The Slippery Map (18 page)

Dear Reader,

Well, there you have it. Odd, I know. Odd but true.

The nun who told me this story in the middle of a snowy night in Baltimore was Sister Mary Many Pockets—but, of course, you've guessed that by now. (I forget sometimes how perceptive you are.)

She wrote down this story for me on slips of paper, but not in these words. She gave me a summary of the story, and I held on to those little slips of paper for dear life.

When she finished and we were sitting quietly in the nunnery kitchen, I thought,
Bode
—for that's what I call myself when I'm giving myself the straight-talk—
you might very well have a great book on these little scraps of paper. You might just prove to all those other writers that you are not a fraud!

Sister Mary Many Pockets called a cab for me, and while we waited she decided that she still had one thing to show me. She ushered me up the nunnery stairs to the hall of bedrooms. It was as noisy as the Breathing River, certainly. She turned into Oyster's room. It was different from how she'd described it earlier. It
now had bunk beds. Oyster, however, was sleeping in a sleeping bag on the floor. He was a little sweaty in his heavy blankets, but rosy. And a small girl—a miniature version of a girl, a young Perth, in fact, with an impish face and freckles—was sleeping on the bottom bunk. It was Ippy, of course. And on the top bunk was a boy with black hair: the owner's son from the Dragon Palace. And since there were no leg braces or crutches, and since he was on the top bunk, I have to assume that Eshma cured him.

At the foot of Oyster's sleeping bag was a slim dachshund stretched out in all of his glory. I suppose he refused to go back to Mrs. Fishback—maybe he even gave her one of the growls she'd taught him long before.

Sister Mary Many Pockets handed me a note that said,
A sleepover. Best friends.

She then led me back to the main door. The cab was waiting at the curb. I said, “Thank you for the notes.” I was still holding them tightly to my chest.

She looked at me and tilted her head, and that's when I heard her say something to me. It went something like:
Will you write this story down?

I nodded. “Yes, yes,” I said. “I promise.”

And then her heart—what else could it have been?—said,
You don't need those notes, N. E. Bode. You have the
story lodged within you. It's yours now to tell.

I nodded, a little surprised and shaken. I thanked her again and shuffled off the stoop. I walked to the cab, but before I opened the door, I looked back at Sister Mary Many Pockets. Her chubby hands folded together at her chest as if at that very moment she was saying a prayer for me, Bode with his bundle of notes.

I took her in. I really did. And then I threw both arms up into the air, and the notes drifted out and up like more snow, like sugar, like moths.

And so here I am. N. E. Bode, Author.

I hand this story to you with reverence and diligence and a fat imagination and love,

N. E. Bode