Zeuglodon by James P. Blaylock Read Free Book Online Page B

but what it all meant I couldn’t say. Now I know that she meant Dr. Frosticos, whose name she couldn’t bring herself to utter.
    We all went into the kitchen to make breakfast then, where the Mermaid still sat on the table. (Perry said that I should spell the Mermaid in the box with a capital M, because it was the mermaid, and had no other name. Lala must remain the lower case mermaid, because she does have a name, and by now we were getting used to it.) Anyway, Lala had come a long way to see the Mermaid, and she looked immensely relieved. It was awkward, actually, because no one wanted to say, “Are you related to this Mermaid in the box? You have gills and frog hands, after all,” although we were all thinking it. Uncle Hedge started mixing up buckwheat pancakes, and pancakes are a good distraction, because eating gives you something to do besides talk. While we were spreading peanut butter on them, dipping them in syrup, and stuffing them down, she stole glances in the Mermaid’s direction, as if she was trying to puzzle something out, and I wondered what it was.
    I could see that Brendan was a little bit googly about her. He wasn’t eating his pancakes, but was showing off and telling her about navigation and the north star and about how everything in the world is actually made of hydrogen, and she was nodding and saying, “Oh,” and, “I wasn’t aware of that.” Perry pointed out helpfully that Brendan’s brain was filled with hydrogen, like a blimp, and that it would float away if it weren’t encased in his skull. Brendan got furious and called him a big bag of pigswill, and Uncle Hedge had to give them a look so that they’d simmer down, which Lala seemed to find amusing.
    After pancakes we went out walking on the bluffs above the Sea Cove, which is nearly behind the house—behind Mrs. Hoover’s house, really. The cliffs are high around the cove, and there’s only a little bit of sand down on the horseshoe-shaped beach, which is mostly under water at high tide and is never very wide even when the tide is out, because the ocean bottom falls away so steeply there. Driftwood piles up on the rocks in the cove, and there’s usually an immense lot of it, which you can use to build a fort, although if the tide comes up high enough, your fort floats away. After a storm you can find seashells there and stuff that gets washed up, like old shoes, although always just one. Once we found a coconut that had drifted in from across the ocean. It turned out to be full of salt water that had leaked into it, which we discovered after we hammered a hole in the top with a nail and paid Brendan a quarter to drink from it. Brendan didn’t think it was as funny as Perry and I did.
    Halfway up the cliffs, there’s a cave in the rocks. It’s not deep, but if it’s rainy you can get in out of the wind and stay warm and dry, especially with a driftwood fire. You have to have a pail of water standing by in order to put the fire out when you leave. We take turns going down after the water, because it’s hard to carry it back up. Brendan helped Lala climb across the face of the cliff toward the narrow little path to the cave. Unless you’re Hasbro you have to hold on to scrubby bushes and roots that grow from the side of the cliff, and if you’re not careful you might fall, which Brendan did once and broke his arm, as Ms Peckworthy already revealed. Hasbro just kind of dances across, because he’s nimble despite his portliness. Perry says that dogs don’t know anything about falling, and that’s what makes them safe from it, although I don’t know if that’s scientific.
    We started a fire with some of the dry wood that we had stowed there, and it was really jolly sitting and looking out at the ocean, which had calmed down since yesterday’s storm. You might think you would suffocate having a fire in a cave, but the sea wind draws the smoke up the curve of the cave roof and out into the open air, so that you don’t.