Unnatural Creatures

“And when the thin grey man fell into the trunk,” said Amos, “it didn’t make any sound at all.”

“Which,” said Lea, “can be stated as: ‘I’ve done it.’ Roughly speaking.”

“Go see what’s in the trunk,” said Jack. “It’s probably not so terrible after all.”

“If you say so,” said Amos. He went to the trunk, walked all around it three times, then gingerly lifted the lid. He didn’t see anything, so he lifted it farther. When he still didn’t see anything, he opened it all the way. “Why, there’s nothing in—” he began. But then something caught his eye at the very bottom of the trunk, and he reached in and picked it up.

It was a short, triangular bar of glass.

“A prism!” said Amos. “Isn’t that amazing. That’s the most amazing thing I ever heard of.”

But then he was alone in the castle hall. Jack and Lea had already left. Amos ran to the mirror just in time to see them walking away across the green and yellow meadows to the golden castle. Lea leaned her head on Jack’s shoulder, and the prince turned to kiss her raven hair, and Amos thought: “Now there are two people living through the happiest moment of their lives.”

Then the picture changed, and he was looking down a familiar seaside cobbled street, wet with rain. A storm had just ended, and the clouds were breaking apart. Down the block the sign of the Mariners’ Tavern swung in the breeze.

Amos ran to get his wheelbarrow, put the prism on top, and wheeled it to the mirror. Then, just in case, he went back and locked the trunk tightly.

Someone opened the door of the Mariners’ Tavern and called inside, “Why is everybody so glum this evening when there’s a beautiful rainbow looped across the world?”

“It’s Amos!” cried Hidalga, running from behind the counter.

“It is Amos!” cried Billy Belay, thumping after her on his wooden leg.

Everyone else in the tavern came running outside too. Sure enough it was Amos, and sure enough a rainbow looped above them to the far horizons.

“Where have you been?” cried Hidalga. “We all thought you were dead.”

“You wouldn’t believe me if I told you,” said Amos, “for you are always saying you take no man’s jabbering seriously.”

“Any man who can walk out of a tavern one night with nothing and come back in a week with that”—and she pointed to the wheelbarrow full of gold and jewels—“is a man to be taken seriously.”

“Then marry me,” said Amos, “for I always thought you had uncommonly good sense in matters of whom to believe and whom not to. Your last words have proved you worthy of my opinion.”

“I certainly shall,” said Hidalga, “for I always thought you an uncommonly clever man. Your return with this wheelbarrow has proved you worthy of my opinion.”

“I thought you were dead too,” said Billy Belay, “after you ran out of here with that thin grey man and his big black trunk. He told us terrible stories of the places he intended to go. And you just up and went with him without having heard anything but the reward.”

“There are times,” said Amos, “when it is better to know only the reward and not the dangers.”

“And this was obviously such a time,” said Hidalga, “for you are back now, and we are to be married.”

“Well, come in, then,” said Billy, “and play me a game of jackstraws, and you can tell us all about it.”

They went back into the tavern, wheeling the barrow before them.

“What is this?” asked Hidalga as they stepped inside. She picked up the glass prism from the top of the barrow.

“That,” said Amos, “is the other end of the Far Rainbow.”

“The other end of the rainbow?” asked Hidalga.

“Over there,” said Amos, pointing back out the door, “is that end. And over there is this end,” and he pointed out the front window, “and right here is the other end.”

Then he showed her how a white light shining through it would break apart and fill her hands with all the colors she could think of.

“Isn’t that amazing,” said Hidalga. “That’s the most amazing thing I ever heard of.”

“That’s exactly what I said,” Amos told her, and they were both very happy, for they were both clever enough to know that when a husband and wife agree about such things, it means a long and happy marriage is ahead.

12

MEGAN KURASHIGE is a dancer who sometimes writes. I wish she would write more, but that would mean she would dance less. Here she shows us some unnatural creatures made by hand.

There’s a strange collection in the Museum of Natural History, an exhibit of rogue taxidermy, hoaxes created by the enterprising to fool people into believing in monsters. Or are they hoaxes?

IT WAS A HOT, BLUE DAY IN AUGUST when Matthew and I went to the Museum of Natural History for the air-conditioning. I wanted to go to the movies, but Matthew’s mother had told him, at breakfast, that she was cleaning up another scandal in the Zoological Gallery. There was even an article in the paper about it. Matthew had cut it out before he got on the train and we began our argument while he was trying to retrieve the piece of newsprint from his back pocket.

“It’s cheaper than the movies,” he said. “I’ve got my mom’s pass, so it’ll be free, actually. It’s air-conditioned. We can stay all day.”

I made a face. Once, when we went to the beach, Matthew spent the whole afternoon crouched by a single tide pool and, while I walked up and down the sand, slowly burning, he watched a tiny crab eat its way through the arm of a dead starfish. It was like watching a horror movie in slow motion, but Matthew thought it was the most interesting thing in the world.

“The movies are air-conditioned,” I said.

“Yeah, but we’ll only be there for an hour and a half. Two at the most.”

The train’s ventilation system had given up, and the air was piling into a thick, damp haze. By the time Matthew rescued the newspaper article from his pocket, the paper was limp and so wrinkled that he had to stretch it across his knee before I could see what it was.

UNNATURAL SPECIMEN SMUGGLED INTO MUSEUM, it said. Beneath the headline, a grainy, black-and-white photograph showed a stuffed raccoon with a pair of soft, gray wings folded over its back. The photograph had been taken through glass and the photographer’s reflection partially obscured the subject, but the raccoon’s face was clearly visible, its lips flared in an artificial snarl. A caption under the raccoon’s feet called it “an audacious hoax.”