Falling Platypus - Chapter 9

“00100 00011.”
—binary gibberish

“Welcome to the Cave of Serenity. I’m Dayton Modwell.”
—Dayton Modwell

“That name sounds familiar,” I said. “Not the Cave of Serenity. The other one. Wait… I know! You wrote Full Force: My Life as a Zebra Tamer.”

Dayton Modwell beamed. “I did!” he said. He’d finally let go of our hands, but he took mine again and shook it vigorously. “I’m so glad you know it. I wrote it right here, in fact. Tell me, what did you think of chapter 22?”

“I’m afraid I haven’t gotten that far yet,” I said. “I only just picked it up.”

“No matter,” he said. “I don’t suppose you brought it with you? I do like to autograph my books.”

“No, I didn’t,” I said, and when he looked crestfallen I added, “but if I’d known you were here, naturally, I would have.”

“Naturally,” Dayton agreed. “But that makes it sound as if you didn’t know I was here. Didn’t anybody tell you?”

“We were looking for a hermit,” Serena Mayfield said. “Eve­rybody said ‘a hermit’ lived at the top of Mount Com­mie.”

“Hardly the top,” Dayton said. “And as far as hermits go, yes, I suppose that has to be me. There’s nobody else around here. I didn’t want my whereabouts to get out to the public, you see, so I kept a low profile. But I didn’t realize it was so low no­body knew who I was! Well.”

“What are you doing out here?” I asked. “And what were you doing in there?”

I pointed at the lotus.

“Well, long story, actually, ha,” Dayton began. His eyes landed on Serena Mayfield’s nose. “Wait a moment!” he cried. “I know that nose! I’d know it anywhere! You’re Serena Mayfield!”

She sighed. “Yes, I am,” she said. “I’m keeping a low profile too. I… Yikes!” she cried as Dayton gave her a hug that plucked her off her feet.

“I haven’t seen you since you were a child!” he said. “You probably don’t remember me at all.”

“No,” she said. “We’ve met before?”

“Only once or twice!” he cried jubilantly, and proclaimed: “I’m your godfather!”

* * *

We sat on the cave floor among the plastic lotus petals while Dayton made us tea. “I don’t suppose you brought the supplies down with you?” he asked us. “I was rather hoping you would have. Oh well.”

He felt along the cave wall and gave a shove, and a slab of stone moved aside revealing a rather well stocked pantry.

“The guides, good men, bring up enough food for a week,” he explained. “But they actually come every five or six days. So over the years I’ve gathered quite a bit of extra.”

“How many years have you been out here?” I asked.

“Three or four,” he said, a tin of tea biscuits in one hand and a teapot in the other. He thought about it for a moment. “Or maybe one or two. It’s hard to keep track.”

“Why did you come out here?” Serena Mayfield asked, which was just as pertinent a question.

“That, dear lady, is the real mystery,” Dayton said, pouring us tea that had somehow already been heated. We sat so as to make a triangular space between us, with a cup each to make a teacup triangle on the inside, and the teapot in the middle of that. Dayton passed around the tea biscuits. “And the answer is, of course, that I wanted to dispense my wisdom as the hermit of the mountain. I daresay I’ve been something of a success.” He winked at us.

“And now I have a question,” he said, as we all sipped our tea. “Bon appetea, by the way.”

Serena Mayfield and I winced involuntarily at the bad pun.

“What…” Dayton began. “Brought you,” he went on. “All,” he added. “The way,” he whispered. “Out,” he breathed. “Here?” he finished. It was so quiet we could barely hear him.

“The short version,” Serena Mayfield began, “is, we were delivering bananas to a refugee camp, he knelt down to coo at the children like a pigeon, and the children all ate the bananas before we could get there, so the elders were upset and they took cyanide and died. But one of them lived long enough to tell us the end of the world was coming and we should go here to find answers.”

“And what are they?” Dayton said. “Did you find them yet?”

“I think he meant we should ask you,” I said.

“But he was dying of cyanide poisoning, so he probably isn’t the most trustworthy person,” Serena Mayfield said matter-of-factly.

“Ohh, not at all,” Dayton said. “Contrariwise, in fact.”

“So you do have answers?” I asked.

Dayton opened his mouth and shut it again. “That isn’t quite what I meant,” he said. “But perhaps you could tell me the ques­tion, and then what you think the answer is, and I could give you my opinion on that.”

“Why is the platypus falling from the sky?” Serena Mayfield said without hesitation.

“I love riddles,” Dayton said, immediately engaged. “Let’s see. I think I know this one. Let’s see.”

“That actually was the question,” I said. “A platy­pus actually fell from the sky.”

“Oh, then I don’t know,” Dayton said. “Sorry.”

“That’s all right,” I said, brushing off my trousers and standing up. “I guess I became a fake kidnapper for nothing. I guess I came all the way out here, for nothing!”

“Not so fast,” Dayton said, and with a yank pulled me back to the cave floor. “You have to respect the tea ceremony.”

“What?”

“We’ve engaged in the holy tea ceremony, you and I and you and I,” he said, looking from me to Serena Mayfield. “And you and you,” he said, referring to me and Serena Mayfield. “While the tea ceremony is in progress, we three are tightly linked, bound by bonds closer than friendship, closer than family, closer than love. We three are, in fact, the same person. Take a deep breath, and you’ll feel it.”

I took a deep breath but I didn’t feel anything.

“Dayton’s humming again,” Serena Mayfield said. She didn’t seem to be feeling anything, either.

It was true. Dayton Modwell had fallen back into his medita­tive position, legs crossed, arms at his side with the thumbs and forefingers pinched.

“Shall we go?” I said, standing.

“Not yet,” Serena Mayfield said, although she stood, too. “I want to know what’s shining in his pantry.”

Where the teapot had been, something glinted. Something dazzling, something that was white and all the colors of the rain­bow at the same time. Something that was its own prism.

“It’s a jewel,” Serena Mayfield said, picking it up from its perch on the shelf. “Looks like a diamond.”

“Let’s ask Dayton,” I said, and we sat back where we had been on the floor. Serena Mayfield put the jewel in the teapot.

I pushed Dayton on the shoulder, and he rocked and wakened and stopped humming.

“More tea?” he asked, and we both nodded and gave him our cups. “My apologies, something is blocking the spout,” he said when the tea wouldn’t pour. He lifted the lid.

His jaw dropped.

His whole body jerked like he’d had a hiccup.

“Everything all right?” Serena Mayfield asked innocently.

“I see you’ve found the bijou,” he said sheepishly, and fished it out of the teapot.

“The what?”

“The bijou.”

“Is that what that is?”

“Yes, a bijou.”

“What is a bijou?”

“A bijou… a bijou is….” Dayton trailed off. “Lots of tricky questions today,” he said. “A bijou is like a diamond, but much more special. It’s strong as steel, but malleable as gold. It’s as beautiful as a sapphire, but plain as a stone. It’s cold as ice, but born of fire. It’s like your first kiss, and the kiss of death. It’s… it’s beyond words, really.”

I was entranced by Dayton’s sudden gift for poetry, but Serena Mayfield was having none of it.

“So what is it?” she said. “As in, actually?”

“It’s condensed sound,” Dayton said, straightforward again. “It’s a pitch, a pitch sounded just right so as to solidify and form a physical incarnation. That is what a bijou is.”

He tapped it with a little silver teaspoon, and the bijou gave off a single, lasting, plaintive tone, both harmonious and dissonant, uplifting and depressing, subservient and commanding, authori­ta­tive and subversive. It continued to ring like a struck gong until Dayton rested his hand on it and stilled it.

“That was…” I began.

“A bijou,” Dayton finished for me.

“Where can we find one?” Serena Mayfield asked. She had a new glint in her eye. “One of our very own?”

“They’re very rare,” Dayton said slowly, pondering. “It took me years to find this one, and I almost never talk about it. But I suppose, if you’re really determined, the best place to look would be in the jungle. Everything is in the jungle.”

“The jungle’s a big place,” I said, as someone had to state the obvious. “Where would you recommend we begin?”

“I would recommend giving up now and going home,” Day­ton said.

“We can’t do that,” I said. “She won’t, and I can’t.”

“Then,” Dayton said, “if I were to recommend something else, and I won’t, I would recommend you start with the Sisters of Mercy of the Jungle. They have an outreach program, these days, but it doesn’t help much.”

“Why not?” Serena Mayfield asked. “Sisters of mercy—sounds like nuns to me.”

“They are,” Dayton agreed. “But they’re also suicidal mani­acs.”

* * *

After the tea ceremony had officially finished, and we were (according to Dayton Modwell) our own persons again, Serena and I headed back to the surface to sleep in the guides’ hut. Dayton walked with us to the edge of his room, which was about four steps.

“Don’t go looking for bijous,” he urged us. “It’s folly. Really and truly, folly.”

“Thank you, Dayton,” Serena Mayfield said. “It was lovely to meet you.”

“And both of you,” Dayton said.

The last I saw of him, he was picking up the pieces of the plastic lotus we’d dismantled.

“I still want to know what he was doing in there,” I said as we walked up the candlelit corkscrew hall.

“He was strange,” Serena Mayfield agreed. “But I liked him.”

“You have to,” I said. “He’s your godfather.”

She gave me the most skeptical look anyone in the world had ever given anyone else. “But don’t worry, I like him, too,” I said hastily.

Outside in the cold, we watched a shooting star crossing the sky. It shone a brilliant red.

“So are we going looking for bijous tomorrow?” I asked her.

She smiled at me and nodded.