Matilda the Snake Gets Sick
Chapter 1
Now, if you remember, the Favulous Sunflower has a fascinating crew. There is Queen Hannah Lily of Sunflower Valley, who is both queen and captain of the Favulous Sunflower. Of course Timmy the Frog, so shy and loves to make zucchini pancakes. And Fred the Literate Baboon, who pretty much lives to climb tall trees and read great books, and who sleeps in the crow’s nest of the fantastic, fabulicious boat or ship or vessel or boat. Fred enjoys climbing the palm tree in your front yard, too, when the Favulous Sunflower is moored in Sunflower Valley, the valley that once, a long while since, had millions of sunflowers following the sun, an annual Sunflower Festival, a Sunflower Queen, a parade with floats and even the Sunflower Cup soccer tournament attended by spectators and players from around the world. However, one year the sunflowers lived their life cycle, died and never returned. Hannah doesn’t know it, but she will one day have to fight the man who destroyed them. She’s a little girl, so imagine. And she doesn’t like to fight. But we’ll get to that.
We never forget Ernesto the Retired Pirate, who decided to give up being a bad pirate because he wanted to sail with you. There breathes Malcolm the Tiger, who never was a scary tiger to begin with and who hoped to stay with Queen Hannah Lily when the boat left the jungle forests after finding the extraordinary, beguiling Seed.
Naturally, wonderfully, you recall Matilda the Big Snake, met along the Amazon, the longest and biggest river in the whole entire universe. Near the mouth of the Amazon they picked up the hitchhiking mariner Adam the Indigenous Wise Person. He became their guide and one of their protectors. He doesn’t talk much. Though he always smiles and laughs. Queen Hannah Lily remarks on his smile and his laugh. Adam’s short, like Princess Abby, and very brave.
And, you remember everybody made it back to Sunflower Valley and the Favulous Sunflower was anchored near the dog run, near the little bridge where the dogs jump into the water after tennis balls and poop basically everywhere, silly dogs. They were having fun, playing around the house, Fred the Baboon climbing the big palm tree, Hannah’s Mommy, Suzy, adopted all their new friends, because, well, eventually she liked them, no loved them, after acclimating to fur, hair, scales, scat and peculiar smells. Suzy played with Malcolm the Tiger and rubbed his super-soft furry belly, tickling him until he giggled. Timmy the Frog took over making breakfast for Suzy and Gary and the two girls. But all Timmy made were pancakes. So Gary and Suzy ate pancakes every morning and Queen Hannah Lily laughed-and-laughed.
And of course you recall how the Favulous Sunflower got its name. Literate baboon, such a smart baboon, wanting to hear excellent and complicated tales, Hannah read them aloud while he snoozed in his tree, Moby Dick and Ulysses. He clambered down from the palm he shared with the local owl shouting “Me! Me! Me!” when they decided to paint the three-masted schooner, and came time to christen the ship, as people call it within a certain paradigm.
They took a vote on the name, avoiding colonial-sounding contrivances, avoiding up or down and this or that, white or black, masculine or feminine, aiming for a flower or a tree. They stumbled upon sunflower after discarding rose. Though roses used to always bloom on the bay. Sunflowers though, in Perugia and Providence, these grew in fields and alongside houses and on this particular boat. When seeds germinate randomly where they will, or where domesticated, or where shat or spit or dropped or tumbled or blown in a storm. My goodness the miracle! Please never lose sight of the miracle. Because you’re the ones who will inherit all of this.
Stupendous sunflower. Absolute sunflower. No sunflower like it sunflower. Tall sunflower, short sunflower, one in a million sunflower. Gigantic sunflower twenty feet tall! A child germinated a sunflower seed in preschool. Tenuously the stalk grew, the blossom showed, the sun they followed, as we do knowingly or unwittingly or no “ly” at all. Children of the sun. The Special Gang settled on fabulous sunflower. They voted. We shall call the ship the Fabulous Sunflower. Me! Me! Me! Fred shouted when they required a scribe for the name. Hannah was going to write the word. With her steady hand. But decided a good thing it would be to hand off the responsibility.
Fred dangled from the side of the boat on a slab of oak attached to ropes. Paintbrush and can containing black. He wrote Favulous Sunflower on port bow and aft. The gang stood and absorbed the typographical uh-oh. Fred beamed like a satisfied artist, satisfied. “Ummm,” said Hannah and her mother, Suzy. “Fab,” Gary said, “Fab. F-A-B.”
“Huh,” from the baboon.
“Bulous,” to bule, to know the B, to b or not to b.
“In this case, let’s not.”
“Surely not.”
“The Fab Four, you know, fabby fab, fab no flab.”
“Oh, who needs a B when you have a V.”
“V for victory!”
“What are you talking about,” Fred queried, now worried.
“Bs are good but Vs are better.”
“Better V than not at all.”
Fred technically did not misspell that day. He’d heard all along, truly heard, a V and not a B. His way became a way, an allowable thing, the person you are. “Well,” said Hannah, “Favulous is kind of awesome.”
“V is awesome! V be awesome!” Shouted Timmy the frog, hopping and jumping even more energetically than usual.
“Awesome and unique,” Suzy declared. Favulous is way cooler. In fact, all printed words declaring fabulous hereafter should be changed, and all future exclamations of the fab should be favulous indeed. The way of things, the prettiest possible way.
The entire crew took another vote and the vote was unanimous. Favulous Sunflower the ship became and so remained, strongly felt and powerfully trumpeted, ready for planet-saving adventures, humanity-spanning journeys, carrying miracles and accruing evidence of goodness and hope, spirit and survival, and oftentimes, though traveling through scary realms and frightening worlds, absolute, simple, real joy.
They lived a quiet, peaceful life, crowded into the house in Sunflower Valley, the Favulous Sunflower resting. But then, if you remember from Idaho, Matilda the Big Snake, such a pretty girl snake, got horrifically sick. She couldn’t do anything anymore, she couldn’t play with the girls or her friends. Hannah’s mommy became super-mega scared, a fear she hadn’t felt in a long while. She said to Queen Hannah, “Hannah, you have got to do something.”
Hannah thought and she thought, she pulled on her chin and said, “Hm.” Timmy the Frog came up to her and asked, “What are we going to do with Matilda?” He was frightened. He started to cry. Fred the Baboon heard Timmy crying and he climbed down from the palm tree and came inside. Then Malcolm the Tiger, who was playing with Princess Abby after changing her diaper, entered the dining room. Everybody wanted to know what Queen Hannah was going to do. She pulled on her chin and she said, “Hm,” deep in thought. She might have thought, Too much responsibility for a young girl, but she refused. She ignored that particular voice, set it aside, flushed it down the toilet, jammed dynamite into it and exploded the thought to smithereens. Goodbye, dumb thought, thought not good for me. But she was doing some serious contemplating of another kind.
Then Ernesto the Former Pirate had an idea. He remembered a powerful waterfall that had the healthiest water in the world, way far away in the middle of the Indian Ocean, on Spirit Island near the Seychelles, among the beautiful blue water and blue skies and blissful whales, protected from brigands, whale hunters, and capitalists of all kinds. The whales were happy because they swam in the healthy, clean blue ocean, and they drank from the waterfall that fell directly into the sea. Dolphins and fish and octopi would ask, “Hey, whales, why are you so happy and healthy?”
The whales answered, “Because we live in clean seawater devoid of human plastics, and we drink from the magical waterfall, the cleanest and prettiest water in the world, not privately owned and maintained.” Once, when Ernesto still lived a pirate’s life, thieving from the rich and giving to the poor, but actually keeping most for himself, he tried to steal the water and sell it to people in Europe and America. What a great thing to take natural resources and sell them at profit! A beautiful, wonderful idea, naturally-occurring riches!
Sigh, but the whales always crushed his boats. Ernesto finally gave up his foolish, renegade’s enterprise, and stuck to silver and gold and diamonds from South Africa. Like a man named Cecil, another pirate of land, who had the hubris to name a gigantic country after himself after stealing valuable minerals and he wasn’t even from there or anything. He called the place Rhodesia. That took some guts. Now that Ernest the Pirate was a nice pirate, and everybody worried about Matilda, he realized they could take Matilda to Spirit Island and save her life. He shared the idea with his friends.
Queen Hannah Lily of Sunflower Valley said, “Hey, that’s a good idea.” She looked around the living room and studied the assembled community. She knew what to do. “We have to leave immediately. There’s no sense waiting until tomorrow!” She was happy and she thanked Ernesto the Good Pirate for the great idea. Timmy the Frog started hopping up and down, singing about how many pancakes he would make Matilda when she got all better. Fred the Baboon ran around in circles, so fast that he made his friends dizzy. Queen Hannah’s mom, Suzy, began making sandwiches for their voyage to Spirit Island. Malcolm the Tiger jumped all over Princess Abby and they laughed-and-laughed.
Then, after everyone finished celebrating, they remembered poor, sick Matilda. They became real-super really-quiet. They walked over to Matilda, who was lying curled up into a tight ball on the white couch in the living room, curled up so small even though she was the biggest snake in the world from the biggest river in the world. She was crying. Fred the Baboon said, “Don’t worry, Matilda, we’re all going to find Spirit Island, and we’re going to save you.” Matilda looked up and tried to smile.
Then Adam the Native tried to lift Matilda, because she was too feeble to slither to the boat, and Matilda cried out, “Ow, ow! Don’t, I can’t move.” Adam quickly placed her back on the couch.
Queen Hannah’s mommy, Suzy, said, “I think we’re going to have to leave Matilda here, you guys. You get out there in the world and find the magic water and bring it back to her. I’ll take care of her. But you have to hurry.” Queen Hannah Lily of Sunflower Valley knew this was a great idea, because she knew that her mom was real smart. Queen Hannah made the decision for all of them: “Let’s leave right now. We’ll bring the magic water back from Spirit Island. And maybe we’ll meet some whales or dolphins or octopi.”
Timmy the Frog began hopping all around the house, shouting “Yay, yay! We’re going to meet some whales, we’re going to meet some dolphins, dolphins and whales, whales and dolphins and octopi!”
Fred the Baboon said, “Timmy, you don’t even know what whales or dolphins or octopusses are.”
Everybody gasped. Total silence, wide eyes. They looked at Fred and then they looked at Timmy. Timmy said, “I do so know.”
“Oh, yeah,” Fred said, “What are they?”
“Why they’re, they’re. . .” and Timmy was stuck. He didn’t know what they were. He was just a simple little frog who liked pancakes for breakfast, lunch and dinner. So he said, “Well, big shot Fred, do you know what whales or dolphins or octopi are?”
Fred was tricked. Timmy had called his bluff. Now he didn’t know what to do. He made a guess, “Whales are like really big birds. And dolphins are a kind of spider, which . . .” he was pulling on his chin and scratching his head. Everybody except for Timmy started laughing at Fred, going “ha ha, they are not, ha ha they are not.” And the whole living room got a little out of hand. So Queen Hannah Lily said, “Wait a minute guys, it doesn’t matter what whales are or are not, we need to save Matilda. So if you’ll quit playing games, we should go now.”
“Oh, yes, go now go now,” Fred the Baboon said. And he ran up the tree and down the tree, up the tree and down the tree, he was so excited.
So they packed up their things, all the sandwiches and water babbas that Suzy fixed for them, and they marched down to the dog run to find the Favulous Sunflower.
- - -
Chapter 2
They climbed into the Favulous Sunflower the whole lot of them. Timmy the Frog, Adam the First Nations person of the land, Ernesto the Pirate, Malcolm the Tiger, Queen Hannah Lily, who left behind her sister Princess Abby because Abby wasn’t yet old enough to voyage across dangerous seas, and Fred the Baboon. Poor Matilda remained home, curled into a scaly ball on the white couch. And they set off, down the waterways of Sunflower Valley, past Richardson Bay and into San Francisco Bay, underneath the Golden Gate Bridge, full sails ahead into the wide, massive Pacific Ocean.
They crossed the entire watery expanse and made it to Asia. They entered the Indian Ocean and turned right, you guys say northeast, to locate the Seychelles, and onward to find Spirit Island, avoiding brigands, bandits, capitalists and politicians. Ernesto the Pirate, because he had been a bad pirate, knew the secret way, for the most part. A route so they wouldn’t meet any mean people navigating in the open, under the big sky, in the unending waters.
As they neared the Seychelles, however, pirates were not the problem. A large army of disagreeable squid who didn’t want strangers to enter their world and steal their riches or spoil their clean water or forever change their way of life. Whether visitors were friend or foe the squid wouldn’t allow anyone to enter their world. Ernesto had always heard stories about the large squid who were aggressive. The stories became real in every adult’s mind, and in the minds of young boys and girls. But he’d never seen them. He thought they were just a part of the imagination. Nothing real. Nothing that could hurt them.
Ernesto was reading a stack of books that Queen Hannah had lent him. Timmy the Frog experimented with potato pancakes, a new kind of pancake for him. Fred the Baboon snored in the crow’s nest at the top of the main mast. He was dreaming of all the trees he could climb. And a way to traverse the fore, main, and mizzen mast without descending. Maybe a rope, or a hang glider, he’d work on it. As he dreamt he smiled. Adam There-First and Hannah played checkers with Malcolm the Tiger the referee.
The Favulous Sunflower sailed just fine, when all of a sudden, out of nowhere, there exploded a very loud noise. “Buruumpp!” went the thumping crack, sounding like the whole world was coming apart, that the Favulous Sunflower had been struck by lightning or Moby Dick the white whale with the thick head and soon to sink. Everybody jumped and ran to the rails. Fred the Baboon, who had been sleeping and snoring and dreaming of tall trees, took it the worst. He bounced out of the crow’s nest and fell overboard into the dark sea.
“Baboon overboard!” shouted Adam, ordinarily quiet. “Baboon overboard!”
Timmy ran up to Queen Hannah and hid behind her, shivering. “What do we do, what do we do, uh-oh, what do we do?” he said to Hannah.
She turned to him and patted him on the head. She tried to calm him. She said, softly, “Now, don’t worry Timmy. What ever it is, we’ll figure it out. Remember, we’re on a magic Favulous Sunflower. Nothing can happen to us if we stay on the boat.”
“I knowwwwww,” he cried. “But Fred’s not on the boat. He’s off it. And he doesn’t know how to swim. He doesn’t know—how----to ----swim!”
Malcolm the Tiger, who did, of course, being a tiger, know how to swim, shouted, “I’ll save him!” He held one sharp claw in the air, swiveled on his paws like a modern dancer, and dove overboard to rescue Fred.
Fred rapidly sinking sank like anvils sink. And obelisks when used as canoes. The Favulous Sunflower shook back and forth, forth and back. It wasn’t a storm, wasn’t lightning, they didn’t know what it might be. Malcolm saw what it was. He noticed one hundred and eleven giant squid banging into the boat, trying to make holes so that the Favulous Sunflower would descend the fathoms scuttled. He spied the squid wrapping their tentacles around the shifting ship. The Favulous Sunflower shook and shook, but wouldn’t go down. Not yet anyway. So much for magic. What’s magic, anyway, nothing but pretend, nothing but metaphysics.
Three squid noticed Malcolm’s sweet dive and they darted after him. Holding his extraordinary breath, he swam down and down after Fred, descending like an anchor tossed from a ship. Malcolm swam and swam and he was faster than the squid, who shrieked and made frightening noises when they saw that they couldn’t catch the wet tiger. Malcolm determined; Malcolm serious; Malcolm super ninja water cat.
Now, finally, Malcolm saw a purpose in his life. He would always take care of Fred the Baboon, take care of his friends, look after Queen Hannah and Princess Abby of Sunflower Valley. He swam and swam, down and down, so deep and deep that he almost couldn’t see anymore. Blindly, hopefully, he reached out a paw and extended his claws. He seized Fred by his shirt, then grabbed him by the belt, and immediately he started swimming toward the surface, following bubbles toward the light.
Adam saw Malcolm surface and he flung a life preserver water-ward. The Favulous Sunflower started going around in circles, trying to shake off the odious squid army. The squid didn’t understand why the boat was so hard to sink, didn’t comprehend the ship they battled was the magic Favulous Sunflower.
Adam thought that the boat would be fine. But he worried about Malcolm and Fred, who still floundered in the water. The squid, angry with the boat, turned on Malcolm, who still clasped Fred by his belt. The squid army circled Fred and Malcolm, very angry, extremely dangerous, not at all compassionate. It didn’t look good for your friends. There was nothing Queen Hannah could do.
“What can we do?” she asked Adam.
“I don’t know,” he admitted. He was sad. The Favulous Sunflower stopped shaking because the squid army turned toward Malcolm and Fred. “I just don’t know.”
“They’re going to die!” shouted Timmy. He started to cry. As the vicious squid closed in on their friends, all of a sudden, out of nowhere, they heard an astounding bellow, long, low and mournful. The strange sound happened again, then again. In the time it takes to burp, from below the surface of the sea, a massive whale rose up and made a fantastic splash. The whale was as big or bigger than the Favulous Sunflower, which, as we all know, is a large boat, a three-masted schooner, not messing around. Benjamin the Whale, a hundred years old, the wise whale of the sea.
Benjamin swam with ten of his friends, gigantic whales too, accompanied by two beautiful, intelligent dolphins. The dolphins names were Eli and Ashley, brother and sister. The two dolphins flipped into the air, performed somersaults, squeaked and shrilled and aimed their hard noses for the squid. The whales were so large, so slow and intent, purposeful and tactical, that the squid couldn’t do anything about them. The whales freaked out the squid and the squid army started to swim away, cutting their losses. Eli and Ashley the dolphins chased the squid into the middle of the dark ocean.
The squid army vanished. Everyone caught their collective breath. Wipe brows, pinched themselves. It’s possible they bit off more than they could chew. I mean, you remember that Hannah was a kid, nothing but a little girl. I mean, come on! Now quiet on the Favulous Sunflower. Using his broad fantabulous tail, Benjamin lifted Malcolm the Tiger to the Favulous Sunflower’s deck.
“Thank you big whale,” Queen Hannah Lily said. “On behalf of all my friends, thank you.”
“Call me Benjamin,” the whale said, slow and mournful. He sounded old and enlightened. “I’ll help you any time. Is the baboon going to make it?”
They all glanced at Fred, who was sopping wet and looked like he was asleep. Strand of seaweed dangled limply from his considerable nostrils. Timmy the Frog hopped over to his ear, leaned over low and easy, and he shouted “Boo!” Fred the Baboon started coughing. He spit saltwater and kelp, looked around confused, and tried to sit up. All of his friends clapped their hands and started to cheer. “Yay! Yay! Fred’s alive, Fred’s alive!”
“Of course I’m alive,” Fred said. “What a horrible dream; one second I was climbing the tallest tree in the world. The next I was swimming in dark volatile waters and I couldn’t see.”
“You fell in the ocean after the squid army attacked us,” Timmy said.
“Get out! Shut the front door! What?”
“Oh, nevermind,” Queen Hannah stepped in. “That’s not important. What’s important is that you’re alive and well.”
“Of course I’m alive and well,” Fred said. “What else would I be?”
“Squid bait, for one thing,” Ernest said.
“Squid bait?”
“Yessss,” thundered the old whale, Benjamin. “The squid are jealously trying to steal and keep the magic, healthy water on Spirit Island for themselves. They’ve been trying to take it from us for years. And bottle it for sale around the world. Interesting concept, bottling free-flowing water. They’re anti-union too.”
“You know where the clean water is on Spirit Island?” Hannah asked.
“Oh, yes, we live off it. That’s why we’re so healthy out here in the middle of the great big ocean, as the world becomes dirtier, grimier and weirder.”
“We seek to take some of the water back to Sunflower Valley with us, just a little,” Hannah said. “Not for sale - for a sick friend.”
“Yes, some water, some water,” Timmy the Frog shouted. He hopped up and down. “And we’re going to give Matilda pancakes and we’re going to give her the water, the water. And Fred some pancakes, too . . . Now that he’s okay after falling into the ocean, and and and, and you some pancakes, because you saved Fred and Malcolm’s lives. Yes, pancakes for all!” Timmy was so excited he couldn’t stop hopping. Hannah pulled on her chin and scratched her head.
“Who’s Matilda,” Eli and Ashley said together. They looked up at everybody from the water.
Adam spoke for all of them, a surprise because he rarely said anything: “Matilda is our friend, she’s the biggest snake in the world from the biggest and longest river in the world, the Amazon, where I also live with my family. It’s my home.”
“Oh, yes,” Benjamin said. “You will need to bring the water to her. We’ll come with you and protect you. Where is this snake, this Matilda?”
“She is in Sunflower Valley,” Fred the Baboon said. He spit out some salt water and a few pieces of seaweed. “So-called though there are no more sunflowers.”
“Yes, in Sunflower Valley, in Sunflower Valley, in Sunflower Valley!” Timmy shouted, hopping around. “Where Suzy is and Gary and Matilda and pancakes everyday and the big red bridge, a bridge a bridge and its red or golden, depending, and Princess Abby, wait till you meet Abby, and . . .”
“Whoa, whoa, slow down little froggy,” Benjamin said. Hannah laughed. Adam laughed. “I know Sunflower Valley,” said the giant, ancient whale. I went there once to visit friends. Isn’t that the Golden Gate Bridge?”
“Yes, the Golden Gate Bridge, the Golden Gate Bridge, yes yes yes!” Timmy shouted again, hopping all over the place. “The prettiest place in the world.” Then he paused, “Well, I mean, you have a pretty place, too. Suppose the whole world is pretty. I mean, I like you and I like this ocean, this is a nice ocean, I guess, and . . .”
The large, old whale laughed. He exhaled sharply from his spout, and sprayed Timmy the Frog from head to toe. Everybody laughed, including Fred the Baboon, now standing. “I’d like to try some of your pancakes, little froggy,” Benjamin said. “But first, let me take you to Spirit Island to fetch the water for you. Then we’ll guide you back to Sunflower Valley.”
“Hey, can we come, too,” said Eli and Ashley the Dolphins together, brother and sister. “We want to go too!”
The whale turned to Queen Hannah Lily. Hannah pulled on her chin and scratched her head. “Is that okay?” Benjamin asked Hannah.
She was thinking of her mother. Would Suzy want more friends to come to the house? Hannah thought that, Yes, surely it would be fine. “We’d love to have you,” she said directly to Eli and Ashley. The dolphins flipped about the water, performing somersaults again, overjoyed to have found new friends in the middle of the wide, gi-flimbous ocean.
“Okay, then, everybody follow me,” Benjamin the Very Big Whale said. “But before we can have any water, you’ll have to explain your purpose to the oracle.” Nobody paid attention to that last part. They were, like, ev, Ben knows what he’s doing. He turned and waved his pectoral fins, splashing his tail flukes. Fred the Baboon steered the Favulous Sunflower after the whales. Eli and Ashley jumped and flipped around the boat, swimming next to them, smiling up at their new friends.
After a short while, the adventurous gang came upon a tiny archipelago of wonderful, remote, hidden islands. The water blue and translucent; turtles swam in the clear sea and those on the boat spotted rocks and coral polyps on the bottom, sardines, sergeants, tarpons, flounders, eels, and individual grains of sand. Soon, Benjamin led them around a few islands, palm trees stretching toward the sun, shiny white coral beaches, fresh water running from the interior spilling in cascades into the clear saltwater.
“It’s right here, It’s right here!” Eli and Ashley shouted. They turned more flips in the stunning liquid. In front of Queen Hannah Lily of Sunflower Valley, in front of the entire crew of the Favulous Sunflower, crested an astounding river over the smooth rocks. What? Why haven’t imperialists found this yet? Why isn’t this place in all the guidebooks? Why don’t millionaire - no, silly me - billionaire yachts know about this place and anchor offshore? The water cascaded in a majestic arc, pure liquid that stirred their hearts, clean and cold, the lifeblood of Spirit Island. Benjamin smiled. This was his enchanted spot, the most sacred place in all the world. Epitome planet extraordinaire.
“We’ve made it,” Benjamin said beaming. Hannah Lily pulled on her chin and scratched her head. Her friends, her crew, waited for her command. She looked at Timmy the Frog, who stared back at her, waiting. He blinked. She peered at Fred the Baboon, at Adam, at Malcolm, at Ernesto. She nodded to Ernesto and the nice brigand said, “Okay, everybody, let’s fill the barrels and get back to Mill Valley. We have to save Matilda, and we have to hurry.”
Hannah did not yet understand that the oracle would block their access to this water. But, in the meantime, remember when you acknowledged the American writer who considered water with reverence. Her word. And water flowing from her “tap in Malibu,” actual, wonderful beautiful waters from the Rocky Mountains, flowing out of Rocky Mountain National Park on the western edge, becoming the mighty Colorado River, “crossing the Mojave Desert” so that she can write essays to begin with, and share with you. Natural light on our waters, natural light on the page. And aqueducts! We build these water things! Why? Exactly.
Recall that Joan loved the waterworks as mechanical, structural genius. The impressive things humans do. Dams and tunnels, pipes and turbines, moving water, domesticating water, waters flowing through American deserts, the Hoover Dam. Visit Hoover Dam, Queen Hannah! With your sister and your cousins! The levees in the Delta, water flowing north in the Central Valley. People who live in deserts, you know, live in arid lands “only the most temporary way.” And we dream, always dreaming, of oceans, lakes, seas, and a “river running free over granite.” Remember, you guys, to water the gardens. Recall the olive tree.
The spring water poured from the rocks and provided life for everyone who lived there, who lived there and your water everywhere. Fred the Literate Baboon, always-knowing and truly understanding, except for marine animals apparently, raised a finger in the air: “I shall recite from memory our water joy, you know, from that time I read James Joyce!”
“Joyce?”
“That’s him!”
“Did he write about water?” Hannah asked
“He perhaps over-wrote about water, in a blooming kind of way, blooming as in spring!”
With that earnestness, Fred prepared to demonstrate his acting skills from the mast, lines he’d perhaps mixed or perhaps not, lines he cared about while paying attention when no one thought he paid attention. Our water your water our bodies water our water planet among darkness and cold. “Um,” he said. Everybody waited below. He looked down at the assembled audience, a world community. “Um, I forgot,” he said.
“Oh, shucks,” Hannah and Adam said at once. “Jinx!” Adam added. She looked at him. He shrugged. Fred descended.
“It’ll come back to me,” he offered. “It always does, I think.”
“Well, anyway, let’s get the barrels ready.” The gang approached in small rowboats, like whaling boats really, with empty barrels ready for some one hydrogen and two oxygens. But, as they neared the cascade, they saw an old man crouched low to the ground. He looked at them with kindness, and a sort of sternness. “Maybe he’s a wizard,” Hannah thought but did not say.
The strange person, ancient in the extreme, pot-belly but crazy skinny, scraggly hair and a long equally-scraggly goatee, peered out from his wrinkled face with green, gleaming eyes. The gang approached cautiously. The elderly alien barely breathed. And then he said, “Hello travelers from afar. Welcome to the here and now.”
“Say what,” thought Fred.
“Run fast away,” thought Timmy.
“What would he taste like,” thought Malcolm.
Hannah approached and declared, “Hello visibly timeworn human, we are visitors from San Francisco Bay, well, Richardson Bay really, carried by current and wind on the . . .”
“. . . Favulous Sunflower,” the decrepit man answered.
“Hey!” Shouted Fred, “How did you know?”
“I read the name on the stern.”
“Oh,” the gang said at once.
“Welcome to Spirit Island, and the first day of the rest of your lives,” he announced. Without moving a muscle, we should report, which is weird. If you’re ever talking with someone who never blinks nor moves a muscle, quietly back away in the opposite direction.
“Thank you, sir,” Hannah said.
“And no need for a speech, I know all about Matilda,” he declared.
“Did you read that on the boat too?” Fred asked. He thought that was funny.
The man turned and looked at him with blank expression and without a word. Fred decided this might be a good time to climb a tall tree. He commenced the climb. “As I was saying, I know all about Matilda. And the answer is maybe you are able to taste the waters. But you will have to go on a long mission, one that might lead to death and violent dismemberment, but one that is necessary to save the magic water itself.”
“We can handle any mission,” Hannah said without hesitation. “To save our friend, and to preserve this spring-fed miracle.” She paused, exhaled, imagined all kinds of terrors out on the open ocean, like finding Moby Dick or something, or a giant great white shark that ate a girl surfer’s arm once. Hannah pulled on her chin in contemplation. “Um, what is it that we have to do?”
“Please, listen closely, come to me here, your silly babooooon, toooo.” Fred heard but remained. Hannah looked up.
“Freddddd! Come on down now, it’s ok,” she called soothingly. She repeated her call. Fred hesitated. Then descended, reasoning that if he was about to lose life and limb on the high seas in service to this aged bloke he could have a chat. The gang gathered around. The decrepit sage didn’t need to clear his throat.
“And of course you know all the great water projects, from irrigating Egypt, to Roman aqueducts, to the Owens Valley theft and the birth of Los Angeles, a city called Phoenix rising from arid Arizona, watered by a river called the Colorado, all such water pumping in the Central Valley, water as snow and then snow melting, draining to the farms and houses and human bodies. People become water engineers! So weird! Hydro-lovers. A need you simply cannot believe. Dublin, that city on that island, required a storage place, we call it a reservoir, “percolating through a subterranean aqueduct,” of pipes and mains and plants, and filters and gradients and summer and droughts, a waterworks.”
Fred stood watching the oracle, agog. The old man, finger in the air, projecting like a thespian, quoted a great voice who had come before him: “Bloom loved, a hydro-phile, drawer of water, watercarrier to boil water for tea! He loved water’s universality, its vastness in the ocean, its unplumbed profundity in the Sundam trench of the Pacific exceeding 8,000 fathoms; the restlessness of its waveband surface particles, water here, there, everywhere, the way we need an oasis in the deserts of life!; its hydrostatic quiescent in calm; its hydrokinetic turgidity in neap and spring tides!”
“What?” Benjamin asked, and Timmy the Frog, too.
“I don’t know!” Fred answered before listening to the seer in seer’s clothing continuing. “Its climatic and commercial significance: its preponderance of 3 to 1 over the dry land of the globe! Its capacity to dissolve and hold in solution all soluble substances including millions of tons of the most precious metals: its slow erosions of peninsulas and downward trending promontories; its alluvial deposits; its weight and volume and density!” The Oracle shouted and grew more excited, and thirsty mind you, as he acted his part, knew most of his lines: “‘and frozen waters, glaciers and lagoons and lakes and rivers and currents, eddies, torrents, freshets, spates and geysers!’ Floods! Oh floods! Remember the flood! We shall always have our ship! Water’s “secrecy in springs, and latent humidity; saturation of air, distillation of dew; the simplicity of its composition, two parts of hydrogen and one part oxygen,’ I mean imagine!”
“And its healing virtues,” chimes Hannah. She channeled water writers of yore.
“Oh course! Its blimey healing virtues,” Ernesto the Good shouted.
“Its buoyancy in the waters the Dead Sea; the way water cuts into the world, into land and rock, breaks dams, leaks into ships, and the way it cleans us, “quenching thirst and fire, nourishing vegetation; its infallibility as paradigm and paragon!”
“Say what?” Shouted the dolphins together.
“Exactly,” from Hannah.
“It’s metamorphosis . . .” The funky friend continued, but Timmy interrupted:
“What?”
“The way it changes,” Hannah said.
“Yes, its change talents. ‘As vapor, mist, cloud, rain, sleet, snow, hail. Its solidity in glaciers, icebergs, ice floes; its docility, and dare I point out utility, while ‘working hydraulic mill wheels, turbines, dynamos, electric power stations, bleach works, tanneries, scrutchmills, canals,’ rivers, navigation, floating stuff along, carrying barter and exchange, remember the Columbia River and the organic machine, remember water everywhere! Remember the companies that try to own water for themselves so they can bottle and sell!”
“Nooo!”
“Yes, indeed. Bottle and sell the organic machine. To dam and make the world glow. It’s ubiquity . . .”
“What?” Again an interruption from the others.
“It’s everywhere-ness,” said Hannah. She became an interpreter by necessity.
“Ahhh.” Somebody, I think, understood.
“How tides rise and fall, the moon and the sun! Tides like Fundy!”
“How fun is that!”
“And tides in our bodies, animal or humanimal! People are three-quarters water and that’s the truth of it!”
“Darn!”
“I know, right?”
“What do we do now? What should we do?”
“Maintain and share, save and share, and save Matilda while we’re doing it.”
“Let’s go!” The crew shouted, and so, fighting to save a friend, there began a true appreciation of water’s ecology and their own souls.
The eternal knowing guy raised a finger, “Hold, my friends, hold, check this out and you’re free: You may try the water and take some back to your serpentine friend, but you must search for a small seed or the water will disappear. You’ll know its The Seed because it shall fall directly from the sun. This is prophesy, the heart of the matter.” He blinked twice, bowed, and then cackled scarily like some kind of hobo lost his mind near the Yuba River eating beans from a giant cauldron. You’ve all seen that faded masculinity, desperate for belonging. “Now, go forth and find The Seed!” He shouted. The gang used their voices in unison: “Yay! We’ll have water for Matilda and then find the Seed, on the lookout for the Seed!”
They had no idea, but this task was also a curse. Once the idea of the Seed entered their minds, they couldn’t shake it. No matter what. No matter anything they would have to find the Seed. Or would the Seed find them? How does that work, anyway? Do you find something or does it locate you? Or both? Maybe it’s a circle? And the Seed falls from the sun? What the heck does that mean, might it mean? Heck, who knows. Maybe you know.
So the friends brimmed the oak barrels with the sweet, clear water. The barrels looked like really big water babbas. They worked fast because they were in a hurry. When the necessary liquid was collected, Queen Hannah said a prayer. She thanked Spirit Island for the good, clean water. She thanked the prehistoric visionary, guardian of the spring. And she prayed to the ocean, to the whales and the dolphins, for Matilda to be safe and healthy one day. And she prayed for the Seed so that they may find the right one in a world of trillions and trillions!
“Let’s go home everybody,” she said at last. Anchors-away and astern propulsion! Fred turned the Favulous Sunflower around, and they sailed to the middle of the Indian Ocean, they crossed into the Pacific, and they traveled safely because of Benjamin and his friends the whales, because of the fast dolphins swimming next to them, and, of course, because of the powerful Favulous Sunflower.
On the other side of the ocean, after a long, long time, they spotted the Golden Gate Bridge. When Timmy the Frog saw the bridge he jumped up and down, up and down, shouting “The Golden Gate Bridge! The Golden Gate Bridge! The Really-Red-Orange Bridge! Hurray, we made it, the Golden Gate Bridge!” Everybody shouted happy shouts, clapped their hands, and joined Timmy in hopping. Even Fred the Babooooon, silly baboon, hopped crazy. Adam jumped into Ernesto’s arms. Hannah laughed, for she was happy to be home and she really loved her friends. But her thoughts were also with Matilda. Was she even still alive?
They secured the Favulous Sunflower at the pier near the dog park. They climbed ashore and walked to Hannah’s house. When Suzy and Gary and Princess Abby saw the whole gang again, there flowed joyful tears with hugs for family and friends.
“You guys made it!” Suzy said, so happy to see Hannah and her friends.
“Yep, we made it,” Hannah said. And then, quickly, “How’s Matilda?”
“Umm,” she paused and looked away, “Matilda is still very sick. You came just in time. Hurry inside.”
Benjamin and the whales and Eli and Ashley the Dolphins stayed with the boat. They swam and played all over San Francisco Bay. The rest of the gang entered the living room and they noticed Matilda, coiled up into a tight ball on the white couch, sleeping. Hannah approached her. “Psst,” Hannah whispered, “Hey, Matilda, wake up, we made it, we have the necessary liquid.”
Matilda opened an eye, just one eye. When she initially perceived her friends she thought she was dreaming. Death must be like this, the final moments. Then she opened both eyes and smiled. Hannah gave her a drink of the sweet water from Spirit Island straight away. The effect was immediate. Matilda’s smile became bigger, broader, eyes carrying light. She slowly uncoiled to her full length. Everybody forced to back up and get out of the way. Hannah offered Matilda another vital sip.
The biggest snake in the world stretched and stretched and she filled the entire living room, from the white couch into the kitchen, around the counter and into the family room. She was so big. And her smile large and wide. Everybody started to cheer. Hannah extended one more sip and then they knew she was back. Matilda happy and all of her friends were happy. Fred the Babooooon jumped on Malcolm, and Timmy into Adam’s arms and Ernesto jumped on Matilda. In a few weeks Matilda vastly improved, vital and strong, slithering all over the house and playing with her friends. Queen Hannah Lily of Sunflower Valley was relieved. She pulled on her chin and scratched her head. She wondered what the next adventure of the Favulous Sunflower would be. She hugged Princess Abby and her mom and dad. And she enjoyed a sip of the secret, clear and cool water herself. She walked to her girlhood room, lay down in her bed, and fell asleep instantly. She dreamed of a round, bright object, of circles and of seeds.
