Authors: Ellen Raskin

Figgs & Phantoms (19 page)

BOOK: Figgs & Phantoms

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Thirty kindergarten children, dressed as Pineapple lollipops, sang and danced under the window.

Everyone looked and told Mrs. Lumpholtz that her granddaughter did, indeed, look like a Pineapple lollipop.

Mr. Bargain placed a book in Mona's hand.

Mona didn't recognize the slim volume cased in new leather. She opened it to the title page:

THE FIGG-NEWTON GIANT

Mona Lisa Newton

THE BARGAIN PRESS

Pineapple

“Look at the colophon,” the bookseller said.

Mona turned the pages of her printed composition to the back of the book.

DESIGNED AND PRINTED BY EBENEZER BARGAIN
AT THE BARGAIN PRESS
IN AN EDITION OF TWO COPIES OF WHICH
THIS IS NUMBER
¹

“I'd like to keep the second copy to remind me of my dear friend Florence Figg. I miss him so much.”

Mona admired the beautifully made book in her hand. Her book, her words, her creation. She looked up gratefully to thank the old man, but he was bent over, pulling another book out of his briefcase. Mona stared at the familiar bald spot on the top of his head.

And then she knew.

The Horticultural Society, led by Sophie Davenport, tiptoed through the tulips.

“This is for you, too, Mona,” Ebenezer Bargain said, straightening up. “Florence traded this book to me for two Conrads, just before he died. He loved the book so, and he loved you soâwell, I want you to have it now. I'm too old to retire, and who knows....”

Mona took
Las HazaÃ±as FantÃ¡sticas
from his hand. “You'll live forever, Mr. Bargain, reading, collecting, and selling books in your little shop.”

“Thank you for the lovely thought,” he said.

The Pineapple High School band blared and a hundred young voices sang:

“Oh, when the saints go marching in,
When the saints go marching in,
We'll be proud to be in that number
When the saints go marching in.”

Noodles, critical of the off-key harmony, darted off Mona's lap and hid under the bed.

Mona watched the old bookseller hobble out of the room. She could never imagine him without his bald spot, not in a nightmare, not in a dream. He had been recreated in that other-time, other-world place by someone else, someone too short to have ever seen the top of Ebenezer Bargain's head. Mona had seen him in Uncle Florence's dream. She had been to Capri!

“Good-bye, Mr. Bargain,” Mona called after him. “And thank you, thank you so very much.”

“And when the new world is revealed,
When the new world is revealed....”

Mona thought of Uncle Florence, but not with sadness. She remembered him dancing with gentle Phoebe. He had found love and contentment; he was happy now, and there was no room for her in his small world.

It was the larger dream, someone else's magnificent dream of dreams that she would return to some day. If she were allowed.

With trembling hands Mona opened the original edition of
Las HazaÃ±as FantÃ¡sticas.
Even her untrained eye could tell the difference between the harsh ink of the facsimile and the delicate tints she now studied. She tenderly ran her finger over the map until it stopped under a tiny, irregularly shaped island.

“Caprichos,” it said. And drawn on the island, their leaves entwined, were two palm treesâone coral, one pink.