The Order of Odd-Fish (27 page)

R
AINY
season struck hard. It was as if a flying ocean had hit the city. Thunder banged and growled at all hours, fog wrapped the mountain in an unbreakable cloud, and water crept in everywhere, flooding basements, soaking through clothes and shoes, making the streets into muddy rivers. The rain droned endlessly, thudding on the roof, spattering on the windows, trickling down from the leaky ceilings.

The damp grayness of the season drained Jo. She wanted to do nothing but stay inside the lodge, drink hot chocolate, and lie on the couch in front of a fire—but she had to prepare for her duel. Jo trained with Dame Delia every day, although she didn’t tell her why. It was wet, grueling work, but as much as Jo wanted to stay in the cozy lodge, she couldn’t bear the thought of Fiona Fuorlini beating her. Still, Fiona was undefeated in seven duels. Jo hadn’t fought once.

One night Dame Delia said, “I did some asking around, Jo. I know you have a duel coming.”

Jo tensed up. “Sorry, Dame Delia. I should’ve told you.”

“Ah, don’t worry about that,” said Dame Delia, taking out her pipe. “I fought illegal duels when I was a squire, too. Lily knew. She wouldn’t mind if you got your hands a little dirty.” As she lit her pipe, she added, “Actually, Lily would be pleased. Between you and me, she was waiting for you to do something like this. She was worried you didn’t have enough fight in you.”

Jo shivered and pulled her jacket closer. “I think I had a bit too much fight.”

Dame Delia paused over her pipe. “What do you mean?”

“We had an argument right before she left. Aunt Lily and me. We never made up. And now I don’t know if she’s even coming back, or…”

“Ah, she’ll be home soon. If anyone can stop the Belgian Prankster, it’s Lily. Did it before, didn’t she?” Dame Delia puffed on her pipe. “Then we won’t have to worry about the Belgian Prankster, the Silent Sisters, or the Ichthala again. That’ll be a relief, eh?”

Jo couldn’t even look Dame Delia in the eye. “Yeah. That’ll be a relief.”

The archives of the Order of Odd-Fish had just recently reopened to the public. Here the Odd-Fish kept the Appendix, the very reason for the Order’s existence—not an actual book, but a disorderly library that took up the entire fifth floor of the lodge, where one could find articles written by generations of knights on the dubious, the improbable, and the bizarre. Sir Festus’s blueprints of ludicrous weaponry, Dame Myra’s sketchbooks of strange plants, Dame Isabel’s periodic table of smells, Sir Oliver’s infamous dissertation on dithering…it was all here, the accumulated research of the Order’s thousand-year history.

Like the other squires, Jo worked at the library one day a week. This meant not only learning the complicated filing system and keeping the unwieldy collection in some kind of order but also answering questions from the public. Jo had the Monday shift with Daphne, but Daphne was sick and so today Jo had to work alone. She found it hard to concentrate—Fiona was coming over tonight to fulfill the dueling tradition that required each side to sleep at the other’s lodge before the duel. Jo wasn’t looking forward to it.

As usual, there was nobody in the reading room but Mr. Enderby, a portly little man who, for some reason, had made it his life’s goal to read the entire Appendix in alphabetical order. Mr. Enderby had just arrived, drenched from the rain, and was taking off his coat.

In a way Jo was glad she was working alone. It meant she could do what she’d been itching to do ever since the archives had reopened: read her parents’ files. Jo glanced out into the reading room, where Mr. Enderby was just getting settled in his chair, pouring himself a mug of coffee and sharpening his pencils. Pale, watery morning light filtered through the windows, and rain hammered down on the roof so loudly that Jo had to raise her voice when she said, “Everything okay there, Mr. Enderby?”

“Oh, yes, yes. Just reviewing my notes. I may need your assistance in a few minutes, though, young lady.”

“Just ring the bell,” said Jo. Then she turned and entered the archives.

The archives! Jo stepped into the silent library with cautious curiosity. File cabinets spilling over with papers, folders, and note cards; teetering stacks of composition books; envelopes stuffed with crumpled documents; great rolled-up maps; boxes and shelves packed with countless notebooks, pamphlets, and reports—Jo was overwhelmed. The corridors of the archives twisted and turned unpredictably, and Jo wondered how anyone could find anything in this hopeless mess, which was catalogued by a wildly arbitrary system even the knights didn’t seem to fully understand. The aisles were flooded knee deep with piles of loose paper, such that you had to wade through, or even climb over, great heaps of documents to get anywhere. All the articles of the Appendix were stored here, as well as notes, reference works, rough drafts, bibliographies, and commentaries; everything, from the most authoritative encyclopedia to the most random idea scribbled on a scrap of toilet paper.

After a half hour of searching, Jo found what she was looking for: two cardboard boxes labeled
SIR MARTIN HAZELWOOD
and
DAME EVELYN HAZELWOOD.
Aunt Lily had told Jo that her father’s specialty was imaginary languages and that her mother had studied obscure cults. Jo guessed that her mother had probably researched the Silent Sisters, so she opened her box first.

For the next hour Jo browsed her mother’s articles. Dame Evelyn had written about dozens of cults, from the Azoobs (who believed not only that God was dead, but that He had a notarized will in which He thoughtfully bequeathed everything to the Azoobs) to the Yipniblians (for whom every day was a holy day of rest, and who thus considered it a sin to get out of bed). But oddly enough, Jo couldn’t find a word about the Silent Sisters.

Jo opened her father’s box next. Here she found mostly dictionaries, all written by Sir Martin, for the various imaginary languages he’d invented. One of his languages was based on tasting patterns of spices, so that books were read by eating them, page by page; there was another language entirely of sneezes; he also invented a language for plants (though his attempts to teach it to a petunia met with only “mixed success”).

The bell rang in front. Jo went back out to the counter, where Mr. Enderby was waiting.

“Can I help you?” she said.

“Oh yes, I believe you can; I believe you most certainly can,” said Mr. Enderby. He looked at Jo closely. “You’re new here, aren’t you?”

“Yes. Dame Lily’s squire. Jo Larouche.”

“So you are, so you are. Well, you might not know this, but I have set myself the task of reading the entire Appendix. I’m on a schedule,” he said proudly. “The lodge getting stolen threw me off a bit, but now I’m right back on track. Let’s see…this week is…Sir Humphrey Mundlebottom. The complete works of Sir Humphrey Mundlebottom, if you please, young lady. Oh, and could you make some more coffee?”

“Right away, Mr. Enderby!” Jo trotted back to the archives and searched through the card catalogue for Sir Humphrey Mundlebottom. As usual, the card catalogue contradicted itself, listing Sir Humphrey’s files in nine different locations. After an hour, she finally found Sir Humphrey’s file, in a dusty corner that looked as though it hadn’t been disturbed in decades. Sir Humphrey was a relatively minor figure in Odd-Fish history. He had lived over seven hundred years ago and specialized in the philosophy of napkins.

Sir Humphrey’s files were kept in an old wooden chest wedged high up in a bookcase. Jo had to climb up a ladder to reach it. She found it difficult to dislodge the chest, even as she pulled and tugged at it, harder and harder—suddenly it tumbled off the shelf, almost taking Jo with it, and fell fifteen feet, thumping down in the swamp of papers.

A manuscript stuffed next to the chest also fluttered to the floor. Jo climbed down the ladder, picked it up—and her eyes went wide.

It was by her father.

Misfiled? Hidden? Forgotten? Jo couldn’t guess—then she heard Mr. Enderby faintly baying, “Miss Larouche! Have you found Sir Humphrey’s files yet?”

“Just a minute, Mr. Enderby!” Jo stuffed the manuscript in her pocket and hauled Sir Humphrey’s chest down to the reading room.

“Hard to find?” said Mr. Enderby.

“Yes,” said Jo, sweating a little. “Is that all you’ll be needing?”

“And the coffee?”

“Oh right—the coffee—” Jo was burning to read the manuscript, and now she had to make some ridiculous coffee…she threw the ground beans in the filter, stuffed it in the machine, and turned it on. “Okay, everything all right now?”

“Ooh, Miss Larouche, this chest is pretty heavy…do you think you could…”

“Yes, Mr. Enderby!” Jo helped the pudgy scholar drag the chest over to his desk. “Everything okay now?”

“Oh yes, I think this will do nicely.”

Jo hurried back to her desk and started in on the manuscript. Nothing she had read yet by her parents had told her anything about her situation. Maybe, by sheer luck—or was it fate?—she had found something. She opened it to a picture of a dozen fish, entwined in each other in a circular chain, tiny letters in their eyes—and stopped cold at these words:

F
OR MY DAUGHTER

Her heart bolted. It was crazy, impossible. Jo flipped through the manuscript. But it was only page after page of slashing, swirling rows of colors—gold, purple, green, silver, red, orange, yellow—quickly scrawled, burning and blooming like a fiery garden. She couldn’t understand any of it. She quickly went back to Sir Martin’s dictionaries, searching for something about a language of colors, but found nothing.

Jo kept struggling with the manuscript. She could feel a hidden logic in the patterns of color, even though she still couldn’t make sense of it. Whatever the message was, Jo felt it had to be important. Maybe her father had calculated how long it would take for Mr. Enderby to work his way alphabetically up to Sir Humphrey and hidden this book there so that it would be discovered only now? But that was so unlikely. Maybe he’d written it in a code that only Jo could break. But what if she couldn’t? What if…

An hour later Jo threw down her pencil, exasperated. It wasn’t happening. She had to do something else. With glum resolution, she decided to start reading
everything
in her parents’ files. True, it was a lot to read; but maybe there was some hint buried in the pages and pages of articles. Jo got down to it.

Hours passed. The reading room was silent except for the percolating coffeepot and the rain steadily drumming on the roof. Occasionally Mr. Enderby would turn a page or write in his notebooks. Nobody else visited.

Jo found it easy to lose herself in the wild religions her mother studied and the strange languages her father invented. Still, Jo had the feeling she was missing something. From time to time she would go back to the swirlingly colorful manuscript, but it was just as incomprehensible as before. And as closing time approached, Jo’s attention strayed from her parents’ files and she started to worry about Fiona, who was due to arrive any minute.

“Five minutes to closing, Mr. Enderby.”

“My, how time flies, Miss Larouche,” sighed Mr. Enderby fondly. “I never knew napkins could be so philosophical.”

Jo came over to help Mr. Enderby put Sir Humphrey’s files back in order. As she absentmindedly sifted through sheafs of paper, a little metal thing plopped out and bounced on the table. She looked down—Sir Humphrey’s Odd-Fish ring.

Mr. Enderby cooed with pleasure. “Oh, such a charming tradition! I always thought it was touching that you Odd-Fish entombed knights’ rings with their files. A fitting memorial to their life’s work, you know, or—”

“I’m sorry, Mr. Enderby, I’ve got to go!”

Jo took off running, leaving a baffled Mr. Enderby behind. How could she have been so dense? It was obvious now—Jo tore downstairs, skidded around the corner, dashed down the hall to Aunt Lily’s room, fumblingly unlocked the door, threw it open, and went for Aunt Lily’s jewelry box. She yanked out every drawer until she found it—Jo’s own original silver ring, with its jewel-eyed fish twisting all around, each eye a different colored gem.

Mr. Enderby was already gone when she got back. Jo darted back into the archives, turned to the first page of her father’s manuscript—the illustration of the ring of entwined fish. Yes! Each fish had a tiny letter in each eye. Jo looked at the first color in the manuscript—red. She scrutinized her ring, looking for a fish with a red eye—and found a tiny ruby. She checked the position of the ruby eye on the illustration and found a tiny
J
in the eye. The next color was blue. Jo found the sapphire on her ring, checked it against the illustration—an
O
. Jo’s pencil trembled as she wrote her translation in the margin of the manuscript:

J
O THIS IS YOUR FATHER

Jo felt a triumphant panic. She started to sweat. She darted a couple of lines ahead:

C
AN’T RISK TELLING
L
ILY