The Mapmaker and the Ghost(39)

After a moment, Meriwether said, “Well … you have my attention.”

“Here’s the thing. Didn’t I sorta, by default, send Snotshot on the quest to find the blue rose?”

Meriwether’s eyebrows knitted together slightly, but he managed to keep his voice politely steady when he responded with, “Yes, I believe you did.”

“So if she is on the quest, doesn’t that mean that she’d be able to see you now?”

One of Meriwether’s eyebrows unknitted itself and arched up instead. “I suppose it should.”

Goldenrod grinned. “Perfect. So the next part of the plan is, what exactly do you know about being a scary kind of ghost?”



Snotshot lay on the cot in her makeshift bedroom, staring at a poster she had drawn on the back of a large and yellowed piece of paper. The picture was of herself playing a red electric guitar while a huge audience lifted cell phones into the air. The back of the guy in the front row might have even been a happy, smiling version of her dad.

It was amazing how a space with crude stone walls, inexpertly decorated and almost claustrophobically small, could make her feel so amazing. Sure, sometimes she missed her large bedroom at home and its ridiculously comfortable bed. Sometimes she even missed her dad’s goodnight hugs. But she didn’t miss those nights when she could hear him tossing and turning—and sometimes even quietly crying—and she could do nothing about it. Whatever else the caves lacked, they provided a place where she felt in control. And that feeling was priceless.

She hung upside down from the side of her cot and swept aside the brown blanket she had purposely let drape off of the bed so that it brushed the floor. There, bathing the mattress springs above it in a faint blue glow, almost like it was made out of water, was the jar with the blue roses.

Last night, after she had been sure that everyone else was asleep, Snotshot had taken out the jar and placed it on the little table by her bed. She had to admit—only to herself of course—that the flowers had added a nice touch to her bedroom by somehow making it feel even homier. A little part of her would have liked to keep them.

But then she had had a fabulous dream about becoming a rich and famous flower-finder, and this morning she had woken up with the thought that as nice as the jar of flowers looked in her room, a brand-new, humongous television set would look even nicer. The dream had also convinced her to trust that the girl had been right about the flowers’ importance after all, which also meant that at some point very soon she was going to have to follow the rest of the girl’s advice.

Take it to a botanist or scientist, she had said. Snotshot would have to think long and hard about that one. She certainly couldn’t think of any botanists off the top of her head, and as for scientists … well, the only one who came to mind was her chemistry teacher from last year whom she knew would at least remember her well. Unfortunately, the reason he would remember her involved an unassigned, extracurricular lab experiment that had left the teacher’s desk drawers smelling like a mixture of rotten eggs and radishes for the better part of the year. And Mr. Elliot seemed like the type that might hold a grudge.

Then again, it would probably be best if Snotshot found someone who had nothing to do with her old life and, preferably, nothing to do with her new life either. After all, she neither wanted to go back to who she had been nor did she want to share whatever bounty might be coming her way with the rest of the kids. She might have to go out of town for a couple of days to find someone who could help. She wondered if botanists were listed on the Internet.

She was trying to come up with a clever way to ask Brains for some information on this when, suddenly, a voice that sounded like a howling wind rustling through dark trees whispered right into her ear, “You must give it back.”

Her head snapped up at once. As the blood rushed to it, her vision whitened, and it took a few seconds for her eyes to focus enough to realize that what lay before them was one of the most terrifying visions she had ever seen.





28

BRILLIANT TROUBLEMAKERS


Meriwether Lewis had always been a good student, even when alive, of course. He had an uncanny ability to know what bits of things to pay attention to in order to get the most out of the information being given him. This combined with his verve, instinct, and knack for improvisation were all the things that had made him a legendary explorer.

Now, they were helping him to be the scariest ghost he could possibly be. If there was one thing Meriwether liked, it was excelling at whatever it was he set his mind to.

After telling him her plan, Goldenrod had also given him some pointers so that now he stood before the gaping girl with ghostly shackles and chains around his arms and legs that he was rattling relentlessly. He had turned his spiffy maroon coat into a moth-ridden and bedraggled mess (luckily, ghostly fabric was much easier to mend than the real kind, as Meriwether had never been much of a tailor to speak of). He had changed his voice to be a slippery, sinewy, and altogether creepy kind of whisper.

Then, he had taken some liberties of his own. Around his head, he had fashioned a sort of large and fiery wreath. It perfectly matched the two burning flames in his eyes that had taken the place of his blue pupils. His head itself was changing color from red to blue and back again, so that at one moment the wreath looked like burning fire, and the next like sharp daggers of ice. If it should prove necessary, he was prepared to set his head spinning along its neck.