Kate DiCamillo - Flora & Ulysses

He should type a word.

But what word?

She woke with a start. The house was incredibly dark, so dark that Flora wondered if she had gone temporarily blind.

“Ulysses?” she said.

She sat up and stared in the direction of the door. Slowly the rectangular outline of it appeared, and then she could see that it was ajar.

“Ulysses?” she said again.

She got out of bed and went down the darkened stairs and past the little shepherdess.

“You stupid lamp,” she said.

She made her way into the kitchen. It was empty. The typewriter was unmanned. Or unsquirreled.

“Ulysses?” said Flora.

She walked over to the typewriter and saw a piece of paper glowing white in the dim light.

“Uh-oh,” she said.

She leaned in close. She squinted.

Dear Flora, I am teribly fond of you. But I here the call of the wild. And I must return to my natrual habitat. Thank you for the macroni and cheese. Yours, Mr. Squirrel.

Mr. Squirrel?

Call of the wild?

Teribly fond?

It was the biggest lie that Flora had ever read in her life. It didn’t look like Ulysses had written it at all.

Only at the very end did the truth appear. Two letters: F and L. That was Ulysses, she knew, trying to type her name one last time, trying to tell her that he loved her.

“I love you, too,” she whispered to the paper.

And then she looked around the kitchen. What kind of cynic was she, whispering “I love you” to a squirrel who wasn’t even there?

But she did love him. She loved his whiskers. She loved his words. She loved his happiness, his little head, his determined heart, his nutty breath. She loved how beautiful he looked when he flew.

She felt her heart seize up. Why hadn’t she told him that? She should have said those words to him.

But that didn’t matter now. What mattered was finding him. Flora hadn’t been reading The Criminal Element for two solid years for nothing. She knew what was going on. The squirrel had been kidnapped. By her mother!

She took a deep breath. She considered what to do, what action to take.

“In the event of a true and genuine emergency, an absolute and undeniable crime, the authorities must be notified immediately,” said The Criminal Element.

Flora was certain that this was a true and genuine emergency, an absolute and undeniable crime.

Still, it didn’t seem like a good idea to notify the authorities.

If she called the police, what would she say?

My mother kidnapped my squirrel?

The Criminal Element: “If for some reason the authorities are not accessible to you, then you must seek help in other quarters. Whom do you trust? Whom do you know to be a safe port in a storm?”

Flora suddenly remembered her dream, how warm William Spiver’s hand had felt in her own.

She blushed.

Whom did she trust?

Good grief, she trusted William Spiver.

It was 2:20 a.m.

The grass was heavy with dew. Flora was picking her way through the darkness. She was breathing heavily because she was carrying Mary Ann in her arms, and Mary Ann — for all of her pink cheeks and delicate features and excessive, stupid frilliness — was incredibly heavy.

Talk about stout, thought Flora.

The Criminal Element: “Can one reason with a criminal? This is debatable. But it is true that the rules of nursery school are often in good effect in the criminal world. What do we mean by this? We mean that if the criminal has something you want, then you must have something he wants. Only then is it possible for some kind of ‘discussion’ to begin.”

There was nothing and no one that Flora’s mother loved more than the lamp. Together, Flora and William Spiver would find her mother. They would offer to exchange the little shepherdess for the squirrel. And then all would be well. Or something.

That was Flora’s plan.

But first she had to find William Spiver, and she didn’t think that it would be a good idea to ring Tootie’s doorbell at 2:20 a.m.

“William Spiver?” said Flora.

Here she was, standing in the dark holding an unlit lamp and hoping that a temporarily blind boy would hear her call his name and come help her rescue her squirrel (a squirrel who, for a superhero, sure did seem to need a lot of rescuing).

Things were pretty grim.

“William Spiver?” she said again. “William Spiver.”

And then, without really intending to, she started saying William Spiver’s name over and over, louder and louder.

“WilliamSpiverWilliamSpiverWilliamSpiverWilliamSpiver WILLIAMSPIVERWILLIAMSPIVER.”

There was no way he would be able to hear her, of course. She knew that. But she couldn’t make herself stop. She just stupidly, idiotically, hopefully, kept saying his name.

“Flora Belle?”

“WilliamSpiverWilliamSpiverWilliamSpiver.”

“Flora Belle?”

“WilliamSpiverWilliamSpiverWilliamSpiver.”

“FLORA BELLE!”

And there he was, standing at a darkened window, conjured, apparently, by her need and her desperation. And her words.

William Spiver.

Or at least the shadow of William Spiver.

“Oh,” said Flora, “hello.”

“Yes, hello to you, too,” said William Spiver. “How lovely of you to visit in the middle of the night.”

“There’s been an emergency,” said Flora.

“Right,” said William Spiver. “Just let me put on my bathrobe.”

Flora felt a familiar prick of irritation. “It’s an emergency, William Spiver. There’s no time to waste. Forget about your bathrobe.”

“I’ll just put on my bathrobe,” said William Spiver as if she hadn’t said anything at all, “and I’ll be right there. Wherever there is. It is shockingly difficult to locate even the most obvious things when one is temporarily blind. The world is very hard to navigate when you can’t see.

“Although to be perfectly frank, I had trouble navigating the world even before the advent of the blindness. I’ve never been what you would call coordinated or spatially intelligent. It’s not even that I bump into things. It’s more that things leap out of nowhere and bump into me. My mother says that this is because I live in my head as opposed to living in the world. But I ask you: Don’t we all live in our heads? Where else could we possibly exist? Our brains are the universe. Don’t you think that’s true? Flora Belle?”

“I said it’s an emergency!”

“Well, then, I’ll just put on my bathrobe, and we’ll sort it all out.”

Flora put Mary Ann down on the ground. She looked around wildly in the darkness. What was she looking for? She didn’t know. Maybe a stick that she could use to hit William Spiver over the head.

“Flora Belle?”

“Ulysses is gone!” she screamed. “My mother kidnapped him. I think my mother is possessed. I think she might hurt him.”

Do not cry, she told herself. Do not cry. Do not hope. Do not cry. Just observe.

“Shhh,” said William Spiver. “It’s okay, Flora Belle. I’ll help you. We’ll find him.”