* * *
The sound of Kerrie Kaufman's CD filled the kitchen where Michael was chopping vegetables and Tim was mixing ingredients into a sauce that he promised would be like no other sauce on earth. That Michael would come back to his house a second time, knowing he would have to help cook, was enough to convince Tim that he finally had a friend.
"How come you moved here?" asked Michael.
"Dad got a job at the University downtown. Teaching physics. That means his own house contradicts everything he teaches in class."
"Did the University rent this house or something?"
"No. It's just that we got here at the last minute and this was all we could find that was big enough for all of us and for the music and science the rest of the family does."
"What do you do?"
"Nothing."
"You mean nothing that anybody else cares about?" asked Michael.
"Yea."
"Same here."
Michael chopped the green pepper at hand into tiny little pieces. Tim turned on the burner where he had placed the saucepan. He stirred constantly while pouring more ingredients into it, torn between wanting to please his new friend and sadistically wondering how Michael would handle his spicing. All the while, he kept his body moving to the rhythm of Kerrie Kaufman's music. Then Tim froze. The track came to an end but the sound of drums and a double bass filled the pause between tracks. When the next track started, Tim turned down the volume.
"You hear that?"
"Yea," said Michael, all ears.
As Tim's hopes raised, so did his fear that he and Michael would be disappointed again. They had already taken tour of the house after school that had proved fruitless. Tim punched the pause button. Now there was no question about it. The sound of a drum and a double bass was sounding from the music room. Michael and Tim looked at each other.
"Let's go," Tim whispered. "I'll show you where they are, I think."
Tim was almost out the kitchen before he remembered to turn the burner down to Low. Then he walked slowly towards the music room. Tim slowly opened the door and then involuntarily jerked back at the sight. The room was much longer than it should have been, so that it was almost a corridor. The walls were lined with red and purple striped wall paper that made Tim think he needed sunglasses to look at it. The floor was covered with a rose carpet. Most important, at the far end of the room, one girl was attacking a drum set with her sticks and another girl was playing pizzicato on a double bass. Both girls looked to be about Tim and Michael's age. The girl at the drums was very fair and the girl playing the double bass had a dark complexion and black hair flowing down past her waist. Behind the girls was a grand piano, but nobody was there. The lively rhythm of the girls' playing was enough to make Tim and Michael both ache for their own instruments, which they had left up in Tim's room. They listened to the girls from a distance, afraid to come too near too soon. The girls, for their part, were so engrossed in their playing that they took no notice of their visitors. Michael began to sing along, though it was hardly certain that his song fit the beat. For once in his life, Tim wished he could sing, but wishing didn't make him suddenly able.
The rhythmic concert was suddenly as shattered by the breaking of one of the windows lining the wall. Tim heard the familiar roar of the monster and then saw the hairy arm reach through the window and grab a hold of the sill. The girls screamed and ran off.
"WAIT!" Tim yelled after them.
But the girls had already disappeared without a trace. The monster pushed the rest of his body through the window, shook off the shards of glass from its fur and looked about the room. Michael turned to run back to the kitchen but, not seeing his way back, he clutched at Tim.
"Don't worry," said a shaking Tim. "I don't think he'll hurt us."
Michael tried to relax, but he couldn't. Tim walked up to the monster, dragging Michael behind him.
"Do you know what you've done this time?" Tim asked the monster.
The monster turned in Tim's direction and gave him and Michael a quizzical look.
"I see you don't know," said Tim. "You just wrecked a nice jazz concert that two girls were giving. Michael and I wanted to say 'hello' to the girls and ask if we could join them but you scared them off."
By this time, Tim was so close to the monster that they could have shaken hands. Michael held back, not ready to trust the monster.
"I see that you didn't mean to scare them off," said Tim, his voice more soothing. "It isn't your fault that people are scared of you just because you're a monster."
Tim petted the monster on the shoulder. The monster grunted contentedly.
"I want you to meet my friend," said Tim.
Michael held his breath. He still doubted that he wanted to get any closer to the monster, but he didn't want to be rude, even to a beast, if it was Tim's friend.
"Monster, this is Michael. Michael, this is Monster."
"Uh--pleased to meet you," said Michael, his voice shaking.
"You have be nice to Michael, okay?" Tim ordered.
The monster grunted.
"If Michael ever needs help, you give it to him, okay?"
The monster grunted again. Tim wasn't so sure he wanted to be helped by a monster like that, but then he definitely didn't want it for an enemy.
"Now, who's going to pay for that window?" Tim asked the monster.
The monster grunted in a questioningly way. Then it crawled back through the window. Michael heaved a sigh of relief.
"You weren't in danger, you know," said Tim.
"How was I supposed to know that?"
"I don't know."
Tim walked over to the broken window and looked out. Michael stood where he was, hands in his pockets. The drum set and the double bass had been dropped by the girls in their haste to get away. He noticed that the wallpaper behind the instruments, unlike that in the rest of the room, had the design based on the little monsters Tim had used for his computer wallpaper.
"Want to have a look?" asked Tim. "Don't worry, I don't see the monster."
What both boys saw out the window was the edge of the town with the cobblestone streets and the surrounding forest. A gentle snow was falling on the bare trees. The ground was swampy with large ponds alternating with muddy soil. Far off in the distance, they saw the shadowy outlines of a large castle.
"Why is it farther away?" asked Michael.
"I don't know. Ask the castle."
As the boys watched, a bearded man walked among the trees, carrying an armload of firewood. He was obviously watching his step and even then one leg sank past his ankle and he had to pull it out of the boggy ground.
"What's that?" asked Michael, pointing to an odd animal emerging out of a pond behind the woodsman. "It looks like one of your--your----hippopalligators."
"Hippopotagator," Tim corrected him.
Indeed, the animal had the bulky body of a hippopotamus but the thin snout of an alligator. The boys held their breath, wondering if they should try to warn the man, but the hippopotagator showed no inclination to attack. It simply waddled over to another pond and plunged into it.
"Tim, how come you can draw a creature like that and then have it appear in this funny world?" asked Michael.
"I don't know," said Tim in a subdued voice. "I just draw these things. I don't make them appear."
Tim wrinkled his nose as an odd burning smell reached him.
"Better get back!" Tim exclaimed.
Michael's eyes grew larger when he still saw nothing but darkness in that direction, but eventually he found himself in the music room, then the hallway and then in the kitchen.
"What are you trying to do, burn the house down?" Peter asked.
"Put the sauce back on the stove, it's heating up," said Tim, ignoring the cloud of smoke hovering over the stove.
"It's burnt already."
Tim put the sauce pan back on the stove himself and stirred it vigorously.
"I know. That's the way it's supposed to be."
"You and your recipes."
* * *
As Tim moved the mouse from side to side, the shape of the gray castle overlooking a swampy landscape emerged on the computer screen.
"Wow!" Michael exclaimed, "you're good!"
"Uh--thanks," said Tim, surprised to hear words like that from anybody.
"I think, though, there were three towers on the left side," said Michael. "Three that I could see anyway."
"Hmm. Either your memory's better than mine, or mine is better than yours. I don't think my memory is that good."
Tim drew the second and third towers where Michael indicated he thought they were.
"How about some hippopotagators?" asked Michael.
"Good idea."
Tim drew the front part of his latest invention so it appeared to be hiding behind a tree. Without any further commands from Tim, the hippopotagator moved from behind the tree. It was followed by another slightly smaller hippopotagator and then two much smaller ones.
"It's a whole family," Michael said in a low voice.
"Yea."
"Are you going to send this in to some computer game?" Michael asked.
"Probably not."
The sound of an electronic piano keyboard started to sound from within the computer. It was a lively jazzy tune that would have gone nicely with the drumming and bass playing the boys had heard that afternoon.
"Did you program that?" asked Michael.
One look at Tim made it clear that he had no idea what was causing the music. He shook his head and called up the MusicSound menu. It wasn't on and it so it shouldn't have been functioning in any way. Tim closed the menu and zoomed in on the picture of the bare trees and the castle. With the closeup, he saw the figure of a boy, dressed in a navy blue sailor suit, walking along a path. He had an electronic keyboard strapped to his shoulders and he played on the keyboard as he went.
"That's where the music's coming from," said Michael. "His fingers match the sound."
"Must have batteries or something," said Tim.
"I guess," said Michael.
Tim zoomed in on the boy a little more. He seemed lost in his music yet he kept on walking along the path although he wasn't even looking where he was going.
"Think he's going to that castle?" asked Michael.
"Looks like it."
A small stream of water poured across the path right behind the boy. He showed no sign of having seen it or heard it. Another jet of water burst out across the lower half of the screen.
"What's going on?" asked Michael.
"I wish I knew," said Tim, his nerves starting to jangle.
As the boy became obscured by the trees, more water flooded the wooded scene until it began to look like a swamp. The family of hippopotagators moved in the boy's direction but the boy either didn't see them or he didn't care. Then the water flowed out of the screen and into the computer room. Tim turned the computer off and jumped out of his chair. The water stopped flowing from the screen, but there was a puddle of slimy water on the floor.
"I wish I knew what is going on," said Tim. "This makes things toointeresting."
* * *
"Good thing you brought your sax along," said Tim as he reached the walk to his house.
"What do you mean?" asked Michael.
"Aren't you going to practice with me?"
"Wasn't planning on it. I've only got the thing because I had band practice today."
"How did it go?"
"Horrible."
"Why don't you quit and join our new band?"
"My Dad won't let me."
"You said he doesn't think much of your playing."
"I did. He doesn't. Don't think he'd be happy if he didn't have a reason for putting me down."
Tim let himself and Michael into the house. Once again, Peter and his mother were making a lot of noise in the music room.
"Guess who's hogging the music room," said Tim.
"So we don't have to practice after all," said Michael.
"We'll just have to do it up in my room," Tim replied. "Let's get some pudding first."
"Okay."
Tim went first to the kitchen and pulled out two containers of chocolate pudding and then took Michael up to his room.
"You hung up your pictures of the hippopotagators," Michael remarked.
"Of course. Monsters should be seen so they can't sneak up on you."
Both boys devoured their puddings in a few seconds each. Then Tim picked his violin out of its open case and started to tune it. Michael sat on the edge of Tim's bed with his books and saxophone case off to the side. Tim played a brief riff, that was almost drowned out by some loud chords from downstairs, then looked at Michael.
"Come on," Tim urged.
"You don't want to hear me play," said Michael.
"You mean band practice was that bad? Come on, we're the Sarabania Hippopotagator Jazz Band. School band music and school band directors and sourpuss fathers not allowed."
Michael smiled weakly, shrugged his shoulders and opened his saxophone case. He pieced his instrument together while Tim played a few more fragments of whatever came into his head. His first note was a squawk. Michael threw his head back with a sour look.
"Keep trying," said Tim. "Practice makes perfect."
"Not for me, it doesn't."
"There's nothing wrong with being imperfect."
"How do you know?"
"A monster told me."
Tim laid his violin on his lap and waited for Michael to try again. This time, he produced a mellow tone on a low note and proceeded to play a slow, bluesy melody.
"That's pretty good," said Tim. "Don't let your band director know or he'll be disappointed that he can't kick you around."
The two boys tentatively played together with little in the way of musical results while the discordant music from downstairs made the boys' instruments sound more out-of-tune than they were.
"Good thing it's Peter's turn to cook," said Tim after a particularly loud crash of sound from the piano downstairs.
"Sounds neat, though," said Michael.
"Best thing about it is that our aunt hated it," said Tim.
"Was your aunt that bad?" asked Michael.
"Not really. She became a reformed creature after this house turned her inside out."
"What's it going to make of me?"
"I don't know."
Tim played a few more riffs on the violin and Michael answered with a few on the sax.
"Ready?" asked Tim.
"What for?"
"To find us the rest of a jazz band."
Michael shrugged his shoulders and followed Tim out into the hall. It looked fairly normal. Tim and Michael walked up and down. It still looked normal. Tim thought a moment, then decided to try one of the rooms that nobody lived in. Michael sneezed as soon as Tim opened the door.
"Want me to try something else?"
"That's okay," Michael sniffed, then he sneezed again.
Tim stepped further into the empty room. There were footprints in the dust all over the room, This was odd as Tim was pretty sure this was not the room they had entered before when they heard the music. Tim looked out the window. The usual back yard was there.
Tim played a bit and nodded to Michael. Michael sneezed again. Tim started playing his favorite tune from the Kerrie Kaufman CD. Tim sneezed one more time before he could put the saxophone to his lips and play along. They were so out of tune with each other that they burst out laughing.
"It's no a--aahchoo!" Michael sneezed.
"Let's just try aahchoo," Tim suggested.
They started in again and this time they were out-of-tune the way they wanted to be. The rhythm was so strong that Tim could practically hear the drums and bass joining in even though he knew that the girls hadn't come yet. As the boys became more confident about their playing, they got louder and more unbuttoned.
"CUT OUT THE RACKET DOWN THERE! I'M TRYING TO SLEEP!"
That put a stop to the music. Tim and Michael looked up in the direction of the voice. A man in a night gown and a night cap was glowering down at them from an opened window where the wall of the room should have been.
"I'm sorry," said Tim, not knowing what else to say or do.
"What's the idea of playing that noise in the middle of the night anyway?"
"I didn't know it was the middle of the night," Tim explained.
"HOW COULD YOU NOT KNOW IT'S THE MIDDLE OF THE NIGHT?"
"BECAUSE IN THE LAND OF MINNESOTA IT'S THE MIDDLE OF THE AFTERNOON!" Tim yelled back.
"SHUT UP OUT THERE, I'M TRYING TO SLEEP!" yelled a woman from an opened window across the street.
By this time, Tim and Michael were standing on a cobblestone street.
"SHUT UP YOURSELF!" yelled the man who had complained first.
The two aroused sleepers continued to yell at each other. Tim decided to ignore the feud and explore the place where they had ended up. He and Michael could see for themselves that it was dark out and the only light came from torches lining the street.
"Look at the stars," said Tim.
Michael looked up.
"Gosh!"
"Cindy told me how she noticed that the constellations are all different," said Tim.
"Yea. What a place for an astronomy lesson!"
By the time they had reached a corner and turned it, the voices of the two aroused sleepers were drowned out by the sound of drumming coming from a crowded tavern. Looking down the street, the boys could see the silhouette of the castle looming above the houses down at the far end of it.
"There's that castle," said Michael.
"So I see. First, I think we should check and see who's drumming," said Tim.
"Okay."
A large wooden shield hung above the door of the tavern with a picture of a raccoon and a robin. Not surprisingly, the caption read: "The Raccoon & The Robin." Tim pushed open the heavy oak door. Smoke from dozens of pipes almost choked him. There was a varied crowd with a lot more children, scattered in among the adults, than one would expect in a tavern that late at night. Many of the children looked familiar to Tim from his previous adventures in Sarabania. Everybody was drinking a foaming liquid but only the men were smoking their long pipes. The sound of the drumming was quite loud and now the sound of the pizzicato double bass was hearable was well. Tim and Michael oriented their sight to the crowd until they saw the same two girls, whom they had seen briefly before, up on a small stage. The girls were playing away with abandon although it was mostly all rhythm. The drummer pounded out an especially loud flourish and brought their playing to an end. The audience broke out into applause and cheering.
"Hey YOU!" cried a burly man with a beard half-way down to his chin. He had a pipe in one hand and a foaming glass of liquid in the other. "You with those instruments!"
"There they are!" cried a boy who looked vaguely familiar to Tim.
"Who's they?" cried another child.
"The rest of the band!" cried a pencil-thin old woman.
"WE WERE WAITING FOR YOU!" yelled the girl playing the drums.
She played a loud drum roll to emphasize her point.
"I guess we join them," said Tim.
"Not in your life," said Michael.
"This is your life," said Tim. "Come on. I don't want to be the only one up there who doesn't know what he's doing."
"I don't even want to be the second one up there who doesn't know what he's doing," said Michael.
"COME ON, YOU TWO! EVERYBODY'S WAITING!" cried the girl with the double bass.
The crowd pushed and shoved at Tim and Michael until they were up on the stage whether they wanted to be there or not.
"Where were you?" asked the girl at the double bass.
"We've been looking for you," Tim answered. "You ran from a monster that wasn't even going to hurt you."
"It wasn't?" asked the drummer.
"No, it wasn't."
"Then why didn't you tell us?"
"Because you ran way before I could tell you, Stupid."
"LET THE MUSIC BEGIN!" roared the burly man.
"Now what do we do?" asked Tim, feeling strange about the situation.
"Just play your thing and we'll think of something," said the drummer."
"I don't have much of a thing," said Michael.
"A thing is a thing," said the drummer.
Tim tuned his violin again and tuned it to Michael's sax. A couple of the boys started a rhythmic applause and soon other children joined in until the whole house was clapping and chanting: "MUSIC! MUSIC! MUSIC!" Tim held up a hand to quiet them.
"Here is some music that is out of this world."
Tim started out on his riff and nodded to Michael who almost missed the cue. As soon as Tim got going and the drum and double bass joined in, Tim forgot about being nervous. He just played, not caring what it sounded like, and so he got better results than he usually did. As for Michael, it was soon apparent that he really was good at the sax. He played rings around Tim, goading Tim into trying out stuff he'd never thought of before and finding out that either he could do it, or it didn't matter that he couldn't. Tim had lost all track of time when they finally held a long chord and then stopped.
The applause was deafening. Four large mugs of the foaming drink floated through a sea of hands up to the stage for the four musicians. Tim and Michael accepted theirs and took their first swallow. They almost fell over, the taste was so strong.
"It doubles over the brain," the bass player explained.
"I noticed," Michael spluttered.
A large wooden bowl filled with giant pretzels was circulated among the band. To Tim's delight, bits of sausage and pepperoni were woven into the dough of the pretzels. They were practically a meal all by themselves. The foaming drink washed down the pretzel nicely.
"Where's Cuthbert?" asked the drummer.
"Cuthbert?" Tim asked.
"Yes, Cuthbert. Where is he?"
"Never heard of him."
"You haven't?"
"No. Why?"
"He's supposed to be in the band, too. We're still missing one."
"How do you know he's supposed to be in the band, too?" asked Tim.
"Because it says so in the fourth volume, sixth chapter, of The History of Jazz-like Ensembles by Berry Moreland."
"It does?"
"It does," said the drummer. "Haven't you read it?"
"Never heard of it," said Tim. "Besides, I don't read four-volume books."
"It isn't in four volumes," said the drummer.
"That's good," said Tim.
"It's in eight volumes."
"Oh."
"It didn't say that we were going to play in your jazz band, did it?" asked Michael.
That was the question Tim wanted to ask but was afraid to.
"Of course it said that," said the bass player. "How else were we to know you were part of our band when you showed up?"
"But--how can a history book tell all about something that hasn't happened yet?"
Both girls sighed.
"Don't you understand anything about time?" asked the drummer.
"I guess not," said Michael. "But Tim said he knew of some worlds where you could go back in time."
"Like I said," said the drummer, "you don't understand anythingabout time. You don't go back in time. There is nothing to go backto.You just go to different places in time, same you go to different places on a map."
"Try telling my Dad, that," said Tim.
"Who's he?"
"A physics professor. He thinks he knows everything about time."
That got the girls laughing pretty hard. Laughing at his father helped Tim feel more at home in this strange environment.
"Time for another piece of music!" cried out a little girl.
"How does she know it's time?" asked Tim.
"By telling us," answered the bass player.
"Let's go!" cried a woman, "this is the best jazz band the Raccoon & the Robin has had in a long time!"
Tim recognized that woman as the Gray Lady, the one who had first appeared to him as a large gray cat. Tim took a second swig out of his drink and stumbled to his place on the stage. With the help of the drink, he could hardly see the crowd and he didn't think he knew what he was doing with his violin. He faked his way by playing little figures over and over again and then trying something new when Michael was playing especially loudly. After another indeterminate amount of time, the music ended and the four members of the band sat down again with a fresh mug of drink thrust into their hands by the adoring crowd.
"You two are good," said the bass player.
"But it's not the same without Cuthbert," sighed the drummer.
"You played with him?" asked Tim.
Doubtfully, he took a sip out of the fresh mug he'd been given. He didn't want to be rude but he was afraid he was already hopelessly drunk. Somehow, the second time round, the drink seemed to clear his head more than muddle it.
"No."
"Then how do you know it's not the same?"
"Same way you know it's not the same."
"Does Cuthbert play the keyboard?" asked Michael.
"Of course he does," said the bass player. "Then you do know him?"
"We saw a boy on the computer screen carrying a keyboard and playing it," said Michael.
"On the computer screen?" asked the drummer.
"Yea. He was walking up towards this castle."
"What castle?" asked the drummer.
"We don't know what castle it is," Tim explained, "we just know it's some gray stone castle that looks pretty big but it's hard to see.
"Oh, that Castle," said the bass player.
"Did you say something about the Castle?" asked the waitress who was placing yet another fresh mug into the hands of each musician.
Tim looked at the two mugs, still two-thirds full, resting on the stage and took a swig out of the new one.
"Michael and Tim saw the castle on their computer screen," said the bass player.
"THE CASTLE!" yelled a woman who was sitting nearby.
"THE CASTLE!" yelled a boy from the middle of the crowd.
"THE CASTLE!" yelled the burly man at the back.
The whole tavern was in an uproar.
"What's the matter?" Michael asked the girls, hardly able to hear his own voice over the din.
The girl's answer was drowned out by a crescendo of noise. It wasn't just the yelling of the crowd. A flood of swampy water inundated the tavern. The Gray Woman grabbed both boys and pulled them towards the kitchen.
"Quick! This way!"
With the water half-way up to their knees, Tim and Michael slogged their way behind the woman and through the swinging door. The patrons fled out the front door or jumped up on the tables. Once through the door, they found themselves in a strange room, still clutching their instruments. It did not look like a kitchen at all.
"Didn't you hear us call you to dinner?"
Tim gave his swirling head a bit of time to calm down and take things in. The strange room was none other than his dining room, and the man asking the question was his father. Everybody in his family appeared to be about halfway through the meal.
"No," Tim answered.
"Haven't I told you to listen when it's dinner time?" his father asked with mounting irritation.
"Yes."
"And why should you be dripping water all over the floor?" asked Diane.
"Can't you see they've been somewhere?" Cindy interjected.
"Looks like it to me," said Peter.
"Well, where have you been?" asked Frank, looking more patient.
"Somewhere."
"Where?"
"I don't know. We got there by a mistake."
"You know what this house is like and what Sarabania is like," said Cindy.
"Not really," said Frank.
"Are you hungry?" asked Diane.
Tim nodded. Seeing how muddy his shoes were, he took them off and Michael did the same. Peter went off to the kitchen and returned with heaped up plates for Michael and Tim while the boys sat down carefully, trying not to make a bigger mess of things with their wet trouser legs.
"Do you want to tell us what's happening?" asked Cindy.
"I don't know what's going on," said Tim.
"Then can you tell us what you don't know is happening?" suggested Peter.
"It might be a good idea to tell us what you can," said Frank.
"Okay," said Tim.
With Michael's help, Tim told his family what had happened up to that point. Michael felt blown away that Tim's parents were willing to listen to such a story. His own parents wouldn't have believed him in a million years.