Chapter 94: The Curator's Bad Day and Rango's Worse One
The Director came back to consciousness the way you came back from something that had done its best to make consciousness optional — gradually, in stages, each stage presenting new information that the previous stage hadn't been ready to process.
Stage one: sand. Specifically, the specific texture of fine coastal sand against his face, which was different from the sand he'd encountered in North Africa fieldwork and different again from the sand in the Pacific locations he'd visited over the years. This sand had a quality to it. He noted this professionally even before he was fully conscious, because forty years of fieldwork had made the professional notation reflex faster than the waking-up reflex.
Stage two: salt water. On his face, in the creases of his collar, on his hands where they'd apparently been trying to brace against something.
Stage three: the camera. Still in his hand. Still intact. He confirmed this before he confirmed the status of his own body, which would have embarrassed him if there had been anyone present to observe it.
Stage four: his body. Present. Functional. The head was registering the specific complaint of something that had made contact with a hard surface, but not the complaint of anything structural.
Stage five: the ropes.
He opened his eyes.
He was on a beach — curved, sheltered, the specific configuration of a natural harbor formed by mountains on three sides and ocean on the fourth. The sky above was the particular tropical blue that appeared in the kind of travel photography that made people feel that travel photographs were edited when they weren't.
He was lying on his back.
He was tied down.
He was tied down by ropes.
The ropes were — he followed one with his eyes to its origin — being held by soldiers.
The soldiers were the size of his finger.
The Director lay on the beach tied down by finger-sized soldiers in armor and processed this information with the specific thoroughness of a man who had spent his professional life in contact with the physical evidence of human civilization and who understood, with complete scholarly clarity, exactly what he was looking at.
Gulliver's Travels, Jonathan Swift, 1726.
The Mysterious Island, Jules Verne, 1874.
The same place.
He had known — intellectually, from the coordinate cross-reference — that the island was real. He had not fully processed, on the emotional level, what real would look like when he arrived at it.
What it looked like was: finger-sized soldiers in armor, pulling ropes, standing on wooden towers they'd constructed around him while he was unconscious, cheering.
"LONG LIVE LILLIPUT!" the soldiers were cheering.
Lilliput, the Director thought. Swift called it Lilliput. Verne didn't name it. It's the same place and it has a name and the name is Lilliput and I am lying on a beach in Lilliput tied down by Lilliputians and I need to find my camera—
The camera was still in his hand.
He pressed record.
"I am not," he said, to the soldiers, "your enemy. I'm a historian. A curator. I've spent my life protecting things, not threatening them." He kept his voice as even as possible, which was a significant effort given that his head was hurting and he was tied down by people the size of his fingers. "My name is Dr. Cecil McPhee. I'm the Director of the American Museum of Natural History in New York City. I've been looking for this island for thirty years."
"SILENCE, GIANT MONSTER!"
The voice came from his chest.
He looked down.
A man on horseback — approximately the size of a tube of chapstick — was pointing a sword at him that was, in scale-appropriate terms, extremely sharp.
The sword was approximately the size of a toothpick.
It was pointed at his chin.
"I am General Edward," the man announced, with the specific energy of someone who had been waiting his entire career to make exactly this announcement in exactly this context. "Commander of the Imperial Forces of Lilliput! You have insulted the Imperial Army and violated the sovereign territory of His Majesty's empire!"
"I apologize for the intrusion," the Director said, maintaining the even voice. "I arrived involuntarily. Through the tornado. I didn't choose the landing location."
"You will be presented to His Majesty the King," General Edward said. "After which your fate will be determined by his wisdom and mercy."
"That seems reasonable," the Director said. "I'm happy to meet the King."
"You will NOT be happy," General Edward said, with the specific offended energy of someone whose dramatic moment is being insufficiently respected. "You will be COMPLIANT."
"I will be both," the Director said. "I'm very good at both simultaneously."
General Edward looked at him.
Pointed the sword slightly more emphatically.
"Where are my companions?" the Director asked. "There were five of us on the yacht."
"We have captured one giant," General Edward said. "Only one giant was found on the beach."
The Director looked at the beach.
At the ocean.
At the harbor entrance where the yacht — intact, apparently, riding at anchor at a distance — was visible.
No Rango. No Jones. No Lara. No Victor. No Ted.
No Toothless.
The anxiety arrived, which was the correct response and which he acknowledged without letting it govern him. He'd been in uncomfortable situations before. He'd been in situations where the correct approach was to gather information before acting.
He gathered information.
He looked at the city — visible now, through a gap in the mountains at the back of the beach, the specific shape of a medieval-scale settlement done at a scale that required recalibration to read correctly. Towers. Streets. A palace. All of it real, all of it inhabited, all of it exactly the size that Gulliver's Travels described.
He pressed the camera's record button.
"General Edward," he said.
The general looked at him.
"Would it be possible," the Director said, "to record this for documentation purposes? I'm a historian. This is the most significant discovery in the history of my field. I would very much like to—"
"SILENCE," General Edward said.
The Director pressed record anyway.
The transit to the city involved being dragged, which involved the horses, which involved a moment when he'd attempted to assert some control over the situation and had been reminded by a combination of ropes and a protruding rock that this was not yet that moment.
He arrived at the palace on a wooden platform pulled by combined horse power, which was — he kept the camera running throughout, the professional notation reflex overriding the discomfort reflex — one of the most remarkable things he had ever seen and he had seen, in forty years of fieldwork, a significant number of remarkable things.
The palace was proportionate to the city. The city was proportionate to the people. The King was on the upper balcony — elderly, in the specific way of rulers who had been ruling for long enough that the weight of it showed — looking down at him with the expression of a man who had not been briefed on giants and was making his real-time assessment.
"What," the King said, to General Edward, "is this?"
"A giant, Your Majesty!" Edward said, with the pride of a man presenting a trophy. "Captured on the southern beach! Possibly a spy from the Eastern Empire!"
The Queen, beside the King, was looking at the Director with the careful attention of someone running a different assessment than her husband.
The Princess — young, the specific bearing of someone who had not yet fully decided to inherit the gravity that the people around her had accumulated — was looking at him with what appeared to be genuine curiosity rather than the managed curiosity that position tended to produce.
"A spy," the Princess said. "They sent a spy the size of a building."
"The Eastern Empire is cunning—" Edward started.
"The Eastern Empire," the Princess said, "is many things. Foolish enough to send a building-sized spy is not one of them." She looked at the Director. "You. Giant. Are you a spy?"
"I am a historian," the Director said. "Specifically, I'm the Director of the American Museum of Natural History. I've spent thirty years looking for this island because I believed it was real, and it is real, and I would very much like to have a conversation with your King rather than being imprisoned."
The Princess looked at her father.
The King looked at General Edward.
Edward had the expression of a man whose authoritative moment was being systematically dismantled by the people who were supposed to be reinforcing it.
"He seems—" the King started.
"He is a spy," Edward said.
"He seems reasonable," the King said.
"Giants are not—"
"He used the word 'historian,'" the Princess said. "Spies don't lead with 'historian.'"
"Unless that's what the Eastern Empire wants us to think," Edward said.
The Princess looked at General Edward for a long moment.
"Edward," she said, pleasantly. "We've been engaged for two years. In those two years, has your military strategy improved, or is it still in the phase where everything is the Eastern Empire?"
"My Princess, this is not—"
"Because I have been patient," the Princess said. "I have been patient for two years. But I want to tell you, Edward, that I am extremely close to the point where I simply walk out of the kingdom and allow the succession crisis to sort itself out."
"You can't—"
"I absolutely can," she said, with the specific certainty of someone who has thought about this more than once and has concluded it's viable. "I have a horse and a sense of direction and I've been reading adventure stories since I was six."
The King was looking at this exchange with the expression of a man who had been watching this particular dynamic develop for two years and had not yet found the intervention that improved it.
"Perhaps," the King said, carefully, "we could discuss the giant's status as a separate matter from the question of the engagement."
"Agreed," the Princess said immediately.
"Agreed," the Director said, with equal immediacy.
Edward looked at both of them.
"He's a spy," Edward said, to the air, to the record, to whoever was writing this down.
"Lock him in the north cave," the King said, with the exhausted tone of someone making a decision that satisfied no one in order to defer a decision that satisfied no one more expensively. "Comfortable. Not punitive. Until we've had more time to assess."
"LANGE—" the Director said.
"The giant is shouting," Edward observed.
"LANGE! JONES! LARA! ANYONE—"
"The giant is shouting loudly," Edward said.
"He's calling for his companions," the Princess said, looking at the empty beach beyond the harbor entrance. "Which means he's concerned about them." She looked at the Director with the specific thoughtfulness of someone filing information. "Which is a spy characteristic less than a person characteristic."
Edward opened his mouth.
Closed it.
The Director was still shouting.
Elsewhere on the island — in a direction that the Director's shouting was not reaching — Rango was sitting in a chair that was the wrong size for him, in a kitchen that was the right size for someone else, looking at a plate.
The transit through the tornado had separated them — he'd registered this in the chaos of the passage, the specific moment when the group's physical proximity had been dissolved by the physics of the thing — and he'd come out of it alone.
Not entirely alone.
He'd been found almost immediately.
He hadn't been found by soldiers.
He'd been found by a girl, approximately twelve years old, who had been extremely pleased to find a giant on her beach and had communicated this pleasure in a language that was approximately English with specific differences that were navigable with effort, and who had brought him to her home with the specific authority of someone who had been living on this island her entire life and considered it entirely her territory.
Her home was the size of a house that had been designed for someone the size of Rango, which was to say: a giant's house, meaning that there were people on this island who were not Lilliputian-scale, and that those people had architecture, and that the architecture was — he looked at the stone construction, at the specific techniques visible in the joinery and the load-bearing — old. Significantly old.
The girl's name, as best as he could render it, was something that started with the sound of a name and arrived at the specific quality of a name that belonged to a place rather than a tradition.
She called him "tall man" with the easy affection of someone who had decided he was fine.
Her father, apparently, was not currently present.
She had made him a pie.
The pie looked like a pie. It had a crust that had been assembled with genuine skill and the specific golden color of something that had been in an oven for the right amount of time. It was the size of a pizza. It smelled like something that had been made with care.
He looked at the pie.
He looked at what was in the pie.
The filling was moving.
Not metaphorically — the filling was actively moving, in the specific way of things that were alive and were responding to the heat of the recently-baked crust with the urgency of things that would prefer to be somewhere else.
The girl was watching him with the bright expectation of someone who had made something they were proud of and was waiting for the response.
"Worm pie," she said, in the approximately-English. "Daddy's favorite."
Rango looked at the worm pie.
At the worms, which were a variety he didn't recognize and which were, in the context of this island, probably entirely normal.
At the girl, who had the specific expression of someone who had made an effort and was hoping it would be appreciated.
He looked at the pie again.
He thought about the Director, who was somewhere on the island in circumstances unknown.
He thought about Jones, whose contact was on the island and had been "for some time."
He thought about Victor, who had two hundred years of patience and an agenda that wasn't Jules Verne appreciation.
He thought about Toothless, who had come home.
He thought about what the island was, and what was in it, and what the Night Fury's presence here meant for what was coming.
He looked at the girl.
At the pie.
"It smells good," he said, which was true. The crust genuinely smelled good. "Your father really likes it?"
"Daddy loves it the most," she confirmed, with the absolute certainty of someone reporting an established fact.
"And your father is—"
"Out," she said. "He's always out. But he'll be back." She said it with the patient confidence of someone who had been saying this for a long time and had not yet been wrong. "He's always back."
Rango looked at the pie.
At the worms.
At the girl, who was waiting with the bright expectation of someone who had made something they were proud of.
He thought about Spirited Away (2001) — about the rule that you ate what was offered to you in strange places, and what happened when you didn't, and what happened when you did, and how the only wrong answer was to refuse entirely.
He thought about Indiana Jones eating the snake in Raiders of the Lost Ark (1981), specifically the expression Jones had made about it.
He picked up the fork.
The worms moved.
The girl beamed.
"Good?" she said.
He put the fork down, having not yet deployed it.
"Can I ask," he said, "about your father? What does he do? Where does he go when he's out?"
"He looks for things," she said. "He's always looking for things. He says the island has things that need finding, and he's the one who finds them." She sat down across from him with the ease of someone who had been having conversations in this kitchen for her entire life. "He says someday someone will come from outside the storm, and then he won't have to look anymore. He says that person will know what to do."
Rango looked at her.
"How long has your father been looking?" he said.
She thought about it.
"Always," she said. "For as long as I can remember. For longer than that, he says."
Rango sat with this.
A man who had been on the island looking for something for "as long as his daughter could remember," which could mean years or could mean — given the island's specific relationship with time, given what the island was and what it had been doing since before recorded history — something else.
Jones's contact.
Who had sent a signal when he was able.
Who was waiting.
"His name," Rango said. "Your father's name."
She told him.
He looked at the pie.
At the worms, which had settled slightly, having concluded that the immediate thermal situation was stable.
At the girl, who was watching him with the patient expectation of someone who had learned patience from a father who had been doing something for a very long time and had not yet stopped.
"I'd like to meet him," Rango said. "When he comes back."
"He'll be back soon," she said. "He always knows when someone's arrived. He'll feel it." She pushed the pie slightly toward him. "You should eat. Daddy says you need to eat on the island. The island takes things from you. Food helps."
Rango looked at the pie.
At the worms.
"The worms," he said. "Are they—"
"Good for you," she said, with complete sincerity. "Very nutritious. Daddy says so."
Rango picked up the fork.
Put it down.
Picked it up again.
Ted, who had been on the windowsill since they'd arrived and who had been observing the situation with the specific attention of someone running a comprehensive assessment, said:
"Back in Ghana," Ted said, "there was a rule about food offered by strangers in strange places."
"What was the rule?" Rango said.
"The rule," Ted said, "was that refusing was worse than accepting."
"And if what's being offered is alive?"
"The rule," Ted said carefully, "was silent on that specific circumstance."
Rango looked at the fork.
At the pie.
At the girl, who was still waiting with the bright expectation of someone who had made something with care and was hoping it would be received accordingly.
He put the fork in the pie.
Something moved under the crust with urgency.
He held the fork.
"I need to ask," he said. "Before I try this. Is your father named — Jones? Did a man named Jones send him here?"
The girl thought about it.
"Jones," she said slowly. "Uncle Jones. Daddy talks about Uncle Jones." She looked up. "Uncle Jones is coming. Daddy said he would come eventually. He said he sent him a message." She looked at Rango with the specific attention of someone making a connection. "Are you with Uncle Jones?"
"Yes," Rango said.
She smiled.
It was the smile of someone receiving confirmation of something they had been told would eventually arrive.
"Then Daddy will be very glad you're here," she said. "He's been waiting a long time."
She pushed the pie more firmly toward him.
"Eat," she said, kindly. "You'll need it."
The fork was in his hand.
The worms were in the pie.
Somewhere on the island, the Director was shouting his name into an empty beach.
Somewhere above the island, Toothless was ranging, looking for something that the island had that he'd known about before he consciously knew anything.
Somewhere in the interior, something large was moving with the patient certainty of something that had been waiting for this specific convergence for a very long time.
The fork went into the pie.
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