The Wondrous Journals of Dr. Wendell Wellington Wiggins Page 9

  Resting—and getting ready for the next jolly 699½-day-long party.

  Yet even the best parties must eventually come to an end. Without going into too much detail, it appears the Celebrators simply grew too fat to, well, make plump little baby Celebrators. I suspect that the last generation of Celebrators gave the most decadent parties yet—the sort that you can create only when you do not have to give a hoot about the future.

  Eventually, I finished my investigation; it was time to rejoin the world above and seal the Celebrators back into their tomb. I had given the thief boy—whose name was Beppe—a tiny gold pebble to stay on as my assistant; he now helped me gather my tools and put everything back in order. We made our way upstairs, and I squeezed myself back through that terrible little floor panel.

  Outside the Pantheon, the late-evening moon hung low over our heads. We had lost track of time in the underground temple of the Grand Celebrators—who knows how long we had been down there? Our stomachs grumbled noisily. Beppe led Gibear and me to a humble trattoria up the street; we ordered heaps of spaghetti and a big bowl of coffee for Gibear. While we waited for the food to come, I thought about the Grand Celebrators and the lavish feasts they ate—it must have been like devouring the fanciest ambrosia and nectar of the gods.54

  But when those delicious, steaming bowls of spaghetti arrived at our table, I would not have traded them for anything else in the world.

  53. This temple was built by ancient Romans to worship all of their gods. Rebuilt from an earlier building in AD 125, the Pantheon still stands today.

  54. The food and drink of the ancient Greek and Roman gods.

  Journal No. 4

  Africa

  March 1866

  The Sahara Desert, Tunisia55

  In Which I Discover … the Paper Mirage Tribe

  (Populi Charta Simulacrumi)

  We rode camels here, of course. Gibear had his own baby camel: on our voyage to our camp, he nestled between the beast’s humps and still sleeps there each night. The two creatures have become close friends and even talk to each other in a special yowling language.

  When we arrived in Tunisia—the first destination in our exploration of Africa—I met with a very old Berber56 chief named Udad to learn more about this country’s history. The chief told me tales of great kingdoms, battles, and pirates.57 I listened with mild interest, like I would listen to bedtime tales. But this fare was entirely too modern for my tastes, and eventually I grew impatient and asked him to tell me about truly ancient Tunisia. The chief grew very serious.

  “There is one part of the desert mountains called Jebel Dahar, where I recommend you do not travel,” he told me. “It appears that the ancient world is still very much alive there, and we do not understand its ways.”

  I sat up straight as an arrow. “What do you mean?” I asked.

  “There are very strange mirages there,” the chief told me. “They do not behave like other mirages in the world. Most of the men who go to look at them do not come back.”58

  A servant placed a cup of strong Arabic coffee in front of Gibear: one sip made his bright green hair stand right up on end. Everyone in the room laughed. I announced that I would leave to examine these mirages right away, and asked how much it would cost to procure camels and a guide.

  “We have no need of your money,” Chief Udad said. “However,” he went on, his gaze drifting down to Gibear, “there are other things to barter. Tunisia is a very dry land; we always long to see green things here.”

  The next morning, Gibear had once again been shaved from ears to tail, and his rare green fur bought us ten camels, porters, a guide, and provisions for a month.

  Away we went. At first our trip seemed curiously uneventful. But then, something quite strange happened as we drew closer to Jebel Dahar. The air grew drier and drier. This may seem like an odd observation; after all, deserts are dry by definition. Well, this air was something new altogether: the air here grew so dry that it almost hardened—and then went on the attack, trying to suck and steal all of the precious water out of our bodies. I covered Gibear with a damp cloth; a minute later that cloth shriveled and stiffened practically into a board under the hot sun.

  Just then, my guide shouted and pointed to the horizon. A glistening, completely colorless grove of trees luxuriated on the side of the dunes ahead: not a clump of dry old date palms, but a grove of delicate willow trees covered in flowers. We scrambled toward it. But the moment we reached the grove’s edge, the trees disappeared.

  “Well!” I exclaimed. “How rude!”

  The sun beat down on us, hotter than ever. Suddenly, all at once, we spotted something else ahead: a small fort nestled into the dune. Vines covered the walls. And, curiously, like the grove of willow trees, this building and its flora lacked any sort of color whatsoever and nearly blended in with the baking Sahara sand. But once again, as we approached the odd building, it vanished into the shimmering air.

  “Stop right here,” I thundered. “I shan’t be lured another step into this desert: clearly these are the deadly mirages the Berber chief told us about. We will set up a camp and excavate the sites of the illusions—and do it at night, when these mirages cannot interfere with us.”

  We set up tents and hunkered down, until a silver desert moon rose above the land. Then we started digging where the “fort” had stood. A strange noise came from beneath my shovel each time it hit the ground, almost like the sound of tearing paper.

  Upon investigation, it turned out that I had come across another strange prehistoric species. Hurrah and huzzah! Unfurl the banners and strew confetti. Make way for the great Dr. Wiggins! He has another tale from the ancient world to tell, and it begins like so:

  Over time, the Sahara has been a bit wishy-washy in making up its mind about certain things, namely whether it likes being a desert or not. For example, ten thousand years ago, great rains swept in and turned the barren land into a lush green country. But then the rains retreated and the land once again became a desert. This back-and-forth has been going on for millions of years, as even students of basic geography know.

  Around two hundred thousand years ago, an ancient human tribe came to settle in the Sahara during one of its green periods. But then, violent hot winds swirled in and dried up the land’s water, leaving the tribe quite stranded. But unlike today’s humans, who can survive without water for only a few days, this tribe stayed put and trained themselves to become desert creatures, forcing themselves to live without water.

  Their bodies began to change. They grew thinner and thinner, and dried out slowly from the inside. The color drained from them; soon they nearly blended in with the landscape and became as thin as paper. This tribe hovered and floated through the desert air like ghosts; they dined on sand, one grain at a time. I have dubbed them the Paper Mirage Tribe.

  Yet no creature can survive without water forever. The Paper Tribe needed a plan, or they faced certain extinction. At this point, they could not simply migrate to a wetter climate; after all, what happens to a piece of paper left in the rain? It becomes mush. It appears that the Paper Tribe concluded that their only option was to lure creatures in from afar—and drink them up for moisture. This much became clear from the hundreds of nonindigenous animal fossils littering the vicinity.

  The luring scheme required some fancy doing. After all, the desert is not exactly a tempting place for sensible creatures. So the Paper Tribe concocted one of the most elaborate temptation strategies I have ever come across. When a creature stumbled to the edge of the desert, the Paper Tribesmen turned themselves into alluring mirages. Not with some sort of magical spell: rather, they twisted and cut their paper-like bodies into different shapes resembling trees and palaces and other tempting structures—sort of like creating an elaborate stage set on the sand. (Some of the paper corpses we uncovered still held such shapes, and, like the Brittle Bones’ corsetry and clothing, they were great works of art.)

  Then, when the unfortunate animal spotted t
his “mirage” and came into the desert to investigate, the Paper Tribesmen would unfurl themselves and form a fence around the creature, whose days were now numbered. One wild camel could provide moisture for the whole Paper Tribe for a year. I found this scheme quite ingenious.

  The Sahara, however, was apparently less impressed. One day it whipped up a particularly violent sandstorm, burying these creatures alive.

  Yet clearly a handful of these Paper Tribesmen must live on today: How else can one explain the tree and fort mirages we saw? Modern creatures must still be getting lured into the desert by those spectacular visions—ever hoping that the next one will be real.

  Will we never learn not to pursue the unattainable? Such chases rarely have happy endings.

  55. A mostly desert country in North Africa.

  56. The Berbers are an ancient tribe that has lived in North Africa since the beginning of recorded history; they remain there today. Tunisia was settled by the Phoenicians in the twelfth century BC and eventually became part of the Roman Empire.

  57. From the sixteenth to the early nineteenth centuries, Tunisia was a stronghold of the terrible Barbary pirates, who stole European boats and sold their sailors as slaves.

  58. Often desert travelers report seeing pools of water in the sand, only to have that water disappear when they approach it. In reality, these pools are an optical illusion caused by heated air and are called mirages.

  April 1866

  Tunis, Tunisia

  In Which I Am Robbed, and Gibear Creates a Spectacle

  Disaster has struck: after we got back to the city of Tunis to buy supplies for our next expedition, someone broke into our little rented clay house and stole the last of my Mexican gold pebbles while we slept! (Gibear, that beast, might be a perfectly splendid excavator, but he is a most disappointing watchdog.)

  I despaired about what to do. Should I sell my equipment? Never. Hire myself to work on a boat back to England to borrow money there? Equally unfathomable. Why, can one imagine me working as a ship hand, swabbing decks—I shudder just to think of it! I worried that my worldwide mission might be coming to an end. I went to visit with Chief Udad to seek his advice. He stroked his beard as he listened to my tale of woe.

  “It is clear that you will have to get a job,” he concluded. “Do you have any skills?”

  I told him—with great pride—that I could ascertain the age of any object in the world just by inspecting it, but he shook his head.

  “That is quite useless, my friend,” he said. “Can you sing?”

  Now I shook my head. “Can you dance?” he pressed.

  “Most certainly not,” I told him indignantly. My hopes sank—and then they rose again suddenly. “Wait a moment. I do have a skill: I can imitate the sounds of the ancient world’s animals.”

  The chief threw up his hands. “It is better than nothing,” he said, and declared that we would stage a show of these animal noises and charge admission.

  It was all too absurd, but what could I do? The next evening, Chief Udad invited the city people to come and hear “the Fantastical Animal Calls of the Great Dr. Wiggins.” I stood nervously on a little stage in the middle of the city’s main square; hundreds of people crammed into the area. A bald Gibear stood next to me on the stage: his green fur still had not grown back in since I had bartered it for the Paper Mirage Tribe expedition camels and porters.

  Chief Udad nodded at me. It was time for the show to begin.

  “First, I shall imitate the call of the Dreaded Gossip Peacocks of Louisiana,” I announced. The people of Tunis leaned forward. I gave a piercing Gossip Peacock whoop—an excellent imitation, I might add. My audience shifted and scowled. Not one person applauded! I grew annoyed.

  “Well, how about this,” I snapped. “I shall imitate the sound of the Hundred-Horned Bull of Spain.” I let out a melancholy blowing noise. Which, incidentally, sounded exactly like the horns of the bull. I was tremendously proud of myself. Suddenly the crowd began to hiss. Someone even threw an orange at me! I have never been so insulted. Chief Udad came up to the edge of the stage.

  “I am afraid that you will have to give back their money,” he said sheepishly. “Or they will make a big problem for you.”

  “They can have it,” I said, my face bright red. “Come along, Gibear—let us depart. I know when I am not appreciated. We shall just have to find another way to earn funds.”

  Suddenly a gasp went up from the crowd; everyone stared at the stage in fascination. I looked down at my little pet and got quite a shock myself.

  There, in front of our eyes, Gibear’s fur was growing again; tufts burst out all over his little body.

  Not black fur, or red, or even bright green, but silver fur. And I do not mean a dull gray-silver; rather, it was a bright, shining silver: coin silver, tea-set silver, spoon silver. It grew and grew until it spilled to the floor.

  The crowd stormed toward us and cheered; so many coins were thrown onto the stage that the stash came up to my knees. Gibear managed to look quite noble amidst all of this chaos. I excitedly scooped the coins into a sack and collected my gleaming animal; a great crowd followed us back to our little clay house, cheering as they walked and reaching out to pet Gibear’s silver fur.

  “Thank you, thank you, my good sirs,” I said to our followers, bowing several times from my threshold. “You are too kind, really,” and then I closed the door. Gibear stood in the middle of the floor and looked up at me modestly.

  “You,” I said to him, staring down in wonderment. “What in heavens are you?”

  But of course, once again, he gave me no answer—at least not one that I could understand. So I fed him his evening bowl of coffee, and after he drank it, he curled up and went to sleep, his silver fur shining in the candlelight.

  May 1867

  The Atlas Mountains, Morocco

  In Which I Discover … Mirrored Pigradillos

  (Speculum Porcus-Cuniculus-Cingulata)

  The Atlas Mountains—our latest stop—have long been home to extraordinary contemporary creatures. My favorites: the grand Barbary Lion and the Northern Bald Ibis, with its rubbery, grotesque mask. So it certainly stands to reason that the mountains’ ancient animals might have been even more fascinating. When I arrived, I immediately scouted excavation sites in the mountains’ caves, which have likely sheltered beasts for millions of years.

  I began by digging in the walls. The first four caves yielded nothing but shards of pottery and some beads, but in the fifth, my shovel gave off a promising crrrack! as it hit something hard.

  “Bring a lamp—quickly!” I called to my new guide, Ahmed, a rather skinny Arab boy who had grown up in the Atlas Mountains. He had worked for an English family living here for years, and spoke the language very well. A fez59 balanced neatly on top of his head; the bottoms of his bare feet had grown as thick as leather. I lit the lamp’s flame and held it up to the wall. Suddenly two eyes blinked at me: a live man wedged in the wall! I gave a whoop and ran out of the cave. A glinting Gibear, who’d been dozing in the sun, lifted his chin lazily.

  “What happened?” cried Ahmed.

  “There is a face buried in that wall,” I gasped. “And it is alive. An older chap. He stared right at me.”

  “Let me see this face,” said Ahmed, taking the lamp from me. He disappeared into the cave. A moment later, he emerged solemnly. “Yes, you are right,” he said. “There is a face in the wall, but it does not belong to an older man. When I look at the wall, I see only the face of a very handsome young man.”

  “I know what I saw,” I thundered. “Give me that lamp.” And I marched right back into the cave. Ahmed followed me.

  “You see?” he said, pointing. “Now an older man lives in that wall again. Look closer. It is you.” And he doubled over with laughter.

  As I live and breathe! Ahmed was right: no live person glowered out from the wall at all. Rather, I had uncovered a most peculiar mirror. I stared at myself. How I had aged! My mustache had gro
wn even grayer, and my face had become even more weathered. Time had clearly decided to race away while I was looking in the other direction.

  When I recovered from my surprise, I chiseled away at the dirt around the mirror—and discovered that this cave actually contained hundreds of little mirrors. And these, in turn, had once belonged to the most tenacious creatures ever to have called these mountains home.

  Each beast looked, according to their fossilized remains, like a very fat piglet the size of a rabbit, with a pudgy belly so round that it pillowed down to the ground. Its head, however, resembled that of an armadillo, with a face that appeared to be sneering all the time. (Even its skull sneered and leered!) A studded, leathery, armadillo-like hide covered the herbivore animal, too.

  Here is how the mirrors figure in: about seventy-five million years ago, these strange Pig-Rabbit-Armadillos (or Pigradillos) plumped around this area. Once Pigradillos grew up, their stomachs outgrew their legs, making walking impossible; instead the creatures curled up into balls like armadillos and rolled up and down the Atlas Mountains slopes. And all along, they devoted their time to devouring grass and roots and enjoying the fair climate.

  This idyllic life ended when they were discovered by the other animals in the valley, for whom the Pigradillos would have made quite a feast. (We later found all sorts of predators with Pigradillo remains in their fossilized bellies.) Their leathery hides presented no obstacle, especially to the hungry, sharp-toothed cats that roamed around the area in great packs. It appears that the Pigradillos became the favorite hors d’oeuvres on the Atlas Mountains menu.