Copyright

Copyright © 1999 by Bruce Coville

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopy, recording, or any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publisher.

For information about permission to reproduce selections from this book, write to [email protected] or to Permissions, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company, 3 Park Avenue, 19th Floor, New York, New York 10016.

“The Golden Sail” copyright © 1999 by Bruce Coville; first publication. “Biscuits of Glory” copyright © 1995 by Bruce Coville; originally published in The Haunted House (HarperCollins), edited by Jane Yolen and Martin H. Greenberg. “I, Earthling” copyright © 1994 by Bruce Coville; originally published in Bruce Coville’s Book of Aliens (Apple/Scholastic), edited by Bruce Coville. “The Giant’s Tooth” copyright © 1999 by Bruce Coville; first publication. “There’s Nothing Under the Bed,” copyright © 1995 by Bruce Coville, originally published in Bruce Coville’s Book of Nightmares (Apple/ Scholastic), edited by Bruce Coville. “The Stinky Princess” copyright © 1999 by Bruce Coville; first publication. “The Japanese Mirror” copyright © 1996 by Bruce Coville; originally published in A Nightmare’s Dozen (Jane Yolen Books/Harcourt), edited by Michael Stearns. “Am I Blue?” copyright © 1994 by Bruce Coville; originally published in Am I Blue? (HarperCollins), edited by Marion Dane Bauer. “The Metamorphosis of Justin Jones” copyright © 1997 by Bruce Coville; originally published in Bruce Coville’s Book of Magic II (Apple/Scholastic), edited by Bruce Coville. “A Note from the Author” copyright © 1999 by Bruce Coville; first publication.

Originally published in hardcover by Harcourt, Inc., 1999

The Library of Congress has cataloged the print edition as follows:
Coville, Bruce.

Odder than ever/stories by Bruce Coville.

p. cm.

Companion title: Oddly enough.

Summary: A collection of nine short stories featuring a ghost, a goblin, a giant, and other unusual creatures.

1. Horror tales, American. 2. Children’s stories, American.

[1. Horror stories. 2. Short stories.] I. Title.

PZ7.C8344Ocj 1999

[Fic]—dc21 98-51102

ISBN 978-0-15-201747-7 hardcover

ISBN 978-0-15-202465-9 paperback

eISBN 978-0-544-98854-5
v1.0716

Dedication

For Dick Decker,

with profound thanks for urging me to stretch my wings and set sail on uncharted seas

The Golden Sail

HIS NAME was Jan. He was short for his thirteen years, and the sun had roasted his skin to a golden brown. His long, unruly hair was black as a moonless night, his heart hard as a sailor’s knot. As for his eyes, they were mostly green but seemed to shift with his moods.

In this, they were much like the sea beside which he lived.

Jan loved the sea. But he also hated it, for it had taken his father when he’d set off to find the ship with the golden sail.

It was a story his father had always loved, the tale of a mysterious ship that fishermen and traders would see on the horizon, yet could never reach. Then one day word swept the coast that the ship had been seen again, and his father announced that he was going in search of it.

That was the last they had seen of him.

But Jan had not stopped waiting, not stopped hoping. Which is why he was squatting at the water’s edge now, looking for a sign of his father’s ship.

The gulls wheeled overhead, shrieking raucously. The waves rolled in to smash against the beach, splashing him with warm brine. The huge yellow eye of the merciless sun glared down at him. And the smooth line of sky and sea remained unbroken.

But still he watched, as he had always done when he was not busy on some task for his mother. Now that she was gone, too—a victim of the fever that had ravaged the coast the previous year—watching was what he did most of the time.

After an hour of squinting at the horizon without seeing any sign of a ship, the boy sighed heavily, stood, and stretched. He gave a final seaward glance, then began to wander down the beach. He moved slowly, enjoying the feel of the warm water as it foamed and bubbled over his toes.

A group of gulls that had gathered on the sand ahead began scolding for the sake of scolding. Jan tossed a pebble listlessly in their direction. They ignored him. He shrugged and continued down the beach, until he came to the hut of Samos, the blind net maker.

The old man paused in his work as the boy approached. After a moment he smiled and said, “Jan.” It was both a greeting and a statement of pleasure. Even so, it made Jan shiver. The way Samos could tell who was standing nearby without being able to see made him uncomfortable. It was, however, the only thing about the man that Jan found disturbing. In all other ways it felt good to be with him, for he would talk to Jan in ways that others would not, offering him advice, wisdom, lore of the sea, and most of all sympathy, which the other fisherfolk thought was a sign of softness, and would make him weak.

“No sign of your father?” asked the old man. His fingers, thick and twisted with age, yet amazingly supple, resumed work on the net he was repairing.

“No.” The word was bitter in Jan’s mouth. He felt like a fool, still waiting, still hoping, after all this time.

“Sometimes it is best to let go,” said Samos. He held up the net to display the gaping hole. “If Markand had let go, instead of holding on to this net, he might be alive today. As it was, he saved the net, but lost his life. Not the best of trades, I think.”

“My father is coming back,” said Jan, fighting to ignore the knot of anger in his stomach.

“Ten years is a long time to be gone,” replied the old man. Then he turned his attention back to the net. Jan stood in silence, gazing out at the sea once more. For a moment he thought he saw something. He blinked and shook his head, and it was gone.

No. There it was again.

The sun was halfway up the sky, and its fierce rays filled the water with flashes of gold and silver. Whatever Jan saw was blending with those flashes, barely distinguishable. He shaded his eyes, squinting for a better view.

A sail! He leaped to his feet, feeling a surge of hope and, at the same time, cursing himself for being fool enough to get excited by every sail that broke the horizon. It would be some time before he could see whether this one carried the family crest—a blue circle that held the image of a gull in flight, with a single star above it. Even if it didn’t, the ship might carry his father. After all, the sea had its own ways of returning things. At least, that was what his mother had always said.

As the minutes wore on, Jan was troubled to see that the sail was the wrong color. It was not simply that it was not white, as his father’s would have been. It was not any of the colors that were proper for a sail—not red, like the sails of the traders from the north, nor blue or green, like those from the south, nor even black, like those from the east.

At first Jan thought the sail was yellow. But it sparkled and shone in a way he had never seen before, and as it drew closer he took in a sharp breath.

The sail looked as if it was made of purest gold.

Could this be the ship his father had gone in search of? Could his father be on it, even now, sailing toward them?

Samos placed his hand on Jan’s shoulder. “That is no ordinary ship,” he whispered.

Jan trembled. The old man was blind. How did he know there was a ship at all?

They stood, waiting. The ship continued toward them, its sail flashing in the sun. Jan’s throat tightened. He could sense something powerful about the vessel, powerful and frightening. Something that was reaching out toward him.

“Samos, I’m frightened.”

The hand on his shoulder tightened, but the old man said nothing. Part of Jan—a small voice inside—was urging him to run. He fought his fear and stood without moving.

As the ship drew closer, Jan saw that it was long and sleek, and rode low in the water. He was admiring its lines when he realized that rather than slowing as it approached the shore, the ship was moving faster.

“Samos! She’s going to run aground!”

But he was wrong. Biting back a cry of astonishment, he watched the ship begin to rise in the water, floating higher and higher on the waves, as if being lifted by some marvelous dolphin. The water parted in white curls before its prow as it surged toward the shore. The ship continued to rise, until it seemed to be riding the air instead of the sea. It came to a halt a few feet from land, floating on a boiling cushion of white foam, its keel cleaving only the air.

Silently, the ship swung around until the starboard side was facing the shore. Silently, a gangplank appeared at the edge of the ship and extended itself onto the sand. The hair on Jan’s neck stood up, but he was unable to resist the mystery. He stepped toward the ship. Samos reached for his arm—not to restrain him, but to join him.

Moving in silence, the old man and the boy ascended the plank.

The ship was silent. Silent, and empty.

Jan shivered. They should turn and run now, he thought, as fast and as far as they could, away from the sea and away from this witch ship. But whatever was calling to him was even stronger now, and the call was too powerful to ignore.

Samos started to speak, but a sound from behind interrupted him. They turned in unison, then Jan yelled and dived for the gangplank, which was sliding back into the ship.

He fell short in his jump. Lying on the deck, with the golden sun burning his back and the sound of the surf pounding in his ears, he felt the ship move away from the shore. His stomach clenched, and he yelled again, though yelling was obviously useless.

He looked at Samos. The old man’s face wore a look of astonishment, and of fear. Yet lurking behind these was one thing more, thought Jan—a hint of burning, radiant joy.

“Back on the sea at last,” Samos whispered.

Jan pulled himself to his feet and stood at the rail, watching as the shore faded from view. Despite his fear, he, too, felt a strange sense of elation. To be on the sea, with a friend like Samos and a ship that was as swift as the wind—this was a wonderful thing. Terrible danger might be waiting. But for the moment, for this one golden moment, he felt wild and free, and close to the edge of a question that was worth answering.

Samos came to stand beside him. “Sea air,” said the old man. “There’s nothing like it. Even living right on the shore you don’t get this. I’ve missed it.”

“But what is this ship?” asked Jan.

“I don’t know.”

“But you’re always telling me stories about the sea. You must have heard something about a ship like this.”

“Oh, ghost ships, certainly,” said the net maker. “But being empty and being a ghost ship are different things. I was on a ghost ship once. You could feel the death in the air—sense the dead men hovering around you. This is no ghost ship we’re riding, Jan.”

“Then what is it?”

Samos shook his head. “I wish I knew.”

They stood at the rail for a long time. Then, with Jan leading the way, they went to explore the ship. It was tight and trim, clean and polished. Belowdecks they found three good-size cabins. One had a trunk filled with weapons. Jan, delighted, chose both a dagger and a sword for himself. He had never owned a blade before and had always wanted one.

As he began to strap the sword to his waist, he saw something that made his fingers tremble. On the hilt of the sword was a blue enamel circle. Inside the circle was a gull in flight. Above the gull was a single star.

“What is it?” asked Samos, when he heard Jan’s gasp.

“This sword bears the sign of my family. What does it mean?”

He could not bring himself to ask the question that was really tearing at his heart: “Does it mean my father is dead?”

When Jan had recovered from his shock, they continued their exploration. They found a small galley. It was bare of food, which worried Jan until that night, when they entered again, planning to search for any crumb, and found a hot meal waiting for them.

Where the wine and cheese, the cool fruit and savory meat had come from they had no idea, and its strange arrival was almost as worrisome as the absence of food had been earlier. But they ate it anyway, and found it good indeed.

Later they went on deck, and Jan described the sky to Samos, who nodded and smiled as the boy talked in wonder of a darkness deeper than he had ever seen, and stars that twinkled more brightly than he had imagined possible.

Despite the fact that he had no idea where they were going, when (or even if) they would arrive, Jan slept peacefully that night, rocked by the gentle waves.

It did not take long for them to fall into a comfortable routine. Jan would rise early and meet Samos in the galley, where a breakfast of fruit and bread would be waiting. After eating, they would go on deck to check the wind and weather. They would discuss the sun and which way they were heading. Then Jan would climb the rigging, looking for any sign of land, or even of another ship. Often he saw distant islands, which he would describe to Samos, who seemed to recognize them all.

“South,” the old man would mutter. “We’re heading south.”

The ship never went within shouting distance of any of the islands.

In the afternoon, at Samos’s insistence, they would polish the ship’s brass fittings, though to Jan’s eye they seemed to gleam all on their own.

They searched for a ship’s log but found none.

“Ah, well,” said Samos. “It doesn’t really matter, since neither of us can read. Even so, I would feel better if there were one.”

When the wind was high, the ship raced across the water as if it were flying. When the air was still, the ship continued to move anyway. Once Samos told Jan to drop a piece of wood overboard, to check the current. The boy was troubled to see that even with no wind the ship was moving against the current, not with it.

On the fifth day, Jan was standing on the starboard side of the ship, gazing into the water, when he saw a woman swimming alongside. Her long hair, gold streaked with green, trailed around her. When Jan called out to her she disappeared beneath the waves. It was only when her shining tail broke the surface that he realized her lower half was that of a fish.

The woman returned every day, usually in the late afternoon. Sometimes she would swim alongside the ship for hours, unless Jan tried to speak to her. Then she would immediately disappear beneath the water again.

On the eighth night, a gale swept down from the north, buffeting the ship with fierce gusts of cold wind. The waves grew higher and higher, until they were crashing over the bow. The ship was tossed across the water like a ball in the hands of the gods. Jan and Samos took refuge in the cabins below and finally tied themselves to their bunks to keep from being flung against the walls.

When morning came, they staggered up to the deck of the ship. Jan clutched Samos’s arm in terror. “Look!” he whispered. And even when he remembered that the old man was blind and could not see what was ahead of them, he was too frightened to feel foolish.

Flying fish were leaping all around them. On the starboard side of the ship, a few hundred yards away, swam a pod of whales. They, too, were leaping out of the water, flinging themselves into the storm with abandon, creating enormous surges when they landed.

These things were strange, but not terrifying. What terrified Jan was the great waterspout that rose from the sea directly ahead, a whirling column that stretched so high he could not see its top.

“Drop the sail,” ordered Samos, when Jan told him what he saw.

The ship was moving faster now, the sea peeling away from the prow in curls of foam. Jan raced to the mast and fumbled with the knots. They refused to budge. He drew his sword and sliced the rope.

It made no difference. The sail stayed proud and full.

They drew closer to the spout, which loomed above them like some living tower, dark and swirling. Jan grabbed a coil of rope. Taking Samos by the arm, he hurried him to the mast. Then he wrapped the rope around both of them and bound them to the wood.

The roar of the water was deafening, the headlong rush of the ship terrifying. The wind clutched at them, as if trying to pluck them from the deck.

Then they were part of the waterspout. The ship, snatched from the surface of the sea, swirled up and up, riding the dark column as helplessly as a leaf on the wind. Around and around they spun. Higher and higher they rose, sometimes on the surface of the spout, sometimes pulled into it. Water drenched them. At times they couldn’t breathe.

And still up they went. The sea was appallingly far below now, so distant that the leaping whales looked like minnows. Looking straight ahead, Jan saw clouds swirling by. Twisting his neck, he saw the dark spout, and the strange sea creatures trapped within it. A moment later they were spun back inside the whirling wall of water themselves, and he could see nothing.

Then, like a cork bobbing to the surface, the ship burst out of the water spout. Jan shook his head, causing water to spatter from his long hair. He blinked to clear his vision, then cried out in astonishment.

“What is it?” gasped Samos. “Where are we?”

“I don’t know,” said Jan. “It looks as if we are on the sea again. But how can that be, when the spout carried us so high away from it? Is this a sea in the sky?”

“Perhaps the spout has taken us to another world,” said Samos gravely.

Jan thought of the stories his mother used to tell, stories of worlds beyond worlds, and shuddered. He began to fumble with the rope that held them to the mast. At first the sea-soaked knots were hard to undo, but finally he managed to loosen them.

When he looked up again, he cried out in surprise. “What is it?” asked Samos.

“An island. We’re sailing straight toward it. Brace yourself. We may run aground.”

And, indeed, moments later they ran right up onto the sand—crossing the line where the sea met the shore and continuing on for twice the length of the ship. Jan was still marveling at this when he realized something else.

“Come on!” he cried. Still holding Samos by the arm, he helped him climb over the edge. They dropped to the sand, which was warm and silky beneath their feet.

“What is happening?” asked Samos breathlessly.

“The ship is getting smaller,” said Jan. His eyes widened. “And smaller still! Now it is no longer than you are tall. And still it shrinks. And now—”

He stopped, too surprised by what had happened to speak for a moment.

“What?” asked Samos. “What is it?”

“The ship has become a coin,” said Jan. He plucked the shining disk from the sand. On one side the coin was engraved with a perfect replica of the ship. On the other the golden surface showed a gull in flight with a single star above it.

“What does it mean?” asked Jan.

“I’d say that it means we’re supposed to take it with us,” said Samos.

“Take it where?”

The old man shrugged. “Wherever we’re going next.”

Jan looked around. The beach ended at a jungle. It would have been too thick to walk through, save that directly ahead of them was a clear path. Taking Samos by the arm, Jan led him forward.

The jungle was so green and dark that Jan felt almost as if they were walking underwater. It was quiet, too—unnaturally quiet. No breeze stirred the leaves, which hung limp and still. No howl nor roar, no cry of bird, buzz of insect, hiss of snake, nor chatter of monkey disturbed the awful silence, which was so heavy it made Jan afraid to speak. The only sound was that of their own passing, and even that seemed oddly muted.

Jan stopped. A huge web blocked their path, its strands as thick as his thumbs. He turned aside, but the jungle was too dense for them to go around. Nervously, looking above and to the side for any sign of the creature that had woven it, Jan sliced at the sticky silk until he had made an opening through which they could pass.

And still all was silent. They walked on, Samos keeping one hand on Jan’s shoulder.

Another web, and yet another. And then, a hundred paces past the last web, the jungle opened.

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