THE WEIGHT OF WORDS
No matter which planet you live on, you're going to have to do some work if you want a pet of your very own. On Epsidor Erandi, it's a long process that involves allergy tests, training courses, home-safety measures, and a review of the child's crammed-full-of-activities schedule to see if there's room in it for pet care. If a child manages to make it through all that, then the desired pet is declawed and defanged, and purchased, along with a leash that matches the one the child has been wearing since he or she could walk.
Parents can be slightly overprotective on Epsidor Erandi.
I'm not entirely sure how kids on Zanflid get their pets, but I think it involves a trek through the jungle with a large bug and a can of net spray. The bug chews a path through the poisonous kufi plants, revealing the small bamu bears that dwell beneath them. One shot of net spray and—swoosh!—you've captured your first pet. If its mother doesn't eat you first.
On Yipsmix, much like on Earth, the first step in getting a pet is proving to your parent that you can take care of it. Jaq tried to show how responsible he'd be by looking after his grandfather so his mom could rest after a hard day's work.
"If I can take care of Grandpa," he told her, "a freasel should be a piece a cake." That was true. Not only was Grandpa lazy, but when he was upset, he also had a habit of angrily pointing at things and making everyone guess his complaint. This was annoying for all involved, even Grandpa, but he did it just so he could say, "You'll never hear me complain," and nobody could call him a liar.
To ease his mother's burden, Jaq jumped in whenever Grandpa got pointy: "The soup's too hot? The soup's too cold? The soup tastes like wonderful tastes? Soup shouldn't be that gray color?"
Grandpa frowned and pointed at his soup again.
"The bowl's too small? You want the purple bowl? Hmm. You're looking at me through the hole in your spoon. You want to play peekaboo? No? What is it? Now your spoon is leaking. Oh! You need a new spoon!" Jaq jumped up and got another spoon for Grandpa, then looked at his mom. But she simply said no.
Jaq knew that his classmate Wixlix had just gotten his own freasel, so Jaq asked him to come over after school. Kids didn't really like coming all the way out to the edge of Cruxlump, so Jaq had to promise to do Wixlix's homework for a week. When his mother was within hearing range, Jaq prompted Wixlix to talk about how great it was to have a freasel.
After Wixlix left, Jaq said, "See, Mom? All the other kids have them."
But his mom said no.
No is such a hard word to swallow.
Jaq kept trying. He made a little freasel shed out of wood he found by the river. He tucked the little home in a corner of the garden.
"A freasel could help me in the fields," he said. "I'll get more work done."
"No."
"Look at my ankles!" he shouted in desperation. His ankles were covered in red dots, the bites of the wippers. "And they make fun of my hair."
"The boy needs a freasel," Grandpa said. "Give them wippers a taste of their own medicine."
"Just ignore them," Mom said. "I'm sorry, Jaq, but we can't afford a pet."
Jaq saved his farmers' market money and tried to earn a bit more by helping out at other stalls. He gave up his after-school sweet drink—which he needed more than ever, now that he was doing three times the usual amount of homework. (His neighbor Tormy Vilcot had heard about his deal with Wixlix and made Jaq do his homework, too, or he'd tell.)
"I'll pay for its food," he promised.
"No," said Mom.
"Arrr!" Jaq threw his hands in the air. Of course his mother said no. She always said no. Whether he asked if he could go with other kids on a camping trip ("No, it's harvesting time.") or for new spiked shoes so he could play vargyball ("No, you already have a pair of shoes.") or for a little pet, it didn't matter. His mom would always say no.
Grandpa gave him a pat on the back. "When I was a kid, I had three freasels. Called them Cap, Milfrix, and Tammy. I had a hoverbike, too. Didn't realize how good I had it. Now it's all gone. Thanks to that farm-stealing Ripley Vilcot."
"Not helpful, Grandpa," Jaq said.
That night, Jaq sat in bed, thinking, I just gotta have a freasel. I just … gotta … have … a … FREASEL!
The next day, Jaq walked home from school with his head hung low, pulled down by the powerful gravity of all those nos. No is such a heavy word.
Tormy Vilcot rode past Jaq on his hoverbike. He turned in circles just to stir up the dust, and laughed. Needless to say, Jaq did not like Tormy Vilcot.
"When are you losers going to sell us that pathetic farm of yours so I can finally have the swimming pool my grandfather promised me?" Tormy shouted as he spun around Jaq.
Jaq didn't answer. He had no answer. His family had nowhere else to go.
"You know, I kind of like not having to do homework," Tormy said. "Maybe you should keep doing mine from now on."
Jaq ignored him, which just made Tormy laugh harder.
"How's the farming going? I bet it's hard to harvest when your ankles are being attacked, huh?" And then he laughed again and sped off for home.
Of course, Jaq thought. Tormy—no, probably Tormy's grandfather—had planted the wippers in their field. The Vilcots had been trying to buy the Rollop farm for years, but Grandpa refused to leave. If there was one thing Jaq hated more than those horrible Vilcots, it was … well, nothing, because he really hated those horrible Vilcots.
As he neared home, Jaq passed the Vilcots' massive farm, with its mechanical harvesters and its herd of mantelopes, which gave the tastiest milk on all of Yipsmix. Grandpa's voice played in his head: When that was my farm, we didn't just have mantelopes. We had robuses, caponutters, and gows, too.
"Not helpful, Grandpa," Jaq said to the voice in his head.
Jaq, already beaten down by all those nos, felt his head sag even lower at the thought that the Vilcots would tear down his home just so Tormy could have a swimming pool. At home, he crouched over his three sets of homework, taking breaks only to rub out painful hand cramps.
He slumped through his work in the field, getting his ankles nipped by those pesky wippers. But drooping over like that just meant the wippers got a better look at his head.
"Honestly—that hair," one of the wippers said. "What do you cut it with?"
"Safety scissors, I bet," said another.
The rest laughed.
"I bet he cuts it in the dark," said another. "With nail clippers."
They howled with laughter.
"I bet he uses a stapler," another one said.
This was followed by an awkward silence.
"That doesn't even make sense, Bonip," the first one said. "You can't cut anything with a stapler."
"I know, I know," the one called Bonip said. "Um, a hole puncher?"
"I'm going to pretend you didn't say that," the first one said. "Now I've lost my flow." He rolled his shoulders, did some shadowboxing, then said, "Hey, kid, I saw another guy wearing that same shirt. It's amazing how different it looks on someone with muscles."
The wippers roared with laughter again.
By the end of the day, Jaq's head felt so heavy, he just plopped it on the table and slurped up his plain noodles while his mom tried to spice them up with a poem by Niviax Wormager. She wrote the most delicious poems, using words like luminous and bungalow and elixir.
Grandpa patted him on the back. "When I was a kid, I had a butler who fed me when I was worn out from riding bungee-cycles all day," he said.
"Not helpful, Grandpa," Jaq muttered. "You know, I think the Vilcots planted the wippers here. Tormy as much as said so on the way home from school. He wants us to sell so he can have a swimming pool."
"Never!" Grandpa shouted, slamming his fist on the table. "That farm-stealing Ripley Vilcot is NOT getting this land. I'd pluck my eyeballs out of my head before I'd let that happen. We're not leaving!"
That was easy for Grandpa to say. He didn't have to face the wippers twice a day.
