Linus sighed. “You want to handle this, or should I?”
“Do go right ahead,” Arthur said. “You have such a delightfully succinct way of putting things.”
Linus clapped his hands loudly to get everyone’s attention. “Children. Children! New house rule. No eating anything that has been given a name.”
Phee blinked prettily up at them. “I forgot to tell you. I can speak to cauliflower, and I’ve named them all Peggy. Oh no, I guess that means I can’t eat cauliflower anymore.”
“Nice try,” Linus said. “And don’t think we don’t see it when you ask Lucy to send your cauliflower to some alternate dimension. Last time, he conjured a black hole.”
“Yeah, that sucked,” Sal said, and then high-fived Talia without looking at her.
It was about this time that Chauncey yarked over the side of the boat, Frank splashing back into the water. They all waved as Frank flashed them his tail fin before disappearing into the sea.
David tilted his head back to look at Arthur. “You weren’t kidding when you said we could be monsters if we wanted to.”
“What?” Lucy asked with a frown. “What do you mean we can be monsters? Arthur said that I can’t…” He trailed off, glancing between David and Arthur with narrowed eyes. “Oh. So that’s how it’s gonna be.” He turned away from them, kicking at the cooler and missing before sitting in Chauncey’s box and pulling the sleeping bag up and over his head. All Arthur could see in the shadows were Lucy’s red-ringed eyes glaring at him.
“What was that about?” Linus asked.
“That’s on me,” Arthur said quietly. “I don’t think I’ve gone about this as well as I could have.”
“You’re learning,” Linus said, patting his arm. “Even you can’t be expected to know everything.”
He was right, of course, but that didn’t assuage Arthur’s guilt. How could he tell one child he could be a thing, but tell another that he couldn’t do the same? Granted, David’s idea of being a monster wasn’t the same as Lucy’s, but was it fair to hold one person to a standard and another to something else entirely?
“Guys!” Sal called. “I think we have a problem.” When they looked at him, he pointed up at the closed sail. It wasn’t moving, hanging limply.
Theodore flew to the pole and gripped it, talons digging into the wood. He plucked at the sail, only to have it flutter back into place. He chirped a question.
“No wind,” Talia said. She went to the side of the boat, looking over. “How are we going to get back to the island?” She slid down the side, slumping, pulling her knees up to her chest. “Are we gonna be boat people now? I can’t grow anything here!”
Linus said, “We could always—” He stopped when Arthur touched his wrist, shaking his head. “What?”
“Children,” Arthur said. “You have a new assignment. Without our help, I want you to come up with a way to get back to the island.” He glanced at Lucy, whose red eyes narrowed. “The person who comes up with the best idea will get a reward.”
A little manipulative? Sure. But even then, it didn’t work. Lucy stayed in the box, eyes burning.
“We could paddle,” Phee said. “Might take forever, but it would work.”
Theodore spread his wings, offering to ferry each person back to the island by carrying them, but then decided that would make him like Merle, and he settled back down, cleaning his scales with a forked tongue.
As the other children gave their ideas (“I have wings,” Phee pointed out, “so I could just leave you all here”), Linus bumped Arthur’s shoulder and nodded toward David, who held his captain’s hat in front of him, fidgeting nervously.
“David,” Arthur called over the noise. “Did you have an idea?”
David cringed, dropping the hat, when everyone turned to look at him. He bent over, picked it up, and said, “Um. I could … turn the water into blocks of ice and we could all walk back?”
“That’s a good idea,” Linus said. “What do you all think?”
Sal and Phee looked at each other and nodded, and then Sal said, “Kids-only meeting. No adults allowed.”
“And where are we supposed to go?” Linus asked. “We’re in the middle of the ocean.”
“Cover your ears and say la la la really loud,” Talia suggested. “It’s what I do when you tell me to do anything.”
“We know,” Arthur assured her. “Seeing as how you do it right in front of us. Proceed with your meeting. Linus and I will la la la with the best of them.”
Sal glanced at the angry boy in the box. “Lucy, that means you too. Come on, man. We need you.”
Grumbling under his breath, Lucy emerged from the box, stomping over to the others. He stopped next to Phee, arms still folded across his chest.
As the children held their congress, heads close together (with Lucy becoming more involved as it went on), Linus and Arthur covered their ears and shouted, “LA LA LA.”
It didn’t take long. From what Arthur could tell, everyone had input, including David. Sal made sure of it, giving him a chance to speak before letting the others have their say. Lucy seemed to have forgotten his momentary need to be upset in a box, but Arthur knew it was only a matter of time before Lucy brought it up again, and rightly so. He needed to think hard about what he’d say to Lucy when the time came.
The children reached an agreement, Sal making them all put their hands in the middle. David was last, his white paw on top. That is, until Lucy pulled his hand out from near the bottom and slapped his on top of David’s. They stared at each other, Lucy looking smug.
Arthur was about to warn Lucy to play fair, but then David did something unexpected. He lifted his other hand, extended a single claw, and then pressed it gently against Lucy’s nose, dimpling his skin. “Boop.”
Lucy gaped at him as Linus and Arthur did their best to smother their laughter.
“On three,” Sal said. “One. Two. Three!”
“We’re not gonna die!” the children all shouted, raising their hands into the sky.
“We figured it out,” Sal said as the other children nodded around him. “A way to get us all back that won’t be boring.”
“I feel like that shouldn’t have been part of whatever you considered,” Linus said.