Something edged out from under his bed.
Ethan didn’t holler this time, but he dropped the illustration board and scuttled back on his bum. The inky blotch seeped onto the blank half of the board and stopped.
If anything, it was bigger than it had been this morning, but it definitely wasn’t a bug. There were no squiggly legs or antennae. And it was completely flat. He would’ve said it was ink, except that it left no stain behind it. And ink didn’t move on its own.
Ethan patted behind him for his hockey stick. Whatever this thing was, he was going to hammer it to smithereens. He kept his eyes on it—and had the strangest feeling it was keeping its eyes on him, too. Which was impossible, since it had no eyes. Still, it was giving an excellent impression of being watchful, and somehow expectant.
“What are you?” Ethan murmured to himself.
The splotch started to move, and Ethan’s hand found the hockey stick and gripped tight. Staying on the board, the ink splotch swirled itself into a perfect question mark.
Ethan stared. “What’s that mean? Are you asking me a question, or answering one?”
The question mark pulsed faintly on the board.
“You don’t know what you are?” Ethan said. “Is that what you mean?”
Ethan gasped as the ink swirled with startling speed into a big smiley face.
“Okay,” said Ethan. “You’re smiling at me now. Does that mean yes? You don’t know what you are?”
The ink morphed itself into a thumbs-up sign.
Ethan couldn’t help grinning. Whatever this thing was, it seemed quite cheerful. It didn’t seem like it wanted to eat him or anything. His grip on the hockey stick loosened but didn’t release.
“If you don’t know what you are, do you know where you’re from?”
He jerked back with a start as the ink exploded all across the blank half of the illustration board. Then, with amazing speed, all the splatter marks formed themselves into little sketches: plants and people and buildings.
“Hey,” Ethan said, frowning, “that looks like Dad’s stuff.”
One of the drawings turned into a bouncing thumbs-up sign.
“Okay, so Dad made some drawings, and . . .”
Suddenly the drawings all flowed together into a big splotch. The splotch roiled and gave a mighty jerk, as if trying to pull itself right off the paper.
Ethan shook his head, wondering what on earth it was doing. After a second pull, the inky blotch sprang off the illustration board like a Slinky toy and landed on the floor, a little closer to Ethan.
He shuffled back, watching intently. The ink quivered for a second and then formed itself into a cat with sharp claws.
“Hey, is that Rickman?” Ethan asked.
The cat picture dissolved back into a blob and scurried frantically across the floor.
Ethan stood up, gripping the hockey stick, worried this thing had gone crazy. What if it jumped onto him next? But it was darting fearfully this way and that, like it was trying to escape something.
“I don’t understand,” said Ethan.
The ink stopped and crept stealthily back toward the illustration board. It slid onto it, and then very intentionally pushed a black tendril over one of the beautiful drawings, erasing it completely.
“Hey!” said Ethan. “Be careful!”
The ink pulled back and with a delicate paintbrush-shaped tendril redrew the work it had erased, exactly.
Ethan exhaled. His own thoughts felt like tiny balls of black ink ricocheting around his head.
The ink splotch moved to the blank half of the illustration board and waited expectantly.
“You’re telling me a story,” Ethan said.
He got a thumbs-up for that.
“So. The pictures in my dad’s sketchbook all kind of ran together and . . . you’re the ink?”
He got a happy face.
“And then you jumped off the sketchbook?”
That would explain the blank pages Dad had complained about. No one had taken the pages—the ink had literally run away!
“But it was hard work,” Ethan continued as the ink quivered. “To get off. And then you got chased—was that Rickman?”
The ink formed itself into a question mark again.
“Rickman. A cat! Our cat!”
He got a happy face, which quickly turned into a sad face. Ethan couldn’t help smiling: the idea of Rickman as a terrifying animal was pretty funny. Rickman could hardly hop up onto the sofa.
Ethan moved a little closer to the illustration board. “So you ran away from Rickman and ended up in my room?”
The smiley face bobbed up and down.
“And you got onto my drawings and . . .” He remembered his math textbook. “You erase whatever you touch! That was you! I got in trouble!”
The smiley face drooped.
“It’s okay,” said Ethan. “And you did all this?” He pointed at the drawings for his graphic novel.
The sad face lifted into a happy one and nodded.
“You drew all this today? It’s amazing!”
Ethan sat back with a sigh, trying to make sense of it all. The ink of his father’s sketches had somehow come to life. And this ink had the power to erase—and draw! And what pictures it could do! He gazed at the finished art again.
“But how did you know the story?”
He hadn’t noticed the crumpled page of Soren’s script until now, probably because it was completely blank, except for a few stray letters at the edges.
“You read his story?” Ethan breathed.
What other explanation could there be? It was one thing to draw a gorilla, but these pictures were clearly based on his stick figures and the scenes in the story.
“You can read?”
As Ethan watched in amazement, a tiny point of ink stretched out and shakily wrote:
A BIT
For a moment Ethan couldn’t say anything. Then he asked, “How?”
The first words slurped back into the ink and were replaced by:
BOOKS
“This is incredible,” Ethan said. This creature had taught itself to read, and write, all in the space of a day! He shuffled closer to the paper. He was still a little nervous being near the ink—it could move so quickly—but he was pretty sure it wasn’t dangerous. And it was certainly smart.
“Do you have a name?”
NO
Ethan thought for a moment. Everything needed a name. What did you call a thing made of ink? An ink thing? Inkthing. Inkling!
“Inkling!” he said. “Do you like that name?”
The ink was still for a moment, as if considering. A tiny tip reached out and wrote:
YES
And then Inkling wrote his name on the board, not just once, but several times in different types of letters, plain letters and fancy letters, faster and faster. When Inkling was done writing his name, the ink flowed back together and formed a happy face.
Ethan smiled, too. “So, you can see me?”
YES
He wondered how it was possible, since Inkling didn’t seem to have any eyes. Then again, Inkling didn’t seem to have any ears either, and he could hear.
Inkling started to draw. In awe Ethan watched as the lines appeared on the paper, sometimes fine, sometimes thick. Head, face, eyes, nose, mouth, hair, shading, texture. Inkling never once erased a line or made a smear. And in under a minute, Inkling had drawn an amazing picture of him. Except . . .
Ethan tilted his head. In the picture, he was younger by several years. With a start, he recognized himself from the laser-printed photograph of him and Mom. He stood and looked at his bulletin board. The picture was just a white rectangle.
“Hey!” he said, turning back to Inkling. “What did you do?”
It was hard to talk because of the lump in his throat.
Inkling formed himself into a question mark.
“The photograph of me and my mom!” he said, fighting to keep his voice low, even though he was sud
denly angry. “You erased it!”
ERASD?
“Yeah, you . . . you moved across it, and now it’s gone!”
I NEED INK
“Well, put her back! You need to bring her back!”
Inkling slid off the paper and across the floor. He flowed up to the top of the chest of drawers and onto the bulletin board. At the edge of the blank photograph, Inkling paused and then began to draw. Even though Inkling himself was all blackness, he seemed to contain every color. Line by line, Ethan’s mother reappeared, like some miracle. Ethan’s eyes prickled. Her image was just as vivid as before—if anything, more vivid, because the original photo had faded in the sunlight, but this one looked like it had been taken yesterday.
“Thanks,” said Ethan, clearing his throat. “There’s some things you shouldn’t erase, okay?”
Silently, on the wooden surface of his chest of drawers, Inkling wrote:
WHR IS MOM?
Ethan hadn’t needed to answer this question in a while, and he was startled by how much it hurt, just to think the words.
“She died.”
DIED?
“Gone. Forever.”
Inkling was still, as if he couldn’t think of anything to say. Ethan went and sat down on the edge of his bed, staring at the artwork. Inkling slid onto the illustration board and pointed at the drawings.
GOOD?
“Yeah. I couldn’t draw like this in a hundred years.”
Inkling immediately started drawing the next panel. Ethan watched, hypnotized. It was a lot like his father’s style, but not quite. He chewed at the inside of his mouth.
“Stop,” he said.
Inkling stopped.
NO GOOD?
“No, it’s fantastic. It’s just . . .”
How could he do any of the art himself now? Whatever he did next would be so bad it would be obvious someone else had done the first part. He’d have to scrap the whole thing and start over.
But how could he get rid of Inkling’s art? It was so good.
And he owed it to his group to give them decent art, didn’t he? They’d asked him, and he’d said yes, and they were counting on him. Soren had already worked hard on the story, and Pino would be a perfectionist with the color, and Brady—well, Brady might mess up the lettering. But still, it wasn’t fair if they all got a bad grade because of his terrible drawings.
Why not let Inkling finish the art? It wasn’t like Ethan would be doing nothing. He’d still sketch in the panels with his stick figures, and then all Inkling would have to do was turn them into drawings.
“Maybe just a little more for now,” Ethan told Inkling. Everyone was going to be amazed tomorrow when he brought this in. He couldn’t wait to see Vika’s face—and Heather Lee’s especially. She’d be really impressed. But if he had too much finished, they might get suspicious. “And make it just a little bit messy, please.”
MESY?
“Yeah, like this.” He licked his finger and smeared the art.
Enthusiastically, Inkling swiped a gorilla picture and turned it into a blob.
“Maybe not so much,” Ethan said.
Inkling quickly repaired his work but left it sloppy.
“Exactly,” Ethan said. “Here, I’ll rough in the next few panels.”
From his backpack, he pulled out the crumpled second page of Soren’s story. With stick figures, Ethan filled two more panels, making sure to mark in space for the speech bubbles.
“It’s this little bit here,” he told Inkling, pointing to Soren’s text.
Inkling flowed over the sentences, erasing them as he absorbed the ink, and then returned to the illustration board.
Spellbound, Ethan watched. Sometimes Inkling started with a fine point; other times it was more like a brushstroke. His marks could be incredibly precise, or blurry, like when Gorilla was running from the evil Trog.
Ethan paid particular attention to how he drew the gorilla, building him line by line. He remembered how he’d watch his father draw when he was younger—and it had always thrilled him, to see things come to life. Dad could draw anything: Ethan only had to yell it out, and it would appear on paper.
When Inkling finished the two panels, he stopped.
“Wow,” said Ethan. “Thanks!”
He looked at Inkling and was amazed all over again. What kind of creature was he? How did he even exist?
“Um,” said Ethan. “Are you hungry or anything?”
HUNGY?
Ethan felt slightly foolish but still thought it was only polite to ask.
“Food, or water—or something to put inside you?”
INK!
Ethan laughed. “Yeah, okay . . . stay here.”
STAY?
“Don’t move anywhere.”
OKAY
He ran to the back room and grabbed a stack of old newspapers from the recycling bin. When he was returning to his room, his father was just leaving his studio.
“What’re those for?” he asked.
“School project,” Ethan said.
His dad nodded. “I’m off to pick up Sarah.”
He looked at his dad’s face, tried to read it. Another lousy day at work.
“Okay,” said Ethan. “See you soon.”
He closed the door to his room behind him and found Inkling waiting obediently in exactly the same position. He put the newspaper down beside Inkling.
“There you go,” he said.
Inkling eagerly slithered onto the pile. He opened a big triangular mouth, like the Pac-Man character, and skidded across the front page, sucking the ink into him. Entire paragraphs disappeared, and then entire pages. Ethan kept flipping pages, and if he didn’t turn quick enough, Inkling just slid right underneath and slurped up the ink from the opposite side.
He demolished the entire front section before he started to flag. He looked bigger; in fact, he looked a bit bloated. There was a bulge in his middle, and he was dragging it around like Santa Claus’s sack.
Inkling slumped, squishing out across a half-eaten page, and went so quiet Ethan could only assume he was sleeping. He looked for signs of breathing or movement but couldn’t see any. He didn’t want to disturb Inkling, who obviously needed rest. Gently he pushed the newspapers under his bed.
And then he heard the front door open, and his father was back from picking up Sarah, and she was hollering for him, like she always did the moment she got home.
Sarah plonked her fox toy in front of Ethan and looked at him expectantly.
“And what’s wrong with Foxy?” Ethan said, a red plastic stethoscope dangling from his neck. They were sitting on the green sofa in the living room. So far he’d done checkups on four dogs, an elephant, a skunk, and something that didn’t look like any creature on earth.
Sarah launched into an incredibly complicated story about all the dangerous things Foxy had done. Ethan zoned out—he’d heard most of these stories many times, and anyway, he was finding it hard to concentrate, knowing that in his bedroom, right now, was some kind of impossible creature made of intelligent ink. He felt like he’d swallowed an entire bottle of soda pop and was close to bursting.
At that moment, Rickman hauled himself onto the sofa and stepped gingerly onto Sarah’s lap, purring hopefully. Rickman adored Sarah and was always rubbing against her, hoping for a pat or a warm place to curl up. Sarah, however, did not return Rickman’s affection.
“Get off, Icklan!” she said, pushing him away with her pudgy hands.
“Be gentle, Sarah,” Ethan told her. “He just likes you.”
“She is too busy!” Sarah said, wrinkling her nose. “She is talking about Foxy.”
“I’m talking about Foxy,” Ethan corrected her. He felt sorry for Rickman and gave him a pat between his ears, but the cat just flicked his tail and walked off.
Ethan turned his attention back to Sarah, waiting impatiently to find out what was wrong with Foxy so he could treat him. He was hoping he’d get to set a broken bone, or remove a thorn, o
r do minor surgery, but in the end, it was the usual: a scraped knee.
Ethan cleaned Foxy’s imaginary wound, put on an imaginary bandage, and then checked his heartbeat—something Sarah demanded every time, regardless of the injury.
“Strong and steady,” Ethan said, standing. “Okay, I think we’ve done everyone.”
“Just one more,” said Sarah.
“I said eight and we did nine!”
“You can’t forget Caspar,” she said earnestly, as if only a total monster could do such a thing.
So he sat down and examined Caspar, wondering, When’s the last time Dad did this? Dad was in the kitchen, getting dinner ready, and checking his phone while he stirred a pot.
“Frisbee!” Sarah said.
“No, Sarah, I think it’s almost dinnertime anyway.”
“Oh, honey, you can do it,” she said, as if Ethan had low self-esteem. “Just ten throws. Deal?” She gravely extended her small hand.
Ethan exhaled and shook. “Okay.”
At least he got to be outside. Frisbee with Sarah usually involved her whipping it into the cedar shrubs along the back fence. It was more like fetch, really. Sarah threw. Ethan scrounged around in the bushes, twigs scratching at his face. The Frisbee was green and said “Dinosaur Provincial Park.” Every time he found the Frisbee, he thought, Mom was still alive then.
They’d been camping near the river, and his best memory was of the four of them sitting outside the tent, playing cards. Mom and Sarah were on the same team. He and Sarah had some kind of fizzy cranberry drink, and his parents each had a glass of wine. It was dusk, and the breeze made the leaves of the big trees rustle, and lights were twinkling from the other campsites, and all four of them were together and happy.
“Okay,” Ethan said to Sarah, “three more throws.”
“Is it Sarah’s birthday yet?” she asked.
“Is it my birthday. No, three more sleeps!”
“She’s having a party!”
“Yep,” said Ethan. He wondered if Dad had remembered to invite everyone. “Last throw!”
Sarah threw it right to him.