psalm_onethirtyone | "Say, 'Son Take a Good Look Around'..."

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"Say, 'Son Take a Good Look Around'..."

Here! Two TMI fics I've owed for a bit! In honour of which I use my Harbert icon. ^__________^

Firstly, trading

gileonnen for the Jack/Norrington she wrote me, is a v. silly Gideon/Cyrus ficlet.

Periwinkle

"Well, well, well, Mr. Gideon Spilett, you're a fool," Gideon said to himself, chuckling as he dug around in the middle of the river, looking among the stones and sand for periwinkles. His trousers were rolled up around his knees, but they were still getting damp. "I'm afraid no one but a fool would offer his services to our Mr. Smith for the afternoon. I thought perhaps I'd get to sit in Granite House counting clouds or mapping out the mountain. Ah, well."

His red hair was damp and sticking out at angles on his head; the December heat was almost overwhelming, and instead of his trustworthy tam he was wearing Pencroff's straw hat to shield his face from the sun. He stifled a yawn and scraped a handful of periwinkles off a rock and into the very fine fishnet Neb had sewn, the one that let in plenty of water and didn't harm the creatures in it, but hadn't holes large enough for escapes to be made.

Between Mr. Smith and Pencroff, he'd been out and about perhaps just a bit more than he liked in this weather, but he couldn't blame them. Pencroff was frantic to get everything in order for his late plantings to be, well, planted properly (Gideon was a reporter first and foremost--he learned little bits of everything but that didn't make him an expert on any subject except talking to people and sketching, the two things that were of most importance to him), and Mr. Smith was getting bored with Harbert away. He needed something to keep him busy, and if sending Gideon on periwinkle hunts so he could study them in the environment he was setting up for them back at Granite House would make him happy, so be it.

Privately Gideon had more affection than respect for Mr. Smith, but that wasn't something he let Mr. Smith know.

Young Harbert was off on a trip across the island with Neb, looking for plants that the boy would identify and Neb would bring home to cook. They'd be gone for a week, so it was just himself and Mr. Smith and Pencroff, who was fussing about everything.

That Pencroff. He was a nice enough fellow, but fuss, fuss, fuss. Probably came from being a sailor--they were superstitious and needed everything to be just so. Mostly Gideon got along with him--just trade for trade, don't step on his fields for heaven's sake, don't steal his hat, don't say anything against his projects, and if you value your life don't get into a story-telling contest with him. Gideon had accidentally done that once, during the early days, but Pencroff had enough to stories to tell anyone else under the table. As for the hat he was wearing now, he had asked for it, quite politely, and Pencroff had grudgingly given it up.

Poor fellow. It was just a hat, a silly straw boater with a blue ribbon that Pencroff liked to twirl around his fingers. Nothing special. Gideon's tam, on the other hand, was actually a valuable possession, a hat that had been with him for years, one that he would certainly never have let anyone handle.

He filled his net and waded back to shore, heading up to Granite House on the elevator and swinging jauntily through the door, although it made him sweat to do it.

"Mr. Smith!"

"Oh, my dear Gideon. Thank you. Here we are." Mr. Smith ushered him over to the coolest corner, where the enormous tank was set up. They had constructed it together, melting the sand down into clear glass and shaping it, fitting it together, and then preparing it--the water had to move somehow, the way the river did, and it was difficult to fix it just so, but they thought they had a proper system. The water was aerated with a little millwheel that Mr. Smith had fixed up to move perpetually, as long as there was always a fire going. Pencroff thought that bit was unnecessary, but Gideon understood that an experiment wouldn't work if things weren't just right. He'd done enough interviews with scientists to know that.

There were a few fish in the tank already, and Mr. Smith carefully began introducing the periwinkles into the water. Gideon couldn't help fetching his sketchpad and starting a drawing of him, with his hands (an engineer's hands, talented and clever and quick--they made perfect scientist's hands with just a little alteration of circumstances) full of tiny smelly black shells.

A half an hour or so later, Mr. Smith got up, dusted off his knees, and smiled at Gideon.

"There we are. Thank you very much."

"All in a day's, Mr. Smith. Got to do something to keep busy. Got to keep fit." Gideon grinned, the distinctive grin that when combined with his bushy red sideburns and big nose, and slight Scottish burr, always got him his interviews with reluctant subjects.

He went out to the elevator and sat there, still wearing Pencroff's hat, and began making more sketches of the plateau before him, as behind him he could hear Mr. Smith still grubbing around with the periwinkles. Had to hand it to the man, he had unique hobbies. Gideon was busy for a long while before Mr. Smith came up beside him, shading his eyes with his hands.

"I'm afraid it's quite hot."

"That it is."

Gideon wiped the sweat off his forehead and grinned again. He could feel Mr. Smith's eyes on him, looking at his sketchpad, and wondered what he was thinking. One of these days, he, Gideon Spilett of the New York Herald, was going to have to tell Mr. Cyrus Smith, engineer, that he felt more affection for him than respect. Who knew? It might go over well.

"Anything else I can do for you?" he asked helpfully.

Mr. Smith beamed. It was dignified and old and Mr. Smith, but it was still a beam. "As a matter of fact," he said.

~~~

And secondly, as a welcome-home surprise gift for

snowyofthenight, Rina/Harbert, the ultimate crossover OTP. This bothered me vaguely, because I think Rina may be too shy, and Harbert not shy enough, but. :D It's long, so pretend that quantity > quality.

A Colour Slide

Harbert couldn't really say how he fell so much in love with the big old lumpy cameras, and tripods and photography. Maybe it was Gideon Spilett's influence, or maybe just the way photographic prints came out and kept something for ever, better than he could ever sketch it, better than he could remember it--this bird, that vine, the leaves just the way they ought to be. He coloured his prints by hand, with the dyes, screens, tissues, using F. E. Ives' method according to the latest scientific journals in Edinburgh, taking hours to get it the way his notes and the picture in his head said it should be.

Then, sometime, he realised that photographing people--well, you could photograph people, too. And maybe it was Mr. Smith's influence, or maybe just that he wanted to study things, everything, like a naturalist, but he knew he wanted to travel and take photographs and study and learn and observe. He wanted to be a botanist for people, writing down what their leaves looked like and how they were veined just so, and making plates of their colours.

The colouring was important. People weren't like photographs. They weren't just black and white and grey.

Maybe he thought that way because of Neb.

But all he knew was he announced his leave of absence to the American Philosopher's Society, went back to Iowa to kiss everybody good-bye, promised Pencroff he'd come back soon and write all the time, promised Mr. Spilett he'd take notes of world news, promised Neb he'd bring him back some funny spice with a funny name for cooking. Neb grinned his grin that made all his teeth show up bright white in his black face, and doffed his handkerchief.

"Take care of yourself, Master Harbert. Don't get eaten."

Harbert laughed good-naturedly, but he was well-aware of the fact. He'd had more narrow escapes than he liked on the Island.

Just before he left, Ayrton caught his hand and pressed money into it.

"Just in case, Master Harbert," he said gruffly, looking down. "Just in case. You never know."

"I'm going to come back," Harbert said, like a promise, and then he tucked the bills into his pocket and set off to catch his ship. He was taking a steamer to France, first of all, and then a few cross-country trains. He had sent out some letters and asked to stay with certain people colleagues recommended to him (Harbert was friendly with everyone, but he didn't make friends much, because he had all his fathers and his photography and he didn't need much else), but for the most part he didn't have any accommodations planned.

He loved travelling on ships. That was probably because of Pencroff.

He got to France on a day it rained, but it didn't stop him. For a few minutes he was busy scratching off a quick note to Pencroff, and then he grabbed his camera and his equipment and went out on the streets, asking the girls of the seaside town to stand for him, naturally please, as they shopped or walked or carried fish down to the inns. The men did likewise, many of them strong men with ropes twisted around their arms and backs, carrying things on their shoulders; working people, living people. Harbert took a room at one of the inns for the night, somewhere called Les Poissons d'Etoiles, and set his things up in the cellar to develop his photographs. It only took a small extra amount of money to persuade the proprietor; Harbert had the wonderful smile and the perfect good humour that made people glad to be around him.

The next day he travelled on by train, a train that stopped too many places to count; and he always photographed the people getting on and off, the people sitting waiting for the great carriages to begin moving again. The camera and tripod were slow, and heavy, and had to be very still in order that the photographs did not come out peculiarly or blurred, but he didn't mind. The people didn't mind much, either, usually. It was flattering to get your picture taken by a real photographer with an eager manner and friendly eyes.

Somewhere along the way the train stopped at one of the thousands of towns with names that began all to run together, and Harbert, who was tired of travelling on at this rate, got off. It didn't matter. Really he could get off anywhere, and he was perfectly happy.

For a while he did as he had at the seaside town in France, and then he called out to a girl carrying a basket of laundry.

"Miss! Excuse me, miss, but could you stand still for a moment?"

She turned to him with a startled face, and Harbert smiled back, reassuring.

"Just like that, miss. Don't move."

He ducked under the dark cloth, which settled comfortably about his shoulders (the little weights sometimes hit him in the back on windy days, but it was still that day), and when he stuck his head up again, the laundress was blushing pink and staring at him. Harbert stuck out his hand.

"I'm Harbert Brown."

"My name's Rina. What did you just do, please?"

"I took your photograph."

"What's that?" she asked shyly.

"Well, when I develop it, I can give it to you, and then you'll see. It's like a self-portrait, except it's exactly of you, and there's no painting. Well, a bit. I'm not saying it very well. If you let me take another, I can let you keep the first one."

"All right--"

So Harbert went back under the cloth and the girl--Rina--stood perfectly still, looking more like a startled fawn than anything else; certainly not looking natural. He grinned and shook his head. "Oh, well. It'll get you all right, I know. Thank you very much, miss. I'll get it done to-night, and I can give it to you to-morrow--you wouldn't happen to know where I could stay to-night?"

Rina smiled hesitantly. "Jellinek's. Jellinek's where we all stay. Then you wouldn't have to look for me. Me and Stock and Luther and Justin and Zara and Florian, we're there all the time, just talking. Florian talks, I mean. He's a good talker."

"That sounds just fine."

"Then--you can just follow me--? Is that all right?"

"Of course it is," he said, folding up his tripod and putting his camera back into the canvas bag and slinging them both carefully over his shoulder.

So that evening he was in the cellar again, making prints in the dark. Up above him there were voices and feet, moving about all the time, and one man's voice, indistinct, that rose above the others, except when a loud, angry voice got in a bit louder. All the same, the man didn't seem upset by the angry voice. No one did. More often than not they laughed good-naturedly or replied back as though it were a normal conversation. He could hear Rina, too, a couple of times, soft pretty voice. It was a funny mix.

In the morning he came down the stairs trying to look a bit taller than he was, and found Rina eating breakfast in the main room of the inn. A young man with hair almost as golden as hers was sitting by her, gesturing animatedly, while she giggled. Harbert came forward almost shyly, with the print in his hand.

"Morning, miss. I got it all finished."

She looked up immediately. "Oh! Oh, good morning--! Er--this is Justin, this is Justin, he's--"

Justin looked at Harbert, and Harbert looked back, carefully, gently, the way you'd look at a dog (or Ayrton) to let it know everything was all right. The boy reminded him a lot of Ayrton. You had to be careful around them both, because moving too quick or doing something unexpected would frighten them.

"Hullo," he said softly. "I'm Harbert Brown."

"Funny name."

He smiled. "It is, isn't it? But I guess everyone I know has a bit of a funny name. My father's name is Bonadventure."

Justin sounded it out. "That's a stupid name."

"You're as determined to get in a fight as Zara is, my boy," a balding fellow in the corner said suddenly. "Bonadventure is a romantic name. Bonadventure will sail the seven seas, or rescue maidens in towers. Bonadventure will wear a sweeping cloak and carry a dagger in his boot. Stock," he added, "will eat mush for breakfast and get old."

Rina giggled, a beautiful laugh that lit her face up (although Harbert realised that lots of things lit her up, and she always looked beautiful). "Oh, no, no, no. You're going to be a famous poet! I know you are."

"Alas." He turned to Harbert. "Hello, young man. I should not, perhaps, call you young man, since we're probably the same age, but you'd never know it to look at me, would you? Another alas, I feel, is needed."

Harbert shook his hand. "I'm pleased to meet you. May I photograph you, too? --Oh," and he turned around quickly to offer Rina the photograph of herself. "There, that's yours."

"Oh!" She held it up to the light, and Justin looked suspiciously over her shoulder. "It's--oh, it's me. It's exactly me, it's like looking in a mirror. Just look at it, Justin. Stock! Please look? It's wonderful. It's me, of all things."

"That's quite artistic. You say you can do one of me, also?"

"Yes. I've all the equipment."

"I don't suppose you could add a bit of hair on top, by any chance?"

"I'm afraid not."

"Ah, well, that's life," Stock said, sighing. Rina poked him fondly.

"You're very nice as you are, and you know it. We like you without hair on top. You look interesting."

"I look bald, dear golden divinity."

"Interesting," stubbornly.

Stock grinned at Harbert. "Isn't she a wonderful girl? Best girl in the world. By the way, we're Florian's band of ragamuffins. Have you met Florian yet?"

"I don't think so," Harbert offered.

"Right, then. Where's Florian?"

"Here."

They both turned. Florian was tallish and his brown hair was greying, and his face was covered with pockmarks. He reminded Harbert of Neb, a bit magic and a bit different, and also of Gideon Spilett, wise and good-humoured and authoritative. Actually Harbert didn't know who he was reminded of; Florian was all his own person, without being anybody else exactly. This time he didn't go shy, because he could see that a man like this wanted to be an equal who knew you respected him. So he held out his hand and said,--

"Hullo, I'm Harbert Brown."

"As I imagine everyone has told you, Florian," and he indicated himself with a small bow, but he shook Harbert's hand firmly. Harbert couldn't help liking him at once.

"Mr. Brown has a magic box," Stock said, breaking in helpfully. "He makes a portrait without doing any painting."

"Oh? May I see?"

Rina offered the photograph, and Florian paused over it for a long moment before handing it back.

"Interesting. I think you've found a sure way to enchant us, Mr. Brown."

Harbert smiled.

Then Rina started tugging his hand excitedly, and he said good-bye to Florian as quickly as possible, following her as she dashed off.

The sound of their feet on the stone cobbles of the street was somehow satisfying, and the whirl of shops they passed by, the sound of people all around them. She was leading, and her hand fit well in his, and he could feel his hair blowing around his face.

"Where are we going?" he called, but the rush of air took away the words as soon as he spoke them, and Rina shook her head, laughing. He just barely caught,--

"I can't hear you!"

--before they came out on the top of a small hill that let the town below them spill out as though it had fallen out of a burlap sack and settled down where it stopped rolling. Rina's skirt was blowing around her legs and her hair was blowing around her face, and Harbert kept looking back and forth. She was beautiful--this city was amazing. There was too much to try and see at once. He wished he had his camera.

"What do you think?" Rina asked, smiling at him almost shyly.

Harbert let his breath out slowly. "I think it's amazing. I think it's wonderful."

"I've lived here since Florian found me and brought me."

"Where were you before?"

"I don't know." She played with her skirt a little, and Harbert felt as though he'd suddenly said the wrong thing. Quietly, the way he might ask Ayrton a question, he asked,--

"But Florian found you and brought you here?"

"That's right. And I've lived here ever since. Florian takes care of us all so well. He's such a good man."

"I wish," he said, "I wish I could take a photograph of you."

"Oh! Why? You've already taken so many--"

"Just two. Two's not a lot. I'd like to take a lot more photographs of you. I'd like--" He took her hand, and all of a sudden he felt as shy as she'd looked, like a younger, unsurer self, not quite knowing what he was trying to say or what he wanted to say. He wasn't very old, was he, he thought. "Look," he said, trying to get his ideas in order, "I'd like--"

"Florian will mind."

"But--" Harbert paused. "Wouldn't Justin mind more?"

"Justin?" Rina stared at him. "Justin doesn't look at me twice. Why would Justin mind?"

He couldn't help laughing, his boyish laugh, and he hugged her, touched her hair. She was like a bird, a little bird, the kind Mr. Smith taught him to hold in his hands, so gently that you could feel it breathing, feel the flutter of feathers against your fingers. She was like a kind of plant--like butter-and-eggs, green and then that pile of golden on top. The American Philosopher's Society would put her in a controlled environment and want to study her for years, trying to make another flower that was just as wonderful, and they'd probably not be able to do it.

Deep inside he wished he could take her to the Island. He would have showed her the places the jaguars jumped him, and Ayrton's house at the daaw pasture, and taken her up Mount Franklin, showed her where to swim in Lake Grant, followed the paths Neb had learnt by heart. The eighteen-year-old self inside him who had learned to grow up taught by five entirely different men, and only those men, who had sat alone on the shore and just thought sometimes for hours together, who came back home and had to understand things all over again, living in a house with walls that weren't part of a rough cave, looking out the window and seeing people--

It was all upside-down to him, sometimes, not being alone. But he wished he could have taken Rina there, because he thought he wouldn't've been sorry not to be alone with her.

"Look," he said, and could hear the shyness this time in his voice, "I--"

"Let's go back," she said.

"All right."

"You haven't met Luther or Zara. They're important."

"All right," Harbert said.

While they walked back, they held hands, and he imagined himself with the most beautiful flower in the world threaded through his fingers.

That afternoon, he met Luther and Zara. Luther reminded him impossibly of Neb, not telling you about himself because he didn't even think about the idea of your wanting to know. Neb was like that, except that Neb talked more, and grinned his white-toothed grin. Luther smiled. Zara, on the other hand, was like Ayrton when he was still mad. When Rina pushed him forward and told her happily,--

"This is Mr. Brown!"

Zara said sharply,--

"Well?"

Rina didn't even seem to notice. "He's a photographer. He takes photographs of things. They're like looking in the mirror, except you can hold them, and you can't do that with mirror-pictures."

"What's the good of that?"

"They're pretty," Rina said.

"That's no good at all. Got to do something that's better than pretty. Anyway, it'd only work part of the time."

"What do you mean?" Harbert asked.

"I'm not pretty in the mirror, so I wouldn't make a pretty photograph. Then what would you do with that?"

"Well," Harbert said, "I don't just take pretty photographs. I take interesting ones. I take them of anything I want to remember."

Zara laughed bitterly. "I'm not something you'd want to remember."

"Of course you are," said Rina, smiling, but Harbert could see that Zara didn't believe her for a moment. He held out his hand, gentling the way he'd done to Justin, careful with an angry animal. He'd been jumped by jaguars before.

"Would you mind too much if I took one of you anyway?"

Zara wouldn't take his hand. She tossed her head. "If you're that much a fool, go ahead and do it."

Later at supper Rina whispered, "She doesn't like people much. We guess it has to do with why Florian chose her. He picked all of us because something awful happened. Like Justin--we don't know why Justin, either, or Luther, but we know something bad must have happened that he's taking care. Me, I--" She stopped, blushed unhappily. "Well, Stock won't tell me about himself, either, but he says it was bad, and it has to be very bad, I think, because Stock likes to talk, and if it weren't very bad he would have told me about what it was--" She stopped again, short.

Harbert reached out and wiped her eyes with his sleeve. "Florian saves you all when something terrible happens?"

She nodded.

He felt eighteen years old again, trying to make Ayrton hear him, trying to talk to eyes that slid right past him. He couldn't imagine anything terrible happening to her, not with her golden hair and all her smiles and the way she thought the best of everyone.

"To-morrow," he said, "let's take my camera everywhere and take photographs of everything."

"Let's do that," she said.

So the next day she asked Florian, and Florian told her she could do as she liked. She showed Harbert Marianstat. As always, civilisation amazed him. Sometimes he couldn't believe he hadn't gotten used to things, not in all this time, and he kept asking her to take him into shops and he took tens of photographs of the streets full of people.

They paused for lunch in a little inn where Rina had a thin stew that she ate as hungrily as though she hadn't been properly fed in ages. That wasn't true, of course, but it struck him the way she seemed so quick for food. Maybe before-- She looked up at him suddenly and smiled.

Harbert smiled back.

Over the next week everyone got used to his being there, so that when he said he had to go on, they all were surprised. Even Justin slanted him a sideways look and said,--

"Why?"

Zara, though, Zara, whose photograph he'd taken several times, muttered, "Good riddance," which made Harbert laugh--somehow it was the thing letting him go. As long as one person sent him on his way--not angrily, but sent him on his way--he knew he could go all right. It was easier than leaving the Island; he had time to see everything again on his way out, and to leave gently. The Island had thrown him away from itself, violently, as it had all his fathers, and he thought it still hurt them all sometimes.

Here, it was different. Rina just walked along with him on the way out, holding his camera reverently. She had asked, and he let her.

"Why are you going?"

"I promised Ayrton I'd come back, and my father--"

"Does your father want you?"

Harbert nodded. "He misses me, and I miss him. I've got to get back home and let them know I'm still alive. Everyone worries about me. And I miss taking lessons from Mr. Smith and Mr. Spilett, and listening to Neb tell stories. I miss the Society, too."

"I'll miss you."

He stopped, then, and touched her hand. "I'm going to come back," he said, like a promise, and reached into his pocket for a photograph he'd taken of her, with her hands in the water kneading lye into clothes, her golden hair pinned up but falling down, her apron wrapt around her waist; and he gave it to her.

The last thing he saw before he got on the train was her smiling, waving at him and smiling, and he steadied his tripod right in front of the door, ignoring the people whose way he was getting in, and took one last photograph.

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

...Either The Mysterious Island or "too much information" ought to have a different acronym.

...The Mysterious Island has quite a fine acronym, thankyou.

It has indeed. So we conclude..."too much information" must have a new acronym.

Shall we go with WTMI for way too much information?

But what if it's only a little bit too much information? (Or "wheeeee, The Mysterious Island!")

You're complicating the issue!

I like complicating the issue.

...Cut it out!

Do you hate me now?

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