Inkling by Kenneth Oppel
With a small silver key that he kept around his neck, Mr. Worthington opened a compartment lower in the cabinet. He allowed himself a small smile.
After he’d moved Blotter into the office, he’d chopped off a few little bits of him with the big paper cutter. A couple quick, hard swings of the blade. Just as an experiment, just to be sure.
“Hey, little guys,” he said, reaching into the compartment.
One by one he lifted out three glass jars. In each was a swirling red-tinged ink splotch.
“You guys are going to do great things,” Mr. Worthington said.
Chapter 22
“Lucy!” said Sarah sternly. “You are a very naughty puppy!”
The Labradoodle puppy ignored her and continued chewing one of Sarah’s favorite soft toys on the living room floor.
“You wicked dog,” said Sarah with huge enjoyment. She dropped her face close to the puppy’s and giggled as Lucy licked her enthusiastically.
“That tickles,” said Sarah with delight.
Ethan couldn’t imagine a happier face.
“I never wanted a dog,” Dad said, “but this makes it almost worth it.”
“She’s pretty cute,” Ethan said.
“She’s very cute,” Dad said. “I’m probably going to spoil the thing rotten.”
Rickman cautiously entered the room and looked balefully at Lucy. When the puppy saw the cat, she scrambled to her feet and growled and yipped. Rickman bristled and started to slink away.
“Lucy, no!” said Sarah, tapping the puppy gently on the head. “Icklan is nice.”
And she went over to Rickman and gave him a quick stroke. Rickman stood there, stunned, then sank down on the floor, purring contentedly.
“I like Icklan,” Sarah said.
Ethan looked over at his dad. “Do you believe it?”
“Yeah, finally, she likes the cat.”
“Yeah, but did you notice she used the word I? ‘I like Icklan’!”
“You’re right!” Dad said, grinning. “Good talking, Sarah!”
“She knows,” Sarah said, and went back to Lucy.
While Dad and Sarah played with the new puppy, Ethan went to his bedroom. It had been two weeks since he’d rescued Inkling—and then lost him to the sketchbook.
Lost. That was absolutely how Ethan thought of it. He’d truly lost a friend, and he missed him.
On his top shelf, where Ethan kept all his favorite things, was the sketchbook. Even though there were still plenty of blank pages left, Dad had retired it as a memorial to Inkling.
Sitting down on his bed, Ethan opened it up and found the pages where Blotter and Inkling were fixed. He touched Inkling, but no breezy sensation moved against his fingertips. There was no life or energy, just dry ink. A few days ago, he thought he’d seen a flicker of movement, but it was just his eyes playing tricks on him.
Inkling was truly gone.
“I was very impressed with the quality of your graphic novels,” said Ms. D as she handed them back to the groups. “And I was especially pleased with how well you all collaborated and divided up the work.”
Ethan crowded around his project with Soren, Pino, and Brady. Pino had done a fantastic job with the coloring, and Ethan was impressed by how much energy and personality it had added to the graphic novel. And Brady had surprised everyone with how neat his lettering was, and how he’d experimented with different styles and colors, depending on who was talking and what was happening in the scene.
On the very last page, Ms. D had paper-clipped her comments.
“‘A highly imaginative and original story,’” Ethan read, nudging Soren. “That’s you!”
“‘Exquisite coloring,’” said Pino with a grin.
“‘The lettering was done with great care and panache,’” said Brady. “What’s panache?”
“It means you didn’t use too much correction fluid,” said Pino.
“Yeah, I was really careful,” Brady said. “What’s she say about the artwork?”
Ethan read aloud. “‘While the artwork was of a generally high standard, greater care could have been taken with smudges.’” Ethan grinned, remembering how he’d asked Inkling to mess up the art on purpose. “‘The last third of the project seemed a bit rushed as the artwork was not as strong, and quite a bit messier.’”
“I don’t know what she’s talking about,” Soren said to him.
“Guys, who cares?” said Brady, pointing at their letter grade. “We got an A!”
Pino went on a recon mission to check out everyone else’s grades. Ethan paged through the spreads. He couldn’t help feeling wistful as he looked at all the images Inkling had drawn—especially toward the end, when Inkling had been teaching him how to draw. He’d never forget how much fun it was, working together.
“I think you should keep it,” Soren said to him.
“No, we’ll split it up,” Ethan said. “We all did this. Everyone should take their favorite spreads. I wouldn’t mind having the last few pages.”
“Great mark,” said Heather Lee, leaning over to have a look. “Congratulations.”
“Thanks,” said Ethan, blushing. “How’d you guys do?”
“B-plus,” she said, and shrugged. “Not all of us can draw like you.”
“I’m not that good,” Ethan said. “I had a lot of help.”
Pino came back to their table and said indignantly, “Vika’s group got an A-plus.”
“What?” Brady said. “Ours was way better!”
“No fair!” said Pino.
“It’s fair,” Ethan said. He’d seen Vika’s work when she’d handed it in. “Believe me, it is totally fair.”
He looked across the room at Vika, who was talking with her group. When she glanced over at him, he mouthed, “Congratulations.”
She nodded, and almost smiled.
“Hey, I wanted to show you something,” Dad said when Ethan got home from school. “I started something new today.”
“That’s great!” Ethan said, then frowned. “So you’re not going to finish the one you started with Inkling?”
Dad shook his head. “There was something missing.”
“What do you mean?”
“The artwork was wonderful; the story was solid. But there wasn’t one thing original about it.”
Ethan felt offended on Inkling’s behalf. “He’d been working so hard on it!”
“I know. And you taught him well, giving him all my books, and good stuff other people have done. But that’s what it felt like. A kind of mishmash of really great stuff that’s already been done. I need to do something truly new. On my own.”
“Okay.” Ethan could understand that.
“You know,” Dad said to him as they walked down the hall, “I was thinking about your drawing.”
“I’ll never be very good,” Ethan said. Even though Inkling had helped him improve, he knew he’d never be as talented as his dad, and it made him discouraged.
“Not true,” Dad said. “First of all, you’ve got a lot of years ahead of you to learn. But also, those stick figures you do?”
“What about them?”
“They’re really good.”
Ethan turned to his dad in amazement. “They’re just stupid stick figures. They’re, like, nothing.”
Dad shook his head. “No. They have a ton of personality. And energy. The positions you draw them in, they’re really expressive.”
Ethan felt his cheeks heat up. “Honest?”
“And even better, no one else does anything like it. It could be your thing.”
“Huh,” said Ethan. He still wasn’t sure drawing was his thing, period, but maybe Dad was right and it was too early to say. “Thanks.”
“So let me show you my new stuff,” Dad said inside the studio.
“Are you doing another Kren?”
Dad laughed. “No. I thought it was time to do something a little more personal. Something under our own roof.”
Ethan leaned against the dr
The first panels were wordless.
There was a house, which looked a lot like theirs, at night, the windows dark.
There was the hallway, deserted and quiet.
A cat prowled along. He was a handsomer version of Rickman, eating something from the carpet.
There was a studio. A small flex lamp had been left on, illuminating the drafting table and the gleaming pages of an open sketchbook.
Closer.
The cat leapt up onto the chair and put his paws on the edge of the table.
Closer still.
The ink in the sketchbook glistened, then moved.
And then, finally, a caption:
No one was awake to see it happen, except Rickman.
About the Author
KENNETH OPPEL wrote his first novel at age fourteen and hasn’t looked back since. His books include the Silverwing trilogy, which has sold over a million copies around the world, and Airborn, winner of the Governor General’s Award and the Michael L. Printz Honor Award.
Ken lives with his family in Toronto. You can find him online at kennethoppel.ca and on Twitter at @kennethoppel.
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About the Illustrator
SYDNEY SMITH is the illustrator of many award-winning picture books, including Smoot: A Rebellious Shadow by Michelle Cuevas, Sidewalk Flowers by JonArno Lawson, and Town Is by the Sea by Joanne Schwartz.
Sydney lives with his family in Toronto.
Books by Kenneth Oppel
Every Hidden Thing
The Nest
The Boundless
This Dark Endeavor
Such Wicked Intent
Half Brother
Airborn
Skybreaker
Starclimber
Silverwing
Sunwing
Firewing
Darkwing
Dead Water Zone
The Live-Forever Machine
Copyright
Inkling
Text copyright © 2018 by Firewing Productions, Inc.
Cover art and interior illustrations copyright © 2018 by Sydney Smith
All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the nonexclusive, nontransferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, downloaded, decompiled, reverse-engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins e-books.
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.
Published by HarperCollins Publishers Ltd
EPub Edition: AUGUST 2018 EPub ISBN: 978-1-4434-5030-0
Print ISBN: 978-2-4434-5028-7
First Canadian edition
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Kenneth Oppel, Inkling