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Chapter 10
In Which Lulu Invents the Bat and Lizard Tiles
--------And then Lulu woke up!
Lulu’s mother was still straightening things up around the family nest, but all the others had already left to gather morning dew from the grass.
“Oh, you’re awake!” exclaimed her mother. “You looked so happy sleeping there that I couldn’t bring myself to awaken you. Did you sleep well?”
“Good morning, Mother. Yes I did. I had the most wonderful dream!” replied Lulu. “And I got some wonderful ideas from it, too.” And with that Lulu jumped up, kissed her mother on the cheek, and dashed out to the yard to make a quick breakfast and to warm up in the morning sun while she thought about the drawings she would make.
Lulu spent all the rest of the morning drawing designs in the sandy earth that floored a corner of the underhouse that was not, just then, being overrun by her little brothers. Occasionally one of them would dash by and shout, “Hi,Lulu. What‘cha doin’?” but then would dash off again without showing any real interest or waiting for an answer. Outside, the sun shown brightly on the lawn and hedges and the sounds of play came drowsily to her in a summery Sunday sort of way. But Lulu kept working. Time after time she would lightly draw a rhombus of one sort or another and then replace its sides with simple curved lines arranged first in one way and then another. It was the middle of the afternoon when she finally appeared satisfied with her designs of bats and lizards. After taking a last long look at them, Lulu smoothed them over and then made her way to the dark corner of the underhouse and climbed the old piece of conduit that was her ladder to the house above.
“Hello, Bubba. Are you here?” she called from her doorway, and leapt down without waiting for a reply. Apparently Bubba had not yet arrived.
Lulu knew just what she wanted to do. She went to the carpeted stairs and found that indeed she could climb them. A little while and fourteen stair steps later, Lulu was in the warm
upstairs emptiness of the old house. Just as she had hoped, the polished floors were covered with an undisturbed layer of dust from the several years during which the house had been unoccupied. Sure of herself now, Lulu duplicated on the floor of the largest room the designs inspired by her dream and which she had practiced drawing in the sandy earth of the underhouse that morning.
Finally the drawings were all done, and done without too many distracting Lulu-footprints around them. Then Lulu, who had lost herself in pleased admiration of her own work for several minutes, heard Bubba calling from the hallway.
“Luuu luuu, Are you here?”
“I’m upstairs in the big bedroom,” replied Lulu loudly, and waited where she was for Bubba to fly up the stairwell.
“Gee, aren’t those nice designs. I didn’t know you were such an artist, Lulu,” said Bubba circling high in the center of the room, “Why, they’re all fatter and skinnier versions of you and me, Lulu! But I don’t get it. What are---, that is, -- what do--, I mean why---? Gosh sakes, how do you ask an artist this kindof question?”
“They’re patterns I dreamed up, or dreamed about, sort of, last night,” replied Lulu.
She told Bubba all about her dream of magic dust and magicked mirrors and the magical Erics the Red and Ernestines, Wilburs and Willows, Orvilles and Opals, Priscillas and Percys, and how they had all played and danced to make wonderful and elaborate floor-covering patterns in the room of mirrors.
“Each one will fit together with any other, but they seem to have certain likes and dislikes if they’re to make a solid pattern, just as I told you,” continued Lulu, “If only we could make them like puzzle pieces, I could show you how they work.”
