The Rainbow of Pens (Part Seven)
Stalking and Evading
Onitha first strikes as a venomous green snake (an illusion shaped by her ink and colored by the pencils) during their visit to the popular zoo, Parco Natura Viva, in an attempt to hypnotize Sabrina into helping her, and to make her forget who Simon and herself are by hissing the ink into her ears and eyes. Simon notices, revives Sabrina, and splashes the reptile with water from a drinking fountain, causing it to evaporate back into ink. The following afternoon, however, Simon (while packing and waiting for his grandfather to return for the rest of the luggage) hears the polite yet uncanny voice from the room’s telephone.
Feeling dizzy, Simon suddenly notices that the cords are still disconnected from their wall sockets and no ringing has sounded, yet Onitha’s ink and voice flow out of the phone’s earpiece as she bribes him again to persuade him to join her. Simon, seeing that her pen is on the grass outside of the window (apparently unnoticed by a resident cockroach), refuses since his father is already searching for her, and regrets telling Onitha this immediately, knowing that she has the ability to reach his father in nearly no time.
In the evening, after Simon and the others land in Paris, they find themselves in Onitha’s presence yet again, this time on a deserted street where a man holding a familiar pen seemingly threatens to rob them. Simon and Sabrina, knowing little French, only assume that this is what he was persuaded to do as he begins to yell. The adults each tell their grandchild to stay behind them which Simon and Sabrina do until it starts to rain.
Sabrina’s grandmother asks the man if he remembers what has just happened as the ink vanishes once more. "Non, je ne me souviens pas d’être venu ici," the confused man answers in a soft, tired voice. Meredith recognizes his words to mean that he has no memory of coming to this location. Two police officers, who have seen the assault attempt from a couple of hundred feet down the street, take the man away for questioning.
