Page 8 - Lulu and Bob in Verbo City

“Right.” His sister picked up the insulated wordsack. “What might
be trying to find sanctuary here in the study?”
Bob scanned the list and decided to go after an obvious one first:
his mind was already working like a glossosynthetic obscurantist.
Inferiopendofructus, he calculated quickly, had more than eighteen
letters, therefore a sesquipedalian. The low-hanging fruit would be
easy pickings. Too bad that big word couldn’t be one of the missing
twenty: he had just made it up. But he was pretty sure where to find
a fugitive: on the large spherical map of Earth next to Uncle
Bunster’s desk.
“Yes!” he cried. “I can see it now that I know where to look. See
it, there on the big terrestrial globe next to Uncle’s desk?”
Lulu squinted. “Come on, Bob: it’s a big planet. We could make a
game of this if we had time, but we don’t. Where is it?”
“On the equator, straddling the International Date Line:
‘circumnavigational.’”
Lulu carefully detached the word; it had barely any traction on the
smooth curved surface. She dumped it in the bag, syllables squirming;
then closed it tightly and wiped her brow.
“It’s getting hotter. What’s next?”
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