“James?” Jack called out to the man on the bench.
“You came back for me? But you shouldn’t,” said the surprised, feeble voice.
“I promised I would,” said Jack.
The man lunged towards Jack, weeping loudly.
“No time for that! Go!” Jack pulled the man out the door.
A voice called from the neighboring cell.
“Just a moment!” Jack tried to find the right key. They were so big and each had a number on them.
“Thank you,” came a muffled feminine voice.
James the prisoner shouted, “No time! Leave her!”
Jack wrestled with the lock and pulled the broad door open. He panicked to see a gargantuan worm in a dark cloak filling the back of the cell. She was as big as the queen! It looked like Jabba the Hutt in drag, and a bit like the caterpillar in Alice in Wonderland in the way she raised up the front half of her body and gazed down at him. All she needed was a pipe.
“I’m ssso happy to sssee you sssweetie.” Mordette gave Jack an appraising look. “You’re young for a hero but you are doing ni-sssely.”
“Thanks, ma’am – we don’t have much time, so –” Jack burst out. He didn’t want to be impolite, so he quickly introduced himself, “I’m Jack.”
“Mordette.”
“Mordette – ” He gestured frantically down the hall.
“Yes, of course. There’s much to do! I need to rescue those fuzzies and get to my island on the roof.”
Jack stopped and turned back to her at that. “Your island on the – ”
“My floating island. It’s tethered to the roof of the palace.”
“Could it carry a lot of woodland creatures and kids?”
“It could,” she looked at Jack a bit more carefully. “They’d have to get past the Queen...”
“If I can get them up there?”
“All the merrier, perhaps I’ll see you on the roof then?” she smiled.
Jack knew it would be crazy luck to find Finn and Jenny, free the kids, and get the all other critters up to the roof. “We’ve gotta go!”
Mordette didn’t move for a moment and she gave Jack a careful evaluation.
He wasn’t sure how fast a slug could move and thought he was never going to get out of here. “Ma’am, do you need some assistance?”
“Sonny, I just need you to get out of that door! Momma’s got some business to attend to!”
“Okay.”
Jack pressed himself and his old cell mate against the corridor wall as the giant slug sped past. He didn’t expect that thing to move so fast! It was gone in seconds!
Jack grabbed the prisoner’s good hand and ran after her – half dragging the bewildered man behind him.
* * * *
When Jack and his charge reached the kitchen, there was no sign of the giant slug. But the three fuzzball kids were running from the pantry.
“Come on, Jack!” shouted Lilbe. “All the b’Trixers are below! Are ya comin’?”
Jack responded in a panic, “And the big prisoners?”
“They be out that far door ta the outside!” yelled Bilbe. “They be makin’ thar own way!”
“BOOM!”
From the direction of that door came the sound of an explosion. Jack’s nose smelled something awful. The stench came flooding in from outside as a big, pear-shaped red creature stepped into the doorway.
“Surrender knaves! Ah took care of all those runaway scalawags out thar, and ah kin cert’nly take care o’ young ‘uns like you!”
Anger swept through Jack. “Did you hurt them!”
“Ha! No, they jest be o’erwhelmed by me secret weapon! They jest be passed out in the yard” scoffed Rip-One. “They’ll all be back ta work by mornin’! But yer de one I be lookin’ for! Say yer prayers!”
The tall red creature swung his bulbous red butt towards them and bent over!
The steps were a lot closer than the pantry.
“UP!” cried Jack as the red creature took a big breath and squinted.
Jack grabbed the three fuzzballs in his arms. Up they ran! The rescued prisoner hopped along after them.
Behind them blasted the loudest fart that Jack had ever heard, but it had hardly subsided when an even louder explosion shook the castle.
“Ovens!” shouted Bilbe.
“Ya really shouldna’ mix gas and fire!” observed Lilbe when Jack stopped to catch his breath several floors up.
(Note: Sheela in Acquisitions was indeed impressed, as Acquisitions is located directly over the kitchen. Sheela and her colleagues unfortunately were firmly impressed into the department ceiling.)
As the small group continued climbing the large steps, alarmed guards rushed down past them towards the explosion. They didn’t pay any attention to the kids.
When they reached the top of the last set of steps, they stood on an open colonnade. They looked out on Atraugh City below and the country beyond.
“Frey,” the prisoner looked at the expanse with a certain sadness, as he fondled a kitchen knife.
It was the first glimpse that Jack had seen of the Frey countryside. The kaleidoscope of color was overwhelming after the darkness of the castle.
“It’s beautiful!” sighed Jack stepping next to him.
“Yes, it is.” The rescued prisoner quickly pulled Jack close and thrust a knife against the teen’s throat. “Ah’m ver’ sorry ‘bout this, but we jest can’t ‘fford ta haf more humans in Frey!”
Chapter 45
The Queen
is Distracted
Unaware of the uprising in the kitchen, the Blue Queen had been uncharacteristically daydreaming in her boudoir on the fourth floor. There were so many possibilities with wishes and she wanted to be ready when the time came.
“So little worm, how long am I going to have to wait? It’s been fun, but I’m impatient to start our big adventure together,” Asphixia lightly drew a clawed finger along the side of the engorged fuzzy-wiggle.
It tickled and terrified him at the same time. Randy squirmed from the overwhelming sensations.
Randy in his bloated state found that hours of playfulness in the Queen’s company had been more than a little distressing, but he was relieved that she had not yet acted on her notion of bleeding dry all the children downstairs. He was quite full, thank-you very much.
He was uncomfortably full and not really feeling like himself. Perhaps that’s what human blood did to fuzzy-wiggles? Maybe this is what losing his sense of self felt like?
With no one to see but Randy, the Blue Queen had let her glamor drop. She was old. The translucent blue scales of youth became hard and white and rough like old stone. The lavender eyes were bloodshot, and her lichen-like curls looked diseased and worm eaten.
“With you, I’ll have true power. Power to adjust the world to my liking. And you’re just the beginning. I’ll dine regularly on dark wishes with my new diet plan!”
Her finger flipped him on his back and she ran her claw back and forth along Randy’s tummy which made him shiver uncomfortably.
“You know wormie when I discovered the surface world, I was such a pretty young thing when I ran away from home. You wouldn’t know it now.” She fretted. “Mordette took me in. She takes in homeless stragglers. Disgusting habit, actually unless you can get some use out of them. It was through Mordette that I became acquainted with wishes. Nobody had heard of dark wishes yet. There were no humans in Frey. It was James who discovered dark wishes... not that he needed them. Just an accident. But, he experimented and discovered that if he fed his own blood to worms it helped his assistant use them. Phookas are not naturally good with wishes. I don’t think they think big enough.” Asphixia sighed. “When I dallied with the phooka during one of his deliveries to Mordette, the phooka gave me a dark wish as a token of his aff
ection.”
Randy was only half following her monologue. He was feeling a little light-headed.
Asphixia was deep in her memories. “I was rather clever with that first dark wish. I really hated those merfolk. Always so annoying with all their giggly ways... near-eternal youth and not a thought in their heads. I wished for a disease to wipe them out. One has to be clever with wishes. One wish couldn’t make all of those sappy creatures disappear, but one wittle wish can easily make an itty bitty disease. That wasn’t difficult at all,” she laughed.
Randy groaned.
Asphixia looked alarmed.
“Yes, it was rather smart wasn’t it? My dear little wormie, one just has to know what one wants. I’m still not yet sure exactly what it is I want after I eat you.” She disregarded his pain and rolled over on her big round bed. She pulled her lichenesque hair out of her eyes and gazed across the room at the mirror. “Of course, I want to be young again. But, I also want absolute obedience and respect from all my subjects. I’d also like everything to be shades of blue. It would look so much more soothing.”
She lifted Randy up in the palm of her hand.
“Blue is a peaceful color don’t you think? No one would ever revolt in a peaceful blue world.”
Randy was not paying attention to her. He was thinking of how much he wanted a new owner when it happened. He gasped and exploded into a ball of lavender light.
Asphixia, without a moment of hesitation, sucked that ball of light right into her mouth. She gasped as her veins surged with power. She momentarily hovered over the bed as blue electricity crackled around her.
This was indescribable! It was a rush! She looked into her mirror. She was glowing a luminous blue. She couldn’t control her illusions during this surge, so she looked her ancient true self. But she was formidable! What was beauty next to becoming a goddess?
It was then that a series of explosions rocked the castle.
Chapter 46
A Very
Fuzzy Rescue
It could be said that Mordette’s greatest skill was in tracing the whereabouts of fuzzy-wiggles. She could track their scent from significant distances. She could now smell them somewhere in the castle above her.
Their scent wafted down from the upper stories. She waddled up the wide steps and took pride in her ability to go unnoticed. Despite her size, she was capable of chameleon-like color changes, and her robes were similarly designed. She noiselessly passed through a crowd of gossiping reptiles who worked the upper floors.
In minutes the scent led her to a large unguarded door at the end of a long, dark corridor. After a brief sniff, she lifted the latch and lithely waddled in.
The dim, stone chamber was empty. Mordette waved a hand in a circular gesture and a wobbly light-filled ball of water appeared, and it floated like a circus balloon towards the high ceiling. Its cool glow illuminated the high ceilinged prison cell. She noticed a miniature balcony to her right. She could see little rooms beyond – the home of small creatures not present. A winding staircase led from the balcony down to the floor of the open room.
She could smell the dark wishes who had once fluttered in that space. It was like the sweet scent of poisonous flowers. If she were a smaller creature it would have made her dizzy.
She focused and her nose led her to a small door below the balcony.
She knocked.
“Knock, knock?” she whispered.
“Who’sss there?” came a fear-stained voice.
“Mordette. Friend to all fuzzy-wiggles,” she whispered.
The door opened cautiously. George peeked out. When he saw Mordette his smile brightened.
“Thank goodness it’s the Water Witch!” He announced to those behind him. “Fuzziesss, we are sssaved!”
George’s fuzzy red form ambled out, followed by Beatrice’s orange and blue striped fur, and then Burt and Teddy and Lance and Cynthia... soon all fourteen fuzzy-wiggles huddled excitedly in front of Mordette. It was quite a group. They’d had to squeeze out the door one at a time as they’d grown considerably.
No more the svelte, young, three-foot long creatures that they used to be. They’d all grown stouter and nearly doubled their lengths from their mad dark wish dining frenzy. Each felt a trifle worse for their gluttony. But even so, they were still tiny compared to the enormous Wish Monger.
“My dears! You must be the contingent from the caves. I’ve heard rumors of you, but I’ve never had the pleasure.”
George (admittedly still tipsy) was enormously flattered! “Graciousss me! To think that THE Water Witch hasss acssstually heard of usss!”
There was a great deal of tittering and stifled giggles.
Mordette silenced them with a glance. “Quickly. You are all nearing your time. You must come with me at once!”
“But, how?” moaned Burt. “I’m not sssure I could crawl ‘cross the floor.”
She opened her cloak. The interior was lined with horizontal pockets... enough for each of the fuzzy-wiggles.
“Sleepin’ quarters? Transsspo’tation out o’ here! This is lovely!” slurred Burt.
Mordette gestured for speed. “Button up. It will be a bumpy ride out of here.”
Beatrice was the last to find her pocket. She sighed, “We were watching the children next door. And the animals. It was ever so interesting.”
George nodded. “Yes, sssad you know. Too bad we can’t do anything.”
Mordette’s eyes narrowed. “Do tell.”
“Right next door. We had a little window so we could spy right into the Hall,” offered Beatrice. “I suppose there’s enough time to peek in.”
Mordette drew her living cloak around her and cautiously undulated into the corridor. The cloak rippled with fuzzy-wiggle lumps like a down jacket. She glided silently till she came to the large arch into Blood Hall. She stopped short at what she saw.
Sitting across the Hall floor were a great many children wrapped in blankets and a number of b’trixers attending to them.
A small rabbit in a rough dress froze in terror when she saw Mordette in the doorway.
“Oh there now. None of that.” whispered Mordette quickly as she hurried into the room. “What’s going on here?”
The nervous rabbit whispered, “We were asked ta feed ‘em. But, look at ‘em! They was all locked up on the walls! We found keys and blankets and moved ‘em all inta here. But, we don’t know what ta do!”
“You are going to get them all up to the roof – that’s what you’re going to do! My floating island is tethered there. We’re going to get you all out of here!”
The small animals and unwashed children looked up at her with surprise.
“Hurry! Quietly! To the roof!” Mordette urged them.
They jumped up as one. The rabbit ran to a small door at the far side of the room. “This way – it goes ta the stairwell!”
Children and b’trixers soon crowded around the small exit. Larger ones helped the smaller ones.
Mordette heard some grumbling from George under her cape, but she hushed him. She stood guard till the last of the little ones slipped through the door.
“And what do we have here!” screamed a voice behind them.
Mordette whirled to see the newly empowered Asphixia. She’d clearly eaten that wish.
The Blue Queen grew ominously even larger in a halo of crackling blue light. Her haggard features snarled with outrage!
“After all my hospitality you do this!!” shrieked the giantess.
“You’re a terrible host, Asphixia. And you aren’t looking too good.” Mordette waved her hand and was immediately surrounded in a halo of golden light. It was just in time as Asphixia shot out a bolt of blue lightning from her fingers. The bolt crashed into the golden halo protecting Mordette and dissipated into a cloud of green gas that hovered between them.
The Blue Queen continued to bombard Mordette. She unfortunately had no offensive skills whatsoever, and her halo of defense was weakening under the vicious onslaught.
* * * *
Meanwhile on another floor another attack was taking place.
The mad ex-prisoner had his knife against Jack’s throat. He was hissing, “Humans be a menace ta all that be good in Frey! Everything be yer fault! The Frit be yer fault! Dark wishes be yer fault! Me lost finger be yer fault!”
“But, you’re human! How can you say that!” choked out Jack.
“Ha -” the man’s response turned into a scream.
The three Wisherman kids had attacked the man. Bilbe bit his injured finger – while Dilbe and Lilbe lunged at the back of his knees. Thrown off balance, the group tumbled to the floor and Jack wrested the knife from the man and spun around.
But the man’s head had hit the stone floor and he was not moving.
Jack was frozen for a moment. “Is he dead?”
“I canna say, but that were disgustin’,” said Bilbe spitting and wiping his mouth.
“We gotta go. Now!” said Dilbe.
Lilbe tugged at Jack’s hand. Jack woke up to their danger.
They turned and fled down the hallway.
They blindly raced down cavernous corridors looking for another stairwell till they found one and ran up those steps as fast as they could. They could hear above them the sound of running feet, as well as strange explosions and the smell of sulfur! At the next floor Jack looked out an arch to the room beyond and saw the battle between Asphixia and Mordette.
The Blue Queen was horrific. Her angry screams and shrieks deafened Jack’s ears as blasts of blue lightning crackled and exploded around Mordette’s shrinking shield of golden light.
Then came a blast more powerful than any of the previous and Mordette imploded into pure golden energy and sent a shock wave through the room. It shook the walls and knocked Jack on his butt.
Olly, Olly, Oxen Frey Page 25