Gorilla Tactics

by Sheila Grau

  “Well . . . no.” But neither had the others, I was sure. They’d just gotten away with lame answers.

  “That’s one strike, Mr. Higgins. Three strikes and you’re out.” He picked up his notebook and made a vicious check mark in it. I felt like I’d been stabbed in the chest.

  He addressed us all. “I take great pride in the henchmen who graduate from my program. They are a reflection of my teaching skills. If you do not measure up to my standards, I won’t allow you to continue in this class, headmaster interference or not.” He glared at me again before turning to the board.

  As he wrote the names of the major evil overlords and the kingdoms they ruled, he answered the question I couldn’t. “The Siren Syndicate has a cozier relationship with the EOs than the Elixir Syndicate had. They ask permission before raising rates on shipping, and they’ve allowed the EOs to have a say in who is elected Grand Sirenness.”

  He finished his list and turned to us. “Tomorrow we’re going on a field trip to the capital to watch a session of the Evil Overlord Council. The trip will take all day, so please notify your other teachers that you’ll be gone.”

  He looked at me, then added, “Let’s see if we can get through the day without anyone being demoted back to regular minion status.”

  In Bluetorch, all books are banned except for two: Dark Victor’s autobiography and his collection of soufflé recipes.

  —TRUE FACT

  During third-period study hall, I met Syke outside. She was eating something that looked like a tulip. Inside the flower were a bunch of plump pink seeds.

  “What is that?” I asked.

  She tried to get another seed, but the flower’s mouth snapped at her fingers as they got close to the fruit.

  “I got it from Tootles,” she said. “It’s part Venus flytrap, part pomegranate.” Her fingers darted inside the flower but came out empty. “Because that’s the problem with eating fruit—it’s just not enough of a challenge.”

  “Is that from his secret greenhouse?”

  She nodded.

  I used to think I knew this school better than anyone, but apparently not. I had no idea where his secret greenhouse was.

  “Tootles has a secret greenhouse,” I said. “Dr. Frankenhammer has a secret lab. Remember when I said everyone has a secret something?”

  She nodded, smiling in victory as she freed a seed.

  “I bet Uncle Ludwig has a secret library,” I said. “Want to go check?”

  “Actually, I have some math homework I’d like to get started on.”

  “Really?”

  “No, not really,” she said with an eye roll. “We have time before Literature. Let’s go.”

  “Uncle Ludwig?” I tapped on one of the locked doors’ windows. “It’s me, Higgins. I’m here to reshelve books.”

  The door opened in a flash.

  “Syke said she’d help,” I said, explaining her presence next to me.

  “Good, good. Come this way.”

  He led us to his desk, through the usual maze of carts loaded with books.

  “We’ll sort them first,” I suggested. Uncle Ludwig nodded and sat back down to his work. I’d filled Syke in on my plan as we walked to the library—that we’d ask Uncle Ludwig some questions while we worked, and then, maybe close to the end of free period, we’d spring the big question on him. Real subtle-like.

  Syke held a book called Social Struggles in Euripidam and Why We Don’t Have Any. I nodded at her to ask the question I’d prompted her with—did he know of any books on Skelterdam?

  Syke nodded back. “So, Uncle Ludwig,” she said loudly. “Where’s your secret library?”

  I threw a paperback at her leg. She was the opposite of subtle.

  “What’s that?” he asked, looking up from his book.

  “Your secret library? We know you have one. Where is it?”

  “Well . . . now what makes you think . . . I’m sure I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

  He had one. That was obvious.

  “Uncle Ludwig,” I said, “these can’t be the only books you’re working with.”

  “Yeah,” Syke said. “It’s strange that you studied at the prestigious Amlick University, and now you’re stuck in this dust hole, with the most ridiculous books.” She picked up another one and read its title. “ ‘Maya Tupo’s Miraculous Cures for Everything.’ That’s got to be true, right? Not just something someone wrote to suck up to Maya Tupo.

  “We know you’re better than this.” She waved her arm to include the whole library. “And we know there’s an order of librarians who dream of a day when knowledge can be freely shared and not hidden. Who protect that knowledge in the Great Library. That seems more like you than this place.

  “C’mon, Uncle Ludwig. Where’s the secret entrance? Is it behind that bookshelf?” She walked behind his desk. “Do I pull out a special book, and the whole wall swings open?”

  “That’s a bit of a cliché,” Uncle Ludwig said. “I’m hurt you think I’d be so unoriginal. If I had such a thing.”

  “No? Then it probably isn’t the fireplace either. I bet it’s underneath this room,” Syke said. “Maybe one of these bookshelves pushes to the side.” She stood next to one and motioned for me to help her try to move it.

  “The thing about a secret entrance,” Uncle Ludwig said, “is that you want to be able to use it quickly, and then cover it up just as quickly, so nobody can follow.”

  “Maybe you have a special key that goes somewhere?” Syke said. We hadn’t budged the bookshelf, so we bent down to look for seams on the floor instead. “Or a switch by your desk?”

  Uncle Ludwig didn’t say anything. We looked over and saw that the reason he didn’t say anything was because he was gone.

  “What the wyvern?” I said. We rushed over to the desk. “Where’d he go?”

  “To his secret library,” Syke said. She ran her hands under and around his desk. She moved to his chair. “Look, the chair’s base is solid, like a pedestal. Weird.”

  A muffled voice called from under the floor. “Sit on the chair.”

  “You do it,” Syke said to me. So I did. The chair was wide and padded. All of a sudden the seat dropped, like a trapdoor, and I fell onto an air mattress. Uncle Ludwig stood next to the mattress in a chamber only a little bigger than an elevator. Above me, the chair opening had already snapped shut.

  “It’s fine, Syke!” I yelled.

  “Okay!”

  Uncle Ludwig pushed a lever, and Syke dropped down. She rolled off the mattress and stood up beside us. “So this is it? Your secret closet? I’m a little underwhelmed.”

  Uncle Ludwig smiled. He put his finger to his lips, and then said, loud and clear, “If books were food, I’d eat a feast, and savor every taste.” At these words, the door opened, and Uncle Ludwig led us out onto a narrow balcony with a wooden banister. “The tangy tales and pepp’ry myths, not one would go to waste,” he said, and the door closed behind us. I recognized the lines from a poem he recited all the time. But those thoughts quickly left my head when the lights came on and I saw the most amazing library spread out below me.

  The school’s main library, the one all students used, was depressing, dim, and uninviting; the books placed on rusty metal shelves. Here, I felt like I’d walked into an oil painting; it was radiant. Amber lighting lit up rows and rows of rich wooden shelves. Every detail was stunning, from the marble floor to the frescoes painted on the stucco ceiling. It smelled of old books: a little musty, leathery, and papery.

  We stood on a balcony at one end of the two-story space. The narrow walkway circled the room, with aisles leading off into the second-floor stacks. Below, wooden columns with decorative golden tops held up the balcony.

  “It’s amazing,” I said. I couldn’t stop staring. Everywhere I looked, there were beautiful details. I felt like I was floating through all the beauty, the view swirling through my brain and lifting my soul. I was sure a boys’ choir would start singing soon. It wa
s the most amazing room I’d ever seen, and I wanted to stay forever.

  “It’s . . . wow . . . ,” Syke said.

  Uncle Ludwig beamed. “It is my treasure. And when a cloud comes to visit, I will show him this room, and he will invite me to join them.”

  “A cloud?”

  “Covert Librarian Order Until Death,” he said. “The secret society that collects books and takes them to the Great Library. When I find a CLOUD, I’ll find the library.”

  We climbed down a spiral staircase in the corner. Uncle Ludwig showed us his book-restoration area, his cozy reading nook, his section on picture books. “This one is banned in fourteen countries,” he said. The book had a cartoon monkey and a man with a big yellow hat on the cover. “It’s considered very subversive.”

  The stacks were organized with a section for each of the seven Greater Realms of the Porvian Continent. The thirteen Lesser Realms were grouped together, as were the Island Realms. The Dismantled Realm was split into three sections, and there was a dark, forgotten section in the corner.

  “Look at this,” Syke said, coming out of one row. “The History of Worb.”

  “Upper Worb or Lower Worb?” I asked.

  “It just says ‘Worb.’ That’s what’s funny.”

  “It used to be a single country,” a familiar voice said.

  We looked over and saw Professor Zaida standing on a step stool as she pulled a book from the stacks.

  “Professor Zaida, what are you doing here?” I asked.

  “I’m the Literature professor,” she said. “And these are books.” She looked at us like it was obvious. “Plus I’ve lost my third-period zombie class.” That was true. After word of their work on Miss Merrybench got out, they’d been quickly recruited by Fraze Coldheart, who had a fondness for undead minions.

  Syke thumbed through the book. “I can’t imagine a complete Worb. Irma Trackno and Wexmir Smarvy despise each other.”

  “Which is why that history book is banned,” Professor Zaida said. “Smarvy would destroy this castle if he knew that book was here. He does not want any talk of reunification of the Worbs. Please forget you saw it.”

  “Uncle Ludwig?” I asked. “This is dangerous, isn’t it?”

  Uncle Ludwig nodded. “Dr. Critchlore wanted to shut it down, but then I presented him with The Top Secret Book of Minions, and he allowed me to continue as long as I added safety measures. I also had to promise to side with him whenever a family vote comes up.”

  “So you won’t vote ‘no confidence’ in Dr. Critchlore?” I asked, remembering what Vodum had said about the family vote.

  “Heard the rumors, have you?” Uncle Ludwig said. “I won’t vote against him, but the rest of the family is already looking for someone to replace him. There’s been talk of bringing in a more successful minion school headmaster to oversee operations here and get us back on top.”

  I gasped. “Not Dr. Pravus?” I said.

  “Some in the family think so, yes. He’s obviously brilliant. And quite charming. Derek is the only Critchlore who despises him.”

  That couldn’t be true. The man was a monster, and I mean that in the “mean and evil” sort of way, not the “cool and powerful” way.

  I stood there, stunned, unable to comprehend what he was suggesting—that the Critchlore family would fire one of their own and bring in Dr. Critchlore’s worst enemy. It was unthinkable.

  “What are the safety measures?” Syke asked, still holding that illegal book.

  “See that button by the fireplace?” Uncle Ludwig said. “It’s a self-destruct button. In the event of an EO finding out about this library, that button will destroy all the evidence.”

  I shuddered at the thought of all this beauty being destroyed by the push of a button.

  Professor Zaida shook her head as she stepped down from her perch. “Ludwig, I’m going to borrow these books on myths of the Plutharic Realm, if you don’t mind.”

  “By all means, Professor Zaida,” he said. “Just remember to return them this time, eh? I’d hate to lose more books to that paper-eating pooch of yours.”

  “I’m so sorry about that,” she said. “Runt, Syke.” She winked at us. “I’ll see you in class. Today is doughnut day, so don’t be late.” She disappeared behind the stacks.

  “Yes,” Syke said, pumping her fist in the air. “Doughnut day. I love Professor Zaida.”

  “There’s another exit over there,” Uncle Ludwig said, nodding at the spot where Professor Zaida had left. “It comes out of a rock wall in the dungeon, near the grotto. Don’t use it. The grotto is very unsafe.”

  “Because of Clarence?” I asked.

  “If that is the name of the flesh-eating fish monster, then yes. Those tentacles come out of nowhere.”

  I looked at all the books that Uncle Ludwig had collected. I’d never seen so many in one place.

  “Uncle Ludwig?” I asked. “Where’d you get The Top Secret Book of Minions? Can you get another one?”

  “The TSBM?” he said. “It took years to track that down. I finally found it in the shady region of Corovilla. It was fantastically expensive but worth it. Dr. Critchlore let me continue my work here, and now we own a priceless piece of history.”

  “Right,” I said. “So finding another copy?”

  “Would be impossible.”

  The number one item on my to-do list—redeeming myself for losing the book—just got a whole lot harder.

  The fable of Little Red Riding Cap teaches us to share, because if she’d shared her basket of food with the wolf, he wouldn’t have eaten her grandma. You can’t blame a wolf for being hungry.

  —RUNT HIGGINS’S LITERATURE ESSAY

  The number one item on my to-do list was impossible, but the number three item on my list, finding out where I came from, just got a little more interesting. Sara had said, “We are Ohtee.” Now I had a real library to find out what that meant.

  Uncle Ludwig had never heard of anything called Ohtee. He suggested I start looking in the Cyclop-edia, which was a whole row of books about everything. I found the “O–N” book, but when I opened it, I saw that large sections had been blacked out.

  “That set came from Bluetorch,” Uncle Ludwig said, sitting beside me at a table. “When Dark Victor came to power, he censored books but soon decided it would be easier to burn them.”

  I didn’t find an entry for Ohtee, or Otee, or O/T, but there was one for Oti. It read:

  The Oti tribe hails from the western slope and foothills of the SMUDGE mountains in SMUDGE.

  It didn’t say “SMUDGE”—that’s just what it looked like.

  The Oti were hunter-gatherers who lived in small bands without centralized political leadership. They were peaceful, but bound together to defend their territory from invaders. Known for their fierce fighting and SMUDGE.

  All the rest was blacked out.

  “Do you have another Cyclop-edia?” I asked Uncle Ludwig.

  “Encyclopedia. No, and my set is incomplete,” he said. “I don’t have an M. Do you see now how important it is to find the Great Library? Who can live in a world with no knowledge of things starting with M?”

  Syke had been exploring the stacks, but she returned to the table where Uncle Ludwig sat. “So where are your files on Runt?” she asked. “You must have collected lots of clues about where he came from, right?”

  “Er . . . files?”

  “Cook said you’ve been researching where Runt came from,” Syke continued. “For years. So what have you found out about him?” She sat down opposite him and leaned over the desk, capturing him in her glare.

  “I . . . um . . . that is . . . my files are upstairs, but I remember . . . Runt arrived here a few years ago—”

  “Eight years ago,” I corrected.

  “Right. Cook took him in, gave him her last name . . .” He looked around the room, then at his watch. “Goodness, look at the time. I must be off.”

  Syke shook her head.

  “You two must
leave as well.” He stood up and shooed us out.

  Syke’s brow was furrowed, and she walked like she was punishing the ground.

  “What’s wrong?” I asked. I pulled her to a stop in the castle’s foyer. We were still a few minutes early for Literature.

  “Uncle Ludwig. Heck, everyone here is so self-centered. Critchlore, Vodum, Frankenhammer, every one of them. They only care about their own stuff.”

  “What about Mistress Moira, Professor Zaida, Tootles and Riga . . . ?” I said.

  “Okay, fine, not them. But Uncle Ludwig is just like Dr. Critchlore—so wrapped up in his own work that he ignores everyone else. Which just reminds me of the fact that all my hamadryad relatives hate Dr. Critchlore, but they won’t tell me why.”

  “Really?”

  This conversation was making me nervous because I knew why the hamadryads hated Dr. Critchlore, why oak trees regularly pelted him with acorns when he passed near. I’d just found out from Dr. Frankenhammer that Dr. Critchlore had destroyed the forest where Syke had lived, killing her mother. He told everyone that he’d saved Syke from the fire, but it was a fire he’d caused on purpose. I didn’t want to tell Syke the truth, because then she would hate him, and if she hated him, she would leave the school.

  The sudden realization of what a huge hypocrite I was made me feel heavy with guilt, so I stepped away from Syke and sat down on the staircase.

  “They despise him,” Syke said, sitting next to me. “So I asked—why would you let me be raised by someone you hate?”

  I didn’t really understand that either. I knew she couldn’t live in the trees like regular hamadryads. I’d assumed Dr. Critchlore was their only option. Still, it made me wonder. “What did they say?”

  “They said I was too young to understand. I’m thirteen; I’m not a baby. I don’t know why they won’t tell me why they hate him. It must be something terrible.”

  It was. And I had to tell her. He’d killed her mother! But there had to be an explanation. Why hadn’t Critchlore known it was a hamadryad-protected forest? His family had lived in the castle for generations. I told myself that I needed more information before I could tell Syke the truth, but I knew I was stalling.