Creature Keepers and the Swindled Soil-Soles

by Peter Nelson

  Gusto stood at the bow of a swan paddleboat, his massive Soil-Sole boots taking up the entire front of the boat. He struck a General George Washington crossing the Delaware River pose as Abbie and Doris, his crammed-in paddling prisoners, looked on. He faced them as they approached the shores of the island.

  “Look at all this wonderful activity!” he snarled, waving his hand toward the rafts, small barge, and tugboats. “In less than twenty-four hours, BUCK WILDE’S WILDE ISLE will be crawling with fans and tourists—along with plenty of worldwide witnesses watching live on their televisions—as the first of what will be many creatures is hunted down! The news will make its way to all cryptids everywhere, injecting fear into their hearts, instilling a distrust of all men, and feeding my legend!”

  “Scary speech for a guy standing in a plastic swan,” Doris said.

  Gusto glared at her, and lifted one of his massive boots. “Don’t make me crush you, old woman. I’m counting on you and the rest of your Creature Keepers to help me spread the word. They’ll whisper it to their cryptids as they tuck them in at night, unaware of their role in my master plan.”

  “And what plan is that?” Abbie said. “To be the biggest jerk, like, ever? I mean, you got the Soil-Soles, why send Buck all the way down to Brazil to hurt another creature? Why lie about Syd? What is it you really want?”

  “Me?” Gusto made an innocent face. “Why, I just want to bring the world closer together, that’s all.” He broke into an evil grin. “And as for the Soil-Soles, I’ll put them to good use, don’t you worry. I just can’t believe how easy it was to get my hands on them. I’ve got ol’ Georgie boy to thank for that.”

  “Georgie boy?” Doris said.

  “This doofus still thinks Jordan’s my grandfather.”

  “He walked right into the lake with them on,” Gusto said. “Just minutes after I’d dropped a scale in the water! Such a rookie mistake from a seasoned Creature Keeper. He must be getting rusty in his old age.”

  “Well, he’s twelve, so, yeah . . . his mind’s pretty much gone.”

  “And who said anything about hurting any creatures,” Gusto continued. “I’m just looking to open their cages, or at least rattle them. You see, like people, different cryptids respond to different threats. For the poor Mapinguari, it’s being hunted by man. For his attention-loving Sasquatch cousin, it’s losing the spotlight, and his fans. One by one, I’ll get to them, undoing the comfort and care your organization has so carefully constructed. In time, they’ll all be running scared. And then they can’t be controlled. And without control, they can’t be kept. It will be the end of them, and the end of the Creature Keepers.”

  RUMMMMBBLLE . . . A small, distant tremor shook from Mount Breakenridge. Gusto looked at it along with Abbie and Doris, then smiled down at them. “Hmm,” he purred. “Seems the pressure’s building around here, wouldn’t you say?”

  As they drifted onto the beach, Gusto kept his back toward Echo Island. Without turning, he held his arms out wide and grinned at Abbie and Doris, waiting for the reaction on his captives’ faces. “That’s it, soak it all in,” he said. “You are the first visitors to witness the soon-to-be-completed BUCK WILDE’S WILDE-ISLE! Is it not fantastic? Tell me what you see!”

  “Nice wooden beaver, there,” Doris said. “You make that yourself?”

  Gusto spun around. Sitting on the beach was the Badger Rangers’ completed, towering, unlit Bonding Bonfire Beach Badger—a hodgepodge of logs and sticks and driftwood all bundled together in the rough form of a giant badger, ready for its ceremonial torching.

  Gusto stepped out of the boat, splashing through the water, onto the shore. “What—what is this? Where are the food courts? My merchandise booths? WHERE IS MY JUMBO SCREEN?” Abbie and Doris grinned as they stepped out of the swan and joined him on the beach.

  One of Gusto’s Brazilian minions (the same one who had the unfortunate job of telling Gusto that his Heli-Jet had been stolen) sneaked up and tapped his boss on the shoulder. Gusto spun around to see all the rafts and boats floating in the shallows, parked and still loaded up with the gear for his island. “Sorry, boss,” he said. “We couldn’t get started. Because of the natives.”

  “Natives?” Gusto said. “What natives? Restless natives?”

  “No, boss. Really nice natives. Which makes kicking them off super awkward.”

  “Howdy!” A friendly voice spun Gusto around again. He looked onshore and saw Ranger Master MacInerney standing with Badger Rangers Tommy and Sinclair. “Welcome to the Forty-Seventh Annual International Badgeroobilee! How can we help you folks?”

  Gusto took a bounding step toward them. “You can help me,” he seethed, “by getting your tents, your canoes, and your ugly wooden beaver—OFF MY ISLAND!” He stomped his massive Soil-Sole, and the entire tiny island shook.

  Ranger Master MacInerney squinted as he stared straight at Gusto. “Badger Ranger Tommy, land use documentation, if you please.” Badger Ranger Tommy stepped up, pulled out a scroll, unrolled it, and began to read.

  “Ahem,” he said. “By order of the Canadian Province of British Columbia, the preserved land mass known as Echo Island is hereby granted this weekend to the Badger Rangers’ International Association for the exclusive purpose of celebrating their Forty-Seventh Annual Badgeroobilee. Congratulations, and enjoy. Signed, dated, notarized, and authorized, Secretary to the Governor General of Canada.”

  Gusto sneered. “None of that means anything to me.”

  “Well, I’ll help you,” Badger Ranger Sinclair said. “It means unless you’re a Badger Ranger, or an invited guest of a Badger Ranger, you’ll be getting back into your pretty little swan boat there, and paddling off somewhere else, sir.”

  Abbie and Doris stepped past Gusto and stood with the Badger Rangers. Behind them, other rangers were coming out of their tents, gathering around the giant wooden badger in the center of the beach, and suddenly looking not so polite.

  “Well, Gusto,” Abbie said. “You may outpower us, but we have you out-rangered. Why don’t you just leave these nice people alone.”

  Ranger Master MacInerney glanced at Abbie, recognizing her. “Oh, hello,” he said. “So nice to see you again. Glad you found your way here.”

  Gusto nodded, and took a few large steps back, until his Soil-Soles were submerged. He whipped off the coat, exposing his glittering, green-scaled Hydro-Hide beneath. A slow, horrible surging noise sounded on either side of Gusto and his flotilla of supply boats. The lake water rose up like two giant hands on either side of Gusto. He smiled at the fear in the faces of the rangers as they looked up at the towering walls of water hanging over them.

  “It is a lovely beaver,” Gusto said, nodding at their unlit badger bonfire. “But you might’ve been better off building an ark.”

  He clapped his hands together. BOOM! The water came together as well, smashing down on both sides of the little island, instantly washing Abbie and Doris away along with all the Badger Rangers, their tents, canoes, and the official Bonding Bonfire Beach Badger. In seconds, the entire island was cleared off as the crashing water flushed everything up the lake, toward Mount Breakenridge.

  When the waters around the island calmed, Gusto turned to the Brazilian workers floating behind him with their unloaded gear. “Well, what are you waiting for?” he said. “Soon the sun will be up, and guests will be arriving! Get to work, and build me my WILDE ISLE!”

  Farther north, the water surged like white-water rapids, shooting Abbie, Doris, the fifty or so Badger Rangers, and their massive wooden bonfire structure along with it. They all swam and scrambled onto the giant driftwood badger, and Abbie pulled Doris up onto the rickety structure. The Badger Rangers quickly went to work yanking planks off their creation and using them as paddles, then expertly maneuvered the makeshift raft past rocks and through the shoals of Harrison Lake.

  Abbie and Doris held on tightly as the giant badger creaked and shifted, riding out the flume of water created by Gusto’s tantrum. The Badger
Rangers worked as one, navigating and turning each bend of Harrison Lake until they reached the far end—where they met the giant toe boulders at the base of Mount Breakenridge.

  SMASH! Their rickety badger-craft slammed into the stone toes, sending rangers flying into the lake and onto the pebbly beach. Abbie clung to one of the boards still connected to the tower, calling out to the dark, sloshing water.

  “Doris!” she yelled into the darkness. “Doris, where are you?”

  “I’m over here, dearie!” Abbie heard Doris’s familiar voice behind her. “And look who caught me!” She turned toward the beach. On the rocks, among the strewn boards and chunks of wood, Doris smiled, lying safely in the arms of Syd.

  25

  The rising sun cast a pink glow across the Amazon jungle. Jordan and Eldon had been trudging silently through the thick foliage for hours, stopping only so that Eldon could check his compass and adjust their course toward the river.

  As the morning light began to break through the darkness, Jordan decided he would try to break through the tension hanging over him and Eldon.

  “Eldon, I’m really sorry. I know I should’ve listened to you. You said to let you do the talking, so of course, I had to open my mouth and ruin everything. Again.”

  Eldon stopped, checked his compass, and walked on. Jordan continued, “I want to be the best Creature Keeper since my grampa Grimsley. But the harder I try, the more I realize I’m nothing like my grandfather.”

  Eldon stopped so suddenly that Jordan slammed into him. He spun around and glared, red in the face. “Of course you’re nothing like your grandfather, precisely because you try so hard! Having Grimsley as a last name doesn’t give you the responsibility—or the right—to run around trying to save the entire cryptid world!”

  Jordan stared back at Eldon. He’d never seen him this upset, never mind with him. “I—I thought you needed my help,” he said.

  “I did, you—you nincompoop!” He shouted back. “I needed your help last spring, when I asked you to watch Bernard for me! I needed your help staying with your sister to care for Syd! I needed your help back there with a touchy Brazilian Mapinguari who’d recently lost his keeper! But each time, you refused to help me and decided to go your own way! And each time something disastrous has happened! Yes, your grandfather did great things. But before greatness came patience. Before he learned how to help, hide, or hoax, your grandfather learned how to be humble. He had to teach himself the first lesson in being a Creature Keeper, one that I’ve been trying to teach you—how to care for a Creature.”

  Jordan felt a chill down his spine. Eldon looked down at his compass, then up at the sun in the sky. He spoke without looking back at Jordan. “Your grandfather made plenty of mistakes, too, by the way.” He started off again through the jungle. “But he knew he had to learn to crawl before he could try to run.”

  The sun rose higher in the sky as they continued hiking, and soon they could hear the rushing of the Amazon River. As exhausted as they were, they picked up their pace, excited to see the water, and hopeful to find their friends waiting for them. When they finally broke through the brush, all that was there at the jungle’s edge was the ruined remnants of Palafito, the riverside floating village.

  The damage was worse than Jordan remembered. The banks of the Amazon were littered with what used to be people’s homes, their boats, their livelihoods. It seemed less an act of an angry river and more a violent attack from some evil force. Of course, Jordan and Eldon knew that the cause of this disaster was an unnatural combination of both.

  They stood where El Encantado used to be, and picked through the litter that once was the cantina. There wasn’t much left.

  Jordan stood on a pile of waterlogged scraps of wood that were once Manuel’s juice bar. “This is where I saw him,” he said.

  “Saw who? Gusto?”

  “No. Izzy’s shadowy stranger.”

  Eldon looked at Jordan. “You didn’t mention that.”

  “I didn’t know who it was at the time. But Izzy’s stories last night got me thinking. If that weird bartender was to be believed, the stranger was there to find Gusto. He certainly went crazy when he showed him this.” Jordan pulled out the napkin from his backpack. Eldon looked down and read the writing: G. WAS HERE.

  Eldon looked up at Jordan. “If the G is for Gusto, and it’s the same figure who was whispering to Izzy about how dangerous Gusto is to cryptids, then it adds up. But Jordan”—Eldon caught Jordan’s eye—“how can you be sure the G wasn’t for Grimsley?”

  “I can’t be sure,” Jordan said.

  They both stared out over the water, where the patio to El Encantado used to be. “He ransacked my hut and took my grandfather’s journal,” Jordan said. “I really wish I had it back. There’s something in there I’m dying to read again. It’s probably nothing, but he wrote some side notes about something called cryptosapiens—creatures who turn from animal form into human form. My grandfather tracked down the myths, and came up with nothing. It was just a bunch of local legends. A dead end.”

  “So why do you want to read it again?”

  “There was something in there, some folklore he came across, having to do with the tears of a cryptosapien, having some powers or something. I was reminded of it the night I was here, and watched the stranger with Manuel. I could be wrong about what I saw, but . . . he may have collected Manuel’s tears.” He looked at Eldon. “Crazy, right? I mean, Grampa Grimsley decided it was just a myth, local folktales.”

  “Maybe,” Eldon said. “But like I said, your grandfather made mistakes, too.”

  “SKRONK!”

  They both looked toward the water. Jordan knew that sound. He and Eldon ran to the river bank. The Amazon was churning and bubbling in front of them. They backed away slowly, carefully preparing for another possible Gusto attack.

  “SKRONK!”

  Jordan stepped forward again. “Manuel?” he said.

  SPLOOSH! Suddenly, the two of them were doused with river water. They looked up to see Nessie bobbing in the Amazon on her back. She flicked her great flipper and soaked them again.

  “Nessie!” Eldon shouted out. “Boy are we glad to see you!”

  The Loch Ness Monster responded to this greeting by diving below. This seemed a bit rude, even for her. A moment passed, and another eruption of water revealed the large submarine belonging to the Creature Keepers. The hatch flew open and a shock of orange curly hair emerged. It was attached to a pudgy boy wearing all plaid. He looked older than last time Jordan saw him, but Jordan still recognized him instantly. Alistair MacAlister, Nessie’s Scottish Keeper.

  “What are you two doin’ way south of the equator?” Alistair shouted. “Don’t ya both know there’s spiders the size of me buttocks down here?”

  “Outta the way!” A large black paw pushed the Scot into the river, where Nessie dived to lift him back up onto the sub. The black paw belonged to Bernard. Most of the Floridian Skunk Ape’s black-and-white fur had grown back, and he looked much more dignified without his ill-fitting Badger Ranger uniform. He leaped from the sub onto the shore and scooped up Eldon and Jordan in his big shaggy arms, giving the two of them great hugs.

  “Thank goodness you’re all right!” he said, staring into Eldon’s eyes.

  “Yes, I’m fine, Bernard, thank you,” Eldon said. “Although there’s a good possibility you’ve cracked two or three of my ribs.”

  Bernard set the two of them down. He studied Eldon’s face. “What is it? What’s wrong? There’s something wrong. You can’t keep it from me, what is it?”

  “It’s Izzy,” Eldon said. “He’s frightened away his Keeper, and he didn’t take too kindly to us, either. I fear I may have lost him to the wild.”

  “So he’s out there in that tangled mess, all by his lonesome?” Alistair said.

  “We have to try to get him back,” Bernard said. “Don’t we?”

  “Jordan reported that Syd may be in danger,” Eldon said. “And there’s a chanc
e that Gusto may have Syd’s Soil-Soles.”

  “Aye,” Mac said. “We received a distress call from CKCC on our way here. Doris and Abbie reported in. Gusto’s got them. He’s up to something.”

  “Well, that settles it,” Eldon said. “As much as I hate to leave Izzy unattended, Gusto’s far too dangerous, especially with those Soil-Soles. I’m gonna need every capable Creature Keeper I have.”

  Bernard helped Eldon onto the submarine, then turned back. “Perhaps I should stay behind. Once I found him, he and I could sit and chat, get him to reconsider his options.”

  “That’s a nice notion, Bernard,” Eldon said. “But Izzy’s not really a sit-and-chat kind of creature. Besides, the last thing I need right now is another unsupervised cryptid wandering around the Amazon jungle.”

  Bernard climbed aboard and looked back at the shore. “You’re awful quiet, Jordan.”

  “Aye!” Alistair chimed in. “You up for battling that Gusto scum-bum again?”

  “No.”

  They all stopped and looked back at Jordan still standing on the shore. “I’ll leave the battle to you guys,” he said. “I’m going to find Izzy and keep him safe.”

  Bernard and Alistair both shot Eldon a worried look. “That’s a nice gesture, laddie,” Alistair said. “But that jungle’s huge—how are you gonna search it all by yourself?”

  Eldon smiled at Jordan. “I imagine he’ll crawl, if he has to.”

  Jordan smiled back. “Just promise me two things, you guys. Make sure my sister and Doris are safe—”

  “You got it,” Bernard said.

  “—and stop that slimy scum-bum once and for all.”

  “With great pleasure,” Alistair said.

  “SKRONK!”