by Barbara Else
Rufkin ducked under a table to see if…ow. He’d bumped heads with Nissy.
She rubbed her forehead, scowling. “It’s stupid if we both check the same places.”
He set his teeth. “I’ll take the side of the park nearest the river. You take the rest.”
“Do it, then.” She backed out.
Rufkin crawled out frontwards.
The grandmotherly woman was gesturing like a traffic cop. “We have warm thistle salad. We have bread from ground dandelion root.”
“Port Feather has failed us,” cried the spiky-haired man. “Who needs a mayor or council? We’ll be self-sufficient.”
“Eat and enjoy!” cried the woman.
Everyone dug forks into their food. The air hummed with people pondering their first tastes.
Rufkin heard Nissy’s voice. “What happens when the thistles are used up? Or when it’s not dandelion-root season?”
“Good point,” cried a fat man. “We’ll starve.”
“We’ll swell up if there’s only beans,” called a thin woman.
A bellow came from the other side of the crowd. “Look! Here’s Jolliman.”
The Mayor was limping into the park. Good—he’d sort everyone out and…
“Spendthrift!” cried the white-haired woman. “Architect of our ruin! Mayor and council have bungled our finances.”
“True!” shouted the red-haired man. “City rates should have been spent on a lizard protection plan.”
“Not on sets of swings and merry-go-rounds that cost three million dolleros,” yelled an ogre.
“They didn’t,” cried the grandmotherly woman. “Somebody lined his own pocket with most of that money.”
The Mayor spread his hands wide. “I agree we must sort out the accounts. But you can’t stay here.”
“Who says?” somebody shouted.
“You won’t like it when it rains and your tents blow down,” the Mayor shouted back.
That was a good point. They really should listen to him. Rufkin hated camping in bad weather.
Nissy gave a sudden wave at a bike rack. Between it and a hedge was the trundler. Vosco was sitting next to it on the grass, still wearing the beanie. And holding the trumpet.
Rufkin was stuck behind a table for a moment. “Vosco!” he cried.
The kid grinned. He raised the right end of the trumpet to his mouth and blew hard. The sound that rumped out was very like a troll who needed the bathroom.
As the rumptipaze died away, Rufkin saw the puppet sit up in the cart, the sack round its shoulders. The downhill rush must have righted the clockwork. It coughed like an out-of-date message-bird. Its head in the yellow sun hat turned this way and that. From the grass Vosco beamed up at it.
“Where is the mine?” said the puppet’s rusty voice.
“Where’s its what?” asked a man.
“Where’s Professor Perkitty?” This time the puppet sounded more realistic. It even stood up in the trundler. “What happened to the engineers? Where am I?”
“The park,” shouted a child in the crowd.
Other children joined in. “Next to Jovial River.”
“Port Feather.”
“In silly trousers.”
“In a fish cart.”
A tiny hiccup shook the puppet. “Port Feather,” said the mechanism.
Someone laughed. “It’s escaped from Butterly & Finnick’s window.”
“It sounds like a delegate on the Council of Wisdom,” a man cried. “But look at those clown pants.”
The crowd had mostly turned to watch.
“It’s a royal on vacation,” somebody shouted.
Everyone burst into laughter. The puppet hiccupped once more as if it had stage-fright. It was sure to collapse again any second. Vosco had started to look as if the crowd worried him. Rufkin wondered if he should get him out of the way.
But there was no time. Mayor Jolliman stood in front of the bike rack and raised his arms. “Brave people of Port Feather. I have put together this performance myself for your enjoyment. It is an apology for any mismanagement by misguided members of the city council.” He beckoned Rufkin. “Quick, boy. Give me a line to say.”
Rufkin took a step or two, faltering. The crowd was a weight, prickling and freezing. A few paces from the trundler, he couldn’t move.
The puppet pulled off the sun hat and stared at it. Rufkin could almost see how its clockwork brain moved. It must be like one of those mechanical pianos that played a different set of notes depending on what metal cylinder the gears clicked into place. Then it blinked at the crowd.
For the first time he thought, It could be real now. This could truly be a mechanical figure gradually transformed by royal magic into somebody real.
“Does it tell ‘Once Upon a Time?’” called a little girl.
The puppet’s mouth opened and twitched. “Once upon—a time…”
The crowd settled down, nudging one another.
The puppet blinked again. “…the King and Queen, brother and sister, decided—it was high time for the people to govern themselves.”
“Lazy twerps!” called a woman.
“Shut up!” cried someone else. “Let it go on.”
For a moment the mechanism seemed to strike a hitch. Then the puppet continued. “They took advice from every quarter and brought together a group of talented people. But—a grave danger came…” As if the puppet couldn’t remember the right words, it raised both hands and snapped its fingers like pretend alligators.
The crowd roared the answer. “Cave-lizards!”
The puppet’s voice settled into husky and soft, though it carried well. “The—um—minuscule saurian mud-dwelling sharp-tooth, in great numbers. The Council of Wisdom spent many weeks deciding what should be done. Fire-lizards began to appear. The King was exhausted by years of struggle and the council packed him off on vacation…”
“Shut the thing up!” shouted a man. “It’s just Jolliman hoping to jolly us.”
“Chuck him in the river!” roared somebody else.
The Mayor spread his arms again. “I agree there is serious fault. But the fault is not mine. I blame…” He caught sight of Rufkin. “Ah! I blame the man who sold us those overpriced roundabouts!” He spread his arms wider. “I blame Tobias Robiasson!”
Rufkin’s breath stopped up in his chest.
“You can’t blame a star,” somebody yelled.
“He’s so proud of his handsome face he despises the rest of us!” cried the Mayor.
All Rufkin could do was stare at Nissy—she was staring at the Mayor as if he’d gone crazy.
“I blame the bigwigs in the City of Spires!” continued the Mayor. “I blame the royals with their high-flying ways, lording it over us!”
“So what’s this puppet meant to be?” yelled a young man. “Brainless bigwig politician or a lazy royal?”
Half the crowd roared and rolled about as if it was truly funny. The other half squinted and wrinkled their noses as if nobody should make fun of a royal. The puppet put a jerky hand to its head again, then looked at its fingers. Some of the rust and blue dust had come off its hair.
Vosco stood up and tapped the puppet’s arm with the trumpet. It glanced down and its eyes widened. “Vosco?” it said. “Ew. What a filthy beanie.”
Nissy looked as if she’d just figured out something. Probably the amount she could have made on the puppet. Rufkin reckoned it was disgusting how everyone cared so much about dolleros. It was doubly disgusting how the Mayor threw blame everywhere and ducked it himself.
“Lazy royal!” bellowed a man. “We should rip it to bits.”
“Interactive drama!” somebody cried. “Give me first go!”
This had turned dangerous. Rufkin moved closer to Vosco.
A deep voice rang out. “Hey!”
The crowd turned, startled. The ragged pair from First Avenue was staggering into the park. It was Calleena and Harry. He looked angry enough to throttle a hippo-goose.
&n
bsp; He shouted again. “Wait! Calm down. Listen to me!”
Wait for Murdering Harry? No way!
Rufkin grabbed Vosco’s hand and started running past the bikes and bushes.
“Vosco!” cried the puppet.
The whole crowd exclaimed and cried out.
“Rufkin!” barked Harry. “Wait! Let me through to him!”
The crowd laughed and screamed. “Blame the Mayor!”
“Blame the royals!”
“Blame the Robiassons!”
Rufkin hauled Vosco past a bed of red roses. Here was the edge of Jovial River. A notice said Canoe Rental. In the water were skiffs, red pedal-boats, canoes, and kayaks. Someone seemed right behind them—he had a look—blast—of course, Vosco had dragged the puppet along too. Rufkin grabbed the thing by its belt and heaved it into a rowboat. He shoved Vosco after it, tried to jump in himself, slipped and went under. He spluttered up and fell into the boat—ow! He’d bashed an elbow.
The boat-hire man was scrambling from his booth. “Hey! You have to pay first.”
But the oars were in place. Rufkin pushed off from the bank. “Here’s twenty dolleros!” He fished in his jacket pocket—no, he’d given the money away days ago. “I’ll pay later. Promise.” He splashed the oars into the water.
“Blast you,” the man yelled. “Make sure you do. One adult, two kids. Stay this side of the sign! Watch out for the current—you won’t be strong enough. Watch out for…”
Rufkin’s ears were full of water. But Harry’s voice was still bellowing. So was the crowd.
One stroke—two—a third—and Rufkin was well out into Jovial River. He glanced behind to make sure Vosco was all right.
The kid still held the trumpet. He was sitting in the puppet’s lap and it had the sun hat on again. All Rufkin could see of its face was the pointed chin.
“Boy,” said the puppet. “When you catch your breath, please explain what’s going on.”
Vosco grinned. “Help.”
The puppet hugged Vosco and let out a sob.
At last, Rufkin got it. The puppet was real. There in red clown pants was Sibilla, Queen of Fontania.
Rufkin almost lost his grip on an oar. He tried to keep rowing. But it was wrong to turn his back on the Queen. For a stroke or two he kept facing her. Ow, it twisted his neck.
“Explain, please!” cried the puppet—Her Majesty.
But he was fighting with the current now. The hire man had warned him. The park was already out of sight. How far was it from here to the mouth of the river? He didn’t want to be swept down to Old Ocean.
“Vosco,” said the Queen, “where’s your mother? Where’s your dad? How on earth did you get here? How did I get…?” She stopped and coughed.
Rufkin fought for the bank. He couldn’t manage. His shoulders ached.
The Queen tapped his shoulder. “Vosco seems to know you. Has he said anything?”
“Only help and meow,” Rufkin answered. “What’s wrong with him?”
“He can talk, he just doesn’t bother.” The rowboat wobbled. The Queen must be jiggling Vosco. “His mother manages charity lunches for a thousand schools—his father’s a diplomat—no time to chat, so he isn’t encouraged. I wish he’d talk now.” It sounded as if the Queen wanted a little cry. “Please, boy—what are we doing here?”
“Just a moment.” He had to keep battling the current.
The water looked sweaty with oil. Clumps of tar lay on the banks. A corner of Nissy’s notebook pressed into his ribs. It was soaked, and too bad. The dinghy passed a sign. He didn’t spot it soon enough to read what it said, but it had red lettering. That usually meant danger, or at least You’re stupid if you don’t read this. He started to worry—but no, whatever it said, he was with the Queen. She’d had plenty of royal adventures, some with Lord Hodie. Magic and the dragon-eagles would protect her. So he and Vosco would be all right too. Of course they would. Probably. He just had to row to the bank.
“Oh, I’m dizzy,” said the Queen. “Limp as jelly. Was I really in a fish cart?”
“You’ve been unconscious for—I don’t know, days.” Rufkin could hardly lift the oars out of the water now. He let the boat drift for a minute. She’d be too weak to help.
Jovial River had widened. Pink parakeets whirred overhead. Blue willows and red spiky grasses lined the riverside. Even if he could manage the current, Rufkin didn’t see a safe spot to land.
“Boy?” The Queen sounded stronger.
“Yes, Ma’am,” he said. “My name’s Rufkin. Please excuse my back to you, Ma’am.”
“Don’t fuss,” said Queen Sibilla. “Just tell me, Rufkin, what’s going on?”
“Ma’am, if you’ll excuse me, I hoped you could tell me.”
“This is not promising,” muttered the Queen.
Rufkin rowed several strokes with the right oar to move nearer the west bank. It didn’t work too well. But they’d reached a slower patch of water. He had a part-rest again and tried to explain what he could. How he’d found the riverboat stuck in the mangroves. How everything, phones, traffic, the Great Bridge of Size, had been undermined or broken down, slowly at first then all at once. How the rusty launch drifted or sometimes the wind seemed to push it. The knot of shipping. How everything at Port Feather had broken down too.
“Captain Thunderhead called it the end-of-days…” He shouldn’t say this but it blurted out anyway. “You were meant to examine the cave-lizards and put things right.”
The Queen gave a sad little laugh. “I know what the newspapers said. It was never going to work so easily. Yes, I can communicate with the dragon-eagles. But the world’s changing so fast, I think they just want to be left alone. I don’t blame them. We had to see where the cave-lizards first came from, to figure out what had caused the plague and how to end it. So I set off. Some people—” it sounded as if she said that through clenched teeth— “warned me against it. But it didn’t seem so very dangerous. I had a professor of biology, other scientists, advisers from the Council of Wisdom, chief engineers from the mine. That’s the Butterly Ventures mine up Lazy River.’
She went on an expedition in her crazy pants? Rufkin couldn’t help but glance round at them.
She laughed in a more truly amused way. “They’re ridiculous and tough and I love them.”
“Sorry,” stammered Rufkin.
His jacket had dried a bit, which made things more comfortable. At last he was near the bank. But the water swirled over rocks, so he eased away. A broken branch floated down and nearly struck one of the oars out of his grip.
The Queen kept talking in those little bursts of trying to remember. “Outside the mine—very dirty holding ponds where they wash the lazulite—then we went inside, down in little trucks—around on turntables—further down in a safety cage—I pretended very hard that I wasn’t scared. We had masks on, protective gear. And there were lanterns. We reached a cavern—one of the engineers said it was where the miners refused to continue, nearly three years ago. Madam Butterly herself had to go down and make them break through. It turned out to be the biggest lazulite deposit ever known. Then what happened? Not to her—what happened to me? Deep, very deep, we heard an explosion. All I remember—I sensed something huge. I saw a glow, was it…green?”
He glanced back. Her hand was gesturing near her forehead as if she touched an invisible crown.
“For a moment I felt so lonely,” she murmured. “Deserted. Desolate. Then another explosion…”
“Boom,” said Vosco.
“I remember a safety cage again—was I going back up?” she muttered. “Another turntable—they were Robiasson turntables. That dreadful little man in the park mentioned Robiasson, didn’t he?”
Rufkin felt sick. He might even be sick over the side if he heard any more against his parents. He should have told the Queen his surname. He couldn’t now.
He cleared his throat. “So, someone must have got you back onto the riverboat. Then—I don’t know, maybe they were all ov
ercome by fumes or something. After all, the explosion must have made you unconscious. You were like that for days.”
“So lonely,” breathed the Queen. “Hurting with grief.”
She’d better not mention his parents again, that was all. Rufkin leaned as far forward as he could, dipped the oars and hauled back. The current was swift in the middle of the river but not as strong here near the bank. Thick curtains of the blue willows trailed in the water. He thought of the red-lettered sign, and something made him change course.
From nearby came a growl like an engine. If it was working, it must be an old one. That might mean they’d be rescued. He cheered up a little and rested the oars.
There, through some branches, beyond a curve in the river and coming upstream, was the hull of a large yacht. She might have been using an engine but she was also under sail, a jib, and a mainsail full-bellied and brave. On the funnel a blue sign glinted. As she rounded the curve, Rufkin could see three decks.
“Vosco, it’s help! Real help at last. That’s the Sea Honey,” he told the Queen. “She was there in the tangle. With luck, Madam Butterly might have got herself back on board. Even if she didn’t, whoever is there will take care of Vosco and you, Ma’am…” He couldn’t be perfect-polite any longer. “They’ll take care of me too. Madam Butterly knows my parents. I am the son of Tobias and Maria Robiasson. They’re very well known of course. And they make the turntables.” It was taking a risk. But Rufkin felt smug.
~
The engine-like growl came again surprisingly close.
“Help!” shrieked Vosco.
Rufkin swung himself around. A swirl of water at the side of the boat almost looked like a long head, its nose sniffing him.
The Queen let out a scream. “Keep your hands inside the boat! Give me an oar!”
The swirl burst up. In the spray Rufkin saw leathery lips, a jaw crammed with teeth. Alligator! It was half-grown but still enormous.
He thrust out an oar. The teeth crunched together, sinking into the shaft. The Queen ripped the other oar from its rowlock, held it in both hands and bashed the snout. Rufkin’s oar started to splinter between the jaws.
“Let go!” He couldn’t believe he was screaming at a monster in a tug-of-war. “Get off!”