At last she followed Ian down a crumbling chimney, wedging her trembling feet and fingers in between bricks—and finally she crawled out of a hearth and into a room.
The room had no doors and no windows: the only exit was back up the chimney. It was black and gloomy, caked with dust, and raggedly furnished with bare mattresses, a low table piled with bric-a-brac, and heaps of mildewed garbage. Dirty dishes lay scattered around, cobwebs clogged the corners, and a silver chandelier hung over all, flickering with black, dripping candles.
Albert and Daphne were huddled together on a mattress, talking in low whispers, Phil was half asleep on some pillows, and Maurice was fiddling with a battered metal movie projector. Nora sat by herself, clutching a film canister; she beckoned Jo and Ian to sit with her in a pile of pillows. Everything was hushed and tense, but Jo hoped that whatever was going to happen would be quick. She ached to be back in bed.
Dugan sat at an ornate desk, looking at everyone solemnly. “Everyone’s here,” he whispered, and tapped the desk with a gavel. “Let’s bring this meeting to order. Albert, drinks.”
Albert Blatch-Budgins produced a twisty amber bottle, opened it, and took a gulp. The bottle was passed from squire to squire, each drinking in silence. When Jo’s turn came, she nervously sipped, and a smooth scorching juice rushed down her throat, bitter and fruity. It was all she could do not to cough it up. She passed the bottle on, and it finally rounded back to Dugan.
Dugan took a final pull and capped the bottle. “Down to business. First off—Jo, welcome to the Odd-Fish. I admit some of us had doubts about you, but not anymore. Catching the nangnang and finding those dolls of the knights…not bad for your first day.”
“Thank you,” murmured Jo. She dimly realized she was being complimented, but the soft pillows and fiery drink only made her want to fall back asleep.
Dugan nodded. “Next point of business. We hear that Sir Nils—”
“We’re not supposed to call him Sir Nils anymore,” said Maurice. “Sir Oliver said his knighthood has been revoked. Now he’s just the Belgian Prankster.”
“Thanks, Maurice. The Belgian Prankster…well, whatever you call him, it’s obvious the knights are keeping something from us. So I asked Albert and Daphne to spy on the knights’ meeting tonight.”
A dull ache pounded behind Jo’s eyes. She didn’t want to hear about the Belgian Prankster, she didn’t want to know any more—she buried herself in the pillows and felt foggy and thick.
“We only caught a little,” said Albert. “Sir Oliver was talking about how he tracked down the lodge. And what the Belgian Prankster was doing in there. In here.”
“And that’s what we don’t understand,” said Daphne. “In the lodge, he was…um…”
Ian looked at her oddly. “What?”
Daphne took a breath and said: “He was playing with those dolls. The ones Jo found this afternoon. He made them, and then he posed them around the lodge and acted like they were real. He talked to the dolls. He danced with them. He sat them around the table and ate with them, had tea parties with them…”
“He would get in fights with the Korsakov doll,” said Albert.
“He would kiss the Dame Lily doll,” said Daphne.
A horrible tingle crawled up Jo’s body. She dug her nails into her arms. The idea of the Belgian Prankster turning the lodge into an overgrown dollhouse was creepy enough. But the idea of the Belgian Prankster kissing that evil doll of Aunt Lily made her feel nasty all over.
Then she realized everyone was looking at her.
“What do you know about the Belgian Prankster, Jo?” said Dugan. “Sir Oliver said that where you’re from, he’s famous.”
“Well…that’s right, he is famous,” said Jo, trying to put her thoughts in order. “He had a television show…he went around the world doing strange things, like he covered everything in New York with orange carpet once, or he turned the Eiffel Tower upside down, or…um…”
All the squires were looking at her blankly.
“You must come from a very weird place,” said Daphne.
“Never mind,” said Jo. “I don’t really know anything about him, actually.”
“I do,” said Nora.
Everyone turned. Nora sat on the edge of her pile of pillows, her skin so pale it seemed to glow, her eyes bright and her body trembling. She held up her canister and said in a high, wild whisper, “I got this downtown. Teenage Ichthala. Advance copy.”
“Nora!” said Dugan. “You’ve had that all this time and haven’t told us?”
“How did you get it?” said Daphne.
“What happens? Have you watched it yet?” said Albert.
Jo was jolted awake. “Teenage Ichthala?”
“That’s what I was trying to tell you about before, Jo!” said Nora. “The most important show in Eldritch City!”
Ian exhaled loudly and said something under his breath.
“Can you…the…what’s it about?” said Jo.
Nora gave Ian a dirty look and said, “Okay, Jo. You know the Ichthala was kidnapped by the Silent Sisters thirteen years ago, right? Well, Teenage Ichthala is all about what the Ichthala is doing now. How she’s plotting to destroy the city with the Silent Sisters. And not only that—”
“Here we go,” muttered Ian.
Nora jerked around to face him. “What’s that mean?”
“Oh, nothing, nothing. Please, keep on talking.”
Nora glared at Ian and plowed ahead. “Anyway, I’ve already watched this episode, but I need to watch it again. There’s a couple of parts that look like they might have clues.”
It was all coming too fast for Jo. “Clues?”
“Don’t ask her about it, Jo,” groaned Ian. “Not unless you want to be here all night, listening to her conspiracy theories.”
“So you still won’t accept the truth!” said Nora. “Even after last night!”
“I have no idea what anyone is talking about,” said Jo.
“Let me ask you something, Jo,” said Nora quickly. “Haven’t you wondered why last night—on the beach, when you came with the fish—a lot of people were expecting Dame Lily? Why they were all shouting her name?”
“Well…yeah,” said Jo. “How did they know she’d be there?”
Nora said, “Because three episodes ago, on Teenage Ichthala, your aunt came back to Eldritch City. Barfed out of a giant fish.”
Jo looked around the room. Most of the squires were nodding.
Nora continued, “That’s why Teenage Ichthala is so important. Nobody knows why, but for the past year, a lot of things that happen on Teenage Ichthala end up happening in real life.”
“Like what?” said Jo.
“For instance, just before our lodge was stolen for real, our lodge got stolen on the show.”
Ian said, “Just a coincidence.”
“Oh, come on, Ian! What happened last night was beyond coincidence. Everybody in Eldritch City thought Dame Lily was dead. Nobody expected her to come back. But then she did come back, just like the show predicted.” Nora turned back to Jo and whispered: “That’s why people are scared. Because in the next episode…”
Jo had a dreadful feeling she knew what Nora would say next. “What?”
Nora waited as long as she could; then said, so quietly that Jo could hardly hear: “Because in the next episode, Ichthala came back to Eldritch City.”
Jo looked around, trying hard to hold on to her calm. She knew she was on dangerous ground now. The mood in the room had changed. The squires had the same expressions that Korsakov and Sefino had when they first remembered who Jo was—a look of queasy terror.
“Sounds like there’s a lot your aunt isn’t telling you,” said Nora. “Do you know what Sir Nils’s specialty had been for the Odd-Fish?”
“Not really…”
“You know how Sir Festus studies ludicrous weaponry, right? And Dame Isabel studies unusual smells?” said Nora, her words tumbling out more and more quickly. “Well, before
he became the Belgian Prankster, Sir Nils researched bad jokes for the Odd-Fish. His goal was to discover the worst joke, using scientific methods. So he wrote thousands of stupid riddles, dumb wisecracks, and unfunny scripts for nonexistent sitcoms, all rigorously proven to be incontrovertibly unhilarious by a mathematics that Sir Nils himself invented. Everyone was awed by Sir Nils’s grand ambitions. Some whispered that Sir Nils might even, in time, write an article even more pointless than Sir Oliver’s. Sir Nils was set to become the greatest Odd-Fish ever.”
Jo bit her tongue. This was probably not the time, she decided, to ask why Odd-Fish believed pointlessness was akin to greatness.
Nora continued: “The rumor is that while the Silent Sisters were taking over his mind, Sir Nils was writing his last theoretical television show. The director of Teenage Ichthala won’t admit anything, but a lot of people think the Belgian Prankster wrote all those episodes of Teenage Ichthala thirteen years ago. Why he wrote them, nobody knows. Maybe the only way he could deal with the horrible things the Silent Sisters were doing to him was to make a joke out of it. Or maybe he hadn’t become totally evil yet and he wrote this show as a coded message, to warn us what would happen when the Ichthala came. Either way, when the show’s run is finished, Sir Nils truly will have created the worst joke of all time. For its punch line will be the return of the Ichthala—the destruction of Eldritch City—maybe even the end of the world.”
The way this all rolled off Nora’s tongue, it was clearly something she’d said a thousand times before. But as she spoke, the squires were silent and tense, as though they were being told a ghost story. But if this is a ghost story, then I’m the ghost, thought Jo. She’s talking about me!
Daphne said, “So are we going to watch it or not?”
“Yeah, put it on!” said Albert.
Nora didn’t need to be asked twice. Jo watched carefully as Nora opened up her canister and threaded the film into the projector. Maurice and Phil hung a white bedsheet on the wall. Every bit of her twisted into frantic little knots. If this show was really about her life, what was she about to see?
A blurry circle of light sprang onto the sheet, jumping and flickering, and the projector’s clattering drowned out the burbling sound. Nora slapped the projector and twisted some knobs until the picture snapped into focus and the sound settled down. The other squires found spots on the couch and cushions to watch, all except for Nora, who sat on the floor close to the sheet, notebook and pencil in hand.
Jo watched anxiously as the words TEENAGE ICHTHALA jittered on the sheet. A fanfare of bells, drums, and organ blared as crude black-and-white images jerked across the screen—knights running around papier-mâché caves, women dancing in cheap-looking veils, an obviously fake model of Eldritch City on fire. It reminded Jo of low-budget movies Aunt Lily had done. A monster was running around the city, being chased by knights. Then people stood around making stupid jokes. Then more chasing, this time with women in veils.
The other squires watched with excited interest, but Jo found herself baffled. On the show, the Ichthala was a powerful monster, causing havoc wherever she went, with the Silent Sisters as her loyal army. Fire streamed from the Ichthala’s eyeballs as she flew around the city, demolishing all she touched. Jo couldn’t help but giggle, even when she was angrily shushed by the other squires. Teenage Ichthala was so wrong, so ludicrously far from her own life, that her dread collapsed into relief. Even the actress who played the Ichthala looked nothing like her: she was hidden under elaborate makeup that made her resemble a diseased lizard. Still, Jo found herself fascinated by the Ichthala’s icy, lonely eyes…That was supposed to be her…?
The day finally caught up with Jo. She let her heavy eyelids close as she listened to the stiff line readings, the explosions, and the tinny music mixed up in the clicking whir of the projector. The candles burned low and she started to doze; Jo curled up deeper into the pillows, warm and drifting, and as the show’s closing music played and the squires murmured around her, she finally fell asleep.
FOR the next couple of weeks Jo explored Eldritch City. Everything she saw fascinated her. It was all so different from home, even the air was different—the desert had smelled of clean dust and empty miles, but Eldritch City was soaked in dirty tropical stink, the wet breath of plants, the sweat of strangers, peppery smoke, brackish seawater, rotten cheese, melted manure on baking paving stones, the sweet fruity thrill of ten thousand flowers.
The streets thronged not only with people but also giant cockroaches, centipedes, and beetles, swishing about in jeweled capes and shimmering pantaloons, swinging chromium walking sticks and tipping precariously tall hats at each other. Near the swampy bottom of the mountain Jo also glimpsed gray eel-like creatures in shabby cloaks, eating a struggling baby octopus or hustling a jar of twitching worms to some unspeakable location. Some neighborhoods were twisty caves burrowing deep into the mountain, hung with strings of glowing paper lanterns; other neighborhoods were practically airborne, teetering off cliffs, propped up by scaffolding. The sheer size and variety of Eldritch City, its creatures and architecture, its noise and chaos, shook Jo’s brain, spurred her senses, made her feel sharp and alive.
Every neighborhood had its own holidays for its own local gods, and sometimes while Jo was exploring she would be swept up into a boisterous parade of Eldritchers who had, say, dyed their skin blue and were all wearing identical white robes, shaking branches of jingling bells at each other in a jerking, bouncing dance; or she would come upon a silent huddle of shrines that had been hastily constructed in the middle of the street, all chugging out clouds of thick, greasy smoke, each of them with a peephole through which Jo could just barely glimpse golden idols of squids, jellyfish, and crabs silently grimacing at each other in the foggy darkness. Some of the festivals seemed almost like games, with priests kicking around hairy, jeweled animal skulls or scampering after each other in some ancient form of hide-and-seek; but other rituals were ponderous and solemn, such as the agonizingly slow all-night procession of a giant balloon in the shape of a local whale-god, a floating mountain covered with candles and sparklers drifting in a billowing ocean of incense. Jo asked about what the festivals meant, but Eldritch City’s mythology was such a bewildering mishmash of thousands of gods and contradicting stories that even the people who could answer Jo’s questions seemed uncertain.
Jo spent most of her time with Aunt Lily, learning how to be a squire. With Sir Festus’s help, Aunt Lily showed Jo how to use the weapons in the Odd-Fish arsenal, including the notoriously clumsy flame-spurting double-sided lance that was the discriminating knight’s weapon of choice. Aunt Lily and Dame Delia also taught Jo how to fly an ostrich, swooping and diving hundreds of feet above Eldritch City, so high and fast Jo could hardly breathe for the thrill.
Aunt Lily guided Jo around her old haunts, meeting up with long-lost friends. Aunt Lily was always in a vivacious mood nowadays, joking with Jo, whispering in her ear, pointing out curiosities as they walked down the street. Strangers murmured excitedly when they saw the legendary Dame Lily, and Jo couldn’t help but feel proud. The day they visited Eelsbridge, the swamp neighborhood at the bottom of the mountain, a brilliantly vivid, flower-dripping, three-story hut on jointed stilt legs walked up to them—the home of one of the most distinguished eelmen in Eldritch City, and an old friend of Aunt Lily’s. Aunt Lily and Jo climbed up a flowered ladder and had tea with the eelman as the walking hut lurched beneath them, its bubbling iron pot swinging wildly over a fire pit, filling the air with sweaty, fishy-smelling smoke. Jo gawked at the eelman, a monstrous heap of greasy rags, wrinkled gray flesh, and throbbing blue eyes, who traded delighted gargles with Aunt Lily (who could speak eel-language fluently) as he delicately held his teacup between thumb and forefinger.
When they were alone, Jo asked Aunt Lily, “Have you seen that show Teenage Ichthala?”
“Oh yes! What a load of hooey!” cackled Aunt Lily. “If people believe that applesauce, we’ve got nothing to worry a
bout.”
“But Nora says the Belgian Prankster wrote it,” said Jo. “She says it predicts the future.”
Aunt Lily’s smile became brittle. “You’ve seen it, Jo. If that show was true, you’d look like a monster, and you could blow things up just by waving your hand.”
“But why were so many people expecting us when we came out of that fish? Didn’t the show predict that?”
“Sir Oliver and I are looking into it.” Aunt Lily’s face tightened, then relaxed. “Anyway, that fish happened to vomit us up right into the middle of a festival. They weren’t gathered there for us, exactly. Please, Jo! It’s best if you just leave the worrying to Sir Oliver and me.”
Jo did find it easier to leave her problems to Aunt Lily and Sir Oliver. There was so much to learn, so many new things to do, she felt it was impossible to take everything in. Even in the evenings, the knights would gather the squires together to give seminars about their own specialties: Dame Myra would show off some man-eating flowers or metallic, glassy blobs she’d collected in the fens, or Sir Alasdair would give each squire a different strange musical instrument and watch in silent amusement as they unsuccessfully tried to play them, never offering any help—not even when Nora’s instrument got angry, sprouted wings, and flew away. And Dame Isabel was notorious for making the squires smell dozens of her favorite odors and write essays about their impressions.
“A properly trained nose is a passport to a world of wonders!” Dame Isabel declared. “Do you know I can find my way through a maze blindfolded, simply by smelling my way? Are you aware that no matter where you hide in this city, I am able to track you down—using only my talented nose? I can even predict the weather! Jo! What does a thunderstorm smell like a week before it hits?”
“I honestly couldn’t say.”
“It smells precisely like boiled cabbage. The nose is a muscle!” Dame Isabel flared her nostrils, like a weight lifter flexing. “Most people use less than two percent of their nose! Do you know how much of my nose—”
The Order of Odd-Fish Page 16