The Order of Odd-Fish

by James Kennedy

  One afternoon Audrey and Jo picked the lock to Dame Delia’s secret dissection lab, and they spent hours examining dozens of Dame Delia’s dead monsters. A huge spider was still spread on the dissection table, its underbelly opened up to expose its colorful guts; other creatures floated in barrels, hung from the ceiling, or were squashed away in drawers; still others were sliced into sheets and bound like books. Audrey stole what looked like a furry starfish and hid it in Ian’s bed, and that night Ian’s roar of shock woke up the entire lodge, and Audrey and Jo had to bite their pillows to muffle their hysterical giggling. (This was part of Audrey and Jo’s campaign to torture Ian until he got rid of his mustache. When he finally shaved it off, Audrey organized a small funeral for it.)

  Sir Oliver’s astronomical observatory wasn’t off-limits, but the squires and even the knights stayed away lest they disturb the great man at his work. But when Jo and Audrey knocked on his door, Sir Oliver opened it with relief and invited them in for a tour.

  “You came just in time,” said Sir Oliver. “My dithering isn’t what it used to be. It’s become harder and harder to fritter away the entire day.”

  Sir Oliver showed them around his observatory, packed with telescopes, star charts, and whirring machines. “I don’t know the first thing about astronomy!” Sir Oliver admitted cheerfully. “As a result, I’ve done some first-rate dithering in here. You see, I keep all the equipment broken, so I can fiddle with it for hours.”

  Jo asked, “If all you do is dither, how do you manage to do anything useful?”

  “Useful…?” said Sir Oliver, as if this was a new word to him.

  “Like when you found the lodge and brought it back?”

  “Oh, I don’t know,” said Sir Oliver brightly. “But I do know that when I was young, I noticed that the more I wanted something, the less likely it was that I’d get it. Therefore, it stood to reason that the less I wanted something, the more likely it was that I’d get it. The lesson is clear: if I have a problem, I ignore it—but I ignore it in an advanced, sophisticated way. Sooner or later the problem usually solves itself. Such is dithering.”

  “How did you learn how to dither?” said Audrey.

  “Practice,” said Sir Oliver gravely. “For twenty years I lived in my mother’s basement and did nothing at all. It is not a training to be undertaken lightly.”

  Jo loved exploring with Audrey, but it was on her own that she found her favorite thing in the lodge. One evening, while creeping through the crawl spaces, she discovered a peephole to Sir Alasdair’s and Dame Isabel’s bedroom. It was only nine o’clock, but the Coveneys were already in their matching pajamas, reading in separate beds.

  Jo saw Sir Alasdair had a sly look; he said something to Dame Isabel that Jo couldn’t hear, and they both excitedly kicked off their sheets and ran over to something that looked like a homemade organ, an ungainly engine connected by hundreds of wires and rubber tubes to an oak cabinet of labeled bottles. Another tube connected the cabinet to a gas mask.

  Sir Alasdair sat at the keyboard, Dame Isabel strapped on the gas mask, and after adjusting some switches and dials, Sir Alasdair started to play the organ. Jo didn’t hear any music, but Dame Isabel began dancing in a wild, looping jig, one hand waving around frantically, the other clutching her gas mask, huffing and snorting with gusto.

  The next day Jo and Audrey sneaked into the Coveneys’ room to investigate. They discovered the machine was a smells organ—each key on the keyboard, when pressed, caused a different smell to spray into the gas mask. They also found handwritten sheet music, Sir Alasdair’s attempts to write the very first “Symphony for the Nose.”

  Jo and Audrey spent a happy afternoon abusing the smells organ. One of Jo’s smell-songs started with a trill of leather, seaweed, and popcorn, then climbed scales of soap, hot sand, and burning hair, and finally burst in a flourish of rose, blood, and wet dog. Audrey played arpeggios of steak, cigar, boy sweat, hair spray, and horses, and then noodled with nutmeg, ozone, and lemon. Jo discovered a sublime chord of autumn leaves, banana pie, morning breath, and cilantro.

  Then they heard Sir Alasdair clumping up the stairs. They escaped just in time. But the next day the Coveneys’ door had a new lock, and this time it was too hard to pick.

  But sometimes, late at night, Jo would sneak in the crawl space and peek again into the Coveneys’ room. And occasionally she would see Sir Alasdair grunting as he played the organ, and Dame Isabel pressing the gas mask to her face, waving her free arm in the air, staggering in jerky ecstasy. Jo didn’t know why she liked to watch this. It was embarrassing and strange. But it was also the picture of happiness. She watched it hungrily.

  On Tuesdays the squires met at a café near the lodge. It was a dingy, nameless place, its walls yellowed with decades of smoke and stains; an ornery dog skulked under the tables, biting ankles, and the food was godawful, but Jo felt at home here. It reminded her of her old café back in Dust Creek. It even had a similar smell, of cigarettes, burnt coffee, and grease.

  The squires held weekly meetings at the café to help each other figure out what their specialties would be. To become an Odd-Fish knight, a squire had to invent a new specialty for the Appendix and write an original article about it. This caused some worry among the squires, for after a thousand years of Odd-Fish history, almost all the good ideas had already been done. All the squires were here, as well as Audrey, who was curious to see what an Odd-Fish squires’ meeting was like.

  Today was Nora’s turn to present her theories about Teenage Ichthala. Her corner booth was dripping with loose papers, convoluted diagrams, and scrawled-upon napkins; she was standing on her chair, her swirly, snaky black hair even more hyperactive than usual and her lip trembling, as she got ready to speak.

  Jo sipped her coffee apprehensively. After their first morning in Eldritch City, Aunt Lily had explained little about the Ichthala. Her answers to Jo’s questions were so vague it almost seemed as if she was holding something back. But almost everyone in Eldritch City was like this. It was as if even to mention the Hazelwoods or the Ichthala were in bad taste. This left Nora, as fanatical and paranoid as she was, as one of Jo’s few sources of information.

  “I’ve finally got it,” said Nora, waving Audrey’s scripts around. “I’ve got it—the truth, the secret, everything. It had been there all along, all in these scripts! It just needed to be dug up, brushed off, translated, solved. What I’ve found may be invisible to the layman—”

  “Or sane people,” said Ian.

  “—but I’ve discovered a subtle code running through all these Teenage Ichthala episodes. As you all remember—and Ian conveniently ignores—lots of stuff that happens on the show ends up happening in real life. But there are other prophecies, too horrible to be explicitly described, hinted at in these coded messages.”

  At this Jo pricked up her ears. She hadn’t heard this one before. She put down her coffee.

  “From these scripts, I can predict what the Ichthala will do in the next couple of months.” Nora paused. “And what the Belgian Prankster will do to her.”

  Jo bit her lip. For weeks she had managed, if not completely to put the Ichthala out of her mind, at least to distract herself out of thinking about it too much. The more time that passed, the more she was convinced it all had to be a mistake—that her birth was simply misunderstood.

  But today something was different about Nora. Her squeaky whisper, her freakish mop of wild black hair, and her frantic energy were all screwed up to an unprecedented intensity, and her speech was jitteringly tentative, as though she couldn’t bring herself to say what she wanted.

  Nora continued, “A couple of months after the Ichthala returns to Eldritch City, the Belgian Prankster will also return to Eldritch City. The Ichthala will go to him and meet him secretly. And then they will…er…they have to…”

  Jo was staring at Nora, silently urging her to finish the sentence; if she could, she would’ve gone up to Nora and physically yanked the words out of
her mouth. But Nora seemed to pull up short and lamely concluded, “Er…and then the world will end. Remember, Sir Nils’s specialty was bad jokes. The goal of his studies was to create the worst joke possible. And he just might have done it, because—”

  Daphne cut in, in a singsong voice: “Because when the show’s run is finished, Sir Nils will indeed have created the worst joke of all time, for its punch line will be the destruction of Eldritch City, maybe the end of the world.”

  Nora frowned. “It’s not funny.”

  “It is funny,” said Phil, “because you say it fifty times a day.”

  “You…you aren’t taking this seriously!” quavered Nora. “You never take me seriously—none of you! But—but you’re just afraid to face the truth! The Ichthala is somewhere in Eldritch City, okay? Right now! And soon the Belgian Prankster will come, too, then the Silent Sisters—and Eldritch City will be destroyed, or worse. That’s why the show is coming to an end—because the end of history is at hand!”

  There was an embarrassed silence. The squires tried not to look at each other. Nobody knew what to say; Nora had gone too far.

  Suddenly there came shouts from outside. Everyone turned around, confused, as a loud tramping of shoes came closer. It was a mob, chanting something—Jo suddenly realized the mob was chanting her name.

  The doors flew open and the butlers burst in. Sefino, Umberto, Cicero, Benozzo, Benvenuto, Barrachio, Lorenzo, Belpo, and Petrucchio—all the cockroaches swarmed into the café, roaring jubilantly, waving that afternoon’s Eldritch Snitch, crowding around Jo, lifting her into the air, shouting “Hip, hip, hooray!”—“She’s done it!”—“A full retraction!”—“We are vindicated!”—“Honor is satisfied!”

  It wasn’t until the cockroaches had carried Jo around the café a couple of times, knocking over chairs and making the dog bark irritably, that she saw the headline of the Eldritch Snitch:

  LILY LAROUCHE’S LACKEY LETS LOOSE LIVID LETTER

  LAMBASTING LURID LIBEL

  SNITCH SAYS “SORRY, SEFINO” SEEKS SOFTER STYLE

  CHATTERBOX CHASTENED

  It took a second for Jo to figure it out: the Eldritch Snitch had printed her letter. She had never seriously believed the Snitch would publish it. Now that they had, she was embarrassed.

  “Jo Larouche, girl reporter?” said Daphne.

  “Since when are you a writer?” said Ian.

  “I’m not, it’s just something Sefino—”

  Jo was drowned out by a loud chanting from the cockroaches: “Hat! Hat! Hat! Haaaat!”

  “Ladies and gentlemen,” Sefino announced. “Jo Larouche has done the butlers of the Odd-Fish a chivalrous service of superlative distinction! We therefore present her with…”

  “Hat! Hat! Hat!” shrieked the cockroaches. “Hattity-hat-hat-hoo-hat!”

  “The HAT OF HONOR!” roared Sefino. Before Jo could react, she was yanked toward Cicero, who held aloft a five-foot-tall, black, cobwebby monstrosity of a hat. The hat was dropped on her with hardly any warning and she nearly collapsed under its weight. “Hat! Hat! Hat!” sang the cockroaches. “See her in the glorious hat!”—but Jo couldn’t see a thing, her body swallowed up by the dusty mass of black velvet, jingling bells, and swaying tassels.

  “For all of her life, Jo has longed to wear the Hat of Honor!” declared Sefino.

  “I have?”

  “When we were in exile and Jo was still a wee tot, many a bedtime she would tug my waistcoat and beg me to tell her once more about the Hat of Honor. ‘Tell me again, Uncle Sefino,’ she would lisp. ‘I do love the Hat of Honor so. Tell me again how it looms majestically!’”

  “Uncle Sefino?”

  “Her heart bursting with innocent wonder, Jo would plead, ‘Tell me again about the heroes who risked their lives so that they might wear the hat. And tell me about the noble cockroaches who zealously guard the Hat of Honor, and bestow it only upon the worthiest citizens of Eldritch City!’ Indeed, in the darkest days of our exile, the only thing that kept Jo going was her hope that one day she might lay her tender eyes upon the Hat of Honor!”

  “Sefino, what—”

  “And now, on this splendid day, not only has Jo Larouche seen the Hat of Honor, she is actually wearing it! This is beyond her wildest dreams. This is the happiest day of Jo’s life!”

  “Hat! Hat! Hat!” shouted the cockroaches. “Hat! Hat! Hat!”

  Ian and Audrey lifted up the massive hat, and Jo managed to gasp through the ancient velvet, “How often do they do this?”

  “I’m afraid they do it all the time,” whispered Ian.

  “Hat! Hat! Hat!” shouted the cockroaches with delirious joy. “Hat! Hat! Hat!”

  Jo was forced to parade through Eldritch City all afternoon wearing the Hat of Honor, in the center of a prancing throng of cockroaches. The parade halted outside Chatterbox’s apartment.

  “Come forth, Chatterbox!” bellowed Sefino. “Show yourself, if you dare!”

  Chatterbox opened his window and looked out languidly. “Yes?”

  “Behold this girl, Chatterbox!” roared Sefino. “Who has vanquished your empire of lies! Who has slain your dragon of deceit! Who has brought your kingdom of calumny crashing down around your head! Chatterbox, face your conqueror!”

  “My conqueror is wearing a silly hat.”

  “It is the Hat of Honor!” shouted Sefino.

  Chatterbox sipped his coffee. He seemed unimpressed.

  Sefino said, “I assure you, Chatterbox, that you will never wear the Hat of Honor!”

  “Heavens, what an empty life I must lead.”

  Jo said to Sefino, “I think he’s had enough. We don’t want to rub his nose in it.”

  “You’re right, of course, Jo; we must be gracious in our victory,” said Sefino. He turned back to Chatterbox. “Chatterbox, we now leave you to writhe in your own shame.”

  “Yes, thanks awfully. I’ve got a lot of writhing to do.”

  “Godspeed!” said Sefino. The parade did an about-face and started back to the lodge. Jo took off the hat, and some cockroaches helped her drag it behind her.

  “Jo, I have to thank you,” said Sefino. “Your article has single-handedly restored the honor of the butlers of the Order of Odd-Fish.”

  “I’m just glad to see you happy again,” said Jo.

  “Wear the hat as often as you like!” said Sefino. “That is, until we find a new hero to honor.”

  “You wouldn’t mind,” said Jo tentatively, “if I didn’t wear it…all the time, would you?”

  “I suppose you needn’t wear it all the time,” said Sefino, puzzled. “But why not?”

  “Modesty?”

  “Nonsense,” said Sefino. “No doubt you’ll want to wear it all day. Put it back on!”

  “But—”

  “I said put it back on.”

  Later that evening, after the parade, Jo went to help Aunt Lily in the basement of the lodge. Aunt Lily’s research specialty was irregular contraptions, and her workroom was ankle deep with experimental mechanisms, dissected machines, and the tangled guts of a hundred scavenged appliances. Crowded shelves loomed on every wall, loaded down with gears, spindles, homemade batteries, and bottles stuffed with nails and bolts and wires.

  It was just before dinner. Sir Alasdair was practicing his urk-ack upstairs, and every so often, whenever Jo and Aunt Lily stopped hammering, drilling, and sawing, they could hear the mellow tones of the urk-ack linger in the early evening air as squires’ feet pounded up and down the stairs and distant shouts and laughs erupted in different parts of the lodge.

  Jo was helping Aunt Lily tinker with the Inconvenience. It was complicated work, and for long stretches they didn’t talk, but it was a comfortable silence. Jo enjoyed working with Aunt Lily. Back at the ruby palace, Aunt Lily had been mildly content but often distracted, as though there was something she felt she should’ve been doing but didn’t quite know what. Now she knew, and threw herself into it with a vengeance, sometimes working in the workroom al
l day and night, having her meals sent down to her, even sleeping on the cot. From what Jo could tell, it seemed Aunt Lily was using the broken pieces of the Inconvenience, along with some new parts, to build a completely different contraption—the purpose of which Jo couldn’t guess.

  After a while Aunt Lily said, “I read your article in the Snitch. It was well written.”

  “Thanks,” said Jo. “It was nothing much, really….”

  “I agree,” said Aunt Lily. “You shouldn’t spend too much time on that kind of thing. You should be out raising hell. I was happier to hear about your exploits in Snoodsbottom…the Wormbeards were splendidly humiliated.”

  Jo put her tools down. “You know about that?”

  Aunt Lily smiled. “Please, Jo, I’m not stupid! Just because you and Ian escaped doesn’t mean you weren’t seen. But there’s nothing the police can do now. It was embarrassing for the Wormbeards, and that’s the important thing…oh, they’re hopping mad!”

  “So you’re not angry about it?”

  “I’m delighted! You’re in training to be a knight, not a Girl Scout. I’d be disappointed if you didn’t make some good enemies. It keeps you sharp.”

  “You’re telling me I should get in trouble?” said Jo.

  “I should hope you’re clever enough to stay out of trouble, but there’s more to being a knight of the Odd-Fish than researching the Appendix. The first duty of a knight is to defend the city if it’s attacked. If you don’t know how to fight, you won’t be much use.”

  “So you want me to go out and brawl with the Wormbeards?”

  “Brawl is not the word,” said Aunt Lily. “Having an enemy is a delicate art. It demands dedication and a certain style. If you handle it right, it can even be good for you. I’ve learned just as much from our rivalry with the Wormbeards as I have from making friends with the Odd-Fish. You learn how to fight back.”

  Jo said, “That all sounds grand, but I still don’t want an enemy.”