by Adam Sidwell
The barn was empty. Dad was at work, and Mom was in the house doing laundry. It was the perfect place to be alone.
Guster squeezed between two hay bales, slumped down, and sat with his back against the barn wall. He had to admit, he was curious about that map. Archedentus had practically spoken to him when Guster had taken that bite of his chocolate soufflé. It had been like a trance or a dream, and sometimes Guster still wondered whether or not it had actually been real. If he went with Felicity, they very well could find more treasures. Could he really let that go?
Something clattered in the loft above. Guster leapt to his feet. No one was supposed to be in there.
And there was the footprint. And Zeke was convinced Bigfoot was in the woods. What had he said though? That they didn’t need to worry unless it was night? Maybe it was just Mariah doing her chores.
Guster peered up toward the loft. It was full of old junk, and Dad didn’t like anyone playing up there. The wood was far too rickety and unstable.
“Mariah?” Guster whispered.
A metal can toppled out of the loft and clattered to the ground in the center of the barn.
“Zeke?” Guster whispered.
A large shadow dashed between the piles of junk up above. A rat or a raccoon couldn’t make a shadow like that. It was something bigger.
Guster crept over to the old wooden ladder that led up to the loft. It was nailed into the wood above. He shook it. The entire loft trembled and groaned, old nails squeaking in their holes and wood rubbing against wood.
There was another clattering, louder this time, and a smash as something large dropped out of the loft and tumbled down the ladder. It smashed to the floor in a heap with a hollow clang.
Guster leapt backward, ready to run, when the fallen heap stumbled to its feet, arms and legs untangling themselves. It was a small man, no taller than Guster, with short, stubby limbs.
He was wearing a large rounded steel armor chest plate that made it look like his belly had swelled up into his chest. There was a steel helmet on his head that curved upward into a point, and his pants bulged out like two red and yellow striped balloons. He had a pointy mustache and a short, sharp beard that looked like a stubby stalactite hung from his chin.
Guster would’ve laughed had the little man not said what he said next. “Hello! My name is Gaucho del Pantaloon, and I am here to tell you that very soon you will be chewed into tiny pieces by a gluttonous beast.”
Chapter 3—The Most Delicious Thing
The little man held one finger up high, like he’d just finished declaring the world was round all over again.
“What?” asked Guster. He wasn’t sure he’d heard what he’d heard.
“You are about to be devoured by a voracious monster!” said the little man once again. He smiled when he said it, his teeth shining.
Guster didn’t know whether to believe him, or poke him with a pitchfork. He grabbed the pitchfork leaning against the wall nearest him just in case.
“You’re going to eat me?” asked Guster.
“Oh no,” the little man said, shaking his head. “I am no monster. I am Gaucho del Pantaloon, Shepherd of the Guardians of the Delicious City, and loyal to the crown.”
Gaucho certainly didn’t look like a monster. In fact, he was quite comical looking with his oversized chest armor and striped pants. Guster was certain he’d seen someone dressed like Gaucho in his history book, somewhere between the page with Genghis Kahn and the page with Winston Churchill. If only Mariah were here to see this. She would know where Gaucho came from.
“And might I add,” said Gaucho, “that it is also quite an honor to finally meet you. I’ve been looking for you for a very long time. Please tell me your name.”
Guster was puzzled. “It’s an honor to meet me but you don’t know my name?”
“I have traveled halfway across the world to make your acquaintance—sometimes by silver bird, other times by boats the size of islands. The strange things I have seen! Did you know there is a flat box that has moving pictures of people inside it that you can control?”
“You mean video games?” Guster said. This Gaucho del Pantaloon must have been living in a cave for the last 100 years.
“Yes! That’s what someone called it,” said Gaucho. “Now, if you please, what may I call you Señor?” Gaucho bowed low, like Guster was someone special.
“My name is Guster Stephen Johnsonville,” Guster said.
Gaucho grabbed Guster’s hand and sniffed it. “Ah, no wonder they are coming for you,” said Gaucho.
Guster pulled his hand away. That was the second time today that someone had sniffed him. He’d just showered last night. It wasn’t like he’d used Mariah’s lilac candy cane conditioner. “Why do you say that?” Guster asked.
Gaucho stood, a look of ferocious importance burning in his eyes. “Guster Stephen Johnsonville, have you ever felt like you were being watched in the woods, or felt the hair of your neck standing on end?”
Guster nodded. He had felt that way just the night before when they’d seen the footprint.
“They have been hunting you, Señor Johnsonville. They left our great city almost one year ago. All of them at once, suddenly gone, as if something very important had called them away!” He looked concerned. “The city it is left unguarded, without Yummy circling its walls.”
Gaucho made so little sense.
“What city? Where?” Guster asked.
Gaucho suddenly leapt backward, whipping a slender sword from his belt and waving it at Guster. “You’d like me to tell you that, wouldn’t you? Scoundrel! I will never tell you the way to the blessed city, you robber! Never!”
Guster hefted his pitchfork. “Okay!” he shouted. “Just asking. Never mind.” He hardly knew what Gaucho was talking about, but it had hit some kind of nerve.
Gaucho lowered his sword. “Forgive me. It is part of the code. I have sworn never to reveal the location of the majestic city, no matter the cost. It is not your fault.”
Guster stepped back. Talking to Gaucho was like stabbing a hornet’s nest.
“Let me start again,” Gaucho said. “Something happened one year ago, and the Yummies left our city. Where they went . . . who knows? It is somewhere far and wide, farther than they ever wandered before, which is strange for Yummy. They did not return.”
“And Yummy is the monster?” asked Guster.
Gaucho nodded. “The guardians of my blessed city went looking for something, as near as we can tell. This one that I followed, it has wandered, searching far and wide, tracking something down.”
“Like what?” asked Guster.
Gaucho hesitated. “Yummy loves nothing more than the good things of the earth. Cookies. Pie. Sweet brownies smothered in chocolate sauce with whipped cream between its intricate layers!” Gaucho’s eyes glazed over, like his heart had gone to a far off place. He swayed a little in the dim light of the barn, like he was moving to some magical music Guster could not hear.
“Yummy is looking for something very sweet, of that I am sure,” Gaucho said. “I followed him from the city walls down over the cliffs for many weeks until he came to the place where lowlanders live. He stalked for days, always far from the buildings of stone and mirrors, and through the desert. He traveled at night, lurking in the shadows. I could not have kept up with him had he not wandered, sniffing and searching. Yummy has a keen sense of smell, so that he could sniff a speck of pollen on the breeze that had long since blown far away from its flower.”
Guster could relate to that. He’d tasted all sorts of things that were impossibly far away.
Gaucho continued, “I could not follow all of them, so I chose to follow the one who is mine. He searched, and searched, and I kept my distance, watching from afar.” Gaucho pointed to his eyes. “I have keen vision you know, and I can see their footprints. After so many years of
tending to them I know them like they are my own little puppies. They cannot escape me.
“So we wandered, and came to a place of many towers where the land was green and the mountains were nothing but soft hills. There were so many delicious things there! Tiny puffs of sugar like a cloud! Sometimes Yummy sniffed a cupcake left in the garbage can, other times a shoe left on the road, or a stream where a tart had washed into the water. Always he was searching.
“Until we came to a castle with a big turkey bird for a fountain, and knives and forks crossed at its gate.”
The Chateau de Dîner. It sounded like Felicity’s castle in France. Could it be? Guster lowered his pitch fork. This story, if it were really true, had suddenly gotten closer to home.
“I may have been there,” he said.
Gaucho clamped his hand down onto his curvy steel helmet. “Aha!” he shouted. “This must be why things changed then.”
Guster was almost afraid to ask, but he did. “How?”
“He sniffed something in the broken remains of a kitchen there that we had found by the light of the moon. And then he howled a long song, and licked the walls all the while, moaning like he was a happy puppy! This is when Yummy began to run!”
It was the same kitchen that haunted Guster in his dreams. But this made so little sense.
“I followed him then, as fast as I could go! I was riding on great big yaks with wheels that were speeding through the cities.”
“Cars?” asked Guster.
Gaucho brightened. “You know them?” he said. “They are very amazing animals.”
Guster chuckled. “Know them? We have one.”
Gaucho looked eager. “Can I drive it?”
“Not without asking Mom,” he said. Even Zeke rarely got to drive the family suburban, and he had his license. But that might have had something to do with the way he liked to sneak up behind pedestrians and blast the horn in their ears.
“You have so many strange and wonderful things that we do not have in my city,” Gaucho said.
The way he talked, Gaucho’s city sounded so remote and old-fashioned. Maybe they were very poor, like some of the villages Guster had seen in Africa. But Gaucho’s clothes, however much they looked like they belonged on a clown, were well-made and looked quite expensive. They weren’t the clothes of a poor villager. Guster wanted to ask more about the city, but Gaucho’s sword made Guster think better of it.
“I followed Yummy to the sea, where he climbed into a boat as big as the countryside. You should have seen it! A man would need to stop and rest before he could walk from end to end. Yummy hid in between the many boxes there, and we traveled for many days, rocking back and forth on the waves.
“Then, when we were far out to sea, and I could not see land anymore, and I thought we would fall off the end of the world, the boat dropped nets into the water and caught mountains of fish!”
Something about that caught Guster’s attention. “Fish?” he asked. “What kind?”
Gaucho shook his head. “I don’t know. They were delicious though. I overheard the sailors. They called them toona.”
Guster’s insides started to heat up. That wasn’t what he wanted to hear. Tuna fish. Like his sandwich. Felicity had told him just minutes earlier that he was starting to taste things about the people that had made the food he ate. Guster was starting to feel what they felt. What if it were the same for the fish? What if they had been afraid of Yummy?
Guster had been right about the sandwich. It was a warning. He shuddered at the thought.
“Then where is Yummy now?” Guster asked.
Gaucho grinned a sheepish grin. He looked like he did not want to say. “Well, he has traveled very far, and that is why I am here . . .”
“Where is he?” asked Guster. He could not let this little man avoid the question.
The grin disappeared from Gaucho’s face. “He is here, in the woods. He’s been circling your house for days, waiting for his chance to gobble you up.”
The barn was so quiet Guster could hear the wood creak. So maybe this creature was real. Zeke certainly thought so. Guster had seen the footprint for himself, and the tree with the bite taken out of it. Now Gaucho had explained everything. And of course there was the sandwich. There was too much evidence to think that Yummy wasn’t real.
But one thing Guster couldn’t believe was that Yummy was on a mission. Why, out of billions of people on the planet, would the monster come halfway across the world for him?
Zeke had been right: the footprint, the tree with the bite taken out of it. If those were clues, Yummy must be very, very big.
“What do you want me to do?” asked Guster.
“That is why I am here.” Gaucho bowed low. “To warn you. You must run away.”
“To where?” Guster asked. He couldn’t just leave home. Where would he go?
“Somewhere far away, where Yummy can’t find you,” said Gaucho.
Guster couldn’t leave home. If he did, what would he eat?
Guster shook his head. “I think you’ve got the wrong guy,” he said. “Yummy doesn’t want me. Give it a few days. Your monster will wander on, just like he’s done for months. I’m staying.”
Gaucho removed his hat and dropped to his knees. “Señor! I beg you, by all the Cookie Coins of the Princess of the Realm, do not ignore this warning!” He looked like he was going to cry.
It didn’t matter. It was far too impossible, even with all that Guster had seen, to trust this little man’s word and leave Mom’s cooking behind without a second thought. No, Guster could not. He had to stick with what he knew.
Guster turned his back on Gaucho. His mind was made up. He wouldn’t tell anyone about Gaucho del Pantaloon. Mom would overreact and lock Guster up until doomsday to protect him. Mariah would probably ignore him for the most part, telling him that they’d gotten too old for silly things like that before she stuffed her ear buds into her ears. Dad, of course, would just open and close his jaw like one end of a teeter-totter. Dad still had a hard time picturing these things in his head. Zeke—well, he’d of course believe everything that Gaucho said, telling Guster that Zeke’s years of research and deep understanding of semi-supernatural creatures would aid Guster in evading the monster, blah blah blah. He’d probably pester him to read that monster book.
“I’m sorry,” Guster said, and pushed open the front doors of the barn.
There wasn’t much Guster could do. He could pay attention to his tastes. He could keep watch. He would stay close to home and stay safe. That was all. Except . . .
He came around the house and found himself staring at the gigantic RV. There they were, the letters FC emblazoned on the side of the door. Felicity.
Would she understand?
Guster shook his head at the thought. Felicity had treated him like he was some kind of experiment. He hated that.
He needed time to think about all this. He needed a place where he could concentrate.
The door of the RV burst open. Felicity leapt out, the saucepan in one hand, the wooden spoon in the other, the yellowish mother sauce spilling over the sides. Her eyes were electric, darting back and forth, her hair swooshing as she fixed her gaze on Guster.
“Guster Johnsonville! The mother sauce is ready. I’ve tasted it. YOU are the most delicious thing in the world!”
Chapter 4—The Bus Station
Guster did not say a word. There was nothing to say. He’d never considered before how he tasted, and he didn’t like being thought of that way. Suddenly, he was on the wrong end of the dinner spoon.
“It’s incredibly sweet,” said Felicity. She hadn’t stopped talking since she’d burst from the trailer. “It was hard to believe at first, but in all my years of cooking, I’ve never seen a transformation in a dish like this. All with the final ingredient—a dash of Guster Johnsonville!”
She
giggled, then seemed to notice how excited she’d become. She straightened and placed a strand of blonde hair back in place. “Guster, I have a theory.”
Guster wasn’t sure he wanted to hear it.
“What was the most delicious thing in the whole world?” she asked.
Guster muttered the answer she wanted to hear, though he wasn’t sure he knew what she was getting at. “The One Recipe. That extraordinary chocolate soufflé. The Gastronomy of Peace.”
Felicity’s red-lipstick lips turned into a genuine smile. “Yes. Archedentus’ greatest creation. And where is it now?” she asked.
“Destroyed,” said Guster. He was the one who had done it. He did not regret that.
“And who was the only one to taste it in the history of the world?” she asked.
The answer was obvious. Guster nodded his head. He was the only person to have ever tasted the Gastronomy of Peace. It had tasted like a dream.
Felicity grabbed Guster by the shoulders and looked him in the eye. “That recipe changed you. It must have done something to your blood. Its flavors were more concentrated than we could have guessed.”
“I . . .” Guster stammered. He took a step back.
This was unexpected. The One Recipe had tasted amazing, but then it was gone. All he had was a memory, nothing permanent. Certainly, the Gastronomy of Peace had tasted better than anything in this world. Guster never expected to find its equal. But what Felicity was saying was insane. Was there suddenly a nutrition label tattooed on his tummy? He was not to be tasted. He was not food. Surely no one could think of him like that.
Yummy.
Guster staggered. Gaucho was right. Something had happened to him at the Chateau de Dîner.
“You want proof?” asked Felicity, holding up a spoonful of sauce. “Have a taste.”
It might as well have been a spoonful of Guster.
“No,” he said, holding up his hands to push it back. He wanted to throw up. He turned, spinning in the dirt and running back toward the house. He needed space.