by Adam Sidwell
The Lieutenant heaved himself against the wall. He broke through and fell out on the other side. The sky outside was bright blue, and there was a wide, dirty street leading down to the Chocolate River.
“Let’s go!” cried Guster. He grabbed Mariah and Zeke by the hands and pulled them toward the opening.
They ducked through. The Lieutenant was already on his feet, pulling Mom through the door.
The Sergeant backed through, still firing, then dropped a clip from his rifle. “I’m all out,” he said.
The Lieutenant frowned. “All the more reason we need to get across that river.”
They ran down the street, past two blocks of chocolate marshmallow buildings until they reached the Chocolate River.
“We can’t wade across,” said Guster. “It’s too deep.” He couldn’t swim with chains on his wrists.
“There’s a bridge,” said Mom, pointing upstream. Another block up the street a narrow, arched waffle cone footbridge spanned the river. On the far side was a strawberry wall with an open gate. Beyond that were cherry and pineapple ice cream buildings: the Fruitful Streets. Above those was Princess Sunday’s Castle.
All they had to do was get to the other side. Then they would find allies in the Fruitful Streets who could help.
They ran. Guster glanced over his shoulder to see the Mayor’s guards charging down the hill after them. Mom crossed the bridge first, with Mariah and Zeke right behind her. The Lieutenant and Sergeant brought up the rear.
Guster ducked through the gate and stopped cold. Mom gasped.
On the other side of the strawberry wall was an open town square studded with gumdrops and bright-red cherry sours. At the head of the square stood the Mayor, his shiny silver spoon in hand. On his left was the Chancellor of the Culinary. To his right was Princess Sunday. She was staring at the ground. Between them and the wall, a semicircle of more than a dozen iron cannons lined the square, all of them pointed straight at Guster. They were trapped.
“I’m sorry,” said Princess Sunday. Tears streamed down her cheeks. “But it had to be done.”
Chapter 17—In the Mayor’s Mansion
Betrayed. Princess Sunday had betrayed them.
“I will fire this if necessary,” said the Mayor. He held a torch mere inches away from the fuse on the cannon nearest him. Behind him stood the rest of his guard, all standing with spears raised. Princess Sunday’s soldiers were nowhere to be seen.
The Lieutenant dropped his rifle and put up his hands.
“But . . .” muttered the Sergeant under his breath.
“Now is not the time,” said the Lieutenant. “We have the Johnsonvilles to protect. Put down your rifle.”
The Sergeant obeyed.
Mom gathered Zeke and Mariah close. “Guster,” she said under her breath, “Don’t do anything rash.” She knew that Guster wanted to run or beat his hands against the Mayor’s chest or scream out to Princess Sunday and ask her how she could do this.
The Chancellor, still wearing his bright-green shirt with banana-yellow pantaloons, nodded his head, and four of the Mayor’s guards stepped past the cannons. They dangled heavy iron chains in each hand. The guards took hold of the Lieutenant and the Sergeant first, clapping the manacles around their wrists then shoving them across the square toward the Mayor.
They handcuffed Mom and Mariah next. Guster waited for them to grab hold of the chains clamped to his wrists, but they did not. Instead, the guards pushed him and Zeke toward the Mayor.
The Chancellor stared straight at Mom. “You! Do you deny that you are this boy’s mother?”
“Of course I am, young man,” she said, looking him square in the face. “I went through a lot of pain to bring him into this world, and I can’t think of any reason to say otherwise.”
There was a murmur and shuffle amongst the guards around them. “I told you,” Guster heard one of them say.
The Chancellor’s face grew so red it looked like he’d pop. “It’s just as Mayor Bollito said! We have a nice dungeon for the likes of you!” He motioned with his head.
Two guards took hold of the chains on Mom’s and Mariah’s wrists. Mom looked over her shoulder at Guster, her face full of pain. She’d just found them, and now they were taking her away.
“But you were supposed to be on our side,” said Guster to Princess Sunday. “You can’t let them take her.”
She bowed her head. She wouldn’t meet Guster’s eyes.
The Mayor’s guards shoved Guster and Zeke into a carriage. They didn’t even let them say goodbye.
“Boys! Dad and I will get you out!” Mom said as the carriage pulled away.
They were driven down through the butterscotch streets toward a large and stately marble fudge manor. The grounds surrounding the Mansion stretched for acres, streams from the Chocolate River winding and branching like fingers across the lawn. The Mansion itself stood on the edge of the plateau overlooking the strawberry plains. Four massive pillars, as thick as redwood trees held up the roof in front, each one a swirl of dark-brown fudge and light-brown chocolate, with flecks of vanilla. The pillars reminded Guster of the marble work he’d seen at some of the state capitols in his history book.
The Mayor’s guard stopped the carriage in front of a set of wide steps leading to a grand set of double doors.
The Guard led Guster and Zeke into a vaulted entry hall lined with columns where two grand staircases curved upward to the second floor.
Their greatest chance of escape had been Mom and the mercenaries. And now even their rescuers had been taken captive.
“Zeke, I just want to get out of this place,” said Guster.
“But I thought you loved it here,” said Zeke.
“I did, but that was before everyone in town decided they wanted me dead.”
Zeke frowned. Then he punched the palm of one hand with the other. “We’ll find a way, P. I know we will.”
The Guards marched Guster and Zeke up the right staircase and into a short hallway. It led to an arched door with a brass ring handle hanging in the center. They opened it. Inside was a study lined floor to ceiling with books. There was a clockwork model of the solar system ticking away methodically in one corner, a telescope pointed out a window toward the strawberry plain, and a collection of antique bronze and silver ice cream scoops mounted on the wall. Most curious of all was a stone bust sitting on the desk with its face pointed away from them.
“Welcome to my library,” said the Mayor, bouncing up the steps behind them. He slipped past them with the speed of a puppy, then turned and smiled a disingenuous smile. “Come, beguile your sorrow. There is no need for us to quarrel any longer. The terms of your sentence have been set and fixed by the Culinary. My hands are tied!” He threw up his gloved hands. “Oh, yes, I tried to execute you an hour ago, but let the past be the past! The Culinary said that wasn’t appropriate, and who am I—just a little old mayor—to tell them what to do?”
It took all of Guster’s resolve not to scream at him. If the guards weren’t there, he might have.
“No, no. I won’t kill you now.” He smiled coldly. “I’m a patient man. I can simply wait a few days until the Yummies come back to eat you. It’s all the same to me.”
So that was his game now. He’d please the Culinary and get what he wanted anyway. Guster had to find a way out of this.
The Mayor sat down behind his desk and folded his hands. “Now that you are guests, I’d like you to enjoy all that my Mansion has to offer. This library, for example. Did you know that the Baconists have been hard at work here, studying and making sense of the universe since we adopted them as children and protectors of the city so many centuries ago? El Elado boasts a long and storied history, and you couldn’t preserve it without scholars on your payroll,” said the Mayor, his chest swelling.
Guster was really, really starting to despise thi
s man.
A pair of doors on the left side of the library opened. Three Baconists puttered through them. Two of them held piles of books and scrolls under each arm. The third proffered a tray of sizzling hot bacon. It was the Baconist with the nostrils as wide as dimes who’d read from the big leather book at the trial.
He lifted it toward Zeke and Guster. The bacon smelled salty and meaty, even better than the kind Mom fried up from the butcher’s back home.
“Help yourself,” said the Baconist with the wide nostrils. He sniffed.
“Don’t mind if I do.” He blew on a piece then stuffed it into his mouth.
The Baconist held the tray toward Guster.
“No thanks,” said Guster. He didn’t want them to think he could be bought so easily.
“I think as long as you are guests here,” the Mayor said, “it makes sense for us to treat you with hospitality.” He cocked his head to one side, turning his monocle in his eye. “We can give you the thing you lack most, the most generous gift we can offer to Flatlanders like you: knowledge.”
Guster felt his chest boil inside. Everything about the Mayor was just so aggravating.
The Mayor gestured toward two plush leather chairs. “Have a seat,” he said.
Zeke plopped himself down into the chair closest him. Guster sat more slowly.
“You are new here to our city. You haven’t had a chance to learn what we have.” The Mayor waved a hand. “Salero! Show him,” he barked.
The Baconist put down the tray and pushed back his red woven sleeves. He unrolled a scroll with a map on it.
The map was clearly handmade, and the continents looked out of place, like someone had squashed the whole picture. Even the Americas were nothing more than a large island.
Guster stifled a laugh. “There’s something wrong with your map,” said Zeke, pointing. “Did a three-year-old draw that?”
Salero sighed. There was pity on his face. “You poor boys. You have lived such naïve, sheltered lives,” he said, his voice droning through his ample nostrils. “But that was then. I am here to help you now.”
“It all started with a voyage,” said Salero, hanging the map on the wall. “Five centuries ago, a ship left from the old country and sailed on a journey that took its crew across the globe to places never explored by human eyes.” He traced a route with a wooden pointer around the large island in the Pacific Ocean where America should have been.
“Somewhere around this New World, a ship full of men bound for their homes in their mother country Spain veered from its intended course and traversed halfway around the globe. The men aboard were brave explorers, fixed on discovering new places and things.”
Salero traced his pointer over the oceans. “Were they lost? Possible. They must have wandered for years on the high seas. But an explorer is never satisfied, and the brave captain of their ship, Palooza del Montana, was finally led by something—or someone—and suddenly changed his ship’s course and brought his crew here.”
Salero stabbed his pointer into the map on the coast of what looked like India, then traced a line toward the heart of the Himalayas.
“Whether Palooza del Montana tasted hints of sweet cream down on the coasts, or whether he heard rumors of the wondrous Yummy and was searching for a glimpse of the beast, we do not know. Whatever his motive, he left his ship and crew on the coast and pressed onward over one impossible, forbidden pass after another, until a Yummy found him and finally showed him the way to the Golden Valley. Once he had tasted the ice cream here, straight from the source, he knew they could never go back. The outside world, even their homes held nothing so exquisite as the treasure he’d found here.”
Salero took the same heavy, leather-bound volume he’d used in the trial from off a shelf. Its pages were yellow and brittle with age.
He hefted it onto the table where it dropped like a stone, the wooden desk quivering under its weight. Salero opened it.
“This is the Book of Knowledge of The Delicious City of El Elado. Some may know it by its other name, The Forbidden City of Flavor and Pain. Regardless, in it are the names of the men and women who have lived here and ruled here, all the way back to Palooza del Montana.”
Salero flipped a dozen pages in the giant book then propped it up. In it was a sketch of the valley, with a more detailed drawing of the city. There were fewer buildings in the sketch, and there was no castle up on the hill. It must have been what the city looked like long ago.
“But once Palooza had tasted it, he knew the men and women aboard his ship, despite all they had seen and tasted in their travels, would not believe him until they had tasted it for themselves.
“So he returned to them and told them what he had found.”
“It wasn’t long before the ship’s crew left their vessel behind for good and climbed the mountains. This was it! The thing they had not known they were searching for! A perfect cradle of nature in which their master chefs could create the most heavenly dessert treasures that the world had ever known!
“They built homes. They fashioned bricks. They made a village. They founded The City of El Elado.
“And so you see, no one, once they find the City of El Elado, ever need leave it.”
“But there are legends of this place. They must have gotten out somehow,” said Guster. “The whole world thinks it’s a lost city of gold.”
“The world knows nothing of the Delicious City!” said Salero. He bent low, pushing his face toward Guster, so Guster could smell the salt on his hot breath. “The explorers aboard that ship had seen things in their journey that no one had ever seen. They brought things here that were more marvelous than anything the world had tasted. That is why they stayed. They wanted a place where they could build a society dedicated to such delicious ideals. They wanted to protect themselves from the outside world! Now no one leaves!”
Guster drew his face back. This man, this Baconist, he sounded so oddly familiar. He held the same ideals as the Gastronimatii. Purity. Preservation. Elitism. And all clad in red robes—how could any of them be trusted?
Salero cleared his throat. “It was the beast that showed Palooza the way over the mountains, and if it were not so, no one could have found this place.”
“Then how did so many people get here?” asked Guster.
“With time, the city grew,” said Salero. “The valley was empty then, only a treacherous flow of pure vanilla ice cream, creaking and grinding across the valley, an unstoppable glacier bent on eroding a path through the mountains.”
Salero flipped another page. There was a sketch of several Yummies tracing lines around the city, like planets trace their orbits around the sun.
“Why are you showing us this?” asked Guster. He wanted to know, but he did not like Salero. And he did not like that he had been forced into the Mayor’s custody.
“Yummy is a guardian, but then he was also a guide,” Salero said. He flipped the page and turned the heavy book toward Guster and Zeke. There was a drawing inside, a very rough sketch of a beast whose neckless head was mounted so that it was one large lump across his shoulders.
“Yummy is the true ruler of this city, Flatlander,” Salero said. “He brought us here, and he will show us who will stay. If it takes only one Exquisite Morsel to satiate him, then we will not hold back.”
Guster squirmed in his chair.
“And it’s not just me who knows it. The people below want Yummy to stay and protect us.”
“Of course,” said Zeke under his breath. “The Yeti has long been a deterrent to mountaineers in the Himalayan region. The legends are numerous.” He patted Guster’s arm. “Not that I think that justifies them eating you, of course.”
Really? That was all Zeke could muster for a show of brotherly support?
“You need to know your place in this city’s history before you become part of it forever,” said Saler
o. He sneered.
The Mayor grunted. “This has been a very educational meeting, but we must show the two guests to their quarters.”
Salero backed up, giving the Mayor a wide berth. “Of course,” he said, clapping his giant book shut. “We’ll have more lessons later.”
Two guards hoisted Guster and Zeke up by the arms and marched them after the Mayor out a door and into a hallway. Guster ducked his head as they descended a narrow spiral staircase that looked like it was made of cookies and cream.
The staircase dropped another two floors. The air was colder and the hallway darker than up above. The Mayor unlocked a door at the end of a hallway. It swung open with a nudge, and the Guards shoved Guster and Zeke inside.
“Your quarters,” said the Mayor. “I hope you will find them comfortable. You needn’t worry too much. It will only be a matter of days.” His lips curled, bearing two pointy canines, then he slammed the door shut tight.
Chapter 18—The Scoop
The room in the Mayor’s Mansion did not look like a prison. Not entirely. There were two soft marshmallow couches, a table in the center made of chocolate bricks, and a tapestry hanging on the far wall that depicted a ship on the shoreline at the foot of a mountain.
There were no windows and no doors except for the one they came through. The walls and floor were made of dark-brown ice cream. There was no way out.
“We’re trapped, Zeke,” said Guster. “Mom shows up, and everything seems like finally something is going to go our way, and now here we are, shut in a dungeon.”
“Yeah, but we’re probably safer here than we would be with Mom,” said Zeke. “Did you see the way her eyes were burning?”
Guster nodded. He had to admit, there was no fury like their mother scorned. Now at least they might get some sympathy, being locked up in the Mayor’s Mansion. Wasn’t Mom the one who was supposed to be shut up in prison? And Zeke and Guster treated to fine accommodations? Whatever loophole the Culinary had imposed to keep Guster alive, it had clearly stopped there. Any way they looked at it, they were trapped, and Yummy was coming.