by Adam Sidwell
Guster flopped down on the marshmallow couch. He let out a sigh so long it rattled his lips.
“At least they locked us up here!” said Zeke, sizing up the room around him.
“Why do you say that?”
Zeke licked his lips. “Because it’s made of chocolate Moose Tracks!” He pressed his cheek up against the wall.
“I don’t think that the conquistadors know what Moose Tracks ice cream is, Zeke,” said Guster. Moose Tracks was not something Guster expected that a lost band of conquistadors would have known about five hundred years ago. Still, hadn’t a select few made it to the outside world to find flavors over the centuries? That explained why they had cookie dough and mint chocolate chip.
“I don’t care,” said Zeke. “It’s got chocolate brownie bits bigger than meatballs. I need a spoon.”
Guster shivered and buttoned up his coat. Everything in this city was cold—it had to be to keep the walls from melting. None of the people seemed to notice. Maybe they were just used to it.
“Give me your belt buckle,” said Zeke. Guster was wearing the same oval belt buckle he always wore. It was small enough to fit in his palm.
“Why?” asked Guster.
Zeke rolled his eyes and pointed to a particularly rich chocolate vein running diagonally down the wall. “This,” he said, “obviously. I’m going to try to dig some out.” He held out his hand, waving his fingers toward him with a gesture that said “gimme.”
Guster unhitched his belt. It was better than Zeke using his fingernails.
Zeke dug the metal buckle into the wall, scraping ice cream brick shavings into his hand. It took him several scrapes just to scratch out a quarter inch. “It’s very solid construction,” he said, his eyes still on the wall. He smushed the ice cream shavings into his mouth.
“Oh! But so good,” he said, closing his eyes and working the ice cream back and forth in his mouth like a burrow chewing its feed. “Finally, we can be alone with all this ice cream in peace. Mmmmmmm. Bro, you have got to try this.”
The doorknob rattled as someone turned a key in the lock. Zeke looked like he’d been hit by lightning. He stiffened up, leaning his head against the wall so that it covered the gouge where he’d scraped the ice cream free.
The door swung open. Caramelo and Pistachero stood there, each carrying a tray with a small bowl of soup on it.
“The Mayor says we can’t starve you, especially since your big day is coming,” Caramelo said. “In fact, he says we ought to fatten you up.” He sneered. “So we got some yak stew for you. You’ll find it delicious and fatty too. We wouldn’t want to sour the Exquisite Morsel, now would we?”
Guster frowned. “Then why did they send you here? I’m starting to feel queasy already.”
Caramelo snorted and set the tray down. “Enjoy. It won’t be long until one of these meals is your last.”
He and Pistachero backed out the door. The lock clicked.
Zeke sighed. He slid down the wall, revealing the gouge in the bricks. “That was close.” He shrugged. “Let’s see what’s for dinner.”
“No spoons?” asked Zeke, lifting the top bowl and looking underneath it. “Dinner without silverware? Savages! That’s what Mom would say.”
That’s exactly what she would say.
Funny, she had been taken to Princess Sunday’s castle to be imprisoned, but he and Zeke were the ones in a tiny locked cell with no way out.
“They don’t want us digging into the walls,” said Guster. “That must be why the stew’s cold. They saw what we did to that wall in the factory.”
Zeke nodded. “Or what we did to that house. They get very grumpy when we do that.”
“Let’s try the bowls,” he said. Zeke slurped down the stew with one long gulp, then set the thick wooden bowl’s edge into his gouge on the wall and dug into it. He managed to shave off a very thin layer of ice cream, but nothing more. It worked worse than the belt buckle had. “Rats,” he said. For now, there would be no dessert.
Guster tried some stew. The meaty chunks were spiced and simmered with a skill that Guster had rarely encountered. The chefs and the Confectioners in the Delicious City were experts. That is what had founded their culture in the first place. Guster could respect that.
***
Guster didn’t even notice that he’d fallen asleep. His belly had been full, and he had been so very tired.
He only awoke because the room was quaking furiously. He bolted upright on the marshmallow couch.
“What’s happening?” cried Zeke. He was standing, bracing himself against the corner of the room, his eyes wide with fright.
“It’s another tremor,” said Guster.
The Princess was right; they were growing stronger. And then it was over. Guster counted off in his head. It must have lasted only five, maybe six seconds. He settled back onto the couch.
They could hear cries and commotion through the walls.
Guster remembered the sinkhole not far from the princess’s castle. Mom and Mariah were up there. He hoped they were okay.
“Zeke, we’ve got to get out of here,” said Guster, his voice thick with panic. If the sinkholes didn’t swallow him up, Yummy certainly would.
Zeke nodded. “Yeah. We do,” he said.
They both settled back into their couches, but sleep did not come for a long time. Then, just as Guster was about to drift off, a panel at the bottom of the wooden door swung open and something slid through.
“Caramelo?” Guster asked.
No one answered.
Guster sat up.
On the floor was a flat sheet cake about two feet long and four inches thick. It was covered in white frosting with red borders. On the top, in big, red frosting letters was scrawled “Look below and look behind.” It was signed “A.G.”
“Zeke, wake up,” said Guster. He shook him.
“What?” said Zeke, rubbing his eyes. He saw the cake and smiled. “Midnight snack.”
“I don’t think this is from the Mayor,” said Guster.
“Even better,” Zeke said. “I never liked that guy anyway.” He stuck his fingers into the top and clawed out a handful. He shoved it into his mouth.
“Zeke, wait!” said Guster. “We don’t even know who A.G. is.”
“It’s probably from Felicity,” Zeke mumbled as he chewed. He dug his fingers back in for more. He paused. “Hey, what’s this?” he asked. He pulled a long metal object from inside the cake and held it up.
It was an ice cream scoop at least as long as Guster’s forearm, with a sturdy handle and an oversized, metal half-sphere at the end.
“No way,” said Zeke. He looked at the Moose Tracks wall. “Finally.” He rushed to the wall and attacked it, digging out a large rut of ice cream. It gave easily under the scoop’s edges.
“Zeke, we don’t even know where that came from,” said Guster.
“Does it matter?” asked Zeke, shoving his face full of ice cream. “I’ve finally gotten the mouthfuls I deserve.”
But who would drop such a tool off in the middle of the night? And who could get past the Mayor’s guards to do so? Guster couldn’t think of anyone with the initials A.G.
Look below and behind. Guster turned to the hanging tapestry of the ship on the wall. Behind that, there was nothing but more ice cream. And beyond that . . .
“Zeke, we’re busting out of here,” said Guster.
Zeke stopped scooping. “Now you’re talking! Jailbreak! Okay. Here’s the plan. We get Mom. We find Felicity’s boys, then we bust them out of prison and sneak out in the middle of the night and get to the choppers and blast over those mountains as the city explodes behinds us in an enormous fireball!”
Guster didn’t see what a fireball had to do with anything. “What about Mariah?” he asked.
Zeke scratched his chin. “Oh yeah.
Her too. She can come if she wants.” Suddenly Zeke plopped down on the couch, defeated. “But how do we get out of this cell?” he asked.
Guster looked at the gouge Zeke had dug in the wall. It wasn’t the best idea he’d ever had. But it was better than nothing. “We eat our way out,” he said.
Zeke’s face lit up. “Yeah,” he said.
They worked all night, carving out a hole behind the tapestry. At first it was hard work, but the deeper they dug, the softer the ice cream got. They used the first few scoops to cover up the gouge Zeke had made in the wall. They didn’t want the guards discovering what they’d done.
Then they kept digging, for an hour or more, taking turns with the scoop while the other one rested.
They couldn’t risk leaving a pile of ice cream, so Zeke ate every last bite.
“Just doing my part,” he said, swallowing another mouthful of ice cream.
By the time they were through, they’d carved out a hole deep enough for Guster to crawl inside.
Guster and Zeke were both taking a breather when they heard the key rattle in the lock. Guster was quick. He grabbed the cake and shoved it into the hole and dropped the tapestry, just as the door opened.
Two guards stood on either side of the corridor with Salero between them, his reddish-brown robes hanging like strips of bacon from his gaunt frame. “Time for your morning tutelage,” he said, his nostrils flaring.
Had he seen the hole? Guster was afraid to turn around and look.
“Of course, sir,” said Guster. He felt hot on his neck. He moved toward Salero, when he spotted the ice cream scoop on the ground behind where Zeke stood. Guster moved to the door, attempting to block the view into the cell. “It’ll be nice to stretch our legs—and minds, of course—for a while.”
Salero peered over the end of his large beak nose. “Quite.” He turned on his heels.
Zeke was right behind Guster, both of them slipping into the hallway and taking off at a brisk pace. The guards pulled the door shut and locked it, then raced after Guster and Zeke before they could get too far unattended.
Salero climbed the spiral stairs upward and led them back into the Mayor’s office, where the maps, charts, books, and two plush red armchairs sat.
The two guards took up their posts on either door, spears pointed straight toward the ceiling. Salero motioned for Zeke and Guster to take a seat.
Mariah was sitting on the desk, leafing through the heavy, leather Book of Knowledge of The Delicious City of El Elado.
“Mariah, what are you doing here?” said Guster.
Mariah looked up from her reading. Her eyes lit up. “Oh. They said I could come and hear their lessons. Do you know what is in this book?” she asked.
Guster shook his head. “A little.”
“Salero’s been teaching me,” she said. She placed both hands flat on the pages. “It’s quite amazing, really.”
Mariah always did love books and learning. Whatever her teachers told her at school was law. But Salero?
Zeke groaned. “I’m on summer vacation,” he said. “And this is what I get? More school. This really is not my favorite city if this is how you treat summertime.”
Salero’s one eyebrow bent upward. “You are here because you must know the history of El Elado.”
“Before Yummy returns to eat me?” asked Guster. They were taking an awful lot of care for someone they wanted dead.
Salero’s lips went tight. “Consider us fattening you up for the slaughter with knowledge. Besides, I think you’ll find this fascinating.” He turned the pages of the enormous book and rotated it around for them to see. On the open page were four numbered sentences, all written in a language Guster couldn’t understand.
“These are the idols of the mind,” said Salero. “Deceptions that cloud our thinking. You are subject to these deceptions, and it is the duty of a scholar to purge them from your head so that you can be clear in your thinking. Your sister seems to be clear of thought.”
Mariah smiled proudly.
Salero turned to another page. “A century after the city was founded, it wallowed in ignorance. There was no one to guide the minds of the people, and they were chained to their foolish superstitions. Then, on one of the many ingredient expeditions to the flatlands, the Confectioners brought back a scholar to live among them. He turned on the light for this city. He was a student of an age of enlightenment, and his tutor was none other than Francis Bacon.”
“That scholar founded the Baconists,” said Guster. He remembered hearing about Francis Bacon in school, though he couldn’t say why he was important. All that he remembered was that the man had worn one of those stiff white collars that looked like a tutu around his neck and that he was really smart.
Salero nodded. “Astute. Perhaps we’ll be able to save your mind yet,” he said. He scratched something down on a piece of paper with his quill. “And since then, the Baconists have grown as the citizens of El Elado discover their love for reason and learning. We have expunged the fogs in their minds.”
Zeke fidgeted in his chair. “So I don’t get it. Why should we care?”
Guster almost laughed, but the serious, grim expression on Salero’s deeply-lined face made Guster think he’d better not.
“I will show you,” said Salero. He unrolled another scroll. This one had an aerial view of the city with a rough sketch of Yummy drawn on it.
Guster peered closer at it. There were lines radiating around the center with thirteen monsters surrounding the city, facing outward like guards.
“You see, we have studied these beasts. They are more than just protectors of the city. They are the foundation on which the city is built. They are builders.”
He unrolled another scroll. There was a close up picture of a Yummy with notes scrawled next to various parts of the Yummy’s body in a language Guster couldn’t read. There was a paragraph near the creature’s head and mouth, a sentence written under his feet, and another paragraph scrawled next to his enormous, clawed hands. Guster had never seen them up close before—they were large and powerful scoops, like a grizzly bear’s hands.
“Do you see his claws?” asked Salero. “At first glance, one would not realize that Yummy makes his burrows in the ice and snow. He digs tunnels deep and far, much like the marmots in the mountains below us. But unlike the marmots, Yummy is a builder. He doesn’t just dig holes. He fills the ones that nature leaves behind.”
Salero pulled a slender stick of charcoal from the folds in his robes and began to draw on another blank parchment. He drew a crude skyline of El Elado on top of its plateau. Then he drew a network of tunnels beneath it. “The city is built on the ever-flowing glacier of ice cream that springs forth from the mountain. The ground beneath us is shifting, slowly creeping downhill, cracking and rolling in slow motion.”
Zeke stirred in his seat. He looked doubtful.
“This is why the city is collapsing beneath us. Ever since the city began, Yummy has burrowed deep, shifting and digging up the ice cream glacier, shoring up the support and keeping the city safe. He is a protector in more ways than one.”
“Have you ever seen these burrows?” asked Guster. The idea struck him as odd, if not impossible.
Salero shook his head. “We don’t need to. There is evidence enough. Our numbers and the frequency of the quakes all point to this same result. Did you not feel the sinking last night?”
Zeke sat straight up in his chair, his eyebrows crammed together. “That sounds crazy,” he said.
Salero turned, his eyes staring like daggers down his beak of a nose. “It is science!” he said, his voice firm and defensive. He swept his arms out over the shelves of books. “Are you going to deny the whole collected work of generations of scholars?”
Guster shook his head. Salero was so sure of himself. “But didn’t the quakes just start one year ago?” Guster asked
.
Salero laughed, spitting. “Ha! Ask any Baconist. We are the protectors of reason and knowledge. Do you really think that a small boy like you actually can have all the facts?”
“Guster, be reasonable,” said Mariah.
Guster didn’t feel like he had very many facts. He’d only gotten a B in science last year. But could Yummy have dug and built foundations for the city? And now that he was gone, it all was going to fall apart? Yummy had only been gone for one year. That hardly seemed like enough evidence for the Baconists to build a theory on. It just sounded so . . . outlandishly ridiculous.
Then again, they were living in a city made of ice cream. Anything seemed possible. And the Baconists were all supposed to be so very smart. The idea was daunting.
Zeke started to laugh. “I’m sorry,” he said, his eyes welling up with tears, “but what you’re saying sounds really, really stupid.”
Guster’s stomach twisted. Salero wasn’t going to like that.
Salero’s face went grim. “I see you deny science,” he said, shaking his head. “Then I cannot stop the doom of this cataclysm falling down upon your head.”
He snapped his fingers. “Guards, take them back to their chambers,” he said, “and get them out of my sight.”
The guards posted on either door yanked Guster and Zeke from their chairs, marched them back to their cell, and locked them inside.
Chapter 19—Mom’s Cell
Guster pulled back the tapestry. Salero frustrated him so. He was so sure of himself. He was acting as if Guster couldn’t—or shouldn’t—be allowed to think for himself.
“We have to get out of here,” Guster said, crawling into the tunnel. “I’ll scoop. You eat.”
Guster dug. It was slow at first, but soon he found a rhythm. Within the hour, he’d dug the tunnel another four feet into the wall.
Zeke shoveled leftover Moose Tracks from the tunnel into his mouth. “Mmmm,” he mumbled between bites, “so good. Best idea we’ve ever had Guster. Mmm. A man’s gotta do what a man’s gotta do.”
Guster ate what he could too, but it didn’t take long for the ice cream to feel like it was pressing up against his stomach lining, like a lump trying to break free.