by Adam Sidwell
They pushed a door open and emerged into chaos, the deafening boom of cannon fire echoing off the walls. They stood in what was left of a half-broken hallway, its bricks shattered and scattered across the floor. A gaping hole had been blasted through it, giving Guster and Mariah a clear view of the courtyard below.
Princess Sunday’s Castle was in near ruin. Its walls were shattered in several places by cannon balls.
In the middle of it all, the Cherry Brigade was making its last stand. Dad was winding a crank on a catapult, with the help of two of the Princess’s guards, until the arm that held the giant ice cream boulder slanted backward, ready to fire.
And in the middle of the smoke and flames, Mom stood across the courtyard, tall and straight, like a general in the middle of the chaos. Henry Junior was strapped to her back, squealing in delight. Her baby-blue apron was tattered on one side, torn by some projectile’s explosion. She was barking commands to the small platoon of soldiers that readied another catapult for launch.
A moment of relief washed over Guster. At least Mom and Dad were alive—for now. There was still a chance they could make it out of this.
But there was the advancing army. Princess Sunday was nowhere to be found.
Save the Delicious City, said the voice inside Guster’s head. It was the same whispered voice he’d heard inside the cold mountain. The Yummies were in his mind. Tasting the ice cream at the source had connected them to Guster.
And this voice was more than a plea. It was a command.
Guster shook his head. How? What could just he do to save an entire city? He was only twelve years old.
Save the City, said the voice again. Guster felt it in his bones. This time the voice was mourning. There was sadness in it, each word laden with weight and sorrow.
Guster took one step into the courtyard.
“Guster Stephen Johnsonville!” shouted Mom. She spotted him from two catapults away. Her hands went straight to her hips. Her eyes glistened with tears. “Get yourself and your sister underground and out of this battle right this instant, or so help me! You know the rule about standing in the line of cannon fire!”
It all felt like a dream.
“You heard your mother!” shouted Dad. A cannonball exploded behind him, smashing the castle wall and leaving a crater in the hard frozen brick. He ducked and then gave the crank one last turn. “Get down below. Take your little brother with you!”
Dad stomped down on a wooden catch, releasing the catapult’s arm. It swung upward, snapping forward with all the incredible force pent up inside its coiled chords. A huge strawberry ice cream boulder flew into the air, up and over the castle wall toward the Mayor’s army on the other side.
“That goes for you too, Mariah!” said Dad.
Guster’s first instinct was to listen, to run down into the safety of the dungeons where he would at least be out of the line of fire. He didn’t want to face Mom’s wrath.
“But . . .” he stammered. He wanted to help. He didn’t know what he would do, and there was such danger. Maybe it was better to go down below.
The pure ice cream surged through him now. It was warm inside his veins. The feeling came again to him, the taste forming itself into words and meaning.
Our city is crumbling, said the voice.
But what could he do?
A dainty hand rested lightly on Guster’s shoulder. It came from below, reaching upward to touch him feebly. Guster turned.
It was Princess Sunday. “Guster, I think you truly are the Exquisite Morsel,” she whispered. She was cradled in the arms of one of her guards. He held her, curled up like a little girl in her daddy’s arms. Her hair was disheveled, tangled, and matted like it had been blown backward by an explosion. Her face was caked with dirt and blood, and her cherry crown had fallen from her head.
A second guard stood nearby, impatient, his eyes darting back and forth helplessly, his spear discarded at his feet. He held the crown in both hands and looked like he wanted to reach out and place it back on her head, like he desperately needed to because, if he did, that would somehow make things all right.
“The Mayor has always thought I was the Exquisite Morsel,” said Guster.
“I don’t think that it means what the Mayor wanted it to mean,” she said, breathing in short gasps. “I think that Yummy didn’t go to the far reaches of the earth to find you for nothing.”
“Princess, you’re hurt,” he said. His heart ached for her. He wanted to help her. She needed a hospital. Did they even have doctors in El Elado? “Marshmallow Cheer,” he said, desperately reaching for hope. “That will cure you.”
Princess Sunday shook her head. “It’s not the answer to everything,” she said sadly. “Though I wish it were.
“Guster, you brave boy from far away, Yummy brought you here for a reason,” she whispered, her voice growing faint.
Guster knew that now. Yummy had wanted to bring him here to find the Shield of Seasons. It all seemed so inevitable now, like no matter what, any road he’d taken would have brought him right back here to El Elado.
“There’s something Yummy wanted me to find. It’s buried deep in the mountain near the source,” he said.
Princess Sunday’s face brightened with curiosity. Then she coughed weakly and it faded away. “That is a story I think you should save for another time,” she said. “There is something here and now far more pressing and immediate. The City of El Elado needs you, Guster.”
“Needs me?” he asked.
What did that mean? He had already found the Shield of Seasons. That’s what Yummy had wanted him to do. And maybe Archedentus too, in some roundabout way. But what could he do for El Elado? They were looking to him again to do something grand.
“What, then, should I do?” asked Guster.
Princess Sunday buried her face into the guard’s chest. “I do not know. Perhaps Yummy knows. Perhaps they are waiting for someone who finally understands them. Who can lead them.”
Guster lowered his eyes. Eating the ice cream at the source sealed the connection between them. Yummy was in his head. But what now?
Save us, said the voice.
He needed help. It is your city, he said in his mind. He didn’t know if they could hear him. Maybe the connection only worked one way.
What can we do? said the voice. We are wild. We are pure instinct.
Guster took a deep breath. The words in his head were so hard to define, like trying to form a picture in the mud—it was a line at first, then a shape. He had to mold it into something real.
“Guster!” said Mom. She was stalking toward him. “You get down those stairs right now, or there will be no breakfast or television or even breathing privileges for the rest of the month!”
There was no time. Guster leapt onto the stairway that lead up the castle wall, and with one last glance at Mom—just at her feet, he couldn’t meet her eyes—he dashed up the stone steps.
“Guster!” she shouted, panic and anger in her voice. There was no time to reason with her. No time to explain. Guster hardly knew himself what he was doing—only that it was what he must do.
He stopped at the rampart three flights up. The Mayor’s guards ringed the castle below, their gleaming spear points and chest plates charging forward. They were at the Castle Gates now. The last of the Princess’s Cherry Brigade had fallen. The Guard swarmed like angry bulls toward the closed drawbridge, where they’d smashed a hole through the peanut brittle. There was an explosion in the courtyard below, bits of stone shrapnel flying everywhere. In moments, the castle would fall; Princess Sunday, Mom, and Dad would fall with it.
Guster stood, stretching himself tall on the ramparts. He did not care what danger he exposed himself to. Rise up, Yummy, he said in his mind, throwing his thoughts outward toward the mountain. He did not know if they could hear him. Defend our city. We are not your en
emy. They surround us. Do not let them break our city. You are our army. Rise up. Come to me.
There was only silence.
Then Guster felt a song flowering inside him, up from his gut and out through his lips, a taste in harmony. He hummed it—three notes, simple and long. He recognized them, as they settled into the air and turned to vapor. They were the notes Gaucho had sung so many days ago when they’d first escaped from Yummy on the bus.
They were a call. They were Yummy’s song.
Then Guster was silent. He felt a hand on his back.
“Guster, what . . .?” whispered Mariah. She was breathing heavy. She had just run up the flights of steps behind him.
The front lines of the Mayor’s guard charged through the outer gates, crying victory, their spears pointed forward. In a moment they would be inside the Castle courtyard.
Then the ground shook ever so slightly, and out of the corner of his eye, Guster saw a flash of white fur break from the hill, like something hatching from an egg. Two thick, furry arms clawed out of the hole, then a blunt, broad head. Another flash of fur broke the ground outside the castle wall. Then another two in the center of the battlefield.
Several more cracks popped, a mass of white fur emerging from each. Like a pack of wolves, they gathered, appearing from all corners of the castle and city. Flowing into one massive column—a sea of white fur, curved claws, and glinting fangs—they charged toward the enemy guards at the castle gates.
The Yummies were a wave of fury and raw strength, their power no longer shrouded in mystery or hidden in the shadows of glaciers as they charged.
There were a dozen of them, all finally seen by the light of day. And in one’s enormous mouth, riding with his arm extended outward like a Calvary captain’s sword, was a sixteen-year-old boy.
“Zeke!” cried Mariah, pointing to the Yummy. They could see Zeke’s bright white teeth, set in a smile as wide as a pickup truck’s grill.
“He must have been with Yummy this whole time,” said Guster. A small weight of worry fell from his shoulders. At least Zeke was safe. That was one less small burden to carry.
The first Yummies reached the Mayor’s guard and broke on them like a wave.
A dozen monsters shattered the soldiers’ ranks, wedges of white fury splintering the columns of advancing silver armor and red banners. Yummy swatted the Guards aside, batting them like pillows out of the way and across the battlefield, the men tumbling and their spears shattering to pieces. Some of them tried to fight back, but they were no match for the ferocity of the Himalayan monster. In minutes the Mayor’s guards were scattered, broken, and running for their lives in full retreat.
Their army was no more.
Mariah put her hand on Guster’s arm. He hadn’t realized how tightly he was gripping the frozen brick on the edge of the ramparts. He relaxed at her touch.
“I think we’ve won,” she said. Her voice was uncertain, like she was afraid to believe what she’d said.
The monsters gathered at the foot of the drawbridge inside the courtyard, their arms limp at their sides. They breathed heavily, panting after their burst of exertion. The one with Zeke in its mouth knelt down and opened his jaws wide. Zeke crawled out onto the frozen ground. He did not seem to care that he was covered in spit; instead he stood up tall, like he’d just defeated the Mayor’s guard all on his own.
The pack of Yummies lifted their stout heads and stared up at Guster as if they were all wondering the same thing. Finished? the voice said in Guster’s head.
“Finished,” said Guster. “You truly are the protectors of El Elado.”
A large one with white mottled fur stood in the front and sniffed and purred contentedly. He closed his eyes. We go now, he said.
Guster descended the steps and ran to them. He extended his hand, palm sideways to the nearest beast. The creature breathed warm, moist breath onto his skin. Guster had only glimpsed him before in passing, but that did not matter. They were all as one. “Thank you,” said Guster. After all his running, from the farmhouse to New York City to the Himalayas, it was over.
From the very beginning, they had been like two streams flowing into the same river. Felicity’s Taste Resonance Theory was true. Now the chase was over. Yummy had let himself be tamed.
Guster lowered his hand, and Yummy backed away slowly, then turned his stumpy head. He leapt over a break in the castle wall and ran toward the mountain. The others followed in a stream, a white, furry flock returning to their home.
Suddenly, the courtyard felt lonely, like an empty home after friends have said their last goodbyes.
Guster turned to Mom. “Guster, I’m so—”
She didn’t finish her sentence. An arm whipped around her throat, locking her neck in the crook of its elbow. A short, stubby man with the squashed up face of a pug dog stood behind Mom, a flintlock pistol in his hand. The barrel was pointed at Guster.
The Mayor.
“This city is mine,” he said. The top half of his top hat had had been blown away, leaving charred and smudged edges where the polish had been so that it looked like the smoking barrel of a cannon. His blue mayor’s badge was dangling from his breast pocket by a thread.
Henry Junior screamed.
Guster tensed. But for some reason, this time he wasn’t afraid.
He drew himself up tall. He had tamed Yummy. “Your army is scattered. You’ve lost,” said Guster.
The Mayor’s eyes grew wide. His nostrils flared as desperation spread across his face. “No. I’m the Mayor Bollito, Ruler of the Delicious City of El Elado. With power invested in me by the right of . . .” he said, spittle spraying out of his mouth. He turned the gun toward Mom.
“I am—” he said, but before he could finish his sentence, Dad leapt from a broken stone, his fist extended, the bow of his battleship nose thrust forward like an iron wedge. His body hung in the air for just a split second, like a basketball player before a slam dunk, and then his knuckles surged forward, smashing into the Mayor’s jaw.
The Mayor’s face crumpled, his head flying backward as he fell to the frozen strawberry pink cobblestones. He groaned, then rolled over and did not stir.
Dad landed with both feet set wide on either side of the Mayor’s limp form. “That is the mother of my children,” Dad said, glowering down at the Mayor.
Dad was glowing like a winged, bronze statue mounted on the steps of a state capitol building. He took Mom in one arm. “Mabel,” he said. “Are you alright?”
Mom nodded. She nuzzled her head under his chin.
Guster had never seen Dad do anything like that before. Had Dad been a commando or a samurai before Guster was born? There was nothing so incredible as Dad in this moment, and Guster promised himself that he would obey whatever Dad said right away for the rest of his life.
“Woah,” said Zeke, his jaw dropped to his chest.
Dad kicked the pistol, sending it skittering across the cobblestones far away from the Mayor’s grasp.
Guster turned his head, taking in everything around him—the ruined stone, the broken spear points jutting out of the ground like nails, the guards limping and dragging their friends into what was left of the castle. The remaining Mayor’s guard were all in chains, having been rounded up by the remnants of the Cherry Brigade.
They had won. They had beaten back the Mayor’s all-out assault on the Castle. It all seemed so surreal now that it was over. Guster had never seen such wide-scale destruction up close. He’d expected that he’d be more nervous, but in the middle of the moment, it all seemed surprisingly normal. Maybe he was getting used to this sort of thing.
“The Princess!” said one of her guards. “She . . .” He hung his head. “Hurry.”
Chapter 26—Heir to the Throne
The Johnsonvilles climbed the steps into the tower on the heels of the guards of the Cherry Brigade as quickly as
they could. The guards pushed through the half-open wooden door. Beyond was a strawberry room studded with purple gumdrops and an enormous, lavish bed draped in curtains in the center.
Mom and Dad pushed their way inside. Guster paused at the threshold. He didn’t want to go in, not after the guard had explained how badly Princess Sunday was wounded in the battle.
Princess Sunday was royalty. She was splendid and marvelous in everything she did. She was permanent. She was forever. Nothing could happen to her. It just couldn’t.
Mariah nudged Guster from behind. He crossed through the door frame, his feet heavy as he took his side by Mom and Dad at her bed.
Princess Sunday was propped up on a set of marshmallow pillows, her golden hair spread out like a waterfall.
She looked so peaceful, like she was sleeping. Her face had been cleaned. Her eyes were closed, and she looked so peaceful, like she’d been lying there for years.
“Princess,” Guster whispered, “the city is safe now. The man who was causing the quakes is gone.” She wouldn’t know who Palatus was. But he had to tell her the city was no longer in danger.
Her eyes fluttered open. Then she closed them again. “Thank you Guster,” she whispered.
Her mouth curved up at the edges in a weak smile, like she was keeping a secret from them.
She did not open her eyes again.
Guster squeezed his eyes shut hard, but that didn’t stop the tears from coming.
***
The entire city joined the procession that marched slowly through the butterscotch streets behind the coach that carried Princess Sunday to her final resting place.
There were thousands of men, women, and children from both the Chocolate Crescent and the Fruitful Streets, all shoulder to shoulder as one.
The coach entered the castle, where the guards drew up the bridge and left the people outside to mourn. Then, in secret, Guster led them up the winding path toward the hidden cave from which the source of El Elado’s pure ice cream flowed.
Outside of its entrance, on a small cliff overlooking the city made of opaque white ice, they laid Princesa Elenora Domingo of the City of El Elado to rest, forever frozen above the precious city that she had ruled with wisdom.