Kelcius still hung by a claw from the door. In a brave mood, IT took action, regurgitating a glue-like blob and elongating into a rope. The bug lassoed Kelcius and lowered him to a stair. “What are friends for?” IT called out, and secured itself to one side, then sprang across the shaft, latching onto the opposite ledge and forming a tightrope. Seeing their opportunity, the Backers interlocked their arms and walked across the chasm, balancing carefully atop the bug’s invention. When they reached Kelcius on the staircase, IT snapped back into shape and plugged itself again into Kelcius’s ear.
Kelcius yanked on the door handle with one of his claws. The door flew open, revealing a startled bunch of Benders on the other side. “We have everyone!” Kelcius said. “Let’s get back to our caves before Letcho finds out!”
They found their way back into the tunnel, retraced their steps and exited the mountain before the entrance disappeared.
***
Glitta flickered on a steep slope of rock and sparked. When she heard the spider say that a lady from the palace was in trouble, she figured it had to be the Captain’s wife. And this “sealed room” that the spider was talking about had to be someplace that few others larger than a spider could get to, some sort of hidden chamber. She began looking for an entrance.
Below she saw the Mammolias, and couldn’t resist playing a bit with them. Glitta sliced through a hovering cloud of crystal dust and spiraled around the huge pillar that supported the observatory deck, throwing rainbow orbs. At first her luminescence startled them, and they rattled their chains in surprise. “Maybe it came to take us away like the little creatures,” a small spotted one said.
Glitta teased them playfully, glittering above their heads. She always enjoyed a game of “catch me, even if you can’t!”
“See you again!” she glittered, and continued on her quest.
“Wait for me, Glitta!” Maximojo hollered, as he followed her light trail into the shaft.
“I think I found what we should be looking for. Land somewhere and wait for me.” Glitta’s voiced echoed up the shaft. She narrowed into a beam, and slid into a crack she had spotted in the lower shaft wall.
“Where does everyone think they are going without me?” Wynder fanged. “That nosey spark-fly better not go where I think she’s headed! Never-never. You’re not allowed in the chamber alone. Wait for me,” she huffed. “I have it all planned out. Come on, girls, let’s see some swing in your spin. Descend. Quick-quick.” They unraveled their threads faster.
Maximojo landed on a plateau next to a waterfall that emptied into a pool of flowstone blossoms, far above the Mammolias. Wynder and her troops touched down softly right behind him. One of them jumped inside the mouth of the Smelka figurine they had carried with them, and the figurine immediately shrank to spider size.
“It was a wise choice to fall into my trap. You’ll never escape again.” The spider fanged, and savored the venom in her mouth. “Tasty-tasty.”
She threw a sticky thread onto the wall next to him, climbed up and swung across to his face.
And crawled inside the button-nose.
Chapter 20
Glitta popped out on the other side of the crack, and found herself in a gloomy room. It was the chamber. She turned on her low beam, and saw a table and a chest. She felt a little dizzy. “Something about this room affects me, and the orbital spin of the planet, I’ll bet! This must what we detected when we landed. We must destroy this place before the timepiece locks into registration.”
She heard a faint noise coming from the far side of the chamber, and shone her light in that direction. “I knew she was here,” Glitta sparkled. “Wait till Mojo finds out that I’m right again.”
***
Maximojo sneezed and whacked the side of his face to try to evict Wynder. She latched onto the inside. “I’m not leaving so soon,” the spider echoed inside his head. “I am here to help you. Do I have to remind you! Over-over.”
Maximojo started to howl, but what came out instead was a clankity-clank noise that sounded like Wynder. He shrank to spider-size. His fur peeled away revealing a hard spider shell. Fangs popped out of his mouth. Many eyes appeared on his head, and feelers replaced his floppy ears.
“You should have listened to me in the dungeon. Kept quiet until squashed. Squish-squish. Trouble-maker! Making me come back for you. I’m on overtime. Late-late. The spider’s voice echoed inside of him. Wynder pumped out his chest just to further demonstrate her control. Maximojo looked bold in shiny black armor.
“A little wider around the girth!” she said. “Have a little respect. Better. Roomier. Much-much.”
Maximojo felt panic rising. “How is Glitta going to get me out of this spider outfit?” he wondered. “She always gets me out of trouble.” This time, though, he was a little worried. She might not find him in time.
Wynder directed him across the dirt and into a crevice around the corner. “Onward many-many eyed willy-want! Up-up and away. Fast-fast.” The spiderettes followed closely behind.
Maximojo looked out of his many eyes, and spied a crack in the rock above him. He felt a need to throw a sticky line up to the wall and hoist his body up. Wynder calculated the angle to the opening, and with a big heave had him land in the opening. He drew his prickly legs in and pushed through, and landed on his head, nearly crushing his shell. He saw that they were now in a cave-like chamber. “One of McFee’s doings, no doubt,” he thought. He saw Glitta’s light and was greatly relieved.
“You are clumsier than expected,” Wynder said. She suspiciously crawled out between his fangs to see how much damage had been done. The spider looked around before backing up into his mouth. “No legs missing. Tight squeeze through my private entranceway into the chamber. Wouldn’t want to lose any legs. It took lifetimes to grow these.”
Unsuspectingly, she felt something grab her, and the spider went flying across the chamber. “You used my leg as weapon against me! Tricky. Nasty-nasty,” she clanked, and flipped herself over onto her legs.
Maximojo began to transform back into his normal shape.
“I’ve been waiting for you!” Glitta sparked. “What happened to your ears, Mojo?” She flickered about priming his coat with little sparklets until the curls took hold. Wynder, who was already on her way out, turned and said, “Where did you get those glittery wings? They look ridiculous in the dark!”
Glitta started after her.
“Easy glitters! No need to get upset. Slow-slow. I brought fluff-face to you, did I not?” And with that she dashed back into the crack in the cave wall. She preferred not to be around when the Master performed his work.
Her troops had followed her in, and dropped the shrunken skunklen beside the chest and skittered after her. The Smelka figurine grew once again to its full size.
“Nobody makes fun of my wings,” She shot bolts of fire at the exit where they all had disappeared. Maximojo had never seen Glitta so sparked-up.
Muffled noises again came from behind the chest. Glitta shone a spotlight in that direction, revealing a lady in a torn gown. “Look who I found,” she said.
Maximojo approached. “You must be Clarenette. We heard about you and the Captain. We were on our way to see you, but we’ve run into a few obstacles,” he said, stating the obvious.
“What took you so long to find me?” Clarenette said. Maximojo wondered how she knew they were coming for her, as it wasn’t part of his original mission. Just then they heard pattering sounds in the dark.
Glitta lit up the floor. “It’s that black rat!”
Rutty blinked at them. He didn’t know how any of them had gotten into this chamber, including himself. The last thing he remembered was carrying Clarenette toward his underground castle. Confused, he was unsure what to do next. “Things have been a little rough for my gang, lately,” he thought. Inside the chest, something began rolling around. Rutty climbed up its side and peered in. He became wide-eyed as he saw the statuettes of Letcho, Scrapsie … and himself. “It looks li
ke my gang,” he exclaimed, “and me! What is this?” he said, reaching for his own figurine, then he spotted Smelka’s figurine on the ground.
A sharp crack came from the ceiling. As they all looked up, a coin dropped through a small hole and clinked on the floor. They watched it roll, stand on its edge. The coin spun to a rest, face-side up, and began to move.
Maximojo’s nose twitched. “He kept his promise, Glitta.”
Fingers appeared from the edges of the coin. The coin expanded, cracked in the middle, and grew into a towering figure wearing a spider-weave hooded cape. It covered his head and most of his face.
The figure turned to Maximojo and began to speak. “This will be your last adventure, Maximojo. I’ve waited forever for this moment, and now you let my spider lead you right into my trap. How does it feel?”
Rutty stared hard at that face, but it took a moment for him to recognize the voice. “It sounds like the smuggler,” he said, growing a little flustered and unsure of what to do. “he seems familiar.”
Glitta blinked on and off not knowing what to do.
“You really don’t remember me, do you my little Starring?” McFee said. “It was a long time ago. You were only a little spark then.”
Glitta felt a tiny tug at her memory, but the picture wouldn’t come clear.
“It was a solar flare raid. I was known then as Emperor McFee, and I led that raid. We got a number of sparks on that raid and put them into plasma-pods for storage to use to control other solar systems. But one of them slipped through our fingers. Can you guess who that might be?”
Suddenly it all came back to her. The raid, the escape, wandering until a space dog found her and helped her become a finely tuned wand of light. Ever since, they had been inseparable, and Glitta was deeply loyal to her Mojo.
“You were the brightest supernova spark I had ever seen,” McFee said. “I loathed not having you then. The possibilities of putting you to my uses were endless. We got the others, but you were the one I really wanted. And I grew to regret it even more when much later Maximojo began reporting our galactic smuggling operations to the Cosmic Federation.
“We were caught and imprisoned into space coins, and sent out to wander aimlessly among the stoneheads. It was dangerous being knocked around, and it took a millennium for me to develop the skills to become the Master you see before you now, but I can’t stay like this for long. You did this to me, Maximojo, and now I’m coined for destruction, so I devised a plan to destroy you.”
“Don’t take another step!” Glitta flared in threatening hues.
“Have you begun to understand, my little sparkler, why you always had such compassion for the Starrings, and I could use them to lure you to me!”
“Glittols!” Maximojo had a sudden realization. “You are one of the Starrings!”
“They are my siblings!” Glitta glittered remembering she had a twin. “Sparkafras! It must be Sparky! I knew she look familiar!”
“Of course, you fools,” McFee said. “And I convinced the Council to send you two to Zalturn, knowing that Glitta would be unconsciously drawn to be with the Starrings. And you, Maximojo, wouldn’t be able to resist such an important mission as preparing the way for Kalapsis to be installed. Now I have you where I want you, and on my schedule.”
With that, McFee slipped off the cape, revealing scorched, scaled skin and side fins.
“He’s turning into a snaphead!” Rutty squealed, peering out from underneath the chest’s lid, his eyes boggling in disbelief.
McFee pointed at the table and a stone pot appeared on it. The chamber shook, awakening winged creatures that swarmed out of the walls, and encircled Maximojo.
“Watch out, Mojo!” Glitta targeted the creatures with a round of radioactive daggers to defuse them, but they only ricocheted off the walls.
“Your making the room spin,” he said. But it was not the room spinning, just her Mojo, as the magnetic force in the center of the room got stronger.
“Hold on to the walls, Mojo,” she flared. But it was too late. Maximojo couldn’t stabilize himself and crashed on the floor.
Before Glitta could strike again, she felt her hair stand on end from static electricity. She tried to look up, and got tangled in a web above her head. It began to short-circuit her energy. Wynder had woven it especially for Glitta’s capture.
“My energy source is weakening,” Glitta said. Collecting the remains of her solar supply, she sent out a distress signal to her friend from the cornfield, the whale. “I feel so depleted.” She barely had enough strength to flicker in silence.
The fliers’ wings enveloped Maximojo, digging their talons into his coat. They lifted him up and dropped him into the pot, which oozed with a sticky liquid that bubbled and poured out over the sides. Glitta, unable even to move her wings, watched helplessly as her Mojo bobbed and sank beneath the goo. McFee grinned, as the pot sealed itself and turned into a viewer-box.
***
In the palace gardens, Smelka regained consciousness, her faint dreams of tumbling into an abyss drifting away. It was still dark. Letcho and Scrapsie also awoke and climbed out of the dirt. They heard a rumble at the palace. “Is the party already over?” Letcho said. “We must have lost track of time. I don’t remember what happened. Has Rutty come back?”
He looked again to the palace and saw the Captain, sitting atop his horse, leading his guards in a charge. And they were coming right at them. The Captain shouted above the thundering hoof beats, “Find her, guards! She can’t be too far. Clarenette, Clarenette!” Daltoid was frantic.
“Rutty must have already captured Clarenette without our help,” Letcho said. Smelka looked up at him with sorrowful eyes. “He would never abandon us for Clarenette, would he?”
“Let’s get out here, or we’re going to get trampled. Back to the castle,” Letcho hissed. “Rutty must be waiting for us there.” They sped off just out of sight of the guards, Smelka trailing a bit behind. But the further behind she got, the more doubts came up in her mind. “I’m so tired of being left out. So tired.” She slowed to a walk, stopped, turned around and headed back to the gardens.
The sun set, rose, and set again with a strange wobble, and still the Captain and the guards searched all of Kavalon to no avail. Dejected, the Captain returned to the palace, backtracking through the gardens. As he looked around, he saw something shiny on the ground. He stopped, dismounted and discovered Clarenette’s hairpin.
“She never went anywhere without it,” he said. “She has been taken against her will!” He inserted the hairpin into his overcoat’s lapel and wept. The guards stood by silently. Everyone was sad. As he rose again, the Captain saw two goblets lying side by side, the very ones he had seen Ratkin carrying with Clarenette during the new-moon festivities. He laid his sword next to them and crushed the goblets under his boot.
As they trudged back in the direction of the palace, the horses tramped unknowingly over the hidden hatch door leading into the vanishing mountain.
Chapter 21
The more the Captain focused on each step Clarenette had taken that night, the more vague everything became, almost as if none of it had ever happened. He touched her hairpin and relived the experience, wondering if he could have changed anything.
“Rutland was acting quite strange dancing around with that odd expression on his face,” he thought. “I should have suspected something. It was as if he were a mere puppet.” Without Clarenette, defeat tore at the Captain, opening up a bottomless pit of sorrow inside him, as ice began to form around his heart. In that moment he lost his need to reign over the land. “Kavalon deserves a better Ruler,” he decided.
Standing on his balcony watching the sunrise, he felt the sea beckon him. A flock of silver-tipped Kaversen flew by. He took this as a sign, and made a decision. The Scepter of the Kingdom will be given to Master McFee. He will rule by land, and I will go back to the sea.” He sent guards to bring McFee to the palace, and ordered a magnificent ship be built for his jo
urney.
***
The night Clarenette disappeared was the moment that the retiring timekeeper stepped down making room for its successor, Kalapsis, the new timekeeper of the universe who snapped into gear, and began to record everything in its calendar. The planets and the stars adapted to its rhythm. At the same moment, the sun doubled, then tripled in size as if to explode, and nearly split in two during the triple eclipse. Zalturn trembled but soon steadied itself.
The intense heat of the sun had flared across the land, forcing the Kingdom’s residents to take cover. Zalturn’s poles switched and locked into place, then the planet easily adjusted its orbit around the sun. Deep inside the planet McFee’s chamber, which had always made Zalturn’s orbit wobble, stabilized due to Maximojo and Glitta’s presence there.
Maximojo and the Wand of Light Page 18