by Mark Crilley
Soon, though, we’d left all the mountains and cliffs behind and were heading out across a big blue sea. With warm sunlight on my shoulders and pretty little waves splashing down below, I was beginning to feel better about things. Maybe this rescue mission wouldn’t turn out to be so difficult after all.
“This is the Moonguzzit Sea, Akiko,” Mr. Beeba explained, sounding like a patient schoolteacher. “Alia Rellapor lives in an enormous castle on the other side. It shouldn’t take us more than a few hours to cross it.”
“What happens if we fail, Mr. Beeba?” I asked. “I mean, what if we aren’t able to rescue the Prince?”
“I don’t know,” Mr. Beeba replied, frowning. “I suppose we’ll all have to hide somewhere for a few years—”
“Don’t listen to him, Akiko,” Spuckler interrupted. “We’ll rescue the Prince, no problem! Right, Gax?”
“ACTUALLY, SIR . . . ,” Gax began.
“I said, ‘Right, Gax?’ ” Spuckler shouted, grabbing the poor robot by his long scrawny neck with one hand and steering with the other.
“IF YOU SAY SO, SIR,” came Gax’s obedient reply. I was beginning to understand that Gax had opinions of his own, even if he wasn’t always allowed to speak his mind.
Soon there was no land in sight, and the waters of the Moonguzzit Sea stretched out to the horizon on all sides. I could just see in the distance what looked like a flock of orange birds flying across our path.
“Hey, Mr. Beeba, what kind of birds are those?” I asked.
“Those are what we call Yumbas, Akiko,” he replied authoritatively. “They aren’t birds, actually, but rather a form of reptile. Fascinating creatures, really.”
“Those ain’t Yumbas,” Spuckler said, squinting. “They’re Mumbas.”
“Spuckler, don’t you think I know a Yumba when I see one?”
“Beeba, the only animals you know about are the ones you seen in them dusty old books of yours. You got no experience in the field.”
And so the two of them continued, arguing back and forth about one thing and then another, for well over an hour. I stopped listening to them and started thinking about my mom and dad and Melissa. I wondered what they would think if they knew where I was and what I was doing. Melissa, for one, would definitely be impressed. It was hard to imagine what my mom would say. She’s always telling me how much good it would do me to get out of my room, but I’m pretty sure this wasn’t what she had in mind.
The hum of the spaceship and the sun on my face suddenly made me feel very sleepy. Before long it was impossible to hold my eyes open for another minute. I slouched down against the seat and drifted off to sleep.
The next sound I heard was the voice of Poog, who was babbling on about something very loudly.
“What’s going on?” I asked, sitting up and rubbing my eyes.
“Go on back t’ sleep, Akiko,” Spuckler said calmly. “Poog jus’ makes a lot of noise sometimes. It ain’t nothin’ to be concerned about.”
“Oh, yes it is,” Mr. Beeba said, wagging a finger in my face. “Poog is warning us of an imminent threat to the safety of this vessel!”
“Oh, come on, Beeba,” Spuckler responded wearily. “You an’ Poog are always warnin’ everybody about one thing or another. Doom an’ gloom, doom an’ gloom. Don’t you two ever lighten up?”
“Well, it just so happens that Poog is more often right about these things than wrong,” Mr. Beeba instructed sternly, “and right now he says we’re heading directly into the domain of some Sky Pirates.”
“Pirates!” I shouted, looking all around with my eyes wide open. “He’s joking, right?”
“I’m afraid Poog’s not much of a comedian, Akiko,” Mr. Beeba replied gravely. “If he says there are Sky Pirates about, we had best take him at his word.”
“Wh-What kind of pirates are they?” I asked. “Are they going to attack us?”
“It’s very possible they will, Akiko,” Mr. Beeba answered. “From what I’ve read, I can tell you that they don’t take kindly to strangers passing through their territory. I’m sure they’d just as soon shoot us out of the sky as let us pass by unhindered. Spuckler, you must change course at once.”
“Beeba, will you stay calm for once and not lose your head at th’ first sign of danger?” said Spuckler, as if he’d been through this sort of thing with Mr. Beeba many times before. “Sky Pirates ain’t nothin’ to be scared of, so long as you know how to deal with ’em.”
“We are not on a mission to make peace with the Sky Pirates, Spuckler,” Mr. Beeba said angrily. “Our top priority is to pass safely from one side of the Moonguzzit Sea to the other, not to serve as a captive audience for your daredevil antics!”
“If I see any Sky Pirates I’ll take a different route,” Spuckler said in exasperation. “Will that make you happy?”
“You’re giving me your word?” Mr. Beeba asked suspiciously.
“Cross my heart, Beebs.” And with that, Spuckler made the ship go even faster in the direction we were already headed.
Unfortunately there was a little problem with Spuckler’s plan. It’s easy enough to say that you’re going to change course as soon as you see a pirate. The thing is, once you’ve seen a pirate, the pirate has also seen you. And by then it’s a little too late to change course. At least that was the lesson we learned when Spuckler suddenly announced that the tiny little speck he was pointing to out among the clouds was a giant Sky Pirate ship.
“That’s one of the biggest ones I’ve seen. I sure would like to go in an’ get a closer look.”
“You will do nothing of the sort!” Mr. Beeba protested, half leaping out of his seat. “I order you to change course!”
“I will, Beebs, I will. Just as soon as we get a li’l bit closer.” Spuckler took the ship up higher to get a better view.
“Turn right! Turn left!” Mr. Beeba was shrieking. “Turn arouuuuund!”
“CHANGING COURSE IS CERTAINLY AN OPTION WORTHY OF CONSIDERATION, SIR,” Gax offered meekly.
Poog floated in toward one side of Spuckler’s head, as if to show his agreement with Gax. He remained silent, though, and Spuckler showed no sign of slowing down.
“Spuckler,” I said finally, leaning forward from the backseat, “I think maybe we’d better not get any closer.”
“Oh, all right,” Spuckler said, surprising me by giving in so easily. It was almost as if he really did think I was in charge.
Spuckler took the steering wheel in both hands and gave it a good turn. The ship nearly flipped sideways as we finally began to turn away and fly for safety.
But it was too late.
The Sky Pirates had already seen our ship and had sent a bunch of men out after us. They were riding in little wingless things that looked like motorboats but sailed through the air like jet planes.
“Don’t worry, gang,” Spuckler reassured us. “The trick with Sky Pirates is to show ’em you ain’t scared.” And with that he turned our ship back around and began flying straight toward them.
“Have you lost your mind?” Mr. Beeba cried, beside himself with fear.
“Trust me, Beebs,” Spuckler said, gritting his teeth, “all’s they need to see is that we ain’t a bunch of cowards.”
By then we were on a collision course with the giant Sky Pirate ship, a huge majestic vessel that looked like an old Spanish galleon, complete with many giant sails and masts. There it was, floating silently among the clouds. Its decks swarmed with hundreds of men readying themselves for battle.
By pulling on the steering wheel with all his might, Spuckler just barely managed to keep us from plowing into the body of the ship. Instead, we took a sharp turn up, shot clear through the sails, and came right out on the other side, slicing through ropes and rigging and sending pieces of wood crashing down to the deck.
“Spuckler . . . you . . . idiot!” Beeba screamed, clawing pieces of mast away from his face. “You’re going to get us all killed!”
Just then a bolt of fire shot right by
Spuckler’s head, sending me and Mr. Beeba scrambling down into the lowest spaces of the backseat.
“Whoah!” was all Spuckler could manage to say.
“They’re . . . They’re firing at us!” I shouted, hardly believing that things were actually becoming even more dangerous.
“I know,” Spuckler called back to me. “They’re not supposed to be doing that.”
“Well, they are, Spuckler!” bellowed Mr. Beeba at the very top of his lungs. “What do you propose we do about it?”
“Beeba,” Spuckler said as he snapped the steering wheel back, nearly flipping the ship upside down, “you’re really startin’ to get on my nerves.”
Next thing I knew, Mr. Beeba had almost fallen out of the ship altogether and was clinging to the backseat by his very fingertips, his legs twirling behind him like a rag doll. For the first time Mr. Beeba was quite speechless, gasping for air as he tried to pull himself back into the ship.
That was when a bunch of fire bolts came hurling at us from all directions, narrowly missing Mr. Beeba and forcing Spuckler into even wilder maneuvers. One shot finally made a direct hit, leaving a big flaming hole in the back of the ship and sending us all into a horrible dizzying tailspin.
“What do we do now?” I called out to Spuckler as we fell helplessly toward the surface of the Moonguzzit Sea.
“Hold your breath,” was all he said.
With a terrific splash the ship plunged into the water and immediately began to sink like a rock. The water was icy cold and very clear. I could see Spuckler and Gax in the seat in front of me. Spuckler’s hair was waving around like seaweed, and Gax had little air bubbles pouring out of every crevice in his body. Mr. Beeba’s head was pressed against my arm, and Poog was floating near my face like some kind of round purple fish. I was just about to pull myself out and start swimming away when I saw that we had crashed, ship and all, into the middle of a gigantic net that had been dragging through the sea. In a matter of seconds the sides of the net swept up around us and began lifting us above the water.
There was nothing we could do at first but cough and spit water out of our mouths as the seaweedy net pulled us up into the air. Our ship was now like a big bathtub, with all of us up to our shoulders in water. Fortunately it was tipped a little, allowing the water to slowly drain out over one side. Gax was bobbing up and down in the front seat like an old tire, and Spuckler was trying his best to aid the draining process by splashing water out with his hands.
I was so relieved just to be breathing again that I kind of forgot to be scared for a minute or two. There was plenty to be scared of, though. The net we were caught in belonged to the Sky Pirates, and we were all slowly but surely being hauled up to their ship as prisoners. The net was so thick with seaweed and other muck that it was hard to get a good view through it, but I could see enough of the sky above and the sea below to realize that we were already hundreds of feet above the water’s surface.
Spuckler brushed his thick, wet hair away from his eyes and looked at me with an expression of extreme embarrassment. He had obviously lost a little of his confidence during the fall.
“I’m sorry, Akiko,” he said as he leaned over and started emptying the water out of Gax’s many compartments. “I guess I didn’t know as much about these Sky Pirate fellers as I thought I did.”
“Don’t worry, Spuckler. We’ll be all right,” I told him, “so long as they don’t make us walk the plank or anything.”
“Walk the plank?” Spuckler said with a chuckle. “Akiko, you’ve been readin’ too many children’s stories.”
I turned my attention to Mr. Beeba. He was slumped over next to me in the backseat with pieces of seaweed all over his head. I think he’d kind of fainted right around the time we went into the water.
“Mr. Beeba,” I said, giving him a shake, “are you okay?”
“Better not wake him up, Akiko,” Spuckler cautioned me. “He’s gonna be plenty angry when he comes to.”
But it was already too late.
“Don’t worry, Spuckler,” Mr. Beeba said, suddenly very alert. “You’ll get the throttling you deserve for this fiasco. But I’m going to save that little treat for a more suitable occasion.”
“Now, come on, Beeba,” Spuckler responded, regaining a bit of his confidence, “you gotta give these Sky Pirates a little credit. They coulda blown us all to smithereens, but instead they just shot us down into the water. Heck, they even made it so as we’d land in one of their nets.”
“Oh yes, they’ve been true gentlemen,” Mr. Beeba said in a very sarcastic voice. “Shall we thank them first or just give them a good handshake?”
I already knew enough about Spuckler and Mr. Beeba to realize that they could go on like this for hours. Judging from what I could see of the Sky Pirate ship above us, there wasn’t much time left to prepare ourselves for dealing with them face to face.
“What are we going to do once we get up there?” I asked.
“Don’t ask, Akiko,” Mr. Beeba replied, still fuming. “Spuckler might give us another one of his brilliant suggestions. He’s quite an expert strategist when it comes to Sky Pirates, you know.”
“Yeah, well, I know more about Sky Pirates than you do,” Spuckler responded.
“The expertise you’ve displayed thus far has been most enlightening!” Mr. Beeba exploded.
I didn’t think I’d ever met anyone who could be so angry and still use such big words.
Suddenly Poog interrupted with one of his weird high-pitched announcements. We all turned to Mr. Beeba, waiting for the translation he usually provided at such times. Unfortunately Mr. Beeba just sat there with his lips firmly shut as the net pulled us ever closer to our captors. He was obviously no longer in a very cooperative mood.
“Well?” Spuckler demanded. “What did Poog say?”
“Hm!” Mr. Beeba snorted, crossing his arms and turning away. “You seem awfully keen to find out, considering the fact that you’ve ignored every piece of advice Poog has ever given us!”
“See, Akiko?” Spuckler said, as if Mr. Beeba had just proved his point. “I told you he’d be angry.”
“Please tell us, Mr. Beeba!” I pleaded. I was as anxious as Spuckler to find out what Poog had said. Poog seemed to always know what was going on. It was like he could even predict things that hadn’t happened yet.
“Poog says the Sky Pirates have no intention of executing us,” Mr. Beeba explained at last, clearing his throat in a very dramatic way, “but what they do have in store is scarcely better!”
“Cheery little feller, ain’t he?” Spuckler said, staring disapprovingly at Poog.
I swallowed hard, hoping that just once Poog might be wrong.
The net was raised to the deck of the ship by this machine that looked like an enormous fishing reel, which was slowly and steadily cranked by dozens of men on either side. Then the net was pulled over onto the deck by an elaborate system of ropes and pulleys. The whole effort was coordinated by a single Sky Pirate leader who kept barking orders at everyone involved. Finally our ship was lowered onto the deck and the net was pulled open by the huge crowd of Sky Pirates who surrounded us.
This was my first chance to get a close look at the Sky Pirates. There were hundreds of them crowded around us, glaring and jeering. All of them were dressed in dirty, ragged clothes, and each held a small curved sword. They had tiny orange glowing eyes and wore enormous helmets with horns on top that stuck out in all directions. They were all speaking to each other in a strange hissing language that made them sound like a bunch of snakes. I kept reminding myself that Poog said they wouldn’t execute us, but somehow that didn’t make me feel much better.
After their leader called out a few more brief commands, a number of Sky Pirates stepped forward and began pulling us out of the ship. Mr. Beeba quivered and whimpered a little as he was led away into the crowd by a pair of Sky Pirates, one on either side of him. Spuckler didn’t look scared at all. He actually looked more angry than anything else
as they led him away after Mr. Beeba. Two Sky Pirates escorted me and Poog into the crowd, and three or four Sky Pirates carried Gax along after us. I was so scared I almost wanted to cry, but I did my best to stay calm. At least it looked like they were taking us all to the same place. If they had separated us, I think I’d have really lost it.
They took all of us to an area of the ship where there were giant piles of rope. A second team of Sky Pirates came in and began tying us up. They forced me to keep my arms by my sides and began winding the rope around me again and again, until finally it was impossible for me to move my arms even an inch. They did the same to Spuckler and Mr. Beeba, and in Gax’s case they just wound the rope around his long, spindly neck. Out of all of us I think Poog had it the worst: The Sky Pirates just tied rope all around him any way they could until he ended up looking like a big ball of yarn.
Finally they hauled us off to another area of the deck, where they attached hooks to us from behind and slowly hauled us up so that we were hanging from the masts. We all ended up about twenty feet above the deck, one next to the other, slowly twirling around like pieces of a wind chime. No one was more than ten feet from anyone else, so we could still talk to one another if we needed to. I wasn’t really in any pain, apart from the rope digging into my skin a little.
Spuckler was getting more and more angry. These Sky Pirates weren’t turning out at all the way he’d expected them to be. I guess all the Sky Pirates he knew lived by a different set of rules. For one thing, they must have had a nicer way of dealing with their captives.
“You call yourselves Sky Pirates?” he shouted down at them. “This ain’t no way to treat prisoners!”
“Don’t waste your breath, Spuckler,” Mr. Beeba said. “These Sky Pirate friends of yours seem to speak a language all their own.”
“Oh, great,” Spuckler said angrily. “More people I can’t understand.”