Gertie Milk and the Great Keeper Rescue

by Simon Van Booy

  Just then, the drumming-hissing-tapping-humming-rumbling got much louder, and Gertie felt trembling in the ground.

  “Back to the bikes!” Kolt said. “Quick as you can!”

  “What is it?”

  There were now heavy, thumping vibrations in the wet earth.

  As they reached their Golden Helpers, the ground seemed to break apart as the shaking grew more intense and the dark cloud on the horizon reared up, almost swallowing the sky.

  “Drop your bike!” Kolt shouted. “The ground is too unsteady. We’re going to have to make a run for it.”

  Gertie looked around in a panic. “But where to?”

  “That giant boulder you saw . . . RUN TO IT NOW!”

  Gertie felt her blood freeze with fear as she scrambled after Kolt up the soggy slope through the tall wet grass.

  “But we’re running toward the shadow!” she cried. “How is that a good idea?”

  “That rock is our only hope to survive!” shouted Kolt, his ripped pants flapping as they scrambled up the hill.

  “Survive what?”

  “Skuldarkian Tapirs!”

  “What!?”

  “Megatapirus augustus—PREHISTORIC RHINOS!”

  “On Skuldark?” Gertie was now moving her legs as quickly as she could—but the ground was squelching and sucking at her shoes.

  Kolt was still trying to explain, but Gertie could only hear bits of what he was saying, over the hissing- drumming-tapping-humming-rumbling-thumping-shaking. “I brought them here . . . just a few . . . many years ago . . . B.D.B.U. . . . allowed it . . . meteor . . . flash . . . wiping out . . . grown into a herd . . . now stampeding . . . apparently . . . make for the boulder . . . trampled . . . horrible . . . squish . . . QUICK!”

  Then the most awful thought occurred to Gertie. What if Robot Rabbit Boy had been trampled? Part of her wanted to stop running, face the titanic creatures that were lashing furiously toward them, and shout: WHAT HAVE YOU DONE WITH ROBOT RABBIT BOY?!

  But her legs just kept on squelching over the sopping field toward the rock. Just as the galloping mountain of tapirs bore down upon them, Gertie and Kolt reached the boulder—but instead of crouching for shelter in front of it, Kolt fumbled for his Keepers’ key, and drove it into a small hole in the stone. A doorway appeared. Kolt pulled Gertie through the opening and they tumbled down a flight of wooden stairs as the thunder of prehistoric hooves passed over them.

  For a moment, Gertie and Kolt were just a wheezing tangle of Keepers at the bottom of a long, dark staircase.

  When they were able to stand and catch their breath without the threat of being trampled, they freed the Slug Lamps from their pockets and used what light was left from their squishy bodies to check themselves for injuries. No one spoke, as though sensing the worst for their little friend.

  “You hurt, Gertie?”

  “No, you?”

  “Just bruised, and my, er, pants . . .”

  They sat down on the step and shone their Slug Lamps into the room.

  “Series 8 Forever Friends had a flying package,” Gertie remembered wistfully. “Kevlar-drone blades that could lift them twenty feet into the air.”

  “But Robot Rabbit Boy is a Series 7,” Kolt pointed out.

  “Yes, I know . . . which means he doesn’t have it and there would have been no way for him to escape a stampede, without knowing about the secret door in the rock. What is this place anyway? Where are we?”

  Gertie lifted her Slug Lamps, but their glow had started to wane, and they squirmed to be set free. Kolt stood, then took a box of matches from his pocket and shook it a few times.

  “What are you doing?”

  He said nothing and stepped through the darkness. Gertie heard the rough strike of a match. A moment later, several candles on a long wooden table flickered to life. She could see clearly now in the shadowy glow. They were deep underground in a large, furnished chamber that seemed to be abandoned.

  “How did you know there were candles on that table?” Gertie asked.

  “Because I put them there,” Kolt said. “With no one living here anymore, I had to shut the generator down and turn off the water to stop the pipes from freezing.”

  “Why?”

  “Because when water freezes it expands, so it would have cracked the pipes in the winter, flooding the room when the ice defrosted in springtime.”

  “No,” Gertie said, “I meant why is there no one living here, and why is the entrance hidden?”

  “It has always been hidden, and it’s empty because there aren’t enough Keepers to man the Gate Keepers’ Lodge.”

  “Or woman,” Gertie said. “Not enough Keepers to woman the Gate Keepers’ Lodge.”

  “Or rabbit . . .” added Kolt, getting technical.

  Gertie stared at what had once been someone’s home. There was a table, comfortable armchairs, an early piano (which Kolt said was called a harpsichord), a bookcase, a mantelpiece, cupboards, a narrow wooden bed, and something called a billiards table. There was even a large chiming clock, not moving and, like everything else, coated in thick layers of dust. When Gertie got up to look around, the floor was covered with broken pieces of pottery and knives and forks that had been twisted into weird shapes—clearly not by human hands. Every mirror in the room had also been broken, as though whatever had caused the destruction wished not to look at itself.

  To make the room even more frightening, the stone fireplace whistled. A cold draft was blowing down the chimney that smelled faintly of wet fur.

  “Something has gotten in . . .” Kolt said, “something not particularly nice.”

  Although Gertie had a sort of morbid curiosity at the idea of discovering the source of the destruction, she felt the pull of something more urgent. “When will it be safe to go back outside and keep looking?”

  “I’m afraid we’re trapped down here until the main herd passes,” Kolt said. The ceiling was still shaking with heavy galloping hooves.

  “What if Robot Rabbit Boy’s injured?”

  “We’ll leave as soon as we can.”

  Gertie sighed impatiently and rubbed thick dust off a tabletop.

  “Why do you think all the mirrors are smashed?”

  “I was afraid you’d ask that,” he said. “Let’s hope it was moisture that froze when winter came—same for the bowls.”

  “But the knives and forks?” Gertie said, picking one up. “That can’t have been moisture.”

  Kolt’s face looked dark and old in the candlelight. “Something has been going on down here we didn’t know about.”

  Gertie was now on the other side of the room, looking at a giant rug hung on the wall. People had been sewn into the fabric with different colored thread. Kolt said it was the Turweston Tapestry, which told the ancient stories of Keepers. Gertie noticed several of the panels showed people with Keepers’ keys running from a giant tornado—which had been expertly spun into the cloth using white thread.

  “You didn’t tell me about this place,” she said. “Did you ever meet the Gate Keeper?”

  “They had gone before I appeared on the island. Mrs. Pumble, the Keeper who taught me everything, might have known who it was, but I didn’t.”

  “But you’ve been down here before?”

  “A long time ago to visit someone.”

  “But I thought it was abandoned?”

  Kolt hesitated. “Not exactly. Most Gate Keepers had a little helper, who kept them company on long, cold nights, when blizzards could trap them down here for a week or two.”

  Gertie looked into the dark corners of the room. “What kinds of little helpers?”

  “Creatures, Gertie—the kind that probably wouldn’t stick around in all this mess.”

  “I wish you’d told me about this place before. How many more secret entrances are there hidden in
rocks?”

  “There’s a lot you don’t know about this island, but finding things out gradually is a normal part of life on Skuldark.”

  “Huh,” she scoffed. “There’s nothing normal about this place.”

  Then Gertie noticed a steel door at the very back of the room. It was marked EXIT ONLY. The door stood out because almost everything else in the Gate Keepers’ Lodge was made of wood, and this was shiny, bright, steel. Gertie was going to ask Kolt what it was when something zipped out from a hole in the wall and hopped up onto the table in front of them.

  9

  George’s Battle to Save the Lodge

  KOLT CLAPPED HIS HANDS in front of his mouth.

  A large white mouse was standing on the table looking at them. It had a long pink tail and a fluffy white coat, and was wearing a black mask with two holes cut out for its eyes.

  “George!” cried Kolt. “I haven’t seen you in years. Can’t believe you’re still here—you don’t look a day over two hundred, seriously.”

  The Lodge mouse stuck out her mouse tongue three or four times.

  Kolt seemed surprised. “It’s been that bad, has it? Is that why you’re wearing the crudely improvised superhero mask?”

  The mouse looked down as though embarrassed.

  Kolt turned to Gertie. “She’s been having a tough time down here apparently.”

  “George is a she?” Gertie said, staring at the creature.

  “Well, her full name is Georgina, but she always preferred George.”

  The mouse confirmed this with a nod. Then she picked up her tail and pointed it at Gertie.

  “Oh, this is Gertie Milk,” Kolt said, “the newest Keeper.”

  The mouse scampered over to Gertie and began to sniff.

  “No, I’m sorry, George, Gertie isn’t the new Gate Keeper, we just literally dropped in by accident, trying to avoid a grisly trampling death.”

  Then the animal made a small squeaking sound, which Gertie thought sounded like the rubber duck in her bathroom.

  “I know, George,” Kolt said. “You haven’t had a Keeper for eighty-eight years—I would feel abandoned too, I really would.”

  Then the mouse looked Kolt up and down with a single squeak.

  Kolt blushed. “What happened to my pants? Never you mind!”

  “You understand Mouse?” Gertie said.

  “Well, I’m not fluent, but . . .”

  Then Gertie had a thought. “Maybe she knows where Robot Rabbit Boy is?”

  Kolt nodded. But before he could open his mouth, the mouse had jumped down and skipped over to the steel door that said EXIT ONLY. George was now squeaking up a storm.

  Gertie followed the creature, noticing what George must have wanted them to see. It was a robot hand. The sort that had been showing up in the cottage for the last few weeks.

  Gertie was disgusted. “They’re here too!” This one was blackened near the fingers as though it had been set on fire.

  Kolt dashed over and picked up the robot hand by the wrist. It wriggled for a second or two, then gave off a puff of smoke and went limp.

  “It must have come from under the steel exit door,” Kolt said, as George let loose a series of passionate squeaks. Kolt listened, then translated for Gertie. “George says the hands keep appearing and she’s been fighting them off with silverware for weeks.”

  “That must be what caused the damage!” Gertie thought out loud.

  The mouse nodded.

  “What’s on the other side of that Exit Only door?”

  “A long staircase leading to an enormous storage room deep underground.”

  “Like the ones under the cottage?”

  “Exactly, but this room is not directly under us in the cliff; it’s much farther away, for practical reasons.”

  “Because it’s radioactive?”

  “Mmmm, yes and no.”

  “I thought the most dangerous things were at the very bottom of the cliff at sea level, or surrounded in concrete?”

  “They are, but the items in this room are not so much dangerous as completely unpredictable.”

  “What are they?”

  “Machines,” Kolt said, “from the twenty-second century and beyond.”

  “Is that all?”

  “No,” said Kolt, “there are devices related to artificial intelligence, like Robot Rabbit Boy—but much more advanced.”

  “Though probably not cuter . . .” Gertie added, glancing up at the ceiling and wondering if the tapir herd had passed so they could resume the search.

  “The B.D.B.U. likes to keep these A.I. rooms pretty much off-limits,” Kolt explained, “which is why they’re hard to reach—even for Keepers.”

  “Could Robot Rabbit Boy be down there?”

  Kolt turned to George.

  “Have you seen any robot rabbits?”

  George squeaked twice, then straightened the (clearly homemade) mask she was wearing.

  “No, she says, it’s just been hands, no rabbits.” Then he looked down at the mouse again. “How long have they been bothering you?”

  George raised both paws and wagged her ear.

  “Three weeks?”

  The mouse nodded.

  “It must be lonely for her down here,” Gertie said.

  The white mouse picked up her tail. Then she pointed it at the messy room, and let out a long, sad squeak.

  “She says we can’t imagine how awful it’s been with the robot hands crawling around trying to destroy things, and that she’s been rather depressed without a Gate Keeper companion, which is why all her cleaning duties have come to a halt.”

  “Yes, I can tell,” Gertie said, looking around. “But can you ask about Robot Rabbit Boy again? Maybe she heard something?”

  The mouse scurried toward Gertie, then ran up her body to perch on her shoulder.

  “What’s she doing?”

  “You’ll see, just keep still.”

  The big mouse fluttered her eyes behind the mask, as though in a trance, and stretched her front paws out in front of her.

  “What’s happening?”

  “She’s trying to find Robot Rabbit Boy for us.”

  “By doing yoga on my shoulder?”

  “George is a Turweston Long Tail,” Kolt explained, “a species that has a special connection to all the places where it’s been to the bathroom.”

  “Is she going to the bathroom on me?” Gertie said, not daring to move, but willing to go along with anything that might help find Robot Rabbit Boy.

  “Don’t be silly. Wherever George has peed in the past, she is able to connect with that area and sense what’s there. It’s why Turweston Long Tails make great Lodge companions, because they know when something is approaching.”

  “But how?”

  “Don’t ask me,” Kolt said. “I’m not a mouse living in a secret lodge on a strange island with a superhero mask and magical pee.”

  Just then, George’s eyes opened very wide, and she nodded at Kolt, then waved her tail several times in a looping motion.

  “He passed through!” Kolt said. “But many hours ago.”

  George pulled down the lower eyelid of one eye, to reveal a red squishy part.

  “Urgh,” Gertie said, “what does that mean?”

  “No, that’s good!” Kolt explained. “It means Robot Rabbit Boy was not on the plain when the tapir stampede began, and he’s not on the plain now, as we feared.”

  “So where is he?”

  “George believes he most likely made it to the Ruined Village.”

  “Then let’s go!” Gertie said, now certain the bright light they had seen from the Spitfire had somehow drawn Robot Rabbit Boy from the cottage.

  The mouse jumped down and scooted toward the staircase with them.

  By n
ow the thudding of the animals over the room had stopped. The old timber beams were no longer shaking.

  “Oh dear . . .” Kolt said. “Our Slug Lamps are too exhausted to be any help, but hopefully it will be light soon.”

  Gertie had put hers on the long table next to Kolt’s, and they all squirmed weakly with their tongues out.

  “They’re hungry,” Gertie said, feeling a pang of guilt. “We should have filled our pockets with moonberries.”

  George jumped up on the table and poked one.

  “She wants us to leave them here,” Kolt said, “so she can take them to the nearest moonberry bush to feed.”

  “But what about their Slug Lamp family outside the cottage?”

  “Slug Lamps are one giant family, Gertie, all cousins, and so as long as they’ve got moonberries to chomp on, they’re blissful anywhere.”

  As they climbed the stairs, Gertie asked if the tapirs would stampede again.

  “They’ll more than likely settle somewhere on the low ground to graze, then wander back up in the afternoon—unless we spook them again.”

  “I bet it was that moth . . .” Gertie said. “The furry pest.” Then she glanced back at the Gate Keeper’s little helper to say goodbye.

  “Don’t worry, George,” Gertie said, “we’re going to find you a new Gate Keeper, I assure you.”

  “And get rid of these annoying robot hands!” Kolt added.

  The white mouse squeaked and raised a paw to her cheek.

  “That’s nice,” Kolt said. “George thinks your birthmark is pretty.”

  “Thanks,” Gertie said, “but how come I can’t understand Mouse with my Skuldarkian?”

  “Because it’s not a language. Animals can communicate, but they don’t have language the way humans do.”

  “Will you teach me Mouse after we’ve found Robot Rabbit Boy?” Gertie asked as they went up the stairs to ground level.