“Will she be all right?” the captain asked, his earrings glinting in the candlelight.
“Most likely,” Giro said. “But as soon as she can stand, you need to set sail before the Venetians discover you’re hiding out here in the mist.”
21
The Losers’ Master Plan
ALL THEY NEEDED NOW was the boy. Through the dusty glass window of the sheriff’s office, Thrax watched people hurrying home as darkness fell upon the town. Then someone knocked on the door.
“Enter,” Thrax said. It was Roland Tubb.
As the giant Loser bounded in, Thrax held up a hand to stop him.
“You haven’t even opened your mouth and you’re already insulting me.”
Tubb froze.
Thrax pointed at the dirt tracked in by Tubb’s leather-soled brogue boots.
“Do you know how spotless that floor was before you barged in with an entire forest on your shoes?”
“What?”
“If things don’t start getting clean around here I’m going to get very, very upset.”
Tubb removed his shoes, trying to sweep up the dirt by swishing around in his socks.
“What are you doing?”
“I’m cleaning up my mess, sir.”
Thrax smiled with both amusement and disgust. “You silly, silly man.”
“But, sir, I . . .”
“Don’t speak! Just tell me, is the boy captured yet? I can’t wait to get out of this place and see a dentist. This body is the ultimate fixer-upper.”
Tubb pointed to his mouth.
“What are you doing now!” Thrax snapped.
“You told me not to speak, sir.”
“Stop being an idiot and tell me if you have the boy.”
“Er, he should be in our custody by tonight, as we have him surrounded. What should we do with his parents?”
“Parents? He has parents?”
“He does, yes.”
“How many?”
“Er, two.”
“That seems like a lot.”
“Most children have at least one, sir.”
“They do? Did I?”
Tubb shrugged and looked down at his socks. “Yours would have been Romans, sir.”
“Well, I’ve forgotten, so they must have been idiots.” Thrax checked his fingernails for micro-specks of dirt. “Listen, Tubb, I wouldn’t worry about his parents—they’ve only had the boy nine years. How attached could they possibly be? You’ve worn underwear for longer than that, I’m sure. Now listen—once we get rid of the undertaker’s son, this Max Franks fellow, Vispoth has uploaded the details of our master plan to Doll Head, which will put us within striking distance of the three remaining Keepers. If all goes well, that wretched cottage AND the Swiss-cheese cliff full of junk it sits on will be destroyed once and for all.”
“What is the plan exactly, sir?”
“You don’t need to know. Let’s just say we’re giving the Keepers a bit of a hand. Now find the boy!”
“Did we decide on a place for him yet?” Tubb asked.
“Vispoth came up with the Black Hole of Calcutta.”
“Is that bad, sir?”
“It’s a black hole, you idiot—yes, it’s bad. And a wonderful irony, considering how the master plan involves exactly that.”
“A boy in a hole?”
“Oh, stop blathering and get back out into the woods. Make sure this Keeper business is taken care of—and find out if pedicures have been invented yet, as inside these boots it’s a chemistry experiment.”
22
Surrounded with No Escape
AFTER TELLING MAX THE story of Little Deer, Ayokeh suddenly seemed afraid.
“We should go back,” she said. “I smell something.”
All Max could smell was sweet forest air and the cool gushing river.
“Come on,” Ayokeh said, pulling on his arm. “We must return to warn our warriors.”
Max trusted his new friend, and raced after her up the grassy path toward the Cherokee village.
“What do you smell exactly, Ayokeh?”
“Alcohol and rotten teeth.”
Max froze with terror. He knew exactly what that meant.
“Come on, Birdy, we must tell my father. He’ll know what to do.”
“But all this is my fault!” Then he had an idea. “If I disappear into these woods, then they’ll leave you alone. They’ll come after me.”
“No,” Ayokeh said wisely, “they will think we are hiding you.”
* * *
‹‹ • • • ››
WHEN THEY ARRIVED IN the village, Ayokeh and Max ran straight to the great council house where her father was meeting with the elders. They burst in as the Red Chief was speaking. Sequoyah rose awkwardly.
“Ayokeh?”
“There are bad men coming!” she said. “I picked up their scent.”
“I will go call the warriors,” one of the chiefs said.
Max couldn’t believe there was going to be a war because of him.
“I’ll give myself up!” he shouted.
Sequoyah put his hands firmly on the boy’s shoulders. “We all agree the Great Spirit wants us to protect you.”
“So I could get your village destroyed by gamblers and drunks?”
Sequoyah whispered something to his daughter.
“Yes, Father,” she said, then grabbed Max’s hand and led him back out into the village. Warriors had heard the chief’s call, and were assembling. Women and children hurried toward the trees carrying six-foot-long blowpipes made from river cane.
Ayokeh took one of the blowpipes and gave it to Max.
“There is a dart inside,” she told him. “Just blow.”
Max examined the strange weapon, telling himself not to suck.
“But if anyone gets hurt,” he said, “it will be my fault.”
“No, it won’t, don’t be silly,” Ayokeh said. “Now follow me to our hiding tree.”
Ayokeh led Max to the edge of the village and they began to climb. Just in time too, for as soon as Max was settled in a wide branch with his enormous (but very thin) blowpipe at the ready, he saw a figure sneaking through the woods with a rifle.
Max glanced up at Ayokeh, who was on a higher branch, but she shook her head and the man passed beneath their tree toward the village unharmed.
Then Max saw something he couldn’t believe. He rubbed his eyes, and blinked a few times, but she was still there—a girl just a few years older than himself stepping through the forest trailed by a pack of wolves. She was wearing a tartan day dress, and where her bonnet should have been were tiny flashing lights—like little candles that were too small to hold. Max had never witnessed anything like it. How was she able to control the wolves? It had to be connected to the lights on the side of her head, he thought.
As the bounty hunters reached the fringe of the Cherokee village, Max knew that at any moment, the brave warriors would burst from the houses with their weapons raised, then a terrible, violent battle would commence. Without thinking, he swallowed his fear in one gulp, and scrambled down the tree. Ayokeh called after him, but Max ignored her voice and sprinted to the center of the Cherokee village before anything could happen.
“It’s me, Max!” he cried, waving his arms around. “I’m surrendering, hello! Everyone! It’s me, Max! Fresh from the woods! The kid in the wanted poster! Here I am! Hi! Better take me in!”
There was a great commotion from the men hiding, as well as movement in the trees.
“He’s mine!” shouted one of the mercenaries who’d come fifty miles to claim the price on Max’s head.
“Get out of it!” shouted another as the two men began fighting it out with fists. Suddenly the truth dawned on the dozens of outlaws in the Cherokee village. There
was only one bounty to be collected. In a mad scramble, they came for the boy all at once. At that exact moment, Mandy Zilch let loose the wolves she had been controlling with a frequency modulator. As if there wasn’t enough chaos already, thirty-three Cherokee warriors came barreling out of their houses with deer-bone knives held aloft.
The battle Max had tried to prevent was about to take place. And it was going to be a slaughter.
But then something unexpected happened. There was a blinding flash of light as the Cherokee village was hit by an electro-graviton pulse. Then another flash—this time green—out of which came something no one had ever seen, except in myths and legends.
23
Venetian Warships
A FEW MOMENTS AFTER drinking Giro’s medicine, the elderly woman in the white nightgown blinked her eyes and sat up. Then to everyone’s surprise, she got out of bed and did a little dance on the spot.
The captain was delighted and clapped Giro on the back.
“You’re a clever barnacle, ain’t you, boy?”
But the celebrations didn’t last long. A cannonball whizzed past the cabin, hitting the wooden case of the ship’s bell and smashing it to pieces with a disorderly clang.
“Shot!” bellowed the captain. “Looks like the Venetians have found us! Shot! Shot!”
They cleared out of the captain’s quarters as quickly as possible. Pirates were rushing around in the scramble for weapons, amidst the deathly whistling of cannonballs.
Giro led Gertie to the starboard side of the ship, where she climbed down the rope to his special gondola. The rope was rough and stung her palms.
With an attack under way from the Venetian navy, Gertie’s first thought was for Giro’s floating zoo, still bobbing at the side of the pirate ship. If even the smallest cannonball hit, the furriest, cutest little creatures in Venice would be sent to a watery grave.
Then Giro shinnied down into his gondola, where his loyal gondolier was waiting for orders.
“Untie the ropes!” Giro shouted.
As if sensing the danger, all of Giro’s little creatures were mewing, meowing, chirping, squeaking, bawling, screeching, and ribbiting, as iron balls of death whistled about their heads.
Gertie frantically tried to undo the knots that held the two boats together.
But just then, the bow of a beautifully crafted hull cut toward them through the mist, only missing the side of the gondola by a few feet. It was a boat of the Venetian navy.
Suddenly grappling hooks flew over their heads and caught in the rigging of the pirate ship—like hooks in a spider’s web. Then from out of the mist burst two daring figures on ropes, swinging wildly. Giro rubbed his eyes in disbelief. “It can’t be!”
“It is!” Gertie screamed, as Kolt and Robot Rabbit Boy landed with a thump on their bobbing gondola.
Robot Rabbit Boy bowed, his fake mustache twitching.
“We found you at last!” Kolt said.
“You’re not angry?” asked Gertie.
“I don’t get angry, you know that—I just worry myself into a state of oblivion.”
“Sorry, Kolt, but I wanted to see Giro’s medicine in action for myself—and it worked! But I don’t think we should stick around any longer—do you have the time machine?”
Kolt had already pulled it out of his Renaissance cloak.
“What about the Time Cat?”
“It’ll find its way back as it always does.”
“Okay, but we don’t have the clothes for North America. They’re in the car!”
“How can you worry about what you’re going to wear at a time like this? It was the same in ancient China! Listen, the main thing is I brought the page of important symbols we have to return.”
“Fine, whatever!” Gertie said, as several cannonballs came whistling toward them. “Let’s link up!”
They quickly grabbed on to each other’s hands, unaware that Robot Rabbit Boy’s other paw was still touching the side of the massive pirate ship, which could mean only one thing.
24
Unexpected Guests
AS THE LAST EXPLOSION of green light tore through the Cherokee village, some outlaws believed it was divine punishment for the evil things they had done.
The Cherokee took it as a sign that Great Spirit had come to their aid. So then everyone was really surprised when out of the blinding flash came a three-hundred-year-old heavily modified Renaissance gondola, with outdated scientific equipment, small animals at various stages of throwing up, a bare-chested gondolier, a stunned-looking professor type, a young Italian holding an escaped frog, a rabbit with facial hair, and a soaking-wet girl in light-up shoes clinging to ropes at the side of the vessel. The small Venetian watercraft crash-landed on the grass outside Sequoyah’s house, to a stunned silence.
Gertie stared at the strange-looking men in long-tailed jackets, who were carrying rifles. On of the other side of the boat were Cherokee warriors, and behind the gondolier—a pack of bewildered wolves.
Then one of the older outlaws pointed a bony finger at Giro.
“Look, it’s Jesus!”
Gertie didn’t understand what was happening. “How can we have traveled over the graviton bridge with the gondola, and Giro, and all the animals?”
“The boat must have been attached to us in some way,” Kolt said quickly, “and the B.D.B.U. thought we meant to bring it with us. It happens from time to time, as does landing in the middle of a battle.”
“Keepers!” Mandy Zilch screamed, unable to contain her disgust.
“Losers!” Gertie cried. “This gets weirder and weirder.”
“Mashed potato fly?”
“It could always be worse!” said Kolt, noticing a piece of rope hovering in midair as though the gondola was attached to something invisible.
Suddenly, in a blinding pink flash, a three-hundred-ton stolen Portuguese warship, with a crew of sixty-four bloodthirsty pirates, exploded through the time portal and came to rest (leaning but upright) atop several crushed clay-and-wood houses.
The outlaws, the Cherokee warriors, and even the pack of wolves were now completely bewildered by the sight of a pirate ship with a full pirate crew, who were just standing around on deck wondering why they were no longer floating.
The captain looked sheepishly over the side of his ship. “Who be you people in strange clothes with hand muskets!?”
“And where be the sea? It was here a minute ago,” Gertie heard one of the other pirates say.
An outlaw stepped forward. “Er, we’re evil mercenaries who’ve been hired by a cruel sheriff to capture a small boy for an outrageous amount of money, and these are the rightful people of this land, the Cherokee, who were about to try and stop us.”
“Oh, I see, sort of a battle then?” said the captain.
Everyone on the ground looked at one another and nodded.
“Yes, exactly,” said the outlaw.
“And might you know,” the captain went on, “where the sea has gotten to?”
“Can’t help you with that one . . .” said the outlaw. “I don’t even swim.”
“Me neither,” said another voice.
“Nor me,” said another.
Then one of the Cherokee got to his feet. “I’m Sequoyah!” he shouted to the pirate captain on the boat. “Welcome to our village.”
“Sequoyah!” Kolt said. “I know you! Hello, hi, hello!”
The kind inventor raised his hand in greeting. “We know each other?”
“Not really, but I have something for you! Some kind of alphabet.”
“Not a syllabary?”
Kolt looked at the paper in his hands. “Yes, it could be that actually. . . .”
“If it is, then praise Great Spirit! I thought I was going to have to start all over again. Thank you, stranger!”
“I’ll br
ing it down after this battle business is decided—wouldn’t want it to get damaged.”
“Who are you, stranger?”
“Well, I’m a sort of a curator of objects, and these men are bloodthirsty pirates, who terrorize the Adriatic Sea on stolen ships.”
The pirate captain nodded. “We were just about to be cannonballed by the Venetian naval fleet, after dropping anchor just outside Venice so that my wife, Martha, could get medical treatment from a small boy with a floating chemistry set.”
Giro put his hand up to signal that he was the “small boy.”
“It really is Jesus!” said a voice in the crowd. “Performing miracles with the help of that magic frog.”
One of the outlaws took off his hat and scratched a bald head. “Pirates?” he said. “I think I read about you somewhere? Bandits on boats, right?”
The pirate captain smoothed his hair. “Oh, so you’ve heard of us then?”
“Yes, of course,” said the outlaw. “You terrorized the seas for hundreds of years, and as such were a great inspiration to me as a boy, hence my current profession.”
“Me too.” One of the other outlaws nodded. “I love how you made people walk the plank; that was just so original.”
The captain chuckled. “Well, we honestly try our best.”
The outlaws laughed at that.
“Who is the rabbit soldier with the mustache?” shouted someone in the crowd. “He’s cute!”
“Dollop?”
“SHUTTTTTT UPPPPPPP!” cried Mandy Zilch. Her face was red with rage. “Get the Keeper boy, you imbeciles!”
But the opportunity for a vicious battle seemed to have passed, and everyone was now more interested in talking about what had happened, and perhaps wondering what might appear next in a flash of colored light.
“What Keeper boy?” Gertie shouted, feeling the key in her pocket start to vibrate madly.
“Shut your mouth!” Mandy Zilch screeched. “Milk scum!”
“MUSH ROOM!” cried Robot Rabbit Boy.
“What boy is it they’re after?” Kolt shouted to Gertie.
Gertie Milk and the Great Keeper Rescue Page 15