Gertie Milk and the Keeper of Lost Things

by Simon Van Booy

  “Oh right,” Kolt said. “That makes sense. Man sword, woman sword equals harmony baby.”

  “Eggcup?”

  “No, no, no,” Kolt said. “Listen, Chinese wisdom has three paths: Lao-tzu came first and wanted people to live in harmony with nature, then Confucius taught people to live in harmony with one another, then about four hundred years later, Buddha’s ideas came from India and taught people how to live in harmony with themselves. Three paths to wisdom! Harmony, baby!”

  “Mashed potato?”

  « • • • »

  When they arrived at the palace, it was nothing more than an oversize clay building with wooden windows cut into complicated geometric shapes. Painted on red panels were more triangles and snakes.

  The soldiers who had let them pass were now chattering nervously with the villagers.

  “More creepy snake drawings,” Kolt said.

  Gertie touched one. “Like Doll Head!” she pointed out. “I suppose if you make people afraid, they are easier to control.”

  Suddenly, two men in blue cloaks appeared from inside the palace doors.

  “I am the minister for the sacrifice of birds,” one of them said, bowing.

  “And I am the minister for the sacrifice of the spotted deer,” said the other, with an even lower bow.

  Kolt stepped forward. “And we are ministers for the rescue of books.”

  The ministers explained that the king was expecting them and had prepared a feast in their honor. Kolt thought that sounded promising, but everyone else looked worried. They followed the two ministers through darkened rooms of the palace to a banquet hall with drums carved into wooden pillars that held up the roof.

  On a low table, a lavish feast had been laid out, and there were mats on the floor for people to sit.

  “Look at all that food!” Kolt said. “But I don’t see the B.D.B.U. anywhere.”

  There were bronze vessels and ceramic bowls filled with sizzling dishes and, beside each dish, a set of silver chopsticks.

  “Amazing! We must be in the Autumn and Spring time period of Zhou Dynasty,” Kolt said. “About 600 B.C.E., just before China’s descent into an epoch of warring states.”

  “What’s an epoch?” Gertie asked.

  “It means ‘time period’—but I always thought using the same word twice in a phrase sounded bad.”

  “How do you know what epoch this is?”

  “Well, for one, I saw soldiers with crossbows outside, and these dishes are typical. . . .” Kolt went on. “Stir-fried turtle with plum, snake and chestnuts, sizzling chicken with ginger and peach, wild dates with boiled snake. . . .”

  Gertie looked over the steaming plates. “At least there are no heads.”

  Kolt chuckled. “We don’t know what’s for dessert yet.”

  “But why are the chopsticks silver?”

  “Because people thought they would change color when touching poison.”

  “Then it’s obvious,” Gertie said. “If the king is worried about being poisoned—then he’s most likely evil.”

  When something on one of the plates began to wriggle, Gertie felt fear seize her body. “I think it’s a trap, Kolt. They know who we are, and the king is mostly likely preparing himself personally for battle with Xiao Jian.”

  “Gertie is right,” Dan told them. “The feast is to honor us—a last meal. The king knows we are here and has planned for our execution during the knowledge sacrifice.”

  “Last meal!” Kolt said. “But I can’t eat any of that, it’s meat!”

  Xiao Jian unsheathed her sword and readied herself for the arrival of the man who had killed her parents.

  But Er, the farmer’s son, had something to say. “Please, Xiao Jian, remember that water is soft but passes through mountains with no effort. This is why softness will always overcome hardness.”

  “He killed my family,” Xiao Jian said bitterly. “I will do what I must.”

  Just then, attendants in brown cloaks appeared and began to beat the wooden pillar drums. Villagers crowded around the building and stared in through every lattice window.

  “Oh dear,” Kolt said. “Let’s hope that’s not the boiling song.”

  The drums got faster and faster, until the whole building began to shake. Then two doors opened to reveal a stocky man with a coarse beard and fierce eyes. His black hair was tied up into a triangular knot and pierced with a hair stick shaped like a snake.

  With a roar of anger, he somersaulted into the main room, landing heavily at the front of the buffet table where he split a melon and a ceramic bowl with one downward swipe of his razor-sharp sword.

  His eyes blazed as he glared at the uninvited guests. “You dare come here and challenge the king!”

  Nobody spoke.

  “Must be a rhetorical question,” Kolt whispered.

  Then Gertie noticed an oddly dressed boy and girl, about her age, enter quietly from the same door as the king.

  “Who are they?” Gertie said, pointing them out to Kolt. “Definitely not locals by the look of them.”

  “Losers!” Kolt said. “And they knew we were coming, because they probably needed the other sword to destroy the B.D.B.U.! This sort of brilliant plan could only have been carried out by Thrax and conceived by Vispoth.”

  “But why would the B.D.B.U. allow us to bring it then?”

  “I have no idea.”

  “Unless it was the only possible way we might rescue it?”

  Gertie stared at the Losers, wondering what they were like and how they had come to join such a terrible gang of troublemakers. The girl especially filled Gertie with fascination. She was wearing a silver space suit and white hat made from thin metal that covered one side of her face and flashed with yellow lights. Was she, too, separated from her family?

  The boy made her feel another way completely. He had on black pants and a black hooded sweater. His hair was short and combed neatly to one side. It was as though she had seen him before, but couldn’t remember where. Gertie searched the darkness in her mind for a single detail, a feeling, the sound of his voice, a word—anything that would give meaning to the strange way she was feeling.

  When the boy noticed Kolt and Gertie staring at him, he whispered something to the girl, and she sneered. Then he looked straight at Gertie and grinned.

  Before Gertie could ask Kolt why the Losers were smiling at her, a group of sixteen soldiers carried in a wooden table, upon which the B.D.B.U. sat open, but lifeless.

  The king raised his sword and took aim at the giant book.

  “Glad you could make it!” the Loser boy with neat hair suddenly shouted toward Kolt. “You’re just in time to see this stupid old book get chopped to nothing.”

  His words were angry and sharp, like scissors cutting through the sentence. The girl in the space suit popped the gum she was chewing.

  “Yeah,” she said. “Destroyed forever!”

  Kolt glared at them. “You fools, give us that book back immediately. It doesn’t belong to you.”

  “Seriously?” Gertie said. “That’s your argument? What’s the backup plan?”

  “Backup plan? I don’t think we even had a plan.”

  But then Xiao Jian marched right up to the king with her sword out.

  “You dare!” he cried, raising the fabled female weapon over his head. Gertie could see the fear in his eyes, and it reassured her there was a chance they would win and get the B.D.B.U. back.

  “You have the bones of my parents around your neck,” Xiao Jian said with a calmness that impressed everyone.

  The Losers did not seem pleased. “You promised an old woman would bring the male sword to us!” the boy said ferociously. “But you didn’t mention that she was an assassin!”

  “I’m not just any assassin!” roared Xiao Jian. “I am the daughter of Mo Ye and Ga
n Jiang!”

  The villagers and guards crowded in at the windows and doorways, not wanting to miss a single word.

  “So you’ve come for your parents’ bones?” The king laughed. “I will trade them for the sword you carry.”

  With everyone’s attention on the two swords, Gertie nudged Robot Rabbit Boy, and the two of them crept toward the table with the B.D.B.U.

  When the Loser boy noticed Gertie and her robot companion sneaking across the banquet hall, he didn’t make any attempt to stop them but smiled again, as though he were on her side and this was all part of some plan.

  Gertie was almost there when the king backflipped so that he was standing on the B.D.B.U. with his sword ready.

  “I shall destroy this book first with my sword, then take yours to complete the job!” he said, spitting the words rather than saying them. “After I’ve thrown you all into the Crown of Triangles.”

  The villagers and guards gasped with horror.

  But just as he was about to skewer the ancient volume with his magical steel blade, Xiao Jian’s body flew through the air like a dart, and the swords of male and female clashed in a shower of white sparks.

  The final battle had begun.

  33

  The Ultimate Sacrifice

  THE PATH TO THE B.D.B.U. was now blocked by the ferocious sword fight and aerial acrobatics of the king and Xiao Jian. Even if Gertie had been able to dive for the old book, there was no way she could have lifted it without the help of at least ten villagers.

  Everyone looked on, hardly able to breathe, as the king and Xiao Jian somersaulted around the room, swords clashing and legs flying up into twisting kicks. Kolt, Gertie, and Robot Rabbit Boy took cover under the banquet table.

  “It’s right there!” Gertie cried. “We’re so close—all we need is to touch it, link up, and put the key in the lock.”

  “They’re moving too quickly,” Kolt pointed out. “If we get in the way we’ll be cut to ribbons.”

  Just then the king’s sword missed Xiao Jian’s head by an inch, and struck a beam, showering everyone with splinters of wood.

  “I’m going over there,” Gertie said impulsively. “Join me when you can and we’ll get out of here!” Before Kolt could stop her, she jumped out from under the table and made a run for the B.D.B.U. The evil king saw, and, while defending against a side blow from Xiao Jian’s glimmering blade, grabbed a wooden bowl and hurled it at Gertie, hitting her square in the nose.

  She fell to the floor, hands over her face. Kolt and Robot Rabbit Boy leapt out from under the table and pulled her to safety.

  “What are you doing?” Kolt said. “Trying to get yourself killed?”

  “I thought I saw a chance,” Gertie said, her nose throbbing. “I had no idea he’d throw a stupid bowl!”

  “He boils people’s heads, Gertie! What did you expect? And we all need to be touching before I turn my key in the time machine.”

  At that moment, the king struck Xiao Jian’s sword with such force that the ancient weapon flew from her hand and stuck in the table next to where the farmer’s son, Li Er, was hiding.

  The boy got up and looked at Xiao Jian’s male sword, still quivering where it had stuck the wood.

  The king laughed heartily. “What are you going to do child? Grab Xiao Jian’s sword and fight me with it yourself?”

  Seeing that Xiao Jian was defeated, the villagers felt afraid, and the terrified guards laughed along with their evil master as he stood ridiculing Li Er, his own sword hovering at Xiao Jian’s throat.

  But Er did not seem angry or afraid, and he spoke to the king in the gentle way he had spoken with Gertie as they came down the mountain.

  “I don’t need this sword to defeat you.” He smiled. “I have a more powerful weapon. . . .”

  “You’ll pay for that arrogance!” the king cried. He summoned his fearful guards to watch the now-swordless Xiao Jian, and started toward Er. The villagers screamed. The farmer rushed to protect his son, but Er told his father he was in no danger.

  “No danger?” the king growled, advancing closer.

  “None at all,” Er said, winking at Gertie. “For the great weapon I will use to defeat you was something I found on my way here, a soft, bright force that is stronger than mountains.”

  “And what is that?” the king cried. “A poison-tipped qiang spear? A fu ax? Crossbow? Throwing daggers?”

  “No.” Er smiled. “My weapon is friendship.”

  Then he looked right at Gertie and winked again.

  Finally she understood what he was getting at, and, as the enraged king stormed up to Er, Gertie silently tipped an enormous jug of water onto its side, sending a slick torrent across the stone. But the stone floor was not level, and, to Gertie’s horror, the path of the water suddenly changed course, causing the mini flood to rush behind where the king was walking.

  The evil king laughed. “You think you can stop a great warrior with water?” he snorted. “There is nothing soft that could ever hurt me!”

  What happened next caught everyone by surprise and would be recorded in the history books for eternity.

  A small, soft, squishy thing shot like a bullet from Gertie’s pocket, so that when the king brought his foot down he slipped onto his back, banging his head and knocking himself out cold—right next to the squished blob that had once lived happily under the moonberry bush outside the Keepers’ cottage, completely unaware of its fate to one day save the human race.

  The villagers, maids, guards, attendants, and even the soldiers went mad with cheers and clapping. It was the bravest, most daring sacrifice ever made in the history of Slug Lamp kind.

  With a mixture of anger, sorrow, and pride, Gertie grabbed the king’s sword from the stone floor and ran over to the Losers, who all this time had just been standing there like a pair of idiots.

  “Surrender!” she cried. “You’ve lost.”

  But they just stared at her with no emotion. Gertie couldn’t figure it out. She didn’t like how calm they seemed, as though everything had been rehearsed and they were just waiting for the scene to play itself out.

  “Stay where you are!” she ordered. “Don’t try to escape.”

  The Loser boy just laughed.

  Suddenly, there was a loud wail. The king had come around and was screaming for mercy. “Don’t kill me, please, please!” he pleaded as Xiao Jian stood over him with a dagger she been given by one of the king’s soldiers.

  She was red with fury. “You murdered my parents and killed many of your own people.”

  Gertie could feel the pain in her voice. It filled the hearts of everyone listening. Then she remembered some wisdom Er had shared with her on their walk down the mountain, and it suddenly made sense.

  “Xiao Jian!” Gertie called from across the hall. “You must spare the king’s life. If you kill him, a part of you will also die.”

  Xiao Jian let out a piercing cry, hoisted the dagger high in the air, and swung it fiercely over the king’s neck, cutting the string that held the glass bottle with her parents’ ground-up bones.

  Xiao Jian stood strong and tall over the man who had spent his life bringing terror and sadness to everyone he met. The villagers escorted their old leader to a jail cell.

  “Great speech,” Kolt said. “Very wise words.”

  “I was just repeating what the farmer’s son told me on our walk down the mountain.”

  “The farmer’s son?”

  “Yes,” said Gertie, looking for his face in the crowd, “the boy called Li Er.”

  “Li Er?” Kolt said. “Why didn’t I realize it before? That’s Lao-tzu! China’s first major philosopher!”

  The Loser boy who had been observing all this cleared his throat. “Have you finished jabbering?” he said. “Because Gertie and I have a book to destroy.”

  Gertie held the s
word up. “I’m not falling for your dumb tricks.” She looked to Kolt for advice. “Let’s take them to the beach for Johnny the Guard Worm.”

  “Well . . . I wouldn’t sleep knowing they were down there with the innocent dodos. Let’s leave them here in jail with the evil king—though they’ll eventually get picked up by their Loser friends in Doll Head, if it’s not already on its way.”

  “But Gertie,” the boy said, “you don’t need to pretend anymore, we’ve done it! Let’s follow through with Thrax’s plan and get out of here.”

  Gertie stared blankly at him, trying to untangle his words into something she understood.

  “She really has lost her whole memory!” the Loser girl with the white metal hat said. “Sewing her name on the gown didn’t do any good.”

  Gertie gasped and took a step back.

  “Oh dear,” Kolt said under his breath. “Oh dearie dear . . .”

  Gertie felt her blood turn ice cold. “It must be a trick. Maybe they saw the gown in my bedroom when they broke into the cottage.”

  “Impossible. They couldn’t get into any of the rooms, remember?”

  “You’re going to have to tell her,” the girl said to the boy with black hair. “Like Thrax said you would.”

  “Tell me what!”

  “You might not want to know,” Kolt warned her. “Might be better to just leave. . . all we need to do is stand on the table with the B.D.B.U. and link up.”

  “Shut up, old man!” the Loser girl snapped. “You’re not taking that book anywhere. Gertie, go get the other sword so we can spike this oversize comic.”

  But Gertie was frozen to the spot with emotions blazing inside her. The Loser boy stepped forward, completely ignoring the sword in her hand.

  “You’ve done it,” he said. “Don’t you understand? The plan worked. We’ve won. You’re a hero.”

  34

  The Crown of Triangles

  GERTIE HAD THE MOST horrible sick feeling in her stomach.

  “Stay back,” she snarled, raising her sword at the boy. “I’m not afraid to use this on you!”