by Becket
“William is the Worm King,” Miss Broomble said to Key.
“— and it seems that,” the elderly ghost went on, “William was in a wonderfully inviting mood this evening, having already set out a table with coffee and biscuits for visitors. His hospitality changed, however, when several frozen gremlins – all cantankerous teens – suddenly came crashing down like a meteor on to Nethermare Street, plowed through the Necropolis and into his fields, smashing his coffee table to bits. The vehemence with which he tore off his flowery apron, I hear, was particularly wrathful. Beware.”
Miss Broomble sighed. “Well,” she remarked, trying to look on the bright side, “I never liked his coffee. It tastes like mud.”
“It is mud, my dear,” Mr. Fuddlebee’s voice said in a hard-boiled tone. “He isn’t called the Worm King for nothing, you know.”
The Scuttlecom fizzled off.
Key leaned closer to Miss Broomble’s ear. “He isn’t a king?”
“It’s just a nickname,” the witch replied.
“Will we need a password to enter this Doorackle Alleyway?” she asked. “Is it also guarded by the Wicked Watchmen?”
Miss Broomble suddenly swooped down, bringing the MotorHog low to the ground, and sped them onwards, through the crooked roads of the Necropolis. “Have you ever heard the mortal expression,” she asked: “The grass is always greener on the other side?”
Key had heard it before, but she’d never thought about it much until now.
“The more we think that our own situation is worse than it actually is,” explained the witch as she swerved past a parade of spectating specters, “the less we can get to where we want to be. So the more we think elsewhere is better than where we’re at now, we’ll never go anywhere. The Worm King’s Doorackle Alleyway has a curse on it. It will not unlock or open for anyone seeking the ‘greener grass.’ So if we can stand long enough in the Worm King’s fields, without wanting to be elsewhere, then the Doorackle Alleyway will unlock and open for us.”
Key did not think that this should be too difficult, as the MotorHog flew to the entrance of the Worm King’s Field, for she thought also that, if she could learn to be mostly happy in Despair, then she should be satisfied anywhere else. But when the MotorHog flew up to a tall wrought iron gate wrapped up in what appeared to be dead vines, she began to have her doubts. For a second, she thought she saw those vines twist around to get a better look at her.
Miss Broomble did not land, but let the MotorHog hover just above the ground, as she sped between pumpkin patches and crops of mushrooms. Key noticed how the pumpkins and the mushrooms appeared to be moving, too. No, not moving, Key thought, writhing was the only word that came to mind. It looked as though something was eating them from the inside out. Key’s excellent sense of hearing could just barely make out the munching sounds of tiny mouths – hundreds of them, thousands of them – all gobbling and gobbling and gobbling. It was the same for a cluster of scarecrows and a flock of bats hanging upside down from a dead tree, covered all over in large spider webs, where black spiders were crouching in wait.
At that instant, it was as if Key’s eyes had opened, for she now understood what she was looking at, which wasn’t exactly a patch of pumpkins or a crop of mushrooms, or scarecrows or bats or spiders. They were all cloth imitations. And something appeared to be sown up inside them.
“It’s the Kin of the Worm King,” explained Miss Broomble, seeing Key’s concerned expression. “To grow his children, nieces, nephews, and even his younger sisters and brothers, he sows them up in darkness.”
Key looked around at fields of other crops. There were rows of old cloth corn and wheat, trees of apples and apricots and figs in tatters, and a harvest of rag tomatoes and cabbages and carrots. They were all cloth imitations. They were all writhing, too, for all had something (or several somethings) sown up inside them.
“I’m glad we’re hovering and not landing,” Key said. “I don’t think I want to walk in fields like this.”
“We cannot land or walk here,” Miss Broomble said as she gestured down towards the ground.
Key was shocked to see that it was writhing, too! Just below the MotorHog, where the ground should have been, were countless insects of all kinds, worms and earwigs and centipedes and several other breeds, all black or brown, all wriggling or crawling over one another.
“If we were to land here,” said the witch, “we would certainly sink in the Worm King’s Kin.”
This idea made Key very sick to her stomach. “We have to find the Doorackle Alleyway in all this?” she asked.
“Not quite. It will find us.”
“When?”
“Once we truly want to be here.”
“But I don’t want to be here.”
“Neither do I, and that’s why the Doorackle Alleyway hasn’t appeared yet. We have to try to want to be here.”
“Couldn’t you use magic to make us want to be here?”
The witch nodded. She held up one hand and incanted: “Beatus vir qui.”
Then she looked for the Doorackle Alleyway, but it still had not yet appeared.
“Where could it be?” she wondered aloud.
“The magic I just incanted is participative,” Miss Broomble said. “We have to work with it so it can work for us. It won’t work by itself.”
“How do we participate with it?”
“The magic will not help us choose to be here. We must freely choose that on our own. But it will help us see that other choices have less importance.”
Key did not understand this. And she did not know how she could or would choose to be here. She didn’t like this place at all. Being in this field, with all these sown up insects, was the last place she wanted to be in the world.
All of a sudden, as if things could not get any worse, a giant worm burst out of the writhing ground, right in the path before the MotorHog. Tiny insects of all sorts went flying in every direction, some getting tangled up in Key’s hair.
“Ew,” she shuddered, “disgusting.”
It was the Worm King who had come forth. Key should not have been surprised to see that he was not quite a worm and not quite a squid either, but a mixture between the two. He had a worm-like body with tentacles ringing around his mouth, looking like a very odd crown, when they stayed still long enough. His worm body wasn’t soft like other worms either; his outer skin was more like the shell of a turtle, with scutes that rattled together as he bent low to eye Key and Miss Broomble with his eye-less face.
Words like deep whispers came from his open mouth, even though his lips never moved. “Who dares trespass into my fields?”
“A seeker of fine coffee,” said Miss Broomble in a respectful tone.
Key was greatly surprised to hear this and she stared at the witch, wondering what she was doing.
The Worm King lowered a little more. He would have stared Miss Broomble in the face, if he had a face to stare with. Key could see inside his open mouth that he had row after row of teeth, like a shark. Yet despite his tentacles, his jaws, or his menacing size, issuing from his open mouth was a peculiar aroma – a mixture of cinnamon and ginger, nutmeg and cloves and allspice. To Key it smelled delicious.
“Fine coffee, you say,” the Worm King said to Miss Broomble in an innocent tone. “Well, yes, my coffee is quite tasty.”
“As tasty as your delectable biscuits, O Great King of Worms,” said Miss Broomble, without a hint of sarcasm in her voice.
Key thought that, if the Worm King had any cheeks, they must be blushing tomato red at this moment.
The Worm King leaned a little closer. “I am not quite sure what delectable means. But if it bears any resemblance to the taste of stick bug, well then, yes, I guess you could say my biscuits are quite good, too.”
Key had never had a biscuit or a stick bug before, but, as she looked out across the fields of writhing insects before her, she felt she didn’t have much of an appetite. Moreover, she was quite confused by Miss Broomble’s
behavior.
“What are you doing?” she whispered. “I thought you said his coffee tastes like mud. And why would you eat a bug biscuit?”
“We must want to be here,” Miss Broomble whispered back, “to open the Doorackle Alleyway. It’s the only way to get ahead of Silas and the Queen. And I can’t think of a better way to want to be anywhere than by having a cup of coffee, muddy or not.”
As the Worm King wiggled off to put on a fresh pot, Key was trying to understand what Miss Broomble meant. “So you’re saying,” she continued whispering to the witch, “if you can be satisfied swallowing and stomaching what you don’t like, then you’ll get to where you want to go?”
Miss Broomble nodded as she put on a smile for the Worm King, who was returning now with a new coffee table, a cup of mud coffee, and a plate of bug biscuits. He set the coffee table between them and poured a cup for Miss Broomble and one for Key.
“You know,” the Worm King said conversationally, “Mystical Creatures of all kinds come and go from here all the time, and none stay for a chat. I’m so glad you’ve decided to do so.”
“This is delicious coffee,” Miss Broomble said, sipping her coffee and crunching into a bug biscuit. She put on her best smile for the Worm King, with a mud mustache across her upper lip. “Did you flavor it with chicory?”
Key sipped her coffee too, but the taste was so disgusting that she spit it out almost immediately. “Ugh,” she coughed. “How can you drink this?”
Miss Broomble gave Key a don’t-be-rude look.
The Worm King, however, seemed to be more concerned than offended. “Maybe I should have used thirty scoops instead of forty,” he remarked. “I do tend to overdo it. It’s one reason I’m so much heavier than your average worm, in case you hadn’t noticed.” He put a tentacle to his mouth to whisper, “I can’t seem to take off any of this wretched weight.” Then he swiped twenty-seven biscuits off the table and swallowed them in one gluttonous gulp.
“Sorry,” said Key sincerely, “I don’t mean to be offensive. I might not like the coffee very much, but I like you, O Great Worm King. You seem very nice and I would like to get the chance to know you better.”
One of the Worm King’s tentacles wiped some crumbs away from his mouth while another hid an embarrassed smile.
Miss Broomble stared at Key in disbelief. “What are you doing,” she demanded beneath her breath.
“Being honest,” Key whispered back. “It’s the only way I can be happy where I am.” Then she returned her attention to the Worm King and spoke rather prudently:
“Regrettably, we are in a dreadful hurry. Old Queen Crinkle was supposed to be turned back into a mortal tonight, but she’s escaped. We’re trying to stop her from causing any further harm.”
The Worm King nodded understandingly. “Oh, Matilda,” he sighed to himself. “What have you done now? You know,” he remarked to Key and Miss Broomble, “Crinkle stopped by my fields a few nights ago, talking about this big plan and that big plan – something about taking over the underworld – her usual threats. She actually tried bossing me around, saying, ‘I’ll show you’ and ‘You’ll all suffer’ and ‘no cream, I’m lactose intolerant’ and other such insufferable remarks. I told her, ‘Look, Matilda, you’ve been crabby all these years because you’re so — well,” he paused reconsideringly, “that’s all in the past. You, young lady vampire,” he said to Key, “are certainly the most honest guest I’ve ever had the pleasure of entertaining. It has been an utter delight to get to know you. Yes, I completely understand if you must dash.”
Suddenly, the mass of insects writhing on the ground began swirling together, like a whirlpool beneath the MotorHog. Key looked below and saw that the way opened beneath them to another part of the Necropolis.
“This is it,” Miss Broomble said to Key. “The Doorackle Alleyway.”
Miss Broomble revved the MotorHog’s engine and pressed the handlebars down. They dove straight into the whirling mass of writhing bugs. Key looked back to wave goodbye to the Worm King and he waved back at her with one of his tentacles. She began to think that she might like to come back and visit him, but she got distracted when several bugs fell into her mouth and ears. Shuddering with disgust she brushed them away and spat them out while also trying to hold on to Miss Broomble’s middle.
The Doorackle Alleyway led straight to the Mausoleum of Madmen on the far side of the Necropolis. Madmen of all kinds suddenly broke free of their chained-up coffins and tried reaching for the MotorHog, but Miss Broomble deftly maneuvered past their gruesomely groping hands.
Key was very relieved when they came bursting out. Miss Broomble looked pleased, too, as the MotorHog rode freely once more through the Necropolis.
“Excellent!” she said, pointing towards a great giant striding towards them. “There’s Silas – and the Old Queen, too – we’ve managed to cut them off. Now comes the hard part.”
“The hard part?” Key said in an incredulous tone, considering that everything till now had been remarkably difficult.
“Now we need to stop them,” Miss Broomble said as she revved the MotorHog’s engine. She gunned it, fearlessly hurtling herself and Key through the twisted streets of the City of the Dead, straight towards the giant cyborg.
— CHAPTER ELEVEN —
A Flying Lesson
The MotorHog was flying as fast as it could to keep pace with Old Queen Crinkle and Silas the Cybernetic Cyclops. It did not seem that Key and Miss Broomble would catch them before they reached the Grave of the Grim Goblin. Key had no idea what Miss Broomble planned to do, but she imagined that the witch had to have another gadget that would unfold into something fantastic, or perhaps more magically mystical words up her sleeve, anything that might somehow slow down the Cyclops, or stop the Queen altogether. So she was completely caught off guard by Miss Broomble’s next remark.
“Leap straight up into the air.”
Key was not sure if she had heard her correctly. She tilted her head in confusion. “Leap into the air,” she repeated, her voice full of doubt.
“Straight up,” Miss Broomble insisted.
Key could not believe what she was hearing. The look of worry must have been clear on her face, for Miss Broomble noticed, looked over her shoulder, and stared intently into her eyes. Key knew that look. She’d seen it before in her mother’s eyes. The look pierced her to the heart, assuring her in so many words, “Trust me.”
Key responded with a look of her own, one of sheer determination, narrowing her eyes, furrowing her brow, and puckering her mouth. Yes, she did indeed trust Miss Broomble and to prove so, she stood up on the back of the MotorHog, without thinking, without letting her fear take hold of her, and she leaped directly up into the air.
The sensation was exhilarating! As a mortal, she had only been able to jump a foot, maybe two. But her vampire power thrust her high into the air. It felt like flying as she went up and up and up – but then she started falling.
She panicked when she looked down and saw that, much to her horror, Miss Broomble and the MotorHog had gone. They were nowhere in front, nowhere to the left or to the right. Key began to fear that she might fall all the way to the streets of the Necropolis, which were so far down that the Mostly Dead citizens looked like Mostly Dead ants. But then she suddenly landed on the MotorHog with a THUMP! Straddling the seat perfectly, it took a moment for her to realize that Miss Broomble had circled around and had come back to catch her.
Only slightly more shocking was the realization that she hadn’t landed behind the witch, but was now in the front seat, with the handlebars before her.
“I didn’t mean for you to jump that high,” Miss Broomble remarked wryly from the back of the MotorHog.
“I didn’t know I could,” Key answered, trying to keep calm. “Why have we changed places?”
“Quick lesson in flying.”
“You want me to fly your MotorHog?”
“You took charge of the dynabow. This is no different,” Miss Br
oomble said as she took Key’s hands and guided them to the handlebars. “This machine flies by your instincts. If you flinch, it will flinch with you, as smoothly as possible. If you instinctively bank hard right, it will factor in surrounding weather patterns, wind conditions, bad attitudes of passengers and passersby, and it will reduce any friction or turbulence. The work of this machine is to provide you with anything you need, although it does not always give you what you want.”
“Is the MotorHog’s operating system also DIOS?”
“All my things operate with DIOS.”
Together they steered the MotorHog, going left and right, higher and lower. In no time Key was getting the feel of flying – and she loved it!
Several questions came to her, however, flying into her mind faster than she was hurtling through the air. But one question particularly stood out and she felt compelled to put it to the witch now.
“What if what I want isn’t what I need?”
Miss Broomble smiled, as though she herself had asked this very same question, too. “DIOS knows you inside and out,” she explained, “so the MotorHog will know what you need when you need it. The worst thing you can do while driving the MotorHog is to worry. By worrying, you fight against the work DIOS is trying to do for you. You fight against your intuition and instinct. Don’t worry – just take control and fly, and you’ll be fine – no matter what happens.”
Key couldn’t help herself. With all this new information, she looked at the MotorHog worriedly. “I don’t think I can fly this thing,” she admitted in a timid voice.
But Miss Broomble only smiled and playfully replied, “Just wait until we teach you residential aeronautics.”
“Residential aeronautics?” Key tried to understand those two very large words. “You mean…flying homes?”