Even humans abandoned their kids, like so many of the boys back at Oak Wilt.
Bolt closed his eyes. He could feel a part of him, the penguin part, stirring inside him. And then he thought of something that would have seemed impossible before now, that would have seemed as strange as eating a live goldfish just two days ago:
Could a penguin family be a real family? Could they become Bolt’s real family?
No. The thought was absurd. His depression was making him delirious.
Bolt slammed the book shut. He needed to get out. Hunt the Baron down. Avenge his parents. Save Brugaria.
Or, he needed to sleep. That sounded like a good plan, too. A wave of exhaustion swept over him. And when was the last time he had eaten anything? As suddenly as his tiredness came the hunger, a nearly insatiable desire for raw fish. He was so very hungry. And so very tired.
* * *
Hours later, Bolt was jostled awake by the chimes of the clock and a tingling feeling spreading through his body. It was deep into the night, and the moon cast its rays through the window. The clock chimes rang. It was midnight. The moment he feared most.
Bolt went to the window, and the full moon bathed him in light.
Bolt’s body rippled, his feet turned orange, and he opened his mouth to scream.
Instead, he barked.
PART FOUR
The Attack of the Werepenguin
34.
Really? Another Break in the Action? This Is Getting Annoying.
As I stood at the St. Aves Zoo, the frigid night winds slammed against me like a ship smashing into an iceberg. The penguins chattered among themselves. I stifled a sneeze.
The penguin caretaker looked at me with a combination of pity and resignation, or perhaps a combination of revulsion and nausea, or a combination of patience and hypothermia, or perhaps none of those. Like a book without punctuation, he was hard to read.
“It is late,” he said. “We should continue our story later. In the morning, perhaps, after a good night’s rest.”
I shook my head, both to show my disagreement with his terms, and also to shake off another sneeze threatening to shoot from my nostrils. “You will finish your story,” I commanded. “I will catch the first boat home, your penguins in tow, assuming you keep your end of the bargain.”
“I will not shirk from it. The penguins are yours if you want them,” the man assured me. “I merely make the suggestion because of the time, and because your teeth are chattering.”
“My teeth chatter from the night air, not from the fear of monstrous penguins. Horror stories will not change my mind. But I admit I have a new appreciation for those birds. Perhaps they deserve an exhibit as large and as comfortable as this one. I promise I will ship them to my zoo in a box made of extra-comfortable wood and I will personally add more airholes.”
The man sighed, a loud sigh that reminded me more of a foghorn than a person breathing. It was so loud, even the penguins craned their necks to look.
“Very well,” the man said. “But once again we need to take a slight detour to catch up on Annika and her—”
“I hate interruptions,” I said with a frown.
35.
The Greatest Bandit Who Ever Lived
Earlier that evening, while Bolt was in the tower and before midnight approached, Annika opened her eyes. She was alarmed to find herself sitting on the cold stone ground of a prison cell. One of her wrists was shackled to the wall by a chain. She yanked her arm, but the chain did not budge, and instead merely hurt her wrist.
The chain creaked as she yanked. It was old and rusted, but not so old nor so rusted that it broke.
Annika glared at the gray stone walls around her, grim and ragged. The cell had no chair. No bed. No toilet. There was a window, but it was small, covered with steel bars, and too high to reach. A sliver of moon glow peeked through.
There were also rats. She heard them chattering in the walls. One scurried across the floor, looked at her, and then slowly neared. Annika kicked at the rodent. It stepped back, shrugged, and ran away.
If it was looking for dinner, the rodent would need to wait until Annika was too weak or hungry to fight back.
Or maybe she should let the rat nibble on her. She probably deserved it. Annika hung her head in shame. First, the villagers had captured her to hang her, and now the Baron had defeated her with a penguin. Great bandits did not allow themselves to be captured even once, let alone twice in the same week.
Maybe she wasn’t quite ready to be a bandit, like her father had said. Maybe, like blanched potatoes, she needed some seasoning.
She couldn’t get any seasoning shackled in a basement, though. She would need to get out of there first.
Annika withdrew two bobby pins from her hair, rubbed them against her fingers, and then got to work. Winning the bandit lock-picking contest had been easier than picking this lock, though—the mechanism inside was old and rusted, and her rough tools had a hard time manipulating the parts inside.
After a few anxious moments, including twice when she feared one of her bobby pins would snap in two, and with her heart speeding faster and faster, Annika heard a faint click, and the lock popped open. Her racing heart slowed down to a trot.
She rubbed her wrist. Her skin felt raw where the shackle had squeezed. She stood up and walked to her door. As she expected, it was locked, but that didn’t worry Annika much. Her bobby pins had proven to be strong.
She reached her thin arm through the bars of her cell and around to the lock. Less than a minute later she was creeping down the hallway.
As she crept, Annika glanced at another cell in the hallway, where a skeleton lay, chained to a wall. Whoever it was hadn’t had a bobby pin.
Annika walked quietly. She didn’t pass guards. She didn’t hear the Baron. No one would notice she was gone except the rats.
The hallway led to a staircase, and at its top was a door that led directly to the lawn.
Annika opened the door and stared out at the great expanse of green grass mottled with white snow behind the manor. For a brief moment, she considered finding the tunnels and fleeing Brugaria to become the bandit she had always dreamed she would be. Then she would return, years later, triumphant and battle-tested, ready to take her place as the leader of the bandits. But now she could leave as easily as a cow could rob a carriage, which is to say, not easily at all. She had seen the Baron’s twisted smile, filled with wickedness and malice. She had heard his evil plans.
If he wasn’t stopped, no one was safe.
She stepped out the door of the manor when, somewhere, a grandfather clock chimed over and over again. Eleven times? No, twelve.
Wild penguin barking echoed across the land.
Above, the full moon shone. The echo of waddling feet grew closer. The forest itself seemed to come alive as ice cracked and the ground rattled.
A bush was next to her. Annika dove behind it, hiding from view, as an army of penguins trampled across the lawn. They looked wicked. Vicious.
Something bigger ran among them. The biggest penguin she had ever seen.
A werepenguin.
It was Bolt. She could see it in the penguin’s eyes: a flicker of humanity. Annika stayed behind that bush, trembling, not daring to move, waiting for morning to come, hoping that, somehow, she could convince her family to fight this evil.
36.
A Light from the Darkness
The next morning, Bolt awoke on the floor of his room in a rather large puddle. His tuxedo, what little was not torn and ripped, dripped seawater. Fish bones lay on the floor.
He didn’t remember very much about the previous night, and the few things he could piece together, he didn’t like. He had chased people. He had smashed things. He had given someone a wedgie. The nighttime was penguin time.
Bolt remembered the seafood market. It had tak
en the worst of the nighttime attack as he and a gang of penguins broke windows to plunder a treasure trove of fish and seafood piled on buckets of ice. They also whittled their initials on the floor. They used the bathrooms and left the toilet seats up.
But the worst part of his memories?
He remembered enjoying all of it.
He had stood next to the Baron, too. Run with him. Swum with him. Bolt could have done something; he’d had plenty of chances. But the idea had not even entered Bolt’s mind. Instead, he had obeyed the Baron willingly. Happily.
Bolt walked over to the closet and found the clothes he’d been wearing when he left the orphanage. They sat in a ball on the floor, damp and smelly, but Bolt put them on anyway. He already shared the Baron’s ghostly pallor and penguin-like nose and hair tufts, but he didn’t have to share the same wardrobe. He vowed he would never wear a tuxedo again.
He was putting on his shirt when the bookcase moved. Startled, Bolt jumped back. It inched forward farther. It squeaked, and then squawked. Bolt jumped in alarm.
The entire case slid over, and Annika entered the room, shaking snow from her shoes. The bookcase, it seemed, hid a secret stairway.
“What are you doing here?” Bolt asked, amazed.
“Freeing you.”
“I would have freed you if I could have,” said Bolt in an apologetic tone. “I thought about it. But I was sort of stuck up here.”
“Didn’t I tell you about the secret tunnels?” Bolt nodded. “And how they were in lots of houses and building?” Bolt nodded again. “And to always check behind bookshelves?” Bolt shook his head. “Sorry, then. My bad.”
“It’s nice of you to rescue me, though.”
“I’m not nice,” said Annika, growling. She spoke in her best bandit voice, trying to sound both firm and cruel. “Bandits are not nice. I owe you one, that’s all. I’m a ruthless bandit. Besides, I need you.”
“I still think it’s nice.”
Annika kicked the floor and frowned. “Stop saying that. Now let’s go. We need to get out of here.”
“Out of Brugaria?”
“I’ve scrapped that plan. We’re heading back to the forest. I need to convince my father of the Baron’s plans and, well, one look at you, and he’ll have to believe me.”
Bolt glanced at his ghostly white reflection in the mirror. A shudder shot through him.
Annika waved Bolt to the bookshelf, but Bolt didn’t move. “What are you waiting for? Your face isn’t going to get any less penguin-like by looking at it. We need to warn my family.”
Bolt sighed. He had never been cute or cuddly like so many other orphans, but now with his ashen face, his tufts of hair, and his slightly larger nose, his un-cute-ness and un-cuddly-ness were more obvious than ever.
But that night, he would look far worse. He would be a complete and total monster.
Bolt lifted his chin as he turned to Annika. “I can’t go with you.”
“You want to stay here?”
“No, I mean I can’t go with you to the forest. I need to find Blazenda. She says I’m the chosen one.”
“Chosen to do what?”
“To defeat the Baron and free the penguins, at least I think so. Honestly, no one seems to be completely sure. I could just be chosen to do his laundry, but that would be terribly anticlimactic.” Annika opened her mouth to protest, but Bolt held his hand up. “If I go with you, I’ll become a penguin again. I’ll fight against you, and the Baron will be unstoppable, or so he says. I need to find Blazenda.”
“That old fortune teller tried to hang me.”
“I never said she was perfect.”
“You can say that again.”
“OK, I never said she was perfect.” Annika threw Bolt a dirty look. “Blazenda told me that I had to free myself to free you all. Maybe it meant nothing. All I know is that I need to find out and do what I’m chosen to do.”
“But why were you chosen? You’re not mighty or brave.”
“I didn’t choose myself. This neck birthmark did. Maybe it knows something I don’t.”
Annika sighed, took out her knife, stared at the blade, and then thrust it back into her belt. “I’m a horrible bandit,” she groaned. “Fine. I’ll help you find the Fortune Teller. You’d better be right about this. Now, let’s get out of here.” She paused and sneered. “And just so you know, this does not mean I’m nice. I’m still ruthless.”
“Right. Ruthless. Got it.” Softer, Bolt added, “But I still think you’re nice.”
Annika growled and then stepped toward the open space behind the bookcase, Bolt behind her. The door to the tower bedroom swung open with a rusty creak. Bolt and Annika turned, ready to fight.
Frau Farfenugen stepped into the room holding a platter of dead fish.
The lowly housekeeper dropped the platter in surprise. It clanged against the hard wooden floor. Frau Farfenugen pointed to Annika while shooting Bolt a withering glare. “I leave you alone and you sneak friends into your room? I’m very disappointed in you.”
“My name is Annika Lambda and I’m the fiercest bandit in the world.”
“Then why have I never heard of you before now?” The housekeeper’s eyes narrowed.
Annika frowned and slumped her shoulders. “I’m working on that.”
“She’s very nice,” said Bolt.
“No, I’m not,” grunted Annika.
Bolt looked at the fish that had fallen from the tray onto the floor and was filled with a ravenous craving to eat. He dropped down to the ground and crammed halibut and minnows from the dirty floor into his mouth as fast as he could. So delicious! He savored each wet, rubbery carcass.
When Bolt saw the housekeeper and Annika staring at him, their mouths agape, he stopped eating and emitted a small burp. He blushed. “I guess I was hungry.”
“Bolt and I are leaving,” said Annika to the housekeeper. “He’s going to save Brugaria. Or at least he’d better. And, hopefully, he’ll learn how to use a fork and a napkin.”
“I have to find Blazenda,” added Bolt, wiping fish slime on his pants. “And yeah, a napkin would be nice.”
Frau Farfenugen scowled. She backed up slowly to the door. “I have no napkins. Even worse, the Baron has threatened to sew me into mittens if the boy escapes again. I don’t even like mittens. It’s very hard to pick up small objects with them. Gloves are much better. But I shouldn’t complain. I’m just a lowly housekeeper who doesn’t deserve any hand-warming outerwear.”
Annika bounded over to the housekeeper and held her knife to her throat. “Should I slit her throat?” she asked Bolt. “Just say the word.”
“Really? Would you do that for me?” asked Bolt. He had never known anyone who would slit a throat for him before.
“No, probably not.” She lowered her knife. “I’m a terrible bandit.”
“You’re still starting out,” said Bolt. “I’m sure one day you’ll be able to slit anyone’s throat, anytime.” Bolt now turned to the housekeeper, who was staring at the door as if planning to turn around and run. “Help us escape, or I’ll tell the Baron about you.”
The housekeeper eyed Bolt warily. “Tell him what?”
“About you and the Fish Man, and how you sneak out of the manor to see him. I spied you.”
The housekeeper spat angrily on the ground. “I looked left and right when I ran out the other day, and forgot to look up. But you wouldn’t tell the Baron.”
“I would.”
“He’d never believe you.”
“He’ll find your love letters.”
Frau Farfenugen looked at the tray by her feet, the tray she had dropped and that held the dead fish, and sighed. “I should help you anyway. The Baron must be stopped.” She pointed to the secret tunnel. “But I’m going with you. Maybe, just maybe, a lowly housekeeper such as I can find happiness,
as improbable as that would seem. Although probably I’ll just find misery and woe.”
The three of them hurried toward the hole in the wall. They dashed down a dark spiraling staircase, through an ancient, crumbling hall, slid down a bumpy chute, and then rushed down a tunnel that was damp and cold, carved into the earth. Cracks from above provided fragments of sunlight, just enough for them to see where they were going.
The tunnel soon split into two, and Frau Farfenugen ran down the tunnel on the left. Annika pointed to the tunnel on the right. “This one leads back to town.”
“Then where did Frau Farfenugen run to?”
“Who knows? The tunnels can get confusing. But we’re going this way. I’m fast, so keep up.”
Bolt wiggled his toes. He was wearing the shoes from the orphanage, if you could call them shoes. They were really just burlap sacks with laces. He couldn’t run fast, but he needed to do his best. He was almost out of time.
He knew he might be Brugaria’s only hope. The penguins’ only hope. But, deep down, it all felt very, very hopeless.
37.
A Storm Approaches
After running, jogging, and dashing down a confusing maze of underground passages, Annika and Bolt scurried up a small ladder. They stood surrounded by endless rows of identical grave markers. Flowers lay on many of the graves, perhaps dropped by loved ones that very morning.
At the edge of the vast lawn were four tall stone penguin statues on high pedestals. Each penguin stood proud, posed in a stoic salute.
“Where are we?” Bolt asked, his voice swept away by the whistling wind.
“The penguin cemetery,” said Annika. “Where the great penguins are buried, and the not-so-great penguins. Really, they let in just about anyone, as long as it’s a penguin.”
The Curse of the Werepenguin Page 14