A Game of Groans: A Sonnet of Slush and Soot (18 page)

Goof gulped, then croaked, “Homminuh, homminuh, homminuh.”

“I’ll take that as, like, a yes.” Sasha smiled, and off they went.

When they arrived back at the castle, they came upon the Leghorn brothers, who were parked at a large square table in the center of the living room, staring intently at …
something
. Sasha scampered over to their table and squealed, “Oh. My. Gods. You guys were, like, tubular at the Festyval. The best there, f’r sure.” They silently glared at Sasha, then turned back to the table. She tapped Sandstorm on the bicep and asked, “Like, what’re you doing?”

Without looking up, he pointed at a rectangular board covered with tiny pieces of some sort. “That’s Risk,” Sandstorm explained. He then pointed at a sloppy pile of playing cards and grunted, “And that’s War.” Then he gestured to a flat box that blinked bright colors and made all kinds of funny noises, then rumbled, “And that’s Myst.”

“That’s, like, totally, totally, totally cool,” she burbled. “Can I play?”

“These aren’t games,” Sandstorm snarled.

“Yes, they are,” Grandstand corrected.

Sandstorm glared at his brother and said, “Nice job, idiot. Now we either have to let her play, or kill her.”

“We can’t kill her. She’s a plot point.”

“Can we at least hurt her? Maybe chop off a toe or two?”

“Not sure. Possibly. I need to check with G.R.R.M.”

“You mean Sistyr Glynda Roesy Raegan Melvyn?”

“No, the
other
G.R.R.M.”

“What
other
G.R.R.M.?”

“The one with the pretentious white beard.”

“Oh. Right. Him. I hear he doesn’t answer his fan mail.”

“He’ll answer a ravengram.”

“How do you know?”

“Ravengrams were his idea in the first place.”

Goof took Sasha’s hand and told the Leghorns, “We were just leaving, guys.” After Goof dragged her up to his bedchambers, he said, “You don’t want to play their silly games. I have something else you can play with, something better.” He then dropped his trousers and murmured, “I believe you were saying something about penises.”

Sasha stared at the small bluish appendage dangling beneath Goofrey’s waist, and felt her gorge rise. “That’s, like, totally gross,” she yelped. “I so don’t want to touch that. I mean it’s, like, all small and mushy. I thought it was supposed to be big and hard.”

Goof complained, “I’m tired, Sasha. I can’t work on command.” Then he blushed, pulled up his pants, and added, “But you’d better get used to touching it no matter how big or small it is or isn’t.”

Sasha squealed,
“Ewwwwww.”

“If you don’t shape up,” Goof threatened, “you might not get to be my wife.”

Off in the distance, Juan Nieve’s direpanda, Fourshadow, could be heard growling.

Tritone Sinister, Lady Gateway, Bobdillon the troubadour, Sur Crayola Burntsienna, and Tinyjohnson journeyed to visit Gateway’s sister, Lysergic Bully Aaron of House Aaron, in the town of Vailcolorado. Further details will not be offered, because, frankly, said details are not particularly interesting.

“You can’t suck in your stomach any more than that?”

King Bobbert Barfonme took as deep of a breath as he could; his stomach moved nary an inch. After a whooshing exhale, he panted, “I’m doing the best I can, Barky-Boy.”

“Well,” Lord Headcase Barker sighed, staring skeptically at Bobbert’s gut and the lower half of his armor, “I think we’re going to have to try a different size.”

Bobbert disgustedly struggled out of the metal pants and snapped, “You must’ve picked out the wrong size by mistake, or this suit was mislabeled or something. No surprise, because that armor room is a disaster. I mean, this
can’t
be an extra large. Gods knows I don’t need extra-extra-large. I’ve been an extra-large for five Summers now.”

Head murmured, “Yeah, but that was about ten million onions and twenty million pints of grog ago.”

“Can it,” Bobbert hissed. “We’re talking a pound or two. It’s not like I’ve become the corpulent embodiment of all the waste and excesses of my reign. It’s not like my own lack of self-control is an obvious literary symbol for my poor governance of this Godsdamn kingdom. Now go get me some iron that fits. And look closely at the label this time. Extra-large, not large, and pick something from the Henry VIII line—they run large. Got it?”

“Got it,” Head mumbled.

On his way to the armor room, Head ran into Lord Petey Varicose Bailbond, knocking the little man onto his backside. “I thought you were traveling with Gateway,” Headcase noted as he helped Tinyjohnson up.

“I am,” Tinyjohnson said.

“You are? But you’re here,” Head pointed out.

“I mean, I
was
there. But I’m now here. I’m most definitely not there. Obviously.”

“Sometimes,” Head mused, “it’s almost like you’re two characters combined into one.”

Tinyjohnson scoffed, “That’s ridiculous.”

“It seems like you’re in two places at once.”

“No way.”

“You’re supposed to be traveling with Gateway, and yet you’re here with me.”

“I’m not. I’m not there, I mean. I mean, I’m not there now. Now this line of questioning ends, because I have pressing news.”

“Always with the pressing news,” Head mused.

“You must pass this on to Bobbert,” Tinyjohnson confided. “If he jousts today, he will die.”

Headcase continued to the armor room, with Tinyjohnson nipping at his heels. “Nobody will hurt him,” Head pointed out. “He’s the King.”

“My sources are good,” Tinyjohnson insisted.

“Just like your sources who told you about the apothecary having something important to add to the story?”

Tinyjohnson threw up his hands and said, “Fine, disregard my warning, but don’t come crying to me when you and the King get murdered, and Goof takes the throne.”

“Right, like that’ll ever happen.”

Ten minutes later, Head returned to Bobbert’s bedroom emptyhanded. “There weren’t any extra-larges,” he lied, “so I guess you’re off the hook.”

The King looked visibly relieved. “Can I tell you a secret, Barky?”

“Sure.”

Bobbert whispered, “I’m as hungover as a snake who coiled then uncoiled.”

“As a snake who
what
?”

“I know, it’s a great metaphor, right? Point is, I’d get killed if I jousted today.”

“That’s the word on the street,” Head said under his breath. Then, at full volume, he said, “Let’s go to the Festyval.”

Bobbert the King and Head the Foot made it to the arena in time for the closing events, a series of one-on-one tussles, and the first battle promised to be a good one: the Not-Kingslayer versus the three-armed man.

Clad in an exceptionally shiny armor suit with a suspicious bulge below the waist, Jagweed Sinister strutted to the center of the ring, sword pointed to the sky. In contrast, Sandstorm Leghorn stood on the perimeter, looking like he was waiting for a bus, which, considering there were not any buses in Capaetal Ceity, would have made his wait a considerable one.

After Wavimus Gravimus told Jagweed and Sandstorm to start their engines, Jagweed cried,
“Cowabunga!”
and charged Sandstorm. Sandstorm neatly sidestepped the sloppy attack, bopped Jagweed in the back of his head with the butt end of his steel, and the fight was over. It was difficult to tell whether the audience was booing Jagweed’s miserable performance, or Sandstorm’s general obnoxiousness.

Once the medics carted Jagweed off the field of battle, Wavimus Gravimus took to the middle of the ring and cried, “To my left, may I introduce Grandstand Leghorn!” After the crowd voiced their disapproval—and after Grandstand lifted four middle fingers to said disapproving crowd—Wavimus Gravimus screamed, “And to my right, a late entry hailing from our very own Capaetal Ceity, give it up for the Knight of Knutsack, Sur N&N!”

What with his short platinum hair, steely blue eyes, and foul mouth, Sur N&N touched something in the crowd. He pointed at Grandstand and said, “You fuckity fucking fuck fuck, you can fuck my fuck fuckity fucking fuck fuck.” Yes, N&N’s cursing was gratuitous, and yes, his preening and primping seemed contrived—it was almost as if he were trying to somehow darken his pale skin—but the Festyval attendees nonetheless ate it up.

After the opponents donned their headgear, Grandstand advanced on Sur N&N. The Knight of Knutsack advanced on Grandstand. They moved closer to each other at an impossibly slow pace, irking both the crowd and the reader to no end. Finally, finally, finally, they met at the center of the ring, and, in traditional Leghorn fashion, Grandstand took out Sur N&N with a single blow. Angered that they had not gotten their money’s worth, the entire crowd stormed the ring. Swords were drawn, mud was flung, and popcorn was thrown.

In the King’s box, Bobbert, who was covered in a layer of mud and two layers of popcorn, glared at Head and growled, “Foot, is this how you envisioned this playing out?”

Wiping the muddy popcorn (or popcorny mud) from his friend’s eyes, Head shrugged. “I told everybody they’d get three days of war and screaming, and they got three days of war and screaming.” Gesturing at the increasingly intense riot in the battlefield, Head continued, “I also told them not to take the brown acid.”

As was the case with many of the characters in Easterrabbit, Cereal Foreskin had disappeared without a trace, and Malia Barker was greatly saddened by her teacher’s departure, even though he had not taught her anything she could not have figured out herself, but he did have the best name in the entire book, thus the great sadness.

In tribute to her vanished mentor, Malia, ice skates in hand, squished her way down to the muddy banks of the muddy Capaetal Ceity River. Once by the water, she donned her skates and wobbled along the big babbling brook, in search of a patch of ice she would never find. Fed up with falling face-first into the gushy mush, she sat down and removed her bulky footwear, then laid her head down in the mud and closed her eyes.

Just as she was about to drift off and fall into a deep sleep in which she would have endured a nightmare of ravens, onions, men named Robert (or some derivation thereof), and thousand-plus-page books that lack satisfying endings, she heard two voices coming from the forest, one belonging to a man, and one belonging to either a woman, or a man with a high voice … the kind of voice one might expect to come from the mouth of a eunuch.

“We must plot and plan,” the man hissed.

“And plan and plot,” the woman/possible eunuch agreed.

“Because there is a lot of planning and plotting to do if we are going to have
everybody
murdered,” the man chuckled evilly.

The woman/possible eunuch said, “I don’t know. Maybe we ought to rethink this. Having
everybody
murdered will take more planning and plotting than we have the time and means for. Sure, we
could
plan and plot for, I don’t know, fifteen more chapters, but there gets to be a point when enough is enough. Should we consider doing all our planning and plotting right now, then actually, you know,
doing something
?”

“Okay, okay, I see what you’re saying,” the man concurred. “So it would be quicker and more efficient to have
almost
everybody murdered.”

“Exactly.” Malia then heard a briefcase open, followed by the ruffling of some papers. “Alright, I did up a spreadsheet. We’ll whack him, and him, and her. We’ll let this guy, and that guy, and that girl live. What do you think about this one?”

“I don’t even know him,” the man admitted.

The woman/possible eunuch said, “Oh. I thought you put him on the list.”

“Nope. Wasn’t me.” After a pause, he asked, “What about this other guy here?”

“Oh, he’s
totally
getting whacked.”

When Malia sat up, the squish of mud could be heard miles away. At the noise, the man asked, “What was that?”

“Ah, it’s probably just one of the Foot’s kids waking up after her nap, a nap that followed an unsuccessful attempt to find a place by the river to skate, a place where she could pay homage to her ice-skating-slash-sword-fighting teacher—you know, the one with the hilarious name. It’s probably nothing to worry about. I mean, it’s not like she’ll go running to the Capaetal Ceity Outdoor Mall to track down the Foot and tell him about all our plotting and planning.”

Malia then flung her skates into the river and ran to the Capaetal Ceity Outdoor Mall in order to track down the Foot and tell him all about the man and the woman/possible eunuch’s plotting and planning.

Ten minutes later, Head asked Malia, “They said they’re going to murder
everybody
?” as he pulled some caked mud from his daughter’s ears.

“
Almost
everybody,” Malia corrected.

“Did they name names?”

“They said they’re going to whack him, and him, and her, and this other guy.”

“Did they mention me?” Head asked.

“Well, no.”

“Your mother, your sister, or your brothers?”

“Um, no.”

“The King, or any of the Barfonmes?”

“Er, no.”

Head patted Malia’s head, then claimed, “So we have nothing to worry about.”

“Then I don’t understand what they’re doing,” Malia whined. “I mean, what’s the point of murdering somebody if they’re not somebody important like you?”

“There
is
no point, Malia. That’s my point.”

“So you think you won’t be murdered,” Malia asked.

“I don’t think I won’t be murdered. I
know
I won’t be murdered.”

“You’re sure?” Malia asked.

“One hundred percent sure. No way, no how, no sir, nobody is murdering Lord Headcase Barker!”

“Somebody’s going to murder you, Lord Headcase Barker,” Tinyjohnson claimed.

“No way, no how, no sir, nobody is murdering Lord Headcase Barker.”

“I don’t know, Foot,” Tinyjohnson asserted, “the buzz on the street is undeniable. Lot of planning and plotting. Not to mention plotting and planning. Word is they’re going to murder almost everybody.”