Akiko in the Sprubly Islands (4 page)

I don’t know
how long it was before I woke up. All I remember is that when I opened my eyes I found Spuckler and Mr. Beeba asleep, both of them snoring like crazy. Poog had stopped singing by then. He had his eyes closed and was just humming quietly to himself. As for Gax, he was wide awake. Robots always
are
, I guess. But he looked even more alert than usual, and I couldn’t help thinking he was nervous about something.

“What’s up, Gax?” I whispered, crawling over to him. “Are you okay?”

“
I’M QUITE FINE, MA’AM
,’’ he answered. “
IT’S MY QUAKE SENSORS; THEY SEEM TO BE GOING HAYWIRE.
”

“Quake sensors?” I asked.

“
THEY DETECT GROUND MOVEMENT, MA’AM
,” he continued, “
AND RIGHT NOW THEY’RE TELLING ME THAT THE GROUND BENEATH US IS HIGHLY UNSTABLE
!”

“Wait a minute, Gax,” I said, putting my hands on the walls around us. “I can feel it too!” There was only a slight vibration, but it was getting stronger and stronger.

“Spuckler!” I said, giving him a good shake. “Wake up!”

“Nguh?” Spuckler sputtered as he got up on his elbows. He was still half asleep, I thought.

“This snake is
moving
!” I told him, “Can you feel it?”

“Moving?” he repeated, rubbing his eyes.

“Mr. Beeba!” I said, rocking Mr. Beeba back and forth by the shoulders. He was still sound asleep, though, and showed no signs of waking up.

“Hey, you’re right,” Spuckler said, “she
is
sorta shakin’ around a little, ain’t she?” By then the movements were becoming more and more obvious.

“Mr. Beeba!” I said, shaking him as hard as I could.

“Here, ’Kiko, lemme help you out there,” Spuckler said, crawling over to where Mr. Beeba was. Before I could stop him, Spuckler hauled off and smacked Mr. Beeba with his hand, good and hard, right on the side of his head.

“Aaughf!” Mr. Beeba groaned as he struggled to his feet.

“Look alive, Beebs,” Spuckler said calmly. “The snake’s startin’ to fidget.”

“You idiot!” Mr. Beeba shouted, now fully awake and very angry. “Don’t you know any
civilized
ways of rousing a fellow from slumber?”

“Worked,” Spuckler said with a shrug, “didn’t it?”

By then the snake’s movements had become impossible to ignore.

“My word!” Mr. Beeba whispered in alarm. “She
is
moving, isn’t she?”

“She ain’t just movin’,” Spuckler shouted as there was a sudden lurch. “She’s goin’
vertical
on us!”

Spuckler was right. It was like we were standing in the middle of a big long tube and someone was slowly raising it on one end, bit by bit. Before long what used to look like the floor was beginning to look like a wall, and we all started slipping and sliding down into the darkness. Meanwhile, Gax’s torch was flickering all over the place, making it even harder to see straight.

“Heavens!” Mr. Beeba cried. “We’d better grab
on
to something!”

“B-but . . . ,” I stammered, starting to panic, “there’s nothing to grab on
to
!”

Everything was so slimy and slippery that it was almost impossible to stop myself from sliding. By then the snake was almost completely vertical!

Luckily, Mr. Beeba was only about ten yards below me, and he was doing a much better job of holding on to the slimy walls. In fact, he was actually climbing up to help stop me from sliding any more.

“Just stay put, ’Kiko!” Spuckler called from above. “Beeba’s gonna save ya!”

“It’s too slippery!” I grunted as I slid down another few feet. By then Mr. Beeba was just a couple of yards below me.

“Hang on, Akiko!” he called desperately. “I’m almost there!”

“I’m losing my grip!” I cried as I felt myself begin to fall.

“Akiko!” Mr. Beeba shouted.

Just as I fell past him he reached out and grabbed my arm, squeezing as tightly as he could. He managed to hold me there for a minute or two.

“Don’t worry, Akiko,” he said to me. “I’ve got you!”

He tried to keep a grip on me, but my hand was covered with slime from the walls of the snake creature, and I watched in horror as his fingers slowly slid upward along my forearm. Before long it was just my hand in his, and finally just the tips of my fingers all scrunched up inside his fist.

“I can’t . . . ,” I gasped, “I can’t hold on much longer!”

“But you
must
, Akiko!” Mr. Beeba cried desperately. “If you let go now you’ll fall straight into the snake’s stomach!”

Just as he said these words, my fingers slipped out of his. Giving a terrified shriek, I felt myself drop like a stone into the darkness below!

I don’t even
like to
think
about what happened next, much less describe it in detail. Let’s just say I was saved by a bad case of snake indigestion. Just as I was falling into the shadowy stomach of the snake, there was this huge belching sound, as loud as thunder. I felt myself being lifted up by a warm (and
very
disgusting smelling) blast of air. With that one deafening burp, the snake began forcing me all the way back up its throat! It was pitch-black and I couldn’t see a thing. Still, I could feel myself rocketing up through one slimy passage after another, until finally I flew right through the snake’s mouth and out into the open air.

The next thing I knew, I was plunging down into the water of the Moonguzzit Sea. I was pretty dizzy, but luckily I was able to swim back to the surface and start treading water. It’s a good thing my mom made me take those swimming classes at the YMCA when I was a kid!

There was a huge splash as the giant snake plunged back into the water. Its body rolled over and down until finally, with a flip of its long tail, it disappeared beneath the waves. I guess the old monster had lost its appetite.

Just when I was beginning to worry about whether the others had made it out alive, I heard voices from somewhere behind me: “Akikoooo!”

It was Spuckler, Mr. Beeba, Gax, and Poog. It turned out that they’d been carried up out of the snake just like I had been, and had landed a dozen or so yards away. They were all treading water and shouting at me over the waves.

“Thank
heavens
you’re okay!” Mr. Beeba called out.

“You had us worried there for a minute, ’Kiko!” Spuckler shouted.

“That was, uh, kind of scary, wasn’t it?” I answered breathlessly as I swam over to join them.

“We need to work on your vocabulary, Akiko,” Mr. Beeba said disapprovingly. “The phrase ‘kind of scary’ doesn’t capture it
at all
.”

The sky was clear and sunny, and the water was pretty calm. As the waves carried us gently up and down, Spuckler started fiddling around with something inside Gax. He told us that Gax was equipped with a life raft, but he was having trouble getting it to inflate.

“This had better work, Spuckler,” Mr. Beeba warned. “We can’t tread water
indefinitely
, you know.”

“Keep a lid on it, will ya, Beebs? I’m tryin’ to concentrate here.”

“JUST A LITTLE LOWER, SIR,”
Gax said, evidently enjoying himself,
“YES, YES, THAT’S
MUCH
BETTER.”

“This ain’t a back rub, Gax,” Spuckler said through clenched teeth, “
Release
the dang thing already, will ya?”

Finally there were several loud snapping sounds as a sheet of bright orange plastic shot out from underneath Gax, followed by a big whooshing noise as it began to fill with air. Within thirty seconds the raft was fully inflated and floating impressively on the surface of the water. It was pretty big, and I was relieved to see that there would be plenty of space for all of us.

“Climb aboard, everybody!” Spuckler said proudly as he helped us all into the raft. “The S.S.
Gax
is about to set sail!”

We were all
safely inside the raft, lazily drying ourselves off in the midday sun. After all we’d been through, we definitely needed some time to recuperate. Mr. Beeba, as always, was a little nervous about the possibility of something going wrong.

“Spuckler,” he said, inspecting the well-worn surface of Gax’s raft, “are you sure this vessel is seaworthy?”

“Absolutely!” was Spuckler’s confident reply. Then a doubtful look came over his face. He turned to Gax and asked, “Say, buddy, did I ever get around to patchin’ this thing?”

“NO, SIR,’’
Gax answered bluntly.

“Aw, well, they ain’t but tiny little holes anyway,” Spuckler said after a pause. “We won’t start sinkin’ for another day or two, I bet. . . .”

The thought of the raft having holes of any size was not reassuring. Neither was the possibility of us floating around like this for days and days! I decided to see if we couldn’t speed things up a little.

“Mr. Beeba,” I asked, “is there any limit to how high up in the air Poog can fly?”

“I don’t think so,” he answered absentmindedly, staring off across the waves. Spuckler busied himself rearranging some of the pieces of equipment inside Gax’s body.

“Well, then, maybe Poog can help us find the Sprubly Islands,” I suggested.

There was a brief pause. Poog turned to face me.

“What are you getting at, Akiko?” Mr. Beeba asked, leaning forward with a puzzled expression.

“If Poog could fly up, way up into the air,” I explained, “he might be able to see where the Sprubly Islands are. Then he could come back down and tell us what direction to go in and we could all paddle with our hands until we started heading in the right direction.”

“Very clever,” Mr. Beeba answered, sitting up straight. “Let’s see if I can persuade Poog to take your plan into consideration.”

But before Mr. Beeba could say another word, Poog began slowly floating up into the air. He rose higher and higher, like a child’s lost balloon, until all we could see was a tiny purple speck against the sky hundreds of feet above us. Spuckler stopped working on Gax and looked up to see what Poog was doing.

“Astonishing!” Mr. Beeba said, shading his eyes with his hands as he followed Poog’s progress. “I’ve never seen Poog act so quickly on a request like that. You’ve really got a
way
with him, Akiko.”

“Really?” I asked, smiling. My face suddenly felt very warm, and I realized that I was blushing.

“Indeed,” he answered, a hint of jealousy coming into his voice, “Poog doesn’t often do the things
I
ask of him, and I’ve known him for a lot longer than you have!”

“It’s, uh, probably just a coincidence,” I said with a nervous chuckle.

“Oh no, Akiko,” Mr. Beeba said with grave seriousness. “Mark my words: There’s a special connection between you and Poog, one that I’ve seen developing from the moment you two met.”

There was a long pause as I thought about Mr. Beeba’s words. I looked up at the distant purple dot in the sky that was Poog and wondered what it meant to have a special connection to this strange floating alien. Somehow I sensed that there was more to it than Poog doing the things I asked of him. What would happen if Poog asked
me
to do something? Would I be able to do it?

A moment later Poog slowly floated back down to our raft. As usual it was hard to see much of an expression on his face, but I think I saw him smiling just a little. He turned to Mr. Beeba and blurted out a brief series of high-pitched syllables.

“Your scheme is a success, Akiko!” Mr. Beeba announced. “Poog has spotted the islands just a mile or two away, and the current is already carrying us in the right direction.”

Spuckler let out a big whoop and I breathed a sigh of relief. Our luck was finally improving! We all started paddling like crazy, trying to get the raft to move as fast as possible. Before long my arms were very sore and I had to take a break. Mr. Beeba soon joined me, but Spuckler kept paddling for almost half an hour. Finally I began to see the silhouettes of trees on the horizon, hazy and blue in the late-afternoon sunlight.

“Everybody look over there!” I shouted, leaning over the edge of the raft and pointing frantically. “It’s one of the Sprubly Islands!”