The Questory of Root Karbunkulus - Quill (9 page)

Okay, team, breathe. Let it go.

No easy task. If they listened carefully
enough they could probably still hear the sizzling sparking death
of the Imaginate, which was nothing compared to the ensuing
hysteria. Lian clung to a single token of redemption. “Thank god we
won’t have to use him.”

“I’m not too sure about that.” Root said,
coming up empty for the third time from the closet floor.

“Oh no.” said Dwyn looking at her.

“Oh please, no.” Added Lian.

In Dwyn’s room all three were scuttling about
in a mad search: tossing clothes, dumping drawers, checking and
rechecking corners, piles, under the bed…all to no avail. Dwyn’s
Klok, a beaver with excessively long, underused teeth yawned.
“It’th way path-t your thleepytime, my boy.”

Everyone ignored it.

“Are you sure I had the Pasting Quill last?”
said Dwyn crouched behind his dresser.

“Well, you were the last one to use it on
Root.”

“Wait a minute! That was when we were still
with Martika and Alabiss. When we left,
you
had packed it in
the travel bag, Lian!” Dwyn obviously didn’t like being held
responsible for losing the one thing they wanted now more than
anything.

But then neither did Lian as they ransacked
his room, which was a much more difficult undertaking considering
that many things that were searchable were alive and not at all
pleased about being frisked.

When nothing was recovered the probable

loss of the Pasting Quill aka HaloEm Quill
became a suffocating reality. And on the heels of suffocating
reality, blame could always be found.

“How could you not know it was a HaloEm
Quill?” asked Dwyn far too accusingly for Lian’s liking.

“As a matter of fact I was suspicious but
she

used it like a butter knife, Dwyn! You don’t
use a real live HaloEm Quill like a butter knife.”

“Well, why didn’t you ask?”

“I just assumed it was from an exotic
bird!

And besides I didn’t see you asking about it,
either!”

“Well, how’m I s’posed t’think it’s
unusual.

I’ve never lived here before!”

“You still could’ve asked. It’s not like

you’ve never asked about anything here

before…only like a hundredbazillion times! It
doesn’t matter anyway ‘cause even if you knew you’d’ve probably
lost it!”

“I didn’t lose it! You did!”

“Okay, guys that’s enough! Geez.” Root

wanted to strangle them both. “There’s no
point fighting when it could’ve got lost anywhere during the last
Quest. It’s not like the travel pack was kept in a nice, safe
bubble after we left the Keepers. If you remember an Albino Gorilla
even had it for awhile.”

True.

But the horror of being so close and now so
far was a sickening pill to swallow. Not because they would have
to, like everyone else, journey to find a new Quill. That wasn’t
bad at all. In fact they had to admit they had felt a little sad at
the thought of missing out on a second exciting adventure.

No, the horror was being stuck on this second
adventure with Ernest Skubblenob.

There was only one thing for it. Sleep. Maybe
they’d wake up to find the old inventor was just a nasty dream they
had coincidentally shared. Okay, maybe not but staying up, freaking
out ‘til sunrise wouldn’t help any either. Maybe, if they were
really lucky in the morning the old inventor would be too
embarrassed to return.

Fingers were crossed.

Root’s walk through the corridors back to her
room was burdened by the desire to visit Krism whose light was
still on. She paused, on the cusp of total burnout.

Nope. Her drooping eyelids simply wouldn’t
allow it. She would have to see Krism in the morning, after a
comatose few hours in bed.

Once returned to her room she jotted down a
note and passed it to her Doorhand. She hadn’t used the Messenger
System before since most deliveries were botched or worse,
monitored. But sleep had already taken over her legs and would soon
consume her entirely. “Room sixty eleven, please. His name’s
Krism.”

Root’s Door Hand, a rather stalky thing with
oversized knuckles was pleased to get an assignment, having
recently felt undervalued and in need of job stimulus. One can only
greet and announce so much before dying of boredom. A dispatch was
just the solution. It snatched the paper from Root and disappeared
to whatever messenger route it was that Door Hands took. Through
the walls most likely.

Root yawned so wide her jaw nearly unhinged.
Even Mordge’s regular nightcap was put off for this much needed
‘preliminary sleep’ as Lian called it.

But tired as she was, it was one of those
attempts where the body is more than ready and willing but the mind
just can’t concur. She stared up from her bed at the cracked
ceiling above. This time tomorrow she would be immersed in the
Second Magisterial Treasure Quest of DréAmm. With so much time
spent pillaging their rooms, all they had eked out of a plan was
back-tracking their last Quest, hoping to find the Quill where it
may have fallen. Anywhere from the Death Yard at Loz to the Sea
Wraith’s domain to Bumplekins’ secret cottage to the very
unfriendly Mortem Woods.

A thrill swept through her as she remembered
her first Quest. Sure, the idea of finding the Quill sitting
innocuously in one of their rooms had had its merits. But truth be
told, a second adventure was the trump. Root had spent so many
weeks training for and looking forward to it. The adventure and
excitement had worked its way under her skin and she suspected that
it had been the same for Dwyn and Lian.

As an orchestra of crickets serenaded outside
her window, she felt exactly as she had the very first night of the
very first Quest: lucky and thrilled and anxious and terrified and
happy. She eventually fell asleep but her dreams were fraught with
images of the HaloEm Quill floating on a vast seascape, only to be
suddenly chomped and dragged under by an old man’s pair of false
teeth.

A Dead Treader is nocturnal. But that doesn’t
mean it dances under the moon or anything wasteful like that. No,
no a Dead Treader is not one to socialize. It comes out just long
enough to find its prey and eat it. A fast food kinda thing.
Nothing too fussy in the diet. Unfortunately for the prey this
usually means anything ‘warm and breathing’, which regrettably
means being eaten alive. However, if one could reach for a brighter
side to such an ordeal, at least the prey is paralyzed first and
can’t feel that it’s being eaten. But that doesn’t really help the
fact that it
knows
its being eaten, which, in the end may be
a far worse way to go. Unless of course the eatee passed out in the
process as is usually the case.

Most victims of a Dead Treader had found a
nice place to sleep after an active evening of foraging. By the
time they realized that
they
were now being foraged, it was
too late; the Dead Treader’s many-segmented body had scurried over
them with hundreds of tiny poison tipped legs, paralyzing them
instantly.

It’s a quiet meal. As was stated and is worth
repeating, a Dead Treader is not one for socializing. It lives a
rather solitary existence under rocks and rotting trees, emerging
only for this brief digestive encounter with a small rodent, of
which a forest has plenty.

But this particular Dead Treader has not been
released into a forest. No. This very large, abnormally large in
fact Dead Treader has been released into a bed. After having spent
many days in a large clay box without food.

This Dead Treader is hungry.

It doesn’t particularly care for the crisp,
clean sheets of its landing but eventually it finds something
resembling a meal, albeit a hairless meal. The Dead Treader
scurries over the skin, marvelling in its smoothness. Salivating.
And lookie here!-this hairless rodent is huge! The Dead Treader
sweeps up and down its victim, discharging hundreds of paralytic
stings from hundreds of eager legs.

Never in its life has the Dead Treader seen
such a large rodent. The Dead Treader can’t believe its good
fortune. In fact, it’s so happy, it doesn’t even seem to mind the
other three Dead Treaders that have been released into the same bed
to share. There’s more than enough!

Hilly Punyun woke up to find that she
couldn’t move anything but her head. She thought she’d been
sleeping in a position that had put her arms to sleep but when she
couldn’t move her legs either, she figured it was more serious. It
was only when she saw several abnormally large Dead Treaders slowly
making their way toward her face that she realized just how serious
it was.

Hilly passed out.

It was as the original Dead Treader was
making its way toward an ear that Hilly woke again. This time she
saw the shiny brown shell and hungry clipping mouth.

Hilly screamed. She screamed louder than
she’d ever screamed in her life. Then she passed out again. But
lucky for Hilly Punyun she had screamed a scream so shrill, so
resonant, so perfectly pitched, it caught the attention of a
Shrieking Shrub. The Shrieking Shrub thought Hilly was its long
lost mother and shrieked back.

Unfortunately for Lian the Shrieking Shrub
was in his room. He woke clutching his heart, just in time to see
his Shrieking Shrub uproot and race out the door. Well, under the
door.

As the shrub tore down the halls towards its
‘mother’, Lian in tow, it managed to wake a good number of
residents. Soon Lian heard the thunder of many a footstep racing
behind him. Root had caught the terrifying shrieks many floors up
and had joined the amassing crowd of pajamas, nighties and
slippers.

When they arrived at Hilly’s room, most of
the horror had been already dealt with. Jorab was putting something
monstrously creepy looking into a bag that was squirming with legs.
Countless, nasty, writhing legs.

Hilly was lying in bed, every inch of her
looking stone cold stiff. The Shrieking Shrub was nestled up under
her chin, practically strangling her with affection. Though she
wanted to swat the thing away, she couldn’t for the only things
mobile were her eyes and mouth. Beside her, Hyvis Punyun was
patting her arm and seething.

“It was him!” Hyvis screamed in a voice still
deranged by the ordeal, not certain her daughter wasn’t partially
eaten already.

The growing swarm of kids rubbernecked toward
the corner where Hyvis’s glare had landed. Root went instantly
pale. There, in the shadows of Hilly’s room, the whites of his eyes
ablaze, stood Krism. He looked small and fatal, any innocence
effectively ambushed.

“He was trying to kill her, Jorab!” Hyvis
exploded.

Hilly’s eyes rolled back to Jorab while her
face remained stone stuck. It was rather disturbing to watch. “Are
they…are they gone!” She screeched as much as one can screech with
no jaw to back it up.

“Yes, they’re all gone. Now settle down, Miss
Punyun. Let’s take care of your paralysis first.” Jorab applied
slight pressure to Hilly’s hand. “Can you feel this?”

“No! Why, is there nothing there? Is my hand
gone?” Her eyes swivelled wildly again. She tried to move her head
to look, but absolutely nothing came of it.

“Your hand is still attached. It’s been
numbed and so…”

“Has it been chewed? Do I still have all five
fingers?”

“No, it has not been chewed. Yes, you have
all five fingers. Consider yourself lucky.”

A huge glob of a tear formed in the corner of
Hilly Punyun’s eye. In perfect measure, an identical droplet, soppy
and ready to burst claimed the other eye. She blinked, sending two
rivulets down her cheeks. It was masterful. Even Root felt a pang
of sympathy.

But in her stupendously, notoriously
obnoxious way, Hilly would put a direct halt to that. “Did
it…sniff…gnaw off my nail polish?” she whimpered. “I spent so much
on that design. I don’t know what I’d do if it was ruined.”

Master Hillywur Gub arrived in a flurry of
panic, putting a swift cork in Hilly’s Oscar performance. Much to
Jorab’s relief.

“What’s going on?” He pushed his way past the
gawking crowd, unconscious of the fact that he was wearing a
one-piece pajama ensemble and a shower cap. He saw Jorab’s
squirming bag of Dead Treaders and yelped.

“Oh good.” Jorab smiled. “Would you mind
disposing of these, Master Gub?” He handed the bag over.

Hillywur Gub took the bag. Slowly. With a
hand clasped over his mouth. He looked fit to outdo Hilly’s
tears.

“Thank you.” Jorab turned back to his task.
“Now then…Lian…”

Lian approached reluctantly.

“I believe she is yours.” Jorab gestured
toward Hilly.

Lian’s face flushed amidst a wave of
snickers. The nubs of his ears went scarlet. “She’s not mine…I
mean…we’re not dating…!”

“Gross! As if!” Hilly added to his
embarrassment.

“I’m referring to your Shrieking Shrub. Yours
I assume?”

“Oh. Yeah.
She’s
mine.” Lian
cautiously leaned in and tried to pry the leaves of his shrub from
their grip around Hilly’s neck. It was utterly impossible. That
weed was clutching so tight, Hilly’s neck looked like the link part
of a sausage, all gathered and squeezed. It was a good thing Hilly
had no feeling or there would be just desserts. And Lian wanted no
part of just desserts, especially coming from the likes of Hilly
and Hyvis Punyun. He bore down on the vegetation.

“What’re you doing to her?” Hyvis cried.

“Get off me, you loser!” Hilly added. “And
take your stupid plant with you!”

“Wha’dya think I’m trying to do!” Lian
yelled. The nubs of his ears were getting redder. Especially with
his audience laughing full out now. He took hold of his ‘stupid’
shrub and yanked. It shrieked louder than before, clutching its
‘mother’s’ long lost cheeks.