Crap Kingdom (18 page)

23

THE ELGG GALLOPED
three or four times before it leapt up and never came down. Its dragon-like wings started beating and they left the plain behind. Like any takeoff Tom had ever experienced, it was as thrilling as it was terrifying.

Tom’s ears filled with wind as they soared into the night sky. For a moment he had forgotten that he was naked and freezing, but now he remembered, and he knew the cold was only going to get worse as they got higher into the atmosphere. The skin of the Elgg, smooth and scaly and vaguely translucent, looked like it would have been cold to the touch, but it was growing warmer by the second, perhaps because of the physical effort of flight. Or, Tom thought, perhaps it sensed that he was cold.
How considerate,
he thought. A comforting green glow was even starting to spread underneath its translucent scales. Tom hugged it even tighter.

He turned his head. The dome of the Wall was receding in the distance, shining brightly now that they were so far away. Was this a bad idea? Gark had said the Ghelm wanted to destroy Crap Kingdom. Well, Russia had wanted to destroy the United States at one point, but they didn’t anymore, and now there were at least three Russian kids in Tom’s high school class. Nations could be enemies. It didn’t necessarily mean the people in them were bad.

Who said that he and Kyle couldn’t each have their own kingdom? It seemed pretty ideal actually. And while Kyle’s kingdom was mostly made of junk from Earth, Tom’s kingdom, if the visions were any guide, had a look that let you know that you were somewhere fantastic. Tom figured he was stuck in this world anyway since he didn’t know the magic words to get home. He could either spend his time here dying or spend it flying. He was pleased that this thought had rhymed. It went a long way toward making it seem true.

He hugged his Elgg more tightly—was it too soon to start thinking of it as
his
Elgg? It was keeping him warm and airborne and alive. It had probably saved his life.

Tom stared up at the blue and craterless moon.
Just a boy and his dragon-dog,
he thought,
soaring through the night sky.

Before long, they seemed to be descending. Something dead ahead and cloud level glinted in the blue moonlight, and Tom realized he was looking at an after-dark version of the vision he’d seen twice, the spire breaking the clouds. The spire’s tip winked with the faintest red light, like the top of a skyscraper and the little red light that tells planes not to crash into it. Even in darkness he could see the dark strip of land made visible by the wedge where the clouds broke, then re-congealed a mile or so away from the spire. Tom didn’t know when he’d become such a decider of how far things were away from other things. But it looked like about a mile.

He waited for the clouds to dissipate as they’d done in the vision, but they stayed solid as his Elgg plunged toward the spire. It looked bigger and bigger as they descended, the Elgg seemingly on a collision course with it, and as it went from big to huge in Tom’s field of view he could see that the spire was actually filled with incandescent gas, like a neon sign, except unlike with neon, you could see the gas itself swirling up to the top if you looked closely. Soon Tom didn’t have to look closely because it was fifty feet in front of them, then twenty-five, then ten, and they were definitely going to crash, then at the last second,
whoosh
, his Elgg rolled to one side and slipped just to the right, into where the cloud layer broke, and they were underneath, swirling around the spire, heading straight down, all the way to the spire’s origin, a blinding round shape pulsating with a thousand different dancing colors that lit up the surrounding black rocks of the jagged mountain. This structure, this thing, was at the summit of the mountain, emanating from the rock, the spire leading down to a huge bulge like the prow of a boat, covered in a network of bubbles and tubes and crystal tunnels, some of them empty, some of them swarming with people, some of them filled with incandescent gases of different colors. A multitude of crystalline structures cascaded from the center tower down one side of the mountain, a multicolored glass-and-neon cityscape of seemingly infinite complexity. Tom was a little bit nauseated but a whole lot in awe.

They seemed about to dash themselves on the rocks when the Elgg swooped under a glass tunnel filled with purple neon vapor that created a sort of bridge between two jagged cliff faces and suddenly they were dodging diamond- and orb-shaped chambers and their interconnecting tubes in a perfectly executed series of maneuvers taking them down the mountain. Tom wondered if all the acrobatics were necessary or if they were strictly for his benefit, not that he was complaining either way. Tom had been breathless from biking over to Lindsy’s house to humiliate himself, and then he had been breathless next to Crap Kingdom sprinting naked from one disappointment to another, but now he was breathless from catapulting through a wonderland of crystal towers full of mysterious people and harnessed, pulsating clouds of indescribable brilliance. There was no question which one he liked best. They had entered a tunnel that seemed barely wider than the Elgg’s wingspan. Every so often a walkway or balcony would jut out from the tunnel walls and the Elgg would be forced to duck one way or the other, but it seemed instinctively aware of the size of the rider on its back, somehow always managing to leave Tom just enough room to duck and not get his head sheared off. It trusted him to duck, Tom thought. It believed in him.

Then the sky was open above them again, and the tunnel’s bottom spread out to become a landing strip. The beast slowly brought its wings in and touched the ground. It galloped to the edge of the landing strip. There was nothing but darkness beyond. Then it turned, and Tom could see they were at the foot of the mountain, staring up at the crystal-enclosed brilliance that climbed up and up, all the way to the tower that tapered off until it became that tiny spire blinking red up there in the unharnessed clouds. Tom sat up. He cracked his back. He remembered he was naked, but he didn’t care. He enjoyed hanging out naked in his room at home. Maybe he could convince them that being naked was part of his culture.

Men Tom hadn’t noticed before appeared out of dark corners of the landing strip. They looked like soldiers. They had the armor Tom had seen in his visions and brandished long crystal pikes that were almost twice as tall as the men themselves and had jets of dancing red smoke coming from their tips. They surrounded Tom and lowered the smoking ends of their weapons at him without a word.

“Easy, gentlemen! Easy!”

Hearing this, the soldiers lifted their weapons and looked up. On a platform high above the landing strip, a slim-faced older man had appeared. He turned and ran down a flight of steps to reach them. Instead of armor, he wore a sort of tight-fitting translucent material that had been made into a jumpsuit and was filled with yellow smoke.“We’ve got one at last! We’ve got—”

He stopped on the last step and actually took Tom in, in all of his nakedness.

“Oh my. It’s like the old days. Step down, son.”

As if it understood what the man had said, the Elgg bowed, and Tom did as he was told. The man in the yellow jumpsuit chose that moment to start looking up and around the room and basically anywhere except for directly at Tom. One of the soldiers laughed and elbowed a coworker.

“Let’s have it quiet now!” the man in the jumpsuit shouted. “Errr . . . let’s see what we can do here. . . .” He looked around. “You,” he said, indicating the soldier who had just been snickering at Tom. “The hose.”

Reluctantly the soldier disappeared into the shadows, then reappeared, holding the end of what looked like a fire hose except its length was completely see-through. He handed the nozzle of the hose to the man in the yellow jumpsuit.

“Hold still, son,” the man said. He pointed the thing at Tom and twisted a lever on the nozzle. A jet of white steam shot out the end. Tom braced himself instinctively, because, as many misadventures pulling lids off boiling pots of macaroni had taught him, steam was very, very hot, and would burn you. It turned out he didn’t need to worry. This steam didn’t burn at all. He tried to move his arms from where they sat wrapped around his body after he’d tried to protect himself from the steam, but they wouldn’t move. His legs were stuck together, too. The steam had formed a solid cloud around him that didn’t dissipate and acted like a straitjacket.

“I told you to hold still, I think,” the man said. “Right, just try to hold your arms at your sides.” The man grabbed the giggling soldier’s pike. “And let’s please really hold still this time?” With no hesitation, he plunged the smoking end of the pike toward Tom, who didn’t even have time to prepare for death. The man made three cuts, two at his sides and one at his legs, then lifted the pike back up. Tom was still alive. He tried lifting his arms and found that he could. The steam still clung to him, except now, instead of a straitjacket, it acted as a shirt and pants, encircling his arms and legs, completely opaque and, he found, quite warm, but without the sensation of wearing anything at all. It was the freedom of nudity combined with the warmth and protection of clothing. Well, this was just the best. Tom wanted to ask if he could maybe get one of these steam-suits for around the house.

“Thanks!” Tom said.

“No thanks necessary,” said the man, handing the pike back to the soldier. “It benefits all of us. Now, there is little time for pleasantries, as I am sure the king will want to see you immediately, but I am Glubwhoa Tchoobrayitch. If you wish, you may call me by the abbreviation ‘Tchoobrayitch.’” Tom’s first thought was that the abbreviation wasn’t much shorter than the name. His second was that he didn’t think he’d ever get tired of hearing that a king wanted to see him immediately.

“Nice to meet you,” Tom said, “I’m Tom.”

“Hello, Tom.” He got Tom’s name right on the first try. Tom liked everything about this kingdom better so far.

“Bring me another Elgg,” Tchoobrayitch said to his men, and they fell all over themselves to run off the landing strip and into the shadows. They came back with an Elgg that was smaller than Tom’s. It didn’t have to be led by a leash—it simply walked alongside the soldiers up to Tchoobrayitch, who hopped on.

“If you’ll retake your Elgg, Tom,” Tchoobrayitch said, smiling, “hopefully you’ll be more comfortable this time.”

Tom’s Elgg bowed once again in front of him, and once Tom got on, it rose to its full height.

“The king may be sleeping,” Tchoobrayitch said, “but we shall wake him. He will want to be made aware of you right away.”

After a few minutes of dodging through a tangle of interconnected tubes and tunnels, Tom and Tchoobrayitch emerged into an enormous chamber. It was easily four times bigger than any stadium Tom had ever seen on Earth. The whole swirling-gas theme of the Ghelm kingdom kept making Tom think of Jupiter, but what they found embedded in one wall of this chamber looked almost exactly like it. It was an orb whose surface was all tumultuous, miniature super-storms. Tom had seen it in his visions. Opposite the orb, the visible stone workings of the mountain ringed a circular chasm, deep and dark and black with a steady, howling wind blowing out of it that seemed to be coming straight from hell. All around the orb’s station in the wall were portholes, presumably for ventilation for the impossible wind. Tom looked down. The wind was tearing his mist-clothing apart but luckily, it was being regenerated at exactly the same rate. Tchoobrayitch turned left, starting up a path carved into the cliff face of the chamber. They were headed away from the chasm, toward the orb.

Tom clung hard to his Elgg, which was struggling not to be blown up against the chamber wall. He wondered if he would get to keep it during his stay here. He sure hoped so. He could name it. He’d never had a pet bigger than a goldfish. It would be neat to have any pet at all, let alone a pet he could ride around as it flew.

Finally they reached the orb. Tchoobrayitch reached out a bare hand and placed it on the orb’s surface, then took it away, leaving a red handprint. The handprint lingered there for a second and then fluttered away into the orb’s interior storm, like a paper cutout blown down the sidewalk on a windy day. A second later, the entire orb began to float out and down toward the center of the chamber. It left a huge vacant hole in the wall, and on the other side of the wall was night, and bare country.

The orb stopped moving and hovered in mid-air several feet away from the edge of the path . Tchoobrayitch’s Elgg leapt off the edge, into the wind, landing on the top of the orb. It skittered to the dead center and, as soon as it had found its footing, Tom’s Elgg did the same. Tom clung harder than ever to the back of his faithful but as-yet-nameless Elgg, worried that he would be blown off its back and dashed against the cliff wall or sucked out of the giant space left by the missing orb.

Instead, his Elgg nobly achieved the summit of the orb. It positioned its feet in a very specific way, and then, synchronized, both Elggs deployed their impressive wings, and none too soon, because the second they did so, the top of the orb opened and they plummeted down into it. The Elggs’ wings acted as parachutes, and Tom and Tchoobrayitch floated straight down into a throne room. There was no mistaking it, Tom thought. For one thing, it actually had a throne.