North! Or Be Eaten (3 page)

Joe and Addie hurried to the kitchen, where they set to work concocting a critternose casserole, the name of which Addie had invented on the spot. She sent Joe out to round up as many rodents as possible so she could begin the work of removing their little black noses.

Joe kissed her and thanked the Maker they were both still alive. “I’ll be back soon, love,” he said.

He hung his apron on the back of a chair and pulled on his boots but hesitated with his hand on the doorknob. Joe peeked out the window that opened on to the back courtyard. He saw no Fangs.

Instead of going outside, Joe tiptoed up the kitchen stairway to the second floor of the inn. He paused at the top and stared at a hallway lined with doors.

He listened. He heard faintly the raucous Fangs in the streets. He heard the creak of the old building and the gusty wind outside. Joe stole down the hallway to room eight and eased the door open.

Room eight contained a neatly made bed, a wash basin on a chest of drawers, and a desk, each piece of furniture simple but sturdy. Joe moved to the window and paused, looking out at the wreckage of Glipwood with a pang of sadness. Below the window lay what remained of Shaggy’s Tavern. The stone chimney stood like the trunk of an old petrified tree, the ground littered with planks, broken stools, and shattered bottles.

Wincing at the creak of his footsteps on the wooden floor, he crept to the chest of drawers and slid it away from the wall. Behind the bureau was a small doorway. Joe looked around one last time and ducked inside, pulling the chest back into place behind him.

The doorway opened on to a cramped room lit only by a tiny window in the ceiling. The light was weak, but after a moment Joe’s eyes adjusted, and he could see the plump figure shivering in the bed.

“Hello, old friend,” Joe whispered.

The man stirred and tried to sit up. A blood-soaked bandage adorned his large belly.

Joe put a hand on his arm. “Don’t sit up. I have to step out for a bit, but I wanted to check on you first. Do you need water?”

The man on the bed tried in vain to flatten a lock of white hair against his balding head. “I’m…parched,” he said, “to paraphrase the wise words…of…Lou di Cicaccelliccelli.”

“I’ll take your word for it,” Joe said with a smile, pouring a cup of water from a pitcher beside the bed. He lifted it to Oskar N. Reteep’s mouth. “I’ll be up later to change your bandages. Do you need anything else?”

Oskar swallowed the water with a grimace. “A few more books would be splendid, if it’s not too much trouble.”

Joe looked at the stacks of books in every corner of the room. “I’ll do my best,” he said. “Rest. I’ll be back tonight. It’s nice that you’re able to talk again, Oskar.”

“Yes,” Oskar wheezed. “And Joe, there’s much I need to tell you. Zouzab… beware—” He broke off in a fit of coughs.

“It’s all right. There will be time to fill me in on everything later.” Soon Joe would have to tell Oskar that his little companion Zouzab was gone, probably killed by the Fangs. He didn’t want to burden the old man with more grief.

Oskar leaned back and fell asleep immediately. As bad as he looked, he had come far in the weeks since Joe found him bleeding on the floor of Books and Crannies. The day the storm came, Joe and Addie had spent the better part of the afternoon maneuvering him into the inn. No Fang reinforcements had come since the night before the storm, when Podo and the Igibys fled to Anklejelly Manor to escape the hundreds of Fangs that had come for them. Joe still wasn’t sure what became of the Fangs that night, but it seemed that someone, or something, had killed them all.

When the Shoosters emerged from their hiding place the morning after the battle, it felt as if the world of Aerwiar had ended. Dark clouds roiled in the sky above the deserted town, and the streets were clogged with the dust, bones, and armor of countless Fangs. Soon Shaggy emerged from the tavern, and the Shoosters felt great relief at his appearance. They had been neighbors for decades and were the only members of the Glipwood Township who chose to stay rather than flee to Torrboro or Dugtown the night the Igibys fought their way out of the Black Carriage.

But then the one friend the Shoosters had left was taken from them.

One afternoon a company of Fangs tore through Glipwood on their way north from Fort Lamendron. From a second-story window of The Only Inn, the Shoosters watched helplessly as Shaggy pushed a wheelbarrow of firewood across the street. When the Fangs saw him, they pushed him to the ground and one of the lizards sank its fangs into Shaggy’s leg.

The Fangs left as quickly as they had come, but by the time Joe and Addie raced to Shaggy’s side, he was already dead. The Shoosters wept as they buried their friend in the Glipwood Cemetery at the southern end of Vibbly Way. Joe scavenged the
SHAGGY’S TAVERN
sign from the building’s wreckage. It bore the name of the tavern and an image of a dog smoking a pipe. Joe placed it at the head of Shaggy’s grave after carving, in his finest lettering, the inscription “Shaggy Bandibund, an Exemplary Neighbor and Friend.”

Now the Fangs were back, demanding to know the whereabouts of Reteep, Podo Helmer, and the Igiby family, and Joe had no idea why. Oskar had mumbled a great deal in his sleep about the Ice Prairies and the Jewels of Anniera, whatever those were, but Joe Shooster was merely the proprietor of The Only Inn. He didn’t know about such things and didn’t care to. He just wanted Oskar to recover and things to somehow go back to the way they were before the Fangs set foot in Skree.

If the Fangs wanted Oskar, then Joe Shooster knew the right thing to do was to keep Oskar hidden. When the old man’s wounds were healed, Joe would figure out what to do next. In the meantime, he had to be careful. As Joe had just seen with Higgk the Fang, it wasn’t just Oskar’s life in danger but his and sweet Addie’s as well. He hated to think of harm ever coming to her.

Joe bid Oskar farewell with a pat to his leg, and Oskar grunted in reply. Joe listened at the back of the chest of drawers for a long moment before sliding it aside and creeping out from behind it. He scooted the chest back into place and froze.

What was that sound? Movement from the window behind him? A sheen of sweat swept over Joe’s body, and his mind raced. As casually as possible, he removed a handkerchief from the pocket of his vest and dusted the top of the chest. He hummed to himself as he moved from the chest of drawers to the desk and risked a glance at the window.

A face stared back at him.

A small figure with delicate features and a patchwork tunic perched outside the window of room eight. His eyes were piercing and cold, and they froze Joe in his tracks.

“Zouzab!” Joe said aloud, glad and confused to see the little fellow. Oskar would be pleased his friend was still alive.

He waved at the ridgerunner, who nodded in reply. The little creature was probably worried about his old master and would be a great help to Joe and Addie as they nursed Oskar back to health. Joe placed the handkerchief back in his pocket and slid the window open.

“Welcome, Zouzab!” he said, as the ridgerunner skittered through the window like a spider. “It’s good to see a familiar face in Glipwood.”

“Greetings, Mister Shooster,” Zouzab said. His voice was thin and brittle—not like a child’s, but not like a man’s either.

Joe patted the little man on the head, failing to notice the look of disgust that flashed over Zouzab’s face when he did so. “I suppose you’re wondering about Oskar, aren’t you?” He smiled at Zouzab, happy about his good news.

Zouzab’s eyes widened almost imperceptibly, and he nodded. “Yes, Mister Shooster, I’m most concerned for his…health.”

“Well,” Joe said and then remembered Oskar’s words just a few minutes ago:
“Zouzab…beware.”

Joe had assumed Oskar wanted to warn his little friend to beware of the Fangs—but now he wasn’t so sure. He detected something sinister in the way the ridgerunner studied him.

“Oskar…” Joe faltered.

Zouzab took a step forward.

“Well—I haven’t seen him. Not since the day before all this chaos descended on Glipwood. Have you?” Joe cleared his throat, removed his handkerchief, and busied himself with dusting the rest of the furniture in the room, tightening the sheets, and fluffing the pillow, acutely aware of Oskar’s presence on the other side of the wall. He prayed the old man wouldn’t wake up or snore.

Joe opened the door to the hallway and paused at the threshold. “Would you like to come with me? I have twelve more rooms to dust, and it’s terribly exciting work, I assure you. Otherwise, you’re welcome to leave the way you came in.”

Zouzab watched him in silence, like a cat about to spring. The two stood in room eight for what felt to Joe like an eternity before Zouzab looked over the room one last time, bowed, and leapt lightly to the windowsill.

“Good-bye, Mister Shooster,” Zouzab said, and in a flutter of patchwork, he was gone.

Joe crossed the room on trembling legs to close and latch the window. Then the silence was shattered by a loud burst of flatulence from Oskar’s secret room.

Zouzab’s head appeared in the window.

“Excuse me,” Joe said with a shrug.

The ridgerunner narrowed his eyes, wrinkled his nose, and was gone.

J
anner’s and Tink’s excitement had evaporated.

Boys sometimes forget that before one leaves on an adventure, if at all possible, one must pack. There are situations in which packing is secondary—such as escaping a burning building—but if there is time to plan and arrange and discuss before leaving, then it is a fact of life that grownups will do so. When children say it’s time to leave, they mean, “It’s time to leave.” When grownups say so, they really mean, “It’s time to begin thinking about leaving sometime in the near future.”

After Nia’s pronouncement, she and Podo proceeded with the day’s chores as if a monumental decision had not been reached at all. The next day, the children chopped firewood, washed clothes and blankets, fetched water from the creek, and prepared meat to be salted and dried while the grownups planned, arranged, and discussed.

That evening after dinner, Nia and Podo unrolled an old map to work out their route to the Ice Prairies. They agreed to travel south to the edge of the forest, then west along the border until they reached the road to Torrboro. At Torrboro, they would travel south and west again in order to skirt the city and avoid the Fangs concentrated there.

“Three days west of Torrboro, the Mighty Blapp River ain’t so mighty. It’s wide but shallow enough to ford,” Podo said. “And the Fangs should be scarce there.”

“What about the Barrier?” Nia said.

“What’s the Barrier?” Janner asked.

“I reckon you wouldn’t have heard of it. It’s here,” Podo said, and he ran his finger across the map. “The Barrier is Gnag’s best attempt to keep Skreeans from doin’ exactly what we’re tryin’ to do. It’s a wall that runs the length of the southern border of the Stony Mountains. It’s patrolled by Fangs night and day. A few years after the Fangs took over, some folks realized the Fangs didn’t move too fast in the cold, so a lot of Skreeans fled north. ‘Course, most of ‘em died. Fangs are slower in the cold, but they can still fight, and they can still bite. Especially when those they’re after are women and children and men without weapons. Gnag’s answer was to construct the
Barrier. It doesn’t keep everyone out—it’s a lot of wall to patrol, see—but it does its job well enough that the masses don’t try an’ run off. Oskar told me that if you’re west of Torrboro and your company is small enough, you can find a breach in the wall and slip through unnoticed. That’s what we aim to do.”

“And Peet says he can get us through the mountains,” Nia said.

“As long as he don’t wake up some mornin’ with his crazy head screwed on sideways and walk us off a cliff,” Podo said. “Or into a crevasse or a nest of bomnubbles.”
¹

“Nugget’s not afraid of bomnubbles,” said Leeli proudly. Below, Nugget barked at the sound of his name. Janner didn’t want to tell Leeli that even Nugget might be an easy kill for a bomnubble.

“We’ll need twenty days’ supply of provisions,” Nia said.

“Aye, which means we should plan for thirty,” Podo said.

“Why?” asked Janner.

“Because, dear, you never know what might happen,” Nia answered. “Journeys like this seldom go as planned.”

“How did you come up with that number, though?” Janner asked. “It’ll take twenty days to travel to the Ice Prairies?”

“Well, it’s about two days to Torrboro, then three days past that to ford the Blapp, and—you know what, lad?” Podo said gently.

“Sir?”

“It’ll be easier for me to just show you than to explain it. We’ve got a lot to sort out, and when ye get the journey under your feet, you’ll learn more than I can tell ye now. Understand?”

Janner sighed. “Yes sir.”

Nia and Podo moved the discussion to the other room and left the children with a long list of assignments from their T.H.A.G.S.
²
to keep their minds occupied until bedtime.