The Boy with 17 Senses (5 page)

She never let him have anything he wanted, and now she was going to take away the one thing he loved. It wasn't fair.

Many planets set aside a special day to celebrate mothers. It's a day when young children can show their love through handcrafted art projects. On Earth, young children sometimes make a necklace out of colored macaroni, or decorate a picture frame, or draw a picture using their handprints as flowers. The gifts are adorable, and mothers love them.

On Epsidor Erandi, macaroni would be considered a choking hazard. Picture frames, with those sharp edges, are too dangerous for kids to handle. And they would never allow their children's hands to be painted—how unsanitary! Instead, most children sing a song for their mothers, usually about the importance of safety, or how much they love wearing a helmet as they walk to school.

To honor their mothers on Zanflid, young children take their machetes and venture into the jungle to collect the venom of the poisonous tree snoogli. It's a great gift because the venom is very useful in making medicines and perfumes, and it's relatively easy to extract. Tree snooglies hardly ever hear you sneak up on them. Mostly never.

On Yipsmix, children collect the clear rocks they have nicknamed “foot scrapers” because of their hard, sharp edges. Teachers help their students polish the foot scrapers, and then they are given to mothers on Gratitude Day. The worthless rocks are very pretty once polished. When the sun hits them, the clear stones light up with rainbows of color.

Jaq had just passed a nice-looking foot scraper on the path as he walked to the river, but he didn't pick it up. Usually, he collected as many as he could find, saving them
up for Gratitude Day, but he wasn't feeling very grateful for his mother at the moment. The last few mornings he'd woken up wondering if this would be the day she would make him sell Klingdux.

He continued down the path, kicking away a few more foot scrapers and swinging the bucket he was going to fill with worms for the garden. But when he got to the river, the river was gone. There was nothing left but a dry depression in the land. He checked his gravity irrigation lines, and they were dry, too.

That was strange. The river had never run dry before. Ever.

He walked up the riverbed and immediately saw why: The river had been moved. Jaq had seen the massive earthmoving equipment working behind the Vilcots' spread; he had assumed they were digging a swimming pool or clearing land for another field. But no, the Vilcots had dug a massive trench, and the water now flowed down to them before taking a wide swing away from the Rollops' farm.

Without water, Jaq's crops would wither and die.

And they did.

Over the next few months, the Rollop family struggled.
Almost all of Mrs. Rollop's factory wages went to pay off the loans they'd taken out to buy the land and seeds. They really needed the crop money to buy food, but the crops failed.

They grew very hungry.

At breakfast, which was a half bowl of ripweed oatmeal topped with one brickleberry, Jaq's mother broke the bad news.

“Jaq, I don't think we have a choice anymore. We have to sell your freasel.”

“Mom, no,” Jaq said. “He's mine. I can't . . .” His voice trembled, and he felt body-shaking sobs rise up inside him.

“Then we'll all die of starvation together,” Mom said, angry now. “Is that what you want?”

Jaq hugged Klingdux a little tighter.

“You've trained him well; he's grown so big and strong,” she said. “I'm sure he'll fetch a good price. With twenty-five, thirty damars, we can dig a well for your irrigation system and be ready for the next planting. I'm sorry, I really am, but he's just a pet.”

Just a pet?
Jaq's world burst with explosions of sadness. Gray streaks swished through his vision and wound around his throat, making it feel tight.

Grandpa put a hand on his shoulder. He didn't say
anything, and that was when Jaq knew there was no escaping this terrible fate. He was going to lose his best friend.

“I'm not selling him to Tormy Vilcot,” he said.

“No, of course not,” his mother said. “His grandfather was back yesterday, saying he would take him off our hands for twenty damars. He said the offer went down because he could see that we're desperate. He's an awful, evil man. Diverting our water so he can steal a pet for his spoiled brat of a grandkid.”

Jaq hugged Klingdux and cried.

8

THE TASTE OF
X

T
he letter
X
tastes light and springy and sweet, which is why the letter
X
is so popular when naming things on Yipsmix. Ending a word with an
X
is like topping a cup of hot chocolate with a dollop of whipped cream. Delightful.

The name
Xenoth
starts with an
X
, but because it sounds like a
Z
, it bears none of the wholesome goodness of
X
, and neither did the man named Xenoth.

Xenoth knew that when he wrote his name on a piece of paper, it looked purple and golden and trustworthy, but when
he said it out loud, people's faces turned cold, and they immediately said words such as
Transfix
and
Victory
to get the bad taste out of their mouths. Nothing tastes sweeter than
Victory
.

Xenoth was a cunning fellow, so he changed his name to Davardi, and people would say his name just to taste it. It didn't change the fact that inside he was as greedy and untrustworthy as the number 48.

Now this greedy man who had renamed himself Davardi was sitting at a sidewalk café in the marketplace when he spied Ripley Vilcot looking around frantically.
What can the crazy old codger be up to now?
Davardi thought.
And is there any money in it for me?

“Davardi,” Vilcot said. “There you are. I have a job for you, if you're interested.”

“Always interested,” Davardi said, carefully dabbing his mouth. “If it's worth my while.”

“Good,” Vilcot replied as he took the seat across from him. “Now, this is a small job. My neighbor is going to be desperate to sell his wipper-slinger. A wipper-slinger that my grandson would like to have.”

“Let me guess—the neighbor isn't feeling neighborly? He doesn't want you to have it? Gee, Vilcot, you still don't know how to make friends, do you?”

Vilcot sneered and leaned closer, whispering, “I want you to buy the wipper-slinger. I offered him twenty damars. I'll go as high as thirty. You bring me the wipper-slinger, and I'll give you a little bonus.”

“Fifty damars,” Davardi said. “That's my fee.” There was a beautiful leather jacket and matching boots he'd seen in the window at NM Clothiers. He really wanted that jacket. He would look so good in that jacket. He couldn't sleep at night for wanting that jacket.

“I'll give you forty damars,” Vilcot said. “That will give you thirty for the animal, and ten for you. Honestly, you could do this in the time it takes to brush that hair of yours.” That was actually an understatement. In the time it took Davardi to brush and gel and properly shape his black hair, he could probably buy a freasel, run a mini-marathon, and teach a class on proper glove accessorizing.

Davardi knew that Vilcot was a prideful man, a man who had to believe he won every negotiation. And the stubborn Vilcot was wearing his “Don't mess with me” gloves. Davardi had a few pairs of those himself. He would have to proceed very carefully to get what he wanted. And what he wanted was fifty damars.

If Davardi came right out and demanded even one damar
more, Vilcot would leave and find someone else for the job. And Davardi didn't want just one damar more; he wanted fifty damars, and he thought he knew how to get it. He was a con man, after all.

“I'm not trying to be hard, Vilcot, but I need fifty damars,” Davardi said. “I've got a job lined up in East Lumlox, and if I'm late to show up, they'll dock me. Listen, we've worked together before, and you've seen that I can be trusted. I get the job done, and I don't talk. Sometimes people in your position reward that kind of loyalty, and people who reward loyalty are greatly admired. Like Klingdux the superhero—when he finds a trustworthy ally, he rewards him handsomely. And everyone admires Klingdux.”

“That's true,” Vilcot said, nodding. “You've proved yourself trustworthy. You know, I have been compared to Klingdux before.”

Sure you have
, Davardi thought.
By me, when I was buttering you up on my last assignment
.

“All right,” Vilcot said. “I'll give you fifty damars. You keep twenty.”

Davardi nodded, suppressing a smile at how easy that had been. “What makes you think this kid is going to be desperate to sell?” he asked.

“I've made him desperate to sell.” Vilcot smiled. “Nobody plays me. That's the lesson here.”

I'll try to remember that
, Davardi thought, stifling a chuckle.
Now I just have to get the kid to hand over that freasel for nothing
.

9

SADNESS, SADNESS, SADNESS, EVERYWHERE YOU LOOK

T
he next morning, Jaq couldn't taste his breakfast or his mother's cheerful, “Good morning, sweetie, sweetie, swift and speedy.” His mother often tried to cheer him up with
S
words because they tasted like feathery candy melting in your mouth, but today Jaq was too sad to notice. He didn't hear the early birds chirping or see the colors of their tweets swirl in the air. His brain couldn't think of anything except
I'm losing Klingdux
.

He loaded his best friend into the wagon and fastened his collar. He didn't feel his legs start to walk, but they did. As
they passed the sideyard and Jaq's small garden, he didn't notice that his brickleberries looked small and deflated, like they were sad, too.

He did hear the wippers, though.

“The swift monster is tied up!” one shouted. “Look, everyone, the skinny kid is defenseless.”

Jaq would have let it go. He wasn't going to work in the garden; he was leaving.
Just ignore them and move on
. That was his motto, most days. But this was not a day to pick on Jaq Rollop. He was already feeling as low as a person could feel.