Horns & Wrinkles Page 10

  "Now, isn't that just like him?" the gnome griped.

  "How so?"

  "He took that feather out of here and never brought it back, that's how so. He's just like every other Mossbottom I've done business with. Too important to keep track of the little things. Leave that to the hired help. I've half a mind to quit on him. Now clear out of here afore I make jelly out of you. You're letting all my stale air out."

  And he jabbed at me with his pitchfork. He'd have drawn blood if I hadn't been quick. Zipping the bag shut from the inside, he went back to singing. This time I caught some of the words, which were mad and spiteful:

  Yes, your majesty.

  No, your majesty.

  I'd rather be home in my hole,

  Your majesty.

  His voice cut off as the zipper closed.

  Feeling bluer than mud, I slunk back to the bottom of the mineshaft, wondering if Mom and Dad and Grandpa and even my sisters were really my family. Even if they weren't, I felt a homesick ache just thinking of them. If I hadn't been so bothered by my resemblance to Stump's brother, I probably would have cried myself to sleep. Instead, I just cried myself awake.

  Thirty-three

  The Valley

  A long time later the trolls woke up and started grumbling about how they hadn't gotten any sleep. Actually, they'd stirred as much as fallen timbers the entire day and just sounded scared about their meeting with Bodacious Deepthink, the Great Rock Troll. But eventually they shifted from fretting about Bo to describing what they'd do after getting their lucky crickets, finding their fathers, and coming home heroes.

  "Going to visit the Nile," Jim Dandy bragged. "I hear it's quite a river."

  "Order a clamshell throne," Biz said.

  "Find my brother," Stump vowed, tying up my wrists and ankles before anyone noticed I'd been loose, "and get back my collection of fish scales."

  Hearing that didn't leave me feeling too proud—if I was his brother, I mean. At least all the talk made the trolls braver. Pretty soon, they sent Stump up the ladder for a peek outside.

  "It's dark," he called down.

  We were off. Except for one piece of driftwood, they stashed all their mining equipment in the mineshaft, which they covered up with carpet. The piece of driftwood they dragged along was a stout pole about twice my height. After tying me to the pole, Biz and Stump lifted it to their shoulders, which put me between them, hanging upside down.

  "I can walk," I offered.

  "No, you can't," Biz squeaked.

  "When you see old Bo," Jim Dandy chuckled, "you might decide to run."

  "What about Duke?" I was watching Jim Dandy untie my cousin's feet and hands. "You're letting him walk."

  "We need him to carry Bo's meal," Jim Dandy said.

  "You mean banquet," Duke corrected, shouldering a heavy burlap sack that Jim Dandy had pulled out of the mining supplies.

  "That's right," Jim Dandy said, clapping my cousin on the back. "Banquet."

  Duke groaned beneath the bag of mutton and wheels of goat cheese, its weight explaining why they wanted him to haul it. Jim Dandy even claimed he would have helped with the bag if he hadn't been wearing oven mitts and balancing the two jewelry boxes still holding stars.

  Quiet as cats, we left the sandbar, crossed a marsh, and sloshed through a culvert that cut under the Wisconsin highway. A couple of miles above Big Rock, we stopped at the mouth of a long, twisty valley that led away from the river.

  "Remember," Biz cautioned, "we don't answer any of her riddles."

  Woods covered the valley's hillsides; pastures and a creek filled its middle. We stayed in the woods on an old Indian trail, or maybe it was an old troll trail. Our progress went like this: two steps and a stop, two steps and a listen. Nobody talked, except to say "Shhh."

  Even Duke buttoned his lip.

  As the valley narrowed, we slipped by farms where watchdogs slept and hollow trees where owls blinked. The trolls' slow march meant it took most of the night to move up the valley, with me hanging upside down all the way.

  At last we ran smack into a limestone wall and had to stop. Biz and Stump dumped me in a small grassy clearing before the wall, which climbed straight up for twenty or thirty feet.

  We sat before the rock wall for the rest of the night, which lasted most of a century. When the pearly gray of false dawn finally arrived, a new moon came fleeing before it, rising up out of the earth as if chased by rock trolls. Or so it seemed. All I could see of the new moon was a faint silvery outline, a silhouette of a full moon, but with it came what everything in the valley had been waiting for.

  At first I wasn't sure what it was. A sound? A touch? A shadow moving fast? I knew only that for a beat everything, everywhere, stopped. The trolls locked up in midbreath. The stars lost their twinkle. The new moon got stuck. The valley waited.

  Then I realized it was a sound. A single trembly note cut through the woods like a mosquito buzzing through tall grass. The note lingered for nearly a minute, making everything shivery, and then it was gone. On its heels, a rustle swept through the valley as everything scrambled for a better hiding place. That was followed by a stillness that made you hold your breath longer than you thought possible.

  "What was that?" Duke asked, not sounding as if he really wanted to know.

  "Bodacious Deepthink." Stump gulped.

  "She's waiting," Biz squeaked.

  "Boys," Jim Dandy quaked, "so are those crickets."

  A new, colder note cut through the woods now, and there could be no doubt: it came from the rock wall before us. If my hands had been free, I would have covered my ears. Duke did cover his ears. The note didn't bother Jim Dandy, Biz, or Stump, though. In fact, it seemed to make up their minds for them. Or at least it made up Biz's mind.

  "Enough talk," Biz squeaked, his voice so high that it disappeared at the end.

  Stepping up to the rock wall, he knocked on it the way you might knock on the door of a dark castle.

  Getting no answer, he knocked louder.

  That was when the earth started to shake. Stone scraped. In the middle of the rock face, a dark hole slowly opened from the ground up. Inside the cave, a lantern was coming toward us.

  Thirty-four

  Bodacious Deepthink

  A mountaintop must have once fallen on Bodacious Deepthink. She looked squashed enough. She also looked as though she were turning into stone. All the while she hobbled toward us, she grinned crookedly as a rockslide.

  Supported by a wooden staff, she had three or four times the girth of a river troll, though was no taller than one. She had bulgy eyes that clicked whenever she blinked, ears like tree fungus, and hair that sparkled like orange crystals. Only her snout vaguely resembled the river trolls', though without whiskers. Her fingers were like petrified tree roots; her toes, thicker petrified tree roots. She wore a nylon bicyclist's outfit that was tiger-striped and bulged like a parachute filled with gravestones. Her earrings were live bats, the kind with wings.

  "You boys are running late," she grumbled, holding up her lantern for a better view of us.

  About that lantern: it was made of brass and glass and had a shooting star rolling around inside it. Whenever the star dimmed, Bodacious Deepthink revived it by rapping the top of the lantern with a stone key that made the same shivery note that had knifed through the valley.

  "Any of you boys belong to Two-cents Eel-tongue's brood?" Bodacious Deepthink asked.

  Hearing that, Jim Dandy fainted. Keeled right over.

  "I'll take that as a yes." Bodacious Deepthink snickered. "Anybody else feeling weak?"

  Biz was too tongue-tied to squeak, although to his credit he at least opened his mouth. Stump covered his eyes with his hands, the way a two-year-old will when trying to hide. The only river troll with enough wits to answer wasn't a full-fledged river troll at all but my cousin Duke. For the first time in my life, I felt kind of proud of the rat.

  "Hey," Duke spoke out, brassy as ever. "We've come a long way to see you
."

  Bodacious Deepthink held her lantern toward Duke for closer inspection.

  "And who might you be?" she asked, amused by such freshness.

  "Their assistant," Duke said.

  By then Stump was peeking through his fingers and one of Jim Dandy's eyes was open a slit.

  "And this little morsel?" she asked, holding the lantern toward me.

  "His conscience," I blurted.

  "Quiet, you," Duke growled, giving the bottom of my shoes a kick. He might have given me two kicks, but as soon as his foot nicked mine, he let out a yelp and grabbed for his face as his horn shot out another inch, easy. Something strange was going on with his hands too. They seemed to be swelling.

  "Well, well." Bodacious Deepthink was watching Duke's nose with interest. "Do you boys mind if I ask you a riddle?"

  Nobody objected.

  "Listen carefully," she instructed. Clearing her throat, she recited:

  What's round when thin,

  Fatter in black,

  Sinks with a grin,

  And never looks back?

  With a smirk, she dared us to answer.

  Duke checked with Jim Dandy, who quickly closed his eye, although not before giving his head a small shake no and peeking at Stump, who shook his head no and glanced at Biz, who shook his head no without taking his eyes off Duke, who for the moment had become their leader. For once Duke did as told and just stood there looking dumb. Everyone else kept close-mouthed too, which for me was an awful strain. You see, the answer popped into my head the instant I heard the riddle, almost as if I'd heard it before.

  The moon.

  Where I could have heard such a riddle led me around to thinking of Stump's brother again. Duckwad might have known the answer too, though just like Jim Dandy, Biz, and Stump, he most likely would have been too scared to say it. That's when I noticed another way I was like a river troll—at the moment I was too shaky to speak up myself.

  "Come on," Bodacious Deepthink prodded, disgusted with our thickness. "It's a simple one."

  Everybody looked at everybody again.

  "We give up," Duke said at last.

  "The moon," Bodacious Deepthink answered, and with that she slapped her knee, threw back her head, and laughed so hard that one of her bat earrings fell off and had to flutter back in place.

  Nobody was laughing on our side, though, or maybe I would have sprung the riddle Two-cents Eel-tongue had given me. Still, I was tempted. For one thing, it was a way to prove to myself that I wasn't terrified. But Two-cents had said it would only buy me a little time, and trussed up as I was, what good would a little time do? So I bit my tongue and waited.

  By then Jim Dandy had come around enough to sneak behind Biz and Stump, and Biz and Stump had taken a step behind Duke.

  "Boys," Bodacious Deepthink confided, "there's nothing like a riddle to break the ice. People come up here expecting to be dinner, but I had to give up eating the guests years ago. Heartburn. I'm on a special diet now."

  "We know." Duke lifted up the sack of food he'd been carrying.

  "You can't keep a secret in this valley," Bodacious Deepthink complained. "Do you boys mind if I ask another question? A serious one. Hear me out." Setting her lantern down and resting both stony hands on her staff, the Great Rock Troll closed her eyes to collect her thoughts. Keeping her eyes shut, she went on in a surprisingly soothing voice, "Have you ever wondered if there might be more to life than tipping canoes or snapping fish lines? Something more satisfying, I mean."

  "Why, yes," Stump said, sounding as though she'd read his mind. He lowered his hands from his face in amazement.

  "And have you ever wondered where you might find that something extra?" she coaxed. "That something that might add extra satisfaction to your life?"

  "I thought we were here for crickets," Duke said.

  "Has anyone ever talked to you about the glories of rock?" Bodacious Deepthink asked, a sweet smile sliding across her bumpy face.

  "Why, no," Biz squeaked, speaking up for the first time. His voice was nowhere near as high as I would have expected.

  "There's no greater peace in the world than living underground with good rock." Bodacious Deepthink sighed contentedly. "Always cool and dank. Everything smells moldy and wonderful. Sounds echo beautifully. Uncover a lantern—sparkles everywhere. Cover it up and you'll never see a dark as lovely and black and comforting. You can give your eyes a good long rest anytime you want when you're down below. Now doesn't that sound grand?"

  Here Bodacious Deepthink popped open one eye to see how she was doing. The river trolls were spellbound, nodding their heads like a line of marionettes, although her voice wasn't working on my cousin. He was wrinkling his nose as though smelling something rotten.

  "What about earthquakes?" Duke quizzed her.

  "Only in nursery rhymes," she answered, closing her eye. "You've a mind full of questions? All and good. There's always room down below for a fellow with a head on his shoulders, especially if he's a horn to go with it."

  To that Jim Dandy chuckled until Bodacious Deepthink silenced him by turning his way. She didn't even have to open her eyes.

  "Remember," the Great Rock Troll went on in a wise voice, "I dealt with your fathers, so I know what young river trolls are after. You've come up here hoping for the crickets who can tell you what happened to those first three miners. Am I right?"

  "Pretty much," Stump confessed.

  "Well," she sympathized, "take my word for it, the crickets you're after don't remember a thing about those miners. Your fathers found that out the hard way."

  "B-but what happened to our Dads?" Stump asked.

  All three river trolls nodded eagerly at that question. When Bodacious Deepthink snapped open her eyes, she found Jim Dandy, Biz, and Stump all acting like bobbleheads. She smiled in satisfaction.

  "Who knows?" she went on. "Maybe some pirates shanghaied them. I can only tell you that any father who traded for a cricket didn't know what he was getting into. Listen now"—and here she raised a hand as if taking a solemn oath—"there's nothing lucky about those three crickets. They're just common, ordinary cave crickets, and I haven't talked to a cave cricket yet whose head wasn't full of stuff and nonsense. Stories about gold and adventures are all they're good for. They keep coming back here broke and claiming they don't remember a thing about what's happened to your fathers or those three miners."

  Dropping her hand, she turned deeply concerned, saying, "I can save you boys a whole world of heartache and misery, if only you'll listen. Come with me now and you'll learn the splendor of rock. You'll see sights that will take your breath away. I'll even write everything up in a contract, I will. Satisfaction guaranteed or your old life back. How's that?"

  "A contract?" Biz squeaked, intrigued.

  One look at Jim Dandy's dreamy smile told me he was being swayed too. Bodacious Deepthink's voice was as warm and comfy as an electric blanket on a chill night. But I still needed a stone feather.

  "What exactly would they be doing?" I asked, aiming to sound as innocent and sincere as possible. "Down below, I mean."

  Thirty-five

  Double-Knot Eel-Tongue

  It's amazing how one little question can blow up everything. Biz shuddered as if surfacing from a confusing dream. Jim Dandy turned off his smile. Stump re-covered his eyes.

  "They'd be doing important work," Bo huffed, insulted. "Exciting work."

  "Have you got the crickets or not?" Duke demanded.

  Bodacious Deepthink blinked at Duke three times before slamming her staff down hard enough to crack a sizable rock in two. Over her shoulder she shouted toward the cave, "Double-knot Eel-tongue! Drag your worthless bones out here and have a talk with your good-for-nothing son."

  A tiny piffle of air could have bowled me over. As for Jim Dandy, he looked as though someone had busted a canoe paddle over his head.

  "Am I going to get to meet your dad?" Duke gushed, hardly able to believe his luck.

  Jim Dan
dy shut him up by giving his horn a hard twist.

  From inside the cave came the rattle of rickety wheels on stone. Out of the shadows trudged a bent-over river troll who dragged one foot and hummed off-key. Dented and dinged as he was, a rockslide or two must have caught him. His willow hair had mostly been stripped clean of leaves, and his scales had lost their mossy green shine and turned a dirty brown. Freckles? They'd all popped into warts.

  Jim Dandy's father was pulling a kid's red wagon, which carried a bamboo birdcage. Inside the cage, three lucky crickets were clinging to the leaves of a potted plant, an ivy of some kind. They were cave crickets, the same kind as the old lady had seen in my eyes when I'd first met her.

  "Park that wagon," Bodacious Deepthink fumed, "and come talk to these boys."

  He parked, he came. Full daylight had a good chance of reaching us first, bad as Double-knot Eel-tongue's crooked foot dragged.

  "Tell 'em how good you've got it," Bodacious Deepthink ordered, nudging him forward with her staff. "Go on. Tell 'em how they'll never get another chance so golden as this one."

  From up close you could see that one of Double-knot's eyes was swollen shut and one of his ears bitten half off. He wore a tattered blue scarf around his throat. His ragged jeans were held up by a piece of yellow rope that looked as though it was cut off a motorboat's anchor line.

  "Speak up," Bodacious Deepthink said, poking him again with her staff.

  "Mining's the best thing ever happened to me," Double-knot Eel-tongue recited in a flat, lifeless voice. "I never knew there were such opportunities to be had underground. A real chance to contribute to the greatest undertaking known to modern trolls."

  "Tell them about the moon," Bodacious Deepthink coached in a whisper.

  "The moon's waiting for us," Double-knot said. "We're making great progress every day. We've the best miners in the world. They've the finest picks and shovels. Dynamite is available. You can't imagine how good it feels to blow a rock bed to smithereens, or to find new caverns never seen before, or to scratch your back on a stalactite that's older than your grandmother."