Jasper Dash and the Flame-Pits of Delaware (10 page)

“You speak English beautifully!” the woman said.

“Thanks,” said Katie, tearing into a candy bar and chomping. “I been studifying real hard.”

“Oh,” explained Lily softly, “we're not Doverians. We're just visiting from another state.”

“Aha!” The woman laughed, covering her
forehead with her hand. “Oh, I'm sorry! I thought you were small Delawarian orphans with bright shining eyes! What a silly mistake.” She sat down beside them. “How long have you been here? Don't you just love it?” she asked. Before Lily could respond, the woman continued, “I mean, wow, I just feel so fulfilled. Every day I'm having new experiences. I've seen all these palaces and temples and museums, and I've gone to all these bazaars, and yesterday I had a real interview with the secret police, and they were really nice and interested in me and everything I had to say. Then later this guy—oh, one sec.” She waved to a street vendor, who rolled his rattling cart and umbrella over. She ordered some kind of chicken sausage.

The man shrugged, pointed to his mouth and his ear, and said apologetically, “Has no English. No English.”

Lisa Buldene whispered to the kids, “I love how they talk here. It's so quaint and darling. You can tell they're a very simple, basic people.”

She shouted a few words in broken Doverian
that, translated into English, would be something like,
Me want to has the thicken.

The sausage salesman's eyes winced with uncertainty.
The thicken?
he asked.

She jabbed a finger at the chicken.
Thicken! Thicken!
she demanded.

The man smiled and responded in Doverian,
Ah, madam, indeed, I see! You mean one of my fine chicken-dogs. Superlative. I believe you will find it to your taste, zesty with spices culled in the hanging gardens of Eberton. The meat is rich with drippings.
He served her a sausage wrapped in flatbread.
You speak Doverian?
he asked her.

Me sauce
, she answered, pointing. He gave her some ketchup. She handed him a big, messy wad of cash. He looked at it in surprise. Then he tipped his cap, looked at her like she was crazy, and strolled away with his cart, shaking his head.

“Wasn't he a cute old guy? They're all so beautiful. They have such lovely souls.” Lisa Buldene held the sausage up to her nose to breathe in its steam. She exclaimed, “What do you think this sauce is?
I've had so many exotic things to eat here in the last few days, I'm kind of in this great foodie haze. Everything I've been served is just fab. I cannot even tell you. Yesterday I had these disks of meat that had been frozen, you know, to lock in all their ancient goodness, and then thrown on a grill and fried, and … Wow. Wow, this sauce smells heavenly. I wonder what it is! Just imagine the little girls in their hats and bells mashing it up in some village courtyard and singing to their donkey!”

“Um,” said Lily, “I think it might be regular ketch—”

“I am completely filled up to here with glory,” sighed Lisa Buldene. “The people here are just so
authentic
, so
spiritual
. I've gotten to know so many new people…. Like you, for example. At home, in New York, I wouldn't have even talked to you, but here we are, exchanging opinions and—”

“Saturn's moons!” cried Jasper. “There's the van!”

“That's not really an opinion,” said Lisa. “It's more like an exclamation, but I feel that way the
whole time here, too, like exclaiming, like crying out to the world that—”

Jasper had stood, dropped his margarine bowl and tongs, and set off running.

Because he had just seen a white van drive past—filled with the fake Delaware Stare-Eyes champions!

“What van?” asked Lisa Buldene. She saw the three kids had scampered away: Jasper first, Katie close behind, and then Lily running as fast as she could.
“What van?”
the New Yorker called after them.
“Is this something I should see? Is it in your guidebook?”
She rummaged in her big bag and pulled out her
There and Back Again
™
Guide to Greater Delaware
and began flipping through its index wildly.

The van rattled down the rutted street. Chickens scurried out of its way. Women with baskets on their heads leaped onto stoops.

The three friends charged after it. They followed it around a corner—and found themselves in a little cobbled square where a work crew of
spavined centaurs was dragging stone blocks. The square was crowded with the half-human, half-horse construction workers; the kids couldn't see the van at all in the crowd of horse legs and granite. But they heard the van's engine rev.

“There!” shouted Katie, and began dodging her way through the centaurs.

Jasper watched her with wide eyes. He saw something she didn't see. “NO, KATIE!” he screamed. “NOOOO!”

But Katie didn't hear him.

“NO, KATIE!”

This time, Katie heard his yell—stopped in her tracks—and looked back, tottering. Jasper was racing toward her.

“You almost jaywalked!” he called. “Don't worry! I see a designated crosswalk just ahead of you!”

“Jasper!” she snarled, and took off again.

He puffed up along beside her. “If we become like our enemies, then we have lost!”

She rolled her eyes. “Yeah. And if we lose our enemies, what then?” They barreled down a street and leaped over a stream.

The van disappeared around a bend near a lopsided old brick building with ancient heroes carved on its doorway. By the time Jasper and
Katie got there, they couldn't tell which way it had gone.

“Great,” said Katie. “Thanks.”

“I'll go this way; you and Lily go that,” said Jasper, hurtling off down the road.

Katie waved back to Lily and took off in the other direction.

She ran out into a square with some kind of lumpy monument in the center surrounded by sick grass. The van was on the other side, trundling away down the street. Katie looked back quickly to make sure that Lily had seen her. Lily, puffing along behind, was waving her hands and looked like she was trying to say something. Lily wasn't a very fast runner. Katie didn't have time to stop; the van was already a couple of blocks away. She plunged onward.

They were passing down a row of cloth shops with samples in bright colors hung up for sale on the street. Merchants sat on wide beds and drank tea. When the van roared past, the cloth samples rose up and flapped as if scolding.

Katie slipped in a mud hole and fell—hit her knee—got back up and kept running. The van was just a little farther away now. She could see one of the kids from the team looking out of the back window at her.

“Katie!” Lily's voice came from far behind her. Katie barreled forward.

The van slid along the row of shops—turned to the left—leaving behind clouds of gray smoke.

Katie followed.

The van turned right—passed over a bridge. Katie, her breath heaving, her heart pounding, followed—just in time to see the van screech to a halt at a crossroad. A procession of the city's Investment Bankers' Guild was marching to their temple with money-green banners and

fanfares from bugle and drum.

There were a lot of them.

Ha
, thought Katie. The van couldn't move an inch.

She walked up slowly toward it. She felt triumphant. They weren't going to escape now. She crossed her arms, smiled an arch smile, and strolled right behind the Stare-Eyes team.

But now something occurred to her. Maybe it was the thing Lily had been shouting about.

She didn't really know what to do, now that she had caught the van. She realized suddenly that she was supposed to follow it
secretly.
Instead of walking right up behind it. And watching its door slide open. And having about eight heads poke out and look right at her.

Whoops
, thought Katie, stopping in her tracks.
I really should have thought this through earlier.

Eight boys stared back at her. And they were really good at staring.

“It's that
girl
, ” said one of the boys. “The one from Pelt.”

Team Mom stuck her head out the door. “Katie Mulligan,” she said. “From Horror Hollow. We've been introduced.”

“Oh,” said Katie weakly. “Hi.”

In front of the van, the procession of investment bankers continued, bearing ornate piggy banks that sloshed with spare change at every step.

One of the boys gestured to Katie. “You wanted to catch us,” he said through his toothy mouth. “Here we are.”

“Get in,” another invited.

“Yeah,” said Team Mom. “Get in, Katie M. We're all waiting.”

“There's room in the back,” a boy said.

“Could I… could I just get your auto-graphs?”

“This isn't about autographs,” said Team Mom. “This is about guts. Guts and glory.”

“Ummmm,” said Katie. “Could I just get a double order of glory?”

The procession in front of the van had passed. The music was already fading.

“We'll meet again, Katie,” said Team Mom. “Believe me. And I'll fork out for a double order of guts. Yours.”

The van rolled forward through the intersection.

Soon it was gone.

Katie and Lily trudged back along the street of silk merchants. On the crumbling brick walls, pasted up next to ancient carved window frames, were posters of the Awful and Adorable Autarch of Dagsboro. He had huge, piratical mustaches that pointed up at each end. He wore big, square plastic glasses that would have looked dumb even back in the eighties, when they were from, and an ugly necktie. The poster was covered with slogans in Doverian. To deface one of the posters—by removing the ridiculous mustaches, for example, rubbing out the goatee, erasing the stupid glasses, or whiting out the missing tooth—was punishable by death. Katie and Lily strolled right by his idiotic gaze.

Katie said, “You were telling me not to let them see me, weren't you?”

Lily shrugged.

“Okay, I get it,” said Katie. “Next time, I'll listen. I'm sorry. It's just that Jasper stopped me in the middle of the chase to yell about crosswalks or buckle up for safety or something. So you yelled and I wasn't into the halt.”

When they found Jasper, he was walking toward them with a young man in a T-shirt and rubber shoes.

“No luck, chums?” asked Jasper.

Katie told him what had happened. Jasper listened attentively.

“No matter, Katie. More important: I have located a guide. This is Bntno.”

Bntno put his hands over his eyes in a traditional Delawarian sign of respect. He said, “I shall lead the dandy children to the mountains.”

“I have to follow the same route I went last time,” Jasper explained to him. “We must seek four mountains. One with a lake on it, one with
a glacier on it, one with a pine forest on it, and one with a pillar of stone on it. The monastery is on one of those four peaks.”

“I know this mountains. I love this glacier. I have spoked with this pillar for days. These places, they are to me as familiar as my own back.”

“Super,” said Jasper.

“You don't know your own back at all,” said Katie. “No one sees their own back.”

“Maybe I have seen it in the mirror. Just as we see all things in a mirror.”

“Maybe,” said Katie.

“Maybe when I go to the shop and try on shirts.”

“Okay,” said Katie.

“It is very dangerous journey,” said Bntno.

“We are determined as steel,” said Jasper.

“Very good,” said Bntno. “Then tomorrow I come to your hotel at six. We leaves early.”

“Early,” agreed Jasper.

The young man once again put his hands over
his eyes in the gesture of respect and then backed away. He slammed into a dentist.

“Do you think he really knows what he's talking about?” said Katie. “I don't want us to get lost.”

“He will get us as far as those mountains,” said Jasper. “It's important to have faith in people, Katie.”

“Hmm,” said Katie.

Bntno had just run into a telephone pole.

They ate dinner at a restaurant where the six-armed tribesmen of the north performed acrobatic dances and traditional wailing-songs until you paid them to go away. For a dollar and fifty-five cents each, Lily, Jasper, and Katie got rice, vegetable medley, and a meat puck. A sign on the wall said in English,
ASK ABOUT OUR DELICHIOUS DEEP-FRIED DRGSL MOUNTAIN SQUID! ONE TENTACLE, IT SERVE YOU
AND
YOUR HONEY-BUNNEY SWEETHEAT!

No one was asking about the deep-fried Drgsl mountain squid. For one thing, they were too busy ducking while the six-armed, tusked dancing girls did high kicks for small change.

At a quiet moment, when Lily could be heard
over the nose-harps and tusk-plucked goo-tars, she asked Jasper, “What, um, what are we going to be looking for with Bntno?”