The Questory of Root Karbunkulus - Quill (4 page)

She drew back, gleefully assessing further
prospects and found target with a table and chair. These she
fringed in red. Valador Red. And thus the Pirate Blue-Valador Red
motif continued, finding its way into curtain panels and tiles and
bathtub ceramics and dresser drawers; and into the skins and furs
of things, and along the surfaces of vials and parchments and husks
and other such oddities that cluttered her son’s counters and
shelves. She was just zeroing in on a few live things, the same of
which drew back into corners horrified and panicked, when she was
stopped by--

Gasp! Lian scanned what looked to him like
the exploded remains of Sailor Barbie and turned his gawping eyes
upon his mother.

“Ta da!” She struck a pose that accidentally
splat paint onto Lian’s Klok, a toy-sized sheep. Now a Pirate Blue
toy-sized sheep.

Root and Dwyn, far too new to this kind of
thing, stood nodding, like satisfied patrons of the arts.

“Mum!” Lian instantly decimated her joy.
“What have you done?”

“What? I just gave it a little update. And by
the way, dear, you shouldn’t leave your underwear lying out in the
open. It’s not very attractive.”

Lian snatched his briefs from his mother, the
nubs of his ears instantly red. “Just never mind! And…and Undo all
this.”

“You don’t like it?”

“No. No I don’t like it. In fact I hate it
and want you to put it back exactly how you found it!”

“Oh, you. You’re worse than beige.” Estrella
pulled out another brush; one with short thick bristles and slapped
it sulkily across her masterpieces. As Lian’s room slowly returned
to its Jungle-Laboratory theme, his guests attempted to be seated.
Unfortunately there were many more occupants to Lian’s room than
could readily be seen and more than one groaned under the weight of
a trespassing butt. At least until the butt leaped up, thereby
allowing escape into more suitable corners and/or nests and/or webs
and/or tiny caves.

Estrella Fuffleteez preferred to stand. Her
news was far too exciting to be told any other way. “Hello Root.
Hello Dwyn. How are you?”

“Awesome!” They unison-ed with wide eyes,
eager for the latest goods. Estrella had been the official Bearer
of Stuff over the last several weeks, bringing with each visit
items of the coolest nature, the best being her famous chocolate
fingers, of which all had polished off in the first hour.

“Alright!” Estrella Fuffleteez took a
prominent position in front of her audience. “A-a-a—a—hem!” She
smiled with an excited squeak that immediately engaged them. Even
Lian had to extinguish his annoyance with a long, affectionate
sigh. After he kicked his undies under the bed.

Estrella began.

“Well, as you know the second race is poised
to begin and with its inevitable challenges, I wanted to make sure
you were taken care of rightly this time. Certainly the Wesh fibre
of your cloaks will repel wetness and keep you warm…”

As she said this Root concurred with many
distinct memories to prove it.

“But you will need much more in the way of
comforts if this Quest takes even half the time of the last.”
Estrella continued. “And so, in consideration of this, I am pleased
to present to you…Ta da!”

With this, her second ‘tada’ of the day,
Estrella stood to the side and revealed something hidden underneath
a sheaf of silky green material. Estrella smiled with dramatic
eyebrows and pinched the top of the sheaf. A third ‘tada’ was
rather a bit overdone considering what it now referred, a large
painting of a very, very, fat, fat family. A royal family it would
seem, as thin gold circlets pressed firmly into all twelve of their
pudgy foreheads. The presumed mother and father took the top peak
of the pose. Ten children heaped around them like juicy, plump
jujubes. They were all fairly dark skinned save for almost clown
like rosy cheeks and the lighter sheen of twelve bald heads.
Despite the sedate tones of their togas, they looked quite jovial
as chubby lips curved up into chubbier cheeks, which heaped up
under black sparkling eyes.

Root blinked. And tried to discreetly meet
the eyes of her teammates without actually turning her neck. She
wondered if they too felt they had somehow missed something here.
How exactly was this picture supposed to help them?

“These! -“ Estrella Fuffleteez proceeded,
“are the Royal Arklempts!”

Her audience responded with nods. Politely
not getting it at all.

“The famously reclusive Arklempts of
N-ye!”

“Oh.” said Lian finally catching on.
“How’djya manage that, mum?”

“
They
called
me
! The Royal
Arklempts, secluded from society, never seen, let alone heard for
fifteen decades, called
me
to do their family portrait!”

“Well, congratulations Ms. Fuffleteez.”

“Thank you, Dwyn but it doesn’t end here.
There’s more! Ta da!”

This ‘tada’ at least had something
interesting to back it up, though what it was no one in her
audience could quite gather, not even Lian. The structure resembled
Bamboo with its long jointed length but its cast was rich, seeping,
endless black. Purple black and haunted with spirit. Its sleek
glossed finish gleamed in a ray of sun that had snuck in through a
hole in Lian’s curtain.

Finally Estrella had fetched the reaction she
had been seeking: wide eyes and open mouths. Lian even reached for
the object but…

“Uh uh uh uh uh…” Estrella pulled back the
instrument.

“But what is it?” Lian remained standing, his
fingers twitching in curiosity, his brain hungry.

“This. This, my darling son, is a
Hemostylus.” Estrella turned its long black length in her hands.
She clearly loved how weighty if felt, so full and thick. “This, my
dearest boy, was the gift I received from the Royal Arklempts, in
honour of my ‘exemplary eye for detail and ability to capture the
very philosophy of the royal family.’”

“Which is…?”

“Well, as you can see from the eyes, this is
a family of survivors. Indeed after their hasty departure from
Sloxington, they claimed a pioneer attitude that not only helped
them survive but thrive in what is now one of the top ten Kingdoms
according to Snuddles’ Almanac, which was granted a rare tour.

“But what is most remarkable is that the
Arklempts have done this without the use of money. Their entire
kingdom flourishes on a trading system, which would include the
limited export of their most prized possession,” Estrella held up
the lustrous instrument again. “Heartwood…the result of which you
see before you. Only
my
Heartwood Hemostylus has been given
a wholly unique ability, a custom made royal Arklempt endowment.
Allow me to demonstrate.”

“Wait a second.” Lian interrupted. “You say
it’s a Hemostylus?”

“Yes.” Estrella’s eyes twinkled. She loved to
see the wheels turning in her son’s head, the joy of his leaping
mind as it sifted and concluded.

“So, if ‘stylus’ means writing instrument,
and ‘hemo’ means blood…then…?”

“Yes.” His mother smiled. “May I continue
now?

Lian opened a mental file and sat back down
in earnest anticipation.

Estrella Fuffleteez snapped her fingers. At
once the Royal Arklempts began to shuffle off the page. It was a
rather lumbering affair with excessive stretching and squeezing,
and bowing and curtsying. When the page was finally clear Estrella
stood before it, careful not to put the Hemostylus in her mouth
like she usually did with her brushes and charcoals.

She turned to Root with a long, hard stare.
“Hmmmm…” When her eyes showed that an idea had flickered on, she
went back to the page and swept the Hemostylus in determined
strokes across its pulpy texture. Lian, Dwyn and most eagerly Root
craned to see past her lean smocked body as it danced to the tune
she was humming.

When she finished her last skipping touch-up
she faced the team. She did not ‘tada’ as was expected but she
definitely had ‘tada’ in her eyes. She moved to the side of the
page and watched with the others.

The blank sheet was no longer blank. Within
its loose edges now sat an inky purple-black sketch of a blouse of
all things. But it was a lovely blouse with long billowy sleeves
and a bodice that laced up. Root thought it would be gorgeous in a
blue as deep as Mirror Lake, with delicate silver rope zigzagging
up the front from silver hook to silver hook.

The boys, on the other hand glazed over
entirely. It was a shirt. Wasn’t it? They squinted. Were they
missing something? Were they wrong or was it just a sketch of a
plain old shirt. Lian was about to complain when all of a sudden
the gauzy soft sheet seemed to shudder. His eyes popped at the next
thing he saw. That they all saw.

The shirt was lifting away from the page. As
if a water bubble was caught underneath, the sleeves began to
ripple and then the waist and the elegant neckline. The entire
blouse was expanding in billows and waves, like a balloon. Then, as
if someone suddenly let go of the balloon’s mouth, the shirt tore
from the page, whizzed around the room with a phfffzzzzzzzz and
then plunked on the floor in front of Estrella. She bent down and
picked it up, a silky white blouse with black lacing up its front.
In exactly Root’s size.

“Do you prefer a color, Rootie-pie?”

Root squirmed in delight. She loved where
this was going and loved even more being called ‘Rootie-pie’.
“Uh…Mirror Lake blue?” she stuttered.

“Nice.” Estrella went to her paint pots,
grabbed a brush and dunked it in to a thick blue pigment. She
sailed it across the blouse. Root watched giddily as the white silk
changed into glorious, glorious Mirror Lake Blue!

“I think…oh, yes!” Estrella grabbed a thinner
brush of Duckhair and dabbed it on the hooks. Then she slithered
its silver tint up over the black lace. When she held up the final
result, it was exactly, no word of a lie, exactly as Root had
imagined. “Here you are, dear!” Estrella handed over the prettiest
blouse Root had ever seen. Ever. In her entire life.

“I am not sure whose magical blood the Royal
Arklempts used to ink the Hemostylus, I didn’t even ask. But at any
rate, it should garner the Valadors with an impressive supply of
necessities, y’think?” Estrella ended with a squeal of delight so
contagiously happy that they were all ignited into jumping
beans.

Lian’s room quickly became abuzz with
activity as Estrella drew pants and shorts and shirts and blowup
pots ‘n pans and just-add-water-mattresses and Chorm and foodstuffs
and…money?”

“Actually,
that
it can’t do.” said
Estrella. “As I explained, the Royal Arklempts run a kingdom based
on trade. They have no money system and unfortunately this is
reflected in the Hemostylus. Do you think I’d be here printing off
sweaters if I could print off gold?”

Clutching her brand spanking new wardrobe of
colourful, fresh pullovers and tees, not to mention thick, warm
tweedy pants and shorts and socks, the first new clothes she’d ever
owned, Root felt this windfall was much better than gold.

And this was only the beginning. Hours later
Estrella Fuffleteez was still drawing up a storm.

“Hold still now.” Estrella dobbed a flat
edged brush of yolk yellow across the border of the pajamas that
Root was now modeling. She’d drawn them exactly to Root’s spec,
with flouncy ruffles at the ends of the sleeves and a collar like a
daisy. And now Estrella was adding the finishing touches of color.
Here they were both a bit stumped. Stripes or polka dots?

They asked the boys.

And regretted it immediately.

For one thing the boys were too engrossed in
their new, top of the line gadget game thingies to care. And for
another, they had no taste.

Lian simply glanced up and said “Hey, you’re
already down to half ink y’know. Do you think it should be wasted
anymore on patterny color stuff or whatever that is?”

“Uh…what’re those frilly hanging things for?”
was Dwyn’s dopier yet kinder remark.

“Nothing. They’re just…nice.” Root snapped.
Over the past few weeks at the House of Gub, she’d become rather
testosterone’d out by her teammates and here was yet another
example of that.

She humphed and turned back to her
design.

While she and Estrella bounced between ideas,
a knock arrived at the door. Lian’s doorhand had gone for a coffee
break and so could not identify the caller. As no one had been
expecting visitors, Lian strode over rather cautiously to open the
door.

No one expected to see what they saw. But
there it was, towering over Lian, solid wood and not taking no for
an answer.

“Good day! DréAmm’s Second Magisterial
Treasure Quest Grand Send Off Committee is currently seeking last
minute donations for the upcoming festivities.” The towering wooden
box said. “So, if you could find some…”

“I don’t think so. But thanks.” Lian was
about to close the door but the box had other plans.

“You don’t have one thing to donate? I find
that hard to believe. Especially you who collects everything that
exists in the entire universe with no storage system in sight.”

“What?”

“You heard me!”

“Who is it, dear?” Estrella Fuffleteez
called, still hovering over Root with a dripping brush.

“It’s a box.” Lian snapped, ready to punch
it.

“Oh brother.” Had the box had eyes they would
surely be rolling. But instead it dropped to the floor revealing a
taller than average girl. Her name didn’t stand out but her
demeanour did. She was the reluctant member of Kor’s Kings, the
maverick girl who was often found scoffing at Kor and skipping away
despite his demands that she return. Up close one could see the
constellation of freckles around her nose and a pair of
underestimated green eyes. Her nut blond hair bounced in the same
familiar pony tail that she wore daily.