The Questory of Root Karbunkulus - Quill (5 page)

Lian recognized her. “Oh. You’re…”

“Tamik Chillenly.”

“Hi. I’m…”

“Lian Blick, the mad scientist. Just kiddin’.
Glad t’meet you.” The girl grabbed Lian’s hand and nodded at the
others. Then she spied something. “You really shouldn’t leave your
underwear lying out in the open. It’s very unattractive.”

Lian burned. Who did this chick think she
was, trespassing and insulting all in one fell swoop? He grit his
teeth and kicked his second pair of briefs under a chair. “What can
I do for you?”

Tamik Chillenly grabbed a bright smile from
the air. “DréAmm’s Second Magisterial Treasure Quest Grand Send Off
Committee is currently seeking last minute donations for the
upcoming festivities.”

“Isn’t it a bit late for that? I mean, aren’t
the festivities tomorrow?”

The girl eyeballed Lian. “Thus the words
‘last minute.’”

Lian got all dithered. Twice she’d upped him
now. Twice! “Well, like I said, I don’t think I have anything that
would…”

“Woah!” the girl had found target. She dodged
past Lian toward something he was sure was off limits. “Those are
awesome! Where’djya get ‘em?”

Lian dropped his annoyance and felt a slight
nudge in the direction of pride. He saw that the girl was facing
his Trunkaptre, a look of complete awe on her face. He sidled over,
thrilled to launch into a detailed explanation.

“That’s my…”

“I have never seen such cute pajamas!” The
girl gushed.

Lian’s entire ego deflated under his
breath.

Then….a most alarming sound. A sound that
utterly confounded Lian as it pitched into the realms of surreal.
It was the unmistakable din of…egads!… girl bonding!

“Oh, you like them?” Root’s eyes were
buoyant.

“Yeah! They’re awesome! Is that Oinkitty
shedding?”

“Yes!” Root and Estrella both cried at
once.

And then it began. The racing squeals and
giggles and chatter of full-blown Girl Talk. Lian and Dwyn stepped
back in horror as their friend’s PJ’s bounced between stripes and
polka dots, to the beat of a body language altogether foreign.
Seriously, how many times did they have to hug? It was
just…wrong.

In the end, the PJ’s became both, the top
being stripes. This finality led to a group-hug the likes of which
made the boys tilt their heads like confused dogs.

And then Root retrieved
The Hat.
The
controversial hat that had created quite a rift between her and the
boys, who couldn’t stop laughing at it. She placed it on her head.
Tamik looked it over carefully. But in the end her nose wrinkled
and her head shook like a true pro. Root nodded bravely and tossed
the hat as if it were a banana peel. The boys were stunned. She’d
never reacted like that to them. In fact she’d lambasted a few not
very nice words their way if they remembered correctly.

Well, Lian had had it. He gathered up a big
gulp of Guy Air and marched toward the Gaggle, a quick pat of
encouragement coming from his Guy Friend. With chest heaved Lian
began.

It was the box that stopped him mid-march,
cuffing the doorframe impatiently. It had many more rooms to
collect from. Indeed, they’d only gotten to three so far. Hupcha,
hupcha!

“Yeah, yeah!” Tamik looked sharply at her
four-sided accomplice. “So, I guess you don’t have anything that
might be cool on a float, then?” She turned back to Lian.

“There is nothing that…”

“Oh, I’m sure there’s something you can give
her, dear.” Estrella piped in. “In all this …stuff, there’s got to
be…How ‘bout this?” She held up something spiky and bright
orange.

“Fine.” Lian sighed. It had been an
experiment gone wrong anyhow.

His mother threw it in the box and began a
heads-down hunt through Lian’s room. The box followed her as she
held up various things of wild design.

Lian fell in line with his mother. “No. Nope.
Uh uh. Fine. Not on your life. Oh, alright.”

An ear-piercing roar froze everyone in their
tracks. Everyone except Lian who went to a corner of his room to
turn off a recording device of some kind. “Sorry ‘bout that. I’m
studying various calls of forest animals. That was a Spotted
Glutch.”

“No, it wasn’t. That was a Wayfaring
Keyop.”

Lian was stunned. He stared at the girl,
anxious to yank her ponytail right out of its stupid spout. “No,”
he said patronizingly “it’s not. It’s a Spotted Glutch from
the…”

“ I know where a Glutch comes from but that
was not a Glutch. It was a Wayfaring Keyop, which I might add can
only be found…”

“I know where a Keyop can be found! And it’s
not on that recording!”

“Wanna bet?”

“Fine! I’ll bet you a zillion spades!”

“You can’t bet zillions!”

“It’s a Zombany!” said Dwyn, reading from the
recording’s cover with its collage of animal pictures and the words
Native Beasts and Fowl
. “…of the lower east tip of the
Skinly peninsula.”

Lian and Tamik blinked. And humphed. Then
Tamik playfully thunked him on the shoulder and laughed. “Can I
have that when you’re done with it?”

Lian got all dithered again. His mouth came
up blank. He rubbed his shoulder.

Estrella Fuffleteez held up her son’s Sea
Light, returning him to his senses and a look of shock.

“But it’s just an old flashlight!” His mother
reasoned.

Dwyn edged back. That was no flashlight.
It

was the very thing that had saved their lives
from the Beast of Naskaw. He watched Lian grit his teeth and launch
into another angry march, this one intent on escorting anything
Girl off the premises.

But, for the second time that day, poor Lian
was stopped mid-stomp. This time it was by an ugly loud splat that
landed upon his window.

All heads turned to see a big, juicy,
exploded Widow Squash bomb slop steadily down the glass pane.

That was all it took. The scale tipped back
into testosterone territory as Lian and Dwyn tore for the window
and sprung it open.

“Whoever did that, you’re gonna pay!”

“Show yourself, you coward so I can kick your
butt!”

“It’s Kor,” said a matter of fact voice. They
all turned to Tamik.

“How do you know?” Lian asked
suspiciously.

“He’s got Invisibility.”

Jaws dropped. Lights went on in brains. Kor.
Invisibility. Of course.

Another Widow Squash bomb splatted, just
missing them. But the pungent, sour smell of its insides quickly
clogged the room.

The boys seemed to have forgotten their
company, amongst them Lian’s mother for they fell at the window
with an intensity of curses that would offend the most liberal of
ears.

And, for the third time that day, poor Lian
was stopped. Or perhaps, a more telling description would be
squelched…as the guts of a new Widow Squash bomb dripped in gagging
clots down his face. This time there were no gender gaps as Root
and, to her surprise Tamik, Kor’s own teammate ran to the window
and heaved out an even more colourful assortment of xxx-rated
language.

Estrella Fuffleteez shook her head. It’s not
like she hadn’t heard it all before. Or done it all before. She
looked at the box and winked, returning to the matter of donations.
The box happily accepted the odds ‘n ends of things she deemed
suitable and soon felt a nice fullness in its belly. When the
window and the four teens finally clapped shut, Estrella’s donation
work was done and the box was waiting at the door.

Tamik walked over to it, content in her
participation and smiled. Dwyn, Estrella and especially Root smiled
back. Lian was still huffing and puffing and dripping.

“By the way, I like your Trunkaptre but you
might want to add a little Glungwart to the tips, keeps ‘em oiled”
Tamik boldly suggested to Lian just before she left.

“My…what? You knew what it was?” Lian said
astonished as his eyes landed on the pile of intricate wires on his
bed.

“Well, thanks for the stuff. See you guys at
the gala tonight! That is if there is one…!”

“What!”

But she was already gone. The same way she’d
come. Like a whirlwind.

How does one explain to three hundred and
fifty guests that there is nothing to be a guest at?

Master Hillywur Gub was on the verge of total
panic. The Quest Gala was hours away, as was his serving staff by
now. Most of which had taken their uniforms with them. Certainly he
could understand their frustrations. No one likes to work within
the confines of a Krux. Anything done is undone and things go
missing or never quite turn out as planned in the first place. But
surely, if everyone just learned to accept this minor limitation,
work around it, then things could run a lot smoother. Yes, the cold
spots moved around but it’s not like the staff couldn’t sense them
and compensate. They had legs, didn’t they?

It was all so maddening. Hillywur Gub had
really felt that they’d been making headway, that they’d become
proactive with the Krux to the point that it seemed less evident.
But this morning all that headway came to a crashing halt. This
morning the entire garden court went cold and all the servers lost
their hair.

Master Gub had prudently suggested they just
step away and wait for the cold to dissipate. But, oh no. This
apparently was the last straw. While the staff did step away, they
did not come back. In fact they kept right on stepping… outside,
past the castle boundaries toward any job that was “better ‘n this
crap!”

Master Hillywur Gub stood, stiff as his
over-starched dungarees, desperate, left on his own with nothing
but a breeze to cool his newly bald head.

So it was pure luck or even fate if you will
that The Lord Sclerous Players showed up at his door.

“Ah, good sir!” the leader had said. “We are
the Lord Sclerous Players and we would like to perform our play of
Bartimus Flat and other Fanciful Tales
for the pleasure of
you and your guests!”

Master Gub gawked at the speaker and then at
the rest of the troupe. He’d actually heard of the Lord Sclerous
Players but had no idea they were Skullks. Not that there was
anything wrong with Skullks. So they were skeletons, so what? They
had a right to live like anyone else. Only Hillywur Gub was always
curious about how they ate. As he thought this, his eyes strolled
to the speakers belly but a bright red tunic with a yellow sash
covered it. This of course furthered his curiosity over the
necessity of Skullk attire at all. Clearly they had no….erm… bits
to keep private.

The Skullk shifted. He hated curiosity. Why
did he have to explain himself all the time? He was a Skullk,
that’s all. He’d chosen to abandon his skin and flesh for the
airier, freer life of simple bones. Why was that such a novelty to
people still? It’s not like there haven’t been Skullks around.
Indeed, they’ve been here even longer than Nodmins, at least in
this particular area. And yet, here again, the despised eyeballing
from an ignorant stranger.

“You like our costumes?” he said at last,
anxious to keep the hand that could potentially feed them
tonight.

This brought Hillywur Gub back to attention
and his list of more important things to do than becoming a
theatrical producer. He had the door halfway slammed when a leg
stopped him. Or rather a femur.

“We are most assuredly the finest actors this
side of DréAmm.”

“I’m sure you are.” With Gub’s next attempt
at rejection, an entire meta-carpal intervened.

“Are you certain, sir? We are those that live
to perform, certain of our destiny in this. It would serve us well,
if we could serve you.”

Serve?

Hillywur Gub got an idea. He stared into the
cavernous sockets of the troupe and smiled.

Not every one of the Lord Sclerous Players
liked the idea of interactive dinner theatre, especially the added
duties of setting up and serving a garden court full of guests. But
as the director had reminded, they would at least have a full house
for which to perform, not to mention free room and board for the
night.

“But what if someone asks me something. What
are my lines?” asked one nervous Skullk in a Medician costume. The
director told her to simply say “I am not at liberty to answer” and
with that she set off to the process of memorization.

It had not been so easy to convince the lead
player, who had determined that his character, the Silken Oxback,
Bartimus Flat would not resort to such denigration. “Alas” he cried
out melodramatically, taking his theatrical speech into his own
daily life and thereby losing much in the way of friendship. “The
Silken Oxback twas king of the forest! He hath not endure-ed such a
fate as serving maiden. T’would be an abomination.”

“He would if it was the only means to feed
himself,” said the director through clenched teeth.

“Neigh! He shall rather choose death.”

“So be it,” said the director. “But I’ll have
my costume back first.”

It wasn’t even a great costume, fairly cheap
and the fur in no way resembled the lustrous strands of a real
Silken Oxback. But needless to say the fake Silken Oxback shut up
and set plates.

Hillywur Gub watched the tables and chairs
and arrangements of his garden court slowly assemble into place. It
was starting to look presentable again. All except the giant Fire
Blossom Tree, of which he would attend to himself, ensuring the
honour of its special guests.

Ernest Skubblenob squinted over the gold and
green invitation, still enjoying his name beside the words
‘
Special Guest’
. Secondly, enjoying the word ‘
Gala’
and best of all ‘
Feast’
. His stomach rumbled as he lovingly
put the invitation back down.

He had been looking for something.

He dug deep into his pants pockets and pulled
out the liners. Nothing.