Akiko in the Sprubly Islands (6 page)

The forest grew
very quiet except for the steady chirping of insects in the bushes. Gax stretched his neck and watched the trees above us, as if already waiting for Spuckler to return. Poog just floated there in the darkness, his eyes blinking every so often, his face almost expressionless.

Gradually the effect of the fruit began to wear off, and I slowly floated back down. First one foot touched the ground, then the other, and a moment later I was sitting down just like I had been before. I crossed my arms in front of me, trying to keep warm. Having spent most of the journey with Spuckler and Mr. Beeba at my side, I suddenly felt frightened and very alone. I thought maybe I could take my mind off things by starting a conversation.

“I don’t know how you can float around like that all day, Poog,” I said, coughing and rubbing my hands together. “I started feeling kind of queasy after just a few minutes.” Poog just smiled and blinked some more. The conversation was already over. I sat there a little longer in the darkness, trying to think of something that would help the situation.

There was a hooting somewhere up above, followed by the snapping of a twig just a few feet behind me. I spun my head around, half expecting to see some terrible hairy creature staring back at me. My heart was beating like a rabbit’s, and I felt the hairs stand up on the back of my neck.

There was nothing there but bushes and tree trunks.

I looked around at Gax and Poog and gradually became more and more aware of how completely alone we were. I tried my best to stay calm, but panicky questions kept creeping into my mind. What if that strange creature had really
hurt
Mr. Beeba? What if Spuckler got lost? What if the creature had already defeated both Spuckler
and
Mr. Beeba and was coming back to . . . 

I stopped myself from finishing that thought.

There was another hooting sound. Then a distant howl, like some strange sort of wolf. I suddenly had this very clear image in my mind of a gigantic, lizardy looking animal with glowing red eyes, prowling around somewhere out there in the forest. I was so scared I was shaking all over, and I almost felt like I was going to cry.

“Spuckler,” I said to myself, my voice sounding very shaky and scared, “you have
got
to get back here soon. I can’t spend the night out here all alone. I’m not going to sleep a wink!”

Fortunately it got pretty quiet over the next ten minutes or so, and I managed to relax a little, even though I was still very nervous.

For some reason I started to think about a camping trip I went on with my parents back when I was about five years old. We went to a little campsite out in the woods, in the middle of September after the real camping season was over. My favorite part was when my dad built a fire at night. It helped keep us all warm, of course, but it also made it a lot less scary to be out there in the woods.

“That’s it!” I said, turning excitedly to Gax. “We need to build a campfire!”

“A CAMPFIRE?”
Gax asked, cocking his head.

“Yeah. All we need to do is get some pieces of wood, put them in a pile, and then . . .” It suddenly occurred to me that I didn’t have any matches.

“ . . . AND THEN?”
Gax asked.

I sat there in the darkness looking at Gax and then at Poog and then at Gax again. I remembered my science teacher saying you could start a fire by rubbing two sticks together, but every time I’d tried that all I’d ended up with was a couple of warm sticks. There had to be another way.

“Gax,” I asked, “you’ve got a torch somewhere there inside you, don’t you?”

“YES, MA’AM,’’
he answered, his robotic voice sounding very odd among the chirping of the insects,
“BUT I’M UNABLE TO OPERATE IT WITHOUT SPUCKLER’S ASSISTANCE.”

“Well, maybe
I
can figure it out,” I said, refusing to give up on the idea. “What does Spuckler usually do to turn the thing on?”

“THERE’S A BUTTON ON THE SIDE OF MY BODY,”
Gax explained.
“IT TURNS THE TORCH ON AND OFF.”

I looked at the side of Gax’s rusty, beat-up body. There was a button there, all right—about
twenty
of them! They were all laid out in neat little rows on a small rectangular panel.

“Which one of these is for the torch?”

“I’M AFRAID I DON’T KNOW, MA’AM,’’
Gax said apologetically.
“SPUCKLER GENERALLY JUST KEEPS PUSHING BUTTONS UNTIL HE GETS WHAT HE WANTS.”

“I see,” I whispered, staring at all the buttons and trying to detect some difference among them. It was already so dark, though, that I could hardly see
anything
.

“Let’s try this one,” I said, pushing a button in the lower left-hand corner of the panel.

SPROING!

A little door in Gax’s side popped open and out came a long metallic arm with a set of tools at the end: a hammer, a wrench, and a tiny little screw driver.

“WOW. Cool!” I said. “But that’s not what we’re looking for, is it?”

I pressed another button.

BROING! FROING!

Immediately the little tool set drew back and folded out of sight. At the same time another door opened on the opposite side of Gax’s body and a weird mechanical extension popped out with tubes at the end like some kind of plastic octopus.

“I wonder what
that’s
for.”

I kept pushing buttons.

TLUNK!

Things kept popping out. There was something that looked like an old-fashioned camera . . . 

SPUP! BWANG!

. . . A boxing glove . . . a bottle of window spray . . .

GRONK! FRING!

. . . A bicycle horn . . . a shiny metallic toaster . . . 

“YOU’RE
ENJOYING
THIS,
AREN
’T YOU?”
Gax finally asked, a note of irritation in his crackly mechanical voice.

“I’m doing the best I can, Gax, honestly,” I answered. He was right, though. It
was
kind of fun, I had to admit!

FRAAAAW!

Finally I pushed the right button and Gax’s torch sprang out: a blindingly bright white flame flickering at the end of a long mechanical arm. I had to turn my face away for a minute while my eyes adjusted to the light. Suddenly all the tree trunks around us were brightly lit and even very distant trees became clearly visible. A couple of mothlike bugs immediately fluttered in and began circling Gax’s flame.

“All right, Gax! Hang on a minute, now,” I said excitedly as I cleared a spot on the ground. I didn’t want to take any chances of starting a forest fire, so I cleared a nice big area and surrounded it with stones. Then I made a little pile of dry wood in the middle of the stones. I took a long stick over to Gax’s torch and set it aflame, then brought the burning stick over to the pile of wood. It took a minute or two, but slowly the dry pieces of wood lit up, and before long we had a nice little campfire.

Gax extinguished his torch, carefully folding it up and stowing it inside his body. Poog hovered near my shoulder, the bright flames of the fire perfectly mirrored in his big, glassy eyes. I leaned back on my elbows and watched the flames jump back and forth.

There was no sound at all except for the quiet chirping of the forest insects and the crackle of the campfire.

“How long do you think it’ll be before they come back, Gax?” I asked.

“IT’S HARD TO SAY, MA’AM. SOMETIMES SPUCKLER IS GONE FOR
WEEKS
,”
he answered. That’s the problem with robots. They always tell you the truth, even when you’d rather they didn’t.

“Well, he told us to stay here, so that’s exactly what we’re going to do,” I said, doing my best to sound determined and unafraid. “We’re going to sit right here and . . .”

I felt a yawn coming on.

“. . . and . . .”

I stretched my mouth open and let out one of the biggest, longest yawns I can remember. Even Poog looked a little surprised!

“Boy, I’m beat!” I said, rubbing my eyes with both hands. “Gax, would you mind keeping watch while I take a little nap?”

“NOT AT ALL, MA’AM,’’
he answered, raising his head into a position of complete alertness.
“IT WOULD BE MY PLEASURE.”

I gathered a bunch of leaves to use as a pillow and flopped over on my side, turning my back to the warmth of the fire.

I started to think about Queen Pwip. I wondered what she looked like. Was she was friendly? Did she wear fancy clothes and live in a big palace? I wondered if she really could see the future, and if so, how she did it. Did she use a crystal ball, or just close her eyes and concentrate really hard?

Then I started to think about my parents again. I remembered that camping trip and how we all slept together in a tent every night. My parents seemed like they were having a ball, but I wasn’t too crazy about the whole experience. It was awfully cold at night, and even during the day it still wasn’t warm enough to go swimming, so there really wasn’t much of anything to do. Then there was the food! My mom and dad kept telling me how great it was to eat fresh salmon that had been grilled over the fire, but I thought it just tasted like burned, salty fish.