Jasper Dash and the Flame-Pits of Delaware

by M. T. Anderson

  “You don’t have the faintest idea, do you?”

  “No, my sister. None whatsoever.”

  Katie peeked up over her outcropping—at the pit, at their adversary, at the five boys dreaming in the radiance of the sacred flames below them.

  More bullets flew by.

  And then Katie realized: Some of those bullets were coming from behind them.

  She turned and grunted in surprise.

  #1 stood in the door behind them, firing at their backs.

  They were trapped.

  62

  Lily and Jasper were in a corridor full of monks. There was a lot of monastic excitement in the air. The monks conferred. They agreed: They had to get outside to safety, beyond the reach of the mob.

  As they went down the hall, Jasper asked one of the older monks, “Your Holiness, are you sure you don’t know the whereabouts of Bobby Spandrel? The leader of the gang? Just a little taller than me? Round, silver, featureless head? No hands or feet?”

  “All of the gangsters have had faces,” answered the monk. “Except inside their hearts. There they have no faces whatsoever.”

  “This way,” one of the monks ordered.

  Jasper nodded. “We’ll get everyone out of the monastery, and then I’ll slip back in to look for that villain Spandrel.”

  They all hurried along the passageway toward the exit. Lisa Buldene was snapping pictures as fast as she could. “This is amazing!” she said. “I’m almost being shot at! Now I’m really alive!”

  The passage came out at a flight of steps that led down the side of the volcanic crater to a little bridge. The monks poured down the steps.

  And stopped.

  There were ten gangsters in one big clump in front of them. Waiting.

  The monks poured back up the steps.

  “Secret door! Secret door!” they said, giddy with motion. Lily, Jasper, Lisa Buldene, and the monks scurried down a hall to a domed, circular chapter house. One slid a lectern aside and pointed at a secret passageway that led down.

  They all ran down the cramped staircase—a hundred monks or more. They came out in a courtyard. They started to run for the exit.

  And then saw, coming to block them, the same parade of ten toughs.

  So the group ran back through the secret door, up the steps, out of the domed chapter house, down the hallway, and tried a bridge.

  But now the mobsters were on the other side of the bridge, waiting for them.

  So the group turned and ran back.

  “To the spoons! To the spoons!” the monks called. They charged up stairs and arrived on the roof of a tower. There was one of the vaultapults there, with a trigger to pull it back and release it.

  “Two by two!” a monk called. “We will be shot over the gangsters’ heads to that tower, where we shall make our way…”

  The words died on his lips. He was pointing at another tower, but mobsters poured out of a trapdoor there and stood, arms folded, waiting to receive whoever landed there.

  Lily looked at the other towers.

  Mobsters. Mobsters. Mobsters.

  “Pyramids of Snefru!” Jasper swore. “We’re trapped, chaps!”

  “It’s like they knew where we were going!” said Lily.

  “It’s like someone was…” Jasper stopped talking.

  “Like someone was what?” said Lisa Buldene.

  Jasper looked down. “Like someone was telling the gangsters which direction we were going in all the time.”

  “Who would do a rotten thing like that?” said Lisa Buldene.

  Full of rage, Jasper looked her in the eye. He said, “I should have known—the moment I saw your pants.”

  “My pants?”

  “No human being would willingly wear pants that zipped off at the knee—no normal human being—unless they had rocket-thrusters in place of their detachable feet.”

  Lily stared aghast at the New Yorker. Could it be?

  Lisa Buldene’s hand was on her own throat. Her fingers were plucking at her skin.… Scrabble, scrabble, scrabble… Pulling on her chin… Yanking off her face!

  Her real head was a foot-and-a-half-wide silver sphere that rang with energy and static. She cast off her rubber hands.

  “Bobby Spandrel,” said Jasper, with disgust.

  “We meet again, Boy Technonaut,” said the international arch-criminal. “But this, I believe, will be the last time.”

  63

  Katie Mulligan and Drgnan Pghlik crouched in the cavern by the flame-pits, fired on from both sides. In front of them, across the pit, was Coach. Behind them, near the door, was #1.

  Bullets splintered stone. Drgnan squatted flat and clucked with his tongue.

  Suddenly Katie had another idea.

  Over the din of lead, she shouted, “We need to get near the boys! No one will shoot us if we’re near the—”

  No time to explain—she grabbed Drgnan Pghlik’s hand and tugged. Together they rushed forward, toward the edge of the pit, toward the bridge—and the Coach rushed toward them. He stood on the opposite cliff, taking aim.

  The girl and the monk had reached the chasm. They faced the enemy.

  Coach stood at the other end of the bridge. He trained his pistol.

  And suddenly Drgnan Pghlik jumped, hurled himself into the air, and grabbed at the first chained, meditating kid. With both hands, he clamped on, and that first jock rocked—slamming into the next one—

  Coach frowned.

  The second jock knocked the third, the third jock knocked the fourth, the fourth jock knocked the fifth—and Coach, on the opposite cliff, was whacked sprawling. He stumbled—arms up—and fell off the edge of the cliff. He tumbled about eight feet to another little cliff, where he lodged, knocked out, spread-eagled, almost upside down.

  Katie, wobbling, crossed the bridge. It swayed. It bucked. It heaved like a dog spitting up.

  #1 had run to the chasm behind them, jumped, and now hung from another one of his team members, kicking and punching at Drgnan. Drgnan defended with knees and wrist blocks. The team, suspended, rocked back and forth, slamming into one another. Drgnan and #1 threw themselves from side to side to avoid getting crushed between meditating sport-brats. They hurled punches around the arms of the glow-eyed boys.

  Katie stepped off the bridge and ran to grab the lever. If she could unscrew that lever, the boys would be trapped in their chain cages. Even if they woke up from their trances, they couldn’t free themselves. She made a dash for the controls to the sacred rotisserie.

  She grabbed the lever. She didn’t know how to detach it. She struggled with it. She pulled it to one side.

  Suddenly an engine cranked to life, and the five suspended boys—and Drgnan and #1, holding fast, flailing—began trundling toward her.

  If they reached her side of the cliff, Katie realized, and somehow woke up, then suddenly there would be six people to fight instead of just one. But if she didn’t get the baskets to safe ground, then Drgnan Pghlik would be trapped hanging on to them above the abyss.

  Drgnan and #1 struggled on the swaying champs. #1 hissed to the monk, “I’ve eaten bigger animals than you.” He showed his teeth. His eyes were green slits. He lashed out with a kick that sent his champ into a spin and caught Drgnan on the side of the head.

  Drgnan almost lost his grip. He grabbed for the chains.

  Katie threw the lever the other way. The machinery clanked and reversed. The line of athletes started rolling back out over the pit.

  “Fortune smiles, my sister!” yelled Drgnan Pghlik. He blocked a punch to his gut. He called to her, “Unscrew the lever!”

  “You’ll be trapped!”

  “Quickly!” said Drgnan.

  The athletes were hanging above the center of the flame-pits again. There they stopped. Katie began unscrewing the lever.

  It was free—she had it—and she ran back to the bridge.

  She looked at Drgnan fighting valiantly. She thought that the two of them made a good team. Her and him. Fightin
g crime, side by side. She was suddenly electric with joy in adventure.

  At last Coach was sitting up, looking around. His gun had fallen into the flame-pit.

  Katie rushed over him, clambering across the bridge of chains. Drgnan and #1 popped up and down around the swaying teammates. Drgnan looked battered, hanging awkwardly by one hand and one foot, his robe torn, his head reeling.

  Katie began swatting at #1 from below with the lever, as if he were a particularly obnoxious piñata.

  #1 growled.

  A hand—#1 swooped his hand down from above and grabbed Katie’s arm. She roared in protest. She slapped him. Grunting, he lifted her.

  Her wrist burned with his grip, but it was all that kept her from falling into the blue flames. She looked down at the tangled energies of the mountain, the loops and licks of magical fire that roiled below.

  Her arm creaked and popped. She hung, slowly sliding out of #1’s grip.

  “Say good-bye,” said #1.

  She felt his fingers loosen their hold on her wrist.

  She fell.

  Drgnan swung—he let go—he dropped.

  She tumbled.

  The flames grew brighter—rocks flashed past.

  Drgnan grabbed her. His arm was wrapped around her.

  And suddenly she wasn’t falling.

  They were deep down in the throat of the mountain, hanging in midair.

  “You levitate,” she said, looking into his eyes. His arm was very strong.

  “The mind is as still as a concrete pool,” he said.

  And with that, they floated upward. Past the suspended team members who hung there helpless, basted in magic. Past #1, who was trapped, holding on to one of the chains, unable to get to either cliff.

  Katie, with her arm around Drnan Pghlik and his arm around her, was shooting up toward the light of day.

  64

  Jasper Dash and Bobby Spandrel faced each other on the tower top. From the chimneys below, the scent of burning fir boughs and candle wax was carried on the breeze across the mountain peaks.

  “Bobby Spandrel, you scoundrel,” said Jasper. “You have disturbed all these good people just to get your revenge on me.”

  “I am tired of you,” said Bobby Spandrel in his awful, tinny, electronic voice. “I try to just carry out a simple, straightforward plan where I levitate the Egyptian Sphinx so I can fly over the sea and rob banks in Rio de Janeiro, and you’re there with a cable to trip me up. I try to counterfeit the Canadian dollar in the basement of a haunted house, and you kick open the secret door and foil my designs. I try to set up a blorgassium smuggling ring on the planet Neptune, and you’re there crawling through the air ducts. I am tired of you, Jasper Dash. I hate you. So this is the end, my flustered friend. You will never bother me again.”

  “You monster!” said Jasper. “Why didn’t you finish me off when you met us disguised as Lisa Buldene in Dover?”

  “Because I wanted you to meet your death here, in total defeat, with the place you love most crushed beneath my thumb.” He gestured with his cuffs to his hands, which lay on the floor. “I put on that woman suit so I could be assured you were on your way to this monastery, and that you knew how to get here despite the mountains shifting when it’s misty. I knew you would eventually see the Vbngoom artifacts in the Pelt Museum, and I knew that if I could slip you directions, it would only be a matter of time before you sought out the monastery and were here quivering at my very feet.” He gestured at the fake feet at the ends of his zip-off pants. “So now you’re here. And now you’re gone. That’s it. It’s time to bash Jasper Dash.” He called shrilly, “Men!”

  From the staircase, several toughs appeared. Team Mom was among them.

  “And woman,” said Team Mom. “I’m here, too.”

  “Men and woman! Throw him over the parapet!” Bobby Spandrel ordered. “Make sure he makes a squishy sound at the bottom.”

  They walked toward Jasper.

  But they couldn’t get to him.

  The monks all moved in and stood in the way. They crossed their arms.

  And right in front of Jasper stood Lily, looking defiant and nervous.

  “We won’t let you hurt our friend,” said the monk in front.

  The mobsters stopped inches from the monks. More monks moved up and confronted them.

  “You will never learn,” said Jasper to his enemy, “that friendship is stronger than hate.”

  Bobby Spandrel didn’t laugh, because that wasn’t the kind of thing they did with their lungs where he came from. But he seemed to laugh, and he said, “And you, Boy Technonaut, will never learn: It’s not much good to have your fighting done by friends who have sworn an oath of nonviolence.” Spandrel swung his empty sleeve in a broad gesture. He ordered his goons, “Push right through the monks.”

  “Move out of the way, baldy,” growled Team Mom. “There are events that need to happen.”

  Bobby Spandrel taunted the monks, “You pledged to never attack anyone. You can’t do anything. So move out of her way.”

  The monk in front said, “We also pledged to protect our guests and our friends. We will use nonviolence to help them.”

  “Ignore him!” cried Bobby Spandrel. “Grab Jasper Dash—and smash smash smash.”

  The gangsters—Team Mom among them—reared back and plunged into the crowd of monks—

  Or would have if the monks hadn’t stood their ground. They didn’t move. The gangsters raised their hands to push the monks out of the way. And then a most extraordinary fight broke out. Monks vs. gangsters.

  The way life should be.

  Of course, it’s a little difficult to describe this fight, since half of the people fighting couldn’t in fact, um, fight, but it went down somewhat like this:

  Weasel Chops O’Reilly goes to smack a monk on the head—raises his hand—and the monk blocks his blow with a sincere hope for universal friendship and kindness! Weasel Chops tries a left-hand hook to the jaw, but the monk counters with a wish that all men and women could coexist peacefully, living in geodesic domes! Gurgling with fury, Weasel Chops throws a quick right to the monk’s face—but just before his punch connects, the monk whaps him on the back of the head with a vision of an elk in a sunlit clearing standing next to its young! Weasel Chops goes reeling, clutching his skull!

  Team Mom seizes a monk’s green robe and hauls him to the side! She elbows another monk in the gut! She grabs his neck! He flails for a second and then delivers a swift, powerful plea for world peace to the nose! She stumbles backward and grabs at his arm, twists as she falls. He fights back with a recipe for unleavened bread! She hits him in the chin; he gasps and pummels her with the thought of calico kittens riding on the back of a friendly shark!

  She throws him to the side! But he’s not so easily defeated: He is a master of haiku! She delivers a roundhouse kick to the stomach. And he? He uses the power of poetry! Like:

  We could sip dark wine.

  Best friends go eat layer cake.

  Ow. You bit my arm.

  And:

  The lake reflects sky.

  So do our eyes show the soul.

  Your left one is black.

  Bobby Spandrel, his round head buzzing with irritation, saw Team Mom get a black eye from poetry—he saw his mobsters being walloped by a bunch of monks, and he was furious.

  He raised his empty sleeve and blasted a huge bolt of energy in Jasper’s direction.

  Lily threw herself to the ground just in time. Everyone screamed and ducked—they kept writhing on the ground, wrestling, saying, “Oof!”

  Jasper and Bobby Spandrel faced each other again over all the wriggling bodies.

  Jasper climbed into the vaultapult. He fired his ray gun at Spandrel, but another burst of energy from Bobby’s arm blocked the beam.

  Bobby took aim and fired right at the Boy Technonaut.

  And at the exact same moment, Jasper fired himself into the air from the vaultapult.

  He soared up into the sky abov
e the monastery. The energy bolt flew harmlessly past his feet. It shuttled along through the mountain passes. Jasper spun in the clear blue.

  Roaring with anger, Bobby Spandrel launched himself into the air, blowing off his fake rubber feet as his ankles ignited with jets.

  Seeing that Jasper was airborne, two gangsters from other towers launched themselves to intercept him and beat him up in midair.

  Lily rose to her feet unsteadily and watched as Jasper twirled over the volcanic crater and prepared to meet the two toughs winging their way toward him. She held her breath.

  A gangster flew up, passed Jasper, and got socked in the jaw—POW!—and, dizzy-eyed, fell.

  Bobby Spandrel flew toward Jasper as Jasper hurtled toward a far trampoline. Jasper spun, firing off several shots from his ray gun at Bobby before he hit the taut oxhide and was hurled back up into the air, wheeling his legs in kicks and punches to knock out the gangsters who grabbed at his knees.

  Now more monks shouldered past Lily and crawled into the vaultapult to throw themselves toward Jasper so they could help. Lily felt useless. She didn’t know what to do. Most of the gangsters on her tower were out of commission—so worn down and humbled by the monks’ superior powers of love and gentleness that they couldn’t even stand up anymore. They just sat around weeping, thinking about how long it had been since they’d played with their dogs and visited their great-aunts at the nursing home. Team Mom was completely knocked out.

  Lily watched, astonished, as gangsters from the far towers shot themselves toward the monks to beat them up in midair.

  Meanwhile Bobby Spandrel had swooped down and grabbed the bouncing Jasper in his stumpy arms. Jasper beat on his archenemy’s metal limbs. It made a sound like an angry person cooking. Whang, whang, whang!

  Bobby Spandrel blasted back up over the volcanic crater.

  Far below his feet, which kicked helplessly in midair, Jasper saw the weird blue light from the flame-pits of Vbngoom. He wished—dearly wished—he’d brought his jetpack. It did not always work well—it had often sent him spiraling into sugar maples—but he was, he figured, looking at certain death without it. When Bobby Spandrel dropped him, which was going to happen close to immediately, Jasper would fall hundreds of feet into the maw of blue fire.