by Fred Koehler
Mr. Popli’s brow furrowed and he twitched his whiskers. He began peeling off bits of pickled kidney and whipping them right at Archie’s snout.
“Why—”
“Ouch!”
“Archibald—”
“Stop it!”
“Would you tell this rat—”
“That hurts!”
“ABOUT OUR ISLAND?!”
The rat laughed, her tail swishing faster than ever. Archie, for his part, was terribly confused. He’d seen Mr. Popli angry, but never like this. In our all years he’s never thrown things at me. And he’d never waste food. It makes no sense!
“You’ve got us cornered,” said Mr. Popli at last. “I’ll give you the egg in exchange for Archie, but we’ll never lead you to our island.”
“NO!” shouted Archie, ducking as another projectile sailed past his ear and down the side of the totem pole.
“No,” said the rat. “I thought you might lead me to an island full of new delicacies. But now you’re better off as a large meal I’ll need to sleep off. My army will find your island in time.”
Archie quailed. This was all his fault. First he’d gotten them into this mess, and then he’d betrayed his entire island to the rat queen and her spider army.
Mr. Popli, however, did not flinch his fur. “Then I’m afraid we must leave you unsatisfied. Archibald, get up. It’s time for us to go.” He stood and turned his back to the hulking rat.
The queen leapt up in a rage, ready to whip at Mr. Popli with her tail hook. Unfortunately for her, the hook was occupied. A piece of kidney that had flown over Archie’s right ear had impaled itself on the rat’s hook. Her tail, swishing in and out of the water, had attracted one of the small fish. Unbeknownst to the rat, that small fish had both the kidney and the hook in its mouth.
When the queen tried to raise her tail to slash at Mr. Popli, the fish began fighting. Flopping to and fro underwater, it unbalanced the queen. She stumbled sideways. Her false foot slipped on the totem pole. Digging in with her remaining back claw, she grabbed hold of her tail and tugged against the persistent fish. But a rather large fish, a wahoo, had noticed the smaller, flailing fish and raced up from the depths to investigate. There was a crash, a splash, a squeal; and thus ended the seven-month reign of the rat queen of the spiders. No one ever even found out her real name, but the wahoo thought she tasted like caramel.
Chapter 18
“Archibald, the spiders!” Surprised by the sudden kerplopping of their queen, the spiders had taken a moment to gape at the empty space where she had just been. Now they stalked the duo in careful steps.
“Don’t worry! I’ve got this under control.” Archie addressed the advancing horde using the dialect he’d heard them speak as they carried him to their city.
“HELLO, SPIDERS. ME ARCHIE. ME BEAT OLD QUEEN. ME NEW KING!”
This caused them to stop and consider, but only for a moment.
“WE HAVE KING,” announced a spider.
“FOR DINNER!” another added. Spider cheers rose from the garbage. Their advance resumed in creeps and sprints.
“Forget what I said, Mr. Popli! We should definitely be going!”
Mr. Popli was already heaving the silk bag, now stuffed with their own possessions as well as Archie’s treasures, back toward the Abigail.
Archie wrenched a long splinter from the totem pole and wielded it like a spear. Spiders halted in their tracks wherever he slashed, but for every one that stopped, ten advanced.
Mr. Popli shoved the bag in through the hatch, then clambered up the side of the ship. With his glass knife, he hacked at the webbing that held the houseboat in place. He sliced through five, then six of the ropes. The first of the spiders leapt onto the Abigail, launching itself at Mr. Popli. He stabbed at it with his knife. It fell. Two more had already landed. One curled up with Archie’s makeshift spear in its side, but the other was scuttling toward them, and still more were leaping for the ship. The shrew launched himself through the porthole. Mr. Popli dove in behind him and slammed the hatch.
“Archibald,” said Mr. Popli.
“Yes?”
“Didn’t I suggest that we install the steering mechanism on the inside?”
“Yes. Yes, you did.”
“Is it okay if I choose this moment to say I told you so?”
“Only if it makes you feel better about our upcoming death.”
“I think it might.”
“Then by all means, go ahead.”
“I told you so.”
It was so dark inside the Abigail it might have been midnight, if midnight skittered and thumped and swore. The spiders threw themselves recklessly on the houseboat, coating it in layers of crawling shadow. Mr. Popli and Archie, as usual, argued over what to do next.
“We’re at a stalemate. They can’t get in. We can’t get out,” said Mr. Popli. “If we wait long enough, they may eventually leave.”
“Or come back with some new and terrible invention designed to skewer houseboats, mice, and shrews all in one stroke.”
“Then I would certainly welcome any brilliant ideas you might have!”
“And I would be glad to offer them!” Archie retorted. “As soon as I have one.”
The spiders’ idea came first.
“What’s happening?!” asked Archie, gripping a rope as the entire houseboat listed to one side.
“We’re going up!” said Mr. Popli. “They’re pulling the whole boat inland!”
“No. It’s worse,” said the shrew, peering through a vent. “I think in fact they are going to skewer us. On that.”
Along the water, near the fishing nets, a metal spike shot up, jagged and rusting in the sun. Tall and narrow, it glistened with bits of hardened webbing that gave it a sinister beauty. At its base, a large basin revealed the serrated rib cage of a fish far too big to be overcome by even a small army of spiders.
Mr. Popli joined Archie at the vent. The spiders had constructed a crane out of broomsticks and paint stirrers and even an old fishing rod, all held together by webbing. The crane stretched out over the spike like an arm bent at an impossible angle. A silk rope attached to the houseboat ran through the crane’s eyelets. Little by little, the spiders were tugging the crew over the garbage toward the spike.
“So you think they’re going to pull us up above that spike and then drop the whole houseboat?” Mr. Popli asked.
“Yes! It’s rather brilliant, actually. We should think about making one. We could have fish for weeks!”
“Except that we’re about to be skewered and then eaten by spiders. Remember?”
“Excellent point, Mr. Popli. Unless …”
“If you have an idea, Archibald, now would be a perfectly appropriate time to share it.” The Abigail bumped over a floating log, tossing the animals inside the hull. Archie shot a worried look toward the egg, still stowed tightly away. Spiders skittered and fell from the top deck.
“Well, look there. They’ve got to pull us up over that barrel. We might be able to cut the line when we’re halfway up and fall right into that canal toward open water. That’s if the spiders don’t attack us right away and we cut the rope at the precise moment and the boat lands pointed in the right direction. We’d have a straight shot out to sea. Then we’d be off for home!”
“So you’re saying that we’ll most likely be skewered and eaten?”
“Yes.”
But since no better plans presented themselves, Archie and Mr. Popli agreed to give it a try. When they felt the houseboat clang against the side of the barrel, Mr. Popli reached to release the lock on the hatch. But then he paused for a moment, turned toward Archie, and extended a paw. “I’m sorry I’ve always been so cross with you. I only ever wanted to keep everyone safe.”
Speechless at Mr. Popli’s apology, Archie could only nod back in reply. The two grasped paws as friends and rushed out together.
The spiders were waiting.
Mr. Popli slashed with his long knife, and Archie attac
ked with the only weapon he could find, his telescope. In the face of this onslaught, spiders slipped and slid across the surface of the rocking Abigail, splashing into the water below.
And then Archie did something very brave and very stupid. From a position of relative safety, he vaulted right into the center of a ring of spiders protecting the rope. He poked at eyes and clubbed at legs. The spiders retreated—but only a whisker’s length.
“I’m stuck!” he shouted to Mr. Popli, who was busy fighting off spiders of his own. Mr. Popli crashed into the nearest spider before scrambling toward Archie. He felt a pinch on his shoulder and spun around, hacking at the spider behind him.
And then Mr. Popli was inside the ring of spiders with the shrew. “Don’t come any closer!” shouted Archie between parries with the spiders. “They’ve laid sticky web all around. You’ll have to throw me your knife so I can cut us down.”
Tossing the knife toward Archie’s outstretched paw, Mr. Popli bared his teeth and extended his claws toward the rush of spiders. A hiss erupted in his throat and he charged the spiders, a blur of crunching and squishing and tearing.
Suddenly they were falling. Mr. Popli leapt for the steering mechanism and clung to it. Spiders filled the air—some sliding off, some jumping from higher up, trying to recapture their prey.
But it was too late for the spider clan. The Abigail splashed down. At the helm, Mr. Popli pedaled for all he was worth. Spiders churned in the houseboat’s wake. Archie shook his tail at the final pursuers, who, too slow to overtake them, had given up.
The less injured spiders who could still walk on water scurried away back toward the island. Archie noted, curiously, that any spiders who fell underwater or were splashed by the salt spray quickly curled up and twitched as if in excruciating pain.
The shrew finished hewing his way through the sticky web on the Abigail’s roof.
Mr. Popli reached toward the pinch on his shoulder and recognized the shape and tender sting of a spider bite. He stopped pedaling.
“I have to admit,” said Archie. “I wasn’t sure we were going to survive that one.”
“I was thinking the same thing,” Mr. Popli said just before he collapsed, rolling into the ocean.
Archie dove into the cool water after the mouse. He heaved the limp body up the water barrels, through the hatch, and inside the houseboat.
“Mr. Popli! Wake up!” He slapped the mouse on the nose, yanked hard on his tail, and twisted his left ear. It was only when he poked the mouse right in the spider bite that Mr. Popli’s eyes flashed open and he shot up, howling.
Archie helped the mouse to his bunk and covered him with a blanket. He checked on the egg. He nibbled a dead spider. Then he climbed back up to the helm.
This is some mess you’ve gotten yourself into, Archie Shrew.
Lost, friendless, with shriveling hopes and dwindling supplies, the shrew pedaled the houseboat away from the spider island and toward nowhere in particular.
Chapter 19
The moon cast slithering shadows inside the houseboat. The previous day’s adventure had left Archie exhausted and dehydrated. He woke up terribly thirsty. With eyesight too poor to see properly in the dim light, the shrew climbed down from his bunk and began to feel and scent his way toward the small container of fresh water they kept inside.
But something smelled wrong. He recognized the warm, furry odor of Mr. Popli, the hunger-inducing aroma of their new barnacle stash, and the ever-present smells of the open sea. He detected something else, too—something animal. His fur bristled, and he reached back into his bunk for Mr. Popli’s knife. Had they crashed into another island in the night? Had the spiders found them? Were new enemies surrounding the Abigail?
The shrew inhaled deeply through his snout and bared his teeth. He knew the scent but couldn’t place it. And then he realized. It smelled like … Colubra!
Few things unsettle an inventor more than being presented with contradicting facts. His nose told him Colubra was nearby. His brain told him there was absolutely no way Colubra could be close. They’d traveled too far in the wrong direction and had not had nearly enough time to make it back. Unless …
What if a rip current has been moving our island at the same rate we’ve been traveling? What if Colubra has been looking for us this whole time, furious about the egg? What if the egg—Something rubbery squished under Archie’s foot. He reached down and picked it up.
The object in his hand felt thin and leathery, broken, yet still slightly round. He held it up to the light and squinted. The egg! It’s hatched! Oh, thank goodness.
He lifted it to his nose. He’d expected an avian smell, some sort of bird like Merri. But whatever had just hatched from inside this particular egg smelled exactly like … like … a snake.
The fur on Archie’s ears tingled as a hissing sound emanated from across the boat. “I am starving,” came a low, reptilian voice. “Mother, is there something to eat?”
And then he realized exactly what had happened. Oh, snakespit.
Archie stood frozen.
I rescued an egg from Colubra. No. I stole a snake egg from Colubra. No. I kidnapped Colubra’s child. And now we have a hungry snake. Inside the boat. In the dark of night. If this baby snake does not eat me, Mr. Popli will throw me overboard. And Colubra, if she ever finds us, will be even less forgiving. But first things first. There is a hungry snake inside the boat.
As quietly and gently as possible, Archie woke Mr. Popli and helped him up to the top deck of the Abigail, whispering the whole way that he would explain everything in a moment. With the effects of the spider poison lingering in his bloodstream, Mr. Popli had fallen in and out of consciousness all day and into the night. Right now, he was mostly lucid.
“What’s going on, Archibald? I’m hardly well enough to be moving around like this,” Mr. Popli said as he leaned back against the steering mechanism.
“The egg hatched.”
“That’s good news, I suppose. But why are we on the roof?”
“The baby; it’s not a bird.”
“Really? What is it then? Surely the egg was too big for it to be an insect. A lizard? A toad? It’s not a toad, I hope. We’ll have a devil of a time feeding it.”
“It’s not a toad.”
“Well, then, what on earth is it?”
“It’s long …”
“A stick bug?”
“And a reptile …”
“A gecko?”
“With scales …”
“An iguana? Really, Archibald. I’ve no patience for games. What is it?”
“It might answer to Little Colubra.”
Archie winced as he said it. He waited for Mr. Popli to lash out. To scream at him for causing another disaster. For endangering yet again everyone and everything they knew and cared about.
But all Mr. Popli could manage was “Oh.”
“I think it’s a boy,” the shrew added hopefully. “And it believes I’m its mother.”
“Oh, my. Well, then I suppose you’d better go down there and kill it.” Then Mr. Popli curled into a ball and fell back asleep.
Kill it? Archie thought, climbing back down through the hatch. But it’s just a baby. What if it turns out to be a nice sort of snake? What if it’s a vegetarian? He would have sooner cannonballed into a school of feeding mackerel than hurt another living creature needlessly.
“Helloooo-ooooh,” he whispered, sniffing the air and feeling for vibrations along the plastic walls of the houseboat. “Little baby snaaa-aaaaake. I’m your mommmmmy.”
The shrew’s eyes shifted rapidly around the room. He’d waited till the sun was rising to go back inside the Abigail. “If I’m going to get eaten, I’d at least like to see what’s gnawing on me,” he’d told the fevered Mr. Popli. Although now he wasn’t so sure.
He could still smell the snake in the room, but the scent had spread. It seemed this snake had explored the whole interior of the houseboat. Probably just trying to find a nice mushroom or some lea
fy greens for breakfast. Using the ropes that crisscrossed the interior, Archie scrabbled from stem to stern through the open air but caught no glimpse of the snake. His fur bristled at every shadow, expecting a hiss, a glimmer of fangs, and a slow, painful ride down a dark throat.
Finally, and with a long sigh, he dropped to the bottom of the hull and began tiptoeing toward the front of the Abigail, poking at every nook and cranny with Mr. Popli’s long knife. What does one say to a ravenous, shrew-eating snake that one has accidentally kidnapped? “Oh hello there, Mr. Snake. Would you like to try some of these delicious salted barnacles? They’re the only thing we have to eat.” Somehow he imagined the snake would be happy to expand the menu.
The scent grew stronger as he approached the bunks. Everything he saw turned serpentine in his mind. That pile of sheets. This bit of rope. The tool belt hanging from his nightstand.
And then he saw it. Or thought he did. A wiggle, a shirk, a whisper of movement. From inside his bed. Underneath his very own blanket. And now we see what you’re made of, Archie Shrew. He might have stabbed the knife straight through the blanket. He could have swept up the tangle of sheets and thrown the whole thing into the ocean. But instead, Archie Shrew did something brave and not very smart. Using the tip of Mr. Popli’s knife, he peeled back the covers and gasped.
It was the smallest snake he’d ever seen, not even as big around as his tail. Certainly not big enough to eat a shrew (or a mouse). And it was fast asleep.
“I think I’ll call you Huxley.”
Chapter 20
Hundreds of eyes followed the shrew’s descent into the depths. They neither attacked nor fled. Don’t make eye contact, Archie told himself. Pretend like you don’t even see them and they’ll ignore you. Archie held the pole tightly in his paw, Mr. Popli’s glass knife lashed to one end. A stretch of rubber band created tension against the fur on his forearm.
