by E E Rawls
You have to fight!
Fight? At first, he thought Oz had spoken, but the face above him was set and grim.
Fight...if he didn’t fight back, there was no hope of changing anything, no hope of making anything better, of serving some sort of purpose in this world. He couldn’t afford to die, just yet.
Madnes balled up his fist and aimed for Oz’s exposed throat. The punch rang with a loud thud, knocking the air out of Oz and sending him backwards, choking.
The claws released him, and Madnes’s body mimicked the same punch-kick moves that Oz had just used on him. A powerful kick to the stomach sent Oz down into the garden’s fence post.
Both of them paused for a moment, coughing and panting.
‘He’s using my own moves against me? The power of the Madness Solver: intelligence, quick learning, and inhuman strength,’ thought Oz, as he tried to gather himself and prepare for a better attack plan.
Just then, the door to the backyard swung open.
Both he and Madnes looked over in alarm. But the person standing there wasn’t who either of them expected it to be.
“Long time no see, Madnes, Oz.” The gruff voice spoke around a stubble jaw. The man entered the garden, hands in the pockets of a duster coat, his torso crisscrossed with belts and knives, and a pistol at each hip. His boots thudded the ground with every step.
“Am I interrupting somethin’?”
Chapter 4:
A Lost Friend
OZ WENT WIDE-EYED. “Cosmic Hunter?” he exclaimed.
Madnes straightened, still clutching his injured arm. “Uncle? Since when did you get back from the Amazon Jungles?”
The man flashed him a grin. “I had some Tropical Killer Cakes t’ take care of, but my fork put an end to ‘em. Didn’t you see me in the papers?”
“Killer Cakes... I’m not even going to ask.” Madnes shook his head.
Uncle winked. “They may not have been cakes, exactly, but they became fine-tastin’ desserts after I put an end to their rampage.”
His uncle was a so-called bounty hunter—the good kind—tracking down problematic monsters and bad guys. He traveled the globe, and often brought Madnes souvenirs and grand tales of his daring escapades.
“You look hurt, there, kiddo,” Cosmic observed from his stance on the patio. “Matter of fact, ya’ll look in terrible shape.” His rusty eyes narrowed. “Horsin’ around is fine, but I think you’re playing a little rough, ain’t you?”
Oz took several steps back and clicked his tongue in irritation. He would have to retreat now that he was outnumbered. He silently criticized himself for acting rashly and blowing away any chance he had at winning over the power. Cheshire would never hand it over to him this way—he’d messed up, badly. And now, Madnes knew his true identity as a Wonderlander.
“Don’t think you’re ever safe, Madnes.” Oz growled. “I’ll take that power from you soon, one way or another.” Oz’s wings beat the air and the rest of his body transformed into a large crow, soaring past the steam of chimneys and up into the air currents.
Madnes watched him vanish into the clouds before he let himself sink down and slump on the ground.
“Let me get somethin’ for that,” Uncle Cosmic indicated his arm.
“YOU KNEW ABOUT ALL of this?” Madnes asked him, incredulous. “Wonderland and everything?”
“O’ course I do.” Cosmic finished patching the gash, and gave his shoulder a pat, making Madnes wince. “My baby sister was the last Madness Solver.”
“Auntie Rose?” He looked up in surprise. “Then...is that why she died?”
Cosmic opened his mouth, but then seemed to change his mind, as if regretting he’d said anything at all. “Not much t’ do about them cuts on your face,” he said instead. “Better come up with a good excuse for ‘em to your ma.”
Madnes’s eyebrows slanted downward. “Uncle, what happened to Auntie Rose?”
“Never you mind that, now. You’ve got bigger problems t’ worry about.” Cosmic helped him to his feet. The movement screamed pain through his muscles. “We gotta get you in better shape, boy! Just because your noggin is smart, now, don’t mean your body is.”
Madnes grimaced.
“That power can give you inhuman strength, and make you learn things fast, but you need an unfaltering determination in that spirit o’ yours or it’ll amount to nothin’.”
Madnes tried to pull away from the grip Uncle had around his shoulders, wincing. “I don’t know what you’re saying, but I’m fine. Let me go!”
“I haven’t given my fave nephew a hug in months. Don’t refuse me.”
“Favorite? I’m your only one!” he protested in vain.
“Your cousin, Oz.” His uncle turned more serious. “Sounds like he wants t’ take that power from you.”
Madnes nodded reluctantly. Thinking about it made guilt well up inside him. “Who is he really?” he asked.
“Prince of the crowv race in Wonderland, and the Red King’s son. That king rules over much of Wonderland.”
“Oz is a prince?” Madnes breathed, stunned. “That’s news to me.”
But thinking about it further, it did answer some questions from the past, like where Oz’s family wealth came from and why Oz had had so much trouble fitting in at school.
“He has enough power of his own. Why does he want mine?” Madnes muttered.
His uncle shrugged. “Dunno. But I’m gonna train you in some martial arts so you don’t go gettin’ your pretty face ruined again.” He chuckled.
“Huh?” Madnes swallowed. “Do Madness Solvers often get into fights?”
Madnes preferred to keep to himself and not get involved in problems, especially fights. But this power wasn’t going to allow that anymore, was it?
“Well...” Cosmic gave a vague shrug.
Madnes didn’t like where this was going...
THE NEXT DAY, AFTER school, found Madnes sitting glumly on a bench and staring out at the view of the sea. Behind him, in the playground, children laughed and screamed on tire swings and jungle-gyms, getting their frilly skirts and suspenders dirty. In the distance, a steam locomotive whistled its arrival, and a line of steam cars clamored through the streets. Oswick was lively today. And he wished he felt the same.
“Ohhh, Madnes is sulking again.”
He didn’t bother to lift his head as Alice plopped herself down onto the bench beside him. “You look like a scorched toad.”
“I’m not a scorched toad.”
“Oh. An angry scorched toad, then,” she corrected. Madnes snorted and fiddled with the brim of his maroon top hat. “What’s got you in such a glum mood swing? I hear your uncle is back; that should make you happy, right?” The green bow in her short hair had little decorative gears sewn on it, matching the gears on the side of his hat. Did she do that on purpose?
“...Yeah. But he thinks I need to toughen up. He’s going to give me lessons in martial arts or something, which is why I’m not eager to head home.”
She watched him, waiting for more.
“...And Oz came by,” he finally admitted under her scrutinizing gaze. “We sort of...got into a fight.”
Secrets couldn’t be kept from Alice. She had a way of drawing things out of him, whether he wanted to talk about them or not. But maybe that’s why he also found her company therapeutic. If only he could tell her about Wonderland and all the crazy things going on, too...but he held his tongue, chewing it.
“That was expected,” she replied. He looked down at her with a question, and she smiled knowingly. “I heard about you and Oz from Harrey a long while back. He said that things grew sour between you two. I may not have been here when it all happened, but even I know it’s a bitter thing when best friends break apart. All those emotions must have come bubbling up again when you met after so many years.”
Yikes, she was perceptive.
Alice had arrived in town soon after Oz had left. And other than Harrey, she was the only thing that had helped k
eep Madnes’s life together.
“Things grew sour between us because of an argument,” Madnes told her. He folded his fingers together, squeezing them. Guilt rattled in his stomach.
He should have been there for Oz. He shouldn’t have let things end the way they did between them. He let his head fall back. “I don’t know what to do, Alice. You know how much I hate admitting things, but...I really don’t know what to do for Oz. He’s nothing like the person I once knew, and I feel like part of it is my fault. I should’ve fought to keep our friendship alive. He needed me back then, but I was too much of a scaredy cat and an introvert to help him.”
Alice gazed ahead beyond the sprawling sea and crying gulls. “To solve a problem, you must first know what the true problem is.”
“The true problem?” He let the words mull over in his mind. “He was hurt by something I did when we were young—or rather, something I didn’t do. Now, he’s out to punish me and take my power away. That’s all I know.”
“He wants your power? He must have a reason for it.”
“Yes,” he said slowly, “but how can I learn what that reason is?”
Wait a minute. He’d accidentally mentioned his power to Alice, and she was acting as if it were normal...
His gaze narrowed at her. “You...do you know about me?”
Chapter 5:
Ninja Banana Problem
MRS. SNOOTÉ OBSERVED herself in the mirror, turning her stance this way and that.
“No, no, this will not do! My jewelry doesn’t match.”
The lady set her gold necklace on top of the dresser for a moment as she went to rummage through her closet for a more stylish blue dress.
An oblong shadow passed by the window, and something yellow flashed in the corner of her eye.
Snooté looked over her shoulder, her expression furrowed with unease.
But there was no shadow there and nothing seemed out of the ordinary...
With a shrug, she returned with another dress and reached for her necklace...only to find it gone.
“Bobby?” she shouted. “Did you take my necklace? Put it back, right now! I’ll give you to the count of three!”
The child came trundling from his room to peek into the master bedroom. “What necklace?” he grumbled, yanking at the arms of a teddy bear.
“Didn’t you just...?”
She fell silent and turned back to the window. It couldn’t have been Bobby, not when he’d been playing in his room.
Then, realization dawned on her.
“Help! We’ve been robbed!!” she cried.
“YOU...DO YOU KNOW ABOUT me?” Madnes turned on the bench to face Alice intently.
Her sea-green eyes blinked back at him full of innocence. “Your family owns a successful shop in Oswick. Isn’t it natural that Oz’s family would want to buy the business for themselves?” she said simply. “They own so much of the town already, the greedy snobs. They rarely ever even visit Oswick.”
“Uh...right.” He looked away. She wasn’t talking about the Madness Solver power—he was being stupid again.
Though, he wasn’t sure if he should feel relieved or not. A part of him wanted her to know the truth...
Pssst!
Something tickled his ear. He craned his neck around to look, but the only things to see were the grass and a leafy tree giving them shade.
His attention returned to Alice.
Psssst!
His head whipped around again, and this time he spotted a twitching cat tail floating behind the bench.
Instinct made him want to scream, grab the nearest object and throw it at the creepy disembodied tail. But a pair of cat eyes and a floating mouth also appeared and quietly called out to him, the tail motioning for him to follow.
Great. It was that weird cat again.
With a grumble, Madnes stood. “I, um, have an errand to run. But maybe we can meet at Harrey’s later?” he told Alice.
She nodded, lips holding a faint smile.
He tried to look as casual as possible while walking away: off around a bend in the park where bushes rose like a wall and hid him from sight. Then he ducked low and followed the beckoning tabby tail as it led him from the park. “What is it now, Cheshire? And just so you know, that bodiless floating tail thing is freaky.”
“You will see, you will see,” came the cat’s voice.
The tail guided him through town, dodging bikes and steam cars, until they reached the corner of a street in the business district. “Here we are!” Cheshire announced and made his full gray body materialize, wearing a blue suit vest and bowtie. His paws gestured grandly. “Your very own Madness Solver office!”
Madnes squinted. At the street corner stood the largest, fattest mushroom he had ever seen, at least two stories tall, with windows and a door decorating its beige front.
“A...mushroom?” he exclaimed. “First of all, why do I have an office? And second of all...a mushroom office?”
“Shush, shush!” Cheshire gestured with a paw. “Its true mushroom form is only visible to those connected to Wonderland, but to everyone else it’s a normal-looking shop at the corner of a busy street.”
“A mushroom?”
“Get over it.” The cat handed him a pair of keys. “Being the Madness Solver, you need an office where Wonderlanders can find you when they require your assistance.”
“And you just had to announce it to the whole of Wonderland, didn’t you? I’m still mad about how you lured me into that assembly meeting!” Madnes shuddered at the embarrassing memory: standing on stage before all those people, creatures, or whatever you wanted to call them.
“You whine too much.”
Madnes’s jaw fell. “I—I do not! I’m just...reclusive. Is that so wrong?”
Cheshire took the keys back and opened the glass front door, shoving Madnes through. It was a quaint office indoors and gave off the feel of a coffee shop, complete with chairs and little tables. It even had a counter and an odd-looking contraption for brewing coffee.
Cheshire inspected the dust. “You’re going to have to change that introverted way of yours and become a real people-person. That’s what this job requires, otherwise you will fail miserably.”
“You can’t expect me to become a completely different person in one day!”
“I don’t. But I do expect you to try. That is, unless you’d rather spend your time learning how to make hats?”
Madnes’s jaw twitched. He took off his top hat and set it on the counter. “Fine. But I can’t promise I’ll be perfect at—”
“Good! Your first job just came in today!” Cheshire interrupted and waved an envelope in his face. “The perfect way to begin your training!”
Still uneasy about a cat wearing clothes, Madnes asked what the job was.
“Jewelry has gone missing all across the wealthy part of town,” Cheshire explained. “And no one has been able to catch a glimpse of who the thief is. They come and go as silent as a mouse, apparently.” He tapped the side of his nose, “My keen whiskers tell me it could be the work of ninja bananas.”
Before Madnes could roll his eyes, Cheshire nudged his chin with the tip of his tail. “You must locate their treasure horde and return the jewelry to its rightful owners.”
Madnes pushed the annoying tail aside. “And how am I supposed to do that? What’s the grand plan?”
MADNES HELD A PAIR of binoculars up to his eyes, observing the fancy house that sat just beyond a decorative front gate. He’d waited for what felt like hours, the sky already colored with sunset, and not a banana or ninja came in sight.
He growled at the feline beside him, “This is your grand plan? Wasting away hours staring at people’s houses, and trying not to look like a creeper while doing so?”
Cheshire’s paws shrugged up. “That’s what a stakeout is. You’d best get used to it.”
He pressed his lips into a thin line. “How do you know it’s the work of ninja bananas or any Wonderlander, anyway? It could
be anything—”
Something moved, and Madnes paused to shift the binoculars. A flash of yellow with an odd crescent shape passed by.
Yep, it had to be them.
Scurrying around the parked steam car they were hiding behind, Madnes drew near and pressed against the house’s front gate, keeping to the shadows and scanning the area. He caught sight of movement: a yellow thing climbing out a window. It was followed by the scream of another victim now missing her jewelry.
“Ah-ha! There’s the evil little banana.” Binoculars up, Madnes followed as the thief made its way to the ground and sprinted across the lawn, then scrambled up and over the encircling garden wall. Madnes hurried, dashing towards the section of wall, and just caught a glimpse as the ninja banana slipped down a storm drain in the street.
“Seriously?”
Cheshire caught up to him, and they both peered down the drain. “I’ll remain up here, while you go and get yourself soaking wet,” said the cat.
“How noble of you,” Madnes replied sarcastically and yanked the drain lid off with one powerful tug of his good arm; thankfully, the injury to his other arm was healing quickly.
Madnes hesitated for one second, then dropped feet-first down into the dark pit below.
His boots landed with a heavy splash, and he suddenly wished he had a flashlight.
“Here, you’ll be needing this!” came the cat’s voice.
Something fell from above and struck him on the head. Catching the object before it hit the ground, he turned on the flashlight.
“You could thank me.”
“Yes, thank you, Cheshire, for nearly killing me with a flashlight,” Madnes retorted.
Light on, Madnes made his way forward through the slippery, dark drainage tunnel. Beyond the ceaseless patter of dripping water, he could hear the shuffling noise of little feet. He carefully followed the sound, moving the flashlight back and forth, until finally something glinted in the light.
Madnes drew near, and there it was: a sack left open and full of sparkling gold and glistening jewelry. The sack had been carefully arranged up on a ledge of brick as if to make a large nest.
