The Slippery Map

by N. E. Bode

  And you might have some questions too, such as, why all of a sudden is it not just a pinprick through the Map, but a big, windy portal?

  Well, the answer is this: Vince Vance had grown more and more agitated, poking the pins into the dimple-scars. He’d gotten angrier and angrier. “Hollywood?” he kept saying, a loud mantra, “Hollywood?” And soon the Map had pins all over it, not just in the dimple-scars. And then he put the final pin into place: the Dragon Palace. He pushed it in hard and then twisted it angrily, making a mighty hole.

  “Hollywood!” he screamed through the hole.

  And that is what Sister Margaret of the Long Sighs and Withering Glare heard, and so did the boy and his parents.

  “Hollywood?” the parents said to each other.

  Sister Margaret of the Long Sighs and Withering Glare had yanked the boy to his parents and wrestled the umbrella from his fist. She let it drag her across the street, back to the nunnery gate. She opened the gate and pulled the gusty umbrella through the front door, the take-out order still held tight—she wasn’t one to waste food. She made an awful clatter, battling the wild, bucking umbrella.

  The nuns all came running. They understood immediately—not how or why Sister Margaret of the Long Sighs and Withering Glare had a portal in this blue umbrella—but what exactly they should do next.

  Clutching their takeout and plasticware, the nuns stepped into the blue umbrella one at a time, and disappeared into the Gulf of Wind and Darkness. Mother Superior was the final nun. She dipped the toe of her rubber-soled shoe into the umbrella. There’s one thing you should know about Mother Superior: She was raised in Kansas and, as a child, developed a fear of tornados. When she stepped into the umbrella and the wind swirled up her skirt, she held on to the blue umbrella and it snapped through its own portal. So as all of the nuns were sailing through the Gulf, Mother Superior was still clutching the blue umbrella. And the nunnery was empty and still, except for a little swirl of dust and then nothing.

  And Vince Vance, you ask? What about him? He had a good cry, and then he took all of the pins out of the Map. He rolled it up—and, knowing that he hadn’t found Hollywood and that he might never escape to find his fame—he did as he’d been ordered.

  He made his way to Dark Mouth’s tower so that he could deliver the Map.

  CHAPTER 21

  AN UNLIKELY TRAIL

  It was dark by the time Oyster, Hopps, and Leatherbelly got to the steepest part of the Pinch-Eye Mountains. Dark Mouth’s Torch was the only light. It glowed in the night sky, making the shadows dart and waver so that it was hard to know where to get a handhold. Leatherbelly hadn’t had the paws for it. He was in the sack with the keys, which Hopps had tied to his back. Every once in a while Leatherbelly let out a pitiful whine.

  “Almost there,” Hopps would tell him. This comforted Oyster the first few times he’d said it, but now he wasn’t sure if they’d ever reach Dark Mouth’s compound. The good news was that the harsh terrain didn’t allow for the beasts they’d found below. The only creatures that could handle the steep and rocky incline were Many-Eyed Mountain Goats. They were eerie to look at, covered in their excess of eyes, but they were fairly tame creatures that looked on from a distance.

  When Oyster gazed across the valley to the rise beyond, he could see ORWISE SUSPAR AND SONS REFINERY lit up in bright letters, looming above the puffing stacks. He wondered if Drusser and Ringet had made it back to Boneland, if they were safe on the other side, getting the uprising going.

  In addition to the bag of keys, Eshma had given them some meat-paste sandwiches and a water jug, which they’d finished. Oyster was hungry again, though, and his legs were burning and trembling from the climb.

  When Hopps saw the first air hole, he pointed it out. “Getting close,” he said.

  The air hole was protected by a slatted vent cover like the heating ducts in the nunnery. Oyster imagined the channels dug out underground and how each led to a cell—and how one led to cell number forty-two, where his parents had lived for many years. It was strange to be so close to them. He realized he was scared to see them. How would they react? He wanted so much from them—all the love he’d missed his whole life. His chest felt heavy with all of his wanting.

  He said, “Let’s stop a minute, Hopps.”

  Hopps was tired too. He pulled the sack off his back and sat on a rocky ledge. Leatherbelly nosed his way from the opening and looked around, wide-eyed.

  “We’ll regain some energy,” Hopps said.

  “My parents are down there somewhere.”

  “I know,” Hopps said.

  “I’m scared,” Oyster said. “What if I can’t save them? What if they don’t like me?”

  Hopps turned to Oyster sharply. “Oyster,” he said, “don’t you know they love you?”

  Oyster shrugged. “Then why did they hand me over to you, Hopps? Why didn’t they bring me back through the Slippery Map so we could be together? They could have, couldn’t they? Why didn’t they do that?” Oyster’s voice was tight in his throat.

  Hopps shook his head. “They saved you, Oyster. It was hard then. The Foul Revolution. They loved you then, Oyster. They love you now.”

  Oyster felt heartsick, guilty for ever having doubted his parents, their love. They’d saved him. They’d made the right choice. “I want to see them,” he said. “With my own eyes.” He sat near a vent covering and peered into it.

  “There are prisoners under us,” Hopps said. “Imagine, someone is down there, on the other side of this air hole. But not for long.” He was slouching with fatigue. His face was wet with sweat. It glistened in the torchlight from overhead.

  “I wonder who it is,” Oyster said.

  And then there was a hoarse whisper. It shot up through the vent and was pushed into the night air. “Prisoner Five Seven Two Four. Olgand Preferous.”

  Oyster and Hopps were startled. They leaned in closer.

  “Hello?” Oyster said.

  “Few words. You’re being looked for—you are a boy, yes? A boy with something called ‘a dog’?”

  “I’m Oyster, and Leatherbelly is with me. How did you know?”

  “Fewer words. Hush. Notes slipped through vents. Boy and dog, missing. Have you seen them? We ate the notes. No evidence.”

  “Written on little slips of paper?” Oyster asked. “Little notes in slanted handwriting?”

  “Yes.”

  Oyster turned to Hopps. “It’s Sister Mary Many Pockets. She’s looking for me.”

  Leatherbelly let out a hopeful bark.

  “Are you saving us?” the voice said.

  “We are. We are,” Oyster said.

  “He’s not just any boy, missing. He’s the boy!” Hopps explained.

  “Are my parents there?” Oyster asked.

  “Fewer words. Hush. Yes. Parents. We’ve been waiting. Keys?”

  Oyster took this to mean that his parents were there, somewhere, underground. “Yes, keys,” Oyster said, trying to use as few words as possible.

  “Pass through vent.”

  This made Oyster nervous. He’d been tricked before, giving the Slippery Map to Vince Vance. “No, Hopps,” Oyster said. “What if he isn’t Prisoner Five Seven Two Four? Olgand Preferous.”

  “Hopps?” the voice said, suddenly sounding chummy. “Is that you? Don’t you remember me? I’m O. The O. From the old days.”

  “O? Old O, the Preferous Professor! Could it be you? I heard you disappeared. Is Oli and Marge’s boy with you?”

  There was a shuffling noise, a clanging, and then another voice. “I’m here, Mr. Hopps, sir. Are my parents okay?”

  Hopps started to cry. He could barely get the words out. “They miss you,” he said in a shaky voice. He wiped his teary eyes.

  “Are you going to save us?” Oli and Marge’s son asked.

  “Fewer!” Ogland said.

  “Yes,” Hopps said. He dug the keys out from under Leatherbelly. The duct was slatted, but there was a screw in each of the fou
r corners. They were a bit rusty, but loose enough to wheedle off. It was a square duct. Oyster held the ring of keys over it.

  “Go ahead,” Hopps said. “Let them go.”

  Oyster released his grip, and the ring of keys started its noisy, clattering descent, but nearly as soon as it started skidding and bumping through the twisting ductwork, it stopped.

  “Keys?” Hopps asked.

  “No,” Ogland said.

  Hopps looked at Oyster. “I think they got hung up on something.”

  “They’re stuck?” Oyster’s voice was dry, his throat tight.

  “Problem?” the voice asked.

  “No,” Hopps said, then he turned to Oyster. “Maybe we can knock it loose.” He picked up a rock and put it down the winding chute. It banged and banged, down and down and down.

  “Rock,” the voice said. “Not keys. Problem?” the voice said.

  Oyster looked down the dark hole.

  “It’s hit a snag. Maybe it’s hung up on a root that’s pushed its way into the duct. It’ll take more precise work to get it unhooked.” Hopps looked at Leatherbelly. “No problem,” he said.

  “But there is a problem,” Oyster whispered, “a big one.”

  “No, there isn’t,” Hopps said, pointing at Leatherbelly and then to the square hole. “The beast can do it. He has teeth. He can unhook the keys.”

  Leatherbelly, still inside the sack, tensed up. Oyster could feel him go rigid. “He can’t. He won’t fit,” Oyster said.

  Leatherbelly complained about this jab at his weight by giving a little growl.

  “He’ll fit,” Hopps said, reaching over and pulling Leatherbelly out of the sack.

  Leatherbelly’s belly had firmed up. He’d been working hard. He was no longer the flabby dog in the nunnery kitchen.

  But still Oyster didn’t want him to go. He’d come to rely on Leatherbelly. They’d been through a lot. “How would we find him again?”

  “He’ll be a hero among the prisoners. When they’re free, they will bring him with them, surely.”

  “He’s not that kind of beast,” Oyster said, but he wasn’t so sure of that. Leatherbelly had fought Water Snakes and outrun Spider Wolves and Dragons. “Or, well, he didn’t used to be.”

  Oyster looked down at Leatherbelly. Leatherbelly looked up at Oyster. He stuck out his narrow chin. He gave a nod.

  “Okay, then,” Oyster said, hefting the dog from his shirt.

  Leatherbelly walked to the hole, solemn as a soldier. He peered down the chute, looked back to Oyster and Hopps once, just once, and then stepped into the chute and began to skid along himself. They listened to Leatherbelly careen down, but not very far. He seemed to stop at around the same place as the keys.

  There was silence, then a small grunt, and then the glorious sound of a dog skidding along ductwork accompanied by the occasional clatter of metal on metal. Ah, Leatherbelly, the hero, Oyster thought, imagining Leatherbelly with the key ring in his teeth. Who would have ever guessed it?

  There was a solid thud, and then the voice again. “Got ’em!”

  The only thing left in the sack was the key that unlocked Dark Mouth’s inner compound.

  “Go. Danger. They know you come. Thank you,” the voice said.

  Oyster whispered to Hopps, “They know you come? Do you think Dark Mouth is waiting for us too? He must be.”

  Hopps sighed. “He knows.”

  Oyster felt sick. He wiped some sweat from his forehead. “We’ll never win,” he said.

  Hopps put his hands on his hips, secured the sack on his back again, and looked at his boots. Then he bent over to examine something on the ground. “What’s this?” he said. Hopps pointed out a small weed that had bullied its way up from a crevice in the packed dirt.

  “A weed?” Oyster said.

  “Touch it,” Hopps said.

  Oyster did. The weed didn’t bend to his touch. It was stiff, brittle, as if held in a little calcified casement. “It feels like tiny bones,” Oyster said.

  “It has turned to bone,” Hopps explained. “This is a place of death and darkness. Remember? Ringet told you about the giant twenty-foot High-Tipping Bluebells, the Rosy-Upsies, the old garden that was destroyed for Dark Mouth’s Torch. Do you recall it?”

  “The petals used to float into the valley like blankets,” Oyster said.

  “Yes, yes, that’s it. Well, Ringet told you that Dark Mouth had killed everything, turned it all to bone. Here it is. Our first real sign. We’re close now.”

  They both stared up at the Torch. “It’s too big,” Oyster said. “It’s too tall. How will we ever put it out?”

  Hopps shook his head. “I don’t know, Oyster. But we have to. That is how the Perths will know that his reign has ended.” He lowered his voice to a whisper. “I’m afraid of Dark Mouth, massive, pale, his mouth a dark hole. Just a little afraid.”

  Oyster touched the weed again. “Will he turn us to bone, Hopps? Is that what he does?”

  Hopps didn’t want to answer. His face twisted. He was holding his breath.

  “Is that what he does?”

  Hopps nodded. “That, yes, or you go underground in the prison for the rest of your life.”

  Oyster wanted to go back into the valley. He didn’t want to go on. His parents didn’t really need him, did they? All of the prisoners could free themselves now. Even if he didn’t find the Slippery Map and never made it home again, at least he wouldn’t be made of pure bone.

  The Torch flickered and light fell for a second on something else sitting near the weed. Oyster squinted at it in the dim light. He picked up a small, brown, dimpled husk, busted open. It sat in his palm. He looked up at the remaining cliff. There was a littered trail.

  “It’s a peanut shell!” Oyster explained. “A peanut shell.” Oyster had no choice. He had to go on. Sister Mary Many Pockets was on her way to Dark Mouth. Oyster had gotten her into this. He’d have to get her out. He hopped up and started following the trail.

  “What is it?” Hopps said, scrambling after him. “Oyster?”

  CHAPTER 22

  DARK MOUTH’S INNER COMPOUND

  A few peanut shells sat in a small heap at the wide door on the side of Dark Mouth’s tower. Oyster and Hopps had the key to this door. It was in the sack on Hopps’s back. Sister Mary Many Pockets didn’t have a key and so the trail of peanut shells continued on behind a row of stiff bone-bushes.

  “We shouldn’t use the key,” Oyster said. “They’re waiting for us. Ogland said so.”

  Hopps agreed. By now, Oyster had explained that the peanut shells belonged to Sister Mary Many Pockets. Hopps already had great respect for her since Eshma had told them that she’d scared off the Blood-Beaked Vultures and survived. Oyster and Hopps followed the trail of peanut shells behind the bone-bushes to a broken window. It was unlike Sister Mary Many Pockets to break a window. All of the nuns were very upset when someone broke one of their windows, which happened from time to time. But Oyster reminded himself that these were desperate times.

  Oyster and Hopps helped each other through the window and inside a dimly lit circular stairwell. The air was cold and damp.

  They tiptoed up the dark turning stairs until they came to what first appeared to be a row of lamps lining the hallway. But then there were small voices, saying, “Is it time?” “Is that the boy?” “Will you save us?”

  Oyster leaned in close to one of the lamps and saw that it was actually a small cage mounted on the wall with Wingers inside.

  “Are you okay?” Oyster asked, examining the cage’s lock.

  “We’ve heard that it’s time,” a female Winger said. “True?”

  Another Winger in a cage a few steps up chimed in, “Will you save us?”

  “Of course,” Hopps said. He pulled a sharp tool out of his sack. “Step back,” he said. The Wingers in the cage pressed their backs against the far bars. Hopps wedged the tool between the bars and pried them open, leaving enough space for the Wingers to fly out.

/>   “Thank you!” they cried.

  Hopps looked up the long rows of ascending cages. “We don’t have enough time to save you all right now,” he said. “But I promise, we will.”

  “If we live,” Oyster added.

  Hopps quickly pried open another cage’s bars, setting Wingers loose.

  “Where’s your army?” the female Winger asked.

  “It’s just us, I think,” Oyster said. “And a nun. Did you see one go by?”

  The Winger from the next cage over stuck her face between the bars. “Are nuns short and wide and wearing black dresses and long hats that fall on their backs?”

  “Yes,” Oyster said. “Was one here?”

  The Winger looked sad. “Yes, they took her to the Torch.”

  “The Torch?” Hopps asked. “She’s with Dark Mouth?”

  “Straight up there,” another Winger said. “She put up some fight.”

  Oyster looked up the winding stairs. “They’ve got her already.”

  “And now,” Hopps said, working a hole in another set of bars, “they know they’ve got you. They know you’ll come for her.”

  “Well,” Oyster said, “they’re right. Nothing else to do.”

  “Right,” he said.

  “We can help,” said one of the Wingers set loose. “We can be messengers. We can tell the others that you need help.”

  “Do you know Eshma and Ippy?”

  They all nodded.

  “Tell them to hurry,” Oyster said. “Thank you.”

  The Wingers flew off with great haste while Oyster and Hopps continued to climb the tower stairs.

  Oyster wondered if Sister Mary Many Pockets had already been served to Vicious Goggles. He wondered if Vince Vance would be here with Dark Mouth, if he would still have the Slippery Map. He wanted to know, once and for all, what Dark Mouth looked like. He wanted to tell him just what he thought of him. But when he came to the landing where the stairs stopped at a pair of closed iron doors and saw the ground dotted with peanuts—whole and shelled—he imagined that Sister Mary Many Pockets had fought hard, and he was scared.