“That’s not like any fuse I’ve ever seen,” Leo said. “Better be careful with it.”
“There’s also this one,” said Remi. He pulled something loose and held it up in his other hand. The same fuse, only this one was charred with black soot.
“Blown,” Leo said. “And it looks like it’s been that way for a while.”
Remi started to put the new fuse in place, but Merganzer’s voice (and Leo’s arm) stopped him.
“Don’t put the fuse in until you’re sure you’re ready to go. It will take you to places you’ve never been. Dangerous places. But you can do it! I know you can! I trust you.”
Remi beamed. He loved being trusted with important things to do.
“Give me the fuse,” Leo said, and Remi handed it up. Leo could hang down and insert the card and the fuse when they were ready. It would be a snap — at least until the door flew up and pinned his arms to the ceiling.
Leo dug around in his overalls for a metal fuse grabber, which was a lot like a pair of pliers only it had soft, curved grippers for grabbing delicate objects.
“Remember!” Merganzer boomed once more. “Four Floogers, a zip rope, and the iron box!”
“Two flip-flops, a zonker, and a sneeze!”
“It’s really not that funny,” Leo said. “This is serious.”
“Oh, right. Sorry,” Remi said, but inside he was giggling. Zonkers and flip-flops and sneezes hit him square in the funny bone.
“One last thing and you’re off. Very important. You’ll need some instructions for later, but you should get them as soon as you can. You’ll find the instructions in a secret place.”
There was a slight pause, like Merganzer was trying to decide if he should continue, and then he did and it made no sense at all.
“An isle of Penguins, a boy named Twist, Robinson Crusoe!”
“He’s gone completely mad,” Remi whispered, but Leo was used to the puzzles and the rants. He and Merganzer went way back.
“You’ll have to grab Betty,” Leo said, and suddenly he knew why Merganzer had mentioned gloves. “There’s no other way.”
Betty was turned away from Remi, eating animal crackers as fast as her orange bill could pick them up. Remi hadn’t picked up a duck before, but Leo had. He was fairly sure it would not go well.
“You can’t just lift her,” Leo said, placing the clamped fuse in the front pocket of his overalls. “You’ll have to grab hard and throw her up here. Otherwise she’ll get loose and bite you.”
“Thanks for the warning,” Remi said. He filled his red jacket pockets with animal crackers and rubbed his hands together for good luck.
“Here goes nothing,” he said, and lunged for Betty. He got his arms around her big middle and hugged, but as Leo had suspected, Betty was no dummy. She bit down hard on Remi’s finger, which made Remi raise his arms and throw the duck over his head. Feathers were flying everywhere and Betty was quacking loudly, but she was back in the duck elevator and Leo was up on his knees, blocking her way out.
“Nice job!” Leo yelled. “Throw me some crackers!”
Remi shook the sting out of his finger and started picking up fistfuls, throwing them up into the elevator until Leo told him to stop. This seemed to calm Betty down, and she went to work on the thirty or so treats on the floor while Leo reached down and hoisted Remi up into the space. It was totally cramped inside again, and Betty started acting weird. She sat down, burped, then burped again. The third time she burped was more violent. A slobbery, projectile animal cracker launched from her throat and tagged Remi in the side of the head.
Leo went to work on the fuse, prying it into position as he leaned down over the edge of the opening and hung upside down.
“Incoming!” Remi yelled, shielding himself behind his red jacket. Betty burped again, this time shooting Leo in the butt with a slobbery thing that had recently been a giraffe cookie.
“Hurry up!” Remi said. “She looks like she might go machine-gun mode on us!”
Leo had the fuse in place and it hummed with red and green light.
“Cool,” he said, for Leo loved all mechanical things. He slid Merganzer’s special key card out of the side pocket of his overalls and inserted it into the top slot. The tree next to the slot glowed green. Pulling the card out, Leo moved as fast as he could back into the duck elevator.
For a moment, nothing happened.
Then Betty burped up an animal cracker, which flew over Leo’s head and caught in his hair.
“I’m just glad she eats them whole,” Remi said. “This could be a lot worse.”
The wall suddenly shot back up with alarming speed. Betty became very still, like she’d seen this happen before. She hiccupped and sat down.
Then something scary happened.
It felt like the cable snapping in two overhead.
The duck elevator was free-falling, and as Leo and Remi and Betty screamed and quacked and burped up animal crackers, the duck elevator zoomed past the lobby, gaining speed.
It kept going, and going, and going . . . far below the Whippet Hotel, to secret places few had ever seen.
The duck elevator slowed from out-of-control fast to very slow in the blink of an eye. This made Leo and Remi feel like they were being squashed, pinned to the floor by an almost unbearable gravity. When it stopped completely, they were left dizzy and confused.
How long had they fallen, and how far?
How would they get back up?
And what was that noise from the other side of the door?
“Where are we?” Leo wondered out loud. He hadn’t gotten up the nerve to open the small door because of the noise he heard. Something was moving out there.
“I wish we’d brought Blop with us,” Remi said. “He’d know what to do.”
Betty shook her head and wobbled to her feet. She had a certain look in her eyes Leo knew all too well.
“We need to get this duck out of here,” he said.
“Why? I don’t think we should,” Remi argued. This was becoming a little more adventurous than he’d bargained for.
“She needs to use the bathroom,” Leo said. “Now.”
Whatever was outside couldn’t be more frightening than Betty using the duck elevator as a bathroom with Leo and Remi stuck in the same space.
“Ready?” Leo asked.
“Not really,” Remi answered, but looking at Betty, he knew they were out of options.
Leo pulled the lever that opened the door, but only enough to see out through a small crack. He peered out, listening, watching. Whatever had been out there was either gone or hiding.
“Cool,” Leo said.
“Let me see,” Remi said, nudging Leo aside and pushing his face up against the crack in the elevator door.
“Leo?” he said.
“Yeah? It’s cool, right?”
“Something just touched my eyeball.”
Suddenly the doors flew open and Remi jumped back.
Two boys and a duck stared into the open space, where a monkey the size of a football stood staring at them. It had the brightest green eyes they’d ever seen, so bright they seemed to glow in the soft light.
“Is it just me or is that a really small monkey?” Remi asked.
As he was saying the words, another monkey — same size, same big green eyes — leaned its head upside down from above.
Betty was bigger than either of them and the bravest of anyone inside the elevator. She honked loudly, which sent the two monkeys scattering, and walked away in search of some privacy.
“How many do you think there are?” Leo asked.
Before Remi could answer, the two monkeys were back, and this time they weren’t alone. They had brought friends. Lots of them.
“They seem nice enough,” Leo said. They weren’t like any monkeys Leo had ever seen, and not just because of their size. These monkeys had elf ears, white brows, and dark furry faces that looked permanently startled because of the big eyes. They were covered in black body fu
r, but all the tails were long and orange, like the extension cords in the Whippet basement.
Thinking of the extension cords reminded Leo that technically he was still in the hotel, but it felt like a different world underground. Remi took out an animal cracker and cracked it into four or five smaller parts, holding his hand out.
“Hey, they like me!” Remi said. The strange little monkeys gathered around and emptied Remi’s hand in a flash.
Leo looked past the group of seven or eight monkeys staring at Remi for more food. Out beyond the duck elevator, it was like a jungle under a full moon on a starry night. Vines hung from the canopy of a huge tree that covered the sky. The tree was full of sparkling white lights, like the carriage had been. Back and forth through the branches of the great tree there were rope bridges and ladders. A woman not that much bigger than the monkeys was standing far above on one of the rope bridges.
“Don’t feed the Leprechauns!” she yelled. She had a big voice for such a small person, and she was mad. Whoever it was rapidly descended the tree by way of a series of hanging rope ladders, long vines, and rope bridges.
“Leprechauns?” Remi asked Leo. Leo darted out of the elevator just before all the monkeys jumped onto Remi at once. Remi fell on his back and a dozen more monkeys showed up and jumped on top of the first bunch. Orange tails were tangled up everywhere, and the small space was filled with shrieking and grabbing for animal crackers.
“I told him,” came a voice startlingly close to Leo. He looked to his left and then down about a foot, and there stood the woman who had been high up in the tree only moments ago.
“You’re fast,” Leo said.
“Not as fast as the Leprechauns. They’re like lightning. Only one way now,” she said.
Remi was actually laughing pretty hard, because the thing they later learned about Leprechaun monkeys was that they were completely harmless. They had no claws or teeth, so they could gum you to death, but that was about it. Mostly it just tickled when they clawed, scratched, or bit.
The pint-size woman reached into the duck elevator and started grabbing orange tails. Each time she got ahold of one, she flicked her arm over her head like she was cleaning out a closet. Leprechauns are also incredibly light, Leo soon discovered, because he was asked to help. They weighed about two pounds and didn’t have any claws to hold on with, so they really flew when they were tossed.
“Are they going to be okay?” Leo asked.
“Oh, sure, they love being tossed around. They live for this stuff,” the woman said. She had eyes too big for her head, like the monkeys, and big teeth. They were down to the last four monkeys when she took one by the tail and spun it over her head like a lasso. When she let go, Leo was almost sure he heard the flying creature say “Wooooohooooooo!”
“Those little guys are hungry,” said Remi, sitting up as the last of the monkeys, who also happened to be the very smallest, burrowed down into the pocket of his red jacket. He saw the small woman and went right to work with the questions. “Who are you? And why aren’t you feeding these monkeys?”
The woman, her button nose having turned a little red with the effort, laughed.
“You two must have parents with a million shares of Google stock. I haven’t had a guest down here in two years.”
“Oh, we’re not guests,” Leo said. “I own the hotel now. I’m Leo. This is Remi; he’s the bellboy.”
“And I’m Leo’s brother,” Remi said, getting up and finally all the way out of the duck elevator. “So technically, I think I’m like an heir to the throne or something like that. What did you say your name was?”
“I didn’t,” the woman said. She had turned more cautious and curious, like maybe Leo and Remi couldn’t be trusted. Betty quacked a couple of times and came out from behind a glob of hanging vines as Leprechauns moved out of her way.
“Betty!” the woman said, softening noticeably. “You’re back!”
She turned to the boys, the ice melting off her mood. “I haven’t seen this duck in a long time.”
She finally said her name was Ingrid and waved Leo and Remi toward the great tree in the center of the underground room. Leo had never seen a tree as big or so full of monkeys; they were everywhere, their glowing green eyes staring down at them.
“If he sent the duck, this must be serious,” Ingrid said when they arrived at the wide trunk. “Come on up, tell old Ingrid what’s going on. We’ll get it figured out.”
“Is this really happening?” Leo asked Remi in a half whisper. Remi nodded, and both boys remembered how Merganzer had told them they would meet a person named Ingrid. Remi, for one, was glad that Merganzer had assured them Ingrid could help, but he was not excited about climbing the tree. Its roots alone presented a challenge, swarming all over the ground like boa constrictors. He tripped twice just getting to the first rung of the rope ladder.
“How far up are we going?” Remi asked nervously. “Couldn’t we just talk down here where it’s safe?”
“I think you’ll like it better up there. Best view in the whole place.”
Ingrid tapped Betty on the head and laughed, then started up the rope ladder like she was related to the monkeys hanging in the trees. She could really move.
An orange tail wrapped around Remi’s arm affectionately as he pet the little monkey in his pocket.
“Looks like you found another small friend,” Leo said as he put his foot on the first rung.
Remi looked down at the face staring back up at him — incredibly cute, the kind of face that makes you smile and feel better after a hard day.
“Will you catch me if I fall?” Remi asked the Leprechaun. But the monkey didn’t understand. It looked up at Remi with those big green eyes and smiled. A monkey loves attention almost as much as it loves animal crackers.
It was some work getting to the top, but mostly it was a blast. Twice they swung on ropes from one side of the tree to the other, landing on vine-covered platforms. At one point the tree limbs became so thick, it was like crawling up through a tangled cave of leaves. When the limbs and leaves opened up again, they found that they’d climbed higher than the tree house by thirty feet. It was nestled against the wide trunk, and it appeared the only way to the front door was by way of a steep zip line.
Ingrid grabbed three zip-line rollers out of a wooden box nailed to a limb and gave brief and harrowing instructions on how to proceed. She set the roller over the line, grabbed the two handles, and was gone before either of them could say no.
“Forget it,” Remi said, glancing at Leo. “You can’t make me.”
Six or seven Leprechaun monkeys glided down the zip line by their curled tails, smiling back at Remi and Leo. The tails seemed to rise and fall loosely, like they were made of rubber. Other monkeys followed, riding down the line and jumping off at the bottom. They were a very playful bunch. Leo couldn’t help himself — he was dying to fly down to the tree house. It looked like a ton of fun, but the tree house itself was also stirring all the magic places in his imagination. It was SO not what he expected, mostly because it was made entirely of copper and rivets and pipes.
There were three sections to the tree house, different sizes, but all with roofs that looked like the tops of mushrooms, round and curved at the sides. Thick, vine-like pipes ran every which way over and through the three roofs.
“I gotta get down there,” Leo said. Looping the roller over the top of the wire, he was gone in a flash. When he reached the tree house, he let go and crash-landed into a clanging metal table. The table sat on a deck of wire grating that ran all the way around the structures. The table hit a metal chair and the chair went skidding off the grating, tumbling down the side of the tree.
“Don’t worry about it,” Leo heard Ingrid say. “Happens all the time. The Leprechauns will bring it back.”
Remi was petrified as he listened to the metal chair bounce all the way to the bottom. He could imagine each and every impact, all the broken bones and, more than likely, a lot of peeing his
pants. It would not be pretty.
“Come on, Remi, it’s easy!”
It looked for a while like Remi wasn’t ever going to make the trip, but the monkeys were nothing if not intuitive, and they liked having company. They wanted to be helpful.
“Loopa!” Ingrid yelled, and the Leprechaun monkey in Remi’s pocket popped its head up obediently. “Gather your friends — he’s going to need some help.”
Loopa was off in a split second, screeching like monkeys do when they’re giving orders. Before long, a group of them had taken out another roller and placed it on the line. One of them held it firmly in place while more monkeys than Leo could count started glomming on to the handles. They weaved their small arms and legs around one another, forming a wide loop Remi could sit on.
They all looked at Remi at once and didn’t make a sound. They stared so patiently and so forcefully that Remi couldn’t stand it.
“You guys have done this before, haven’t you?” Remi asked, inching one step closer to the zip line. He should have paid more attention. All at once, dozens of monkeys jumped on Remi’s back from the tree limbs behind him.
He didn’t have a chance.
The force of many small monkeys landing on him shoved Remi face-first into the loop, and then Remi and about fifty Leprechaun monkeys raced toward the tree house, screaming and screeching. Remi was yelling with fear, but all the monkeys were laughing, or so it seemed to Leo, who was also laughing from where he stood below.
There was a crash at the bottom, like a barrel full of monkeys had blown open, but Remi was fine.
“They’ll want to do it again,” Ingrid said. “Better get inside and give them a chance to calm down. You’ve got them riled up good.”
She passed through a door, but no monkeys followed, and Leo and Remi went inside. They gathered at an egg-shaped table and got down to business.
Floors #2: 3 Below Page 4
