Sylvester decided it was about time he made a contribution to the conversation.
“I think all three of us would like to thank you from the bottom of our hearts.”
The mouse bobbed his nose in friendly fashion, giving Sylvester a narrow-mouthed grin. He was wearing a shirt and shorts dyed in such garish, clashing colors that, even in this dim light, it made Sylvester’s head hurt to look at them. On his rear feet were sandals that seemed designed to show off his claws to best advantage. The fur on his pate had been elaborately coiffed into a ball so big it looked almost like an ancillary head.
“You could not have found better zan to find yourself in the embrace of ze famille des Roquettes,” he said.
“We couldn’t?”
“Would you like a little more light?”
The three lemmings nodded. Lemmings have rather poor vision at the best of times. The weak glow down here in what Sylvester was becoming increasingly convinced was an earth cellar was making their heads hurt.
“It iss, ’ow you say, easy enough to do.”
Rasco stepped over to the wall and drew a little farther open what Sylvester realized was some kind of a curtain. There was a crack there, a crack that ran along the bottom corner of a wall in one of The Monkey’s Curse’s bars and, correspondingly, along the ceiling of the earth cellar. Someone, one of Rasco’s ancestors if not Rasco himself, had rigged up a curtain on a high rail so that the crack could be used as an adjustable source of illumination.
And as a way of spying on whatever was going on in the bar of The Monkey’s Curse.
You couldn’t see much through the crack, of course, except people’s feet and the occasional spittoon that might float within eyeshot.
But you could hear plenty.
What the three lemmings and the little black mouse could now hear was the incursion of a half-dozen or more of Cap’n Rustbane’s cutthroats into the midst of the convivial crowd of The Monkey’s Curse.
“You scurvy knaves seen anythin’ o’ a bunch o’ lemmings?”
There was the sound of breaking glass, followed almost immediately by the sound of someone landing very heavily in the street.
“You, ahem, fine gentleman noticed anyone entering within the past few minutes?”
A sophisticated ear could have told that the glass broke less violently, but the impact of a body on the street was, at best, undetectably lighter.
“Free drinks, anyone?”
The last was Rustbane’s voice, and it drew instant cries of approval.
Rasco looked worried.
“Zey are my friends, up zere,” he said. “But zey are like anyone else in ’Angman’s ’Aven outside ze Roquettes and zeir closest relations.”
“You mean—” said Sylvester.
“Zat’s right. Any one of zem could betray our presence ’ere at any, how you say, moment. It is best we move ourselves away from here as vitement, I mean fast as possible.”
Overhead, Rustbane had clearly cornered one of the regulars at The Monkey’s Curse. From here, the voices sounded crystal clear.
“Far as I can see, old chap,” said Rustbane, belching discreetly, “those infernal lemmings vanished as if by magic from the middle of a heap of” – a sudden drunken shout drowned out his next word – “in that alley that runs up the side of the tavern.”
“An’ what these lemmings ever been a-doing to you?” said the other, clearly trying to show he wasn’t such a pushover as everyone thought. “Another pint o’ mead, I’ll trouble you for,” he added in a lower voice, indicating that in fact he was.
If the entrance from the alley into the earth cellar was widely known among the tavern’s habitués, Sylvester and the Pickleberries were as good as dead. Rustbane’s persuasive charm would have the secret out of someone, probably this old sousehead, within the next few minutes at most.
“We ’ave to be moving,” said Rasco.
“You said it,” confirmed Sylvester.
“What’s your accent?” said Mrs. Pickleberry with the air of someone who’s been locked out of a conversation quite unreasonably and for far too long.
“It ees irresistibly exotique, zou are zinking, non, ma charmante?”
“No,” said Mrs. Pickleberry, looking wistfully at the rolling pin she’d managed to keep firmly clutched in her fist all the way through the rigors of their escape from the alley. “I was thinkin’ more along the lines of how it was infuriatingly difficult to understand.”
“But, ma belle, ’ow could you zay such a thing?”
“Easier than you might imagine,” replied Mrs. Pickleberry ominously.
“Um,” said Rasco.
All four waited for someone to make the first move.
No one did.
“Truth is,” admitted Rasco after a pause, “the exotic accent is expected of us folks who live out here on the islands.”
“It is?” said Sylvester, intrigued. He’d never heard of anything like this before.
“Yeah,” said Rasco. “See, the job most of us mice have is to make the females who come here on the tourist ships feel at home. Right at home, if you know what I mean?”
“Your job’s to be a holiday fling?” said Mrs. Pickleberry, looking at the little black mouse suspiciously.
“You have hit the nail right on the thumb,” said Rasco, nodding vigorously. “I’m the cutie-pops every gal dreams of spending a week with, then never having to see again no matter how long she lives. You’d be surprised how many gals are prepared to pay just for the privilege o’ swanking me around in front of the other gals, y’know, the gals that are supposed to be their friends.”
Mrs. Pickleberry started to giggle.
“Bit of a dreamboat, aincher?”
“That’s the general idea, Mrs. P.”
She cackled again.
“Now,” said Rasco, “I really do think we ought to be getting out of here. Right now. Not a moment more’s delay.”
“He’s right,” Sylvester said to Viola and Mrs. Pickleberry.
“Good. We’s all agreed then,” said Rasco, clapping his paws together.
“Only,” he added, “where do you guys think it might be a good idea to escape to?”
✿ ✿ ✿ ✿ ✿.
It took a long time for Viola and Sylvester, between them, to tell Rasco the story of how they had been bamboozled then seized by the dastardly Cap’n Terrigan Rustbane and his equally vile crew. In a way, the pair of them realized as they were telling it, it was a story with everything: violence, pathos, remorse, romance, comedy, tragedy …
“Blimey, mon,” said Rasco when at last their narrative petered out, “that ain’t half an epic, ain’t it?”
“Well, I, ah …” said Sylvester, aware he was sounding even more of a pompous ass with each extra syllable.
“This Rustbane o’ yours,” Rasco cut in, covering up Sylvester’s confusion gracefully, “he sounds more than a smidgen like someone who’s made himself a bit of a legend around here. But the one I’m thinking of isn’t called Rustbane.” He tapped his chin with little sharp claws. “His name is, ah, that’s it, his name’s Deathflash.”
By now they were some considerable distance from the wine cellar of The Monkey’s Curse. At least, Sylvester hoped they were. Rasco had shown them a tiny opening at the join between wall and floor, concealed behind a large tun of malmsey.
“Malmsey?” said Mrs. Pickleberry with a grin, pausing to sniff appreciatively at a puddle of the stuff that had leaked out onto the floor.
“Away with you, Mrs. P!” cried Rasco, laughing, pulling her away from the heady liquid.
The crack in the clay seemed barely large enough for a mouse to get into, let alone a full-grown lemming (not to mention a full-grown, rather plump lemming like Mrs. Pickleberry) but Rasco vanished into it with an adroit wriggle and clearly expected the others to
have no difficulty following him. Sylvester looked at Viola, who shrugged, so he shrugged too and they both looked at Mrs. Pickleberry.
“Hold Elvira, there’s a dearie.”
Viola took the rolling pin and the two younger lemmings watched in amazement as Mrs. Pickleberry disappeared into the gap with the same ease Rasco had displayed.
They had more difficulty getting the rolling pin through the crack than its owner seemed to have had.
Viola went next.
“It’s not as difficult as it looks, Sylvester,” she called back to him.
Skeptically, he put his forepaws on the two edges of the crevice, then pushed his nose into it, then gave a little thrust with his back legs just so and … got firmly stuck. It felt as if some monster had snatched him up in its mouth and was slowly tightening its teeth around his midriff.
The worst of all was that he could see his three companions watching him with perfect calm. Rasco had produced a lighted candle from somewhere and was holding it high above his head. The two lemmings and the little black mouse were standing in a cavern that, though not as big as the wine cellar, was plenty spacious enough for them. The floor was comprised of old crumbly brick. It was harder to see the walls in the flickering shadows created by the candle, but Sylvester could discern just enough of them to know he didn’t want to see them any more clearly. There was a definite sense of evilly fluorescing fungal ooze and clammily lurking spiderwebs.
Not that he had much brainpower left over right now to spare for thoughts about carnivorous fungi. Right now, he was firmly stuck in a sharp-edged hole and it seemed as if the only way he’d ever get through it was to leave his rear half behind him for the pirates to find.
“Just give one great big heave,” said Rasco helpfully.
“I’ve already tried that,” gasped Sylvester. “Several times,” he added.
“Pizza,” said Viola.
“Eh?” said everyone.
“Pizza,” she explained. “Sylvester tends to eat too much of it. I’ve told him and told him. Mom, why’re you looking at me like that?”
The final question seemed to be addressed not so much to Mrs. Pickleberry as to Mrs. Pickleberry’s rolling pin.
Through the red haze of his own panic, Sylvester saw Viola’s mother come to some sort of decision.
“Sylvester,” said Mrs. Pickleberry.
“Yes?”
“You ever been bit by a rattlesnake?”
“Er, no.” What in the world, thought Sylvester in a rare moment of clarity, is the daft old bat talking about?
Like all lemmings, he had a distinct aversion to snakes of any sort. Rattlers weren’t the worst, that’d likely be cobras, but at the same time they weren’t far from it.
“A rabid rattlesnake?” probed Mrs. Pickleberry.
“Most certainly not!”
“Cos I think there’s one o’ them rabid ones back in that wine cellar wot we just left, and he’s got his fangs all shiny and eager and his greedy little eyes on yer bum. In fact, I think if yer lissens real careful yer can just hear his dinky little rattle-rattle-rattle …”
“Oh, hello, Sylvester,” said Viola, surprised to find him standing beside her, puffing and panting a lot. “How did you get yourself out of that hole in the wall?”
“I haven’t the faintest idea,” answered Sylvester, honestly.
Mrs. Pickleberry cackled irritatingly.
“Are we ready to get a move on now the pantomime’s over?” said Rasco in a bored voice.
“Just let me catch my breath,” Sylvester replied.
“Or the pirates catch you,” said Rasco pointedly. Without waiting for any further response he turned and, holding the candle aloft in front of him, scuttled toward the darkness at the rear of the cavern.
After a moment’s pause, Mrs. Pickleberry chased after him, with Viola and Sylvester, arm in arm, coming along behind her.
The next hour or so was a bit of a blur in Sylvester’s memory, but at last they found themselves in the sanctuary of a small cavern that smelled of lots of warm mammalian bodies snuggled closely together. Of that and, just faintly, of mature cheddar cheese. Miraculously, Rasco’s candle was still flickering happily. He’d used the candle’s own hot wax to stick it firmly upright in the middle of the cavern floor, and the little gang had sprawled around it like explorers might sprawl around their nighttime campfire.
“Deathflash,” Rasco repeated, staring at the small flame.
Sylvester was sure he’d heard the name before but he couldn’t remember quite where or when. Then he remembered! Back in Foxglove, what seemed like a million years ago, when he and Viola had been pretending to listen worshipfully while letting Rustbane brag away about his own magnificence. What was it the gray fox had said? “Not for nothing do some people call me Deathflash. Or Doomslayer. Or Warhammer. Or … well, I can’t hardly remember all the different names people call me, not even the ones you can mention in polite company, which are by far the minority, but you can be sure most of them attest to the enormousness of my powers.”
“That’s him!” Sylvester exclaimed, leaning forward enthusiastically. “That’s Rustbane, sure enough. It’s one of the names people have given him or he’s given himself, more like. Such a boastly fellow, he is.”
“If it’s Deathflash we’re up against,” said Rasco slowly, looking off into the moving shadows in a corner of the room, “then we sure got ourselves a problem.” He shuddered theatrically. “They say even the monsters of the ocean depths are terrified of the gray fox, despite the fact he feeds ’em so well with all the corpses he casts their way.”
“Thanks,” said Viola, pressing herself close up to Sylvester’s side. “That’s cheering.” But, glancing sideways, Sylvester could see her eyes were gleaming.
“I thinks,” continued Rasco, paying them no attention, “we ought to go consult my grandma.”
“Your grandma?” said Viola’s mom.
“None other, Mrs. P.”
“And who is this grandmother of yours, dearie?”
“My grandma, Mrs. P, is Madame Zahnia.”
The mouse paused for effect – an effect that did not come. The three lemmings just stared at him expectantly.
“You haven’t heard of Madame Zahnia?” said Rasco.
“Not entirely,” Sylvester said after a brief, embarrassed pause.
“The greatest voodoo priestess this side of the yawning chasm between the living and the dead?”
“The name rings a bell, I’m sure it does,” lied Sylvester.
“Does she write a newspaper column?” asked Mrs. Pickleberry, brows wrinkling.
“She could,” Rasco assured her, “but in point of fact she, ah, doesn’t. Instead, she is content to accept the reverence of every god-fearing mouse in the Caraya Islands – and many a rat and porcupine too. She is a woman of” – he sucked in his breath and looked at each of their faces in turn – “of power.”
“Oh,” said Sylvester.
“My sisters are likewise all trained in the finer and subtler arts of voodoo,” Rasco carried on after a dramatic pause, “but not one of ’em is a patch on me old gran. She is mighty wise, is Madame Zahnia, and there ain’t a voodoo-practicing mouse under Sagaria’s blue skies that don’t respect her. I’m sure that, if anyone can, my gran can help you.”
The three lemmings glanced at each other. When Viola spoke she knew she was speaking for all of them.
“Thank you, Rasco. We’d really like to meet your grandmother, as you suggest. Where does she live?”
“Quite a distance from here, in the middle of the jungle.”
“How are we supposed to get there?”
Rasco looked down the length of his hindlegs to the feet at their ends and curled the claws there.
“On foot?” said Mrs. Pickleberry.
“You got it in one, Mr
s. P.”
12 Jungle Bungles
How much longer?” gasped Sylvester. Fortunately, there was no one to embarrass him by being within earshot. Even more fortunately, one of the people who wasn’t there was Viola.
Somewhere far above, amid the canopy of foliage that hid the sky from view, a leaf tilted to send a drop of sap plummeting toward the thick, moldering sludge of the jungle floor. The droplet hit the back of Sylvester’s neck just before reaching its intended destination. By that time, it had cooled down to a temperature not significantly above boiling point.
“Owwwwww!” Sylvester wailed in misery.
He was glad Viola wasn’t near enough to hear him say that, either.
“Jungle life isn’t all it’s cracked up to be,” he muttered crossly to himself, as the sap peeled painfully from his hairy neck and he began pressing his way forward through the vegetation once more. “I wonder if that’s just a big root or if it’s a huge snake planning to squeeze me to death and then swallow me whole?”
The question seemed, in his current state of abject exhaustion, to be more of academic interest than anything else.
He felt like it had been forever since Rasco had led them to the place where they could escape from the block of buildings of which The Monkey’s Curse was a part. By then the whole night had gone by and the sun was already drifting clear of the horizon.
The little mouse had gestured them to stay back. “We wait until nightfall,” he said firmly.
“But that’s hours away!” cried Viola. “We can’t wait that long.”
“Better to wait a while than to find ourselves fried by the noonday sun,” Rasco told her, lowering his voice ominously. “If we even live that long.”
All he got from Viola by way of reply was a gasp.
“Predators?” said Sylvester, trying to maintain his cool.
Rasco nodded. “Back where you folks come from, perhaps they don’t have boa constrictors, rabid crocodiles, venomous spiders the size of hunting dogs …”
The Tides of Avarice Page 30
