Gertie Milk and the Great Keeper Rescue

by Simon Van Booy

  “Why on earth would the B.D.B.U. plonk us down so far away?”

  “At least we have the Time Cat, and the air is fresher here. . . .”

  “Fresh air?” Kolt said, suddenly noticing movement in the distance. “Oh no, look!” A ragged human figure was approaching. After a few seconds, dozens of other bodies began to emerge from all directions, limping slowly toward the Time Cat, with blank, hollow looks on their faces.

  Kolt was pale with fright. “Gertie, I don’t suppose you know what a zombie is, do you?”

  “Um, um, let me see . . .” she said, “some kind of spicy chewing gum?”

  “Er, no—trust me, you wouldn’t want a zombie in your mouth.”

  “Mashed potato?” said Robot Rabbit Boy.

  Kolt turned to glare at the Series 7.

  Gertie could feel Kolt’s fear now, and panic began spreading through her body at the sight of so many strange people coming toward them.

  “Why are they walking so slowly like that?”

  “Because they’re zombies!” Kolt yelled. “Walking hunks of dead human flesh!”

  “Zombies?” Gertie said frantically. “What do they want with us?”

  “Let’s just say they’re not vegetarian.”

  Kolt slammed the Time Cat into first gear. But when they tried to drive away, the wheels spun in the wet grass. Clumps of dirt flew up from the tires and mud splattered the windows.

  “We can’t get traction!” Kolt shrieked. “This ground is like butter.”

  “Butter!” Robot Rabbit Boy exclaimed. “A dollop of butter?”

  Suddenly there was a type of disorderly music made by tiny bells and wooden clappers—instruments being carried by the people now surrounding the Time Cat.

  “Er, that’s weird,” Gertie said, “they’re putting on some kind of zombie concert.”

  Then something occurred to Kolt, as his expression of fear changed to one of delight. “This is no zombie concert! Those are bells used by people with leprosy! We’re saved!”

  “Phew,” Gertie said. “So not zombies?”

  “I don’t suppose you know what leprosy is?” Kolt asked in a voice that Gertie found slightly annoying.

  “Not exactly,” she said, “but I suppose you’re going to tell me it’s something horrible, using a very long word that I don’t understand?”

  Kolt frowned. “I wouldn’t dream of doing that! I hate it when I’m reading a book and the author uses a super-long word to make herself look clever.”

  They were now completely surrounded by a hobbling mass of bodies. Men, women, and small children, all suffering from a disease called leprosy and thankfully not another condition known as pneumonoultramicroscopicsilicovolcanoconiosis.

  Gertie cleared her throat. “So what is it then?”

  “People with leprosy have been infected with bacteria that causes skin growths, which can disfigure the person—even stop them from feeling pain, which means they may not know if a limb is broken or infected.”

  “That’s a really horrible disease,” Gertie said sympathetically, noticing that some of the victims of leprosy were missing hands or legs or feet. “Can we help them?”

  “Sadly no, the cure hasn’t been invented yet.”

  “We should have brought it! I bet it’s down in bedroom 469 with that walking mushroom.”

  “Tempting I know, but we have to let progress unfold naturally, Gertie.”

  “Well, we could at least have brought them wheelchairs or something—some of those children might be our missing Keepers!”

  Robot Rabbit Boy (who’d been in the backseat near the emergency juice boxes) hopped onto Gertie’s lap.

  Some victims of the disease couldn’t walk and dragged their bodies along the ground. Some had lost fingers or whole arms. Nearly all had some kind of facial deformity.

  “Usually the bells and clappers are used to get someone’s attention after a victim’s voice has fallen prey to the disease, but in this case, they are warning us to stay away,” Kolt explained. “They’re trying to let us know we’re in danger of catching their disease, despite their terrible pain.”

  “I feel very sorry for them,” Gertie admitted. “They might look weird on the outside, but inside they have the same thoughts and feelings as us, right?”

  Kolt nodded seriously.

  “History really is a nightmare. They’re doomed and there’s nothing they can do but suffer.”

  “Which is why it’s so important we defeat the Losers. Without science and education, there would never have been a cure.”

  Just then, the Time Cat’s wheels found some traction in the dirt and they were sliding sideways.

  “Finally moving!” Kolt said, turning the wheel to get them going straight.

  “Go slowly,” Gertie said. “In case anyone falls in front of us.”

  “Good idea.”

  “Fly,” said Robot Rabbit Boy, “mush.”

  One person they passed was ringing his bell so vigorously that the metal bit came flying out and hit the windshield. Behind him stood a child who was missing both her hands.

  “When was the cure for leprosy invented?”

  “Er, um, let’s see, 1980, I think . . .”

  “WHAT?!?! That’s almost five hundred years from now!”

  Gertie was determined to do something, and rolled down her window.

  “Well, if we can’t get them the cure . . .” she said, pulling all the money they had brought with them from the pockets of her gown (and from Kolt’s leather satchel), “then at least we can make them rich!”

  With the window down, Gertie began flinging out gold coins, silver pieces, even emeralds and rubies.

  “Butter!” Robot Rabbit Boy said, taking off the gold coin from around his neck and chucking it out into the field.

  “What are you both doing? We need that! How will we buy food?”

  “We can live on the emergency cakes and moonberry juice!”

  As they drove across the field in the direction of the road, Gertie looked back and watched the victims waving madly as best they could.

  “What are they doing?”

  “They’re thanking you,” Kolt said. “You’ve made them wealthy beyond their wildest dreams.”

  “I’m glad,” Gertie said, “but I wish we could give them the cure now.”

  “Well, we can’t, but thanks to you, they’ll be able to live in decent houses, and eat soft food that doesn’t hurt their gums, and take baths and have the nice things we don’t even think about—like comfortable straw beds.”

  Gertie checked her pocket for the glass vial of medicine they had come to return. In her heart she felt, more than ever before, the reason she had been chosen to be a Keeper of Lost Things.

  “I think I understand now why knowledge is so vital, and why our duty is more important than the lives we had before, the ones we lost.”

  “Yes, it’s paramount”—Kolt smiled, driving up onto the dirt track—“because knowledge fills a space in humans that would otherwise fill up with fear.”

  “The Losers want people to be afraid, don’t they?”

  “Eggcups fly.”

  “Yes, but what they don’t realize, Gertie, is that when people live in fear, they’re easy to convince that attacking others is the only way to feel safe.”

  Gertie thought of her brother, and wondered what he was doing at that exact moment, wherever in time he was.

  “And so if humans were to lose knowledge,” Kolt said, steering the Time Cat around an enormous brown puddle, “the result would not be mindless harmony as the Losers think, but endless war, disease, and suffering.”

  Gertie thought for a moment. “So ignorance is not bliss?”

  “No,” Kolt said seriously. “Ignorance is danger.”

  16

  A Dream Home
for Fleas

  SOON THE MARSHY FIELD was behind them. The sounds from the tiny bells and clappers was replaced by the buzzing of insects and the smell of damp wood. Gertie leaned out her window to guide Kolt onto the road.

  “Watch out,” she said. “There’s a giant hole—move to the right.”

  Kolt steered around the hole, but instead of pulling onto the narrow dirt highway he parked the Time Cat under some mulberry trees.

  “There’s no way we can drive an E-Type Jaguar into Renaissance Venice.”

  Gertie looked at the road, a narrow track of mud with deep puddles and the occasional pyramid of horse droppings.

  “Dollops.”

  “But Venice seems like a long way.”

  “Sorry, Gertie, it’s too risky to drive any farther.”

  “But we can’t come all the way back here for the Time Cat after?”

  “We have to, it’s a double return, remember? We have eleven hours in each place.”

  “Oh, but it’s too far, I was hoping we could use the extra time to look for Keepers?”

  Kolt cloaked the Time Cat with the Narcissus button.

  When they started walking, Robot Rabbit Boy ran ahead with one hand on his fake mustache and the other on his leather belt.

  “Why is he in such a hurry?” Kolt asked.

  “If there’s one thing I’ve learned since he came to live with us, it’s that what goes on in a rabbit’s head is one of the great mysteries of the universe.”

  Kolt was about to say something when his foot disappeared in a puddle.

  “Wet feet again! What’s the deal?”

  The road was indeed much sloppier than it looked, with flies hovering over each slimy puddle. When they reached an enormous one, Robot Rabbit Boy used his dagger to measure the depth.

  “Lavender.”

  “Ugh, this stuff is a nightmare!” Kolt said.

  “I told you we should have driven!”

  “It would have been too dangerous.”

  “Well, we could have gone a little farther . . . we haven’t even seen anyone!”

  “Renaissance Italians loved anything beautiful and well designed. The Time Cat would be taken from us for sure, then pulled apart in a frenzy of grabbing, so they could learn how to make it before anyone else in the surrounding towns.”

  “If the Italians loved design so much, why is this road such a mess?” Gertie said, still annoyed at the time it was taking to walk.

  “Because there was no central government in Italy.”

  “Eggcup.”

  “I mean no one was in charge,” Kolt said. “The cities of Renaissance Italy were ruled by rich families with private armies who were constantly fighting for power.”

  “Weird,” Gertie said. “So if you weren’t in one of these rich families?”

  “Then you were at their mercy,” Kolt explained. “The Renaissance might have been a time of discovery and invention, but it was also a period of constant bickering, murder, poisoning, hanging, public burning, and other brutal forms of persuasion and torture.”

  Kolt was about to say a bit more about the very creative approach taken to torture, when they noticed someone coming toward them.

  “A local!” Gertie said. “Thank goodness, we can ask directions.”

  But Kolt seemed anxious. “Just act normal,” he said. “Like we’re from a powerful Venetian family, living out simple, short, smelly lives in Renaissance Italy.” Then he looked down at Robot Rabbit Boy, who was using his dagger as a pointed walking stick. “For goodness’ sake put that thing away and straighten your mustache!”

  “Strawberry fly butter?”

  The man had a round, sweaty face, and rough, straggly hair that looked as though it had never been washed—except by rain.

  He stopped a yard or so away and pointed at Robot Rabbit Boy.

  “Carnival monkey!” he said, gawking.

  “Excuse me, local . . . person,” Kolt said, “but is this the highway to Venice? And do you know what a doctor is?”

  The man scratched his head, though not because he was thinking—but on account of lice, which at that moment had all begun a mass scramble at the sight of Robot Rabbit Boy’s fake mustache, which greatly resembled the dream home they had recently been discussing.

  The man nodded. “This is the road to Venice, sir, and for telling you I want your circus monkey.”

  “Lavender fly?” Robot Rabbit Boy said.

  The man jumped back so fast at hearing the rabbit speak, that he slipped and fell into a puddle. “It can talk!” he cried, pointing with dripping sleeves.

  “Oh dear,” Kolt said. “This isn’t going well.”

  The man then pulled a rusty knife from his cloak.

  “Give me that talking monkey or I’ll slash thee!”

  “Thee?” Gertie said, looking around. “Who’s thee?”

  “He means us!” Kolt told her. “He’s some kind of Renaissance loony.”

  Gertie was amazed by how easily the stranger was prepared to use violence against them. She had to think quickly.

  “He’s not a monkey!” she blurted out. “He’s my brother, a rabbit boy, and he’s dangerous.”

  The arm with the knife dropped slightly.

  “Rabbit boy? Dangerous?”

  “Yes—he’s part-boy, part-rabbit.”

  Then Kolt interrupted, “And part-robot.”

  “PART RHUBARB!” Gertie shouted, glaring at Kolt. “I mean rhubarb is what he eats, nothing else.”

  “Lavender,” said Robot Rabbit Boy.

  “And lavender, which. . . is why he turned into a rabbit,” Gertie said.

  “Butter,” Robot Rabbit Boy added.

  “Yes, rhubarb and lavender dipped in butter,” said Gertie.

  Robot Rabbit Boy touched his fake mustache. “A dollop of mashed potato.”

  The Italian peasant was understandably confused. “He certainly eats a lot, and he’s your brother, you say? But he doesn’t have a mark on his face like you?”

  “That’s actually a birthmark,” Gertie explained. “I was born with it. My brother has a mustache instead.”

  “Well, I can’t steal him,” said the man, getting up out of the puddle. “Seeing as he’s family.”

  “That’s right,” said Gertie. “It would be rabbit-napping.”

  “So just tell me your price?”

  “Price?”

  Kolt stepped toward Gertie. “He’s serious. Buying and selling people was sadly normal before the end of the twenty-first century.”

  “Come on,” said the man. “I haven’t got all day. If you want me to let you live, I need a price.”

  Just as Gertie was about to get really angry—and agree with Kolt that the Renaissance was a brutal time where bullies ruled—they heard a clobbering and splashing in the distance as a chestnut horse in armor came galloping toward them.

  “What now!” Kolt said. “We’ve got enough on our plates without King Arthur showing up!”

  But it wasn’t King Arthur. As the horse and rider got closer, they saw it was a woman, sitting high and straight in the saddle, with a shiny metal breastplate strapped to the upper part of her body. On her body armor was a painted rabbit head.

  Gertie and Kolt could hardly believe their eyes.

  “I don’t believe it,” Kolt said. “Robot Rabbit Boy’s fairy godmother.”

  The woman’s long hair had been tied up in braids, which were rolled neatly to the sides of her head in buns. She wore a shimmering sword at her hip, which bounced as she cantered toward the strange group in the middle of the road.

  The peasant’s eyesight must have been poor, because he kept his knife held high until the rider was close enough for him to see her. The woman steered her horse right up to the man. Then she booted him in the chest so that he went f
lying back, dropping his knife and losing one of his ragged shoes.

  “Get off this road, you terrible man!” the woman growled. “If I ever see you harassing people again I’ll quarter you myself!”

  “What does she mean by quarter?” Gertie whispered to Kolt.

  “You don’t want to know—seriously you don’t.”

  “Actually I do.”

  “Okay, fine—pieces of rope are tied to a person’s wrists and ankles, then the other ends of the four pieces are tied to four different horses. When the horses bolt, the victim’s body is torn into four quarters, hence, quartering.”

  “Gross! Who would do such a thing?”

  Kolt pointed to the woman, who was still shouting at the thief. “Er, rabbit girl for one, so keep you wits about you.”

  Then something occurred to Gertie. In Mrs. Pumble’s book—the one she had written about miraculously finding her way home—she talked about going back to her original life, discovering her true identity, but then giving it up and returning to the Island of Lost Things to take her place as a Keeper. Gertie was only a few chapters in, but if Mrs. Pumble’s home was a place like this, where human lives were short, painful, full of fear and violence—then it made sense she had wanted to return to Skuldark.

  “And who might you lot be?” barked the woman on the horse at the three Keepers. “You don’t look like thieves.”

  Kolt smiled weakly. “Um, we’re simple travelers trying to get to Venice with dry feet and failing.”

  “I like her braid buns,” Gertie whispered. “Her hair is so blonde, it’s cool.”

  “It was the fashion. People put on wide-brimmed hats with no center, then sat on roofs for hours on end, as the sun dyed their hair yellow.”

  “You can dye your hair in the sun?”

  “Oh, sure.”

  The woman cleared her throat loudly, as if to stop their muttering.

  “Who are you, exactly? Not spies, I hope. . . .”

  If not for the symbol painted on the woman’s armor, ,Gertie would have been more afraid of her wrath. But how could anyone who loved rabbits be mean? And she had saved them from the weird peasant, who had now disappeared along with his rusty knife and army of head lice.