Gertie Milk and the Great Keeper Rescue

by Simon Van Booy

  The girl holding the bowl laughed.

  “Eggcups,” Robot Rabbit Boy said, his eyes flashing neon yellow. The girl screamed and dropped the bowl, but Robot Rabbit Boy caught it. Series 7 reflexes were lightning fast.

  The boy next to Gertie suddenly sat up. “Who is that furry person with the mustache?”

  “Er, Robot Rabbit Boy?”

  “I long to pet him.”

  “Oh, okay, maybe later.”

  “Do you go to clown school? Most girls in Venice don’t go to school at all, but my mother made Isabetta take lessons. I have six older brothers, but they are off doing things, university and such.”

  “We’re not actually clowns, and there is no such thing as school where I live. It’s a rocky island with snowcapped mountains and underground tunnels.”

  “So what do you all day if you’re not in school?”

  “I work,” Gertie said, and nodded in Kolt’s direction, “with him.”

  Warm food was now being served onto their plates by young servants.

  “I’m Girolamo,” the boy said. “Giro for short.”

  Gertie stared at the boy sitting opposite her. He didn’t look like a doctor, but his first name matched the name of the person whose vial they had come to return.

  “Um, so . . .” she said, “your father is an astrologist?”

  “I’m afraid so.”

  “What? You don’t believe in planets controlling our body parts?”

  “No I don’t,” Giro said passionately, but making sure his father wasn’t listening. “You might think I’m dumb, but I think diseases are caused by tiny creatures, like little animals too small to see, that get passed from one person to the next in fluids, or through coughing and sneezing.”

  Germs! Gertie thought. She was sitting next to the medical genius, to whom the green powder belonged!

  “That’s why I want to build hospitals,” Giro said, “so that people can be kept away from others and get better without the little creatures spreading.”

  Gertie pictured the people she had seen with leprosy, and suggested that Giro find a way to help them too.

  “If I can’t find a medicine to cure leprosy, then I want to find out how it spreads, and then control it. My dream is to stop the spread of disease by spreading knowledge instead.”

  Gertie smiled.

  “My sister thinks it’s stupid, but then all she can think about is riding around the countryside like a soldier, and trying to get our parents to find her a marriage partner. That’s our custom. Parents choose the person you get married to.”

  “Oh, huh, well, that’s a pretty boring subject if you ask me.”

  “I agree,” Giro said. “I’d rather spend time with my mushroom collection than a girl!”

  Gertie breathed an enormous sigh of relief.

  “Perfect! That’s exactly how I feel,” she said, extending her hand to shake. “I’m Gertie.”

  Giro looked at it awkwardly. “Um, when was the last time you, er, washed your hands?”

  “In the rose water that was brought around.”

  “Oh, that’s fine then—can’t be too careful with little creatures lurking everywhere.”

  Giro’s parents were now ogling and petting Robot Rabbit Boy, who by his glowing neon pink eyes was enjoying the attention.

  “Lavender!” Robot Rabbit Boy said, showing off. “Room butter strawberry fly dollop lavender cup eggcup fly mush potato mashed.”

  Gertie leaned toward Kolt, who had finished his vegetable course, and was now gobbling up chestnut pudding.

  “It’s him,” she whispered.

  “Who is?”

  “The boy is Girolamo Fracostoro—not the father.”

  “Okay, great! Ask if he can get us the recipe for this, would you? It’s unbelievable.”

  Robot Rabbit Boy was also getting fed giant globs of chestnut pudding from golden spoons. Everyone but Gertie seemed to have forgotten about the mission, and the importance of trying to reunite a Keeper with their key.

  She was about to take the glass vial of powder out of her velvet Renaissance dress and hand it to Giro when he started to apologize.

  “Sorry if you heard me shouting earlier, Gertie. I’ve been in a state of panic and fury for days now.”

  “Why?”

  “I know I’m only twelve, but I have a patient already.”

  “A sick person?”

  “A very ill woman on the other side of the city.”

  “Who?”

  “My nanny’s mother,” Giro said. “And she has a disease, a terrible one.”

  “Will she die?”

  “I’m afraid she might, which is why she’s gone back to her husband, and is no longer living here with us,” Giro said, his eyes filling with tears. “I spent weeks preparing a medicine for her, but lost it. And now I can’t recreate the formula. I’ve looked everywhere, but . . .”

  Gertie whipped out the vial of powder from her velvet dress.

  Giro’s eyes widened with disbelief.

  “It was on my seat when I went to sit down.”

  “Gertie!” Giro said, staring at the vial of green medicine in astonishment. “That is an old woman’s life you hold in your hands. I have to get this medicine to my patient! Do you want to sneak away from this dull supper and go on a wild adventure to save an old woman’s life?”

  It was probably the worst idea in the history of bad ideas—an insane, deadly suicide mission with a twelve-year-old medical genius who was also a clean freak. But they weren’t going to find any trapped Keepers at the bottom of a dish of chestnut pudding.

  “I’m in!” Gertie said. “Let’s go.”

  20

  An Adventure at Sea

  THE ADULTS WERE SO busy talking about the different customs of Venice, and marveling at Robot Rabbit Boy’s glowing eyes, that Giro and Gertie slipped away from the table unnoticed.

  It felt weird going on an adventure without Robot Rabbit Boy and Kolt, but there was no way of getting their attention without being found out.

  Giro led Gertie out of the main hall, through a low stone opening, down some damp stone stairs, until they were outside at the edge of the rushing Grand Canal. Distant church bells were tolling, as though urging Giro and Gertie forward, on their mission of life and death.

  “This is my boat,” Giro said, pointing at the long vessel bobbing up and down on the river current. “It’s completely custom, and took four carpenters and five normal-sized gondolas to build it.”

  They jumped off the stone jetty onto Giro’s special watercraft, which had a high black hood of canvas stretched over it and two tall wooden arms at each end. A shirtless man with scars all over his body and an eye patch was at the back of the boat: Giro’s private gondolier.

  Once inside under the heavy canvas, Gertie was amazed. It was a science lab with vials and pots of bubbling smoke.

  Between them in the middle of the boat was a bench and narrow table upon which stood dishes, bottles, glass pipes, and vials, all with different colored liquids running through them. One pipe went very high up, then curled around countless times as the liquid went from clear to purple, then to a strange smoke that was slowly filling a giant bottle suspended by ropes. It was like a smaller, floating version of the lab where Marie Curie was isolating elements. Gertie wasn’t sure if elements had been discovered yet, and decided not to say anything about the other great scientist she had met only days ago.

  On a smaller table near the back of the boat were various vials exactly like the one Gertie had brought from bedroom 469. The front of the vessel was literally a jungle of plants.

  Giro untied the ropes so the shirtless gondolier could push them off into the fast current.

  “Welcome to my laboratory,” Giro said.

  “You built it on a boat?”

 
“It was the only place, as some of the plants I need for experiments are deadly, and so I didn’t even ask if I could grow them in my bedroom.”

  Gertie stepped away from a waxy tree with orange and red spikes growing from it.

  “That’s ghost pepper,” Giro said. “If you touched it, then you would have to quarantine your hands for four hours until the burning wore off—some mad people actually eat them.”

  A different specimen had green berries with black dots all over them. Giro said these helped with muscle stiffness for very old people. In another corner was a mini pineapple plant.

  The boat swung out into the fast-moving mass of water. The legs of the tables had been cut and joined back together inside sealed glass cylinders that were full of olive oil. When the boat rocked from side to side, the table legs moved, keeping the surface level.

  “Another reason I keep my lab out here,” Giro confessed, “is that if I had live animals in the house, they would wake everyone up—especially if they escaped.”

  “What animals?” Gertie said.

  Giro pointed to the wooden compartments lining the sides of the boat. From inside, Gertie saw countless pairs of tiny eyes watching her. Some of the compartments had doors, and some had bars. Giro’s modified gondola was not only a lab, but a floating zoo of small creatures.

  “Do you test things out on them?” Gertie said.

  “Goodness no!”

  In the closest compartment was a frog.

  “You can take him out,” Giro said. “He’s completely cured.”

  Gertie nervously reached her hand toward the opening, and the frog blinked twice then pushed off his back legs and crawled onto her hand.

  “Hello, froggy,” she said, wondering what the small amphibian thought of her.

  In addition to the frog, there was a mouse, squirrel, vole, fox cub, and several birds rescued from his parents’ kitchen. Giro also had a pig called Lester who lived in a straw basket. Giro said that Lester kept the boat clean by eating any food scraps and by chasing rats away without hurting them.

  “That medicine you found,” Giro said as they bobbed along the canal on their lifesaving mission, “was something I had been trying to make for a long time—but I couldn’t get the cooking temperature right—too hot and it flamed, too cool and it wouldn’t harden into a chalky block so I could grind it with my mortar and pestle.”

  “I’m impressed,” Gertie said. “You really are a doctor. But wouldn’t your parents be proud of you, Giro? If they knew?”

  “They wouldn’t understand,” he said sadly. “Especially my father; he’d think all this was too dangerous somehow, or that it was just a child’s game. Grown-ups always think they’re right and never listen to children,” Giro went on, “but if you look at history—the old ruin the world, while the young are always saving it.”

  Because the old are afraid of death, Gertie thought, remembering what Kolt had told her that first night they visited the rooms under the cottage—about how the human fear of death is what causes most suffering.

  “So will we ruin the world when we get old?” Gertie asked.

  “Hope not!”

  “Me too,” Gertie said, wondering exactly how she would age on Skuldark.

  By now the boat was ripping along in the current at a frightening speed, with the gondolier still steering bravely through the tumultuous water.

  When the boat began to rock back and forth violently, the animals cried out in their little voices.

  “Don’t worry, my friends!” shouted Giro, throwing his hands around as though he were conducting a pet orchestra of squeals and squeaks.

  “I knew this trip would be dangerous—but if we survive, something incredible will have been achieved.”

  “If we survive!” Gertie said. “I thought you said we were going to rescue an old woman?”

  “I didn’t mention we’d also be in grave danger?”

  “No! You said an adventure, and nothing about being on a deadly river in a floating zoo with poisonous plants and a pig called Lester.”

  “Oink,” went something under the table.

  Then the boat began to turn sharply in the fierce currents.

  Giro went up the steps to brave the terrifying storm outside. Water was splashing up and over the sides of the boat. It was so rough they had to tie themselves to a varnished railing with leashes of rope.

  “Why is it so bad!”

  “The tide!” Giro said. “We should have timed our departure a bit better. We have to cross sandbars, and there’s a growing wind swell making high rollers that we’re going to have to get past before the long journey.”

  “What long journey!?” Gertie screamed over the furious sloshing. “I thought it was just a dangerous adventure to save an old woman! Now it’s a long journey? How long?”

  Her panic at sinking in the mud-brown water was now replaced by a worse fear. Although she had returned the vial of medicine to its rightful owner, she had only seven hours left in Venice to reunite with Kolt and Robot Rabbit Boy.

  “We’re going out into the Adriatic Sea,” Giro said, “to a ship moored in deep water.”

  “A ship? I have to get to the dungeons before Kolt finishes dessert!”

  “I didn’t tell you the sick old woman is on a ship?”

  “Er, no, and couldn’t they have sailed into Venice? It is a river city.”

  “I’m afraid not, Gertie—you see, my beloved nanny is married to a pirate and no doctor in Venice will treat outlaws—it’s forbidden by the Doge himself. She doesn’t sail with him, preferring a more tranquil life with us on land. But at the prospect of death, they reunited.”

  “Pirates!” Gertie said, remembering her book and the insect movie. “Great!”

  “You’re happy about this? For helping pirates we could get put in prison or worse! That’s why this is such an exciting mission, because we’ll either drown, be caught by the authorities and have our heads chopped off, or be put in prison—or, and this is probably the most likely option, get kidnapped by the pirates who decide they need two ship doctors.”

  “But I’m not a doctor!”

  “Neither am I!”

  When Gertie looked back, Venice was just a cluster of flickering lights under a cloud of gray smoke.

  Gertie took deep breaths of sea air and remembered when she had been alone on the cliffs that first morning on Skuldark.

  She wished now she had told Kolt where she was going. If they did sink, she’d have to swim for it—try and stay alive long enough to get snatched, as Kolt had the time machine, which she would have needed to escape.

  In the distance, peaks of open sea loomed like dark, watery mountains.

  Without the rough-looking gondolier’s expert handling, they would all have drowned for sure. But he knew how to take the waves, steering masterfully up the heaving chest of one, then down its slippery back.

  “If we hit the swell at the wrong angle, we’ll capsize,” Giro shouted over the wind, which was now whipping up sea spray and stinging their cheeks.

  After plowing over the crest of the most enormous wave, they glimpsed a yellow glow in the distance, somewhere between the sea and the sky. Then they lost sight of it, as another set of monster waves rolled toward them.

  They were now completely soaked to the skin, and at least half the animals in the boat had thrown up in their cubbies.

  The yellow glow, which had looked like a faraway candle only minutes before, was now a massive warship right off their starboard bow. It had been stolen six months ago from the country of Portugal by the most vicious, cutthroat band of sailors who had ever sailed the seven seas.

  Pirates.

  “Weird-looking gondola-boat-thing ahoy!” came a gruff voice from the deck of the pirate ship. Two more faces appeared, then ropes were thrown down through the mist. Once Giro’s floating sci
ence experiment had been secured, a rope ladder unfurled over the side of the enormous stolen warship. Giro and Gertie pulled themselves up along the slick hull of the four-mast caravel—hoping that whoever was holding the top rope wasn’t going to let go. The brave shirtless gondolier climbed down from his steering platform, and went inside to nurse Giro’s seasick animals.

  Gertie had read terrible things about pirates in her book, and half expected to be chased around on deck by one-legged sailors, with lice-filled scraggly beards and parrots on their shoulders.

  When they were safely standing on the deck, Gertie took a deep breath at the sight of such scary-looking men and women, who represented so many different nations from Jamaica to China. Some of the sailors were very old, while one or two were younger than Gertie. She hoped they knew Giro had come to help.

  Then a man with long black hair and two sparkling earrings growled at them.

  “Giro, ye old barnacle! Where have you been? We were worried sick about you in such a boiling sea—and with Martha still so unwell.”

  Then the old pirate turned to Gertie, flashing a smile that revealed several gold teeth, and a few black ones.

  “Is this your wife, Giro?”

  For the first time ever in her whole life, Gertie felt seasick.

  Everyone on the ship burst out laughing, except Gertie and Giro, whose faces turned the color of overripe strawberries.

  “This no time for jokes, Captain,” said Giro, holding up the vial of powder. “Thanks to Gertie, I have the medicine for Martha.”

  The gnarly crew of disfigured, tattooed, patch-wearing, dagger-wielding pirates separated, and Giro ran up some steps to a small cabin at the stern of the ship. After hesitating for a moment, Gertie followed.

  In a small wooden bed in the captain’s quarters, an elderly woman was curled up in great pain. When she saw Giro, she reached out feebly. “My boy, my boy . . .”

  The unofficial child doctor went to work quickly.

  The old woman sat up and took a few trembling sips of the medicine Giro had mixed with water.