Gertie Milk and the Great Keeper Rescue

by Simon Van Booy

  “She didn’t say!”

  “It’s me they want,” came a small voice from the hull of the pirate ship.

  Kolt peered down at him. “Looks like you were almost crushed by the pirate ship!”

  “Mashed fly.”

  “I was!” said the boy. “But thankfully all I lost was a shoe.”

  “That’s good, but do you know why the Losers are trying to capture you?”

  Then Gertie noticed Mandy Zilch was holding a magnetic cuff. “He must be a missing Keeper,” she shouted before the boy could answer. “Look what the Loser girl is holding, Kolt! It’s a magnetic cuff! And the Keepers’ key is buzzing like crazy!”

  “You’re right, Gertie, he must be one of your missing Keepers. I can’t believe it. A new Keeper, in the flesh!”

  Gertie had forgotten about Giro with all the excitement of finding a lost Keeper. “Are we dead?” he asked, tugging lightly on her sleeve. “Is this heaven?”

  “No,” Gertie said, “but it’s goodbye, I’m afraid, as anything that accidentally travels through time with Keepers is soon catapulted back.”

  “We’ve traveled through time? Future or past?”

  “I shouldn’t say,” she told him, “but I can tell you that everything you’ve figured out about the little creatures is true.”

  “It is?”

  Gertie nodded. “You’re actually really, really clever, so keep working because the world needs your ideas.”

  As there was no time for lengthy explanations, she leaned in and gave Giro a hug.

  “I’ll miss you,” he said.

  “Look after those animals, especially the frog.”

  Then, without wasting any more time, Gertie jumped out of the gondola and sprinted toward the small figure the Losers had been trying to kidnap.

  “What are you doing!” Mandy Zilch screamed at the outlaws. “Get the boy!”

  “But it doesn’t feel right anymore,” one of the outlaws said.

  “Yeah,” said another. “It’s like a crazy dream, where you need the toilet but can’t seem to find one and eventually it starts to hurt.”

  “And then Jesus comes!” shouted someone from the back of the group. Everyone nodded in agreement, then resumed talking among themselves.

  Just then, the pirate ship and its crew, along with Giro and his gondola, disappeared with a loud pop, leaving a few crushed Cherokee houses and a faint pink mist.

  “Well, there they go!” said Kolt, who had hurried over to Sequoyah to return the syllabary. The sudden disappearance of the ships was too much for the outlaws, and they ran off into the woods.

  But Mandy Zilch was not about to give up her prize. After gathering the wolves under her control into a single pack, she let them loose again. They tore across the dirt at a frightening speed toward Gertie and the young Keeper.

  Just as they were about to make a leap for their victims, Robot Rabbit Boy twitched his nose three times, causing a red laser beam to shoot from one of his nostrils. The result was an enormous BOOM! and everyone was splattered by an explosion of dirt. When the smoke cleared there was a deep hole in the ground with angry wolves at the bottom of it. Unfortunately, the hole was so big that Max was now hanging on to a tree root to stop himself from falling on top of the snarling wolf pack.

  “Grab my hand!” Gertie cried out, as she skidded to a stop at the edge of the pit.

  “What?” Max said. “Who are you?” Just as the tree root snapped, he reached for Gertie’s outstretched arm.

  “Kolt!” she cried. “I can’t hold him for long!”

  But Kolt was already there, fiddling his key into the lock as Robot Rabbit Boy grabbed Gertie’s feet to stop her slipping into the hole with the boy.

  With a flash of neon green light, the four Keepers landed as a gasping tangle of bodies back on the island of Skuldark, bruised and battered but delirious with joy and relief.

  They had done it. Returned two very important items, saved one of their own from a Loser kidnapping, met pirates, and all while managing to lose only one thing—Robot Rabbit Boy’s fake mustache—which Kolt thought was the perfect end to the first-ever great Keeper rescue.

  Part

  3

  25

  Home Sweet Skuldark

  IT TOOK A LONG time to calm the boy down. As Kolt suspected would happen, the entire memory of his previous existence was wiped out the moment they landed in the Garden of Lost Things.

  “Who are you!” he kept demanding, once they’d sat him down in the cottage with a glass of warm moonberry juice. “And when can I go home?”

  Kolt did his best to explain.

  For Gertie, it felt like déjà vu. “You’re a Keeper,” she said. “I know it sounds weird, but it’s your destiny—you won’t be going home.”

  “What about my family?” the boy said.

  “Do you remember who they are?” Kolt asked sympathetically. “How to find them?”

  Gertie remembered that it was exactly what Kolt had said to her, almost word for word.

  The boy stared at the window. A baby Slug Lamp was inching his way across a glass panel, perhaps eager to catch a glimpse of the new Keeper.

  “We know it was North America,” Kolt said. “Same as Gertie, just a different time.”

  “And I can’t go back?”

  “Without a memory of who your family might be,” Gertie told him, “even if we went back to your time, how would you recognize them?”

  The boy now seemed about to cry. “So they’re lost forever?”

  “Not to themselves,” said Kolt, trying to find something positive to say.

  The boy’s head dropped, and he let out a deep sigh. “It’s weird that I miss people I can’t remember.” Then he looked up at Gertie and Kolt. “And I have to spend the rest of my life here? Not knowing who I am?”

  “Kolt heard people calling you Birdy!” Gertie pointed out.

  “Birdy?” the boy said. “I don’t even recognize my own name.”

  “But what’s even weirder . . .” Gertie went on, “is that you probably don’t even know what you look like.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “What color are your eyes?”

  The boy blinked. “You’re right. I don’t know.”

  “We’re here to look after you,” Kolt said kindly. “This is going to be your home.”

  “For how long?”

  Gertie winked at Kolt. “For now,” she said. “While we rescue more Keepers like yourself.”

  Kolt nodded. “I think it’s safe to say the B.D.B.U. is fully on board, excuse the pun.”

  Gertie smirked. “I’ll start searching the island for more keys tomorrow.”

  “Or the day after,” Kolt said. “I thought we might have cake day tomorrow, get Birdy fully fed?”

  “No, this is urgent. You bake if you want, Kolt, but I’m going on the hunt for keys.”

  Kolt sighed. “Well, if you’re this determined, I’ll prepare your aircraft in the morning, before I peel the apples and rinse the peaches.”

  With the sun setting over the cliffs of Skuldark, Kolt mentioned that they might want to get some sleep.

  Kolt took Birdy down steep steps to the Sock Drawer, kicking a robot hand out of the way. His bedroom was through a small door at the back of the room, behind the many racks of clothes and accessories. It was smaller than Gertie’s room, but also overlooked the Skuldarkian Sea at the back of the cottage.

  When Gertie heard Kolt coming back up the steps from Birdy’s new bedroom, she put the kettle on for one more cup of tea before bed.

  Kolt picked up the apparently dead robot hand and put it in a glass jar. Then he threw a log on the fire and settled into one of the comfy velvet armchairs.

  “Is he settled?”

  “For now,” Kolt said. “He was completely kn
ackered.”

  When the kettle whistled, Gertie got up and made a pot of tea. It was a nutty mélange of cinnamon, cardamom, and cloves, blended by an old woman they had met on a mission to India.

  “It’ll take time for him to adjust . . .” Gertie said, “obviously. But it’s better than being stranded in some horrible place for the rest of your life. How much do you think we should tell him?”

  “There’s nothing really to tell. We know the year and the location, but nothing about who he is.”

  For a few moments, they both stared into the fire, going over the different moments of their adventure. Moments that were personal to them and that they would never forget.

  “He won’t be sleeping,” Gertie said. “He’ll be looking at himself in the mirror trying to figure out who he is, just like I was.”

  * * *

  ‹‹ • • • ››

  BEFORE GOING TO BED, Gertie decided to check on the new Keeper. She went down the steps to the Sock Drawer, looking out for any pesky robot hands she might trip over. Then, quietly tiptoeing past the enormous revolving globe, she arrived at a small door with a knocker shaped like a shoe.

  “Birdy . . .” she whispered in case he was sleeping. “Birdy, it’s me, Gertie.”

  “Come in,” said a faint voice. The room was lit by a single lamp, and the boy’s eyes were red as though he’d been crying. Gertie sat down next to him and looked around.

  Birdy’s bedroom had a loft bed reached by a narrow ladder with steps that lit up as you walked on them. On the far side of the room was a massive glass window from which Birdy could see miles and miles out to sea.

  “I’m directly above you,” she told him. “So if you ever need me in the night, just throw a shoe at the ceiling.”

  “Thanks, Gertie, I just wish I could remember something.”

  Underneath his bed was a desk, and a wooden case stuffed with books.

  “Those things are books,” Gertie said. “I can teach you how to read if you want.”

  “I know that already, but I’m more comfortable with this type of language.” Birdy pointed to a heavy volume on his desk called Calculus, Statistics, Algebra, Geometry, and Trigonometry for a Rainy Day.

  “Well, that’s great,” Gertie said, trying to sound positive. “Maybe you can teach me something?”

  The boy nodded sadly. “I just wish I knew who I was. It’s like something has taken a bite out of me.”

  Gertie knew the pain he was feeling. That gnawing sense of being incomplete. “It’s like you know you’ve lost something precious, but you just don’t know what it is.”

  “Or where to look for it,” Birdy added.

  “Just remember one thing, though,” Gertie said. “Remember that you’ve been chosen out of thousands of other children for the task of saving the world from ignorance and chaos.”

  “You mean as a Keeper of Lost Things?”

  “Yeah, exactly,” Gertie said. “It’s kind of a big deal.”

  26

  Birdy Gets a Surprise

  AFTER SEVERAL BOWLS EACH of Robot Rabbit Boy’s famous fruit salad the next morning, Kolt wanted to show Birdy the beach.

  “We can swim if the water’s not too cold,” he said.

  Gertie stood up from the table. She couldn’t believe it.

  “Swimming?” she said. “When there are missing Keepers to rescue? I thought you were going to refuel the Spitfire so I could hunt for more keys?”

  “Well, um, yes, certainly . . .” Kolt said, nodding, “but the beach might be a good place to start—and it’s much easier digging in sand. . . .”

  Gertie nodded, then looked at Birdy. “Fine,” she said, “I’ll bring shovels. Maybe later I’ll do a sweep of the island in my aircraft.”

  * * *

  ‹‹ • • • ››

  AFTER BREAKFAST, KOLT FOUND some towels and packed sandwiches, three small shovels, buckets, a yellow ball, a jar of lemon curd for Robot Rabbit Boy, and three ice-cold bottles of moonberry juice.

  “Remember!” Gertie reminded them. “Any kind of glowing could be a buried key.”

  As they left the cottage, the path took them past the Spitfire at the entrance to Turweston Passage.

  Birdy was impressed with the enormous machine.

  “It’s beautiful,” he marveled, then asked how it could possibly conform to Newton’s Laws of Motion, being so heavy.

  “Er, I’m not sure, but you can sit in the cockpit if you want.”

  “The what?”

  “C’mon,” Gertie said, “we can do it later—we’ve got keys to find now.”

  “Dollops of fly . . .” said Robot Rabbit Boy, thoughtfully.

  Kolt led them back through a far corner of the Garden of Lost Things, between an old fairground ride called “The Ghost Train” and weather-beaten statues of men and women that were half human and half horse.

  As they neared the cliff edge, they passed two wells. One, Kolt said, could be used to draw water if the pump system failed. The other looked very old and was beginning to crumble. It had bars over the top and several padlocks preventing the bars’ removal.

  “Steer clear of this one, Keepers,” Kolt warned them.

  “Eggcup?” said Robot Rabbit Boy, distracted by two butterflies that were chasing each other.

  A sign read:

  SECURE ALL KEYS BEFORE APPROACHING

  USE WITH EXTREME CAUTION

  “The Well of No Return!” Kolt said. “A last resort if ever I saw one. . . .”

  “A what?” Gertie said.

  “A plan Z.”

  “Huh?”

  “When we’ve run out of every conceivable option . . .”

  Birdy was curious about the well and asked why it was so dangerous.

  “Because,” Kolt explained, “whatever goes down that hole never, ever comes back to Skuldark.”

  Birdy looked through the bars into darkness. “Where does it go?”

  “Some place in history,” Kolt said.

  “So what if we threw a stone down there?”

  “Then it might bonk someone on the head in Scotland of 1376, or smash someone’s bedroom window in Western Australia, 1998, or plop into a prehistoric sea before humans were even around.”

  “So you’ve never used it?” Gertie asked, looking in.

  “I have been tempted once or twice,” Kolt said, “to toss a little peach cake down there, then imagine it being enjoyed by someone, somewhere. . . .”

  At the edge of the garden, the path dropped steeply to stone steps that zigzagged along the cliff.

  “Hold the rope handrails! And try not to look down, it’ll make you dizzy.”

  When they had descended halfway to the beach, Gertie could smell the sea, and taste salt on her lips.

  “How are you getting on with Mrs. Pumble’s book, by the way, Gertie?” Kolt said.

  “Not very well,” Gertie admitted. “I’ve been so busy, but I’m at the part where Mrs. Pumble is about to find out the truth. I’m afraid if I know how she did it, I’ll do the same thing.” She turned to Birdy. “That is, try and get back to where I came from.”

  Kolt laughed knowingly. “Very wise, Gertie. I would skip over that part if I were you—if you wish to avoid the same fate.”

  Birdy was more than curious. “There’s a way to get back to where we’re from in the world?”

  “Maybe,” Gertie said. “Mrs. Pumble, an old Keeper, found a way, but then decided it was better on Skuldark as a Keeper of Lost Things. I’ll tell you more later.”

  When the path finally ended, Gertie’s legs were aching, but they were now on one of Skuldark’s only sandy beaches.

  Along the sand were items that had washed up from the deep ocean. Giant clams, a ship’s wheel standing upright, even the seaweed-strewn shell of a big blue car. Far down the
beach, they could even make out the rib cage of some ancient creature, picked clean by nibbling crabs, then bleached white by the sun and salt water. It was so big they could all have sat down inside of it, and pretended they were in a skeleton jail.

  “Don’t worry, Birdy,” Kolt reassured him, “those beasts live in deep water. You’ll be safe swimming here.”

  “I feel certain we’re going to find another key today,” Gertie announced. “Keep a lookout for anything that glows! Listen for any kind of buzzing.”

  The Skuldarkian sea was calm that morning, the water clear and green. After laying out their beach towels, Birdy, Kolt, Gertie, and Robot Rabbit Boy ran about looking at the different objects, and digging under giant tree trunks of driftwood, to see what might be living there and to seek out any glowing objects.

  When Birdy and Robot Rabbit Boy stopped to rest, Gertie kept going, and walked a mile or so with her eyes trained on the sand.

  When the sun came out it was warm. And when Gertie returned from her walk, Kolt told them to cool off in the water.

  But Birdy just stood there. “I don’t know if I can swim,” he said. “I can’t remember anything.”

  “Take my hand,” said Gertie. “I’ll take you in, but then I should keep looking.”

  “Could there be keys under the sea?” Birdy asked.

  Gertie thought about it. She had washed up on a beach, and so others could too.

  “I should have brought some diving gear—at least a mask and some flippers,” she said.

  Kolt shivered. “Not sure I’d want to know what lives under the water.”

  “What do you mean?” Birdy asked.

  “Oh, nothing! Enjoy your swim!”

  Robot Rabbit Boy put out his paw and took Birdy’s other hand. Then the three of them went to the water’s edge. Small waves splashed over their feet (and paws), as they screamed at the shock of how cold it was.

  “I thought you said it was warm!” Gertie shouted. “I can’t go searching for keys in this! I’ll turn into an ice cube!”

  “Just be careful!”

  The water was very cold and clear. Gertie was able to see the sand beneath and decided that after a quick swim and a sandwich, she would take Birdy and Robot Rabbit Boy on another long walk along the waterline, this time in the other direction. If she could cross the beach off her map of places to search, it would be a good day’s work.