He charged like a herd of rhinos. The ground shook. Guster grabbed hold of Mom’s apron as Zeke whimpered. They could not outrun him; they could not fight him.
In a less than a second, the giant ape was on them, his shadow covering them in blackness, his full animal force coming to destroy them. Guster saw Zeke stretch out his hand. The beast shifted midstride. It smashed into the ground in front of them, the earth shaking with the impact.
Guster clamped his eyes shut, cringing, waiting to be torn in two, waiting for the blow that would end it all.
But it was silent. He could feel the giant’s hot, steamy breath beating him with stinking air. Slowly, Guster peeked — one eye at a time. The ape was crouched only inches in front of them.
Guster was alive — for the moment. Mom and Mariah and everyone else were still as statues. Only Zeke had moved. Zeke’s arm was extended toward the giant ape, his hand trembling, a single, partially unwrapped chocolate bar sticking out of his fist at the ape like a flat brown thumb.
Guster kept frozen in place. He wasn’t sure he could move if he’d wanted to, he was so afraid. Why did the beast hesitate? The giant ape slowly gathered his feet under him, cocked his head to one side and gingerly plucked the chocolate bar from Zeke’s hand between his thumb and forefinger. He sniffed it.
They waited.
The ape nibbled the end, his big jaw rolling like a horse’s as he chewed, his eyes turned upward in consideration.
He’s really eating it, thought Guster. Had the giant ape really just taken Zeke’s offer? If only they’d had some Arrivederci Chocolate to give him.
Slowly, the gorilla’s lips peeled back over his teeth in a grin so ridiculous, it squeezed his eyes shut. He hooted a happy hoot.
The clearing burst into chirps, hoots, and roars of applause. Guster had forgotten to breathe.
The giant gorilla smashed the rest of the chocolate bar into his mouth, then whacked Zeke on the shoulder, knocking him off his feet. He turned back across the clearing, apparently unconcerned now with the matter of the intruders.
Zeke had saved them all. “How did you know to give him the candy bar?” Mariah asked.
“I don’t know!” Zeke muttered, exasperated. “I was just trying to get him to eat something besides me!”
Guster was just happy — and surprised — to be alive.
One by one, the apes scrambled down from their trees and returned to the clearing. As if on cue from the biggest ape, they didn’t seem concerned anymore about the humans in their midst.
“Keep your weapons ready,” said Felicity to her men. “They may have forgiven us for now, but wild animals have short memories.”
The great beast himself climbed back up the enormously wide tree at the far edge of the clearing. The fur on his back lit up bright and crystal-white, sparkling all over like glass in the sunlight. It was beautiful.
“Look at his him,” said Mariah. “He must be the leader. They’re called the Silverback because of all that silvery fur on him.”
“More like the Sugarback,” said Zeke. “It looks like he rolled around in candy!” Zeke was right. The fur on the giant gorilla’s back glistened like sugar.
The big smelly gorilla that caught Guster in the first place emerged from the jungle with a pineapple in one hand. He broke it open, then made his way over to another, smaller gorilla who was clutching a log hollowed out at the top like a crude bucket. Big Smelly snatched the bucket from her. She screamed and batted at him, but it was useless — Big Smelly was much too strong. As soon as Big Smelly got it to himself, he dumped the bucket upside down, pouring sugar granules all over his two pineapple halves.
“It’s sugar!” said Mariah. The gorilla was actually sweetening his lunch.
Big Smelly seemed to understand he was being talked about, because he smiled a big, wide grin with a set of brown, rotting teeth that made Guster feel like worms were crawling between his toes.
“Gross-aholic!” said Zeke. “It looks like he’s got cavities!”
“There are no dentists in the jungle, Zeke,” said Mom. “Let that be a lesson to you on proper brushing.”
Now that Zeke mentioned it, all the gorillas in the clearing had bad teeth. And most of them were crowded around one barrel-log or another, all fighting for their turn to sweeten their fruit. It was remarkable just how much they all looked like Zeke — only with more hair — pouring mounds of sugar over his cold cereal on a Saturday morning.
“There must be a sugarcane field nearby,” said Felicity. “Look around for some tall stalks — kind of like bamboo.”
As the Sergeant and the Lieutenant scanned the edges of the clearing, Guster watched the Sugarback lounge on a branch of the enormously wide tree. Two gorillas emerged from of a hole in the trunk, each carrying a barrel-log under one arm. At the sight of them the clearing erupted in hooting; gorillas charged in from all sides, trouncing over to the fresh barrels of sugar, fruit in hand, shoving and cutting in front of each other to get first crack at the prize.
One grunt from the Sugarback and the unruly apes fell silent, cowering back from the entrance. The two gorillas who’d brought the sugar out poured it into one ape’s hollow log after another, until each had his fill. Then the apes were back out in the clearing, frolicking, tumbling, and hoarding their sugar-caches.
“I’m guessing we’ll find the sugarcane over there,” said Guster, pointing to the hole in the trunk.
“Underground?” said Felicity.
“Yes,” said Guster. They had found the source of the sugar, and he’d led them to it. Even Felicity couldn’t deny that. He felt a sense of pride at being right.
“Lieutenant, flashlights,” she said. They picked their way through the herd toward the hole in the tree.
When they were only a few feet from the trunk, the Sugarback leapt from his perch above, all five hundred pounds or more of muscle smashing into the ground in front of them like a cement slab blocking their path. There was fire in his eyes. The Lieutenant stepped back, and the Sugarback put the tip of his forefinger and thumb to his lips.
“I think he wants more candy,” said Zeke.
“How many more bars do we have in our rations?” Felicity asked. The three mercenaries rummaged through their packs.
“Two,” said the Lieutenant.
“And I’ve got three more,” said the Sergeant.
“Good. Unwrap as many of them as you can. We want to be gracious guests,” said Felicity. Zeke handed two more bars to her.
Felicity knelt on one knee and bowed her head, spreading the chocolate across the ground in front of the gorilla like he was a king. Guster and the rest did the same.
The Sugarback reached down, scooped up all the candy bars in his arm, and shoved them all into his mouth at once. He smiled as he chewed. His teeth were the worst of all the apes in the clearing.
The Sugarback reached one catcher mitt hand out to Zeke, and grabbing him by the forearm, led him down into the hole.
“Zeke, are you okay?” asked Mom.
“I think so,” he said, looking scared. The Sugarback smoothed Zeke’s hair out with one hand. Zeke’s knees almost buckled under the force. Apparently the Sugarback had taken a liking to him.
“It looks like he has accepted our gift,” said Felicity. “Lights on.” The Lieutenant switched his flashlight on and followed Zeke and the Sugarback into the hole.
Guster grabbed Mariah’s hand and they all picked their way carefully over the rocks into the darkness. He tried to stick close to the Lieutenant so he could follow the beam of his flashlight in the narrow tunnel. He had to duck here and there to keep from hitting his head on roots that stuck out of the ceiling.
“Can you see?” said Mom.
“N..no,” whimpered Zeke, “He’s sniffing his way.”
There was a flash of brilliance under the Lieutenant’s flashlight. “What was that?” Mariah asked. He shined his beam back over the wall, where a glistening line of clear white mineral shined under it. A thin vein
of crystal rock wound through the side of the cave and up into the ceiling.
“It looks like quartz,” said Felicity.
“It certainly is beautiful,” said Mom.
They continued on. They wound up and down until Guster’s back got tired from bending so low for so long. They turned one more corner in the passage and came to a cavern where, to his relief, he could finally stand.
The chamber was littered with piles of crumbling rock. A stack of sharpened, wedge-shaped stones lined one wall. More of the same crystal veins spread out like spider webs all over the ceiling.
The Sugarback smacked his lips while he waited for everyone to catch up, then took one of the sharpened stones and drove it with both hands into the closest crystal vein. After a few more blows, a thin sheet of clear rock, no thicker than a piece of window glass, broke loose. He pulled it free with his fingernails, then handed it to Zeke.
Zeke looked like he was going to cry. The Sugarback grunted softly, pushing it at him until he finally took it. It broke in Zeke’s hands.
“He wants you to eat it,” said Mom.
Reluctantly, Zeke licked the crystal. A smile slowly came to his face. “It tastes like candy,” he said. He handed one of the shards to Guster. “You try,” he said.
Guster knew before it touched his lips that it wasn’t rock. It was sweet; it was succulent; it tasted like frozen air mixed with a hint of honey. No — it was like someone had squeezed the sweetness from a hundred syrup bottles and turned it to glass. “Sugar!” cried Guster.
“From a mine?” asked Felicity.
“It’s Archedentus’ sugar,” Mom said, smiling smugly. “You’ll get used to it.”
“Look,” said Mariah, grabbing the Sergeant’s flashlight and shining it on the opposite wall. There was some writing scrawled across it above a hole near the floor. “It looks like it’s French,” she said.
“Eat not…” Felicity translated out loud. “No, Taste not,” she said. “Taste not for Fortune nor Fame, but Taste to set Earth right again.”
“And it’s signed below,” said Mariah. A large flowing ‘A’ was scrawled right above the hole. It was his signature. The great chef had made it here.
Felicity crossed the room and nearly touched the letters with her fingertips. “Archedentus,” she said, her hand hovering over the rock. “To think, he walked this same path.”
She looked at Guster, and for the first time, he saw a hint of genuine admiration in her eyes. “You found it,” she said. “You truly are the Harbinger of Peace.” Was this some kind of test? Guster didn’t care if he’d passed it or not. He knew who he was.
All that mattered was that Archedentus had gotten this far, and whatever he’d wanted them to find was inside. There was no reason to wait.
The hole below the inscription was just big enough for Guster to crawl through. “I’m going in,” he said, grabbing the flashlight from Mariah.
“Take this,” said Felicity. She pulled a glass container with a screw-on lid from the Lieutenant’s backpack and handed it to Guster. He held it in his armpit and crawled into the tunnel.
“I’m coming with you,” said Mariah, scrambling on all fours behind him.
“Good,” said Guster. He couldn’t begin to guess what was inside and he did not want to go alone.
The ground was rough and he had to keep his head low so he didn’t bump it on the ceiling as he crawled. The passage twisted a few times until Mom and Felicity were completely out of earshot.
The deeper they went, the narrower it got. Guster had heard about spelunkers who got trapped for days or weeks until they starved to death — he couldn’t let that happen to them. After a few minutes of crawling, the tunnel turned upward sharply, and a faint glow seeped into the darkness. “It looks like there’s light ahead,” said Mariah.
“Let’s find out,” said Guster. The passage widened enough to let them walk in a crouch. A few more yards, and the tunnel opened into a cavern as tall and grand as a baseball stadium. Pencil-thin rays of sunlight streamed through small holes in the ceiling and slanted across the room, bouncing off dozens of giant towers made up of millions of sparkling crystals. A clear, shimmering lake covered the cavern floor.
It was like a city of crooked crystal sugar towers, all glistening like clear icicles or a necklace of precious jewels. It was a sacred place — the very place Archedentus had found. “The Mighty Ape’s Diamonds,” Guster whispered.
“It’s spectacular,” breathed Mariah. Almost too spectacular for humans to enter.
The two of them staggered down the slope toward the sugar towers. Guster sloshed straight into the lake without stopping. The water came up to his knees.
“No wonder there were so many fruit trees and flowers the closer we got to these sugar mines,” said Mariah as they neared the pillars. “There is a higher concentration of sugar in the ground here, almost like sweetened fertilizer.”
It made sense. That’s exactly why the bananas tasted better too. And now Guster was going to taste the source. He picked out an especially shiny pillar. He took a rock from the water to use as a chisel, and hammered it against pillar’s surface. A sugar crystal the size of his fist broke free. He caught it in his hand. “It’s practically a 100 karat diamond,” he said.
He bit into it, the sugar breaking easily in his teeth. It tasted clear and clean — a thousand times more extraordinary than the shard the Sugarback had given them.
Then something happened: His head swirled and his body surged. It was without compare. All he could think about was the taste in his mouth. Nothing else mattered. Mariah’s chatter began to fade away, and it seemed like Guster was alone in the cave — just him and his gigantic, pure pillar of taste.
He would have to lick the whole thing. It would take years — years of untold bliss. And he had just begun. After that he could have more.
To taste them all! Diamond after diamond, as long as they left him alone.
He broke loose another chunk and ate it.
Time slowed. Then he had another.
And another.
The cavern was the only place that mattered. It was the world.
He could stay there a hundred years.
It was like a dream.
He was made for this place, and it for him —
Mariah shook him. “Guster!” she said. “What are you doing?”
“Wha?” he asked, his mouth locked to the pillar so he could barely speak. Why did she have to bother him now? It was so wonderful —
She took him by the shoulders and yanked him backward off the pillar. He stumbled, his legs splashing through the water, the hard rocks beneath him jarring him back to reality as the sugar fell from his open mouth.
“I’ve been trying to get your attention. Where have you been?” she said, yanking a sugar crystal from his hand.
Guster rubbed his eyes. He felt like he was waking from a dream. “Right here,” he said. She wasn’t making sense. It had only seemed like a moment.
“I think the sugar was doing something to you, like putting you in a trance.”
“Couldn’t be,” said Guster; he hadn’t felt any time pass at all.
“You shouldn’t have any more right now,” she said.
He wiped the sugar from his mouth. “Okay.” If that’s what it took to make her feel better. He’d sneak some more when her back was turned.
“Let’s just grab some crystals. Mom will be waiting,” said Mariah.
And leave this beautiful place so soon? thought Guster. But he could spend years there!
Mariah took the glass jar from him and unscrewed the lid. Guster gladly helped her break off more chunks of crystal until the jar was full. Mariah tightened the lid down as Guster reached for the jar. “Why don’t I carry it?” she said, eyeing Guster suspiciously and snatching it away.
Guster pretended not to care. He shrugged his shoulders. “Suit yourself,” he said, but really, he could hardly stand it, letting her have even one jar-full of the cavern’s sug
ar. That was one less jar-full for him. Maybe he should tell Mariah to go on ahead, and he would catch up.
Before he could protest, she grabbed him by the hand and pulled him back up toward the narrow tunnel. An instant later, she screamed.
They hadn’t seen it on the way in, but there, on the edge of the lake, with his arms wrapped around a pillar of sugar, was a bleached white human skeleton. His jawbone was locked on the pillar like he was gnawing on it with his old, rotting teeth. Whoever that skeleton had been, he was trying to get one more taste up until his very last breath.
Mariah let out a sob. “He must have been with Archedentus’ crew when they discovered the place,” said Mariah. “It looks like he never wanted to leave.”
Guster gulped. So he wasn’t the only one. There were no monsters or bottomless pits guarding the sugar — just the sugar itself — powerful diamonds that if given their way, would keep him there to rot.
They had to get out of there. Mariah grabbed Guster by the hand and crawled back into the tunnel. He followed, forcing himself into the passage before he could reconsider.
When they came out the other side, Mom was in the corner, shining a flashlight into the dirt where she wrote with a stick. The Sugarback sat cross-legged behind Zeke, picking through his hair.
Felicity rushed to meet them. “Did you get it?” she said eagerly. Mariah took the jar from her backpack, the diamonds sparkling under the flashlight beams. They were even more beautiful in the darkness.
Felicity reached out like she was going to kiss the glass. Mariah pulled the jar back.
“They’re remarkable,” said Felicity, giving Mariah her space. She seemed to sense that this was not worth a fight. “Truly worthy to take their place in the Gastronomy of Peace. Sugar, eggs, butter, chocolate — and then, just one more,” she said.
“Sweet Black Tears,” said Mariah. “Which could change the recipe entirely.”
“Possible. But unlikely,” said Felicity confidently.
Mom looked up from her scratching in the dirt. “You know what it makes, don’t you?” she said. Her eyes locked on Felicity.
Felicity nodded. “I had it narrowed down to a few prime suspects for years now. As soon as I saw the sugar, I knew what it was.”
Evertaster Page 19
