Gertie Milk and the Keeper of Lost Things

by Simon Van Booy

  “From seeds?”

  “Exactly, and growing food instead of always looking for it gave them more time to socialize, trade with other tribes, think and invent things like writing, so that great ideas could be written down and shared, and eventually people would live in harmony with one another and nature.”

  “But those cannons you returned were used to blow people up, so why did they need returning?”

  “The universe is not like the inside of a clock, Gertie, where we can observe and then predict what will happen based on what has happened. Nature is keenly sensitive—even a tiny change can have an enormous impact, which seems like chaos but is actually a brilliant, logical pattern only the B.D.B.U. can understand.”

  “So most of the stuff just sits here?”

  “Correct.”

  “We only return what the B.D.B.U. commands?”

  “That’s right . . . because even the tiniest thing, like an ancient copper button from the Indus Valley, can have an enormous impact on the lives of humans, but as I mentioned before, not everyone believes we’re doing the right thing.”

  “You’re talking about the Losers?”

  “They want to strip the world of ideas, and destroy all technology so that humans can start again—having made such a mess of things. That’s why they’re trying to stop us, Gertie.”

  At the top of the stairs was a small wooden door with palm prints embedded in the wood, along with words:

  SINT SEMPER PEIORES RES IPSAE

  As Kolt read the Latin inscription, the handprints glowed.

  “One for you, and one for me,” Kolt said. “That means the door recognizes you as a real Keeper, which I never doubted of course.”

  Gertie followed Kolt’s example and placed her hand into the smaller of the glowing handprints. It was a perfect fit. Suddenly there was rumbling—but instead of the door swinging open, it rose like the portcullis of a castle to reveal another door made of steel wires.

  “This is the cage,” Kolt said. Then in a loud voice, “It could always be worse!”

  “What could?”

  “No, that’s the password, Gertie. It’s a translation of the Latin on the first door and the Keeper’s code.”

  The metal strands of the cage separated quickly, and Kolt led Gertie into a circular room with a stone floor.

  At the center of the room was an enormous rock, upon which a book the size of a bed sat open, its pages illuminated with gold and silver light.

  “Behold!” Kolt announced, “the Big Dusty Book Upstairs.”

  12

  Don’t Get Snatched

  “IT’S HUGE!” Gertie exclaimed. “How do you turn the pages?”

  “You don’t!” Kolt said. “But why it’s being so quiet now, after all that thunder, lightning, and rain, I can’t imagine. Perhaps it’s pretending we’re not here.”

  “Or just being shy?” Gertie said.

  The room they were in had windows all around, but when Gertie looked out, all she could see was blue sky and a thick blanket of cloud below.

  The ceiling over the enormous B.D.B.U. was not flat like most ceilings, but a rounded dome, painted very dark blue, from which thousands of tiny glowing specks, each the size of a sand grain, twinkled.

  “It’s a star chart,” Kolt told her. “A map of distant planets and galaxies outside Earth.”

  “How do you get there? In one of the rockets in the garden?”

  “Underground actually, through the Tunnels of Bodwin I’m afraid, which are very nasty. Now, let’s say hello to the B.D.B.U.”

  Kolt waved Gertie up some rickety wooden steps to the rock upon which the B.D.B.U. sat open.

  At first, Gertie was mesmerized by the magnificent glow. But when she looked closely, she noticed that each page not only contained words, but images too, and the pictures were moving. Bees and birds darted across the paper, landing on tall letters, and crawling into round ones. At the top of one page was a tiny frame in which it was snowing.

  As Gertie’s eyes soaked up the vivid colors of the living book, its pages shimmered with a deep, intense gold. The room was suddenly full of whispering voices and warm swirling air. One of the pages began to flutter, then another, and soon they were turning by themselves, quickly, but with a delicate sound. The enormous book began to rise off its stone mount.

  “What’s it doing?” Gertie asked. “Is it angry with me?”

  “It’s just showing off,” Kolt sighed. “It obviously likes you, as it’s never put on a show like that for me.”

  “What’s that sweet, smoky smell?”

  “It’s the wood the pages were made from. Skuldark once had old-growth knowledge trees, and the B.D.B.U. was woven from the fibers of the last one, which apparently contained all the power of the others. If I remember correctly, the trees existed as one organism, with their roots linked under the soil.”

  “Like a family . . .”

  “Exactly, connected in every way, just like humans are. Imagine one soul shared between all. As a single tree withers, another shoots up somewhere else.”

  The pages of the B.D.B.U. were now flipping so wildly, Gertie’s hair blew back. Eventually the book slowed and then stopped at the correct pages. Beams of white light shot out, and the words seemed to lift off the page and hover in the air.

  Kolt ran up the steps and looked at the bright floating words over Gertie’s shoulder. But when he leaned down to read a passage obscured by the colorful illustration of a flowering tree with branches that were moving, the book let out a giant rasping noise, snapped shut, and fell back onto its stone pedestal with a thump.

  “How rude!” Kolt huffed, “All the knowledge in the universe and look how it behaves!”

  Gertie stroked the gnarled brown cover of the now closed B.D.B.U. “I think it’s cute,” she said. “Like a very, very old dog.”

  Kolt sighed. “Well, that’s wonderful Gertie. At least you know what a dog is.”

  « • • • »

  Back downstairs, the rain was a steady drumming on the windows. Kolt consulted a map with a magnifying glass, then pointed in the direction of a bookcase. “Gertie, will you please go over to that shelf? There should be some kind of tree branch.”

  When she got there, Gertie crouched down and saw a bundle of wood next to a small statue of a woman holding a baby.

  “One of the sticks is glowing!”

  “Great!” Kolt said. “Can you bring it over?”

  Gertie picked it up with extreme care, then dropped it with a yelp.

  “It’s hot!”

  “Sorry, I should have warned you! Must be an urgent case.”

  Gertie picked the stick up with her sleeve and carried it to the table.

  “And that,” Kolt said, prodding a map in his book, “Is our destination, ancient Alexandria in North Africa.”

  “Why is it orange?”

  “Because it’s the desert, Gertie. Ready for something to eat?”

  “Now?”

  “You’re not hungry?”

  “I am, but isn’t the human race in danger?”

  “Yes it is, Gertie—which is why we must do our very best to return everything the B.D.B.U. asks us to.”

  “So shouldn’t we get going then?”

  “We will, I just can’t think on an empty stomach,” Kolt said, assembling a meal of cheese and vegetables. He explained that some objects on Skuldark appeared quite ordinary at first, while the importance of others was immediately clear. “Such as with the first microscope, Gertie, invented around 1600 by Zacharias Janssen while he was apparently trying to increase the power of eyeglasses for people with very bad sight.”

  “That was nice of him.”

  “That’s what I used to think until I returned the thing and discovered he was using it to perfect an illegal coin-making operation.”


  It was also convenient, Kolt pointed out, that the stick happened to just be sitting there in a bundle on the bookshelf.

  “That buys us a little time for lunch,” he said. “Most objects have to be retrieved with the help of a cave sprite from one of the 945 rooms beneath the cottage.”

  Outside, the thunder was now so loud that glasses drying by the sink began to vibrate.

  “No need to panic just yet,” Kolt said. “It’s just the B.D.B.U. making sure we don’t forget.”

  “It seems angry.”

  “Oh it’s furious!” Kolt chuckled, giving Gertie a triangle of soft cheese. “But I can tell you from experience that traveling through time on an empty stomach is a terrible idea.”

  Gertie nearly dropped the cheese. “Traveling through time?”

  “Didn’t I mention that?”

  “No you didn’t!”

  “The time machine is parked outside in the garden. You haven’t seen the Time Cat yet.”

  “A time machine?” Gertie could hardly believe what she was hearing.

  “Yes of course, how else did you think we got things back to the world? Through a hole in the ground?”

  Then Gertie realized something. “If we have a time machine, why can’t we use it to go back to our families?”

  Kolt bit into a piece of green pepper. “It’s more complicated than that. We can only travel to the time and place in history of the object we’re returning. Plus, you don’t remember when it is you’re even from!”

  “But after returning something, couldn’t we stay awhile?” Gertie suggested. “Ask around, see if anyone has ever heard of me, or you?”

  “We only get eleven hours in each place. The B.D.B.U. used to give us twelve hours but then I accidentally spilled tea on page 7,323.”

  “What happens after eleven hours?”

  “If we haven’t used the time machine to return to Skuldark within eleven hours, we get snatched by the B.D.B.U., which is best avoided as it’s a slow and extremely painful way to travel. Don’t ever allow yourself to get snatched, Gertie. Always, always use the time machine and your key, which operates it.”

  “My key operates the time machine?”

  “Oh yes. Don’t ever lose your key.”

  Just then, thunder ripped through the cottage, causing the lights to flicker.

  “Yes, okay! We’re leaving in a minute!” Kolt shouted through the wall toward the tower.

  “Tea or moonberry juice, Gertie?”

  “Er, moonberry juice, please.”

  Kolt took Gertie’s teacup to a kitchen cupboard, where he popped the cork out of a tall bottle, and poured out bright purple liquid. “Here you are,” he said, handing it to her carefully. “Just a splash until you get used to it.”

  Gertie took a small sip. At first, it was ice cold and didn’t have any flavor. Then she felt a sort of bubbling and her whole mouth glowed with sweetness.

  “Is it fizzing yet?”

  “On my tongue!”

  “Summer moonberries are fizziest because they grow under cloudless, glittering skies, where starlight blends with the lunar glow. By the way, did I mention magnets?”

  “I don’t think so.”

  “Well, don’t go anywhere near them! Magnets are the enemy of all time travelers. For some reason, they mess everything up.”

  “Okay,” Gertie said, “stay away from magnets.”

  “Yes. Very important.”

  “What if my key gets lost? Will I be sent back to—”

  “To where you came from? No! If you lose your key along with the time machine and get snatched—you will lose the ability to travel through time, and if you’re the only Keeper, that’s a very big problem. Always remember to take the time machine and key with you at all times, and to stay away from—”

  “Magnets, I’ll remember,” Gertie said. “I promise. I’m just happy I have a way back home.”

  Kolt bit into some cheese as lightning flashed at the window. “But do you know where exactly in the world you’re from, Gertie? And when in time? And who your family might be? Their names for instance?”

  “The Milks?” She winced, realizing he might have a point.

  “I looked for my family for hundreds of years. But I don’t know who it is I am looking for. I might have met them several times already and not known it.”

  “But they’re out there somewhere. They have to be, right, Kolt? We’re connected like those tree roots, remember?”

  “They’re out there right now, sure as you and I sit here breathing—but say we travel to Vienna in 1734 or Lagos in 1986, what if it’s one thousand years too early? Or two hundred years too late? Or fifteen thousand years too early? Or ten minutes too late?”

  “But if we are missing from the world, Kolt, shouldn’t we be returned too? Who returns us?” Gertie said, feeling sudden anger at the unfairness of it all.

  “I don’t know, Gertie, but there’s always a right moment for lost objects to be returned, so perhaps it just isn’t our time yet. All I know is that we’re bound by sacred terms to do our Keeper duty.”

  “Even if we didn’t choose it?”

  “It was chosen for us, Gertie. We didn’t choose to be Keepers any more than we chose to be born.”

  Kolt was going for the last roasted vegetable when thunder crackled through the cottage with such force that he was thrown from his chair onto the floor. The vegetable flew off his plate toward the bookcase, landing on the statue of the woman, who now held a carrot instead of a baby.

  “Come on then!” Kolt said, getting up. “Before the seas begin to boil, let’s go!”

  13

  The Sock Drawer

  THEY LEFT THE TABLE and hurried to a small, ordinary-looking door near the books.

  “Welcome to the Sock Drawer,” Kolt said, turning the handle to reveal a descending staircase. “Bedroom 87, home to all lost clothing.”

  “Is it really a drawer?” Gertie asked. “Should we go in one at a time?”

  “One at a time?” Kolt laughed. “Down these stairs, you’ll find a complete fashion history of the world, so that we can blend in with the locals and make our job of returning things even less dangerous.”

  Gertie descended the steps carefully, and soon found herself in one of the biggest and most exciting bedrooms, with racks and racks and more racks of clothes, shoes, and accessories from every place and time in history.

  “So time travel is dangerous?” Gertie asked, noticing a tall shelf with armor and helmets.

  “Not the traveling part, Gertie—oh it’s bumpy on occasion, and if we take a wrong turn and end up in 2488 instead of 1488, then we just come home and wait for the B.D.B.U. to reset the time clock and try again.”

  “I like that!” Gertie said, pointing to a tall cone-style hat.

  “Sorry, Gertie, that’s a fifteenth-century Hungarian hennin hat, completely wrong for where we’re going.”

  Gertie held up a dagger-staff, engraved with hieroglyphs, from a rack of swords. “Could we take this?”

  “We almost never need weapons, Gertie, but it’s an interesting piece.”

  Gertie replaced it in the rack next to a ruby-encrusted battle ax.

  “The dangerous part,” Kolt went on, “is the occasional vicious creature, or earthquake, or”—Kolt laughed—“in the case of traveling to years 4900 B.C.E., 866 C.E., and 2187 C.E.—cosmic events from meteor showers and solar bursts related to gravitational realignments—not the best time to get a flat tire. It can be especially hazardous when returning things to nether regions. To this day, I’ve thankfully never seen the Pits of Megatronus, the Bruggedon Tundra, the Salt River of Knapp Gorge, the Devil’s Cape, the Glowing Triangle of Jig, or the famous blood tunnel of Darren Island.”

  In the center of the Sock Drawer was a large globe, revolving slowly.

  K
olt went up to it and spoke out loud the year they intended to visit, 240 B.C.E.

  The world stopped moving. Then land and water shifted into a new position and changed color.

  “Clever, isn’t it?” Kolt said. “Say any year, and the continents and seas shift to reveal what the Earth looked like then.”

  “What do the colors mean?”

  “Temperature and wind!”

  Then tiny numbers and letters appeared over the areas of land, each set corresponding to a particular rack of clothes.

  When they arrived at rack B21, Gertie gazed over the rows of different colored fabrics. Some were woven with gold and silver, while others looked dark and foreboding.

  “Nothing too royal, Gertie, as the B.D.B.U. didn’t mention kings or queens on this trip. That’s a good thing by the way, as most people in power are a bit batty or soon will be.”

  “This is nice,” Gertie said, pulling a dress off the rack, “but the material is quite rough. It’s like sandpaper.”

  “Ah! You remember what sandpaper is! Very good, that’s peaches, pineapple, bicycles, chickens, the ability to operate a World War II machine gun, and now sandpaper. As for the frock, if it’s what people wore in 240 B.C.E., then we have no choice. We must be fashionable—our lives depend on it.”

  “Does the Sock Drawer always have the right outfit, Kolt?”

  “Always.” Kolt smiled. “I’ve dressed up as a sixth-century Australasian snake handler and a Wild West sheriff, and even an Egyptian queen. That involved the crushing of fish scales to get the makeup shimmery enough.”

  Gertie settled on a knee-length hooded gown in orange with black seams. She pulled it over her head and straightened the fabric. The storm outside was now like a ferocious beast with the cottage in its grasp.

  Kolt knocked on her dressing room door. “Time to get some money, then it’s off to ancient Alexandria to return the Persea branch!”

  With rain pummeling the house like thousands of small fists, Kolt led Gertie to tiny bedroom 88 at the back of the Sock Drawer (nicknamed the Piggy Bank), which was nothing but buckets and buckets of cash in all forms from coins to banknotes to tiny star-shaped mirrors to polished stones and even vials of spices.