Gertie Milk and the Keeper of Lost Things

by Simon Van Booy

Gertie scooped him into her arms. “I’m glad you’re awake, but there’s an emergency going on because a group of very bad people have stolen something precious.”

  “A dollop of mashed potato?”

  “No, something much more important than a crushed vegetable.”

  Kolt paced up and down, muttering to himself, trying to devise a plan to rescue the old book.

  “Maybe we try to find out where they’ve been hiding?” Gertie suggested.

  “We have no way of knowing where that might be. They could be headquartered at any point in history, depending on Vispoth’s calculations.”

  Gertie thought for a minute.

  “If I were the B.D.B.U.,” she said slowly, “and I needed rescuing, I would summon the Keepers by demanding the return of something from where I was being kept prisoner!”

  “—Thus reuniting Keepers and book!” Kolt rattled off excitedly. “That’s brilliant, Gertie! Let’s go under the house and see if the cave sprites have noticed anything glowing, vibrating, or bouncing around. That could be it!”

  He swept the rug from over the trapdoor, then jumped back in horror.

  “Noooo!” he roared. “No, no, no, no! We’re doomed.”

  Gertie scrambled over with Robot Rabbit Boy still in her arms like a fluffy baby.

  Kolt was hysterical. “They’ve gotten under the cottage! And locked the trapdoor behind them!”

  Gertie bent down and examined an enormous combination padlock of shiny black metal, with thousands of digital numbers scrolling over its surface.

  “What kind of lock is this?” she asked.

  “A Flux Bandit,” Kolt groaned. “A Japanese padlock from the middle of the twenty-third century that’s impossible to break. Those numbers you see flashing over the metal are all variants of the combination, which changes one hundred times a second. If only we could get it off—then at least we’d know if they stole anything from downstairs, and perhaps get hold of an item that will lead us to where the B.D.B.U. has been taken.”

  Gertie glared at the numbers flashing silently over the black steel. “There must be a way!”

  “It’s no use,” Kolt said. “Everybody knows the Flux Bandit is indestructible.”

  Gertie was holding Robot Rabbit Boy in one arm when he began to wriggle. She put him down, and he hopped over to the trapdoor casually, his metal legs clinking.

  “Eggcup?” he said, touching the padlock with his paw.

  “Poor little creature,” Kolt said. “He probably thinks it’s a toy.”

  Robot Rabbit Boy sniffed the lock, then looked up at Kolt with his nose twitching. “A dollop of mashed potato?”

  Kolt smiled. “I would love a dollop of mashed potato—but first we have to think of a way to get past the most secure, sophisticated, unbreakable superpadlock ever made, which I’m afraid is impossible. There’s nothing in the entire universe that can penetrate such an impenetrable mechanism.”

  Robot Rabbit Boy touched the Flux Bandit again, his nose still twitching like mad.

  “That’s strange,” Kolt said. “I wonder what he’s doing.”

  Gertie couldn’t figure it out either. “Maybe he’s about to sneeze?”

  Then suddenly, from out of nowhere, a bolt of high-intensity, scorching-hot laser-beam shot from the little X mark below Robot Rabbit Boy’s nose, and in a flash of blinding light the kitchen was sprayed by thousands of exploding Flux Bandit pieces.

  Robot Rabbit Boy pointed at the blackened, smoldering hole in the floor with his paw. “A dollop of eggcup.”

  “B-b-b-big . . . d-d-dollop.” Kolt whimpered, his hair blown back from the explosion.

  Gertie patted her little friend on the head, then turned to Kolt through the smoky air.

  “Guess I’d better read the instruction manual after all.”

  29

  A Big Moment for Robot Rabbit Boy

  AS THEY RACED down the basement stairs, Gertie saw something ahead of her glowing.

  “Stop! Stop!” she called back to the others. “There’s something on the step.” But then she recognized what it was.

  “Slug Lamp!”

  “What on earth is that doing down here?” Kolt said, catching up. “Moonberries don’t grow underground.”

  Gertie picked it up and looked at its squashy, sluggy face.

  “Hey! It’s the one you gave me on my first night here!”

  At hearing her voice, the Slug Lamp glowed a bit brighter.

  “Throw it upstairs through the trapdoor,” Kolt said quickly. “We have work to do.”

  “I will not!” Gertie snapped. “I’ll bet it was trying to save the cave sprites, but only got as far as the third step.”

  The Slug Lamp glowed and wriggled as if this were all true. Robot Rabbit Boy stepped down to where Gertie was and touched the creature with his paw.

  “Mashed potato?”

  “Slug Lamp,” Gertie said, then stuffed the creature into her jeans pocket where he’d be safe. “C’mon, let’s go!”

  Once they were in the basement, the presence of intruders was immediately clear. Most of the lamps had been pulled from the rock and lay glowing in bits on the ground. Messages had also been spray painted on the cave walls, such as:

  loserz win!

  And:

  wee no wear u live!

  And perhaps the one they had intended to be most frightening but wasn’t:

  keepers dye

  A few of the bedroom doors had cracks and indentations where they had been thumped with something hard and heavy.

  “Look, Kolt! They must have tried to get into some of the rooms.”

  “But they couldn’t, could they?” Kolt said, examining the handles. “I wonder why their stolen Keepers’ key didn’t work?”

  “I guess the same reason they couldn’t get into our bedrooms. . . . Maybe the B.D.B.U. has the power to block them!”

  “Yes, or maybe they only work when yielded by a true Keeper.”

  The Losers had also failed to capture, or douse, even a single cave sprite, and the whole week of them appeared to meet Gertie and Kolt as a chaotic jumble of orange lights, although old Sunday still lagged behind, confused as to what was happening.

  Robot Rabbit Boy couldn’t stop looking at the sprites. “Eggcup . . .” he said dreamily, reaching up with his ragged paw toward the lowest one. “Lavender . . .”

  “Thank goodness they’re unharmed!” Kolt said, wondering why the sprites had begun to hover over an ancient Inuit boat in the center of the room. “What are they doing?”

  “Maybe they have something to show us?” Gertie asked.

  “That’s it, you’re right!” Kolt said, rushing over to the boat. “Let’s get in the umiak! The sprites must want to take us deep under the cliff to one of the lowest rooms. Climb inside the boat, everyone!”

  Gertie and Robot Rabbit Boy stepped sheepishly inside the vessel—which Kolt said had been joined from whalebone and animal skins by the native people of Greenland.

  “Hold on, both of you,” he instructed.

  “Mashed potato?”

  “But there’s no water up here,” Gertie pointed out, looking around, “so hooooowwww—”

  A trapdoor opened suddenly under the umiak, dropping the boat and its crew of three ten feet into a fast-flowing underground river.

  “Hold on for dear life!” Kolt bellowed over the thunder of rushing water. “If anything jumps into the boat—throw it out!”

  They were going so fast, Gertie didn’t even try to answer. She just gripped the sides, her hair blowing wildly as they dropped through a series of corkscrew turns. All Gertie could do was blink away the splashing water as best she could and hope that Robot Rabbit Boy hadn’t bounced out of the boat. When a sharp corner threw them all to the side of the bone-framed kayak, Gertie felt the Slug Lamp squirming
in her pocket. Then a wave of freezing water took her breath away.

  Finally, they dropped from the rushing tunnel into a deep lagoon.

  Everyone was sopping wet, but had somehow managed to stay in the boat during the hellish descent. As they drifted with the current, still recovering their senses, Gertie saw they were deep under the cliff, most likely at sea level.

  “We made it!” she said, taking the Slug Lamp out of her pocket to check if it was okay. The squashy creature nodded and blinked its eyes.

  Kolt grabbed a bone oar and rowed them to the side of the cave. With the cave sprites drifting overhead, there was enough light for Gertie to make out a rocky staircase leading to a corridor lined with doors.

  “That must be it!”

  They clambered out of the boat and ran up the steps.

  “It’s bedroom 888,” said Kolt, jostling his key into the lock. With extreme caution Kolt, Gertie, Robot Rabbit Boy, the Slug Lamp (in Gertie’s pocket), and cave sprites entered the darkened chamber.

  To Gertie’s great relief, it didn’t appear to be a living room (like the bedroom of lost limbs), as all they could see at first were narrow slits of bamboo with vertical writing that had been tied together with string.

  “Books,” Kolt said, unrolling one. “Old Chinese books.”

  “Why are there books in here?”

  “I don’t know,” Kolt said. “But not all books contain knowledge, Gertie—some are just pamphlets intended to spread fear.”

  Gertie pointed to a plain-looking bowl with pink powder. “I thought each room contained only one type of thing?”

  “This one is different,” Kolt said apprehensively. “I knew it existed, but hoped I’d never see it.”

  “Why?”

  “Because bedroom 888 contains an object from ancient Asia capable of destroying the B.D.B.U.”

  “It can be destroyed?”

  “Oh yes . . . just like any living thing.”

  “But why these things?”

  “Because they’re made from metals, or powders, or even sound frequencies that have been known to undo the fibers from which the B.D.B.U. is woven. The rooms in this lower chamber of the cliff contain some of the most dangerous items from the world.”

  Gertie stared in awe at the various artifacts capable of such devastation. There was a bronze gong with a skull drawn on it, three green poles sharpened at the edges, a statue of an angry looking half-man/half-fish, a glass ball with fire inside, and a sword in a sheath woven with silver, which was the only item in the room glowing brightly.

  Kolt saw it too.

  “Be careful!” he said. “Stay back, and let the cave sprites do their job.”

  “Why would the B.D.B.U. want us to get something that could destroy it?” Gertie asked. “It doesn’t make sense.”

  They watched as the cave sprites flitted about the room over the many objects, before finally settling on the glowing sword.

  “Could it be wrong?” Gertie asked. “You said the B.D.B.U. sometimes gets things mixed up, so how can we be sure?”

  When the cave sprites had gone over the ancient weapon several times, checking to make sure it wasn’t a trap left by the Losers, Kolt stepped forward and took hold of it. “At this point we have no choice, Gertie. It’s blind faith in the old book from here on out.”

  Gertie and Robot Rabbit Boy followed Kolt out of bedroom 888, and watched as he removed his key from the lock, then hurriedly took out the time machine.

  “We’re not going in the Time Cat?”

  “No time!” Kolt said. “We’d have to paddle out of the cliff, then around to the beach. Even with Johnny the Guard Worm pushing us, it would take too long to get back to the garden.”

  “Do you know where we’re going?”

  “Ancient China, I think, but I don’t know exactly, sometime between 700 and 300 B.C.E. We’re going to have to trust that the B.D.B.U. knows what it’s doing.”

  “Shouldn’t we change clothes at least, to fit in?” Gertie said.

  “We can’t visit the Sock Drawer, we’ve got Losers to catch! Now everybody link hands.”

  With the Slug Lamp still in her pocket, Gertie huddled next to Kolt as he threaded his key into the time machine.

  “Wait!” she cried, looking around for Robot Rabbit Boy, who had slinked off to a far corner of the cave.

  “What’s he doing?” Kolt called out. “Robot Rabbit Boy! Over here now! Eggcup! Eggcup!”

  But he just stood there, looking down at the floor and shuffling his paws.

  “He’s upset about something,” Gertie said. “Maybe he thinks we’re taking him back to the abandoned city?”

  “I’ll take care of this,” Kolt said, giving Gertie the sword and rushing over to the little creature.

  “Down on one knee!”

  Robot Rabbit Boy did as he was told, his plump metal legs knocking with fear.

  “I, Kolt, head Keeper of Skuldark, hereby officially recognize that the Series 7 creature known as Robot Rabbit Boy is to be sworn in by an emergency honorary decree in the Age of Disappearance as an official Keeper of Lost Things, thus enjoying all the privileges, benefits, protections, mysteries, coincidences, extraordinary cakes, and dangers accompanying the aforementioned position, from now until the end—or the beginning—of time. Upon these words I do so solemnly swear, this day, with Gertie Milk as my official witness . . . now link up!”

  30

  Evil in the Forest of Moganshan

  WITH A FLASH OF BLUE LIGHT, they cleared the graviton bridge and found themselves in a dense green forest of bamboo and pine. The cool air was alive with birdsong and the rattle of cicadas from low branches. Wind swayed the hollow bamboo trunks, making them knock.

  “It’s Asia for sure,” Kolt said, “but when, I can’t say.”

  “I wish you had let me change clothes!” complained Gertie. “I don’t think there was denim in ancient Asia, and I’m still wet from that weird bone canoe.”

  Kolt shot her a look of annoyance. “You might be more concerned about the fact that we have a robot rabbit who can shoot high-powered laser beams from the little X below his nose. That might draw a bit more attention than your wet jeans.”

  “Right,” Gertie said, looking down into her little friend’s eyes, which glowed neon purple.

  “Now let’s really concentrate on what to do, because if we don’t get the B.D.B.U. back, human achievements will soon disappear most likely along with us, and our species will be doomed to—”

  “The age of ignorance!” Gertie interrupted.

  “I’m afraid so,” Kolt said, “with people burning witches again.”

  “There are witches?”

  “Thank goodness yes. . . . Mrs. Pumble was one.”

  “She was?”

  “Of course. Any brave, quick-thinking, free-spirited woman living in dark times is thought to be a witch—didn’t you know that?”

  « • • • »

  The forest was so tightly packed with lush bamboo trees that Gertie couldn’t even see the sky. It was such a change from the dry heat of North Africa, where she had helped return the measuring stick to Eratosthenes. Now it was a sword they had to give back, which they hoped would lead them to the B.D.B.U.

  Gertie removed the weapon from its sheath.

  “It’s still glowing, but which way?”

  “Oh, this is a nightmare,” Kolt lamented. “I have no idea why the Losers would have brought the B.D.B.U. to ancient China and why the B.D.B.U. wanted us to bring along the very weapon capable of destroying it! We could be dealing with anything.”

  Then Robot Rabbit Boy pointed at a young bamboo tree.

  “Lavender!” he cried.

  “Yes,” Kolt said. “I saw something, too. We may not be alone.”

  “Then I think we should get moving,” suggested Gerti
e. “Anywhere is better than just standing here.”

  Without being asked, the newly appointed Keeper of Lost Things, Robot Rabbit Boy, bravely hopped out in front and began leading the charge, which would have appeared more heroic if Gertie hadn’t had to keep lifting him over low bushes.

  It was slow going through the dense undergrowth. The farther they went down the mountain, the more humid it got. Soon they were all drenched in sweat.

  “If we don’t find water,” Kolt panted, “we might have to return to Skuldark.”

  “We can’t do that,” said Gertie. “We’ve come so far, and remember what you said about the Losers? The B.D.B.U. needs our help. Without it, I’ve got no chance of finding out who I am.”

  Kolt stopped walking and stood there.

  “And if you did discover who you are, Gertie?” he asked indignantly. “What then? Would you leave us forever? What about your Keeper promise?”

  “I haven’t made any promises!” Gertie said crossly. “And I failed my last mission, so I don’t know why you’d want me to stay anyway.”

  They continued on in complete silence, broken only by the occasional offer of mashed potato.

  But when something moved in the trees ahead, Kolt and Gertie exchanged a look that extinguished any tension between them.

  “Who is there?” Kolt called out. “Show yourself! We are seekers of a giant book, and have a deadly rabbit.”

  “I’m not sure they speak our language.”

  “All Keepers speak Skuldarkian, Gertie, so anything we say translates into whichever language the listener best understands.”

  A man and a boy about Gertie’s age stepped out from behind some bamboo trees, brandishing long staffs to defend themselves. They wore loose, light-brown robes of a cloth made from plant fibers.

  “Hello!” said Kolt, placing his fist against an open palm and then bowing. The familiar greeting seemed to put the strangers at ease, and they returned the gesture. Then they spotted Robot Rabbit Boy’s glowing eyes, and the older man stood in front of the boy, as if to shield him.

  “Who are you people?”

  “We are friends from very far away,” Kolt said.