by Steven Bohls
Hift released an exaggerated sigh as he begrudgingly set down his kebab and brushed cake crumbs from his trousers. “Follow me, I suppose. Murjen! Taskon!” he called.
The other two guards glared at Jed but put down their plates and joined Hift to escort the prisoner. None of them even seemed to notice that Shay was missing.
The prison was a basement under a basement, and it was much more secure than Jed had expected—or wanted. The stone walls were thick, and the door was made from heavy wood and straps of steel.
“Happy?” Hift said as he shut the door and locked it.
Sprocket rolled out from his backpack. “Zzztuck,” she said, looking around the dimly lit room.
Jed sighed. “Quite stuck,” he agreed. “But don’t worry, we’ll be unstuck from here soon.”
• • •
Within four hours, the latch lifted on his prison door.
Time for midevening tea and cakes.
Murjen carried a tray decorated neatly with a porcelain teacup and freshly baked biscuits. “Good evening,” she said sheepishly, holding the tray up so Jed could see it. A small daisy sat in a miniature vase as an adornment to the snack.
Every meal the golds brought him looked, smelled, and tasted like it had been made by a four-star chef: broiled flat-iron steak, maple-glazed salmon with pineapple salsa, and spice-rubbed beef tenderloins with chimichurri. He ate better in this prison than he did at almost any other time in his life, and more often. They brought meals seven times the first day.
“We don’t get a lot of prisoners,” Hift had explained apologetically at the time. “Do prisoners prefer nine meals a day? What, with all that sitting around and having nothing else to do but eat? Sounds dreadful.”
He’d been stuck in this prison for only two full days, but they’d already given him a week’s worth of food.
Jed’s mind snapped back to Murjen. “Um…is there…uh…anything else I can do for you?” she asked, setting down the tea and biscuits and looking sorrowfully at the dank surroundings.
“Besides letting me go?” Jed asked.
“Yeah, besides that.”
“I’m fine,” Jed grumped.
Murjen reached down to the tray and adjusted the daisy, then nodded to herself in approval as he looked at the tray. “I’ll be back in an hour for supper,” she said, her voice breaking with the prospect. “I’ll check on the cooking now! Prisoners should never be subjected to burned duck confit.”
Alone again, Jed looked at Sprocket. “Do you think Shay made it back?”
“Yezzz.”
He’d already scoured the walls of the prison for any loose stones that he might pull away to tunnel free, but the wall was solid. Golds might not be good at taking prisoners, but they were good at keeping them.
“We have to get out of this basement,” he whispered to Sprocket. “I have an idea, but I’m going to need your help.”
“Helllp.”
At supper, Murjen brought in a plate covered by a large silver serving dish. “Perfectly roasted duck confit,” she said, whipping the cover off the food with a flourish. “Enjoy.”
When Jed finished eating, he hid Sprocket on the finished tray to be taken for washing. Now he just had to wait. That night, once the town was stuffed and sleeping, Sprocket returned and lifted the prison’s latch bar. Together, Jed and his faithful tin can snuck out of the root cellar and into the open town square.
Sprocket sped alongside Jed, fluttering happily in the still air. The dome lights had dimmed to pinpricks of white light, like stars. Violet battery bugs—much like the green one he’d purchased in Lunkway for Alice—hovered in distant orchards and gardens.
Jed walked toward Lawnmower Mountain. Dirt and rocks crunched under his steps until he reached a field of grass. The soft earth made him want to take off his shoes and walk in the cool lawn the way he used to at his home beyond the fringe. The mountain grew taller the closer Jed got to it. Flowering vines weaved through the heaps of lawn mowers.
Jed walked around the base until he spotted what looked like the mouth of a cave. Vines covered the dark opening like prison bars. He peered inside but couldn’t see anything within the black depths.
He needed light. A trip back to the village was too risky, but the memory of Lyle using the key on Jed—the key that allowed him to remove his skin—jumped into his mind. Could he do it without the key? Could he take off his skin? He closed his eyes, remembering how it had felt. The sound of the clicking key. The movement of the gears inside his chest. The sensation against his skin was gone. The gentle breeze. The slight chill of night. Gone.
Jed’s skin slouched around his gold. He removed it entirely. The thousands of sparks inside of him shined with a light of their own. Spark light pierced the blackness of the cave. Jagged shapes ran along a corridor that extended into the heart of the mountain.
Jed pried through the vines that grew across the opening, and squeezed into the cavern. His brilliant sparks glowed brighter in the total darkness of the cave, and the silence of the night was broken only by the sound of his light footsteps on the ground.
Jed walked until he could barely see the entrance, Sprocket still dancing beside him. He crept farther in until a chamber opened. It domed overhead as far as he could see. In the center of the chamber was a ladder, too tall for Jed to see its end.
“Well,” he said to Sprocket, who fluttered nearer and then perched on his shoulder. “Shall we?”
Jed
“Toppp,” Sprocket buzzed.
“Finally,” Jed said. “If we ever get out of this hole in the ground and make it back aboard Bog’s tugboat, I want you to tell Kizer—straight to his grim face—that I can climb a clunk ladder. Okay?”
“Clllunk faaace,” Sprocket said. “Ladderrr.”
“Exactly.”
The ladder stretched to an empty room at the hollow peak of the mountain. A gap in one wall overlooked the city. Jed could see everything: the starry sky, the town square, and even the root cellar from which he’d escaped. More purple battery bugs filled the dome, spreading over the grass like a violet mist.
But there was nothing inside the room—no control panel, no levers or gears or buttons. Only a single cable dangled from the ceiling.
Turning away from the outside world, he approached the cable warily. Loose, exposed wires snarled from its end. Jed looked from the cable to his chest.
Sprocket buzzed.
“Yeah, I don’t think I’m putting that in me just yet. We need to shut down those dampeners first,” Jed said to Sprocket.
She sputtered in agreement.
• • •
Jed was back in his prison before sunup. Sprocket was tucked in a corner nearby, looking as innocent as a cherry pie filling can can look. They repeated the routine the next night; Sprocket opened the prison door, and Jed studied the mountain or searched for the spark inhibitors.
There was a little problem with that second task, though: Jed didn’t have the faintest idea what a spark inhibitor looked like.
On the third night, Jed was sitting at the mountain base, wondering what he should do. Lyle would be on the hunt for him. They were safe now, but how long could that last? He needed to activate the mountain.
“What’s your secret?” he whispered to its forbidding shape.
Sprocket fluttered about in the grass. She weaved around flowers, occasionally hunching over them as if smelling the petals. The longer Jed sat, the bolder she grew in exploring the space around them.
Jed lay back on the cool ground, interlocking his hands behind his head. “What do you think, Sprocket?”
He waited for an answer.
“Sprocket?” he said again.
Nothing.
He sat up. She wasn’t beside him.
“Sprocket?” he called a third time.
A light buzzing noise came from the side of the mountain.
Jed hopped up and walked after her, following the sound of her wings. A dim purple light pulsed in the dist
ance. Jed smiled to himself. She had been chasing a battery bug. As he drew closer, he could see her awkward shape trying to match the rise and fall of the battery bug’s movement.
“Prrretty,” Sprocket buzzed. “Zzzpark!”
“Yeah, it’s kind of like a spark,” Jed said, jogging to catch her.
He walked with her around the base of the mountain as she delightedly chased the battery bug. They walked nearly halfway around the mountain before Jed stopped. “We should head back,” he called softly to Sprocket. “Before the sun—I guess the lights—come up.”
“Light! Light! Light!” Sprocket chanted.
“Exactly,” Jed said.
“Seee!” Sprocket said, “Seee!”
She raced ahead, passing the battery bug.
“Wait!” Jed called, running after her. Then he saw it, too—a red dot blinked in the distance. He squinted. “What is that?”
“Light!” Sprocket said as she reached it. She flew like a tornado around the red dot.
Jed finally caught up and found a simple post sticking out of the ground. At the top of the post was a big red button. Next to the button was a sign: DO NOT PUSH.
A chill trickled from the back of Jed’s neck down to his toes.
“Mom. Dad,” he whispered in the cool night air, thinking back to the letter they’d left him so long ago. “I hope you’re right.”
And then he pushed the button.
Jed
Color bled through the sky as the dome lights changed from black to crimson. A siren wailed three times and then fell silent.
Sweat beaded in Jed’s palm. What have I done?
His vision flickered, and a voice entered his mind.
“Jed?” Shay’s voice said inside his head. “Are you there? I can feel you again. What happened? You were gone, but now you’re back. Like a super-secret magic mouse! You are back, aren’t you?”
“Yes, I’m here,” he answered in his mind. “I think Sprocket found the dampener controls.”
“Good. We’re close,” Shay continued. “But there’s a teensy, tinesy, itty, bitty nibblet of a problem.”
As if Jed could hear what Shay could hear, background noises echoed through their link. Sizzling wires…distant warning sirens…shatterfire.
“Shay?” Jed panicked. “What’s going on?”
“Have you ever heard squeak of I.C.C.A.D.?”
Jed thought back to the tavern in Lunkway. “The Iron Copper Coalition Against Dread,” he said in his mind. “What about them? Are they following you?”
“Well…we had to sneak through copper mouse skies,” Shay said. “But copper mice didn’t think it was very funny to see so many scritchnoughts. So, they called aaalllll of their friends, and now they’re exploding us. Boom! Bang! Kasplooot! But don’t worry, we’re not exploding them back. Well…not too many of them. Ugly Mouse said, ‘Don’t stay and fight; go, go, go to save Jed!’ Ooo…are you a mountain yet?”
“Are you going to be all right?” Jed asked.
“Probably. Ugly Mouse says that—”
Lyle’s whispering voice snuffed out Shay’s. “Jed, Jed, Jed…It’s so good to feel your presence again. I’m quite hurt that you left without saying good-bye. Not even a single word. That was entirely inconsiderate. I thought you’d been killed or kidnapped a second time. I withdrew my entire fleet to look for you. I launched ghostnoughts in every direction. It was as if you had just vanished.
“I thought you were gone forever. But then there was that junkstorm. You’re not the only one with relics that can predict junkstorm locations….When your storm blew in out of nowhere with no warning on my radar, I knew you were behind it. So, I waited at the edge of town for days. Then I saw your old tugboat and I found your signal—your scent.
“I followed, but you disappeared yet again. Your signal evaporated completely this time. Until now. I take it you found those bumbling golden fools?”
“Leave them alone,” Jed said angrily.
“They deserve it.”
“I watched the memory. You abandoned them. Not the other way around.”
“I saved them from the coppers and irons. And then the golds hid—even from me. I’ve spent a century searching. You find them in one day.”
“They don’t want to be found. They’re not hurting anybody. Just leave them alone.”
“I will leave them alone…once the hiding place they’ve built is their gravesite. Then I will leave them alone.”
Shay’s voice seeped back. “And that’s why I think Ugly Mouse is always so grumpy,” she said. “He just needs a big, tight, mouse squeeze.”
“Shay,” Jed said. “You need to get here soon. Lyle knows where I am. He’s coming.”
“Hmm. That’s going to be a whole lot of mice squeezed in one little burrow. A whole lot, indeed.”
“Goldzzz,” Sprocket buzzed.
Jed looked up. A troop of guards rushed around the mountain toward them.
“Shay. I have to go. Get here as soon as you can.”
“Quick as a whisker!”
“What have you done?” Queen Calliope called out. “You’ve shut down our only defenses!”
Hift, Murjen, and Taskon reached Jed first. Calliope trailed close behind. “Get the dampeners online immediately.”
A technician stepped forward and knelt before the post. He opened a panel in its middle and fiddled with the wires until the crimson sky retuned to its bright, daytime gold. “I can reset the dampener cells,” he said, “but it will take at least four hours to warm up.”
“We’re defenseless until then?” she asked.
The technician nodded.
“Get him back to his cell,” Calliope snapped, stabbing a finger in Jed’s direction.
“No,” Jed said. “Lyle is coming. I need to be out here—I have to be ready for him.”
“You’ve put our entire city in peril,” Calliope said. “Guards, take him.”
Jed aimed a hand at Hift. “You don’t want to do this. I’m not your enemy.”
“Take him now!” Calliope shouted.
The three guards stepped forward. Jed charged them with mutiny against the ground underneath their feet. They floated a few feet in the air.
“Ah!” Hift shouted. “What’s going—”
Boom!
Hift accidently fired his shatterkeg. The force of the blast launched him toward Lawnmower Mountain, where he smacked its vine-covered surface and tumbled to the ground with a confused “Ouch!”
“That was him, not me.” Jed cringed. He turned to Calliope. “Let me help you. Please. I can do this.”
The anger in her eyes faded to despair. “He’ll kill us all,” she said in a softer tone. “He burns with so much hatred.”
“I won’t let him.”
“He has an army. Legions of undead that will tear all of us into scrap.”
“And we have an entire mountain,” Jed said.
Before Calliope could respond, Lyle’s slippery voice crawled into Jed’s ears. “Ahh. It’s good to be home.”
An explosion rattled the earth. The dome lights flicked out. Bits of debris trickled down into the gold city.
“He’s here,” Calliope said.
Jed nodded. Two more explosions rumbled in the dome. The hole where Jed had entered erupted in flames. Chunks of metal rained down. The hole grew wider and wider until it was enormous—a black disk in a golden sky.
The explosions ceased and the flames fizzled.
Everything was still for a moment.
Then, as the smoke dissipated, a ship floated through the hole.
“Dreadnought,” Jed said.
Another dreadnought descended after it. Then a third and a fourth. Soon, a dozen ships floated above the peaceful orchards, ponds, fields, and gardens. They flew slowly, hauntingly. Their engines coughed black trails of smoke as they clustered into battle formation.
Calliope turned to Jed. “Do it.”
Jed turned and ran. His feet pounded the earth with purpose.
“Faster,” he said, rounding the base of the mountain and rallying to the top.
Jed
“Shay?” Jed called out in his mind.
“Jed,” Shay answered. “We’re two squeaks away. We see Lyle’s mousenoughts. They’re scampering inside the gold burrow.”
Jed nodded to himself. “I know. I’m going to try to stop them.”
“Be careful. Or don’t be careful, and smash up their boats. But don’t die. We’ll be there soon, unless we get squashed.”
Jed heard Captain Bog’s voice in the background. “Shay! Stop jabbering and help me get this pulse beam online!”
“Gotta go,” Shay said. Her voice faded and disappeared.
Jed faced the thick cable hanging from the ceiling. “I can do this.”
He walked toward the cable, pulled off his shirt, and plugged the cable into his chest. A waterfall of energy gushed from the end of the cable, flooding every capacitor in his body with raw power. His sparks drank it in.
Jed felt for the lawn mowers. They appeared inside his mind one at a time, then dozens at a time, then hundreds, and then thousands, until he could feel them all—each lawn mower, a wave in an ocean of power.
Jed focused on the closest dreadnought. “Go,” he commanded.
A lawn mower sailed across the sky. It tumbled end over end as it flew toward the ship. The mower snapped against the ship’s hull. Jed infused the mower with life. Its blades ground into the side of the dreadnought, sending bits of wood and metal spraying everywhere as it crawled back and forth, chomping everything in its path.
Jed felt for more mowers, this time charging a hundred at once.
“Start,” he commanded.
Their motors chugged to life, coughing exhaust and sending tiny fumes of black smoke out from the mountain simultaneously.
“Go.”
The mowers swarmed toward the dreadnought, too, joining the first mower in tearing bits and scrap from its body.
Jed hurled hundreds more at the ship until, finally, the lawn mowers chewed the engines to pieces and the dreadnought sank from the sky.
Jed focused on a second dreadnought. He flared his rally sparks and anchored the ship to the drifting, dead dreadnought. Jed rallied the two ships toward each other until they slammed together. Metal crunched against metal and rained down.
