The Questory of Root Karbunkulus - Quill Read online

  “I know. I can see you.”

  “I know that…I just…never mind…I have with me Miss Root Karbunkulees and her friend…”

  “Krism…”

  “Krism. Yes, of course. It…erm…it seems we have a problem in that Krism claims to be a victim of frequent bullying.”

  “Y’don’t say.” Slim Pulpit picked up his fat cigar, sucked its smoke into his innards and skulked at Krism. Some ashes fell and drowned in the flash and pomp of his paisley jacket

  “I do say.” Picklepug continued, waving the smoke out of his face. “And I’d like you to do something about it.”

  “Of course, sir. Can’t have that kind of behaviour under our watch. I’ll get on it right away.”

  “Thank you, Slim. I shall await your report.” Picklepug coughed.

  “Sure thing, Mr. Picklepug, sir.”

  “And don’t forget to contact the poster committee and tell them to triple the size of my headshots.”

  “Triple, sir?”

  “Yes and the touch up work on…my…uh…”

  “Your chins, sir?”

  “Chin, Mr. Pulpit. One chin. And put out that blasted cigar! ”

  “Sure thing, sir.”

  They hung up. Root watched Slim Pulpit’s paisley bulk disappear behind the re-establishing walls and ceiling of Picklepug’s office.

  “Ahem! See! No job is too small for the Guardian of DréAmm. We are on the case.”

  “But…” Root was about to mention the fact that he’d been on the case many times prior and that if her calculations were right, that nasty sack of bull rot, Slim Pulpit was now eight reports overdue! But “but” was all that was allowed.

  “Oh, you’re welcome, my dear. It was my pleasure. Now, if you’ll excuse me I have another meeting. Toodles and all that.”

  He nudged them along out of his office and then shot down the hall, craning his neck in an undeniable attempt to smooth out three folds of chin.

  “I’m sorry.” Root grabbed Krism’s hand.

  “Hey, you tried.” Krism smiled lamely. “No one’s even tried for me before.”

  “But I just wish…”

  “You’re my friend, Root. That’s enough for me.”

  Root and Krism lugged themselves down the hallway, hoping not to run into anyone and then, of course running straight into Lian and Dwyn.

  “Oh there you are.” Lian said. “C’mon. Mum’s here with our stuff.”

  Root looked at Krism and then back to Lian.

  “Um…sure, he can come, too.”

  But Krism had become quite adept at deciphering a true welcome and an obligated one. He declined quietly and walked away, muttering a quick goodbye to Root.

  In his room he was greeted by Wilma, his pet chameleon. She was too big to travel on his shoulder now so he often had to leave her. Now on his lap, she purred while he smoothed his hand over her blue skin. Blue for the color of his pants.

  “One day,” Krism sneered. “One day, I’ll get even. With them all. They’ll regret everything they ever did to me.”

  As he spoke, letting the dark angry words engrave him, he looked down, startled. His loyal chameleon Wilma had turned as black as the night.

  As black as his raging, vengeful heart.

  4

  THE HEMOSTYLUS

  Estrella Fuffleteez had entered her son’s room and got right to the business of cleaning it up. Lian, she could see was in dire need of pizzazz. From a pocket of her apron she withdrew a favourite Glong-hair brush. This she dipped in a small clay pot labeled Pirate Blue of her mobile unit of paints and swept it across her son’s blanket. What had looked like a tattered rain cloud now seemed a bright swatch of ocean billowing over his mattress. Estrella Fuffleteez was pleased.

  She drew back, gleefully assessing further prospects and found target with a table and chair. These she fringed in red. Valador Red. And thus the Pirate Blue-Valador Red motif continued, finding its way into curtain panels and tiles and bathtub ceramics and dresser drawers; and into the skins and furs of things, and along the surfaces of vials and parchments and husks and other such oddities that cluttered her son’s counters and shelves. She was just zeroing in on a few live things, the same of which drew back into corners horrified and panicked, when she was stopped by--

  Gasp! Lian scanned what looked to him like the exploded remains of Sailor Barbie and turned his gawping eyes upon his mother.

  “Ta da!” She struck a pose that accidentally splat paint onto Lian’s Klok, a toy-sized sheep. Now a Pirate Blue toy-sized sheep.

  Root and Dwyn, far too new to this kind of thing, stood nodding, like satisfied patrons of the arts.

  “Mum!” Lian instantly decimated her joy. “What have you done?”

  “What? I just gave it a little update. And by the way, dear, you shouldn’t leave your underwear lying out in the open. It’s not very attractive.”

  Lian snatched his briefs from his mother, the nubs of his ears instantly red. “Just never mind! And…and Undo all this.”

  “You don’t like it?”

  “No. No I don’t like it. In fact I hate it and want you to put it back exactly how you found it!”

  “Oh, you. You’re worse than beige.” Estrella pulled out another brush; one with short thick bristles and slapped it sulkily across her masterpieces. As Lian’s room slowly returned to its Jungle-Laboratory theme, his guests attempted to be seated. Unfortunately there were many more occupants to Lian’s room than could readily be seen and more than one groaned under the weight of a trespassing butt. At least until the butt leaped up, thereby allowing escape into more suitable corners and/or nests and/or webs and/or tiny caves.

  Estrella Fuffleteez preferred to stand. Her news was far too exciting to be told any other way. “Hello Root. Hello Dwyn. How are you?”

  “Awesome!” They unison-ed with wide eyes, eager for the latest goods. Estrella had been the official Bearer of Stuff over the last several weeks, bringing with each visit items of the coolest nature, the best being her famous chocolate fingers, of which all had polished off in the first hour.

  “Alright!” Estrella Fuffleteez took a prominent position in front of her audience. “A-a-a—a—hem!” She smiled with an excited squeak that immediately engaged them. Even Lian had to extinguish his annoyance with a long, affectionate sigh. After he kicked his undies under the bed.

  Estrella began.

  “Well, as you know the second race is poised to begin and with its inevitable challenges, I wanted to make sure you were taken care of rightly this time. Certainly the Wesh fibre of your cloaks will repel wetness and keep you warm…”

  As she said this Root concurred with many distinct memories to prove it.

  “But you will need much more in the way of comforts if this Quest takes even half the time of the last.” Estrella continued. “And so, in consideration of this, I am pleased to present to you…Ta da!”

  With this, her second ‘tada’ of the day, Estrella stood to the side and revealed something hidden underneath a sheaf of silky green material. Estrella smiled with dramatic eyebrows and pinched the top of the sheaf. A third ‘tada’ was rather a bit overdone considering what it now referred, a large painting of a very, very, fat, fat family. A royal family it would seem, as thin gold circlets pressed firmly into all twelve of their pudgy foreheads. The presumed mother and father took the top peak of the pose. Ten children heaped around them like juicy, plump jujubes. They were all fairly dark skinned save for almost clown like rosy cheeks and the lighter sheen of twelve bald heads. Despite the sedate tones of their togas, they looked quite jovial as chubby lips curved up into chubbier cheeks, which heaped up under black sparkling eyes.

  Root blinked. And tried to discreetly meet the eyes of her teammates without actually turning her neck. She wondered if they too felt they had somehow missed something here. How exactly was this picture supposed to help them?

  “These! -“ Estrella Fuffleteez proceeded, “are the Royal Arklempts!”

&nb
sp; Her audience responded with nods. Politely not getting it at all.

  “The famously reclusive Arklempts of N-ye!”

  “Oh.” said Lian finally catching on. “How’djya manage that, mum?”

  “They called me! The Royal Arklempts, secluded from society, never seen, let alone heard for fifteen decades, called me to do their family portrait!”

  “Well, congratulations Ms. Fuffleteez.”

  “Thank you, Dwyn but it doesn’t end here. There’s more! Ta da!”

  This ‘tada’ at least had something interesting to back it up, though what it was no one in her audience could quite gather, not even Lian. The structure resembled Bamboo with its long jointed length but its cast was rich, seeping, endless black. Purple black and haunted with spirit. Its sleek glossed finish gleamed in a ray of sun that had snuck in through a hole in Lian’s curtain.

  Finally Estrella had fetched the reaction she had been seeking: wide eyes and open mouths. Lian even reached for the object but…

  “Uh uh uh uh uh…” Estrella pulled back the instrument.

  “But what is it?” Lian remained standing, his fingers twitching in curiosity, his brain hungry.

  “This. This, my darling son, is a Hemostylus.” Estrella turned its long black length in her hands. She clearly loved how weighty if felt, so full and thick. “This, my dearest boy, was the gift I received from the Royal Arklempts, in honour of my ‘exemplary eye for detail and ability to capture the very philosophy of the royal family.’”

  “Which is…?”

  “Well, as you can see from the eyes, this is a family of survivors. Indeed after their hasty departure from Sloxington, they claimed a pioneer attitude that not only helped them survive but thrive in what is now one of the top ten Kingdoms according to Snuddles’ Almanac, which was granted a rare tour.

  “But what is most remarkable is that the Arklempts have done this without the use of money. Their entire kingdom flourishes on a trading system, which would include the limited export of their most prized possession,” Estrella held up the lustrous instrument again. “Heartwood…the result of which you see before you. Only my Heartwood Hemostylus has been given a wholly unique ability, a custom made royal Arklempt endowment. Allow me to demonstrate.”

  “Wait a second.” Lian interrupted. “You say it’s a Hemostylus?”

  “Yes.” Estrella’s eyes twinkled. She loved to see the wheels turning in her son’s head, the joy of his leaping mind as it sifted and concluded.

  “So, if ‘stylus’ means writing instrument, and ‘hemo’ means blood…then…?”

  “Yes.” His mother smiled. “May I continue now?

  Lian opened a mental file and sat back down in earnest anticipation.

  Estrella Fuffleteez snapped her fingers. At once the Royal Arklempts began to shuffle off the page. It was a rather lumbering affair with excessive stretching and squeezing, and bowing and curtsying. When the page was finally clear Estrella stood before it, careful not to put the Hemostylus in her mouth like she usually did with her brushes and charcoals.

  She turned to Root with a long, hard stare. “Hmmmm…” When her eyes showed that an idea had flickered on, she went back to the page and swept the Hemostylus in determined strokes across its pulpy texture. Lian, Dwyn and most eagerly Root craned to see past her lean smocked body as it danced to the tune she was humming.

  When she finished her last skipping touch-up she faced the team. She did not ‘tada’ as was expected but she definitely had ‘tada’ in her eyes. She moved to the side of the page and watched with the others.

  The blank sheet was no longer blank. Within its loose edges now sat an inky purple-black sketch of a blouse of all things. But it was a lovely blouse with long billowy sleeves and a bodice that laced up. Root thought it would be gorgeous in a blue as deep as Mirror Lake, with delicate silver rope zigzagging up the front from silver hook to silver hook.

  The boys, on the other hand glazed over entirely. It was a shirt. Wasn’t it? They squinted. Were they missing something? Were they wrong or was it just a sketch of a plain old shirt. Lian was about to complain when all of a sudden the gauzy soft sheet seemed to shudder. His eyes popped at the next thing he saw. That they all saw.

  The shirt was lifting away from the page. As if a water bubble was caught underneath, the sleeves began to ripple and then the waist and the elegant neckline. The entire blouse was expanding in billows and waves, like a balloon. Then, as if someone suddenly let go of the balloon’s mouth, the shirt tore from the page, whizzed around the room with a phfffzzzzzzzz and then plunked on the floor in front of Estrella. She bent down and picked it up, a silky white blouse with black lacing up its front. In exactly Root’s size.

  “Do you prefer a color, Rootie-pie?”

  Root squirmed in delight. She loved where this was going and loved even more being called ‘Rootie-pie’. “Uh…Mirror Lake blue?” she stuttered.

  “Nice.” Estrella went to her paint pots, grabbed a brush and dunked it in to a thick blue pigment. She sailed it across the blouse. Root watched giddily as the white silk changed into glorious, glorious Mirror Lake Blue!

  “I think…oh, yes!” Estrella grabbed a thinner brush of Duckhair and dabbed it on the hooks. Then she slithered its silver tint up over the black lace. When she held up the final result, it was exactly, no word of a lie, exactly as Root had imagined. “Here you are, dear!” Estrella handed over the prettiest blouse Root had ever seen. Ever. In her entire life.

  “I am not sure whose magical blood the Royal Arklempts used to ink the Hemostylus, I didn’t even ask. But at any rate, it should garner the Valadors with an impressive supply of necessities, y’think?” Estrella ended with a squeal of delight so contagiously happy that they were all ignited into jumping beans.

  Lian’s room quickly became abuzz with activity as Estrella drew pants and shorts and shirts and blowup pots ‘n pans and just-add-water-mattresses and Chorm and foodstuffs and…money?”

  “Actually, that it can’t do.” said Estrella. “As I explained, the Royal Arklempts run a kingdom based on trade. They have no money system and unfortunately this is reflected in the Hemostylus. Do you think I’d be here printing off sweaters if I could print off gold?”

  Clutching her brand spanking new wardrobe of colourful, fresh pullovers and tees, not to mention thick, warm tweedy pants and shorts and socks, the first new clothes she’d ever owned, Root felt this windfall was much better than gold.

  And this was only the beginning. Hours later Estrella Fuffleteez was still drawing up a storm.

  “Hold still now.” Estrella dobbed a flat edged brush of yolk yellow across the border of the pajamas that Root was now modeling. She’d drawn them exactly to Root’s spec, with flouncy ruffles at the ends of the sleeves and a collar like a daisy. And now Estrella was adding the finishing touches of color. Here they were both a bit stumped. Stripes or polka dots?

  They asked the boys.

  And regretted it immediately.

  For one thing the boys were too engrossed in their new, top of the line gadget game thingies to care. And for another, they had no taste.

  Lian simply glanced up and said “Hey, you’re already down to half ink y’know. Do you think it should be wasted anymore on patterny color stuff or whatever that is?”

  “Uh…what’re those frilly hanging things for?” was Dwyn’s dopier yet kinder remark.

  “Nothing. They’re just…nice.” Root snapped. Over the past few weeks at the House of Gub, she’d become rather testosterone’d out by her teammates and here was yet another example of that.

  She humphed and turned back to her design.

  While she and Estrella bounced between ideas, a knock arrived at the door. Lian’s doorhand had gone for a coffee break and so could not identify the caller. As no one had been expecting visitors, Lian strode over rather cautiously to open the door.

  No one expected to see what they saw. But there it was, towering over Lian, solid wood and not taking no for an answ
er.

  5

  TAMIK CHILLENLY

  “Good day! DréAmm’s Second Magisterial Treasure Quest Grand Send Off Committee is currently seeking last minute donations for the upcoming festivities.” The towering wooden box said. “So, if you could find some…”

  “I don’t think so. But thanks.” Lian was about to close the door but the box had other plans.

  “You don’t have one thing to donate? I find that hard to believe. Especially you who collects everything that exists in the entire universe with no storage system in sight.”

  “What?”

  “You heard me!”

  “Who is it, dear?” Estrella Fuffleteez called, still hovering over Root with a dripping brush.

  “It’s a box.” Lian snapped, ready to punch it.

  “Oh brother.” Had the box had eyes they would surely be rolling. But instead it dropped to the floor revealing a taller than average girl. Her name didn’t stand out but her demeanour did. She was the reluctant member of Kor’s Kings, the maverick girl who was often found scoffing at Kor and skipping away despite his demands that she return. Up close one could see the constellation of freckles around her nose and a pair of underestimated green eyes. Her nut blond hair bounced in the same familiar pony tail that she wore daily.

  Lian recognized her. “Oh. You’re…”

  “Tamik Chillenly.”

  “Hi. I’m…”

  “Lian Blick, the mad scientist. Just kiddin’. Glad t’meet you.” The girl grabbed Lian’s hand and nodded at the others. Then she spied something. “You really shouldn’t leave your underwear lying out in the open. It’s very unattractive.”

  Lian burned. Who did this chick think she was, trespassing and insulting all in one fell swoop? He grit his teeth and kicked his second pair of briefs under a chair. “What can I do for you?”

  Tamik Chillenly grabbed a bright smile from the air. “DréAmm’s Second Magisterial Treasure Quest Grand Send Off Committee is currently seeking last minute donations for the upcoming festivities.”