Secrets of the looking g.., p.17
Secrets of the Looking Glass, page 17
“What is this?” she whispered. Then the smell hit her, and she knew exactly what it was.
They were swimming in a vat of . . .
Chapter 27
Root Beer
By the time the vat—along with the rest of the cargo—had been lifted by crane, swung to the pirate ship, and, finally dropped onto the deck with a teeth-rattling thump, Celia and Tyrus swore they would never drink another root beer again as long as they lived.
“It’s up my nose,” Celia moaned. “And I’m never going to get it out of my hair.”
“I can’t hear you,” Tyrus said. “I have root beer in my ears.”
They had been washed, sloshed, spun around, and nearly drowned when the soda had foamed up from all the jostling. More than once during their journey, Celia had considered telling Tyrus to open the hatch so they could escape the horrifying brew that made her gag with every breath. The only thing that had kept her from doing it was the thought that, if they were discovered, the pirates might simply toss them both into the Nix.
But now that they were on the pirate ship, Celia allowed herself a moment of relief. She and Tyrus waited, listening for any sounds that might mean the pirate sheep had discovered them, but all was quiet except for the root beer slowly sloshing from side to side.
“Let’s get out of here,” she said, pushing on the hatch.
“For sure,” Tyrus said. “But be careful. We want to make sure there aren’t any, I don’t know, root beer guards.”
She paused. “Usually, I would be the one warning us to be careful, while you charged into whatever new adventure was coming. Do you think that’s changed because you’ve been trying to increase your logic or because I’ve been working on improving my imagination?”
“Maybe a little of both.” His voice sounded thoughtful. “That might not be such a bad thing, you know. Even after we rejoin our mirror images—assuming we ever do.”
“Yeah.” Another thought occurred to her, and even though she wanted to get out of the vat, she had to ask. “If I’m the risk-taker now and you’re the voice of caution, why did you jump on that rope?”
“I wasn’t looking at it as an adventure,” he said. “It wasn’t like I was imagining myself in a book. I just knew I could never forgive myself if we didn’t do everything we could to make things right.”
Carefully, they pushed the hatch open. Silver moonlight gleamed through the circle above them, and for the first time in hours, Celia could see Tyrus’s face. “Oh, your poor glasses. The lenses are totally brown.”
He rubbed them with his fingers, which only made things worse. “They’ll wash. I can’t say the same for my backpack.” Holding onto the railing with one hand, he pulled off his pack, but could barely lift it above the edge of the liquid.
Celia gasped. “You’ve been wearing that the whole time?” She grabbed the other side, and slowly, they managed to push it out of the hatch, root beer streaming from every seam. It must have weighed fifty pounds.
Tyrus shrugged. “I was hoping some of the books might have stayed dry. Pretty sure not.”
Celia knew how much Tyrus’s books meant to him. He almost always carried some of his favorites; a few of them were even signed by the authors.
“I swear when we get home, I will replace every one of them.”
Celia helped push Tyrus up through the opening. Once he’d made sure no one was watching, he pulled her out.
“Oh,” she sighed, lying back on the first dry surface she’d touched in hours. “Rinse me off and stick me in a desert, and I could be happy for days.”
“Look at those sheep,” Tyrus said, pointing to the masts. The sheep were so high up, they looked like toys among the rigging, adjusting sails, keeping watch, and pulling on ropes. “I had no idea they could even climb.”
“I guess if you practice anything long enough you get good at it.”
Moving to their knees to get a better view, they looked around.
“I think we’re on the back of the ship. There’s the steering wheel.” Celia pointed to a spot below and forward from them.
“It’s called the helm,” Tyrus said. “That part’s the quarter deck. The one we’re on is the poop deck.” Celia giggled, and Tyrus quickly added, “La poupe is French for ‘stern,’ which is what sailors call the back of the ship.”
Celia grinned. “Books, right?”
“I read a lot of pirate stories when I was younger,” he said. He took off his glasses and tried to wipe them clean with the hem of his shirt. It wasn’t much of an improvement, but at least the fingerprints were gone.
“Okay, ship expert. Where would we be most likely to find Lia and Ty?”
Tyrus moved closer to the edge of the vat, still staying in the shadows from the sails, and pointed at a large group of sailors shouting and laughing around a plank table covered with platters of food and barrels of root beer.
“That’s the main deck.” He pointed to an opening halfway down the ship next to a small boat hanging outside the rail, suspended over the water. “Those stairs just past the longboat probably lead down to the gun deck where they mount the cannons.”
“I didn’t see any cannons,” Celia said. “Just gargoyle faces.”
“Probably because the gunports are shut. That’s also the deck where the crew usually sleeps. Beneath that is the cargo hold.”
A pair of pirates carrying barrels suddenly appeared, and Celia and Tyrus scurried backward before they could be spotted.
After the pirates had moved on, Celia said, “I didn’t see Ty or Lia eating with the sailors.”
Tyrus tried to wipe his hands on his soaked shirt. “I bet they’re eating in their own quarters, or with the captain and officers, which should be right under us, along with the navigation room.”
“If we could get in there, maybe we could figure out where they’re going,” Celia said. She stopped and stared at Tyrus. “How did I figure that out with no logic?”
“Common sense,” Tyrus said. “Maybe you were afraid to use it before because your fear of having lost your logic was blocking it.”
Was Hatta right? Had she been so focused on the sliver in her one finger that she’d forgotten she had nine others that worked?
Careful to stay hidden, they slipped down the ladder and descended the stairway to a scarred wooden door marked Navigation. Celia looked back, afraid their wet footprints would give them away, but between spilled root beer and food, the pirates had left the deck such a mess that nothing stood out.
Tyrus pressed his ear to the door, listened for a moment, then eased it open.
Celia tensed, afraid someone would be inside, but the room was empty.
They quickly examined the charts and maps tacked to the walls and tables. Celia expected to be overwhelmed by words she didn’t know, but to her surprise, the maps and papers had few labels and even fewer descriptions.
The more they searched, the more Celia worried she was missing something. She kept glancing behind her and off to the side, feeling like there was an important document just out of sight.
“What’s this?” Tyrus asked, bending over a round device roughly the size of a large pizza. A pendulum swung from a raised arm, and gears clicked every few seconds, rotating the circular surface a fraction of an inch.
He reached out to poke the pendulum, but Celia caught his hand.
“Let’s not touch anything right now.” She studied the instrument, which seemed like a navigation tool. But instead of a map, the document on the rotating surface was a piece of paper covered with random scribbles.
She looked around the room. “Does this make any sense to you? I don’t see anything that would give us a clue as to where the ship is now or where we’re going.”
Tyrus shook his head. “There’s not even an ‘X marks the spot.’”
Celia tried not to think about her missing logic, but she couldn’t help feeling like she’d have been able to figure out everything if only she had it for a minute or two. Glancing into the corner, she noticed a small trapdoor set into the floor. As soon as she opened it, a woman’s powerful voice carried up to them.
“And what is it you hope to find on this particular Isle of Illusion?”
“I’m afraid I can’t tell you that,” replied a familiar voice.
Lia, Celia mouthed silently to Tyrus.
“But we’ll make it worth your while,” Ty answered.
“Of course, you will,” said the voice. “The generals of the Red Queen’s army are powerful allies. I will do anything I can to help the two of you.”
“That must be Black Sheep,” Celia whispered to Tyrus. “I thought she’d sound more like a pirate—you know, with arghs and maties and that kind of thing.”
“Let me take a peek,” Tyrus said, pushing by her.
Celia moved aside. “Do you see anything?”
Tyrus nodded.
“Is it Black Sheep?”
“Maybe?” He backed away, giving her a strange look.
Celia lowered her head through the trapdoor and stared down a short hallway into a fancy dining room. After everything they’d heard about the pirate sheep, she’d expected something terrifying. An eyepatch or a scar. Maybe a hook for a hand or a peg leg, or both. Definitely a broadsword with a few nicks from her latest kill.
What she didn’t expect was an old, gray-haired sheep with a wrinkled face and pink lipstick wearing a cardigan. Instead of a sword Celia had expected and the bicorn hat Hatta had mentioned, the sheep was wearing a bonnet and clicking a large set of metal needles together as she rocked back and forth.
Celia looked at Tyrus. “She’s knitting.”
“And she isn’t even black,” Tyrus said. “Why didn’t they name her Gray Sheep? Or Old Lady Sheep?”
“Maybe her wool used to be black when she was younger.”
Silently, Celia lowered herself through the trapdoor and climbed down the ladder into the hall.
“Where are you going?” Tyrus whispered.
She held a finger to her mouth and tiptoed toward the door, thinking maybe the old sheep was the pirate captain’s mother or grandmother.
But peering into the small room, she saw only two people and the sheep. Lia and Ty sat at a table with a white tablecloth and fancy dishes, eating roasted chicken, mashed potatoes with brown gravy, and vegetables. Celia, who hadn’t eaten in what felt like forever, felt her stomach rumble.
“You’re sure you know how to get to the right island?” Lia asked, taking a fork full of potatoes.
“Of course, dear.” The old sheep smiled, her knitting needles clicking together. “It’s the same one where we took Mr. Dodgson. Although, obviously, I was much younger at the time.”
Ty cut a slice of chicken, and Celia began to salivate. Except, when she looked directly at the food on his plate, she got that same blurry feeling again, and as she glanced away, her stomach jumped as though Ty and Lia were eating something completely different than what was on the table. Something terrible.
“Humpty and Dumpty told us the isles move, which made them impossible to map,” Ty said.
“Did they?” asked Black Sheep.
Celia reminded herself that Hatta said the pirate captain was dangerous, even though she looked more likely to bake cookies than plunder the high seas.
Black Sheep lifted her knitting from her lap. “I’m guessing you wear a medium?” she asked Ty. He nodded, and she handed him a blue-and-yellow striped sweater. “It will get cold where we’re going, and the two of you don’t have any wool to keep you warm.”
Something bumped into Celia, and she nearly screamed before realizing it was Tyrus.
At the table, Ty slid his arms into the sleeves of the sweater. “Snug.”
“Why is she knitting them sweaters?” Tyrus asked.
Celia shrugged. None of this made any sense, and the more she thought about it, the more wrong it felt.
The pirate captain pulled another ball of yarn from her bag and resumed knitting.
Celia could swear the sheep was using more than two needles, but she moved them so quickly, darting in and out of the knots, it made it hard to tell for sure. But there seemed to be at least six needles. Maybe even eight. Even as she watched, the sheep reached up and snatched another pair of needles from the curls on her head without missing a stitch.
“The only way to track a moving island is to use a moving map.” The pirate captain’s refined voice filled the room. “It’s like tracking the stars and planets. If you look for them in the same place every night, you’ll never find them. But if you track their movements, you’ll know exactly where to search.”
A moment later, she held up a second sweater, this one turquoise and gray. “I’m guessing you’re a small?” she asked Lia.
“How did she knit that so fast?” Tyrus whispered. “How does she knit at all? Sheep don’t have fingers.”
At the table, Lia nodded, and as Black Sheep handed over the sweater, Celia felt a cold dread. She wanted to yell to Lia not to put it on. There was something horrible about it, just like there was something so very wrong with the food.
At that moment, Lia turned. She and Celia met each other’s eyes.
Celia tried to shake her head, to back away, but Lia was already on her feet—eyes wide, jaw tight.
“Captain Black Sheep,” she shouted, pointing at the door. “You have . . .”
Chapter 28
Stowaways
“What are you doing here?” Lia snarled, yanking Celia and Tyrus into the room. “And what is that all over you?”
Ty sniffed and burst out laughing. “Root beer. You snuck onboard inside a vat of root beer, didn’t you?”
“Hatta sent us,” Celia said, keeping her voice low so Black Sheep couldn’t hear. “You two are in danger.”
“Not that again.” Lia shook Celia’s arm so hard it hurt. “Don’t you get it? Maybe in your world, you had to hide from bullies, but here, we’re two of the most powerful people.” She turned to the pirate captain. “I’m sorry these two snuck onto your ship. We didn’t know anything about it. Would you like us to throw them overboard?”
Celia yanked her arm free from Lia’s grip. “You wouldn’t.”
“Watch me,” Lia said. “Puns. Weather. How did the cloud tie its shoes? With a rainbow.”
Celia flinched, waiting for the blow to strike. But nothing happened.
“Let me try,” Ty said. “Why didn’t the fog publish its best-selling novel? Because it was a mist opportunity.”
Tyrus laughed. “A mist opportunity. Good one.”
“Why isn’t this working?” Lia demanded, jabbing Celia in the chest with one finger. “You should both be on the ground begging for mercy.”
Celia slowly smiled, remembering the hedge just outside the harbor. “We aren’t in the Looking-Glass World anymore,” she said. “Words don’t hurt here.” She slapped Lia’s finger away. “How are you with sticks and stones?”
Tyrus balled his fists as he walked around the table toward Ty. “I’ve never punched anyone in the nose before, but I’m willing to try.”
“No,” Ty said, raising his hands and backing away. “That’s not fair. I don’t—”
“Now, now,” Black Sheep said with a trace of a smile as she stood up from her rocking chair. “There’s no need to fight, and no one’s going to be thrown overboard. We’ve got plenty of room for everyone.”
“You’re not mad?” Ty asked from the corner of the room.
“Of course not.” The pirate captain gave a bleating laugh. “It is an honor to have the generals of the Red Army on my ship. But it’s an even greater honor to have the generals of the Red Army and their mirror images.”
Lia crossed her arms. “They weren’t invited.”
“An unfortunate oversight on my part.”
“They contaminated your root beer,” Ty said, looking at his half-finished mug.
Black Sheep ignored him. She turned to Celia and Tyrus. “Allow me to formally welcome you onto The Pillaging Life.” She pointed to the table, still covered with platters of meat and vegetables. “Have you eaten?”
Celia, who was beginning to relax a little, looked at the food, expecting the same strange feeling she’d had before. But seeing it now, everything seemed fine. No, not just fine. Amazing. The roasted carrots smelled like they were fresh out of the garden, and the aroma of the gravy was so rich it made her dizzy just thinking about pouring it over a pile of mashed potatoes.
Still, she couldn’t forget the feeling of wrongness she’d had before. “Maybe later. I’m a little queasy from being sloshed around in the root beer.”
Tyrus caught her eye before nodding. “Yeah. Me too.”
“Of course,” Black Sheep said. “Let’s get the two of you cleaned up. There are private bathrooms in the officers’ quarters where you can bathe, and we’ll get you both clean clothes.”
“Not sweaters.” The words were out of Celia’s mouth before she realized how rude they sounded. But thinking about the way those knitting needles had flashed and dipped with blurring speed sent shivers down her back.
“No?” the pirate captain asked, eyes twinkling with barely hidden amusement. She tucked a ball of yarn into a bag by her chair, her shadow seeming to grow larger than her body. “As you wish.”
• • •
An hour later, Celia was as clean as she was going to get and dressed in clothes that made her feel like she should be robbing villages and digging for buried treasure. The only thing missing was a pistol at her waist and a parrot on her shoulder.
Tyrus came swaggering out of a bathroom wearing a pair of boots with the tops folded down and a vest three sizes too big for him. “Fifteen men on a dead man’s chest,” he sang in a fake pirate voice. “Yo ho ho and a bottle of . . . root beer.”
