Key the Steampunk Vampire Girl and the Tower Tomb of Time (9781941240076) (8 page)

Key decided that this was indeed the best advice. She could do nothing about that problem at the moment. Her only responsibility at present was helping Mr. Fuddlebee and Miss Broomble stop Old Queen Crinkle. “What will Thomas à Tempus do to help the Queen escape?” she asked loudly as the witch revved the engine, trying to catch up with the Cybernetic Cyclops.

“We do not know much about Thomas,” replied Miss Broomble. “We know that he has a beginning and an end, because all things have one of each – sometimes two. But no one really knows whether Thomas à Tempus was born in the past or in the present or in the future. We know only that, at this time and place, he is Mostly Dead.”

“How does Thomas à Tempus time-travel?” Key asked. “With the Eye of DIOS?”

“It’s more like time-cavorting —” Miss Broomble had begun to respond when she suddenly banked the MotorHog hard. A group of unruly, teenage gremlins had come speeding by on Mechacopters – which looked like helicopters, except made from any junk a gremlin might happen to find. As these teenage gremlins sped by, they called out cruel names to Key and Miss Broomble, laughing and making rude gestures, too. Next the gremlins started throwing all sorts of things at the MotorHog, like fireworks and food and lady fingers (and not the biscuit either). In response, Miss Broomble pressed a button on the steering column. A burst of purple light shot out from the front of the MotorHog. The light hit the teenage gremlins and formed into a cloud. The cloud then solidified into a mass of ice, which now hurtled through the Necropolis like a meteor. Inside, the frozen gremlins looked confused and concerned as they began plummeting down to Nethermare Street, where there were several shops for Mostly Dead Mystical Creatures, one being Faridoon’s Fright Night Firewood, which would chop up anything, including teenage gremlins.

Looking ahead, Key observed now that Silas was much farther along. She had no idea how they would catch up with him. Miss Broomble saw this, too, and she called back to Key, “Hold on,” as she pulled a lever on the dashboard and pressed another button on the steering column. Streams of fire shot out through the smokestacks behind them. The MotorHog was suddenly flung through the air like a missile speeding towards the Cybernetic Cyclops.

“To answer your question,” Miss Broomble shouted, as if this were all perfectly normal while Key was hanging on for dear life, “yes,” the witch went on, “Thomas à Tempus travels through time by the Eye of DIOS. That’s why the Eye is kept at the Grave of the Grim Goblin, far from Thomas’s Tomb. We do not want him to escape again, nor for anyone else to turn into a time-traveling paradox like him.”

“Except me,” said Key.

“Yes,” said Miss Broomble, concern in her voice. “How you became a paradox is still a paradox.”

Key had only begun to ask, “How will the Queen escape using the Eye at the Tower Tomb —” when suddenly the MotorHog’s thrust gave out with a sputter.

The engine stopped working. A dreadful silence surrounded them, and then Key could only hear the rush of air fill her ears as she and Miss Broomble plummeted straight down to the Necropolis streets. She held on tighter to Miss Broomble while the witch pressed a few buttons and rewired circuitry. With every second they plunged nearer and nearer to the streets below. A tourist ghoul from the Darkling District with a cadaver camera slung around his neck snapped a photograph of them for the Welkin City News. Zombie students from Cobweb Academy led by a distinguished-looking sorceress in a tall hat looked up together, saw the MotorHog nose-diving straight towards them, screamed wildly, then scattered, their hands flailing in the air. Mostly Dead bystanders wearing sunglasses and flip-flops saw them and panicked, too. Others started carrying placards that read: THE END IS NEAR – AGAIN. Soon complete pandemonium began breaking out all over the place.

Key feared that she and Miss Broomble were certainly done for this time. But right at the last second, when the witch had done all she could to rewire the MotorHog, she held her hand over the damaged circuitry and incanted mysterious words, “
Nolite timere pusillus grex
—” There was more, but that was all Key heard right before the engine suddenly exploded back to life. Miss Broomble pulled the handlebars back and the MotorHog swerved up from the ground and soared back into the air.

They had returned to a speed just barely able to keep pace with Silas’s great strides, but they were still too far to stop him, close enough only to hear his footfall booming thunderously, nearly drowning out all other noises. He left massive footprints in old graveyards, crushing charnel houses, flattening vaults, leaving a wake of ruin in the City of the Dead.

Sometimes the giant swatted something away from his face, as though a gigantic bug was biting him. When Key took a closer look, she saw that it wasn’t a bug at all, but Tudwal. Her immortal puppy was scampering around Silas’s shoulders and neck, biting him anywhere there was flesh, sinking his teeth into the giant’s ear and chin and cheek and hairy moles. Silas would howl in pain and then swat Tudwal away. Sometimes the puppy could scamper away quick enough, but other times he got swatted off. Key shrieked in fear for a moment. But when she saw him gingerly float back up to the giant’s neck, she knew with relief that he could only have been saved by Pega the ghost maid.

Miss Broomble spoke into the Scuttlecom on her wrist. “Mr. Fuddlebee, we’ve almost reached Silas, but we’re still not close enough to stop him or the Queen.”

The voice of the elderly ghost came crackling through. “You’ll probably only catch him if you go by William’s Doorackle Alleyway.”

Miss Broomble cringed. “I’d rather not.”

“And I’d rather glow mauve instead of green, but there you have it.”

Miss Broomble sighed after a moment, then nodded and said reluctantly, “All right. Making a course correction now.” She turned the MotorHog away from Silas and sped towards what appeared to be brown fields.

Miss Broomble was about to sign off from her Scuttlecom communication with Mr. Fuddlebee, when someone else spoke through it. “Wingtips! Wingtips half off! Get ‘em before they’re gone!”

“Mr. Fuddlebee?” the witch asked doubtfully, though she hid a secret smile, for she knew her friend’s charming weaknesses. “Aren’t you on your way to the Tower Tomb?”

“Of course,” replied the elderly ghost matter-of-factly.

“You sound like you’re at Saul’s.”

“I just had to make a small stop.”

“For shoes?”

“Well,” said Mr. Fuddlebee, “as I was floating by I happened to notice that our dear Centaur Shoemaker is selling wingtips at half off – making quite the killing on the sale, too – literally – it’s almost manslaughter down here – thankfully without the men.”

Miss Broomble looked a little bothered by this news, and Key thought she was about to yell at Mr. Fuddlebee, so she was pleasantly surprised when she heard the witch say into her Scuttlecom, “Are there any platforms?”

“Just your size,” sang the elderly ghost.
 

“Grab ‘em.”

“Righto! See you at the Tower Tomb.”

The Scuttlecom fizzled off.

As Silas and Old Queen Crinkle were heading towards one direction while Key and Miss Broomble were flying towards another, Key thought about the interchange she’d just overheard. She understood some of it. But she had a question concerning something Mr. Fuddlebee had said about the direction they were now heading.

“We have to go through another Doorackle Alleyway?”

Miss Broomble nodded towards the direction before them. “Do you see that patch of brown land?”

Key could just barely see fields covered in what looked like dead things – grass and trees and leaves. “Is there another Doorackle Alleyway?”

Miss Broomble, grimacing, looking miserable, nodded. “It’s a shortcut to the Grim Goblin’s Grave.”

“You don’t seem too happy about it.”

“It’s my least favorite Doorackle Alleyway.”

“Why?”

“It’s on the Fields of the Worm King.”

— CHAPTER TEN —

The Fields of the Worm King

Key and Miss Broomble rode on for a few minutes before they reached the Fields of the Worm King. At a distance, the Fields looked almost ordinary, like a farm browned-over by harsh winter weather. As the two flew over more graves and cemetery plots, Key wondered if this Doorackle Alleyway would be like the last.

But before she could inquire about this, Mr. Fuddlebee’s voice came crackling through the Scuttlecom. “I thought you should know, my dear Miss Broomble, that I just finished having a delightful conversation with Madam Frombone, and one of the many things she happened to mention was that she’d just come from William’s Fields —”

“William is the Worm King,” Miss Broomble said to Key.

“— and it seems that,” the elderly ghost went on, “William was in a wonderfully inviting mood this evening, having already set out a table with coffee and biscuits for visitors. His hospitality changed, however, when several frozen gremlins – all cantankerous teens – suddenly came crashing down like a meteor on to Nethermare Street, plowed through the Necropolis and into his fields, smashing his coffee table to bits. The vehemence with which he tore off his flowery apron, I hear, was particularly wrathful. Beware.”

Miss Broomble sighed. “Well,” she remarked, trying to look on the bright side, “I never liked his coffee. It tastes like mud.”

“It is mud, my dear,” Mr. Fuddlebee’s voice said in a hard-boiled tone. “He isn’t called the Worm King for nothing, you know.”

The Scuttlecom fizzled off.

Key leaned closer to Miss Broomble’s ear. “He isn’t a king?”

“It’s just a nickname,” the witch replied.

“Will we need a password to enter this Doorackle Alleyway?” she asked. “Is it also guarded by the Wicked Watchmen?”

Miss Broomble suddenly swooped down, bringing the MotorHog low to the ground, and sped them onwards, through the crooked roads of the Necropolis. “Have you ever heard the mortal expression,” she asked: “The grass is always greener on the other side?”

Key had heard it before, but she’d never thought about it much until now.

“The more we think that our own situation is worse than it actually is,” explained the witch as she swerved past a parade of spectating specters, “the less we can get to where we want to be. So the more we think elsewhere is better than where we’re at now, we’ll never go anywhere. The Worm King’s Doorackle Alleyway has a curse on it. It will not unlock or open for anyone seeking the ‘greener grass.’ So if we can stand long enough in the Worm King’s fields, without wanting to be elsewhere, then the Doorackle Alleyway will unlock and open for us.”

Key did not think that this should be too difficult, as the MotorHog flew to the entrance of the Worm King’s Field, for she thought also that, if she could learn to be mostly happy in Despair, then she should be satisfied anywhere else. But when the MotorHog flew up to a tall wrought iron gate wrapped up in what appeared to be dead vines, she began to have her doubts. For a second, she thought she saw those vines twist around to get a better look at her.

Miss Broomble did not land, but let the MotorHog hover just above the ground, as she sped between pumpkin patches and crops of mushrooms. Key noticed how the pumpkins and the mushrooms appeared to be moving, too.
No, not moving
, Key thought,
writhing
was the only word that came to mind. It looked as though something was eating them from the inside out. Key’s excellent sense of hearing could just barely make out the munching sounds of tiny mouths – hundreds of them, thousands of them – all gobbling and gobbling and gobbling. It was the same for a cluster of scarecrows and a flock of bats hanging upside down from a dead tree, covered all over in large spider webs, where black spiders were crouching in wait.

At that instant, it was as if Key’s eyes had opened, for she now understood what she was looking at, which wasn’t exactly a patch of pumpkins or a crop of mushrooms, or scarecrows or bats or spiders. They were all cloth imitations. And something appeared to be sown up inside them.

“It’s the Kin of the Worm King,” explained Miss Broomble, seeing Key’s concerned expression. “To grow his children, nieces, nephews, and even his younger sisters and brothers, he sows them up in darkness.”

Key looked around at fields of other crops. There were rows of old cloth corn and wheat, trees of apples and apricots and figs in tatters, and a harvest of rag tomatoes and cabbages and carrots. They were all cloth imitations. They were all writhing, too, for all had something (or several somethings) sown up inside them.

“I’m glad we’re hovering and not landing,” Key said. “I don’t think I want to walk in fields like this.”

“We cannot land or walk here,” Miss Broomble said as she gestured down towards the ground.

Key was shocked to see that it was writhing, too! Just below the MotorHog, where the ground should have been, were countless insects of all kinds, worms and earwigs and centipedes and several other breeds, all black or brown, all wriggling or crawling over one another.

“If we were to land here,” said the witch, “we would certainly sink in the Worm King’s Kin.”

This idea made Key very sick to her stomach. “We have to find the Doorackle Alleyway in all this?” she asked.

“Not quite. It will find us.”

“When?”

“Once we truly want to be here.”

“But I don’t want to be here.”

“Neither do I, and that’s why the Doorackle Alleyway hasn’t appeared yet. We have to try to want to be here.”

“Couldn’t you use magic to make us want to be here?”

The witch nodded. She held up one hand and incanted: “
Beatus vir qui
.”

Then she looked for the Doorackle Alleyway, but it still had not yet appeared.

“Where could it be?” she wondered aloud.

“The magic I just incanted is participative,” Miss Broomble said. “We have to work with it so it can work for us. It won’t work by itself.”

“How do we participate with it?”

“The magic will not help us choose to be here. We must freely choose that on our own. But it will help us see that other choices have less importance.”