The Wondermark Gazette

Our story thus far: Aboard a hovering dirigible, and mistaken (at my own unspoken urging) for the ancient healer Grenadon, I now turn my vengeance towards the ailing wretch Peapoddy, my true identity’s deepest foe.

“Don’t worry,” I gasped, feeling the exertion in my arms and back; “this is part of the healing process.” And with that, I mashed the croquet-mallet into Peapoddy’s flesh, over and over and over. I figured it would take about six hours to turn him into pulp, and I planned to enjoy every minute of it.

In fact, in an instant I had it all planned out — I knew that Peapoddy’s death would trigger the detonation of the dirigible. So I planned to beat him to within an inch of his life, leaving him with just enough awareness that I could watch him realise who it truly was that was beating his brains in with a mallet. Then I would sprint down the hall-way, bowl over Mr K____ if necessary, burst down the gang-plank, un-moor the air-ship, and let it blow into flaming smithereens safely out over the open sea. I would be dramatically silhouetted by both the blast and the rising sun, and (hopefully) Peapoddy’s swollen, scorched head (or at least a goodly chunk of it) would spin gracefully from the fire-ball, trailing a wispy streamer of smoke before plopping, utterly defeated, at my feet. Then, I would return to the village in time for the Mayor’s banquet, and have some really excellent food, because I was really hungry.

It was an utterly fool-proof plan, and I set to its execution at once.

The process began slowly. At first I thought I could just batter and bludgeon my way along until the matter was settled, as I’d battered and bludgeoned so many witless dolts in the past, but after the first few blows the croquet-mallet began to ring against Peapoddy’s brain-case and spring, quivering, from my fingers. The flesh-mound that was my enemy simply peered at me as I heaved and struck his massive bulk; the algae-dust had evidently eaten clear through his skin’s nerve-cells and pain-receptors, and try as I might, I could not elicit so much as a grunt of discomfort from his twisted lips.

“This is a bit of an un-orthodox method, from the lay-man’s perspective at least,” he muttered, squinting at me suspiciously, as I struck the side of his face with the wooden weapon again, and again, and again. “I can’t say that I entirely trust where this is leading.”

I threw the mallet clattering into a corner and began to hunt about the small state-room for anything that might serve as a more potent instrument of murder. Something pointy, maybe, or serrated. I found nothing good — chicken-bones, an avocado-pit, a single floppy boot bearing the ketchup-stained image of Hello Kitty — and I nearly sobbed in frustration like a nancy. My anger against Peapoddy was justified, blast it to Hell, and yet I was receiving, as of yet, exactly zero satisfaction from my vengeance.

The problem was, besides his log-like tolerance for pain, that this wasn’t the same creature as the man I hated. It might be the same body, after a fashion, but there was nothing here of the Peapoddy of my night-mares. These mounds of flesh feeding into clock-works and boiler-pipes and arcane, brass-valved man-juice-pumps bore no resemblance to the hateful, smirking visage seared permanently into my memory.

And then: “Something the matter?” he trilled, and for an instant that lilting tone wrapped around my shoulders and neck, gently reminding me that yes, I could do it. I could hate this meat-mountain. I could maim him, even if my glee would be forced and mechanical. For Lara, I would make that sacrifice.

Maybe it would help me remember her face more clearly.

I took a soot-filled breath, and assumed my best medical-professional tone. I’d played at Doctor many times, late nights back at the Manor. This would be no different. Well, a little different.

“My traditional holistic remedy is not as effective as I’d like,” I mused, putting a finger to pursed lips in what I thought might pass for smart-guy contemplation. “I’ll need more background on your malady. You mentioned a fire — I see the scarring — but what happened after that? Please be detailed.” I hoped to find some detail of his condition that I could exploit for maximum murdery-ness, and potentially, if I was slick, unlock a clue or two as to the fate of the Tome of the Precious Lore in the bargain.

“Fire? Feh–it was a personal attack,” Peapoddy spat, “and only my cunning let me escape the blaze alive. I retired to the local Hospital, where my wounds were treated adequately, if a bit perfunctorily, and then I had a scuffle with some bilge-smuggling oar-jockeys.” This I knew; I had been there, scooting quickly out the back. “They gave me a bit of a tossing, I don’t mind saying, and I them as well; but I had Medicine on my side, and they had the cowardly nature common to sea-rats, so I came out ahead morally, as well as thumping them ’round the hook-ends in a manner, shall we say, a half-measure less than neighbourly.”

I nodded sagely, knowing that this was a bit of an exaggeration; Cap’n Narwhal and his men had hated Peapoddy as much as I, and had laid into him severely. However, it was true that Peapoddy was pansy enough type to cry for help and aid and probably bandages or whatever, as the fight had happened within the confines of a hospital, while the sailors had a certain bushy rough-neck pride about them; given a long enough skirmish under those conditions, of course Peapoddy could have escaped alive. As he, of course, did, chasing me onto that black-sand cliff-side high above the harbor.

“I had nearly laid my outstanding affairs in the crypt,” Peapoddy growled, referring to his tussle with me, “when I was blind-sided by a terrible old man, all finger-nails and hissing, reeking terribly of cheese and old pork. Before I could react, he had laid his teeth into me with violence, right here where you can still see the mark.” He craned his neck to reveal a pocked dimple in the blue-glowing flesh, a perfect half-circle of tooth-marks, now bulbous and misshapen from the bulging skin on all sides.

It had been Abu Fromage, as I had thought. My heart swelled at the thought of that ancient body tackling Peapoddy as I lay vulnerable at the cliff’s edge. My mentor, my teacher, and finally, at the moment of truth — my saviour. I felt really special.

The reverent old cheese-monk had saved me by inflicting the gravest of all cheese-monk curses: The Camembert Under-Bite. I had heard whispers of its existence during my long-ago pilgrimage to Abu Fromage’s Himalayan hermitage, but had never given the rumours credence; here, however, was a soul actually afflicted with the Under-Bite, swollen from its ill effects, and driven to algae-dust and coal-furnaces to keep his heart yet beating.

“I think he might have infected me with something,” Peapoddy went on, sucking on the room’s sour air. “I haven’t been able to eliminate, from that day ’til this, and” — here he spread his hands as far as they could move, which was about six inches — “you can see how it’s affected my physique.”

I felt my throat close and my stomach lurch. Peapoddy was bloated from the inside with waste.

How could I even conceive of a worse fate to inflict on the man? Far from killing him, it would be crueller to let him live — if I knew how. In fact, it seemed likely, from the wheezing and gasping and oozing of fluids, that Peapoddy would die whether I bludgeoned him to death or not. Oh, and the dirigible would explode, and I with it.

Time was running short, I feared, yet there was one topic about which I still yearned for satisfaction. “I believe,” I said, “that the only known cure to your condition is contained in the pages of the Tome of the Precious Lore.”

Peapoddy looked at me quizzically “You were the one who told my father that you had hidden it safely away. If any man knows its location, it’s you, and no other.”

“Ah,” I said, and then, after several long, awkward seconds, “Right.”

Peapoddy sighed. “I guess we’re boned, then.”

Boned, indeed. At that point I decided to simply truncate my earlier plan, and leap directly to the “bolt through the state-room door and run” portion.

Perhaps I’d still get to find a flaming piece of his head. That would have to be satisfying.

I knelt to nervously re-lace my shoes, and prepared to run. “Let me tell you one last thing,” I said. “Let me tell you something about me.”

“But perhaps you can check the old man,” Peapoddy said hopefully. “Would it help to examine him? We kept him, after all.”

This sentence didn’t quite parse to my ears. “Kept him?” I asked, afraid of what the words might mean.

“Of course,” Peapoddy said, his horrible mouth assuming the worst impression of a smile I’ve ever seen. “In the next room. In shackles these many months.”

He must have read my expression, because his next words chilled my core like an ice-cream cone on Christmas.

“Do you know him?” he said, and his tone seemed to indicate that he knew the answer already.

NEXT: The Cave in Question

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