The Wondermark Gazette

Our story thus far: Aboard a hovering dirigible, and mistaken (at my own unspoken urging) for the ancient healer Grenadon, I have been attempting to turn my vengeance towards the ailing wretch Peapoddy, my true identity’s deepest foe — but I have just learnt that my mentor, Abu Fromage, is even now in shackles on this very air-ship. To make matters worse, the air-ship is rigged to explode at the moment that Peapoddy draws his last living breath — a moment which may be drawing uncomfortably nigh.

The whalish mad-man eyed me in the blue-glowing darkness. “You do know him, don’t you?” he wheezed, his breath laboured and sootish, each inhalation quivering the the brass pipes running from the dirigible’s furnace into his massive chest with a slight, hollow ring.

My mind raced. How should I respond? Would Grenadon have known Abu Fromage? The real Grenadon was ancient, and seemed to know everybody of note; but he’d also been boarded-up in a salt-barrel these last many decades, and I had no idea where the boundary lay between what I — as he — should and shouldn’t be aware of. The many layers of deception were boggling my mind! I’d have to continue to excellently weave my impenetrable web of deceit.

“Should I?” I answered dismissively, with a little wave. Yes! I thought. Nailed it!

Peapoddy’s eyes narrowed into meaty slits. “I may be misshapen from that creature’s infection,” he spat, “but I am still a world-renowned Special Investigator.” With a log-like limb he snatched a fistful of my coat, and dragged me into his seething aura of awful musk and coal-black hatred. “Show me the bright-jade.”

Of course! The bright-jade! That shard of jewel could instantly illuminate the state-room, muting the numbing effects of the algae-dust that coated Peapoddy’s skin — perhaps I could find a way to make the man feel pain, after all! I fumbled in my shirt-collar and traced the cord of the necklace with trembling fingers…

…And then what? Peapoddy would die, and the dirigible would explode, with Abu Fromage and myself aboard. I needed to keep the man alive, at least until I could find Abu Fromage and escape — but how? Each second that went by, Peapoddy seemed to be hacking up bigger and grosser gobs of innard-juice from deep within his squishy gravity, and I had no doubt that his end was approaching more hastily now than before. He was dying faster than I could ever kill him.

Huge, rough hands snatched the green stone from my fingers, leaving a thin film of algae-dust on my skin. It glowed blue in specks and spots, and I felt a minty tingle stand the hairs of my hand on end. It felt a bit like rubbing tooth-paste into one’s gums with a wooden spoon — hearty, without being exactly comfortable. Just for fun, I rubbed this little bit into my own gums, and got quite a little buzzy rush — I could see how a man could become addicted to the stuff.

And then I realised that I had lost the bright-jade, and with it, my only claim to the identity of Grenadon. “Hand that back,” I growled, trying to sound imposing. “I’m ready to heal you now. Congratulations, you’ve passed the test.”

The huge man ignored me, eyeing the jade like a jeweller, staring at it closely and intently in the wan light. I stumbled over the next words, but with difficulty, forced them, pointy and misshapen, up through my throat and out into the air:

“I forgive the slights that my family has held against yours,” I croaked. “Hand that back, please.” Then I added, for good deceptive measure: “S-So I can heal you?”

I reassured myself that it was in the character of Grenadon that I was speaking, and that I, my true self, still clung tightly to the hatred that I felt for Peapoddy…

Didn’t I? It had become less fun, somehow, and yet here I was, standing in his room, croquet-mallet tossed into a corner. I had to hate him. I was here.

He’d — he’d hurt Lara. He was a bad guy.

I wished, for the briefest moment before I shoved the emotion as far away as I could manage without flinching, that I could just walk away from all this and go back to cheese-twirling on a wharf somewhere and live day-to-day without worrying about vengeance or the Tome or impersonating an ancient healer or even changing into clean under-pants. Life had been simpler, once.

But then I wouldn’t have met Lara. That would — it would have been bad, right?

Right?

Peapoddy nodded, finally, with satisfaction and with an effete charm I would have thought impossible in such a bulky creature. He produced a heavy black object from somewhere behind or beneath his floppy body, placing it delicately upon the side-table. It appeared to be a vise of sorts, with a clamp and a screw-handle. Peapoddy gently placed the bright-jade into the centre of the vice, and delicately began to tighten it into the clamp.

“Thank you for returning my father’s tooth,” Peapoddy said. I leaned close — and indeed, sure enough, the bright-jade formed the exact shape of a human tooth. It was a slim incisor, not a molar with tell-tale forked roots, but a tooth all the same. I should have recognised that; I’d knocked out my share in my day. But I’d never given it the thought.

“I watched you from the next room as you wrenched it from his skull,” Peapoddy continued, slowly turning the screw-handle. “You promised you would return it, and you have. You have held up your end of the bargain, forty years later — and so shall I.”

I had the strange feeling that this conversation was going somewhere I didn’t want to go, but what could I say? ‘I’m not Grenadon’? That would surely be suicide — as the only person Peapoddy hated more than Grenadon, I wagered, was my true self. Or perhaps Cap’n Narwhal, who was long lost to the sea by now; or, if he’d ever met him, my irritating nephew Josiah, just because everyone hated Josiah.

The handle stopped turning, the clamp seated as tight as Peapoddy could make it from his awkward, seated position. “He gave this to me,” Peapoddy said, “and told me how to use it, and why, and when.”

My blood ran cold as he mashed a fat finger onto a recessed button on the side of the vice, and I flinched — but nothing happened. His digit was too thick to penetrate the recess. “Would you mind terribly?” he asked, a bit sheepishly, following it up with a pathetic, phlegmy cough and what was either a fart or merely the wet shifting of his belly-folds.

What could I do? I pressed the button. It was cool, and felt like stone. It didn’t give to my pressure at first — and then it did, terribly and violently.

There was a snapping crash and a brilliant flash of green as the heavy device flew spinning off the side-table. It bounced into Peapoddy’s fleshy abdomen, caroming off a pipe-fitting; then it settled, heavily and dustily, to the wooden floor, gouging the finish. I’d dived into a huddle in the corner at the first sign of trouble, and still cowered beneath my arm for a good ten seconds before I even dared take another breath.

When I finally pried my eyes open and looked up, the room was bathed in soft green light. It was nicer than the harsh blue of the algae-dust. It was calm. It would have been almost peaceful, if the figure across the room hadn’t been so horribly grotesque — but I guess I was getting used to that horrid sight, because I hadn’t vomited with disgust in nearly an hour. In fact, Peapoddy looked downright beatific at the moment, a slight, putrid smile creasing his scarred and twisted lips, but a lightness and sanity taking residence in his eyes for the first time. “It worked,” he whispered.

He had smashed the bright-jade. It was gone, pulverised into brilliant green dust that coated the entire room.

“Wh-what have you done,” I stammered, half from amazement, half from terror, half from confusion, half from irritation, and half again from idle curiosity.

“Now it’s certain,” Peapoddy said. “Now there can be no more healing. That time is past.”

He reached up and drew back the compartment’s curtains with one, long swipe of his meaty arm. It wasn’t yet light outside, but even the pre-dawn darkness was bright compared to the dimness of the state-room; I blinked and turned away, then realised what I’d glimpsed, and looked back with awe.

A wide panorama spread before me, the Isle of Yam-Runners from a hundred feet up; with the sun barely beneath the horizon, the island was a black silhouette on a black sea, with only a vast sea of white stars outlining its heavy crags and hill-tops. I could have played connect-the-dots with that sky for aeons and never finished the activity. Already I saw a giraffe I could make, and idly I traced the pattern on the window with my finger.

A red spot on the land-mass made the tip of the giraffe’s toe-nail. I squinted — was that a mountain-top torch? A bon-fire?

No. I looked closer.

It was a cave, burning from within with other-worldly light.

Grenadon’s own voice echoed in my memory. There is a path along a lonesome cliff. I won’t direct you to it, because I’d rather it be forgotten, but if you find it, you’ll know. There, you will find your answers.

I blinked, looked away and back, but the red spot still burned, tiny on the far-off mountain-side. That had to be it.

The Tome of the Precious Lore was in there.

I turned back to Peapoddy and froze. He was just lowering a vial from his lips.

He licked those chapped skin-flaps slowly, like an erotic snake, one that had been burned and mangled beyond recognition and then pumped full of its own waste and hooked into the furnace of a dirigible. He did it just like that. It was uncanny.

“Delicious,” he said. “And now we wait. It won’t be long — a minute, maybe, if even that. Could be any second, really — this is potent stuff. Pure mermaid-bilge; I’ve kept it for years for just such an occasion. Can’t get this stuff on the street anymore. Thanks to me, of course.”

“We wait for what?” I asked, although I think I knew.

He smiled, again, still at peace. “For us all to die,” he said.

NEXT: A Mad Dash

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