CONTENTS
1. Elspeth
2. Smorkus Flinders
3. Castle Chaos
4. Spar Kellis
5. The Pandimensionality
6. Dinner Conversation
7. Reality Quake
8. Ground Level
9. Wherefore Art Thou, Snout?
10. Out of Shape
11. The Chibling
12. The Valley of the Shapeshifters
13. The Tar’s Offer
14. Katsu Maranda
15. The Ting Wongovia
16. Bubble Memories
17. Unite and Conquer
18. Warrior Training
19. Krevlik’s Duty
20. Battle of the Titans
21. The Secret
Epilogue
About the Author and the Illustrator
For Elise, who keeps the boat afloat
CHAPTER
1
Elspeth
WITH A CRY OF HORROR, I grabbed my throat and began to gag. My face turned red. I staggered across the kitchen. After a moment I collapsed against a chair, staring at my mother.
“Tell me you’re kidding,” I gasped. “Tell me this is some horrible joke.”
Mom was not amused.
“I am not kidding, Rod, and I don’t want to hear any more about it,” she replied in her special I Really Mean It! voice. “Your aunt Grace and uncle Roger are having some problems, and we are helping in the only way we can.”
“Yeah,” I moaned, sliding down so that I was flat on the floor. “By sacrificing my summer vacation.”
Bonehead, my dog, came over and started licking my face.
“Having your cousin Elspeth stay with us for a couple of weeks is not going to ruin your summer, Rod. It doesn’t even have to ruin those two weeks.”
“Are you kidding? You know what Elspeth is like.”
My mother sighed. “I’ll grant you that she’s not the easiest child to get along with. But she is your cousin. And her parents really do need to get away.”
“If Elspeth was my kid, I’d need to get away, too.”
Mom didn’t bother to answer. She didn’t have to. The look on her face told me that it was time to shut up.
“I like Elspeth,” said my sister, Little Thing One. (Her real name is Linda. But she’s three years old, and at that age kids are very good at insisting on special names.)
“I like Elspeth, too,” said her twin, Little Thing Two (also known as Eric, but mostly to my mother).
“You do not,” I replied, sitting up. “The last time she was here she made you both cry, and you said you hated her.”
“She won’t make me cry this time,” said Linda. “No one can make me cry anymore. Not since Grakker.”
My mother rolled her eyes, but didn’t say anything. I think that was because she had read some book that told her it wasn’t healthy to tell little kids that their imaginary friends weren’t real. What Mom didn’t know was that Grakker was real—as were Snout, Phil, Madame Pong, and Tar Gibbons, the other four little aliens that traveled through space with him on the good ship Ferkel. While I couldn’t stop the Things from talking about the aliens, there was no way Mom was going to believe anything they said. This was just as well, since I was under strict orders from Grakker not to talk about the adventures that I had had with the aliens.
Mom turned her attention back to me. “Look, Rod, your cousin Elspeth is coming, and that’s it. I want you to make her feel welcome. Is that clear?”
“Yes, ma’am,” I said reluctantly. I try not to give her too much grief, since I know things have been hard on her ever since my father just took off shortly after the twins were born. Of course, things have been hard on me, too. But sometimes at night, when she thinks I’m sleeping, I hear her crying in her room. Those are the times when I think that if I could find my father, I would punch him in the nose. Except mostly I just want him to come home.
Anyway, even though I try to take it easy on Mom, I was not thrilled about having to spend the first two weeks of summer vacation with my bratty cousin Elspeth tagging around after me.
* * *
“It stinks,” I said to my best friend, Mickey, the next morning, while we were waiting for the bus. “A kid waits all year for summer vacation, and then something like this has to happen.”
“At least Billy Becker isn’t pushing you around anymore,” said Mickey, examining a grasshopper he had just caught.
He was right. Of course, what he didn’t know was that Billy Becker wasn’t exactly your run-of-the-mill sixth-grade bully but secretly a criminal mastermind from outer space. The reason he wasn’t around anymore was that with my help Grakker and the rest of his crew had captured him. I wondered if Billy—or BKRI, as he was known in most of the galaxy—was still in the Ferkel, or if Grakker had actually delivered him to the place where he was to be held prisoner. Things had happened so fast when the aliens were around that I had never had a chance to ask a lot of the questions I had about how they traveled.
The bus came. Mickey put the grasshopper on my shoulder and climbed aboard. I flicked the bug away and climbed on after him. It was the first day of the last week of school, and I was torn between two feelings. First was that delicious sensation that school was almost over, the happy anticipation of the vacation to come. Except in this case, that anticipation was tainted by my second feeling: dread at the arrival of my cousin Elspeth.
She wasn’t even here yet and she was making me miserable!
That night I decided to take a look in my copy of Secrets of the Mental Masters, a book the alien named Snout had left me to study. So far it had not been as useful as I had hoped. The first chapter, for instance, consisted of two words: “Stay calm.” I figured if this was what passed for secret knowledge in the rest of the galaxy, Earth wasn’t as far behind the aliens as I had thought. On the other hand, when I considered how many people I had met who actually managed to follow that advice, I wondered if maybe there was more to it than I realized.
“Okay,” I told myself. “I’ll get calm. Knowing Elspeth, it won’t be easy. But I’ll do it.”
Living in the same house as Thing One and Thing Two gave me lots of opportunities to practice staying calm under all sorts of circumstances. By the time I got through the birdseed in my underwear incident without exploding, I was feeling pretty confident about my calmness.
Then Elspeth arrived, and I realized I was going to need a whole library of alien advice to stay calm with this kid around.
“Hi, Roddie!” she exclaimed as her mother led her through the door. “No luck with the diet, huh?”
I began to blush. It’s not like I’m fat or anything; just a little chunkier than I would like. I certainly didn’t need Elspeth to remind me of it.
“He likes ice cream too much,” said Little Thing One.
(That was another problem with Elspeth: She brought out the worst in the twins.)
“And chapato pips,” added Little Thing Two. “I like them, too. But I’m skinny anyway.” He pulled up his shirt to prove the point.
“That’s enough, Eric,” said my mother.
It didn’t take long for Aunt Grace to say her good-byes. After giving Elspeth a hug, she scurried out the door.
“Have a good time!” called my mother. This seemed unnecessary to me; now that she had dumped Elspeth with us, Aunt Grace’s life was bound to improve.
It was my future that was looking bleak.
* * *
By the next day I was ready to imitate my father and run away from home. Elspeth’s nonstop chatter—combined with her need to point out every flaw in my face, body, clothing,
and room—was driving me berserk.
“I think I’ll take Bonehead out to Seldom Seen for a while,” I said to my mother, after breakfast.
Seldom Seen is what we call the field behind our house. We live out in the country, and our backyard slopes down to a swamp thick with big old willow trees. On the far side of the swamp, surrounded by woods, is a big field where Grampa still grows corn. He named it “Seldom Seen” because—well, because it’s seldom seen. You can only get to it by crossing the swamp on a little wooden bridge my father and some of his friends built, or by going through a neighbor’s automobile junkyard.
It is a very private place, and I love it out there. I had intended to go on my own. So you can imagine how pleased I was when my mother said, “That’s a good idea, Rod. Why don’t you take Elspeth along?”
I sighed. It wasn’t even worth fighting about. I knew I would lose. At least she didn’t make me take the twins. (This was just as well, considering what was waiting for me out there.)
I started to put on my new sneakers, which were sort of a bribe from Mom for putting up with Elspeth, and got ready to leave.
“Do you think you should wear those, Rod?” asked Mom—meaning, of course, that she didn’t think I should wear them. They were expensive, and I knew she had had to stretch the budget to buy them. But what was the use of sneakers if you couldn’t wear them? Even so, I might have changed my mind, if Elspeth hadn’t chimed in.
“Your mother’s right,” she said primly. “You’ll probably get them all muddy crossing the swamp.”
I grunted and continued tying my laces. Mom sighed and turned away. I felt bad, but not bad enough to take off the sneakers.
With Elspeth bouncing along behind me, and Bonehead bouncing along behind her, I headed for the swamp.
I figured things couldn’t get worse, until we actually made it to Seldom Seen and stumbled into a hole. It was enormous—about a foot deep and nearly twenty feet long. I knew it would upset my grandfather, because whatever had made it had mashed down the young corn stalks.
Then I realized what the hole really was. I stopped worrying about what my grandfather would think and concentrated on staying calm. It wasn’t easy. My heart pounding with terror, I whispered, “Let’s get out of here, Elspeth.”
“Why? I like it back here.”
“Don’t you see what this is?” I asked.
She made a face. “Yeah, it’s a hole in the ground. So what?”
I swallowed, then pointed to the front of the hole, yards away, where I could see four distinct marks.
Toe marks.
“This isn’t just a hole,” I hissed. “We’re standing in a footprint!”
* * *
I Pronounced “Bee Kay Are”—editor
CHAPTER
2
Smorkus Flinders
ELSPETH BEGAN TO LAUGH. “YOU don’t think I’m dumb enough to fall for that, do you?”
“Shhhh!” I hissed. Though she was talking in a normal tone of voice, to my terrified ears it sounded as loud as a scream. I figured anything that might attract whatever had made that footprint could be fatal.
Elspeth ignored my terror. “This is amazing,” she said, starting to walk the length of the print, which had a series of puddles in the bottom of it. Bonehead had already raced from one end to the other, sniffing frantically.
“I’m impressed, Roddie,” said Elspeth when she reached the far end. “It really does look like a footprint. You even gave it claw marks. How did you do this, anyway?”
“I didn’t do it, Elspeth, it’s real! Come on, let’s get out of here while we can.”
I grabbed her hand, intending to drag her away.
“Stop it, Rod!” she shouted.
The jolt of fear that shuddered through me was something like the feeling I had had the time I was nearly hit by a car while trying to catch someone I mistakenly thought was my father.
“Don’t shout,” I pleaded, keeping my voice as low as I could. “Don’t do anything to attract attention.”
Her peal of laughter would have woken a stone. “I didn’t know you could act, Rod! You’re really good. Have you been in any plays at school? My mother says—”
Her chatter was interrupted by the arrival of the creature in whose footprint we were standing, at which point it became clear that my initial reaction of sheer, stark terror had been the correct one.
The monster came at us out of the woods, wading through the trees as if they were water. He was so tall—easily four times as tall as my house—that I wondered if he had been lying down until now. His eyes were the size of watermelons, his orange skin the texture of a newly plowed field, his oddly split nose like a tree trunk putting down four major roots. The ground shook when he walked, though it took him only three steps to reach us. Staring down at us, he said, “Where is Grakker?”
His voice was like thunder. His breath, which rushed past us like a windstorm, smelled as if he had just eaten the county landfill.
I think it would have been perfectly reasonable of me to fall over dead with fear at that point. However, I actually managed to reply. If I remember correctly, my exact words were something like, “Uh-uh-uh-b-duh.”
“My name is Smorkus Flinders,” roared the monster, “and I want Grakker!” Reaching down, he scooped me into his hand. His fingers were the size of small tree trunks, his skin as rough as a gravel driveway.
For good measure, he grabbed Elspeth with his other hand. She was screaming, which I couldn’t blame her for, since I was doing the same thing. Don’t get me wrong; I had faced enough scary moments during my adventures with Grakker and the gang that I think I can safely say I’m not a coward. But this was something else altogether. The creature holding us now would have been terrifying even if he was the nicest person in the universe—which I had no reason to believe he was. One squeeze and he could have popped me like a pimple; one bite and he could have removed my head as easily as you nip a grape from its stem. So I hope you’ll excuse me for experiencing a level of terror unlike anything I had ever known before.
“Grakker! Grakker! Grakker!” said the monster, shaking me up and down like a baby’s rattle.
I tried to answer, but my voice seemed to have gotten stuck somewhere inside my throat.
The monster raised his hand so that I was right in front of his face. His eyeball was bigger than my head.
“Where did Grakker go?”
“I don’t know,” I answered. At least, I tried to. My voice came out in a tiny squeak.
“I can’t hear you!” he roared.
I wondered if he would get angry if I wet my pants, which was beginning to seem like a real possibility.
“I don’t know!” I repeated.
I was louder this time, I’m sure. But obviously not loud enough.
“I still can’t hear you!” he roared.
Then he stuck me in his ear.
This was, without a doubt, the most disgusting thing that had ever happened to me in my life. I was jammed into Smorkus Flinders’s ear canal all the way to my waist. My arms were pinned to my sides. From the bits of light that leaked in around my body, I could see a boulder-size chunk of ear wax just inches from my face. Hairs the thickness of tree twigs sprouted all over its surface. On the hairs were swarms of tiny, aphidlike green bugs.
For a minute I was afraid the monster was going to shove me all the way in. Maybe that wasn’t a reasonable fear. Considering the circumstances, I am not ashamed to say that I was feeling completely unreasonable.
“Talk louder!” roared my captor. “Where . . . is . . . Grakker?”
“I don’t know!” I screamed.
At least he was able to hear me this time. “You must know,” he said. “He was here, was he not?”
If I had any brains, I would have lied. But I had only learned to lie a little while ago, and I still wasn’t very good at it. Besides, the way I was thinking at the moment, my brains might as well have been made of tapioca pudding.
So
I told the truth. “Yes, he was here.”
The monster made a growling sound deep in his throat. For a horrible second I was afraid he was going to shove me the rest of the way into his head and just leave me there. But after a moment he said, “Good. That is what I wanted to know.” Then he pulled me out of his ear and transferred me to the hand that held Elspeth.
She was still screaming. I hoped the monster wouldn’t get tired of listening to her and decide to just give us a little squeeze. We probably would have oozed out of his hand like toothpaste from a tube.
It’s weird the stuff that runs through your mind when you’re in danger. Even as I was wondering if I was going to be alive thirty seconds from now, I was also hoping that if I never got home again my mother wouldn’t think I had just run out on her.
I heard Bonehead barking in the distance. Looking down, I saw that he was nipping at the monster’s heels. What a brave little dog! Fortunately, Smorkus Flinders didn’t notice him. I couldn’t have stood it if he had stepped on the little guy.
Our captor sniffed the air a few times, then turned back in the direction from which he had come. Then he did something even more frightening than picking us up, more frightening than sticking me in his ear, more frightening, in his case, than existing.
Using his free hand, he tore a hole in the air.
It was weird, as if the world was a giant movie screen, and he was ripping through it into somewhere else.
Beyond the hole was someplace dark and strange.
Growling like a thunderstorm, still clutching Elspeth and me in his rocky paw, the monster stepped through the hole.
I could hear Bonehead barking frantically behind us. Then the monster pulled the hole shut and everything was silent.
CHAPTER
3
Castle Chaos
I DON’T KNOW HOW TO describe the place we entered, except to say that somehow it felt as if it was shaped wrong. Shifting forms, unconnected to anything, floated in the air. The sky looked like boiling purple water, the ground like a pot of overcooked macaroni. Only I don’t think ground was the right word, since I suddenly realized that our captor was walking waist deep through—through whatever it was. The sight was so weird my stomach rolled over as if I were in a roller coaster that had just done a complete loop.