It was no longer a feeble little blob, but a sprawling mess. It swelled over the sides of the comic book, like a hairy dude wearing underwear that was too small. It jiggled and jittered. It doodled explosions, and people’s heads flying off their bodies, and big blood spatters. It scrawled things like:
BOOM!!!
and
HAHAHAAAAA!!!
and
KERSPLATTCHHHHHUKKKKK!!!
Sometimes a part of the splotch would swell up and pop like an enormous pimple. Other times it sprayed out a spatter of ink, as if it were burping or farting. It was that kind of ink splotch.
Then again, thought Inkling, what else could it learn from those awful things it was reading and eating all night?
“Whoa!” said Vika, who’d woken up and was now leaning over the fish tank.
The ink splotch tensed, as if listening.
“Can you hear me?” Vika asked.
In messy lettering it wrote:
UNH???
“Can—you—hear—me?”
URG!!!
Vika ran out of the room and in less than a minute was back with her dad.
“Look at him now!” she said.
As if showing off his skills, the ink splotch sketched a crazed-looking woman holding a bomb—and then made both explode across the page in a gory mess.
Vika winced, but a smile spread across Mr. Worthington’s face.
“Now that is definitely a scene from Exterminatrix. We have ourselves a very talented artist!”
Watching from his jar, Inkling didn’t like what he saw. This creature couldn’t have been more different from him. Sure, Inkling liked superhero comics and the occasional explosion, but this was too much. And he felt angry—not at the splotch, but at Vika and Mr. Worthington. They should be feeding this new creature all sorts of things, beautiful books and magnificent artwork. It should have a healthy, mixed diet, like the one Inkling was lucky enough to get from Ethan. Mr. Worthington was going to ruin that ink splotch—and as far as Inkling was concerned, that ink splotch was also him. He needed to be reunited with it!
“He can write, too,” Vika was saying to her father. “Sort of.” She leaned in close to the tank. “What’s your name?”
The ink splotch hesitated. It had only a vague idea what a name was, and it wasn’t really interested in words. Frankly there weren’t that many in these comics. So it tried to write the words it liked best.
It started with blood, then gave up and tried lots, and then had a very half-hearted go at more. What ended up on the page looked a bit like this:
BLOTR
“Blotter?” said Vika.
“It has a certain ring to it,” said Mr. Worthington. “I like it.”
Very appropriate, thought Inkling.
“Okay, Blotter,” said Mr. Worthington, “let’s see what you can do.”
From Vika’s desk, he took a piece of blank paper and dropped it into the tank.
“Draw something else for us.”
MRE FOD!!!
“What’s he saying?” Mr. Worthington asked Vika.
“I think that’s more food.”
“No, Blotter. First you draw. Then you eat. Lots and lots of food.”
Blotter swelled and belched, then hauled his carcass toward the blank paper.
And began to draw. His sloppy, inky limbs splattered the paper. It was the opposite of watching Inkling work. Inkling was careful and seemed to think about every line, but Blotter was like a garbage truck rumbling down the street, with refuse flying out the back.
And yet, and yet, images began to appear around him, in dazzling color. Inkling couldn’t look away. When Blotter was finished, he’d drawn a dark and gruesome spread that was, if anything, more violent than the comics he’d eaten overnight.
“Oh!” said Mr. Worthington. “Oh, man!”
Vika swallowed and looked away. Her father grinned like a kid who’d just been told that all the presents under the Christmas tree—not some, but all—were his.
“This guy’s amazing!” he said. “If he can do a double-page spread this fast, imagine what he can do in a week!”
“I told you!” said Vika.
Her father grabbed her by the shoulders. “And you were right. This is going to be so good!”
Monday morning, Ethan could barely concentrate on what the teacher was saying. He could only stare at the back of Vika’s head, hating her.
At recess, she walked right up to him when he was alone in the yard and said, “Don’t even think of trying to steal him.”
“That’s a laugh. You’re the one who stole him from us.”
“My dad’s home all day, just in case.”
“I can’t believe you did this,” Ethan said, and felt overwhelmed all over again by what had happened. Before he could stop himself, he said, “We need Inkling. Dad needs him, and Sarah needs him. And I need him, too.”
For just a second Ethan thought Vika’s face softened. But then she said, “Yeah, well, we need him, too!”
“How come?”
“Because we need an artist who can actually make comics!”
“My dad’s doing one right now!”
She grunted. “Maybe if he’d made one sooner, we wouldn’t be in such a mess! My dad could lose his company!”
“What?”
She glared at the pavement. “They’re losing money. We could lose our house!”
Ethan scowled, not wanting to feel sorry for Vika.
He heard a very happy voice shout his name, and looked up to see Sarah running across the schoolyard toward him. Ethan smiled at the soft impact of her body against his. She threw her arms around him.
Then, to his dismay, Sarah let go and hugged Vika, too.
“Eeka!” she said, beaming up at her.
“Hey, Sarah.”
“Lucy is very naughty!” Sarah said. “Be cross with her!”
Vika looked at Ethan. “Who’s Lucy?”
“It’s what she calls Inkling.”
“Oh,” said Vika dully.
“She has run away. Naughty puppy! Be cross with her!”
“I hope she comes back soon,” Vika said gently, and then looked at Ethan. “Why doesn’t your dad just work with us, all together? I don’t see what the big deal is.”
“Because he’s not yours,” Ethan said, taking Sarah’s hand and walking away. “He’s ours.”
All through the day, Inkling splashed himself against the sides of the jar, trying to get Blotter’s attention.
Mr. Worthington had placed the fish tank and the jar side by side on the desk in his home office. He came and went, always locking the door behind him.
Before she’d left for school, Vika had sprinkled little bits of newspaper, like fish food, into his jar. She was smart. She wasn’t going to stick a big piece of paper down, in case he climbed up and out—which he absolutely would have done. Dejectedly, he ate his little bits of grimy text.
Inkling felt a terrible ache. He missed Ethan. He missed Sarah and wondered how she was doing without her puppy. He even missed Ethan’s father a little because, after all, they did share some things in common, like an imagination. And Peter Rylance still needed his help. They all did.
On one of the tiny scraps of blank paper he wrote:
LONELY.
Blotter, meanwhile, was busy drawing. Inkling had to admit, Blotter was an excellent mimic, and bewilderingly fast. Mr. Worthington kept putting fresh paper into his tank, and when Blotter filled it, he’d get rewarded with a few more pages from some vile comic book.
On his biggest bit of paper Inkling wrote:
HELLO!
He kept writing it over and over again, in different-colored letters, hoping Blotter would notice. At last Blotter lurched around and moved closer to the side of his tank. On the paper he wrote:
UNH???
He still didn’t have a very good vocabulary. Inkling wrote:
I’M INKLING!
Blotter wrote back:
WHATR YU
?!?
SAME AS YOU! Inkling wrote. IN FACT, YOU ARE ME!
It took him a while to write this because the paper was so small he had to erase words to make room for the next ones. Maybe Blotter had already lost interest, because he heaved up some ink, like a cat hacking up a hairball. Finally, he coughed up a few more letters.
IM ME!!! said Blotter.
YES, Inkling wrote. BUT YOU CAME FROM ME.
Blotter didn’t seem too thrilled with this news. He just farted ink and wrote:
NAH!!!
Inkling couldn’t figure out how to convince him of this, so he wrote:
WE NEED TO ESCAPE!
Escape was a word Blotter actually understood. In these comics, people were always escaping from monsters and machines and other people who were trying to kill them. In his messy writing, Blotter wrote:
WY???
WE DON’T BELONG HERE, Inkling said. THIS ISN’T OUR HOME.
HOM???
THE PLACE WE’RE SUPPOSED TO BE.
I LIK IT HRE!!! Blotter replied.
NOT ME, Inkling said.
THEY PUT YU IN A JR!!!
YES, wrote Inkling. AND I WANT OUT. HELP.
Surely this other creature would help him. Blotter had come from his very own ink! And even if Blotter didn’t want to be reunited, at least Inkling could be a good influence on him and make sure he ate more nourishing things.
Blotter seemed to be mulling things over, and Inkling became more hopeful by the second. Then Blotter wrote:
WHN SOMEONE’S IN A JR, THEYR IN A JR FOR A REESON!!!
This was a very long sentence for Blotter, and it pretty much tired him out. He retreated and sat around bubbling and oozing for a bit. Then he got back to work, drawing another terrifying spread for Mr. Worthington.
Inkling sighed and wondered if Ethan would come looking for him ever again.
Chapter 18
“She does not like it,” Sarah said, pushing away the robotic dog she’d gotten for her birthday.
Ethan had been trying to get her interested in it while Dad did the dishes after dinner. He patted it. He praised it when it opened its mouth or wagged its tail. But Sarah just watched disdainfully.
“She only wants Lucy,” she said, and then, to Ethan’s utter surprise, began to cry.
Her eyes crinkled shut and small tears leaked out. She pushed her face into his shoulder and made little crooked moaning sounds. He held on to her.
Sarah hardly ever cried. So when it happened, it was a big deal. It tore at his heart. He hadn’t seen her like this since after Mom had died. She hadn’t cried right away. She hadn’t really understood. She just kept asking the same questions. Where was Mom? When was she coming home? Why wasn’t she coming home?
Week after week, he and Dad had tried to explain that she wouldn’t be coming home, that she got sick and died and was gone forever. It had been so awful to have to repeat these things over and over, each word and sentence like a wound reopened.
Eventually, Sarah had stopped asking where Mom was, and didn’t talk about her for a while. But then one night at bedtime, she’d just unexpectedly asked for Mom, and cried and cried.
That was one of the worst days Ethan could remember—and he thought about it right now, with Sarah’s hot face smushed against him.
With Inkling gone, the house felt empty all over again. All day at school, Ethan had been trying to think up some plan to rescue Inkling. He’d come home to find Dad in his studio, staring blankly out the window. His markers were all capped. On his drafting table, not a single new panel or sketch or line had been added to Inkling’s artwork. A sad, invisible weight sagged down over the room.
“We’ll find her,” Ethan told Sarah now. “I promise.”
“What’s wrong?” Dad asked, coming in from the kitchen, a dish towel over his shoulder.
“She misses Lucy,” Ethan told him.
Dad leaned in and tenderly put his hand on Sarah’s head. Sarah lifted her face away from the wet patch on Ethan’s shirt and transferred herself into Dad’s arms.
“Come on,” he said, “let’s get you into your pajamas and read some stories.”
“O-kay,” Sarah said shakily.
Ethan watched her being carried away, sniffling, and knew he absolutely had to keep his promise to her.
“I’ve got a plan,” Ethan told his dad after Sarah was asleep. “Mr. Worthington said he’d be moving Inkling to the Prometheus Comix office, right?”
Dad nodded. “It’s the safest place for Karl to keep him.”
“We break in and get him out.”
“Ethan—”
“I’m serious. We all need Inkling. We need him back!”
“Agreed, but it’s not so simple. You need a key to get into the building, and then a passcode for the actual office. I’m sure it’s alarmed.”
“We go in through a window,” Ethan persisted. “Glass cutter.”
“It’s on the fourth floor!”
“There’s a fire escape, though, right?”
“Ethan, stop. I’ve been thinking, too. And I have a plan.”
“You do?” Ethan felt a flooding relief. His dad’s plan would probably be better than his.
“I’m going to call up Karl and accept his offer.”
For a moment, Ethan couldn’t speak. “What kind of plan is that?”
“Listen. I’d get to work with Inkling—”
“While he’s locked up!”
“Yes, but at least that way I’ll get to finish my book.”
Ethan felt a clutch of disappointment at his heart, then anger.
“Yeah, I guess that’s all you care about!”
“We need the money!”
Ethan knew this was supposed to shut him up and make him feel bad. But he didn’t feel bad, and he wasn’t going to shut up. If Dad was so worried about money, he should’ve been working harder the past couple of years! He should’ve been doing something. That was his job.
“What about Sarah? She’s really upset.”
“She’ll be fine. She was just tired tonight.”
“And how about Inkling?” Ethan demanded. “They want to use him like a printing press! They’re going to kill him!”
“If I work with him, I can at least make sure he’s properly fed and not getting too tired—”
Ethan sniffed. “Yeah, like you were employer of the year.”
His father let this one go. “And most important, if I’m working with him, there might be a chance I can smuggle him out somehow.”
“That’s true,” Ethan said, feeling a bit better.
He didn’t like to think about going so long without Inkling. He’d become such a constant and cheerful friend. Ethan chewed at his lip. He hated the idea that Inkling might now be friends with Vika, that he was happily drawing for her, his old home already forgotten.
“You’ve got to promise me,” Ethan said to his father, “the first chance you get, you’ll rescue him.”
By the end of the day, Blotter had finished an entire comic, and Mr. Worthington was overjoyed.
“It’s like a mash-up of all the things I’ve been feeding him,” he told Vika in his home office. “He ate every single issue of Exterminatrix and all the copycat bestsellers I could get my hands on. But what he drew is different enough that we can call it our own!”
“Can I see?” she asked.
Dad had turned all the spreads facedown on his desk when she’d walked in.
“Not for your age group,” he told her.
Watching from his jar, Inkling had seen the whole thing being drawn. It wasn’t just that it was violent and crudely drawn; it was also embarrassingly dull-witted and, well, boring. Inkling had eaten enough books and comics by now to be a pretty good judge of stories and artwork.
“Maybe if you fed him something different,” Vika said, as if reading Inkling’s mind, “he could do other stuff. Maybe stuff for kids.”
“Something to think about down the line, absolutely,” Dad replied. ?
??But right now, there’s a market for this, and it seems like Blotter can make one every couple of days.”
He went dreamily quiet, as if doing math in his head.
“Did Mr. Rylance call?” Vika asked.
“Not yet. It’s a shame, but even if he says no, we’ve got our very own artist in residence here.”
“So we’re going to be okay?” said Vika. “Your company and everything?”
“With Blotter here, we’re going to be rich!”
He looked over at Inkling, who had been watching and listening to all this from his jar.
“What about you, Inkling? Are you ready to draw today?”
Inkling said nothing.
“If you draw, we’ll give you some books to eat. Whatever you want.”
Still, Inkling remained silent. He wanted nothing to do with this fellow.
“Suit yourself,” Mr. Worthington said.
Vika went closer to his jar. “You’re looking pale, Inkling. You should eat something.”
She looked genuinely concerned, and Inkling’s feeling about her shifted a little. She wasn’t as bad as her father. She began to tear up more humiliating little bits of newsprint to sprinkle into his jar, but her father stopped her.
“No. If he doesn’t draw, he doesn’t eat.”
Vika frowned. “Dad, he might die!”
“He won’t die. Let him get good and hungry. In my experience, the hungrier an artist is, the more creative and productive he gets.” He chuckled. “And if he still doesn’t draw, maybe we should feed him to Blotter.”
At these words, Blotter surged across the fish tank and hit the wall with such force that the entire tank actually shifted slightly. His inky body boiled high up the glass.
In jagged letters Blotter wrote:
YES!!! GIVE HIM TO ME!!!!!!
“I was just kidding, Blotter,” said Mr. Worthington.
Vika asked, “You’d really eat him?”
YES YES YESSSSSSS!! I WNT HIS INK!!!
Watching, Inkling got a seasick feeling inside him. When that little bit of him had been cut off, all he could think about was being reunited with it. Even when Blotter had emerged from his first night’s feeding as a bloated thug, Inkling still wanted to absorb him back.
But now, he wondered who would absorb whom. Blotter was much beefier and stronger, by the looks of it. And what kind of creature would they be afterward anyway? More Blotter, or more Inkling?