While that was the usual reason for locking someone up, Peter couldn’t imagine how it was worth the trouble. What possible threat could these little sparrows pose to a king? “Why doesn’t he want you to escape? Is he afraid of you?”
“Oh yes!” She leaned close. “He thinks we might fly off and fetch help . . . and we will, too!” she said, pluming herself proudly. “Even if the journey kills us!”
Peter marveled at this little bird’s courage. “When I was at supper last night, the big clock went off and everyone started running about. Why was that?”
“I do not know what a clock is, sir. But every night and every morning the king works a great magic bell. It’s for their own safety—the people have to clear the corridors before the Night Patrol comes.” As she finished speaking, Peter heard a roar echo from a nearby terrace. The bird loosed a terrified chirp, nestling herself deep into the boy’s palm. “That’s them now!”
The Night Patrol. Those must be the monsters he had heard earlier. Peter could tell they were working their way toward the Eating Hall—there wasn’t much time left. “What exactly is the Night Patrol?” he asked.
“Oh, they’re horrible, sir! They could gobble you up, feathers and all! That’s why the people’s doors get locked at night—so the Night Patrol won’t get them. Anyone wandering the halls after curfew is fair game. If the Night Patrol sees you flapping about, the most you can pray for is that they’ll make it swift.”
Peter thought that this Night Patrol sounded rather similar to Pencil Cookson and his Mumblety-Peg Gang. Only much, much worse. “You’re saying the Night Patrol works for the king?”
“Of course they do. They’re the king’s personal army . . . only he’s no king, he’s a tyrant! He keeps all his subjects under lock and latch, and makes us say we love him. And if anyone disagrees, he sends the Night Patrol to their door. And worst of all,” her voice fell to a peep, “he’s made them all forget!”
Peter was running out of time. He could now make out the sounds of scraping, clinking footsteps approaching from the hall. “I need you to be very clear with me, Pickle. What has he made them forget?”
“Not what . . . who!” she said. “The locks on the doors aren’t just there to keep people safe. It’s to keep people from getting out and seeing the Missing Ones.”
It was just as Peter had suspected. If the locks had been only for protection, then it would have been possible to open them from the inside. The king was hiding something, something he didn’t want them to see. “These Missing Ones? Who are they?”
“Well, what’s the one thing missing in this whole palace? The one thing that every kingdom needs?”
“I don’t know . . . dirt?” he stammered. “Why don’t you just tell me?”
Pickle shook her tiny head and hopped back. “He was afraid they’d outwit him. He knows how clever they can be. So instead, he locked up every last one of—” and before she could finish, she gave a shriek. The little bird leapt from Peter’s hand and fluttered into the air.
“Locked up all the what?” Peter called after her. But it was too late. Pickle had disappeared.
“Hoy!” A voice roared directly behind him. “Who goes there?!”
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
THE NIGHT PATROL
Peter froze. He listened as a pair of razor-sharp claws scraped against the courtyard floor. The master thief had been so focused on getting answers from Pickle Sparrow that he hadn’t noticed that the groaning pack of monsters had finally worked its way to the center of the kingdom. Everywhere Peter turned, his ears were met with the miserable clink-clink of dragging chains.
The Night Patrol had found him.
“Hey, LongClaw!” the voice roared again. “You’d better get over here!”
Peter heard another creature stomp in from the opposite side. “What now?” it growled.
“I was bringin’ the chiddlers by just now when I heard voices inside. Definitely sounded human.”
“Human, eh? Must have got trampled at tuck-in, poor things,” the second said, snapping what Peter could now tell was some kind of whip against the floor.
“What do you say, boss? Think we should tell the king?”
“No need for that, Maul. I say we just keep the fun between ourselves.”
Peter slunk deeper into the shadows, trying to grasp his situation. He could tell they were huge by the way the floor winced with each step. Their whips sounded like they had bits of glass braided into the ends. It also sounded like each of them was carrying some kind of long chain in their free hand. Their voices were deep and fierce—especially that of the bigger one, LongClaw. Peter could hear little splashes of drool falling onto the ground at their feet.
“Whoever’s in there,” LongClaw snarled, “you’re in violation of the king’s Royal Curfew—the punishment is death!”
“Yeah! If you beg real pathetic-like, we might make it quick.”
“But if you try and escape, we make it real slow . . . and real fun.” They broke into wild fits of laughter, snorting and wheezing. The awful sound sent chills along Peter’s arms. He couldn’t imagine what kind of horrible monsters he was up against, but he was pretty sure they were serious about killing him. He slowed his racing heart as the creatures lumbered through the wrecked Eating Hall.
“Come on, now. We ain’t got all night!” LongClaw swept a pedestal aside with his mighty arm. The stone pillar smashed against the far wall, exploding into a hundred pieces. Peter swallowed—if that creature could shatter rock, who knew what it could do to bone? Suddenly, he caught a whiff of musk in the darkness, and his whole body went cold.
They were apes.
For those of you who have only seen domestic apes, you might not realize how truly horrifying these creatures can be. While they vary slightly from species to species, most wild apes have two terrible, cracked horns sprouting from their brow, which join in a giant tusk right where the nose should be. Their mouths are wide and drooling, filled with ivory fangs that stick out in all directions. Many years before, Peter had happened upon one such monstrosity while robbing the hold of a sea circus. The encounter—which nearly resulted in Peter getting his arm bitten off—still haunted him to this day.
Peter crouched in the shadows, listening as the Night Patrol came closer. He reminded himself that animals in the Vanished Kingdom were different from those back home—and in the case of these apes that might mean even more deadly.
“Look at this bloody mess!” LongClaw kicked over a platter of liver biscuits. “Place reeks like a hog-sty.”
“That’s humans for you,” Maul said, scraping leftover pudding-wurst off his heel. “Bunch of disgustin’ creatures.”
“Watch your gob!” LongClaw swiped at his head. “The king’s a human, you know. If it weren’t for him teaching us to speak with all his books and charts, we’d all be in a jungle somewheres, flinging dung and sucking ticks off our ruddy humps!” He raised the chain in his free paw. “But now we got slaves to do that for us, don’t we?” He gave a sharp yank to the chain. From somewhere around the corner came a hundred miserable groans and sobs.
“Slaves,” Peter thought to himself. “They must be fettered to the other end of those chains.” But as pitiful as their cries were, the boy knew he was no good to anyone if those apes got hold of him. His first concern had to be with his own survival. The Night Patrol was blocking the exits, so running wasn’t an option. He could try scaling the wall, but it would be just as dangerous—apes have predator’s eyes and would spot his movements in a second. No, the only thing to do was keep very still and hope they lost interest.
“Hold up,” LongClaw said, taking a step in Peter’s direction. “I think I whiffed somethin’ by the back wall.”
“Human, right? Like I said!”
LongClaw raised his scourge. “Flank the perimeter! I’ll check them shadows!”
The apes split up and started working along opposite walls of the hall. Peter pressed his body against the pedestal, trying despera
tely to come up with a plan before they reached him. He felt the black pair of Fantastic Eyes in his pocket. He didn’t much savor turning into a tiny, squishable insect right now, but he was running out of options. If he was lucky, maybe he could crawl away before they spotted him.
“Hoy! There it is!” Maul said, spotting Peter’s elbow in the shadows. “Somethin’ moved over there.”
They charged ahead, knocking planters and pews out of their path. Peter didn’t have a moment to spare. He ripped his bandage off and pressed the two black eyes into his sockets. The next moment, he felt his whole body changing once again. The ground beneath him expanded as he shrank down and down. But something was wrong—his hands weren’t just shrinking, they were sprouting feathers! Peter opened his mouth to yell, but all that came out was a high-pitched “chirp!”
The apes kicked Peter’s pedestal aside. They stared down at the floor. “You dumb lout,” LongClaw said, clobbering Maul upside the head. “It was just one of them twittin’ birds.” The ape was speaking the truth, for hopping on the ground before them was a tiny, terrified sparrow.
A bird! Peter thought to himself, flapping his wings. But how? The how didn’t matter at the moment—he had to get out of there. He quickly learned that being a bird was not nearly so easy as being a beetle: he had no arms or hands, his feet were awkward and long, and his face was covered with feathers. Even worse, Peter couldn’t quite seem to manage flapping both wings at the same time. That—combined with the usual blindness—made it pretty much impossible for him to fly more than a few inches . . . if you could even call it flying.
“Hold up. What’s she doin’ on the ground like that?” Maul said, watching as the flapping bird crashed into a table leg for the third time. “Ain’t all sparrows supposed to be chained up, king’s orders?”
LongClaw peered at the other pedestals, noticing for the first time that they were each unbirded. “Someone’s sprung every last one of ’em!” He squatted down in front of Peter. “Maybe this little flapper can tell us what happened. And if she don’t, then we’ll just have ourselves a midnight snack.” He snatched Peter by the tail feathers, dangling him over his mouth. Peter-the-bird’s little heart was beating faster than he thought possible. “Hello, morsel,” the ape said with a grin. “Care to tell us what transpired here tonight?”
Peter wilted under the beast’s hot, putrid breath. The last time he had been this close to an ape, he had nearly lost a limb; now he was facing the possibility of losing a lot more. Unless he wanted to get eaten, he had to think of an answer fast. Peter knew the best lies were mostly truth—that way you can look as honest as possible when telling them. He began to cry. “Don’t eat me, sir! I just want to be put back on my pedestal!” All true: Peter didn’t want to be eaten, and he very much wanted to be put down.
“Hogwash,” LongClaw said. “You tweeters been dreamin’ of freedom for years. You peck at them pretty little ankle-chains so much we gotta bloody replace ’em every half-moon. Now, who helped you lovelies escape?”
“It was a . . . a stranger!” Peter said, again thinking the truth would be most convincing. “I’d never seen him before!” Also true. “He shouted something about ‘down with the king!’ and then popped our chains off like magic! My sisters flew away, but I couldn’t, on account of . . . of a broken wing!” He thrust out a crooked arm as proof. “I saw the stranger run off, though. He went that way!” Peter pointed in a direction leading away from Mrs. Molasses’s house.
“A lock-pick?!” LongClaw put his paw straight through the wall. “King’ll have our hides if he hears of this!” He threw the bird to Maul. “Your chores can wait. Shackle this one and assemble the horde! I want all apes on the lookout for that stranger!” He stormed off.
Maul carried Peter to an empty (and still upright) pedestal. He took a tiny gold shackle between the tips of his claws and struggled to latch it around Peter’s tiny bird leg. At last he succeeded. “Scrawny rat,” the ape muttered. “Hardly worth the meat.” He took up his whip and lumbered into the corridor.
You may remember that both of the apes had entered the Eating Hall clutching a long chain. As Maul stomped across the floor, his chain pulled tight, dragging a hundred slaves with it. The captives stumbled and rattled and moaned their way right past Peter’s nose. Who are these wretched souls? he wondered to himself. They were obviously prisoners of some sort. But if that was so, why didn’t the king just ship them off to the Just Deserts? Having only a beak, Peter couldn’t smell quite as well as usual, but whatever these creatures were, they stank like they hadn’t bathed once in their lives. He listened as the miserable procession moved past him. Peter was having trouble sorting out their exact number—sparrows, as a species, are not renowned for their attention spans—but thought he counted at least a hundred heartbeats along the rusted chain.
“Move it, you maggots!” Maul cracked his whip from somewhere down the hall. The mysterious prisoners staggered forward, their groans echoing through the palace.
When the Eating Hall was finally clear of all danger, Peter set to the challenging task of removing the eyes again. While struggling, the great thief wondered about how, exactly, these particular Fantastic Eyes worked. First they changed him into a bug, then a bird—so what was the connection? Peter thought of the brief conversation he’d had with that beetle on Mrs. Molasses’s wall. And just before the apes arrived, he had been talking to a sparrow. Maybe these eyes turned him into whatever animal he had last touched? If that was so, then meeting that peevish beetle had proved more helpful than he originally realized.
So what had happened the first time he tried these eyes? Peter tried to think back on his journey across the Just Deserts. What animal could he have touched? He assumed that Sir Tode didn’t count, so it had to be something else. He remembered how he couldn’t breathe and how everything around him (even the air) had burned like fire against his clammy skin—but what sort of animal can’t survive its own habitat? “Unless I wasn’t in my own habitat,” he chirped to himself. “Maybe I was turning into something from the ocean? Something . . . like a fish.” Peter thought of the shipyard back home, and how the docks were always covered in suffocating fish. That’s exactly how he would have died had not Sir Tode been there to save him. He only hoped he’d have a chance to return the favor.
Peter finally managed to remove the black eyes (with the help of both feet and a stray relish spoon) and was soon sitting on the pedestal as a full-size ten-year-old boy once more. The tiny gold chain around his ankle had burst wide open upon his transformation. I must remember never to handle a snake, he thought to himself, or else I’ll never get these things out.
Peter hopped down and raced from the Eating Hall. He had left the box with the other Fantastic Eyes behind a pillar in the corridor; he needed to retrieve them before anyone found them. When he reached the gate, he grew pale. He could smell that someone had been near—someone filthy.
Peter searched the wall for a release mechanism. If these barriers were truly meant to keep people locked in, then it followed that there might be some way for the Night Patrol to activate them from the other side. Sure enough, he found a small lever hidden just above his head. Peter pulled it with both hands, and the mighty gate clanked up into the ceiling. As soon as there was enough space, he wriggled under the iron bars and ran to the box of Fantastic Eyes.
The remaining pairs were just as he had left them. Whoever had passed must not have noticed them in the shadows. Breathing a sigh, Peter took the black eyes from his pocket and replaced them in their eggshells.
The boy was so focused on the box that he failed to notice something else on the floor. Laid out in the middle of the corridor was a large circle of rope, tied off like a lasso. The end trailed down the hallway and disappeared through a crack in the wall through which four pairs of eyes watched.
The spies studied Peter from their hiding place, fidgeting and fussing to get a better view.
“What’s he doing?” one of them said.
“Move your fat head, I can’t see!” another hissed.
“Both of you, shut up before he hears us!”
Peter snapped the box closed. His ears had just caught whispers at the end of the hall. “I know you’re watching me,” he called out, rising to his feet.
“Do it!” a voice shouted. Before Peter could react, a snare pulled tight around his legs, whipping him off his feet. His head struck the ground with a deafening crack, and once again his body went limp.
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
SIMON and the MISSING ONES
Peter awoke to the smell of flour. Not the boring perennials that wise men are constantly badgering us to stop and smell, but the white powdery stuff meant for baking and booby traps. Whoever it was that kidnapped him had tied an old flour sack over his head. Peter breathed the dusty air and immediately began sneezing. This led to a gust of flour shooting straight up his nose that made him sneeze all the more. With each sternutation came a sharp pain in back of his head, which was still sore from his ambush outside the Eating Hall. It felt like his fall had reopened the gash in his crown—his temple was pounding something fierce, and he could feel blood trickling down into one ear.
The boy tried moving, only to discover that his entire body had been wrapped from top to bottom in a giant chain. To ensure he didn’t wriggle free, a collection of old manacles had been clamped pell-mell to his limbs. From what he could feel, Peter had about ten locks on each arm, fifteen on each leg, and two big ones clenched tightly around his neck. He could tell that the locks were each rusted over, which would not make escaping from them any easier.
Through the flour sack, Peter could hear muffled footsteps and voices approaching. He let his head fall limp—it was probably smart to feign unconsciousness until he could figure out who, exactly, was holding him captive. Silently digging his left pinkie into the keyhole of an ankle bracelet, the master thief did his best to make out what the voices were saying.