Akiko in the Castle of Alia Rellapor (8 page)

“Absolutely,” Mr. Beeba chimed in. “Spuckler and I have learned our lesson. Truly we have.”

“Just one thing, Mr. Beeba.”

“Yes, Akiko?”

“Lend me your handkerchief, will you?” I said. “My nose is running like crazy.”

 Chapter 15 

After a moment there was a strange rumbling sound. I felt the cage rattling beneath me as if we were in the midst of a minor earthquake.

“
MY MOTION DETECTORS, SIR—”
Gax began.

“Yeah, I know, Gax,” Spuckler interrupted. “I feel it too.”

“What’s going on?” I asked, staring nervously into the darkness.

“This is it!” Mr. Beeba announced in a panicked voice. “Execution time!”

“Beebs!” Spuckler cried. “Get ahold of yourself!”

Just then I noticed that the temperature seemed to be rising. I thought it might have just been Gax’s torch, but eventually I could tell that it was coming from somewhere outside the cage.

“A lava trap,” Spuckler muttered. “I mighta known.”

“A lava trap?”
Mr. Beeba repeated, his voice loud and shrill.

“Wh-what’s a lava trap?” I asked, hoping it wasn’t as self-explanatory as it sounded.

“Well, basically,” Spuckler explained, “it’s a trap where they get ya in some place where ya can’t get back out—like this here pit, for instance—an’ then what they do is dump a buncha lava on ya. Hurts pretty bad, I ’magine.”

“Hurts
pretty bad?”
Mr. Beeba repeated, sounding even more panicked than before. “You mean
kills
pretty bad!”

“Well,” Spuckler answered, rubbing his chin thoughtfully, “yeah, Beebs, if ya wanna get technical.”

I stared up in horror as I saw tiny streaks of glowing yellow-and-orange lava begin to trickle down the walls from somewhere high above. In seconds big puddles of the stuff began forming where the walls met the floor, slowly creeping in toward the cage, inch by inch.

“We’re going to be buried alive!” Mr. Beeba shrieked. “We’re going to be
burned
alive!” He paused, then added, “We’re going to be buried alive
and
burned alive!”

“Oh no we ain’t,” Spuckler announced confidently.

He reached inside Gax and produced a tool about the size of an eggbeater. At one end of the tool was

a small rotary blade. Clicking a button on one side, Spuckler made the blade spin at an incredible speed.

“Cover your eyes, now,” Spuckler said to Mr. Beeba and me. “This thing tends to send out a lotta sparks.”

I turned my face away and covered my eyes with my hands.

ZZZZYYYYAAAAAAAAAAARRRRRRRRRRR!!!

There was a terrible grinding sound. I wanted to see what Spuckler was doing, but I didn’t dare look. There were two loud clanking noises, like the sound of a barbell being dropped on a metal floor. Ten or twenty seconds later the noise stopped and Spuckler invited us to see what he had done.

Two bars of the cage had been cut away, creating a window about three feet tall and two feet wide.

“C’mon, everybody!” Spuckler shouted. “Up on top of the cage! Fast as ya can!”

By then the pools of lava on the floor had reached the bottom of the cage and begun to seep between the bars. I stuck my foot into Spuckler’s folded hands and stepped up through the opening he had made.

When I got to the top of the cage, I saw that the chain was gone, just as Spuckler had said. Peering up into the darkness, I could see a tiny circle of light in the distance. It looked as if we were at least half a mile away from the top of the pit.

“Akiko! Do give me a hand here, won’t you?”

It was Mr. Beeba. His head was poking out from under the roof of the cage, a look of real terror gripping his face. I reached down with both hands and helped him up. Spuckler lifted Gax by his round robot body and carefully handed him to us before swiftly scrambling up himself. By then the floor of the cage was completely covered with white-hot lava, which created an intense dry heat beneath us. It was like being trapped inside a parked car with all the windows up on a blistering August day. We quickly peeled off our thick winter coats and allowed them to fall into the glowing fire beneath us.

“We’re doomed!
Doomed!
” Mr. Beeba wailed.

For once his fears seemed to be completely justified. The fiery rivers continued pouring down the walls, raising the level of the lava to ever greater heights. Within minutes the cage was more than half buried. Stranded on the top, there was nothing we could do but huddle closer and closer together.

“I just want you all to know,” Mr. Beeba said tearfully, “that I can think of no people I’d rather die with than you. . . .”

“For cryin’ out loud, Beebs, we ain’t gonna die!” Spuckler said between clenched teeth. But even
he
seemed to have run out of ideas. We all stared longingly at the tiny circle of light hundreds of feet above, hoping that by some miracle the lava flow would stop.

It didn’t.

Soon only about a foot and a half of the cage remained above the scalding-hot lava, and another inch vanished with each passing second. Wondering if this really
was
the end, I looked at Spuckler, Mr. Beeba, Gax, and . . . 

I suddenly realized that Poog was nowhere to be seen.

Just then the cage began to tremble under us. At first I thought it was just being lifted by the sheer volume of the fiery material surrounding it. But no! It was actually
rising into the air,
floating up out of the lava as if by magic. Spuckler lay down and stuck his head out over the edge of the cage.

“It’s Poog!” he shouted. “He’s underneath this here cage!”

He swung his head around and gave us a big toothy grin just as the cage broke free of the lava for good.

“He’s liftin’ us outta here!”
Spuckler hollered, cackling with delight.

Mr. Beeba and I held on for dear life as Poog carried the cage—and all of us on top of it—from the very bottom of the pit to the very top. The bricks on the wall raced by as we kept going up, up, up. I sucked in the clean, cool air with hungry gulps as the cage rose over the lip of the hole and settled gently on one side of the room.

Throck was gone. So were the Torgs.

We scrambled down from the top of the cage to see if Poog was all right. He looked very tired but happy. I reached out and gave him a big hug. (Don’t ask me how you hug an alien that has no arms. You just
do
it.)

“Thank you, Poog! Thank you!”

Mr. Beeba, Spuckler, and Gax all joined in congratulating Poog. I’d always suspected that Poog was the most important member of our team. Now I knew for sure.

 Chapter 16 

We were all
so happy and relieved just to be alive, I don’t think it had occurred to us that we’d need a plan once we’d made it out of the hole.

“’Kiko, I reckon it’s up to you,” Spuckler said when our little celebration was over. “Should we try t’ rescue the Prince again, or should we jus’ hightail it on outta here?”

“Yes, Akiko,” said Mr. Beeba. “In view of the, er,
revelations
regarding Alia Rellapor, perhaps you’ve had to reassess your attitude toward the mission?”

He was right. Knowing that Alia Rellapor was the Prince’s mother changed everything. After all, she had as much right to keep the Prince with her as the King did. But she was locking him up in that horrible little room all day! What was she, crazy? Then again, the Prince had said he was getting all the food he needed. Maybe she was just trying to toughen him up, as she’d said. It was a very difficult decision.

“Well, guys,” I said at last, “I hate to say it, but I think we’ve just got to give up the mission and get out of here. I don’t like Alia Rellapor any more than you do. But she
is
the Prince’s mother, and as long as she’s not
hurting
him, I guess she can raise him any way she likes.”

Spuckler looked disappointed, but he nodded his agreement. Mr. Beeba looked very relieved.

“It’s agreed, then,” Mr. Beeba announced. “Our mission is at an end. Now we must focus all our energies on getting out of this infernal castle.”

So we all crept back down the hallway toward Alia Rellapor’s chambers. I kept half expecting Throck to jump out and grab us, but he seemed to have disappeared, at least for the time being. When we neared Alia’s throne room, Gax went ahead and took a peek to make sure the coast was clear.

“
THE THRONE IS EMPTY, AS IS THE ROOM
,” Gax told us in a mechanical whisper. “
NO ALIA. NO THROCK. NO TORGS
.”

“Well, c’mon then,” Spuckler said impatiently. “Let’s go.”

We tiptoed along the edge of the wall toward the heavy red curtain at the back of the room. Before we got there, though, Poog noticed something. He spoke quickly, in his warbly garbled language, stopping us in our tracks.

“What is it?” I asked. “Throck?”

“No,” Mr. Beeba. “It’s Alia. She’s somewhere in this room. Poog says . . . But no, I must have misheard him.”

Poog spoke again, saying what sounded like the same thing, only he said it a bit more loudly and insistently.

“Come on, Beebs!” Spuckler whispered. “What’s he sayin’?”

“He says . . . ,” Mr. Beeba began, his eyes squinting in disbelief, “Poog says
Alia needs our help
.”

“What?” Spuckler and I asked simultaneously.

“I know, I know!” Mr. Beeba said, pointing defensively at Poog. “It doesn’t make any sense to me, either! But that’s what Poog said, and he seems quite convinced of the idea.”

“Well, let’s find her and see what Poog’s talking about,” I said. The idea of Alia Rellapor’s needing our help seemed beyond ridiculous, but I’d learned by now never to doubt Poog.

Upon searching the room, we found a small, dark alcove off to one side. There, on a large rectangular block of marble, lay Alia Rellapor, sound asleep. She was on her back with her hands folded across her chest, like Sleeping Beauty in the old fairy tale. Her face was almost drained of color, though, so she also looked

a bit like a vampire. A very
pretty
vampire.

“What’s going on?”

I whispered. “What’s wrong with her?”

Poog floated over to my side. He looked very strange all of a sudden. He turned to face me and gazed deeply into my eyes.

Bit by bit the room seemed to tilt, first to one side, then to the other. My body began to feel very sleepy, but my mind had never been so wide awake. I was vaguely aware of Mr. Beeba and Gax and Spuckler, but they seemed to fall away into the distance while Poog expanded to fill my entire field of vision.

What happened next is almost impossible to describe.

It was as if Poog were sending images directly into my brain. I could see them in front of my eyes, but I could also see them inside my head. It was like dreaming and being awake at the same time.

I could see Alia Rellapor. She looked younger, happier. She was back at the palace with King Froptoppit and the Prince, smiling, laughing, perfectly content. Then I saw Throck. He was also younger, with less armor and machinery covering his body. I saw him staring at Alia Rellapor from somewhere outside the palace. I saw him mixing potions and casting spells like some kind of warlock or voodoo doctor: chanting, whispering, sometimes shouting.

Suddenly it became very clear to me: Alia wasn’t evil. She had been
made
evil. She was being controlled by
Throck
!

I wanted to tell everyone my discovery, but Poog wasn’t finished with me yet. He kept sending images into my brain. Now I saw scenes of our journey, little flashes of things that had happened to us before we got to Alia Rellapor’s castle. I saw Spuckler throwing the stone at the Torg. I saw all of us crossing the Moonguzzit Sea on the superlong bridge. I saw myself climbing up the Great Wall of Trudd. I saw Queen Pwip. I saw Admiral Frutz. . . . 

Then I saw one scene that was especially clear and vivid. Poog and I were in the forest in the middle of the night. Poog was teaching me words in his own language. It seemed so real I could almost hear the insect sounds coming from the forest and smell the wood crackling on the fire.

The words. Poog was repeating the words to me, making me memorize them. Over and over he drilled the words into my brain. I felt them forming on my tongue. I opened my mouth. I heard the words coming out, echoing off the walls.

The
walls
?

I opened my eyes. I was back in Alia Rellapor’s castle. Spuckler and Mr. Beeba were looking at me with great astonishment.

“Heavens!” Mr. Beeba said. “Well, I’ll be dagnabbed!” Spuckler said, rubbing the back of his neck agitatedly with one hand.

Poog was gazing at me with supreme pride.

“What?” I asked.
“What?”

“Akiko, my dear child,” Mr. Beeba said. “You just said something in Poog’s language. You said it loudly. And with a
very
convincing accent, I must say.”

I shook myself vigorously. It was as if I’d just come back from a very long journey.