In a Glass Grimmly (15 page)

“He says he’s always wanted to know which was hotter, summer or winter.”

Jill smacked her forehead. “How long is this going to go on?”

“Just answer him,” Jack told the frog. So the frog did. The salamander shook the cavern with his appreciative nodding. He roared again.

“He wants to know if smelly is good or smelly is bad.”

Jack and Jill laughed out loud at that. The salamander roared fiercely, and a ball of fire exploded from his mouth. They both stopped laughing.

“Bad,” said Jill.

“Right,” said Jack.

“Wrong,” said the frog, and he turned and croaked at Eddie. Eddie seemed very, very happy. He roared another question.

“He says, ‘Am I smelly? Very smelly? How smelly?’”

“Very smelly,” both children said at once. Jill added, “Unbelievably smelly.”

The frog turned and croaked at Eddie, and Eddie’s head started bobbing up and down, up and down. “He’s very excited,” said the frog. Eddie asked another question.

“Does everyone have a birthday?” the frog relayed to the children.

Jill hesitated. But Jack said, “Yes,” and the frog told Eddie. Eddie roared.

“He wants to know when his is,” said the frog.

The children looked at each other and raised their eyebrows. “What should we say?” Jack asked the frog quietly. The frog shrugged.

“Say yesterday,” said Jill. “And tell him we’re sorry we missed it, but congratulations anyway.” The frog turned and croaked that to Eddie, who looked a little deflated, but appreciative of their belated good wishes. He roared.

“Are salamanders people, too?” said the frog to Jack and Jill.

Jill looked at Eddie, with his grotesque translucent skin, his hideously wide mouth, his distended belly, and his thick, fleshy tail. But then she looked at his little black eyes, set just where you’d expect his ears to be. They looked at her. “Of course,” she said, and she smiled at him. Jack nodded vigorously in agreement. So Eddie started nodding, too. He nodded so hard that the ground shook up and down and knocked Jack and Jill over. Then Eddie lay his head down on the ground and smiled.

All of a sudden, Jill did something that surprised her as much as it surprised everyone else. She got up and walked slowly toward Eddie. When she was just a few feet from his enormous, horrible-smelling head, she reached out and she touched it. It was slimy and fleshy and diaphanous enough to see his skull bones through it. She let her hand come to rest on his nose.

Jack scooped up the frog and followed Jill. He, too, rested his hand on Eddie’s nose. The giant salamander sighed, and Jack and Jill and the frog were enveloped in the foulest stench you can imagine. And they laughed.

The frog said, “Well, shall we get the Glass?”

Jack and Jill nodded. So the frog croaked at the salamander.

Eddie opened his mouth.

“That,” said the frog, “looks like an invitation.”

Eddie’s mouth was probably eight feet across and six feet tall when open. Near the front were a row of small teeth—well, small for Eddie. Each was about six inches high and shaped like a little triangle. After the row of teeth there was a patch of pink flesh, and then, about a foot farther back, was another row of slightly larger teeth. Behind the second row of teeth was an enormous mound of a tongue. Farther back was a wide, dark passage that led down Eddie’s throat. It all looked pretty gross, of course. But how it looked was nothing compared to how it smelled.

Jill spun away as soon as Eddie opened his mouth. But Jack just clamped his hand over his nose and said to the frog, “Please don’t let him close it while we’re in there.”

“What about the fire?” Jill asked, still facing the other direction.

The frog croaked and Eddie closed his mouth and roared. “He won’t burn you,” said the frog. “Unless he burps.”

“Do salamanders burp often?”

“All the time,” replied the frog.

Jill sighed. “Remind him to keep his mouth open.” The frog croaked some more. Eddie nodded with his mouth open.

Jill turned back toward Eddie, closed her eyes, did not take a deep breath, and grabbed Jack’s left hand. But Jack said, “Wait.” He ran back into the corridor and got his discarded spear. While it was not necessarily hospitable to take a weapon into someone’s gastrointestinal tract, Jack certainly wasn’t going in there without it.

The children stepped over Eddie’s lip and into his mouth. The frog quietly croaked at Eddie, reminding him not to close his mouth and not to breathe any fire and to try, try, try not to burp.

“We could die right now,” said Jack.

“I trust Eddie,” said Jill.

“Then you’re probably as dumb as he is,” Jack replied. But he didn’t mean it. He was just a little tense.

Hand in hand, they stepped over the first row of teeth, and then the second. Jill reached out with her foot and touched Eddie’s tongue. It shivered and then lay still. She looked over her shoulder at the frog. The frog nodded at her and kept up his constant stream of reminders to Eddie. Jill stepped onto Eddie’s tongue. It did not move. Jack followed her. They walked across the tongue. The stench became worse, the air thicker and hotter. Jill gagged.

“Don’t,” Jack said severely. Jill swallowed hard.

They approached the dark hole of Eddie’s throat. “Ready?” said Jack.

Together, they ducked through the giant aperture and into the blackness of Eddie’s esophagus.

A rumble came from Eddie’s belly. Jack and Jill froze and gripped each other’s hand more tightly. They could hear the frog croaking.

“Why do we have to do this?” said Jack quietly. “Why are we bothering?”

“Greatest treasure in the history of the world. Very powerful. We don’t get it, we die,” Jill answered.

“Right. Just wanted to make sure this wasn’t optional or anything.”

“Not optional.”

The esophagus narrowed, and Jack and Jill were forced to crawl, their hands and knees sliding along his slimy throat. The growling grew louder. And then it was joined by a buzzing.

“What’s that?”

Jill was slapped in the face by an enormous bug. She frantically swatted it away. Another one crashed into Jack’s neck. Jack screamed and then shuddered.

They pushed on. The darkness became heavier.

“Look for treasure. Or a giant mirror,” Jack whispered. Jill nodded.

The two children slid out of the esophagus and into the stomach. This was a burbling swamp of acid that burned their skin when they touched it. Foul-smelling gloop dripped from the ceiling and coated their bodies and then began to sting. Jack and Jill winced in pain. They couldn’t hear the frog any more. “Hurry,” said Jill. They pushed deeper. Bugs slapped them in the face and got caught in the sticky, stinging gloop. The children pulled them off, and the bugs protested and stung at their hands. Jill thought she might cry. But she gasped, “Deeper.”

On they pushed. They felt with their feet under the pool of acid for treasure chests or strings of pearls or golden mirrors. Anything that might be the Seeing Glass.

They found nothing.

“It’s not here,” Jack said.

“Maybe Eddie got mixed up.”

“Maybe he digested it.”

“I can’t believe it’s not here.”

Sudden panic gripped the children. “What are we going to do now?” Jack demanded.

They arrived at the back of Eddie’s stomach. There, in the dim light that filtered from Eddie’s mouth and down his throat, they could make out a round little hatch of muscle. It led, they figured, to his intestines.

“That’s all there is,” said Jack. “The end.”

But suddenly Jill was pointing at something.

It did not look like a bug, or like anything edible.

It was a round disc, about a foot in diameter.

“What’s that?” Jill asked. They waded up to it. It was lodged in the hatch of muscle.

“Dunno,” said Jack.

“Pull it out.”

“If I do it I think I’m going to throw up.”

“Well, I
know
I will,” said Jill.

So Jack grabbed hold of the little disc that was lodged between Eddie’s stomach and intestines and yanked at it. It came out easily, and Jack fell backward into the burbling stomach acid. The acid burned his skin. He shouted and scrambled to his feet.

Suddenly, everything went black. Eddie’s entire stomach began to shift, and Jack and Jill were thrown into the fleshy back wall. Eddie was rearing up. Stomach acid poured all over the children, burning their faces, their arms, their hands, submerging them utterly. Jill began swimming upward to get to air, but Jack, holding onto the little disc with one hand and the spear with the other, could not. Jill reached the surface, looked for Jack, and began to scream. Suddenly, Eddie slammed back to the ground, sending Jack crashing into Jill, and both sprawling into the stomach acid again.

They got to their feet and groped frantically through the pitch darkness toward the throat.

“What’s going on?” Jill asked, terrified.

“No idea. He forgot?”

“Or he’s decided to eat us?”

“Was it a trap?”

And then the darkness was cut by an orange glow. Jack and Jill looked in the direction of Eddie’s mouth. It was still tightly shut, and no light came through at all. Where was the glow coming from, then? They looked back into the stomach. A small fire was burning there at the back. A small fire. But growing.

“He’s erupting!” Jill shouted, and though that wasn’t exactly the word she was looking for at that moment, it was in fact exactly the right word. For the fire was blooming up the length of Eddie’s stomach. Jack thrust the disc to Jill and gripped the spear with both hands.

“What are you going to do?” Jill screamed.

“I don’t know!”

The fire boiled toward them.

“This way!” Jill shouted, and she grabbed Jack’s arm and they crawled through the esophagus and into Eddie’s mouth.

“Eddie, open up! Open up!” she cried. Something exploded in Eddie’s stomach. The fire burst into Eddie’s throat. Jack aimed the spear at the roof of Eddie’s mouth.

“You’re going to kill him!” Jill shouted.

“What else can I do?” Jack cried.

“EDDIE!” Jill screamed.

And Jack sent the spear straight up at the soft part of Eddie’s palate.

And then, just before the point of Jack’s spear hit Eddie’s flesh, the giant mouth opened and the great tongue flung Jill and Jack and Jack’s spear out of Eddie’s mouth. They spun through the air and hit the ground hard as an arm of flame burst from Eddie’s throat and cut a line through the air just above the children’s bodies.

The flame died. Jack and Jill turned and looked at Eddie. He roared.

“Good God!” the frog cried.

Eddie kept roaring.

“What happened?” Jack and Jill shouted at the same moment.

“He had to burp,” said the frog. “I kept telling him not to. Eventually he closed his mouth to keep the burp down.”

“Why didn’t you call to us?” Jack demanded.

“I did! You didn’t hear me?”

The children shook their heads.

“What’s all over you?” the frog said. Jack and Jill looked at their arms, hands, bodies. They touched their faces. Their skin was raw and blistering, and totally covered in stomach acid. “You look horrible,” the frog added.

“Thanks,” Jill replied.

“And no treasure?”

Jack held up the little disc. “This is all we could find.” The frog turned and croaked at Eddie. Eddie nodded and roared.

“That’s it,” said the frog.

“What? That’s the whole treasure?”

“According to him,” the frog shrugged.

Jill, still lying on the ground, let her head fall against the craggy black stone. Jack stared at the disc. It was so coated in stomach gloop he couldn’t make it out. “What is it?” he said. No one answered.

Jack sat up, cradled the thing in his lap, and pawed at the gloop with his fingers. It stung them. He pulled at it, but it just drooped back into place, hugging the little disc.

“Maybe it’s a mirror,” Jack concluded.

“We better hope so,” agreed Jill.

Eddie roared. Jill looked up wearily at the giant, ecstatic salamander. “What is he saying?” she asked.

The frog sighed. “He wants to ask us more questions.”

Some hours passed while the children recuperated from their ordeal and fielded such questions as, “If a tree falls in a forest and there’s nobody around, how did it fall down?” and “What does the word ‘is’ mean?” But finally Jack stood up and said, “I think we should go now.” Jill, who had been coming up with the bulk of the answers to Eddie’s questions, gratefully agreed.

“The problem is,” said Jack, “there’s no way Begehren is going to believe that this thing is all the treasure that’s down here.” He waved the disc in the air. The gloop was beginning to harden. “How are we going to get him to lift us back up?”

The frog offered a suggestion, and then Jill did, and then Jack came up with one of his own. None seemed particularly promising. Jill tried another, and another. Jack added to one, subtracted from the other. The frog offered a variant. After a while, the two children were nodding.

“That might work,” said Jill.

“It’s the best we’ve got,” said Jack. “Let’s try it.”

Jill turned to the frog. “Tell Eddie.”

When the frog informed Eddie of their intent to leave, Eddie was crestfallen. But when the frog elaborated that they would need the giant salamander’s help, he looked like it might be the very best day of his long, long life.

“Tell him to lead the way,” Jack said to the frog. So Eddie began crashing through the tunnels that had led them there, smashing stone as easily as one might smash glass. Jack and Jill ran after him, the frog nestled in Jack’s pocket.

Jack and Jill stood at the bottom of the sinkhole and stared up. Far above, they could see the dim red light of the Goblin Kingdom. Beside them lay Eddie, still as death. Jack nodded at Jill. They cupped their hands to their mouths and shouted, “Begehren!”

Their voices echoed up the sides of the sinkhole and then died away.

No answer came.

Jill nodded at Jack. Again they cupped their hands to their mouths and shouted, “BEGEHREN!”

Again, no answer.

A third time they cupped their hands to their mouths, turned them to the great hole, and bellowed.