Scurvy Goonda (11 page)

Cries of “Hear! Hear!” and “Garbage, indeed!” rang out from the senators.

“Southern California is mine!”

“I get the Croatian coastline!”

“I’ll take all of England, except for Essex!”

“Now, now, let’s not divide up the world
before
it is ours,” said Persephone. “First things first—as you know, an eighty-five-percent vote is necessary to overturn the nonviolence law. I propose that we make a
statement
today, and overturn it with one hundred percent of the vote. A vote for a fight is a vote
for
the future—”

“HAVE YOU LOST YOUR MIND, PERSEPHONE?” boomed a voice from the back of the chamber.

Persephone paused, astounded.

“Who? Said? That?” she asked.

“
I
did,” said the voice, which was now getting closer. Persephone saw an ancient double-pouched kangaroo bouncing ponderously down the red-carpeted center aisle of the chamber, his multicolored tail dragging behind.

“Senator Thip-Thap,” said Persephone. He was her old mentor.

“You’ve disappointed me, Persephone,” said Senator Thip-Thap.

When Persephone had first arrived in Middlemost, she’d had a difficult time adjusting to her new environment. She was lonely. Senator Thip-Thap took her in and gave her a home and friendship during her first couple of centuries there. She served as a clerk in his office, learning the basics of
government, before starting her political career in earnest. She knew that she owed much of her success to Senator Thip-Thap—who was now staring at her, shaking angrily.

“You should be ashamed of yourself!” said Senator Thip-Thap. “Spewing a message of violence. It got you into office because you earned the votes of fools, but it must
stop here.”

Nervous chattering from the audience.

“Your colleagues seem to disagree,” said Persephone.

“Yes, you were cast aside,” said Senator Thip-Thap, turning to the Senate chamber. “
All
of you were cast aside! But we’ve seen what violence does to humans, and we
know
that it is always a mistake! And now you want to take up arms against them? You want to
eradicate
them from their own world?”

Senator Thip-Thap slammed his cane into the ground.

“The humans who abandoned you were CHILDREN!” he exploded. “Children who didn’t know any better because they were
young
. I
implore
you—forget this madness, and find another way to preserve Middlemost
without
violence.”

There was silence in the Senate chamber.

“It’s rude to interrupt your president when she is speaking,” said Persephone. “Would the officer of the court please have Senator Thip-Thap taken to a comfortable place where he can
lie down?
He’s quite old, and not quite sane.”

“Of course, President Skeleton,” said the court proboscis monkey, lumbering toward Senator Thip-Thap, who stared at Persephone.

“And you wonder why nobody loves you,” said Senator Thip-Thap.

“I HAVE THE LOVE OF A
WORLD,”
she snapped.
“Out
with this shoddy antique!”

The court monkey grabbed Senator Thip-Thap and dragged him out of the Senate chamber while the rest of the audience looked on, giving their silent consent. As soon as the monkey was out of the room, Persephone straightened her body, cracked her bones, and spoke sweetly into the microphone.

“Now then,” she said. “Let us get this vote under way. I trust there won’t be any more distractions, aside from my beauty. As I was saying …”

Being inside a thick sack, Ted only knew that he’d been placed on a wagon of some kind, and he could feel Vango, Dr. Narwhal, and Dwack beside him. Their mouths were taped shut and their wrists bound with heavy ropes.

When the wagon stopped, Ted detected a flurry of activity outside the sack.

“Move!” said a rough voice as Ted was yanked off the wagon and carried by several pairs of hands. Behind him, he heard labored grunting and guessed that the kidnappers were attempting to lift Dr. Narwhal.

“Set his flippers free and make him walk,” said another voice. “If he doesn’t move, we’ll have to roll him.”

Suddenly Ted was dropped roughly onto the ground, and his sack was untied and swiftly removed. He opened his eyes and saw that he was in a wide tunnel constructed entirely of bending, arching trees. Everywhere he looked, other tree-tunnels connected to this main corridor.

Dwack, Vango, and Dr. Narwhal sat beside him.

And standing in front of him was the most beautiful girl he’d ever seen.

“Mon Dieu!”
she said. “You are a ragtag lot. And you
stink!”

After the vote, Persephone departed the Senate chamber for her high-rise apartment, feeling great about herself. It was almost unprecedented to see a
unanimous
yes vote, and the invasion was
going
to happen. She just needed to hammer out some final details. But that meeting wasn’t for another couple of weeks, so she had some time to relax … and get married.

Persephone looked through the window at the Ab-Com City skyline. Though she knew she should move into the stodgy Presidential Palace on the outskirts of the city, she preferred living in this apartment, her home, which she had been in ever since she had started earning enough money from bribes and kickbacks to have the type of life she had fantasized about during her sailing days.

When she met her Scurvy.

Persephone sat down on her feather bed—made from specific birds whose plumage had made her jealous—and removed her wig. It had been a long day, and she needed to rest if she was going to see Scurvy soon. He was the love of her life, and she wanted to look gorgeous.

“SWAMSTER,” she yelled. “BRING MY BATH SALTS!”

But Swamster didn’t respond.

“Oh yes,” said Persephone to herself. “I sent him to kill that boy.”

Persephone flopped back on her bed and rubbed her eyeholes with the delicate bones that formed her wings. She looked at the ceiling, where years before she had commissioned an artist to paint a portrait of Scurvy, just the way she’d remembered him. Masculine. Dashing. Perfect.

“Ah,
mi amor,”
said Persephone.

She had first met Scurvy on a pirate ship, where she had been the ab-com of a cabin girl named Grace, who had helped her mother cook, clean, and sew for the sailors. Grace had spent her entire life on the boat and saw plenty of scrap bones that sailors tossed her way after they were done eating. The cabin girl was terribly lonely, and she reconstructed these bones in her imagination to make a friend—her cockatoo, Persephone Skeleton.

One day, the ship stopped in Port Royal, Jamaica, to pick up supplies and replace crew members who had been lost at sea or killed in battle. A sailor came aboard with his young son Myles, who had dreamed of being a pirate since he was old enough to stare out at the boats coming into port. Myles had inherited an abstract companion to match his obsession—Scurvy Gordon. Myles the cabin boy met Grace the cabin girl, and from that day on, Scurvy and Persephone were inseparable.

During the days, Persephone sat on Scurvy’s shoulder as he captained his ship up and down the coast of the Americas, one of her eyes on the ocean, looking for ships, the other focused on Scurvy’s face. She had never seen such a handsome man. In battles, Persephone fought alongside Scurvy, clawing and pecking the eyes of rival sailors and buccaneers. During long days at sea, she entertained Scurvy with her songs:
CAW CAW!
And
Scurvy always smiled and sang along, yelling his own
CAW CAWs
at the sea.

With Grace’s help, Persephone gradually learned some proper English, though at first she was limited mainly to nautical terms and curse words:
CAW CAW! TURN STARBOARD, YA RUM BUCKET!
But at night, Scurvy had her sleep on a perch in his personal quarters belowdecks, and it was here that Persephone eventually said the things she really wanted to say:

CAW CAW! I LOVE YOU, SCURVY!

All day long, she would sit on Scurvy’s shoulder and tell him again and again how she felt inside:
CAW CAW! LET’S BUILD A NEST TOGETHER! CAW CAW!

But Scurvy never seemed to take her declarations seriously, and it almost seemed like he was confused by what she was saying. Confused by her
love
! Over time, Persephone could see that he was starting to shut her out completely. He stopped letting her sleep in his quarters and instead kept her in a cage in the galley. He stopped having her ride on his shoulder as he captained the ship.

Eventually, he stopped visiting her altogether, and Grace lost interest in her as well. She was never let out of her cage, nobody came to play with her, nobody came to talk to her. Stuck below the ship’s deck, she didn’t even know if it was morning or night. Persephone became bitter. Scurvy had cut Persephone out of his life completely—just because she loved him.

Then came the night the ship went down. She had been asleep in her cage—she liked to sleep, because sometimes she dreamed that Scurvy loved her back—when all of a sudden she heard a pounding above deck. She heard the shouts of men fighting and the booms of cannons being fired at close range,
and shortly afterward came the crackle of the wooden ship burning.

She watched the fire scorch through the ceiling and begin to creep down the walls.

CAW CAW!
she yelled.

She watched the flames leap along the floor.

CAW CAW CAW!
she pleaded, begging
anybody
to save her.

She watched the blaze consume the oak stand beneath her and lick the bars of her cage.

CAW?
she said, realizing that nobody was going to save her.

GRACE? SCURVY?
She looked at the stairs leading down to the galley, willing her love to rush into the room and save her.

But he didn’t. And the ship sank.

And that was that.

Ted was looking at the beautiful girl—staring at her, to be precise. The girl’s skin had a porcelain, polished quality to it, as if she were a statue. He guessed that she was about his age, and considering that she was wearing a pink leotard and a tutu, he guessed that she was a ballerina.

A yellow elk wearing a bowler hat stood next to her. The elk didn’t speak, and it seemed entirely deferential to the incomprehensibly beautiful ballerina.

“So,” said the ballerina. “It’s probably a good time for at least
one
of you to tell me what you were doing creeping around when my guards picked you up.”

“I am Dwack,” said Dwack. “And these are my associates, Dr. Narwhal, Vango, and Ted, a human who took a bit of a wrong turn from his own world.”

“Human,” said the ballerina, looking at Ted. “Interesting.”

The ballerina let her pretty porcelain eyes remain on Ted for a moment longer than any lovely girl had ever looked at him before.

“Go on,” she said.

“And had your men—or your mammalia,” said Dwack, nodding at the dapper elk, “taken the time to question us about where we were going, they would have found that we were searching for ACORN.”

Dwack paused.

“Which,” he continued, “considering that you are hiding in a tree cave, I’d imagine you’d know something about.”

The ballerina narrowed her eyes.

“How do I know you’re not spies?” she said.

“Simple,” said Dwack. “Look at Vango.”

Even sitting in place, Vango was trembling visibly, and his eye was twitching. He looked completely out of his mind.

“He needs to paint every day,” said Dwack, “or else he has, let’s say, an
episode
. Now, do you believe that the Presidential Guard would let such a loose cannon join its spies?”

The ballerina was studying Vango. He clearly creeped her out, though she was holding her head high and keeping her face quiet, trying not to betray a reaction.

“Perhaps not,” said the ballerina. “But what of the rest of you?”

“I have nothing ill to say about Dr. Narwhal,” said Dwack. “And as for myself, I find our current administration a bit…
gauche
. They have no style. I would never be a part of such a flair-free bunch.”

“And what about the near-man?” said the ballerina.

Ted’s face warmed uncomfortably.
A near-man?
What was with the hyphen?

“He’s just lost,” said Dwack. “But you can question him yourself, if you have any concerns.”

“Well?” said the ballerina. “How do I know you’re not working for President Skeleton?”

Ted thought about this.

“Back in my world I have a family I love,” he said. “I have
a little sister, Adeline, who I would never allow anyone to hurt.”

The ballerina thought about this, and then she smiled.

“Very good. My name is Joelle-Michelle Athenais-Benedicte de la Valliere. If you were looking for ACORN, you have found it.”