The Lonely Whelk (10 page)

Kaia gave a little wave. “Nice to meet you,”
she said at the group of students, and then ran after John.

It took Maxwell some time to calm down from
the incident at the Globe. He had often gone key hunting there, but
never been confronted by security. Something must have changed in
the building… that’s what it was. Someone didn’t have enough to
do.

He began walking slowly towards the
residential neighborhood. Soon, he would need to meet with Perla
and her people, but before then, he had to come up with another
plan for getting in the building. After all, that was his part of
the deal.

“
I can’t believe it didn’t
work! I was just going to grab a key and get out of there,” he said
to Maddy.

“
Why didn’t you take one a
while ago?” Maddy asked. “He wouldn’t have noticed.”

Maxwell opened his mouth three times, as if
surprised.

“
I can’t believe I didn’t
think of that!” he berated himself. “Of course! If I had just taken
one of the keys originally, John would have thought that he had
forgotten where he hid it and gotten another one.” He slapped his
forehead with the palm of his hand. “Oh well. There’s no use
worrying about it now.”

He sighed and turned down a narrow alley
between two old Earth-Victorian-style houses. This whole
neighborhood was built to mimic home designs used by various people
on Earth and Velima, and Maxwell found it all to be simply gaudy.
Too much frillery, too much colour, and too much nonsense.

He led Maddy up to an old wooden door
leading into the basement on their left, and knocked three
times.

“
Go away!” a voice
replied.

“
I can’t,” Maxwell said.
“The traffic is too heavy and there might be thugs outside. I would
offer to pay you, but I can’t afford a bribe.”

“
It’s ‘there might be rain
outside,’ not ‘there might be thugs outside,’” the man inside
replied. “We changed it last night. Come in.”

The sound of sixteen locks being unlatched
bled through the wooden door.

“
Are you adding locks?”
Maxwell asked as he stepped into the cellar.

“
Perla added three last
week,” said a husky but rather short man with a red beard and a hat
shaped like a cartoon character. He drank chocolate milk out of a
carton so small it was nearly invisible amid all of his
carrot-sized fingers. He waved his other hand towards the back.
“You can go on in.”

Maxwell planted his feet shoulder-width
apart, crossed his arms, and glared at the man. “Well, Ralph?” he
demanded.

Ralph sighed loudly. “Hello, Maddy. It’s
good to see you again.”

“
Thank you,” Maxwell said.
“You need to learn to mind your manners.”

Maxwell entered the room, casually ignoring
the other individuals seated on boxes, crates, and the floor. One
young woman appeared to be homeless. That was Fox. She wasn’t
actually homeless, they all knew, but she made more money in a day
peddling as a blind homeless woman than most make in a year. Lord J
stood idly in the back of the room, sipping something out of a wine
glass. He dressed in gentleman’s clothes and typically wore a hat.
No one quite knew what he did. Twelve-year-old Tink sat on the
floor in the back, counting money, and nearby Godfrey lay bundled
up in old blankets. He was snoring. Tink was the group’s best
pickpocket, and Godfrey counted cards. There were other members of
Perla’s crew, but she kept her various cells separate, as far as
Maxwell knew.

“
Where’s Bad Face?” Maxwell
asked. “And Perla?”

“
They’re on the way,” Lord
J replied.

“
Maddy,” Maxwell said. “You
can sit right there.” He gestured to an empty crate.

Fox sniggered. “Still got old Maddy
following you around. You know you oughta just dump her.”

Maxwell scowled at Fox. “Maddy is a valuable
asset. It’s too bad I can’t say the same about you!”

“
Bad Face!” Ralph called
from the other room.

Fox stood up as Bad Face entered the room.
“Hello there, hunk!” she exclaimed. “Come sit over here, by
me.”

The large man with an over-sized belly and a
massive tattoo of a pink rabbit on one bicep ignored her, heading
instead for Lord J. His skin was a medium brown, and massive scars
crisscrossed his entire face, which scowled as if ready to murder
every living thing he could find. One eye was entirely missing. He
was Perla’s bodyguard and assassin. Lord J handed him the
half-empty wine glass without a sound.

“
Hello, my friends,” came a
woman’s voice from the doorway. Everyone turned.

“
Perla!” Maxwell growled.
“It’s about time you got here.”

She turned towards him, frowning. “Have you
done as I asked?”

“
No. The keys have been
removed.” He gulped, wishing he had thought of a new
plan.

“
One thing!” Perla stated
angrily. She strode forward, stopping directly in front of him with
her hands on her hips. “I asked you to do one thing! Well, so be
it. I have an additional task, then, to replace the one you failed
to do. But first...”

She turned to gaze at the group seated
around her.

“
You’re all
out.”

The group gave a resounding, “What?”

“
Out, I said. I only need
Bad Face and Lord J for this mission.”

“
And me,” Maxwell
interjected.

“
Of course,” Perla said
noncommittally. “And you. Everyone else – out.”

Grumbling, Tink and Godfrey pulled
themselves up off the floor. Tink gathered the money she had been
counting into her pockets rapidly as she stood.

“
Seriously? You don’t need
me?” Fox demanded. “I was looking forward to this!”

“
There has been a change in
plans, and I am telling you to go. Please dismiss Ralph on your way
out the door.”

Fox sighed loudly and stomped her way out of
the room.

“
What about—” Maxwell
began, intending to ask about Maddy’s involvement.

“
Hush.” Perla held up her
hand, listening for the sound of the closing door. When it became
silent she turned to the three men remaining.

“
There has been a
complication. My son, Clyde, has taken a job at the Globe. We must
avoid him at all costs – firstly so that he does not recognize me,
and secondly so that he is not injured. Maxwell, did you bring the
wig I requested?”

“
Yes!” Maxwell reached into
his knapsack and pulled out a wig.

“
Where is it?” he asked.
“It’s not here!”

Perla frowned.

Maxwell looked over at Maddy and laughed.
“Oh there it is, you silly girl.” He reached over and removed the
wig from her head. “Maddy was wearing it,” he said to Perla.

“
I see.” Perla scowled at
him and rubbed her forehead. She reached out and took the wig.
“Thank you. This is hideous.” The black wig was a mess, filled with
twigs and crumbs, and sorely in need of a comb. “But I suppose it
will do.”

“
Now,” she continued,
turning her attention away from the wig. “You all have your
assignments, but there is still one flaw: getting into the
building. I have a potential solution.” She faced Maxwell. “Do you
remember our cousin, Louise?”

“
She had nice hair and made
good cinnamon cookies,” Maxwell replied.

“
Yes, that one. Her son is
a graduate student, and according to my sources, has managed to
land a position within the Globe. I want you to contact him as he
is leaving work today and acquire his key. Do you
understand?”

“
Yes,” Maxwell replied,
relieved. Now he had a plan for retrieving a key, and the rest of
the day to do it.

“
We will begin at exactly
closing time. You know your orders,” Perla finished. “Bad Face,
stay with me. I may as yet need an assassin before the day is out.”
She turned her eyes towards Maxwell menacingly. “Now get
out.”

Hazel stopped crying sometime later. She
knew her face was red and her nose was red and her eyes were
painted with spidery red lines – to go with her hair, she noted
wryly. She was somewhere new and weird, but that didn’t mean she
could act like a baby. If she did that every time she ended up in a
new place, she’d never be happy! Taking a deep breath, she stood
and stretched. At some point, she would need to go exploring.

She wandered into the back room, its warm
oranges and reds calming her and reminding her that this was home,
whether she liked it or not. The red jewels were hidden in a box in
another box inside a cupboard that was partially behind the couch.
She shifted the couch forward, and pulled out the wooden box. After
dialing the code for the lock, the lid popped open, revealing
another box. This one was an ordinary jewelry box, and the red
jewels sat on soft velvet, glittering in the light. She slipped
them into her ears.

Next, she dug around in her closet for a
backpack, and filled it with water bottles and granola bars.

“
I think I’m ready,” she
said. “The universe awaits.”

As she strode confidently into the front of
the shop, she began to hum. The first day she had worked up the
courage to leave the shop after it moved, and to go explore the
city of Anchorage, she had made up the ditty. She called it, “The
Adventure Song.”

She peered through the glass of the front
door and then jumped back.

The monkey was still there, but it was
closer. It sat right outside the door, looking at her. It made a
chattering noise.

“
Hi,” she said tentatively.
“Are you friendly?”

The monkey hopped a little bit closer and
tilted its head sideways.

Hazel giggled. It was really cute – which
meant it was likely safe, right?

Slowly, she opened the door of the shop and
stepped out. The monkey sat on the floor, just looking up at
her.

“
What’s your name?” she
asked, knowing full well that monkeys didn’t talk.

It scampered off down the hallway.

“
Wait!”

It stopped and looked back at her, and
waited. She hurried after it.

They kept up this routine for quite a while.
The monkey would scamper forward, and then look back, as if waiting
for her to follow. Hazel kept up a stream of one-sided conversation
as they worked their way... somewhere.

“
This is a very strange
place,” Hazel said. “It doesn’t feel familiar at all. It feels
really weird. But I don’t really know why – it’s just my gut, I
guess.” She turned and looked behind them. They had turned several
times, but not gone through any doors. She wasn’t sure she would be
able to find her way back if she had to. “I hope you know where
you’re going,” she muttered. “Because I sure don’t.”

She was quiet for a moment, and then her
mind began to wander – to her shop, to her dad, to that strange man
with the rubies.

“
When I discovered that my
shop moved, I may have gone into shock for a week or so. I didn’t
sell anything. I wouldn’t let anyone in.” She didn’t care whether
the monkey was listening or not, but it was nice to have another
living creature with her in this strange new place. “Then I decided
I was being stupid and that the least I could do was to make some
money.” She shrugged. “I was really mad at my dad for dying and for
leaving me with a shop that I couldn’t control.”

The monkey rounded another corner in front
of her. She skipped ahead a few steps to catch up, and then stopped
in surprise as she came around the corner: in front of her loomed a
forest!

A set of double doors sat propped open with
trees, branches, and ferns pouring out of them. It was a beautiful,
lush green and she smiled broadly with excitement. “Outside!” she
exclaimed. “Apparently we are somewhere real. A real, real
place.”

The monkey dived into the foliage.

“
No, wait!” Hazel called
out. “Where are you going? I’ll never find you in
there!”

The monkey poked its cute face through the
branches and beckoned her to step forward. She ducked under the
first branches, and then the monkey dropped down and wrapped around
her neck. She smiled, thinking that the monkey was very soft. Then
she frowned – it was a very cold monkey… at least, colder than she
would have expected.

The monkey pointed forward, and she
followed, doing her best to avoid the low-hanging branches. She
stepped over logs on the ground, crushed smaller plants as she
stomped them down, and got whacked in the face by trees that seemed
to want to destroy her.

“
How much farther are we
going?” she demanded. Of course the monkey didn’t reply; he only
kept pointing.

Hazel walked and walked. She was beginning
to feel tired… and how far away was she from her shop – from
home?

When they reached a clearing, the monkey
began to make chattering noises. Hazel paused, and for no conscious
reason, she looked up.

Above her was a ceiling of windows shaped
like octagons and pieced together in a sort of dome. Through it she
looked out into the most beautiful sight she had ever seen: the
sky. Innumerable stars twinkled in the massive darkness of space
that suddenly seemed to weigh on her like a thousand elephants. A
closer star burned brightly, but only as brightly as it might look
from a distant planet.