The Secret of Zoone Read online

  “Personally, I think you will make a fine representative for Eridea,” Lady Zoone continued. “In the meantime, we must prepare for the convention. Wizardly folk, I must tell you, can be a lot of work, and we could use your help around here.”

  “What can I do?” Ozzie wondered. He was pretty sure Zoone didn’t require any ninjas—not that he was qualified for that job anyway.

  “I would like you to work as a porter. It’s someone who assists travelers with their luggage. You can report to Mr. Fusselbone’s office first thing in the morning for training.”

  Fusselbone? Ozzie thought. Hadn’t Cho and Tug mentioned him? They had called him the chief conductor or something—and they had suggested he wasn’t very friendly. “Look, I’ve never had a job before,” Ozzie told Lady Zoone. “Don’t kids here go to school?”

  “We don’t have many kids in Zoone,” Lady Zoone admitted. “I could find a tutor for you, of course, but I think you’ll learn a lot more as a porter than sitting in a classroom for the next week or so. Don’t you?”

  Ozzie grimaced. “You know, people back home kind of think I’m a screwup.”

  “Well, you’re not at home, are you?” Lady Zoone challenged him. “If you start porting this week, you’ll be in tip-top shape by the time the convention starts.”

  “I guess,” Ozzie replied hesitantly. “Does Tug have a job?”

  “We like to joke around here that he is a job,” Lady Zoone said. “Truth be told, he has many jobs. Patrol skyger. Official food tester. . . .”

  “Aunt Temperance fetcher?” Ozzie suggested.

  “See?” Lady Zoone said. “You’re fitting in already. Now, time to send you to the southeast tower, where the crew lives.” She took her key from around her neck and approached the door they had entered through. “Hmm, is it clockwise or counterclockwise to reach the southeast tower? I can never quite remember—oh!”

  A cacophony of chirping and chattering had erupted from her tangle of hair.

  “What is it?!” Ozzie asked anxiously.

  “Twigs and trunks!” Lady Zoone said happily, pointing upward. “What a lot of excitement. It seems the first of the new hatchlings has arrived.”

  7

  The Mouse-Man of Zoone Station

  After Lady Zoone sorted out the right turns for the key—and the hatchlings in her hair—Ozzie stepped through the door and found himself in an unfamiliar lobby. Tug and Cho were waiting for him.

  I guess they did get Lady Zoone’s bird message, Ozzie thought.

  “You’re going to share our room,” Tug announced, excitedly swishing his tail, which Ozzie had to duck in order to avoid having his face introduced to the nearest wall.

  Cho led them to another door, and opened it with a key that looked like a less complicated version of Lady Zoone’s.

  “Does anyone here ever just take the stairs?” Ozzie asked.

  Cho chuckled. “Sometimes.”

  “Skygers prefer magic doorways,” Tug added.

  Their quarters were at the very top of the tower, in what was essentially the attic. There were really only two rooms, one for the bathroom and one for everything else, including their beds. Still, it had a cozy feeling to it, reminding Ozzie of Apartment 2B.

  “Believe it or not, there’s more space up here than a normal room,” Cho explained to Ozzie, before adding with a wink, “Just to tell you, skygers need lots of space.”

  Ozzie could see through the window that the sky was darkening. Tug padded over to a large mattress at one end of the room, plopped down, and began to snore.

  “Exciting day for him,” Cho observed. “And you, too, lad. I suggest you try to catch some sleep. I’ve set up a cot for you, and there are some leftovers in the icebox if you’re hungry. Though, if you’re really hungry, just nudge Tug awake—he’ll gladly take you down to the mess hall. As for me, I must make one last round of the station before turning in.”

  The giant man departed, leaving Ozzie to stare at the bed that had been prepared for him. It occurred to him that he had never been on a sleepover before. He had only ever slept in his parents’ place or Apartment 2B. He felt a sudden wave of homesickness.

  Then he heard Tug murmur sleepily from his corner, “Fix my wings, wizards. Fix my wings.”

  Ozzie wandered over to the giant skyger. “And help me fix the door,” he added. Then he lay down alongside the skyger and snuggled into his luxurious blue fur. He was fast asleep in seconds.

  The next morning, Ozzie woke with a start—which he supposed was what happened when you’d forgotten you went to bed using a skyger as a pillow. The enormous cat was now purring loudly in Ozzie’s ear. “I thought you would never wake up,” Tug said. “Are you ready for breakfast? What do you usually like to eat? Do you like grumffles? Just to tell you, skygers love grumffles.”

  Ozzie couldn’t help thinking about Aunt Temperance. He usually ate breakfast with her. By now she had surely realized Ozzie was missing. He knew she’d be worried sick about him, and that stirred up fresh feelings of guilt. The last real conversation he had shared with her hadn’t been very kind; he had told her he didn’t want to be stuck with her. What would she think now that he was gone?

  But there was no more time to dwell on the matter before Tug whisked him off to breakfast, which was served in the crew mess hall on the second floor of the tower. Everyone dished up at a serving station, then sat at long tables. It reminded Ozzie of the school cafeteria—except here, he didn’t have to worry about someone squirting him in the back of the head with a stream of ketchup. Ozzie decided to take Tug’s advice and try the grumffles, which were sort of like waffles, except stuffed with some sort of exotic filling.

  The mess hall was a cheerful place, burbling with activity. There were cleaners, cooks, and all sorts of security personnel; in truth, it was a bit overwhelming, so Ozzie decided to concentrate on the beautiful paintings that decorated the walls. They seemed to depict different worlds throughout the multiverse. There were switches on the sides of the frames, and Ozzie was just about to ask Tug what they were for when Cho poked his head into the room.

  “Ah, there you are, lad,” the captain said. “Ready for your first day as a porter?”

  Ozzie wasn’t sure about ready. But he was definitely eager to learn everything he could to help the station prepare for the wizards. He settled on saying, “I just need to find Fusselbone’s office.”

  “It’s located below the hub, in the porters’ headquarters,” Cho replied. “Tug can take you, right, cub?”

  “Oh, sure,” the skyger said. “Just let me finish one more stack of grumffles.”

  “Do you actually know the way?” Ozzie asked after a half hour of wandering around the station cellars.

  “I know they’re below the hub,” Tug replied confidently.

  “Are you just saying that because that’s what Cho told us?”

  Tug swished his tail. It was, Ozzie was learning, the skyger equivalent of a shrug.

  He found a young woman to help them. She had bright orange hair styled into stubby braided loops.

  “You’re looking for Fusselbone?” she said, looking pitifully at Ozzie. “Too bad.”

  “What’s that supposed to mean?” Ozzie wondered.

  But instead of a straight answer, the woman said, “I’m headed that way—come on.”

  Everyone’s terrified of this Fussel guy, Ozzie thought as he and Tug followed her. What kind of monster is he?

  They soon arrived at the porters’ headquarters, which was a hectic place, with porters hustling in and out, either finishing or starting shifts. The woman pointed Ozzie to a doorway in a corner, and he and Tug wandered over.

  The office was small, though this wasn’t exactly the room’s fault. For one thing, it had a massive desk jammed into a corner. Then there was Tug. He could make any room feel cramped. One thing the room had going for it was that it was meticulously organized. The surface of the desk was neatly stacked with different in- and out-boxes, and a row of clipboar
ds containing various schedules and charts lined the left and right walls. The far wall, behind the desk, was hung with dozens of clocks, each of them labeled with strange names—different worlds, Ozzie assumed. What the office didn’t have was any workers.

  “Where’s Mr. Fusselbone?” Ozzie wondered.

  “What’s that?” came a voice, seemingly out of nowhere. “Who are you?”

  “Oh, good morning,” Tug replied cheerfully.

  At first, Ozzie thought Tug was talking to thin air. Then he felt something jab his leg and he looked down to see a tiny fellow standing in front of him. The little man—if you could call him a man—came to just above Ozzie’s knee. He was wearing a bow tie and a long tailcoat, which seemed rather at odds with the rest of him. That was because the rest of him was a scruffy mess of whiskers. In fact, Ozzie considered, he was as messy as his office was neat. Hair was coming from everywhere: from his two very large ears, the top of his head, out of his collar, and even from the tip of his very long nose. In some ways, he looked like a mouse.

  But he didn’t sound like one.

  “Good morning, you say?!” Fusselbone squawked, hopping from foot to foot. “What’s good about it? An entire door has collapsed, an entire door! We heard the explosion from all the way down here. Why, it’s preposasterous!”

  “It’s not exactly the end of the worlds,” Tug said. “There’s been problems with doors before.”

  “Not like this!” the little mouse-man fretted. “Not a week before the Convention of Wizardry! Not when there’s talk of the glibber king on the loose.”

  “Glibber king?” Ozzie wondered out loud. “Who’s that?”

  “Crogus!” Fusselbone cried, his eyes widening with alarm. “The glibber king! Don’t you know anything?”

  “Cho says the glibber king’s in prison,” Tug remarked. “He says we shouldn’t panic.”

  “Panic? Who’s panicking?” Fusselbone demanded, starting to hop again. “When a door collapses, that’s suspicious!” He drilled another finger into Ozzie’s leg. “It doesn’t help when the culprit flees the scene of the crime.”

  “I’m not a culprit!” Ozzie argued. “And I didn’t flee. I was with Cho and Tug.”

  “So, you admit you were there, do you?” Fusselbone said, his finger firing at Ozzie like an electric sewing needle. “What do you mean by destroying one of our doors? It’s an unauthorized entry, that’s what it is! What did you do? Try to sneak in without a key?”

  This is getting ridiculous, Ozzie thought. He had plenty of experience being reamed out by his parents, but it was a bit harder to take a lecture from a hyperactive mouse. “I have a key. Look, it’s right here around my neck. And I don’t know what happened. It was—”

  Fusselbone didn’t let him finish. “And you!” he continued, whirling toward Tug. “I suppose you had something to do with this mess. Why, you’re the very definition of preposasterous!”

  “I sure am,” Tug said, turning a proud ultramarine. “Even without proper wings.”

  Ozzie had never heard the word “preposasterous” before, but he was pretty sure it wasn’t a compliment. Tug gave what seemed like a smile, then swished his tail, which ended up knocking Fusselbone from his feet. The little man rolled head over heels across the floor and crashed into the desk—which, Ozzie now considered, was way too big for its occupant. Fusselbone seemed none the worse for wear; he immediately leaped to his feet and cried, “This whole situation is preposasterous, I tell you. PREPOSASTEROUS!”

  “You know,” Ozzie suggested, “you might be acting just a bit . . . melodramatic.” It was an Aunt Temperance word, and he was proud for coming up with it on the spot.

  “Who’s melodramatic?” Fusselbone fumed. “Doors are exploding, the wizards are coming, and we’re short-staffed.”

  “That’s why I’m here,” Ozzie explained. “I’m your new porter.”

  “You want to be a porter?” Fusselbone gasped. “You can’t just show up here. We don’t know anything about you!”

  “Sure we do,” Tug offered. “For one thing, he has a lot of friends.”

  Ozzie grimaced. “Well . . .”

  “Ooh!” Tug added. “And he doesn’t know any wizards. At least not any good ones.”

  Fusselbone didn’t seem impressed, so Ozzie quickly said, “Lady Zoone sent me. Maybe you should talk to her.”

  Fusselbone frowned. “You’re a little short for a porter,” he said eventually, which Ozzie thought rather amusing coming from someone so small. Then again, if you could measure size by bluster, Fusselbone was the size of a mountain—a volcanic one. “What are your qualifications? What do you know about interworld relations? Or key maintenance? Ever had to deal with a portal pirate?”

  “What’s a . . . ,” Ozzie began.

  “Well,” Fusselbone interrupted, “you better learn quickly if you’re going to be a porter.”

  “I thought I was too short,” Ozzie said in bewilderment.

  “Oh, you want to get out of the job, do you?” Fusselbone said, poking another finger at Ozzie’s knee. “It’s too late for that, my boy, too late! You’re going to be a porter, if that’s what Lady Zoone says. And we need the help!”

  “Me, too,” Tug said with an excited twitch of his tail.

  “Not you!” Fusselbone cried, this time managing to jump out of the tail’s way. “You’re not supposed to be on the platforms without supervision!”

  “Ozzie can supervise me,” Tug suggested. “We’re a team.”

  “The last time you teamed up, you destroyed Door 871!” Fusselbone accused, hopping about. “I know what you’re like. If you have anything to do with luggage, it’ll end up in shreds.”

  Tug’s fur turned gray with dismay. “What if I just greet travelers as they come through the doors? I’ll leave the luggage alone.”

  “No, no! Certainly not,” Fusselbone fretted. “A traveler doesn’t want to see what he thinks is a ferocious killer the second he steps out of a door.”

  “Oh!” Tug exclaimed. “If there’s a ferocious killer on the loose, we should tell Captain Cho. So he can catch him.”

  “I think he means you,” Ozzie told the gigantic cat.

  “Me?” Tug asked. “Just to tell you, I don’t think skygers are very good at catching ferocious killers.”

  “Away, away, AWAY!” Fusselbone shrieked.

  Tug’s ash-colored tail drooped to the ground. “See you later, Ozzie,” he moaned as he slinked away. “I guess I’ll just go get some more breakfast.”

  “Yeah . . . see you later,” Ozzie called after him. He marveled at the appetite of a skyger. Tug had already eaten fifteen stacks of grumffles for breakfast—Ozzie had counted.

  “Much better, much better,” Fusselbone declared after Tug had departed. “That tail of his vexes me. It’ll swat you like you’re a fly, Ozzie, a fly! Now, are you ready?”

  Ozzie nodded, though he felt a bit sorry that Tug had been chased off. Sure, the skyger was a handful (maybe two handfuls, considering his tail), but at least he was a friendly face.

  “This is where you’ll start each and every day, my boy,” Fusselbone explained as he led Ozzie back into the main part of the headquarters. “It’s where you can get changed into uniform and receive your duty assignment. Today—that’s right, today, my boy—we’ll start you out on the platforms, where you’ll assist travelers with luggage and lead them to their next destination. That’ll be another door or maybe a room in one of our inns.”

  “Oh,” Ozzie said uncertainly. “But what if—”

  “Don’t worry,” piped up one of the other porters in the room. It was the very same woman who had helped Ozzie find Fusselbone’s office. “You’ll soon know this place like the back of your heel.”

  Ozzie couldn’t help glancing down at his leg. “I actually don’t really know what the back of my—”

  “Don’t worry about her,” Fusselbone said with a disapproving look at the porter. “Keeva fancies herself a bit of a comedian. Though, if you ask me
, her humor’s an acquired taste.”

  “Ah! It tastes quite delicious once you get used to it!” Keeva replied with a laugh.

  Fusselbone proceeded to introduce some of the other porters to Ozzie. He couldn’t help noticing that they were all a lot older than him—and taller, too.

  “What’s wrong with that?” Fusselbone wondered when Ozzie pointed this out.

  “Well . . . I don’t know,” Ozzie stammered, suddenly realizing that everyone in Zoone—and possibly the multiverse—was probably taller than Fusselbone. “You’re the one who said I’m too short. How am I going to fit into the uniform?”

  “Not to worry, my boy, not to worry,” Fusselbone said. “I had one specially made for you.”

  “Wait a minute. That means you knew I was coming all along!”

  Fusselbone didn’t respond; he simply handed Ozzie a package wrapped in brown paper and sent him off to the changing room. The uniform wasn’t exactly what Ozzie was used to wearing, though he had to admit that he liked that it was the same turquoise color as Cho’s. The outfit also included a hat, though Ozzie’s wasn’t nearly as tall as the captain’s. The jacket had a long row of buttons, which made it almost impossible to put on backward or inside out (though, at first, Ozzie missed a button and had to start over).

  After Ozzie was dressed, Fusselbone gave him his official porter’s kit. This included a map, a regulation handbook, a station schedule, and a trolley. Ozzie especially liked the trolley. It was a magical device, which meant you could load anything on it and it would still be easy to push, as if it was carrying nothing heavier than a whisker. Best of all, he could fold it up until it was so small that it fit inside his uniform pocket.

  “Oh!” Fusselbone said. “I almost forgot the most important thing!” He handed Ozzie a shiny silver whistle.

  “What’s this for?” Ozzie asked.

  “Give it two quick blows if you need assistance,” Fusselbone replied. “In case of emergency, one long blow. Got it, my boy?”

  Ozzie nodded, and Fusselbone proceeded to bombard him with all sorts of other essential information about being a porter—instructions about how the keys worked, details about the different services offered in the hub—until the next thing Ozzie knew, they were standing on the north platform in front of Door 38, waiting for the 10:20 to arrive from Grimmlorin.