The Secret of Zoone Read online

  It all seemed a bit overwhelming. Ozzie tried to remind himself that he was doing it for Aunt Temperance—he needed to be ready to impress the wizards when they showed up. But as he gazed at Door 38, he felt a wave of insecurity.

  “I’m not exactly sure I’m ready for all of this,” Ozzie confessed to Fusselbone. “This time yesterday, I was failing a math quiz.”

  “You’ll be fine, my boy,” Fusselbone promised. “Absolutely fine. Do your best, and I’ll see you later today.”

  “What?! Aren’t you going to stay and, you know—help me?”

  “I have no time, my boy, no time at all,” Fusselbone replied, pulling out an oversize pocket watch to anxiously glance at it. “There’s a whole track-load of Darvidian schoolchildren arriving for a tour of the Zoone museum. I’ve been asked to officially welcome them.”

  “But—”

  “Don’t worry,” Fusselbone assured Ozzie. “Just remember, there are only three things that travelers really need: help with luggage, directions, and a friendly greeting.”

  Ozzie nodded. Luggage. Directions. Greetings. It seemed simple enough.

  Then Miss Lizard arrived.

  8

  The Portal Porter

  Door 38 was made of wood, painted bright yellow, and decorated with thick black hinges and a monstrous metal face holding a door knocker in its teeth. Ozzie was just trying to figure out what sort of people lived in Grimmlorin when the door flew open and a stream of travelers rushed out. Ozzie peered past them to gaze upon the track. It was far more spectacular than the one he had taken from home. A vibrant pattern of colored clouds swirled around this track, making Ozzie think of the space vortices in the science fiction shows that Aunt Temperance liked to watch. It even had seats and luggage compartments, reminding Ozzie of a train carriage.

  “Excuse me! Are you here to help?” came a desperate-sounding voice.

  Ozzie looked up to see a peculiar woman looming over him. She had mottled green skin and a mouth that was accentuated by a smear of ink-black lipstick. Her hair was styled into tiny spikes of amber and she wore a glamorous outfit, every part of which seemed to be made from different types of reptile skin—her dress, her shawl, and even her gloves. In her hands, she was clutching a fashionable bag. At least Ozzie thought it was fashionable. He had no real idea, but it reminded him of the bags that Aunt Temperance tut-tutted at whenever she saw women carrying them in their neighborhood. Sitting next to the woman was a large scaly suitcase.

  “I said, are you here to help?” the woman repeated, lifting her enormous sunglasses to reveal a pair of serpentine eyes.

  She looks like some sort of lizard, Ozzie thought.

  “You’re a porter, are you not?” the woman inquired haughtily. “You’re certainly dressed like one. Though you seem rather short. And very young.”

  “Y-yes, ma’am,” Ozzie said with as much volume as he could muster.

  “Yes, ma’am, what?” Miss Lizard asked with just a hint of venom in her voice. “You’re very young and short or you’re a porter?”

  “Well . . . all of the above?” Ozzie realized this wasn’t exactly the most confident of replies, so he hastily added, “Welcome to Zoone!” Then he produced the trolley from his top left pocket. Unopened, it looked like nothing more than a rod or a stick. Now, where is that trigger? Ozzie wondered as he fumbled with the object.

  “Is there a problem?” Miss Lizard fretted. She was wearing a fancy pair of high—very high—heels, and now she tapped the toe of one of them impatiently against the cobblestones.

  Ozzie finally found the trigger and the trolley sprang open to its full size. Miss Lizard gestured to the case at her feet and Ozzie quickly loaded it onto the trolley.

  “Well?” Miss Lizard queried. “Aren’t you going to ask if I have any more luggage?”

  “Do you?” Ozzie asked.

  “Yes,” Miss Lizard replied. “Two more cases are waiting on the track at Seat 33.”

  Ozzie scurried onto the track, his trolley in tow. He quickly located the luggage, loaded it, then whirled around to rejoin the high-strung lizard woman.

  “Where to, Miss Liz—I mean, er, miss?” Ozzie inquired.

  Miss Lizard flashed him a key. There was a tag attached to it that read: Passenger Fare for travel through Door 517, East Platform. Valid for 13:15 ~ 16.05.34 Standard Multiversal Time.

  Fusselbone had explained to Ozzie that different keys could do different things, depending on what sort of spell was encoded into them. Some keys, like the one Ozzie had from Aunt Temperance, had no restrictions and could be used again and again. However, the tag on Miss Lizard’s key told Ozzie that it could only be used for a specific time.

  “Door 517?” Ozzie mused as he consulted his schedule. “That’s to Ophidia. It doesn’t open for another two hours.”

  “Yes, I know where it goes and when,” Miss Lizard said with an overly dramatic sigh. “It’s not my first time in Zoone, you know. I’ve been here hundreds of times. We’ll just have to amuse ourselves in the hub until then.”

  “We?” Ozzie wondered. No one had told him it was part of a porter’s duties to entertain the travelers while they waited for their connections.

  But Miss Lizard was already scuttling away from the door and toward the station. “Come, porter. You’d better keep up with me! I don’t want to get lost.”

  Ozzie chased after her with the trolley full of luggage. How’s she going to get lost if she’s been here hundreds of times? he wondered.

  They had just passed the ticket agent and entered the hub when a boy approached them out of the crowd. He had light blue skin dappled with darker spots, and a lick of navy hair sticking out from beneath a crooked cap. Aunt Temperance would say he had some terrible disease, Ozzie thought with amusement.

  “How about a shoeshine?” the boy offered Miss Lizard with a jaunty grin.

  “Yes, I’ve had quite a journey,” the reptilian woman replied. “A shoeshine will be just the thing.”

  Ozzie looked down at her shoes. They seemed shiny enough to him. Then again, who was he to argue with a lizard?

  The shoeshine boy set out a stool and Miss Lizard sat down. “You’re making me nervous, hovering around,” she told Ozzie. “Why don’t you go run some errands for me?”

  “Sure,” Ozzie said, though he wasn’t sure that was part of a porter’s job, either.

  “Haven’t you noticed one of my cases needs patching?” Miss Lizard chided. “Take it to the tinker for repair and tell him to mind that he uses only Norduvian leather for the patch. Do not, I repeat, do not let him open the case, under any circumstances.” She paused to hand Ozzie a roll of paper. “Next, go to the quirlery and send this message. The delivery address is written at the top, but do not, I repeat, do not read the message itself. Here is some money for the payment. I’ve counted it, so I’ll know if you try to sneak any. Bring back the exact change.”

  “Okay . . . ,” Ozzie began. He wasn’t exactly sure where the quirlery was located. Or even what it was. Had Fusselbone mentioned it? But Miss Lizard was staring at him expectantly, so he took the scroll and the handful of coins and set off through the hub with the trolley of cases.

  Once he was out of Miss Lizard’s line of sight, he paused, took out his map, and studied it—he certainly didn’t want his first customer to know that he wasn’t sure where to go. The map told him that the quirlery was on the other side of the hub, and that the tinker was on the way.

  “Maybe this won’t be so difficult after all,” Ozzie encouraged himself as he began navigating his trolley through the sea of travelers. There were so many of them; Ozzie couldn’t help imagining where they were all coming from, and where they were going.

  He passed the tavern (it was called The Squeaky Hinge), a fruit and flower shop, the lavatories, the left luggage, and finally arrived at the tinker’s (Suitcases Repaired Here! a sign on the outside read).

  Ozzie entered to find himself instantly lost in a labyrinth of luggage. Cases, bags, and par
cels were stacked in tall haphazard rows that led this way and that. Every spare inch of space was crammed full of strange tools and instruments; it was as if whoever managed the shop had never thrown anything away; there was a part for this and a part for that—in Ozzie’s opinion, parts for a lot of things besides luggage.

  “Hello?” Ozzie called, sniffing at the air, which was a mixture of leather, oil, and dust. “Is anyone here?”

  A figure peered from behind the nearest stack of luggage. “What? Who’s there? Oh—hello. Mr. Whisk at your service.”

  Ozzie was speechless. He had seen many strange people since coming to Zoone, but just between him and himself, Mr. Whisk was the strangest. To begin with, he had a tail—a prehensile one that was adeptly wielding a screwdriver. Then there were his fingers. There were at least seven on each hand (Ozzie had trouble counting them without being obvious about it). As for Mr. Whisk’s face, it was dominated by a peculiar mustache that had two branches as thick as walrus tusks, so long that they swept the ground.

  “I haven’t seen you before,” Mr. Whisk declared. “You must be the new porter everyone’s talking about. What’s your name?”

  “Most people call me Ozzie,” Ozzie said.

  “And what do we have here?” Mr. Whisk wondered, circling around Ozzie’s trolley. “Luggage in need of repair for one of our travelers?”

  Ozzie nodded. “This green case here needs a patch. And you’re supposed to use only . . . er, a certain type of leather.”

  “Norduvian?” Mr. Whisk guessed.

  “Yeah, that’s right,” Ozzie said. “She says she needs it right away. She’s on the next track to Ophidia.”

  “Rush, rush, rush,” Mr. Whisk grumbled. “Always a rush job around here. Well, it’ll still take fifteen minutes.”

  “That’s okay,” Ozzie told him. “I have to go to the quirlery. Do you know where it is?”

  Mr. Whisk was running his hand across the damaged corner of Miss Lizard’s case. “The quirlery? You are new, that’s for certain. It’s just a few doors down.”

  Ozzie considered asking if he could leave all of Miss Lizard’s luggage behind while he visited the quirlery, but then decided against it. The shop was so cluttered that he might never find her cases again—and then what would Miss Lizard say? So, he wheeled his trolley back into the hub and, after a short walk, reached the quirlery. A sign out front read: Send your messages to and from every corner of the multiverse.

  Oh, that’s right, Ozzie remembered. Fusselbone did tell me about this place. It’s the Zoonian version of a post office!

  Inside, Ozzie found customers lined up at counters, hand-writing notes on small scraps of parchment. These were then given to clerks, who rolled them up, stuffed them into tiny tubes, and attached them to the tails of small rodents.

  Those must be the quirls, Ozzie thought.

  The rodents were scurrying all about the place. One of them even darted across a counter, jumped onto Ozzie’s shoulder, and scampered down his arm, reminding him of Lady Zoone’s green-spotted mouse. This quirl, however, was smaller—so small that it fit right into his palm. It was a curious creature, with bright eyes, a long tail, and tiny webbed feet. As Ozzie stared at it, he recalled what Fusselbone had told him that morning about quirls: “They’re native to Zoone, and they can scamper, swim, and even glide short distances. Best of all, Ozzie, they’re small enough to squeeze through the mail slots—or sometimes even the keyholes.”

  Ozzie laughed as the quirl’s pointy toes tickled his palm. He wondered if he could send Aunt Temperance a message. Then he realized it would be impossible; that would require a door with a functioning mail slot, and the door to his world was lying in a mangled heap.

  Since Miss Lizard had given him a prewritten note, Ozzie stepped right into the line for delivery, behind a pair of travelers who seemed to be husband and wife. Each had hair that was styled to look like a pair of dragonish horns, though the husband’s were bright red and the wife’s candy-apple green. Ozzie, however, was less interested in their hair than he was in their words.

  “I heard that the glibber king is on the loose,” said the husband.

  “That’s not what I’ve been told,” the wife said. “I heard he’s still in prison, but that he has an apprentice working for him, running around free in the worlds somewhere.”

  “Crogus has an apprentice?” the husband wondered.

  “I’m sure he’d be in disguise,” the wife said, lowering her voice. “You’d never recognize him.”

  The husband glanced over his shoulder. When he saw Ozzie, he seemed to scrutinize him suspiciously.

  “And this apprentice, or spy, or whatever you want to call him, is out there, plotting to bust Crogus out of prison,” the wife continued. “Then we’re all in trouble. You know what they say about the glibber king. He can kill you with a single bite.”

  “I heard he injects eggs into your brain,” the husband said, turning back to his wife. “Once the parasites hatch, they control your thoughts and actions. But, you know, I haven’t seen any of this in the papers.”

  “The wizards would never officially talk about it,” the wife countered. “Too embarrassing for them to admit! But you can bet your horns on this, darling: They’re worried. No one’s caused them more problems than Crogus.”

  That was all Ozzie heard, for the couple was beckoned to the next quirlery agent. That glibber king sure has everyone spooked, Ozzie thought. And it’s no wonder, if what they say is true. Eggs in your brain? Ugh.

  He wondered if Crogus had something to do with the secret of Zoone. It was a conundrum—to use one of his aunt’s words—but it also made him think of something else. Aunt Temperance liked to say that a problem was actually an opportunity in disguise.

  If I figure out what’s going on with the glibber king, maybe I can impress the wizards, Ozzie thought. Because that’s exactly what Lady Zoone wants me to do—impress them. And what could be better than helping them catch their worst enemy?

  9

  Hullabaloo in the Hub

  When it was Ozzie’s turn at the counter, he handed over the note and watched as the agent attached it to one of the tiny rodents. Then the quirl scurried away, presumably out to the platform and the destination doorway. Ozzie paid the clerk, tucked the change carefully away in his uniform pocket, and hurried back to Mr. Whisk’s shop.

  The tinker looked completely different. Gone was his mustache; instead Mr. Whisk was wearing a short beard that curled up at the bottom like the letter “W.”

  “Oh, my hair,” Mr. Whisk said, noticing Ozzie’s astonishment. “It changes all the time, depending.”

  “Depending on what?” Ozzie ventured.

  “The weather, perhaps,” Mr. Whisk mused. “Or my mood. Can’t ever really seem to tell which. Now, here’s your case. And don’t ask so many questions!”

  Ozzie paid for the case and was making his way back through the hub when he heard a loud commotion coming from the crowd of travelers in front of him. Next, someone burst through the throng, shoving travelers aside. At first it just looked like a streak of blue; then Ozzie realized it was Miss Lizard’s shoeshine boy. He had his polishing kit tucked beneath one arm and was heading straight toward Ozzie.

  “Quick, stop! Thief!”

  Even over the noise, Ozzie could tell it was Miss Lizard’s voice. Ozzie wasn’t sure what else to do, so he pushed his trolley in front of the fleeing boy. The boy didn’t even pause. He leaped right over the trolley—but at the last moment his toe caught the stack of cases. The boy went flying, and so did the cases. One of them—the one that had just been repaired—smashed against a nearby column and slid to the ground. Ozzie noticed that its latches had sprung open.

  “What have you done?!” Miss Lizard shrieked, arriving on the scene.

  “Me? I didn’t—I mean, I . . . ,” Ozzie sputtered. He looked around and realized that the entire hub had now seemed to come to a halt to stare at them.

  “He stole my money,” Miss Lizard de
clared, pointing at the shoeshine boy, who was still sprawled on the ground. “And now you’ve gone and ruined my case! Wait until I tell your supervisor!”

  Most people turned red when they were irate, but Ozzie noticed that Miss Lizard was growing greener with each passing moment. Oh, great, Ozzie thought. My very first day—my very first shift—and it’s already ended in . . . preposastery.

  “Ozzie? What’s all the commotion?”

  Ozzie was relieved to see it was Captain Cho. The crowd had parted to make way for him—and Tug, who was trotting at the captain’s side.

  “Are you in charge of security at this poor excuse for a station?” Miss Lizard hissed at Cho, even though he towered over her. “I demand you punish this miserable shoeshine boy!”

  “Oh, that’s just Scuffy Will,” Tug said. With his teeth, he snatched the boy up by his collar and lifted him into the air.

  “Ah, Tug,” Scuffy Will groaned. “I told you to leave me alone. You cramp my style.”

  “I want this fiendish boy fired,” Miss Lizard announced. “And the porter.”

  “Me?” Ozzie gasped. “What did I do?”

  “You assaulted my case!” Miss Lizard wailed, pointing at the scaly piece of luggage sitting nearby.

  Except it wasn’t exactly sitting anymore; It was opening. Ozzie watched in stupefied horror as the longest creepy-crawly he’d ever seen began to slither out of the case and onto the tiled floor of the hub.

  “That’s an Ophidian spitting cobra!” Cho cried. “Everyone stand back!”

  Most of the crowd didn’t stand at all—they began to stampede away in a panic. Which, Ozzie observed, didn’t help the mood of the cobra. It reared upward in a menacing pose, its long tongue flickering and its yellow hood flaring in warning.

  “My precious pet,” Miss Lizard moaned. “Did that cruel porter wake you from your hibernation?”