The Secret of Zoone Read online

  “Can you control that thing?” Cho asked Miss Lizard. “Perhaps you can coax it back inside the case.”

  “Me?!” Miss Lizard screeched. “That thing is highly venomous!”

  Cho sighed. “All right then.” He began to edge toward the serpent.

  “Don’t hurt it!” Miss Lizard warned. “Oh, my poor darling.”

  Ozzie watched as the snake trained its eyes on Cho, tracking the captain as he approached. Then, suddenly, the cobra opened its massive maw and released a jet of poison at Cho’s face. The captain quickly lifted his arm to block the splatter of venom with his glove—which instantly began to sizzle and disintegrate.

  “Are you all right?!” Miss Lizard cried.

  It took Ozzie a moment to realize she was talking to the snake, even as Cho was furiously shaking off what remained of his glove. As it melted away, Ozzie noticed there was something wrong with the captain’s hand. But it looked like an old wound, like maybe there were fingers missing. Before he could get a closer look, he heard a threatening hiss and he whirled to see the cobra gliding straight toward him.

  “Ahh!” Ozzie screamed, stumbling backward.

  Before the snake could strike, Tug padded forward and pinned the snake to the floor with one of his enormous paws. The cobra thrashed underneath, but Tug held it tight—all the while still clutching the shoeshine boy in his mouth.

  “Well, cub,” Cho said with a chuckle. “Looks like you’ve got everything under control.” He had already bandaged his hand with a handkerchief, so Ozzie could no longer see what might be wrong with it. The makeshift dressing didn’t impede the captain as he snatched the cobra by the tail, yanked it from Tug’s grasp, and stuffed it back into the case where it had come from. He latched the case shut again.

  “Thanks, Tug,” Ozzie said, stroking the skyger’s fur. “You saved me. Again.”

  “That’s what teammates are for.” Tug beamed after dropping Scuffy Will to the ground.

  The shoeshine boy instantly tried to bolt away, but Cho snatched him by one ear. “Why are you in such a hurry to leave?” the captain wondered.

  “No reason, Captain,” the boy replied with a grimace. “Just want to make the next door home.”

  “With my money!” Miss Lizard exclaimed. “He gave me a shoeshine, but failed to return my change. A whole zoondera for a polish? What are the worlds coming to?”

  “Took me half an hour!” Scuffy Will protested, still squirming within Cho’s grasp. “She made me wax them scale by scale. Thought she was giving me a generous tip!”

  Cho held out his bandaged hand. “Give it over, lad. Yes, dig into them pockets, now. Very good.”

  With the coins procured, Cho turned and deposited them into Miss Lizard’s waiting palm. She didn’t even say thank you. Instead she turned and stared at Ozzie; he quickly handed over the change from the quirlery and the tinker.

  “What are you going to do about this miscreant?” Miss Lizard asked Cho, pointing a finger at Scuffy Will. “Aren’t you going to arrest him?”

  “It seems like nothing more than a misunderstanding to me,” Cho decreed. “To be honest, what is a concern are the contents of your luggage. It’s illegal to transport deadly specimens through the nexus.”

  “Not if you have the correct paperwork,” Miss Lizard snapped, producing a very official-looking piece of parchment from her purse. “See? Everything’s in order. It’s not my fault that this clumsy porter doesn’t know how to handle suitcases properly. I demand—”

  “I think we can agree that no true harm was done,” Cho interrupted firmly, staring down the overwrought woman.

  Miss Lizard scowled. Then she tapped her foot. Cho didn’t even flinch, so eventually she just sighed and said, “I’m just not sure what the worlds are coming to. I’d file an official complaint if I ever thought it would reach the right ears. I think it’s best if I go relax in the salon before I catch my track. Maybe I’ll get a manicure or a massage, if they can manage it! Porter, where are you?”

  “Right here,” Ozzie said in exasperation. “Standing right in front of you!”

  “Oh, yes! Well, I’m going to the salon after this shoeshine disaster,” Miss Lizard declared. “Meet me at Door 517 in one hour! Got it?”

  “But you just tried to have me fire—”

  “Don’t forget my luggage!” Miss Lizard snapped, narrowing her reptilian eyes at Ozzie. “And do not be late. I’ve had quite enough trauma for one day.”

  “You’ve had trauma?” Ozzie muttered incredulously, but she had already marched away.

  “Whew,” Cho exhaled, finally releasing Scuffy Will’s ear. “She’s a bit high-strung. Now, Scuff, scamper off before you find any more trouble. And next time, don’t try to take advantage of your customers.”

  Scuffy Will flashed a grin, then darted into the crowd.

  “He’s mostly a harmless lad,” Cho told Ozzie. “Poor as a pot and comes from—well, I can never seem to pronounce the name of his world. Enjoying your first day?”

  “It hasn’t been boring,” Ozzie said truthfully. “Cho, did something happen to your hand? Are you okay?”

  “Don’t worry about me, lad,” Cho reassured him. “And don’t worry about that Ophidian woman, either. Most travelers won’t be as difficult to deal with as her. Being a porter is mostly about being a good ambassador for Zoone.”

  “How do I do that?” Ozzie asked.

  “Just smile, nod, and be polite,” Cho answered. “Even when the travelers hiss at you—which, as you’ve already experienced, some of them do.”

  Ozzie nodded. “To tell you the truth, Cho, it’s not the travelers that I mind hissing. It’s the luggage.”

  10

  Miss Mongo’s Special Suitcase

  Fusselbone had a fit when he learned of the incident with the snake. “Don’t you know it’s illegal to transport dangerous animals across the nexus without a permit?” he demanded of Ozzie at the end of his shift, down in the porters’ headquarters.

  “She did—”

  “As it states in your regulation handbook, Section Fifteen, Rule One—”

  “Everything turned out okay,” interjected Ozzie’s fellow porter, Keeva, who was sitting nearby and polishing a set of tarnished keys. “Captain Cho was there,” she added in Ozzie’s defense. “I heard he handled everything—with Tug’s help.”

  “What a preposasterous affair,” Fusselbone groaned. Then, wagging a shaggy finger at Ozzie’s knee, he added, “You have to keep your heels clean, my boy, keep them clean!”

  Ozzie nodded, though he wasn’t sure what his heels had to do with anything.

  Over the next two days, he worked extra hard to master the ropes of being a porter. He came to realize that you could learn a lot about travelers based on their luggage. For example, cases that were brown or black usually belonged to a quiet someone who just wanted to cross the station with as little fuss as possible. Cases that were bright colors belonged to travelers who wanted the entire station to know that they were coming for a visit. They were like Miss Lizard, strutting, preening, and snapping their fingers at the porters. Other cases were scuffed and scratched and sometimes bound with thick rope. They belonged to the type of travelers who looked like they had journeyed to the ends of the multiverse. They had stories to tell—you could see it in their eyes.

  Then there were the suitcases that seemed to have minds and personalities all their own. Those particular packages belonged to Miss Mongo.

  It was Ozzie’s third day on the job. Instead of assisting travelers on the platforms, he was designated to wait in one of the porters’ posts and respond to specific requests. There were many porters on duty and, at first, Ozzie assumed it would be a quiet shift. Then the communication horn began to blare.

  “Porter to Door 401!” came the first call. “A delivery of ale for The Squeaky Hinge.”

  It was followed by: “Two porters to Door 132. The visiting delegation from Eraxi has arrived!”

  And next: “Porter to Door 734
! Miss Mongo’s secret ingredient is waiting for pickup.”

  All the porters scurried off to answer the calls. As luck would have it, Ozzie was sent to fetch the package containing the secret ingredient. Miss Mongo was Zoone’s head cook, which meant she managed the food service for the entire station. Ozzie had never met her in person, but according to Keeva and the other porters, she was a difficult personality.

  I better not mess this up, Ozzie thought as he hurried on his way to pick up the delivery.

  Located on the outskirts of the west platform, Door 734 was tall, wide, and made of brightly polished metal. In front of it was the deliveryman. He was holding a clipboard and had one foot planted on top of a battered old suitcase, as if to keep it pinned down. Ozzie noticed a glob of greenish slime oozing from one corner of the case.

  “That’s for Miss Mongo?” Ozzie asked. It made him think twice about eating dinner; Miss Mongo was not only responsible for feeding guests but the crew as well.

  “I don’t pack ’em. I just drop ’em off,” the deliveryman bleated, thrusting a clipboard under Ozzie’s nose. “Sign here.”

  As soon as Ozzie had obliged, the deliveryman added, “Maybe it’s a glibber bomb. They say old Crogus is on the lam and lookin’ to stir up trouble again.”

  “You mean the glibber king?” Ozzie gasped. “Maybe you should take this thing back!”

  “Too late,” the deliveryman said, lifting his foot off the case. “You already signed.” And with that, he opened Door 734 and departed.

  Ozzie cautiously approached the suitcase. It didn’t seem that dangerous, except for the green ooze. Then, as he reached for the case, it suddenly issued a menacing snarl.

  Ozzie leaped back in surprise. Oh, great. Another cobra?

  Then the suitcase did something even more surprising—it began scooting across the platform, toward the dark recesses of the Infinite Wood. Ozzie tore after it, but he soon lost sight of the case. He wasn’t sure how deep he should go into the forest; it was the Infinite Wood, after all—the perfect place to get lost.

  “Now what?” he wondered, circling back to Door 734.

  Then he remembered his whistle: two quick blows for assistance, one long blow for an emergency. I’m not sure if this is an emergency, Ozzie thought. But it’s certainly a disruption to the natural order of the Infinite Wood!

  He blew the whistle and waited. Within minutes, Captain Cho arrived. He had Tug at his side, plus two members of his security team, a pair of officers everyone called Needles and Bones.

  “There’s this package,” Ozzie explained quickly. “Something’s alive inside! It snarled. Then it escaped into the forest.”

  “So, basically, you misplaced luggage?” grumbled Needles, who was a short woman with pointed ears and even pointier teeth. “Aren’t you the same boy who caused that commotion in the hub on his very first shift? Something to do with a venomous serpent?”

  Ozzie grimaced.

  “This is the door to Pentross,” said Bones, a tall and skinny man with pale skin. “Which means it was just Miss Mongo’s monthly shipment of her secret ingredient. And it always runs off. Hardly an emergency, is it?”

  Cho chuckled. “Well, it might be if Miss Mongo isn’t able to make dinner tonight!”

  “That won’t happen, will it?” Tug asked with an anxious twitch of his tail.

  “Don’t worry,” Cho assured him. Then he waved away Needles and Bones, saying, “Tug and I will handle this. You can return to your stations.”

  “Gladly,” Needles griped. “I thought we were hiring more people to help with the workload—not to overreact every time a package gets misplaced.”

  “Fusselbone’s going to have a conniption when he hears about this,” Ozzie groaned as he watched Needles and Bones march away.

  “Well, that’s true,” Cho admitted. “Then again, he’s bound to have a conniption about something. But I won’t tell him about this if you don’t! Now, let’s track down that package.”

  “Sure,” Ozzie said. “But it could be anywhere by now.”

  “Don’t despair,” Cho said. “This is the type of job perfectly suited for Tug. It’s a good thing I brought him on patrol with me this morning. You know what to do, don’t you, cub?”

  “I sure do,” Tug said. He put his giant blue nose to the ground and began snuffling for the scent. “Got it!” he announced an instant later, and he bounded into the Infinite Wood.

  “We better hurry,” Cho told Ozzie. “Tug sometimes gets a little rambunctious with the chasing. We want something left for you to deliver!”

  They raced after the streaking skyger and soon found themselves deep in the woods, beyond all the doors. The air was cool and earthy here, the trees so tall and thick that only dappled sunlight reached the ground. Eventually, Ozzie and Cho caught up to Tug; the skyger had cornered the suitcase against one of the trees and was excitedly twitching his tail. The suitcase was emitting loud, threatening growls. Slime was gushing down its sides like sweat.

  “Careful,” Cho whispered as he inched forward. “Everyone spread out, so we can surround it.”

  Suddenly, the case made a break for it, right in Ozzie’s direction. He tried to intercept it using his best ninja move—which apparently was an awkward kick that resulted in his untied shoe flying off his foot. Still, it wasn’t entirely unsuccessful; the shoe struck the case right between the clasps, causing it to squeal in surprise and change direction. It didn’t make it far before being bludgeoned—accidentally—by Tug’s twitching tail. The case careened into the nearest tree, then slid to the ground with a snivel.

  “Quickly, Ozzie,” Cho said, snatching up the pesky parcel, “take out your trolley.”

  Ozzie quickly expanded the trolley, and Cho used a bit of twine from his pocket to tie the suitcase down. As soon as the case regained its wits, it began to snarl and wriggle, but the twine held tight.

  “That was fun,” Tug declared. “We sure make a great team, Ozzie.”

  Ozzie retrieved his shoe and put it back on. “Sorry for causing such a commotion,” he told Cho as they started making their way back to the station. “The deliveryman said something about it being a glibber bomb. I guess he was joking.”

  “It was a terrible joke,” Cho said with a frown. “All this talk about the glibber king is whipping everyone into a frenzy—and making my job a lot more difficult.”

  “What exactly is a glibber?” Ozzie asked as he watched Tug spring ahead to playfully chase a quirl.

  “Someone from the land of Glibbersaug,” Cho replied. “But you won’t ever meet a glibber. It’s impossible.”

  “Why?”

  “Because the door to Glibbersaug is locked,” Cho told him. “The wizards did it, a long time ago. Only two people in the multiverse have keys, and that’s Lady Zoone and Master Nymm, head of the Council of Wizardry.”

  “They locked the door?” Ozzie asked. “Permanently?”

  “Glibbersaug is a consumptive and greedy world,” Cho said. “A dying world. Nothing’s more dangerous than a world on its last breath.”

  The wizards think my world is dying, Ozzie thought, remembering his conversation with Lady Zoone. Does that mean they’d lock our door, too?

  “Wait a minute,” Ozzie said. “There’s something I don’t get. If Glibbersaug is sealed, why is everyone worried about this glibber king?”

  “Crogus isn’t in Glibbersaug,” Cho revealed. “By the time the wizards locked its door, Crogus was already out in the multiverse, traveling the worlds. He once tried to take control of Zoone. If he had succeeded . . .”

  Cho hesitated.

  “What?” Ozzie pressed. They were approaching the platform now, and he knew Cho wouldn’t want to talk about any of this once there were travelers nearby.

  “He would have controlled the world between the worlds,” Cho said solemnly. “He would have unleashed his people upon the multiverse. Thankfully, the wizards discovered the glibber king’s plot. They banished him to the prison world of Morindu,
and he remains there yet. And that’s the truth, Ozzie. Crogus is in Morindu. Don’t listen to all this hearsay, or let your imagination run wild. Right?”

  Ozzie stared into the captain’s kind eyes. Corralling his imagination was difficult enough back home. Here? It felt near impossible.

  After parting ways with Cho and Tug, Ozzie headed straight to the kitchens, which were located in the bottom level of the station, below the hub. It was quite the operation to feed an entire station, and the kitchens showed it. Cooks and helpers buzzed about the vast complex, chopping, stirring, and mixing. Pots percolated on cast-iron stoves or from hooks in the fireplaces, filling the air with colorful steam. Ozzie paused to inhale the many aromas wafting past his nose, then worked his way farther inside, past stacks of caskets and crates, until he found the first person at a standstill: a young woman with hair streaked blue and green. She was dicing what seemed to be an enormous stick of celery.

  “Excuse me?” Ozzie called, wheeling the trolley up to her. “Ma’am?”

  “Ma’am?” the girl asked, turning with a menacing wave of her knife. “Exactly how old do you think I am?”

  “Er . . .”

  “The answer is eighteen,” the girl snapped. “Name’s Piper. You must be the new porter. What are you doing down here?”

  “I’m here to deliver this . . . disgusting thing,” Ozzie replied.

  Piper used her knife to cut the suitcase free of Ozzie’s trolley. Ozzie half expected the case to make another run for it, but Piper obviously had dealt with this sort of thing before. “Hey, sis!” she called. Then, with a swift kick, she sent the case sliding across the floor toward the nearest fireplace, where another girl was stirring a bubbling cauldron. This girl looked similar to Piper, though a bit older. She used her foot to stop the case, then dropped a brick on top of it to keep it from scampering off. The case released a woeful whimper.

  “Took you long enough to get here,” this second girl told Ozzie. “Who are you anyway?”

  “The new porter,” Piper answered for him. “I don’t think he has a name.”