NEWDIE STEADSLAW

It could not be said for certain where Roby had acquired that basket, nor what exactly was in it, but it contained such an amplitude of victuals that they made enough of a feast to pass as a picnic, if any councilors were counting—and if not, they’d rest easy knowing the deed’d been done—and it was further fortune when an extroverted tornado came by near to them, bringing with it, in the halo of debris it wore, a red-and-white checkered tablecloth on which to sit, their legs as crossed as murder might manage—though, truth be told, the tablecloth was a curtain. The previous owners would never know it was missing, and the rest of us can pick up the pieces.

Postpicnic, during the napkin-dabbing phase, Phillippo said, “Well, what do you guys want to do next?”

Ben Garment rose from his sittage and made ready to depart, and said, “Our time’s been spent unmoving—let’s see that rectified, at a stance.”

“But,” said Mario, “we’re still without direction.”

“Truer words have been spoke, albeit not often,” said Ben Garment. “As the snack’s prompted no ideas, we’re bound to engage unaimed and catch hold of a thread!”

“Dehasten a bit, Ben Garment!” said Traycup. “We must respect tradition! No picnic finds its completion without a handful of ice cream. As we’ve none ’pon us, let’s away to a frothy parlor of frozen treats! The proper endment of the ritual may yet yield results, a’ter all. Roby?” He said this last bit at Roby, who was still mideat.

“Oh! Call me sorry,” said Roby, hiding the pretzel bones. “Let us now hurry—is that what you said? If not, then go slowly instead.”

So they put away their things into the picnic basket, and Roby put away the picnic basket into a place only she knew, and then they planned their next step. Since Traycup was the tallest of them, they went to a bookstore not far from a lemon tree, where a shoe stood outside crying, “Lament, o elder ones, for the dog sign is near!” They all nodded solemnly, for this sounded close to a see sharp, and, thus convinced, they entered said bookstore to inquire of the proprietor too many things to list on one page.

“Who uses paper in this day and age, anyway?” said the bookseller, presenting a sign that read “CREDIT/DEBIT CARD ONLY,” and then, instantly realizing his error, he put on a mustache and didn’t have a cane. He checked to see if anyone had noticed the mistake, but no one seemed to, and so he relaxed unprofitably.

Traycup built a chair from leftover sneezing powder and said, “That’s a fine start! We’ll take one of each.”

“Make mine with rice,” said Ben Garment. “The tin exports haven’t been sitting right with me lately.”

“Alas,” said Traycup, “poor Ben Garment. Very well. One of each, and one of each with rice.”

“The bill for that,” said the bookseller engloomily, “is two dollars.”

“What! Well, with a cost like that, we’re undone,” Traycup lamented. “Folks, we must take flight—bookman, farewell!”

“A fair in a well?” said the bookseller, shaking his head casually at the very foolishness of the concept. Is this the quality of this year’s crop of children? Better the blight take them at this rate!—or so it was supposed, but they would get their own in the end, all of them—or at least all the ones that mattered.

So Traycup and Ben Garment, Mario the gondolier and Phillippo the horse costume, and lastly Roby, who still stood about gazing at the cadre of books as if she’d seen such a thing before, next tried visiting a mouse hole. Well, this was no “try”, they successfully visited the mouse hole, and therein met the king of mice, Garbaon Eternalis, who had a new paper crown and a long list of chores, but they shirked the odor of this sour deal and ’scaped through a crack in the wall, each bearing a commemorative petrified duck’s foot and nothing more to show for their work.

“A kindly mouse-friend,” said Roby, “and kingly, as well. Almost a pity to be quitting that fair land so soon—but now for the city, a place more fitting to make our voyage improve!”

“Roby’s stolen the words from my lip!” said Traycup. “What odd tricks she’s done with them since, too. Ah, it’s a charm, lookn’t so—but thither!”

Next they ran up and down some stairs until the janitor told them to knock if off, but they’d seen enough stripes singing songs of pity that they knew the score, and so they found a penny gleaming on its upside and enshrined it, but its back cast shadows that were quite cursive, and everyone who plugged life-support systems into boxes of dirt needed to be plugged in themselves, and theirs was a circle unto its self, but from here had not even the image of a line. It took some work, as it always does.

“We’re looking for a clue,” said Traycup, “in too-guessed places!” He put a few phone cases away.

“So,” said Mario, “we need to get creative, eh?”

“Stay that slur,” said Ben Garment. “There’s other options afore.”

Halfway up the mountain came a line of monks, each bearing a cymbal—or rather a symbol, for the bumpy road they’d taken passed no dinosaurs. They knocked upon the door of a skyscraper, eager to set a meal to treats.

“What are you doing?” said the skyscraper. “What are you bringing? Oh—well, there’s another to delist!”

“The list is lost,” said the monks. “Now—show your bones, won’t you?”

“For you?” said the skyscraper.

“For we,” said the monks.

“You have a wrongful memory,” said the skyscraper, and in petulance slammed the door closed on the monks. The monks rang and rang subsequently, but their cries went unheeded, as usual.

Traycup pondered this sight. Ben Garment stood beside him and pondered as well.

“Never mind it,” said Ben Garment at last. “It would seem this one’s got nothing to do with us.”

“Set it up for a sequel,” said Traycup.

Now Phillippo burst forth, bouncing on a broken box, its characterization infused with some agitation—a little more than justified. “We’re no closer to the ice cream!” it said. Its bridle wilted and its legs were almost as well as squid.

“It’s so,” said Traycup in dread. “The stuff’s probably gone all the way extinct by now, or at least wended its way onto the endangered species list.”

This was sad news, and they all sighed wistfully, drearily done by the end of ice cream as they knew it, and nearly resigned themselves to a shepherd’s-pie-themed dessert menu, but then someone named Pilpug came up to them and said, “You kids want to buy some hockey cards?”

Some of them had never heard of hockey, but Ben Garment was not among that subset. “I’ve a suite myself,” said he, “that I’ve been trying to offload on someone for an age!”

“Then we’re met,” said Pilpug. “Let’s set your set against mine and see how they seem.”

So, they called a carpenter to craft a fine antique footstool for them, and they all sat on that and laid out their hockey cards on the back of an ox, and Pilpug and Ben Garment pointed to ones from one another’s collection and said names and numbers mysterious to everyone, and all the ununderstanders went to challenge a gang of pencil sharpeners to a hopscotch match, but the sharpeners couldn’t make it because that was their hot yoga day. But they hadn’t long to wait, anyway, for after only a few weeks, Pilpug and Ben Garment came back to them with an announcement.

“A deal is done!” said Ben Garment. “Pilpug made a purchase of my collection.”

“Crafty Ben Garment was pocketing some wealth!” cheered Traycup.

“Not even close,” said Pilpug. “To a collector, they are indeed worthless—one hundred thousand identical cards, all pulled from the same pack one forgettable day! However, to a statistical historician, each card is a unique physical object—a novel instance of an otherwise typical class of item. Each has traced a path unakin to any other, and bore its wounds and wear to tell its life. From these marks of damage it can be reconstructed the chain of events stretching pastwards and concoct all of history from the tale they bear.”

“And thus,” said Traycup, “in that tome of inf’, you’d reveal the location of the nearest ice cream dispensary! Cleverly done, Ben!”

“A shortcut to ice cream!” said Phillippo, cutting it close.

“A way’s made at last,” said Ben Garment. “Now, Pilpug the knower, how swiftly can the desired knowledge be divined from the acquisition?”

“As swift as this!” said Pilpug, and then, rather than answer Ben Garment’s question in satisfactory detail, he sacked up all the hockey cards and stowed them into a bassinet, and then he and bassinet both leapt aboard a passing fiendish dolphin, which escaped from their environs. “Call it a scam if you must!” cried Pilpug as he departed. “But you’re not the only gaggle needful of dairy funds!”

Ben Garment was embarrassed at his deception and bought some drywall to hide his shame, but Traycup said, “Renovations can wait—we must pursue!”

They all agreed this was the most velveteenish decision, but before they could even call up the talent agency, a standard bus came from behind the observatory—or observatory, if you know what I mean—and the bus stopped right next to them, and flang open its door, threw wide its arms, and scooped them all aboard in one swift motion.

As they were plopped ceremoniously into their seats, Traycup said untoastly, “And thus we’re bussed ere the last!”

“That was a cunning play,” said Ben Garment.

“Indeed, a’though it got a bit more diced than likable,” said Traycup. “Now, fair bus, say you’ve a route toward the absconder, so we can make some payment change hands!”

“Or,” said Phillippo, “we could just go straight to the ice cream department?”

“Serve up the entree,” said Ben Garment, “and take us on a road toward Oopertreepia!”

“Oh! How ’bout none of the above?” clamored the bus. “The next, best, and final stop shall be Traycup’s house! Way back at the beginning of the book!” The bus launched at a merely slightly illegal speed and patted itself on the back of the canopy for having spotted such a way to spite these wayfarers.

Traycup was dismayed to his sternum when he heard those words; he wanted not to proceed to the beginning, as he meant to go forward, and the rest of them, too, knew that this was backwards progress, and so not progress at all, but tacky and stymieing ungress. They gazed out the windows longingly as they saw their journey undone, for there was no escape from a bus—its doors remained mysteries, and the magnets were surely not the trick—and they must be resigned to enduring its service.

Roby, who saw the evident woe in Traycup, opted to say with brightings, “The house of you must have quite a view! I suspect we will be made to feel fine guests, as we should not like to be like wild pests.”

“It’sn’t a place of showing,” said Traycup, and he added, “and I fear an unpolished door’s knob might divulge my slovenhood!”

“Then, may we not ask,” said Roby, “the bus to quit its task? If it would deign stop, then off we would hop!”

“We could just reroute it,” said Mario, “and take advantage of it while we’ve got it. Anyone have any experience hijacking?”

“A new plan’s needed at once!” said Traycup with a laugh as sad as a fish who never met a Viking. “It’s almost fully an orb to forge one at the fore!”

“Very well,” said Ben Garment. “Have a crack at this: persuade the bus a novel location for your home—get it to cut an angle that’ll take us closer alongward to a targeted destination!”

“Ah, Ben, I’m unstudied in trigonometry, so it might’ve to wait!” said Traycup.

A swarthy math teacher then sprang up from his seat, spat fire and wisdom in a gross fluster, and nearly lost his “Bless This Morass” poncho in the mayhem. “You fools! You unpackaged fools! Trigonometry waits for no man, nor woman, nor any person who dares delay the teachings thereof! Now I stand before you, so prepare yourselves for sohcahtoa!” With that, the math teacher began dictating formulae, and the party, with nothing better to do and the bathroom already occupied by the cribbage team, studiously wrote down the dictated formulae, copying with exactness and thoroughhood—but then Phillippo’s pen ran out of ink.

“Pen-math,” said Roby, “is bold math.”

“I had confidence,” said Phillippo with attenuation.

“And now you’ven’t even ink!” said Traycup with a cup and saucer.

“Studentia must be silent or be silenced!” said the math teacher. “Enough chatter. We’re moving on to spherical coordinates. Brace yourself for theta and rho!”

They all became braced, and it was a good time for it, because the bus, growing bored, veered near to a duck pond and shouted at some nearby sharks, “Hey! Fish-face! Let’s get nasty! Show me your sword—I’m willing to wager mine’s got more girth!” And so the sharks surrounded the bus, their fins emerging above the surface, emanating their threat to all and sundry. The bus swang its sword, which further incited the rage of the sharks, though it did nothing as untoward as damage or injury, for it was all bluster. Bus bluster.

Hector, the leader of the sharks, said, “Ping pang walulu, bing bang patutu! Not that that means anything to you two! Now, catch a wave—a real one!”

As Hector foretold, a wave washed over the bus, and washed the bus, passengers and all, out to pond, right into the heart of shark territory, and more sharks arrove, and soon there were three thousand of them, and each shark had a hundred rows of teeth, and one of the junior sharks—a sharksquire—went about sharpening all the sharks’ teeth. He did a really good job. They don’t pay him enough, honestly. They don’t pay him, honestly enough.

Roby sat down behind a battered whisk while Traycup stood around with adequate posture and put away his notes from the recent math lesson. Phillippo and Mario debated their mismemories of the stated equations, conflating their squares and their cubes, and were unable to find the least common denomination. Ben Garment, however, knew several of the sharks.

“We grew up in the same wiretap,” he explained.

“Why,” said a shark named Steelth Octrode, “if that isn’t Ben Garment! Released from the clutches of the purse at last!”

“But a brace of weekends ago!” said Ben Garment. “And so I espy Steelth Octrode, and Hunjaleo, and Fordock the Mind Manager, and Illilixililli!” Ben Garment laughed, and he stood up on the summit of the bus, and waved to his old schoolyard chums.

“Now’s a thing,” said Traycup, “of luck, to’ve found some friends in such a dire strait.”

Ben Garment said in a low voice, in volume and character, “Friends, no, but traitors to the old cause, so make ready to conduct a great slaying.”

The bus said, “A great slaying? Finally, common ground! Well, say no more!”

The three thousand sharks said, “A great slaying? Fine, come on down! You’ll say no more!”

And then the battle was joined. The sharks made an assault upon the bus with all their teeth, and the bus swang its sword to and fro and cut up some of the sharks into pieces, and everyone else slipped out of the rear porthole and climbed a convenient ladder up to the safety of an even-more-convenient balcony, for Howlistune’s most grand and exquisite hotel, the Palais Foop, stood there on the beach, overhanging the beautiful, sparkling duck pond, and when Roby et al clomb to the height of the ladder, they saw there in the suite Poodleface, the most famous singer in the time zone, and she was aghast with subterfuge, for the ladder had been left in the hopes of a romantic rendezvous, which was not what was currently occurring, although the swarthy mathematician would stay to try his luck, for this was highly preferable compared against the frenzy below.

Poodleface said, “What prompts this untoward disturbance of my domain?”

“A comfortable transition!” said Traycup, exiting the hotel room, and Roby and Ben Garment and Phillippo and Mario followed him.

But Poodleface wasn’t satisfied with the curtness of this answer, and so turned the hallways of the hotel into an inescapable, indefinite, infinite geometric maze, where up was left and down was backwards, and time stood still or lounged about like an unemployed gopher cart, and the only way out was—whoa! That’s a spoiler, but let’s just say they should’ve paid more attention to the math lesson.

“Remain here in danger forever,” said Poodleface, wincing her eyes and slurping her ears. She faded into a figure of legend as the fleet of protagonists lost themselves in the confines of the labyrinth, which, for current purposes, is the exact same as a maze. Running about in a mild panic, no emus or ketchup bottles in sight, they quickly became separated and shortly after thoroughly dislocated, which perhaps was for the best—but not now.