Entry 5

Mavis Island — Halloween 2009 II

Nighttime, 0130.

I don’t know how long the toughbook battery will hold out. I’m going to try to record the events of the last few hours in case I don’t live to tell the tale.

I think I left off my account of the Halloween ambush when Professor Lopez ordered Jacky to stand down that night, and not try to track down Penelope Farris-Washington until the sun came up.

It was a tense few hours. Professor Lopez set up a war room in the conference room. She pulled yanked on several strings hiding pull-down maps that I had never noticed were there, and booted various instruments only some of which I recognized.

We had matcha brought out for our planning session, along with copious amounts of gertis gertis tea to fuel our weary bodies. Professor Lopez was in high gear, directing the undergrads with standard ISO Desolomer hand signals, and barking orders at me and Jacky. We worked until 0500, when Professor Lopez we could all use a nap.

At 0700 I was back at the war room, and Professor Lopez was still barking orders. I don’t know if she even left to nap, or stayed there studying maps and instruments, coordinating our movements in advance of our return. She turned to me and Jacky, giving a directive that almost scared me: “Find CJ and bring him here.”

Outside the conference room, Jacky pointed in the direction of the vehicle depot. “Let’s split up, you check that side of the compound and I’ll go this way.”

I paused. “How do we know he’s not still at the vat of plactowater?” I asked simply.

“Come on Delgado, you think they wouldn’t have checked there? And why would Penelope have run off looking for him if he was there the whole time?”

“We don’t know he was there the whole time,” I reasoned, putting my logical prowess to good use. I crossed my arms and considered the possibilities.

In the corner of my eye I saw Jacky shrug. “Fine, Pierre, go check the vat area,” she said, and wandered toward the radio tower control hut grumbling to herself.

With the thinking out of the way, I uncrossed my arms and took off at a jog across the compound. There were about a dozen vats filled with various liquids, and I believed I remembered the one to which we had run in the heat of the moment after my University lubrication challenge.

As I neared the vats I heard stifled laughter. Around the final one, I saw CJ still on his back, kicking his feet up and down as he guffawed. He looked up and saw me and laughed again, audibly. “Pierre Delgado, that’s you a lotto!” he managed to get out. I stepped over to him deliberately, leaned down, and slapped him across one cheek.

“Snap out of it, CJ!” I hated doing it to my new friend, but he was clearly in some kind of trance. He recoiled and slowly reached up with his left hand, gently touching the red spot where my hand had landed.

“What’s going on?” CJ asked, bewildered, suddenly squinting in the daylight. “What time is it?” I reached out with my right hand to help him up.

“It’s just past 0700,” I said, “and you’re right here where I left you last night.” In my left hand I was clutching my dinquoi-trouvain sash in a tight ball, not even aware I had removed it. I released it and it fell into the vat of plactowater like the banner of a fallen knight on a ruined ancient battlefield.

“Oh no, that’s not right,” he said, finally taking my outstretched hand.

“Yes, it is,” I said, showing him my watch as I helped him up.

“I mean — where’s Penelope?” His lip was quivering as he held onto the side of the vat for support. I put my hand on his shoulder. He gasped, putting two and two together. “She went looking for me, didn’t she? Did they take her? Lupus dragonicus?”

I nodded solemnly. “We’re going out to get her back. Professor Delgado wants you to come to her war room on the other side of the compound immediately. Let’s go.” I turned in the other direction and took a step, but CJ didn’t follow. “CJ?” I said in bewilderment.

“CJ Lee, that’s me!” he replied nervously. “Come here a second, and don’t tell anyone what I’m about to divulge.”

I don’t have the time to fully explain here what CJ told me in those crucial few minutes, as my battery is low. But the moments that followed were even more critical.

“You know your Castonellan tales, don’t you?” he asked in hushed tones barely louder than a whisper. I nodded. “Yes, I’ve heard you reference those old stories. The bravery of Filip Tutta Dellamarca, you see, this is his moment, per legend. Now I’m going to show you where I believe Penelope must be. But before I do, I need you to remember two digits.”

I waited, finally saying, “yes, CJ, yes, what are the digits?”

He looked over his shoulder. “Number 30,” he breathed. It was the nickname he had given me at Base Camp, but he was the only one who ever used it. And others never seemed to hear him say it, as no one ever asked him what it meant or followed suit and started using it themselves.

“Number… 30?” I asked. He nodded and put his pointer finger to his lips.

“Now, Castonellan brave, kneel and prostrate yourself.” I slowly bent down on one knee, and tilted my head down, regarding his boots. He said nothing else, just touching the back of my neck with a single finger.

In an instant I was whooshing across Mavis Island, on top of Cape Stanwell and everywhere else all at once. I was looking for Penelope but I was distracted by plentiful gertis gertis, as well as stimulus exopilis and drastophus blinnium in my field of vision. It was all within reach.

In that moment, I knew my cerberus planatinum was flashing microwhispers throughout my ejecticus system. There was someone in peril. But opposite that system, my cerberus denonycum was suppressing my biopreferential cryptidium and lowering my subcore body temperature. They’re the two systems that keep the human body in harmony, but in that moment I needed less harmony and more agitation. I agitated myself with a hard slap on the cheek.

When I got fully in tune with my cerberus planatinum, I saw where all my microwhispers were pointing: an old dock the University had previously used, up until World War II, on the other side of the island on a rocky beach labeled Dagano Beach on our older maps. Newer maps just labeled it “Off Limits 250.4.” I had always been curious about those mysterious coordinates.

I channeled my ejectus system and hurtled in my mind toward Dagano Beach. I suddenly fell from my crouched pose, as I had been whilst kneeling before CJ, onto the rocky beach, hitting my head on a large seashell and shattering it. It was nighttime again somehow. I still don’t even know what day it was, when I landed on Off Limits 250.4.

I rubbed my head, which was scraped and slightly bleeding, as I looked up. I was concealed within the shadow of the cliffside. But a dozen yards away, Penelope Farris-Washington was tied to one of the pilings on the old dock, her unconscious body illuminated by the full moon. She didn’t notice me. Nor did they, at first.

There were rows of lupus dragonicus standing at attention around the beach, with a handful reviewing notes written on crude, weatherworn scrolls, and diligently reviewing what appeared to be established procedures for what to do with her. Some seemed annoyed to have been kept up so late and put to this purpose, as many of the older looking lupus dragonicus with graying hair occasionally sighed and shrugged in passive agreement to what others were telling them.

I stepped out of the shadow and immediately one of the junior lupus dragonicus howled at me. I think he was one of the two I saw in the forest, although I’m sure many who were hiding would also have recognized me. Instantly, numerous bright lights from unknown origins circled the beach, finally settling on me and blinding me as though I were staring into the midday sun.

As quickly as they had begun running over to apprehend me, they stopped again. The orderly rows of lupus dragonicus had disaggregated into a chaotic semicircle of howling, snarling, otherworldly beasts, none willing to come closer than ten feet. They reviewed me, some holding their snouts erect and sniffing loudly. I looked near the back of the pack where the still unimpressed older lupus dragonicus were again deep in discussion. One was using his snout and one of his paws to outline what seemed to have been clothing on another.

I looked down at my dinquoi-trouvain suit and sash, which CJ must have retrieved from the vat of plactowater and placed on me before touching my neck, along with my small pack which contained my toughbook and low-polarity carbonalturer.

The lupus dragonicus must have mistaken me for a cursed joursque or a malicious flatfooted brintôt. Despite the fake blood having been mostly cleaned off, Baron Chester Richard of Simpletown must have made quite a frightening impression.

If I knew my Piègais folklore, I knew a cursed joursque could easily fight off most of these beasts. They still had the numbers to take down Baron Chester Richard of Simpleton, but he would weaken their pack to a level from which it would take years to recover. I knew I wasn’t an actual cursed joursque, but I knew enough about the legend to fake it. I would lunge at them with a Choppaise feint while gargling in the mythical beast’s larynx, a most frightening kind of fallorian squawk. Yes, that would get them on their hind paws.

I would then … and suddenly I wondered what I was even talking about. I wasn’t a joursque or even a flatfooted brintôt. I was Pierre. I was Pierre Delgado, just a Baryllisman in training. And, I realized, Pierre Delgado, I was. Not some glue pot from Cavignon or a dewey Grionnaise.

In the time I was standing there, wondering what Baron Chester Richard of Simpletown would do, or what courage, perhaps, a Castonellan knight might muster, the oldest and most disheveled-looking lupus dragonicus stepped to the fore. He motioned with his snout for one of his deputies to bring him a scroll, which he crumbled around a mango-sized rock with two paws, and tossed toward me.

In awe, I picked up the bundled note and unwrapped it from the rock. The message was transcribed in crude characters, but I could recognize many of them easily enough from the ancient Castonellan tomes Maria Francesca had read to me so many times before. The gist was that they wanted me to guess a number. If I guessed correctly, they would take Penelope back to the tree-line near Base Camp and release her. If I guessed wrongly, I, the mysterious beast of the lowlands, and the human would die. And tragically, so would many of their own.

I took a pen from my pack and flipped the scroll over, grateful my knowledge of old Castonellan was enough to write the two digits I needed: 30.

I wrapped up the scroll and tossed it back toward the older lupus dragonicus. A couple of them helped him unwrap it, and they made an odd wheezing sound. The rest of their pack backed even farther away from me. A number of them spread apart and allowed a column I hadn’t seen yet to march up to Penelope. They used their teeth to untie the ropes binding her to the piling, then one of the bigger ones took her limp body onto his back and strode off.

The column bearing Penelope marched into the island as the rest of the lupus dragonicus scampered off one by one. The last to leave was the older one, who looked over his shoulder once with what could only be understood as a glint of recognition in his eye.

Before I could believe my eyes, Dagano Beach was empty once again. Small waves were gently lapping on the rocky shore, and the moonlight danced in the small eddies and whirlpools beneath the dock’s remnants, pointing like an arrow: away, away from this place.

But I dared not leave yet. I was a dinquoi-trouvain and a proud Piègais, but I was no joursque or flatfooted brintôt. I was Pierre Delgado, not Baron Chester Richard of Simpletown. I would hide here for the evening, mostly buried in the sand with my bag, and wait until sunrise to make my way back to Base Camp.

My battery is almost dead. Signing off, it’s 0145. I’m humming some Audioslave tonight.

All glory to the University.

Pierre Delgado

In your house, I long to be
Room by room, patiently
I’ll wait for you there like a stone
I’ll wait for you there alone