CHAPTER 11
The trouble with Pflemba was that she refused to be reasonable.
Annaruth had given her everything a self-respecting, misunderstood, slightly amphibious-looking anti-heroine could possibly have wanted: motive, backstory, a complicated relationship with her mother, an enviable hat collection, and the thrill of an impending gruesome battle against the Duke of Murgmire. And still the stubborn goblin queen stood right smack in the middle of chapter 7 with her warty arms crossed and her best hat on and had the nerve to argue back.
“It has to be the hatpin.”
“It most certainly does not have to be the hatpin when we’ve already set up the reader to be suspicious of soup. Soup, Pflemba. Soup.”
“Hatpin. You know I’m right.”
“Remind me again who is the author of this story?”
“Miss Glubson!” The deep voice was grating, peevish, and decidedly un-goblin-like. Instantly, Pflemba disappeared. The Duke of Murgmire disappeared. Chapter 7 disappeared—what little there was of it, anyway. Annaruth reluctantly brought her mind back to the chilly office with its imposing row of cold metal chairs and the cold faces of the Council of Muses who sat in them. The owner of the peevish voice leaned forward and rapped impatiently on the table. “As I was saying, Miss Glubson . . ."
“Yes, Grand Inspirator,” said Annaruth encouragingly, “as you were saying.”
And as he continued saying it, whatever it was—something about improper filing procedures and dereliction of Muse duties and maximum monetization potential and the Circumstellar Authenticity Index—her eyes drifted down the table. The Undersecretaries of Poetry, Prose, and Pretty Pictures were diligently writing numbers on spreadsheets, while the Undersecretary of Oversight snored softly beside them. The Adjudicator of Creative Compliance hadn’t moved in 11 minutes, his pen poised over a blank notebook page. The Director of Originality Assessment was scrolling through videos on her phone. The Celestial Branding Consultant was carefully emptying a packet of artificial sweetener into a sequined plastic coffee cup.
“—conduct unbecoming,” the Grand Inspirator droned on, “of a Muse at any level, let alone one on Level IV Probationary Status—“
Annaruth remembered, dimly, when she had dreamed of being exactly where she was sitting right now. Back when she was just a young girl whose brain was brimming with stories, and she’d felt the strange music ringing in her bones and tingling all the way down her arm to the tip of her pencil till it practically sang on the paper. Back when she’d innocently believed the Muses were the ones who heard the music best, the ones who’d vowed to keep its signal clear and strong. Back when the Singing Star was bright and loud and on key, and the Circumstellar Band was still, well, a Band—all of them together, each in their own circuit, playing in harmony and filling all the sky and all her heart with wonder.
Everyone wants to be a Star, she thought, but no one wants to orbit one.
CHAPTER 12
Sitting before the Council of Muses, Aunt Annaruth’s stomach growled and she thought longingly of the other half of her blueberry scone still lying in crumbles on her desk. It had been dropped there mid-bite when she suddenly found herself lifted out of her seat, swung over the shoulder of the Associate Manager of Narrative Merchandising like a sack of potatoes and carried to the Council Chamber (so she didn’t get distracted by the library along the way and forget about the meeting, they told her—as if she’d do that again!) Which reminds me, she thought, I need to remember to remind Charlie to buy more potatoes for dinner.
"—which is why the Council feels it has been more than patient—” the Grand Inspirator was saying, “and that the time has come for Miss Glubson to demonstrate, in clear and unambiguous terms, her commitment to the Council’s Declaration of Acoustic Independence—”
Beyond his balding head, the wall of windows looked out over the rooftops of the city to the faint stony cliffs of the Cumbersome Gorge. A tiny flycycle with something dangling from the handlebars flew across a cloud. Which was odd, but even odder was the shape of the cloud itself—like a well-fed turnip, or the rotund belly of the villainous Duke of Murdmire.
“Gosh darn it, Pflemba is right,” Annaruth sighed and scribbled in the margin of Form Z-492-XVII-b: Hat pin. Chapter 7.
“Well, obviously,” the goblin queen whispered over her shoulder.
“I beg your pardon?”
“Nothing, Grand Inspirator. Carry on.”
“Let me come straight to the point, Miss Glubson.”
“Yes, please do.”
“There have been reports of unauthorized communications with individuals of dubious intent . . . Evidence of—er, organized resistance—to the Council’s glorious guidelines and goals.”
The metal chair Annaruth was sitting on grew even colder, and she was suddenly, fully, frighteningly alert. For once in her life, her brain was empty of stories, or even one good whopping lie.
She felt a lingering crumb of blueberry scone tickling a tonsil and she swallowed hard. “I—I don’t know what you’re talking about, Grand Inspirator.”
He rested his bony elbows on the table, clasped two hands with impeccably clean fingernails, and smiled at her. “Then perhaps you can explain why you are currently wearing a red pennant around your neck.”
She looked down. There it was—bright red, slightly crumpled where she’d been absentmindedly twisting it between her fingers for the past hour. Unmistakably, undeniably, a pennant. The pennant. The one she’d hung on the agreed-upon tree this very morning, as soon as she’d seen the blue-fringed cowboy with his green guitar and ridiculous hat strutting purposefully down Main Street.
But if the red pennant was still around her neck, then what did she hang on the tree?
At that moment Annaruth felt as if Pflemba had jabbed the much-disputed hat pin straight through her heart. Or who?
CHAPTER 13
“Charlie! Get over here!” Junie hollered from the other room.
Charlie had been ransacking Aunt Annaruth’s bedroom trying to find any clue as to where she’d been taken, but at the sound of Junie’s voice, he charged down the stairs and out into the front yard, where Junie, Arlo, and Cliff were staring up at the strangest interaction they’d ever seen.
Misty the Morphable had been roused from her post breakfast nap by another sentient cloud, a little larger than she, who was simply bursting with news. To anyone fluent in cloud language, the result would have been a quite ordinary, if somewhat urgent, conversation. To everyone standing in the yard, it looked like the two of them were creating a weatherman’s worst nightmare.
Strange Cloud: Thunder
Misty: Thunder louder
Strange Cloud: Morph into a cluster of snowflakes
Misty: Produce hail
Strange Cloud: Produce rain
Cliff and Arlo stood beneath this bizarre interaction, mouths agape. Junie turned to Charlie. “What in tarnation is…?”
But Charlie was no longer there. He was tearing about the house, looking for Aunt Annaruth’s Complete Dictionary of Morphables, Manifestations, and Other Sentient Weather Patterns. He found it underneath a well-loved copy of Goblin Heroines and the Importance of Soup, grabbed a piece of paper for translation purposes, and rushed back out into the yard. He flopped down on the grass with his pencil poised and the book opened in front of him.
“Junie!” he yelled over the noise of the two clouds, who were now creating a roaring wind and spinning about one another at a blinding speed. “Tell me what they do next!”
Junie fully thought her friend had lost his mind, but she did what he said anyway. If she were averse to strange happenings, she wouldn’t be friends with Charlie and Annaruth. “Okay, she said, “the new cloud is forming little icicles on top of itself, like a crown.”
Charlie flipped through the dictionary. “It either means the destruction of all polar bears, or it means the council has gathered.” He wrote down both options.
“Now Misty is letting out little puffs of air, like she’s sneezing.”
Charlie found the entry. Misty was either displaying rampant curiosity or an obsession with hedgehogs.
It went on like this for some time until Charlie was staring at the piece of paper and doing his best not to cry. Circling the most likely translations of the new cloud’s message, the page now read:
“The council has gathered. Your owner is being questioned. She wears a red cloth. I am worried.”
If his translations were correct, his Aunt was sitting before the Council of Muses with a red pennant around her neck and no one there to help her.
Charlie turned to tell everyone that they had to go and save her, only to see Junie already wrestling Arlo back into the flycycle and Cliff pumping up the wings.
“Let’s go!” Junie yelled over the sounds of the clouds saying their thunderous goodbyes. Charlie climbed aboard and off they rode towards one of the most important, dangerous, and well-protected buildings in Downtown Knashville–The Inter-Circumstellar State Observatory, where sat the Council of Muses and one unfortunate Aunt.
CHAPTER 14
Perhaps it was naive for three children, a diminutive stuntflyer, and an emotional Morphable to imagine they could descend into the airspace over the Inter-Circumstellar State Observatory in a banged-up flycycle without causing a ruckus.
Perhaps, had they given it any thought whatsoever, the band of would-be heroes might have considered the advanced technology, armed guards, armored doors, biometric access, and round-the-clock surveillance which now stood between them and rescuing Annaruth.
Being both short on time and long on blind optimism, however, the kids clambered aboard the flycycle while Cliff situated his goggles over his eyes and plugged the Observatory’s coordinates into his Galactic Positioning System. Then, with gears grinding, engine sputtering, and pistons clanking, up, up, up they flapped.
At cruising altitude, careening high above downtown Knashville, Charlie and Junie’s eyes watered with the force of the wind buffeting their faces. Arlo’s eyes, it must be admitted, hadn’t stopped watering since his miserable mistake of following Junie to the bus stop that fateful morning.
As Misty sailed along beside them—throwing in an occasional loop-de-loop just to show off her superior aerodynamics—Cliff Anger the Danger Ranger turned tour guide, exclaiming, “Hooeee, would you look at that? If you’ll direct your attention down below, my fair and fearless passengers, you’ll have the profound privilege of laying eyes on the world famous RhymeMan Auditorium, home of some of the most stupendous musical performances the Circumstellar Band has ever laid ears on!”
Charlie squinted down, and through the blur of tears could just make out a red brick building on a bustling city street. As Cliff continued to expound upon all the famous musicians who’d graced the RhymeMan stage, Charlie’s thoughts drifted anxiously to Aunt Annaruth—
Was she alright? Would they make it to the Observatory in time?
Perhaps most worrisome of all—Charlie had a terrible, sinking feeling the red cloth Aunt Annaruth was wearing might just be the Red Pennant itself. If that was the case, their mission to rescue her was more urgent than ever.
At that precise moment, the flycycle entered the protected airspace over the Inter-Circumstellar State Observatory, and the crew was greeted with the earsplitting alarm of Klaxon bells.
Over the blaring sirens, the kids heard Cliff bellow, “Hang on, everyone, I’m gonna land this baby on the roof!!” With a downward crank of the controls, a stomp on the rudder pedal, and a “Yippee Ki YAAAAAY!!!!” from the Danger Ranger, the flycycle gave an almighty lurch into a precipitous nosedive.
Charlie clung with white-knuckled terror to his harness straps, clamped his eyes shut, and braced for impact.
But the impact never came.
At the last possible second, Cliff executed a flawlessly smooth landing on the flat expanse of the Observatory roof.
Heaving a deep sigh of relief at being back on solid ground, Charlie unclipped his harness and leapt down from his seat, his knees shaky beneath him. The others scrambled down beside him on the roof.
His relief was short-lived.
Bursting through the rooftop exit came an armed troop of guards.
Charlie, wide-eyed with fear, gulped down the panicky scream bubbling up in his throat and raised both hands above his head as the guards formed into a tight circle, their weapons drawn, all pointed straight at Charlie and his friends.
CHAPTER 15
In the long and storied career of Ribeye Gwinett, he’d often found that the least talent for music often resided in those most assured of its expansive presence, and as he sat at the mixing board of his studio and listened to the blue-spangled singer belting predictably about dirt roads, beloved trucks, and mid-summer nostalgia, he came to a troubling conclusion: this man was going to make a great deal of money with his lack of talent.
When the song came to an end, Ribeye sighed a deep sigh of musical defeat, pressed the intercom button, and said pleasantly: “That was great.”
From inside the vocal booth, the blue-spangled man grinned from left to right and said, “I felt pretty good about that one.”
Ribeye nodded at him. He had no doubt at all that the man felt good about what had just happened–no doubt at all.
Within a couple of hours (for it did not take long with so little to work with), they had a brand new single ready for the airwaves. Ribeye quietly leaned back in his chair as the song played over the speakers and the blue-spangled man listened to himself with growing satisfaction.
Hometown boy with a cow-town girl
Back when the times was a simpler world
Never been realer than it was back then
Never been better than the way back when
Never been, never been
Never been gooder than the good days since
Never been better than it was back in
that hot sticky Knashville summertime wind
Summertime wind
Oh that hot sticky summertime wind
Back then
Back when
Hot wind
Sticky wind, ooh yeah
Sticky wind stuck on me
Stick, stuck, stanky wind
Stuck on me
Stuck on you
Way back when?
Back then
Back when?
(Back wind)
Back when?
(Back wind)
Yeah
(Back wind)
Yeah
“Just make it fade out.” Blue Spangles nodded matter of factly as the music died. Then he said, “I’ll call it ‘Hot Sticky’.”
Who was Ribeye Gwinnett to argue? “I guess that’ll be a hard one to top.”
Blue Spangles tipped his hat back on his head and said, “Oh, I got a lot more where that one come from.”
And that’s exactly what Ribeye was afraid of.
CHAPTER 16
After the recording of the third song (not to mention the third death of Ribeye’s soul), another party arrived at the studio unannounced. In walked a stubbly man in a white shirt and bowtie. He had a head like a turnip–splotched red and white with a tuft of unruly hair sprouting from the top.
Ribeye swiveled his chair dejectedly and stared at the intruder as if to say: Well? Get on with it.
“Oh, I’m happy to see you’ve met. The Grand Inspirator sent me to…manage…things. I trust all has gone well?” said the turnip-topped man.
“It has certainly gone…somewhere,” said Ribeye. “Grand Inspirator sent you?”
“Well, certainly. I assumed–”
Blue Spangles leaned forward abruptly. “It’s all part of the plan, Mr. Gwinnett. All indeed part of the plan. This is Mr. Fummicle. Underseer of Oversight to the Committee for the Establishment of the Knashville Solo Singing Star.”
Ribeye did not like the sound of that. The Singing Star of Klumph and the Circum-Stellar Band (of which Knashville was merely one member) had been in concert since time began (so far as anyone knew). The Band were the very source of the Music of the Spheres–the cosmic music that held away the “un-sound” of the nearby black hole that no one had yet found any way to chase off entirely. If the Grand Inspirator and his ilk were planning to leave the Band and go solo, this seemed to Ribeye an ill omen indeed.
“Knashville Singing Star, huh?”
Blue Spangles spread his arms and nodded. “Yours truly.”
“We believe that his musical compositions will provide us with just the sort of auditory wallop we need to push us out of the Singing Star’s orbit entirely and set us up as a rival act that will be able to chart its own course and destiny.” Mr. Fummicle’s turnip turned a shade redder as he smiled.
“Do you hear that, Gwinnett? Destiny. That’s what we’re doing here today. That’s what’s brought us together. You and me. We’re crafting music for a whole new age. The people are going to love it. They are going to love us! Isn’t that right, Fummicle?”
“The Grand Inspirator certainly hopes so. Our research suggests that your themes and your chords will appeal to listeners at the optimal resonant frequencies and elicit the purest state of economic growth. Our best algorithms predict that this album will provide almost limitless energy and potential.”
“Limitless! Oh, I love limitless.” Blue Spangles leapt out of his seat and danced happily without any discernable rhythm or skill.
“If you’d just sign here, Mr. Gwinnett,” Fummicle laid a contract on the table, “we’ll be sure to see you’re handsomely compensated.”
Ribeye Gwinnett rocked gently in his chair as he considered all of this. He certainly did not exist beyond the basic human desire to profit from his work. But he did prefer to work only on those things he considered worthy of doing, and this Blue Spangled, get away from the Band business did not quite align with that preference. But, he thought, if he continued the questionable production, perhaps he could steer it in precisely the wrong direction and therefore corrupt it from within and assure the failure of this upstart attempt to break up the Band. For, in fact, if he refused, they would surely find some other rube to con (and to profit).
Ribeye Gwinnett smiled as genuinely as he could (which wasn’t very), and leaned forward. “Why, that sounds fine. Where shall I sign?”