part0016

B olt’s feet hurt. His sneakers had been a gift from the sea, but not a very generous gift, as the rubber on the bottoms was worn and there were holes on the sides. He knew he was doing the right thing, but that didn’t make his feet hurt less, or his heart ache less.

But how could he not go? Annika was a ruthless bandit, and yet she was marching back toward Sphen to help the people and penguins. If she was going, Bolt couldn’t very well stay behind.

Their journey took them from the seashore through a massive forest, across a vast field of snow, over a wide frozen lake, around a towering volcano, up and down an imposing mountain, and into a large, festering swamp.

“Let’s stop for a minute,” suggested Bolt, eager to rest his feet, but also to eat.

“But we’ve only gone through a massive forest, across a vast field of snow, over a wide frozen lake, around a towering volcano, up and down an imposing mountain, and into a large, festering swamp,” protested Annika. “We haven’t even reached the immeasurable firepits or the endless caverns.”

Bolt sat down, anyway. He unzipped his backpack and pulled out some raw fish, tossing a silver, rubbery trout to Pygo, who sniffed it, barked, frowned, and then ate.

Bolt threw one of his fish high into the air and opened his jaws. The long fish somersaulted before landing in his mouth. His stomach growled with delight. Or maybe that was Pygo, growling at a squirrel in a tree. Regardless, Bolt swallowed the fish whole. “Delicious.”

She sprang to her left, her movements so nimble and quick that Bolt barely had time to register her spring, let alone the knife flash that followed. Annika held up her blade, a lizard impaled on its tip. “A much tastier lunch than some nasty fish,” she announced.

Soon, the lizard was roasting over the flames of a small fire. “Sorry for the pungent smell of roasted lizard,” said Annika as the gag-inducing fumes wafted through the air. Few odors are stronger than that of burnt iguana skin.

But Annika appeared to enjoy her meal. And a few minutes later, after stomping out the fire, the trio were on their way again.

Bandits are trained to walk silently, and Annika was a superb bandit. She walked as if on air. Somehow she even avoided leaving footprints in the snow. Bolt, on the other hand, seemed to kick every piece of rubble, crack every pane of ice, and leave prints twice as big as his feet.

“You’d make a lousy bandit,” snapped Annika. Bolt had no intention of becoming a bandit, so he didn’t mind that he’d make a lousy one.

They continued to walk silently, or at least without talking, because only Annika actually walked silently. They ambled through the immeasurable firepits, although they turned out to be quite measurable and were crossed in about a half hour. Eventually they reached a gravel road, but one with well-worn wheel marks and hoofprints upon it.

They were finally near civilization. Bolt bit his fingernails. He suddenly felt sensitive about his bushy eyebrows, alabaster skin, and horn-spiked hair.

He slowed down until Annika snapped, “Why are you slowing down?” She shook her head. “No one cares about your eyebrows, white skin, and horn hair, you know.”

“That’s not why I slowed down,” muttered Bolt, but Annika just rolled her eyes at him.

Soon they saw a wooden post sticking out of the ground with a wooden board nailed to it. Words were written on the board with splotchy white paint:

Bolt put his hands on his hips. One of his big toes popped out of a sneaker hole. “Can you believe that sign? It’s awful.”

“I know. They can’t even count how many people live here,” agreed Annika.

“Not that! ” He pointed at the words No penguins allowed. “That’s penguin discrimination!” His face flushed and he was suddenly filled with a nearly overwhelming urge to run into the town and start pecking people.

“They probably don’t really mean it,” said Annika. “Let’s check out the town. Maybe they have a restaurant. I’m so hungry, I could eat a penguin.” She smiled, sheepishly. “Not that I would. It’s just an expression.”

“It’s not a very nice expression,” Bolt grumbled, before turning back to the sign and counting to twenty.

Sometimes, when he had still lived at the Oak Wilt Home for Unwanted Boys, one of the boys would get upset. It was easy to get upset when you discovered dead roaches in your meat loaf at dinnertime, or woke up in the middle of the night to find moths landing on your head. “Count to twenty,” Bolt would say, knowing that after you had counted to twenty, the anger would subside.

Now, infused with his werepenguin blood, Bolt found himself counting to twenty quite often.

Bolt hated that part of himself, the angry evil werepenguin part. Werepenguins are prone to raising armies, ransacking seafood shacks, and causing trouble. Bolt’s evil inclinations often churned through his veins, urging him to the dark side of werepenguin-ism.

Bolt shook his head. He was hearing things. But that voice had sounded so close! It must just be his nerves. Going far away to fight a werepenguin was quite nerve-racking.

Bolt suggested Pygo wait outside the town, where she wouldn’t be seen, remembering the sign’s warning. Annika thought he was overreacting, but agreed.

As Bolt escorted Pygo into the forest, he reached into her mind, hoping to pluck her thoughts. But the wall inside her brain was as impenetrable as ever. “What’s blocking me?” he asked her, but Pygo merely nuzzled Bolt’s hand. Bolt reached down and scratched behind her ears, or at least where her ears would be if penguins had ears. Pygo growled happily.

A minute or so later, Annika and Bolt entered the town, which was just around the bend. They followed a dirt path around a few shops. The stores were small and needed painting, but the only thing remarkable about the town was the silence. It felt deserted.

Bolt looked in the store windows: one store sold drums, one sold firecrackers, and one sold chain saws. They only made the silence more disturbing.

They spotted a small diner. It smelled like freshly made pancakes. Once, Bolt would have been delighted at the aroma of pancakes. Now it merely made him hope they made pancakes from dried fish blubber, but he doubted they did.

They heard a murmuring of people, agitated whispers and a few sobs mixed in. They followed the sounds, walking past the diner and down an alley between a discomfitingly quiet trombone store and an eerily silent gong shop.

A group of twenty or thirty people had gathered in front of a seafood shop, or at least what was left of one. It was as if a hurricane had twirled inside the place, shattering the plate-glass window and scattering ice and fish bones into the street. Inside, light fixtures hung loosely from the ceiling, attached by only a few dangling wires, and shelves had been toppled.

“They come down from Sphen, you know,” said a woman in the crowd. “Why won’t those horrible beasts leave us alone?”

“Name one penguin that is not a vicious ransacker of fish stores,” the woman demanded.

“I can’t, but that’s only because I don’t know any penguins by name,” said the man.

Bolt could barely speak. He had not seen evil penguins for a long time, and he was still far from Sphen. Could the Earl’s powers reach all the way out here?

Bolt shook his head. Just more nerves rattling in his head. “We should get out of here,” he said, uneasy at being so near so many penguin haters.

Bolt knew it was in Annika’s nature to rob, just like it was in Bolt’s werepenguin nature to want to rule the world. But she needed to curb that impulse, just like he curbed his own evil desires. “You can’t go around taking things all the time.”

Annika’s smile drooped. “But I can keep these, right?” Annika thrust her hand into her jacket pocket and removed a purse, a wallet, a silver wristwatch, a rubber duck, and two fuzzy banana slippers. “People staring at broken seafood stores aren’t paying attention to their pockets.”

Bolt gave Annika a harsh stare. She sighed and dashed into the crowd of seafood-store mourners. When she returned a minute later she was empty-handed. “I really could have used a pair of fuzzy banana slippers,” she said with a sigh. She marched toward the restaurant. “Anyway, let’s eat. And you’re paying.”

Luckily, Bolt had some coins in his pocket: they had been in his pants when the pants first washed ashore.

“They should outlaw penguins,” said one of the women who was standing near the seafood shop, loudly. “The world would be better without them.”

Bolt blocked out the rest of the woman’s voice. Feeling his anger returning, he clenched his fists and counted to twenty. When that didn’t help, he counted to twenty again.