part0058

“That sounds special to me,” said Bolt.

“I didn’t have a leopard seal in the moat. And really, what’s so special about someone without their own personal leopard seal?” He didn’t wait for an answer. “Of course, I also had the bird-shaped birthmark on my arm. I usually wore long-sleeve shirts to hide it.”

Bolt leaned his head to his left, just a little, as was his habit, to hide the birthmark he was sensitive about, too.

“But then one night, when I was sleeping in my bed under a blanket of money, a tall man with jet-black hair, a large, thin nose, and bushy eyebrows came through the open balcony door. But I didn’t scream. Something about the man seemed familiar, as if I had been expecting him my entire life. He said he was traveling the world in search of those with penguin birthmarks. I asked him his name and he merely said, ‘Call me the Stranger.’”

“But why?”

“Maybe he doesn’t like his real name?” the Earl guessed.

“No, I meant why was he traveling the world looking for people with penguin birthmarks.”

“Oh, yes. That’s a much better question. Because he wanted to unite us all, of course. To take over the world! A single werepenguin is powerful. Two werepenguins are doubly so. But imagine a group of werepenguins, each with his or her own penguin army. Who could stop us?”

The Earl stared at Bolt, as if waiting for an answer, but Bolt couldn’t think of anyone who could stop a group of penguin armies, at least not off the top of his head.

“The Stranger knew it would take time to coat penguins with enough thick oniony layers of violent rage that they would fight. But that’s the great part about being immortal: time isn’t an issue.”

“And you gladly agreed to his plan,” said Bolt bitterly.

“Not at first. When he told me I could be a werepenguin and torture and maim whomever I chose, it sounded too good to be true. I just laughed at him.”

“That doesn’t sound funny,” said Bolt, shuddering.

“It turned out a goose feather from my pillow had wiggled itself under my armpit. Quite embarrassing, really. Once I removed it, I didn’t laugh again for weeks. The Stranger asked permission to bite me. Why not? I answered. But then, after, I understood the truth. Penguins are meant to rule. I was special. Converting the palace library into a giant fish-frying room was a good idea. Pouring melted iron onto my arm until it created a hard, permanent cast was a very sensible thing to do. It was all so obvious.”

“Why didn’t you just make some sort of removable iron glove or something?”

The Earl rolled his eyes. “And pretend I had an iron hand? That would be as silly as wearing X-ray glasses in a dark cave.” The Earl bent down, grabbed two fish, and ate them.

Bolt puffed out his chest and told himself: You are brave! You are a bolt of lightning! “You sound like the Baron. But he was wrong,” he said, stepping forward and pointing an accusatory finger at the Earl. “And so are you. Penguins aren’t meant to rule. They are meant to love one another and raise families.”

“Family? What a quaint notion,” the Earl said, chuckling, unfazed by Bolt’s accusatory finger-pointing. “Families are quite overrated.” He looked at his egg. “Well, mostly overrated. I do like my egg.” He plopped another fish into his mouth, then squirmed in pleasure as it rolled down his throat. “Delicious!” He wiped his mouth with the sleeve of his robe and then raised his fist and pounded it on his armrest. It made a solid thud. He frowned, and then crashed his other hand, his iron hand, atop the other armrest, which completely broke off and crashed to the ground. “Much better,” he mumbled with a smile. “Fortunately, I keep a couple dozen backup thrones in a storage room.”

“What happened to the Stranger?” asked Bolt.

“He continued his quest to find more of our kind. There aren’t many of us, but there are some. He is the greatest of us all, though. He talks to me.” He pointed to Bolt. “And he talks to you.”

“He’s never talked to me.”

“Are you sure?” The Earl giggled, ate another fish, and then giggled again. “You’ve never thought it might be fun to rule? You’ve never felt anger? Or violence? Or craved fish sticks?”

“Well, sure,” admitted Bolt. “But that’s just part of being a werepenguin.”

“Is it?” The Earl shrugged, ate two more fish, and then hiccupped. “Perhaps. Or perhaps that is him inside you. Talking.”

Bolt stared at the Earl. Those voices in his head—he had thought they were his werepenguin side, or maybe the Earl, talking to him. But was it the Stranger? Had it been the Stranger from the beginning?

All his other thoughts suddenly made sense, from the fleeting sympathies for the Earl to the many gift horses he had avoided looking in the mouth during their voyage.

Bolt gripped his ears, as if to rip them off and reach inside his head and try to grab whatever Stranger-infested thoughts might be inside, but all he did was bruise his earlobes. He released his grip and groaned, uncertain which thoughts were his and which thoughts had been planted there.

Bolt had long sensed a barrier deep inside every penguin, a crusty coating that had kept him from truly being one of them. Was that crust from the Stranger, too? Had he infected every penguin in the world?

If that were true, no penguin would be free while the Stranger lived.

The Earl spat fish parts from his mouth. “But you are here now, Bolt,” he said. “And that’s what’s important. We need you.”

“Why?”

“Because you are the chosen one!” declared the Earl, standing up. His weight was so heavy that the marble ground sagged under him. “Although I have to admit, the Stranger is slightly confused as to what you were chosen for.”

“I get that a lot,” Bolt admitted.

“The Stranger wanted you here, with us, and not living in some far-off colony. That was the challenge, wasn’t it? How could we lure you here to join our fight? It wasn’t like I could send you a plane ticket.”

“I’m not a big fan of planes anyway,” said Bolt, remembering his unpleasant journey to Brugaria.

“All penguins hate to fly unless it’s first class,” agreed the Earl. He picked up another fish, looked at it, frowned, and then tossed it away before grabbing a different fish and nibbling a fin. “Much better,” he mumbled, although Bolt hadn’t seen anything wrong with the first fish. “Where was I? Oh, right. You were living in a colony and we needed to get you here. It was a miracle, really. A bandit girl was captured and she mentioned you to one of my prison guards. One of my penguin soldiers overheard, and reported the news back to me.”

“I know the rest of the story,” said Bolt. “You made a deal for her to bring me here. But you’re hanging her father anyway.”

“A deal with a human is worth nothing to our kind,” said the Earl. “But she wasn’t planning on turning you over either.” The Earl stuffed an entire fish in his mouth, spat out a bone, and sighed happily. “You see, we’ve known everything all along. We had a spy.” The Earl looked at his egg, and the penguin soldier sitting atop it. Bolt hadn’t paid much attention to that soldier before now. As he stared, his eyes widened. The penguin had blue eyes, a color so rare in a penguin.

“Pygo?” muttered Bolt. The soldier stared straight ahead, but Bolt had no doubt it was her. His throat tightened. “Help me,” he choked.

The Earl laughed. “Help you? Don’t be absurd. She was quite helpful to me, of course. Her mission was to make sure you came back in one piece, by protecting you from sharks or overzealous penguin soldiers. And since you’re still in one piece, she did her job quite well.”

“But she thinks she’s a puppy.”

The Earl laughed. “Yes, the Stranger’s idea, once again. You can read penguin minds, of course. But can you read the mind of a whale? Or a walrus? Or a puppy? Of course not. So we did a little mind probe into her head, and convinced her that she was Pygo the puppy. It worked quite well! But as you can see, she’s all penguin now.”

Bolt reached into Pygo’s head, expecting to run into a wall and maybe a fleeting image of flea powder, but instead he was greeted by oniony layers that, when peeled back, revealed the same vicious hate that infected all the penguins of Sphen. Screaming and maniacal laughter echoed within her brain. He gasped for breath before leaping out of her brain, panting.

“We’ve been one step ahead of you, Bolt. I let you escape the dock in that silly boat—couldn’t have you accidentally impaled or anything—but I knew you’d be back soon. I ordered the penguins to let you into the castle tonight and stay out of your way. And now you are here.”

“I’ll never avoid looking a gift horse in the mouth again,” Bolt mumbled, angry at himself for not doing so.

The Earl threw the half-eaten fish he was holding straight at Bolt. Bolt caught it in his teeth without even thinking. The Earl chuckled. “We are not so unalike, you and I.”

Bolt spat out the fish. “I’m nothing like you.” He looked into the Earl’s eyes and saw his own reflection: his horn hair, his white skin, and his eyes, which were softly glowing red. “Well, maybe a little like you.”

The Earl lifted another fish from the ground and rubbed his tongue against its side. “The Stranger says we are one big werepenguin family. And I think you know that nothing is more important than family.”

Bolt stared at Vigi, sitting in the birdcage. At the Earl, giggling and burping on his throne. And then he shuffled his backpack, with its egg. He was supposed to fight the Earl with this ? The full force of his doubts hit him now, harder than ever. I am a fool.

Bolt’s stomach growled. He wasn’t just a fool, he was a hungry fool.

The Earl laughed. “Welcome to the family, Bolt.”