War on Whimsy

  Just as the arrow turned black, Nicola's head broke through the surface of the water.

  She was first up. She pulled the glass bubble off her head and treaded water as she breathed in air so pure and sweet, she felt like she was drinking it.

  Oh my goodness, this is . . .

  The rest of the Space Brigade emerged from the water around her.

  She smiled as she saw the expressions of amazement and delight on their faces as they gazed around them.

  "Welcome to the Planet of Whimsy," she said.

  CHAPTER 19

  The Space Brigade pulled off their helmets and took a look at their surroundings. All of them were struggling to find the right words to describe Whimsy.

  "Oh, it's just . . . !" said Katie.

  "This is . . . this is . . . this is . . ." repeated Sean over and over.

  "I have never seen anything so . . . so . . . I don't know," said Shimlara.

  "Beautiful," said Greta. "Except beautiful seems too ordinary a word. It's . . ."

  "Ineffable," said Nicola.

  They all stared at her as if she were speaking another language.

  "It's a word!" Nicola said defiantly. "I saw it in the dictionary one day when I was looking up how to spell inertia. Ineffable means something that you can't describe. I didn't think I'd ever get to use that word, but that's what this is--ineffable."

  She gestured at their surroundings. They were in the very center of a brilliant turquoise lake. Waterfalls tumbled over mossy rocks. Birds soared above them, singing like church bells. In the distance, they could see velvet green mountains. The sky was the color of a ripe plum. There was only one sun, just like on Earth, except this sun was four times the size of Earth's sun, and it shone beams of intense scarlet-gold light. Curving over the sky like a rainbow, and hiding Volcomania's suns and volcanos from view, was the halo of pink atmospheric dust. From here, you would never know that Whimsy was attached to a planet like Volcomania.

  BOOM! BOOM! BOOM!

  A shocking sound ripped through the peaceful landscape.

  One of the velvet green mountains exploded inward as if a giant fist had punched it. Clouds of smoke billowed black against the plum-colored sky. There was a hammering noise that sounded like machine guns.

  The Space Brigade swam closer together and formed a tight little circle of fear. The joy on their faces vanished. They'd forgotten they were in a war zone.

  "Let's get to the shore," said Nicola.

  As they swam, more explosions rocked the lake like an earthquake. Suddenly Nicola was furious with Volcomania. What right did it have to declare war on this beautiful planet? It was like a big bully picking on an adorable child.

  "Leave them alone!" she cried at the sky.

  Fortunately, it didn't take them long to make it to the sandy shore. They unsnapped their scuba diving suits and stepped out, their clothes completely dry.

  "Maybe we should hide our suits here instead of carrying them around everywhere we go," said Katie.

  "Good idea," said Nicola.

  They found a cave behind a waterfall and hid their suits under a pile of rocks.

  "I hope we get to use these," said Shimlara, her voice filled with emotion, as she hid the three extra suits they'd brought along for Georgio, Mully, and Squid.

  "Of course we'll use them," said Nicola.

  "Mmmm--" began Greta with a pessimistic look on her face but Nicola glared at her, making a sign with her finger and thumb like a zipper pulling her mouth shut. For once Greta stopped talking.

  "We have to remember we're still undercover as a news crew," said Nicola. "So don't forget your press passes."

  "No problem," said Tyler. "As long as no one looks too closely at our equipment." He lifted his battered and soggy camera gear onto his shoulder.

  "What will I be now that I'm not the bus driver?" said Shimlara.

  "You can be my assistant," said Greta. "That means you get me cups of coffee and do my photocopying and faxing."

  Shimlara raised her eyebrows. "Seeing as I've never even heard of the words coffee, photocopying, or faxing, I don't think I'd make much of an assistant."

  "You can be our bodyguard," said Nicola. "It makes sense seeing as you're so much taller than us."

  Shimlara liked that idea immediately. She lifted her fists like a fighter and spoke in a deep, weirdly accented voice. "You wanna take me on? Do ya? Well, do ya?"

  She chuckled as if she'd just said something that they would all agree was hilarious. Then she saw the rest of the Space Brigade staring at her blankly. "You know! It's a line from that movie Galaxy Bust! You know, the part where the bad guy is talking to himself in the mirror? You must have seen it. I've seen it fourteen times. Every single person I know has seen Galaxy Bust!"

  "We don't get to see movies from other planets on Earth," explained Nicola.

  Shimlara dropped her fists. "Well, anyway, I'll be your security guard, no problem. You're all under my protection. No one gets hurt on my watch."

  "I don't need you to protect me," said Sean.

  "It's just a role, Sean," said Nicola. "It's not real. Remember?"

  "Yeah, I know that," muttered Sean. "I'm just saying . . ."

  Shimlara winked at Nicola over Sean's head.

  "I saw that!" said Sean.

  KABOOM!

  There was another explosion from outside the cave. It was even louder than the ones they'd heard before.

  "I think I miss the volcanoes," said Katie.

  "Shhhh." Tyler held up his hand. "Did you hear that?"

  "The explosion?" said Sean. "A bit hard to miss."

  "No," said Tyler. "It sounded like someone calling for help."

  "I can't hear anything," said Greta. "You're imagining it."

  "I am not imagining it," said Tyler. Nicola had never seen him speak so assertively. "Be quiet, all of you, and listen!"

  Everyone stopped talking. There was silence. The bombs had stopped and they could hear the birds singing again.

  Nicola went to speak and then she heard it. They all heard it.

  It was someone screaming. A woman's voice, raw with panic.

  "Help! Please!"

  The Space Brigade ran.

  CHAPTER 20

  Tyler took the lead.

  "This way!" he called, running out of the cave and around the shore of the lake.

  The voice rang out again. "Is anyone there? I need help!"

  "We're coming!" called Tyler.

  They scrambled over mossy rocks and ran along a wooden bridge that crossed a bubbling creek. Suddenly they were in a forest. Trees with creamy, papery bark and giant red leaves towered above them, and Nicola caught a glimpse of small, big-eyed animals scurrying through the branches.

  Tyler came to an abrupt stop. "I don't know which way to go," he said.

  They all stopped, breathing heavily and trying to listen for the voice. They had come to a small clearing. Numerous trails ran off the clearing in different directions. "I think I can hear children," said Katie, her face creased with worry.

  Nicola could hear shouts and cries in the distance but she had no idea which direction they were coming from.

  "Smoke!" said Shimlara suddenly. "This way!" She took off down one of the trails. They ran behind her.

  Now Nicola could hear the distressed cries of very young children.

  "I want my Mommy! "

  "I can't see! "

  "I hurt myself! "

  The Space Brigade picked up their pace.

  The trail ended in a small hollow.

  "Oh, thank goodness you're here!" A young woman with a long, blond braid down her back came running out of the smoke toward them. She was clutching a wilting yellow flower and wearing a rose-colored dress with puffy sleeves and a big sash tied in a bow at the back. Even though her face was stained with tears and soot, and there was a bloody gash down one cheek, you could see she was very beautiful.

  "They've attacked my preschool with a bubble-bomb!" she cried. "The
re are twenty children in there! Twenty of the most adorable small children! We were reading stories when little Camille noticed this yellow buttercup through the window. Well, she loves flowers! They all do! So naturally, I ran straight out to pick it for her and when I turned around--kaboom! Bubbles were everywhere! It was impossible to see a thing! It was so frightening! How could this happen?"

  She clung to Tyler's arm.

  "I--don't know," stammered Tyler. He seemed overcome by the woman's beauty and the strange scene in front of them.

  Through the haze of smoke, Nicola could see an enormous mass of quivering, frothy, white soap bubbles. It was like a giant bubble bath or a washing machine had overflowed.

  "My preschool is under all those bubbles!" babbled the woman. "We have to get the children out before those awful soldiers arrive! That's what the Volcomanian Army does! They drop a bubble-bomb from the air, and while everyone is trapped--confused, blinded, and sticky!--they send the soldiers in to capture them! It's pure evil!"

  Without even looking at one another, as if they were responding to some unheard order, every member of the Space Brigade ran straight into the mass of bubbles.

  Nicola was immediately disoriented. All she could see was white froth. It was like being trapped in the middle of a cloud.

  "Where are you, kids?" she shouted, batting helplessly away at the bubbles. Her eyes were stinging, and her mouth was filled with the taste of soap.

  "We're all still sitting on the story mat!"

  "We can't see anything!"

  Nicola turned toward the voices and slipped, painfully banging her knee against something.

  "I think the entrance is this way!" Nicola heard Sean's voice in front of her.

  Nicola got back up to her feet and followed his voice, up what seemed to be a small step and in through a doorway.

  "My clothes are all bubbly!" The voice seemed to come from somewhere near Nicola's feet. She got down on her hands and knees and crawled slowly forward, calling out, "Where are you?" Suddenly her hand clutched a small foot.

  "That tickles!"

  Nicola pushed away the bubbles to reveal a cheekily grinning little girl scooping bubbles out of her hair. "This is a fun game!" she said. "Is it like hide-and-seek?"

  "Sort of." Nicola stood up. "Come with me and I'll take you to your teacher."

  The little girl stood up and grabbed her hand. Slipping and sliding, blindly trying to find her way back to the front door, Nicola managed to drag her out of the mass of bubbles and back into the clearing.

  She turned to see the rest of the Space Brigade emerging from the school. Sean had a child sitting happily astride his shoulders, while Shimlara, being the tallest, had managed to scoop up two at once. Apart from being covered in bubbles, so they all looked like miniature snowmen, the children seemed perfectly happy.

  "Oh! Oh! My darlings! My sweeties!" The preschool teacher tried to hug them all at once.

  There were still voices coming from inside the preschool, so Nicola and the others brushed the bubbles from their eyes and ran straight back in to pull out more children.

  This time Nicola found a little boy humming happily to himself in the corner.

  "I'm staying here," he told Nicola. "These bubbles are beautiful!"

  "No, you're not," said Nicola firmly, grabbing him by the elbow and pulling him outside.

  "How many are still in there?" asked Greta, grunting with relief as she deposited a rather plump child at the teacher's feet.

  The teacher looked confused.

  "Oh, I'm not sure. Let me see, we're still missing dear little Sebastian, aren't we? Oh, no we're not--here he is! Yes, Sebastian, I'm sure we'll find your violin. Have you glorious people come across Sebastian's violin by any chance?"

  "That's not important right now!" Greta was exasperated. "We need to know how many more children we need to save!"

  "Yes, yes, of course you do," said the teacher. "Children are far more important than violins! It's just that I can't seem to count the children! They're like marbles, rolling this way and that."

  Greta sighed and wiped a layer of bubbly froth from her face. "Right!" she cried like an army officer. "All children line up in front of me now!" The children jumped and immediately ran to obey her orders.

  Greta counted them efficiently. "Sixteen, seventeen, eighteen, nineteen. Nineteen! So that means we're still missing one child, right?"

  "Yes," said the teacher. "I definitely have twenty children in my class because that's how many strawberry frosted cupcakes I make on strawberry frosted cupcake day!"

  The Space Brigade renewed their efforts--running back into the preschool, slipping and sliding, tearing their fingernails, and grazing their knees as they searched through the bubbles for the last missing child.

  After ten minutes, just when Nicola was beginning to feel quite frantic, the teacher suddenly cried, "Oh, I forgot Jerry Sweet!" The Space Brigade went back outside.

  "Jerry Sweet!" said the teacher happily. "I always make him an extra strawberry frosted cupcake because he loves them so much, so I let you have two, don't I, Jerry?"

  The fat-cheeked little boy whom Greta had saved nodded and licked his lips solemnly.

  "So that means I must have nineteen children in my class, not twenty!" said the teacher. "Goodness, what a lot of complex mathematics I'm doing today!"

  "So we've definitely got everyone?" double-checked Nicola.

  "Yes," said the teacher. "Yes, you do! You're heroes!"

  "What's that?" Tyler lifted his head. Nicola couldn't hear a thing. Tyler seemed to have developed superhuman hearing.

  And then she heard a pounding of footsteps coming their way like a great herd of elephants.

  "Is it Volcomanian soldiers already?" asked Sean.

  The teacher looked terrified. "Oh, quick, quick, we must hide, get back under the bubbles, darlings!"

  At that moment, a crowd of people poured into the clearing and the teacher's face broke into a smile.

  "It's not soldiers!" she said happily. "It's the parents!"

  CHAPTER 21

  The parents were half-crazed with fear. They stumbled and tripped and shouted. When they saw their children, they grabbed them in suffocating embraces and repeated their names over and over.

  "We expected the worst when we heard the preschool had been hit," said one of the mothers to the teacher. "But you managed to save them all, you clever girl, Rosie!"

  "No, no!" said Rosie. "It wasn't me, it was these wonderful apparitions! It was like magic. I called for help, and they appeared with a puff of smoke and a sprinkle of stardust! They set to work, rescuing the children with the use of their superpowers! Look at them, aren't they lovely! Someone must paint their portraits and sculpt their statues!"

  The Space Brigade squirmed with embarrassment as the parents dropped their children and ran to hug them.

  "We are forever in your debt!"

  "How shall we ever repay you?"

  "Shouldn't we get out of here?" asked Tyler. "Won't the Volcomanian soldiers be here soon?"

  "See how intelligent they are!" beamed Rosie.

  "We shall take you to our village and give you a feast in your honor!" cried the parents.

  "Oh, that's really not nec--" began Nicola, but the children had already grabbed them with their sticky hands and were dragging them away from the bubble-covered preschool and down a pathway that led out of the forest.

  "What magical planet are you from?" asked one of the parents.

  Nicola decided it would be best if they stayed undercover. Although these people were clearly not Volcomanians, she had learned from her experiences on the Planet of Shobble that you could never be too careful.

  "We're journalists from Earth," she said. "We're reporting on the war.We don't have any magical powers at all and we're definitely not superheroes--we were just happy to help."

  The parents refused to believe that magic wasn't involved in some way.

  "It was magic that put you in the right pl
ace at the right time," they agreed.

  "Just good luck," said Sean.

  "Exactly," said one of the fathers with dark hair, a pale face, and soulful eyes. "Luck. Magic. Same thing. I once tried to write a poem on exactly that topic. It didn't really come together. I must try again." He wandered off, pulling a small notepad from his pocket and a pencil from behind his ear.

  One of the mothers was looking at Shimlara. "You're not from the planet Earth, are you, my dear? You're far too tall. Actually, there's something familiar about your lovely young face."

  "I'm from Globagaskar," said Shimlara.

  "Ah." The mother frowned. Then her face cleared. "You must be Georgio and Mully Gorgioskio's daughter! You're an exact mix of the two of them. Georgio's nose. Mully's mouth." The woman looked around excitedly. "Are your delightful parents here, too?"

  "Ah, no, they're not," said Shimlara. "Well, we think they could be here on Whimsy, but, um--"

  She glanced at Nicola, obviously not sure how much she should say.

  "How do you know Georgio and Mully?" Nicola asked the mother.

  "They visited Whimsy the day after Volcomania declared war on us," said the woman. "They were so charming! They gave us a list of things we should do to try and prevent the war. You see, my husband is Henry Sweet--he's the new president of Whimsy, although it does keep slipping his mind. Where is Henry?"

  "Right behind you, my love!" A man wearing a beret, with spatters of paint across his face, was walking behind them, carrying the little plump boy who liked cupcakes on his hip. Nicola recognized the man from the pictures that XYZ40 had shown them at the intelligence briefing.

  "This is Georgio and Mully's daughter," said the woman.

  Henry nearly dropped his son as he bowed deeply.

  "There are no words that can express my gratitude for the gift of my son's life. It plunges deeper than the ocean, it soars higher than an eagle."

  "Ah, that's okay," said Shimlara. "Um, your wife was saying that my parents were here?"

  "Indeed they were. They could only stay for a day. They had to get back to Globagaskar. They said they had a small son who was being babysat by his grandma and a daughter who was away on the Planet of Shobble." He looked at Shimlara and Nicola, and said, "Well, you must be the Space Brigade!"

  Their cover was blown.

  "Georgio told us the whole story of how the Space Brigade was formed. He's very proud of you." He looked confused. "So you're also journalists? As well as undertaking daring missions around the galaxy? Goodness, you're busy."