Creature Keepers and the Burgled Blizzard-Bristles Page 3

  Abbie woke and stretched. “Where are we?” she asked.

  “We’re close,” Jordan said. “Almost there.”

  She grabbed her backpack and rushed to join Bernard in the cockpit.

  Jordan turned his attention back to Eldon. “I want to ask you something. Don’t think I’m crazy, but do you ever wonder if Chupacabra’s right? About my grandfather.”

  Eldon looked at Jordan very seriously, and Jordan continued. “What I mean is, do you ever wonder why Chupacabra’s so sure my Grampa Grimsley’s still alive?”

  Eldon sat back and thought about this. “Chupacabra’s twisted with hatred and vengeance. He’s been obsessed with getting back at George Grimsley for so long, he’s convinced himself that George Grimsley is still out there.”

  “But—” Jordan glanced toward the cockpit, where Abbie was talking with Bernard. He suddenly spoke in a lower voice. “That’s the thing. I don’t know what it is . . . but I think I’m beginning to feel it, too.”

  “You’re not crazy. But you do have something in common with Chupacabra. You both want to believe George Grimsley’s alive. For very different reasons, of course, but just as strongly.” Eldon reached down and picked up Grampa Grimsley’s old journal off the floor where it had fallen from Jordan’s arms during the long overnight flight. He flipped through pages filled with George Grimsley’s sketches of cryptids, drawings of maps of faraway places, and handwritten entries describing his adventures and discoveries. Near the end of the journal, Eldon noticed different handwriting. He looked up at Jordan, who shrugged.

  “I’m adding some of what I’ve learned. I figured it wouldn’t matter to anyone.”

  Eldon smiled and handed the journal back. “It matters a lot. You’re continuing the Grimsley legacy. Your grandfather is still alive, Jordan. Through you.”

  As he took the journal back, something caught Jordan’s eye. Eldon’s finger. On it was his Grampa Grimsley’s crystal ring. He could see the sparkling liquid inside of it—a very special concentrated elixir of the Fountain of Youth. It seemed to dance and swirl inside the thick, clear band. Eldon noticed.

  “It’s still yours, y’know. Whenever you’re ready to claim it. Your grandfather passed it along to me to lead the Creature Keepers, but you’re its rightful owner.”

  Bernard poked his head out of the cockpit. “We’re within five miles of the signal. Switching engines to chopper mode to get over a safe drop zone.” They looked up. Abbie was standing over them, holding a pair of parachutes. She was grinning.

  “Drop zone?” Jordan said, now on his feet. “We’re not landing?”

  “Oh, you’re landing,” Abbie said, handing Eldon a parachute. She tossed the other one at her brother. “And I hope it’s a soft one for you guys.”

  Jordan and Eldon traded glances as they put on their parachutes. Bernard stepped out of the cockpit and pulled open the sliding door. The wind whipped into the Heli-Jet cabin, and they could see the vast desert below. Jordan was terrified. And confused.

  “Wait, I didn’t know we were skydiving in.” Jordan glanced at Eldon. “Did you?” Eldon shrugged and stepped toward the open door. Jordan looked back at his grinning sister. “What about you? Aren’t you coming?”

  “Nah, you got this,” Abbie said. “Go take care of the turd situation. Bernard and I are going to pop over to Japan and check on Katsu and Shika’s creature.”

  “What?” Jordan hollered over the whipping wind from the open door.

  Abbie grinned back at him. “I promised Shika. This should save us some time.”

  “Wait!” Jordan saw Eldon clearly trying to hide a smile. He turned back to his sister. “This wasn’t the plan! Jumping out of this plane was not the plan!”

  “Plan’s changed,” Abbie said, shoving the T-549 at him. “We’ll swing back to pick you up. Right after you scoop that poop!” Abbie stepped toward her brother and shoved him out the door. Then she turned to Eldon.

  “Pretty impressive, Elite Keeper.” He gave her a smile, then turned and jumped out of the Heli-Jet.

  Abbie slid the door closed and locked it. Bernard was standing in the cockpit door, his mouth hanging open.

  “What are you staring at?” she said. “Fire up those thrusters! Next stop, Japan.”

  5

  It was afternoon by the time Abbie and Bernard had crossed the Sea of Japan. Bernard flew low to the water as they approached the northern part of the country, staying close to the green treetops. Finally, he lowered the airship, touching down in a clearing deep within the Shirakami-Sanchi Forest. The two of them slid open the door and looked out at the thick, bushy beech trees and the nearby Anmon River winding its way through them.

  Abbie had been reading the Raising and Caring for Your Kappa book that Shika had given her. “It says here that most of this forest is protected and isolated. But just in case, you’d better stay with the jet and keep out of sight.”

  Bernard slumped a little. “Okay,” he said, disappointed. He nodded toward a grove. “I picked up Morris on the onboard GCPS. Follow the river into that grove. He’s in there somewhere. You sure you should be doing this?”

  “I have to. I made a promise to a girl who, despite calling me her BFF, still deserves to know that her creature is okay. Failure is not an option.” She hopped out of the Heli-Jet onto the soft forest floor, then turned and smiled at Bernard. “Also, it’ll really annoy my brother.”

  The low-lying beech-tree branches, with their feather-like leaves, gave the forest a dreamlike quality. As she made her way along the banks of the Anmon River, Abbie glanced up at the wispy green giants bending and arching over her head. The afternoon sunlight splintered through their leaves, casting a peaceful glow. The water splashed and tumbled, snaking its way through the trees, leading Abbie deeper into the forest.

  “Morris!” she called out over the whispering forest. “Morris, if you can hear me, I’m a friend of Shika’s! It’s okay for you to show yourself!”

  A strange cry answered her calls, stopping her in her tracks and sending a chill down her back. It came from just across the river, from inside a thick collection of trunks. It was a sort of guttural crowing, like a chicken with a head cold. She crossed the river, stepping on mossy stones, and reached the other side.

  “Morris?”

  “Errhhh!” The strange sound called out louder this time, from behind a cluster of trees just ahead of her. She ran to it and immediately felt her legs yank out from under her. A second later, she was trapped, hanging upside down by her ankles over the forest floor, suspended by a rope that had been pulleyed through the branches overhead.

  She wanted to scream, but stopped herself when she was faced with her captor. He was a human boy with Asian features. And he looked just as frightened as she was.

  “Who are you?” Abbie yelled at him. “Let me down right now!”

  “Who are you? This forest is protected. You are not supposed to be here!”

  “Neither are you,” Abbie said. The two of them eyed each other suspiciously, neither wanting to be the first to speak.

  “You were yelling for the Kappa!” the boy finally blurted out.

  “Well, you were making weird Kappa noises! Ha! Busted!”

  “How do you know what Morris sounds like? Aha! Busted back!”

  Abbie reached behind her and yanked open her backpack. The contents tumbled out onto the ground, including Raising and Caring for Your Kappa. The boy picked it up and looked at it. “Where did you get this?”

  “From Shika. Not that it’s any of your business.”

  “You don’t know Shika. I know Shika.”

  “Excuse me, but she and I are besties.” Abbie couldn’t believe the words that just came out of her mouth. She hoped it was the blood rushing to her head. “I’m here on an official Creature Keeper mission, if that means anything to you.”

  “I know all about the Creature Keepers. But how do I know you know about the Creature Keepers?”

  There was a snapping sound behi
nd them. Abbie suddenly dropped to the ground. The skinny boy spun around. Bernard stood holding the cut rope.

  “I can vouch for her,” he said calmly. “Also, she has a shiny badge.”

  Abbie stood up and shoved her Elite Keeper badge in the boy’s face.

  A moment later, Zaya was leading Abbie and Bernard along the riverside, deeper into the beech-tree forest, until they finally came to a small clearing beside the river.

  There in front of them was a large, stone statue of a creature. It had a turtle-like shell for a back, thick scaly-carved legs, and an oversized head.

  “Okay,” Abbie said. “Nice statue. Now where is the actual Kappa?”

  “This is him!” Zaya said. “This is how I found him!”

  Abbie and Bernard exchanged a worried look. She stepped to the statue and touched it. It was solid rock. She looked it over closely, studying its features. They perfectly matched the description and pictures in her book. Its face had two large, lazy eyes and a beak-like nose. And its head was deeply concave at the top, like a soup bowl. Its webbed claws were raised, as if trying to reach into the bowl, or protect it. That’s when Abbie noticed something. The only thing on the entire statue not made of stone was around the statue’s wrist. One of Jordan’s GCPS tracker bracelets. She removed it and showed it to Bernard. “He’s telling the truth. I think this is Morris.”

  “Can you help him?” Zaya said.

  “For a river cryptid, he’s pretty far from the river,” Bernard said.

  Abbie was scanning the Raising and Caring for Your Kappa book. A terrible feeling had come over her as she imagined telling Shika how they found her creature. “Here,” she said, consulting the book. “The deep indentation in his head is called a sara. It needs to stay filled with water. It says here that if it empties . . . he turns to stone.”

  “Is it permanent?” Bernard asked sadly.

  “That depends.” Abbie’s nose was in the book. “Within each monthly cycle of the moon, he can refill and come back to life only two times. If he spills a third time before this phase of the moon rises again, he stays stone forever.” She held up a page of the book and showed them a picture of a half-lit moon. It was shaped like a turtle’s shell.

  “That’s the First Quarter phase,” Bernard said. “It comes every four weeks. And if I’m not mistaken, the next one rises in seven days.” Abbie and Zaya both looked at him. “I’m a bit of an astronomy buff.” Bernard shrugged.

  “So, depending on how many times he’s spilled this month, we might be able to bring him back to life by refilling his sara,” Zaya said.

  “What are we waiting for?” Abbie suddenly exclaimed.

  Bernard and Zaya leaped into action, pushing hard against the stone turtle cryptid, trying to move him toward the nearby river. Bernard was a very strong creature, and not just in odor. He was quite muscular under his smelly fur. And yet he couldn’t budge the immobilized cryptid. “This thing is a lot heavier than it looks,” he said between grunts.

  As the two of them continued with all their might, Abbie set down her book, walked to the edge of the babbling Anmon River, bent down, and scooped the cool water with her hands. She carried it back, then gently released it into the empty bowl atop Morris’s head. Bernard and Zaya noticed, stopped pushing, and stepped back.

  A glossy dampness spread down through Morris’s stone face, as if he’d sprung a leak from the inside. It steadily transformed the dry, brown solid rock to moist, bluish-green scales, claws, and shell. His large, heavy-lidded eyes blinked and looked around. Then they fell directly on Abbie.

  “Hello, master,” the Kappa said to her in a soft, croaking voice. His rounded beak smacked dryly. “I seem to be parched. Might I trouble you for a drink of water?”

  6

  A howling wind slammed against Jordan and Eldon as they made their way across a vast desert of Xinjiang. The two of them had been walking for an hour across a bare and rugged plain, the gusts slowing every step they took.

  “Just keep moving forward!” Eldon shouted back. “And keep one eye on that tracker gizmo of yours!”

  Jordan’s mobile GCPS tracker device was presumably pointing in the direction of the collar Chupacabra had swallowed. Unfortunately, that direction was also leading them head-on into an approaching sandstorm that barreled toward them across the flat, barren land.

  As the wind and sand picked up, they huddled together tightly and braced themselves. The sand blotted out the sun overhead and nearly buried the two of them as it passed. Then, suddenly, a quiet calm settled over the desert. Jordan blew the sand off his device and stared down at it. “C’mon,” he hollered. “Let’s keep going while we can!”

  Eldon got up and knocked the sand out of his ears. “I have to say, I wasn’t too keen on that newfangled system you and Doris installed. But even if I don’t completely understand it, I’m glad we have it in place. Especially now.”

  “Between those wandering cryptids and whatever we find out here in the desert, this gizmo of mine will be the key to us figuring out what’s going on,” Jordan said, staring down at his device as he walked. “You’ll be thanking me! I still don’t get why you’re so against technology, anyway.”

  “It’s a load of dung!”

  Jordan looked up, irritated. “Hey! That’s not very nice.”

  Eldon was peering through his beat-up-looking binoculars as he pointed. “No! Up ahead! I think I see a load of dung!”

  In the distance was a small brown blob, the only other object besides themselves for miles and miles. Jordan and Eldon ran toward it. Soon they were standing over what looked to be a greenish-brown pile. Eldon immediately dropped to his belly and began sniffing it. Jordan made a face.

  “Ew. Chupa-poop. So that’s bad, right?”

  Eldon took another good whiff, then put on a pair of rubber gloves and gently poked the dropping. Jordan could tell Eldon was utilizing his skills in spooring—an ancient tracking technique very popular with Badger Rangers. After his inspection, Eldon offered his analysis. “The sample is surprisingly moist for its environment, which would indicate a freshness. And yet it lacks the pungent odor of a recent deposit.”

  “Well, pungent or moist or whatever, it’s most definitely our dropping. Look.” Tightly bound to the poop was Syd’s beat-up, half-digested, weather-worn GCPS tracking device. “That’s our tracker, which means Chupacabra could be alive.”

  “And he could be anywhere,” Eldon added. He stood and wandered a few feet away, carefully spooring the sand for tracks. “Strange. As fresh as that sample is, I see no evidence whatsoever of Chupacabra.”

  Jordan pulled out the T-549 pooper-scooper and put on his rubber gloves. “In these conditions, any tracks would’ve been blown away.”

  “Yes,” Eldon said. “So why didn’t it blow away the scat, as well?”

  Jordan thought about this, then turned his attention to the scat at hand. He knelt down and looked closer at his GCPS collar tightly wound around the pile. He noticed a small transmitter box attached to the collar. Printed on it were five letters: CHUPA. “That is not part of my design,” he said to himself. Jordan pulled at the collar, but it didn’t budge. He pulled out his pocketknife, opened the blade and jabbed at the turd with the tip.

  RUMMMBBBLLLE! A mild tremor suddenly shook the ground all around them. Jordan dropped his knife and looked up at Eldon, who was still spooring for nearby tracks. “Earthquake?” Jordan said.

  “Not normal for this region.”

  Jordan swallowed hard. A cold fear grew in his stomach as he imagined something awful. “Soil-Soles?” The two of them stared across the desert plain in every direction, searching for a sign of Chupacabra armed—or rather footed—with one of the Sasquatch’s earth-rumbling Soil-Soles. Thankfully, there didn’t seem to be a single other living thing for what appeared to be hundreds of miles.

  “I don’t think so,” Eldon said. “There’s no one out here but us.”

  Jordan turned his attention back to the pile. He took the
knife and poked the turd again, but harder this time.

  ZAPOW! A flash of blue-white lightning suddenly sent Jordan flying into the air, knocking him back. Jordan shook the sand out of his hair and tried to sit up as Eldon ran toward him, his miniature first-aid kit out of his backpack and at the ready.

  “Did you see that?” Jordan asked.

  “Don’t move,” Eldon answered. “You were nearly struck by lightning, and could be in shock.”

  “That’s the thing—I think the lightning shot out of that turd!”

  “Okay, you need to just rest for a minute.” He held Jordan’s wrist and checked his pulse. “You’re clearly dazed, and a little confused.”

  Jordan looked past Eldon’s concerned expression at the scat lying on the desert floor. He’d seen a lot of weird things since he’d met the Creature Keepers. A lightning-charged pile of poo didn’t seem out of the question.

  7

  Abbie watched as Morris dropped yet another slimy fish on the pile at her feet. “Thanks again, Morris. But you can stop bringing me fish now. I need you to listen to me.”

  “As you wish, master.” Morris began to bow to her. As he did a splash of water sloshed over the top of his head.

  “Morris, no! What are you doing?”

  “It is my tradition to bow to my new master, master.”

  “Okay, couple of things. If you bow, you spill. And if you spill again before the next Quarter Moon rises—you could, uh. It would just be bad. So no bowing, got it?”

  “As you wish, master.”

  “Which brings me to my second thing. I’m not your master. I’m a friend of Katsu and Shika. Your Keepers. They asked me to come check on you, that’s all. Got it?”

  “You replenished my sara,” Morris said. “You are my master now.”

  “No, Morris. I mean, yes, I did that, but Katsu and Shika, they’re—”

  “They emptied my sara. You filled it. You are my master now.”

  Abbie stared into his large, glassy eyes. Zaya, who had been pacing near the river, looked over at him.