168. Samples of Pipnoshers
After vanishing from Petey’s palace, we reappeared in a wood rife with bluebells. How beautiful it was! They are my favorite flowers, but we had no time to enjoy them.
“Fine, Arley, now you’ve threatened these mortals and you will want to make your threats good. But just what do you mean to do?” asked Uncle Gentlerain. I didn’t bother to ask him why he was with us. I assumed he wanted to protect me, or fairyland, the universe, or something of the kind.
“The good thing is Arley hasn’t specified what he means to do,” said Alpin. “That means he has time to think of something.”
“Whatever I do, I don’t want any violence.”
“She spat at you, kid. That’s like throwing a glove in your face. You’ll have to send her your seconds to arrange a duel,” said Alpin.
“No way!” said Uncle Gentlerain. “Some of us are such bunglers she might win.”
“If you mean me,” said Alpin, “you are probably right, wee little bee transformed into an attractive fellow of misleadingly amiable aspect. But it’s clear Arley has to attack. Diplomacy is done.”
“I don’t want to attack, but I have to defend myself. Or rather, my position. I could just run off and leave things as they are and laze here among the bluebells. But there’s Jane to consider. This won’t be an attack. It will be a defence. After all, that creature spat her poison at us and tried to thrust her pipnoshers on us. That’s what that cloud was, wasn’t it?”
“We have Viruta’s DNA. I heard her say that,” said Alpin. “I don’t think we have Petey’s though.”
Suddenly Jane appeared, creeping out from behind a tree. How she had managed to follow us, I ignored. But there she was, and without a word, she thrust one of her children at us.
“Don’t tell me it’s Petey’s,” I said, staring at the child.
Jane nodded crossly.
“This isn’t a pipnosher, is it? I mean, it’s not one of Viruta’s?”
Hearing her enemy’s name, Jane growled. I think what she growled was a no.
“I have some pipnoshers in captivity,” said Uncle Gentlerain, intervening quickly. “They should come in handy. Know your enemy, you know.” He returned Petey’s child to Jane quietly and with a reassuring gesture.
Next Uncle Gentlerain then drew a square in the air with his index finger. A glass case appeared floating just where he had drawn its outline. Within it a much magnified creature was trapped. It had eight black arms like a spider. They grew out of its back and ended in pincers large in proportion to reach for sunflower seeds with. The creature had a short, broad torso out of which grew two little feet and a large flat head with a pale face as round as the full moon that had two white horns on it. When the creature wanted to fly, its balloon-like head lit up like a light bulb and lifted it in the air. By moving its arms, it advanced swimming in the direction of its choice. Its eyes were just as round as its face, with beady black pupils, and it also had teeth cracked from cracking sunflower seeds. The only resemblance the pipnosher bore to its supposed father, Petey, was in the clothes it wore. On its round head rested a black beret.
It was not screaming and kicking for sunflower seeds. It had a whole basket of them next to it. All it did was look back at us curiously.
“I have more,” said Uncle Gentlerain, and he showed us a case with three other specimens. “These will have to be separated soon, for when they are not poisoning others they fight among themselves for sunflower seeds, even when they have tons at their disposal.”
“We have to exterminate these things,” muttered Alpin.
I knew we were dealing with vermin, but I didn’t like the way what Alpin had said sounded. What I wanted to do was find something that would make the poison they spat innocuous.
“What we need is some kind of an…an antidote,” I said.
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