Another Whole Nother Story Read online

  Mr. Cheeseman thought for a moment, running the name over and over in his head. “Penny Nickelton. It’s both complimentary and contradictory, depending on how you look at it.”

  “Exactly,” said Penny with a satisfied smile.

  Gerard had originally wanted to go first but now was happy that, in his opinion anyway, the best had been saved for last.

  “My new name is the bestest of all,” said Gerard proudly.

  “It’s the best of all,” said Penny.

  “But you haven’t even heard it yet,” said Gerard, who had given himself such names as Luke Tuna, Po Ming, Chance Showers, and just a couple of weeks ago, Gerard LaFontaine. “My new name is …”

  Gerard paused, as he always did, for dramatic effect.

  “… Captain Fabulous!” Gerard extended his arms out in front of him and performed a quick fly-around, complete with Mach 5 sound effects, before coming in for a forceful landing as if he were about to face off against an army of renegade robots.

  Captain Jibby laughed and shook his head in disbelief. Juanita snorted and slapped her knee. Three-Eyed Jake treated Gerard to an exaggerated salute. Gerard saluted right back, then took flight once more while declaring loudly, “Captain Fabulous and his trusty sidekick, Rat-Face Roy, will save the world from evil villains everywhere.”

  “Uh, I don’t think so,” said Penny.

  “What do you mean?” asked the confused superhero when he had touched down again.

  “What I mean is, there is absolutely no way on earth I am going to refer to you as Captain Fabulous.”

  “Why not?”

  “Yeah, why not?” said Rat-Face Roy.

  “For the same reason you wouldn’t want to call me Queen of the Universe.”

  “Well,” Mr. Cheeseman interjected. “Perhaps there’s an easy solution to this. Maybe Captain Fabulous has an alter ego.”

  “What’s an alter ego?” asked Gerard.

  “It’s a superhero’s true but secret identity,” said Chip. “You know, the way that Superman is really Clark Kent.”

  “Superman is really Clark Kent?”

  “It’s pretty obvious,” said Penny. “To everyone but you and Lois Lane.”

  “Okay,” Gerard conceded. “Captain Fabulous’s alter ego will be … Teddy Roosevelt.”

  Penny scoffed so hard she almost lost her balance. Sometimes she wondered if her little brother did things with the express purpose of annoying her. “What? You can’t name yourself after one of our most famous presidents. People will think you’re crazy.”

  “Not people in 1668,” said Teddy. “In 1668, he hasn’t even been borned yet. Has he, Dad?”

  “Uh, no,” said Mr. Cheeseman. “He hasn’t been … borned.”

  “Someday, when he is, people will think he was named after me,” said Teddy.

  “I think it’s disrespectful and in poor taste,” said Penny.

  “I don’t know,” said Chip. “Somehow I think the other Teddy Roosevelt would have approved.”

  A shrill sound interrupted the controversy and all eyes shot to the sky, where Dizzy was standing near the very top of the cottonwood tree, waving his arm wildly and whistling loudly.

  “Smoke!” yelled Dizzy. “I see smoke!”

  Off in the distance, a good five miles away, a single pillar of thin gray smoke was angling into the breezy, pale blue October sky.

  “There, that should do it,” said Mr. Cheeseman as he, Jibby, and Sammy lowered the ceiling panel back onto the LVR. “As long as it doesn’t rain, we should be okay.” For the next thirty minutes or so, everyone was put to work gathering leaves and branches, which were used to completely cover the LVR until it looked like nothing more than a large, egg-shaped mound of brush.

  Mr. Cheeseman hid the fear and uncertainty in his heart by decorating his face with a confident smile. Would he be able to repair a very modern machine with only spare parts from 1668? Had he doomed them all to spend the rest of their lives in a time without electricity, indoor plumbing, bubble gum, and doughnuts? Would his children once more be able to hug the mother they loved so dearly?

  Manning the compass, the doubtful, smiling scientist led the group through the dense forest in the direction Dizzy had pointed. Along the way, he jotted down notes on their exact position so that once they were able to secure the materials they would need to fix the LVR they would actually have a way to find it again.

  “Are you sure this is the past?” asked Teddy. “It doesn’t look very old-timey around here. It just looks sharp and stickery.”

  Several hundred years later, the land beneath their feet would be home to a large housing development, two car dealerships, and an enormous supermall featuring no fewer than three coffee shops and a place that sells deep-fried cheese. But for now, the ground on which they traveled had perhaps never before been trodden upon by human beings and the going was not easy.

  “Are we almost there?” Teddy whined. “I’m hungry. And my feet hurt.”

  “Well, maybe you should turn into Captain Fabulous,” said Penny. “Then you could fly to the nearest town and get something to eat.”

  “Hey, could you bring me back a burger and fries, Captain Fabulous?” said Chip.

  “And a strawberry shake, if you don’t mind.” Penny laughed.

  “Stop making fun of me,” Teddy insisted.

  With a sigh, Mr. Cheeseman stopped and turned toward the squabble. “Chip. Penny. That’s not helpful right now.”

  “Okay.”

  Sammy took a knee next to Teddy. “Would you like a ride?” he asked.

  “What about your bad back, Sammy?” Penny asked the strong man.

  “Ah, it’s all right. How much could he weigh? He’s not the size of tuppence.” Sammy hoisted Teddy onto his shoulders and then, with a plaintive wail, stood up, causing Teddy’s head to smack into a low-hanging branch.

  “Ow!”

  “Sorry,” said Sammy, stepping aside. “How’s that?”

  “Well, my feet don’t hurt anymore,” said Teddy, rubbing his head.

  “It’s the blasted curse,” said Jake, narrowing his one remaining eye.

  “Or it could have been a simple accident,” Mr. Cheeseman suggested.

  Aristotle stepped forward, his eyes dancing wildly beneath the shadow of his bushy eyebrows. “There are no such things as accidents,” he said in a dramatic, whispery voice. “Everything happens for a reason.”

  “I don’t understand this curse business,” said Chip. “I mean, how did it all get started anyway?”

  Jibby stroked his beard and drew in a deep breath. “Well,” he said. “If you really want to know …” He reached into a small leather pouch attached to his belt and retrieved a shiny trophy-shaped cup, its base ringed with strange symbols. “Are you familiar with Odin?” he asked.

  “I went to kindergarten with a kid named Odin,” said Teddy.

  “That was Aidan,” said Penny.

  “Yes, but his last name was Odin.”

  “His name was Aidan Odin?” said Chip.

  Jibby let out a sigh of mild frustration. “I’m talking about Odin, the god of Norse mythology. It is said that this chalice was passed directly from his hand to the great king of Denmark, Harald Wartooth.”

  “Wartooth. Now that’s a funny name,” said Rat-Face Roy.

  Jibby ignored the sock puppet interruption and continued with the story. “The cup was to be used by Harald and his descendants after every battle to offer a toast to those who had died. It gave those brave warriors a proper sendoff to the Viking heaven known as Valhalla, ensuring their entry.

  “For centuries, the cup was passed down through Harald’s children and grandchildren and great-grandchildren and—”

  “Okay, we get the idea,” Penny interrupted.

  “Yes, right. Until it ended up in the hands of Horwendill, the ruler of Jutland, a region of Denmark. But on the very night that Horwendill was murdered by his own brother, the cup went missing. Since that day, he who wrongfully poss
esses the White Gold Chalice is subject to the dreadful curse, brought upon, they say, by all those lost souls stranded at Valhalla’s gate.” Jibby returned the cup to its pouch and tied the drawstring tightly. “And that,” he said, “is the story of the curse.”

  “Well, that should be easy to fix,” said Teddy. “Why don’t you just let someone steal it from you and then the curse will be on them? One time I left my lunch box on the bus and the next day it was gone. I think Robbie Bentler took it but I could never prove it so I didn’t put a curse on him or anything. Anyway, you should try it with that white gold thingy. Just go into a store or a restaurant, set it down for a minute, and someone will take it.”

  “Won’t work,” said Jibby. “The curse is nontransferable, I’m afraid. Were someone to steal the chalice from me, they’d become every bit as cursed as we are, but we’d remain so as well. So we must take very good care of this cup until we’re able to place it in the hands of its rightful owner, the Duke of Jutland, Horwendill’s natural heir.”

  “There’s still one thing I don’t get,” said Penny. “Why would you want to steal something that had a curse on it?”

  “Didn’t want to,” said Jibby. “But another pirate, one I mistakenly thought to be my friend, had robbed us blind the week before and left us penniless and hungry. A man can lose all sense of reason when he’s hungry. But I learned my lesson, I assure you. That’s why I’ve vowed to put my thievin’ days behind me.”

  Chip suddenly stopped, spun around, and scanned the woods behind them. “Did you hear that?”

  “I didn’t hear anything,” said Penny.

  “Something’s out there.” Chip was right, because whatever that something was moved again, rustling leaves and crackling twigs as it went.

  “Nothing to worry about,” said Jibby, his eyes darting from tree to tree. He casually popped open the blade of his Swiss Army hand. Though he had been a fierce pirate in his day and feared no man on earth, his sailor’s superstition could easily get the better of him.

  “Probably just a deer,” said Penny.

  “Or it could have been a bird,” said Sammy, turning a slow, cautious circle.

  “Or a squirrel,” said Dizzy hopefully.

  “Or a savage, red-eyed half man, half lizard, slithering through the forest in search of human blood,” said Aristotle with an ominous stare.

  While Penny and Chip stood there, deciding whether or not to run ahead and catch up with their father, Jibby grabbed Juanita by the hand and took off, his face white as rice beneath his thick orange beard. Dizzy, Aristotle, Jake, and Sammy, with Teddy bouncing along atop his shoulders, took off running too, leaving Chip and Penny to deal with any red-eyed lizard men on their own.

  “What happened to women and children first?” said Chip. Penny shrugged and she and Chip hurried along. They quickly caught up to the others, who had stopped dead in their tracks at the edge of the forest, where they gazed upon a lush meadow, resplendent with flowers of yellow, white, and rich vermillion. Teddy, who had an almost obsessive need to grade sights, tastes, textures, and smells on a ten-point scale, rated this particular meadow a solid nine-point-six.

  “No. Nine-point-seven,” he corrected himself.

  Before anyone could comment further, something suddenly appeared above the tree line at the other end of the meadow. Something that caused eyes to widen and mouths to gape. It was a small, searing ball of white light arcing from one end of the sky to the other at an incredible speed. They watched in silence as the blob of light disappeared below the horizon.

  “Wow,” said Chip. “Did you see that, Dad?”

  “I sure did,” said Mr. Cheeseman.

  “What do you think it was?” asked Teddy.

  “Could have been a comet,” said Mr. Cheeseman.

  “Or a meteor,” said Penny.

  “Or a flying saucer,” said Rat-Face Roy.

  “Full of red-eyed lizard men,” said Aristotle.

  “Grrrr,” said Pinky.

  Some Unidentified Flying Advice

  Since the beginning of recorded history, people have been encountering strange objects in the sky. Thankfully, most of these sightings can be explained away as: satellites, weather balloons, comets, meteors, military aircraft, flying squirrels, flying fish, flying monkeys, or my uncle Gordie, who accidentally built his outhouse directly over a geyser.

  Those reports that are not explained by natural phenomena or exploding outhouses are known as UFOs, which is the official abbreviation for Unidentified Flying Objects. I suppose it could also stand for Uncommonly Fat Orangutans, but in this case it does not.

  It seems that these so-called UFOs are always reported as being silver in color and saucer shaped, which makes you think that if these aliens are so advanced, why is it they can only come up with one model of spaceship? You would assume such intelligent creatures could, once in a while, put out something in a nice powder blue and shaped like a footstool or maybe like France.

  Still, none of these flying discs has ever been proven to be an alien spacecraft. There is absolutely no evidence that we have been visited by creatures from other planets, despite an exhaustive investigation by the governments of the United States, Canada, Russia, China, France, Great Britain, and Mars.

  So if you do happen to look up one day and see a strange light racing across the sky, rest assured that it’s probably nothing to worry about. If, however, your psychic fox terrier growls at that mysterious light, you had best run for the hills or, at the very least, hide behind some uncommonly fat orangutans.

  Chapter 4

  As Mr. Cheeseman and the others neared the other side of the meadow, Chip, Penny, Teddy, Pinky, and Rat-Face Roy lagged behind, enjoying a slow stroll through a quiet and beautiful place. “I still say it was a comet,” said Chip, brushing his hand across the tall grass and flowers.

  “I’ll bet it was aliens coming to take over the world,” said Teddy, those same flowers slapping him in the face as they sprang back from Chip’s caress.

  “If aliens took over the world in 1668, I think I would have learned about it in history class,” said Penny.

  “Maybe you were absent that day,” said Rat-Face Roy, which prompted Penny to reach out and flick the makeshift sock puppet on the head.

  Chip stopped abruptly in his tracks and cocked his ear toward the forest on their left. “There it is again,” he whispered. “The noise. It came from over there.” But to the naked eye there was nothing but trees and bushes, and to the naked ear there was only the soft breeze jostling the brittle autumn leaves.

  Chip’s eyes moved from the forest to the ground at his feet, searching for something. He stooped over and dug out a small gray rock, half embedded in the ground and about the size of a cherry tomato. He rolled it between his fingers a couple of times to remove the dirt.

  Penny knew what he was thinking. “Are you sure about this?” she asked.

  “Don’t tell me you believe in red-eyed lizard men,” said Chip.

  “Stand back,” said Teddy, arms akimbo. “If a red-eyed lizard man attacks, Captain Fabulous will protect us.”

  “Captain Fabulous will cry and wet his pants,” said Penny. “Besides, Pinky hasn’t growled in a while, so it’s probably nothing to worry about.” It was true that Pinky had not growled since first seeing that coruscating ball of light racing across the sky nearly half an hour before.

  Chip adjusted his baseball cap and inhaled deeply, then went into his pitcher’s windup, extending his arms above his head and kicking his left leg high into the air before stepping in and hurling the rock in the direction of the noise that only he had heard. The rock sped silently above the weeds and flowers and disappeared into the trees with a ploomph. For a moment, they half expected a giant two-legged lizard to come charging from the underbrush. But instead, nothing happened.

  “Whatever it was, I must have scared it away,” said Captain Fabulous with a triumphant pump of his fist.

  “Yes,” said Penny. “I’m sure that’s
what happened.” So Chip, Penny, their superhero protector, and his pink-eyed sidekick ran ahead to catch up to the group, where Mr. Cheeseman and Jibby were busy talking strategy.

  “I absolutely insist,” said Ethan. “Once we get to a town or settlement, you, Juanita, and your men should make your way to the nearest seaport and get on your way to Denmark. There’s not much you can do for us now. It’s going to be up to me to get the LVR running again.” Jibby nodded. He hated to leave his friends in such a desperate situation but he knew that returning the White Gold Chalice to the Duke of Jutland, thus putting an end to the horrible curse, was most important.

  By and by, they happened upon a wide path that ran along the edge of the meadow and split off into the trees in two different directions. A discussion soon began as to which of those directions might be more likely to take them to civilization. There were footprints on the paths leading both ways. But which footprints were coming and which were going? And where were they going to or coming from? Three-Eyed Jake knelt down next to a deep footprint and scooped up a portion of the mud with his fingers. “Tracks. And they’re still fresh,” he said through a mouthful of dirt.

  “For the love of Persephone, what are you doing?” asked Jibby.

  “Why, testing the tracks for freshness,” said Jake.

  “That’s not how you do it.”

  Jake spat out the mud and wiped his mouth with his sleeve. “Well, how am I supposed to know? I’m a seafarin’ man, not a landlubber.”

  Mr. Cheeseman checked the compass reading and ran his hand across the back of his neck. “I’m not sure, but I think we should take the path on the left.”

  “Don’t say left,” cautioned Jibby. “Left is bad luck. It’s port or starboard but never left. Besides, the path on the right looks more promising to me.”

  “Ow!” said Chip, adding nothing to the discussion of which way to go. Something, it seemed, had hit him on the side of the neck. He looked down to see a gray stone about the size of a cherry tomato resting at his feet. In fact, upon further inspection, it was the exact same rock he had thrown into the woods just moments ago. He picked it up and rolled it between his fingers. “I think someone threw a rock at me.”