|
I looked over at Reallyconfused. He was sitting on the living
room floor polishing off the last bit of his breakfast negg. His toes were curled
under and he was humming happily as he ate. He was totally oblivious to everything
that was happening. I almost wished I was a dim-witted Meerca too.
I headed for the hallway and entered the library.
It was lined with bookshelves crammed with all of the books that Stonewolf3x
had read. Even at the time there were over two hundred of them. The doorway
at the far end of the room led to the trophy and game room. These two connecting
rooms had originally been designed to be my bedroom and study, but Wolf took
them over for his stuff, so I wound up with an upstairs bedroom. The point of
this is that there was a walk-in closet type room on the far side of the trophy
room. That's where I was headed. It appeared to be a bare room with a few odds
and ends in it. But it was more than that.
I counted the stones on the floor carefully
until I came to the one I was looking for. I pressed it with my foot. I paced
several steps towards the wall and pressed another stone in the floor. A huge
slab of stone shifted in the floor to reveal a hidden stairway. I grabbed a
wall torch, lit it, and descended down the hewn stone steps. This was my private
vault. I know I am supposed to keep all of my valuables in my safety deposit
box at the bank, but it was convenient to have a stash here too. It was a major
trip to go to the bank in Neopia Central, and it was just easier to have some
things stored in the house. Things like food, for example. The naturally cool
underground cave was the same as having a refrigerator. It was actually a very
ingenious idea. So you know I wasn't the one who came up with it. Wolf did.
I located the strongbox in the corner and retrieved
the key to it from its very clever hiding place. It was in my spare pair of
lucky green boots on the shelf. We had tried hiding the key behind a stone in
the wall, but I kept getting confused about which stone it was since I already
had to remember two stones in the room above to open the durn vault in the first
place. Wolf came up with that hiding place too. I dumped the key out of my boot
and opened up the strongbox. There were several dubloons and a gold brush in
it. I plucked out a two dubloon coin. Wolf had already graduated from Cap'n
Threelegs' Swashbuckling Academy on Krawk Island so we didn't need them anymore.
I kept them because... well... because I had forgotten about them until Advisor
Wessle mentioned he wanted one as his legal fee.
A thump-thump-thump thudded in the room above
my head.
"Who's up there?" I called out, hoping that
Wolf and company had changed their minds and returned.
"Stoney?" an squeaky voice called back uncertainly.
It was RC.
"I'm down in the vault, RC," I yelled, shoving
the dubloon into my pocket and locking up the strongbox.
"Wheeee!" a high-pitched Meerca voice squealed.
"I love playing hide-'n-seek!"
A series of whump-thumps echoed in the room
above as the Meerca joyfully bounced on his tail across it. I suddenly was hit
with a very bad feeling about that.
"Don't bounce on the stones up there, RC!" I
called out nervously.
Even as the words left my mouth, the entrance
stone was triggered and began closing.
Reallyconfused peeked down into the closing
gap. He didn't even seem to notice that it was shutting. I sped up the stairs.
Within a few seconds the trapdoor would close and there was no way to open it
from inside the vault. But I was almost there and I knew I was going to make
it out before it closed completely. Except something happened that I hadn't
anticipated in my lunge up the stone steps.
"I found you!" a yellow ball of fur screeched
with delight as it launched into my arms.
I dropped the torch I was holding and caught
him. The torch clanked loudly down the steps. It was snuffed out just as the
slab inches above my head closed completely.
"Gee, it's dark in here, isn't it?" the fuzziness
in my arms remarked breezily.
***
Either Reallyconfused was used to living in a small, dark stone cell or Meercas
in general had good night vision, because he didn't seem very concerned about
our predicament. I wasn't worried about food or water. There were enough cans
of prune juice and tins of sardines down in the vault to feed Dr. Sloth's mutant
Grundo army. But I was certain that by the time anyone figured out we were down
there, we would have long since run out of oxygen. Not only would we be dead,
we would be as grumpy about being dead as Eliv Thade. It was not a happy thought.
I had parked myself on the bottom step of the
stairway. I tried to stay as upbeat and calm as possible for RC's sake, but
quite frankly, he didn't seem to need cheering up. Every few minutes he would
plop an object into my hand and coo, "Ooooo what's this?" Since it was pitch
black and I couldn't see what he was handing me, I had to feel it and
try to guess. I'm pretty sure it didn't matter to RC if I called an apple a
tchea fruit. He didn't know what either of those things were and I couldn't
be 100% certain about anything I was trying to identify in the dark.
Just as the Meerca plopped an extremely cold
and dripping wet snowball in my hand, I heard scuffling noises in the room above
our heads.
"Hey!" I bellowed as I leapt to my feet. "We're
down here! Help! Get us out!"
I galloped up the steps, stumbling upwards,
groping the walls I couldn't see. The top of my head hit the entrance slab and
I almost toppled back down the steps.
"Owww!" I moaned, as I massaged the bump that
was forming on my scalp. "Open up! Open up! We're down here!"
I pummeled the rock with my fists for emphasis,
but for all the good it did, I might as well have been trying to... ummm...
beat on solid rock with my bare hands. The scuffling noises stopped for a moment
and then faded away. Whoever had been in the room hadn't heard me and had left.
I sank slowly down and sat on a step. Cupping my face in my hands, I groaned
in disappointment and pain. I was not having a good day.
Reallyconfused thumpity-thumped up the steps
and nestled in next to me. A sloshy, ice-cold object dropped into my lap. I
jumped up in surprise and clunked my head on the ceiling again.
"What's this?" he chirped in eager curiosity.
I placed the wet snowball on my throbbing head.
"It's a blessing," I replied.
***
I don't know how long we remained down in the dark, clammy vault. It seemed
like hours. I was ready to start scratching my last will and testament into
the wall next to me, when I suddenly heard a thunderous scraping noise above
my head. In an instant, the vault flooded with light.
"You can come out now," an only slightly familiar
voice said calmly.
I blinked rapidly in the glaring light, trying
to focus my unwilling retinas on my savior. A fuzzy yellow butterball rocketed
past me through the opening and bounded into the room above.
"Hi, 'Visor Wessly!" Reallyconfused squealed
cheerfully as he sprang up and down on his tail like it was a pogo stick.
"Oh, thank Faerieland," I wheezed with relief.
"Boy, am I glad to see you, Advisor Wessle!"
My legs were numb from the cold and my feet
were asleep. So I crawled out of the hole like a zombie Sludgy. I rose unsteadily
to my feet at looked down at the gentlemanly-looking desert Kyrii standing before
me.
"That was an excellent hiding place," Advisor
Wessle commented with a wry smile. "They certainly never found you there."
"We weren't hiding!" I protested. "We were trapped!"
"Ahhh," the Kyrii said, nodding thoughtfully.
"A lucky misfortune, in any case."
"Lucky we were trapped?" I asked, brushing the
dirt from the cellar off of my pants. "It's lucky you found us!"
"Yes," the Kyrii replied with another sage nod
of his head. "It's lucky I found you and not the Chia police who were here."
"The Chia police were HERE?" I gasped in alarm.
"Yes. They were conducting a NeoHome to NeoHome
search. Since I had heard you calling out earlier, I knew you were down there.
So when they showed up, I allowed them to search your entire house, confident
that they would not discover you. Chias, fortunately, do not have the excellent
hearing that Kyrii have. It certainly pays to have large ears. Anyway, they
are gone now. So you are safe for the time being."
"Wait a second..." I said, my forehead wrinkling
suspiciously. "How long have you been here?"
"Oh, about an hour or so I should think," he
casually replied.
I was dumbfounded. "You knew we were down there
and you left us there without saying anything?" I sputtered.
"It seemed the wisest thing to do," he answered
with a nonchalant shrug.
Suddenly, my head cleared. Indignant outrage
has a way of doing that.
"Hold on... " I said, my eyes narrowing on the
little Egyptian-clad Neopet. "How did you open the vault anyway? How did you
figure out how to do it?"
He smiled smugly at me and said, "You know,
you shouldn't write down secret codes and leave them in your desk drawer. It's
the first place that anyone with any common sense at all would look."
My own stupidity embarrassed me, so I was slightly
defensive about it.
"You were snooping in my private papers?"
"Well, I needed to find the secret code to get
you out, didn't I? I waited for you to come out on your own, but it was getting
late and I had others things to do," he stated flatly.
I felt even more stupid now.
"Yeah... well... I guess I'm glad that you did
that. Thanks for getting us out," I said, shifting uncomfortably.
"You're welcome," he said with a thin smile.
"Do you have my two dubloon coin and my hundred and thirty-five Neopoints?"
I dug in my pocket and handed him the two dubloon
coin. But I hesitated when I pulled a wad of Neopoints out of the spare wallet
that it was handy that I just happened to have.
"Whoa!" I said, suddenly motivated to do some
math in my head. "A hundred and thirty five Neopoints?"
"Yes," Advisor Wessle replied, holding out his
paw. "Ten Neopoints for the telephone consultation, twenty-five Neopoints for
the face-to-face consultation and one hundred Neopoints for lying to the Chia
police. I assure you that a hundred Neopoints for lying to the police is the
flat rate that all lawyers charge."
I wasn't really reassured about his honesty
in hearing him say that, but I dug into my spare wallet, pulled out the cash
and gave it to him anyway.
"What happens now?" I asked uneasily. "What
are we going to do about all of this? It's not my fault... it's all just a misunderstanding..."
Advisor Wessle patted my arm reassuringly.
"I have everything under control," he said in
a soothing tone. "I have been busy in the past hour, working on our strategy.
Just leave everything to me."
The Kyrii flashed me a winning smile and winked.
I was filled with a surge of hope and relief. It lasted about long as carrot
in a room full of Cybunnies. Outside, in front of my NeoHome, a babble of voices
filled the air. I glanced uneasily at Advisor Wessle. He had a knowing, sly
look on his face. My confidence in him quickly evaporated. Dashing into the
living room, I pulled back the giant leaf curtains. My front lawn was filled
with an angry mob of shouting, shoving, screaming Neopets.
"Everything is under control?" I echoed in dismay.
"Why am I having trouble believing that?"
To be continued...
| 
