By Nicholas Elton Driscoll
Click here to read from the beginning.
“Hello, oh late one.”
It was Colander Caracal, the librarian. Today she was wearing an eyepatch with a picture of an eyeball on it, and she had stacks of books like miniature skyscrapers at both her sides. And she was smiling that grin of hers that reached for one eye on one side, dimpled the cheek on the other.
“I had a bit of an adventure this morning,” I said. “You wouldn’t believe.”
“You live with a dinosaur now, Walter,” she said. “By definition your life is hard to believe. How’s the new ambassador job?”
I shrugged and adjusted my work belt.
“I got to taste dinosaur spit this morning,” I said.
Colander raised an eyebrow over her eye patch, and the image of the eyeball bounced excitedly.
“What kind of ambassador are you anyway?”
“A sore one,” I said. “I think my shoulders are going to be so blue I am considering starting a music group. I’ve got plenty of plastic tubes I can bang on.”
Colander started walking me to the new area of the Final Pumpkin Public Library, an expansion long overdue at a library overflowing with too many books as well as an excess of warmth to go around for anyone who visited. We passed a line-up of brats on the computers who were playing the latest idiotic webgame—Fartnight, a game in which you have to fart, but you don’t want to wake your family or something. I don’t know, I haven’t played it… much.
“I heard your dinosaur friend saved a boy’s life today,” Colander said. “You must be a proud dino daddy.”
“News travels fast,” I said. “But it’s true—I always thought that carnosaur would probably put some people in the hospital, but I didn’t expect it would be like that. I couldn’t believe it.”
I started cutting smurf tube to feed through the incomplete walls of the expansion as we talked. In all the craziness of the last few weeks, it felt good to have something that felt close to a normal conversation for once.
“Several people went to the hospital today,” Colander said quietly.
I froze.
“It happened again,” I said.
Out of the corner of my eye I could see Colander nodding.
“Looks that way,” she said. “Still too early to know what caused it I guess. Well, I mean, we don’t really know what happened the first time.”
“Or the second,” I said. “Or the third. How bad was it this time?”
“Three people,” she said. “One died.”
“Right,” I said. “So we have these mysterious deaths and injuries or whatever you want to call them. Cell phones and computers conk out and break down at an extraordinary rate in our city, which keeps me busy and in the money at least. But also buildings fall apart for no reason. I’m still single. And now we have a dinosaur. A dinosaur that talks and smiles and says it’s our king. What’s next? And what the heck does this dinosaur want anyway? He was talking about getting a job today!”
Colander ran her finger across the nearest plank of wood and flicked dust off her fingertips, folded her arms and leaned against an incomplete pillar.
“Maybe he should start a t-shirt company,” she said. “You know, t-rex. T-shirts. T-riffic.”
I shook my head, bizarre images of Warbell sitting at a sewing machine intruding into my mind.
“No, I want to figure what the doodle is going on,” I said. “For real. It’s been bothering me. There has to be some explanation, and I am not sure it’s going to be a happy one. Maybe you can help me out, actually, Colander. You’re a smart woman.”
“I admit it, I am,” she said. “Though if I was really smart, I would probably say no to your wild schemes.”
“I have a theory about this dinosaur,” I said. “And I found something to back it up.”
“What’s that?” she asked.
“I found some strange stones,” I said. “And I wonder if they might actually be dinosaur eggs.”