The Empire of Ice Cream Read Online Free

and pinched my nose to wake me. We ran to the top of the turret, where Greenly was still sounding the alarm, and looked north. There three shadows moved ever closer across the sand. I went and fetched my bow and arrows, my latest weapon, devised from something Meiwa had said she’d seen the humans use. I was waiting to fire until they drew closer. Meiwa had a plan, though. She called for her night bird, and we mounted its back. We attacked from the air, and the monsters never got within 50 steps of the castle. My arrows could not kill them but effectively turned them away. I would have perished without her.
    W HILE M EIWA S LEPT
    While Meiwa slept, Magtel and I took torches, slings for carrying large objects upon the back, and our axes, and quietly left the castle. Phargo trailed after us, of course. There was a far place I had been to only one other time before. Heading west, I set a brisk pace and the boy kept up, sometimes running to stay next to me. Suddenly he started talking, telling me about a creature he had seen while living aboard the ship. “A whale,” he called it. “Bigger than a hundred humans, with a mouth like a cavern.” I laughed and asked him if he was certain of this. “I swear to you,” he said. “It blows water from a hole on its back, a fountain that reaches to the sky.” He told me the humans hunted them with spears from small boats, and made from their insides lamp oil and perfume. What an imagination the child has, for it did not end with the whale, but he continued to relate to me so many unbelievable wonders as we walked along I lost track of where we were and, though I watched for danger and the path through the sand ahead, it was really inward that my vision was trained, picturing his fantastic ideas. Before this he had not said but a few words to me. After turning north at the shark skeleton, we traveled awhile more and then entered the forest. Our torches pushed back the gloom, but it was mightily dark in there among the brambles and stickers. A short way in I spotted what we had come for: giant berries, like clusters of beads, indigo in color and sweating their sweetness. I hacked one off its vine and showed Magtel how to chop one down. We loaded them into our slings and then started back. There were a few tense moments before leaving the forest, for a long, yellow snake slithered by as we stood stiller than Greenly, holding our breath. I had to keep one foot lightly on Phargo’s neck to keep him from barking or hopping and giving us away. On the way home, the boy asked if I had ever been married, and then a few minutes later if I had any children. We presented the berries to Meiwa upon her waking. I will never forget the taste of them.
    T HE B OY H AS A P LAN
    Magtel joined Meiwa and me as we sat on the tall turret enjoying a sip of liquor from a bottle I had recently discovered on the beach. He said he knew how to protect the castle against the rats. This was his plan: Gather as much dried seaweed that has blown into clumps upon the beach, encircle the outer wall of the castle with it. When Greenly sounds the alarm, we will shoot flaming arrows into it, north, south, east, and west, creating a ring of fire around us that the rats cannot pass through. I thought it ingenious. Meiwa kissed him and clapped her hands. We will forthwith begin collecting the necessary seaweed. It will be a big job. My boy is gifted.
    100 S TEPS
    I don’t know why I checked how far the ocean’s flood could reach. 100 is a lot of steps.
    W E A RE R EADY
    After a long span of hard work, we have completed the seaweed defense of the castle. The rats are nowhere in sight. I found a large round contrivance, one side metal, one glass, buried in the sand. It had a heartbeat that sounded like a tiny hammer tapping glass. With each beat, an arrow inside the glass moved ever so slightly in a course describing a circle. Meiwa told me it was called a Watch, and the humans use them