Up In A Heaval Read Free

cloud forming over her head. “I'll deal with you later,” she said menacingly. “For now, go muck out the dungeon.”
    Umlaut decided not to argue; he was in enough trouble already. This was evidently a person of authority. He hurried toward the castle.
    He had expected something pretty dingy. He had underestimated the case. Castle Zombie up close was a festering ruin of an edifice. The moat was covered with sludge, and there was slime on the worn stones. The drawbridge was rotten and about to collapse. He did not want to try to cross over it.
    “Got a problem?” It was a young man, fully alive.
    Umlaut decided to stick with his zombie girl emulation. “Who zhou?”
    The man smiled. "I am Justin Tree, master of Castle Zombie. You don't recognize me?”
    Umlaut thought fast. “Bad eyzs.”
    “Of course; I should have realized. And you can't see the bridge clearly enough to cross.”
    “Yez. I waz zent to muck the dunzeon.”
    “Oh, yes, Breanna has been meaning to assign a crew for that. The dragon manure is accumulating. Don't be concerned; that bridge is stronger than it looks. Just walk across and take the first stairway down. You'll find a spading fork at the dungeon entrance.”
    “Zank youz.” Umlaut walked cautiously across, and the bridge did turn out to be solid enough.
    So the man was Justin Tree. Umlaut had heard of him. He had married a Black Wave girl a year or so back. That would be the one who had sent him here: Breanna of the Black Wave. They had taken over the castle after the original zombie master had retired. It looked as if they still had a lot of cleaning up to do.
    He found the stairway down, as slimy as the rest of it. He made his way below. Now he got nervous: What was this about a dragon? A dungeon was not his idea of fun, and a dungeon and a dragon were definitely worth avoiding. But the only way out was back past the master of the castle. So he went on.
    There was the spading fork. He picked it up. If the dragon attacked, maybe he could use the fork to warn it back. That didn't seem very promising, but what else was there? Maybe he could simply duck into a small, dark passage and hide from it. He might emulate an ogre, but that would set back only a medium to small dragon.
    He walked on through cobwebbed passages and chambers, his eyes adjusting to the gloom. It wasn't pitch dark so much as intensely dim, with wan weak beams of light seeping through crevices in the walls. This dungeon region was huge; he could get lost in it. So he went back to the foot of the stairway, then advanced again, this time scraping a line with a tine of the fork. That would be his sure trail back. It was easier to make a good mark, one that would show up in the dusky recesses, if he walked backward and held it down behind his progress.
    It got more difficult, because a layer of mucky manure was building up, thickening as he progressed. He would have a big job to do, once he had his route marked. Where was he supposed to put all this stuff? The odor was awful.
    He bumped into something. Startled, he turned. There was a monstrous snout. “The dragon!” he cried and scrambled to escape. But his feet slipped on the solidified stench, and he fell on his rear and slid into a wall. He was done for.
    After a moment he realized two things: His bottom was sore from the fall, and the dragon hadn't eaten him. He climbed to his feet, rubbing his soiled posterior. “Ooo, that smarts,” he said.
    The dragon moved. The huge nose nudged a shelf Umlaut hadn't seen before, and a bottle fell off and rolled toward him. He stooped to pick it up. The crude label said HEALING.
    Could that be true? If so, by what mischance had the monster happened to knock that particular bottle down at this time? Good fortune had never been Umlaut's forte.
    He decided to try it. He opened the bottle, poured a drop of goo on his hand, and slid the hand down inside his pants to smear the stuff on his rear. Immediately he felt its benefit; not only