Mayhem and Monkeyshines, page 1
MAYHEM
and
MONKEYSHINES
GLENN CLARK
Copyright © 2022 Glenn Clark.
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ISBN: 978-1-6657-2876-8 (sc)
ISBN: 978-1-6657-2877-5 (e)
Library of Congress Control Number: 2022915190
Archway Publishing rev. date: 08/23/2022
CONTENTS
MAYHEM AND MONKEYSHINES
1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
9
10
11
12
13
14
15
16
17
MARY BRENT IN THE MISTY SEAS
1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
9
10
11
MYSTERIES OF MACO MARU
1
2
MAYHEM AND
MONKEYSHINES
1
Mary Lyttle’s snug little room was in the attic of her parents’ home, and the only thing between her and heaven was a raftered roof that had been drummed all night with a hard rain and an eager wind that had pounded the walls and rattled the windows trying to get in. Under one of these windows, Mary slept all night warm and safe.
When she woke up, it was still raining, and she rolled over in bed to steal another few winks of sleep. Then she remembered it was Saturday. The thought of no school to slow her down the rest of the day gave her the impetus to jump out of bed and go down to breakfast that her mother had waiting for her. After she was through eating, she looked out of the window again.
“Oh, dear,” she said. “It’s still raining.”
This was a little discouraging. Mary had planned to go across town and go beach combing in search of interesting driftwood and maybe that rare sea shell that would talk to her of faraway places and adventure, but the storm had now put a stop to that. Mary, however, always had an escape. Just down the street was The Big Barn, her favorite used book store, and she could often find something fun and exciting in an old book. So, that is where we now find her: sitting on the floor going through a large pile of books that had just arrived.
She stretched out her legs and relaxed, and as she did so, the whole building jiggled slightly, and a volume from high up on a shelf fell into her lap. This small quake didn’t bother Mary very much, because there had been a small one earlier, and earthquakes were not uncommon in her part of the country anyway. She set the fallen book aside. Then she picked it up again. It was a very strange looking book. On the cover were the simple words, The Quest of Mylja. When she opened it she was surprised to see that there was nothing written on the pages; they all seemed to be blank. She continued to examine each page more carefully and began to realize that they weren’t entirely blank after all. One page was covered with something that appeared to be a picture of fog. The more she looked at it, the more she began to see something in it but she couldn’t quite make out what it was. It became almost hypnotic, and the fog seemed to be actually swirling around on the page. At that moment, a huge earthquake rocked the whole building, knocking Mary over backward to the floor. Slightly dizzy, Mary sat back up. She still had the book in her hands, and it seemed to draw her into the picture. As she tried to get to her feet, she fell forward, and instead of falling on to the floor of the book store, she fell right through the picture and down an embankment. Dazed, she picked herself up dusted herself off, made sure she still had the crystal medallion that she always wore on a thin gold chain around her neck and looked around.
“Oh, dear!” she cried. “This isn’t right. What happened?” She tried to climb back up the embankment, but she kept falling. “This isn’t right at all,” she kept saying. “Where am I anyway?” She was getting frightened and didn’t know what to do. She started looking for some stairs, but there weren’t any.
She then could see that she had fallen onto a long beach with a small cove by the sea and that there was an old-style ship anchored off shore. There was also what looked like a mother with two children about Mary’s age picking up sea shells and examining them. Having seen Mary fall, they quickly came over.
“My, what a tumble. Are you all right?” the mother asked.
“I think so,” Mary replied, examining herself. She looked up and down the beach and then up at the cliff from which she had fallen, wondering where she was and how she could get back to the book store.
“Oh, I’m sorry,” the mother said. “I better introduce myself. I’m Mrs. Gimbley, but you should call me Nell. And these are my children, Willie and Nilly.”
She patted the boy on the head when she said Willie and the younger girl on the head when she said Nilly.
“How do you do?” They both said together and then waited patiently while Mary gathered her wits about her.
“Well,” Mary finally said, “I’m Mary Lyttle, and I wonder if you could tell me exactly where I am. I must be getting back to the book store.”
“You came from a book store?” they all asked in unison, but before Mary could answer, the earth gave a big shudder which knocked them all to the ground.
“My, oh, my!” Nell exclaimed trying to rise, but the ground was shaking so much that they all had trouble getting up. “Quickly!” Nell cried. “We must get to the ship. Hold my hands, all of you, and we’ll crawl to the boat.”
There was a small boat bobbing about at the shoreline that was tied to an anchor buried in the sand, and they hurriedly made their way to it, hauled the anchor out of the sand, and after climbing in, they pushed off, heading for the ship that was rocking violently some way off shore. Nell pulled with a will on the oars, and they soon bumped up against the ship and were pulled aboard by some large, muscular monkeys.
“Come along now, we’ll be away in a moment,” one of them said.
Imagine Mary’s surprise at that. She had never heard a monkey speak perfect English before, and it came as quite a shock. While this was happening, a man standing on a raised part of the stern waved his arms about and shouted orders to the crew that was made up of the same agile monkeys that had pulled them aboard.
“Avast, ye lubbers!” he cried. “Look alive now! Back the fore stay and up with the main. Down with the boom and square the yards! Clear the jib bits and walk the windless.” He waved his arms and shouted as the crew went swiftly and efficiently about their business, ignoring him completely, and the ship began to move forward.
“Come along now,” Nell said. “We’d best get below to the cabin before we’re blown overboard.” They climbed down a ladder onto a lower deck and then into a large, stern cabin where they all sat down, finally able to relax. “That’s better.” Nell said as the man who had been on the quarterdeck directing the crew joined them.
“Well that’s done,” he said. “We’ll soon be away from this accursed shore. It’s not so hard to run a ship you know. And who do we have here?” he asked, looking at Mary.
Nell looked at Mary and winked, and the children sniggered. “Mary, this is my husband Elgard, but we call him El. You might want to call him Captain, but I wouldn’t. He thinks he’s an old salt, but the closest he ever came to that was when he recently fell overboard.”
“Hey, not so loud!” Elgard whispered harshly. “The crew will hear you.”
“I think they are well aware of your seamanship by now,” Nell said, laughing. “And this, El, is Mary.”
“How do you do Mary?” said El, looking Mary over. “And how have you come to be on my ship—oh!—look at this.”
They all crowded around the large window that looked out from the stern of the ship. What they could now see was that the ship had been anchored in a small bay surrounded by an island with only a narrow passage between two high headlands. They were under way and had just negotiated the pass into the open sea when the entire island gave a great shiver and slipped below the waves, leaving only a vast empty ocean behind. They watched silently as a huge whirlpool formed where the island
“Oh, my, oh, my!” El announced and ran back on deck.
The rest of them just watched anxiously out the stern window as the ship drifted slowly toward the hole in the water. Soon the ship began to drift around and around faster and faster, and just as it began to look as if they were going to be drawn down into the whirlpool, the ship steadied and slowly began to pull away. Their eyes were glued on the spectacle when they heard a great gulp, and a large bubble rose out of the hole in the water. It got bigger and bigger until it popped, and then the sea filled in the hole and they were again sailing away on a smooth waters. They couldn’t believe they were safe until El came back to the cabin and said all was well. He said that the Monkeyshines—that was the name of the crew—had thrown Dolly Fin, a dolphin that was an old friend of the Monkeyshines, a line from the bow of the ship, and she and others of her kind had been able pull the ship away from the whirlpool just in time.
All this time, Mary was pinching herself, trying to wake up from a bad dream, but all she did was make little red marks on her arm. What was happening? How would she find her way back to the book store now? Or more importantly, how would she ever get home? She was aroused from her thoughts when El spoke up.
“Well, as I was saying a moment ago, what are you doing, Mary, on my ship?”
“It’s really not our ship, dear,” Nell said to Mary, “it belongs to the Monkeyshines. It’s just on loan to us, but we’ll explain that later—”
“I would appreciate it, dear,” El interrupted, “if I may find out what is going on here. Now, again, Mary, how can we help you?”
Mary was by now beginning to panic. “I don’t know what’s happening,” she said, tears welling up. “I don’t know where I am and I don’t know how to get home,” and she started to cry.
Nelly jumped up from where she was and went over and sat down beside Mary. “Don’t cry dear, it’s not as bad as you think. It’s never as bad as one thinks it is. Our brains play tricks on us sometimes. You’ll see. You’ll be back in your own bed in no time.” Nelly glanced up at El as if to reinforce what she was saying because she didn’t know what was happening either.
“Mary,” El said sternly, “we must get to the bottom of this. This ship is on an extremely urgent and dangerous journey and we must decide what to do with you.” Something in his voice made her look up. “First of all, you must have come from the island, is that right?”
“Well, not originally.”
“Where originally then?”
“I was in a book store, trying to read a strange old book, when I fell onto that island and Nelly brought me here.”
“A book store,” El said thoughtfully, and looked at Nelly, and Willie and Nilly looked at Mary.
“What kind of book?” asked El.
“A crazy book. I told the proprietor I wanted a silly book and he told me where one might be and sure enough I found one.”
“Mary,” El said exasperatedly, “What kind of book.”
“I don’t think I can tell you. It didn’t make any sense.” Mary idly put her hand in the large pocket of her dress... “oh, here it is. I still have it with me.” And she handed it to El.
El looked at the book and his eyes got bigger and bigger and then he cried out, “oh, my! Oh, my oh, my!” and dropped the book in his lap. Willie and Nilly looked at each other, and Nelly got up, walked across the cabin and took the book out of El’s hand and sat down again and she too looked at the book and then across the room at El.
“What do we do now?” El finally said looking at Nelly.
Nelly looked at Mary for a long time and nobody spoke, and then she said quietly as if to herself. “Could this really be our contact?”
El heard it and blurted out. “Are you crazy? It’s just a terrible mistake. My message must have been blown off course.”
“El,” Nelly said meaningfully. “We mustn’t jump to judgment.”
All this time Mary was listening and trying to figure out what they were talking about. “Does this mean that I’m never going to get home?” she finally asked.
“No, no,” El said shortly, and then more softly. “No, Mary this has nothing to do with you, we’ll get you home no matter what happens.” They were all quiet for a long time.
“El,” Nelly finally said, “I think we should consider all possibilities.”
With a sigh, El agreed. “I guess we had better put all our cards on the table and see what comes of it, what do you think?”
“I think that is a good idea,” said Nelly.
El turned to Mary. “It’s probable Mary, that you know nothing of what I am about to tell you, but if you do, tell us immediately, otherwise please just listen.” Mary sat very still and began to listen to El.
“We will want to know something more about you soon, Mary,” El began. “You are undoubtedly from that other land that we’ve heard about. Our ancient manuscripts talk about parallel universes and mouse-holes through which a few gifted individuals might pass from one world to another and you may be one of those people, but for now we will tell you something about ourselves.”
“We live far to the north of here where until recently it was peaceful and quiet. A place where everyone was friendly and considerate. But lately there has been a great change. There has been a curse put on our land. The elders of my village, of which I am one, finally determined that something must be done. As is our custom we wrote our pleas on the special parchment that is necessary, and put them all into a great fire that we built on the mound of our father’s graves.”
“Why did you throw them in the fire?” interrupted Mary.
“Yes, I should explain. You of course are not familiar with our customs. When it’s very important to seek help in an hour of need we build a great fire on the mound where our ancestors are buried. When it is roaring we throw our pleas or requests quests into the fire and as they burn they rise as sparks into the heavens where our Great Father lives. This we did and the next day three of the elders received an answer. One of us was to make a journey far to the south, into the Sea of Ki.”
“Do you mean, the Key of C” I know where the key of C is on my piano.”
“No, no, Mary. Although I’m glad you are paying attention. I am referring to the Sea Of Kiwa, which we normally shorten into The Sea Of Ki. That is in fact where we are now. It’s farther south than anyone in our land has ever been because it’s known as a place of magic where strange things can happen at any moment. We were sent here for that very fact because it was said it is here we would find the answer to our problem. You mustn’t worry though because we are heading home now. We’re running low on supplies and this is as far south as we dare go. The demons dwell just a bit south of here and it seems foolhardy to go any further. Besides, if you have “The Book”, Mary, we may have all ready made our contact. As unlikely as it may seem, you may be the one to help us.” At that moment Monkey One, the leader of the Monkeyshines called them up on deck. As they watched fluffy clouds scud by in a brisk breeze, wondering what Monkey One wanted them on deck for, he pointed to a great flock of sea birds that were beginning to circle the ship. “That’s peculiar,” said El, and as they watched, the birds dove on the ship and started pecking at the monkeyshines. They were shrieking and pecking and the monkeyshines had to take cover as they were beginning to bleed from their wounds. El made it back down the ladder, but Mary tripped and one of the birds attacked her. She struggled for a minute and then drew something up that had been hanging around her neck and put it to her lips. It was a whistle and she blew into it as hard as she could, and kept on blowing. At that the birds went even crazier, flying into the masts and sails and onto the deck, finally falling overboard and into the sea, where they finally flew away.
Later, when they had found there way back into the cabin, El turned to his wife. “You see, strange things are happening even down here in this far place. The sea birds have never acted like that before. There is evil stalking about, mark my
“Yes, I know. You’ld better finish what you were saying to Mary before the birds arrived,” Nelly answered.
