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  EVERTASTER

  Course of Legends

  Adam Glendon Sidwell

  EVERTASTER

  Course of Legends

  All Rights Reserved © 2012 by Adam Glendon Sidwell

  No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, graphic, electronic, or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, taping, or by any information storage or retrieval system, without the written permission of the publisher.

  Copyright © 2012 Adam Glendon Sidwell

  Cover art: Goro Fujita

  Title design: Matthew Eng

  Inside Illustrations: Adam Glendon Sidwell

  All rights reserved.

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  Alyssa Henkin, my agent at Trident Media Group, who gave Guster his first chance, and has been fighting for him ever since. She’s a skilled editor who made me do twenty extra writing pushups when I thought I couldn’t do one more. It’s a better book for it.

  Jarom Sidwell, who first helped me tell this story out loud on a long car ride one night, and lives out his own wondrous imagination every day.

  My beta-readers: Furnace, Shrff, Seanny, Foodest, Mutie, Q, Rach, Chancellor, and especially the Maxes, who always gave thoughtful and valuable feedback.

  Goro Fujita, a very talented artist who made the cover amazing. I’d describe it here, but the picture itself is its own praise.

  Matthew Eng, an excellent artist and friend did the title design.

  Nanette Harvey, who is a stern and quick editor. I appreciate her. Commas fear her.

  My wife, Michelle, who married me even though she knew I wanted to be a writer, and has been several quarts of fun ever since.

  This book is dedicated to Mom, who in many ways is the real Mabel Johnsonville.

  Contents

  Chapter 1 — The Heist

  Chapter 2 — The Stranger in Red

  Chapter 3 — The Master Pastry Chef

  Chapter 4 — The Eggbeater

  Chapter 5 — Late Night News

  Chapter 6 — Aunt Priscilla

  Chapter 7 — The Cuisine Capital of the World

  Chapter 8 — The Lost City

  Chapter 9 — Lovelock, Nevada

  Chapter 10 — On the Road Again

  Chapter 11 — The Buttersmiths’ Gold

  Chapter 12 — The Cult of Gastronimatii

  Chapter 13 — The Castaways

  Chapter 14 — The Return of the Sea Dragon

  Chapter 15 — The Sky Demons

  Chapter 16 — The Harbinger of Peace

  Chapter 17 — Felicity’s Quest

  Chapter 18 — The Sweetest Way

  Chapter 19 — The Mighty Sugarback’s Treasure

  Chapter 20 — Chateau de Dîner

  Chapter 21 — The Rites of the Gastronimatii

  Chapter 22 — Fate’s Kitchen

  Chapter 23 — The Gastronomy of Peace

  Chapter 24 — The Farmhouse

  About The Author

  Connect with Adam Glendon Sidwell Online

  Chapter 1 — The Heist

  The vault was supposed to be impregnable.

  And it was — for the most part. Mr. Italo Arrivederci had made sure of that. It had stopped dozens of would-be thieves over hundreds of risky years; though no one knew exactly why it was so effective.

  That night, things would change.

  Epiglottis pushed his mop back and forth across the marble floor of the outer hall. A guard in a dark blue uniform nodded to him as he passed, the click-clack of his footsteps echoing between the ivory columns as they did every night. For all the familiarity it brought with it, Epiglottis hated the sound. Epiglottis had waited for years, posing as a lowly janitor, casting aside his true self, enduring a Scavenger’s life. Tonight it would end.

  He adjusted the miniature camera housed discreetly inside the pen stuck in the left breast pocket of his coveralls. It was a direct video feed to the man with the pencil-thin tie — another source of frustration.

  “Take up your position,” crackled the voice through the microphone hidden in Epiglottis’ ear.

  “Already there,” he whispered, irritated, as he ducked behind one of the two massive, polished white columns that flanked the five-hundred pound, double wooden doors. He wished the Arch-Gourmand were giving the orders. He would appreciate the magnitude of the task at hand.

  The guard had turned the corner by now. He wouldn’t be gone long. Epiglottis looked at his watch. Now, he thought.

  There was a splintering smash, then a crack, and the doors tore from their hinges and crashed to the floor. Two huge men, each at least a foot taller and twice as wide as Epiglottis strode through the empty door frame. Their chests were bare and their bellies hung over their loose, wooly gray pants. Executioner’s hoods covered their faces, except for the eyes and mouth.

  The guard was back in a flash, his gun drawn. The two hulking brutes each plucked a huge door from the floor and swung them in front of the guard like a shield; he fired. There was a pop! Pop! as the bullets shattered the surface of the wood.

  The first brute heaved the door on top of the guard, knocking him to the ground. And then it was quiet.

  Epiglottis stepped out from behind the pillar. He was impressed. He’d heard that the giant brutes could not taste or smell — but it was their brawn that was useful.

  “This way,” he said, leading them down the hall. More guards would certainly come soon, so they had to work fast. They descended a steep stair that led underground. At the bottom was a locked door; this one steel. He’d never been through it; he wasn’t given clearance for that. He pulled a stolen badge from his pocket and swiped it through the sensor. The lock clicked and he pushed it open.

  “We’re in,” he said activating the microphone in his ear.

  “Good,” said the man with the pencil-thin tie.

  The dark corridors were lit by candle. The first brute shined a flashlight on his palm. It was tattooed with a map of the inner chambers — he had probably been raised and trained just for tonight.

  The brute struck out to the right. In a matter of minutes they would have what they came for. So much for impenetrable defenses!

  That’s when the most wonderful aroma struck Epiglottis like a mallet. It was chocolate, pure, sweet and rich as a milkshake or a slab of fudge. It filled his nose and then, like a mug filling with cocoa, his head. He bolted after it to the left.

  “What are you doing? Stick to the plan!” shouted the voice in his ear. He did not care. The Scavenger was a fool, and the brutes could not smell a thing. This had to be it. He passed a hallway, then turned left, then right, closing in on the smell.

  When he turned the corner he found the source of his delight: a flatbed cart stacked evenly with block after block of pure brown chocolate. It was parked in a cell, a fan gently blowing the aroma toward him.

  “This is it!” cried Epiglottis. He reached through the doorway, not caring that a set of iron bars protruded from the ceiling, waiting to drop. It was within his grasp!

  An enormous hand grabbed him by the back of his coveralls and yanked him back. Epiglottis winced as the second brute threw him over his shoulder like a child. He kicked. He screamed. And then the brute started to run back the way they’d come.

  The precious chocolate was disappearing from sight! It had been so close. The object of their mission! Why couldn’t the brutes see that? Didn’t they want it? They were going the wrong way!

  “Epiglottis, you fool!” said the voice in his ear. “You’ve fallen into their trap!”

  The first brute lifted his palm at every branch in the corridors, studying the map as they ran. The scent grew weaker. Then came new breezes with similar smells — more chocolate down this corridor, or that one.<
br />
  He wanted to scream, to break away and run. But the gray-hooded brute was too strong.

  They followed the twisting passages until, deep inside the corridors, at the end of a long hallway, there was a room with a safe inside. A bald man in a coarse brown robe stood there.

  “This is not what you seek,” he said. Epiglottis sniffed the air. He had to be right. There was no smell.

  Without hesitation, the first brute knocked the robed man out of the way. Then he opened a satchel slung across his shoulder and removed a block of sweet, caramel colored substance. He stuck it to the safe door, then inserted a needle with a timer on the end. He pressed a button and backed up.

  The block exploded. The safe door swung open. Inside was a platter covered with a silver dome lid.

  The brute removed it from the safe and lifted the lid, breaking the seal. Underneath was a stack of chocolate bars so rich and brown, Epiglottis could have sworn they were glowing. The air around them looked edible, like flavored heat from a smoldering fire. It was luxurious. It was wonderful. It was beyond compare. Every bit of chocolate he had seen up to this point was a mere distraction.

  Now he understood. This is what they came for. He never should have been so blinded by second-rate treasures!

  “Mine!” he cried. In a burst of adrenaline, he kicked the second brute. For one brief second the brute’s grip loosened and Epiglottis broke free, wriggling to the ground. He leapt for the chocolate, unable to control his appetite. He knew how angry the man in the pencil-thin tie would be, but it didn’t matter. He had to taste it at once.

  The second brute moved quicker. His fingertips inches away from the chocolate, Epiglottis felt a hand catch him around the throat and an arm latch around his waist as he was hoisted into the air by his coveralls.

  The first brute clapped the silver dome down on the platter again, hiding the sacred chocolate from Epiglottis’ view. The aroma waned, then disappeared. Bring it back! thought Epiglottis. Couldn’t they smell it?

  The brute with the platter tucked it under his arm and bolted for the exit.

  “It was not meant for you!” cried the brown-robed servant, lifting himself from the ground.

  The remaining brute took one look at him and snorted, then ran out into the corridor, Epiglottis under his arm.

  It took less than half the time to get out of the passageways as it did to get in. When the brutes reached the stairs, they charged up them as quickly as they could. The first one knocked another guard out of the way and bolted through the smashed doors to the outside.

  A bucket-shaped wicker basket the size of a small car was waiting for them in the courtyard. They leapt inside. A red zeppelin floating above pulled on a set of ropes tied to the basket until they tightened, hoisting them skyward.

  More guards stormed into the courtyard outside the Arrivederci vault, but it was too late. Epiglottis and the brutes were already off the ground. The guards opened fire, but their bullets only ricocheted harmlessly off the basket’s bulletproof bottom.

  The bottom of the zeppelin’s cabin opened, reeling the basket safely inside. The hatch shut, and the second brute finally loosened his grip on Epiglottis, dropping him to the floor. Epiglottis gasped for air. His ribs hurt.

  “A pity,” said the man with the pencil-thin tie. He took the silver platter out of the first brute’s giant hands and peered at it over his spectacles. “It seems the Arrivedercis never reckoned on invaders totally incapable of smelling their treasure.” He nodded to the giant brutes who, now that they’d done their job, were stowing the basket at the rear of the cabin, completely disinterested in the prize. “We’ve plucked their precious gem right out from under them!” he laughed.

  Miserable Scavenger, thought Epiglottis. He held such extraordinary taste in his hands — the work of the masters over the centuries. Did it mean nothing to him?

  “Full speed ahead,” the man with the pencil-thin tie barked to the pilot behind the controls. “I’ve got to get this back to my employer before the night is through.”

  Epiglottis boiled with anger, but he knew his duty. This was all part of the Arch-Gourmand’s plan.

  The man with the pencil-thin tie saw his pain, “Don’t look so glum, old fellow. You elitist gourmets will get your way. After so many centuries, your time has finally come…”

  Chapter 2 — The Stranger in Red

  Eleven-year-old Guster Johnsonville was about to hold the fate of humanity on the end of his spoon. It never would have happened that way if he hadn’t been such a picky eater, nor would he have left the farmhouse in Louisiana and set out across the world if it weren’t for that wretched Ham Chowder Casserole.

  No one likes to eat this stuff, thought Guster, even though his two brothers and sister didn’t seem to mind. But if Mom ever made that mishmash of pig, peas, and potato again, he would be doomed.

  To think! They called him picky. “You’re a remarkable child,” was all Mom would say to him when he told her that the potatoes in her Chowder were grown so far north, they tasted like gravel. Never mind that he was on the verge of starvation.

  “Not picky! Just careful,” Guster always said. How often he went hungry! How badly he needed something to eat! The way food burned or ached as it passed across his tongue — it was like eating day-old road kill. Hot dogs were like the sweaty vinyl back seat of a station wagon with its windows rolled up in the sun. Frozen burritos were like buttery squirrels infected with the flu.

  And ever since the hot summer had smoldered up out of the ground that year, it had been getting worse. So bad, in fact, that he hadn’t put anything in his empty beanpole stomach for three whole days. If he didn’t find something — anything he could eat soon — he was going to starve.

  “Guster, come down to the table,” Mom cried from the kitchen on the night the Ham Chowder changed everything forever. He smelled it — that familiar smell of cheesy, potato-soaked socks — all the way up the stairs in his room.

  He could make for the window and lower himself to the ground from the roof. He could bolt down the stairs, past the kitchen, and into the night, then run through the fields. But no matter what he did, no matter where he went, he could not escape it: the pain that came with eating.

  “Hungry, Capital P?” Zeke jeered as Guster entered the kitchen. Zeke was fifteen, pimply and plump as a horse. He thought that calling Guster ‘Capital P’ was the funniest thing in the world. He said that Guster was so skinny that, from the side, his head looked like a lump on a stick.

  Guster hated that name. “I served you up a real good helping,” Zeke said and pushed a heaping plate full of Ham Chowder in Guster’s direction.

  Why does he always have to pick on me? thought Guster. He tried not to cough at the smell.

  Mom — who never seemed to care what she was putting Guster through — prayed, “Lord, thanks for this Ham Chowder, and bless Henry Senior that he will come home safely from his business trip. And bless this…”

  A roll bounced off Guster’s head. He opened one eye. Zeke was staring at him, a grin spread across his pimply face.

  “…bless this family that it will STOP FIGHTING! AMEN!” Mom finished. She scowled. Zeke had soured her mood, which was going to make it even harder for Guster to get through dinner without touching that Chowder.

  “When we go camping, do you think there will be bears there?” asked Mariah, Guster’s older sister. Guster loved his sister. She was much smarter than him, and she didn’t tease him like Zeke did.

  “Mom, why do we have to go to Camp Cucamunga again this year? Betsy’s family went to Mexico!” Zeke hollered.

  “You mean your girlfriend?” Mariah asked.

  “I didn’t say she was my girlfriend!” cried Zeke.

  “Neither did I,” Mariah said, smiling mischievously. It was enough to turn the rest of Zeke’s face as red as his pimples.

  “Mexico would be nice someday,” said Mom without even looking up as she spoon fed Guster’s toddler brother, Henry Junior. She alway
s talked about going to far-off places, but she never actually went.

  “Anyway,” said Zeke, “in Mexico Betsy’s brother saw these ancient stone temples with stairs leading all the way up to the top. And there were these passages that went down underground to secret chambers where they sacrificed people and ate their —”

  “Zeke, that is not dinner table talk,” said Mom. What it was was another one of Zeke’s wild stories.

  “Well, you’ll notice that Betsy’s brother hasn’t been around ever since they got back,” Zeke said.

  “He’s in the Army, Zeke,” said Mariah. “Next you’ll be telling us about the red-robed stranger again.”

  Zeke turned white and dropped his fork. Guster had not heard about this one. Something about the way Zeke’s chubby cheeks went limp told Guster this story was different.

  “Betsy’s mom saw him on a trip into the city,” Zeke said in a low voice, “He was lurking around down near the waterfront dressed in some kind of tall hat, red jacket and pants and apron. No one there had ever seen anyone like him before, until this week.” He did not laugh or smile this time. He just stared across the room at nothing at all.

  “It sounds like a chef,” said Guster. There were plenty of chefs in New Orleans.

  “But how many chefs come out only at night, dressed as red as the devil himself, with teeth like a gator’s and a belt full of razor-sharp knives dripping with blood?” asked Zeke.

  “He’s probably just making some deliveries or something,” said Mariah.

  “Then how do you explain the disappearances?” whispered Zeke. “The way Betsy’s mom tells it, people go into the city, then poof! They’re gone. You could be walking down the street, sitting in a café — it doesn’t matter, because the Chef in Red has got his eye on you, and everybody in the whole city, maybe even the state,” he said. He was serious, and he looked more scared than Guster had ever seen him. “I know it’s real. I saw it on the news. Or at least Betsy did.”