At the Final Fortress
Under cover of darkness, Sonjay slipped inside the heavy door that led to the dungeons. The fortress
remained eerily quiet. He stepped softly down the stone stairs. When he reached the bottom of the
stairs, he found himself in a corridor dimly lit by wall sconces. Still no one appeared. Hugging the damp,
cold, stone wall, he made his way cautiously down the corridor toward the cell where Sissrath had
imprisoned him on his previous stay at the Final Fortress.
Suddenly, a hand reached out of the wall and clapped itself over Sonjay’s mouth, then hauled him
into a tiny room. Sonjay struggled to free himself from the grip of that hand. “Don’t make a sound,” a
voice whispered in his ear. The hand released him as it spun him around and he stared into the
astonished face of Buttercup, the wife of Crumpet. Crumpet was the older brother of the great
enchanter Cardamom. Crumpet was not the most proficient enchanter. His enchantments seemed to go
wrong more often than they went right, but he was a good guy. Buttercup was much better at casting
enchantments than her husband. She was a large woman and her dark-brown skin had the distinctive
yellow glow of the Mountain People. “What are you doing here?” she hissed. “I almost killed you.”
“I could ask you the same thing,” Sonjay replied. “What are you doing here?”
“I’m rescuing Crumpet,” she declared.
“Well, I’m rescuing my father,” Sonjay countered. “Where is everyone? Are there any guards down
here?” As Sonjay’s eyes adjusted to the dim room, he discovered that he and Buttercup, as well as
several other Mountain People from Buttercup’s home in the Amber Mountains, had crammed
themselves inside a tiny closet filled with brooms, mops, buckets, scrub brushes, and cleaning supplies.
“Are we in a mop closet?”
“You betcha,” Buttercup answered. “We put an enchantment on the guards to make them sleep.
Well, most of ‘em. It’s complicated. The Special Forces are asleep, but not the Corportons.”
“Corportons?”
“Aliens. I told you, it’s complicated. Let’s free Crumpet, then we’ll try to find your father, and then
we’ll get out of here. After we get out, I’ll bring you up to speed about the aliens.”
“I’m down with that. Lead the way,” Sonjay said, as he gestured toward the door of the mop closet.
Buttercup picked up a huge super-soaker squirt gun and handed it to Sonjay. “If you see someone in
a snow-white jumpsuit, spray ‘em. Don’t ask questions.” She motioned to the others and stepped toward
the door.
“Yuk. It smells like skunk,” Sonjay sniffed the super-soaker.
“You betcha,” Buttercup confirmed.
“What’d you put in this thing?”
“Skunk juice, they hate it.”
“They?”
Buttercup shushed him. “Let’s roll.”
Sonjay and the others followed Buttercup out of the mop closet and down the corridor. Buttercup
held a device in one hand that looked like a cell phone but Sonjay knew it wasn’t. There were no phones
at all in Faracadar. Buttercup pointed the device forward. When it started beeping, she turned it off and

put her hands on the cell door nearest to her. “He’s in here, stand back,” she instructed. Sonjay and the
others moved away. Buttercup pointed her fingers at the door, closed her eyes, inhaled deeply, and then
spoke words of enchantment under her breath. The door to the cell slowly opened.
“You have to teach me how to do that,” Sonjay told her admiringly.
“All in good time.” She entered and Sonjay followed close behind. Inside the cell, Sonjay saw a cot
with a blanket on it. There was a small window high up on the outside-facing wall. A table had been
pushed against that wall and there was a chair on top of the table. The cell was empty.
Buttercup looked up at the chair on the table. She reached for Sonjay’s skunk juice super-soaker,
which he handed to her gratefully (it smelled awful), as she commanded him, “Climb up there and get
that pastry off the chair. Be careful. Don’t let it crumble.”
Sonjay clambered onto the table and sure enough, he found a fat cinnamon roll on the chair. It
looked tasty. He climbed back down with it resting flat on his palm. “Yum,” he said to Buttercup. “I’m
starved.” As he started to open his mouth to take a bite, Buttercup snatched the cinnamon roll out of
his hand and smacked him upside the head. The other Mountain People laughed.
“What’s up with you?” Sonjay demanded as he rubbed his face where she had slapped him.
“Shut up!” Buttercup yelped. She tenderly placed the pastry on the cot and said a few words of
enchantment to it. The pastry glowed chartreuse, then yellow, and then, with a pop, it transformed into
a familiar figure.
“Crumpet!” Sonjay exclaimed. “I almost took a bite out of you.”
“What did I turn into this time?” Crumpet asked querulously.
“A cinnamon roll,” Buttercup informed him.
“With icing and raisins. You looked delicious,” Sonjay added, as he put his arms around Crumpet
and gave him a hug. He had missed the incompetent enchanter; incompetent because whenever he
became too excited, flustered, or angry while conducting an enchantment he turned himself into some
object (usually something useless) and remained stuck like that until a capable enchanter could be found
to change him back.
“The Corportons have Sissrath in their back pocket. It’s disgusting. He took them to the North
Coast,” Crumpet began to explain to his wife in an agitated voice as he waved his arms above his head,
but she stopped him with a raised hand.
“Not now. First, if you upset yourself then you might turn into a doughnut, and second, we have to
help Sonjay find his father and then skedaddle out of here before the guards wake up.”
“You have a father?” Crumpet asked Sonjay incredulously.
“Everyone has a father,” Sonjay reminded him.
“Alive? Here?” Crumpet continued.
“I think so. I need to find out for sure. I haven’t ever seen my dad. But I think he’s down here
somewhere. Do you remember last year when Sissrath put us into a cell in this dungeon? The time you
had turned yourself into a rock and your brother Cardamom turned you back while we were
imprisoned?”

“Of course. There’s nothing wrong with my memory,” Crumpet replied haughtily. He unfolded his
long body to its full height as he gave his wife a hug. “Thank you for rescuing me, babycakes,” Crumpet
told Buttercup appreciatively. She planted a kiss on his nose.
“We have to go. Now,” Buttercup reminded them urgently.
“OK, OK,” Sonjay said as he took the stinky super-soaker out of her hand and headed out the cell
door. Crumpet still smelled vaguely like cinnamon and it made Sonjay’s mouth water.
Suddenly the passageway fill with human-like creatures covered from head to toe in snow-white
jumpsuits, their faces hidden by opaque gray masks that did not yield any clue as to the appearance of
the creature which lay underneath.
“Run for it!” Buttercup shouted, as she discharged a stream of stinky skunk juice from her super-
soaker.