The More Known World (The Oddfits Series Book 2) Read online

  ALSO BY TIFFANY TSAO

  The Oddfits

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, organizations, places, events, and incidents are either products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events is purely coincidental.

  Text copyright © 2017 by Tiffany Tsao

  All rights reserved.

  No part of this book may be reproduced, or stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without express written permission of the publisher.

  Published by AmazonCrossing, Seattle

  www.apub.com

  Amazon, the Amazon logo, and AmazonCrossing are trademarks of Amazon.com, Inc., or its affiliates.

  ISBN-13: 9781503935983

  ISBN-10: 1503935981

  Cover design by David Drummond

  In memory of Ron Cauble (1940–2014), who was passionately odd and encouraged oddness in others

  CONTENTS

  CHAPTER 1

  CHAPTER 2

  CHAPTER 3

  CHAPTER 4

  CHAPTER 5

  CHAPTER 6

  CHAPTER 7

  CHAPTER 8

  CHAPTER 9

  CHAPTER 10

  CHAPTER 11

  CHAPTER 12

  CHAPTER 13

  CHAPTER 14

  CHAPTER 15

  CHAPTER 16

  CHAPTER 17

  CHAPTER 18

  CHAPTER 19

  CHAPTER 20

  ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

  ABOUT THE AUTHOR

  CHAPTER 1

  If the rain fell downwards, it wouldn’t have been so bad, but rising rain was intolerable. Nimali’s discomfort was her own fault. She had been warned to dress accordingly and had refused—stupidly, she could now see. Pooh-poohing the advice offered by the initial survey report, she had omitted to pack the ridiculous-looking anklets, belt, and neck-ruff—each one shaped like an upside-down umbrella—designed for the Territories of the More Known World where rain originated from the surface of the earth and shot up towards the sky. Nimali had reasoned that she was more than accustomed to the torrential monsoonal downpours of her home village back in southern Sri Lanka. How much worse could rising rain be?

  Much worse.

  The rain ran up her trousers and tunic, drenching her from the inside out, trickling up her calves and thighs, her torso and neck, running up into the rims of her eyes and the roots of her hair. Its passage through the soil made it more mud than water, and when the droplets slithered up onto her feet, it felt as if she were being caressed by slugs. And to think: this was only the fourth week of the projected sixteen it would take to do a thorough second survey of this area.

  There was an alternative. She could swallow her pride, transfer back to her abode to pick up the abandoned rain gear, and then transfer back here. She could still see them, lying in a jumbled heap on the grassy floor next to her sleeping mat. But this area was nowhere near her abode—it was twenty-seven Territories away. Her insufficient knowledge of this Territory and tenuous familiarity with some of the intervening ones meant she’d never be able to pull off a direct transfer. The whole process could take a week.

  She decided to just stick it out. Anyway, it could be worse. It had been worse. On a previous expedition, she had discovered a banana-like fruit and devoured it without thinking, only to spend the next six months suffering from a severe bout of tickling warts.

  Wiping the rain off her face with both hands, Nimali shook her head and smiled. She thought about what her great-aunt would have said to her at this moment: “Silly girl.” That had been Great-Aunt’s inevitable response whenever Nimali told her about some mistake she had made or dilemma she had gotten herself into. But even though it was an admonishment, its utterance was always seasoned with gentleness, affection, and amusement. To Great-Aunt, who had been widowed at fifteen and never remarried, Nimali was a daughter. And to Nimali, who had never managed to wrest a single scrap of her parents’ affection from her five brothers, Great-Aunt was a mother. “Silly girl. You are too impulsive,” the old woman was telling her now, murmuring it into her mind’s ear. “You don’t think of consequences.”

  True, too true, she reflected with a sigh. Perhaps it was time for a rest. She scanned her surroundings: to her left, an endless plain of mud; to the right, about one kilometre away, a craggy rock formation the colour of damp undyed cotton. Maybe she could dry off on that small flat ledge at the top. The stone looked relatively nonporous, and the ledge was high enough that, even if the rainwater was seeping up towards it from the ground, its surface might still be dry. She could even have a snack. One that wasn’t soggy. She’d possessed enough common sense, thankfully, to pack her possessions in a waterproof backpack she’d fashioned out of several plastic bags.

  Climbing up to the ledge seemed to take an eternity. The mud on her shoes made getting a foothold difficult, and she nearly slipped a couple of times. But her effort was made worthwhile when she hauled herself over the top, collapsed face down, and pressed her cheek against its surface. Completely dry. She sighed with relief, unburdened herself of the backpack, and stretched out, belly up, watching the raindrops around the ledge spring into the cloudless orange sky. Her stomach growled, and to mollify it, she reached into her bag for a special treat—uncooked instant Maggi noodles. Her childhood favourite. Not particularly healthy, she knew, but a welcome change from a week of muddy water and native flora (those verified safe for consumption; she wasn’t making that mistake again).

  Nimali kneaded the packet with her fingers, crushing the rectangular block of noodle within into little curly pieces. Then she opened the plastic packet, took out the pouch of soup flavouring, squeezed the moist powder onto the noodle bits, and gave the bag a few vigorous shakes. So absorbed was she in these actions, she failed to notice she was no longer alone. As she crunched her way through her first bite, a shadow stole over her. She looked up in surprise.

  “Oh, it’s you! What are you doing here?” She smiled and held out the packet. “Want some?”

  By the time she’d realized—a split-second later—it was over. Even the rudimentary skills she had learned in combat training would have been useless in this type of surprise attack. She had no idea why anyone would want to do this to her, but she had little time to think further on the matter.

  As the blood trickled from her, snaking into the grey sky above in thin streams, she could hear Great-Aunt’s voice reassuring her that although she was indeed a silly girl, this time, it wasn’t her fault.

  CHAPTER 2

  Someday, thought Murgatroyd, I will be rash-free. He was cautiously optimistic about the achievability of this goal. Plenty of people, he heard, spent months, even years, without having some patch of their body covered in itchy red bumps. Not only that, but he had long since left the Known World behind, including his parents, who he now knew were the direct cause of the skin conditions that had so plagued him the first twenty-five years of his existence. He was in the More Known World now—a world that wasn’t allergic to him, whose immune system didn’t have to suppress him in order to tolerate his presence, and thus had no reason to compel those around him to keep him in a constant state of misery. It felt fantastic. Murgatroyd took a deep breath of velvety black air and closed his eyes as its warmth filled his lungs. I’m part of the Quest now, he thought happily. I’m exploring the More Known World. I’m where an Oddfit is supposed to be, doing what an Oddfit is meant to do. He exhaled, then grinned. And someday, I will be rash-free.

  “At least they’re g
ood rashes now,” he observed out loud.

  “‘Good rashes’?” a sceptical voice repeated. It was Ann. The air was too opaque for Murgatroyd to see where she was, but the words came from somewhere in front of him.

  “Yes,” Murgatroyd affirmed. “At least they come from exploring new Territories, not itching powder in my bed sheets.”

  “Rengas sap, actually,” Ann replied.

  “Say again?”

  “Sap from the rengas tree. Collected from the park near your parents’ flat. Inflames the skin upon contact. The tree is native to Singapore. That’s what your parents used on your bed sheets—and towels. It was all in your file.”

  “Erh, all right. Rengas sap,” said Murgatroyd, correcting himself. “But what I’m trying to say is, I’m on the Quest, Ann! I’m on the Quest!” The glee in his voice was infectious, and if Ann’s face had been visible, Murgatroyd would have seen the very faintest of smiles spread across her lips.

  The smile drifted into her voice, imbuing it with an almost imperceptible tone of jest. “You joined the Quest two years ago, and you’re only realizing it now?”

  “No, of course not! It’s just that I remember it every now and then. And it makes me so . . . happy.”

  This sentence was immediately followed by a thud and a yelp as Murgatroyd tripped and fell into a patch of stinging grass for the fourth time that day and the eighty-fourth time in the past three weeks. Ann had been keeping count. Although she couldn’t see the red welts blossoming on the exposed parts of Murgatroyd’s skin, she could imagine them vividly. Too vividly. She winced.

  She heard Murgatroyd groan a little before scrambling to his feet. Then came the sound of his voice again, chirrupy and undeterred. “I’m so happy!”

  Murgatroyd Floyd never ceased to amaze her.

  Indeed it had been two years, a little more, since she had met Murgatroyd—since he had joined her and the dozens of other individuals whose life’s work was to explore the vast stretches of the planet invisible and inaccessible to the majority of Earth’s inhabitants. On one level, she understood his joy completely. She too was happy. Oddfits like them thrived on exploration, and the Quest, in its dedication to make the mysteries of the More Known World ever more known, nourished this biological impulse of theirs. On another level, however, she didn’t understand how he could still be so excessively enthusiastic after all this time—as if he had just joined the Quest a few days ago, as if he were realizing the fact afresh every hour, every minute. The persistence of his pleasure astounded her. But then again, she reflected, Murgatroyd was a miracle in more ways than one.

  Her thoughts were broken by yet another yelp, thud, and groan.

  “We’re almost back, aren’t we?” piped Murgatroyd from somewhere near the ground.

  “Almost,” said Ann. “Let me get out the fan. I think we have just enough battery power for a few more bursts.”

  She pulled a handheld electric fan out of her pocket—the small, plastic kind that desperate amusement-park goers buy from kiosks in summer. Aiming it in the direction they were walking, she flicked the switch. Instantly the breeze cut through the darkness, sending the black fog rolling back in waves. At the other end of this corridor of clarity, Ann could make out a slight rise in elevation. Good. They were approaching the base of the hill they had started out from. Soon they would be above the black fog and able to see once again. And not long after that, they would reach the transfer point, conclude their expedition into China-Plummet, and return to Ann’s abode in Madagascar-Aplomb, where they would celebrate by eating chocolate.

  Her mouth began to water ever so slightly as she imagined the two bars in her pantry, which she had saved expressly for this occasion. Boiled stinging-grass tubers were nutritious, and thankfully not rash inducing like the grass blades, but eight weeks of them was more than anyone could stand.

  “Erh, Ann?” asked Murgatroyd. “What do you see?”

  Ann switched off the fan. “Nearly there.”

  Murgatroyd gave a whoop of excitement, and they trudged forward, with Ann making sure her movements were loud enough for Murgatroyd to follow.

  Minutes passed—twenty, maybe forty, it was hard to tell—and at last, Ann found herself above the blackness, standing neck deep in it. She stopped and waited for Murgatroyd to emerge, which he did, his blonde head rising up out of the fog like a diver’s coming up for air.

  “We made it!” he exclaimed, blinking rapidly as his eyes adjusted to the comparative transparency of their new situation.

  Ann blinked as well—to resettle her green contact lens—and wiped the black drops of condensation from the patch over her missing eye. She wondered briefly how the scene might appear to an onlooker. Two heads bobbing in an inky sea. It was at times like this when she wished cameras worked in the More Known World. They didn’t, for reasons no one could explain—the same for TVs, radios, Internet, and most inexplicably of all, deep fryers and deep-frying in general.

  “Hurry up,” Ann said. “The faster we walk, the sooner we can get back. We’ll finish writing up the expedition report at my abode.” She continued marching up the hill and out of the fog. It was like emerging from a warm bath, and upon contact with the cool, clear air, goose bumps rippled across her arms and legs.

  “Erh, can we rest a bit before we transfer?” Murgatroyd asked. “I want to apply some lotion.”

  Ann was just about to tell him that now wasn’t the time to moisturize, but as his entire being rose into view, she thought better of it.

  “Of course,” she said instead. Gratefully Murgatroyd lowered himself onto the ground, took a large glass jar out of his backpack, and began dabbing its contents on the red-ringed pustules blanketing his neck, arms, legs, and feet. He was wearing his usual garb—a T-shirt, shorts, and a pair of flip-flops. But there wasn’t a patch of clear skin in sight. In some parts, there were pustules upon pustules—lumpy monuments to the victory of rashdom over this particular specimen of human being. Even opening his backpack and manipulating the jar seemed a painful task; his fingers looked more like batons of raw minced meat than human digits. Ann watched as the lotion began to work its magic, returning his skin to its usual unsettlingly pasty hue. Finally he scraped out the last of the lotion and rubbed it into the raspberries on his left foot, which promptly transformed into toes.

  “Maybe you should have dressed more practically,” observed Ann. “You could have worn socks at least.”

  “But you’re wearing a suit,” Murgatroyd sputtered.

  It was true. Ann was looking very dapper indeed in her three-piece clover-green seersucker suit. But at Murgatroyd’s comment, she frowned. “Suits are very practical. Note that I’m not the one covered in boils. How much of that stuff do you go through?” Ann pointed at the jar.

  Murgatroyd gave her an embarrassed grin. “Erh. Ivan and Tally say I’m their best customer.”

  Ivan and Tally Ho had been invaluable in helping convince Murgatroyd to join the Quest. It was from their convenience store in Singapore that Murgatroyd had completed his first solo transfer to the More Known World. On that same day he had been introduced to the wonders of Tally Ho Miracle Cream, the More Known World’s cure-all treatment of choice.

  Soothing and cooling, works like a dream.

  Try a jar of Tally Ho Miracle Cream.

  Ann couldn’t help but hear the jingle in her head. All the medicine sellers in the settlements sang it. Whatever his eccentricities, Tally Ho was certainly a genius, and Ivan Ho was no less impressive: it was he whom the Quest contracted to retrieve information on many potential recruits, Murgatroyd included. The man could break into anywhere, disguise himself as anyone—anything for that matter. Ivan had once slipped past an office security desk by doing a credible impersonation of an expensive floral arrangement. The Ho brothers were a living testament to the fact that you didn’t need to be an Oddfit or a Questian to do amazing things, contrary to what some people thought.

  Murgatroyd looked around. “We don’t need to go al
l the way to the transfer point,” he declared. “I remember how to get back from here.”

  Ann raised an eyebrow. “Are you sure?”

  Murgatroyd thought for a while, recalling what they would pass if they walked the rest of the way to where they had started their journey: the congregations of purple pebbles, the occasional spindly skinnytree (mercifully rare, given the fact that so much exploring of this Territory involved stumbling around in the dark), the two clumps of stinging grass nestled together like lovers on the crest of the hill. Both he and Ann—all Oddfits, actually—had an innate ability to remember such landmarks. There was an in-built desire for an Oddfit’s heart and mind to roam the earth and subconsciously catalogue everything they came across in a desperate search for a home they would never find. Murgatroyd concentrated in order to let loose his instincts, then gave a firm nod.

  “I remember enough,” he said. “I think I might even be able to transfer all the way back to Madagascar-Aplomb.”

  “You’re absolutely positive?” Ann asked. She had good reason to be cautious. Transferring across multiple Territories in one go required an Oddfit to have a very good sense of the intervening terrain. Murgatroyd, Ann felt, did not usually have that sense, and she always broke their transfers into stages, talking Murgatroyd through one Territory at a time. Now Ann studied him, as if something about his appearance would tell her whether he really was ready.

  “You don’t have to rush things,” she said. “Everything in good time. That’s what Yusuf would say, you know. It’ll only take a few minutes longer to do it step by step.”

  At the mention of the late Yusuf’s name, Murgatroyd gave the matter further consideration. Without Uncle Yusuf (as Murgatroyd had called him), he would never have been identified as an Oddfit or joined the Quest. And though his memories of Uncle Yusuf were few and faded, they were very dear.

  After a while, Murgatroyd took a deep breath and nodded. “I can do it. I’m positive.” And he was. There was no mistake about it. He could feel the certainty coursing through his veins, making him giddy with excitement. In fact, he had never been more confident of anything in his entire life.