The UFOs are staring at me. I know they don't have eyes (the F stands for Faceless, after all; Marra honestly sucks at acronyms), but I can still feel them looking at me spitefully, accosting me, wishing me dead.

Maybe it's just wistful thinking.

Anyway, whether or not they're staring at me right now doesn't particularly matter, because I'm sure they were staring at me then - frisking about from tree top to tree top - while I swallowed a couple of delicious pearls and tried to communicate with the lionfishes swimming besides the schooner. 'You guys hungry?'

Turns out, they're good hunters. Can take care of themselves.

Also, not all fishes can talk.

Still, I was getting exhausted out of my mind and I needed to keep myself at an arm's length from sleep. I remembered how me and Marra had stayed up last time we had been here, on guard, while Es drove the boat and the others snored around us. I felt melancholy.

'How's the weather broadcast like down at your place?' I asked my fish companions, chuckling as I fought to keep my red eyes open. ' "Today we'll see no rain but a lot of water." Hehe.'

Hehe. Es's word.

Subconsciously I had taken so much of my friends in me. I guess that happens when you love someone deeply, you kind of carry a chunk of them with you. Like when you daub ink with cloth, the cloth gets imprinted itself. And I hadn't even known Marra and Es till last year, so it was crazy to think how much they had both grown on me.

And Aar. That drama queen. I think I missed him most. I think I still miss him most, more than even Momma and Pops, for some reason.

Although it gives me the heebie-jeebies to imagine what their reaction must be, when they find out their daughter has gone missing. Oh, lord, I don't want them to be sad. Ever. Momma has been so happy lately about the breakthrough in her research, and Pops has been trying to adjust to the new place as much as me - more, if anything, his life had been longer than mine, and spent entirely in {Undisclosed}.

How had I missed all this when I had been there? Why did I make everything about myself?

Surely I could have handled Garbo and a bunch of stupid bullies on my own. I don't know how I'll handle this, however. It's only a matter of time before the ravens strike me down. Only a matter of little, wittle time.

See? Es has grown on me.

(See. Oh, See, my fluffy companion, I hope they take good care of you.)

(And Toby, make sure to get Pops to water you daily, okay? Don't let See eat too many of your leaves, either, it makes his stomach upset.)

Anyways, I was still making conversation with the red-blue lionfishes - 'You guys were named after lions, why? You're not from the genus Panthera. You surely can't roar. So maybe you'll grow a mane when you grow older?' - when the schooner suddenly made contact with something concrete and furiously rocked backwards.

I fell over, then picked myself up, and looked. A long, baby-flesh-pink tentacle emerged from the lake, rising high into the air, giving me a clear view of its disgusting, cupping suckers even as a thick jet of water streamed at my face.

Thank mermaid excreta for
your hydrophobic clothes, I thought, and gasped, as another humongous feeler rose from the water and smashed against the bulkhead, making the schooner dance like crazy.

The red lionfishes, about six of them, zipped in the general direction of the tentacles, and while I couldn't see them clearly, it was clear that they were chomping at whom/what-ever it was the appendages belonged to. A third tentacle thumped right besides me, and I saw the squishy sucker on it - as big as my face - sticking to the deck with an irritating prrrr.

Then the head of the unseen creature appeared out of the lake, and I saw the poor lionfishes retreat into the lank, into their 'water-dom'.

'Gah!' The sound just escaped me. Not a sound I thought I'd ever make.

The best way I can describe how it looked is . . . an alligator crossed with a chainsaw. Further crossed with an octopus or a squid, to account for the tentacles.

A fourth tentacle spread across the left (port) side of the schooner, and a fifth across the right (star side). Nauseating prrrrs caulked the air as the suckers stuck to the boat, and started to lift it. Actually lift it.

I felt the front of the schooner tilt and descend into the open, protruding mouth of the alligator-chainsaw-squid monster lined with jagged, razor-teeth, me included, while the rear hoisted over the water, as a sixth feeler supported its weight.

I closed my eyes, accepting my end. Maybe I could tear through the inside of the creature's gut, maybe by some miracle he would poop or vomit me out. But hearing the prrrr of the suckers and the tut-tut of the monster's teeth gave me no comfort, and my intestines clenched over themselves as I felt the deck below me list into a vertical line and fall into -

A screech.

The schooner was suddenly let go, and it fell flat (thankfully) onto the surface of the lake with a resounding splash, taking me down with it and bathing me in its foul water.

I heard a flapping of wings and hence opened my eyes to see the alligator-chainsaw-squid monster waving and flailing its tentacles at a familiar giant butterfly pecking away at its thick blubber of a head.

I could now actually see the creature's brain through its fleshy baby-pink skin, but that didn't phase me. My eyes were only for Goof, who was hitting the monster's head repeatedly with her antenna and legs and wings.

The creature screeched exactly like a chainsaw too, let me tell you, and once its clapperclaw feeler struck the butterfly's membranous hind wings with such force that she staggered into the woods, and I was worried that she might not come back . . .

But she did, this time with a Ubiquitous Faceless Orangutan on her wings, and dropped the furry brown animal on the squid. Immediately the arboreal UFO started scratching and jumping on its head, and Goof brought another two frantic brown UFOS from the trees and dropped them on the alligator-squid creature.

The struggle was real, but I felt the schooner wobble on water again as this insane battle went on in front of it, and I found my eyelids collapsing despite the adrenaline of the whole situation . . . and the I'm sure that before I passed off, I whispered 'Beware the Goof' under my breath.

I hope you guys remember Goof and the UFOs. This whole book depends on whether you've read the previous one or not, although I keep trying to recap a little, subtly, about whatever comes from the last installment.