Kwek Kwek

By Gene Laurenciano

The year is 1912

Lord and Lady Clayton, with their newborn son, Robert, are bound to Cape Town-Wellington in their flying machine to foresee the construction of railways. During the journey, their flying machine encounters a flock of migrating geese so numerous that Lord Clayton thought he was seeing storm cloud ahead. It is too late to turn back and the “cloud” comes too fast too soon.
Driven by curiosity of the first mammoth flying thing they see, the geese flap closer. Then they start ramming on the flying machine in all directions nearly causing the flyer to plunge to a fatal crash.

The crash is completed by marauding apes. The mishap kills Lord and Lady Clayton instantly. The migrating geese return to save the Baby Robert from the Apes. The apes are beaten and
Witnessing the death of two humans, the wisest of all the geese, mahatma the Gander and his wife Cleoquackquack, opts to stay to prevent another death – that of the child’s, if they all leave. Those that remained set up a permanent settlement at the foot of The Blue Misty Mountain -- where a supposed hermit duck lives in one of the caves of its unconquered summit -- and calls it Fort Quack. The boy is named Kwek-Kwek. He acts, eats and fights like one of them. The only thing he could not do is fly – which Mahatma the Gander had not yet given up trying to teach the boy. Drak the Peking Duck, the martial arts duck from the Orient teaches Kwek-Kwek Tad-Jak Sapak-Tuka – the goose art of fighting.

Somewhere Russia, a fence and a treasure hunter , Sir Edward Spencer and his lackey, Ivan Warren, get hold of a manuscript of Aesop’s fable on the goose that lays golden egg. Following the clue, the two embark to a quest, chasing their own tails, until they come across Mother Goose – Oliver Goldsmith. They torture him to reveal what he knows. When the knowledge is finally affirmed, the two consolidates a force that can defeat any tribe that will stand between them and the Golden Duck.

Meanwhile, Bianca Jill, an American ornithology student, gets lost during a field trip and harass by a pack of hyenas. She is saved by Kwek-Kwek and they become friends. But the day finally come that she has to leave him for home.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Gene Laurenciano
• Release date: Jul 6, 2017
• ISBN: 9781370120215

Book preview

What if the tale of the goose that lays golden eggs was true after all?

What if Tarzan was raised by geese and not by the apes?

He’d be called

Kwek-Kwek

Gene Laurenciano

Prologue

The Solon Manuscript

St. Petersburg, 1900

The street sign says, Bolshaia Morskaia.

It is an elegant part of the city because it is here that the most famous of all jewelers had set up shop and residence.

If there is a New York today that does not seem to sleep, in this turn-of-the century thoroughfare, at the wee hours of a foggy night, few people in their stylish attires are just on their way home and their rowdydowdy intoxicated laughter reverberate. The cobbled boulevard moans under the wheels of their chic carriages, and dogs could be heard barking, maybe serenading the full moon that hangs low like a ball of scarred cheese or simply irritated that people still had not learned that the nighttime is for sleeping. Further down the road is a rather long flat house that occupies twice the size of the neighboring street-level premises. The owner of the property is announced in shimmering brass sign that says:

Karl Gustavovich Fabergé

16/18 Bolshaia Morskaia

Like any resident of that street, Karl Gustavovich or Peter Carl could not be home yet by this hour – or maybe just on his way, which is usually prior to the first light of dawn before he turns to a human mud. That is what a myth says, and there were actually sightings to prove it. It is also believed that a human mud scares away vampires and werewolves, feasting on their non-beating hearts, thus Karl Gustavovich Fabergé enjoys the benefit of that urban lore, which he himself had helped circulate. Except that it is all a cloak to protect secrets -- other than the source of the clan’s wealth, the pith of his slow aging.

His room is in gloom, though not entirely; the moon outside provides a sort of silky light source. A Fabergé egg on a miniature pedestal is the most precious piece in this chamber, and the next one is a book, its pages all thick and well thumb due to age. The leather binding is consistent with the pages and the rib has no markings at all. If it had, it couldn’t be read anymore, moldered by age. The book was acquired though the influences of the first of the Fabergés to gain fame as jeweler. It is supposed that another of such book – written by the very subject of the account -- exists, but had been missing since The First Crusade.

A calloused hand periscopes, gropes and snatches the book. The hand belongs to Ivan Wrenzky, a lanky thirteen-year-old thief, who dreams big of being a professional pugilist someday. A moment later Ivan’s head cranes up, his right eye, slightly deformed due to a scar from one of his failed bid inside the boxing arena, twinkles bright with the prospect, matching that of the good left’s. The deformity adds to his stupid appearance – small metallic blue eyes like those of a mole’s with no glint of intelligence in them, a forehead that tappers to almost conical shape, a mouth that has a lower lip too thick for the upper to say they were from the same set, and a pug’s nose that was broken in several places when he was still a seven-year old urchin.

He stuffs the book in a bag almost full of loot, eyes darting right and left. Assured that there is absolutely no one, he grabs the biggest prize in the room – the egg. The prize, very polished and kept in coat of a kind of protective oil, slips out of his hand like a live fish. It floats in the air as Ivan grabs, and it slips every time. The egg finally bounces away; Ivan follows it with his stupid gaze, his mouth agape as if waiting for the motor of his brains to jolt him to action. The egg rolls under Carl Fabergé’s bed. Ivan crawls and stretches for the egg, but it had rolled too far from his scrunch. He strives, yet his range is still short. Ivan lowers his shoulder for a squeeze-in.

The dirty fingers touch the pointy end of the egg very slightly. Exerting for a more solid hold, Ivan grins -- the booty almost his. The fingers shake in the effort to claw the egg. The pointer finger touches a side of the egg and it slips again; the failed clamping becomes the momentum for the egg to spin. Ivan continues to grope, missing the egg a miniscule distance. He squeezes his body deeper under the bed. That is when he hears footsteps and humming coming in to the room.

"La-lalalalalalalala…."

The thief becomes nervous. The mud man is home early! Perhaps vampires and werewolves had already left St. Petersburg, which only means that the mud man could be hungry and would eat anything – even human hearts! He tries to pull out, however the bed is too heavy and he is stuck to almost immobility; the loot bag had served as a wedge between him and the bed. He settles, rattled, catching his breath, sweating despite the chill of the night as the footsteps become louder and nearer. He looks to where the footsteps are coming from, thinking if he could still live without a heart.

The large door swings open. Ivan Wrenzky panics silently as Carl Fabergé’s feet in patent leather shoes walk in. Wrenzky humps up for a push to get out, ripping his pants in the most disgraceful location. He touches the ripped part, trying to pinch-close the torn fabric, while his eyes are fixed on the approaching feet.

The thief could see Fabergé taking off his shoes and slips on a pair of fleece-lined slippers, possibly the hide of a devoured werewolf. The trousers are now the hem of a satin nightgown. Ivan could just die in dread while the feet make its way to the bed-- a pound more of weigh will clamp him under and he’d be caught if not now, later. Ivan labors to squiggle out.

Karl Gustavovich Fabergé, in mudpack, his hair covered in net with pointy ears as part of the slumber kitty pajama set, notices the wiggling end of the thief. Concern growing, his face contorts in slow motion as he gathers the strength to scream. Afterward a faggish siren blares from a vocal chord that could only be matched by something yet to be invented during the frenzy of the First World War,

"Ahhh… ahhh…. EEEEEEEEEeeeee eeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee!!!!!," Fabergé blows.

Ivan is able to free himself from the bed. He tumbles out from the impetus of the pull. He is slumped. When he lifts his sight – more surprised than Fabergé, seeing the face masked in mud-- he screams, too. EEEEeeeeEEeeeEeEEEEEE eeeeEEeeeEeEEEEEE!!!!!!

And the screaming turns to a match, each assuming that the loser will shut up. But it goes for a while. Suddenly, Fabergé zips up. Ivan waits a bit, expecting Fabergé to run away so he could make his clean escape. In spite of this, Fabergé is not to be beaten that easily, musters more strength for a louder yowl, and it scares Wrenzky more.

It was an opportunity for Peter Carl! His foe had blinked and a killer instinct takes over. He grabs a decorative, fully functional double-barrel blunderbuss on the wall and aims it to the stunned Ivan. The hammer is pulled back.

Ivan farts in fear, slightly altering the tangent of the aim.

The finger squeezes the trigger. The first barrel discharges. The recoil throws Fabergé on the floor.

Wrenzky, saved by his fart, is paralyzed with dread. Half of his face is dark with the soot from the burnt powder.

Fabergé flouts, assured of a kill as he thumbs the other barrel; his face has also the tattooing of soot from the backfire, that portion where the mud vizard had been rimed. The barrel barks anew. Wrenzky’s mouth turns to a black void as he reverses his lungs for a shriek that would only be matched by sirens in London during the Nazi air raid.

Between Ivan’s bowed legs is the smoking hole created by the explosion – where his head used to be; his heels together and he clings on two wall-mounted candleholders. Ivan gives a plastered silly grin and hurdles out of the window. The spot where he was is marked with a white silhouette surrounded by the blast mark.

Sir Ed Spencers’s Hideout

The Poor Section Of St. Petersburg

Dark.

A matchstick is struck, did not burst to flame at first, creating only a spark. The second strike is a success. The kindle journeys the air. The reddish and yellowish effects of the glow make everything around the room casts eerie shapes. For a couple of seconds, there is a parade of shadows that seem to be gargoyles, but the objects that shed them are actually junctions of mixed bits and pieces viewed from a weird perspective. The glow touches a wick of an oil lamp, and it gathers brilliance. The lighted stick travels to the face of Sir Ed Spencer, his protruding eyeballs focus on Wrenzky while he snuffs the matchstick with a puff. Sir Ed’s mouth catches its dying flush, reflecting back a dull sheen from a suite of stainless steel-clad teeth above a wide nose with flared nostrils.

Sir Ed, a muscular Scottish army reject turned treasure hunter and fence, is standing by a huge, discolored, and with popped out stuffing leather armchair behind a massive table having cracked varnish, scratches and nipped decorative carvings that bare the true color of the wood. He adjusts the wicker of the lamp, his shadow growing in the background, looming above everything else in the room -- an ever-watchful protector of a wicked domain. He was born Edward Sicpence and he hated his last name that sounded both lunatic and very cheap. There could have been a mistake in the records when he was registered in the census office, being the only Sicpence in the family with eight broods. When he entered the army, he changed it to Edward Spence. The name sounded good enough, but adding an R and making it Edward Spencer gave it more air of respect. After he was dishonorably discharged for rubber band pilfering, he affixed the title Sir to his tainted alias to further mock the system, and it worked wonderfully. He found out that people respect more those with the Sir before their first names.

Ivan is seated across Sir Ed, absorbed by the cigarette he is rolling. He licks the edge of the preparation to make the paper cohere, gives it one last twirl and puts it in his mouth. Then he stretches a leg and dips his hand in his pocket, pulls out and strikes a match of his own. He lights up, drags a long toke and the lighted tip of the cigarette races towards his lips. He inhales deeply, pinches the cigarette off his mouth and blows rings of smoke. He puts the cigarette back in his mouth and drags again.

Sir Ed sits and clasps his hands together, thumbs twiddling, stares at Ivan and scowls. So, what have we got here, Wrenzky? he asks in a raspy voice.

Ivan reaches by his leg for the loot bag. The content of the bag is poured out on the table – almost all are worthless trinkets. Sir Ed’s dismay for every draffy item that falls out is manifested by his eyes following the dumping. Ivan does not seem to mind; he is all a smile, until nothing is coming out anymore. Sir Ed is silent, waiting for the last item, nostrils flaring on every breath.

The cigarette’s elongated ash threatening to fall, Wrenzky signals him with a finger extended up that could mean, one moment, please. He pulls the bag’s mouth wider and dips his head in. Assured that there are still things left when his head is out, he smiles again to Sir Ed, and shakes the bag up-side-down for the second time.

The leather-bound book drops, followed by a set of dentures that clatters on its fall. Sir Ed stoops forward, anticipating more items that could be of value. When nothing comes out, he shoots Ivan a nasty, oblique stare. Ivan, beaming proudly, removes the consumed cigarette in his mouth and grinds it in an ashtray nearby.

Is that it? Sir Ed hisses.

Ivan nods.

Sir Ed whips out his wallet, pulls a boodle and counts, occasionally glancing to Wrenzky, who is rubbing his hands in anticipation of a huge payday. Sir Ed stops counting and rips out the smallest denomination, which could be a one rubble bill, and gives it to Wrenzky.

Ivan scratches his head as he receives the pay. Is that it? he grumbles.

Sir Ed nods. For four days I’ve been waiting for you, and this is all you’ve got?

Wrenzky sinks wearily in the chair, needs a puff. He gets the tobacco pouch in his belt, shaking his head in frustration. He opens the book to the last page – where some of the leaves had already been torn away – and tears another. The book catches Sir Ed’s curiosity. Ivan has the skag prepared, puts it in his mouth, strikes a match, lights up and drags. The flame on the cigarette tip almost burgeons. Sir Ed reaches out, extinguishing the cigarette by slapping it out with a flurry. Wrenzky dodges and wards him off. Hey! Wha –

Sir Ed grabs the book and thumbs the pages, his interest mounting over as he browses on the content. Then he stops, puts down the codex and stares accusingly to Ivan. Ivan leans back.

Where are the last pages? Sir Ed snaps.

I – I used them as cigarette wraps. Taste sweeter than my brand.

Why you!? Sir Ed releases a flurry of slaps again.

Ivan shields himself with his arms. Why? What did I do?

You just smoked away the most critical clue to the duck that lays golden eggs! That’s all! Sir Ed stops. Panting, he walks back to his chair.

I just did? Ivan sighs.

Sir Ed jiggles an emphatic nod. He summons Wrenzky with his finger. Ivan leans toward Sir Ed. Sir Ed opens