Part 1, if you missed it. And Part 2. And Part 3. And Part 4.
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Over on the bench in its tube, the egg within an egg within an egg trembled, the surface finely crazing. Like a firefly trapped in a jar, it bounced off the glass walls.
“What is it I’m supposed to do?” Stumpy asked, wishing for another round of food, wondering if it would be rude to ask.
“Technically, you’ve already done it.”
“Does that mean I am free to go or whatever? Like maybe eat more?”
“Wasn’t I clear? You’ve already done it but you still have to do it so it will already be done. Also you’ll need to do what needs to be done but won’t be done for quite some time yet.”
The tap-tap-tap of the egg against glass was the only sound in the silence that followed.
“Um…what?”
“Honestly, the bird brains.”
“I’m not sure that would make sense to any brain?” said Stumpy. “Where did we land on the more food or…?”
“You’ll probably want to travel light for this one,” said Ida, eyeing the egg, which was now spinning, a deep, rich red radiating through the fine cracks.
“But you still haven’t told me what I need to do,” Stumpy watched the egg within an egg within an egg turning end over end “and so far when it’s done that I’ve wound up some place weird.”
“Maybe not as birdy a bird brain as I thought,” Ida said. “Backward is one thing, but forward, well, that’s quite a lot of temporal turbulence.”
“Forward? Forward as in forward in time? Why would I go forward?”
“And here I was thinking you were starting to understand. It’s very simply, put, Stumpy, yellow and red make orange.”
“But what does that have to do–” whatever she was going to say, Stumpy lost it as the red from the egg permeated the glass, coming at her like tentacles, fast and grasping.
They slithered around her as the egg audibly cracked, and then she was off like a stone in a slingshot, at speed no penguin ever achieved before or since.
Gone was the strange, sterile lab, she was following the rolling egg forward, forward, forward. Until she wasn’t.
It was white. Everything was white; the ground, the sky, the air itself, all heavy with snow and a wind unlike anything Stumpy ever felt, even in the worst of the Antarctic winter. There was no hope of spotting the egg, and Stumpy had mixed feelings on that particular matter, given it seemed like it might not be too terrible to be rid of it.
Then again, the way things were going, she probably couldn’t get home without it. Whatever or wherever that “home” was, if it could exist again.
Before her, not close enough to see clearly, not through all the heavy falling snow, there sat a grayish blobby…shape, high up, no more than a silhouette, really, beyond the white.
“Finally,” he said, “that took forever, do you know how long I’ve waited for you?”
“What? No, of course I don’t,” Stumpy said, trying to waddle closer through the enormous snowdrifts, her wings wide for balance. She gave up, flopped on her belly and slid her way over the icy surface, bonking her head on packed snow.
She stumbled to her feet and craned backward. Before her stood a kind of throne made entirely of packed snow and and ice filagree, delicately twisted, glistening canes, transparent below the fresh topping of snow.
A creature of a type Stumpy had never seen sat in the throne, fin-legs crossed, a huge, twirling horn shooting upward, far enough that Stumpy couldn’t see the end in all the snow.
“I don’t even know who you are. Or where I am. Or when I am. You’re definitely not a penguin. Or a pen..guman, I think she said?”
The animal in the throne laughed, the horn jostling. “Oh they’re long, long gone. If you can’t stand the cold, get out of the icebox, as the saying goes.” He paused, then gave his head a quick tilt, the thing at the top suddenly visible in all of its very long, very sharp glory.
“I like your horn,” said Stumpy uncertainly, thinking it looked like a penguin skewer.
“It’s not a horn,” he said, a little huffily. “It’s a tooth. And there’s no need for pleasantries, let’s get on with it, we’ve got the Narwal/Polar Bear Cross Town Classic in a bit, and I don’t want to miss the opening maul. I’m Oliver, by the way.”
“Wasn’t that a pleasantry? I’m not even sure what I’m doing here.”
Oliver sighed a heavy, sea-scented sigh. “Aunty Ida warned me.”
“Aunty?” Stumpy searched his light gray, brown and dark gray blobbed face, but saw no family resemblance.
“That’s just what she likes to be called. By people she likes.”
“She didn’t ask me to call her Aunty…”
“Anyway,” he said pointedly, “here we are, at the far end of your…mess,” he waved a fin arm around vaguely, “and she warned us we’re heading to collapse unless you undo it.”
“I didn’t do it on purpose,” said Stumpy, “it’s the egg. Where is the egg?”
“You’re a follower, Stumpy. Be a leader for once.” He flipped the end of his finarm over, revealing the egg, which was already turning a warm shade of yellow. With a flick he sent toward her. She tried to catch it between her wings, but it plopped softly into the deep snow.
“Oh right,” Oliver said as the yellow glow warmed the snow around, “she told me you needed this one last thing.”
TO BE CONTINUED…
A Bit to Read 
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