Amanderella Gottsnobbler and the Bangolin Tree Chapter 8

Chapter 9.

 

So where is the Bangolin tree?

 

Amanderella tapped her notebook with her sharpened pencil. “Please tell me as much as you know.”

Mr Swiftgaze folded his hands with the solemnity of a man about to announce a national shortage of umbrellas. “The last explorer to find the Bangolin fruit,” he said, “was Dr Jesson Wickslate. He located the tree forty‑nine years ago and a bit. Brilliant man. Terrible handwriting. He vanished while searching for the Source of the—”

Amanderella looked up. “The Source of the what?”

Motethrifters nodded gravely. “His final journal entry ends with the words: ‘I shall find the Sauce of the—’ and then a blot so dramatic it has been studied by scholars.”

Quicklens added, “Some believe he meant ‘Source’. Others insist it was ‘South’. One man claimed it was ‘Sausage’, but he was not invited back.”

Quicklens nodded. “People have been looking for him ever since. And for the Sauce. Whatever it was.”

Amanderella wrote in her notebook:

Source: unidentified. Possibly important. Possibly lunch.

Swiftgaze continued, “People have been looking for him ever since. Every so often, an explorer returns from some remote corner of the world claiming to have met a man who matches his description.”

Motethrifters leaned in. “And whenever they greet him, they always say the same thing.”

Quicklens cleared his throat and delivered the line with the reverence of a man quoting scripture: ‘Dr Wickslate, I presume?’”

Amanderella raised an eyebrow. “And does he ever answer?”

“No,” Swiftgaze sighed. “He is always gone by the time they turn around. Some say he is still searching for the Sauce of the… whatever it was. Some say he found it. Some say he became it.”

Motethrifters shuddered. “We do not ask.”

Mr Quicklens, who had already changed spectacles twice since entering the room, leaned forward. “The juice from that last fruit has lasted this long only because it was diluted with beetroot juice. A single teensy‑weensy drop of Bangolin essence is enough to turn ordinary pink glass into true rose‑tinted lenses.”

Amanderella nodded. “Efficient.”

“Terrifyingly so,” Swiftgaze murmured. “For we are now down to the final vial. The very last.”

Amanderella closed her notebook with a decisive snap.

“Well,” she said, “if he found the Bangolin tree once, I can find it again.”

“So,” Mrs Gaffletter interrupted, folding her hands in front of her like a governess preparing to deliver unwelcome news, “you intend to go gallivanting into Burkoland. A place which, I might remind you, does not appear on any map, sensible or otherwise.”

Mr Swiftgaze brightened. “We do have a map!”

Mrs Gaffletter turned her head very slowly, as though afraid that any sudden movement might cause the universe to collapse.

“A map,” she repeated.

Motethrifters produced a roll of paper with the enthusiasm of a magician unveiling a rabbit. Unfortunately, the resemblance continued: the map had the same startled, slightly crumpled expression as a rabbit dragged unexpectedly into daylight.

Amanderella unrolled it across the table.

It contained:

• three rivers
• two mountains
• one enthusiastic doodle of a tree
• and, in the centre, the helpful label: “Burkoland (somewhere here‑ish)”

It looked as though it had been drawn by a child during a bumpy carriage ride, using a pencil that kept trying to escape.

Amanderella studied it.
Mrs Gaffletter stared at it.
The map stared back, apologetically.

Amanderella cleared her throat. “Gentlemen… this is—”

“—a masterpiece of optical cartography,” Quicklens said proudly.

Mrs Gaffletter made a noise like a kettle about to boil over.

Motethrifters leaned over the map and tapped a large, wobbly circle labelled “Burkoland (somewhere here‑ish)”. “You see,” he explained, “we are spectacle makers. Our fathers were spectacle makers. Their fathers were spectacle makers. We come from a long line of men who can identify a smudge on a lens at twenty paces.”

Swiftgaze nodded. “Unfortunately, none of us can draw.”

Quicklens added, “Or navigate.”

Motethrifters sighed. “Or hold a pencil steady in a moving vehicle.”

Amanderella sighed.

Mrs Gaffletter stared at it for a long moment. Then she inhaled again, not a sigh, but a sigh‑shaped event. “You may rely on me,” Mrs Gaffletter said. “That if you go, I will keep your room ready for you, but I should like it noted that I do not approve.”

The spectacle makers hovered over their map like three owls trying to read a shopping list in a gale.

Mrs Gaffletter hovered behind them, arms folded, radiating disapproval in neat, symmetrical waves.

Amanderella, meanwhile, took out her notebook and her sharpest pencil.

“Gentlemen,” she said, “your map is… enthusiastic. But enthusiasm is not geography.”

Swiftgaze looked wounded. “It is based on the best information available.”

“Which is what?” Amanderella asked.

Motethrifters cleared his throat. “Rumour. Hearsay. A man we met on a train who claimed to have once seen a tree.”

Quicklens added, “He was very convincing.”

Amanderella tapped her pencil. “Did he say where the tree was?”

“No,” Swiftgaze admitted. “But he said it was ‘not near the coast.’”

Amanderella wrote:

Not near the coast.

“And,” Motethrifters added, “he said it was ‘not on a mountain.’”

Not on a mountain.

“And,” Quicklens said, “he was quite certain it was ‘not in a swamp.’”

Amanderella paused. “So, you know where it isn’t.”

The spectacle makers brightened. “Exactly!”

Mrs Gaffletter made a noise like a teapot suppressing a scream.

Amanderella spread the map flat, ignoring the rivers that fled in three directions and the mountains that looked startled to be included.

“Very well,” she said. “Let us proceed by elimination.”

She drew a firm line through:

• the coast
• the mountains
• the swamps
• the areas labelled ‘Here be vines (possibly)’
• and the large doodle of a tree that looked apologetic

This left a single, unmarked patch of paper in the middle, a blank, featureless space the spectacle makers had apparently forgotten to fill in.

Amanderella tapped it with satisfaction.

“There,” she said. “That is where the Bangolin tree must be.”

The spectacle makers stared.
Mrs Gaffletter stared.
Even the map seemed surprised.

Swiftgaze whispered, “How did you know?”

Amanderella closed her notebook with a snap. “Because it is the only place you have not ruled out.”

Motethrifters blinked. “But that is… that is…”

“Logical,” Amanderella supplied. “Now, if you will excuse me, I must consult sources that do not wobble, contradict themselves, or doodle apologetic trees.”

She swept past them with the calm authority of a woman who had just solved a problem and was already halfway to solving the next. “I shall be at the library,” she added, “where the maps stay still and the books do not argue.”

Amanderella left the boarding house with her notebook, her pencil, and the sort of purposeful stride that made pedestrians step aside without quite knowing why. The spectacle makers were still arguing about whether their map should have included a compass rose, and Mrs Gaffletter was muttering darkly about “foreign vegetation” in the pantry.

The library, by contrast, was perfectly still.

It smelled of polished wood, old paper, and the faint, reassuring dust of knowledge that had settled into the shelves over centuries.

Amanderella approved. Dust in a library was respectable dust, the sort that stayed where it was put and did not attempt to infiltrate carpets.

She took a seat at a long oak table, opened her notebook, and began her research.

Mrs Gaffletter returned to her polishing with the air of a woman who had just survived a minor natural disaster. The spectacle makers had finally departed, in three different directions, none of them correct, leaving behind a faint smell of lens polish and confusion.

The house was quiet. Too quiet.

Amanderella’s room door stood neatly closed, her boots absent from their usual place by the mat. Mrs Gaffletter paused, hand on the banister, feeling a small, unwelcome flutter of anxiety.

Her most reliable lodger, tidy, punctual, crumb‑averse, financially dependable, and whose boots did not shed mud, was preparing to vanish into a jungle full of vines, humidity, and foreign inconveniences.

And what, precisely, was a responsible landlady supposed to do then?

She went to her writing desk. She sat. She smoothed the blotter. She selected her best pen, the one reserved for matters of gravity and rent.

And she began to write to the only person who might understand the seriousness of the situation: Amanderella’s mother.

Madam,
I trust this letter finds you in tolerable health and safely removed from any draughts, chills, or other atmospheric disturbances. I write to you in my capacity as landlady to your daughter, Lady Amanderella, whose conduct as a lodger has been exemplary in every respect: punctual, tidy, and entirely free of crumbs.

It has come to my attention, through certain conversations of a professional nature, that Lady Amanderella may shortly be embarking upon an expedition of some duration. The precise destination was not made clear to me, though I gathered it involves jungles, humidity, fruit‑picking, beetroot, and vegetation of an assertive character.

In the unlikely event that her return should be delayed by vines, roots, monsoons, or any other foreign impediments, I should be grateful for guidance regarding the appropriate handling of her personal effects. Naturally, I do not anticipate calamity. I merely seek to ensure that her belongings, and her room, are managed in accordance with your wishes should she be temporarily indisposed, detained, or otherwise rendered unable to communicate.

Please be assured that this enquiry arises solely from a desire for administrative clarity and not from any expectation of misfortune.

With respectful regards,
Mrs Gaffletter
Proprietor, Gaffletter’s Select Boarding Establishment.

Amanderella’s mother immediately read this letter as meaning, “Your daughter is trekking into a swamp full of diseases, crocodiles, and possibly beetroot.”