Chapter 5: In Which the Fate of the Seventy-Seven Amphi Pambis is Finally Revealed

Boom. In the distance, someone screamed, sounding unfortunately similar to a very angry teapot. Boom. Another scream joined the first, marginally closer and more distressed. Boom. Eunkyung swallowed at the thuds of bodies fainting and hitting the ground outside. The villagers kneeling before her in the room exchanged glances, and her guards formed ranks around her, spears at the ready. Boom.

Just outside the door of the throne room, the booms paused. Stopped by the guards, Eunkyung guessed, heart jumping in her chest. It was a testament to their rigorous training that the guards’ voices did not waver in the least a second later. “Ho there! State your name and business with the Crown!”

Everyone inside the room strained to hear the much softer response. “... messenger... here to report to the princess on the Amphi Pambi situation.”

There was a pause, in which the guards seemed to have a brief debate about whether to allow the visitors in, and then the great doors to the throne room creaked open. Straining to see from her throne on the dais, Eunkyung peered through the widening gap between the doors, then gasped. Someone else screamed and fainted behind her.

Just barely squeezing its way through the grand doors, which were a towering five adult Bijeonians tall and two turtles wide, was what appeared to be an enormous, hairy-eyed, green-slimed, seven-eyed Amphi Pambi with a crown on its head. Somebody inside screamed again, and the messenger following the giant Amphi Pambi sighed a long-suffering sigh, plugging her ears until the screamer’s nerves gave out and the scream cut off with a swoon and an all-too-familiar thud.

Eunkyung swallowed, struggling to keep her expression blank. “Will someone please explain to me why a… an Amphi Pambi has been brought before me on Grievance Day? I explicitly ordered today’s schedule to be cleared out for villagers to present their complaints and conflicts to the Crown, and all other concerns should be redirected to Eri.”

The messenger inclined her head. “Begging your pardon, Your Majesty, but this seemed rather important, and there is a grievance to be presented.”

“What?” Eunkyung blinked, not sure if she’d heard that correctly. “A grievance?”

Swallowing, the messenger nodded. “I… I think it would be best for her to explain.” She gestured at the huge creature at her side, and Eunkyung couldn’t stop her jaw from dropping. Has she lost her mind? Amphi Pambis can’t talk, much less present grievances at Grievance Day!

But a moment later, the messenger’s sanity was proven intact.

The Amphi Pambi, still dripping swamp slime on the floor, opened its great maw and croaked, “Greetings, Bijeonian princess.” Eunkyung felt her face slacken and lose all color. That’s not our language. It can’t be! But why… why can I understand?

The Amphi Pambi’s voice was like nothing she’d ever heard before - it was some sort of a cross between enormous boulders grinding and scraping into each other and a yodeling goat trapped between aforementioned boulders, and the sounds the Amphi Pambi produced fell into no category of vowels or consonants that Eunkyung could discern. Whether the voice was high-pitched or low, she could not tell either - in truth, it sounded like it was at once high and low, and everything in between, as if an infinite number of voices were all speaking at the same time.

By all rights, she shouldn’t have been able to understand this strange creature’s words, if they could even be called that. Yet the grinding-scraping-yodeling utterations wormed through her ears and into her brain, where they were understood as easily as if the Amphi Pambi were speaking fluent Bijeonian. Judging by the shocked expressions around her, she wasn’t the only one who understood the Amphi Pambi, either.

“We are Queen of the Amphi Pambis,” the creature continued, great webbed toes flexing. “We speak on behalf of all Amphi Pambis. We have been brought here by your messenger, and we have a grievance to present.”

“A-Ah,” Eunkyung said, feeling quite faint. “Welcome to the court then. What grievance have you today?”

The queen shifted her massive body closer to the dais. “We are not pleased. We do not like our people being stolen and separated from us every year by the blimp.”

Is she referring to the rain ceremony? Eunkyung blinked and fervently wished her mother were here to provide some semblance of advice on how to handle this. It wasn’t as if her advisers were being very helpful - half of them had already fainted dead away, and the other half seemed to be contemplating joining their colleagues in blissful unconsciousness.

“We do not like living on the cloud.” Each of the queen’s seven eyes took turns blinking, Eunkyung noticed with morbid fascination, with the larger eyes blinking slower than the smaller ones. “The cloud is windy and cold. And sometimes we fall through the cloud when it rains and go splat.”

Finally finding her voice, Eunkyung sat up straighter. “And which cloud is this, may I inquire?”

“The cloud that your blimp lands us on every year before it pops and falls back down.”

“It goes to the same cloud every year?” Astounded, she stared at the queen. Never before had she wondered where the blimp went - it was only part of the ceremony, and she had assumed it would come down in the next thunderstorm when the body of the blimp was punctured. “Are you saying the Amphi Pambis have started a colony on this cloud?”

The queen nodded her massive head. “We call it the Cloud of the Blimped. We do not like