She looked at Melina now and the caterpillar gave her a cautious but joyful smile.
Vita joined the headmonster at the railing and it hit just below her shoulder. She started when a burst of lighting made the sky white for a moment. But it was the white of an old refrigerator or a worn linoleum floor. This was a world past its expiration date, a world just moments short of crumbling in on itself.
A Rotten world, just as Peebles had said.
“I don’t have to describe the feeling of this place to you, Vita,” Mazkin said without looking at her. “Since the moment you left the school you’ve felt an ice in your bones that has only a little to do with the weather, and a miserable hunger that has as much to do with food. You wanted sunlight but instead you found an everlasting fog and air that is somehow both dusty and wet. You feel it’s been days, weeks, years since you have been in the sun or seen color or really truly felt anything at all.”
Vita felt herself beginning to respond to his words, her posture slumping and her eyes tearing. She shook her head and took a few deep breaths.
“Our world is sick, dying,” he went on. “It won’t be long until it falls apart entirely and we Drozlinians will be doomed. That is, unless you help us.”
“What can I do?”
“We will provide you with the supplies and necessary space to make a model of your Whirlyton, down to the tiniest detail. Just like you saw the boy make his chocolate fountain. I and the rest of the staff will train you and aid you in the creation of your model as best we can. Then, when we deem it appropriate, we will test the integrity of each student’s model.”
She blinked at that. Test the integrity. Did that mean the teachers would just look at each model and decide which was best?
“Whoever’s model wins will be chosen as the model for New Drozlin,” Mazkin continued, his voice pitched louder as a harsh gust of wind rushed by. “The winner will come here and make Drozlin like his or her model. Just think, Vita. Instead of these gray and dreary moors we could see the plains of your own Whirlyton.”
“What happens to the kids whose models don’t get chosen?” she asked. Images of Ruckles’ sharp claws and Skrillus’s fangs swam in her mind.
“They will accompany the winner to Drozlin to aid in the building process. All four of you will be free to go once the building of New Drozlin is completed.” He looked down at Melina, then back at Vita with a grin. “It’s just that only one of you will be leaving with the Cloak.”
CHAPTER SIX
THE RED BALL
Vita’s wet sneakers squelched on the burgundy carpeting in the hallway where Mazkin had asked her to wait while he put the Crossing Cloak away. He’d insisted he needed Melina’s help gathering a few of those world-building “supplies” he’d been talking about earlier. So Vita had left the caterpillar still bundled up in the cloak, as real in the office as she’d been outside, sitting on the armchair while Mazkin unlocked the oak chest.
Vita’s shoulders felt better freed of Melina’s heavy weight at last—but she still wished her friend were here.
Two desks were pushed up against one wall. One desk was spotless while the other was covered in sketches of mazes, fairies, and flowers. A canvas resting against the wall on the art-covered desk depicted a fairy resting on the grassy ground in the shade of a daisy, her legs bent and her delicate caramel arms folded over her knees. She looked over her shoulder with bright green eyes. She had wings of woven gold and the locks of her wild red-blond hair were like flames.
The vibrant colors in the painting reminded Vita of Whirlyton. She thought of her friends besides Melina—Spiral, Harper, Pish and Posh. What had they been doing while Melina shifted from imaginary, to some kind of apparition, to flesh and blood? Did they remain in Whirlyton, hanging around Nayera Jungle or soaring through the cotton clouds, unaware of all Vita and Melina had faced?
Vita turned when Mazkin emerged from his office with Melina in tow, swallowing hard at the sight of her friend, fuzzy and indistinct once again without the Crossing Cloak. She tried to remember that just earlier that day, Melina had been nothing more than an intangible confidante—the stuff of whimsical daydreams and fantasy.
It was hard to keep that in mind, though, when mere moments before the caterpillar had been something truly other from Vita. A real friend, like Vita had thought Jen was.
Vita could see Melina well enough to tell the ghostly caterpillar was frowning, her fluffy brows drawn. Melina wore something silver around her neck—a necklace?—that brought her insubstantial state into sharp relief. Vita worried for a moment it was some sort of leash, but Melina would have reacted to such a thing with far worse than a dismayed expression. And Mazkin didn’t seem to be holding anything but a single piece of paper folded into quarters.
“Rosie’s a talented artist, isn’t she?” he remarked when he reached Vita.
Vita nodded and her gaze returned to the desk. The grinning girl who’d hopped up to wave at her behind the order window hadn’t looked nearly old enough to have that kind of artistic talent—Rosie still had the kind of apple cheeks that flicked adults’ voices up an octave or two like a switch. She’d seemed friendly … but if she was another student, wouldn’t she be Vita’s competition?
Mazkin walked past Rosie’s desk and approached the other desk beyond the first set of arched double doors with Vita and Melina following behind. Vita tried to catch her friend’s eye, searching for some clue as to what she and Mazkin had talked about alone in the office, but Melina just gave her a not now shake of the head.
“This will be your work station,” the headmonster told Vita of the desk on her right. “Most of our students find it helpful to take a step away from building every now and then to work things through by making notes on or,” his eyes flicked back toward Rosie’s artwork, “sketches of the details of their models.”
Did that flame-haired fairy really exist somewhere in Moorhouse then, as Melina did? Vita felt a tickle of giddy joy in her stomach at the thought of seeing a real live fairy. Or even a ghostly one. Though she wasn’t sure she would get a chance to see the other children’s models—that would be a bit like peeking at another student’s paper during an exam, she supposed. She stepped forward, pulled out her desk’s single drawer, and found it empty as well.
“Let one of your teachers know which supplies you will require and we’ll make sure you receive them,” Mazkin said.
Vita wouldn’t be asking for pastels or colored pencils. She’d never been much of an artist. “How many teachers will I have?” she asked.
“You’ll get a rotation of several at first. We’ll figure out whom you work best with, and by the end of your training you’ll only be working with a few monsters. Fironella and I will both drop in periodically to monitor your progress as well.”
The girl shivered at the thought of the doll monster. She’d nearly forgotten Fironella with the recent distractions of the death cliff and Drozlin and Melina being temporarily real.
Vita bent down to pet Melina. Specter or no, the caterpillar was one of her oldest friends and would always prove a comfort. Melina lengthened her neck to lean into Vita’s hand and the girl noticed the chain around it again. It was a long chain and its circular charm dragged on the carpet. The charm looked like a shiny black locket.
“Melina was kind enough to carry your compass for me,” Mazkin said above them.
Vita looked up at him, noting that the paper in his hand left the other free. “Why couldn’t you carry it?”
“Your compass is a very special tool, Vita, and should only be handled by you or members of your world,” he said. “It will act as your guide within your Dream Chamber, and help to center your world-building power.”
She picked up the compass and opened it. A brilliant ruby sat at the center, and a black needle spun against its white face and silver compass rose. The lettering appeared to be upside-down—as though the “E” and “W” were meant to be read with the compass facing south rather than north. The poin
t of the needle soon settled on the curled “S” and remained there no matter which direction she turned.
“I think it’s broken,” Vita replied.
“The compasses don’t work very well outside our students’ Dream Chambers. In fact your compass is really only good for one thing out here.” He walked over to the hallway’s second gray archway and stood to the right near a circular hollow in the stone. “Bring the compass over here and I’ll show you.”
Melina ducked her head down so Vita could lift the chain from her neck. “Glad to be rid it,” the caterpillar muttered. “It felt quite strange around my neck now that I’m not … how I was earlier.”
Vita gave her friend a few sympathetic pats. As confusing as this real-not-real business had been for Vita, she knew it was probably nothing compared to what Melina had been going through.
Vita and Melina joined Mazkin in front of the second set of black doors. “Now push your compass, with the face facing outward, into that hole there,” he said.
Vita did so and started a little when the compass clicked into place and the grand doors swung inward. She could see nothing but darkness beyond the entrance. She kept a hold on the compass’s silver chain but didn’t pull it; afraid the doors would close again.
“Feel free to remove your compass from the keyhole, Vita,” Mazkin said. “The doors will close once we’re inside.”
She did so then settled the compass around her neck. It hung close to her waist and Vita found something comforting in its weight.
When her feet crossed the threshold onto the room’s black and white checkered floor, some unknown source of light streamed in from the sides rather than above. A high domed cement ceiling expanded above them—or at least it seemed domed to Vita. To be sure the ceiling was domed, she would have needed to see other walls. But the floor appeared to go on beyond the entrance endlessly in each direction.
Vita was shocked to see some uncannily familiar faces in this vast, otherworldly room. Nearly thirty feet away stood two bright green birds the size of bumpers cars beside a gray bear even taller than Mazkin. Vita closed and opened her eyes a few times. The animals weren’t see-through like Melina, nor were they what Melina had become beneath the Crossing Cloak. Beneath the cloak, Melina had been real—what a sixteen-legged peach and lavender cat with long eyelashes would truly look like in the human world.
These creatures looked precisely how Vita had always seen them in her head: more like watercolor pictures come to life.
She looked down at her arms and found that inside the Dream Chamber she was also different—more like the girl she imagined when she’d gone on her Whirlyton adventures with Jen. Instead of her blue collared shirt and shorts, she wore a lavender gown of silk with long, billowing sleeves. Delicate silver slippers had replaced her soggy tennis shoes. Instead of its usual flat frizz her hair was shiny with gentle waves.
Vita searched for Melina at her feet and found the caterpillar was already trotting toward the others. It was perhaps the most startling to see Melina this way, looking just like the creature Vita had been trying and failing to draw practically ever since she’d learned how.
With a delighted laugh the girl took off across the checkered floor and, as two long legs tended to work better than sixteen short ones, she still reached the group before Melina. Vita didn’t pause before launching herself into the bear’s arms. “Harper!” she exclaimed against his soft chest.
Harper raised his arms to hug her back and twirled her around, her legs swinging. “It sure is good to see you too, Vita,” he said in his deep, rumbling voice.
“Don’t we get a hello?” Posh asked with his usual scowl.
“Posh, Pish, hi!” Vita replied.
Harper set her on the ground and she ran to hug each bird around the neck, which Pish accepted gratefully and Posh merely tolerated. “Sorry,” she said after she pulled away, “I was just so surprised to see you here.”
“So am I,” Melina said, having reached them at last. She brushed against Harper’s legs affectionately—he and Melina were the unofficial leaders of Nayera Jungle, and also very old friends. Then patted Pish and Posh’s heads with the end of her long tail in greeting. “How did you get here?”
“Dunno, really,” Pish replied. “We were in Whirlyton, searching the jungle for you, M’lina, then suddenly we were here. Just like that.”
“But where’s Spiral?” Melina asked.
Vita looked back and forth but couldn’t find the rainbow snake anywhere.
“He went searching for other walls,” Harper answered.
“Then he may be gone a while,” Mazkin called from a few feet away. He waved a clawed hand as he approached them.
Pish peered nervously at Vita out of the corner of one of his large black eyes. She patted his feathers in a way that she hoped was reassuring. “Spiral’s very fast,” she said to the headmonster.
“I don’t doubt it,” Mazkin replied. “But this Dream Chamber is roughly the size of Drozlin itself so he won’t find any more walls for miles.”
Vita looked into the distance. This room seemed enormous, but large enough to contain an entire world? “I thought when you said ‘model’, you meant something … tiny.”
“They’re not tiny, are they?” Mazkin asked with a nod toward Vita’s friends. “I must say, it’s very impressive that you managed to bring these Figments so quickly into your Chamber, and those clothes as well,” he said with a gesture toward her gown. “Our other students needed some Base to work with before being able to create like that.” He gave her a wink. “It shows you have quite the imagination, Vita, and you should fit right in here.”
Vita, who had never thought she fit in much of anywhere, blushed at the compliment.
Mazkin looked back toward her Whirlyton friends. “I’d like to welcome you all to Moorhouse, by the way. I am co-headmonster and you may call me Mazkin.”
“Hi there, Mazkin!” Pish called.
Harper nodded hello while Posh simply stared.
“Your friend Vita has just agreed to become a student here, and it is my hope that you’ll be game to help her with her studies.”
“Well, of course,” Pish said. “We’re happy to help V with whatever she needs.”
But Harper was frowning. “You’re staying here, Vita?” he asked her. “What about your parents?”
“Well, I’ll be able to go home at night, right?” she asked Mazkin. “I can just tell my dad I’m going to regular school during the day.”
Though she did remember with a chill how Mazkin had said the children would be “free to go” only after rebuilding Drozlin.
Mazkin’s frown confirmed her suspicion. “I’m afraid not, Vita. Moorhouse can only be entered from the human world once—should you try to leave, you will never be able to be a student here again.”
Vita’s heart pounded in her chest. She would be stuck here until she or one of the other children won the contest? How long would that take? She didn’t even know how long she’d been at Moorhouse already—it was possible her father had already done something drastic like called the police.
For a moment she was lost in the thought of her mother lying in her hospital bed, growing thinner by the day. She thought of her chronically concerned father’s shoulders drooping even further in sadness.
But those images were quickly replaced by ones of her siblings constantly walking ahead of her on the sidewalk and never waiting up, of Vita peeking her eyes open to see her father coming home late from work for the third time in a week. Of Jen looking embarrassed by her on the playground that afternoon.
Vita knew she would miss her parents, and didn’t want them to worry … but a part of her wondered if anyone had noticed yet that she was even gone. Her father had been so distracted ever since her mother had gotten sick. Sometimes Vita didn’t feel like she even remembered a time before her mother had been in the hospital. Deep down she knew that didn’t make sense—she had plenty of memories of her mother at home and healthy. But
so much of the time it felt like she had been gone forever, and that she would stay gone for just as long.
If Vita had a chance to bring Melina with her to the real world, then she would do whatever it took.
“Don’t worry, Harper,” Vita said, shaking the sad thoughts out of her head. “This will be an adventure.”
“That’s an attitude I like to see,” Mazkin remarked with a fanged grin. “Perhaps you and your friends would like to see the Supply Closet while you wait for, uh, Spiral, was it? As I said, it may take him quite some time to make his way back.”
Vita nodded and Melina hopped up to curl around her. The six of them made their way back toward the Dream Chamber’s entrance. They turned left when they reached the nearly black wooden wall and walked alongside it. Vita couldn’t see where the back wall hit another to their right, but spied a narrow adjacent wall in the direction they were walking. A small, wooden door was set into the wall and the oak wall went on beyond the door’s edge.
Mazkin led them inside. The Supply Closet was much larger than any closet Vita had ever seen—it seemed nearly as expansive as the Dream Chamber itself. Row after row of steel shelves filled the room, going on forever. The shelves were so tall Vita couldn’t see the tops; only a distant cement ceiling gave some hint the shelves even had tops. Each shelf was filled with wooden barrels.
Pish and Posh both wandered farther into the closet, fascinated by the rows and rows of barrels. Harper stood against the wall with his arms crossed, glancing out the still open door for Spiral every few seconds.
Mazkin stepped closer to the first set of shelves and beckoned for Vita to follow. He sat the piece of paper he’d been carrying down on a free bit of shelf, then bent to the one below it to lift one of the barrels and set it in front of Vita. He twisted off the lid and revealed its gray-brown contents, looking like a halfway point between mud and pudding. Vita recognized the stuff the bespectacled boy had used to make the chocolate peanut butter fountain. Base, Mazkin had called it.
Vita and the Monsters of Moorhouse Page 5
