As soon as Pish landed, a hen dressed in a blue apron and twice as tall as Vita pulled her by the hand toward a cottage and pointed. “My babies, Miss Vita!” she screamed. The cottage was engulfed in flames and the roof had already caved in.
Before she could think of what to do or say, Pish ran over to Vita and pointed her in the direction of Brimby’s, the local diner. Horses and goats in flannel and overalls tripped over one another trying to escape through the front door while Skrillus slammed repeatedly into the diner’s front windows. The glass windows of the nearby post office and ice cream shop had already been smashed.
“But Skrillus isn’t doing anything to the fires…” Vita said.
“It looks like the worst of it is coming from the river,” Melina observed.
Vita hopped on Pish’s back and he took her to the river that ran through the center of Bringlesberg. “Well, ain’t it fancy seeing you up here?” a spine-tingly familiar voice called over to her in the sky.
She looked over to find Ruckles riding on a terrified-looking green jay. There was a rectangular hole in the center of Ruckles’ box-like frame and Vita watched him pull a glass bottle filled with clear liquid out of his hidden compartment. Then he hurled the bottle at one of the few bonfires on the bank of the river that still looked calm; the three pigs around the bonfire tried to gather up their stick-shorn marshmallows so they could flee from the fire that surrounded them. The flames of their fire exploded upon impact—Vita couldn’t see for sure what had happened to the pigs at this distance.
“What are you doing??” she demanded of the robot monster. “You’re killing them!”
“Looks like little baby doll’s gotten too attached,” Ruckles said with a pitying sort of smile in his voice. “It happens. But it’s my job to curb those nasty habits.” He laughed and threw another bottle of alcohol down.
Vita stared down at the flaming remains of her lovely little farming village. Half the cottages were aflame and a few had been burnt through to soot. Once strings of Christmas lights had hung on posts all around the village’s edges, but now they’d been torn down and the electricity cut off. She screamed at Ruckles again to stop but he merely flew eastward to enhance more fires on the other side of town.
“Posh and the others are trying to fix this but they won’t be able to if you don’t help them,” Melina told her in a stern tone.
Vita looked across the sky and picked out all the green jays tipping barrel after barrel of Base over the fires. In some cases the Base put the fires out, but more often the fires simply spread outward around the Base. Base couldn’t do much on its own—Vita had to mold it into something first. She focused on Melina’s steady breathing around her neck and tried her best to emulate it. Then she concentrated as hard as she could on water—loads and loads of it. She peeked an eye open and was sad to find the Base all over the ground had remained Base.
Then thunder cracked and a bolt of lightning lit up the sky.
A thick, heavy rain began to fall. It was so heavy that Pish, Posh, and all the other green jays were forced to return to the ground. The rain also put out each and every fire in a matter of moments. The wounded chickens and pigs began to rise from the ground. Vita felt a tap on her shoulder and found the mother hen, who held three little chicks in her arms, all wrapped in wet blankets. Half their feathers had burned off, but they were okay.
“Thank you,” the mother hen said. Her ruined cottage behind her didn’t even seem to bother her; she was so happy her babies were all right.
Vita exhaled a deep sigh of relief and patted one of the chick’s cheeks. She jumped when a bottle broke a few feet away from her.
“Just keeping you on your toes, baby doll!” Ruckles called from above.
“Knock it off, Ruckles!” a voice that sounded like an actual baby doll called to Vita’s left. Skrillus still stood in front of the same diner as before, only now all the windows were broken and it was dark and deserted. The voice had come from somewhere higher up … and there Fironella was, standing on the diner’s roof. She jumped down and landed on Skrillus’s hood.
Skrillus turned and drove over to where Vita stood in front of the mother hen’s cottage and she graced Vita with one of her flawless smiles. “You’ve done quite well. For a first-timer, anyway.” She put a cool hand on Vita’s arm. “It wasn’t too trying for you, I trust?”
Vita took a few deep breaths. She did feel a little woozy now that Fironella mentioned it, but she wasn’t sure that was about how much building she’d just done or if she was just sick with fear, confusion, and anger. “Why would you let them do all that? You let them hurt—”
Fironella quieted Vita with a wave of her hand. “Oh, dear, my question was rhetorical. Now I must be off.” Her eyes flicked toward something behind Vita. “It looks like you’ve got some work to do anyway.”
The girl turned around and faced the Autumn Fire Forest. Once the leaves had been orange, gold, red, and brown, just as Grover had suggested on his first visit to Whirlyton.
Now the entire forest—the leaves, bark, forest floor, everything—had turned gray.
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
REBUILDING
Vita was leaning against the door of her Dream Chamber blinking the still-pouring rain out of her eyes when her doorbell rang. It couldn’t be more monsters, could it? The girl didn’t think she could stand even Peebles and Dotted-Line Jack, not right now.
She held her breath and opened the door. Her held breath came out in one big relieved sigh when the door revealed not two monsters but a single Wile. A dim melody filled the hallway—it was a sad-sounding lady Vita had heard before, singing with only an acoustic guitar. It sounded like an old recording, like always. Vita wondered if whatever made Melina blurry and indistinct outside her Dream Chamber was the same thing that made Wile’s music harder to hear outside his.
The girl opened her mouth to speak but all that came out was a garbled sob. Her shoulders had been killing her so she’d left Melina in Nayera Jungle on their way back from Bringlesberg, but now Vita was regretting that decision. If Melina were here she would curl up around Vita’s face so Wile couldn’t see. She made some attempt to talk around her tears and when that didn’t work she looked down at the grass, embarrassed. This would make twice in the span of just a few days that she had cried in front of the boy. Though who was to say it hadn’t been longer than a few days since she’d looked out that window with Wile in the North Hall? It could have been a week, a month, a year. Who knew?
This only made the girl cry harder.
Wile crossed the threshold into Whirlyton and put a hand on her shoulder. “Shh, just let it out. You should have seen me the first time Fi and the silver psychopaths came to my Chamber.”
Now that the boy was in her Dream Chamber she could still hear a shadow of his bluesy tune against the evening wind. It was like music in a movie or a department store—she noticed it if she focused on it but otherwise it disappeared completely into the background. “Why would they try to ruin everything?” she was finally able to choke out.
“Because it’s what they do,” Wile spat. “I’m not sure there is a reason.”
“Does Mazkin know they do this?”
“How could he not? Sure, he’ll act like he’s your buddy, but standing by and watching doesn’t make him innocent. I can’t stand to think of them in Rosie’s Chamber.”
Vita’s sadness coiled into protective anger at his mention of the little girl. She couldn’t bear the thought of Ruckles traipsing through sweet Rosie’s floral labyrinth, swinging his hedge clipper arms.
He walked west toward the meadow and studied the tracks across the ground. “This’ll be an easy fix—don’t even worry yourself about it now. Wanna show me the worst of the damage?”
She led the boy into Nayera Jungle between two weeping willows. They walked in silence, focused on not tripping over the branches and deep puddles that littered the jungle floor. In some spots the rain didn’t make it through the web of branches
above at all while in others it poured down in uneven, startling spurts.
Wile smiled at the rushing waterfall when they passed it. “I’ve always loved that sound. It’s neat when nature makes its own kind of music, you know?” Then he quickly looked down at the ground.
She smiled back at him. “I like the sound of waterfalls too. Fire crackling is probably my favorite, though.”
He brightened. “Oh yeah, and rain on the roof, don’t forget that.”
She looked up into the trees and listened to the raindrops pitter-pattering on the leaves and branches. It sounded a little like rain on a rooftop, only softer. She could hear Wile’s music again, this time a folksy-sounding piano and guitar that wove around the sounds of the rain and waterfall beautifully. She didn’t even mind when a giant raindrop plopped right into her eye.
“I used to think I hated the rain,” she told Wile. “…But I guess it can be nice sometimes.”
Soon afterward the rain slowly came to a stop and through a gap in the trees Vita could see the gray rainclouds clearing away. The full moon shone through the trees and helped to light their path. Both children’s smiles faded when they reached the clearing at the center of the jungle. Several green jays were gathered around Harper, who wore a light hat, and a single bird—Vita recognized the green jay Ruckles had been riding by the speck of white above his beak. She was pretty sure his name was Zims. There were spots of cherry red all over the bird’s back: Christmas gone horribly, disastrously wrong.
Harper placed long dark green leaves over the cuts and Zims winced at each and every one. The green jays crowded around him frequently reached out the tips of their wings to touch his head and shoulders in sympathy.
Harper looked up and gave Vita a silent nod. He looked down at poor Zims. “You just leave these bandages on until tomorrow, and the herbs will help you heal. Makia, Banbar, could you get Zims back home to his tree?” Two green jays led Zims away through the jungle and Harper turned to Vita. “It looks like Zims got the worst of it, and he should be fine. A few other birds got burned, but I already gave them some salve.”
Vita hugged the gray bear around his mighty leg. “Thank you, Harper. Have you seen Melina?”
“Mmm, she’s fast asleep up in her usual tree.” Vita was glad. The caterpillar had taken charge when Fironella’s cruel games had reduced the girl to a shivering puddle of fright—now Melina deserved her rest. Harper looked down at Wile. “I don’t believe we’ve been properly introduced.”
“Not properly, no,” Wile replied. When Vita withdrew from Harper’s leg, the boy put his hand out toward the gray bear. “Name’s Wile, nice to meet you.”
With an amused smirk the bear leaned forward and took the boy’s hand in his paw. “Harper, pleased to meet you too.”
“I remember you!” Pish called over to Wile from where he and Posh stood congregating with a group of green jays by the river. He tottered over and Posh followed slowly behind. “You called me a p-p-pigeon,” Pish told the boy, out of breath, when he reached them. He said it with a smile and without a trace of ill will.
“I did,” Wile acknowledged. “I’m sorry about that.”
Pish shrugged. “You ask me, there’s not so big a difference anyway. We’re all birds, right?”
“Speak for yourself,” Posh said with a roll of his heavy-lidded black eyes. He fixed them on Wile. “I’m a green jay and proud, and I’ll not be ridiculed.”
Wile nodded. “Understood.”
“Would you be up to taking me back to Bringlesberg, Pish?” Vita asked. “Wile thinks he can help.”
“Well, sure, V. But who’s gonna take him? I can’t fit two of you on my back.” Pish had enough trouble flying with just Vita for company.
The girl looked around but many of the green jays who’d been milling around the clearing and banks of the river had retired to the trees. When Vita’s gaze returned to her friends she found Posh had already unstrapped his pack and set it aside. “I’ll take him,” the green jay said.
Vita hiked an eyebrow. Nobody ever rode Posh—nobody but Jen.
In the air on the way to Bringlesberg it was so odd flying side by side with Posh, just like old times. She kept half expecting to see Jen riding Posh beside her. Instead it was Wile, smiling down at the plains of Whirlyton, able to see it in a way Jen never could.
Pish and Posh followed Classon River all the way from Nayera Jungle to Bringlesberg. Someone had been able to get the string of white lights that bordered the village up and working again. The river and grass surrounding the pumpkin patch stopped at the edge of Bringlesberg and a plane of Base continued on in its place. Some of the cabins still stood but nearly all of them had been covered in Base. The injured Bringlesberg citizens were attended to in the nearby pumpkin patch while the uninjured helped green jays smooth Base over each of the cabins and the broken windows of the post office and diner.
A few feet away from the Bringlesberg border a team of chickens were hard at work digging a hole the exact width and depth of the river. “Hello, Miss Vita!” one of them clucked to Vita once Pish and Posh had landed.
Vita gave the chicken a distracted wave before rushing over to Admiral Alira. The bird stood supervising a group of green jays who formed a block of Base where a cabin had been burnt to the ground. Vita noticed a pig and rabbit smoothing over the walls with silver scrapers as well. A horse in overalls and a straw hat arrived with a heaping cart of Base and spilled its contents over a patch of dirt ground that had been perfectly fine to begin with.
“Stop!” the girl yelled at the admiral. “Who told you to cover everything in Base? We could have salvaged some of those cabins … now I’ll have to do everything all over from scratch!”
Admiral Alira just narrowed her eyes at Vita. “Captain Posh left me in charge here.” Her black eyes softened a little and she touched Vita’s shoulder with the tip of her wing. “There wasn’t anything left worth saving, Vita. The townspeople are all right for the most part, and that’s the important thing.”
The girl nodded but her stomach turned in anxiety. She was already behind the other students on her world-building. Now she had to rebuild Bringlesberg too?
She turned to find Wile running alongside Classon River in the direction of the gray Autumn Fire Forest. She wasn’t sure he’d even looked at burnt-up, Base-covered Bringlesberg. He stopped at a large maple tree at the edge of the forest and knocked on its gray bark.
Vita left Pish and Posh with the other green jays and ran over to where Wile stood at the edge of the forest. “What are you doing?” she asked.
He looked up at the branches of the tree. “Just checking.” He knocked on the trunk once more and seemed satisfied. “But this is fine.”
The girl stepped forward and knocked on the trunk as well. Aside from its discoloration, the tree behaved as expected. “What would have happened if it hadn’t been fine?” she asked.
“Make us a pair of flashlights and I’ll tell you.” Supplied with flashlights, the children stepped between the maple and a dark gray redwood (a graywood, Vita wondered?) and walked into the forest. “If the tree hadn’t been fine,” Wile explained, “this whole forest would be a heap of ash. And you wouldn’t be able to build over it or fix it, not ever.”
The idea gave Vita a chill. “H-has that happened to you?”
He shook his head but wouldn’t meet her eyes.
The two continued on in silence until they reached the very center of the forest. Here stood a tree with a trunk five times as wide as the others in the forest. Before the tree’s trunk had been a rich mahogany, though it had the drooping branches and leaves of a weeping willow. Where the chirping of the burgundy-feathered wrens and pelicarobins should have been was eerie silence. The wind rushed by and Vita shivered, less from the cold and more from the lonely desolation of the charcoal forest. It reminded her of Drozlin and those spindly trees reaching out for her.
A heavy branch broke away from the tree and Wile and Vita sprang apart to avoid it hittin
g them. “Vita, take a deep breath,” the boy instructed from a few feet away.
She did as he said.
“Now look up.”
The stars above them startled her eyes with their brightness. They reminded her of the light-up fairies in Rosie’s Dream Chamber. Soon she was lost in memories of the vibrant peaches, greens, and pale purples of Rosie’s carnivals, and the colorful, eccentric clothing the fairies wore. Her eyes drifted closed and suddenly the grayness of the forest didn’t bother her—not when all she had to do to see Rosie’s beautiful colors was close her eyes.
“Vita…” Wile whispered.
When she opened her eyes she giggled and put her hand to her mouth. The Autumn Fire Forest’s name suited it once again. Moreover the red, orange, and yellow-leaved trees seemed more resplendent than ever before, even in the blackness of night. The chirping of the birds had returned and Vita thought she could also hear some of Wile’s banjos.
“When the gray gets to you, V, never forget the sky,” Wile said. “Even when the color gets sucked out of everything else, the sky always seems to stay the same.”
“Thanks for the tip.” Feeling dizzy, Vita braced herself against the fat mahogany tree for balance.
“Do you need to go to the Mess Hall?”
She did. It had been at least a day since she’d eaten anything—maybe more. But there were probably monsters in the Mess Hall. And Vita didn’t yet feel ready to face any of them.
As if he’d read her thoughts, he pointed out, “If we eat something here it’ll tide you over for at least an hour or two.”
Through the trees Vita could see train tracks. She cocked her head in that direction. “There’s food on the train.”
Twenty minutes later the children sat across from each other in a compartment of their own, a plate of brownies and cookies on the table between them. Vita did feel better with sugar in her system, even if it was imaginary sugar.
Vita and the Monsters of Moorhouse Page 17
