“Don’t you want Drozlin to get better?” Vita asked.
The doll monster flashed another brilliant white smile. “I like things just fine the way they are.”
“I always suspected but I never wanted to believe it,” a deep, buttery voice said. Vita turned to find Mazkin walking over the grass Vita had just built, which had already died and was more dirt than grass. “Stealing compasses from students! No wonder no one has ever won. I revoke your headmonstress status for theft of student property, effective immediately.”
Again Fironella laughed that little giggle of hers that was equal parts tinkling bells and shattered glass. “And who says you’ve got the authority to do that?”
The large monster crouched into a fighting stance. “I do.”
Considering their respective sizes, Mazkin should have beaten Fironella easily. But the tiny doll monster was surprisingly fast, doing flips and kicks around the much larger monster. She also had the help of Skrillus and Ruckles, who focused all their energy into slicing at and ramming into Mazkin at every available opportunity. Soon Mazkin’s pinkish fur was stained red with blood in several places.
At the same time, the monsters working on the fortress turned on Vita and her Whirlyton friends. Instead of their usual bright blue, Dotted-Line Jack’s eyes had turned a glowing red, as had the other monsters’.
Monsters used Base to create bows and arrows and began to shoot without mercy. Red-eyed Myeliel floated footless in the air and rapidly turned balls of Base into throwing knives. Faylonique blew her usual gray smoke through a wad of Base and it emerged bright green in color, knocking out each gray jay who breathed it in. Eerla created hefty boulders to throw, while Dotted-Line Jack wielded what appeared to be a cannon.
Vita heard heavy footsteps and saw Rafe approach through the trees with Grover riding on his shoulder. Rosie flew above them on one of her flying horses. Rafe began to fight back against armored soldiers created by the monsters with his mighty sword, and Grover made metal walls rise out of the dirt to protect the others from the monsters’ attacks. Jasmine and a swarm of other fairies began catching the monsters’ arrows in midair and flying into their faces, disorienting them.
Suddenly someone knocked into Vita, making her stumble over her feet. She looked over to see red-eyed Crane and cowered in fear. But the monster turned away from her and threw sand in the face of a purple monster with snapping claws that had been coming straight for her.
Vita watched, astounded, as Crane continued to fight off other monsters and their creations. Crane hadn’t been trying to hurt her—he’d saved her. Vita looked around the forest, wondering where he’d gotten sand from. The other monsters were creating things, but they had Base.
Then she remembered that being able to build without Base was one of Wile’s special talents.
“Please still be in there somewhere, Wile,” she murmured.
“Vita, we have to help them,” Melina said in her ear.
Vita nodded, ashamed at how she had frozen as her Whirlyton and human friends fought so bravely. She looked again at Fironella and Mazkin as they continued to fight, though Mazkin’s movements were growing slower and heavier by the second. It wouldn’t be long before Fironella defeated him.
“It’s all coming from Fironella,” she told Melina. “If we get those compasses away from her, then the monsters will stop attacking.”
Melina swiped at the air with her claws. “It’s a good thing this place made these sharper then.”
With Melina around her neck, Vita jumped onto Pish’s back. They flew straight toward Fironella and Mazkin. Melina leaned outward with her paw outstretched, ready to slice the chains of the compasses around Fironella’s neck.
“Oh you silly little kitty,” Fironella said, and with surprising force she knocked Melina off Vita’s neck.
Melina went flying and landed on the dirt ground. Skrillus quickly began to chase the caterpillar, giving her no choice but to run up one of those eerily reaching trees that Vita hadn’t yet built over. Beyond the tree an oily black swamp overtook the forest floor and the trees’ trunks seemed half-submerged in it.
Melina clung to the tree and its branches swatted at the trunk as though the caterpillar were a mosquito. A branch hand with twigs for fingers plucked Melina by her tail and threw her into the swamp.
There was a slight splash, a few bubbles, then nothing at all.
“NO!” Vita howled even louder than the wind. She hoped against hope that the caterpillar would raise her head out of the inky water, but the water remained still.
“Pish, we have to go down there and try to get Melina out.”
“How?” the gray jay asked hopelessly. “She’s gone.”
A tear trickled down Vita’s cheek. Then her face twisted in anger and she turned back toward Fironella. It seemed the doll monster and Mazkin had stopped fighting—to Vita’s horror she noticed a bloodied heap of pink-red fur on the ground. Fironella stood beside him, that bone-chilling smile on her face.
Vita reached into her satchel and pulled out a ball of Base. “I’m going to kill you,” she growled.
Fironella giggled. “I’d like to see you try.”
The Base in Vita’s hand formed into a silver dagger, and she hurled it in Fironella’s direction. But it stopped just short of her, as though it had run into an invisible wall. Vita noticed that several red-eyed monsters near Fironella had ceased fighting, and instead gathered around the headmonstress with their hands raised in much the same way Grover did while building. They were creating some sort of protective shield around her.
Still Vita kept trying, her anger fueling her as she sent fireballs and bolts of lightning Fironella’s way. But nothing could penetrate the doll monster’s shield. Behind it Fironella just laughed and laughed.
The girl’s rage began to twist into despair. It was hopeless—Fironella was too powerful. The girl and her friends were doomed to become monsters like Dotted-Line Jack and Wile, and would serve the headmonstress until they were utterly sapped of their power. None of them would ever see the human world or their parents ever again.
Any bits of Landora that the girl had managed to build around them began to shift from vibrant pink, green, and blue to different shades of gray. Lightning cracked the sky above, and the girl looked up to find that it was no longer blue—it was the same dirty sort of white Drozlin’s sky had been when she’d first seen it with Mazkin what felt like a lifetime ago.
She dimly remembered that a friend of hers had once said that when the gray got to her, to remember the sky—that the sky always stayed the same. But he’d been wrong. And now she’d lost him, and Melina, and would likely lose Rosie and Pres as well.
She’d be completely alone.
Rain began to pour down from the sky. The girl pulled more Base from her pack but found she didn’t have the energy to transform it. She threw it toward Fironella anyway, and the Base hit the shield with a useless splat before falling to the ground.
Fironella continued to laugh. “You really think you still have any chance of defeating me? You’ve lost your Figment. Your world is gray. I bet you don’t even remember your own name.”
The girl opened her mouth then closed it. What was her name? She’d known it only a moment ago. She had a murky memory of a ball of white light, but the light soon turned gray in her mind.
Fironella was right—the girl would never be able to defeat her.
“Let’s get out of here, Pish,” she said hopelessly to the bird beneath her.
The bird obligingly rose up high into the sky above the forest. The girl looked down at the swamp where Melina had fallen. “Maybe we should go down there and look for her,” she said. “Melina always knew what to do, and she could—” She couldn’t speak anymore as tears ran down her face. She knew they’d never find Melina; her friend was gone forever.
The gray jay looked back at her with an eye that was no longer black; it had turned blood red.
“I don’t have to do a single thi
ng you say, girlie,” he replied.
With that he threw the girl off his back and she plummeted to the ground.
The girl frantically pulled her satchel open, searching for some Base. Maybe she could make a parachute. But all she could feel was dust sifting through her fingers.
Then she happened upon a folded piece of paper. She unfolded it and found two words written in all capital letters and underlined several times. She read the words over and over, and with each new reading she felt a little less cold, a little less tired. Her memories returned in a flurry of colors and light and she took a few deep breaths in and out.
“Vita Lawrence. My name is VITA LAWRENCE!” she shouted into the wind.
Suddenly Vita heard a loud noise like the rushing of water. Something had surged out of the swamp below and up into the sky. Black water trailed in the air until it had all washed away and revealed a long, lavender and peach creature with several legs and enormous matching wings. It had the head of a cat but had the sharp teeth and fangs of a dragon. The creature flew straight underneath Vita and she landed on its back. As they flew she hugged the creature hard around its neck from behind.
“Melina, Melina, I thought I had lost you,” the girl said, grateful tears running down her cheeks.
“You’ll never lose me—not really,” this new version of Melina told her. “I went into a catcoon as soon as I hit the deep of that water and just had to go to sleep for a while. Then I came out like this. Do you see I have wings now? I have wings!”
“And you’ll never have to walk on the ground again if you don’t want to,” Vita said.
Melina looked down toward where Fironella stood on the ground. “What do you say we handle that nasty little problem?”
So Vita grabbed onto Melina’s ears, which had gotten bigger in her transformation, and the two dove straight toward the doll monster.
Fironella wasn’t laughing now.
“But how did your cat—” she began in a whimper.
“I’m a catterfly,” Melina corrected, breathing a burst of fire that burned the doll’s hair clean off.
Fironella fell to the ground and this time Melina was able to use her claws to cut the collection of compasses off her neck. She handed them to Vita, who climbed off Melina’s back with the many compasses heaped in her arms.
The surrounding monsters red eyes instantly shifted back to their usual shades. Many shook their heads as though they were coming out of a trance.
Vita felt a rush of relief as Mazkin turned over. With help from two monsters who had been attacking Vita and her friends just moments earlier, the headmonster rose to his feet. “Well done, Vita,” he said. “I think we all owe you a debt of gratitude.”
Vita looked back toward Grover and Rosie, who both luckily seemed unscathed. “I had some help.” She held the compasses up toward him. “Will you be able to get these back to who they belong to?”
He winked. “I think I can manage.”
She took off the burnt compass around her neck and gave it to Mazkin as well. “This one belongs to Crane.”
Melina looked toward Fironella, still unconscious on the ground. “Shall we finish the job?”
Vita climbed onto Melina’s back and patted her head. “Forget her,” she said into the catterfly’s ear. “Let’s get back to building.”
As they flew the sky shifted from its terrible off-white to bright blue with cottony clouds. Melina swooped over Bringlesberg and Railstown, and any damaged bits blushed back into their true selves, no Base necessary. The citizens of Bringlesberg gathered around their bonfires despite the early hour, and the large mother hen waved with her babies cradled in her other wing. Squirrels and rabbits scurried across Railstown’s many platforms, rushing to catch their trains.
All that the children had been able to build of Whirlyton healed as Melina and Vita flew over it. Landora cropped up effortlessly over Rasper Forest, erasing the black pools and reaching trees. Vita could see Giuseppe the lobster steering his gondola down one of Landora’s many canals.
“Hello Melina! Hello little miss!” he called to them.
In addition to Nayera Jungle and Brickingham Manor below were contributions from Grover and Rosie. There stood Elysian, with King Arzanian and Queen Felinetta standing on the balcony waving hello. They flew farther south and found Rosie’s night carnival and the soda fountain. Fairies and flying horses flew through the air beside Melina and Vita—at one point Sage, who she had ridden so many times in Rosie’s Chamber, flew close enough for Vita to pat his silky white mane.
Vita felt her eyes growing heavier and heavier as they flew until she whispered in Melina’s ear, “I need sleep, then I’ll keep going.”
Melina took her down to Gossamer Fields, where Vita could see a mouse family enjoying the new Meadow Line through the railcar window. The mother waved to Vita. “It’s going to be all right now, isn’t it?” the girl asked Melina as the catterfly dropped Vita into a pile of lavender.
“It’s getting better,” Melina replied. “Just remember—”
But Vita didn’t hear anything else before she drifted off to sleep.
CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR
GOODBYES
Vita awoke to the tickle of feathers and a heavy weight on top of her. “Oh, Vita!” Pish wailed, “I am so, so sorry! I don’t know what came over me.” The bird wrapped her up in his soft green wings and looked into her eyes. His had regained their brilliant luster.
The girl tried to reach up to hug him back but her arms were trapped under his bulk. “It’s okay, Pish. You’re kind of crushing me, though.”
The bird pulled away from her, knocking over Posh and a few of the other green jays gathered around her in his clumsy haste.
Vita searched around for Melina in the meadow but saw only a sea of green jays. “Do you know where Melina is?” she asked Pish. “And Rosie and Grover?”
“The other children went with some of my green jays to inspect your work,” Posh answered for him. “You covered quite a lot of ground.”
Vita walked to her brick castle. On the way she spotted some of the monsters who had fought against her at Fironella’s fortress, though they weren’t all quite as she remembered them. Eerla was still green and her eyes remained yellow but she took the form of a plump little girl with brown hair. Faylonique looked almost the same as before, though smoke no longer spewed from her mouth. And Myeliel finally had both hands for his leather gloves to fill and feet for his patent leather shoes. Each one of them wore a compass that matched her own.
Inside Brickingham she noticed Mazkin sitting on one of the spiral staircases. He looked the same as always, with no sign of a compass around his neck.
She squeezed into the space beside him. “So how much more building do I have to do before Melina and I can get out of here?”
Mazkin was about to answer when Vita heard the noise of an engine revving outside. She looked out the window and found a trail of dirt and dust instead of smoke. It was Spiral, back to full color. “There’s still more gray at the southern border,” the snake said with a heave when he reached the front doors of the castle.
“Of course there is,” Mazkin said, standing beside Vita. “It’s where Fironella and her henchmen have gone. They’ll always go toward the gray, and the gray will exist as long as they do.”
“But I thought you said my Dream Chamber was the same size as Drozlin.”
“We may have underestimated Drozlin’s size.”
“Does that mean I have to build even more?” she asked.
“No, your bird friends can take it from here. You have done enough world-building to win the Crossing Cloak. I will show you to it and you and the other children will be free to go.”
The girl felt that same beam of joy she’d felt when Mazkin had first told her she might be able to bring Melina home to the human world with her. She’d really and truly won.
“What will you call this world, Vita?” Mazkin asked. “New Drozlin doesn’t really sound right to me anymore
. Whirlyton?”
She shook her head. “No. Lumaria.”
Through the open door she could hear music. It was at once joyous and wistful—grateful for what it had, but unable to quite forget all it had lost. As soon as her ears caught the sweeping strings and soft flute, she followed the music out of the castle and toward Landora. Outside Mr. Chauncey’s Bakery two boys sat at a patio table with a blue umbrella. Vita whooped once she got a close enough look at the boy on the left—he looked so much like Wile, it had to be him. The other boy was pale and blonde.
The girl started when the Wile look-alike looked up at her—his eyes were still red. Up close she could see that the other boy had a tattoo of three dotted, vertical gray lines running up and down his face. Each boy wore a compass.
Wile blinked his red eyes at Vita when she arrived. “I’m sorry—have we met?” he asked her.
The blond boy’s eyebrows drew together in concern. “Wile, that’s Vita. Remember?”
“Excuse me, have we met?” Vita asked the other boy. She stared at his tattooed face for a moment then said, “Dotted-Line Jack?”
“Jeff?” Rosie’s voice asked at the same time. She and Grover stood together with wide eyes.
The nearly normal boy version of Dotted-Line Jack smiled. “You used to call me Jeffie.”
“She got better at nicknames after you disappeared,” Jasmine said. She was back to her old self and hugged one of Rosie’s braids.
Rosie’s eyes brimmed with tears. “Jeffie,” she said, and hugged the monster hard. Vita found herself wondering if Dotted-Line Jack still had his cold-as-ice touch. If he did, Rosie didn’t seem to care.
Maybe-Wile stood and hugged Rosie as well. “Rosie-Rose,” he said. “You’re okay.” He went on to recognize Grover and Rafe and greet them warmly—was Vita all he’d forgotten?
They went to Nayera Jungle to retrieve Melina, who was flying over the tops of the trees with glee. Then the group of monsters and imaginary friends rode green jays to Lumaria’s northern border to bid the children and Melina farewell. During the trip Mazkin steered his green jay close to where Vita rode on Melina’s back.
Vita and the Monsters of Moorhouse Page 23
