by Sheila Grau
“I’ll have Professor Murphy take the antidote to the old woman in the capital. We’ll send some to that Yipps fellow, in case he has other colleagues who have been poisoned. I’ll try to contact the headmaster at the Kobold Retraining Center and warn him of Dr. Pravus’s intentions. I’ll tell him we’re on our way with help, and to find Professor Zaida and tell her to sit tight.
“I’ll take the antidote by air, either by dragon or maybe Master Ping can persuade the harpies to carry me in a flying coach. I really hate flying coach, but what can you do? Coach Foley will take some of the antidote by road until he hits a roadblock, then he can continue on one of our new unicorn stallions. I need one more backup plan, though. I hate to do anything without at least two backup plans.”
I told him about Pismo’s offer to take someone upriver.
“Yes, but who wants to swim in the frigid waters of the Wallippi River?”
“I’ll do it,” I said. “Please, Dr. Critchlore. My future depends on finding the Great Library.”
“No. It’s too dangerous for someone of your age and experience deficiencies.”
“You just sent Janet to go up against a giant gorilla! Besides, you need someone small. Pismo can’t carry an adult.”
He frowned at me.
“I can do this,” I said. “And even if I can’t, you have two other plans. Land and river and air. One of us will get through.”
He shook his head. “I admire your loyalty to your teacher, but you must trust us here. I will go by air, Coach Foley by road, and Professor Twilk can finally put his off-road vehicles to a practical test.”
I could tell he wasn’t going to change his mind. I wasn’t going to change mine either. I was going up the river, whether I had permission or not.
Whoa. What did I just think? Pismo’s turned me into a rule-breaking, confrontational delinquent.
We left his office.
“You like Mistress Moira, don’t you?” I said as we walked through the secretary’s office. “That wasn’t just an act to get her to stay.”
“Of course I like her,” he said. “The scary thing is, she reminds me of my mother—beautiful, powerful, and vengeful. But if you breathe a word of that to anybody, I’ll bring Professor Vodum back to be your personal tutor.”
“Breathe a word about what?” I asked.
“Good lad.”
If it’s flying, it’s spying. Shoot it down.
—POPULAR QUOTE. ALSO WHY NOBODY TRAVELS BY AIR ON THE PORVIAN CONTINENT.
I met the guys at the lake—Pismo had two mermaid friends, so we decided that Syke, Frankie, and I would go upstream while Darthin, Eloni, and Boris stayed behind.
Eloni and Boris had gathered supplies—wet suits, watertight backpacks, and food. Darthin handed us each a vial of the antidote, Dr. Critchlore’s advice about having two backups still fresh in my mind.
The mermaids donned their battle slings, which we could wedge ourselves into to ride on their backs. The battle slings were long and stiff, and holding on was still hard work for us, but we glided upstream, fighting the current. I could feel Pismo get into a rhythm. Once away from school, the river ran wide and deep, the current just a whisper.
After an hour, we stopped to rest on a grassy bank surrounded by forest. The mermaids stayed in the water while Syke, Frankie, and I dried off in the sun.
“I’m exhausted,” I said. “And I’m not even swimming.” I rubbed my shoulders.
“Me too,” Syke said. She leaned back, looking at the trees. “You know, this is what I want our new forest to look like. Dense, but not too dense, with mossy trunks and colorful leaves in the fall. A grassy meadow here and there.”
“It’ll be beautiful,” I said.
“I still can’t believe Dr. Critchlore agreed to the forest restoration project. He’s always talking about how he wants to expand the facilities for the minions of impressive size. Give them more training space and stuff.”
I shrugged. We lay in the grass, staring at the sky. I wanted to change the subject before she started wondering again why the hamadryads hated Dr. Critchlore.
“You know what?” I said. “I’m pretty sure Janet is a spy.”
“Really?” Syke sat up, excited by this juicy bit of gossip. “Why?”
“Well, I don’t think she’s a siren. You once told me she can’t sing. She didn’t want to do the fashion show, and I think the reason is that she knew the siren mothers would ask who she was, and her cover would be blown. Plus I saw her talking to some shifty-looking guy in the capital.”
“If that’s true, I hate her even more,” Syke said. “I mean, it was bad enough thinking she was a snobby, useless siren, but if she’s a spy? That’s so cool. I’d love to be a spy. How dare she be cooler than me? I. Hate. Her.”
Frankie laughed. “I’ve gotta pee,” he said, heading for the forest. Once he disappeared, I turned to Syke.
“Why do you like him?” I asked. Frankie was the best, but no other girls paid any attention to him. It made me curious.
“Because he’s awesome and he doesn’t act like he knows it. One-on-one, Frankie could take anyone at school. Anyone. You see most of those guys—the ogre-men, the werewolves, the giants—they swagger around acting like they’re the best at everything. They pick on guys who are weaker, just to show off how strong they are. They don’t realize how insecure that makes them look. How mean and ridiculous. A strong man doesn’t hold others down; he lifts them up. That’s Frankie.”
“Yeah, but those eyebrows,” I said, and we laughed.
“I know, and he can be kind of dense,” Syke added. “Hey, you know that new guy, Meztli? He’s really cute.”
“He’s in my junior henchman class.”
She grabbed my arm. “Introduce me to him when we get back, okay?”
We continued on our journey, taking breaks every hour or so. The mermaids were nearly spent, and Syke and I could barely hang on a moment longer. Frankie looked fine, of course.
“I had no idea I was so out of shape,” Boynton said during another stop. “How much farther, Delray?”
“By my senses,” he said, “we’re about three-quarters of the way there. We’re slowing, but we should get there before sundown.”
We rounded a bend in the river and Pismo abruptly veered to his left and turned around. He surfaced near the riverbank, where some trees provided cover.
“Did you see that?” he asked. Delray and Boynton surfaced, and we all looked upstream. Standing on a bridge, looking down into the water, was a giant gorilla.
“We’re too late,” Frankie said. “Pravus is here, and he’s set up defenses. He didn’t win the bid to take over the school. How can he get away with that?”
“Who knows? Let’s get out of here and check the map,” I said. “We might be close.”
“We won’t get past that bridge without being seen,” Pismo said. “The water’s not deep enough.”
We snuck out of the river and hid in the nearby trees. Pismo, Delray, and Boynton took off their battle slings and lay down. They were snoring in seconds, completely exhausted.
I pulled out the map. “That must be the Leshy Bridge,” I said. “So we’re practically at the Kobold Retraining Center. If we’d stayed in the water, we would have gotten out just a few hundred meters farther up, at the Leshy Pier.”
We changed out of our wet suits and into T-shirts and cargo pants. After a quick snack, we climbed a tree to get a better look at the terrain.
Syke had no problem scaling the trunk of the tallest redwood. I couldn’t reach the lowest branch, so Frankie tossed me up and then jumped up next to me.
As Frankie and I climbed, Syke visited other trees in the neighborhood. The sun was low on the horizon, lighting up the mountain so that the waterfall sparkled. Could that be it? Could the entrance to the most secret place in the world be within my sight?
Syke returned, sitting on the branch next to me. “This is a hamadryad forest,” she said, smiling. “Some of these trees knew my m
other. Isn’t that crazy?”
I didn’t have time to ask how that worked and get a lecture about how humans are so ignorant of the workings of the natural world that they live in, so I tried to steer Syke back to the task at hand. “Can we get to the school from here?”
“Yes, but they tell me that the forest is filled with giant gorillas and other things, worse things. The gorillas have uprooted a bunch of trees to make a base of operations, over there.” She pointed in the distance, where a clearing opened up in the trees.
“We need to get to the waterfall,” I said, pointing to the mountain. “The entrance to the Great Library is there.”
“What about the school?” Frankie said. “Should we try to find the headmaster?”
“Critchlore is heading there,” I said. “But Professor Zaida went to the library. We don’t have time to waste. We have to get the antidote to her.”
“Look.” Syke pointed to a clump of buildings near the river. “See the trees waving? I sent a message through these redwoods. They’re telling us to stay away from the school. Pravus must have defenses there.”
“Pravus’s base is pretty far to the left of the waterfall,” I said. “It’s possible he hasn’t found the entrance yet. Maybe we can beat him to it. We just have to get through this forest.”
A thunderous BOOM tore through the air, and the ground shook so violently that I was knocked off my perch. Fortunately, Frankie grabbed me as I fell past him and pulled me up to his branch, which I clung to with both my arms and legs.
“What was that?” I asked.
Syke climbed higher, and when she came back, she said, “Pravus is trying to blast his way inside the mountain, just past the clearing. I can see smoke.”
“Oh no,” I said. “He’s desperate. He probably knows that Critchlore is coming, and he wants to get to the library first. He’s not waiting for a CLOUD to break and tell him where the entrance is.”
The ground shook again, a long, rumbling shake that felt more like an earthquake than an explosion. “Look,” I said, pointing to the volcano, which was now billowing smoke and ash.
“Can an explosion trigger a volcanic eruption?” Frankie asked.
“I have no idea.”
Roaring red fire blasted up out of the mountain. Another BOOM shook the tree.
“We have to get moving,” I said. “If we can make it to the waterfall and find the eternal flame in the water, we can find the entrance. Let’s go.” I started down the tree. Frankie swooshed by, jumping from three stories above the ground. Syke also beat me to the forest floor.
“I can take Runt on my back,” Frankie said. “Syke, you move faster through the trees than on land. Go ahead. I’ll stay with you.”
“Think you can keep up?” she said.
“I could keep up carrying five Runts and a Frieda.”
“We’ll see,” she said, and climbed back up. As she reached the branches, she was propelled forward to the next tree, which caught her and threw her onward. Frankie turned his backpack around to his front so I could jump on his back. He made his own way through the forest floor. I bounced along, clinging for my life as he bounded over fallen trees and boulders, zigzagging around tree trunks.
We raced toward the mountain. Twice Frankie stumbled when the earth shook suddenly. We could feel the air getting hotter and smokier as the mountain rumbled and the sky filled with falling debris.
We were getting closer. I kept my eye on Syke, so I could tell Frankie if he veered off course. She reached for a giant sequoia tree, but it slapped her away. Syke screamed as she fell toward the ground. Frankie caught her before she hit.
“What happened?” I asked as Frankie placed her upright.
“That sequoia is the sentinel,” she said. “It won’t let me go any closer. She says the volcano is going to erupt.”
“Can you go on foot?” I asked.
“Let’s try,” she said.
We edged around the sentinel tree, thankful that its branches were too high to swoop down and reach us. Once past, we ran on until a loud roar split the air, sending us ducking for cover behind a pine tree.
I hoped whatever made that noise wouldn’t see us. Syke pulled something out of her backpack as the thumps and huffs drew closer. The trees seemed to tremble with each thump.
A giant hairy arm swung across the three pine trees in front of us, toppling each one and exposing us. We looked up into the enraged face of a giant gorilla.
It’s usually best to run away from an erupting volcano.
—GOOD ADVICE
Two regular-sized gorillas followed the enormous silverback. Regular-sized gorillas are big and scary too, with forearms larger than my torso and giant teeth and angry faces. The silverback pounded his chest and roared at us. His mouth was big enough to swallow us whole.
Just as he began his charge, a blinding light flashed in his face. He covered his eyes and roared again, louder this time. Syke grabbed me and Frankie, and we ran for a new hiding place. We jumped over a boulder and looked back at our attackers.
Syke had thrown Meika’s cape, the one we’d nicknamed the Flash Cape, at the gorilla. The bright flash was meant to foil aggressive photographers by overexposing their pictures with light, but the cape also had a cool attack feature: When thrown, it flew like a flying disk and wrapped itself around its victim.
The cape now clung to the giant gorilla’s face like flypaper. Trees were toppled, the smaller gorillas scrambled to safety, and the big one roared. With all that noise, we dashed toward a thicker part of the forest and safety.
“You stole Meika’s dress?” I said once we were well enough away.
“It’s not her dress. It’s Mistress Moira’s,” Syke said. She pulled out Verduccia’s green knife-sleeved dress and put it on for better camouflage. “And I think she’d want us to have it, don’t you?”
We took off, sprinting through the trees. Frankie led, followed by Syke, and then me. Frankie jumped over a fallen tree trunk, but when Syke followed, a branch swooshed down and wrapped around her middle, lifting her into the air.
“Let me down!” she yelled.
“Syke! What’s happening?”
“They’re trying to protect me by not letting me go farther.” She pulled at the branch. Frankie reached for her, but the branch lifted her higher. “Hang on,” she said. “Let me talk to them.”
She disappeared into the canopy of branches above us. I looked at Frankie, wondering what we should do. His shrug told me that he didn’t know either. We listened for the gorillas, but the thumps seemed to be traveling away from us.
Frankie and I crouched near a clump of pines, watching the sky as it rained ash and rocks and fire. A flaming log rolled by us, crashing into a dead tree and setting it ablaze. The heat was suffocating, and I felt panic rise inside me. What if we got trapped in this forest fire?
And where was Syke? Just as I was about to tell Frankie to climb up and investigate, Syke jumped down from the tree and landed next to me. She looked back up at the trees. Then she shook her head.
“What is it?”
“There are hamadryads in those pines,” she said. “One of them said that this was the last straw, and that if Dr. Critchlore was going to risk my life like this . . . they want me to leave the school . . . I said no way . . . and then she told me about my mother.”
The air was getting smokier, and I lifted my shirt to cover my mouth. A giant boom shook the air, sending us to the ground. It sounded more like an explosion than an eruption. We had to move.
“That’s great, Syke, and I’m sure you guys will have time to catch up later, but we have to go save Professor Zaida.”
“I know.”
I jumped on Frankie’s back, and we turned toward the mountain. I didn’t hear Syke follow.
“Syke, come on,” I said. “Jump on my back.”
“It’s just . . . she said I shouldn’t have stayed at Dr. Critchlore’s,” she said.
“Really? Why?”
Syke looked
confused, sad. “He killed my mother.”
Oh no. No, no, no, no, no.
“He’s always said that he saved me from a forest fire. But Silveria, the queen of this forest, just told me that he burned the forest down on purpose. Dr. Critchlore killed my mother’s tree.”
“That doesn’t sound like him,” I said.
“Are you kidding? Of course it does. He does whatever he wants, and he doesn’t care who he hurts.”
“Maybe he didn’t know your mom was in the tree? Let’s go.”
She scowled at me. I looked away because I couldn’t meet her gaze. She was so angry.
“Oh my goddess, Runt.” She grabbed my arm, and Frankie dropped me to the ground. “Did you know?”
“What?”
“You knew, didn’t you? You knew he killed my mother, and you didn’t tell me.”
A huge boulder rumbled down the mountainside, crunching trees in its path. We really had to get moving, but Syke was firmly planted, waiting for answers.
“Syke, I . . . It’s like you not telling me I’m not a werewolf. I didn’t want to hurt you.”
She held up a hand to stop me, shaking her head. “Don’t even go there. Me not telling you that you’re not a werewolf is not the same as you allowing me to live with my mother’s murderer! How can you even think that?”
“Syke, I only just found out. I didn’t know how to tell you.”
“Let’s stop the lying right now,” she said. “You’ve never been anything but Dr. Critchlore’s obedient puppy dog. Should I just call you Pizza from now on?”
“Syke. I’m sorry. I know this is . . . a shock . . . and you’re hurt . . . but Professor Zaida is probably dying right now. We have to save her, and then we can talk about this.”
She shook her head, as if to clear it. “You’re right. We have to save Professor Zaida. But I’m not going to forget this, Runt. When we get back—”
She didn’t finish. A tree branch bent down and lifted her up and away. “Hey! I told you I’m fine! You don’t need to protect me!” The tree lifted her higher.
