The Weird in the Wilds
Page 1
ALSO BY DEB CALETTI
A Flicker of Courage
FOR OLDER READERS
Girl, Unframed
A Heart in a Body in the World
Essential Maps for the Lost
The Last Forever
The Story of Us
Stay
The Six Rules of Maybe
The Secret Life of Prince Charming
The Fortunes of Indigo Skye
The Nature of Jade
Wild Roses
Honey, Baby, Sweetheart
The Queen of Everything
G. P. PUTNAM’S SONS
An imprint of Penguin Random House LLC, New York
Copyright © 2020 by Deb Caletti
Map illustration copyright © 2020 by Adam Nickel
Penguin supports copyright. Copyright fuels creativity, encourages diverse voices, promotes free speech, and creates a vibrant culture. Thank you for buying an authorized edition of this book and for complying with copyright laws by not reproducing, scanning, or distributing any part of it in any form without permission. You are supporting writers and allowing Penguin to continue to publish books for every reader.
G. P. Putnam’s Sons is a registered trademark of Penguin Random House LLC.
Visit us online at penguinrandomhouse.com
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Names: Caletti, Deb, author.
Title: The weird in the Wilds / Deb Caletti.
Description: New York: G. P. Putnam’s Sons, [2020] | Series: Tales of triumph and disaster! | Audience: Ages 8–12. | Audience: Grades 4–6. | Summary: “When their village’s evil leader, Vlad Luxor, turns the class bully into a stinky gerenuk, Henry, Jo, Apollo, and Pirate Girl must once again put their spell-breaking talents to the test on another extraordinary adventure”—Provided by publisher.
Identifiers: LCCN 2019058182 (print) | LCCN 2019058183 (ebook) | ISBN 9781984813084 (hardcover) | ISBN 9781984813091 (ebook)
Subjects: CYAC: Magic—Fiction. | Friendship—Fiction. | Good and evil—Fiction. | Kings, queens, rulers, etc.—Fiction. | Adventure and adventurers—Fiction.
Classification: LCC PZ7.C127437 We 2020 (print) | LCC PZ7.C127437 (ebook) | DDC [Fic]—dc23
LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2019058182
LC ebook record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2019058183
Ebook ISBN 9781984813084
This book is a work of fiction. Any references to historical events, real people, or real places are used fictitiously. Other names, characters, places, and events are products of the author’s imagination, and any resemblance to actual events or places or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.
COVER ART © 2020 BY PATRICK FARICY
COVER DESIGN BY THERESA EVANGELISTA
pid_prh_5.5.0_c0_r0
Here’s to my beautiful, growing family, and to the way the record keeps spinning, with old songs and new ones.
Contents
Cover
Also by Deb Caletti
Title Page
Copyright
Dedication
Map
Chapter 1: A Dreadful Event
Chapter 2: A Weird and Terrible Spell
Chapter 3: The Weight of Duty
Chapter 4: A Tree Saves the Day
Chapter 5: A Nerve-Racking Ride
Chapter 6: A Delicious Reunion
Chapter 7: A Sad Secret
Chapter 8: A Place of Marvel and Wonder
Chapter 9: The Bad News
Chapter 10: A Missing Bully
Chapter 11: Two Unpleasant Reunions
Chapter 12: Nowhere to Turn
Chapter 13: Into the Wilds
Chapter 14: What the Children Learn by the Pond
Chapter 15: Something Funny, Something Not
Chapter 16: The Sky Darkens
Chapter 17: A Sparkling Discovery
Chapter 18: The Worst Forest of All
Chapter 19: Of Course They Go Up, You Knew They Would
Chapter 20: A Hazardous Trip Down
Chapter 21: Quite a Tangle
Chapter 22: The Wall
Chapter 23: Capture
Chapter 24: The Surprise in the Trophy Room
Chapter 25: The Children Use Their Skills
Chapter 26: Perfectly Thin
Chapter 27: The Most Wrong Words
Chapter 28: A Most Fortuitous Turkey Leg
Chapter 29: Something Magical
Chapter 30: A Weighty Decision
Chapter 31: An Astonishing Forest and an Awful Confession
Chapter 32: A Difficult Parting
Chapter 33: An Electric Event
Chapter 34: A Silent, Loud Voice
Chapter 35: The Details of Bizarro Crueltildo
Chapter 36: A Spell-Breaking Feast
Chapter 37: The Spinning Circle
Acknowledgments
About the Author
CHAPTER 1
A Dreadful Event
Henry Every has no clue that something terrible and shocking is about to happen. The poor boy will soon get scared out of his wits. You’d think Henry would be on his toes about such possibilities after what occurred just a few weeks ago: the terrifying trip up Rulers Mountain, facing the evil Vlad Luxor, and turning Rocco Dante from a naked lizard back into a child. And now that there’s a new horrible problem troubling the good people of the Timeless Province . . . well, you’d think he’d be especially aware. But Henry’s mind is on other things. It’s the first day of school. The first day of school is always somewhat nerve-racking, and Henry’s a shy boy, so he could barely sleep last night. Right at this moment, his tummy is spinning and thumping like a pair of tennis shoes in the dryer.
It’s a chilly and beautiful fall morning, and outside Henry’s bedroom window, the trees look like giant orange and red balloons. Leaves spiral in a gust of wind. The season has changed, and other things have changed, too. But unfortunately, a lot hasn’t.
“Stop dawdling, Henry! You’re a big sloth. You’re going to be late for school like you always are!” Henry’s mother screeches. Her voice climbs up the stairs and shoots through his body, rattling his spirit.
“And take that stinky, whiny mutt outside,” Henry’s father shouts. “All she does is bark and jump on the furniture when you’re gone.”
Henry and his Jack Russell terrier, Button, look at each other. If eyes can sigh, theirs do. Of course, Button never jumps on the furniture, and only barks when it’s truly necessary and extraordinarily helpful or when a doorbell rings on TV. She smells like any good dog, which means kind of like a soggy wool blanket, but in the nicest way. And of course, Henry has never been late for school, and he’s not a big anything. He’s rather small and skinny and kind. He’s quiet and thoughtful, and he always hopes for the best.
Now, thank heavens, Henry finally sees Apollo Dante and the whole Dante family leave their house. Apollo waves at Henry up in his window. It’s time, it’s time, it’s time! Anxiety and excitement smash together like two exploding asteroids on Rocket Galaxy. Henry runs downstairs as Button races ahead.
On this day, when other children are wearing their new school clothes, Henry is wearing only old school clothes. His jeans are as thin as a bedsheet, and his bare wrists stick out from his cuffs, and one of his big toes pokes through his tennis shoe like a periscope from a submarine. Henry’s backpack is a crinkled grocery bag from the Always Open (now, sadly, named Vlad’s), and his lunch box is a used athletic sock of his fath
er’s, filled with a single boiled potato. He did not go to Cadabra, the Store with Everything, in order to get fresh school supplies for the year. He has one school supply, which he found under the couch cushions: the saddest pencil you’ve ever seen in your life.
The Saddest Pencil You’ve Ever Seen in Your Life
Henry is nearly at the door when his mother steps in front of him and folds her arms. “What have you forgotten, Henry? What are the three magic words?”
“I—I . . .”
She stares at him hard, waiting. “You what?”
The words feel like a giant, wrinkly apricot pit in his stomach, but he knows what he must do.
“I love you,” he manages to whisper, and then his mother huffs and opens the door and lets him pass. Sadly, this is also still the same: the way it’s mostly impossible and dangerous for Henry to use his very own voice in a way that’s true.
Henry steps into the fall air and runs down the rickety steps of the Every house. Now that he’s out in the open, he remembers to cautiously look left and then right. A shiver trickles down his arms, and a prickly awareness goes up his spine, because things are as dire as ever in the world beyond his house, too: Vlad Luxor is still their HRM—Horrible Ruler with Magic—living in that black-mirrored tower on Rulers Mountain, and Mr. Needleman is still his vile right-hand man. The good people of the Timeless Province continue to be constantly afraid, as Vlad Luxor struts around town, staring at his reflection in store windows and mud puddles, and using his power to cast every kind of random, cruel spell. Just last week, he told Professor M. Eritus that she had a horse face and then he turned her into a donkey. He changed their beloved produce man, Mr. Tim Apple, into an actual McIntosh Red for no reason at all, and the poor man nearly got baked into a pie.
But something else has been happening lately as well. A terrible, worrisome new trouble. As if constant fear and utter havoc weren’t bad enough, things have recently gotten darker and even more evil in the province. It began one day with an unusual message on the blue scrolling banner above Vlad’s billboard in the town square, a message about INNERS and OUTERS, OTHERS and US. And then came more such messages, and more, and more, as if Vlad was a parrot, squawking one awful thing over and over. On that sign, he says it again and again, using way too many exclamation points—how outers and others are dangerous. How the Province needs walls and walls and walls! Not just the wall Vlad already built around the bottom of Rulers Mountain. Or the wall around the village at the top. But walls around the entire Timeless Province.
When Best Farriver was their Ruler with Magic—RM with no H at all—visitors from other lands were warmly welcomed. Now anyone who dares cross into their village to visit a relative or a faraway friend is locked up or shipped home. Certainly no one new is allowed to live there with them. And if you dare to speak badly about Vlad’s walls . . . Poof! You’re turned into a silent centipede or a blob of gum. And maybe even worse . . . people are beginning to look at their neighbors with doubt and mistrust. A shameful feeling of anxious suspicion has seeped into the corners of their beautiful province.
Henry and Button reach the sidewalk, where Apollo Dante and his brother Rocco wait for him, along with their sister, Coco, and baby Otto, who is balanced on Mrs. Dante’s hip. And now—well, finally—we come to a good thing that has changed since we first met Henry. Before last summer, Henry was so lonely, his very soul ached. That loneliness was with him every tick tock of the clock. But now he doesn’t feel that loneliness every moment, because he has something remarkable and astonishing: friends. Honestly, he can hardly believe it. Seeing the Dante family there is like finding a giant pile of Christmas presents under a tree. He has never actually found a giant pile of Christmas presents under a tree, but this is how he imagines you might feel if you did. His heart soars.
“Good morning, Henry,” Mrs. Dante says. She smiles at him. She ruffles his hair. This is such a miracle every time it occurs that it’s worth saying again, with extra enthusiasm: She smiles at him! She ruffles his hair!
“Good morning, Mrs. Dante,” Henry says. “Hi, Apollo, and Rocco, and Coco, and Otto.”
Rocco and Coco aren’t listening, because they are busy being siblings. Rocco pokes Coco and she says Stop poking me! And then Coco pokes Rocco and he says YOU stop poking ME. Otto only says Blurghy goo gah, which surely means something quite intelligent in baby language.
What’s weird, though, is that this morning, Apollo only looks down at his handsome new shoes and mumbles, “Mmrning, Hry.” It’s weird because Apollo is very intelligent, and handsome, and confident. He has everything a child could want. He’s not the looking-down-and-mumbling type, not at all.
“Show Henry your new glasses, Apollo,” Mrs. Dante says. “We saw Dr. Frederick Valhalla, optometrist and man-about-town, and now Apollo can see much more clearly, can’t you, Apollo?”
“I hay mglsss,” Apollo mumbles again.
When Apollo peeks up, Henry gasps, because wow. Right on his very own face, Apollo has something astonishing and dazzling—a pair of glasses! Round, magical disks of clarity! Oh man! Henry has wished and wished for a pair of those for years. Things are blurry for Henry. Very blurry. People look like hungry bears. Bicycles look like fierce monsters charging at him. Playgrounds look like dangerous battlegrounds. It’s hard to know what is what.
“Those are really amazing,” Henry says, but Apollo only shakes his head and turns red from embarrassment. This is all very hard for Henry to understand.
“Shall we go, children?” Mrs. Dante says. “You should come along, too, Button, and then you can spend the day with me if you like.” She pats the dog’s head.
Henry and Button and the Dante family walk down their own street and then another one. They stop at a long road that leads to a big field. A blur races toward Henry, a familiar blur this time—a girl wearing sturdy pirate boots and a leather pirate vest over a billowing white pirate shirt. Like Henry, she doesn’t have a backpack. Instead, everything she needs for school is stuffed into the many bulging pockets of her pants. She’s got a red pirate kerchief tied around her head, and her brown hair, decorated with pirate beads, flies out behind her as she runs.
She’s out of breath when she reaches them. “Holy zucchini, Apollo. Cool glasses,” Pirate Girl says.
“Thnk yr,” Apollo mumbles, his head still down.
All of this is new for Henry. Before the terrifying and wonderful events of last summer, he walked to school by himself. But not anymore. Not since Grandfather Every—the senior-most spell breaker alive—revealed the shocking news that Henry and Apollo and Pirate Girl and their friend Jo are (and let’s whisper here, since this must be said with extreme care) spell breakers. And definitely not since they saved little Rocco from life as a reptile. Now they barely go anywhere alone. There’s safety in numbers, the caring grown-ups in their life keep saying, but whether this is true or not is impossible to tell.
The world has become doubly dangerous for them: Vlad Luxor has no idea that these very regular-looking children are spell breakers, and if he did . . . It’s too shuddery to even imagine. Worse, Needleman, Vlad Luxor’s right-hand man, knows who they are. He’s known ever since he first spotted the four children from four particular family lines having a meeting in the Circle of the Y. He has his own reasons for wanting them gone, pronto: If Vlad Luxor discovers that there are spell breakers running about willy-nilly, his right-hand man will be the first to pay. Needleman himself will get turned into something awful—a pesky gnat, an annoying wind chime, an extra-fishy salmon loaf.
An Extra-Fishy Salmon Loaf
They escaped Needleman’s creepy grip once, at that frightening parade and fair, but now he may be lurking behind any lamppost or tree, waiting to snatch them up. So, whenever possible, the good adults of their lives keep protective watch over the children when they’re in their very own yards, or on the streets, and, from today forward, on the
ir way to school. Word gets out quickly when a lizard turns back into a toddler. And so—careful whisper to careful whisper—the kind townspeople make a protective net around the four children, guarding against Needleman and his few trusted spies.
Still. We should not forget: Nets have holes.
On this first day of school, the small group continues through town. Now they’re about to pass the French bakery. Just before they do, at the doorway of that most delicious-smelling shop, something surprising happens. Ms. Esmé Silvooplay dashes out. She shoves plump, delicious, still-warm DoublaVay Sayes right into their hands.
“To start the year off right,” she says.
“Well, thank you very much!” Mrs. Dante beams.
“My pleasure.” Ms. Esmé Silvooplay smiles.
“I want one, I want one! Me too!” Rocco and Coco say, and they get their wish. Button is offered a delectable-to-dogs-only Pup Crust.
And then, another surprising thing. When they walk past Big Meats, Sir Loinshank Jr. runs outside. He claps the children on the back, jostling Apollo’s new glasses.
“For your great coura—” He stops himself. “Well, you know.” He thrusts a Pork Zoo Chew into Henry’s hands—a lion. Apollo gets a hippo, and Pirate Girl gets a giraffe, and Rocco and Coco trade so that Rocco gets the parrot and Coco gets the lemur. The butcher leans down and gives Button a cat Pork Zoo Chew, which she chomps in one bite. Sir Loinshank Jr. tips his cap to Mrs. Dante, and she pretends to tip a hat back, even though she’s not wearing one. He gives a wave to Ms. Esmé Silvooplay across the street, and she waves in return.
Next, they pass Creamy Dreamy Dairy, and Miss Becky emerges to offer them delectable Stretch-a-Mile Cheese Cones. It’s hard to hear anything over all that gooeyness and crunching. What a remarkable morning!
When they cross the town square, though, and walk by the enormous billboard of Vlad Luxor with the blue scrolling sign on top, it’s impossible not to shiver. Anxiety whooshes through all of them like toilet water after a flush. The huge Vlad wears a black tuxedo and a gold crown on his head, and he smiles down with his yellowing teeth. His vacant pinpoint eyes seem to follow Henry with every step.