The Weird in the Wilds

by Deb Caletti

  “What’s that?” Henry asks. He feels very lucky to have someone along who reads as much as Apollo does. Henry points to one of the strangest things he has ever seen—a group of plants with enormous flowers, each shaped like a fancy jug. Some of the odd blooms are green and some are a deep red, and some of the lips fold softly under, but some appear to have long sharp fangs.

  “They’re kind of scary,” Pirate Girl says. “And that one has water in it. We could almost drink from it.”

  “I wouldn’t do that if I were you,” Apollo warns. “Those are Nepenthes pitchers. They’ll eat anything that gets close enough. It’ll swallow a rat whole.”

  “Eyuw.” Jo shivers.

  “And there’s another reason why you wouldn’t want to drink from it,” Apollo says. “See how you could sit right on it? Um . . .” He takes a big breath, the way you do when you must say something you’d rather not. “It’s a plant that some animals use as a toilet.”

  A Plant That Some Animals Use as a Toilet

  Pirate Girl snickers. “That’s seriously important to know. Thanks, Apollo. I’m glad I didn’t take a sip! It would have been our first bungle in the jungle.”

  Now, behind them, there’s a noise. It’s not a scurrying scorpion or a flower gulping a rat whole, though. It’s an annoyed and unhappy squirrel who appears to be at his wits’ end.

  “Why, why, why would you come to a place like this?” Mr. Reese mutters as he scoots and zigzags toward them, lifting his skirts as he goes. “How will you ever figure out how to turn me back into a man if you keep making horrid decisions like this? Do you know how close you were back there to being—” With one of his creepy squirrel hands, he makes that slicing motion against his neck that means . . . Well, you understand, even without the unpleasant specifics. “I can’t believe you foolish children are my best hope for becoming a man again. Ugh! I’d be better off trying to beg Vlad Luxor for forgiveness.”

  “Are you still here?” Pirate Girl says.

  “Well, I’m finally here. Do you know how hard it is to run in heels? Why do you wear these things?”

  “I have no idea. Don’t ask me!” Pirate Girl rolls her eyes at Jo, and Jo rolls them back. “I like shoes you can explore the world in.”

  Shoes You Can Explore the World In

  “Wait,” Jo says. “Wait just a minute.”

  “Now what?” Mr. Reese moans.

  “Do you guys smell what I smell?” Jo asks.

  Henry sniffs, and oh, it is awful. It’s terribly unfair and quite horrible to suggest it once, let alone twice, but please imagine an even more horrific odor than the one you imagined before. A stink that still shoves its way through your nostrils even when you’ve pinched them closed, one that worms its way into your tummy and flops it right over as if you’re about to be carsick. Except, in the wide open of the Wilds, there is no rolling down the window for fresh air, because this is fresh air. Button is the only one who’s happy about this smell. She sticks her nose right up and sniff-sniff-sniffs, because, to a dog, when it comes to smells, the more stomach-turning, the better.

  “Holy vomitini.” Pirate Girl makes a horrified face.

  “We’ve found him!” Henry says. “Jason must be right around here somewhere.”

  “Jason!” Pirate Girl shouts.

  “Jason!” Jo shouts, too. “We’re here!”

  “Are you nuts?” the squirrel asks. “Lower your voices! How can I keep you children safe, when you insist on doing the most dangerous things! Like announcing your whereabouts to the Shadow of the Wilds! Like going farther and farther into this place, heading right in the direction where Vla—”

  “Wait a sec,” Apollo interrupts. “It might not be Jason. Look.” He points toward a very, very odd-looking plant. Picture a single, enormous lily, large enough for a giant’s garden. “A corpse flower. Wow, those are actually quite rare.”

  “Corpse? Eek,” Pirate Girl says.

  “It’s huge,” Henry says. And it looks even huger next to small, thin Henry.

  “They can get up to two hundred pounds. And, oh!” Apollo says as they walk deeper and deeper into the Wilds. “Look there! Angel’s trumpets! I’ve read about those, too.” He points toward a lovely, drooping flower. “They’re very dangerous. If you eat them, they can hypnotize you so that you do horrible stuff and don’t even care.”

  “This is all very fascinating and everything,” Jo says, freeing her sleeve from a jagged branch. “But I’m getting the creeps. I feel like something is hovering nearby, or maybe someone . . .”

  Henry has that creepy feeling, too. Like he’s being watched, or worse. The creepy feeling slithers like a slim snake shushing along the ground, one that lifts slowly over your shoes, and then twists around your ankl—

  “AAAH,” Henry screams. Something actually is slinking around the thin bone of his ankle! When he looks down in horror, yanking his foot back, he’s relieved to see that it’s not the claws of the Shadow or even a snake, but a vine, a thick and hungry vine, gliding across his skin and doing its best to tighten its grip around him.

  “Don’t worry, Henry!” Pirate Girl says. In an instant, she frees him with one careful whack of her pocketknife. “We’ll definitely have to avoid those.”

  “It’s hard to know which direction to go,” Apollo says. “And it’s already after lunchtime, and we haven’t even found Jason Scrum, let alone turned him back into a bully.”

  “Jason Scrum?” Mr. Reese asks. “That horrid little boy?”

  “Vlad Luxor turned the bully into a gerenuk,” Apollo explains.

  “Wait. Wait, wait, wait! You’re here in the Wilds to risk your lives for a bully?” Mr. Reese’s tiny squirrel face twists in outrage. “Or rather, risking my chance to be turned back into a man if something happens to you while you’re out and about? I can’t believe you’re even here, walking right toward Vla—”

  “Shh!” Pirate Girl says. “I hear something.”

  Henry stops to listen. Yes. He hears it, too, though it’s hard to say where it’s coming from.

  “Get me offa this thing!” Jason Scrum whines. “No one told me there’d be a boat on this field trip! I hate boats. This stupid boat is making me dizzy.”

  “We found him,” Henry says.

  CHAPTER 14

  What the Children Learn by the Pond

  I want more treats!” Jason says. “I see them over there, and there, and there! And instead of being there, I’m here on this stupid boat!”

  “It’s him all right,” Apollo sighs.

  “All we have to do is follow the complaining,” Pirate Girl says. But now that they’ve stopped with their ears perked, the petulant bully has gone silent.

  It’s very difficult to make their way through the Wilds, and listening for the gerenuk is harder than it sounds, because there are other noises, lots of them. There are the slurps and squashes and slips of plants growing and the earth shifting. There are the screeches and squawks of birds and animals. Henry is getting very tired and cold, and he still can’t shake the eerie feeling that shadows, the Shadow is everywhere. He spots something moving out of the corner of his eye, something thick and fast. He snatches up Button, and Pirate Girl grabs his arm.

  “Did you see that?” she asks.

  “I think so,” Henry whispers.

  “What?” Jo asks. “What did you guys see?” Her voice trembles.

  “I knew this was a bad idea,” Apollo says.

  “It was . . . large. Very large. A tail, maybe?” Pirate Girl’s eyes scan the area. “But nothing has a tail that big.”

  “Let’s get out of here,” Jo says.

  Walking is difficult in the tangle of everything fantastic and strange, things that look beautiful but are terrible, things that look weird but are marvelous. Another pulsing vine twists rapidly around Henry’s ankle, and he has to stop an
d free himself. Jo points out a flower that looks like a bumblebee, and then one that looks like a duck in flight, and another that looks like a pair of giant red lips. Pirate Girl shrieks when she sees a branch with a row of tiny skulls, but Apollo explains that it’s just the seedpods of an ordinary snapdragon. They see an orchid with the face of a monkey, and then an actual monkey drinking from one of the pitcher plants.

  “Gross,” Pirate Girl says, and Henry has to agree.

  Henry’s head aches from all the colors and shapes around him, and from all the new facts and possible dangers everywhere he looks. What he feels now—well, imagine those times when you are very excited but a little nervous to play a new, wonderful game, but the instructions go on and on and on. They’re never going to find that gerenuk. Poor Apollo looks exhausted, too, as if he’s just finished a very tiring exercise.

  A Very Tiring Exercise

  Mr. Reese is getting cranky as well, or rather, more cranky than usual, mumbling and squeaking like an old bedspring as he tries to keep up. “I don’t know why you all insist on walking straight toward—”

  “Shh!” Apollo says. “I hear him.”

  “Thank goodness,” Jo says.

  “How many times have I told you that I hate water? Water is boring! I have no need to see all this water, water, water!”

  “I think the bully is stuck!” Pirate Girl says. “Water . . . It must be a pond or a lake or a swamp, or . . . Well, here it could be anything.”

  “But a boat? I can’t imagine it.” Jo shakes her head. “I think he’s over there.”

  “No,” Pirate Girl says. “Over this way.”

  “I’m sure he’s straight ahead,” Apollo says.

  They stand in a circle, scowling at one another.

  “We have to go some direction,” Henry pleads. Quarreling is certainly understandable right then, but it isn’t helping. In fact, quarreling has led them to a dead stop, as disagreements often do.

  “Juana Azurduy wouldn’t take directions, she’d give directions. This way,” Jo commands, and marches forward. This isn’t like Jo at all, but the circumstances are rather stressful. The hours are ticking past, and this place would be deadly in the dark.

  “This is the longest, dumbest field trip ever.” Jason Scrum’s voice is suddenly quite clear. “Shouldn’t we be wearing life jackets? My mother will be very angry that I’m on a boat and not wearing one.”

  “You found him, Jo!” Pirate Girl beams.

  “Wow,” Henry says, because the gerenuk is stuck on something that is definitely not a boat. In front of them is an enormous green pond with lily pads that are big enough to stand on.

  Lily Pads That Are Big Enough to Stand On

  “Those are incredible!” Pirate Girl says.

  They are. The lily pads cover the entire pond, huge circle sitting next to huge circle, each with a delicate raised edge, like enormous yet elegant green plates spread across a tabletop.

  “I’ve never read about these before.” Apollo’s eyes are large behind his glasses.

  “It’s about time!” Jason Scrum whines. “Where did you guys get to go while I was stuck on this dumb boat? Get me off of here.”

  “You’re not stuck at all!” Jo says, and Henry sees that she’s right. “Just step back onto the bank. You can get off quite easily.”

  “I would, if this stupid boat didn’t keep rocking! I would in a second.”

  Henry understands the problem. With every step the gerenuk tries to take, the lily pad buckles and sloshes. Jason looks quite frightened.

  Pirate Girl notices, too. “He’s scared,” she says.

  “I’m not scared! I just hate water. Water is stupid. It’s much too wet! I can’t swim. This is the worst boat ever.”

  Mr. Reese lifts his skirts, steps onto one of the large dishes of green, and lies down on his back. “I quite like it. It’s wavy and rather soothing.”

  Pirate Girl has already retrieved her rope. “Well, we have to get him off of there if we want to walk him along a line between good and evil, wherever that is.”

  Mr. Reese pops his little bonnet-clad head up. “Did you say ‘a line between good and evil’?”

  “Yes,” Henry says. “To break the spell, we need to walk him along a line between good and evil, falling on the side of good.”

  “You don’t mean the wall, do you?” Mr. Reese says.

  “The wall?” Henry asks.

  “The wall, the wall, the wall! Vlad Luxor’s wall! The one he’s trying to build around the whole province! The Wilds, the Jaggeds, and even Beyond the Mountain! Haven’t you read the scrolling sign on the billboard?”

  “The wall!” Pirate Girl says. “Of course! That must be the line between good and evil.”

  “You can’t go there! Vlad himself and Needleman have been over there nearly every day. I know, because I’ve been keeping track of Needleman’s whereabouts. We don’t want him surprising you out of nowhere! You children need to be kept—”

  “Safe,” Pirate Girl says. “Wow! You’re like our own little rodent spy!”

  “You’ve been watching out for us, Mr. Reese,” Jo says. “Thank you! I think you actually care about us. Well, we care about you, too.” She picks him right up and plants a kiss on the furry marble of his cheek. This is a shivery thing to imagine doing to a squirrel, but nonetheless, Henry’s heart also fills for their little protector.

  “Care, shmare! Put me down!” Mr. Reese shakes off the kiss. But Henry can see that he’s actually touched by Jo’s affection. He shakes his head, and his eyes get a little watery, and he has to clear his throat before speaking. “The point is, they’ve both been at the construction site every day. There’ve been problems. This obstacle, that crisis!”

  “Problems that even hideous magic can’t solve?” Henry asks.

  “I can’t understand it myself,” Mr. Reese says. “Things are going wrong every which way, as if it’s some sort of impossibility! But if there’s a line between good and evil, that must be it. It’s right over . . . Well, I don’t know exactly. East, near Rulers Mountain. The wall is supposed to start there. I’ve gotten quite turned around. Somewhere near, I’m sure. If you’d have stopped your yammering on about scientific facts and this flower and that plant, you would have heard me warning you a thousand times that you are likely walking straight toward it.”

  “Oh no!” Apollo says.

  “But oh yes, too,” Jo says. “At least we know where we’re going. We can hurry and get home before dark.”

  “Not oh yes! Not at all! Not for a minute!” Mr. Reese is hopping about with anxiety. “That’s one of the most dangerous places in the world right now, with that maniac stomping around, talking about others and its, inners and outers, keeping ‘dangerous people’ away when he is the most dangerous person one could imagine! You can’t go there! You will surely get turned into a buffalo or a lamppost or, or . . . who knows what! Mr. Apple was nearly baked into a pie! Do you want to become some other dessert that might be devoured in two seconds?”

  Some Other Dessert That Might Be Devoured in Two Seconds

  “It’ll be okay, Mr. Reese. As Captain Every always tell us, ‘A plan will present itself, and then you will follow it to great success,’” Pirate Girl says, looking at Henry.

  He’s not so sure about the great success part. Not at all. Not with the way Mr. Reese, in his permanent dress and bonnet, is looking at them now, with his bulgy rodent eyes all alarmed and his creepy squirrel fingers nervously clawing around in the air. The doom in Henry’s stomach rises, the way water fills a pool, or a bathtub, or a sink, or . . . well, it doesn’t matter, choose any one you’d like. The point is, it’s hard not to think of water and more water when you are standing at the edge of an enormous pond, and a gerenuk is making waves, and your tennis shoes are getting soppy.

  “Let’s g
et the bully off the boat,” Pirate Girl says.

  CHAPTER 15

  Something Funny, Something Not

  Oh, there’s a lot of whining and complaining, cajoling and convincing. Apollo holds out a few large, enticing leaves, the kind that Jason Scrum was trying to reach when he stepped onto that lily pad in the first place. Pirate Girl hops up on it, too, and gives Jason Scrum the rope, which he holds between his gerenuk hooves. The children yank and pull and urge him on from the bank.

  “You can do it!” Jo says.

  “Come on!” Henry encourages.

  “Ow!” the gerenuk squeals, because, right then, Button gives Jason a nip on the behind, which propels the bully forward, right off the giant lily pad and onto land once again.

  “Great job,” Jo says, but Jason Scrum doesn’t say thank you. He’s lost his manners, or never found them in the first place. Now he lifts his lips and reaches for those leaves like a horse with a carrot.

  A Horse with a Carrot

  “Which way did you say that wall was, Mr. Reese?” Pirate Girl asks. She’s already winding her rope back into a neat circle and scouting in the distance for where to head next.

  “You must not have heard me clearly. You cannot go to the wall. Or, rather, the place where the wall is somewhat built. That is highly, highly dangerous! Think it through, I beg you! Vlad Luxor, going on and on about others and its . . . Because, if all of you aren’t other, and he isn’t an it”—here, he points to Jason Scrum—“well, then I don’t know who is.”

  “I wish we didn’t have to,” Apollo sighs.

  “Same here,” Jo says. “It’s getting late, and I’m very worried we won’t make it home. Tonight, Becky is coming over, and we’re all baking the cake for the celebration of love. And what if we have to stay longer? My mother will cancel everything if I’m not there.”