“Brainwashed? Listen, Abby, I know you’re mad at Theo. I don’t blame you. I’m not thrilled with him either. But brainwashing—that’s way too extreme. Theo’s just serious. About the Founders. About everything.”
“And he’s starting to get Marty thinking the way he does,” Abby said. “That whatever the Founders want is more important than anything else. Than my parents. Than the rest of the world.” On a flat piece of rock by the edge of the stream, she stopped, turning to face Sam. A breeze blew tendrils of her light hair around her thin face, and her clear blue eyes were solemn. “I mean it, Sam. I think you should watch out for yourself. Theo’s made it pretty clear he doesn’t care what happens to anyone else, as long as he gets what he wants.”
Sam was shaking his head. “No, Abby, really. You’ve got the wrong idea.”
Abby shrugged. “I don’t expect you to agree with me, Sam. Not right now. But don’t forget what I said, okay? Let’s keep going.”
They kept going, Sam with a squirmy, uneasy feeling inside. Abby was upset, and who could blame her? But it was crazy to talk about brainwashing. To suggest that Sam needed to watch out for Theo. How many times since this whole thing had started had Theo saved Sam’s life?
Of course, Sam’s life would not have been in any danger at all if it hadn’t been for Theo, and for Evangeline too. If those two hadn’t lied to him, told him he’d won a contest, and dragged him along on a life-and-death mission because they needed somebody good at solving puzzles.
Sam pulled a Snickers bar out of his pack and ate it as he walked, but not even the melty goodness of chocolate and caramel could wash away the bad taste in his mouth.
The stream headed downhill, getting deeper and faster as they followed it. Sam stuffed his half-eaten chocolate bar into the outside pocket of his backpack as they walked out from beneath the shadows of the trees. Here the stream spilled into a wide but shallow river that meandered across a rocky plain. It wasn’t the only stream to do so either.
“United we stand,” Sam said, looking around. “So . . . anything like a clue here?”
Abby pointed. “Like that?”
Sam spun around and blinked, dazzled. A bright light had flashed right in his eyes. Sam rubbed them until the black-and-blue spots had faded from his vision, and he saw that the light was coming from somewhere back the way they had come, flashing through the branches of the trees.
“What is that?” Abby asked. “It could be just the light reflecting off water somewhere, I guess, but—”
“Not unless there’s a river around here that knows Morse code,” Sam answered.
The light was flashing rhythmically, long and short. In his head, Sam translated the blinks:
–••• • •– •–• –• •
Morse code was just another code, after all. And it was a handy thing to know if you liked solving puzzles. Sam had memorized it last summer. This was a short message and pretty easy to figure out: BEAR NE.
“Bear northeast,” he muttered. “It’s Marty, of course. She must have a mirror in her pack”—of course Marty would have a mirror, Sam thought to himself—“and she’s flashing us a message. I bet they can see the next clue from wherever they are. Up on that cliff, I guess.” So Marty had been right about the cliff, and he’d been wrong about the river. Sam stifled a groan.
“And she wants us to go northeast?” Abby asked.
“Looks like it.” Sam turned around until he was facing the direction the sun had risen. “That’s east, so . . .” He and Abby figured out northeast and headed that way, along the bank of the river, forcing their way through alder thickets and clambering over stones.
The flashing light continued blinking away through the trees. Sam lifted his hand to shield his eyes. “We got it, Marty!” He took off his hat and waved it, trying to signal. “If she can see us to flash that light at us, she must be able to see that we’re doing what she says,” he grumbled to Abby as she splashed through a shallow rivulet behind him. “Why does she have to keep—”
Wait a minute. He turned his head toward the lights. Had the patterns of dashes and dots changed? It had.
••• – – – – •– – • ••• – – – – •– – • ••• – – – – •– – •
STOP STOP STOP
“Whoa.” Sam stopped walking. Behind him, close enough to touch, Abby did too.
A low growl came at them through a dense thicket of alder bushes, a tone so deep it hummed along Sam’s rib cage. Branches and leaves about ten feet ahead of them heaved and shook as something big and brown forced its way through.
A grizzly bear.
CHAPTER TEN
“Don’t run,” Sam whispered to Abby. He unzipped his jacket and stuffed his hands in the pockets, spreading his arms out wide to make himself look bigger. The bear took a look at him and halted, swinging its head from side to side and snuffling, as if trying to decide what Sam’s smell meant. Was he a threat? Was he a meal? Or was he just in the way?
“Let’s back off,” he said, keeping his voice low. “Maybe if we get away from it . . .”
She didn’t answer. Sam didn’t dare look away from the bear. He could see the heavy, dense brown fur swinging slightly on the bear’s frame; the claws, streaked yellow and brown, on its massive feet; its small, dark eyes. “Abby?” he croaked.
He caught a flash of movement out of the corner of his eye. Abby was gone! She was sprinting toward a tall spruce tree uphill from the riverbank. Sam had time for a moment of astonishment—wasn’t it the worst thing you could do, to run from a bear? He’d grown up in a suburb and he knew that! And Abby had lived in the wilderness all her life! She was the one who knew how to handle the mountain lion. What was she doing?
Then the bear charged.
It was like watching a huge brown mountain heave itself into motion. How could anything that big move that fast? Without even thinking, Sam was running too. Maybe it was wrong, maybe it was right, but it was the only thing to do. He had to get away!
He tore uphill, his feet digging into slick mud, his hands pawing at rocks to get a grip. How close was the bear? He could hear breath huffing from its nose; he could hear claws on rocks. Any minute—any second—those claws would be in him!
The shadow of a pine tree fell over Sam. He looked up and jumped, grabbing a long, horizontal branch that stretched out over his head. He swung and heaved his feet up too, locking them around the branch. Something snagged his backpack and yanked. Desperate, he clung to the branch. Cloth ripped, and he was suddenly lighter. A strap of his backpack had given way and the pack dangled from one shoulder as he hugged the branch, wiggled, twisted, got his weight up onto it, and looked down.
Less than three feet below him, the bear snarled. Sam’s heart was pounding so hard, it seemed to bang into his rib cage and send vibrations buzzing down his bones. He’d never known how big a grizzly was. The thing looked like a wall of brown, like a tank—not like an animal at all.
Grimly, on hands and knees, Sam inched toward the trunk of the tree. Why did they always put bears in stories for little kids? Had none of those writers ever seen the real thing? Or smelled it? A stench of old fish and unwashed fur rose up and choked Sam’s nostrils.
He got to the trunk and, clinging to it, climbed carefully to his feet. Below him, the bear seemed to be doing the same thing. Slowly it rose up on its hind legs. No! If that thing stood up to its full height, it could swipe Sam off this branch as easily as he’d swat a fly off a windowsill. Sam grabbed a branch above him and scrambled up. Another branch. Another.
Panting, he looked down. The bear dropped back to all fours and paced around the tree. It didn’t seem to want to leave. Sam sat on his branch and hugged the trunk. He could stay up here longer than any bear could stay down there, he figured.
Then the bear rose up on its hind legs again and hugged the tree.
Was it doing this to try to shake Sam out of his perch? Were bears that smart? No, it wasn’t. Sam stared down, appalled, as the grizzly t
ook a good grip on the trunk with its inch-long claws and awkwardly heaved itself up. The thing was climbing up after him!
Sam scrambled higher into the tree, as the bear came up below him, faster than anything that big should be able to climb. The tree shook under the animal’s vast weight, and Sam had to grip hard, his hands stinging from scratches and sticky with pine sap, his arm muscles starting to throb. He was lighter than the bear, so he could go up higher, right? Where the branches were thinner and the animal wouldn’t be able to follow him, right?
He had to stop when he reached a branch about as thick as a baseball bat that bent under his feet. The branches above were even skinnier. He was trapped. And the bear was still coming.
Hugging the tree with one arm, Sam reached back into his pack. Bears liked honey, didn’t they? Sweet things? Well, maybe he had something that would help. His fingers closed around something sticky in a crackling wrapper—his half-eaten Snickers bar.
Sam aimed carefully and let the candy bar go. It bounced off the bear’s nose and fell to the ground.
The bear shook its head, startled, and paused.
“Go on,” Sam muttered between clenched teeth. “You want it, right? Candy? Much tastier than me. Go get it!”
Maybe the bear heard him. It craned its head as if wondering where the interesting-smelling projectile had gone, and then began to move again—this time down the tree.
All of Sam’s joints felt watery with relief. He eased himself down to sit on his thin, creaky branch, gripping the tree’s trunk, as the bear scrambled back to the ground, nosed through the pine needles for his Snickers bar, and ate it in one gulp.
“Okay, you’ve had your snack,” Sam told it. “Time to get moving. Don’t you have somewhere to go?”
Apparently the bear didn’t. It seemed to have no inclination to climb the tree again, but it also didn’t seem to want to go anywhere. It scratched through the dirt at the roots of the tree and nosed through drifts of golden pine needles as though hoping another candy bar would appear.
Sam thought of pitching pinecones down at the bear, but maybe that would just make it mad. So he sat. After a while the bear sat too. Then it stretched out with a long, whiffling sigh that Sam could hear all the way up the tree.
Sam groaned.
His butt was beginning to go to sleep. Cautiously he eased himself down to a slightly lower, slightly thicker branch. He sat for a while more. He alternated between looking down at Smoky the very lazy bear and out at the view.
Under other circumstances, it would have been pretty—he could see the river meandering through its valley, a thick rope of gray and white and silver spilling and splashing over smooth, dark stones. He could see the mountains surrounding the valley, steep slopes carpeted in light green, then dark green, then bare rock, then, on the highest peaks, snow. He could see a clearing in the forest not far from the river, where eight trees had grown in a circle. Kind of odd, really. He remembered Abby saying that nothing in the wilderness went in a straight line, not for long. So what in the wilderness grew in a perfect circle?
But never mind about that—where was Abby? The bear had followed Sam, so Abby must be okay . . . he thought. But if she was okay, wouldn’t she try to find Sam? He strained his eyes, hunting for a trace of Abby’s purple jacket down there in all that green, but he didn’t see anything.
He did hear something, though.
A loud blast on a whistle. Another. The bear stirred and shook its head, as if it didn’t like the sound.
Another. The loud shrill noise tearing through the forest. Grumpily, the bear heaved itself to its feet, growled, took a final swipe at the tree with its claws as if to prove a point, and lumbered away between the trees.
Was it gone? Sam eased himself down a few more branches, but not all the way to the ground. He could hear more blasts on the whistle now, and feet tromping through the bushes, and voices calling, “Sam? Sam!”
Marty! And Abby! Sam slithered down a few more branches just as the two girls, with Theo behind them, appeared at the foot of his tree.
“Hi, Sam,” Marty called, looking up at him. “Did you decide to build a nest up there?”
“Very funny.” Sam climbed down the rest of the way and jumped to the ground, his pack swinging from one shoulder.
“Sam, I’m so sorry.” Abby’s eyes were wide and full of remorse. “I can’t believe I took off like that—I just panicked! Then I ran into Marty and Theo, and we headed back to find you.”
“You should have had a bear whistle, Sam,” Marty told him, waving her bright silver whistle at him. “If you make enough noise, the bears hear you and get out of your way.”
“I wouldn’t have needed a whistle if you hadn’t sent us straight toward the bear!” Sam shot back. “What was that all about, Marty? Telling us to go northeast?”
Marty blinked, startled. “I didn’t tell you to do that.”
“Sure you did. Do you think I can’t read Morse code? You said, ‘Bear NE.’”
Marty shook her head. “You thought that meant—? I was trying to warn you about the bear! That there was a bear to the northeast!”
Oh. Sam thought for a second. So Marty’s message hadn’t been “Bear NE”; it had been “Bear! NE!” That did kind of make more sense, now that he thought about it.
“Anyway, never mind.” Marty flapped a hand, brushing away Sam’s near-mauling experience. “We found the next clue! Theo and I could see it from up on the cliff. There are eight trees near here—”
“Planted in a circle! I saw those!” Sam said.
“I don’t think it’s a circle. I think it’s an octagon!” Marty’s eyes were gleaming. “Remember Thomas Jefferson and octagons?”
“Let’s go!” Sam said, leading the way. “You know, Marty, since you saw those trees from the cliff, and I saw them from a tree by the river, maybe we were both right about the clue on the tombstone.”
Marty, falling into step beside Sam, gave him a quick glance out of the corner of her eye. “Maybe.”
Silently, Theo followed them. Abby had dropped several paces to the rear, so she wouldn’t have to walk beside Theo. Sam glanced back, thinking maybe he should walk with Abby, but for the moment he decided to stay where he was.
They hiked under trees for perhaps half an hour, finally reaching the clearing Sam had sighted from the top of his tree. They eyed the ring of trees in the center, a circle perhaps fifteen feet across. “Eight of them. Definitely an octagon,” Marty said, her eyes narrowed as she thought.
“I wonder who planted them. Maybe it was Josiah!” Abby started toward the ring of trees. The others followed more slowly.
Once inside the circle, Abby paused by a birch tree and looked startled. “Huh. That’s weird.” A metal plate had been set into a knot on the narrow white trunk, and a long, thin lever stuck out from it.
“Abby, don’t—” Marty started to say.
“Not a good idea!” Sam burst out, moving quickly forward.
But before they could warn Abby that, when you were dealing with the Founders, it was best to be careful about pushing buttons or turning handles, she had taken hold of the lever and pulled it.
They heard a loud, grating squeal, as if a rusty hinge was opening, and the ground shook hard beneath their feet.
CHAPTER ELEVEN
Sam was thrown on his face in the soft grass, and he heard Abby shriek. He staggered up to see that the birch tree was gone. It had fallen straight into a deep pit that had opened up underneath it, and Abby was clinging to the side of that same pit. She’d grabbed at the grass before she fell, but her grip wasn’t enough to hold her weight. Her fingers were slipping slowly through the dirt.
Sam lunged forward. “Don’t let go!” he yelled, flinging himself down and grabbing for both of Abby’s hands. She gripped him frantically, her fingernails biting into his skin. Sam dug his knees and elbows and feet into the earth, trying to brace himself, but it was no use. He was inching forward, Abby’s weight pulling him down with he
r.
Then Marty thumped on top of him, anchoring him with her weight and knocking the breath out of him, and Theo threw himself onto his knees beside the pit, grabbing Abby beneath her arms.
For a moment Abby’s eyes met Theo’s, and Sam saw something strange on her face—astonishment? Confusion? Resentment? Then Theo said, “Pull! Now!” and all three of them heaved, dragging Abby up over the edge of the pit.
Marty rolled off Sam. Abby sat up, shaking. “Thanks,” she said, her voice wobbling. She glanced at Theo and then away.
Theo didn’t say anything—but then, that was typical. “No problem,” Sam wheezed. “Geez, Marty, what do you have in that pack, a set of weights?”
“You’re welcome,” Marty said tartly.
“Yeah, yeah. But, Abby, just so you know—it’s better not to, you know, pull on things. Or step on bridges, right, Marty?” Marty snorted. “Or whatever. Old TJ was a typical Founder, all right. He loved making things difficult.”
“Well, that’s kind of the point,” Marty said. “It’s supposed to be difficult if you don’t know what to do. If we had Jefferson’s descendant here, we’d know.”
“But he’s in Nepal, so we’re stuck with difficult.” Sam looked around. “And that’s what we’ve got, all right.”
When Abby had pulled that lever, it hadn’t merely opened up a pit beneath her feet. A rough circle of ground inside the clearing, with the ring of trees at its center, had dropped down as well. It had been that movement that had tossed Sam on his face. Now they were at the bottom of a hole maybe forty feet across and ten feet deep.
How could the earth just fall down like that? Sam frowned. He yanked up a handful of grass by the roots and poked into the hole he’d created. Under about three inches of dirt was a rough metal surface. The entire clearing was a fake.
“I bet there’s a crater below us, or a sinkhole,” Marty said. “And the Founders built this on top.”
“But trees can’t grow in just a few inches of soil!” Abby said, puzzled.
“I don’t think they did.” Sam got up cautiously, in case the ground beneath his feet planned to do any more gymnastics. It stayed steady, however, and he approached the octagon of trees, except that now, without the birch tree in it, it was—what had Marty called it?—a heptagon.
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