However, it is likely that you have been in the situation of trying to do something tricky, like take the top off a bottle or mend something that is stuck or turn a handle that WILL NOT BUDGE, so you will probably sympathize with Xar, who was trying to do something rather like this under very trying, frightening (and disgusting) circumstances, while being given useful suggestions by the sprites, such as:
“What happensss if you wigglesss it the other way?”
“Try pulling it…”
“Try squiggling it…”
“Have you tried wiggling it?”
But absolutely nothing worked.
“Okay, Wish!” Xar shouted up. “I’m going to need your help! Even if I get this beastly thing out, I don’t want to drop it, so we need two pairs of hands!”
So Wish attached herself to another rope, and Crusher lowered her down to help Xar.
Together they squiggled, and they wiggled, and their two pairs of hands worked the stone out of the sore burning spot where it had been bothering the Nuckalavee for the past twenty years.
“We’ve got it!” cried Wish in relief. “Haul us up, Crusher!”
Up where he was balancing on the rim of the Nuckalavee’s mouth, Crusher began to haul in both of them at once with all the strength that a Longstepper High-Walker giant can gather.
Meanwhile, all the time that they had been so intent on getting the stone out of the throat, Bodkin had been perching high on the ridge in the cavern walls, watching the Nuckalavee.
And what Bodkin had seen made his heart beat ever so quick.
Slowly,
Slowly,
Ever so slowly,
As Crusher and Wish and Xar and the sprites and Caliburn were all concentrating on getting the stone out of the Nuckalavee’s throat… the Nuckalavee was very gently lowering his top jaw.
Slowly,
Slowly,
Ever so slowly,
The Nuckalavee was shutting his mouth.
Bodkin opened his own mouth to shout out a warning but he was so scared, no sound came out.
What on earth could he do?
Wait a second… the Nuckalavee had said that the Magic of Wizards did not work in here. The Enchanted Sword was stuck in the scabbard. But how about the do-it-yourself Magic staff? That wasn’t the Magic of Wizards, that worked on its own. Maybe the staff would work in here…
He pointed the do-it-yourself Magic staff at his forehead.
Squelch! The staff stuck firmly to his right temple.
Great.
Now he had a staff stuck to his head.
This sort of thing never seemed to happen to proper heroes in stories.
It took a few moments for Bodkin to remember the right words to get the staff to unstick. Which it did, with another protesting squelch!
Okay, so he had a weapon that at least worked, although it was a little difficult to see how sticking things to other things was going to be helpful in this kind of emergency. He gathered all his courage together. Wish and Xar were dangling down inside the throat of that monster. They were his friends. And even though Bodkin was ABSOLUTELY PETRIFIED of the Nuckalavee,
Slowly,
Slowly,
Ever so slowly,
Bodkin climbed down from his hiding place.
When one of the Nuckalavee’s eyes flicked in his direction, Bodkin froze. But he kept on moving slowly, slowly. Because he had a very bad feeling about what the Nuckalavee was going to do next.
And Bodkin was right.
The moment that Wish shouted, “We’ve got it!” and Crusher began to haul on the ropes to bring Wish and Xar up, the Nuckalavee’s eyes blazed orange and he shut his mouth very, very quickly indeed.
WHIRRRAMMMMM!
The Nuckalavee’s jaws slammed shut, with Wish and Xar and the sprites and Caliburn and Crusher all inside.
Crusher’s rope was still tied to the stalactite. The Nuckalavee jerked his head to work the rope free. The rope held, because the rope of a Longstepper High-Walker giant is made of strong stuff.
And Bodkin ran, as fast as he could toward the rock and the rope.
He didn’t have a plan.
He just ran toward the rock and the rope.
The Nuckalavee’s eyes blazed orange at him.
You’re putting your filthy shoes on my beach!!! is what the Nuckalavee would have said if he didn’t have his mouth full at the time.
The Nuckalavee jerked his head a second time, and this time…
SNAP!
Bodkin only just got hold of the rope before it snapped from the stalactite, and he was hauled high up into the air, dangling from one end of it.
21. Will the Parents Be Too Late?
Meanwhile, Encanzo and Sychorax had reached the beach opposite the Isle of the Nuckalavee and were following on a boat, in a sea of curse bottles, and every curse bottle now had a name in it. Encanzo reached down and picked out a curse bottle. He smeared away the seawater, and there, gleaming bright in the sunlight, was a name picked out in sprite-writing, and the name was “Encanzo.”
Sychorax looked out at the sea of bobbing bottles, the name “Encanzo” trapped in the heart of them, gleaming, an “o” here, a “z” there, as the sunlight caught the letters. “Someone out there really doesn’t like you,” said Sychorax.
Encanzo turned white as snow when he saw his name in the bottles.
“What did you do to deserve this hatred?” said Sychorax.
“I came here to get rid of my heart,” said Encanzo bitterly. “What use did I have of it? You betrayed me, and I was in a state of despair. This was my shadow quest…”
Sychorax was now seeing with her own eyes the consequences of her actions on another heart, another soul, and that is always a difficult moment. It is one thing to know something vaguely. It is quite another to plant your feet in the exact footsteps of where another has gone. Sychorax was planting her pretty little feet in the hopeless footprints of the young Wizard she had once loved, the boy named Tor whose heart she had broken twenty weary years ago, and it was a most uncomfortable feeling, for with each step she could feel the lost boy’s despair.
“But you endured, as I did,” said Sychorax, making herself feel better. “There are very few who come away from a shadow quest and live, and those who do are stronger than ever.”
“I have endured without a heart,” said Encanzo. “And in the course of stealing myself a second chance, I tricked the Nuckalavee most royally.”
“Ah…” said Sychorax. That explained all the curse bottles. The Nuckalavee was looking for revenge.
“Now that the Nuckalavee knows my name, Wish and Xar are in terrible trouble,” said Encanzo grimly. “We must be quick now, Sychorax. If you want to come with me, you’ll have to transform. Don’t pretend you don’t remember how to do it… it was I who taught you, long ago, don’t you remember?”
Sychorax did remember.
“I only use Magic for a purpose,” said Queen Sychorax.
“Ah…” taunted Encanzo, “so you never enjoy it?”
Sychorax blushed.
“What better purpose are you waiting for?” said Encanzo. “We will have to transform into swifts, for they are the fastest—”
“Oh, not swifts…” said Sychorax, for swifts were symbolic of an uncomfortable memory for her. “What’s this obsession with swifts, with you? Why not eagles? Peregrine falcons? Sparrow hawks? They’re all fast flyers, particularly when they’re hunting… And eagles are royal birds, Encanzo—don’t forget our pedigree. We need to maintain our dignity, we should at least be birds of prey.”
“Oh for goodness’ sake,” snapped Encanzo. “There isn’t a snowflake in a bonfire’s chance of me ever falling in love with a she-wolf like you again, Sychorax! I have no heart. I’M going as a swift, because swifts are the fastest and most agile flyers, but you can be whatever you like! TRANSFORM!”
Encanzo thrust his arm with his staff up into the air, shouting out the word, and, sighing, Sychorax closed her own f
ist around the staff as well. Sychorax was highly competitive, so if swifts were the most agile flyers, Sychorax was going to have to be one too. She wasn’t going to have Encanzo shooting off into the distance leaving her behind, however royal the wings of an eagle might be.
There was a great chemical explosion, and there, where there had been Sychorax and Encanzo, were two small brown swifts, wings beating the air.
Sychorax had forgotten how wonderful it was to live life as a bird. All the weary gold that weighed her down, the thick furs, the heavy flesh, lightened to paper-thinness before vanishing. She could feel her heart, so dull, so leaden, lightening with it, feel the air rushing into the quick of her bones with such a heady haste that she launched herself into the air the instant her flagging arms turned into joyous wings.
Encanzo hovered before her, crying with a bright pure call.
They ought to have been eagles. With eagle wings she might have remembered she was hunting. With eagle eyes she might have only focused on the prey.
But swifts can stay in the air for six, ten months at a time. In a single lifetime, a swift spends such a time flying that they could have flown seven times to the moon and back.
It was impossible not to be distracted by the pure joy of flying when you had wings so reactive to the breeze that it was almost like they were part of the wind itself, the sky above calling her to stay up there forever and never to go down.
With every beat of those curved bright wings, she was going back in time to when the young Wizard Tor first taught her to transform, a time when she was a careless young princess, as wild and fast and free as the swift itself.
The will-o’-the-wisps called after them their haunting cry:
Love is weakness…
Love is kindness…
Love is childish…
Love is thoughtless…
Care-less, love-less, heart-worn, soul-blast?
Come this way…
Thought-less… shoe-less… hope-less?
Come this way…
No more second chances
No more silly dances
LOVE is weakness… so
Come this way…
Will the parents-transformed-into-swifts be able to reach their children in time to be able to save the situation?
Swifts fly swiftly, as their name suggests.
But unfortunately, even the wings of swifts will be too slow for this task. Even Magic has to obey logic and the laws of physics. I am the narrator, and even MY Magic will not get them there in time.
The children are on their own, and the situation is dire.
22. Inside the Mouth of the Nuckalavee
There was chaos inside the mouth of the Nuckalavee.
Darkness and a terrible rushing noise, like a roaring, churning, bellowing tide.
“THE NUCKALAVEE IS TRYING TO SWALLOW US! HANG ON AS TIGHT AS YOU CAN!” shouted Wish. She and Xar were using all their energy to cling on as hard as they could to Crusher’s rope while they swung wildly this way, that way, this way, that way, turning somersaults, doing backflips, losing all sense of what was up and what was down. The sprites had lost their lights in the confusion as they rattled all around.
Down below them, the Nuckalavee’s second set of jaws had opened, the ones hidden down at the bottom of his throat, and if they dropped through those, they would never get out again.
Crusher, the great Longstepper High-Walker giant, hung on grimly, one great arm clasping the ropes Wish and Xar were holding, the other one gripping the inside of the Nuckalavee’s mouth. He was desperately trying to keep a hold on both as the Nuckalavee shook his head this way and that, and the gigantic muscles of his great gullet tried again and again to swallow them.
I… can’t… hold… on… anymore… thought Xar as the rope shuddered and swung chaotically.
And just as Wish began losing her grip and was about to be jolted off the rope entirely…
…the Nuckalavee stopped shaking his head.
Because while Xar and Wish and Crusher were being jangled about like stones in a bucket, on the OUTSIDE of the Nuckalavee’s mouth, Bodkin was being thrown about this way and that just as violently as they were on the other end of Crusher’s rope. He had a brief moment of panic as he looked down and remembered, Oh yes, I’m dangling a hundred feet up, from the jaws of the Nuckalavee, and my friends are actually INSIDE the Nuckalavee, and it’s my job to save them…
The rope had stopped shaking and was now swaying gently from side to side in a way that was really quite drowsy making… Oh no! It was happening again!
“Don’t fall asleep, Bodkin!” cried Caliburn, flapping around in frantic circles because there wasn’t a lot he could do himself while he was in bird form. “The one thing you mustn’t do is fall asleep!”
Caliburn was right.
Bodkin was never going to be a hero if he kept falling asleep in a crisis situation.
He had to stay awake.
So even though the familiar woozy feeling was coming over Bodkin, this time he fought it with EVERY FIBER OF HIS HEART AND SOUL.
Wake up! Bodkin said to himself sharply as his eyelids drooped. Wake up now! THIS IS YOUR CHANCE TO BE A HERO!
THINK!
The reason that the rope had suddenly stopped shaking was because the Nuckalavee had lost sight of Bodkin.
The last the monster had seen of the boy-who-didn’t-take-his-shoes-off was down on the beach, running toward him. But the boy had disappeared. Was he really a Wizard and not a Warrior, as the girl had claimed? Had he used some magical object to turn himself invisible? Maybe he was a scarier opponent than he had looked.
The Nuckalavee’s thirteen eyes swiveled in all directions, looking for the boy. No sign.
The Nuckalavee hated getting out of the water; his bulk was too much for that. But this was an emergency. He dragged the front half of his enormous body out onto the beach to get a closer look at the crevices high up in the cavern. No boy. Where had he gone?
Bodkin, meanwhile, had thought of a plan.
Bodkin swung the rope back, forth, back, forth, as though he was on a rope swing, until he hit the side of the cavern wall. He hung there a second, before kicking off with such force that he and the rope swung all the way around the Nuckalavee’s chin, past the creature’s ears on the other side, and he landed on the Nuckalavee’s snout.
The Nuckalavee suddenly remembered the rope dangling from the outside of his mouth. He tried to look down, but his thirteen eyes were perched right on top of his head, and he couldn’t see under his own chin. Which is why he missed seeing Bodkin, who was now standing on top of the Nuckalavee’s nose.
The staff that Bodkin was holding only did one thing. It was a Staff-That-Stuck-Things-to-Other-Things.
You might have thought that this was quite a limited spell. It certainly wasn’t one of the flashier, more spectacular ones, like mind control or invisibility or transformation or shape-shifting.
But sometimes it isn’t the spells themselves that are important.
It is the clever ways you use them.
Bodkin used that spell intelligently now. He touched the staff on one of the Nuckalavee’s nostrils and—SQUERRRRCHHHHHHH!
The nostril closed in on itself, as one side of the nostril stuck itself to the other side.
The Nuckalavee tried to snort through it, and—SQUERRRRCHHHHHH! Bodkin touched the staff on the other nostril, and it closed up too.
Still holding the rope, Bodkin launched himself off the Nuckalavee’s nose with as much careless recklessness as if he had been Xar himself.
Around the other side of the Nuckalavee, Bodkin fell so that the rope wound itself in a circle all the way around the Nuckalavee’s head. And when Bodkin swung back down to the bottom of the circle, he touched the staff to the rope and it stuck tight.
The Nuckalavee tried to breathe through his nostrils, but they would not unblock.
The Nuckalavee tried to open his mouth that he had been keeping closed so firmly.
&n
bsp; But his mouth would not open.
The Nuckalavee was part of a crocodilian family of monsters that have great strength in the muscles that grasp prey, so they exert extraordinary force when they are keeping their jaws shut. But the muscles that OPEN the jaws are far weaker, so weak, even, that they cannot break through the rope of a Longstepper High-Walker giant.
And then there was chaos in the cavern of the Nuckalavee.
The Nuckalavee’s thirteen eyes bulged and blazed with absolute incandescent fury. He thrashed about in the underground lake, with Bodkin desperately hanging on to the madly jerking rope.
Lightning bolts shot off the Nuckalavee’s tentacles as his enormous body swung this way and that in the jangling mass of curse bottles…
But however hard he thrashed, the Nuckalavee could not catch his breath.
The Nuckalavee knew when he was beaten.
The jerking of the great monster’s body became weaker and weaker.
And now that he knew he was vanquished, the Nuckalavee was dignified in defeat. He lay his head down quietly on the beach and closed all thirteen of his eyes and resigned himself to death.
After all, he had broken a promise to Xar and Wish that he would not close his jaws while they were taking out the stone, and he had promised by mistletoe and Magic, may his own life be forfeit. That is a very solemn promise, and you break it at your peril, so the Nuckalavee must have known he was risking the wrath of Fate.
Bodkin dropped onto the beach when the Nuckalavee laid down his head. He unstuck the rope that was tied under the monster’s chin, and the Nuckalavee’s jaws relaxed and his mouth opened.
Inside the throat of the Nuckalavee, the world stopped rocking for Wish and Xar. Crusher pulled them up and they slipped and slid out of the open mouth of the Nuckalavee, the stone held tight in the palm of Xar’s hand.
Knock Three Times Page 15
