“Where did all the rules come from?” Carly asked him.
“What rules?” said Lewis.
“The rule about having to use a vegetable when a band loses one of its members—and the rule about always playing with three instruments—and the rules about only playing in moonlight and always playing up high. Those rules,” said Carly. “They don’t make much sense.”
Lewis shrugged. “They’re just rules.”
“And why didn’t Breeza Meezy stop the musicians from playing when the owls began taking them?” she continued. “She could have saved them. But now they’re all gone and you’re the only one left. Doesn’t that bother you?”
Lewis looked at her with disbelief and anger in his eyes.
“We have always played our music,” he said with great pride in his voice. He snatched his fiddle back from her and played a few angry notes.
“But couldn’t you have made an exception? At least for a little while? Just until you’d figured out how to make the owls start dancing again?”
“None of the musicians would have agreed to that!” said Lewis, his face jutting forward and his tail whipping around in the air behind him.
Carly had not intended to anger Lewis. She just had so many questions and couldn’t seem to get answers to any of them. She looked away from his stare and idly lifted her hand to feel the wind run under her palm.
And it was then that she felt her first tisk.
It was so subtle, just a little bump under one of her fingertips. She tried again and felt another one—a dent this time. Was she really feeling them?
She kept her hand out, and when she felt the next tisk, she pushed down just the slightest bit with her finger and was instantly yanked forward. She let go, but was curious and tried again. And before she could release the next tisk, she was off the roof and flying over the lawn.
It felt as if she had grabbed the tail of a runaway horse. The lawn passed beneath her and she found herself flying over the woods.
She was completely out of control. The wind pulled her up toward the moon and then sent her diving toward the trees. It seemed that the wind was trying to shake her loose, so violent were its twists and turns.
She didn’t dare let go; the fall would surely kill her.
Suddenly, she felt something slam into the back of her head and grab her hair.
The wind pulled her up toward the moon.
“Have you gone mad?” she heard Lewis’s voice say in her ear.
He crawled quickly down to her shoulder, and then out her arm toward the finger that was holding the tisk.
“Try and grab as many tisks as you can!” he yelled to her. “Use both of your hands and all of your fingers!”
Carly did as he said and stretched the fingers and thumb of the hand that was holding the tisk as far as they would go, trying to feel the little bumps and dents. She could only find a couple more. With her other hand, she felt around more freely and grabbed three tisks that were right next to each other—two bumps and a dent.
“I think I’ve got all I can!” she yelled to Lewis.
He crawled to the edge of her hand and looked like a parachutist about to jump from a plane. He reached out with one foot and felt around with his toes until he found a tisk. He then stepped from Carly’s hand into the wind and found a few more with his other foot.
“Try to steer it downward!” he yelled. “Now!”
Carly pushed down on the tisks and was surprised when she and Lewis dropped straight toward the trees. They were going much too fast—they were going to crash!
“Not so hard!” yelled Lewis.
Carly panicked and lifted her fingers and lost all of the tisks except one. The wind yanked them back upward and shook them both back and forth. Carly felt as if her arm was going to be pulled out of its socket.
“Grab the tisks again!” yelled Lewis.
Carly did as he said and found the tisks more quickly this time.
“Now steer downward again, but don’t push so hard!” he commanded.
Carly pushed down on the tisks more gently than before. And she and Lewis plunged back downward, but at more of an angle this time.
“Now when we get close to the trees, lift your fingers slowly and try and fly right above them!” yelled Lewis. “There’s a meadow up ahead! We’ll try and land there!”
Carly watched the tops of the trees coming at them fast. Just before they hit them, she lifted her fingers the slightest bit. But she either didn’t lift them enough, or the wind had a mind of its own, because they crashed into the uppermost leaves and branches of the trees.
Carly grabbed Lewis with her left hand and flung her right arm out to grab whatever she could find. She caught the end of a long branch and wrapped her fingers tightly around it and held on with all the strength she had.
The branch bent with Carly and Lewis dangling on its end. Carly looked down and could barely see the ground in the darkness.
They both heard snapping noises. The branch was breaking! Right at the point where it connected to the trunk of the tree. Carly screamed and imagined breaking into pieces when she hit the ground, as if she were made of glass.
But the branch broke slowly. And with each snapping noise, they dropped just a little more, as the branch broke bit by bit, lowering them gently through the air.
In the end, Carly’s feet touched lightly on the ground and she let go of the branch, like a small child letting go of a parent’s hand. She looked around and saw that her feet were surrounded by whistle roots.
They had been saved by a whistle root tree.
“What were you thinking?” said Lewis angrily. “Hadn’t I just told you how dangerous it is to fly on the wind?”
“I didn’t mean to,” said Carly. “I wasn’t even trying to find a tisk when it happened. It was just there suddenly, under my fingertip. And I only pressed down slightly. I had no idea it was going to pull me off the roof like that!”
Lewis crossed his arms and scowled at her.
“Thanks for coming after me,” she said sincerely. “I might have been killed if you hadn’t. Or ended up who knows where—on the moon for all I know.” The thought frightened her so badly, she resolved never to fly on the wind again.
Lewis waved away her thank-you.
“Well, I couldn’t let that happen, could I?” he said. “It’s like I told you before, it would be a great embarrassment to have two vegetables in the band. And besides, where would I find a squash that can play the horn as well as you?”
Carly had to smile. She knew that for Lewis, that was the highest compliment he could have given her.
BECAUSE THE WIND HAD TAKEN them up and down so much, they weren’t that far from Carly’s house. Walking back through the woods, Carly was glad she always wore her whistle roots now—in case they saw any owls, or even worse, the griddlebeast.
Aside from those dangers, she was also looking for anything that could be the Crank of Crassifolia. If it existed and she turned it, could the rats be saved? Would Green’s grandmother wake up? And what about Carly? She hadn’t forgotten the last message in the red hat. If she was the Moon Child, whatever that meant, would the Crank protect her? What danger was she in exactly?
She had asked Green if he thought the woods had once been the Kingdom of Endroot.
“Maybe,” he’d said. “But it seems odd that a whole kingdom could have been forgotten.”
Carly tried turning a few small, crooked trees, but nothing happened. When Lewis asked her what she was doing, she quickly thought of an answer.
“Checking for shimmer trees,” she said.
She couldn’t tell him the truth. He would be against turning the Crank just as Breeza Meezy had been. And for the same reason—he wouldn’t want the owls to suffer the same fate as the five kings in the Endroot.
But what if turning the Crank was the only way to stop the griddlebeast too?
Carly knew the griddlebeast had whispered Green’s grandmother into her endless sleep. And she
suspected it was also behind the owl attacks and the rising creek.
Was that also done with whispers?
CARLY AND LEWIS’S PATH HOME took them by the cradle, and Carly checked the red hat as she always did. There was a new note inside. It said:
The Bells Must Ring!
Immediately she knew that it meant the whistle root trees. But how could she make them ring?
And who is sending me these messages? she wondered, not for the first time.
Suddenly she had an idea.
Maybe she could send a message back.
WHEN THEY GOT TO CARLY’S roof, the wind died down and Lewis played his fiddle. Carly played her horn with him, but she was really watching warily for owls and thinking about what to say in the message.
When it was almost sunrise, Lewis promised to see her the next night and then flew away on a breeze. Carly closed her window and sat down at her desk to write.
Dear Note Sender,
HOW do I make the whistle root trees ring? WHERE is the Crank of Crassifolia? Does it still exist? Much confusion and suffering here due to constant owl attacks. If I can’t find the Crank, what else should I do? Please respond soon. A long letter (or at least more than one sentence) would be appreciated.
Yours truly,
Carly Bean Bitters
It was growing light outside and Carly felt her eyelids beginning to droop. It was Saturday morning and it had been an exhausting week. She wanted to run to the cradle and put her note in the hat, but she was afraid she would fall asleep in the woods.
She checked to make sure the window was locked and began to walk to her bed. But she had forgotten to shut the curtains and sunlight suddenly poured in and lit up her room with a blinding brightness.
Carly blinked once, as one would in response to a camera flash, and was asleep before she even hit the floor.
WHEN SHE WOKE UP, IT was already night again. Her aunt had obviously been in her room, since Carly was now lying on her bed and there was a cold lump of squash casserole in a bowl on her night table. Carly knew it was ridiculous, but she went to the window and closed her curtains so that the squash on her roof couldn’t see her eating it.
Maybe I have gone crazy, she thought. It was a possibility that had crossed her mind before.
After she finished eating, she made herself a cup of tea. And while it cooled, she prepared to take her bowl downstairs so she could put it in the kitchen sink. It was then that she saw the envelope. It was propped against her lamp and addressed to her, but it didn’t have a return address or stamp, so someone must have delivered it. There was a note in her aunt’s handwriting on it that said:
Found this in the mailbox. Found you on the floor. The school called. Something about you stealing light bulbs and hitting a teacher?
Carly groaned, but calls from the school were nothing new. Her aunt had been getting them almost weekly since Carly’s first day of kindergarten, when she had fallen asleep going down a slide on the playground. It had happened when she was about halfway down, and her limp little body had slid the rest of the way and dropped into the dirt without making a sound. The teacher thought she had died and had run to the nurse’s office screaming. And there had been so many calls since then that her aunt rarely even talked to her about them anymore.
Carly opened the envelope and read the letter inside.
Can you come to the school tonight? I’ve found something you should see. Meet me at the outside cafeteria door by the trash bins. Around eight? I don’t know what time you wake up. —Green
CARLY LOOKED AT THE CLOCK; she was already late. She jumped out of bed and ran to the window and opened it. Then she remembered the note she’d written and grabbed it from her desk before jumping out the window onto the roof.
When she reached the cradle, she checked the red hat. There wasn’t a new message, so she placed her note inside and then ran all the way to the school.
Green wasn’t there when she reached the cafeteria door. She whispered his name a few times, but there was no answer. She found a candle and a box of matches on top of a trash can, along with a note from him that said the door was unlocked and to meet him in the library.
It was very dark inside the school and she was thankful for the candle. She cupped her hand around the flame to keep it from making too much light. She remembered what Green had said about the watchman.
She made her way through the kitchen and into the cafeteria itself, and then out into the hallway that led to the library.
“You’re here!” said Green excitedly, as he removed the wood board from the front of the fireplace. He walked over to the pile of books on the floor beneath Elzick. “The watchman fell asleep, so I had a chance to search the library again and found this . . .” He picked up a book from the top of the pile and handed it to Carly.
It was another old book with a thick, dusty cover. Carly opened it and flipped through the pages. When she found the pieces of brownish paper, she could hardly contain her excitement. She unfolded them, read the title, and looked up at Green with wide, surprised eyes.
He had found the story of the Moon King.
CHAPTER ELEVEN
THE MOON KING
* * *
The MOON KING
The King of Endroot lived to be a hundred years old. And to the end of his life, he loved and cared for the forest he had planted as a boy.
He had no need of armies because of the protection of the whistle root trees. He had no need of castles because the forest was his home. And in his old age, his fiddle became his voice and his final words before he died were not spoken but played.
“The Moon Child is in danger,” is what his final tune had said, although most everyone listening heard only music.
The message was understood by no one except his youngest son. The boy did not tell anyone what he had heard. It had been a warning, perhaps for his ears alone. For he had the oddest affliction. His clock was reversed. He slept during the day and was awake all night. And he knew that it was he to whom the tune was referring.
The king’s eleven other sons assumed that the oldest would now be king, something which the oldest son assumed as well. He did not care for music or the forest, and when his father died, he began to build the castle of which he had always dreamed.
Trees were chopped down. The people were forced to work day and night.
And then, everything stopped.
A decree had been found hidden inside the old king’s fiddle; the final decree from the King of Endroot.
“My youngest son shall be the next king” was all that it said, but it was enough. And the oldest brother was forced to step down from his throne so that the boy could sit there instead.
Almost immediately, rumors began to spread.
“Why is he only awake at night?” the people asked each other suspiciously.
“I’ll tell you why,” said the oldest brother whenever he heard people talking like this. “It’s the time of witchery, that’s why.”
He took every opportunity to help the suspicions of the people grow.
He was eventually so successful in this that the people revolted and took the boy while he was sleeping and threw him in the dungeon. It was the only part of the castle that had been completed. And now that the oldest brother was king again, he wasted no time in forcing the people back to work.
From a dark and damp cell deep within the earth, the boy could hear his brother’s castle being built on top of him.
“Find the witch Crassifolia,” the new king commanded his brothers. “And kill her if she still lives.” No one had seen her for many years, but he did not want to take any chances. And just to be sure that his throne would not be taken from him again, he gave one more order.
“Chop down the whistle root trees,” he said. Although he was selfish and cruel, he was also a smart man and had little doubt that it would be he who would suffer if someone turned the Crank. His father had never told him where it was, and he was certain that Crassifolia woul
d never reveal its location to him either.
To make sure his order was carried out, he issued a decree stating that anyone who refused to chop down whistle root trees would be chopped into pieces themselves.
When the first whistle root tree came down, a door was made from its wood, which was placed in front of the boy’s cell. The guards in the dungeon loved to taunt the boy, and carved the words “Moon King” into it to amuse themselves and mock him further.
The boy lived in that cell for the next three years. When he finally escaped, he saw something he knew would have broken his father’s heart.
Every whistle root tree in the Kingdom of Endroot was gone.
* * *
“‘THE MOON CHILD IS IN danger,’” said Carly when she finished reading the story. “Those are the exact words in one of the notes I found in the red hat. I had thought it was referring to me.”
“It probably was,” said Green. “The story must have taken place a long time ago. You are the Moon Child now. You’re just like he was, awake at night and asleep during the day.”
“And they called him the Moon King to make fun of him,” she said sadly, thinking of him sitting alone in the dungeon for all those years. “He was only a boy. He could have been our age. And they chopped down the whistle root trees too—which is terrible—but which also means that these woods weren’t once the Kingdom of Endroot—which means that there is no Crank of Crassifolia—which means that I have no idea how to save the rats or your grandmother!”
Carly felt so terrible that she almost regretted having read the story.
The Mysterious Woods of Whistle Root Page 6
