Juniper tried to break free from Skeksyl’s grip but it wouldn’t give. He had her. He pulled her closer still.
She tried to plant her feet, but it was no use. Her hands clawed helplessly at the dirt.
Closer to the hole she came, closer to him. He pulled her all the way back to the ice-cold steps.
Giles dashed for her, arms outstretched.
“No! Finish the tree!” Juniper called.
Torn, Giles hesitated.
“It’s our only chance!” she screamed.
With amazing strength and speed, Giles picked up the ax and chopped furiously at the twisted trunk. One swipe, two swipes, three . . . Soon the tree began to creak.
Juniper’s mind raced. If it falls with me down there . . . but she pushed the thought away. She had to.
“Yes! Yes! Come to me, Juniper! You’re mine!”
Juniper looked back and, in the faint light, she could see Skeksyl. More than that, however, she could see his face. His hood was down and she saw him fully for the first time. It was the most disturbing and sickening image she would see for the rest of her life. It wasn’t even a face. It was the remains of a face, the remains of a man, one with no soul of his own.
Still, she glared directly at him. “I’m not going anywhere. Not any part of me.” And with her free leg she kicked him as hard as she could right between what were supposed to be his eyes. His head snapped far back and she fell backward, free.
Giles struck the tree one more time and the loudest crack of all echoed. Skeksyl looked up just in time to see the tree come falling down upon him.
The hole was covered in a mass of debris and, with the tree no longer standing, the stairway collapsed, each step crumbling and dissolving as if it had never existed at all. With an inhuman wail, Skeksyl was lost beneath the shifting earth. His arm, still grasping for Juniper’s ankle, breaking ground like an oversize root, was all that was left. Then that, too, vanished, disintegrating into dust and carried away by a strong wind.
It was over.
Chapter 16
MORNING HAD COME, AND SUNSHINE STRUCK the balloons in magnificent blasts. The dust from the fallen tree rose up and danced in the yellow rays pulsing through the overhead leaves. Bouncing together in the breeze, the balloons were a bubbling wind chime eliciting a welcome sense of peace. They sat aglow among the branches, as if the sparks were tending them still. Below them, eyes closed, Juniper and Giles embraced for some time. They didn’t say anything; they didn’t need to.
When they finally came apart, they knew there was one final step they had to take, the most important step, the most terrifying step, because, if it didn’t work, their families would be gone for good. All would have been for naught.
They went through the balloons one by one, searching for their parents’ signatures. Juniper came across one, her mother’s, and weighed it in her hands. The balloon felt like nothing, like a handful of fog. She handled it delicately, caressing the orange latex. It seemed even more vulnerable now. Only the thinnest of layers kept her mother’s soul from mixing with the morning air. Juniper gently tied the balloon to her wrist for safekeeping. Beneath the orange shell was precious cargo indeed.
In the end, there were twenty balloons in all—five for each parent. If there had been more, they were now long gone.
Giles and Juniper nodded at each other, and then he turned and ran for home, the ten balloons trailing behind him, rainbow drops against a blue sky. Juniper looked up to her parents’ bedroom window. She took a deep breath and hoped it wasn’t too late.
She entered the house to find Kitty waiting for her. Yipping, her dog jumped as high as her chest. “I’m okay, I’m okay,” Juniper said, calming Kitty. “But we need to hurry.” As she stared at her feline dog, her voice cracked: “It’s going to work, isn’t it? It has to.” Kitty released a soft whine and rubbed against her leg. “I hope so, too. Here goes everything.” Together, they made their way to her parents’ bedroom.
Juniper pushed the door open. Inside, her father was still sprawled on the floor, while her mother remained collapsed awkwardly against the table. Their eyes were open and blank. The sun burst through the immense windows, illuminating the broken bodies.
Falling to her knees, Juniper undid one of the balloons and, hands trembling, placed it to her father’s lips. It reminded her of when she was a child and her parents lovingly fed her with a spoon they flew through the air like a plane. Now, much too soon, it was her turn to care for them. She emptied the balloon’s contents down her father’s throat, making sure not a single breath escaped. Then she did the same for her mother.
Finished, she stood back, waiting for something to happen. Only nothing did. Her parents were completely still.
“No, no, no. Please,” she cried. Desperate, she shook them, slapped their chests, kissed them. Still nothing.
With the fear of forever losing her parents taking strong hold of her emotions, she quickly undid a second balloon each and squeezed the air back into their lungs. “Come on,” she begged. “Come on. Work.”
Anxiously, she waited for the souls to settle. Her parents had to come back to her; they just had to. Face wet with tears, she gazed at them, wishing them back into existence. “I need you. I need you both so much.”
Just then, there was a flicker in their eyes, a twitch of life in their hands and legs. They uttered soft moans as if waking up from a long sleep riddled with nightmares.
More balloons. Juniper sprang to her feet and grabbed two more. Kitty watched closely as the third and fourth balloons were carefully issued back to Mr. and Mrs. Berry.
Impatient and achingly nervous, Juniper repeatedly slammed her palms against her thighs. “Hurry. Work. Help them,” she pleaded. “Help them.” She grabbed Kitty for comfort, squeezing her tight.
With tear-filled eyes, clutching Kitty close to her chest, she watched as life flowed back into her parents. She saw their skin glow, their chests heave. Their once-vacant eyes suddenly reflected a previously forgotten past. Slowly, they both sat up, shaking their heads clear of a powerful daze.
Still groggy, her parents settled their eyes on Juniper. For some time they stared at her, unable to speak.
Please, let it work, Juniper silently hoped. Please be my mom and dad again.
More silence. Then . . .
“Juniper? Juniper? Oh, thank goodness! Juniper!” Mrs. Berry leaped forward and grabbed her daughter, hugging her as tightly as she could. She planted kisses all across her face, refusing to stop even as the excitable Kitty barked and nipped at their legs.
“My girl!” Mr. Berry cried as he joined them. “You did it! Oh, my little girl, you did it!”
It was the moment Juniper had waited so long for. It was the same hopeful thought that had pushed her through this nightmare, the image she wished for each night as she went to bed. They were back. Her parents were finally back.
Once Mr. and Mrs. Berry calmed down—they couldn’t stop kissing each other, couldn’t stop kissing Juniper, even Kitty—Juniper went on to explain everything that had happened since she first spied them entering the underworld beneath the tree. She told them about Giles and Dmitri and Skeksyl and Neptune. She told them about the black room of dreams, about Theodore and the sparks and the chopping down of the tree. She told them how she missed them so very much.
Then, most important of all, she told them that she had the last of their balloons, one more each. They could reclaim the contents as well, but they all knew this meant they would have to give up everything they had gained in their deals with Skeksyl.
“I don’t know if you’ll be able to accomplish so easily everything you once did,” she told them. “There are no guarantees. Dad, I don’t know if your characters’ voices will come.”
Mr. Berry grabbed her hand. “The words will come. Only they’ll be mine now, no one else’s. It may not be what everyone wants, but that’s okay. I’ll be doing what feels right to me, and I’ll have you and your mother. That’s what I should have
known from the beginning.”
“We were so lost,” Mrs. Berry said. “We had everything, and yet, nothing. This is what matters most, the three of us like this. We’ve missed out on so much. You missed out on so much, Juniper. We’re so, so sorry.” She looked at her husband, then back at Juniper. “Sweetheart, get us those balloons.”
The balloons were happily returned, and Mr. and Mrs. Berry were whole once more.
“What’s the first thing you want to do, Juniper?” her father asked, grinning a forgotten grin, his complete self for the first time in ages. He put her face in his hands, caressing her cheeks with his thumbs, wiping away her tears. “Anything you want. What shall we do?”
Juniper didn’t have to think. “I want to have a party.”
Mr. Berry laughed and pulled her close. “A party it is!” And he kissed her on her forehead.
Mrs. Berry grabbed Juniper and twirled her in her arms, a long-delayed dance. Mr. Berry joined the embrace and Juniper closed her eyes.
“My beautiful family,” Mrs. Berry said. “We’re back together. Everything is right again.”
Juniper couldn’t agree more.
Epilogue
WHEN THE DAY OF THE PARTY ARRIVED, so did nearly fifty guests. Juniper, however, did not know any of them. She found their names on the balloons and, with the help of her parents’ various employees, spread word across the Internet, hoping the owners would take notice and come to reclaim what they had lost.
Juniper had never been so happy.
Nor had Giles. At nearly the same time as Juniper’s parents reclaimed their balloons, the Abernathys reclaimed theirs. They rejoiced as well, embracing Giles as the son they never had. Life as it ought to be returned.
It wasn’t so for everybody. Not every person came to the party. Some may never have come across the invitation, for some it might have been too late—as it almost was for the Berrys—while others may have had no desire to give up the lives they had gained in losing a part of themselves.
In the backyard, the balloons were everywhere, and Juniper was thrilled to see those who were eager to find theirs and open them like birthday gifts. Smiles spread seamlessly from face to face as tears of joy fell. There were happy reunions left and right, and people sang and played games and lived as if they were children again.
At one point, as she and Giles returned to reflect on the ruins of the tree, she was tapped on the shoulder. “I’d like mine back, too.” It was Dmitri.
Juniper looked up at him. “I thought I might find your name on one of the balloons. You knew what was happening all along.”
Dmitri nodded. “When I first came here, I made a deal with that . . . that thing. He can be . . . persuasive. And when I inhaled that balloon, I felt different. I began to hate myself and I vowed never to return there. But there was still the temptation, always the temptation, and that was why I tried to chop it down. Your father stopped me, of course, and I’m glad he did.”
“But why?” Giles asked.
“There will always be temptation, wherever we go in life, with whatever we do. There will always be an easier way out. But there’s nothing to gain from that. We have to overcome such urges; we have to be stronger. I fought hard and I won. Every day, I stared down that tree and everything it represented. But you two are something else. You didn’t fight for yourselves, you fought for others. That makes you two the strongest people I know.” He laid a hand on Giles’s shoulder, then found his balloon tethered to a nearby tree. “Now, if you’ll excuse me, I’ve been waiting for this a long time.” And off he went, undoing the string.
Juniper turned to Giles. “You hear that? There are different kinds of strength.”
Giles smiled and grabbed Juniper’s hand. Together they walked through the party, witnesses to the beauty of life restored.
Throughout the day, Juniper talked to nearly everyone. Her parents proudly paraded her around, introducing her to anybody who would listen. And not once did she wish she was somewhere else, not once did she yearn for that which she didn’t have, not once did she wish she was something she wasn’t. She looked each person in the eye and said, “Hello. I’m Juniper Berry.”
About the Author
M. P. KOZLOWSKY was a high school English teacher before becoming a writer. JUNIPER BERRY is his first book. He lives in New York with his wife and daughter.
Visit www.AuthorTracker.com for exclusive information on your favorite HarperCollins authors.
Copyright
Juniper Berry
Text copyright © 2011 by M. P. Kozlowsky
Illustrations copyright © 2011 by Erwin Madrid
Printed in the United States of America.
All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, down-loaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins e-books.
* * *
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Kozlowsky, M. P.
Juniper Berry / M.P. Kozlowsky ; drawings by Erwin Madrid. — 1st ed.
p. cm.
Summary: When eleven-year-old Juniper begins to suspect something is wrong with her mother and father, she and her friend Giles discover they have been selling their souls, pieces at a time, to a silver-tongued creature in a terrifying fairy-tale underworld.
ISBN 978-0-06-199869-0 (trade bdg.)
[1. Families—Fiction. 2. Soul—Fiction. 3. Ghouls and ogres—Fiction. 4. Supernatural—Fiction.] I. Madrid, Erwin, ill. II. Title.
PZ7.K8567Ju 2011
[Fic]—dc22
2010040338
CIP
AC
* * *
EPub Edition © 2011 ISBN: 9780062077127
11 12 13 14 15 LP/RRDB 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
First Edition
About the Publisher
Australia
HarperCollins Publishers (Australia) Pty. Ltd.
25 Ryde Road (P.O. Box 321)
Pymble, NSW 2073, Australia
www.harpercollins.com.au/ebooks
Canada
HarperCollins Canada
2 Bloor Street East - 20th Floor
Toronto, ON, M4W, 1A8, Canada
http://www.harpercollins.ca
New Zealand
HarperCollins Publishers (New Zealand) Limited
P.O. Box 1
Auckland, New Zealand
http://www.harpercollins.co.nz
United Kingdom
HarperCollins Publishers Ltd.
77-85 Fulham Palace Road
London, W6 8JB, UK
http://www.harpercollins.co.uk
United States
HarperCollins Publishers Inc.
10 East 53rd Street
New York, NY 10022
http://www.harpercollins.com
Juniper Berry Page 13
