“Good thing it didn’t go the other way,” he muttered. “We’re really close to the river here.”
Corby clung to a bush and listened to the faint rush of the river. Then he heard something else, half whimper, half yelp.
Aggie-talk.
“She’s here!” he shouted. “Hey, Buck, I can hear her!”
The yelping grew louder. Corby felt sick as he realized where the sound came from. He dropped to his knees and crawled off the path toward the edge of the cliff.
Buck wiped the muddy flashlight on his shirt and came after him. “Go slow,” he warned. “The water’s real rough here—lots of rocks. I know you can swim but—”
“She’s not in the water,” Corby panted. “She’s stuck somewhere. Hey, Aggie!”
He reached ahead for something to hold on to and found empty space instead. The rain-soaked earth was slick under his knees, and he scooped up handfuls of mud as he tried to stop his slide. Then he felt Buck’s hand close around one ankle. A moment later the flashlight beam settled on a thick root sticking out from the bank. He grabbed it with his right hand and waited, gasping for breath, till Buck crawled up beside him. Flat on their stomachs, they peered over the rim of the cliff.
Aggie was just below them on a ledge not much wider than she was. When she saw Corby, she wriggled with joy and almost slipped off into the water below.
Corby pulled back. “You talk to her,” he whispered, “and keep the light off me. I’ll try to grab her collar.”
“What’s the use?” Buck demanded. “We can’t pull her up that way—she’s too heavy. She’ll choke!”
“Just do it!” Corby said fiercely. “If I don’t hold on to her, she’s going to fall for sure.”
Buck groaned but did as he was told. “Okay, goofy dog,” he said in a suddenly gentle voice Corby had never heard him use before. “You’re too goofy to stay on the path … what a dog … I never saw such a goofy dog.…”
Corby tightened his grip on the root and stretched. The fingers of his left hand grazed Aggie’s bony head and slid under the rope collar.
“Got her!” He was weak with relief. “It’s okay, Aggie, don’t move!”
“It’s not okay,” Buck argued, back to his normal voice. “Now what?”
Corby thought fast, trying to come up with a plan. “As long as I hold her, she can’t fall,” he said. Unless the collar slips. Unless my arm breaks off! “You better go home and get some rope. Or leather straps—that would be better! We need something to haul her up with.”
“How am I supposed to do that!” Buck growled. “That kind of stuff is all in the barn, and I could never get the door open without my dad hearing. It creaks something awful—he says it’s better than a burglar alarm.”
Corby’s shoulders ached. His nose itched, but with one hand clutching Aggie’s collar and the other clamped around the root, he couldn’t scratch.
“Well, if he does wake up—” he hesitated, “I don’t think he’d be so mad if you told him about Aggie—”
“NO!” Buck scrambled back from the edge of the cliff, taking the light with him. “I told you, I’m not telling him anything! Listen,” he went on, “we both should go back right now. Aggie will be okay. Tomorrow morning we can get all the stuff we need to pull her up.”
Corby was silent.
“I’m going then,” Buck threatened. “And I feel sorry for you if a bear comes along!”
When Corby still didn’t reply, Buck exploded. “I’m never going to get my bike!” he yelled. “The only thing I’m going to get is a beating if my dad finds out why you came up here. He’ll blame me if you drown or break your neck!”
Corby shuddered. “I won’t,” he said, and pressed his knuckles into Aggie’s fur. She was trembling terribly. “If she was your dog, I bet you’d stay.”
It took awhile before he realized the argument was over. Buck was no longer there.
The rain let up for a while and then came down harder than ever, pressing Corby into the mud with needle-sharp fingers. Corby hoped Aggie couldn’t tell how scared he was. His shoulders throbbed, and he couldn’t feel his hands at all. If a bear did come along …
“There aren’t any bears. Buck made that up.” He was pretty sure of it, but saying the words helped. “All we have to do is hold on, Aggie.”
He tried to figure out how far Buck might have gone by now. The Millers’ farm was a long way off—halfway around the world! And when Buck got there he’d have to sneak into the barn to find what they needed, and then he’d have to come all the way back. It would take a very long time.
Aggie whimpered as if she knew what he was thinking. Then, to Corby’s horror, she tried to lie down. The collar bit into her neck, and she lurched sideways.
“No, Aggie!” He slid forward, scraping his chin on something sharp. Desperately, he clung to the collar and pulled. At last, just as the pain in his shoulders was becoming unbearable, she regained her balance and stopped struggling.
“Good girl!” Corby hung over the edge. He was afraid to move or even take a deep breath. His head felt as if it were full of rocks, pulling him down, and he wondered if this was what fainting felt like. If he fainted, he and Aggie would both fall. The river would carry them away—he could see it happening, like a movie or a dream. Tomorrow someone would find them, still together, and feel very sad. “What a brave kid!” the person would say. “He gave his life for his dog!”
Then the dream vanished, and the churning water leaped up at him in a blaze of light. A hard hand gripped his shoulder.
“If there’s any more ways to get into trouble,” a deep voice rumbled, “I guess you’ll find ’em!”
Corby managed to turn his head. Grandpa Hill was crouched in the mud, looking down at Aggie. Behind him, Buck held a lantern, his face spooky white in its glare.
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
“A Kind of Snowman”
He was sitting in the kitchen drinking cocoa, but Corby couldn’t remember how he got there. What he did remember was Grandpa leaning over the edge of the cliff and lifting Aggie as if she weighed about as much as a feather. The next minute, it seemed, they were home, and his mother was hugging and scolding and handing out dry clothes, all at the same time.
“Is Grandma really okay?” Corby could hardly believe it. The Wish Master had worked very fast.
“She’s sound asleep,” his mother said happily. She hugged him again. “It wasn’t a heart attack after all, thank goodness. Her doctor said we might as well come home—and it’s a good thing we did! What if we hadn’t been here when Buck came to the door?”
“I would have kept on going,” Buck said. “I only stopped because I saw the lights. My folks don’t know I—we—I mean, they think we’re still in bed.”
“You mean you sneaked out?” Grandpa growled. “Call it what it is.”
“But why?” Corby’s mother waited for an answer, but the boys just looked at each other. “Corby, Buck told us you went up on that cliff to make a wish. He said you were worried about Grandma, so you went out in the middle of the night in a storm. Does that make sense?”
Strange sounds came from under the table. Aggie was talking in her sleep.
Corby’s mother tried not to smile. “That doesn’t answer my question,” she said. But then, to Corby’s relief, she changed the subject. “I’m going to drive you home, Buck. There’s been enough wandering around in the rain for one night.”
“You can’t!” Buck exclaimed in a panicky voice. “I don’t want my folks to know I—we sneaked out.”
“But they’re going to find out sooner or later,” Corby’s mother protested. “In the morning, when they see Corby is gone, you’ll have to tell them what happened. If you don’t, they’ll call here and I’ll tell them. You did a very brave thing, going to find Corby and then running for help. Your parents will be proud of you.”
Buck looked doubtful, but he waited at the door while she got her raincoat and Grandpa’s car keys.
“Corby,
you finish your cocoa and go to bed,” she ordered. “And don’t worry about Buck. I’ll see to it that his parents understand.”
As soon as they were gone, Corby stood up. Scrambling sounds came from under the table as Aggie struggled to stand up, too. She looked weirder than ever—mud-streaked and skinny, with hair hanging like a curtain over her eyes.
“So you went out and nearly got yourself killed so you could wish your grandma would get better.” Grandpa shook his head. “Your ma was right—it was a dumb thing to do. Your grandma might not think so, but I do.”
“It wasn’t so dumb.” Corby said. “She is better, isn’t she?” He tried to explain. “There’s a big stone thing up there that makes your wishes come true. It’s called the Wish Master. I wished for a video game and I got one, and I wished for a dog and I got Aggie. Buck wished for a mountain bike, and his dad says he can order one as soon as he finishes cleaning the barn. Maybe the Wish Master doesn’t always get things straight, but he tries. Like with Grandma.”
“If that dog is the best he could send you, you should have given up,” Grandpa said. “What do you mean, ‘like with Grandma’?”
Corby met Grandpa’s fierce glare. He hadn’t meant to tell anyone—especially Grandpa—what he had done. Now he was trapped.
“It was my fault she had to go to the hospital,” he said softly. “I told the Wish Master I wanted to go home right away, and I guess he thought if Grandma died …”
“If Grandma died, you and your ma could pack up and head back to California.” Grandpa finished the sentence for him. They stared at each other.
“What’s your big hurry?” Grandpa asked after a minute. “What’s wrong with a summer in Berry Hill? Best place in the world, I’d say.”
Corby took a deep breath. “You don’t like runts,” he said. “I heard you say it—runt of the litter. I’m just in the way around here. But I never meant for Grandma to die so I could go home. That’s why I went back tonight. I wanted to make the Wish Master understand.”
By the time he finished his explanation, Grandpa’s face had turned a dark red.
“I never said you were in the way,” he grumbled. Then he pointed at Corby’s chair. “Sit down a minute and I’ll tell you a story that’ll save you a trip in the dark the next time you think of something you want.”
Corby sat.
“This happened when I was in high school. It was homecoming weekend and we were all on the football team. We were pretty worked up, waiting for the big game that evening.” He paused. “Are you on any teams at school?”
“No,” Corby said.
“Well, if you were you’d know how we felt. Uptight, wanting to get started. We hung around town for a while, and then we decided to take a hike. The whole team went—our girlfriends, too. Grandma was with me. She was a cheerleader.”
Corby blinked. It wasn’t hard to imagine Grandpa playing football, but he couldn’t picture Grandma in a cheerleader’s outfit.
“We walked up to the highest point overlooking the river—that’s where you were tonight. When we got there, somebody noticed a tall hunk of rock standing by itself. There were other rocks scattered around, and we decided to build a kind of snowman.”
“A snowman?” Corby repeated.
“A snowman, made of rocks,” Grandpa said impatiently. “It was just something to do until game time. Hard work, too! One of the boys had a marking pen in his shirt pocket. He drew a face on another big boulder, and we hoisted it up on top of the first one. When we finished, we took turns writing our initials, upside down and backward, all over the thing. And then we hiked back to town to get ready for the game. I never thought about it again till tonight when Buck came banging on the door. On the way to the cliff he told me why you’d gone up there.”
“You made the Wish Master?” Corby could hardly believe it. “Does Buck know?”
“I didn’t feel like talking then,” Grandpa said. “Not while I was wondering whether we’d find you on the cliff or at the bottom of the river.”
Corby thought about the strange events of the last couple of weeks. “Are you sure that’s all it is?” he asked doubtfully. “A pile of rocks?”
“Far as I know. Somebody must have made up the rest a long time ago, and folks have been believing it ever since. Some people believe whatever you tell ’em.”
Dumb people like me, Corby thought. He pushed back his chair. “I’m going to bed,” he mumbled, and hurried down the hall with Aggie close behind him.
He wouldn’t feel so bad, he thought, if Grandpa hadn’t been the one who’d told him the truth. It was a relief to know the Wish Master hadn’t made Grandma sick. He hadn’t sent Aggie either. Aggie had been looking for a friend, and she’d chosen Corby.
He climbed into bed and Aggie jumped up beside him. She was already snoring when Grandpa trudged up the stairs a few minutes later.
“You asleep?”
Corby lay very still with his eyes closed.
“If you are, that’s okay. I was just going to say, you sure made me think of your pa tonight. What you did was the same kind of stunt he might have pulled at your age. Once he made up his mind to do something, you couldn’t stop him. Didn’t matter how scared he was.”
Corby’s eyes flew open, and Grandpa snorted. “I thought so,” he said. “We’ll talk tomorrow about where that sorry-looking dog is going to sleep.”
He closed the door and left Corby to stare into the darkness. It was the first time anyone had ever, ever said he was like his dad. He repeated the words out loud: “You couldn’t stop him. Didn’t matter how scared he was.”
That’s me, he whispered to Aggie, and she yawned, as if she’d known it all the time.
All rights reserved, including without limitation the right to reproduce this ebook or any portion thereof in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of the publisher.
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, events, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, businesses, companies, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.
Copyright © 2000 by Betty Ren Wright
Cover design by Connie Gabbert
ISBN 978-1-5040-1330-7
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BETTY REN WRIGHT
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The first of its kind, then—a specialized publisher with a unique program and a diminutive catalog, small enough to fit in a child’s palm. The catalog announced five books, three nursery rhyme broadsides, and the publisher’s intentions: “… Its editorial policy embraces only such books as are worthy of inclusion in a child’s permanent library.”
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