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Laura Monster Crusher

Page 17

by Wesley King


  “We were thinking about a girls’ night on Saturday,” Mia said.

  “Sure,” I replied. “We can do my house again.”

  “We can write another love letter to Liam,” Shal said, smirking.

  “No.”

  “Come on,” Shal insisted. “You still owe him punching lessons. Maybe he’d trade them for kissing lessons.”

  “Who would be the teacher?” Mia asked curiously.

  “Thanks,” I muttered. “Just drop it. I’m sure he doesn’t like me.”

  “Why not?” Mia asked. “You’re funny, pretty—”

  “Twice his size,” I pointed out.

  “More of you to love,” Shal said dismissively. “And you’re not twice his size. Maybe a little bigger—”

  “A little?” I asked, raising my eyebrows.

  “Maybe a Liam-and-a-half,” Shal admitted. “But he’s also a twig.”

  “I guess,” I said. “I don’t know. Either way, I’m in for the girls’ night. At least I can draw a clown face on Mia if Liam doesn’t speak to me until then.”

  “Great,” Mia said sarcastically.

  “Deal,” Shal agreed. “Ugh, did either of do that math homework? Mia, can I see yours so I can check my answers?”

  “Do you mean copy my answers?” Mia asked.

  Shal paused. “Yes.”

  —

  I sat in class that day thinking about Liam. I know I had much bigger things to worry about, including a possible monster army marching around under my feet, but I couldn’t help it. Shal and Mia had got me thinking. How could I be sure he didn’t like me? We had a lot in common, and we always seemed to have nice talks, even if they were only ten seconds a piece. And he did smile at me a lot. In the mornings. When he first saw me.

  I sighed, doodling on my notebook. There was no chance.

  I wished I had brought the guide to school today, but I had already read through most of it, so I’d stopped bringing it. I tried to pay attention to the math lesson, but I was distracted by the textbook at my back, which I had put over the opening in my chair so Allison couldn’t pull her little pee trick on me anymore.

  “Ready for training tonight?” a quiet voice whispered.

  I almost fell off my chair. Allison was leaning toward me, her pretty dark eyes narrowed ominously. Carl was busy chatting with Tim, leaving her alone.

  “I don’t think we should talk about this,” I murmured.

  “I know the rules,” she snarled. “And I’m going to teach you a thing or two about combat tonight, as well. I think I can convince Eldon to let us spar.”

  I pictured myself hitting Allison over the head with a hammer and smiled.

  “Excellent.”

  “Anything you want to share with the rest of us?” Ms. Haddock said politely, staring at Allison and me.

  Allison sat upright immediately, flashing a brilliant smile.

  “Sorry, Ms. Haddock,” she said. “Laura just asked to borrow a pencil.”

  “Oh,” Ms. Haddock replied, looking slightly embarrassed. “That’s fine.”

  Shal and Mia shot me questioning looks from across the classroom, and I just shook my head to let them know I was fine. I could feel my cheeks burning as Liam glanced back as well.

  “See you tonight, tubby,” Allison whispered, kicking the back of my chair.

  I sighed. What a great bodyguard. Thanks, Eldon.

  —

  Later that night, after finally finishing my math homework, I went downstairs to where Stache was now working on painting the main floor bathroom. My mom usually went to bed around nine, and Tom was reading a Braille book in his room, so it was already quiet in the house. I poked my head into the bathroom.

  “Hey, Stache.”

  My dad looked back in surprise, and I almost laughed. His face was splattered with blue paint, especially his moustache. He raised a bushy brown eyebrow.

  “Shouldn’t you be getting ready for bed?” he asked, looking at his watch.

  Ha. The earliest I’d gone to bed in this new house was, like, three in the morning.

  “Just wanted to say good night,” I said, looking around the bathroom. “Looks good. Maybe you were right about this place.”

  He beamed. “It’s definitely coming around.”

  I hesitated, feeling a bit awkward. “Also, I just wanted to say thanks. Mom told me a few weeks ago that one of the reasons you moved was to give me a fresh start, and I forgot to say thanks. Been a little busy, I guess.”

  My dad laid his paintbrush down on the can and turned to me. “And do you still like it here, Laurabell? You seem a little…distant sometimes.”

  “No, I like it here,” I said, feeling a sudden surge of emotion I wasn’t at all expecting. My eyes threatened to tear up, and I tried to get myself together. Obviously I’d been holding more in than I thought, and my dad’s tone was breaking down all my walls.

  He gently took my hand. “If you don’t, we can move again.”

  I looked at him in surprise. “You’ve been working non-stop since we got here.”

  “Doesn’t matter,” he said, squeezing my fingers with his strong hands. “I’ll move ten times until we find somewhere you like.”

  That did it. I felt my eyes well with tears, and I quickly blinked them back. I knew how much he loved this place, and how much work he had already put into it, and he was still willing to give it up. This was my out. I could ask him to move, he would, and I could leave all this monster crushing stuff behind me. I could let someone else worry about it. And even if things went wrong, and the monsters got to the surface, we would be far away from Riverfield. My family would be safe.

  But even as I thought it, I knew it didn’t feel right. I didn’t want my dad to give up on his dream home. Or Tom to give up his new crush. Or my mom to have to start a new job somewhere else. And more importantly, I didn’t want to give up my job either.

  That surprised me. I was afraid of fighting monsters. I was afraid of those things watching me from my yard. But for the first time in my life, I had something really, really special to do. Something I was chosen for. And I wasn’t going to quit again. I did that once already. Whatever happened, I was going to stick around.

  I stepped forward and wrapped my surprised dad in a hug. “Thanks, Stache. That means a lot. But I don’t want to go anywhere. This is just starting to feel like home.”

  “That’s good to hear, Laurabell. And now you have paint on you.”

  “Crap,” I said, pulling away again and looking down at my T-shirt. It was speckled with blue paint. “Well, I guess I’ll go change before bed.”

  He smiled. “Probably a good idea.”

  I walked back upstairs feeling much different than I had on the way down. It was one thing to feel forced into a job; it was another thing to accept it. I got to my room and closed my computer. I had laid out some of my old collectibles on the table, and I picked up my grandpa’s pen and smiled. Somehow I knew he’d be proud of me. He was always telling me I was capable of doing great things. He probably meant like be a doctor or something, but crushing monsters was pretty cool too. I wondered what my grandma would say: her only advice had been to give myself a chance. I was certainly doing that.

  —

  Training that night was a little different. Some of my Swords were there for the first time: Allison, Steven the grocery manager, and Liz. Laine was watching my house with Laren, and some of the roaming Protectorate of Arnwell that helped out where necessary. Eldon didn’t let Allison and me spar—I wasn’t sure who was more disappointed—but he did ask her to teach me how to shoot a bow and arrow. She was like a freaking master archer, and when she was done putting another arrow between a fake monster’s eyes, I decided I was happy we weren’t sparring.

  I ran the Way a few times as usual, and when I was suitably sweating and flushed, Eldon asked Lee to show me a few moves with a large fake hammer carved from wood.

  I stood across from him in the ring, trying to copy his slow, deliberate m
ovements. But my brain wasn’t exactly processing things correctly. Like when he showed me how to do an overhead swing, I just saw that his arms really bulged and his chest got tight beneath his shirt. And when he did a forward jab, I noticed that he had a cute little frown line between his eyes. And then he tried to tell me some things about strategy, I saw that he had a dimple on his right cheek that deepened when he smiled.

  “You listening?” he asked, smirking.

  “What?” I snapped back into it. “Yeah. Hit stuff with the hammer.”

  He laughed. “More or less. Come on, take a swing.”

  I immediately took a few light swings, and he easily beat them away.

  “I saw you blow up that goblin head,” he said. “Take some real swings.”

  Flushing, I picked it up a little, swinging at both sides of him and even a few overhead blows. He blocked them all, but his muscles were straining and glistening with sweat as I pushed him back, and I saw him smiling admiringly.

  “Not bad.”

  I grinned. “Well I am kind of a Monster Crusher you know—”

  I’m not entirely sure what happened. I think I stepped on a shoelace or something, because one minute I was talking and the next I was lying face first on the cobblestone, my whole body aching and the hammer lying on the other side of the ring.

  I rolled over.

  “Never mind.”

  Lee laughed and helped me up, and I sort of bumped into him as I stood up, my stomach pressed against his. I was about to pull away, but he held me there for a moment, his eyes serious.

  “You have to be aware of everything,” he said seriously. “I don’t want to find out you were killed in your first battle. Understood?”

  “Yeah,” I said, shyly meeting his eyes. Did he actually care? “I will be.”

  He released me and went to scoop up his hammer again. “Let’s do it again.”

  I felt eyes on me, and glanced over to see Allison watching me from the corner. She looked even more sour than usual, sharpening her blade on a whetstone. I gave her a mock smile and returned to training, wondering what was wrong with her this time.

  Eldon let me finish a bit early and surprised me with a couple of beautiful brown horses waiting outside the gate of Arnwell. He led me over to the horses.

  “What’s this?” I asked, looking at him.

  “I want you to see what you’re protecting.”

  After a bit of a struggle to actually get up on the horse, I followed Eldon on his horse for a tour of Derwin, sometimes trotting along the cobblestone streets, smelling the rich scents of roasting beef and fresh bread and the perfume wafting in from the meadows. We circled the lake, our reflections staring back at us, and I saw silver fish darting along beneath the surface, their scales like diamonds. In fact, I saw a lot of diamonds. They were glinting out from exposed rocks and flashing beneath the water in the winding streams, bigger and more beautiful than any I had ever seen on earth. Eldon saw me staring.

  “You value different things when you have them in abundance,” he said. “We have mountains of diamonds and oceans of crude oil. For us, we value the sweet taste of a peach, which we’ve never been able to grow here, or coconuts, my personal favourite.”

  Everything rolled by in a beautiful blur, like I was riding through an oil painting. Eldon showed me some of the tunnels, including the huge one where the train came and went, currently empty except for the wooden tracks that ran off into the darkness. He showed me one of the boring machines they used—a massive steam-powered contraption with a diamond cutting wheel that sliced through the rock like butter. He said there were hundreds of those machines in the Under Earth—different sizes for different tunnels.

  “Do you live in Arnwell Castle?” I asked him as we continued on.

  He nodded. “I live there, along with the ten Swords of the Protectorate. We also have rooms for all the Monster Crushers and their Swords from around the world, the ones who stay here for days at a time. There are housekeepers and staff as well, of course, but it can be a cold and lonely place. It wasn’t always for Monster Crushers: once it was a home for a king and his armies, a long time ago.”

  “Who rules Derwin now?”

  “There’s a mayor elected by the people; democracy is an idea we liked from the surface.” He laughed. “But he’s a portly old fellow who spends much of his time in the tavern. Most of the people here are farmers and blacksmiths and tailors: they like simple things, though they all have weapons, because our enemies are all around us. Monsters have only gotten into Derwin once before, and thankfully they were completely destroyed before they could share the location with others. The monsters want to destroy Derwin very badly, and end the training of their most feared enemies.”

  He glanced at me as we rode.

  “But magic still rules in Derwin, as it always has. The Brotherhood, the three that are left, are the main authority in the five realms. The leader in Eran is a powerful man, but the Brotherhood still have the power to overrule him. But there are only three left, and they are getting very old. The Under Earth will have to make some choices when those three pass away.”

  As we continued our ride across Derwin, I even got to see some more of the animals of the Under Earth: many were brought from the surface—wild horses, dogs, cows—while others they had found down here in the shadows. There were rats as big as house cats, long dark lizards with flashing white eyes, and birds that soared around in the cavern, eating the rats and lizards. The birds were huge, as big as albatrosses, and richly coloured with red and blue plumage. I watched them soar overhead, weaving in and out of the hanging stalactites.

  “I see why you like it here,” I murmured.

  “Eran is even more beautiful,” he said softly. “And Oren, which is beneath your China, is the strangest and most fascinating place you will ever see. Lakes pockmark it like puddles after rain, some bubbling hot, others brutally cold. Waterfalls spill from every wall, sending a mist across the realm like a jungle. Houses are built on stilts or nestled on jutting spires, and some are even perched right on the walls. I’ll take you there one day. Of course they also have the most giant spiders and that’s where wolf hawks come from, so we’ll wait until you’re a bit better with your weapons.”

  “Thanks,” I said, rolling my eyes.

  Finally Eldon led us back to Arnwell, and I climbed off the horse, sore from the two-hour ride, but nearly speechless from everything I had seen. If his plan was to make me love Derwin enough to fight for it, then his plan had worked. I was almost reluctant to leave. There was a vibrancy here—you could feel the energy of the life that somehow managed to survive down here.

  Eldon had said the people of the Under Earth had sensed the magic beneath them—and I felt like I could sense it too. The trees seemed alive, grasping always toward the sun sphere, and the waters of the many streams and the vast lake felt so crisp and pure that it almost melted my anxieties away.

  “There is one more thing before you go,” he said, leading me into the castle. “It’s time to make you look like a Monster Crusher.”

  We walked through the great hall and into an adjoining armoury, where the Iron Hammer sat perched atop a stone dais, surrounded by walls of weaponry and armour.

  He scooped up a large brown leather sheath with a strap attached to both ends.

  “Here,” Eldon said. “See if it fits.”

  I slid into the leather strap, which ran from my right shoulder down to my left hip. It was made of a thick, durable leather like a hauberk and fit pretty snugly across my stomach. I looked at Eldon hopefully. “Well? Do I look like a Monster Crusher yet?”

  He snorted and gestured to the hammer. “Now try that.”

  I scooped up the hammer, thinking once again how light it was—whatever metal they used, we didn’t have it on the surface. The handle itself was black and grooved, while the silver hammer top was scuffed and worn from use, the three red rubies on either side subdued in the pale light. Gripping the hammer in two hands, I s
topped, looking over my shoulder at the sheath and wondering how I was going to get it in there.

  “This seems a little inconvenient.”

  The hammer itself was about a metre long—far too long to just tuck over my shoulder. I awkwardly tried to position it with two hands, knowing I looked ridiculous. Eldon was smirking as he watched me struggle to set it in the sheath.

  “Stop,” he said. “The sheath is designed for someone with the strength to use one hand. It should be dropped in with one and pulled out with one. Grab it close to the bottom of the handle with your hand facing down.”

  I did as I was told, feeling the hammer wavering in mid-air. It was lighter than it looked, but it was still very heavy to try and hold with just one hand.

  Eldon nodded. “Now lift it over your shoulder, put the bottom in the sheath, and let it slide in. Try not to knock yourself in the head with the hammer.”

  I gingerly lifted the hammer over my shoulder, my whole arm trembling. The iron top was wobbling all over the place. I tucked the bottom of the handle into the sheath, my arm straining, and then let it drop, catching it every few inches to make sure the top didn’t crash into head. When the hammer was in, I was surprised to feel the weight spread across my body, almost as if I wasn’t carrying anything at all. Even the massive iron top sat back enough that it didn’t block my view to the left.

  “It was well designed,” Eldon said softly, guessing at my thoughts. “Now pull it out. You won’t have time to inch it out. It has to be one strong pull, like throwing a spear. Then catch it in mid-air and face your enemy.”

  “Oh, that should be easy,” I grumbled, adjusting my stance. I reached behind me, grabbing the iron pole just below the top, and with a tremendous effort I threw it straight up into the air. Well, that was the intention anyway.

  Apparently I didn’t throw it straight enough, because the hammer was almost out when the bottom caught the sheath and the entire weapon started drifting backward. I wasn’t ready for the change of weight, and I toppled over, slamming into the floor and hearing a crack as the hammer split the tiles. I lay there for a moment, stunned.

 

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