Tomas gripped me tighter. “Oh, no! I’m allergic to sunflow—”
He didn’t get to finish, because Regent Maximus leaped again, all twisted, and Tomas and I went flying through the air. I saw the three little dogs beneath us, staring, as we arced over them. We hit the grass and rolled and rolled and rolled until we stopped with a little oof.
“Tomas!” I yelled the moment I could sit up. “Are you okay?”
“Yep!” Tomas said mournfully. “Except I’m also allergic to Chihuahuas.” All three of the little dogs capered around him, licking his face and wagging their tiny tails. Tomas sneezed, and they scattered for a second, but then went right back to the licking. On the other side of the fence, Regent Maximus paced frantically.
“Sorry!” the Unicorn said. “Sorry, sorry! I didn’t know what they were! Are they dogs? Are they monsters? Are they eating you, Tomas? Are you mortally wounded? Am I?”
I sighed. “No, we’re okay. They’re just dogs, Regent Maximus.” I stood up and rubbed the spot on my butt where I’d landed. “All right, let’s try this again.”
We led Regent Maximus over to the quiet country road. We’d been trying to keep our distance from the road, because the noise of cars seemed likely to scare him, and because him spooking into traffic would be a lot more dangerous than him spooking into a field. But we were far from the clinic’s trash bins now, so we needed the ditch beside the road to climb back on to his back. Tomas showed Regent Maximus that there was no water, ooze, or Bog Wallows in the ditch, and then the Unicorn stood in it, quivering, as we climbed back on. I quickly directed him back into the field, away from the road.
But Regent Maximus was clearly still freaked out by us falling. Or by the journey itself. Or by breathing. He was beginning to mutter to himself. And he was still shaking. I could tell he was only two seconds away from spooking again.
“I can’t go on,” Regent Maximus said. “It’s all over. I’ll never make it home alive. What am I doing? What was I thinking? I knew children were dangerous! I knew the world was full of things! I gallop into danger! I gallop to my end! When the gore—”
“Here’s an idea,” I told Regent Maximus. “Stop for a second. What if you close your eyes? Try it now.”
I couldn’t tell from his back if he was listening to me, but he stopped moving, and then he stopped talking. He stood, ears flicking rapidly from left to right. But slowly his breathing calmed and he stopped shivering.
“That’s better,” Tomas said. “But we’re running out of time. We can’t go anywhere with his eyes closed.”
“Actually …” I said. “Maybe we can. I have an idea. Regent Maximus, do you think you can trust me?”
The Unicorn made a humming sound like a Fuzzle in response. I couldn’t tell if it meant yes, no, or I am very afraid of life.
“I’m going to steer you with the reins,” I said. “I won’t let you get into trouble. I’ll see the dangerous things and turn you away from them, and you don’t have to see them and be scared.”
I expected Regent Maximus to protest, but he nodded his head vigorously. I guess he thought it was less dangerous to gallop about with his eyes closed than to face the world. Oh, well! I turned to Tomas and discovered his eyes were closed as well.
“Seriously?” I said. “I’m the only one looking where we’re going?”
I was.
It hit me all at once: I was riding a Unicorn, just like I’d always dreamed about. And just like my first Unicorn ride, I’d talked my way into the situation. But unlike the Unicorn Incident, this Unicorn was listening to me, and I was listening to him.
Even though we still had a long way to go, I couldn’t stop the grin from slowly spreading across my face.
And then I guided us all to Two Duck Lake.
Two Duck Lake was surrounded by forest, so we had to leave Regent Maximus behind—he said he was afraid of the underbrush (“As if regular-sized trees weren’t scary enough!”) and I didn’t think we needed to chance it, after our fall. Tomas suggested tying him to a stop sign, but I didn’t want him to get eaten by a Grim if there was one here. So we snuck him into one of the crusty out-of-order public restrooms near the picnic tables. He stood obediently next to the sinks with his eyes still tightly closed, muttering to himself. His voice echoed off the tile.
“We’ll be back soon,” I promised him.
If we’re not eaten by a Grim, I thought.
Then I shoved that thought aside and headed into the trees with Tomas.
Here was the thing about woods and me—I really loved animals and nature and all, but, deep down inside, I was from a city. We didn’t have big stretches of trees and leaves and plants and little trickling rivers in Atlanta. We had parks, of course, but you couldn’t really get lost in them because there were paths and signs everywhere.
So I kind of knew that being in the woods, where a Grim was lurking, with a boy who kept stopping to reapply eyedrops—would be kind of scary.
And it was really scary, especially once we couldn’t hear the sounds from the campground anymore. All sense of space and time vanished as we searched for clues.
“What time is it?” I whispered to Tomas, because it was so strangely quiet out here in the middle of nowhere that it seemed wrong to speak too loudly.
He studied his watch. “Ten o’clock.” Then he sneezed for the fifty-third time.
It had taken a long time to coax Regent Maximus to the woods. Less time than walking, by a lot, but not as fast as I had hoped. And we’d spent way longer wandering in the woods.
We only had an hour left.
This was bad. I hadn’t even seen a single black tuft of hair, much less an entire black dog.
“Have we been this way before?” I asked.
Something in the woods crunched in response.
Tomas and I looked at each other, then into the woods. It was bright in here, being the morning and all, but it was still hard to see very far since there were so many leaves.
Tomas sneezed again, then clapped his hands over his nose at the sound of it. His eyes widened. “What if—what if I’m sneezing because it’s close?”
“Tomas, you’ve been sneezing for a half hour—” I stopped. I looked at him, and my jaw dropped. The Guide said that Grims were “stealthy, slinky” animals. Half Ninja Dog, after all.
It was very possible that for the last half hour, the Grim had been following us. I took a deep breath.
“Hello?” I called out into the trees. “Any Grims out there?”
Nothing answered me.
But we did hear a light little crunch sound. Much too light to be a Grim.
I sighed, disappointed. And also a little relieved, because I didn’t want to be eaten.
“Don’t worry, Tomas,” I said. “It’s probably just a squirrel. Come on.”
“I can’t,” Tomas replied, sneezing again.
“Tomas, you can walk and sneeze at the same ti—”
“No, I can’t!” he protested.
I turned around to look and clapped my hand over my mouth.
Tomas was flying.
Okay, he wasn’t flying. He was floating, the way a balloon does when it’s nearly out of helium but has just enough left that you can’t throw it away. His toes skimmed the moss on the forest floor.
“Tomas!” I said. “Get … get down!”
“I’m trying!” he said and kicked his legs like he was running. All that did was send him tumbling forward, spinning head over heels in the air, things cascading from his pockets. He flailed his arms around like a windmill before snatching on to my ponytail to steady himself.
Breathlessly, he gasped, “Thanks, Pip.”
“Don’t mention it.” I winced as he tugged my ponytail harder. “Why are you floating?”
“I told you! I have allergies!”
“What are you allergic to that makes you float?”
Tomas, still floating over my head, ducked to avoid a low tree branch. “I don’t know. Sometimes it’s hard to
tell what’s making me have a reaction.”
I pointed at his pockets. “Don’t you have something useful in there?”
“Oh, right! I hope they haven’t fallen out.” With his free hand, he rustled in his pocket and pulled out some allergy capsules, which he swallowed quickly.
“How long do those take?” I asked.
“Fifteen minutes?”
Fifteen minutes is a very long time when you have less than an hour. And we’d lost some time with the floating and catching too. I was afraid to ask Tomas what time it was now.
“We have to keep moving. Just try to stay out of the tree branches, and hold on to my hair. It’s our only chance of finding the Grim so—”
Crunch.
The sound was light, just like the last noise, but now it was much, much closer. Tomas eyed me from the air above my head.
I leaned toward the sound, peering through the leaves.
I saw a patch of black fur!
Jerking backward, I curled my toes in my shoes.
I tried not to think of all of the scary facts about Grims in the Guide.
“Hello!” I said again, this time not in a question voice. “I know you’re there, Grim. My name’s Pip, and I just want to talk with you.”
I could feel Tomas shaking in fear—he was wiggling my ponytail. I couldn’t blame him, especially as I heard more crunching—the Grim was approaching us. Grims must be really stealthy, I thought, for a huge animal like that to sound so light on the forest floor. Now there was more black among the leaves as it got closer, closer—
“Hi,” the Grim said, finally emerging from the trees.
My mouth dropped open. I couldn’t believe it! This was a Grim, all right—a big, black, magical dog, just like the Guide described. But this Grim wasn’t the “size of a full-grown man at the shoulder.” It barely came up to my shoulder.
Because this Grim? It was just a baby!
The Grim sniffled a little, then hung his head low. He had burrs in his fur, and he looked a little thin. Everything about him was gangly and puppy-like, especially his big eyes.
“Hi,” I said back. I was too shocked, at first, to say anything else. Then I asked, “Is the rest of the pack nearby?”
Tomas’s shaking increased.
The Grim laid his ears back against his head. “I’m alone.”
I asked, “What are you doing out here all by yourself? You’re too young to be a rogue Grim, aren’t you?”
The Grim opened his mouth, but instead of answering, he flopped to the forest floor. He put his head on his paws and let out a long, terrible whimper. Tearily, he said, “It wasn’t my fault!”
There was nothing much sadder looking than a lost baby Grim weeping into a forest floor.
“Oh, hey, don’t cry—” I started to stoop, but the closer I got to the Grim, the higher Tomas’s allergies made him float.
“Hang on,” Tomas said, grabbing hold of a tree branch overhead. When he had a secure grip, he released my ponytail. “Okay, I’m good!”
I rubbed the spot where my hair had been pulled and kneeled by the Grim. “I’m sure it’s not your fault. What happened?”
It took a moment for the Grim to calm down enough to tell the story. He rubbed his nose on his paw. “My pack was asleep, but I heard something in the woods. I went to look, and there was this cat—it was huge! And so … I chased it, because that’s fun, you know? But then when I stopped and looked around, I was …”
“Lost?” I suggested.
The Grim started to whimper again. He was making those big, ratty snuff-snooooooffff sounds you make after you’ve been crying for a while. I very carefully extended a hand—he was a wild animal, after all—and patted him on the head. When I did, he crumpled toward me, a mess of black fur and paws and weight.
“Is he mauling you?” Tomas shouted from overhead. “I brought some hydrogen peroxide for the wounds!”
“He’s not mauling me!” I called up, even though the baby Grim was sort of suffocating me. He didn’t mean it though, so I wrapped my fingers in his fur and patted him until he stopped crying.
“Listen,” I finally told the Grim. “I bet I know where your family is. Grim packs migrate to the same place every year. My aunt will definitely know where the closest Grim migration point is. We can take you right to them!”
The Grim lifted his head to look at me, and I saw his very impressive bright white teeth. They flashed as he spoke. “Why would you help me?”
“Well, for starters, because it’s a nice thing to do,” I said. Gently, so that it didn’t sound like an accusation, I added, “But also, because you’ve been eating Fuzzles, right?”
The Grim nodded and licked his lips. “They’re all I can catch. I tried to catch regular food, bigger food, but … I’m just not fast enough yet …” His eyes wobbled like he might cry again.
“Okay, okay!” I patted him again. “Well, it’s just that since you’ve been eating them, they moved into our town and keep burning things down. So once we reunite you with your pack, the Fuzzles will be able to come back to the wild. Everyone will be happy!”
“Except the Fuzzles I already ate?” the Grim asked.
“Well, yes, but let’s not think about that,” I said, cringing. “Stick with me and you’ll be safe.”
That was the moment Tomas’s allergy medicine kicked in. He crashed to the ground beside us, emptying the remaining contents of his pockets. He bent to pick up the various packages of gauze and lip balms and spare batteries.
“Leave it! We have to go!” I said. We hurried toward the edge of the woods, which no longer seemed so far away or mysterious now that we had the baby Grim following us. As we reached the sunlight, I told Tomas, “Show me your watch!”
It was 10:35. The Fuzzles only had twenty-five minutes.
Tomas’s shoulders slumped. “We’ll never make it back in time!”
“If we go straight back!” I said.
“You know that won’t happen! Regent Maximus will see a puddle or something and stop and we’ll never make it!”
I couldn’t believe it. We’d come all the way out here, found the Grim, and now the Fuzzles were still getting exterminated?
“No!” I said. “No way! Come on.”
We ran to the bathrooms, where Regent Maximus was still waiting with his eyes closed. He seemed to be listing things he wasn’t afraid of:
“Clouds, except not the ones that are dark or fluffy. Honeycomb, when it’s not in hard pieces. Clouds. Honeycomb. Butterflies. Wait! No, not butterflies. Clouds …”
“Regent Maximus!” I said, voice a little louder than I meant to. His eyes flew wide-open. He looked at me, then at Tomas, then his eyes went even wider—the Grim was standing just behind us.
“He’s going to eat—”
“No!” I said again. “Regent Maximus, this is a baby Grim. And he is lost and scared. Unless we get him back to the clinic, all of those Fuzzles are going to die.”
Regent Maximus didn’t seem swayed. Actually, he didn’t seem anything. I think he might have been literally frozen with fear.
“Is he going to hurt me?” the baby Grim asked meekly, looking at Regent Maximus’s horn. He was quivering a little. “Mom and Dad told me not to go near animals with horns. They’re only used for poking.”
Regent Maximus blinked. He screwed his eyes up at the Grim. For a moment, I thought he was preparing to run, but then he said, quite plainly, “Oh, you don’t need to be afraid of me. Do I need to be afraid of you? Are you going to bite my ankles?”
“I don’t bite ankles!” the Grim said, sounding offended. He leaned forward and very, very tentatively sniffed Regent Maximus’s tail, then jerked back, still unsure.
I don’t think Regent Maximus had ever met anyone who was so obviously afraid of him. He looked almost proud, really, and tossed his mane a little. He allowed us to lead him outside to the water fountain to get on his back.
“All right, Regent Maximus. Close your eyes!” I said. The Unicorn
squeezed them shut. “We’ll have to go fast this time if we want to make it,” I added.
“I’ll try,” Regent Maximus said, shaking a little. “You’ll warn me if there’s something scary?”
“Absolutely,” I said.
“And if I see something scary, I’ll growl at it!” the Grim offered, wagging his tail a little.
So off we went, me and Tomas on Regent Maximus, the Grim running alongside us.
Hey, I thought, we might just be able to save the Fuzzles after all!
We tore into the clinic parking lot at 10:55—the Fuzzles had five minutes left, by Tomas’s watch! The Grim was drooling and Regent Maximus was panting and shaking his head. I thought we were going to slide off his back and run inside, but just as Regent Maximus slowed to a walk, the door of the clinic flew open.
Aunt Emma was the first one out. Then Callie. Then Mr. Randall. Then Mrs. Dreadbatch, and Mr. Henshaw, and that guy who had the Lilac-Horned Pomeranian, and Goggy’s owners, and a bunch of other adults I didn’t know.
Then the exterminators. Or at least, I guessed they were the exterminators—they had bright silvery suits on, with a tank of what I presumed to be Fuzzle poison on their backs.
They all stared at me.
“What’s going on?” Regent Maximus asked anxiously. I guessed he could tell I was tensing up.
“Pip Bartlett!” Aunt Emma said before I could answer Regent Maximus. “You’re in so much trouble!”
Mr. Henshaw’s eyes were wide. I thought he was angry too, but then he lifted a wondering hand to Regent Maximus’s bridle as Tomas and I slid off Regent Maximus’s back. “I never thought I’d see the day! How did you manage this?”
That was a different conversation for a different time.
“Aunt Emma,” I said urgently. “I know you’re mad at me, and that’s okay, but what about the Grim?”
Aunt Emma said, “What are you talking about?”
Mrs. Dreadbatch cut in before I could explain. “I don’t have time for this, Emma Bartlett! The exterminators are here. Deal with your renegade niece later! Time to end this Fuzzle infestation once and for all!”
Pip Bartlett's Guide to Magical Creatures Page 10
