Polar Distress

by Sheila Grau

  “Well, I’m glad you’re here,” I said. “We always lose to this team. See their center?”

  “The tall one with the pointy nose?”

  “Yeah, his name is Victus. Watch out for him. He loves to take cheap shots when the ball’s on the other side of the court. Last year he gave Boris a bloody nose and bit Eloni on the ear. Their coach is scary too.”

  I pointed at Coach Reythor, who looked as mean as a hungry troll, with a thick neck and small, crazy eyes. He surveyed our team like he was figuring out which one of us to maim first. I was so focused on him that I didn’t notice that they had a new player.

  “Isn’t that your amiga?” Meztli said, pointing to one of their players.

  My mouth dropped to the floor, along with the ball I’d been holding.

  It was Syke.

  “The Most Intimidating Building Award goes to ‘The Eye of Pravus’ at the Pravus Academy. It’s impossible not to feel like you’re being watched.”

  —MAYA TUPO, AT THE EO AWARDS GALA

  While Syke warmed up with the Pravus team, the guys on my team gathered around me to watch her.

  “What’s she doing here?” Eloni asked. “I thought you said she was taking classes at the Kobold Retraining Center.”

  “She was,” I said.

  “She can’t play for Pravus,” Boris said. “She doesn’t go to the school.”

  “It looks like she does now.”

  They were warming up by moving through a series of passing plays. Syke looked completely serious, like the rest of their team. They were preparing for war, not for a fun game of hoopsmash. She wouldn’t look at us, but I couldn’t stop watching her. She had a dark bruise on her cheek, a bandage on her elbow, and her hands looked scratched up and raw.

  Five seconds into the game she tackled me.

  “Syke, what are you doing here?” I asked.

  “Getting some real training, for once,” she said.

  Syke had never been a minion-in-training because Dr. Critchlore was planning for her to attend horticulture school in the capital after graduation. She’d always resented the fact that she couldn’t take the same classes as the rest of us. She loved to be in on the action.

  “Why here?” I asked.

  “Pravus hates Critchlore. I hate Critchlore.”

  “Pravus is a psycho. He tried to choke you.”

  “Yeah, well, he doesn’t remember that. And he loves me now. We have a good time sharing Critchlore stories. You would not believe how lame Critchlore was back in his school days.”

  Yeah—according to Pravus, I thought.

  I got up, but she shoved me down as she ran after the ball. Meztli beat her to it and dodged her tackle, threw the ball against the wall, and headed it through the ring to score.

  Mez was amazing. He darted between tacklers, jumped ridiculously high, and had dead-on aim every time. The Pravus kids couldn’t even play dirty against him—he was too quick for their late hits and late tackles. At one point I stopped playing just so I could watch him move. But then that stupid Victus barreled into me from behind, sending me to the floor.

  I tried to match up against Syke, so I could talk to her. I wanted to tell her about Tootles’s forest, about how I thought the fire story was suspicious, and that everyone was hiding something. But after that first tackle, she avoided me.

  And then, during the second half, I felt a sinister presence fill the gymnasium, like an ogre burp. I looked up at the seats perched above the court and saw Dr. Pravus standing next to a railing, staring down at me. He had a confused look on his face, like he wasn’t sure if he knew me or not.

  I knew that Dr. Frankenhammer had erased Pravus’s memory of how I had turned his vaskor minions against him and stolen the Great Library from his clutches, but the way he was looking at me now made my insides feel mushy, like they were scrambling for a place to hide.

  I ran back into the game, my heart racing faster than Meztli’s feet. I shook all over as I remembered his deadly anger, his promise to kill me. Why had I come here?

  I glanced up to see him still staring at me, and then I was tackled hard by Syke. She stood over me, blocking Dr. Pravus from my view. “That’s for not telling me about my mom.”

  A few moments later she tripped me from behind and said, “That’s for defending the man who murdered my mom.” And finally, she hip-checked me into the side of the gym, “And that’s the last of my hate for you, Runt Higgins. I’m done with you.”

  I won’t lie, those words hurt. I had known that Syke was mad at me, but this hatred took me by surprise. Just like the elbow to the ribs that Victus gave me as I was lining up a shot.

  My best friend hated me. I wanted to grab her, make her say she didn’t mean it.

  I finished the game covered in bruises. I had played the worst game of my life. I couldn’t even get myself to be happy that we’d beaten that smug team 24–19, which normally would have been so satisfying. Syke ran off before the postgame handshake.

  I tried to stay in the middle of my team as we left the gym. One quick glance told me that Dr. Pravus was still staring at me. It was the cold, intense stare of a predator right before it strikes. I pushed a few kids out of the way to get out of there and onto the bus. When we finally drove out the school gates, I’d never been so relieved in my life.

  On the ride home I sat alone, resting my head against the glass and wondering why I hadn’t just told Syke that Dr. Critchlore had burned down her mom’s tree as soon as I’d heard about it. If I hadn’t kept that secret from her, we’d still be friends. She wouldn’t think I’d betrayed her, and we’d probably be working together right now, trying to find out the truth about that fire. She’d see, like I did, that people were hiding something.

  I closed my eyes and listened to the rest of the guys talk about Syke.

  “I asked about that bruise on her face,” Eloni said. “She said she got it in the Gauntlet of Loyalty test.”

  “One of their forwards told me she got the highest score,” Boris said. “She also passed the Test of Worthiness. And she did better than an ogre in the Pain Threshold Evaluator!”

  “It’s insane what Pravus makes his students go through,” Frankie said.

  “I heard she was near the sinkhole when it opened up,” Eloni said. “She could have died. They don’t even know how deep it is. It’s that deep.”

  “Better than an ogre!” Boris repeated. He thumped his head against the window to prove how great ogres were at taking pain.

  Did Syke really hate us that much, that she would put herself in that torture camp?

  I had to find out the truth about the fire. If I did that, Syke would come back. She’d come back and see the new forest and we’d be happy again.

  Driving into my nearly empty school reminded me about not being selected for a search team, that I still didn’t have any minions to train, and that I was cursed to die on my sixteenth birthday.

  Before getting off the bus, I took out my Good List and tried to wade through the mire of terrible things in my mind to find something to write. At last, I wrote, “We beat the Pravus team today!” I smiled and tucked it back in my pocket.

  “Growing up, Dr. Pravus never had an imaginary friend. He had lots of imaginary enemies, though. He beat them up after school every day.”

  —FROM AN UNAUTHORIZED BIOGRAPHY OF DR. PRAVUS

  The next morning, I reported to Tootles at the FRP, eager to tell him about Syke and hoping the trees had somehow decided to return to their boxes on their own.

  “She’s at the Pravus Academy?” Tootles said, knee deep in a trench he’d dug for some bushes. “Oh no. Does Dr. Critchlore know about this?”

  “I don’t know. I can’t get past Barry Merrybench to see him.” I wasn’t even going to try anymore. The last time he’d smiled at me and told me that Miss Merrybench left him something to give me. I ran out of there before finding out what it was.

  “I’ll talk to him,” Tootles said. “Now, I have another problem I need hel
p with.”

  “More missing trees?” I asked. I really, really hoped he wasn’t going to send me after more trees. Anything would be better than that.

  “I need you to feed that giant gorilla so he stops stripping the leaves off all the trees out front.”

  Except that.

  “I’ll go with you on this first trip,” he said, stepping out of the trench. “But then I’d like you to do this each morning on your own. I just have too much work to do here.”

  Tootles had an electric cart that he used to get around school, with an attached trailer for his tools and supplies. He’d already filled the trailer with fruit and leaves, so we headed for the front gate.

  I was beginning to think that Tootles didn’t really care about my wellbeing. First swamp creatures and now a giant gorilla? Why did he think I could take on these monsters?

  “I don’t know if you’ve noticed, Tootles,” I said as we rode along. “But I’m kinda small and weak. I’m not really the best person for all these jobs you’re giving me. Maybe if I had more helpers, or if I was part troll.”

  He stopped the trailer and pointed in the direction of the maintenance buildings.

  “You see that oak tree over there?”

  I nodded. It grew at the far end of the tackle three-ball field and was so tall that the top was visible over the buildings.

  “It’s probably the strongest tree on campus,” he said.

  “Don’t tell me,” I said. “It didn’t give up.”

  “It survived, despite being alone,” he said. “All alone in that big field, it had to face the wind and weather without any protection. Now, you know the oaks by the dorms? They protect each other in a nice little clump, don’t they?”

  “Sure, I guess.”

  “But none of them has grown as big and strong as the lone oak. Not one. That lone oak has had to fend for itself, and its struggles have made it stronger.”

  “You’re not giving me any helpers, are you?”

  Instead of replying, he took a bite of his apple, which I guess was his answer. Then he offered me one.

  “Trees have very few needs, Runt. With enough water, nutrients, and sunlight, they thrive. And they give us such wonderful things.” He lifted his apple. “I just love trees.”

  Which made the sight at the gate all the more heart-wrenching. The gorilla sat nestled in a forest of ferns, surrounded by the dead carcasses of all the trees he’d pulled up. He was chomping on one now, like it was corn on the cob, which made Tootles cringe.

  “What’s he hanging around for?” Tootles wondered out loud.

  I had my theory, and it was this: He was looking for Janet. This had to be the gorilla that she’d tamed—the one that had made Dr. Pravus look bad at the EO Council meeting. That gorilla had been living in Delpha, not at the Pravus Academy, so he hadn’t been killed in the sinkhole. The big ape had fallen in love with Janet and had followed her here. It’s what I would do, and really, it was the only possible explanation.

  “Pravus probably sent him here to spy on us,” Tootles said. “He’s so big, he can see the whole campus.”

  Or that. That was a pretty good theory too.

  Tootles drove the cart through the gate and slowly approached the gorilla. I gripped my door, ready to make a break and run for safety. The gorilla spotted us and became completely still, except for his eyes, which watched our every move.

  Tootles swung the cart around, detached the trailer, and motioned for me to help him push it toward the beast. “It’s better if the food is in front of us,” he whispered.

  The gorilla frowned. He lifted his pointer finger and shook it back and forth, then he pointed to the right.

  We pushed it closer. And then a little closer.

  The gorilla kept making those motions with his finger.

  “Get ready to run,” Tootles said, “as soon as he makes a move.”

  We were about to reach the edge of the ferns when the gorilla jumped up and roared. We turned around and sprinted for the cart. I ran right past it and kept going for the gate. Sorry, Tootles, but it’s every man for himself, especially when I didn’t sign up for this job.

  The gorilla didn’t chase us, but soon the air was filled with flying fruit as he hurled all the food back at us. Tootles drove past me and didn’t stop until he was inside the gate. I caught up to him, and we turned around to see the gorilla sit back down and pull up another tree, munching on it while he glared at us. “Take that!” each bite seemed to say.

  I told Tootles to go ahead without me, because my Minion Games team was working on our float nearby, at the PE field. I wandered over and saw the yellow team there as well. The air was filled with hammering and music and laughter.

  For our float, we were going to re-create Fraze Coldheart’s mountain fortress, complete with zombie guards, the Cave of Dangers, and the Devil’s Cauldron, which was a boiling tar pit where he threw his enemies. Someone, probably Rufus, would play Coldheart, and the rest of us would dress up as his army of the dead. It was going to be so cool!

  Boris and I hauled mud for the simulated tar pit until I had to go to my free-period class with Professor Zaida. Every other class had been canceled because of the field trips, but not mine.

  I headed back to the castle, kicking a rock and not really paying attention to what was around me, so I didn’t see them until it was too late.

  Those freaky skeletons. And they were coming for me, again.

  “I left my heart in Santo Lisco.”

  —POPULAR SKELETON SONG

  The skeletons still weren’t wearing uniforms. They were all white bones walking down the main road from the castle toward the front gate. They were heading right for me, and I froze, panic spreading through my body.

  Seeing me, they burst forward. I turned to run, but the ground shook beneath my feet, making me stumble. In a flash, a group of giants came around the corner from the dorm road and barreled right toward me.

  I was caught between a pack of menacing skeletons and a troop of giants. I dove for the side of the road, barely escaping the giants’ trampling feet.

  “Stevie!” I shouted, waving my arms. “Hey!”

  Stevie stopped running and looked down.

  “Give me a lift, okay?” I said.

  He reached down and picked me up.

  “Gently!” I shouted when we were face-to-face. “Hey, Stevie, do you see those skeletons over there?”

  They’d stopped coming at me and were now huddled in the trees, watching. The dog was running in circles, agitated at not having caught me.

  “Yeah, I see them,” he said. “Why aren’t they in uniform?”

  “I don’t know. They freak me out. They chased me in the cemetery a few days ago, and they were just coming after me here.”

  “Why were you in the cemetery? That place is creepy.”

  “I was doing something for Mistress Moira,” I said. “Can you give me a lift past them to the castle steps?”

  “Sure,” he said.

  There was a pause, and then he added, “You know, my uncle worked in necromancy.”

  “Really?” I said, because that wasn’t the normal course of study for a giant.

  “Yeah, he kept trying to get me interested in it, but I didn’t like it. Being dead changes a person, you know?”

  “Makes sense,” I said. “I just wish they’d leave me alone.”

  “Maybe those skeletons saw you in the cemetery and thought you were rising from the dead or something.”

  “That’s possible. I was covered in mud,” I said. Hmm, interesting idea. “Thanks, Stevie, I owe you one.”

  “Can you help me with my Battlefield Instruments homework later?” he said. “You took that last year, right?”

  “Sure,” I said.

  He smiled and placed me on the steps, then turned and ran for the boulderball field. I stood there wondering if I was going to need giant protection to get around the school from now on.

  I got to the library before Professor
Zaida, so I used the time to look up information about giant gorillas. All I could find online was a brochure from the Pravus Academy that talked about how great they are.

  “Strong and ferocious, they can squish the insides out of a full-grown ogre,” I read. I skimmed over the rest of that section, because I was sure it would give me nightmares. “Fantastically smart too.” Ooh, this was interesting. “They understand commands and can communicate with over two thousand words in Gorilla Sign Language (GSL). They are actually easier to communicate with than trolls.”

  Maybe that’s what he’d been trying to do with all that finger waving.

  Professor Zaida arrived, hustling down the spiral staircase in the corner.

  “Sorry I’m late, Runt,” she said, handing me a very squished, very tiny piece of paper. “That’s a note from Mistress Moira. She sent it with one of her trained carrier ravens.”

  I had to squint to read it.

  Am in East Chambor. There are three witches here capable of casting a tethering curse. Also—have seen two Pravus kids interviewing people here. Tell Derek XOXO MM.

  “I’ve informed Dr. Critchlore of the Pravus Academy kids,” Professor Zaida said. “It just set him off in another fit of panic, though. ‘Why didn’t she message me directly?’ ‘Do you think she’s avoiding me?’ ‘Can I send her a message back?’”

  “Are there meteorite-impact craters in East Chambor?” I remembered that Dr. Critchlore had sent a team to West Chambor.

  “No.”

  “Then why is Pravus searching there? Do you think he’s going after another resource?”

  “Yes, he is. We’ve just finished translating The Top Secret Book of Minions. We now know the four requirements needed to create an Undefeatable Minion. The final one is a spell of obedience, because why create a powerful monster if you can’t control it?”

  “Like the vaskor,” I said.

  “The vaskor weren’t created, but yes. The spell that binds them to your command is centuries old and could only have been cast by an extremely powerful witch. There are very few capable of doing it today.”