Polar Distress

by Sheila Grau

  “And Pravus is looking . . . ,” I said. “That means we still have time to catch up.”

  “We have to catch up,” she said, looking extremely worried.

  “Why? What will happen if we don’t?”

  “An Undefeatable Minion means ultimate power. If Dr. Pravus were to create them, what do you think would happen?”

  “He’d drive other minion schools out of business?”

  “Yes, but there’s a worse possibility.”

  “What?”

  She leaned forward. “Think, Runt. Ultimate power! The EOs will be falling over themselves to get them. Pravus could make a pact with a select few evil overlords and only supply the UMs to them. Then those EOs will quickly take over every other realm, further consolidating and broadening their power and their oppression of everyone else.”

  Yikes.

  “Or something worse could happen,” she added.

  “What?”

  “It would be madness, but it’s possible: Dr. Pravus could use the UMs himself and take over the entire continent. The man is driven and brutal. If you think the EOs are bad, imagine a world run by that sadistic egomaniac.

  “Both scenarios would be catastrophic for millions of people, and the only way to stop them from happening is to create the UMs ourselves. There has to be a balance of power. If Pravus wants to use them, we must threaten to use ours against him. If he lets Wexmir Smarvy recruit them, then we supply Smarvy’s enemies with the same force. This is the only way to ensure that they are never used.”

  I sat there biting my lower lip, terrified.

  “Now, to work,” she said. “Did you finish your history assignment?”

  “Huh?” I said. My mind was racing with thoughts of a few overlords controlling everything—or worse, Dr. Pravus ruling the world. I had no idea that the stakes were so high.

  But if anyone could stop him, Dr. Critchlore could. He’d done it before, many times. I took some deep breaths and tried to convince myself of this.

  “Your assignment?” she repeated.

  I handed her my essay about the collapse of Erudyten two hundred years ago. I’d titled it “The Fall of a Great Society.” It was a sad tale. A peaceful, prosperous, library-loving country had been torn apart by the greed of its neighbors and then turned into four realms filled with poverty and despair.

  “Great,” she said. She glanced at it quickly, then put it aside. “For your next essay, I want you to research the similarities and differences between the fall of Erudyten and the fall of Andirat.”

  “I already know this,” I said. “Peaceful and rich Erudyten fell because it thought it could appease its enemies with gifts, but they attacked anyway. Two hundred years later, their descendants, now ruling in Andirat and fearing the same outcome, built a strong army for defense, but then the army attacked them.”

  “There’s more to it than that,” she said. “Read this book. I want you to pay close attention to the people involved in the coup in Andirat. One of those people was a trusted advisor to your father.”

  I gulped. My father. It still seemed so strange to imagine King Natherly as my father. He was a figure in history now, as distant from me as all the other historical figures I read about.

  In all my studies for Professor Zaida, I’d paid the most attention to him. He was so . . . fair. He believed that all laws should apply to everyone. If he asked his people to do something, then he did it too.

  And then he’d been betrayed by someone he thought was his closest friend.

  Anyone traveling to West Chambor must first be vaccinated for wyvern pox.

  —MRS. GOMES, ALL-POINTS BULLETIN

  At lunch the cafeteria was more than half empty because so many kids had gone on the Treasure Hunt Challenge. I saw Pismo across the room, sitting at his usual first-year table with some skeletons. I decided to ask him about the new guys.

  I sat down across from him and a skeleton in a first-year purple jacket. KATE was stitched on the front.

  “Hi guys, can I ask you a question?”

  “Sure, Higgins,” Pismo said. “What’s up?”

  “Have you seen the new skeletons around campus? The ones that don’t wear a uniform. And there’s a dog skeleton with them.”

  Pismo looked at Kate, who nodded. Then her fingers moved in rapid flicks, and Pismo laughed.

  “What was that?” I asked.

  “Skeleton sign language,” Pismo said. “Kate said the new guys are”—he laughed—“something rude.”

  “Skeleton what now?” I said

  “Sign language,” Pismo said. “How else are they supposed to communicate? I don’t know if you’ve noticed, but they don’t have vocal chords.”

  Kate seemed to shake with chuckles at that.

  “But she can see without eyeballs? And hear without eardrums?” I said. “That doesn’t make sense.”

  “Haven’t you taken Necromancy 101? Sense data can go in, but it can’t go out. It’s science—your basic reanimating dead stuff . . . stuff.”

  I really needed to take that class, but I’d always avoided it in the past because it was taught by Professor Vodum.

  I remembered the brochure about the gorillas, and that they spoke using sign language, so I asked Pismo, “Does this mean anything?” I made the motions the gorilla had made at me. The wagging finger and the pointing to the side.

  “Yeah—‘Where is it?’” Pismo said. “Or ‘Where is he?’ Or she.”

  Kate nodded.

  “‘Where is she?’” I repeated. “He’s looking for someone. A ‘she’ someone. I knew it! It’s got to be Janet. She made friends with him in Delpha, and he followed her here.”

  “Could be.”

  “You guys have to come with me to talk to the gorilla. Please, it’s important. He’s destroying the forest out there.”

  They agreed to come along. As we walked down the main road, I asked Pismo how he knew SSL.

  “It’s similar to TSL,” he said.

  “TSL?”

  “Turtle sign language,” he answered.

  Kate’s head tilted back with silent laughter.

  “I’m kidding,” Pismo said. “But as a prince, I have to be conversant in many forms of communication. Merpeople use telepathy with each other, but it doesn’t always work with other species.”

  We went through the open front gate and carefully approached the gorilla. Like before, he sat in his patch of ferns, stripping leaves off a tree he had uprooted. He chewed slowly as he watched us approach.

  “Kate, can you ask him his name?” I asked.

  Kate nodded and stepped forward. The gorilla stopped chewing and stared at her with a gaze that made my insides feel squishy with fear. It was the exact same feeling I got when Cook served leftover goulash surprise. Don’t go any closer! that feeling was telling me.

  Once she had the gorilla’s attention, Kate stopped. She made a sideways salute, then put her hand on her chest, tapped her hands together with two fingers, and made some more finger motions.

  “She just said, ‘Hi, my name is Kate,’” Pismo whispered to me.

  The gorilla saluted back.

  “The gorilla said hi back,” Pismo said.

  “Yeah, I picked up on that one,” I said.

  “And now Kate’s asking his name . . . The gorilla just spelled out Kumi.”

  “Kate,” I said. “Tell him we brought him food. Ask him to not eat the trees.”

  Kate nodded.

  They had what seemed like a long conversation with their hands until Kumi abruptly stood up and roared. He pounded the ground with both fists, which shook so violently that we were knocked off our feet. Kate raced back to the front gate. Pismo and I followed.

  “What happened?” I asked.

  Kate signed to Pismo, who translated.

  “She says that Kumi likes to eat trees, and he got angry when she asked him to stop. He also kept signing ‘Where is she?’ and when Kate told him ‘She’s gone,’ he went berserk.”

  �
�Janet had better come back soon,” I said. “Or we aren’t going to have any trees left.”

  I’d been hoping the quiet campus would allow me to make progress on my projects, but that wasn’t happening and I was frustrated.

  Days passed and the gorilla wouldn’t eat the food I brought him, the toddler trees were still running around out of control, and nobody would talk to me about the fire that had burned down Syke’s mom’s forest. And those creepy skeletons were following me, I was sure. It seemed that every time I turned around they were lurking behind me.

  On the Good List side, I did not miss Professor Murphy’s angry glares or Rufus’s taunts. I was worried about Darthin, though. I really hoped he was doing okay.

  On my way to the castle I saw Frankie heading back to the lab. I was going to pretend not to see him, because I didn’t have the energy to deal with his emotional neediness. But he spotted me and ran over.

  “Darthin’s back,” he said.

  “Did they find anything?” I asked, not sure which answer I was hoping for. I wanted Dr. Critchlore to find this mineral, but I didn’t want Rufus to be the one who did it.

  “I don’t think so,” he said. “Darthin wouldn’t say anything. He’s hiding under his bed and won’t come out. I was hoping you could talk to him.”

  “Me? Why not you?”

  “I have to report to the lab. Dr. Critchlore just yelled at Daddy, saying he’s spending too much time trying to figure out what’s wrong with me and not enough trying to figure out what sudithium does. Dr. Frankenhammer kept telling him that he could fix my flaws, that he just needs some time, because”—he sniffed—“I have a few more flaws than he expected, and, yes, he’s disappointed in himself for creating something below expectations, but he knows he can do better.”

  I put a hand on Frankie’s arm, because those seemed like some pretty damaging words to hear.

  “Dr. Critchlore told him to stop. He’s to work on sudithium and nothing else. So now Dr. Frankenhammer needs me to read some more journals for him.”

  “He really has no idea what it does?” I asked.

  “He thinks it might harden the skin, so that it becomes an impenetrable shell of some kind. Still flexible like skin, but super strong. He really needs a sample of it, so he can perform some tests, but nobody can find any.”

  Frankie wiped his eyes and took a deep breath. “Good luck with Darthin,” he said.

  Darthin wouldn’t come out from under his bed. A part of me wanted to join him and hide from all my problems.

  He wouldn’t talk to me, either. He was completely terrified. Whenever I tried to ask him what had happened, he just shook his head and curled more tightly into a ball. I stayed with him all afternoon, until Frankie came back, just before dinner.

  “Frankie, did you find out anything?” I asked.

  “I did. I heard from Jud that the trip was a disaster. They found the crater, but no sudithium. Rufus got in a fight with a yeti, and something important got destroyed. After that, Professor Murphy wanted Darthin to talk to the locals, who are really mean and uncooperative. Darthin wouldn’t leave the house where they were staying. Rufus got mad and dragged him outside, strapped him to a snowmobile, drove a few miles from the village, and left him there. Darthin had to walk back. Alone. He was nearly eaten by a giant creature.”

  “A snow crawler?”

  “He won’t say.”

  “What was it?” I asked Darthin.

  A faint whisper seemed to say, “A polar bear.”

  “A polar bear?”

  “No,” he said, stronger now. “Not bear. Hare.”

  “A bunny?” Frankie asked, and both of us had to clamp our mouths shut to keep from laughing.

  “It wasn’t a bunny,” Darthin said, his voice muffled. “It was an enormous polar hare, and there were five of them, I’ll have you know. They stampeded right at me, coming from nowhere. I only escaped by playing dead.”

  “Bunnies?” I mouthed at Frankie.

  He shrugged.

  “It was the worst experience of my life,” Darthin said. “I thought I was going to die every second I was there. And then as soon as we got back here, I was running to my dorm and some weird mushroom monster tried to eat me.”

  “Yeah—the Matango,” I said. “Professor Vodum recruited him. He can’t hurt you. Just don’t eat anything he offers you, or you’ll turn into a mushroom man yourself.”

  “Maybe Critchlore is trying to get out of training human minions and is going full-monster,” Frankie said.

  “Maybe,” I said, remembering the leech-men, the new skeletons, and now the Matango. But I really hoped not.

  “I’m not leaving this room,” Darthin said. “Ever. They can search for sudithium without me.”

  “Nobody’s found anything,” Frankie said. “Critchlore is sending Uncle Ludwig and some other people out to find a sample of sudithium on the black market. He’s getting really desperate.”

  So the rest of the teams had come back empty-handed as well. There didn’t seem to be a trace of the rare gray-green mineral anywhere.

  To the next student who leaves a paper bag filled with dragon dung on my desk: You’ll be in for a rude surprise.

  —BARRY MERRYBENCH, ALL-POINTS BULLETIN

  With everyone back at school, classes resumed. I was ready to go to breakfast, but Darthin wouldn’t get out of bed. He had the covers pulled up over his head.

  “Darthin, you have to go to class.”

  “Can’t. There are too many monsters out there.”

  “What about food? You have to eat.”

  He pointed under his bed. The space was crammed full of little boxes marked MRE—Meals Ready to Eat. “They gave us those for our expedition. I’m starting to like dehydrated chicken loaf.”

  Something had to be done. I went outside to the Dormitory for Minions of Impressive Size. It was a busy time of day, and I had to dodge quite a few huge bodies as I made my way to their front steps. I grabbed one giant’s leg thinking it was Stevie, but when he looked down, I saw it was George.

  “Oops,” I said. “Wrong giant. Have you seen Stevie?”

  “Yeah, he’s inside,” George replied. “I’ll get him.”

  In a few minutes, Stevie was holding me next to his face so I could tell him my plan.

  “Got it,” Stevie said. “And thanks for reminding me about that assignment.”

  I ran back to my dorm. Darthin hadn’t moved, but there was an empty container on the floor and the room smelled like tinned food.

  Soon we heard a tap on our window. The tap was a little harder than it should have been, and the glass shattered onto the floor.

  “We’re under attack!” Darthin screamed. He jumped up and ran to the far corner of the room.

  “No, it’s just Stevie,” I said. “Hi, Stevie. How’s it going?”

  “Hi, Runt.” Part of Stevie’s big head appeared at the window, one eye glaring into our room. “Sorry about your window. Is Darthin in there?”

  “He wants me?” Darthin said, shaking in the corner. “Why?”

  “Oh, there you are,” Stevie said. “Travis told me you aced Battlefield Instruments and that you might be able to help me figure out what’s wrong with my seismograph.”

  “Y-y-you’re in Battlefield Instruments?” Darthin asked.

  “Yeah, and it’s really hard,” Stevie said. “I didn’t do so good on my first two tests, and the final project is due tomorrow. I made a seismograph to measure the shaking power of different giants’ steps. But the paper comes out with a flat line. It’s not detecting my power.” He stomped his foot in an unnecessary display of his stomp’s power.

  “Hmm . . . that’s interesting,” Darthin said. He stood up, his eyes seeming to focus on something far away. “Could the pen be stuck in one position?”

  “No, that was the first thing I checked.”

  “Hmm . . . maybe your weighted beam is too heavy,” Darthin said. “Can I see it?”

  “Hang on.”

&
nbsp; Darthin got up and scooched closer to the window, brushing the glass shards to the side

  When Stevie came back, Darthin got so caught up in the problem that he forgot he was talking to a giant.

  With that intervention complete, I focused my attention on another problem: the stubborn little toddler trees. I’d just gotten Stevie to help with Darthin; maybe I could get Fthip, Googa, and Swish to help me find their missing friends. I saw them near Tootles’s tree house and called them over. They weren’t afraid of me anymore because we always played games. We raced to the kitchen, where Cook had left some fruit for the gorilla.

  “Boy, those other trees are really good at hide-and-seek,” I said as I threw some bananas on a wagon. “They’re making us look bad.”

  “Hidey seek?” Googa said, turning to the others to see if they knew what I was talking about, but the other two just shrugged.

  “Hide-and-seek,” I said. “I was ‘it’ and I found you two in the swamp. When you find someone, then he or she . . . or both? . . . is on your team. So we’re a team now.” I pointed to each of them, then back at me. “But we can’t find the other three. Gosh, and I really hate to lose. I’ve looked everywhere—in the forest, the swamp, by the river, by the boulderball field. I just don’t know where he could be.” I kicked a rock.

  Googa hopped up and down. “Googa! Googa! Hidey seek! Seek Woooosh!”

  “Is Woooosh a tree?” I asked.

  All three started bouncing and saying, “Woooosh.” Then they turned around and raced for Mount Curiosity.

  “Nicely done,” a voice behind me said.

  I turned and saw Riga, holding a can of paint. She’d been really busy lately, helping all the teams with their floats.

  “Thanks,” I said. “Four down, two to go.”

  “Tootles really appreciates the help,” she said, continuing on toward her tree house.

  I fell in step beside her, pulling my wagon of fruit. “I wish he’d return the favor.”

  “What do you need, son?”

  “Answers,” I said. “About Syke’s mother, and the fire, and everything. Tootles told me that Dr. Critchlore knew Syke’s mother. How could he burn down her tree, if he knew she lived there?”