Polar Distress

by Sheila Grau

  We’d only gone about thirty yards when Alasie shrieked and pointed to the sky. There, gliding silently across the bay, was an enormous bird of prey. It looked like a giant white eagle, with gray flecks dotting its wings. I could tell that its keen eyes had latched onto Mez’s orange vest.

  “Mez!” I screamed. “Look out! Giant bird!”

  Mez looked up and saw the bird homing in on him. Two thick, fluffy legs reached out with sharp, hooked talons that were each as long as my forearm. I fired my flare, which burst next to the falcon’s face, startling it. Mez tore off his orange vest, threw it at the bird, and rolled away, just under those talons. He got up and sprinted for the nearest building, diving around the corner just as the bird swooped off with his vest.

  Alasie and I rode over to him.

  “You could have warned me,” he said.

  She scowled and shook her head, but I thought I detected the faintest twitch of a smile around her mouth.

  A loud screech startled us and we looked up. The gyrfalcon was speeding back toward the cliffs, where a black dragon was circling. I pulled out my binoculars.

  “There’s someone on the dragon,” I said. I passed the binoculars to Meztli.

  “Wearing red,” he said. “It’s a Pravus kid.”

  I nodded. So that black dragon in the hangar had come here with the Pravus team. We watched as the gyrfalcon flew right at the dragon, who turned to spit fire at the bird. The gyrfalcon dodged the flames and kept heading for the intruder.

  “Darthin said the gyrfalcon has a nest up there,” I said. “She’s protecting it. But what is the Pravus team doing?”

  Mez didn’t answer. We watched the short confrontation as the dragon quickly gave up and flew away. The gyrfalcon landed in its nest, victorious.

  Battle over, Mez hopped on the snowmobile behind Alasie, and I climbed on behind him. We continued to the site, where we spent the day digging, recording, and getting laughed at by Pravus kids. After a dinner of MREs, we headed back to the inn, where another copy of the rules was waiting for us on our bed.

  I pulled out my Good List, trying to come up with something to put on it. Everyone in this freezing town hated us. The area was filled with huge, annoying rabbits, terrifying yeti, and a giant bird of prey. The Pravus kids were mean, and it was obvious that I was being set up to fail.

  After thinking hard for a few minutes, I wrote: “Travel to new places is educational. I’ve learned that I do not like the taste of raw whale blubber.”

  “I really need to find something,” I told Mez the next day at breakfast. “Professor Murphy will fail me if I don’t.”

  Meztli had finished eating and was resting his chin on the counter. With great concentration he pushed the saltshaker toward the edge of the counter with short little pokes.

  “Is frustrating,” Mez said. He watched the shaker as it reached the edge, where it teetered. “We won’t find anything in our spot. He’s definitely messing with you.” One more poke, and the shaker fell to the ground.

  “Why do you do that?” I asked.

  He shrugged.

  I sighed. “I just want to prove myself here,” I said. I didn’t say it out loud, but I wanted Professor Murphy to be proud of me for once, like he was of the other junior henchmen. I didn’t want him to look at me like I was an embarrassment.

  “Wouldn’t it be great to be the ones to find something?” I added. “Instead of Rufus?”

  “Stupid dog. He’s the worst.”

  We bundled up and headed out for another day of digging in the ice, along with our guide, who was so silent we hardly noticed she was there. We found nothing. Again. I did learn a lot about Meztli, though. His family had sent him to Stull because there was a revolution going on in his home country, and they wanted to keep him safe. We laughed about this as we loaded our flare pens with bear bangers, just in case. Safety was relative.

  “You’re not going to do anything . . . rash, are you?” I asked him when I noticed he was getting bored. “You know, that orange rule was pretty important.”

  “Now I know,” he said, smiling.

  “Mez, breaking a rule can get you killed. Why take the risk?”

  “In my country, big heroes in history are people who broke rules,” he said. “Unfair rules—like the Chapuca tribe aren’t allowed to vote or lizard-men aren’t allowed in restaurants. And selfish rules—like nobody can swim in Lake Tarnolacco, because it belongs to Lord Dunga, who is never at his lake house anyway. So brave monsters voted, brave monsters ate in restaurants, and brave people swam in Lord Dunga’s lake. Rules change after that.”

  A Pravus team approached, and I cringed when I recognized Victus. He was about to say something mean, I was sure, but before he could, I said, “Where’s Syke?”

  “She’s sick,” he said. “Guess she’s not as strong as we thought she was. Typical weak Critchlore kid, after all.”

  Mez shot off a bunny hopper in his face. Victus accelerated his snowmobile to evade the flash and drove it into a snowbank. He had to get off to pull the snowmobile out, which was great because we got to laugh at him for a change. He pointed a threatening finger at us and took off.

  Those guys weren’t even pretending to look for sudithium. It seemed like their sole purpose was to make sure we didn’t find anything, and if we did, to take it from us. They had teams positioned at each of our spots.

  When Professor Murphy realized this, he decided to rearrange our teams. That afternoon, back at camp, Darthin told me that he and Professor Murphy had spent the morning huddled over his Monster Desk Reference book.

  “The Pravus team has five trolls, two skeletons, two ogres, a tree nymph, and two humans,” he said. “We have three werewolves, a were-jaguar, two ogre-men, an imp, two shape-shifters, two humans, and a Frankie. We figured out how to split up our teams so that any team of ours can take on any team of theirs. It was like working a complicated mathematical puzzle. I had so much fun!

  “For instance, according to the Vlagnof-Spitzer matrices, one werewolf and one ogre-man should defeat two werewolves, but not a werewolf and a troll. We created the best monster match-ups.”

  And that was how I lost Meztli. Professor Murphy moved him into the camp (apparently there was an extra cot for one more kid, but not two) because they needed him for one of the other teams. I wasn’t familiar with the Vlag-whatever matrices, but I was pretty sure one scrawny human kid wouldn’t be able to defeat anything. When I mentioned this to Professor Murphy, he told me that I’d be fine. Since I was close to camp, if I found anything—I’m sure he chuckled here—I would be safe where I was.

  The Pravus teams took one look at our new search teams and raised the stakes by messing with them as much as possible. They started by feeding the hares near where our teams were working. I had wondered why that was a no-no and quickly found out.

  “There must be fifteen of the huge beasts surrounding our spot now,” Jud complained. “I morphed to scare them off, but it’s too cold for me to be in wolf form for long.”

  “We ran out of bunny hoppers,” Lapso said.

  The Pravus teams painted orange circles all over our digging spots. Our guides spent the morning trying to lure the giant gyrfalcon back to its normal food spot, and then our teams wasted valuable search time cleaning up the graffiti.

  If the locals hated us before, by now they absolutely detested us. All of us. To them, we were a bunch of disrespectful, rule-breaking hooligans, and they wanted us gone. Darthin told us so.

  While all this was happening, I was alone with Alasie, who still wouldn’t talk to me. Not when I asked her questions, or complimented her skills with the bow and arrow, or offered her food.

  “Do you know what happened between Rufus and my yeti guide?” I asked Darthin that afternoon.

  “Yes,” he said. “Rufus was warned not to harass the local animals, but he kept doing it anyway. He tried to ride a polar hare, and then he fought a giant fox. Alasie had been trying to lure the fox away from town, and then Rufus
messed up everything. She threw a snowball at him in frustration. When she turned around, he hit her with an ice-ball. This absolutely enraged her, and she picked up a boulder and threw it at him. She’s incredibly strong, but her aim isn’t the best, luckily for Rufus. She missed him but hit one of the stilts holding up the community building, and it partially collapsed.”

  “Yikes,” I said.

  “And so she was put on probation. I think she has to work off her debt to the community.”

  No wonder she was mad. Well, I was mad too.

  Each day I felt a slow, boiling rage grow hotter and hotter inside me, but I kept working. Tootle’s lessons about plants kept playing in my head, like a catchy tune you can’t shake: Weeds keep trying, trees become stronger when they’re alone, trees never give up . . .

  And then I looked around and noticed something: There were no trees in the polar region. Maybe they did give up.

  And maybe I should too.

  “A must-have reference book for EOs, minion trainers, and Mixed Monster Arts competitors.”

  —ADVERTISEMENT FOR THE MONSTER DESK REFERENCE

  Every afternoon the other Critchlore teams passed by my spot on their way back to camp. Frankie always stopped to walk back with me, and this time we met Darthin as he returned from town.

  “What’s up, Darthin?” I asked, pulling down my face-covering and watching my words take flight with a cloud of fog.

  “I haven’t had much luck,” he said, looking back at town. “The kids are relaxing a bit around me, but they won’t talk about sudithium. A couple offered to teach me how to kite-ski. There’s a competition coming up. It’s kind of a big deal here.”

  “It looks like fun,” I said. “Do they know what sudithium is?”

  “They act like they don’t,” he said. “They know we’re looking for it, but they play dumb and it’s so obvious. I have noticed some interesting things, though.”

  “Like what?”

  “Have you noticed that huge corrugated-metal building that faces the bay? Well, every day fishermen take snowmobiles out to the floe edge, where the frozen ice meets open water. Every day they come back and load the fish into that giant building. It must be stuffed full of fish. Why do they need so much fish?”

  “For the bird?”

  “It’s way more than they need to feed the gyrfalcon. And they can’t be storing it for winter, because it’s spring. It’s weird, but the adults clam up when they see me. They don’t trust me. Also, they’re getting really upset about all the stuff going on near the crater.”

  “It’s the Pravus team,” Frankie said.

  “I know,” Darthin said. “How about you guys? Find anything?”

  “Rufus’s team has collected a small vial of flakes,” Frankie said. When he noticed me deflate, he added, “It’s not much, really. But Professor Murphy is excited. He’s moving me over there, to help dig. He told me I am the single best addition to the team.”

  “That’s great, Frankie,” I said, feeling a stab of jealousy at those words. Once, just once, I wish Professor Murphy would feel that way about me. “I hope you find more.”

  “Runt,” Frankie said. “If I find some, maybe I can sneak it to you, so you can say you found something too.”

  I shook my head. “No, I don’t want you to do that.”

  “But it’s not fair,” he said. “He’s put you where you won’t find anything. You’re going to flunk his class, and it’s not your fault.”

  “I’ve got to do it on my own,” I said.

  Inside I wasn’t so sure. What if Professor Murphy had been right all along? Maybe I wasn’t junior henchman material. Ever since Dr. Critchlore had called me “Prince Auberon” I’d wondered if he’d put me in the class because he knew I was a prince and not because he saw some potential in me.

  Professor Zaida was right too. I didn’t want to be given something I didn’t earn, whether it was a bit of sudithium or a place in an elite training program.

  Darthin, Frankie, Meztli, and I joined the rest of the group for the end-of-the day meeting in camp. The sun was close to the horizon, and the wind was kicking up little clouds of snow as it hurried through camp. We stood in a circle, close together, stamping our feet to stay warm.

  “The locals are petitioning Irma Trackno to revoke our visas,” Professor Murphy said. “They say that we and the Pravus team are disrupting local wildlife, that it will result in irreparable harm to life here if the animals start encroaching on the village again.”

  “That’s probably what the Pravus team is hoping for, with all their assaults,” Jud said.

  Professor Murphy nodded. “Yes. It’s become quite obvious that they aren’t here to look for sudithium. They just don’t want us to find any. I have to report to the village council tomorrow. I’m guessing we have a few days left, at best.” Then he held up Rufus’s small vial of sudithium. The flakes inside the glass vial practically glowed with a gray-green color. “And this is not an acceptable amount. It’s less than we got from Mistress Moira. We need more. A lot more.”

  My rage bubble was about to pop. Normally, fear of embarrassment kept me from speaking in groups, but this was too much.

  “I can help at one of the other sites,” I said.

  Rufus laughed.

  Professor Murphy scowled. “I want you to stay where you are.”

  So I went back to the inn, alone. I tried to talk to Alasie, but she had perfected ignoring me. I had to sit at the counter, eating alone, with my lonely thoughts. I wanted to work with my friends, and stay in the camp with them.

  No wonder Kumi had been so angry.

  I pulled out my Good List, but could only think of one thing to write on it: “My wrists aren’t changing color.” Then I laughed, because that’s not something most people would be thankful for. Most people take for granted the simple things in life, like fresh fruit and having un-cursed skin.

  Again I thought about giving up. Why bother? I wasn’t going to find anything. The whole trip had been rigged against me. I was a joke.

  My chest felt tight as humiliation gripped me once again. I should have been used to the feeling by now. I tried to get rid of it by daydreaming about finding some sudithium. I imagined myself with a large chunk of the gray-green mineral. I’d hand it to Professor Murphy and say, “How do you like me now?”

  And then he’d hug me and say, “You did it!”

  The next morning, Darthin, Frankie, and Meztli came to the inn to tell me not to come to the camp. Professor Murphy had wanted the teams to continue searching while he was called before the council, but our local guides were part of the council, and we couldn’t go out without them.

  This made Alasie very happy, and after getting a nod from Big Jim, she left for the ice.

  “We could go watch,” I suggested. There was nothing else to do, so we bundled up and headed for the shore of the frozen bay to watch the local kids kite-ski.

  “The big race is tomorrow,” Darthin said. “The whole village will be there.”

  We continued past the last line of houses facing the bay and reached a small ridge. There must have been thirty kids out on the ice, preparing their kites.

  To the right, a group of men stood near the giant metal building that Darthin had told us was filled with fish. Some sat on snowmobiles with attached sleds, ready to head out on the ice.

  “Does Professor Murphy know what that fish is for?” I asked Darthin.

  “He said that our mission was to find sudithium, nothing else. He said he doesn’t care why they fish, where they fish, or who they’re fishing for, and neither should I. So . . . no.”

  “I have an idea,” I said, looking at the men. “Mez, you could sneak over there. They’d never notice you in the rocks and snow. Just listen in.”

  Mez nodded. “I go,” he said. He ducked behind a building, stripped down to his snap-free thermals, and morphed into the white-as-snow jaguar that he was. He had a determined look on his face as he snuck down the rocky shore, edging clos
er to the men. He had always wanted to join a hunt, and now he was finally getting the chance. And he was good. He kept low to the ground and moved so carefully.

  We walked down the slope, closer to where the racers were taking off on their practice runs. We were hoping to draw the attention of the men to us, so they wouldn’t notice the white shape edging closer and closer to them.

  The kids zipped across the ice. They headed for the iceberg fist in the middle of the bay and then cruised around it and back. Sometimes they rose in the air, breathtakingly high, before maneuvering back to the ice again.

  “They’re fast,” Frankie said.

  “It’s not normally this windy,” Darthin said. “I’ve heard there’s a storm approaching from the south.”

  We snuck glances at the fishermen. After a few minutes, two others joined the group and they all headed out. We watched their snowmobiles pull sleds across the ice as kids flew past them with their kites. Mez came bounding back, shivering, so we hustled back to the inn and upstairs to my room.

  Bundled in dry clothes and wrapped in a thick blanket, Mez took sips of hot chocolate while he told us what he’d learned.

  “That was fun,” he said, still shivering. “But so cold. My fur’s not thick enough for this place.”

  “I could barely see you,” I said. “You were practically invisible.”

  He shrugged. “It’s unlucky for me,” he said. “Here, I fit in, but I do not belong. At home, I belong, but I don’t fit in.”

  We all murmured about how unfair that was, and then Darthin said, “Did you hear anything?”

  “The men were angry,” Mez said. “They said they’d just gotten the giant animals to leave the village alone, but now they’re coming back, because of us. One bunny stays very close to town. It likes to follow Professor Murphy and swat at him.”

  This was true. Professor Murphy was getting very annoyed by it.

  “They want us gone, all of us,” Mez went on. “One of them said, ‘Why don’t we just give it to them?’ but another said, ‘Then they will keep coming back.’”