Billy couldn’t believe it. How was this possible? He was being punished? Not only was Cameron not in trouble—again—but Billy was in trouble?
“But I didn’t—” he began.
Mrs. Russet’s mutterings cut him off. “Not possible,” she said under her breath, casting a glance at Billy. “You didn’t even Glimmer.”
Billy tried again. “But he started it.”
Mrs. Russet stopped in front of a room marked “Janitorial” and seemed to focus on Billy for the first time. “I don’t doubt that for a second, Mr. Jones.”
“But then,” Billy said in a very small, very confused voice, “Why are you mad at me?”
Mrs. Russet’s visage softened. Or at least, it got as soft as it could, which was to say it could have shattered diamonds but was now slightly less frightening than it had been a moment ago. “I’m not mad at you, Mr. Crane. I’m mad at Cameron Black.”
She withdrew a small item from her pocket. It was a key, Billy saw. But it was unlike the keys he saw his parents and other older people use. It was old-fashioned and looked like it had been made by hand at an ancient forge: the kind a person would see in movies featuring underground dungeons in medieval castles. But where there was usually a circular piece of metal at the top of such keys, this one had been shaped to resemble a beehive.
Mrs. Russet pushed the key toward the keyhole to the janitorial closet. There was no way it was going to fit, Billy knew. The key was far too large.
But somehow, it did fit.
“Buster bumpkin bunny burps,” whispered Mrs. Russet. She turned the key. A dazzling light speared out of the key, blinding Billy. Unseeing, he felt Mrs. Russet’s hand on his shoulder.
“I’m not mad, Billy. But you never should have been able to touch Cameron. You see, he’s a Black. But you did touch him. So we must find out why.” The hand tightened. “Hold your breath,” she said. “Take two steps forward, then one step back.”
Billy did what she said. He did so automatically, almost as though he had no choice in the matter. Through the blaze of white light, he could feel Mrs. Russet moving with him.
A queer jerking sensation bounced up through Billy’s frame, shivering him from head to foot. The breath he’d been holding burst out of him in a whoosh, and at the same time the blinding light dimmed. Billy blinked once, then screamed at the first thing he saw.
Because the first thing he saw…was a dragon.
Billy had never seen a dragon before, so he couldn’t absolutely swear that what he was now looking at was a dragon. But it certainly looked like what Billy imagined a dragon would look like. It was the size of a two-story house, with overlapping metallic blue scales the size of tea plates covering its entire body. Great glistening wings flapped slowly, moving lazily and gracefully as those of a butterfly resting on a rose.
But this was no butterfly. The dragon’s mouth was agape, teeth the length of Billy’s forearm glistening with saliva that dripped in stringy lengths to the stone ground upon which the monster sat. The saliva spit and hissed as it touched the ground, etching acid courses through the rock.
The dragon spotted them almost at once. It hissed a warning, and a long tail that ended in a wickedly serrated point flicked over its head. Two small puffs of flame emerged from its nostrils, and then it inhaled deeply.
Billy knew what was going to happen next. He simply knew it. He and Mrs. Russet were going to be incinerated.
He screamed again.
Strangely, Mrs. Russet’s only response was, “Oh, fiddlesticks. Artetha couldn’t Imbue a key if the White King Himself helped her do it.”
The dragon was still inhaling.
Billy was still screaming in terror.
Mrs. Russet held out her key: that strange key that she had used on the door to a janitorial closet that apparently was much more than a janitorial closet. She shook it like one would a remote control that wasn’t working, then said, to no one in particular, “Artetha, if you are listening, I want you to know that I am going to drop a mountain on you the next time we meet.”
The dragon stopped inhaling.
Mrs. Russet looked it square in the eye, and said, “Don’t even think about it, Serba.”
The dragon, still holding its breath, seemed to grin evilly, and made a noise, deep in its throat, that Billy would swear sounded like nothing other than a nasty chuckle. Then it opened its mouth to exhale.
And what happened next made everything else seem ordinary in comparison. As the dragon opened its mouth, not fire, but a thick liquid river of lightning spewed toward Billy and Mrs. Russet.
Billy screeched and dropped to the ground, skinning his knees and hands on the rock below. Mrs. Russet reacted differently. She whispered a quick word, and the rocky ground all around them shifted as though it had suddenly become water. A thick stalagmite erupted from the ground directly in front of them, and the dragonsbreath slammed into it with the sound of dynamite exploding against the rock face of a mountain. A shower of dirt and pebbles cascaded down all around Billy and Mrs. Russet, but the stalagmite had protected them from a painful electric death.
Billy could no longer see the dragon, but heard it inhale again, and wondered how many hits the pillar of rock could absorb before simply falling to pieces.
Mrs. Russet looked at him. “Stand up!” she snapped. Billy did so, surprised he was able to move at all.
BANG! Another explosion slammed shockwaves through Billy as the dragonsbreath hit the rock again. The pillar started to shimmy back and forth, clearly about to topple.
Mrs. Russet grabbed Billy as the dragon once more inhaled for a final, deadly strike. She held her strange beehive key against the back of the stalagmite as though it were a door, and turned the key, whispering again those nonsense words that apparently turned the key on: “Buster bumpkin bunny burps.”
And a door appeared in the back of the rock.
Billy had thought nothing could surprise him further at this point, but a door appearing as though to meet the key’s needs did so.
He didn’t have long to think about it though. The dragon stopped inhaling. This was it.
“Hold your breath,” hissed the teacher. “And remember: two steps forward, one step back.” Then she yanked Billy forward with her, with him lurching against her unsteadily as they stepped into the dark doorway to nowhere just as the dragon exhaled lightning once again.
The sound was all around them, too loud to be believed, as the dragonsbreath exploded through the rock. But then it instantly muffled, as though heard from a great distance. “One step back,” said Mrs. Russet, and her voice, too, sounded odd and strained. Billy realized his eyes were tightly closed. But he didn’t open them. What new terror would he see if he did? He just scrunched them even tighter, and then stepped backward with Mrs. Russet, her bony, strong fingers sunk deep into his shoulder and giving him little choice in the matter.
And then, all was silence.
And a moment later, sounds came to Billy. Strange, alien sounds.
“Open your eyes, boy,” said Mrs. Russet impatiently. “We’re here.”
Billy opened his eyes. And gasped.
“Welcome,” said Mrs. Russet, “to Powers Island.”
CHAPTER THE THIRD
In Which Billy arrives at The island, and is given the Test of Five…
“This is what happens when you don’t hold your breath” was the first thing Billy saw. It was written in ornate letters on a six foot tall bronze sheet that stood behind what looked like a shriveled mummy. Its mouth was open in a silent shriek and its eyes bugged out of its head, pupils staring in opposite directions like a chameleon. Billy stifled the urge to scream.
Instead, he managed to look at Mrs. Russet and stutter, “W-would I l-look like that if I hadn’t held my breath just now?”
“Of course not,” said Mrs. Russet, somewhat distractedly. “You’d be much shorter.”
Billy reeled, trying to take in his surroundings. He and Mrs. Russet were standing in what looke
d like the lobby to a movie theater. Nearby, there were three lines of people, everyone in them waiting patiently as the lines moved toward three glass cases. Each case was about six feet tall and held in it what looked like a carnival fortune teller: one of those plastic mannequins that would give someone a card with their fortune on it in exchange for a quarter.
Mrs. Russet pulled Billy with her into the shortest line. “What are we doing?” asked Billy. “Where are we? Why are we here? Who are you? How did we get here? Why are we in line? What’s that fortune teller thing? How—”
“Calm down,” snapped Mrs. Russet. “Powers Island. To determine if you Glimmer. Mrs. Russet. By Imbuement. To stand and be counted. The Counter.”
Billy looked at his teacher. The words were, once again, English. But as had happened so often in recent minutes, he didn’t understand a word of what she was saying.
“What?”
“Those were the answers to your questions.”
Billy thought furiously. He couldn’t remember what he had asked. But he suspected that, even if he did remember, he wouldn’t understand the answers anyway. Still, he tried again. Start with something basic, he thought, then said aloud, “Where are we?”
“Powers Island. Specifically, we’re in the tower at the center of the island right now, in the Accounting Room.”
Billy had been right: he didn’t understand a word of that. Accounting Room? It sounded like someplace where there should be guys in suits with calculators, not a bunch of people in waiting in line for a fortune teller booth.
A sudden “pop” sounded behind them. Billy turned and saw a man appear out of thin air. He was dressed like a bobby—a British policeman—with a tall rounded cap and swinging a short nightstick with practiced ease. The bobby nodded at Mrs. Russet. “Lumilla,” he said in a precise English accent.
Mrs. Russet nodded back. “Bellestus,” she replied as the policeman stepped into another one of the three lines.
Billy’s brain was quickly overloading again. He opened his mouth to fire another machine-gun cartridge of questions at his teacher, then decided to just wait quietly for a few minutes to see if anything remotely understandable happened. He closed his mouth and Mrs. Russet—Lumilla?—smiled at him as though approving of his decision.
They moved forward in their line, slowly but surely approaching the glass-cased mannequin before them. During the time they waited in line, Billy heard three more “pops” and turned to see three more people appear out of nowhere: a man in a three-piece suit; a lady with a stethoscope hanging around her neck and a round badge that said “ENT’s are head and shoulders above the rest”; and what looked like a tribal warrior from darkest Africa, complete with ornate headdress and a thin bone piercing his nose. Each of these three arrivals nodded at Mrs. Russet with either familiarity or respect when they noticed her in line.
At last, it was Billy’s and Mrs. Russet’s turn to approach the mannequin. Mrs. Russet went first. She didn’t have to put a quarter in the machine, just touched a button on the side of the case. The mannequin—which had a thick beard and wore a jeweled turban and a blouse made of glimmering silk—moved a rigid hand and a card dropped into a slot at the bottom of the machine. Mrs. Russet took it and touched it to her shirt, where it stuck tightly.
“Lumilla Russet—Dawnwalker” is what the card said.
Billy stood silently for a moment, unsure what to do. Mrs. Russet pushed him gently toward the machine. “Your turn,” she said.
Billy walked forward hesitatingly, fearful of what was going on and what would happen next. Nothing had hurt him so far—though the dragon had seemed quite happy to try—but he still felt as if a meteor was going to fall on his head at any moment.
Unbidden, his mind cast up an image of Blythe Forrest, her beautiful eyes looking at him, her lovely face lit by a smile that was for him alone. His toes again felt like they were turning inside out, but at the same time just thinking about Blythe made him feel more…secure. Nervous, but happy and safe.
Billy stepped forward and pressed the button on the mannequin’s case.
The mannequin’s hand moved. It wavered, as though uncertain, taking much longer than it had with Mrs. Russet. But, at last, a card dropped into the slot. Billy took it.
“Billy,” it said simply. No last name, nothing else on it.
“First time, eh?” said the woman who stood behind him in line. The lady doctor. She touched him gently on the arm. “You’ll be fine,” she said gravely, glancing at Mrs. Russet. “You’re in good hands.”
Billy knew that the words were meant to be encouraging, but for some reason they just made him worry that much more.
“Come on, we haven’t all day for this. I’m getting far too old in the real world to spend all day on the island,” said Mrs. Russet. She took the “Billy” card from Billy’s hands and pressed it against his shirt. The card hadn’t been sticky, Billy knew. But it stuck to his shirt like it had been super-glued there. Then Mrs. Russet took Billy’s hand and walked him over to what looked like a nearby bank of elevators, the old fashioned kind with windows in the doors through which each passing floor might be glimpsed.
“What are those?” Billy asked, almost afraid of what the answer might be.
“Elevators,” answered Mrs. Russet. She looked at him like he had just dropped fifty IQ points. “You know, little boxes that take people up and down in tall buildings?”
“But…I thought…,” Billy stammered. His voice drifted off as one of the elevators dinged and opened. Mrs. Russet stepped in. Billy followed her, and the doors closed.
“What floor and department, please?” said a pleasant voice from a hidden speaker somewhere.
“Three thousand seven hundred sixty-eighth floor, Glimmer Detection and Decisionary Department,” replied Mrs. Russet.
“It is my pleasure to lift you there. Would you care for a refreshing beverage or some kind of tasty treat on your trip?” asked the elevator. It began whirring, and Billy’s stomach lurched as he felt the elevator begin to rise.
“No thank you,” said Mrs. Russet.
Over three thousand floors? Billy thought. He did a bit of math in his head: at ten feet per floor, that was over thirty thousand feet, or about…six miles!
The elevator went up one level, and through the window in the elevator’s door Billy caught a glimpse of what looked like a forest. A forest? he thought. How could an entire forest be inside a single floor of a building?
Then he realized that if there was a forest in the first floor, that meant that ten feet per floor was probably way too little. Who knew how high up they would be when they got wherever they were going?
“Are you sure you wouldn’t like a treat?” cajoled the elevator. “I have very yummy snacks. Dell-Diddly-Delites?”
Another floor passed, and Billy glimpsed a herd of something that looked like pigs the size of dump trucks galloping by.
“Bing-Bing Belly Boomers?” continued the elevator as it picked up speed. The floors flashed by faster and faster, and the things Billy saw grew stranger and stranger. What looked like a truck-sized armadillo on one floor, a group of men and women in white coats chasing each other while holding what appeared to be huge butterfly wings on another, house-sized beehives stretching as far as the eye could see on a third. Then the elevator was moving up too fast for the floors to be seen, and they became mere flashes of light that strobed by as the elevator sped upward.
“Scuddle Snackers?” The elevator was really hard-selling its inventory. “Fizzy Floaters? Shakka-Shakka Shakes? Blue Lightning Crumpets? Candy bar?”
“Shut up,” said Mrs. Russet. No more words came out of the speakers, but Billy felt for some reason as though the elevator were sulking.
Mrs. Russet swiveled to look at Billy. She tapped a spot on the wall of the elevator. It looked no different to Billy than any other spot on the wall, but when she did so, two softly-velveted seats emerged from the sides of the elevator. Mrs. Russet sat down on one, gesturing for Billy
to do the same.
“You must have many questions,” she began.
Billy nodded. He was afraid to actually ask any questions, since that just ended up making him more confused. But Mrs. Russet was looking at him expectantly, and he didn’t want to irritate her, so finally he said, “What was the key?”
“This?” asked Mrs. Russet, drawing out that strange beehive key. “It is an Imbued Object.” Billy stared at her blankly. “It means it is magic.”
“Magic?” said Billy.
“No, magic,” said Mrs. Russet.
“Magic?” asked Billy again.
“Maqic,” she emphasized.
Billy couldn’t hear a difference between the way he was saying the word and the way Mrs. Russet was. His look must have told Mrs. Russet this, for her brow furrowed. “Can’t tell the difference between magic and magic, either,” she mumbled, as though Billy had failed some kind of test. Then she re-focused her attention on him. “You can’t hear the silent ‘q’? Try it again: magic,” she said, over-enunciating the last word as though she were trying to teach Billy a new language.
Billy, now thoroughly befuddled and maybe even downright bamboozled, shook his head. “It sounds like you’re saying, uh, ‘magic.’”
Mr. Russet shook her head. “Fine, for now we’ll just call it magic, since you haven’t been Determined yet.”
Billy still didn’t understand anything she was saying. But he felt some hope, because at least her words were starting to sound a bit more like threads of a normal conversation, rather than just a spewing of random words.
She held up the key. “This is a key that has been Imbued with magic.”
“Imbued?” asked Billy.
“Imbued means that a Power—what I suppose you would call a wizard or a witch—has put a small piece of his or her magical essence into an object to give it certain special properties. In this case, a Power named Artetha put some of her essence into the key and made it magic. The key can take its possessor from one place to another through doorways in space and time that it creates. So the possessor is me, and I wanted the key to open a doorway to Powers Island—to where we now are—and that is what it did.”
Billy: Messenger of Powers Page 4
