by Henry Clark
“It’s twenty minutes until one twenty-three, the first Magic Minute of the night,” Modesty told Pre. “We don’t want to waste it. I’m not saying your smell spell stinks or anything, but—do you have anything better?”
“Yeah,” I said. “Maybe something that causes skeletons to rise up out of the floor waving swords over their heads? That might convince Davy to stop making DavyTrons.”
“We don’t have anything like that,” said Pre.
“Oh?” I said. “What about the spell called To Summon the Forces of Torque? That’s a good one, right?”
“Oh, it’s a very useful spell. You know how sometimes you can’t get the lid off a jar? When you summon the Forces of Torque, the lid twists right off.”
“It’s a spell for opening peanut butter?”
“Essentially. And pickles.”
To hide my disappointment, I put my face to the pay-per-view binoculars and swiveled them as if I were studying the Davy Tower, four miles away on Gernsback Ridge. I didn’t bother to put in a quarter.
“Can you teleport the four of us to Davy’s headquarters?” asked Modesty. “Maybe we could sneak around and find out something useful.”
“That’s not how teleportation works.” Pre sighed. “Teleportation breaks something down into its smallest parts—we call them ‘atoms’—and sends those atoms somewhere else across a great distance. But it doesn’t put the atoms back together. Anything you teleport is totally destroyed. That’s why the Garbage Magicians use it when they remove our trash from the curb each morning.”
“Where does the trash go?” asked Modesty.
“Pluto. We’re adding to its mass, trying to make it large enough that it becomes a planet again.”
I abandoned the binoculars.
“What about To Cast a Reflection?” I asked. “Is that something to do with mirrors?”
“Yes and no.” Pre sounded a little embarrassed. “It’s mainly used by kids in schoolyard fights, to bounce insults back at bullies. It’s also called the I Know You Are, But What Am I? spell. Most adults have forgotten the spell even exists. Every kid knows it, though.”
“And I suppose To View Things More Clearly is a spell for washing windows,” Modesty said glumly.
“No,” said Pre. “It’s a spell that helps you understand things better. Oddly enough, it was invented by a sorceress who was too lazy to wash her windows, but after she used the spell, she realized she didn’t have to wash them—she just asked the people across the street to paint their house a brighter color.”
“It’s a spell that makes you smarter?” Modesty’s voice had an edge to it that set off warning bells in my head.
“Well, sort of.” Pre sounded a little uncomfortable. “It would be more accurate to say the spell helps you make better use of the intelligence you’ve already got. It’s for those times when you have a problem to solve but maybe you’re tired or not feeling well and you’re not thinking as clearly as you usually do.”
“My father calls that coffee,” I said.
“That may be the scientifical name for it; I wouldn’t know. It only works for a minute or two, and then it can’t be used for another twenty-four hours. That’s to prevent people from taking unfair advantage during tests and trivia contests.”
Our phones said 1:19.
“Let me get this straight,” said Modesty. “If, four minutes from now, at one twenty-three, I play the Magic Bite for the incantation To View Things More Clearly, it will make me smarter?”
“If you insist on putting it that way. But just a little bit. And only for a minute or two.”
“What if Cal plays the Magic Bite for the spell called To Intensify an Enchantment?”
“That… might make you even smarter, or it might only make you mildly smarter but for a longer period of time. The effect of Intensify is hard to predict.”
“Either way, it might help me come up with an idea for stopping Elwood Davy from destroying Congroo. I say we try this.” Modesty looked from Pre to me.
“Why you?” I asked. “Why do you get to be the one who gets her brain boosted?”
“Because I’m the smartest to begin with.”
“Why would you think that?” I squawked.
“Because I came up with the idea, and nobody else did!”
Sometimes she was hard to argue with. Most of the time, actually.
“So right after you play the spell To Open a Door,” said Modesty, “and you get your friend back, then I press To View Things More Clearly and you press To Intensify an Enchantment, and I’ll become all brainy and figure out exactly what we’re going to say to Elwood Davy tomorrow. Agreed?”
“Uh—”
Modesty took my uh as a yes.
“All right. We have to be ready. Anything we should know?” She directed the question to Pre.
Pre looked around.
“Close the trapdoor to the stairs,” he said. “It’s the only door up here, so that will be the one that opens. Make sure you’re not standing on it when you play the spell. Unless you want to go flying over the barn.”
I undid the hook that latched the open door to the wall and lowered the wooden door until it was flush with the floor.
“Okay,” said Modesty. “Now we wait.”
I scrolled down to the door-opening spell.
“It only takes three or four seconds for a Magic Bite to play, so we’ve got plenty of time,” Modesty reminded us. “There’s no reason to get all tensed up about this.”
We got all tensed up about it. We stared at our phones, waiting for the time to advance, and I could tell Modesty was as nervous as I was. My palms got sweaty. Modesty’s hands shook a little. She kept flicking the scroll on her phone back and forth between To View Things More Clearly and To Walk with Stilts. After what seemed an hour, the phones finally announced 1:23.
I stabbed To Open a Door.
Blippity-blippity-blip.
The trapdoor flew open.
I ran to it eagerly and looked down. The stairs were empty.
“He isn’t there!” I cried. “It didn’t work! I’ll do it again—”
“No!” Pre’s hand shot out and stopped me from jabbing my phone. “Don’t repeat the spell. Your friend may not have tried his side of the spell yet. He has until the end of the minute. Just wait.”
We stood, staring expectantly at the hole in the floor.
“While we’re waiting,” said Modesty, “let’s try my thing. Scroll up to Intensify.”
I looked away from the trapdoor long enough to line up the intensification spell. Modesty poised her finger an inch above her phone screen.
DINK-bingle-BONK!
Pre’s crystal rang. He pulled it out of his sweatshirt, and the green balloon head of Hemi-Semi-Demi-Director Oöm Lout suddenly loomed over us.
“Apprentice Arrowshot!” Lout shouted. “Where are you? I’ve been trying to reach you all day. I told you to wait in the library. When we got there, the place was deserted! This is insubordination!”
Pre saluted, then stammered, “Hemi-Semi-Femi-uh-Demi-Director Lout. I’ve made it to the World of Science. My scientist friends and I are working on a way to stop the magic from draining out of Congroo. I’m sorry, but I don’t believe it will come back on its own. How many jars of dragon food were you able to transfer from Alkahest’s food bin?”
“Alkahest’s food bin?” Lout seemed taken aback. “None! That was just a ruse to keep you and your scientist friends where you were.”
“Didn’t work too well, did it?” Modesty muttered.
“Return to Congroo at once,” Lout roared. “The so-called magic drain is fake news. Global cooling is a myth. Colluding with scientists is treason. Listen to me carefully. Magic. Always. Goes. Away. That’s my motto. But it comes back! It’s a cycle! Return now, and we’ll go easy on you. Arrowshot—I have Master Index as my guest. Do you understand what that means?”
“You’re… taking him to dinner?”
“Idiot. It means I have him i
n my power. If you ever hope to see him again, you’ll do as I say!”
Oöm Lout’s face winked out. Pre dropped the crystal to his chest as if it had burned his fingers.
“This would be a great time to make me smarter,” Modesty announced. She punched her phone—blippity-brumpity-bork!—and jabbed me in the ribs with her elbow. I stopped staring at the open trapdoor and pressed my finger down on the intensification spell—blippity-brap!
I watched my phone as 1:23 became 1:24.
The trapdoor remained empty.
“I don’t feel any different,” said Modesty.
“You certainly don’t look any smarter,” agreed Pre.
The tower shook.
We all froze, as if our movements might have caused it.
Then the tower tilted, and we stumbled across the floor and hit the east wall of the cab. The tower lurched the other way, and the tilt straightened a bit. I scrambled uphill to the west side and looked out.
We were moving. My house was gliding by on our right. I jumped halfway down the top flight of the zigzag stairs and grabbed the railing as the tower swayed to the south. Modesty and Pre clambered down behind me.
The tower was walking.
Its four legs—each more than a hundred feet long and made of steel—were taking steps. The two legs on the left bent as if they had knees, and they strode forward together, and all the metal cross braces that linked them to the other legs stretched like rubber bands. Then the two legs on the right lifted off the ground and took their own step, stretching the cross braces again, and moved the tower forward another twenty feet. The zigzag stairway had folded itself upward to half its usual length so it could clear any obstacles. That made it a fifty-foot drop from the bottommost step. Nobody would be getting off.
“Back upstairs,” I ordered, and nobody had to be told twice.
“Is this something that Oöm Lout guy is doing to us?” I demanded as we jammed together at the forward-facing window. Pre looked confused.
“You mean the tower isn’t supposed to do this? This isn’t some scientifical thing?”
“The word is scientific, and no, our towers don’t do this!”
“I did this,” Modesty suddenly wailed. She was frowning at her phone. “I must have jogged the screen while Lout-face was talking. I hit the wrong Magic Bite. They were right next to each other.”
“What did you hit?”
“To Walk with Stilts. And then you intensified it.”
“That may be why,” said Pre breathlessly, “we’re told never to use Intensify without adult supervision.”
The tower swayed, and its feet, which were blobs of concrete that had been embedded in the ground, made horseshoe-like noises as they clopped across the asphalt of Route 9 and we entered the overflow parking field. For a one-hundred-foot tower wearing cement boots, it moved remarkably quietly. I looked back at my house. The lights were still out.
“I’m sure this is somehow my fault,” Pre whimpered. “Magic anywhere near me always goes awry.”
“The Magic Minute’s over,” I muttered. “Why are we still moving?”
“It must be like the coins after the coin-gathering spell,” said Modesty as the tower lurched to the right and she grabbed the windowsill. “They keep going until they reach their destination.”
“So what’s our destination?” I wondered, and it came out shriller than I meant it to.
We peered into the darkness ahead of us. The parking lot gave way to the wheat field. The tower leaned to one side to avoid stepping on the remains of the Fireball 50, then adjusted its path and continued on.
It was the same field Pre and I had walked across that afternoon. Meaning the Fireball 50 wasn’t the only unsightly monstrosity in it. Directly ahead of us, a line of latticework metal towers was silhouetted against the distant glow of downtown Disarray.
“Oh euphemera!” I said.
“What are those things?” asked Pre.
I gulped. I did a quick calculation in my head. Our fire tower was a hundred feet tall. The power lines… were stretched across our path about eighty feet above the ground.
“They’re called high-tension towers,” I said. “It’s too dark to see, but there are wires strung between them. The wires carry high-voltage electricity.”
“High-voltage electricity?”
“Lightning bolts! And we’re walking straight at ’em!”
CHAPTER 18
A WALK ON THE WILD SIDE
If we hit those wires—” I said, but didn’t finish. There was no point in stating the obvious. If we hit the wires and they broke, we would be electrocuted. If they didn’t break, the tower could easily topple backward and we’d fall a hundred feet.
“Should we jump?” asked Modesty as she leaned too far out the window. I grabbed her by a belt loop and hauled her back, just as the tower started to tilt again. We both staggered to the opposite wall. The rickety table, some loose Cheerios, and the carrot-crown box slid there with us. Preffy clung to one of the roof supports, lost his grip, and landed next to us.
The tower continued to tilt.
“Oh… em… gee!” Modesty screamed, and clutched the window frame. “Hold on! It’s… it’s doing the limbo!”
The fire tower bent backward until the floor of the cab went from horizontal to vertical. The east wall became our floor, and we had to catch ourselves before we fell out the window.
Modesty was right. The fire tower was doing the limbo. It had bent back almost double, and it was taking waddling baby steps to inch its way under the overhanging electric cables. In some places, the tower wasn’t quite low enough, and it brushed against the wires, strumming them as if they were guitar strings. They vibrated with weird twangs that sounded like calypso music.
Stray Cheerios rolled out the window and fell to the ground fifty feet below, like sweat dropping off an actual limbo dancer. Then the box containing the carrot crown tumbled end over end and followed the Cheerios. Modesty lunged and caught it, but too much of her went out the window, and I jumped and snagged her by the pants before she fell headfirst into the wheat field. Pre and I dragged her back. She clutched the dented box to her chest.
The tower jiggled to and fro and then, finally, returned to its original height after passing completely under the wires and finishing the dance. It started striding forward again. It seemed a little jauntier, as if it had won a contest.
“Where does it think it’s going?” muttered Modesty, as if she wanted to have a word with it.
We crowded together at the front window again. The tower picked its way through the trees at the edge of the field, then walked down an embankment to the railroad tracks that ran along the south side of Disarray. It began strolling along the tracks.
“If there’s no food for Phlogiston,” said Pre, seemingly oblivious to anything being out of the ordinary, “then Phloggie’s had her last meal. She’ll barely last another day!”
“That’s not going to happen,” Modesty assured him. “We’re going to work this out. No dragons are going to go extinct on my watch!”
“Yeah,” I agreed. “If my best friend is going to be marooned in the World of Magic, I want to make sure there’s some magic there for him to enjoy.”
“I’m sure there’s a perfectly good reason Drew missed the Magic Minute,” Modesty said.
“Yeah, it would be just like him to get distracted. We’ll try again at two thirty-four. At least we know he’s not in the hands of Oöm Lout. Lout said the library was deserted when they got there. Drew must have hid.”
I knew I might be kidding myself. I knew Lout could have Drew and might be torturing him to find out everything Drew knew about the World of Science. Or Drew might have been injured and was unable to use his phone. Or Drew was hiding out in the library and had gotten engrossed in a good book. If he was reading the Mary Potter septology, I’d probably never see him again.
I would retry the door-opening spell at 2:34.
We came up on the Disarray train sta
tion, which was the closest the tracks got to the center of town. The streetlamps beyond the station bathed Main Street in a silvery light, so anybody who happened to be around at one thirty in the morning would have no trouble noticing a fire tower out for a walk along the train tracks. We weren’t even leading a doghouse on a leash as a good cover story.
Fortunately, Main Street was deserted. As we strode past, the tower’s clunky feet were reflected in the windows of the hardware store, then the bank, then Baba Yaga’s Frozen Yogurt Shop, where something in the wavy glass distorted the feet and made them look like chicken legs. Then downtown was behind us, and we were following the tracks into the woods to the west.
In the distance, a train whistle wailed mournfully.
“What was that?” Pre asked.
“Uh…” said Modesty.
“Look,” I said after thinking about it for a moment. “It didn’t step on the farm stand; it limboed under the electric lines; I’m sure it’s going to know enough to get out of the way of an oncoming train!”
“You think?” said Modesty. “What if we meet it at Deadman’s Curve? The train’s hidden by the bend there. By the time you see it, it’s on you. There’s a reason it’s called Deadman’s Curve!”
“Yeah,” I said. “It was named after Albert Deadman. He used to own the farm where the curve is.”
“That’s not the point,” hollered Modesty. “We have to figure out how to control this thing. We can’t just let it kidnap us!”
“It must be able to hear the train coming,” I said as the whistle sounded again, noticeably louder.
“With what?” Modesty demanded. “Where are the ears on a fire tower? Maybe if we all throw our weight to one side, we can get it off the tracks!”
She threw herself against the wall on the right. A moment later, Pre and I did the same. The tower continued to stride purposefully down the tracks, with its two left feet dead center. A hit by a locomotive would shred it and send us falling to our deaths.
“Maybe we can control it by ESP,” Modesty said breathlessly. “Maybe if we all think, as hard as we can, ‘get off the tracks!’”
