by Jeff Rosen
“We were going to work on my profile,” Caley said, hoping to calm everyone down.
“I’ll help you.” Kip plunked himself down on the couch beside Caley. “Hey, Bee: New profile. Princess Caley Cross.” A blank profile page opened on the bee-screen with Caley’s name on it. “Take photo.”
The bee flashed and the next thing Caley knew, her blinded-looking picture appeared under her profile, with Kip hovering on the edge of the frame.
“Looks good,” Kip said with a nod. “What about your interests and hobbies?”
Caley thought a moment. She never had any time for interests or hobbies with the Gunch. Did zombie-raising count? Probably not, so she just shrugged.
“We can leave that empty for now.” Kip scanned the profile page. “Oh, here’s one,” he said blandly. “‘Relationship status.’ What’s yours? Do you only date Earth people, or do you also date people from other worlds—”
“It’s none of your business,” Neive cut in.
“It’s part of the profile,” said Kip, his face getting flushed. “Just trying to help.”
“She didn’t ask you to help.”
“She didn’t not ask.”
“I’m right here.” Caley stared back and forth at two like she was watching a Ping-Pong match.
Loud snoring was followed by groans.
“Lucas!”
Everyone turned to Lidia Vowell, who was sitting nearby with a few kids, and Lucas Mancini, who was fast asleep.
“He heard you arguing,” Lidia explained to Neive and Kip. “Conflict puts him to sleep.”
“He was right in the middle of a tapestry,” said one of the O’Toole twins, gesturing to a large tapestry on the wall in front of them.
Most rooms had a tapestry with nature scenes like the one in Caley’s bedroom. It turned out the images could also show you any story you thought up. The little worm-like fibers that made up the fabric wove out the scene, except the tapestries made the stories much more exciting, adding characters and plot twists. It was like being the director of your own movie. Lucas usually got to control the tapestry in the common room because he had a knack for creating epic adventures. Right now, the tapestry was frozen on the image of a prince (who looked a bit like Lucas but without the greenish hedge-hair) who was battling a bazkûl. The bazkûl had trapped a princess (who, Caley noticed, looked a bit like her) in a burning tower. The prince had been climbing a vine to get to the princess’s window (the vine also looked a bit like Lucas) but was now dangling from it, snoring loudly.
“Lucas!” The other O’Toole shook the snoring boy. “Wake up and finish the story.”
“He always does this,” Kip told Caley. “Last week he made a murder mystery, but just as the killer was about to be revealed, the detective began trimming a hedge and then fell asleep. I swear he’s one-third human, one-third plant, and one-third sloth.”
“That’s speciest,” said Lidia. “Sloths are often in torpor, which is different than sleep. Their metabolic rate and body temperature both drop, and brain activity is dramatically decreased, in order to conserve energy.”
“One-third human, one-third plant, one-third dramatic drop in brain activity.” Kip shrugged. “Works for me. Anyway, I just thought of a good story …”
Kip ambled up to the tapestry and started a story. It really wasn’t much of one, just a dog chasing a squirrel, although Kip did manage a plot twist when the dog used an exploding acorn to stun the squirrel.
“Stupid squirrel,” Kip said with a chuckle.
To Caley’s surprise, Neive stormed off. Kip started to follow her, but Neive shot him a sharp look, her nose twitching, and he froze, watching her go, his head cocked curiously.
CALEY caught up with Neive in the palace gardens. A few clouds skudded by in the cool autumn afternoon, and ballerina blossoms curtsied at the girls as they passed.
“What’s wrong?” Caley asked.
“I don’t know why you hang out with Kipley Gorsebrooke. I think he’s the densest boy in Erinath.”
“Is this about his story?”
Neive glanced around warily. Groundskeepers were trying to herd the hippo-hedge out of a flower bed. Neive motioned to a greenhouse that resembled a giant glass fish near the edge of the gardens, and the girls walked there in silence.
“This is Master Pim’s greenhouse,” said Neive, opening the door for Caley. “He’s the one who planted the gardens.”
“I thought they were a thousand years old.”
Neive shrugged by way of reply.
Caley looked around. Overhead, slits in the glass gently opened and closed, like gills, and a fine mist blew from tiny knotholes in the arched roots that spanned the roof. The greenhouse was full of the oddest plants and flowers. She began to sit on a wooden bench under a drooping willow with a curious crying face shape in the trunk.
“Maybe we better sit over there …” Neive led Caley to another bench farther away. “Can I tell you a secret?”
“Sure.”
“Promise you’ll never tell anyone?”
Caley nodded. “I promise.”
A row of flowers with petals that looked like earlobes craned toward them. Neive clapped her hands loudly, and the earlobes quickly closed.
“I’m a squirrel.”
“You mean … your baest?”
“Not exactly,” Neive said. “It’s complicated.”
“That’s cool.”
“The squirrels made me promise not to tell anyone.”
“I’ll never tell.” Caley shook her head solemnly.
“There’s something else. It’s hard to explain. My baest …” Neive gestured at herself, “is this.”
Caley regarded her, puzzled.
“I was born a squirrel. I took a human as my baest.”
“I … think I understand.”
“I don’t.” Neive shook her head. “I’ve never met anyone else like me.”
“What happened when you got it?”
Neive’s large oval eyes narrowed as she stared into space. “I don’t remember much. I was only two when they found me. They thought I was just some little kid who got lost in the Wandering Woods.”
“How do you know you were a squirrel?”
“The squirrels told me. They tell me lots of things.”
“Things like what?”
“Like … you were coming, and I needed to stay close to you. So I asked the duchess if I could be your maid.”
“Neive, if the squirrels made you promise, aren’t you going to get in trouble for telling me?”
Neive regarded Caley with an expression halfway between fear and defiance. “I don’t know, but I wanted to. I trust you. I don’t know why the squirrels told me to stick close to you,” concluded Neive, “but I’m glad I’m your maid.”
“But mostly my friend,” said Caley. “Right?” she added nervously.
Neive smiled. “I’ve never had a royal friend before.”
Caley smiled back. “I’ve never had a friend before.”
CHAPTER EIGHT
The Wandering Woods
“So, do you think you’re a new species of human, or do you think humans are a new species of squirrel?”
Caley regarded Neive intently in the mirror while Neive tried to brush her hair one morning.
Neive shrugged. “I wish I knew what to think—”
The brush snagged in Caley’s amulet. Neive started to take it off, and Caley slapped her hand away and clutched it.
“Sorry!” said Caley, looking just as shocked as Neive. “I don’t know why I did that! I don’t take it off.”
“Ever?” Neive asked.
Caley thought about this a moment and came to a surprising realization.
“I can never remember not wearing it.”
“Is that kind of … strange?”
Caley took the amulet off and laid it on the dressing table.
“There. No biggie.” Caley regarded the amulet. “I don’t know why I even wear it. It’s just an ugly old rock.”
Neive began to comb Caley’s hair again. “Where did it come from?”
“Who knows? I didn’t even know where I came from until, like, a week ago. I only just found out who my mother was …”
Caley’s eyes drifted over to the portrait of her mother.
“Do you think the amulet belonged to her?” Neive asked, following her gaze.
“I used to make believe it did. I have this dream where I’m living with my mother. I have a real home. But maybe I didn’t deserve one. Maybe that’s why she left.”
“Why would you say that?”
Caley looked at Neive in the mirror. Should she tell her?
“I bring dead things back to life.”
Neive stopped combing and stared, unblinking, back at Caley.
“Really?”
“Really. One time, I rescued a cricket from the pet store because it was going to be fed to a gecko. It was the only pet I ever had. Kind of fun, but, you know … a cricket … so not super engaging. The Gunch heard it chirping and flushed it down the toilet. That night a zombie cricket plague came out of the sewers and ate all her cashmere sweaters and skirts.”
“Is that one of them?” Neive nervously eyed the ex-cricket in the cage.
Caley nodded.
“Another time I brought home an ivy I grew at school for Nature Studies. The Gunch tossed it in the trash because, she said, ‘Plants need air and water, and who is going to pay for those?’ Next morning, the whole orphanage was covered in ivy. They had to call the fire department to use the Jaws of Life to get it off the Gunch. Turned out it was poison ivy too. They never completely got rid of it.”
“How do you know that was you?”
“I knew.” Caley nodded. “I can always tell when it’s going to happen because my hands start to burn.”
“Burn? Like … actual fire?”
“Sometimes. And my amulet buzzes.”
“Buzzes?”
“It vibrates—kind of like a warning, I guess. It’s why no one ever wanted to adopt me. Like when they sent me to the Muirs. They had a son. Asher. He tortured his pets, and he made me bury them in the backyard. I could hear them screaming at night. I told the Muirs, who got me put on meds—which made the screaming worse. One day when I was burying a cat it started to claw out of its little cat grave. Then all the other dead pets did too. And they kind of messed up Asher. I got sent back to the Gunch.”
Neive stopped brushing Caley’s hair with a thoughtful expression.
“It sounds like they were bad people and bad things happened to them, so maybe the reason you can raise the dead is more like a force for good. In a weird, totally gross way.”
“I never thought of it like that,” said Caley.
Neive started trying to comb Caley’s cobweb of curls again, but the brush snapped right in half.
“Don’t worry about it,” Caley told her. “I’ll just tie it back or something.”
“Use this …”
Neive lent Caley one of her barrettes, and the table the amulet was on suddenly toppled over. Before the girls could say anything, the rest of the furniture started shaking, and the portrait of Caley’s mother almost fell off the wall.
“The castle!” shouted Neive. “We have to get out!”
A siren began to sound. The girls ran into the heaving hallway. Panicked students were racing from their rooms.
“Follow me outside!” The duchess appeared and began herding everyone down a hallway. “Do not panic. And do not run. The aristocracy is never in a rush!”
Caley suddenly turned and raced back into her rooms.
“Where are you going?” called Neive.
“My amulet!”
Caley retrieved her amulet and set off again with Neive. Everyone else had disappeared. The hallway twisted into a pretzel, then began to bulge like a blocked hose. There was a feeling of intense pressure, like the moment before a hurricane hits.
Kip came sprinting toward them—he could sniff out wherever Caley was.
The hallway suddenly contracted. It was like being inside a burst balloon as a wild wind sent them flying out an archway that usually led to the academy courtyard.
Not this time.
Caley landed in some sort of woods. It was nearly dark, as if the sun had suddenly eclipsed. Withered trees reached into a purple sky, creaking and swaying in the wind like bones. A dense tangle of roots knotted the ground, slick with moss. Cold fog hung over everything. Caley’s attention was drawn to a stone arch carved with animals. It looked ancient and didn’t seem to lead anywhere.
Kip came hurtling through the arch from out of nowhere and landed face-first beside Caley.
“I’ve officially had it with the castle,” said Kip, swiping dirt from his face as he got to his feet.
Caley stared around the fog. “Where’s Neive?”
“Could be anywhere,” Kip answered, gaping around. He saw the arch, and his expression fell. “We have to leave. Now.”
“Why?”
“This is the Wandering Woods. If Neive’s here, she’ll have to find her own way out. And if anyone finds out we’ve been in here without permission, we’ll be kicked out of the academy.”
“But Neive might be lost. Or hurt. You said Gorsebrookes were born rebels.”
Kip frowned. “Maybe if I had her scent …”
“This!” Caley pulled the barrette from her hair. “Neive lent it to me.”
Kip sniffed the barrette. “A bit like … acorns.” He set off with Caley, then grabbed her arm. “You can’t come with me. The only time you’re allowed in the Wandering Woods is to make the Unbreakable Bond. And then the only way out is to find your baest, or—”
“Or you wander in here forever,” finished Caley. That’s what Neive had told her.
“You don’t have a baest.” Kip shook his head. “It’s too dangerous.”
“We have to find Neive,” Caley insisted, and she headed into the woods.
Kip shook his head ruefully and trudged after her.
“We’re going to miss dinner.”
Kip loped along, sniffing the air now and then. Nothing moved. Caley never imagined woods could be so still, so lifeless. It felt like a wax museum. And she had the feeling that while she hunted for Neive, something was hunting her.
“Did you hear that?” She stopped and looked around.
Kip turned to her blankly.
“Screams.”
“What kind of screams?”
Caley knew the kind. She had been hearing them her whole life: the screams of dead animals. She pointed to a looming structure just visible through fog-shrouded woods. It was built out of the bone-trees, gnarled together. It reminded Caley of skeletons clutching at each other. The screams were coming from inside.
“What do you think that is?” Caley asked.
Kip regarded the structure unhappily. “Don’t know. Don’t want to know.”
Caley set off toward it.
“We’re not seriously going in there?” said Kip, looking mortified.
When they got to the structure, Kip motioned to a gap in the bone-trees, near the ground. They wriggled through. What they saw inside made the hair on the back of Caley’s neck stand up. In the middle of a vast empty space stood a colossal machine. Enormous pistons and gears shook the earth. The heat coming off it made Caley’s and Kip’s faces shine with sweat. Ghostly, contorted creatures writhed above the machine in a dark vortex, being drawn relentlessly into it through a huge iron funnel.
“What are those?” Caley asked.
“Baests,” said Kip, shaking his head in disbelief. “Of wolves, if I had to guess.”
The machine shuddered, and from one end something rolled out, like a car on an assembly line. It was about the size and shape of a wolf, but its fur was made of needles and it had steel claws and teeth. Caley stared at the thing with a jolt of recognition. The wolf’s yellow eyes blinked open, staring around in vacant ferocity, and then it let out a terrible cry, like an animal being born in pain.
“I’ve seen that thing before,” said Caley, turning to Kip.
He was gone.
Caley wriggled out of the structure and stared around. To her horror, she saw several mechanical wolves chasing Kip. His foot snagged on a root, and he fell with a cry. The wolves circled, their blade-like fangs bared.
Before she could think what to do, Caley ran toward Kip, and as she ran, something came at her from the depths of the dark woods—hurtling at inconceivable speed. It had no form. She felt it more than saw it. It was the feeling you get the second before you wake up from a nightmare: shapeless dread and doom descending. The instant it touched her she felt unbearable pain, like she had fallen into a frying pan.
Then everything went black.
Caley’s breath returned to her with a juddering gasp, as if she had been drowned, and her eyes jolted open. The pain was gone except for a scorched sensation, like a bomb had gone off inside her. She stood in the middle of a charred crater like a meteor had landed. The wolves were incinerated into shadows, and acrid metallic ash clung to everything. Kip lay nearby. He sat up shakily, staring around in a vacant daze.
“What … happened?”
He wiped some burnt metal off his torn clothes, sniffed the air, and turned toward the forest.
Caley saw the tip of a squirrel tail disappear behind a tree.
Kip got to his feet and grabbed his ankle, groaning. “Can we please get out of here now?”
Caley began to help him toward the stone arch in the distance.
“WERE you attacked by a wolf, dear boy?”
Doctor Lemenecky examined Kip in the infirmary while Caley looked on. His glowing blue beard wriggled around his face like a wall of worms, and he started coughing so violently he almost fell over.
“Maybe you should see a doctor … Doctor,” Kip said nervously.
“Everything’s perfect. Practically …” Lemenecky responded.
He opened a medical bag and pulled out what looked like a large mechanical fish with a mouthful of titanium teeth. The teeth began rotating and roaring around like a chainsaw.
“My ankle’s probably only broken,” sputtered Kip. “I don’t think it needs to actually come off!”
Lemenecky hacked off part of his beard with the chainsaw-fish, and his beard seemed to settle down.