by Jack Patton
Max looked to the horizon. Distant winged shapes were coming into view.
“General!” he yelled at the top of his voice, hoping he was close enough for Barton to hear.
Barton stopped. “Max? Is that you? Excellent. I was worried you wouldn’t make it.”
“General, get to cover. It’s an air raid. The birds are attacking!”
“What?” Barton looked up, just in time to see the first of the birds come swooping over the treetops.
Behind him, two enormous stag beetle bodyguards leaped into action. One of them stood bravely in front of Barton, protecting him with his whole body, while the other flew up into the air to meet the bird attack. The Elite Bee Guard buzzed with one voice, swarming in a cloud above their general.
“Battle Bugs!” bellowed Barton. “Battle stations!”
The hornets, already in the air for their stunt-flying exercises, shot up to engage the birds. Several divisions of wasps followed them.
The hornet squadron crashed through the birds’ attack path. The birds had size on their side, but the hornets had numbers. They jabbed their stingers at the birds from all sides, and the birds couldn’t defend themselves. Soon, injured birds were retreating …
A small group of birds made it through the hornet barrage.
“Those birds are bee-eaters,” Max told Alexis. “We have to send the Elite Bee Guard back to the ground.”
Max scrambled down from Spike’s back and onto Alexis’s. Boy and butterfly soared up into the chaos of the air fight.
With birds and insects screaming past overhead in all directions, it was hard to tell what was going on. Max saw Buzz flying circles around a furious bee-eater and a bird snatch a wasp out of the sky.
“I have to find Barton,” he said to himself.
He and Alexis flew across to where the bees had been flying moments before.
The group of birds who had made it this far was making short work of Barton’s Elite Bee Guard, just as Max had feared. They swept in, attacked, and zoomed back up into the sky before turning around for another run.
“Land!” Max shouted to the remaining bees. “You’ve got to get out of the air.”
“We’ll be helpless on the ground,” a bee warrior shouted angrily.
“No you won’t. They only catch prey that’s flying. If you land, they’ll leave you alone.”
The Elite Bee Guard ducked out of the fight, settling down on the ground among the other bugs.
Max finally saw Barton himself, standing bravely between his two stag beetle bodyguards. Three bee-eaters were heading straight for him.
“The general’s open to attack,” he told Alexis. “Those bees were meant to be his air cover, and now they’re gone.”
“Let’s rush the birds!” Alexis said. “I’m a Battle Bug. My general needs me.”
The butterfly’s bravery gave Max a lump in his throat.
“It wouldn’t help,” he said quietly. “We can’t reach Barton in time. We’re too far away.”
I’m going to lose for the first time ever, he thought.
As if to prove him right, a familiar tugging feeling began in his pocket. He knew what it was. The magnifying glass was trying to pull him away from Bug Island, as it always did when his work here was done.
“That can’t be it!” he yelled. “I’m not finished here … There has to be more I can do!”
He angrily pulled the magnifying glass out. It was glowing like the pages of the book did. As the sunlight struck the lens, a beam of concentrated light sprang from the other side. It was so bright he could barely look at it.
Max tilted the beam around, full of a sense of wonder. How could this be happening? No ordinary magnifying glass could focus the sun’s rays into a beam that bright. It just wasn’t possible.
But then, this was no ordinary magnifying glass.
“It’s not calling me back home at all,” he whispered. “It’s showing me the answer.”
The three bee-eater birds were seconds away from reaching Barton. Max carefully angled the dazzling beam of light until it shone right into the eyes of the oncoming birds.
Suddenly, they screeched in terror. “I’m blinded!” yelled one, flying away on a crazy zigzag course.
“What is that light?” another howled before flapping away in fear.
The third bird screeched and dive-bombed, disappearing into nearby trees.
“That was amazing!” Alexis said in awe.
“Watch this!” Max shone the beam up into the sky, where the birds and hornets were still fighting a desperate battle.
The flickering, blinding light sent the remaining birds into a total panic. They abandoned the fight and fled. Their terrified screeches echoed all around the forest, and were still ringing in the distance long after the last of them was gone.
As Max laughed and watched them fly away, he suddenly remembered seeing a TV commercial for shiny reflective tape streamers—bird scarers.
Birds are frightened of flashing lights, he thought. I should have remembered sooner!
* * *
It was a very relieved Barton who climbed to the top of the hill and delivered his speech. This time, he got to finish it.
Max stood by his side as the parade went by after he was done speaking. As the pair of them watched wave after wave of proud fighting bugs troop past, antennae and stingers held high, Max felt more confident than ever.
“We will win this war, no matter what the reptiles throw at us,” Barton said.
“I was just thinking the same thing,” Max said. “Oops. My magnifying glass is pulling again. This time it really means it.”
Barton laughed. “Get some rest. We’ll take it from here.”
The strange forces of the Encyclopedia pulled Max back up into the sky and into his own world again. Max couldn’t wait to try out the idea he’d had on Bug Island.
He pushed open the shed door. There was Grandpa Mike, standing by the blueberry patch with an amused look on his face.
“Now, what were you up to in there?”
“Oh, bug stuff,” Max said lightly. “Grandpa, I think I’ve figured out how to solve the bird problem.”
Grandpa Mike raised an eyebrow. “Oh?”
Later that afternoon, Max stood with his hands on his hips, proudly watching his brand-new reflective streamers shimmering in the sun. The greedy birds watched him from far off in the sky, too scared of the flickering lights to come any closer.
“What do you think?” he asked.
“Very clever,” Grandpa Mike said. “Now that the berries are safe, let’s go watch that bug documentary you were telling me so much about.”
Max grinned. TV bugs weren’t quite as cool as watching the Battle Bugs in action, but they’d have to do for now!
Queen Alexandra’s birdwing butterfly
The Queen Alexandra’s birdwing is an impressive and brightly colored butterfly. It is the largest in the world, with a wingspan of up to eleven inches. It lives exclusively in northeastern Papua New Guinea. This rare, endangered species is found in a thin strip of low-lying coastal rain forest, and nowhere else.
Although it had previously been known to local inhabitants, the butterfly was given its current name by Europeans in the early twentieth century. It was named Alexandra after Alexandra of Denmark.
The birdwing exhibits strong sexual dimorphism, which means that the male and female of the species look very different. The female is by far the larger, but the male is much more colorful. The female is mostly a dark brown color, with a yellow body, and small, yellow-white triangles on her wings. The male has striking blue-green wings, with dark black stripes and a bright yellow abdomen.
Deathwatch beetle
The deathwatch is a type of wood-boring beetle that is native to northern Europe, but is also sometimes found in North America. Because young larvae of the species bore into dead, dry wood, they can be unwittingly transported from one place to another, and become serious pests.
These beetles ar
e known for the noises they make. Once inside a piece of timber, they bash their heads against the wood to create their signature tapping sound. If you live in a house with this so-called “woodworm,” you may have experienced this annoying sound while trying to fall asleep—deathwatch beetles tend to be most active during the night.
Sound is a great way to communicate if you live in complete darkness like the deathwatch. However, the regular tapping gave rise to superstitions about the insects. Some people used to believe that the beetles were a bad omen, and that the sound they emitted was a countdown to death! But now we know the tapping noise the beetles make is just to attract potential mates.
Max landed with a thud. His sneakers crunched on gritty, sloping rock and skidded out from under him. With a yell, he fell on his backside and slid even farther down the slope. With one flailing hand he caught hold of a rock and hung on to it until he’d stopped sliding.
“Ouch,” he yelled as he came to a bumpy halt.
He struggled to his feet and dusted himself off. It was always a bit of a bumpy landing on Bug Island, but this time was even harder. The rocky slopes of Fang Mountain were not exactly a feather bed.
Max looked out at the amazing view over Bug Island. In the dim light of the morning, everything was calm and quiet. He listened for the telltale sound of crickets and other bugs, but he couldn’t hear a thing.
The silence gave him a creepy feeling, as if he’d arrived too late for some important battle.
“Weird,” Max whispered to himself. Part of him was relieved. At least he wasn’t in the middle of a vicious reptile assault. The recent bird raid was still fresh in his memory. Bee-eaters loaded with flying Draco lizard troops had almost overwhelmed the Battle Bugs, and only Max’s quick actions had saved the day.
“Better make my way to Bug Camp,” Max said to himself. “They’ll know what’s going on.” He looked down and saw the forest stretching out below him. Farther off to the south, he could make out the curve of the bay, and then the forest, where the bugs usually lived.
The only way to reach the forest was to descend the slopes of Fang Mountain, and Max didn’t have a bug’s advantages when it came to climbing. He picked his way down the gentler slopes easily enough, but the steeper drops were more treacherous. He hunkered down on his hands and knees, spreading his weight out as evenly as he could so he wouldn’t fall.
Max was soon sweating from the effort of the climb, and the forest didn’t seem to be getting any nearer. What he needed was a lift from a flying friend, like Buzz the hornet air ace, or even Alexis the giant butterfly.
He came to a halt on a rocky ledge and peered over the side. Then, he saw something that would help him: hanging vines dangling downward, looking as thick as rope.
“That’s more like it.” Max grinned. “Time to take a shortcut!”
Max took hold of a length of vine and braced his feet against the rock face. He remembered abseiling the indoor climbing wall with his Scout troop, and gently lowered himself down the rock wall, taking care to keep a good grip on the vine.
He glanced down as he climbed. The ground looked very far away, and the breeze made him swing in the air. Below, he spotted a narrow rock ledge with a little tree sprouting from the cliff just above. From there he might be able to make his way down to the forest.
However, as he pushed off the rock face with his legs, the vine made an ominous creaking noise. Then came a cracking, splitting sound.
“Uh-oh,” Max cried. “I’m only halfway down!”
He frantically tried to climb down faster, but it was too late. The vine broke free from the side of the rock with a dry rattle of falling earth.
“Argh!” Max cried as he fell. In an instant he tumbled through the air and crashed through the branches of the little tree below. Before he could get his bearings, the branches split, and he went crashing to the rock ledge. The vine rope landed on top of him in a loose heap.
“Owww,” he yelled for the second time this morning. “What’s with today?”
He pulled himself upright again, wincing. The narrow ledge had even less room to move than he’d had before, and although he’d thought it might be easier to reach the forest from here, the sheer drop below made his heart lurch. He was stuck, he realized, with no way down and no way back up.
“Looks like you’re trapped, strange bug,” hissed a sinister voice from behind him.
Max spun around, his heart thumping in his chest.
“What the—” he began. But as he looked, all he could see was the tree he’d crashed through and the rocky mountain face. He narrowed his eyes and peered closer. He could’ve sworn the voice had come from near the tree.
“Over here,” he heard the voice tease. “Or am I over here … ?”
Text copyright © 2016 by Hothouse Fiction.
Cover and interior art copyright © 2016 Scholastic Inc.
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First printing 2016
e-ISBN 978-0-545-94516-5
Cover art by Brett Bean
Cover design by Phil Falco & Ellen Duda
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