by Sheila Grau
“I’ll be checking your progress daily,” Professor Murphy said.
We spent the class period taking notes on how to do our tasks. After class, as we left, I overheard Rufus talking to Janet. “This is full lunar, man,” he said. “I feel like I’m gonna morph and eat someone. How am I gonna get recruited if Dr. Critchlore doesn’t get this school together? A fashion show? You have got to be kidding me.”
“Relax, Rufus,” Janet said, laughing. “Just think how great this will look on your transcript—an A in Fashion Show.”
“You laugh, but this is serious. I’ve always been a lock for a major EO. If this school continues to tank, I’ll be lucky if I’m picked up by some loser EO near Skelterdam.”
Janet patted his arm with a sad face that made me want to hug her.
I went to find Syke for free period. As I veered around the fountain in front of the castle, I heard a roar coming from the hedge maze. I was used to hearing sounds coming from the maze, usually cries of frustration. I don’t think I’d ever heard a roar, though, so I went to investigate.
Jake, the stable master, stood near the entrance, an empty dragon collar dangling from one hand, a bloody sack in the other.
“Hi, Jake,” I said. “Did you lose something?”
“Hi, Higgins,” he said. He went back to staring at the maze entrance. Jake had a very short attention span because of the many concussions he’d suffered in his years of caring for dangerous animals. He was also scarred with burns across his face and hands.
“Jake?” I said.
He looked at me. “Hi, Higgins.”
I nodded to the collar. “Is there a dragon loose in the maze?”
“I was told to bring Plopper over, with his wings bound so he couldn’t fly out. Plopper don’t like to have his wings bound. He’s real mad.”
We heard another roar, proving Jake’s point. A blast of fire shot up from the middle of the maze, followed by a human scream.
Great screaming banshees!
“There’s someone in there with him!” I cried.
Who would be dumb enough to enter a maze with an angry dragon?
Just like smooth seas do not make skillful sailors, soft training methods don’t make strong minions.
—DR. PRAVUS, EXPLAINING HIS MINION-TRAINING PHILOSOPHY
“Jake!” I screamed. “You’ve got to get Plopper out of there!”
Jake nodded and ran into the maze, blowing a whistle that he used to call the wyverns to eat. “Come here, Binky!”
“It’s Plopper!” I yelled at him.
“Right!” he yelled back.
I pulled out my DPS and sent a quick alert to Mrs. Gomes. A thump shook the leaves on the hedge, followed by another scream. Smoke rose from inside.
Jake stumbled back out of the maze. “Higgins, how’d you get to the middle so fast?” He looked around. “Oh. This ain’t the middle.”
“Come on,” I said, answering my own question about who was stupid enough to go into a maze with an angry dragon. “I’ll get you to Plopper, and you can unbind him so he can get out.”
“Good idea.”
I raced down the narrow pathways of the maze, Jake following. The maze was huge, and Tootles used lots of tricks to make it difficult. There were loops, one-way doors, and false exits. Some of the hedges were realistic fakes, hiding secret passages.
I ran forward, took the first left, then a right, jumping around Plopper’s little land mines as I went. Suddenly, my leg hit something and I fell forward, hard.
I looked back and saw that I’d stumbled over a trip wire, which had lifted a section of fake hedge. A mass of spiders streamed out of the gap, each as big as my hand. I screamed. Jake bounded between the spiders and me, and threw something bloody to the ground in front of them. The spiders went right for it.
“What’s going on?” I asked as Jake lifted me up and away. There was no way Tootles would do that to a kid. Frustrate us with a difficult maze, yes. Frighten us with spiders? No way.
“Vodum said some guy wanted to see if the maze would make a good training arena. A way to weed out the weak.”
Vodum? “What guy?”
“A guy who’s looking to take Dr. Critchlore’s place as headmaster.”
Pravus? This did seem like something he’d do to kids.
We raced through a curving bit and reached a secret latch that opened a trick door. Once through, we sprinted forward. Screams filled the air. I raced around a corner, only to come face-to-face with a swamp creature, who hissed at me.
More screams rang out. This time they were mine. I turned around, crashing into Jake, and we ran. I lost track of where I was; I just took turn after turn to get away from frog face.
We’d gone to the far side and then back toward the middle, dodging tricks and traps as we went. A giant, automatic fist tried to knock us down. We had to jump over some black tar that would have held our feet tight. I was losing my breath, and my legs felt weak, but raging panic helped keep me going.
Fires dotted the hedges and the air turned smoky. As we rounded a corner, one whole side had flames licking out of the middle in a straight line, about waist high. The green hedge crackled with anger.
I saw a scaly, spiked tail swish around a corner. I skidded to a halt and turned around to let Jake go ahead, but guess what. No Jake.
I noticed scaffolding in the center of the maze. Two men were watching Plopper’s progress, and the person he was chasing.
“Hey!” I yelled. One of them was Professor Vodum. “He’ll destroy the maze!”
“Runt!” Professor Vodum yelled. “Get out of there! You’ll ruin the test!”
I was about to ask what was going on when I noticed that Plopper had turned around and was coming straight for me.
Plopper was a small dragon, a little bigger than a unicorn. Like most dragons, he could move very quickly in the open, but his body had trouble with the tight turns of the maze. He made up for his lack of speed in the maze with the ability to chase me down with a ball of fire.
He roared. I got one look at his pre-fireball-spitting face and knew I had to get out of the way, fast. I ducked around a corner and watched the ball of fire hit the hedge behind me. Plopper didn’t follow, so I edged back and peeked around the corner.
Plopper had turned away from me. I noticed another form curled into a ball farther up the path, wearing a light green second-year jacket. Plopper thumped right by him, which surprised me because I’d never seen the “curl up in a ball and hope nobody notices you” technique work before. I ran over and put a hand on his shoulder.
He looked up, trembling. “Vodum said that man wanted to see how fast I could reach the center, and then they sent the dragon after me!”
“Come on. We’ve gotta get out of here,” I said, pulling him up. We couldn’t go back—the whole pathway was on fire. We had to get away from the flames, which were everywhere now.
Plopper was panicking too. I heard his frantic roars. This might sound crazy, but I ran toward them. I couldn’t let him be trapped in here with his wings bound, unable to get away from the fires he’d started.
“What are you doing?” Second-year said.
“Up may be the only way out,” I said.
We ran into Plopper as he reached a dead end. He spun around, eyes wide with panic. I approached him, arms up.
“It’s okay, boy,” I said. Second-year clung to my back like a tick. I could feel his hands burrowing into my jacket, using me as a shield. “Let’s get you out of here.”
Plopper clawed at the ground with his front foot.
I’d had a lot more confidence for this sort of thing back when I thought I was a werewolf. Knowing I was human made me realize how fragile I was. How easily the dragon could rip me to shreds.
“C’mon, Plopper.” I slowly stepped toward him. He huddled back into the dead end, head turning from side to side, looking for an escape. He was as afraid as we were.
“Easy, now.” I was within reach. “Let me unhook your h
arness.”
I made the clicking noises I’d heard Jake make when leading the dragons out of their stalls. I slipped past his head, hot nostril air blowing out at me. I reached up with one hand and undid the belt-like latch of the thick leather strap that held down his wings. My other hand scratched him behind the ear, because I knew he liked that.
The belt swung free. I jumped on his back, Second-year swinging up behind me.
“Up, up!” I yelled, squeezing Plopper with my legs. He took a few fast steps, but couldn’t get his wings wide enough for liftoff. He ran straight for a hedge wall, climbed up it enough to get his wings clear, and we rose.
Once in the air, Plopper circled until he spotted Jake holding a bloody rabbit, then swooped right for him. He landed and nuzzled into Jake, clearly distraught and needing comfort. Second-year and I swung down.
I looked up and saw Mrs. Gomes riding Puddles. Puddles did his name proud, and the fires were extinguished as he peed on them. Tootles ran up, his white hair escaping from his ponytail as he put his hands to his head in shock and anger. “My hedges! What’s happened to my hedges?”
Vodum and his guest had disappeared. I headed for the castle to tell Dr. Critchlore about this insanity.
Vodum’s desk was empty, so I knocked on Dr. Critchlore’s open door and said, “Excuse me, Dr. Critchlore?”
Dr. Critchlore sat behind his giant desk. He looked up. “Vodum!” he screamed. “I told you I’m not to be disturbed!”
“He’s not there,” I said. “In fact, he nearly destroyed the hedge maze by—”
At that moment, Vodum walked in, shoving me out of the way.
“Dr. Critchlore,” he said, “your eleven fifteen appointment is here.” He turned to whisper in my ear. “Tattletale.”
“My what?” Dr. Critchlore asked.
“Your eleven fifteen appointment with Mr. Peabody,” Vodum said. “The family wants to make sure they have a replacement in case they decide to get rid of you with a vote of no confidence. Mr. Peabody represents a candidate who has a few questions about operations.”
“Operations?” I asked.
“He wants to see if the grounds are compatible with what his boss has in mind—”
“And that involves a dragon chasing a second-year through a hedge maze?” I asked.
“Well, since we don’t have a detention pit, Mr. Peabody was checking out other possible opportunities for student discipline.”
“Tell him I’m busy,” Dr. Critchlore said.
“You have to see him,” Vodum replied. “The school charter says that if the family calls for a vote of no confidence in the leadership—”
Dr. Critchlore slammed down his pen. “Fine. I’ll meet with him. Harris, get back to class. Vodum, you are the worst secretary I’ve ever had, and that includes the one who poisoned me. Send the man in and get me some coffee.”
“I’m on a break.”
Mr. Peabody was a large man, wearing an ill-fitting suit that was too tight for his muscular frame. Vodum only came up to the man’s broad shoulders.
He sat down opposite Dr. Critchlore and opened his notebook. “My boss would like to know if you’ve ranked your students based on their ability to tolerate pain,” he said.
I tiptoed out, right behind Vodum, who left the door open and stood next to it, listening in.
Dragons will not be used for student discipline without the prior approval of the security team.
—ALL-POINTS SAFETY BULLETIN NO. 58, FROM MRS. GOMES
At lunch I tried to recruit some helpers for my gift bag project.
“I’m helping Meztli with the scenery,” Eloni said, flexing his large biceps. “That little dude is so cool. He told me in his country there’s a monster called a Cherufe that lives in the molten lava of volcanoes and makes the earth shake when he’s angry. So awesome!”
Frankie was helping Mistress Moira. Darthin had been snagged by an upperclassman to help with logistics. Syke was supposed to be practicing with the girls, but instead, she was helping Tootles mend his torched maze. That left only Boris, so the two of us went to find Pismo, who was returning from the lake.
“Sure, I’ll help,” he said, surprising me with his quick response. “A fashion show project will get me out of PE. Since the zombies left, I’m the only one in Coach Foley’s class, and I do not need one-on-one attention from that psycho.”
“Great,” I said. We headed back to the castle through the Memorial Courtyard. “I have a tackle three-ball game this afternoon at the Pravus Academy, so we can have our first meeting after dinner.”
“You’re going to the Pravus Academy? Today?” Pismo asked.
“Yes. Why?”
“I wouldn’t go there if you paid me my weight in pearls.”
“Why not?” Boris asked.
Pismo sighed. “The Pravus Academy isn’t like this school. I was there for three months, and if my dad was trying to show me what jail would be like, it worked.”
“What do you mean?” I asked.
“Dr. Pravus doesn’t treat his minions like we’re treated here,” Pismo went on as we walked back to the castle. “He has a detention pit, and sometimes they forget that you’re down there.
“He makes scrawny kids fight huge monsters, and they get crushed, and everyone thinks it’s funny. ‘We must weed out the weak,’ he says. ‘If you’re not strong enough to take it, then you shouldn’t be here.’ He is entirely without compassion, and so are his minions.”
The Critchlore family wanted Pravus to run this school. And now his man was checking to see if our benign hedge maze could be turned into a trial of terrors. Dr. Critchlore had to stop him. He had to convince the EO Council, and his own family, that Pravus shouldn’t run our school.
But right now, all everyone could see was that the Pravus Academy was soaring, and Dr. Critchlore’s School was floundering. It looked like the only people against a Pravus takeover would be us kids, and nobody cared what we thought.
“Be careful, guys,” Pismo said. “They won’t ease up, even if they’re winning thirty to zero. Once they have a lead, Pravus tells his athletes to play dirty, just to see what they can get away with.
“We should probably meet in the morning,” Pismo added. “You’re going to need time to recover.”
As nervous as I was after Pismo’s little pep talk, I was still excited to go to the Pravus Academy for the first time.
I’d seen the Pravus Academy campus in ads, and it looked like a prison. Most of the buildings were massive concrete structures with precise angles and rough textures. Someone told me it was the Brutalist style of architecture, and I thought that was a good name for it. Cold and brutal. By contrast, Dr. Critchlore’s School was picturesque and tree-filled. I shuddered to think of Pravus taking over my school and imposing his harsh environment on us.
I sat next to Syke on the bus and told her what Pismo had said about Pravus’s teams playing dirty.
“Maybe we should play Frankie,” she said.
Frankie, sitting in front of us, turned around to join our conversation. “Daddy—er—Dr. Frankenhammer says I can’t play.”
“We’d have to forfeit if they found out he’s enhanced,” I said. “The rules say that genetically modified individuals can only play if the other team gives permission.”
“Don’t you want to play?” Syke asked Frankie. She flipped her hair out of her face, and I noticed for the first time that it wasn’t tied back in a ponytail. Her lips were shiny, and she smelled nice too. She put her hand on Frankie’s arm, but he pulled it away.
“I’d love to play,” he said. “I can hit an imp at three hundred feet.”
That was true; he’d done it on a dare once, after Uhoh had taken one of our balls and was using it to bowl down unsuspecting first-years. Uhoh had just knocked a kid into a puddle and was laughing hysterically when Frankie’s hit nailed him in the back. It was hilarious.
“You should put your hair back, so it doesn’t get in your face,” Frankie said.
“Maybe we’ll see Sara,” I said, mostly to change the subject. “Maybe I can rescue her from Dr. Pravus.”
“Not likely,” Syke said. “Don’t you think it’s weird that nobody knows he has them? I mean, if Critchlore had a beast that powerful, he’d be advertising it and waiting for the EOs to start a bidding war. Pravus is up to something with them. They’re probably hidden away.”
It made me sad to think of Sara locked away, far from the trees she loved.
We approached an intimidating wrought-iron gate that was nearly two stories high. A pair of giant gorillas flanked the gate, and by giant I don’t mean really big, I mean GIANT. They each stood taller than the gate.
No wonder everyone wanted to recruit Pravus’s minions. They were completely terrifying.
After unloading our gear, Professor Zaida told us to head for the field and warm up while she found the other coach. “Should have been here to greet us,” she said, shaking her head.
I walked with Syke and Frankie, following the rest of the team down a road scarred with potholes. We passed windowless barracks and listened to the muffled screeches and howls of minions fighting to get out. A training arena pitted four human kids against a giant swamp creature. Two kids lay crumpled on the ground, out cold.
Lots of monsters, but no sign of a Girl Explorer anywhere.
Near the field were some empty buildings that looked like practice siege targets. Some of the concrete structures had been reduced to rubble; others were empty shell buildings with metal supporting rods sticking out of the blasted-off tops. It was like walking through a war zone.
Suddenly, a giant gorilla stomped out from behind a building and blocked our way. I jumped back, my heart rate racing like a scared bunny.
He huffed, pounded his chest, and roared. He had the biggest teeth I’d seen since last winter, when I’d been on dragon flossing duty.
We huddled together, scared out of our minds.
“Frankie, go shove it off,” I said.