by Sheila Grau
“No, thank you,” he said. “Let’s just wait for Professor Zaida.”
The gorilla charged right at us, and we screamed. He stopped before he touched us, and backed up, as if he’d made his point. This was his road.
“Don’t look it in the eye,” Eloni whispered. “That makes them crazy.”
“Minions can’t attack another school’s minions. It’s in the Directives,” I said.
“Tell that to him,” Eloni said. “Go on, we’ll wait here.”
Syke rolled her eyes and then strode toward the beast.
“Syke, don’t!” I called, but she just waved her hand at me. Looking at her, with her hair neatly brushed, and her face all glowy, it hit me. She had tried to look pretty for Frankie, and Frankie hadn’t noticed. And now Syke was mad. She was ready to take out her anger on that gorilla. I kind of felt sorry for the gorilla.
“Move it, fuzzball,” she said, standing right below him with her hands on her hips.
The gorilla roared and pounded his chest.
“I said, MOVE IT!” Syke pointed toward the side of the road. He didn’t move. She walked forward and pushed his foot. He jumped back. He seemed shocked, as if nobody had ever confronted him before.
In a swift movement, he reached forward and swept up Syke in his paw. He brought her close to his face and made a sound like a soft grunt. He tilted his head sideways to get a look at her from that angle. I knew that look. It was the “Wow, you’re kind of cute” head tilt. Syke didn’t struggle; she gritted her teeth and said, very calmly, “Put me down. Now.”
The gorilla put her down. He slowly backed away, nestling himself between two buildings, never taking his eyes off Syke.
Syke turned and waved us forward. “C’mon, let’s go.”
Everyone passed her, heading for the field.
“Did you see that, Frankie?” I said. “Syke’s beauty tamed a wild beast.”
Syke smiled, but then Frankie said, “You are one tough dude,” and the smile faded.
It was the last smiling any of us did that afternoon. The game was a disaster. The Pravus team played dirty from the first pitch, which nailed me in the head. Their tacklers piled on our runners, even after the play had ended. And I’m pretty sure one of them was at least part swamp monster, and monsters aren’t allowed to play unless they can maintain their human form. This guy had a green complexion (“he’s just a little ill”), webbed hands (“those are gloves”), and was stronger than an ogre (“good diet and exercise”). Twice he picked up Boris and, instead of tackling him, threw him across the field and back into the dugout.
The only one of us who could match these guys was Eloni, but here’s the thing about Eloni—he’s the happiest guy I know, with a huge smile that could light up a moonless night, and a booming laugh that makes everything more fun. He could get creamed by a fair hit, and he’d just laugh and tell his tackler, “Great hit.” But if someone plays dirty against him, or, worse, cheap-shots his teammates, it’s good-bye joyous affection of the islanders, and hello angry volcano god.
Our angry volcano god was ejected in the first inning for head-butting their first bagman, who’d fouled Boris after Eloni had warned him to cut it out. Without Eloni, we were doomed.
And then Professor Zaida was ejected when she ran onto the field to pry some Pravus kids off Boris while screaming, “Leave my kids alone!” That left Frankie to be our coach.
Poor Frankie. He watched, twitching with the desire to jump in and help us, but held back by the inner voice of Dr. Frankenhammer telling him he couldn’t. It was painful to watch him struggle on the sideline, holding his head to keep it from popping off. The other team would do mean things just to laugh at Frankie’s spastic response.
We rode the bus home in silence, bruised and battered.
“I really don’t think it should be legal to sit on someone’s face when they’re on the bottom of a pileup,” Boris said, holding an ice pack to his chin.
I can’t express how much we hated the Pravus team.
Keep your friends close, but your enemies closer. Unless your enemy is a mole person, because his body odor will make you cry.
—ANONYMOUS
We didn’t want to go to the cafeteria after our humiliating loss. But hunger won out over pride, and we snuck in, hoping nobody would notice us.
Nobody did. Everyone was watching the newsfeed on the giant screen at the end of the room. There was a story about Pravus’s giant gorillas.
“They really are unstoppable,” Pravus said to the interviewer. “It’s remarkable to see them in action. Ogres, trolls, giants—they don’t have anywhere near the strength and speed of my gorillas. When you add a few years of my special training, well . . .”
“Unstoppable,” the reporter finished for him.
Pravus smiled.
“Tell that to Syke,” I said.
The reporter went on. “Dr. Pravus is a very busy man, and it looks like he’s about to get busier. Rumor has it that Lord Vengecrypt has pledged to recruit a good portion of his graduating class. And there are rumors about a possible expansion in the works.”
“I do need more room if I’m to keep up with demand,” Pravus said.
“Dr. Critchlore’s has five times the area of the Pravus Academy,” Darthin said.
“Forget that,” Eloni said. “Lord Vengecrypt has always gotten his minions from Critchlore. Always.”
“Always,” I echoed. “You know what? Maybe that’s why Pravus was sabotaging us—so he could steal Critchlore’s best customers.”
“Probably,” Darthin said. “And now, when Dr. Critchlore should be fixing this school, he’s planning a fashion show. It’s insane.”
The newsfeed blinked out, replaced by a headshot of our leader. Dr. Critchlore’s serious expression silenced everyone. “Students, faculty, staff, and the Useless Hanger-on, yes, I mean you, Vodum. I have an announcement. I’ve just received word that the Siren Syndicate”—he shivered—“will be here a day early. I am hereby suspending all classes while we all work to prepare for their visit.
“In addition, I’ve heard rumors that I want to put to rest. I have no plans to install a gauntlet of pain. What a ridiculous notion! Please do not worry that my training methods have stooped to that level.
“That man testing one in our hedge maze works for someone who might replace me as headmaster. I’m mostly sure this won’t happen. Well, maybe forty percent sure. So, everyone, just calm down.
“That is all.”
‡‡‡
The next morning, Boris, Pismo, and I headed to the dungeon. Mole people (MP), underground creatures with scaly green skin, red eyes, and hot tempers, ran the Supply Station.
“Pismo, please remember to be respectful,” I said. The last time we were here, they gave him a leaky hazmat suit because he was rude.
“Don’t worry, Runt,” he said. “I’m pals with these guys now. They love me.”
I rolled my eyes.
With classes canceled, I thought the place would be quiet, but it was busier than ever. Mole people raced around filling orders, driving forklifts through the tall aisles, and unpacking boxes.
We stood at the counter. I rang the bell, but there was so much beeping and shouting that even I couldn’t hear it. I waved my arms in the air, trying to get someone’s attention, but they all ignored me.
Pismo put a hand on my shoulder just as I was about to hop over the counter. “I got this,” he said. “You might want to cover your ears.”
“Why?” I asked, but before I could cover my ears, my question was answered.
Pismo opened his mouth, and out came the most ear-aching screech I’d ever heard in my life, and I used to feed hungry banshees in the Aviary.
All activity ceased. The mole people turned toward us. I thought they’d be mad at that horrible sound, but one walked over and said, “Yeah, Your Royal Deepness, what do you want?”
Pismo pointed at me.
“Um, thank you, Magnificent Inventory Master,”
I said. “Uh, we’re here on official fashion show business—”
“So are we all,” he said. “Get to the point.”
“We need to assemble gift bags for a couple hundred guests. That means we need bags, and—um—gifts to put into the bags.”
“Professor Murphy said you’d be coming. Conference room, over there.” He lifted a panel in the counter, and we followed him to a large room. He directed us to sit, and then disappeared into the long stacks of supplies.
We took seats and I dropped my magazines on the table.
“Pismo, what the heck was that?” I asked.
“My screech?” he said, leaning back in his chair. “Powerful, isn’t it?”
“It’s still ringing in my ears.” I had a feeling it was a mermaid thing, and I didn’t want to say anything else, because Pismo didn’t want people to know he was a mermaid.
Boris reached for a magazine. He took one look at the cover (girls in dresses) and shoved it back at me. “Maybe you’re part banshee,” he said to Pismo.
“I am,” Pismo said. “It’s clever of you to notice.”
Boris smiled. He wasn’t called “clever” very often.
“Okay,” I said, getting to business. I opened the magazine to the gift bag article. “It says here that gift bags are usually filled with things like lipstick and perfume. I wonder if they have any of that down here?”
“Doubtful,” Pismo said. “Judging by the mole people. Unless the lipstick is brown and lumpy, and the perfume smells like a garbage dump.”
The mole person returned with an armful of bags. “Pick one,” he said, dropping them onto the table.
We sorted through the pile. There were simple paper bags, colored bags, ones with handles, others without, and all kinds of materials.
“I like this velvety one with the drawstring,” Pismo said. He turned it upside down to empty it, and out fell a plastic bag filled with eyeballs. “Ooh, but not that, I would think.”
“We have lots of those bags,” the MP said. “In the empty version.”
“Great,” I said. “They look elegant. Do you have any with the school’s logo stitched on them?”
“Can be done,” he said.
Two more MPs came in carrying boxes as the first one swept the bags back in his box.
“Pick out the items you want for the bag,” the first MP said. “And we got another box from your father, Prince Pismodor. Do you want it?”
He was looking at Pismo.
“No. But I’ll take it,” Pismo said. The MP nodded and left.
“Prince Pismodor?” I asked.
Pismo closed his eyes and shook his head. “My ridiculous father has been sending me photophore stuff. It’s one of the things we—uh—banshees . . . manufacture—er—in our nests. He wants me to get Dr. Critchlore to sell them as part of his minion supply business. But who wants photophore stuff, unless you’re going underwater?”
“What’s a photophore?” I asked. Boris wasn’t really paying attention. He was searching through the other box. The remaining MPs left with the box of bags, and took their body odor with them, thank goodness, because I felt like I’d been holding my breath for five minutes.
Pismo reached into his box and handed me a black dress. “In the depths of the ocean, it’s very dark. A lot of animals make their own light with light-producing organs called photophores. This material mimics that kind of bioluminescence. It senses when you need light and it lights up. Here, watch.”
He pulled the long-sleeved dress on over his head. It fell to midthigh on him.
“Nice dress,” Boris said.
“It’s not a dress. It’s a tunic. All the men in my family wear them, since we don’t have . . .”
He wanted to say “legs,” I was sure. I decided to help him out. “Dignity?”
He scowled at me. “We make gloves too,” he said, throwing us each a pair. Then he turned off the lights.
His tunic lit up with bright ocean-blue dots. The light was powerful and beautiful.
I put on the gloves. The black material felt light and silky, like I was wearing water. “Wow,” Boris said. “My hand is like the sky. It has stars!” He turned his hand over. “Oooh, look at my fingers!” Each fingertip blasted out light like a flashlight.
“That’s so cool,” I said. “Why haven’t you shown them to Critchlore?”
“Everyone knows these are made by . . . banshees, so nobody will buy them. Nobody wants to go against the Siren Syndicate. The sirens hate us and they’re much too powerful. So why bother? I’ve got about twenty boxes of these things.”
He closed the box and stuffed it under the table.
“Sirens hate banshees?” Boris asked.
“Sirens hate everyone,” Pismo said.
We got back to work, searching through boxes for appropriate things to put in the gift bags. We rejected anything that looked like it belonged in Dr. Frankenhammer’s lab—eyeballs, tongues, feet with claws, those sorts of things. It took a while, but we managed to fill our example bag with stuff we thought was cool. I pulled the gold drawstring shut, and it looked great.
Boris ran off, late for his emergency ogre-man seminar on personal hygiene. The sirens were coming, and Dr. Critchlore wanted to see some improvement in this area.
“I’ll give this to Professor Murphy and see what he thinks. Thanks for your help, Prince Pismodor.”
“Shut up.”
“Will you be king someday?” I asked as I pushed my chair in.
“Not likely. I’m the youngest of fourteen. Besides, who wants to be king of the mermaids? That’s like the punch line for a joke about being stupid.”
That was true. “It’s not fair,” I said.
Pismo shrugged. “Things are changing. Lord Vengecrypt just recruited a bunch of mermaids for his coastal attacks. People will see we’re not stupid. It’s just not happening fast enough for me.”
We packed up our stuff to leave. “Can I keep these gloves?”
“Sure,” he said. “Just don’t tell anyone where you got them, okay?”
“Okay,” I said.
We walked out of the conference room. Just as we were about to lift the section of the counter that would let us leave, a mole person’s clawed hand grabbed Pismo. When Pismo looked at him, the mole person just shook his head.
“Can’t blame a guy for trying,” Pismo said as he emptied his pockets of all the stuff he’d tried to steal.
The early bird catches the worm. But if you sleep in, you can catch the early bird, and I bet he tastes better.
—TEENAGE WEREWOLF, TO HIS DAD
The next day, I sat beside Mistress Moira onstage, picking green sequins out of a multicolored pile. Professor Murphy charged up the runway, heading right for us with a look on his face I hadn’t seen since someone put an eyeball in his coffee.
“Higgins, what the blazes is this?” he said. He held my gift bag.
“Um . . . a gift bag?”
“This is what you came up with?” he said. He dumped the contents on a table next to Mistress Moira, calling out each item as he lined them up. “A jar of gourmet ogre jelly? You do realize that only ogres believe this to be gourmet? It’s made from something nobody would consider a fruit, and it’s infused with cockroaches.”
“I don’t read Ogre. I just thought the jar looked cool.”
“One Dr. Critchlore’s Tornado in a Can™—”
“Some of the bags could have Earthquake in a Can™, or Flood in a Can™,” I interrupted. “They’re fun at parties.”
Mistress Moira chuckled softly.
“A ring that looks like it came as a free prize in a box of cereal?”
“It’s a slingshot. That little ball on top of the ring shoots up to fifty feet,” I explained. “The mole person said that Dr. Critchlore uses them when meetings get boring.” Professor Murphy’s hand went to his neck. He had a small red scar just below his ear. He frowned at me and picked up the next item.
“So we have disgusting jelly, a cheap
weapon, and a natural disaster. And we are planning to give this out to our elegant and sophisticated guests. Brilliant.”
“Thank you?”
Mistress Moira laughed again and then covered her mouth.
“I was being sarcastic. That’s another strike for you, Mr. Higgins. I’m giving this job to someone else.” He looked around the room.
“No, please, give me another chance,” I begged. “Did you like the bag? I told them to stitch the Critchlore crest on that.”
He looked at the bag, feeling its velvety softness. “The bag is fine. But you have to understand how important this is. The future of this school depends on us making a good impression with these ladies.”
“I know,” I said. “I’ll find better stuff. I’ll get a girl to help this time.” I guessed I didn’t really understand this task. Honestly, I still can’t imagine why anyone wouldn’t want a Tornado in a Can™.
“You have one more chance,” he said. He turned around and left.
I put the items back in the bag and pulled the drawstring closed. It was such a beautiful bag, but I had no idea what should go inside. It had to be something that represented the school while also pleasing the sirens. Professor Murphy had called them “elegant” and “sophisticated.”
“I wish I could put in Pismo’s gloves,” I said to myself. “They look elegant, which the sirens will like, but they also have a surprise, which is just like Dr. Critchlore. He’s always doing surprising things.”
Mistress Moira stopped sewing and sighed. “You got that right,” she said, nodding at the room. “What’s surprising about the gloves?”
Uh-oh. I didn’t want to reveal Pismo’s secret. But on the other hand, Mistress Moira seemed to know everything about everybody. “Pismo’s dad sent him some gloves, but Pismo doesn’t want to show them to anybody. He’s embarrassed about them.”
“Because they’re made by mermaids?” Yep. Mistress Moira knew everything.
I nodded. “The gloves light up in the dark. They give off this really beautiful pale blue light.” I reached into my bag and pulled out the pair that Pismo had given me.
Moira held them, feeling the waterproof, soft-as-silk material. “They’re lovely.”