by Deb Caletti
Henry sighs. “We have to help him.”
“Why?” Apollo moans. His glasses fog with emotion.
“I have no idea,” Henry says. “But it’s like Grandfather told us. I just feel a knowing about it.” The feeling—it’s the have to that comes when your parents tell you to clean your room or write a thank-you note to the relative who gave you a five-dollar bill inside a birthday card. Well, Grandfather Every is the only one who’s given Henry such a thing, but you get the idea. The point is, it’s something you have no choice about, and the certainty of that fact sits in your gut like too much cheese. The spell-breaking feeling, though—it also has a vein of dread and fear and a little dollop of excitement and a great bit of who knows what will happen next.
Now Pirate Girl sighs. “I have the feeling, too. I just didn’t want to say so.”
“This is the feeling?” Apollo rubs his chest. “I thought I had to burp after that Pork Zoo Chew.”
Ms. Fortune clasps her hands together rather awkwardly in relief and joy. “Oh, children! I’m so glad. Thank you. Thank you!”
“This is a better snack than my mother usually makes,” Jason Scrum says. He’s walking around on his hind legs, eating the topmost leaves of a nearby tree.
Button has given up and plopped down on the grass, the way you do when a potential playmate turns out to be much less fun than you’d hoped. She sighs through her nose.
“He doesn’t even seem to realize he’s a gerenuk yet,” Jo says. “Probably because he can’t see anything about himself very clearly. But, ugh. I have the feeling, too.”
“Do we have to do this now?” Pirate Girl asks. “It’s the first day of school, and I heard we get to learn about Vikings this year.”
“And I’ve been counting the days before we can do a book report. Mine’s going to be about Juana Azurduy, South American revolutionary.” Jo opens the flaps of her puffy coat to show them the warrior on her T-shirt. “She was a distant relative, and very good with swords, rifles, and cannons.”
Juana Azurduy, South American Revolutionary
“I’m sure it will be excellent,” Ms. Fortune says. “But all of that can wait!”
“Won’t this be even more dangerous than last time? I mean, just going back home to get our bikes, let alone anything else . . .” The tremor in Apollo’s voice brings it all back to Henry: Their last spell-breaking adventure on Vlad Luxor’s mountain. The way Needleman captured them and stuck them in the Cage Lurch. Their frightening escape, and the long, dark night in the thick forest. He shudders.
“I could come with you,” Ms. Fortune says. “If you need adult protection.”
Henry loves Ms. Fortune, but a bunch of images now flash through his mind: Ms. Fortune falling into a creek, or stumbling and breaking her other arm. They all heard about the time, too, when she reached over the counter at the French bakery and caught her sleeve in the frosting conveyor belt. If Ms. Silvooplay hadn’t acted so speedily . . . Well, this is not something you even want to think about.
“Thank you, but that’s okay,” Henry tells her. “You’re needed here.”
And it’s true. Now that Vlad Luxor is gone, the children are shrieking and running around on the playground again, twirling in circles on the monkey bars until they’re dizzy, walking up the slide instead going down, tagging each other and saying You’re it, and then tagging each other right back and saying No, YOU’RE it. It’s utter mayhem.
“You’re right, of course,” she says.
Besides that, Henry knows, spell breaking is not the place for hovering teachers or worried parents. If they had any idea what was about to happen, Apollo’s father would rush over or his mother would start calling them every five minutes, and Jo’s mother would try to follow discreetly behind them in the catering truck from Rio Royale. Worse, though, the Dantes and Isabelle Idár would be in danger, too.
“Well, we know what we have to do,” Pirate Girl says. “And we know where we’re heading.”
Henry nods. There’s only one place to go when you need great wisdom and guidance about spell breaking.
“What about him, though?” Jo asks. “He still thinks he’s a boy.”
Jason Scrum is walking around on his back legs. “I could eat these all day,” he says, crunching leaves. “They’re even better than Rainbow Target Pops.”
Ms. Fortune tries to clap her hands, but with one arm in a cast, this is impossible. “Jason!” she shouts. He looks over at them with the bulbs of his widely spaced eyes. “Field trip! With your classmates.”
“Them? They’re so short, like a bunch of babies,” Jason says. “I’m not going on some preschool field trip.”
Henry sighs. It is hard, so hard, to have a duty. What an impossible weight to carry. This is what Henry feels now, anyway, as he and Apollo and Jo and Pirate Girl and Button and the gerenuk walk down the treacherous road back home to retrieve their bikes. A sense of doom drops over Henry’s shoulders like a cape. He feels afraid even before they descend into the Wilds, even before the Shadow edges from its hiding place and they are in the grips of evil, and . . .
Well, let’s just say this is how Henry feels before the truly awful things that are going to happen actually do.
CHAPTER 4
A Tree Saves the Day
This is the most boring field trip ever,” Jason Scrum whines. “Are we there yet?”
It’s an annoying but somewhat understandable question, because they’ve taken the long way through town—the back way. The back way means winding down alleyways and passing the hidden parts of any village: overflowing trash cans and unwelcoming stairwells, stacks of empty crates and cardboard boxes, and even a few rats zipping around from hiding place to hiding place, making it hard for Button to focus. The back way is necessary, though, since they don’t want to be spotted and captured by Needleman, and being spotted is almost a guarantee when you have a stinky, long-necked, and very opinionated gerenuk with you.
They retrieve Jo’s yellow bike from the back of Rio Royale, and then fetch Pirate Girl’s amazing red bike with the sidecar from the house in the big field where she lives with her father. Apollo sneaks through the side door of his garage to get his bike without Mrs. Dante or Rocco or Otto hearing, which isn’t hard because Rocco has the television blasting and he’s singing the theme song to Rocket Galaxy at the top of his lungs. Now they just need to get Henry’s bike without his parents seeing.
“Shh,” he tells Jason Scrum. Henry has to hurry. It’s rather difficult to hide four children, three bikes, a dog, and a creature who’s half giraffe, half gazelle, all waiting nearby, and he can’t risk getting caught. Henry’s home is dangerous and unpredictable and sad even on an ordinary day, as we’ve mentioned. In fact, poor Henry is so lonely there that he and Button often feel like the sole survivors of a shipwreck.
The Sole Survivors of a Shipwreck
Henry edges past the rhododendrons to the side yard with the garbage cans. This is where he keeps his bike, which he bought for two dollars at a neighbor’s yard sale. It’s one of his most prized possessions, along with his lucky rock, his Ranger Scout Handbook, and two gifts from his grandfather, Amazing Stories magazine and the book Sinister Forces by Alvin Westwood, all safely hidden from his parents.
Henry’s bike leans against the fence. He can hear the television inside his own house, too, and a loud clattering of pots and pans. Thank goodness—maybe his parents won’t hear anything, either. He folds his fingers around the handlebars as quietly as possible. He’s just about to exhale his relief when his mother’s voice comes booming out from the very walls of the house.
“What is that noise?” she shouts.
Oh no! Henry wrestles his bike past the rhododendrons. He tries to go as fast as he can, but bike wrestling is never easy. His sleeve catches on a rhododendron branch. A wheel bumps a tin can that missed the trash.
“Some strange animal out front, I’m sure of it.”
The Extraordinary Ears of a Bat
It’s not him she hears after all, Henry realizes. It’s Jason Scrum, who has unwisely ambled onto the weedy grass of Henry’s front lawn. He’s eating the few remaining leaves off the lone tree in their yard, making mmm, mmm, mmm! sounds. Henry swears his mother has the extraordinary ears of a bat.
“You’re crazy! What would a strange animal be doing out front?”
“You never believe anything I say!” Mrs. Every shouts. “The least you could do is go check! You don’t even care about my safety!”
“Of course I care about my safety!” Mr. Every shouts back.
Henry’s heart starts beating hard. They’ve got to get out of there, fast. In his rush, he knocks a lid off of one of the garbage cans, and it clatters to the ground.
“I HEARD THAT, YOU BEAST!” Mrs. Every yells.
“Hurry, Henry! Hurry!” Apollo quietly urges. Apollo has been inside Henry’s house. He knows the dangers there.
The bike is finally out the side gate. Apollo is sweating with nerves. Henry flings one leg over his bike just as the front door of his house shoots open.
And now there’s Henry’s father, with his mean black hair, and prickly whiskers, and gaping mouth that twists and snarls. Mr. Every’s eyes swivel across the scene: the gerenuk, the children, and Henry himself.
“HENRY EVERY!” his father yells. He flies down the rickety porch stairs, shaking his gorilla-sized fist.
“Come on, Henry! Come on!” Pirate Girl pleads, because Henry has indeed frozen. This is what happens whenever his father or mother is coming at him, ready to smack or grab or pinch or shake. As you can imagine, a grown-up towering over you stops you right in your tracks. It utterly halts all your good sense and ability to flee. This occurs right in the moment, but it can last a long while afterward, too.
Mr. Every is down those steps now, his face full of rage, and Mrs. Every follows behind, waving a broom in the air. She spots Jason Scrum on their lawn and screams, “Shoo! Shoo, you hairy, malodorous monster!”
Mr. Every reaches the lawn. The one, poor tree in Henry’s yard has roots that lift from the ground like the veins in an old man’s hand, and since both roots and veins are life-giving things, the root catches Mr. Every’s toe and sends him sprawling.
Mr. Every yells something that cannot be repeated here. Mrs. Every flies down the stairs with the broom and tumbles right over Mr. Every.
“YOU TRIPPED ME!” she yells from the pile of bodies they make on the grass, and then she begins to sob. It’s not the kind of sobbing that makes you feel sad and want to help, though. It’s the kind of sobbing that’s trying to make you feel bad, and so this is what unfreezes Henry.
“Pedal, Henry! Pedal!” Jo says, and then he does. He pedals and pedals with the speed of fear, and the terror of a fast-beating heart.
CHAPTER 5
A Nerve-Racking Ride
All the children are pedaling madly now, and Button is running as fast as she can, and so is Jason Scrum, more gazelle than giraffe at the moment, showing surprising grace and elegance for a bully.
Directly in His Path
The terrible experience at Henry’s house, the narrow miss—it sends them back through the alleys and to the edge of town with shocking speed. At one narrow turn, Pirate Girl’s sidecar even causes a pile of boxes to fly midair, sending various fruits and vegetables scattering, same as in those movies with a motorcycle chase in an exotic locale. They can’t stop to restack the boxes, though, however much they want to. Speed, however rude or hazardous, is the important thing. Henry even has to swerve rather dangerously around a grapefruit, which is sitting directly in his path.
When they ride past the billboard to reach the edge of town, the children notice that the sign has already changed: DIFFERENT IS DANGEROUS! WALLS ARE THE WAY! Do you see how shocking things have gotten? New messages are coming practically every minute! There is no time to shiver or cringe, though. They keep going, bumping down onto the dirt path of the meadow. In the summer, that meadow was filled with blue and white and yellow flowers, but now the grasses are orangey and red and golden, more damp than sneezy. Jo is in the lead. She arcs her arm over her head to urge them to keep going, same as Juana Azurduy must have done with the rebel army.
Finally, they reach the Circle of the Y, where one road leads down, down to the Indigo Sea, and another leads up, up the mountain road to the tower. Henry has been pedaling so hard that he’s barely looked at the tower until now. He stares upward, and, oh, it’s creepy. Fifty-eight stories of black mirror, rising so far into the sky, he can barely see the top. The tower casts a huge, dark shadow, and Henry’s stomach begins to ache. It’s the gnawing feeling you get in the nearness of evil, like a fat rat chewing on the edge of your favorite paperback.
Henry’s eyes dart around, and Button’s ears twitch. Needleman could pop out at any moment, with his pointy nose and reaching fingers. He’d love nothing more than to find them here, alone and out in the open.
Jo drops her bike. Pirate Girl hops off, too, and so do Apollo and Henry. The cuffs of their pants are wet from riding through dewy grass. Pirate Girl passes around two water bottles that she had in her sidecar because she’s always prepared. She makes a cup with her hands and lets Button drink from them.
“That was terrible back there at your house, Henry! Are you okay?” Jo asks with her usual kindness.
Henry nods.
“It was just like Captain Steve Savage: Operation Destruction,” Jason Scrum says. “I wasn’t scared, though. Everyone else was scared, but not me.”
Captain Steve Savage: Operation Destruction
Pirate Girl rolls her eyes. Jason Scrum’s gazelle-giraffe eyes had clearly been terrified when Mrs. Every came at him with that broom. He took off like a, well, a gazelle being chased by a lion.
“I don’t need any water. I’m not the least bit thirsty,” he brags.
“Gerenuks can go their whole life without drinking anything,” Apollo tells them, wiping his misty glasses with the hem of his shirt. “They get all the water they need from plants.” Thank goodness Apollo knows such a vast array of facts.
Jason is standing on his back legs again, crunching some leaves on a tree near the Circle of the Y. “Gere-what? Are you calling me names? This field trip sucks so far.”
“Gerenuk. A member of the antelope family, with particularly bulgy eyes and big horns.”
“Horns?” Jason says with his mouth full, which means it sounds more like Hrms?
“Oh, never mind,” Apollo says. He shakes his head in exasperation, but Jason has already turned away, his attention only on his own hunger and needs. “How is it possible that he still doesn’t see what he’s become?” Apollo asks the others.
“Well, he couldn’t see what a beastly human he was before, so maybe he can’t see what a human-ly beast he is now.” Jo has a good point.
“All he thinks about is Jason, Jason, Jason,” Pirate Girl says.
“What do you want? Are you calling me? Can’t you see I’m busy?” the gerenuk gripes.
“I wish we could leave him here,” Henry says. “But I think we’d better bring him to Grandfather’s, same as we did Rocco.”
“Let’s hurry,” Jo says. They’re all thinking the same thing. It’s not just Needleman they have to be afraid of. Vlad Luxor’s spies are everywhere, too—spies who tattle to Vlad whenever they catch anyone saying something bad about him. Think what a prize it would be to tell Vlad that spell breakers exist!
The children look around uneasily. The wind sounds like whispers, and a rustling tree like the flap of Needleman’s coat. Henry can still remember the feel of Needleman’s chilly, spindly fingers on the back of his neck.<
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“Yeah, let’s get out of here,” Jo says. “I’m getting the creeps.”
“Don’t worry, Jo. At least I have this.” Pirate Girl rummages around in her pockets, locates her pocketknife, and holds it up in the air. “Ta-da!” she says, catching the attention of the gerenuk.
“You always have a stupid pocketknife. It’s so weird,” Jason Scrum says, making a face at Pirate Girl as he walks around on his hind legs.
“Don’t listen to him, Pirate Girl,” Henry says, which is quite brave, given Jason’s nasty past. “Come on, let’s go.”
It’s astonishing how, bit by bit, Henry begins to feel better as they head down toward the sea. His thin legs feel stronger when the sky begins to widen. His spirit feels sturdier when he first smells the ocean. And when he actually sees the red and white stripes of the lighthouse in view, that revolving beam that never dims in any darkness or storm, well, his heart soars. With every swivel of the lantern, the bright light tells Henry (and anyone else who needs it) something quite important—Blink, there’s a safe place in the world. Blink, you won’t be lost forever. Blink, you are never as alone as you feel.
Oh, how Henry loves this place. When they finally reach the lighthouse, and the majestic white house with the red shutters that sits alongside of it, the children drop their bikes and race with Button through the gate of the white fence, past the bank of ivy, and up the steps of the white porch. Jason Scrum is already there, naturally, since gerenuks can run nearly thirty-five miles an hour. He’s on his hind legs again, walking around the old tree out front, which has only a handful of fall leaves left on it.