The Weird in the Wilds

by Deb Caletti

  “Are there lots of guests from faraway places and important dignitaries?” Apollo asks. “Like when Best Farriver was our RM?”

  “I don’t think so,” Henry says. “It’s just the same old tower workers we’ve seen before, wearing different costumes.”

  “Do you see Brenda and Eddie anywhere? Or Jason Scrum?” Pirate Girl asks.

  “Or worse . . . Needleman?” Jo asks.

  “I see . . . I think I might see Brenda and Eddie, or else two large and shaggy armchairs. And maybe a gerenuk with bulgy eyes facing this direction, unless that’s a very tall coatrack.”

  “Try to get their attention,” Apollo suggests.

  Henry waves his arms around, which is a courageous thing to do on those wobbly boxes. “It’s no use. They can’t see me.”

  “Open the window and shout,” Apollo suggests, and because Henry’s used to following all orders without protest, he wiggles his fingers toward the latch and unhooks it, and then shoves and shoves with all his might until the window is up, the cool air blowing in.

  “Wait. We can’t do that,” Henry says, at the very same moment that Pirate Girl and Jo and even the elk and the deer shout, “No!”

  “They’ll hear us! The tower workers! Needleman! The spy!” Pirate Girl reminds Apollo.

  And then Apollo says something Henry has already known for a long, long time. “Ugh! It’s so hard to keep your head on straight when you’re hungry. With apologies,” he says to the talking heads.

  “No problem at all,” the elk head says.

  “But we must find a way to get them to see us,” Jo says. “Getting help seems like our only hope.”

  “Hey!” Henry says. Once again, an idea and bravery mix together to form something powerful. “I remember something from my Ranger Scout Handbook, sixth edition. The way everyday objects can help you survive in the wilderness! Your shoelaces can be a fishing line. Your socks can filter water. And your eyeglasses can help you start a fire, or—”

  “Signal someone!” Apollo says. “Signal, by redirecting the sunlight using the lens. I know how to do that! Should I try to throw my glasses to you, Henry?”

  “Oh, I don’t think so,” Henry says. “Your glasses are way too important, and they might break. And I’m not sure if I remember exactly how to signal.”

  “We’ll switch spots, then!” Apollo looks more confident and excited than he has since the moment Henry first saw him with his new glasses. Henry makes his way down the boxes, and Apollo makes his way up, which is, of course, quite a bit more nerve-racking to watch, given Apollo’s athletic build. The suitcases smush and squash and tip. But Apollo is up there, holding on to the ledge with one hand. With the other, he removes his frames.

  “You can also use your glasses for a fishing hook, or to pry grubs from a log,” Henry says, because once you start being helpful, it can be hard to stop. Apollo is concentrating, though. He aims the one lens toward the beam of sun and then adjusts the angle.

  “Can they see you?” Jo asks with great worry and anticipation.

  “Any shiny object should work. As a beam of light hits a prism, the beam slows, which changes the angle the light moves, and then the light bends again as it exits . . .”

  Honestly, this is quite confusing, though Henry gets the general idea.

  The General Idea

  “Jason is facing us, and I’m aiming it . . . almost . . . there. There, it’s right in his eyes!”

  “What’s he doing? Does he see?” Jo asks.

  “I wish I could wear my glasses and use them,” Apollo says, with new appreciation for his specs. “Because it’s hard to tell for sure. But it looks like he’s batting the light away. Kind of like he’s whining and complaining and rubbing his eyes.”

  “Ugh! If only it were Brenda and Eddie seeing the signal,” Jo says. “They’d know what it was. They wouldn’t think only of themselves.”

  “Wait,” Apollo says. “Brenda’s turning around. Or, maybe that’s Eddie. It’s hard to tell who is who from this distance. But, yes! They’re turning! They’re looking!” Apollo begins to wave his arms. “They see me! Here they come!”

  CHAPTER 26

  Perfectly Thin

  Well, the great big clock in Henry’s head really begins to tick now. It is not a tick, tock any longer. Now it’s a TICK, TOCK, TICK, TOCK. He can hear the bustling sounds outside the door, meaning the lodge is filling with workers, and that Needleman will be back any minute, and that night is coming and so is the day of Jo’s mother’s celebration of love. Apollo is waving his arms and saying excitedly, “They’re coming! They’re coming!”

  “I love your glasses, Apollo! I love your glasses so much!” Pirate Girl cries.

  “I do too!” he says with great glee. “I do too!”

  Even from below, on the floor where the children and Button stand, they can see the horns and the strange alien-like eyes of the gerenuk up on his hind legs, peering in the window.

  “What are you guys doing in there? Well, that looks nice and cozy and warm, while we’re stuck out here in the cold!” Jason whines. “Hey! Stop shoving me off this rock, you caribou! I can’t see!” Somehow, he makes even those words—you caribou—sound like an insult, even though those magnificent creatures should only be looked at in awe.

  Awe

  “Don’t worry, children,” Brenda says, her calm Rangifer Tarandus voice drifting through the window and down to them. “We’ll have you out in no time.”

  “We just need to . . .” Eddie grunts. In order to reach all seven feet up, the caribou have climbed atop a large, flat stone below, and Eddie’s antlers are locked onto one of the bars, and Brenda’s are locked onto another, and there’s ferociously loud grunting and huffing and snorting, such important and meaningful noises that Henry’s sure they’ll be heard.

  “Oh dear,” says the elk head inside.

  “Exactly,” says the deer head.

  But Button begins to turn circles of excitement, and Pirate Girl grips Henry’s sleeve, and Jo’s cheeks begin to redden not from the warm, crackling fire but from the joyful thought of escape, because it’s happening. The bars are bending, bending, bending.

  “Ah!” Brenda sighs. “That’s it. That’s as far as I can go.”

  “Yes, me too,” Eddie says. Their big nostrils strain from effort.

  “Well, let me—” Apollo says. He tries to stick part of his body through, and then he tries again another way, and then he attempts an arm and then just a head, but it’s quite clear—there’s no way he’ll fit.

  “We won’t be able to get through,” Pirate Girl sighs.

  Not Hands

  “You have to get through,” Brenda says. “Or at least one of you does. There’s an extra key hanging on a hook in the kitchen. A skeleton key. It opens all the doors of the house. If it’s still there, of course. That’s where we kept it when the lodge was our home. I would get it myself, but hooves are not hands.”

  Eddie’s big shaggy face pops into the window frame. “Brenda’s right. Someone needs to get outside, walk back into the house, retrieve the key, unlock your prison, and set you all free.”

  “I don’t see how it’s possible,” Jo says. “That is a very, very small hole.”

  “Way too small,” the broad-shouldered Apollo says.

  But Henry knows something about himself, and he knows it very well, because it’s one of the things that the bully Jason Scrum has teased him about again and again. “I’m small,” Henry says. “I’m thin and small enough to fit.”

  “Do you really think so, Henry?” Jo says.

  He looks at the hole and at his narrow arms and legs. “Yes. I’m perfectly thin.”

  “You are, Henry! You are perfectly thin!” Pirate Girl says, and Henry’s chest fills with gladness.

  Apollo climbs down the suitcase
ladder, and Henry prepares to climb up.

  “Wait,” the elk head says.

  “Wait just one minute,” the deer head says.

  “You can’t let them see you,” the elk reminds him.

  “At least not like that. What about those costumes, right in the wardrobe? There seems to be all sorts of sizes and varieties of things.” The deer rolls her eyes that direction.

  “They’ll think you’re a visitor to the party!” says the elk head.

  “They’re right!” Pirate Girl says. “And if Needleman sees you, he might not realize who you are, at least at first.”

  “I guess it’s true.” Jo smiles. “Two heads are better than one.”

  CHAPTER 27

  The Most Wrong Words

  Houdini Himself, Performing the Great Milk Can Escape

  As you can imagine, it’s quite difficult to squeeze oneself through the tiniest hole while also wearing a somewhat roomy and elaborate costume of velvet and satin. Henry has a difficult moment where he’s stuck half in and half out, and where it looks like the ground is a long, long way down. Jo makes a quick calculation and suggests a twenty-degree-angle slide to a caribou’s back, minimizing the distance Henry has to fall. When everyone is in place, and he manages to slip and eke his body out into the evening air, falling just so onto the shaggy back of Eddie, Henry feels as thrilled as if he is Harry Houdini himself, performing the great milk can escape.

  “Well done!” Eddie says, dropping to his knees so that Henry can slide off. Now that he’s outside, it’s much clearer what great danger he’s in, because there are workers everywhere, all in extravagant costumes, some playing strange instruments from a different time.

  Strange Instruments from a Different Time

  Jason Scrum, per usual, is only thinking about himself, munching heartily on the upper branches of a nearby tree, but Brenda nudges Henry forward with her squarish nose. “Go. Hurry! Get the key on the hook hanging right by the kitchen door.”

  “Your friends are counting on you,” Eddie adds, which doesn’t help Henry’s nerves.

  “Just act natural,” Brenda suggests, which is exceptionally difficult when you’re wearing fancier clothes than you ever have in your life, let alone when you’re in great danger. Acting unnatural would be better advice, because Henry needs to be more of the things he isn’t usually: daring and bold.

  He takes a big breath and moves his thin little legs toward the open lodge doors, and that’s when a huge figure suddenly fills the entryway. Henry feels a whoosh—the cold blast of an arctic wind—as Vlad Luxor appears. His paunch presses against his velvet waistcoat, and his belly splurches over his lacy breeches, and he’s wearing the gold brocade and garish jewelry of evil kings of the past.

  The Gold Brocade and Garish Jewelry of Evil Kings of the Past

  “Welcome, dignitaries from foreign lands!” Vlad booms, though of course Henry sees only the crowd of scary-faced workers, now making their way into the lodge. Almost immediately, Henry’s caught among them, flowing forward like a salmon forced upstream. Vlad claps the backs of workers and ho-ho-hos in heartiness and cheer. Then he leans back on his heels and waits for the praise and admiration the workers must say before he lets them inside, like a secret password.

  “I bow to you, your honor,” one worker says.

  “I give you my life, Great Emperor,” says another.

  Henry’s stomach churns with the nearness of yuck, but also with terror. He tries to think of his grandfather, Captain Every, who faced and conquered Avar Slaven, a dark and evil man from another time, and he thinks of his friends (the word is still magical to him), who are desperately waiting for him in that locked room.

  Henry summons his courage. He’s sure Vlad will recognize him. But their hideous HRM never truly sees anyone or anything else, of course. He’s only looking for glorious reflections of himself, even if they’re lies. Same as in that mirror on the day this terrible story began.

  Now Vlad stares down at Henry. His globulous neck wobbles. He claps Henry on the back of his velvet coat, making his thin frame shudder. He waits for some magical words of praise, but Henry’s mind has gone as blank as Vlad’s eyes.

  “Yes? Go on.” Vlad’s flat gaze is rapidly shifting to something quite sinister, more and more so the longer that Henry is frozen there with his mouth hanging open.

  “I . . . I . . .”

  Well, what happens next is awful, and may be the saddest moment in this story, so if you must pause to honk your sorrow into a hanky after hearing it, go right ahead. But poor, poor Henry—his voice, which is always such a problem, truly fails him. He’s in a state of shock with Vlad standing in the doorway like that. And what pops out of his mouth are the most wrong words, the same words he’s required to give every day under similar circumstances, when a tyrant stands at the door of his very own home every morning.

  “I . . . I . . . love you,” he says.

  Ah! Those most beautiful words given wrongly . . . Almost immediately, a shame and a horror and a deep regret drop over Henry. His face turns a dreadful red. Even so, Vlad beams, and moves his gaze onward, to the person behind our grief-stricken boy. And of course, Henry has no time for the curling badness in his tummy, either. He has to rush through the huge hall, and the enormous room with the fireplace, his eyes skirting back and forth, watching for Needleman.

  Which way to the kitchen? It’s difficult to remember, or even find his way, with his head spinning from upset, and with the workers rushing around, carrying large platters of food and setting them on the big table in the dining room, where Henry is now. The large iron chandelier above the table is lit with twenty candles or more, which twinkle their reflections in the windows turning dark with twilight. The goblets shine, and the food smells unbelievably good, and Henry must hurry, because people are standing behind their chairs, waiting for Vlad to come inside and sit down.

  The velvet of his sleeve brushes past the velvet of other sleeves as he hurries out of there, following the sounds of clattering—pans and pots, dishes and silver. Left, right, left again, until he’s in the busy kitchen with the huge stove and the counters filled with dishes under silver domes, the scary worker chefs in white click-clicking their long sharp knives and jostling their sizzling pans.

  He is through the door. Now he only needs to find the hook next to it. That’s where the keys are supposed to be. Henry is so close. It sounds so simple: Grab the keys, and then make his way down the great wood hall to free his friends.

  But the hook, the hook! Where is it?

  There is no hook.

  There’s only a framed oil painting of Vlad Luxor wearing a sash that reads FRENCH CHEF. When the forest rangers lived in that lodge, there was a hook and a key, but not now.

  Now there’s only Vlad and more Vlad. A prison of Vlad with no way out.

  The last of Henry’s hope is gone. He doesn’t know what to do. He is full of despair, and then—

  “Chee chee chee! CHEE CHEE CHEE!”

  There’s a creepy, awful scratch of nails against silver from under one of those domes, a shivery scritch-scritch. Henry lifts the curved lid off the platter, and now he finds something wonderful and heart-lifting, because there is Mr. Reese, looking like he’s been out in a rainstorm, lying on a bed of lettuce, a sprig of parsley on his tummy.

  “Mr. Reese!” Henry exclaims with joy.

  “Shh!” Mr. Reese says.

  “You’re not cooked!”

  “The chef decided at the very last moment that squirrel is best served carpaccio.”

  “Carpaccio?”

  “Raw, with vinegar and oil.” He shakes drops of vinegar from his bonnet-clad head, and casts off the parsley. “Get me out of here!”

  Mr. Reese is quite soggy and also heavily salted and peppered, and it is always extraordinarily shivery to tou
ch, let alone—ugh—pick up a squirrel, but Henry snatches Mr. Reese off the platter and hides him in his velvety waistcoat. Henry has no idea what to do next, since there are no keys. But one of the chefs is turning around now, so he must do something. He has to get out of there.

  Henry’s brain scurries madly. Much to his horror, right as he remembers his grandfather’s words that a plan will present itself, a back door flings open, when he didn’t even know there was a back door. And there is Needleman, grasping a large salmon. For one brief second, Needleman looks quite exhausted after a day of fishing and attending to evil, but then he spots Henry and his eyes alight, and the salmon spurts from his arms and slides across the metal countertop.

  “Well, well, well. Henry Every. Now, this is what I call the catch of the day.”

  CHAPTER 28

  A Most Fortuitous Turkey Leg

  Henry tries to escape. Needleman is slowed briefly by the fact that the salmon blops from the counter onto the floor, and he must step over it, causing him to slip and slide as the chefs turn and grab at the fish, and at a dish of Chicken Candelabro with Peas, too, which is threatening to fall. There is the general pandemonium one sees whenever there is a chase scene in a busy kitchen in any film or television show. It is all quite true, Henry understands, the way the dishes begin to fly and crash as one weaves and darts around, and the way there is suddenly an asparagus in midair, and a madman with a butcher knife chasing you.

  He dodges one chef wielding a spoonful of butter, as well as a worker entering the kitchen with a tray of freshly emptied bottles of Sparkling Vrés Fondoo. There’s the unnerving slice-slice sound in the air of Needleman wielding that blade.

  Henry flees, but there is nowhere to go, and unfortunately, very, very unfortunately, he makes an unwise move. It’s so unwise that if you saw him do it, you’d jump up and down and yell, No, Henry, No!