Who needed Kill Hill? This was awesome.
The campsite was empty. Only Clay’s backpack remained. There was no indication that anyone else had ever been there.
Clay threw his shredded board to the ground and put his backpack on. He looked for signs of what direction Flint had taken, but he couldn’t find any. He would have to retrace their steps back to Earth Ranch.
When he got to the mouth of the lava tube, he realized he no longer had his flashlight. It must have fallen out somewhere on the mountain. While he debated what to do, he saw a curl of smoke coming out of the lava tube. He ran inside.
At first, it was so dark, he couldn’t see. And he had to walk slowly with his arms outstretched, navigating by feel, coughing from the smoke. But soon there was a glimmer of light ahead. Flint? It went in and out of view, but Clay kept pushing forward in the dark. He hit his head, scraped his shoulder, tripped and fell. More than once he worried he would die there in that tunnel, a present-day casualty of a volcanic eruption that occurred long ago. But somehow he made it all the way to the end.
When he came out on the other side, he thought he saw the burning doll again in the distance. He ran toward it, only to find that Flint had made a fire next to a tree. The fire was small, just a few twigs and leaves, but there was a good possibility it would spread and cause a forest fire if left unattended. Clay covered the fire with dirt and stamped on it until it was out.
There was another fire about a quarter mile down the trail. And then another. And another. Flint had left a trail of fires behind him, like signposts leading the way. Clay snuffed them out as he went along, cursing to himself about how much time it was taking.
Between fires he ran to make up the time. What had been a seven-hour hike going up took no more than two hours going back.
When Clay could finally see the library, Flint was standing in the doorway, as if he’d been waiting for him. He waved to Clay with the burning doll.
“Cool—you made it,” Flint shouted. “Now I’ll have an audience for my biggest fire ever!”
“Stop! Don’t do this!” Clay shouted back.
Without responding, Flint disappeared into the library. The door closed behind him. It seemed he was going to burn down the library from within.
Clay was about to try to run in after Flint when he noticed it: The ring of flowers that had circled the building was gone, replaced by hot molten rock.
A lava moat was guarding the library.
Clay stared in horror. There was nothing he could do. Part of him, most of him, had believed it was all a charade. But the lava said otherwise.
He looked up to the top of the tower. Mira was back in her window. The last time he’d seen her there, she had tried to shoo him away. This time, she beckoned to him with an imploring look. Did she already know Flint was inside?
That all the books would burn? And that she would, too?
The bees came first, flying so close that he had to close his eyes.
When he opened them, Buzz was at his side.
“Hail, Young Worm,” said his counselor.
“The lava,” said Clay. “It’s real; it’s not magic.”
“It’s real. And magic.”
“I don’t believe you,” said Clay, willing it to not be true. “And I don’t believe Flint is really going to burn down the library.”
Buzz looked him in the eye. “Is that a risk you want to take?”
“You guys wouldn’t let him,” Clay insisted. “You wouldn’t let him hurt Mira.”
“Maybe not,” Buzz said levelly. “Or maybe we have faith that you will stop him in time.”
“But how?” asked Clay, miserable. “There’s no way I can get in.”
“Sure there is. The library doors are right in front of you.”
“I’m supposed to walk across the lava?” Clay looked down at his sneakers. The rubber soles were almost worn out already. “My shoes will melt in seconds.”
“True. If you wear them.”
Buzz put his hand on Clay’s shoulder. “Just remember, you have to mean it.”
“Mean what?” asked Clay.
“The magic,” said Buzz. “Remember, you’re every bit as strong a magician as Flint is. You just have to trust in yourself.”
Clay looked at the moat again, hoping vainly that he would see a way through that he’d missed.
When he looked back, Buzz was gone. Clay’s only companions were the bees. Clay blinked in surprise. It was as if he had hallucinated the conversation.
Was he really supposed to walk barefoot across the lava? Flint had done it at the lava feast. But Flint was insane. A pyromaniac with a death wish.
And yet if Clay didn’t walk…? Clay thought of Price’s niece, the original Mira, who had burned in Price Palace. It wasn’t so much that Flint had been rewriting Price’s story, but that he, Clay, was reliving it—with a twist. He was being asked to right the wrong, he now understood. To reverse history. It seemed impossible, fantastical, but he had to try.
The whole summer, his whole experience at camp, it had all been leading up to this moment—this moment when he would use magic to enter the library and save Mira.
But what magic?
There was that strange word he remembered Flint pronouncing, the word that sounded like it was part of no language he knew.
Was it a magic word—a bad word, as Clay and his brother used to call them? For Flint, it sure seemed to work like one.
According to Buzz, it wasn’t enough to say it; he had to mean it.
Could he mean it? Until now he’d assumed Flint’s magic tricks were just that. Tricks. Illusions. Stage magic, even if they weren’t on a stage. Like Clay and his brother used to do.
Now he was being asked to believe the magic was something else. Something more than cheese-wizardry.
Just say it, he told himself.
He spoke the word loudly, emphatically, trying his best to mean it, even if he didn’t know what the word meant.*
He looked at the lava; it was unchanged. But on the stone wall of the library was the word he had just pronounced—in his handwriting, but in big letters. Much the way MAGIC SUCKS! had appeared on Mr. Bailey’s wall at school.
As he marveled, the word disappeared. It was time.
He pulled off his shoes and socks, and took a tentative step—
“Ow!”
—and recoiled.
He tried again. The lava felt hot, painfully hot. But asphalt-in-the-sun hot, sandy-beach-in-summer hot, not molten-rock hot.
Girding himself, he started walking. Quickly but not so quickly that he was running. He made himself think cold thoughts. He imagined the snow on top of Mount Forge coming down the mountain in an avalanche and covering all the lava. Amazingly, the lava seemed to cool beneath his feet. By the time he got to the other side of the moat, it felt icy cold. He could feel snow between his toes.
“Help! Clay!”
Mira was crying for him from inside.
In a kind of dream state, he pulled open the heavy library doors. He expected to hear more cries. Instead, he heard cheers.
CHAPTER
TWENTY-NINE
CURTAIN CALL
Everybody was there.
They all stood around the checkout desk, applauding, big grins on their faces. Leira in her newsboy cap. Buzz in his beekeeper outfit. Nurse Cora in her hair. The Worms wore makeshift party hats and Mardi Gras necklaces. Caliban wore a flower lei. It looked to Clay as though he had interrupted a going-away party or a birthday celebration.
“Hi, were you looking for me?” Mira stepped up to Clay, back in her polka-dot dress. She offered him a glass of something pink. “Punch?”
Overwhelmed, Clay automatically took it. He held the glass in his hand, not drinking, just staring.
“Why is everybody here?” he asked, his voice coming out in a whisper. “Why are they clapping?”
“They’re clapping for you, silly,” said Mira. “That’s what you do when the show is over.”
Clay blinked, trying to absorb what she was saying. “You mean it never ended? It was always still… on? The play, or whatever it was.”
He had suspected this might be the case, but he couldn’t quite believe it, even now.
Mira nodded. “This is the cast party and curtain call rolled into one. You should take a bow.”
“But I didn’t do anything. I’m just the audience, remember?”
Mira laughed. “What do you mean? You’re the star of the show.”
Clay looked around, stunned. The library was much brighter than it had been the last time he was inside. It was like they’d turned on the houselights, now that the show was over.
Clay’s fellow Worms were smiling and nodding at him.
“That was awesome,” said Jonah.
“Yeah, you really pulled it out in the end,” said Kwan.
Pablo raised a fist. “Way to go, man.” Caliban, standing next to Pablo, raised a fist as well.
Still trying to take it in, Clay half raised his fist in response.
“My turn,” said Leira, pulling her sister away from Clay. “Welcome back.”
“Uh… thanks, I think?”
“You dropped something up there—”
She handed Clay his wallet. He looked at it blankly.
“What—? Oh, right, heh.” He forced a smile.
Skipper, the pilot, was next. He stepped up to Clay—“Nice job, Shakespeare”—and pulled off his gray-ponytailed wig, revealing himself to be Uncle Ben, the old custodian.
“Hey, Skipper—I mean, Uncle Ben,” Clay managed. “So you were part of this, too?”
“The name is Owen.” The bald man took a rag out of his pocket and started wiping off spots and scabs and wrinkles. The octogenarian quickly became a man of thirty—with a shaved head. “And Gilligan—well, that’s what he’s actually called.”
Gilligan the bulldog, not exactly docile, but much sweeter than he’d ever been before, nuzzled Clay’s leg. Clay distractedly scratched behind the dog’s ear, and the dog licked his hand.
Buzz stepped up, a warm smile on his face. “Congratulations, Worm. We knew you had it in you.”
Behind Buzz, lurking in the background, was Flint. He nodded at Clay, but he didn’t break a smile. Evidently, he was part of the show, too, but he didn’t seem altogether pleased with the way things had gone. Clay wondered how much of Flint’s animosity toward him had been real, how much scripted.
“And here at last is the director of our camp—” Buzz gestured toward a short hobbit-like man in sandals and mismatched socks.
“Hiya, Clay,” boomed a familiar voice. “I know it’s a little late, but welcome to Earth Ranch.”
“Mr. Bailey?” Clay was surprised to see his language arts teacher… but not very surprised. Nothing surprised him very much anymore.
“Call me Eli,” said Mr. Bailey, beaming. “Great performance. Bravissimo.”
“You were watching?”
“From the back row, you could say. Hard to guide the action if you can’t see anything.”
Clay thought of Over There, the mysterious moving teepee—and the sense he’d often had that the director was just around the corner.
“So you’re not just the director of the camp—you were the director of the show?” said Clay. “Just like at school.”
Mr. Bailey shrugged his shoulders. “We don’t think of it so much as a show. More of a game.”
Clay’s big eyes narrowed. “What kind of game?”
“The Hero Game, we call it. Everybody here has played—their own versions, of course. For Kwan we made up a junior poker championship. Pablo we threw into an imaginary civil war. I don’t think we’ve ever used Shakespeare before.…”
“So everything that happened—the ghost, the journal, the lava—it was all like game levels or something?”
A feeling that was part anger and part disappointment had been building inside Clay ever since he entered the library. It was like a stomachache he was trying to ignore. His leg jiggled.
“What about Gideon? Did he really write on your wall, like you said in your letter?”
Mr. Bailey shook his head. “No. Sorry about that. I couldn’t think of any other explanation.…”
“And those guys—” Clay nodded toward the other campers, the people he’d thought were his friends. “Even at the end, they were just acting like we were all in it together?”
“It wasn’t like that—” Jonah protested.
“Right. Nothing’s really like anything here, is it?” said Clay, a sour taste in his mouth. “Nothing here is real.”
“Nothing in the Hero Game is real or unreal,” said Mr. Bailey. “Remember what we said about fiction in class? It’s a lie that tells the truth.”
Clay nodded—slightly. Sure he remembered. But he also remembered what he’d thought at the time: A lie is a lie.
“And what about—” Clay could barely bring himself to say it aloud. “What about the magic?”
“What about it?” asked Mr. Bailey.
“Never mind, it doesn’t matter,” said Clay, humiliated.
Of course magic wasn’t real—no more so than his friendships with the other campers.
He, Clay, the cynic, had been duped. Tricked into believing in something that didn’t exist. Flint and Buzz were just expert illusionists, that was all. Earth Ranch was like one big Las Vegas magic show with lava and bees instead of dancing girls and tigers.
He should have been relieved to learn the magic was a hoax; after all, he was the guy who wrote MAGIC SUCKS! in his journal. So why were his eyes filling with tears?
“I guess you proved your point, didn’t you?” said Clay, his emotions bursting to the surface. “I’m just as dumb as everybody else. Everybody falls for magic tricks in the end, right?”
“You didn’t fall for magic,” said Mr. Bailey quietly. “You found it. In yourself. That’s how we know you’re ready.”
Clay glared at his teacher. “Ready for what? To be conned again?”
“To be a magician.”
“You think I want to be a magician?” Clay snorted. “After what you guys did? You’re just like my brother. A bunch of fakes.”
“That’s what Max-Ernest thought you would say,” said Mr. Bailey.
Clay froze. “Wait—what did you say?”
“I said, that’s what Max-Ernest thought you would say.”
“You—you know my brother?” Clay stammered.
Mr. Bailey nodded. “He helped write your game. He even named it.”
He pointed to a banner hanging above the checkout desk.
it said in glittery gold letters. In his delirium, Clay had missed it earlier.
“The kids wanted to change it to MAGIC SUCKS!,” said Mr. Bailey. “But as a teacher, I just couldn’t—”
“Where is he?” Clay demanded.
“At the moment, I don’t know.”
“But he’s my brother!”
“I’m sorry, Clay,” said Mr. Bailey. “You just have to trust him.”
Clay looked at his teacher, tears trickling down his cheeks.
“You know what, forget it,” said Clay, a deep despair taking the place of the emotions that had been roiling inside him. “He obviously doesn’t want to see me, anyway.” He just wants to play tricks on me, Clay added in his head. “I should have known. This whole thing—it’s something only Max-Ernest would do.”
Wiping his eyes, Clay turned toward the exit. “Uncle Ben, Skipper, Owen, whatever your name is—I’m going to go wait by your plane.”
Mr. Bailey put his hand on Clay’s shoulder. “I understand how you feel, Clay. But before you go, there’s something you might want to see—”
The banyan tree that grew out of the bottom of the library seemed even larger to Clay when he stood at the base. The trunk was so wide that there was almost no space to walk around it. And so many roots dangled from the tree that it was almost impossible to see more than one or two feet ahead. He wasn’t sure what
he was looking for—Mr. Bailey had merely pointed him in the direction of the tree—and he was half-inclined to give up the search and exit the library as he’d planned. Instead, he pushed his way through the roots, circling the tree.
He’d almost made a full circle when he noticed a faint buzzing sound coming from the tree trunk. Another beehive? Cautiously, he stepped closer, and saw it: a small round door at the base of the tree, surrounded by roots on all sides. In the middle of the door was a brass knob.
The buzzing grew louder.
Clay remembered Uncle Ben—Owen, he reminded himself—saying something about a vault underneath the tree. A vault that contained Price’s most precious books. Is that what this was? Then why the buzzing?
Clay tried the knob, but the door was locked or stuck. Or maybe it’s fake, Clay thought. Like everything else on the island.
“It was locked by Max-Ernest,” said Mr. Bailey, who had walked up beside Clay. “Only you know the word that will open it.”
Clay frowned. “How would I know it?”
“He said it was the first magic word you ever learned. He wouldn’t tell us what it was.”
Clay studied the door for a moment; he couldn’t imagine which word—of all the magic words that they had spoken to each other—Max-Ernest might have been thinking of.
What was strange was Max-Ernest calling it a magic word instead of a bad word, as they usually did.
Then, suddenly, Clay grinned. That was the clue. Max-Ernest loved reversals. If bad word meant magic word, then magic word meant bad word. The magic word Clay needed now wasn’t the first magic word he ever learned, it was the first bad word he ever learned.
The old kind of bad word. The bad kind.
Clay stood as tall as he could.
he said, perhaps not quite as loudly as he had in that elevator when he was three years old, but with no less feeling.
No sooner had Clay spoken this terrible word than it appeared on the tree trunk in front of him. It looked as if it had been burned into the tree by a thoughtless vandal.
Mr. Bailey looked at Clay, aghast. “What have you done, young man? If you were in school, I’d expel you all over again!”
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