Heartwood Hotel Book 3

by Kallie George

  “Great!” said Tilly. “I was hoping you’d take him.”

  Mona didn’t mean that, but now it was too late.

  “Stick close to Mona, okay?” Tilly told Henry. “Don’t go too far. And make sure you’re helpful.” She rubbed between his ears. “Thanks so much, Mona.”

  Mona looked over at Henry, who was jumping up and down extra enthusiastically. It seemed she didn’t have any choice.

  Pushing a little luggage cart to carry back the blossom, Mona headed off into the forest, Henry by her side.

  Spring had not only brought Fernwood Forest to life, but it had brought out many of the animals who lived there. Through some branches, in a hollow, Mona could see a little deer taking its wobbly first steps, its mama proudly looking on. A vole was vigorously sweeping dust from his tree-root doorway, and three gopher pups were skipping with a rope of braided grass. Henry looked at them longingly.

  “Come on,” said Mona. “We have flowers to fetch.”

  Henry perked up and ran ahead. “I found some!” he said.

  A few white daisies and blue forget-me-nots dotted the mossy trail along the bank of the stream. Mona shook her head.

  “There are better flowers farther on,” she said. Mona knew if they followed the stream, it would lead them all the way to the Farmer’s Garden.

  So they continued walking beside the warbling water. Henry began to sing, too:

  “Hip hip hop, it’s spring.

  Hip hip hop, let’s swing.

  Bip bip bop, let’s hop.

  Bip bip bop, don’t stop.”

  His voice was loud and off-key. Even so, Mona caught herself humming along. After a while, Henry stopped singing and started asking questions.

  “Mona, did you really live in the forest all by yourself before you lived at the Heartwood?”

  Mona nodded, pushing the luggage cart. “Yes. A barn for a while and an old tree stump, too.”

  “Was it lonely?”

  Sometimes, but she didn’t want to admit this to Henry. “It can be nice to be alone and quiet.”

  Henry didn’t take the hint. “I could never live all by myself. I’d be too…” Henry stopped and sniffed. His tail twitched. “Do you smell that?”

  Mona sniffed, too. All she could smell were the moss and the maple trees, and she told him so.

  “No. Something else. I’m not sure what…but—” He shivered. “I don’t like it.”

  “It’s just your imagination.” Mona pushed the cart over a root. The wheel stuck.

  “Here, I can help,” said Henry. “I’m bigger than you. I mean, I know I’m littler but I’m still bigger.” He grabbed the cart away from Mona and shoved. POP! The wheel burst free from the roots. Henry lost his grip and the cart raced ahead of them, down the trail. CRASH! It hit a rock and toppled over.

  “Henry!” cried Mona. “Now look what you’ve done. Just because I’m a mouse doesn’t mean I can’t do it.”

  Henry gulped. “I was just trying to help.”

  “Never mind…” Mona sighed. “Let’s go.”

  Henry looked at the cart in the distance and shook his head.

  “Nuh-uh, Mona. I smell something bad.”

  “You stay here, then. This is the way to the best blossom. I’ll come get you after.”

  Henry’s eyes went wide.

  “Look,” said Mona, “you don’t have a choice. I’m not going back, so you can’t either. There’s no one to take you.”

  But as it turned out, there was.

  As though it was meant to be, Mona heard the voices of Maggie and Maurice through the trees.

  “Clover flowers! Yum!” said Maurice.

  “No, Maurice, don’t EAT them,” said his sister. “We’ll never win the prize if you eat our entries. I told you, we can have lunch once we get back to the Heartwood.” Maggie and Maurice were heading back to the hotel!

  “There,” Mona said to Henry, “problem solved. You can go with them.”

  “Are you sure?” Henry replied. But he sniffed again and shivered.

  “I’m sure,” said Mona. If Henry went back, she could find a blossom all by herself. “And besides, you don’t want to miss lunch. I’ll catch up with you later.”

  That did it. Henry nodded and scurried toward the voices. His red tail was the last thing to disappear through the bushes. It looked surprisingly small and droopy.

  It’s better like this, Mona told herself. Tilly wouldn’t be mad at her for leaving him with Maggie and Maurice. Henry was safe with them—safer than heading out so far into the forest anyway.

  With Henry gone, Mona scrambled down the trail to the cart. It took all her strength and several tries to get it back on its wheels. But at last she managed it and was on her way again.

  Time passed slowly, and the forest was eerily quiet without Henry’s chatter.

  It’s just because of the weather, thought Mona. Sun wasn’t shining through the canopy anymore. Gray sky peeked between the green leaves. Was it going to rain? Wind blew through, picking up petals and fluff, and even some Splash flyers. They really had been posted everywhere.

  One swooped by Mona, like a spooky wing. Others joined it, circling her head like birds of prey. She could only read a few words: competitions…finale…Prickles.

  Mona’s tail began to tremble, and the fur on her neck stood up.

  Should she head back to Henry and the rabbits? To the Heartwood? But then she thought of returning with the best blossom.

  Go on, she told herself, pushing her cart extra fast. There’s no one else here. It’s only your imagination.

  It wasn’t, though, because a moment later she heard a low voice.

  “Salutations!”

  Mona froze.

  “Salutations!” came the voice again.

  Mona looked around frantically, but she couldn’t see anyone anywhere.

  “Hello?” she whispered.

  “Under here,” came the voice.

  Mona pulled the luggage cart back, cautiously, to reveal right in front of it…

  A snail! Mona breathed a sigh of relief. Henry was wrong. A snail was nothing to be scared of.

  The snail’s feelers were curled upward like a moving mustache, and he was wearing large round glasses. How they were perched on his eye stalks, Mona wasn’t sure. Perhaps they were stuck on with slime? His shell was a swirl of reds, like a tiny rosy apple. He was, Mona realized, an apple snail. Usually they lived in water, but they traveled on land, too. She had met a few on her adventures in the woods, before coming to the Heartwood. Slung over this snail’s shell was the strap of a suitcase, which was made from another shell—an itty-bitty clam one.

  The snail looked up at Mona and blinked. His eyes were magnified by the lenses of his glasses. “Perhaps you can help. I’m looking for my hotel. My brother booked me there as a birthday gift.”

  “You must be one of our guests,” said Mona. “I’m one of the maids. My name is Mona.”

  “How fortuitous,” said the snail. “Am I going the right way? I really should have brought a map.”

  “Yes, you are,” said Mona.

  “Thank goodness. It IS a good thing I ran into you. Or, shall I say, you ran into me. No need to look dismayed. I should have spoken up. I was trying to remember the directions. I must have read them too quickly. I’m a fast reader—a speed-reading champion, in fact—and sometimes that can get me into trouble because I skip over things.”

  “Speed-reading champion?” Mona asked.

  “Yes. My name is Skim,” the snail said, blinking behind his glasses. “Now, this convergence was a pleasure, but I must keep going.”

  Mona watched as the snail began to slowly inch his way forward to the Heartwood. Very slowly.

  It would take him at least a day and a night to reach the Heartwood at the rate he was traveling.

  As much as she wanted to find the best blossom and win the contest, she couldn’t leave a guest alone in the forest, so far away from the Heartwood. Mr. Heartwood would never do
that. Suddenly, with an ache, Mona missed the big badger.

  “I can take you there, if you’d like,” she said to the snail.

  “Would you?” The snail perked up. “I really could use a quiescence.”

  “Excuse me?”

  “A rest,” the snail explained. “It has been a long journey. I may be a speed-reading champion, but in all other matters, I am extremely slow.”

  Indeed by the time he’d inched his way onto the luggage cart, the rain had started to fall, a few drops slipping through the canopy, and Skim was happy about it. The pitter-patter of the rain mixed with his chattering as Mona rolled him back to the hotel.

  They could hear the hubbub before the Heartwood came into sight. It had taken them a long time to get back, even with Skim riding the cart. But Mona didn’t realize quite how long she’d been gone until she saw the hotel.

  White daisies, blue violets, yellow buttercups, chocolate lilies, blue forget-me-nots, and pink-and-white trilliums, all braided together in chains, were being looped through the balcony railings by the guests and staff, who were singing and shouting as they worked. Some were even preening their feathers and fur in the spring shower. Others were tucking ferns and grasses into the bark of the tree. Mona could smell the sweetgrass and the wild oats. And the skunk cabbage! Petals floated and filled the pool that the stream created between two roots.

  The hotel was almost unrecognizable. It didn’t even look like a tree! It looked…

  “Grandiferous!” declared Skim.

  “What does that mean?” asked Mona.

  “I made it up,” said Skim. “Sometimes the best words burst from you, in the heart of the moment.”

  “Oh,” said Mona.

  “Though I must say, it isn’t what I expected.”

  It wasn’t what Mona expected either. Was it really grandiferous? She wasn’t sure. “Come on,” she said to Skim. “I can check you in.”

  The inside of the Heartwood was just as colorful and chaotic as the outside. If at the beginning of spring, the hotel had been buzzing with energy, now it was bursting. Guests were coming and going down the stairs—hatchlings who couldn’t fly yet were even sliding down the rail. Crickets chirped from the ceiling of the lobby. Chipmunks were eating nuts in the empty fireplace. The beautiful new lobby rug was being scrubbed by a family of pigs. “Mud is for sunscreen, not for rugs,” the mama pig was saying to her piglets. Tilly had said the pigs were tidy, but this was ridiculous. They wouldn’t even let Mona wipe her feet on it.

  Maggie and Maurice didn’t seem to care that guests were cleaning. They were draping daisy chains above the fireplace mantel, hiding the Heartwood motto. Mr. Heartwood would never allow that. Near them, Mona could see the porcupine, Mr. Quillson, a cluster of daisy chains in his paw. But instead of handing them to the rabbits to arrange, he was plucking petals from one of the flowers and muttering to himself. Extra strange!

  “Mona, you’re back!” said Maggie. “Where’s your flower?”

  Of course, she hadn’t had a chance to find one.

  “You should see what Henry found,” added Maurice.

  Sure enough, there was Henry. Mona was relieved to see him—until she noticed the giant blossom he was holding. The pink flower was shaped like a heart. It was just the sort of flower she would have liked to find.

  “It’s a heart flower!” said Henry. “You know, like the Heartwood! Want to help me put it up?”

  “I have a guest to check in,” said Mona, a bit of grump creeping into her voice, and wheeled the cart away from Henry toward the front desk.

  But when she checked the ledger, there was no record of Skim, or any snails, for that matter.

  “Let me talk to Gilles,” said Mona. “He’s our manager. One moment.”

  She found Gilles in Mr. Heartwood’s office, which was at the back of the front desk. The door was slightly open. Gilles looked small in Mr. Heartwood’s big twig chair. He was arguing with Mrs. Higgins.

  “This is ridiculous, Gilles! We have a secret door for a reason, to make our hotel hard to find. But everyone can find the hotel now.”

  “Exactly!” said Gilles. “We want EVERYONE to come here.”

  “No, we don’t!” huffed Mrs. Higgins. “We have no room.”

  “Um…” started Mona, reluctant to interrupt.

  “Mona, there you are!” said Mrs. Higgins. “More of the hatchlings have been born. Their rooms need cleaning. The shells must be properly recycled—taken to the garden for composting—unless of course the parents wish to keep pieces for mementos.”

  “But Gilles sent us to get blossoms,” said Mona.

  Mrs. Higgins huffed again.

  “I did, but that was ages ago. Everyone came back with plenty,” said Gilles. “Now, please, if we are to manage this Splash, I must have you here. Why, it’s a fully booked hotel. Every room is occupied.”

  “We’re fully booked? But we have a guest here now, waiting for a room,” said Mona.

  Gilles’s tongue flicked out, then in. “We do?”

  “He said he has a reservation.”

  “See? Our standards are slipping!” tsked Mrs. Higgins. “If you would spend more time at the desk…”

  “We’ll find him a room, we must!”

  “But how?” asked Mona. “You just said there were none left.”

  “I did. There aren’t.” Gilles got up and began poring over the large map of the hotel hanging on the wall. “I just booked a family of rabbits into the last ones. Fourteen kits. I gave them three rooms. They are related to the Duchess.” He was so green now, he practically glowed.

  “This is a snail. He wouldn’t need a big room. Maybe something in the bug suites?” piped Mona.

  Gilles shook his head, tapping the map with his tail, harder and harder each time. “Booked, booked, booked!”

  If Gilles felt dreadful, Mona felt worse, as she peered back through the office door. Skim had inched himself over to the guest book on the front desk and seemed to be reading it.

  Suddenly Mona had an idea. “Gilles, there IS one room left.” She pointed to the map.

  “But that’s the storage room. It’s filled with books,” said Mrs. Higgins. “It will NEVER do.”

  “Actually,” said Mona, “I think for this guest, it will be just right.”

  And it was. Despite the mix-up, Skim was ecstatic, which he explained to Mona meant “very happy indeed.”

  Once Mona had cleaned the suite, the snail settled in with a tub of water, a dandelion-leaf sandwich, and a big stack of books. “If there is anything I can do for you, Miss Mouse,” he said, “I would be happy to. You have taken great care of me.”

  “Actually,” said Mona hesitantly, another idea popping into her head, “if you are going to read the guest books anyway, could you look for an entry for me, please…by mice? My parents, Madeline and Timothy, stayed here long ago. I don’t know their last names. They were lost in a storm when I was a baby. I’ve been trying to read the books myself, to see if they wrote an entry, but I haven’t had a chance. I’m not a fast reader like you.”

  “Of course,” said Skim. “It’s but a night’s wordswork.”

  Mona smiled. Wordswork? It was another one of Skim’s made-up words. But it sounded perfect.

  BANG! BAM! BOOM!

  The sounds that woke up Mona the next morning were anything but perfect. Not one, but two bands were battling down the hallway. They were so loud the noise drifted all the way to Mona’s room. She got out of bed, tied her apron on with a quick knot, and peeked out her door. All along the hallway other staff were doing the same.

  Outside Mrs. Higgins’s office, three raccoons were yelling at three frogs. Mrs. Higgins and Gilles were there, still wearing their nightcaps and looking frazzled.

  BANG! One of the frogs hit his drum. “We are always hired for the Heartwood Hop!”

  TWANG! One of the raccoons plucked his banjo. “But it’s NOT the hop. It’s the Splash. And we were hired.”

  “Didn’t you canc
el the Hoppers?” Mrs. Higgins said to Gilles.

  “I…ah…I…” For once Gilles seemed at a loss for words. But then he found some. “I…decided to book you both.” The bands didn’t look happy about this, but at least they stopped their noise.

  Mona was glad that fighting was over. In the kitchen, however, she was greeted by another argument.

  Captain Ruby had found out that the Flares had been asked to perform that night and was none too pleased.

  “Can’t we book them, too?” Mona asked Gilles when he came in. “Like you did with the bands?”

  “The bees are already booked—to make honey,” he replied.

  “Fine,” said the captain. “Since we are not being given a chance to display our fine-tuned formations, we shall depart for good. First thing tomorrow. THOSE Flares are always the only ones who get to shine.” The squadron buzzed away.

  “Oh dear,” cried Ms. Prickles. “Now look what’s happened.” Smoke filled the kitchen. Mona hurried to help.

  “I’ve never burned anything before, not in all my years,” she moaned.

  “Never?” asked Mona.

  She paused. “I guess there was that one time, when I was young and let my heart distract my head….”

  Mona wondered what Ms. Prickles meant and hoped she would say more. But she didn’t. Instead, the porcupine composed herself and continued, “It’s okay, dearie. I’ll just save them for Henry. He won’t mind. He has an even bigger appetite than his sister.”

  Henry again? Now he was the best eater, too? This was getting ridiculous!

  By the afternoon, things had calmed down considerably, as almost everyone was busy brushing their fur and fluffing their feathers to get ready for the big party.

  Tilly, though, was running around, frantically assigning roles to the staff for later. Gilles was master of ceremonies. Ms. Prickles was going to serve her petal pastries. Even Tony, the security woodpecker, had a task: as well as patrol, he had to relight any lanterns that might blow out.

  What will I get to do? wondered Mona. Something important, she decided. Tilly still hadn’t told her, only asked her to place the lanterns around the edge of the stage in the courtyard. It was supposed to be a dark night with only a whisker of a moon, and lanterns were needed.