by Bryan Chick
“Are you saying you’re not going to wear yours for school pictures?” Megan teased.
“They’re not so bad,” Richie argued. He buried his whole hand in his chest pocket. “I could fit a lot of cool stuff in here.”
“Richie,” said Ella, “you could put a toaster in there.”
They stepped forward and peered through the glass walls of the aquarium. Otters swam and played in the channel of water between the island and the glass. The scouts gasped and stepped back as someone suddenly appeared in the water, a girl with short blond hair and red bangs. Hannah. She swam underwater from around the corner, otters swerving around her. She was chewing a piece of gum. Noah had the crazy thought that she might blow an underwater bubble and pop it against her lips. When she drew near the scouts, she casually tipped her head.
The scouts simply stood there as inches away from them, Hannah swam. Incredibly, the Descender was wearing her long purple boots with the thick soles. She kicked past the scouts and swam into the turn at the opposite end of the aquarium, disappearing behind the island.
Silence. None of the scouts moved. Finally, Richie cleared his throat and said, “Funny-looking otter, huh?”
From the back of the aquarium came a loud splash. Hannah appeared again, this time on the island. She rose over the hills like a giant. With her purple boots and wet, multicolored hair, she looked like a monster on a bad movie set. Noah almost expected her to growl, snatch an otter, and bite off its furry head. Instead, she walked to the front of the island, stepping over the otters and water slides. When she was near the scouts, she jumped across the channel of water, pulled her waist up on the aquarium wall, and flipped over the glass in an impressive arc before landing gracefully on her feet. She propped her hands on her hips and stood facing the scouts, casually chomping her gum.
“Wow!” Richie gasped. “That was . . . that was really, really athletic.”
Ella rolled her eyes.
“Ummm—hi,” said Noah.
Hannah said nothing. She simply stood there in her dripping clothes. She popped another bubble. Her stare swept over the scouts, momentarily stopping on each name tag. Still smacking her gum, she said, “Nice shirts.” She turned away and walked along the aquarium wall. “Follow me.”
As the scouts clambered behind Hannah, Richie asked, “Aren’t you cold?”
“A little bit.” Noah guessed that she would have responded the same way if icicles were dangling from her skin. “You’re going to be cold in a few minutes, too,” she added.
“Great,” said Richie. “Can’t wait.”
Hannah stopped, turned to the scouts, and leaned her shoulder against the aquarium in a casual, cool way. “First things first. You’re not going to get a long history lesson from me, and I’m certainly not going to bore myself by talking about our role in protecting animals. I’m going to show you guys how to cross the Secret Wotter Park, and that’s it. We got ninety minutes before your mommies put dinner on the table. That gives us enough time to get you into the City of Species and back.”
Hannah blew a bubble, popped it, then licked the sticky film off her lips. Then she continued, “Few quick things about the Wotter Park. It has a straight drop to the Secret Zoo. Once you cross into the Secret Wotter Park, there are four city gateways—entrances into the City of Species.” She popped another bubble. “Sector Thirty-one, the Secret Wotter Park, is more than a bit unusual. It’s the result of a consolidation project.”
“Consolidation project?” Megan asked.
“Yeah. The Secret Society needed to free up some space for a new sector, so we—”
“What was the new sector?” Megan asked.
“The Cemetery Sector.”
“Oh,” said Richie. “One of the”—he drew quotation marks in the air with his fingers—“Forbidden Five.”
“Look,” Hannah told him, “that’s not important. All you need to know is that the Secret Society moved the original Secret Wotter Park to a water tower, an existing structure in the City of Species. These days, most people call this water tower the Wotter Tower.” She spelled it out. “W-o-t-t-e-r.”
Noah said, “So the Secret Wotter Park—the sector that we’re about to gate into—it’s actually inside a water tower in the City of Species?”
Hannah answered with a nod and a pop!
“How high?”
“High. More than a thousand feet.”
Richie clutched the sides of his head.
Hannah continued, “One nice thing about the Secret Wotter Park is that it’s pretty small, allowing Crossers quick access to the City of Species. The record for crossing Sector Thirty-one is two minutes and twelve seconds.”
“Who holds it?” Noah asked.
Hannah tapped her chest.
The scouts didn’t say anything. They stared at the teenage girl, still trying to figure her out.
“One bad thing about this sector is that crossing it means you’re going to get wet.” She paused, then added, “If you guys learn only one thing in crosstraining, learn this: the secret to getting quickly across any sector is being able to use the unique abilities of the animals that live in that sector. You need to become the animals.”
Noah asked, “But how—”
“Follow me,” said Hannah. “Follow me, and I’ll show you.”
With that, she turned and led the scouts around the corner of the aquarium.
Chapter 19
The Scouts Get Wet
On the side farthest from the entrance to the exhibit, a door stood in the wall across from the aquarium. Hannah told them it was kept locked and instructed Noah to use his magical key. The room inside was narrow and had steps built into one wall. Hannah and the scouts climbed up the steps and entered a passageway in the ceiling of the exhibit. They crossed over the visitors’ walkway, opened a hatch, and jumped down to the island in the middle of the aquarium.
Hannah led them to the pool on the island, into which all the water slides emptied. The scouts followed her, stepping over rocks and puddles. Curious otters romped at their feet, scuttling through their legs and stepping on their toes. Hannah crouched like a baseball catcher and gestured toward the bubbling water. “Down there,” she said. “Right in the middle—that’s the entrance to the Secret Wotter Park.”
The scouts leaned over and struggled to see into the depths. Otters plummeted down the slides and splashed headfirst into the pool. Some squirmed back onto shore, their slender bodies sleek and slippery. Others disappeared in the tunnels that opened into the channel of water along the aquarium walls.
“What do we do?” Noah asked.
“You jump in,” Hannah replied. “You should have plenty of air.”
“Should?” Richie echoed.
Hannah smirked and popped her bubble gum. “First timers. Always so nervous.”
“You said it’s a straight drop, right?” Megan asked.
Hannah nodded.
“As opposed to the Grottoes,” Noah said, fishing for information.
Hannah kept silent, dodging Noah’s remark.
“I’ll go,” Megan volunteered. She flung herself forward feetfirst and sank, the churning water closing above her head.
Still smiling, Hannah shook her head. “That chick—it’s no wonder she found the Secret Zoo.”
Inspired by Megan, Ella jumped forward and splashed down. Like her friend, she immediately disappeared into the bubbling water, leaving no trace.
Noah corralled his courage and fell forward. The cold water stole his breath. As his body sank, the only thing he could hear was the muted gurgle of the water. His clothes filled with weight and clung to his body.
He opened his eyes. The walls were smooth and sloped like those of an inground pool. He noticed the tunnels that punched through the island to the outer channel of water. Above him, the choppy water sparkled as it absorbed the incoming light. Beyond the flickering crests, he could make out the shifting silhouettes of Hannah and Richie peering into the pool.
Noah realized he was softly being pulled toward the bottom of the pool. He looked down, expecting to find an otter tugging on his pants. Instead, he saw that his feet were being sucked into a narrow cavern. Water swirled around the cavern’s mouth the way it does around a bathtub drain. As Noah sank, his body began to spin around—once, twice, three times. His legs were swallowed, then his waist, his chest, his neck. Finally, he was pulled completely into the hole, and the light of the world blinked out.
Consumed in darkness, Noah continued to spin. Once again he was in a tunnel descending toward the Secret Zoo. This time, however, he was making the trip as a Crosser, a real member of the Secret Society. He began to envision what the Secret Wotter Park might look like— this magical place inside a water tower high above a city of unimaginable wonder.
Chapter 20
Break on Through to the Otter Side
In the tunnel, something cold and smooth dragged across all sides of Noah. He knew what it had been: velvet charged with magic. Noah had just gated into Sector 31 of the Secret Zoo, the Secret Wotter Park.
The tunnel came to an abrupt end. On a gush of water, Noah shot into a bright open space surrounded by steep mountainsides. His arms and legs fanned the air as he dropped fifteen feet and splashed into a huge pool of water. He swam to the surface through the blinding trail of bubbles his splashdown had created and emerged gasping for air.
“Here!” a voice called out.
He swung his head around. Perhaps twenty yards away, Ella and Megan were clinging to otters—two for each girl, one tucked under each arm. Another pair bumped against him. He draped his arms over their backs and allowed himself to be carried toward his friends.
The scouts had been deposited in the middle of a round lake, roughly two hundred yards across. The lake butted against steep, rocky mountainsides. It was as if the scouts had landed in the bowl of a volcano filled with water rather than lava. Great trees covered the cliffs and reached across the water, sunlight streaming through their branches. Ropes of ivy draped down. Waterfalls dropped from the hidden heights, spilling over rocks and raising clouds of mist.
Smooth channels were etched into the granite parts of the mountainsides. Filled with cascading water, they acted as waterslides. Hundreds of otters were cruising down the well-worn paths and splashing into the lake.
Otters scrambled over the branches and one another. In the water, more than thirty swam up to the scouts and began to circle them, their long bodies snaking around.
Noah looked up and spied the watery tunnel from which he and the other scouts had spouted. It resided in the hollow of a huge branch. Richie suddenly shot out, tumbled gracelessly through the air, struck the water headfirst, and promptly sank.
Ella said, “Is it too late to pretend we don’t know him?”
Richie’s head emerged, then bobbed like a buoy with a red cap. Miraculously, he’d managed not to lose his glasses. He slapped his arms around, splashing water everywhere. An otter bumped noses with him, then unapologetically kicked off against his chest.
“Richie!” Ella called. “Over here!”
He dog-paddled toward the sound of Ella’s voice, not covering much ground —or water—for his efforts. Seeing this, two otters squeezed under his arms and quickly carried him over.
“You okay?” Ella asked.
Richie was coughing too much to answer.
Concerned, Ella leaned toward him. “Richie?”
His coughing subsided. “I think . . . I think I swallowed an otter.”
Ella swatted his head, sending his pom-pom into a dance.
Just then, Hannah shot out through the hollow in the tree. With a diver’s grace, she twirled and flipped and pierced the water, leaving not a ripple. Seconds later, she emerged in front of the scouts. She swept her red bangs off her forehead and asked, “What do you think? Piece of cake?”
“Maybe later,” Richie said. “I just ate an otter.”
More and more otters were swimming around them now, wriggling and looping from spot to spot, only their backs and heads visible above the water.
“I don’t see the gateways into the City of Species,” Noah said.
“That’s because you’re not looking in the right spot,” said Hannah.
Noah pointed to the rising cliff walls and said, “If we need to climb those to get out of here, it’s going to take a lot more than ten minutes.”
“Again, you’re not looking in the right spot. Remember— you’re in a tower.”
Noah pondered for a moment and realized what he’d forgotten. The water. He squirmed off his otters and dove down into the lake. What he saw through the clear water was so breathtaking that he had to surface for air.
“What’s down there?” Megan asked.
Noah took three shallow breaths and gasped, “No words . . . just look!”
With that, he sank a second time. The scouts—even Richie—swam after him. Just below the water surface on each side of them, a distant light blinked above a velvet curtain: the four gateways into the City of Species. The tower walls, made of glass, slowly curved inward, converging on a point no less than five hundred feet below. Through the distant glass floor, Noah saw gleaming columns and realized the tower had two parts: a round tank above a series of columns. With no visible seams or supporting framework, the walls offered an endless view into the City of Species. Noah saw buildings and trees and the faint suggestions of animals navigating the winding streets.
Almost bursting from lack of air, the scouts resurfaced. “Unbelievable!” Richie spluttered, spraying water from his lips. “The walls! The glass! The city! It’s . . . incredible!”
“But how . . .” Megan looked up around her. “All these mountainsides—what are they standing on? I mean, if everything beneath us is glass, how—”
“Don’t smoke your brain thinking about it,” said Hannah. “I’m not a magical scientist, so I couldn’t explain.”
“A what?” Noah asked. “A magical scientist?”
Hannah popped her gum. “You guys have so much to learn—but not from me, because, remember, I don’t do the book stuff. Right now, the only thing I care about is getting you guys into the City of Species and back to the Clarksville Zoo. You ready?”
On behalf of the scouts, Noah nodded.
“Good. This next part makes gating into the sector feel like a walk in the park.”
Richie said, “You’re kidding, right?”
Hannah winked. “Get ready to lose your stomach.”
Chapter 21
Across the Wotter Tower
Each of the scouts once again clung to a pair of otters to stay afloat. More than a hundred otters were swimming around them, bumping heads and rumps while leaving V-shaped ripples in their wakes. The animals seemed to be anxious about something.
To be heard above the splashes and squeaks, Hannah loudly said, “Okay, as you guys saw, there are four city gateways equally spaced around the Wotter Tower. Each gateway opens to a different street in the city. We’re going to take”—Hannah pointed her finger—“that one.” She paused, chomped her gum, then said, “Ready?”
The scouts nodded.
“Just do like I do.”
She waved her arm above her head, as if flagging down a taxi, and about twenty otters quickly closed in around her. She sucked back a deep breath and plunged down. As she started swimming, the otters packed in around her and began kicking their legs and undulating their streamlined bodies, propelling themselves forward. Though their movements were at first sloppy and uncoordinated, they quickly synchronized. From the snout of the first otter to the rump of the last, waves rolled across them as if they were a single unit, causing Hannah to be carried away.
Just when Noah wondered how Hannah would breathe, her otters rose to the surface in a smooth arc, allowing her to take a breath before plunging her back down, their pointy tails whipping the air.
“I’m going,” said Megan without hesitation.
“Cool,” Richie said. He pushed his glas
ses back up the slippery slope of his nose and added, “On your way back, let me know how it went.”
Following Hannah’s lead, Megan waved her arm in the air, alerting the otters. Then she dove into the water and began swimming toward the gateway. Quickly, a pack of otters dipped down and squeezed into place along her body. They began to kick and undulate, first individually, then as a unit. Finding their rhythm, they carried Megan forward.
“I’ll go,” Ella volunteered next. “Before these river rats start munching on my fingertips, which started looking like prunes about five minutes ago.”
She waved her arm and dove down, where a pack of otters quickly gathered around her. Within seconds, Ella was being carried across the tower.
“Okay,” said Noah. “My turn.” He drew in a breath and plunged in. Sound left his world. He held open his eyes to watch the otters move in around him. He was pulled, poked, and pressed as the animals jostled for position. When they took off swimming, Noah was pummeled by their hard noggins and wide rumps. But soon their movements harmonized and the otters took control of Noah like a strange underwater puppet. He discovered what it was like to swim with an otter’s grace, speed, and flexibility.
After a few seconds, the otters brought Noah toward the surface so abruptly that his stomach dropped. They surfaced long enough for Noah to take a breath and then dipped back into the water.
They gained speed. Noah peered out over his shoulder: across the underwater reaches of the Wotter Tower, hundreds of otters were playfully chasing him.
Seconds later, the otters again lifted him to the surface for air. Noah saw the mountain was less than thirty yards away. Its closeness meant the city gateway was close as well.
The otters dipped Noah back down into the water. Soon the world darkened as they swam beneath the mountain-side. Noah could make out a shadowy ceiling of rocks and roots. Somehow the mountain stood on nothing. Noah suspected it clung to the glass walls of the Wotter Tower the way mud clings to a brick wall. The details of the gold curtain came into view: the long vertical folds, the dangling tassels, the gold loops holding the curtain to its rod.