Rosie held out a small hardbound notebook. Grass stained the corner.
It had the words PROPERTY OF APRIL written with black magic marker on the front.
“When I found it, it was open to this page,” Rosie said.
Rosie carefully opened the notebook to its last entry: April’s picture of the mountain. “Seems likely that they came back for more than just the unicorns,” Rosie said, closing the book and sticking it in her bag.
“It sounds like something they would do,” Jen said, and bit her lip.
“Did you find anything,” Rosie asked.
Jen nodded. “Look.”
“Hey,” Rosie read, “Hey, please do not climb this mountain. For a variety of reasons but mainly because it is not a mountain and it is stormy dangerous.”
Jen stood up. Once again, she thought, the world was full of weird things she wished she understood or at least had some clue about in advance.
“The mountain,” she said, pointing behind Rosie. “It’s . . .”
“It’s what,” Rosie looked up.
“Gone!”
CHAPTER 32
“Okay, quick recap,” April said, stabbing her finger into her palm, “Just. Okay. So. You’re saying that This Mountain, this mountain we just climbed up, just now, like JUST NOW, doesn’t exist?”
“This is rainy days.” Swish seemed to be turning the words over in its head. “So, like, it doesn’t exist right now.”
“We were JUST on it,” April repeated sternly, to ensure clarity, miming their ascent for the Cloudies in case she wasn’t being clear enough. “We were climbing,” she added, demonstrating, “with increasing effort.” April lifted her legs up to indicate a strenuous ascent.
“And then we were like this, AAHHHHHH!” Ripley showed them falling so the story would be complete. “And then our friend’s wrist got hurt.”
“Blue skies. Totally blue skies. Except ya, the mountain’s gone now. It might be back later, though,” Flap mused, its hat sliding off its head slightly.
“What? That’s nuts!” April threw her hands up. “That is just CASHEWS, man!”
“That does seem very unlikely to be true,” Jo said.
But, Molly thought, not all that unlikely, given the many unlikely things that were always happening.
Mal flopped to the ground, cross-legged, and tried not to think for a second. Her legs felt like jelly.
“Well, like, it’s a bit foggy?” Swish tilted its head and stroked its beard. “It’s not like it’s not there, just that a lot of the time, it’s not there.”
“Most of the time it’s there and then it’s not there.” Flap’s voice seemed unsure, or at least very laid back. “It’s there and then sunny days and . . .”
“And then it’s not there? It just disappears?” Jo looked at April.
April looked like her head was about to explode.
“Some of it does, sometimes all of it,” Flap said, patting its cap, “Foggy, right? So that’s why we tell people not to climb it. Because it could go at any minute so, you know, pretty stormy if you’re on the mountain when it’s not there, because, then—”
“Whoosh,” Mal grumbled from the ground.
Flap looked around. “Uh. Whoosh isn’t here right now, but Whoosh will definitely be at tea later.”
Swish looked at Flap. “Hey,” Swish said, “you know who they should talk to?”
“Oh yeah,” said Flap, braiding its beard absentmindedly, “totally.”
And with that, Swish and Flap floated off, their robe ties dragging through the light mist in their wake.
When Swish and Flap disappeared into the clouds, they left behind them a silence thicker than a triple strawberry gelato shake, extra thick.
Molly sat down next to Mal and gently took her wrist in her hand. “Hey,” she said quietly.
Mal looked at her wrist.
Jo looked at April. Ripley looked at Mal and Molly.
“This is BONKERS!” April looked pleadingly at Mal. “There has to be a way to get down.”
“We need a safe way to get down, because someone’s already been hurt,” Molly said, looking at Mal with concern.
Suddenly the hardest thing April had ever done was just stand still and look at her friends, who were all looking kind of scared and kind of mad.
“How was I supposed to know the mountain wasn’t a mountain and we couldn’t get up and be able to get back down, or even up?” April looked at her feet.
Mal looked at her wrist. Being hurt sucks.
Mal gingerly got to her feet and looked hard at April. “Of course we’re on a mountain that’s not a mountain. Because stuff like this always happens to us! Because we’re always DOING this stuff! And now we’re stuck up here. Maybe forever.”
Ripley’s eyes got big as saucers. “Are we?”
“Well, hold on,” Jo objected, putting her arms around Ripley.
“This wasn’t part of the plan!” April shouted. “I mean if I had known, obviously . . .”
April didn’t know what else to say. All her words were balled up in her chest.
Mal didn’t know what else to say either. Everything she wanted to say sounded kind of mean in her head, mostly because her head felt like it was splitting down the center.
So she walked away.
“Mal!” April’s face twisted.
But Mal was already gone, holding her wrist and trying to hold back the tears that were already pouring down her cheeks so why bother.
Jo turned and looked at April, who also looked like she was about to melt into a tiny puddle of April. “We’ll think of something,” Jo said solemnly.
Molly ran off after Mal.
Ripley pulled the little Clow Bell out of her pocket and thought about a time when all they had to worry about was smelly unicorns.
Out of the mist, another figure, less willowy and not in a robe, emerged. “Is that a Clow Bell? Don’t tell me you were hangin’ out with those stinkin’ unicorns.”
CHAPTER 33
Jen and Rosie stood in the spot that had been a mountain but was now just a clearing past the fields of unicorns and Clow Bells. It looked like an empty sandbox, a patch of desert with just a few rocks here and there. A faint mist, like a few dozen pfffts of hairspray, hung in the air.
Here there was once a mountain. It seemed impossible. Now there was just Jen, Jeremy, and Rosie. And empty, inexplicable space. And Jen was freaking out, which involved a lot of arm waving.
“I was here the day before yesterday,” Jen said. “I’m telling you, I was here and there was a mountain right here!”
“Yes,” Rosie said, kneeling down and placing her hand on the ground, which was warm to the touch. “Hmmmm.”
“And can I just say, SEEING A WHOLE MOUNTAIN is not something you make a mistake about,” Jen went on, pacing in circles of increasing diameter, “and I know there are a lot of things to be wrong about. But this is a matter of MATTER!”
“Well,” Rosie lifted her hand from the ground and looked at her palm, where the faintest layer of a soft pink dust glittered on her skin, “yes and no. Really, it’s a matter of a mountain. Currently, it’s a matter of how to get up a mountain that isn’t there.”
“Have you remembered the story you forgot yet?” Jen asked, exasperated.
“I have.” Rosie looked around and breathed in the air to see if it was sweet or sour. Mostly it was faintly unicorn. “It’s a story that takes place a long, long time ago, before one of many wars, about a scout, a very determined scout, who vanished, and was last seen headed toward a meadow of Clow Bells and unicorns.” Rosie adjusted her glasses. “It was long before me. Long before anyone who’s still on the council.”
Jen clapped her hands on the side of her face. “SHE VANISHED?”
“She went to climb a mountain and she never returned.” Rosie stood and looked up as far as she could look. All she could see was empty space. Empty space and empty space and empty space . . . and cloud. “POOF!”
“POO
F!?” Jen threw her hands up in the air.
“I’m not saying she exploded,” Rosie clarified, still looking up, because there was a story of a camper who had gone poof once, but it was a minor explosion and everyone walked away okay. “I’m saying whatever she climbed up, she never came back down.”
Jen, who didn’t know the story of the student who sort of exploded but ended up okay, was squeezing her head so tight it looked like it might go POP! “POOF!?!?”
Rosie put her hand on Jen’s shoulder. “Breathe, Jen. We’ll get them back. We just need to figure out how. Lumberjanes don’t give up on Lumberjanes, or on mountains, or on mountain climbers.”
“It’s J—.” Jen tilted her head, alerted to the sound of her actual name. “Oh. Right. Okay. Well. We better.”
“We will.” Rosie scratched her head, which was full of many thoughts. Mostly about how to get up a mountain that used to be there but now no longer was.
CHAPTER 34
“Who are you and what are you doing here?”
The woman standing in front of April, Jo, and Ripley appeared to be about eighty, although it’s hard to tell what women in their eighties look like as opposed to women in their sixties or seventies. She was tall and muscular, bent slightly in the middle. She looked like someone who was ready to box any creature willing and able to box, at a moment’s notice. Instead of a robe, she was wearing a long khaki skirt and a faded yellow button-up blouse.
Her face wasn’t so much pearly as weathered and kind of wrinkly, like an apple that’s been left out on a windowsill after someone forgot to finish it. She did have very long, flowing white hair down past her knees and, like the Cloudies, a very long, wispy, wavy beard, which she wore wrapped around her neck like a thick woolen scarf.
The woman thumped over and leaned in close to Ripley with a menacing scowl. “The Cloudies said you’re Lumberjanes.”
“Yes!” Ripley beamed, moving her face until it was so close to the old woman’s face you could barely fit a cat’s tail between them. “We’re members of Roanoke cabin! Which is the best cabin ever!”
“Humph,” the woman said, turning to look April up and down like a sergeant conducting inspection. “If you’re LUMBERJANES, why are you out of uniform? Don’t tell me they let you wear PANTS.” She looked at Jo. “That’s not even regulation khaki.”
Jo looked down at her pants, which were her favorite pants because they had lots of really big pockets and even two handy secret pockets. “We don’t wear uniforms. Lumberjane scouts can wear whatever they want.”
“Even tutus,” Ripley chimed in. “Or wet suits. Or giant bear costumes! Or clown noses! Or glitter wigs with wings on them. OH! OR—”
“What’s that,” the old woman pointed a bony finger at Bubbles, who was currently curled up tightly around Jo’s neck, while Molly comforted Mal.
“That’s our raccoon, Bubbles!” Ripley said. “Technically, it’s kind of Molly’s raccoon, but now Jo is holding him because there was this fall and—”
“You don’t wear uniforms and you carry vermin around?” The old woman snarled, cutting Ripley off. “In my day, a Lumberjane didn’t have pets, she had priorities.”
“We have both,” Jo said, giving Bubbles a reassuring pat on the head.
Bubbles chirped a chirp that might be described as a raccoon saying, “Who is this cantakerous lady, what’s her beef with raccoons?!”
April’s eyes suddenly popped out of her head. She pointed at the old woman who was giving them static about their clothes. “WHAT THE AGATHA CHRISTIE! YOU’RE a Lumberjane!”
“Humph. Obviously I am,” the old woman said, pointing at her uniform, which was faded but clearly Lumberjane green and yellow. “Two points to you for observation skills.”
“Hold up,” April put her hands on her hips. “You’re giving me points?”
“Points are everything to a Lumberjane,” the old lady huffed. “I had 4,234 points at last count. And forty-five badges. And a bronze and silver double-ax pin. And the Starbringer medal for fastest runner.”
For a brief moment, April wondered how many points she would have, if they gave points. Also she wondered if she should let this woman know how many badges SHE had. Then she shook the thought out of her head.
“I’m sorry.” Jo stepped forward. “We didn’t introduce ourselves (not that you asked). I’m Jo. This is April, and the person hugging you is Ripley. Over there are our friends Mal and Molly.”
“Fine, fine,” the woman snapped. Looking down, she added, “No unnecessary displays of affection.”
Ripley stepped back. “Sorry. Habit.”
“And you are…” Jo asked.
The woman spryly hopped up on a small mound of cloud, waving her finger in the air. “I AM THE LADY DANA DEVEROE ANASTASIA MISTYTOE AND I AM THE GREATEST RECORD HOLDER IN THE HISTORY OF THE LUMBERJANES!”
Pausing for effect, Lady Dana held her hand up in a somewhat majestic gesture.
“You have a record,” Jo mused quietly to herself. “Not surprising.”
“A record?” Lady Dana cackled. “HA! I have THE RECORDS. All of them! The fastest swim, the longest swim, the fastest unicycle, the fastest climb, and the tallest climb in all of Lumberjane history.”
She jumped down and did a few quick laps around April, Jo, and Ripley. “I was the first and, up until you scouts, the only person to climb this mountain.”
“This lady is making me dizzy,” Ripley said.
“WHAAAA. Wait! You climbed up,” April gasped. “And you’re STILL here?”
Lady Dana stopped her hopping and finger waving. “HUMPH. You don’t know the half of it,” she grumbled.
CHAPTER 35
Mal was freaking out. It was embarrassing and frustrating to be the only one in your cabin freaking out. Again. The only one freaked out by being on an alien-looking cloud world with pearl-faced people and no way of getting home.
Or at least the only one who seemed freaked out.
And injured.
So Mal took a moment to stand on a cloud and look at the sky and try to stop from losing her stuffing.
Molly walked up behind Mal and waited for her breathing to get less crazy. Sometimes when Mal got nervous, she kind of hyperventilated a bit. Mal closed her eyes and tried to just breathe.
It took a few minutes. Then Mal took a deep deep breath and let it out.
FFFFFFFFFFFF.
“Hey.” Molly’s voice was soft and cautious. “I’m sorry about your wrist, Mal. I promise we’ll figure out something. There’s got to be some way to get down.” Molly paused. “And you can go to your accordion practice when it heals.”
Mal turned, cheeks red. “I don’t care about the accordion. That’s not the reason . . . That’s not—”
“It’s fine,” Molly interrupted, suddenly nervous. “I get it. Zodiac are totally cool.”
“What?” Mal stepped forward and took Molly’s hand with her good hand. “I think you’re the coolest!”
Molly rolled her eyes, a pinkish color filling her usually pale white cheeks. “I’m not cool.”
“You really are,” Mal said, running her fingers over the shaved bits of her head nervously. “I’m the one who’s not cool. I mean, everything we do as Lumberjanes, I’m always the only one who’s freaked out or scared. I’m the only one who’s not like, ‘Woo-hoo, let’s go canoe down a waterfall.’”
“You don’t think I was scared when I was falling?” Molly gasped. “I was totally scared!”
“Okay, well.” Mal touched her forehead to Molly’s forehead. “I’m glad you didn’t totally plummet. And I’m glad that even if I’m freaked out, at least you’re here.”
Suddenly there was an extra pair of arms around them. It was Ripley squeezing them tight.
“April’s talking to this grumpy bearded lady who used to be a Lumberjane,” she reported in a reporter’s voice. “That lady is THE Lady Dana Devotion Alaska Mistletoe . . . or something. She doesn’t like hugs and she holds a lot of records and stu
ff.”
“We’ll be right there.” Molly put her hand on Ripley’s head.
“We could all waddle over in hug formation,” Ripley suggested, because it sounded like a pretty great idea.
“Okay,” Mal said, “but watch my arm.”
So the three of them all hug-shuffled back across the clouds to where Lady Dana Deveroe Anastasia Mistytoe was just getting started.
CHAPTER 36
Jo and April watched Lady Dana pace back and forth and back and forth, pinging off an invisible wall, gesturing like she was in a big meeting and trying to make a really big point.
Lady Dana was on her second wind. Maybe even her third. She held her hand up above her head as she continued detailing her string of accomplishments. “I ran through the fields of alabaster wheat and across the Egyptian desert. I swam the Lake of Ruinous Ruin three times around in less time than it took most ladies to get their swimming costumes on. I swam so fast you couldn’t even see me swim. I was a BLUR.”
“Ruinous Ruin,” Mal shivered, as she, Molly, and Ripley approached.
“Swimming costumes,” Molly mused.
“There wasn’t a race I couldn’t win. I was the fastest lap in the 100-, 200- and 2,000-meter sprint,” Lady Dana continued, now jogging from foot to foot. “Scouts would say that Lady Dana Deveroe Anastasia Mistytoe is the fastest scout on earth.”
“Wow,” said April.
“And they were RIGHT!” Lady Dana slammed her fist into her open palm. BOOM!
“I like a snack after a race,” Ripley said.
“Being the best runs in my family. My aunt, the great Madam Deborah Darcy Abalonious Mistytoe, rest her soul, used to invent NEW things to be the best at because she ran out.” Lady Dana unfurled her long beard from around her neck, tossing it over her shoulder the way old-timey fighter pilots tossed their silk scarves over theirs when they boarded their biplanes
Ripley wondered if it would be rude to ask a person who doesn’t like hugging how long it took her to grow her beard. Ripley thought if she herself had a beard, she would dye it different colors like a unicorn tail.
Unicorn Power! Page 9