by Tony Abbott
Everything froze, stilled, stopped.
Everything was silent.
Nothing moved.
Nothing. Except Eric.
And except the magic staff. It flew out of Umberto’s iron hand and its tangle of thorns burst into flames.
The staff whirled across the whole length of the arena. Astonished, Eric followed it with his eyes until it stopped in the hand of someone he knew.
“Thank you, Eric. I’ve been wanting this!”
Dora, the old boat woman, hobbled toward him, holding the staff in her hands.
With every step she took, however, she changed. Her old rags melted away, and in their place appeared a cloak of brilliant green.
“Salamandra!” said Eric. “It was you!”
She smiled. “Here I am. And here you are.”
When she stopped in front of Eric, the fragrance of fresh apples fell over him.
He knew Salamandra had come from the ancient past of his world. In a way, she was still a teenager, but she seemed older than before. Wiser, perhaps. More weary. But a glimmer of mischief still haunted her features. Her dark lips smiled as if she heard his silent thoughts.
“I have lived five thousand years,” she said. “My wandering has aged me, wearied me. I needed your help to regain my magic staff.”
“You needed our help?” said Eric. “But you helped us from the beginning! You gave us clues. ‘Rope is fun. Music soothes the beast.’ You helped us all the way. Why?”
“Without my staff, I couldn’t hope to defeat Umberto. I needed you and your friends,” she said.
“You knew this would happen,” he said.
“I came from the future. I saw … some things,” she said. “Things about you, too. Some good, some not. Special things. You’ll really be special now, Eric Hinkle.”
A shiver went up his neck. How … ?
Salamandra cast a glance at Umberto. Her features grew frosty. “Only you have the power to stop the Rat King.”
“What? No! It’s too late!” Eric felt a lump in his throat grow and thicken. “Maybe I had the power. For a few seconds. But I didn’t do anything. I was so lame. I ran to my friends when I should have been trying to destroy the crown. It’s too late. The Rat King exists!”
Salamandra moved the staff toward him as if to light his face by its blazing tangle of thorns. “In different ways, you and I, Eric, are necessary for the future of Droon. But the cost will be high. You have a price to pay, if you choose to.”
He almost wasn’t listening. Looking over the scene around him, he felt like crying. It had gone so wrong. Special? I don’t think so!
“We’re all paying a price today,” he said.
She looked into his eyes. “If you take my staff, you can change all this. Our powers joined together, working together, can change this. There is still time to do what you must. The choice is yours.”
“Our powers? Working together?” he said.
She smiled and nodded.
Trembling, Eric took the staff from her. When he did, he felt immense power flow between himself and the staff.
“What choice do I have to make?” he asked.
“Oh, you’ve already made it!”
With that, Salamandra was gone in a puff of green smoke, and time came rushing back in a blur of movement around him.
“Gladiators, advance!” shouted a voice.
Eric was shocked to see Umberto high in the stands, not yet transformed into the hideous Rat King.
“What’s going on?” he cried. Looking up, he saw the stars not yet in alignment and the moon still moving toward them.
“I went back in time!” he whispered. “Salamandra sent me back in time! I can change things! I can fix them!”
“Glok, my wild beast!” boomed Umberto.
Eric smiled when he saw the thorn staff in his hands.
“Umberto!” he yelled. “I was going to play a song. Instead, I think I’ll just knock your head off!”
Eric rushed up the stands as quickly as his legs could carry him. He reached Umberto just as the bright moon burst over the arena. The moment had arrived.
“Behold the Rat King of Pesh!” Umberto wailed. “Droon’s next —!”
“Oh, can it, Fog Face!” cried Eric.
With a single swing of the powerful thorn staff, he struck the rat crown just as Umberto tried to lower it onto his head.
Wha-boooom! The crown blew apart into a thousand fragments of black iron and gold.
The sound was a tremendous earth-rending crack of thunder that tore the air in two.
Eric staggered and fell, barely conscious. Umberto himself collapsed on the stones in a heap of broken armor. His shadow oozed away from the fragments. It formed a coil of ragged black smoke, shot into the sky, and vanished. Simply vanished. The moment he did, the sun rose over the horizon.
Eric wobbled to his feet. “He’s gone! Salamandra did it! We did it. Umberto’s gone!”
At once, medallions clattered to the ground all across the arena, and the soldiers were nowhere to be seen. All that remained were thousands of rats. They scurried away in fright.
Glok’s medallion fell to the sand — clink — and the giant spider melted away. Max stood in its place, as small, orange-haired, and chirpy as ever.
The medallions fell from Umberto’s twin beasts, and Keeah’s parents stood in their place. With cries of joy, they embraced their daughter.
The sailors of the Droon navy were restored as well. Neal, Khan, and Julie ran up the stands, back to their normal selves again, too.
The friends all hugged one another for a long time, until a familiar voice called them.
“Everyone, hello there!”
They turned. Galen the wizard, in full cloak and hat, stood in the arena, smiling broadly.
“Where have you been?” asked Keeah, rushing to his side.
Galen smiled. “Looking down on you all from a great height.” He turned and pointed back toward Flemky’s pole. The top was empty.
“Galen was Flemky?” gasped Neal.
“And Flemky was Galen?” said Khan.
“Just as the splangle is nothing but my staff!” said Galen. He thrust out his hand, and the fragments of the broken splangle collected in his hand. They stretched and narrowed into his long staff once more.
“I met Salamandra outside the gate,” he told them. “She told me what was going on inside Jabar-Loo and that you were coming. Sometimes, you must trust, even when you doubt. So I played my part and helped where I could. Salamandra hinted that you all would stop Umberto.” He turned to Eric. “And you did!”
Eric breathed in. “She told me things. About the future. About me.”
Queen Relna put her arm on his shoulder. “Truth can be found in the most mysterious places and from the most mysterious people,” she said. “And Salamandra may very well know what lies in wait for all of us.”
“Let’s not forget she is a riddler,” said Max, fluffing his hair. He seemed glad to be himself again. “I, for one, am not sure whether I shall ever trust her.”
Eric wondered whether he would, either. She spoke in riddles he often couldn’t understand. But he remembered that moment when he held her staff and felt power move between him and it. Something happened in that moment. He quietly flicked his own fingers twice and realized she had told him the truth. There had been a price to pay.
“Oh, hey there!” shouted a voice.
They all turned to see Mr. Duppy and Mr. Beffle waddle into the arena, chuckling.
“Wait for it,” said Neal. “In a few seconds, they’ll change.”
Everyone stood back, waiting for the two traders to transform into something else.
They didn’t.
“Awkward silence there,” said Mr. Duppy. “Anyway, we’d like to trade for these, if we may!” He whistled, and several big creatures entered the arena.
“Our tuskadons!” said Julie.
“Traveling on these fellows would cut our time to Samarindo in half,”
said Mr. Beffle.
“The tuskadons are friends of the droomar,” said Keeah. “Maybe you can work out a deal with them.”
“Well, then,” said Mr. Duppy, “we’ll just be off!” He and Mr. Beffle led the tuskadons out.
“So, they were just themselves?” asked Neal.
Galen laughed. “Sometimes things really are what they seem!”
“Uh, Hob is gone again,” said Max, looking all around. The scruffy imp was nowhere to be seen.
“And sometimes,” said Galen, still laughing, “some things are just as they should be.”
“Before that changes again,” said King Zello, “I suggest we all go home!”
Together, the king, the queen, the children, Galen, Khan, Max, and the entire Droon navy marched out of Jabar-Loo toward the droomar song towers. When they came to the hill that had been overgrown, they found the ships restored and moored in an inlet of the sea.
A breeze lifted the sails of the navy’s ships, and they bobbed brightly on the water.
“The sun shines for us today,” said Zello. “Perfect sailing weather. Navy, let us set off!”
The low chanting from the droomar song towers floated over the waves and seemed to guide the ships straight to the open seas.
Soon enough, the children spotted the rainbow staircase hovering over the water.
“Umberto’s shadow is gone,” said Eric. “But Salamandra is back.”
“And Ko, Emperor of Beasts, is assembling his troops,” added Max. “After a good night’s rest, I think we’ll all be busily back at work!”
“One adventure twists and turns and soon becomes another,” said Queen Relna.
Eric knew that was true. Things changed all the time in Droon. He knew it already had changed for him. And he knew that among his friends, he really was special now.
Waving good-bye, the children raced up the stairs. Pausing midway, Eric looked down at the world of Droon he loved so much.
He flicked his fingers again and saw no sparks. He knew that his choice that day had been a real one. Whatever else had happened, one thing was sure.
His wizard powers were gone.
Even before he crossed the street, Eric Hinkle could see his friends Neal and Julie waving at him excitedly from the library steps.
As the town librarian, Neal’s mother, Mrs. Kroger, had asked the children to help with the grand opening of the library’s rare books room.
“Hurry up, Eric!” said Julie. “We’ve got news!”
“I can just guess,” Eric grumbled to himself, looking each way before stepping into the road. “I bet they both dreamed about Droon, and we’ll go there, and everyone will know what happened to me.”
Droon was the magical world Eric and his friends had discovered under his basement one day. It was a land of great friends like Princess Keeah and Galen the wizard. It was also a place of dangerous enemies like the bull-headed beast, Emperor Ko, and his second-in-command, the moon dragon, Gethwing.
Before they discovered Droon, Eric, Neal, and Julie were ordinary, normal kids like their friends. But since finding the rainbow stairs in Eric’s basement, they had developed powerful magical abilities.
Julie could fly like a bird and change her shape whenever she wanted.
Neal had become a famous time-traveling genie named Zabilac.
Eric himself had been swiftly becoming a full-fledged wizard with many magical powers. He had dreams about Droon, saw visions, understood all sorts of old languages, and cast complicated spells. He had hoped to be as great as Galen himself one day.
Except …
Except that on their last visit to Droon, Eric had lost his powers. Lost them. All of them.
In order to defeat a powerful foe, as well as to help his friends and save Droon, Eric had used the magical staff of thorns that belonged to the mysterious Princess Salamandra.
Eric knew Salamandra was a thief of magic. She came originally from an ancient empire called Shadowthorn and traveled to different times and places through her magnificent Portal of Ages. When she told Eric that there would be a price to pay for using her staff, it didn’t matter. He had to save his friends, and that’s all there was to it.
But the moment he did, his powers vanished. They were sucked away into Salamandra’s staff. Eric could no longer do what he used to do.
He was normal and ordinary again.
He was … plain.
Eric hadn’t told anyone yet. He couldn’t bear to imagine how Julie and Neal would look at him. He felt bad enough already. But judging by his friends’ excitement as he trotted up the library steps, he knew they’d soon be going back to Droon.
And then everyone would know.
“Let me guess,” he said to them, “you both had dreams about Droon last night.”
“We totally did,” said Neal, laughing. “And that means we’re going back. Today.”
“What did you dream about?” Julie asked.
Eric frowned. “Tell me yours first?”
“Mine was weird,” said Neal. “First I was looking at a beautiful blue sky. Then all of a sudden, this stream of smoke rises up. It’s like a nutty dark finger or something. The way it wiggled, it looked like it was pointing at me and calling me over!”
“A finger of smoke pointed at you? Because you’re a genie?” Eric asked.
“I think so,” said Neal. “Anyway, it was very Droonian. Unless, of course, I was dreaming about the hot dog I grilled for breakfast yesterday. That smoked a lot, too.”
Julie pulled open the library doors. The main room was already filled with people waiting for the rare books room to open.
“Our library is so cool,” said Neal. “Plus, it’s where all the books are!”
“Okay, now my turn,” said Julie, passing through the crowd. “You know how they always say, ‘Where there’s smoke, there’s fire’? Well, that’s what I saw. Fire, moving like a giant finger over the land. It was a scary procession of torches.”
Fingers. Fingers! thought Eric. What’s with all the fingers? I used to be able to shoot blasts of light from my fingers. But not anymore!
“Interesting,” he said. “I dreamed about a finger, too. It was pretty much the same.”
“Was it smoke or fire?” asked Julie.
“Uh … water,” said Eric.
He didn’t want his friends asking him why he no longer had powers. He couldn’t think of a way to tell them that didn’t sound as if it were all his fault.
“Children, this way,” called Mrs. Kroger from across the room. “One last look around before we open the doors. Take a peek.”
It was quiet and cool inside the rare books room. On the floor stood several glass-topped display cases draped in cloths to shield the expensive books from the light.
“The prize of our collection is this book here,” Mrs. Kroger said. She lifted the cloth from one case where a leather book lay open, revealing two yellowed pages dense with inky handwriting and tiny drawings.
“It was donated to the library anonymously,” she said. “We believe it’s over five hundred years old. But there are others.”
While Mrs. Kroger went over to one of the other cases, the children read the gold letters at the top of the page.
“Sombraspina,” Julie whispered. “Eric, what does it mean? You know languages.”
Not anymore! he thought. “Hmm. Let me think about that….”
“Well, I’ve taken a little bit of Spanish,” Julie said, “and I think spina might mean ‘spine’ or ‘back.’ Sombra probably means ‘sleep.’”
“Maybe it means ‘Go Back to Sleep,’” said Neal, “which is what my brain says whenever my alarm clock goes off.”
“Don’t I know it!” Mrs. Kroger chuckled.
All of a sudden, a yell came from outside the room. “Hey, everyone, look at that!”
“What’s going on?” asked Julie.
When they ran back into the main room, they saw the crowd rushing outside. A woman was pointing across the lawn.
It looked exactly like a finger pointing.
“Holy crow!” gasped Neal. “My dream! I hope it doesn’t call me over!”
Eric stood on his toes and saw the smoke rising behind the apple trees in his yard. “Guys, I think it’s calling us all over. It’s coming from my house….”
A siren shrieked nearby, and the children raced away from the library. They cut through backyards until they saw two fire trucks screeching to a halt in front of Eric’s house.
“Everyone, stay back!” yelled a firefighter, jumping down from one of the trucks. He motioned the gathering crowd away.
“Smoke filled the kitchen!” said Mrs. Hinkle, who was out on the front lawn. “It just came out of nowhere!”
“Oh, no! No … no …” said Eric. He ran to his mother. “Mom, I’m glad you’re all right.”
“I didn’t see fire,” she said. “Just smoke.”
A trio of firefighters pulled a long hose across the lawn toward the kitchen door, while two others attached the far end to the nearest fire hydrant.
“Follow me,” whispered Julie, pulling Eric by the arm. “We have to check out your basement.”
Edging away from Mrs. Hinkle, the three friends scurried into the neighboring yard and peered through the hedge at Eric’s small basement window.
“I can’t see anything,” said Neal.
“Let’s get closer,” said Julie.
Eric said nothing. He slipped under the hedge on his stomach, crawled to the basement window, and peered in. Smoke was streaming under the door of the closet under the stairs. It slithered like a snake across the basement floor and up to the kitchen.
“It’s coming from Droon!” said Neal.
They heard men yelling and doors slamming on the far side of the house.
“The firefighters are in the kitchen,” said Julie. “The second they see where the smoke is coming from, they’ll find the closet. And the rainbow stairs. We need to get there first!”
“Okay,” said Eric. Hands trembling, he pried up the basement window, slid onto his father’s workbench, then jumped to the floor. Julie and Neal followed him. The room itself was not smoky.