“Go,” said the headmaster. “She can turn you back to your true self, if she wishes. Of course if you prefer, Jonny, you can keep your distance from her. That’s not a bad choice, either. It is, in fact, the choice that I myself have followed, in spite of the thing I felt for her. In spite of the thing—I still feel.”
“Aww,” said the mockingbird.
“Fly, then,” said the headmaster. “Now you are the one with a choice to make.”
“Aww,” said the mockingbird.
The mockingbird flapped its wings and flew through the arch, and headed straight toward the border, toward the Sea of Dragons. It warbled as it flew.
“Listen to the mockingbird,” said the headmaster.
He climbed onto the stone railing of the tower, and watched the bird fly away. Remarkable, he thought. Perhaps this Jonny had saved Megan Crofton after all. That would be an amazing turn of events, a thing almost as unexpected as his son spreading his wings and emerging into the world as an angel with two hearts.
He looked back over his shoulder at the innards of the tower. The clockworks ticked below him.
Then the Crow stepped out into empty space. He fell for a few moments before his great black wings spread wide and caught the air. A smile crept across the man’s face as he hovered in the air, and the watch around the creature’s neck began to tick.
He flapped his wings and began to soar toward earth, and his son, and the battle that raged below.
30
THE BATTLE OF GRISLEIGH QUAD
The young monsters were in a tight spot. After the failure of the initial attack by the ex-minotaurs’ cannon, they had temporarily seized the advantage, in part because half their ranks had immediately charged and half had fallen back to a strategically advantageous position behind the wall of the Upper School, which had been breached by the impact of that initial cannon blast. The ex-monsters had not expected a counterattack, counting instead on the success of the artillery, and were thus surprised when Ankh-hoptet and Pearl and Max came charging at them, wielding ancient Egyptian curses, the poison stinger of the Chupakabra, and the enraged simian strength of the Sasquatch. One of the ex-vampires had been incapacitated by Pearl’s stinger in this very first wave, although whether she had been killed or simply stunned was not clear at first in the confusion of the battle. Max, meanwhile, picked up the former weredog Scout and hurled him like a bowling ball toward a group of teachers and staff, knocking Dr. Ziegfield-Gruff and Miss Cuspid over like candlepins. Ankh-hoptet, for her part, ignored the attacking pseudohuman students altogether and directed her curses upon the administrators, Mrs. Redflint in particular, whom she doomed to an eternity of wakeless dreaming in the morbid half-light of an embalming chamber. For a moment Mrs. Redflint staggered as if her legs were giving out beneath her, and she fell in a half swoon into the arms of Mr. Shale.
Behind the wall of the Upper School, the zombie force, led by Mortia, saw the success of this first assault and realized that a chance had been given them in the initial confusion. “Come on, then,” said Mortia to her friends. “Zombies forward!”
The four of them rushed through the breach in the Upper School’s stone wall in a well-choreographed formation, doing a version of the Zombie Snap that was truly fearsome to observe. The two former minotaurs took a step backward as the zombies loomed forward, their arms and feet swinging in unison, and their fingers snapping to the left and right.
You can call me a physician, make a diplomatic mission,
You can tell your obstetrician that you need a spinal tap,
But my monster’s intuition says you need a new mortician!
So prepare for demolition! Here it comes: the Zombie Snap!
The former minotaur boys fell back for a moment, intimidated by the momentum of the Zombie Snap. Then, to finish them off, Weems stepped up, raised his hands over his head, and let loose with the Crystal Scream. The boys fell to their knees, covered their ears, and writhed in agony.
Weems smiled happily. Then he looked around the battlefield. “The beloved,” he whispered. “Where is the beloved?”
But Destynee had already been carried off by the moth man. “The beloved!” said Weems.
Two of the vampire girls rushed toward Weems with swords in their hands. Weems realized he was cornered and backed toward the wall of the Upper School, but the girls had him and would have run him through at this moment had Max not rushed up behind them, roaring at the top of his lungs, and thrown both girls over the high wall, scattering their swords. Weems caught one of the falling swords in his right hand, and Max caught the other in his left. For a moment they looked at the swords with surprise.
“Dude!” shouted Max to Weems. “We have swords!”
“We do,” said Weems, smiling broadly and displaying all of his jagged triangular teeth. Then he charged forward and immediately found himself engaged with Mr. Hake, whose rubbery tentacles were hard to pierce with the sword. Weems hacked away at the writhing, sucker-covered arms, but there were too many of them, and one tentacle encircled the ghoul’s legs and raised him in the air. Even as Mr. Hake held him upside down, Weems kept hacking away at the tentacles. But then Mr. Hake’s hideous mouth opened wide, and Weems was dropped in.
“Destynee!” he cried as he fell, and then Weems disappeared into the maw of the Terrible Kraken. The sword clattered on the ground.
There was a pause on the side of the young monsters as they all watched Weems vanish into the slimy mouth of the enormous mollusk. It was a terrible thing to witness. Turpin’s mouth opened wide in horror as he stood still for a moment, taking in the carnage.
“He’s—gonna—eat—everybody,” he said, and then vanished into his shell.
The young monsters’ ranks were thinning. By now they’d lost several of their classmates. Destynee and Lincoln Pugh had been carried off to the Wellness Center, Weems had been devoured by the Terrible Kraken, and Elaine Screamish had been rendered mute. All of this was in addition to the recent loss of Turpin, who seemed as if he’d retracted into his shell for good.
The zombie force advanced upon the Terrible Kraken. Mr. Hake bore down upon them, his ten horrible tentacles wriggling.
“There are too many of them,” said Molda, looking at Mortia. “We can’t—”
“We must continue to fight!” shouted Pearl, suddenly buzzing around Molda’s head. “We shall not let them take away our courage! For we fight with our hearts! The weapon that cannot be dest—”
But at this moment Dr. Ziegfield-Gruff swatted her with a tennis racket, and Pearl went spinning, stinger over teakettle, and fell with a thud on the green grass of the quad.
“Pearl!” shouted Molda, but now Mr. Hake wriggled forward, lifted Molda off her feet, and dropped her, still wriggling, into his enormous, viscous mouth.
“You’re stupid!” shouted Max at the Terrible Kraken. He pointed his sword at Mr. Hake and rushed forward. “You’re nothing but a big pile of, like—sushi!” And with this, he sliced off one of Mr. Hake’s disgusting sucker-covered arms. It lay on the ground, still writhing. “You see?” shouted Max. “That’s what you get!”
Mr. Hake roared in anger and pain, and moved toward Max—but as he did, Max bent down, picked up the severed tentacle, and started slapping Mr. Hake around the head with it. He furiously whapped the Terrible Kraken with his own tentacle, and after a few moments of this, Mr. Hake fell back, confused and slightly dazed. Max advanced, still whacking Mr. Hake with the writhing tentacle, and then stuffed it in the Kraken’s mouth. The Kraken turned purple as he choked on his own arm.
“And so!” shouted a familiar voice. “You see the consequences of attacking Señor Max, the Sasquatch of fearsome strength!”
“Pearl,” said Max. “You’re okay!”
“I have had the stuffings knocked from me,” said Pearl, “but I have not yet lost my strength. I am la Chupakabra! The famous gooo—”
But once again she was swatted out of the air by Dr. Ziegfield-Gruff’s tennis racket. He held
the racket toward Max.
“It ees,” he said, “das human-tennis-ball-returning instrument!”
But Max clanged the flat side of his sword over the professor’s head, and the goat man fell over on the ground.
“Excuse me, Mr. Parsons,” said a voice just behind Max’s left shoulder. “I was wondering—”
He turned, and there was Willow, with her large, sharp red fountain pen. “What do you suppose is mightier—the pen or the sword?”
He looked at the tall, thin woman—who seemed, even in the height of the battle, to be intrigued by this issue as a philosophical inquiry. “Seriously?” said Max.
“Of course,” said Willow. “I’ve never been more serious.”
Then she raised her pen, pointed it at Max’s face, and squirted the thick red ink into his eyes. Max was completely blinded, and dropping his sword, he stumbled around the battlefield for a moment before Miss Cuspid grabbed him, slapped handcuffs onto his giant Sasquatch wrists, and pulled him toward the Wellness Center.
“Come on now, Mr. Parsons,” she said.
“Duuude,” said Max.
Algol scampered toward Sparkbolt. “‘Oo’s got a nasty foamy potion? All abubble and ready to be used upon a ’orrible filthy creature?”
“HUNCHBACK BAD,” said Sparkbolt.
Algol nodded. “Bad? Aye, but it’s not me fault, now, is it? Truly it’s the result of me loathsome upbringin’, and me lifelong deprivation of affection!” he said. Then he poured one of his beakers of liquid over Sparkbolt’s head.
Sparkbolt looked to the left and right at the raging battle, strangely withdrawn, considering the circumstances. Then he cleared his throat.
“Sparkbolt—FEEL FUNNY—”
There was a sudden hissing sound, and then Sparkbolt shrank, and shrank and shrank. A moment later, the Frankenstein monster was only two inches tall, hopping up and down on the battlefield and crying in a voice that sounded like the squeaking of a tiny mouse.
“SPARKBOLT—LITTLE!” it said.
“Aye,” said Algol. “He’s all shrinky!” He picked up the tiny Frankenstein and put him in the pocket of his lab coat.
One by one they were falling. The only monsters still unscathed were three of the four zombies—Mortia, Putrude, and Crumble; Augusten Krumpet, who had held his own by sprinkling his enemies’ eyes with fairy dust; Owen Kearney, wielding his balls of ice and snow; and Ankh-hoptet. Pearl was still buzzing, but she had been weakened and stunned by Dr. Ziegfield-Gruff’s repeated attacks with the tennis racket.
But the other side was ailing as well. Mr. Hake was still struggling from the ongoing attack of his own severed tentacle, now lodged deeply in his mouth, and Dr. Ziegfield-Gruff lay prone on the battlefield where Max had conked him with the sword. Next to him was Willow Wordswaste-Phinney, who had somehow managed to stumble and fall upon her own fountain pen, which was now sticking out of her chest like a sword. “The pen!” she gasped. “It’s supposed to be mightier than the—than the—”
Max Parsons came roaring back onto the battlefield, the handcuffs broken on his wrists. “Hey, everybody!” he shouted, raising his hands in the air. “I’m back!”
Pearl buzzed toward him and circled his head twice. “I knew that you could not be held for long!” she cried. “I knew it!”
“I made that nurse lady bite herself!”
Pearl nodded. “An ingenious maneuver,” she said. Now Pearl looked around the quadrangle, aware that the odds were lengthening against them, but not quite ready to admit defeat. “Come!” she said. “Let us gather our strength into a final assault!” And Mortia, Crumble, Putrude, Owen Kearney, Augusten Krumpet, and Ankh-hoptet rushed to the place where she stood with Max.
“Now!” said Pearl. “For our honor! For our souls! For Falcon Quinn!”
And they all yelled and advanced upon a band of teachers.
Ankh-hoptet, leading the charge, cursed Mr. Shale. “By the bleeding scarab of DEATH,” she shouted. “YOUR OWN HANDS shall rise against thee! This I command, in the name of Anubis the Jackal! And in the name of Sonahmen Ankh-hoptet, Princess of DECAY!”
“Whaat?” said Mr. Shale.
“By the bleeding scarab of DEATH,” began Ankh-hoptet again, “shall thine own hands rise!”
“Shaddap,” said Mr. Shale, annoyed. “Shaaaddap!”
But even as he spoke these words, his hands rose before him, as if under the command of some other master. “Whaaat?” he said, confused. “Whaaatt?”
And then he grasped his own neck with his gnarly red fingers. For a moment it looked as if Mr. Shale was trying to strangle himself. But then, in the next instant, the crumpled old man’s voice disappeared.
“So it is done this day!” shouted Ankh-hoptet. “So it is done!”
“Dude,” said Max, “you made yourself shaddap!”
“Enough!” cried Mrs. Redflint, enraged and exhausted. She breathed a sudden blast of fire, and it forced the advancing monsters back. Ankh-hoptet’s bandages caught fire, and Owen Kearney had to extinguish her with a fine dusting of soft snow.
Mrs. Redflint did not pause. She blasted them all with another column of fire, and it occurred to Pearl, as the dragon lady advanced, that they had never seen her unveiled before in her full dragon form. But now Mrs. Redflint had grown larger, and larger, and her skin was speckled with thick scales. Again and again she enveloped them with fire, and the remaining monsters retreated rapidly.
The teachers and staff and the army of human students advanced upon them, and they retreated until they were pushed to the opening of the hole in the Upper School wall. The ex-minotaurs were reloading the cannon and pushing it into position once more, as Mrs. Redflint blasted the revolutionaries again and again. Owen Kearney tried to blunt the heat of the dragon fire by casting cold clouds of sleet between themselves and Mrs. Redflint, but the dragon lady just increased the size and intensity of her attack.
“The Princess of Decay suggests that we retreat,” cried Ankh-hoptet.
“Never!” shouted Pearl.
“Maybe,” said Max, “we could just, like, go back. A little?”
In the end it didn’t seem as if they had much choice. Now they stood by the hole in the Upper School’s wall. They were just about to run through the hole when the two ex-vampires, Merideath and Wakeful, her last minion, appeared on the other side of the breach, carrying the swords that had been theirs before being briefly seized, then dropped, by Max and Weems.
The monsters looked at the ex-vampires, and then at the advancing teachers, and everything fell silent. They turned to Mrs. Redflint.
“This is where it ends,” she said. “This is the end of this little adven—”
But Mrs. Redflint’s words were cut short as Falcon Quinn swept down upon her with his magnificent white wings. He lifted the dragon lady skyward, then kicked her with his right foot. Mrs. Redflint soared in the air, and as she did, Falcon shot her with seven red fireballs from his dark left eye, one after the other. Mrs. Redflint disappeared out of sight, beyond the wall of the Upper School.
Falcon flew to earth and landed in the midst of his surviving friends.
“Dude,” said Max. “You’ve got wings. And a halo thing.”
“Yes,” said Falcon Quinn. “I do.”
The other students looked at Falcon, amazed. His great white wings hovered above his head. His eyes burned brightly, each with its own intense color. But something else about Falcon had changed. He seemed still, somehow. “Señor Falcon!” said Pearl. “You have been given the gift of flight!”
“Hi, Pearl,” said Falcon.
“Falcon…,” said Mortia, “are you—an angel?”
“Maybe,” said Falcon.
“Dude,” said Max.
“Let us join our forces then,” said Pearl. “We who remain shall now be aided by Falcon Quinn—the angel of fire!”
“Okay,” said Falcon. “Good idea.”
Pearl rose once more in the air, shouting as she did, “Bang! Bang! Bang!”
But Mr. Hake had at last removed his tentacle from his mouth, and now he wriggled toward them, enraged.
“It isn’t supposed to go this far,” he said. “It is not.”
The vampire girls rushed forward from their position in the rear at this same moment.
“Hey, Gus,” said Merideath. “Another one bites the dust.”
“What?”
“Gus,” said Merideath. “That would have been your name. Remember? If you’d had the courage to resist your disgusting monster self and become normal, like us.”
“My name is Max.”
“You had your chance,” said Merideath. “That’s the sad thing. You had the same chance that we did to become normal. To be human, like everybody else. Instead, you chose to be a disgusting thing, covered with hair. You make me sick!”
Max roared at the top of his lungs, “THERE’S NOTHING WRONG WITH BEING HAIRY!”
But Falcon Quinn swept forward on his great wings at this moment, blasting Merideath with fireballs. She was fast, though, and deflected each one with her sword; the fireballs ricocheted off of the sword and flew wildly back toward the battlefield.
“Falcon Quinn,” said Merideath. “You’re the biggest freak of all.”
Falcon was just about to sweep down on her and pick her up and give her the boot, the same as he had done with Mrs. Redflint, but instead he felt something strong and slimy wrap around his waist and drag him to the ground. Mr. Hake’s tentacles enveloped him, one after the other. Just as Falcon was about to shoot the Kraken with his fireballs, one of the tentacles wrapped around Falcon’s face and covered his left eye. He tried to escape by flapping his great wings, but the Kraken had immobilized these too.
Mr. Hake held Falcon prisoner in his awful, wriggling arms. In spite of this, he had enough free tentacles left over to grab Putrude and Mortia and Augusten Krumpet, and hold them captive as well. Owen Kearney was about to blast the vice principal with one of his ice-balls, but now Mrs. Redflint stepped through the breach in the wall and blasted the boy with fire. Algol pulled out a beaker of foaming liquid and held it over the head of Max the Sasquatch. “’Old it right there, squire,” he said. “Let’s ’old it right there.”
Falcon Quinn and the Black Mirror Page 30