by Tony Abbott
“Have you noticed that there’s a lot of music on this adventure?” whispered Julie.
“Maybe before it’s over, I’ll get to sing my theme song again,” said Neal.
Julie frowned. “Let’s hope it doesn’t come to that.”
The weasels hummed along the winding jungle paths to the foot of a structure more like an enormous tree house than a palace. The building had many levels and was made entirely of branches and leaves, trees and vines, and stairs, walkways, ladders, and bridges that connected each level to the next.
The palace was a living structure, blossoming with magnificent flowers from the jungle floor all the way up to a tower nearly touching the high jungle canopy.
“Pah — rum-pum-pummmm!” the weasels hummed, then stopped.
Silence fell over the jungle.
No one moved.
Keeah felt the seconds tick by. In her mind’s eye, she saw more and more Skorth ships approaching the shore, their ghostly sails billowing in the wind. She wished she already had the wand and could return to help her parents stop the Skorth, and hasten Eric’s and Galen’s return.
Still the seconds ticked by.
And still nothing happened.
“Now what?” Neal asked.
Pinch made a face. “Wait for it …”
Then, with a loud squeak and a soft snapping of branches, something descended through the leaves from high overhead. It was a sort of cradle, like a hammock, wide from end to end and suspended by vines from the tower’s summit.
Sitting on the cradle, like a child on a swing, was a weasel whose head was slightly larger than the others’.
And while Pinch and the others wore puffy pants and vests, this creature wore a long blue coat decorated with gold chains, medals, and buttons. Bright golden fringes dangled from each padded shoulder.
A tall tuft of silvery fur grew straight up from the center of his head.
“Ahem … ,” he said, looking at Pinch.
“Ahem?” Pinch repeated. Then he blinked. “Oh. Right! All … hail … Duke … Anga!”
There was a soft grumble among the weasel troops, but eventually they repeated Pinch’s words. “All hail Duke Anga….”
“Quite right,” said the duke.
When he hopped down from the cradle to the jungle floor and strode on his hind legs, the children saw that Anga was two feet tall from tail to tuft but had the puffed-up demeanor of a weasel twice that size.
He stopped in front of the kids and scowled. “In-vaders! Attacking Anga’s palace, are you?”
“Not really —” Keeah started.
“On your knees!” the weasel ruler shouted. “So I can look you in the eyes!”
“Duke Anga commands you to obey!” said Pinch. Then he whispered, “Believe me, you’d better. He gets kind of upset….”
“We really do mean you no harm,” said Keeah, kneeling with her friends.
“Ha! And ha!” Anga said, pushing his little button of a nose into Keeah’s face. “And again, I proclaim, HA!”
He suddenly stopped talking and stared at Neal’s turban. “What’s that on your head?”
“It’s a —”
“Did I tell you to speak?” screamed Anga.
“Well, actually, you did —”
“It looks like some sort of big muffin!” said Anga, poking Neal’s turban.
Neal said nothing. His eyes glazed over, and his friends knew he was thinking about muffins.
Suddenly, Anga gasped. “Hold on! Strangers in my jungle? I wonder if you are the ones foretold by the mysterious prophecy!”
“What prophecy?” asked Julie.
“Silence!” shouted Duke Anga. “I will tell you what prophecy!”
Hanging on Anga’s waist was a sheath. Slowly, he drew from the sheath not a sword but a shaft of gleaming brass. A giant red stone — a ruby — was fixed near its tip. The ruby glowed brightly, shedding a warm crimson light over all of them.
The Ruby Wand! said Keeah.
The moment he held the wand, Anga seemed to swell a few sizes larger. “This here wand has magic all over it, and I have waited my whole life for its prophecy to come true!”
“But, Duke Anga, you didn’t find the wand until last Saturday,” said Pinch.
“Duke Anga?” the weasel ruler said, narrowing his eyes. “You remind me that I’ve been considering a promotion. From now on, call me … Prince Anga!” He paused. “I’m waiting….”
“All hail Prince Anga,” chorused the weasels.
“Very good,” said their leader. “Now, according to the prophecy, the owner of the wand commands the fabled Knights of the Ruby Wand. Perhaps you children are them.”
“But maybe the prophecy’s come true already,” said Pinch. “Did you ever think of that? I mean, maybe me and the other weasels are the Knights of the Ruby Wand —”
“Oh, don’t make me laugh!” snarled Anga. “You? You are hardly knights at all! Not to mention knights of any wand. Not to mention a ruby wand. Look at you. You are not the least … knightlike.”
Pinch and his men took deep breaths and stepped back. “Yes, Prince Anga.”
“What did you call me?” said Anga. “I am no longer Prince. I am — are you ready?”
“Are we ever?” asked Pinch.
“King Anga!” said the weasel ruler. “Yes, that’s better. As my first kingly act, I demand that these children submit to the trial!”
“What trial?” said Julie.
Anga grinned, and his teeth gleamed. “The trial that proves if you are worthy to be my knights of the Ruby Wand or not. If you are not worthy, I will know you are attackers! And if you are attackers, I shall be … angry!”
As Anga finished speaking, the ruby flared. The little weasel’s eyes changed from green to red. The tuft of fur on his head turned spiky. Inch by inch, he grew taller than the children. His teeth curved into sharp fangs.
When he clutched the wand’s handle and pointed it at the children, large black clouds raced across the sky overhead. The wind rushed and howled among the trees.
“Holy cow, what’s happening?” said Julie.
“The trial!” Anga shouted, his voice deep as thunder. “Force them to enter … the patio!”
“That doesn’t sound so bad,” Neal muttered.
“I didn’t finish!” Anga snapped. “The Patio … OF TERROR! Only if you make it all the way to my tower will you be my knights. Pinch, to the patio with them. And be rough!”
“As you say, Sire,” said Pinch.
As roughly as he possibly could — which fortunately was not all that rough — Pinch led the children off to the Patio …
… OF TERROR!
With a cold laugh, King Anga hopped into his cradle and was hoisted all the way up to his palace-top throne room.
“Move along now,” Pinch said to the children, prodding them with his stick. He marched the kids around the back of the palace. “Prince Anga is already miffed. You don’t want him any madder.”
“King Anga,” said Julie. “You said ‘Prince.’”
“Right. Well, it keeps changing, doesn’t it?” Pinch said as they neared the patio. “It’s probably changing again while we’re doing this. Don’t know how much higher he can go, though. King’s about the top as far as titles go.”
We have to end this silly business and get that wand, Neal said silently.
But how? asked Julie.
I’m working on it, said Keeah.
At least, she was trying to.
But her mind was a jumble of worries. There were the wand’s strange control of nature, the fact that Anga wouldn’t give it up, the approach of the Skorth navy, and her parents’ safety. To say nothing of Eric’s curse — poor Eric! — the battle towers, Galen’s kidnapping, and the five days before the attack that were now four and would soon be three.
It was all so … overwhelming!
“Here you are, then!”
The weasel captain halted in front of a gate that led into the back of An
ga’s palace. Towering over the gate was the giant construction itself, made of tree limbs and planks that rose hundreds of feet in the air, all the way to the tip of the tower, where Anga now sat.
“Into the patio,” said Pinch. “Maybe you’ll find Anga at the top. Maybe not. See you … Well, no, we probably won’t see you.”
“Hold on,” said Julie. “This is the patio?”
“Sorry, yes,” said Pinch. “Many poor souls have been lost in it. Sad, really.”
“It doesn’t look like any patio I’ve ever seen,” said Neal. “And I have a patio.”
Pinch sighed. “Well, it started as a normal patio off the back of the palace. I mean, Anga always wanted one —”
“King Anga,” said Julie.
“Yeah, him,” said Pinch. “But since he found the wand, he got these big ideas. He told us to add stairs and another level, then a slide back to the first level. But we made the slide too long, so we had to build a third level to slide down from. But that turned out to be too tall, so we needed more stairs, but they were too short. So we added a ladder, but Anga said, ‘Put a curve in it,’ which meant adding a level between two and three. But when we renumbered the levels, we somehow got level five, which was just sitting there with no way to get to it, so we added a bridge, which runs all the way up to the balcony on level seven —”
“Level seven?” said Neal. “What happened to level six?”
“Six is Anga’s unlucky number,” said Pinch. “So there is no sixth level. Which makes it even more confusing. So Anga decided to turn the patio into a trial for finding his knights. And here we are!”
“What’s taking so long?” Anga shouted down from his perch.
“Teaching a history lesson!” Pinch called.
“Make them history!” called Anga. “Now!”
Anga’s eyes turned red, and the sky began to darken once more. Lightning flashed.
“Sorry,” Pinch said to the children. “It’s my job.”
The weasel troops armed themselves with bows and arrows and stood guard at the patio entrance to prevent the kids from escaping.
The children had no choice but to enter.
The Patio of Terror was as terrifying as it appeared. With every step the kids took, they seemed to get deeper into the structure and farther away from any way out. Here, the planks sank beneath their feet. There, a bamboo wall flipped and sent them into a blind alley. The ladder upward only took them down again, and they had to start all over.
“This is like my brain in math class,” said Neal. “Should we just fly out of here?”
“I don’t like the look of those arrows,” said Julie. “Pinch and his men are probably just as afraid of Anga as we are. They might fire.”
“And we probably couldn’t find our way out if we tried,” said Keeah. “I think I’m in math class with you, Neal.”
They pressed on. The higher they went, the more Anga scowled at them and the worse the weather became.
Black clouds swirled over the jungle treetops, and sharp winds battered the wooden framework of the patio. When they reached the third level, Anga howled, and lightning bolts sizzled at them from the Ruby Wand.
“This is so crazy!” said Neal, ducking under a wobbly balcony. “He has to be stopped!”
When they made it to the fifth level, Keeah’s breath caught in her throat. Peeking through the vines, she could see the first Skorth ship sail safely beyond the Horns of Ko. Two more ships were close behind.
In the distance she saw a royal vessel steam toward the Jaffa Wind, but even two ships were no match for the gathering Skorth navy.
“Maybe we should split up,” Keeah said.
“Less chatting and more terror down there!” shouted Anga. “I’m watching you!”
As his anger grew, so did the strength of the lightning bolts exploding overhead.
“We have to do something,” said Julie, ducking away from an assault of frozen rain.
Neal peered up at the tower’s top, then back down to the entrance. “I figure only one of us can escape, and that’s you, Keeah.”
“Me?” she said. “Why me?”
“Because Julie and I can change shape, and you can’t. The two of us can pretend to be Neal and Julie or Julie and Keeah or Keeah and Neal, so they won’t miss you. But you and me or you and Julie can only pretend to be either Keeah and Julie or Keeah and Neal, but not Neal and Julie or Julie and Keeah or Keeah and Neal. See the problem?”
Keeah stared into his eyes. “Up close, actually.”
“You’re welcome,” said Neal.
Lightning crashed inches away.
“I — said — more — terror!” cried Anga.
Wasting no time, Julie twisted her heels and suddenly looked like Keeah while Neal muttered a word and instantly looked like Julie.
“I still have that headache,” Keeah said. “But good luck.”
“We’ll pretty much need it,” said Julie.
“I know you will,” said the princess.
While icy rain battered the patio stairs, Keeah jumped down a slide, ducked under a wobbly platform, darted around one corner after another, hurried across little bridges, clambered up short stairs, and jumped down long ones. Soon she saw Pinch and his men guarding the entrance. In her head, she knew they were as much victims of Anga’s wrath as she and her friends were.
“I won’t hurt them,” she promised herself.
Doubling back, she found an odd angle in one level. Waiting for the next lightning blast, she flicked her fingers. The moment the sky exploded, she blasted her way out of the patio and darted into the thick jungle.
Hunching her shoulders low, she kept running. As she raced away, she tried to form a plan. But there were so many things to consider. Pinch. The witch sisters. Anga’s bizarre power over nature. Her captured friends. And the Warriors of the Skorth!
“It’s too much,” she said.
Glancing overhead, she knew that behind Anga’s storm, the sun must be waning. The day was already more than half over. “Time is passing!”
Keeah used all her strength to push her way through the dense, dangling vines. She could see the edge of the jungle. Only a few more feet and she would be out.
And then — “Oh, no!”
When she saw the shore, she froze in her tracks. Seven Skorth ships already sailed north on the Sea of Droon, heading directly for her parents’ ship.
“How can I stop them? What can I do —”
“You can be captured!” cried a familiar voice. All at once — whooomp! — a thick web of vines fell over Keeah, and she was caught.
“Take her away, boys!” cried Pinch.
The weasel troops marched Keeah away but stopped when one of Pinch’s fellow guards gasped. “Sir, look!”
They all turned to see a blur of dragon wings streaking the afternoon sky.
“Gethwing!” murmured Keeah.
And there, on the dragon’s back, sat none other than the purple-cloaked figure of Prince Ungast, his hand thrust toward the east.
Keeah shuddered, guessing that Gethwing and Ungast were on their way to inspect the battle towers the kids had seen earlier.
Eric … I … we need you! What would you do in my place?
But her cursed friend and the moon dragon soared over the hills and were soon gone.
THOOM! The earth quaked with the sound of the Horns of Ko thundering shut behind the last Skorth vessel. All twenty ships were now sailing swiftly on the open sea.
Keeah knew they would soon spot the Jaffa Wind and launch an attack her parents would surely lose.
“They’ll be at Jaffa City in two days at most,” said Pinch’s comrade.
“Ah, Jaffa City. Spent a lovely week there once,” said Pinch. “Too bad those odd bonehead men will probably tear the place down. Sad.”
Keeah knew that Eric might revolt against Gethwing now, fight the moon dragon. But in doing so, he would lose the big battle. He was doing everything he could to hold on, to find a way to defeat
Gethwing from the inside once and for all.
She felt the same way. She was angry. She wanted to blast everything in sight. She wanted to steal the wand and fight the Skorth and get it all done. But being angry wouldn’t solve her problems. It only clouded her thinking. It wasn’t helping. So she imagined Eric’s face in front of her, speaking to her.
She imagined what he would say.
And then she knew.
Like Eric, she had to make sure all the parts of her plan came together at the same time. She would have to do everything at once — which meant that her plan would have to be big. Bigger than big. There would be lots of phases to it. If it was going to work, everyone had to play a part.
Her friends. Pinch. The weasels. The weird sisters. Anga. Even the terrifying Skorth Warriors.
Everyone.
“I have it!” she said.
Pinch jumped. “You have something? Anga probably wants it. You should turn it over.”
Keeah knew she was taking a big chance, but there was something in Pinch’s brown eyes that told her the weasels had been happier before regular old Anga became King Anga.
“Things haven’t been right since he found the wand, have they?” she asked.
Pinch scratched his chin. “Well, for one thing, the weather was a lot better back then.”
“I think we can change that,” said Keeah. “But … I’ll need your help.”
“Our help? We’re enemies!” said Pinch.
Keeah looked at him. “Are we really? Do I look like your enemy? I think we’re both enemies of that terrible moon dragon.”
“I don’t like him; that’s true,” said Pinch.
“I know you’re not happy with Anga,” Keeah said. “Let’s teach him a little lesson.”
“Us? Teach him a lesson?” said Pinch. “That would be different.”
“And dangerous,” said another weasel.
“But maybe fun?” said a third.
Pinch turned to the other weasels. They mumbled amongst themselves for a few moments. Then the captain turned back to Keeah and smiled. “Fine, but only if you promise not to hurt Anga.”
Keeah breathed a sigh of relief. She didn’t want to fight the cute little tree weasels.