“Land of the Living Dead?” Glory’s voice went up in pitch. “Where’s that?”
“The old folks home.”
“Oh.” Glory gave a nervous laugh. “Uh, you don’t think the Wybbils will try to hurt us, do you?”
“Only if desperate,” said Grandpa. “And if they lost the Elboni, desperate they will be. You’ve been playing up at Queen's Mesa again, haven’t you?”
“Yes, but not since...”
“Watch yourself, young lady. Wybbils have the magic. If you took their Elboni, you’ve brought down a whole lot of trouble on yourself and possibly the entire Alley clan.”
“What do you know about binding Wybbils?” Glory asked.
“The old-timers used to say if you caught a Wybbil by the toe he’d have to give you whatever you wanted.”
Glory shook her head. “I already tried that—didn’t work.”
“You’re kidding.”
“No,” said Glory. “I grabbed a Wybbil by the toe just last night and hung on real tight, but he said it wasn’t the toe that mattered, but what’s under hand. Whaddaya suppose that means?”
“My own granddaughter caught herself a Wybbil.” Grandpa slapped his knee. “Ain’t that just something.” Then he made a prune face. “That was a dumb thing to do. Wybbils are dangerous, but if I was a betting man, I’d say what needs to be under hand is the Elboni itself.”
The wheels in Glory’s skull turned. That went along with what the Sliver had said, too. The Wybbils themselves told her eight conditions were required for a binding. If Grandpa was right, Glory knew one of the conditions already.
The screen door swung open and Patrice poked her head outside.
“Me and Nana are almost done making lunch. We need you to make the powdered punch and set the table.”
“Give her a few minutes,” Grandpa said.
“Don’t keep her too long,” Patrice said and let the screen door slam shut.
“Nope,” Grandpa winked, “won’t be long at all.” Then he moved his second knight, the one with the golden key, toward Glory’s treasure chest.
“Dragon's Bane!” Grandpa shouted with glee as he slayed Glory’s dragon.
“What!”
Grandpa had set her up and was about to win the game. Glory surveyed the situation. Her knights were way over in Grandpa’s lair, across the game board, so there wasn’t enough time left to move back and defend her own treasure chest. Dejected, Glory sat with chin in hand watching the inevitable pilfering of her gold.
“I sought, found, persisted, and conquered,” Grandpa bragged. The usual lecture was about to commence. “Ya fall for it every time. As we danced in the daisies, you thought that I was only shuffling my feet, but I was actually lining up both barrels. When the jig was up, I open fired.” He pointed at Glory’s heart. “BANG! Ya didn’t have a prayer.
“Ya have a good head on your shoulders, Sprout. But your strategy lacks foresight. Remember; never take your eyes off the treasure. Got it?”
Glory gave a sarcastic half salute. “Never take my eyes off the treasure. Got it.”
“Whippersnappers, think ya know everything and never listen. Now put the game away, while I find my teeth. Ya haven’t happened seen ‘em lying around anywhere, have ya?”
Glory picked-up the Treasure Quest box and saw the fake pink gums and yellowish teeth lying inside of it. Yuck. She held the box out to Grandpa to avoid touching them.
“Ah,” Grandpa picked up his upper plate and slurped it into place, doing the same with the bottom. “I’m always losing my choppers.”
“I know.”
Grandpa wriggled his lips, while Glory put away the game.
“Wheel me to the table, will ya?”
“Sure, Grandpa.”
Glory spent lunch staring out the window, barely tasting her food, mind turning. Plan A had been foiled by Nana’s unfortunate accident. The toe thing didn’t work either. If she wanted to bind a Wybbil she better come up with a Plan C—and fast. Maybe it was time to pull in an ally.
Chapter 14
Next morning, she planned to tell Clash everything that’d happened since the day she found the mystical stone in the cavern and get his input, but when she got on the bus he wasn’t there. Crud! The day went downhill from there.
On the way to lunch, Mandy encouraged a boy to trip her in the hallway. Glory’s books slid over the tile. Mandy and her flock of friends pointed, laughed, and called her a clumsy cow. Normally, she’d be more upset, but it seemed a trifle next to what was happening at home. She gathered up her books in a daze, so preoccupied that she barely noticed their taunts. Must get the magic for myself…
Classes went by in a blur as she pondered her next move. She was growing more excited about bringing Clash into the situation. He’d take some convincing. If she had to sneak him through her bedroom window in the middle of the night and wait for the Wybbils to reappear, that’s what they would do.
One thing seemed certain—she needed to bring a Wybbil and the Elboni together. But the problem was how to bring them together before the Wybbil tried snatch it away without making a fair trade. The binding ritual was the only way to ensure her dreams would come true.
During Math, she jotted down the known variables in a spiral notebook:
How To Get A Wish (8 conditions)
1) The wish must be for something very specific.
a. unlimited credits
2) elboni must be present.
3) wybbil must take an oath.
a. oath (noun): a formal or legally binding pledge to do something
“Hot bam!” she stood up in class. “I got three!”
Classmates snickered and the teacher stopped the lesson to address Glory.
“I don’t know what problem you’re working on, Miss Alley, but the answer is 31,622. How did you get three?”
Glory’s cheeks burned, she muttered a nevermind, and stuffed her nose behind her digital textbook.
The class quickly lost interest in her outburst. In no time, she was chewing the end of a stubby pencil, studying the paper list of conditions. Have I missed any of the known variables? She strained her brain cells, revisiting conversations with the Sliver, Grandpa, and the Wybbils themselves, but came up with nothing new to add to the list. On the bright side, more than a third of the conditions were already there. If she could come up with the rest of them before the Wybbils returned… she imagined pulling up to school in a limousine, wearing designer clothes, with a hot guy on each arm, while Mandy Filmore looked at her in envy. “Failure is not an option,” she whispered to herself.
After class she stood at her locker studying the list some more. Finally, folding the paper, she shoved it into her coat pocket along with her mangled pencil.
“Glory.”
She recognized Clash’s voice without turning around.
“Why weren’t you on the bus this morning?”
“Missed it. Gotta phone call from my relatives overseas this morning. My papasan’s father died over the weekend.”
“Uh,” Glory struggled to say the right thing. She hadn’t heard that his grandfather was sick. “That’s terrible. I’m so sorry.”
“Me, too.”
“Are you okay? I mean, do you need anything?”
“I’m okay. Only met him once a long time ago. My parents are scrambling to get the money to fly overseas for the funeral. I said they could save on airfare and let me stay home, but they said my absence would shame the entire family. I’ll probably miss at least a week of school.”
You can’t go, Glory wanted to say , Not now! I’m all alone and need your help. Instead, she placed a hand on Clash’s shoulder. “Let me know if I can do anything.”
“I will.”
The bell for the next class dinged and they went their separate ways. Glory went through classes like a zombie, barely aware of the happenings around her. By the time she got home from school, she felt faint from all the worrying.
She climbed the front porch and
halted at the sight of a red square of paper fastened to the screen door.
Foreclosure Notice
The thick black words couldn’t be more sinister. She came closer to read the smaller print. The legaleaze made her head spin, but she got the jest of it. The government was seizing the house and land because Dad hadn’t paid the taxes. And they had thirty days to vacate the premises.
Thirty days!
“Oh no,” Glory said, feeling as if the porch was sinking beneath her feet, threatening to swallow the whole house, and all the Alleys with it. What the heck are we going to do?
“No, no, no…this can’t be happening.”
After standing there several minutes, thinking she’d rather fight the Hoogula than the government, she pushed the door open. The tangy smell of booze and bad breath slammed her nose.
There was Dad on the front couch sprawled out in his boxer shorts and a grimy T-shirt. A bottle of vodka sat on the coffee table next to a tall glass with a bit of orange juice at the bottom. Glory stood in doorway, cold breeze blowing from behind, icing her spine.
Dad opened one eye.
“Do ya think I’m made of money!” he tossed the remote at her, but she ducked, and it hit the wall behind her head. “Don’t just stand there like an idiot, shut the guldang door!”
Glory closed the door.
If only she had done a better job helping around the house and the farm. If only she had kept her encounters with the Wybbils a secret, maybe Dad wouldn’t have crumbled under the combined weight of so many stressors.
Shoulders slumped; Glory climbed the stairs, gray storm clouds rumbling through her thoughts. Between losing the house and Dad drinking again, Miss Crenshaw would figure it out sooner or later. The thought of George being at the mercy of people who didn’t love or understand him sent waves of panic through her chest.
Dad had betrayed them all for a bottle of hard liquor. At least this time she could see it coming. She spent the evening curled up on a ball on her bedroom floor crying until the well of tears emptied.
The disappointment and fear eventually boiled over into anger. By nightfall, the raw emotion simmered into plan-making mode.
Binding a Wybbil was more important than ever. The Elboni was her best and only hope.
Over the next week, Glory did her best to avoid Mean Dad. She stayed outside or upstairs. Before long, Patrice was up to her old ways, not coming home at night. Dad didn’t seem to notice, but Glory did, especially the diamonds shaped like hearts on her ears. Brandon had pretty much taken over Patrice’s bed and the entire room. When he came in from wherever it was that he went every night, smelling like smoke, she was forced to put away her notebook.
Glory pulled the covers up to her chin, praying this would not be the night the Wybbils returned. Clash would be home tomorrow. They needed a few more days to work out a new plan.
Later that night, as Brandon snored away, Glory watched the shadow of the tree on the wall. The branches swayed in the breeze. The swish of the wind around the eaves sounded like moaning. She flipped the covers over head. Sleep seeped in and she drifted into a fitful slumber.
Dreams of a giant serpent made of fire slithered beneath her eyelids. “Glory Alley,” the serpent whispered. “Abandon yourself to every desire and I’ll make you a god.” A hot tail coiled around and up her leg, creeping higher and higher, and began to squeeze. “Can’t breathe!”
She jolted up in bed, gasping for breath. A pair of beady bloodshot eyes stared back at her. For a second she thought the serpent had slithered out of her dreams. However, the sagging jowls and disgusting night crawler beards were familiar by now. Two other pairs of eyes hovered slightly behind the first. Glory let out a yelp, she wasn’t ready for the Wybbils yet, but White Feather held her fast by the arm.
“We searched the mesa high, and we searched the mesa low, with no sign of the Elboni. So by issued decree ye must come with us.”
“Let go of me!” She tried to uncurl thick fingers from around her arm. Panic rose up at the realization that the Wybbils intended to take her with them.
“Brandon, wake up!” Her screams fell on ears closed by sleeping dust. “Help!”
She kicked her feet and fists hard enough to make them think twice about messing with an angry Tullahn, or so she hoped.
“No use fighting us, Rock Collector. Your presence has been requested by the highest order.”
She wriggled, she squirmed, and she threw more punches. Swear words tumbled out of her mouth. “Get off me you dirty rotten squirrel munchers!” Anything to force them to let go.
The little men erupted into an explosion of elbows and hands. A hot palm covered her mouth, wrestled her off the bed, down the hallway, and down the stairs, and through the front door, over the porch and into the crisp starry night. Glory threw a left hook into Bone’s squishy beard. Yuck! He rubbed his chin, but held her fast with his other hand. A girl didn’t have a chance against the Wybbils’ combined strength. They carried her like a hammock into the night, past the barn, over the field, and into the woods, loose hair dusting the ground.
Finally, they dropped her into a pile of leaves.
Fighting tears, Glory sniffled. "Are you going to kill me?”
“There, there, don’t cry.” Needle said, patting her back. He tossed Glory’s shoes and coat at her feet.
“See,” Needle assured, “If we wanted to do ye harm, we wouldn’t have bothered. Now, put on your things and be warm.”
Glory took in jagged breaths, shakily tying her shoes and zipping her coat. I’ll be fine, she tried to convince herself. Needle’s right. Why would they care if I were warm if they intended to do me harm?
The Wybbils stood back as she dressed.
Bone sniffed deeply. “I smell game.”
“Quit thinking about your belly,” White Feather said. “There’s more important things to worry about.”
“Aye, but while we’re waiting, might as well help me self.”
Quick as a wink the Wybbil with the bone in his hatband, dove into the brush. He gave an excited cry and emerged holding a brown rabbit by the ears.
The rabbit looked at him, pink nose twitching. Glory cringed, knowing what was coming next. Bone curled back his lips and took a hard snip out of the back of the rabbit’s neck. The rabbit's legs kicked a few seconds. Bone held its tummy to his face, nibbling off the flesh back and forth, like he was eating the kernels off of a corncob. When he got down to the bones, he popped them in, crunching and snapping rent the night. It took him all of a minute to eat the whole thing.
Glory scurried away like a crab. She knocked against White Feather’s knees, not taking her eyes of Bone, whose face was covered with blood, little tufts of fur stuck in his beard.
“Fresh,” Bone commented, smacking his lips. “Mmmm.”
“You...you’re the ones who killed the chickens.” Glory pointed accusingly at Bone. “And you have the nerve to call me a thief? I got a whipping because of you.”
Bone seemed unmoved. Meanwhile, Needle took the silver spike from his hat. He bounced it in the palm of his hand and said, “Nonru.”
The metal burst into a steady bright light, which got brighter each time Needle said the mysterious word. White Feather yanked Glory up by the collar and urged her forward with a push. “Get going, Stone Napper.”
Glory realized she’d been so bent on getting a wish, she had never seriously questioned the wisdom of her actions. Holding the Elboni for ransom from these guys could be fatal. Fear was eating a hole in her stomach. Maybe it was time to spill the beans and give up the stone’s location. The temptation boiled at the tip of her tongue leaving such a bitter taste her lips puckered. I’m doing this for George—for all of us. She swallowed temptation with a gulp. I’ll drag this out as long as possible until a new strategy presents itself.
Chapter 15
Needle led the way with his spike of light. White Feather pushed Glory along while Bone kept a few paces off to the side.
She had wa
lked this woods many times and considered it an old friend. Now they approached her favorite place, a patch of weeping willow trees dubbed Glash Grove by herself and Clash. It was a combination of the letters in their names. The two of them had burned away many summers here, nestling in the crook of branches, chasing each other through the long sweeping braches, doing kid things like dropping paper parachutes, re-enacting scenes from Galactic Heroes, or playing Beautiful Prince and Brave Knight. Clash used to braid willow reed ringlets and present them to her as royal crowns. Those were the best days ever. She had once thought the place held real magic.
“Quit lollygagging back there.” Bone ordered.
“Sorry.”
As the cold wind blew through the trees, tousling her hair, the branches swayed and clicked together in angry protest at her predicament. Did the forest see how her knees trembled? Did it sense the fear gnawing at her liver like a squirrel on a hickory nut? A scream built from deep within, but the only sound she made was the crunch of leaves under her feet. Never take your eyes off the treasure... Grandpa’s words gave her the backbone to search for answers. She cleared her throat.
“Uh, are we going to Queen's Mesa?”
“Aye,” Needle replied.
So much for her vow to never return to the mesa again. The image of a wall of thorns and teeth flashed in her mind. She sucked in a deep breath for extra courage and stared at the warm glow coming from Needle’s spike. Brighter than any flashlight, with no need of batteries, it was every spelunker’s dream. Boy, what she wouldn’t do for one of those! It cast the gnarled trees in a moment of daylight as they passed through them. Birds flitted out of the trees cheeping merrily until they met the perimeter of darkness. Then they’d circle in confusion before returning to their nests.
“This be a waste of time,” White Feather snorted at Needle. “Let’s take her to the lady and be done with it.”
“What lady?” Glory asked, but the Wybbils ignored her, speaking amongst themselves as they weaved through the trees.
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