“Here!” said Roderick, slapping his golden token into the architect’s outstretched hand and pressing his other hand against his side.
“Your task,” said the architect, “is to retrieve a golden banana from inside the tower and make your way to the door marked ‘exit.’ You may now enter the tower.” The stubby-legged little man paused briefly before adding, with no small grin: “At your own risk.”
Roderick nodded as if he understood. He did not immediately make his way to the door, however, but took a moment to catch his breath.
“What are you waiting for, Roderick?” a voice shouted, and as Oona approached the architect with her own token, she glanced toward the crowd of spectators who had once again formed near the stage. The shouting voice was that of Roderick’s father, Sir Baltimore. His face was apple red. “Get a move on, boy! You have a race to win!”
Roderick glanced in his father’s direction as Oona handed her token to the architect, receiving the same instructions as Roderick. “Your task is to retrieve a golden banana from inside the tower and make your way to the door marked ‘exit.’ You may now enter the tower … at your own risk.”
She saw a glimmer of mischievous delight in the man’s eyes and instantly began to wonder just what she was getting herself into. What twisted game did the architect have waiting for them behind that door?
Deacon landed on Oona’s shoulder, ruffling his feathers as if ready to settle in.
“The bird must wait out here,” the architect added to Oona before Adler Iree stepped up behind her and handed over his token.
As the architect gave Adler the same instructions he had given Oona and Roderick, Oona cocked her head to one side and shrugged. “Sorry, Deacon. Guess I’m on my own in there.”
Deacon cast a menacing look toward the architect, puffing himself up, as if to say: If anything happens to her …
“It’s all right, Deacon. I’ll manage,” Oona said, her breath slowly returning to normal.
“As you wish,” Deacon said, and flew to the nearest tree branch, cawing his displeasure.
“I said get a move on, Roderick!” Sir Baltimore shouted at his son.
The three of them, Oona, Adler, and Roderick, approached the crooked tower door together. Oona craned her neck back, peering up at the swaying monstrosity, wondering how high they would be required to climb today, and what dreamed-up obstacles the architect had placed in there.
Then came a scream. It pierced through the tower walls like something from a nightmare, followed by what might have been shrieks of high-pitched laughter. Oona went all over with goose bumps.
Roderick took in a startled breath. “Isadora!” he shouted, before wrenching open the door and darting inside. “I’ll save you, my lady!”
Adler and Oona watched him go.
Oona remembered her own hasty promise to Isadora: I won’t use any magic at all during the contest, and then we shall see who is the better.
It had been a silly thing to agree to; she had known that from the moment the words had left her lips, but she also felt it was her duty not to go back on her vow. She had a surprisingly clear memory of her father saying something like: “A great man is only as good as his word.” And Oona’s mother replied: “And a great woman, as well.” Her father had nodded his agreement, and then Oona had said: “And a great girl!” Her parents had laughed. “Quite right, Oona, dear. Quite right,” her father had replied, mussing up her hair as he did so.
Father made it to the final challenge, and he hadn’t needed magic, Oona thought. And neither do I.
That settled the matter.
Another scream issued from the half-open doorway. Oona’s throat was suddenly very dry as she and Adler followed Roderick into the tower.
Get these beasts away from me!” Isadora howled.
The chatter and shrieks of chimpanzees filled Oona’s ears. The chimps seemed to be everywhere, chattering, chortling, throwing things.
Oona, Roderick, and Adler bolted for the nearest shelter: a wooden table covered with banana peels and half-eaten apples.
A ripe red tomato collided with the side of Oona’s head as she dove beneath the table.
“Ouch!” Roderick cried, sliding in beside Oona and digging something small and hard from his collar. “That was an avocado pit,” he said. “Might as well be throwing stones.”
“That’s nothing,” Adler said, and then held up a foot-long fish. “This hit me square in the face, so it did.”
Oona was suddenly worried about what else the chimps might throw.
“We appear to be in some sort of monkey house,” Roderick said.
“You don’t say,” Adler replied sarcastically.
“Actually, they are apes,” Oona said. “Chimpanzees, to be precise. Not monkeys. I’ve read about them.”
“What’s the difference?” asked Adler.
Oona frowned. “Well, I’m not sure. But I think apes are usually much bigger than monkeys … and stronger.”
“And smellier,” said Adler. He squinched up his nose.
Oona had to agree. The room smelled terrible.
“How did Isadora get way up there?” Roderick asked, cocking his thumb toward the ceiling.
Unsure of what he meant, Oona peeked out from beneath the table.
The tower walls rose up around them like a house of cards built by an unsteady hand. The four walls leaned awkwardly in different directions, yet somehow they managed to meet the high-beamed ceiling three dizzying stories overhead.
Oona and the two boys were currently in some sort of kitchen area on the bottom floor, where an enormous wood-burning stove sat in the center of the room, atop of which bubbled an equally large kettle of steaming liquid.
The floor above them—which was not really a floor at all, because there was no floor to speak of—was made up entirely of various pieces of floating furniture. Oona blinked in surprise, unsure of what she was seeing.
The furnishings appeared to hover in the air, with no support from underneath, and her first thought was that some sort of spell had been placed on them. But upon further examination she realized that the furniture was actually suspended by long black ropes that hung down from the high ceiling.
So far as she could make out, there were two upper levels, one above the other, with a series of steps and platforms built into the walls that led from one level to the next.
The first level consisted of a sofa, a chandelier, a frighteningly heavy-looking grand piano, and an even heavier-looking red brick fireplace complete with chimney. Oona shook her head, somewhat surprised to see that the fireplace was fully lit. Bits of ash and spark rained down to the lower level of the room as the fireplace rocked back and forth on the straining ropes.
Farther up, on the topmost level, a second line of furniture also hung from the ceiling, swaying slightly from side to side on their flimsy ropes like bizarre pendulums: a standing oil lamp, a four-poster bed, a chest of drawers, and a mirrored dressing table. At the very top of the room, nearest to the hanging lamp, a rickety landing stuck out of the wall like a crooked wooden finger. It led to a bright red door, and from Oona’s vantage point three stories below, she was just able to make out the word EXIT marked on the door in fat white letters.
Further examination of the steps and platforms along the walls revealed that the stairs leading from the bottom level to the second were on one side of the room, while the steps that rose from the second level to the third were on the opposite side. This posed quite a problem—how to get from one side of the room to the other with no floor to walk on—though presently Oona realized this was the least of their worries.
The apes, which were making so much noise that Oona wished to stuff her fingers into her ears, could all be found on the upper levels. They swung from the ropes and dangled from the edges of the furniture like extremely hairy lunatics. Oona counted five of them, and they seemed to be everywhere at once, causing the ropes holding up the piano to creak, or bouncing on the sofa like a trampoline.
Oona could see Isadora up there on the sofa, looking fearfully disheveled and holding on for dear life.
“Someone get me down from here!” she cried.
The apes screamed with laughter as several of the chimps joined in on the fun of bouncing around Isadora and the piles of fruit on the sofa.
Something shiny caught Oona’s gaze: something hanging from the end of a thin chain around the neck of one of the chimps. It was hard to tell, because of how feverishly the hairy beast was bouncing on the sofa cushion beside Isadora, but to Oona the shiny object looked vaguely like a crescent of gold. With a quick glance at the chimp’s companions, she realized that each of the apes had a similar necklace.
The golden bananas, she thought. That’s what the architect told us to retrieve.
She also realized that when the apes weren’t busy throwing food at the contestants, they were attempting to toss it into the boiling pot. At present, one of the chimps, a large, fierce-looking one with a stripe of gray across its eyes, was preparing to toss one of Isadora’s shoes into the boiling stew below, but when the ape caught sight of Oona peeking out from beneath the table, it hurled the shoe at her instead, striking her in the forehead.
“Bloody beast!” Oona shouted, rubbing at her forehead and ducking back beneath the table.
“Roderick!” Isadora cried from above. “I thought you were my BOYFRIEND!”
“I am, my lady,” Roderick called back.
“Then get out here, BOYFRIEND! Now! Retrieve my shoe, and then get me out of here!”
Roderick looked pale. “Just a … a … a minute, my lady!”
“I’ll just a minute you, BOYFRIEND,” Isadora howled, “and … hey, let go of my hair, you evil thing!”
This was followed by a fit of high-pitched chimpanzee chortling.
Oona tapped both boys on the shoulder. “Here’s what I believe we have to do. First we’ll need to climb the stairs along the wall to get to the next level. Once we get there we will have to hop from one piece of furniture to the next in order to get across to the other side of the room. From there we can travel up the second set of steps to the top level, and again hop across the furniture to the exit. The golden bananas are hanging from the necks of the apes. We’ll each need to get close enough to one of them in order to take a banana.”
“I know what to do!” Roderick snapped at her. “You don’t need to tell me.”
He leapt from beneath the table and made a dash for the opposite end of the room, toward the stairs leading to the second level. Fruit rained down on him from all directions, and Oona wanted to cover her ears against the manic cry of the apes. But instead of cowering beneath the table, she followed Roderick, hoping that his lead would draw most of the fire.
It worked … sort of.
Roderick took the stairs three at a time, swatting back potatoes and bananas. For the second time, a tomato struck Oona in the back of the head. She stumbled forward, nearly losing her balance as the juices splattered through her hair and oozed down her back.
“You nasty beasts!” she shouted, but quickly realized that she had been the lucky one when a ripe, red beet hammered Roderick between the eyes. The beet cracked open against his head, spinning him down against the wall just as he reached the second-floor platform.
For an instant Oona thought it had split Roderick’s head right open, but kneeling down to see if he was all right, she saw that it was not blood after all, but only purplish beet juice that blobbed down his nose.
Realizing that he was going to be okay, Oona seized her chance to take the lead. The first platform jutted out about six feet from the wall and then stopped, where a three-foot gap opened between the platform’s edge and the arm of the hanging sofa. Knowing that a single hesitation might cause her to lose her nerve completely, Oona jumped. But not far enough. Her foot caught on the arm of the sofa, and she tumbled into Isadora’s lap.
Isadora let out a sharp scream of surprise.
The ropes creaked as the sofa swung from side to side like a boat caught in a storm.
“Get off me!” Isadora shouted, swatting blindly at both Oona and the two apes that were presently tying bits of banana peel into her golden hair. Oona shoved a pile of fruit out of the way and sat up, careful not to lean too far forward.
Suddenly, the sofa gave a jerk sideways as Roderick landed on the cushion beside her, and for one heart-stopping second Oona was sure that the ropes were about to break and the entire sofa was going to crash to the bottom floor. But the ropes held, creaking under the added weight as Oona pulled her feet up, meaning to crawl over Isadora. But Roderick grabbed hold of Oona’s skirt, pulling her back into her seat.
Oona gasped. “Whatever happened to chivalry, Mr. Rutherford?” she chided.
Roderick did not answer, but stepped impolitely over her and caught hold of one of the apes by the arm. He pulled the golden banana from its neck, and the chain snapped off quite easily. He then attempted to push the chimpanzee away, but the chimp was far stronger than Roderick. It picked him up by his arm, seemingly with no effort at all, and dangled him over the edge of the sofa.
“BOYFRIEND!” Isadora shouted, attempting to swat the second monkey away. “What are you doing? Get this beast off me!”
“I’m a little busy, Isadora,” he called back, clinging precariously to the ape’s hairy arm.
“Whoooooa!”
The sound shot from his lips as the ape tossed him through the air toward a fellow chimp on the piano. Roderick somersaulted over the chandelier, and the piano ape caught him by the back of his cloak before fervently tossing him back to the ape on the sofa. This went on for several more throws before both apes became bored with the game, and Roderick came down with a resounding GONG! on top of the piano.
Meanwhile, down below, Adler was having difficulty getting past the stripe-faced ape, which had descended to the bottom floor and was blocking his way to the stairs.
“Roderick!” Isadora crooned. “Come back here and help me!”
But Roderick was busy pushing himself to his feet on top of the piano lid. He glanced up toward the next level of furniture, and said: “I have an idea!”
Oona pulled her feet back onto the sofa and began to crawl over Isadora. Roderick may have taken the lead, but she didn’t plan on letting him keep it.
“Where do you think you’re going?” Isadora asked.
“Isadora, why don’t you—” but Oona was rudely cut short when one of the apes grabbed her around the waist and tossed her in the direction of the piano. Skirts flying like a wind-filled flag, she cartwheeled through the air, completely out of control.
To her dismay, the chimp on the piano was presently throwing a handful of dried prunes at Adler, and thus failed to catch her before she slammed down on the piano top. Her shoe clanged against the keyboard, and for one panicky instant her breath was knocked from her body, but a moment later she pushed herself to her knees and the pungent air filled her lungs. The fall had shaken her, to be sure, but, checking herself over, she seemed remarkably unharmed.
Ahead of her, Roderick leapt from the piano to the hanging fireplace, but seemed to misjudge the distance. He only just managed to catch hold of the mantelpiece and save himself from a nine-foot fall. His feet swung forward into the fire, but he quickly pulled himself up onto the chimp-free chimney. From there he hopped to the platform on the other side and began rapidly making his way up the steps to the third level.
“BOYFRIEND!” Isadora cried. “You better not leave me here!”
“Hold your horses, my lady!” Roderick called back.
Oona took her footing on the piano rather precariously. Her shoes had little grip, and they were sliding all over the place. She steadied herself on one of the ropes, waiting on the lip of the lid as the piano rocked closer to the fireplace.
She leapt … but like Roderick, she jumped too early. For half a heartbeat she thought she was going to fly right into the mouth of the fireplace, but her fingers clamped hold of the m
antle. She kicked her feet, fighting to pull herself up. Her dress felt like it weighed two hundred pounds.
Suddenly, there was an ape above her, this one more gray than black, and it cackled at her with wild amusement. It caught hold of the back of her dress, hauling her up. Oona had an idea that the chimp’s intentions were not so much to help her but to start up its own little game of Toss the Helpless Girl.
Just as the ape brought her up to chimney height, however, both Oona and the ape realized that something was burning … and a second later Oona felt what it was. The bottom of her dress had swung into the flames and was now on fire.
Dreadfully fearful of the flames, the gray ape tossed her in the opposite direction of the piano, but not before Oona reached out and caught hold of the golden banana hanging from its neck. The chain snapped, and she came down on the far platform, rolling over several times before hitting the wall. She quickly sat up, slapping at the hem of her dress, only to realize that the fire had been doused in her roll across the floor.
“Well,” she said, breathing a sigh of relief. “That was certainly memorable.”
“Isadora!” Oona heard Roderick shout from above. “Grab hold. I’ll pull you up!”
Pushing herself to her feet, Oona glanced toward the second level of furniture. She could see Roderick up there balancing on the hanging chest of drawers. He steadied himself with one rope and was using his other hand to rock the chandelier below toward Isadora.
It took only two swings, and Isadora grabbed hold. She hung on for dear life as the ape on the sofa tried its best to pull her free. But the chimp quickly gave up and started throwing the sofa cushions at Adler, who had only just managed to reach the stairs at the bottom of the tower.
Suddenly, the entrance to the tower swung inward, and Mr. Bop stepped into the ape house, causing the entire structure to quake with each step. A fresh round of fruits and vegetables began to pelt the enormous man about the head, and he quickly backed out through the door, apparently having second thoughts about his chances in the physical task.
The Magician's Tower Page 6