I pick one up; it’s about as heavy as a flashlight and it has a clasp at one of the ends. “What does this do?” I say as I put my thumb on the clasp.
Mal snatches the tube from me. “Get your thumb away from the trigger!”
“Sorry.”
“If you unhook the latch, it will fire the recovery line,” Mal says.
Both Brilliance and I give her confused looks.
“You know how every time I take Harvey on walks, he wiggles out of his collar or gnaws through his chain and takes off on me?” Mal asks.
I nod. Brilliance shakes her head.
“Harvey is her hellhound,” I say.
“Ahh,” Brilliance says.
“So I built the hound recovery tube. You point it at the running hound and it fires a steel line with a suction cup at the end. The suction cup is lathered up with goblin snot, so it sticks to ’em tight. Then you push this button, and a reel comes out so you can pull them in like you are reeling in a fish.”
“Gross,” Brilliance says.
“Cool,” I say.
Mal picks up a small silver whistle. “The last thing is the—”
“Hound-ariot whistle,” I blurt. “But what good is that here? There aren’t any hounds.”
Mal smiles and twists the whistle. It breaks in half and then she flips one end around and screws it back together. She puts it to her lips and blows. There isn’t any sound.
“It’s broken,” Brilliance says.
“Wait for it,” I say with a smile.
A few moments later, a bushy tailed squirrel scampers to our feet. It tilts its head up at us, waiting for a command.
“It’s a slightly different frequency, but it works on rodents too,” Mal says.
“How do you figure this stuff out?” Brilliance asks.
“Mal’s a genius,” I say and pick up the voice receiver and twirl it in my hands. “And I’ve got a plan.” I glance up at Mal, whose face has gone all red again. “You okay?”
“Fine,” she says, turning away.
“So what’s the plan?” Brilliance asks.
Twenty-Two
The three of us heave our backs against the rock. It inches over to reveal a bright pink-and-blue lever. Brilliance reaches down and yanks the lever. The steel lily pads erupt out of the crashing water. I latch the voice receiver around the squirrel’s neck and give it a nod. It leaps out onto the first pad, barely catching the edge with its shiny black claws. It pulls itself onto the pad and rears up to make another leap to the next pad. The squirrel almost plunges into the churning river twice before finally reaching the archway into the waterfall. He scampers through the archway and disappears behind the sheet of water.
A few moments pass, and then the squirrel reappears. It beckons us forward with its little squirrel arm. We hop over to him and enter the archway beneath the pounding waterfall. The noise is deafening.
The archway leads into a leaky stone corridor. We creep down it; a faint light highlights the end of the tunnel. We reach the end and step into a cavern. Stalactites and stalagmites dot the cavern like fangs, making the vast room look like a poisonous jaw gaping open to invite us in. A smooth path snakes through the stalagmites.
I glance down at the squirrel and it gives me a thumbs-up. It then scurries forward down the path. I have to admit, I’m really hoping that our new little friend isn’t a distant cousin to the chip-beast from Michaels Park that I tried to do in. If so, then this would be a perfect opportunity for payback.
We follow a dozen or so yards behind the squirrel. The whole time I press the earpiece from the voice receiver firmly into my ear. All I can hear is the squirrel’s wheezing and snuffling. Somehow we were able to attract the only squirrel in the forest with a cold, but I guess beggars can’t be choosers.
The path swerves deeper and deeper through the rocks and pools of black water. I squint forward into the gloom and notice something rotating that I swear is a multicolored windmill.
“Do you see that?”
“It looks like a giant peppermint candy,” Brilliance says.
We follow the path until we reach the back wall of the cavern.
“That’s a gear,” Mal says, pointing to the circulating wheel.
It’s fifty feet tall and attached to the cavern wall. It has notches in it, and every time it turns, it spins several other gears next to it. At least a dozen different-sized wheels spin at various speeds like rainbow-colored pinwheels.
“It’s like those gears and wheels that are inside a clock,” Mal says, staring at it. “Those are connected to something.” She takes a step forward, and I notice what’s at her feet.
“Stop!” I yell and spring forward. I catch her by the shoulder and tug her backward.
“Hey! What was that for?” Mal asks.
“Look.” I motion toward the cavern floor just ahead of her.
There are three ten-foot-wide holes in a line. I inch forward and look down into one, but it’s a black abyss without a visible bottom. A distant, metallic rumbling creeps up from their depths.
“How deep are they?” Brilliance asks.
Mal pulls out a coin from her backpack and flips it into the nearest hole. We wait and wait, but nothing.
“You’re lucky,” Brilliance says, walking on the path between the holes to the other side. “You’d have fallen for a long, long time.”
On the other side of the three holes and below the massive spinning gear is a jagged gash in the rock wall. It is the width of ten men or two unicorns. The squirrel scurries between the holes and stops at the edge of the crack. He flops back down onto his back haunches.
We follow after him and I peer into the opening. It’s a short tunnel; another cavern lies on the other side of the wall.
The squirrel and I make eye contact. “Well, get going,” I whisper.
It shakes its head.
“What’s in there?” I ask.
The squirrel runs its claw across its neck menacingly, and acts like it has been struck dead flopping on the ground. It lies there for a moment and then pops back up. It shakes free of the voice receiver and gives us a little salute before heading back down the direction we came.
“Where’s he going?” Brilliance asks.
“I guess this is as far as he’s gonna go,” I say.
“Okay. Well then, what now?” Brilliance asks.
I inch forward trying to get a better glimpse into the next cavern, but I can’t make heads or tails of what’s in there.
“Night, what now?” Mal asks.
“Uh …” I stammer. “That was kind of the extent of the plan.”
“What!” Brilliance whispers.
“Well, I didn’t know our toothy friend was gonna bail right away,” I say.
Brilliance rolls her eyes. “What a strategist,” she says and pushes past me. She creeps into the crack in the wall. She gets onto her stomach and worms forward until she reaches the edge. She lies there for a moment and crawls back to us.
She signals for us to come close. “There’s a crevasse between us and the other side of the room. An iron bridge with rails on both sides spans across the gulf.”
“That doesn’t sound so bad,” I say.
Brilliance smirks. “I’m not done. There are also two unicorn guards on the opposite side of the bridge. They both are holding some type of spear.”
“Oh … that sucks,” I say.
Brilliance nods and bites her lip. “I think I can get us past them.”
“How?” Mal asks.
“With this,” she says, patting her skull ball boot hanging over her shoulder. “And these.” She picks up two grapefruit-sized stones.
I eye her warily. “You sure? This isn’t kicking a skull through a golden hoop. There are two of them out there.”
“You’re right. This isn’t kicking a skull through a golden hoop. This is easier,” she says and smiles. “I’ll be able to kick both stones before the unicorns realize what’s happening.”
I glance o
ver at Mal, and she shrugs. “I can’t think of anything better,” she says.
Brilliance smiles and turns back into the crack. We follow close behind her. She gingerly slides the two stones into position about a foot apart from each other. She gets to her knees, straps the boot onto her foot, takes a couple of steps back, and lets out a long breath.
“Here goes,” she whispers and strides forward. Clunk! The sharp noise echoes throughout the cavern. The unicorns jump to attention, looking one way and then another.
The first stone sails to the left side of the bridge. It collides forcefully with the unicorn’s skull, right between its eyes. Thunk! The left guard drops to the floor. The unicorn on the right side flips his head around to see his compatriot collapse when the second stone strikes him directly in the temple. Thwack! He lets out a whinny that sounds like a cross between a seal bark and horse snort.
“Incredible,” I whisper.
Brilliance puts her hands on her hips in her typical superhero stance and smiles smugly. “Told you—”
A flash of white catches our eye. A third unicorn dashes for the door on the opposite side of the cavern.
“It’s trying to get away! A rock! Quick!” Brilliance yells.
I glance around at my feet for anything.
Phumpt! A suction cup soars through the air with a long silver chain attached to the end of it. It smacks directly into the unicorns rear end. The unicorn cries out in surprise.
“Hurry! Help me!” Mal screams. She’s got both her hands wrapped around the hound retriever. I jump forward and grab it too. The chain goes taut and yanks us off our feet. We fly through the air. We crash face-first into the ground. The air bellows out of my lungs. Skidding across the ground, I look up. We’re screaming toward the edge of the precipice.
“Let go!” I yell.
“Can’t!” Mal cries. “My hand is stuck.”
I look forward, and we’re nearly to the edge. I reach up and pull at the chain wrapped around Mal’s hand, but it’s caught around her wrist.
Thunk!
There’s a sharp pain in my side. I look up. Brilliance has kicked me in the ribs. The force of her kick skids us from going over the ledge and onto the center of the bridge. The chains tangle in the bridge’s iron beams. Twang! The line goes taut. The unicorn is hurtled backward.
I scurry to my knees and untangle Mal’s hand. We both wait for the unicorn to get back to his feet, but he lies motionless. Brilliance jogs around us with the iron boot still attached to her foot. Clunk, clunk, clunk. She cautiously approaches the unicorn. He lies spread eagle on the floor. Mal claps her hands together and beckons us forward.
She points down at the unicorn. His head is on top of a smooth boulder sticking out of the cavern floor. “Out like a light,” Brilliance says with a smile.
I rub my ribs. “Thanks for the kick. I think you cracked a rib, but thanks.”
“Sorry, it’s all I could think of,” she says and turns to Mal. “Great shot with the hound retriever.”
Mal nods while rubbing her wrist. “It’s all I could think of too.”
Brilliance picks up a stone the size of one of our skull ball skulls and extends it toward Mal.
“Do you mind putting this in your backpack?” she asks.
I screw up my face. “Why?”
“In case we run into another unicorn,” Mal says, taking the stone from Brilliance and stuffing it into her backpack.
A thick wooden door with smoothed bark stands a few feet from us. It has rusted metal hinges and a meaty iron handle. It takes all three of us to crack it open. I slide through the narrow gap and then do a double take. The room is brightly lit by hundreds of candles lining the walls. Each candle burns a different color. But that wasn’t what made me do a double take.
Hanging in a row twenty feet in front of me are two dozen rainbow-embellished donkey piñatas. Each donkey stares blindly back at me. Behind them is a sheer wall with a handleless door. High above the door are countless gears and wheels shaped and colored like lollipops.
“What the heck?” I mutter.
Brilliance and Mal push me from behind and squeeze past me. Both of them stare dumbfounded at the display before us.
“What is this?” Brilliance asks.
Mal takes a couple of steps forward, examining the piñatas and the gears above the door.
“Mal, what do you think this is?” I ask.
“It’s a riddle. Kind of a twisted security system. You have to hit the right piñata to open the door.”
“Hit it with what?” I ask.
“That,” Brilliance says, striding forward. She picks up a wooden club and smacks it in her hand. “So, do we just do eeny, meeny, miny, moe?”
“I don’t think so,” Mal says, still staring up at the lollipop-shaped gears above the door.
“This actually might be fun,” Brilliance says, flipping the club in her hand. She skips forward and rears back, aiming for one of the donkey piñata’s heads.
I throw my hand up to stop her. “Brilliance, I don’t—”
Brilliance slashes the club at the donkey’s head.
“Stop!” Mal screams.
Brilliance pulls back at the last second, barely nicking the donkey’s nose. Boom!
A terrible explosion blows us backward. Hundreds of green and pink gumdrops blast out in every direction. The acid gumdrops hit the back wall, the ceiling, and ground all around us. One hurtles just past my left ear and burns a streak through my hair.
I push myself up, careful to not stick my hand in any oozing puddles of gumdrop acid. “Mal! Brilliance! You okay?”
“I guess,” Mal says with a groan.
Brilliance lets out a yelp and then swallows up her cry. I hopscotch around acid puddles to where she is sitting. She has thick strands of her singed blonde hair in each hand. “Are you alright?” I ask, looking her over for any burn marks.
“My beautiful hair,” she says and then a hushed sob croaks from her throat. She shakes her head, jumps to her feet, and sets her jaw. “I’m fine.”
The acid must have just missed her neck. The back of her hair has been burned away into the shape of a skinny palm tree, bushy on top with a narrow trunk.
“Uh …,” I stammer. “It doesn’t look so—”
Mal shoots me a nasty glance and hushes me with a hiss. I clamp my mouth shut and pick up the club. “So how do we know which one we are supposed to hit?”
“Look,” Mal says, pointing at the gears above the door. “They are spinning and turning at different speeds.” A new piñata drops from the sky and bounces up like a desperado hitting the bottom of a hangman’s noose. The new piñata comes to rest in the space where the other one blew up.
Mal continues to examine the gears whirring and spinning above the door, and a smile grows across her face. “I know which one it is,” she whispers.
“Huh?” Brilliance asks.
“I know which piñata opens the door,” she says, tugging the club out of my hand. She walks over to a piñata hanging five donkeys to the left.
“How?” I ask.
“The gears above the door. I followed their motion. All the others are attached to a gear that drops another donkey. This is the only one that isn’t. So it must be the right one”
I study the gears for a moment but can’t make heads or tails. “How sure are you that’s the right one?”
“Pretty sure,” she says.
“Tell me in percentages. What are the chances that this thing is going to blow up in our face?”
“Hm … 23.9 percent,” she says and rolls her eyes. She lifts the club above her head and whacks the donkey.
I let out a mannish squeal and tuck my head. The donkey doesn’t explode, but it swings backward. A little trumpet shoots out from the donkey’s mouth and it blares out a victory song.
The handleless door behind the donkeys swings open.
“Let’s go,” Mal says with a smile.
We cross through the door and are met by a
wide, winding staircase. We follow it down, descending deeper and deeper underground. The air turns more and more frigid with every step. We reach the bottom of the staircase and find ourselves in a perfectly round cavern. The underground room is humongous. The walls are marble smooth and the floor gleans like polished glass. Only sporadic torches crowning the top of the cavern light the room.
“Is the floor moving?” Brilliance asks, tilting her head forward.
We scurry forward. The polished floor ends and a clear pond begins. Teeming just underneath the water are thousands of shining fish, some glowing gold, some blue, others pink and green. They glide effortlessly through the water like gentle strokes of paint against a clear canvas.
I peer into the pond’s depths but can’t see a bottom. Poking only an inch over the surface of the water are the tips of wooden poles. Countless telephone poles extend down into the depths and peek just above the waterline as stepping-stones.
We follow the water’s edge until we reach the smooth cavern wall. It is impassable on that side; we try the other side but are greeted by the same predicament.
“The only way across is by jumping from pole to pole,” Brilliance says.
“Or by swimming,” I add, and glance at Brilliance. “It looks like it’s only a hundred or so feet across. Can you swim?”
She snorts. “Of course.”
“I don’t think we want to swim in that,” Mal says. “There’s got to be something more to this water.” She kneels down at the edge of the pool and pulls her backpack off her shoulder. She rifles through it and pulls out a granola bar.
My stomach growls. “Where did you get that?”
“I brought them for the trip. Now be quiet,” she says, breaking off a piece of the granola bar and tossing it into the water.
A gurgling, bubbling frenzy erupts where Mal has tossed the piece of granola. Hundreds of glowing fish rip and tear at the bar and at each other. Their wide mouths open to expose rows and rows of jagged teeth. As quickly as the storm started, it subsides, leaving not a speck of granola left and dozens of other fish maimed and headless.
I take three healthy steps backward. “I am not going out there,” I say. “I don’t care if my parents never come home. I don’t care if I never find out about the Queen Suzanne. I don’t care, I don’t care, I don’t care!”
Death's Academy Page 14