Hatched

by Bruce Coville

  “I can help you with that,” he said.

  I felt a huge sense of relief. “You mean you know where there’s a cave we can go through?”

  “No. But I do know where there’s a Wall of Passage. And I will be with you to encourage you, to keep you believing that you can fly through it. So we should be fine.”

  Trying not to cry, I said, “I don’t think I can do it!”

  He gave my ear a sharp tug. “Nonsense! Here is how much I believe in you. I will ride on your beak as we fly toward the stone wall! That way, if you fail, which I do not think will happen, I will be the first to smash into it!”

  The thought that my teacher had so much faith in me that he would risk his life believing in my own faith brought a tear to my eye. “You really think I can do it?” I asked.

  “No, I’m just looking for a fast way to die!”

  As I’ve noted, Master A can be quite sarcastic.

  “I can’t go without my hoard,” I said, partly because it was true, partly to change the subject and buy some time.

  “I know that. It’s why I gave you that pack last month when I realized you were thinking about doing this. Everything is already stored in it, right?”

  “Yes.”

  “Then quietly bring it out here. I’ll help you strap it on.”

  Getting the pack properly situated turned out to be more complicated than Master A seemed to have expected.

  “I think you’ve grown,” he complained, while trying to pull the straps tight.

  Secretly, I hoped he might not be able to manage it, as that would give me an excuse not to do this after all. Much as I hate to admit it, even to myself, I was still not entirely ready to go.

  Why am I always wanting to do something and at the same time not wanting to do it? Is it true, as Master Abelard has told me so many times, that being both eagle and lion has given me a divided nature?

  Even if it is true, should not both halves of my nature be bold and fearless?

  Back to what actually happened. Once Master A managed to get the travel pouch strapped into place, he said, “Everything ready, steady, and ready. Let’s go!”

  “I can’t go yet,” I answered.

  “Why not?” he asked, and I could tell he was getting impatient.

  “Because I have to leave a note!”

  Master A sighed. He has a wide variety of very expressive sighs, and this was one I knew well. It meant that despite the fact that he didn’t like what I said, he accepted that I was right. He lowered himself into my travel pouch, then lifted up my bottle of ink. I took it from his hands. Next he tore a page from the back of my diary and handed it up to me.

  I flinched when he did that, but it was true that I had nothing else on which to leave my note, which I wrote by the light of the moon.

  Tuesday, June 30 (continued)

  As soon as I had secured the note under a rock, Master Abelard said, “Let’s fly!”

  I knelt so he could climb to the top of my head. Once he was in place and clinging to my right ear, I could delay no longer. I backed into the mouth of the cave…then raced forward and launched into the air.

  Instantly we were soaring above the deep abyss that yawns below my family’s aerie.

  I do not often fly by moonlight, mostly because Mom does not approve. But truly it is one of the most beautiful things you can do…especially if you are in the mountains. The rich silver light highlights the tors and crags and makes mysteries of the valleys and crevices. My mind itched at the thought that anything could be hidden in those dark and mysterious places. After all, we were in the Enchanted Realm! Another time I would have contemplated what monsters and wonders might have been waiting there.

  Not now, though.

  This night I was a griffin on a mission!

  “Head toward the Shanamal Valley,” ordered Master Abelard.

  I banked to the right.

  The flying was easy, the winds and updrafts holding me so firmly I could glide much of the way. I barely needed to work my wings; mostly I used them to steer, tilting first left and then right as I careened between the rocky crags.

  If the flight at that point was easy, my mind was anything but at ease.

  All I could think about was the great test that lay ahead.

  Could I really make it through the wall?

  Master Abelard, who was clinging to my right ear, suddenly leaned into it and shouted, “Turn here! Fly past that outcropping.”

  I did as he ordered. A moment later he cried, “There’s our cliff, about three hundred feet ahead!”

  My heart grew soft and fearful, and my stomach clenched with dread.

  “Glide for a moment while I position myself on your beak,” said Master Abelard.

  This made me feel a little better, as it told me he truly did believe I could fly straight through that solid wall of rock!

  Climbing down my face, my teacher positioned himself flat upon my beak, then placed one small hand in each of my nostrils.

  I knew this was so he would not fall off. I just hoped it wouldn’t make me sneeze!

  Once firmly situated, he cried, “Now fly, Gerald! FLY!”

  Stretching my wings to their fullest, I flapped with all my might. At the same time I whispered to myself, “I think I can, I think I can, I think I can! I know I can!”

  I was flying full-speed. We were mere feet from the cliff. I wanted to close my eyes but feared if I did it would indicate I didn’t really believe I would make it through…and thus would crash and die. Worse, it wouldn’t be just me who would die. If I didn’t make it, I would kill my teacher, who was staking his life on his belief in me!

  “Faster, Gerald!” cried Master Abelard. “Don’t stop believing!”

  I flew on, gaining speed with each stroke of my wings.

  The cliff loomed before us.

  Would we collide and die or glide right through to the human world?

  I must not question. I had to believe!

  That’s all I can write for now. I’m tired and my words are starting to wobble.

  From: Huntsline Airfield

  Date: June 30

  Time: 01:10

  To: Federal Aviation Administration

  Re: Unidentified Aircraft

  At 23:15 hours last night a small aircraft appeared on our radar screen. (One observer insists we should refer to it as an unidentified flying object, but I refuse to indulge in such nonsense.)

  After repeated attempts to contact the aircraft met with no success, several drones were sent out, ready to shoot down the intruding aircraft if necessary. Some laser blasts were fired. However, storm conditions made visual tracking via the drones nearly impossible.

  At 23:25 the unidentified aircraft fell below radar-detection levels.

  We have been monitoring all channels for word of a crash, but nothing has come in.

  No further information available at this time.

  Respectfully submitted,

  Rodney Parker

  Airman First Class

  Tuesday, June 30 (continued)

  All right, I’ve recovered a bit, so I can write more now. I do want to get all this down while it is fresh in my memory.

  So…when we were a few feet from the cliff I did close my eyes. Actually my eyes closed themselves. I couldn’t stop them!

  According to Master Abelard, I also emitted a shriek of terror.

  To be honest, I think he did, too.

  There was no halting at that point, of course, no turning aside. The collision was unavoidable.

  I braced myself for the impact, which indicated I did not believe. But maybe I had believed enough already, because I didn’t feel any sudden crash against stone, didn’t feel any pain, didn’t feel…anything.

  I wondered if this meant that I was now dead.

  Then Master Abelard cried, “You did it, Gerald! You did it!”

  I opened my eyes and saw that the terrain below was entirely different from the land I had been flying over moments earlier.r />
  We were in the human world!

  “But I didn’t feel anything,” I said.

  “You weren’t supposed to,” shouted Master A as he crawled back toward the top of my head. He sounded calm, but once he had positioned himself and was holding on to my ear I could feel him tremble.

  Had he not believed we were going to make it through?

  By the light of the moon, nearly as bright in the human world as it had been in the Enchanted Realm, I could see that the landscape stretching below was more gentle than that of home. Oh, we were still flying over mountains. But unlike the bare and rocky peaks of home, these mountains were low and round and covered with trees.

  I tried to spot a place to land so I could recover from our passage. The problem was not that my wings were tired. It was that my heart was totally wrung out by fear!

  However, the dense forest presented a problem. The upper branches of the trees certainly could not hold my weight. And they grew so close together that I could see no opening through which I could reach the ground.

  Adding to the problem, a stiff wind made it hard to keep a steady course. The sky was heavy with scudding clouds, which soon blocked the moon, plunging this new world into complete blackness…a blackness broken when somewhere ahead a bolt of lightning streaked down. Its hot white crackle was followed so quickly by a rumble of thunder that I knew it had been terribly close.

  “Gerald, we have to land!” cried Master Abelard. “I’m having a hard time holding on in this wind.”

  He had to shout to be heard above the gusts, even though he had thrust his head directly into my ear!

  “I can’t see anyplace to touch down!” I shouted back.

  Another bolt of lightning sliced the air to our right.

  “Turn a bit to the left,” bellowed Master A.

  At that moment the rain started.

  I do not like to fly in the rain!

  To make things worse, we heard a noise from behind. Before I could turn my head to see what it was, a bolt of green light flashed past us! The light was straight and narrow, not jagged like lightning. And it traveled sideways rather than up and down.

  “What was that?” I cried.

  Instead of answering, Master A tightened his grip on my ear and shrieked, “Lasers! Dive, Gerald! Dive if you want to live to see the morning!”

  I dove.

  “Get as close to the trees as you can! Go lower. Lower!”

  I was terrified. Had someone pursued us through the Transcendental Curtain? Were we about to be arrested?

  Another bolt of green light shot past, followed almost instantly by another flare of real lightning up ahead. In its brief brilliance I spotted a gap in the trees! It was miles away (given my eagle eyes, I have amazing vision) but exactly what we needed.

  Picking up speed, fighting the wind, barely skimming the treetops, I raced for the gap.

  The rain drove against us, hard as pebbles. The wind knocked me first right, then left, as if it could not make up its mind which direction it was blowing from. I was in constant danger of being slammed into the treetops.

  “Hold tight, teacher!” I bellowed, terrified one of the gusts might blow Master A off my head and send him tumbling into the darkness.

  As we drew closer to the open space I had spotted, I saw that it had buildings!

  I felt a new wave of dismay. Buildings meant people, which meant there was a chance we would be spotted by humans!

  How many ways can I violate the Great Code before Izzikiah Wildbeak himself comes back from the dead and strikes me down for my sins?

  “We’ll take shelter in that barn!” shouted Master Abelard.

  Hoping the wind would not swallow my words, I cried, “Someone might see us!”

  “No one will be out in this storm, Gerald. Get us down and we’ll hide there for the night.”

  I landed directly in front of the barn, splashing into a puddle as I did.

  I was exhausted, sodden, thoroughly miserable.

  Happily, we had one piece of good fortune…the barn doors were open.

  “Hurry inside!” shouted Master A. “I want to get out of this gnome-drenching downpour!”

  I did as he ordered, still nervous about being spotted.

  It was pitch-black inside the building but totally dry. So that was one small comfort.

  “Unless some tramp has taken shelter here for the night, I think it’s safe to say there are no humans nearby,” Master Abelard said. “There may be some livestock, but they won’t bother us.”

  “I can’t see a thing!” I complained. (I may have amazing vision, but I need some light to move around.)

  “Give me a moment,” replied Master A.

  I don’t know what he did, other than mutter a few words I couldn’t understand, but seconds later light was streaming from the top of my head! Well, not actually from my head. At least I think not. That’s just where Master Abelard was sitting. Something he had done was causing the light.

  Strange as this was, I was grateful to have him with me. He is so much wiser than me and knows so much more about the human world. For example: For reasons I was not able to understand, he said, “Clearly not a working barn. So much the better. Head to your right, Gerald.”

  I moved as he directed, winding my way through large and complicated chunks of metal, one of which he called a “tractor.” Soon we came to two long sticks. About a dozen shorter sticks, evenly spaced, went crosswise between them.

  “This is a ladder,” said Master A. “It’s for climbing.”

  I prefer climbing rocks, or flying, but I slowly made my way up the rickety thing. It trembled beneath me, which was scary. If it broke there would be no time—or room!—to spread my wings and fly.

  At the top of the ladder I was forced to tuck my wings against my sides in order to squeeze through a hole. We found ourselves in what Master A called a loft. It was a wide space, completely empty, bounded by wooden walls. The wall to our left had a set of what my teacher informed me were stairs. I climbed them (easier to use than the ladder) and found a second loft. This one contained a great deal of loose straw.

  I arranged some into a pile to make a nesting place. Wobbling from weariness, I settled into it. Master Abelard nestled against my side, tucking himself under the covering of my wing.

  Outside, the storm continued to rage; inside the barn, which was like a giant wooden cave, we were safe and dry.

  I fell into a deep sleep.

  When I woke this morning my illusions of safety were shattered.

  Master Abelard had vanished!

  Panic-stricken, I flung the straw about, digging at it frantically with my talons. Where was he? What could have happened to him? I could not help myself. I let out a wail of despair.

  “For the love of all that’s enchanted, be quiet!” cried Master A. “Someone might hear you!”

  “Where are you?” I called, too relieved to care how cranky he had sounded. “Are you all right?”

  “I’m fine, Gerald. I’m over here in the storage area. I was just trying to see if I could find anything interesting.”

  I sank down and crossed my talons over my face.

  Sometimes I am such an idiot!

  From the Journal of Bradley Ashango

  (Summer Assignment)

  6/30 (Tues.)

  We had a very big storm last night. There was a lot of thunder. I was afraid lightning would hit the barn.

  I can see the barn from my room. It is huge. It would be a good place for a clubhouse, but I would need friends for that.

  We do not have Internet here. I guess I will just have to read some books. That should make my teachers happy.

  (3 paragraphs, 3 sentences each, 1 of them compound.)

  From Brad’s Real Journal

  6/30

  Holy melting marshmallows! When I went up to the attic to poke around this morning, two things happened…one kind of strange, the other actually bloodcurdling. I should start with a little about the attic. One of
the many things I love about it is that it has its own special smell—old, musty, and kind of mysterious.

  And it is crammed with STUFF! It would seriously take days to examine everything stored there. It’s a massive collection of broken lamps, old clothes, birdcages, books, discarded board games, mysterious-looking trunks, and things I don’t even have words for.

  Most of the trunks have flat tops. Those have stacks of boxes on them, as does pretty much any flat surface up there. So you have to move stuff around if you want to look inside them. Some of the older trunks have rounded tops. I don’t know why, but somehow that makes me really want to look inside them.

  Standing against one wall is a rickety bookcase filled with really old books. Some are massively boring—things like Minutes of the Vande Velde’s Landing Town Meetings for 1897. I suppose somebody studying local history might think they were real treasures, but I can’t imagine anyone else finding them interesting. Others are totally cool adventure stories written a hundred or more years ago. You have to adjust your brain to read them, but once you do the stories are great!

  It was while I was looking at the books that I experienced the bloodcurdling moment I mentioned. I was at the back of the attic, which faces the barn. From the barn I heard—distinctly heard—a screech that sounded like some creature in a state of terror.

  I froze in place, but the sound stopped almost immediately and didn’t start again.

  What could it have been?

  After several minutes of silence I went back to exploring the attic. I found a big stash of old jigsaw puzzles and pulled out a couple to take downstairs. Bibi and I like to work on puzzles on rainy days or nights when we just feel like staying up late and talking. We chat while we’re trying to find the pieces we want. Sometimes Bibi tells me stories from when she was young.

  It was shortly after I found the puzzles that I made the big discovery. It happened when I opened an old trunk. The first thing I saw was a faded brown blanket. I was afraid the whole thing would be filled with sheets and boring stuff like that. I almost closed it right then but decided to dig a little deeper. So I lifted out the blanket.