by Temre Beltz
It happened to be the boy Ralph.
Birdie snapped to attention. The other children straightened up a bit too. Despite the Tragicals’ painful habit of ignoring one another, Ralph was in a slightly different category. Ralph was the only child in the whole manor who had a single memory of life in the Beyond.26 While all the other Tragicals arrived at the manor before the age of three, Ralph was deposited (kicking and screaming, no less) at the age of seven. Of course, no one knew what any of Ralph’s memories were because the children never talked to one another. Birdie determined, however, that his memories must have been rooted in something halfway good. Otherwise, he wouldn’t have kept trying to escape from Foulweather’s Home for the Tragical.
Ralph met Mistress Octavia’s stare. “I wouldn’t run away because I wouldn’t be afraid.”
The other Tragicals gasped.
Mistress Octavia’s nostrils flared. “Not afraid? Not afraid of a dragon? Have you listened to a single word I’ve read during story time? Do you know what dragons do to young, scrumptious boys like yourself?”
Ralph swallowed. He stuffed his hands—which were shaking a bit—beneath his desk. “I guess there’s two ways to look at it. First, if I’m taking my duty as a Tragical seriously, I ought to be glad to stumble across a dragon.” At the word “glad,” Mistress Octavia’s jaw dropped. Ralph continued on, “Surely getting gobbled up by something as fantastic as a dragon is worth at least ten or twelve bad endings when compared to something boring like falling into a pit of quicksand. If I free up extra good endings for the Triumphants, they might even have to call me a super Tragical.”
“A Super Tragical?” Francesca burst out, looking wildly around the room while fanning herself with her hand. Surely in all her years of striving, she had never imagined there could exist something so wonderfully self-explanatory as a Super Tragical!
The rest of the children began to twitter and stir.
They began to think.
Ralph may have nearly smiled.
And that’s when the first roll of thunder occurred.
BOOM-BOOM-BA-BA-BOOM!
Thunder so loud, it sounded as if it was coming from inside the manor.
But that was impossible, wasn’t it?
“Silence!” Mistress Octavia hissed. She fixed her eyes on Ralph. “There is no such thing as a Super Tragical. There is nothing super about Tragicals, and certainly nothing super about a single one of you. You are all nothing! It is the very reason why you were sent here, the very reason why no one comes for you, and the very reason why no one will care when you meet your Tragic Ends.”
When Mistress Octavia was finished huffing, to Birdie’s astonishment, Ralph’s hand rose up again.
“What? What could you possibly have to say?” Mistress Octavia shrieked.
“I didn’t, um, get to share the second reason why I wouldn’t be afraid of the dragon. You see, you never said what color the dragon was—”
“What difference does something like color make? Isn’t it enough to know that all dragons have row upon row of shining teeth?”
“Well, if it happened to be blue, that might make all the difference in the world. Because there’s one dragon in Wanderly that they say has the power to—”
“ENOUGH!” Mistress Octavia brought her broomstick handle down against Ralph’s desk with an explosive crack. But even that was nothing compared to the second round of thunder that was so deafening it hands-down had to come from within the manor and was—gulp—getting closer.
BOOM-BOBBITY-BIBBITY-BOOM-BA-BOOM-BOOM!!!!!
The Tragicals screamed. A few grabbed their chalk slates and held them in front of their chests like shields. The two youngest simply froze in their seats, threw their heads toward the sky, and wailed. Even the gangly teenagers (all three of them) folded up like pretzels and slid beneath their desks.
But Birdie stared at Ralph. She stared at the boy whose eyes were lit up from within because surely he knew things. Things he might be willing to share. Not that Birdie was interested in dragons—whatever color they happened to be—but in something she couldn’t stop thinking about: friendship. Maybe Ralph could teach her what friendship looked like in the Beyond! Maybe he could teach her how to be a friend.
Birdie’s thoughts were interrupted by Mistress Octavia’s shrill cry of “SIR ICH-A-BOD! SIR ICH-A-BOD!”
As usual, Sir Ichabod arrived quickly. He slipped into the Instruction Room and shut the door softly behind him. His messy hair fell like a curtain across his eyes, and beneath the frayed hem of his sleeve cuffs, his hands trembled.
“Yes, my lady?” he whispered.
“Stop making such an obnoxious racket! It’s completely disruptive!”
“That w-wasn’t me, my lady.” Sir Ichabod paused. He looked around. He looked around as if he expected something to sneak up behind him. “That was the thunder. C-come from inside.”
Mistress Octavia’s eyes narrowed. “That doesn’t make any sense, you ridiculous fool! Now admit that racket was nothing more than you banging about your pots and pans, and be sure it doesn’t happen again!”
“I . . . Well, okay . . .”
But Sir Ichabod was unable to finish because someone knocked upon the Instruction Room door.
Everyone, even Mistress Octavia, froze.
“Ichabod.” Mistress Octavia’s voice was a whisper. “Whom have you admitted to the manor today?”
Sir Ichabod stared blankly. For truly, who was ever admitted to the manor? Even though Mistress Octavia extended invitation after invitation after invitation to the Chancellor, he never bothered to show up.
Mistress Octavia waved her hand in the air. “Are all the children accounted for?”
Sir Ichabod counted the children because Mistress Octavia could never keep track of how many Tragicals were under her care. “All here,” Sir Ichabod whispered.
Raising her voice a tinge higher, Mistress Octavia demanded, “Then who could possibly be knocking upon the door?”
A second and more insistent knock erupted. As if jolted suddenly awake, Sir Ichabod threw his skinny arms across the doorframe. He squeaked to the Tragicals, “Hide! You must all hide!”
Mistress Octavia, however, wasn’t about to do any such thing. She charged toward the door. She raised her broken broomstick handle high over her head, ready to dish out a hefty wallop. But once she was within a few feet, the door bulged, and Sir Ichabod catapulted off the frame! He knocked a stunned Mistress Octavia flat against the ground, whereupon her arms and legs kicked wildly beneath him like a trapped roly-poly.
The door swung wide open.
The Tragicals waited in agony for the revealing of a horrid monster bearing two heads or maybe even eighteen arms—one to grasp each of them—because what could be more tragical than all their lives ending at once?
But the visitor did not have a head.
Or arms.
Or even legs.
Instead, puffing into the classroom like a steaming locomotive came a chain of black storm clouds. A chain that snaked around the room until every last inch of the ceiling was covered. The clouds sucked up their girth the way a child prepares to blow out candles on a birthday cake. In perfect unison, the clouds burst open and released a streaking, pouring, pounding torrent of rain.
Everything was drenched. Everything was flooded!
The Tragicals sat in stunned silence because none of them, except perhaps for Ralph, had ever witnessed water streaking down from up above. And certainly rain outside beneath a wide-open sky would have been glorious enough, but rain inside the manor—rain that had managed to come and find them—well, that was even grander!
Still terrifying, of course. But also grand.
In all her worrying over what magic might one day do to the Tragicals, Birdie had never imagined it would arrive in the form of letters and rainstorms. Things that made her knees buckle, but things that were also, maybe, good.
Was such a thing possible with magic?
A few of the b
ravest children rolled up the sleeves of their gowns and tentatively stuck their hands out from beneath their desks. They gasped as the water splish-splashed off their skin. Though the rest of the Tragicals stayed curled up into tiny balls, they kept their eyes held wide open. For once, they were watching one another, noticing one another, experiencing something together.
Birdie would have liked to watch too, but she hadn’t forgotten her revelation about Ralph. With a shrieking Mistress Octavia temporarily trapped beneath Sir Ichabod, it was the best chance she was going to get.
Birdie lay low, on her hands and knees. She crawled in between the legs of the desks and sloshed through the rising water. She happened upon Ralph while he was chewing on a hangnail and looking sort of bored, like he’d not only seen rain plenty of times before, but magic, too.
Birdie’s heart pounded. If Ralph was that familiar with something as impressive as magic, surely he’d know plenty about friendship.
“Hello!” Birdie said, a bit out of breath.
Ralph stared at her. He even scooted a bit farther away.
Which was a tiny bit awkward, but Birdie figured it was best to get on with it. Mistress Octavia wasn’t the sort to stay trapped for long, and she would be all too eager to punish Birdie’s attempt at conversation. “So, you seen this kind of weather before?” Birdie continued.
Ralph blinked. Birdie told herself that was better. Definitely better than a blank stare. She cleared her throat. She dove in. “You, uh, have a friend before, too?”
Friend.
The word was so big. It almost felt too big for Birdie to say aloud, but at the same time, it seemed the sort of word that should be said and said often. True words are like that.
But Ralph narrowed his eyes. He looked toward where Mistress Octavia had finally succeeded in shoving Sir Ichabod to the side and was engaged in a great cacophony of irate splashing at Sir Ichabod’s expense. Birdie wished Ralph would hurry up already. They didn’t have much time!
“Why do you want to know?” he finally said.
“Because I’d like one.”
“Oh, well, that’s great, then,” he said with a shrug.
“But I don’t know what one is exactly.” Birdie paused and leaned forward. “I thought you might be able to help.”
“You want me to be your friend?”
Birdie froze. Because she didn’t want that. Or at least she didn’t think she wanted that. Did she? Ralph got into trouble a lot. He came up with wild ideas like, well, being a “Super Tragical.” He was a messy eater; he sometimes made a strange whistling sound when he did chores; and he was a—a—a boy. Birdie didn’t know all the rules yet! Could girls even be friends with boys?
But in the end, none of that mattered.
Mistress Octavia had moved on from Sir Ichabod. Mistress Octavia had moved on in a big, bad way. Her skirts were hiked up over her knees, and her skinny ankles quivered as she pounded down the aisle of the Instruction Room, spraying water every which way. She took a flying leap and landed atop poor Cricket’s desk. She stretched her broken broomstick handle up toward the ceiling and began to jab a rain cloud in the belly!
Pop! Pop! Pop!
The rain cloud under attack shuddered. It began to shrink. And quickly! In less than seconds it whittled down to the size of a bouncy ball before falling—splat!—against the ground as nothing more than a single raindrop.
With renewed vigor, Mistress Octavia seized upon the next rain cloud and began to jab harder. She was going to destroy them all!
Francesca Prickleboo rose up so suddenly, her chair clattered behind her. Birdie drew in a sharp breath, and even Ralph straightened up with interest, as Francesca waded away from the protection of the desks and into the dead center of the room where the rain pounded the hardest. She winced as the drops pelted her cheeks, but when she spoke, her voice was loud and clear, “I AM FRANCESCA PRICKLEBOO. I AM A TRAGICAL. AND TODAY I WILL MEET MY TRAGIC END AT THE HAND OF A MAGICAL STORM CLOUD.” And she closed her eyes and threw her head back in a gesture of total surrender.
Mistress Octavia stomped her foot on Cricket’s desk. “Shut up, you wretch!” she said. “No one’s going to meet their Tragic End by a little spit of water. And if you dare mention that awful, horrible, forbidden word in my presence again, it will be to the dungeon for you!”
Francesca’s face paled to a ghastly shade of white. A drop of rain splashed off the tip of her nose. In all of Francesca’s years, never once had Mistress Octavia threatened her with the dungeon. “Is it— Do you mean— Is it the M-word?” she asked in a frantic, high-pitched squeak.
“ARGH!” Mistress Octavia shrieked.
And just at the moment Birdie was about to feel sorry for Francesca, just at the moment Francesca’s lower lip began to tremble, Francesca must have remembered who she was: a world-class tattletale. Without missing a beat, Francesca whirled around and shook her finger in Birdie and Ralph’s direction. “Those two were talking! Those two right over there were talking a ton! And she even asked him to be her fiend!”
“Fiend”?
Oh dear. This is precisely why I encourage readers such as yourself to always keep a dictionary handy. But on the off chance that you find yourself without one, let us just say that a fiend is the exact opposite of a friend (and then some). Maybe now you’ll believe your teachers when they say spelling is important. Nevertheless, Francesca’s error may have worked out to Birdie’s benefit. It makes me shudder to imagine the punishment Mistress Octavia might have dished out had she suspected Birdie of something as non-Tragical as friendship.
It was still quite bad though.
Mistress Octavia slithered off Cricket’s desk. She plip-plopped over to where Birdie was huddled beside Ralph, and she wrenched Birdie out from beneath the desk by the tip of her ear.
“Stay safe,” Ralph whispered. It came out sharp and fast. Almost as if it were nothing more than a deep breath, but it wasn’t, was it? He had said it, hadn’t he?
Two words.
Two syllables.
Something, however small, for Birdie to hold on to.
Of course, with Mistress Octavia’s fingernails pricking into her shoulder, Birdie certainly didn’t feel safe. Nor did she feel safe when Mistress Octavia tossed her in the direction of a sopping wet Sir Ichabod and commanded, “Take her to the dungeon! This time put Chewy into her cell. He’s been cooped up for days and is simply dying for a bit of playtime.”
And so, for the second time in one week, Birdie was headed down to the dungeon. Only this time she wouldn’t have the company of Cricket. This time she would have something much, much worse. Because Chewy was Mistress Octavia’s venomous pet scorpion.
(I told you it was bad.)
Six
Something to Chew On
Despite the uneasy peace Birdie had made with the dungeon on visits past, dungeons get a whole lot more dungeon-y when a scorpion is tossed into the mix. Birdie had tried every which way to get out of Mistress Octavia’s punishment. She had wrapped her fingers around the dungeon’s rickety banister; she had tried to plop down onto the middle of the dungeon floor; she had even tried to reason with Sir Ichabod Grim, but nothing worked.
Birdie blamed at least part of that on the dungeon door. Because when Sir Ichabod had reached into his pocket for the keys, his hand had instead fallen slack against his side. There was no need to unlock a door when it was already cracked open. And perhaps because Sir Ichabod was nothing if not methodical, perhaps because he conducted his daily duties like an automated machine, he had stood and stared at the door for a full thirty seconds. Had he ever once forgotten to lock the dungeon before?
Birdie might have given the peculiar matter a bit more thought had she not found herself in the throes of such a dire predicament. For one, despite Birdie’s desperate protests, Sir Ichabod had mindlessly nudged Mistress Octavia’s scorpion, Chewy, into her cell with the toe of his shoe and crept back up the four winding flights of stairs a whole five minutes ago. Two, her black go
wn was sopping wet, and every time she moved, water squeezed out from the fabric, creating a series of unfortunate puddles. That was nothing, however, compared to the chill. Indeed, her teeth were chattering so badly her whole head was beginning to ache.
Birdie shivered in the center of the itty-bitty cell, so Chewy couldn’t conduct a sneak attack by creeping along the walls and springing toward her. She fixed her eyes on the corner where Chewy sat and glowered. Of course, it also happened to be the exact corner where Birdie had lifted the stone in the floor and gently slid her storybook beneath the day she and Cricket were in the dungeon together. Birdie hadn’t wanted to leave her storybook behind. She wanted to keep it close to her. She wanted to pull it out at any spare, private moment and dive into the pages so that she could learn more about friendship.
But she also knew bringing her book anywhere near Mistress Octavia was a risk. So she had left it in the one location Mistress Octavia never set a pinkie toe in. And now . . . now that she was so close, that location was being guarded by a cantankerous scorpion.
“Figures,” Birdie said. And she slumped down onto the floor and crossed her legs beneath her, because it had been quite a morning.
Chewy flexed his shiny head in her direction. Whether due merely to Birdie’s motion or the fact that sitting on the ground made her seem more appropriately sized, the formerly comatose scorpion began to shimmy in place. He flexed the long stinger on his tail back and forth, back and forth. And then, much to Birdie’s horror, he leaped spectacularly away from the corner and skittered in Birdie’s direction atop his eight jointed legs.
Birdie dashed to her feet. She pounded them against the floor with reckless abandon, hoping the flurry of movement would frighten him. It didn’t. And Chewy was surprisingly fast. He dodged in and out from between Birdie’s feet without breaking a sweat. He pressed his legs into the floor and sprang up.
Chewy landed on Birdie’s calf, and in less than a quarter-second, skimmed over her kneecap! She could feel each and every one of Chewy’s legs wriggling along her skin. And his giant pincers—Oh, Birdie hadn’t paid much attention to those before. But they were big. And sharp. And he opened and closed them as if warming them up!