by Tony Abbott
Neal grinned. “Cool. The element of surprise. It’ll be like Christmas morning for the Hunters. Only we’ll be the presents and it won’t be as much fun … for them.”
Sparr’s eyes twinkled. “Let’s do it.”
Together the band of friends climbed up the ladder and hopped over a low wall onto the roof. They could feel the ceaseless throb of machinery beneath their feet.
Neal darted straight to a raised brick shed. “A locked door?” he said. “Not so much.”
Adjusting his turban, he flicked his fingers, and the lock clicked open. While the Hinkles kept guard on the roof, Sparr, the children, and Max crept one by one down a set of metal stairs to a catwalk overlooking an immense power generator.
“There she is,” whispered Max.
Meredith’s long, dark hair was tangled and wet, but her young face was calm as she glared at the three gangly Hunters. Her hands were bound behind her to a fat steel girder.
“Her chains must be preventing her from becoming a serpent,” whispered Keeah. “Otherwise she’d turn the tables on those Hunters.”
“And the chairs and dishes and place mats and everything,” said Neal.
Sparr pressed a finger to his lips. “Listen closely. They are questioning her.”
“Where?” the first Hunter hissed.
“Where?” said the second.
“Where?” said the third.
Meredith followed each one with her eyes. Then she said, “Uh, can you repeat the question?”
Keeah smiled. “That’s Aunt Demither.”
Sparr nodded. “Neal, take out the lights. Julie, fly quietly down behind the Hunters and prepare to leap. Keeah and Max, create a diversion. Eric, you and I will release Demither. These fiends cannot remain in your world. They must return with us. Ready?”
They all nodded.
Sparr grinned. “And … go!”
When Julie leaped up, Neal charmed the lights to flare out. At the same time, Max swung quietly down behind Meredith, and Keeah shot a single violet spark across the large room. It struck an iron wheel, ricocheted, and hit a steel drum.
All three Hunters jerked around at once.
“Now!” said Sparr.
The friends leaped into action. It went like clockwork. The surprised Hunters scrambled in every direction at once. Julie flew from one to the other, tripping them. Keeah forced them down, and Max bound them in strong spider silk.
Twin streams of sparks from Eric and Sparr quickly dissolved the chains on Meredith. The action was over before she even jumped to her feet.
Keeah bowed before her aunt. “Meredith. Demither!”
“Thank you all,” she said. “I’m Meredith for now. We have loads of work to do. But first …”
She turned to Sparr. “You cursed me.”
Sparr lowered his head. “I did. I will not lie. You were a threat to me. The world was a threat to me. But now … I am changed.”
“And why should I believe you?” she asked.
“There is no excuse for what I did,” Sparr said. “And I shall pay for it. But look in your heart. A greater cause demands we work together.”
Keeah took her aunt aside. “It’s true. Even as we speak, Gethwing marches on Jaffa City with the largest army of beasts ever assembled. My father and my mother — your sister — bravely defend a falling city, hoping against hope that the tide will turn. But the beasts are legion. Hundreds of thousands of them march over the land. Millions. They are unstoppable.”
Meredith was silent for a long moment before her face changed. “Very well. I can help. I will help. Perhaps we are in this together. Dreams day and night pursued me until a spell of such power took me away from Droon and led me here. There was a reason. Gethwing sent the Hunters after me to trap me and force me to find something for him. I didn’t know myself what it was. I wandered your world, trying to discover what I searched for. Always I returned to this lake.”
“As I do now,” said Sparr. “It lies under the waves. I know it. But alone, I have not the magic to retrieve it. I need more. I need you.”
“Then … let’s find it,” Meredith said.
“But what exactly are you talking about?” Keeah asked. “Meredith?”
Saying nothing, the girl made her way outside the building, where Eric’s parents were waiting. They all followed her to the lakeshore where, with barely a sound, she slipped beneath its surface and breathed the water as if it were air.
When she came up, her hair was a tangle of strands that coiled like eels. Her skin, dark green and glistening, was formed of scales, and her eyes were as red as flame. Beneath the surface, her body twisted away into a long, finned tail.
Mrs. Hinkle gasped. “Oh, my!”
“You see me in my true form,” she said. Then she pointed to the center of the lake, which was black in the shadow of the pine trees. “It lies down there.”
“It does?” said Neal. “Wait. What does?”
“Like Demither, my travels led me all over the Upper World,” Sparr said. “You children know this. My brother Urik followed me through time. It was during this journey through time that I first experienced the tangle that is our past and our future.”
The Sea Witch nodded. “How it loops upon itself. How an object, even a powerful one, can be trapped in time’s twists and turns.”
“I had it for a while,” said Sparr. “Galen certainly did. Eric, you had it.”
“I did?” he said.
“Yet time swept it away,” Demither said. “Over and over it was found, lost, found, lost.”
“Until now,” said the sorcerer.
Their conversation was like a strange duet of storytellers, each adding another part of the tale. Eric tried to understand what Demither and Sparr were talking about, when Julie suddenly gasped. “Are you talking about the Wand of Urik?”
Sparr smiled. “Just so. Let us retrieve it, for the sands of time fall rapidly. To the ship!”
“That leaves us out,” said Mr. Hinkle. “I’m not a lake person. We’ll wait on shore.”
His head buzzing with questions, Eric helped his friends haul the Hunters to the ship. They sailed it to the center of the lake.
The Wand of Urik! he thought. Of course! It was one of the most magical of objects in both worlds. But like its maker, it was lost in time!
“Hold on,” Neal said. “This really is the deepest part of the whole lake. Don’t tell us we have to …”
“I am telling you!” said Demither.
With a twist of her hands, she conjured a helmet of air for each of them. “Now dive!”
They did dive, deep under the surface to the very bottom of the lake where the water was as black as oil. Sparr and Demither swam on as if they could see in the dark.
When they stopped, there it was, hazy at first, then growing in detail until they could all plainly see it … a sequence of images moving like a film.
Eric’s heart skipped as he saw a boy, young Galen, holding the magic wand he knew so well. At its tip blossomed a vibrant purple flower whose petals were part of its magic.
“The Wand of Urik!” Lord Sparr declared. “It lies trapped in a loop of time.”
It did seem like that, as the story of the wand replayed itself in front of them.
At first it was in Galen’s hand. Then it was stolen by a goblin. It reappeared in Ko’s hand. Then Eric’s, then Sparr’s, then Galen’s again.
It dawned on Eric exactly what he was seeing. It was as if the world — as if both worlds, the Upper one and Droon — combined in a single place and time.
“When he was young, Galen used Urik’s wand to create the rainbow stairs,” Eric said. “After that, he lost it in Droon to a goblin, who brought it to Ko. I found it at Ko’s tomb and brought it to the Upper World when I followed Sparr up the Dark Stair into the past. That was when Galen was given the wand. He used it for the staircase, then the wand was lost and found again and lost again.”
“It really is a time tangle,” said Julie.
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“And here comes my headache,” Neal said.
“One of us alone could not have found the wand,” said the Sea Witch. “Nor can one of us alone retrieve it.”
“It is my mother’s vision of us,” said Sparr. “Working together.”
“To collect the magics,” Eric said out loud for the first time. “It’s Galen’s vision, too.”
Demither turned to him and smiled. “All things connect.”
Sparr made his way closer to the moving images, but they resisted his approach, fading away and reappearing only when he stepped away.
Demither tried the same, reaching out as the wand passed from one person to the next. Each time she moved, the scene changed.
“Time!” said Neal. “It’s enough to drive you crazy.”
“Maybe we can’t retrieve the wand,” Max said. “Maybe it really is lost in time forever.”
Eric watched closely and glimpsed a moment, a single instant, when the wand appeared to touch the ground with no one’s hand upon it. He moved toward young Galen and watched the sequence of images play again and again. Finally, he seemed to catch the young wizard’s eye.
Galen’s hand loosened.
The wand fell to the ground.
Or it would have fallen to the ground if Eric had not grasped it in his fingers an instant before it struck.
When he drew his hand away, he was holding the Wand of Urik. “I have it!” he cried.
In a flash, the friends surfaced and climbed aboard the stone ship once more.
“Holy cow, Eric, you did it!” gasped Neal, yanking off his air helmet. “That was so cool!”
“I did it,” Eric said, still stunned that he had found a way where others had not.
Collect the magics? I’m doing it!
The wand’s power screamed through Eric’s veins. The heat of it shocked him. “Sparr, take it. Please.”
The moment the sorcerer wrapped his fingers around the wand, its tip blossomed with new sharp petals, as purple as the ocean at night, and Sparr underwent a change.
All at once, he was Young Sparr again. Then he was the ancient sorcerer Eric had seen in the Underworld, then the teenage Sparr whom they had battled in the desert long ago.
Even Shadowface, the evil side of the sorcerer, appeared, before dissolving away to leave only the Sparr the children had met so long ago on their first day in Droon.
“My journey enters a new phase,” Sparr said with a smile. “I’ve come full circle and then some. A new chapter begins. I’m back!”
“Speaking of back,” said Max. “We should be getting —”
All at once, the lake bubbled and splashed.
“Not again!” said Julie. “Everyone on your guard!”
A narrow metal tower rose out of the heaving waves. It was followed by a complex construction of decks, smokestacks, ladders, cables, fins, tentacles, propellers, hatches, railings, and keels.
“My goodness!” Max chirped. “If I didn’t know better, I would say that that was one of Galen’s earliest underwater motor devices!”
The strange vessel chugged toward them and stopped. A large round hatch swung open, and the wide red face of a Ninn popped out. He looked all around, saw the friends in the stone boat, and grinned. “Halloooo!”
“Captain Bludge?” said Sparr.
“At your service, my lord!” Bludge chirped.
The children had met Thumpinius Bludge several times before. The last time was in the red deserts of Koomba, from where Bludge and his Ninns had set off to find Sparr.
“How did you ever get here?” asked Keeah.
“We went searching for you, Lord Sparr,” said the Ninn captain. “Alas, we drove off course. But we found you anyway! The truth is, our pilot said he knew the way.”
“Which has nothing at all to do with me!” said a voice from below. “You’re welcome!”
Bludge grumbled. “Meet our pilot.”
Out popped the old face and long white beard of Nelag. He looked at the starry sky and frowned. “Good morning!”
Nelag was an unwizard. He was Galen’s negative self and was known for saying and doing the opposite of what was considered normal.
“I said, ‘Fly to the desert!’” Nelag said with a yawn. “That’s why we sailed here.”
Two other faces now peeped out of the submarine. Both faces belonged to Kem, the two-headed dog.
“Kem!” said the sorcerer. “My puppy!”
“Rooooo!” Sparr’s two-headed pet dog yelped when he saw his master. He leaped from the sub straight onto the deck of the stone ship. Sparr swept his childhood friend into his arms.
“In case anyone wants to know,” Nelag said, “I have not had any dream from Zara. She does not want you to bring her the wand. And especially not immediately!”
The children looked at one another.
Neal blinked. “Holy cow, our quest …”
“Continues!” said Julie.
“We have the wand,” said Eric. “And Sparr. And the Moon Medallion. And Demither.”
“We are collecting the magics!” said Keeah.
“Then raise the rigging!” boomed Sparr. “Unfurl the sail! Our quest continues!”
“Don’t follow us back to Droon!” said Nelag, standing suddenly on his hands. “We don’t know the way!”
“To Bangledorn Forest,” shouted Keeah. “And the tomb of the Lost Queen!”
Sparr stood at the wheel of the stone ship, Kem at his side. “The time is now. Demither, if you please …”
“The worlds connect through water,” she said. “That’s my department. Here goes!”
Demither underwent a second change. Her green tail darkened beneath the water and grew. Her features vanished into the frightening visage of a serpent — horned, finned, and giant — though her eyes remained fiery and glistening. She was now an enormous sea creature. “Prepare the ships! We travel!”
“Hinkles, board the stone ship for the journey of a lifetime!” called Max, and the ship swung to shore and the plank was lowered.
Mr. Hinkle stepped back, tugging Mrs. Hinkle with him. “I have an idea that your mother and I might be in the way.”
“There’s plenty of room, Dad,” said Eric. “It’s a magic ship.”
“Oh, I’m sure it is, but …”
Mrs. Hinkle smiled. “What your father is trying to say, dear, is that you’ll probably do better without us. Sailing between worlds in a magical stone boat is for the young at heart.”
Knowing that the next few hours would be the most dangerous of his life, Eric went down the plank to them. “Thanks, Mom and Dad. You really helped today. But …”
“We know,” said his father, tapping his knuckles on Eric’s purple armor. “There’s more to do. Stay safe. Really.”
“I’ll do my best,” said Eric.
“Tell our parents we’re all right,” said Julie.
“We will,” said Mrs. Hinkle.
“Good luck with mine,” said Neal. “My folks worry about me getting on the bus every morning. And off the bus. And getting into school. To my desk. To lunch …”
“It means they love you,” said Mrs. Hinkle.
Neal breathed deeply. “Yeah. Ditto. If things happen as they should, we’ll be home soon.”
Eric hugged his parents one last time before he mounted the plank to the deck once more.
But Neal’s word — soon — flickered in his mind. Gethwing had used it, too. So had Sparr. And though he and his friends had begun to collect magical objects, he was sure the final element of Gethwing’s prophecy predicted Droon’s fall into ashes, and he was afraid his beloved Droon would be no more.
Soon? We’ll be home soon?
Sure. And maybe never leave home again.
Demither swam around the perimeter of the lake in a wide circle. With each lap, she went faster around the stone ship and the antique submarine until a whirling wall of water grew high around them.
Clinging to his friends as the ship spun, Eric remembered th
e day Droon began for them. “What did we ever do before we found Droon?” he whispered.
Julie’s face went pale. “I … can’t remember. It’s … everything.”
“With all of you there,” Keeah said.
“Let’s not even think about it,” said Neal. “A world without Droon is …”
He drifted off, unable to find the word.
“Exactly,” said Eric. He recalled how the Droon adventure really started when his mother gave him a handful of garbage bags and told him to clean out the basement.
Garbage bags!
That simple chore had changed his life, for in the basement that day he, Julie, and Neal had discovered the rainbow staircase.
And then? Well, that was a long story.
A long story that might be in its final hours.
“Tighten the rigging!” shouted Max. “Be lively there. Rapids ahead!”
The Hunters, bound hand and foot, hissed and spat and cried to be released, but Max snatched their magical tools away, tightened their bonds, and dumped them into Keeah’s magical trunk, which only made them cry louder.
All at once, the Ninns’ submarine vanished into the depths of the whirling lake. Next went Demither herself, her finned tail coiling high. Finally, the storm of water rose over the stone ship’s mast, and it, too, plummeted below the surface.
“Down the drain!” cried Neal. “Blub-blub!”
While Neal, Julie, and Max clung to the railing, Eric linked arms with Keeah, but whether to keep her safe or to steady himself, he was not sure.
As Demither had said, all water connects, and soon they were riding the waves of the Fifth River. It coiled upon itself and pushed the stone ship — like thread through the eye of a needle — into a tunnel of darkness so thick they couldn’t tell whether they were sailing forward or backward or up or down.
A moment later, however, they were shot out into the air. But not from the magical fountain at Zorfendorf. The ship skidded to a stop in the main courtyard of Jaffa City!
The city was a storm of chaos.
The beast armies were on the attack. A wave of armored groggles had just broken through the gates with an enormous dragon-headed battering ram.
“Semirakin!” Sparr called out, and his faithful winged pilka appeared out of the twisting ribbons of smoke. Leaping to its back, he whistled.