Another batch of Fuzzles launched themselves onto more Glassfish swimming in the shallows. Without another word of protest, both Callie and I hurled ourselves after them, scattering the school just beneath the surface.
“Hello?” Aunt Emma said anxiously into the phone. “Joseph? We need your help! They’re escaping—I know, I didn’t think they were clever enough either—”
On the shore of the mainland, it seemed like help had already arrived. A pair of headlights suddenly blinded us. They were pointed right at the island. A silhouette climbed out. It was wearing heels. It was a bit melty looking.
Aunt Emma swung her flashlight up to illuminate the distant newcomer on the other shore.
Mrs. Dreadbatch.
“Ah ha!” Mrs. Dreadbatch cried, pointing furiously. “I knew it!”
And then the ground right in front of her caught fire.
It really was a small fire, all things considered—the first group of Fuzzles had finally rolled ashore. But that didn’t stop Mrs. Dreadbatch from leaping back with a shriek-yell-curse. Whipping off her bright red blazer, she began beating the flames with it. All the noise and the waving shocked the other Fuzzles, causing them to light up, one after another, until they were like little campfires across the water.
“Come on!” Aunt Emma shouted, and Callie and I hurried into the canoe. Aunt Emma shoved us off before clambering in and paddling furiously. We’d barely struck the other shore when she jumped out, tripping a bit in the water as she rushed to help Mrs. Dreadbatch.
“They’re everywhere! They’re everywhere!” Mrs. Dreadbatch howled. Lights in the vacation cabins were flicking on and people were staring. And Mrs. Dreadbatch was right: The Fuzzles really were everywhere. Bushes rustled with them. The dirt paths seethed with them. They rolled around Mrs. Dreadbatch’s feet; little flames licked at her ankles. Her panty hose had scorch marks on them, and there were big burned holes in her blazer.
“Mrs. Dreadbatch, you have to stop yelling! You’re scaring them! You’re making it worse!” Aunt Emma urged. Grabbing Mrs. Dreadbatch’s arm, she tried to pull her away from the Fuzzle-filled shore. But Mrs. Dreadbatch’s pointy high heels didn’t work very well in the sand.
First her ankle twisted around. Then her leg. Then she whirled in a circle, overbalanced, and with a great flailing of arms tumbled to the ground. Her butt landed squarely on a flaming Fuzzle. Her pointy shoes flew off—I heard one splash into the lake—and she began to roll down the shore, backside lit with Fuzzle fire. With a yelp, Aunt Emma ran for her, but it was too late.
Mrs. Dreadbatch rolled straight into the lake.
Personally, I thought this was a good thing—the lake water, after all, put out the fire on her butt.
Mrs. Dreadbatch didn’t see it that way.
She reared up from the water, grabbing the side of our canoe to hoist herself to a standing position. Gasping for air, she went all wide-eyed. Her mascara was running and there were pond weeds stuck to her head.
Aunt Emma stood on the shore, still dripping, watching in shock. She wasn’t the only one—all the vacationers had come out of their cabins and were staring.
Finally, Mrs. Dreadbatch said, “Ahhhhhhhhhh!” in a way that made me think she was going to charge Aunt Emma like an angry rhinoceros. Aunt Emma seemed to think so too, because she took a step back.
“That’s it!” Mrs. Dreadbatch finally managed to form words. She slogged her way out of the lake, looking a bit like a Scottish Bog Wallow. I suspected she didn’t eat slugs though, like the Wallows did. Well, she probably didn’t, anyhow.
Callie and I kicked our legs over the side of the canoe and followed her onto the shore.
“You’re not hurt, Mrs. Dreadbatch. It’s all right!” Aunt Emma said hopefully. Mr. Randall wheeled up with a truck full of fire extinguishers, but there was no point—now that Mrs. Dreadbatch wasn’t beating them with a red blazer, the Fuzzles were happily rolling along the shore, fire-free.
“Not hurt? Not hurt? What, exactly, do you call this?” Mrs. Dreadbatch snapped, pointing to the scorch mark on her butt. It’d burned straight through to her flowery underwear. “Tomorrow. The exterminators are coming tomorrow. S.M.A.C.K.E.D. will pay them whatever they want. These Fuzzles are dangerous, and they clearly can’t be contained. What if they’d burned down one of the cabins? Or my house? Or your precious clinic? Then what?”
I thought Aunt Emma would have some sort of quick response, so I was confused when Mrs. Dreadbatch made it all the way to her Cadillac and I still hadn’t heard my aunt say anything.
I turned to her.
Aunt Emma looked defeated and soggy. She tucked her hair behind her ear and nodded quietly. Mr. Randall patted her shoulder comfortingly. Then they both started toward the car.
“Wait!” I called after them. “Aunt Emma! You can’t just give up!”
Aunt Emma sighed. “Pip, as much as I hate to agree with Mrs. Dreadbatch—and I really hate to agree with her—she’s right. It isn’t safe. Someone could get seriously hurt. It isn’t fair to the Fuzzles, I know, but it has to be this way.”
I didn’t know what to say. Callie, Mr. Randall, and Aunt Emma began gathering up armfuls of Fuzzles and putting them in the back of Mr. Randall’s truck. It would take far more than one truckload to hold them now.
“Where are we headed with them?” Mr. Randall asked.
Aunt Emma still sounded depressed. “Back to the clinic, for now. We can watch them there. And we can keep them comfortable until the exterminators arrive to …”
She didn’t say the rest. She didn’t have to.
I refused to help put the Fuzzles in the truck. I wouldn’t be any more a part of this than I already was. Stomping back down to the lake, I sat on the shore with my chin on my knees. The lake water lapped at my toes, and my throat felt all lumpy from trying to hold back tears. Then, to make things worse, the newly woken flock of Emerald Dunking Ducks floated nearby, muttering to one another.
“Did you see that lady fall into the water? I wonder if I can find her shoe. Those were nice shoes.”
“Oh, yes, very nice. I liked her necklace too. Looked like emerald.”
“Indeed!”
“Maybe with those Fuzzles gone, we’ll get back to some peace and quiet around here.”
“Well, if we can get the loud kids to leave too. They splash too much. Upsets the silt.”
“No one shows any regard for the silt. Remember that black dog? He tromped right into it! Who does he expect to clean all that up?”
“You know what I bet he has?”
“Lake fleas,” both Ducks said at once.
I glowered at them. I must have looked pretty serious, because they gave me a pointed look, then floated away, snickering to each other about my hair.
“Don’t you dare say I have lake fleas!” I yelled after them. Lake fleas. I wasn’t even sure they existed. Those Ducks just wanted something to complain about. I bet that dog didn’t even bother the silt—
My head snapped up.
Dog. A black dog.
I looked down at the nearest Fuzzle—it was right next to my leg. “Hey, Fuzzle? Can you tell me why you are all in Cloverton suddenly?”
Of course, I had tried to talk to them before, back at the clinic, and they’d only hummed at me. I figured they just couldn’t talk or wouldn’t talk. I guess I figured that something so small just didn’t understand things.
The same way lots of people figure someone so small, like me, just doesn’t understand things.
“I know you probably tried to tell me before,” I said. “Or, er, one of you. But I’m listening now, I promise. Why are you here?”
The Fuzzle rolled closer to me. Another joined it, and another, and another. And they hummed together, but this time I knew it wasn’t really humming. They were speaking.
“Grrrrrrrr-immmmmmmmmm,” they harmonized.
And now I knew exactly what they’d been trying to tell me, because I knew exactly what a Grim was, thanks to Jeffrey Higg
leston’s Guide to Magical Creatures.
It was, as I thought all along, a predator. A predator that looked an awful lot like a big black dog.
A very frightening, very enormous, very toothy, big, black, magical dog.
I told Aunt Emma as soon as we had gotten the Fuzzles settled down back at the clinic, but she didn’t believe me.
“Pip, didn’t you read the rest of the section in the Guide? Grims have set migration patterns. They spend the winters in Mexico, and they go to a colony in the mountains of North Carolina every summer. They’re famous for their migration. They don’t wander.”
“But what about the rogue Grim?” I asked. “Couldn’t it be a rogue Grim? No wonder they wanted to escape the island, if there’s a rogue Grim wandering around Two Duck Lake!”
Aunt Emma said, “It’s not impossible, but it is not probable—and besides, we don’t know they were escaping on purpose. One might have just rolled onto the Glassfish by accident, and the others followed. Fuzzles do tend to stick together like that. And anyway, it doesn’t matter, Pip. It’s too late now. It’s too late to change anything.”
“But we have all night! We could go looking for a Grim!” I insisted.
“Pip,” she said, putting her hand on my shoulder—this is what grown-ups do sometimes when they are trying to tell you something that you won’t like—“I know this is a terrible situation. But we can’t do any good traipsing around Cloverton at night looking for an animal that’s not there. We can do some good by making sure the Fuzzles are not stressed out in the clinic and by going to the community meeting to make sure this never happens again.”
She went into the clinic then, but it seemed to me like she was really only going there to be sad about the whole thing.
I went to my bedroom. But I didn’t sleep. I lay in my bed and drew Fuzzles on my hands and tried to think of a plan. By the time the sun came up, I hadn’t gotten much sleep, but I’d decided what I was going to do. If there was a Grim, I was going to find it and talk to it. I would convince it to leave Cloverton. And then the Fuzzles would return to the wild. Everyone—from the Fuzzles to Mrs. Dreadbatch’s backside—would be safe.
There was only one catch. I needed transportation to find the Grim, and it was pretty obvious that Aunt Emma wasn’t going to skip the community meeting to drive me around looking for it.
I had an idea.
But I wasn’t sure if it was a good idea. My mother always said, “Think twice, act once.” It hadn’t worked very well with the whole Unicorn Incident thing. But this time I thought I’d think once and then have Tomas think once, and together we’d maybe make a not-stupid decision.
As soon as there was enough light to see by, I called Tomas. His mother answered and gave up the phone to him after a moment.
“Pip?” Tomas asked blearily. He sounded as if he had been woken up. Or perhaps like he was still asleep.
“You’ve got to get over here fast. It’s seven o’clock, so we’ve got”—I looked at the clock—“four hours before the exterminators get here for the Fuzzles. That’s not long.”
“Not long to what?” Tomas asked, sounding a little more awake.
“To find a rogue Grim.”
He sighed, as if I’d suggested this every day for the last week. “I’ll be there in ten minutes.”
Downstairs, Callie was already in the clinic answering the phone beside two dozen metal trash cans packed with Fuzzles—all the ones from Two Duck Lake, plus a few extras people had found that morning.
“Where’s Aunt Emma?” I asked.
“She’s in surgery. A Pawpig came in with a Lego stuck up his snout. Pawpigs,” she scoffed, but she didn’t sound like her heart was really into making fun of the Pawpig. She patted the nearest Fuzzle. It hummed.
“Hey—will she be in there long?”
“Do I look like I know how long it takes to de-Lego a Pawpig sinus cavity? She’s got that meeting right after, anyway,” Callie snapped, turning away.
Tomas arrived a few minutes later. His pockets bulged from the various inhalers, washes, sprays, bandages, and medicines he’d packed.
I lifted my eyebrows.
“What?” he said. “I wanted to be prepared. Grims can kill a man seventy-three different ways.”
I lifted my eyebrows farther.
“We’ll see who’s laughing when you need my bandages,” Tomas said solemnly. “So, where are we going?”
“The woods up behind Two Duck Lake. The Ducks saw the Grim, so I think that’s where it is.”
“We’re walking all the way to Two Duck Lake? We don’t have enough hours for that! And I should have brought blister pads …”
“Okay,” I said in a low voice. “I don’t want you to panic. But I think there might be only one way to make it to Two Duck Lake in time.”
Tomas frowned. “Motorcycle? Jet Ski? Race car? I don’t think I have the safety gear for any of those, but my brothers might.”
I shook my head. “The only way we’re going to make it to Two Duck Lake, Tomas, is on the back of a Unicorn. And there’s only one Unicorn around here we can ask.”
* * *
“No,” said Regent Maximus. “No-no-no-no-no. You’ll collapse my spine! I’ll be a walking accordion! We’ll get lost! I’ll put my leg in a Groundfeatherdog hole! Oh, I’m too young to be maimed!”
Tomas looked relieved after I translated this response—he’d agreed to ask Regent Maximus, but clearly didn’t like the idea of actually riding him. He sneezed into his elbow and said, “Well, that’s settled, then!”
“No, it’s not,” I said. “Regent Maximus, I know you’re scared. But this is important.”
“Do you know what’s important?” Regent Maximus asked me in a high-pitched whinny. He ran his lips back and forth over his stall bars. It made a whub-whub-whub sound and the Griffins in the other stalls laughed meanly. “Life is important! The pursuit of breathing is important! I don’t want to die!”
“Neither do the Fuzzles!” I said. “You’re a show Unicorn! You’re supposed to be amazing! This is your chance to amaze! To be a hero! To prove to everyone you’re more than … well …”
I trailed off, but Regent Maximus wasn’t listening to me anyhow. He had stopped running his mouth over the bars and was instead tensing and untensing his lips. I could practically feel time ticking by. Maybe there was some other way to get to the lake. Maybe we could call a cab—I’d seen my parents do it twice in Atlanta, when they went to the airport. I didn’t have my allowance here in Cloverton, but I knew where the pizza money was in the kitchen. I could borrow it, right? This was an emergency!
Except—no cab driver would take two kids to the middle of nowhere, even if they had money.
I thought about the Fuzzles trying to tell me what was chasing them. Griimmmmmmmmm. If only I’d figured it out sooner! If only I hadn’t doubted my own ability to talk to them. If only I hadn’t assumed they didn’t have important things to say.
I took a deep breath.
“Look, Regent Maximus,” I tried again. “I know you’re scared. I’m a little scared too.”
Tomas and Regent Maximus looked at me, like they were ready to be way more afraid after hearing this. I shook my head and my cheeks went warm. “It’s just that I did something dumb with Unicorns back at my school in Atlanta.”
“Did a Unicorn die?” Regent Maximus gasped.
“No,” I said. “It’s just that I sort of got excited and didn’t think about anybody else. I only thought about how cool it would be to ride a Unicorn and show off, and I ended up breaking a lot of things. I was so embarrassed and it was terrible and I never wanted to see another Unicorn again. Definitely not ride one.”
I had Regent Maximus’s full attention—his ears were pricked and, for once, I saw the resemblance between him and the Barreras’ show Unicorns, because he was very handsome indeed. His intent expression made me feel both very important and very strange—no one had ever listened to me so closely. I kept going. “So I want yo
u to know that I’m only asking you because I’m really afraid for the Fuzzles and this is the only way I can think of to get there. I don’t have any other ideas. And I’m pretty scared that I might be wrong about asking you.”
Tomas patted my shoulder and hiccuped a blue bubble out of his left nostril.
Regent Maximus quivered.
“I heard there are Bog Wallows at Two Duck Lake,” he whimpered. My shoulders slumped, but then he added, “So if we go, I’m not going through any water.”
“Agreed!” I said.
“Wait.” Tomas looked at me strangely. “Did he say yes? Are we really doing this?”
Regent Maximus and I both bit our lips.
Tomas said, “At least let me pick up my bicycle helmet from the house.”
* * *
Riding Regent Maximus was nothing like riding Raindancer. For starters, it took us ten minutes just to convince him to get close enough to the trash bins behind the clinic so that we could use one to climb onto his back. It was also strange having Tomas behind me—I’d already ridden and fallen from a Unicorn before, so I knew I could survive, but Tomas didn’t seem quite as sturdy as I was. He seemed equally concerned, because he clung to me tightly enough that his hiccup bubbles kept popping on my ponytail.
Also, Regent Maximus didn’t seem to have the same five gaits as the Barreras’ Unicorns. He moved between slinking and scampering and ducking and shaking, depending on what we passed. For example—a bunch of dog water bowls? He scampered past those. A little sunflower-shaped windmill in a lady’s yard? He ducked. The worst was when we passed a yard with three little yappy dogs behind the fence. I noticed them pretty early on, but thought—well, hoped—that maybe they were the watching sort of dogs, rather than the barking sort.
Unfortunately, they were the barking sort.
All three of them ran up to the fence, yapping and shouting and carrying on in squeaky little barks.
“It’s okay, Regent Maximus!” I shouted. “They’re behind the fence!”
But Regent Maximus was beyond comforting. He leaped up into the air and screamed, “They’re going to gnaw my ankles off!” When he came down, his foot caught the edge of a garden bed full of sunflowers.
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