The three of them walked briskly down a long hall. A bustling number of other people hurried alongside them, pulling suitcases. When they passed a huge glass window, Anni’s jaw dropped. She blinked a dozen times, but it was clear. They were in an airport.
EGBERT’S PLAN
Anni looked back at a huge mural under a sign that said Terminal Five.
“Walk faster. We are late,” Egbert said. His swift stride forced her to jog in order to keep up with him. Oliver was already in line at gate number fifty-five.
“Wait,” said Anni, trailing behind.
Egbert didn’t wait; he pushed forward. He reached Oliver. “You know what to do?”
“Yes,” said Oliver. He handed Egbert the rectangular bag and gave him a wry smile. “It’ll be fine. We’ll cross as soon as we hit the fifth ring.”
Egbert shook his hand and Oliver boarded.
“Wait. How did we…never mind,” Anni said. “Why are we in an airport? We’re wasting time. We need to find Lexi, not drop people off!”
Egbert handed her the rectangular black bag. “I need you to take this with you.”
Anni looked inside the bag. “Why are you giving me a cat?”
“You’re in charge of taking him home. I need you to board that plane.”
“What? No!” Anni shoved the cat carrier back at Egbert. “I’m helping you find Lexi.”
Egbert didn’t take the bag. His stern expression should have been enough to convince her he meant business. “I realize this will be hard for you, but I need you to get on that plane.”
“Last boarding call for Virgin Atlantic flight 005 to New York,” called an attendant on the overhead speaker.
“No way. I need to find Lexi. She’s my only family left—”
Egbert pulled out two tickets and a small blue book. “You were right. Someone, I don’t know who, is after Lexi. I don’t know why.” His eyes shifted away for a second. “But Zelda has found her.”
“Really?” Anni beamed.
“There isn’t time. I’m personally escorting her to meet you tomorrow. Here are the tickets for you and the cat. You’ll be staying with Zelda’s brother, Van, and his wife—somewhere very safe.” Egbert averted his eyes as he shuttled her closer to the gate. “They live on the outskirts of a large city. Oliver will help you get there.” He pulled something like a candy bar from his pocket. “Oh, you should eat this when you get seated. It’s important that you do.”
Anni took the bar. The flight attendant was about to close the gate’s door. “Hold on,” called Egbert, waving his hand. “She’s boarding.”
Anni felt immobile and didn’t know what she should do. Egbert leaned down to face her. His eyes harbored a rare hint of emotion. “Please, for Lexi’s sake, I need you to get on that plane. I can’t help her unless you’re safe.”
He waited. The attendant took the cat’s bag in one hand and reached out for Anni’s hand with the other. The moment stretched into an eternity, and she left him at the precipice of not knowing if she would agree.
“Fine.” Anni gave him her steeliest stare. “But if Lexi’s not there tomorrow, I’m leaving.” She followed the attendant to the double doors of the jet bridge.
LEO’S IN CHARGE
Ushered to the back of the plane by the flight attendant, Anni was glad to have a window seat and the entire last row to herself. Even with the cat carrier, she had plenty of room to stretch out. She couldn’t help but wonder why there were so many empty rows at the back of the plane. Oliver sat alone five rows ahead of her, thankfully on the opposite side.
Satisfaction warmed her as she realized she didn’t have to endure any of his smug expressions during the flight and only had to gaze on his spiky hair. All the same, she didn’t need a babysitter. She’d be thirteen years old in six days on the twenty-first of June. How old could Oliver be? Fourteen? Maybe fifteen?
Although her track record for following Egbert’s precise instructions wasn’t great, she wondered what would have happened if she followed Brat’s advice. Who wanted to kidnap Lexi? Finnegan was awful, but was he really a kidnapper? Maybe working for Egbert made Finnegan crack up; Egbert had that effect on people. And what was the deal with the painting in Mabel’s apartment? Something about that picture tickled her memory. Had she seen Mabel passing through it once before, when she was a child?
Who would answer her questions? She glanced at Oliver. Nope. She carefully opened her shirt pocket, making sure no one was watching. Brat was still tucked into a round leathery ball as she whispered, “Psst, Brat, wake up.” He didn’t respond. “Of course you’re asleep. Listen, when you wake up, I’ve got questions for you.”
She fidgeted in her seat when a handsome young man walked down the aisle. His blazing smile arrested all of Anni’s thoughts. Dressed in crisp linen, he looked like he came from a long, sun-soaked weekend on a Caribbean island instead of the gray, drenched skies of Chicago. His brownish mop of hair fell in tight, finger-length curls that hung above his puka shell necklace and his iPod cords.
“Hello,” he said to her as he stuffed a bag into the overhead compartment.
Dumbstruck, Anni didn’t say a word as he took his seat three rows behind Oliver. She was mesmerized by his caramel toned features and his infectious grin; whatever bothered her seconds ago inexplicably escaped her mind.
When the plane was in the air, the captain made an announcement: “For those of you making connecting flights, we should be arriving on time in New York around five-thirty p.m. Eastern Standard Time. For those of you continuing on to London, we will ask…”
“London!” Anni gasped. She pulled out her ticket, which was tucked into a small blue booklet labeled Passport. In bold black ink, the boarding pass read: CONNECTION FROM NEW YORK TO LONDON.
“No. No. No. He didn’t…” Although Egbert’s methods were suspect, she knew he didn’t just forget to mention that she was going to another country altogether. Anni was so mad she stuffed the ticket and passport in the seat pocket. When she saw the candy bar Egbert had given her, she threw it, but it fell on the black carrier, waking the cat up.
“He tricked me. Did you know?” Anni said to the cat as she reached for the candy bar. “Sorry, didn’t mean to wake you.” She opened the wrapper and took a bite. “Gross!” She gagged, searching for something to spit in, but she was out of luck and resorted to swallowing what tasted like a combination of chalk and tar.
The cat pawed the carrier’s mesh panels. His tiny nose sniffed the area around the zippered opening, and he finally started to claw on the black mesh door.
“I can’t let you out. We’ll get in trouble.”
The cat resorted to meowing. Anni wondered if he needed to stretch; the rectangular bag looked dark and cramped. She unzipped the top about an inch and put her finger inside the opening. The cat licked her and purred.
“I bet you hate being trapped,” she said. “I’m trapped, too, you know. A plane’s not a box, but it sure feels like one.”
Anni checked to see if the coast was clear. No stewardess in sight, she unzipped the carrier’s door flap. “Don’t run off, okay?”
The beautiful red tabby sprang out and onto her lap. She scratched his ear and found a nametag hanging from a collar.
“Leo…Hi. Nice to meet you.”
Leo purred as he walked around in circles on the seat beside her, until he found the perfect spot to comfortably curl up.
“It’s bad enough you’re stuck on this plane. It’s your seat—you should enjoy it.” Anni suppressed a giggle as Leo’s tongue stuck out, even though his mouth was closed.
Leo was a brief diversion, but her mind raced back to Lexi. Where was she? Was Egbert really going to put Lexi on a plane? How could she trust him?
“Want to hear a secret?” Anni whispered to Leo. “I’m not going to London. I’m going back to Chicago. But first, I need to escape from Mr. Squinty Eyes Oliver.”
She began to form a plan. Grace, an old friend who used to attend Waterstone, lived i
n New York. If Anni slipped off the plane when it landed, she could call Grace and get help from her and her family.
Leo nuzzled her hand with his wet nose. His green eyes twinkled like glowing green orbs as he stood up and walked in circles on her lap.
“Hyper, much?”
Leo jumped and landed silently in the aisle. He sat there, licking his paw, then started to clean his face. He was cute, for sure, but Anni knew he shouldn’t be there. The aisle wasn’t empty; a steward, about ten rows ahead, had his back to them as he passed out pretzels.
Leo sauntered toward the galley, pausing at the threshold between the last row of seats and the back of the plane, where the drink carts and bathrooms were. Anni sprang into the aisle when the steward turned around, pretending to tie her shoe until he turned back.
Anni sneaked a peek at the rows ahead of her. The smiling guy was asleep against a shaded window, but Oliver turned and nearly looked right at her. She ducked. This wasn’t good. She would have to put Leo back into his carrier for sure, but only if she could catch him first. She decided she needed to adopt a casual approach, not wanting to startle Leo into darting in the opposite direction, down the aisle where the steward would catch him.
Leo stood and rounded the galley’s corner. Now he was trapped. Crouched low, Anni followed. She turned the corner and stood up immediately.
In the galley, a stewardess was arranging the drink service cart. Anni spotted the tip of Leo’s ginger tail twined around an open lavatory door.
“Gotcha,” Anni whispered.
“Sorry?” asked the stewardess. “Did you need something?”
“Bathroom,” Anni mumbled. She skirted toward the lavatory door, thinking Leo would be easier to catch now that he was cornered, even though she hated the idea of taking away his freedom.
With the restroom door ajar, she blocked the opening with her foot, just in case Leo backtracked. She inched her way inside and closed the door behind her.
The bathroom’s interior surprised her. Compared with the narrow galley, this restroom was impossibly big—almost too big for the allotted space.
She didn’t see a toilet, or even a sink, only a long Formica countertop that ran along the wall, which curiously ended next to an ornate wooden doorframe. Beyond that, there was an extra lounge, where Leo sat waiting for her atop a table, purring. She needed to step over a short lip in the wall to get in because the bottom of the strange doorframe wasn’t flush with the bathroom’s floor.
Anni gave Leo a weak smile. “Sorry, but you’re gonna have to come with me.”
Leo stood on his hindquarters like a meerkat and said, “I’m afraid not, dear girl. Welcome to the Wood Realm; you have just arrived on Moon Zephyr.”
THE HAND
When Lexi opened her eyes, she was in almost total darkness. A hint of light issued along a door’s edge that was slightly ajar. As her eyes adjusted, Lexi realized she was inside a closet. She tried to move, she tried to speak, but she couldn’t. It was as if she were paralyzed from the nose down. She had no idea how long she had been like this and could only recall running up three flights of the school’s stairs before everything went black.
Lexi trained her eyes on the crack of light issuing through the closet door. As her eyes adjusted, she recognized the room beyond. It was where she and Anni had spent years playing games, doing homework, and staring out the vast window onto the school grounds, but the common room had been upturned and ransacked. From her position, she could tell that she was inside the narrow coat closet near the common room’s double doors.
Unexpectedly, Anni darted past the door and ran into Lexi’s bedroom. Filled with relief, Lexi knew it would be okay; Anni would find her. But Lexi had forgotten she had left a note with the doll, telling Anni to meet her at Mabel’s apartment. All she wanted to do was show Anni the velvet tapestry with the Golden Bee and start explaining everything.
Lexi’s relief fizzled. If Anni found the note, she would go to Mabel’s next. Lexi tried to move again, but it was no use. Her body refused to obey her commands.
Anni raced out of the bedroom, stopped in the middle of the common room, and bent down to pick up something off the ground. Lexi recognized the object as her broken eyeglasses, but they weren’t real; Lexi only wore them because Teddy told her that she needed to wear them as part of a disguise. It was just one more thing to add to the list of explanations she would need to share with her best friend.
Come on, Anni. Figure out I’m in here. A small grunt escaped Lexi’s lips as Anni stood frozen, holding the broken frames.
The weight of a gloved hand fell on Lexi’s shoulder. She tensed. Warm, sticky breath smelling of stale tobacco wheezed in her ear, “Not a sound, girl. Someone wants to meet you, and if you behave, I might let that friend of yours live.”
QUEEN’S MIRROR
Anni braced herself against the bathroom’s counter where Leo sat staring at her like he was waiting for an answer. The floor beneath her moved and warped. Was her mind playing tricks?
Her shirt pocket shifted. Brat peeked out and muttered, “Moppins! What have you gotten us into?” before he ducked back inside.
It was all she could do to hold onto the counter as gravity pulled her down. Beneath her fingertips, the stiff Formica countertop rematerialized into a round, polished wooden table. The airplane’s previous sterile gray lavatory walls disintegrated and were replaced by an enormous circular room saturated in sprightly oaken hues. It was meticulously organized, like a showroom for gardening tools.
Leo jumped down from the table and looked at Anni. “Sorry we tricked you, but it was the only way to get you on the Zephyr without an E-pass.” Leo pranced over to the far side of the room, where a great oak door opened. A blinding light poured into the room accompanied by a breeze of overpowering metallic and sugary smells. One whiff made Anni heave and her knees went wobbly. She planted both hands on the table; beads of sweat trickled down her forehead as she attempted to move. The room wasn’t swaying, but she was. Head throbbing, her knees gave way and she crumpled to the floor.
“Thanks, Leo,” said Oliver, whom Anni hadn’t seen standing by the door.
“My pleasure, dear boy,” said Leo. “Happy to oblige. We all must do our part. Now, if you’ll excuse me, I need to see a man about a dog.”
Lying on the floor, Anni watched Leo paw the door open and disappear through it. Briefly, more light filled the room, piercing her retinas, along with overpowering earthy scents. Just as Leo left, two rusty-haired teens walked in.
Of the two, the girl with long, blazing red hair spoke first. “Honestly, what were you thinking…bringing that thing here? Didn’t you even consider DeFunkifying her first? Ollie, the whole Zephyr knows she’s here…”
“Miranda? Eggs!” Anni said with disbelief. “Oh, no. Please get me out of here.”
“Ha ha,” said the rusty-haired boy who walked in with Miranda. “I…like…her. She’s smart, too.” He had the same strong jaw as Miranda, and they had the same blue eyes, but his hair was more orange than red, curlier than hers, and windblown. There was a definite strut to his walk as he approached Anni. “Hey, kid. I’m Jay, but seems you already know my evil twin sister, Miranda.” Jay laughed at his own joke.
Miranda gasped and her lip curled as she eyed her brother.
“Just ignore her. I do,” said Jay, just a few inches away from Anni’s face. He inspected her like she was something foreign. Anni tried to move, but the pounding strain in her head prevented her. “Relax, kid. You’re not going anywhere with that much Funk. Trust me.” Jay winked at Anni, stood and turned to face his sibling. “I can’t remember the last time we had a full-on Super-Funked human on the Zephyr.”
“Idiot!” hissed Miranda. Her teeth were clenched so tight, they were in danger of cracking. “Don’t make friends with her, she’s a human!”
“What’s the matter? You afraid the little human might find out your full name and take all your Leprechaun gold?” Miranda scowled as Jay turned to Oliv
er. “When the Funk hit the Zephyr, Mir totally tripped. It was priceless.”
“Shut it, Egghead,” spat Miranda.
“Not cool.” Jay smiled and shook his finger. “I wouldn’t use that kind of language in front of the human! For one, it’s bad for Elemental relations, and B, you’re only two requirements away from your Continuus Humanus Educatio E-pass. I know how bad you want it, and I’d hate to see you screw that up.”
Miranda pinched her nose. “For Elsakes, is it me, or did she bring all the Funk from the human realm onto our Zephyr? It stinks!” She turned her back to her brother and asked Oliver, “Who’s wrapping things up?”
“That would be me,” said a calm voice behind Anni.
Anni turned her head and discovered that the voice belonged to the relaxed, handsome-looking teenaged boy who had gotten on the airplane just after her. His smile was arresting; however, there was a problem. Where was the rest of his body? His head floated midair through a mirror-like surface that was surrounded by a thick wooden frame. The reflective surface shimmered like water when he glanced down at Anni. “Hiya. I’m Mackenzie. Just collecting your bags.” His arm passed through the sparkling glass. “Oye, Ollie, heads up!” He tossed Anni’s backpack and Leo’s carrier in Oliver’s direction.
“Mac!” Jay whistled. “Queen’s Mirror, now that’s some risky business. Wait a second…you can’t travel to a Zephyr by Queen’s Mirror unless you’re already in the air…wait, no! Tell me you’re not on an airplane right now? Aw, man.”
Mackenzie laughed, and grinned at Jay. “Hold up. I’ll be right out.” Mackenzie’s head vanished beyond the Queen’s Mirror’s shimmering surface. Somehow, his presence in the room soothed the general atmosphere, but when he disappeared, Anni felt sick again.
“Ugh, gross!” Miranda moved farther away from Anni and closer to the door. “Jay! Don’t bother Mac. Let him finish. Her Funk is getting worse by the second.”
Finally, Mackenzie walked through the Queen’s Mirror and the rippling surface turned solid and clear like glass. Anni was relieved to see that his body was still attached to his head, which helped make her nausea dissipate. She had heard about Funk enough to understand that, whatever it was, it was most likely what was making her sick and unable to move. She couldn’t explain it, but when Mackenzie was present, she felt better: less sick and calmer.
Anni Moon & The Elemental Artifact: An Elemental Fantasy Adventure Series: Book For Kids Ages 9-12 (Anni Moon Series) Page 8