by Amy C. Blake
Trevor shook his head. “How hard can it be, really?”
“Yeah.” Tommy leaned against a column. “If you’ve done any sports at all, you should be able to get it.”
Levi eyed Tommy’s wiry arms. “Are you into martial arts or something?”
Tommy looked at him like he was crazy. “No. Hockey.”
“Oh.” Levi’s armpits grew damp. What if he was the only one who flopped at this? His only sword-fighting experience was with his little brothers—using plastic swords.
“I bet it’s a lot like ballet,” said a tall, thin girl named Gabrielle who walked around everywhere on her tiptoes, her nose in a skyward tilt. “I should do fine.”
Steve’s face went ashen and sweat beaded his forehead. He was probably envisioning his big feet in ballet toe shoes. Levi offered him a wobbly smile, glad he wasn’t the only one scared spitless.
He glanced across the courtyard. Mr. Sylvester, the seven-footer with white-blond hair, led some kids to the grassy common area and gestured for Levi’s group to join them. Levi slunk along at the rear.
Oh, boy. Hunter and Martin waited beside Mr. Sylvester with ugly smirks on their faces as if chomping at the bit to slash their fellow campers to pieces. Levi positioned himself behind Steve and Trevor, leaving only the slightest peephole. He prayed he wouldn’t be called on for any demonstrations.
“Fencing is a beautiful sport,” Mr. Sylvester announced in a British lecture voice. “It will help you develop a strong body, a keen mind, and a renewed spirit. All of which are essential in the face of the evil surrounding us.”
The face of the evil surrounding us? Levi glanced around. They were at summer camp, for crying out loud. The only evil face Levi saw was Hunter’s. He grinned at his private joke. Until he caught a glimpse of Hunter’s hard eyes, which had somehow found their way to his hiding place.
Come to think of it, a few fencing lessons may not be such a bad idea.
“All right, everyone,” Mr. Sylvester said. “Form a wide circle around me.” After they circled up, he waved to someone on the walkway. “Mr. Drake? Join me, please. We shall demonstrate the proper way to engage in a sword battle.”
Mr. Drake, the ferry pilot who was also over seven feet tall and had the same long black hair, reddish skin, and high cheekbones as his wife, stepped into the ragged ring carrying two golden scabbards. He handed one to Mr. Sylvester, and the two exchanged bows. Both wore white protective suits, but neither put on the masks piled near the far walkway.
The two men sparred gracefully, thrusting and parrying while sunbeams glinted against their silver blades. Levi tried to watch the men’s feet, but they moved too fast for him to follow. Then he tried to study their faces, but long black hair blended and swayed into long blond hair, masking their eyes.
After a few minutes, Mr. Sylvester caught Mr. Drake square in the chest protector, forcing him to lean back until the ends of his dark hair brushed the grass. It only lasted a second, but in that frozen instant Levi’s breath caught, not over the excitement of the match, but over what he saw.
Mr. Drake’s ears. His pointy-tipped ears. Not just slight points either. These were Lord of the Rings ears.
Bizarre.
As the men shook hands and bowed all around, Levi didn’t join in the wild clapping and cheering. He could only stare, hoping for another glimpse of ears. He’d never heard of anyone having ears that pointy. At least not anyone human.
He rubbed his suddenly cold hands together. Strange castles with unusual weather and islands that didn’t end where they were supposed to, all that was odd enough, but this—
Trevor elbowed him. “That was awesome, wasn’t it?”
Levi forced his stiff lips to move, eyes still fixed on the fencing instructors. “Yeah.”
The only other motionless person in the group caught Levi’s attention. Hunter, arms across his chest and head thrown back, regarded Levi with a knowing look in his eyes.
Chapter 8
Confusion
Levi’s t-shirt stuck to his sweaty body. The cool dimness of the castle felt great after baking in the early afternoon sun. He’d only dropped his sword three or four times during training drills. Thankfully all the blades were covered in some sort of foam-filled leather sheaths; otherwise he might’ve severed an artery.
Lizzie was nearly flawless in the exercises, at least until she chipped a nail. After that, she refused to continue until a disgusted Mr. Sylvester let her run to her room for her nail repair kit. Poor Steve, though, hadn’t made it through any of the maneuvers without fumbling at least once. It probably hadn’t helped that Hunter, who drilled without error directly behind Steve, kept whispering about the irresistible target made by Steve’s wide rear end.
As he started for the stairs, Levi stretched. Muscles he’d never used so hard in his life protested. Time to try out that luxury shower before his roommates beat him to it. He hurried up the steps. By the time he got to the fourth floor, he had to stop with his hands on his knees and catch his breath. When he got his wind back, he reached for the handle of the door to his corridor.
The door beside it caught his eye. He knew it must lead along the north corridor like the one on the third floor that housed their classrooms. He opened it a crack and peeked inside. Empty. He tiptoed to another door in the middle of the corridor, glanced around to make sure he was alone, then turned the handle and pulled. Stepping through, he let out a tiny gasp.
Large bands of soft multicolored light swathed the room, painting rows of benches red and green, purple and blue, yellow and pink. Levi stepped further in, blinking hard until he understood he’d entered a chapel. The colors came from floor-to-ceiling stained glass windows lining the entire north wall. The rows of benches were padded pews. A raised platform at one end held a communion table and a pulpit.
Levi sat down in the first pew he came to, a center seat, since the door opened in the middle of the room. He wiped at his sweaty forehead and breathed deeply, inhaling the scent of candles and old wood smoke. He relaxed in the peaceful atmosphere. Had he been alone even once since coming to Camp Classic?
His eyes skipped to an open Bible on the communion table, and a twinge of guilt bit him. He hadn’t so much as opened his Bible since he got to camp. Mr. Dominic had read a few verses after breakfast, but Levi knew that wasn’t enough. His parents had insisted he read his Bible each morning from the time he’d learned to read.
Sorry, God.
A brief vision of pointy ears filled his mind, and he shook it away. Maybe reading his Bible more would keep him from being so confused. Or delusional. At this point, he wasn’t sure what to believe.
“I’ll do better, I promise.” Levi’s quiet words shattered the stillness of the chapel, making him wince. Maybe he should leave. Mr. Dominic had told them the cellar was off limits and that boys and girls weren’t allowed to enter each others’ dorm corridors. Other than that, they were to make the castle their home.
Still, he should get back to his room and clean up. He was stinking up the chapel.
The next morning Levi was scheduled for Literature and History, his two favorite subjects. When he arrived, he settled into a desk near his roommates and glanced around the classroom. Sara and the girls were in the class too. Unfortunately, so were Hunter and Martin.
The stumpy, brown-haired Literature teacher, Mr. Austin, glowered at the campers from beneath bushy brows. “This summer you’ll study The Iliad,” he barked as if someone had dared complain.
Levi shrank back in his seat, not sure he was going to enjoy this class so much after all. Yet the teacher’s excitement about his subject became evident the longer he spoke, and Levi’s hopes for the class rose.
Mr. Austin’s jowls quivered and he bounced on the balls of his feet as he reviewed Homer’s version of the Trojan horse tale. “Paris, the prince of Troy, kidnapped Helen, wife of the Spartan king, Menelaus. The Trojans and Spartans waged war over the woman for years. Then the Spartans came up with a sneaky idea. The
y built a huge wooden horse and hid inside it. But the Trojans thought the Spartans had fled. They wheeled the horse inside their gates, gloating over their great victory.” Mr. Austin’s voice deepened to an ominous rumble. “In the night, the Spartan warriors emerged from hiding, utterly destroyed the Trojans, and took the fair Helen home.
“Trickery!” he bellowed, making several kids jump. “Deceit! Never let down your guard for an instant! That’s what we learn from this story. Don’t be so all-fired sure of yourself that you give your enemy a way in. Otherwise, they’ll trick you—and sometimes, destroy you.”
Levi and the others stared in wide-eyed silence. This was one strange teacher.
“Now, for homework—”
Levi groaned along with the rest.
Archery class took Levi outside the castle walls for the first time—on the north side, opposite where they’d arrived from the cabins. Mr. Sylvester led Levi’s group through a foyer area beyond the great hall and fiddled with elaborate locks on the giant door. His wife waited at his side.
“Man, look at that,” said Luke, a kid from Levi’s hall who was even smaller than he was. The kid’s glasses took up most of his face.
Levi glanced from Luke to the locks situated well above Levi’s head. “Yeah, pretty impressive.”
Luke sucked in a breath. “I’ll say.”
Mr. Sylvester’s words about surrounding evil flickered through Levi’s brain. “Doesn’t look like anyone could get in this place really easy,” he said as much to himself as to Luke. So why did he suddenly feel nervous?
When Mr. Sylvester finally undid all the locks and opened the door, he raised the massive portcullis. Levi’s palms dampened as he followed the teacher under the iron spikes. He sure hoped the ropes held that thing up. He also hoped he was better at archery than he was at fencing.
Mr. Sylvester lowered the drawbridge, took his wife’s elbow, and looked expectantly at the campers. “Well, come along.”
Levi glanced at Luke. The boy’s mouth hung wide. Levi started over the drawbridge, watchful for anything Mr. Sylvester might call evil. They crossed a broad field to an archery range at the edge of the forest he’d seen from his window. A long, high mound waited behind the targets for stray arrows.
When they arrived at the range, Mr. Sylvester asked the campers to divide themselves into their usual class groupings, which meant Levi didn’t have to be in a group with Hunter. He ended up next to Mr. Sylvester and overheard him ask his wife to take the west dormitory kids. She shot a look at Hunter and Martin, who were bragging to the boys from their hall.
“I took out three deer with a bow and arrow last winter. It was wicked.” Hunter’s lips twisted into a grin that made Levi feel sorry for the deer.
Martin popped his gum between his teeth as he fumbled with a camouflage arm-guard. “I can’t wait to kill something.”
Mr. Sylvester shook his head in disgust. “Never mind, dear. I’ll take that bunch. You take these fellows.” He cocked his chin toward Levi’s group.
Levi found his mind straying from Mrs. Sylvester’s lesson on the proper way to hold a bow and string an arrow. His gaze kept skipping from the bow she held to her white-blonde hair, though it wasn’t her hair that interested him. It had hit him that she was tall and reed-thin like Mr. Drake. Did she have the same type of ears?
In spite of his distraction, Levi shot fairly well on his first couple of tries. One arrow actually hit the target instead of the dirt beside it. All of Ashley’s arrows ended up clanking off of a target three over from hers, but Sara and Tommy both seemed to be naturals. Tommy hit right next to the mark several times, and Sara shot bullseye after bullseye with apparent ease.
Shooting a hockey puck must’ve helped Tommy’s aim, but that didn’t explain Sara’s skill. He watched her line up, one eye closed, body still. Every time she let fly, the arrow soared to its mark and pinged in the target’s center. Then she’d release a joyful bubble of laughter totally different from Hunter’s harsh cackle on the other end of the range.
When the lesson was over, the group walked back to the castle door, Levi surrounded by a bunch of boys whose shots got closer and closer to the mark as their stories grew. He smiled and dropped back a few steps, wanting to slip to the edge of the castle and peek around it. Could he truly have mistaken the moat for a raging lake?
Levi wound up near Sara and Mrs. Sylvester. The teacher looped her arm across the girl’s shoulder, and both smiled. The wind snatched at their long hair, the one pale, the other golden.
“You shot well, Sarafina, my dear.” Mrs. Sylvester’s tone was tender.
Sarafina? Levi peeked at the two as the lady brushed back her hair, momentarily revealing her left ear—her perfectly-formed, pearly-white, pointy-tipped ear.
Too stunned to notice what his feet were doing, Levi plunged into the cold moat.
Chapter 9
The Moat
Levi panicked. His lungs squeezed as he flailed in the murky water. After a few seconds, he forced himself to calm down and pushed up toward the light. He surfaced, splashing and spluttering, and swam to the edge where Mrs. Sylvester and Sara knelt. They reached to help him, but he hoisted himself out on his own. The laughter and catcalls from kids on the drawbridge sizzled the droplets on Levi’s face.
“Are you okay?” Sara asked. At least she wasn’t laughing at him.
“Yeah.” Levi wrung water from his t-shirt and glared at the puddle beneath his feet.
Mrs. Sylvester took his arm. “Come on, let’s get you inside.”
Levi looked up at her face. It was pale, like he’d really scared her.
Her husband rushed up. “Is he okay?” He turned from his wife to Levi. “Are you okay?”
Levi’s skin practically steamed with humiliation. What was the big deal about falling into the moat? Everybody had to know how to swim before coming to camp. Surely they didn’t think he was so wimpy he’d drown in the few seconds he was under.
“He’s fine, dear. It’s nothing,” Mrs. Sylvester told her husband in a soothing voice, as if she recognized Levi’s extreme embarrassment and was trying to spare him more.
But Mr. Sylvester studied Levi’s eyes for what felt like a long time. “You’re fine? You didn’t go very deep, did you?” He frowned hard. “Did you get bumped on anything?” His eyebrows shot up. “Or see anything?”
Levi shook his head. Why the third degree? He glanced at the tranquil water. Was something in there?
“No, no, of course not,” Mr. Sylvester answered himself with a short laugh. “Nothing at all to see, of course. Let’s stay back from the moat from now on, all right?” He slapped Levi on the back. “Don’t want to get in that nasty water. Deep and dark. Not at all a pleasant place to swim.”
Grimacing, Levi darted a look at Sara. She raised both eyebrows and shrugged.
Mrs. Sylvester patted her husband’s arm. “He’s really fine, dear. Let’s go on in now and let him change out of those wet clothes.” The two locked eyes a moment. She turned a bright smile on Levi, the kind his mom gave his dad when she was really worried but didn’t want Levi to know. “At least it’s not cold outside, right?”
“Right.” Levi looked down at his sopping shorts. “Good thing tomorrow’s laundry day.”
Sara giggled. “Better not miss it or you’ll be wearing dirty socks for a week.”
Thinking of the single pair of underwear in his wardrobe, he blushed. It wasn’t dirty socks he was worried about.
He walked with Sara toward the drawbridge. The adults flanked them like Levi might fall back in the moat if they got too far away. Most of the other kids had already gone into the castle, but Hunter, Martin, the piggy-faced girl who’d mocked Sara, and a broad-shouldered, buzz cut kid named Greg lingered on the drawbridge, mocking Levi for his tumble into the water. They didn’t stop until Mr. Sylvester shooed them inside.
By the time Levi sat down for supper, everyone seemed to know about his little dip in the moat. He did his best to ignore Hunter
and Martin, who took turns falling out of their chairs and pretending to splash around on the floor—much to the amusement of their new buddies. Levi kept his face near his bowl of chili, trying not to react as Hunter kept adding to the story. Really nice stuff like, “He was squealing like a two-year-old!”
The guys at Levi’s table didn’t laugh, but by the time he finished forcing down his food, Levi figured his neck would be permanently red. Heaving a sigh, he glanced up at the head table. Mr. Sylvester had his head right next to Mr. Dominic’s. They cast frequent looks his direction. Great, now they were talking about him, too.
Then Mr. Drake walked up and bent to join their conversation. When he swept back his hair so it wouldn’t dangle into Mr. Dominic’s chili bowl, Levi remembered why he’d fallen into the moat in the first place.
Pointy-tipped ears—both Mr. Drake’s and Mrs. Sylvester’s.
A question throbbed Levi’s temples. Was there any possible way this camp had nonhumans on staff? As his eyes slid between Mr. Drake and Mr. Sylvester, another question intruded into his mind. If they weren’t human, what were they?
Should he talk to Hunter about all this? Creep though he undoubtedly was, Hunter and his mindless minion Martin seemed to be the only other people suspicious about Camp Classic and its employees.
What if Hunter was right? What if this camp was run by aliens or something? Did that mean they’d entered some alternate reality somehow?
“Scared him so bad he wet his pants.” Hunter’s jeering words shattered Levi’s internal debate.
Levi’s eyes locked on Hunter. As most of the campers burst out laughing, the bully’s face twisted into a taunting smirk.
Levi broke eye contact. How could he even consider confiding in a jerk like Hunter? Loneliness and despair sagged Levi’s shoulders.
Sara touched his arm. “Just ignore him.”
Levi offered her a wobbly smile and glanced at his other friends. Each face reflected Sara’s sympathetic expression.