Artifacts

by Pete Catalano

  The Grumpkins moved to either side of Skylights, and Crunch was still right beside them. The moment Crunch saw the house he took off running.

  As he lumbered across the grass, I could feel the ground rumble, tremors rippling and racing through the earth. When Crunch had run about twenty yards, the ground between the house and us exploded.

  Large, gnarled, twisted branches of a thick, heavy vine covered with razor-sharp thorns ripped through the earth in all directions, spiraling into the sky. The thickets were so massive and invasive they choked the life out of everything around them.

  “Blackthorn,” Grifter said, stepping from the woods behind Korie. “It’s a gift Hook brought to help keep us, and anyone else, out.”

  “It’s just as I imagined from the stories my mom read to me when I was little,” Korie said. “But even then, it didn’t seem nearly so … evil.”

  The branches knitted into an impenetrable wall. Dark and foreboding, it rose thirty feet into the air and raced over one hundred feet across the ground. There was no way in save a small, five-foot wide opening just to the right of center.

  “The house is a ghost,” Skylights said. “The Blackthorn disappears long enough to allow a peek, then comes roaring back.”

  Walking straight toward the Blackthorn, I was mesmerized. Stopping at the base, I tilted my head back to see how high it was and immediately got that feeling I was falling off the top.

  “You can’t climb it and you can’t go through it,” Skylights said, walking up behind me. “We’ve been trying since the moment we arrived.”

  I ran my hand across the long, sharp thorns and the stark, black, twisted skeleton formed by its branches.

  This is truly the most deadly thing I’ve ever seen, I thought.

  “Those thorns will rip and tear your flesh if they have the opportunity.”

  “Seriously?” I asked. “You’re talking about the Blackthorn like it’s alive.”

  “It is,” Skylights said emphatically. “Go ahead. Touch it again.”

  Reaching out for the thorns, the branches bowed out to meet my hand and the thorns slowly turned toward it.

  “Crapola!” I yelled, jumping back and shoving my hand in my pocket.

  “If you’re going to battle pirates,” a familiar voice said, walking up behind us, “you’re going to need words a lot more awesome than that.”

  I didn’t even have to turn around. “Mouth, I knew they wanted to give you back, but I didn’t think we’d see you this soon.”

  “I’m ready to lead this battle with my new friends,” Mouth said, putting his arm around Skylights, who quickly shrugged it off.

  “Lead the battle?” I asked.

  “Sure,” Mouth said. “I’ll tell Tank and the Grumpkins what to do from the safety of my command center in one of the tree houses. Our victory will be famous all over the world.”

  I tried to hide my smile. “You’re a legend in your own mind,” I said. Then I turned back toward the Blackthorn. “How does the wall appear out of nowhere to protect the house?”

  “It’s not a wall,” Skylights said. “It’s a maze, with more than one entrance and choices along the way. The walls are high so you can’t see the way out. We almost lost poor Grifter a few times. As hard as we try, we weren’t able to get through the first few layers.”

  “So why do you want to get in there so badly?” I asked. “What is the artifact?”

  Skylights looked at the others and then nodded. “A remnant of a time when all the great stories were written which has become a threat to the very foundation of Fairy Tale Land … ”

  “There’s a land!” Crunch cried, hearing those two words put together for the first time.

  “Let me start from the beginning,” Skylights said. “While seizing a ship and plundering it for every last bit of treasure, Captain James Bartholomew Hook stumbled upon a man, hiding amongst the crew, who had originally hired the ship to take him to Neverland.”

  My head was swirling. “Say, ‘Let me start from the beginning,’ again.”

  Skylights laughed. “It’ll get easier. I promise.”

  “Who was the man?” Korie asked.

  “His name was J. M. Barrie,” Skylights said.

  I shot a look at Korie. “The guy who wrote Peter Pan?”

  Skylights smiled as Grifter and Touch snickered behind him. “The man who spent time with us and Peter in Neverland and later wrote about his experiences.”

  “This is the craziest thing I’ve ever heard,” Mouth said, “and I’ve told some doozies.”

  “It does get stranger,” Skylights said. “Barrie was on his way to talk to Peter about an artifact which could supposedly change the course of fairy tales forever.”

  “How could it change them?” I asked.

  “It can rewrite them,” Skylights said.

  “Why does everybody think the artifact is here?” Korie asked.

  “We’ve been looking for it for the better part of the last century … ”

  “Century?” Mouth asked.

  “Some of us are a great deal older than we look, Mouth,” Skylights said and then continued. “Years ago, we had thought we found it. After much searching and inquiry, we traced it to a Lost Boy named Slightly who stumbled on it in the forest during one of his searches for treasure. We believe it was taken in one of the raids Hook or even Blackbeard before him had made and was lost over the years.”

  “What did he say when you asked him?” Crunch asked.

  “Slightly is much like Mouth in that his memories are based on pure fabrications.”

  Tank cracked up. “He knows you pretty well, Mouth.”

  “So you kept looking?” Korie asked.

  Skylights nodded. “We kept looking.”

  “By the time we realized Slightly did have the artifact, he had left Neverland,” Grifter said.

  “The only thing he left behind was a box of treasures. Baubles, trinkets, and shiny pieces of broken things that weren’t worth much, except they meant the world to him,” Touch continued. “There was also a note from Wendy, thanking him for the gift he had so kindly given her when she left and saying she would use it to make no less than wondrous things.”

  “Wendy was given the artifact?” I asked.

  “Yes,” Skylights said. “And she brought it back with her to London. Over the years, her children and grandchildren arrived here at various times and we believe one of them brought it with them to North Carolina. We still aren’t sure what it is or where to look for it.”

  “So that’s why Hook’s here?” Korie asked.

  “Yes.” Skylights nodded. “When he found out about the artifact, he became obsessed with it and launched a very elaborate mission to retrieve it.”

  “So he recruited Butt-Kiss?” I asked.

  “The villains of Fairy Tale Land needed the most ruthless and the strongest for this journey,” Skylights said. “They’ve also been given special gifts, like the Blackthorn, to try to secure their success. The only weakness those two share are the allies they keep closest to them.”

  “Smee and Jerkin,” Tank said.

  “Smee and Durkin,” Skylights confirmed.

  “Why are you and the other Lost Boys here?” Korie asked.

  Skylights smiled shyly. “We’ve had some success with Hook in the past, so the others thought we would be the best choice to stop him before he was able to retrieve the artifact.”

  “Why did you wait so long to come here after they arrived?” Mouth asked. “They had a waaaaay longer head start.”

  “We didn’t know Hook was gone from Neverland,” Skylights said. “Until it was nearly too late.”

  I laughed. “He and Smee must have been surprised to see you show up in the cafeteria.”

  “Butkus and Durkin, as well,” Touch said. “Grifter even brought a very special clock which tick-tocked loud enough for Hook to believe we had brought the crocodile with us.”

 
“We’ve been to every garbage dump and flea market slash junkyard we could find,” Mouth complained. “Why didn’t Hook just say, ‘This is what I’m looking for, go and get it?’”

  “Hook doesn’t know what it is, either,” Skylights said. “As the items are recovered and brought to him they are dragged back out to this house to be looked over and sorted through.”

  “How do you know Hook still doesn’t know what it is?” I asked.

  “Smee gave it away when he stopped by our table the other day. He didn’t say anything about the artifact directly, but he asked very Smee-like questions. What were we looking for and if we didn’t know what we were looking for, would we know it when we saw it?”

  Touch laughed. “We told him we had no idea what he was talking about.”

  “He then asked that if we were looking for something and had an idea of what it was, would we know where to look?”

  “I’m getting a headache just listening to Smee’s part of the conversation,” Korie said.

  “And what did you tell him?” Tank asked.

  “We told him that we had been here looking for an artifact. But we had it on good authority that Butkus had found it months ago and was keeping it hidden,” Skylights said. “We told him the only chance for him to get that answer would be through Durkin.”

  I cracked up. “Jerkin doesn’t know anything about anything.”

  Skylights smiled. “That’s the beauty of it. It gave them a chance to drive a wedge deep into their partnership and give us more time to find our way in through the maze.”

  “Do we know what it is we’re looking for?” Korie asked.

  “Do we know what it does?” Crunch asked.

  “Do we know what fairy tale it’s from?” Tank asked.

  Skylights shook his head. “We don’t know anything about it except that …”

  “It can change the course of fairy tales forever.” I finished his sentence.

  Chapter Fifteen

  Mouth had this weird scrunched up look on his face like he just bit into a lemon. “So, J.M. Barrie really went to Neverland on a vacation and wrote about his trip. An artifact from some fairy tale was given as a present to Wendy, who gave it to her ancestors, who brought it here. So then Hook comes to town, gets middle schoolers to hunt down artifacts which he hides in that house which is protected by a spell from some powerful sorceress.”

  Skylights shrugged. “Exactly.”

  “Back to the maze,” I said.

  “Great opportunity is usually disguised as unsolvable problems,” Korie said. “There are often secrets and patterns to mazes. We just need to get this maze to tell us its secret.”

  “Oh, so now you’re the maze expert?” Mouth whined. “Or maybe I should say mexpert?”

  “Ignore him,” Tank said. “How do we do that?”

  “The only way is from the inside.” She sighed. “Go in the various entrances and hopefully make the right choices as we’re walking through. We should come out in or near the middle.”

  “I hate near the middle,” Crunch said. “With my luck, I’ll always be over just one row too far. Close enough to see you guys, but not close enough to get there. You’ll watch as something hunts me down and eats me since you won’t be able to get there in time to save me.”

  Mouth cracked up. “Yeah, but we’ll get there in plenty of time to see it get about half the way through. That’s a lot of eating, no matter how massive the monster is.”

  “Okay, enough about the mystery monsters eating Crunch,” I said.

  “Time for me to outline our strategy.” Mouth turned and headed back to the forest. “I’ll be up in my tree house. Once you’ve made it through the maze and to the house let me know.”

  I grabbed him by the back of the shirt. “Not so fast. You can lead this battle from the other side of the maze while you and Crunch try to find an entrance. Tank can go with you.”

  “How about we send one of the Grumpkins with them,” Tank said. “I’d like to stay close to you and Korie. If Mouth and I were together, he’d say something stupid which would probably lead to me missing some really big clues on how to get through this maze.”

  “Good idea.” I pointed to the first Grumpkin. “Can you go with Crunch and Mouth?”

  He nodded and pushed Mouth ahead of him while allowing Crunch to walk alongside.

  The other Grumpkin’s face fell, thinking he was being left behind.

  I motioned toward him and finally got his attention. From the expression on his face and the heavy sigh, he looked like Eeyore from Winnie the Pooh. “Go with Grifter and Touch and find the entrance on the left side of the maze.”

  The Grumpkin’s face lit up. Before I could finish, he grabbed Grifter and Touch up in his arms and ran the length of the maze, quickly turning the corner.

  “Grumpkins are fast!” I said as they disappeared. “Now, Korie.”

  She smiled. “I’m ready.”

  “You, Tank, Skylights, and I will go through the front entrance and we’ll take your lead from there.”

  Korie walked to the entrance and then disappeared, a lot like she did in the forest. Skylights and I were right behind her and Tank stayed within an arm’s length of us.

  Stepping through the entrance, it was nearly three feet thick and the vines were constantly shifting and moving. The edges of the opening bowed out toward us as we passed by and the tips of the thorns extending as far as they could, brushing across our skin and our clothing, trying to snag some part of something and drag us in.

  “Be careful,” Skylights warned us, pulling Tank back from the edge of a thorn that was about to embed itself. “You may be too big to be dragged in, but we aren’t sure if the tips are poisonous or not.”

  “Poisonous!” I yelled. “You wait until we’re inside the Blackthorn to tell us the tips of the thorns may be poisonous?”

  “Could I have gotten you in here otherwise?” Skylights asked.

  “Not a chance. I would have been with Mouth up in his Command Tree House.”

  “Come on,” Korie said, making a right hand turn into the entrance. “Stay in the middle of the path and away from the walls and you’ll be fine.”

  Korie moved quickly down the path, Tank staying right behind her. She made a left turn and then a right and we found ourselves at our first crossroads.

  “Left seems to be the way that would take us farther into the maze,” I said. “But right may give us the chance to go around the edge and, hopefully, find more opportunities.”

  “I don’t think it would drive us into its center so quickly,” Korie said. “This has to be a trick. Making us think that left will be the most direct way to the house.”

  Skylights was quiet.

  “Go whichever way you think is best,” Tank said. “I’ll be right behind you.”

  Korie ran right and Tank and I followed her. As the path curved one way and then the other, we passed several crossroads, taking the right turn first, then the left, and then alternating as we went. There was a long straightaway and as we ran to the end and took the turn … Skylights was standing in front of us.

  “But how did you …” I asked.

  “I stayed here as you ran and waited for you to return,” Skylights said.

  “Why didn’t you …” Korie asked.

  “This is where we found ourselves the very first day,” Skylights said, smiling at how easily Korie and I had found ourselves caught in an unending loop “You needed to feel the frustration for yourselves. In order to make better choices later.”

  Korie stepped up to the wall but stayed just beyond the reach of the thorns. “High-tech mazes respond to the actions of the guests,” she said, seemingly looking for any sign of weakness

  “But this isn’t a high-tech maze,” I reminded her.

  She nodded. “But a maze made from magic, protecting such a valuable artifact from the grabby hands of trespassers, should have a sensor recognizing the pureness of o
ur intentions.”

  “That’s stupid,” I could hear Mouth yelling from the other side of the hedge. “You’re stuck just like us and now you have to turn around.”

  “Hey,” Tank yelled back. “You keep talking and I’ll drag you right through these vines.”

  Through the wall, I could hear the thunder of footsteps running away from us until they finally disappeared.

  “We’d better turn around and go the other way,” Skylights said. “We did get a little farther when we took the turn to the left …”

  Skylights words tailed off as a rumble at the base of the wall drowned him out.

  We watched intently as the large, dense, thorn-laden thickets slowly disentangled themselves until they were long stalks rising into the sky. Suddenly, they raced to the ground as if being pulled from the underside and slipped back through tiny openings in the earth.

  Skylights was speechless.

  The passageway in front of us was clear, allowing us to continue through.

  Korie smiled at him as Tank and I cracked up. “Never underestimate the power of pure intentions?”

  “Or a girl who knows she’s right,” I added.

  Tank cracked up again.

  “Please go ahead,” Skylights said, his voice quiet with a touch of humbleness.

  We continued through the maze, keeping an eye out for any new challenges created by the sorceress.

  I could feel we were getting closer. We were given a few more choices in the maze, which we seemed to have made correctly. Turning the corner to what I hoped would be one more straightaway leading us to the exit, we saw the house through the opening in the maze.

  “We did it,” I whispered, not wanting to say it too loud in case it disappeared.

  “I wasn’t sure we’d ever see the day we could walk through to the house,” Skylights said.

  “Let’s get going,” Tank said. “Then we can go up to the fourth floor and see where Mouth and the others are. I can’t wait to see their faces.”

  “Wait,” Korie said, grabbing Tank’s arm. “It still doesn’t feel right. After all the work it took to get here, something about it still seems too easy.”