Dead Boy

by Laurel Gale

  “You are?” Maybe he’d heard that wrong. He checked his ears for maggots.

  “Of course. She makes you happy; I see that. You have to understand that I just want to protect you. I love you. But your father’s right. You’re growing up, and I can’t keep you locked away in your room forever. If you want to be friends with Melody, or even Luke”—her face soured again—“you can.”

  “I don’t want to be friends with Luke,” Crow said.

  “Oh, thank goodness. Why don’t you go up to your room and draw? Or we can play a game, if you’d like.”

  “Okay, but can I go out later? Melody wants me to meet her.”

  “Today? Really? She was just over here.” She forced a smile. “I suppose that’s fine. But, Crow, you need to be careful. Other people won’t understand you. They might even try to hurt you. Promise me you’ll be careful?”

  Crow nodded. “I promise.” And he meant it, too, but he also knew that all the care in the world couldn’t make what he was planning safe.

  At Mrs. Darlingson’s insistence, Crow wore an oversized hooded sweatshirt, hood up. Gloves, too. The evening was a little chilly, so the warm clothes wouldn’t look too conspicuous, and they would help hide his state of decay from any passersby.

  As Crow walked to the park, the wind blew in a thick layer of gray clouds. A light sprinkling of rain became a heavy downpour, and the streets emptied as everyone hurried inside their warm, dry homes. When Crow reached the park, he found it empty—except for Melody.

  “Have you been waiting long?” he asked. Her duckling-decorated raincoat kept the top half of her dry, but her red-and-green velvet pants were soaked, and the rain had washed the protective oil from her hair.

  “Not too long. Luke’s not here yet.” Her eyes widened in horror. “Wait! Don’t move!”

  Crow stopped with one foot in midair.

  “There’s a fairy trap right in front of you. Don’t you see it?”

  Crow shook his head. With all the rain, he couldn’t see much of anything, although he doubted that he’d be able to see a fairy trap, whatever that was, on even the sunniest of days. “What do I do?”

  “Come this way.” She guided him around the hazard.

  “Thanks. What would have happened to me if I’d stepped on it?”

  “A bad case of the hiccups.” She smiled, something she hadn’t done much since Halloween. “Okay, so maybe it wasn’t exactly life and death. Fairies leave traps like that everywhere. Some make you hiccup, like this one. Others make you sneeze, or forget what you were doing, or get a really bad itch right on that part of your back you can’t reach. One unties your shoelaces. They think it’s funny.”

  “What about kidnappings?” Crow asked. “Do fairies think that’s funny, too?”

  “You’re asking if they could have taken my mother, right?” Melody pressed her lips into a thin line. “I don’t know. It’s possible.”

  “Where are the fairies?” He looked around. If they caught one, maybe they could ask it. Force it to talk, if necessary. Not that Crow knew how he’d go about forcing a fairy to talk, but he’d figure it out if it meant finding Melody’s mother.

  “They’re not here anymore. Too wet. They’ll come out once the storm’s over—which makes them smarter than us right now. Let’s go to the shed. The Meera might curse us, or lock us up forever, but at least we’ll get out of this rain.”

  “But we can’t! Not yet! Once it’s done, you won’t be able to talk to the fairies.” His voice became a whisper. “You won’t be able to find your mom.”

  “It’s okay. You remember that brownie I told you about?” Crow nodded, and she continued. “I gave it a jar of honey and asked it to find my mother. It’s out there right now, looking for her, so I don’t need to talk to fairies.”

  “What about Luke? He’ll be here any minute.”

  “Do you really want to wait for him? He didn’t help last time.”

  Crow couldn’t deny that. Still, ditching him didn’t seem right. “He might be better this time.”

  “I doubt it. He’s probably not even coming. I bet he chickened out again. Or he decided to tell his father, and soon we’ll have an angry mob on our hands. Our best chance is if we go now, just the two of us.”

  “Okay,” Crow said. Melody’s wish had made her the expert when it came to magical problems. He had to trust that she knew what she was doing—otherwise they were doomed.

  In the shed, the Meera neither cursed them nor took them prisoner. It didn’t even show up, at least not as far as Crow could tell—although it was dark enough that something could have been hiding right beside them. He didn’t hear anything, but he didn’t think he would have been able to hear the Meera if it had taken the form of something small: a mouse lurking in the corner, or a cockroach resting in a crevice.

  Melody removed two flashlights from the backpack she’d been carrying. She handed one to Crow, and they looked around the shed. There was nothing there, not even a fly.

  Crow pointed to her backpack. “You have everything we’ll need? The ne—”

  “It might be listening,” Melody interrupted. “But yes, I have everything.”

  She pushed against the wall. “The shortcut’s right here. This is where we came out after the Meera granted our wishes. The magical passageway’s still here, but it’s locked with a spell from this side. I can’t open it. We’ll have to use the grate again.”

  Crow pulled up the metal grate and jumped down. Melody followed.

  The hall was exactly as it had been before—endless and decorated with tortoise engravings. They began walking.

  “The hall does loop,” Melody said. “It just doesn’t loop in a circle like you’d expect. Space-time loops, folding reality in on itself.”

  Crow nodded thoughtfully. He’d read that space-time could curve, and he knew that some scientists thought wormholes might connect one place to another, but he’d never expected to experience the theoretical physics firsthand. “Is there any way to unfold it?”

  “Yes, but I can’t do it.” She sighed. “One of the many reasons why this wish isn’t so great. Understanding magic isn’t the same as being able to use magic.” She touched the strap of her backpack. “Although it does help a little.”

  She determined that the fastest way through the test was to walk slowly but steadily, without taking any breaks. Crow expected the mud to appear any second. He steeled himself in anticipation. They got through it once, so they could get through it again.

  But the mud never appeared.

  “Is the path getting steeper?” he asked. He slowed down in order to inspect the incline.

  Melody yanked him forward. “We have to keep going. But yes, it’s getting steeper.”

  After a little while, the slant became obvious. Before, the hall had been perfectly flat as far as Crow could tell, but now it was like climbing up a mountain. If it got much steeper, they would need rock-climbing equipment.

  The ground shook.

  “Look out!” Crow screamed as a boulder rolled toward them.

  There was nowhere to move. The large rock was nearly as wide as the hall, so even pressing themselves against the walls wouldn’t help. Maybe they could try to jump over the boulder, but since it was nearly as tall as they were, success seemed incredibly unlikely.

  They were going to be flattened.

  Crow couldn’t stand to see his best friend—his only friend—get squashed. He closed his eyes.

  No pain came, but that wasn’t surprising. His dead nerves couldn’t feel much of anything. He wondered whether the rock had already rolled over him.

  “It’s okay,” Melody said.

  Crow opened his eyes. The boulder had stopped a few feet in front of him, though he didn’t see how. The steep incline meant that it should have tumbled right over them.

  “There’s a magical barrier,” Melody explained. “We can pass it, but the rock can’t. I’m not sure what we’re supposed to do now, though. Maybe we can go over it.”
>
  She tried to climb over the boulder, but it was too round, too smooth. She kept slipping off.

  “We have to push it,” Crow said. “Like Sisyphus.”

  “Sisyphus? Is that a type of rock?”

  “No, he’s a king from Greek mythology. The gods punished him by making him push a boulder up a hill. When he reached the top, the boulder would slide back down, and he’d have to push it up again.”

  “How long did he have to do that for?”

  Crow hesitated. “Eternity, I think.”

  “That doesn’t sound very promising,” Melody said, though she started pushing against the boulder anyway.

  It was heavy, but not as heavy as Crow had expected. Working together, they forced it to budge inch by inch. Sweat dripped down Melody’s forehead, and Crow wondered whether they should have waited for Luke after all. Of the three of them, he was definitely the strongest.

  The inches became yards.

  The boulder wobbled. Melody whimpered.

  “What’s wrong?” Crow asked. They’d stopped moving forward, but keeping the boulder in place still required a lot of effort.

  “My shoe came untied a while ago, and now it’s slipping off. It’s making it hard to walk.”

  “Fix it.”

  Melody turned to her side. Leaning against the rock, she raised her foot and adjusted her sneaker.

  The boulder shook as it pushed against Crow’s palms. Melody must have felt it, too, because she stopped tying her laces.

  “Run!” Crow yelled. They couldn’t stop it. The boulder was rolling down the hill.

  The slope ensured that, once the boulder started moving, it moved quickly. It also made running difficult. Melody and Crow stumbled, and within seconds they were tumbling down the hill, the large rock a hair’s width away from crushing them.

  Then the boulder stopped. They’d passed the magical barrier.

  It took them a while to stop tumbling.

  Melody didn’t bother standing up. “Let’s take a break before we try again.” She tied her sneakers, checking that both laces were tight. Then she got some water and a chocolate bar out of her bag.

  “The Meera said the tests would be harder the second time,” Crow said. It must have known that they would come for Grace, Hannah, and Travis. Hopefully it didn’t realize their other reason for returning.

  Melody didn’t respond. She was too busy chugging her water.

  After a while, she stood up, and they tried again. It wasn’t any easier. With every step, they faced the possibility that they would stumble, that Melody’s sweaty hands would slip, or that Crow’s atrophied muscles would give out, and the boulder would crush them.

  Melody grunted and wheezed. Crow was pushing as hard as he could, but he suspected that she was doing most of the work. He just couldn’t get his dead body to do any better.

  “I need to stop,” Melody panted.

  “We can’t.” They’d be crushed. Even if they somehow survived, they’d have failed the test. The Meera would curse them. Again.

  “I just need a break.”

  “One more step,” Crow said. She took a step, a tiny one, and he repeated his encouragement. “One more step. One more step.”

  He couldn’t help worrying that, like Sisyphus, they’d be stuck doing this for eternity. But then the boulder disappeared, its oppressive weight vanishing with it.

  A door appeared in front of them. They had passed the test.

  —

  The next room had the crow engravings, but little else remained the same. For one thing, the giant birdbath was missing. The exit was different, too. This time, it wasn’t high up in a spot that could be reached only by scaling the wall. Instead, it was right in front of them, as easy to reach as could be.

  Unfortunately, there wasn’t one exit. There were many.

  Melody sat down. “I’m so glad we don’t have to climb like last time. I don’t think I could after that.”

  “See anything to help us figure out which door to use?” Crow asked.

  Melody shook her head. “Whatever the solution is, it doesn’t involve magic. I guess we should just try one.”

  She got up and pulled on one of the doors, but it didn’t budge. She tried another and another, and Crow did the same, but they were all locked.

  “Come over here,” Melody said. She was standing in the center of the room, where thin lines in the floor hinted at a secret opening. Her fingers fought to pry the cover open, but with no success.

  One spot in the middle of the lines seemed darker than the rest. Crow pushed at it, and a piece of the floor slid back to reveal a secret hollow.

  Inside sat a pyramid-shaped box. A tetrahedron, Crow thought, remembering the shape from one of his geometry lessons. Each corner of the four triangular sides bore a picture of an animal or a plant.

  Melody picked it up. “Look, it opens.”

  She slid one part of one side off to reveal a space much smaller than the large box suggested. Inside was a key. She rushed forward to the doors, trying the key in each. On her fourth try, the key fit, and the door opened.

  “We did it! That was fast!”

  Something buzzed.

  “Close the door!” Crow yelled.

  Melody screamed as a large colony of bees flew toward her. She jerked left, then right, then back, her screams intensifying.

  Crow rushed toward the door. He slammed it shut in time to keep most, but not all, of the bees out. Those that had made it inside buzzed around aimlessly.

  Lumps swelled on Melody’s forehead and on both her arms. “Are you allergic?” Crow asked. She shook her head. Using what little fingernails he had left, Crow helped her remove the stingers. He took care not to squeeze them, which would cause them to release more of their venom into her skin.

  Once he was sure Melody was okay, he returned his attention to the tetrahedron. “The sides move,” he said, demonstrating how each part could twist around. With each new formation, a different part slid off to reveal a different key. “How do we know which key is right?” After the bee incident, trying the doors at random seemed like a very dangerous idea.

  “The pictures must have something to do with it,” Melody said.

  Crow studied them: a big fish, a small fish, a snake, a coyote, a frog, an otter, a rabbit, a mouse, a fly, grass, acorns, and a green blob. He couldn’t quite tell what the last one was supposed to depict. The tetrahedron shape meant that three pictures always came together at each of the four vertices. “Maybe we’re supposed to put the animals into groups.”

  Thinking that the green blob could be some sort of plant, he wanted to put the acorn, the grass, and the green blob together, but the acorn and the blob were on the same side, so putting them together was impossible. He twisted the sides so that the two fish were together, but there wasn’t another fish to complete the group. He thought maybe the frog would work, but that put the fly and the acorn together, and he didn’t see how that made sense.

  Melody and Crow spent the next hour or so passing the tetrahedron back and forth. They tried many combinations, but none of them quite made sense.

  Melody threw the tetrahedron on the floor. “We could just try the doors. If we peek through first, we’ll be okay.”

  Crow picked up the tetrahedron. “The other doors might contain things that are worse than bees. And the danger might not be obvious at first. We could walk out, seeing nothing and thinking we’re fine, and then get mauled by a bear.”

  So they kept twisting the sides in search of a combination that made sense.

  After suggesting that they go by color and size, Melody offered one more idea: “What about the food chain?”

  Crow looked at the tetrahedron again. The rabbit would eat the grass, and the coyote would eat the rabbit. The snake would eat the mouse, which would eat the acorns. The otter would eat the fish, but also the frog, which would eat the fly. The big fish would eat the small fish, and the small fish would eat…algae! That was what the green blob was.
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  After Melody had twisted all of the sides into the right position, a part of one side slid off to reveal a key.

  “Stay back.” Crow wanted Melody to be as far away as possible in case this combination was wrong and something even worse than bees attacked.

  But when Crow opened the door, nothing attacked. The door opened to a well-lit hall. They had passed another test.

  Without taking a break, they headed to the next room. Crow rubbed his wrist, where a line of stitches was all that kept his hand attached.

  “Maybe your wish will help us with the next test,” Crow said, doing his best to sound cheerful. “It has to come in handy sometimes.”

  Melody scowled. “You’ve clearly never had to learn math from a werewolf. Every time I see him, I want to scream or offer him a dog treat, but I’m pretty sure he’d fail me if I did anything like that.”

  “Your math teacher is a werewolf? Didn’t you notice that before?”

  “No. He looks more or less normal most of the time—unless you understand all forms of magic, that is. It was much better when I thought he was a regular, although somewhat hairy, human.”

  “Are there any other monsters at your school?” Crow asked. “What about the librarian? Is she really an alien like you thought?”

  Melody frowned. “The librarian seems normal—although I don’t think I could detect alien technology, assuming it was based in science, not magic. The history teacher isn’t really a warlock, either, and if the school food’s being poisoned, it’s not with anything magical, and nobody’s gotten sick anyway, so I guess I was wrong about that, too. There are things I hadn’t noticed before, though: the werewolf and two sisters who are half elf. Really, you’d fit in at the school pretty well just the way you are.”

  “You’ve clearly never had to remove a maggot from your nose. Unlike your math teacher, I can’t exactly pass for normal.”

  The room looked more or less as they remembered it, with engravings of dogs on the walls and two dark areas on either side of the torch-lit center.

  “Don’t step there,” she said, pointing to where Crow was about to put his foot. “Come this way. Now jump.” And like that, she led him through the magical minefield. No swords swung at them. No arrows whizzed past. No guillotines chopped off their hands. It was the easiest test yet.