by Laurel Gale
Melody grabbed him before he could jump into the deadly liquid. “Not so fast. That water’s filled with flesh-eating fish.” She plucked his skull-and-crossbones bandanna from off his head and dipped it into the water. Then she offered the bandanna, half-eaten, back to him.
“No thanks.” He stepped away from her. “You can keep it. And I, uh, order you to build a bridge. As your leader.”
By now, all five of them had crowded onto the rectangular platform, which started to move. The series of platforms no longer formed a passageway straight to the door on the other side of the spider room. Instead, the platforms were once again scattered, slowly sliding back and forth. Any step off them and into the surrounding pool would mean instant death—or, at the very least, instant severe pain and injury.
“We have to wait,” Crow said. “There’s nothing else we can do. Eventually the rectangles will line up and we’ll be able to walk out easily.”
“What about this?” Grace asked. Gray and small, a button blended into the platform’s edge. Despite this, Crow was certain that it hadn’t been there last time. During the long hours spent waiting in the spider room, he would have noticed a button no matter how good the camouflage was.
“What does it do?” Hannah asked, pressing it.
“Stop that,” Melody said. She sounded worried.
“Is magic involved?” Crow asked.
Melody nodded. “The button only makes things worse.”
“No, it doesn’t.” With his tiny fingers, Travis pointed to the nearest platform, currently moving toward them. “It must control these rectangle things. Look, it’s making that one come closer.”
Hannah and Grace pressed the button madly.
“No, it’s not,” Melody said. “It doesn’t affect the other platforms at all. But it does make this one smaller, so you’d better stop unless you want to become fish food.”
Grace analyzed the platform from under her very bushy eyebrows, which now covered the top third of her face, while warts covered the rest. She seemed to have trouble seeing and had to use a warty hand to remove her long brows from her eyes. “It’s not getting smaller.”
“Yes, it is,” Melody insisted. “Just very slowly. Slowly enough that you can’t notice, but if you keep pressing the button like that, it’ll add up. Stop.”
“If it’s happening too slowly to notice, how do you know?” Hannah asked, her voice very nasal.
“I just do. It’s magic, and I understand magic.”
Travis laughed. It came out very high-pitched, as if he’d been sucking on helium. “Like how you understood the librarian was an alien?”
Melody’s face reddened. “No. It’s real this time. The Meera granted my wish, and now I—Why am I explaining this to you? Just stop it!” She pushed her way between Hannah and Grace and covered the button with her hands. “Sit down and wait.”
“Hey, I’m in charge here,” Travis squeaked. He looked up at Melody, now more than twice as tall as he was. “We’ll try and do it your way ’cause you did this before, but just till I say otherwise.”
So they settled down for the long wait. Travis, still shrinking, sat in the middle. He looked like a pile of clothes with a small head sticking out.
Melody and Crow sat by the button, in case the others decided to try pressing it again. They tried to pass the time by playing hangman—Melody had come prepared for the long wait with some paper and a pen—but neither could get into the game.
Hannah and Grace claimed the opposite edge as their own. They sat there and whispered to each other. It might have been motion sickness, or maybe just another symptom of the curse, but their skin was taking on a greenish hue. Occasionally one would cry, and the other would offer a comforting hug or a pat on the shoulder, as long as it didn’t mean looking at each other.
Crow considered saying something to them. After all, he knew what it was like to go from a normal-looking kid to a deformed atrocity because of a curse. Despite this, he couldn’t think of anything cheerful to say. His life hadn’t exactly improved after his own curse, even if he finally did have a friend again, and their victory against the Meera was far from certain.
When another panel came close, Travis stood, although he had shrunk so much that it hardly made a difference. “Let’s go.”
Melody and Crow shook their heads.
“Not yet,” Melody said as the panel slid away. “We have to wait.”
Travis sat back down, or maybe he just shrank some more—it was hard to tell. Either way, he didn’t say anything else. Other than Grace and Hannah’s whispered conversation and the swooshing of the panels, the room was quiet.
But not for long. After a while, Grace and Hannah’s whispers grew louder. Angrier. Eventually, they morphed into shouts.
“You’re the ugly one!” said Hannah, identifiable only by the princess dress she wore. Her face, all chin hair and nose, looked nothing like the beautiful visage Crow had seen on Halloween.
“If I’m uglier now,” Grace said, “it’s only because normally I’m the prettier one. That’s why I’ve starred in commercials and you haven’t.” She, too, could be identified only by her costume. Her face, neck, and arms were completely covered in warts. Even her warts had warts.
“One commercial! For your uncle’s company!” Hannah pushed Grace, who pushed her back. A wart-covered hand pulled a fistful of chin hair. Long, curling nails scratched at greenish skin. They pushed and pulled each other to the floor, where their wrestling brought them dangerously close to the edge of the platform.
Grace’s hair, frizzy and gray, touched the water, and she screamed. Hannah held her down while the fish ate her hair.
Melody and Crow exchanged a look. They had to do something. She pulled Hannah back, and he helped Grace up. If anything, this made her scream more loudly.
“Get away from me!” Hannah yelled, struggling to free herself from Melody’s hold.
“Let go of me!” Grace cried. She pushed Crow away. “This is all your fault!”
Hannah nodded, her large nose bobbing up and down. “Yeah. The two of you are probably working with the monster. Monsters always work together!”
Crow stepped backward, away from the girls who had stopped attacking each other and now looked ready to attack him. With another step, he tripped over something. No—not something. Someone. Travis. Only a foot tall, he’d tied his shirt around him as a sort of robe, and the rest of his clothes sat in a heap.
Hannah lunged, and all Crow could see was nose. He rolled away just in time, and she landed on top of Travis, whose high-pitched scream could have made dogs cry.
Melody leaped onto a platform passing by. “Come on, Crow. Before it moves away.”
Crow hesitated. He knew they were supposed to wait with the patience of a spider, but spiders didn’t have to deal with Grace and Hannah. He jumped.
His left foot grazed the water, but the rest of him landed safely on the platform. He took off his shoe, worried that the fish still clung to it. The vicious little creatures had stayed in the water, though. Other than a large hole in the sole of his shoe, he was fine. He’d made it.
Grace and Hannah crouched, ready to jump. Panic filled Crow’s mind. He’d made it onto one platform, but the next was farther away, and the one after that farther still. He’d never make it all the way to the exit. And the girls, sure that he was a monster, sure that he had something to do with their curse, might throw him into the water if they ever caught up. Even an undead boy couldn’t survive being eaten.
“Don’t leave me!” Travis cried, his voice high and tiny. “I can’t jump that far.”
With the platforms moving away, Grace and Hannah couldn’t jump, either. They whispered to each other before sitting down next to the button. They pressed it for a long time, until the platform shrank to half its original size. Then, seeing that Melody had been right, they finally stopped. The two groups waited separately, occasionally sliding much closer than Crow would have liked.
The wait seemed
longer this time. Crow wondered whether, as punishment for jumping onto the next platform, they would be stuck there forever. Maybe it was better that way. Defeating the Meera seemed like an impossible feat.
But he had to try.
No longer fighting, Hannah and Grace sat leaning against each other. A lump of clothes that must have been Travis sat between them.
Crow couldn’t help feeling sorry for them.
Before his death, he’d had a pretty good life. He was the captain of the academic bowl, the winner of the fourth-grade spelling bee, and the star of the school play. Friends always surrounded him, and in third grade, he’d gotten more Valentine’s Day cards than anyone else in his class.
Luke hadn’t gotten any cards that year. People had given him some; he just never received them. Someone had dumped all of his cards into Crow’s bag. By the time Crow noticed that some of the cards were addressed to someone else, he’d already bragged about all the valentines he’d received. He couldn’t admit the truth then, not even to stop Luke from crying in the corner.
He hadn’t thought about that day for a long time. It had only been a prank. Crow didn’t even know who’d done it—maybe someone trying for a laugh, maybe someone seeking revenge. It hadn’t seemed important, not in light of everything that had happened.
Now he couldn’t stop thinking about it.
Maybe Crow had never bullied anyone the way Luke and his friends did, but he hadn’t always been nice, either. That didn’t mean that he’d deserved to have his life ripped away from him, though. Nobody was perfect. The Meera should know that.
The slow back-and-forth movement of the floating platforms lulled everyone to sleep. Everyone except Crow, who never slept. Hours later, when the platforms lined up, he was the only one still awake.
He shook Melody’s shoulder. She bolted upright, her eyes already wide open. She started to say something, but he silenced her with a finger to his mouth. He pointed to the platforms, and she nodded.
They tiptoed forward, silently agreeing not to wake the others. It was safer for everyone that way.
“Are you sure about this?” Melody whispered. They were standing in front of the door.
“Isn’t it too late to change our minds?” Crow thought he could hear a low growling coming from the next room. The Meera was waiting for them.
“We’ll be fine,” he added, trying his best to sound more confident than he felt. “We just have to stick to the plan. Right?”
Melody nodded and handed him the backpack.
They entered the next room, where engravings of bees urged selflessness. The Meera stood in the center, its growl rising into a roar.
“Why have you come back? Didn’t I give you everything you wished for?”
“You tricked us,” Melody said, her voice quivering. “You cursed me.”
“You cursed yourself, just as humans always do.” Its eyes, blue with rectangular pupils, focused on Crow. “Almost always. Why have you come back? Surely those three vermin aren’t worth your time.”
“I thought you wanted us to be selfless,” Crow said. “And no matter how awful they are, they don’t deserve what you did to them. Nobody does. You have to stop.”
“We can help you,” Melody said. “You must hate that collar. We can help.”
“You help me? Such arrogance.” A laugh like a hyena’s rolled out of the Meera’s beak. “Humans always think they’re better than everyone and everything else, but they aren’t. My tests prove that.”
“But why do you get to test people?” Crow asked. “Someone hurt you, so now you hurt everyone else? It isn’t right. You have to stop.”
“And I suppose you intend to make me?”
“Yes,” Crow said, painfully aware of the Meera’s single horn, sharp beak, and scorpion tail, all poised to strike. “You made a mistake. We know about the collar. Melody knows it’s where your power comes from.”
He removed a net from the backpack. Covered with oil, salt, and herbs, it was slick, and it almost slipped out of Crow’s hands. He threw it over the Meera. Melody had promised the net would weaken the Meera enough to keep it from changing form—but not for long. They had to remove its collar before it had time to break free.
While the Meera struggled against the net, its beak already slicing the beginnings of a hole, Crow tossed Melody the last item from the bag. A hammer, treated with the same mixture of herbs, salt, and oil.
Hannah and Grace burst through the door. Travis, the size of a thumb, rode on Hannah’s shoulder. He was wearing some ribbon taken from Grace’s Greek goddess dress, torn off and folded into a makeshift toga.
Grace grabbed Melody’s arm. “You were going to leave without us!”
The hammer fell to the floor, Melody too distracted to catch it. She pushed Grace away, but it was too late. The Meera had broken free of the net.
Spider silk shot out from its torso, trapping Melody and Grace in the strong, sticky web. It did the same to Hannah and Travis before turning its attention to Crow. “You shouldn’t have returned. Nobody receives a second wish.”
“I don’t want another wish,” Crow said. He dodged a blast of webbing. “I don’t want any wishes at all.”
Only Melody truly understood the Meera’s magic, but she had told Crow enough to defeat it. Hopefully. He just had to reach the hammer, which lay on the floor a few feet away. As more webbing shot toward him, he rolled out of the way and grabbed the hammer.
The Meera transformed into a small, feathered dinosaur. A velociraptor, Crow noted, only around thirty pounds but fast and deadly. He avoided the large claw on its hind legs, which the dinosaur used to kill its prey. When it charged at him, he used the hammer to swat it away.
The velociraptor cried in pain, then charged again. This time, a claw sliced through Crow’s left arm before he managed to swat it away. He didn’t know how long he could fight it off.
Even worse, now that the Meera had abandoned its hybrid form, he didn’t know how to destroy its collar. He couldn’t even see it anymore.
After another good swat at the velociraptor, he ran to Melody. She was still stuck in the web, futilely trying to tear her way out. Crow scratched at the web, too, without any more success. “What do I do?”
Her eyes widened. “Turn around!”
The Meera was transforming again. The feathers disappeared. The body grew, the tail becoming thick, the mouth enormous. Crow gulped. An allosaurus.
The allosaurus’s giant jaws snapped at Crow, who avoided being eaten by jumping onto its snout. Its head thrashed back and forth, but he clung on. As he struggled to gain a better grip, he felt something hard and smooth around the beast’s neck.
“It’s still there,” Melody said. “You can’t see it, but you should be able to feel it.”
The collar. The power source. It was right there; all Crow had to do was remove it.
But removing it wasn’t that easy. The collar had grown with the rest of the beast. Crow held on to the allosaurus’s nostril with one hand, using his other hand to pry the collar off with the claw of the hammer. The collar, strong and solid, resisted the attempt.
The allosaurus disappeared. Crow plummeted to the ground.
A fly buzzed away. The Meera was escaping.
Crow tried to stand—he needed to catch the Meera—but something was wrong with his leg. He looked down, expecting to find that another body part had fallen off. To his relief, his right leg was simply broken. Everything was still attached.
His decayed nerves registered nothing beyond a distant, dull ache. He pulled himself up, putting his weight on his left leg. The Meera was getting away. He had to stop it. Even without pain slowing him down, though, he couldn’t move very fast. He hobbled forward. Not nearly fast enough.
Melody, still caught in the webbing, threw herself at the fly as it passed. Grace was dragged along, and the two fell in a tangled heap.
“I got it!” Melody yelled. “Hurry!”
Crow limped as fast as he could.
&
nbsp; The fly was caught in the spiderweb. It buzzed angrily, unable to escape its own trap. Not in fly form, anyway.
Crow hesitated. If he attacked now, he’d kill the Meera. He’d never planned to do that.
“Smash it!” Grace yelled.
Melody jerked. “No! If you kill it, nothing will change!”
As she spoke, the Meera grew bigger. Its fragile insect wings became the strong, feathered wings of an owl. Its body stretched into the shape of a goat. A large scorpion tail, dripping with venom, rose from its backside. A sharp horn extended from its forehead.
The collar was visible once again.
The Meera tore itself free of the web. Its deadly tail arched forward, ready to sting Melody. She screamed.
Crow struck the collar with his hammer.
The Meera turned its attention to Crow, its stinger now aimed at him.
Melody had said that normally they’d never be able to break the dragon bone collar, but because of the anti-magic oil she’d concocted, they had a chance. He just had to hit it hard enough.
Before the Meera killed them.
Crow ducked out of the way of the stinger and struck the collar again. The Meera’s claws slashed at his chest, tearing his shirt and slicing into his dead flesh. He raised the hammer again and brought it down on the collar with all his strength.
A crack formed in the dragon bone. With one more strike, the collar fell off.
The Meera went through a series of transformations—scorpion, dragon, fish, deer, mammoth, unicorn, crocodile, turtle, phoenix, goat, snake, and other creatures Crow couldn’t identify—each one lasting a fraction of a second. When the changes stopped, it was an owl. Not a goat-scorpion-owl hybrid, but a regular, everyday owl. It flew away.
A wave of pain overwhelmed Crow. He passed out.
When Crow awoke, he noticed four things.
One, pain radiated from his leg. Not a dull ache, but real, burning, excruciating pain. The kind he hadn’t felt in years.