“C’mon, Carter. You can do it!”
And then, as the t-rex was about to bite into the baby brontosaurus, Carter mustered up every ounce of courage he possessed and made the decision to go into battle with the giant in front of him. Because he was a very sensitive boy, he didn’t like to see anyone hurt. Since the poor baby brontosaurus was in trouble, he knew he had to take charge of the situation. “I said, hey, you, fart-head!”
The t-rex turned around, baring his fierce teeth. He was gigantic, terrifying, and incredibly ugly. His skin was a fire engine red, muddied by dirt, with claws so long they looked more like sharpened elephant tusks, and his teeth—oh boy, the teeth! All Carter knew at that very moment was he did not want to find himself between those teeth! “Yeah, you, stupid! Ugly don’t scare me, freakmeyer!”
The t-rex obviously did not appreciate the taunting as he lunged toward Carter, who dodged him by mere inches. The gigantic beast snarled, widening his large mouth, further exposing the razor sharp teeth. Carter screamed, “Mason!” His brother was nowhere in sight. All Carter could see were those teeth bared at him, and he kept trying to tell himself not to be afraid. “I will not be a dinosaur snack, I will not be a dinosaur snack,” he said over and over again in his mind.
“The light-wand, Carter. The wand!” He heard Mason yell.
Remembering he held the magic wand, Carter began to swing it around, pointing it at the beast. The small wand and the boy were no match for such a vicious creature. But he trusted, knowing he must, that his brother was nearby and they could bring the t-rex down together.
“Get him!” Mason yelled.
As Rex took another step towards Carter—so close Carter knew if it opened its mouth it could quickly and easily swallow him up—he put all his thought into wielding the magic wand, and with a strength he didn’t know he had, he swung harder than he’d ever swung a baseball bat in his life, even harder than he’d ever swung his fist at his brother. Amazingly he struck Rex in its reptilian, blood shot looking eye. A ray of light shot out through the wand. The creature screamed and spun around several times. It was then that Carter saw Mason who had also hit Rex from behind, wounding the giant in the stomach.
However, the wounds did not keep the now seriously ticked off dinosaur from coming after them. At first, Rex was so confused he didn’t seem to know who to go after.
But Mason was closer to it now, and the giant focused on him. Mason took several steps back, as the bleeding monster charged. Mason fell backwards, nearly dropping his wand. He screamed. Carter could see his brother was in grave danger as Rex bent over him, ready to tear him to shreds.
Mason yelled, “No!”
Carter ran to the front of the dinosaur and with all his might, while yelling out a savage scream, swung the wand again. Once more, a light shot out of the tip of the wand and straight into the giant’s chest. Mason stood up, grabbing his wand, and together—as Rex stumbled backwards—they wielded their wands and struck the creature again.
“Take that, freakmeyer!” Carter yelled.
Rex swayed, and as he fell to the ground, he made one last attempt at the boys. Gnashing out, he grabbed Carter with his teeth, only getting the back of his shirt collar. As the t-rex fell to the ground with Carter dangling from one of its incredibly sharp teeth, he was catapulted from the dinosaur’s mouth and onto the ground where, with one eye closed, he witnessed Rex take his last breath.
Mason ran to Carter’s side. “Carter! Carter! Oh jeez, are you okay? Carter, please say you’re okay.”
Carter, who’d thought for a moment it would be funny to play dead, opened his eyes and said, “Would you miss me if I wasn’t?”
“No!” Mason shouted.
“Liar.”
“Freakmeyer? You called the t-rex freakmeyer What the heck is that supposed to mean? What’s a freakmeyer , dude?”
Carter stood up and shrugged his shoulders. “Katie Smith called me that the other day.”
“Katie Smith is a stupid girl, and she likes you. That’s why she called you that.”
“Well, he didn’t like it did he?” Carter pointed to the dead dinosaur.
“That’s for sure. Still stupid.”
“Is not.”
“Is too.”
“Oh yeah, what would you have called him?” Carter asked.
“I don’t know, something like...” But before Mason could reply they heard another groan. This one was different from the t-rex.
In all the commotion and near-death experience, they’d forgotten about the baby brontosaurus. When they looked around, they saw her lying under the tree where the t-rex had cornered her. They rushed to her side, seeing that old Rex had done some damage. A large wound in her side gaped open. “She’s hurt. She needs stitches, Mason. How are we gonna fix her?”
Blood oozed from the wound, as the poor baby dinosaur groaned. She opened her eyes, pleading with the boys to help her. Mason reached in his backpack and took out a cotton cloth. “I’ll get this wet. There has to be water close by. Stay with her.”
Carter nodded in agreement. “Just don’t bring back anymore freakmeyers with you, please.”
“No, duh!”
Carter sat at the baby’s head, stroking it. “It’s going to be okay. I promise. We’ll fix you up. Don’t worry; no one’s going to eat you. The bad guy is gone, little baby. Well, big baby, huh? You’re hardly little.”
The baby seemed to understand as she stuck her tongue out and slid its rough edges gently across Carter’s hand.
“Hey, that tickles,” he laughed. “Where’s your mom, anyway?”
She rolled her eyes. Carter nodded. “I know, my mom had to go to a meeting, too, and that’s how we wound up here. I hope she isn’t too worried about us, just like I hope your mother isn’t worried about you.”
Within minutes, Mason was back with a damp cloth. “I found a pond nearby. You keep talking to her.” Mason cleaned the wound. The baby moaned and whimpered like a huge puppy, but lay still, as if she knew they were only trying to help.
Once the wound was clean, Mason looked into his bag again, knowing Seyem probably would’ve provided them something for healing wounds, and, sure enough, inside he found a jar labeled, “Magic Salve.” He opened it and rubbed some onto the baby’s wound. To his wonder, it closed up and completely disappeared without even leaving the tiniest of scars. The boys looked at each other in astonishment.
“No way! Did you see that?” Carter said.
“Yeah, cool!”
The baby dino looked at them and with her raspy tongue, licked Mason’s hand in gratitude.
As the boys turned to go, they came face-to-face with an eye larger than anything they’d ever seen in their lives. And the eye was attached to the hugest animal ever, far more gigantic than even the t-rex—truly awe-inspiring. Almost as big as a ship, it was like an aircraft carrier but on four legs, with a huge, long neck.
“Aargh!” Mason yelled and jumped about ten feet backwards.
It was the mother brontosaurus. She tilted her head and sniffed the boys who stood frozen.
“It’s okay,” Carter whispered to his brother. He’d been a dinosaur buff when he was younger. “I don’t think she’ll hurt us. Sauropods weren’t known for being violent.”
“Sauro…what? I thought this was a brontosaurus?”
“She is…sauropod is the family name, you know…the genus. And like I said, scientists think they were pretty gentle.”
“Yeah, unless they think you’re hurting their baby!” Mason muttered out of the corner of his mouth. “You’ve seen how Mom gets when she thinks someone’s looked cross-eyed at us.”
“No, no, I think she only wants to check us out. She’s as unsure of us as we are of her.”
“Right, smarty pants. Since when did you get all A+ student on me?”
Then, the mama dino did something neither boy expected. She stuck out her long, sand paper tongue and, after stroking the baby across her body, she, as gently as possible with the tip, licked each boy a
cross the cheek.
“She’s thanking us, I think,” Mason said.
“Told you she didn’t want to hurt us. But her tongue is kind of gross.”
“Shut-up.”
Then the gentle giant lowered her head again.
“It looks like she wants us to get on her back!” Mason exclaimed.
Carter shrugged his shoulders and led the way as both boys climbed aboard. They settled onto her back—the slightly cool, bumpy skin feeling strange. They couldn’t help but look down and see how high up they were. As the mother dino started moving, she took giant steps that jostled them a bit, but because her back was so large, they were able to stay on. Surrounding them was a myriad of tropical colors that inflamed the bright, blue sky. It was almost like looking through a kaleidoscope, except everything here was quite clear and easy to see. The volcano loomed in the distance, spitting out bubbles of red-hot lava.
“Hey, Mason, look over there,” Carter said, his voice sounding on edge.
“What? Where?”
“There.” Carter pointed a bit to the right.
Mason saw it, way off in the distance, but it was unmistakable. It was the other side of this paradise, the one Seyem warned them about, the one they had to travel to. It was dark and gloomy, and something about it sent a spray of goose bumps down their spines. “That’s what’s eating this paradise up a little more every day. In just a few days, if Queen Zamora gets her way, and…”
“…takes over Izzy’s soul,” Carter interjected.
“Yes, takes over Izzy, this whole place will become dark and evil.”
“We can’t let that happen.”
“No, we can’t, Carter, and we won’t. We’ll get to her. I have to believe it, and so do you. Remember what Seyem told us.”
“I wonder if this old girl can move any faster?”
As if the dinosaur understood what the boys were saying, she slowly rolled into a jog. Carter nearly slid off, and grabbed onto Mason. Then she changed direction. The boys yelled and tried to coax her back towards the gray, dark sky to the right, but nothing they did made her turn.
“Look in the pack. See if there’s anything that can help us!” Mason yelled.
Carter rummaged through the backpack, finding the guidebook, hoping it would tell them what to do. He skimmed through it twice. “The only thing I can find is a passage that reads, ‘Things don’t always look as they seem. Trust those with kind heart. They will know the path of your journey. But beware not all have kind hearts, even though they may seem like it.’”
“Well, she must have a kind heart because she could’ve taken us out back there,” Mason said.
“Yeah, I guess you’re right.”
“That’s sort of like the third rule: believe in the light of the soul.”
“Yeah, I guess,” Carter repeated.
Twenty minutes later, it felt as if they’d gone in a circle, but they could see they hadn’t as they rounded a bend to the other side of the mountain.
“Uh-oh,” Carter said.
“You can say that again.”
“Uh-oh.”
They’d entered pterodactyl territory. Looking up into the sky, they could see the wings of the great, bird-like dinosaurs flying above them. A bit further off was a sight that was both savage and brilliant: the flocks of winged dinosaurs dove into an expansive sea, bringing up all sorts of interesting-looking sea creatures and swallowing them whole. Mason and Carter both knew what this meant. This was where the gentle giant would leave them; she had no choice. What lay ahead could take her life and she had a baby to take care of. She bowed her head so they could climb down off her back.
The boys gave her a pat on the neck, and a wide grin spread across the face that didn’t quite fit the terrifyingly huge body. They thanked her and watched as she turned and thundered away. As they turned back to the scene in front of them, Carter asked, “What do we do now?”
“If you remember the game, I don’t think it’s about what we do now. It’s about what we don’t do.”
“What’s that, Mason?” Carter had obviously not been paying attention, as he should have, during this level. Before Mason was able to respond, the answer became quite clear. The winged monsters in the sky sensed they had foreign visitors. Like a group of fighter planes heading out to battle, they turned their attention to the boys and flew straight for them.
Mason yelled, “Run!”
The boys ducked behind rocks, weaving between bushes and foliage, to avoid being swooped up and made into dinner. But there was another fear, aside from the all-consuming possibility they could be eaten alive at any moment. As Carter ran from one large boulder to another, his eyes darting around in search of his older brother, the ground exploded right in front of him, and he bounced several feet into the air. As he landed, nearly falling into a crater that had just been created by what had fallen from the sky, memories of exactly what was happening clicked on in Carter’s brain.
Mason ran up next to him, grabbing his hand. Continual near misses from groundbreaking bombs exploded all around them, burning up everything in site. What was once green and lush was rapidly turning into black, smoke-filled craters. White plumes rose up from the holes along with a stench so foul—so much worse than even the boys’ dog, Java, had ever farted—that as the boys ran and dodged the bombs, they also held their noses.
“They’re pooping on us! They’re poop bombs, Mason. Poop bombs!!”
“I heard you the first time, genius!”
“What do we do?”
“We dodge them, until…until now! Come on!”
The boys ran faster as they saw exactly what Mason remembered would be there—at least it was there in the game—a downed pterodactyl. Old and oblivious to the chaos surrounding him, the ancient dinosaur slept up in one of the huge trees. “We’ve got to get to him,” Mason yelled above the squawking birds and their poop bombs, which continued to land and explode all around.
“Up there? Are you crazy?!” Carter pointed to the top of the tree where the winged dinosaur slumbered through the events surrounding him.
“Yes, up there! No, I’m not crazy. It’s the only way. It’s how the game is played.”
“Yeah, well, I never did like this level.”
“Too bad. Follow me.” Mason and Carter barely escaped being bombarded by several of the acid bombs as they ran underneath the cover of the giant tree. Carter was not one for heights and he continued to protest. Mason turned and faced him, grabbing him by the shoulders and looking him square in the eyes. “Listen, there’s no other way out of this. We can stay here and go down in history as the first kids to ever die from exploding poop. Or we can climb this tree and escape to the next level. Before long we’ll be that much closer to saving Izzy. She needs us Carter. I need you!”
The younger boy, still shaking, nodded his head. With a new determination, he climbed the tree. Mason scaled it behind him. “Ouch!” screamed Carter.
“What is it?” Then whatever it was stung Mason as well. Large fire ants were biting them on their hands. The pain hurt just as much as a bee sting. But the boys had a mission. Even though the fire ants continued to bite, they climbed the tree. Reaching the highest branch above the ancient pterodactyl, they sat at the edge rubbing their stings, both wanting to cry from pain and fear.
“Maybe the salve we used on the baby brontosaurus would help,” Carter suggested, while eyeing the giant, sleeping dinosaur below them.
Mason nodded. He took Carter’s backpack from his shoulders. They both carefully balanced on tree branch. “Careful, Mason.”
Mason pulled out the magic salve and rubbed it on his brother’s arms and hands. Immediately the burning subsided and the stings evaporated. Mason quickly rubbed it on himself. “Aaah! Yes!”
“No kidding. I never felt anything so horrible in my life. I almost let go of the tree at one point.”
“I think that’s what the idea was—to make us let go. But we didn’t, and now we’re here. On to phase two of
Operation Dino Fly.”
“Operation Dino Fly?”
“Yeah. Now Carter, see that flimsy limb closest to you?”
“Uh, hmm.”
“Break it off, but make sure you don’t make it too short.”
“What’s this all about?”
“We’re making a bridle for our winged pal over there.”
“Wait. A what? Like a horse? Oh no, Mason, you mean we’re gonna…”
“Yessiree, we’re gonna fly that thing on out of here.”
“Jeez, Mom is gonna kill us.”
“C’mon, Carter, Mom isn’t here and we’re wasting time.” Mason held Carter’s legs as he reached across the tree and grabbed the limb his brother pointed out. It took a minute but he was finally able to wrestle it free. He handed it to Mason, who had at one time in his life, been greatly teased by the neighborhood boys for his proficiency at string games. The kind little girls usually play. Carter regretted ever joining in with those kids, because right now Mason was twining that piece of limb around like it was a piece of string. Before long, he had himself a bridle. He broke off one more piece of branch. This one was much smaller, but thicker, and he tied it around in the middle.
“What’s that?” Carter asked.
“It’s a bit. It goes in his beak. Don’t you remember when Mom and Dad took us to that dude ranch for summer vacation? Before Izzy was born?”
Carter nodded and the mere mention of Izzy’s name brought tears to his eyes. Life was different before their baby sister was born, and only a short time ago they had both been so certain life had also been much better before Izzy showed up. Carter didn’t believe that anymore. He’d never realized until he sat on this tree branch in the middle of a world he’d only seen via a video game, frightened he might die, just how much he loved his little sister. They would save her. They had to. He grabbed the bridle from Mason’s hands.
“Hey!” Mason said. But before his big brother could grab it back, Carter had harnessed the unwary pterodactyl, which let out quite a cry. He climbed on its back, and Mason quickly followed behind.
“Wait a minute!” Mason shouted. “I don’t think you should be driving this bird. You don’t have that much luck with it at home on the game. You always crash him into the ground and then get splatted by the bombs.”
The Clover Siblings and the Evil of Desmal Page 3