What We Found in the Corn Maze and How It Saved a Dragon

by Henry Clark

  “That still leaves the power lines,” said Modesty.

  “Nothing I can do about that. We’ll just have to hold tight when the tower dances under.” I turned to Pre. “To Walk with Stilts!” I said, and he took a step back, as I’d said it rather accusingly. “That’s the spell we used, and the tower started walking. We didn’t use a spell called To Make a Tower Walk. Getting the tower to move was an accident. It only happened because the tower’s legs are a little like stilts. Am I right?”

  He shook his head. “I really don’t know. It never would have happened in Congroo. Magic is much more focused there. You usually get what you expect. Except when I use it….”

  “Do you remember the burned-out machine you thought had been hit by lightning?” I asked.

  He nodded. “Yes—”

  “When it burned, it smoked like a chimney. You could see the cloud for miles. If I were to sit in its driver’s seat during a Magic Minute and play the Magic Bite called To Repair a Chimney, do you think that might fix it? It wouldn’t have to be as good as new, just so long as it became a working harvester again.”

  “I have no idea.” Pre looked perplexed. “It might, I suppose, fix it. Or it might turn it into a real chimney or a pile of bricks, or it might start the fire all over again. It would be a very dangerous thing to do, especially if you’re sitting in the middle of it.”

  “But it’s something I’m going to have to try,” I said, feeling hope for the first time since I had set fire to the thing. Maybe I could finally make it up to my folks.

  “Anybody besides me think Spalding Wicket might actually be Elwood Davy?” asked Modesty. She had yawned during my conversation with Pre and had now planted her elbows on the forward windowsill and was peering out into the night.

  “You think that might have been the real Mr. Davy we were talking to?” asked Pre as the tower lurched across the football field behind Disarray Middle. “Why would he pretend to be someone else?”

  “He may need time to think about everything we told him,” said Modesty. “Claiming to be somebody else could be his way of buying time before he has to make a decision. I mean, if he shuts down the DavyTrons, it saves Congroo, but it also puts him and everyone who works for him out of business.”

  “It’s not a decision he should need any time at all to think about,” said Pre defiantly. “It’s affecting both our worlds.”

  “Or,” I said, “he may have told us he’s an impostor as the best way to hide the fact that he’s an impostor. He might know we wouldn’t believe him and we’d assume he’s the real Davy. So he could be messing with our minds big-time. Anybody else think that returning at eleven tonight and going to the factory entrance sounds a little fishy?”

  “What do small fish have to do with it?” Pre inquired.

  “He means suspicious,” Modesty enlightened him, “and yes, it is suspicious, but I think we’re going to have to do it. As Preffy says, Congroo is running out of time. We’ll sneak back tonight, earlier than he expects us. Only this time, we’ll ride our bikes.”

  “Yeah,” I said. “Nothing says master magicians better than three sweaty kids on bicycles.”

  “Once we’re sure we’re with the real Mr. Davy,” continued Modesty, “all we have to do is keep him talking until one twenty-three rolls around. Then we’ll knock his socks off with an intensified To Materialize a Storm Cloud spell.”

  “That spell has nothing to do with removing stockings,” Pre informed us. “You’re thinking of To Undress the Feet, a spell invented by Prince Goldbric the Lazy so he’d never have to bend over again.”

  The fire tower shifted direction, again lining itself up with Sapling Farm. I threw all my weight at the binoculars, swiveled them, and forced the tower away from its destination. It crossed the rock-strewn gully that separated Gernsback Ridge from Campbell Hill and headed up the slope. Once we were over the hill, I could let it set its own course. We’d be on the less populated side of town.

  “Tell us about this Oöm Lout guy,” said Modesty. “What makes him such a creep?”

  “I’ve never thought of him as a creep,” said Pre. “Although his treatment of Master Index is worrisome, and his shortsightedness with regard to Phlogiston’s feeding is vexing. I’m sure he’s reconsidered since we spoke.”

  “Didn’t sound like he would.” Modesty snorted.

  “No, Oöm Lout isn’t necessarily bad,” Pre continued. “He’s just somebody you can’t argue with. Of all the Louts, he’s the biggest.”

  “There’s more than one?” I asked.

  “The Louts have been a powerful family for decades. They made most of their money building livery stables, slaughterhouses, and casinos. Oöm Lout himself, though, isn’t much interested in those things. When he’s not at Weegee Board meetings, he spends most of his time doing Goblin War reenacting. He dresses up like one of the original Goblin War generals and commands a bunch of volunteers who dress up like his troops. They run around on some of the original battlefields and pretend to fight with cardboard replicas of the old shields and swords. It’s a silly hobby, but at least it keeps him out of the Weegee Board a few days each week.”

  “Goblin War?” I asked.

  “Named after Beatrice Goblin, usurper of the throne of Congroo nine hundred years ago. The Goblin Wars were fought shortly before the people of Congroo mastered magic and created PEACE. That’s the Pacifist Enforcement and Control Enchantment, an ongoing spell that prevents troops from using lethal weapons. The Second Goblin War was our final war. We’ve had PEACE ever since.”

  The tower tottered a bit as it made its way around a rocky outcropping halfway up Campbell Hill. We all steadied ourselves.

  “How many reenactors does Oöm Lout play soldier with?” I asked, feeling it might be important. Fearing it, actually.

  “Oh, it varies, but according to the last thing I read, there’s about a quarter million of them.”

  “That’s a lot of troops,” said Modesty.

  “I guess a lot of people like to dress up and run around waving cardboard weapons.”

  “What happens to the Pacifist Enforcement and Control Enchantment when all the magic disappears from Congroo?” I asked.

  Pre was silent. One of the tower’s concrete feet scraped against a tree trunk, and a bunch of bats flew out.

  “I guess…” he said slowly, “that would be the end of the enchantment. Anybody who survived the increased cold and the scarcity of food would also have to face the possibility of the first real war in almost eight hundred years.”

  “Anybody other than Oöm Lout have their own army?” I said as gently as I could. Part of me wanted to scream it.

  “No, of course not. Lout and his people are only playing. It’s not like all their fake battles are training exercises or serious military drills….” Pre trailed off. Modesty and I stared at him.

  “No,” he said at last. “I can’t believe Hemi-Semi-Demi-Director Lout is planning to benefit from the loss of magic. He’s not that clever. The only reason he was able to get elected sixty-fourth assistant head was because my mother died two days before the election, and he ran unopposed. My mother would have won in a landslide. Everybody says so.”

  “Your mother was running against him in an election?” Modesty’s voice got shriller as she spoke. “And she died—in an accident—two days before? You don’t think that’s… suspicious?”

  “I try to think the best of people,” Pre said, an uncertain quaver in his voice. “Oöm Lout may be overbearing and a bully, but I can’t believe he’s evil.”

  “I say he is!” declared Modesty.

  “He isn’t.”

  “Is!”

  “Isn’t!”

  I S

  Huge block letters—an I and an S—suddenly appeared in the forward window of the cab. The tower stopped moving.

  “What the—?” said Modesty.

  We had reached the top of Campbell Hill. In front of us, the town of Disarray’s water tower stood on the crest. Ou
r fire tower had come up beside it, until the cab was level with the water tower’s huge tank. The name of the town—

  D I S A R R A Y

  —curved around the tank, with spotlights shining up at the letters. We were only a few feet away from the I and the S.

  “Then again,” said Pre in a tiny voice, “maybe I’m wrong.”

  CHAPTER 23

  HYPOTHESES

  Why are we stopped?” I wondered.

  The tower was no longer going forward. But that didn’t mean it was completely motionless. The cab was swaying from side to side, as if it were trying to look around the curving tank of the water tower. After a moment, it started walking again, but instead of continuing down the hill in the direction of Sapling Farm, it strode slowly around the Disarray tower, keeping the same window of the cab always turned toward the tank, as if the two towers were having a staring contest.

  “This must be the first other tower it’s ever met,” said Modesty. “I’m sure it doesn’t get out much.”

  “It’s out all the time,” I said. “It’s a tower.”

  “I meant socially.”

  “The tower moves because of magic,” I replied. “Not because it’s alive. It doesn’t have a brain in its head.”

  “Actually, it has three,” said Modesty. “If you think of this cab as its head.”

  Our tower completed its circle around the water tower. When it got back to the point it had started from, it stopped and leaned forward until the edge of its roof touched the side of the tank.

  “No, no, no!” shouted Modesty. “You’re a fire tower. This is a water tower. It’ll never work!” She kicked the wall below the window to get the tower’s attention. “Fire and water do not mix. There can only be heartache.” She kicked it again. “Forget this. Take us home!”

  The tower straightened. Its side legs became its front legs, and it started down the hill, but not without one final twist of the cab to look back at the other tower. One of the spotlights on the water tank—the one shining up at the letters

  R R

  —flickered.

  “What was that?” asked Pre.

  “Short circuit,” I said.

  “Possibly,” said Modesty. “Or maybe it’s warning us to be careful crossing the railroad tracks.”

  The fire tower picked its way slowly through a grove of tall pines. The pay-per-view binoculars swiveled until they were aligned with the distant Halloween glow of the lights that outlined my barn.

  “How is it possible,” Pre said quietly, “that it never occurred to me that Oöm Lout might have had something to do with my parents’ deaths?”

  “Because,” said Modesty gently, “if you had been born into my family, they would have named you something like Innocence, and you would have been the first of us ever to live up to your name.”

  “Your mother, Hope, lives up to her name,” I pointed out.

  “No, she doesn’t. We call her ‘Mum.’ She never shuts up.”

  “What did the Congroo police say about the accident?” I asked.

  “The Quieters? They said… it was an accident.” Pre shrugged. “I only read the reports years later, when I was old enough and Master Index was willing to show them to me. The Quieters, as detectives, aren’t very good. They’re much better at locking people up for disturbing the peace. They rarely solve a mystery, unless the answer’s really obvious.”

  “I’m guessing the people of Congroo aren’t big on the scientific method,” I said.

  “What’s… the scientific method?”

  “You make a guess at the explanation for something you don’t understand. The guess is called a ‘hypothesis.’ Then you come up with ways to test your hypothesis. You set up experiments. You gather evidence. If your hypothesis turns out to be wrong, you chuck it and you think up a different hypothesis and test that. Until you come up with the answer. Any good police detective uses the scientific method.”

  “So,” said Pre, “our hypothesis is… Oöm Lout somehow caused the accident that resulted in my parents’ deaths, because it was the only way he could win a place on the governing board. How do we test that?”

  Neither Modesty nor I had an answer. Our silence said so.

  “We have a second hypothesis,” said Modesty, reaching down and yanking a handful of pine needles from the top of a passing tree. “If Oöm Lout has an army that can only fight in a world without magic, and the magic will be gone from Congroo in a day or two, then Oöm Lout will be able to start conquering Congroo by the end of the week!”

  She tossed her pine needles in the air. They fell on us like thin, undernourished confetti.

  “That’s actually a syllogism,” I said.

  “There’s nothing silly about it,” Modesty snapped. “And I’m not finished. Therefore, if what I said about Lout is true, he may have had something to do with the DavyTrons’ draining Congroo’s magic. Because he would profit from it—he’d get something he wants. That’s the hypothesis. Somehow, Lout may have been responsible for the transmutation spell winding up in the DavyTron computer code.”

  I raked pine needles out of my hair and asked Pre, “Is that possible? Could Lout, or somebody working for him, have come here and messed with Elwood Davy’s computer code?”

  “Impossible.”

  “But you’re here,” said Modesty.

  “I’m only here because I had somebody here who could open the door for me. And that only happened because I put a notebook into a niche, the gniche sent it to your locker, you figured out the incantation, and you created the other side of the door. Do you know what the odds of that happening even once are? Almost impossible. Do you know what the odds of it happening twice are? Beyond possibility.”

  The tower stopped.

  “Now what?” muttered Modesty.

  We leaned out the window.

  The tower had paused on Baily Road where the railroad tracks crossed it. The tower leaned cautiously forward and turned the cab so we could see down the tracks to the left. Then it turned the cab so we could see down the tracks to the right. No trains were coming. The tower straightened and walked assuredly across the tracks, continuing down Baily a little way before it again waded into the woods.

  “It’s learning safety,” said Modesty.

  “H-how can it learn?” I sputtered. “How can it even think? Its head is hollow, except for three kids riding around in it.”

  “Maybe that’s enough,” she said.

  “Some things with hollow heads think pretty well for themselves,” said Pre. “A logem is hollow from head to toe, but some of them think well enough to pass for human. We believe their brains are spread through their outer shell.”

  We rode in silence for a moment. Then Modesty said, “A logem is a magical robot made out of clay?” She spoke very slowly, as if she was working something out in her head, “Grown… from a slab of clay… from the Humpty Dumpty Clay Pits?”

  “Homunculus Clay Pits,” Pre corrected her. “What’s a robot?”

  Modesty ignored Pre’s question. “How big is the slab of clay?”

  “Oh, it’s about the size of that wonderful apple pie I ate. In fact, the trendier stores, like the Logemporium, actually sell them in the shape of a pie. You put it on your windowsill, let the sun hit it for a few days, and the third morning there’s a full-grown, life-size logem sitting in your window, ready to work. Usually, the first thing you tell it to do is, wash the window. They come pre-enchanted.”

  “Pre-enchanted?” I asked.

  “With a set of tasks they already know how to do.”

  “Programmed,” I said.

  “Is that the scientifical word for it?”

  “I think it might be.”

  “I’ve only seen logems at a distance,” said Pre. “They’re ridiculously expensive. Only the very well-to-do have them.”

  “Do logems sleep?” asked Modesty.

  “Well, they become motionless for thirty minutes each day. Nothing can get them to do anything during t
hose thirty minutes. For them, that might be sleep. Nobody’s sure.”

  “Thirty consecutive minutes?” Modesty said. “Or thirty individual minutes spread out over the day?”

  “Consecutive.” Pre nodded emphatically. “And always at the same time each night. Seven thirty BMS until midnight. In your time, that would be… eleven thirty DM.”

  “PM,” I corrected him.

  “PM. The logems become unmoving statues during the final half hour of each day.”

  “Well,” said Modesty despondently. “There goes that hypothesis.”

  “What hypothesis?” asked Pre.

  “I was thinking maybe we were right when we called Spalding Wicket a dummy. I was thinking that maybe he’s one of these logem things. But he can’t be.”

  “No, he can’t,” I said, surprised that I was following her logic. “Why would he want us to come back to Davy headquarters at eleven o’clock tonight if he’s going to go off-line half an hour after we get there? He certainly didn’t invite us back just to watch him sleep. The moment he turned into a statue, Pre would realize he’s a logem. Even you and I would be a little suspicious.”

  “That was a very good hypothesis, though,” said Pre.

  “Power lines!” Modesty announced. “Limbo positions!”

  We grabbed the posts that held the roof to the cab and braced our feet against the walls. The tower slowly bent backward, took eight or nine sliding steps forward, and righted itself after it had passed under the wires. We swung our feet back to the floor as if we did this every day.

  It took another minute or two for the tower to cross the wheat field, clomp across Route 9, and bury its concrete boots in the four holes it had created when it had uprooted itself and gone for a walk. I glanced at my phone. It was 4:03.

  Modesty departed immediately, hoping to get a few hours of sleep before school. I left Pre hidden in the fire tower and descended to the farmyard, intent on getting to my own bed.

  I found it hard to believe that less than two full days had passed since Drew and I had first seen coins move by themselves in Onderdonk Grove. That had been Saturday afternoon. Now Monday’s sunrise was less than three hours away. As I got to the house, I paused and looked across Route 9 at the carcass of the Fireball 50.