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

by Henry Clark

  We pounded on it.

  The soundproofing was good, but when we put our ears to the surface, we could hear faint knocks answering us from the other side.

  “How do we get this open?” asked Modesty.

  “Why don’t we ask the logem in the parlor?” suggested Pre.

  “The logem in the—Oh!” It’d taken me a moment to get it. “You mean the animatronic grandpa? You think he would know?”

  “He’s connected to the computer network,” said Modesty. “It’s worth a shot.” She wheeled around and led us back the way we had come.

  “Howdy there, blood-soaked children,” said the robot figure when we stood before it. “Rough day?”

  “It’s not blood; it’s tomato juice,” I explained. “How do we open the basement door?”

  “I was born eighty-seven years ago,” Granddad recited.

  “That’s not what I asked.”

  “I used to tell my grandson, little Elwood, all about my adventures running a cucumber ranch. Those were the days, by cracky.” Granddad slapped his left knee.

  “All he’s doing is repeating his house-tour spiel,” I said, disappointed. “We’re wasting our time!”

  “Wait,” said Modesty. “Granddad! Access code TOMATO.”

  “I always knew Elwood would grow up to do great things,” Granddad droned on.

  “That wasn’t the password,” I said, casting my mind back to what Spalding had said. “Granddad! Access code 2-MATE-2.”

  Modesty shrugged. “You say 2-MATE-2, I say TOMATO—”

  Granddad’s head swiveled in my direction.

  “How do we open the basement door?” I repeated.

  “Press your thumb on my face.”

  “Excuse me?”

  “Press your thumb on the face of Elwood Davy’s grandfather in the photo hanging next to the basement door. The photo of the family picnic from ten years ago. It’s a fingerprint reader.”

  “Will it work for anybody?”

  “Anybody, so long as they have Elwood Davy’s fingerprints.”

  “Oh. Could you open the door for us? We’re kind of pressed for time.”

  “You wish me to override the lock?”

  “Yes.”

  Something down the hall went clonk. A scraping sound followed, then running footsteps, then a wild-eyed man, hairier than anything in a werewolf movie, appeared in the doorway.

  We screamed.

  He screamed.

  Everybody jumped back a foot.

  The hairy-faced man shakily stretched his hand toward us and said, “Did he kill you? Are you ghosts? Or am I hallucinating again?”

  “It’s… tomato juice,” I said, remembering we all looked like something out of Sapling Farm’s monster barn. “Are you Elwood Davy?”

  “Yes, yes, of course I’m Elwood Davy.” He raked his fingers through hair that would have reached to his shoulders if he had ever taken the trouble to comb it in that direction and yanked at a beard that covered his chest like a furry lobster bib. He stepped into the light, and we could see Elwood Davy’s face peering out of all the shagginess. He was barefoot, wearing blue jeans and a ragged T-shirt.

  “He didn’t kill you? Where is he? He’s got the strength of ten men, you know!”

  “He’s in one of the tomato-juice tanks,” said Modesty. “At least, I hope he is. He’s awake by now. Listen, listen—we don’t have much time, and you’re probably not going to believe us—”

  “Never mind all that!” he snapped. “I have to stop the twelve twelve DavyTron update from going out, otherwise Congroo will become a wasteland!”

  “Well, that was easy,” said Pre.

  “You know what’s going on?” I asked.

  “Of course I know what’s going on. I can’t help but know what’s going on. Every night I’ve been imprisoned, John Deere’s been telling me everything he’s been up to! Then he apologizes over and over. I’m so sorry! I’m so sorry! What’s the time?”

  He spun around to see the clock on the mantel.

  It was 12:11.

  “Whoa! Follow me!”

  He dashed out the door, and we ran after him, racing up the stairs to his old apartment over the garage. He threw himself into the chair in front of the computer. He flexed his fingers above the keyboard.

  “Now—”

  He typed furiously. Then he sat back and slammed his fists down on the desk.

  “He changed the password. I can’t get in!”

  The computer’s clock advanced to 12:13.

  We were too late.

  CHAPTER 29

  MAGIC AMOK

  What could he have changed the password to? Maybe he wrote it down somewhere.” Elwood started rummaging through the papers on the desk. “Help me look!”

  “It doesn’t make any difference,” Pre cried. “It’s past time! The update thingy’s gone out. Congroo is doomed!”

  “What?” Elwood glanced up. “Oh, that. This computer’s clock has always been fast. We’ve got, oh, at least thirty seconds. What could he have used as a password?”

  “Only Ye Who Speak Wisely May Enter Here,” I said.

  “What?” Elwood glanced up at me and frowned.

  “It’s a quote on a locked door in the video game Castle Conundrum,” I explained. “It only took my friend Drew half a second to figure out the password. It was obvious. I’m trying to think the same way he did.”

  Elwood considered for a second. “The password was… wisely?”

  “No—the password was obvious.”

  I leaned past him and typed ten characters into the keyboard.

  I’M SO SORRY

  The screen remained locked.

  I added an exclamation point.

  !

  The screen cleared.

  “That’s it!” Elwood crowed, and reclaimed the keys. His fingers flew, and in a moment, the mind-numbing gibberish of computer code appeared before us.

  “Select all,” Elwood barked. “Delete!”

  Everything on the screen vanished.

  “There!” Elwood raised his arms over his head in triumph. “Three seconds to spare. That’ll show that Oom-pah-pah guy. Mess with me, will he?”

  “Oöm Lout,” Pre corrected him, and a strange blue—possibly cerulean—light came in through the window.

  “Does anybody else feel strange?” asked Modesty, and hugged herself.

  My skin prickled, and I was suddenly light-headed.

  “You’re getting it, too?” Elwood got shakily to his feet. “I thought it might be the altitude. This is the first time I’ve been out of the basement in years. But if we’re all feeling it—”

  “Are the trees supposed to be glowing?” asked Pre from the window. “Is it something scientifical?”

  We crowded around him. Through the front of the lobby, we could see the trees on the far side of the parking lot. They were the source of the eerie blue light. They were covered with it.

  “Like St. Elmo’s fire,” said Elwood.

  “Did we do that?” Modesty wondered. “When we stopped the update?”

  “I don’t know. Maybe.” I suspected we had. “We should get a closer look.”

  We turned for the door and crashed into a wall in the middle of the room that hadn’t been there a moment earlier. The wall was stone, covered with moss, and almost reached the ceiling. It had a hole in it where a window might once have been.

  “I know this wall,” said Pre. “It’s part of the ruins of the Abbey of Legerdemain. You’ve seen it—looking across the valley from the top of the library tower. It’s part of Congroo!”

  “What’s it doing here?” I asked.

  “Getting in our way,” growled Modesty, and she clambered through the hole. Once through, she gestured impatiently for us to follow.

  “The abbey’s in the same location in my world as Mr. Davy’s factory is in yours,” said Pre as he slid over the sill. “Somehow, our two worlds are drawing closer together. They’re overlapping.”

  We
got out of the house. Broken stone walls jutted out of the lobby’s tile floor. A withered tree loomed over the reception desk.

  “Let’s see how far this thing extends.” Elwood ran for the elevators, dodging around the rocky remains of the former home of Congroo’s foremost dragon expert. At the elevator, we helped him pull a vine off the door. The elevator seemed sluggish on the way up, but it finally opened on the top floor, and the office didn’t look any different from the last time we had been there. We sprinted out through the roof garden, stopped at the parapet, and gazed across the valley.

  The entire forest that surrounded Gernsback Ridge was glowing with the eerie blue light, and the glow was spreading out in all directions. As we watched, it engulfed downtown Disarray—the buildings began to shimmer—and then it rolled like an ocean across the far side of the valley and lit up Sapling Farm.

  “Somebody’s bound to notice this,” I said.

  “Ring, ring.”

  I fumbled at my pocket, then realized I didn’t have my phone.

  And Modesty’s phone wasn’t working.

  “Ring, ring.”

  The voice came from behind us.

  We turned.

  A large lady in a lavender dress and a matching hat with a swooping brim that hid one eye was sitting on the edge of the rooftop garden’s fountain, knitting a sweater. The strand of yarn she was using ended in midair, as if the ball it came from were invisible or located somewhere else.

  “You’re all quite revolting; are you aware of that?” she said. “Even the adult, who should know better. I really can’t talk to you while you’re looking like this.”

  She waved a hand at us, said one word—it sounded like xylophone—and I shuddered as something rubbed itself all over my body, yanked my hair in every direction, and flapped my clothing around me as if I were standing in a hurricane. It lasted only a moment, then I stretched out my arms to see they were no longer covered in tomato juice. My clothing was clean and dry. I had a sneaking suspicion my hair had been combed.

  The others were equally neat and tidy, wearing what looked like freshly washed apparel. Elwood had been shaved and given a haircut. He looked like the Elwood Davy in the photos.

  “That’s better,” said the woman.

  “Delleps.” I stated it, just in case she’d disappear if I asked a question.

  “Yes, of course. Who else would I be?”

  “You can do magic here,” said Pre.

  “So can you.” Delleps put aside her knitting and stood. “At least for the next hour or so. That’s what I have to talk to you about. I tried calling, but somebody isn’t answering his phone.” She glared at me.

  I hunched my shoulders and studied my feet.

  “I lost it.”

  “Careless.”

  “We saved Congroo!” I reminded her, hoping that would make it better.

  “That’s just it. You didn’t. You were too late.”

  “What?”

  “I deleted the DavyTron update code,” Elwood protested. “That should have made everything all right!” He turned to me. “Who is this woman?”

  “She’s an oracle. Her name is Delleps.”

  “Delleps?” Elwood pondered for a split second. “That’s spelled backward.”

  “Your quick and unnecessary word analysis tells me you must be the nerd genius who started all this.” Delleps sighed. “I would say I’m pleased to meet you, but I’m not. Not even remotely.”

  “I didn’t start all this,” Elwood protested. “I only wanted children to be able to design their own Mister Zucchini Heads. And I’ve just undone the damage. I deleted the code.”

  “Yes, and that was well done.” Delleps nodded. “But what’s happening now is, any unused magic stored up in those machines of yours is leaving the machines and rushing back into Congroo, and there’s too much of it. It’s like a bathtub that can only drain a little water at a time trying to deal with thousands of gallons.”

  “Like the time the landslide dammed up the magic behind the Delectable Mountains,” said Pre, looking awestruck. “That’s what all this blue light is!”

  “Exactly,” Delleps agreed. “A huge puddle of magic is forming. It’s draining here in this building, but the puddle extends a good four miles in every direction. For the next hour or so, magic will work within that puddle.”

  “Without it being a Magic Minute?” said Modesty, her eyes lighting up.

  “Without it being a Magic Minute, yes,” agreed Delleps.

  “And this is a problem?” I asked.

  “It’s not, in and of itself. Congroo will have its magic back within the hour—but it won’t do any good. It may give us a few extra months, maybe even a year or two—but it won’t last.”

  “But—but the magic will raise the temperature and keep the last of the flyer-fries alive, and dragons eat flyer-fries, and dragons exhale magic.” Modesty sounded like she was pleading. “So it’ll start up again. Life’s a web. My father always said so.”

  “It would start again.” Delleps’s face became grave. “Except for one thing. Phlogiston is dead.”

  “Phloggie died?” Pre said in a small, broken voice.

  “No!” Modesty yelped. The rest of us were stunned speechless. “She can’t be! It’s my mission to keep her alive! It’s what my dad would have done! He would have dropped everything and risked everything to do it. She can’t be dead!”

  “It happened only moments ago,” Delleps said crisply. “Leaving only her mate, Alkahest, as the last surviving dragon. A single dragon is not a breeding population. Congroo will use up its magic, the Pacifist Enforcement and Control Enchantment will fail, and petty warlords like Oöm Lout will enslave the land. Congroo will return to the Dark Ages.”

  Pre shuddered. I stood silently. Modesty paced rapidly back and forth, as if she was looking for something to hit.

  “Wait,” I said, thinking it through. “You’re not… being cryptic.”

  “No, I’m not here in my capacity as an oracle. I’m here on my own as a concerned citizen of Congroo. If I had been able to reach you on your phone, then I would have been cryptic. I had a nice ambiguous limerick all worked out, rhyming airborne and forlorn. And a third word. Now I’ll never get to use it.”

  “You didn’t come here just to make us feel bad,” I said, knowing I was onto something. “You came because you must think there’s still something that can be done. Something… involving whatever it is Verbena discovered about dead dragons!”

  “Viridis, and yes—there is a slim hope. And you’re the only ones in a position to do anything about it. I’ve taken the liberty of calling you a cab. It should be here any minute.”

  Pre stepped forward.

  “What can we do?” he demanded.

  “Phlogiston is dead. But Phlogiston’s anima—her spirit—has yet to go wherever dragons’ spirits go when they die. No. Phlogiston’s spirit has entered the receptacle that this young man’s father so thoughtfully prepared for her.”

  She pointed at me.

  “My father?” I leaned forward as if I hadn’t heard her correctly. “My dad hasn’t made any receptacles. He’s getting ready for Halloween. He painted some signs; he decorated the barn; he made a… corn maze….”

  “Exactly. The labyrinth. In the shape of a dragon. Phlogiston’s spirit fled there when our two worlds became even more overlapped than usual. I hope your father didn’t make the maze too simple, because once the spirit finds its way out, there will be no bringing it back. You must track it down and give it a good slap in the face.”

  “A slap in the—”

  “Or a kick in the butt. If the three of you could tackle it from three sides and give it a good simultaneous whack, that would be ideal—a sudden jolt should send it back into its body, unless you take too long and the body grows cold. Do you understand?”

  “No!”

  “Good. That’s exactly what an oracle likes to hear, even if she is off duty.”

  A loud thud came from behin
d us. We turned. The fire tower was pressed up against the parapet.

  “There’s your cab.” Delleps walked toward us, fluttering her hands as if she were shooing geese. “Let’s not dillydally. Off you go. Get in. Get in! Not you, Mr. Davy!”

  Elwood had been eagerly following us. Delleps caught him by the shoulder and spun him around. “You’ve got sixteen hundred employees and no product to sell. There’s work to do, young man, if you’re going to treat those people fairly. Stay here and get to it!”

  Elwood looked like a five-year-old who had been denied ice cream.

  “But—”

  “No buts.”

  “These children need a responsible adult with them,” Elwood protested.

  “And how is that you? Besides, I’ve found these three do very well without supervision.”

  She brushed past him. The rest of us had straddled the parapet and dropped into the fire tower’s cab. Delleps leaned in the window.

  “A couple of things before you go. Once the magic drains out of here, the suction that follows it will slam shut all the conduits between the two worlds. Magic will cease to work here, even at the times you call Magic Minutes.”

  “No!” shrieked Modesty. “Permanently?”

  “That, I can’t predict. Certainly for a while. You should check back periodically. My point is, one of you is going to have to decide which world you’d prefer to be stranded in.” Delleps gave Pre a piercing glance. He staggered back a step. “And the rest of you should realize that if this puddle of magic made it possible for me to cross over from Congroo, then nothing is stopping others from doing it.” She glanced at me. “Including your friend, provided he wakes up to the fact in time. And”—she turned her attention back to the three of us—“I’m sure by now Hemi-Semi-Demi-Director Oöm Lout has figured out his plan is in jeopardy. Be on your guard.”

  She rapped her knuckles twice on one of the cab’s roof posts, and the tower lurched away from the building.

  “And oh,” she called after us, “don’t underestimate how fast a logem can run!”

  The fire tower crouched and hurled itself forward.

  “Whoa!”

  We each grabbed a post for support. The cab rocked back and forth as the tower galloped, no longer picking its way carefully but barely missing obstacles as it dodged from side to side, sprinting straight for Sapling Farm. If there was any doubt that we were in a puddle of magic, it vanished the moment the water tower atop Campbell Hill leaned forward and turned its tank to watch us go.