The Crown of the Bandit King

by Matti Lena Harris

  I raced to meet with Deeter and Sweet Pea at the slide.

  “Anything?” Sweet Pea asked me as I joined them. “Oh! What happened to your cheek?”

  I told them about creepy Mrs. Hiddleburg (and her carnivorous pigeon), along with everything that had happened, while Sweet Pea fetched a tissue from her pack and held it against my cheek to stop the bleeding.

  “That doesn’t make sense!” she said. “Why would Mrs. Hiddleburg, of all people, try to take The Book of All Words?”

  “Maybe she wasn’t trying,” Deeter said. “Maybe she was just a snoopy old lady. Wanted to pry into Rookie’s private stuff. Or maybe she was a pickpocket looking for cash to take.”

  “Yeah, so she can buy more meat to feed her pigeon,” I said.

  Whatever was going on, this was a bad idea, coming here. I shouldn’t have suggested it.

  “We tried,” Sweet Pea said. “Let’s go back and—”

  A crash of thunder resounded around us, causing Deeter to jump while Sweet Pea made a small cry. Then the sky darkened as if someone had thrown a gray wool sweater over it. Raindrops started to fall, first one.

  Then another.

  Then a downpour, hard and cold. It was weird how fast the storm was growing. The clouds above us billowed and swirled while lightning streaked overhead. But worst of all was the jumpy feeling I got deep inside me. Like trouble was coming.

  Magical trouble.

  “It must be the Black Umbrella!” Sweet Pea shouted over the sudden downpour. “Someone’s using it against us!”

  “Oh, man! It’s a trap!” Deeter said. “We better get out of here!”

  “Run! Run for the gate! Run for the exit!”

  We took off as fast as we could, splashing through the spreading puddles of mud on the path.

  “What’s the Black Umbrella?” I yelled. “What does it do?”

  “It’s a Collectible that can control the weather over small areas!” Sweet Pea said. “We’ve got to escape! There’s no time—”

  She was interrupted by a huge roar coming from behind us. It grew louder and louder, so we looked back. A giant wave of brown, muddy water careened through the park, swallowing up playground equipment and park benches as it rushed right towards us.

  “Too late!” Sweet Pea cried.

  Chapter 11

  The Sidewalk Chalk

  “We’ll never make it to the gate in time!” Sweet Pea shouted. “Run for the pavilion!”

  Maybe the sight of that out-of-control killer wave had made Sweet Pea lose her mind. The pavilion? That was just a large gazebo in the center of the park, sort of like a covered stage for theater performances.

  Honestly, how would such a place protect us from a flash flood?

  I glanced at Deeter, but he was already running in the pavilion’s direction, his sneakers splashing through the flowing stream that used to be the path. Sweet Pea was right behind him, so I followed too. Crazy or not, she was right about one thing—we’d never make it to the park exit.

  When we reached the pavilion, Sweet Pea swung her backpack off, unzipped it and searched inside.

  “Whatever you’re planning, you better make it quick!” Deeter yelled, hopping from one foot to the other. “There’s no time!”

  The wave engulfed the slide where we’d been standing only moments before. Its dark water roiled and churned, spraying flecks of brown-speckled foam and uprooted grass as it roared its way closer to the pavilion.

  Sweet Pea held up a small tin box. “Found it!”

  Whatever was in the tin box, it was definitely a Collectible. My skin prickled the moment she took it out of her pack.

  “The Sidewalk Chalk?” Deeter said. “Does the Ragman know you brought that?”

  Sweet Pea didn’t answer. Instead, she tossed Deeter a piece of brown chalk.

  “We need a ship!” she said. “Big enough for the three of us! Don’t forget the rudder!”

  Then she tossed me a piece of white chalk, and she snatched a gray piece for herself.

  “You draw the sails, Rookie! I’ll make the anchor!”

  Draw a ship. Right. Not exactly the last thing I thought I’d be doing before dying. At least now it made sense why Sweet Pea had chosen the pavilion—it was the only place in the whole park with cement rather than grass or dirt for ground. Deeter was already sketching madly, and his drawing was starting to look like a ship while Sweet Pea began drawing the anchor.

  “Do it!” she shouted at me.

  No reason to argue. No time, either. The chalk made my fingers tingle as I crouched and tried my best to draw some sails. They turned out pretty pathetic and wobbly, but no one else seemed to notice. When we’d finished, we stood next to the chalk ship. Sweet Pea shouldered her backpack again while Deeter chewed his nails. I waited.

  Nothing happened.

  The wave crashed through some trees, uprooting them as it went. They had been the last things between us and the wave.

  “Um, Sweet Pea?” I said, my voice shaking. “It’s a nice ship and all…but how is this suppose to save us?”

  “There must be a gap!” she cried. “All the chalk lines have to connect! Quick, find the gap!”

  The ground trembled beneath our feet with the oncoming wave. Deeter hunched over, examining the lines he’d drawn and mumbling, “Oh, man! Oh, man!”

  Sweet Pea studied her own lines with quick precision, her lips pursed and her eyes intent. I walked along the lines I’d drawn, looking at the way they slanted and wiggled where they should have been straight. It was hard not to glance at the approaching wave. Was it just me, or was it speeding up?

  A gap. There, right where my sails should have connected to Deeter’s mast, a slight break in the white line I’d drawn. It was less than half of an inch, but maybe even that was enough.

  “Found it! Sweet Pea, Deeter, I—”

  I made the mistake of glancing up. First, I saw Deeter’s face, his eyes wide, and Sweet Pea too, her face as pale as my white chalk.

  And then, the wall of water.

  In that last second, I retraced the broken line with a slash of my chalk, right as the wave crashed into the pavilion. The shock of cold chaos hit me, and the current yanked me in every direction. I clawed at the water, trying my best to swim. Which way was up and which was down? I fought, but it was no good. My black coat was too heavy underwater, and I had no more breath.

  I started to sink.

  A hand grabbed the scruff of my coat, and I had the oddest sensation that I was rising. At first, I thought the wave was causing it, but then something hard underneath the water pushed up against the flood, pushing me up with it.

  Air, at last.

  The thing, whatever it was, broke through the water’s surface, and I gasped for breath. There was a tremendous creaking sound, like wood strained almost to breaking, and the thing beneath me rolled like a barrel. A tall mast lifted into the sky, with its sails dripping wet and flapping loose, until suddenly they caught the wind and billowed out.

  Unbelievable.

  The ship we’d drawn was real. Real and surging forward, driven by the wind. It looked like a Viking ship, long with tall sides, but the hull was shallow. On each side, oars poked out and in the back, a side rudder steered the ship. The waves crashed against the ship’s sides, but the ship skimmed past them like they weren’t even there.

  Not bad for a chalk drawing.

  Somehow, I’d ended up on the ship’s deck—half-drowned, shivering, and gasping for breath, sure, but I was alive. Sweet Pea was near the anchor, coughing. She grinned at me, and for some reason I stopped shivering when her eyes met mine. But then her face fell. It took me a minute to understand why.

  Deeter.

  Sweet Pea and I both scrambled to the sides of the ship and looked out at the water, but there was no sign of him amongst the torrent full of snapped tree branches and broken playground equipment.

  The world’s most annoying boy was gone.

  Which should have been cause for celebrat
ion. No more fights. No more insults. No more whining. It should have been history’s greatest day.

  So why did I feel like throwing up?

  I cupped my hands to my mouth and shouted, “Deeter!”

  “It’s no use,” Sweet Pea said. “He’s gone. I tried to grab onto him, but the current was too strong! I couldn’t hold him.”

  I gazed at the water again, searching for the orange speck of Deeter’s T-shirt. Or some sign to show me he was alive. But there was nothing. Just brown, murky water.

  He couldn’t be drowned. He couldn’t be.

  Sweet Pea sat down and hugged her knees to her chest. She started to cry.

  “I always knew something like this would happen someday,” she said. “That I’d let him down somehow. I always let everyone down.”

  “It’s not your fault, Sweet.” I eased myself down beside her. “If I’d made my lines straight, the ship would’ve been ready in time. I’m the one who messed up. Not you.”

  “But it was my idea to use the sidewalk chalk in the first place! I should have thought of something else. The chalk was too risky!”

  “We wouldn’t have even needed the chalk if we’d stayed out of the park to begin with. It was my idea to come here and look for clues. Deeter just wanted to go back to the Ragman’s house and eat breakfast.”

  I swallowed, my throat tightening. Deeter had said I’d mess up again, and he’d been right. Now he was dead.

  Because of me.

  “No,” Sweet Pea said. “It was my idea that all three of us should hunt for the eight ball together. I should have gone looking for it by myself….”

  “Yeah, but I’m the one who thought we should find the Magic Eight Ball first. We should have tried finding the rogue Collector some other way.”

  “Hey!” Deeter shouted. “How ’bout you two pull me up, and then you can decide who drowned me!”

  Sweet Pea and I both jumped to our feet. We looked around, but Deeter was still nowhere to be seen.

  “Where are you?” I called.

  “Over here!”

  Deeter’s voice seemed to come from ahead of us, so I glanced at the ship’s figurehead—a dragon with a gaping mouth and massive horns.

  “I’m here!”

  If it hadn’t sounded so much like Deeter, I might have thought the dragon had spoken. For all I knew, in this weird world of Collectibles it might not be so unusual for a ship’s figurehead to talk, especially one made from a chalk drawing.

  “Man, you gonna pull me up, or what!”

  No, it was definitely Deeter.

  Sweet Pea and I rushed to the dragon’s head. There was Deeter, hanging from the dragon’s left tooth, his feet kicking and dangling over the water beneath.

  “You grab one arm. I’ll grab the other!” Sweet Pea said.

  We both reached over the side and hauled him onto the deck. Good thing Deeter didn’t weigh much.

  “Took you long enough!” he said, clambering to his feet.

  Sweet Pea punched him lightly in the arm, and he laughed.

  “A Viking ship, Deeter? What were you thinking?” she asked.

  “I saw a picture in one of the Ragman’s books, and I thought it looked cool.”

  “If you’re part of a barbarian horde who’s out to pillage and plunder, maybe.”

  Deeter laughed again. Probably now was a good time to say it.

  “Hey, Deeter, listen,” I said. “I know you hate me and all. But still, I’m glad you’re alive. Sorry I’ve been a jerk.”

  Deeter stopped laughing, and he looked at me for a minute. “I don’t hate you…I talk a lot, but I don’t mean it. We don’t have to fight all the time. If you don’t want to.”

  I held out my hand. “How about a truce?”

  “Deal.”

  We shook hands.

  “Just for the record, though,” I said. “I still think you’re the world’s most annoying boy.”

  “That’s all right, Rookie.” Deeter grinned. “I still think you’re going to mess up again.”

  Fair enough.

  “Hey guys,” Sweet Pea said, “you might want to see this.”

  The flash flood’s current had carried our ship away from the park, and now we were sailing down some quiet neighborhood street. Fortunately, the houses were mostly built on hills, a safe distance from the water. Still, mailboxes and garden gnomes floated in the river while surprised homeowners peeked out of their houses’ windows.

  “Does anyone know how to sail this thing?” I asked.

  “We don’t have to,” Sweet Pea said. “Everything made with the Sidewalk Chalk is self-animated.”

  “Self-animated?”

  “It will sail itself.”

  “Oh.”

  “The real thing we gotta worry about,” Deeter said, “is who started this flash flood in the first place.”

  “Right.” Sweet Pea nodded. “Someone used the Black Umbrella against us. That’s serious. We could easily have been killed. Who would do such a thing? And why?”

  “What about that crazy old lady Hiddleburg?” Deeter asked. “Did she have the Black Umbrella when you saw her?”

  “No,” I said. “She didn’t have any Collectibles on her. I would have felt them.”

  Besides, it was hard to believe a sad little widow, even one as creepy as Mrs. Hiddleburg, could be capable of attempted murder. Or causing a natural disaster.

  “What about the Detective?” I asked. “The newspaper article said he was hunting me, right?”

  “Hunting you to catch you. Not to kill you. There’s a difference.”

  “What about the rogue Collector?” Deeter asked. “Maybe it was him.”

  “How would he have known where we were, though?” Sweet Pea frowned. “We hardly knew where we were ourselves.”

  “Maybe it was someone else, then,” Deeter said, “who happened to find us and knew about the reward. Some really mean Artisan, like the Bounty Hunter. Or, maybe a rival Collector, or some other group of Finders, like the Choir Boys.”

  Deeter and Sweet Pea went on and on, talking about the possibilities. The more they talked, the less sense it made to me. For a while I just stood there, listening to them discuss all the things I didn’t know.

  Like I didn’t know any opportunistic Artisans who’d be after the reward. I didn’t know any suspicious Collectors or their Finders. I didn’t know why someone would want to kill us. I certainly didn’t know why any Collector would decide to break the Collector’s Oath.

  I didn’t even know my own name.

  When I realized how completely useless I was, I wandered to the back of the ship and leaned against the side. The rain had stopped, and the air was warming. To make myself feel better, I decided to make a list of all the things I did know.

  It was a short list.

  “A mind with no memories is a ship with no anchor,” I said.

  “What’s that Rookie?” Deeter asked.

  “Nothing.”

  I glanced back at the park—or what was left of it—and that was when I saw him.

  A man stood near the park’s front gate on a hill, just above the waterline. He wore a black business suit, and he held an opened black umbrella over his head, obscuring his face. He gave the umbrella a twirl, spinning it like a wheel as he turned his back to us. Wherever he stepped, the waters in his path rushed out of his way, so that he walked on dry ground.

  I held my breath, waiting for another flash flood, or maybe a blizzard or a hurricane. The man halted at the gate, spun around—and closed the umbrella. I strained my eyes, but still I couldn’t quite see his face. The distance was too far, the shadows too dark. For a second, I could’ve sworn he took a bow.

  Then he exited beyond the gate and was gone.

  Chapter 12

  The Viking Ship

  “Anyone know where this ship’s going?” I asked.

  We’d left the Hiddleburg Memorial Park and the surrounding neighborhood far behind us, as the waters flowed along flood channels a
nd rivers and drainage outlets. At first, we seemed to sail adrift. But then I started noticing how the ship would glide one way, even though the current was heading for another. The ship was definitely sailing itself.

  “Who cares,” Deeter said, “so long as we can find a good dinner when we get there.”

  Must’ve been late in the afternoon. Deeter’s stomach was turning out to be a pretty reliable clock.

  “Everything that’s made by the magic of the Sidewalk Chalk acts true to its nature,” Sweet Pea said, “so the ship will head for the sea, I guess.”

  “The sea!” I said. “Are you serious!”

  Deeter laughed. “We’ll be lucky if it only sails to the sea. It might try to sail all the way to Greenland, or Iceland, or Valhalla, or wherever it is Viking ships come from.”

  “But how do we make it stop? How do we get off?”

  A nice sea cruise to Valhalla wasn’t exactly my idea of a fun time.

  Sweet Pea’s ears reddened. “I’m still working on that part of the plan.”

  “Besides,” Deeter said, “I say we put as much distance between us and that creepy guy you saw back at the park as possible.”

  The man with the Black Umbrella. I’d already told Deeter and Sweet Pea about him, how I’d seen him standing near the park’s entrance. They’d both looked worried. But neither of them had been able to guess who it’d been, even with my description, or why he’d tried to kill us. Only one thing really seemed certain about him.

  He’d probably try again.

  When evening came, we sailed along a marshy outlet during the highest point of the tide, and just as an orange sunset colored the horizon, we reached the ocean. A sweet-salt smell tinged the air, and seagulls soared on the sea-driven breezes. Soon the purpling sky turned black, and then the stars came out.

  Now that the night had come, there wasn’t much to do. Sweet Pea sat near the front of the ship, reading The Book of All Words with a flashlight. Deeter snoozed near the mast, his hands behind his head. Every once in a while, he’d mumble something like, “Pass the peanut butter pancakes, please.”