3 Below

by Patrick Carman

  Off they went as a group, looking at their tickets, which had been marked with three rides that needed riding. They were listed in order:

  THE ZIPPER

  THE FIRE BREATHER

  THE TREE DRAGON

  There were other rides in the realm of MONDAR — the Scorpion, Typhoon!, BLAMMO — but they were only tasked with riding these three.

  The roller-coaster car zoomed by again, bringing with it a fresh gust of wind. The front of the car was carved into the head of a beastly creature.

  “I’m thinking that was the tree dragon,” Remi said. “Great. MONDAR saved the best for last.”

  When they arrived in front of the Zipper, everyone realized just how scary the ride was. There were spinning squirrel cages attached to a tall contraption that rose up into the darkness.

  “I’ve seen this ride at fairs before,” Lucy said, suddenly not so sure about it. “It’s a bad one.”

  “Awwww, man. Did you have to say that?” Remi asked.

  They found a slot in which to push their tickets through. Leo put his in first, and felt something being driven into the cardstock. When he pulled his ticket out, there was a check mark punched onto the card.

  The ride slowed down, then stopped.

  Remi reluctantly punched his card, then Lucy, then Alfred and Mr. Pilf. They all pocketed their tickets as the first squirrel cage arrived in front of them.

  “Time to ride!” Leo said, because he of all people in the group loved carnival rides. He opened the cage and slid inside on the slick seat. Lucy waited for Remi, who wouldn’t move, and finally slid past him and sat down next to Leo.

  “Come on, Remi,” Leo called, leaning forward. “You can do this. I know you can.”

  Remi took a deep breath and stepped forward. Before he knew it, he’d closed the door and put on his seat belt.

  “My brain is fuzzy,” he said. “And I can’t feel my feet.”

  “Calm down, buddy,” Leo consoled. “We’re going to be okay.”

  Behind them, Alfred and Mr. Pilf had also settled in.

  “There’s another slot on the dash,” Alfred said. “But I tried it and nothing happened. I guess we need to push the button instead.”

  Lucy leaned forward, saw a green button on the dash, and slammed it with her fist.

  “Don’t go being all gentle or anything,” Remi said. “Might as well make MONDAR as angry as we can.”

  “Totally,” Lucy said, leaning back and smiling.

  “No, but seriously, we probably shouldn’t be hitting the rides like that,” Remi said. He was going to go on about why, but the ride started, so he screamed instead.

  The Zipper instantly flipped them upside down. Then the cage they were in rose to the very top of the ceiling, spinning around and around as everyone screamed. They plunged toward the floor and the cages stopped spinning. At the lowest point, they were staring at the ground, then the cages were spinning faster than before as they rose again. This went on for three revolutions before Lucy stopped laughing long enough to check on Phil, who was bouncing around inside her pocket.

  “You doing okay there, little buddy?” Lucy asked, holding him firmly in her hand. Phil took one look at the situation he was in, turned in Remi’s direction, and threw up. He was a tiny creature who had eaten a wooden block for lunch, so what came out looked like a spoonful of oatmeal.

  It landed on Remi’s cheek.

  “Get it off! Get it off!” he screamed, but it was more like Elmer’s Glue in its composition than anything else, and it was pretty well stuck where it had landed.

  “Bummer,” Leo said as they headed up for their fourth revolution, which turned out to be their last. The squirrel cages came to a stop at the bottom of the ride, but the doors did not open.

  “If this thing starts up again before we get out, I’m wiping my face on your shoulder,” Remi said to Lucy. But she wasn’t paying any attention to Remi, she was too busy taking her ticket out of her pocket.

  “The slot has lit up, you guys,” she said, inserting her ticket and feeling the punch as it tore into the cardstock. When she pulled it out, there were two check marks next to THE ZIPPER.

  “Go on, you two,” she said. “Get your cards punched and let’s get on the next ride.”

  Leo punched his ticket, then Remi did the same, and the door to the cage clicked open. When they got out, Alfred and Mr. Pilf were already waiting for them, looking a little worse for the wear. It’s an eternal truth that adults and small dinosaurs do poorly on zipper rides. Still, Mr. Pilf was alert enough to see that Remi needed some attention. He took his spotless handkerchief out of his breast pocket and wiped away the little accident Phil had left behind.

  “Thank you, Mr. Pilf. I feel much better now.”

  The Zipper started up again, like a ghost had punched its ticket and gotten on board.

  “Come on,” Lucy said. “Next up is the Fire Breather. How much fun is that going to be?!”

  Even Leo thought the Fire Breather sounded outrageously dangerous, but off they went in search of the next ride. Along the way, to Remi’s sheer delight, they encountered an automatic cotton candy machine. There was a lever next to the machine with three options: SMALL, MEDIUM, and HUGE. Remi pulled the lever gleefully, making sure it landed firmly on HUGE, and stood back while the machine went to work. Pink sugar shot into a round tub and a hot-air blower turned on. A mechanical arm dropped into place, holding on to what looked like a cardboard tube from a long roll of wrapping paper. A few seconds later, the tub was covered in pink cotton candy.

  “That’s going to be large,” Mr. Pilf said. “Very large.”

  The tube of cotton candy grew larger and larger, and then the mechanical arm pulled it out of the tub and turned the treat right side up.

  Remi wasted no time grabbing it before someone else did.

  “It’s bigger than you are,” Leo said, and it was. “Good thing cotton candy weighs basically nothing.”

  They all ripped off pieces of cotton candy as they searched for the Fire Breather. Mr. Pilf, in a moment of unexpected goofiness, made a pink mustache and held it on with his finger, then employed his best MONDAR impression.

  “You will meet your doom on the Fire Breather! DOooOooOOoM, I say!”

  “He’s weird,” Lucy said. She was standing between Remi and Leo, and they all laughed. It was starting to feel like the best day ever, with rides and candy and adventure … until they found themselves staring at the Fire Breather.

  “You have got to be joking!” Remi cried out. There was another wooden MONDAR head sitting in the middle of what looked like a gigantic hamster wheel turned on its side. The hamster wheel was spinning alarmingly fast, and MONDAR was breathing fire every five seconds. His mouth was like a flamethrower, and the fire reached all the way to the outer edge of the spinning hamster wheel.

  “If you think I’m getting in that thing, you’ve lost your mind,” Remi said.

  “Oh, come on, it can’t be that dangerous,” Leo said.

  “Remember the realm of gears?” Remi reminded Leo.

  “What’s the realm of gears?” Lucy asked.

  “You’ll have to come visit the Whippet to see it,” Remi jumped in. “It’s even more dangerous than it sounds.”

  Leo did sometimes wonder if Merganzer was aware of just how treacherous some of his inventions were, but he had never once in all the adventures he’d gone on felt that he was truly in mortal danger. It had always felt possible he could break an arm or have his hair singed off, but those kinds of injuries sounded cool. Just knowing it was possible to actually get hurt made everything seem like they weren’t being treated like little kids. This was real adventure, the kind where you might get a black eye or lose a toe.

  “Well,” Leo concluded, “I’m going for it. Who’s with me?”

  “I am,” Lucy said.

  “Me too,” Alfred chimed in. “This has been the best day of my life. If my suit gets scorched off, so be it. I’ll buy another one.”


  “What if your face gets scorched off?! What then?!” Remi yelled.

  “I’m taking my chances. I don’t believe it’s in Merganzer’s nature to hurt anyone.”

  Mr. Pilf just shrugged. He was in, if only because he didn’t want to stay inside MONDAR’s realm any longer then he had to.

  “Come on, Remi, think about it,” Leo said. “We’ve been through worse. Remember the train room? And the atomic ants?”

  “I really do need to visit the Whippet Hotel,” Lucy said.

  Remi grabbed a big wad of cotton candy and stuffed it in his mouth. Then he threw the rest like a spear, right toward MONDAR’s face. MONDAR responded with a stream of fire and the cotton candy burst into flames.

  “Let’s do this thing,” Remi said. “I’m ready.”

  Watching the cotton candy and the tube it was attached to go up in flames made Leo a little less sure, but he didn’t say so. They all punched their tickets and the ride came to a stop. There was a latch on one part of the curved hamster wheel, and a rounded metal door swung open on quiet hinges. Everyone climbed in, and the first thing they realized was that there were no straps to hold them.

  “Maybe this wasn’t such a good idea after all,” Leo said, but it was too late for that. The metal door slammed shut and MONDAR started talking.

  “Beware my wrath! This flame is real!”

  “Holy barfing dinosaurs!” Remi yelled.

  The giant wheel began to turn like the inside of a washing machine on spin cycle.

  MONDAR’s head spun one way, then the other. His emerald eyes grew larger in his wooden head, a few seconds passed, and he blew a line of fire that just missed Lucy as she tumbled out of the way.

  “Lucy!” Leo yelled.

  The wheel was moving much faster now, so fast that everyone was held to the curved wall by gravity.

  “I’m okay!” Lucy said, standing on the grated metal underfoot. “He looks one way, then the other. Then his eyes get bigger —”

  “Then it’s flamethrower time,” Remi said.

  “That’s right!” Alfred agreed.

  Unfortunately for everyone on the ride, the Fire Breather had reached its optimal speed, otherwise known as face-melting fast. The floor fell out from under them, but the gravity kept them all stuck to the wall.

  MONDAR laughed maniacally. His head spun one way, then the other. Then he stopped and his eyes got real big.

  “Mr. Pilf! Get out of the way!” Leo yelled. MONDAR’s face was pointing right where Mr. Pilf was standing. He curled into a ball at the bottom of the hamster wheel and the flame shot directly over his head.

  “I smell something burning,” Remi said. “That can’t be good.”

  Alfred rolled along the wheel until he came to Mr. Pilf. Mr. Pilf’s hat had caught fire, but Alfred had it out in a jiffy.

  “Thank you, Alfred,” Mr. Pilf said, working his way back into a standing position. “I do so like this hat. I’m glad it’s not been completely ruined.”

  “My pleasure.”

  Remi had figured something else out during his time in the hamster wheel.

  “Stop, drop, and roll,” he said.

  “What are you talking about?” Leo asked.

  “From school — stop, drop, and roll. Everyone stay standing even though there’s no floor to stand on. If a flame is coming toward you, just roll out of the way. It’s easy.”

  As if to prove Remi’s point, MONDAR blew a flame directly in Remi’s direction and Remi gamely rolled his round body to one side, avoiding harm.

  After that, the ride was a lot more fun. They bumped into one another a couple of times and that made it scarier, but they knew how to stay out of MONDAR’s fire breathing. After a while the floor returned and the ride slowed down. When it stopped, a sliver of light poured out of MONDAR’s head and he spoke.

  “Tickets please.”

  Everyone walked up to MONDAR and slid their tickets into the top of his head so they could be punched.

  “Next up, the Tree Dragon!” Remi said, exiting the ride and looking both ways.

  “It takes him a little while to get warmed up,” Leo whispered to Lucy. “But once he’s in, he’s all in.”

  “So I see,” she said. Her hand brushed against Leo’s, and for the briefest moment they both held on. When he let go, Leo asked Lucy if she would sit next to him on the Tree Dragon. She smiled, nodded, and ran after Remi in search of their next destination.

  They passed by the rides that were not on their tickets. The Scorpion was a wicked-cool slide they all wished they could ride, and Typhoon! looked so complicated they weren’t even sure how one got on. And there was BLAMMO, which involved giant spinning paddles and bungee cords. But they had tickets for only one more ride, the Tree Dragon, the great roller coaster in the realm of MONDAR.

  Where it would lead them, they could not know. But they knew they were very near the end of their adventure.

  Only the top floor of the new Merganzer D. Whippet hotel remained, and though they could not have known, it was already on the move in the sky outside.

  Roots as thick as telephone poles snaked all through the realm of MONDAR, but they were especially thick on the second level of the floor, where the party of five stood. Getting to the top half of the realm of MONDAR had required some adept climbing, especially for Alfred Whitney. His bum knees made the effort all the more challenging, but his fighting football spirit returned, and he gladly made his way up with the others. It required some swinging from vines, which the boys and Lucy enjoyed and the adults endured. But, eventually, through much backtracking, swinging, and climbing, they’d reached the grated metal floor of the upper level. “It’s like a forest up here,” Lucy said, and it was. The roots sprung up into great trees full of leaves, but Leo had long since begun to wonder if any of it was actually alive. He retrieved a hammer from his maintenance overalls along with a Phillips screwdriver. The Tree Dragon whished by on tracks that looked like long limbs as Leo pounded the screwdriver into the side of one of the trees.

  “As I suspected,” Leo said, a piece of the tree breaking free and falling onto the grated metal floor. “There’s no way a tree could grow in here. It’s all made out of something else.”

  Remi picked up the piece of the tree that had broken free and brought it to his bulbous nose, sniffing it. Then he licked it.

  “It’s candy,” Remi said. “Tastes like butterscotch.”

  “Astounding,” Alfred said, leaning in close to the tree and licking it.

  “Sometimes you act like a big kid,” Remi said. “Anyone ever tell you that?”

  “Not often enough. I take it as a compliment, thank you.”

  “Think nothing of it.” Remi shrugged.

  “Shouldn’t we be getting on with this?” Mr. Pilf said, even though he couldn’t help but steal a snack as well. “It looks like we board over there, next to the moon.”

  A moon had been built on one of the far walls of the floor, where it glowed as though it were real. Fireflies danced all around it, buzzing in circles.

  “He’s right,” Lucy said. “We really should get out of the realm of MONDAR as quickly as we can. And the only way out is to punch these tickets with our last ride. Come on, let’s do it.”

  Everyone moved as one toward the shimmering moon until they reached the final slot for their tickets. One by one they had their tickets punched and the Tree Dragon car came to a stop in front of them. There were two rows of seats, and the front was filled with two boys and a girl before either adult had a thing to say about it.

  “I guess we’re in back again,” Mr. Pilf said. “Okay by me.”

  The Tree Dragon was not a ride to be trifled with — that much was clear to everyone when a thick metal rail covered in foam settled firmly across their laps. There was no getting out of the Tree Dragon until it decided to let its riders go.

  “Everyone ready?” Leo asked.

  A collection of yeses and one maybe from Remi ensued, and Leo pushed the green button on the dashb
oard. They were locked in, and all of them were about to ride the Tree Dragon to its final destination whether they liked it or not.

  “Here we go!” Lucy yelled, raising her arms in the air. Phil, who was peeking out of her pocket, did the same. He was a copycat.

  Remi had taken special care not to sit next to Lucy in case there was another projectile vomiting event from Phil.

  “Good luck with that,” Remi said, smiling at Leo, who sat in the middle.

  “Thanks, buddy. I appreciate it.”

  The Tree Dragon began to move very slowly, jerking forward in small bursts like it was struggling to get started again. A distant cry of maniacal laughter filled the air, and the shadow of MONDAR covered the rising moon.

  “Does that seem like a bad omen to anyone besides me?” Remi asked.

  There was no time for an answer between Remi finishing his question and the Tree Dragon bursting forward like it was propelled by jet fuel (which, Leo would later discover, was actually true). Alfred and Mr. Pilf gripped the rail over their legs with white knuckles, holding on for dear life as their heads snapped back.

  The Tree Dragon rolled on rails that looked for all the world like they were part of the roots and trees themselves. It was a tangled mess of a track, but somehow the coaster stayed on as it headed straight for a wall and banked sharply down and to the right. As quick as it was heading down, it was shooting up in a spiral, then gliding upside down across the high ceiling of the hotel.

  “Hold on to Blop!” Leo yelled. “And Comet! And Phil!”

  There were lots of pocket buddies to worry about as the Tree Dragon dove once more, heading straight for the ticket office on the first floor and banking left in the nick of time. Mr. Pilf’s hat flew off and he screamed, but Alfred was extremely quick for a man of his age, especially with his cane. He reached out, caught the inside of the hat with the tip of his cane, and slowly drew it back in before it got away for good.

  “Better hold on to that!” Alfred yelled, his hair blowing back and tears running sideways out of the corners of his eyes.