by Lauren Child
As they raced across the valley, Ruby’s hopes began to rise. She saw the bicycle tracks: had he got away? If he had, he would have tried to make it to the Boulder Valley caves, then she knew he would be safe. No one knew those caves like Clancy did. Up ahead she could see something shimmering in the desert heat, discarded, abandoned in the middle of nowhere. What was it? As she got nearer, it began to come into focus. She could see it was blue, she could see it was metal and she could see it was a bike: not any bike, a Windrush 2000.
Clancy woke up to
the smell of Turkish
delight. . .
. . .And, for just a moment, he forgot he was tied up and locked inside a stranger’s outbuilding. The smell was so sweet, so restful, but then he heard the cut-glass voice of the perfume assistant and it all came back to him – he was glad of the blindfold. He didn’t want to look into her cold blue eyes.
‘So what were you doing in my apartment?’ she demanded.
‘I don’t know what you mean,’ stammered Clancy. ‘How could I have been in your apartment? I don’t even know where you live.’
‘You were there, I smelled your bubblegum.’
‘But I don’t even like bubblegum.’
‘Really?’ she said.
‘Yes, really, so tell me why would I be in your apartment when I have no idea where you live, chewing bubblegum which I don’t like?’ said Clancy. He was a little irritated by now; whatever they had drugged him with had robbed him of his inhibition and had made him decidedly crabby.
The woman who called herself Lorelei reached into his sweat-top pocket and pulled out the Hubble-Yum. ‘Have it your own way, but I find it strange that you would have bubblegum about your person if, as you say, you don’t even like it.’ She was turning to go, ready to let him stew for a while, admit defeat and spill the beans.
‘Would you listen to me? You’ve got the wrong sucker here. This isn’t even my gum. I found it in my sister’s bicycle basket. It belongs to Ruby Red—’
Lorelei stopped, her hand on the door handle, and turned. ‘You were saying?’ she said.
She came over and pulled the blindfold from his eyes.
Clancy looked at her, knowing that everything had changed.
‘And who is Ruby Red?’ she said. ‘And where can we find her?’
But Clancy said not another word.
Chapter 58.
The trail
THE ABANDONED WINDRUSH WAS NOW WAY BEHIND HER. Ruby had crossed the desert valley and was now cycling up the forest track. It was getting dark and as Ruby rode she saw tiny glow-worms light up their lights. Bug was ahead of her and nosing the route. They had travelled about a quarter-mile when Ruby checked behind to see if she was being followed. The tiny illuminators had disappeared and suddenly Ruby realised her mistake; she had Forgotten all about the activator, still at attached to her Bradley Baker sneaker – these were no glow-worms, these were ground glows and the only person who could have dropped them was Clancy Crew.
She rode back, collecting each glow, and slipped them into her saddlebag – her gut told her that she might need them. Looking back at the distant Twinford lights, she took her notebook from her satchel and scribbled a message to Hitch.
GO SPEAK TO MADAME SWANN, SHE WILL EXPLAIN – DON’T DELAY
Then she slipped it into the canister attached to Bug’s collar and told him to head for home. The dog looked at Ruby, his eyes telling her that he thought this a bad idea – that he did not want to leave her out here in the middle of nowhere. But he also recognised that look in Ruby’s eyes, the one that told him her mind was set.
He sniffed her face and gave her cheek a lick before turning and setting off for Twinford at surprising speed. Only when he was about to disappear down into the valley of rocks did he stop, turning just once to see where she was. The husky was silhouetted against the moon like some classic wolf image on a tacky poster. Ruby did not turn; she was concentrating hard on the trail, hopeful that the ground glows would not run out before she made it to the place where Clancy was held. How would she find him otherwise? Almost at the same moment that she thought this thought, the ground glows disappeared.
The trail was gone.
‘Ah, kill him – he’s no earthly good to us,’ said Eduardo. ‘He knows nothing. Shoot him and feed him to the wolf: two birds with one stone. One less boy, one less hungry animal.’
‘Do you want to come?’ asked the man with the gun.
‘No,’ said Eduardo, ‘I can’t deal with the whole chewing thing, it really puts me off my food. I’m a vegetarian.’
‘Just a moment,’ said Lorelei, holding up her hand. ‘Before you get all carried away throwing the wretch to the wolves, don’t you think we ought to consider his usefulness?’
‘That scrawny kid? Useful?’ said the man his hand on the gun holster like he couldn’t wait to wrap his finger round the trigger.
‘Shouldn’t we be wondering who this girl is, this Ruby Red? She must be more than just any girl: she broke into my apartment, she was sniffing around, like she was some little detective, some little Nancy Drew. It wouldn’t surprise me if she was working for Madwoman Swann. No, something smells fishy here, a little off. If I’m right, then we need to track the little spy down. Get the boy to talk. Find out where she lives.’
‘How are you gonna do that?’ asked Eduardo. ‘Torture?’
Lorelei shook her head and laughed. ‘Torture? Have you seen the little squirt? He’ll be crying for his mommy in no time; he’ll tell us what we want to know soon enough.’
But Lorelei von Leyden had no idea who she was dealing with. Clancy Crew would die a thousand deaths before he gave up even one syllable of Ruby Redfort’s address.
Mistake one: underestimating the resolve of a very loyal friend.
‘Do you want a guard on the boy?’ asked the trigger-happy fellow.
‘No, no need to guard him. He’s not going anywhere and some little girl will never find her way through this mountain forest; not even Hansel and Gretel themselves could make it here.’
Mistake two: underestimating the resolve of a very loyal friend.
It was while she was standing in the dark, dark forest, not knowing which way to turn, left or right, that Ruby thought of Connie Slowfoot. She could almost hear her rasping old crone laugh. ‘You got brains girl, you just gotta stop relying on them, use your gut like nature intended.’
Ruby stopped panicking and considered what she should do; she could feel the grooves in the hard-packed earth, tyre tracks. Vehicles had made great ruts in the ground from travelling this way back and forth. The other track looked used but less so; the odds were that the kidnapping wolf stealers had been up and down many times in the past month so she would opt for the well-worn track.
As Ruby rode, she made a mental note of what the air smelled of, how it changed as she moved. The overwhelming scent was of pine, so strong she could taste it, but there was also wild garlic and moss and fungus and vegetation. And something strong and animal, the dung of deer maybe; she hoped it was deer, but who knew what lurked on Wolf Paw Mountain.
She could feel the thick, soft bounce of pine needles and bark, the occasional sting of some tall plant or other. She heard sounds of night birds and insects. The bike bumped over a lump in the road, soft like a body, feathered and dead, a ground bird. Ruby stopped, took out her flashlight: this bird hadn’t died of natural causes; it had been hit by a car, not so long ago either because it wasn’t yet riddled with maggots.
This surely was the road that the kidnappers had taken.
She turned of the flashlight because, as Connie had so wisely told her, she could see more when she stopped trying to look with her eyes. All the flashlight did was to act as a spotlight, illuminating one small circle of blackness, thus preventing her from seeing the bigger picture and sensing what was around her.
It wasn’t easy cycling a mountain path in the dark, but her bike, though beaten up and well used, was reliable and strong. Despite this,
she would have to ditch it someplace soon; after all, she couldn’t exactly ride on up a mountain road and pull into the kidnappers’ yard. Before long she found a small turning and was able to abandon the track and her bike and make her way on foot.
Very soon the narrow track became a dirt path and minutes later the dirt path disappeared completely and Ruby looked up to see the underside of a cliff jutting out from the mountainside.
The house was built on top of this slab of rock and in order to reach it Ruby was going to have to climb up and over. On the one hand no one would spot her making her ascent as she tried to cling to the overhang, but on the other hand clinging to the underside of a rock ledge wasn’t the easiest thing in the world to do. In fact, it looked like it might be more or less impossible. But then she didn’t have a whole lot of choice – impossible, possible, she would have to take her chances.
RULE 20: NINETY PER CENT OF SURVIVAL IS ABOUT BELIEVING YOU WILL SURVIVE or, as Sam Colt would say: the key to survival is keeping a positive mental attitude.
She tied her laces very tight, pulled the dorky poppered tab across the laces just to be sure they didn’t come undone, then she began to edge out along the cliff, finding footholds where she could. The rock was solid, it wasn’t crumbling and it wasn’t slippy, but it was a little sheer to say the least.
When Ruby was halfway along, she realised just how hopeless the task she had set herself was. Positive mental attitude or not, one would have to be Spider-Man himself to make it up this rock face. . . She clung on and kicked it angrily, knowing she was going to have to climb back down. She hated giving up.
And that’s when a very strange thing happened.
The Bradley Baker kid sneakers seemed to be actually clinging to the surface of the cliff. Somehow she had activated suckers in the soles, super strong suckers that meant she could very nearly walk upside down; all she had to do was to find handholds and it was a piece of cake. She was a human fly scaling the rock wall.
So this was the ‘other benefit’ Dr Harper was talking about, she thought. These shoes weren’t just comfy after all: they made you superhuman.
Minutes later, Ruby crawled over the top of the overhang and rolled into the shadow to the side of the house. It was cabinlike in style, but not in scale. The house itself was low, large and sprawling with a good many outbuildings surrounding a good-sized yard.
Ruby reasoned that if these guys had the wolf then they would have some security. They wouldn’t mess that up – these people weren’t amateurs. Ruby crouched there, trying to work out just how many guards there were likely to be. She figured that there could easily be eight. There were three pickups and a couple of motorbikes. Lorelei would be there too with the young guy Ruby had seen in the department store. But where was Clancy? They weren’t going to be too worried about him escaping; he was probably tied up, and where exactly was he going to run to if he did escape?
She edged round in the shadows of the buildings, but everything was quiet, no one about. No one was expecting a visit from a lone thirteen-year-old girl.
Chapter 59.
Better late than never
CLANCY CAME TO WHEN HE HEARD A STRANGE YET FAMILIAR SOUND. It was the call of the tawny owl, a bird not found in the United States, but yet a bird call he had heard many times in Cedarwood Drive, Twinford. It was the Ruby Redfort rescue call* – she had found him, she was outside the door. He was saved.
When Ruby heard the response call coming from the small low building on the far side of the yard, she immediately set about finding a way in. It didn’t take long: as she had predicted, they weren’t too concerned about the possibility of escape or rescue.
He smiled up at her weakly. ‘I wasn’t sure you’d come.’
‘Oh, you know me Clance. I’m not always punctual, but I always show up eventually.’ She took his hand and managed to gently stand him on his feet; he wobbled a bit, but he didn’t fall. ‘Look Clance, we’re gonna have to run for it – you think you can do that?’
‘Sure,’ he said.
She opened the door. ‘Stay close to the building, OK? If you stay close, it won’t trigger the security light. . . at least that’s what I’m hoping.’
They had travelled about twenty yards when Clancy started to look decidedly unstable.
‘Are you OK?’ whispered Ruby.
Clancy said nothing, he just breathed all the harder.
‘OK,’ hissed Ruby. ‘You’re gonna need to keep going.’
He sort of nodded, but stood exactly where he was.
‘You don’t seem very OK,’ Ruby said. ‘Are you about to pass out on me?’
Clancy shook his head and passed out.
‘Now that’s what I call timing,’ muttered Ruby. She caught him before he hit the deck, but there was no way she was going to be able to drag him down a mountain if he was unconscious and no way she was going to risk him fainting all over the place.
‘Darn it,’ she hissed.
Ruby slapped him gently and he opened his eyes.
‘Am I still here?’ he said.
‘Yeah, and unfortunately so am I.’
‘Do we have to go back?’ he asked. ‘I didn’t like it so much there.’
‘No, I don’t think that’s such a good idea,’ she said.
She thought for a second or two. They were going to have to hide out someplace until he pulled it together; he was never going to make it down a cliff face in his condition.
‘OK,’ said Ruby, ‘this is what we’re gonna do.’ She had spied a disused-looking barn; there were no lights on and for now at least no one seemed to be patrolling around there. In utter silence they edged their way slowly round the yard, hugging close to the darkness of the outbuildings, and waited for the cloud to move across the moon and, when it did, took a deep breath before they ventured from the shadows across the open space between them and the barn. They made it without the alarm being raised. The door was bolted and looped with a heavy industrial-sized padlock. Undeterred, Ruby took the barrette from her hair, inserted it into the lock and wiggled it this way and that until the padlock clicked open. A little trick Mrs Digby had taught her one rainy winter’s day.
Ruby pulled the bolt and pushed Clancy inside where he slumped down onto the sawdust floor. He looked bad, eyes all droopy and unfocused.
‘Sorry Rube, I haven’t eaten in a while. I saw them drugging the food and I didn’t want to be unconscious in case I got a chance to escape.’
‘Kinda ironic, don’t you think, considering you are pretty much unconscious anyway?’
Clancy smiled weakly. ‘Yeah, I guess it is kinda funny.’
‘Glad you can still laugh about the little things,’ said Ruby. ‘Would be a shame to lose your sense of humour on top of everything else.’
‘You know I have a feeling they aren’t too concerned about my general state of health,’ said Clancy.
‘Yeah, I’m guessing you’re right about that,’ Ruby agreed.
‘You know it’s a real shame Lyla turned out to be a psychopath,’ said Clancy. ‘She promised to get some of that Marie Antoinette perfume for my mom’s birthday, made out like she could get it cut-price.’
‘Well, don’t feel too sore about it Clance, that perfume ain’t quite as authentic as Madame Swann claims it is.’
‘It’s a fake?’ asked Clancy.
‘Kinda is,’ replied Ruby.
Clancy sighed. ‘I feel a whole lot better knowing that. I mean who wants fake Marie Antoinette perfume, right? Only problem is, what do I get my mom now?’
‘I might be able to find you a bottle of wolf scent,’ said Ruby, looking back towards the house.
‘I didn’t tell them about you, at least I didn’t mean to,’ said Clancy, ‘and when your name sorta slipped out I shut right up.’
‘Don’t give it a second thought,’ said Ruby.
‘I’ve been feeling kinda bad,’ mumbled Clancy. ‘Not about that, at least not so much about that – more about how I’ve been acting.’
>
‘I don’t know what you’re talking about Clance,’ said Ruby.
He looked at her.
‘I really don’t,’ she said, her face betraying nothing that would suggest this wasn’t the whole truth.
‘Anyhow,’ she shrugged, ‘it’s me who should be grovelling for forgiveness. I nearly got you eaten by a tiger, not to mention old Madame Loup on your tail.’
‘And that’s the other thing,’ said Clancy. ‘I wanted to say thanks for passing French for me.’
‘I don’t know what you mean Clance, what French?’
He was staring at her now, looking up at those amazing green eyes. How could he ever have misjudged Ruby Redfort, the best friend anyone could ever have?
‘By the way bozo,’ she said, ‘I’m not about to apologise for Wichitino Camp, since here you are all kidnapped instead of toasting marshmallows and singing “Kumbaya” with a bunch of dorks – luck musta been on your side.’
‘What exactly are these guys after?’ asked Clancy.
‘It has something to do with a wolf,’ said Ruby, ‘a wolf and a vial of wolf scent.’
‘Jeepers,’ mumbled Clancy, ‘I do seem to remember someone mentioning a wolf.’
‘Where dya think they keep it?’
‘I don’t know,’ said Clancy. ‘I was hoping not to be introduced.’ He shut his eyes again. ‘So what dya think they’re planning next?’ he asked.
‘They’re gonna kill you for sure,’ said Ruby.
‘You say the nicest things Rube,’ he said dreamily.
‘They’re gonna kill me too if that’s any comfort.’
‘Nah.’ He looked up like he was considering the thought. ‘That doesn’t really help.’
‘I’m just being straight with you.’
‘Yeah, well, would you mind lying a little? The truth is beginning to hurt.’
‘Dya think you can run, even a little bit?’
‘I feel real dizzy.’
‘You do look a little drugged Clance,’ said Ruby.