Wham!

by Carol Marrs Phipps

  Presently the first stock truck appeared at the bottom of the bluff, as it drove out of the mine. Morrigan carefully studied its prisoners and the prisoners in the next truck.

  At the sight of Kellen's green head in the third truck, she hurriedly set aside the binoculars, turned into Bart and leaped into flight to climb well into the air beyond the guardhouse. “Caw! Caw! Caw! Caw!” he cried as he swept back to land by the binoculars.

  Daniel stepped in front of the guardhouse, leveled his staff and shot a crackling blue bolt of light into the open doorway, setting alight the entire shed with a volatile whoosh, sending the only surviving guard running out in flames to be shot by Llygad and Philpott as everyone turned and ran for the blind, where Morrigan was watching the trucks. “Kellen's in the last one,” she said as they came tramping to a halt, grabbing for Daniel's hands.

  Teeuh saw the guardhouse the moment it burst into flame and plummeted from the sky in a flutter of wings, sending a blinding white throb of light from the Crystal end of the Staff to the ground in front of the first truck as she came, throwing up a ballooning hail of dirt and rocks that came pelting down all over the valley as the truck hurtled into the crater and rolled onto its side.

  The second truck slid to a broadside halt at the edge of the hole as its door flew open and a guard began taking wild shots with his machine pistol. Teeuh stopped him at once by blowing the cab to smithereens.

  Daniel, Maxi, Philpott and Llygad appeared on the ground behind the third truck as it made a frantic U-turn, slamming its prisoners about and coming right back for them with one of the guards shooting. Teeuh landed nearby and set the truck's tires afire, causing it to slow and weave madly out of control. Philpott and Llygad were afraid to open fire for fear of hitting prisoners, but Maxi was in a perfect place as the truck rolled by and took out the gunner with a pounding boom of his pistol. He sprinted after the truck, grabbed onto the door and took out the driver with a boom from his other barrel.

  Philpott and Llygad were in the back of the truck at once, hunting for Kellen in the pile of dazed prisoners. Teeuh fluttered up onto the cab and used the Heart to make a light to see by as they got Kellen to his feet, over the side and down to the ground.

  Suddenly there were headlights from every direction. “Armored cars!” cried Philpott.

  “Take hands!” cried Daniel. “Now!”

  “Kellen!” cried Teeuh, holding out her hand. “Here!”

  The instant Maxi, Llygad and Philpott grabbed hands with Daniel and vanished, a pair of headlights came right up to Kellen and Teeuh. Out stepped Smiley with his pistol.

  With a scream of fury, Kellen ran right for him.

  Smiley commenced firing as he came. The instant Kellen dove to grab his throat, Teeuh set off Smiley's head with a concussion that rattled away in echoes along the bluff and landed Kellen on his backside for an ear-ringing moment. Teeuh dropped her staff with a clatter and stood stunned as blood spurted from her arm. Car doors slammed as shots were fired and bullets glanced off things nearby.

  “Teeuh!” cried Kellen, springing up to grab her arm.

  Suddenly there were shouts and cries as roars and belches of fire came from the sky and Smiley's car and the cars on either side of it burst into flame, as a great black crested dragon swooped low over the pandemonium and came running up to them on the ground. “Get on my back with her!” bellowed the dragon as it squatted and pressed its breastbone to the ground. “Now!”

  Teeuh looked as though she might faint, so Kellen fairly heaved her astride the beast, careful not to let go of her mangled arm and threw his leg over right behind. “How do we hang on?” he cried.

  “Fist full o' feathers,” rumbled the dragon, heaving up beneath them as it began running and flapping its wings. It was aloft at once, just clearing the truck. A guard threw open the door of an armored car and took aim, but the dragon dove right at him, drenching him in flames as it passed over and pumped aloft. At the top of the bluff it trotted to a halt in front of Daniel and the others and squatted.

  “Morrigan?” said Kellen as he helped Teeuh onto her feet.

  “I was thinking Bart,” rumbled the dragon. “I stayed a cockerel.” And as if to confuse matters he immediately became Morrigan again.

  “The Staff!” cried Teeuh. “It's down there with the Heart.”

  “I'll get them,” said Morrigan. And with that, she ran and dove off the bluff, turning into Bart as she fell and flying back to the burning cars. He picked out the cattle truck with the tires burnt off and made straight for it, intending to turn into a dragon for the return trip the moment he had the Staff. Instead, he got to see a guard pick it up before he got there and wave over a warder who took it and set out at once for the prison gate.

  Bart certainly intended to turn into a dragon, but he was much faster as a crow, so he flew on to the gate with everything he had. At the gate he saw the warder disappear through the doors with the Staff. “Damn it!” he cried, landing on his feet in the form of the bushy tailed guard he had been the last time and sprinting for the doors.

  There was not a soul to be seen when he stepped inside, so he ran smacking out echoes down the long corridor. He could not imagine the fellow going into the cell block with the Staff, so he rushed 'round the corner and down the other hallway without a word to Hole who sat on his stool with very round eyes. At the end of this short hallway, there was no choice but to take the staircase. At the first landing he pushed open the door. “A mess hall?” he said, gasping for breath. “No way.” And with that he charged up the next flight of stairs to a carpeted hallway where he just saw the warder go through the door at the far end with the Staff. Down the hallway he sprinted for all he was worth, thump, thump, thump, thump, thump, thump, thump...

  “Hey!” cried a man, stepping into his path from behind a pile of cardboard boxes. “This is Administration! Where's the damned fire?”

  There was nothing for it. Bart had no choice but to turn into a rat and scurry under the boxes.

  * * *

  The warden was governor of the prison and the coal mine. He had had a very long day of it. He had one last bit of paperwork to do before he could retire to his well-appointed quarters. He flushed the toilet and sauntered back to his desk, pausing to zip up the fly of his breeches.

  “Mr. Unben,” squealed Pandora, sitting on his desk with a smile. “So good to see you attending to things.”

  “Potentate!” gasped Unben with a start.

  “And you might consider closing the W.C.,” she said in low tones, waving her hand before her nose.

  Unben went scarlet and shut the door.

  “Now,” she said before he could quite look her in the eye. “I know you to be one who attends to nearly everything needing attention, so why would I have felt two very powerful magic breeches of my wards almost two full days ago without your having bothered to notify me yet? Here I was, waiting and waiting.”

  “Well with your time plainly being more valuable than anyone else's,” he said, “I didn't consider bothering you with any of it until we'd contained the situation. Even as we speak, my guards are closing in on the perpetrators of this little prison break and may even have them in custody along with their pigeon.”

  “Really?” she said with a gasp fit for a windy young boy. “Your guards are up to an encounter with the most powerful wizard and Fairy I may ever have felt? Their discharges not an hour ago were enough to alert me in the capitol. Do tell me how they'll accomplish this wonder.”

  “Well as you know, the warder assigned to shadow Kellen Greenwood...” he stammered.

  “Your perpetrators' pigeon?” she said, looking up at a knock at the door.

  “What!” he called out. “Come on in!”

  The warder with the Staff stepped in, leaving the door open. “Sorry to intrude,” he said, seeing Pandora with no idea who she might be.

  “What do you have, Lippincott?” said Unben to the sound an avalanche of cardboard boxes out in the hall.

&nbs
p; “We shot a being who dropped this...”

  “Being?” said Unben, as Bart darted in and ran along the skirting board to where the drapes came to the floor.

  “A woman, kind of, with green hair and pointed ears, like Greenwood,” said Lippincott, holding out the Staff to Unben. “I mean she couldn't possibly be a woman, not with moth wings and flying all about as she was. But she used this thing to blow an enormous hole in the ground. And she used it to blow up a truck and she killed several guards with it. I can't imagine how she managed. You know, made it work. I mean I don't for the life of me see a button or trigger on it anywhere...”

  “Oh I can,” said Pandora, sliding off the desk and taking the Staff. “Thank you Mr. Lippincott. And you have this being in custody? You said you shot her. Right?”

  “We did,” he said, shifting from foot to foot. “But Greenwood helped her onto the back of an enormous black bird with teeth and flew off...”

  “With teeth?” she said in distraction as she studied the Crystal mounted in the end of the Staff.

  “Yeh teeth! And it set fire to several armored cars.”

  “Really!” she said, turning to Unben. “Our good warden here didn't prepare me for any of this.”

  “Well there was no possible...” stammered Unben.

  “Mr. Unben,” said Pandora. “Mr. Lippincott here is second in command, am I not mistaken?

  “Yes.”

  “And was he in charge this evening during that escape?”

  “Yes.”

  “And he's a pilot?”

  “He is.”

  “Have him immediately take the small helicopter to three hundred feet, directly over the pit made by the winged woman and remain hovering. That means: have him run.”

  “You heard her,” said Unben. “On the double!”

  “Yes sir!” said Lippincott with a salute as he hurried out.

  “And I want you to ready two helicopter gunship crews and have them waiting for orders as soon as we're done here,” she said.

  “Yes, Potentate,” said Unben. “And is there something you want me to do with that stick, then?”

  “These tools of power are legend, my dear warden,” she said with a squeal. “I never dreamed that one day I'd actually hold them in my hands, let alone have them for my own. And this be the day. You know, my very mother, Spitemorta wielded this Great

  Staff and Crystal Heart before the winged Fairy got them. Do you realize that they made that Fairy the very most powerful being on the planet from before I was on the throne of Gwael until this moment?”

  “Of course I had no idea...” said Unben.

  “Is that a balcony?” she said, nodding at the drapes.

  “It is.”

  “And will we be able to see Mr. Lippincott hovering from out there?”

  “If he's had time to get into position,” he said, drawing open the drapes right in Bart's face before nearly striking him with the sliding glass door racing by immediately after.

  “Right out your balcony!” she said. “And you were on the toilet with the drapes closed.”

  “Well I...” he sputtered.

  “That's all right, Warden.” she said, stepping out onto the balcony. “Everyone uses the thunderbox. I'm merely impressed by your lack of curiosity about your own affairs, is all. But what really concerns me is Mr. Lippincott...”

  “Lippincott?”

  “Ah! There he is,” she said as the helicopter rose into position. “Certainly. After all, it was Mr. Lippincott who allowed Kellen Greenwood and the winged Fairy to escape.” And with that, she raised the Staff and shot a bolt of light to the helicopter which went blinding red in a concussion of thunder and flaming fragments, as a brilliant spreading ring of ruby light raced away for a heartbeat.

  Bart scuttled out of the drapes, around the corner to leap off the balcony into the night air, where he turned into a crow and flew at once for the top of the bluff.

  “Well,” said Pandora, with sunny resolution as she turned away from the railing. “We no longer have to worry with Mr. Lippincott.” She stopped short. “Look 'ee!” she said with a gasp. “The Crystal Heart is ruby red again.”

  “And I'll be organizing those helicopters, then?”

  “Oh yes,” she said as she admired the large red jewel. “That's how you'll capture Greenwood, Mistress Wings and the wizard, what's-his-name. Too bad you never found the location of the underground's headquarters. That's the first place I'd 'ave looked.”

  “But we did...”

  “Funny thing I never heard about it. That surely wouldn't be another oversight. Would it?”

  “Not at all!” stammered Unben. “We forced it out of Greenwood. That's what happened to his wife. It's underneath the ruins of the pink Elven palace at Oilean Gairdin.

  You know, the island in the middle of the dead lake in the Jutwoods. Down the valley to Cwm Eryr and straight east...”

  “Well,” she said with a bored sigh. “If you say so.”

  “I'll have them immediately.”

  Bart found everyone at the cave when he returned to the bluff. He turned into Morrigan the instant his feet touched the ground.

  “The Heart and Staff?” said Teeuh at the sight of her.

  “I'm sorry,” said Morrigan. “I chased them all the way to the warden's office in time to find them in the hands of the daughter of Spitemorta, the daughter who sat on the throne of Gwael. I heard all that hiding behind the drapes as a rat. That would make her...”

  “Pandora!” said Teeuh and Daniel at the same time.

  “Did you see the helicopter?” said Morrigan.

  “We heard a big explosion from here,” said Philpott.

  “That was it,” said Morrigan. “She did it with the Heart. And I saw the Heart turn blood red.”

  “No!” wailed Teeuh.

  “And do you know what I heard them call her?”

  “What?” said Kellen.

  “Potentate,” said Morrigan.

  Chapter 26

  “Red!” said Teeuh, rising to her feet cradling her arm which had not bled for some time. “Ich wolde nevere have dremed. Whyte hit hath yben evere sithence hit to restore the Forest Primycies I dide use.”

  “Now how be?” said Maxi with a rattle of his necklace of bone beads and toy cars.

  “I begge thy pardon,” said Teeuh. “This is such an upset. The Heart stopped being red the moment I first used it. It's been white ever since I restored the Forest Primeval.

  And if the Heart could turn red in Pandora's hands, she is indeed unspeakably evil. And what calamity I've condemned this world to I shall never grasp until I've had the chance to commune with my mother.”

  “Who be you mother?” said Maxi.

  “Longbark, the oldest and wisest oak tree in all the Forest.”

  Maxi swallowed and looked at her.

  “Good grief!” said Kellen. “How could you be to blame?”

  “The Heart and Staff were my burden to bear from the moment they came into my hands,” said Teeuh.

  “I'm right certain none of us hold you responsible,” said Daniel as he got to his feet. “But speaking of calamity, we might face it if we stay here long enough for Pandora to come after us.” And with nods all 'round, he took out his scrying ball and began locating Maxi's underground room as everyone joined hands.

  In the next moment they found Tess and Drake sound asleep in their chairs at the conference table. Maxi quietly woke Drake and waved everyone upstairs to the gymnasium, leaving Kellen alone with Tess.

  “Hey Tess,” said Kellen softly as he knelt beside her and gave her a pat.

  “Let me sleep Dad,” she mumbled before sitting up with a gasp. “Dad!” she croaked, throwing her arms about his neck. “It's you!”

  He nodded and hugged her soundly.

  “Where's Mom?” she said, straightening up for a look about.

  She felt him sob as he shook his head.

  “You couldn't get her out?” she gasped. “They moved her?”<
br />
  Now he was shaking with sobs.

  “They killed her!” she wailed out. “Mom!”

  Maxi did not have the heart to intrude. It had been quiet for some time when at last he came down the steps with very wide eyes to find them talking quietly. “We could have tumble-down,” he said.

  “A problem?” said Kellen.

  “Children and Family have coppers all sorts of different wheres outside,” said

  Maxi. “Poot say they wait to jump grab Tess. Poot point-say Tess no be here. They no believe any Dyrney troll, so they still be outside.

  “Wait a minute. Why would they be after Tess?”

  “There've been a lot of things happen...” said Tess, looking at her handkerchief.

  “I can see,” said Kellen.

  “I'm sorry about my hair...”

  “Don't be. What things?”

  “Children and Family moved Jasmine and Trent Warren in with me. They stole a bunch of things, but Children and Family are after me because they turned me in for coming here to see Maxi. And I am sorry about my hair. It's a long story, but Maxi cut it for me so I could get you and Mom...” she gave a sudden sob, “you and Mom back.”

  “Oh punkin!” he said, giving her a hug at once. “You'd be pretty no matter how you had it. My only regret is, I know that when it grows out, your being a little girl won't come back with it.”

  “Are you in trouble?” he said, looking at Maxi.

  Maxi shrugged his shoulders. “May-if they say I did-be at Tess's,” he said. “But who be head-nod? But I do be big up-and-down head-nod this one: when coppers get news put in ear that I put holes in prison hoo-hoo peoples to grab-out you, they be in front door with all champ-champ toofs.”

  “And we don't have much time if we get her back to the Forest before that news gets here,” he said with a nod at Teeuh as she came down the stairs.

  Teeuh went straight to Tess. “My derre herte suster,” she said, giving her an embrace that had poor Tess in tears all over again.

  “Where's your staff?” said Tess.

  Teeuh squeezed shut her eyes. “I lost it,” she said with a shake of her head.