quite hungry myself.” He looked around the kitchen as if some food might magically appear in front of him.
“Did you get the letter delivered to Tick okay?” Rutger asked.
Master George blushed, fidgeting with the Wand. “Why, er, yes, yes, it arrived just fine, I believe. Though I might have miscalculated a bit on the exact delivery location.”
“Miscalculated?” Mothball repeated.
“Why, er, well… I may have sent it a little… to the
… left, if you will.”
“The left?” Rutger asked.
Master George slammed his hand on the table. “Fine! I put the blasted thing right in the middle of their wall! And yes, I’m quite embarrassed.”
“Ya could’ve sliced someone’s ruddy head off,” Mothball said.
“I’m quite aware of that, thank you very much.” Master George looked angry, but it quickly flashed into a smile and a snicker. “I imagine it gave them a jolly good fright, don’t you?”
“I bet you did it on purpose,” Rutger said. “I know I would have.”
“But they got it?” Mothball asked.
“Yes, yes, they got it. I hope they’ll forgive me the debt of mending their wall, however.” Master George cleared his throat, then his face grew serious again. “I’m afraid we have tough times ahead, my friends. This… problem is growing, and we haven’t the slightest clue as to its source. If I could, I would begin our meeting this very instant. But, alas, not everyone will be here until the appointed time.”
“What do you have planned for Tick and his friends?” Rutger asked.
Master George put the Barrier Wand on the table and absently rolled it back and forth. “Well, the most essential matter is to figure out Master Tick’s odd ability to manipulate the Chi’karda. Perhaps we can use it to our advantage in this dreadful mess.”
“Figured out where yer gonna send ’em yet?” Mothball asked.
“Oh, yes, indeed I have.”
Mothball and Rutger waited, expecting their boss to tell them the plan. But he stayed silent, staring at an empty spot on the other side of the kitchen.
“And…” Rutger prodded.
Master George finally looked up, focused on Rutger, then Mothball. “My dear friends, I’m afraid my plans for them are quite… hazardous.”
“Hazardous?” Mothball repeated.
Master George nodded. “I daresay I hardly expect all three of them to survive.”
Chapter 8
Guilty
Tick’s eyes flickered, then opened.
Though shaded by trees, the faint forest light looked like atomic explosions, blistering his eyeballs with pain, making him squeeze his eyelids shut once more. He groaned, every inch of his body feeling like someone had mistaken him for a human pi-ata. He hurt. He hurt bad.
To his right, he heard movement-the rustling of leaves, moaning. Tick brought his hands up to his face, wincing as the movement sent shockwaves of pain coursing through his body again. He froze until it died down, then rubbed his eyes. He finally opened them again, and the light didn’t seem nearly as bad. Carefully, delicately, he pushed himself into a sitting position.
Darkness had crept into the forest, more and more insects revealing their presence in a growing chorus of mating calls. Paul sat with his arms folded, leaning against a nearby tree, his face set in a grimace. Sofia was curled up in a ball several feet to Paul’s right, still moaning, leaves sticking to her clothes as if she’d been rolling around in them since morning. The strange devices Mr. Chu had attached to them were gone.
Surprisingly, Tick felt the pain sliding away, feeling better by the second. Pushing against the ground, he got his feet under him and stood up. Though sore, he no longer felt the pinpricks and bruises he’d suffered from just moments earlier. It was as if someone had injected him with two shots of morphine.
“Dude, what happened? ” Paul said through a groan, stretching his arms out before him.
Tick stepped over to Sofia, who seemed to be regaining her strength as well. She rolled onto her back, blinked up at Tick, then held up an arm; Tick helped her to her feet.
“Is that guy still your favorite teacher?” she asked, brushing leaves off her clothes. “He’s a real joy to be around, that’s for sure.”
“I… I don’t know what-” Tick stopped in mid-sentence, staring at something over Sofia’s shoulder. He squinted to see through the dim twilight, then squeezed his eyes shut and opened them again. “What the heck is that? ”
“What?” Sofia and Paul asked in unison, turning to look in the same direction as Tick.
Without answering, Tick walked toward the oddity that loomed over them just a few dozen feet away.
“Whoa,” he heard Paul say from behind him.
Deeper into the forest, several trees had melted into a twisting, gnarled, monstrous-looking mass of wood that was as tall and thick as a house. Several other trees had been lifted out of the ground, their roots sticking out like naked fingers, clods of dirt swaying back and forth. Tick could only stare, disbelieving his own eyes. It looked like some giant magician had grabbed dozens of trees, transformed them into liquid wood, and then smashed them together, twisting and squeezing all of it into a deformed, hideous shape.
Sofia gasped, then pointed to a section of the wood-blob near the ground. “Is that what I think it is? Oh!” She covered her face with her hands and turned around, her body visibly shuddering.
“What?” Paul asked, stepping closer to take a look. Tick joined him, and immediately saw the source of her disgust.
Somehow twisted into the wood was the body of a deer. Three legs poked out of the main trunk; its face was half-sunk into the wood, the one visible eye somehow displaying the fear it must have felt at the last second before death.
“That’s downright creepy,” Paul whispered.
By the time they reached Tick’s house, almost all of the intense pain they’d felt had disappeared, leaving only a weary soreness. Tick, like Paul and Sofia, had hardly said a word on the walk back, trying to figure out which had been more disturbing-the agonizing pain or the deformed super-tree with the dead deer sticking out of it.
“Could this day have been any weirder?” Paul asked as they walked up the porch steps to Tick’s house.
“Maybe if we’d grown bunny ears,” Sofia replied.
Paul let out a bitter laugh.
They walked in to the wonderful smells of dinner, all of them pausing to take a deep breath. Tick was starving. He couldn’t tell what his mom had cooked, but he had a feeling she’d felt the need to prove to Sofia that she could cook, too.
“So are we gonna tell your parents what just happened?” Paul whispered.
Tick thought a minute. “Maybe later. My poor mom’s worried enough as it is. No harm, no foul, right?”
“Yeah,” Sofia agreed. “Let’s just stay in the house and stare at each other until it’s time to go meet Master George.”
“Sounds good,” Tick said. “Hopefully we can stay out of trouble for one more day.”
They walked into the kitchen.
Mistress Jane felt discouraged.
She sat next to the large stone window of her apartment in the Lemon Fortress, closing her eyes every time the soft, warm breeze filled with the sweet smell of wildflowers blew up from the meadows below. The day was beautiful, the slightest hint in the air that autumn lay just around the corner. Everything was perfect.
