Team Knight and Team Scarab ran for the jungle gym.
Adrenaline pulsed and pounded through Fiona’s blood. She raced ahead, and she easily outdistanced them all, except Robert.
He got to the obstacle course first, clambered up a ladder, and turned to make sure she was right behind him.
Fiona grabbed the ladder, but then looked back.
Jeremy and Sarah Covington, Jezebel, Mitch Stephenson, Eliot, and Amanda Lane had scattered across the field. It was total chaos. Eliot had a hard time running with that stupid pack of his.
Team Knight was different. They ran in formation-two four-person teams. One angled left, and one split off to the right side. They had a plan.
“Come on,” Robert said. “We need to get up as fast as we can.” He scrambled up the ladder.
Sarah and Jeremy ran up to her but ignored the ladder. Instead they tromped along the adjacent spiral that went up a ways and then wormed into the center of the structure.
“Hey!” Fiona said. “Stick together!”
“Middle path, me dearie,” Jeremy called back. “Hurry. Knights be taking the high and low paths.”
Fiona saw the Knights had done precisely that. One group ran up along a zigzag of stairs-almost as high as Robert now despite his head start. The other team-she just caught a glimpse of them in the lower portion of the course, and then lost them in a tangle of hanging chains.
Jezebel, Mitch, then Eliot, and finally Amanda caught up to her.
“It’s a maze,” Jezebel said, scrutinizing the structure. “Not all paths lead to our goal, I bet.”
“Then which way?” Mitch asked, looking up and squinting.
Amanda was so out of breath, she couldn’t speak. She knelt and panted.
Eliot hefted Lady Dawn, and said, “I’ve got an idea.”
Fiona’s gut reaction was to tell him to stop playing with that silly violin, that they didn’t have time. But with everything she’d seen Eliot do with his music, she figured it was worth the gamble of a few seconds to see what he had in mind.
Jezebel didn’t wait, however. She found a knotted rope and pulled herself up hand over hand.
Mitch glanced at her and then to Fiona, indecisive which way to go. He smiled and took a step closer to her. “I’ll stay with you guys, if that’s okay.”
“Great.” Mitch hadn’t said much to her since school started, but whenever he was around, he had a way of making her feel comfortable. She was glad he was here now.
Eliot ran a thumb over the Lady Dawn’s strings and then plucked out a whimsical tune.
Fiona smelled popcorn and the burned sugar scent of cotton candy, and then heard on the wind a distant calliope join Eliot’s song.
This had something to do with that carnival they’d been in, where they’d fought Perry Millhouse, and where they rescued Amanda.
Amanda went white. Her eyes widened. She backed away from Eliot.
The song was a little musical phrase that repeated and then reflected and inverted and bounced around in Fiona’s head. A wonderful invention.
“Where did he learn to play like that?” Mitch asked in awe.
Fiona didn’t have an answer for him.
She saw multiples of Eliot prism, as if her eyes were full of tears. She saw the obstacle course blur with a hundred different twisting paths. It was like the mirror maze in the carnival; that’s what Eliot’s music was about.
The jungle gym creaked and pinged. The scuffed aluminum ladder shone like it was new-and then a dozen rungs up, there was a set of monkey bars whose tarnished brass cleared and gleamed as if just polished-and where those ended, a balance beam of scuffed and scratched wood smoothed into gleaming mahogany as she watched.
He was finding the path through the course.
“The quickest way to the flag,” Eliot said as he played. “Go. Quick. I’ll keep playing.”
Mitch started up the ladder, and then waited for Fiona and Amanda.
Fiona wasn’t sure. It was a great idea, but she didn’t like leaving Eliot by himself.
How else were they going to win, though?
She and Eliot locked eyes. It’d be okay; they both knew how to take care of themselves if they had to.
“I can’t do this,” Amanda whispered. She looked miserable, sick from the brief sprint, terrified at the height of the imposing course, one hand clutching the side of her head, trying to block out Eliot’s music. “Let me stay. I’d just slow you down.”
“Keep your eyes open at least,” Fiona told her. . a little more nastily than she had intended.
Fiona and Mitch then mounted the ladder, climbed up-and then swung onto the monkey bars, following Eliot’s gleaming path.
Mitch got onto the balance beam, braced one hand on a railing, and extended his other hand to Fiona.
She took it and felt perfectly safe with him here-she looked down-even though “here” was a precarious twenty feet high.
They stepped across the beam, followed its arc shape up and then down in a half-moon trajectory and landed on a platform held by a steel pole. The thing swayed but held their weight.
Eliot looked small on the ground, his music tinny and far away. . but it still worked: Among the tangles of woven rope netting that went up from the platform, one section looked new, its knots squared and firm and sturdy.
“Your brother’s a miracle worker,” Mitch said, and started up.
“He’s something, that’s for sure,” she replied.
If they’d been smart, they would have had Eliot find the path ahead of time, and they could all have gone up together.
Fiona scanned the course and spotted Jezebel ten feet higher, where her rope ended in a solid concrete ceiling. She was stuck.
Robert was very high now. . almost to their flag. Good for him.
Should she have gone with him in the first place? That would have given them two at their goal. Nearly half a win. She didn’t see Jeremy or Sarah.
Half of Team White Knight, though, were almost to their flag. They worked together, helping each other along, and they were all looking for the best path. . keeping an eye out for an attack from Team Scarab as well? It was a smart strategy.
Fiona clambered over the top of the cargo netting and into a tube made of chain link. It was rickety, sloped down and then up and then sideways, spilling out into a series of hand-powered lifts: a bucket and rope and pulleys that would carry them almost to Robert’s position.
In a minute, they could be all caught up.
A breeze rocked the gym. Fiona clutched onto the chain and felt her stomach in her throat.
She looked down, for a moment not being able to see Eliot. . then she found him. Tiny and playing and still there.
But she saw something else that made her heart skip a beat: the missing half of Team White Knight. They were on the ground and moving toward her bother.
In a flash, she understood. Their strategy was to send one half up-fast sprinters-and let one half lag behind to slow down the opposition. And right now, the most vulnerable target was her trouble-magnet of a brother.
They were going to clobber him.
“Eliot!” she yelled.
Her voice was lost in the breeze. Eliot kept his head down, playing.
“I see them, too,” Mitch said, his normally reassuring tone heavy with concern. “There’s no way to get to him in time.”
