Cedric managed to twist from Andy’s grip. As he stood, he turned to Andy. With an evil grin he said, “You’re too late, you know. She already has the Key of Fate. Whether you defeat me or not, you’ll all die soon enough!”
Then Cedric turned and ran toward the group of thugs from the Collective, calling for protection. Andy gave chase, still howling with rage.
When Cedric reached the crowd where the fighting was thickest, Andy saw him remove a glittering orb from his pocket and raise it high above his head.
Andy had seen Cedric use his favorite weapon before. He was particularly fond of crafting decorated bombs that resembled Easter eggs. Cedric now held one of these and, seeing what he was about to do, Andy screamed for him to stop.
It all seemed to happen in slow motion. One second Cedric had the egg above his head and the next he slammed it to the ground.
A billowing cloud of smoke filled the air where the egg had landed. There was no explosion, and Andy wondered if perhaps, by some stroke of luck, he and his friends had been spared an untimely demise. Perhaps the explosive was a dud. But the smoke that filled the air was so thick, Andy couldn’t see a thing!
Emerging from the smoke, coughing and haggard, came Abigail. She rushed over to Andy and said, “Are you all right?”
Andy was relieved to see her. He was pretty sure his nose was bleeding from the fight with Cedric, but he was otherwise okay. He felt like crying, but he did his best to hold back the tears.
He nodded and then said, in a choked voice, “He killed my grandfather.”
Abigail didn’t say anything for a moment. Then, looking back toward the clearing smoke, she said, “We should get out of here while we can. Follow me. Let the others finish the fight.”
But Andy didn’t move. He stared at Abigail and said, “What did you say?”
“I said, let’s leave! The others can fend for themselves!”
And then Andy saw the glittering chain around her neck. Abigail didn’t wear jewelry. He knew in a flash who it was that stood in front of him.
He drew his Zoomwriter and pointed it at Cedric.
“Nice try,” he said, and pushed down hard on the cap.
KABOOOOM! A huge atomic pulse slammed into Cedric, sending him backward through the air. Andy watched as the villain’s unconscious body splashed down into a pool of quicksand. As he slowly sank below the surface of the bog, Andy made no move to rescue him.
The traitor had paid the price for his treachery.
Andy glanced back down at the Zoomwriter. He didn’t know how it had happened—usually it took a lot longer to recharge. But his grandfather’s gift had been there when he needed it, and now he felt the stinging tears he’d been fighting so hard to hold back come rolling down his cheeks.
Andy walked over to the table and gazed down at the dying form of his grandfather. He looked so small and frail without his protective window. Andy noted Ned’s bushy white sideburns and wished that his blue eyes, which were nearly always twinkling with suppressed mirth, would open.
But there was nothing he could do to open them and, Andy realized with a pain deep in his heart, they never would again.
Andy wiped his eyes and tried to come up with words to express how he was feeling. His grandfather had done so much for him. When Andy had first met him, Ned had seen potential in him that nobody else had ever seen. He’d believed in Andy and said he possessed the “Lostmore Spirit.”
Andy had wanted nothing more than to live up to his grandfather’s expectations and be just like him. After working hard trying to come up with the right words to say, all he could manage was a whisper.
“Grandfather, I…” he began, shoving his hands in his pockets.
Andy stopped, his eyes growing wide as his hand touched something in his pocket. He drew out a frond of purple aloe, the same miraculous plant that had healed Rusty.
Andy felt like he was in a dream as he moved close to his grandfather and squeezed a tiny bit of the plant’s juice onto his grandfather’s tongue. He stared down at him, wondering if there was still any chance at all.
Please…
He was aware of several hands on his shoulders. His friends were nearby. All stared down at Ned Lostmore, their leader, each unable to find a single word to say but all feeling exactly the same.
A moment passed.
And then another.
And then, Ned Lostmore’s eyes fluttered open and the color returned to his cheeks. He smacked his lips and said in a weak but cheery English accent, “I say, is that purple aloe I taste? Egad, haven’t had any of that in years. Makes a wonderful tea, don’t you know. Very restorative!”
Andy yelped with glee. He gently hugged his grandfather to his chest and realized, as he did so, that it was the first time the two of them had actually had any physical contact.
Ned’s eyes sparkled as Andy set him back down on the table. “Thank you, Grandson,” he said. “I can’t tell you how proud I am of you.”
Andy cried again. But this time, they were happy tears, and he didn’t try to hide them.
Andy sat on the docks next to his grandfather, relaxing beneath the canopy of twinkling stars that blanketed the sky over the Jungle Navigation Company boathouse. Ned Lostmore had been temporarily installed in a windowed cabinet to protect him until Boltonhouse could be rebuilt, and Andy had wheeled him over to a spot where the two of them could talk in private.
Andy gazed up at the heavens and listened to the gurgle of the river. “Little Brown Jug,” a famous dance tune, played
