Some of the aliens were mounted on the orange spiders, some held the leashes of two-headed dogs. All carried wands, and all were staring at her or Jeff. The decision to play with the kids suddenly seemed laughably dumb.
A group of three walked out onto the field toward her, and the kids moved out of their way. Suzy walked over to Jeff and took his hand. He’s trembling, she thought, a second before she realized that she was, too.
When the three were nearly to them, the kid Suzy had labeled “captain of the two-man team” suddenly stepped forward.
“Je Sos!” he called, a big grin on his face. The man in the lead turned to him, his look of grim purpose turning into something more like longsuffering exasperation.
“Je Zir,” he said tiredly. The boy and the man held a brief conference. Suzy noticed the boy’s tone go from cheerful to wheedling to outright angry.
The man, in contrast, had only one tone – tired but firm – and nearly only one word, “ri,” which he repeated many times. Finally, he interrupted the boy mid-sentence, nodded to the men at his sides, and they reached forward and grabbed Jeff and Suzy.
The soldiers led them to the edge of the field, then lifted them up to ride spiderback behind more alien soldiers. Suzy turned back and looked at the kids as the spider began to move.
Shovuy, blue eyes now looking scared and a little sad, gave her a wave. To Suzy, the wave felt very final.
As she rode through the cobblestone street, through the gaping, pointing aliens, Suzy found herself trembling more violently than ever.
They rounded a corner, and the wall of the castle loomed up over them. Three cars were parked incongruously there now, but Suzy didn’t see any humans. Suzy shivered. The aliens ignored the cars as they rode past.
Across the drawbridge, over the river, Suzy rode, with a mounting sense of doom. She almost couldn’t look as they moved through the archway into the courtyard, not wanting to see kids chained as slaves, or kids locked in cages, or kids turned to stone. Or worse. She hoped there wouldn’t be blood.
“You know,” said Jeff from somewhere behind her, “I’m not usually this nervous going back to school.”
TWENTY
Jeff climbed down from the spider with a sigh. As terrible as all of this was, riding a giant furry spider had been pretty cool, and he would rather stay up there than come down and face his fate.
On the way to the front door, they passed Mr. McArthur’s petrified form, which seemed to be made of jade now. That didn’t help Jeff’s growing sense of dread.
They walked into the school, and the squeak of Jeff’s shoes seemed to scream, “Notice me!” Suzy shushed him.
“What?” Jeff whispered. “I’m not TRYING to squeak.”
They didn’t see any blood or bodies in the main hall, which was encouraging.
One of the guards gave Jeff a little shove and said, “Wax ach! Rib ci xi thiash shiqu.” He pointed both ways down the hall and looked at Jeff expectantly. Jeff looked at Suzy, who shrugged. The guard gave him another shove and said, “Rib ci xi thiash shiqu!”
Jeff didn’t know what the guy meant, but he started walking anyway, and then he made the connection, “Oh, you’re letting me lead the way? Got it.”
As they moved down the hall, past door after closed door, Jeff could hear the quiet hum of voices, human voices, coming from within the rooms. And they weren’t howling and screaming in pain, so that was another good sign.
They passed the cafeteria, and Jeff turned back to the guards. “Hey, you don’t happen to have any food, do you?” He mimed putting food in his mouth and chewing. The nearest guard gave him a shove and pointed for him to keep walking. Jeff sighed again. End of the hall, up the stairs, around the corner, and they were there, standing in front of the door to Ms. Hacking’s class.
He couldn’t see anything through the frosted glass of the door, but he could hear subdued voices on the other side. “Home sweet home, I guess,” he said to himself, and he opened the door.
There was a scramble for cover as the door swung open, but when Jeff and Suzy walked in, and then the guards closed the door, leaving them alone, the class exploded into happy motion.
Paola, then Jaime, then Zoe hugged Suzy. Jeff found himself giving hi-fives all around, and everyone was asking questions. He saw Nacho, and the two gave each other an only-slightly-awkward hug. Jeff couldn’t stop grinning.
Jeff half expected to hear Ms. Hacking shushing everyone and telling them to take their seats, but of course, she was gone. “Here,” Jeff finally said as he climbed up onto a desk, “We’ll tell you all about it.”
Suzy climbed up, too, and they passed a glorious half hour regaling everyone with their exploits. Jeff especially liked telling about meeting the tree-man and about Suzy running away from a sort of porcupine-squirrel creature in the woods that morning.
“Yeah, yeah,” Suzy grumbled, sounding just like their Mom, “Remember when you kept pulling up roots and leaves this morning and sniffing everything to see if it smelled like food? And then you pulled up that flower over the anthill, and the ants got all over you, and you were all,” Suzy began dance and contort her body wildly. The class laughed at her impression of Jeff being swarmed by ants, and then Jeff said, “But hey, do you guys HAVE any food?”
This sobered everyone up, and then the class told Jeff and Suzy their own story. It came out pretty disjointed, told by twenty competing spokesmen, but it amounted to this: after Jeff and Suzy had gone into the river, the aliens had rounded
