Death's Academy (19 page)

We reach the edge of the meadow, and the pigeons begin their descent. We’re dropping fast.

“Hey, Mal!” I call out.

“Not now, I’m thinking.”

“But, Mal, it’s really, really important!”

“Everything is always really, really important with you.”

“No seriously, it’s really, really, really important. Should we be dropping this fa—” The earth smacks into us and we three trampoline off the blanket and skip across the meadow floor. Thankfully I fall into an obliging clump of reeds and a soft mound of mud.

I push myself to my feet and spit mud from my mouth. I’ve got it caked all over my face and the front of my shirt. I look around and see a boulder sticking out of the ground like a dull tooth only a few feet from me. I take a deep breath. “Wow, that was lucky.”

I trot over to Mal and help her to her feet. “You okay?”

“Yeah, I think so,” she says, rubbing her knees.

Brilliance is already to her feet and scouting around to make sure the coast is clear. She jogs over to Mal
and me. She looks me up and down. “What happened to you?”

I brush some of the mud off my face and shirt. “I’m okay. I hit some reeds and landed in some mud.”

A smile creeps across Brilliance’s face. “Uh … that wasn’t mud.”

My eyes widen. “What?”

“Let’s just say you have a bear to thank for your soft landing.”

I splutter and spit with all my might. I run over and dunk my head in a pool of water nearby and wash my mouth out and face off.

Brilliance and Mal are watching me with suppressed smiles.

“It isn’t funny,” I grumble.

Brilliance lets out a stifled giggle, and Mal clamps her hands over her mouth to not laugh. I roll my eyes.

“Come on. Let’s go,” I say.

I take off toward the waterfall, and my two giggling compatriots chase after me. As we sneak from tree to tree, the rumble of the waterfall grows in intensity. The sun dips behind the towering mountain just west of us.

“We’ve got to find out where the unicorn hideout is before it gets too dark.” I say over my shoulder. “The last thing we want is to spend the night in the forest not knowing where they are, and then happen upon them in the middle of the night.”

I scurry forward and dip behind a collapsed pine tree. Mal and Brilliance sidle up next to me. I peer through a grove of aspen trees and can make out the
base of the waterfall. The roar of the water dashing itself off the jagged rocks is deafening.

Brilliance signals for us to follow her, and she starts to creep around the dead tree trunk. As she is about to take a step into the open, something flashes in the corner of my eye. I grab Brilliance by the back of the shirt and yank her down. Her backside hits the ground hard, and she lets out a yelp. I clasp my hand to her mouth while shaking my head for her to be quiet.

I peek my head just above our hiding place. Two unicorns are striding through the trees only thirty yards ahead of us. They’re marching toward the base of the waterfall.

I motion to Mal and Brilliance to stay put, and I creep after the unicorns. I follow a safe distance behind, ducking behind trees and rocks. They reach the churning river just below the crashing falls. They stop and swivel their heads in every direction scanning the forest. I drop to my stomach.

The unicorns reach down and push aside a boulder. One of them pulls out something that was hidden underneath. There’s a gnashing and scraping sound like rusty metal plates sliding against each other. Platforms the size of manhole covers pop out of the river. The unicorns hop from one to the next, like frogs jumping from lily pad to lily pad. An arch has pushed itself up right in the heart of the falls, a doorway through the curtain of water. The unicorns walk through the arch and disappear behind the waterfall.

There’s another screeching metallic sound, and the platforms drop back into the churning river.

I turn back to tell Mal and Brilliance about my discovery and then lead them back to the spot where I watched the unicorns climb through the falls.

“Okay, so we know where they are and how to get in, but what are we going to do when we get in there? We don’t know what’s behind there, we don’t know how many unicorns there are, and we don’t know where they’ve taken the Scythe,” Mal says, wringing her hands together.

“We’ve got to at least try,” Brilliance says. “We’ve come too far to not try. If my dad was here he—”

“I agree with both of you,” I say quickly, hoping to cut short
another
story about Lightcrest. “We’ve got to at least try to get the Scythe back. But we can’t just walk through the front door without a plan.”

“So, what’s the plan?” Brilliance asks, and both she and Mal look at me expectantly.

Fantastic … I was hoping that one of them had a plan. “Uh … Mal, what do you have in that backpack of yours?”

Mal lays the contents neatly onto the ground. She points to each item. “I brought the ice spray, the voice receiver—”

“What does that do?” Brilliance asks.

My memory immediately conjures up her pet guinea pig Titacus-Rex. “It allows you to speak through someone or something else. You put the band around the neck and you put the earpiece into your ear. It’s kind of like one of those shorty walkie-talkies. You
hear what the animal or person hears and you can use their vocal chords.”

Brilliance screws up her face. “That’s kind of creepy.”

Mal points to three slender foot-long cylinders. “I just finished these last week. I call them hound retriever tubes.”

I pick one up; it’s about as heavy as a flashlight and it has a clasp at one of the ends. “What does this do?” I say as I put my thumb on the clasp.

Mal snatches the tube from me. “Get your thumb away from the trigger!”

“Sorry.”

“If you unhook the latch, it will fire the recovery line,” Mal says.

Both Brilliance and I give her confused looks.

“You know how every time I take Harvey on walks, he wiggles out of his collar or gnaws through his chain and takes off on me?” Mal asks.

I nod. Brilliance shakes her head.

“Harvey is her hellhound,” I say.

“Ahh,” Brilliance says.

“So I built the hound recovery tube. You point it at the running hound and it fires a steel line with a suction cup at the end. The suction cup is lathered up with goblin snot, so it sticks to ’em tight. Then you push this button, and a reel comes out so you can pull them in like you are reeling in a fish.”

“Gross,” Brilliance says.

“Cool,” I say.

Mal picks up a small silver whistle. “The last thing is the—”

“Hound-ariot whistle,” I blurt. “But what good is that here? There aren’t any hounds.”

Mal smiles and twists the whistle. It breaks in half and then she flips one end around and screws it back together. She puts it to her lips and blows. There isn’t any sound.

“It’s broken,” Brilliance says.

“Wait for it,” I say with a smile.

A few moments later, a bushy tailed squirrel scampers to our feet. It tilts its head up at us, waiting for a command.

“It’s a slightly different frequency, but it works on rodents too,” Mal says.

“How do you figure this stuff out?” Brilliance asks.

“Mal’s a genius,” I say and pick up the voice receiver and twirl it in my hands. “And I’ve got a plan.” I glance up at Mal, whose face has gone all red again. “You okay?”

“Fine,” she says, turning away.

“So what’s the plan?” Brilliance asks.

A few moments pass, and then the squirrel reappears. It beckons us forward with its little squirrel arm.
We hop over to him and enter the archway beneath the pounding waterfall. The noise is deafening.

The archway leads into a leaky stone corridor. We creep down it; a faint light highlights the end of the tunnel. We reach the end and step into a cavern. Stalactites and stalagmites dot the cavern like fangs, making the vast room look like a poisonous jaw gaping open to invite us in. A smooth path snakes through the stalagmites.

I glance down at the squirrel and it gives me a thumbs-up. It then scurries forward down the path. I have to admit, I’m really hoping that our new little friend isn’t a distant cousin to the chip-beast from Michaels Park that I tried to do in. If so, then this would be a perfect opportunity for payback.

We follow a dozen or so yards behind the squirrel. The whole time I press the earpiece from the voice receiver firmly into my ear. All I can hear is the squirrel’s wheezing and snuffling. Somehow we were able to attract the only squirrel in the forest with a cold, but I guess beggars can’t be choosers.

The path swerves deeper and deeper through the rocks and pools of black water. I squint forward into the gloom and notice something rotating that I swear is a multicolored windmill.

“Do you see that?”

“It looks like a giant peppermint candy,” Brilliance says.

We follow the path until we reach the back wall of the cavern.

“That’s a gear,” Mal says, pointing to the circulating wheel.

It’s fifty feet tall and attached to the cavern wall. It has notches in it, and every time it turns, it spins several other gears next to it. At least a dozen different-sized wheels spin at various speeds like rainbow-colored pinwheels.

“It’s like those gears and wheels that are inside a clock,” Mal says, staring at it. “Those are connected to something.” She takes a step forward, and I notice what’s at her feet.

“Stop!” I yell and spring forward. I catch her by the shoulder and tug her backward.

“Hey! What was that for?” Mal asks.

“Look.” I motion toward the cavern floor just ahead of her.

There are three ten-foot-wide holes in a line. I inch forward and look down into one, but it’s a black abyss without a visible bottom. A distant, metallic rumbling creeps up from their depths.

“How deep are they?” Brilliance asks.

Mal pulls out a coin from her backpack and flips it into the nearest hole. We wait and wait, but nothing.

“You’re lucky,” Brilliance says, walking on the path between the holes to the other side. “You’d have fallen for a long, long time.”

On the other side of the three holes and below the massive spinning gear is a jagged gash in the rock wall. It is the width of ten men or two unicorns. The squirrel scurries between the holes and stops at the edge of the crack. He flops back down onto his back haunches.

We follow after him and I peer into the opening. It’s a short tunnel; another cavern lies on the other side of the wall.

The squirrel and I make eye contact. “Well, get going,” I whisper.

It shakes its head.

“What’s in there?” I ask.

The squirrel runs its claw across its neck menacingly, and acts like it has been struck dead flopping on the ground. It lies there for a moment and then pops back up. It shakes free of the voice receiver and gives us a little salute before heading back down the direction we came.

“Where’s he going?” Brilliance asks.

“I guess this is as far as he’s gonna go,” I say.

“Okay. Well then, what now?” Brilliance asks.

I inch forward trying to get a better glimpse into the next cavern, but I can’t make heads or tails of what’s in there.

“Night, what now?” Mal asks.

“Uh …” I stammer. “That was kind of the extent of the plan.”

“What!” Brilliance whispers.

“Well, I didn’t know our toothy friend was gonna bail right away,” I say.

Brilliance rolls her eyes. “What a strategist,” she says and pushes past me. She creeps into the crack in the wall. She gets onto her stomach and worms forward until she reaches the edge. She lies there for a moment and crawls back to us.

She signals for us to come close. “There’s a crevasse between us and the other side of the room. An iron bridge with rails on both sides spans across the gulf.”

“That doesn’t sound so bad,” I say.

Brilliance smirks. “I’m not done. There are also two unicorn guards on the opposite side of the bridge. They both are holding some type of spear.”

“Oh … that sucks,” I say.

Brilliance nods and bites her lip. “I think I can get us past them.”

“How?” Mal asks.

“With this,” she says, patting her skull ball boot hanging over her shoulder. “And these.” She picks up two grapefruit-sized stones.

I eye her warily. “You sure? This isn’t kicking a skull through a golden hoop. There are two of them out there.”

“You’re right. This isn’t kicking a skull through a golden hoop. This is easier,” she says and smiles. “I’ll be able to kick both stones before the unicorns realize what’s happening.”