Ravenspell Book 3: Freaky Fly Day (9 page)

Chapter 13

Chapter 14

LOST IN THE WILDERNESS

It is not wise

To listen to flies

—COB

Fortunately, Ben Ravenspell’s dad had stashed a few thousand dollars in his pockets as “folding money.”

“We can use it to hire a taxi,” he said when he broke free from his parachute.

The only problem was that they had bailed from the airplane out in the wilderness somewhere in a desert full of mesquite bushes taller than Ben’s dad’s head and yucca plants with broad spikes for leaves.

The small group gazed down from the hilltop where they’d landed.

“If we only had a cell phone,” Butch said. But Amber’s little cell phone was lost.

“What do we do?” Ben asked. He felt weak and very vulnerable here in the desert. It was only April, so it wasn’t very hot. In fact, it was rather pleasant. But Ben couldn’t see any sign of a lake or stream for miles. He worried he might die of thirst.

“Maybe we should just wait here for help,” Ben’s mom suggested. “I’ll bet that our pilot sent some sort of distress call.”

“That bozo?” Butch asked. “I don’t think so. I didn’t hear him calling for help.”

Ben knew his dad was right. The pilot had access to a two-way speaker system in the cockpit. They’d been able to hear everything he said, and he hadn’t called for help.

“Boy, what lousy luck I’m having,” Butch said. He squatted on the ground, head drooping.

“Cheer up, hon,” Mona said. “Look at the bright side: we made four million dollars this morning!”

“Yeah, but we lost it all before noon,” Butch said. “And I think we’re all going to die!”

“Perhaps we should start walking,” Lady Blackpool suggested. “I have found that one cannot go too far without running into a human road of some sort. Besides, it will be good for Ben and Amber. They need to collect mage dust. I suppose I’ll need it, too.”

“Okay,” Ben’s mom said. She picked up the mice and shrew and stuck them in the big pockets of her blouse. “I think we should go west from here. When we were falling, I thought I saw a freeway in that direction. I’m sure that I saw some orange groves.”

“West it is, then,” Butch said, glancing up at the sky. The sun was almost directly overhead. “Uh, which way do you think is west?”

“This way,” Mona said, pointing to a path through the brush.

“Are you sure you want to carry us?” Ben asked. “I don’t want to weigh you down.” As soon as he spoke, he realized how dumb he must sound. Altogether, two mice and a shrew couldn’t weigh more than four ounces.

“I think I can manage,” Mona said.

Ben and Amber were thrust into one pocket, and Lady Blackpool had gone into the other. Serena the butterfly chose to fly on her own, dipping from flower to flower as she traveled.

“Wow, your mom sure is great!” Amber whispered to Ben as they walked. “I mean, she’s
carrying
us.”

“Yeah,” Ben said, and he felt kind of weird inside. A couple of weeks ago, he hadn’t realized how cool his mom could be. He’d seen her dirty house and her lazy habits. But now here she was, marching through the wilderness, leading them toward the lair of an evil fly, and she had a strange look in her eyes—a cold intensity that Ben had never seen before.

“Mom, you’re different,” Ben said. “What happened to you?”

He looked up. From his vantage point, he couldn’t see much more than the inside of his mom’s nose.

Her voice came out sounding kind of sad. “Two weeks ago, when I woke up and you were gone, I realized that I could have been a better mother, Ben. So I decided to try to be the kind of mom that I knew I should have been.”

Ben thought for a moment and then admitted, “I think you’re a great mom.”

That brought a soft smile to her face.

For long hours they marched through the desert, over rough rocks and through tall brush. There were lots of cactuses among the mesquite—little barrel cactuses with bright red flowers and prickly pears with their strange leaf buds.

There was lots of life here in the desert, more than Ben would have imagined—meadowlarks and sparrows leaping about in the brush, and other kinds of birds, too, like scarlet-chested wrens. Ben saw a cottontail rabbit disappear into a thicket under a cactus. The desert was quiet and beautiful.

Ben would never have admitted it, but he decided that he liked being on another adventure. He liked being out in the wild with Amber.

But this was even more fun, because now he had his mom and dad with him. He felt safe with them.

Amber sat next to him, and she pointed out a little mouse hole in the grass, just beneath a cactus. A pair of fine red rocks rose up to either side of it.

“What do you think lives there?” Amber wondered aloud. “A mouse or a vole?”

“In the desert,” Ben said, “I’ve heard that there are lots of kangaroo mice. They can jump like me.”

“Wouldn’t it be fun to meet them?” Amber asked.

Ben had to admit that it would.

“If you could have a burrow anywhere in the world,” Amber asked, “where would it be?”

That was a big question. Ben hadn’t thought much about it. The world was such a big place. “I guess in Hawaii,” Ben suggested. “They say that it’s real pretty there.”

Ben’s mom and dad had passed the little burrow now, so Amber said, “I think I’d live back there—with a cactus for my roof, and nice big rocks on each side of my burrow. You would never have to worry about cats or coyotes trying to dig out your burrow.”

Ben had to admit that it did look like a nice little burrow, but he wondered if Amber was hinting at something. He knew that she had a crush on him, and she wanted him to stay a mouse. But sometimes he worried that she wanted him to be her boyfriend. Was she hinting that she wanted to live in that little hole in the ground with him?

“That cactus might keep out the coyotes,” he admitted, “but you’d still have to worry about rattlesnakes.”

That made Amber fall silent, and she gave him a nervous glance.

As the day wore on, Ben’s mom began to tire. Her breathing deepened, and so much sweat soaked through her blouse that Ben felt as if he were in a sauna instead of her pocket. They’d been gone for hours and hadn’t found any water.

Suddenly, Butch pulled the money out of his pants pocket and tossed it on the ground.

“What are you doing?” Mona asked. She stooped to pick up the money. “Are you so tired that you don’t feel like you can carry a few extra hundred-dollar bills?”

“I’m littering,” Butch said. “I like to litter. Uh, I mean, at least I’ve always
wanted
to do it!”

Ben’s mom gave him a curious look and then shoved the money into her own pocket. “Maybe we should rest,” she said. “I think that the sun is getting to you.”

A fly buzzed overhead, circled Mona once, and buzzed off.

Butch turned to walk away, but Mona jumped forward and stepped on the heel of his shoe, so that it came off. “Ha!” she cried in glee. “Gotcha!”

Ben had never seen his mother play such a childish prank before. Yet he suddenly had his own strange compulsion.

If I were at school right now, I’d run down the hall!
he thought. He imagined how free he would feel, running as fast as he could then stopping and sliding over the polished floor. Nothing in the world sounded as fun as running down the halls.

Butch turned and glared at Mona as if he might hit her for taking off his shoe. He crouched for an instant, trying to get his shoe back on, and he scowled up at her.

“Don’t you dare lunge at me!” Mona shouted. “I . . . I . . . I’ve wanted to tell you this for years: your mom is such a turkey that when she comes for Thanksgiving next year, I’m gonna baste
her
!”

A wild fierceness blazed in Butch’s eyes. They gleamed with insanity. Suddenly Ben noticed a fly buzzing around his dad’s head, and Butch leapt forward. He grabbed the money from Mona’s pocket and held the bills up. Then he savagely tore them into little pieces, right in front of Mona’s eyes.

“Litter!” he shouted gleefully, throwing the shredded bills into the air. “Litter, litter, litter! I’m a litterer!” The scraps of hundred-dollar bills floated down like confetti.

“What in the world are you doing?” Mona shrieked. “That’s all the cash we have!”

“Don’t worry,” Butch said. “I’ll just rob a pizza parlor and get some more! Or . . . or maybe I’ll make Ben write a book. Or maybe I’ll sell these stupid mice into slavery! How much do you think we could get for a magic mouse?”

Butch leered, the crazed expression on his face deepening. Mona lunged forward, startling him so that he tried to leap away. But she stepped on the heel of his left shoe again, pulling it off.

Butch growled like a wounded bear and whirled, trying to escape from Mona. She latched onto the back of his shirt, and the two of them became locked in a dance, Butch trying to get away while Ben’s mom tried to stomp on the heel of his right shoe.

“Let’s get out of here!” Amber screamed, and she leapt from Mona’s pocket.

Ben and Lady Blackpool did the same, and Ben thumped to the ground. He took shelter beneath a cactus and sat trembling while his mom and dad circled each other.

Butch stuck his tongue out at Mona and waggled it like a dog. He rolled his eyes back in his head so that they turned white then used his fingers to flare his nostrils out. He made grunting noises like a pig.

“Hogs! Hogs! You’re all a bunch of hogs!” he shouted. “And I’m not going to do anything you say!”

Ben’s mom gave a bloodcurdling scream and leapt in the air, and then karate-kicked Butch right in the gut.

“You crazy creep!” Butch screamed, doubled over in pain. He bent over to pick up a handful of sand and throw it in her face, but just as he scooped it up, Ben’s mom shoved him into a patch of cactus.

Butch yelped in outrage. “I’m gonna . . . I’m gonna poke you in the eye!”

He leapt up and grabbed Mona. He tried to poke her in the eye, but she dropped her head a little and bit his finger.

Butch screamed as Mona kicked him in the shins. He fell, pulling her down on top of him into a pile of cactus. They were both yelling and growling. Ben had never seen such a great fight in his life!

“Stop!” Serena screamed. The blue butterfly dipped in from above and fluttered between the two grown-ups. “Stop fighting! Don’t you see what’s happening? It’s the flies. The flies are telling you to do this!”

Immediately Ben glanced up and saw that, indeed, a pair of flies circled above his parents.

Now they buzzed toward Serena and grabbed her by the wings. Serena shrieked and tried to escape.

The flies shouted, “Traitor, we’ll show you!” as they caught her from behind. The flies grabbed her back and clung on for a second.

Serena struggled to climb back into the air, but the evil flies snapped her wings off. Serena dropped, her wings fluttering to the ground like leaves.

The two evil flies laughed maniacally and leapt into the air.

It happened so fast that Ben was helpless to stop it.

His mom and dad began circling each other, ready to brawl.

Ben still wanted to run in the halls at school, but now an even deeper compulsion struck. Next time he went to the school, he was going to chew gum in class then leave a big, juicy wad under the teacher’s desk!

Ben glanced up; the flies were circling overhead, just above him.

“Cover your ears!” Lady Blackpool shouted. “Everyone cover your ears! The flies are putting some kind of curse on you all!”

“Your ears, Mom—cover your ears!” Ben shouted.

He put his little paws over his own ears, drowning out the sound of the flies somewhat, and almost immediately the strange compulsions began to fade.

Lady Blackpool stood beneath the blade of cactus and raised a paw in the air. She muttered an incantation.

Birds that dart, birds that glide

Come and eat these evil flies!

Instantly, birds came careening through the mesquite brush, shooting between the branches like arrows.

They weren’t fancy birds—just little brown sparrowlike creatures, some with a bit of red or yellow on their chests. But did they fly fast!

They raced into the glade and darted around Ben’s mom and dad almost like hummingbirds, stopping and flapping motionless in the air, then plunging off in some new directions. In seconds, they had each gobbled down a couple flies.

The buzzing ceased, and Ben took his paws off of his ears.

But the birds remained. In a few seconds, more of them appeared, and then more, landing in mesquite bushes, perching on the spines of a large cactus. Dozens of them fluttered near, then hundreds.

Ben’s mom and dad stopped fighting. They both crouched warily, eyeing one another for a long moment, as if afraid that the other would attack.

Mona’s face softened, and she fought back a tear.

“Oh, cuddle-pumpkin,” Butch said. “I love you. I’m so sorry.”

“And I love you, my kissy-lips,” Mona replied.

Suddenly the two lunged at the same time. But instead of fighting, they just stood hugging.

While Ben’s parents traded apologies and kisses, Ben looked about. Birds kept coming. A great flock had begun to gather from across the desert.

“What’s going on?” Amber asked. “What kind of birds are these?”

“They’re called flycatchers,” Lady Blackpool said. “Most of them. Others are bee-eaters. They’re excellent fliers, and all of them eat flies.”

“But . . .” Amber said, “there are so many birds. Where are they coming from?”

“They’re scattered throughout this desert,” Lady Blackpool said. “They’re plain enough in color that you don’t notice them until you are looking for them. But we will need their help. We’ll need an army of them if we are to confront Belle Z. Bug!”

Lady Blackpool gave Amber a sidelong gaze and added, “Remember, Amber—never waste your powers by fighting if you don’t have to. You can often enlist the aid of others.”

Amber looked solemn as she considered the lesson.

As the flycatchers gathered, a mournful young Serena came crawling up to Ben. “Oh,” she lamented, “my wings, my beautiful wings!”