The grim adventure, p.15
The Grim Adventure, page 15
Rosemary sprinted from the beast to where the terrified students remained frozen on the steps. The silver half-moon reflected off the mucus coating the beast’s body, casting its bulbous form in a metallic glow. Twinkling stars and abominable fungus had rolled together into one screaming, living nightmare.
“What is that!”
“That can’t be a meguling!”
The beast’s true name pierced Rosemary’s heart like a spear. Thaeda’s and Rush’s cries overlapped, but Willow remained planted firmly on the grass, fists clenched at her side. She turned to Rosemary. Her voice shook, but she did not flee. “How do I help?”
Rosemary reached for Willow’s hand, and the girl extended it in return. Rosemary looked at the other two just as the monster stopped its screaming. “I need you to listen to me, and we don’t have time to argue.”
The beast did not stomp toward them like the giants in fairy tales. One moment it was planted on the ground, and the next it had taken off in a thunderous run. She didn’t have to look over her shoulder. In the fraction of a second it took for the first footstep to send the ground trembling, her classmates’ eyes widened in a way that told her time was up.
“Go, go!” Rosemary was already on her feet. She took off to the left like a bullet, dodging and rolling out of the way just as she drew the monster’s attention. It snarled as it followed her. She zigzagged to the left, then the right as she shouted, “Don’t get hit! Get ready.”
Thaeda dashed to the right, yanking Rush as he trailed behind her. Willow ran with no fear as she took off down the center. They created a perfect triangle as the creature stayed fixated on Rosemary.
“Thaeda!” Rosemary called an order. “If it claps its hands together, we’ll choke on its spores. I need you to—”
“Wind!” Thaeda agreed, jaw clenched, hands at the ready.
The meguling ignored them as it took one thunderous step after another toward Rush.
“Rush! Use your water!” Rosemary said.
He yelled, “Absolutely not! Mushrooms love water!”
“No” came her frustrated response. “Mushrooms are made of mostly water. Can’t you—”
She didn’t have time to finish her thought before the meguling clapped its hands. A volcanic eruption of yellow spores filled the lawn in an instant. But the choking cloud only made it a few inches before Thaeda hit it with a powerful blast of wind. She planted her feet, hands raised, and pushed the air all around them as hard as she could, clearing it before they’d taken a single breath of the spores.
The meguling let out a frustrated grunt, then a roar as it set its sights on Thaeda. Its mustard-yellow eyes widened, teeth bared as it ran for her.
“Rush!” Rosemary urged.
“On it.” He set his jaw, put one foot behind the other, closed his eyes, and lifted his hands. Instead of the pushing motion Thaeda had used, Rosemary and Willow stood side by side, watching in amazement as Rush held his left hand extended to keep the monster at bay. He hooked his right hand as if cupping water and began to pull it closer and closer toward him.
The creature ran toward them. Thaeda screamed. Rosemary’s heart plummeted. Rush wasn’t powerful enough. He couldn’t do it. She took a few staggering steps toward Thaeda through a strangely sloshy, wet lawn where dry grass had existed only moments earlier, but she wasn’t going to make it in time. Thaeda lifted her arms to protect her face as she braced for impact.
The meguling came to an abrupt halt only a few feet from her. Thaeda peeked up between her arms as the creature lifted its hands and looked at them. Where once a giant, mushy paw had been, a thin, withered hand was in its place.
Its arm thinned, then its chest, as if some strange vampire was drinking the meguling dry. With wide eyes, Rosemary realized what was happening.
Rush hadn’t failed after all.
He kept his eyes closed, hands working as he sucked the water from the beast. Her sneakers weren’t suddenly soaked from some wet coincidence. Rush was draining the monster and filling Fern’s grassy lawn with the water that had filled the mushroom beast only moments before.
Rush continued to focus. The others watched in stunned silence as the creature’s dinosaur feet, its giant hat, its millions of tiny protrusions all became dried and shriveled.
“That’s it!” Rosemary said excitedly. Hope flooded through her. “You’re doing great!”
The beast fell to its knees as it crumbled into soft yellow dust. The meguling let out what would have been a mighty roar, but instead, only a cloud of spores was emitted as it coughed, then collapsed.
Movement from somewhere near the sanctuary drew Rosemary’s eyes. Trym and Henry had safely arrived and stood on the far edge of the lawn, jaws on their hinges, watching in amazement.
“We won!” Thaeda shouted.
Rush jumped in the air and pumped his fist in victory.
Rosemary wrapped her arms around Willow in a tight hug, but the girl did not return the embrace. After a moment, the curious feeling of dread pinched at Rosemary once more. She pulled out of the hug and held Willow at arm’s length. “What is it?” she asked.
Willow looked at the yellow dust. “We’ve made it worse,” she said in a whisper.
Rosemary shook her head, not understanding.
“Spores are like mushroom babies. If the spores are everywhere, that means that as soon as they take root, we won’t have one meguling. We’ll have millions. No, billions.”
Rush and Thaeda arrived just as Willow finished her gut-wrenching explanation.
“No . . . ,” Rush whispered.
“That can’t be,” Thaeda insisted.
“It’s true,” Willow said gravely.
And then, just as it had in the Lost Woods, an idea struck Rosemary. She turned to Willow. “What plant eats mushrooms?”
Willow furrowed her brows. “None. If they did, I would have used them the night of the toorsodos.”
Rosemary’s hair tickled her shoulders as she shook her head with feverish intensity. She gripped Willow by both arms. “No, not living mushrooms. I mean the stuff in them. The minerals. The nutrients. Isn’t there a plant that needs them in the soil? Didn’t you say . . .”
Willow nodded slowly “Yes. Almost all plants use photosynthesis and get their food from the sun, but orchids are special. If they don’t get enough nutrients from sunlight, they use the soil. They eat—”
“Mushrooms,” Rosemary said on a breath.
“Mushrooms,” Willow agreed.
It was Willow’s turn to close her eyes. Unlike the others, she did not lift her hands. She knelt on the ground and pressed her hands into the grass. Then, as if murmuring a wish, she asked the plants for a favor.
A creeping vine emerged as if from nowhere. It moved like a snake, weaving past legs and over obstacles until it reached the dusty pillow of yellow spores. It came to a stop in the middle of the mustardy pile, and at its tip, a bright silver flower emerged.
“The Starlit Lycaste,” Rosemary whispered.
She watched as Willow continued to speak to the earth. Another silver flower popped up, then another, then another. Within a heartbeat, a thousand metallic flowers bloomed from the lawn in all their silvery glory. It was as if the terrible creature had never existed, and in its place was an ocean of stars.
Rosemary joined Willow on the ground and slid a hand over her back. Other students popped into various spaces of the lawn as they finished their farce of an exam and walked toward the beautiful array of diamond-like blossoms. Essie, Grey, and Iris rushed toward the aftermath.
“I’m so sorry we weren’t here,” Essie said, eyes wide.
“The one time my gifts would have been useful,” Grey grumbled. He jutted a thumb at Iris. “Correction. The one time her gifts would have been useful.”
“I should have been here,” Iris said quietly. “I could have used my shield. I could have helped. I . . .”
Rosemary blinked at the three. Of course she wished Essie had been there. Grey’s ability to create things in moments of need would have been spectacular. But as she stared at Iris, she believed the girl’s apology was genuine. Iris truly wanted to help. That didn’t seem like the behavior of a student who was spying for the Keeper. It certainly didn’t seem like the response of someone who wanted to destroy Fern’s.
Willow’s murmurs drew her attention. She looked back at her part-nymph friend to see tears spilling from her tightly shut eyes.
“You have to see this,” Rosemary urged. “Look what you did.”
Willow peeked just enough to see her handiwork.
Rosemary beamed as she said, “You saved Fern’s.”
“Rosemary, get up.”
No, she was not interested in that. Classes could wait. Now was the time for a nap. She needed ten thousand years without mushrooms or monsters or exercise of any form.
“Five more minutes, Mom,” she murmured.
“Burning beasts, Rose.” The voice released an exasperated sigh. It continued shaking her, but a second, stranger sensation interrupted her slumber. Little squeaks wormed their way through the space between the sleeping world and the waking one before a small, wet nose and soft, ticklish whiskers set her own nose itching. She cracked open a single eye to see the fluffy pink ear of her favorite siboo.
“Wiggles?” Her voice was so groggy, she barely recognized it.
“Come on,” the voice insisted. Rosemary rolled onto her back to find Trym in a frilly black dress standing over her bed. “Put on a costume and get downstairs. You’re going to miss your party.”
“My party?” Rosemary felt like a broken record, but her brain was feeling a little sluggish.
“It’s your birthday! I laid out a costume for you on my bed.”
Rosemary yawned. “I guess I didn’t think fae would also dress up on Halloween. Humans often dress up as things that really exist in the fae world.”
“I know,” Trym agreed. “You should ask Owen to explain his Halloween pranks on other humans who dressed up as vampires. Now, hurry up, get ready.”
Rosemary rubbed her eyes as she pulled herself to a seated position. Her vision was too bleary to make out the pile of fabric and odds and ends on Trym’s bed. Instead, she asked, “What are you?”
“A banshee,” Trym said.
Rosemary narrowed her eyes, waiting for any sign that her roommate was being sarcastic.
Trym cracked a grin and answered her question for real. “Me? The human-borns keep saying I remind them of some girl, so I’m dressing as her for the spooky dress-up holiday. I think her name is Thursday.”
Rosemary pressed her lips into a tight line to keep from smiling. “Isn’t that just one of your regular dresses?”
Trym reached the doorway and cast her roommate a final shrug. “I guess Thursday likes to copy me.” With that, she left.
Rosemary swung her feet off the bed and savored the feeling of cool, mushroom-free wood beneath her toes. She smiled at the sunrise as it cast its warming rays into her bedroom. She took her time getting up, then went down the hall, brushed her teeth, combed her hair, and splashed her face with water before returning to see what sort of costume Trym had picked out for her.
She stopped short of Trym’s bed when she realized what her roommate had done.
Rosemary’s eyes watered as she picked up a note in Trym’s handwriting that said:
Beneath the piece of paper rested a long-sleeved gray shirt and a pair of jeans. Rosemary wiped a tear from her cheek. She stepped into the jeans and pulled the shirt over her head, then crossed to the small mirror in the corner of her room. She looked at the reflection of herself—muddy-brown hair, hazel eyes, in her favorite clothes—and for the first time in her life, she felt seen.
Maybe she wasn’t normal—whatever that meant. But here at Fern’s, she was accepted. And that was the most beautiful birthday gift of all.
Rosemary was no stranger to birthdays. Eleanor Thorpe, despite her flaws, had always tried to make her daughter’s birthdays special. Her mother made cupcakes with pink frosting each year. She’d make chocolate chip pancakes and put a special present on the breakfast table if Rosemary’s birthday fell on a weekend, and make waffles and bacon and sliced fruit for dinner if her birthday fell on a school night.
While her mother didn’t totally understand what Rosemary liked, she usually got her something soft, like a fluffy blanket, or a pack of new socks, and lastly, each and every year, her mother would try to meet Rosemary where she was in the best way she knew how. She would give her as many art supplies as she could afford so that Rosemary could carry on with the paintings, drawings, and sketches that Eleanor would never understand.
But when Rosemary descended the manor stairs, it was to a different sort of birthday entirely. Orange and black balloons sat atop Una’s desk in the foyer. Dante was the only person in the room. He paused above Una’s desk as if caught with his hand in the cookie jar.
“You couldn’t have waited five more minutes?” he asked. “It’s customary for tutors to get cards for their students. It’s not much of a surprise now.”
“You didn’t know I’d be five minutes early? Maybe you’re not a very good prophet.” She extended her hand for the card.
Dante also handed her a simple black-and-orange cone-shaped cardboard hat with an elastic chin strap. She slipped it over her head with a small smile.
“It’s just the card from me,” Dante said. “Don’t expect a week without homework or whatever it is you kids ask for.”
“I don’t care about future homework,” Rosemary replied, “but I have a question about a past assignment. The one where you wanted us to pick a specific date, and the next thing we know all of us are being sent away from the school at the same time. What did you see?”
“Can’t you just enjoy your party? Cake’s waiting.”
She tapped her cardboard cone. “It’s my birthday. I deserve to know.”
He sighed. “You will. Shortly. I’m so sorry.”
Dante turned and led them down the hall before she could ask why he was apologizing.
The portraits watched their every step as she made her way past the jack-o’-lanterns carved with various faces—some serious, some traditional, some artistic, some silly. They flickered as festive candles burned within them.
Apart from Dante’s strange behavior, she wasn’t sure what was making her so nervous. These weren’t the sort of nerves she felt when walking down the hall to the principal’s office at her old school. This wasn’t the nervousness she’d felt when her mother had discovered her journal after she’d resolved to stop drawing things that might upset her parent. This was not quite excitement, but perhaps this was what uncertainty felt like when, at long last, she had the chance to be hopeful.
When she stepped through the door, it was to the most beautiful sound in the world.
A chorus of “Surprise!” rang out from every student, every teacher, and some people she absolutely did not recognize, who she could only hypothesize must be the elusive Mrs. Kay the kikimora and the otherwise-invisible Sweetie and Nickel—the latter who was, in fact, a gnome, and the former who was something that Rosemary couldn’t begin to describe, nor would she want to. Everyone at Fern’s had gathered for her, and her alone. All three fireplaces crackled their warm, happy greeting. Stacks of muffins and breakfast foods and pitchers of tea and a bowl of red punch covered the tables. Piles of gifts and decorations and odds and ends made it clear that they were prepared for a lovely day of celebrating.
Okay, maybe it wasn’t exclusively for her.
The evening broke out in a series of Halloween games the likes of which she’d never seen. Many of the games revolved around candy, though others, like bobbing for apples, glow-in-the-dark tic-tac-toe, and a strange game that involved cute, slug-like creatures following shouted instructions as the students raced to complete their images of a pumpkin, took over the night.
Una, the teachers, and the zookeepers, cook, and whatever it was that Nickel did around the house, brought a chocolate cake with orange frosting big enough for everyone. Dante clapped her on the back once, then made some gruff comment about not expecting him to get all emotional anytime soon, before the others encouraged her to blow out her candles and make her wish.
Rosemary had never received so many thoughtful presents in her life. Among the more thoughtful gifts were a potted orchid from Willow, costume vampire teeth from Owen, and the West Virginia state flag from Thaeda. Essie gave her a bright red coin for one future wish. Leo gave her a moth bauble and told her to prepare to fight him in Bauble Battles. Then Iris handed her a small silver box.
“It’s a compass,” she said quietly. “I figured if you had your own, maybe you would give mine back to me.”
Rosemary stared at the box and the compass. The idle, happy chatter between students and teachers died down as everyone turned to see what was going on.
She didn’t know what possessed her to say what came out of her mouth next. Perhaps it was the safety of being surrounded by friends. Maybe it was the birthday celebration that made her braver. Or maybe, just maybe, she was sick of Iris’s lies.
“I can’t give you back your compass,” Rosemary said at last.
Iris’s eyelashes fluttered rapidly. Her posture straightened. “Why not?”
The room was so silent that even the fireplace seemed to have ceased its crackling.
“Because,” Rosemary said, “yours is a transportation device to the Seelie court. You’re the reason I was almost kidnapped by the Keeper. And I won’t let you give me or this school over to him. I won’t let him win.”
Iris’s fingernails bit into the skin of her shoulder. “Rosemary, I never—”
“Don’t lie,” Rosemary said. “I know what happened. And it would have been so much worse if Fern hadn’t showed up.”
The elusive fairy’s name seemed to have broken whatever spell the exchange had cast over the common room. The teachers sucked in collective breaths as their gazes dashed from one to another. Dante took several steps as if to stop Rosemary, but it was too late.
