The Secret of Zoone Read online

  The questions were still swirling inside of Ozzie. “Couldn’t you have joined one of the other clans? A clan that didn’t believe in hunting magic?”

  “Perhaps,” Cho said. “But to do such a thing . . . it would have sparked a war between clans—not the kind of strife I wanted to bring to my world. I chose to wander. At first, I stuck to the wild lands: Untaar, Thrak . . . but eventually I found my way to different worlds. You know, I even ventured into the Skylands of Azuria. It was there where I happened upon an abandoned skyger cub, mewling on the ground.”

  “Tug!”

  Cho nodded. “Would you believe he was so small I could carry him in my arms? His mother had bitten off the ends of his wings—that’s why they’re stunted—and booted him from the nest.”

  “What!” Ozzie cried. “Why?”

  “Sometimes skygers have big litters,” Cho explained. “If the mother sees a docile cub, or a runt, she will decide that he will harm the other cubs’ ability to survive. So, she kicks him from the nest.”

  “That’s horrible,” Ozzie said.

  “Perhaps,” Cho acknowledged. “Nature is often cruel, I’m afraid. But Tug has no memory of this event; he was too young. I decided to take him with me, and eventually we ended up in Zoone, two sorry castaways. Lady Zoone took pity on us and allowed us to stay.”

  Ozzie looked over to where Tug was sleeping peacefully in the corner.

  “He doesn’t know the truth about his past, does he?” Ozzie said.

  “No,” Cho admitted. “He has this idea about returning to Azuria to be with the other skygers. He thinks they’re like him, but the truth is that a skyger is one of the fiercest creatures you’ll ever encounter.” Cho paused. “I guess my clan was right. I am a coward, for I’ve never found the courage to tell Tug the real story of his past. I think it would break his heart.”

  Ozzie exhaled. “I’m not going to tell him, either,” he vowed, still gazing at the magnificent blue cat. “Not ever.”

  21

  The Skyger, a Shoe, and an Unconventional Sword

  The next morning arrived terribly, dripping and dribbling, as if the world had woken up with a bad head cold. Even though the rain itself had stopped, water was still trickling off the ruined buildings and splashing into milky puddles on the streets below.

  “It’s too wet,” Fidget fretted, looking over Ozzie’s shoulder as he stood at the entrance hole. “I can’t go out there.”

  “We have to try,” Ozzie said.

  “Do you think I enjoy this?” Fidget snapped. “I love water. I crave it. But it’ll kill me.”

  “I . . . I know,” Ozzie mumbled.

  Because he did know. Any thoughts of her being a glibber had now scampered away. But it wasn’t like he could apologize to her; she hadn’t known about his suspicion in the first place. If he told her now, he’d have to face her wrath. And possibly her umbrella.

  “We understand, lass,” Cho said, placing a hand gently on Fidget’s shoulder. “But we can’t stay here any longer. Ride on Tug’s back. It will keep you off the ground, away from the puddles. Ozzie, you sit behind her and make sure she doesn’t fall.”

  After a quick swig from the canteen of Arborellian nectar (Tug’s swig was not so quick), they set off into the dreary day. Cho took the lead, followed by Tug, with Fidget and Ozzie on his back. Ozzie kept looking nervously over his shoulder. He couldn’t shake the feeling that they were being watched.

  “Your fur can’t turn camouflage, can it?” Ozzie asked Tug.

  “I don’t know,” Tug replied over his shoulder. “I’ve never heard of that color. Is it a type of blue? Just to tell you, I’m good at blue.”

  “It doesn’t matter,” Fidget said sourly. “He wouldn’t be able to disguise my inappropriately purple hair. My head might as well be a giant sign that says: All glibbers, come eat here.”

  “Your voices, too,” Cho warned.

  After that, they all kept quiet.

  They trekked through the remnants of the city, the broken windows and doorways glaring at them as they passed. They reached the ruined city gates without incident and soon found themselves on the same barren landscape that they had crossed upon first arriving in Glibbersaug. The difference now was that the ground wasn’t cracked and baked hard; it was soft and squishy. Every step Tug and Cho took resulted in a loud squelch. Ozzie could see it was hard going for the skyger and the captain, but neither complained, and eventually the wall appeared in the distance.

  “Finally,” Ozzie said. “I can just make out the door.”

  “Right where we left it.” Fidget exhaled in relief. “We made it.”

  She leaned down to hug Tug, but the skyger only made a sad little mew.

  “What is it?” Ozzie asked the skyger. But then he heard it, too. It was like the sound of a distant wave crashing against the shore—except instead of crashing, this wave was . . . croaking.

  Ozzie looked behind him.

  Glibbers. There were hundreds of them, maybe thousands, so many that they filled the horizon—and they were stampeding straight toward Ozzie and his companions. That all-too-familiar creepy-crawly feeling percolated inside Ozzie’s stomach. This is the glibber king’s army, he thought. This is what he wants to unleash upon the multiverse.

  Cho removed a key from around his neck and passed it to Fidget. “You’re the oldest, so you’re in charge of this,” he told her intently. “I’ll fight glibbers, and you open the door. If we get separated, just go through. Do not wait for me. Do you understand?”

  Fidget nodded.

  “Swear it, lass!” Cho urged, his voice hot with an unfamiliar harshness that made Ozzie flinch. “Swear you won’t wait!”

  “Yes!” Fidget said quickly. “I swear—we won’t wait.”

  Cho had already unsheathed his Valdune blade and was gripping it tightly in one hand. With his other, he slapped Tug on the rump and the giant cat sprang forward with a yelp. “Run, cub!” Cho shouted. “RUN!”

  And off the skyger shot, like a bolt of blue across the gray expanse. Though he wasn’t blue for long. Between his fingers, Ozzie could see Tug’s fur fading white with terror. The giant cat could not keep up his frantic pace, not with the ground sucking at his paws. Soon he was back to slogging through the mud.

  “They’re going to catch us!” Fidget fretted. “You’ve got to hurry, Tug!”

  “I’m doing my best,” the skyger panted.

  Ozzie clung tightly to Fidget. The cacophony of croaking became louder—which meant closer. The small and light glibbers didn’t have the same problems as Tug when it came to crossing the sloppy ground; the next time Ozzie glanced down, it was to see the slimy creatures surging around them in a tidal wave of teeth, flippers, and webbed claws. There was no sign of Cho. Ozzie looked ahead and saw that they were nearly at the wall. It rose before them, tall and steep.

  “Where’s the door?!” Fidget screeched.

  For a moment, Ozzie thought it had vanished, until he realized that the glibbers had purposely steered them off course. The door was farther down the wall. Ozzie could see it, but it might as well have been on the other side of the multiverse; with the glibbers swarming, they would never make it.

  Then Ozzie had an idea. He could see that the ground was harder here, at the base of the wall. It might just give us a chance, he thought. Then out loud he yelled, “Tug, can you jump? We have to reach the top of the wall! It’s our only hope!”

  The mighty cat didn’t hesitate, bursting from the ground like a rocket. As they soared through the air, Ozzie had a hint of what it might be like to ride atop a skyger that could actually fly. It was glorious.

  But their landing was not.

  Tug didn’t quite reach the top. Instead, he slammed into the side of the wall, clinging desperately to the ledge with his front paws. The jolt made Ozzie lose his grip, and he plunged downward. At the last moment, he managed to grab hold of a brick jutting from the wall and he dangled there, dangerously, like bait on a hook. Below him, the r
avenous glibbers were leaping up to snap at his heels. Ozzie tried to curl his knees, but a glibber still managed to snatch one of his untied shoelaces in its teeth. For a moment, the horrible beast hung there, Ozzie straining against the extra weight to keep his grip on the wall. Then Ozzie’s shoe came off and both it and the glibber plummeted into the horde below. A fracas erupted over the shoe until one of the glibbers seized the prize and ate it. Ozzie’s stomach churned at the sight.

  The glibbers turned their attention back toward Ozzie, still clinging precariously to his brick. He looked up to see that Tug had finally managed to clamber to the top of the wall. He and Fidget were now staring down at him.

  “Are you done hanging around?” the Quoxxian girl quipped.

  “Ha ha!” Ozzie retorted.

  Fidget reached down with her umbrella. Ozzie desperately clutched at it, feeling glibber tongues graze his now shoeless foot. He could hear the pucker and slurp of their lips—which didn’t do much to help his concentration. At last, he managed to grab hold of the umbrella’s handle and Fidget tried to pull him up.

  “Ugh!” she grunted. “You’re too heavy.”

  “Don’t worry! I can help,” Tug said. He turned around and lowered his long tail. Ozzie leaped onto it, just as another glibber pounced at him. With a swish of his tail, Tug pulled Ozzie to the top of the wall.

  Ozzie peered over the edge—and immediately wished he hadn’t. The glibbers were now scrambling on top of one another, flipping and flapping to reach the ledge. It was like they were building a ladder using one another as rungs. They reminded Ozzie of ants—the hungry, industrious kind he’d seen in nature shows on Sunday afternoons with Aunt Temperance.

  “Hurry, Tug,” Ozzie urged as he and Fidget climbed back onto the skyger. “Head toward the door.”

  Tug bounded along the top of the wall. There was a sheer slope on both sides of them. Ozzie couldn’t see anything on the other side of the wall except more mud. But it didn’t really matter; going over there wouldn’t help them. They needed to be on this side, the side with the door.

  Tug was so big and clumsy that there were many moments when he nearly slipped off, each time sending down a cascade of crumbling wall. And then the glibbers were upon them again. They had finished their makeshift ladder and now, like giant, bloodthirsty fleas, they raced alongside the skyger, pouncing and nipping at him.

  Tug yowled. Fidget began whacking. Her umbrella wasn’t quite a Valdune sword, but the glibbers still squealed when she struck them. A few of the beasts managed to leap onto Tug’s back, but Fidget clicked open the umbrella and, using it like a sort of shield, sent the slimy attackers tumbling down the slopes of the wall. Still, they kept coming. Ozzie desperately wished he had something to help in their defense. He didn’t even have his key anymore; he could have at least used it to jab at the glibbers.

  Going to have to rely on my wits, he thought desperately. “Tug!” he shouted over the din. “Flap your wings!”

  “But my wings don’t work,” Tug called over his shoulder. “I can’t fly.”

  “I don’t want you to fly!” Ozzie yelled. “I want you to blow these little grubs into oblivion!”

  “Oh!” the skyger said as he began fiercely beating his stumpy wings. He managed to stir up enough of a gust to force more of the attacking glibbers to pinwheel away in a flurry of blue feathers.

  They finally reached the part of the wall where the door was located. Tug leaped down, hitting the damp ground in a spray of pebbles and sludge. Cho was already there, standing in front of the door and swinging his blade of light in a wide arc to repel the glibber throng.

  “Where in the name of Zoone have you been?” he demanded.

  “Oh, you know,” Fidget panted as she jumped off Tug’s back. “Just seeing the sights.”

  She stabbed the key into the lock, turned it with a click, and they all scrambled through. At the last moment, just before Cho slammed the door shut, Fidget turned and hurled her umbrella at the glibber horde. It clobbered one of the slimy beasts right between the eyes.

  Cho grunted and wiped the sweat from his brow. “Nice shot, lass. But a waste of a good umbrella, don’t you think?”

  22

  The Magical Mix-Up

  Ozzie had learned that time wasn’t something that matched from world to world. So, even though the journey between Glibbersaug and Zoone took only half an hour, he wasn’t surprised to find that it was already late afternoon when he and his companions staggered through Door 89 and onto the north platform. There was an audience awaiting their arrival: Lady Zoone, Fusselbone, Master Nymm, and, most important in Ozzie’s opinion, Salamanda.

  “What a preposasterous situation!” Fusselbone fretted. “Is everyone okay? Did anyone die? What terrible things happened?”

  “A glibber ate Ozzie’s shoe,” Tug offered.

  “Oh, Ozzie!” Salamanda cried, rushing forward to throw her arms around him. “I’m so glad you’re all right. It . . . it . . . was all just a horrendous mistake. The door to Isendell is 189, not 89. And I have so many keys to look after for Master Nymm, I just got mixed up. It’s all my fault. I’m so sorry!”

  “Sorry!” Fidget erupted. “We nearly end up as fish food and all you can say is ‘sorry’?!”

  “You encountered glibbers, then?” Nymm asked Cho stiffly.

  “Aye,” Cho replied. He wrinkled his nose. “I can still smell them. Their stench must have soaked into our clothes.”

  Lady Zoone, who had remained silent until now, stepped forward and bowed her head to Cho. “Your bravery is to be commended,” she announced, the little creatures in her hair warbling excitedly as she spoke. “Don’t you agree, Isidorus?”

  “An admirable job,” Nymm conceded after a moment, though his eyebrows seemed to be saying something else. “But you, Eridean boy? You wish to speak to the council? How seriously do you think they will take a troublemaker from a dying world who has just gone traipsing through another?”

  “It wasn’t his fault,” Tug said.

  “It was hers,” Fidget declared, pointing at Salamanda.

  “Or no one’s,” Tug said, sitting on his hindquarters and licking a front paw. “Just a magical mix-up.”

  “That’s right,” Salamanda said. “A magical mix—”

  “Enough!” Nymm boomed. “What do you have to say for yourself, Eridean boy?”

  Ozzie couldn’t find the words to defend himself. He had been trying to win Nymm’s favor—but his plan had completely backfired and now all he could do was stare sheepishly at the ground.

  “Is this what you plan to do in front of the council?” Nymm snapped. “Stand there and gape like some Aquarian sea bass?”

  “Isidorus,” Lady Zoone said sternly. “He’s just survived Glibbersaug. You can’t say that about too many people in the multiverse. Give him some credit.”

  “Please,” Ozzie managed. “You have to let me talk to the council.”

  Nymm leaned down and leveled his nasty eyes—and the even nastier eyebrows above them—at Ozzie. “Have to? I do not have to do anything, Eridean boy.” Then, standing back to full height, he added, “What about the key to Glibbersaug? The one my apprentice gave you in her feat of glorious ineptitude. Where is it? I must have it now.”

  Fidget thrust the key into Nymm’s waiting hand, then gave back Lady Zoone’s as well. “And what about Smink the Fink?” Fidget demanded, pursing her lips.

  “I am not in the habit of answering to Quoxxian girls,” Nymm scoffed. “But rest assured, Miss Smink will be punished for her buffoonish mix-up. She has reported the entire story to me, only to reveal more mind-boggling incompetence. The parcel she wished to retrieve was never actually forgotten. It was here the entire time.” He turned and glared at the bleary-eyed girl. “She can begin her penance by cleaning my cauldron. With her own toothbrush.”

  Nymm marched away. Salamanda followed, but not before casting Ozzie a woeful look over her shoulder.

  “Good-bye,” Ozzie mouthed to her.
r />   “That’s it?!” Fidget cried after they were gone.

  “You’ve obviously never seen what a wizard’s cauldron looks like after a month’s brewing,” Lady Zoone said. “And, if I know Isidorus, he’ll make Salamanda use the toothbrush on her own teeth afterward.”

  “Good,” Fidget muttered. “It’s not enough—but good.”

  She trudged off to the station, hands clenched into fists. Ozzie watched her go with mixed feelings. He still felt like he owed her an apology for thinking that she was a glibber, and for the way he had treated her so suspiciously in Glibbersaug. But he had no idea how to begin that sort of conversation.

  “Ozzie?”

  He looked up and suddenly realized that the only people left standing at the door to Glibbersaug were him, Tug, and Lady Zoone.

  “Tug, why don’t you make your way to the mess hall?” Lady Zoone suggested. When the skyger opened his mouth to object, she added tetchily, “I’d like a moment alone with Ozzie.”

  “Well, I am starving,” Tug said, and for once, Ozzie didn’t think he was exaggerating.

  “Go on, Tug,” Ozzie told him. “I’ll catch up.”

  “Well?” Lady Zoone asked after the skyger had departed. She was staring down at Ozzie with the kind of look he had come to know all too well from his schoolteachers. “I find myself in the awkward position of needing to ask: Just what in the worlds were you thinking?”

  “I know you’re upset,” Ozzie said. “But I was just trying to help Salamanda. And, if you think about it, Nymm. I thought it would be good to . . . to . . .”

  “Ingratiate yourself with the council.”

  “Yeah. Ingratiate.” It was an Aunt Temperance word, and just thinking of her made Ozzie’s stomach quiver with panic. “Look,” he told Lady Zoone, “now that I’ve seen Glibbersaug, now that I’ve seen what can happen, I get what you mean about dying worlds. We can’t let anything like that happen to my world. Aunt Temperance is there. My parents are there. There’s billions of people. Glibbersaug is a mess! It’s complete and utter devastation. It’s—”