The Secret of Zoone Page 3

  Ozzie began to seriously worry. This was now officially Aunt Temperance’s worst downward spiral, and he didn’t know what to do. He tried calling his parents, but neither of them answered. Too busy enjoying their adventures to pick up the phone, Ozzie thought bitterly. But it didn’t really make a difference; there was no way his parents could come rushing home from their respective corners of the world in time to help, even if they wanted to.

  The key, the door, even the mysterious secret faded in importance. All Ozzie could think about was how to get Aunt Temperance on her feet again. He was thinking about her Friday morning while he walked to school. He was thinking about her all through his afternoon math quiz (he scored worse than usual). He was thinking about her when he came home from school and found the door to Apartment 2B standing wide open.

  Whoops, Ozzie thought. Aunt Temperance was forever reprimanding him for not closing the door properly. And now he had left it open for the entire day. He wondered if he should confess his blunder. Perhaps he could coax a lecture from her; at least it would prove she had some fight left in her.

  But all thoughts of Aunt Temperance instantly evaporated the moment Ozzie entered the living room.

  There was a tiger on the sofa.

  It was stretched across the cushions like an enormous house cat and, as Ozzie shut the front door, it looked up and smiled at him. At least it seemed to smile. Ozzie wasn’t so sure tigers could smile—though, as he circled around to the front of the sofa, it occurred to him that it probably wasn’t a tiger after all. It did have stripes, a long tail, and a whiskery face. But its fur was blue, and it had curly ears and a pair of wings.

  I think they’re wings, anyway, Ozzie thought, because they looked stunted and feeble, like they hadn’t grown properly.

  Then the beast opened its gigantic mouth and declared, “You must be Oswald Sparks.”

  Ozzie blinked. It was definitely not a tiger. What’s going on in this apartment? he wondered. A lady with an impossibly long neck and a pet mouse was one thing. You could almost believe they came from this world. But an enormous talking cat? No way.

  “Oswald?” the definitely-not-a-tiger repeated with a hint of uncertainty.

  “Yeah, that’s me,” Ozzie said, before quickly adding, “Actually, most people call me Ozzie.”

  “Oh,” the definitely-not-a-tiger said. Then, after seeming to take a moment to think about it, he added, “Most people call me Tug.”

  “Are you making fun of me?” Ozzie asked suspiciously.

  Tug looked at him rather blankly. Ozzie stared back. For a moment, they sized each other up, and the only sound in the room was that of the sofa groaning beneath the creature’s immense weight.

  It was Tug who broke the silence first. “Well, I’m not sure skygers are very good at staring contests,” he announced, blinking his sapphire eyes, then yawning to reveal a turquoise tongue and mouthful of sharp teeth. “Oh, and just to tell you, I’m a skyger. By the way, is your shirt on backward?”

  Without taking his eyes from the cat, Ozzie reached down to feel the shirt tag on the inside of his collar. At least it wasn’t inside out.

  “Maybe we could be friends,” the skyger purred with a hopeful twitch of his ears.

  Ozzie couldn’t remember the last time anyone had made him that kind of offer. His only response was to gape at the cat—which he must have done for a long time, because eventually Tug lowered his head and said, “Oh. I guess you have enough friends already.”

  Ozzie snorted. His best friend was his aunt—but that wasn’t exactly the sort of thing you advertised. “Why would you say that?” Ozzie asked.

  “You just have that sort of look,” Tug explained. “Anyone who wears his shirt backward probably doesn’t worry about what anyone else thinks. And Lady Zoone says when you don’t care about what anyone thinks, then you’ve really made something of yourself.”

  “Who’s Lady Zoone?” Ozzie asked, though he had a sneaking suspicion that she was the owner of a certain hat.

  “She’s the stationmaster,” Tug replied. “She runs Zoone.”

  Ozzie frowned in confusion. “So . . . is Zoone a place or a person?”

  Tug seemed to consider this question for a moment. “It’s both. Zoone Station is named after the wizard who built it, and that’s Zephyrus Zoone, Lady Zoone’s ancestor. She’s the first Zoone to run the station since him. But you would have to ask her about it. Just to tell you, skygers aren’t very good when it comes to history. We’re good at other stuff.”

  “Yeah?” Ozzie wondered. “Like what?”

  “Well, we can change color, depending on our mood,” Tug boasted. “And we can fly, too. Well, most of us. Not me. I was born with bad wings.”

  As a demonstration, he gave his wings a flap, which, despite their stumpy nature, created a gust of wind that was enough to send the nearby lamp toppling against an armchair.

  He’s just as clumsy as me, Ozzie thought.

  “The Convention of Wizardry is coming to Zoone,” Tug continued. “I’m hoping the wizards can fix my wings. If anyone can, it’s a wizard . . . right?”

  Ozzie’s mouth fell open. “I . . . I don’t know,” he admitted. “I’ve never met a wizard.”

  “Oh,” Tug said, not sounding entirely convinced.

  “But . . . but a Convention of Wizardry?” Ozzie stammered. His imagination was running laps—except, he realized, it wasn’t his imagination anymore. Talking animals, wizards . . . these things were suddenly very real.

  “You know,” Tug said, “if the wizards fix my wings, I can return to the Skylands of Azuria. That’s where I was born. Though I don’t remember it. I’ve lived in Zoone most of my life.”

  “Why wouldn’t you want to stay there?” Ozzie asked incredulously. “I mean, if there’s wizards there. Magic.”

  “Azuria is where all the other skygers are,” Tug explained. Then, with a slightly mournful mew, he added, “Besides, I don’t have a lot of friends like you. There aren’t many other kids in Zoone.”

  “Er . . . you’re a kid? Like a cub?” Ozzie asked. He wondered at the size of a fully grown skyger; it would mean the doom of any sofa.

  “I stay with Captain Cho,” Tug continued. “But he’s a grown-up. And you know what they’re like. Busy, busy, busy. Just to tell you, I’m an orphan. What about you? Are you an orphan?”

  “No,” Ozzie said. “It’s just that my parents are . . . busy, busy, busy. I have Aunt Temperance, though.”

  And, now that he had mentioned her, she elbowed her way back to the forefront of his mind. Ozzie turned to look at her bedroom door. It was shut tight, with not a peep coming from behind it. Ozzie grimaced. If a visit from Hat Lady had been enough to plunge Aunt Temperance into her current condition, he could only imagine what seeing the skyger would do.

  “You know,” Ozzie said, “I think it’s best if you leave before Aunt Temperance sees you.”

  “But she’s supposed to see me,” Tug protested. “Lady Zoone said I could convince her to go through the door.”

  “How?”

  “She says it’s hard to ignore a skyger.” As he said this, he gave his tail an excitable swish, knocking over a vase and two picture frames on the nearby side table. Everything struck the floor with a resounding crash.

  Ozzie cringed at the sound—this certainly qualified as a disruption to the natural order of Apartment 2B. Tug himself seemed oblivious to the accident. Ozzie stared expectantly at Aunt Temperance’s door, but she failed to come bursting out . . . which only deepened Ozzie’s worries.

  “How long have you been here, by the way?” he asked the skyger.

  “I arrived just before you,” Tug answered. “Just to tell you, the apartment door was wide open.”

  Ozzie nodded and crept over to Aunt Temperance’s bedroom. He opened her door and poked his head through. In the faint light, he could see Aunt Temperance in her pajamas, lying on top of the covers, staring at the ceiling.

  “Aunt T?” Ozzie called into t
he dim room. “Sorry about the noise. I knocked something over.”

  “Okay, Ozzie,” she replied emotionlessly.

  “I’ll clean it up.”

  “Sure, Ozzie.”

  Ozzie closed the door and turned back to Tug. “It’s no good,” he worried. “You’ll have to go back. Aunt Temperance is . . . yeah, she’s pretty sick.”

  “But I don’t have a way back,” Tug announced.

  “Can’t you go back through the door?” Ozzie asked.

  “I don’t have a key,” Tug said.

  Ozzie scratched his head. “Then how did you get through in the first place?”

  “Lady Zoone let me through. She said Miss Sparks could take me back with her key.”

  Ozzie’s shoulders slumped. It sounded like Hat Lady was just one more person getting in line to boss Aunt Temperance around. “This sounds like . . . like extortion,” he told the skyger, borrowing one of his aunt’s heavy words.

  “Oh, sure,” Tug declared cheerfully.

  “You don’t know what extortion means, do you?” Ozzie asked. “What I mean is that you’re trying to make Aunt Temperance do something that she doesn’t want to.”

  “Why wouldn’t she want to go to Zoone?” Tug wondered.

  It was a good question, Ozzie decided. A really good question. Here Aunt Temperance was, lying in bed, when there was an entire world out there populated with definitely-not-tigers, green-spotted mice, and who knew what else. Plus, she had a key—an actual way to get there! What were they doing, kicking around Apartment 2B, when they could be off on an adventure? Instead, she had kept the existence of Zoone hidden from him, kept it a . . .

  Ozzie gave Tug a pointed look. “Have you ever heard of the secret of Zoone?”

  “No,” the skyger admitted. “But there’s lots of things I don’t know about Zoone. You know adults. They don’t tell you anything. But I have an idea! Maybe you can ask your aunt to lend you the key, and you can take me back to Zoone. Then we can find the secret together.”

  “Actually,” Ozzie said, “I don’t need to ask her for the key. I know where it is. And you can help me get it.”

  He headed toward the kitchen, prompting Tug to hop off the sofa (which Ozzie swore sighed in relief) and follow him. Tug couldn’t actually fit in the tiny kitchen, but all they really needed was the skyger’s tail. Tug stood in the living room, turned around, and aimed his tail through the doorway at the high shelf where the book was located. It took a couple of flicks, but eventually Tug was able to knock down the book. Actually, he knocked down the entire shelf—the book merely happened to tag along for the ride.

  “We make a good team, you and me.” Tug beamed as Ozzie plucked the key out of the mess.

  Ozzie returned to the living room, staring at the key in fascination. Now that he could study it closely, there was no doubt that it was magic. It was attached to a long cord and was old and tarnished, with that sort of I-have-a-story-to-tell feeling about it. The top—the bow of the key—was in the whimsical shape of a Z, and the bottom had a large, ornate tooth.

  “It’s beautiful,” Ozzie murmured, brushing his finger along the shank.

  “It’s a Zoone key, all right,” Tug remarked, leaning so close that Ozzie could feel the tickle of his whiskers. “Now you can take me back.”

  Ozzie turned to stare again at Aunt Temperance’s bedroom door. There was nothing he wanted more than to accompany the giant cat to Zoone, to escape the dull and miserable routine otherwise known as his life. But it wasn’t quite that simple, not with Aunt Temperance in her state of despair.

  He turned his attention back to Tug. The skyger sat down on his massive haunches and gave Ozzie a woeful look. “You are coming, aren’t you?” he asked, his fur fading to dull gray. (That must be his sad color, Ozzie guessed.) “I thought we were a team.”

  “Trust me, I want to come,” Ozzie explained. “I’m tired of never getting to go anywhere. But what about Aunt Temperance? Someone has to look after her.”

  “Well, that’s a point,” Tug conceded, glancing about the disheveled living room. “This place is a bit of a wreck. Just look at the sofa.”

  “Yeah . . . right,” Ozzie said. The thing was, his parents never seemed to worry about leaving him behind. And Aunt Temperance was an adult. She should be able to look after herself, Ozzie thought. Besides, hadn’t Hat Lady said the secret of Zoone was waiting for Aunt Temperance? What if it was something that could make her better? What if it was a cure?

  “Come on,” Ozzie said impulsively. “Let’s do it.”

  He thrust his head out the apartment door and peered into the hallway to check if there was anyone about—the last thing they needed was for Mrs. Yang in Apartment 2A to have a heart attack because there was a definitely-not-a-tiger prowling the building. The coast was clear, so, still clutching the key to Zoone, Ozzie led Tug out of the apartment. He was careful to close the door behind them.

  “I’ll be back before you know it, Aunt T,” he whispered—though, even as he said it, a deep-down part of him knew it was a lie.

  4

  Return to the Depths

  With Tug padding along at his heels, Ozzie descended cautiously into The Depths. He couldn’t help the cautious part; after all, this was the domain of Mr. Crudge. Ozzie tried to muster some courage by telling himself that a whole lot had happened since his last trip to The Depths. For one thing, he now had someone to back him up—an enormous someone. In fact, Tug was so large that his stubby wings brushed the walls on either side of the corridor.

  “Just to tell you, skygers don’t care for these sorts of places,” Tug commented, wrinkling his giant blue nose. “We’re used to fresh air.”

  “That’s Mr. Crudge’s potion you’re smelling,” Ozzie explained. “I think he makes it by boiling fingernail clippings.”

  “Oh,” Tug said. “I thought you didn’t know any wizards.”

  “He’s not a wizard,” Ozzie admitted, hearing Aunt Temperance scold him in his mind. “Not a good one, anyway. Or a sober one.”

  The farther down they went, the narrower, darker, and colder it became. When they reached the T-junction, Ozzie paused. On the right was the door to Zoone. On the left was the one to Mr. Crudge’s apartment. His door was open, like a hungry mouth, revealing nothing beyond but pitch black.

  “Was that door open when you got here?” Ozzie asked Tug.

  “I don’t think so,” the skyger replied, his long curly ears twitching. “What’s in there?”

  “The caretaker,” Ozzie said with a grimace. “He must have been off fixing something when you arrived.”

  Then, as if the words had summoned him, ghastly Mr. Crudge slowly emerged from the pit of his apartment. At first, all they could see were his two gleaming eyes, swimming through the darkness toward them. Next came his rows of crooked mustard teeth. By the time the rest of him caught up, the brute of a man was standing right in front of them.

  “T-Tug?” Ozzie said. “Couldn’t you roar or something?”

  He had been hoping that Mr. Crudge would take one look at the skyger and immediately scuttle back into his lair. But Mr. Crudge didn’t seem the least bit surprised or frightened. Maybe it was because he was so drunk or deranged that he didn’t know what he was seeing anymore. Maybe he thought Tug was merely an oversize house cat.

  And, to be fair to Mr. Crudge, Tug was sure acting like one; he crouched down and began whimpering loudly. Ozzie noticed that his fur had turned ghost white.

  “Where’d you get that key, boy?” Mr. Crudge slurred, lumbering toward Ozzie. “Give it to me.”

  Shaking his head, Ozzie clutched the key to his chest and took a step backward.

  “I said give it—this is my basement!” Mr. Crudge snarled.

  Ozzie gulped. Time to make like a ninja and vanish—or, as it turned out, trip on an untied shoelace and stumble to the ground. The key to Zoone spun out of his hand, ricocheted off the wall, and landed right at Mr. Crudge’s feet.

  For a moment, the re
pugnant caretaker stood there in surprise. Then he scooped up the key, like it was some sort of long-lost treasure, and ogled it with glistening eyes. Suddenly, there was a loud, searing hiss. Smoke began to snake from Mr. Crudge’s hand.

  “It burns!” he bellowed.

  He dropped the key with a clatter and cradled his hand, which was now bubbling with red blisters. A foul stench filled the corridor.

  Ozzie snatched up the key. “Come on!” he said, turning to Tug.

  “I can’t turn around!” Tug cried in a panic. “It’s too narrow for skygers.”

  “I’ll open the door and you can back your way in,” Ozzie said as he squeezed past the enormous cat. “Just hold on!”

  He reached the door and paused to contemplate its graying slats. Now that he was looking at it again, he realized that what he had thought was the “N” on the door was actually a “Z”—one of the nails holding it in place had just rusted away, causing it to shift.

  “Hurry, Ozzie!” Tug mewled.

  Ozzie thrust the key into the waiting hole and turned it with a resounding click. Then he pulled out the key and swung open the door to see . . .

  Not a single brick.

  Instead, stretching before Ozzie was a long tunnel that looked like a vortex of stars. All the lights were gently spinning around a black center, which Ozzie guessed must be the path to Zoone. It was one of the most beautiful things Ozzie had ever seen, and he froze there, at the brink of the door, mesmerized.

  Until Mr. Crudge broke his trance. From the other side of Tug, the old man yelled, “You burned me, worm! And now you’re going to get it!”

  “Yeowwwl!” Tug caterwauled. “Get me away from him!”

  The massive cat scrambled backward in terror, forcing himself—and Ozzie—through the door and into the vortex. Ozzie stumbled onto ground that felt like sponge. It took him a moment to realize that they were moving forward through the bedazzling spectrum of lights, as if on some sort of invisible train. But there was no train—not that Ozzie could see—and no rails, either.