Cloaked (15 page)
Authors: Alex Flinn
I land outside in case Ranger Wendell is still there. But everything’s dark, still. It’s almost too perfect. I hear voices, people singing campfire songs far away. And crickets.
And Meg’s voice.
“You were going to
marry
Victoriana?” She pulls away. Against the night, I can see her silhouette. Even in the darkness, her shoulders look angry.
“I can explain.”
“Oh, can you?” The shadow’s hands move to her hips. “Go ahead.”
“Can we talk later, maybe? After I get the frog?”
After I think of an excuse.
“Were you planning on telling me?”
I don’t have an answer. “I wish I was in the ranger station.”
And then, I am.
It’s even darker in here, but more silent, which is good. I find Wendell’s office. The door’s locked, but I wish myself onto the other side, then walk to the desk where the tank was. I leave the light out but crack open the curtain to allow in a sliver of moonlight. I don’t look out, don’t want to see Meg, still waiting there, angry. The tank gleams like a hidden diamond. I run my hand along its smooth, glass side, up to the top. I remove the cover and stick my hand in.
Sharp pain sears through my finger, then my whole hand. Something bit me. Hard. Frogs don’t have teeth, do they? I pull out my hand and flip on the light switch. No one’s here. When my eyes adjust, I peer into the tank.
Scorpions. The whole tank is crawling with them. I’ve been bitten by a scorpion. And, not only that, but the frog isn’t even here.
My hand is burning like it’s cut in two. I glance back into the tank. He must be there, hidden behind something. He couldn’t have run away.
Then I see a sheet of memo paper. I squint at the writing, but a scorpion’s on it.
My hand throbs, pounds. I wish I could cut it off. It feels like it’s twice its usual size, and now the pain spreads to my arm, my torso, my head. My tongue feels like it’s swelling in my mouth. My legs hurt so, they can’t support me. My field of vision narrows to one red dot. My knees buckle. I’m on the floor.
In my last conscious act, I use my left hand to pull out Meg’s ring. Bring Meg to me. Then, with my thumb and middle fingers, I barely push it onto my left pinky. The red dot gets smaller. Then the pain overwhelms me.
It’s dark, and I hear rain, very close rain. My hand doesn’t hurt anymore. I hold up my arm, wondering if the hand is missing. I wiggle the fingers. Am I dead? Do I feel better because I’m feeling no pain? No. At least, I don’t think so.
“You’re awake.” The voice in the darkness startles me. Then, a circle of light, a flashlight. My eyes readjust, and I see I’m in a tent. With Meg. Meg!
She holds up a sheet of paper. “Wendell knew you’d try to steal the frog.”
I take the paper in my hand (which feels totally fine). It says:
The frog stays with me until you kill the giants. No tricks.
“But how’d you get the note?” I examine my hand.
“I took it out of the tank, of course.”
“But the scorpions—”
“No big. Not all scorpions are poisonous. And if you’re friendly with them and don’t just stick your hand in and disturb them, they don’t bite.”
I turn my hand. A dime-size, red, C-shaped scar is the only sign of trauma. Is it possible a nonpoisonous scorpion bit me? Then, why did it hurt so much?
But I feel fine now.
“Well, that’s that,” Meg says. “You can’t kill the giants, so I guess it’s over.”
She turns her face away as she says it, and I suspect she’s smiling. She can’t stand Victoriana, and she’s furious at me for . . .
It’s all coming back to me. She knows I agreed to marry the princess. She hates me.
Still, I say, “Guess you’re right.”
But when I think of it, all of it, Victoriana marrying Prince Wolfgang, me and Mom, losing the business, me maybe having to work as a shoe-shop boy the rest of my life, I can’t handle it. I turn away, trying to keep my face out of the circle of flashlight.
Outside is silent. Even the campfire singing has ended, and I wonder how much time has passed. Not even a cricket or cicada chirps.
Meg breaks it. “What is it, Johnny?”
“It’s over.”
“Your quest? Your adventure? Yeah, I think so.”
“It wasn’t just an adventure. It’s . . . everything.”
“What do you mean?”
I don’t want to talk to her. I want to curl up in a ball and sleep for all the days I haven’t slept, sleep until the giants come back and stomp on me, and I won’t even notice because I’m sleeping so soundly. I want to sleep like a little kid who falls asleep in front of the television and wakes the next morning, in bed, not even knowing or caring how he got there. I want to forget. But I have no time. I tell Meg about Mom and me and our debt.
“Marrying Victoriana was a way out. I can’t afford college. We might not even be able to keep the business open much longer.”
“So you want to marry her for the money?”
I hesitate before saying, “Yeah.”
But my face must betray that it wouldn’t exactly be torture because Meg says, “Oh, it’s because she’s hot.”
“It’s mostly the money. It just doesn’t hurt that she’s hot. And she’s nicer than people think. But I’m seventeen, so I wouldn’t want to marry anyone if it wasn’t for the money. The money would fix everything.”
I examine my hand. It’s fixed too, amazingly fixed. Before, I’d have sworn it was the size of a bowling ball. Even the small bite mark seems almost gone. I’m still wearing Meg’s ring, the ring that brought her to my rescue. Now I hand it back to her.
“I have to find the frog,” I tell her. “I made a promise. I can’t let Victoriana marry Prince Wolfgang. He’ll kill her, and it would be on my head. And I can’t let Mom lose her business either, not without trying everything.”
“You’ve already been trapped in a dungeon and bitten by a scorpion. Now you want to be eaten by giants?”
“That’s a chance I’ll have to take.” I start to stand. It’s surprisingly easy. I look around for the cloak. Except it’s not there. It’s missing. I look at Meg. “Give it back.”
“Give what back?”
“You know.”
Meg purses her lips, thinking.
“Come on, Meg. You’re not being fair. I’ve made my decision.”
Meg’s silent a moment longer before saying, “You’re right. I can’t stop you. But I can make you wait. If we’re going to fight giants, we should get a full night’s sleep.”
“We? Did you say we? You’re staying?”
“I can’t let you get killed. Your mother would be miserable. I’ll take the cloak and get in the tree. If I see one coming, I’ll put on the ring and bring you to me.”
“And what will I be doing while you’re in the tree?”
She stares directly into my eyes, then places her hand on my forehead and strokes it lightly. Her hands are cool, and my eyes start to shut.
“Sleep,” she whispers. “Sleep.”
Just you wait here. I will finish off the giants by myself.
—“The Valiant Tailor”
I wake to the angry beeping of my cell phone, which is out of batteries. I switch it off. There’s no reception here anyway, and Meg called her mother from New York City.
It’s eight in the morning, and I wonder if Meg’s been in the tree all night. I look out the tent and see the cloak. Meg must have thrown it down. I wish myself into the tree, next to her, even though I still don’t know why she’s staying with me. She’s leaning against a branch, resting her head in her hand, staring at the tent. “Oh!”
“Did I frighten you?” I ask.
At first, she looks like she’s not going to answer me, and I remember she’s angry. But then, she gestures downward. “It’s a pretty scary scene, isn’t it?”
From the tree, I survey the damage on the ground below. The giants were here, if not last night, then during the day. Everything is ransacked. A Styrofoam cooler I bought is crushed like a peanut in the hands of an impatient kid. Shoes, clothes are everywhere. The food is gone, wrappers strewn like seaweed across the dirt, hanging from the weeds.
Nearby, the grass and pine needles are mottled down in what is unmistakably the shape of four giant legs and two giant rear ends. Maybe they thought we’d come back, so they could eat us.
Meg peers through Wendell’s binoculars.
“Any sign of them?” I ask.
She shakes her head and hands them to me.
I look and see nothing, even far off in the distance. “Maybe we should go down,” I say.
“Are you sure you want to do this?”
I don’t want to answer her, so I pretend I don’t hear her. I wish.
I land in a leg print more than three times the size of one of my own legs. I could lie down comfortably in each of the giant rear end prints (not that I’d want to).
“Only a giant could kill something this big,” I say.
Meg’s examining a handprint the size of a puddle, but when I say that, she stops. “You know, you’re right.” She grins, happy I’m giving up, I guess.
“Don’t gloat.”
“Gloat? Who’s gloating? I have an idea.”
An hour later, we return from Winn-Dixie, toting five whole turkeys, some rope, and a bag of rocks. We gathered the rocks on the walk there, but we used the cloak to get back. Turkeys are heavy. Now we’re prepared.
“‘Between saying and doing,’” I say, “‘many a pair of shoes is worn out.’”
“Who said that?” Meg asks.
“I’m not sure.”
Meg sits lookout in the tree while I arrange everything. I know the traps I discussed with Wendell won’t work, but this one just might. I take the turkeys and place them inside the tent. I open the wrappers to give the giants the scent. When it’s all ready, I take the bag of rocks and go high into the tree, where Meg’s scanning the horizon.
“Nothing so far?” I ask.
Meg shakes her head. “They’ll be here, though. They’re looking for food. They know we’re camping here, and based on experience, they know you’re slower and easier to catch than a Key deer.”
“Gee, thanks. Nothing yet?”
She shakes her head. I imagine what it would be like to be a deer or a mouse, something chased and preyed upon all the time. These past few days, I’ve felt like that. After a while, you must get good at hiding. Either that or you get dead.
It makes my life seem pretty easy.
Meg lowers her binoculars. “Have you ever thought of how it would be, being married to Victoriana? Like, what would you do all day?”
I say, “I guess I’ll have no problems. I’ll hang with Victoriana.”
“And what? Make out all day? Sounds like a good life—if you’re Ryan. But I always thought you wanted to accomplish something.”
“I can’t accomplish anything now. If I was married to Victoriana, I could still design shoes. I just wouldn’t have to repair them. I wouldn’t have to scrounge for materials either. I could be one of those celebrities who has a hobby like writing children’s books or releasing albums of my songs.” But I see her point. I remember Victoriana, led around by bodyguards, having to hide in bathrooms to get a moment alone, to put on a façade so the press doesn’t know what she’s really like. It could be hard to have things that easy.
And I’d miss Meg.
“Maybe you could come visit sometime,” I say.
She sniffs. “I don’t think I’ll have time.”
Neither of us speaks for a while after that, Meg scanning the treetops with the binoculars, me doing the same with my bare eyes. Gradually, the sun turns the sky red and orange, pink and gold, as if one of the giants has used a paintbrush on it.
“Ho-hum,” I say. “Should have brought a deck of cards.”
“We could play Four Truths and a Lie.”
“What’s that?” I shift in the tree.
“It’s where you say five things about yourself, and the other person has to guess which one is false.”
“But that would be too easy. We’ve been friends forever.”
Meg’s shadow moves in, staring at me. “Sometimes, people have secrets, even from their closest friends, things you’d have thought they’d tell you, since you’re such a good friend.”
I get it. I didn’t tell her how bad our finances were, and I didn’t tell her about Victoriana either. I say, “Okay. Why not? I’ll go first.”
I try to think of something tricky, but it’s hard. Finally, I say, “My first kiss was with Jennifer Garcia in seventh grade.”
“Jennifer? Eww.” Meg holds her nose.
“She’s pretty.”
“Pretty mean. I hope that’s the lie.”
It isn’t. I go on. “I haven’t seen or heard from my father since I was two. One day, he just disappeared. Three: I sent a secret admirer valentine to Hailey Feinberg in eighth grade.”
“That was you?”
“Yep . . . I mean, maybe. I mean . . . four: I got an A on my trig final. Five: I stole a bag of chips out of your backpack yesterday.”
“I knew that was what happened to them.” Meg slaps my shoulder.
“See? There’s no way to fool you.”
“I bet I can fool you.”
“Okay, so which one was the lie?”
“I’m hoping it was Jennifer, but I’m pretty sure it was the trig final. No way you aced that. I only got a B, and I’m smarter than you.”
“Are not . . . okay, you got me. Now you go.”
She thinks a minute, then says, “All right. One: I do one hundred percent of the cleaning in my family’s business.”
That’s true. Her mother is old, and her brothers are complete bums.
“Two: I have a box of ashes from when I burned the letters Andrew gave me.”
Andrew. Her ex. Total jerk. He dumped her for another girl, and I can totally see Meg doing that. “You should toss them. He’s so not worth it.”
“Three: My family buys some of the pastries we sell as homemade.”
“You do?”
“Yeah.”
“Four: I can’t whistle.”
I know she can’t. I’ve heard her try. I’m about to say this, but then, she says, dramatically, “And five: I am secretly, madly in love with you.”
“Aha! That’s obviously the lie. You made it too easy.”
She chuckles. “Yeah, I guess we can’t fool each other.”
And then, in the distance, I see something moving. Something big. I tap Meg on the shoulder and point.
“Do you see them?”
I point again to the moving spot, then up at her binoculars. She twists her body, shoulders making contact with mine, and looks. Then she hands the binoculars to me.
It’s a giant, barely visible among the slash pines. He’s heading toward us. But just one? That will be a problem.
Then, behind him, I spy the second. I exhale and realize I’ve been holding my breath. The two giants walk like hunters, slow and surprisingly silent. Sunset is the time when most wildlife comes out. It’s also the time when I bet they’re most hungry, most in need of a kill. I remember the deer carcasses and hope we don’t end up like that. I tighten the cloak around us. We may need it for a quick escape.
Finally, they’re close enough that I can hear footsteps. The front one—the one with the missing eye—emerges from the trees. He gazes first to one side, then the other. He looks hungry.
A step closer. Then another. The second giant, the one who chased me, emerges from the brush too. He crouches, as if he’s listening to the ground. I sit, frozen, the binoculars clutched in my hand. My fingers ache from holding them up so long. Yet, I don’t dare change position. They’re too close.
The front giant stops walking then, sniffs the air. I don’t know if what he’s smelling is the turkeys, or us. He glances back at the other giant, then speeds his own step.
Boom. Boom
. I understand by the fact that he doesn’t signal to the other giant, that he doesn’t want to share. This is what Meg suspected when we saw them fighting before, what we counted on. The two-eyed giant sees his companion running and speeds up too. I hold my breath, not daring to look at Meg, but I can tell from the stillness in the air that she’s holding her breath too.
The two-eyed giant gives a mighty sniff, then a roar. It takes me an instant to realize that the roar is his massive stomach growling.
And then, he pounces. In a swift movement for someone so large, he’s lifted the tent and obliterated it. He seizes one turkey and holds it up. It’s a big turkey, almost as big as his head, too large to swallow whole. He has some trouble with the wrapper, but finally, he undoes it and rips apart the cavity. He removes the organs and swallows them, bag and all. A huge drumstick is next. He rips the meat off with his teeth like Ryan eating a Buffalo chicken wing, then spits out the bone.
Meanwhile, One-Eye has arrived. He seizes a turkey. Two-Eye tries to push him away, but One-Eye pushes back and starts to eat. Two-Eye must decide it’s easier to share because he goes back to his turkey. The wings are next, then the breast. He displays the wishbone like a child at Thanksgiving, then drops it.
It takes no more than two minutes. When he’s finished, he seizes a second turkey and starts to annihilate that one. One-Eye does too. All we can hear is crunching bones and the tearing of flesh.
Finally, Two-Eye finishes the second turkey. He reaches for the last only to find something in his way. One-Eye. One-Eye still has bones and flesh hanging from his mouth, but he’s not about to give up the last turkey. He pulls but only rips off a drumstick. Two-Eye laughs in triumph. One-Eye growls in rage. He crouches and launches himself at his companion. The other falls, striking his head on the tree we’re in. It shakes and bends, and we grab on. I see Meg beside me, mouth frozen mid-shriek. We don’t want them to see us and decide we’re bigger food. My hand comes down on hers, and we hang on.
Two-Eye seizes a huge coral rock. Holding it in both hands, he runs at his companion. One-Eye screams right before he gets bashed on the head. He’s knocked to the ground, bleeding. Two-Eye clobbers him again, and I can tell he’s down for good.
Two-Eye, now alone, grabs the turkey from the giant’s limp fingers. He does a dance of triumph until he trips on a giant outstretched leg. With a mighty crash, he rockets to the ground, his head hitting the same rock that felled his companion.
He moves no more.