Secrets of Stone and Sea, page 19
Kai stumbled on uneven ground. Just a paw print. Though, it seemed … bigger than the paw of any dog he knew about.
Beside the paw prints was an S-shaped squiggle through the dirt. It looked like a snake trail.
Kai knelt beside it. He put his hands on either side of the squiggle, measuring its width. When he pulled his hands back, they were shoulder-width apart. “That’s one huge snake,” he muttered.
Nothing native to Massachusetts grew that big. The thought occurred to him that maybe he should have listened when Peter wanted to stop searching for the seals.
But he had to be strong, and brave, and save the day. So he took it as a sign he was on the right track and trekked deeper into the brush, looking for more signs of strange animal life.
He didn’t have far to go. Another snake trail, also massive, crossing the first. More paw prints so big that Kai could fit his whole foot inside one. And a dark shadow like a bird passed overhead, but it was so big it could have carried off their car.
“I think I hate this,” Kai said to himself.
He searched for the seal, but with all the undergrowth and animal tracks, it seemed impossible to find a pattern like the binding word in all the chaos.
And even if he found it, he couldn’t do anything about it until Peter showed up. That left him alone in the forest, waiting, while the creatures that lurked in the shadows got closer and closer—
Kai’s shoes squelched in swampy mud. Mosquitoes buzzed around him. He was deep into the swamp now, and the daylight had faded into a yellow haze. The air was rank with the smells of decay and thick animal musk. Kai pulled his shirt over his nose and tried to breathe shallowly.
The seal was probably here. This place was creepy enough for it.
Kai heard a loud crack and grumble from his right. He spun, knife out. “What was that?”
No response. Kai crept toward the sound. He wouldn’t back down now.
Kai pushed aside a bush and saw it. A tall, hairy figure, like a large ape, crouched by some manna grass. It looked like it was searching for a lost phone, and it would have been funny if Kai didn’t notice the thing’s feet.
Human or ape feet, but huge. BIG feet.
Bigfoot.
“Bigfoot?” Kai said. Out loud. Too loud.
Bigfoot paused and looked around. Seeing Kai, it stood, rising up and up and up.
It had to be at least ten feet tall!
There!
On Bigfoot’s chest, there was the seal, marked in dark brown like a tattoo.
So now what?
Kai had no idea. He couldn’t activate that seal, not without Peter. And how could anyone even get close enough to touch it, when it was about seven feet in the air, on a legendary ape-man?
There had to be a way. A secret, a clue, a pattern. Kai had solved multiple puzzles protecting the seals. How different could this one be?
Kai scanned the ground, the trees, and Bigfoot himself.
Nothing.
Kai didn’t have time to wait! He strode out toward the creature. “Hey!” he called. “You! I need that seal!”
This felt uncomfortably like how he’d challenged the Sea. But maybe this time it would work out better.
Bigfoot roared.
The swamp water bubbled. The reeds and buttonbushes quivered.
And Kai realized he’d made another huge mistake.
From the ground, spiders the size of Kai’s hands, put together, crawled from under the leaves. The water spit out giant rats, and then the surface rippled with scales.
Snarling, huge red-eyed dogs emerged from the trees.
Kai backed away from the growing horde. A pattern? Something? A trick to stay alive and safe until Peter arrived?
If there was, Kai couldn’t see it. He just saw the creatures scuttle, slither, and prowl toward him.
He was surrounded. Any moment, those racing spiders would crawl up his legs, and the dogs would leap, and it would be over.
There was nothing else to do but run.
Kai tore back through the forest. Behind him, an army of enormous, monstrous creatures followed, guided by Bigfoot himself.
CHAPTER 24
WISPS AND LIGHTS
PETER
Peter threw himself to the ground and spat out a leaf. Above him, the lights dived and wailed. He rolled over as another one attacked, and it grazed his skin.
The pain was like a thousand bee stings, all over his body. His muscles spasmed as electric energy filled them.
“I’ve got you.” Sophie pulled Peter back as he gasped and tried to remember what his face felt like.
Her shirt had burnt patches where she’d taken her own electrocutions. They’d both tried to dodge the lights, but there were too many of them. As soon as Peter avoided one, another slammed into his back.
There was no time to make a plan.
Peter looked, searching for something familiar, or anything he could use. After the lights attacked again, he closed his eyes, trying to use his other senses, like he had at Hoosac. But all he could smell were normal forest and swamp scents, and the whistling and humming of the lights drowned out any other sounds.
He got another shock, this time on his leg. Crawling, dragging the leg, he made it to a rock and leaned against it. Sophie was on the other side of the cloud of lights, playing her own unearthly game of dodgeball.
The daylight had faded to nothing. This was a haunted swamp, after all. If it wanted to be midnight at two in the afternoon, it could be.
Maybe it was absolute darkness around him, but the glow of the lights was also absolute. Peter couldn’t see anything other than the lights and the area right around them. And he couldn’t hear anything else.
If there was something out in the woods that would help him fight them off, he would never find it.
Sophie tried to run into the woods, but a handful of lights drove her back. Peter yelled as she got shocked again, and then he screamed when at least three lights attacked him, stinging his back and legs.
One was bad enough, but three? Peter put his hand to his heart, which beat quickly and, he feared, out of rhythm. How much more could he take?
Sophie appeared and pulled him behind the rock.
“We—we’re not safe here,” Peter wheezed.
“We’re not safe anywhere.” Sophie picked up a stick, but then tossed it away. It wouldn’t be that easy. “Do you see the seal?”
Peter shook his head. “I’ve looked. I swear. I’m sorry for dragging you into this.”
“You couldn’t drag me anywhere. I came willingly.” Sophie yelped and pulled Peter down as another crowd of lights attacked. These missed them both, but Peter smelled ozone and felt a light buzz as they passed over.
“We have to do something!” Sophie said as they sat back up.
“I don’t know what to do!”
Peter wanted to run. He was willing to give up the seal, but the lights wouldn’t let them leave this area. He was stuck, getting shocked again and again until he couldn’t survive another, all because he got mad at Kai and went after a seal alone.
If Kai were here, would he see a way out?
Sophie pulled Peter out of the way of another light. She eyed the swirling mass. “It’s strange,” she said, her voice barely louder than the din.
“What?”
“That—watch out!”
This time the warning was just a bit late. Two lights rammed into him and Sophie, and they twitched until the electricity went to ground. Every muscle aching, Peter lay on the dirt. But Sophie sat up. She stared at the lights.
Then she grabbed Peter and pulled him standing. They ducked under another wave of the lights. “Listen to me. You have to go into the middle.”
“That will kill me!”
“It won’t.”
“Can we think about this?”
“Now!”
Sophie pushed Peter into the middle of the lights. The pain made his vision flash red as multiple dancing lights brushed his arms and legs, though none seemed to hit him directly. He fell over, gasping, trying to calm his heart.
“Do it!”
“What?”
“Do what you do! Activate the thing!”
Why? Peter saw no binding word.
“Peter, please, trust me!”
Well, it was worth a shot.
Peter dug his hands into the soil and opened himself to the rush that came with activating another seal. To his surprise, it came, filling his mind with images of the Sea and his nostrils with the smell of warm dirt.
The lights around him blazed blue and halted midair. They rearranged themselves and sank into the ground around Peter, forming the binding symbol he was becoming so familiar with. The seal shone and vanished, and the false nighttime brightened back to a sunny day in the forest.
Head reeling from both the pain and the sheer rushing power of the activation, Peter looked back at Sophie.
“How’d you know?” he croaked.
“I didn’t. I mean, I had a good guess, but I didn’t see the seal or anything. I’m not Kai.” Sophie sank onto the rock. “But the lights were flashing in a pattern. As they got closer to the center of the swirl, they blinked faster and faster, like they were more … agitated, I guess. I figured that was working like an arrow to the seal, so I pushed you in. I should have been more careful.”
“No.” Peter sat back on his heels. “No, you did the right thing.”
Sophie could have gotten him killed, pushing him into all those balls of lightning. But if she hadn’t, the lightning would have gotten them anyway, sooner or later. Not acting was killing them both.
If Sophie had waited to make a plan, how much worse would the attacks have become?
No matter what, he was glad she’d chosen to come with him.
Peter moved to stand, but as he planted his foot, the ground beneath it shifted. Bits of dirt sank below him, like he was standing on a sandcastle.
Right. The seals were destroyed after each one was activated. And Peter was sitting on a giant seal.
He tried to run, but the earth split below him, sending him tumbling down into darkness as Sophie yelled above him.
Fortunately, Peter didn’t fall far. He slammed into a pile of loose dirt, which hurt, but not as badly as it would if he hit the rock floor to his left and right. As dust billowed around him, clinging to the inside of his nose and bringing tears to his eyes, he coughed and tried to look around.
“Peter? Peter!” Sophie’s face peered over the side.
“I—I’m fine.” He sat up to prove it and waved at his sister. “I just don’t know how I’ll get back up.” The pit wasn’t too deep, but at ten or fifteen feet of smooth stone and loose dirt, Peter knew he couldn’t climb it.
“Grandma packed a rope. We’ll get it and pull you out.”
“Okay. Where is Grandma?”
“I don’t know. Maybe at the car?”
“At least those lights are gone.”
“There is that.”
Peter looked around. Now that that fake night was gone, the sunlight illuminated the pit pretty well. A large tunnel headed down to one side, and while it wasn’t bright that way, it wasn’t dark, either. “I’m going to explore down here,” he said. “I won’t go far. Call me back when you have a rope.”
“Be careful, Peter.”
“I will.”
The tunnel remained well lit, even though Peter had left the huge hole behind. Small cracks overhead let enough light in.
And then there were the crystals.
Crystals in all colors were scattered along the sides and floor of the tunnel. No, it wasn’t a tunnel. It was a chamber. A huge room that only looked like a tunnel if you fell into one end of it.
Red, green, yellow, blue, violet, clear white, deep brown, and black. Crystals of all colors, some the size of Peter’s hand, some only the size of his pinkie nail. He picked up a clear one and tried to figure out if it was a diamond.
What was this place doing here?
Light sent a prism of rainbow from the crystal to the wall. Peter followed it, and dropped the crystal. On the wall was a mosaic of crystals.
A mural of the Sea.
Its snaky body rose from rich, blue waves, curving over an island set in amber, red, gold, and green. The waves started small but sharp beside the Sea, but they grew into mighty tidal waves over the second half of the island.
It was the sinking of Atlantis.
Seeing this after the Sea’s recent attack on Seaspire made the danger feel more real to Peter. The Sea had destroyed a whole island. Now it wanted to do the same to Seaspire and all the land it could drown.
Peter noticed a little figure, arms raised, about to be swallowed by the wave. That would be him, and his family, if the Sea had its way.
It had to be stopped.
Peter stepped closer to the mural and noticed an odd structure in front of it. A strange, treelike web of reddish metal. Many of the holes were empty, but a few of them had crystals set inside them.
“What are you for?” Peter murmured.
Beneath the structure, crystals lay scattered and loose. They must have once been set in the metal, but they’d fallen out over time.
Peter walked up to the structure and picked up a fallen green stone. He examined it for a moment and then placed it in the hole where it fit.
Nothing happened. The walls didn’t shake, and no traps sprang. A crystal now shone in its setting. That was all.
Peter’s skin tingled with a different kind of electricity. If the mosaic was the story he knew, maybe this structure, once completed, could illuminate the secrets he sensed were lurking in the shadows.
He picked up another crystal.
CHAPTER 25
PIECES COME TOGETHER
KAI
Kai ran. The spiders skittered behind, rustling over leaves without any sign of slowing down. The snakes crossed back and forth over the path, forcing Kai to stumble over them, and the dogs sped up, clearly enjoying the thrill of the hunt.
How long could he hold out? Kai had visions of tripping and being torn apart by massive animals, failing the quest and never seeing his family again.
As he passed a large stone, a strong hand grabbed his arm and pulled him to one side. Kai struggled but stopped when he saw it was Grandma.
“Keep your back to the rock,” she said, unsheathing her sword cane. “So we can’t be surrounded.”
“What are you doing here?” Kai asked.
There were shapes in the sky Kai didn’t like. Although that strange darkness had settled on them even more, he could see, flying above, huge birds against the twilight.
“I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again. We’re not going to succeed unless we work together. You boys shouldn’t have run off on your own. Where’s Peter?”
“He went for the other seal.”
“You split up?”
The forest around the woods spilled out its monsters. Grandma pushed Kai back and raised her blade. “That’s not good,” she said. Kai thought she meant the animals until she added, “We need Peter to break the seal.”
“I know.”
“Did you find it, at least?”
“Yes. It’s on—”
Bigfoot emerged from the trees, seal obvious on its chest.
Grandma’s jaw dropped. “My word,” she muttered.
Bigfoot roared and the animals attacked.
“Let me handle this, Kai!” Grandma took a swipe at a striking snake, which hissed but backed off. “You come up with a plan.”
A plan? Get the seal on Bigfoot. That was the plan.
But how could he do it?
Kai kept thinking there had to be some pattern to the movement of the creatures. If he could see a pattern, he could use it to bypass them and get to Bigfoot.
But as he watched the snakes slither and dogs run and those huge spiders crawl, he couldn’t see anything. No pattern, no design. It was chaos and randomness, with nothing he could use.
A spider put its front leg against Kai’s foot. Shuddering, he drove his heel into it, smashing it with a smear of green goo.
“Very good!” Grandma said as she waved her sword at a dog. “You’re on plan-and-spider duty.”
So, shaking, Kai stepped on another spider and another. But they were coming so fast! He was quick footed playing Frisbee, but could he be quick enough to squash spiders?
And could Grandma keep fighting off the larger animals? She loved using her ancient weapons, but she was still old. And human. They’d both tire soon.
And Kai had no plan.
A blaze of blue light, like a lighthouse beacon, shot out of the trees to the west. It flared brightly, causing Kai to stop and stare. Then it faded.
“What was that?” he asked.
“Who cares?” Grandma said. “It made the creatures back away. See?”
Kai looked, and sure enough, the creatures had shied away from the light. But they were regrouping.
One spider clung to his leg, so Kai slammed it against the stone. The crunching sound it made nauseated him.
“Hold them off with this.” Grandma opened her backpack. She took out a bronze dagger, passed it to Kai, and continued to rummage through the bag.
Kai cradled the blade. “Why?”
“I have a plan.”
A red-eyed dog leaped at Kai. Yelling, he slashed at it with the knife. He managed to keep it from biting his neck, but its weight carried them both to the ground.
The knife slipped from his hand. The dog snapped at Kai’s throat.
A bright light shone right in both of their faces. The dog whined and jumped away. Kai stood up next to Grandma, who held a halogen flashlight.
“Stay back!” she said, waving it around. “This is as good as Greek fire to you, isn’t it? So stay back!”
The creatures leaped back from the light. Even the spiders cowered, scuttling under the safety of fallen leaves and undergrowth.
Bigfoot roared. Emboldened, the creatures moved forward after the light passed them. A spider climbed on Grandma’s backpack, which she’d left on the ground. Kai kicked the spider off and grabbed the backpack.
