Horns & Wrinkles (23 page)

Maybe the rhinos would have sorted everything out sooner or later. Bodacious Deepthink wasn't sinking that fast, and one or two of the rhinos, with some help from the old lady, did spurt free of the herd and gallop after Uncle Floyd. But then Duke looked up from his bale of hay, saw that he was being left behind, and bellowed out with all his might, "Hey! What about me?"

He wasn't satisfied with yelling either. Lowering his horn, he barreled out of the corral to plow into the back of the herd with all his might. The collision caused the middle of the herd to buckle upward, pushing a rhino wearing a baseball cap onto the backs of the others.

By then Bodacious Deepthink had sunk to a height of seven or eight feet above the bridge. The horn of the lifted rhino stabbed her bottom, and that poke did what all the bickering and shouting had failed to. The Great Rock Troll woke.

Rubbing her eyes, Bodacious Deepthink tried sitting up. That was a bust. Her middle went down, her two ends up.

"WHAT THE..."

Feeling a poke to her underside, she patted beneath herself and found her prize herd of rhinos about to escape. She cut loose with a roar that shook rocks from the cavern's walls.

The rhino with the baseball cap lurched across the backs of the others and jumped for it. A couple of rhinos at the front of the pileup broke free to pound after him. At the back of the herd, Duke kept right on ramming away, which cleared some space too.

All at once, the logjam broke loose and the herd stampeded for freedom, forcing the old lady to jump off the path. Uncle Floyd was nearly trampled.

Bodacious Deepthink twisted, grabbing for them, but the squirming shook up the fairy dust still inside her, making her swell and rise. Plus, she kept filling her lungs to bellow. The extra air made her go up even faster.

"STOP THEM! STOP THEM!! STOP THEM!!!"

Maybe Bodacious Deepthink only screamed it once and the rest were echoes. Either way, all the shouts had trolls staggering out of holes, rubbing sleep from their eyes, and shouting back:

"Who's them?"

"What's them?"

"Where's them?"

Every corner of the cavern had trolls whipping burlap covers off lanterns. With the growing light, there was plenty to see and nowhere to hide.

The two fastest rhinos had already reached the tunnel entrance and were fighting over who would squeeze through the gap first.

"Me!"

"No, me!"

They wouldn't listen to a thing that Stump or I said, not even when Stump broke rocks over their heads. Behind them, the rest of the herd was gaining fast. Duke had used his weight to bull his way to the middle of the pack, but Uncle Floyd was falling behind with every step. Handing the lantern to Stump, I dashed to help my uncle, though reaching him wasn't easy. A herd of stampeding bullies doesn't make room for anyone, and Duke, seeing his chance, head-butted me off the path.

Up above, Bodacious Deepthink rolled from side to side, squirming to see everything. The rocking back and forth shook up the fairy dust inside her even more, sending her all the higher. With a better view, she had more to shout about.

"GET THOSE RHINOS! GET THAT GIRL! THAT OLD LADY! GET HER! AND GET ME DOWN!"

Every rock troll in the place gawked upward, with a mouth like an open rain barrel. Thudding against a ledge, Bo grabbed ahold of it and cracked off chunks to hurl at the trolls below, which sent them screaming after us.

By then I'd reached Uncle Floyd, who'd made it to the rope the old lady had laid across the path.

"You can do it," I said, waving him on.

"Better leave me," he croaked.

"To them?" The trolls were closing in on us.

Rock trolls aren't built for speed any more than a boulder is, but just like a boulder headed downhill, once they start rolling, they stay rolling, gaining speed as they go.

Uncle Floyd took one look and started shuffling again, though first he had to step over the old lady's rope. His hooves had so little oomph in them that I had to help lift his two rear ones over the rope. Once past the rope, he found enough breath to say, "The rope. Stretch it."

Now I understood why the old lady hadn't pulled it tight earlier. The rhinos had to clear it before it would do us any good. Giving Uncle Floyd one last push, I scrambled back to the rope, reaching it barely a dozen steps ahead of the lead rock trolls. They would have had me if the old lady hadn't come to the rescue.

Climbing up on the bridge railing, she whipped out her slingshot and started shooting out lanterns. With each pop and crash of glass, a new shooting star escaped.

"SAVE THE LANTERNS!" Bodacious Deepthink thundered.

That order went against her first orders about stopping the herd and getting me and pulling her down. Trolls skidded to a halt everywhere, confused.

Forgetting about the rope, I yanked out my slingshot and went after the glass lanterns too. My every third or fourth shot nailed a lantern and set a star loose. Freed-up stars whizzed and spun all over the place, sparking off walls and forcing rock trolls to dive for cover. Before long, some began finding their way up the hole leading to Farmer Bailey's pasture. The cave slowly dimmed.

The old lady kept on firing her slingshot, even as rock trolls advanced on her from everywhere. At the last instant, when about to be grabbed, she flung her slingshot at the nearest troll, beaning him on the snout. "Shoo!"

Reaching into a pocket, she tossed a handful of fairy dust over the stream and leaped into it just as three rock trolls jumped for her.

The old lady floated in the fairy dust, soaking all the colors up. From her finger, she pulled off her silver ring, which instantly grew to the size of a crown, and placed it on her head. As soon as the crown touched her white hair, she glowed like sunrise over a snowy field. At the same time, she started to shrink.

Rubbing my eyes didn't change anything.

The smaller she got, the stronger the old lady glowed. In seconds, she was no bigger than my hand, with a pair of blue wings beating on her back.

"A BLUE-WING?" Bodacious Deepthink screamed, outraged. "IN MY HOUSE? GET HER!"

Troll hands grabbed for the old lady, getting air. From lantern to lantern she looped, opening their doors with both hands and standing back as the stars burst out. I laughed to see it, then got busy with my slingshot, helping out as best I could.

"GET THE STONE BIRDS!" Bodacious screamed as the cavern dimmed more.

A small mob of rock trolls began tugging on an iron grate in the cavern floor, waking up something below that screeched worse than busted violins.

When the grate popped up, out burst three dark creatures that were chicken-size and made of stone—gritty stuff with jagged edges. Steering wasn't their strong suit, not with all the stone feathers plucked from their wings, but once airborne, they zoomed after the old lady, zeroing in on her from behind.

"Look out!" I yelled.

All the cheering and jeering of the rock trolls, along with the stone birds screeching, drowned me out. I held my breath, expecting the worst until the old lady dipped at the last instant and the fastest bird went barreling past her.

The chase was on.

Again and again, stone beaks snapped where the old lady had been. Two rock trolls got turned to stone when the birds overshot the old lady and bounced off them instead. One touch from those birds petrified the trolls as solid as my grandpa.

I turned my slingshot on them without luck. One time I connected, but the gravel bounced harmlessly off the bird's back.

Then, with only three lanterns left, the old lady began to tire, causing her glow to flicker. She wobbled before one of the remaining lanterns as the stone birds closed. Her glow winked out. I gasped. The stone birds screeched.

At the last possible second the old lady's glow flashed on and she lifted away. Two of the birds crashed into the lantern with their beaks. The third bird plowed into their stone tail feathers. Shattered glass exploded everywhere, followed by the freed shooting star.

Aside from the lantern Stump held back at the tunnel, only one other lantern was still blazing. An angry knot of rock trolls protected it with pickaxes.

"Shoot it," the old lady called out, whizzing as close to me as she dared without getting caught.

Ducking, I caught a glimpse of her face, which looked centuries younger and as beautiful as someone who's famous for being beautiful. By then I'd emptied my sack of gravel and had to hunt for stones on the cavern floor, but a large troll protected their last lantern with a shovel, knocking down my every shot.

The old lady's glow began flickering again, leaving her no time or strength to offer more advice. The stone birds were closing fast.

When she rose up the hole to Farmer Bailey's pasture, the stone birds screeched right after her, pecking at her tiny heels.

The cave fell silent like an old church. That didn't last long.

"GET ME DOWN!" bellowed Bodacious Deepthink.

Not a one of the rhinos stranded outside the tunnel knew what taking turns meant. They all tried to cram through the tunnel mouth at once, no matter how loud or often Stump shouted, "Back off!" Duke thrashed about in the thick of the frenzy, kicking up the biggest fuss of all, and even Uncle Floyd, weak as he was, panicked and tried butting his way ahead.

Every once in a while, Stump gave up shouting and set the lantern aside to yank a rhino back by the tail. If he picked the right tail, his efforts made a slight opening that allowed a different rhino to squirt through the gap and gallop off into the darkness. After twenty or thirty steps, the escaping rhinos either slammed into a wall or another rhino, unable to see either. The ones left behind wailed all the louder, even though within minutes the freed rhinos came limping back to demand the lantern.

"We can't see a thing!" the bruised rhinos clamored. "Hand over the lantern."

"No way!" Duke screamed back.

At which point every rhino on the outside went back to pushing and shoving and squealing and checking over their shoulders with bugged eyes. Stump was the only one who showed any sense at all, which left me feeling unexplainably proud. (No time to wonder about that, though.)

Bodacious Deepthink kept right on barking orders from on high. She had her rock trolls tie together a long rope made of hay-bale twine, bootlaces, and leather reins, then had her bat earrings fly one end up to her so that rock trolls could pull her down. They didn't reel her in anywhere near fast enough to suit the Great Rock Troll, but they made progress.

Slow as Stump was squeezing rhinos into the tunnel, we needed more time. I tried buying it by tying the old lady's rope tautly across the path, but I couldn't get a knot to stick. The rope was slippery and felt as if it might have been soaped or—more likely—was under some kind of spell. It kept drooping toward the cavern floor, hanging so loose and low that it wouldn't have tripped a shadow.

And then time ran out.

Bodacious Deepthink landed on the cavern floor with a thud followed by a bounce. Her pockets had to be stuffed with small boulders to keep her from floating off again.

"AFTER THEM!" Bodacious Deepthink howled, charging ahead.

Still full of fairy dust, she bounced as though on a trampoline. The other rock trolls did their best to drag themselves after her.

"PUDDING!" Bo yelled. "PUDDING!"

"And cream!" her trolls answered. "And cream!"

The pounding of Bo's feet, along with all the shouting about pudding and cream, soon drowned out even the bickering of the rhinos.

And still I couldn't get a knot to stick. In the end, I had no choice but to hold the rope tight myself, pulling back with all my might. Bodacious Deepthink was soon upon me, too focused on her escaping rhinos to notice me or the rope I was stretching across the path.

Her lead foot, looking as big as most people's front steps, sailed past me, clearing the rope by inches. For a heart-flipping second I thought her back foot would do likewise, but at the last instant the rope stretched up—I swear—and snagged her little toe, tripping her.