Ravenspell Book 2: The Wizard of Ooze (7 page)

Chapter 10

FALLEN ANGELS

You cannot truly understand the joy of flying until you have felt the pain of a fall.

—GRAY OWL

“This is just like flying on a giant frisbee!”

Amber peered down below at the houses and trees and fields. She could see them a little, but the sun glared down so brightly, reflecting off the aluminum garbage can lid, that it hurt her eyes.

“This is just like flying on a giant frisbee!” Ben shouted in delight.

Amber was pleased with herself. The engine of her flying machine roared, making the whole craft tremble. It was a terribly noisy way to fly, and also terribly exciting. She felt like a silver angel speeding carefree above the world.

Unfortunately, she couldn’t see down below, so she just harnessed all of the energy from the ship and sent it east, skimming the treetops. Little did she know what kind of a stir this was causing!

* * *

Dawna Shockley was driving to work and was one of the first to see the flying saucer—a blindingly silver craft with a glass bubble on top.

She swerved off the freeway, down into the ditch, roared through a fence, and hit a two-thousand-pound rodeo bull.

At sixty-five miles per hour, her car took the bull out at the knees. Most of the bull went through the passenger’s side window, but its head got caught in the roof and pulled the roof completely off.

When Dawna finally came to a stop, she had a perfect view of the flying saucer whizzing over her head.

As for the bull, it just got up on its feet, mooed angrily at the car, and went back to grazing.

Fumbling for her cell phone, Dawna immediately dialed 911, and frantically began shouting, “Help! Help! There’s a flying saucer full of aliens. They just tried to abduct me!”

But her call was only the first to deluge the Dallas, Oregon, police department. Hundreds of calls began pouring in within seconds of each other.

“The aliens are landing!” one nervous caller shouted. “The spaceship looks like it is flying five miles in the air,” another added, “and must be a mile across. It’s hurtling east at ten thousand miles per hour!” A third caller cried, “I just saw it shoot out a laser beam that lifted a herd of sheep in the air!”

Cars down on the busy interstate saw it and sped up, trying to get a closer look, but the flying saucer was moving far too fast.

Police cars gave chase in vain, sirens wailing and lights flashing, but the flying saucer whipped over rivers and crossed the woods.

In no time at all, half a dozen Air Force jets were scrambling over the valley at nearly two thousand miles per hour.

Amber and the other mice were peering ahead, doing their best to travel toward the sound of the wormsong.

Ben was the only one who happened to look behind. He’d been gazing at his house, wondering if he’d ever see it again, as it finally disappeared in the distance.

Suddenly, he spotted three F-18 fighter jets veering straight at them.

“I’ve got a funny feeling about this,” Ben said, his stomach suddenly growing queasy.

The jets roared toward them.

“Amber,” he said, his voice rising in fear. “We have company!”

“Who?” Amber asked. “Are those fleas back?”

“No,” Ben said, pointing toward the planes. “Those are fighter jets!”

Amber turned and peered stupidly at the approaching planes. Ben suddenly realized that she wouldn’t know a fighter jet from a nosehair trimmer. “Those are airplanes,” Ben said, “like ours. Only they have guns in them.”

“Oh,” Amber said. “What are guns?”

Suddenly, from one of the jets, a pair of missiles detached, their rockets flaring, leaving a smoky white trail as they blasted toward Amber’s little ship.

“I recommend that we take evasive action!” Thorn shouted.

“Duck!” Ben screamed.

Amber whirled. “A duck? Where?”

She peered forward, afraid that they’d crash into a duck.

Their little aircraft suddenly dove and dodged to the left, as Amber tried bravely to avoid a duck that she couldn’t see.

The tactic saved their lives. Just then, a missile exploded nearby, sending pieces of shrapnel through the garbage can lid. The lawnmower engine blew clear while the propeller turned into a twisted piece of scrap metal, looking sort of like warm taffy that a couple of kids had been fighting over.

The top of the contraption, the thick turtle bowl, cracked into pieces, and the mice were thrown clear. They went hurtling toward their deaths.

Ben saw trees below and rocks and a fishing pond, and he screamed as he fell.

When they were only a dozen feet from land, all of the mice quit tumbling. Instead, they floated down softly, like feathers in the air.

The F-18 fighter jets roared past, circled, and came back again.

Ben found himself trembling in terror, his legs so weak that he could hardly stand. It had only been twenty minutes, and already he regretted his decision to follow Amber on her journey.

“Who are those guys?” Amber demanded. Her jaw had dropped open, partly in fear, partly in awe at the power of the explosion. She watched the circling jets.

“Those are from the Air Force,” Ben said. “They’re like the Army, a human army that patrols the skies.”

“And they just shoot down innocent mice?” Thorn asked. “Inconceivable!”

“Well,” Amber said, “they’re not going to get away with it!” She raised a finger on her front paw, taking aim as if it were a gun.

“Stop!” Ben shouted. “You can’t just kill people!”

“Why not?” Amber asked evenly. “They tried to kill me.”

“But,” Ben said. “That was an accident. They thought you were an enemy ship.”

“Oh, yeah?” Amber asked. “What about that time a human tried to feed me to a lizard? Huh? What about that!”

Ben stood there, convicted by his own actions. Amber was right. Humans were mean. They poisoned mice that tried to live in their homes. They bought them to use as snake food.

Amber watched the jet arc over the treetops, apparently deciding not to blast it into oblivion.

“I’m adding humans to the list,” Amber said. “They’re the enemies of mice. And when I take over the world, they’re going to have to change their ways!”

“I’m not your enemy,” Ben apologized, wishing that he could speak for all of mankind.

* * *

Amber marched through the undergrowth with the other mice behind, shaken. The blast from the missile had made her brains rattle in her skull, and she wasn’t really certain what she was doing anymore.

Was she right to want to take over the world?

Ever since she had been a babe, other mice had told her that she had a great mission in life. She was the Golden One, the mouse destined to free all of the mice in the world.

That was what her magic powers were for. The Great Master of the Meadows had created the world, and Amber believed that he had given her this power for a reason. Indeed, if Lady Blackpool was right, for Amber to use her powers selfishly was evil.

But is it evil to want my people to live free of fear? Amber wondered.

To be a mouse was terrifying. There were so many dangers—animals out to eat you, animals that could step on you. Ben didn’t understand that yet, not really. He had a mouse’s shape, but not a mouse’s pounding heart. He had been born a human. Apparently, life was pretty comfortable for folks up at the top of the food chain.

Amber just wanted to cut down on the stress in her life, get the terror to a manageable level.

Was that so wrong?

They scurried through a blackberry patch. Most of the vines were old, their stems gray and hard and dead. But there were plenty of vibrant new sprouts everywhere. The dead leaves under the mice’s feet were wet and comfortable, but everywhere around them was a forest of thorns, and more than once, Amber found herself getting pricked.

Ahead of her, Bushmaster led the way. Suddenly he shouted, “Whoa!” and went sliding through the mud down a steep hill. At the bottom, he hit the water with a small splash but quickly ran on top of the water, back onto dry land.

“How did you do that?” Ben asked the vole.

“Do what?” Bushmaster asked.

“Run on the water?”

Bushmaster raised one furry paw. “All you need is a little hair between your toes.”

Amber looked at his feet in astonishment but said nothing. It was good to have a vole with her, she decided—one that could walk on water.

The mice stood at the edge of a vast pond, its surface brown and brackish. Overhead, oak and alder trees raised their bare limbs to a gray sky.

Bushmaster looked at the water forlornly. “We’ll have to go around. There are bass in that pond for sure. We’d never make it across if we tried to swim.”

Amber shivered at the memory of her last encounter with a bass, a huge fish with a mouth that could easily swallow her whole, and a body nearly sixteen inches in length.

Across the pond, Amber spotted a colorful bird feeding on the shore, a male wood duck with beautiful, iridescent green feathers on his head, gleaming purple on his chest and flanks, and magnificent lines of black and white on his wings and throat.

The duck was waddling through the underbrush, searching for acorns beneath the fallen leaves.

“We won’t walk,” Amber said. “We’d never make it over the mountains on foot anyway.”

With that, she cast a spell, and the duck made a whistling noise as he flew toward her. He landed with a splash just a few feet from shore, and paddled over.

As he sat in a daze, the mice mounted up, and Ben looked about fearfully. “These duck feathers are too slick and oily,” he said, while clinging to the bird’s back. “We’d better tie ourselves on.”

And so Ben took his fishing line from around his neck, made a little lasso, and put it over the duck’s neck. Then he tied the fishing line around his waist and around the waists of the other mice. When they were all secure, they took off for the Cascade Mountains.

For long hours they flew, huddling together for warmth.

At nightfall they set down in a field where a few pines thrust their heads up through the snow, and Amber released the weary duck. He flew up doggedly, heading for the McKenzie River.

The mice foraged for food, digging beneath the snow, but it seemed useless. The air flowed down from the mountains in an icy sheet, and while it had been warm and springlike in the valley, winter still held the mountains in its grip.

Digging beneath the snow, they finally found a squirrel’s midden—a place where it buried its food. But getting to it through the snow and dirt was hard work, and all that the mice found for their efforts were a few pine nuts. Amber had never eaten anything spicier than mouse pellets, and found that the nuts, still coated with pine resin, didn’t sit well in her stomach.

Feeling achy, the mice crawled under a pine bough to sleep. The small rodents huddled together for warmth among some dry leaves and peered out into the darkness, where starlight dusted the snow. It was beautiful and peaceful, but in the distance, floating down the mountains, Amber could hear the eerie song of coyotes. She had never felt quite so cold and miserable.

“My front paws are freezing,” Ben whispered, stamping.

Thorn said, “That’s because they’re so small. They lose heat more easily.”

“Don’t worry,” Bushmaster said. “In a few weeks, you’ll get used to the cold.”

“A few weeks?” Ben asked.

“Four, to be exact,” Thorn assured him. “It takes that long for a mouse’s metabolism to adjust to a drop in the ambient temperature.”

“No wonder mice try to break into people’s houses in the winter!” Ben said. “Why don’t we build a fire to help keep warm?”

“What’s a fire?” Amber asked.

“If you heat up wood and grass enough,” Ben said, “it will glow and give off lots of heat. That’s a fire.”

Gleefully, the mice stacked up a few twigs and leaves, and Amber heated them. Soon they had a nice little flame dancing in front of them. It wasn’t much bigger than a candle, but all of the mice huddled around the campfire and warmed their paws.

As they did, Ben suddenly got a sly look. He twisted his paws funny and said, “Look, a cat!” Then he whirled and peered at the snow behind them.

Bushmaster gave a mighty shout and Thorn jumped so high, he could have been a flea. Amber shot around and saw the shadow of an enormous cat there in the snow. She was trying to think of some spell to frighten it off when she followed the lines of the shadow and saw that it was only Ben, making shadow puppets on the ground.

I can make a better cat than that, Amber thought. And suddenly she created an enormous black cat out of shadows and sound. It yowled and hissed, and Ben’s eyes went wide.

He whirled and peered behind him just as an enormous cat leapt upon his back. Thorn and Bushmaster raced off, squeaking in terror. But when the huge black cat landed on Ben, it disappeared.

Amber laughed herself silly until Bushmaster and Thorn returned. Then they all sat beside the fire and got toasty, enjoying the strange and pungent scents of smoke and ash, while Ben showed them how to make shadow puppets that looked like cats, dogs, and creatures that he called alligators and dinosaurs.