Michael Grant - The Call

“I fade.” The old man sighed. His shoulders slumped. “I weaken. I will return when I am able.”

Then, with a wheeze, he added, “My head hurts.”

And he was gone. As suddenly as he had appeared.

His smell left with him. And the light.

And suddenly, the kids were moving again. Their eyes were bright in anticipation again.

Mack looked at Stefan. “I know you have to beat me up and all,” Mack said to Stefan, “but before you do, just tell me: Did you see that?”

“The old guy?”

“So you did,” Mack said. “Whoa.”

“How did you do that?” Stefan asked.

“I didn’t,” Mack admitted, although maybe he should have pretended he did.

“Huh,” Stefan commented.

“Yeah.”

The two of them stood there, considering the flat-out impossible thing that had just happened. Mack could not help but notice that none of the other kids in the hallway seemed upset or weirded out or even curious, aside from a certain curiosity as to why Stefan had not yet killed Mack.

They hadn’t seen any of it. Only Mack and Stefan had.

“I wasn’t going to kick your butt anyway,” Stefan said.

Mack raised one skeptical eyebrow. “Why not?”

“Dude – you saved my life.”

“Just now you mean?”

“Whoa!” Stefan said. “That makes two times. You totally saved my life, like… twice.” He’d had to search for the word twice and he seemed pretty pleased to be able to come up with it.

Mack shrugged. “I couldn’t let you bleed to death, or even choke. You’re just a bully. It’s not like you’re evil.”

“Huh,” Stefan said.

“Kick his butt already!” Matthew shouted. He’d tolerated this cryptic conversation for as long as he could. He had waited patiently for this moment, after all, for the king of all bullies to destroy the boy who had caused him to be painted yellow.

Bits of yellow could still be seen in the creases of Matthew’s neck and in his ears.

Stefan processed this for a moment. Then he said words that sent a shock through the entire student body of Richard Gere Middle School. “Yo,” he said. “Listen up,” he added. “MacAvoy is under my wing.”

“No way!” Matthew snarled.

So Stefan took two steps. His face was very close to Matthew’s face and a person who didn’t know better might think they were going to kiss.

That was not happening.

Instead, Stefan repeated it slowly, word by word. “Under. My. Wing.”

Which settled it.

A REALLY, REALLY LONG TIME AGO…

o twelve-year-old Grimluk hit the road as a fleer. He wasn’t quite sure why he was supposed to flee from the Pale Queen, but he knew that’s what people did. And in those days long, long ago, smart people didn’t ask too many questions when they heard trouble was on the way.

Grimluk rounded up Gelidberry, their nameless baby son and the cows and hit the road.

They carried with them all their most prized possessions:

One thin mattress made of straw and pigeon feathers that was home to approximately eighty thousand bedbugs – although Grimluk could never have conceived of such a vast number

A lump of clay shaped like a fat woman with a giant mouth that was the family’s goddess, Gordia

One small hatchet with sharpening stone

A cook pot with an actual metal handle (the family’s most valuable object and one of the reasons many others in the village were jealous of Grimluk and thought he and his family were kind of snooty)

One jar of bold ale, a beverage made of fermented milk and cow sweat flavoured with crushed nettles

The tinderbox, which contained a piece of rock, a sliver of steel that had once chipped off the baron’s sword and a tiny bundle of dry grass

Gelidberry’s sewing kit, consisting of a thorn with a hole in one end, a nice spool of cowtail-hair thread and a six-inch-square piece of wool

The family spoon

Other than this they had the clothes on their backs, their foot wrappings, their caps, the baby’s blanket and various lice, fleas, ticks, crusted filth and face grease.

“I can’t believe we’ve acquired all this stuff,” Grimluk complained. “I was hoping to travel light.”

“You’re a family man,” Gelidberry pointed out. “You’re not just some carefree nine-year-old. You have responsibilities, you know.”

“Oh, I know,” Grimluk grumbled. “Believe me, I know.”

“Just point the way and let’s get going,” Gelidberry said, gritting her teeth – she had six, so her gritting was a subtle dig at Grimluk, who had only five.

“The Pale Queen comes from the direction of the setting sun. We’ll go the other way.”

So off they went towards the rising sun. Which was rather hard to do since in the deep forest one seldom saw the sun.

They walked with the cows and took turns carrying the baby. The mattress was strapped to one of the cows while the other cow carried the pot.

At night they lay the mattress down on pine needles. The three of them squeezed together on it, quite cosy since it was still the warm season.

They rose each day at dawn. They milked the cows and drank the milk. Sometimes Grimluk would manage to hit an opossum or a squirrel with his axe. Then Gelidberry would start a fire, cook the meat in the pot and they would hand the spoon back and forth.

From time to time they would encounter other fleeing families. The fleers would exchange information on the path of the Pale Queen. It was pretty clear that she was coming. Some of the fleers had run into elements of the Pale Queen’s forces. It was easy to spot the people who’d had that kind of bad luck because they didn’t always have the full number of arms (two) or legs (also two). Many had livid scars or terrible wounds.

Clearly fleeing was called for. But Grimluk still had no idea what the Pale Queen herself was, or what her agenda might be. None of the others he met had seen her.

Another way of putting it was that those who had seen the Pale Queen were no longer in any position to flee or tell tales.

But it happened that on their fifth night in the forest, Grimluk came to a better understanding of just what or whom he was fleeing.

He was out hunting in the forest, armed with his hatchet. The forest was a frightening place, full as it was of wolves and werewolves, spirits and gnomes, flesh-eating trees and flesh-scratching bushes.

It was dark in the forest. Even in the day it was dark, but at night it was so dark under the high canopy of intertwined branches that Grimluk could not see the hatchet in his own hands. Or his hands, either. Let alone fallen branches, twisted roots, gopher holes and badly placed rocks.

He tripped fairly often. And there was really very little chance that he would come across an animal to strike with his hatchet. No chance, really. But the baby was teething and therefore crying quite a bit and Grimluk hated that incessant crying so much that even the forest at night seemed preferable.

As he was feeling his way carefully through the almost pitch black, he saw light ahead. Not sunlight or anything so bright, just a place where it seemed starlight might reach the forest’s floor.

He headed towards that silvery light, thinking, Hey, maybe I’ll find an opossum after all. And then I will rub it in Gelidberry’s face.

Not the opossum. The fact that he’d found something to eat. That’s what he would rub in her face. Because Gelidberry had accused him of only pretending to hunt so that he could get away from the crying, crying, crying.