“The prophecy is this: the bow and arrow will bring the world to right, end the darkness screaming, bring the sunlight streaming,” he began.
“Seriously?” muttered Eva. “It rhymes?”
“A good prophecy always does,” SalGoud whispered back.
“Ugh and double ugh,” muttered Eva, turning away.
Johann continued, “In the darkest hour, call upon the Stopper’s power, the elf of light, the boy of might, and—”
“Is there or is there not a dwarf in this prophecy?” Eva stomped her foot on the floor and time rushed back, bringing with it sound and wind.
Before Johann could answer, a roar—loud and fierce—filled the chamber. The Bugbear was moving and obviously upset that his prey wasn’t right in front of him, ready to be eaten.
They all just stood next to the wall of bones and clacking skulls and stared at Johann. Every so often one would glance at another as if to say, Um … Do you know what to do? Because I don’t, and inside I’m kind of freaking out.
“Can you stop time again?” Johann blurted.
“I don’t think so,” Annie admitted.
Eva moved toward the turn in the road. “I will meet him with my ax,” Eva said. “And prove myself worthy of a prophecy. Any prophecy.”
Bloom grabbed the back of her coat. “No, you won’t.”
Lifting her beneath his arm, he rushed to the wall of bones and shoved her rather ungraciously through the hole. She landed with a clatter on the other side of the wall and protested with a string of swears that involved troll bottoms and hag eyes.
Jamie ignored her. “What do you see?”
“A feather … It’s beautiful and obviously magical … And stairs …,” Eva answered. “Let me get through.”
Her head poked out of the hole. Johann pushed it back in. “We’re all coming through. Get out of the way. That feather is the Helper thing!”
“We’re not fighting?” Eva scuttled backward as Johann hoisted Annie through. She landed on her feet and moved out of the way as Jamie blasted across.
“SalGoud, you next,” Bloom ordered.
“No, you.” SalGoud shook his head.
“I’ll use my arrows to hold the Bugbear off.” Bloom nudged the stone giant forward.
“That didn’t work the last time, brother.” SalGoud pushed his head through the hole and then started to wedge his shoulders through. “I might be too big.”
He made a groaning noise. The bones around him didn’t budge.
“Grab him and yank, Annie,” Jamie suggested, taking one of SalGoud’s long slender hands and his wrist.
Annie grabbed the other, and they pulled as hard as they could, bracing their feet against skulls and leg bones.
“Oh for dragon’s poop, make room for me!” Stowing her ax, Eva scaled up a stack of vertebrae and slipped her arm around SalGoud’s chest. “On my mark … heave!”
Annie and Jamie tightened their holds.
“Hurry up!” Johann bellowed. “I hear the Bugbear.”
“One …,” Eva said.
“It’s coming!” Johann added.
“Two …,” Eva announced.
Johann pulled Bloom back toward him. Bloom stowed his bow and began pushing at SalGoud’s bottom, trying to hoist it up and through the hole in the bone wall.
“Really … it’s running!” Johann yelled, helping, too, using his back as a bigger pushing surface. Bloom flipped around and did the same.
“Three!” Eva grunted and yanked.
SalGoud exploded through the hole like a cork blasting off the top of a champagne bottle. He popped right through, sending Annie, Jamie, and Eva flopping onto the floor. One moment later Johann scuttled through the hole right after him. His eyes were terrified.
“It’s here! The Bugbear is here!”
“Bloom!” Annie yelled, picking herself off the floor. “Bloom! Hurry!”
One second seemed to last a thousand minutes, but Bloom’s bright yellow head poked through the hole and his body quickly followed. He dropped smoothly to the floor in front of the opening, whisking out his bow and notching an arrow before anyone could draw in a breath. The arrow whizzed through the hole. Two more followed.
The Bugbear bellowed in pain and rage.
“Finally!” Bloom said, smiling. “Finally, I got him.”
Eva yanked him forward and away from the wall, hands shaking a bit. “No time to bask in your glory now, elf. We have stealing to do.”
Johann carefully turned toward the glowing feather as the Bugbear raged on the other side of the bone wall.
“Aw, there are booby traps …” He rubbed his hands together. “How exciting!”
“I don’t understand dwarfs,” Annie whispered to Jamie as she eyed the object they had come to retrieve.
It was a feather, a single feather, but it truly did glow red and vibrant and magical.
He lifted his shoulders to indicate he didn’t either. “Do you think the wall will hold?”
“It’s enchanted. It seems it will.” SalGoud studied it.
The Bugbear’s arm reached through. SalGoud leaped back gasping, but Eva surged forward.
“Feel the sting of my ax!” She swung down hard, hitting the tops of the Bugbear’s claws and neatly clipping all of them.
“You gave it a manicure,” Bloom said as the Bugbear’s hand retreated back into the hole.
“I gave it a warning!” Eva insisted.
“A manicure.”
“A warning.”
Jamie cleared his throat.
“We should probably get out of here as quickly as we can,” SalGoud suggested.
“How do we get the feather, and what do we do with it when we have it?” Annie cleared her throat awkwardly.
“It is part of the arrow that is part of the bow,” Bloom explained. “It must be the Helper like Johann said. It helps the arrow fly true.”
“You know this, how?” Eva demanded.
Bloom pressed his hand against his chest. “I feel it in here. In my heart.”
Eva harrumphed, but Annie took him at his word and lifted his hand off his chest. Bloom seemed moved, absolutely in awe of the feather.
Annie knew it had to be special. It had to be, didn’t it? There was a wall of bones keeping it safe. But there was also a staircase leading up and out of the chamber.
“What is the staircase for?” she mumbled.
And the skull closest to her spoke up. “Last Chance Staircase. Make the decision to live.”
They all jumped at the voice, high and tinny.
“Um …” Annie exchanged a glance with Jamie.
“If we go up can we come down again?”
“No,” the skull answered.
“Can you tell us if the feather is booby-trapped?”
“Of course it is. How do you think I got here?” The skull probably would have rolled its eyes if it had any.
“Shouldn’t it be floating?” Annie asked. “In a book it would be flying and we’d have to try to catch it. It’s just lying there on the floor.”
“I give up talking to you.” The skeleton’s jaw snapped shut.
“No, really? I meant it … Was that a bad question?” Annie looked to the others to help.
Johann and Eva both went to the skull and threatened its kin and ancestors with their sword and blade and blah, blah, blah … Jamie tuned it out. He was busy trying to think of what the booby trap might be. The Bugbear kept raging behind the wall, and it was hard to concentrate.
“Maybe we should just go up the staircase and come back for the feather after we find the bow and arrow …,” SalGoud suggested because he honestly didn’t want to deal with this anymore. He would much rather read a book and sit by a fire somewhere.
“Then we’d have to fight the Bugbear or avoid it again.” Bloom grabbed Johann’s sword and ignored Johann’s sputtering protests. “Maybe I could jab it out of place.”
Annie placed her hand on top of his, even as he bent into a crouching positio
n, stopping him. “We need to think, Bloom. We have to be clever. I’m sure one of those people tried that already.” She motioned to the wall behind them. “Maybe if we could figure out what the booby trap is, then we could figure out how to avoid it.”
“And how do we do that?” Eva blew hair out of her face and took a swipe at the Bugbear, who was reaching his hairy arm through the hole again despite his neatly shorn claws.
“Well, what happens to the people who fail?” Annie asked.
Jamie motioned toward the wall. “They get stuck here.”
“And how does that happen?” Annie peered at the bones as if they had an answer.
“This is so boring!” Johann shouted. “Can we just grab the feather, and can I have my sword back, elf? I feel naked without it. Plus, the longer you hold it, the more elf cooties it gets.”
But Bloom wasn’t about to give anything back. He was still peering intently at the feather, transfixed.
“I could get it. It’s right here …,” he murmured, leaning in.
Annie scuttled back to him, grabbing his arm again. “Bloom. Look at me. Do not touch the feather until we figure out what will happen.”
“What will happen is we get the feather and we skedaddle out of here,” Eva said, taking aim at the Bugbear’s hand, going right for the knuckles. She swung the ax. It whizzed through the air and clattered against the floor under the hole in the wall. “Darn thing moved back.” She put her face up to the hole and shouted, “Coward!”
On the other side of the room, over by the stairs, a small table sat covered in dust. There was indeed a pot—more of a cauldron, actually—sitting on top of it. SalGoud gestured toward it.
“Did any of you notice that before?” he asked, approaching it cautiously, but in the next moment he stopped frozen. “That’s a pot of acid, isn’t it?”
“Acid indeed!” Annie said sharply, sounding remarkably like Miss Cornelia somehow.
Striding toward the table, she seemed to forget about all notions of booby traps and potential entombment in a wall of skeleton bones and occasionally talking skeleton heads. She stopped just short of the table, motioning for someone to join her. Jamie did, rushing along the exact same path she followed. Their footsteps made prints in the thick dust, breaking its thick covering. There were no footsteps around the table, Jamie noticed.
“Magic. It’s part of the magic,” he said, motioning. “No marks around it. The table … It just appeared there.”
Annie twirled around, a light sparking in her eyes. “Everyone. Listen. That means you, too, Eva. Stop toying with the Bugbear’s arm and listen to me.”
Eva harrumphed but notched her ax with her penknife to record the strike against the Bugbear and faced Annie. The Bugbear’s hand stretched out in the air, searching for something to grab, but got nothing. Its fingers spread out. Still nothing.
“Look. The skeletons are those who tried before and failed. There are a lot of skeletons in that wall. I mean how thick is it, honestly?” Annie squinted at it.
“Four feet,” SalGoud answered, stepping a bit away from the wall. “That’s how thick it feels.”
“Exactly. That’s a lot of bones.” Annie pointed at the feather, glowing and resting on the dusty floor but surprisingly not dusty itself. “A feather should not cause you to die and be entombed in a wall, but acid would … Well, not the wall part, but—”
“But it would burn the flesh and muscle off your body,” Jamie finished for her, and he, too, took a step away from the wall.
“Look at the placement of the acid,” Annie continued. “It’s right by the staircase, so people must grab the feather and just run up here to escape, but they can’t because—”
“Because the acid attacks them or something!” Eva finished. “Holy vampire garlic dogs! That’s brilliant.”
Annie bit her lip. “But we’re going to have to try to bypass this acid part somehow.”
Jamie took one more step so that he stood next to her, mere inches away from the table and its acid cauldron. He craned his neck, staring up. “It looks like there is some sort of trapdoor at the top of the stairs.”
“What’s it made of?” SalGoud asked.
“Wood.” Jamie’s eyes lit up and he pivoted. “Bloom. Can you attach a rope to an arrow? Then maybe we could climb up it and bypass the first part of the stairs.”
“Why would we want to bypass the first part of the stairs?” Eva asked.
Annie knew what Jamie was thinking and watched as Bloom attached a rope, pulled out of Eva’s handy knapsack, to an arrow.
“Maybe the acid touches their feet, or the bottoms of their shoes or whatever and then—” Jamie snapped his fingers, making everyone, even the now-quiet Bugbear, jump. Or at least it looked like he jumped because his arm jerked upward. “The acid just eats all of you from there.”
“And the bones …? How do the bones get in the wall?” Johann asked.
Annie shrugged. “Magic? Maybe? I’m not sure and I don’t want to waste time figuring it out. Just … Just … Whatever you do … Whatever happens … Try to avoid the acid.”
Jamie swallowed hard as Bloom shot the arrow with the rope attached up to the trapdoor. It struck on the first try. Bloom tugged on the rope to make sure it would hold their weight. While everyone else was watching the rope and judging if it was secure, Jamie eyed the cauldron. The acid inside kept bubbling but didn’t leak out or spill over.
“I say we all get near the bottom of the rope …,” Jamie suggested. “One of us grabs the feather. And we climb.”
“I think you should start climbing before I grab the feather. It seems safer,” Bloom suggested.
“I will stay down with Bloom,” SalGoud said over the protests. “We are the fastest climbers and the tallest.”
Eva and Annie objected, but they were talked down, and within minutes, Johann, Eva, Annie, and Jamie had started climbing the rope. It wasn’t easy, actually. The rope’s fibers rubbed against their hands. Annie’s bled a bit from the chafing, and a drop of blood hit the floor … a drop so small that nobody really even noticed it … But the moment it touched the ground, the cauldron’s bubbling grew more chaotic, more passionate … Bubbles … bigger and bigger bubbles began to pop inside it.
“It’s boiling over!” Jamie announced. He was closest and could look down upon the boiling mess.
And it did. The acid sloshed over the side and began spreading across the ground, edging toward Bloom and SalGoud.
Bloom rushed to the other corner and snatched the red feather. For a moment nothing happened. A giant creaking noise filled the room. It came from the skeleton wall.
“Jump up, man,” Bloom urged SalGoud. “Let’s go.”
SalGoud bypassed the rope completely, leaping over the acid and to the edge of the staircase. His fingers caught the edge of a step, and he clambered up, immediately racing toward the top and grabbing the rope, hauling it up, trying to get the others to safety.
But below them, the bone wall had started to move. The skeletons were leaving it, breaking free of whatever magic bonded them to each other. They creaked out of the wall, one after another, all edging toward Bloom, who stood near the bottom of the rope.
“Bloom!” Annie yelled as Johann jumped from the rope to the stairs with the assistance of SalGoud’s long hand.
A skeleton lunged toward Bloom. Its hands gripped his neck, choking him. He tucked the red feather in his cloak pocket and pulled out his dagger, stabbing at the skeleton, but there was nothing to stab into, no flesh, no muscle; it was all just bones.
The skeleton’s hands tightened around Bloom’s neck, and he gave up on the dagger, instead trying to get out of the skeleton’s grip even as others converged on them.
“Bloom!” Eva bellowed and started down the rope, climbing over Jamie and Annie, stepping on them without a thought. “Don’t you touch my elf, you nasty bag of bones!”
Annie made it to the top of the stairs. There was no way she could stop time and help all of them …
They had to be touching and were too far apart … “Eva, come back! The acid!” The acid hit the end of the rope and easily climbed up it. The rope sizzled as it dissolved, spreading up and up toward Eva’s feet. She stopped, rushing back to the top of the stairs.
And on the other side of the breaking skeleton wall, the Bugbear howled. Skeletons attacked it. More and more skeletons joined in the skirmish … And on Bloom’s side, too, they left the wall, arms out, ready to kill, surrounding him. He used his forearm, pulling it up and in between the skeleton’s own arms and smashed outward, breaking the hold, and as he did, he rolled on the floor, knocking several of the attacking skeletons right over.
“The acid!” Annie yelled.
He switched directions, rolling in the opposite way.
“He’s like a bowling ball, and the skeletons are the pins,” Eva whooped. “Way to go, elf! Way to go!”
SalGoud yanked Jamie up onto the stairs just as the entire wall tumbled to the ground, revealing a Bugbear smashing one skeleton after another. It set its sights on the elf, now in the farthermost corner of the room. It smiled.
“Get. The. Door. Open. Now!” Annie ordered, and Johann slammed up the remaining steps, smashing at the trapdoor with his shoulder.
“It’s not moving,” he said with a grunt as SalGoud sprang up there with him.
Bloom stood up effortlessly and pulled out his dagger, but it was not going to be much of a match for the Bugbear, who even now was casting aside the attacking skeletons as if they were nothing—just air.
“Bloom!” Annie yelled. “The rope! You can’t use the rope!”
It sizzled, dissolving faster and faster.
The acid had spread across the floor, a giant bubbling puddle of it. The skeletons that Bloom or the Bugbear had smashed over lay in it, twitching and slowly liquefying. Bloom sheathed his dagger even as the Bugbear lunged toward him.
At the last second, Bloom vaulted into the air, one foot landing on the confused Bugbear’s shoulder. He powered off it even as the Bugbear made a startled attempt to grab him. Landing on first one skeleton head and then another, he rushed toward the stairs, feet never touching the acid. Finally, running out of heads, he leaped forward and up, bounding toward the stairs. Jamie’s hands shot down and caught him. The weight of Bloom almost yanked Jamie off the stairs, but Annie and Eva grabbed him by the waist and staggered backward.