Then, all at once, his head was out of the water and he sucked in warm, damp air.
Stefan was treading water close by. “Dude—we just fell out of a plane and we’re still alive!”
“But we’re in the ocean!” Mack cried.
“No big deal. The water’s not that cold.”
“It’s still the ocean. The ocean!”
“It’s just water, man. Chill. What are you so scared of?” Stefan asked.
“That!” Mack said, and pointed.
He pointed at the gray, triangular fin that sliced through the water, turned, and came straight for him.
* * *
DEAR MACK,
I AM SORRY ABOUT…WELL, YOU’LL SEE WHEN YOU GET BACK. I TRIED TO TEXT YOU, BUT I GUESS YOU WERE BUSY OR DIDN’T HAVE A SIGNAL. ANYWAY, DON’T WORRY: IT’S TOO LATE NOW.
YOUR FRIEND,
GOLEM
* * *
Eighteen
“Ret click-ur!”
Mack yelled it and got a mouthful of salt water.
He yelled it again.
But the shark fin kept coming. Nothing stopped. Nothing changed.
“Huh,” Stefan remarked.
“Aaaaaah!” Mack cried. He’d always known it would end this way.
The fin disappeared beneath a swell that lifted Mack up like a cork. He felt something big brush against him. It turned him around. He cried out in terror and started swimming, splashing, heedless of direction so long as it was away.
But then the fin! It was in front of him. Coming straight at him, fast, fast, so fast!
Then the shark rolled over onto its side. Mack was staring straight into the shark’s evil eye.
Only it didn’t look evil. And instead of a huge gaping mouth full of razor-tipped teeth, Mack saw a quirky smile.
It took several seconds for the truth to percolate through Mack’s brain. It was not a shark.
“It’s a dolphin,” Mack yelled to Stefan.
Stefan yelled back, “Sharks are way cooler.”
“What?”
“Didn’t you ever see Megashark vs. Giant Octopus? That was so cool the way the shark, like, ate that whole bridge.”
Not for the last time, Mack wondered if he and Stefan were even from the same planet.
Then something much bigger than the dolphin appeared. A vast white sail. It was closer to Stefan than to Mack. They both started shouting and yelling.
Stefan yelled, “Yo!”
Mack yelled, “Save me! Save me! Help! For the love of God rescue me!”
The sail—they couldn’t see the actual boat because it was hidden by the swells—suddenly collapsed. And then they could see the boat itself, the blue hull with chrome railings. It was turning toward them, slowing but coming closer.
A man stood at the wheel. He was barely visible in the dim light, but Mack could see the glow of a cigar.
They swam hard for the boat, which was now just a few dozen yards away. Mack was pretty sure he would be chomped by a shark before he could get aboard. But he was going to give it a try.
The man came to the rail and tossed them a rope. Stefan grabbed it and carried it to Mack, who clutched it like it was his last hope of life. Which it probably was.
A minute later they were hauled up the side and stood, wet and shaky but definitely alive, on the teak deck of the sailboat.
“Out for a swim, then?” the man asked, in what Mack assumed was an Australian accent.
Mack stared at him.
“Bit of a haul to Sydney Harbour, mate,” the man said.
“Yes,” Mack said, spitting out salt water. “I guess we didn’t think it through.”
“Well, you’re young,” the man said. “We were all young once, eh? Right. Then we’ll get you dried off. Get you a bite. We’ll be all snug in our slip in a couple hours.”
“Thanks,” Mack said. “You saved our lives.”
“Don’t thank me. Thank my daughter. She’s the reason we were looking for you.”
“You were…what?”
“Go on below, she’ll explain it all to you. And maybe you can get her to cook you an omelet.”
Stefan led the way down the narrow stairs to the cabin. Here was light and warmth and the smell of food. Mack could almost—not quite—forget that he was on a tiny vessel in the midst of a vast ocean filled with sharks.
A girl sat at a cramped table. She had dark skin, incongruously blond hair pulled into a ponytail, and brown eyes. She was drinking a cup of coffee, gulping it—not sipping.
She looked up at them with no sign of surprise. “Which one of you is it?”
Stefan, fully recovered despite still being wet and having a piece of seaweed draped over one shoulder, said, “It’s me.”
The girl cocked her head to one side. Then she laughed. “Don’t waste your time flirting with me, mate. You’re a fine-looking fellow, no mistaking that. But I’m not looking for a fine fellow, I’m looking for a magnificent fellow.”
She looked shrewdly at Mack. Like he might be worth something but still wasn’t quite what she’d been hoping for.
“You’d be the one,” she said. She half stood, reached out her hand, and Mack shook it. He felt calluses. This was not a girl who obsessed over moisturizing. She had done lots of physical work in her life. Mack noticed things like that. Her shoulders were strong; her gaze was direct and not even a little shy.
“My name’s Jarrah Major,” she said.
“I’m Mack. This is Stefan.”
“Have a seat, boys. Don’t worry about the wet clothes; you’ll dry soon enough.”
Mack sat. He was still stunned and scared and feeling a little stupid. “Your dad said you were looking for us. How did you…”
Jarrah laughed. “Long story short, I’m the girl you’ve come here to find. I’m the second of the twelve.”
Nineteen
One of the rules of Great Literature is: show, don’t tell. But one of the other rules of Great Literature is: don’t go on and on with boring scenes where nothing happens but a lot of talking.
So let’s just have a quick glance at what Jarrah told Mack and Stefan on the way into stunning Sydney Harbour, and then move on, shall we?
Jarrah’s father, Peter Major, was a journalist. A “journo,” as she said. He was also an avid sailor. Which is only important because that’s how Jarrah came by the boat she took to meet Mack as he fell from the sky.
Jarrah’s mother is more important to the story because she was an archaeologist who was leading the first ever expedition inside Uluru.
Uluru was a gigantic rock in the middle of the Australian Outback (no, not Outback the restaurant chain, Outback as in the vast Australian desert).
No one even knew there was an inside to Uluru. Until Jarrah’s mother, Karri. Karri and Jarrah were both Indigenous names. Karri meant a type of eucalyptus. And so did Jarrah.
Using all the latest ground-penetrating radar and other hi-tech toys, Karri Major had discovered a network of caves deep within Uluru. Being an Indigenous Australian herself, and a member of a local clan, she was able to convince her people that it would not be sacrilege to drill a small tunnel to reach those caves.
Which she did.
As soon as they docked, Jarrah’s father drove them to Sydney Airport. Mack and Stefan had to be careful at the airport because the plane they’d been snatched out of had landed. There were reporters and cops and just mobs of milling people all around as the spokesman for the airport explained that something very unusual had happened on the flight.
Yes; very unusual.
Mack and Stefan were listed as missing. Turning up alive and well right then would just delay things for hours.
“Problem is,” Jarrah’s dad said, “it’s a long wait for the plane to Ayers Rock.”
Ayers Rock being Uluru. Same place, different name.
“If we hang out here, we’ll be spotted,” Mack said, shielding his face with his hand as if he were in bright sunlight. (He wasn’t; he was in an airport,
remember?)
“There’s no other way,” Jarrah said.
“Unless we got a private jet,” Mack said.
Jarrah’s father made a dismissive sound. “Those don’t come cheap.”
Mack pulled out his credit card with a flourish. “I got it covered.”
The private jet was extremely cool. Tall leather seats that reclined all the way back. Thick carpeting. An excellent choice of movies. And a small buffet laid out with cheese, crackers, shrimp, some kind of pinkish dip, and sodas.
They left Jarrah’s father at the airport and took off for Uluru.
Mack had intended to keep his eyes peeled for Risky’s creepy flying machine. But it had been a very long and sleepless night. He was more tired than he would have believed possible. Falling from an airplane and landing in the ocean will take a lot out of you.
He woke when the plane started to descend toward a very basic-looking airport. Barely an airport, really. Just a single paved strip and two low-slung buildings surrounded by a vast red emptiness.
It was as if someone had taken a billion red bricks, ground them to dust, and then spread them over a million square miles. There were trees, but they were widely spaced. And just a single road.
It struck Mack that he was very, very far away from home. He’d never been this far from home. He’d stayed with his grandparents in Michigan once for about three days while his parents went off doing…well, whatever it was parents did when they ditched their kids.
He supposed they would miss him. If they even noticed he was gone. The golem wasn’t exactly a perfect copy, but it would probably be good enough to fool his parents.
“I think I’m homesick,” Mack said.
“Of course you are; who wouldn’t be?” Jarrah said.
“I wouldn’t be,” Stefan said. He yawned. “It’s good to get out of the house.”
“It’s not like we’re going to the park to play Frisbee,” Mack grumped.
Stefan laughed. “Yeah, this is way better.”
It occurred to Mack that maybe Stefan’s home life wasn’t everything it could be.
“Looks desolate, doesn’t it?” Jarrah said. She was friendly at least. That was good. If Mack was going to save the world from some evil villain with a very beautiful but crazy-bad daughter, it would be best to have pleasant people along with him.
“It looks a little like home,” Mack said. “I’m a desert rat myself. Arizona.”
“Ha,” Jarrah said. “Your desert’s all full of roads and cities. Civilized, like. The Outback’s a bit different. Emptiest place on earth, you know. Millions of square miles of nothing much.” She glanced over at Stefan. “You two been friends for long, then?”
“Actually, Stefan was my bully. But we’ve moved on.”
Stefan jerked a thumb at Mack. “He saved my life.”
This seemed to impress Jarrah, who gave Mack a long, appraising look as the plane spiraled down toward the tiny airport.
“You don’t look so much like a great hero,” Jarrah said.
“I’m pretty sure I’m not,” Mack said wearily. “My throat is hoarse from screaming in terror. I don’t think heroes have that problem.”
The plane landed without incident. Waiting outside the terminal was a tall, very thin woman with springy black hair and very dark skin.
“Mack, my mum. Mum, Mack. And this is Stefan. Mack’s bodyguard.” Her Australian accent turned bodyguard into bodygaad.
Karri Major was covered in the red dust Mack had seen flying in. She was dressed in cargo pants and a vest with an awful lot of pockets. Webbing straps hung from various places holding various instruments: small hammer, steel file, a soft brush, a camera, a flashlight.
“So you’re the boy from the sky,” Karri said. She looked at Mack with something like awe—like she was gazing upon a miracle or meeting the Dalai Lama.
“Come on then,” she said, and gave him a sort of shoulder bump that seemed a bit weird coming from an adult.
Mack said, “Yes, ma’am,” mostly because he couldn’t think of anything else to say.
They went to the parking lot, where Karri led the way to a sort of dune buggy. It was yellow, but so covered in red dirt that no more than six square inches of paint was actually visible. It looked like it had been made out of an SUV but with a platform on the back and a winch on the front and big, oversized tires. A rack of spotlights perched on top.
The buggy made a very satisfying roar.
They drove peacefully from the airport out into the desert, windows down. After just a few minutes Karri pulled off the highway onto a dirt road. She stopped the car and climbed out.
“I have work to catch up on,” Karri explained. She pulled a rugged laptop from a rucksack and traded places with Jarrah. Jarrah sat behind the steering wheel, which was on the wrong side, the right side, the Australian side.
Mack assumed they would be sitting there for a while. But then Jarrah turned the key, turned to look over her shoulder, and winked at Mack. “Hold on, mate; this gets a bit bumpy.”
“Wait. You’re driving?” Mack asked in a voice he hoped didn’t sound too terrified.
“No worries,” Karri said. “Jarrah’s been driving in the bush for years. Ever since she was nine.”
“Yeah, no worries,” Jarrah said.
Then she shoved the shift knob forward and stomped on the gas. The buggy roared and shot down the dirt road. It took off like some giant had kicked it.
“A bit bumpy” was an understatement. Mack felt like he’d been dumped into a blender set on “vibrate to death.”
The dirt road was edged by occasional bushes that smacked the sides of the buggy as it went past. A cloud of dust billowed behind them.
“H-h-h-o-o-o-w-w-w-w f-f-f-a-a-a-r-r-r i-i-i-s-s-s i-i-t-t?” Mack asked. It was hard to talk without unclenching his teeth, and when he unclenched his teeth they vibrated so hard he thought he might break one.
“Not far,” Jarrah said. For some reason she didn’t seem to vibrate quite as much. “Not far” came out as “Naw faa.”
Jarrah grinned, raised her eyebrows, and sent the buggy flying, absolutely airborne, off a red dune. They landed with a spine-shortening crunch amid scruffy bushes and kept right on going.
“Look!” Stefan shouted. He grabbed Mack’s shoulder and squeezed.
Mack looked. There, off to the left side, two kangaroos were speeding along, bounding on their giant hind legs as if they were racing the buggy.
In spite of the pounding he was taking, Mack smiled. All right: kangaroos. How cool was that?
“Can we pull over?” Stefan asked.
“You want to take a picture?” Jarrah asked.
“No. I want to box them,” Stefan said.
Jarrah looked at Mack in the rearview mirror and smiled broadly. “I like your bully.”
She kept driving at breakneck speed, and the kangaroos fell behind. But suddenly she stopped. She turned off the car engine and popped open the door.
“Why are we stopping?” Mack asked.
“Because you should see this,” Jarrah said. “It’s where we’re going. It’s why you didn’t just drown out in the deep blue sea. It’s Uluru, mates—Uluru.”
* * *
DEAR MACK,
DID YOU KNOW THAT YOU CANNOT EAT CATS? EACH DAY I LEARN A LITTLE MORE. SO I THINK I AM BECOMING A BETTER AND BETTER MACK. BUT IT’S POSSIBLE THAT I HAVE GROWN MORE THAN I SHOULD BECAUSE MOM WAS WHISPERING TO DAD THAT I NEEDED A SHRINK.
YOUR FRIEND,
GOLEM
* * *
Twenty
A REALLY, REALLY LONG TIME AGO…
They surrounded the castle like a sea: the creatures of the Pale Queen. Grimluk had seen some ugly in his life, but this was more ugly in one place, all together, than he could ever have imagined.
The Skirrit were the most numerous. They advanced in well-ordered columns, armed with wickedly curved blades like scythes. They swung these upward since that was how their insect arms worked best. They
were quick and accurate and deadly.
“Be ready, brothers and sisters,” Grimluk commanded the other eleven. Although he had been the last to arrive, Grimluk had demonstrated a quick grasp of the basics of Vargran. And he had managed on more than one occasion to combine his power with that of others.
The Magnifica had not yet combined all their powers. Drupe had warned them that such an event might destroy them all as well as the Pale Queen. Some believed it would destroy the entire world, such would be the power needed to stop the Pale Queen.
The Tong Elves moved as clans, independent bands incapable of organization, each led with a branch of some particular tree. There were Pine Tong Elves and Birch Tong Elves and Oak Tong Elves. For weapons, the elves preferred bats and sticks, sometimes enhanced with chips of sharpened stone driven into the ends.
Near Deads, of course, were even less organized than elves and tended to wander around more or less at random looking for some living thing to eat. Sometimes they would free themselves for a moment or two from the spells that controlled them, and then they were perfectly capable of eating a Skirrit or a Bowand.
The terror of the Near Deads was that it was very difficult to actually kill them. They were human, not really different from Grimluk, except for being dead and possessed of a powerful hunger for human flesh. But the Pale Queen’s spells had been layered upon them in such a way that even a headless Near Dead would keep moving forward, grabbing what it could and attempting, rather stupidly, to eat without benefit of head or mouth.
“Remember that we are not tasked to fight Skirrit or Bowands or even Gudridan,” Miladew said for all to hear. “We must go toward the Dread One herself.”
“It will mean going through all of these,” Bruise said, sweeping his hand wide to indicate the sea of monsters.
“Yes,” a fellow named Chunhee said with relish. “Through them!”
Chunhee was the most bloodthirsty of the Magnifica. He had come the farthest, from a land of dragons and eating sticks.
Drupe joined them. She touched Grimluk’s shoulder lightly to let him know she was behind him. “Keep your eyes open, my brave twelve of twelves. You will know the Dread Foe’s location by the light she will reveal when she is ready to strike.”