Then at the end of the day as he headed to her classroom, a mysterious word had popped into his head, just like that.
Topa-popa-snabbo.
“That’s it!” Eric groaned to himself. “I shouldn’t have said that word!”
But he had said it.
And suddenly — quawk! — birds were everywhere. They chased him down the hall. And now they were all over Mrs. Michaels’s classroom. And they just kept coming — more and more and more of them!
“Get away!” he cried. Shielding his face with one arm, he swatted them away with the other, when another word popped into his head.
“Ya-ya-boko-mesh! I mean, huh — ?”
Kkkk — blam!
His fingers shot out a sudden spray of blue sparks and — poomf! — the birds vanished. All of them. As if they had never been there at all.
Eric slumped to the floor, exhausted. “What is going on? I mean, I can make stuff appear. I have these sparks coming out of my fingers. And I’m even having, sort of, visions!”
Yes, visions. That was another thing.
For several days he had found himself seeing and hearing things that were happening somewhere else. It was truly weird. Now sitting on the classroom floor, he tried to make it happen again.
He closed his eyes.
Suddenly, light flashed in his head, and he “saw” Mrs. Michaels pulling open a door somewhere in the school.
He opened his eyes and — poof! — she was gone. A vision.
Eric smiled to himself and said aloud what he’d been thinking. “I have … magical powers.”
He remembered exactly when he got the powers, too. It was on his last visit to Droon. He had been thrown into a deep cavern by a whispering evil spirit named Om.
To save Eric, his friend Princess Keeah had directed a blast of blue wizard light at him. It had saved him, all right. But it had done something else, too. Keeah’s light had entered into him, filling him with its glow.
She didn’t know it, but his fingers had been sparking ever since. Well, almost ever since.
Eric never knew when he would have the powers. In fact, every time he tried to show his friends Neal and Julie, his hands turned normal again. No sparks. No powers. No nothing.
“What if my powers go away when I tell people?” he asked himself. “I mean, I like being … Eric Hinkle … kid wizard!”
He laughed. Whirling around, he pointed his fingers at some blackboard erasers on the desk, and a new word came to him.
“Lev … ta … lem!”
Amazed, Eric watched as a stream of sparks left his fingertips and drifted over to the erasers. The erasers wobbled once, then rose from the desk.
“I’m doing it!” he cried. “I’m doing it —”
The door squeaked.
“Oh, no!” He shoved his hands in his pockets, and the erasers crashed to the floor in a puff of dust.
Mrs. Michaels entered the room. She started to cough. “My goodness, Eric, what are you doing?” She waved the chalk dust away from her face.
“Sorry, Mrs. Michaels. I’m here for the extra help we talked about.” He put the erasers back on the desk.
“Then let’s get started, shall we?”
For the next thirty minutes, Mrs. Michaels went over math problems while Eric did his best to hide his sparking fingertips.
“I think I understand the problems now,” he said finally.
She smiled. “You can always get extra help when you’re having trouble with something.”
“Extra help. I sure need that.” What Eric really needed was extra help controlling his powers.
“Next time, don’t keep it such a secret.”
“No secrets,” he said. “Right. Got it.”
He suddenly felt bad about not telling Julie and Neal about what was happening to him.
Friends don’t keep secrets from friends.
Brrrinnng! The final school bell rang. Eric thanked Mrs. Michaels, grabbed his books, then jumped into the hallway. It was already crowded with kids coming back from the assembly.
“Eric!” called a loud voice. “Today’s the day!”
He turned to see Julie and Neal trotting toward him. He grinned. “The day for what?”
Neal grabbed Eric’s arm and tugged him close to the lockers. “The three of us are going back to you-know-where!”
“Really?” said Eric. “Today? Are you sure?”
Julie laughed. “Keeah said our dreams tell us when we’re needed in Droon, right? Well, it was so hot in the auditorium —”
“And the assembly took forever,” said Neal.
“—that we both fell asleep, and guess what?” said Julie. “We both dreamed of the same creature! He was all furry with red and yellow spots. He was very cute.”
“But mostly weird,” Neal added, making a face. “And Droon is the only place with weird creatures … besides the mall, I mean!”
Eric laughed. “That’s for sure.”
After their bus had been called, they left the school, got on the bus, and plopped down in their seats.
“We figure we’re being called back for a special mission,” said Julie. “I wonder what Galen’s got cooking up for us this time!”
Galen Longbeard was the very old and very powerful first wizard of Droon. Eric wondered what Galen would say if he knew that Eric had powers, too. Would he make him give them up?
Eric decided not to tell anyone his secret until he could learn more. And the only place to do that was Droon.
The bus started up and pulled onto the street.
“I can’t wait to see Keeah again,” said Julie. “And Max, of course. He’s so funny!”
Neal nodded. “But there are some folks who aren’t so funny. Lord Sparr, for instance. Yuck.”
Lord Sparr.
Just the name made the kids shiver. Sparr was a sorcerer who wanted to take over all of Droon. He would have succeeded, too, but Keeah had turned his own wicked creation, the Golden Wasp, against him. Sparr had been stung by it.
Since then, people told stories about the terrible monster Sparr had become. The kids were sure they had seen him recently. If it was him, “monster” was certainly the right word. Instead of a man with a black cloak and fins behind his ears, Sparr was all dark and scaly with a red snout and long teeth. Yep, “monster” was the word.
Eric shivered for another reason, too. He was remembering what the spirit Om had whispered.
He said Eric would help Sparr. Help him!
Just then, the bus stopped at Eric’s house.
“To the basement!” he cried.
They scrambled into his house and headed down to the basement. Moving some boxes, they revealed a small door under the stairs.
“Last one in is a rotten egg,” said Eric.
“Wait!” Neal froze. “Did you say … egg? Egg is food. Food is good. I’m suddenly hungry!”
“Neal!” said Julie, rolling her eyes.
Eric was about to say that there was a box of doughnuts in the kitchen when another word popped into his head and right out of his mouth.
“Bubb-zee-doo —”
Neal looked puzzled. “Is that a new kind of snack food?”
Splop! A jelly doughnut — a fat, powdery, jelly-filled doughnut — appeared behind Neal’s head. Another popped up behind Julie’s head.
Soon, more and more of them appeared. The doughnuts began to spin in circles.
Eric’s eyes bugged out. “How about we catch a meal in Droon? Now!” He pushed his friends into the closet before they could see anything.
“Somebody wants to get there fast!” said Julie as Eric slammed the door behind them.
“I sure do,” said Eric. “Everybody ready?”
He flicked off the ceiling light.
The closet went dark, then — whoosh! — the cold gray floor vanished. In its place shimmered the rainbow-colored staircase to Droon.
“This is my favorite thing,” said Julie excitedly. “I mean, where else besides Droon can life
be so … magical?”
Eric thought about the doughnuts flying around his basement and smiled. “Right. Where else?”
Together, the three friends climbed down the stairs. Lower and lower they went. But with every step, dark shadows fell over the staircase.
“I know the stairs always lead to someplace new,” said Neal. “But let me be the first to say it’s blacker than night down there. I just hope it’s not a trap set by Lord Sparr.”
The steps wound down into total darkness.
“Or by some new creepy villain,” added Julie.
Crunch! The ground was rough under their shoes.
“We’re at the bottom,” said Eric. “We must be in a tunnel — holy cow! — what’s that?”
Splop! Splop! There was a strange sound and a flash of green. Then out of the distance came a rolling, hopping, boiling swarm of creatures.
Splop! They looked like frogs but had big purple eyes and were as large as cats.
Their skins were blazing with bright green flames that lit the tunnel with a fantastic glow.
“Back up the stairs!” yelled Julie.
Eric glanced behind them. “Too late. They’re fading. We’ll find them when it’s time to go home.”
“But I want to go home now!” cried Neal.
They took another look at the frogs bounding wildly at them. And for the second time that day, Eric started to scream.
Text copyright © 2001 by Robert T. Abbott
Illustrations copyright © 2001 by Scholastic Inc.
All rights reserved. Published by Scholastic Inc.
SCHOLASTIC, LITTLE APPLE PAPERBACKS, and associated logos are trademarks and/or registered trademarks of Scholastic Inc.
First Scholastic printing, May 2001
Cover art by Tim Jessell
e-ISBN 978-0-545-41825-6
All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. No part of this publication may be reproduced, transmitted, downloaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereafter invented, without the express written permission of the publisher. For information regarding permission, write to Scholastic Inc., Attention: Permissions Department, 557 Broadway, New York, NY 10012.
Tony Abbott, Under the Serpent Sea (The Secrets of Droon #12)
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