Flight of the Genie

  Title Page

  Dedication

  1: Footsteps in the Morning

  2: Over the Saladian Plains

  3: In the Streets of Ut

  4: A Dungeon with a View

  5: At the Drop of a Pickle

  6: Museum of Magic

  7: Nose to Nose … to Nose

  8: Interview with a Sorcerer

  9: The Yellow Star of Ut

  10: The Urns Return

  The Adventure Continues …

  Also Available

  Copyright

  Swish-swish-swish!

  Eric Hinkle darted across his friend Neal’s patio. He stopped to see if anyone was watching.

  “No way,” he chuckled. “No one’s up yet!”

  He stepped onto a lawn chair. Then he braced one leg on the ledge of a window and pulled himself up.

  “The things I do for Droon!”

  He hooked one heel over the low roof and dragged himself onto the shingles.

  “Almost there!” he huffed.

  From the moment he had jumped out of bed that morning, Eric knew he had to tell Neal his dream. He couldn’t wait until everyone was up. He had to go right then.

  And there it was, ten feet away.

  Neal’s bedroom window.

  Eric grinned as he edged across the roof.

  Droon was the secret world he and Neal and their friend Julie had found under the basement of his house. When they had dreams about Droon, it meant they were being called to go back.

  Droon was a vast land of diamond valleys, floating cities, deep forests, and castles of snow.

  It was the home of strange creatures — the six-legged pilkas, the pillow-shaped Lumpies, the friendly fire frogs, and the Bangledorn monkeys.

  Mostly, though, Droon was a place of great people. Eric, Julie, and Neal’s best friend there was Keeah, a princess with amazing powers. Magical old Galen was probably the greatest wizard ever known. Max was a friendly, orange-haired, eight-legged spider troll.

  Droon was awesome.

  But it was a land in trouble, too.

  On one side of the world were the Dark Lands of Lord Sparr, a sorcerer as wicked as Galen was good. And there were Ninns, lots and lots of Ninns, Sparr’s klutzy red warriors.

  There was Kano, a fiery palace; Plud, Sparr’s forbidden fortress; and under the Serpent Sea, the mysterious caves of a witch named Demither.

  Eric would never forget those caves.

  It was deep in Demither’s Doom Gate that a jewel called the Red Eye of Dawn was imprisoned. While battling Om, the whispering evil spirit of the Eye, Keeah had saved Eric’s life by zapping him with her magic. From that moment on, Eric had his own powers.

  It seemed like forever since then, but he had actually counted the days. Eric had been a wizard for exactly one hundred and eighty-seven days.

  Eric glanced at his hands.

  Zzzz! Silver sparks sprinkled from the tips of his fingers. Practicing what Keeah had told him, he flicked his hand once, and the sparks vanished.

  That sort of magic was powerful, but he needed to learn to use his other powers, too. Sometimes he had visions and could hear things no one else could. He had also learned to speak silently to his friends.

  Droon had changed Julie, too. Though she didn’t have as many magical powers as Eric, on one adventure she had gained the ability to fly!

  Tweee! A robin flitted across Neal’s roof and vanished into the branches of a tree, chirping its early morning song.

  “Right,” said Eric. “The reason I’m here. Get ready, Neal. Here comes your wake-up call!”

  He braced himself outside the window. Seeing that it was unlocked, he carefully slid his hands under the sash and pulled.

  Fooom! The window flew up suddenly.

  Eric jerked backward. He grabbed for the sash, missed, slipped on the shingles, and fell.

  Right off the roof.

  “Helllllllp!” he cried. “Someone — whoa!”

  At that instant, two arms slid around him and lifted him up —all the way back to the roof!

  “What? Who? How —”

  “Lucky I flew here when I did!”

  When he opened his eyes, he was teetering back and forth next to his friend. “Julie!”

  She grinned, then shrugged. “At your service.”

  Eric’s heart was pounding like a drum. “Holy cow, thanks, Julie. I had this incredible dream and I needed to tell Neal —”

  “Me, too!” she said. “I flew to your room first, but it was empty. I figured you were here.”

  “Yeah, trying to smush myself!” said Eric.

  Laughing, Julie edged to the window. “Time for Neal to wake up. And we’ll be his alarm clock!”

  The two friends carefully climbed through the window. Neal lay asleep in his bed, buried in blankets and smiling a big smile.

  Eric laughed quietly. “He must be dreaming.”

  “He’s drooling, too,” whispered Julie. “So I guess there’s food involved. Hey, Neal — BRRINNG!”

  “Whoa, Mom, I’m coming! Wha —” Neal burst upright, jumped out of bed, and stood wobbling on the floor. He was completely dressed. “What? Who’s there? Huh?”

  “Neal, wake up. It’s us,” said Eric.

  Sleepily, Neal blinked, finally recognizing his friends. “Oh, man, I dreamed I was playing basketball with a globe of Droon when a bell rang. I thought it meant breakfast was ready.”

  “We all dreamed of Droon,” said Julie. “But, Neal, I have to ask, why do you sleep in your clothes?”

  He glanced at his T-shirt and jeans. “So I can get to breakfast faster, of course!”

  Eric laughed. “We can get to Droon faster, too. Let’s go.”

  Grinning, Neal opened his bedroom door, looked both ways, then quietly led his friends down the stairs to the living room and out the back door.

  As Julie led them across Neal’s patio, Eric breathed in the morning air once more.

  Having magical powers was great, he thought, but going on an adventure with his friends was really the best part about Droon.

  “So tell me your dreams,” said Neal as they made their way across his yard.

  Chuckling, Eric leaped over a row of bushes. “Mine was all about you. First, you were on a throne in a palace with a giant crown on your head.”

  Neal nodded. “This is a good thing. I don’t know my hat size, but maybe crowns are one-size-fits-all. Go on.”

  “You looked out at a huge crowd,” said Eric. “Then you held up some crusty old scroll. You frowned at it as if it were a math test.”

  Julie laughed as they sped through Eric’s yard. “I know that look. Neal’s face wrinkles into a knot!”

  “It’s all those numbers,” said Neal, shivering. “Math is full of them.”

  “Finally, you nodded and everybody got really quiet,” said Eric. “Then you spoke.”

  Neal stopped. “Really? What did I say?”

  “Pointing at the scroll, you said … ‘I’ll have the Droonburger!’”

  Neal burst into laughter as Eric opened his back door. “A menu dream. I love those!”

  Together, the three friends climbed down to Eric’s basement and pushed away two big cartons blocking a small closet door under the stairs.

  Piling into the closet, they shut the door, turned off the light, and waited.

  Not for long.

  Whooosh! The gray floor vanished beneath their feet, and they were standing on top of a staircase shining in every color of the rainbow.

  A staircase leading to the land of Droon.

  Warm air drifted up from below. It was filled with all the smells of early summer. Birds cooed and chirped gentle songs of morning.

  “Guys,” murmured Eric. “I have a feeli
ng that today is going to be a great day.”

  Julie nodded. “Droon adventures are so cool.”

  “Yeah,” Neal agreed. “And I hope our dreams come true, too. I’m planning to order fries with mine —”

  But as the friends rushed down the stairs, the birds seemed to stop singing all at once. The breezes stilled. The air went strangely quiet.

  Julie slowed to a stop. She looked around. “I guess maybe it’s time I told you guys my dream. It wasn’t exactly like yours.”

  “What was it about?” asked Eric.

  Rough voices yelled in the distance. Then came the flap of wings and a low growling sound.

  Julie gulped. “We were on the stairs….”

  Suddenly, the pink clouds parted and the air darkened with a swarm of flying lizards called groggles.

  Kaww! Kaww! they shrieked. On the back of each groggle was a fierce red warrior.

  “Ninns!” said Julie. “My dream was about — Ninns!”

  “Now you tell us?!” cried Eric.

  Thwang-thwang-thwang! A volley of fiery arrows burst across the sky.

  “This is not a good thing!” cried Neal.

  The Ninns shot another round of flying arrows, and the three best friends tumbled down the rainbow stairs.

  Clink! Blang! Plink! The arrows hit the stairs.

  “Why couldn’t you dream of me like everyone else?” cried Neal as he fell down the steps.

  “Sorry —” yelled Julie, tumbling faster and faster.

  As the three friends toppled head over heels, the rainbow stairs began to wobble. Laughing, the Ninns drew their bows for another attack.

  “Help!” yelled Eric as the stairs began to fade.

  Suddenly, a strange sound pierced the air.

  Yip-yip-yip!

  The clouds parted and a small four-winged airplane looped through the sky — voooom!

  It flew under the groggles, scattered them, and — thwoo-oo-oop! — scooped Eric, Julie, and Neal right into an open compartment on its back.

  “Wha —” cried Julie.

  Slank! A see-through ceiling closed over them.

  A moment later, the plane lifted, tilted, then shot between two snowy peaks, leaving the shrieking groggles and Ninns in its wake.

  “What just happened?” asked Neal.

  “I think we got rescued,” said Julie.

  Eric’s heart was pounding again. “That’s my second time today!”

  Just then, a small hatch opened onto the compartment. In popped a big face with a pug nose and a thatch of wild orange hair.

  “Max!” cried Julie, jumping to him.

  The spider troll laughed brightly. “Welcome to the new, improved Dragonfly, Keeah’s plane! Good thing we came along when we did. Hee-hee! Follow me!”

  As the plane rose and turned, the children followed Max through a narrow passageway to the little plane’s cockpit. At the wheel was a young girl with long blond hair.

  “Keeah!” said Eric. “We were smushed for sure. Boy, are we lucky you found us!”

  The princess smiled. “Too bad the Ninns found you first. I sure hope we lost them.”

  “Ho-ho!” laughed a deep voice. “I wonder if we shall ever lose the Ninns!”

  Sitting in the back, surrounded by mounds of curled papers, was the wizard Galen. Beside him on a small desk, lying drooped and still, was Quill, the magical feather pen.

  “I suspect dreams brought you?” said the wizard, pushing aside a pile of papers so they could sit.

  “Cool dreams, mostly about me,” said Neal.

  Keeah set the controls of the plane to fly by itself, then turned her seat as the children quickly described their dreams.

  “Eric dreamed of Neal,” said Julie, “and Neal dreamed of himself, playing basketball with a globe of Droon. I dreamed about Ninns attacking us on the stairs.”

  Galen stroked his beard. “Dreams and memories do sometimes become very real. We shall see more of that today, I think. Keeah, the bottle!”

  On the desk next to Quill stood a small bottle made of dark glass. Deep designs coiled over it.

  The kids recognized the bottle as the one given to them by the mysterious Prince of Stars.

  “The prince said this bottle would be useful against Lord Sparr,” said Keeah, giving it to the old wizard.

  “But not in the way we’d expect,” remembered Julie.

  It was clear to all of them that Sparr had a scary new mission. He was bringing together the three greatest objects of power from all over Droon.

  “What this bottle has to do with Lord Sparr is not clear,” said Galen, running his fingers over the bottle’s designs. “But Quill did his best to translate these strange marks for us.”

  The plane dipped closer to the ground.

  “The bottle is very old,” said Keeah, reading Quill’s papers. “It is called the Bottle of Ut.”

  Neal blinked. “The bottle of nut?”

  “No, Ut!” Max laughed. “According to the words, we must take the bottle to a giant sand dune in the Saladian Plains and — pfft! — out of it will come … the city of Ut!”

  The children stared at the dark bottle.

  Julie frowned. “There’s a whole city in there?”

  “There is,” said Galen. “Every one hundred years, Ut appears for a single day, then returns to the bottle. Today is that day. But that is not the most remarkable thing. Here.” He tapped the marks. “It says that someone is trapped in the city. Someone by the name of … Hoja.”

  “Hoja?” cried Eric. “We know him!”

  Hoja was the Seventh Genie of the Dove. He wore a giant turban and spoke odd, funny sayings. The kids had met him on an earlier adventure.

  “Wait a second,” said Neal, raising his hand. “You said that Ut appears once every hundred years. Well, we saw Hoja a little while ago. How could he be trapped in the bottle?”

  Max laughed. “Because he is a genie! Genies move through time as much as they like. Hoja must have gone back to Ut the last time it was out of the bottle.”

  “And he got stuck there when it returned to the bottle?” asked Julie. “Wow.”

  “Got stuck,” said Galen. “Or got captured. Quill has written that Ut is ‘a city of dangers.’”

  “He also told us to watch for the ‘blue flower,’” added Max.

  “Blue flower, city of dangers — what does all this have to do with Sparr?” asked Eric. “He already has his Coiled Viper and Golden Wasp. His other great Power, the Red Eye of Dawn, is sealed away halfway across the world.”

  Galen gazed out the plane’s windows. “True,” he said. “Ut is a Droon mystery. We must use our powers, all of them, to reveal what new evil Sparr has in mind. For now, our mission is clear. Rescue Hoja before Ut vanishes again!”

  “A Droon mystery,” said Eric. “Okay …”

  “Look!” cried Max. “Quill is writing again!”

  Scritch! Scratch! The feather pen wiggled quickly on the paper.

  “Is Quill writing the future?” asked Julie. “He’s writing very fast.”

  Normally, the magical pen wrote everything that happened in Droon. But sometimes he wrote so quickly that his words were about things that hadn’t happened yet.

  Quill flopped over, and Galen read the words.

  Fly me up, you flying dove,

  Fair as the moon, the one I love.

  “What does that mean?” asked Neal.

  Galen stroked his beard, then laughed.

  “Silly Quill! This has little to do with Hoja or Ut, or even the future. Quill remembers a poem I wrote a long time ago. About a person I loved. She swept me off my feet, you could say!”

  “She?” Max giggled as the plane dipped again. “How did she ever put up with you?”

  The wizard laughed again. “I ask myself that all the time!”

  The tall grass and rolling dunes of the immense Saladian Plains spread before them as the Dragonfly flew lower.

  “Get ready, everyone,” said Keeah, sliding into t
he pilot’s seat. “We’re going down there.”

  The princess pulled on the wheel, and the plane slowed and thudded down, sending waves of sand high up behind it. Flapping its wings one last time, the small craft came to a stop.

  “We must set the bottle in the center of the great dune,” said Max, holding it carefully.

  “Maybe we should bring Quill, too?” asked Neal. “He might help us find where Hoja is.”

  “Good idea.” Keeah stuffed a pad of paper and the feather in her belt. Quill wiggled once, then fell asleep.

  When the small crew stepped out of the plane, heat poured up all around them. Almost instantly, funnels of sand spun here and there from the dunes.

  “Should we blast those away?” asked Eric.

  Keeah shook her head. “I’m learning other powers. Sofo … la … koom!”

  Fwoosh! Instantly, the funnels settled down.

  Neal smiled. “Now, that is a very good thing.”

  “It comes!” Galen walked up to the top of the sand dune. The misty pink clouds of early morning were just giving way as the great Droon sun rose over the mountains.

  “The sky turns sapphire blue,” he said. “The sun shall strike the exact spot. Max, quickly now!”

  Max scampered up the dune and planted the bottle in its center.

  For a moment, everything seemed to pause.

  The plains were silent and still.

  All of a sudden, the sun’s rays burst through the morning clouds and slanted across the earth until they struck the dune. The bottle began to shake.

  “Awesome!” whispered Julie.

  “The adventure begins once more,” said Galen. “How I wish I could do this forever!”

  “And me with you!” chirped Max.

  All at once — whooooomf! — thick, purple smoke shot out of the bottle. It blew upward in great, billowing puffs around the children.

  Eric found himself staring, astonished, as the whole world of sky and sun and sand gave way to a giant city.

  “Behold!” cried Galen, raising his arms in the air. “The city of Ut comes again!”

  “Look, everyone!” gasped Max. “Oh, look!”

  Out of the spinning purple smoke, rose shapes.

  First one wall sprouted from the empty sands as if it were alive. Then came a great curved tower, then a twisted dome. One after another, buildings rose up magically.