Who is Marcy's grandmother?
What's happening at Matt's hideout?
Read on!
(oh and sorry I still haven't solved the formatting problem but I think I got it from now on)
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CHAPTER 13
“What’s the plan once we find Matt?” Marcy asked after momentary silence.
Alex made a pensive face. “Good question. I guess just see what he does and follow him if he goes anywhere? I basically have no clue what I’m doing, and not knowing what his plan is doesn’t help at all.”
“Well, you know more than me.” She shot him a glance. He seemed not to notice. Why does he always appear zoned out? she wondered. He abruptly stuck out his hand, motioning for her to stop. And somehow he’s the most attentive person I’ve ever met. Crazy.
“We’re getting near to his cave,” he murmured. “It would be best if we didn’t go inside, though. It’s not a big place. I can’t imagine what he’s going to do.”
“Me neither,” Marcy whispered back. “So what do we do? How do we find out what he’s doing?”
Alex shrugged. “I don’t--hang on.” Tapping a finger against his jaw, he looked at her. “The cave isn’t that deep underground. Trust me, I know, because of my…’connection,’ I guess you could say, to the earth.” He looked very thoughtful. “Have you ever made one of those telephone things with tin cans and string?” he asked her abruptly.
“Um, I don’t think so,” she stuttered. “But I know what you mean.”
“What if I made one of those kind of things, but with roots?” he said slowly. “We could hear what Matt was doing.”
She tapped her chin, mimicking him. “Sounds like it might work,” she observed. “A bit far-fetched, but you do have magic, so that should count for something.”
“What, are you saying that I’m useless without magic?” teased Alex as they resumed walking. “I am so offended!”
“That’s right,” Marcy mocked. “A sack of dirt would be more useful than you without magic.” It’s great that I can tease him like this, she thought. Usually I can only do this with some of my best friends, and we just met!
“Okay, all insults aside,” he whispered. “This is his cave right here. We’re coming up on the back of it.” There was a hill in front of them, which dropped off suddenly. Marcy assumed that the drop off indicated the door to the cave.
Alex dropped to his arms and knees and began to crawl toward the hill. “Can’t be too safe.”
“Ugh, I don’t want to get dirty…ew. Oh well,” she mumbled as she crawled after him. The undergrowth brushed up against her mouth and she spit it out. “Ew!”
They stopped at the peak of the small hill. “Now, watch and learn,” he murmured as he closed his eyes. Marcy watched in wonder as his fingers dug into the fertile ground. Mumbling something unintelligible, he pulled up two handfuls of dirt and sprinkled them onto the ground. The dirt began to wriggle and two large roots wormed their way up to the surface. They look like snakes! she thought, disgusted.
“How are we going to do…the telephone thing with these?” she asked tentatively.
“Not done yet,” he muttered shortly. The roots wiggled some more, dirt falling off them in flakes. The tips grew wider until there was bulb attached to each. After one final twitch, the roots fell to the ground, no longer moving. “Now we can use them,” Alex said. “Sorry, it’s hard to talk and work the magic at the same time.”
“It’s fine.” She picked up a root, grimacing. “So we just put them to our ears and listen?”
“Yep. And I’ll work some special magic too, so that if you close your eyes you’ll see what’s happening in addition to what we can hear.” He picked up a root as well. “Like those things you call…televisions?”
“Yep. Cool.” Marcy put her root up to her ear after brushing off some of the dirt.
Suddenly, she felt like she wasn’t above the cave anymore. She was inside it, on the ceiling, in the walls, floating above and beside it all. Maybe I’m seeing what the roots see, she realized. This is really, really weird.
Matt was in the main room. At least, she supposed it was the main room because it was the only one she had seen. She gave a small gasp. He was surrounded by people. The wizards and witches from the Wizard Convention! she realized. He must have taken some of them--it’s definitely not all of them. There’s probably only about thirteen here. Each one was seated on a chair arranged in a circle. Their hands and feet weren’t tied, but no one seemed to be able to move. Wonder how he got them here?
“Now, how shall we do this,” Matt mused. He was pacing leisurely. “You may wonder why I’ve gathered you all together here.” Laughing, he shook his head. “How cliché. But, it’s true.” He resumed pacing. “I stole you all from your silly Wizard’s Convention, fought my wife, stole her Shimner, and for what? For my own gain. I wanted the Shimner because I needed it to trade for--that reminds me!”
He strode over to a table and picked up a small clear box. Hey! That’s the box he was carrying earlier! Marcy thought. She thought she saw movement inside of it. What in the world? I wish I could see closer!
However, her wish wasn’t necessary for much longer. Matt put his mouth close to the box and whispered something to it, which she thought was odd. But it was nothing compared to her surprise when a man appeared in the room beside Matt. Oh my goodness!
He was dressed like a Unologian, but didn’t have the looks of one. He was fatter than the other Unologians Marcy had seen, and had a chubby face. He looked extremely startled. “What--? How did I get here? Where am I?” the man stuttered. “Who are you?” he asked, looking at Matt.
“That’s unimportant, for the time being,” Matt replied. “Now why don’t you sit down like the rest of these lovely people?”
The man gazed around the room. “I don’t think so, actually,” he said quickly, before dashing to the door. Matt snapped his fingers and the man suddenly tripped. “Ow!” He got to his feet and tried to rush toward the door again, but his legs began to move slowly, like he was wading through jelly. Matt’s doing that! Marcy realized with a start.
Gradually, as the whole room watched, the man started to turn around and plod toward an empty chair in the circle. His eyes wide, he stopped moving his legs. Strangely, though he stood like a plank, he still drifted forward, getting nearer and nearer to the chair. It’s almost like he’s on an invisible moving sidewalk, Marcy thought. “How?” the man sputtered as he sat defeated on the chair.
“Magic,” Matt said simply. “Or, as you Unologians prefer, science. Now,” he addressed the room, “this man’s name is Perjio. He’s from Unologe, as you’ve probably gathered. Yesterday evening he came to a restaurant, was asked to step around back for a moment to take care of private business, and was promptly kidnapped.” Perjio gasped. “That’s right,” Matt continued, smiling. “He was taken to a black market building and traded to me for Jenny’s Shimner. I brought him here in this little box, called a Telol. It shrunk him to about the size of my pinky finger so I could transport him easier.” He threw the box up in the air and caught it again. “Fun little relic.” Setting it down, he pulled up a chair and placed before the semicircle. He sat down and tented his fingers like he was talking to preschoolers. “Now I can tell you why you’re here.”
“Filthy little chaale!” a woman sitting in one of the chairs spat at Matt. “You’re never going to get away with this!”
He raised his eyebrows. “My my my, watch your language! The others might not be as coarse as you, and we wouldn’t want to steal their innocence, would we?” He smiled. “Where was I? Oh yes, I was going to tell you why you’re here. Why I’ve captured you.”
Yes! Tell us! Marcy was eager to hear his plan. He seemed almost like he was stalling. At least we can see if he comes outside, though. I’d hate to be found eavesdropping.
“Well, who here has heard of the Well of Souhaiters?” Matt chuckled. “Did I just make a pun? I just made a pun. Well, have you heard about the Well? Raise your hand if you have--oh wait, I forgot, you can’t move. Sorry. I assume you’ve all heard of it, but I’ll give a brief summary just in case. The Well of Souhaiters is a sort of wishing well, somewhere in a remote and far away space. Instead of wishes, it grants you the deepest desire of your heart. Money? You got it. An army? Bam, thousands. But what I want is power.” He clenched his fists. “I’m a powerful magician, it’s true. Technically a wizard. Is that enough? No. I need more power, I need influence, I need unlimited power. Imagine never getting tired after working magic. It takes something from you, normally. But what if you could move mountains, create new spaces, and have energy left over to make more? To do more?” Leaning forward, he spoke earnestly. He really wants this, thought Marcy. “Almost like the first magicians. They created all the spaces in existence. Can you imagine doing that yourself? No. You can’t. I can tell by your faces that you think I’m crazy, some sort of nut for believing in a legend.
“Plot twist--it’s not a myth. It’s real. I saw it, a long time ago. It’s in a big chamber, which is protected, of course. You need many wizards and witches with different strengths and weaknesses to open the chamber. Which is why you are here,” he finished, sitting back as if satisfied. “I need you to help me open the chamber.”
There was momentary silence. Then one of the wizards burst out laughing. Matt patiently waited for him to finish. “Do…do you really think there’s such thing as the Well of Souhaiters?” he asked, still chuckling after he had composed himself. “You’re a fool, and a chaale just like Shellie said!”
Matt sighed. “Ugh, it’s so terrible having to rely on you to open the chamber. I wish I could kill you. And I can’t torture you either--you need all your strength to open the chamber. But, I should be able to hurt you a little bit…” He smiled and snapped his fingers. Marcy gasped as the man’s head snapped back as well. His mouth opened in a silent scream.
Marcy felt like she might be sick. We have to stop him! she thought urgently. He’s going to d--well, not die, but he’s going to be seriously injured or something! Oh, we have to stop him!
Suddenly she felt a strange sensation, like being sucked and compressed out of the cave. She also felt a hand on her mouth. Opening her eyes, she saw that a woman had pinned Alex on the ground with one hand and had the other over her mouth. She took a breath to scream.
“Hush!” The woman looked from side to side. “Do you want him to come see what the ruckus is? I had a hard enough time getting Alex over there to not make noise.”
“Ellah!” gasped Marcy, pulling the woman’s hand off her mouth. “What are you doing here?”
“After I tended to Jenny, I came here.” Ellah sat back on her feet and let Alex get up. “She was hurt pretty badly, so I took her to some friends. Matt didn’t kill her, even though he had the chance, which was strange. He froze us all, as you probably know, and then when you were gone he knocked everyone out.” Marcy cocked an eyebrow. “Not with his fists, with some kind of gas. I escaped.”
“Do you know her? Is she on our side?” Alex asked suspiciously, gesturing to Ellah. He was standing up, looking down on both of them.
“Yeah, Ellah’s good,” she answered.
“Okay.”
Ellah sighed. “I saw what he was doing down there, which is partly why I chose that moment to talk. I’ve been here for a while. Alex, you need to learn a warding spell. It tells you when anyone’s in the general vicinity.”
“Oh.” He looked surprised. “That seems sensible.”
“And useful.” Screams echoed through the woods, coming from the cave. Ellah grimaced. “Now he lets him scream. He does this, you know. Intimidation. The others won’t readily cross him after this. Worst son-in-law ever,” she muttered.
Marcy almost fell backwards. “Son-in-law? Matt is your son-in-law?”
“Yep,” Ellah nodded.
“Hang on.” Alex sat down beside them. “Then that would make you--”
“Marcy’s grandmother,” she finished. “It’s true. Damion and Jenny are my children.”
“But--I thought--I thought you died!” stuttered Marcy. Why is everyone suddenly family? How is this even happening? I have a maniac serial killer for a dad and my grandma and mom are wizards! She put her head in her hands.
“Yes, well.” Ellah looked uncomfortable. “Something happened, there was a mishap, and I had to drop off the map, so to say. Everyone who knew me thought I had died, but I just took on a new identity and moved halfway across the country. It was a big change.”
“Right.” Marcy nodded. “Okay. Right. This is crazy.”
“You can say that again,” Alex said. He seemed stunned as well.
“Okay enough of that, listen,” Ellah announced. “He’s stopped torturing poor Onev.”
Marcy and Alex looked at each other and grabbed their roots. Marcy shoved hers to her ear and felt sucked downwards again.
“Okay,” Matt was saying. “That was fun, wasn’t it? The screams are music to my ears, because do you know what they mean? No? They mean that every one of you”--he pointed at the seated magicians, enunciating every word--“will not try to escape. Or sass me. In fact, you’ll respect me. At least you should.” He strode over to a shelf and took out another small box, this one black. Throwing it up into the air over his shoulder, he turned on his heel and walked behind the circle of chairs. Strangely, the box didn’t fall to the ground, but hung suspended in the middle of the room. Matt snapped his fingers and the box projected a blurry picture onto the opposite wall.
“Now, let’s explain this in detail. I’m going to show you a little bit about where I’ll be taking you, what you’ll be doing, and how you will be very cooperative with me.” He snapped his fingers again and the illustration on the wall sharpened. It was a picture of a planet suspended in space, but strangely, it was completely flat. It almost looks like a giant rectangle, she thought, amazed. How is that physically possible?
“This is the space that contains the Well of Souhaiters.” The picture zoomed in quickly, focusing on a strange cylindrical house somewhere in the middle of the space. “This,” he said, “is the chamber that holds the door to the Well. The Well itself is deep below the building you can see. Now, if we go into it…” The picture zoomed through the wall and into the building. “There we go. As you can see, there is an illuminated altar right there in the middle. There are four stands for torches in a square pattern around the altar. On the walls, there are four indentations that hold boxes. In this chamber, there are two roles for two of you to play. You”--he pointed at the woman named Shellie--“are a fire wizard. There’s a special ceremony required to open the door to the Well, and you will play the part of lighting the torches.”
“Why can’t you do it?” Shellie asked cautiously.
“Because the torches can only be lit by a fire wizard.”
Wait, there are different kinds of wizards? Marcy thought. How did I not know this? What kind of wizard is Jenny? What kind of wizard is Matt?
Matt resumed talking, snapping her out of her thoughts. “The boxes in the wall have to be removed by a rock wizard. One of them holds a diamond, one holds an emerald, one holds a ruby, and one holds a sapphire. The rock wizard, in this case, Dylian”--he pointed at one of the men--“will figure out which box holds which jewel. Notice how above the holes in the wall, there are pictures of the jewels. You will carry each box to its respective spot.” Here Matt stopped and sighed. “Now, for the altar, a healer has to sacrifice a turtledove with several select herbs and perform a ritual. I had obtained a healer, raised him myself in fact, but right before I came to kidnap you all he ran away. I’m not sure where he is.”
Marcy gasped, which felt odd while her mind was disconnected with her body. Alex! she thought urgently. The healer was Alex! That’s why he needed him! And now he can’t get to the Well because he doesn’t have him! She felt slightly comforted, but scared. What if Matt ever finds him? What will he do? We can’t let that happen!
“I’m not sure what to do now,” Matt continued. “But I might have an idea. I have a feeling that Alex and my daughter Marcy will follow me, so maybe I can try to capture him when they get sloppy. Speaking of which--” He looked up at the ceiling and Marcy was sure he could see her. “I believe they’re here now. I’ll be back, make yourself at home. In your chairs. That you can’t escape from.” Shooting a cocky smile at his prisoners, he walked out of the main room.
Marcy panicked. She again felt the strange sensation of being pulled out of the main room and gasped, “He’s onto us! He’s coming! He’s--”
“Hush, I know!” Ellah whispered. “Come on, run!”
And they ran. Alex, Marcy, and Ellah ran far away from Matt’s hideout.
Finally, Marcy thought she was about to die from running. “Can we take a break?” she puffed. “I…can’t see him anywhere.”
Ellah gazed around, barely breathing hard. “Yes,” she said. “But only a short one.”
Marcy collapsed on the ground. How is everyone but me so used to running?
Alex knelt beside her. “Drink this,” he said. “It’s water with a strength potion.” She drank. It tasted like lemonade.
Just as she got to the bottom of the flask, she heard a voice. The trio whirled around to look behind them.
“Oh, why hello,” said Matt, stepping out from behind a tree. “What a coincidence to see you here!”
---------NOW YOU KIND OF KNOW WHAT MATT'S GOING TO DO!!!!!!!!! ARE YOU EXCITED? BECAUSE I AM!!! IT'S COMING ALONG NICELY I THINK
And what's going to happen next? Will Matt attack or capture Alex and let Marcy and Ellah go?
*insert sneaky face*
~~Zoë Wingfeather
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