Maddy West and the Tongue Taker Read online

  Kazuki’s face brightened when she said that. “Am I?” he asked doubtfully.

  “Yes,” Maddy said. “And a very good friend.” That reminded her of Mr. Chester.

  “Mr. Chester,” she whispered, but there was no sudden scampering of tiny feet, no tug on her clothes as he climbed up onto her shoulder. “Mr. Chester?” she said again, but still there was nothing. She checked her backpack, but it was empty.

  “Who is Mr. Chester?” Kazuki asked.

  Kazuki hadn’t seen Mr. Chester at the airport, Maddy realized, and he certainly wouldn’t know that the sneaky little fellow had stowed away in her backpack. She quickly explained all that and how she thought Mr. Chester had somehow been sent by Dimitar’s father to look after her and that he was probably part magic, but Kazuki looked very doubtful about that.

  Where was the little monkey? He wasn’t anywhere in the cellar, and the door at the top of the stairs had been shut the whole time, so he couldn’t have gotten out.

  Then again, Maddy thought, a monkey who could free himself from an animal cage in the cargo hold of an airplane and get into her backpack was capable of anything.

  They waited in the gloom of the cellar on the bottom step, which was the only place to sit. Kazuki took Maddy’s hand and held it, but she wasn’t sure if he was holding it to reassure her or himself.

  “Listen,” Maddy said.

  A light tapping sound, barely audible, was coming from somewhere in the cellar.

  “Did you hear that?” Maddy asked.

  Kazuki nodded.

  The tapping continued.

  “What is it?” Maddy asked.

  “I don’t know,” Kazuki said. He looked small and frightened. They were both glad when it stopped.

  There were discussions going on upstairs, but in quiet voices, so although they could hear people talking, they couldn’t make out the words. Then they heard the witch’s car start up. It hiccupped a couple of times, then it drove off down the gravel driveway.

  “They left!” Kazuki said. “We have to get out of here before she casts some kind of spell on us.”

  “But we don’t know who’s still here,” Maddy said.

  “We have to try to escape,” Kazuki said.

  “How?” Maddy asked.

  Kazuki looked around. The walls of the cellar were thick blocks of stone. The only entrance was by the door at the top of the stairs. There was no way out.

  After a while, they heard the click of a key in the lock and the cellar door opened. The light from the kitchen fell down into the murky gloom of the cellar — just a narrow strip but enough to push away the shadows.

  A shape blocked the light. It was the big girl — Pavla. She stood in the doorway, making sure there was no possibility of escape.

  Maddy stood and turned to face her. Kazuki moved half a step in front of her. He raised his fists into a karate stance. “Leave her alone, you big bully,” he said. “I’m not afraid of you.”

  Maddy was watching Pavla’s face, and what she saw was not threatening or cruel. She touched Kazuki lightly on the arm.

  “It’s all right, Kazuki,” she said. “She’s not going to hurt us.”

  “How do you know?” Kazuki said while making punching and blocking moves with his arms. The sleeves of his black ninja suit swished with the rapid movements.

  “Because she’s different from the others,” Maddy said.

  Pavla shook her head and sat down on the top step, still blocking the doorway in case they tried to escape. She said nothing.

  Maddy stared at her. At first she had thought Pavla wasn’t very bright because of the slow way that she spoke and the way that she seemed to repeat things her sister had said. But now she didn’t think that was right. It was more that Pavla knew what she wanted to say — it just took her longer than most people to work out how to say it.

  She was nothing like her sister. It was hard to believe they were even related. Anka seemed a lot like their mother. Maybe Pavla took after their father.

  “Where are the others?” Maddy asked.

  “Mother has gone out,” Pavla said. A long pause. “Anka, too.”

  “Where have they gone?” Maddy asked.

  “To get dragon’s tongue,” Pavla said. Another pause. “It’s very rare nowadays.”

  Maddy translated the conversation for Kazuki, who said, “Dragon’s tongue? Is that real?”

  “I don’t know,” Maddy said.

  Pavla obviously wanted to tell them something but was struggling to find the right words.

  “You’re not like your sister,” Maddy said.

  Pavla shook her head with a quiet smile.

  “Maybe you take after your father,” Maddy said.

  Pavla shook her head sadly. “Maybe,” she said after a little deliberation.

  Then, for the first time, Maddy saw the sun shine out of Pavla’s face. “Father was tall and very handsome,” she said. “He was kind, and he told wonderful, funny stories.”

  “My dad does, too,” Maddy said. “Where was your father from?”

  “I think Mother . . . I think she magicked him,” said Pavla.

  “You mean she created him out of thin air?” Kazuki asked after Maddy had translated. He finally dropped his arms from their defensive position and took a step backward.

  Pavla shook her head. “No. He was from a nearby town. I think Mother made a love spell to make him fall in love with her.”

  “Could she really do that?” Maddy asked.

  “Love spells are easy,” she said. “Like conjuring butterflies. Anyone can do it. And the person under the spell thinks they are actually . . .” her voice tightened, “in love with you.”

  “So what happened?” Kazuki asked. “Did she turn him into a . . . something?”

  That made Pavla smile again, but you could feel the heartbreak behind it. “When he disappeared,” Pavla said, “that’s what I thought, too. I was only little, and I thought she had turned him into something else. Every time I saw a bird or a dog or a nice flower, I would look at it closely to see if it was him. But that’s big magic. She can’t do big magic.”

  Pavla shifted around uncomfortably on the hard wooden step. “When I got a little older, I realized that he had just gone away. He must have been so frightened of her that he ran away.” She dropped her eyes. “He never said goodbye . . .” Her voice trailed off.

  “Please let us go,” Maddy said. “We’ve done nothing wrong.”

  Pavla shook her head again. “I can’t.” She faltered around for a bit, trying to put words together, and finally looked at Kazuki. “Why did you come here?” she asked. “That’s what I came down to ask. Why did you hide in the car and come up here?”

  Maddy translated the question for Kazuki.

  “Because she’s my friend,” Kazuki said.

  Pavla was silent for a moment. She said, “You are lucky, Maddy, to have a friend like Kazuki.”

  “I know,” Maddy said, putting her arm around Kazuki’s shoulders.

  “And he is lucky to have a friend like you,” Pavla said.

  “Please let us go,” Maddy asked again.

  “I can’t,” Pavla said.

  “Let us go!” Kazuki shouted, but as he said it there was the sound of a car, and Pavla jumped straight up into the air as if a wasp had stung her.

  She raced back up the stairs, and the door slammed shut. A thin veil of dust wafted down in the meager light from the cellar bulb.

  “Maddy —” Kazuki began, but he was interrupted by the sound of knocking. Someone was at the front door!

  Both of them strained their ears toward the ceiling.

  The knock sounded again, and they could hear footsteps above them as Pavla went to answer it.

  The creak of the door was audible from the cellar.

  “He
llo?” said Pavla.

  Maddy recognized the next voice instantly. It was a deep, gravelly voice that reverberated through the floorboards above them.

  “Excuse me, young lady. I’m sorry for the intrusion, but I’m looking for my father’s monkey.”

  CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

  DIMITAR THE GIANT

  “DIMITAR! DIMITAR!” Maddy screamed. She screwed up her face and let out a high-pitched squeal. “Dimitar!” she yelled again, and this time Kazuki joined in with her.

  They could hear shouting, then heavy footsteps above their heads. Suddenly, the cellar door thrust open, banging back against the wall, and Dimitar the Giant stood in the doorway. He shook his head, perplexed.

  “Little Maddy!” he said. “What are you doing here?”

  Pavla appeared behind Dimitar. She leaped up onto his back and wrapped her arms around his head, wrestling with him. She was big and strong, but he hardly seemed to notice. He just shook his shoulders and dismissed her as easily as brushing off a fly.

  “We’ve been kidnapped!” Maddy said. “By a witch.”

  “A witch?”

  “Yes!”

  Dimitar didn’t laugh or doubt her. “Where is she?”

  “She drove off to get something,” Maddy said.

  “In a black car?” Dimitar asked.

  “Yes!”

  “I just passed a car like that. We must hurry before she gets back,” Dimitar said.

  “No,” Pavla screamed. “You can’t go. If Mother returns and you’re gone . . .”

  “You should run away too,” Maddy said.

  Dimitar turned and led the way to the door.

  “No!” Pavla hurled herself at him again, but he fended her off with a huge hand, and she fell back onto one of the kitchen chairs with a thud, looking distraught.

  “Come on,” Dimitar growled, and Maddy and Kazuki scrambled up the stairs.

  “How did you know we were here?” Maddy asked.

  “I didn’t,” Dimitar said, shoving the kitchen table out of the way as he took the shortest path to the hallway door. “I was looking for Mr. Chester.”

  “Mr. Chester! How did you know he was here?” Maddy asked.

  “He called me.”

  “He called you?”

  “Yes. I could hear him chirping on the end of the line, and I knew right away it was him. A friend of mine at the telephone company traced the number to this address.”

  Mr. Chester had called Dimitar!

  That was unbelievable, Maddy thought, until she remembered that Mr. Chester had been trained to dial the phone for Dimitar’s father, who would have called Dimitar lots of times. The clever little monkey must have remembered the number.

  “Come on, let’s take you home,” Dimitar said. But now there was a dark shape in front of them.

  “It’s the witch!” Maddy screamed.

  “Out of my way,” the giant stormed, but the witch was muttering in that low rasp.

  A spider dropped from the ceiling onto Dimitar’s back. It was huge, with long, furry legs and a body as big as Maddy’s hand.

  “There’s a spider on your back,” Maddy yelled.

  Dimitar reached around and knocked it off, but it just turned and ran back up his leg. Another spider dropped even as he did so, and another, and another. There were small spiders and big spiders, hundreds of them, dropping from the ceiling, crawling out of the walls, up through the floorboards. Some had yellow-and-black stripes across their bodies. Others were red and black with red joints across their legs. Still others were jet-black with a single yellow stripe. They all looked scary.

  Dimitar swept his hands across his back, ridding himself of some of them, but they landed on the floor and ran back at him. His back turned yellow and red and black with the creatures. They were in his long hair and his beard.

  The witch continued muttering the spell. It was one of the ones Maddy had translated.

  Now Maddy could see what the spiders were doing. They were spinning webs, tiny strands of glittering web, around and around. At first, Dimitar broke the webs and kept on walking toward the witch, but as more and more spiders landed on him and started spinning their webs, he began to slow down, his legs trapped by thousands of strands.

  Maddy was screaming, and Kazuki was yelling.

  Anka appeared from behind the witch and grabbed Maddy.

  She started to haul Maddy back toward the cellar. Pavla caught Kazuki, who struggled furiously but could not break her grip.

  Dimitar’s arms were now caught in the webs. Every movement he made was slow and sluggish. Any normal person would have been completely immobilized by now, yet still, somehow, with his tremendous strength, Dimitar kept going. He reached out for the witch.

  She sneered at him and ducked beneath his slow, pawing grasp.

  He began to topple forward and landed on the floor, spiders scattering in all directions.

  A moment later, Maddy and Kazuki were back in the cellar. The door slammed shut above them, and this time, the light was off.

  Tap, tap, tap, came the sound they had heard earlier.

  Tap, tap, tap . . .

  CHAPTER NINETEEN

  TAP, TAP, TAP

  IN THE BLACKNESS OF THE CELLAR, Maddy’s imagination began to create pictures of what she could not see. Cockroaches creeping from tiny holes in the walls of the cellar, spiders crawling across the ceiling, a huge rat emerging from under the stairs, its teeth tapping together as it waited to bite.

  Her breath came in short, hard bursts, and she put her hand over her mouth so she wouldn’t scream. Maddy tried to tell herself that it was only her imagination. She shut her eyes, but that made no difference. It was just as dark either way, and her imagination kept playing the same tricks on her.

  When she thought she could bear it no longer, she heard a quiet click, and then a thin, bluish light lit the inside of the cellar.

  “A good ninja is prepared for anything,” Kazuki said. He had a small flashlight in his hand.

  “Kazuki, you’re amazing!” Maddy said. She wondered what else he had hidden in the secret pockets in his ninja suit. She was about to ask him when the noise came again.

  Tap, tap, tap. Like fingernails on a table. Or talons on wooden floorboards.

  The noise seemed to be coming from under the stairs. Suddenly, she thought of Mr. Chester. Perhaps it was him. Perhaps he was trapped under there.

  “Come with me,” Maddy said, and after a short hesitation, Kazuki followed her.

  She went carefully down to the bottom of the stairs, and Kazuki shined the flashlight around underneath. The space beneath the staircase was dusty and full of cobwebs. The dust on the floor was disturbed, as if some creature had recently been here. There were scratches in the dust that looked like they had been made by claws.

  The walls of the cellar were made of stone. But there, on the back wall under the stairs, was a wooden panel . . . and it was there where the tapping sound came from.

  Maddy wavered, then slowly pushed on the panel.

  “Are you sure you want to do that?” Kazuki asked.

  “No,” Maddy said, but she pushed on the panel again anyway. It seemed solid. Kazuki shined his light around the outside of it, but as far as they could see, it fit snugly into the stone that surrounded it.

  Still, the tapping noise came from the other side.

  “Mr. Chester?” Maddy asked, her voice quivering.

  Tap, tap, tap.

  “Mr. Chester?”

  There were no chirps or screeches from the other side of the panel.

  “It’s not Mr. Chester,” Kazuki said, backing away.

  “Bring that light back here,” Maddy said.

  “It’s not Mr. Chester,” Kazuki said again. Who knew what kind of horrors awaited them behind a secret panel in the cellar of a witch
’s house?

  There was a hole in the stone wall by the wooden panel. Just a gap where a few of the stones had not fit together properly.

  “Shine your light in here,” Maddy said, her voice now no more than a whisper.

  Kazuki tried, but the flashlight was shaking so badly that the light went everywhere except where Maddy wanted it to go.

  “Give me the flashlight,” Maddy said, and Kazuki passed it.

  She shined it into the hole but could see nothing. Holding her breath, she reached into the hole.

  “Maddy, no!” Kazuki cried.

  Maddy shut all thoughts out of her mind. Thoughts of rats and snakes and spiders and other sharp-toothed and poisonous creatures whose home she could be putting her hand into. She knew that if she let even a shred of those thoughts into her mind, she would never do what she was doing.

  Deeper she reached into the black hole. She bumped her knuckle on a spur of rock but kept going. Her hand touched something smooth. Cold. A piece of metal perhaps. She grasped it and pulled it. There was a click, and a narrow gap appeared down one side of the panel.

  “It’s a little doorway,” Maddy cried.

  Kazuki moved closer, fascinated despite his fear. She handed him back the flashlight and pushed on the door. It opened easily, and Kazuki aimed his flashlight inside. The panel concealed a circular tunnel, with walls made of brick.

  In the middle, a short way back from the opening, Mr. Chester sat on his haunches, his arms crossed over his chest. The expression on his face was clear: What took you so long?

  “Mr. Chester!” Maddy cried. “It was you!” She crawled into the tunnel. Kazuki followed her, the flashlight now steadier.

  Mr. Chester ran up her arm onto her back, sitting on the back of her neck like a jockey on a horse.

  “Where do you think it goes?” Kazuki asked.

  “I don’t know, but anywhere is better than sitting in that cellar waiting for the witch to return,” Maddy said.

  The panel clicked shut behind them.

  The tunnel was small, just big enough for a grown-up to crawl through, Maddy thought, which meant there was plenty of room for her and Kazuki.