Maddy West and the Tongue Taker Read online

  Dimitar slammed on the brakes, and the tires of the van screamed on the dry road. It veered sideways to a halt as the tree crashed down in a maelstrom of leaves and branches just in front of them.

  The van rocked on its suspension, just a couple inches from the cliff edge.

  They all sat still, breathing deeply, staring at the tree trunk that now blocked the road.

  Not even a giant like Dimitar was going to be able to move that whole oak tree by himself.

  “I think we are walking the rest of the way,” Dimitar said in a low, angry voice.

  Kazuki was the first to open his door. He climbed down and looked up at Maddy.

  Dimitar was already stepping out of the van on the other side, both baseball bats clenched in one giant fist.

  Maddy climbed down on Kazuki’s side and pushed the van door closed behind her. Around them, the forest made forest noises and every one of them seemed full of danger and dread.

  Dimitar stepped up to the fallen tree and found a place near the base of the trunk where the branches were not so thick. He stepped one foot over and straddled the tree, then lifted each of the children over.

  “Walk behind me,” he said.

  The leaves of the trees were moving around them, and this time it was not the wind. There were definite movements in the trees. Animals were tracking them as they walked. Fierce eyes peered at them out of the shadows. A raucous call sounded from the sky above them, and Maddy looked up to see a trio of black crows circling.

  “Look,” Kazuki said. The moon was up, low on the horizon — big, bright, and orange. That wasn’t what Kazuki was looking at, though. It was the thick yellow smoke, heavy and lumpy, drifting toward them.

  The tongues of hundreds of thousands — maybe millions — of people were starting to arrive as the witch’s spell took hold and spread farther and farther.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

  THE STROKE OF MIDNIGHT

  IT WAS A LONG WAY UP the mountain, and although they ran and walked as fast as they could, it was almost midnight before they finally arrived at the straight stretch of road that led to the gates of the old black house.

  The road ran alongside a high wall, unmarked except at one place where a tree branch had fallen onto the wall, cracking the stone at the top.

  The gates were shut. Maddy had expected that, but actually to see it as they approached made her worry a little more. How would they get in? The gates were high and topped with sharp spikes. The wall was even higher and, although old and grimy, it was as smooth as glass to the touch with no handholds or footholds to climb.

  As they approached the gates, they could hear chanting coming from inside. Kazuki pulled over his ninja mask and crept to the gates, crouching near the ground and poking his head slowly around the corner. After a moment, he motioned to the others to come up. Maddy kneeled down and peered past the large stone gatepost, just above where he was crouching, and Dimitar put his head above them both.

  An almost full moon shined down on the house, washing everything with burnished silver. In the garden, a bonfire added a yellow-orange glow. It was in a cleared area in the middle of the cemetery, and it crackled and spat sparks over the broken tombstones that surrounded it. The bonfire was tall: higher than the witch and her daughters who pranced and chanted in a circle around it. The light from the moon and the glow of the fire reflected off the almost-bald head of the witch, and her thick black ponytail danced about as if it had a life of its own.

  The witch had a wooden pail in one hand and took ladlefuls of a yellow liquid from it, tossing it into the flames, where it fizzed and popped. Each time she did, a thick plume of dark yellow smoke puffed up and out of the bonfire into a small mushroom-shaped cloud before drifting up higher in the air, coloring the stars as it went.

  On a stand near the fire was a huge glass jar. It was as big as an old-fashioned wooden barrel. Inside the jar, a black shape writhed and squirmed. Not a mere morsel of dragon’s tongue — it seemed to Maddy that this was an entire tongue.

  Black and awful and somehow still alive, it seemed to be trying to escape. But the glass sides were sheer, and the tongue could only squirm around in the thick yellow mist that was condensing in the base of the jar. The sight of the tongue made a cold shiver run down Maddy’s spine, but the knowledge that every tiny wisp of smoke in the jar was the voice, the language, the “tongue” of some poor person, made hot bile rise up inside her. How dared the witch do this?

  There was no way in. No way to stop her. Even if Maddy was small enough to squeeze through the gates, there was no way for Dimitar to do so, and what could one girl, not yet ten years old, do against a witch and her teenage daughters?

  Dimitar crept back from the gates and motioned for them to join him so they could talk without risk of being heard.

  “How does she open the gates?” he asked. “Is it magic?”

  “It’s science,” Maddy replied. “She has a gate opener on a key chain in a pocket in her dress.”

  “Back down there is a branch of a tree fallen onto the wall,” Dimitar said. “If I lift you up on top of the wall, do you think you could climb down the tree on the other side?”

  “I think so,” Maddy said, then explained Dimitar’s suggestion to Kazuki.

  “I should go with you,” Kazuki said.

  “No,” Maddy said. “We need you here to be our lookout.”

  Kazuki was terrified of heights, and anyway, Maddy didn’t want to be worrying about him once she was inside. “I will try to sneak the key chain out of her pocket, then open the gates and let you both in.”

  Kazuki shook his head. “Not you. It has to be me. I’m the one who can go invisible.”

  “Kazuki,” Maddy said. “You don’t really go invisible.”

  “I know that,” he said. “But if I’m careful and quiet, it’s like being invisible. Nobody seems to see me.”

  “No,” Maddy said, and her voice made it clear that that was that. “I’ll do it. We need you as a lookout.”

  She dashed back to where the branch of the tree protruded over the wall.

  Dimitar lifted Maddy, grabbing her by the ankles and hoisting her right up until she could scramble on top of the wall.

  The branch was thick but appeared rotten. She hoped it was strong enough to bear her weight. There was only one way to find out.

  Maddy stretched out her hands like a tightrope walker and took one step. The branch was smooth and round. It sagged a little under her weight but held.

  Looking only at the tree trunk in front of her, she took one tentative step after another along the branch. She almost made it. In fact, she would have if not for the cat.

  She was almost across to the tree, and safety, when there was a harsh hissing noise close to her head. She looked up in fright to see two eyes — one dark, the other green — reflecting the light of the bonfire in the graveyard beyond. The cat snarled and clawed at her and, although it was well out of reach, it made Maddy flinch and slip. She recovered but leaned too far the other way, swaying and wobbling, trying to get her balance back. She started to fall. She clutched at the branch, wrapping her arms and legs around it and sliding underneath, staring at the ground, which suddenly seemed a very long way down.

  Something grabbed at her neck, and she realized it was the cord of her runestone necklace snagged on a jagged piece of bark. It snapped, and the runestone dropped away to the dark ground below.

  She clawed desperately at the soft wood of the rotten branch. Pieces of bark came away from underneath her fingers, and her hands slipped even more. She struggled not to cry out, knowing that any loud noise would alert the witch.

  Her other hand slipped, then a large piece of wood came away, and suddenly she was falling!

  But a steely grip wrapped around her wrist as she fell, and instead of tumbling to the ground, she swung into the trunk of the tree with
a whumph that knocked all the air out of her body. Her foot found a branch, then her free hand found another one, and she was safe amongst the branches. She looked up to see Kazuki, his face whiter than snow, lying on top of the branch with his arms and legs wrapped around it. He was small, but she had never realized before how strong he was. He let go of her wrist when he saw she was safe.

  “Kazuki!” she said. She had told him not to come, but he had come anyway. To keep her safe.

  The acid hissing of the cat came from just above her head, and she looked up to see it was on the next branch up. It wasn’t hissing at her but at Kazuki, who was sitting up, staring at the cat.

  Kazuki held one of the baseballs he had taken from the sports shop. He tossed it up a couple of times in one hand, then drew back his arm.

  The cat turned and disappeared down the tree.

  With Maddy safe, Kazuki put away the baseball and began to inch his way along the branch. When he got to the safety of the main trunk, he stopped, shaking uncontrollably.

  The climb down the tree was easier. Maddy helped Kazuki, showing him where to put his hands and feet. The tree had many branches, and it was almost like a staircase, except for when they reached the bottom and had to jump the last several feet. Kazuki did it with his eyes shut, and Maddy helped steady him as he landed.

  “Thank you, Kazuki,” she said.

  He was breathing so heavily that Maddy was afraid the witch would hear, but he sucked in enough air to say, “I’ll go get the key chain.”

  Maddy hesitated. “Okay, but be careful,” she said. “I’ll do something to distract them.”

  Kazuki nodded, pulled over his hood, and right before her eyes, he melted away into the deep shadow by the wall. Even though she knew where he was, it took a concentrated effort to see him in his black ninja suit.

  From within the old house she heard the sound of a clock. The old grandfather clock. It began to chime the hours. It was midnight!

  The witch started to chant again, horrible words in a sinister old language. Deep down, Maddy felt that this was somehow her fault. She was the one who had translated the spells. She had told the witch she would call the police. But what else could she have done? Maddy clutched at her neck, remembering the runestone that had dropped. She looked around for it, but a dark stone on the dark ground at night was going to take too long to find — if she could find it at all.

  Maddy ran toward the bonfire. She was out of the trees now, among the old stones of the cemetery. She no longer cared about being seen. She wanted to be seen.

  She thought of Kazuki risking his life, climbing out along the broken tree branch despite his terrible fear of heights. She thought of Dimitar, huge and powerful, but brought to his knees by the witch’s spells. She thought of the waitress at the café and all the people in the town who could no longer speak. Of Kazuki’s mom and dad babbling on the phone. She no longer cared what happened to her.

  She ran, her fists clenched, her hair standing on end, her voice half a shout, half a scream.

  “Stop it!” she screamed. “Stop it, you ugly witch!”

  The witch stopped chanting. The girls stopped dancing. Even the fire seemed to stop crackling and popping for a moment as this red-headed apparition, shaking and running and screaming out of the trees, came toward them.

  “Maddy,” the witch snarled.

  “You’re so ugly that your doctor is a vet!” Maddy yelled, her cheeks burning. “You’re so ugly you make onions cry!”

  From inside the house she heard the clock continue to chime the hour.

  Two.

  A few seconds more, and the stolen tongues would turn to dust.

  “Get her,” the witch said quite calmly and turned back to the bonfire. The light from it shimmered off her velvety chocolate dress and lit her hair from behind, making it glow.

  “When you were born, your doctor took one look at you and slapped your parents!” Maddy yelled.

  The witch ignored her. Behind the witch, silhouetted by the light of the fire, she could see a dark shape and a small hand reaching out toward the witch’s pocket.

  Three.

  “I know who you are, Professor Coateloch,” Maddy cried out, just as Anka reached her. She should have turned and tried to run, but fury was burning inside her, brighter than the bonfire. Anka’s hand clamped down on her arm, and then she was being dragged back toward the witch.

  The witch cackled. “Professor Coateloch? There is no Professor Coateloch. If your parents had bothered checking with the university, they could have found that out. But they were too busy counting their money. They sold you, Maddy. They sold you for a thousand dollars. That’s all you were worth.”

  Maddy struggled, tears in her eyes, but she couldn’t break Anka’s grip.

  “What’s this?” the witch screamed, and her hand now grasped a small wrist — Kazuki’s wrist. In Kazuki’s hand were the keys and the opener for the gate. He cried out in pain, and the keys dropped to the ground.

  Four.

  “Small boys and girls do make delightful eating,” the witch cackled again, “but they have to be cooked first.” She pulled Kazuki closer to the fire.

  “Leave him alone!” Maddy shouted.

  The witch ignored her, and now Anka was dragging Maddy, too, closer and closer to the roaring bonfire.

  “Leave her alone!” It was Pavla’s voice. She gripped Maddy by the other arm.

  “Pavla!” the witch shrieked.

  Pavla looked at her mother, and her face shrank, but she did not let go of Maddy’s arm.

  Five.

  “Leave them alone!” Dimitar yelled. He thrust his arms through the railings as if he could somehow reach them from there. He rattled the gates, but even his giant strength was no match for the huge metal bars.

  Six.

  The tug of war continued with Maddy in the middle. Pavla was bigger and stronger, but Anka was more determined. The fire loomed closer. Maddy could feel the heat on her face and bare arms now.

  The witch had stopped cackling and was talking — whispering a spell that Maddy remembered from the ancient scrolls. Her fingertips began to glitter.

  “Look out, Dimitar!” she screamed.

  Behind Dimitar one of the huge oaks of the forest was hauling its own roots up out of the ground. It pulled itself along the ground using the roots like arms. The top of the tree wavered and tottered as it moved.

  The witch was calling the tree.

  Seven.

  Dimitar turned, but the tree was already upon him, giant oak branches reaching out for him, trapping him against the metal gates.

  “Dimitar!” Maddy screamed again. Now the fire was just in front of her face, and she could feel her eyebrows start to singe from its heat. She turned her face away from the flames. Nothing could help them now, nothing short of a miracle. Then she saw it.

  The key chain with the gate opener on it was still lying on the ground where Kazuki had dropped it. As she watched, a tiny hand reached for it. A smaller-than-human hand — smaller, even, than that of a baby. It was the hand of a little monkey, hiding in the folds of the witch’s cloak.

  “Mr. Chester!” Maddy cried. The little hand pressed the green button on the gate opener, and with a creak and a groan the big metal gates began to open.

  Eight.

  “What?” the witch cried and looked down.

  Mr. Chester jumped out from the folds of the cloak. He looked different somehow and later, when Maddy had time to think about it, she would realize that it was the crow’s feather stuck on a jaunty angle in the hatband of his tiny hat. He looked up at the witch with a sly grin and gathered up the keys, scampering off with them.

  “Get him!” the witch shouted. Anka let go of Maddy’s arms and chased after the monkey. Pavla was still pulling, and she and Maddy went over in a heap.

  Dimitar was
already out of the clutches of the tree and storming across the yard toward the witch.

  Nine.

  The witch let go of Kazuki. Her eyes rolled back in her head, and her fingertips began to glitter once more.

  Another spell. A spell of spiders, or centipedes, or lightning, or, Maddy feared, something much worse.

  The anger inside Maddy was gone now. A calmness came over her, and she suddenly knew what she had to do. She untangled herself from Pavla and jumped up. She saw Kazuki scrambling on his hands and knees away from the witch, away from the fire. She saw the jar, full of the tongues of people about to be trapped forever.

  “Kazuki! The jar!” she yelled.

  Ten.

  He must have been thinking the same thing because there was a loud bang, and a huge crack appeared in the jar as a baseball bounced off it and rolled away somewhere amongst the gravestones. The crack spread like a spiderweb across the glass, but the jar remained intact.

  Maddy closed her eyes, remembering the words of the old scrolls. She opened them again and began to chant.

  Kazuki drew a second baseball out of his ninja suit and drew his arm back, a tense, taut spring. But what he hadn’t seen, what Maddy hadn’t seen either, was Anka, hurtling down on Kazuki from behind, her fingers rigid, like the talons of a hunting bird, her lips drawn back from her teeth like a vicious dog.

  Kazuki took aim just as Anka leaped into the air behind him, but with a thud that Maddy felt from a few feet away, the witch’s daughter went flying off to the side, away from Kazuki. The much larger shape of Pavla was on top of her, pinning her sister to the ground.

  Kazuki’s arm snapped forward, and the ball hurtled toward the already cracked glass. There was a splintering sound, and the ball smashed right through the side of the jar. The jar broke into two large pieces. One of them toppled off the stand and smashed into even smaller pieces on the ground. The dragon’s tongue flopped out of the wreckage of the jar and landed amongst the shards of glass, still writhing and jerking.