Maddy West and the Tongue Taker Page 15

  The thick yellow smoke drifted up into the air, evaporating into a long, pale cloud that got thinner and thinner as it rose higher, and the trapped tongues began the journey back to their owners.

  Eleven.

  Maddy’s own fingertips began to flash as magic welled up inside her and burst out through her hands like sparklers. She grasped a burning branch from the fire and threw it on the ground at the witch’s feet. A cloud of the yellow smoke rose up, enveloping the witch, who scarcely seemed to notice, so great was her concentration on the storming giant who was approaching her.

  The ground in front of Dimitar began to soften as the witch chanted her spell, and he started to slow, each footstep sinking deeper and deeper into the earth. In a moment, Maddy knew, the earth would swallow her big friend entirely, but she didn’t let herself think about that.

  Her hand found the glass tube in her pocket, and she pulled it out, removing the stopper as she continued to chant the words of the spell exactly as she had read it in the old parchment scrolls.

  Twelve!

  Her arms flopped to her sides, the sparks from her fingertips dying away to fizzles and pops and then to a gentle glitter. She swayed on her feet, totally exhausted.

  The witch continued to chant, but her words were no longer the incantations of ancient magic. “Bummity boodle, gwurgle,” the witch said.

  The sparks in the witch’s fingertips died.

  “Blaggedy bong, budda budda gunga doodle.”

  The ground beneath the giant began to firm, and he strode steadily forward.

  Maddy looked at the glass tube in her hand, noticing in a dizzy, dazed kind of way that a thick yellow smoke — the tongue of the witch — was settling down inside. She pushed the stopper back into the tube.

  “Hubbidy hobbidy blurble bab,” the witch said, her eyes wide with fear. Dimitar was right in front of her, and he clamped one hand over the witch’s mouth, although Maddy knew that was no longer necessary.

  The witch had not worn a runestone — as the caster of the spell, she was immune from its powers. But she was no longer the caster of the spell — Maddy was — and as the clock struck midnight and one day turned into the next, it was the witch herself who lost her tongue.

  The glittering from Maddy’s fingertips faded and as it did, so did the sky and the bonfire and the witch, and Dimitar and Kazuki and the entire world was just a cloud. The world was reeling around her now, and in the middle of it all was the bonfire, a huge, bright, burning light, growing and getting hotter. Maddy was falling toward the heat, and it was burning, and then it all faded away.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE

  THE HELICOPTER

  MADDY WOKE TO THE SOUND of birds singing in the trees. Not the harsh caw of crows, but the lyrical lullabies of thrushes and the cheerful cooing of pigeons.

  She was on the floor of one of the rooms of the old house, on a rough mattress that had been made for her from cushions taken from the sofa. Dimitar’s jacket had been pulled over her as a blanket, and she was grateful for it; the morning was cold.

  When she sat up, she saw Kazuki lying on one of the sofas. He looked like he had just woken up too. His hair was sticking out in every direction.

  “What happened?” she asked.

  “You passed out,” Kazuki said, sitting up on the sofa. “You almost fell in the fire. You would have if . . .” He stopped, not wanting to say more, but Maddy guessed. It was Kazuki who had rushed over and caught her as she had fallen toward the flames.

  “Thank you, Kazuki,” she said, but those three words could not really tell him how she was feeling. No words could. Not in any language.

  “Thank you,” he said in return. “You saved us all. Turning the spell back on the witch was brilliant.”

  There was a sudden scampering of tiny feet, and Mr. Chester bounded into the room, jumping up onto Maddy’s shoulders and rubbing his hands vigorously through her hair.

  “All right, all right.” Maddy giggled. “I’m glad to see you too.”

  He hopped down and sat in her lap. The crow feather in his hat stuck out like a badge of courage. Whether he had stuck it there himself, or whether it had just ended up there during his fight with the crow, nobody would ever know. But it stayed.

  On a small table next to her was the glass tube with the witch’s tongue: her language, her spells, trapped inside forever.

  Mr. Chester cocked his head, listening, and then began to hop up and down on Maddy’s lap, clearly excited about something.

  “Listen,” Kazuki said.

  After a moment, Maddy heard it too. The rapidly approaching chop, chop sound of a helicopter. She sprang to her feet, and Mr. Chester had to leap for her neck to stop himself from being thrown halfway across the room, so sudden was her movement.

  “Come on,” she said. She ran into the kitchen. There, tied to chairs with bindings made from ripped up bedsheets were the witch and her two daughters.

  The witch glared at Maddy as she entered.

  “Rubble bubble,” she said. “Flirty wap.”

  “Flirty wap to you, too,” Maddy said with a cheery smile.

  Anka looked furious, but Pavla seemed sad and frightened.

  Maddy winked at Pavla to let her know that things would be all right.

  With Mr. Chester on her shoulder and Kazuki close behind, Maddy walked outside.

  Dimitar was already out there, looking up at the sky with a hand shielding his eyes from the glare of the morning sun.

  “Here’s our brave girl,” he said. “How are you this morning?”

  “Rubble bubble,” Maddy said. “Flirty wap.” As Dimitar was starting to look worried, she added, “That’s what the witch just said to me. I’m fine, thank you very much.”

  Dimitar chuckled, a deep, throaty laugh, and said, “I’m pleased to hear it.”

  Maddy saw the helicopter flying low through the valley.

  It hovered for a few seconds, then settled gently into a large, clear area to the left of the graveyard.

  For some reason Maddy expected it to be full of police, but instead, to her great surprise, the first person to step down out of the helicopter was her mom and then her dad. Then came Kazuki’s parents, and perhaps the greatest surprise of all was the person who came out last. She recognized the smile beaming from the shadows inside the helicopter before she even saw the bald head and soft eyes of William Buthelezi, the Zulu speaker who had been on TV with her.

  “Mom!” Maddy squealed and ran toward her mom, who ran as fast toward Maddy. Her hair a mess, she was crying, and she picked up Maddy in a giant bear hug. Her dad wrapped his arms around them both and was laughing and laughing and laughing.

  “What? How?” Maddy asked as soon as she was able to get her breath back.

  Her mom set her down on the ground but wasn’t about to let her go yet.

  She saw that Kazuki’s parents had him in just the same kind of hug, and they weren’t about to let go either.

  “Mr. Buthelezi, as it turns out, is very, very rich,” Maddy’s dad said. “A millionaire, in fact. When he heard you were missing, he called and offered to help. He flew us here to Bulgaria in his private jet, and we joined Kazuki’s parents to look for you. But we didn’t know where to find you until Kazuki’s dad got the message with the GPS map of this house.”

  “Thank you,” Maddy said to William Buthelezi, who gave a short bow from the waist.

  “I told you that if you ever wanted my help, it was yours, and I meant it,” he said.

  “When we got the map, Mr. Buthelezi tried to charter a helicopter,” her dad continued. “But then everybody suddenly forgot how to talk, and we couldn’t do anything.”

  “It was most strange,” William said. “Everybody just started babbling like newborn babies.”

  “Including us!” her mom said. “But when we woke up this morning, ever
ything was back to normal. So Mr. Buthelezi hired the helicopter, and we came here as fast as we could.”

  “What happened here?” Kazuki’s dad asked in Japanese.

  Maddy translated the question for the others, first in English, then in Bulgarian for Dimitar.

  “That’s a very long story,” she said.

  “Well, you can tell us later,” Maddy’s mom said. “I’m so happy to have you back.”

  She hugged Maddy again, then hugged Dimitar for helping save her, and she hugged William for all his help, and she hugged Kazuki’s mom and dad because she was so pleased that Kazuki was safe and sound also, then she hugged Maddy again, and Maddy hugged her back.

  Maddy’s mom even asked her how to say “thank you” in Bulgarian and in Zulu and spent the next few minutes thanking them both over and over again in their own languages (although with a terrible accent!).

  Mr. Chester had disappeared somewhere while all this hugging was going on, but now he came scampering back, running up Maddy’s arm and perching on her shoulder. He put both his arms around her neck for a moment then let go and gave her a quick little peck on the cheek.

  “Eww, monkey kiss,” Maddy said, but she was smiling. Mr. Chester kissed her again, then leaped off her shoulder onto the arm of Dimitar, running up and perching on his shoulder.

  “Goodbye, Mr. Chester,” Maddy said, and the monkey saluted once again like a soldier.

  The first police car arrived not long after that, and sitting next to the driver was Inspector Teodorov, who looked greatly relieved to see Maddy and Kazuki safe and sound. More police cars arrived and so did more helicopters with cameras and TV news crews. It was all turning into quite a circus, Maddy thought.

  In the midst of it all, she found Kazuki sitting on a dining chair, one of a number of which had been dragged outside the house for people to sit on. He seemed to be enjoying all the attention, even if he understood very little of it. Maddy sat next to him and put her arm around his shoulder.

  “Thank you, Kazuki,” she said. “We wouldn’t be here if not for you.”

  “It’s all thanks to you,” Kazuki said.

  “I think you are one of the bravest, strongest people I have ever met,” Maddy said. “And I think you’d make a great ninja warrior.”

  Kazuki tilted his face toward hers and smiled. He said nothing, but he didn’t need to. There was a different look in his eyes now, and Maddy knew that things would be different for him from now on.

  Maddy West and the Tongue Taker

  is first published in the United States by

  Capstone Young Readers in 2015,

  A Capstone Imprint

  1710 Roe Crest Drive

  North Mankato, Minnesota 56003

  www.capstoneyoungreaders.com

  Text © 2012 Brian Falkner

  Illustrations © 2012 Donovan Bixley

  Published by arrangement with Walker Books Australia Pty. Ltd., Sydney.

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced, transmitted, broadcast or stored in an information retrieval system in any form or by any means, graphic, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, taping and recording, without written permission of the publisher.

  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data is available on the Library of Congress website.

  ISBN: 978-1-62370-084-3 (paper-over-board)

  ISBN: 978-1-62370-280-9 (ebook)

  Summary: Maddy West can speak every language in the world. When she is asked to help translate some ancient scrolls, she is thrilled. But she soon learns that the scrolls hide many secrets . . . secrets that send Maddy on a wild adventure with a stowaway ninja, a mysterious monkey, a Bulgarian wrestler, evil magic, and a fiendish witch. Does Maddy have what it takes to save herself and her new friends?

  Image credits: Shutterstock (endsheet pattern)