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33

  SOLVING THE MYSTERY

  QUEEN CECILIA CALLED a meeting in the throne room. The first and last one she would ever hold. It was only at the insistence of everyone else that she finally stepped up toward the big stone throne and sat on it.

  Rocky sat at her side, and her hand toyed with his long white fur as she waited for everybody to come in and be seated.

  On her other side, resplendent in the bright-blue tunic of the royal guards, sat Tony Baloney. Every time that Cecilia said she didn’t think she needed a royal guard, he just pointed to his ear and shook his head.

  Avery and Evan sat at the head of the long table. They were now officially her royal advisors.

  That was what Evan said they were, anyway. He said it was an important position and that he and Avery were quite serendipitous to have been chosen. Cecilia couldn’t bring herself to tell him it was the wrong word again.

  It had been three days since Harry disappeared. He and his goons had spent several days barricaded inside the royal chambers. Then one morning the door had been wide open and all of them were gone.

  That same day, Rocky had opened his eyes for the first time and looked around him, and Cecilia had cried and hugged him. He licked her, and she asked him to stop because it was all gooey. He said he was sorry, but he couldn’t help it.

  He was a dog, after all.

  The royal crown had vanished with Harry, but to be honest, it was probably too big and heavy for a ten-year-old girl anyway. Instead, Cecilia wore the beautiful, and now spotlessly clean, golden tiara they had found in the nursery.

  Cecilia surveyed the room, almost exploding with the news she had to give everyone.

  The room was full of smiles.

  “People of Storm,” Cecilia said in her biggest voice. What her teacher, Mr. Treegarden, would have called her “outside voice.” She continued, “I am not sure that I am ready to be your Queen.” There was a murmur of disagreement but she spoke on, and the voices fell silent.

  “And I am not going to be your Queen.”

  The murmur was back, a little concerned now.

  “Not because I do not wish to be, but because I have some good news for you.”

  Dead silence. A hush of anticipation.

  “Today, we are leaving Castle Storm,” Cecilia announced.

  It took ten minutes for the noise to subside so she could explain further.

  “The answer was always right under my nose, but I was too stupid to see it,” she said. “Until Harry and his goons escaped. We’d thought that Harry knew a secret path out through the forest maze, but after they left, the front door of the castle was still bolted. So I realized that their passage to the outside world must be from within the castle itself.”

  She stopped for a moment, enjoying the anticipation on all their faces.

  “And then I thought that there must be an entrance to another secret passage in the royal quarters, so we searched there. But all we found were empty beer bottles and old pizza boxes. While I was wandering around the castle, searching, a little blue bird flew in and perched on the windowsill.”

  There were some curious looks and some nodding heads. Everybody knew the speedy little blue birds that darted around the castle.

  “And that’s when I finally realized what had been under my nose all along. Come with me.”

  She stood and walked from the throne room, forcing herself not to run, a perplexed crowd following in her wake.

  She led them outside to the courtyard, where a large rock had been placed near the beginning of the water channel that fed the waterfall and the birdbath.

  With a nod from Cecilia, big Tony put both hands around the rock and heaved, lowering it into the channel and blocking the water.

  In a second or two the stream across the courtyard was almost dry, and the waterfall slowed to a mere trickle.

  Cecilia led the way down to the lower level and pointed to the waterfall. The velvet curtain of water was drawn back, revealing a dark window into unknown places.

  “The birdbath was the clue,” Cecilia said. “This is the start of the passage. This is how Harry brought in his supplies, and how he escaped. I even know where the tunnel will take us.”

  She looked around excitedly, overjoyed for a whole bunch of reasons. She was overjoyed that she was about to see her parents and Jana again, that she would be able to eat normal food, that she would be back in the real world.

  “Where does it come out?” Mrs. Proctor asked.

  Cecilia reached out and grasped the little golden bird statue.

  “The Church of the Yellow Bird.”

  34

  WHAT IT WAS ALL ABOUT

  IT WAS ALL about truffles. That was one thing Cecilia hadn’t figured out, mainly because she didn’t know anything about truffles.

  Truffles are very rare, and because of that they are a very expensive delicacy used in fine French cooking.

  White truffles are the most prized and the most rare, and because of that they are the most expensive.

  A single pound of white truffles can be worth thousands of dollars.

  It so happened that the beech forest along the riverbank in Storm Gorge was one of the best places in the world to find truffles.

  “King” Harry was harvesting them, sneaking them through the waterfall in the middle of the night, shipping them out through the underground tunnel on wooden carts, and selling them at a huge profit, which he and the guards were sharing.

  Cecilia and the others figured that out when they found the carts and empty truffle sacks deep underground in the secret passage.

  She was wrong about the Church of the Yellow Bird, but only slightly. The church had been built next to a ruined monastery, which was much, much older.

  It was from the cellar of the ruined Yellow Bird monastery that Cecilia and the others emerged on a bright sunny morning, shielding their eyes and marveling at the blue dome of the sky, which they had not seen for many years — or in Avery and Evan’s case, ever!

  It was a Friday and nobody was at church that day, but a whole crowd of people appearing suddenly on an island in the middle of a lake was not going to go unnoticed. Before long, there was a small fleet of boats, canoes, and pedal boats ferrying the newcomers across the lake to the shore.

  Cecilia, as befits a queen, was last to leave the island, finally departing in the back of a small dinghy rowed by the pastor of the church himself.

  Rocky, of course, was by her side, although he was weak and just lay with his head on her lap the whole way.

  The pastor told her that her parents were on their way back from the city where they had been trying to organize a large search party.

  So when Cecilia stepped off the boat and onto the small dock on the shore of the lake, it was not her mother or father who was there to greet her, but a huge fluffy pillow of a woman who threw her arms around her so energetically that the two of them almost toppled off the dock into the water.

  “Bam, bam, bam!” Jana shouted. There were tears in Jana’s eyes and snot running out of her nose. “Bam, bam, bam. Oh, this is a beautiful day. The sun has shone down on Jana today and brought my little child back.”

  Cecilia tried to talk, but there was no getting a word in against Jana.

  “Oh, hallelujah and praise the Lord, child, I thought you were eaten by them lions.”

  “I almost was.” Cecilia gasped for breath, submerged in Jana’s flowery blouse. “Come on, you have to meet Avery and Evan.”

  And Jana’s love overflowed some more.

  In fact, that day it was a true deluge.

  35

  THE END OF THE STORY

  AND THAT'S THE end of the story. The strange (and probably not true) story of Cecilia Undergarment and the black lions of Northwood.

  The castle became a tourist attraction. Some of the people who had lived there
even returned to work as tour guides or actors in “reenactment scenes.” The difference was that now they could leave whenever they wanted.

  Queen Cecilia visited regularly, just to keep an eye on things, and to watch out for her royal subjects. For the lions, nothing changed. Although every once in a while Prowler would stroll down to the clearing, and Queen Cecilia would go out to meet him, and they would chat for a while about the weather and the goings-on in the forest.

  Or did they? It depends on whether what I am telling you is true, or just a big fat farty fib.

  But remember, not everything is entirely what it seems. Nor is it otherwise.

  Northwood is published in the United States by

  Capstone Young Readers

  A Capstone Imprint

  1710 Roe Crest Drive

  North Mankato, Minnesota 56003

  www.capstoneyoungreaders.com

  Text © 2011 Brian Falkner

  Illustrations © 2011 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: 978-1-62370-083-6 (paper-over-board)

  ISBN: 978-1-4342-8667-3 (hardcover)

  ISBN: 978-1-4342-8666-6 (paperback)

  ISBN: 978-1-62370-211-3 (ebook)

  Summary: Cecilia Undergarment likes a challenge. So when she discovers a sad and neglected dog, she is determined to rescue him. But her daring dog rescue lands her lost and alone in the dark forest of Northwood. A forest where ferocious black lions roam. A forest where those who enter never return. But then Northwood has never seen the likes of Cecilia Undergarment before...

  Image credits: Shutterstock (tree pattern)