Eddy Stone and the Mean Genie's Curse Page 8

  One of the other whispering voices laughed.

  Are you laughing at what she said? the first whispering voice asked.

  It was quite funny, said the second.

  You’re not doing the whooossshh thing. The whhh and the shhhh, said the third whisperer.

  Never mind the whoooossshhh thing, said the first whisperer. You were laughing at me

  You’ve got to do the whooooosssh thing, said the third whisperer. That’s what makes us sound sinister

  You were laughing, said the first whisperer. How sinister is that? Laughing at what this airhead in the tasteless clothes said

  “Tasteless?” said Mitzee. “Lavender with orange is totally on trend, thank you very much. I’ve done interior design and colour matching, so there. And who are you to talk about colour anyway? Just look at this desert.”

  What do you mean? said the first whisperer.

  “It’s beige everywhere. Boring, boring, boring. Beige isn’t a colour – it’s an excuse.”

  There was a sudden snort of wind.

  Are you laughing now, too? the first whisperer said grumpily.

  Well it was funny, said another.

  No it wasn’t. It was just rude

  Oh come on, admit it. Beige is a bit dull

  You’re agreeing with her now? We’re meant to destroy her confidence and leave her a shivering wreck

  We were doing alright until you started showing off. Displaced. Refract. What’s all the fancy language for?

  Yeah, what’s wrong with a good whhooooshhhh? Another whisperer joined the argument.

  Oh, don’t you start. At least I was putting some effort in

  And they drifted away over the sand, squabbling together instead of tormenting the travellers. And as the voices faded, all the doubts that had built up didn’t seem quite so bad any more.

  “You know,” said Eddy. “This desert isn’t so big.”

  “You know,” said Hen. “I can make us a compass. I’ve got a magnet and a needle in my tool bag. If I magnetize the needle, we can attach it to a cork from one of the water bottles, float it on a cup of water, and it will point north. I’ll get on with it.”

  “You know,” said Six. “With my thieving experience, I’m sure I can get us into the palace to steal that Genie.”

  “You did well,” Eddy said to Mitzee.

  “Yes,” said Hen. “Those voices really got to all of us. Except you. How did you manage that?”

  “Simple, Babes. When you know you’re right, you can just ignore anyone who disagrees with you. And I’m always right. I call it mind over matter. I don’t mind what they say, because it doesn’t matter.”

  “Yes, I can see how that would do it,” said Hen, as she finished making the compass. “The needle is showing that north is this way,” she pointed. “Let’s go.”

  After a couple of hours they came to the far edge of the desert. They were dusty, hot and tired. But safe.

  Now they could all see Grimglower Castle in the distance. And this was no mirage. Huge and black, it loomed over the land around it. It stood on a hill, across a broad plain that was strewn with boulders and large stones, and bordered on either side by craggy mountains.

  “I reckon we can be there by the end of the afternoon,” said Eddy. “Let’s take a break for lunch.”

  They unloaded their bags of crackers and bottles of water, and sat by the side of a pile of boulders as they ate.

  “I am going to have a beauty nap,” said Mitzee. She settled in a sunny spot and closed her eyes.

  A bird of the small brown variety hopped across the ground nearby looking for stray crumbs. “That reminds me,” said Eddy. “The Emperor said we had to look out for some birds.”

  “What sort of birds?” said Six.

  “He just said we’d know when we saw one,” said Hen.

  “I think I know now,” said Six. He was pointing at the sky.

  Eddy and Hen looked up. A shape like a jumbo jet was flying low towards them, but a jumbo jet with feathered wings and a hooked beak where its nose cone should be.

  As it came nearer, its huge shadow fell across them.

  “Where did the sun go?” said Mitzee, without opening her eyes.

  “Oh – my – gosh,” said Eddy, standing up, as Hen scrambled to her feet beside him.

  The shape was getting bigger with every second. Not just getting nearer, Eddy realized with a jolt, but getting lower. He could see its legs stretched out and a set of long curved talons glinting on each foot. Talons that were big enough to hook an elephant – sharp and open and coming straight at them.

  “Look out!” shouted Six. He dived behind the pile of boulders, with Claudius close behind him.

  Eddy and Hen stood frozen to the spot. Eddy wanted to run away, but the messages from his brain to his legs were getting mixed up. Instead of rushing him to safety, his limbs were putting all their energy into trembling like jelly.

  The massive bird swooped down on them. Eddy stared in horror at the talons that were spearing towards him. And still his legs refused to run.

  Suddenly he was lifted off his feet. The talons had closed around him like a cage, without even scratching him. But now he was trapped as securely as if he were behind thick iron bars.

  “Let go!” he shouted, as the bird beat its wings, making a draught that scattered the travellers’ lunch across the plain, and blew Mitzee’s hair out of shape.

  “What’s going on?” she said sitting up and seeing the mess around her.

  “Put me down!” Eddy yelled again. “Let go!”

  The great wings beat once more, and in an instant they were high in the air. The ground was a very long way down.

  “I’ve changed my mind!” shouted Eddy. “Don’t let go! Please don’t let go!”

  He peered out between the bird’s talons. Ahead of him he could see the mountain range that stood at the edge of the plain. He looked around – and saw Hen trapped inside the bird’s other foot. Her eyes were wide open in shock. Her mouth was moving, but if she was speaking he couldn’t hear her over the rush of air as the bird sped on.

  They were getting close to the mountains now, flying towards a jagged spike of rock. Clinging to the top of the spike was an immense tree. Its branches opened out into a massive bowl, and as they got near Eddy could see that the bowl was cluttered with smaller tree trunks and thick pieces of wood that had been bent and woven together to form a colossal nest.

  The bird spread its wings to brake and dropped Eddy and Hen on one side of the nest. The impact forced the air out of Eddy’s body. It would have broken his bones if the bottom of the nest had not been lined with softer material – giant leaves, and animal skins, and enormous feathers.

  “Are you okay?” he asked Hen, gasping to get his breath back.

  “Don’t be ridiculous,” she said. “We’re stuck way up in the air in the nest of a giant bird. This is about as un-okay as I’ve ever been in my life. And I think it’s about to get worse. Look.”

  The bird looped round in the air, and landed in the middle of the nest, eyeing them. It pushed its head close. Its beak was easily big enough to swallow either one of them whole.

  Or both of them, if it chewed.

  Moments earlier, they had been enjoying a quiet lunch. Now it looked they were going to be lunch.

  But the bird turned, hopped off the edge of the nest, and spread its wings and flapped away.

  “Thank goodness,” said Eddy. “I thought it was going to eat us.”

  “It’s probably just saving us for later,” said Hen. “Let’s face it, I don’t think it brought us back here because it was lonely and wanted some company. So what do we do now?”

  “I don’t know,” said Eddy. “Let’s take a look around.”

  There wasn’t much to see. The nest was as broad and as deep as a swimming pool. Apart from them, the only things on the floor in the middle were some heaps of sun-bleached bones, and a large, white, oval boulder.

  “What do you think th
at boulder is doing up here?” said Hen.

  They went to take a closer look.

  “Not much,” said Eddy. “Which I suppose is what you would expect a boulder to do. Hang on though. What’s that knocking?”

  A hollow thumping noise started to echo round the nest, like someone repeatedly driving a steamroller into the face of a cliff.

  “I think it’s coming from inside the boulder,” said Hen.

  There was a sudden loud CRUNCH, like a thousand sets of teeth biting down on a thousand slices of crisp toast.

  And then a crack opened up on the boulder.

  The end of something sharp poked out.

  “I don’t think this is a boulder,” said Eddy. “I think it’s an egg. And I think it’s hatching. And I think that we’ve been delivered to be Junior’s first meal. We need to get out of here. Now.”

  “I agree,” said Hen. “With everything you’ve just said – especially the getting-out-of-here part. The problem is – how?”

  Eddy picked his way towards the edge of the nest. He tested every step as he went, carefully making sure that the floor was solid beneath its covering of leaves and fur and feathers.

  And as he got nearer to the edge he had to be just as careful to avoid great heaps of bird droppings that were all around, some dried as hard as concrete by the sun, and some still sticky and stinky.

  At the outer rim he faced a wall of tangled branches that came up to his waist. He found a foothold on a sturdy branch, and hauled himself up onto the top of the rim.

  “Be careful,” said Hen, who was following close behind him.

  “Don’t worry,” said Eddy. “I just want to see if there’s any way down from here.”

  He crawled out on the rim. Sharp points of wood dug into his hands and knees as he moved forward. He stuck his head out over the edge of the nest – and immediately wished he hadn’t. The view sent a wave of dizziness rippling through him.

  “Wow,” he said. “It really is a very, very long way to the bottom.”

  “Do you think we could climb down?” said Hen.

  “I don’t know,” said Eddy. “We’d have to go over the side here, then hold on and swing by our arms to get across the underside of the nest until we reached the trunk of the tree. It would be like doing monkey bars in the gym. How are you at those?”

  “Not great,” said Hen. “I don’t know how long I’d be able to hang on.”

  “No,” said Eddy. “Neither do I. If we had a really long piece of rope we might be able to lower ourselves over the edge.”

  “I’ve got a big ball of string in here,” said Hen, pointing to the tool bag that was slung from her belt. “But it’s not long enough or strong enough for that.”

  “I don’t think this way is going to work,” said Eddy. “I’m coming back.”

  He shuffled backwards, and dropped onto the floor.

  At that moment there was a cracking, crunching noise from behind him, and a chunk of eggshell, as big and thick as a dinner plate, flew past his shoulder. When he turned round he could see the chick’s eye staring out of the egg at them through the hole its beak had just made. It reminded him of the way the big dog that lived up the road from him looked at sausages.

  “We’ve got to do something,” said Hen. “That bird isn’t going to be stuck in there much longer. Maybe we could go down through the middle of the nest and straight onto the tree.”

  “That sounds worth a try,” said Eddy. “Let’s pick a spot over there. We’ll just need to shift all the feathers and leaves, and then we can see if we can find a way through.”

  Just shifting turned out to be a lot harder than expected. The leaves were okay, but the feathers were awkward. They weren’t heavy, but most of them were twice as long as Eddy was tall, and just moving them through the air felt like trying to push a brick through a tub of treacle.

  They were both panting by the time they had cleared a spot. They looked down at the tangle of thick branches that formed the floor of the nest.

  “You’d have to be a snake to wriggle through that lot,” said Eddy. “We’re going to have to make a gap.” He tugged at a branch. It didn’t move.

  He strained and grunted and heaved.

  It still didn’t move.

  “It’s woven together really tightly,” he said. “Do you think we could cut our way through? Have you got a saw in your toolbag?”

  “Of course,” said Hen. “But not one that’s going to do this job for us.” She pulled out a folding saw. Its blade was just about as long as her finger. Her little finger.

  “Useful for lots of things, but it will never get through all that wood. So that’s another idea that won’t work,” said Hen. “We’ve got about as much chance of flying away.”

  Flying.

  That reminded Eddy of something.

  What was it?

  And then it came to him in a flash like a light being turned on in his head.

  “Okay,” he said. “I’ve got an idea of how to get out of here. Maybe. Stop me if this sounds completely crazy.”

  “Stop you if it sounds crazy?” said Hen. “You mean crazier that being stranded in the nest of a giant bird whose chick is about to hatch out and eat us for lunch? This idea of yours would have to be completely bonkers to beat that.”

  “Well,” said Eddy, “it might just be. I’ve remembered something. I’ve got a book at home. It’s about here. There’s a picture in it that didn’t mean much when I saw it. But now, I think it might be showing us how to escape.”

  “Go on,” said Hen. “This all sounds unlikely, but it hasn’t reached crazy yet.”

  “In the picture there’s a very tall tree, and a man jumping out of it with wings on his back. These big feathers lying around…”

  “BONG!” said Hen. “And stop. People can’t fly. We haven’t got big enough arm muscles. I’ve seen videos of birdmen jumping off things. They all go the same way. Flap, flap, splat. We would be just the same if we tried it. Except, in our case there would be a very long gap between flap and splat because we’ve got a very long way to fall.”

  “Not flying,” said Eddy. “Gliding. You’re an engineer – do you think that a couple of these big feathers would give enough lift for one of us to glide safely down to the ground?”

  “I suppose they might,” said Hen. “In theory. But we would never be able to hold them and keep our arms out straight. Like I said, our muscles aren’t big enough.”

  “So we fasten the feathers on with something,” said Eddy. “You’ve got string.”

  “String’s too weak,” said Hen. “They would be ripped apart. But hey! – I know what we could use.”

  Hen continued, “There are loads of animal skins lying round here. If we cut those into strips and knot them together they will be as good as ropes. And my little saw is sharp enough to cut a couple of straight pieces of wood to go across our shoulders. So we find two matching pairs of feathers – left and right – strap those onto the wood and tie the whole thing over our shoulders. If we’re very lucky, that could work.”

  “Then what are we waiting for?” said Eddy.

  “Who’s waiting?” said Hen. She was already sawing at a branch.

  They worked fast. In just a few minutes they had gathered their materials together.

  In those same few minutes, the chick had battered a hole in the eggshell large enough to stick its beak through, and was now chomping away to free itself.

  Eddy laid two feathers quill to quill across each piece of wood. Hen wound the skin ropes round and round the smooth ends, binding them to the support, while Eddy held them in place.

  Hen finished the second one and tied it off, leaving two long trailing ends of rope.

  “I think that’s it,” she said. “Let’s see if it’s going to hold.”

  They lifted one of the sets of wings off the floor. The feathers shifted in the ropes as the fastenings took their weight.

  “It’s no good,” she said. “They aren’t firm enough. They wo
n’t hold up in flight.”

  “What can we do?” said Eddy. He looked across at the egg. The chick’s whole head was now poking free. “Whatever it is, we need to be quick.”

  “If only we had some really strong glue,” said Hen. “A layer of that and then some more skin ropes on top would do the job.”

  “If you need sticky stuff,” said Eddy, “there’s masses of it lying around here.” He took a deep breath, stepped over to a big wet pile of bird droppings, plunged his hands into it and scooped a load up. It was thick, and gungy, and about as horrible and smelly as he had expected.

  He slapped it across the bindings on the first set of wings.

  “There. You tie them up while I get some more for the other ones.”

  If we get out of this, I really must remember to wash my hands before tea, he thought, as he plastered another load of the foul-smelling goo onto the second set of wings.

  He watched the chick while Hen worked with the ropes. It began to squeeze itself through the hole in the egg. With a loud and sudden CRACK, the shell shattered and fell in pieces around its feet.

  “It’s out!” Eddy yelled. “Are you ready?”

  “Nearly,” Hen replied. “Just one more knot.”

  The chick shook itself out, feeling its way into its newly hatched body. Its first downy fluff was still damp and plastered to its skin. And then it stood upright for the first time, already taller than a grown man.

  It fixed Eddy with a stare that reminded him of a crocodile – cold, calculating and deadly. And it started to move towards him. With its wobbling waddle, it looked less like a bird and more like a giant wind-up walking dinosaur toy. But there was nothing playful about the sharp beak that it held open as it headed unsteadily in their direction.

  “We’ve got to move,” said Eddy. “Come on.”

  They dragged the wings over to the edge of the nest, and hoisted them onto the rim.

  “Turn round and face me,” said Hen, “so I can tie your wings on. And tell me if that bird’s getting close.”

  She fumbled with the long tails that she had left on the ropes, wrapping them over Eddy’s shoulders and across his chest, round and over again and knotting them tight so that the wings were secure.