There's a sucker born every minute.
—MOTTO OF AUNT HOWIE'S LEECH MONSTER FARM
I went to the cafeteria early the next morning, expecting the worse. Sure enough, as I stood in line I overheard two ogre-men talking behind me.
"You hear about that kid who was dancing in the cemetery last night?"
"Yeah, hilarious! I heard he was howling at the moon, pretending to be a werewolf."
"That's just sad."
"Shut up, guys," an imp said. "He's standing right there."
I tried to sneak to my table, but lots of kids made a point of howling as I passed them, the howls then breaking into laughter.
I realized then that Syke had been my armor against these sorts of attacks. Kids could have teased me for a million things before this, but they were just doing it now. Why? Because before, if anyone teased me, Syke would throw some insults right back at them. Along with a fruit cup, and maybe a chair.
I missed Syke. So much.
Halfway to my table I detoured and snuck into the kitchen, blinking fast so the tears wouldn't spill down my face. Once safely there, I took a deep, shaky breath. I sat down at Cook's table in the corner and looked at my wrists for the twentieth time that morning. The angry red lines had faded to a mellow pink. I pulled out my Good List and added: "Tether Curse has been defeated!" And then tried to convince myself to be happy.
When Cook came over, I showed her my wrists.
"What does it mean?" she asked.
"Mistress Moira thinks that if the curser added a tether, her curse range must be weak," I said. "If it was strong, she wouldn't worry about me getting out of range. At the very least, I'll be able to escape the death curse by moving far away."
"But I don't want you to move far away," Cook said.
"Do you want me to die on my sixteenth birthday?"
"Of course not," she said. "This is really great news. And I will continue to hope that she finds out who cursed you and gets her to remove the curse altogether."
Cook placed a plate of muffins on the table. I showed her that my hands were clean, she nodded, and then I grabbed one. She returned to her pan of scrambled eggs on the stove top.
"Cook," I said between bites. "Have you seen any trees running around lately?"
"Excuse me?"
"Tootles raised some enchanted trees, but until their roots strengthen, they can run around. He's missing six weeping blue atlas cedars, about as tall as me."
"Well, that's a new one," she said. "No, I haven't."
"I saw one in the swamp, but when I asked it to come with me, it screamed 'Nooooo' and ran away like a toddler."
"You can't reason with a toddler," Cook said with a chuckle.
"That's the truth," Mrs. Gomes, the head of security, added. She'd just come into the kitchen with her assistant, Margaret. Between them, Mrs. Gomes and Cook had raised eleven kids, so they would know.
"And you can't win a struggle of wills, either," Mrs. Gomes added, grabbing a muffin. "Toddlers feel powerless most of the time. Saying no is the only power they have. You have to allow them to feel powerful, but in a constructive way."
"How do I do that?" I asked.
"Don't give him a chance to say no," Cook said. "If you say 'Come with me,' you've given him two choices—one, to come with you; the other, to say no. Instead, give him the power to decide between two choices you pick. Like, 'We can go to Tootle's tree house or to the field. Which one do you want to do?'"
"I'll tell Tootles," I said.
"One that always worked for me was turning what I wanted my kids to do into a game," Mrs. Gomes said.
Cook nodded. "And when all else fails, put them in charge of what you want them to do."
They continued to reminisce about their childrearing tactics. I left wondering if I really was in charge of handwashing in our family, or if that was just a trick. Jeesh.
I headed out to the new forest for my first-period mentor class and found Tootles pulling out weeds from a flowerbed near the river. I sat down next to him and helped while I told him about the tree I'd spotted in the swamp.
"And then he ran off," I said. "I couldn't catch him."
"When are you going to try again?" he asked.
"Um ... ," I said, because I had no plans to try again. This was a job for someone else.
"Don't give up, Runt," Tootles said.
"It's just that ..." I fell backward and lay on my back, staring up at the sky. "Nothing is going my way lately. Everything seems impossible."
"Would you look at these weeds?" he said, pointing to the pile he'd made. "I pull these weeds out all the time. And they keep coming back."
"That's annoying," I said.
He pointed to his toolshed, closer to the road. The small brick building was covered with ivy that seemed to drip from the wooden roof.
"I used to pull that ivy out too. But then I got busy and neglected to do it for a while. Now it's kind of grown on me, because I like the look of it."
"You like weeds?"
"No, I hate them," he said. "But I admire their persistence. I yank them out, telling them they can't grow here. They come back. I yank them out. They come back. I forget to yank them out, and all of a sudden—they win."
He helped me up. "Don't stop trying just because you don't succeed on your first try," he said. "Otherwise, you'll never know what you can do."
???
At lunch, instead of stampeding to the cafeteria, everyone was racing to the front gate. I saw Eloni and Boris following some ogre-men, so I jogged to catch up.
"What's happening?" I asked.
"Someone saw a giant gorilla outside the gate," Eloni said. "They think that Pravus is attacking the school for revenge, because he thinks Critchlore destroyed his gorilla enclosure."
"That can't be right," I said. "Pravus wouldn't risk attacking us. Plus, all his gorillas died in that cave-in."
"Maybe not," Eloni said. "What if Pravus faked the whole thing?"
We followed the mob to the gate. It didn't take long to see what the commotion was about. Giant gorillas are, well, giant. This one could have stepped right over our perimeter wall, but he sat huddled back between some trees. He seemed nervous and kept scanning the growing crowd, like he was looking for someone.
The guards at the gate were trying to get everyone to back away.
"Maybe he's a new student," I said. "Vodum sent two new recruits yesterday."
"Or maybe this is the minion that Dr. Pravus had to give us," Boris said.
"Why would he give us one of his best minions?" Eloni said. "He's probably going to give us that dorky human kid. You know, the one on their tackle three-ball team who never gets in the game and just sits on the bench?"
"Someone should get Janet," I said. "I bet she could get him to do whatever she wants."
Rufus knocked into me from behind. "Why don't you quit obsessing over Janet, Runt. She thinks you're lame."
"Runt's right, though," Eloni said. "Janet could talk to that gorilla."
"No, she couldn't," Rufus said. "She's not here. She went home because of a family emergency."
"Do you know what happened?" I asked.
"Of course I do," Rufus said. "And it's none of your business."
I had my theory about Janet. I was pretty sure she was a spy. There were just too many things about her that didn't add up. She claimed to be part-siren, but she couldn't sing. She'd avoided the Fashion Show when all the siren mothers came to visit, and none of them had asked about her. Clearly she was just pretending to be a siren. Plus, she'd acted very suspiciously in the capital during our field trip. I saw her talking to a very tall man in the library there, but she wouldn't tell me who he was.
And she knew I was a prince.
Security showed up, followed by Mr. Everest, the dean of students, who herded us away from the gate. Since I was close to the school's perimeter path, I decided to follow it to the swamp and see if I could rustle up some wayward trees.
