The Prince and the Blight E-Book

Kathryn Butler

• Herausgeber: Crossway
• Kategorie: Für Kinder und Jugendliche
• Serie: The Dream Keeper Saga
• Sprache: Englisch

Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2022

Beschreibung

An Adventure Novel for Middle-Grade Readers Steeped in Magic, Mystery, and Glimmers of Hope—Book 2 in the Dream Keeper Saga It's been a month since 12-year-old Lily McKinley was whisked away to the Somnium Realm to rescue her father, and although she's overjoyed to have him home, she can't leave the magical world behind. The glowing stone pendant that transported her is now bringing strange creatures to life against her will, with her paper-mache pterodactyl and even scrambled eggs suddenly moving about on their own. Lily tries to pretend that everything is normal, but when her friend Cedric the dragon appears to tell her that an illness has taken over the kingdom, troubling questions haunt her. Where is Prince Pax? If he can save the Somnium Realm like he did before, why won't he stop the blight? Lily and her friends must return to Castle Iridyll to find out. In this sequel to The Dragon and the Stone, Kathryn Butler takes middle-grade readers on an unforgettable adventure that mixes fantasy with biblical concepts. As young readers join Lily's exciting quest, they'll explore what it means to trust in God's faithfulness, even when he feels distant. - Ideal for Middle-Grade Readers and Families: Includes kids' favorite fantasy and adventure elements with imaginative new characters and settings they'll love - Christian Themes: This exciting story invites readers into deep conversations about the gospel and theological issues including hope, evil, and salvation - Book 2 in the Dream Keeper Saga by Kathryn Butler

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“The stakes are high when Lily is called back to the realm of dreams, and her questions and fears will feel surprisingly true to life for young readers. Fortunately, so will the magic. A worthy companion to the first adventure!”

James D. Witmer, Managing Editor, StoryWarren.com; author, A Year in the Big Old Garden, Beside the Pond, and The Strange New Dog

“Though Lily returns to the Realm and finds it marred by darkness, her story is an adventure of the best and brightest kind. Beautiful, honest, redemptive, and true, this book is sure to win a spot in the hearts of those who love the Chronicles of Narnia and the Wingfeather Saga. I can’t wait to see where Kathryn Butler steers her series next!”

Théa Rosenburg, blogger, Little Book, Big Story

“My favorite thirty minutes of every day are the moments before bed when I gather with my sons to read great stories. Our hearts connect as our imaginations are unlocked by the characters and adventures described on each page. Kathryn Butler’s excellent book, The Prince and the Blight, is a book we will read together again and again. Riveting storytelling meets meaningful themes in this treasure. Make room on your bookshelf. Your family will love—and grow through—this fantastical series.”

Erin Davis, writer; Bible teacher; mom of four

“What an exciting continuation of the Dream Keeper Saga! The plot twists and layers of character development will keep your kids thinking and guessing. Like the first installment in this series, The Prince and the Blight carries on with engaging readers in creative imagination and spiritual depth.”

Gloria Furman, author, Alive in Him and Labor with Hope

“Lily and Cedric were too compelling for one story alone. And Pax! What a joy to have this second book and see them now face a threat so relevant in our times. Kathryn Butler wins our trust with her characters, engaging turns, and deeply Christian themes. I’m excited to add the Dream Keeper Saga to our family canon.”

David Mathis, Senior Teacher and Executive Editor, desiringGod.org; Pastor, Cities Church, Saint Paul, Minnesota; author, Habits of Grace

The Prince and the Blight

The Prince and the Blight

Kathryn Butler

The Prince and the Blight

Copyright © 2022 by Kathryn Butler

Published by Crossway1300 Crescent StreetWheaton, Illinois 60187

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopy, recording, or otherwise, without the prior permission of the publisher, except as provided for by USA copyright law. Crossway® is a registered trademark in the United States of America.

Published in association with the literary agency of Wolgemuth & Associates

Cover design: Studio Muti

Interior illustrations by Jordan Eskovitz

First printing 2022

Printed in the United States of America

Trade paperback ISBN: 978-1-4335-7951-6 ePub ISBN: 978-1-4335-7954-7 PDF ISBN: 978-1-4335-7952-3 Mobipocket ISBN: 978-1-4335-7953-0

Names: Butler, Kathryn, 1980– author.

Title: The prince and the blight / Kathryn Butler.

Description: Wheaton, Illinois : Crossway, [2022] | Series: The dream keeper saga ; book 2 | Summary: Twelve-year-old Lily is pulled back into the Realm, together with Adam and Keisha, because the dreamworld is being threatened by the blight, and her friends there need her help—but first she has to discover its origin, a quest that will not be easy, or safe.

Identifiers: LCCN 2021047644 (print) | LCCN 2021047645 (ebook) | ISBN 9781433579516 (trade paperback) | ISBN 9781433579523 (pdf) | ISBN 9781433579530 (nook edition) | ISBN 9781433579547 (epub)

Subjects: LCSH: Magic—Juvenile fiction. | Imaginary places—Juvenile fiction. | Diseases—Juvenile fiction. | Quests (Expeditions)—Juvenile fiction. | Friendship—Juvenile fiction. | Adventure stories. | CYAC: Magic—Fiction. | Imaginary places—Fiction. | Diseases—Fiction. | Friendship—Fiction. | Adventure and adventurers—Fiction. | Fantasy. | LCGFT: Fantasy fiction. | Action and adventure fiction.

Classification: LCC PZ7.1.B8935 Pr 2022 (print) | LCC PZ7.1.B8935 (ebook) | DDC 813.6 [Fic]—dc23

LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2021047644

LC ebook record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2021047645

Crossway is a publishing ministry of Good News Publishers.

2022-05-25 11:18:18 AM

To Jack and Christie again.

The adventure continues . . .

Contents

  Map

1  The Pterodactyl

2  Home

3  Jailbreak!

4  The Dragon in the Kitchen

5  Back to the Realm

6  Lost in the Storm

7  The Bear

8  Muzzytown

9  The Flying Emerald

10  The Voyage Begins

11  Shipwrecked

12  Castle Iridyll

13  The Tenth Spire

14  The Apprenticeship

15  Scallywag

16  Merlin

17  The New Captain

18  Northward

19  Ash Canyon

20  The Burning Valley

21  Nightshade

22  The Sea of Oblivion

23  The Sovran Merrow

24  A Light in the Darkness

25  The Prince

26  The Draught

27  The Promise

28  Endings and Beginnings

Chapter 1

The Pterodactyl

This stuff is like ogre slobber.

Lily screwed up her face at the paper-mache paste dripping from her brush, and cast a doubtful glance at the mess of newsprint that slouched on the art bench before her. She’d crumpled old advice columns into a lopsided pterodactyl, but the result fell far short from the vision in her mind. She slopped another brushful of paste and wrinkled her nose. I actually wouldn’t mind seeing an ogre right now, if it meant I could be back in the Realm, Lily thought. At least, a friendly one. Is there any such thing as a friendly ogre?

A wadded up gum wrapper thunked Lily in the back of the head. She tried to ignore the kids snickering behind her and the snapping of gum that she knew belonged to Amanda Weatherby, who’d held a grudge against Lily ever since she’d accidentally spilled mac ’n’ cheese all over her dress in second grade (to be fair, it was picture day). Without looking, Lily knew Amanda smirked at her, with her head cocked to one side and with a sticky thread of gum wound around a single finger. Evan Kim would be sitting next to Amanda, elbowing her and joking about her great shot.

Lily bit her lip and tried not to let their whispers bother her. She glopped another mound of glue, and the pterodactyl’s right wing sagged beneath the weight. Finally she threw down her brush in defeat. This feels pointless.I’ve made flames come to life, but I can’t manage a pile of newspaper. She narrowed her eyes and studied the muddle. I guess that corner does look like its jaws. Maybe it doesn’t look quite so bad?

“What do you think?” she asked the pterodactyl aloud.

In response, the pterodactyl stretched its wings, flapped twice, and squawked.

Lily’s heart leapt. She didn’t have to look down to know that the stone fragment in her pocket gleamed its brilliant, blue-white light. She reached for the pterodactyl with both hands, but with a few wing beats the reptile evaded her grasp and swept scraps of newspaper onto the floor. Lily caught the creature by the neck and shoved it, still gooey with paste, into the folds of her cardigan, then wrapped her arms around her abdomen in a mighty hug. She teetered as the pterodactyl thrashed underneath her sweater, and she barely kept her balance when she spun around to flee out the door.

She came face to face with Keisha Reynolds. Keisha stared at Lily, a single beaded braid dangling near one eye. Her gaping mouth told Lily that she’d seen everything: every flying dollop of paste, every flap of the pterodactyl’s wings.

Lily searched her mind for something to say, but nothing could explain away the monster wriggling beneath her sweater. When the pterodactyl squawked again, Lily ran for the door. She flew past benches of students who alternated between dabbing paint and flicking glue at each other. No one look at me, she pleaded. Please, no one else look. Then the pterodactyl bit her arm. Lily gasped, tripped, and stumbled toward the doorway, and all eyes turned toward her.

“Lily! Where are you going?”

Lily froze, then closed her eyes. She wrapped her arms tighter around her middle and prayed the pterodactyl wouldn’t writhe or screech as she turned around.

To her horror, Keisha spoke up. “Ms. Gilson, she’s—”

“I’ve got a stomachache,” Lily blurted, straining to hide the shakiness in her voice. “I need to go to the nurse’s office.”

The art teacher raised an eyebrow. “A stomachache? Again?”

“Yeah.” Lily gritted her teeth against a sticky poke in her gut. “I think I’m coming down with something.”

Ms. Gilson twisted her maroon lips into a pincushion, and Lily feared she’d been caught. How am I going to get out of this one? she thought.

To her relief, after a moment Ms. Gilson relaxed her mouth and nodded. “Okay, Lily. School’s almost over anyway. Feel better, all right? And get checked out so this doesn’t keep happening. Change your diet, or something?”

Still clutching the pterodactyl in a gooey bundle, Lily raced from the room, past the nurses’ station, and out the school building. She ran several blocks until she reached the trail through the forest, the way she’d memorized years ago. She ducked in among the trees and didn’t realize until the cool shadows from the canopy touched her skin that she’d been holding her breath.

The pterodactyl whined as Lily leapt over Silverstream and slipped on the muddy bank. She rounded the boulders, and her aching arms, still held tight around her middle, threatened to loosen like rubber bands stretched to the breaking point. The pterodactyl squawked and thrashed, as if it could sense her weariness.

Finally, she reached the Fortress. The clearing still smelled of lumbered pine and sawdust, relics from her father’s efforts a month before to rebuild the burnt treehouse. Lily collapsed to her knees and relaxed her arms, and the pterodactyl burst free and flapped its wings in panic. It stirred up spirals of leaves that rolled like tumbleweed over the dewy earth, but to Lily’s relief it didn’t escape. Although her arms hung limp at her sides, some glue had dried and the creature, fight as it may, stuck to the inside of her sweater.

Lily closed her eyes as the fanning of the pterodactyl’s wings lapped her face. In the colors that danced through her eyelids, she discerned flecks of sunset, fireworks, the crackle of a fire. For an instant she pretended that she was back at the foot of the mountains in the Realm, with Cedric stepping out into the sunlight, his eyes the same but everything else glittering and new.

“You’ve got to be kidding me!”

Lily opened one eye. Adam stood over her, his arms folded across his chest. He grabbed the pterodactyl by its awkward neck, and it squealed and flapped in protest. “Seriously Lily? Another one? This has got to stop!”

“Just help me with her, please.” Lily pried the pterodactyl from the fibers of her sweater, and its wings promptly slapped Adam in the face. Adam held the creature at arm’s length and used his free hand to wipe a blob of glue from his forehead. He inadvertently smeared the paste into his cowlick, which stood upright like the comb of a rooster.

“Sheila, stop fighting!” Lily scolded.

“Sheila?” Adam said, scrunching his face. “Sheila the pterodactyl?”

Lily shrugged. “It was the first thing I could think of.”

“With a name like that, she should be mad.”

“Hey. Look who’s talking. You named the scrambled eggs Glorf.”

“No, you named him. I only made a suggestion.” With Sheila still flapping in one hand, Adam struggled up the rope ladder, and Lily followed behind him. Rigel swooped down from his perch on the Fortress roof, and together they fiddled with his handiwork: a silver net he’d draped over the treehouse to secure its occupants.

“Your knots are super tight, Rigel,” Lily said, unraveling the cords to free the doorway. After tugging at a few strands that scratched her fingers, she loosened the netting and then shoved the wooden door open.

The scent of new wood wafted toward them, and pine shavings clung to their sneakers as they stepped inside. Bizarre creatures teemed throughout the room, languished on shelves, and lined the walls from top to bottom. A pile of mutant scrambled eggs (that would be Glorf) had slithered atop Lily’s painting set, and now noisily munched some paintbrush bristles. Serpentine shoelaces coiled on the floor and dozed in a patch of sunlight. Beside the shoelaces, a rabbit in a top hat reclined on the floor, one foot lazily draped over the other as he perused an old copy of National Geographic. A fairy floated about the room like a tuft of milkweed silk, and an armadillo with horned-rimmed spectacles rummaged through a box of crackers. After much snuffling, he wedged his head into the box and waddled over to Lily for help.

Lily crouched down to free the armadillo, then Adam, still struggling after ascending the ladder, pushed Sheila the pterodactyl through the door. She flapped a few times, circled the crowd, perched on a coat hook, and cocked her head as if to say, “Really? This is it?”

Lily shrugged. “I’m sorry. I know it’s not home for you.”

“So, do we feed them now?” Adam asked. “I can’t stay long, I’ve got baseball practice.”

“Yeah, sounds good. Did you bring them?”

“Yeah.” Adam swung his backpack to the floor. “But we need to figure out a better solution. I only have a few more s’mores bars left to trade. Plus, I’m getting a reputation as a food hog.”

“Thanks, Adam. I wish they all liked something else, but they’re pretty picky.”

“Picky? Glorf is eating your paintbrushes.”

Lily giggled, and Adam shook his head and pulled a packet of brown paper from the knapsack. He opened the package to reveal a mound of tater tots, all of them procured during trades in the cafeteria. The heap was a sad little offering—half of them were smooshed, the other half soggy, and all of them were cold—but at the first glimpse of them the entire group of creatures pounced, clambering for each morsel and knocking Adam to the floor in their fervor for gummy potato goodness. Lily laughed, then dropped to her knees beside him and pulled a water bottle from her bag. When she unscrewed the cap of her bottle, a shrub in the shape of a dog bounded over to lap up a drink, and a mouse with wings soon joined it. Lily smiled at them and stroked the mouse between its ears with her index finger.

“Lily, I wasn’t kidding about what I said earlier. This really has to stop.”

Lily’s smile faded. “You told me that yesterday.”

“And the day before. And now you’ve added a pterodactyl to the bunch.”

Sheila squawked in protest.

“You know I didn’t do it on purpose,” Lily said. “It just keeps . . . happening. I try to control it, but every time the stone starts glowing I can’t stop it. It’s like it has a mind of its own all of a sudden.”

“I get that. But how much longer do you think we can hide all these guys? Especially if you keep making more? It’s only a matter of time before someone else sees these things.” He glanced up at the pterodactyl, who jeered like a blue jay, circled to the floor, and swiped a tater tot from the rabbit in the top hat. In response, the rabbit jumped to his feet, removed his hat, and swatted Sheila over the head with it.

“Actually . . .” she glanced at Adam anxiously, “someone already has.”

“What? What do you mean, somebody has? Who?”

“Keisha Reynolds.”

“Who’s that?”

“She’s new. She moved here a few weeks ago, I think. She’s super smart. Anyway, she was sitting right next to me when Sheila came to life.”

“What did you do? What did you say?”

“Nothing! It was in the middle of art class, what could I do? I hid Sheila and I got out.”

“Great. This is just great.” Adam raked his hands through his hair, then hugged his knees to his chest.

“I don’t think we should panic about it,” said Lily. “I’ll just talk to her tomorrow.”

“And say what, exactly?”

“I don’t know, Adam. I’ll think of something. What else can we do?”

“You can tell your dad.”

Lily didn’t answer. A lump lodged in her throat.

“You’ve said you could trust your dad with anything. I don’t understand why you don’t ask him for help with this. I mean, he knows about that soothstone better than anybody. Wouldn’t he be able to figure out something?”

“Maybe. Probably.”

“Then why not tell him?”

Lily stood up. She tried to coax Sheila from the corner where she’d retreated, but the pterodactyl merely blinked at her. “He doesn’t talk about the Realm anymore. Not even when it’s just us. It’s almost like he wants to forget all about it.”

“Wants to forget it? I know the feeling.”

“You can’t mean that.”

“Sure I do.”

“Adam, you mean you’d never want to go back?”

“Nope.”

“Not even for just a little while? To see Cedric?”

“Cedric hated me.”

“That’s not true.”

“He called me a maggot!”

“That was before he got to know you. And let’s be honest, at that moment, you kind of deserved it.”

“Lily, we barely got out of the Realm alive the first time. Why would you want to go back and risk your life all over again?”

Lily sat cross-legged on the floor, face to face with Adam. She pulled the soothstone fragment from her pocket and turned it in her fingers. One side of the stone, smooth and polished, still retained the pale wisps she remembered, like clouds frozen in the rock. When she flipped it over, however, she found the opposite surface cracked, and its edge charred and warped from its encounter with Eymah. “I hate keeping this from my dad,” she said. “I mean, I really hate it. But if I tell him, he’s going to ask me to give him the stone, and then I’ll never get back to the Realm again.”

Adam pointed to the burnt edge. “Would that really be such a bad thing? You almost died, like, thirty-seven times. Plus, your dad is home now.”

Adam stared into the distance, and Lily could tell his mind was whirring. “Did your dad come for Kirsty’s birthday?” she asked.

Adam winced, as if he’d swallowed something sour. “Nope. That’s why I made all the stupid s’mores bars. I was trying to cheer her up.”

Lily tugged at her shoelaces. “I’m sorry, Adam.”

He shrugged. “I just don’t get why you’d want to go back, when your dad is here. He’s home.”

“That’s just the thing. None of this feels like home. My family does, but as soon as I leave them, it’s like—I don’t know. Like I just don’t belong.” She looked up at him. “Do you ever feel that way?”

“Sure. I think everyone does, sometimes.” Adam held out a crumb of tater tot to the winged mouse. “But why would the Realm be any different?”

“All the ways I goof up here, seemed to—I dunno—actually mean something there. Like, it was a good thing to have my head in the clouds all the time.”

“But Pax said you didn’t belong there anymore, remember? He’s the one who sent you back.”

“Maybe he didn’t know. He thought Eymah destroyed all the soothstones, and maybe he didn’t realize I still had a piece of one.”

“I don’t know much about anything, but after seeing the stuff he did, I’m pretty sure he knew.”

Reluctantly, Lily nodded. She remembered how Pax had melted away their fear in the Petrified Forest and lit their path to guide them out. He’d banished Eymah to the fiery depths, and once the Catacombs crumbled, Pax made everything new. Adam was right.

And yet, she wondered, why wouldn’t Pax want her to stay? If he knew she still had a soothstone, why would he send her back with it?

“Anyway, I’ve gotta go,” Adam said, clambering to his feet. “Coach is gonna kill me if I’m late again.”

“You’ve been late?”

“Yeah. Tons.”

“Why?”

He raised his eyebrows. “Can you take a guess?”

Lily smirked, then packed up her own things and followed him out of the treehouse. Rigel lashed the doorway with more cords, and she kissed the top of his silky head, then waved to Adam.

Lost in her thoughts as she headed for home, Lily didn’t hear the gigantic burp that emanated from the treehouse window, or the screech of alarm that followed.

Chapter 2

Home

Lily tripped on the front stoop when she arrived home. She stood on her toes to check herself in the entryway mirror and tugged a lingering blob of glue—and with it, a clump of dark strands—from her hair.

Gran sat in her chair and watched a colorized episode of I Love Lucy, and she flashed Lily a smile at the touch of her shoulder. “This is a good one!” Gran said, pointing at the screen. Lily hugged her, then headed to the kitchen to see her mom.

She found her leaning over a pot, a tendril of hair pulled loose from her bun, as it always had when she’d soothed Lily through dozens of scraped knees. She still wore her scrubs from her day shift at work, turquoise this time, like she used to wear.

“Hey there!” She wrapped Lily in a one-armed hug, with her right hand still clutching a wooden spoon that dripped curry sauce. The scent triggered Lily’s memory of the odd-tasting berries Cedric had picked for her. “How was your day?” her mom asked. “Anything fun happen?”

“Not really,” Lily said with a shrug. She thought of Sheila, and tried not to appear uncomfortable.

“Well, my day was fun. I booked our cabin in the mountains for July. Dad says he can take two weeks off of work. Can you imagine? Two whole weeks, just for us? We’ll go hiking every day, and kayaking, and maybe we can even convince you to do some fishing?” She shot Lily a wry smile.

“Sure, mom. That sounds great. As long as Dad cleans the fish.”

“Of course. You’ll be in charge of marshmallows, as long as you promise not to barbecue them this time.”

“Hey, that wasn’t my fault!”

Her mom laughed. “It will be just like old times.” Lily hugged her, holding on a moment too long. “Go, set the table,” her mom said, wiping away tears. “Dad will be home soon.”

Over dinner, Lily’s dad regaled them with stories. He recounted the time a black bear lumbered onto the trail while he was hiking, and how it stomped and huffed to warn him away. Then he told about the time he grounded a sailboat in a cove off the coast of Maine and watched lobsters scuttling across the ocean floor. And then, of course, there was the tragic saga of how he and his little sister tried to teach their pet gerbil to fly. With each story, Lily’s mom burst into laughter, placed a hand on his arm, and interrupted him to add a detail he’d missed. Lily hung upon their every word and tried to memorize each moment.

Yet in the quiet of her room, once clean dishes stocked the cupboards and the laughter had quieted, Lily sat on her bed, turned the stone fragment in her palm, and longed for different stories. Her dad had shared great tales that night, but she knew he had so many more. For years he’d summoned fantastic creatures and shepherded the dreams of men. He knew enough fairy tales—all of them true!—to fill an entire anthology, but since they’d returned he’d not said a single word about the Realm.

A knock sounded on the door, and Lily jumped. She hid the stone in the pocket of her pajamas and tried to suppress the flush that crept over her face.

“Hey, Scout.” Her dad poked his head in, then sat beside her bed and wrapped her in a bear hug. Lily squeezed her eyes shut and tried to focus on his embrace, but her questions still nagged her.

“I love you, Lily Bean,” he said, pulling away and tousling her hair. “You have a good night, okay?”

“Thanks, Dad. I love you too.”

He rose and placed a hand on the doorknob, but Lily called him back. “Dad? Um, can you . . . can you please sing to me?”

“Sing? Yeah, sure.” He sat on the foot of her bed, and then cleared his throat. “Yes, we have no bananas—”

“No, Dad! That’s not what I mean!”

“All right, all right. How about a hymn? ‘Amazing Grace’?”

“Actually, can you please sing like you used to? About the Cave of Lights?”

His face fell. “I don’t think so, Lily.”

“Why not?”

He studied her for a long moment. When he finally spoke, his face was hard, set like stone. “Because we need to move on.”

“Why? Why don’t you ever want to talk about the Realm? For years you’d sing to me about it and tell me stories, and I had no idea it was a real place. Now I’ve been there, and actually understand it, but you won’t talk about it.”

He leaned forward with his elbows on his knees and rubbed his forehead, just as Lily was prone to do. “There’s a reason Toggybiffle never commissioned me as a guardian,” he finally said. “I loved my work as a steward. Dreams reflect something of who we are, something precious.” He sat up, and when he fixed her in his gaze, the gravity in his eyes unnerved her. “But mankind is also capable of terrible evil, Lily. Unspeakable evil. There are things I witnessed in the Catacombs that I wish I’d never seen, and I’m trying to forget them.” He grasped her hand. “I almost lost you both. Do you realize that? It’s my job to take care of you and your mom, and I can’t put you at risk again. I can’t take that chance.”

Lily reached into her pocket and worried the stone with her fingers. “But Dad, Eymah and the shrouds are gone now. Pax beat them. It should be safe.”

“We don’t know that.”

“Don’t you think Pax would protect us?”

“Of course he would, but that still doesn’t mean we should be reckless. Don’t forget that he’s the one who sent us back.”

“Maybe he made a mistake about that.”

He shook his head. “Pax is more wise than you and I could ever imagine. He doesn’t make mistakes.”

“Maybe we misunderstood him, then. What if he didn’t mean for us to stay away forever?”

“Lily, what is this about? Why are you suddenly so upset?”

“Maybe all the stones aren’t gone.” Lily’s heart quickened. She withdrew the stone from her pocket, but still hid it within her enclosed fist. Just tell him, she thought.

“That’s unlikely. Yours was the last, Lily. And you saw what happened to it.”

“But what if it wasn’t completely destroyed? What if there was a piece left? Then, couldn’t we get back?”

“Theoretically, sure. But it wouldn’t be the right thing. Pax told us to return home. He didn’t tell us to watch for a way to get in through the back door.”

Lily slid the stone back into her pocket and bit the inside of her lip to keep it from quivering.

“Let it go, Lily Bean,” he said, squeezing her shoulder. “We’re all together now. That’s more important than having adventures.” He kissed her on the forehead, and then, with a last tousle of her hair, stepped out.

Lily stared at the ceiling. As night crept into her room, thoughts spiraled and tangled in her mind: dragons and paper-mache, tater tots and shrouds writhing in smoke. A treehouse full of creatures that she didn’t know how to manage. Eventually, after what seemed like hours, she drifted into a fitful sleep.

A tapping on the window woke her. She blinked several times, looked at the clock, and realized that her alarm wouldn’t go off for another hour. Outside, the first rays of dawn cast the street in a dusty rose light.

Another tap. Lily blinked again and saw Rigel hovering outside her window, rapping the glass with his beak. He flitted back and forth frantically, scattering a trail of silver dust behind him.

Something was wrong.

Chapter 3

Jailbreak!

Lily cracked open the window, and the star kestrel dashed in and seized her collar in his beak.

“Rigel, what is it? Is it the Fortress?”

With a flurry of wingbeats, Rigel dragged her to the window and urged her out into the morning air.

“Okay, hold on, hold on, I’m coming. Just let me get dressed.”

Rigel grabbed her sleeve and tugged. When she shrugged him off and searched the floor for a pair of jeans, he yanked a clump of her hair.

“Ow! Hey! I’m coming, just let me get dressed! I can’t go out like this!”

Rigel screeched again.

“Okay, okay. I get it. I’m coming.” Lily tugged on her sneakers and took a last, reluctant glance around her room. She was wearing purple fleece pajamas adorned with panda bears. She cringed at the thought of the insults she’d hear if anyone at school glimpsed her.

Rigel dashed out the open window, then trilled for Lily to follow. She creaked the window open and tumbled out into the bushes with the grace and poise of a fish flopping on the shore. Lily rolled into a holly bush, and grimaced as the leaves scratched her face.

By the time she brushed the dirt and stray weeds from her pajamas, Rigel had already flown down the street. Although he’d weathered shrouds and pirate ships, the Desert of the Forgotten and the Petrified Forest, Lily couldn’t remember a time when she’d seen him so frantic. She squinted against the glare of the early sun as it poured between treetops and bathed her neighbors’ houses in rose gold. For a second time, she hoped that no bleary-eyed adult holding a cup of coffee, or child wearily munching a bowl of soggy cereal, saw her as she raced down the street in her purple panda splendor.

She followed Rigel into the woods. The chill of night still lingered in the forest, turning her breath into clouds, but as she ran sweat slicked her hair. She could no longer see Rigel, and as she searched the trees for a silver flicker of his wings, her worries churned up. What happened? she wondered with dread. Is someone hurt?

As she crossed the stream, she heard Rigel cry out again. She rounded the boulders, and her chest tightened from the cold air. When she finally reached the Fortress, she bent over at the waist, propped her hands on her knees, and paused to catch her breath. Rigel shrieked yet again, and Lily looked up.

Her heart sank.

Rigel’s netting was torn to shreds, and it drooped from the treehouse like hanging moss. The new wooden door, now bashed and broken, clung to the frame by a single hinge.

They’re gone.

“Oh no! Rigel, are there any still inside?” The kestrel shook his head. “How did this happen? What did this?” she asked.

Rigel darted into the abandoned house, then reappeared with something clutched in his talons. He hovered over Lily and dropped the items into her open hands. At first, they seemed to be ordinary sticks, but on a closer look Lily realized they were polished. They were her paintbrushes, their bristles chewed down to nubs.

“Glorf?” She surveyed the destruction—the ripped silver netting, the door splintered and dangling. “But that’s impossible! He couldn’t have done all this!” Glorf was only the size of her palm. How could he cause such damage?

A rustle broke the quiet of the woods, and Lily turned to see a mound rise and shift beneath the leaves, like a wave on the forest floor. She leapt for it, and extracted the armadillo, who waved his stubby limbs, squeaked, and with his forelimbs fumbled to straighten his horn-rimmed spectacles.

“Rigel, you have to help me. I’ll try to catch them, but you need to make a net to hold them. At least until we fix the door.”

Rigel trilled his approval, then pirouetted into the air, and a mesh of silver floated down. While he worked, Lily held the armadillo beneath one arm as if he was a football, and spun around in search of more creatures among the leaves.

She discovered the shrub-dog frozen by a tree, masquerading as an actual bush. Lily grasped it by the scruff, and hauled it, along with the armadillo still wriggling in the crook of her elbow, into the net Rigel held suspended for her. The dog whimpered and the armadillo grunted as she struggled to tie the net shut, and a pang of guilt stabbed Lily’s chest. “I’m sorry,” she said, reaching a finger through the netting to scratch behind the dog’s ear. “We’ll get you back into the house as soon as we can, I promise.”

Another rustle betrayed the location of the shoelaces, slithering from beneath the leaf litter to sun themselves on a rock. Then, with a voice like tinkling wind chimes, the fairy hovered at Lily’s ear and reprimanded her for the disaster. Lily cupped the fairy between her palms and eased her into the net, then did the same with the serpentine laces.

Lily scanned the ground, but could discern neither movement nor trail of any other creature. She searched the treetops and found Sheila perched high up in an old maple tree, her head tilted in amusement. Lily pleaded with her to come down, but Sheila just flapped her sharp-tipped wings, bobbed her head, and squawked. With a groan, Lily climbed up a few branches and swiped at the pterodactyl, but Sheila flew out of reach, leaving Lily to lose her balance and narrowly escape a plummet to the ground below.

“I do not think she will come down. Unless, of course, you persuade her, which I also think you will not do.”

The voice, with a thick French accent, startled Lily. She turned to see the rabbit sitting on a rock, his back against a tree, reading the same copy of National Geographic that had so preoccupied him the day before. “Phillippe? You—you can talk?”

“Oui,” he said. He licked his paw and flipped another page. “The Great Barrier Reef, it is superb. Do you know it is home to over a thousand species of fish? Une mille!”

“Why haven’t you said anything before?”

“You gave me no raison.”

“What? What do raisins have to do with it?”

Phillippe rolled his eyes, and cleared his throat. “Je suis désolé. No, not ‘raaaay-zins.’ Raison. No, um, what you say, purpose.”

“Oh . . . you mean reason.”

“Oui, reeez-on.”

Lily shut her eyes and shook her head. This is crazy. I’m having an argument with a talking rabbit. “Okay, okay. Now that you’re speaking—have you seen any of the others? Glorf, or Mortimer?”

He flipped another page. “The turtle, he went to the river. The big sloppy person, he went that way.” He lazily pointed a paw past Silverstream, toward the trail.

“Big sloppy person?”

“You know. The person who broke the door.”

“Glorf? He’s big now?”

Phillippe flipped another page, yawned, and didn’t answer. Lily shook her head again, and wondered why none of these new creatures bothered to listen to her.

She set off toward the stream on her own and found the magenta turtle half-buried in mud as he slunk toward the water. He snapped his jaws at her, but after a struggle she stuffed him into the net along with the others. Then, with Rigel leading her, she searched the ground, the rocks, even the treetops for some sign of Glorf. She raced through the forest, across Silverstream, past the boulders, and finally along the trail leading out of the woods.

She found no trace of him.

Lily lingered beside a tree and wondered what to do. Dawn had bloomed into full morning. The school was just a block away, and by this hour it would be swarming with kids. They’d be loitering in the schoolyard, trudging into the building, and staring out the school bus windows with their cheeks pressed to the panes. Lily glanced down at her panda pajamas, the cuffs of her pants now dingy with mud, and hesitated in the safety of the trees.

Then, Rigel screeched. He hovered over a smudge on the sidewalk, wet like a slick of oil. Lily stooped down. It’s greasy, she thought. Warily, she stretched out a single finger to touch the stuff, and sniffed it.

Butter.

Glorf had oozed a trail of butter, just like a snail leaving a path of slime in its wake. Lily followed the trail along the sidewalk. Her pace quickened as the splotches veered into the grass, then reappeared ten feet down the sidewalk. They dove into a storm drain, where Glorf must have paused to sample some grime from the grate, then dashed across the street, zigzagged, curlicued, and straightened again. She followed the marks around the corner, then stopped dead in her tracks. Oh no.

The path of butter led straight to the front entrance of the school.

“Rigel, you need to stay out here,” Lily said, mustering her resolve for the fiasco about to unfold. Rigel chirruped in protest, but Lily pressed him. “If someone sees you, who knows what will happen. They might take you away.” Rigel nuzzled her cheek, and then, with his head bowed, flew back toward the forest.

Lily turned toward the school, the grounds of which now teemed with kids. She drew a deep breath, then lowered her head and ran through the schoolyard.

The comments came swiftly.

“Check it out! Do you see this?”

“Ha! Nice jammies, Silly Lily!”

“Looks like someone forgot to get dressed this morning.”

“I told you! She belongs in kindergarten!”

Lily’s face grew hot, and she struggled to focus on the trail before her. She weaved through the crowd, accidentally bumped a third-grader in the shoulder, and ignored the reprimand of a teacher. When she edged into the lobby, she gasped at the sudden pull of a hand on her arm.

“Lily, what’s wrong?” Adam said. “What’s going on?”

“Jailbreak,” she whispered.

The color drained from Adam’s face, and without another word he followed her. The trail of butter snaked down the main corridor, dipped into and then out of the music room, and finally disappeared through the double doors of the cafeteria. Lily shoved open the doors and traced the path between chairs, over a few tables, and into the kitchen. When she heard the clang of pans, Lily groaned with dismay.

“We’ve got to get him out of there,” she told Adam. “Someone’s going to see him!”

“What’s he doing in there, anyway?”

“I have no idea.”

A bang interrupted them. Lily and Adam wheeled about to see Keisha standing at the door, her braids pulled smartly into a knot. She held a notebook at the ready, one in which Lily had seen her scribbling while she sat alone at a lunch table day after day, with her nose just inches from the paper.

“I know you guys are up to something,” Keisha said. “And I want in on it.”

Adam groaned. “I don’t know who you are, but we have real stuff to deal with right now, okay?”

Keisha pointed at Lily. “She made a paper pterodactyl come to life yesterday. I know. I saw it.”

“You’re crazy,” Adam said.

“Not about this, I’m not! I’ve seen a lot of stuff, but nothing like that before. I want answers.”

“We don’t have time for this!”

“Okay, no problem.” Keisha opened her notebook, licked a finger, and flipped to a clean page. She pulled a pencil from her hair knot. “You do your thing. I’ll just observe.”

“What? Observe? Why?”

“I’m interested.”

Adam groaned. “Look, we can’t get you involved. It’s—it’s top secret.”

“Ooh, like espionage?”

“Espy-a-what?”

Lily ignored them and followed Glorf’s trail into the kitchen. She inched into the doorway and scooted against the wall to avoid the eyes of any of the employees inside. Steam billowed from the back of the kitchen. Dishes clinked. And in the serving line, deep within a vat of tater tots, Glorf gobbled and slurped.

Adam joined her, and at the sight of Glorf his jaw dropped. The creature had swelled from a clump of scrambled eggs the size of Lily’s hand, to a jiggling, wriggling blob as large as a bear cub.

“What happened? How’d he get so big?” Adam asked.

“Maybe there was something on the brushes he ate?” said Lily. “Mom always says I don’t clean them well.”

“So, what now?”

“Maybe he’ll come if I call him.”

“None of these guys come when you call them.”

“Rigel does.”

“Yeah, but he’s different. He’s from the Realm. These other guys, they don’t listen.”

An off-key rendition of “The Way You Look Tonight” interrupted them. One of the staff, her hair bunched up in a net, carried a tray to a counter, whipped out a pizza slicer, and proceeded to carve up another dish.

It was a tray of scrambled eggs, cooked into a sheet.

Glorf paused from his munching, a few crumbs of tater tot clinging to him. He swiveled to look at the woman, and a pause ensued, during which both Adam and Lily held their breath. Then, to their horror, Glorf quivered, growled . . . and pounced.

He flew through the air and landed squarely on the woman’s back, jiggling upon impact. She screamed, flailed her arms, and knocked the tray of eggs to the floor. The sight of Glorf’s kin broken and smeared on the ground enraged him even more, and with an angry gurgle he engulfed the woman’s hair.