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Chapter Twenty Five

“So then I just left him there,” I said, wilting like a blue-headed dandelion under a shower of weedkiller. “I even told Opisthia he wasn’t my friend.”

“Cantankerous butterflies always get upset tummies.”

The floor of the Jiggly Trombone rose and fell beneath me like the world’s lamest trampoline. We were three hours into our journey, and Jah Beryge had long since vanished behind us. Ethan sat nearby with his back against the ship's wall, doodling in a notebook he'd found somewhere. Jade was keeping watch in that bucket thing ships have up above their masts (I told you I wasn't going to be using fancy sailor talk) but given how we were in the middle of the freaking ocean, there wasn't much to report. I had tried keeping watch from the pointy bit on the front of the boat as well, but the monotonous scenery had provided precious little to keep my imagination from running wild, and I’d given up pretty quickly. Rather than agonize over what Ichabod may or may not have been doing to my poor family, I’d decided to pop a squat next to Captain Kook and see what I could learn.

Fifteen minutes later, he had become my new therapist. What can I say? The dude was a good listener.

“What was I supposed to do, though?” I demanded, pounding my leg with my fist. “My mom, my dad, and my grandpa will all die if this doesn't work out, and he put the whole operation at risk! Does he really think that’s something I can just forgive and forget? He deserves what he got!”

Captain Kook side eyed me.

“I mean…doesn’t he?” I asked.

“Most mermaids are allergic to toothpaste,” said Captain Kook.

“Well, it’s not like I could get him out of there even if I wanted to,” I said with a stubbornness I didn’t quite feel. “And I don’t want to. Maybe a few decades locked in Opisthia’s dungeon will teach him that sometimes his actions have consequences!”

And then a few more decades for him to die of old age…

“Thirty five liters of water, twenty kilograms of carbon, four liters of ammonia, one and a half kilogram of lime, eight hundred grams of phosphorus, two hundred fifty grams of salt, one hundred grams of saltpeter, eighty grams of sulfur, seven and a half grams of fluorine, five grams of iron, three grams of silicon, and trace amounts of fifteen other elements.”

I nodded, even though I had no clue what he had just said. “You’re right. What I need to do is focus on getting this key back to Jah Beryge. Then Opisthia will give me his hammer, and I’ll be able to trade it for my—”

“HENRY!”

I snapped my head toward the front of the boat, expecting to see Daggum's pillar rising out of the ocean in the distance. Instead, all I saw was Ethan storming over to me.

“Wha—” I began to ask, but was cut off when he grabbed my arm and hauled me to my feet.

“Excuse us for a minute,” he said, dragging me away.

“Tater tots were not invented in 1847,” the captain reassured us.

“What?” I asked, still frantically scanning the waters. “What is it?”

“What is wrong with you?” he hissed, a vein pulsing in his forehead. “We came all this way, got so close to actually doing this, and you just decided to tell that lunatic everything?”

I shrugged. “Why not? Have you heard the guy? You could ask him his name, and he'd probably recite the Gettysburg Address.”

“What if he's just pretending? He might just be putting on an act for the Trial!”

I glanced over at the captain, who was still steering the Jiggly Trombone while his eyes swiveled to look in two different directions.

“No, he's telling the truth, I said, then paused. “Or, he would be if he could…you know what I mean.”

Ethan crossed his arms. “How do you know?”

A smirk tugged on the corner of my lips. “Because he reminds me of Uncle Junk.”

“Oh, God, don't even say his name!” Ethan exclaimed, running a hand through his hair and looking around as if my favorite uncle be about to leap out of the water like a crusty, mildly radioactive mermaid.

Then again, considering how much garbage there was in the ocean, maybe that wasn't such a farfetched idea after all.

“First of all,” I said, raising a finger, “Uncle Junk is awesome, so I don't want to hear you talking about him like that. Secondly, I don't know Captain Kook’s story, but I recognize those kinds of psychological cracks. That's one hundred percent grade-A, farm raised insanity right there.”

“So of course we have to rely on him to get us where we need to go,” Ethan muttered, shaking his head. “But are you sure he's not going to rat us out to Opisthia?”

I nodded. “An army of psychiatrists on brain steroids couldn't drag a single rational word out of that guy’s mouth.”

“Are you willing to risk your family's lives on that?”

“Are you ever going to start minding your own business?” I snapped.

Ethan blinked in surprise, an emotion that I matched perfectly. Where had that sudden spike of anger come from—and more importantly, had I really just taken it out on Ethan? Shame washed over me, and I looked away, but even that wasn't enough to put out the fire that smoldered in my chest. I knew I should apologize. Ethan had only been trying to help. Instead, I shouldered past him and made my way to the front of the boat again.

According to Opisthia, we were looking for a massive pillar. If that was anything like what he had built Jah Beryge on, then we would be able to spot it from miles away. The problem was, this was the ocean. “Miles away” didn't mean much when there could be anywhere between hundreds and thousands of miles between us and our goal, with nothing but water, water, and more water to serve as landmarks.

Water that was just a few shades of blue darker than the sky, I realized. Both stretched out into the horizon before meeting, splitting my world into two types of blue. One above, one below, and both so mind bogglingly massive that it made my head spin, and—

“Henry!”

I felt Ethan's hands grab my shoulders, and realized that I had toppled over backwards without even knowing it. There was a green flash as Jade joined us, and together they lowered me down onto the floor.

“What happened?” Jade asked. “I was watching from the crow's nest, and you just fainted! I almost thought you were going to fall overboard!”

“Henry, are you all right?” Ethan asked, his face and voice grave.

“Kinky pooch,” I answered.

He blinked. “What?”

“Pee…Pinky scream.”

“Peachy keen?” Jade asked, just as perplexed as Ethan was.

I squinted at my friend, who had clearly gone insane. “Sure, if you want to make it weird, you weirdo.”

The two of them stared at me for a minute, so I stayed there, laying on my back, letting them get a nice, long look. I couldn't blame them, I suppose. I was the pinnacle of klaonish beauty. But eventually the Jiggly Trombone’s hard wooden floor started to get uncomfortable, so I tried to pick myself up…

Only to flop over like a fish and land flat on my face.

“Henry, how much sleep did you get last night?” Ethan asked.

I glared up at him as another wave of irrational anger surged through me. So that's where he was trying to go with this. After everything we'd been through together, right when we were finally about to be done with this whole crappy affair, he decided that I couldn't do it. Putting my hands beneath me, I forced myself back to my feet. My legs were wobbly, and Ethan reached out to help steady me.

I slapped his hand away.

“Henry, answer him!” Jade told me.

“I am the Hunter!” I said, standing as straight backed as I could with the floor shifting under my feet. “I couldn't do this job if I wasn't in peak physical condition. It'll take more than one sleepless night to throw me off my game!”

“We know, and we believe you,” Ethan reassured me, “but has it only been one night?”

“One night, three nights, it's all the same if you're as bad at math as I am,” I said.

Ethan and Jade shared a look.

“It's probably going to be a while before we get there,” Jade said a moment later. “Why don't you try getting some sleep while we—”

I spun to face her. “Why don't you quit trying to stick your nose up my keister and put it back in Ethan's, since you love it so much in there?”

“Henry!” Ethan yelled, his face turning red. “She's only trying to help!”

“We're both trying to help,” Jade agreed.

“The Henry I know would never say something like that, so you're obviously not thinking straight,” Ethan went on. “We're just worried for you, Henry. For you and your family. If you show up to the Trial in this condition, do you really think you'll be able to win?”

Jade put her hand on my arm, and shame hit me like a bucket of sour milk, putting out the fire but leaving me no less miserable than before. Ethan was right. After everything I'd been through in the past few days, I did need sleep. Every inch of my body was begging for it—except for my brain, which was too tired to beg for anything, and so settled for doing an impression of a dehydrated slug.

But I couldn't do it. Not when the pathway to sleep was guarded by Sir Lanceloyal and Snitchelangelo. And even if I managed to make it past them, there was nothing waiting for me in dreamland except nightmares starring the tortured faces of my family.

I turned to Ethan. “If we found out there was a way for you to get your parents back, would you be able to just lay down and take a nap?”

Ethan's face paled, and he took an involuntary step backwards. Without another word, I stepped past him, returning to my spot at the front of the ship to take up watch again. The little statue thing—I think it's called a figurehead?—was an uprooted Wombo World drive thru speaker that still occasionally spouted words in a crackly, barely understandable voice.

“Sever your leg please, sir,” it greeted me.

“You and me both,” I agreed.

Everything went quiet except for the crashing of the waves against the Jiggly Trombone’s sides. I could hear Ethan and Jade whispering frantically from behind me. It wouldn't be long before they tried again to make me get some sleep. Sausages and sauerkraut, I didn't deserve either of them. But I still couldn't rest. Not until this was over.

I fixed my eyes on the horizon, scanning it for the pillar Opisthia had promised us would be there. The sky, though. It was so blue—and since when had it been so bright? I wasn't even facing the sun, but in just a few seconds my eyes were watering, and I kept having to rub the back of my hand across them to keep my vision clear.

I heard Ethan step up beside me a minute later, but I refused to look at him.

“Well, if you're going to stay up,” he said, “then we may as well do something productive.”

I didn't say anything, determined to ignore him until he left me to wallow in my exhausted misery alone. But then…

“Cogito et Creo!”

I had just enough time for my heart to leap up into my forehead before a flash of light came from the corner of my eye. I spun to look, one of my hands reflexively going to Splatsy, but there was no danger. Just a glowing circle ripped straight through space and time.

Normal stuff, you know?

“What is that?” I demanded.

Ethan smirked. In his hand, he held McGus’ crystal spellhammer. “It's my own pocket dimension. I taught myself how to make it a couple weeks ago. You like it?”

“You taught…” I shook my head. “You shouldn't be able to learn a spell like that, much less teach it to yourself! You're human! Humans can't cut Corners!”

“Of course I can't,” he said, shrugging. “That's why I opened a door to it.”

Before I could argue more, he reached through the glowing hole and pulled out a thick hardcover tome. A chill ran down my spine. It had taken a while for me to come to terms with him learning magic. I had been against it, but McGus said he had too much potential to waste, and so he had spent the past year teaching Ethan how to bend and break the laws of physics.

To be fair, he was good at it, but that didn’t mean he didn’t still blow something up on occasion—and considering that we were in the middle of an uncharted interdimensional ocean, potentially hundreds of miles away from dry land, the Jiggly Trombone did not strike me as the best place for him to practice.

But then it dawned on me that he wasn’t holding his spellbook. It was something far, far worse.

A math textbook.

“Mrs. Rutherford gave us twenty problems as homework,” he said, flipping through the pages, “and I know you haven't been working on it, so let's get started now.”

I glared at him silently as he sat down with his back against the wall and the book spread across his knees.

“Question 1A,” he said, his voice becoming dull and monotonous. Whether he was doing that on purpose or if it was just a side effect of talking about math, I wasn't sure. “If Y is 37 and 15X minus twenty four equals 200Y divided by 8, then what is X?”

I stubbornly kept my eyes set on the horizon, but my thoughts were already starting to come slower. I swayed, my legs suddenly feeling rubbery. Reluctantly, I sat down. I could still…keep watching from… down…

“Question 1B,” said Ethan, “take the result from 1A and multiply it by…”

“You don't play fair,” I muttered, my eyes sliding closed against my will.

The last thing I heard before I sank down into sleep was Jade’s voice coming from beside me.

“Rest easy, Henry. We'll wake you up when we get there.”


NEXT CHAPTER 12/31/25