School Nathaniel Hardman (the best ebook reader for android txt) 📖

was inches from her brother. And Ushegg was taking too long. Suzy spun wildly, looking for a weapon. There has to be at least a rock around here somewhere! But she didn’t see one. The fallen branches all looked withered and fragile. No one in the class had a weapon, of course. But Ushegg — he always has that little pocket knife!

Suzy stuck her hand into the boy’s pocket, pulled out the tiny knife, and charged, flinging away the sheath as she ran.

The bird had its back to her, about forty feet away. Suzy closed the distance in seconds. The tail feathers stretched out like a ramp up its back, a pathway for her to the head. Suzy leapt for that ramp, knife raised in one fist.

It wasn’t a solid ramp.

When her weight came down on the tail feathers, her foot sank through, and she slammed headfirst into the bird’s backside. Her fist holding the knife slammed down as well, into the bird.

Suzy wasn’t sure the blade even reached the body through the thick feathers of the back, but the bird reacted, lurching backward and trying to swing its beak toward Suzy. Suzy scrambled back, ready to run, but the bird was stuck in the reeds, cawing in fury as it struggled to get to her.

She looked over her shoulder. Ushegg was STILL chanting. Gritting her teeth, she charged in again, coming around the side of the bird opposite from where its head was trying to turn. She stabbed at its side, under the wing, and knew as the shigg screamed that she had hit flesh.

She felt a moment’s satisfaction, and then the body beside her suddenly tilted away, and one taloned foot shot toward her, catching her vice-like around her stomach. “Ushegg!” She screamed, as the bird slammed her to the ground.

The shigg’s face appeared above her, and she knew she was going to die.

“OQUR!” she heard a voice bellow.

As Jeff floated up out of unconsciousness, there was a moment – a blissful moment – in which he thought he was home. There was the smell of wood smoke and the sound of voices, and Jeff tried to remember if his dad was hosting a barbecue.

Then he opened his eyes to the dim forest, to the dirty kids sitting around the roaring fire, and gradually, heartbreakingly, he remembered.

He groaned as he sat up, noticing Suzy sitting beside him. Her face was sooty, and blood-stained, but she gave him a tired smile.

“You okay?” she asked. “How do you feel?”

“Uh,” Jeff took a moment to assess. His head was still swimming and a little achy, and he could feel scratches and bruises everywhere. “Okay, I guess. What,” he changed his question suddenly as his brain finally registered what he was seeing and smelling by the fire, “Wait, that is NOT...”

Suzy looked over at the huge, charred form leaning partly over the fire. “Yeah,” she said, “That’s it. When Ushegg FINALLY built up his spell enough, he hit it with this huge fireball. It was so horrible.”

Almost, the words “so horrible that what?” slipped out of Jeff’s mouth, but the look on Suzy’s face was too serious, and he waited for her to go on.

“Ushegg’s spell hit it in the head, and its feathers caught on fire. It kind of went crazy then,” Suzy went on, “Just about trampled me. And you. Then it... kind of stabbed itself,” she rushed on with obvious disgust, “On one of the big bamboos it had broken.” She shuddered.

“Wow,” said Jeff, glancing over at the fire. “So... is it ready to eat?”

He did end up eating as they hurried back through the woods toward their school – scorched, gamey morsels that were all a bit too cooked or not cooked enough, but he didn’t care, and neither did the others. Their bodies recognized the protein greedily, and they licked their fingers clean and agreed they should have waited for more to cook, never mind what happened or how late they got back.

Ushegg kept urging them to hurry, and they tried. Jeff noticed that the others were taking Ushegg more seriously now. Killing that bird… it changed things. Then again, thought Jeff, it was Ushegg who took us there without mentioning it was a giant monster bird nest.

Jeff shook his head. He pulled one of the long thin bones from his back pocket and examined it as they walked. They had dug it and many others out of the pellet – that’s what the lump of fur and bones had been, the indigestible, regurgitated remains of the pale monkeys the giant hawk apparently hunted. He hoped it was worth what they had just gone through to get it.

He glanced over at Ushegg, at the bag he carried, now growing wet with blood. That was the other trophy of the day. Ushegg had cut a weird, spongy, cone-shaped organ from the base of the bird’s throat. If Jeff understood him right, they would be able to fertilize their wands with this and get the power of the bird’s scream. Bulletproof beads and a screaming knock-out spell, he thought. Not a bad day’s work.

But how do we go home?

THIRTY ONE

“Haynes Bridge Insurance Agency, this is Jeremiah.” He was brisk, almost rude. He was only in the office for a few things that absolutely had to get done, and he did NOT have time to sell insurance.

“Jer,” his wife’s voice on the other end answered. “Are you watching the news?”

“No...” Jeremiah opened a browser and pulled up the news. He could hear a reporter’s voice, muffled, from Lori’s end of the line. “Our connection here is SO SLOW,” he muttered as it buffered, and then, “You’ve got to be kidding me.” He stared in disbelief at the screen. “How long has this been going on?”

“I don’t know. Janice just