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

her ankle, and by the dim light of Ushegg’s wand, she could see a little half moon of teeth marks. She shuddered violently and jerked her jeans back down over the wound. She stood, shuddered again, and turned, wondering suddenly why Jeff and Ushegg had been so still.

Suzy’s mind tried and failed and tried again to make sense of what she saw. The room was almost entirely filled with a tree. It couldn’t have grown here – not inside a dark room in the second story of a house, with no light and no soil – and yet, the tree was bent, folded into the contours of the room as if it had lived here.

The trunk was more than a foot thick. Standing, the tree must have been at least thirty feet tall. Crammed into the room, it filled most of the floor and walls. And it was clearly dead.

“How did...?” Jeff trailed off.

Suzy squeezed through a gap in the bare branches to an open spot in the middle of the room. She wished she could see better, and she glanced at the window. It was not only shuttered, but it had been sealed off, heavy boards bolted over every inch of it. A number of branches seemed to be trying to grow their way through the gaps in the slats.

Wait.

“Those aren’t roots,” Jeff said.

Suzy didn’t turn to look at what he was seeing. “And those aren’t branches,” she said. Branch-like, yes, but it was pencil-long FINGERS that had been clawing at the boards over the window when this thing had died.

“Look,” said Jeff. His voice was closer now. Suzy turned and saw him peering at a part of the trunk near her. There was a face, only faintly discernible from the rest of the trunk. “A tree man,” he said, and the depth of the sadness in his voice surprised Suzy. “Like the one I met in the woods.”

“But WHY?” Ushegg asked from where he still stood by the door. “Oy they can do is vuorcu into trees.”

No one answered for a minute. “Look at his feet. Or, well, not his feet, but... these things.” Jeff was back by the doorway, crouching with Ushegg. Suzy squeezed her way back. The tree man’s...roots? legs? wooden tentacles? spread out in various directions. But a dark, crusty gap at the base of the trunk showed where an appendage had been recently removed.

As she looked more closely, she saw other knots, gaps where other roots had been severed in the past. She gagged and looked away.

“That guy,” Jeff breathed, “Ushegg, what king name?”

“Tuynomosh,” the boy whispered.

“Tuynomosh. That guy is a monster. He was cutting off the tree man’s LEGS for his wand. What kind of person does that? Ushegg,” he looked up, and Suzy saw a streak of wet on his face. “Why? Why Tuynomosh did this?”

Ushegg shook his head. “I don’t know. I don’t know. Oy they do is vuorcu into trees.”

“No,” Suzy said slowly, shaking her head. “It doesn’t turn into a tree. It switches places with a tree. It SWITCHES.”

She locked eyes with Jeff. “This is it. This is how the king switched places with us. Jeff, this is how we go home.”

Jeff balanced on top of the root of the fallen tree man, his arms spread wide for balance as the tree rocked under his weight. They hadn’t found any tools in the room, and Ushegg said there was no such thing as a cutting spell – or maybe his wand just couldn’t do a cutting spell.

“Just do it already,” Suzy said from below.

“Okay, shh.” Jeff said. He crouched. He hated doing this. He didn’t want to break off the tree man’s leg, even if he WAS already dead. But if it meant going home… He steadied himself. He jumped.

The tree shifted as he jumped, and he fell painfully with his ribs across the root. The root snapped, dropping him awkwardly to the floor, where he stumbled back and fell against the wall.

No, against the door. Jeff felt it giving way behind him and twisted to catch the doorframe.

He missed.

Even as Jeff hit the floor, he felt the scurry of tiny feet swarming over him. Dozens of them, hundreds of them, poured over him like a flood. He tried to push himself up from the floor, but then fiery stings were arcing up into his body from his hands, where lizards were savaging his exposed skin.

Jeff screamed and rolled, crushing little bodies beneath him even as more swarmed onto his head and face. One latched onto his upper ear, and he blacked out from the pain.

And then, someone seemed to be trying to rip his arm out of its socket, screaming, “Get up! Get up! Jeff, GET UP!”

Jeff pulled his legs under him and let Suzy shove him forward. He hit a wall and staggered backward. Suzy caught him, shoved him again in the direction of the stairs. He lurched, spasms of pain making his movements jerky. Suzy slapped a lizard off his neck, then his back and braced him from behind with one arm as he half fell, half slid down the stairs.

Suzy sprinted past him to the open window, then held it open with one hand and shoved him through it with the other, which was holding something big and hard. He flopped out the window onto the wet cobbles of the night street, Ushegg and Suzy following him.

He lay there panting for a moment, then thrashed over, thrust a hand under his shirt, and ripped off the lizard clamped on his lower back. He flung it down the street, then shuddered violently. He could feel phantom feet scurrying over his bare skin, burrowing under the cuffs of his pants, and he swatted and scrubbed himself furiously.

At last, when he was certain there were no lizards, he