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

collapsed back to the cobbles. “I take back everything I ever said about wanting a pet lizard. Lizards are THE WORST. This whole HOUSE is the worst.”

He looked over at Suzy and Ushegg. The alien was fingering one of the many rows of teeth marks covering his lower legs. Suzy was sitting on the ground, panting, the misty after-rain beginning to turn her hair wet. Seeing her there, bleeding from wounds on hands and face, something caught in Jeff’s throat.

“Hey,” he started, but wasn’t sure how to continue. “Thanks,” he finished, looking away. “I think I might have gotten eaten if you hadn’t been there. That was the worst.”

She gave a tired chuckle. “What are sisters for? And hey, that WAS terrible, but at least we didn’t come out empty-handed.” Then from the ground beside her she lifted a curved, tapering tube, about the size and shape of an elephant’s tusk. The root of the treeman.

THIRTY SEVEN

The door to the alien school was locked. “Well now what?” Suzy asked.

“Hmmm,” Jeff considered. “I wish Ushegg hadn’t left…”

The alien boy had said something about “My dad” and “dinner,” but it seemed to Jeff that the incident with the lizards had just been too much for him.

“We’ve got to do it now,” Suzy said. “I have this feeling that Qush Yurwush is going to try to stop us. Like maybe if he knows we’re trying to switch back... I don’t know. Or even if he doesn’t try to stop us,” she hesitated, biting her lip before going on, “Do we want other people to know how this works? I mean, if they all know how to switch from planet to planet, isn’t that going to cause problems?”

“Yeah. You’re right. Here, we’ll climb.”

It was dark now, almost full night, and after a few furtive looks at the nearby houses, Jeff and Suzy helped each other over the wall and down into the courtyard. There, it was even darker, and very quiet. The black, evenly-spaced little trees struck Jeff as somehow sinister as they made their way to the back.

“We can’t just stick this whole thing in the ground,” Jeff said, holding up the root.

“Maybe you can cut pieces off?” Suzy suggested. “I’ll see if there’s a knife by the supplies.”

While Suzy checked, Jeff tested the root with his hands. By the time Suzy returned, he had found that while the outside was stiff and hard, he could dig his fingers into the broken end and claw out chunks of mulch. It felt like wood in the late stages of decomposition – damp and fibrous and gritty.

He worked on hollowing out the tusk until he had a good-sized pile of the stuff at his feet. “What do we say?” Suzy muttered. “‘Yuoshr’ something.”

“What’s that?”

“I’m trying to think what we’re supposed to say when we feed the trees. I know we say yuoshr, but then we have to say the name of the spell so the tree knows the name of the magic going into it. And I don’t remember the word for ‘switch’.”

“Hmmm,” Jeff pursed his lips. “Do we have to do it in alien? If we’re teaching the wand the name of the magic, can’t we just teach it English? ‘Switch’?”

They decided to go with this, and for the next few minutes, they kneaded the wood chips into the ground around their trees, chanting softly, “Yuoshr SWITCH,” as they went. Jeff felt the now-familiar sting of the probing roots on his fingers, and he knew his tree would learn the magic.

“Alright,” he said, dusting off his fingers. “How long do we need to wait?” he asked.

“For what?”

“Before we pick them.”

Suzy considered. “A couple hours? A day?”

“A day?! I thought we were going to do this tonight!”

“I know, I know,” Suzy said. “But now I’m wondering. I mean, we don’t know. What if we pick the trees, and the magic hasn’t sunk in yet, and the wands are useless. I want to hurry and try it out, but… I don’t want to mess it up either.”

Jeff shook his head slowly, an argument forming on his lips.

“Plus,” Suzy hurried on, “Yurwush said something about the trees one time and how you pick them. I didn’t really get what he was saying, but I know he said, ‘kepx’.”

“Fight?” Jeff asked, surprised.

“Yeah. I think,” Suzy pursed her lips in thought, “You don’t just pick them. I got the feeling there’s more to it.”

“Fine,” Jeff said finally.

It wasn’t really fine. The disappointment was almost physically painful, he felt it so strongly in his gut. “But what are we going to do now?” He gestured around, taking in the night sky, the half-emptied root, themselves. They were already going to be in serious trouble when they got back to the school this late.

“And what about this?” Suzy said, holding up the root. “We can’t leave it here.”

Jeff narrowed his eyes, then smiled. “I know a place.”

Ten minutes later, they were back at the abandoned house, the lizard house. “You’ve got to be kidding,” Suzy said. “I’m not going back in there.”

“We don’t need to,” Jeff said, “That’s not the safe place. Here, give me a boost.” Suzy laced her fingers together to give him a foothold, and he jumped up. He grabbed the top of the wall and started to pull himself up when flames engulfed his fingers. He shouted and fell back down to the street, shoving his hands in his armpits.

“What...?” Suzy whispered, shooting glances between him and the dark, quiet street.

Gingerly, he pulled his hands out of his armpits and looked at them. Red and throbbing, but not seriously injured, as if they had been splashed with boiling water. He shook his head and let out a long breath. He flexed his fingers experimentally and grimaced. He’d survive.

“Okay,” he said,