“I left out perhaps the strangest part,” added the wizard ominously. “The fellow’s ears . . .”
“Yes?” said North.
Ombric leaned forward. “Mr. North,” he said with dramatic relish. “They were the ears of a gigantic rabbit.”
CHAPTER SEVEN
A Tall Tale for a Rabbit
KATHERINE AND NORTH SIMPLY did not know what to say about a seven-foot-tall talking rabbit. They’d seen so many amazements with the great wizard, but this struck them as, well . . . outstandingly odd.
North was the first to voice his doubts. “An interstellar talking Rabbit Man?” he questioned. “Are you sure all this time travel isn’t scrambling your brains?”
Ombric raised an eyebrow at his former pupil.
“It does sound, hmmm . . . very unusual,” added Katherine.
Ombric’s eyebrow rose even higher. He was stunned that they doubted him. His temper began to rise. Then his mustache began to twist into tight curls.
But then Ombric remembered that he, too, had doubted the existence of this rabbit when he’d first read about him in an ancient text from Atlantis. In fact, he’d discounted the creature as merely a myth until he saw it floating next to him.
“If I am not mistaken,” began the wizard in his most patient teacher voice, “this Rabbit Man, as you call him, is a Pooka—the rarest and most mysterious creature in the universe.”
North and Katherine were intrigued; it was their eyebrows that now rose.
“They are among the oldest creatures in creation,” continued Ombric, “so little is known about them and even less understood. It is said that they oversee the health and well-being of planets.”
“This Pooka is mysterious indeed,” interrupted the Grand High Lama. He and the Lamas stood serenely in their usual V formation. They’d entered the room, as always, in complete silence and had startled our heroes with their arrival.
“You know him? It?” asked Ombric, visibly surprised.
“We know he is a him, not an it,” replied a tallish Lama.
“We know he has a vast knowledge,” said another.
“We know he is difficult to know,” said the shortest.
“We know he prefers to be unknown,” said one of the others.
“We’ve heard he likes eggs,” said another.
“. . . and chocolate,” added the shortest one.
“We think,” concluded the Grand High Lama.
Katherine, North, and Ombric mulled over that uncommonly informative aria of information from the Lamas.
“A robe-wearing Rabbit Man who time travels and likes eggs,” summarized North, trying not to laugh.
“And chocolate!” said Katherine mischievously.
“A substance he apparently invented,” interjected the Grand High Lama.
“I thought I invented chocolate!” said Ombric indignantly.
“That, my dear Ombric, is what the Pooka wants you to think,” replied a Lama.
“We think,” added another.
Ombric shook his head in confusion. “I’m going time traveling. At least the past is certain. That much I do know.”
“But do not tamper with events in the past,” warned the High Lama.
“It is forbidden,” said the tallest Lama.
“And the Pooka will not like it,” said another.
As the wizard entered the time machine and made his settings, he replied, “Good!” And vanished into the certainties of the past.
North and Katherine stared at the clock for a few moments, then shared a concerned glance.
“I always worry about him when he goes back there. Wherever ‘there’ is,” North admitted.
Katherine gave a small nod. “Me too.”
“But he’s a tough old bird,” North reasoned just as Kailash came waddling up and began nuzzling her head against them. “This tough young bird needs feeding,” he chuckled.
He picked Katherine up and set her on Kailash’s back. “Your goose is as big as Petrov—and still growing!”
“Want to help me feed her?” asked Katherine.
“Maybe tonight. I’ve got to keep working,” North told her, reaching up to brush her hair out of her face. Her hair was always falling over one eye, and North would often brush it back.
Katherine looked down at her dashing friend. She was a little worried about him too. He’d been working so hard, trying to figure out how to use the new magic sword.
“That’s all right. Nightlight will help me,” she assured him.
She thought back to the day she, North, and Ombric had bowed before the Man in the Moon, had pledged their oath to continue in the fight against Pitch. North had sworn to use his sword wisely and well. So study he must. She was grateful for Nightlight’s help, for being a Guardian was harder than any of them had realized. And it was about to get harder than they’d ever imagined.
CHAPTER EIGHT
A Hop, Skip, and a Jump Through Time
DEEP INSIDE THE CLOCK, Ombric was somersaulting through time at a furious pace. The world around him flickered from day to night faster than the blink of an eye. He saw seasons pass in seconds. Centuries flew by as he drifted up and away from the Lamadary. He looked skyward as the sun and stars spiraled past him at rocket speed. Day. Night. Day. Night. Faster than could be said and in reverse. The Moon was there too, and in a flash he saw the explosion of Pitch’s galleon and the last great battle of the Golden Age. But it all happened too fast. The relics fell from the Moon too quickly for him to track them.
Ombric wasn’t worried. He would slow down his trajectory on the return trip and take note of their whereabouts. And if his plan worked, he wouldn’t need to.
He began to drift away from Earth, going deeper and deeper into the vast dazzlements of space. He was traveling so swiftly through time that comets, planets, and galaxies pivoted and sparkled around him like fireworks, but their size was beyond description.
Then Ombric realized that the flashes he was seeing were the deaths of the Golden Age worlds. What he was watching was Pitch’s galleon destroying one Constellation after another. Then, as Ombric continued to pinwheel backward through time, the universe around him brightened.
Golden Age ships coursed through the sky around him. This was it! The age he had studied for so long but never dreamed he would see. He could barely take it all in. The cities he saw were colossal, magnificent, more magical than anything he had ever imagined. It broke his heart to think of the vanished wonder and glory of this perfect era, and he became more determined than ever to implement his plan.
He soon found himself at the infamous prison planet, the huge rusted dungeon where the Fearlings had been locked after the Golden Age Armies had captured them. As time slowed down, he stopped his journey just moments before Pitch was overtaken and the Fearlings had escaped. Ombric hid behind a large pillar an arm’s length away from Pitch, who was standing in a guard’s station in front of the prison’s only door.
It was remarkable to see his nemesis as he had been before his change to evil. He looked every inch a great hero. Stalwart. Valiant. Even noble in his Golden Age military uniform. But his determined expression was weary and tinged with sorrow.
From behind the massive door, Ombric could hear a drone of whispers and mutterings from the prisoners. The noise would rise to a crescendo, then sink low, pulsing eerily from within.
What an awful sound, thought Ombric. It’s like evil itself. To hear that day after day would drive any man insane. And indeed, the ghostly noise seemed to weigh on Pitch. His face was drawn, his fists clenched in anxiety.
But then he pulled a silver locket from his tunic pocket; the chain hung around his neck. He tapped the clasp and it swung open, revealing a small photograph. Ombric could just make out the face of a little girl. Pitch stared at the image, seeming to take great solace in the picture. His face softened and his sadness eased. Ombric knew that expression. He’d seen it countless times. It was the look of a father gazing at his child. Pitch had a
daughter! The wizard could feel Pitch’s longing to see his child in person.
Pitch’s daughter
The Fearlings sensed his longing too. Their strange mutterings shifted in tone, their pleadings took on the voice of a small girl. “Please, Daddy,” they whispered. “Please, please, please open the door.”
A momentary spark of hope crossed Pitch’s face. His eyes lit up, and then they dimmed as he recognized the sound for what it was: a Fearling trick. He visibly steeled himself against the evil, bracing his shoulders, clenching his jaw, but the Fearlings started to beg again.
“Daddy,” they cried. “I’m trapped in here with these shadows, and I’m scared. Please open the door. Help me, Daddy, please.”
Pitch looked again at the photograph. The pleading grew more desperate. More hypnotic. Pitch seemed to be slipping into a trance.
Suddenly, his face grew wild with panic. He reached for the door. The locket fell from his neck. Ombric caught it in midair and was about to block Pitch from opening the prison door when the mysterious Pooka reappeared. Ombric found he could neither move nor utter a sound.
The Pooka held up his hand and shook his head. “That’s a no-no,” he scolded.
The Lamas had told Ombric he could not change events in his journeys through time, he could only observe them. The Pooka, it seemed, was there to stop his trying.
Ombric looked from the Pooka back to Pitch in time to witness agony and shock in the jailer’s eyes—the desperation of a loving father trying to save his daughter from the Fearlings. As the door swung open, all that was visible was a roiling mass of dark, serpentlike creatures. Of course Pitch’s daughter was not there. Before Pitch could even scream her name, he was surrounded by malevolent shadows. In less than an instant, they poured over, around, into him! It was a horrifying sight. One that Ombric would never forget.
Pitch struggled valiantly, but he soon succumbed to the evil flooding him, twisting him into a madman. He swelled to ten times his normal size; his face became monstrous and cruel.
As Ombric stared, transfixed, he felt the familiar touch of the Pooka’s egg-tipped staff on his shoulder. He was being sent back to the present again. But as he began to dim and vanish, he saw Pitch throw his head back and roar with the menacing laughter of ten thousand Fearlings.
CHAPTER NINE
The Secret of the Sword
WHILE OMBRIC WAS WATCHING history unfold, North was in the Lamadary library studying the new sword. He’d examined it for weeks with all the methods at his disposal: magnifying glasses of every shape, size, and purpose. Microscopes, maxiscopes, telescopes. He’d come to so many mystifying discoveries, it boggled his agile mind. The metal of the sword could change itself. Sometimes it was mostly iron, then it shifted to steel, then to metals that North couldn’t even classify. It could become highly magnetic or immeasurably strong, and at times it could emit various kinds of light. Sunlight. Moonlight. Comet light. Lights that had no name. North began to realize that the weapon was indeed a living thing.
In battle it would transform into a conventional sword—a long blade with a protective covering over the handle. But depending on the circumstances, it would sprout various mechanical additions. In darkness, for instance, a curious light-emitting orb would appear. When danger was imminent, the jewels on the hand guard would glow red. And at other times the hand guard itself would change, sometimes revealing maps of the stars or the Moon or the Earth itself.
But the how, why, and what of these gadgets were still a mystery to him.
North thought about what Ombric always said about magic—that its real power was in belief. North knew for certain that this sword had powers beyond explanation. The sword, he hoped, could tell him what he most needed to know. So he closed his eyes and concentrated on that belief with all his mind and heart. “I believe. I believe. I believe,” he said very quietly. As he chanted the phrase over and over, his thoughts began to grow uncluttered, pure, sharp, until he had only one question. Where were the other relics? It was as if the sword now guided his mind.
And then, with the subtlest of clicks, North felt the sword change.
He opened his eyes to see that a metal orb had appeared. It opened, unwrapping like an intricate puzzle. Inside was a map of the Earth, and on the map were four glittering jewels. Four jewels—North’s mind raced—four jewels. . . . Were they the four relics? That had to be it! Each jewel marked their position . They simply had to follow this map!
Eager to share the news with the wizard, North raced through the Lamadary, finding Ombric in the tower just as he was reappearing from his latest time travel.
“I have the answer, old man!” North cried, slapping him on the back.
“And I have new questions,” said Ombric wearily.
At that moment Katherine ran into the room.
“Nightlight is missing!” she shouted.
CHAPTER TEN
Revelations, Terror, and Daring Deeds
KATHERINE TRIED TO REIN in her panic, but her quivering voice betrayed her. “He hasn’t returned since last night. No one has seen him,” she explained in a rush.
Both Ombric and North tensed. They knew that Nightlight’s visits were as regular as clockwork. They also knew that Santoff Claussen was always his last stop before he returned to the Lamadary.
“Only one thing could delay the lad,” said North, his voice low.
“Pitch,” whispered Katherine.
Even as they spoke, Ombric was already trying to contact his owls. They were constantly on watch in his library and forever at the ready to report to him telepathically. He concentrated with all his might, but the line of mental communication was severed. How could that be? He could not sense even an echo of emotion from the owls. If they could not speak to him, he should at least be able to feel them. Especially if they were in danger or afraid. But there was nothing.
It was this nothingness that frightened him most. He spun around and caught North’s eye. He didn’t need to say a word—North understood immediately.
“To Santoff Claussen?” North asked.
“And right speedily” came Ombric’s answer.
The question was, which method would get them there “right speedily”? Ombric knew he didn’t have the stamina for astral projection1—time travel always left him exhausted. Besides, North and Katherine couldn’t join him in that mode. The reindeer? They needed the spectral boy to create the highways of light upon which they flew. The djinni, of course, was gone. Ombric’s mind was anxiously calculating all the possibilities when he was interrupted by the sudden appearance of the Lamas.
“We have adequate conveyance,” said the Grand High Lama.
“It is swift,” said another Lama.
“And comfortable,” added a third.
“And easy to pilot,” agreed a shortish one.
Ombric dreaded the series of answers his next question would cause; the Lamas answered questions only in fragments.
“Where is the craft?” Ombric tried to sound patient and urgent at the same time.
The Lamas looked at one another, deciding who would answer first.
Ombric, North, and Katherine shifted impatiently. Time was wasting.
Finally, the Grand High Lama spoke. “The craft? Why, you stand within it,” he said with stunning simplicity. “You need merely to say where you’d like to go, and this tower will rocket you there with both speed and accuracy.” Then the Lamas began to shuffle silently toward the courtyard.
“We are certain you can handle the situation,” said the Grand High Lama as they reached the arching doorway.
“But we suggest you sit down for the trip,” said the tallest.
“The trajectory is most speedy,” said the shortest.
“At least when last we used it,” said another.
“Thirty thousand years ago,” added the Grand Lama as he exited last.
North, Ombric, and Katherine looked quizzically at one another. They each took to a chair and then glanced up at the glas
s-topped ceiling of the tower. It was perfect for observing a journey.
“We have all we need, I think,” said North, gripping his sword.
Katherine suppressed a smile. She knew Kailash, asleep under a nearby table, was aboard for the trip. But she thought it best to keep that to herself.
The Lamadary Tower is a swell way to travel.
Ombric turned to her. “My dear, give the order.”
She grasped the arms of her chair tightly. “To Santoff Claussen as fast as—”
But before she could finish the sentence, they were already blasting off.
* * *
1 Astral projection: When you mentally project yourself from one place to another. It is also an ancient method of mystical travel. Only the most brilliant and daring are able to astrally project themselves.
CHAPTER ELEVEN
As the Tower Flies
THE LAMAS WERE TRUE to their word. The tower was a marvelous airship. No sooner had they taken off than the entire interior began to mechanically transform. As the tower shifted horizontally in its trajectory, their chairs glided toward the glass ceiling. The floor began to pivot and lean, as did the walls, until they formed a sort of ship’s cabin with large Moon-shaped windows.
The woodwork, the mosaic floor tiles, the wallpaper, the instrument panels—every aspect of the cabin took on different shapes of the Moon: full or half or crescent. It was enchanting and, as promised, comfortable.
North examined all the charts and instruments carefully. “This screen shows our present position,” he determined, then pointed to another and another. “This one our speed. This one our route. This one our time of arrival.”
He seemed pleased by the instruments’ reading. “We should be there within the hour,” he told them.