You’re expecting some sort of glib remark. A joke, a witty comment. Well, I wasn’t in a Jim Carrey kind of space.
The Helmacrons hadn’t exactly charmed me the first time around. Basically, I’d decided they were insane. Now they were inside my body.
In there with little unimportant things like my heart and my lungs.
And my friends.
The truth: I was thinking about scribbling out a little note. Telling Jake to take my stereo after I was gone. Explaining to Dad what really happened to Mom. Telling Rachel about the dream where she begged me to marry her.
Adding to the general creepiness factor was the fact that my friends weren’t talking to me.
I heard Ax say, Then … nothing.
Nothing for at least a minute.
Then —
“But you can hear me, right?”
Another long pause. Then —
Ax, of course.
“Well, how annoying!” I said. “I mean, how am I supposed to keep up troop morale when nobody can even hear my comic genius?”
Nothing.
Oh. Right. They couldn’t hear me.
Ax said.
Sure. Except — big problem: How was I supposed to pick them up without squishing them? I had to squint just to see them. They were, like, the size of dandruff flakes.
I leaned over and stared at the ground. Okay, second big problem: I’d lost them. Frantically, I scanned the dirt and hay. Nothing.
Stupid, stupid, stupid.
I was ticked. We hadn’t thought of this. We should have arranged for everyone to hop on my hand when they got to about an inch high. Because finding my friends seemed totally impossible.
Major feeling of dread.
I’d faced death before. Each one of us had had at least one major close call. But this was different. This was everyone. As in, I would be the only Animorph left alive. Little me against all the bad guys.
I felt like puking.
Stress.
Or … something else? Some strange little aliens marching through my … what? Nose? Lungs? Brain? Doing who knows what kind of damage.
No time to freak out.
Time to find my friends and stick them up my nose.
Tobias suddenly screamed in my head.
My stomach took a lurch.
Definitely stress.
Ax said.
“Fine, fine,” I muttered. “Just tell me where you are!”
Of course, they couldn’t hear me.
Then I saw it. A black bug with a hard shell. Weird pincers in the front. Scary. Considering how panicked Tobias sounded, my friends were somewhere near that big, bad beetle.
I dropped to my knees. At first nothing but dirt. Then —
There!
A few too-colorful grains of sand. I tried to count them. I couldn’t smash the beetle if he had one of my friends.
One. Two. Three. Four … Five. Okay. I reached out and snatched up the beetle by a back leg. Flung him toward the freezer.
Tobias said shakily.
“You’re welcome,” I muttered, even though he wouldn’t hear me.
Okay, I could see the colorful specks. But I still had no idea how to pick them up. And I was afraid to look away.
Rachel
Our little vacation in the hay forest was nice but I was ready to leave. Especially after the beetle episode.
We could see Marco hovering overhead. His face was an entire landscape. Nose mountain. Cheek plains.
He was a giant.
“Why doesn’t he pick us up?” Cassie asked.
Marco wasn’t doing anything except staring at us.
“Maybe he’s waiting for Jake to tell him what to do,” I said nastily. Tiny is definitely not my thing.
Ax looked at Jake.
“Right,” Jake said. “Let’s tell him how to pick us up. Er — how should he pick us up?”
“Easy,” I said. “We grab a piece of hay. He sticks it up his nose and we’re off.”
Jake nodded. “That piece there.” He pointed to a piece of hay a few paces away.
Climbing it was easy. At our size the hay looked rough, like someone had taken a cheese grater to its sides. I grabbed a couple of handholds and pulled myself up. No problem.
“I feel like I could take on Schwarzenegger,” I said.
Cassie nodded as she scrambled up beside me. “Something about being small makes you stronger.” We noticed it before. “Like ants lifting a thousand times their weight.”
Once we were all aboard, Ax told Marco to pick up the hay. Two fingers the size of sequoia trunks lowered, pinched, and lifted.
“Ahhhhh!” Cassie screamed.
“Ahhhhh!” I yelled.
We were being blasted into space! The G-force knocked me on my butt. I just managed to hang on. The wind was whipping. I could barely breath. I saw something flash by. Could have been Marco’s knee.
Tobias shouted.
The wind died down. The landscape beneath us shifted from jeans-color to T-shirt-color to chin-color.
“Fantastic Voyage,” I said. “The voyage inside Marco.”
Tobias said.
We passed into shadow.
Apparently into — can I just say EWWW — Marco’s nose.
When my eyes adjusted to the dimness, I saw a widely spaced forest of rough, textured black hairs, sprouting out of what looked like a waxy, pink granite wall. The hairs were sapling-sized, long, criss-crossing high overhead. A shifting intermittent wind tossed them.
“Okay, everybody off,” Jake said. He reached for a nearby hair.
Tobias fluttered above my head.
Ax said.
“Do it.”
I reached out for a hair and pulled myself onto it. The hair sagged under my weight. Below … the void. I could see a bright oval spot of light. I was looking straight out of Marco’s nostril. The ground was miles and miles away. I quickly scrambled toward the overhang.
Ugh. The wall was oddly warm. Body temperature. There was something really weird about pressing myself into Marco’s skin. Gave me a massive case of the heebie-jeebies.
“You know,” Jake said thoughtfully. “I think this is the most disgusting mission we’ve ever done. Something about being inside Marco makes me feel like a Yeerk.”
“Check it out,” Cassie whispered. “You can feel Marco’s breath. In —”
A cool breeze blew up from the opening below us.
“And out —”
Now a warmer moist breeze blew in the opposite direction.
I clung, staring up. The wall arched over my head at a forty-five-degree angle. I couldn’t see the end of the overhang, but it went way, way up, disappearing into darkness.
There was no sign of the Helmacrons. No footprints to tell us which way to go.
“Now what?” I asked.
“Climb?” Cassie suggested.
I watched as Ax completed his morph to northern harrier. As his stalk eyes withered and vanished.
SLURP! His tail violently disappeared into his body like an electric cord into a vacuum. Tail feathers shot out.
“Let’s all get wings,” I suggested. “Flying will be easier than trying to rock climb.”
Hanging onto delicate nose hairs and the slick wall, we morphed. Tricky, but I felt much, much better as a bald eagle. Touching Marco’s insides was wigging me out.
/> Morphs complete, we put our backs to Marco’s nostril and flew. A red-tailed hawk, a peregrine falcon, a northern harrier, a bald eagle, an owl.
On and on. Like flying into a cave. Darker and darker the deeper we got.
Flying was easier than climbing, but it was still hard work. Each time Marco exhaled, we lost ground. A bald eagle can hover for hours on a nice updraft. But there were no updrafts here. Soon I was exhausted from flapping my wings, up and down.
Before long, a flat plain opened up beneath us. My raptor ears started to pick up sounds.
Tobias said.
They sounded angry. As if they were arguing.
Finally, I could make out their forms.
I asked.
Jake said.
I hesitated, uncertain. Bald eagles see well during the day. They can spot a salmon swimming upstream from a mile up. But it was dark now, and I was practically blind.
Tobias said.
Kind of big. As in — enormous. Huge. Gargantuan. They were the size of giraffes. No — bigger. Twice as big. As big as air traffic control towers. I could morph elephant and still only come up to their calves.
Another thing. These were some seriously ugly aliens. Heads: wide and perfectly flat on top. Eyes rolled around up there like big green marbles. Faces: upside-down pyramids. Chins: barbed. Teeth gnashed in from either side of their mouths. And an extra set of legs made them look like walking tables.
Ax said calmly.
Jake wondered.
Ax? Make a simple mathematical error? No.
I said.
Jake said.
Cassie said.
O Great One, Most Courageous of all Leaders, we have bravely marched into a breathing hole of the giant alien! Triumph was within our grasp until one of the treasonable females wallowed into a sticky body excretion! But we, the noble knights of Helmacron, shall overcome this hardship and find the strength to silence the giant forever!
— From the log of the Helmacron Males
The Helmacrons didn’t seem to notice us as we flapped overhead. They were absorbed in themselves. As usual.
Tobias said. The Helmacrons were standing in a circle like Boy Scouts around a fire. Only there was a Helmacron where the fire belonged.