‘Clear as glass,’ I said.
What kind of glass? Grandpa asked.
‘The transparent kind,’ I said. ‘I’ll let you know once we’re inside.’
Good lad.
His face vanished, and I felt an overwhelming fatigue. I stumbled over to a moss-covered stone and sat down, exhausted.
‘Alcatraz,’ Bastille said, ‘was your grandfather still in Nalhalla?’
I nodded.
‘But . . . you shouldn’t be able to . . .’
‘I know, Bastille,’ I said. ‘That’s probably why I’m so tired. Impossible things are really rough to do, you know.’
She looked troubled.
‘Hey!’ Kaz exclaimed suddenly, looking through his pack. ‘I forgot that I stuffed these in here.’ He pulled out some colored teddy bears.
‘Oh!’ Aydee said, squealing and running over to snatch them up.
‘Aydee!’ I said, standing. ‘Wait! Those are grenades!’
‘I know,’ she said enthusiastically.’ ‘I love grenades!’
Yes, she’s a Smedry all right.
‘How many do you have?’ I asked.
‘One of each of the main three kinds,’ Kaz said.
‘So, six?’ Aydee said.
‘Uh,’ I said. ‘Actually, one plus one plus one is . . .’ I trailed off as, suddenly, Aydee was holding not three, but six bears.
‘One plus one plus one,’ she proclaimed. ‘Six, right?’
I blinked. She’s bad at math . . . Her Talent, it appears, had forced the world to match her powers of addition.
‘Don’t correct her, Al,’ Kaz said, chuckling. ‘At least not when her bad math is in our favor. Nice work, Aydee.’
‘But what did I do?’ she said, confused, handing back the exploding bears.
‘Nothing,’ Kaz said, tucking the bears in his pack.
Aydee was young enough that she hadn’t learned to control her Talent yet – and I couldn’t really blame her for that, since I barely had mine under control myself. Her Talent would be hard to control anyway, since she could only make mathematical miracles when she legitimately calculated wrong in her head.
‘Alcatraz, are you all right?’ Bastille asked.
I nodded, still feeling tired but forcing myself to my feet. ‘Come on. I want to see what we’re up against.’
Kaz led the way over to the ridge. We walked up to it, looking out of the jungle over a daunting sight.
Beneath us, the forest had been trampled to the ground. The black tents of an enormous army were pitched amid the stumps of trees, and the smoke of a hundred fires rose into the sky. The army encircled a small hilltop city made entirely of wooden huts, with a wooden-stake wall around the outside. It looked small and fragile, but it had some kind of shield around it – a bubble of glass, like a translucent dome. That glass was cracked and broken in several places.
The army was bad enough. However, the things that stood behind it were even more daunting – three enormous robots dressed like Librarians, holding enormous swords on their shoulders.