The Magic Misfits - Neil Patrick Harris Page 0,44

Leila yelled back.

Carter was strangely quiet, but maybe—Ridley considered—this was how he dealt with being terrified.

“Wheeee!” shrieked the twins.

The magic box cart raced deeper into the earth. Ridley flipped the light switch at the arm of her chair, the thin beam glowing back up the track from where they’d come. The track curved tightly, and their bodies were slammed to one side.

Ridley felt the cart begin to tilt. “Lean!” she called out. “To the other side! Lean!”

The wheels reconnected with the rails, and Ridley heaved a sigh. But then, the track sloped down again and the cart raced faster than ever. Would it never end? Ridley had assumed they’d find a quick exit, and yet the darkness kept speeding by. The small light from Ridley’s chair flashed across the mouths of deep crevices where icy air blasted out like the breath of a long-frozen beast.

(All right, I know what you’re thinking. It seems a bit improbable that the Misfits haven’t flown right off the rails into a rock-filled crevice by now. That said, we’re having a great ride, aren’t we? So quit thinking about it and hold on tight!)

There was a rushing sound ahead that grew louder as the tracks sloped steeper and steeper. A strange light began to fill the tunnel. Cold. Blue. Ridley craned her neck to get a glimpse of where they were headed. Mist and spray clung to her eyelashes and eyebrows. A hazy glow was widening at the bottom of the slope. The Misfits’ cries were not enough to drown out the sound of pounding water.

Ridley bit her lip, hoping she hadn’t sent them all to meet their final fates. She wanted to call out to them, to apologize. To tell them she loved them. But the cart bottomed out, slamming her jaw shut, and then shot upward. The magic box left the track altogether, flying off a sudden ragged edge and into the curtain of spray at the end of the tunnel.

A frozen sensation coated Ridley’s body, plastering her hair to her skull. Water filled her mouth and went up her nose. She felt weightless, and for a moment, she couldn’t tell if she was soaring or sinking. Then, without warning, the cart crashed down, knocking Ridley’s chin nearly against her chest. Water splashed out in a high, wide fan all around the magic box cart as it landed over a dozen yards out from the cliff at the edge of a lake.

It took several seconds for Ridley to feel like she was inside her body again, and when she did, she gulped down a huge lungful of air. The blue sky overhead was blindingly bright. Shaking her hair from her face, she called out to her friends, “Is everyone okay?” From behind her came groans.

“I think so,” said Leila.

“Define okay,” Theo answered.

“That was awesome!” chirped Izzy.

“Can we ride it again?” Olly added.

“What about you, Carter?” Ridley asked.

“Fine,” he said with such curtness that everyone knew he was not fine at all.

Ridley glanced down and noticed that water had already crept up to the bottom of the footrest on her chair. The magic box cart was sinking!

Thankfully, Ridley had a plan for that.…

She grabbed the handle of yet another lever at the bottom of the box and gave it a yank. The sides of the box popped off, transforming it into a raft. “Don’t let those panels float away,” she called to her friends. “We can use them as oars to get ourselves back to shore.”

The others all looked at her in amazement.

“Guys! Grab the panels!” Ridley urged. “This thing is going to sink fast.”

Olly and Izzy snatched up the panels and began propelling the raft forward. Luckily they were already drifting closer to their destination thanks to the momentum from their wild ride through the tunnels.

“Ridley Larsen!” Leila exclaimed. “How did you build this thing?”

Ridley sniffed. She was surprised that all the buttons, levers, and transformations had worked so well. Looking back toward the misty falls, she couldn’t believe that they had actually survived the short flight over the jagged rocks at the bottom of the cliff. It felt like a magic trick, possibly the grandest one ever performed!

“Very carefully,” Ridley answered.

Olly laughed giddily as he pulled at the water with his oar panel.

“I’m not trying to be funny. I very carefully planned it all out, then very carefully put it together. It took weeks and weeks.”

“It is, without a doubt, your greatest invention,” Theo agreed.

“I can’t believe you anticipated every problem we