Billy: Messenger of Powers (21 page)

“What do you mean, you’re concentrating on keeping it from moving?” asked Billy. “I mean, it’s just
you
, isn’t it? Fizzles are like remote controlled robots, right?”

Mrs. Russet nodded again. “For the most part, yes. But there
is
always a danger when creating a Fizzle that the magical creature will take on a bit of its own personality and life.”

Billy remembered how Vester’s Fizzles—the blue and red horses—had pranced and danced on their own, as though they were living creatures. He nodded at what Mrs. Russet was saying. “So you mean, some Fizzles aren’t totally under the control of the Powers that make them?” asked Billy.

“Correct. The greater the Fizzle, the more danger there is that the Fizzle will break loose and simply do what it wants to. For a lower level Power, the danger inherent in that is minimal, for its Fizzle will disappear unless the Power is touching it. However, for a greater Power—such as myself, if I may be so bold—there is a bit more danger involved if the Fizzle breaks free of its maker’s power. Because in that case, the Fizzle will continue to exist for quite some time, and there may be…unfortunate consequences when such a Fizzle is allowed to do what it wishes. For example,” she eyed the rock monster. “Eugene, here—”

“Its name is
Eugene
?” asked Billy incredulously.

“I made it, I can name it anything I want,” replied Mrs. Russet indignantly. “I had a fish named Eugene once, and I’ve always liked the name. Now don’t interrupt. We haven’t got a lot of time before your air runs out.”

Billy noticed how she didn’t say “before
our
air runs out,” and was filled again with that silent dread that he was coming to recognize so well.

“Eugene is quite a large Fizzle, and I imagine that if I were to lose control of him, he’d probably do quite a lot of damage to anything—or anybody,” she added pointedly, looking at Billy, “that was anywhere nearby.”

“Well,” said Billy with a forced smile. “It’s a good thing you won’t let that happen, ha, ha.” He literally said that, said “ha, ha.” He was trying for a reassuring laugh, but just didn’t have it in him. He didn’t think that was a sign of cowardice; he imagined even Rambo or the Terminator would probably have trouble laughing when standing between the hooked talons of a giant scorpion rock monster named Eugene. Plus, he had a very bad feeling about the way Mrs. Russet pursed her lips when he said hopefully that she would never let the monster out of her control.

Sure enough, Mrs. Russet’s next words did nothing to soothe Billy’s fears. “As you can see, Mr. Jones, there is nothing but sand and rock all around you. If you are a Power of Earth, it is very likely that your control over that Element will show itself now.”

“Why now?” he managed to squeak.

“Because people with the potential to do so are most likely to become Powers when their lives are in danger,” she responded. She turned to the cliff wall nearby, took out her beehive key, and inserted it into a keyhole that appeared at that moment. She turned the key, whispered the words that would activate the key, opened the door that appeared, and put one foot through into the blackness beyond.

“You have about three minutes of air left, I should think,” she said. “Good luck.” Then Mrs. Russet took a deep breath, stepped through the opening in the rock, and was gone, the cliff face sealing behind her as though she had never existed.

Billy had little time to notice all this, because the instant Mrs. Russet wished him luck, the rock monster moved.

It shook itself, as though confused. Its head moved left and right, throwing off whatever traces of magical control had kept it from tearing Billy apart. Then the monster refocused on him.

The monster reared up, its terrifying body standing on only one set of legs, the front legs curling and grasping at space eighty feet over Billy’s head, then the beast came crashing down with terrible speed, hurtling toward Billy.

Billy rolled away at the last moment, barely missing getting crushed by the impact of the scorpion’s body on the colored sand. The beast shook itself, dazed, then looked around to see where Billy had gone.

Billy was running across the valley floor, weaving between the scorpion’s huge legs, which were set like curved pillars in the ground. The sand below him pulled at his feet, making forward motion difficult, but Billy tried as best he could. He was aided, at least, by the fact that this place had lower gravity than Earth, so he was able to take great jumping strides and move faster than he normally would be able to.

The scorpion spotted him, and immediately the stone leg nearest to Billy raised up and then slammed down, narrowly missing him. The leg pulled up, leaving a curved crater in the sand where it had impacted. Again it smashed down, and again Billy barely missed becoming a Billy-ka-bob as he rolled away at the last second.

At last, he was out from under the scorpion’s body. But Billy was hardly free from danger. He looked over just in time to see the three-pointed tail whistling down at him, its tips so sharp that he thought he could see moonlight reflecting off them.

Billy ducked, rolling through the sand ungracefully, frantically trying to figure out how to get out of the mess he was in.

What would Mrs. Russet do? he thought. The answer his brain coughed up wasn’t at all helpful: She never would have let herself get in this situation in the first place, dummy.

Billy almost sighed. Here he was, a bizillion light years away from his house, about to run out of air if he didn’t get pulverized by a rock scorpion first, and his subconscious mind was being sarcastic to him. He just couldn’t get a break.

As if to answer that, the scorpion took another swing at him, which if it had hit would not only have broken Billy, it would have shattered him into a million twitching pieces. Billy ducked out of the way at the last second, however, and the spiked tail buried itself in the nearby rock wall. The scorpion pulled at it, but was clearly stuck, giving Billy a few precious seconds to run as fast as he could toward the other end of the tiny valley.

Come on, think! he shouted at himself. If I’m a Brown Power, what do I do?

He supposed that Mrs. Russet would have created an impenetrable rock fortress around herself, or made a great wave of rocks come ripping through the ground to crush the scorpion into sand. Most likely, she would have just thought about the scorpion dissolving, and it would have happened. But Billy had no idea how to make any of those things occur. He tried imagining them, hoping that was all he would have to do, but the only thing that happened was that the scorpion had time to pull its tail out of the cliff. The beast wheeled around on its many legs, again bringing itself to face Billy, and once more, the monster started lumbering after him.

Billy began wheezing. He thought at first it was just exhaustion from running across the sand, jumping and ducking and rolling to avoid the attacks of a homicidal space monster made of meteor. But then he realized it wasn’t mere physical exhaustion: his air supply was running out. He glanced down at his legs, which were pumping madly through the rainbow sand. Sure enough, the blue glow that had surrounded him was rapidly fading.

WHUMP! WHUMP! The scorpion’s footfalls were coming louder now, as though the titanic monster was angry that Billy had the nerve to stay alive this long. It came at Billy like an express train, and Billy once again had to roll away from a downward-curving leg. Sand exploded all around him, getting in his hair and eyes. The hooked leg had missed him by bare inches, and was still stuck in the ground right in front of him.

What Billy did next was insane. It was purely crazy.

It was also the only thing he could think of.

He took two huge steps, then
grabbed the leg
. He wrapped his arms and legs around it as tightly as he could. There were small craggy pits in the rock-leg, allowing Billy some foot and handholds.

The scorpion’s jaws clicked together again, the vibrations rattling Billy’s own teeth in his head. The monster pulled its leg out of the sand, taking Billy high up into the air with it. It shook its leg, trying to dislodge Billy, who was holding onto the leg with the tenacity of a woodland tick.

Billy refused to budge. His hands cramped, his leg muscles locked in quivering pain, but he wouldn’t let go. The scorpion shook harder, trying even more forcefully to dislodge him, but that didn’t work, either.

The monster paused, as though gathering its thoughts for a moment. Then Billy could swear he saw some of the thing’s eyepits widen with an idea. The rock monster hobbled on its nine unencumbered feet to the nearest cliff wall. It raised Billy up, and then he realized that the monster was about to scrape him off against the rock of the wall.

Billy saw the cliff face coming at him and knew that he was a goner. He concentrated as hard as he could on the rock wall that he was now speeding toward, trying to will it into becoming soft as pudding, or blowing into a million pieces, or turning to sand. Something, anything that would save him. But nothing was happening. He finally gave up wishing for specifically rock-related things to happen, and just settled for a more generic wish that
anything
would happen. Just so long as it would save him.

At that moment, Billy was suddenly gripped by a surprising feeling of calm. He was going to die here. There was nothing he could do about it. But he was at peace. As though nothing could really harm him, nothing could touch him. He didn’t know where the feeling was coming from, but he didn’t care. It was delicious as fruit to a starving man, this feeling, and Billy actually closed his eyes to savor it.

Then there was a noise.

It wasn’t a big noise, but nor exactly could it be called a small noise. Not a sharp noise, but nor was it a soft noise. It wasn’t particularly loud, but it was hardly quiet, either. It was as though the very stuff sound was made of were being released from a container, where it had been confined for a thousand years, and was now calmly but firmly making its presence known throughout the universe.

Apparently, even though it had no ears, the scorpion heard the noise as well, because it stopped trying to scrape Billy off its leg. Its head began moving back and forth in a rhythmic pattern, reminding Billy of a snake being charmed by some kind of wise man.

Billy had very little time to enjoy this strange reprieve, though, because his air finally ran out. He inhaled, but no air came into his lungs. His suddenly stricken body tried to cough, but no air came into it. The dark void of space had no oxygen to provide, and whatever air Billy had been given as part of his test was now gone.

Darkness started swirling in at the edges of Billy’s vision, and then he saw something, a bright light in the middle of the tunnel around the edges of his sight. At first he thought it was just another star, hanging between the three huge moons above him. But no, it couldn’t be a star, because it was moving. Faster and faster it came, growing larger in Billy’s sight.

The noise, that strange noise that he had been hearing, now grew louder as well. And as it did, Billy was amazed to see the colored sand below him starting to move as though in eddies of air. But that couldn’t be, could it?

But it was! Billy suddenly felt a cool blast of rich, wonderful air hit him in the face. He inhaled deeply, the air as wonderful to him as the hot chocolate had been in the anteroom on Powers Island. He felt his muscles rejuvenate as oxygen flooded his air-starved lungs.

With the air, he felt something else that he had not felt since coming to this strange place of his testing: he felt sound. It seemed strange, to think that sound could actually be
felt
, but it was true. As the air came from who-knew-where, it brought with it the sounds that had been absent from this meteor in space, and the sound it brought was as tangible as concrete to Billy. He could hear his own breathing, he could hear the sift of sand below his feet, he could hear the scraping of rocky joints as the scorpion swayed nearby, still dancing to the silent music that held it captive.

And through all this, the star that sped towards them grew. It grew and grew, and began to take shape. Billy blinked. He would have rubbed his eyes had his arms not been clasped so tightly around the rock monster’s stony leg. He couldn’t believe what he was seeing.

A new sound greeted him. It came from the star that wasn’t a star. It came from the thing that Billy couldn’t believe he was seeing.

The sound was a neigh. A great, loud whinnying that Billy imagined might be what the horses of medieval times might have sounded like as they carried their knights to battle.

The sound came from the shape in the sky above them. From the star that was not a star. It was a horse. But what a horse! It was the purest white, from the tip of its hard-breathing nose, to the ends of its hooves, which appeared to be made of white marble. A golden horn emerged from the horse’s forehead, a sharp-tipped swirl of bright color that seemed almost out of place on the snowy beast. Two enormous feathered wings emerged from its body, flapping in huge, powerful arcs. And instead of a horse’s tail, the incredible animal had a trio of platinum-colored flails that were both beautiful and terrible to look upon. Billy knew somehow that the tails could flay the skin from off an enemy, and sincerely hoped the Unicorn—no ordinary horse, he could see that now—would view him as a friend.