The Power Potion (2 page)

To Dave, they looked like billy goats from a storybook. (They were, in fact, mostly nanny goats, but given their sizeable horns and obvious beards, it was an understandable mistake for Dave to make.) And as he rode deeper and deeper into this Moongaze maze, he noticed them grazing on weeds or nibbling at the leaves of shrubs and trees. One was even
in
a tree. “A goat in a tree?” Dave muttered incredulously (as he did not know that goats are quite good at climbing trees, provided there is at least some slant to the trunk).

When Dave came upon Moongaze Place, he
turned left (again), and after a short ride past more goats (and now chickens, too), he came to a sign announcing Moongaze Court.

Now, this sign wasn’t a city-issued green and white metal sign on a tidy metal pole like the rest of the Moongaze signs had been.

Oh no.

It was crudely carved and nailed to a tree, and its arrow shape was pointing to the (you guessed it) left. Moongaze Court, Dave discovered, was not so much a street as it was a narrow dirt path that led to a beautifully painted and ornately carved vardo.

And what, exactly, is a vardo?

It’s a horse-drawn home. A nomad’s dandy domicile, portable pad, and single most prized possession.

In short, it’s a gypsy wagon.

Vardos come in a variety of styles and sizes, and although the one at the end of Moongaze Court was small, it was magnificent. It had a
gracefully bowed roof, elaborately scrolled detailing, and quaint, shuttered windows.

Like many vardos, this one was brightly painted (the color scheme here being deep violet, forest green, and gold), and it had four gold wagon wheels—two large ones in back and two medium-sized ones up front.

Handles (similar to those of a wheelbarrow) rested on the ground, and between these handles was a curved ladder that led to a Dutch door.

“Wow,” Dave muttered after taking in the scene, “a circus wagon?”

He checked the address against his paperwork, and when he was convinced that this was, indeed, the place he needed to be, he leaned his bike against a tree and approached the door.

Now, Dave had, left by left, wound his way into a potentially perilous situation. There was nobody within earshot. It was as though the surrounding houses had all turned their backs on the vardo,
then put up walls, creating a remote area that was isolated from the rest of the neighborhood.

And although there were goats and chickens and large, lovely trees giving the setting an innocent, bucolic feel, Dave was, in fact, in the very heart of what people on the outside called Moongaze Maze.

Now, by “people on the outside,” I do not mean people hanging around in their yards, or sitting on their porches, or out for an evening stroll.

By “people on the outside,” I mean the people who did not dare (or care) to come inside. People who had heard rumors of gypsy thieves and bad-luck curses.

People like, oh, anyone who lived in a neighborhood north, south, or (especially) east of Moongaze Maze.

People like, say, the mailman, and the UPS driver, and the FedEx guy.

(Even the garbage collectors didn’t like going that deeply into the Maze.)

But there Dave was, about to knock on a strange door at the end of a shady dirt path in the heart of a mysteriously mazed neighborhood, completely unfazed by any of it. He was, instead, relieved. Relieved to have found Moongaze Court and relieved to be on his last pickup of the day. (His stomach was protesting the absence of an after-school snack, plus there was the nettling matter of an almost-due social studies project that he had yet to begin.)

And so Dave simply mounted the curved ladder’s steps and knocked on the vardo’s Dutch door, and a few moments later the top half of the door swung in. A tubby little man with impressively large ears and cloudy, almost white eyes said, “Yes?”

“Yanko Purran?” Dave asked, referring to his printout.

“I am,” the man answered.

Dave made his voice as deep and professional-sounding as possible. “Roadrunner Express, here for a pickup, sir.”

The man scratched a long fingernail through
the formerly fuzzy blood-red beret that he wore low over his forehead (accentuating his elephant ears). “Very good!” he said pleasantly, and in the brief moments he stepped away, Dave saw the most amazing sight. The vardo was beautiful inside. It had rich wood cabinetry with gilded trim, a bunk to sleep on, and a hand-painted washbasin. But mostly what Dave noticed were flasks bubbling and distilleries dripping and odd-colored liquids in vials.

Yanko Purran returned (blocking Dave’s view) and handed over a white mailing tube.

Now, there was nothing alarming or at all ominous about this tube. It was simply a standard cardboard mailing tube with caps on both ends and a label affixed across the middle.

There
was
, however, something both alarming and ominous about the instructions Yanko Purran gave him. “Deliver this to Mr. Black,” the man said firmly. “He says that under no circumstances are
you to give it over to anyone else at that address. Is that understood? Give it only to Mr. Black.”

“Mr. Black?” Dave gasped, and a shiver shinnied up his spine as he saw that the package was addressed to “Monsieur Damien Black, #1 Raven Ridge.”

“I said, is that understood?” the man demanded.

“Uh, y-yes,” Dave replied, and his voice was neither deep nor professional-sounding. “Give it to Mr. Black, and only to Mr. Black,” he repeated.

“Exactly. He wants it by sundown.”

Dave nodded, as though in a trance.

“Did you hear me?” the man demanded.

It wasn’t until that moment that Dave understood that the man needed to
hear
his responses because he could not see them. “Uh, yes, sir. Of course, sir,” he said, this time using his deepest voice. “We’ll get it there by sundown.”

Well! These were the words that sprang from
Dave’s mouth, but these words did not reflect what Dave was actually thinking.

Dave was actually thinking that he’d rather die than go up to Raven Ridge.

Or, more accurately, that he
might
die if he went up to Raven Ridge.

Dave, you see, had been to Number 1 Raven Ridge before.

On several occasions, actually.

He’d had dealings with Damien Black before.

Several times before.

And, to his credit, he’d learned that it was wise to stay far, far away from the diabolical man and his monstrous mansion.

But Dave had never refused a delivery, and before he could grasp the notion that refusal was, indeed, an option, Yanko Purran closed the vardo’s door, leaving Dave with the terrifying task of delivering a package to Damien Black.

Dave did not go directly to Raven Ridge.

First (preoccupied with dread over the delivery he had to make), he took a wrong turn as he was leaving Moongaze Maze, and, as I’m sure you know, one wrong turn can easily lead to another. It wasn’t long before Dave was completely discombobulated (and hopelessly lost).

Which, of course, caused panic to set in.

And then (as if being discombobulated and hopelessly lost inside Moongaze Maze with a dreaded delivery weren’t bad enough) Dave U-turned away from (yet another) dead end and found himself blocked by goats.

A whole herd of them.

Right there.

In the middle of the road.

Plus, he realized with a double take, there was a big goat overhead.

In a tree.

Now, it’s a well-known fact that goats eat everything.

That’s not to say that this well-known fact is correct, because it’s not. Goats are, for example, not carnivores (which eliminates an enormous slice of the pie right there). Nor do they particularly like garbage. Their reputation for indiscriminate ingesting comes more from their curiosity than their culinary preferences.

Goats, you see, are quite intelligent and, consequently, intensely inquisitive. And to satisfy its curiosity, a goat will explore things with its prehensile upper lip and tongue. (These two appendages have, over time, adapted, allowing goats to grasp and hold things.) (And quite firmly,
I might add.) So any consumption of, say, shirts or shoes or delivery-boy bicycle seats is simply the unintended consequence of a goat’s need to check things out.

And these goats were clearly intent on checking Dave out.

The circle tightened.

The goats sniffed.

Their top lips pursed and wagged and quivered.

Goat tongues made their way toward Dave.

“Aaaah!” Dave cried (because, really, what else was there to say?).

Now, you may be wondering why Dave didn’t just push right through this brash blockade of bearded goats. After all, goats are not predators.

Goats don’t circle and attack.

Or stalk and assault.

(They do, it’s true, assault stalks, but that’s an entirely different matter.)

It was the eyes. The golden eyes with long, slitty, sideways pupils. They reminded Dave of tiger-eyes.

Living, blinking, sideways tiger-eyes.

And tiger-eyes (to make a long story short) reminded Dave of Damien Black, and thinking of Damien Black petrified him.

However, the bleating and groaning and
grunting and baaing that the goats were doing also kept Dave from pushing through them.

Plus, there were horns.

Large, curled horns.

You don’t just blithely push through a hard-horned herd of bleating, baaing, grunting, groaning goats.

You just don’t.

And
then
Dave noticed that one of the goats had not just two but
six
horns coming out of its head.

Six horns?

Dave was now way beyond discombobulated or panicked.

He was freaking out.

“AAAAH!” Dave cried again, but as he backed away, he rammed right into a second six-horned goat.

“AAAAHHH!” he cried once more, because the goats were now upon him, nibbling at his
shoes, his handlebars, his tires, his bike seat, his sweatshirt.

“HELP!” he yelped from inside the herd of side-eyed nibblers. “HELP!”

“Hey!” came a voice from Dave’s right. “Hey, leave him alone, you two-toed turkeys!”

It was a girl, no more than eight.

A girl who reminded Dave of his little sister, Evie.

A girl brash and pushy and loud.

One who knew how to get her way.

“Back off!” she said, whacking the goats with a stick. “He’s not edible. Go! Go!”

“Thanks,” Dave choked out after the goats began retreating, but he felt terribly embarrassed to have been rescued by a little girl. (Especially one so much like Evie.)

“Watch out for Hilda,” the girl said, nodding at the tree branch above. “She’s a prankster.”

As if on cue, the goat in the tree let loose a spray
of pellets, raining little poopy nuggets all over Dave.

“AAAAHH!” Dave cried (yet again) because (yet again) what else was there to say?

He shook out his helmet, then pushed forward, asking the girl, “How do you get back to the main road?”

“Jackaroo?” she asked.

“Yes!” he called over his shoulder (as he was, once again, too impatient to wait for decent directions).

“Second right, right, right!” she called after him.

“
Second
right?”

“Right!” she shouted.

And so off Dave pedaled, escaping Moongaze Maze as fast as he could.

After Dave escaped Moongaze Maze, he still did not go directly to Raven Ridge.

Instead, he went directly home.

“Sticky!” he called after he’d made sure his parents and sister were not in the apartment. “Sticky, where are you?”

Well. We’ve reached the point in the story when I worry about telling you more. Either you already know everything I’m about to tell you or you know none of it. If you know everything, you’ll say, Yeah, yeah, I know all that—now get on with the story! And if you know none of it, well, chances are you’ll roll your eyes and go, Oh,
right
, and I’ll have to jump through a bunch
of fast and fiery hoops to convince you that this isn’t just some silly make-believe story—that it’s true, authenticated, documented, and (in fact) factual.