Glory Alley and the Star Riders (The Glory Alley Series) (89 page)

"We'll find it,"
they assured.

Glory
made her
lower lip
tremble
and it wasn’t hard to do
.
Thoughts of failure loomed
large
.
She still
wasn’t positive she’d worked out
the true eight
condition
s. An
d time was running out
.
She
sniffled and
tried to
muster up tears
.
T
he waterworks wouldn’t come
though, so
s
he
tried whining instead.
"
W
hat if you forget this exact place and accidently bury me in the wrong grave?"

“That wouldn’t happen,” Bone
said.

“You can’t know that for sure
.
”
Glory
needed to cry to make h
er
act convincing
.
Find
some
bad thoughts
,
s
he told h
er
self
.
Considering the circumstances, it was pretty easy.
The
magic
s
he worked so hard for was slipping away, and a drawn-out painful extraction wa
s only a short journey via the Paraplume away.
Jagged
sobs
worked their way through her solid frame, but she still couldn’t squeeze out the waterworks.
Would they buy it?

Bone
was
shift
ing
uncomfortably
from foot to foot
.
That was a good sign.

Needle patted h
er
on the shoulder
.
“Please, don’t
be so upset.
We will not forget.”

Glory
plopped down onto the
ground,
resting her
head between knees,
covering her face with both hands,
wailing l
ike a four-year-old
.
“All I want is to be buried with my mom. Is that too much to ask?”

“
Maybe we can mark the grave before we leave,
” White Feather suggested. “T
hat way ye won’t
have to worry about us finding it again
.
”

Glory
w
ip
ed
h
er
nose
on a sleeve
.

“You’d do that for me?”

All three nodded.
“Aye,” they said.

Glory’s head popped up.
“I know just what to do.
”
As much as she hated seeing them step out of the circle, it was
a
necessary
risk
. She brought them to
the corner of the lot where
her usual stash of
stones was sorted by size.
“
I bring her a present on her
b
irthday
s
and every Father Winter’s Day. I wish I could buy her a real marker, with words engraved in it and stuff, but this pile of rocks is the next best thing.”

“There’s that word again,” said Bone.

“Ignore h
er
,” White Feather said
.
“
She
’s doing it just to
be irritating.”

Glory
hid a grin
. She could see the words on the game
board clearly in her mind
:
Seek, Find, Persist, Conquer
.
I’m in the
persist
stage of the game, she told herself, and my dragon is in my
opponent’s
lair, ready to pilfer the treasure chest. But Grandpa had turned the tables on her enough to know that anything could go wrong.

She cleared her throat, carefully lining up the pieces.

“
I
wanted
to build
my mother
a
ginormous
monument for a Father Winter’s Day present
, so I was
gathering prime specimens for a few months now,”
s
he pointed
to the half-hidden pile of stones
near the fence at a line of evergreens
.
“If you let me finish
it,
I
promise to be
quiet on the return trip.”

"How long will it take
you
?
”
Bone asked.

“Not even an hour.”

“No
, t
hat’s too long,” said Bone.

“
If you help me it will take
ten minutes
—
tops.”

“
Together we shall work then
,” said Needle
.
“But, let’s get on with it.”

They walked over to the evergreens
.
The
whole while White Feather grumbled at Needle
for agreeing to help
.

“
I bet you
wish
you
were
already
back on Wybb
,
”
Glory
said.

Bone curled up the corner of his lip, giving a slight growl, while the others
continued
to
scoop up load
s
of stones
. They
followed
Glory
back to
Mom’s
grave
.

“Show us where ye want them.”

Glory
led them
over the
intertwined
willow switches into the middle of the circle
.
The three of them stood over
the grave
with rocks in hand
,
waiting for instruction
.

By the mountains of
Tullah
, it dawned on her that not one, but
three
Wybbils stood inside the circle
.
This meant not one wish, but three, more than she ever dreamed possible
.
She had been through a lot since the
incident in h
er
bedroom
, where
s
he had grabbed Bone’s leg,
and wished to be rich
. Asking for credits again would surely alert the Wybbils to the plan at hand
, but that was no longer what she wanted. No,
she wanted
something far greater than that, but
she had
never considered the possibility of more than one wish.
This was too much
pressure. Her mind drew a blank and her teeth began to chatter

“Tell us where to stack them,” Needle said.

She
stood back and
studied the area.

“
Stack them up by size with biggest at the bottom, smallest at the top
. It has to be
perfect."

“Who made h
er
our supervisor?” Bone complained to the other
Wybbil
s, but kept on working.

The
Wybbil
s were marking h
er
grave with about as much emotion as someone burying a potato
.
And, as soon as they finished, they intended to
turn her over to the executioners
.
Fear
wash
ed
over h
er
in waves
now
.

"I
t
sure is
n-n-
nice of you guys to g-go to so much trouble.
”
She
faked
gratitude
with a cheesy smile
.
They kept working and
Glory
kept talking
.
Their breaths turned to puffs of fog cloud
ing
the air as they labored
.
She eyed the beautiful spike in Needle’s hat
.
With
a light like that
,
she’d never have to worry about
battery power again
.
On the spur of the
mom
ent,
s
he decided to make
it one of her wishes
.
Glory
thrust h
er
shaking hands deep
er
into pockets,
humming
and talking about everything and nothing
.
The
star riders
carefully checked the
makeshift
monument without looking up
.
T
ime to make
the next
move, perhaps the riskiest part of the ritual.