The Pillars of Ponderay (21 page)

Albert was about to call Leroy over so he could logic out a new plan, when Hoyt turned and shouted, “Slink! Come here!”

Slink climbed over to Albert and Hoyt. He was dripping wet, and he looked like he was about to drop.

“Ask a Jackalope to take me and Albert to the top of this Pillar,” Hoyt said.

Slink looked like Hoyt had just told him to put on a dress. “I can't do that! I'm not good enough yet. I only know how to say a few words to them, and besides, they're angry from the Imbalance.”

Hoyt looked Slink right in the eyes. “You
are
good enough, Slink. I know you can do it. Just try.”

Albert was grateful to Hoyt right then, for his pep talk seemed to have worked. Slink climbed back up and approached the hole where the Jackalope was hiding. With a deep breath, Slink climbed inside.

Albert gripped the Pillar so hard his fingers ached.
What if Slink can't do it?

“He's got this,” Hoyt said.

A full minute passed.

Slink poked his head out and called down. “Get in here, boys!”

Albert and Hoyt climbed up the Pillar as quickly as they could. Had Slink done it? Had he tamed a Jackalope?

They reached the hole, and both Albert and Hoyt climbed inside.

There sat a Jackalope, with horns as long as Albert was tall. It hardly fit inside the cave, and with three boys inside as well, the Jackalope looked like it wanted to bolt. Or attack.

“He'll do it,” Slink said. He reached out and patted the wild Jackalope on the neck. It flinched, and its eyes widened, but when Slink spoke something to it in Creature Speak, the Jackalope relaxed. “Better go now, while you can. I'll go find Birdie and Leroy and see if we can tame some more.”

“You're a lifesaver,” Albert said to Slink.

“I knew you could do it.” Hoyt grinned.

Slink said one more thing to the Jackalope, and dove out of the hole.

The Jackalope pawed the ground, as if to say,
Let's get this over with.

Albert approached it first, his hands outstretched. The Jackalope's fur was soft as silk. Albert climbed on the creature's back and grabbed onto its horns for support.

“No one in the Core needs to hear about this,” Hoyt said. He climbed on behind Albert and wrapped his arms around Albert's stomach. “Got it?”

“Got it,” Albert said.

He wasn't sure how to control the Jackalope. He clicked his teeth and kicked his heels, almost like he was riding a horse. The Jackalope huffed and bent its back legs. Then, before Albert or Hoyt could change their minds, the creature leaped.

Really
leaped.

It was like Albert had been in a car that suddenly went from zero to one hundred in an instant. His stomach went out from under him, and he and Hoyt both screamed.

The Jackalope carried them through the air, across to the next Pillar. There, its back feet kicked off a handhold. It leaped again.

Jump after jump, the Jackalope carried Albert and Hoyt into the sky.

Finally, they landed on top of a Pillar.

Albert and Hoyt slid off the Jackalope's back. It shook like a dog after a bath, but it stayed put.

“Wow,” Hoyt gasped. “Look at this, Flynn.”

They peered over the edge of the Pillar as it spun them round and round and round. From here, they could see the rest of the Realm, all the cliffs and chasms they'd journeyed across to get here. Down below, Albert could see Slink and Mo on one Pillar, Birdie and Leroy on another. He hoped they'd get up here soon. Albert and Hoyt needed all the help they could get. The Counter said
they had only two and a half hours to finish this thing.

Probably shouldn't have slept so long on the cliff
, Albert thought.
But too late now.

“On to the Tiles,” Albert said.

He sat up and looked around. Sure enough, right there on the top of the Pillar was a narrow opening. There was something sticking out of it.

“The first Tile!” Albert said. It was just like the Tiles they wore on their necks, but bigger, about the size of a piece of toast.

Hoyt reached for it and yanked it out, holding it in front of him.

There was an ancient-looking symbol on it, like a knife had scratched it. The symbol was a diamond—or a rhombus, as his math teacher had called it during their geometry lesson earlier this year. Albert did pay attention in school
sometimes.

“What should I do with it?” Hoyt asked.

Albert shrugged. “Keep it, I guess. Not much we can do with it until we know how the Pillars are marked.”

Hoyt stuck the Tile in his backpack and zipped it tight. “Now what?”

Albert looked around. The rest of his teammates were still climbing Pillars; Slink apparently hadn't tamed any more Jackalopes yet.

“Ready for another ride?” Albert asked. “We should go and grab another Tile and see what the symbol is. Maybe
it will spark something for us. If the goal is to rearrange the Tiles, and get them back to their original Pillars, then we've got to see if we can decipher the pattern.”

They climbed back onto the Jackalope. It bristled, but allowed them to stay on.

“Take us to the next Pillar,” Albert said, picturing the Creature Speak Tile. His words came out in a mixture of strange huffing and clicking noises.

The Jackalope bent its back legs, wiggled its butt, and leaped.

This time Albert resisted the urge to scream. The wind was ice-cold on his face, but it made him feel alive.

The Jackalope landed hard, on the next Pillar. Hoyt fell off, and Albert almost landed on top of him.

“Sorry,” Albert said, as he brushed himself off.

“It's fine. Look!” Hoyt yanked out the next Tile. This one had a carving of a triangle. “Should I put this in my backpack, too?”

Albert just shrugged. He hated that they didn't really know what to do next.
Had
they checked the Pillars for markings on the way up? Albert certainly hadn't and it wasn't like he wanted to interrupt Leroy to ask him now—he was dangling precariously near a Jackalope hole. Maybe Albert could do a quick check himself.

He pictured the Flight Vision symbol once again and looked over the edge of his Pillar, searching for a symbol.

But it was just rock! Just stupid, algae-covered rock.
He moved his vision to another Pillar where his friends were climbing around the sides. He watched Birdie try to climb around a corner on one Pillar, and Leroy nearly slip over a rounded edge on another, but he didn't see any symbols.

He saw Slink talking to the Jackalopes, trying to reason with them, and Mo was in the waves below.

Still, no markings caught Albert's eye. “I've got nothing,” Albert growled in frustration, shaking off the Flight Vision.

Just then, a splash sounded from below. A Hammerfin flew through the air.

“Duck!” Albert shouted. He tackled Hoyt just in time, and then caught the Triangle Tile, which had flown from Hoyt's hands. The Hammerfin did a flip, and its giant tail swooshed less than a foot from Albert's head.

Albert scrambled to the edge of the Pillar and peered over. The Hammerfin had disappeared back beneath the waves. But more would be back.

“We have to keep going,” Hoyt said, as he and Albert brushed themselves off. Albert tucked the Triangle Tile into his backpack and climbed onto the Jackalope. “Take us to another Pillar,” he said to the Jackalope, using Creature Speak.

“I'm glad you've got that Master Tile,” Hoyt said, climbing up beside Albert onto the Jackalope's back. The beast reared and leaped, and soon they'd landed on another Pillar.

Hoyt quickly bent down and plucked out a third Tile. He held it up and Albert noted the rectangle shape.

Just then, everything changed.

There was a great, resounding
CRACK-BOOM-CRACK
, an angrier noise than Albert had ever heard. The ground shook, and the Silver Sea roared from far below. The Pillars jerked violently. Albert and Hoyt fell to their knees to avoid going overboard, Hoyt barely keeping ahold of the Rectangle Tile.

This is the end
, Albert thought.
The Counter must have been wrong. We're too late.

The Pillars' insides buzzed like a car's engine revving up. Albert braced himself for the Pillars to pick up even more speed, but instead, the Pillars jolted to a hard stop, like when his mom slammed on the brakes at a red light. Albert and Hoyt instinctively each grabbed the Tile slot in the middle of the Pillar to keep from flying off.

Albert had turned to make sure his friends were okay when the Pillars jerked into motion again, this time rotating in the opposite direction.

Well, that could be worse. A direction change isn't so—

The Pillars halted again, and rotated back the
other
way.

Then the other way.

Then back the other way again.

Every few seconds, the Pillars halted and switched direction, churning back and forth, back and forth. It was like Albert was in a giant washing machine set to the
“heavy duty” cycle. Below them, the waters of the Silver Sea churned with waves higher than Albert had ever seen. Albert and Hoyt held on to the Tile slot as best they could, but after a particularly heavy jolt, Hoyt started sliding away from Albert, the unexpected momentum tugging at him like an invisible hand. Albert tried to hang on to him, but the churning was just too strong.

Hoyt's legs dangled over the edge.

“Don't let go!” Hoyt screamed.

Albert didn't let go.

Not even when the Pillars churned harder. Not even when Hoyt's weight became too much. Together, they went overboard and plummeted toward the Silver Sea.

T
here was nothing they could do. It all happened so fast.

Albert saw the Lightning Rays below in the water, ready to shock him and paralyze him. He was going to die down there, even if he survived the fall.

Down and down they fell, tumbling head over heels.

I should have been nicer to my siblings
, Albert thought, as he came closer and closer to death.
I should have called my mom one more time before I entered the Realm, to say good-bye.

He thought of Farnsworth's bright blue eyes, and Professor Flynn's glittering smile, and the very first time Albert had seen the Core. He imagined he was just about to dive into the Waterfall of Fate, not the Silver
Sea, and . . . suddenly something floated into his line of vision.

It was the Tile Lucinda had given him, back in the Main Chamber.

The Chance Tile.

Albert wrapped his fingers around the Tile, clutching it with all the hope he could muster.
Please
, he thought, as he came closer and closer to his end.
Please don't let me die like this.

The Tile burned beneath his fingertips. The wind rushed and roared into Albert's face as he fell. For one fleeting moment, he thought he heard music, the voice of someone or something sweet, telling him to hold on.

BAM!

The breath left Albert's lungs in a whoosh as he landed, hard.

But it wasn't into the Silver Sea. He'd landed . . .
on the back of a Jackalope? And Leroy was controlling the creature?!

Leroy had come out of nowhere, riding on a Jackalope like it was a quarter horse. It had bounced from one Pillar to another, angling itself perfectly so that Albert fell across its back.

Albert gasped and held so tightly to Leroy's waist that Leroy yelped. But Albert didn't care. He was
alive.

“What the heck?” Albert yelled.

Leroy's laugh was triumphant. “It was me! I saw you and Hoyt struggling up there, and there was nothing I
could do, but suddenly it was like I heard this voice, talking about horses. Can you believe that? So I put two and two together, and figured out that Jackalopes are just like horses, really. And once I knew that, it was much easier for Slink to use his Creature Speak to communicate with them. We all hopped on Jackalopes the second you fell.”

Albert looked to the left, to see Mo and Slink each on their own Jackalopes. The real shock was Birdie, who'd gotten stuck with saving Hoyt (who was hugging Birdie's waist so tightly she looked like she couldn't breathe).

“You're a genius!” Albert shouted.

“Take us sky-high, noble steed,” Leroy said, and though the Jackalope couldn't understand his words, when he lightly kicked the Jackalope's sides, it responded. It bounced higher and higher, using divots in the rock to reach the top, navigating the Pillars easily, even with their crazy churning.

Albert and Leroy landed safely on a Pillar, Slink and Mo beside them.

Hoyt and Birdie landed on the Pillar Albert had just fallen from, directly to their left.

They all dismounted—Hoyt in record time.

He must really hate these Jackalopes
, Albert thought, but then Albert saw why Hoyt had jumped off so fast—he was now plugging the Rectangle Tile back into the Pillar.

The churning motion died down instantly. The Pillars
went back to what Albert had come to think of as their normal spinning.

Albert looked to Slink, Mo, and Leroy for an explanation, but they all just shrugged.

Hoyt, on the other hand, nodded to himself, then stooped down and plucked the Tile
back
out.

CRACK-BOOM-CRACK!

Albert's stomach lurched as the Pillars jerked violently. The churning began again, but it didn't reach its full extremes before Hoyt had plugged the Tile back in.

“What's he doing?” Albert asked.

It was Leroy who answered. “I think he's just discovered another challenge to the Means to Restore Balance. How many Tiles are in your backpack, Albert?”

Albert swung his backpack forward. “I've got one, and Hoyt has one, plus the one he just put back in.”

Leroy nodded. “I think that when more than two Tiles are removed at the same time, the Realm reacts very, very badly.”

Albert thought back. The churning
had
happened right after Hoyt had removed their third Tile.

“So we can only remove
two
Tiles at once,” Albert said. “My dad and Tussy didn't figure that out, because they'd only managed to climb two Pillars when they came.”

“Great,” Mo said. “As if this wasn't hard enough.”

“Statistically speaking, if we were to remove
four
Tiles at one time, things could get a whole heck of a lot harder,” Leroy said.

Birdie glared at him, and Leroy's mouth snapped shut.

“Well, we've got to move forward,” Albert said. The Counter on his wrist now blinked with a red number two. “We're running out of time.”

Mo whistled and waved his arms to get Birdie's and Hoyt's attention. They quickly hopped onto their Jackalope, and when Albert called out
come here
in Creature Speak, their Jackalope leaped over the gap.

Now all six of them were together again.

“We've figured out the whole only-remove-two-Tiles-at-once rule,” Albert said. “At least, Hoyt did.” He gave Hoyt a congratulatory slap on the back.

“So now what?” Birdie asked. “We've got Ten Pillars, and we can only remove two Tiles at a time.”

“And,” Mo added, scratching his head like a Hexabon, “we still haven't figured out the markings on the Pillars.”

Time was running out. It was Slink's idea to call up more Jackalopes.

In pairs of two, the Balance Keepers rode around, searching for markings. There was nothing. Once, Albert and Leroy dismounted, and spent twenty precious minutes trying to find
any
type of sign.

“I can't see anything that stands out!” Albert called to Leroy. He was trying to climb sideways around the Pillar to reach Leroy, but there was a jagged point in the Pillar's side making things difficult. He looked across, to where Birdie and Slink were carefully scaling a particularly sharp-edged portion of a Pillar. Albert was glad he
wasn't on that one. Hoyt and Mo were on a third Pillar, looking like koala bears stuck on the trunk of an extra-large eucalyptus tree.
They
didn't have any weird lumps to climb around.
They
didn't have any sharp edges to navigate. . . .

“Holy crap,” Albert gasped, as it hit him. The Ten Pillars were shaped differently. He had assumed the Pillars were all basically the same, but looking again . . .

Excitement buzzed in his chest. If he was right, and he'd figured out the solution to the problem. . . .

They were going to save Ponderay.

Albert called the Jackalope forth, and he and Leroy climbed back on. When they got back to the top of a Pillar, Albert confirmed his suspicions.

The top of the Pillar he was on was a rough star shape. The top of the one Birdie and Slink were on was a little more like a triangle. How had he not noticed that before? He used the Flight Vision symbol to take his vision skyward, until he had a bird's-eye view of the Ten Pillars. Albert saw that the Pillar directly across from him—the one Hoyt and Mo were on—was a perfect circle. The next one was a rectangle, and the next one was a rhombus, like the shape that was on the Tile Hoyt had in his backpack!

The Pillars were different shapes, so that meant that each Pillar had a Tile with a symbol shape to match it. That had to be it!

Albert returned to normal vision and called his teammates in.

Once all the Balance Keepers were back together, Albert explained what he'd figured out.

“Awesome, Albert!” Mo said.

“Yeah, Albert, way to use that Master Tile,” Birdie chimed in.

“So now all we have to do is match the Triangle Tile with the Triangle Pillar and so on. Easy peasy!”

“Not so easy,” Albert said. “The Tiles are scrambled, remember?”

“And we can only take out two at a time,” Hoyt said.

Mo stepped forward. “We need to create a map first. Figure out the shapes of all the Pillars.”

Hoyt nodded and pulled his pocketknife out. “We'll carve it into the top of this Pillar, and use it as a guide map for when we start unscrambling the Tiles.”

“I never thought I'd say this, boys,” Birdie said, as she tightened her ponytail like she was gearing up for battle, “but you're brilliant.”

Albert called forth the power of his Master Tile, and as he used Flight Vision to get an aerial view of the Pillars, he called out the pattern.

“The one we're on is a star,” he said.

He could just hear the scratching of Hoyt's pocketknife over the wind as Hoyt carved a little star on the Pillar.

“The one directly to our left is a square,” Albert said. “To the left of the square is eight-sided.”

“An octagon,” said Leroy.

Albert nodded. “Yeah, that's the one. Next is a trapezoid. Then a pentagon.”

He called out shape after shape (thankfully he'd actually paid attention for that portion of his math class this year) until all Ten Pillars had been accounted for.

Albert called his vision back to his head. He looked down and saw the crude, caveman-like map Hoyt had carved. The shapes were a little off, but it did the job. Now they had a solid plan for which Tiles were supposed to go where.

Albert's Counter beeped.

Then it started blinking, a fat red
60
that made everyone stop and stare.

“An hour left,” Leroy said.

“Can we make it?” Slink asked.

“We have to try,” Mo answered.

Albert was expecting nerves to flow like a raging river into his system. But instead, a wave of calm rushed over him. He knew what he needed to do next.

He reached into his backpack and pulled out the CoreBow, unfolding it to its regular size. “We should all take a Jackalope to our own Pillars. That will cover six Pillars, and six Tiles.”

Slink nodded, then leaned over the side of the Pillar
and shouted something in Creature Speak. Three more Jackalopes started toward them.

“Everyone head for a Pillar,” Albert said. “Then wait for instructions.”

They all nodded, climbed onto Jackalopes as they arrived, and bounded off to five separate Pillars. Albert stayed on the star.

Albert unzipped his backpack and pulled out the Triangle Tile. He looked around the ring of Pillars. Hoyt was sitting atop his Jackalope on the Triangle Pillar. Albert waved his arms to get Hoyt's attention. Then he plugged the Triangle Tile into the CoreBow.

It wasn't like last night in Cedarfell, where aiming the bow had been a breeze. From here, with the Pillars spinning like wild, and the wind raging at top speeds, aiming seemed impossible.

Even if Albert shot it straight toward Hoyt, the wind would carry the Tile away.

Aim a little to the left of him.

It was Professor Flynn's voice that popped into Albert's head, a memory from the time his dad had taught Albert how to shoot a BB gun in the woods outside of Herman. It was windy that day, and aiming to the left would compensate for that.

“Thanks, Dad,” Albert whispered to himself.

He leveled the CoreBow toward Hoyt, then swung a tiny bit to the left, and squeezed the trigger.

The Tile shot out of the bow like a bullet, spiraling toward Hoyt so fast that Albert was afraid Hoyt wouldn't be able to catch it.

But Hoyt did.

Everyone cheered from their spots on separate Pillars.

Albert tried to yell a command to Hoyt, but his voice was lost in the wind. He closed his eyes and pictured the Black Book, all the countless symbols. With a little help from the MegaSpeak symbol (which resembled a megaphone), it was like Albert was speaking into a microphone. “Unplug the Tile on your Pillar, and plug the Triangle Tile in
immediately
after. That will mean, for just a second or two, that we'll have three Tiles out. Everyone brace yourselves for that to happen!”

Hoyt did as Albert asked.

The
CRACK-BOOM-CRACK
sounded, and for one horrifying moment, the Pillars responded, trying to throw everyone overboard. But in seconds, Hoyt had plugged the correct Tile into the Triangle Pillar.

The Pillars slowed just slightly, and Albert continued with his orders.

It took a while to get a steady pace going at first, but with the help of the CoreBow, and with Slink also offering to bound back and forth on his Jackalope and help trade Tiles, they got their system down.

Tile after Tile, Pillar after Pillar, the Imbalance in Ponderay was one step closer to being solved. They got
really good at switching Tiles out to avoid any chance of activating the churning, and the Pillars slowed their spinning with each Tile they plugged in.

A couple of times, Albert was tempted to check the Counter on his wrist, but he didn't want to get distracted stressing out about time.

Just keep going, Albert
, he thought.
The world is counting on you.

Still, by the time all the Balance Keepers were back on the Star Pillar, Albert had a feeling it was getting down to the wire—and they all looked exhausted. Everyone was breathless and ready to drop. Their faces were red, their skin chapped from the wind. Albert longed to finish the Means to Restore Balance if not to save the world, then just so he could get some sleep.

Leroy had just plugged in the Star Tile and pulled out a Parallelogram when Albert's Counter flashed an angry blood red like a flashing police car light on the streets of New York City. Albert had been right about it being close.

“We have five minutes left,” he said, a rush of adrenaline suddenly giving him a jolt of energy. It was tight, but the Parallelogram was the last Tile—they might actually make it.

Albert looked at the map. The Parallelogram Pillar was directly to their right. He called a Jackalope over and readied himself to mount it.