Kingdom Keepers III(5)

Finn’s hand nervously clutched into a fist. In doing so, he gripped a handful of sand. He reached out, his hand searching, and he bumped into Charlene’s arm. He let some of the sand cascade onto her skin, hoping she would get the message.

Over the next few seconds he heard the soft trickle of sand spilling. She had understood! The sound moved from DHI to DHI in a semicircle inside the teepee.

The pirate heard it too, but couldn’t figure it out.

Finn scooped up two big fistfuls of sand. His heart pounded in his chest.

The pirate looked searchingly into the teepee.

“Ain’t no one here,” he said.

“But them tracks go in and don’t come back out,” said the man with the gravel voice. “Don’t make no sense.”

“Them kids is cagey,” offered a third voice. “Wouldn’t trust them with my teeth.”

“You ain’t got no teeth,” said the man in the doorway. “Come take a look yourself.”

A second face appeared in the doorway. This man had long, greasy hair, a gold hoop earring in his right ear, and a left eyelid partly sewn shut. He smelled like bacon fat and fish guts.

He also stepped inside. “Them tracks don’t make no sense.” He looked up into the peak of the teepee, searching for the kids. “And them tracks don’t lie. They’re here somewhere.”

He looked right at Finn.

“Maybe they done dug themselves down into the sand like a flounder.”

“You mean a stone crab,” said the first man.

“I mean a flounder, you landlubber. Or a ray. What’s it matter what kind of fish, you ninny? Point is, they could be hiding ’neath the sand and we wouldn’t know it, now would we?”

The two were standing inside the teepee now, one so close to where Philby had sat down that he had to be just about touching his DHI. The pirates used their feet to disturb the sand, digging down.

“How would they be breathing?” the gravel-voiced pirate asked.

“How should I know?” answered the one-eyed stink bomb.

“Now!” Finn shouted. He stood and threw both handfuls of sand directly into the faces of the two pirates.

The men screamed. Covering his face, clawing at his eyes, one fell to his knees as Philby tripped him.

Finn snagged the remote control fob on the way out the door as the other Kingdom Keepers charged for the doorway. Two more pirates appeared.

Startled by the kids appearing out of thin air, the two men went wide-eyed with surprise. Willa and Charlene filled those eyes with flying sand. The two pirates hollered and staggered back.

The Kingdom Keepers rushed out of the teepee as a group. Finn, the fob in hand, ran smack into what felt like a giant sponge, bounced back, and fell to the sand.

Stitch stood over him.

“You don’t belong here,” Stitch said. He showed his teeth. It looked as if he could bite Finn’s head off—and maybe had that in mind.

Maybeck, who had run past Stitch, now daringly crept up behind the blue alien and knelt down on all fours.

Finn got up.

“Neither do you,” Finn said. “Shouldn’t you be back in space? And you want to know something? I liked you until just now. My sister thinks you’re cute.”

This caused Stitch a moment of thought.

Finn took the opportunity to step forward and shove the creature over Maybeck’s back. Stitch went down hard.

Maybeck jumped up. He and Finn took off, turning left down an access trail, back toward the park.

The pirates were up now, angry as hornets, and running hard to catch them.

“Ready?” Finn called out. “Keep close together. Everyone hold hands.”

No one argued. They closed ranks and all held hands.

Finn had never tried to use the remote control device on the run before. They’d always been standing together as a group. He had no idea if it would work. He hoped that by holding hands…

“One…” he counted.

The pirates were only a few feet behind them. He heard the ring of steel as swords were drawn.

“Two…”

Whoosh! A sword blade passed frighteningly close to his head.

“Three!”

He pushed the button. All the holograms disappeared at once. The black fob fell into the bushes at the base of a palm tree—a location Finn would etch vividly in his memory.





3


FINN OPENED HIS EYES. It was the same as always: he could barely see. His bedroom was cloaked in a midnight darkness, the only light coming from the colorful LEDs on his computer and his DS. He could make out the poster of Matt Damon overhead, taped to the ceiling alongside a glow-in-the-dark mobile of the solar system. He reached out and touched his face, pulled on his ear—he was human. He’d crossed back over again. He could never really be sure if the experience was anything more than a vivid dream. If the other Kingdom Keepers had not had the exact same dream as his he might have questioned all of it. But there was no doubting the phenomenon anymore. As unreal as it was, it was for real.