Glory Alley and the Star Riders (The Glory Alley Series) (54 page)

“
Yowch
!
”

Insects
bit h
er
face and hands
.
H
undreds
of
biting bugs, maybe thousands, buzz
ed
around.
What she wouldn’t do for repellant right now
.
And
a chocolate
coated ice cream bar.

“Are
there
mosquitoes on every planet?”
she complained.

“Just about,” Needle called from up ahead
.

The muggy air soaked h
er
coat
from the outside. Sweat soaked her pajamas from the inside.
She
flung her ponytail around like a fan
to dry her neck
,
and
tied her
coat around her waist
, but that
only served to offer the mosquitoes a bigger buffet.
Steam
continued to rise
from the soil
.
Unseen critters scurried, chipped and squawked in the branches above
.
Glory
’s
legs were longer than the
Wybbil
s’ legs, but it was a chore trying to keep up
with them
.

“I’m so thirsty,” she panted.

Bone rolled his eyes
.
“
Tullah
ns are such mamsy pamsies
.
How about somebody giving her some
water?”

The
Wybbil
s dug through the inside of their
glittery green
vests and Needle produced a metal flask
.

Glory
gulped
the contents
, which was
water unlike any
s
he had ever tasted—clean, sweet and
sort of lemony
.
She wiped her lips
on
her
forearm
with a
loud
AHHH.

They walked again.
Glory
turned to the
Wybbil
pilot behind h
er
.

“I
’d like to
fly a whifferdil
some time
.”

“Ye
would
,
would
ye?”
t
he pilot laughed a little.

“If all you have to do is concentrate on flying, it seems like anybody could
manage
that.”

“It involves a lot more than that,
Tullah
n,” the pilot said
.

“Such as?”

“Like I’d tell ye.”

“Lady
Gost
said
you guys have to answer my questions.”

“I
heard no such decree
.”

“For once the
Tullah
n tells
the
truth,” Bone said
.
“So by decree, ye must tell h
er
.”

“I don’t understand
,
”
he replied.

“Neither do we,” Needle said
.
“Th
e
lady’s ways
be
a mystery.”

“Very well then
,” the pilot sighed
.
“
In order to fly
a
whifferdil one must
be connected
to
the
Elboni
in a very special way
.”

“W
hich
of course,
ye are not
,” Bone was sure to add.

“
Flying be like meditating
,” the pilot continued
.
“
Ye must clear your mind of everything except
the
whifferdil, wind
,
and
the
mystical
Elboni
.
Thinking of all three
,
and nothing else
,
be no small feat
.
A skilled aviator leans how to maintain this state, even amid conversation and distractions.”

“
Sounds easy enough.”

The pilot stopped
and dropped his bundle on the ground. “I have
the
good mind to let ye try.”

Glory
’s
face lit up. “Could I?”

“No!”
t
he pilot said
.

Bone, Needle and White Feather chuckled.

They walked a few minutes longer until the jungle broke into a clearing the size of the
sling
field at school
.
Aqua sky contrasted with the ground of white sand. The towering white formation
s
he had seen from the
sky
stood in the middle of the open space
.
Its
base
looked like a
fishbowl
big enough for
whale
.
The long neck that came out of it reminded h
er
of
a tall factory smokestack.
The
huge formation
had neither windows nor decorations and appeared to be made of the same
white
sand that covered the ground. A lone
red
door
stood
at its base
.

“T
he Bamboozle
?”
Glory
asked.

“Aye,” the
Wybbil
s replied
.

It didn’t look scary
.
In fact
,
it looked kind of pretty sparkling under the afternoon sun
.

It’s round
ish
,
Glory
noted.
Circles
be
for magic
.
Uh-oh.

“Come,” White Feather said with a wave of his hand
.

The
y trudged through the
thick sand around the
Bamboozle
until stopping by the red door.
White Feather turned the brass handle and pulled it open
.
The floor
inside
was covered with the same white sand
.
Except for a spot of light coming in from the tall stack
,
sunlight
barely touched
the interior
.
No vegetation inside, no
cobwebs,
but most important
ly
—
no
insects
.

“
It’s like a
desert
in there
.
”
Glory
commented
.

Needle stepped inside while the rest of them hovered by the door.
He
went to stan
d at the center of the Bamboozle where he held up the silver spike
—
t
he Nightburner
—
and said,
“Nanru
.
”

T
he Nightburner illuminat
ed
the entire place. N
ow
Glory
saw
there were three other doors equally spaced along the
round walls
—
one green, another blue,
one
black.
Her
eyes roamed
upward
where the light streamed
down
through the
long stack
.

“That must be twenty stories high,”
she
mused aloud.
“Now what?”

“If ye get out of
the
Bamboozle on your own ye pass
the
test
,” White Feather
replied.
“If ye
elect to end the test
early,
or
happen to
die before it’s over
,
you fail.”

“
Happen to die
?”
she
croaked, “And what do I get if I
happen
pass?”