Categories > Original > Mystery > The Great Library: Prologue
7
Josh had gone to sleep with a feeling of satisfaction. He wasn’t sure why, but he was sure he would discover something important. He would stay at home for another day or two, but then move on, to stop Science. After all, he was a fugitive, and it was only a matter of time before the police came calling.
~
In his sleep, Josh was having the worst dream of his life! A curtain of blond—wait, no it was brunet—hair, was encircling him. At first the hair was pleasant, but Slowly Josh realized that if he stayed under the veil of German hair—how did he know it was German?—that he would die. He struggled to free himself, but the harder he struggled the more the hair tightened together, disallowing him to escape.
Suddenly, a siren sounded several floors below. The sound was so far away it sounded almost musical. Almost. It was rising up through the floors. Soon it didn’t sound melodic, but more demonic. Josh knew that if it reached him, he would die. He struggled with the curtain of hair, trying to escape.
The fibers of the hair spoke. “You want to leave my confines? Very well. I tried to protect you, but you persisted. Take your punishment.” The hair evaporated around Josh, and he awoke to a bright light.
~
Before Josh had woken, Miss Sterling had knocked on the Flint’s door. Merry, even though it was the middle of the night, had gone down to answer it.
“Hello Mrs. Flint,” Miss Sterling purred.
“Oh, call me Merry.”
“You’re son, Josh. May I speak to him?”
“Well sure, but it is the middle of the night,” said Merry shocked. “He’s asleep, like we all should be, but I’ll wake him up.”
“Nonsense!” claimed Miss Sterling. “I have my scientific wakeup methods. He’ll be up in five seconds.”
With that she had stocked up the stairs toward the bedrooms.
~
“Scientific wakeup methods,” muttered Miss Sterling. “Really? She fell for that?
“This must be his room,” she muttered, opening the door. She flicked on the light.
Josh woke up with a start.
“Here’s our little hero,” crooned Miss Sterling. “Would you mind coming quietly, or am I going to have to force you to come?”
“Come where?” Josh asked. “The police station?”
Miss Sterling sneered. “So you’re not as stupid as you look. Of course, that’s where we’re going. You now have a criminal record. A very severe one, at that. You will be executed in three days time.”
“I’ve never done anything wrong before!” exclaimed Josh, shocked. “Did you convince the police to give me a criminal record?”
“Of course. I’m sure you learned last year in the holocaust unit, that no one can resist a German? That wasn’t just some blown-up headed thing they made up. It was based on a fact. Just say I’m very persuasive.”
“So you’re going to kill me just because I asked a couple of questions?” Joshasked.
“Now you’re actually catching on,” said Miss Sterling with an icy cold voice. “You’ve finally learned that I am not to be trifled with. Now get up. Don’t take anything, because you will only live for another three days. We’ll talk more when you’re behind bars. I don’t trust you.”
She led him downstairs, and into the living room. “Unfortunately, I will have to handcuff you. I can’t give you a chance to escape like I did last time.”
Handcuffs, Josh thought. I could still teleport away and just undo the handcuffs later.
As if Miss Sterling had read his thoughts she said, “Now these handcuffs aren’t your usual old, run-of-the-mill police handcuffs, now are they? You wouldn’t have escaped me back in detention, if you hadn’t known any magic. I snuck into old Izall’s house a couple of nights ago, and stole some pixie dust that she had excavated from Turkey. I doubt she recognized it for what it was. I used it to reinforce the handcuffs with magic. Basically, you won’t be able to teleport away.”
Miss Sterling hustled Josh into her adopted police car. She sped away to the police station.
~
When Miss Sterling had reached the police station, she had flung some her pixie dust over her shoulder into the back seat. This time Josh fell asleep. Then Miss Sterling used the pixie dust to levitated Josh. When she had secured him away in a cell, she woke him up.
“I’m going to make sure that you never see the light of day, until it’s time for you to die. Right now, you are put away where not even the crows can land their dropping on you,” rasped Miss Sterling, with an evil glint in her eye. “And no, you won’t be executed with a lethal injection, or even the electric chair. You will be tortured, until you beg for death. You can’t possibly escape. It’s the weekend, so I’ll be able to watch you until it’s time for the torture to commence. Then in your after life, you will be tortured for all eternity.
“You’ve read the Hardy Boys I presume? All kids who are too stupid to read challenging books read them. Anyway, the bad guy always ‘spills the beans’ when he knows the sleuth isn’t going to live to ‘sing to the cops.’
“Basically, I want to rule the world, just as Hitler wanted to. You saw that Indiana Jones Movie? Hitler did seek out magical sources. The Ark of the Covenant most likely wasn’t one of them; the movie was realistic fiction. The rest of the Germans thought it stupid what Hitler was trying to do. In the end he gave up, but if he had continued, he would have taken over the world. It’s a good thing he didn’t, because that’s what I intend to do. I’m sure you know of my intent to raid The Great Library. With the knowledge, I could take over the world.
“Now stay in here, like a good little boy, and I might not be so harsh your torture. I might just stretch you ten feet long, over a pit of lava, instead actually making eat lava. You deserve much worse, but I’m a forgiving person.”
~
Josh was trying to think of an escape plan, but Miss Sterling was constantly staring at him through the five inch think bars. If he even as much as moved, she would say something like, “Remember deary, the better you are now, the better your tortuous future will be.”
Her green blue, German eyes, were constantly staring into his own. It was as if she wanted to suck all the life out of him through his eyes. As if, she wanted to make him pay for all those innocent questions he’d asked back in seventh grade.
Even though the blue eyes were slightly hypnotizing, Josh was still able to come up with a plan. He could sense the water molecules, in Miss Sterling’s body. One by one, he teleported them elsewhere.
After, about five minutes, Miss Sterling said, “Now dear, I’m going to get me some water. I want you to be good. It’s not as if this cell would allow you to escape.”
~
Miss Sterling had been gone for about five minutes, when a Josh heard a rumbling, creaking sound. “Who’s there?” he asked to the now dark room; Miss Sterling had turned off the lights when she left.
Adam’s voice answered. “Hey Josh. It’s me.” The voice was coming from the wall, which was now partially transparent. Glowing moons and stars now made up the wall. Adam stepped from the wall. “I was brought her by Miss Sterling too. I helped you look for magic. At school on Friday she asked me if I knew anything. She ‘arrested’ me.”
“Oh. I’m sorry,” said Josh. “Hey, how did you get in here?”
“Mostly magic. The guards of this prison feel sorry for us. We don’t belong here. It’s the holocaust all over again. When the guards built this new part of the prison for Miss Sterling, they made ways to escape. Miss Sterling won’t really watch you all day. Once she gets distracted, she leaves, and forgets about us.”
Josh wondered if it was possible to escape. “How about escaping?”
“There are tunnels that lead all over this prison, like the one I came through. I don’t have a lot of magic, so I can only open the gateways to non-important cells like this one. The gateway to freedom would take a lot of magic to unblock.”
“Maybe I could do it,” said Josh, optimism shining in his eyes.
“Those tunnels only open when Miss Sterling is teaching. Only during school hours. A food guard told me when he brought me dinner. That’s the loophole. We have to wait ‘til Monday for our chance.”
Josh looked depressed. “That’s the day I’m being executed.” Josh told Adam the details to his execution.
“We’ll just have to play it by ear then,” said Adam. “Come on. I’ll show the rest of the prison.”
~
Josh was led through the glowing, shimmering gateway. He raised his hand, to block it again. It less than a second, the moons and stars winked out of existence, to be replaced by grimy stone wall.
“Wow!” exclaimed Adam. “It took me more than five minutes to open that up. You probably could open the passage out of here.”
The room they were standing in was about as big as a regular school gym, but for the most part, circular. There some other kids from West Orient that Josh recognized, but he wasn’t exactly friends with most of them. Water dripped from the ceiling, and gathered in a central pool. Water from the walls ran, in trenches, to the pool as well. There was a normal drinking fountain, but Josh guessed that it ran off the collected water, instead of the prison pluming.
Trees and other fruit giving plants grew around the cave. The same minuscule, translucent, luminous moons and stars hung from nonexistent threads towards the roof of the cave. The plants must have been growing thanks to the magical light source. Although the light was there, it wasn’t that bright. Josh added a little of his power to the glow. Soon the cave was shining like as if the sun had been convinced to come over for a visit.
Now, Josh could see that the cave was much bigger. Enchanted pickaxes attempted to chip away the walls of the cave. Adam saw where Josh was looking. “I found that the walls of this cave are made up of un-ground pixie dust. I found a pickaxe, and excavated some. I used the dust to create the lights, make the water to flow correctly, and enchant the axes to collect more dust. All of these students have attended MsIzall’s class over the last five years. They have been arrested because they might be able to help bring down Science.”
“You know about the war?” Josh asked.
“Yeah. Miss Sterling explained some of it to me.”
“Oh.”
~
Day by day past inside the cave.Adam explained that when it was time to go to sleep, he would make the ground have the texture similar to a bed, for people to sleep on. Josh tried the technique as well; needless to say he did a much better job than Adam.
“It looks like you’ll be the magician in here from now on,” Adam said, once. “We don’t even need that pixie dust, but it won’t harm to have some around for those who haven’t learned magic yet.”
For dinner the prisoners would eat fruit of the plants. Soon, Josh got bored of the healthy food. He allowed some of his power to seep into one of the trees. He thought of junk food—junk food that tasted really good. Before long, not only were there trees bearing fruit, but ones bearing hamburgers, pizza, and such.
~
Life in the cave had begun to grow tranquil, but even so, the Monday, the day of the execution arrived.
Josh didn’t normally have a lowed voice, so he used a voice magnification spell, he’d invented. A patch of misty, white air appeared in front of Josh. “Hey guys. Um, you may know about the war. I am going to be the first of you to die. I need your help in escaping. You will be sent home to your families.”
Adam stepped up to the magical air. “I don’t think sending you home to your families is safe though. Miss Sterling will just come and bring you back here. I have a solution. Mr. Voz is a very big fan of Social Science. He is a substitute teacher, sometimes, at West Orient. He loves to tantalize the class by asking them questions about history. I’m sure he would agree to let you all stay with him and his family.”
A murmur of agreement greeted Adam’s words.
“Good idea, Adam,” approved Josh.
“Here’s my plan. We blockade ourselves in this room. Miss Sterling will have to go to work. Then we’ll be able to escape. I’ll teleport us to Mr. Voz’s house. Adam, can come with me, if he wants, but everyone else, must stay away, unless you have any magic.”
Some people started protesting, but others agreed, because they just wanted out of the prison.
Josh raised his hand. A grinding noise sounded, and Josh knew that they were sealed in the cave. He created a bag out of thin air, and caused all the pixie dust to go into it. “Where’s the passage leading out of here?” Josh asked Adam.
“Follow me,” Adam answered.
~
Adam led Josh to a part of the cave wall opposite from the pixie dust excavation site. When Josh had first seen this part of the wall, he had presumed that it was the most solid part of the entire wall. The rock looked the oldest, toughest, and generally the hardest to get through. He never would have thought that it was concealing a secret passage.
Josh willed it to open. This was probably the hardest spell that Josh had ever worked. The telltale luminous moons and stars showed that a secret passage had been revealed. Josh took a step closer. He was about to step into it, when Adam warned him not to.
“I wouldn’t do that if I were you.”
“Why not?” question Josh.
“Remember that the passage will only truly work when Miss Sterling has set foot on West Orient property.”
Josh looked closely, and could now see a transparent ghost of the rock wall, along with the stars and moons. The passage was there, but it was inaccessible until Miss Sterling fulfilled the requirements. Miss Sterling, without knowing it, wouldperformthe necessities.
~
“Ah, Mrs. Machiavelli,” Miss Sterling crooned. “So nice of you to come enjoy my company.”
Mrs. Machiavelli strained against the bonds that bound her to the chair. “What do you want from me Athena?”
Miss Sterling was shocked that someone knew her real name. Even the in the teacher directory, she was labeled as “Miss” Sterling.
Miss Sterling sneered. “I want you to torture Josh. You will make his death long, and full of suffering. I must go to work. Make sure he doesn’t escape….”
Miss Sterling then turned and walked out the door. It was time to go and give those naughty kids at school a lesson.
~
About ten minutes later, Miss Sterling had arrived at work. The passageway opened up for the fugitives. Josh told everyone in the cave to hurry over to the escape route. One by one, the escapees exited the cave. Josh filled in the cave with the magical substance that had been used to block the passage that everyone was in now; only Josh could unblock the cave now that it was filled in.
The newly open corridor seemed to be made by magic. The walls were perfectly smooth, without any imperfections. Nothing could be in the shadow, for this tunnel was lit by magic. The tunnel snaked and turned. The band of escapees trudged for about five minutes, until they came to a latter. They climbed the later, and opened a trapdoor. Josh was the first up. He looked around and noticed that he was… in the Library at West Orient. No wonder it took so long to get through tunnel.
Soon the rest of the fugitives had followed Josh’s lead.
Someone said, “It looks like we’ve come up in the center of the library.”
Most people agreed with that.
Adam spoke up. “We need to teleport to Mr. Voz’s house. This is German territory. We’re not safe here.”
“Ok,” said Josh. “Everyone hold hands.”
As soon as everyone was secured to someone else, a plume of bright green flames rose up. The blaze was much bigger than the one Josh had used to escape detention; these flames were ten feet high, and thirty feet across. If it had been real fire, the school library would have been scorched beyond repair. Luckily, these were the flames of teleportation, so no one got burnt.
~
Paraphrase
● Go to Voz’s house
● Drop other kids off.
~
“Josh!” It was Sydney speaking. “Don’t go!”
“What are you doing here?” askedJosh. “I thought all the other kids got dropped off at Mr. Voz’s house to stay until the war was over?”
“Well they did, but I didn’t want to stay. I want to go with you, and stop Science. I think it’s the most boring class ever! I’d love to have all those classes canceled.”
“That’s not exactly the point though, is it?” asked Josh.
Sydney had been friends with Josh for a long time. They'd met at the beginning of sixth grade, and been friends ever since.
“My other friends will be safe with Mr. Voz. You won’t. I’ll still have themafter the war, but I wouldn’t have all of them, if you died.
“So are you really up to fighting to the death, against one of your favorite teachers?” asked Josh.
Not everyone had been treated evilly be Miss Sterling. Some had thought she was the best teacher “in the galaxy.”
“If you think she’s bad I’ll help you get rid of her.”**
Just then, Adam walked up.
“Adam,” Josh said, “Sydney is going to stay with us and help us win this war.”
“Why?” Adam asked incredulously. He had an unfortunate dislike for Sydney.
“Because she wants to,” Josh said simply.
Josh had gone to sleep with a feeling of satisfaction. He wasn’t sure why, but he was sure he would discover something important. He would stay at home for another day or two, but then move on, to stop Science. After all, he was a fugitive, and it was only a matter of time before the police came calling.
~
In his sleep, Josh was having the worst dream of his life! A curtain of blond—wait, no it was brunet—hair, was encircling him. At first the hair was pleasant, but Slowly Josh realized that if he stayed under the veil of German hair—how did he know it was German?—that he would die. He struggled to free himself, but the harder he struggled the more the hair tightened together, disallowing him to escape.
Suddenly, a siren sounded several floors below. The sound was so far away it sounded almost musical. Almost. It was rising up through the floors. Soon it didn’t sound melodic, but more demonic. Josh knew that if it reached him, he would die. He struggled with the curtain of hair, trying to escape.
The fibers of the hair spoke. “You want to leave my confines? Very well. I tried to protect you, but you persisted. Take your punishment.” The hair evaporated around Josh, and he awoke to a bright light.
~
Before Josh had woken, Miss Sterling had knocked on the Flint’s door. Merry, even though it was the middle of the night, had gone down to answer it.
“Hello Mrs. Flint,” Miss Sterling purred.
“Oh, call me Merry.”
“You’re son, Josh. May I speak to him?”
“Well sure, but it is the middle of the night,” said Merry shocked. “He’s asleep, like we all should be, but I’ll wake him up.”
“Nonsense!” claimed Miss Sterling. “I have my scientific wakeup methods. He’ll be up in five seconds.”
With that she had stocked up the stairs toward the bedrooms.
~
“Scientific wakeup methods,” muttered Miss Sterling. “Really? She fell for that?
“This must be his room,” she muttered, opening the door. She flicked on the light.
Josh woke up with a start.
“Here’s our little hero,” crooned Miss Sterling. “Would you mind coming quietly, or am I going to have to force you to come?”
“Come where?” Josh asked. “The police station?”
Miss Sterling sneered. “So you’re not as stupid as you look. Of course, that’s where we’re going. You now have a criminal record. A very severe one, at that. You will be executed in three days time.”
“I’ve never done anything wrong before!” exclaimed Josh, shocked. “Did you convince the police to give me a criminal record?”
“Of course. I’m sure you learned last year in the holocaust unit, that no one can resist a German? That wasn’t just some blown-up headed thing they made up. It was based on a fact. Just say I’m very persuasive.”
“So you’re going to kill me just because I asked a couple of questions?” Joshasked.
“Now you’re actually catching on,” said Miss Sterling with an icy cold voice. “You’ve finally learned that I am not to be trifled with. Now get up. Don’t take anything, because you will only live for another three days. We’ll talk more when you’re behind bars. I don’t trust you.”
She led him downstairs, and into the living room. “Unfortunately, I will have to handcuff you. I can’t give you a chance to escape like I did last time.”
Handcuffs, Josh thought. I could still teleport away and just undo the handcuffs later.
As if Miss Sterling had read his thoughts she said, “Now these handcuffs aren’t your usual old, run-of-the-mill police handcuffs, now are they? You wouldn’t have escaped me back in detention, if you hadn’t known any magic. I snuck into old Izall’s house a couple of nights ago, and stole some pixie dust that she had excavated from Turkey. I doubt she recognized it for what it was. I used it to reinforce the handcuffs with magic. Basically, you won’t be able to teleport away.”
Miss Sterling hustled Josh into her adopted police car. She sped away to the police station.
~
When Miss Sterling had reached the police station, she had flung some her pixie dust over her shoulder into the back seat. This time Josh fell asleep. Then Miss Sterling used the pixie dust to levitated Josh. When she had secured him away in a cell, she woke him up.
“I’m going to make sure that you never see the light of day, until it’s time for you to die. Right now, you are put away where not even the crows can land their dropping on you,” rasped Miss Sterling, with an evil glint in her eye. “And no, you won’t be executed with a lethal injection, or even the electric chair. You will be tortured, until you beg for death. You can’t possibly escape. It’s the weekend, so I’ll be able to watch you until it’s time for the torture to commence. Then in your after life, you will be tortured for all eternity.
“You’ve read the Hardy Boys I presume? All kids who are too stupid to read challenging books read them. Anyway, the bad guy always ‘spills the beans’ when he knows the sleuth isn’t going to live to ‘sing to the cops.’
“Basically, I want to rule the world, just as Hitler wanted to. You saw that Indiana Jones Movie? Hitler did seek out magical sources. The Ark of the Covenant most likely wasn’t one of them; the movie was realistic fiction. The rest of the Germans thought it stupid what Hitler was trying to do. In the end he gave up, but if he had continued, he would have taken over the world. It’s a good thing he didn’t, because that’s what I intend to do. I’m sure you know of my intent to raid The Great Library. With the knowledge, I could take over the world.
“Now stay in here, like a good little boy, and I might not be so harsh your torture. I might just stretch you ten feet long, over a pit of lava, instead actually making eat lava. You deserve much worse, but I’m a forgiving person.”
~
Josh was trying to think of an escape plan, but Miss Sterling was constantly staring at him through the five inch think bars. If he even as much as moved, she would say something like, “Remember deary, the better you are now, the better your tortuous future will be.”
Her green blue, German eyes, were constantly staring into his own. It was as if she wanted to suck all the life out of him through his eyes. As if, she wanted to make him pay for all those innocent questions he’d asked back in seventh grade.
Even though the blue eyes were slightly hypnotizing, Josh was still able to come up with a plan. He could sense the water molecules, in Miss Sterling’s body. One by one, he teleported them elsewhere.
After, about five minutes, Miss Sterling said, “Now dear, I’m going to get me some water. I want you to be good. It’s not as if this cell would allow you to escape.”
~
Miss Sterling had been gone for about five minutes, when a Josh heard a rumbling, creaking sound. “Who’s there?” he asked to the now dark room; Miss Sterling had turned off the lights when she left.
Adam’s voice answered. “Hey Josh. It’s me.” The voice was coming from the wall, which was now partially transparent. Glowing moons and stars now made up the wall. Adam stepped from the wall. “I was brought her by Miss Sterling too. I helped you look for magic. At school on Friday she asked me if I knew anything. She ‘arrested’ me.”
“Oh. I’m sorry,” said Josh. “Hey, how did you get in here?”
“Mostly magic. The guards of this prison feel sorry for us. We don’t belong here. It’s the holocaust all over again. When the guards built this new part of the prison for Miss Sterling, they made ways to escape. Miss Sterling won’t really watch you all day. Once she gets distracted, she leaves, and forgets about us.”
Josh wondered if it was possible to escape. “How about escaping?”
“There are tunnels that lead all over this prison, like the one I came through. I don’t have a lot of magic, so I can only open the gateways to non-important cells like this one. The gateway to freedom would take a lot of magic to unblock.”
“Maybe I could do it,” said Josh, optimism shining in his eyes.
“Those tunnels only open when Miss Sterling is teaching. Only during school hours. A food guard told me when he brought me dinner. That’s the loophole. We have to wait ‘til Monday for our chance.”
Josh looked depressed. “That’s the day I’m being executed.” Josh told Adam the details to his execution.
“We’ll just have to play it by ear then,” said Adam. “Come on. I’ll show the rest of the prison.”
~
Josh was led through the glowing, shimmering gateway. He raised his hand, to block it again. It less than a second, the moons and stars winked out of existence, to be replaced by grimy stone wall.
“Wow!” exclaimed Adam. “It took me more than five minutes to open that up. You probably could open the passage out of here.”
The room they were standing in was about as big as a regular school gym, but for the most part, circular. There some other kids from West Orient that Josh recognized, but he wasn’t exactly friends with most of them. Water dripped from the ceiling, and gathered in a central pool. Water from the walls ran, in trenches, to the pool as well. There was a normal drinking fountain, but Josh guessed that it ran off the collected water, instead of the prison pluming.
Trees and other fruit giving plants grew around the cave. The same minuscule, translucent, luminous moons and stars hung from nonexistent threads towards the roof of the cave. The plants must have been growing thanks to the magical light source. Although the light was there, it wasn’t that bright. Josh added a little of his power to the glow. Soon the cave was shining like as if the sun had been convinced to come over for a visit.
Now, Josh could see that the cave was much bigger. Enchanted pickaxes attempted to chip away the walls of the cave. Adam saw where Josh was looking. “I found that the walls of this cave are made up of un-ground pixie dust. I found a pickaxe, and excavated some. I used the dust to create the lights, make the water to flow correctly, and enchant the axes to collect more dust. All of these students have attended MsIzall’s class over the last five years. They have been arrested because they might be able to help bring down Science.”
“You know about the war?” Josh asked.
“Yeah. Miss Sterling explained some of it to me.”
“Oh.”
~
Day by day past inside the cave.Adam explained that when it was time to go to sleep, he would make the ground have the texture similar to a bed, for people to sleep on. Josh tried the technique as well; needless to say he did a much better job than Adam.
“It looks like you’ll be the magician in here from now on,” Adam said, once. “We don’t even need that pixie dust, but it won’t harm to have some around for those who haven’t learned magic yet.”
For dinner the prisoners would eat fruit of the plants. Soon, Josh got bored of the healthy food. He allowed some of his power to seep into one of the trees. He thought of junk food—junk food that tasted really good. Before long, not only were there trees bearing fruit, but ones bearing hamburgers, pizza, and such.
~
Life in the cave had begun to grow tranquil, but even so, the Monday, the day of the execution arrived.
Josh didn’t normally have a lowed voice, so he used a voice magnification spell, he’d invented. A patch of misty, white air appeared in front of Josh. “Hey guys. Um, you may know about the war. I am going to be the first of you to die. I need your help in escaping. You will be sent home to your families.”
Adam stepped up to the magical air. “I don’t think sending you home to your families is safe though. Miss Sterling will just come and bring you back here. I have a solution. Mr. Voz is a very big fan of Social Science. He is a substitute teacher, sometimes, at West Orient. He loves to tantalize the class by asking them questions about history. I’m sure he would agree to let you all stay with him and his family.”
A murmur of agreement greeted Adam’s words.
“Good idea, Adam,” approved Josh.
“Here’s my plan. We blockade ourselves in this room. Miss Sterling will have to go to work. Then we’ll be able to escape. I’ll teleport us to Mr. Voz’s house. Adam, can come with me, if he wants, but everyone else, must stay away, unless you have any magic.”
Some people started protesting, but others agreed, because they just wanted out of the prison.
Josh raised his hand. A grinding noise sounded, and Josh knew that they were sealed in the cave. He created a bag out of thin air, and caused all the pixie dust to go into it. “Where’s the passage leading out of here?” Josh asked Adam.
“Follow me,” Adam answered.
~
Adam led Josh to a part of the cave wall opposite from the pixie dust excavation site. When Josh had first seen this part of the wall, he had presumed that it was the most solid part of the entire wall. The rock looked the oldest, toughest, and generally the hardest to get through. He never would have thought that it was concealing a secret passage.
Josh willed it to open. This was probably the hardest spell that Josh had ever worked. The telltale luminous moons and stars showed that a secret passage had been revealed. Josh took a step closer. He was about to step into it, when Adam warned him not to.
“I wouldn’t do that if I were you.”
“Why not?” question Josh.
“Remember that the passage will only truly work when Miss Sterling has set foot on West Orient property.”
Josh looked closely, and could now see a transparent ghost of the rock wall, along with the stars and moons. The passage was there, but it was inaccessible until Miss Sterling fulfilled the requirements. Miss Sterling, without knowing it, wouldperformthe necessities.
~
“Ah, Mrs. Machiavelli,” Miss Sterling crooned. “So nice of you to come enjoy my company.”
Mrs. Machiavelli strained against the bonds that bound her to the chair. “What do you want from me Athena?”
Miss Sterling was shocked that someone knew her real name. Even the in the teacher directory, she was labeled as “Miss” Sterling.
Miss Sterling sneered. “I want you to torture Josh. You will make his death long, and full of suffering. I must go to work. Make sure he doesn’t escape….”
Miss Sterling then turned and walked out the door. It was time to go and give those naughty kids at school a lesson.
~
About ten minutes later, Miss Sterling had arrived at work. The passageway opened up for the fugitives. Josh told everyone in the cave to hurry over to the escape route. One by one, the escapees exited the cave. Josh filled in the cave with the magical substance that had been used to block the passage that everyone was in now; only Josh could unblock the cave now that it was filled in.
The newly open corridor seemed to be made by magic. The walls were perfectly smooth, without any imperfections. Nothing could be in the shadow, for this tunnel was lit by magic. The tunnel snaked and turned. The band of escapees trudged for about five minutes, until they came to a latter. They climbed the later, and opened a trapdoor. Josh was the first up. He looked around and noticed that he was… in the Library at West Orient. No wonder it took so long to get through tunnel.
Soon the rest of the fugitives had followed Josh’s lead.
Someone said, “It looks like we’ve come up in the center of the library.”
Most people agreed with that.
Adam spoke up. “We need to teleport to Mr. Voz’s house. This is German territory. We’re not safe here.”
“Ok,” said Josh. “Everyone hold hands.”
As soon as everyone was secured to someone else, a plume of bright green flames rose up. The blaze was much bigger than the one Josh had used to escape detention; these flames were ten feet high, and thirty feet across. If it had been real fire, the school library would have been scorched beyond repair. Luckily, these were the flames of teleportation, so no one got burnt.
~
Paraphrase
● Go to Voz’s house
● Drop other kids off.
~
“Josh!” It was Sydney speaking. “Don’t go!”
“What are you doing here?” askedJosh. “I thought all the other kids got dropped off at Mr. Voz’s house to stay until the war was over?”
“Well they did, but I didn’t want to stay. I want to go with you, and stop Science. I think it’s the most boring class ever! I’d love to have all those classes canceled.”
“That’s not exactly the point though, is it?” asked Josh.
Sydney had been friends with Josh for a long time. They'd met at the beginning of sixth grade, and been friends ever since.
“My other friends will be safe with Mr. Voz. You won’t. I’ll still have themafter the war, but I wouldn’t have all of them, if you died.
“So are you really up to fighting to the death, against one of your favorite teachers?” asked Josh.
Not everyone had been treated evilly be Miss Sterling. Some had thought she was the best teacher “in the galaxy.”
“If you think she’s bad I’ll help you get rid of her.”**
Just then, Adam walked up.
“Adam,” Josh said, “Sydney is going to stay with us and help us win this war.”
“Why?” Adam asked incredulously. He had an unfortunate dislike for Sydney.
“Because she wants to,” Josh said simply.
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