I slipped on the Courier’s Lenses and concentrated. Unfortunately, I wasn’t able to get anything out of them. I left them on just in case, then stuffed the Grappler’s Glass boots into one of the packs.
I slung it over my shoulder; however, Bastille took it from me. I shot her frown.
“Sorry,” she said. “My mother’s orders.”
“You don’t need to carry anything, Lord Smedry,” Draulin said, hefting another pack. “Let Squire Bastille do it.”
“I can carry my own pack, Draulin,” I snapped.
“Oh?” she asked. “And if we get attacked, do you not need to be ready and agile so that you can use your Lenses to defend us?” She turned away from me. “Squire Bastille is good at carrying things. Allow her to do this – it will let her be useful and make her feel a sense of accomplishment.”
Bastille flushed. I opened my mouth to argue some more, but Bastille shot me a glance that quieted me.
Fine, I thought. We all looked toward Kaz, ready to go. “Onward then!” the short man said, taking off across the sand up toward the trees.
CHAPTER 6
Adults are not idiots.
Often, in books such as this one, the opposite impression is given. Adults in these stories will either (a) get captured, (b) disappear conspicuously when there is trouble, or (c) refuse to help.
(I’m not sure what authors have against adults, but everyone seems to hate them to an extent usually reserved for dogs and mothers. Why else make them out to be such idiots? “ Ah, look, the dark lord of evil has come to attack the castle! Annnnd, there’s my lunch break. Have fun saving the world on your own, kids! “)
In the real world, adults tend to get involved in everything, whether you want them to or not. They won’t disappear when the dark lord appears, though they may try to sue him. This discrepancy is yet another proof that most books are fantasies while this book is utterly true and invaluable. You see, in this book, I will make it completely clear that all adults are not idiots.
They are, however, hairy.
Adults are like hairy kids who like to tell others what to do. Despite what other books may claim, they do have their uses. They can reach things on high shelves, for instance. (Though, Kaz would argue that such high shelves shouldn’t be necessary. Reference Number sixty-three, which will be explained at a later point.)
Regardless, I often wish that the two groups – adults and kids – could find a way to get along better. Some sort of treaty or something. The biggest problem is, the adults have one of the most effective recruitment strategies in the world.
Give them enough time, and they’ll turn any kid into one of them.
We entered the jungle.
“Everyone remember to stay in sight of someone else in the group,” Kaz said. “There’s no telling where we’ll leave you if you get separated!”
With that, Kaz pulled out a machete and began to cut his way through the undergrowth. I glanced back at the beach, bidding silent farewell to the translucent dragon, cracked from landing, its body slowly being buried in the sand from the rising tide. One wing still hung up in the air, as if in defiance of its death.
“You were the most majestic thing I’d ever seen,” I whispered. “Rest well.” A little melodramatic, true, but it felt appropriate. Then I quickly rushed after the others, careful not to lose sight of Draulin, who walked in the rear.
The jungle was thick, and the canopy overhead made the darkness near absolute. Draulin pulled an antiquated-looking lantern from her pack, then tapped it with one finger. It started to glow, the flame coming to life without needing a match. Even with it, however, it felt creepy to be traveling through a dense jungle in the middle of the night.
In order to still my nerves, I moved to walk by Bastille. She, however, didn’t want to talk. I eventually worked my way up through the column until I was behind Kaz. I figured that he and I had started off on the wrong foot, and I hoped I could patch things up a bit.
Those of you who recall the events of the first book will realize that this was quite a change in me. For most of my life, I’d been abandoned by family after family. It was tough to blame them, however, since I’d spent my childhood breaking everything in sight. I’d gone on such a rampage that I would have made the proverbial bull in the proverbial china shop look unproverbially good by proverbial comparison. (Personally, I don’t even know how he’d fit through the door. Proverbially.)
Regardless, I had grown into the habit of pushing people away as soon as I got to know them – abandoning them before they could abandon me. It had been tough to realize what I was doing, but I was already starting to change.
Kaz was my uncle. My father’s brother. For a kid who had spent most of his life thinking that he had no living relatives, having Kaz think I was a fool was a big deal. I wanted desperately to show him I was capable.
Kaz glanced at me as he chopped at the foliage –though he only tended to cut away things up to his own height of four feet, leaving the rest of us to get branches in our faces. “Well?” he asked.
“I wanted to apologize for that whole midget thing,”
He shrugged.
“It’s just that…,” I said. “Well, I figured with all of the magic and stuff they have in the Free Kingdoms, they would have been able to cure dwarfism by now.”
“They haven’t been able to cure stupidity, either,” he said. “So I guess we won’t be able to help you.”
I blushed. “I… didn’t mean…”
Kaz chuckled, slicing off a couple of fronds. “Look, it’s all right. I’m used to this. I just want you to understand that I don’t need to be cured.”
“But…,” I said, trying hard to express what I felt without being offensive, “isn’t being short like you a genetic disease?”
“Genetic, yes,” Kaz said. “But is it disease just because it’s different? I mean, you’re an Oculator; that’s genetic too. Would you like to be cured?”
“That’s different,” I said.
“Is it?”
I paused to think about it. “I don’t know,” I finally said. “But don’t you get tired of being short?”
“Don’t you get tired of being tall?”
“I…” It was tough to come up with an answer to that one. I really wasn’t all that tall – barely five feet, now that I’d launched into my teens. Still, I was tall compared with him.
“Now, personally,” Kaz continued, “I think you tall people are really missing out. ?
?Why the entire world would be a better place if you were all shorter.”
I raised an eyebrow.
“You look doubtful,” Kaz said, smiling. “Obviously you need to be introduced to The List!”
“The List?”
From behind, I heard Australia sigh. “Don’t encourage him, Alcatraz.”
“Hush, you!” Kaz said, eyeing Australia and eliciting a bit of an eep from her. “The List is a time-tested and scientifically researched collection of facts that prove that short people are better off than tall ones.”
He glanced at me. “Confused?”
I nodded.
“Slowness of thought,” he said. “A common ailment of tall people. Reason number forty-seven: Tall people’s heads are in a thinner atmosphere than those of short people, so the tall people get less oxygen. That makes it so that their brains don’t work quite as well.”
With that, he chopped his way through the edge of the forest and walked out into a clearing. I stopped in the path, then glanced at Australia.
“We’re not sure if he’s serious or not,” she whispered. “But, he really does keep that List of his.”
After getting a glare from Bastille for pausing for so long, I rushed out into the clearing with Kaz. I was surprised to see that the jungle broke just a little further out, giving us a view of...
“Paris?” I asked in shock. “That’s the Eiffel Tower!”
“Ah, is that what that is?” Kaz asked, scribbling something on a notepad. “Great! We’re back in the Hushlands. Not as badly lost as I thought.”
“But…,” I said. “We were on another continent! How did we cross the ocean?”
“We’re lost, kid,” Kaz said, as if that explained everything. “Anyway, I’ll get us where we need to be. Always trust the short person to know his way! Reason number twenty-eight: Short people can find things easier and follow trails better because they’re closer to the ground.”
I stood, nearly dumbfounded. “But… there aren’t any jungles near Paris!”
“He gets lost,” Bastille said, walking up to me, “in some very incredible ways.”