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“Where’s the other end of this thing, exactly?” Jack asked her. “How much space is there?”
“It’s in the blue room…. Oh, that’s not going to work. We’ll blow the house up!”
“We have to change course,” said Kyle.
“I don’t know if Grandma can do that….”
“Jack can.” Kyle handed him the umbrella he had used to deflect the vortex on the way out. “Here.”
“Perfect!” Jack unfurled it, while Jaide watched in puzzlement.
Once the open umbrella was magically locked in the vortex and Jack started pulling on it, she understood. Standing on the bow of the ship, peering through the vortex at the glimpses of Portland ahead — it was like staring the wrong way through a telescope, a telescope that someone was swinging wildly about — she called out directions.
“Left … more left — no, that’s the Rock!” It was hard to see what was going on. There was so much cloud and rain, and so little light. “To the right! To the right!”
++What’s happening, Jaide?++ The voice of her grandmother faded in and out. The ghostly hand flickered and disappeared. ++… losing you …++
++Don’t worry, Grandma,++ Jaide called. ++We’re almost home!++
She hoped that was true. The vortex made everything difficult. Glimpses of Portland came and went, growing larger by the second. There was the tent, glowing yellow now with the heat of the lodestone. There was the lighthouse. There was the iron bridge.
“Down a bit — no, the other way! Down, not up!”
She was aiming for the swamp. That was the softest place she could think of within the wards.
Jack wrestled with the umbrella. Tara and Kyle added their strength and weight. Maybe it was the ship that was making everything more difficult than it had been going the other way. It kept pulling him off course, almost as though it had a mind of its own.
The open end of the vortex rushed by around them. For a terrifying moment they were in free fall, dropping with their stomachs in their mouths. Jaide smelled rain and electricity and salty sea air. Jack gasped at the shock of icy rain striking his skin and the return of his proper weight. With a descending whistle, they dropped out of the bottom of a cloud rippling with sheet lightning, and splashed down hard in the churning water of Portland harbor.
Omega took water over the gunwales and rocked wildly from side to side. But she stayed upright and at least for the time being stayed afloat, though there were ominous gurgling noises belowdeck. Lottie woke with a gasp.
“Cold! And wet!” she cried. “I forgot what that feels like. How wonderful!”
“This is my sister,” said Jack, pulling Jaide closer. “She rescued us.”
The old woman on the sled smiled and reached for her. “You’re a brave girl. Thank you, troubletwisters, from the bottom of my heart. I had almost stopped dreaming that I’d come home, but here I am, at last, where I belong.”
Jaide didn’t know what to say. She had done what she had to do, that was all — and she realized now that it was exactly what Grandma X would have done for her sister a long time ago, had she only known Lottie was alive.
Lottie was staring at Portland with shining eyes. She might have been crying, but it was impossible to tell through the rain.
“It’s changed,” she said. “The old swimming pool is gone. Is that a marina? Looks like they’ve extended the hospital, making it uglier than ever. And what on earth has happened to Mermaid Point?”
++Jaide? Can you hear me?++
Guiltily, Jaide remembered that she hadn’t let Grandma X know that they had arrived.
++We’re here,++ she teeped back. ++It worked! We landed in the harbor. I have Jack and Kyle and Tara and Cornelia … and Lottie, too, Grandma. Jack found her. Isn’t that wonderful?++
++It is wonderful, dear, but I need you to come home as quickly as possible.++
++Sure, once we work out how to steer this boat.++
++ Use your Gift, Jaide, and do it now.++
She sounded impatient, but Jaide couldn’t imagine why.
++Okay. But aren’t you happy? We have your sister.++
++I’ll deal with Charlotte later,++ said Grandma X. ++The Bridge is still open. Look up.++
Jaide did so. At first it was hard to make out what she was seeing. A dark cloud was spreading across the sky, eclipsing the sheet lightning and soaking up the rain. Only when it unfurled its wings did she recognize its shape.
The dragon had followed them to Portland.
Jack heard Jaide’s gasp and felt the Omega shift underneath him. A powerful wind had sprung up out of nowhere, pushing the ship sideways to the shore, the tattered, useless sails streaming overhead.
“What is it?” he asked her.
“That thing up there … it came with us!”
Only then did he hear the familiar sound of thousands of Evil bugs roaring in one voice. He groaned, too exhausted to call on his Gifts for help. He could do nothing but watch as Jaide tried her best to outrun The Evil.
At first that looked impossible. The Evil dragon’s giant wings were fully outstretched. All it had to do was swoop down on them and they would be finished.
But something was wrong. The dragon’s body was slumping and crumbling down the middle. Its wings flapped once but didn’t come back up again. The dragonish shape was losing definition around the edges. A rain of bugs began to fall into the sea, wings whirring in desperation.
Jack grinned. Of course! The gravity of Earth was slightly higher than the place the bugs had come from. Here they couldn’t fly. They could only fall. And being desert creatures, maybe, just maybe, they would all drown.
A small tsunami spread out from the swarm’s point of impact, making the boat tip forward and then back again. Jaide brought them around the breakwater and headed them sideways toward the marina, the sea breaking over the starboard side. It wasn’t going to be elegant, but it would do the job, if she was quick. The Omega was heavy and sluggish, clearly taking water. Although she doubted The Evil would let them live long enough to drown, Jaide was reluctant to put that to the test.
The Omega shouldered several fishing boats out of the way, but was caught in a wild current driven by the thrashing dragon. The ship groaned and began to spin about to head in almost the opposite direction.
“No, no!” said Jaide. “Wrong way!”
The ship was now heading for the sand flats, where they’d get bogged for sure. If that happened they’d have to swim to the shore, and Jaide didn’t think frail, ancient-looking Lottie would survive that experience.
“Hold on,” she warned the others. She would have to let her Gift really go for it. That made her nervous after everything Alfred the Examiner had told her, not to mention the many times things had gone wrong when she had lost control. But she had no choice. She would trust her Gift this time. If it behaved, well and good.
If not … she would deal with that afterward.
“All I want to do is get there,” she said, pointing to where a dredge bobbed and swayed, tied to its own private dock. “I don’t care how you do it. Have fun, if you like. Just don’t kill anyone, please, and if you can avoid damaging too much property, that would be g
reat.”
The wind responded, spinning up around her in giddy triumph. She could feel its energy, its freedom, its almost gleeful desire to cause trouble. But it didn’t make any moves to pick up the ship and smash it against the rocks, as she feared it might. Instead, it swept away from the ship and began sucking at the ocean.
“What are you doing?” Jaide said, trying not to sound too frustrated. “Making a whirlpool doesn’t help us.”
But then she felt the tug of the current pulling the ship in a wide arc around the eye of the waterspout, angling in to the shore.
She grinned with excitement. So this was how you did it, she thought. You gave your Gifts enough freedom to do something they enjoyed, but you traded it off against something you needed in turn. She could tell her Gift was having fun: Great gouts of water were shooting in all directions, playing havoc with the clouds. The spout itself was doing something that looked like a belly dance. It didn’t care about The Evil or Project Thunderclap. It just wanted to play.
Jaide gave it the thumbs-up as the Omega smashed alongside the dredge’s pier — and stayed there.
“Thank you!”
The whirlwind gave one last jig, sucked up an unmoored boat, and spat it to the other side of the harbor, then evaporated.
“Nicely done,” said Lottie from her sled as Kyle and Jack lifted her toward the side of the boat. “How advanced are you through your training?”
“I’ve passed the Third Examination,” she said proudly.
“What?” said Jack. “You did it without me?”
“I didn’t have any choice. Grandma wouldn’t listen.”
Headlights swept across them, which surprised all of them because the town looked deserted. Jack recognized the longhorn bumper bar and sheer size of Zebediah, Rodeo Dave’s car. The tootling of its musical horn greeted them.
