Chapter 7: Ill-Met by Moonlight
Now began another hard march through the forest in pouring rain. After the kids struggled back into their wet clothes, they trudged, often through ankle-deep mud, into the inky darkness. Rain poured in miniature waterfalls down the broad leaves of the forest’s understory. Men marched with them, men on every side in saturated green fatigues, each with an AK-47 in his arms, each snarling in French too quickly for Nancy to follow. Lightning flashed overhead, and thunder roared like the end of the world. Now and then, one of the girls stumbled, and then she got a cold gun barrel against her back—or else a buttstock made a sharp, wet thwack as it stung her shoulders. Twice, Junie B. flexed her raw, burned hands and looked ready to start something. Both times, Cam calmly laid a hand on her arm.
Judy cradled Mouse and tried in vain to shelter the cat from the rain. Droplets hung off the ends of Mouse’s whiskers. The cat’s fur was matted, and her eyes were half-lidded with misery. Finally, too big to carry, padded alongside Amelia, who had to pull the dog out whenever she unwittingly plunged into one of the deep pools that marked the dark, uneven ground.
The thunder made Nancy jump. Whenever she did so, she compulsively clutched Judy’s sleeve, which only made her more irritated and embarrassed. And she wasn’t the only one in an ugly temper: she could see that Judy’s ring was pitch black, darker even than the night that surrounded them.
It was obvious that she, Judy Moody, was in a mood. Not a good mood. A bad mood. A mad-face mood. A forced-to-march-through-the-jungle-at-gunpoint-in-a-thunderstorm mood.
Nancy thought it might be a good idea to distract her. Still clutching Judy’s sleeve, Nancy glanced uneasily at a soldier marching to her left before she cleared her throat and said, “So, Judy … you like solving mysteries, too, right?”
“Roar,” Judy replied. She glared at Nancy for a moment, but after a pause added, “Yeah.” A minute passed before a hint of green flickered across her ring and she said, “Y’know, if I had a memory—”
“Mais oui, bien sûr!” said Nancy quickly. “But you’ve solved more than me! I’ve solved one, or two if you count finding Mrs. DeVine’s old friend, but that wasn’t a crime—”
Judy grunted. “I got a friend who really likes Nancy Drew …” She paused as her left leg plunged into a puddle up to her knee. After Nancy helped her out, she grumbled for a few seconds before continuing, “Anyway, me an’ her found a trapdoor in her attic with a secret message inside. With the message, we found a hidden first-edition of a Nancy Drew book up in the rafters.”
“Really?”
“No lie!”
“You know, Mrs. DeVine gave me an old Nancy Drew from when she was a little girl. I guess I don’t know if it’s a first edition, though—”
“Same-same!” Judy laughed for a moment. “Well, I just finished reading all fifty-six of the original Nancy Drews.”
“Ooh la la!”
“I know, right?”
“I like to tell stories myself,” Nancy added, “and sometimes Nancy Drew is my inspiration. When Mr. Dudery makes us do creative writing in class, I write about a girl named Lucette Fromage. She has all kinds of adventures, and sometimes she solves mysteries.”
“Rare. How do your stories end?”
Nancy giggled quietly. “All my stories have happy endings.”
“All?”
“Mais oui.” She patted Judy on the back. “But you see, Judy, you’re really a great mystery-solver! You found that old book and everything!”
“Well …”
“And you’ve read all fifty-six Nancy Drews! You can’t be bad at solving mysterious after you’ve read all the Nancy Drews.”
As she tromped through the mud and helped Nancy climb over a large root, Judy looked thoughtful, and her ring turned bluish-green. “Hey, maybe you’re right. And I’ve faced a fear! That’s important for mystery-solvers, right?”
Nancy stumbled against a tree and tried to ignore the gun that bruised her ribs or the loud curses in French that followed. Judy pulled her upright and held her steady as they continued their march. “What fear?” Nancy asked.
“The utility room in my Grandma Lou’s basement, actually. We thought there was a ghost.” Judy glanced back and forth, lowered her voice, and added, “But this is pretty scary, so maybe I’m facing a fear right now.”
Nancy could sympathize, but now that Judy looked less grumpy, Nancy’s annoyance inexplicably returned. She turned up her nose and said with a smug smile, “I can’t believe you were afraid of a silly old ghost, Judy. You know there’s no such thing!”
When they came to the next tree root, Judy released her, letting her trip and fall flat on her face. The butt of a rifle hit her in the lower back twice, and then a boot caught her in the ribs. It hurt a lot, but Nancy almost didn’t notice, because she was choking and gagging on mud. She tried to rise, but her hands slipped, and she sprawled out headlong again.
Judy Moody! Just see if I try to be nice to you anymore!
She heard Junie B. shouting. She managed to get a purchase on something solid with her right hand, and she sat up to find Junie B. standing over her and shaking a fist at the threatening guards while Cam tried in vain to calm her down.
“You leave her alone!” Junie B. yelled. “You leave alone Nancy-whose-last-name-starts-with-a-C-I-think! Because you’re a bunch of meanie mean pants, that’s why! And I mean it!”
Nancy coughed violently and spat out several globs of mud. “It’s … it’s okay, Junie B.! I’m okay!”
Cam grabbed her under her arms and hauled her to her feet. Nearby, Judy, cradling Mouse, gave Nancy a furtive glance and then quickly turned her back.
When she wiped the mud out of her eyes, Nancy noticed that boy, the same boy who had been staring at Cam in the cave. He silently fingered his rifle, and he was once again looking at Cam. Cam’s clear, keen eyes noticed him as well. Her T-shirt, soaked through, was sticking to her torso, so she turned toward Nancy, hunched her shoulders, and crossed her arms over her chest.
Nancy shuddered, and not just from cold.
Nancy was exhausted. The march stretched on like an interminable nightmare. Mud stuck to the bottoms of her sneakers, making her feet feel like slabs of lead. The other kids were as wet as she was, and under their sopping strands of reddish hair, their eyes were downcast and their mouths were set in pouts. But none of them looked as tired as Nancy felt. Her back and sides ached where the men had struck her. Her stomach ached from hunger. It seemed as if she alone had received no boost to her stamina from the nanoprobes.
She had no idea where they were going. Up hills, down valleys, across rapidly running streams. If they lagged, someone was always ready to strike out with a rifle butt and a sharp word in unintelligible French. Nancy had always loved French, but now she was beginning to think the language wasn’t as nice as she’d supposed.
Once, in the midst of the hellish march, Eshele, somewhere in the forest’s deep shadows, grunted in English, “The tower of the Pink One, it does something to the weather. Storms like this—they are not natural.”
In addition to the lightning, there were sometimes pulses of unearthly red and green light, like the effects at a rock concert. Somehow, they made Nancy’s heart pound.
Judy had Mouse tucked under one arm. The cat, her hair dirty and soaked, looked up and said, “Those lights—I think they’re lasers.”
“Lasers?” Nancy asked as she tried in vain to wipe the mud from her face. “Like, guns or something?”
Finally, after clawing her way out of yet another mud hole, shook herself and said “They could be power sources for the space elevator’s climbers. If the climbers are solar-powered, they might be driven by ground-based lasers before they reach the upper atmosphere. But on the other paw, Pink Vicious might have an orbital broom system.”
By Finally’s side, Amelia rubbed her chin. “I’m pretty good with a broom, but I don’t know if I could use one in orbit. I’d be weightless, right? Hard to sweep that way.”
Finally sighed. “An orbital broom is to remove orbital debris, Amelia Bedelia.”
Nancy just frowned and shook her head.
Finally explained, “There’s a lot of stuff orbiting the planet—rocks from space, old satellites, junk lost from space missions. Sooner or later, every piece of debris will cross the path of the elevator and could damage it, so there has to be a system to remove it.”
“So the lasers just, like, blast it away?” Nancy asked.
Finally chuckled as the rain drizzled down her floppy ears. “Probably nothing so dramatic. More likely, the lasers heat one side of the object, causing it to ablate. This would produce slight propulsion, which would destabilize its orbit. It would then disintegrate on reentry from atmospheric compression.”
Nancy shook her head again. Those words sounded very fancy, but she was too tired to ask for definitions.
At last, a glimmer of a different sort of light shone through the trees—the steady, warm, flickering glow of a fire. At first, it was merely a speck that Nancy could sometimes see shining from time to time in the distance. Then it grew and took on definite shape.
She shuddered. She was chilled to the bone, and she suddenly realized how good it would feel to stand next to a fire again.
After another half hour of trudging, they at last entered the guerrilla camp. It consisted of a haphazard cluster of canvas tents flapping in a faint wind. A fire in the center of the camp crackled under a high tarp suspended on posts. A few men, also cradling rifles, stood around it drinking coffee. Rain pattered steadily on the tarp’s top.
Eshele gruffly barked orders, and two of the men ran from the fire to a nearby tent. More guttural exclamations in French followed.
The kids stood in the rain, hugging themselves. Nancy tried to walk toward the fire, but one of the soldiers pointed a rifle at her and snarled, so she stepped back.
Still that boy was staring at Cam. Cam hunched further, as if trying to disappear. For a brief but terrifying moment, Nancy felt a horrible, violent desire she’d never felt before—she wanted to take her fingers and gouge that boy’s eyes out.
After what felt like an eternity, the flap of a tent opened and Eshele, his face somber, gestured them inside. Nancy, her water-filled sneakers making squishy noises, walked in, and the other kids quietly followed.
The flap closed behind them. To Nancy’s surprise, none of the soldiers had followed them inside.
The tent was surprisingly spacious, considerably larger than the tent her family used for camping. In fact, it was nearly the size of her living room back home. What looked like several skins, including a white-and-black-striped one that could only be from a zebra, formed a carpet on the floor. A few lamps hung from strings, and the acrid smell of kerosene, mixed with the musty scent of damp canvas, met Nancy’s nose. A cot, its blankets neatly folded, sat in one corner. Beside it was a folding table apparently used as a writing desk, judging from the stacks of papers and quills—yes, actual quills!—on its top.
In the center of the tent, sitting cross-legged, was a woman with a seamed, kindly face. She had curly, reddish hair. What’s more, she wore a pink, poufy dress with flounces, petticoats, and a lot of lace. Strings of pearls hung from her neck.
Nancy liked her immediately.
The woman sat before an alcohol burner, over which she suspended a kettle. She looked up and gave the girls a warm smile. “Ah, children. The tea will be ready in a few minutes. I suppose you’ll want to get out of those wet, dirty clothes—I have housecoats hanging to your left.”
Nancy turned left and, indeed, saw a clothing rod from which hung several dresses and several small, white terrycloth coats.
The kids didn’t have to be told twice. In a few minutes, they were in the housecoats and elbowing one another as they tried to warm themselves over the small burner. Their sopping, muddy clothes sat in a heap in the corner.
After a few minutes more, they held cups of hot tea in their hands. The tea smelled like cinnamon and cloves. Nancy tasted it cautiously. It was very sweet.
The elderly lady stood over them as they sat or knelt on the fur rugs. She clasped her hands together and, giving them another motherly smile, said, “Now, let’s see, who do we have? Judy Moody, age nine—of Frog’s Neck Lake, Virginia, yes? Attends Mr. Todd’s third-grade class at Virginia Dare Elementary and has one brother, James, nicknamed Stink. You once, when your brother got a loose tooth, pretended to be the tooth fairy after you’d overheard some fifth-graders saying there’s no such thing.”
Judy’s mouth dropped open, and her ring ran rapidly through an indecipherable plethora of colors.
Then the old woman’s eyes alighted on Junie B. “And this is Juniper Beatrice Jones, age six. Nickname Junie B. You were the first student in Mr. Scary’s first-grade class, Room One, to lose a top front incisor. You were afraid of the tooth fairy because Pauly Allen Puffer told you in kindergarten that the fairy was really a witch who could pinch your cheeks. But then you decided that the fairy must actually use the teeth in a recycling project.”
“Wowie wow wow!” Junie B. gasped. “I bet you must be a mind-reader, probably!”
The old woman’s eyes then fell on Nancy. “And you—Nancy Clancy, age nine. Nicknames Fancy Nancy and Nancy M. Clancy. In second grade, upon finding a loose tooth, you determined to lose it at school rather than at home so the school nurse would give you a fancy tooth-shaped necklace to keep it in.”
Nancy shifted uncomfortably on the floor. She didn’t want to remember that particular misadventure.
Cam watched the woman silently, her sharp eyes glistening in the light of the burner. “Who are you?” she finally asked.
The woman smiled. “My name is Teethateena. I am the personal tooth fairy of Pinkalicious.”
Nancy shot to her feet. “Say what?”
“It’s true,” said Teethateena with an amused smile.
“There’s no such thing as tooth fairies!”
“Is too!” said Judy smugly as she pulled a damp and unhappy Mouse into her lap. “And ghosts, too, I bet! And I almost caught Bigfoot last summer, and me an’ Amy Namey once saw a sea monster in Frog Neck Creek! No lie!”
Grumbling, Nancy lowered herself back to the floor. Finally, however, stood up and growled. “Are you working with Pink Vicious, then, Teethateena?”
Teethateena’s smile fell, and a faint sneer formed on her mouth. “Ah, a Keplerian. I knew your kind would show up. You do not understand what you have meddled in, you imitation dog.”
“I think,” Mouse purred from Judy’s lap, “we understand perfectly well, but do you? Our enemies have infested Pink Vicious—”
“No, you do not understand,” Teethateena snapped. “You do not know what Pinkalicious is. She is a witch, one of the last witches on Earth. And she is more dangerous than you can possibly imagine. We had her under control, but then you—”
Teethateena closed her eyes for a moment and took a deep breath. “Have you never paused to wonder how she and her brother could accomplish all of this, even with your parasites in her brain?”
Mouse glanced at Finally, but neither the cat nor dog spoke.
Teethateena paced back and forth. She went to her desk for a moment and fingered a quill. “Not every child gets a personal tooth fairy, you understand. But because of Pinkalicious’s great power, all the fay folk determined to treat her with particular respect. It was about a year ago that she lost a tooth—a very important tooth, her sweet tooth. She lost the ability to taste anything sweet. This greatly distressed her, and she wrote to me for help, but, alas, I was away on business. Other fairy creatures attempted to placate her by sending her candy: one of Santa’s elves, a leprechaun, even Cupid. She could taste the sweetness in none of what they gave her, and she rejected them all with scorn. Fairyland was in an uproar.”
“That doesn’t sound very nice,” said Nancy.
“It wasn’t very nice,” Teethateena replied. “Pinkalicious is a darling little girl, but she does have a temper, and that temper makes her dangerous. Upon my return, I took the risk of writing her a stern letter—in which I reminded her that true sweetness comes from within. She accepted my rebuke.”
Nancy touched her chin and nodded thoughtfully. “That’s a fancy word for telling someone off.”
“Yes.” Teethateena dropped her eyes and rubbed her forehead. “I was … I was hoping I could remind her of that lesson now, but I’m not sure—”
“You said she was dangerous,” said Cam quietly, “even back then. What was the danger?”
Teethateena dropped her hand. “Pinkalicious is powerful, as is her brother Peter—she is a true witch and he is a true technomancer. Their kind are rare, and it is rarer still to find two in a generation. Even the fay folk must fear strong magic such as theirs. That is why Pinkalicious was my special responsibility.” She slammed a fist down on her desk. “A responsibility at which I have failed.”
A moment of silence passed. The rain pattered steadily on the canvas of the tent.
But then Teethateena turned around and marched straight at Nancy. Nancy started and slopped some of her sweet tea into her lap.
“But you,” Teethateena said, “what are you? I sense magic emanating from you—and yet you are not a witch. How did you escape our notice?”
Nancy opened her mouth, but she could think of no words to say. She felt her cheeks flush.
Finally cleared her throat. “Nancy is ours. She is a magical girl.”
“And what is that?” Teethateena snapped. “Keplerians know nothing of magic!”
Finally coughed quietly. “You see, we have enhanced each of these children with nanites. Junie B. has synthetic muscle and a carbon-fiber skeleton, Judy Moody generates excess energy in her emotion centers, Cam Jansen has an extensive electronic system throughout her body and a quantum computer in her brain, and Amelia Bedelia can form bladed weapons out of her own tissues. Nancy, however, is different. She contains a particularly … ah … experimental strain—”
Teethateena’s eyes narrowed. She held out her hand. In it, out of thin air, appeared a long rod of pale, polished wood topped with a golden star. “Tell me what you mean, dog.”
Mouse hissed. Amelia sat up straight, and she flexed her right hand, as if planning to pull something from her sleeve.
Finally coughed again, and Nancy noticed her shaking. “The nanites, you see, were carrying a payload of Pinkalicious’s genetic code, transcribed into RNA. Acting as a retrovirus, the nanites altered Nancy’s—”
Teethateena’s wand flashed like a strobe, and Finally fell silent.
“Fools!” the tooth fairy roared. “Foolish Keplerians! Blending a witch’s DNA with a human’s? You have no idea what you’ve done!”
“It worked,” said Finally simply.
Teethateena turned on Nancy a look that nearly sent her reeling to the floor. It was a mixture of rage, sorrow—and perhaps pity. It was an expression of such intensity that Nancy had never seen the like before, and that she hoped never to see again.
“Then what is done is done,” Teethateena whispered, turning back to her desk and sitting down. She pulled out a quill, dipped it in ink, and began to write. “We must plan,” she said as her pen scratched across the paper, blending with the sound of the rain. “The soldiers here are members of a cell that has splintered from a rebel group called the Soldiers of God. They are dangerous fanatics—but they wish to destroy Pinkalicious and remove her tower from their land. We can make use of them.”
“What do you propose?” Mouse asked.
“We noticed,” said Finally, “a laser system. We were wondering if it powered the climbers, or if it were an orbital broom.”
Teethateena turned around and smiled. “Very observant. In fact, young Peter designed the lasers to do both—but that may be his undoing. You see, the lasers must be capable of aiming directly at the elevator’s tether in order to power the climbers, though they do not then fire at full strength. If we can take over one laser, direct it at the tether, and turn it to full power, we may be able to cause fatal damage to the structure.”
Nancy swallowed. “What happens then?”
Finally chuckled. “What happens when you swing a yo-yo over your head, Nancy—and suddenly let go?”
“Pink Vicious, Peter, their minions, and the Emeraldlicious fly away into space,” said Mouse, nodding. “It’s a good plan.”
Nancy jumped to her feet. “What? No!”
She wildly cast her eyes around the room, looking for support. She found none, though Judy coughed into her hand and Cam interlaced her fingers before her face.
“We can’t do that!” Nancy shouted. “They’d die!”
“That’s the idea,” said Finally. “You do realize, Nancy, that if Pink Vicious deploys the Emeraldlicious, she will turn the world pink—and that pink plants can’t photosynthesize? If she succeeds in her mad plan, the whole world dies.”
“That doesn’t mean we can kill her!” Nancy spun around. “Cam! Amelia! Judy!”
Judy bit her lip for a moment before she said quietly, “I … I want to save the rainforest. Pink Vicious would kill the rainforest, so—”
“You can’t kill someone over the rainforest!”
Judy set down Mouse and climbed to her feet. Her ring flashed amber. “It’s the whole world, Nancy! It’s us! We’re gonna die, too, an’ I still got things to do! I still have to go to Antarctica before fourth grade! It’s on my bucket list, and I can’t do stuff on my bucket list if I kick the bucket for real!”
“You are so selfish!” Nancy shouted, stamping a foot. “Who cares about your stupid bucket list, and who cares about your stupid rainforest? You can’t just kill people!”
“Better a few people than the whole planet!”
“What about your brother?” Nancy screamed. “Did you forget he’s up there, too? And so is my sister!”
Judy blanched. Her ring turned deep blue, and she sank slowly to her knees.
Nancy took several deep breaths. No one spoke, so she added, “And furthermore, I am a storyteller. This is my story, because I’m in it, and all of my stories have happy endings! All of them!”
Nancy heard movement behind her as someone stood up. A moment later, Cam’s hand landed on Nancy’s shoulder.
“That’s right,” said Cam in her calm, even voice. “My brother and sister are up there, too. I want to save them.” She tapped her chest. “And besides, I’m Cam Jansen. I always get my man.”
Amelia jumped up from the floor and pumped a fist in the air. “I don’t know what we’re fighting about, but I’m in!”
Junie B. scrambled to her feet. “Me too, probably!”
Teethateena leaned back in her chair, tapped her fingers on her desk, and chuckled quietly. “Well, well, my dear Keplerians. You gave these children power—did you really believe you would be able to control them?”
“We can’t possibly ascend the tower without full control of the lasers,” Finally growled, “or Pink Vicious can blast our climber right off the tether. And if she knows we’re coming, nothing will stop her from deploying the Emeraldlicious ahead of schedule. This is a fool’s errand—”
“I’ve gone on lots of errands,” said Amelia Bedelia as she leaned on Nancy’s shoulder, “and lots of people say I’m a fool, so this is just the job for me!”
Finally groaned.
Then the children all tumbled to the ground as an ear-splitting blast sounded from outside. Something huge, jagged, and made of metal ripped through one side of the tent and out the other. Teethateena fell from her chair, and her desk toppled. Rain poured in, instantly soaking her papers.
There was another blast. Then another. And another. Nancy heard men shouting, cursing, and then screaming. A weird light flashed outside.
“Children!” Mouse yelled, but then she leapt behind the turned-over desk and cowered.
Finally snarled.
Nancy found her feet, thrust a hand in the air, and yelled, “Habille-moi dans des vêtements de fantaisie!”
Her housecoat disappeared, she floated into the air, and a bright light filled the ruined tent as her tutu, bodice, ballet slippers, and petite top hat formed from thin air. She landed lightly on her toes, brandished her wand, and cried, “Sugar is sweet, but justice is sweeter! In the name of goodness and beauty, I am Magical Girl Fancy Nancy!”
Lying on the floor, Teethateena gasped. Her mouth fell open, and glistening tears fell from her eyes.
Nancy ran outside with the other girls close behind. All was chaos: in the ruined, rain-lashed camp, soldiers ran pell-mell back and forth, firing rifles and rockets into the dark. More explosions. Trees caught fire, and then rain snuffed the fires out. Branches cracked with a sound like lightning and fell to the ground with a heavy thud. Men, bleeding profusely, wallowed in the mud and cried hoarsely for their mothers. Over all, mixed with the smells of flowers and sap and leaf mold, hung the stomach-churning stench of blood and cordite.
Then Nancy saw it: towering above the camp, reaching almost to the height of the understory, stood a great robot of red and gray steel. On its dome-like head, a single, bright red eye roved back and forth.
“Oh, no!” Judy shouted as rain again plastered her wild hair to her head. “They found us!”
Perched on the robot’s shoulder were two skinny little girls. One had black hair cropped severely at the neck and a sopping fedora sitting crooked on her head. The other had bushy red hair now slicked with rain. They had their arms over each other’s shoulders.
The black-haired girl leapt to her feet, pointed a triumphant finger, and shouted, “There she is! Magical Girl Fancy Nancy! It’s payback time!”
At Nancy’s side, Finally growled. “Ivy and Bean! I might have known!”
Nancy’s hand tightened on her wand, and she clenched her teeth. She ran a hand through her curly, dripping hair as she said calmly, but with a hint of menace in her voice, “There is going to be a happy ending. And it’s going to start now.”
