Lewis was trying to keep his eyes open. For the past half-hour, over a meal of goop, the group had been discussing their best course of action. Should they camp where they were on the verge of the forest and scour the region for the last ingredient? Or should they search for it en route to Yellow Swamp, on the grounds they would be killing two birds with one stone? They were exhausted and couldn’t make up their minds.
“It’s like a needle in a haystack,” Adelaide grumbled for the third time in the past ten minutes.
“Then let’s head for the swamp now,” Todrus yawned. “At least we’ll make some progress that way.”
“But we’ve got to find the weed,” she protested. “And that might mean retracing our steps.”
“Unless the weed’s near the swamp,” Gibiwink argued. And so the discussion dragged on and on.
There might have been a quarrel had Alfonse not spoken up. He had been strangely quiet for the whole exchange and was seated several feet away from the group. “I know where we can find that weed.”
Everyone started, and Lewis’s eyes jumped open.
As the group pressed Alfonse to explain himself, he gestured to the mountain that overshadowed the forest. “When we were on that hill overlooking the flowers, I managed to get a close look at the mountain and saw a giant oak growing on its crest. In its highest branches there’s a yellow-tipped weed, exactly like the one described in the poem.”
“Are you sure?” Todrus asked. “Your eyes would have to be sharp.”
“I’m sure,” Alfonse snapped. “You’ll find the weed in that tree.”
“You should have said so earlier!” Adelaide muttered. “We’ve been discussing our plans for over an hour.”
Alfonse shrugged. “I was distracted. My powers are gone.” That said, he moved away from the group and propped himself at the foot of an alder.
Feeling bad for Alfonse, Lewis strolled over. “Move over.” He sat next to his friend. “I’m sorry about your powers.”
Alfonse yawned. “You shouldn’t be. I’m happy they’re gone.”
“You are? You don’t mind?”
“I know this sounds strange, but those powers were creepy. When I was running fast and could see things at a distance, it felt like a stranger was working inside me. Besides, I should be dead right now.”
“What’s it like?” Lewis whispered. “Being dead, I mean.”
“It felt … it was like …” Alfonse sought the right words. “I was far away, very far away, beyond the reach of everything, both good and evil. It’s nice to be back, that’s all I can say, and you won’t ever hear me complaining again.”
Lewis stood and tapped his friend’s shoulder. He was about to suggest the group start moving when he noticed that the others had fallen asleep. Lewis shook the frogs vigorously but couldn’t get them to stir. Glancing back, he saw that Alfonse had dropped off, too.
As Lewis stood there wondering what he should do, exhaustion hit him with the force of a hammer, almost knocking him off his feet. Maybe a nap would do him good, he thought. After all, as his father often argued, rest was the formula for all success.
His father. Lewis frowned. Again he saw his dad in that sunken chamber, frozen, weakened, with those guards poised above him. He had looked so helpless, so utterly defeated.
“I can’t afford to sleep,” Lewis gasped, reaching for his manual. “He’ll die if we don’t reach him soon.”
Focusing hard to stay awake, Lewis searched the book for a possible solution. He wound up making two discoveries. The first involved the chemicals themselves — it turned out they were all related to one another. Even as he kicked himself for having missed this connection, he came across a most promising entry: “Sleep compression,” the index read.
Following the directions, he pulled out vials of hydralienic microsulfate, alienodextrose, and chlorolacticalienamalinamine. He was barely able to keep his eyes open, but he managed to pour these ingredients onto a handful of dirt and grimaced when a slimy violet gel took shape. Steeling himself, he swallowed part of it. Yuck!
Lewis waited. Was it working? He didn’t feel any different. Sniffing with impatience, he glanced up at the sky. A chip from a tree was falling toward him, bullet-shaped and black as coal. He tried to catch it, but a wave of grey bowled him over.
He was falling, falling, falling. A corridor appeared. It was lined with a trophy case and newspaper clippings, each with a story about Ernst K. Grumpel. One headline read METEORITE IN MASON SPRINGS! while a second trumpeted PHARMACIST SCORES TRIUMPH! A moment later he was at the door to a pool. The chain on its handles opened without warning, and three hulking figures emerged. One pointed a rifle at him. He cried, “Don’t shoot!” But the figure only laughed and pulled the trigger.
Lewis awoke with a start. Despite this jarring nightmare, he had slept like the dead and had never felt quite so rested before. He yawned, stretched, and thought about his dream. Then a bolt of panic caused him to tremble. How long had he been down? Four hours? Six? Eight? Ten? Twelve? His father was clinging to life by a thread and he had dared —
A wood chip hit him. It was bullet-shaped and black as coal. Lewis frowned, then laughed. It was the chip he had spied before the brew had kicked in and, as incredible as it seemed, he had been asleep for five seconds!
“Alfonse!” he cried, scooping up some gel. “Try this mixture! It’ll leave you feeling rested.”
Because his friend didn’t respond, Lewis fed him the substance. He repeated this process with the rest of the gang, opening their jaws and placing the mix inside. By the time he had finished, the gel was taking effect.
“Boy, did I sleep!” Alfonse declared.
“Me, too!” the rest of the group sang out. Weak and exhausted only minutes before, they were all on their feet and itching to move forward.
“All right,” Lewis said, “we know where to go to find the weed. Let’s head for the mountain, track the weed down, and end this mission once and for all!”
His friends thought this was an excellent idea. With a heartening shout they set off together, leaving the open field behind and plunging into the thick of the forest. As they marched, they swapped jokes and encouraged one another, confident their goal was finally within reach.
A minute later their spirits sank once more.
The woods had been blasted through and through. Once a collection of birch, pine, and alder, it was now black and charred and maimed all over. Not a single speck of green was visible, and the branches were scarred, gnarled, and twisted, as if they were doubled over in pain. The bark, too, was hideous, like the skin on someone who had been burned all over. The worst part was the silence: there were no bird songs, no cricket calls, no rustling leaves. And at every step they sank up to their ankles in ash.
What a pity, Lewis thought. Normally, he was fond of nature — he loved the Canadian wilds, for example — but this forest’s desolation made him sick at heart. To distract himself and his friends from the carnage, he described his dream about the trophy case and clippings.
“You were back in school,” Alfonse suggested.
“Yes. The clippings were about that meteorite and how Grumpel became a sensation soon after —”
“Like in real life,” Adelaide interrupted, half stumbling in the ash.
“That’s my point. The dream was telling me something.”
“Like what?” Todrus asked.
Lewis replied that he didn’t know. On the other hand, he had a discovery to share — how the chemicals in their belts had something in common. Before he could explain further, the forest erupted.
There was no wind present, yet the branches swayed and creaked on high, never mind all of them were horrifically battered. The friends glanced up. The trees were rubbing their boughs together, not casually as happened when a breeze arose, but like fiddlers sawing away on their bows.
“I know this sounds crazy,” Lewis shouted to make himself heard above the wild scratching, “but I’d swear these trees were talking to each other!”
“They are.” Again, because of the translation brew, the Stranger was able to decipher these sounds. “They think you’re murderers, as a matter of fact.”
“Murderers? Us?” the group cried out.
“That’s what they’re saying,” the Stranger insisted. “I think it has something to do with your outfits.”
“That’s crazy!” Alfonse argued. “These outfits aren’t ours! Grumpel forced us to put them on.”
“But don’t you see?” Adelaide interrupted. “His henchmen wrecked this region, along with these trees. And I suspect —”
“They were dressed just like us,” Lewis finished. “And that means these trees think we’re working for Grumpel.”
They hurried on in silence. The trees continued to scratch and saw, then started spitting bark at the group. Now that the Stranger had translated the racket, everyone could sense the raw hatred. Infuriated on account of their wounds, these trees were intent on exacting revenge.
Lewis felt uneasy, if not for himself, then for his mother at least. He thought back to Elizabeth’s statement about his mother. She had told him that his mother had informed Grumpel about Yellow Swamp’s existence and that, if not for her, this part of Alberta would be unscathed. Although his mother had loved nature deeply and would never have been part of Grumpel’s scheme — if she had known it would mean the swamp’s ruin — this disaster was partially her doing. She had been so intent on building an unbreakable lock that everything else had been forgotten.
“Ow!” Todrus wailed as a piece of bark struck home. The trees were now attacking in earnest and tossing large parts of themselves at the group, in some cases branches that could crush them flat. And the scratching was loud, not to mention insulting. If they stayed there much longer, they would be killed for sure.
“Let’s run for it!” Lewis yelled, pointing at the mountain ahead. A hundred yards off, in the midst of the forest, a mass of rocks rose up from the soil and stormed its way straight into the clouds.
With the trees hurling threats and jeers in their wake, not to mention a volley of missiles, they doubled their speed and dodged a tangle of roots. One branch fell straight toward Lewis and would have crushed him had the Stranger not knocked it aside. One second later and —
“My pleasure,” the Stranger answered, returning his gaze.
Again, for an instant, Lewis spied something familiar.
The trees were so furious that, even when the travellers reached the base of the mountain, they didn’t pause to catch their breath. Instead they scrambled toward its boulders and started climbing for all they were worth.
The ascent wasn’t difficult, in the technical sense, since there were plenty of ledges and cracks to clutch onto. Still, the face was frighteningly steep. By the time they had covered the first hundred yards, the easiest part of the climb, everyone was sweating and fighting for breath. It wasn’t wise to look down, either. There were no lack of footholds, but the drop was … lethal.
They continued climbing for the next half-hour, unable to speak because they were puffing so hard. By now the trees were far below, yet they had conquered only part of the mountain, as if they were ants on a human being and had only reached the start of his knees. The rock was sharp and cut their skin, yet they clung to it the way a baby nuzzled its parent.
“Ooh,” Gibiwink moaned, pausing to glance below. “Did I ever mention I’m hydrophobic?”
“You’re scared of water?” Todrus panted.
“Is that what it means? Then I’m looking for another word … xenophobic?”
“The proper word is acrophobic — a fear of heights,” Todrus lectured. “Xenophobia is the fear of strangers, anyone who’s not from the same place as you.”
“Speaking of things from somewhere else,” Lewis gasped. “Have any of you noticed something strange about the chemicals we’ve been using?”
“You’re kidding, right?” Alfonse asked, dropping a stone and watching it fall to the soil. “I mean, these chemicals are only strange.”
Lewis produced a handful of vials. He then read the words printed on the labels. “Alienophloxyxene, hydralienoplasmic acid, tyralienahippaceronase, meninaeidealienotheacide …”
“I don’t get it,” Alfonse said.
Lewis laughed. “It’s staring you in the face. Each vial contains something with alieno or aliena in the name. Let’s call it Alienus. You’re a chemist, Todrus. Does that sound familiar?”
The frog frowned. “Alienus? Hmm, there’s no such thing.”
“You mean, there’s no such thing on Earth,” Lewis corrected.
“Now hang on a second. Are you suggesting …?”
Lewis nodded. “This substance is from another planet. And it arrived on the meteorite that fell on Grumpel’s farm, the one reported in that newspaper clipping.”
“You mean Grumpel’s inventions —” Alfonse asked.
“Exactly. How else would he have become an overnight sensation? When that meteorite landed, it was carrying an element.”
“Alienus,” the Stranger mused.
Lewis smiled. “Which can trigger all sorts of amazing reactions. Grumpel must have found that out and quickly built an empire for himself.”
The group exchanged worried frowns with one another. They didn’t like this conversation. The thought that they were carrying a foreign substance like that, an element from a far-off galaxy perhaps, sent tingles up and down their spines. Was there life on other planets? Was something, somewhere, watching from … out there?
“And that’s why he’s been closing his factories,” Lewis added. “He’s running low on Alienus and can’t mass-produce his inventions any longer — just as Todrus argued.”
Alfonse whistled. “So that’s what he’s hiding in Yellow Swamp. Piles and piles of Alienus.”
“There’s more to it than that,” Adelaide said. “I mean, he could have hidden this stuff in New York City and had it available when the first batch failed. So what’s it doing in northern Alberta?”
“And why did he cause that chemical spill?” the Stranger added.
“You’re right,” Todrus said after a pause. “We haven’t solved the entire riddle. Still, we won’t find answers by lounging about. Let’s collect the weed, get to the swamp, and see what this mystery’s about for ourselves.”
They continued the ascent. Apart from the heavy effort it required, the odd, tense moment when someone missed his footing, and the breathtaking but dizzying view of the landscape, the rest of the climb was uneventful. Eventually, Alfonse mounted a boulder, only to discover he had reached the top.
“We’ve done it!” he cried. “We’re at the crest!”
“Thank goodness,” Gibiwink sighed, his flippers scraped all over.
“Let’s celebrate,” Todrus wheezed. “And fix ourselves a snack.”
“We’d be celebrating too soon,” Adelaide objected.
Everyone followed her pointing finger, and one by one their looks of triumph faded. The mountain had so distracted them, as had their talk about Alienus, that they had forgotten why they were scaling its heights.
A gargantuan oak stood a short distant off. Its trunk rose hundreds of feet into the air, only to vanish in a bank of mist. There was no saying how tall it was. Its width, too, was just as impressive. If they joined hands, they would encircle half its trunk. No branches were visible, high or low, and the bark had the same smoothness as steel.
Lewis gulped and passed a hand through his hair. The real climb hadn’t even started yet.