CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

THE RESCUE

“Help!” Alistair screams, and Filomena turns around. Just as she believed the gruesome and relentless attack was over, it hit close to home. Alistair is in the grips of an ogre giant’s fist.

Filomena looks for Jack or Zera, but they’re too far away, helping creatures wounded or trapped by the attack.

It’s up to her, standing small at the gigantic feet of this humongous ogre. And I thought Algebra One Honors is hard. She shakes her head at the silly things she’d feared before all … this.

The ogre doesn’t see her; he’s too busy trying to get a good look at Alistair, the tiny boy in his mammoth fist.

Filomena hears a distinct snap, followed by a pain-stricken groan from somewhere above her.

“Ahhhh!” Alistair wails in the sky, his face contorting with agony.

The ogre brings Alistair right by his eye and roars in satisfaction. “Got you now, you little bugger!”

Alistair screams again.

Filomena can’t take it anymore. She has to do something to save him! She bends down and grabs a few rocks, throwing them at the ogre to try to distract him before he kills Alistair.

But the rocks bounce off his leg like pebbles. The ogre doesn’t even flinch.

As much as Filomena wants to call out for Jack or Zera to help her, she knows time is ticking, and with every second that passes, another of Alistair’s bones could be breaking.

She thinks back to the books. I know all the spells, she’d announced just moments earlier. I can help.

She remembers one chapter in particular where an ogre sweeps a princess off her feet, only it isn’t in a good way. It was horrifying, just like this. In the book, Jack saves the princess by loosening the limbs of the ogre with a particular spell, basically turning the enemy’s extremities into Jell-O-like appendages.

She remembers the chapter. She remembers the scene. She remembers what the princess is wearing. But the spell … It’s on the tip of her tongue, but she can’t recall where it starts or ends, or anything in between.

Alistair shrieks in pain again, and she mumbles to herself, covering her ears so she can think straight.

How did it go?

Quick. ‘Ogre be quick…’

No … It went, ‘Ogre, ogre…’

She rolls the words around in her mind a few times, rearranging them as Zera had done to the floorboards.

It comes to her all at once. She stumbles at first, attempting to remember the tongue twister’s true order. But there’s no time to perfect the rhyme. She decides to just spit it out and hope she gets it right. Alistair’s life depends on it.

“Ogre be feeble, ogre be thick! Ogre be sluggish, ogre be sick! Ogre droop under this limbless kiss, until every bit of you is mush and twist!” she chants, over and over, until she’s screaming the words into the sky. “OGRE BE FEEBLE! OGRE BE THICK! OGRE BE SLUGGISH! OGRE BE SICK! OGRE DROOP UNDER THIS LIMBLESS KISS, UNTIL EVERY BIT OF YOU IS MUSH AND TWIST!”

She feels her voice going hoarse as the ogre stumbles, gently at first, like he’s about to sneeze. But almost instantly, before he can recover his footing, his face starts drooping. His mouth settles into a permanent frown.

His flesh goes formless, starting at the neck. What was once nimble becomes numb, the skin sagging into a gloppy substance. She watches his one arm go limp and then start flopping around like a rubber snake. Next goes the other arm, the one attached to the hand gripping Alistair.

The fist becomes fluidlike, and Alistair suddenly looks as if he’s caught in a bowl of skin soup. Filomena gags while watching the transformation. The ogre is rendered powerless as his legs go next, his kneecaps turning into pure tissue and becoming formless, bending and meandering and twisting at angles that could make even the strongest stomach turn.

The giant falls to the ground in a heavy, aimless flop, his malleable body parts still detouring with a mind of their own. Filomena tries not to puke as she races to Alistair, who’s still in the sloshy grip of the erstwhile powerful ogre, now a mushy pile on the ground.

Filomena climbs over the ogre, sinking into his skin like it’s quicksand. As disgusting as it is, she searches her way around the saggy baggy sea and finally finds Alistair. She only sees his head, but she yells for him to try to reach his hand out so she can help him.

He’s struggling to breathe, but his hand juts out and she grabs it, pulling him from the goop.

She groans and yanks as hard as she can. Jack and Zera suddenly appear right behind her.

“Hey! I remember using that spell,” says Jack. “Let me guess, that’s in the books?”

“You know it! I’m a big reader, remember?” Filomena says between grunts. “Help me get him out of here! He’s drowning in bone-drool!”

Jack rushes to her side and grabs what’s available of Alistair’s arm, the rest still sunken in the sloppy skin-ship.

With a little help from Jack Stalker, Filomena’s last tug frees Alistair from the ogre’s gooey clutches, and she and Alistair go flying backward.

She crawls toward Alistair, checking him over. Zera kneels beside her, also inspecting the boy for injury.

“Where does it hurt?” Filomena asks Alistair.

“Everywhere and after,” he says with a groan. “But if you think this is bad, you should see the other guy.”

Filomena laughs, and they all turn their heads to the puddle of ogre, still melting by their feet.