Chapter Twenty

Sam

The next day, the hottest day of the summer so far, Mason and Sam walked together to the elementary school without seeing a single pig.

Not Gilfillan, who’d been happily snoring in Bella’s room, despite their parents’ efforts to keep the pookah out on the porch. Not the big metal word hogs that Sam knew were roaming the neighborhood. He could hear them clanking. But they stayed out of sight.

They passed the oak tree and the rebuilt Little Free Library. The night before, all their parents, plus Nana, had come out to rebuild it while Sam and Mason refined their trap ideas. The library looked better, though there were cracks up the side, and the paint was a bit patchy where the caulk was still drying.

Mrs. Lockheart, in a big sun hat, stood next to it, holding the security camera. She watched Sam and Mason pass, her lips pursed like she wanted to say something but was not sure what.

They waved and walked as quickly as they could to the corner.

“What are you going to do about Dr. Vane, Sam?” Mason said.

Sam chewed his lip. “I wish I had the cards Bella made for me.”

“Sorry about that,” Tolver said. Sam couldn’t see him at all, but it sounded like the goblin was walking right beside them. “But we’re even now, right?”

“Not anywhere close to even,” Mason laughed. The three of them crossed the street, and she pulled a list of supplies to get from Sam’s bag. “Let me know if you think of more things you need. Your stepmom and I are going to go to the hardware store when it opens. Then if you want me to come talk to Dr. Vane with you, I will.”

“You’re not going to lie for me, Mason. I told you.” Sam wouldn’t let Mason get in trouble too.

“I know. But he’s so focused on words, not actual apologies. I think it’s ridiculous. There’s a big difference.” Mason’s cheeks were rosy with outrage.

“Once we get rid of the prospectors, it will all be fine,” Sam said. He faced where Tolver was probably standing. “Won’t it?”

“Absolutely,” Tolver said. “Let’s go to school! There should be a lot of careless words in the garbage cans, at least.”

Sam shook his head: no. Tolver chuckled. “Can’t fault me for trying. We need hot air to get back home, just like the prospectors.”

“Maybe you should wait outside,” Mason suggested firmly. “Until Ms. Malloy says okay.”

Sam stopped and waited until, with a rustle and a thump, Tolver sat down hard on the elementary school steps. “Fine. Fiiiine.”

And with that, Sam trudged through the door alone and ran smack into Dr. Vane.

He wore a suit, even though it was already hot. And a bow tie, tied so tight the stars on it seemed to stretch. “Hello, Sam. Anything you want to say to me?”

Ms. Malloy came out of Dr. Vane’s office, looking frustrated. “I tried to talk to him, Sam. But he insists on doing this by the book.”

Which book was that, exactly? There were so many different ways to say I’m _____. “I’m working on it, Dr. Vane. I want you to know that I do feel badly about what happened.” Sam had practiced that phrase with his dad at breakfast, before Mr. Culver went in to fix things at the office.

Dr. Vane shook his head slowly. “That’s not ‘sorry,’ Sam. Or ‘apologies.’ I’ve given you plenty of options.” He sighed. “The words, Sam. The words are important. You show others you mean to change with words and deeds.”

“I think Sam is well on his way to the latter,” Ms. Malloy protested. “He walked here with Mason today, and I—”

Dr. Vane held up a hand and Ms. Malloy’s cheeks turned an angry red. Sam’s hands curled tight around his backpack strap. Why was Dr. Vane being so mean?

The principal opened his office door. “I’ll be right here, all day. You should know, Sam, that every minute you delay doesn’t just reflect poorly on you. It impacts Ms. Malloy as well. I feel I’m doing your job for you, Ms. Malloy. You could say thank you.”

Ms. Malloy pressed her lips tight in a frustrated line. She was also not saying what Dr. Vane was demanding. Interesting, Sam thought.

Once the principal closed his office door, Ms. Malloy took Sam’s elbow and propelled him fast down the muggy school hallway to her classroom. “Is Tolver outside?”

Sam was pretty sure, despite Tolver’s theatrics, that the boglin had snuck in right behind him. “Maybe?”

“I need his help. There was a device on Dr. Vane’s desk today that wasn’t there last week. It looked like something you’d described from the prospector’s ship. All brass, with a trumpet and a bunch of clear cables running from it?”

Tolver appeared. “That sounds bad.”

Sam lowered his voice to match Ms. Malloy’s “Tolver, I saw your grandmother’s friend Julius on board The Plumbline, working on something like that. If Dr. Vane’s been tapped by the prospectors, the community meeting is going to be even more terrible.”

But as Sam thought about it, he realized that he already knew Dr. Vane wasn’t being mined for his words. The prospectors’ machine was sitting on his desk. And the tie he’d been wearing that morning, a bow tie, with stars? Sam had seen that before too. On The Declension. It was from the suit Captain Bellfont had been trying on. “What if Dr. Vane is working with the prospectors?”

“You don’t think . . .” Ms. Malloy looked horrified. “I’m going to go back and speak to him right now.”

Tolver put out a hand, blocking her. “You can’t risk it. He could tell the prospectors everything and we’d lose our element of surprise.”

“Then I need to tell the school board,” she said.

With a buzz, Ms. Malloy’s intercom clicked on. The red light had been on when they’d walked into the room, but now it was green.

“Ms. Malloy?” Dr. Vane said. His voice filled the room with static. “The school board will be at the meeting; can you be sure to make them welcome?”

Ms. Malloy’s eyes went wide. She found a pencil and wrote: I think he’s listening to us, on a blank piece of paper. Her hand shook while she did it. Sam put his finger to his lips to show her he understood. Tolver did the same.

“Come to think of it, Sam,” Dr. Vane continued, the intercom whistling because the principal was too close to the microphone. “I do need your help this afternoon, and your friends too. The community meeting has been moved to two p.m. due to some rather large concerns by the neighbors. Your father suggested you could help set up the auditorium.”

“Okay,” Sam said.

“Thank you.” Dr. Vane clicked the intercom off. Ms. Malloy, Sam, and Tolver sat together in the hot, silent classroom.

Oh no. Two p.m., not four.

Ms. Malloy looked heartbroken. “Sam, do you think it will be enough time?”

Sam played with the pencil stub he’d been writing with, thinking, All of my plans so far had gone pretty terribly, and I want to make sure this one works. “Tolver, find Mason and Anita. And get Bella and Nana too.”

Tolver went invisible as he climbed out the classroom window. Sam could see his path through the unmowed grass, across the field, and to the hardware store near the Mount Cloud train station. He hoped the boglin found everyone in time.

They were going to need to all work together in order to pull this off.

Ms. Malloy smiled at Sam nervously. “I really liked this job,” she said aloud.

Sam wished he could say something to make her feel better.

Instead, for the rest of the morning, the two of them strategized silently, testing and retesting the goblin trap plans Sam and Mason had refined the night before.

When Tolver returned with Mason, they snuck in through the window. Ms. Malloy pointed at the intercom and put her finger to her lips.

“Bella’s with your stepmom,” Tolver whispered. “They’re down by the auditorium.”

Have you seen any prospectors? Sam wrote on his scrap of paper. Anywhere?

The boglin nodded, his dark eyes wide. He borrowed the pencil and paper. A word hog was hidden behind the dumpsters near the train station. Maybe they went downtown?

Uh oh. Not back to Sam’s dad’s office. “We have to warn my dad,” he said aloud.

Sam, Ms. Malloy wrote, Mount Cloud can’t be the only small neighborhood the goblins have been mining. She looked over her glasses at Tolver.

Tolver looked sheepish. I don’t think they could have gotten far, to be honest. They used up most of their fuel chasing us here, didn’t they? They’re stuck too. Tolver wrote quickly. We don’t often get stuck over here. Only lately.

Before Sam could write back, Nana appeared and thwacked them both gently with the oak switch. She took the pencil and wrote, Boys. This is a serious matter. We won’t be going back home until we sort this all out.

Tolver ducked his head. “Okay, Nan.”

“Yes, Nana,” Sam said, feeling guilty until he saw Ms. Malloy wink at Nana.

Let’s go get them, Mason wrote.

Down the hall from Ms. Malloy’s room, the doors to the school’s auditorium were wide open. The room had been modernized the year before to add air conditioning in addition to the special stage with a trapdoor that let the chorus appear and disappear during plays.

Sam, Mason, Tolver, and Ms. Malloy slowly walked down the hall and into the auditorium. Inside, the air conditioning felt cool against Sam’s skin. Mason shivered.

His stepmom and Bella stood on the stage, looking at the trapdoor.

Anita pulled a screwdriver from her tool belt. “I’m going to make some adjustments. Want to help?” she winked.

She showed Sam and Mason how to set the computerized scale on the floor so that it would sink when it hit a particular weight. Then she hesitated. “Did you calculate for the bait, or just the goblins?”

“We still have to get the bait,” Ms. Malloy said. “Once we have it, we’ll add that weight to the calculations from last night. It will be fine as long as there are exactly twenty goblins, and if they don’t bring any word hogs.”

That was a big if. Sam hoped they were right.

“But how are you going to get them on stage, Sam?” His stepmom stared out over the empty auditorium seating. Then she whispered, “Are any of them already here?”

Nana shook her head. “They’re not. I’ve . . . distracted them for a few hours.”

“Good,” Sam said.

“How?” Mason asked, her eyes narrowing.

Nana blushed. “I disabled their word hogs and had Gilfillan run through a bunch of tap lines we found. They’re chasing the pig all around the neighborhood.”

“I thaw it,” Bella said. “It looked like a tornado blowing down the road. All the trash cans got knocked over.”

Ms. Malloy covered her eyes. “I hope they stay well away from the Little Free Library. We just fixed that again.”

Sam hoped so as well. Emphatically.

Once his stepmother had the trapdoor primed and the video monitor set up the way Dr. Vane had requested, they took a break to eat lunch. Anita had brought leftover chicken from the ruined picnic and a big thermos of cold lemonade.

“Now we just need to bait the trap,” Mason said after she swallowed.

Tolver, digging in the auditorium’s waste bins for words, said, “It had better be really good.”

“It will be.” Ms. Malloy smiled.

“Like what?” Mason asked. “One of us?”

“No. None of us,” Ms. Malloy said. “I have something else in mind: Old essay papers. With circles drawn in red ink around careless words. I keep several years’ worth in boxes in the basement archives.”

A light dawned in Tolver’s eyes. “Can I have them when we’re done?”

Ms. Malloy rolled her eyes to the ceiling, pointedly ignoring Tolver’s request. But then she frowned. “Oh. But the keys are in Dr. Vane’s office.”

“Sam and I can get them, Ms. Malloy!” Mason said. “I have the perfect idea.”

“You can’t,” Sam said. “I won’t let you.”

Mason walked ahead of him all the way to Dr. Vane’s office, making Sam nearly run to keep up. “You can’t exactly stop me, you know.”

“But what if you lose your words? What if the prospectors’ machine takes them?” Sam wasn’t going to let that happen. Not to any of his friends.

“Sam, when the first mate took me out of the brig, she said something. I thought she was just celebrating your raid, but I don’t think so now.”

Sam frowned. “What did the first mate say, exactly?”

“She said there were a lot of potential resources that had gone untapped so far, but that Julius’s new inventions would make everyone rich. She was hoping to get her own ship someday.”

All the prospectors had the same dream, Sam realized. And it’s one that requires a lot of hot air. The prospectors wouldn’t stop at just a few baskets of words if they had the chance. They’d keep going. And I’m not going to let that happen. “I still don’t want you to risk your words, Mason. I should be the one to do that. Slow down!”

“This isn’t about a few words anymore, Sam. This is about saving Mount Cloud! And maybe other places. A few words are worth that.” She grinned.

But Mason hadn’t been missing several important words all weekend. She didn’t know the trouble it caused. Not firsthand. Sam didn’t want her to find out.

They were nearly at the office.

The door was open, and someone was talking loudly and a bit pompously to Dr. Vane.

“Imagine, Vane. If you could keep kids from trash-talking each other on the field. What an improvement that would be to the game! This machine,” Sam and Mason heard a hand thump the machine, “is capable of that very thing!”

The voice was Captain Geary’s.

“How can you prove it?” Dr. Vane said. “I’ve been playing with this thing all day and I can’t get it to work.”

Bellfont, who sat next to Captain Geary, flicked the machine on, then off again. Sam heard it whirr softly, then stop. There was feedback from the intercom every time he did it.

“We’ll bring it to your community meeting this afternoon. You can watch us test it there and enjoy the results. Then we’ll teach you. Anyone back talks or interrupts, you’ll see the power of this technology immediately.”

Mason stared at Sam, wide-eyed. “They can’t do that.”

“The meeting is about beautification and standards,” the principal protested. “Not about restricting students’ self-expression.”

“Libraries and scoreboards, we know. We heard you all yesterday.” Captain Geary said. “I know how business works, and you’ve said yourself that you need parents’ buy-in. You can’t have the kids interrupting you during your statement. That’s all I’m saying. You bring us enough kids who mis-use words, and we’ll prove its value to you.”

“It may even,” Bellfont chuckled, “take sincere words, if you target it right. Experimentally, of course. My scientists are very skilled.”

Vane frowned. “I’m not convinced. But if you’ll keep it to the kids who’ve been breaking the Lockhearts’ library and getting in trouble, I won’t fight it.”

Sam and Mason hid behind the office secretary’s desk as the two prospector captains emerged from his office. They both wore suits this time. And shoes. They didn’t smell. It was hard to tell that they were goblins, if you didn’t look too closely.

When they heard the double doors of the school swing shut, Mason stood up. Sam followed.

Dr. Vane sat staring into the mid-distance. The machine that had been on his desk was gone. “Would be nice,” he murmured.

Then Mason knocked hard on the doorframe, and the principal jumped. “Just a moment!”

“Mason, NO!”

“Trust me, Sam.” Mason punched his arm lightly. “Play along, okay?”

Sam realized he did trust her. “Okay,” he whispered.

Dr. Vane came to the door. “I’m in a meeting, kids. If you need me, I can come in a few minutes.”

They both knew he wasn’t in a meeting. But he didn’t know they knew. “We’re sorry to interrupt you, sir,” Mason said. “We need you to come now, Dr. Vane. Ms. Malloy’s gone silent.”

She nudged Sam and he added, “She keeps trying to say things, but nothing’s coming out. It started this morning, when you were talking to us over the intercom, but now it’s getting worse.”

“We weren’t sure if we should take her to the hospital?” Mason said.

Sam admired Mason even more. She was brilliant at thinking on her feet.

There was a rustle behind them. Tolver had heard the whole thing. Now the boglin went running to the auditorium to tell Ms. Malloy what she needed to do.

“No, no hospital.” Dr. Vane frowned at the place where the machine had been on his desk. “That’s not supposed to happen. Is it possible she’s got laryngitis?”

Mason and Sam both shook their heads: no.

Dr. Vane had a hard time not running down the hall. They watched him speed up, straighten his tie or his hair, slow down, then speed up again. All the way to the auditorium.

Meantime, Mason went around to the other side of Dr. Vane’s desk and found the keys to the basement in the top drawer. “Mission accomplished!”

“Mason,” Sam said, “we have to find that machine too. Before the meeting.”

“What do you mean?”

“Did you hear what they said? He thinks we’re the kids who’ve been messing with the Lockhearts’ library.”

“We kind of are,” she pointed out.

“Mason, Dr. Vane’s fine with the goblins taking our words forever. Starting at the meeting. We have to warn everyone.” Sam looked up at the wall clock. They were running out of time.