And just as Wish began losing her grip and was about to be jolted off the rope entirely…

…the Nuckalavee stopped shaking his head.

Because while Xar and Wish and Crusher were being jangled about like stones in a bucket, on the OUTSIDE of the Nuckalavee’s mouth, Bodkin was being thrown about this way and that just as violently as they were on the other end of Crusher’s rope. He had a brief moment of panic as he looked down and remembered, Oh yes, I’m dangling a hundred feet up, from the jaws of the Nuckalavee, and my friends are actually INSIDE the Nuckalavee, and it’s my job to save them…

The rope had stopped shaking and was now swaying gently from side to side in a way that was really quite drowsy making… Oh no! It was happening again!

“Don’t fall asleep, Bodkin!” cried Caliburn, flapping around in frantic circles because there wasn’t a lot he could do himself while he was in bird form. “The one thing you mustn’t do is fall asleep!”

Caliburn was right.

Bodkin was never going to be a hero if he kept falling asleep in a crisis situation.

He had to stay awake.

So even though the familiar woozy feeling was coming over Bodkin, this time he fought it with EVERY FIBER OF HIS HEART AND SOUL.

Wake up! Bodkin said to himself sharply as his eyelids drooped. Wake up now! THIS IS YOUR CHANCE TO BE A HERO!

THINK!

The reason that the rope had suddenly stopped shaking was because the Nuckalavee had lost sight of Bodkin.

The last the monster had seen of the boy-who-didn’t-take-his-shoes-off was down on the beach, running toward him. But the boy had disappeared. Was he really a Wizard and not a Warrior, as the girl had claimed? Had he used some magical object to turn himself invisible? Maybe he was a scarier opponent than he had looked.

The Nuckalavee’s thirteen eyes swiveled in all directions, looking for the boy. No sign.

The Nuckalavee hated getting out of the water; his bulk was too much for that. But this was an emergency. He dragged the front half of his enormous body out onto the beach to get a closer look at the crevices high up in the cavern. No boy. Where had he gone?

Bodkin, meanwhile, had thought of a plan.

Bodkin swung the rope back, forth, back, forth, as though he was on a rope swing, until he hit the side of the cavern wall. He hung there a second, before kicking off with such force that he and the rope swung all the way around the Nuckalavee’s chin, past the creature’s ears on the other side, and he landed on the Nuckalavee’s snout.

The Nuckalavee suddenly remembered the rope dangling from the outside of his mouth. He tried to look down, but his thirteen eyes were perched right on top of his head, and he couldn’t see under his own chin. Which is why he missed seeing Bodkin, who was now standing on top of the Nuckalavee’s nose.

The staff that Bodkin was holding only did one thing. It was a Staff-That-Stuck-Things-to-Other-Things.

You might have thought that this was quite a limited spell. It certainly wasn’t one of the flashier, more spectacular ones, like mind control or invisibility or transformation or shape-shifting.

But sometimes it isn’t the spells themselves that are important.

It is the clever ways you use them.

Bodkin used that spell intelligently now. He touched the staff on one of the Nuckalavee’s nostrils and—SQUERRRRCHHHHHHH!

The nostril closed in on itself, as one side of the nostril stuck itself to the other side.

The Nuckalavee tried to snort through it, and—SQUERRRRCHHHHHH! Bodkin touched the staff on the other nostril, and it closed up too.

Still holding the rope, Bodkin launched himself off the Nuckalavee’s nose with as much careless recklessness as if he had been Xar himself.

Around the other side of the Nuckalavee, Bodkin fell so that the rope wound itself in a circle all the way around the Nuckalavee’s head. And when Bodkin swung back down to the bottom of the circle, he touched the staff to the rope and it stuck tight.

The Nuckalavee tried to breathe through his nostrils, but they would not unblock.

The Nuckalavee tried to open his mouth that he had been keeping closed so firmly.

But his mouth would not open.

The Nuckalavee was part of a crocodilian family of monsters that have great strength in the muscles that grasp prey, so they exert extraordinary force when they are keeping their jaws shut. But the muscles that OPEN the jaws are far weaker, so weak, even, that they cannot break through the rope of a Longstepper High-Walker giant.

And then there was chaos in the cavern of the Nuckalavee.

The Nuckalavee’s thirteen eyes bulged and blazed with absolute incandescent fury. He thrashed about in the underground lake, with Bodkin desperately hanging on to the madly jerking rope.