Troll Overboard Read online

  I came up beside him. “No sign of her?”

  Kevin lowered the glasses without taking his eyes off the water. “She’ll come. She has to.”

  I left him pining away as I went off looking for food. On my way to the hull, I passed Roquefort and Trunk, leaning against the railing rubbing huge quantities of Purell into their arms and faces.

  • 21 •

  ABSOLUTELY STUNNING

  The day went by fairly quickly, and after the evening meal of Smutton and nasty canned Swamp Roots, I collapsed into an empty hammock in the bunk room.

  I woke up during the night to loud snoring. I assumed it was Roquefort, having heard his talents on the island, but there was just enough moonlight coming through the portholes for me to see that it was Ferlin. He was two bunks over, using his ratty old potion backpack as a pillow and sawing away like a champion.

  I drifted back to sleep feeling a sense of well-being and excitement for the future that I hadn’t felt for a long time.

  It didn’t last long.

  I was shaken awake by small hooves.

  I sat up and flipped the hammock, crashing nose-first into the floor below.

  I was dazed and crabby as Kevin grabbed my paw and pulled me up the stairs. For the dead of night, it was surprisingly bright on deck due to a full moon and about a bazillion stars. The wind had picked up a bit, and Kevin had to yell as he pulled me to the rail.

  I looked down into the water, and there was S’wella, darting along beside the ship. She dipped in and out of the waves, shouting and gesturing like crazy. There was no mistaking the panic on her face.

  Kevin and I scrambled around until we found a gigantic coil of rope and tossed it over. S’wella dodged the falling tangle before launching herself out of the water and grabbing on. Kev and I started pulling as hard as we could.

  When we got her high enough, S’wella flipped herself over the rail and landed on the deck with a splat. She was so worked up, she could barely get the words out.

  “Ursula . . . Gasp . . . Coming for you.”

  S’wella was busy gulping air, so she touched her hoof to her snout and pointed at Kevin in an “On the nose” gesture.

  My blood ran cold. “Where . . . I mean . . . How soon?”

  S’wella shook her head. “Any minute. I tried to get out ahead of her and her ‘children’ . . . but they’re fast. If y’all have an alarm, sound it. Now.”

  Something slammed into the side of the boat—hard enough that Kevin and I were knocked off our feet. Whether it was the witch or one of her freaky serpent kids, it had to be big. I ran to the railing and couldn’t believe my eyes.

  The water looked like it was boiling, there were so many serpents surrounding the ship. It was an army of the creatures that had swallowed Roquefort and me. Two of them smashed into the hull as I heard the door to the lower deck slam open.

  Gerome the gnome was the first one out of the door, followed closely by Red and Harry the bear.

  Chester was next out the door, running into Harry’s backside. He straightened his vest and stood with his hands on his hips.

  Then he saw the sea serpents, and all of the blood and enthusiasm ran out of his face. “Holey buckets!”

  The rest of the crew was piling out from below- decks as the ship was pummeled by the monsters. Red jumped to the top of a barrel, holding tight to the center mast as she barked out orders.

  “But aim carefully! We have a limited supply!”

  Chester looked over at me, confused. “What are stunpoons?” I shrugged my shoulders as Harry ran up and put a modified harpoon gun and a few harpoons in each of our hands. The pointy tips of the harpoons had been replaced with what looked like bags of sand.

  “Ha.” Harry put his gun to his shoulder and sighted in on a serpent. “That’s ’cause you haven’t seen them in action.”

  He pulled the trigger and the stunpoon took off like a small rocket. It left a trail of smoke, and a second later made loud contact with the side of the serpent’s face. The giant fish-thing went flying, and the crew let out a huge cheer.

  He started loading up another stunpoon. “He’ll be alive . . . but he may wish he wasn’t.”

  I spun around and spotted Kevin at the side of the ship. S’wella was still scootching herself across the deck, but he already had his gun up to his shoulder, aiming. I guess love makes you brave. Or at least makes you fake it.

  Look . . . I’m no whiz in physics class, but I could see what was coming. I shouted his name and took off running, but it was too late. The rest happened in slow motion.

  The stunpoon shot out of the gun and the force lifted Kevin off of his feet. A startled Kevin and his gun shot backward into the air like a Rocket Dragon in a hurricane. I dove to grab his hoof as he sailed overhead, but missed him. I landed and flipped over just in time to see Kevin slam back-first into the main sail. The gun punched a hole in the sail and kept on going as Kevin rolled down the canvas, getting snarled up in some ropes.

  He ended up hanging about a foot over the deck, his legs tangled in the rigging.

  I ran over to help him as the sound of the crew’s stunpoons filled the night. So did the smacks of those sandbags drilling into serpents. As soon as Kev was free, I ran to the railing.

  I put the gun to my shoulder, braced my feet, and fired at a long, bumpy serpent about twenty feet out. I’m not gonna lie. Seeing that stunpoon whomp into its slimy head felt pretty good.

  I was loading up again when I caught something out of the corner of my eye. While the other serpents were swimming more or less the same direction as the ship, one was coming straight at me. I thought I recognized its shape. Then I noticed first aid tape on one of the nostrils and I knew for sure.

  I fired my stunpoon as the serpent launched itself out of the water at me, but my aim was off. It glanced uselessly off the side of the beast’s cheek as it sailed up and blocked the moon and stars.

  My paws slipped on the wet deck as I tried to scramble backward, and I was slammed to the boards by the big elephant-sized fish.

  Amazingly, my innards didn’t get squeezed out of my ears, but my nose did get jammed into my brain. I was gulping little sips of air as the thing squirmed around on top of me. I think its goal was to pancake me to death.

  I was about to lose consciousness when I felt several muffled thuds and the serpent went limp. I was pretty sure it’d been stunpooned. A few long moments went by with my lungs screaming for air before part of the weight came up off of me. I gasped and peeled my smashed eyelids open. Holding the front end of the beast up over his head was Harry. He smiled down at me and I did my best to coax a smile out of my rearranged face.

  “You can eat my hair any day.”

  It took several of the pirate ogres and giants to help him throw the serpent overboard. I staggered up and saw that there were only a couple of serpents left attacking the ship. Chester got off one of the final stunpoons to help finish the job.

  A cheer went up from the crew when the sea around the ship was calm again. Pirates of every kind slapped high fives in celebration. Even Trunk the ogre had a big grin on his face as he fist bumped a gnome back by the bow—which got me looking around. Where was Roquefort? Probably hiding in a closet somewhere.

  I walked up to Kevin, who was just now starting to tremble—though he was trying to play it cool for S’wella.

  “Sh-shaking? Me? Maybe just a little chilly or something, but I’m fine. Juuuust fine. Not freaking out a bit.”

  S’wella smiled and gave him a peck on the cheek.

  His eyelids drooped and his shaking slowed down.

  I was starting to laugh when a huge can of Smutton rolled past me, gaining speed as it made its way to the front of the ship. The back of the ship was lifting.

  The sea was swelling behind the ship. A giant bulge wider than our ship was rising up. It was lifting the back of th
e boat like a huge wave. I turned around and found Red standing beside me. “What is it? A tidal wave?”

  Red’s eyes were huge in the moonlight. “No.”

  * * *

  “It’s her.”

  • 22 •

  THE LADY COMES CALLING

  Just then the mound of water parted to reveal the top of a hair-and-seaweed-covered dome. It was enormous—maybe a school bus length across—and coming fast. I still wasn’t sure what I was seeing until its eyes cleared the surface. Red glowing eyes the size of cars. That’s about the time my knees went weak.

  Suddenly Chester was at my side with his weapon ready. “Let’s see how this thing likes getting its bell rung.” With that, he fired a stunpoon right into the sea witch’s face. We all held our breath, wondering what would happen.

  The answer was a resounding “Nothing.” It bothered the sea witch about as much as if I flicked a Q-tip at your face.

  That’s when the rest of the head cleared the water. It was one of the ugliest things I’d ever seen. Sweeping back from the head—coming out of the thin hair—were huge writhing tentacles. There really wasn’t a nose, just a couple of nostrils. And then there was that horrible mouth.

  It opened to reveal hundreds of small sharp teeth. It reminded me of Ernie’s mouth on Sesame Street—an evil, fanged, twenty-five-foot-wide Ernie mouth. I let out a nervous giggle and worried that I might be losing my mind.

  A couple more stunpoons fired off with no effect, and someone was yelling that those were the last we had.

  I staggered back and yelled over to Red. “That thing looks NOTHING like Ursula from The Little Mermaid movie!! NOTHING!!”

  Red had spun a mounted cannon around at the creature. She wasn’t taking her eyes off the witch while she lit the fuse. “I’d imagine they . . . didn’t want to give kids . . . nightmares.”

  We did. But when it came, the blast was deafening. My hearing dropped out, so what happened after that was like watching a silent movie.

  The cannonball hit the witch in the eye. Great, except it sent her into a rage that would have made my troll ancestors proud.

  The witch reared back in a fang-bearing roar. All of a sudden there were enormous tentacles everywhere. Not like the ones on her head—these were long muscled arm suckers bursting out of the water. Two of them came up from the right side of the boat and smashed through the railing. An extra-long one shot out and slashed through the main sail. Another smashed the cannon like it was made of Silly Putty.

  I turned around looking for Kevin, and what I saw was a nightmare. Kevin and S’wella were mid- ships, avoiding tentacles like they were in the worst game of dodgeball ever.

  Gerome and Harry had been swept up in two tentacles and were fighting with everything they had.

  Several pirates, including Ferlin the wizard and a young female elf, were sprawled on the deck unconscious, and it suddenly hit me: This was our fault. Okay, maybe mostly Roquefort’s fault, but if we hadn’t dropped into their lives, these people would be safe and sound playing Pictionary on their island.

  That old, unstoppable troll anger boiled up—but this time it was different than ever before. This time a good part of it was aimed at myself.

  In two seconds flat, I was in a full rage. I grabbed the first tentacle I saw and snapped the end off over my knee like it was a string bean. I spun and used the end as a club to beat the rest of the tentacle back.

  I’m not sure how long this lasted, but I may have gone a little bonkers—one of the hereditary hazards of being a troll. I was pounding, slashing, scratching, biting . . . I’m not sure how many tentacles I damaged, but the stupid things kept coming. I was wondering why they had named this thing a sea witch and not a Gigantic Endlessly-Squid-Tentacled Sky Scraper Ernie Puppet Mind-Melting Vision of Unthinkable Horror when my hearing started to come back.

  The first thing I heard—and just barely—was Kevin squealing.

  Kevin was upside down in one of the tentacles. S’wella was hanging desperately from one of his hooves.

  I ran over, but they were lifted up beyond my reach. Then Chester was there. He cupped his hands for me to step in and tried to launch me high enough to grab S’wella’s tail.

  I fell back to the deck, hardly believing what was happening. The sea witch had her big Ernie puppet mouth open and was dangling nine or ten potential pirate meals over her mouth. She would hold one over her mouth and smack her lips—like a little cat playing with its food—and then move on to the next.

  I heard Ferlin behind me—letting out a groan and a big burp as he came to—and suddenly I had an idea. Ferlin’s bag. The potions. It was a shot in the dark, but it was a shot.

  I took off running for the door to the cabins below, threw it open, and pounded down the steps four at a time. I ran into the bunkroom and straight up to Ferlin’s bunk . . . but his backpack wasn’t there. My heart sank, until I heard a small sniffle near my feet.

  I dropped to my hands and knees and saw the bag, clutched in Roquefort’s stubby little fingers. He was tucked back under the bottom bunk, and he’d barricaded himself under there with pillows, blankets, and Ferlin’s bag.

  “I’d be out there defeating that thing if I wasn’t singlehandedly the FUTURE of our KINGDOM.”

  There was a loud crash from above, and he looked up in terror.

  I tried to grab the bag, but the prince wasn’t letting go. Time was wasting, and I felt my troll anger kick back in. “Let go of the backpack, Roquefort. It might be our only chance.”

  The prince glared at me. “Well, I’m currently using it as a shield! So buzz off!”

  That did it. Final straw. I yanked the bag out, with Roquefort still clinging to it, and took off for the stairs.

  He bounced up a few stairs before he came to his senses and let go, fleeing back into the bunkroom.

  I burst through the door and saw how badly the ship was leaning to one side. I realized we must be taking on water. I ran straight for the witch, who was still doing the cat-and-mouse thing with Kevin and the rest. It looked like Kevin was unconscious (as is his way), but S’wella had a good grip on him. Another tentacle reared up and I saw that the witch had Red and Chester now too.

  Using every bit of troll strength I had, I smashed the backpack against the deck.

  It sounded like an explosion of glass and liquid in there, just as I’d hoped. I reared back and held the bag out.

  I kept going. “I TOOK THE BEANS! ISN’T THAT WHAT THIS IS ABOUT??”

  Everything stopped. The tentacles stopped swaying, that big freaky mouth slammed shut, and those glowing red eyes turned in my direction.

  I was starting to yell again when another tentacle came around from the back and caught me off guard, knocking the wind out of me. It slipped around my waist, and I gripped the backpack tightly as I was hauled into the air.

  That nasty-looking face got closer and larger until I was dangling right in front of the witch’s fuming eyes.

  There was some serious, angry heat coming from them. I swallowed hard and kept goading her.

  “YUM YUM YUM. Those beans were SCRUMPTIOUS!! I mean, these things were juicy and meaty and perfectly seasoned and . . .”

  The mouth opened, and a rumbling voice that made my ears flutter started to roll out.

  “MMMYYYY BEEEEEEEAAAAAAAA. . . .”

  I didn’t wait. I chucked that dripping, oozing backpack as hard as I could, right through those enormous greasy lips.

  “. . . AAAANNNNNSSSSSSSSS!” The witch finished her word before she realized something had landed in her throat. Then she blinked and swallowed out of reflex. For a second, nothing moved.

  The witch shook it off, almost like a kid on a bike who’d swallowed a fly.

  Then it was back to business. The tentacle lifted me higher into the air until I was looking straight down on the witch. She let out a deep sound th
at sounded like a chuckle. That huge mouth started to open. And open. And open . . .

  And then things started to happen.

  First came a shudder—like an earthquake—that rumbled through the witch. She paused and lowered me just a bit, away from her mouth.

  The shaking was growing stronger and stronger when her teeth started to fall out. They made splashes as each one hit the water—one or two at first, and then in groups of four or five at a time. There must have been some kind of anti-dental potion in that bag of tricks.

  A gurgling came from the top of the witch’s head. It was bubbling and squirming like a honey bog on a hot day, when there was a squishy bursting sound . . . and huge tufts of pink and purple hair started to explode out of her scalp. I mean huge shocks of hair, the size of the flumpfruit trees. One after another they unfolded and expanded until the witch’s head was like a small forest.

  Those horrible red eyes looked confused. She started shaking her enormous head, trying to figure out what was happening up there.

  Then came the big changes.

  A couple of huge bean leaves popped out of the tentacle wrapped around me, and I had a pretty good idea what was coming. More leaves started sprouting, and within a few seconds I was wrapped up in a loosening beanstalk. One by one I heard my friends plopping into the ocean as the beanstalks relaxed their grips and fell away.