

# Stella Sky

Book One

# The Shattered Mirror

by

# C. A. Strand

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents either are the product of the author's imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events or locales is entirely coincidental.

Smashwords Edition

Smashwords Edition License

Thank you for downloading this ebook. This book remains the copyrighted property of

the author, and may not be redistributed to others for commercial or non-commercial

purposes. If you enjoyed this book, please encourage your friends to download their own

copy from their favorite authorized retailer.

Copyright 2014 by C.A. Strand all rights reserved.

No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews. For information please address Stella Sky Books at stellaskybooks.com

www.stellaskybooks.com

Stella Sky - The Shattered Mirror

Book One in a series of five

# The other books in the Stella Sky series

Book Two

Stella Sky - The Chainsaw Sisters

Book Three

Stella Sky - Camp Edgar

Book Four

Stella Sky - Snowy Hall

Book Five

Stella Sky - Into the Labyrinth

To all of you, with thanks for your

encouragement, guidance, inspiration,

laughter, love & dreams.

GURRBECK! GURRBECK! GURRBECK!

# Table of Contents

There Will Be Magic

Blue Canoe

Flashes and Glints

Boy in a Fur Hat

Quicksilver World

Glitter Girl

Flight to Wenry Heath

Just George

Crash Landing

To Build a Fire

Distress and Calamity

Mirrors and Dreams

Candy Land or Chess

The Wonderful Chainsaws of Buzz

Lake Endless

Wireless Telegraphy Apparatus

Skedaddle

# Stella Sky

# The Shattered Mirror

# There Will Be Magic

Stella was a strange girl in many ways. She stood a lanky five feet, seven and a half inches, which was pretty tall for a girl who was only eleven. Her eyes were a curious mix of gold and green, depending on the light. She had long curly hair that was blonde in the summer but grew dark in the dead of winter. She had a pet ferret named Freddy who went with her almost everywhere. She had a blue belt in kickboxing, certified by her dojo's sensei, Mr. Watanabe-san. And she had a name that was so long and such a project to recite that she usually shortened it to Stella Sky, because S K Y were the last three letters of her last name. Or sometimes she just called herself Wenry, because Wenry was a lot easier to say than Stella Maxine Leberecht-Yarwood-Vogel-Starpinsky.

"This is Treego," announced her mom. "The last town before the cottage."

Stella was riding in the back seat of the family van with Freddy nestled on her shoulder. It felt like forever since she and Freddy and her mom and her little brother Russell had left Chicagoland for their vacation at the Andersen's cottage on Lake Wippiwee-Wananana; but now, nine hours later, they were almost there.

"How much farther?" asked Stella.

"Just ten more miles."

"Thank goodness." Stella rolled her window down and a warm, pine-scented summer breeze slipped in and played with her curls. Treego was a tiny town with one gas station, one grocery store, one bakery, one tavern, one café, a Dairy Queen and a spindly, sky-blue water tower with the town's name painted on the side. "I wonder if there's a tattoo parlor in Treego."

"Probably not." Her mom glanced back at her with a worried look.

"What do you want a stupid tattoo parlor for?"

"None of your business, Russell."

"We've already discussed this, Stella. You are not getting a tattoo."

"Mom, I know. I was just wondering. That's all." Stella sighed and looked out the window. They drove by a rusted green pickup truck with an I BRAKE FOR TROLLS sticker on the bumper, and a chainsaw sculpture of a huge walleye, mid-leap, in the back. The truck was parked in front of Bill's Bait Shack, a cinderblock building decorated with Day-Glo orange signs advertising NIGHT CRAWLERS, MINNOWS and LEECHES $2.50 A DOZEN.

"Look, leeches."

"Yuck," said Russell.

"Hey, Mom? Can we get a dozen leeches for dinner?"

"No we can't, Stella."

"I mean just for Russell. You and I can have Dairy Queen."

"I don't want any yucky leeches. I want Dairy Queen too."

"Sorry, boys can't have Dairy Queen."

"Yes we can."

"Boys can only have Dairy King."

"There's no such thing as Dairy King."

"In Patagonia there is. They have yak burgers and ostrich egg salad sandwiches and—"

"Yak burgers?"

"Yeah, and they also have iceberg-flavored ice cream. It's blue."

Russell squinted at Stella; he wasn't sure if he should believe her. "Where's Patagonia?"

"The southern tip of South America."

"Is that true, Mom?"

"That's where it is, dear, but I'm not so sure about those Dairy Kings."

"Mom, everyone knows Dairy King is huge in Patagonia."

"Really, Stella?" her mom laughed. "Dairy King's huge in Patagonia?"

"Uh-huh. Pretty much."

Stella watched Treego get smaller and smaller and finally disappear in the rearview mirror. They drove past a marsh crowded with green cattails, and a flock of blackbirds that took flight in a surprising flurry of flashing red wings. Then County Road G swerved north toward Lake Wippiwee-Wananana; it tunneled into the surrounding forest, between lakes that sparkled in the angled, evening light. The sun was just beginning to fall below the trees.

"Hey, Mom? Why does Mrs. Andersen call their cottage a fairy tale cottage?"

"I think it's just an expression, Stella."

"But maybe she means there's magic there."

"Yeah, and maybe trolls and evil ogres," said Russell.

"Or maybe there's an enchanted forest with a princess and unicorns and—"

"Pirates and buried treasure!"

"Russell ..." Stella rolled her eyes. "Pirates aren't in fairy tales."

"I think she means their cottage looks like it could be in a fairy tale, but we'll just have to wait and see," said her mom.

"What do you think, Freddy? Is there gonna be magic at this fairy tale cottage?"

Freddy gave Stella's cheek a mischievous lick with his tiny pink tongue.

"Freddy ..." Stella giggled as she pulled him off her shoulder and looked into his big brown eyes. "I asked you a question. Will there be magic? Yes or no."

Freddy blinked twice.

"Freddy says yes, there will be magic."

"No he didn't," said Russell.

"He blinked twice, and that means yes."

"Since when?"

"Since basically forever. Two blinks means yes, one blink means no, and a wink means maybe. Right, Freddy?"

Freddy blinked twice and Stella smiled. "See?"

Six miles later, the paved road disintegrated into gravel, and then the gravel road gradually faded into two tire ruts separated by a strip of tall grass. The van thumped and bounced, and the tire ruts made sudden turns to avoid rocks and trees until the forest gave way to a clearing with a meadow of wildflowers and uncut grass.

"This must be it," said her mom as she parked the van. "We finally made it."

"We're here! We're here!" cheered Russell.

"Wow ..." Stella could see the lake glittering gold and blue beyond the trees, and a cottage—half hidden in the slanted shadows—made of pine logs, with a cedar-shingled roof and a stone fireplace crowned by a towering chimney that disappeared in the trees. "It's like the seven dwarfs' cottage in 'Snow White.'" Stella opened the door, grabbed Freddy and ran down the path. "FIRST ONE THERE GETS FIRST DIBS ON BEDROOMS!" She ran up the stairs to the cottage deck and stopped. She could see the boathouse and the path down to the lake and towering pink clouds high above the water. Russell was behind her running as fast as his six-year-old legs could carry him. He slowed at the stairs, taking them carefully, one at a time.

"I won."

"No fair, you started before I got out of the—" Russell was interrupted by a high-pitched "Hoooooo-OOOOOT!" followed by trembling laughter that echoed through the trees.

"What's that?" he asked, wide-eyed.

The weird laughter answered, and was answered again by even stranger sounds, farther away.

"It's the lake ghost," whispered Stella.

"Lake ghost?"

"Uh-huh, Mrs. Andersen told me a crazy old woman drowned in this lake a long, long time ago."

"Ha ha-ha-ha-ha! Ha ha-ha-ha-ha!"

"Listen ..." whispered Stella.

Russell stood very still and listened.

"Sometimes her ghost comes back to drag little boys just like you down to the bottom of the lake—"

"Ha ha-ha-ha-ha! Ha ha-ha-ha-ha!"

"That's not true."

"Hoooooo-OOOOOT!"

"Ha ha-ha-ha-ha! Ha ha-ha-ha-ha!"

"She's coming for you, Russell." Stella pointed at the dim path that led to the lake. "Look, there she is ... She's coming!"

Russell screamed, "MOM!"

"Stella, please ..." Her mom stood at the bottom of the deck stairs. "Tell your brother what's making those sounds."

Stella sighed and said, "They're just loons, Russell."

"There's no lake ghost, honey."

"But what's loons?" asked Russell.

"Loons are like ducks, but they can swim underwater, and they catch fish and they make all kinds of crazy sounds."

"Ha ha-ha-ha-ha! Ha ha-ha-ha-ha! Ha ha-ha-ha-ha! Ha ha-ha-ha-ha!"

"Like that."

"Then why'd you say it was a ghost?"

"I was just kidding, silly. Everyone knows there's no such thing as ghosts."

"That's going to be a real storm." Her mom was looking up at a dark, billowing curtain of thunderheads. The rain clouds seemed to have come out of nowhere, riding in on a cold wind that was blowing from the northwest. "Stella? You and I need to get the power turned on." Her mom unlocked the cottage door, went in and came out with two flashlights. "The switch box is somewhere down in the boathouse. Russell? Take Freddy inside and choose your bedroom."

"Yay!" Russell took Freddy from Stella's hands and ran inside shouting, "First dibs! First dibs!"

"But I had first dibs, Mom."

"There are plenty of bedrooms, honey." She gave Stella a flashlight. "Let's get the power on before this rain hits."

Loons were calling, and there were distant rumbles of thunder. When the first drops of rain began to fall, Stella and her mom ran to the boathouse and took shelter under the eaves.

"What if we can't find it?" Stella glanced up at a pair of old moose antlers that hung below the roof peak. "This switch box thingamajig."

"Then we'll be reading by candlelight, honey." Her mom unlocked the door.

"For two whole weeks? We better find it."

"You're right," her mom laughed, "we better." The door opened with a rusty creak.

Inside, the boathouse smelled of musty wood, moldy canvas, gasoline spills and outboard motor oil. The rain was getting louder; it drummed on the roof in a rage that ended in a blinding flash of light and an explosion of thunder that shook the walls.

"Wow! That was close."

"A little too close." Her mom sounded worried. "Stella, you check over there."

"What's it look like?"

"It's usually just a small metal cabinet." Her mom scanned the clutter with her light. "Mounted on a wall somewhere." Lightning flickered through the dusty windows followed by waves of rumbling thunder. The rain was pouring down.

"Look at all this stuff." Stella's flashlight panned across a complicated collage of rusty garden tools, lawn furniture, old bikes, bait buckets, fishing poles, landing nets and tackle boxes. A large boat on a trailer took up all of the space in the middle, a green canvas canoe hung from ropes tied to the rafters, and deflated beach balls, air mattresses and animal-shaped swim toys were corralled in a corner near the door.

"Keep looking, honey."

"I am." Stella squeezed between the boat and an old stepladder and followed the beam of light to the furthest corner of the farthest back. "Hey, what's this doing here?"

"CAN'T HEAR YOU OVER THE RAIN, HONEY."

"THERE'S A REALLY OLD MIRROR, MOM." Stella looked back to see if her mom could see her, but a stack of storage boxes was in the way. "How did you end up here?" Stella asked, and the mirror seemed to shimmer and flicker in reply. The flashlight beam bounced off the silvered glass and shot into the dark with prism rainbows and diamond light. The mirror was almost three feet taller than she was, and its intricate wood frame of thorny roses and trumpeting morning glories was covered in burnished gold. "The perfect mirror for a fairy tale princess," she whispered, "like Sleeping Beauty or Snow White."

"FOUND IT." Her mom pushed the main switch, and Stella saw the cottage lights ignite through the rain-spattered windows.

"LIGHTS ARE ON, MOM," she called.

"Good." Her mom stopped near the door and flipped the boathouse light switch a few times but nothing happened. "Bulb must be out. Wait here and I'll get an umbrella. There's no reason for both of us to get soaked," she said, and then she was gone.

There was a white flash of lightning followed by waves of rumbling thunder. Stella approached the mirror, holding the flashlight with one hand as she pulled her hair back with the other. She could be that fairy tale princess, she thought, and then her reflection began to shift and ripple as if the mirror's surface was made of water and a wind was caressing it into a thousand reflections of her lips, curls and eyes.

When the surface finally stilled, Stella saw a beautiful princess surrounded by falling snow, huge flakes swooping and fluttering like ice butterflies with snowflake wings, and there was hoarfrost on her eyelashes, and her skin glittered like winter, and her lips were slightly blue. Stella gasped, frightened but also curious, and when she touched the glass with her fingers, the mirror blurred into a thousand tiny ripples, and she felt a deep shivering cold enfold her. Someone on the other side was trying to pull her in.

"Hey, don't—"

Lightning exploded and shook the boathouse walls. The reflection in the mirror blazed and then changed into something strange and startling—

Stella screamed and dropped the flashlight and ran out through the dark into the storm. She didn't stop until she reached the cottage deck, shivering and wet and trying to catch her breath as her shaking hands struggled with the door. She turned to see if anything was following her, but there was nothing except darkness and rain and her own words coming back to haunt her: there's no such thing as ghosts.

# Blue Canoe

George Thistlebaum—if not exactly a strange boy, then certainly an exceptional and slightly enigmatic boy by most accounts—woke suddenly from a dream that he would remember for the rest of his life. It was daybreak. The sky was pink, and the rising sun glowed molten-metal red behind the silver-skinned birch trees that grew along the shore of Lake Wippiwee-Wananana. The storm the night before had been crazy, with monster winds, earthquake thunder, and lightning shattering the dark, rainy sky. Now the storm had moved on and left the trees green and glittering.

The dream was still very vivid in his mind, which was strange because he almost never remembered his dreams, and for some reason this particular dream had left him in a very peculiar mood. There was a very tall girl in the dream he'd never seen before and didn't know from anywhere he could remember. She had gold and green eyes and long curly blonde hair, and like all dreams it was a crazy mix of colors, places, people and things: charcoal black raven feathers and weathered wood chainsaw sculptures and winter palaces made of frost. There was an army of trolls singing a chorus of burps and belches, and a blurry crimson food fight with stewed tomatoes and Concord grape jam. There was a taxi yellow bush plane landing on an icy lake of turquoise blue, and an antique gold-framed mirror that shimmered and rippled like a quicksilver pond. He felt like he had been looking through a kaleidoscope that bent the light into rainbow-colored visions and shifting stained-glass scenes, and in the center, and through it all was the tall girl with gold-green eyes and a halo of corkscrew curls. Rather randomly, the girl also happened to have a ferret that sat on her shoulder, and the ferret could talk, and it did talk. The ferret talked a lot.

"Weird," George whispered.

George had turned twelve in April, and while most people in the town of Treego where he went to school said he was about ten inches too short for his age, they also said he would probably catch up with a growth spurt when he turned thirteen. George studied his reflection in the mirror above the dresser and saw the still-sleepy face of a boy with hazel-colored eyes and hazel-colored hair that had been cut short for the summer but still stuck up and out and looked funny when he first woke up in the morning as if his pillow had cast a spell on it during the night. He cinched up his army green cargo shorts, pulled on his favorite Hawking Quantum Physics Camp football jersey, and then he climbed down out of the sleeping loft to the room his uncle called the big room, but that George thought of as the book room, because of all the books his uncle kept there in tall bookcases against the walls.

Even George's uncle seemed to be in a strange mood that morning, more quiet and taciturn than usual, which was hard to imagine because George's uncle Torvald Thistlebaum was perhaps the quietest and most taciturn man in all of Arrowhead County.

"Morning, Uncle Tor."

Torvald looked up from an issue of Theoretical Physics Monthly and nodded at his bed-head-haired nephew.

"That storm keep you awake like it did me?"

Uncle Tor shook his head by way of saying: No.

"Sure was a loud one."

Uncle Tor shrugged his shoulders by way of saying: Maybe.

"Boy, did I have a weird dream this morning."

Uncle Tor arched his eyebrows.

"There was this girl with a pet ferret ... the ferret sat on her shoulder and it talked."

Uncle Tor took a sip of coffee and waited for more.

"There was so much stuff in it, and it happened so fast ..." George closed his eyes and concentrated. "I wish I could show you. I mean I wish you could see what I saw."

His uncle nodded. "Dreams ..." He took a sip of coffee and looked off into a distant nowhere. "Dreams are complicated."

"This one sure was. A talking ferret, I wonder what that means?"

Uncle Tor didn't seem to have any theories about talking ferrets, so George filled the long, almost awkward silence by saying, "Well, guess I'll go get something to eat."

George was eating a bowl of cornflakes with milk when his uncle Tor walked in the kitchen to get another cup of coffee and his pipe. It seemed to George that he almost never saw his uncle actually eat food unless it was fish: walleye, northern pike, bass, muskie, fresh from the lake, dipped in cornmeal and fried in a skillet on the stove.

"Goin' fishing?" his uncle asked.

"Guess I might, wanna come?"

Uncle Tor shook his head by way of saying: No.

"Does anything feel weird to you this morning, sir?"

Uncle Tor arched his eyebrows and shrugged his shoulders by way of saying: Don't know, maybe, and then he said, "Don't take the canoe, take the rowboat."

"How come?"

"Just because."

"Okay, rowboat it is."

The blue canoe was what George almost always used when he went fishing. It was a lot easier to maneuver a canoe than a rowboat, but the rowboat, which happened to be blue too, was okay in a pinch. His uncle Torvald stuffed the bowl of his pipe with tobacco and filled his mug with coffee and went outside through the kitchen screen door.

Good ole Mr. Silence, thought George. Maybe this particular day felt weird because of that dream, but his uncle was always a little weird, and George would be the first to admit it. A little weird but also really smart—educated at Caltech and Oxford University, recipient of numerous scholarly prizes and honors—Uncle Tor was a theoretical physicist who specialized in time theory. In any case, thought George as he raced through his beginning-to-get-soggy cornflakes, Uncle Tor had been very helpful ever since his parents won that $5.8 million dollar, scratch-for-cash, Super-Lotto Mega-Prize and took off for Europe. George glanced at the random collection of postcards that were taped to the refrigerator door, sent from European capitals and featuring pictures of fountains, palaces and medieval cathedrals that bristled with gargoyles. They arrived sometimes and occasionally, written and sent by George's mother, and always inscribed with the same farewell: Wish you were here!

"Wish you were here, my foot," mumbled George into his rapidly wilting cornflakes.

George had a strange urge to pack more than usual for his day out on the lake, but he didn't know why. Uncle Tor was smoking his pipe at the end of the dock, thinking about something deep, and George was lugging his fishing pole, tackle box, life preserver, rucksack and everything else to the rowboat, where it floated dockside.

"Uncle Tor? What do you think it means when you feel like something weird's gonna happen? I mean in the future, but also really soon."

Torvald turned away from the lake and took silent inventory of the gear George was putting in the boat.

"I feel like I should pack about fifty sandwiches and a hundred candy bars."

Uncle Tor raised his eyebrows by way of saying: Interesting.

"But I guess I won't."

Uncle Tor nodded by way of saying: Yes, better not.

"I mean I'm only going fishing, I'll just be gone for the day, right?" George, who didn't expect an answer to that question, went back to the shed to get more stuff: the Coleman lantern and some rope and three boat cushions, just in case.

When he was seated on the center seat and ready to row out, he said, "See ya tonight, Uncle Tor!" and then he put on his lucky fishing hat, a tall fur hat he'd made himself out of beaver and trimmed with mink.

"Where are you planning to fish?"

George dug in with the oars and pulled. "Andersen Bay, I guess. I had some good strikes there yesterday." The rowboat slipped away from the dock, oarlocks squeaking with each pull. "Guess I should grease up these locks."

Uncle Tor nodded by way of saying: Yes.

"I'll do it when I get back."

Uncle Tor nodded and shook out the embers and ash from his pipe. "Be careful out there."

"I will."

"And bring home a lunker ... or at least a good story."

"I'm sure gonna try, sir. I just wish I didn't feel so weird, I mean like something bad's gonna happen."

"The future's always communicating with the present."

"You think?"

Uncle Tor nodded. "Our lives are threads in the fabric of time. We're all entangled."

"We're tangled?"

"No. Entangled."

"Oh." George pulled hard on the oars and tried to follow what his uncle was saying. Even though his uncle's specialty was the study of time, he almost never talked about it.

"BUT ISN'T TIME SUPPOSED TO BE AN ILLUSION? I MEAN THAT'S WHAT THEY TAUGHT US AT PHYSICS CAMP." George had to shout it; he was already pretty far away and the squeaking oarlocks were loud.

"ABSOLUTELY," his uncle called, "IT'S THE ILLUSION WE ALL SHARE."

George pulled strong and hard with the oars. He hadn't been out in the rowboat in weeks and it felt good to row. Brilliant Bay—the bay they lived on—was as smooth as glass, and there wasn't a cloud in the sky. What could possibly go wrong? he wondered. It's a perfect summer day.

"HER NAME IS STELLA!" his uncle shouted.

"WHAT WAS THAT, SIR?" George stopped rowing and let the boat drift.

"THE GIRL, THE ONE IN YOUR DREAM, HER NAME IS STELLA."

"STELLA?"

"STELLA SKY." His uncle waved goodbye and he even smiled, and that was the weirdest part of all, because Uncle Torvald never smiled. "HAVE A FINE TIME ON YOUR ADVENTURE, GEORGE."

"THANKS, UNCLE TOR."

"I'll see you in a few months," Torvald said as an afterthought, but George couldn't hear him; he was rowing out of Brilliant Bay and was already too far away.

# Flashes and Glints

The first thing Stella saw when she opened her eyes that morning was a pileated woodpecker hanging upside down from the roof eave. It was almost as big as a crow and had a red flame-top crest of feathers like a real punk-rock bird, and a long dagger-shaped beak perfect for drilling dead trees when it was hunting for beetles and grubs and other tasty treats. It kept switching the position of its head, jerking from side to side, looking at Stella with one eye and then the other, left, right, left, right, as if it couldn't quite believe what it was seeing through the window, a girl with gold and green eyes looking back from her pillow.

The woodpecker rapped on the glass and then it spread its enormous wings and flew away, calling out as it dodged between the trees in a cartoon shriek that made Stella laugh.

"What was that?" she asked, still laughing. "This forest is completely nuts, Freddy." She scooped him off the floor and kissed him on the top of his head. "Did you see those crazy red feathers?"

After breakfast, Stella ran through the kitchen in her swimsuit with Freddy following close behind. "Goin' down to the lake, Mom."

"Wait for me before you go in the water, honey."

"Okay."

"And tell your brother to wait for me—"

"Sure, Mom." Stella was already out the door and running across the deck. Russell was busy building a castle from a pile of stuff, a red blanket held aloft by lawn chairs and canoe paddles with an overturned trash can for a tower and three buckets full of water for a moat.

"HALT! WHO GOES THERE?" he shouted.

"Guess," said Stella as she disappeared down the path.

"Where you going?"

"The lake!"

"Wait for me."

On the path to the lake there was a footbridge that crossed a stream. The stream was running high with the rain from the night before, and it splashed and gurgled between the mossy rocks. Freddy stopped three feet from the stream and sniffed. The only kind of water Freddy liked was the drinking kind in his water dish.

"Come on, Freddy, you can cross on the bridge."

Freddy wasn't sure if he should trust the bridge. He sniffed the air and looked at Stella. She had stopped on the other side and was waiting for him to follow.

"Come on, you can do it."

Freddy blinked once.

"Sure you can," countered Stella.

He looked at the bridge, and at Stella, and the stream, and back at Stella, and then in one brave burst he bounded across, and they ran until the path ended at the shore where the water was bluer than the sky, and a soft breeze teased the lake into an infinity of reflected suns.

"Look at that, Freddy."

There was a dock made from sturdy wood planks that jutted out into the water. Freddy stayed on shore and sniffed the air while Stella ran out onto the dock to the very end, planks thumping under her bare feet. Stella had seen a lot of lakes in her life, and twice she had been to the ocean, but this lake was different, it stretched out in three directions for as far as she could see, and there were so many islands, small islands that were big rocks surfacing out of the water like the backs of granite whales, and also much larger islands covered with pine trees. There were islands that looked big enough to live on forever, and medium-sized islands that looked big enough to live on for a week. There were islands that were close and there were islands that were far away. The lake was like an entire world made of rock and water, and Stella wanted to explore it all summer long.

Russell ran down the dock clutching a float-toy dolphin to his chest.

"Wow!" he said.

"Wow is right. Is Mom coming?"

"Mmm hmm." Russell put the air valve into his mouth and blew.

"How deep do you think it is?"

Russell shrugged his shoulders, puffed up his cheeks and blew some more.

"I mean right here." Stella was looking down into the water; it was so clear she could see the rocky bottom and minnows swimming and crayfish lurking in the shadows. "HEY, MOM? ARE YOU COMING?" she called. "Russell, where is she?"

"About thirty feet and closing, Stella." Her mom came down the path with a beach bag slung over her shoulder.

"Here goes nothing!" Stella took five broad steps back and made a run for the edge and shouted "YIPPY!" just before she plunged into Lake Wippiwee-Wananana.

Stella was a good swimmer. She thought it was pretty silly that her mom wouldn't let her swim in the lake alone. She did the breaststroke for twenty yards out and then stopped, looked around at the islands and sky and then she dog paddled back into the shallows.

"How is it?" her mom asked.

"Great! Are you coming in?"

"In a few minutes, honey." Her mom had spread a beach towel on the dock. She was sitting on it in her bikini with her sunglasses propped on her forehead and a tube of sunscreen in her hands.

"Hey, Mom? Can I swim out to that island?"

"Which island?"

"That island." Stella pointed at a tiny island out beyond the bay that only had two trees growing on it.

"I'm afraid that's too far, Stella."

"No it isn't."

"Just swim around here."

"But I really want to explore an island, please?"

"Well ..."

"Please."

"Okay, but you have to wear a life vest and swim where I can see you."

"Really? I can?"

"If you promise to be careful."

"I promise."

"Life vests are in the boathouse."

"Hooray!" Stella did a backstroke into shore and ran up the path, with Freddy following.

When they got to the boathouse door, Stella asked, "Are you afraid, Freddy? I mean, you know, afraid of the mirror?" She had told Freddy about the mirror the night before, about the strange things she had seen in it.

Freddy blinked once and sniffed.

"Then I'm not either." Stella tiptoed in and searched through an old box crowded with life vests until she found one that fit her, a red vest with a white plastic zipper. "I got it, let's go." She searched the shadows. "Freddy?"

Freddy had slipped under the boat trailer and was exploring in back. Stella found him standing on his hind legs with his front paws against the mirror glass, gazing with wide brown eyes at his reflection.

"Hey, what're you doing?" Stella had wrapped her towel around her hair like a turban; it sat high on her head and when she saw it in the mirror it made her laugh. It was just a reflection, nothing else, nothing scary. It was just an old mirror, and there was no such thing as ghosts. Stella smiled at her swimsuit gown and beach towel crown, and then she asked, "Mirror, mirror, on the wall, who's the cutest one of all?"

The glass began to ripple and the reflection began to twist, and then Stella thought she heard Freddy say, "You're the cutest one of all, Sugarplum," in a squeaky ferret voice.

"Russell?" She turned her head so quickly the turban fell and unfurled on the floor. "Russell? Is that you?" She thought her brother might be playing a trick on her, but there was no one else in the boathouse.

"Freddy? Did you just talk?"

Freddy looked at her but didn't answer or even blink.

"Freddy?" She scooped him off the floor and glanced back at the mirror. The reflections were still rippling and twisting, and the reflection she saw there was suddenly someone older and taller, and her hair was longer and she was lit by a strange winter light, blue and cold and glittering with a mirror-ball blizzard of flashes and glints.

Stella gasped, frozen for a moment, and then she bolted from the boathouse with Freddy in her arms, running out into the sunlight and down the path as fast as she could go.

# Boy in a Fur Hat

"Hey, Mom?"

"Yeah?"

"I think Freddy talked to me."

"Stella ..."

"He did, Mom, in the boathouse, he talked to me."

"Ferrets can't talk!"

"I know they can't, Russell." Stella zipped up her life vest. "But I guess maybe Freddy can because he did, in the boathouse."

"Wha'd he say?"

"I'm not telling you. It's a secret." Stella looked across the lake. The sun was higher. A herring gull was flying low along the shore. "Okay if I swim to the island now?"

Stella's mom, who was sunning herself on the dock, sat up and shaded her eyes with her hand. "How's the fit?"

"Good." Stella tugged on the life vest to show her mom it was snug.

"Be safe, dear."

"I will." Stella bent down and kissed Freddy on the head. "Don't do any talking while I'm gone, okay? I'll be back in a bit." She scratched him behind the ear, and then ran past her mom to the end of the dock and jumped in with a whoop of pure joy. She loved the water, and with the life vest on she felt like she could swim as far and as long as she wanted, no matter how deep or wide the lake. "See ya!" she said to Russell as she paddled by.

"Watch out for sharks," said Russell.

"You watch out for sharks."

"Mom? Can I swim out to the island too?"

"Sorry, no dolphins allowed," said Stella.

"It's not up to you," said Russell.

"No islands today, Russell. We'll explore them tomorrow with the canoe." Her mom watched Stella swim into the open water beyond the bay. She backstroked and breaststroked, and then she dog paddled the last twenty-five yards until she stood up in the shallows and shouted, "MADE IT!"

Stella shook the water out of her hair, unzipped the life vest and lay down in the sun on the bare granite shore. With eyes closed, as her body warmed, she wondered what she should name her island, and then she thought of something and said it out loud, "Wenry Heath ... That's what I'll call you."

A large black raven circled low out of the sky. It swooped over Stella and cawed so loudly that she sat up—blinking her eyes open to the blinding sun—and felt the raven's tail feathers brush her cheek.

"Hey!"

"Cawwwwwwwarkarkarkarkarkark!"

"Who are you?"

The raven landed on a gnarled limb of the cedar tree that jutted out over the water.

"My name's Wenry, what's yours?"

The raven didn't answer. It just studied Stella from its perch above the water.

"Not very friendly, are you."

"Rawk! Rawk! Rawk!"

"That's better, Mr. Rawk! Rawk! Rawk!" Stella laughed. She left the life vest behind and walked up the granite slope, stepping from the warm bare rock onto a soft emerald green carpet of moss that was shaded by the island's only other tree, a very old pine that was split at the top where it had been struck by lightning years before. The moss felt so luxurious on the bottoms of her bare feet that she giggled, and then she turned and motioned with her arm. "Come on, Mr. Rawk! Rawk! Rawk! Let's explore this thing!"

"Ahhhhrrrrawk! Rawk! Kuck! Kuck! Kuck!" answered the raven.

Stella was surprised when the raven took flight and circled above her as she climbed to the highest point on the island, a mound of bare granite that rose more than twenty-five feet above the water. From the top Stella could see the lake stretching out in all directions, and the other islands, and Andersen Bay where her brother and his blowup dolphin were playing. The raven was still circling, gliding in wider arcs, and then it flapped its wings and flew much higher, still looking down, still watching Stella.

"Ahhhhrrrrawk! Rawk!"

"Hey, wait!"

"Ahhhhrrrrawk! Rawk! Rawk! Rawk!"

"COME BACK!" Stella shouted, but the raven just got smaller and higher and smaller and—

"What're you doing?"

"Huh?" Stella froze, her eyes shifted back and forth.

"Just wondering what you're doing."

Stella turned in the voice's direction and saw the old lightning-scorched pine towering above her. Great, she thought, just exactly what I don't need right now, a talking tree. "Would you mind leaving me alone."

"Sorry. Didn't mean to bother you."

"I just don't feel like talking to a tree."

"But talking to a raven's okay?"

"Whatever. When a tree starts talking, what's that supposed to mean?" She threw her arms up in exasperation. "Is this the Land of Oz, or what?"

"It's not Oz, it's Arrowhead County, and I'm actually not a tree."

"Yeah? Well, you look like a tree."

"That's simply a problem of optics and acoustics."

"Optics and acoustics? Pretty big words for a talking tree."

"Optics, acoustics and mistaken identity."

Stella heard the screeching squeak of rusty iron oarlocks, and then she saw a blue rowboat with a boy on the middle seat row into view. "Where'd you come from?"

"From over there." George pointed in the opposite direction, "Brilliant Bay, it's about five miles from here."

"How come I didn't see you before."

"Guess you were too busy with your raven."

"But I didn't hear you either."

"I was just floating here, watching you." George smiled.

"Then you were spying on me."

"I was not, I was fishing."

"Fishing? For what?" Stella started down toward the boat.

"Muskie, walleye, bass."

"Catch anything?" She stopped at the shore, her toes just touching the water.

"One."

"Can I see?"

"I guess." George stowed the oars inside the boat, stood up and hoisted a stringer that had a small fish dangling from it. "It's a bass."

Stella thought George was strikingly short, maybe four feet plus a few more inches tall; he wore oversized cargo shorts that pretty much ended at his ankles, and a red football jersey with the symbol for infinity  on the front. Strangest of all was the fur hat on his head.

"Does bass taste good?"

"Sure does." George dropped the stringer over the side and sort of stared at Stella. He was beginning to think maybe she was the girl in his dream.

"Hey, isn't that fur hat hot?"

"A little, yeah."

"Then why are you wearing it?"

"It's my lucky hat. I always catch fish if I wear it."

"Can I try it?"

"Sure, if you want. It's mink."

"Mink?"

"Uh-huh, mink and beaver." The rowboat had floated into shore. It bumped the rocks, making a soft thunk-thunk sound. "Hop in."

Stella climbed on board and sat on the front seat. "What's your name?"

"George. What's yours?"

"Wenry."

"Wenry?" George sounded surprised and a little relieved. "You mean like Henry but with a 'W'?"

"Yup." Stella took the hat from his hand. "Where'd you get it?"

"I made it."

"You made it?" Stella put it on and was surprised to find that it fit just fine. She leaned over the side and looked at her reflection in the water. "Hey, did you ever read The Snow Queen?"

"Yeah, a long time ago."

"I think the Snow Queen would love this hat, I mean if it was white—"

"Honey? Where are you?" Her mom's distant voice mixed with the sound of waves lapping at the shores of Wenry Heath.

"That's my mom. I have to go." She gave the hat back and jumped out of the boat and started up the hill to the island's other side. "Good luck fishing."

"Nice meeting you."

"Hey ..." She stopped at the top of the hill. "Maybe we could go fishing some time."

"Yeah, I guess if you want."

"I'm staying over there." She pointed.

"The Andersen place?"

"Uh-huh. Maybe tomorrow?"

"Okay."

"Or another day, we're gonna be here for two whole weeks."

"I guess tomorrow is good."

"Then tomorrow it is. What time?"

"Ten?"

"Sure. See ya tomorrow."

"WHERE ARE YOU?" echoed across the water.

"COMING!" she called. "Gotta run."

# Quicksilver World

Stella and Russell were outside enjoying a late afternoon snack, thick wedges of chilled watermelon. Freddy sat on Stella's shoulder and sniffed the sweet, watermelon-scented air as she ate. He had missed her when she had been on her adventure to Wenry Heath, and now that she was back, Freddy wanted to stay close.

Their mom came out on the deck and smiled when she saw their faces and hands dripping with watermelon juice. "Messy but good?"

"Very messy good," said Stella.

"I have to go into Treego to get a few things for dinner. Stella, I'm leaving you in charge. No swimming while I'm gone, okay?"

"Okay."

"Can you get ice cream?" asked Russell.

"If you promise to mind your sister while I'm gone."

"Maybe."

"Russell ..."

"Okay, but if I promise, will you get chocolate fudge ice cream with a marshmallow swirl, please?"

"I'll see if they have it. Back in an hour. Be good."

"We will."

"Bye, Mom."

They heard the engine start and the car drive away. Russell ran down the stairs to the lawn and announced, "I'm going to my castle, and no girls allowed!"

"No girls would want to be allowed," giggled Stella, and then she yawned. Everything was quiet and kind of sleepy, but she wasn't in the mood for a nap. A blue jay landed on the deck railing and scolded her with a sharp piercing cry that seemed to say the deck was his and she should leave it now. "I'll be in the boathouse if you need me, little brother," she called to the castle, but the castle didn't answer; maybe Russell was already asleep.

Freddy followed Stella down the path and was right on her heels when she went inside.

"This boathouse is way too dark."

Freddy's eyes flashed.

"I know." Stella laughed, "Ferrets are equipped with extraordinary night vision. To a ferret, even the dimmest boathouse is as bright as day. Right, Freddy?"

Freddy blinked twice, and then he loped under the boat and pushed the flashlight she had dropped the night before out of the shadows. It rolled to a stop at her feet.

"Thanks." She switched it on and it fired a beam of white light that illuminated the rafters. "Hey, what's up there?" Stella pointed the light at a ladder leading to a loft where boxes, suitcases and trunks were stowed. The ladder creaked and shifted as she climbed.

"Sure is dusty." Stella opened a trunk that looked practically ancient. It had leather straps she had to unbuckle and metal clasps she had to unclip. She lifted the arched top and found it was full of old clothes from who knows when, a jumbled mix of plaid shirts, blaze orange hunting coats, rubber-coated raingear and, hiding under a stack of flannel long johns, a beaded, white buckskin dress with leather fringe.

"Look, Freddy!" Stella held up the dress, a souvenir shop Indian princess dress with matching moccasins and leggings that had blue, green, red and yellow beads sewn on in geometric patterns: thunderbirds, arrowheads and rising suns.

Stella didn't think anyone would mind if she put on the Indian princess dress and braided her hair into two long golden plaits and pretended that she was Wenonah, the firstborn daughter of Nokomis. She cleared a space in front of the mirror in the furthest corner of the farthest back, and positioned the flashlight on a shelf behind her, and stepped into the white buckskin dress. It seemed to fit her almost perfectly, but as she was lacing it up, she looked in the mirror and suddenly thought maybe it wasn't such a good idea, the mirror part.

"You've been nothing but trouble," and even as she said it, the surface of the mirror began to ripple and blur, and the mirror seemed to whisper, "Perhaps."

"So I'm not looking." Stella turned away and sat with her back to the mirror as she pulled on the leggings and laced up the moccasins and braided her hair. When she tied the last bow, Freddy slipped from the shadows into the spotlight, sniffed the dress and then climbed into her lap and put his mouth close to her ear.

"Cute, Toots, but who are you supposed to be?"

"Uhhhh!" Stella stood and turned with Freddy in her arms to face the mirror and give it a piece of her mind. "Just stop! Okay?"

"Stop what, Sweets?"

"Freddy ..." Stella saw his mouth move in the mirror and she could hear his voice very close to her ear.

"Look how cute you are in buckskin, Sugarplum."

Stella was transfixed by what she saw in the mirror. The glass rippled like water ruffled by a soft breeze, and with the fringe and beads and her long braids falling over her shoulders she couldn't stop staring at herself.

"Am I right, Sweets? It's a new beautiful you."

"Mmm hmm."

"You're cuter than cute."

"Thanks, Freddy."

"You're a diamond-encrusted diamond."

"You think?"

"You're a fairy tale princess in the back of a fast car."

"Awesome."

"You're the cat's pajamas with a big meow."

"Mmm hmm."

"You have gold in your eyes and wings on your feet."

Stella felt herself moving closer to the mirror, or was the mirror moving closer to her? She couldn't tell. Everything was topsy-turvy, and Freddy whispering in her ear wasn't helping.

"You're the last day of spring on the first of July."

"Seriously?" Stella giggled, and then her fingers touched the mirror and went in, her hand went in, her wrist went in as if the mirror was a pool of water she could fall into, but how far?

"You're the vanilla cream in a chocolate éclair on a silver plate beside a first-class seat on a jet plane to Paris," whispered Freddy.

Her arm went in. Her face went in. Her body went in, and that's when it got crazy-scary. The surface of the mirror was a portal into a glittering quicksilver world where the colors were all white and the sounds were too sharp and the air was so cold that Stella could feel her lips and nose begin to freeze. Freddy's soothing voice became the vicious fury of a million snowflakes driven by a blizzard wind that made her hands and arms and legs turn to ice, and that's when Stella started to scream.

The cries of a fair damsel in distress woke Russell from his princely sleep. When he realized the damsel was actually his sister screaming in the boathouse, he crawled out of his castle and shouted, "I'LL SAVE YOU!" It could be anything, he thought, the evil ogre or an army of trolls or a huge spider with fangs as sharp as knives. He grabbed a moat bucket full of water and ran down the path to battle the terrible beast. The boathouse was dark except for a beam of light in the back. "STELLA?" Russell ran to the furthest corner of the farthest back with his sloshing pail and found her shivering on the floor in front of a strange mirror with shifting, rippling glass.

"STOP IT NOW!" He threw the water at the twisted quicksilver world, and the mirror froze smooth and solid with an angry hiss and a brittle snap!

"Mmmmm ..." Stella groaned.

"What happened?"

"I don't know, I—" She blinked and squinted until she could see Russell with the dripping bucket in his wet little hands. Her face was wet. The Indian princess dress was soaked. She wiped the water off her face and asked, "Why'd you do that?"

"Just trying to save you."

"With a bucket of water?"

"Well why were you screaming?"

"I don't know, I just—" she took a deep breath. "I was just standing here and then it ..." Stella covered her eyes with her hands and shivered.

"I thought it was trolls or the ogre or—"

"It's the mirror."

"Is it magic?"

"I don't know what it is. Where's Freddy? Did you see Freddy?" Then she heard the car door slam. "Go! Go help Mom, and don't tell her about this."

"Tell her about what?"

"Everything, Russell, the mirror, this dress, it's not mine, and now it's all wet. What if it's ruined?"

"RUSSELL? STELLA?"

"Go help Mom. I'll be there in a sec. Pretend you're a spy on a secret mission, okay? Just don't say anything."

"Okay," whispered Russell, and he ran.

"Freddy?" Stella turned off the flashlight and began to unlace the dripping dress. "Where are you?" She listened but there was nothing to hear, only the wind in the trees and her mom's voice far away. "Freddy, come out now, this isn't funny." She pulled off the dress and draped it over the side of the boat. "Freddy?" She touched the mirror. The glass was hard and cold and she could see the dim reflection of her face in it and the anger in her eyes as she told the mirror, "If you have Freddy in there you better give him back or I'll smash you into a million little pieces. I swear I will."

# Glitter Girl

Stella ran up the path and across the lawn to the cottage deck. Russell was sitting on the top stair next to a pile of sweet corn he was shucking. He watched his big sister climb the stairs two at a time.

"What's wrong?"

"Can't find Freddy." Stella pulled the door open. "Hey, Mom?" She ran to the kitchen. "Mom?"

"Where were you, honey?"

"I can't find Freddy."

"I'm sure Freddy's fine. Cute braids."

"He was in the boathouse with me, and now he's gone and I've called him a thousand times."

"Where did you find the glitter, honey?" Her mom stroked her cheek.

"What glitter."

"There's glitter on your face, it's in your hair—"

"All done!" Russell marched triumphantly into the kitchen with the sweet corn.

"Look in the mirror, honey."

"I don't trust mirrors anymore."

"Really? Since when?"

"Mom, can we eat now?"

"Soon, Russell. Help your sister set the table." She gave Stella a handful of forks and knives.

"But Freddy, Mom."

"Russell, have you seen Freddy?"

"Nope."

"He's probably just exploring, honey. He'll come home when he's hungry. Now go set the table while I cook the corn, and Stella? Please wash that glitter off before we eat."

After she set the table, Stella went out on the deck and called Freddy and waited and then she called again. The sun was low in the sky. The pine tree shadows had engulfed the lawn and the path down to the boathouse looked like a tunnel made of darkness that might swallow a girl and her pet ferret alive forever. Out on the lake a loon called and another loon answered.

"Hoooooo-OOOOOT!"

"Hoooooooooooooooooo-OOOOOOOOOOT!"

"Freddy!"

"Dinner's on the table, honey."

"Frehhhhhhhh-DEEEEEEEEEE!"

"Come sit down, honey. We'll find Freddy after dinner."

Stella reluctantly shuffled into the dining room. The pine-paneled walls glowed with the warm light from candles burning in brass candlesticks on a long dining table that could easily seat eight. Russell was putting too much ketchup on his hamburger like he always did, and her mom was dishing up green beans from a pan.

"No beans for me, thank you!" Russell announced as if using the words "thank you" would magically protect him from the task of eating green beans. His mom simply smiled and spooned a bunch of beans on his plate.

"What?" Russell said with dismay.

"More?" his mom asked.

"Nope! Thanks." Russell squeezed a mound of ketchup on the green beans, hoping they might disappear or at least taste a little better.

"Want some?" Russell offered the ketchup bottle to Stella but she shook her head no.

"I can't eat, Mom."

"Please try, honey. Freddy's fine, I'm sure."

"But he's never been gone this long."

"Yes he has," said Russell. "Remember that time when we got home from school and you couldn't find him, and we were looking all night for him, and you started crying, and then we found him in the basement like two days later sleeping in the laundry room clothes hamper?"

"Shut up, Russell. I wasn't crying and it wasn't two days."

"Stella, please ..."

"It wasn't two days, Mom. And anyway, Russell, if you hadn't thrown water on us, this whole thing wouldn't've happened! You know Freddy hates water! But you—"

"I was trying to help! You're the one who was playing dress-up in front of that weird mir—"

Stella kicked Russell under the table.

"Ow! That hurt!"

"Weird what?" her mom asked.

"Weird mirror," said Russell.

"What weird mirror?"

"Just some old mirror in the back of the boathouse." Stella stared at the string beans on her plate; they were wet and creepy and still steaming and very green, like the twisted fingers of the Wicked Witch of the West.

"Is that where you found the glitter?" Her mom touched Stella's cheek; it sparkled with silver flecks that she gently rubbed with her fingers, but they wouldn't come off. "Is it paint?"

"I don't know." Stella closed her eyes. She could feel the first hot tears sliding down her cheeks and everything was completely horrible. Freddy was lost, her brother was being a brat, her mom wasn't helping, and that stupid mirror—

"Just leave me alone!" Stella pushed her chair back, grabbed her fleece hoodie from the closet and ran out into the dark blue twilight.

The raven from the island watched Stella from a bare branch that hung over the dark lawn. It called once, a long, throaty "Cawrkrkrkrkrkrkrkrkrkrkrkrkrkrk!" like the sound of a witch clearing her throat so she could cast an evil spell. Stella—still crying—slipped inside the boathouse, found the flashlight and flicked it on.

"Freddy?" The cold white beam cast weird shadows on the walls. She searched the floor and shelves and corners. "Freddy, where are you?" She worked her way to the far back where the mirror glittered and shifted in the flashlight beam. "Freddy!" Stella smeared the last tear across her cheek and stuffed the Indian princess dress, leggings and moccasins into a red nylon tote bag with mysterious letters on the side that spelled TWA.

"I warned you, you stupid mirror." Stella took a deep breath, centered her body and positioned her feet in a kickboxing Most-Powerful-Tree-Frog stance. When she sprang she saw herself in the mirror as if it were happening in slow motion, her leg arcing up, delivering a solid blow to the glass and her foot splashing deep into the quicksilver. Stella spun and tumbled and landed on the floor with an embarrassing thump. She sat up and confronted a hundred liquid reflections of her angry face in the mirror, shifting on the ripples of a quicksilver pool.

"Mmmmmmmumph!" Stella jumped up and assumed the Fierce-Mountain-Ocelot stance. Her foot was covered in silver and there was silver splashed across her knee. "GIVE FREDDY BACK!" Stella concentrated all of her energy as she spun counterclockwise. She kicked the mirror with the heel of her foot, but her foot and her ankle and part of her leg went in and came out soaked in silver and she fell again with an even louder thump!

"Arrrrrrrrrrruhhhhhhh!" Stella jumped up and assumed the Angry-Tasmanian-Devil stance. She tried to concentrate on her next attack, but the mirror seemed to be making fun of her with twisted reflections that stretched her into a wavy beanstalk of a girl who was at least eight feet tall and still climbing. "You think you're so smart, stupid mirror." Stella concentrated all of her energy in her hands and formed Furious-Fists-Of-Steel. She cocked her arms and shouted, "GIVE FREDDY BACK!", and the word "BACK" hit a note so high, the rippling quicksilver mirror froze hard as ice. Stella threw two fierce blows with her bare hands, and the mirror shattered with a brittle crack!

"I warned you!"

The splitting and cracking glass sounded like wind chimes in a blizzard wind. Stella's knuckles began to bleed, and the glass snapped and cracked and split into smaller and smaller pieces until the mirror was only shards.

"Freddy? Are you there?"

Freddy leaped out of the darkness bordered by the mirror's gold frame, his fur glittering with silver and frost.

"Freddy!"

"Stella Maxine! What's going on here?" Her mom stepped out of the shadows into the circle of light as the final shards fell to the floor. "What in the world?"

Stella didn't answer because she didn't know what to say. She looked down at her bloody knuckles and then back at the empty frame.

"What happened?"

"I'm sorry but I had to, Mom." Stella scooped Freddy up in her arms.

"Did you break that mirror?"

"I had to get Freddy back, Mom, he—"

"Freddy? Stella ..." Her mom frowned. "Just look at that frame ... this mirror was at least a hundred years old."

Stella stared at the shattered glass scattered on the floor. She felt bad for breaking it, but it wasn't her fault, it was the mirror's fault. Why didn't her mom understand?

"How am I going to explain this to the Andersens, Stella? Hmm? What am I supposed to say?"

"I don't know, Mom, I—"

"Am I supposed to tell them your pet ferret was trapped inside their mirror?"

"But he was, Mom." Freddy shivered and Stella hugged him hard.

"How could he be inside?"

"Because it swallowed him, the mirror swallowed him and I had to get him out!"

Her mom picked up a blade-shaped shard from the floor. "Stella ..."

"It wasn't just any mirror, Mom, it was an evil mirror and I—"

"Stella ..."

"But it was evil! It was an evil mirror, and it had to be smashed so I could get Freddy back!" She was crying now. How could things go from really bad, to really-really-worse so quickly?

"Stella Maxine," her mom sighed, "what am I going to do with you?"

"Don't do anything with me! Just leave me alone!" Stella cried as she grabbed the TWA tote and the flashlight and ran for the door through a rainy blur of tears.

# Flight to Wenry Heath

Stella ran crying with Freddy in her arms through the fading twilight, a deep blurry blue that made the path to the lake look like it was underwater. She sprinted across the bridge, through the dark down to the dock, and she didn't stop until she was standing on the very last plank. When she got there, she wanted to just jump in and start swimming, but she didn't because of Freddy, who couldn't swim, or probably could swim if he had to but wouldn't like it if they did. She smeared the tears across her cheeks; they felt cold on her skin in the wind blowing from the west.

"Thanks for springing me from the frosty clutches of that freezing mirror, Toots."

"Huh?"

"It was just a little too cold for this fierce ferret inside Silverado."

"Freddy—"

"Like an ice water bath in a blizzard wind, Sweets."

"Since when can you talk?"

"Like a visit to the North Pole on the last day of December."

"Ferrets don't talk, Freddy, they just don't."

"Like dancing in an icicle gown at the grand Snow Ball."

"So stop it now, Freddy, or I'm gonna freak out."

Freddy shivered, took a breath and continued, "Of course I have the advantage of my luxurious fur, but you, Sugarplum, you only have your very fair skin, and we both know that's no protection against winter winds and subzero—"

"Freddy!" Stella was freaking out. She didn't know how or why her pet ferret could talk, but he certainly could, and he kept yammering away about anything and everything. "Just shush!" She was over it—the evil mirror, the fairy tale cottage, the deep dark woods, the howling wind and her talking ferret. Her eyes burned from crying, and her knuckles were still bleeding. "I just wanna go home."

"Home, Toots?"

"Back to Chicagoland."

"Seriously?"

"Or at least to Wenry Heath."

"Wenry what?"

"Shhhhh, listen ..." They both heard the distant screech and squeak of rusty oarlocks and then they saw a dim lantern, burning yellow-white like a firefly, bobbing in the bow of a rowboat. "HEY!" Stella flicked on the flashlight and pointed the long beam at George, still wearing his fur hat, rowing hard against the wind. "GEORGE! IT'S ME, WENRY! I NEED YOUR HELP!"

"WHAT'S WRONG?" George called, and then against his better judgment he turned the boat in her direction and rowed. The waves slapped the prow as he maneuvered the boat up against the dock.

"You still fishing?"

"No, I'm trying to get home, but this wind's been making it pretty slow going." George noticed her bleeding knuckles. "Are you okay?" It was obvious she wasn't. Her shoes and legs were spattered with silver something, her face was wet with tears, and then George saw the ferret on her shoulder peeking out from behind a veil of her curls and he knew she was the girl from his dream, the girl his uncle called Stella Sky.

"We're kind of in a jam," Stella laughed nervously.

"Yeah?" George felt a sinking spinning in his stomach like the feeling he got riding the Turbo-Twister-Zipper at the Arrowhead County Fair.

"Could you take us to my island?"

The thing George had been dreading all day had finally arrived wearing a rainbow-leopard-print fleece hoodie and a ferret riding shotgun on her shoulder.

"Your island?"

"Yeah, Wenry Heath." Stella pointed the flashlight in Wenry Heath's direction. "Where we met today."

"I don't know ..." George's first impulse was to push off and row away just as fast as his arms could go.

"Could you, please?" A gust blew her curls in her face and she pulled them back. "It's kind of an emergency."

"What kind of an emergency?"

"Fight with an evil mirror emergency."

"Evil mirror?"

"Uh-huh, see ..." Stella pointed at the silver on her legs and then she looked back to see if her mom was coming, "I'll tell you all about it on the way." She dropped the TWA tote in the boat and stepped off the dock.

"Oh no, Sweets, you're not taking me!"

"Does that thing actually talk?"

"No! No! No! I won't! Not in a boat, I won't!" Freddy shrieked.

"Shhhhh, Freddy, please." Stella sat near the lantern and tried to hold Freddy's mouth closed with her hand. "He just started today, it's so weird and random, I—"

He nipped her finger.

"OUCH! FREDDY!"

"No! No! No, Sugarplum! TAKE ME BACK!"

"Freddy, stop it!"

George was rowing hard out of the bay with his back to the girl and her talking ferret from his dream. He had decided to take them to her island, drop them and run. She would step out onto Wenry Heath, and he would row straight home and not look back. Maybe that's the best way to outfox the future, he thought, help the girl with the gold and green eyes escape from whatever it was she was escaping from and then dash, super pronto, back to Brilliant Bay.

"I've heard ferrets don't care much for water," he said, nervously making small talk.

"That's right, kid, we don't." Freddy twisted free from Stella's arms and bounded to the back of the boat.

"Freddy!"

"We don't care for it one itty-little bit." Freddy sat up and glared at George, "Now turn this crummy tub around before I attack your little hands with my razor sharp teeth!"

"Freddy, be nice."

"They do have sharp teeth," said George.

"Needle sharp!" snarled Freddy.

"They're also skilled burrowers with excellent night vision." George rowed and kept an eye on Freddy. "I don't think they make good pets though."

"What would you know about pets?" growled Freddy. "Hicks like you think animals are just for food and fur hats!"

"Freddy! Please ... No name calling."

"Turn this tub around and take us back right now or I'll eat you alive!"

"That is one very agitated and threatening ferret," said George.

"His name's Freddy," said Stella.

"TAKE US BACK!"

"Does he always get riled up like this?"

"Riled up? I'll show you riled up!" Freddy flashed his claws and prepared to pounce, but George splashed a little water at him and Freddy fled back to the safety of Stella's lap.

"Eeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee! Tell the mean kid in the fur hat to take us back, Toots, please, please, please, please—"

"But we're just going there, Freddy, " Stella pointed the flashlight at Wenry Heath, "We'll camp out and watch the sunrise. It'll be fun."

Freddy shook his head. "No, Sugarplum, it won't." To Freddy the screeching oarlocks were like the cries of a hunting hawk, and the wind howled like a hungry wolf. White-capped waves slapped the sides and the rowboat heaved and creaked and then all too suddenly, the wind became a gale. A cresting wave smacked the port side and splashed Stella and Freddy in the face.

"Uhhh!"

"EEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE!" Freddy scrambled for the TWA tote and burrowed inside. He periscoped up through the open top and glared at Stella "Don't say I didn't warn you, Sweets, this rickety tub's a disaster already happening."

Stella wiped the water out of her eyes, her hoodie was soaked, and the wind was fierce. She was beginning to think Freddy was right; the rowboat ride to Wenry Heath wasn't such a great idea after all.

"Hey! Maybe we should turn back!"

"Turn back? Are you kidding?" George turned to look at Stella and she saw the fear in his eyes. "This wind's too strong, I can't turn anywhere!"

"Then where are we going?"

"Wherever it wants to take us!"

"Where's that?"

"Right now? Down there! It's blowing us down the East Arm!"

"Is that bad?" Another wave slapped the side and splashed her face.

"Yes it's bad, no islands, just open water for miles ..." George pulled with everything he had, but it didn't matter, the lake was in control now, the waves pushed the oars wherever they wanted.

A gust of wind blew out the lantern and everything went dark. The stars and moon were hidden by storm clouds. Only one light was visible; back across the water a flashlight beam moved on the cottage dock.

"Look, it's my mom!"

"Signal her!" George's voice was hoarse with fear and his arms felt useless. It was all he could do just to keep the boat from turning broadside to the waves and swamping. "Signal her!"

"MOM!" Stella aimed her flashlight at the dock, but it was too far away. "MOM!" She didn't know if her mom could see the light or hear her shouts, so she stood on the seat and waved the light over her head. "WE'RE HERE, MOM!"

"Get down!"

"She can't see us!" Stella swayed as the boat pitched; it felt like she was riding a skateboard through a cyclone.

"Get down now, before a wave takes you down!"

"MOM!"

"Wenry, sit—" A huge wave slammed into the side and pitched Stella headfirst into George. She screamed and there was a thump and a thud as they tumbled sideways, tangled in a knot in the stern. The boat pitched high, and George watched as an oar bucked from its lock and disappeared on a dark hissing wave.

"No," he groaned as he crawled back to the center seat and grabbed the other oar. "ARE YOU OKAY?" The wind howled and Stella's eyelashes fluttered like tiny black butterflies. The fluttering worried George a lot. "WENRY, SAY SOMETHING!" He leaned forward as far as he could to touch her cheek. "Wenry?"

Stella moaned.

"Hold on, Wenry, I'll be there in a second." He watched the dark lake until he spied a gap in the waves and then he took a chance. He swiveled the portside oar into the boat and crawled to where Stella lay slumped in a heap. "Wenry?" Her face was slack and her eyelashes were still fluttering. "Wenry!" George slapped her cheeks and splashed a handful of water on her face.

"Huh!" Her eyes snapped open. "Uh, my head ..."

"You okay?"

Before Stella could answer, a wave slammed into the boat and pushed the second oar from its lock. George lunged to grab it, and almost went over the side too. The wave sucked the oar into the lake and swallowed it with a hissing gulp.

"We're in trouble now," he said. Another monster wave washed over the sides and they were suddenly up to their ankles in water. George grabbed a bait bucket and started to bail. "Can you bail?"

"With what?"

"That!" George pointed at an old coffee can he used for night crawlers. Another wave rolled through and spilled gallons more over the sides. "Hurry!"

Stella felt dizzy and seasick. The flashlight was shining strange underwater light on their faces, and George was dumping buckets of water over the side so quickly that his body was a blur. She pushed herself up, grabbed the can and started bailing. "Are we gonna sink?"

"Maybe."

"Can you swim?"

"Sure, but we can't swim through this. We're miles from shore."

Freddy was bobbing and bumping around, afloat inside the TWA tote. He yanked the zipper back and stuck his head out.

"EEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE!"

Stella was sure everything was just about as bad as things could possibly get. They were bailing as fast as they could, but just when it seemed they might be winning and not sinking, another wave would rush up out of the dark, wash over the sides and dump another thirty or forty gallons of water at their feet, and Freddy's screams weren't helping.

"EEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE!"

"Freddy! Stop it!"

"But we're gonna sink and die, Sugarplum!"

"No we're not, Freddy! We're not gonna die! We're not gonna sink! WE'RE NOT GONNA DIE! WE'RE NOT GONNA SINK!" Stella shouted it at the wind while she bailed, and bucket-by-bucket the pond inside the boat shrank until it was just a puddle of muddy water. The TWA tote ran aground between the seats and Freddy was strangely quiet.

Stella peered inside. "You okay, Freddy?"

"Never better, Toots! Thanks for asking. What a fun night full of misadventure this has been!"

"Freddy ..."

"Don't worry about me, Sweets! I'll be in here waiting for the rescue chopper or search plane or Coastguard or whatever they send to save us." Freddy blinked. "They will send something to save us, won't they, Sugarplum?"

"Sure they will, Freddy, but who knows when."

"They don't have a chopper in Treego," said George, "and it's too windy to send a search plane."

"Great!" said Freddy and he pulled the tote zipper closed.

"They won't be able to search for us until morning anyway." George aimed the flashlight into the dark. He was looking for shore or islands, but there was no shore or islands to be found. They were being blown down the middle of the widest part of Lake Wippiwee-Wananana, the part of the lake that even the bigger boats avoided because the East Arm had a reputation for hidden shoals and sudden wrecks. "If I just had one oar, then at least I could steer this thing."

The wind whistled past the boat and the waves hissed along the sides; the waves had gradually become smaller, two and three footers that the rowboat could easily ride.

"I'm tired."

"Here." George handed her his life vest. "Use this for a pillow. You sleep, and I'll take the first watch."

"The first watch?"

"Yeah. I'll wake you in about three hours. You can take the second watch."

"Aye, aye, Captain."

For a bed Stella looped a lot of wet rope in the space between the seats and put three seat cushions on top of that for a mattress. She put George's life vest on one end for a pillow, and she unfolded the canvas boat cover on top of that for a blanket. "Think it's gonna rain?" she asked.

"Hope not."

As Stella nestled, Freddy poked his head out of the tote and licked her cheek. "Sleep tight, Sugarplum."

"You too, Freddy. Sorry about all the water and ... you know ... the misadventure."

"Me too, Sweets— I mean sorry about all the screaming."

"That's okay," she sighed and closed her eyes. "Good night, George."

"Good night, Wenry."

Despite the wind and the damp and the weird heap of stuff for her bed, Stella could already feel herself drifting off to sleep. She felt safe with the fur-hatted boy keeping the first watch. The waves rushed up and swept by. The hissing and fussing water along the boat's gunwales sounded like the lake was sighing her name, 'Stella Sky ... Stella Sky ... Stella Sky ...' The rowboat rocked and heaved and surfed the waves down the East Arm of Lake Wippiwee-Wananana, and after a little while Stella fell asleep.

# Just George

Everyone was dressed like Eskimos and they sat at a banquet table made of brown twine and indigo string, woven in crazy geometric patterns and held together with glue, maybe. Stella kept pushing her fur hood back so she could see better, but the hood kept falling forward, making it hard to see, and it was becoming very annoying.

"Hmmm ..."

There was a lot of food on the twine and string table and the food was blue, mostly blue and purple and there was also some green food and some red food and an enormous plate of fresh-baked biscuits that were positively biscuit-colored, flaky baked brown and fluffy white, all ready for butter.

"Pass the biscuits!" Stella shouted as she pushed her hood back again.

"Please?"

Stella turned to see who was talking, expecting someone dressed in fur but it was a raven dressed in feathers.

"Please?" the raven croaked again. "Please?"

"Hmmm ..." Stella's hood fell and when she pushed it back she noticed that all the people dressed like Eskimos were now ravens, cawing croaky, throaty calls and stealing hot biscuits off the plate.

"Hey!" The hood fell again. "Hey, I want one of those!" Stella pushed the hood back and found the plate full of biscuits empty. "HEY!"

"You broke our mirror, you little witch," shrieked a raven.

"I am not a little witch, I'm a hungry Wenry," said Stella, and the table full of ravens exploded in a loud chorus of throaty, croaking laughter and rustling ruffling raven feathers.

"You are the hungry little witch who broke our mirror," croaked another raven.

"I am not a witch!" Stella yanked her hood back for the last time. The fur was suffocating and the raven laughter was so cruel.

"Mirror-shattering little witch!" the conspiracy of ravens rasped in chorus, "MIRROR-SHATTERING LITTLE WITCH!"

"I AM NOT A WITCH! I AM NOT A WITCH! I AM NOT—"

"Wenry, wake up." George shook her shoulder.

"Huh?" Stella opened her eyes.

"You're dreaming."

"Wow, was I ever." She blinked and shook her head. "What time is it?"

"Three-thirty, maybe four."

Stella sat up, rubbed her eyes and looked out across the water. It was black and choppy, and it was still windy and the wind felt cold. "I was dreaming about ravens and," she sighed, "buttermilk biscuits."

"Don't say biscuits. I'm starving."

"Do we have any food?"

"Just the fish I caught, and some other stuff." George untied the drawstring on his rucksack and dug in. He pulled out a Granny Smith apple, a Clark candy bar, half of a liverwurst sandwich, a dill pickle wrapped in aluminum foil, a summer sausage sandwich and a bag of candy corn. "Here." He handed her the summer sausage sandwich. "It's a little wet but—"

"Thanks. What about you?"

"Guess I'll finish this." He unwrapped what was left of the liverwurst sandwich and took a bite. His face became thoughtful as he chewed. "If we get thirsty, at least there's plenty to drink."

"Where?"

"We're floating on it."

Stella looked confused.

"The lake."

"You drink the lake?"

"Uh-huh, and so can you." George cupped his hands together, scooped water from a passing wave and took a satisfying gulp. "It's good water. Go ahead and try it."

Stella hesitated for a few seconds, and then she reached over the side, scooped up a handful of water and slurped.

"Well? What do you think?"

"It's good. We've got a whole lake to drink. Who knew?" Stella unwrapped the sandwich and took a bite. "We had hamburgers for dinner but I didn't eat mine."

"I could sure go for one of those now."

"Me too."

"Me three!" Freddy's head periscoped through the top of the TWA tote. "What's for grub, shipmates?"

"Hi, Freddy ..." Stella pretended Freddy's newfound talent for talk was no big deal, but actually his gift of gab really threw her for a loop. In fact when she first woke up she thought the whole talking Freddy thing had been part of a strange dream, but nope, here he was, ready to share his ferret thoughts, hopes and dreams, and chock-full of ferret questions.

"Maybe a can of Mighty Cat Tantalizing Tuna, Toots?"

"Sorry, no cat food, Freddy. How about some tantalizing candy corn instead?"

"Trick or treat." Freddy stuck out his paw.

George eyed Freddy with suspicion. "Didn't know you could actually teach a ferret to talk."

"You can't, I mean, I didn't. He just started talking totally on his own yesterday."

"Where'd you learn how to talk?" asked George.

"Where'd you learn how to row?" asked Freddy.

"What's that supposed to mean?"

"Take a look around, kid. Does this look like Wenry Heath?"

George frowned at Freddy.

"And you lost the oars."

"I didn't lose the oars."

"Really?"

"The oars were swept overboard."

"Swept?"

"Uh-huh."

"Okay, swept. And now because of all of this sweeping, we're being swept down this dark, watery lake with no end in—"

"Hey, wait, wait, wait!" Stella held up her hands. "Please don't, okay? We're all in this together, so let's try to get along."

Silent tight-lipped glares.

"United we stand, divided we fall?"

Arms and paws crossed in frustration.

"All for one and one for all?"

Wind, waves and scowls.

"Be friends, please? For me, huh?"

"Well ... Okay," muttered George.

"If I have to," sighed Freddy, "but only for you, Sugarplum."

"Good. Now let's start fresh. George, I'd like to introduce you to Frederic James Waverly Richard Winmark the third, but you can call him Freddy."

"Okay if I call you Fred?"

"Fine with me, kid," said Freddy.

"Freddy, I'd like to introduce you to George ..."

"Thistlebaum," said George.

"George Thistlebaum," giggled Stella.

"Really? Thistlebaum?" asked Freddy.

"Just George is fine, Fred."

"Just George?"

"Uh-huh."

"Then Just George it is."

"No, I meant my name's just George."

"That's what I said."

"But no just. Only George."

"So now you're Only George?"

"No, just George."

"Make up your mind, kid. Is it Only George? Or Just George?"

George glared.

"Okay if I just call you J.G. for short, Just George?" snickered Freddy.

"Whatever." George shook his head in frustration and faced the opposite direction. "A talking ferret," he muttered, "just my luck."

Stella did her best not to giggle but it was hard to hold it in. As usual the boys were acting all crazy competitive and ready to fight. To ease the tension, she started to sing, "Row, row, row your boat, gently down the stream, merrily, merrily, merrily, merrily, life is but a dream."

"I'm not so sure about the dream part," said George.

"Then how about this?" Stella sang, "Row, row, row your boat, wildly in the gale, splashy, wavy, splashy, wavy, hurry up and bail!"

"Much better," George laughed.

Freddy chuckled. "I have a verse, Toots."

"Sing it," said Stella.

"Sweep, sweep, sweep your oars, accidentally in the lake, verily, verily, verily, verily, this trip's a big mistake."

"That's good," Stella laughed, "I have one!"

"Sing it, Sweets."

"Grow, grow, grow your sheep, in a field of corn, hair-ily, hair-ily, hair-ily, hair-ily, fleece is being shorn!"

"Very, very random, Sugarplum," chuckled Freddy, "okay, I have one!"

"Sing it!"

"Throw, throw, throw your rope, when the cliff is—"

"Uh, Fred? Wenry? I'm pretty tired." George yawned and stretched his arms. "Think it would be okay if I grabbed a little shut-eye?"

"Sure," said Stella, "we'll stand second watch, won't we Freddy?"

"Absolutely, Toots."

"Bed's all yours, Captain," said Stella. "It's really not that bad for a bed in a boat on a lake in the woods of deepest darkest wilderness," she laughed. She was feeling silly. Maybe it was the sandwich and the singing. She was feeling much better. Now if she could only have a mug of hot chocolate with miniature marshmallows ...

"Guess I'll hit the hay then." George climbed into the damp nest of rope and seat cushions, and pulled the canvas boat cover up to his chin.

"Good night, Just-George!" Stella and Freddy shouted in unison.

"Night."

"Sweet dreams," said Stella.

"Wake me at sunrise."

"Aye, aye, Captain."

The clouds were clearing and now Stella and Freddy could see stars. There were no sounds except the whistling wind and the hissing waves that pushed and pulled the boat as they passed, their whitecaps frothing and foaming and disappearing into the dark like wet, murmuring ghosts.

"Hey, Freddy?" whispered Stella.

"Yes, Sugarplum?"

"Throw, throw, throw your rope, when the cliff is what?"

# Crash Landing

Stella pulled the hood of her rainbow-leopard-print fleece hoodie over her head to keep the predawn cold out and whispered, "What do you see?"

"Out there?" Freddy sat up on her shoulder and searched the dark with his superior night vision. "A lot, Toots."

"A lot like what?"

"Over there," Freddy pointed south, "a moose is eating willow tops in a boggy shallows."

"How far away?"

"More than a mile, Sweets."

"Wow."

"And over there ..."

"Uh-huh?"

"A family of otters is playing hide-and-seek with a small army of crunchy crayfish."

"Real otters?"

"Real wild otters, Sugarplum. And over there," he pointed north, "a black bear and her cubs are digging for ants near a stump."

"Yum," said Stella and then she giggled, George was snoring.

"Listen to that ..."

"Yeah."

"Hahhhhrrrrrrrrr, hahhhhrrrrrrrrr, hahhhhrrrrrrrrr, hahhhhrrrrrrrrr,"

"For such a short kid, Just George really roars, Sweets."

"Sure does."

"Hahhhhrrrrrrrrr, hahhhhrrrrrrrrr, hahhhhrrrrrrrrr, hahhhhrrrrrrrrr,"

"He sounds like a polar bear."

"How would you know what a polar bear sounds like?"

"Hahhhhrrrrrrrrr, hahhhhrrrrrrrrr, hahhhhrrrrrrrrr, hahhhhrrrrrrrrr,"

"Lot's of polar bears in Mirrorland, Sugarplum."

"Seriously? In the mirror?"

"Hahhhhrrrrrrrrr, hahhhhrrrrrrrrr, hahhhhrrrrrrrrr, hahhhhrrrrrrrrr,"

"Seriously, Toots, gangs of polar bears, plethoras of penguins, and miles of ice." Freddy wrapped his tail around Stella's neck and shivered. "That mirror was one icy land of cruel winds and subzero snow drifts."

"It was cold," Stella shivered too, "but the only thing I could see was white."

"In Snowdonia?"

"Just white on white—"

"In Frostbitesville?"

"With some occasional silver."

"In the frigid burg of Iceberg?"

"Hey, Freddy? Do you think the mirror was evil?"

"I don't know about evil, Toots, but it was certainly enchanted."

"Enchanted ... yeah. And now it's broken."

"Shattered by your Furious-Fists-Of-Steel."

"Furious is right, but I'm not so sure about the steel." Stella showed Freddy her knuckles; they had stopped bleeding; now they were just swollen and red.

"Ouch ..."

"Did it all for you."

"You sure did, Sweets." Freddy licked Stella's cheek and she giggled.

"Look, Freddy, dawn." She pointed at a faint hint of hazy gray daylight in the east. It was finally morning, and the fierce wind from the night before was just a breeze, but the frothing, hissing waves were still rolling out of the west, pushing the rowboat along.

"Let's celebrate with some candy corn. Want one, Sugarplum?" Freddy grabbed a kernel from his stash and pawed it to her.

"Thanks." Stella nibbled the white end off her kernel and watched the just barely brightening sky get lighter. "It's vanilla, right?"

"Vanilla?"

"Yeah, the white part." She nibbled off the orange part of the kernel and smacked her lips. "Mmmmm, pumpkin!"

Freddy examined his kernel. "Pumpkin?"

"Definitely pumpkin." Stella slipped the yellow end into her mouth and chewed. "Hmmm, it tastes like ... sunshine!" And it was. The first rays of sunlight shot into the sky and the scattered clouds were suddenly cotton candy pink. Stella climbed over the seat and gave George a tender poke with her little finger. "Georgie Boy, Georgie Boy," she called in sing-song, "rise and shine, fur-hatted boy."

"Mmmmm ..." George rolled over and squinted at the sky. He was trying to remember why he was lying on a bed of wet rope and seat cushions in his uncle's rowboat somewhere out on Lake Wippiwee-Wananana, when Freddy's unlikely ferret voice reminded him of their current predicament.

"You snore like a polar bear, J.G."

"Oh, that's right," he mumbled, "a talking ferret and the girl from Wenry Heath."

"No joke, J.G., that was some seriously carnivorous snoring."

George sat up, adjusted his hat and searched the shore for a landmark or some sign of people.

"You should record that snore and sell it to zoos."

"Fred—"

"You could go on tour as Polar Bear Man. You'd really make a mint, J.G."

"No one's going anywhere until we get rescued, Fred."

"Yeah, so, where are we?" asked Stella.

"Somewhere down the East Arm, I guess."

"You guess? But you live on this lake."

"That's right, Fred. Smack-dab on Brilliant Bay. It just so happens that Wippiwee-Wananana's a very, very big lake." George stood up and looked back at where they had been. The sky was brighter, the clouds were orange, and the sun was bobbing up out of the water like a red beach ball on fire.

"How far do you think we've gone?" asked Stella.

"Hmmm ..." George did a quick calculation in his head. "If we're averaging four miles an hour, and it's about five-thirty in the morning, and we started around nine last night, I'd say maybe we went thirty-four miles, give or take a few."

"Thirty-four miles?"

"Approximately."

"But where are all the cottages?"

"Yeah, J.G., shouldn't there be cottages with docks and boats and people that we can signal?"

"I've never been down this far on the East Arm." George squinted into the distance and frowned. "There's nothing but a lot of trees and rocks and—"

"That." Freddy pointed his paw.

"What is it, Freddy?"

"Trouble, Sweets."

George stepped up on the middle seat and tried to see what Freddy was pointing at.

"See it, J.G.?"

"I see it." George shook his head. "We sure don't want to go there."

"Oh no ..." Now Stella could see it too, a treacherous shore of walled cliffs and jagged rocks. "I think we're in trouble."

"Serious trouble."

"Looks like you and your rowboat are letting us down again, J.G."

"Well this trip wasn't exactly my idea, Fred."

"Nothing like a good shipwreck first thing in the morning, huh, Toots?" Freddy petulantly burrowed into the tote and zipped it shut. "Call me when it's over!"

"What're we gonna do?"

"Get out of the boat before it hits those rocks, I guess." George grabbed his stringer of fish, his pole and tackle box and dumped them in the canvas boat cover.

"Put this on." He handed Stella his life vest.

"What about you?"

"I can swim."

"So can I." Stella held up the life vest; it was too small for her. "It won't fit anyway. Take it. I'm a really good swimmer."

"Okay, but get your shoes off and put 'em in your bag. You'll swim better without shoes." He started to unlace his boots.

"But what about the rocks?"

"We'll just have to swim until we get someplace where it isn't so dangerous, a beach or a bay."

"Do you see any beaches or bays?"

"No."

"Neither do I, and that's a problem."

The closer the waves carried them to the cliffs, the worse the cliffs looked. Stella watched the waves crash into the rock walls and splash back in a complete chaos of chop and spray. Her mouth was dry and her heart was beating too fast. She couldn't believe what was happening was actually happening: the sun was warm and the sky was blue, the herring gulls were gliding high above, and a beautiful monarch butterfly was fluttering by. It should have been a perfect day but it wasn't, it was a perfect disaster.

"Freddy, I need to put some stuff in there."

"Fine with me, Sweets." He crowded into a corner of the tote, and Stella stuffed her hoodie, the bag of candy corn and her shoes on the other side.

"Things are gonna get a little weird and wet out—"

"Wet?"

"We're swimming."

"Eeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee!"

"Maybe you'd like to get out and swim too?"

"EEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE!"

"See? So stay in the bag, and I'll swim for both of us."

"If anyone can do it, you can, Sugarplum."

"I hope so." She tried to make sense of what was coming, soaring granite walls that stretched for at least a quarter mile in both directions; the walls were protected by a ring of sharp boulders and jagged rocks that were being pummeled by four foot waves. The rocks flashed and gnashed like giant shark teeth with every crashing wave. "We can't swim through that mess."

"Yeah? Well, we don't have a choice." George was tying up the canvas boat cover. The bundle looked ridiculous and ready to sink like a stone as soon as it went over the side.

"What're you gonna do with that?"

"I'll tow it if it floats."

"That's not gonna float. This is crazy. We can't swim our way out of this."

"I'm telling you, we don't have a choice."

"If we try to swim, it's basically suicide."

"And if we crash into those rocks and get dragged around by those waves? It's definitely suicide."

"I know but ..." Stella watched George knot the rope around the bundle. "Wait. We can climb! We can climb it!"

"What're you talking about? There's no way we can climb that."

"Sure we can. With the rope and that tree!" Stella pointed up at an old gnarly pine that clung to the cliff in front of them; it had a broad trunk and weathered roots that looked welded to the rock.

"But how do we get the rope up—"

"With that!" She pointed at the rowboat's bow plate, a triangular piece of steel fitted with a cleat for an anchor line. "We'll tie it to the rope and use it for throwing. Do you have a screwdriver?"

"In the tackle box."

"Well get it, and get that thing off." Stella started frantically tying knotted climbing loops in the longest rope she could find. The boat was bucking and tossing, the cliff was only thirty yards away, and it looked like George was turning the screwdriver in slow motion. "Come on, faster!"

"I'm going as fast as I can!"

"You need to go faster!" Stella knotted the final loop and then she threaded the opposite end through the bow plate cleat just as George pulled out the last screw. "Stay down and watch your head," she called as she double-checked her knot, stood up and took a deep, body-centering breath. "Wish me luck."

"You can do it, Wenry!"

Stella swung the bow plate round and round above her head and—aiming for the pine—released the rope and whispered, "Go, go, go!" The bow plate soared up and out in an arc over the water and hit the cliff with a shattering clank and fell back into the waves. Stella reeled the rope in double-time. Every passing second was pushing them closer to the cliff and if they crashed—

"This is the one, Wenry!"

"It better be, or we're sunk." Stella swung the bow plate over her head and it whistled through the air. She tried to center herself and her thoughts. What would her kickboxing sensei Mr. Watanabe-san say? Concentrate and remain calm. "YaaaAAA!" She launched the bow plate. It arced high, cleared the cliff and wrapped itself around the trunk of the pine with a whoosh and a thunk!

"Great throw!"

"Thanks." Stella pulled hard on her end to secure it. "You first."

"Girls first."

"But I'm taller, that might help down here. Take your pack and my tote and go. I'll steady the rope."

Freddy pulled the zipper back and poked his head out. "We there yet?"

"No, but we're not swimming."

"Good!"

"We're climbing."

"BAAAAAAAAAD!"

"And no screaming, okay?"

"Going up!" George slung the tote over his shoulder and started up the swaying rope ladder.

"What about you, Toots?" Freddy looked up at the sheer granite wall and then he looked back at her, absolutely terrified.

"As soon as you reach the top, I'm right behind you, Freddy. Hang on tight and—"A huge wave pushed the rowboat into the cliff, broadside. The planks above the waterline cracked, and the wave pulled the boat back out into the chop and spray.

"EEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE!" Freddy screamed and George climbed, swinging, swaying and practically hanging sideways, but tenaciously hanging on.

"You can do it!" Stella clutched her end of the rope and watched him climb. "And stop screaming, Freddy, it's not help—" Another wave slammed the boat into the cliff.

"EEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE!"

"HURRY!" Stella was soaked. Water poured in over the sides and gushed up through a gash in the bottom. The wave swept back and Stella saw the next wave coming, and she knew it would be the last—five feet high with a foaming crest that was just beginning to curl. She threaded her end of the rope through the corner grommets on the boat cover and cinched it with a slipknot.

When the final wave hit, she struggled up the first rope loops through the spray. She didn't know if George had made it to the top yet, but it didn't matter, the boat was sinking. She couldn't wait.

"CLIMBING!" she shouted, and she pulled herself hand over hand, higher and higher above the waves and rocks. The rope twisted and turned and felt like it could break or pull free at any second. She tried not to look down.

"YOU OKAY, WENRY?

"YEAH, STILL CLIMBING!"

"GOOD, KEEP COMING!"

Stella could hear George but she couldn't see him. She grabbed another loop, and another, and she didn't look down. It was too scary. She kept looking up, and then she saw tree roots, and then George against the tree holding the rope, and then Freddy watching her from the ledge.

"Almost there, Toots, come on!"

Stella grabbed the last loop, and then a tree root. She scraped both knees scrambling up on the ledge, but she didn't care, they felt like the best scrapes of her entire life.

"You made it!"

"Hooray, Sugarplum!"

"Yeah ... wow ..." Stella was out of breath. "I tied the rope to the boat cover. All your stuff's in there. Let's pull it up." She grabbed the rope behind George and they pulled together, but it weighed a ton.

"On three. One, two, THREE!"

"Mmmmmmmrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr!"

"Hhhhhhhhhhhhhhhrrrrrrrrr!"

The rope barely budged.

"Can you see if it's caught on something, Freddy?"

Freddy peered over the cliff and shuddered. The rowboat had been flipped on its side and shattered on the rocks. Wave after wave hurled it against the cliff wall, splintering the planks and pieces, and it creaked and groaned with the painful sound of something dying.

"The boat's ruined! We're marooned!"

"But what about the boat canvas, Freddy?" Stella pulled with everything she had; her hands hurt and George's face was red with exertion.

"It's full of water, Toots, the waves—"

"I don't think we can do it," groaned George.

"But if we can just! Mmm! Get it! Mmmmm! High enough! Mmmmmmmm!" Stella pulled, "The water will drain! Mmmmmmmmmmmm!"

"Maybe ..." George dug in and held on.

"Is it draining, Freddy?"

"A little, Sweets, but ..." Freddy watched another wave sweep in and drag the bundle down.

"Uhhhhhhhhhh!" They were yanked toward the ledge when the wave pulled it out.

"We can't," said George.

"We have to."

"Not like this. Let's tie it to the tree. We'll wait for the waves to stop." George walked the rope around the trunk of the pine twice, ran it through the cleat from the bow plate and tied it fast. "You can let go now, Wenry."

Stella was still holding tight with her rope-burned hands. When she finally let go, her hands and legs were shaking. It was the adrenaline from the tying and throwing and climbing and shouting and pulling and almost dying. It felt so good to be alive that she fell to the ground and started laughing. It was a strange laugh, carrying the sound of fear and relief and exhaustion.

George leaned against the tree, looked wide-eyed at the sky and started laughing too. "We did it," he said. "Your climbing idea saved us."

"Wish I knew why it's so funny," said Stella.

"Guess it's 'cause we're still alive."

"Uh-huh, still alive ..."

"And marooned," said Freddy, "what's so funny about that?"

"There's nothing funny about it," said George, still laughing.

"MAROONED!" shouted Freddy.

"Yeah, we sure are," laughed Stella, but the thought of being marooned sobered her slightly. She fell back in the grass, still smiling, and looked up at the gnarly old pine that had helped save their lives. She listened to the crashing waves and the groaning rope that twisted and stretched every time a wave pushed or pulled the boat cover. The sun felt warm on her face, the wind was soft and there were orange and yellow wildflowers growing in clusters among the tufts of tall grass. The morning was only a few hours old but she had been up for most of the night and she was tired—they all were—and after a few minutes Stella closed her eyes, and a few minutes later she fell asleep.

# To Build a Fire

Her mom was covered in tiny mirrors like the mirror pieces on a mirror ball, and the mirror-piece reflections were so bright in the starry snowflake light that it was hard to see that her mom was fiercely knitting a strawberry red scarf with strawberry red yarn in an ice castle tower surrounded by oily black smoke that smelled like French toast, maybe.

MOM!

STELLA?

The swirling, billowing plumes of smoke swallowed everything: tower, scarf and her mirror ball mom. When the toast smoke cleared, Stella was with Freddy, who wore ski goggles and a strawberry red wool beanie. They were driving in an open-topped convertible that pulled a trailer stacked with leaning towers of strawberry shortcakes sloshing in lakes of sweet strawberry juice. Stella was copilot for Fast Freddy in her strawberry red scarf, and he drove recklessly on the scary, narrow, winding, cliff-edge road over a very tall range of whipped-cream mountains with soft peaks through the hot chocolate rain to the City of Spoons in the Land of Sugar and—

"Uhhh!" Stella woke with a start. "Yuck!"

"Sorry," George grunted.

"What're you doing?" She wiped the water off her face.

"Got the gear." George was carefully lowering the dripping boat cover canvas to the ground. "Didn't mean to get you wet."

"How'd you do it without me?"

"I used a block and tackle. You were asleep."

"I sure was." Stella stood and stretched. The sun was directly overhead, it must have been around noon, and she felt really hungry. "A block and tackle, huh? Hey, what's for lunch?"

"Excellent question," said Freddy, from his plush bed of green moss. "I could eat three cans of Mighty Cat Shrimp Boat Bonanza in two shakes of a lamb's tail."

"Sorry, Freddy, we're fresh out of Shrimp Boat Bonanza."

"Let's have the fish," said George.

"Fish is the dish for which I wish," said Stella with a giggle. She was studying the block and tackle, which was basically four thick sticks that were sort of like pulleys, and a lot of rope looped over and under and around and in between them. "How's it work?"

"It works with mechanical advantage. It's the law of the lever."

"The law of the lever? Where'd you learn that?"

"Hawking Quantum Physics Camp." George pointed at the infinity symbol on his football jersey. "Special unit on levers and forces."

"Really? What about archery and arts and crafts?"

"We had archery, but they called it 'archery as a means of demonstrating velocity through a uniform medium.'"

"Seriously? Velocity through a uniform medium?"

"Uh-huh."

"Quantum physics camp doesn't sound like very much fun."

"It's actually really fun if you like physics." He untied the rope and peeled back the wet canvas "Guess we should take inventory."

"Of that junk? Why?" asked Freddy.

"Because this junk is going to help us survive until we get rescued, Fred."

"I don't know about you, J.G., but I plan on being back at that cottage tonight, right around dinner time."

"Yeah, George, they're probably searching for us right now," said Stella.

"Sure, but where?" George pointed at the empty East Arm. "Not out there ... At least not yet."

"It's true." Stella sighed and scanned the sky. "Where are the search planes?"

"Anyway, we need to be prepared, it could be a day, a week, or a month—"

"A month?"

"I hope not, but no matter how long it takes, we need to be prepared. Ready?"

"Sure, ready," said Stella trying her best to sound excited about being prepared.

George held up his fish stringer. "Six kinda-fresh-caught bass and one muskellunge, a four-pounder."

"Check," said Stella.

"One fishing pole, one tackle box full of tackle, and one landing net for lunkers on the line."

"What's lunkers on the line?" asked Stella with a giggle.

"A lunker's a really big fish," said George in a tone that meant a lunker was no laughing matter.

"One lunker landing net, check," said Stella, suppressing a second giggle.

"One boat lantern and four various lengths of rope."

"Check."

"One life vest and three Bill's Bait Shack boat cushions."

"Check."

"One empty coffee can and one minnow bucket."

"Check."

"And last but not least, the 1920 edition of the Boy Scouts of America Official Handbook for Boys."

"Nineteen twenty?"

"It was my great-grandpa's." George carefully opened the dripping cover and showed Stella the blurred fountain pen inscription on the first page.

This book belongs to Erasmus Whitaker Stote – 1926

"But isn't it obsolete?"

"Obsolete? Not even close." George turned to the table of contents. "Just about everything you might want to know is in here: agriculture, angling, architecture, art, astronomy, athletics, automobiling, aviation, beekeeping, bird study, blacksmithing, botany, bugling, business, camping, carpentry, chemistry, civics, conservation, cooking—"

"Cooking!" cheered Freddy. "I'm ready for that part now."

"Maybe it'll come in handy," said Stella.

"This book might save our lives."

"Can we eat now, Sweets? My stomach feels like a bottomless pit inside a black hole."

"I'll clean the fish," said George.

"We'll need to build a fire," said Stella.

"Right, a cook fire. Fred, you're in charge of birch bark."

"Birch bark?"

"Best fire starter in the forest. It burns like a firecracker fuse even if it's wet. Check the ground under those birch trees over there."

"Aye, aye, J.G.," Freddy saluted with his paw, "birch bark, on the double."

"What about me?"

"You're in charge of wood. Anything on the ground that's dry is good, not too big."

"Sticks?"

"Uh-huh, sticks, dead branches, as much as you can carry."

"Sticks it is." Stella walked down the hill and headed for a stand of pine trees on the other side of a mossy bog. What a weird day, she thought. First we get caught in a crazy wind and our boat is blown off course, then we almost die when it hits the rocks, then we're marooned on this cliff overlooking the lake, and now I'm hunting for sticks so we can build a fire and cook something called a muskellunge and actually eat it. Stella stopped walking and thinking and just listened and looked for a minute. Chickadees were calling, honeybees were buzzing, the wind was whispering, dragonflies were hovering and the mossy ground was emerald green, dotted with wild strawberries.

"Really?" She suddenly saw hundreds of them, tiny, fire engine red strawberries, each one the size of a jellybean. To make sure they were real, she picked one and tasted it. "Strawberries!" She fell to her knees and started eating. "STRAWBERRIES!" she shouted just in case Freddy and George were interested in eating wild strawberries. Stella couldn't imagine why they wouldn't be, but then you never knew with boys. Her brother Russell, for instance: give Russell a wild strawberry, and he would definitely fuss and complain or want to squeeze a lot of ketchup on it.

Stella crawled between the strawberry plants, eating as she went, her tongue and lips slowly turning strawberry red; she crawled around a juniper bush, and pushed aside some tufts of tall grass, and was about to pluck the next when—

"Uhhh!"

There were tiny people everywhere, tiny people with mouse-drawn carts, tiny people with thimble-sized baskets woven from pine needles, and pencil-long ladders made of twigs leaning against the strawberry plants. Tiny people wearing the cutest tiny clothes Stella had ever seen in her entire dollhouse-surveying life. The level of detail was unimaginable; buttons no bigger than sand grains, shoelaces like strands of hair, tiny men, tiny women and tiny children with their pet crickets, harvesting strawberries. They were cutting strawberries off their stems with tiny saws, and two or three tiny people together were rolling the larger berries to the mouse-drawn carts. Stella didn't know what to do. Should she say hi? Should she run back to camp? She was very still, and she tried not to breathe, or if she had to breathe she tried to breathe quietly, and she watched them work, and work they did. These were very industrious tiny people, almost like tiny Amish people; they all worked together, and they didn't have gas-powered machinery, and the tiny men had tiny beards.

And then, as if she were suddenly developing a strawberry allergy or a head cold from last night's chill, Stella sneezed so unexpectedly that there was nothing she could do to stop it.

"Ahhhhhhhhhhhhh-CHOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!"

To the tiny crowd below, that sneeze was the sound of girl thunder. Every tiny person working the strawberry patch turned and looked and saw Stella and started screaming.

Uh-oh, thought Stella.

The screams were so tiny and so high-pitched that Stella could barely hear them. The tiny people were racing around, knocking over ladders, spilling buckets, gathering children, shouting and screaming and occasionally glancing back at her with such terror on their tiny faces that Stella thought maybe her face had changed to something ugly during the night, or maybe her teeth had fallen out, or maybe she had lost all her hair. She glanced at her shoulders just to be sure her hair was still there.

"Hi." Stella smiled and gave them a tiny wave, hoping for the best, but this new sound and gesture only sparked more chaos below. Some of the tiny men were cracking their tiny whips and the mouse-drawn carts were beginning to trundle and bounce as the mice in their harnesses pulled hard and ran. The women and children—with pet crickets hopping—were running and screaming and leading the way.

"I won't hurt you." Stella promised, but the tiny people continued to flee. She couldn't tell what they were saying, or what language they were saying it in. It was all tiny-voiced high-pitched squeaky squeaks that only a dog could hear, a dog with really big ears. Then she noticed that some of the tiny men were forming a tiny line and loading tiny bows with tiny arrows that were pointed directly at her. This was where their resemblance to the Amish ended, she thought; everyone knew the Amish were a peaceful people, and these tiny people were suddenly anything but.

"Ow!" The first arrow lodged somewhere in her ankle.

"Ouch!" A second arrow hit her knee.

"Hey! You could put someone's eye out with—" A third arrow hit her in the calf with a thwong!

"Ow!" The arrows felt like bee stings and looked like cactus spines possibly dipped in a poisonous brew. The line of tiny men kept bravely reloading, aiming and firing their tiny arrows at their giant target, her, with no sign that they would ever stop to discuss the situation and possibly work out a wild strawberry patch truce between the tall and the small, so Stella ran.

"Where's the firewood, Wenry?" George flicked his disposable butane lighter, sparking a flame that flared and vanished.

"St-st-st-stuh ..." Stella stammered.

"Stuh what?" He flicked it again and the flame flared and vanished again.

"Toots?"

"St-st-st-strawberries ..." Stella looked at them with wide eyes, and tried to catch her breath. "Strawberries."

"Strawberries what?" said George.

"Li-li-li-li-little people," Stella stuttered.

"Little people, Sweets?"

"Uh-huh, yeah." Stella pointed. "Over there, they shot arrows at me, they have tiny carts!"

"Little people," said George.

"Tiny people, at least fifty, a whole village, picking strawberries, I just saw them," Stella paused to catch her breath, "if we go back we need to bring shields."

George looked genuinely worried. It seemed Wenry had snapped. "Maybe you should lie down. I'll get the wood."

"But don't you wanna see 'em?"

"Wenry, I don't think—"

"You don't believe me?" She pointed at the red dots on her ankles. "See, that's where their arrows hit me." She hoped one of the arrows was still stuck in her skin so she could pluck it out as proof, but they'd fallen out as she ran.

"They look like mosquito bites to me."

"Or maybe bee stings," said Freddy.

"I'll get the wood, you get some rest." George walked down the hill and Freddy loped though the grass to lean his head against Stella's ankle.

"You'll feel better after you eat, Sugarplum, it's been a very challenging day."

"Freddy!" Stella was angry. "If I say I saw a village of little people harvesting wild strawberries, then it means I saw a village of little people harvesting wild strawberries. It doesn't mean I'm tired and hungry, even though I am tired and hungry and a little homesick. I mean, come on, I'm not crazy."

"Of course not."

"Then you believe me?" Stella picked him up.

"No."

"Freddy!"

"But you're not crazy." He climbed up to her shoulder and gave her cheek a quick lick. "You might be a little nuts, but—

"Freddy!"

"Talking to a ferret is very odd behavior, Toots. This alone indicates certain borderline tendencies which could lead to more serious tendencies which could ultimately lead to tendonitis."

"They were real, Freddy."

"Okay, okay ... Little people, right? Gnomes? Elves? Leprechauns?"

"Gnomes, maybe. They seemed too small to be elves, and they were too big to be sprites or pixies, and they weren't green so they can't be leprechauns."

"Then gnomes they are." Freddy sighed and gazed with hungry eyes at the muskie near the fire ring. "You know I'm thinking I might have my fish raw, what do you think?"

"I'm having mine cooked, and then it's back to that strawberry patch with the minnow bucket and a boat cushion for a shield. Wanna come?"

"Maybe not, Sugarplum, gnomes ..."

"But strawberries ..."

"Yes, but gnomes ..."

"But strawberries!"

"Gnomes can't be trusted. They're too tiny to trust. There isn't space in their tiny brains for—"

"Look what I found!" George hurried up the hill carrying a tiny cart full of wild strawberries. It had tiny wheels carved from dried toadstool caps, and torn grass harness lines that had snapped when the frightened mice bolted.

"See, I told you."

"Gnomes?" asked George.

"Gnomes," agreed Freddy.

"Where'd they come from?" asked Stella.

"I don't know. Maybe we were blown farther down the lake than I thought."

"What's that mean?"

"I've heard a lot of weird stories about the east end of Wippiwee-Wananana."

"Like what?"

"Like legends and stuff ... Sightings of strange and unlikely creatures thought to be extinct."

"You mean dinosaurs, J.G.?"

"No, mostly trolls."

"Trolls?"

"Trolls, gnomes, ogres ... And my grandpa saw a Sasquatch once. He was moose hunting near Flint Creek Falls, that's probably not too far from here."

"What's that? A Sasquatch?" asked Stella.

"A Sasquatch is a man-ape, Bigfoot thing that has a lot of fur and walks with a slouch and sneezes a lot because basically they're allergic to their own fur. They're pretty shy too."

"I sure wouldn't want to find a village of Sasquatches picking wild strawberries in this forest." Stella plucked a strawberry from the cart and ate it.

"If we're marooned on the east end of the lake, then it's possible anything's possible," said George, and he ate a strawberry too.

Freddy blinked and said, "Sasquatches, ogres and trolls?"

"Oh my," said Stella, with a worried smile.

# Distress and Calamity

They cooked and ate the entire muskellunge, except for the bones, skin, head and guts. According to George, the muskie fillets weighed about three pounds, one pound of fish per kid or ferret, and Stella had been surprised that something with such a vicious name could taste so good. Now, resting by the fire after eating all that fish, Stella snatched a few wild strawberries from the gnome's strawberry cart and ate them for dessert. Freddy—lounging on a bed of plush, green moss—licked his paws clean and then he burped, which made George and Stella laugh because a ferret burp sounds like a cork popping from a bottle of champagne.

"Freddy ..."

"Excuse me, Sweets, but I just dined on a massive amount of muskie."

"You sure did," Stella giggled.

"We all did." George was dropping handfuls of grass on their cook fire to make a smudge. His plan was to smoke the six bass so they wouldn't spoil and could be eaten later. He had cleaned the fish and skewered them on sticks, and now they were slowly roasting over the smoky fire. "That was one tasty muskie." He added more grass to the fire, and then he flipped open the Boy Scouts of America The Official Handbook for Boys to the chapter titled "Distress and Calamity."

"Let's see what the handbook has to say about our present situation," George cleared his throat and read aloud: "Getting lost and its attending miseries are generally caused by carelessness or lack of observation and can only be avoided by paying very close attention to where one is going. Scouts as a rule do not go into the big woods, so there is slight danger of their straying very far out of the reach of help. If you should become lost and have companions in camp, my advice is to stay right where you are and make yourself comfortable, build a shelter and a good fire, and conserve your strength. Your companions are sure to find you if you will call at intervals of a half-hour. Keep a good smoke going by day and a bright fire at night; keep cool and wait."

"Who're our companions in camp?" asked Stella.

"Your mom," said George.

"And your uncle."

"Yeah, my uncle." George sighed. "He's sure gonna be mad when he sees his boat ... Well I guess he won't see it, but when he finds out, I mean after we get rescued, he'll probably have to smoke his pipe in silence for at least an hour just to get over it."

Stella shouted, "MOM! MOM! MOM! MOM! MOM—"

"What're you doing?"

"Your book said we should call at half-hour intervals."

"I don't think that part's gonna help us get rescued."

"Well what part is gonna help, J.G.?"

"Still looking, Fred."

"But shouldn't there be search planes by now?" asked Stella. "It's like they don't know we're gone, or don't care, or—" The breeze shifted and blew smoke in her face. She stood up and coughed as she walked to the ledge overlooking the East Arm. "We haven't seen a boat since we got here. What time is it?"

"Around six, I guess."

"We've been here since sunrise. Where are the boats?"

"I don't know."

"It's weird."

"Weird or not, we need to be ready to signal them if they come."

"If?" asked Stella.

"I meant when."

"What do we signal with, J.G.?"

"Smoke, Fred." George turned a few more pages and smiled. "Here we go—signs, symbols and signaling. It says we need three fires because three means calamity."

"Calamity?" Stella looked back at their camp: the fish, the fire and their salvaged rowboat gear stacked in carefully inventoried and categorized piles. It didn't actually look like a calamity, but it probably was.

George read, "Three of everything does, and must, have the same general meaning, a cry for succor, help, or alarm. The white man's custom of firing three shots as a call for help, the Apache's custom of three smokes as a sign of alarm, the mountaineer's custom of three stones one on top of another, also the three blazes on a tree, three tufts of grass, three short blasts on a steamboat whistle, all indicate trouble; consequently in this system of signs, three columns of rising smoke, to anyone searching the horizon with binoculars, telescope or the unaided gaze, will most certainly be recognized as a sign of distress and calamity."

"Okay, what do we need?"

"A ton of dry sticks and a lot of moss and grass."

"Let's do it," said Stella.

"First I'm gonna rig the boat cover into a tent."

"Why?" asked Stella.

"Because if we don't get rescued today, we'll be sleeping here tonight."

"Great," groaned Freddy.

"Yeah," agreed Stella.

"Wenry, you gather wood and build the signal fire piles. I'll put up the tent. Fred, you keep watch for planes and boats. When you see one, give the signal and we'll start those fires, okay?"

"Sounds good," said Stella. "Freddy?"

"My eyes are at your service, Sweets."

Stella carried the last load of sticks to the highest point along the cliff. She dropped them on the third pile and wiped the sweat off her forehead with the back of her hand. The East Arm of Lake Wippiwee-Wananana stretched out in front of her forever. She could see tiny trees and rocks on the north and south shores, but to the west it was just sky blue water reflecting the golden sun.

"HEY!" George waved, "IT'S DONE." He had hung a rope between two trees to hold up the boat cover, and staked out the sides with sharpened sticks. "IT'S AN ISOSCELES TRIANGLE TENT!"

Whatever that means, thought Stella, and then she shouted "LOOKS GOOD!" It looked a lot like Russell's castle, which made her think of Russell and her mom. She was even beginning to miss Russell, and that wasn't a good sign. Just thinking about it made her want to cry.

"I'M GETTING SOME PINE BOUGHS FOR THE FLOOR," George shouted.

"OKAY." Stella sat on the ground and searched the sky for a plane, but the only thing she could see were gulls, herring gulls skirting the shore, gliding on the breeze, and then something black that soared over the water and slowly spiraled lower, wingtip feathers spread like feather fingers as it swooped into the pine trees and disappeared, a raven.

"Hi, Sugarplum."

Stella turned to see Freddy loping up the hill with something red wrapped around his neck. "Stick piles are ready to send their signal of distress and calamity, Freddy. Now all you have to do is find us some boats and planes to signal."

"Let the hunt begin, Sweets!" Freddy leaped into her lap. "Speaking of finding, Toots, look what I found for you." He pulled the thing from around his neck and gave it to her. "It was in the side pocket of the bag."

"Thanks, Freddy." Stella unfurled a red rayon headscarf with TWA printed on it in white bold-italic capitals. "Hey, do you think it's pronounced twuh? Or tway?"

"I'd say tway, Sweets."

"But if it's tway, then why isn't there a Y at the end?"

"Because English is a language of exceptions, Sugarplum."

"It certainly is. I wonder what tway is."

"A brand of luggage and accessories?"

"Maybe. Anyway, I like the scarf. Thanks."

"Put it on—" Freddy's ears twitched and he looked up; he heard the soft, distant roar of jet engines high in the sky. "Airplane, Sugarplum."

"Where?"

"There." Freddy pointed a claw.

"HEY, GEORGE? A PLANE!" The plane was a giant commercial jetliner headed to Europe over the pole, and flying so high it looked like a tiny, shiny silver toy. "SHOULD I START THE FIRES?" Stella waved the red scarf over her head. "HEY! WE'RE MAROONED DOWN HERE!" She jumped, waved and shouted, and the airplane kept jetting across the sky. "SAVE US FROM THE SASQUATCHES!"

"It's too high, Sweets. They can't see you."

Stella stopped waving and watched it go.

"Ahhhhrawk!"

"Huh?" Stella turned.

The raven swooped low, arced its wings and landed atop the middle pile of sticks.

"Oh, it's you, Mr. Rawk! Rawk! Rawk! Long time no see."

"Do you know that raven, Toots?"

"Yeah. We met on Wenry Heath yesterday."

"Rawk! Rawk! Kuck! Kuck! Kuck!" The raven turned its head from side to side and studied Stella and Freddy.

"Could you go catch that plane for us, Mr. Rawk! Rawk! Rawk!"

"Rawk! Rawk! Rawk!" The raven hopped from branch to stick to branch to ground and then it strutted over to Freddy. "Rawk! Kuck! Kuck! Kuck! Kuck!"

Freddy's ears flattened and he shook his head as if a wasp had stung him.

"Rawk! Kuck! Kuck! Kuck! Kuck!"

"Rarrrrk! Arrrk! Kuck! Kuck! Kuck!" Freddy answered.

"I didn't know you could talk to ravens—"

"Shhhh, Sweets, he's saying something."

"Rawk! Rrrrawk! Kuck! Kuck! Kuck!" The raven stabbed the air with its beak and made angry rasping sounds that made Stella shiver. "Rawk! Kuck-Kuck! Rawk!" The raven flapped its wings and waddled over; it got so close she could smell its oily feathers, a scent like gunpowder mixed with rusting sewer pipes and rotting leaves. "Kuck! Kuck! Kuck! Kuck!"

"What's he want, Freddy?"

"Nothing but trouble, Toots." Freddy got between them and growled at the raven with bared teeth.

"Rawk! Rawk! Rawk!"

Stella didn't breathe.

"RAWK! RAWK! RAWK!" The raven rasped, and then it hopped to the ledge and flew away on wings that flashed like blackened sunshine.

"What was that?"

Freddy looked up at her and started to answer, but then he stopped.

"Wha'd the raven want, Freddy?"

Freddy didn't want to tell her. The raven flew higher and higher and got smaller and smaller until it disappeared against the burning sky. The sun was going down and Stella had a strange sad feeling about it, like her heart was sinking with the sun.

# Mirrors and Dreams

That night they slept under the cover of the isosceles triangle tent. Above their boat-cover shelter was a dark sky spangled with planets and satellites, distant stars and the blurry galactic haze of the Milky Way. Freddy was snoring inside the TWA tote; it was his own personal apartment and swank bachelor pad with the Indian princess dress for a white buckskin bed and red nylon walls that smelled vaguely of the jet age. Stella was sleeping and dreaming who knows what, her breathing was soft, and occasionally she muttered "maven rirror" and "tot chuckchermeg." George tossed and turned for most of the night and finally crawled out of the tent an hour before dawn. He kept thinking about the dream he had with Wenry in it, and he kept trying to figure out if he could've done something, anything, to avoid the mess they were in.

"After I met her on that island, that's when I should've rowed straight home and never looked back," he said to himself. "I should've trusted my instincts." He sat against the old pine tree on the cliff facing the lake, and he waited for the sun. Maybe there wasn't anything I could've done about it, he thought, maybe everything's decided before it even happens and there's nothing anyone can do to change it.

At times like these George wished Uncle Tor were around so he could ask him a few questions about the nature of time and the probable range of possible futures. "Is it all going to happen no matter what I do?" he asked the sky. George wasn't expecting an answer, and he didn't get one. He rubbed his bloodshot eyes and watched for the sun. The answer to that question would have to wait for another day.

When Stella woke, the sun was up, the tent was empty and it took her a minute to remember where she was and how she got there.

"Marooned," she sighed. "My new least-favorite word." She grabbed the tote and dumped out the flashlight, the TWA headscarf, the Indian princess dress and the leggings and moccasins that matched. There were a few other things in the carry-on bag: a TWA pencil, a red leatherette-bound travel diary that had TWA on the cover and, perhaps most important of all, a small TWA Swiss army knife that had two blades and seven retractable tool attachments.

"Tway makes knives too?" She snapped open the biggest blade and used it as a mirror. "Hmmm." Her hair was an explosion of curls with sun-streaked highlights and there were glints of mirror glitter on her eyelashes and cheeks. Stella folded the blade back into its slot and looked down at the shirt and shorts she'd been wearing since the whole rowboat calamity thing began. They were a little dirty and smelled vaguely of smoked fish. "Maybe I'll wear the Indian princess dress instead."

When Stella crawled out of the tent, the morning campfire was still smoldering and there were wild strawberries and smoked bass to eat. She waved at George and Freddy, and then she climbed the hill to join them on the cliff overlooking the lake.

"Good morning, Maroonies." Stella giggled.

"Morning, Toots. Sleep well?"

"It was pretty dreamy sleep on a bed of pine boughs. Hey, what were you two talking about?"

Freddy didn't answer and George just scratched a complicated physics equation in the dirt with a stick.

"Is something wrong?"

"Everything's fine, Sugarplum."

"We're gonna get rescued today, right?"

George frowned. Freddy looked up at the sky.

"Isn't anyone gonna notice my dress?"

"Cute, Toots."

"Thanks, Freddy."

"Very north woods appropriate."

George scowled at both of them and sighed.

"What?" asked Stella.

"What?" George said with exasperation, "Fred says your talking raven flew into camp last night—"

"He's not my talking raven."

"The talking raven, whatever." George slashed a big X through his equation and stood up, all four feet, four inches of him, plus twelve inches of fur hat.

"Technically, J.G., he's not a talking raven. He speaks Raven, not English," said Freddy.

"Right, Raven, which I guess your talking ferret here understands. Is that right, Fred? You understand that Raven stuff?"

"I speak many languages, English, Raven, Finnish, Elf—"

"Elf?"

"Elf."

"Whatever. Anyway, apparently this raven told Fred we won't be rescued, right Fred?"

"Won't be rescued?" asked Stella.

Freddy glared at George.

George glared back.

"Freddy?"

"I couldn't tell you, Sweets."

"Why won't we be rescued?"

"Why? Because of you," said George.

"Me?"

George pointed his stick at Stella. "You know I had a warning dream about you before we even met."

"A warning dream?"

"Yeah, I had a dream that warned me you were trouble."

"I'm trouble?"

"You're not trouble, Toots."

"What did the raven say, Freddy?"

"Well, Sugarplum, the raven intimated that maybe, possibly, perhaps, there was a chance, in his opinion—"

"We won't be rescued," interrupted George. "We're basically marooned for life."

"That's not possible," said Stella.

"According to the raven it is." George looked out at the lake and groaned, "Enchantments, curses, spells, you name it, you've got it."

"You say it like I have some kind of disease." Stella started to cry.

"Oh, for crying out loud, don't cry."

"What am I supposed to do?" She sniffed and then she sobbed. "You won't even tell me what's going on, but you're making it seem like it's all my fault." She turned and walked away.

"Wait, don't cry, listen ..." George caught up with her. "I'm sorry I said you're trouble, you're not trouble, okay? It's just this whole mess is so ... messed up."

Tears slid down Stella's cheeks and fell on the green moss at her feet where they sparkled like morning dew.

"I guess we'll figure something out," said George.

Stella sniffed and wiped a tear away with her finger.

"Of course we'll figure something out," said Freddy in a more convincing tone.

"Figure out what?"

"How to get home," said George.

"On our own," said Freddy.

"But we can still signal the first boat or plane that goes by."

"There won't be any boats, Sweets."

"Or planes," said George.

"No?" Stella sniffed and smeared a tear across her cheek.

"None," said George.

"Why?"

"Something to do with the mirror, Sweets."

"What's that stupid mirror have to do with it?"

"The raven said when you broke it, it did something," Freddy sighed. "It cast a spell, or triggered an enchantment, or caused a curse, or something like that. The raven was really furious, I couldn't follow it all, he was ranting like a crazy crow."

"But how does the raven even know about the mirror?"

"He saw the glitter on your cheeks, Toots. He said there's only one place that kind of silver comes from."

"The mirror?" Stella sniffed.

"The shattered magic mirror, Sugarplum."

"Magic? Oh, brother ... First it's dreams, then it's gnomes, now it's magic mirrors?" George scowled and walked toward the edge of the cliff. "I just want you to know I won first prize for my theoretical model of a quantum bit computer at physics camp."

Stella and Freddy had no idea what George was raving about.

"I won the blue ribbon! My model was best in camp! George hurled his stick and watched it arc over the water and splash down in the lake. "I don't believe in magic mirrors." He turned and blurted, "Enchantments? Curses? Spells? What a bunch of malarkey!" He looked back at the miles of empty water that stretched to an empty horizon. "But no boats! The raven's right about that!" He looked over the ledge at what was left of his uncle's rowboat, a battered chunk of the hull being heaved against the rocks with every wave. "It's been exactly negative one boats since we got here!"

"You really are an impossibly angry boy," said Stella.

"I've got a right to be angry. You tricked me."

"What?"

"Did you say anything about a magic mirror when you got in my boat?"

"Sure I did."

"No you didn't."

"I told you I had a fight with a mirror, remember?"

"But you didn't say it was a magic mirror."

"Because maybe I left that part out."

George scowled at her.

"Okay fine, so sue me, and anyway Mr. Quantum Physics Camp, you don't believe in magic."

"That's right, I don't! I don't believe in magic, or spells, or enchantments! I believe in science, not this fairy tale junk." George glared at Stella; he was about to blurt something else when suddenly he was struck by her strange beauty, the radiant sunlight in her wildly curly hair and the glitter from the mirror sparkling on her eyelashes and tear-streaked cheeks. Freddy loped over to be closer to her; she picked him up and put him on her shoulder, and then Freddy and Stella looked at George, and they waited.

"Shattered mirrors," George grumbled, "gnomes and talking ravens ... what next?"

"Good question," said Stella.

"A plan," said Freddy.

"A plan," agreed Stella.

"We need to get back to Andersen Bay without a boat," said Freddy.

"Yeah, I know, Fred."

"So what is it?" asked Stella.

"Yeah, what's the plan, J.G.?"

"Plan?" George straightened his hat, crossed his arms and tried his best to look tall. "The plan's simple: we're packing up and we're walking home."

"Through that?" Stella pointed at what seemed to her to be the biggest, most endless forest ever. "No way."

"Way," said George. "Now let's get to it."

# Candy Land or Chess

Before they left their camp on the cliff, George made the boat-cover tent into a boat-cover pack with rope and a lot of folding, and Stella rearranged the piles of distress-signal-fire sticks into a stick-lettered message of distress for anyone who might be searching for them.

WENRY FREDDY + GEORGE WENT THAT WAY

===/>

WE'RE WALKING HOME

Stella returned the tiny strawberry cart to the strawberry patch and left it where the gnomes could find it. She also picked about 500 wild strawberries to bring along because George said they would need all the berries they could get so they wouldn't die of scurvy, which is a disease you get if you don't have enough vitamin C in your diet. Basically, what happens is you get dizzy and lethargic and then purple sores appear all over your body, your gums start to bleed, and before your teeth even have a chance to fall out, you're dead.

Stella was the tallest so she carried the boat-cover pack. It was okay with her; the makeshift rope straps didn't hurt her shoulders that much, and it only weighed about twenty-five pounds. Freddy rode on top and sometimes nuzzled Stella's cheek and whispered cheerful words of comfort and encouragement.

"Giddy-up, PONY!"

"Freddy ..."

"Just kidding, Toots."

But mostly Freddy was the lookout, keeping a vigilant watch for bears, wolves and ravens with his superior ferret vision. George was the navigator. With his rucksack on his back and Stella's TWA tote dangling from his shoulder and a stout walking stick with a crooked handle that he could use as weapon if he needed to, he led the way.

George stopped, so Stella stopped too. He sighted the sun between the pine trees, looked at the hillock of mossy granite directly in front of them, looked back at Stella, pointed left and said, "That way, I guess." and started walking again.

Stella wasn't exactly sure how George knew which direction was the direction home, or if not home, at least the direction to some cabin or cottage or house or even a 7-Eleven convenience store with a parking lot where they could call her mom from a pay phone with a quarter they might borrow from a nice old lady out walking her dog. The forest was endlessly huge and confusing, a weird mix of so much the same but also really different all at once, and there wasn't actually a trail to follow; they just seemed to be randomly walking around swampy bogs and moss-covered slopes and down into fern-filled gullies and skirting ponds between some of the tallest pine trees she had ever seen. In any case, George gave the impression that he knew where he was going, which was comforting, sort of.

Stella had swapped the Indian princess dress for her shorts, top and rainbow-leopard-print fleece hoodie. The dress would be safer in the TWA tote while they slogged through the forest, and anyway who would see her? just George, Freddy and maybe a moose or possibly a bear. Occasionally a bush or branch would scrape Stella's legs but it usually didn't hurt unless it was full of sharp thorns like the occasional raspberry bush with raspberries that weren't even ripe yet; they were white and green and basically inedible, which only made Stella hungry and slightly annoyed.

"Just don't make me bleed," she told the raspberry bushes, and then she asked George and Freddy, "Hey, is anyone hungry yet?"

"Sure am, Sugarplum."

"Freddy, you're always hungry."

"Because ferrets have an extremely high metabolism."

"Yeah, I know."

"It's what powers our keen sense of smell, our extremely vivid vision, our acute sense of hearing, our superior—"

"It's too soon to eat," interrupted George.

"—sense of taste."

"Why?" asked Stella.

"Our delicate—"

"We've only been walking for about two hours."

"—sense of touch."

"Two hours is a lot."

"Our uncanny ability—"

"No it isn't."

"—to see the future."

"Not if you wanna get back to the Andersen cottage before the first snow falls."

"Snow? George, it's summer."

"Our astonishing good looks, our clairvoyant—"

"Yeah, but when winter hits it's—"

"Wait, wait wait ..." Freddy stopped listing his ferret features and blinked his big brown eyes in disbelief, "Winter?"

"Summer's pretty short up here, Fred. It's nice now, but our fall lasts about five days and then boom, it's winter." George snapped his fingers. "Just like that."

"You only get five days of fall?" asked Stella.

"Sometimes we get six, or seven if we're really lucky, but then all of a sudden it's about twenty below zero with a forty below wind chill. The tent will be useless in that kind of weather, and fishing gets complicated, we're talking three, sometimes four feet of lake ice."

"Maybe we should just keep walking," said Stella.

"Seemingly so." Freddy grabbed a few kernels of candy corn from his stash in Stella's hood. "Here, Sweets, these'll get you through."

"Thanks, Freddy."

"Rawk! Rawk! Rawk! Rawk! Rawk! Rawk!"

George and Stella froze. "The raven!" whispered Stella.

"Rrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrawk!"

They could see the raven perched on a rock in the center of a glade illuminated by shafts of sunlight that penetrated the dense perimeter of cedar trees. The trees towered and leaned and cast a net of shadows over everything, and there was mist from a nearby bog that gave the sunlight a hazy yellow glow that looked as luscious to Stella as a banana lemon Popsicle.

"If only it didn't have that nasty raven-flavored center," she whispered.

"What, Sweets?"

"Rrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrawk!"

"Nothing. What do you think we should do?"

"Run that way." Freddy pointed a claw in the opposite direction.

"I'm not afraid of any stupid raven."

"But that's not just any stupid raven, J.G."

"Yeah? I'll see about that, Fred." George pushed between the low-hanging branches and stepped into the glade.

The raven cocked its head and almost seemed to smile. "Rawk! Kuck! Kuck! Kuck! Kuck!"

"Look, raven, we don't want any trouble from you, in fact we don't want anything from you."

"Rawk! Rawk! Rawk!"

"So fly away, okay? Just leave us alone."

"Rrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrawk!" The raven unfolded its wings as if it was about to take flight, but instead of flying it just flapped them at George. "Rawk! Awk! Awk!"

Freddy jumped from the pack and hit the ground running.

"Freddy!"

"Shoooo! Go! Leave!" George lunged at the raven with his walking stick.

Freddy called, "DON'T J.G.!" but it was already too late. In a flickering second, the walking stick became a writhing serpent without head or tail. George's hand flew away from the thing, but the thing already had him in its coils. It spiraled up his arm, wrapped itself around his neck and started to squeeze.

"Help! Haaaawwwwwlp! Hawwwwwwwuuuullllllllllllllllllll—" And then George stopped shouting. He couldn't breathe.

"Rawk! Rawk! Rawk!"

"George!" Stella dropped the pack and ran to help him while Freddy barked and cawed in Raven, "Rawk! Kuck! Kuck! Rawk!"

The raven turned its head and glared at Freddy. "Rawk! Rawk-awk-awk! Rrrrrrrrrawk!"

"Freddy! Do something!" Stella fell to her knees next to George; he was pulling on the serpent wood, and Stella pulled too, but the harder they pulled the tighter the wood wound itself around his throat. His lips and face were turning blue.

"Rawk-awk-awk!" barked Freddy.

"RAWK! Kuck! Kuck! Kuck! Kuck!" answered the raven.

"Freddy! He's dying!"

Freddy cawed and barked and begged. The angry raven screeched and stabbed the air with its beak, and just when it seemed too late to save George, the raven turned, cawed three times, and the serpent wood unwound itself, slithered away and burned up in a sudden blaze of blue-green fire.

"Can you breathe?"

George choked and gasped for air. He couldn't speak, but Stella could see the color returning to his cheeks. It looked like George would live.

Stella glared at the raven and blurted, "You are an evil beast!"

"Rawk! Rawk! Kuck! Kuck!"

"Don't make him mad," said Freddy.

"Mad? He almost killed George!"

"Shhhhhhhh, Sweets."

"Can you talk?" asked Stella.

"Sorta," George choked.

Freddy loped over to see how George was doing. "Alive, J.G.?"

"Yeah, Fred. Thanks."

"What did you say to the raven?" whispered Stella, "to get that thing off his neck."

"I made a deal, Sugarplum."

"A deal?"

"A raven always likes a good deal."

"What kind of deal?"

"Uh ... Well ... A deal involving you."

"Freddy!"

"Easy, Sweets, easy." Freddy glanced back at the raven; it was still perched on the rock, cocking its head and ruffling its feathers. "No choice, Sugarplum. You were my only bargaining chip. For some reason the raven wants you."

"Well I don't want the raven, and I don't want to be anyone's bargaining chip either."

"Of course you don't, but I did it to save J.G."

"What kind of ... deal?" rasped George.

"The raven likes to play games."

"Games?"

"Board games. Chess, checkers, Yahtzee, cribbage, Candy Land, you name it."

"So?"

"So the deal is this: one game of Candy Land or chess, between you and the raven. The choice of game is yours, J.G. I assume you know how to play Candy Land."

"I was Candy Land champ of Treego three years in a row."

"Treego has a Candy Land champ?" asked Stella.

"Uh-huh," George coughed and cleared his throat. "I have the trophies to prove it."

"That's great, J.G., Candy Land is a go. Now what about chess?"

"Yeah, my Uncle Tor taught me but—"

"Good."

"But it's not my favorite. I guess I'll play Candy Land."

Freddy shook his head. "No."

"No? But I was champ for three—"

"There's too much chance in Candy Land, J.G. We don't want chances. We want strategies. You have to win. If you don't"—Freddy looked back at the raven; it was still there, fluffing feathers and polishing its beak—"the raven gets Sugarplum."

"And that's bad," said Stella.

"Really bad."

"Yeah, it is."

"So you choose chess?" asked Freddy.

"I guess. Okay. Chess."

"And you know how to play?" asked Stella.

"Pretty much, uh-huh."

"Chess it is." Freddy waved a paw at the raven and barked, "Rawk-awk-awk! Kuck! Kuck! Kuck!"

"Please win," said Stella.

"Yeah," said George, "I'm gonna try, believe me."

The chessboard was made of baked cookie dough, gingerbread for the black squares and sugar cookie for the white, while the chess pieces themselves were made of white and dark chocolate. Where it came from was, as Stella liked to say, YTBD—yet to be determined—but there it was where it hadn't been before, conjured from nowhere, a cookie and chocolate chess set positioned on a broad, flat rock in the misty golden glade, just waiting to be played or maybe eaten.

"But I don't speak Raven," George whispered as they approached.

"You only need to know a few Raven words to play chess with a raven," said Freddy, "try saying this: Kuck! Kuck! Rawk! Rawk-awk-awk! Harrrrrk!"

"Kuck! Kuck! Rawk! Rawk-awk-awk! Harrrrrk!" George repeated. "What's it mean?"

"Checkmate. I won."

"How do you say, checkmate, I won, you stupid raven, now curl up and fly?" asked Stella.

The raven ruffled its feathers and squawked. "Rawk!"

"Hi."

"Rawk!" answered the raven. It stood on the table rock and cocked its head this way and that, studying the pieces and also studying George, Stella and Freddy.

"My name's George."

"Rawk! Kuck! Kuck!" said the raven.

"Rawk! Rawk!" answered Freddy, and then he said to George, "The raven wants to be black."

"Okay," said George.

"So you're white."

"Uh-huh."

"Which means you move first," said Freddy, "but you already knew that because you know how to play chess, right, J.G.?"

"Yeah, sure, sort of."

"Good."

"Rawk! Kuck! Kuck! Kuck!" said the raven.

"What's that mean?"

"The raven said, nice shirt," said Freddy

"Oh yeah, this?" George looked down at his shirt and smiled. "Thanks."

"Don't be so friendly," whispered Stella.

"I can't help it," whispered George. "I was taught to be polite."

"But that raven tried to kill you."

"Well, I'm from the Midwest. We're generally very polite people."

"Yeah, but sometimes you have to be mean and ruthless and—"

"Nice, polite, friendly, that's just the way—"

"Rawk!" barked the raven.

"Your move," translated Freddy.

"Yeah, I know. Now could everyone maybe be quiet so I can concentrate?"

"Shhhhhhhhhhhh," shushed Stella.

"Thanks." George sighed and stared at the board and bit his thumb. It looked to Stella like George had never seen a chessboard in his entire life. Great, she thought, and she walked over to the tote to get the TWA Swiss army knife. She thought it might be wise to whittle some long, sharp spear-like sticks while George and the raven played, just in case Freddy's deal with the raven went south and she needed the extra protection.

"Hey, is it okay if I eat something now? I mean just in case it's my last meal and everything."

"Shhhhhhhhhhhh," shushed George.

"Sorry," said Stella.

George moved a pawn and nervously wiped the sweat from his forehead.

"Like maybe some smoked fish?" asked Stella.

"Sure, go ahead," said George.

The raven moved a pawn, which looked funny because the raven had to pick it up with its beak and lean way over the board and then drop it. "Rawk!

"Want some?" asked Stella. "Fish is brain food, it might help you think."

"Not now."

"Freddy?"

"Sure, Sweets, I'm starved." Freddy was getting nervous; he couldn't tell if George actually knew how to play chess or not.

"Hmm ..." George stared at the board and then he moved a knight.

The raven moved a knight. "Rawwwwk!"

George bit his thumb and thought, and then he moved a pawn.

"Kuck! Kuck! Kuck!"

The next moves happened quickly. The raven took George's pawn with its pawn. George took the raven's capturing pawn with his knight. The raven moved a knight's pawn out onto the board. George attacked, taking the raven's knight with his knight. The raven countered by taking George's knight with the queen's pawn.

"Rawk! Rawk! Rrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrak!" squawked the raven in triumph.

George nodded at the raven, and then he slid his queen across the entire length of the board, knocked the raven's queen off the side, and barked what he thought was Raven for "check": "Kuck! Kuck! Rawk! RAWK-AWK-AWK!"

The raven went crazy. The angry bird became an improbable twirling twister of black feathers and blurred claws and beaks. Freddy was blown off the rock and George ducked for cover while his fur hat cartwheeled away. The roar of the wind became an ear-shredding shriek as the black-feathered funnel shot up into the sky taking the chocolate chess set with it.

"Wow! What was that?" laughed Stella, She had just finished whittling the first of what she thought would be many dangerously sharp sticks when she heard the raven's shrieks of rage.

"I don't know." George blinked and rubbed the dust from his eyes.

"Did you win?"

"Nope, not yet."

"Then why did the raven freak?"

"Took his queen. Guess it made the raven a little mad."

"That raven was born mad," said Freddy as he brushed the twigs and pine needles from his fur. He half expected to see the raven circling above them in the sky, but the only thing up there besides the sun was a commercial airplane jetting across the wide open blue at its standard cruising altitude of 36,000 feet. "Airplane, Toots."

"Airplane?" Stella grabbed the TWA scarf from the tote and began to wave it. "AIRPLANE! HEY! WE'RE DOWN HERE AND READY TO BE RESCUED! HEY AIRPLANE! HEY AIRPLANE! HEY—"

"I'm afraid it's too far away, Sugarplum. They can't see you."

"Yeah." Stella stopped jumping and sort of slouched under the weight of her disappointment. All three of them wistfully watched it go wherever it was going, Paris, London, Tokyo or Toledo.

"Jet planes," said Stella, "why do they have to fly so high?"

# The Wonderful Chainsaws of Buzz

Stella circled the table rock where the now missing chessboard had last been seen. She was looking for clues to the raven's crazy, raging, twister exit. "I wonder where he went."

"Who cares? Let's get out of here before he comes back," said George.

"Maybe he won't come back," said Stella, "ever."

"He'll be back," said Freddy. "He's out there somewhere studying a book on chess strategy. You really ruffled his feathers, J.G."

"Got lucky, I guess."

"I was beginning to think you didn't know how to play," said Freddy.

"I know how to play, it's just ... I mean ... Uncle Tor always wins."

"Look!" Stella crouched down.

"What, Sweets?"

"The queen and a feather." One of the raven's long, black tail feathers was propped quill end down in a blueberry bush next to a green patch of moss pillowing the dark chocolate queen. Stella picked up the queen and, after brushing the bits of moss and dirt off, took a bite.

"Hmmmm ..."

"How is it?"

"Yummy. Here." She offered the queen to Freddy.

"No chocolate for me, Sweets."

"George? Want some? Spoils of war?"

"What if it's poisoned?"

"Doesn't taste poisoned."

"I don't trust it, and I don't trust that raven. It's all yours."

"Okay." She dropped the feather in the tote, and nibbled on the dark queen. A chickadee flew into the glade, landed on the table rock and chick-a-dee-dee-deed. The forest could be so peaceful, thought Stella. A nice day like today with a lot of sun, a little wind and a few singing birds, a girl could get used to it. "Hey, come on, let's get going." She handed George her tote and hoisted the boat-canvas pack onto her back. "Ready, Freddy?"

"Just a sec, Sugarplum ..." Freddy sat up and cupped his paws behind his ears. "Does anyone hear what I hear?"

"What do you hear?"

"Chainsaws."

"Chainsaws?"

"Positively chainsaws."

"I don't hear anything."

"Me either," said George.

Freddy sniffed and listened and then he pointed. "That way, two chainsaws, possibly three."

"Yeah? Let's go!" said George.

"But isn't that the wrong direction?" Stella pointed the other way. "Weren't we going that way before?"

"Sure, but where there are chainsaws there are lumberjacks, and where there are lumberjacks there are logging roads, and where there are logging roads—"

"There's rescue!" said Freddy. "And where there's rescue, there's a can of Mighty Cat Chicken Liver Lover and where there's a can of Mighty Cat—"

"Okay, I get it," Stella said. "But what if it's a trick? Huh? Maybe the raven's trying to lure us deeper into the forest."

"I guess it could be a trick," said George.

Freddy closed his eyes and sniffed. "I can smell the exhaust from the engines." He opened his eyes. "I don't think it's a trick. Maybe the raven could fake the sound but not the smell. It smells like real chainsaws."

"Good, let's go," said George.

"Okay with you, Sugarplum?"

"How far away do you think they are, Freddy?"

"I estimate seven miles, give or take one or two, Toots."

"Only seven miles to rescue! We could be there in two or three hours."

"Let's go!"

"You lead, Wenry. We'll follow Fred's ears."

Freddy guided them through the forest with his exceptional sense of hearing by saying into Stella's right ear "Little more to the left, Sweets," and into her left ear "Little more to the right, Toots." After an hour of hiking, even Stella and George could hear the chainsaws. The faint, distant buzz and whine of gas-powered engines thrilled Stella with the promise of rescue and a celebratory dinner back at the cottage of beef stroganoff, roasted Brussels sprouts, spinach salad with blue cheese dressing, a tall glass of whole milk and chocolate éclairs for dessert—basically her favorite meal—followed by a hot bath, a down comforter, a fluffy pillow and a good night's sleep. Yeah.

"Little more to the left, Sweets."

"Left it is, Freddy," said Stella, and then she began to sing her own made-up-on-the-spot words to the tune of that well-known song about The Wonderful Wizard of Oz

"We're off to see the chainsaws, the wonderful chainsaws of buzz ... It really is a biz of a buzz, if ever there wiz a wuz ... If ever there wiz a wuz of fuzz, the chainsaws of buzz are cutting because ... Because, because, because, because, becuzzzzzzzzzzzzz .... Because forest product harvesting, is what the chainsaw does! Da-da, da-da, da-dahhhh ... We're off to see the chainsaws, the wonderful chainsaws of buzzzzzzzzzzz!"

"Cute song, Sugarplum. Little more to the right."

"Right it is, Freddy." Stella hummed her song and skipped when she could. There wasn't a cloud in the sky and the sun was hot; even the deep green, moss-covered shady places had lost their morning cool. Stella noticed that the warmer the forest became, the more fragrant the forest became; it was like a forest-flavored cake baking in an oven, a cake made with juniper, cedar, pine, balsam and birch. They climbed a broad hill, dodging between the wide trunks of tall red pines, and when they finally reached the top, the chainsaw buzz was decidedly louder.

"Hear that?" asked George.

"Sure do."

"Let's go!" He ran down the hill, over blueberry bushes and club moss, and between sweet ferns that had grown so tall they occasionally brushed the brim of his fur hat.

"Woo hoo!" Stella galloped after him and Freddy clung to the pack like he was riding a bucking bronco.

"Easy, Sweets!" Freddy laughed. "Easy!"

George stopped running when he reached the water. "Great," he moaned, "just exactly what we don't need now." There was a lake obstinately placed between them and their rescue, or so the whining, buzzing chainsaws seemed to indicate. They stood on the shore and looked left and right. The lake wasn't very wide but it was very, very long.

"We'll just have to walk around it," said Freddy.

"Which way?" asked Stella.

"Your guess is as good as mine," said George.

"What do your ears say, Freddy? Should we go that way?" Stella pointed left, "or should we go—hey, what's that?"

"What?"

"That." Stella pointed. "See it?"

"I see it, Sweets."

"What is it?"

"Looks like some kind of cabin. You two stay here." George dropped his rucksack and the tote, "I'll take a look."

"Be careful," said Stella, "it could be the home of that Sasquatch guy."

"Yeah, be ready to run." George crept between the trees and crawled and snuck up on an ancient cabin with a slate shingle roof. The cabin was so weathered and overgrown with moss that it practically disappeared into the forest, and George was surprised how small it was, it was very small, the front door was only three feet high and—

George ran back to warn them.

"Furry slouching Sasquatch lair?" asked Stella.

"Troll cabin," whispered George.

"With an actual troll inside?" Stella was curious; she had never seen a real troll before, she had only seen them in books. Seeing a real troll was almost better than seeing a real bear or a real moose.

"I didn't look."

"Let's look."

"Trolls are trouble," said Freddy.

"Trolls can also grant a wish," said Stella.

"Says who?" asked George.

"It's in one of my books at home," said Stella. "If we can capture a troll, he'll grant us a wish in exchange for his freedom."

"Trolls stink," said Freddy, "they almost never bathe."

"What would we wish for?" asked George.

"Hmm, let me see ..." Stella put her finger to her cheek and looked up at the sky in mock concentration. "Well, we might wish to be back in your uncle's rowboat at the end of the Andersen cottage dock with maybe six bags of gold and a dozen raised glazed doughnuts. That might make a nice wish, wouldn't you say?"

"But that's four wishes."

"Not if it's all in the same sentence."

"Says who?"

"Says everyone. If it's all in the same sentence, it's one wish."

"Oh."

"So let's nab that troll."

"Nabbing a troll is a bad idea, Toots. I advise keeping at least a football field between you and a troll at all times."

"Freddy, a wish! We could use one. Let's have a look."

As they crept toward the cabin, carefully avoiding sticks on the ground that could snap or leaves that might crunch, they each took personal inventory of their weapons, in case a troll should happen to be inside and should randomly decide to attack. Stella carried her sharpened stick and her TWA Swiss army knife. George had his pocketknife and a short length of rope. Freddy had his razor-sharp teeth and his dagger-sharp claws. Smoke swirled up from the cabin chimney, and there was a soft glow of firelight flickering in two tiny windows.

"He's in there," whispered Stella, "there's a fire in the fireplace."

"Shhhhhhhhhhhh," shushed Freddy.

They crept and crawled and then crouched near one of the windows. Stella was the first to look through the tiny windowpanes, and what she saw thrilled her and scared her at the same time. There was a troll seated at a tiny table near the fire. His face was creased with deep wrinkles that pooled with dark shadows, and he had long white hair and a little wisp of a white beard on his chin. He wore funny troll clothes made of thick blue felt, red leather and gray tree bark. He was smoking a pipe and his gnarly bare feet didn't touch the floor even though the chair was very short and stumpy. That was fine because that was the troll, but what scared Stella was this: sitting on the other side of the table was—

"The raven."

"What?" George pushed her away so he could see. "The raven," he whispered.

"Doing what?" whispered Freddy.

"Guess they're arguing about the gold."

Freddy scrambled up on Stella's shoulder for a look. The troll and raven sat at opposite ends of the table, and between them in heaps and piles was a queen's ransom in gold. "They're speaking Troll," he whispered.

"What're they saying?" asked George.

"Don't know. I never learned Troll."

"Why not?"

"Because I never wanted to learn Troll. Trolls are trouble."

"Then how do you know they're speaking Troll?"

"Because Troll sounds like Bullfrog, but uses the grammar of Elf. There's also a troll at the table, that's a big giveaway, J.G."

"Let's get out of here," whispered Stella.

"Let's," agreed Freddy, but when they turned to sneak away, they saw something they hadn't noticed before. Tethered to the end of a tiny troll dock in a small bay in front of the troll cabin was a human-sized speedboat, rocket red with chrome trim. It bobbed and rolled in the waves like a fantastic, adult-sized water toy, and sparkled like a mirage in the sun.

"Holy bananas," whispered George. "Look ..."

"A speedboat," confirmed Freddy.

"Cool," said Stella.

"You got your wish, Wenry."

"Part of it, anyway."

"Even without capturing a stinky troll," whispered Freddy.

They crept back to where they had stowed their packs and carried them down along the shore to the tiny troll dock. They watched the troll cabin, and listened for any troll or raven sounds, and when they felt pretty sure the coast was clear, they crept out to the end of the dock and climbed on board.

"You actually know how to drive one of these things?" asked Stella.

"I could do it in my sleep," said George. He was checking the gas tanks and the lines, making sure everything was hooked and ready to deliver fuel to the twin seventy-five horse outboard motors. "Gas tanks are full." He climbed into the driver's seat and checked the ignition, "Just like a troll, no key."

"No key?"

"Nope."

"Now what?"

"We can't start it. I guess we could paddle it."

"If we had paddles."

"Maybe the troll hid the keys on the boat somewhere." George looked in the glove compartment. Stella checked the side compartments. George searched the storage spaces under the seats, but no keys.

"Uhh, this is so frustrating," said Stella. It's also completely nerve-racking, she thought. In that direction the chainsaws continued to whine, buzz and cut, but for how long? At any minute the lumberjacks could quit for the day and get in their muddy pickup trucks and drive home for dinner. Meanwhile, in the opposite direction, the musty raven was fighting over a pile of gold coins with the smelly troll in his stinky cabin. "If that troll comes out for a breath of fresh air we're gonna be trapped at the end of his dock. Let's get out of here while we still can."

"Hold on a sec, maybe we could ..." George snapped his fingers. "Fred?"

"J.G.?"

"You're a ferret."

"I thought you'd never notice."

"Why don't you sneak into the troll cabin and ferret out the boat keys."

"Because maybe I'd prefer not to?"

"Fred, we need your ferret skills."

"I'd love to help, J.G., but I've got this thing about trolls."

"You've got a thing about water, you've got a thing about trolls, what don't you have a thing about?"

"Sleep."

"Yeah?"

"That's right. I love a good sleep, a solid night's rest, even a nap! I love a pleasant afternoon nap."

"Do it for Wenry, Fred."

"Wenry? Oh right, Wenry ..." Freddy glanced at Stella; she looked so disappointed and upset that it made Freddy feel terrible. "Okay, okay, I'll do it for you, Sugarplum, but what about the smell? The smell of a troll is no joke. That's a smell that can kill."

"How about these, Freddy?" Stella grabbed two kernels of candy corn from her pocket and presented them on the palm of her hand. "One for each nostril."

"Perfect, Sweets! These'll do the trick." Freddy pushed the kernels up his nose, pointy end first so that the wide ends stuck out like candy corn tusks. "I'll be back in a jiff—"

"With the key but without a whiff or sniff of that smelly troll!" laughed Stella.

"Shhhhhhhh," shushed George and then he turned to give Fred some advice about how to get in and where to look, but Freddy was just a blur of fur streaking down the troll dock, disappearing up the troll path, heading for the troll cabin door.

"He's fast."

"Ferrets are fast."

"Greased lightening."

"Basically, yeah." Stella closed her eyes and tried to imagine the troll cabin key hunt in Freddy-Vision: low to the ground and moving fast, run up to the cabin and around the back, up the wall, through the propped-open kitchen window, across the counter, down to the floor, into the front room, under the table between troll and raven (still arguing about gold), into the bedroom, up on the bed, burrow between the covers and under the pillow, bingo! Boat key. With key ring in mouth, leap off the bed, streak into the front room, detour up a chair, sashay across the table and knock over two towering stacks of coins.

Raven: Rrrrrrrrawk!

Troll: Blegblech!

Dive to the floor, scamper to the kitchen, slip out the window, run around the side to the front and—

Stella opened her eyes and saw Freddy streaking down the path to the dock. "He's back!"

"Way to go, Fred!"

Freddy leaped into the boat and dropped the key in George's hand.

"Now let's see if this thing starts." He put the key in the ignition. "Prepare to cast off, Wenry."

"Aye, aye, Captain!"

The angry troll was chugging down the path on stumpy troll legs, burping and barking at them in Troll. "Gurrbeck! Gurrbeck! Gurrbeck!"

"Troll at six o'clock!" Stella pushed the boat away from the dock and jumped in. "Let's go!"

George cranked the key and the twin outboard motors made a chucka-chucka-chucka sound and then they smoked, sputtered and died.

"Come on, J.G."

"I'm trying, Fred." George turned the key again. Everything was quiet except for the chucka-chucka-chucka of the motors not starting, and the sloshing of the waves pushing the boat back to the dock, and the distant buzzy whine of the chainsaws across the lake, and the thump thump thump thump of troll feet running.

"Troll on the dock!" shouted Stella.

"Come on," George whispered as he turned the key with crossed fingers. The engines burbled and sputtered and died.

"TROLL FIVE FEET AND CLOSING!" yelled Stella, and then what happened next happened all at once. The outboard motors started with a smoky roar. The troll leaped headfirst for the boat. The speedboat reared up with the sudden push from the propellers and pulled away. The furious troll arced through the air, waving his stubby arms and barking "GURRBECK! GURRBECK! GURRBECK!" The speedboat leveled out and then really took off as the troll plunged into its frothy wake with a scream and a hiss.

"Whooooo! Hoooooo!" hooted George.

"See ya, Stinky!" shouted Stella.

"Stinky is right." Freddy pulled the candy corn nostril plugs out of his nose and waved goodbye to the thrashing, splashing troll. "He could use a bath."

# Lake Endless

"Where do you wanna go?" asked George.

"HOME!" shouted Freddy and Stella.

"HOME IT IS!" George pushed the throttle forward and the side-by-side seventy-five horse outboard motors roared. "WOO HOO!" The sudden rush of acceleration blew the hat off his head; it tumbled until it stopped propped against Stella's TWA tote in the back. "SURE IS A GREAT BOAT!"

"YEAH!" Stella sat opposite George on the forward facing seat, and Freddy sat on her shoulder with his tail wrapped around her neck. They were going so fast that it felt like a dream. Stella loved the wind in her hair and the roar of the engines, but she didn't want the boat to hit a rock; she didn't want the dream to become a nightmare. "HEY! MAYBE DON'T GO SO FAST."

"I KNOW WHAT I'M DOING, I'VE BEEN DRIVING SPEEDBOATS SINCE I WAS NINE."

"BUT WHAT IF WE HIT SOMETHING?"

"I'M WATCHING!" George squinted into the wind, keeping an eye out for sandbars and rocks.

"You watch too, Freddy."

"Will do, Sweets."

"LET'S GO FIND THOSE LUMBERJACKS BEFORE THEY LEAVE FOR THE DAY."

"WE DON'T NEED'EM NOW. WE'VE GOT THE BOAT." George pointed west. "THE COTTAGE IS THAT WAY. WE SHOULD BE THERE IN ABOUT AN HOUR. WANNA DO A LITTLE WATERSKIING ON THE WAY BACK?"

"I DON'T HAVE A SWIMSUIT."

"THERE'S GEAR ALL OVER THIS BOAT. TAKE A LOOK AROUND. THERE MIGHT BE A FEW SWIMSUITS AND WETSUITS STASHED SOMEWHERE."

Actually Stella didn't want to look for swimsuits or wetsuits. There was a horseshoe-shaped couch of built-in seating in the bow of the boat that looked really comfortable. She got the coffee can full of strawberries from the pack, and while Freddy explored the back, she took a seat in the front. It felt great to watch the shore speed by and occasionally eat a wild strawberry that she had picked in the forest just that morning.

"Bet my mom's crazy worried," Stella handed the can to George. "Think your uncle's crazy worried about you?"

"Probably not. My uncle doesn't worry about anything."

"Really? What's he do?"

"Mostly he just thinks about stuff. He likes to ponder and smoke his pipe."

"No, I mean what's he do for a job?"

"Theoretical physics. He specializes in time theory." George was sitting up on the top of the backrest with his feet on the seat and his hands on the steering wheel. There was a lever to his right that he moved to make the boat go faster and slower. It was a good thing the boat didn't have gas and brake pedals like a car, thought Stella, because there was no way George could reach pedals with his feet and see over the steering wheel at the same time.

"Hey, where'd you learn how to drive a speedboat?"

"At my cousins, they've got a place on Lake Wanna-Shee-Wago with three boats."

"Three speedboats?"

"Yeah, different sizes. They like to water ski. You ever tried it?"

"Nope. Is it hard?"

"At first, yeah. It's hard to get up, but once you do, it's really fun."

"Maybe we could try it later after we get back." Stella faced the front and leaned out over the water with her head resting on her hands and her elbows braced against the side. The warm wind kissed her cheeks and kind of made her feel like she was one of those clipper ship figureheads, the goddesses, angels and mermaids carved from wood, painted and posted at the prows of fast sailing ships. "How fast are we going?" she asked.

"Twenty-four knots."

"What's that? A knot?"

"It's a nautical measure of speed which equals approximately 1.15 miles per hour."

Stella rolled her eyes. Leave it to George to take a simple question and turn it into something confusing involving an equation. "Hey, what happened to your parents?"

"What do you mean?"

"Are they dead? I mean, why do you live with your uncle?"

"Nope. They're not dead. They're just in Europe."

"They went to Europe without you?"

"Yeaup. About three years ago after they won the Super-Lotto Mega-Prize."

"Seriously? They won? For how much?"

"Close to six million."

"Six million? Wow, but how come they didn't take you along?"

"'Cause I guess they thought it was better if I stayed in Treego and finished school."

"When are they coming back?"

"Not exactly sure, but Mummsy says—"

"Mummsy?" Stella laughed. "You call your mom Mummsy?"

George dug a postcard out of one of his cargo shorts pockets and handed it to her. The front featured a picture of Drottningholm Palace in Stockholm, and on the back there was this:

Our Dearest George,

We've only just now come from an absolutely fabulous museum, the Moderna Museet! Absolutely breathtaking, really! Dashing off this short note to you before we have dinner at an award-winning, three-star restaurant: Smutsen Gården! Our personal concierge informs me that their specialty is steamed garden slugs with raw beets and burnt goat cheese. I simply can't wait! Give our best to Uncle Torvald. Wish you were here!

Love,

Mummsy and Dads!

"Yeaup, there it is ... Mummsy ..." Stella handed the card back. "But it just seems kinda weird."

"Weirder than a talking ferret?"

"No, but—"

"Sugarplum ..." Freddy loped up from the back of the boat carrying something pink and something shiny. "Look what I found for you."

"Sunglasses," said Stella.

"Helps fight the glare."

"Thanks, Freddy." There was a mirrored pair of aviator glasses with silver rims and a pink-framed pair of Wayfarers. Stella took the pinks and handed the mirrors to George. "Hey, do you want your hat?" Stella had never seen George without his fur hat and she was beginning to miss it.

"Sure, thanks." George slipped on the mirrored shades. "Grab the Clark Bar out of my pack while you're back there. It's time to celebrate."

"What're we celebrating?"

"We're going home. We'll be back in time for dinner."

"You really think? This morning you said we might not get home before winter, and that was a pretty gloomy thing to say."

"Yeah, but that was before this Chris-Craft." George patted the steering wheel. "It's why they're called speedboats, everything happens really fast."

Stella found the Clark Bar and grabbed the hat. "Here you go, Captain Chris-Craft." She pushed the hat down on his head so it wouldn't blow away, and then she returned to the bow lounge, unwrapped the Clark Bar and split it in half. "Here."

"Thanks."

Stella took a bite of her half and watched the rippling blue water blur and vanish under the speeding hull of the boat. She liked facing forward but she also like facing the back so she could watch George drive the boat. In his Hawking Quantum Physics Camp jersey, mirrored aviator sunglasses and fur hat, Stella thought he looked a lot like an evil genius in a James Bond 007 movie, an evil genius who had a thing about fur and also a secret hideout built inside a mountain where he was using his quantum physics camp knowledge to secretly design and build a doomsday machine that could possible destroy the entire world! And Stella Sky is his public relations manager; she handles the television appearances, national magazine interviews and official press—

Something swept by that interrupted Stella's train of thought; it was there and then it was gone, a strange peripheral thing that made her eyes go wide.

"Did you see that?"

"See what?" George glanced back.

"The troll cabin."

"What?"

"We just passed the troll cabin."

"Not possible."

"Then we just passed a cabin that looked exactly like the troll cabin."

"Not impossible, but very unlikely."

"You didn't see it?"

"Nope."

"Freddy, did you see it?"

"Didn't see it, Sugarplum."

"Well, I saw it, and it was the troll cabin."

"Did it have a dock?"

"The exact same dock."

"Was there a wet troll on the dock?"

"Maybe. I'm not sure. We're going pretty fast."

"Is there any smoked fish left?" asked George. "That Clark Bar made me hungry."

"But what about the troll cabin?"

"Guess it's just another troll cabin. Maybe they all look the same." George adjusted his mirrored sunglasses and turned on the speedboat stereo system. "Sure you don't wanna try a little waterskiing on the way back?"

"Yeah, I'm sure. I just wanna get home."

The first song to blast from the boat speakers was The Ventures playing "Wipe Out," with the rata-tat-tat of a snare drum mixed with the twangy buzz of electric guitars.

"Surf music," muttered Stella, "that figures."

"What, Toots?"

"COME ON, WENRY." George pushed the boat throttle up to the notch labeled MAX. The engines roared and the boat accelerated. "PARTY TIME!" George stood up on the seat and started to dance The Swim.

"HEY, MAYBE YOU SHOULD SIT DOWN WHILE YOU'RE DRIVING THE BOAT." Stella shouted, but the roar of the outboard motors and the loud surf music made it impossible to hear anything. "MAYBE JUST SIT DOWN AND WATCH OUT FOR ROCKS! OKAY?" Stella was beginning to get a bad feeling about this lake and the loud surf music wasn't helping.

Nineteen minutes went by. Six more songs from The Ventures Sixties Surfing Hits played on the boat stereo. George danced The Frug. One more identical troll cabin with an identical troll dock in an identical tiny bay went by on the port side of the boat, again.

"See the cabin, Freddy?"

"I see it, Sweets."

"What do you think it means?"

"Search me."

Seventeen more minutes went by. Seven more tunes from The Ventures Sixties Surfing Hits played on the boat stereo including "Diamond Head," "Ram Bunk Shush" and "Hang-Ten or Lose Five." George danced The Dog, and one more identical troll cabin with an identical troll dock in an identical tiny bay went by on the port side of the boat, again.

"See it, Freddy?"

"Sure do."

"What do you think?"

"Weird and unlikely, Sweets, and what's up with J.G.?"

"Maybe it's the mirror sunglasses. See how they ripple and warp?"

"Mirrors," said Freddy, "reflective deceptive perspective."

Eighteen more minutes went by. Six more tracks from The Ventures Sixties Surfing Hits played on the boat stereo, including "Pipeline," "Bombara" and "Theme From Hawaii Five-O," and one more identical troll cabin with an identical troll dock in an identical tiny bay on the port side of the boat was coming up again, and George the evil genius danced The Jerk to "Walk Don't Run" like there was no tomorrow. Stella decided that was that, she'd had enough.

"Mutiny time, Freddy."

"You can say that again, Sugarplum."

"GEORGE, LOOK!" Stella pointed.

"WHAT?"

"IT'S THE VERY SAME TROLL CABIN AGAIN! THIS LAKE IS A TRICK! WE'RE GOING IN CIRCLES! GEORGE! STOP!" Stella snatched the sunglasses off his face and tossed them in the lake. "STOP THE BOAT, NOW!"

George blinked at her as if waking from a dream.

"GEORGE! LOOK!" Stella pointed at the troll cabin and then the roaring outboard motors sputtered, coughed and stopped. The speedboat coasted into an aimless drift and a winged shadow passed over the boat. The three of them looked up.

"The raven ..."

"I knew it!"

"Evil bird."

The raven flapped its wings and climbed higher; it looked down on the two kids and their talking ferret adrift in a speedboat on a doughnut-shaped lake, one half mile wide and eleven miles around, an enormous circle of water with one giant island in the middle. They had been speeding in circles for almost two hours.

"What a waste," said Stella. She switched off the stereo and their speedboat party collapsed into silence.

"Both tanks are empty," said George from the back.

"We were tricked," said Stella.

"Rawk! Rawk! Ark-ark-ark! Rrrrrrrawk!"

"What's that raven rawking about, Freddy?"

"That's what you brats get for taking my queen."

"Seriously?"

"Seriously, Sweets, only nastier."

"Dang nabbit." George kicked one of the empty gas tanks; it made a weird clunking sound like a broken gong and then he hopped up and down from the pain and shouted, "OWWW! STUPID RAVEN."

"Actually we're the ones who were stupid," said Stella.

"Yeah, J.G. How could you could you possibly drive us around in circles for two hours?"

"I'm sorry, I guess I just ... I just wasn't paying attention or something 'cause it was so much fun."

"Yeah, it was fun," said Stella, "except for the circles part."

"Listen ... Do you hear what I don't hear?" asked Freddy.

"No more chainsaws," said George.

"They left without us," moaned Stella, "now what'll we do?"

"Drop anchor and wait for morning," said George. "They'll be back tomorrow."

"Unless tomorrow's Saturday. Is tomorrow Saturday, Freddy?"

"Tomorrow's Wednesday, Sugarplum."

"Good," said Stella, "drop the anchor."

"Anchor away." George flipped a switch on the dashboard panel and an electric motor slowly lowered the bow anchor into the lake. "Guess I'll do a little fishing before the sun goes down."

"Rawk! Rawk! Rawk! Rawk! Rrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrawk!"

The three of them watched the raven, turning and turning in a widening gyre.

"What's that bird yakking about now?" asked George.

"He keeps shouting the name of this lake," said Freddy. "The raven seems to think it's really funny."

"Why?"

"Yeah, what is it?" asked Stella.

# Wireless Telegraphy Apparatus

There was a lot of peace and quiet on Lake Endless at dusk. The speedboat was tethered to its anchor chain, aimlessly drifting in the soft breeze but never going far. George was casting from the bow, fishing for walleye. His line was baited with a Dardevle spoon that glittered and flashed white and red before it splashed into the lake. Stella was stretched out on one of the seats that folded down to make a bed. With her head propped up on a life preserver, she watched the ever-changing sky go from snow cone blue, to cantaloupe orange, to cotton candy pink, to a fiery sugar bomb of watermelon taffy red. Freddy sat next to her and paged through the Boy Scouts' Official Handbook for Boys.

"I didn't know you could read, Freddy."

"I'm just a ferret full of surprises, Sweets."

"Are you looking for something?"

"The chapter on how to build an airplane out of pine trees."

"Good idea."

"And power it with lake water."

"That's an even better idea."

"Hoooooo-OOOOOT!"

"Ha ha-ha-ha-ha! Ha ha-ha-ha-ha! Ha ha-ha-ha-ha! Ha ha-ha-ha-ha!"

"Hoooooo-OOOOOT!"

Stella sat up and spied two loons floating on the snow cone blue water, their dark silhouettes against the watermelon taffy sky.

"Do you speak Loon?"

"I understand Loon, but it's completely impossible to speak unless you are a loon, or a Swiss mountain yodeler."

"I could be a Swiss mountain yodeler."

"Truly, Toots?"

"Absolutely." Stella flashed a smile and sang, "Yodel-odel-dodel-doodle-oodle-lay-hee-hoooooooooo!"

"Hoooooooooo-OOOOOOOOOT!" answered a loon.

"What did I say?" asked Stella.

"I think you just made a date."

"I made a date with a loon?"

"Mm-hmm. You yodeled, 'Meet me near the bay where the bass swim deep,' and the loon answered, 'See you there at seven, baby!' "

"Freddy, loons don't say baby, do they?"

"This one did."

Stella cupped her hands around her mouth and shouted, "I WAS JUST KIDDING!"

"Ha ha-ha-ha-ha! Ha ha-ha-ha-ha! Ha ha-ha-ha-ha!" the loon answered.

"You're gonna break that loon's heart," said George between casts.

"Hoooooooooo-OOOOOOOOOT!" said the loon.

"See," said George.

"SORRY!" shouted Stella. "BUT WE CAN STILL BE FRIENDS!"

"Hoooooooooo-OOOOOOOOOT!"

"I've got it," said Freddy.

"Got what?" asked George.

"Here, page 299, wireless telegraphy apparatus—"

"What's that?" asked Stella.

"Radio."

"Oh."

"If we build one we can send an SOS."

"You mean like in that ABBA song?"

"Exactly like in that ABBA song, Sweets." Freddy extended a claw and pointed at the page. "It includes instructions for building a stationary wireless sending and receiving set for use in the meeting place of any scout patrol."

"I already thought of that," said George.

"Oh really, J.G.? Exactly when?"

"Yesterday."

"Then why didn't you say something."

"Parts, Fred. Where'ya gonna get the parts?" George leaned his fishing pole in the corner. The sky was darker now. A quarter moon was hanging a quarter sky away from the western horizon, and a few planets and the brighter stars and thousands of satellites sparkled above them. He switched on the flashlight and shined the beam on the book. "First we need a pair of watch-case receivers, then we need a loose coupler tuning coil, and a crystal detector, and a variable condenser, and a fixed condenser, and a—"

"You guys wanna build a wireless telegraphy apparatus?" asked Stella.

"We would if we could," said George.

"And send out a signal of distress?"

"SOS, Sugarplum."

"Hoooooooooo-OOOOOOOOOT!" a loon called from somewhere out on the lake.

"Well, what about this one?" Stella sat in the front seat, turned on the stereo and switched it to AM radio. A static-strafed voice broadcasting from Thunder Bay, Ontario said, "You are listening to CABA-AM, eh? Trans-Canadian talk radio ... Let's take our next caller, eh?"

"Parts," said Freddy.

"Parts," agreed George.

"How come he keeps saying 'eh'?" asked Stella.

It looked a lot like surgery, surgery where the surgeons didn't know what they were doing but were going to try anyway even though their tools were wrong and everything was unraveling into a complete mess. George and Freddy sat on the floor with the CD player radio thing pulled out and pulled apart into circuit boards, wires, transistors and resistors, teeny-tiny screws and itty-bitty nuts. Stella was up front, couched in one of the built-in bow seats, studying the sky. She wasn't interested in the radio now that it was just parts spread across the boat's indoor-outdoor carpeting. The radio had been a lot more interesting while it still had Canadian talk radio voices arguing about serious Canadian issues. Before George had pulled the plug, one lady caller was angry about a new proposal for a change in the Canadian maple syrup grading system.

"I didn't know maple syrup got grades," said Stella.

"I didn't know maple syrup went to school," said Freddy.

One guy called to complain about ice hockey, specifically the Winnipeg Jets. He said they couldn't be trusted. He said the Jets had left Winnipeg once and they would do it again. Stella guessed he was a broken-hearted man. He kept telling everyone in Canadian talk radio land, "Doon't fall in loove wid 'em, eh?" Another caller called to complain about what she called "The looming Royal Canadian Mounted Police horse shortage crisis." Another caller called to complain about the caller who had called to complain about the ice hockey team known as the Winnipeg Jets. He said the previous caller should "Get a life, eh?" He also said the Winnipeg Jets should be renamed the Manitoba Muskrats. "What's Jets got to do with us Manitobans, eh?"

"Isn't it baseball season?" asked Stella.

"Not in Canada," said Freddy.

"Hockey twenty-four seven, three-sixty-five," said George as he pulled the cables off the boat battery, and Canadian talk radio died in an electric gasp of AM static.

Now Stella was looking up at the sky, watching the big dipper slowly spin around Polaris and thinking about home. She was wondering what her little brother Russell and her mom were having for dinner. She thought about it for a while and decided Russell was probably having a big bowl of ketchup with some ketchup on top, and her mom wasn't eating anything because she was so upset that Stella was gone, she had lost her appetite.

"We still need to make a loose coupler tuning coil," said George, who was using Stella's TWA Swiss army knife to pry one of the eight-ohm resisters off a circuit board.

Things could be a lot worse, thought Stella. It was a warm night, and there weren't too many mosquitoes, and they still had a little smoked fish left and one quarter of a coffee can full of wild strawberries. That would be their dinner, washed down with a nice, tall glass of lake water.

"Does that look like a crystal tuner to you, Fred?" asked George.

"Hey, when do you wanna eat dinner?" asked Stella.

"What's for dinner?" asked George.

"The usual."

"Smoked fish and strawberries?"

"Don't sound so excited."

"I'm not excited," said George.

"I'll be having candy corn," said Freddy.

"I sure wouldn't mind something besides lake water to drink with dinner tonight," said Stella.

"If you're looking for sugary bubbles, Sweets, there's a six-pack of Dr Pepper in one of the cubbies back here," announced Freddy.

"Dr Pepper's on board?"

"He sure is."

"Why didn't you say something sooner?"

"Because you only liked root beer and grape, Sweets."

"That's at home, Freddy. These are special circumstances." Stella walked back along the port side of the boat, stepping from seat to seat to avoid the CD player radio parts scattered across the floor.

"Where?"

"There." Freddy pointed and Stella reached in and pulled out the six of Dr P.

After their dinner of smoked fish, wild strawberries and a can of Dr Pepper each, George and Freddy returned to their handmade radio project and Stella got ready for bed.

"The bow is my bedroom, okay?" She flipped up one of the seats and pulled out three beach towels and a fleece blanket, and then she pulled out the hidden foldout panel that transformed the built-in bow seats into a built-in bow bed. She arranged the blanket and the beach towels into covers, tied up her hair with the TWA scarf, climbed in, closed her eyes, and waited for sleep.

"Good night," said Stella.

"Good night, Wenry."

"Sweet dreams, Toots."

About an hour and twenty minutes later Stella opened her eyes and sat up. George and Freddy were still huddled over their radio project. The cold white beam of a boat utility light shined up at them from the floor and cast strange, mask-like shadows on their faces. Freddy was assembling something from a cluster of multicolored wires and George was attaching something to something with the Swiss Army knife screwdriver. Out on the water, a loon called and another loon, much farther away, answered.

"Ha ha-ha-ha-ha! Ha ha-ha-ha-ha! Ha ha-ha-ha-ha! Ha ha-ha-ha-ha!"

"Hoooooooooo-OOOOOOOOOT!"

"Hey, is that wireless telegraphy sending and receiving apparatus almost done yet?"

"Almost," said George, "I think."

"I can't sleep," said Stella.

"It's probably the caffeine in the Dr Pepper, Sweets."

"What time is it?"

"Around midnight," said George.

"Midnight? Hmm ..." Stella pulled the blanket up around her shoulders and looked out into the dark. She could see a fire burning about a quarter mile away near the troll cabin. Occasionally a tiny silhouette would appear and then disappear in the firelight, and the fire was so large and the flames were so bright that Stella thought it must be a bonfire.

"Is that the troll?" she asked.

"Where?" asked George.

"Over there near the troll cabin. I think the troll is dancing around a fire."

"Probably still trying to dry off," said George.

Freddy chuckled, remembering the troll's unplanned bath, and then he sat up on his hind legs, sniffed the air and studied the distant bonfire with his superior ferret vision. "That's him, Toots."

"Well, I think it's kinda creepy," said Stella.

"That's what trolls do," said George.

"Dance around bonfires all night?"

"Pretty much."

"Alone?"

"The troll is a solitary creature."

"But what if he decides to come out here and menace us?"

"In what? We have his speedboat."

"A canoe or maybe a kayak ..." Stella watched the tiny troll silhouette appear and disappear in the flickering light. "Or a raft made of sticks, limbs and bark."

"I wouldn't worry. After the dunking that troll got today, he isn't going anywhere near the water."

"I wish I could be so sure." Stella leaned back and looked up at all the stars. How could there be so many? Basically the sky was so beautiful it was incomprehensible and overwhelming and almost heartbreaking. "I sure wish I could sleep."

"Count sheep," said Freddy.

"Or trolls," said George.

"Or gnomes," said Freddy.

"Or loons," said George.

"Or ravens," said Freddy.

"Or wolves," said George, and just as he did, they heard the first wolf howl of the night. It started out low and went high. It was just one wolf, across the water and not that far away. The wolf howled again and a pack of wolves answered. The starry night was suddenly a starry night opera of wolves howling and loons calling and more wolves answering. They were surrounded by the sound of it and the sound of it made the fur on Freddy's back stand on end.

"Did you have to say wolves, J.G.?"

"Those are wolves?" asked Stella.

"Wolves," said George.

Stella got up, wrapped the blanket around her like an Indian princess robe and walked back to the radio surgery area. "Anyone else want one? Another Dr P?" She grabbed a can and held it in the light.

"Thought you were trying to sleep?"

"Not any more." She popped the top and took a long, lukewarm chug. "Not after that wolf chorus. It's not gonna happen, so why try?"

No one slept that night. Fueled by Dr Pepper and occasionally serenaded by the all-nighter loons and nocturnal wolves, Freddy and George worked on their wireless sending and receiving apparatus and Stella kept them entertained by singing songs from the stage of the speedboat's bow. She held their flashlight like a microphone and sang every one of ABBA's solid gold greatest hits in chronological order. Then, as the night wore on, Stella sang several darker, moodier songs by Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds, songs she gravely dedicated to the troll. It was four in the morning, approximately. The troll's fire had burned down to just coals and embers, and maybe the troll had gone to bed, or maybe he had just flopped on the ground, exhausted and vexed.

"This one's going out to that stinky dancer in the red felt vest." Stella pointed in the direction of the troll's distant and dying embers. "With his stolen bags of gold and his angry heart of lead!" And then Freddy and George hooted and clapped while Stella sang "Where the Wild Roses Grow" in a dark and haunted baritone.

When the wolves howled Stella howled back. When the loons called Stella yodeled in return. Stella sang Nirvana, Madonna and Sinatra, and then they passed the last can of Dr Pepper between them and drank deep gulps. Their eyes were bloodshot, their heads felt thick and difficult, and their tongues wagged like unruly eels.

It was just before sunrise when George crushed the last Dr Pepper can in his fist and said, "It's done." He meant the wireless sending and receiving apparatus. It didn't look like much but there it was, odd bits of wire and circuit board, transistors, resistors, copper coils and random electric sparks, and all of it carefully connected to the speedboat's rakishly-angled, chrome flagpole. The flagpole was the antenna.

"Hooray!" shouted Stella, "We're saved!" And then she collapsed.

"Sweets?" Freddy ran up to the front to see if she was okay. She had finally fallen asleep, softly snoring through lips that were just barely parted. Freddy grabbed the blanket with his teeth and pulled it up over her shoulders and chin and gave her a quick good night lick on the cheek, even though it was already morning.

"Let's do this, Fred."

"Roger that, J.G."

While the morning sun climbed into the sky, George used the clicker attached to their wireless sending and receiving apparatus to send the international Morse code signal for distress, SOS, three long clicks followed by three short clicks followed by three long clicks. He clicked S, O, S, and then they listened on the receiver for a response ... He clicked it again and then they waited and listened ... He clicked and they waited and listened ... He clicked and they listened ... He clicked and they listened ... He clicked; they listened ... He clicked; they listened ... Clicked and listened ... Clicked and listened ... Clicked and listened ... Clicked and listened ... Clicked and listened ... Clicked and listened ... Clicked and listened ... Clicked and listened ... Clicked and listened ... Clicked and listened ... Clicked and listened ... Clicked and listened ... Clicked and listened ... Clicked and ...

# Skedaddle

Under a vast, shiny sky of harvest gold kitchen linoleum, Stella was playing badminton with a spatula racquet on a giant, greasy pancake griddle that had one huge strip of bacon held aloft by two very tall forks for a net, maybe. The griddle was so slippery that she slid like an ice skater every time she ran to make a hit. On the other side of the bacon net was her badminton opponent the troll, who just happened to look a lot like her After School Madrigal Club vocal coach and conductor, Mr. Lively, only shorter. Stella hit the shuttlecock, which was actually a shuttlecock, and it flew over the bacon net, and over the troll's head, and it landed in the surrounding thick lake of eggy pancake batter with a "plop" and sank with a "blub-blub-blub."

"Uhhh!"

"You lose! Heh-heh-heh ... Now sing me a song!" commanded the troll. There were maple-sugar loons on the pancake batter lake, and the sun in the linoleum sky was a giant egg yolk that was really huge and really far away. The troll wore a bacon-strip sun visor, puffy pancake shorts and glossy tennis shoes made of fresh creamery butter.

"What song should I sing?"

"White Christmas."

"White Christmas?"

"Only make it ice."

"Ice?"

"You're dreaming of an Ice Christmas."

"No I'm not."

"Yes you are!"

"I am not!"

"YOU ARE!"

"NOT!"

"ARE!"

"I AM NOT DREAMING OF AN ICE—" Stella woke to the distant whining buzz of chainsaws. She sat up and rubbed the sleep from her eyes and tried to make sense of what she saw. The speedboat actually looked like the set for a low-budget science fiction movie where two evil geniuses had collapsed from exhaustion after their caffeine-fueled all-nighter of who-knows-what mischief. Empty Dr Pepper cans were scattered among the ruins of the CD player radio thing, and there was the wireless telegraphy sending and receiving apparatus that really looked more like a random collection of CD player radio junk connected by a few spindly wires and some gluey chewed bubblegum. Freddy had apparently burrowed into George's fur hat, because the only part of Freddy Stella could see was his tail hanging out of the hat on the carpet next to George, who was snoring so loudly he sounded like a chainsaw too.

"Hmmm," said Stella, looking up at the clear, blue sky; it seemed to stretch out in front of her forever, another beautiful day with just a few tiny white clouds and a plane—

She jumped up. "HEY! WAKE UP! GEORGE! FREDDY! WAKE UP! A PLANE!" The plane was silver, a giant commercial jetliner full of passengers going somewhere very faraway and extremely exotic, but it was so high in the sky that it looked really tiny.

"SIGNAL THE SOS!" shouted Stella.

George stopped snoring and sat up. He rubbed his eyes and blinked at the bright sky.

"It's a plane," Stella pointed, "signal the SOS!"

George was stunned and confused. He didn't know where he was or what to do.

"George! Come on! Plane!"

"A plane?" George groaned and he grabbed the wireless telegraphy sender clicker thing and began to tap out the Morse code for SOS.

"Is it working?"

"I guess it is, sure ..." George pressed the receiving unit earphone to his ear, actually an empty, cut-in-half Dr. Pepper can attached to two wires.

"Can you hear anything?"

"Not yet."

"How come I don't hear anything?" asked Stella.

"You're not supposed to hear anything."

"Then how does it work?"

"It uses radio waves." George kept clicking the clicker.

"Can they hear it?"

"I don't know. They're not responding."

"HEY!" Stella pulled the TWA scarf from her hair and waved it wildly over her head. "HEY! WE'RE DOWN HERE! WE'RE READY TO BE RESCUED NOW! HERE WE ARE! HELP US! WE'RE YOUNG AND WE'RE HUNGRY AND GETTING OLD BEFORE OUR TIME!"

The plane cruised cruelly on, sunlight glinting on its aluminum wings as its jet engines draped wispy contrail banners of fare-thee-well across the sky.

"I guess it's just too far away or something." George stopped tapping the clicker and collapsed on the floor face up and sighed.

"Hmmm." Stella stuffed the scarf in her back pocket. "Whatever. Let's go find those lumberjacks. We don't need any stupid planes anyway."

George stared at the sky and listened to the encouraging buzz and whine of the chainsaws. "If they're as close as they sound, I bet we can be there in less than an hour." He sat up, grabbed his hat and Freddy fell out.

"Top of the morning, shipmates!"

"Morning, Fred."

"Good morning, Freddy." Stella giggled.

"What's for breakfast, Sweets? Smoked fish with wild strawberries and a side of candy corn?"

"Yup, a special treat," said George.

"I can't wait," said Freddy.

"And don't forget the lake water, all you can drink!" said Stella.

"I bet those lumberjacks packed tons of good stuff to eat ... Roast beef sandwiches, bags of potato chips, slices of apple pie ..." George gazed at the shore. "Now we just have to get this out-of-gas boat from here to there, and go find 'em."

"How are we gonna do that?" asked Stella.

"I wish I knew."

"Hoooooooooo-OOOOOOOOOT!" A loon called and Stella's eyes glittered with inspiration.

"Hey, wait!"

"Wait what, Sugarplum?"

"Maybe with a little loon power ..."

"Loon power?"

"Loons are strong swimmers. Let's get some loons to tow us to shore."

"Excellent idea, Sweets. How many loons do you think we might need, J.G.?"

George did a little mental arithmetic and said, "Sixteen loons could easily tow this boat, but there's no way you're gonna get—"

"Just wait and see. Get your spool of fishing line and tie sixteen lengths of it to the tow ring on the front, okay?"

"Sure, I guess, but—"

"And Freddy, I want you to tie one kernel of candy corn to the other end of every line."

"Aye, aye, Sugarplum!"

"What're you gonna do?" asked George.

"I'm gonna yodel."

"What's your yodel gonna do?"

"What won't my yodel do?" asked Stella, rhetorically.

While George cut lengths of fishing line with his pocketknife, and Freddy drilled holes in sixteen kernels of candy corn with his sharpest claw, Stella rummaged through the storage under the seats until she found a waterskiing wetsuit that looked like it would fit. It was made of black, stretchy neoprene rubber with white stitching, and Stella had to really pull and tug to get into it.

"All set?"

"Ready."

"Good." Stella cupped her hands around her mouth and yodeled. "Yodel-odel-dodel-oodle-doodle-poodle-lay-hee-hoooooooooo! Yodel-odel-dodel-oodle-doodle-poodle-lay-hee-hoooooooooo! Yodel-odel-dodel-oodle-doodle-poodle-lay-hee-hoooooooooo!"

"Hoooooooooo-OOOOOOOOOT!" a loon answered.

"Yodel-odel-dodel-oodle-doodle-poodle-lay-hee-hoooooooooo!"

"Hoooooooooo-OOOOOOOOOT!" another loon answered.

"Yodel-odel-dodel-oodle-doodle-poodle-lay-hee-hoooooooooo!"

Loons from every direction began to answer her call. They flew in low over the trees with black and white wings flapping fast and long necks outstretched. They circled the speedboat and landed nearby on the water.

"Hi!" said Stella to the assembling flock, "Thanks for coming!"

"They don't speak English, Toots."

"I know that, Freddy."

It didn't seem to matter what language Stella spoke; the loons watched her with intense curiosity. She looked a little loon-like herself in the black wetsuit with the white stitching, a mermaid loon with long golden curls.

"Here you go." Stella tossed out a line with a kernel of candy corn attached and one of the loons grabbed it. "Good!" She tossed another and then another and another until sixteen kernels attached to sixteen lines were firmly grasped by sixteen loon bills.

"Now what?" asked George.

"Now you raise the anchor, and I take a swim."

George switched on the electric motor that pulled up the anchor chain and Stella flipped the bow ladder over the side and climbed down to join her new loon friends. They studied her with their ruby red eyes and sucked fiercely on their candy corn tethers.

"Come on, loons! Let's go!" She pushed off in a dog paddle and the loons followed, pulling their candy corn lines. The speedboat started moving.

"Loon power!" cheered Freddy, who loved to celebrate anything that kept him from getting wet. "Let's hear it for loon power!"

"Loon power!" shouted George. "Hip-hip-hooray!"

Stella swam the backstroke, the butterfly and the crawl. It was easy for the loons to keep up with their mermaid leader. Thirty-two webbed feet churned the water and the speedboat followed in their wake. When Stella finally stood up in the sandy shallows, the loons crowded around her and the fishing lines went slack. The speedboat drifted in and Stella bent down to kiss each loon on the top of its head and say thank you. When she did, each loon opened its mouth to hoot something back in Loon, and the towlines dropped from their bills.

"Thank you!"

"Hooo-oooo!"

"Thank you!"

"Hooo-oooo!"

"Thank you!"

"Hooo-oooo!"

Their heads felt like plush velvet to her lips, and even though they looked black from a distance, up close they were actually an iridescent blend of dark greens, navy blues, royal purples and charcoal grays. Isn't that just like the world, thought Stella. From a distance things might look black as night, but when you get close, it turns out they're a crazy rainbow of beautiful possibilities. She smiled and said "Thank you!" one last time.

"Hooo-oooo!"

"Anchor away!" George flipped the switch.

"Thanks for the tow!" Stella was still waving goodbye to her newfound friends when the anchor splashed into the shallows. "Do we just leave it here?"

"The boat?" asked George.

"Yeah."

"Where else? Grab your stuff. Let's skedaddle."

"Ske-what?"

"Skedaddle, scoot, scram, scatter—"

"Okay, okay, but first I have to change."

"You change. I'll carry the packs to shore." George tumbled over the side and down the ladder with his rucksack. When he stepped into the water, which came up to his chest, he had to hold the pack above his head so it wouldn't get wet.

Stella climbed back on board to pack and change.

"Your loon power was a good idea, Sweets. Those crazy birds really know how to tow a boat."

"They sure do, Freddy." She scratched him behind the ears and then she called, "HEY, I'M WEARING THE INDIAN PRINCESS DRESS."

"FINE WITH ME," George answered.

"AND THE MOCCASINS."

"A-OKAY."

"I'm so sick of these shorts." Stella unzipped the TWA tote. "It'll be Indian Princess Wednesday ... Is today Wednesday, Freddy?"

"Sure is, Sugarplum."

"Guess it doesn't really matter what day it is, does it? As long as those lumberjacks are there, who cares? HEY, GEORGE? I'M GONNA WEAR THESE LEGGINGS TOO." She held them up so he could see what she was talking about, but he didn't even turn to look. "THEY'LL PROTECT ME FROM SCRATCHES AND MOSQUITO BITES."

"WEAR WHATEVER YOU WANT, WENRY."

Stella pressed her lips together and sighed; sometimes talking to boys was just about the most boring thing she could ever imagine doing, ever. George sloshed and then slogged back to the boat and climbed halfway up the ladder.

"You almost ready?"

"In a bit. Here ..." She handed the canvas pack over the side and George hoisted it as high as he could and sloshed to shore. Stella pulled and pulled and pulled on the wetsuit. It finally came off with a "snap" like a rubber band. She dried off with one of the towels and then she put on the beaded Indian princess dress and laced it up. As she was drying her hair she noticed a clumpy snarled thing on the left side of her head.

"Uhhh ..." She tugged on it. It felt sort of thick and crunchy like there were a few leaves and twigs buried inside. "I NEED A COMB!" she shouted.

"WHY?"

"I HAVE A DREADLOCK!"

"DON'T WORRY ABOUT IT, LET'S GO!"

Stella pulled the clump around to the side and looked at it in the speedboat's rearview mirror. "Freddy? Have you seen a comb around?"

"Not a one, Sugarplum, but I wouldn't worry about that snarl."

"I NEED A COMB, GEORGE!"

"THE LUMBERJACKS'LL HAVE A COMB, NOW COME ON!"

"LUMBERJACKS DON'T HAVE COMBS!" she shouted. "Who does he think he's kidding? Huh, Freddy? Everyone knows lumberjacks just slick their hair back with bacon grease. They don't use combs." Stella sighed and took a closer look at her face in the mirror. Her skin was tan from all the sun, and the spangles of silver glitter from the shattered mirror were still there on her eyelashes and cheeks. "I'm a marked girl, Freddy."

"Marked, Sweets?" Freddy climbed the back of the seat and peered over her shoulder into the rearview mirror.

"From the shattered mirror, all this silver stuff ..." She rubbed her cheek with her thumb. "It still hasn't come off."

"Maybe it won't."

"Ever?"

"I don't know, Toots. Time will tell. I'm a marked ferret too." Freddy moved his head from side to side and his silver-tipped fur glittered in the sun. "We're in this one together."

"Freddy, anyone who knows about that mirror will know I'm the one who broke it, if they see this silver stuff on my face." Stella frowned and rubbed her cheek with her hand. "Why is it so stubborn?" She scratched the glitter with her fingernails until her cheeks hurt and her eyes burned. "Uhhhh!" She was about to cry.

"Sugarplum, don't—"

"WENRY? ARE YOU COMING TODAY? OR ARE YOU COMING TOMORROW?"

"It's just that raven, Sweets. No one else knows anything about that mirror—"

"The raven and my mom."

"The raven, and your mom, and she's your mom, so—"

"It's going to be okay?"

"It's going to be very okay, Toots."

"Okay."

"WENRY!"

"COMING!" Stella jumped up. "Then let's skedaddle, Freddy." She felt a lot better, so much better that she whistled the ABBA song "SOS" while she stuffed her shorts, shirt, shoes, moccasins and leggings in the tote and dragged it to the front. "I'M TAKING A TOWEL."

"GREAT! TAKE TWO! NOW LET'S GO!"

"COMING!" Stella climbed over the side. "Ready, Freddy?"

"Where do you want me, Toots?"

"Shoulder?"

"I'd feel safer in the bag."

"Bag's kinda full, Freddy."

"Still, I think I'd prefer the bag, Sugarplum."

"You'll be fine on my shoulder, I'll be really careful, promise."

"Mmmm, I don't know, Sweets, there's a lot of water between here and there."

"COME ON, YOU TWO, TEMPUS FUGIT ..."

"Tempus what?" asked Stella.

"It's Latin. It means time flies, Sugarplum."

"Sure does, but we have to walk."

"WENRY..."

"Tote, Toots?"

"There isn't that much water and I promise to be very careful, Freddy."

"I know you will, Sweets, but I really much prefer the tote. It feels very, I don't know, very sanctuaryish in the tote, and I like that feeling a lot."

"Sanctuaryish?" Stella giggled.

"WENRY, PLEASE JUST—"

"HOLD YOUR HORSES, GEORGE!"

"WE DON'T HAVE ALL DAY!"

"YEAH, WE'RE COMING." She rolled her eyes. "Freddy, trust me, I won't drop you."

"Promise?"

"Scout's honor."

"Indian princess's honor?"

Stella laughed and kissed his head. "Yes, silly! Indian princess's honor too."

"Okay, Sugarplum, I'm _trusting_ you." Freddy jumped on, and Stella carefully climbed down and waded in. They listened to the distant chorus of chainsaws buzzing, whining, sputtering and revving in a two-cycle-engine frenzy of tree cutting and forest clearing. Freddy, with his acute sense of smell, also caught whiffs of pine tree sawdust and chainsaw engine exhaust, gasoline and oil, and maybe even the slightest whiff of coffee poured from thermoses, and also the scent of lumberjack sweat with just a hint of Chanel No. 5—

"Huh?" gulped Freddy.

"Huh what?" asked Stella.

"Chanel No. 5, Toots."

"Chanel No. 5, what, Freddy?" Stella waded out of the water and sat down on the sand.

"Chanel No. 5, I think our lumberjacks might not be lumberjacks after all," said Freddy.

"What're you talking about?" George watched Stella open the tote and pull out the leggings and moccasins and a towel to dry her feet. "Wenry, please hurry up just a little, okay? We're never gonna get there if you take all—"

"I'm hurrying, George."

"I distinctly smell Chanel No.5," said Freddy.

"What's that?" asked George.

"Perfume," said Stella.

"Out here?" asked George.

"Not exactly what we would expect to smell so far from the La Ville-Lumière."

"La Ville-What?" asked George.

" Paris, J.G.," said Freddy. "France."

"Hey, maybe your parents are there right now, George, eating croissants and brioche at the very top of the Eiffel Tower and planning their next visit to the Louvre."

"Why are we wasting time talking about my parents when we've got some very important lumberjacks to see? Huh?" George glared at Stella and Freddy in exasperation. "And for your information? Last postcard they sent was from Vienna, Austria, in May."

Freddy took a long, definitive sniff. "It's definitely Chanel No. 5, Sugarplum."

"You really think the lumberjacks are wearing perfume?"

"No doubt about it."

"That's pretty weird." Stella stood and twirled. "Hey, what do you think of the outfit?"

"Très chic, Toots."

"Thanks, Freddy. George? The outfit?"

"It's okay, I guess."

Stella rolled her eyes. "Just okay?"

"Could we please, go now? It's like you don't even wanna be rescued or something, and this perfume thing, Fred, that's your imagination."

"It's not my imagination, J.G."

"Well, it's not the lumberjacks 'cause lumberjacks don't wear perfume. Okay? Now let's go! Move'em out! Vamoose!" George slung the tote over his shoulder. "Okay?"

"I'm gonna miss the Chris-Craft," said Stella, looking back at the boat.

"We all will, Wenry. Now let's skedaddle." George started down the beach toward the forest.

"Think we'll ever see it again?"

"PROBABLY NOT," George shouted.

"He's being a real sourpuss this morning," said Stella.

"He's just annoyed his wireless telegraphy apparatus didn't work, Toots."

"I CAN HEAR EVERYTHING YOU'RE SAYING, AND BY THE WAY? I AM NOT ANNOYED THAT OUR WIRELESS TELEGRAPHY APPARATUS DIDN'T WORK, FRED! NOW LET'S GET GOING BEFORE THE LUMBERJACKS QUIT FOR THE DAY AND LEAVE WITHOUT US, OKAY? ARE YOU COMING? WENRY? PLEASE?"

Stella slid her arms through the rope straps on the canvas pack and turned for one last look at the speedboat floating on Lake Endless. Beyond that she could see the moss-covered troll cabin in the distant distance with just the faintest wisp of smoke rising from the chimney. She imagined the tense, angry troll inside, slouched at his table, furiously counting and stacking his piles of ill-gotten gold.

"PLEASE? WENRY ..."

"NOT UNTIL YOU SAY, PLEASE, WENONAH, DAUGHTER OF NOKOMIS, WITH THE BEAUTY OF THE MOONLIGHT, WITH THE BEAUTY OF THE STARLIGHT."

"WHAT?"

"YOU HEARD ME, MR. QUANTUM PHYSICS CAMP."

"ALL THAT?"

"YEAUP, ALL OF IT." Stella giggled softly.

George stared at the deep-shadowed forest and listened to the chainsaws wail and buzz for what seemed like an entire minute. "Okay, here it goes ..." He sighed and then he shouted, "PLEASE, WENONAH, DAUGHTER OF NOKOMIS, WITH THE BEAUTY OF THE MOONLIGHT, WITH THE BEAUTY OF THE STARLIGHT, CAN WE PLEASE GO FIND THOSE LUMBERJACKS NOW AND GET RESCUED?"

"SURE CAN!" said Stella, and off they went.
If you liked Stella Sky – The Shattered Mirror

Share us, tell your friends!

www.stellaskybooks.com

The story of Stella Sky continues...

with Book Two

# Stella Sky – The Chainsaw Sisters

