Changing the Prophecy Chapter 4 Episode 1

Chapter 4 Arrival Part Three -- Episode 1

With a whoosh and a rush of yellow smoke, Sonjay landed on the cobblestone ground of the courtyard at the Final Fortress. “What in the heck?” he said softly to Bayard, who still perched on his shoulder, as he quickly ducked behind a statue that hid him from the view of anyone entering or leaving by the main gate. “You have to keep quiet, Bayard,” he instructed. “Quiet. Understand?” Sonjay put a finger to his lips to emphasize his point. Bayard took to the air and flew up over the stone wall and out of the courtyard, most likely to forage for food. Sonjay felt sad to see him go, but he was better off without the bird for the moment. Bayard could make quite a racket and Sonjay needed to stay hidden.

Sonjay waited in the silent courtyard until nightfall. He hoped that his sisters or brother would turn up. That didn’t happen. He was on his own. He wondered if the previous Four (Momma, Aunt Alice, and his uncles) had ever been separated during the passage. Although he worried about the others, and wondered if they had even made the passage at all, he didn’t think he had arrived at the Final Fortress by accident or because Crystal and Ruby lacked experience. He thought he had arrived there for a reason and he thought the reason had to do with finding his father.

Daddy had disappeared when Sonjay was a baby, and the Four had given up hope of ever seeing him again, even though Momma used to say that Daddy would return to them as soon as he could. The previous summer, when Sissrath held Sonjay and the others captive in the dungeon at the Final Fortress, Sonjay thought he had heard his father speaking their names. Now seemed like as good a time as any to find out if Daddy was actually here. Sonjay had the crescent moon mark of the enchanter on his wrist, just like Princess Honeydew. He wished he knew how to cast enchantments, but he had not yet come of age and therefore had not studied enchantment yet at the Wolf Circle. If he could have cast enchantments, he would have made himself invisible.

Under cover of darkness, Sonjay slipped inside the heavy door that led to the dungeons. The fortress remained eerily quiet. He stepped softly down the stone stairs, wishing he had one of the flashlights in Denzel’s backpack. When he reached the bottom of the stairs, he found himself in a corridor dimly lit by wall sconces. Still no one appeared. Hugging the damp, cold, stone wall, he made his way cautiously down the corridor toward the cell where Sissrath had imprisoned him on his previous stay at the Final Fortress.

Suddenly, a hand reached out of the wall and clapped itself over Sonjay’s mouth, then hauled him into a tiny room. Sonjay struggled to free himself from the grip of that hand. “Don’t make a sound,” a voice whispered in his ear. The hand released him as it spun him around and he stared into the astonished face of Buttercup, the wife of Crumpet. Crumpet was the older brother of the great enchanter Cardamom. Crumpet was not the most proficient enchanter. His enchantments seemed to go wrong more often than they went right, but he was a good guy. Buttercup was much better at casting enchantments than her husband. She was a large woman and her dark-brown skin had the distinctive yellow glow of the Mountain People. “What are you doing here?” she hissed. “I almost killed you.”

“I could ask you the same thing,” Sonjay replied. “What are you doing here?”

“I’m rescuing Crumpet,” she declared.

“Well, I’m rescuing my father,” Sonjay countered. “Where is everyone? Are there any guards down here?” As Sonjay’s eyes adjusted to the dim room, he discovered that he and Buttercup, as well as several other Mountain People from Buttercup’s home in the Amber Mountains, had crammed themselves inside a tiny closet filled with brooms, mops, buckets, scrub brushes, and cleaning supplies. “Are we in a mop closet?”

“You betcha,” Buttercup answered. “We put an enchantment on the guards to make them sleep. Well, most of ‘em. It’s complicated. The Special Forces are asleep, but not the Corportons.”

“Corportons?”

“Aliens. I told you, it’s complicated. Let’s free Crumpet, then we’ll try to find your father, and then we’ll get out of here. After we get out, I’ll bring you up to speed about the aliens.”

“I’m down with that. Lead the way,” Sonjay said, as he gestured toward the door of the mop closet.

Buttercup picked up a huge super-soaker squirt gun and handed it to Sonjay. “If you see someone in a snow-white jumpsuit, spray ‘em. Don’t ask questions.” She motioned to the others and stepped toward the door.

“Yuk. It smells like skunk,” Sonjay sniffed the super-soaker.

“You betcha,” Buttercup confirmed.

“What’d you put in this thing?”

“Skunk juice, they hate it.”

“They?”

Buttercup shushed him. “Let’s roll.”

Sonjay and the others followed Buttercup out of the mop closet and down the corridor. Buttercup held a device in one hand that looked like a cell phone but Sonjay knew it wasn’t. There were no phones at all in Faracadar. Buttercup pointed the device forward. When it started beeping, she turned it off and put her hands on the cell door nearest to her. “He’s in here, stand back,” she instructed. Sonjay and the others moved away. Buttercup pointed her fingers at the door, closed her eyes, inhaled deeply, and then spoke words of enchantment under her breath. The door to the cell slowly opened.

“You have to teach me how to do that,” Sonjay told her admiringly.

“All in good time.” She entered and Sonjay followed close behind. Inside the cell, Sonjay saw a cot with a blanket on it. There was a small window high up on the outside-facing wall. A table had been pushed against that wall and there was a chair on top of the table. The cell was empty.

Buttercup looked up at the chair on the table. She reached for Sonjay’s skunk juice super-soaker, which he handed to her gratefully (it smelled awful), as she commanded him, “Climb up there and get that pastry off the chair. Be careful. Don’t let it crumble.”

Sonjay clambered onto the table and sure enough, he found a fat cinnamon roll on the chair. It looked tasty. He climbed back down with it resting flat on his palm. “Yum,” he said to Buttercup. “I’m starved.” As he started to open his mouth to take a bite, Buttercup snatched the cinnamon roll out of his hand and smacked him upside the head. The other Mountain People laughed.

“What’s up with you?” Sonjay demanded as he rubbed his face where she had slapped him.

“Shut up!” Buttercup yelped. She tenderly placed the pastry on the cot and said a few words of enchantment to it. The pastry glowed chartreuse, then yellow, and then, with a pop, it transformed into a familiar figure.

“Crumpet!” Sonjay exclaimed. “I almost took a bite out of you.”

“What did I turn into this time?” Crumpet asked querulously.

“A cinnamon roll,” Buttercup informed him.

“With icing and raisins. You looked delicious,” Sonjay added, as he put his arms around Crumpet and gave him a hug. He had missed the incompetent enchanter; incompetent because whenever he became too excited, flustered, or angry while conducting an enchantment he turned himself into some object (usually something useless) and remained stuck like that until a capable enchanter could be found to change him back.

“The Corportons have Sissrath in their back pocket. It’s disgusting. He took them to the North Coast,” Crumpet began to explain to his wife in an agitated voice as he waved his arms above his head, but she stopped him with a raised hand.

“Not now. First, if you upset yourself then you might turn into a doughnut, and second, we have to help Sonjay find his father and then skedaddle out of here before the guards wake up.”

“You have a father?” Crumpet asked Sonjay incredulously.

“Everyone has a father,” Sonjay reminded him.

“Alive? Here?” Crumpet continued.

“I think so. I need to find out for sure. I haven’t ever seen my dad. But I think he’s down here somewhere. Do you remember last year when Sissrath put us into a cell in this dungeon? The time you had turned yourself into a rock and your brother Cardamom turned you back while we were imprisoned?”

“Of course. There’s nothing wrong with my memory,” Crumpet replied haughtily. He unfolded his long body to its full height as he gave his wife a hug. “Thank you for rescuing me, babycakes,” Crumpet told Buttercup appreciatively. She planted a kiss on his nose. “Where are Doshmisi, Denzel, and Maia?” Crumpet asked Sonjay.

“I don’t know. We got separated during the passage.”

“We have to go. Now,” Buttercup reminded them urgently.

“OK, OK,” Sonjay said as he took the stinky super-soaker out of her hand and headed toward the cell door. “Here’s the deal. I thought I heard my father’s voice when I was in that cell with Crumpet and the others last year. But I don’t know exactly where the voice came from. I just know it was near our cell. Do you think you can find the cell where Sissrath imprisoned us last year?” Sonjay asked Crumpet.

“Of course. I never forget a prison cell,” Crumpet said, his eyes shining brightly. “Everyone imprisoned here is an enemy of Sissrath,” Crumpet pointed out as he turned to Buttercup and suggested, “so why don’t you and the fellas start opening cell doors and have a look to see who’s inside, while I take Sonjay to our former cell to see if we can figure out where his father might be.”

“You got it, babycakes,” Buttercup agreed. “But be quick. The Corportons will discover us any minute.”

Crumpet and Sonjay hurried out of the cell and continued down the corridor. Crumpet turned to the right into a passageway that looked familiar to Sonjay, and then he stopped outside a cell door. “This one.”

Sonjay put his hand on Crumpet’s arm. Crumpet still smelled vaguely like cinnamon and it made Sonjay’s mouth water. “Keep quiet for a minute and let me listen,” Sonjay commanded. Crumpet obeyed as Sonjay cocked his head to the right and listened intently. All he could hear was Buttercup and her team in the distance as they released prisoners from their cells. Last year he had distinctly heard a man repeating over and over again his name and the names of his brother and sisters. Maybe his father had died since the previous year. After all, he had probably been a prisoner in the Final Fortress for ten years or more.

Just then, Bayard appeared. The parrot flew down the passageway and squawked “Daddy-O, Daddy-O.” Sonjay trusted Bayard implicitly so he followed him immediately. Bayard alighted on the floor outside a cell door and repeated “Daddy-O.”

“Can you open it?” Sonjay asked Crumpet. “Without turning into a slice of cake, I mean?”

“Give me a little credit,” Crumpet complained. He said some words and the lock clicked open. With his heart beating loudly in his ears, Sonjay pulled the heavy door back with a creak and a rumble.

A man with long dreadlocks sat at a table and typed on an old-fashioned typewriter. When Sonjay entered, the man looked up from his work with curiosity. Bookshelves loaded with books lined the walls of the cell. A rich red-and-black carpet covered the floor and a warm fire glowed in the fireplace. The bed, piled high with comfy pillows, invited a nap. A glow-bug lantern stood on the table and cast an amber light to the edges of the room. This warm room was the opposite of a cold, damp prison cell. It looked more like a cozy study.

Sonjay had expected to find a grizzled and emaciated man chained to the wall, his eyes rolling around crazily in his head. This man looked well-fed and clean. And he looked exactly, precisely, like Denzel, only grown up. When Sonjay entered the cell with Crumpet, the prisoner pushed his chair back and rose to his feet with a questioning expression.

“I am Sonjay, the youngest son of Debbie,” he stated matter-of-factly. “Are you my father?”

The man’s face collapsed with emotion as tears ran down his cheeks. He nodded his head and then, in a voice that cracked, he said, “Yes. Yes. I am Reggie; Reginald Goodacre. I am your father.”

Sonjay was stunned. He had set out to find his father and had expected to find him, but nothing could have prepared him for the moment when he would actually stand face-to-face with his father. Rooted to the spot, his eyes welled up with tears. Reggie walked over to Sonjay and wrapped him in his arms. They held onto each other tightly and cried, oblivious to everything and everyone around them. “Such a beautiful, strong boy. My son. I have wished to see you every minute of every day these ten long years,” Reggie choked out between sobs.

Sonjay felt like dancing and shouting. He was fit to burst with joy and wished with all his heart that his brother and sisters were there with him at that moment. But all his wishing did not bring them to his side.

“Sissrath says your mother died; is it true?” Reggie asked.

Sonjay swallowed hard and nodded his head. “She had a heart attack. But it was really the deep enchantment that killed her. You know, because she traded years from her life to protect the people.”

“Yes, I know it. I tried to save her. That’s why I came here,” Reggie said huskily as he tried to regain control of his emotions. “Are the others here too? Doshmisi, Denzel, and Maia?”

“We were separated during the passage. I think they probably arrived in Faracadar somewhere, just not with me,” Sonjay explained. “But I don’t know.”

The sound of a struggle in the passageway outside the door of the cell cut their reunion short. Sonjay and Crumpet ran to the threshold of the cell. Buttercup stood just outside the cell, transfixed in horror as she watched the far end of the passageway fill with human-like creatures covered from head to toe in snow-white jumpsuits, their faces hidden by opaque gray masks that did not yield any clue as to the appearance of the creature which lay underneath.

“Run for it!” Buttercup shouted, as she discharged a stream of stinky skunk juice from her super-soaker.