Chapter 4
Fall of a Hero
Super Pumpkin looked meticulously
at each member of the group. Then he
said, “Here is the plan, everyone.
Jonathan and lady friend will defeat M.D. I think we can all safely say that the wicked
lady is M.D., yes? Pumpkin and I will work on getting that cauldron off the
cliff, but we will first confirm that you have killed M.D. Ghost, please keep your eyes on Melhrir and
update us on his proximity. Also,
provide cover for us if anything unexpected occurs. Jonathan and girl, once you have finished
M.D., I want you both to ascend one of these stones and jump into the
portal. I believe that Pumpkin and Ghost
will join you at that point; I know that Pumpkin would prefer to be in another
world with all of his close friends, rather than in his homeland without
them. I will then push the cauldron off
the cliff and, ideally, escape before Melhrir arrives. M.D. will be dead and the portal potion will
be no more.”
“Sounds like a plan,” responded
Jonathan. He put a hand on Awana’s
shoulder. “Let’s go!” Then they ran off to the south together,
rounding the outside of the stones.
“Hold on, Super Pumpkin,” Pumpkin
said forcefully. “I haven’t seen you in
five years, and now I may never see you again? We need to talk!”
“We have no time, Pumpkin!”
yelled the caped squash. “You know what
that Eagle is capable of. Your ma and pa
read those stories to us all the time when we were squashlings. Why they read us that story in particular
eludes me to this day. It was far too
violent.”
“Super Pumpkin, I have spent
years wondering why you chose the road you did.
What turned you into this?”
Super Pumpkin groaned. “Listen to me! We have no time. We must—”
“You owe me an answer!” Pumpkin
roared.
The caped squash looked toward
the ground. “You did, Pumpkin. You turned me into this.”
“What do you mean?”
“I am a reflection of you,
Pumpkin,” Super Pumpkin admitted sadly.
“Remember how we were so alike? Can you remember that? Can you remember
how we played together, and got into trouble around our neighborhood? Do you
recall the time we threw apples at Old Barkface when he was crossing the road
that day? We did everything we knew that we should not.”
“Of course I remember,” answered
Pumpkin. “But we grew up.”
“No, cousin, you grew up. You matured
faster, and I was left behind. And even
when I did mature, I refused to
become the person you were. When I
looked at you, all I could think was that you were so much better than I
was. You always made the right decision. You were so moral. And I was always
‘going down the wrong path.’ I was
always doing the wrong thing. But even
when I resisted becoming you, I envied you.
Your morality gave you such a sense of superiority, and I wanted
that. I was weary of feeling bad for
myself, and weary of you being better than I.
So I became like you: I became a superhero. I chose to do the right thing, and I always
went down the right path. I felt great
about this new person I had become. But
I was not myself; I was you.
“It was not until some years
later that I did the right thing because
it was right. For a long time, I was
merely acting as a superhero to spite you.
But then I grew up, and this persona was my own. I was a hero, but not because I needed to be
better than you. Doing good was the
right thing to do, and I did not need anyone to show me that. I had to come to the conclusion myself.
“So you see, Pumpkin, I was
jealous of you, and I hope you can forgive me for that. But I had to forgive you for always being
better. Because Pumpkin, as much as I
love you, that is who you have always been.
Your opinion, your way, your decision, has always been the best. You make others feel that they cannot compare
to you, because you have grown so accustomed to leading and providing the best
way of doing things. And I forgive you
for that, Pumpkin. I hope you can
forgive me for any pain I caused you.”
Pumpkin was baffled. “Super Pumpkin, of course I forgive you. But I don’t understand.”
“You will, Pumpkin,” his cousin
told him. “Reflect on it.” He lifted his
eyes toward the turkeys and the radiating cauldron. “I am glad that we were permitted some time
to speak. But now is the time for
action. Are you with me?”
Pumpkin looked at him. “I always have been.”
“Then let us combine our strength
and save the world together!” Super Pumpkin rose a couple feet above the ground
and soared directly toward the cauldron.
Pumpkin charged across the summit and hopped over the ring of
turkeys. They hit the cauldron
simultaneously, knocking it toward the west a few yards. They moved back and smashed into it
again. After repeating this process a
dozen times, they had moved the cauldron about a hundred feet. There was still a long distance before they
would reach their goal.
“Melhrir is still far away!” Ghost
announced. “I’d say forty miles!”
Pumpkin rammed the cauldron with
all his might. “I have to be honest,
Super Pumpkin. We did a lot of wild and
unusual things when we were young, but I never imagined we would one day push a
cauldron across a mountain peak to disrupt a portal between Armenor and earth.”
“Believe me,” Super Pumpkin
laughed, “you are not alone there.”
At that moment, the low voice
they had heard on the wind earlier resumed.
The turkeys stopped gobbling, and suddenly, they began to stare at the
two pumpkins pushing the cauldron toward the western cliff. Super Pumpkin dropped back in preparation for
another strike on the cauldron when he noticed the change in the birds’ focus. “Pumpkin,” he said, “perhaps I am
over-analyzing this, but it seems to me that the turkeys are in fighting
stances. If they attack, you may have to
fight them off while I continue with this task.”
“I was thinking the same thing,”
Pumpkin replied, and without another word, he drew his sword as the frenzied birds
closed in.
Jonathan and Awana rounded the
edge of the stones as they made their way toward the southern tower. They were near their destination when they
heard a loud shuffling of feathers and a battle cry from Pumpkin. Jonathan led Awana between a couple of the
curved obelisks and they glanced toward the center of the peak. Pumpkin was leaping and shouting and slashing
as turkeys swarmed in on him and his cousin.
The squash was circling the cauldron, keeping the winged beasts as far
away as possible. When he appeared to be
overwhelmed, a barrage of blue projectiles would come raining down from a
cluster of ghostly ballistae that Ghost had constructed in the east. Jonathan yearned to join the fray and aid his
friends, but he knew that M.D. had to be defeated. As they came to the foot of one set of
stairs, he and Awana stopped their flight and crouched down.
“Awana, here’s the plan,” said
the boy. “I want you to head to the
other stairs and approach M.D. from that side.
On your way to the stairs, try to stay out of sight; she hasn’t seen us
yet. Just stay close to the bottom of
the tower on your way there. Once you’ve
reached the stairs, we need to keep an eye on each other and climb them at the
same time. We should reach both
entrances to the building at once, and then we can rush her from two
sides. Even if she tries something on
one of us, it will only be a moment before the other one hits her.”
“Good thinking, Johnny boy. I love it when you take charge.” She grinned
at him. “Now let’s get to it. Earth and a wonderful Thanksgiving dinner
await us on the other side!”
Jonathan took her hand and looked
at her with serious eyes. “Please be
careful, Awana.”
She nodded. “I will.
You be careful, too.” Then she dashed along the shadow of the tower and
came to the foot of her stairs. They
motioned at each other and climbed in perfect harmony.
Lightning was now springing
everywhere across the heavens, and the clouds were darker than any they had
ever seen. Melhrir, releasing an
ear-splitting caw every minute or so, grew larger as he approached. The wind picked up and lashed across the
summit like an icy whip. Turkeys lunged
at the two pumpkins, sometimes hitting their mark with their beaks, sometimes
receiving a fatal blow to the head or back from Pumpkin’s sword. Ghost watched fearfully as the great Eagle
drew ever closer; he was summoning and loading projectiles into his ballistae
as quickly as he could. The portal
continued to swirl hypnotically in the center of the stones.
Jonathan and Awana both reached
their respective doorways silently, and they found an old woman with a staff in
one hand and a red vial in the other, facing the window and watching the brawl
below. Her hair was a greasy gray, and
her face was so pale that it was nearly green.
She was garbed in a cloak darker than night. Her staff was made of wood, but its unique
hue made it appear like the bone of some unfortunate victim. She was mumbling something under her breath,
but neither of them could tell what it was.
It was a deep, guttural tongue, and the best way they could describe it
was ancient and outraged. There was
something entrancing and demoralizing about the powerful, heavy words that she
spoke, and they began to think that they should turn around and head to the
portal. Somehow, they managed to snap
out of it. They took one look at each
other and nodded; then they burst forward with all the speed they could muster.
The old lady whirled toward Awana
and stretched out her staff. A rounded
shadow propelled from the staff head and smashed into the girl with frightening
force. Jonathan was so taken aback by
the quickness with which his friend fell that he stopped in his tracks. He looked at Awana’s limp body and shook his
head in disbelief. The lady screeched
with laughter and turned toward him, stabbing the bottom of her staff into the
ground.
“Dearest one, ‘twas nigh a sound
plan,” she said with a hiss, “but alas, thou hast not dealt with a sorceress
before.”
“I knew it!” Jonathan
exclaimed. “It is you! You’re the old woman who was blocking me on the street on
Halloween morning!”
“Yea, quite a sharp one stands
hither,” the woman croaked sardonically.
“But—why? Why did you send me to
Kory’s mansion? If you had not sent me there, I would not have joined up with
the Halloween friends and killed Apo.
You were working with him, weren’t you? But it was your words that led
me to eventually kill him.”
The woman smiled, her teeth
rotten and as yellow as butter. “Dear oh
dear, the babe is befuddled. Apo created
the vaunted Halloween potion in its glory, and yea, we knew well thou wouldst
be unaffected. ‘twas ever our plan.”
“So…you wanted me to kill him?”
“Oh, quite, quite.”
“But why in the world would you
want that?”
She chuckled. “There be certain edicts at work, the likes
of which thou wouldst scarce comprehend! I could
not harm my child. But he, yea, even he
willed to give up his own life—to please Mother Dearest.”
“M.D.,” Jonathan whispered to
himself, noticing that the woman had placed the vial of red liquid on the frame
of the window. “That is just about the
lamest acronym ever.”
“Doest we what we can with what
we have,” she replied, appearing to agree with the boy.
“But what did Apo’s death
accomplish? I don’t get it.”
She smiled again, and then
cackled wildly. “Oh, but a sole hint
shall I give unto thee! Had thou properly disposed of the ashes of thy
antagonistic professor that lay at the base of his cauldron…thou wouldst
shoulder less responsibility for thy—and thy world’s—future.”
Jonathan smirked at her. “I think you’re lying. I think you’re terrified right now, because
you know you’re about to be defeated by a 15-year old boy. But nothing will save you now, you crazy old
hag.”
“Learnest thou naught from the
first book?” shrieked the sorceress. “Respect thy elders, thou insolent worm!”
She then extended her staff
toward him, and another rounded shadow exploded across the room. Jonathan avoided the blow by dropping to his
hands, then hopped back up in an instant and took Ms. Unicorn from his
pocket. With one split-second motion, he
threw the unicorn like a boomerang. M.D.
jumped back toward the southern wall of the building, but the boy had not aimed
for her. The unicorn crashed into the
red vial and knocked it out of the tower.
The sound of shattering glass reached their ears a moment later.
“Wretched scum!” the woman
bellowed. “‘twas Armenor’s final potion
of resurrec—”
She never finished her sentence,
for Jonathan leapt toward her and kicked her in the abdomen with every ounce of
his weight behind him. The impact was so
brutal that she tore through the wooden wall behind her and plummeted down the
mountainside. The boy walked over to the
hole in the wall and gazed down to confirm that she had not survived the
fall. Before her body disappeared from
view, he watched as she collided with multiple objects along her descent. He knew from his experience of hitting a tree
that there was no possible way she could have survived multiples collisions, so
he turned away and went to check on Awana.
The girl was injured, but she was
breathing and somewhat conscious. She
looked up at him and said dazedly, “Mr. Bird, I felt far more useful on our
last adventure.”
With a small but concerned laugh,
Jonathan scooped her up from the ground and dusted her off. “Awana, if you had not been here, we would
have failed. I guarantee it. You kept me going. You encouraged me every step of the way. And though we didn’t plan it this way, you
bought me time to figure out my next move for M.D. Thank you.”
She beamed at him. “You’re certainly welcome, but I’m just
trying to understand how a bird of your size can talk. It blows my mind.” Then her head rolled back,
and she fell asleep.
Jonathan peered out the open
window and saw the bodies of many turkeys on the ground. Pumpkin was no longer jumping, but swinging
his sword here and there wearily. There
were still almost a hundred birds around him.
Super Pumpkin had managed to push the cauldron very close to the western
cliff, but he was now seated against the pot, exhausted.
“Guys!” Jonathan shouted. “Guys, M.D. has been slain!”
“Great!” Super Pumpkin called out
to him. “You two must get going. Good luck to you both, and I pray that you
find happiness together!”
Ghost was looking exceptionally
nervous. “Melhrir is only a few miles
away! Hurry!”
Everyone looked to the west, and
the great Eagle, its talons large enough to carry a small town, and its wings
spread a couple hundred feet across, approached at a horrifying speed. Jonathan shuddered, and he hurried out of the
tower. A moment later, the companions
watched as he climbed up the spine of a hunched obelisk with Awana in his arms,
and they all realized that he had never before appeared like such a hero. Lightning continued to strike behind him, and
the thunder chanted, and Melhrir came on from the western skies. But the boy, injured and weary, and somehow
full of hope, drew closer to his goal with each step. His eyes fell to Awana, and he said, “We’ll
be home soon; I promise.”
Pumpkin drove his sword through a
turkey’s wing, and then he faced Super Pumpkin.
“Well, this is it.”
“Yes, it is time for you to go,”
Super Pumpkin answered, still sitting against the cauldron. “Do not worry; I will do as I have said, and
destroy this cauldron.”
“But you have no strength left,
and you know it,” said Pumpkin. “You
cannot do this alone. I’ll stay here
with you.”
The caped squash sighed. “You do not want to do that. I know you, Pumpkin. You wish to be with your friends. You must leave.”
Jonathan reached the end of the
stone, and he looked into the deep void of the portal. “Thank you all for what you’ve done for me in
the past and on this day. I won’t forget
it. Super Pumpkin, I was wrong. There are
superheroes, and you’ve shown me that today. Pumpkin and Ghost, I hope I’ll see you on the
other side. Goodbye.” He closed his eyes
and muttered, “Oh, I hope we don’t appear a thousand feet above Berryessa.”
Then he hurdled forward, touched the portal’s edge, and vanished.
“Pumpkin,” Super Pumpkin
grumbled, rising to his feet. “Go. Now!”
“Melhrir is right on us, you
guys!” Ghost wailed.
Turkeys were finally breaking
through and pecking both Pumpkin and Super Pumpkin all over their bodies. Pumpkin could hardly lift his sword, and he
wondered if he could even make his way to the top of a stone if he tried. He limped to his cousin’s side. “Listen, I’m staying. We need to make sure that Melhrir can’t reach
earth. That’s our priority.”
“I am going to tap into the last
of my Magic to take down this cauldron,” Super Pumpkin responded. “Believe me, I am fully capable of it. I will be fine, Pumpkin. I will be fine.”
“You’ll be utterly spent. I need to be here to save you.”
His cousin untied the cape from
his body and handed it to Pumpkin. “You
cannot save everyone, Pumpkin. Sometimes
you have to let others find the way on their own.”
“Um…Super Pumpkin, what are you
doing?” Pumpkin looked at the cape in his hands.
“The name isn’t Super Pumpkin, my
dear cousin.” The squash held onto Pumpkin’s entire body and lifted him off the
ground. “It’s Gourdo. Now go!” Then, with a massive surge of power,
he lobbed Pumpkin toward the portal.
Ghost zipped after his friend, cowering as Melhrir swooped down a
hundred yards above the summit. The last
thing Pumpkin saw before he reached the portal was a white light flashing from
his cousin’s hands and knocking the cauldron off the cliff. Gourdo fell onto his back, his duty
fulfilled, and turkeys swarmed over him.
Pumpkin and Ghost touched the portal and disappeared.
To their horror and annoyance,
they did indeed appear a thousand feet above Lake Berryessa. Ghost had no need to worry (yet he did
anyway), but Pumpkin feared that he would soon be a squashed…squash. As the portal above him dispersed into
nothingness, he plunged toward the water while Ghost pretended to fall beside
him. They screamed in unison, the deep
abyss waiting for them far below. They
thought they heard the words “There they are!” come from somewhere nearby, and
a couple seconds later, someone grabbed Pumpkin and ended his descent. He looked below him and saw a
broomstick. Then he looked ahead and saw
that Witch was flying on the broomstick and heading toward a cliffside road. Ghost continued to “tumble” through the air
behind them, convinced that this was the end for him. As Witch and Pumpkin drew nearer to the road,
the squash could see Jonathan standing on the side, and Awana resting against a
stump. Frankenstein’s monster and the
Legcheeses were also there. Mr.
Legcheese was doing some pretty epic lunges for warmth, and Mrs. Legcheese was
dressed like a cheerleader. She cheered
on Pumpkin as he reached the cliff and jumped onto the pebbly roadside. Stanley Pharmacist was nowhere to be seen; he
had fled hysterically from the Legcheese household after realizing there would
be no turkey for dinner.
“Witch, I thought I was done
for,” Pumpkin said as he landed on his feet.
“Thank you.”
“Oh, dearie, y’know it’s
nothing.” She kicked her broom into her hand like a skateboard.
Jonathan turned to Frankenstein’s
monster. “How did you guys know we would
show up here?”
“While I would find it the
pinnacle of enjoyment to profess to you that knowledge,” explained the
intelligent creature, “methinks the dialogue would be better suited over food
frequently equated with this merry holiday.”
“Sure, I’m fine with that,” the
boy answered. “But I think we might have
to move to cooked goose or leg of lamb.
Maybe even chicken breast. I
don’t care. Please, just no turkey.”
Ghost rose up among the group
from the ground. “Guys, weirdest thing
just happened. I was freefalling pretty
intensely. Not sure if you saw it. But I didn’t even hit the water. I didn’t hit a thing! Can you believe that?”
Pumpkin sighed. “If only he could use the long day as an
excuse, but he always acts like this.”
“Well, it has been a long day,” Jonathan said, looking at Awana. “Come on, guys. Let’s go home.”
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