Henry Rider: Clown Hunter

Chapter Sixteen

AUTHOR'S NOTE: if you get tired of waiting for new chapters, the entire book is for sale on Amazon in print and on Kindle!

Chapter Sixteen

Ethan flew up into the air, flipping head over heels, and crashed back down to earth with a wicked belly flop. I sighed, not because he'd failed to defend himself again — I'd just about given up on that — but because I was determined to flip him just right so that he landed on his feet on the way back down.

Hey, a girl's got to have her hobbies.

"Sloppy!" I yelled as he got back up. "What did I tell you?"

Ethan rubbed his head. "Remind me. I think you gave me amnesia."

"Keep your hammer up like this." I showed him with Splatsy. "That's your best defensive posture."

"But you hit me on the head!" he complained. He was still using the wooden slightly-smaller-than-Splatsy hammer. "How does holding it in front of my chest protect my head?"

"If I go for your head, then you defend your head. Duh."

"But you—"

"Think fast!" I swung Splatsy, and Ethan actually managed to block my first attack. I rewarded him with a quick smack to his hand, which made him drop his hammer, and then bonked him on the head.

"Dead," I said as he collapsed. "Dead, dead, dead as a doorknob."

"Nail."

I raised an eyebrow. "Come again?"

"It's dead as a doornail, not knob." he said, still lying on the ground.

"You're not a knob!"

He blinked. "Uh, thank you?"

"This," McGus declared, "is the saddest thing I've ever seen."

I clenched my teeth and refused to look at him. He wanted me to give up and ask for help. If I were smart, I probably would have. But nobody calls Henrietta Chaplin Rider smart and lives to tell about it, so I vented my frustrations by smacking Ethan up into the air again. I overdid it this time, as he flipped so far that he actually landed on his back.

"Up," I snapped. "Let's go again."

"How am I supposed to learn anything like this?" he demanded, stubbornly remaining on the floor.

I sighed, but sat down across from him. "The same way I learned. When McGus first made me his apprentice, he would kick my butt up and down this room for five hours a day until I finally learned how to kick back."

Ethan sat up and gave me a skeptical look. "And how long did that take?"

"More than a year," I admitted.

He fell onto his back. "Wonderful."

Before I could say anything else, McGus stood up. "All right, girl, you've played Whack-a-Mole on him enough for one day. Get out of here before I decide to do the same to you."

"Fine by me!" Ethan said, already on his feet.

While I watched him drag his hammer back to the weapons wall, McGus came to stand beside me.

"Be honest with me, Master," I said.

"You're irresponsible, lazy, and you don't take anything seriously." I shot him a look, and his eyebrows went up. "Oh, did you mean about something specific?"

I ignored the jab and asked, "Am I doing okay with him?"

On the other side of the room, Ethan lifted the hammer to put it away, but overbalanced and ended up slamming it against the wall. He screamed and covered his head as ten more hammers fell free, thudding heavily to the floor all around him.