House of Secrets

Chapter 26

The last time the Walters went outside, Jonathan had made sure they had weapons. This time Will seemed weapon enough. He made quick, staggered movements down the front hallway, holding his arm at his side. He couldn’t move it freely yet, but Alyssa was just impressed that he was alive and awake. Dad would be proud.

A second tree landed outside with a thud, shaking the house.

“What’s doing that?” Nellie said. “Another plane?”

“Pray it’s not a German zeppelin,” said Will.

Another crack. Another long, creaking groan, this one from a tree that sounded like it was about to make the house cave in. Instead it landed just outside the utterly busted front door.

“I’m not scared of any zeppoles,” Nellie said firmly. She pulled the door aside and stepped out over Alyssa’s protests: “No! Stop! What are you—”

“Come and look, guys!”

Jonathan, Alyssa, and Will followed Nellie out. Three enormous trees lay in front of the house. Jonathan remembered the three pines that stood on the lawn back in San Francisco . . . but these were jungle trees, ramrod straight all the way to the top, with bristly primitive leaves.

“Odd,” Alyssa said. “None of them have any roots.”

Jonathan walked to the base of one. It was snapped on a diagonal, like a blade of grass someone had ripped up.

“What could have done this?” Alyssa asked.

“I don’t know . . . ,” said Will. Another crack sounded to the right. They turned to look, but immediately snapped their heads at another crack to the left. Then at another, hundreds of yards in front of them. And another behind them.

Suddenly, four enormous, snapped-off trees floated upward, hundreds of feet in the air. The Walters and Will squinted in disbelief as the trees began to spin, their branches dipping under their trunks and up again, until they were whirling like pinwheels, performing a surrealistic air ballet, blowing down air that pushed everyone’s hair away from their faces.

“Not what I expected!” yelled a stunned Will—and then the trees began to drop.

“Run!” screamed Alyssa. They all sprinted forward as the trees crashed around them. Each time one hit the ground, it produced a shock wave that blew them over; they had to scramble up to avoid the next massive, plummeting trunk. The final tree crashed directly in front of Nellie, missing her by inches.

“Raining trees. This is a first!” said Jonathan.

“What’s doing it?” asked Alyssa.

“Magic!” Jonathan said. They huddled by one of the fallen trees.

“But we haven’t seen any magic. Not like that. The only person who can do things like that is—”

“Don’t say her name!” said Nellie, but now the tree trunks were moving again. The farthest one, by the open door to the house, rose as if pulled by a string attached to its top. Once it was at a forty-five-degree angle to the ground, it stopped and stood there impossibly, like an optical illusion, before a second tree rose to mirror it, forming an arch that dwarfed the house. Soon enough all the trees rose to form a majestic tunnel, with the house at one end and the Walters and Will at the other.

Striding toward them under the unbelievable timber formation, in a fine purple robe, was the Wind Witch.

“Heck of a way to make an entrance,” said Jonathan.