Page 51 of The Tree of Spirits
There was a hard, hollow drumming noise from deep inside the earth.Da-dum. Da-dum. Da-dum.The pounding grew louder. Harder. Angrier. The ground began to quake. It was sofast, so unrelenting. The vibrations shot up my legs. My teeth began to clatter. My head was spinning. I felt dizzy, disoriented, off canter.
“If you pass out, I won’t be able to catch you,” Nixi warned me.
Capricorn stomped her foot again. The earth opened up beneath the Chameleon’s feet. The creature dropped out of view.
“Help!” a young girl cried out, her voice rising above the quaking and snarling. “Please help me! Someone! Anyone!”
I scoured the scene, searching for the girl. I found her trapped inside one of the craters Capricorn’s spell had scooped out of the road.
“Don’t worry,” I told the girl. “I’ll save you.”
“Stop.” Capricorn caught my arm. “That isn’t a little girl. It’s the Chameleon, trying to trick you.”
The earth shook again.
“Help me!” screeched the girl. She reached out to me, tears pouring down her face. “Please! Don’t leave me here! Don’t let me die!”
“Don’t do it, Savannah.” Capricorn didn’t let go of my arm. “Don’t be fooled by appearances. This monster is a shapeshifter. And it’s very crafty.”
“Help me!” the girl cried out again.
Except there were two of them now, trapped in neighboring craters.
“Please!”
Now there were four little girls, identical in every way, right down to the pink, star-shaped birthmark on each girl’s forehead.
“Don’t leave me here!”
There were eight girls. Their voices called out in perfect unison.
“Don’t let me die!”
My mind knew it was the Chameleon, but even so, gazing into their innocent, terrified eyes, it made my heart ache with sympathy.
“Why don’t you help me?” the girls asked, the chorus of voices echoing in my ears. “I thought Knights were supposed to be heroes.”
“You are not a Knight.”
I turned toward the sound of Kato’s voice. He was standing there beside me.
“You are only an Apprentice,” Conner told me. He stood on my other side. “And only because you cheated.”
Nevada was there too. “You will never be a Knight.”
“You’re such a scaredy-cat,” Dante taunted me. “Always have been, always will be.”
“I should never have let you go, Savannah,” my mom sighed. “You’re too young. Too small. Too fragile.”
“Too pathetic,” Zoe added in her biting, nasally voice. She sneered at me. “Are you going to cry, little girl? Are you going to fall apart?”
Rhett folded his arms over his chest and hit me with a triumphant smile. “It certainly looks like it.”
“She’s splitting at the seams!” Dutch laughed.
“You’ve looked better,” Kylie told me. Her smile was half-comforting, half-amused.
“Well, at least after the monster eats you, you won’t be dragging down the rest of us,” Bronte said. “Honestly, Savannah, I’ve never met anyone so terribly inept at following directions. I told you exactly what you need to do to rise up the Scoreboard, but you refused to listen!”
