Graysen Foxx and the Treasure of Principal Redbeard by J. Scott Savage

Author:J. Scott Savage
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Shadow Mountain Publishing
Published: 2023-02-02T19:47:17+00:00

Lizzy held up her kazoo. “That’s why we brought these.”

Maya looked unconvinced. “How are musical instruments supposed to stop wild monsters with giant tongues?”

Lizzy closed her eyes. “Many years ago, before the chamele­pigs turned feral, they were second-grade pets.”

“Second-grade pets,” the spies behind her repeated.

“Safe in their cages, they were fed, watered, and petted.”

“Fed, watered, and petted.”

“But what they liked best was music time,” the spy commander said. “Although the creatures have grown and changed, their love for music has not. And there is one song they all remember.”

She motioned to the spies gathered around her, and, as one, they raised their kazoos and began to play a song I immediately recognized.

“You put your left hand in,” Maya whispered. “You put your left hand out.”

Jack swayed back and forth to the music as he silently mouthed the words and followed the directions with his hand.

Jake stopped wriggling his toes. “You put your left hand in.”

Ricky picked up a piece of paper, his eyes dreamy and faraway. “And you shake it all about.”

Tunes changed her random notes to their song.

“The Hokey Pokey?” I asked.

Lizzy nodded. “It is the song that soothes the savage beasts to this day.”

I’d seen stranger things than kazoo-playing spies since I started school at Ordinary Elementary, but I couldn’t imagine their music would protect us from the monsters that roamed the Forsaken Field.

Still, as I studied the others around me, I couldn’t help noticing that they all looked less anxious than before. Ricky was holding the paper, but not ripping it. Bathroom-Break Erica wasn’t shifting back and forth, and Jake’s toes had stopped wiggling. The music did seem to have a calming effect.

Out in the field, the trees and bushes had stopped moving, and I no longer sensed the danger I’d felt the first time I’d looked at the cursed ground. The plant-choked lot felt almost peaceful—like a park.

“What do you think?” I asked Maya.

But I was alone. Maya and the others were already twenty feet into the field, pulling paper, cans, faded jackets, and old balls from the deep grass and tossing them into their trash bags.

I clenched my jaw. “If this is another one of Raven’s tricks, I promise I’ll—”

“I told you, we don’t work for Raven anymore,” Lizzy said. “It is time for you to complete your quest.”

Hoping I wasn’t making the biggest mistake of my life, I opened my bag and walked into the field. Accompanied by the oddly restful music of the Hokey Pokey kazoo band, I was soon deep into the trees, picking up baseball mitts, caps, torn kites, and rusty toy cars—even a clipboard with a faded attendance role dated from before I was born.

I didn’t notice the footprint in the mulch beneath the branches of a crooked oak tree until I stepped over it. At first, I figured it must have been made by one of the other kids who were picking up trash. The second-grade spies usually walked too lightly to leave tracks.

But this print was too big to have been left by one of us.

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