Chapter 10 - Yay!

“What a stupid monster!” said Yates, laughing loudly. His voice echoed.

“What?” said Jane.

“I know what it is! I’ll tell you how to beat it. Firstly, climb to its back; secondly, find its fifteenth scale on its tortoise shell; thirdly, tap it seventeen times; finally, step on its head and jump immediately—it’ll—uh—I forgot what it will do.”

“Never mind,” said Leo, picking his sword up.

“Let me try,” said Derek confidently.

He climbed from the second snake’s tail of the monster to its back. He was too confident. It noticed almost at once. Its head turned, its huge sharp eyes gazing at him. He screamed and fell. The girls screamed too.

“Leave it to me,” called Rachel bravely.

However, she was also too confident. Carelessly, she grabbed Leo’s sword and jumped onto the monster’s back. She counted, and then—

ROAR!

The monster tilted its back and Rachel fell to the pile of books with a long scream.

“NO!” cried Yates. “Hey—wait—did I forget something? Oh, yes—teamwork!”

“Teamwork? ” called Jane.

“Teamwork! Jane, you can have a try,” said Yates patiently. “Be careful! And Leo, you can go attracting the monster’s attention by throwing the sword you’ve got. Bottle carriers, you can all throw books at the monster.”

“Good idea!” said the bottle carriers together.

“I should use a smarter way to climb,” murmured Jane to herself. She used one of the bookcases as a ladder and jumped down to the monster’s shell. It roared and Jane’s heart pounded fast. She looked at Leo, who had just thrown the sword towards a bookcase. “Yes, ” shouted Yates. Jane quickly found the fifteenth scale on the shell. Leo handed her the sword. She tapped and counted.

“1… 2… 3…”

“Rachel! Scream! Attract it!”

“9…10…11…”

“It’s going there — crashing into that bookcase!”

“12…13…”

“Come on, Jane!”

“16…17!”

Jane jumped onto the monster’s head as fast as she could. The monster’s screech pierced and echoed. Jane jumped off and heard that the bottle carriers cheered, “Oh, wow!” The monster was getting smaller and smaller, and eventually vanished with a cracking noise.

“Brilliant!” called Yates. “That was excellent!” Rachel was crying happily and crazily. Leo and Derek cheered. All the bottle carriers hugged each other. “Yay!” said all of the children. And then, Jane heard a door creaking sound. Her heart started to pound quickly again. Everybody fell silent, still hugging.

She breathed out a sigh of relief because minutes later August and Mr. Summer appeared in the doorway. “What?” whispered Rachel.

“Are they in there?” called Mr. Summer.

“They must be,” said August. “The other bottle carriers have searched for them everywhere. We did not find them, so they must be here.”

“Ah! Maybe they’re eaten. The monster—”

“We’re here!” cried Rachel crazily.

“Jane helped us beat the monster!” yelled Derek cheerfully.

“No!” said Jane. “We did it together! It was easy to do that if we do it together.”

“Really?” said Mr. Summer suspiciously. “It’s been locking here for ages! It’s such a magically horrid monster.”

“It has been forgotten,” said August smiling. “Even I could hardly remember it—I just know it’s dangerous. Now we all know we only need a few kids to beat that!”

Everyone laughed, but soon they noticed that they were very tired.

Standing in front of the mirror of one of the rooms in “Season Changers’ Dorms”, Jane knew how messy her hair had been. She was too tired. She climbed into the white blanket and fell asleep soon.

“Yay!” she said, when the morning sunlight came in from the opening windows. Her pink skirt, white shirt, yellow and brown jacket which were all at home last night  suddenly and magically appeared. Jane gasped in amazement. She put them on quickly. “Yay!” she whispered again, because she felt very happy and the next day began.

A girl came in from the door when Jane and Rachel combed their hair. The girl had long black hair and yellowish brown eyes. Her face was pretty long and she was a little taller than Rachel. She was wearing a long dark green dress. “Come on, girls,” said the girl, “it’s August 20th. It’s half past seven now.”

“What?” gasped Jane. “You’re wrong. It must be August 2nd. It was August 1st yesterday.”

“No!” gasped Rachel. “You are wrong. We’ve been to the mountains with the magical time. Stop being stupid, Jannie, we’ve been staying there for hours. We ate there.”

Jane felt herself being silly. A strange desire of going home went through Jane’s mind like a shooting star.

Later she was delighted again, because she was going to have a different life—the life in the castle.

“Yay!” she repeated.