Free Saving Lucas Biggs by Marisa de los Santos

been able to whip certain beagles.
    The pigeon was just right for a pie.
    “Awwww,” cooed Luke as I picked up my rabbit, his furry head lolling, his pink tongue sticking out. “He’s cute.”
    “Um,” I replied.
    “We should name that bunny.”
    “But—” I said.
    “Look at his big brown eyes!” Luke persisted. “I think we should call him—”
    “Come on!” I protested. “Name him what?”
    “Stew!” declared Luke. “Throw some carrots in there, maybe chop up an onion—”
    “Stew. Good one,” I had to admit.
    “Sorry, Stew—” Luke told the rabbit.
    “—better you than us,” I said.
    “Now what about the pigeon?” asked Luke, cradling him in two hands.
    “Reginald,” I said.
    “Perfect,” declared Luke.
    I hefted the dead bunny, or as I liked to think of him, dinner, and Luke turned around to clamber back down the outcrop, which looked very different from where we now stood.
    “Which way do we go?” I asked.
    “Down?” he suggested.
    “Sure,” I replied. “But which down?” Because it wasn’t as simple as you’d have thought. Mount Hosta was complicated—splitting into ridges, spines, gorges, ravines, rockfalls, cliffs, and gullies as far as the eye could see. In the three minutes we hadn’t been paying attention, we’d gotten ourselves completely lost.
    “Maybe we could ask over there,” suggested Luke, pointing at a perfect little house in a mountain meadow just visible over the next ridge like something from a fairy tale: peaked roof, red shutters, yellow window boxes, and green trim.
    “If a weird old lady comes to the door and asks us in,” whispered Luke as we knocked, “don’t get between her and the oven.”
    A weird not-so-old lady came to the door. “Would you like to come in?” she asked. The mothball fumes billowing around her probably stunned migrating butterflies as far away as Mexico. “Leave your pets on the front porch if you don’t mind.”
    Luke and I glanced at each other, but since there wasn’t another mysterious mountain cottage handy, we dropped Reginald and Stew in the grass and stepped inside that one. In the light, I got a good look at the woman who lived there. Behind eyeglasses as thick as the windshield of a spaceship, she had the same green eyes as the doctor who had saved all my friends. I was sure she must be Doc O’Malley’s sister.
    “I’m Josh Garrett, and this is my friend Luke Agrippa, ma’am,” I said.
    “Don’t ma’am me, sir. I am Miss O’Malley,” she snapped, scorching me with those peepers of hers, but not too much. “You may call me Aunt Bridey.”
    “But you’re not our—” Luke started to point out.
    “You may call me Aunt Bridey!” repeated Aunt Bridey in a tone that brooked no argument.
    Luke scratched his head as if he was trying to put all this together, but I saw how it fit. She wasn’t married. She’d never been married. Maybe she’d wanted to marry somebody once, and maybe one day she still would because she wasn’t all that old. But for now she lived up here in her mountain meadow with her green eyes and probably some binoculars to spy on birds with and carried a fruitcake down the mountain to her brother and her nieces and nephews every holiday season so they wouldn’t forget she existed, and the rest of the time she stayed up here wearing her essence of mothballs sweater and stayed out of everybody’s affairs.
    I shot Luke a look expressing all this.
    “Right,” he said. “Pardon the intrusion,” he added. “If you could just direct us back to Victory, we’ll be on our way.”
    “There,” she said, pointing over the edge of a nearby cliff.
    “I, ah, thanks,” said Luke, eyeing it dubiously.
    “Oh, don’t be such a sissy !” chided Aunt Bridey. “The drop-off isn’t as bad as it looks. And there’s a trail. Leads past the beehive. Along the brook. Antelopes use it all the time.”
    “Thank you,” I said.
    On our way out, something on her hall table caught my eye: a