Free The Key by Michael Grant

exactly … twelve years old.
    â€œThere’s a castle there. On top of a mountain.”
    She was with her grandparents. Not the wrinkled-up type of grandparents—these were the active, fit, nutrition-beverage-drinking kind of grandparents.
    And they saw it, too.
    Not all the tourists did. But some did. At least half of those standing there were looking up with their jaws down and their eyes wide and their cameras forgotten for a moment.
    â€œWhat are you all staring at?” others demanded, frustrated.
    One of the bus drivers said, “I’ve lived here all my life: I’ve never seen this. It’s … it’s impossible.”
    â€œNo, not impossible,” Dietmar announced somewhat grandly. “It is the castle of William Blisterthöng MacGuffin, long concealed by fairy magic.”
    The crowd continued the jaws-hanging, eyes-wide thing, but now some were pointing their cameras and others were moving toward the castle.
    A scream pierced the air.
    A cannonball flew from the castle’s highest tower.
    The cannonball was writhing and yelling.
    Xiao, Jarrah, and Dietmar all saw it at the same instant.
    Stefan cried out in anguished recognition.
    No chance to use Vargran! The three Magnifica had used up their enlightened puissance revealing the castle.
    â€œNoooo!” Xiao cried.
    Mack flew in a long, flat arc straight toward the unyielding stone walls of Urquhart Castle.
    â€œHalk-ma simu (ch)ias!”
    The Vargran spell rang out clear and loud.
    And it came from the goth girl, who stood legs apart, both hands together, and pointing with her clenched fist, like she was aiming a gun or something, as Mack flew overhead.

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Eleven
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    W hat do you think about in the seconds before death?
    Have you ever considered that? You’re probably considering it right now.
    In Mack’s case he was thinking about his life. Which, prior to Grimluk suddenly informing him of his importance in an age-old struggle between good and evil, had been pretty boring.
    And Mack was thinking about how great boring is. Boring is excellent, compared to dying.
    In those last seconds he was thinking about his mom. And screaming. And his dad. And screaming.
    And he was feeling guilty because now the world would not be saved and the Pale Queen would enslave all of humanity. She would probably outlaw video games and movies and fro-yo and Toaster Strudel and all the truly good things in the world.
    And then there was the screaming.
    And suddenly Mack heard a voice, audible even over the shriek of the wind whipping past.
    He didn’t think he recognized the voice. Then again, it’s sometimes hard to recognize voices when you’re screaming and hurtling to your death.
    â€œHalk-ma simu (ch)ias!”
    The walls of Urquhart Castle were so close that Mack could see ants crawling up the rock when all of a sudden he was free of the rope and his arms spread and caught the wind.
    The wind filled his wings and he soared!
    His what now?
    His wings!
    It strained very muscle fiber in his body. It was like he was being stretched on a rack, but his wings took the wind, filled, shot him up, up, up past the wall, so close that the tip of his nose scraped the rock, and then he was up over the walls, up in the air, zooming up into the sky.
    Up and up until momentum died away and he sort of hung there between acceleration and gravity.
    Gravity gently tugged at him, and he began to fall. But his wings—they were like a seagull’s wings, actually, white and swept back, but as wide in span as the largest condor’s—held him aloft.
    His feet were melted together and had sprouted a wide fan of feathers. The rest of him was pretty much regular old Mack.
    He caught an updraft and swooped low above a crowd of utterly amazed faces, all turned skyward.
    He would have liked to land, but no feet.
    So he hovered in the sky, riding the thermal, 18 floating on an updraft of warm air rippling up from the grassy