Free The Monsters of Morley Manor by Bruce Coville Page A

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, I thought.
    Then I spotted Gaspar. He looked impatient.
    â€œCome on,” I said to Sarah. “We’d better hurry.”
    I half expected the words to come out in little bubbles. Duh. You have to have air to make bubbles, and we weren’t breathing air anymore. So the words just came out as sound, made odd by the fact that they were traveling through water rather than air.
    I glanced over my shoulder. The lake bed sloped up behind us. Ludmilla and Melisande were completely underwater now, too, and Melisande’s snakes were writhing wildly about her head. I hoped the snakes were all right. I thought about going back to check, but I figured Melisande would know if anything was wrong. Even as I watched, they began to settle down. Since Melisande didn’t turn and head for the surface, I figured they were relaxing, not drowning.
    I glanced up. The sun catching on the water that rippled overhead made the surface look like some kind of silvery ceiling, with a pattern that changed from moment to moment. I tapped Sarah’s shoulder and pointed for her to look. She smiled, then said happily, “This is the weirdest, coolest thing that’s ever happened to us, Anthony.”
    I didn’t know if she meant breathing underwater, or everything that had gone on since we first put Albert in the sink. Either way, she was right.
    Melisande and Ludmilla had caught up with us by that time. “Ve’d better keep moving,’’ said Ludmilla.
    We started out again. The lake bed was getting kind of mucky, and some clinging weeds made it hard to walk, so we began to swim, which turned out to be a lot easier.
    Though we could breathe, the water was still wet, of course. So our hair was floating around our heads, while our clothes were plastered to our bodies—not that Melisande’s dress hadn’t been pretty much plastered to her body already. Sarah caught me looking at her now and gave me an elbow in the ribs.
    As we swam deeper, I felt the pressure of the water begin to squeeze me. I wondered how far down we were going to go—and whether the Wentar’s spell would protect us from being squished by the water’s great weight.
    I was gazing around, fascinated by the fish and the scenery and not paying much attention to where we were heading, when suddenly Sarah cried, “Holy mackerel!”
    At first I thought she had seen a giant fish. Then I realized that the waterguy had led us over a cliff. I was terrified when I saw that dark drop beneath us, but really, it was no big deal. When you’re already in the water you’re not going to fall or anything. As my terror began to ebb I studied the strange landscape below us.
    Then I saw what Sarah had been shouting about. It wasn’t the cliff, after all. My heart began to pound again, and I wondered if we had been betrayed.

10
The Mother of All Frogs
    S QUATTING IN THE CENTER of that landscape, huge and astonishing, was a creature that looked somewhat like Chug-rug-lalla-apsa-lalla-rugum-bupbup, with one major difference: This one was bigger than our house!
    When I first saw it, I thought it must be some kind of statue the waterpeople had made. But seconds after we cleared the edge of the cliff, the enormous beast rolled its huge eyeballs in their sockets, looked up at us, blinked twice, then opened its mouth.
    Out shot a tongue that had to be at least a hundred feet long. Like a green ribbon of death, the tongue wrapped around the Wentar and pulled him into the creature’s mouth, so fast it was almost as if it hadn’t happened.
    Panic exploded in my chest. Was this how I was going to die—swallowed by a giant frog on an alien planet?
    I looked around frantically for Sarah. She was only a few feet from me. “Come on!” I cried. “Let’s get out of here.”
    I reached for her hand—instinct, I guess, since it was actually a pretty silly thing to do: You can’t swim very fast while