Free Out on a Limb by Gail Banning Page B

soft and mossy, but somehow our footsteps sounded exaggerated, like what a rabbit must hear. We wound our way between shrubs and came to a little fountain. Water spouted from the mouth of a man’s stone face, into a stone basin. It did not seem pleasant, for something to gush so forcefully from a person’s mouth. We continued down the forking paths.
    We came to a pond, which we’d never seen properly from outside the hedge. The pond water was as dark as anti-matter. At first it seemed empty, but then enormous golden carp rose from the depths. They watched Tilley and me from the surface, and opened their gaping mouths as if getting ready to swallow us whole. They were prehistorically huge.
    “These fish are man-eaters,” I told Tilley.
    “Are not,” she said.
    “Are too.” I threw in a chunk of leftover granola bar, and from the way those fish thrashed, it seemed that it might be true.
    “Let’s go, Rosie,” Tilley said, pulling on the cuff of my fleece jacket.
    “Okay,” I said, because it was hard not to be creeped out by those fish. We followed another path to a tree that had been all perfectly trimmed into the shape of a deer, with antlers and everything.
    “This used to be a real deer,” I said.
    “Did not,” Tilley said.
    “Did too. It was a real deer, until Great-great-aunt Lydia put an evil spell on it.”
    “She did not.”
    “She did!” I thought of something, and got the torn blue strip out of my wallet. “‘Ives. It Turns. Possessed A. Treehouse I. It Turns O.You Are Who. It Turns Ou.’” I quoted. “You know what this is about Tilley? It’s about a spell, where you turn three times. It’s about the spell that made the deer
possessed
.”
    “That is so not true. I saw the gardener clipping it.” “It is true,” I said. I didn’t believe what I was saying, but this dark view of Great-great-aunt Lydia suited my mood. “Then why does it say ‘treehouse’, and ‘you are who’” challenged Tilley.
    “It’s saying we in the treehouse are next.” I took the coded letter out of my wallet and waved it. “And this isn’t a code at all. It’s the words of the spell. If someone chants this while circling a creature three times, the creature turns into something else. For all eternity.”
    “Does not.”
    “It does!” I began to circle Tilley, reading from the coded letter in a creepy voice. “ID ID NO! TE VERTHIN KAPA! IROFSCIS! SORSCO!”
    “Rosie!” Tilley smiled a bit to show that she knew I was teasing.
    “ULDDO SOMU! CHHARM IHA! VETOLE AVETH!”
    “Rosie, stop it!”
    “ISBLO!” I cried, circling. “ODYHO!”
    “Don’t!” Tilley screamed, and she ran for the gap in the fence, leaving me alone in the Manor garden. I looked around. Up in one of Great-great-aunt Lydia’s trees was an owl. His head turned weirdly, almost a complete turn, as if it was a jar lid or something. The owl glared. I decided not to explore any further. There was no way of knowing when Great-great-aunt Lydia might return in her Bentley.
    “You’re mean,” Tilley said as I crouched through the gap in the fence.
    “You knew I was teasing,” I said, swinging the board shut behind me.
    “You scared me on purpose.”
    “You were scared of being turned into a
tree
? And you’re the child of
scientists
?”
    Tilley’s eyeballs got wet and shiny. “You’re
really
mean,” she said. As she marched across the meadow, I felt a bit bad. I
had
known she was scared, and as an older sibling I had a responsibility not to abuse my power. I followed her to the treehouse and made her hot chocolate on the camping stove, and read her a chapter of Harry Potter, and she went right back to being happy with me.
    The next day after school I noticed that Great-great-aunt Lydia’s fence didn’t bug me anymore. I figured it was because we had committed the breaking and entering. The fence insulted us, but we had insulted it right back.
    That Thursday afternoon when I arrived at Sir Combover Elementary, Tilley