Free The Magician's Tower by Shawn Thomas Odyssey

making so much noise that Oona wished to stuff her fingers into her ears, could all be found on the upper levels. They swung from the ropes and dangled from the edges of the furniture like extremely hairy lunatics. Oona counted five of them, and they seemed to be everywhere at once, causing the ropes holding up the piano to creak, or bouncing on the sofa like a trampoline.
    Oona could see Isadora up there on the sofa, looking fearfully disheveled and holding on for dear life.
    â€œSomeone get me down from here!” she cried.
    The apes screamed with laughter as several of the chimps joined in on the fun of bouncing around Isadora and the piles of fruit on the sofa.
    Something shiny caught Oona’s gaze: something hanging from the end of a thin chain around the neck of one of the chimps. It was hard to tell, because of how feverishly the hairy beast was bouncing on the sofa cushion beside Isadora, but to Oona the shiny object looked vaguely like a crescent of gold. With a quick glance at the chimp’s companions, she realized that each of the apes had a similar necklace.
    The golden bananas
, she thought.
That’s what the architect told us to retrieve
.
    She also realized that when the apes weren’t busy throwing food at the contestants, they were attempting to toss it into the boiling pot. At present, one of the chimps, a large, fierce-looking one with a stripe of gray across its eyes, was preparing to toss one of Isadora’s shoes into the boiling stew below, but when the ape caught sight of Oona peeking out from beneath the table, it hurled the shoe at her instead, striking her in the forehead.
    â€œBloody beast!” Oona shouted, rubbing at her forehead and ducking back beneath the table.
    â€œRoderick!” Isadora cried from above. “I thought you were my BOYFRIEND!”
    â€œI am, my lady,” Roderick called back.
    â€œThen get out here, BOYFRIEND! Now! Retrieve my shoe, and then get me out of here!”
    Roderick looked pale. “Just a … a … a minute, my lady!”
    â€œI’ll just a minute you, BOYFRIEND,” Isadora howled, “and … hey, let go of my hair, you evil thing!”
    This was followed by a fit of high-pitched chimpanzee chortling.
    Oona tapped both boys on the shoulder. “Here’s what I believe we have to do. First we’ll need to climb the stairs along the wall to get to the next level. Once we get there we will have to hop from one piece of furniture to the next in order to get across to the other side of the room. From there we can travel up the second set of steps to the top level, and again hop across the furniture to the exit. The golden bananas are hanging from the necks of the apes. We’ll each need to get close enough to one of them in order to take a banana.”
    â€œI know what to do!” Roderick snapped at her. “You don’t need to tell me.”
    He leapt from beneath the table and made a dash for the opposite end of the room, toward the stairs leading to the second level. Fruit rained down on him from all directions, and Oona wanted to cover her ears against the manic cry of the apes. But instead of cowering beneaththe table, she followed Roderick, hoping that his lead would draw most of the fire.
    It worked … sort of.
    Roderick took the stairs three at a time, swatting back potatoes and bananas. For the second time, a tomato struck Oona in the back of the head. She stumbled forward, nearly losing her balance as the juices splattered through her hair and oozed down her back.
    â€œYou nasty beasts!” she shouted, but quickly realized that she had been the lucky one when a ripe, red beet hammered Roderick between the eyes. The beet cracked open against his head, spinning him down against the wall just as he reached the second-floor platform.
    For an instant Oona thought it had split Roderick’s head right open, but kneeling down to see if he was all right,