Chapter 15

“He should come along any minute now,” I said to Pine.

We’d been staking out the dried-up creek bed for about an hour, waiting for Tenontosaurus to wander down the ditch. Nuke had poofed and returned to me a long time ago.

As the sun slipped behind a fast-building thunderhead, I’d worked a streak of sweat down my back piling rocks to secure the firework. Instead of up, I’d laid the tube on its side and aimed it straight down the channel, so when the dinosaur came along—boom.

Would it be quick and merciful? Well . . . It would be quick. Best I could do.

This seemed like a pretty safe place to launch a firework, at least. This ditch was all white chalk and gravel beds, with steep cliffs on either side. Not much around to set on fire. Still—and I couldn’t believe I was saying this—I wouldn’t mind some parental supervision right about now.

“As soon as this goes off, we’ll have to bag the soulshine and run.” I threaded the rocket’s fuse through the rocks where I planned to hide behind the pile. “Because I guarantee somebody will come running out here to investigate an explosion. And I am not getting double-grounded.”

This seems like a bad idea, Pine said. He had no way of knowing what a #500 Fluorescent Orange mortar was. It didn’t seem like he even had a word for explosion. But he knew a fire hazard when he saw one.

“Well, if anything goes wrong . . .” I tried not to imagine myself sizzling like a plate of fajitas, getting rushed to the burn ward. “At least I’ll look super cool for, like, two seconds.”

Be serious.

“You think I’d be out here trespassing on somebody else’s property with a tube full of gunpowder if I wasn’t serious?” I flopped down in the pebbles behind my makeshift cannon. “People are getting hurt because of my magic, and I’m the only one who might be able to put this monster down for good.” I shrugged. “So here we are.”

I unzipped my backpack and pushed the ukulele and a steel water bottle aside, rummaging around for matches.

Do you think the Crow is close by? Pine asked.

“I doubt it. Probably laying low.” I pulled Mom’s old ukulele out of the backpack and set it aside. I’d need to be ready to play if I wanted to catch the bull before Crow called him back. “Thanks for coming along. Not that you had a choice.”

It’s good that there’s two of us.

I lifted the water bottle out of the backpack and stared into the main pocket.

Empty.

My stomach flip-flopped.

I unzipped the front pocket. The side pocket. Dumped the pack upside down and shook.

A pencil dropped out. Two quarters. A penny.

No matches.

I pictured the bag of old birthday candles sitting in the lowest kitchen drawer. The matchbox lying inside.

“Oh my gosh.” I wanted to throw up.

What?

I slapped the empty backpack to the ground and stared up at the sky. “I’m the stupidest person in the whole world.”

Somewhere in the distance, a flock of crows cawed and took off. And then, down the creek bed, I heard the gravel crunch under heavy footsteps.

I clapped a hand over my mouth and hunkered behind my rock pile. In the steel water bottle at my feet, I saw a blurry, brown reflection.

The bull was here.

And I forgot the freaking matches.

I need something to light a fire. Even in my head, my voice came out as a whisper.

Distract it. Pine’s voice was tight with stress, but he didn’t waste any time. I can find a spark stone.

The closer the dinosaur’s footsteps got, the smaller I shrank. We’re in the same body. We can only be one place at a time. 

Use your magic.

I glanced at the uke, within arm’s reach. I can’t summon anything. He’ll hear the music.

What music?

What do you mean, what— I shook my head. I didn’t have time for this.

Slowly, I reached for the ukulele. Pulled it into my lap. Took a breath.

Jones and Freeland’s Tractor Store . . . I mouthed the words to myself and used the tippy-tips of my fingers to pluck the strings.

In metal of the water bottle, the brown blur froze. I peeked over my rock pile.

The bull locked eyes with me and let out an angry snort.

My fingers kicked into overdrive and rushed through the end of the radio jingle.

Bitey Face crumbled out of the chalk bed covered in white dust. He glanced between me and Tenontosaurus, taking in the drama.

“Bitey!” I struggled for a clever plan but ended up just blurting, “Bite!” It’s what he did best.

No hesitation. He darted toward the bull.

Bitey Face had barely a chip of the bull’s bodyweight, but his lightspeed charge made Tenontosaurus jerk back like it saw a wasp. The bull reared up and came down like a sledgehammer, pounding all of his weight on his front hooves.

Bitey dodged, weaving between his legs.

Eyes down here. Pine forced my focus to the pebbles around me. He was already moving my hands, fumbling around in the rocks. He spotted a brown stone with a jagged edge and snatched it off the ground. Now we need—

I could guess the next part. Steel. I grabbed the water bottle, braced it on the firework fuse, and hammered Pine’s rock against it.

It left a dent. No spark.

Not like that, Pine shouted.

“Don’t yell at me. I’ve never done this before.” I glanced up at the dinosaurs. Bitey zigged around the bull’s stomping feet and zagged behind him.

Tenontosaurus galloped right at me, Bitey hot on his heels.

I smacked the rock against the water bottle again. And again. But all I was doing was banging it out of shape.

Let me—

“Do it,” I said.

Pine’s soulshine surged into my hands and made a perfect strike.

The sharp rock glanced off the edge of the water bottle. An orange spark flashed.

The firework fuse hissed to life.

I scrambled backward—barely in time.

With a quick, clean shoof, the firework shot toward the charging dinosaur like a comet.

The bull caught the rocket square in the chest.

An ear-splitting, heart-stopping bang punched through the air. The whole world went supernova. Blinding red and orange and yellow sparkles blasted out of the dinosaur and rained down.

Pine’s soulshine was a spike ball of exclamation points.

The light died. Smoke swirled through the ditch. Embers and ash floated down around me. And where the bull once stood lay a smoldering pile of forest woodchips and cedar needles, topped with a sad, uprooted cactus. It looked like a backhoe took a scoop out of Dinosaur Valley and dumped it here.

I sat sprawled out on my butt. My eyes were full of stars and my ears were ringing—but something else flooded my senses.

Soulshine.

I scrambled for the ukulele before I missed my chance.

The just-right notes jumped into my fingers, and a bold Spanish riff, flamenco style, poured into the smokey air. On a classical guitar, it would’ve sounded like a challenge to a swordfight. Even on a fourth-grader’s ukulele, it sounded pretty cool.

The music roped the bull’s soulshine and the line of magic between us snapped tight, thin but steady. I reeled him in with some fancy string plucking, until his soulshine clicked into me like a puzzle piece. A perfect fit.

I finished the song off with a quick, sharp strum. “Got him!”

*

I withdrew Bitey Face and walked back to Grandpa’s ranch, hurrying through the switchgrass to beat the incoming thunderhead home. Setting sunlight had washed the lone anvil cloud pink and purple. Occasionally, a bolt of lightning snapped in the storm.

“That was insane. I’m still shaking.” I wiped my clammy hands on my shorts. “Pine, you were awesome back there. It’s like you weren’t even scared. Just, bam.” I punched air. “The power of fire.”

Pine didn’t say anything. He was so quiet, I wasn’t even sure he was paying attention.

“Are you okay?” I asked.

Grasshoppers chirped. Wind whispered through the wildflowers. Somewhere far away, a dog barked.

Can I ask a question? Pine said.

All this buildup made me nervous. “Yes?”

Does guitar make a sound?

“Um.” I glanced aside. Slowed my pace. “I don’t get what you mean.”

Cecelia, Pine said. I can’t hear.

I stopped in the middle of the field.

A few years ago, I stopped hearing running water and footsteps. Then I couldn’t hear the ocean. But last spring—he paused—the last spring I was alive, I couldn’t understand voices. Sometimes not even shouting.

“Oh.” The more I thought back, the more I realized that made so much sense. When I saw his memories like movies, it was like the volume was turned way, way down. And yesterday, when I was trying to summon him in front of Mom, my music just bounced off his soulshine. “Oh. Is that why last night . . . ?”

Yes, he said, no room for wondering.

That was why I couldn’t summon Pine. My music didn’t reach him. All those times I’d played guitar in front of him—“You didn’t know . . . ?” But why would I expect him to know? “I must’ve looked so stupid to you, carrying that clunky thing around.”

He let out a rare laugh. I wondered why you liked it so much.

“I just assumed you could hear through my ears.”

I get ideas through you. But not sounds.

“Like subtitles,” I mumbled to myself. I guess, trapped in my body, he didn’t get to see the world like I did when I looked through Nuke.

But why would his hearing loss keep my magic from working? As soulshine he didn’t have a body, let alone ears. He was just pure energy.

Grandpa John said memories were written into soulshine. I guess being hard of hearing was the same as Pine being redheaded or locked into his teens for thirty-thousand years. When he died, those things were part of him. Maybe that was the same technicality that kept Bitey Face a baby, or left battle scars on the bull.

I didn’t understand all that on the same level that Grandpa did, but now I knew one thing for sure.

“That’s it, then.” My heart fell. “We won’t ever meet face-to-face.” We’d be like long-distance internet friends, messaging back and forth forever.

Not unless you can make music louder than thunder.

A moment passed. And then, suddenly, I remembered something I’d found in the barn.

“Louder.” My eyes snapped wide open. “We can do louder.”

When I got home, the 4Runner wasn’t in the driveway yet. So I went into the house, got a paperclip, and wiggled it in the lock on the mudroom closet.

I’d been doing this a lot lately—asking for forgiveness instead of permission. So far it hadn’t been working out. But for the chance to clear my name and meet Pine in person? I’d jailbreak my guitar.

The lock clicked. I grabbed my guitar, case and all, and ran back out to the barn.

The air was heavy and warm, and the cloudy sky cast the whole ranch in blues and grays. The beginnings of a rainstorm sprinkled down.

I hurried into the open barn, flipped on the lights, and dragged Grandpa’s heavy vintage amp to one of the outlets. Once everything was plugged in and the speaker made a fuzzy hiss, I put my slide on my finger and gave the guitar a test strum.

A chill went through Pine—through me—like he just saw a shooting star.

He definitely heard that.

“Louder?” I asked.

Louder.

I cranked the amp up good and high, so I could hear the static crackling, and plucked out a galloping arpeggio. The warm, bright sound filled the whole barn. The amp was so loud, I could feel the shiver of each string in my skin.

Like this? I kept the shimmery sound going, rolling my fingers up and down the frets.

Yeah. His voice shone with a smile.

The song drummed like the heart of a horse. I grinned and nodded along with the peaks and valleys.

Pine’s soulshine pulled me forward like gravity, and the song sped up. My fingers could barely keep pace, we were going so fast. I was on the very edge of my skill, almost out of control—but I managed to slip in some rips and glides between notes.

Thunder rumbled. Soulshine hung in the air like the smell of rain. The water on the ground turned to fog.

I was starting to feel the heat from my magic, but that wasn’t why I was sweating. I was pushing myself harder than ever before.

But for the first time in a couple of really tough days, I was having fun. And I wanted to give Pine my very best.

Lightning flickered, and that’s when I saw him—a shadow rising out of the muddy ground, dripping with rain. A shaggy head, a wide back, and two thick arms. It was Pine, pulling himself out of the grave.

“You can do it,” I shouted over the pouring rain.

A pair of headlights swept the barn. The 4Runner pulled into the drive and the car door slammed.

Just in time.

I propped my foot up on the amp and powered into the final round of the song.

“Cecelia,” Mom called over the downpour. She ran up to the barn, a shadow in the car’s headlights. I wasn’t sure if she felt that the air was electric with magic, or if she saw Pine clawing out of the ground like Night of the Living Dead. But she froze in the rain, almost like she was afraid to come closer.

I closed my eyes and dived into the music, racing to hit each string perfectly. Every ripple pulled Pine’s soulshine out of me like tide, making him realer and realer.

The song tucked its wings and dropped into the final note like a falcon. I stooped over the guitar and swept my slide all the way down the fretboard, plunging into a deep, dark sound that echoed over our property.

Thunder and lightning cracked. The lights flickered out. The amp cut off.

I stood in the dark, doubled over my guitar, breathing hard.

Pine’s soulshine wasn’t inside me anymore.

The barn lights flickered back on. The amp spat and buzzed.

There was a boy collapsed in our yard, bare and weak as a baby bird.

My guitar nearly fell out of my hands. Slowly, shakily, I set it aside.

“Cecelia,” Mom ran to Pine and waved for me to turn around. “Good lord, girl. Cover him up.”

Head flooded my face. “Sorry.” I whipped around and snatched a Mexican saddle blanket from one of the stables, shielding my eyes as I handed it over.

Mom wrapped Pine up, helped him to his feet, and brought him into the light of the barn.

And there he was, hair stuck to his pink face, barefoot and shivering. Hugging the blanket tight around his shoulders, he looked down at his own wobbly body—then up at me with wide blue eyes.

His knees buckled, thirty-thousand years out of walking practice. He stumbled and let out a gasp.

I dove in before he hit the ground. It took all my strength to prop up his weight.

The ends of his hair dripped water onto my shirt. I could feel the heat in his freckly skin and his heart beating under my hand. I caught the sweet smell of hay in the horse blanket.

That’s when it hit me. How different this was from meeting in my dreams.

“You’re real,” I said stupidly.

Mom stood several feet back, her face twisted in shock. “He’s real.”

Slowly, carefully, I held Pine out at arm’s length so he could get used to standing. “How do you feel?”

He tipped his head and leaned in, like he hadn’t quite caught what I said.

“Sorry.” I took a moment to check our mental link and strengthened his connection to my mind so he could use my subtitles. “How do you feel?”

Heavy. He flexed his fingers, physical for the first time in centuries. Then he touched his stomach. And hungry.

I broke out a smile. “We can fix that.”