School by Nathaniel Hardman (top reads .TXT) 📕

the gun turned to run at the last second, and the spell hit him in the back of the head.

Flicker.

An alien appeared holding a soapy bowl in one hand and a wet rag in the other. His eyes widened in surprise, then terror. People scattered from around him. He looked like he wanted to run too, but didn’t know which direction to go.

One of the alien soldiers waved and yelled, “Thia! Ksheurs! Itush jushu!” The dish washer’s eyes widened further; then he ducked his head and ran toward the others, clutching the bowl in front of him like a shield. Humans scattered out of his way.

In the chaos of the next few minutes, as the crowd panicked, as the army forcefully escorted the aliens back toward the castle and Jeremiah dazedly searched for his discarded bike, one word kept running through his mind. The word he now knew. The word, that together with a wand, could bring his children home:  Zbexvu.

THIRTY TWO

Jeff watched nervously as Qush Yurwush yelled at Ushegg. “I thought he’d be more happy about this,” he whispered to Suzy. “Like with the caterpillar stones.”

“Maybe the birds are an endangered species,” Suzy whispered back.

Ushegg tried to interject something, his tone defensive, but Qush Yurwush cut him off. “Beniax the uoshz, it’s bishzu nor azuyuzz.”

The teacher made a sort of chopping motion as he concluded, then turned toward the field, where the other kids were still playing kixtoy, and used his wand to make the sound of a car horn, calling them in.

Ushegg turned to Jeff and Suzy, his expression glum. “I cauz we can’t azu it,” he said, feebly lifting the still-damp bag with the shigg’s throat.

“But WHY? – Uh... byth?” Jeff asked.

Ushegg shook his head, “I kishcix to get the uoshz.”

“What does that even-?” Jeff started to ask, but Suzy cut him off.

“Uoshz?” She said. She pointed to her ear. “Ears? Uoshz?”

Ushegg nodded. “Without the ears, the zchuy biays grigg thia iax xi.”

Jeff looked to Suzy for translation. Her brow was furrowed, eyes narrowed in concentration. The last of the other students was entering the building, and if they didn’t follow soon, Qush Yurwush was going to get mad.

Ushegg seemed to be feeling the urgency, because he said, a bit impatiently, “Their ears are quocegg too. Inushbezu nuths zggshuoqu, and it biays grigg them out, too.”

Jeff puzzled over this as school started and Yurwush began to teach. He stewed it over – the ears, the throat, the thunderbird – and by the time they got up for wand-tree time, he thought he understood.

“Suzy,” he said, catching her arm as the rest of the class filed out. “It’s like this: the shigg, the thunderbird – we should call it a thunderbird–”

“Let’s just call it a shigg.”

“Okay, whatever. So the shigg has this magic scream that can knock out anything. But it doesn’t knock ITSELF out.”

“Kind of like your body odor,” Suzy said, “Somehow it doesn’t affect you.”

Jeff scowled. “Yeah. Funny. ANYways, the magic has to have two parts – one part in its throat to make the sound, and the other part in its ears to make it immune to the sound.

“Ushegg only brought back the throat – I bet they just don’t kill these birds very often, so he didn’t know – and Yurwush is saying that without the ear part, it’s useless. And Ushegg is just going to throw this away now,” He ran to the back of the classroom where Ushegg had left the bloody, vaguely stinky bag and lifted it up, “But I say, ‘EARPLUGS’! Right?”

Suzy scrunched up the side of her mouth in a skeptical sort of way. “Hmm. I don’t know... Don’t you think they’d have thought of earplugs by now? I’m not sure that’s the whole reason.”

“But here’s the thing,” Jeff went on, voice rising, “What’s the worst that could happen? Say earplugs don’t work, and we can’t use the spell? So what? The wand would just be able to do something we’d never want it to do. Like all those dumb stock market apps on my iPhone that I can’t delete. They’re on there, I never use ‘em, but they don’t hurt anything.”

“How many stock market apps do you HAVE on your phone?”

“Well, just... one, but that’s not... You know what I mean! All those other dumb apps. The point is, at worst, this is just another useless app on my tree. I say we install it, because MAYBE it could come in handy later.”

Suzy considered for a moment, then shrugged. “I guess it won’t hurt.” They walked together out to the courtyard before she added, “But I bet you the earplugs don’t work.”

When Ushegg saw Jeff carrying the bag into the courtyard, he shook his head in frustration, “Ri! It won’t bishg. We need to fazx nshib ex oboth!”

“Yes, yes,” Jeff said, waving away Ushegg’s objections. He could see that Qush Yurwush was watching him, too, stonefaced. “I...” Jeff struggled for words, failed to find them, and gave up. Instead, he mimed pointing a wand, made a scream, then fell to the ground. “Right?” he said, “Shepx?”

Qush Yurwush shook his head and walked away to help Fogu with something, but Ushegg smiled a little and helped Jeff to his feet.

“Right,” the boy said, and with a shrug, he walked with Jeff over to his tree.

Kneeling by the little sapling, Jeff reached gingerly into the sack and pulled out the ORGAN. It was about the size of a cantaloupe with an inch-wide hole running through the middle. It was sticky with blood, reaked of iron and salt, and squished like a sponge. Jeff thought this must be what holding a lung in your hand might feel like; then he gagged and had to turn away for a minute.

“Here,” Ushegg said, holding out his little knife.