The Island of Dr. Libris (5 page)

“You dare poke at me?” roared a gravelly voice.

Great.
Antaeus was back.

Somehow, even though one book was sealed up tight in the bookcase, the two books were mashing together.

Was it because Billy had read them both and now they were all mixed up in his brain?

“Mind thy manners, thou oafish ogre!” somebody with a British accent, maybe Robin Hood, shouted.

“Or we shall mind them for thee!” Another British accent. Female.

What is going on out there?
Billy wondered. Then he heard another voice. Much closer.

“Hello, Billy.”

No accent. It was his neighbor Alyssa.

Billy closed the
Robin Hood
book. The sounds stopped.

“What’re you doing?”

“Reading.”

“Really? Walter was just reading to me and guess what?”

“What?”

“It was a book about you!
The Three Billy Goats Gruff
! Get it? You’re Billy, right?”

Billy just nodded. He remembered that story.

And if
The Three Billy Goats Gruff
was inside Dr. Libris’s special bookcase, Billy might be able to hear a troll and a bunch of goats on the island, too.

Billy was convinced that somebody on the island was messing with his head.

He locked
Robin Hood
inside Dr. Libris’s cabinet and slipped the key into his pocket.

“This has to be a gag,” he said to one of the wooden pirates carved into the bookcase. “Dr. Libris probably punks people like this every summer. He rents them his cabin, then hires actors to do the voices and sound effects out on the island.”

Yeah
, he thought,
that would make sense.

Except how did they know what book Billy was reading?
The TV cameras?

Then there had been that chunky guy stomping along the shore in the dark the night before. The guy had to be at least fifteen feet tall.

How’d they swing that?

Stilts?

World’s biggest marionette?

And how much would you have to pay actors to sit around all day waiting for someone to open a book?

A little after noon, Billy came to a conclusion.

He had to go explore the island.

Well, actually, he
could
just stay in Dr. Libris’s cabin staring at pictures of impossibly sideways staircases and pretending nothing had ever happened.

But if he kept hearing an action-movie sound track every time he opened one of those bookcase books, he might go nutzoid.

He went into the kitchen to grab a quick lunch.

“Are you eating some fruit?” his mother called from the second floor when she heard the unmistakable crinkle of peanut butter cracker wrappers.

“Yes.” Billy plucked up an apple. “And then I’m going to take the rowboat out to the island.”

“Fantastic! Promise me you’ll wear a life jacket?”

“I will.”

“They’re in the mudroom. Be careful.”

“I will.”

“I’ll be watching out my window.”

“I know.”

“Billy?”

“Yes, Mom?”

“Do you know how to row a boat?”

“
Pffft.
Are you kidding? We learned it in gym class.”

Okay.

That was a lie.

Billy had absolutely no idea how a rowboat worked.

Good thing there were life jackets. He might really need one.

Billy stood on the dock in the hot sun looking down at the creaky red boat as it rocked back and forth in the water.

A pair of oars was stowed in the bottom.

“What’re you doing, Weedpole?”

Billy spun around.

Nick Farkas and his two evil minions were at the neighboring dock, tying off a three-person Yamaha WaveRunner Jet Ski. They must’ve just taken the floating motorcycle out for a spin to terrorize the trout.

“I asked you what you were doing!” shouted Farkas.

“Nothing. Just, you know. Nothing.”

Farkas laughed. “Well, guess what we’re doing?”

Billy wanted to say, “Learning how to use a spoon without hurting yourself?” but decided just to shrug instead.

Farkas strutted to the edge of his dock. “My mom just bought me the brand-new Space Lizard game for my Xbox.”

“But wait,” said one of his goons. “There’s more.”

“There’s more,” said the other.

“She also got me the cheat guide!” Farkas brandished a magazine-sized book. “So we’re going inside to totally annihilate the Space Lizard. And when we’re done with him, guess what we’re going to do?”

Billy shrugged again. “Make Popsicle-stick pot holders?”

“No, Weedpole. We’re gonna come back out here, hop on my Jet Ski, and annihilate
you.
”

“We’re gonna sink your dinky little boat,” added his buddy.

“Yeah,” said the other one. “Your boat is dinky.”

Oh-kay
, Billy thought.
Maybe this isn’t such a good idea.

Then, on the island, he heard Hercules shout, “By Zeus, I know not how to slay this monster!”

Farkas and his friends were already heading up to the glass house, laughing and slugging each other the whole way. If they heard the yelling, they sure didn’t act like it.

Billy took a deep, steadying breath.

He had to do this thing.

He untied the docking rope from a piling and stepped down. He had one foot up on the pier and one down in the wobbly boat. He pushed his foot off the dock, shot out his arms for balance, and stood frozen like a terrified tightrope walker.

Then he moved half an inch.

And the boat nearly flipped over.

Billy dropped to his hands and knees and scrabbled around on the bottom of the boat until he was finally able to twist himself sideways and slide his butt up onto the slat of wood he was supposed to sit on to row.

Before he could slide the oars into their brackets, the boat started drifting.

Fortunately, the current carried him to the left,
away
from Nick Farkas’s dock. Billy slapped at the water with one of the paddles. Unfortunately, he was turning in circles.

But then he felt something correct his course.

Something under his hull.

Something big.

Billy looked down at the lake.

Through the glassy surface of the water, he saw a huge face staring up at him.

“Aaaaah!” Billy nearly jumped out of the boat.

The man glaring up at him had long, flowing white hair and a wavy Santa Claus beard. He wore a golden starfish crown on his head and carried a humongous three-pronged spear.

He was also the size of a whale.

Billy gulped.

Because the underwater titan was Poseidon.

And he looked just like he did in the book!

Billy was frantically hanging on as Poseidon used the middle tip of his trident to nudge him toward the island. The Greek god was helping Billy exactly the way he’d helped Hercules
in the book
!

Awesome
, thought Billy.

But how did Dr. Libris get the fake Greek god’s spear to actually push the real rowboat?

Did the professor hire engineers from an amusement park to set this all up?

Why?

Powered by Poseidon propulsion, Billy reached the island’s rocky coast in less than five minutes.

“Thanks for the assist,” he said to the water.

But, of course, nobody was there.

Clenching the nylon docking line in his teeth, Billy crawled out of the rowboat. Luckily, someone had bolted a metal tie-off cleat to one of the boulders dotting the edge of the shallow lagoon.

Very convenient
, Billy thought.
Probably where the ferryboat docks in the morning when it drops off all the actors and special effects technicians.

Billy stood on the rocky shore and took in the towering row of shaggy evergreen trees ringing the island. Even though it was the middle of a hot summer day, the place seemed dark and mysterious.

He was tempted to row back to the mainland.

But he didn’t.

Instead, he walked up a narrow path into the lush and sort of steamy forest. The fragrant evergreens gave way to leafier trees and thick, tangled underbrush.

Billy had hiked maybe thirty feet when he came to a wall of wire netting. Tugging at it, he realized that a
massive mesh dome—like the net over the hawk cages at a zoo—covered the
entire island.

That was why the island looked so hazy from a distance. It was under a gigantic screen lid.

Probably so they can rig ropes and pulleys off the dome
, Billy thought.
To work the Rock Person puppet and stuff.

Billy raised a loose flap cut into the netting—a doorway as wide as the path. He stepped through it and was under the dome. The narrow trail continued to wind its way into the shadowy green world. Billy followed it.

“Okay, guys,” he said nervously to the trees and bushes and the actors he figured were hiding behind them. “I know you’re back there. Here I come. It’s showtime.”

Rounding a bend, Billy came to a pair of massive wrought-iron gates set between twin columns of stacked stone.

Each of the pillars anchored a green chain-link fence that ran through the equally green undergrowth in both directions. The security fencing looked like it encircled the entire island.

The gates themselves were decorated with elaborate metal sculptures that were as amazing as the wood carvings on Dr. Libris’s bookcase: a fox staring up at a cluster of grapes, a rabbit chasing a turtle, a lion with a splinter in its paw.

In the center of all the sculpted figures was a boxy black lock.

“You there! Boy!”

Billy nearly leapt out of his skin.

A strong, golden-skinned man stumbled into the
clearing on the far side of the locked gates. The guy looked like a star of the WWE or a bodybuilder who worked out sixteen hours a day.

His bulging muscles glistened with sweat. Clumps of green grass stuck out of his curly black hair and beard. His headband was tilted sideways. The lion-head-and-fur cape on his back was missing a few fangs.

Whoa
, thought Billy.
Hercules.

“Don’t just stand there, boy!” cried the muscleman. “Help me!”

“Um, hi,” said Billy through the bars of the gate. “You’re supposed to be Hercules, right?”

“Yes. I am Hercules.”

“Nice costume.”

“Costume?” Hercules looked confused. “Foolish child. This is the hide of the Nemean lion that I cut off with a blade made of its own claws!”

“Riiiight. Is this a theme park? ‘Fairy Tale Forest,’ maybe? Did Dr. Libris hire you to trick me and my mom?”

“Please, mortal, do not speak in riddles. You are hurting the insides of my head.”

“So,” said Billy, looking around, “where’s the big rocky guy?”

“In the name of Zeus, boy—silence! Who sent you here?”

“Poseidon.”

“Poseidon? I do not understand.”

“Well,” Billy explained, “Poseidon shoved me across
the lake with his spear, which, by the way, is an awesome effect. Is there a chain or something under the water like on a log flume ride?”

“This is most confusing.” Hercules narrowed his eyes. “What is your name, skinny mortal?”