“I think he will,” Jalli said. “But if the legends are true, we have to get him outside fast.”
“Outside the castle?” I asked doubtfully. Being outside after curfew was a serious offense. If you were caught you could count on suspension at the least—expulsion at the worst.
But now was clearly not the time to worry about breaking the rules.
“Come on,” Megan said quickly. “I know a way.”
At that moment, Saint popped his head out of the boy’s dorm, frowning.
“What is all the commotion?” he wanted to know.
“Oh, Saint—Mr. Seahorse is spawning!” Jalli exclaimed in wide-eyed excitement. “At least I think he is. Come with us to see!”
Saint’s black eyes widened.
“To see a chimeling spawn is considered to be the best of luck,” he remarked. “But…” His face fell. “I cannot go. I fear the presence of my Drake would scare all the spawnlings away.”
“Okay, we’ll be back in a minute,” Megan told him. “At least, I assume we will.”
She looked at Mr. Seahorse doubtfully. The little chimeling was going faster and faster, working himself into a lather, I thought.
“Okay, it’s okay,” Kaitlyn crooned, trying to soothe him. “Come on, we’re going to take you outside right now, little guy.”
With Kaitlyn in the lead, Avery, Jalli, Megan, and I all hurried up the spiral staircase that led to the trapdoor exit to the Norm Dorm. Griffin, like Ari, had gone some time ago so it was just our original Coven—well, aside from Jalli.
All of us were wearing our “jammy britch” as we called our PJs and the warm, fuzzy robes and slippers that kept us toasty, even in the chilly dungeon dorm. We must have made quite a sight, rushing through the darkened halls of the old stone castle, our slippered feet hush-hushing on the flagstone floors as we followed Megan to the exit she said she knew of.
Luckily, nobody was watching—or if they were, they didn’t catch us. We made it to a little side-corridor which shouldn’t have been there—at least, not given the layout of the castle—without anyone stopping us.
“Here it is—here’s the door.” Megan pushed open a heavy wooden door, letting in a humid breath of Florida night air. The minute she did, Mr. Seahorse flitted outside and the rest of us tumbled out after him, like a bunch of kids chasing an oversized butterfly.
I began sweating at once—even at night, the Florida heat was no joke. I would have loosened my robe but I didn’t dare offer the mosquitoes buzzing around more of a target than they already had.
The moon outside was full and bright—it glimmered on the lake beyond the trees that surrounded the castle. The brilliant light made it easy to see the little chimeling darting from branch to branch of the various trees and bushes, as though trying to find the perfect place to perch. He seemed like he just couldn’t make up his mind because he was going all over the place and chiming loudly as he did, making a sound like someone leaning on a doorbell.
“Oh, what’s he doing?” Kaitlyn moaned, nearly dancing with anxiety. “Is he in some kind of pain?”
“I don’t think so,” Jalli said, putting a hand on her arm. “Try and relax, Kaitlyn—from all the books I’ve ever read, he’s just trying to find just the right place to release his spawnlings.”
“What in the world are ‘spawnlings’?” I asked, slapping at a mosquito as it buzzed around my ear.
But just at that moment, Mr. Seahorse answered my question.
Settling at last on a branch just a few feet from Kaitlyn’s head, he uncurled those tiny little arms of his and began rubbing his rounded belly with two teeny little hands.
“Oh dear—do you have a tummy ache, Mr. Seahorse?” Kaitlyn asked him anxiously. “Oh, I thought your little belly was looking awfully big and round lately. I wonder if you ate a bad insect or something?”
“It’s not that at all,” Jalli told her.
“She’s right,” Avery said. “Look—what’s he doing?”
It was a fair question, for the little chimeling had stopped rubbing his belly and now he was tugging at it with his little hands—almost like a woman wearing an apron might tug open a pocket.
Or no, not a pocket, I realized…
“A pouch!” Megan exclaimed. “Look—he has a pouch! Like a kangaroo!”
“A what?” Jalli asked, frowning. Being from the Sky Lands, which was a whole different realm, she naturally didn’t know a lot about Earth animals yet.
I started to explain about Australia and kangaroos and other marsupials but just then something tiny and bright flew out of Mr. Seahorse’s pouch. It looked like a spark—or maybe a lightning bug. Then another came out and then another and another.
Soon a whole swarm of the tiny, sparkling creatures was issuing out of the pouch, which the little chimeling continued to hold open with his tiny hands.
“Oh, spawnlings!” Jalli exclaimed.
“What?” Kaitlyn still looked confused.
“Baby chimelings,” Jalli explained. “There must be over a hundred of them!”
“Babies?” Kaitlyn looked even more confused as she stared at her pet. “Mr. Seahorse, you’re a mama? But I thought you were a boy.”
“Oh, he is,” Jalli explained, her eyes still riveted to the sparkling display of the baby chimelings flitting about in the moonlight. “All chimelings are male. But they’re born pregnant, you see. And then, at a certain point in their life, they spawn.”
“What?” Avery exclaimed. “A whole race of just males?”
“That doesn’t make any sense, biologically,” I pointed out.
“Because they’re not biological—chimelings are magical!” Jalli said impatiently. “Oh wait—come here, little ones. See? I have something for you!”
She reached into the pocket of her robe and pulled out a handful of something. Looking closer, I saw they were the gourmet jellybeans I had given her earlier that week. After all, if she was going to learn about Earth, she might as well have fun doing it, right? And what’s more fun than candy?
“What are you doing, Jalli?” Avery asked as several of the bright little sparks flew over to investigate her offering.
“Trying to get them to eat,” she explained in a hushed voice. “The legend says if you can be the first to feed a chimeling, you will have a companion for life.”
“But I thought they only ate insects,” Megan said doubtfully.
Indeed, many of the tiny creatures—which looked like miniature glowing seahorses, when any of them held still long enough to look at—were already making a meal of the mosquitoes buzzing around our heads. Tiny tongues of flame—almost too little to see—were zapping out and frying the blood suckers as the spawnlings had their first hunt.
But there were a few who seemed more interested in Jalli’s handful of jellybeans than the mosquitoes. At least three chimeling babies—or spawnlings as Jalli had called them—were sniffing at her palm. After a moment, one of them shot out a tiny tongue of flame and melted the end of one of the jellybeans. Darting forward, he gobbled up the gooey treat. Then, apparently deciding he liked it, he came back for more.