Wooden Foxes

Noople tilted her head sideways and glared at the door. “Perhaps there is a special way to open the door.”

Quill picked up Grok’s axe and threw it. There was a snap like lightning ripping a tree in half, as giant hole appeared in the door. Quill walked up, reached through the hole, and after fishing about for a moment with his eyes closed, found the doorknob on the other side and turned it.

The door swung open.

“That qualifies as a special way of opening the door, I suppose,” Noople said.

Everyone hurried to get through the door, and so they all bounced off one another like too many basketballs thrown through the same hoop at the same moment. Quill squeezed through first, finding himself feeling tiny in a circular room large enough to fit millions of oranges in.

At the center, like the hub of a wheel, sat a pool of burbling lava. It was red and yellow and moved like a pit full of dancing kindergarteners.

The friends all stood and squinted against the heat. Then they heard a whirring noise, like one hundred flies had gathered around their ears.

“Noople, shoot an arrow, it’s Renald,” Quill said, waving a scaly finger at an object that was ascending up to the ceiling.

Noople knocked an arrow and fired. There was a thunk and a thump as whatever had been airborne was now laying flat on the rocky floor.

Quill ran over to investigate but had only taken five steps when they all heard the whirring noise again. “That’s Renald! Again?”

Noople fired another arrow, again sending the maybe Renald to the ground once more.

This time, Quill didn’t have the chance to even start running before they heard and saw two Renalds spinning up toward a hole in the ceiling.

Noople downed them both.

The witch put her hands on her hips. “How many evil foxes are there in this little cozy lava home?”

This time three Renald look alikes, or possibly one Renald and two Renald look alikes began to ascend.

Noople looked at Quill. “Do I shoot them all?”

“How many arrows do you have left?”

“Around fifteen, I would guess.”

“Shoot them down. We can’t risk any Renalds escaping.”

“Any? So there is more than one?”

Thunk, thunk, thunk. Three more maybes crashed to the ground.

Next there were five. Then seven. Then nine, and Noople was out of arrows so she dipped into Poople’s arrows but then there were eleven and then thirteen and nobody had any arrows left so a swarm of Renalds departed out the ceiling.

They buzzing stopped.

Quill finally could run without being distracted by flying possible enemies and so he did and what he found was a stash of wooden Renalds, all painted and capped with propellers attached to their heads.

They searched the “bodies” and found they were all wooden replicas.

Noople slung her bow over her shoulder “So the real fox is now where?”

Quill pointed up. “Not here anymore.”

A series of groans came from the doorway and they all saw frowny faced Poople and Sun-hop stumbling to their feet.