The Call - Michael Grant [0]
The Magnificent 12
Book One
The Call
For Katherine Tegen,
who believed I could be funny.
And for Katherine, Jake, and Julia,
who still aren’t sure.
Contents
One
David MacAvoy—whose friends called him Mack—was not an unlikely hero.
Two
Grimluk was twelve years old. Like most twelve-year-olds he had…
Three
So, back in the present day, Mack was waiting to…
Four
Let’s just skip the part where Stefan lost two pints…
Five
So twelve-year-old Grimluk hit the road as a fleer. He…
Six
Mack’s parents always asked him about his day at school.
Seven
The golem was supposed to spend the night on the…
Eight
After his run-in with the Skirrit and the princess, Grimluk…
Nine
Mack was somewhat disturbed by the incident of the snakes.
Ten
“Have at you!” the green man said.
Eleven
“What know you of the conjurer’s tongue?” the man in…
Twelve
The giant bug arm oozed green-black blood from the stump.
Thirteen
Mack and Stefan flew from Flagstaff to Los Angeles without…
Fourteen
From the high, crenellated walls of Castle Etruk, Grimluk could…
Fifteen
It was hard to tell how big it was, the…
Sixteen
“I’m good right here,” Mack said.
Seventeen
“Nooooooooo!” Mack screamed, but the wind tore the words right…
Eighteen
“Ret click-ur!”
Nineteen
One of the rules of Great Literature is: show, don’t…
Twenty
They surrounded the castle like a sea: the creatures of…
Twenty-One
Looming ahead, larger and larger, was the rock. Ayers Rock.
Twenty-Two
“Ahhhhh!” Mack cried, knowing even as he made that whinnying…
Twenty-Three
Grimluk and the others reached the Pale Queen. And they…
Twenty-Four
Mack woke too early. It was the high whine of…
Twenty-Five
The chewing, grinding sound was getting slowly louder. “It’s Risky,”…
Twenty-Six
Grimluk wandered far and wide with his companions of the…
Twenty-Seven
They ran—straight into the tunnel Risky had cut. They ran…
Twenty-Eight
Grimluk left the island continent after the death of Miladew.
Twenty-Nine
It was many hours before the ambulance came and took…
About the Author
Praise
Other Books by Michael Grant
Credits
Copyright
About the Publisher
One
David MacAvoy—whose friends called him Mack—was not an unlikely hero. He was an impossible hero.
First, there was the fact that he was only twelve years old.
And then there was the fact that he was not especially big, strong, wise, kind, or good-looking.
Plus he was scared. Scared of what? Quite a list of things.
He had arachnophobia, a fear of spiders.
Dentophobia, a fear of dentists.
Pyrophobia, a fear of fire, although most people have some of that.
Pupaphobia, a fear of puppets. But he was not afraid of clowns, unlike most sensible people.
Trypanophobia, a fear of getting shots.
Thalassophobia, a fear of oceans, which led fairly naturally to selachophobia, a fear of sharks.
And phobophobia, a fear of phobias. Which makes more sense than it may seem at first because Mack was always finding new fears. And it scared him to have more scary things to be scared of.
Worst of all, the horror among horrors: Mack had claustrophobia, a fear of cramped spaces. A fear, to put it as unpleasantly as possible, of being buried alive.
So this was not a twelve-year-old you’d expect to become one of the greatest heroes in human history—not the person you’d expect would try and save the world from the greatest evil it had ever faced.
But that’s our story.
One thing to remember: most heroes end up dead. Even when they don’t end up dead themselves, people around them very often do.
Mack was an okay-looking kid: crazy, curly brown hair; medium height; medium build. He had a serious case of mediumness.
His eyes were brown, too, which is the most common eye color in the world. But there was something else about his eyes. They were eyes that noticed things. Mack didn’t miss much.
He noticed how people looked at him, but he also noticed how they looked at each other and how they looked at things, and even how they looked at a printed page.
He noticed details of how people dressed,