Little Orphan Anvil: The Complete Trilogy by Joseph Beekman (good beach reads .txt) 📗

Will a fright. Hewhirled around towards the dog, and in a flash he wasknocked to the floor of the raft by an invisible force.Ranger started barking loudly as Will tried to regain hisbalance and focus.

The river was now being rained upon by greatstones from high above, creating large splashes of waterall about. Looking up, Will saw the ghostly form of thewitch-lady herself! She flew above them holding thelost remains of the robot-droid by one of its metalliclimbs.

Will quickly rubbed his eyes to see if he was onlydreaming; but to his shock and surprise it was mostcertainly his robot, and it was being hurled through theair as if carried by a strong wind. The witch had passedinto the darkness of the spirit world—and she wasblood thirsty for vengeance!

“Now it’s time to see the end of your ways, oldman!” she screamed down to Will in a haunting andhowling voice.

Moving with great speed, her ghastly formdropped down through her own violent storm-spell—one hand clutching a lightning bolt as a weapon and theother dangling the lifeless robot. She aimed straight forWill.

In a heartbeat, Will thrust the pole upwards,driving it into the base of the robot: it came to lifeinstantly at the press of its power source button; andbeing that it was made of metal, it sent a fiery shockinto the witch as she held the lightning bolt. The witchscreamed in horror as her spirit-body lit up in a whitehot, electric fire.

Will rolled out of the way as the robot fell. Itlanded with a loud bang onto the raft; its metal limbsclanked and sizzled, and a whimper of a whistlesounded out of its damaged iron body.

Ranger was beside himself. He cowered in fearand confusion. Sonny remained still; his arms remainedstretched straight-out like a sleepwalker. The witch’sfiery, ghostly form zigzagged through the air and upthrough the canyon walls, which shook ever-harder.

Will lay there on the bobbing raft, gazing up. Hewatched as yet another surprise caught his attention:from the dark caves in the canyon walls above, wispy,multiple-colored vapor trails zoomed out, andenveloped the witch’s smoldering, fluttering figure.

The stone traders! Will’s mind shouted withhope.

Dropping hastily through the raining stones andquaking canyon walls, the stone trader ghosts plummeted, carrying the witch-lady and her howling screechwith them. Deep into the river they plunged, and withthem—her dark, glowing, snake-like form. Withinseconds, a great geyser shot up from the river.

Ranger ran over to Will and lay beside him.They both stared numbly at the rising fountain ofgushing water. After a moment, the stone traders vaporlike trails could be seen shooting back up through thegeyser; up towards their caves above.

Will stood up and moved over to the robot. Heswitched its power off so he could tend to it withgreater care as soon as everything calmed, and as soonas they were out of the chaos of the canyon narrows.

Then as the river began to calm and the wallscame to a standstill, great white stones began crashinginto the river over the spot of the witch-lady’s sinking.With the raft now further away from her spot, Will hadto strain his eyes a bit harder to see. The stone traderghosts were hurling their ancient stones from their caveopenings down into it.

As the stones continued to splash into the river,they also, in turn, began to pile up. Soon a pyramid ofwhite stones poked above the water’s surface. And thenthey stopped falling, and all grew quiet and still in thecanyons.

Will just stood there, gaping in awe at all that hadhappened. Ranger barked and ran over to Sonny; hehopped up on the wagon-cart, whining and batting histail, and clamoring all over Sonny.

“Hey there, boy! What’s all the fuss?” Sonnysaid, rubbing the sleep out of his sand-crusted eyes.

Will turned around and gasped. Sonny’s wakingup out of the spell! The magic stones—their ancientmagic worked! They’ve buried the witch and now thespell has been crushed!

With heartfelt joy, he moved over to Sonny andsmiled, ruffling Sonny’s already messy hair. “Wow!”Will chuckled. “What a show you just missed, mybrave fellow!”

“Wha—what happened, Will? Where are we?”Sonny asked with a drawl.

“My lad, we are going back home! The darkspell you were put under by the orphanage lady—thewitch, rather—is over! You and the other orphans arenow free of her evil ways! No longer can she twist andmold the good magic that so many still believe in, toher selfish and dishonest ways. We can begin again,and rebuild the Land of Iron and Anvil!”

Will turned around, looking back once more atthe now distant shape of the magic stones.

“Look back there, Sonny,” he said, pointing outthe stones to Sonny. “That is where the last of thewitch-lady now lies—at the bottom of the river, beneaththe stone traders’ magic stones!”

Sonny could barely make out the tiny pyramidshape of stones, for they were fading far into thedistance as the raft continued moving further away.

“And now she lies below the eyes of those traderghosts, too…I guess one could say,” Sonny said dryly.

Will nodded his head, smiling; “Yes, my goodfriend, one could say that indeed!”

He put his arm over Sonny’s shoulder; they bothwatched the ghostly stones and the witch-lady foreverdisappear into the night of the narrowed canyons.

~ Chapter XIII

~The Land of Iron and Anvil

The rest of the journey home had proved to berather peaceful for Will, Sonny, and Ranger. Will hadexplained to Sonny what had taken place after he hadbeen put under the witch-lady’s spell: how Kelsey hadsaved him from the mansion; how the little robot hadremoved the spell over the orphans by destroying thegiant pumpkins; and of the separate journeys that theyand the orphans were forced to take, for fear of thewitch-lady having escaped her doom at the mansion’sfire.

Passing through a few rain storms and few minorencounters with some oil slicks, they had continued upthe river, always wondering if they might happen uponKelsey and the orphans traveling somewhere to thesouth of the river. Along the way, Will had made a fewrepairs to the damaged robot; Sonny had caught a