Floors: by Patrick Carman Read Free Book Online Page B

with.
    He turned the handle back once, a second time, then once more. A big blue ball, round and perfect, dropped out of the ceiling and was held on the wind in front of the two rings.
    “I wonder how many of these I get,” Leo said to Betty, excited to have another ball but realizing he had to be extremely careful. If he got too far into the maze and ran out of balls, he might never get out. He’d have to remember exactly which rings were capable of turning him into fairy dust.
    Leo twisted the handle forward and sent the blue ball safely through the opening on the left, then stepped through himself. Betty flew carefully through the ring as well, and they were safely into the second circular layer of the maze. Looking at the model in the box, Leosaw many openings that led to the next inner level, but only one had an arrow pointing inside. He was excited again, less nervous, realizing that no one else but he could complete the maze and live to tell about it.
    During the next twenty minutes, Leo blew up four more giant ping-pong balls on his way to the center of the Room of Rings. He began to anticipate seeing them explode and felt less anxious when they did. Watching the orange ball blast into dust was particularly enjoyable, because orange was his favorite color.
    He couldn’t have known, for there were no mirrors in the maze, but his hair was starting to look like a rainbow, dusted with purple, green, orange, yellow, and blue as he arrived in the inner circle of the maze.
    He’d exploded the green ball on the way into this chamber, and passing through the opening into the center of the maze, he felt as if he were standing in the middle of an igloo. The walls were frosty white and perfectly round, curved into a dome at the top. He stood there with his box and his duck and wondered what he should do, for the room was completely empty.
    The opening to the room, which he had just passed through, was suddenly gone, filled by a curved wall sliding down from above. Leo was trapped in a half circleof pure white, his heart beating faster as a terrible thought crossed his mind.
    No one knows I’m here.
    But that wasn’t entirely true. There was one person who knew, and whoever it was began writing a message on the ceiling, just like he’d written the other messages before.
    “Is that you, Merganzer?” asked Leo, setting the purple box and the handles on the floor and reaching up toward the ceiling. “Won’t you please come out?”
    He’d had his suspicions, but there was no way he could know for sure. It was a dangerous path he’d taken to the white room, and it would be unlike his old friend to place him in harm’s way. Then again, who else could it be, helping him along and pretending to be MR. M. all this time?
    It was a short message, only three words:
    Take the ring.
     
    At first the message made no sense, because there were no rings in the room to take. But then something small dropped through a hole in the ceiling. Quickly thrusting out his hand, Leo caught the object before it hit the floor.
    There was a deep silence then. Even Betty seemed to understand that something important had just happened. Leo knew it, too, but he didn’t say anything. There was something very special about the ring that had fallen into his hand. Something so special, it nearly made him cry, but not quite, as he placed it in his pocket next to his mother’s watch.
    “Thank you, whoever you are.”
    Without any warning at all, the hole in the ceiling got bigger and a blue box fell through. It was the exact same shape and size as the purple box sitting in the center of the room. Leo caught the blue box as it was falling, finding it heavier than the purple box, but not by much. On the lid was a message.
    Don’t turn me upside down. Don’t open me until morning.
     
    The emblem of Merganzer’s head was also on the box, right in the middle.
    “I got another box,” said Leo, very proud of himself for what he’d done. “What do you