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CHAPTER 4
Russell poked Carl in the face. Nothing happened. He poked him again—harder. This time, Carl’s eyes snapped open.
“Whew.” Russell breathed a deep sigh of relief. “I thought you were dead.”
Carl got up. “Huh … wha … what happened?”
“I steered us,” Russell announced. “I did. I steered the house.”
Carl felt his head. He was too groggy to understand what Russell was saying. “Steered us?”
“After you tied your stuff down, you took a nap, so I went ahead and steered us down here.”
Carl went to the window and stuck his head out. For a moment, the light was too bright—he couldn’t see anything.When his eyes adjusted, he realized that the house was floating over a blanket of thick fog. “Can’t tell where we are,” he mumbled.
Russell held up a global positioning device. “Oh, we’re in South America, all right. It was a cinch with my Wilderness Explorer GPS.”
Carl pulled his head back in through the window and glared at the newfangled gadget. “GP—what?”
“My dad gave it to me,” Russell explained. “It shows exactly where we are on the planet.” Russell made a few robot-style beeps, waving his GPS proudly.“With this baby we’ll never be lost!” He threw open his hands, and the GPS sailed out the window. Russell and Carl watched as the GPS fell through the clouds.
“Oops,” said Russell.
Grumbling, Carl kneeled by the fireplace to cut a few balloon strings. “We’ll get you down, find a bus stop,” he said. “You just tell the man you want to go back to your mother.”
Russell shrugged. “Sure, but I don’t think they have buses in Paradise Falls.”
“There.” Carl finished cutting the strings. He could feel the house begin to descend like a slow elevator. “That ought to do it. Here, I’ll give you some change for bus fare.”
Russell put on his backpack and the house lowered through the fog. “Nah, I’ll just use my city bus pass. Whoa, that’s going to be like a billion transfers to get back to my house.” He and Carl headed out onto the porch. “Mr. Fredricksen, how much longer?”
“Well, we’re up pretty high. Could take hours to get down.” Carl caught sight of something out of the corner of his eye, but it disappeared back into the fog. “Uh … that thing was … a building or something.”
Suddenly, something came up through the clouds. It was headed straight for them! “What was that, Mr. Fredricksen?” Russell exclaimed. Carl didn’t know. “We can’t be close to the ground yet!”
But they were—there were rocks directly below them. Carl gasped as the landscape came into view. It was a tepui!
Bam!
The house slammed against the rocky ground. Carl and Russell were knocked off the porch. They struggled to hold on as the house bumped and dragged across the tepui. Carl and Russell both lost their grip.
But the house kept going.
Carl chased a stray garden hose that was trailing behind the house like a tail. “Wait. Wait!” he shouted at the house. “Don’t, don’t. Stop!” He grabbed the hose, and it pulled him into the air. “Wait! Wait! Wait! Whoa!”
With a leap, Russell grabbed on to Carl’s leg. The weight pulled the house closer to the ground.
“Russell, hang on!” Carl hollered.
“Whoa!”
The house dragged them along. They slid to the edge of the tepui and then stopped. Carl looked down. He was at the top of a steep cliff. It was thousands and thousands of feet to the bottom.
“Walk back!” Carl shouted. “Walk back!”
“Okay.” Russell nodded and dug in.
“Come on, come on!”
The wind tried to carry the house over the edge. Russell pulled Carl’s foot with all his strength, yanking him to safety.
Carl looked around, breathing hard. They were still surrounded by fog. All he could see was that the ground was rocky. “Where … where are we?”
“This doesn’t look like the city or the jungle, Mr. Fredricksen,” Russell said.
The wind picked up again. Russell and Carl struggled to keep hold of the house. “Don’t worry, Ellie,” Carl muttered. “I got it.”
As the fog began to clear, Carl could see where they were. He and Russell were standing at the top of a tall, flat-topped mountain. They were surrounded by more tepuis. And across from them, less than ten miles away, was Paradise Falls.
Carl gasped in disbelief. “There it is,” he whispered. “Ellie, it’s so beautiful.” He pulled out Ellie’s old drawing—the one with the house sitting beside the waterfall. “We made it. We made it!” Carl whooped. “Russell! We could float right over there. Climb up. Climb up!”
“You mean assist you?” Russell asked hopefully.
“Yeah, yeah. Whatever.”
“Okay. I’ll climb up!” Russell climbed over Carl, stepping on his arms and face to get to the house.
“Watch it,” Carl growled.
“Sorry.” Russell smiled apologetically. He’d been so eager to assist an elderly person that he’d forgotten he shouldn’t step on Carl to do it.
“Now, when you get up there,” Carl called, “go ahead and hoist me up! Got it? You on the porch yet?”
But Russell had barely climbed six inches. He slid down the hose, exhausted, and landed on Carl’s head.
“Oh, great,” Carl grumbled.
“Hey, if I could assist you over there, would you sign off on my badge?” Russell asked.
“What are you talking about?” Carl snapped.
“We could walk your house to the falls.”
“Walk it?” Carl snorted. The boy was talking nonsense again.
“Yeah,” Russell said. “After all, we weigh it down. We could walk it right over there. Like a parade balloon!”
Carl started to scowl, but then stopped. He looked up. A light breeze blew, and the house swayed slightly. He was still holding on to the hose. The house pulled him forward … toward the falls.
Walk to the falls. It was totally crazy … crazy enough to work.
Soon Carl and Russell were ready to go.They had made harnesses out of the garden hose, which they tied across their chests.
As they hiked, Carl tried to make Russell understand the seriousness of their situation. “Now, we’re going to walk to the falls quickly and quietly, with no rap music or flash dancing,” he explained.“We have three days, at best, before the helium leaks out of those balloons, and if we’re not at the falls when that happens, we’re not getting to the falls!”
But Russell was barely listening. There were so many new and interesting sights on the tepui, it was difficult to concentrate on Carl’s words.
Carl looked over at the falls, then up at his house. “Don’t you worry, Ellie,” he muttered. “We’ll get our house over there.”
Dragging the house behind them was difficult work. But Russell didn’t mind it. “This is fun already, isn’t it?” he asked happily. “By the time we get there, you’re gonna feel so assisted.”
Suddenly, he had an idea. “Oh, Mr. Fredricksen. If we happen to get separated, use the Wilderness Explorer call: Caw-caw! Rarr!”
Carl winced as the call set off his hearing aid once more.
“Wait,” Russell said. “Why are we going to Paradise Falls again?”
“Hey, let’s play a game,” Carl suggested. “It’s called See Who Can Be Quiet the Longest.”
Russell smiled—he knew how to play this one. “Cool! My mom loves that game!”