WARNING: This is not the published version of Feeding Frenzy. This is the Wattpad version. If you would like the final, professionally editing version, please visit maajawentz.com. 

(The picture is from the Book Launch at Baaka-Phoenix Bookstore in Toronto)

Tonya, Priya, Ducky and Ducky's friend Zain, were eating lunch in the cafeteria. The fourth wall of the enormous room was a floor-to-ceiling window giving onto the central courtyard. It was the first time Tonya had met Zain, who had shiny black hair, tied in a sleek ponytail. He was almost as tall as Ducky and just as slender, but unlike Ducky in his check shirts, Zain favored black clothing and a ball cap that said 'Director.'

Ducky pointed out the window. "Don't you love watching them scurry this way and that while we sit here and enjoy our mango shakes?"

"That will be us in another half hour," said Tonya.

"Not all of us," said Priya. "Ducky and I are skipping this afternoon so we can plan the digital part of my installation."

"I think it's a mistake," said Zain. "What if people break our cameras as a Halloween prank?"

"Too much horror is turning you into a pessimist. They won't even see them," said Ducky. "I'm going to mount them way up in the trees."

"They could watch us putting them up and steal them when we leave," said Zain, pointing an accusing French fry at his friend. "What would you do then?"

Ducky pointed a long fry at Zain's heart and put on a cheesy French accent. "I would defeat them with ze Blade of Orleans. En garde, coward!"

Zain brandished his own deep-fried weapon and they started to thrust and parry across the table. Ducky stood up to gain some reach so Zain leaped to his feet, and the two of them took the fight to the floor. Tonya saw people stare and giggle from all corners of the immense cafeteria.

"Would you idiots sit back down," said Priya. "You'll embarrass Tonya."

"Speak for yourself," said Tonya. She grabbed a fry and held it 'en garde.' "I was known as ze 'Ketchup killer' of Loon Lake High."

Priya and Tonya exchanged a look then started giggling, until Zain put a hand on Tonya's shoulder. His face was serious and he was pointing out the window.

"Isn't that your Professor?" said Priya.

Tonya saw Professor Rudolph in the courtyard. He was walking blindly up the path as students dodged out of his way. At the centre of the courtyard stood a statue of Mackenzie King, directly in his path. The Professor walked right into it, stumbled back and continued past, lumbering blindly into a student and causing her to drop an armful of books.

"He looks sick or something, c'mon." Without waiting for the others, Tonya got up and went outside to see what was ailing her beloved History professor. His eyes, when she caught up with him, were unfocused and dull, coated in a bluish film. He staggered blindly towards the edge of campus.

It wasn't difficult to keep up with him. He walked with all the grace of Frankenstein. "Professor Rudolph," she touched his shoulder. "Are you okay?"

This got no reaction. "Can you hear me? It's Tonya, from Philosophy of History."

He kept lumbering forward on heavy legs, unhearing as well as blind.

Priya and Ducky caught up. "What's wrong with him?" asked Priya.

"He won't answer," said Tonya. "Watch this." She waved her hands in front of his face. When he didn't react, she stepped into his path and stood there. Professor Rudolph was a very big guy. When she saw he wouldn't alter his course, she leaped clear before he plowed into her.

"We should call his family," said Ducky. "This looks like sleepwalking. My brother used to sleepwalk so badly, my parents had to tie his leg to the bed so he wouldn't wander down the stairs."

"If we wake him suddenly, could he have a heart attack?" asked Zain.

Priya took the Professor's shoulder and gave it a gentle shake. "Wake up Rudolph. Wake up!"

When that didn't work, they tried grabbing him. Gently at first. Then they tried poking. Tonya watched Ducky pinch him, hard, but the Professor didn't notice.

"I refuse to be a part of this. You're going to hurt him," said Zain. "You should just leave him alone until he wakes up by himself." He started walking back up the path.

"Where are you going?" asked Ducky.

"Don't say I didn't warn you," said Zain. "If he gets hurt, his family can sue you."

"Wait!" said Ducky. The professor kept lumbering away from campus while Zain headed back the other way.

"Let Zain go," said Tonya. "We have to stop the Professor or he might walk into the road and get killed."

"How are you going to do that?" Priya asked. "You're half his size, and you're a cream puff."

"I can do this. You just have to want it badly enough." Tonya rushed up ahead of the professor and placed herself in front of him, straight-armed her hands at chest height and planted her feet. This time when Rudolph kept coming, Tonya resisted with all her force, for at least half a second, until he tipped her back and she lost equilibrium, crashing back onto her ass. Before she could react, the Professor raised a foot so large it blocked out the sun. He was about to bring it down on her head!

Suddenly, she felt Ducky's arm around her waist as he pulled her aside, barely averting the Professor's trampling feet.

"Thanks." She stood up, brushing wet leaves from her jeans.

After that, the three of them tried shouting and even kicking at the backs of the Professor's knees. They could make him stumble, momentarily, but nothing could stop or wake him. Giving up on individual efforts, they all grabbed onto his legs and dug in their heels, but soon found themselves water-skiing along the path, their feet slipping across muddy leaves. Two skinnies and Tonya were no match for the sheer forward momentum of Professor Rudolph.

"It's like trying to stop a rhino," said Ducky "What do we do now?

"Call the zoo?" asked Tonya.

"He ruined my good shoes," said Priya.

"We can't do nothing," said Ducky.

"Call the cops," said Priya. "He's a clear and present danger to leather goods."

"Not funny," said Ducky. "C'mon, maybe if we all grab the back of his jacket, we can at least slow him down."

Nothing helped. The Professor moved inexorably forward like the 'Unmoved Mover' he so eloquently described in his philosophical lectures.

"Let him go." Priya was panting. "We can follow him. It's all we can do."

"We need professional help," said Tonya.

"Who? Campus police? The O.P.P.?" said Ducky.

"They'll laugh at us," said Priya.

"You have a point." Tonya couldn't imagine the Ontario Provincial Police driving halfway across the region for a runaway sleep walker. "So we steer him clear of obstacles until he wakes up naturally." Although the unnaturally blue film over his eyeballs made her wonder if that were possible.

The professor had walked far off campus and was following the well-trod path through the woods. Tonya said: "He's headed for the graveyard."

"That makes sense," said Ducky, "since he lost his wife. Maybe he fell asleep in class and he's dreaming of visiting her grave."

"Very poetic," said Priya, "but it doesn't explain why we can't wake him."

"This is hopeless," Tonya said. "What if he walks into the stream?"

"You're worried he'll get his feet wet?" asked Ducky. It was said jokingly, but the stream was waist deep. If he bulldozed his way through it, the bracing temperature could give him hypothermia.

Ten minutes later, the path changed from a narrow mud track in the leaves, to a proper asphalt path. This was the route runners took on their long circuit through the graveyard and the forest. Tonya had seen them passing through, wearing their Loon Lake jerseys, since she was little. How funny to see them run by now, as if nothing had changed since then, except today she was a student too, trying to catch a runaway sleeping professor.

And then, straight ahead, Tonya saw salvation. There was a tall, wrought-iron fence around the cemetery, dividing it from the big field behind her Aunt Helene's store. There was no way a sleeping man could climb it. She doubted the Professor could climb it awake, given his current state of flabby overweight.

"I see the end of the road," said Ducky, echoing her thoughts.

They watched the Professor shamble up against the gate, expecting him to stop or turn around. When instead, the Professor put one foot into a crosspiece in the fence and boosted himself up, Ducky whistled. "Who knew he was so spry?"

"How is he doing that if he's asleep?" asked Priya.

"He might not be awake but his eyes are open," said Ducky. "My brother used to open the refrigerator door when he was sleepwalking. Sometimes he'd even pull things out onto the table."

The next bit was harder. The professor had to get a leg over the top of the fence, as if he were mounting a tall horse.

Tonya didn't dare get closer or try to help, in case he fell on top of her. Instead she stood helpless, her own body swaying in sympathy as the Professor teetered with one foot set halfway up the fence, and other in the air, straining weak muscles to make it go over.

When he finally succeeded Ducky said: "Good for him. I thought he was going to rip something."

Tonya smiled, until she realized that the Professor was continuing forward, and that he was headed straight for the Three-Century Ash. This was a lot more serious than sleepwalking. She told the others to stay where they were, and clambered over the fence.

He stopped dead in front of the Ash. No, no, no. The professor must be under a spell and she was going to be 'outed' if she told her friends about the tree and its powers.

The others caught up with her. How could she make them steer clear of the danger without telling all? So much for her dream of popularity and a normal life. The taint of the supernatural, which hung around her family, had followed her to campus, despite her parents' efforts to spare her.

"This isn't good," she said, her mind revving through a panoply of lies, hunting for a natural explanation for the warning she must give her friends. They were in danger and had to leave, now. "We should go back to campus."

"Why?" said Priya. "At least he's stopped. Maybe he'll wake up now."

Before Tonya could formulate an acceptable answer, the professor sat himself down on the dirty tree roots, and then lay out flat with his head pointing towards the tree. He moaned and started to agitate his arms.

"What's he doing?" asked Priya.

"Making snow angels in the leaves?" said Ducky.

"Scaring the crap out of me." Tonya got out her phone. Her hands were trembling and it seemed to take forever to find the number for campus police.

When she hung up Ducky asked why she hadn't called an ambulance.

"They're calling an ambulance for me, don't worry." Tonya didn't add that medical aide wouldn't help. This 'disease' seemed supernatural, which meant keeping things local. She wanted to try campus police and, if the officer seemed to know what she was talking about, alert them to something much bigger than a passed-out professor.

When Priya and Ducky went to bend over the body, Tonya shouted: "Don't get close. He might be contagious."

"A contagious sleepwalker?" asked Priya.

"We were all over him a minute ago," said Ducky. "Too late now."

"Just back off!"

Priya looked hurt but Tonya didn't have time for it. She called her parents, the Herbal Healing Shop, and Aunt Helene's home number, leaving messages everywhere when nobody picked up. Even her Dad's cell, which should have been switched on for emergencies, went straight to voicemail. In desperation she sent him a text, which he would probably never see, because he hadn't yet figured out texting.

Just then the ambulance came, rolling gingerly over the field, passing between garden plots spiked with withered stalks of the herbs her Aunt cultivated. When the paramedics came out, a man and a woman, they looked so young, they could have been students too. He stood a head taller than her, but both had light brown hair, similar features and the bluest eyes Tonya had ever seen. Were they twins?

Tonya and her friends answered their questions, then stood and watched as they slid Professor Rudolph's rounded body onto a stretcher. With a grunt and muttered curses, they lifted the heavy man into the back of the ambulance.

"Can I come along?" Tonya asked. She felt responsible, especially since she hadn't been able to stop his blind walk to the Three-Century Ash.

"We'll take it from here," said the young woman. "Unless you're a relative?"

"I'm not, but I'm from Loon Lake, and I think this is a local problem," Tonya said. "He walked from the middle of campus to the Three-Century Ash with his eyes closed." It was the most she could say without sounding crazy, especially since the woman didn't react when she heard about the tree. A local, from an old Loon Lake family, would hear that and suspect right away that magic was involved. "Make sure they know about the tree when he gets checked in," Tonya added.

"Don't worry," said the male paramedic. "He'll get the best possible care. And you can visit him in hospital, once the doctors okay visitors."

As the ambulance bumped away over the field, Tonya wondered what to do next. Could the professor's illness be an isolated event, or was it related to Aunt Helene's mysterious illness, and her parents' disappearance? It had only been a couple of days since she heard from them, but Tonya sensed something was wrong. They would never shut her out like that, without telling her what hospital Helene was in. At first she thought her family was protecting her, making sure she wouldn't be distracted from her studies, but it was too suspicious. Something bigger was going on and it was possible all three of them were in danger. At the very least her family seemed involved. She needed to find out what was happening, and whether they were okay.

She looked at Priya and Ducky as they stood, watching the ambulance drive away. Should she tell them about Loon Lake? All she had were handed-down stories of potions and spell casters' feuds. It wasn't enough information to help, just enough to convince them she was insane. Speaking to outsiders about the town's 'problems' was taboo anyway. She risked the wrath of the old families if she spilled Loon Lake's secrets.

"I'm going to walk over to the Healing Shop, just to see if my Aunt left any messages." She pointed at it across the field.

"What about class?" Priya asked.

"What about Rudolph?" asked Ducky.

"Let the ambulance guys take care of him. I'm really worried about my Aunt." She had already told Priya about being left behind, without an option to visit the hospital. "Maybe I can find some clue about where she went, or what's wrong with her."

Just then a campus golf cart drove up and a uniformed constable got out. He had a Mall Cop swagger as he strutted up to meet them.

"Did you folks call campus police?"

"I called," said Tonya. "Rudolph walked off the campus in the middle of the day..."

"You call him Rudolph?"

"Everybody does," said Ducky.

"He wasn't conscious," said Tonya. "He ran into people and we couldn't wake him."

"I can't believe you call a professor by his first name. That's just disrespectful."

"He was sleepwalking," said Priya, "until they took him away in an ambulance."

"Just a minute," he said, pulling a digital recorder from his pocket and pressing 'record.'

"This is Special Constable Vince Moldower. I've been called to the scene where Professor Rudolph Evers..." To Tonya he said: "Why did you call the police to report sleepwalking?"

"He was unstoppable," said Tonya.

"We were afraid he could hurt somebody," said Priya.

"And where was he when the ambulance came for him?" asked Moldower.

"Lying under that tree," said Ducky, pointing to the Three-Century Ash.

"So, napping under a tree," said Moldower "not exactly a major crime." Shutting off the recorder, he snapped it into a holster on his belt in one swift movement. "I believe my work here is done." He stalked back to his golf cart and drove away.

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