The Candy Shop War

Nate runs downstairs with the teleidoscope until he is attacked by Mrs. White’s other assistant, a very strong, agile dwarf. When the dwarf hurls a chair at Nate, it smashes the front window, allowing Nate to escape. He flees immediately to Stott’s home. The old magician says Trevor won’t be harmed because Mrs. White needs him as a bargaining chip. In the meantime, Stott uses the teleidoscope to decipher the message hidden in the stone slab.

He learns that the Haag family holds the key and that the map to the talisman is inside a ship called the USS Stargazer. Stott explains that the Haag family has lived in Colson for generations, but this doesn’t explain the clue. It is now four in the morning, and Stott offers to drive Nate home. Once inside his house, Nate goes to the bathroom to wash up and sees Trevor in his mirror. The latter pantomimes that he escaped Mrs. White, but he has no Mirror Mint to break him out of the mirror realm. Nate writes a note that Trevor can read through the glass, reassuring him that they will find a solution.

A few days later, while at school, Nate gets a call from Stott. Apparently, the Stargazer is a model ship that Hanaver Mills constructed. Stott instructs the children to meet him at his ice cream truck at 3:30pm. During the lunch break, the sixth-grade bullies accost the children. They have started working for Mrs. White, and she’s given them magical candies. Since Summer, Nate, and Pigeon all still have a stash of their own candies to draw upon, a battle ensues. The conflict ends abruptly when a school official arrives to investigate suspicious fireworks but finds only candy.

When the three friends arrive later at the ice cream truck, Stott hands out magic candy of his own because he is as adept at concocting such treats as Mrs. White is. He gives Pigeon a sack of Brain Feed. When this treat is fed to animals, it briefly allows them to communicate with humans. Summer gets gum that is called Peak Performance. It will give her superhuman athletic abilities. Nate gets jawbreakers called Ironhides. These will make his skin as tough as iron and render him impervious to injury.

Stott informs his new assistants that the Stargazer is probably at the home of Mayor Todd Colson because his wife Victoria is a descendant of Hanaver Mills. Pigeon volunteers to go to the Colson house and ask Mrs. Colson if he can see the ship. He will use Sweet Tooth candy and Brain Feed to get the information he needs. After gaining access to the house, Pigeon waits to meet Mrs. Colson and gives some Brian Feed to her cat, Jasmine. The cat informs him there is no ship in the house, but she says Belinda White has been asking about Hanaver Mills memorabilia. When Mrs. Colson arrives, she says that she donated the ship to the local library but that it’s probably in storage rather than on display. Pigeon leaves and immediately goes to the library. That same afternoon, while Nate is giving Trevor all the news via messages through his bathroom mirror, he gets a call from Stott requesting him to come to the old man’s house immediately.

When Nate arrives, Stott shows him a strange flat figure floating in an aquarium: “The creature looked like a cross between a human being and a fried egg. About the size of a Frisbee, the Flatman was sheathed in pale human skin, complete with pores and faint wrinkles” (234). This creature was once Stott’s assistant, but he grew very ill. In a botched attempt to cure him, Stott transformed him into an aquatic creature with the power to foresee the future and communicate telepathically. Flatman has foreseen a dire future in which the old magician might not survive. The creature insists that Stott must give Nate his most powerful magic, the Grains of Time—“Ornately decorated, the hourglass contained blue sand in one chamber, red sand in the other, with a tiny yellow pellet plugging the gap between the two” (235).

Stott says the grains must always be consumed in the proper order: blue, red, and yellow. The blue grain masters the past. The red one governs the future, while the yellow controls the present. They can only be used once and only when Nate is in dire peril. He hangs the hourglass around his neck for safekeeping. Before he leaves, Nate promises to care for Flatman if anything should happen to Stott.

That afternoon, Summer inspects her remaining arsenal of magic candy: “In addition to her Flame Outs, Summer had three doses of Shock Bits, eight Moon Rocks, six sticks of Peak Performance gum, and the extra Sun Stone” (237). Her friends are all similarly equipped in case of danger. Pigeon calls to say that he’s located the Stargazer in a storage room at the library, but the librarian won’t allow him to take it home. The friends will need to break into the library late that night to steal it.

After dark, they ride their bikes to the library, a modern building adjoining the original barn on the property. Live animals are still kept there. The friends have no choice but to trigger the alarm while taking the ship, which is housed in a huge bottle. As they are about to escape, they are confronted by the three bullies armed with even more powerful magic candies. All the children dip into their arsenals as they join the battle. Pigeon and Summer mount a strong defense as Nate charges out of the building carrying the ship. He falls from a second-story window, shattering the bottle. Summer uses her Flame Outs to keep the bullies at bay. The fight continues on the barn roof until Summer’s fire accidentally ignites it. She tells Nate to take the ship to Stott’s house while she and Pigeon deal with the bullies.

Pigeon runs across the pasture and uses Brain Feed to converse with a horse. The animal agrees to carry him to help his friends. They race back to collect Summer, who says Nate is already on his way to Stott’s with the ship. The bullies are still inside the barn, trying to revive Denny, who fell from the roof. The horse takes the other two back to their homes. When Nate approaches Stott’s house, he sees two of Mrs. White’s henchmen posted outside. He then calls Stott to inform him and is told to take the ship to his own house for the night.

Later, after Nate has gone to bed, he sees a bubble hovering in his room like the one that Pigeon noticed near the creek. Believing this to be an ominous sign, Nate gets up to check on the ship, but he is attacked by the wooden Indian statue that once stood inside the candy shop. Someone is obviously controlling it using Proxy Dust, and the figure is waving a hatchet. Nate takes an Ironhides jawbreaker, so the attack doesn’t hurt him, but he is briefly knocked out. When he recovers, the Stargazer is gone.