Tales From the Hood

by Michael Buckley

  “And how do you suggest we learn all this?” Sabrina asked.

  “The library, of course,” Uncle Jake said.

  Sabrina groaned. “Not the library.”

  “What’s wrong with the library?” Uncle Jake asked.

  “Nothing. The library is fine. It’s the librarian that’s the problem,” Sabrina said.

  “He’s a complete idiot,” Daphne explained.

  “I thought he was supposed to be the smartest guy in the world,” Uncle Jake said.

  “Maybe, but he’s still an idiot,” Sabrina said. “Why can’t you go?”

  Uncle Jake shook his head. “Someone’s got to stay here and keep an eye on Goldilocks.”

  “We’re going to need the flying carpet to get to the library,” Sabrina said as she reached into her pants pocket for her set of keys to the Hall of Wonders. But before she could hand them over to Mirror, Puck entered the room.

  “Uh-uh-uh-uh-uh,” he said. “You two aren’t going anywhere without protection.”

  “Well, you can forget sending one of your misfits with us,” Sabrina said. “In fact, you can get rid of the whole team.”

  “Listen, dogface. Almost everyone in this town wants you dead. Not that I can blame them. But if you were to die, I know the old lady would want to have a funeral, and if there’s a funeral I know I’m going to have to take a bath. So I will superglue a hobgoblin to your leg if I have to,” Puck declared.

  Sabrina was so angry she thought she might burst into flames. It wasn’t that Puck was being stubborn about his stupid security team; it was because he called her dogface. She knew it shouldn’t have mattered. He insulted her all the time, but for some reason this one stung. Why did it suddenly matter to her that he thought she was ugly?

  “What? No comeback?” Puck pressed, clearly surprised.

  “Maybe Puck can fly us to the library?” Daphne suggested.

  “Excellent idea,” Uncle Jake said.

  “Boring!” Puck cried.

  “Oh, I’m sorry, I was under the impression that you were some kind of mischief maker. I remember a time when you would have jumped at the chance to sneak out without my mother knowing,” Uncle Jake said. “Oh, well. I guess you’ve lost your touch.”

  Puck scowled. “I have not lost my touch for mischief! I invented mischief!”

  “These days you seem to act more like a good little boy than someone called the Trickster King. In fact, I’m surprised that people don’t mistake you for that other beloved flying boy that won’t grow up. What’s his name?”

  “Don’t you say it!” Puck warned.

  “I know who you’re talking about,” Daphne added, winking at her uncle. “The one that hangs out with the little girl and her brothers. He can fly, too. What’s his name?”

  “I mean it! Don’t you say his name in front of me. That guy is a washed-up has-been. Don’t you even compare us!”

  “Oh, I remember,” Uncle Jake said. “You’re acting like Peter—”

  Puck let out an angry bellow. “FINE!” he shouted. “I’ll go with you but let’s get something straight. I am not some goofy flying boy in green tights. I am the Trickster King: the spiritual leader of hooligans, good-for-nothings, pranksters, and class clowns. I am a villain feared worldwide and don’t you forget it.”

  “Of course you are,” Uncle Jake said.

  Two enormous insectlike wings popped out of Puck’s back. They stood taller than his body, and when he flapped them, the wind they created blew Sabrina’s hair around. He buzzed right over Sabrina’s and Daphne’s heads, snatching the girls off their feet and whisking them out the open bedroom window. Sabrina saw her uncle wave good-bye as she soared over the forest, bright with the setting sun’s palette of oranges, reds, and yellows.

  he Mid-Hudson Public Library was a small, squat building not far from the train station. Its parking lot was empty, as was the lot for the tiny auditorium next to it. When humans had lived in the town, the little library had been a bustling community center. Now that they were gone, it was lonely and dark. It reminded Sabrina of the westerns her mother loved to watch on television. They all seemed to be set in the same barren ghost town. The library had the same abandoned feel. She expected tumbleweeds to roll by at any moment.

  Puck lowered the girls to the ground outside the library’s front door, and his wings tucked themselves back under his hoodie. He sniffed the air and crinkled up his nose.

  “I smell books,” he said, repulsed.

  “That’s probably because this is a library,” Sabrina said, rolling her eyes. “It’s full of books.”

  “No way! Why didn’t you warn me?”

  “What did you think a library was?” Daphne asked.

  “I don’t know,” Puck cried. “I was hoping it was a place where men fought tigers with their bare hands. I should have known better. You guys never want to do anything fun.”

  “Oh, you’re not going to be bored in here,” Daphne said.

  “Yeah, I’m warning you in advance,” Sabrina said to the fairy boy. “You need to stay alert in here. The librarian is sort of unpredictable.”

  “We should have brought the football helmets,” Daphne said to her sister.

  Sabrina nodded. “You’re right. We keep forgetting.”

  “You two are teasing me,” Puck complained.

  “Fine! Don’t believe us,” Sabrina said. “You’ll see soon enough.”

  She led them through the front door. Inside, the library was a disastrous mess. Books, magazines, and newspapers lay scattered about the floor as if a cyclone had blown them off their shelves. Everywhere she looked, Sabrina saw piles of papers and overturned chairs but not a single soul.

  Puck’s face turned green as if he was about to be sick. “Look at all the learning,” he moaned. “I’m going to lose my lunch.”

  Sabrina grabbed his hand and pulled him down an aisle lined with packed bookshelves. “Let’s just find what we’re looking for and get out of here. If we’re lucky we won’t have to see the librarian at all.”

  Daphne took one side and Sabrina took the other, scanning the titles as they walked and hoping they might stumble upon a book of international flags. They found nothing, so they headed up another aisle. As they searched, Puck gagged.

  “Can you give it a rest?” Sabrina asked.

  “The smell is horrible! Books reek!” Puck cried. “It’s so bad I can almost taste them.”

  “Stop being a baby,” Daphne said. Her tone startled Sabrina. She had never heard the little girl scold anyone, especially Puck. Daphne usually thought everything he said or did was hilarious. Worse still was the expression on her sister’s face. Daphne was impatiently rolling her eyes again. It was the rudest thing Sabrina had ever seen her do and it made her furious. She was just about to give her sister a lecture on manners when she heard someone whistling happily from across the room. Sabrina groaned. The librarian had found them.

  “Is that the lunatic you were talking about?” Puck said, searching for the owner of the whistle.

  Sabrina nodded. “Remember what we told you. Stay on your toes.”

  “Hello!” the librarian cried as he appeared from around a shelf. He was holding a towering stack of books that reached several feet over his head. “It’s the Grimm sisters. You know, since the last time you were here, I was thinking how clever and funny your name is—the Sisters Grimm—oh, that’s fun. Like the Brothers Grimm—only girls.”

  “Yes, it’s hilarious,” Sabrina said, forcing a smile on her face. “Do you need any help?”

  “Everything is under control,” the librarian said, but his words did not reflect reality. With each step, the tower of books swayed back and forth. Convinced that the stack would topple over and crush them at any moment, Sabrina shuffled the group to the left, then to the right. It seemed as if no matter what direction they moved, the swaying books followed.

  “I suppose you are hot on the trail of another mystery,” the librarian continued, unaware of the impen
ding disaster.

  “Are you sure you don’t need a hand?” Daphne asked.

  “I’m hunky-dory!” the librarian claimed, but he was wrong. The top book in his stack slipped off. The librarian’s right leg darted out and the book landed on his foot before it hit the ground. He stood balanced on one leg, yet perfectly content. With one foot holding the book, the odd gentleman was forced to hop up and down on his free leg toward the information desk. Unfortunately, his hopping made the tower drift even farther, keeping Sabrina, Daphne, and Puck on the move to avoid the avalanche.

  Just as the librarian reached the desk, a banana peel slipped out of his pocket.

  “OH! I’m losing my lunch!” he cried.

  Sabrina sighed, knowing full well what was about to happen. She’d seen the same thing the last time they had visited the librarian, except then it had been an orange peel. She watched helplessly as he stepped on the banana peel and went flailing forward, showering the children with heavy books and knocking them to the ground. Sabrina caught one right between the eyes and saw little stars explode in front of her face.

  Puck managed to snatch his sword and bat the books away, then he brushed himself off frantically as if the books had been poisonous spiders. “Get them off me!” he shouted.

  “Oh, my! Clumsy me,” the librarian cried as he struggled to his feet. He tried to help the children up but stepped on the banana peel again and lost his footing once more. This time he did a complete somersault in midair and landed flat on his back. When he got to his feet, Sabrina could see his true Everafter form. Hay sprang from the collar and sleeves of his red plaid shirt. A dusty old hat sat on his head, and his kindly face was nothing more than an old burlap sack with eyes, nose, and mouth crudely painted on it. He was the Scarecrow, made famous in L. Frank Baum’s Oz books. Watching the face, with its moving mouth and blinking eyes, was too much for Sabrina’s sensitive stomach, and like Puck, she suddenly felt nauseated. She had to avert her eyes when Scarecrow talked, just to keep her lunch in her belly. She knew it was rude, but not as rude as barfing all over the card catalog. She wondered if she’d ever get used to seeing such strange things.

  Puck leaped into the air. His wings kept him high above the piles of books. He darted around the librarian like an annoyinggnat.

  “You’re a scarecrow,” he said.

  “Actually, I’m the Scarecrow, accomplished thinker, former Emperor of Oz, and head librarian of the Mid-Hudson Public Library.”

  Puck eyed the man closely. “But you’re made out of hay, right?”

  “Yes, and a brain. The great and terrible Oz gave it to me before he flew away in his balloon.”

  “Someone gave you a brain?” Puck asked. “I’m actually jealous. Whose was it before you got it?”

  “I’m not sure what you mean,” Scarecrow stammered.

  “The brain! Oz had to have gotten it somewhere. I bet it was a deranged killer’s. Those are the easiest to get.”

  The Scarecrow stifled a scream. “My brain was brand new!”

  “As if!” Puck said. “I know Oz and he never bought anything that wasn’t on sale. I’m sure your brain is secondhand.”

  The Scarecrow looked as if he might have a nervous breakdown, so Sabrina stepped in to change the subject. “We’re looking for a friend who is overseas. We have a street address and a flag but not a city or a country.”

  “Well, you came to the right place,” the librarian exclaimed as he got himself under control. “Tell me about this flag of yours.”

  “It’s red with a big golden lion in the center,” Daphne said. “The lion has wings and is guarding a castle on a hill. There’re all these vines on the border and little saints in the corners, too.”

  Scarecrow rubbed his burlap chin, thought for a moment, and then his eyes lit up. “I’ve seen that flag!” He raced off, leaving the children behind. They chased the Scarecrow through the stacks and caught up with him in the back of the library. He was already climbing up a big bookcase, reaching for a book on the very top. The bookcase was not mounted to the wall and was teetering back and forth under the Scarecrow’s weight.

  “Does anyone else see where this is going?” Sabrina sighed. She remembered seeing the movie The Wizard of Oz when she was a child. The Scarecrow was such a klutz, Sabrina would giggle whenever he was on-screen. The real flesh-and-hay Scarecrow wasn’t much different, but the pratfalls weren’t as endearing. Perhaps she was getting older and had less patience for such silliness, or maybe, she suspected, the Scarecrow was just annoying. “I think I know why Dorothy wanted to go back to Kansas,” Sabrina muttered to herself.

  Despite the Scarecrow’s weight, the shelf did not topple over, but that didn’t mean Sabrina and Daphne were safe. The Scarecrow kept tossing down the books he didn’t need. The tumbling volumes were encyclopedias, and the children darted around like they were trapped in a whack-a-mole game.

  “Here it is,” the Scarecrow cried, just before he fell off the shelf and landed in a heap on the floor. Without missing a beat, the librarian sprang to his feet and opened the book. Inside were pictures of flags from all over the world. He flipped through the pages until he found a flag that looked just like the one the girls had seen hanging from the Hotel Cipriani’s banister. “Is that it?”

  Daphne and Sabrina nodded.

  “That’s the flag of a city called Venice,” the Scarecrow said, quite proud of his discovery. “It’s a lovely place built on one hundred seventeen islands connected by one hundred fifty canals. In Venice, you don’t hail a cab, you hail a boat called a gondola, because many of the roads are actually waterways. The population is roughly two hundred and fifty thousand people. The average annual rainfall is thirty-four inches. The major industry is tourism, and the region’s biggest exports are textiles, clothing, glass, paper, motor vehicles, chemicals, minerals, and nonferrous metals.”

  Sabrina prepared for Daphne to ask for the definition of nonferrous; she herself had no idea what it meant. But much to Sabrina’s surprise, the little girl took a pocket dictionary from her purse and looked up the word on her own.

  “Nonferrous is a metal containing little or no iron,” she announced.

  Sabrina grabbed the dictionary. “What’s this?”

  “What does it look like?” Daphne said, rolling her eyes.

  Sabrina could feel her face tighten up. How dare Daphne roll her eyes at her!

  “Now, how about that hotel?” the Scarecrow asked, interrupting the argument.

  “It’s called Hotel Cipriani,” Daphne said, since Sabrina was still too angry to talk.

  “Sounds like that language they speak over there,” Scarecrow said. “What’s it called? You know, the language they speak in Italy?”

  “Uh . . . Italian?” Daphne asked.

  “Bingo!” Scarecrow raced back through the library to where travel books for places all around the world were kept. Soon the girls were caught in another hailstorm of books. Copies of Fodor’s Guide to Oz, Frommer’s Lilliput, Lonely Planet’s Narnia, and The Complete Idiot’s Guide to Neverland flew at them. After some very close calls, Scarecrow snatched a book off a shelf and held it triumphantly above his head. “Here it is!” In his excitement, he lost his balance and nearly fell off the bookcase. He managed to hold on with one hand, but he struggled to regain his footing.

  “Oh, yeah, that’s a secondhand brain, for sure,” Puck said, flying down to the girls’ level. “Oz was such a prankster.”

  “Have you forgotten that Oz tried to kill us?” Sabrina said.

  “You can be a homicidal madman and hilarious at the same time, you know,” Puck said—right before the bookcase tipped over and came crashing down, burying him in a mountain of books.

  “Boy, am I accident prone today,” the librarian said.

  “The books! They’re touching me,” Puck groaned. “They’re all over me!”

  “We’ll get this off you in no time,” the Scarecrow said. Working together, he and the girls lifted the heavy shelf off Puck
. When he got to his feet, Sabrina noticed he had blotchy red marks on his arms and legs, and his face had swollen to the size of a pumpkin.

  “I’m allergic!” he cried as he scratched his arms and legs furiously. He reached for the wooden sword he kept at his waist. Sabrina was sure Puck was going to attack the clumsy scarecrow, but instead, he used his weapon to scratch the areas of his back that he couldn’t reach. “Whoever had your brain before you was evil!” Puck muttered.

  Scarecrow frowned, but then he spotted a book on the floor and his burlap face lit up. “Hey! Here’s the book.” He grabbed a large volume off the floor, then opened it and flipped through the pages. “This is a travel guide to Italian hotels. Travel books don’t get checked out much. There aren’t too many vacationers from Ferryport Landing. Oh, here it is—the Hotel Cipriani. It has a five-star rating—very swanky.”

  “Is there an address for the hotel?” Sabrina asked, remembering her uncle’s specific request.

  “Absolutely! The listing says it’s at Giudecca 10 in Venice,” Scarecrow said. “They put the building number after the street name in a lot of European countries. Is there anything else you need to know?”

  “I’m not sure we’d survive any more of your help,” Daphne grumbled. “Thanks a lot.”

  “No thanks is necessary!” Scarecrow said, ignoring Daphne’s comment. “Learning something new is thanks enough. Though I could use a hand reshelving some of these books.”

  The Scarecrow strolled away, leaving the shelf and the books where they fell. Puck fired insults at him as the librarian walked away. “I know Oz. He’s a liar. I wouldn’t be surprised if your brain wasn’t made out of an old sock and some butterscotch pudding! I’m talking to you, Mr. Genius. You should call Oz and get the receipt for your brain. I’m sure the warranty has expired.”