Cold Cereal

by Adam Rex

  CHAPTER 23

  “Where were you?” Biggs asked Erno. He didn’t even give Scott a glance. “So worried.”

  “Sorry. I’m sorry,” said Erno. “I just saw Scott through the periscope, looking for us. So I rode out to find him.” Erno shot Scott a look. “It took longer than I thought it would.”

  More lies. Scott sighed.

  After a moment Biggs nodded. “Sorry I took so long,” he said. “Was in the shower. ’Lo, Scott,” he finished, and then looked rather squarely at Mick as though waiting to be introduced.

  “Um,” said Scott.

  “All right, grab an armful of wet housekeeper,” said Erno as he hopped on Biggs’s back. Scott gave Mick a meaningful look, and the little man climbed into his backpack.

  They fell, in fits and starts, into the sky. Scott regretted the cherry water ice he’d eaten earlier as a syrupy bile rose in his throat. Biggs soon deposited Scott on a strong branch and revealed the way inside his strangely homey nest egg. Then he went back for his bike. Erno ran in ahead to announce Scott, and soon Emily came squealing to meet him in the foyer with nearly homicidal enthusiasm. Had she hugged him with any more momentum they might both have tumbled backward through the still-open door and dropped a hundred feet to their adorable deaths.

  “Hi,” Scott said, blushing.

  “I knew you’d find us,” said Emily. “You won’t believe what’s happened.”

  Biggs returned and excused himself to go finish his shower. Emily led Scott into Biggs’s living room, which contained Erno and some 50s modern furniture and a rabbit-man perched atop a bookcase reading Half Magic.

  Harvey looked over the edge of his book at Scott. “You?” he coughed. Scott set his backpack down and unzipped the top. Harvey goggled. “Mick?”

  “Harv!”

  Scott found it hard to concentrate on Erno and Emily’s story while the elf and pooka had their noisy, backslapping reunion. Mick produced his little flask, and the two of them passed it back and forth.

  “What do you keep looking at?” asked Erno.

  “Nothing. Sorry. That’s awful, what Goodco was doing. And Mr. Wilson was a part of it?”

  “No,” said Emily.

  Erno didn’t answer, though you could kind of tell he wanted to.

  Biggs returned wearing a white shirt and a tweed vest and slacks. He watched Mick and Harvey on the bookcase, then noticed Scott watching him.

  “You can see them?” asked Biggs and Scott in unison.

  “See them what?” asked Erno.

  “The big guy ith touched,” Harvey told Mick. “Goodco did a number on him in the thixties.”

  Biggs sat heavily in the corner chair. His glacial face cracked, just a little.

  “Didn’t know they were real,” he said. “The things I see. Not really real.”

  “What are we talking about?” said Erno. “Scott?”

  Scott glanced at Mick. Mick said, “Harvey, I think these are all good people. Yeh have any glamour left?”

  “Thome.”

  “Enough for us both?”

  “No. No way. That’th too much.”

  Mick jerked his head toward the Utz kids. “Not if yeh know their True Names.”

  Harvey seemed to be considering this, then he gave a resigned little shrug. “Erno and Emily Utth,” he said as his ears shivered, and Erno fell straight off the couch.

  “Easter Bunny!” Erno shouted, pointing. “Little … munchkin!”

  “Thtupid kid.”

  “What?” said Emily.

  “Wait—you!” Erno said to Mick. “You’re that angry leprechaun!”

  “Angry clurichaun, actually,” Mick growled.

  “They’re magical … refugees,” said Scott. “They’re from another world or something. Goodco has been holding them prisoner and stealing their magic.”

  “Have they been here this whole time?” Erno asked, breathless.

  “No, no—Mick came with me.”

  “Met Harvey by the Porta-Potties,” said Biggs. “Said he needed a place to hide.”

  “Why didn’t you tell us?” Erno asked him while crawling back onto the couch.

  “Thought it was all in muh head.”

  “I used to think they were auras,” Scott explained.

  “WHAT ARE YOU ALL TALKING ABOUT?!” wailed Emily. “Are you making fun of me?”

  Everyone fell silent and stared at her. Mick climbed down to the floor.

  “No one’s making fun of you,” Scott said quietly. “Why do you think we are?”

  “You all … planned this somehow,” Emily muttered. “You said, ‘Let’s pretend there are invisible people in the room to scare Emily.’”

  Mick stepped over to the sofa. “Yeh still can’t see me, lass? Or hear me?”

  Emily gave no indication she could.

  “Emily…,” said Erno. “There’s a leprechaun next to you. And a … rabbit-man on top of the bookshelf.”

  Emily was looking like a balloon in search of a pin. “No such thing,” she whispered as she pressed backward into the crook of the sofa.

  “What’th with her?”

  Mick looked up and over his shoulder. “She doesn’t believe in us, Harv.”

  Harvey slumped. “That’th all right. I don’t believe in me, either.”

  “Maybe Emily Utz isn’t her True Name?”

  “Sure it is,” said Erno. “What do you mean?”

  “A True Name isn’t just what yeh call yourself,” said Mick. “’Tis who yeh think yeh really are. It’s the name that feels like home.”

  “So what difference does it make, anyway?” asked Scott. He was frightened for Emily, who was big-eyed and jerking her head back and forth like a sparrow.

  “If yeh know a fellow’s True Name, it gives yeh … influence. Your magics will work better on that person.”

  Erno glanced at Emily. “Try … try Emily Wilson.”

  “Thatth not it,” said Harvey from the bookcase. “Thereth thomething elth up with her. Can’t you thmell it? She thtinkth of magic.”

  Scott frowned as Emily started vibrating like a cell phone. And were the lights actually dimming? “Magic should make it easier for her to see you, shouldn’t it? Not harder.”

  “STOP IT! STOP IT! IT’S NOT FUNNY!”

  No one was laughing. Emily squirmed in her seat as Biggs rushed to take her in his arms. The lamps went out, there was a sharp crack and a flash of pink, and when the lights flickered on again the tree house was pierced in two dozen places with bony twigs. They jutted through the walls, ceiling, and floor at odd angles.

  Mick hustled to the front door, and a stale hush hung in the air until he returned.

  “It’s tree branches,” he reported. “Grew right in from the outside.”

  Erno touched one of the thin branches. “Did … did Emily do this?” he asked.

  Biggs was swaddling Emily in his arms, rocking his weight from foot to foot. She appeared to have fallen dead asleep.

  “Maybe we should go,” Scott whispered to Mick.

  “Aye.”

  Harvey proceeded to climb down from the bookcase. “Lookth like you’re gonna have a pooka in your baythment after all,” he told Scott. “Should have jutht helped me from the thtart.”

  “Wait,” said Scott. “Whoa. He can’t stay at my house.”

  “He’s right, Harv. Scott here has a little sister and a da’ what can probably see us.”

  “What?” Harvey sputtered, his ears stock-straight.

  Mick tried to calm him. “Yeh know how adult humans can be. Been hard enough just keeping me out o’ sight, an’ I can fit in a backpack.”

  “Inhothpitable mithcreants! Thcoundrelth! Dithcourteouth reprobateth!”

  Scott glanced at Mick. “Is he still making words?”

  “Promised you could stay here,” Biggs told Harvey with his quiet thunder. “Still can. Just have to not upset Emily so.”

  Harvey seemed to be preparing some fresh snark, then thought better of it. He and Erno
followed Scott and Mick to the door.

  “What did Mr. Wilson do to her?” said Scott.

  “I don’t know yet,” Erno answered. “I’m gonna find out.”

  “That was strong stuff, that was,” said Mick. “Wild magic. No cause, no justification.”

  “So … she’s got some weird powers now,” said Erno, “and she doesn’t know how to control them. You guys are magic, right? You can teach her.”

  Mick shook his head. “I couldn’t have done what your sister just did on my best day. Not without a very good reason.”

  “Is this another one of your rules?” asked Scott. “Like having to be good to get your glamour back? Seems like magic shouldn’t have rules.”

  “Magic is all abou’ rules. If we didn’t have rules we’d be gods. Even back when I had my glamour I couldn’t just do whatever I wanted. But I got what I deserved. Lemme tell yeh a story.”

  Scott sighed, and settled against the front door.

  “This is back in the Old Days, in the Old World,” said Mick, “an’ a hermit catches one o’ the Good Folk in his radish patch an’ demands him some fairy treasure. So the old elf shows the hermit exactly which plant hides the gold. Why does he do this? ’Cause he has to, don’t he? That’s the arrangement; them’s the rules. Now, the hermit doesn’t have a shovel, so he ties a red garter around the radish greens an’ heads back to his cave t’ fetch one. An’ when he comes back, what does he find?”

  “That the elf has taken off the garter,” said Scott.

  “No! He comes back to find that every radish plant’s got a garter now. Every last radish, an’ a few thistles besides.”

  “And this elf was you?”

  “No. He was a friend o’ a friend. The point is, that elf couldn’t just remove the garter. The hermit had caught him fair an’ square. But he could be tricky. We were made to be tricky.”

  “I alwayth thought your Bugth Bunny mutht be a pooka,” said Harvey quietly. “He jutht wantth to live hith life. He’th a thimple thort. But when thomeone mithtreatth him, he can do impothible thingth. Tie a shotgun in a bow, drop an anvil out of the thky. Pull dynamite out of nowhere—he can do anything, if he hath a good enough reathon.”

  Mick smiled at the rabbit-man. “How’d yeh escape, Harv?”

  “It wath Thamhain,” Harvey answered. “I did one of the guardth a favor.”

  “Thowin?” said Scott. He didn’t know that word. And he wouldn’t have recognized it even if he’d seen it—Samhain was an Irish word, and like so many Irish words, it didn’t sound (SOW-in) anything like it looked.

  “Samhain. November Day,” Mick said. “The first o’ the month.”

  “We pooka get a little more glamourouth on Thamhain. And thometimeth we give true anthwers, if people athk the right quethtionth. Don’t know how thome Goodco guard knew about that.”

  “Wikipedia,” suggested Erno.

  “He wanted to know if hith girl would marry him. I thaid yeth.”

  “Was it true?” asked Scott.

  “Gueth tho, or he wouldn’t have let me out. Lucky me it wath a fifty-fifty quethtion.”

  Biggs was still cradling Emily, and possibly singing something atonally.

  “How do we get down again?” asked Scott.

  Erno grinned. “Rope.”

  Scott lowered them down, and he and Mick walked vaguely back toward the bus stop. It was dark, and Scott wondered what to say at home. That he’d changed his mind about the sleepover? That he and Erno had had a fight? He supposed he could tell John that Emily had one of her spells. Spells. It was almost funny except that it wasn’t.

  “Told you,” said Mick. “Things comin’ together. We set off lookin’ for the Utz kids an’ find a tree full o’ everybody. That’s magic, too.”

  “It’s like a story.”

  “Same thing. The universe don’t like plot. Story is magic’s way o’ telling the universe to sod off.”

  “That’s good then, right?” said Scott. After this episode with Emily, he was ready for some optimism. “Magic wants us all to live happily ever after.”

  “Not necessarily,” Mick answered. “Magic likes a good tragedy, too.”

  CHAPTER 24

  “Can people see you now?” Scott asked Mick as they sat on a bench, waiting for the bus. “Because of the glamour Harvey gave you, I mean?”

  “Nah. That was only good for the children. Or the lad, at any rate.”

  “Why didn’t it work on Emily? Could you smell magic on her like Harvey could?”

  Mick shook his head. “Harvey’s got a considerable nose. An’ Emily’s something I’ve never seen before. If she’s full o’ magic like Harv says, she’s keeping it way down in her root cellar where I can’t see it at all.”

  “Maybe she’s a changeling,” Scott muttered. “It’s … it’s not like she and Erno exactly look like brother and sister.”

  “Meant t’ ask you about that. One o’ them adopted?”

  “No. I mean … they’re supposed to be twins,” said Scott, and Mick huffed. “I’ve tried to bring it up with Erno, but I’ve never gotten very far.”

  “Well, if she was just a changeling, she’d be able to see me an’ Harvey an’ all the other things that don’t belong in this world.”

  Down the street a windowless white van was pulling into the parking lot next to the Park Authority Building. Scott was on alert for white vans, for all the good it did. Now that he was paying attention it seemed like they were everywhere. So far they’d only meant plumbers or flower deliveries. This one had a long ladder hitched to the side.

  “Okay,” he said to Mick. “Well, if you don’t belong in this world, then where?”

  “Maybe nowhere. Listen, I’ll tell yeh a story.”

  Another story. Mick was getting nothing if not more talkative.

  “This was abou’ a thousand years ago,” the old elf began. “I don’t remember much before it happened, an’ sure an’ I don’t remember everything since. But I remember this: one day, a thousand years ago, the sun rose twice.”

  In the lands of King Anguish of Ireland, the sun lingered just beyond horizon’s door as though smitten with all creation, and reluctant to say good night. This was the twilight time, and the favorite time of the Fay. The old elf-man Fergus Ór (for if he had always existed, then he had always been old) emerged from his mound, clean as a turnip. He stood and whistled, and before long the firebird, Finchbriton, joined him. Then Fergus packed his pipe, and Finchbriton took his perch, and each smoked a while in his own way.

  “Quiet this evening,” Fergus said, and the little bird trilled in response. “Well, I ween it’s because so many good Christian men an’ boys are off helpin’ our friend Arthur,” Fergus explained.

  Finchbriton warbled humbly.

  “No cause to be embarrassed; yeh weren’t to know. I only mean Arthur. He’s King o’ the Britons, he is,” said Fergus. “But I amn’t much of a Briton meself, an’ you’re a bit of a bird, if yeh don’t mind me sayin’ so.”

  “Who’s a bit of a bird?” asked a passing beansidhe, who stopped and watched Fergus from a thicket of dead trees. She was pallid and clothed in diaphanous tatters; and Fergus thought she could be beautiful if only she fixed her hair, or at least combed the worms out of it.

  “Just my friend here,” said Fergus, and he pointed to Finchbriton with the stem of his pipe. “Only don’t tell him; he thinks he’s a dragon.”

  “You and that bird,” the bean-sidhe sneered.

  “Me an’ this bird,” Fergus agreed. “That’s it exactly. What brings you by, Mona? Not business, I hope.”

  “Not business,” said the bean-sidhe with notable regret. “I should be in the east, at Camlann. A great battle rages.”

  “Still? It’s not Arthur an’ Nimue’s boy again, is it?”

  “Arthur and Lancelot are again of one accord. Today they fight Mordred, Arthur’s bastard son.”

  “Well, aren’t you the gossip.”

  And then a strange sun rose i
n the east. To begin with, there was only a glow, like the first light of morning.

  “Well now,” whispered Fergus, as much to himself as to the bird or the bean-sidhe. “What do yeh make o’ that?”

  The bean-sidhe turned to the east and clutched at the trees. Her hair writhed.

  “A sign! A new day begins, and Arthur hath prevailed! Or died!”

  This strange sun breached the hills, looking jagged and broken through the trees. It grew larger, closer, not a sun but a dome, or else a great sphere of light that was half above the ground, half below. Finchbriton flew to Fergus’s shoulder and whistled low.

  It came at them, this curved radiant wall, and passed on through. Then they were inside the light, and the light was magic. Pure magic, like neither elf nor bird had experienced before. The trees held their branches still, while every blade of grass quivered and the stars fell like cherry blossoms all around. Fergus burst out laughing: round peals of laughter like church bells. Finchbriton sang out loud and clear and set the tops of trees ablaze, while the bean-sidhe keened and wailed and fell to her knees.

  Everything blurred, and it occurred to Fergus through his tears that he was seeing double. Then perhaps his brain guttered a bit, and he dropped to the earth.

  “Seein’ double,” Mick repeated. “That’s what really stayed with me after I woke up again.”

  “Finchbriton?” asked Scott. “You said that elf wasn’t you.”

  “Yeah. I lied.”

  The buses didn’t run much at night. Scott breathed on his hands to warm them and watched another white van pull up and park next to the first. Mick played with the zipper on his jacket and slumped back against the bench, which was papered with an ad for Aspercreme. Then he took another little drink from his flask.

  “What is that stuff, anyway?” asked Scott.