by Greg Cox
“Caving?” A trace of alarm entered her voice. “So we can go spelunking in some crumbling, two-thousand-year-old well?”
He didn’t miss the plural pronoun. “We?”
“Naturally,” she said. “You can’t tempt me with the possibility of finding the very first printing of Mother Goose’s Melodies—and maybe an answer to my Pumpkin Morning nightmare—and then just leave me in the lurch. Besides, do you even know the way to the ruins? Believe me when I tell you that it’s a long, difficult hike on a trail that’s not exactly designed for sightseeing academics from America. You don’t want to go it alone.”
“Thanks for the offer, but I can manage outside the ivory towers of academia, thank you very much. I’m not exactly your typical Librarian.”
“I’m picking up on that,” she said, “and consider me intrigued, in more ways than one. But that doesn’t change anything. I’m going with you, period.”
Her tone, which was enough to put the fear of God into any errant student, brooked no further discussion, but she had no idea what she was letting herself in for if she tagged along on this quest. He couldn’t in good conscience let her wander into potentially mortal jeopardy unawares.
“Look,” he said, “it’s not that I wouldn’t appreciate the company—and your company, specifically—but my colleague and I aren’t the only ones looking for those pages. We have competition and, in all honesty, I’m not sure how far they might go to beat us to the pages. We could be talking serious danger to life and limb.”
“Even worse than waking up in a pumpkin with no idea how you got there?”
“Possibly,” he said. “Academic politics may get cutthroat at times, but compared to treasure hunting?” He tried to get across just how serious this was. “More than reputations can be destroyed, if you get what I’m saying.”
“I see.” She was silent for a minute, absorbing what he’d told her. “But you still think this search is worth pursuing?”
He shrugged. “It’s my job, not yours.”
“But according to you, I’m Great-Great-Great-Great-Granddaughter Goose or whatever, so this is my business, too.” She nodded to herself, her decision made. “Like it or not, you’re stuck with me, Jake or Jackson or whatever you’re calling yourself at the moment. You’re not going up that hill without me.”
Stone realized that there was no winning this battle, short of stuffing her in a pumpkin himself. “All right then,” he conceded. “Every Jack must have his Jill, I guess.”
She smiled slyly in a way that promised trouble.
“Don’t get ahead of yourself, Jake Stone.”
He was searching for a suitable reply when the overhead lights flickered and went out, throwing the pub into darkness. Startled gasps and exclamations replaced the general hubbub as confused customers and servers reacted to the unexpected blackout, which puzzled Stone as well. It wasn’t as though there was any sort of storm going on outside.
“What the devil?” Gillian said. “This doesn’t—”
The lights returned as abruptly as they left, bringing an unwelcome surprise.
A large orange pumpkin, about the size of a Halloween jack-o’-lantern, had magically appeared on the table between them. Gillian’s face went pale at the sight. Stone assumed that this pumpkin was not nearly as enormous as the one she’d woken up inside, but it still had to be a very triggery reminder of her recent ordeal.
Which is exactly the idea, he guessed.
“What…?” she stammered. “How…?”
Stone reached across the table to take her hand, hoping to comfort her. “Hang in there,” he began. “It’s just a pumpkin.”
“No,” she said, shaking. “There’s more.”
She turned the pumpkin around and he saw writing carved into its shell in a way he recognized from his boyhood. Back home, farmers would sometimes scratch short messages—such as, say, a child’s name—into the tender green skin of a freshly sprouted pumpkin. As the pumpkin matured, the message would grow, too, scabbing over to form bumpy white script across the bright orange shell, just like on the pumpkin he was looking at now.
The message scarring the pumpkin was short and to the point: THE BOOK IS MINE.
“Damn,” Stone muttered.
Gillian looked understandably freaked out. “This is insane,” she protested. “What’s this all about?”
“It’s a warning,” Stone said. “To leave those missing rhymes alone.”
From Mother Goose, no doubt.
She took a deep breath to steady her nerves. The color began to return to her face.
“For you or for me?”
“Both, I’m guessing.” He squeezed her hand. “I’ll understand if you want nothing more to do with any of this. You can just walk away.”
“Like hell I will!” Her cheeks flushed with anger, suggesting that the brazen attempt to intimidate her had achieved precisely the opposite result. “I’ve had quite enough of being bullied by pumpkins.”
She shoved the threatening gourd off the table. It crashed to the floor, splattering pumpkin guts all over the tiles. Startled customers looked on in shock, but Gillian couldn’t be bothered to explain or apologize. She rose defiantly to her feet and put on her jacket.
“Well?” she asked Stone impatiently. “Are you coming or not?”
9
Florida
“Excuse me. Sorry. No, thank you. I’m fine.”
It was open mic night at Slant, a hip-hop night club in Miami, and Cassandra found herself adrift in a sea of bodies bobbing and swaying to the rhythmic beats and rhymes coming from the stage. It was hot and crowded and loud and she felt overwhelmed and out of place, not to mention daunted by the challenge of finding George Cole, the unnaturally lucky tree trimmer from her news clipping, in the midst of the densely packed club.
This was not the kind of “rock-a-bye baby” I was expecting, she thought. And is the music supposed to be this loud?
She had been running around the city for hours trying to track down Cole, and getting nowhere, until one of his neighbors had helpfully steered her toward this club. “You’re looking for Georgie on a Saturday night?” the woman had volunteered before carrying a heavy bag of groceries into her own place. “Slant is the place to be.”
Cassandra hoped that advice was on target, as she fruitlessly searched the faces of the crowd, looking in vain for anyone who resembled the news photo of George Cole she’d found online. Random bodies jostled her or protested being jostled. Someone offered her a drink, but she declined without hesitation, recalling her inebriated exploits at Dorian Gray’s club in London not too long ago; she needed to keep her wits about her.
And I really don’t need a hangover tomorrow, she thought. Magical or otherwise.
The noise and commotion were already giving her a headache. Rapper after rapper took their turn upon the stage, eliciting cheers and jeers from the hyped-up crowd. Cassandra paid little attention to the performances, scanning the crowd instead. Sensory overload threatened to send her head spinning; the percussive four-beat rhythm of the raps intruded on her brain, filling it with mathematical static: four by four by four, sixteen bars to a verse, snares on every second beat, rhyme and cadence forming recurring patterns, syllables synched to a staccato schema that smelled oddly like children’s aspirin—
Stop it! She shook her head to clear it. Keep it under control.
She was tempted to turn back and stake out Cole’s doorstep until he finally dragged himself back home, but who knew how long that might take, especially if he met somebody at the club. According to Jenkins, time was of the essence; she needed to locate Cole with all due speed, even if she had no idea how.
Maybe I can just step outside for minute to get a little fresh air and quiet?
She was starting to make her way toward the nearest exit, despite the raucous throng between her and the door, when the MC strode back out onto the stage to introduce the next performer:
“What’s crackin’, Miami? You ready
for more?”
The audience whooped in response, practically shaking the building.
“All right! Then raise the roof for the slamming stylings of Miami’s favorite black sheep, our own homegrown shepherd of swag … Bo-Peeps!”
Bo-Peeps?
Cassandra halted her exodus and spun around in time to see George Cole take the stage, decked out in an oversized T-shirt, sweatpants, and sneakers. A large gilded candy cane hung on a chain around his neck; it took Cassandra a moment to realize that it represented a shepherd’s crook. Claiming the mic from the MC, Cole confidently turned toward the audience and launched into his rap:
They call me Bo-Peeps ’cause I tend to my flock,
I walk the walk, not just talk the talk.
No man is an island. Gotta watch for the strays.
You mess with my peeps, you best mind your ways!
Cassandra was no expert on rap music, but her heart pounded in excitement. She was clearly on the right track: Cole was trumpeting his Mother Goose roots for all the world to see and hear. She didn’t need to retrace his ancestry back to Elizabeth Goose to know that she had gotten it right the first time.
You want a good shepherd, you’re talking Bo-Peeps.
I keep watch in the night; them wolves never sleep.
No eyes are sharper, my name’s in the book.
I keep my sheep safe … by hook or by crook!
Waiting anxiously for “Bo-Peeps” to wrap up his performance, Cassandra caught herself tapping her foot in time to the beat, getting into the rap. She was almost disappointed when he finally surrendered the mic and exited the stage on the right. Bouncing on her tiptoes, she peered over the heads and shoulders of the crowd, desperately trying to keep him in sight.
“Mr. Cole? George Cole?” she called out, struggling to be heard over the general hubbub. She shoved her way through the crowd, wishing she had Eve’s Amazonian height and physique. Dirty looks and grumbling followed her as she squeezed her way forward, feeling like a salmon fighting its way upstream. “Mr. Peeps! Bo-Peeps!”
Her frantic shouting caught his attention. Surrounded by some friends or admirers, with whom he was chilling after his act, he stared at her in curiosity. She couldn’t blame him for looking puzzled; she wasn’t exactly dressed for clubbing. What with her Peter Pan collar, pink floral dress, and leggings, she appeared neither hip nor hop.
“Yo!” he called back. “You lost, little sheep?”
Not anymore, she thought. “If I could please just have a moment of your time…!”
He gestured for his fan club to let her through. Gasping in relief, she burst from the pack to get up close to him. Her voice was hoarse from shouting.
“Mr. Cole?” she said. “My name is Cassandra and—”
“Call me Georgie,” he said, grinning broadly. He was a big, muscular guy who made her feel even more petite than usual. His shaved skull gleamed beneath the club lights; an amused expression was less intimidating than his imposing physique. “As in Georgie Porgie, you know?” He looked her over again. “I kiss the girls and make them cry.”
Cassandra feared he might have the wrong idea. She was a Librarian, not a groupie. “I’m sure you do, but I really need to talk to you about an important matter.”
“Are you a talent scout?” he asked. “Did you like my flow? ’Cause I’ve got even crisper rhymes where those came from.”
“No, no, nothing like that.” Cassandra decided to cut to the chase to avoid any further confusion. “It’s about … Mother Goose.”
His whole face lit up. “Hell, girl, why didn’t you say so? I’m all about Ma Goose, obviously.” He patted his chest. “Where do you think I get my mad rhyming skills from? Cross my heart, you’re looking at a genuine descendant of the original Ma Goose, the most old-school rapper of all!”
He was obviously proud of his illustrious roots.
“I know!” Cassandra said. Elizabeth Goose’s luminous family tree flashed briefly before her eyes. “That’s what I need to speak with you about.” A stray customer shouldered past her, bumping her to one side. She found herself standing in a puddle of spilled beer. “Any chance we can relocate to someplace a little less … distracting?”
Cole nodded. “I know just the place.” He made his goodbyes to his assembled fan club before guiding Cassandra toward a rear exit backstage. “Let’s bail.”
The exit led to a crowded parking lot lit up by glowing lampposts. The cool night air came as a relief after the overheated atmosphere of the club. Cole’s car—an eggshell-blue convertible—was easily identified by his vanity plates, which spelled out “BO PEEPS.” He chivalrously opened the passenger side door. “Welcome to my crib away from crib. Make yourself at home.”
Cassandra hesitated only briefly. There was a time when she would have never gotten into a car with a strange man, but that was before she became a Librarian. She’d stepped through a dimensional vortex into a Lovecraftian hell dimension and, at various points in her new career, faced off against the likes of Morgan le Fay, Professor Moriarty, and the Big Bad Wolf. She figured she could handle a parked convertible in Miami.
Besides, she was getting a good vibe from Cole.
“We going somewhere?” she asked.
“I don’t know. You got any place you need to go?”
“That kind of depends on what you can tell me.” She took a deep breath before diving in. “I’m a Librarian and I’m looking for a certain book.…”
“Mother Goose’s spell book? The one that got split three ways?”
Cassandra blinked in surprise. “You know about that?”
“Damn straight. Case you didn’t figure it out already, I’m all into my family history. Gotta know where you came from if you want to know where you’re going, right? I know the whole deal backwards and forwards, and can break it down for you beat by beat: the spells, the book, the Treaty.…” He pointed his thumb at his heart. “The Goose is strong in this one.”
Cassandra wasn’t used to it being this easy. “You’re not all skeptical about … magic?”
“Hell, no. The world’s full of seriously freaky stuff that can’t be explained. All you gotta do is open your eyes and look around.” He gestured at the glittering sky above them, just as a shooting star streaked by overhead. “Don’t believe it? Just wait until you hear about the totally insane thing that happened to me on my day job.”
“Your miraculous fall onto that trampoline?”
Now it was his turn to be caught off guard. “You heard about that?”
“That’s what called you to my attention in the first place,” she divulged. “Maybe you can tell me exactly what happened, in your own words?”
“My favorite kind,” he joked. “Sit back and let me enlighten you, little lamb.” He held an imaginary mic up before his lips. “So I’ve got this tree-trimming gig, just to pay the bills until my raps blow up big, and one day I’m up in the bucket, pruning some limbs, when, right out of the blue, this extreme wind comes out of nowhere—like Auntie Em, it’s a twister!—and tears me right out of the bucket and tosses me into the air, up, up, and away.” He shivered in recollection. “Now I can handle heights, no problem, but I’m not too proud to admit that I was screaming like a baby, convinced that it was all over for me. Understand, we’re talking altitude here, like at least eighty feet above the pavement. I was looking at a hard landing.”
He slapped the dashboard for emphasis, making Cassandra jump.
“But then, just as I was saying my prayers, that same crazy wind carried me away from the road and out over somebody’s backyard, then dropped me onto some kid’s trampoline.” He threw up his hands in disbelief, marveling at his own survival. “Wild, right? Don’t tell me there’s no such thing as luck or magic in this big, wide world!”
“I wouldn’t dream of it,” she said.
“But what’s that got to do with Ma Goose?” he asked.
“Rock-a-bye, baby,” she prompted him. “When the wind blows…”
Understanding dawned on his face. “Damn! How did I miss that?” He stared at her in amazement. “You saying that somebody whammied me with an honest-to-gooseness curse?”
“That’s one way to put it, I guess.” She admired his colorful turn of phrase. “And you weren’t the only target. My colleagues and I have reason to believe that someone posing as Mother Goose—probably one of the other heirs to the title—is trying collect all three sections of the book in order to unlock its full power … and misuse it.”
She figured she didn’t need to explain the whole Humpty Dumpty business, which was bizarre by several more orders of magnitude. Even she was having trouble wrapping her head around the idea that putting Humpty Dumpty back together again would reboot all of Creation.
“That’s whack,” Cole said, nodding gravely. “So one of my distant relations is making a major power play, like on Game of Thrones or something?”
“More or less,” she said. “Or at least that’s our best guess as to what’s going on.”
He let that sink in for a minute. “What kind of librarian did you say you were again?”
“The kind that tracks down dangerous magical books and that, no offense, doesn’t have a lot of time to spare.” She hoped that Cole’s knowledge of his family’s past included the location of their share of Elizabeth Goose’s legacy. “You don’t happen to know where I can find those missing pages?”
“Sorry, lamb chop. According to my folks, that secret was buried six feet deep on purpose. Mother Goose’s spell book is like the Holy Grail or the Lost Ark: it’s not meant to be found.”
She refrained from mentioning that both those relics were currently under glass at the Library. “Does that mean you’re not going to help me locate it?”
“Did I say that?” He laughed at the notion. “Sounds to me like the ball is already in play and the game is on. Count me in!”
Cassandra was glad to hear it. “Did you inherit any family heirlooms? Such as samplers perhaps?”
