Escape from Hat

by Adam Kline

  Dedication

  For the boy who had only bad luck

  and the black cat who chose to be good.

  Contents

  Cover

  Title Page

  Dedication

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Acknowledgments

  About the Author and Illustrator

  Copyright

  About the Publisher

  Chapter One

  Cecil Bean had both good luck and bad.

  Once a little girl had thrown a big wet wad of watermelon chewing gum from the balcony of her fourth-floor flat, and it had landed in Cecil’s hair—a particularly unpleasant circumstance, given that Cecil was mildly allergic to watermelon. And when Cecil sneezed, he sneezed so hard that fallen leaves and scraps of trash flew wildly about, an especially large section of the village newspaper sticking directly to the side of his noggin.

  But just out of the corner of his eye, Cecil could see that the proprietor of the Fancy Lad Barbershop had placed a large advertisement in the newspaper. In honor of the salon’s sesquicentennial anniversary, all little boys named Cecil would receive a complimentary haircut, courtesy of their finest coiffeur. When Cecil emerged from the shop, freshly coiffed, the chewing-gum thrower glanced down from the balcony of her fourth-floor flat and promptly decided that boys were substantially more interesting than she had previously thought.

  “Hey, little boy!” she cried down to Cecil. “I like the cut of your jib!”

  That was the sort of luck that Cecil had. Something terrible would happen, and then something quite pleasant would inevitably follow. But as to precisely why he experienced such extremes of luck, Cecil had no idea. Most people don’t.

  The bad luck was Millikin’s fault.

  You see, every person in the entire world is stalked by his or her very own personal black cat. And Millikin was Cecil’s. Millikin’s assignment was to cross Cecil’s path as often as he could possibly manage it. Because every time he did, something bad would happen to Cecil. Sometimes the bad things would be relatively minor, like misplacing the key to his bicycle lock, and sometimes they’d be a bit more serious, like accidentally putting chili peppers on his peanut butter sandwich.

  Black cats don’t come from our world. They come from a dark and shadowy realm and only enter ours during working hours, to busy themselves crossing our paths and making mischief. Millikin liked his job. He did not, on the other hand, like Leek.

  Leek followed Cecil everywhere, because Leek was Cecil’s personal lucky rabbit. (Everyone has one, of course, but we almost never notice them because they’re so exceptionally clever.) Each time some calamity would befall Cecil Bean, Leek would brush against the hem of his trousers, and everything would instantly be just dandy—or even better than dandy, as in the case of the aforementioned chewing gum incident.

  Leek was the seven-hundred-and-seventy-seventh son of a seven-hundred-and-seventy-seventh son, which made him an especially magical lucky rabbit. But Leek didn’t come from some mysterious and shadowy realm like Millikin did. Leek came from the garden behind the Bean cottage, where he lived in a cozy hole just left of the bok choy.

  Like Millikin, Leek loved his job. Unlike Millikin, he also loved Cecil Bean—with every single fiber of his being. If it had been left entirely up to Leek, which it wasn’t, Cecil wouldn’t have had any bad luck at all. But given the long-standing conflict between the black cats and lucky rabbits, Leek simply had no choice but to keep one watchful eye on Cecil and the other on Millikin.

  “Millikin,” Leek would say to himself, “is a rapscallion.” (Which is a five-dollar word for scoundrel. If Leek had known any ten-dollar words for scoundrel, he would have used one of those, too.)

  Millikin, on the other hand, had endured just about all the interference from Leek he cared to endure. It was all so terrifically frustrating! When Millikin engineered a thunderstorm to soak Cecil down to his tighty-whities, Leek conjured up a bright yellow rain slicker, with matching boots to boot. When the cat summoned a legion of chicken pox to ruin Cecil’s holiday vacation, Leek answered with a rare strain of immunoglobulin known as Vulpes carnivorous, which promptly ate the chicken pox whole. And when Millikin somehow managed to surround the Bean residence in a ring of steaming green dog poop, so that Cecil would be sure to step in multiple piles, Leek produced a tribe of dung beetles, who rolled the poop away in tidy little balls and played bocce.

  After a veritable lifetime of defeat, Millikin had endured quite enough, in large part because it made him so deeply unhappy. Millikin had spoken at length with his therapist, who concluded quite logically that Leek was the root of the problem. For with every crushing loss, Millikin’s confidence waned, his self-worth contracted, and all that remained was a nagging sense of ennui, which is a five-dollar word for depression. It was all Leek’s fault, his therapist had announced. Millikin would never ever know true joy so long as that meddlesome magic rabbit was foiling all his plans.

  That’s when Millikin had The Most Sinister Idea of His Life™.

  What would happen, wondered Millikin, if he were to cross Leek’s path rather than Cecil’s?

  Now it was just about this time that a very curious sort of caravan emerged from the Northern Wilds and clickety-clacked its way rather ominously toward the center of town. Unlike a proper caravan, this caravan wasn’t crimson red and sparkly gold, filled with acrobats and paper hats and soda pop freezing cold. No, this caravan was dusty and crusty and hauled by a feeble affair, a rickety rickshaw built on the cheap with parts from a Chevy Corvair. All this caravan contained were a few shoddy parlor tricks and one conniving old man, who called himself a magician. His name was the Great Imbrolio, and on his head, he wore a tall black hat that didn’t really belong to him but was, at the time, in his possession.

  The following morning, Leek emerged from his hole in the garden and readied himself for work. Cecil was just departing the little Bean cottage, and Leek decided that, if he could manage it, the boy would have an exceptionally lucky day—possibly something involving chocolate eclairs. The magic rabbit thusly hopped off to follow Cecil as he set about his errands.

  What Leek had failed to notice was that just ahead of him, a dark and shadowy feline form had snuck across his path, forming an invisible line of ill luck—which Leek unwittingly stepped across.

  Precisely six seconds later, Leek saw The Turnip.

  It was just sitting there, big as you please, smelling for all the world like the most delectable turnip that ever was. As the turnip’s savory bouquet wafted invitingly in Leek’s direction, his whiskers twitched, and his stomach growled rather crudely.

  “It would be a disservice to Cecil,” reasoned Leek, “were I not to fortify myself with this turnip.”

  But when Leek hoisted the turnip, which truly was a specimen of the very highest quality, everything went black. The turnip, you see, was more than just a turnip. It was bait.

  Needless to say, the day did not go even mildly well for Cecil. The boy couldn’t remember a more unlucky day in his life! Millikin considered it a great victory that when Cecil arrived home that evening, his knees were scraped, his toes were stubbed, and his marbles were all quite lost, through holes in each of his pockets. Positively reeking from a chance encounter with an unreasonably territorial skunk, poor Cecil Bean had even contracted a rare breed of poison ivy that, for whatever reason, affects only one’s bottom.

  The only thing that might possibly have salvaged Cecil’s day was The Magic Show.

  All th
e village children were abuzz with excitement, and as dusk settled forebodingly over the town, a sizable crowd assembled around the mysterious caravan of the Great Imbrolio, who emerged from within in a burst of purple smoke.

  “My name,” said the Great Imbrolio, “is the Great Imbrolio. And I am a famous magician.”

  “Huzzah!” bellowed the crowd.

  “Huzzah!” cried Cecil, absently scratching his bottom.

  “And now,” hissed the Great Imbrolio, “on with the show!”

  Sadly, Imbrolio’s show was anything but magical. His deck of cards was clearly stacked. His Mystical Orb of Levitation quite obviously dangled from twine. And the length of colorful scarves he withdrew from his fist was plainly stuffed down a pant leg. Long before the Great Imbrolio had even approached his best material, the crowd began to protest.

  “Fraud!”

  “Charlatan!”

  “Swindler!”

  “Cheat!”

  “Goober!”

  It was painfully clear to all assembled that Imbrolio wasn’t great by any stretch of the imagination whatsoever. What no one could possibly have known, at least not yet, was that they were in the presence of something truly special, of wonder and deep magic. For while Imbrolio himself was decidedly ordinary—and well below average with regard to personal hygiene—he did have something quite extraordinary up his sleeve. Or rather, on his head.

  “Silence!”

  Something in Imbrolio’s voice was so horrific, so chilling, that even the muscular guy in back figured he’d better stop flexing his pecs and calling people “goober.”

  “For my final trick, I will require a volunteer from the audience.”

  Cecil Bean raised the hand that wasn’t busy scratching his behind.

  “You there, boy! Step forward!”

  Which Cecil did. And when he did, the Great Imbrolio handed him his hat.

  “Would you say, boy, that this hat is an absolutely normal hat? Would you say that you have never inspected a more normal hat in all your life?”

  Cecil inspected the hat. It was tall and black, with a bright red lining. But aside from smelling a bit like the Great Imbrolio, it certainly seemed quite normal. So Cecil nodded, acknowledging the hat’s apparent normalcy.

  “And would you say, dear boy, that THIS is a normal rabbit?”

  The Great Imbrolio reached beneath the folds of his cloak and withdrew a rabbit, holding him by the ears.

  It was Leek.

  Cecil looked at Leek, and Leek looked at Cecil. Cecil felt that the rabbit’s eyes were tinged with a great sadness, and he couldn’t quite shake the feeling that the rabbit seemed somehow familiar. But Cecil could not deny that otherwise, it seemed just as normal as the hat.

  “Quite right,” said the magician. “And now, citizens of this pathetic little backwater, behold the greatness of Imbrolio! Behold as I utter ancient incantations in the long-forgotten tongue of the mystics! Behold, be amazed”—this last part, the old man whispered only to Leek—“and beware.”

  The Great Imbrolio thrust Leek into the hat. When Cecil peered inside a mere half moment later, the rabbit was gone.

  The crowd gasped in amazement. Now that was a magic trick.

  Cecil waited patiently as the magician bowed and waved and strutted about triumphantly. But patience is a virtue only some of the time, and as far as Cecil was concerned, this wasn’t one of those times. So he tugged on a corner of the great magician’s cloak.

  “When are you going to bring him back?” asked Cecil.

  The Great Imbrolio’s eyes narrowed, and he stared down at Cecil the same way one stares at the hindquarters of a big hairy worm after biting its forequarters from an apple.

  “The show,” he declared, “is over.”

  And with that, the caravan rolled promptly from town. You see, Imbrolio did not choose to admit that, in fact, he hadn’t the faintest idea how to bring anything back from within the hat, let alone Leek. What’s more, and as you’ll soon discover, the hat wasn’t even his.

  Leek screamed as he fell. He fell for so long that eventually he had to take a very deep breath and start screaming all over again. But eventually, Leek peered down at a large patch of whiteness, which grew steadily larger. Then, rather faster than he’d expected, Leek plunged headlong into the whiteness, which as it turns out was snow.

  Leek sat for a moment and gazed about, shaking the snow from his whiskers. All around him, in every direction as far as the eye could see, was snow. He had fallen into an endless tundra of perfect solitude, with the exception of a single black dot that seemed to be moving very slowly along the horizon. Leek stared at the dot and thought about Cecil, considering all the terrible twists of fate now certain to come his way, and really wished he hadn’t bothered with that turnip.

  Then the dot stopped, and Leek had the distinct impression that it was watching him. Which it was.

  Precisely six seconds later, the dot was standing before him. But now that it was so close, it was hardly a dot anymore. It clearly was a monster.

  The monster stood over Leek, belching steam from a variety of orifices. Then a hole opened in the center of the monster’s head, and a black cat peeked out.

  “Interloper!” cried the cat. (Which is a five-dollar word for someone who’s somewhere he’s not supposed to be.)

  The monster with the cat in its head raised a hoof altogether larger, Leek thought, than the entire Bean cottage. And Leek froze, which is something rabbits do when they’re so frightened that the blood runs cold in their veins, a state that renders an otherwise nimble creature about as fast as the average ice cube.

  But as the hoof hurtled toward him, Leek felt a strong tug from beneath the snow. And altogether unexpectedly, the rabbit found himself pulled down, down through the snow, into a low tunnel, which shuddered violently as the monstrous hoof struck the ice pack above.

  Standing before Leek was a she-rabbit, who whispered, “The surface isn’t safe to walk alone. The Dimmer-Dammers are always watching.”

  “I’m sorry,” said Leek, “but I’m afraid I’ve lost my way. I’m responsible for a little boy named Cecil Bean, who lives in a cottage on a hill. I myself live in the Bean family garden, in a cozy hole just left of the bok choy. And it’s absolutely imperative that I return to my boy at once. I can’t imagine what awful luck he must be having without me there to save the day!”

  “We’ve all lost our humans,” said the she-rabbit, turning into the darkness and beckoning Leek to follow.

  Then she paused and glanced back, staring at Leek with a stare that made his whiskers twitch.

  “My name is Morel,” said the she-rabbit. “Welcome to Hat.”

  Just then, Cecil Bean, far away in an utterly separate world, stepped in an enormous pile of steaming green dog poop. Yes, his luck had turned for the worse.

  Chapter Two

  Leek followed Morel through a series of catacombs carved in the ancient ice. It was so cold that Leek could see his breath! Tiny icicles even formed at the tips of his whiskers—a circumstance that never occurred in his cozy little hole in the garden.

  Before long, the tunnels came to an end, emerging in a great cavern of sapphire ice that sparkled with golden torchlight. The cavern, much to Leek’s surprise, was filled with hundreds of rabbits, who turned their heads to gaze at him with curiosity. Leek gazed shyly back and stuck close to Morel, who led him to a crude chair in which sat a very old rabbit indeed.

  “Old one,” said Morel, bowing her head with respect, “yet another has fallen from the sky.”

  The elder raised his dark black eyes to stare at Leek, and Leek had the distinct impression he was being inspected both outside and in. Then the elder rabbit sighed, deeply and sadly, and spoke.

  “I am Komatsuna,” said he. “The first to come to Hat. Many moons have passed since I was seized by the nefarious Imbrolio, and many more have waxed and waned as my clan has grown. Here, beneath the ice, we seek refuge from the Dimmer-Dammers, and wait, without hope,
for salvation. I bid you welcome.”

  “Thank you very much,” squeaked Leek, “but I’m afraid I’m unable to stay. You see, I am in charge of a little boy named Cecil Bean, and I simply must return to him at once.”

  “It is impossible,” replied Komatsuna. “There is no return from Hat. You, and your human Bean, are doomed.”

  Leek didn’t much like the sound of that and turned to stare in wonder at Komatsuna’s clan.

  “But there are hundreds of you! Do you mean to say that you’ve all abandoned your humans? Think of the terrible luck they must be having!”

  “Not all have lost their wards,” said Komatsuna. “Only a fraction of us ever lived among the humans, though we have since multiplied.”

  “O . . . kay,” said Leek, trying valiantly to grasp the situation. “But there’s got to be some way back,” he considered. “There’s always a way, with luck!”

  Morel watched Komatsuna closely, wondering if he would dare to speak of The Only Way There Was. The sad old rabbit closed his sad black eyes in deep and somber thought.

  “It is said there is a way,” spoke Komatsuna, in a whisper. “A way that lies across the Great Ink. Far beyond the Jungle Prime Evil, through the Grottos of Ill Repute. For there, far beyond the reach of luck, lies the fortress of the black cats. There, in a barren land bereft of leaf or root, it is said there is a way.”

  “Well, that doesn’t sound so bad,” said Leek, his ears twitching optimistically.

  “There, at the very heart of that luck-forsaken citadel, is a tower. And within, it is said that a rabbit may return to its human, through magic. But many have sought the tower, and none has ever reached it.”

  “I will reach it,” said Leek. “I must. For Cecil Bean.”

  “And how will you reach it, young one, without luck?” inquired Komatsuna. “For luck is a gift that must be given. No rabbit can provide its own.”

  “I will go with Leek and be his guide,” said Morel, surprising all assembled—including herself. “Long have I hidden from the Dimmer-Dammers, with great fear and loathing. But I too miss my human. And for her, I will brave the perils of Hat. For her, I will join this Leek, and we will give each other luck. Hear me, old one. I have spoken.”