“Is,” Emily finished for him.
“Right.”
She could feel him slowing, then coming to a stop.
“Okay,” he said. “We’re home. Here.” Emily felt Gorgo’s massive hands on her shoulders as he rotated her a quarter turn to her left. “My house is right in front of you. You can open your eyes. But I’ll warn you again: what you see might shock you.”
Steeling herself mentally, she cautiously opened her eyelids.
“Oh my goodness!”
“I told you,” he said.
The narrow path they had followed had taken them to an isolated outcropping. All around her were distant mountains. The glowing red sky was matched by the glowing red of whatever was in the valleys far below them—lava flows? Right in front of them was Gorgo’s home. It was not at all what she had been expecting.
“Is that a white picket fence?” said Emily.
“Sure is. Shall we go in?”
The house was a tidy little two-story home with white siding and a gray shingled roof. Well, not little—it was scaled to fit a creature of Gorgo’s size. Otherwise it looked like any number of suburban homes that Emily had seen. Surrounding it was the white picket fence. There was a nicely tended lawn and a flower bed.
“She’s very house-proud, my mom,” explained Gorgo.
“You have a mom?”
“Of course!”
They walked along the path to the front entrance. Gorgo reached for the handle to the screen door, then paused.
“You’ll be safe,” he said. Then thought a moment and added, “. . . ish. But my family . . .”
“You have a family?”
“Of course. My mom and three older brothers.” He sighed. “The thing is . . . they can be difficult.”
Then he opened the screen door and the inner solid door and said, “Hello? I’m home.”
It didn’t take long for Emily to get a small sense of what Gorgo had meant by “difficult.”
His apron-clad mother met him at the door, hugging him and pinching his cheeks and generally fussing over him, saying, “My baby’s back! My widdle Gorgi is back!”
“Ma . . .” mumbled Gorgo. “C’mon . . .”
“What wonderful timing! I was just making shrapnel pie!”
Only then did she notice Emily.
“And who is this adorable little snack?” she said.
“This is Emily. Emily, this is my mother,” said Gorgo. Emily noted that he was employing the same closed-mouth mumble she used when she had to introduce someone to her embarrassing parents.
“Oh, how lovely!” said his mother. The family resemblance, Emily noted, was remarkable. In fact, his mother looked exactly like Gorgo, except with gray curly hair and a housedress and reading glasses. “Will we be having her for tea?”
“Not in the way you’re thinking, Ma,” said Gorgo.
“Pity. Well, come on back, the both of you,” she said with a warm, maternal smile. “And WIPE YOUR FEET FIRST!!!” she bellowed suddenly, flames spurting from her mouth and ears. Emily jumped in fearful surprise and instantly began scraping her feet on the entryway mat with desperate enthusiasm. “Wonderful!” said Gorgo’s mother with another smile. “Right this way!”
It wasn’t until they were ushered into the kitchen that Emily really understood what “difficult” had meant.
“Ooh, look who it is! The runt is back!” roared a gigantic demon who had to be Gorgo’s oldest brother.
“It’s widdle Gorgi-Porgi!” roared another.
“The shrimp has returned!” roared the third.
Everything in the kitchen looked like what one would expect in the tidy white house. Just like the house itself, the furnishings were scaled up to fit creatures who were much larger than human beings.
The three brothers were seated around a massive circular table, plates of scones and dainty cups of tea in front of them. And they were right: compared to them, the massive Gorgo looked like a runty widdle shrimp.
“And who’s this?” asked the biggest one, pointing to Emily. “Honey.”
For a moment Emily wasn’t sure if he was calling her honey or calling his mother honey—and then saw that he was gesturing with one claw for his middle brother to pass him a jar of honey. “She looks like she’ll taste great dipped in this,” said the biggest brother.
“No one is touching her!” said Gorgo.
“Ooh! No one’s touching her! Widdle shrimpy Gorgo says so!” The brothers waved their claws and widened their eyes in mock fear, giggling and guffawing.
“This is Emily,” said Gorgo. “Emily, these are . . . my brothers. Such as they are.”
“Where you been, brother?” asked the middle one. “How was the rock show?” he said, then laughed uproariously at his own joke, high-fiving the others. “Get it? The rock show?”
“Yeah!” said the third. “What happened? Get stuck between a rock and, I don’t know, a rock?”
More rough laughter. “What was it,” said the oldest, “a rock concert? HA HA HA HA!”
Gorgo rolled his eyes. Emily heard him mutter, “And they wonder why I never wrote . . .”
Their mother was at the counter, kneading some sort of dough. Emily wasn’t sure, but she thought she heard the dough saying, “Ouch! Ooh! Ouch!” It was hard to tell over all the guffawing.
“Boys, be nice to your baby brother,” said their mother indulgently. “BAMPILANGAYANGCHICHARONIMUS, YOU GET YOUR ELBOWS OFF THE TABLE RIGHT NOW!!!”
“Sorry, Mum,” said the eldest, as Emily tried to get her heart to stop thumping.
“Gorgi, have you been eating enough? You look terrible,” said his mother. The brothers sniggered.
“Ma, please, I’m not a baby . . .”
“Who gets himself wizarded into a rock?” said the youngest. “‘Ooh, I’m just going to stop and help this lovely maiden. I sure hope a wizard doesn’t come along and trap me in a rock for an eternity.’”
“HA HA HA HA!!” they all laughed.
“I was not going to help her, I was going to eat her!” said Gorgo. He looked pleadingly at Emily. “I was!” he insisted. “I was planning to eat her, and then suddenly there’s this wizard, and he’s all, like, ‘Begone, foul creature . . .’”
“Hey, Gorgo,” said the middle one, “and then what happened? You had to get freed by a little girl!”
“Gorgo has to serve a little girl! HAR HAR HAR!!!”
“Yeah, what’s she making you do, play with dolls? HAR HAR HAR!!!”
“All right, I’ve had enough of this,” said Gorgo. He turned to Emily. “I have to go up to my old room to deal with my pigggy bank.”
“I’ll come with you.”
“No, just stay here. You’ll be safe.”
They both glanced at the three cackling brothers.
“. . . ish,” said Emily.
“Well, safer than if you had to deal with the pigggy bank.” Gorgo pointed a claw at his brothers. “I’m going upstairs now. You know the rules: you can’t even touch her.” He marched over to the long kitchen counter and opened the last drawer, from which he pulled out a huge hammer.
“What are you doing?” asked the middle brother.
“None of your business.” As Gorgo passed by Emily, he said, “I’ll be back soon. I’d suggest not eating anything.”
Chapter
Fifteen
As was previously stated, time moves differently for different realms. Not just in easy ratios, either, such as one day being equal to two weeks, and so on. More like, one hour might equal a day, but then the very next hour might equal just five minutes, and then the next might equal half a day . . . which is a long-winded way of explaining that right now it was the next day in Clearview. And there were problems.
Angela was sitting in her civics class, watching with rising apprehension as Mrs. Henkins got more and more annoyed. The source of her annoyance: each time she started talking to the class, there would be a scritch-scratch-scribble noise that would end as soon as sh
e turned from the blackboard to see who was responsible for it.
Angela’s spot was the last one in the last row in the back corner. Emily—iEmily, that is—was seated across the room toward the front, so Angela didn’t have a good view of her. But she could tell that was where the scritch-scratch-scribbling was coming from and was just now remembering one of real Emily’s final instructions to iEmily: Pay attention and take notes on everything the teachers say.
“So,” Mrs. Henkins said, “the judicial branch of the government . . .” As she spoke, the scribbling started again. There were some scattered giggles. The teacher jerked her head around. The scratching and giggling stopped. She faced the blackboard and started talking again.
“The judicial branch of the government includes the—okay, who is doing that!!”
She glared at the classroom. More poorly stifled giggles.
“Sorry, Mrs. Henkins,” said Angela. “I’m just taking some notes.”
“You were doing that?”
“Yes, ma’am.”
“Mrs. Henkins, it wasn’t her,” said Kristy. “It was Emily.” She twisted around to smile poisonously at Angela.
“Mrs. Henkins,” said Angela, “it was me taking notes. I just want to make sure I don’t miss anything!”
Angela darted a glare at Kristy.
“Okay, fine. I don’t care who it is,” said Mrs. Henkins. “Just please do it more . . .” She hesitated. “Do it more . . .” She hesitated again. “Qui . . . et . . . ly.”
Mrs. Henkins was speaking in that start-stop manner because she kept getting distracted by iEmily, who was staring back at her intently, pencil poised above her notebook.
“I didn’t mean to be a nuisance!” said Angela from the back of the room, desperate to divert Mrs. Henkins’s attention.
“You’re being a nuisance right now, Angela,” said Mrs. Henkins. She was still watching iEmily, because the instant the teacher started to talk, iEmily started writing in her notebook at an impossible speed.
“Um, Mrs. Henkins?” said Angela.
Mrs. Henkins held up a hand. “Hold on a moment,” she said.
“I just . . .”
“Be quiet!”
Scribble scribble.
“Emily,” said Mrs. Henkins, “what are you”—scribble scribble scribble—“doing? Are you just doodling”—scribble scribble—“in your notebook?”
“I’m taking notes, Mrs. Henkins,” said iEmily.
More giggles throughout the classroom.
Mrs. Henkins walked over to iEmily’s desk and looked down at the notebook. Her eyes widened. The pages were entirely covered with perfect handwriting.
Today we’ll be discussing the tripartite structure of our government. Tripartite means . . . Where is the chalk . . . Hold on . . . There we go. Tripartite means “three parts.” Let me put that on the board.
That was just a small portion of the paragraphs and paragraphs of notes. As if iEmily had transcribed every single word Mrs. Henkins had said.
“Emily, are you writing down every single word . . .” The teacher stopped talking, because Emily was doing exactly that, writing each word as fast as Mrs. Henkins could speak, her pencil a blur. “. . . I say?” she finished.
Scribble scribble.
“Oh, dear,” said Mrs. Henkins.
iEmily dutifully wrote that down, too.
Meanwhile, in Dougie’s classroom in the lower school at Clearview School, Dougie was behaving perfectly. He did not yell. He did not run. He did not throw anything. Another student made a large tower out of blocks and Dougie did not knock it down.
Dougie’s teacher found this worrisome.
In the early afternoon, Mr. Edelman called his wife at work.
“Hi, honey. You know, I was thinking about what Hilary was saying last night, and then I got a call from Dougie’s teacher—he wanted to know if Dougie was feeling okay. Said he was acting a bit weird. ‘Off,’ as he put it.”
“Can I tell you something?” said Mrs. Edelman. “I just got off the phone with one of Emily’s teachers, who said the same thing.”
Just as time moves oddly between dimensions, it sometimes flows oddly within dimensions. For example, it was only three o’clock, but for Angela it seemed as though her first school day with iDougie and iEmily had lasted for several eternities.
That morning, she had appeared at the Edelmans’ door before school. “Hi!” she said to Mrs. Edelman. “I was hoping maybe I could walk to school with Emily and Dougie.”
“How wonderful!” said Mrs. Edelman.
So Angela had left the house with iEmily and iDougie, aware that Hilary was watching them go with a raised eyebrow.
Angela escorted the two clones to school. Before she sent iDougie off to his classroom—where he’d stay the whole day, because that’s what they did in first grade—she’d said, “Behave today.”
“Okay,” he said.
Then Angela had done her best to watch over iEmily in the halls and in the classes that they shared, like the civics class with Mrs. Henkins earlier in the day. Wherever she went with iEmily, the other kids parted to let them pass, not even bothering to hide their stares. Finally the day was over. Angela had picked up iDougie from his classroom and then waited with iEmily in the upper school until most of the kids had left. She was now walking with iEmily and iDougie down an empty hallway, heading toward a rear exit.
Angela didn’t know how school would be tomorrow, but she was grateful to have made it through today. All she had to do was—
“Hey, stupid!”
Angela looked up. Kristy had just rounded the corner and was blocking their path, her hands on her hips.
“Kristy, please, not now,” said Angela.
“Oh, what’s wrong, Alice? You scared?”
“My name is Angela. And yes, I’m scared, but not of you.”
Kristy snorted. Then, “What are you looking at?” she said to iEmily.
“I’m looking at you,” responded iEmily.
“Well, stop doing that.”
“Okay,” said iEmily, and diverted her gaze just slightly away from Kristy. iDougie stood silently next to his isister.
“What is wrong with you?” said Kristy.
“Kristy, please, you don’t understand,” said Angela.
“I don’t understand? Why, do you think I’m stupid?”
“Kristy, we’re just trying to—”
“What about you, Emily? Do you think I’m stupid?”
iEmily appeared to consider this.
“Possibly,” she said.
“You know who’s stupid?” spat Kristy. “You are. Stupid and ugly. You should pull your own head off.”
“You mean, like this?” said iEmily.
Kristy’s scream echoed down the school hallways.
“Oh, no,” whispered Angela, looking down at Kristy’s unconscious form. She turned to iEmily. “Oh, for goodness’ sake! Put your head back on!”
Angela stayed with Kristy until she sat up woozily, shaking her head, and said, “What happened?”
“Nothing happened! It’s fine it was all a dream you dreamed it it wasn’t real you dreamed it bye!” babbled Angela as she fled down the hall with iEmily and iDougie in tow.
This was a disaster. What was going on with the real Emily? Would she ever call on the rock, which Angela was now carrying around everywhere? Would Emily ever come back? How long before iDougie and iEmily turned to mud again? Could things possibly get worse?
Which is what Angela was thinking just as she reached the Edelman front door and it opened from the inside and Hilary was standing right there, smiling.
“Hi there!” said Hilary.
“Uh . . . hi!”
“So glad you two are home,” Hilary said to iDougie and iEmily, then grabbed them both by the arm and yanked them inside.
“Wait!” said Angela. “Can I come in?”
“Nope,” said Hilary, and closed the door in Angela’s face.
Oh, Emily, thought Angela. Where are you?!
Chapter
Sixteen
Where was Emily? She was still in the kitchen with Gorgo’s mother and brothers. A moment ago, Gorgo had left the room. Emily could hear his footsteps climbing the stairs. The three brothers were giggling and saying things in low tones that made them giggle more. Emily could distinctly make out an occasional “Ooh!” and “Ouch!” from the dough that Gorgo’s mom was kneading.
“Look at her,” the eldest brother was saying. “What luck. She gets a demonic servant, and it turns out to be that pathetic idiot.”
“Yeah, widdle runty stupid Gorgi.”
From upstairs came a crashing sound, then the grunts and squeals of what Emily envisioned as a gigantic and very angry wild boar. More crashing. Gorgo yelling something that Emily guessed was a series of very bad words. Squeals and grunts, the sound of glass breaking, something wooden getting smashed.
The rest of the family seemed not to notice the titanic struggle happening on the second floor.
“Can you imagine ending up with Gorgi as your demonic servant?” one of the brothers was saying. “Awful. Pathetic. Makes me laugh.”
“Completely agree.”
“Absolutely.”
Emily, to her surprise, found herself getting angry.
“Well, you know what?” she said to the brothers. They looked at her in surprise. “You think you’re all such great catches? Forget it. I think you’re pathetic. And I don’t care how he got stuck in that rock. Maybe he was trying to help some maiden. Well, good for him. And maybe he’ll end up eating me, but I have to say, I’d rather it be him than any of you jerks. At least he’s good company, and helpful, and friendly in his own weird way. He’s actually likable. There, I said it. I like him. Who would like you? Oh, and also? Your stupid jokes? They’re stupid.”
The three brothers blinked in bewildered silence at the small, brave girl in front of them. A little wisp of smoke rose from the head of the eldest brother. Their mother had stopped kneading and was staring at her. Emily was aware that the sounds of struggle from upstairs had ended.
Emily and the Spellstone Page 12
