by Carrie Jones
“Thomas Tullgren and Aislinn O’Grahaghan Tullgren,” Gramma Doris announced somberly.
“And are they magic?” Jamie asked for Annie, who was now clutching her hands against her chest.
Tala hobbled in, front leg in a cast, and rubbed against her legs.
Gramma Doris looked at the ceiling before saying, “Yes, they are quite magic.”
“But they don’t live here …,” Jamie continued, prodding for answers that weren’t too obvious.
“They live in Ireland,” she huffed out dismissively, shutting the door without thinking. The momentum pushed Eva right inside the refrigerator with the eggs and milk and radishes.
She began to let out some screams that were muffled by the door. Jamie made his way over, but he knew the moment he let her out, she’d start huffing and puffing and everyone would be too distracted to answer his questions.
He pressed on, ignoring Eva’s fists hammering against the side of the refrigerator. “What do they do in Ireland?”
“They run a bed-and-breakfast by the Cliffs of Moher. Half their clients are human. Half are not. It makes it …” Gramma Doris searched for a word. “It makes it … interesting. It’s a lovely place. The Clover, they call it. It’s been called that for centuries. Right next to the Ballinackalacken Castle or some such. Aw, in the good old days before the Bugbears of the Clan McFarland came, the unicorns would frolic in the meadows. Bugbears have a taste for any flesh, best hunters, but they do love a unicorn.”
Jamie silently repeated the names. That’s what they needed. That had to be where the bow and arrow were. It was as good a place as any to start. He made eye contact with SalGoud, who was awkwardly patting Annie on the shoulder with his giant hand, which was actually larger than Annie’s head. Jamie opened the refrigerator door. Eva tumbled out. Shredded pieces of cheddar cheese clung to her pigtails. A portion of a carrot stuck out of her ear.
“DWARFS DO NOT GET STUCK IN REFRIGERATORS!” she roared, shaking herself like a dog.
Bits of shredded cheddar flew everywhere, but Tala didn’t lick them off the floor. He just stood there next to Annie. His leg could support his weight, now that he was healing and in a cast.
“I want to go,” Annie said.
Gramma Doris stepped backward. A timer went off on the stove. “What?”
“I want to go see them,” Annie insisted as the stove door popped open and loaves of bread flew out.
One had flattened from the stress. Gramma Doris threw her hands up in the air but only for a moment, before turning back to Annie and commanding the loaves settle themselves down on the counter.
“No. Absolutely not,” Gramma Doris announced. “We need you here.”
“Everyone was just trying to send Annie to the Badlands! Which is it? Do you need her or not?” Bloom demanded.
SalGoud roared up to his full height. “I know you’re upset, but you may not talk to Gramma Doris like that, boy!”
“I am not a boy,” Bloom shot back.
“Then what are you?”
“I am an elf.” Bloom stood there, taller than any had ever seen him. Strong and angry. He seemed mature suddenly, somehow. He took Annie’s hand and didn’t even look back as they left the kitchen. “I am an elf and it’s time I start acting like one.”
Jamie and Eva had to scurry to catch up to Annie and Bloom, but they managed to reach them in the hallway outside Annie’s room, all of them crowding together. Annie’s face had become even paler than normal and her hair seemed limp.
“I don’t know whether or not to feel angry or betrayed or hopeful,” she admitted.
“I’d pick angry,” Eva said, plucking a radish out of the pocket of her overalls.
“You are allowed to feel whatever you want to feel, Annie,” Jamie began, and then Eva clamped her hand over his mouth.
“Now is not the time for feelings. Now is the time for action,” she said and let go of his mouth.
“Let’s get to the point,” Bloom said. “We are going to Ireland to the area of the Cliffs of Moher. We shall find the castle and the Clover Inn that Annie’s grandparents run, and then we shall locate the bow and arrow and return.”
“It’s a good plan,” Jamie said, “but how do we get to Ireland? We can’t take Grady O’Grady because dragons can’t fly across entire oceans, plus Grady said that he’s at the Badlands searching for Cornelia and the elves again, plus he’d be seen, which means we have to go the normal human way. By airplane. And then I think there’s a significant hike on foot. I saw a map of Ireland in that book about the Golden Arrow. The castle is all alone, nowhere near civilization. I don’t even have a passport. Does anyone have a passport?”
“That,” Eva said, wiggling both her eyebrows up and down, “should not be a problem. I’ll take care of it.”
She started scuttling off.
“Eva!” Jamie called after her. “Can you find us some money, too? Enough to pay all of our ways, plus taxis. Plus spending money.”
Jamie, who had never gone anywhere ever, had seen enough videos to understand there were certain essentials that you had to have for traveling across the ocean. And who was even going? Him. Annie, of course. Bloom. He doubted Eva would stay home. SalGoud?
“That will be thousands of dollars,” Jamie whispered as he silently calculated the cost of airfare.
“No problem!” Eva yelled over her shoulder. “Meet me by the library when you’re ready, but give me an hour or two.”
“Dwarfs,” Bloom muttered. “So annoying.”
“But so necessary,” Annie added.
“Exactly.” Bloom cleared his throat. “Let’s get moving.”
As evening closed in, they each already had backpacks stowed away. Annie had left hers beneath her bed and filled it with water and food, clothes, and her sketchpad. Now she added her pastels and the phurba Miss Cornelia had given her when they’d first met. She had found matches, too, just in case they needed to make a fire. She tied a pot to the strap so that they’d have something to cook in on the hike. It clanged against her as she snuck down the stairs and past the mermaid’s fountain. A nymph waved to her. She waved back.
“Going on a trip?” it asked with its watery voice. It plucked a piece of algae out of its hair.
“A little exploration,” Annie explained, crossing her fingers against the half lie.
“Well, have fun. Don’t let the Raiff or any trolls get ’cha. Good fight. Sleep sight. Don’t let the demon bugs bite. May you have visions in the night.” The nymph began to laugh at her own feeble joke, then choked on the seaweed.
“Ha. Ha,” Annie said, awkwardly scuttling away.
Jamie and Annie rendezvoused in the parlor and quietly shut the door behind them. It was the first room Annie had seen when she arrived at Miss Cornelia’s house. The drapes were long and velvety green. The couch and floor seemed to be made of moss with delicate flowers growing in them as well. Long vines and treelike plants covered the walls. It was more like an elegant forest room than a formal parlor.
Annie shook her head at the familiar place.
“I can’t believe that I used to live here once,” she said.
Jamie shrugged. “It’s strange.”
“And nobody told me, but everybody knew,” she grumbled. “How embarrassing. Why didn’t they tell me, Jamie? Why haven’t they told me about my parents? About … well, about anything?”
“Maybe they really were waiting for the right time?” he offered as she leaned the back of her head against the wall and closed her eyes. “I don’t think it’s because they didn’t trust you, Annie. I think—” He searched for the word. “I think it’s because they were ashamed. Magic people are like adults. They think that they have to be perfect all the time because they are adulting or have powers or whatever, but when they screw up, it turns them into liars and hiders. They can’t admit what they have done wrong.”
“I used to try so hard to be perfect. I thought it would make me loved, make me finally belong,” Annie said aft
er a moment.
“And now?”
“And now, I don’t think I care anymore about being perfect or belonging. I just care about getting those elves back.” She opened her eyes.
“And Miss Cornelia, still?” Jamie’s heart gave a little jolt of worry. Annie seemed so pained lately. How much had all this changed her? And so quickly?
Annie gave a little sigh as she adjusted the straps on Jamie’s backpack.
“Yes, and Miss Cornelia. I love her even though she’s not perfect either.” Annie put on her hat and turned Jamie back around so they faced each other.
“You’re very smart, Annie Nobody.”
She looked at him, really looked at him. “And so are you, James Hephaistion Alexander. And so are you.”
14
Preflight Jitters
Since Eva’s dad’s snowmobile was still broken and the skis were completely out of commission, the children used a toboggan to get out of Aurora and into town. Luckily, it was mostly downhill. Even more luckily, Eva was capable of steering the toboggan, and no matter what her faults, didn’t crash them into any trees, or even the huge oil truck that steamed up the road just as they crossed it.
They had all their gear stowed on their laps or their backs, and Eva even had pockets and pockets full of cash, which she displayed rather proudly. After he apologized to Bloom for reprimanding him for the way he spoke to Gramma Doris, SalGoud had agreed in secret to come along and pretend to be their “chaperone” since his height and bulk could pass for an adult’s, and he and Bloom had done the best they could to disguise themselves as humans. Bloom tugged his winter hat low around his head, hiding his elf ears.
Once they were in the town of Mount Desert, getting a taxi proved easier than they thought it would. They all piled inside the ugly green minivan that read Acadia Taxis on the side. The placard was magnetic or something and Eva wanted to study it for a while, but the others pushed her into the car.
Annie was still angry at, well, at almost everyone who knew that she had grandparents, real living relatives, and had never told her.
“What happened to my father?” she blurted as they drove on the one-lane state highway past an IGA grocery store, the Trenton Bridge Lobster Pound place closed up for winter, and an octagonal building that everyone local called “the cheese house.”
“He died in the Purge,” Bloom said.
“And my mother?” Annie asked.
“She died a hero,” Eva announced. “She lost, though. Sorry. Bad, but still glorious, you know?”
The taxi driver raised an eyebrow and said in a voice that smelled of coffee and sounded like cigarettes, “What are you kids even talking about?”
They sat in awkward silence.
“We are composing a story,” SalGoud began slowly, obviously thinking out every word before he spoke it.
“About a video game!” Jamie added, trying to make it more believable. “And, um … one of our characters … this Time Stopper girl … she needs a back story.”
“You kids are smart. I bet you’ll make a billion dollars on something like that,” the taxi driver gruffed out, finally driving through Ellsworth and making it onto Route One to Bangor. “Is that why you’re heading out to the airport? Meeting some producers? Game execs?”
Nobody answered for another long pause before Jamie got it together enough to say, “Exactly.”
“I don’t even know my mother’s name,” Annie whispered to Bloom. “Someone must know her name.”
“Lilana,” Bloom whispered back as they bounced over a frost heave. SalGoud hit his head on the minivan’s ceiling.
“Do you know how she died?” Annie asked.
Eva unbuckled her seat belt, hauled herself over the seat back, and crawled between Annie and Bloom before buckling in again. The taxi driver didn’t even notice.
Eva didn’t bother to whisper. “She was a hero. She tried to save the elves. Faced the Raiff herself, she did. Stood there and took hit after hit. She’s the one who weakened him enough for Miss Cornelia to be able to send him to the portal at all. That’s what I’ve heard at least. Unfortunately, I wasn’t there or I would have killed him myself with my ax.”
“You kids are weird,” the driver announced, turning up the radio.
Shivering slightly, Annie stared straight ahead and didn’t respond.
“Yes, sir,” SalGoud agreed from his spot next to the driver in the front. Being the “adult” seemed to make him the official spokesperson for the group. “Yes, they are.”
Jamie leaned forward and tried to touch Annie’s shoulder in what he hoped was a comforting way. Annie didn’t respond, and after a minute he sat back again, listening to Eva chattering on about the physics of airplanes and how dwarfs were really the ones who invented them and so on. Before long, Eva was peeling off some money from her stash of cash—well, one of her many stashes. Even as she did so, a happy-looking gnome, the size of a pixie, popped his head up out of the center pocket of her overalls. He was carefully peeling off more dollars from midair, plucking them out, and then transferring them to Eva’s other hand.
“What is that?” Jamie whispered to SalGoud as they took the suitcase and backpacks out of the back of the taxi.
“Oh, that’s a special gnome who has a buy-your-way-forever charm,” SalGoud said offhandedly as though it was nothing unexpected at all. “They don’t talk, but they are very good at what they do.”
“Which is?” Jamie asked.
“Making money out of thin air.” SalGoud yawned and checked his watch, then startled back into attention. “We are a mere sixty-one minutes early. We should be checked in at exactly sixty minutes prior to departure.”
Eva made a fake moan and put her hand to her forehead. “Heaven forbid.”
“Planes run like clockwork, Eva,” SalGoud stressed, grabbing pretty much everyone’s backpacks and the suitcase and running into the terminal. “Get your picture identifications and follow me!”
“He gets a bit anxious about timetables. He’s the same way about getting the bus for school,” Bloom explained to Annie and Jamie as they followed SalGoud and Eva into the terminal.
They all had passports ready thanks to Eva, who had vaguely explained that “her people” had handled it. “Her people” had also secured the pixie-size gnome with the buy-your-way-forever charm, and also had allegedly found a car to meet them in the Dublin airport since none of them could actually drive a car, legally. Those same “people” had booked rooms for them at the Clover Inn.
The Bangor International Airport was incredibly small, but somehow managed to have one of the longest runways on the eastern coast of the United States. At the airport, only American Airways and Delta had airplanes with engines instead of propellers, and each of them just had two staff members. The kids tromped through the ground floor of the airport, past the one escalator that led up to the gates and one car rental booth and the two luggage terminals, and to the Delta ticket counter.
“I feel nervous,” Bloom said. “I’m not a big fan of planes.”
“You’ll be fine,” Jamie said.
People all seemed to be staring at them as they walked by. They had to look odd—a motley crew of twelve- and thirteen-year-olds trudging through an airport with one barely passable adult. Plus, SalGoud was so tall and carrying absolutely everything. Add to that, Eva was short and had very stand-out pigtails.
SalGoud dumped all the luggage on the floor as he made it to the ticket counter. There was no line at all. It was nothing like bigger airports that Jamie had seen in television shows and movies.
“We are here!” SalGoud announced. “We are one minute late and I apologize profusely, for as John F. Boyes said, ‘Strict punctuality is perhaps the cheapest virtue …’ and yet we have let you, the customer service ticket agent of Delta Airlines, down.”
The ticket agent blew some hair out of his eyes, didn’t even glance up from his computer terminal, and said, “Yeah … uh … whatever. Your final destination today is …?�
��
“Dublin,” SalGoud announced.
“It’s in Ireland!” Eva was jumping up trying to see over the counter.
“Any luggage today for any of your party?” the ticket agent asked.
“It will be okay,” Annie mumbled as they checked in to the airport. “Everything will be okay.”
Jamie grabbed her hand and said, “Of course it will,” but he really wasn’t sure.
15
Pig Cars
They made it through security fine. The gnome didn’t even register on the TSA’s whole-body X-ray machine, and the gold in Eva’s pockets or any of their weapons in their bags—Eva’s ax, Annie’s phurba, and Bloom’s bow and arrows—somehow didn’t either.
Eva winked at Jamie once they were all the way past the listening ears of the security people. “Leprechaun spell. Bought it off Canin last year. Knew I’d need it someday. Hides the property of metal into something more like cotton balls when probed.”
“Wow,” Jamie managed to say as they strode across the carpeted floor toward Gate 2B.
“Exactly. Wow. I am a wow kind of dwarf, if you haven’t noticed,” she boasted.
“Oh, I have … I … um … I have noticed.”
“Good.”
The others joined them, and as they waited to board the plane, Eva began to pull at her pigtails just a little bit. Annie petted her absently on the shoulder. “I know you’re nervous but …”
“Dwarfs do not get nervous!” Eva yelled, which made everyone in the terminal turn and stare.
“But they do get noticed,” Bloom said drolly, putting his legs up on top of the backpacks and stretching out.
“As well they should!” Eva said, and to be fair she said it a bit more quietly.
The older woman who had been gaping at them all open mouthed turned around and muttered to her companion, “No manners at all. Where are their parents? They can’t all belong to that strange tall man.”
Annie seemed to shrink into her metal and plastic dull-gray seat.
“Annie?” Jamie leaned toward her. “You okay?”
