Amelia Fang and the Memory Thief

by Laura Ellen Anderson

  “ ‘If the petals are then picked…,’ ” Amelia read, turning the page to read further—except there was no more. Just a new ingredient page about Daffodil Essence and a lot of globules of goblin-slime superglue.

  “Hmm, there doesn’t seem to be anything more about Scorpion Grass…. How odd. Maybe the page fell out or something?” Amelia pondered.

  “I wonder why Mr. Sublime would put Scorpion Grass in his recipe,” said Tangine.

  “Maybe he doesn’t realize what it does,” said Amelia. “He said himself, the Fairy Forest is filled with millions of amazing and mysterious plants, so even he can’t possibly know about every single one!”

  “True,” said Tangine. “Then we need to tell him right away! He might be able to work out a way to reverse the effects.”

  “Good idea,” said Amelia. “Do you think we can get one of the Mummy Maids to find us a net so that we can catch some of the petals to show him too?”

  “I’ll get Karl on the case,” said Tangine, nodding seriously.

  “Great!” said Amelia, and she tucked the Fairy Forest Encyclopedia under her arm. “Come on. Let’s go!”

  Outside the palace, blue petals coated the sky like a flock of tiny bluebirds flying in formation. Amelia gasped at the sight and the intense flowery smell filling the air.

  Holding the net Tangine had given her, she ran and jumped, trying to catch a small flurry of petals that floated above her head. But as she swept the net back and forth, it simply passed through the petals as if they weren’t there at all.

  “It’s not working!” said Amelia.

  “Let me try,” said Tangine.

  As if handling a large sword, Tangine poised himself into a squatting position and grasped the handle of the net with both hands. His face was contorted with concentration and determination.

  SWIIIIIIIIIIIPE!

  But the same thing happened. The net passed through the petals as if they were merely figments of their imaginations.

  “They’re like little ghost petals,” said Tangine. “What do we do?”

  “We’re going to have to hope Mr. Sublime believes what we have to tell him. Let’s go and find him,” said Amelia.

  “But how? We don’t know where he lives,” said Tangine.

  “Don’t teachers just live at school? All the time?” said Amelia.

  Tangine thought for a moment, then smiled. “Of course. Silly me!” he said. “To Catacomb Academy!”

  * * *

  The sight that greeted Amelia and Tangine as they left the palace grounds for the academy was not good at all.

  Creatures of the Dark and Light were running around brandishing baguettes, top hats, branches and anything else that could be used as a weapon to wave, poke or prod each other.

  Amelia and Tangine hid behind a gravestone as a Booger Bun narrowly missed Tangine’s head. He heaved slightly at the sight of the boogers.

  “What’s going on here?” whispered Amelia.

  “Get away from me, BEAST!” yelled a high-pitched voice. One of the fairy exchange students swept across the sky, and Amelia gasped as she saw Florence burst into view behind the fairy.

  “I AM NOT A BEAST!” she bellowed. “I’M A RARE BREED OF YETI!”

  Florence bumped into a young unicorn with a balloon. “GAAAAAAAAAAAH!” she yelled. “UNICOOOOOORN! THE TERROR!”

  A crying cyclops rolled into view—behind him, an angel-kitten was trying to tickle his bottom with a duster.

  Suddenly, Grimaldi went flying across the graveyard, screaming as a leprechaun jigged aggressively toward him, yelling “Glitter RULES!”

  “WHO SAID GLITTERRRRR?” came Countess Frivoleeta’s shrill voice. Amelia’s mom ran into the graveyard holding two lit candelabras. Her dress was tattered, her beehive hairdo disheveled and her make-up smudged. Amelia’s dad, Count Drake, trailed behind her with a pen and crossword puzzle in hand, looking a little confused by it all.

  Werewolves, goblins, skeletons and ghosts wailed. King Vladimir was running around shouting, “SOMEBODY FIND THE KING! HE MUST SAVE US FROM THESE HORRID CREATURES OF THE LIGHT!”

  Then suddenly, out of the commotion, Squashy pa-doinged into view, blowing raspberries back at a pixie who was close on his tail.

  “Squashy!” Amelia couldn’t watch anymore. She stepped from behind the gravestone to rescue him.

  “Stop!” Tangine shouted. “You can’t go out there! You might get a Big-Toe Tart thrown in your face or something.” Then he strained his eyes to get a better look at the crowd. “I wonder where Pumpy is?” he said with concern.

  Tangine’s mom, Queen Fairyweather, flew across the sky and landed on a gravestone that King Vladimir was cowering behind. She gazed at her husband, and for a split second Amelia hoped that Queen Fairyweather might still remember something. But then the fairy queen’s expression changed. Her face filled with fear. She screamed and flew away into the Petrified Forest.

  “Mom and Dad have gone crazy,” whispered Tangine. “They’ve all gone crazy!”

  “I think they’ve just all lost their memories,” Amelia muttered. “The only thing they can remember is to be afraid of one another.”

  After everything they’d been through, the Kingdom of the Dark and the Kingdom of the Light were divided once again.

  Amelia and Tangine stood in silence.

  Amelia felt tears burn her eyes as she watched Squashy bounce away. “I can’t lose Squashy!” she said to Tangine. “And I don’t want my last memories of Florence and Grimaldi to be ones when we were fighting. And my mom…she was so mad at me. What if we can’t find the lost memories? It will be awful.” Amelia’s eyes filled to overflowing.

  “It’ll be okay. There’s still time,” said Tangine, putting his arms around Amelia. “We just need to find Mr. Sublime so we can save everyone’s memories.”

  “I’m so glad you’re here with me, Tangine,” said Amelia. “Thank you.”

  “Don’t thank me,” said Tangine. “Thank the bad boogers. Otherwise I’d have been eating all those cookies too!”

  Amelia giggled through her tears and hugged her friend tight.

  “GAH…not too tight,” said Tangine through a booger burp. “Don’t want to throw up on your toes. That would make this night much worse.”

  * * *

  Amelia and Tangine crept through Nocturnia, narrowly avoiding the wrath of confused creatures, until they reached Catacomb Academy. Amelia had half expected to see Frankie Steinberg standing there, arms folded and with a smug look on her face, having sold a bazillion cookies. Then everything would seem normal again. But the school was empty and eerie. Even eerier than usual, that was.

  They entered the Coughing Classroom, where Mr. Sublime taught their new cooking lessons, but there was no sign of him. There was no sign that he had even been there at all.

  The room gave a loud AHEM! Then sneezed. ACHOO! Amelia and Tangine ducked as a stream of snot sprayed toward them from the wall.

  As they slowly stood up again, Amelia noticed that every decoration had been removed: the cupboards, which had once been full of ingredients, were now empty, and the walls were completely bare (except for the usual strands of snot trickling down them).

  “Poor Mr. Sublime must’ve lost his memory and run away!” Tangine said, shaking his head. “Along with all the other teachers.”

  But Amelia was too distracted to agree—she saw a book on the front desk, picked it up and shook her head angrily. “The Truth and Terrors of the Creatures of the Light,” she read out loud. “WHY are these horrid books still around?”

  Amelia remembered reading the book a long time ago in a Creatures and Critters lesson, back when everyone in Nocturnia still believed Creatures of the Light were evil. But she now KNEW that these books were all made up. Every copy should have been destroyed after Amelia and her friends defeated the evil unicorn lor
ds that had ruled over Glitteropolis and spread lies about the two kingdoms to keep them divided.

  “There is no ‘truth’ in The Truth and Terrors of the Creatures of the Light,” Amelia growled.

  Tangine looked sad. “I don’t think anyone can remember the truth anymore.”

  As Amelia and Tangine walked out of Catacomb Academy, Amelia tried not to feel hopeless, but she wasn’t sure what to do next. It felt like they had reached a dead end. And where was Mr. Sublime?

  Amelia held the Fairy Forest Encyclopedia to her chest and took a deep breath. She looked up at the moon and suddenly noticed something about the blanket of blue petals drifting across the sky.

  “Look! All the petals seem to be traveling in the same direction.” Amelia quickly opened the encyclopedia to the Scorpion Grass page. “If consumed, one’s memories will transform into small blue petals, which will eventually settle in a suitable location and finally take the form of a forget-me-not flower, where the memories are stored until picked…,” she read out loud. “So maybe they’re all floating somewhere to settle?” she said, feeling an ounce of hope. “They must be!”

  Tangine nodded. “Then let’s FOLLOW THOSE PETALS!”

  The friends followed the trail of petals until they reached the Petrified Forest, which bordered the Kingdom of the Light.

  Amelia felt a little lump in her throat as she looked back at Nocturnia and saw the Fang Mansion, her family home.

  “I really hope we can fix this,” she said with a sudden sense of overwhelming sadness. She couldn’t imagine a life without Florence and Grimaldi, a life without Squashy or her mom and dad, or Wooo. The thought was almost unbearable.

  Amelia and Tangine followed the petals through the Meadow of Loveliness, past the Wishing Well of Well Wishes and beyond. Finally, Amelia noticed that the blue petals were beginning to drift toward the ground.

  As the petals fell, they curled and coiled, forming piles of small blue flowers.

  “A field of forget-me-nots…,” Amelia murmured. The carpet of tiny blue flowers stretched as far as the eye could see.

  Amelia stepped into the field and was instantly overcome with a wave of emotions.

  Surrounded by the tiny flowers, Amelia reached out and touched one of the forget-me-nots gently. This time, rooted in the earth of the field, the forget-me-not petals felt very real. Amelia had an overwhelming urge to pick one.

  She gently plucked a petal from one of the flowers, and suddenly the forget-me-not field around her faded and swirled, until she could see what seemed to be the inside of Grimaldi’s barge.

  Everything was a little misty, as if Amelia were in a dream. She saw Grimaldi, but he was tiny, no more than a few years old, and his grimpapa was handing him a present. She felt Grimaldi’s love for his grandfather, and his excitement to be receiving a gift. Tiny Grimaldi floated around happily, tearing the black shimmery paper to reveal his very first scythe.

  Then all of a sudden everything blurred again, and Amelia felt herself being pulled away. She was in the field of forget-me-nots, lying on the ground.

  “Amelia, are you okay?” asked Tangine anxiously, leaning over her.

  “I think I just saw one of Grimaldi’s memories,” she breathed. Then Amelia looked down at her hand as the petal that she had just picked disappeared. Somehow, inside herself, Amelia realized that the memory had returned to Grimaldi—and then she knew what they had to do.

  Amelia sat up and looked across the field. “Maybe if we pick all the petals from the forget-me-nots, we can free everyone’s memories!” She quickly picked another petal, and the scene changed around her.

  Suddenly, Amelia saw an angel-kitten flying through Glitteropolis in the Kingdom of the Light. Amelia could feel the angel-kitten’s joy as the breeze whisked through his whiskers and fur. Then everything blurred and Amelia was back in the field of forget-me-nots. The petal in her hand faded away.

  Tangine had also just picked a petal and was slumped on the ground. “I just saw a leprechaun’s memory…,” he said, catching his breath. “There was so much jigging! He was in a national jigging competition. I think he won!” The petal in Tangine’s hand slowly faded. “That was awesome! Let’s pick more!”

  Amelia bent down and picked another petal. The scene surrounding her changed again, and this time Amelia found herself in a dark room, the walls lined with stripy candy-cane-barred cages. She recognized it as the candy chambers in the Unicorn Horn Tower from which they had rescued Tangine’s mom.

  Locked behind the bars was a very familiar large unicorn with a purple mane—Alpha Unicorn. Amelia felt his fear and saw a huge contraption being lowered from the ceiling. Manic laughter echoed through the chambers, and Amelia followed Alpha Unicorn’s gaze to see a figure standing in the open doorway. A figure she knew very well.

  A flash of light filled the room, and then everything faded.

  Amelia felt an icy chill run down her spine before opening her eyes to see Tangine’s concerned face.

  “What’s wrong, Amelia? You look so pale. Even for a vampire.”

  “I…I just saw Alpha Unicorn’s memory,” Amelia said quietly as the tiny blue petal she’d picked faded away.

  “What? That power-crazy unicorn lord we met in Glitteropolis who tried to lock us up?” said Tangine with a bitter tone in his voice.

  “Yes, and I saw someone else too,” said Amelia, feeling her chest tighten. “There was someone laughing. But not in a nice way. And that someone looked just like Mr. Sublime….”

  “Really?” said Tangine. “What was he doing in Alpha Unicorn’s memory?”

  “I don’t think Mr. Sublime exposed us to the memory-erasing ingredients by accident. I have a bad feeling about this, Tan—” Amelia paused suddenly, scratching her head and looking confused. “Er, Tan— Tang…erine?”

  Tangine frowned. “Are you okay, Amy? I mean, Emma? I mean, Amelie…What on bats?!”

  “I can’t…” Amelia screwed her nose up. “I can’t seem to remember your name.”

  “I can’t remember YOUR name!” said Tangine, an air of panic in his voice.

  “Tamborine? Tin of beans?” Amelia tried desperately.

  “It’s TIMMY BEAM!” yelled Tangine. “Wait…I can’t remember my OWN name. I know I’m the future king of Nocturnia, but that’s all I know.”

  “What’s going on?” cried Amelia. “What are our names?!”

  “TANGEEEEEENIUS!” Tangine cried. “I think my name is Tangenius…. That would make sense. Yes…” He scratched his head in deep thought.

  “I don’t understand. Why can’t I remember—?” Amelia began. But before she could finish, someone who wasn’t Tangine spoke from behind her.

  “Clearly, you haven’t done your research….”

  Amelia swung around and there, in the middle of the field of forget-me-nots, stood Mr. Sublime.

  “Well, well, well, if it isn’t Amelia Fang and Tangerine,” said their culinary teacher.

  “Wait…. That’s my name?” said Tangine.

  “You! You’re behind all this!” Amelia pointed at Mr. Sublime. “Why did you trick us into putting memory-wiping ingredients in the cookies?”

  “The real question is,” began Mr. Sublime, “WHY haven’t the cookies affected YOU?”

  “A case of sore fangs and bad boogers!” said Tangine. “HA!”

  “Ugh,” Mr. Sublime said, looking disgusted. “Well, soon it won’t matter either way. Soon, each and every creature’s memory will be lost forever! I will divide the kingdoms for GOOD, and you will not ruin it this time!”

  “ ‘This time,’ ” Tangine muttered. “What does he mean, ‘thi—’ ”

  “OH!” Amelia cried, realizing what Alpha Unicorn’s memory really meant. “Alpha Unicorn wasn’t the mastermind behind dividing the two kingdoms for all those years and keeping everyone afraid of each other—YOU were
!”

  “I was, until YOU and your friends came along and ruined everything, Amelia Fang!” Mr. Sublime spat. “But I’m not going to let that happen again. I made a promise to divide the kingdoms for GOOD, and that’s exactly what I’m going to do….”

  With that, he pulled a strange contraption from inside his cloak. It looked a bit like a child’s bubble-blower, with a wide, shiny nozzle that was attached to a small glass ball filled with blue powder. It was a miniature version of the one Amelia had seen in Alpha Unicorn’s memory.

  Mr. Sublime grinned as he saw a look of recognition pass over Amelia’s face.

  “Yes—it’s crushed Scorpion Grass, the ultimate memory eraser!” Mr. Sublime pulled a lever on the back of the device until it began to make a whirring sound. Then he paused and held up a finger on his other hand. “Wait. I almost forgot….”

  He lowered the memory eraser and erupted with manic laughter. “MWAAAAAAAAHAHAHA HAHAAAAAAAR!” he boomed.

  “Seriously? I’ve seen villains do evil laughs in the movies, but I didn’t think it was a REAL THING,” said Tangine, edging closer to Amelia.

  “HAR…ahem…har…Oh HUSH!” Mr. Sublime hissed, looking at Tangine with annoyance. “I’ve been working on my evil laugh for YEARS, and you just SPOILED it.”

  Tangine gasped. “Did you just HUSH the future KING of Nocturnia?!”

  “I’ll hush, interrupt and interject whenever I please, tiny vampire.”

  “Actually, I’m HALF vampire, half fairy,” said Tangine, flapping his wings and spraying glitter everywhere. Mr. Sublime stared at Tangine for a second, seemingly distracted, then shook his head and frowned.

  “None of this matters now,” Mr. Sublime declared with a dramatic swish of his cloak, pointing the glass ball of Scorpion Grass in Amelia and Tangine’s direction. “I suggest we FORGET about the whole thing.”