by Kat Shepherd
“Thanks,” Rebecca said. “It’s for a project we’re working on for school, and it’s due really soon. Like, tomorrow, probably, or maybe Tuesday. It’s a really, really important project, so, you know, obviously I have to find that … thing … I left.”
Tanya nudged her inside the house. “Thanks, Mrs. Dunmore. We won’t be long.”
The girls walked up the stairs. Tanya lowered her voice. “Okay, I kind of get why you were nervous about blowing our cover.”
Rebecca looked behind her. “Why? Was that bad? Do you think she could tell I was lying?”
“No!” Tanya said too quickly. “Great job. Just, um, you know, maybe let me do the talking when we leave?”
From the doorway of Kyle’s room, Rebecca could smell the same pungent, earthy scent from her last visit. And the handprints were back. All along the wall near the crib. Even on the ceiling, leading to the window—where scratch marks marred the sill. Deep ones.
“Wow. That’s not creepy at all.” Tanya pulled a digital camera out of her backpack and took some photos of the prints and scratches.
Rebecca opened the dresser drawers and carefully went through the piles of clothes. She unballed each pair of Kyle’s tiny socks and looked inside before folding them up again and putting them back into the drawer.
“Find anything?” Tanya asked.
“Not yet,” Rebecca answered. She lifted Kyle’s favorite lamp; it was shaped like a sheep. She felt along the inside of the shade for a telltale bump, but the inside was smooth.
Tanya pulled the changing table away from the wall and searched behind it. Rebecca ran her hand along the underside of the table, eyes unfocused out the window. Rebecca stood up sharply. Had something moved in the trees below?
There was a creak at the bottom of the stairs. “Do you girls need any help up there?”
“We’re almost done. Thanks, Mrs. Dunmore,” Tanya called. She turned back to Rebecca. “We should hurry,” she whispered.
Rebecca turned away from the window and got on her hands and knees to study the crib. From down the hall, she could hear the sound of the Dunmores’ bedroom door opening. She slipped her hand under the fitted sheet and ran her fingers across the mattress. “It’s got to be over here,” she whispered.
Tanya rushed to help. The floor creaked outside the Dunmores’ room.
Someone was coming to check on them.
The footsteps outside the room grew closer, and Rebecca frantically felt behind the crib rails near the wall. Something soft and silky brushed her hand. Heart pounding, she pulled out a long, brown-and-gray-striped feather. Her arm shook slightly as she held it up. “Is this what I think it is?” she whispered.
Tanya unzipped her backpack and held out her hand. “Quick!” Rebecca handed her the feather, and Tanya dropped it in her bag just as Mr. Dunmore appeared in the doorway in faded gray sweats.
“Oh! I didn’t know you were in here,” he said.
Tanya held up a notebook from her backpack. “Yeah, Mrs. Dunmore let us in. Rebecca left this here, and we needed it for school.”
“Well, I’m glad you found it. Do you girls want some breakfast?”
Rebecca felt her phone buzz in her pocket. “No thanks. We’ve got to get going.” She stood up and followed Mr. Dunmore to the stairs, Tanya close behind her.
Mr. Dunmore paused at the front door. “Are you all right, Rebecca? You look pale.”
“Oh, yeah, no, I’m … um … just … so…,” Rebecca stammered.
“… so busy,” Tanya finished. “We’re so busy working on this project, and we’re worried we won’t finish in time. So we really need to bounce.”
“Thank you so much, Mr. Dunmore. See you soon.” Rebecca gave a hurried wave and rushed down the steps. After the front door closed, she pulled out her phone. There was a text from Clio.
As they hurried to their bikes, Rebecca glanced back at the house. The curtain in Kyle’s window twitched. Someone—or something—was watching them ride away.
CHAPTER
10
“WHAT DO YOU mean, Kawanna can’t come with us?” Rebecca demanded. She pointed to the pile of open books and papers piled on Kawanna’s desk, the latter covered in Kawanna’s spidery scrawl. “How are we going to get Kyle back without her?”
“Don’t worry, honey,” Kawanna said. “I may not be able to come with you, but I’ll be here to help with every step of the planning.” She held up a wizened leather-bound book whose pages were brown with age and mildew. “Clio and I found this while you were gone. It’s the best information we have right now, and it says that only children themselves can challenge the Night Queen. Adults can’t. Mainly because we can’t see her.”
Clio nodded in agreement. “Like Kyle’s parents. We don’t know exactly why yet, but the book says it’s rare for any adult to see creatures from the Nightmare Realm clearly.”
“I’ve been wondering about that,” Tanya said. “And I have a theory. You know all those stories about babies waving to someone who isn’t there? Or toddlers talking about their imaginary friends? Maybe the younger you are, the more you can see.”
“So all those imaginary friends might actually be ghosts, or … something worse?” Rebecca shuddered, remembering her brother’s imaginary friend, Bartleby. “Oh, that gives me the creeps.”
“Yeah, that’s super creepy,” Clio agreed. “And it means that it’s basically up to us to get Kyle back. But we have to find him first.”
Rebecca straightened her shoulders. She would never leave Kyle to the Nightmare Realm. “So how do we do that?” she asked.
“Let’s start by taking a look at that feather,” Kawanna suggested. Rebecca handed it to her, and Kawanna frowned as she ran her fingers down the shaft, noting the soft-fringed edges. She turned to the bookshelf behind her and pulled out a thick volume with a tattered gray dust jacket. “These edges tell me it’s from some kind of owl,” Kawanna said, pointing to the fluffy side of the feather. “Owls are night hunters. These fringes are what allow them to fly silently and surprise their prey; no other bird has them.” She laid the feather on the desk and turned to the index at the back of the book. “The question is, which owl?”
“Why do we need to know which owl it is?” Rebecca asked.
Kawanna pointed to a page in the book and read, “Although the queen loves all night hunters, there is only one bird whose feathers she considers regal enough to wear as her mantle: the great horned owl.” She looked up. “And that’s exactly who this feather belongs to.”
“The Queen’s Mark,” Rebecca whispered. She stared at the feather. This is real. This is all real. Kyle is missing.
“The next step is to get the changeling to show its true form,” Clio said. “Once it does, it returns to the creature who created it…”
“… giving us a road map right to the Nightmare Realm,” Tanya finished.
“Exactly,” Clio said. “Now, a changeling can be all kinds of things: a rotten log, a bundle of sticks, or even a spirit in disguise. There are lots of ways you can see the true form. In Germany, they recommended hitting or whipping it, or trying to burn it in the oven.”
“What?!” Rebecca screeched, horrified.
Kawanna chuckled and patted Rebecca’s arm reassuringly. “Don’t worry. We’re not going to be listening to the Germans.”
“Actually, most places mentioned beating or burning,” Clio admitted, “but that’s obviously not happening. We knew there had to be some other way. And we found one!” Her hazel eyes sparkled with excitement.
“What is it?” Rebecca asked.
Kawanna raised a finger in the air. “Wait,” she said to her niece. “Don’t tell them right away. Give them a chance to guess. With a riddle.”
“A riddle?” Rebecca asked, confused.
“The Night Queen loves riddles,” Clio explained, “and so does my auntie. Whenever our family was traveling, she was forever making up riddles for, like, the simplest things: ‘What can you catch, but not throw? A cold
.’ Stuff like that.”
“I had to do something to keep you busy on all those airplanes and trains. You were a fussy little thing!” Kawanna said. She folded her arms. “This is an especially good riddle for you, Rebecca: What needs to be broken before it can be used?”
Rebecca thought carefully. Why would this be a good riddle for her? What was something that she broke in order to use it? The other three looked at her expectantly, encouraging looks on their faces. She pictured Kyle, alone and scared, without even his teddy bear to comfort him. Her mind went completely blank. “I can’t … I don’t know. A … branch?” she asked lamely.
“Wait, I think I’ve got it,” Tanya said. “I’ll give you a hint. Think about baking.”
Rebecca turned her mind back to the riddle and tried to relax. After a moment, she spoke. “Oh, is it an egg? You have to break the shell before you can use it.”
“Yes! It’s an egg!” Clio cheered. “Believe it or not, almost every story we read mentioned using eggs to reveal a changeling’s true form.”
“But how?” Rebecca asked. “Do we have to break them over the changeling or something?”
“It’s actually a little bit weirder than that—this is where you come in. Changeling-Kyle has to actually see us cook something inside the eggshell, and then we have to give it to him,” Clio said.
“That’s so random,” Rebecca said. “Why eggs?”
Clio shrugged. “The websites I found said that cooking inside an egg was considered such an odd thing to do that it would shock the changeling into forgetting that it was pretending to be a baby. But whatever it is, something about it freaks them out enough to turn them back.”
“We were thinking maybe you could figure out how to make cupcakes with the eggshells as the cupcake tins,” Kawanna said.
“Well, I definitely like it better than that German plan.” Rebecca thought for a moment. “I think I could probably do it, but I’ll need to practice first.”
“I’ll put together a grocery list,” Kawanna said, standing up. She carefully smoothed the indigo tunic she wore over skull-patterned black leggings and adjusted the gauzy scarf around her neck before disappearing into the back of the shop.
“While you’re practicing, Tanya and I will continue to research the queen,” Clio said.
“What do we do when we find her? How do we get Kyle back safely?” Rebecca asked.
“It’s hard to say. Every creature is different, and all we found about fighting them so far is just in a bunch of old poems and songs,” Tanya said.
Clio smoothed out a curled scroll and squinted at the elaborate calligraphy. “It’s a lot of stuff like this: ‘Cruelty is as cruelty does, but none can rule the heart that loves.’ Whatever that means. Or how about, ‘Bend the willow, bend the rod, with iron shoes the Queene be shod.’ Is that supposed to be a good thing or a bad thing?”
Tanya ran her fingers through her short-cropped hair. “They’re all like that. This is a scientist’s worst nightmare. Why can’t there be a nice, simple textbook or some kind of how-to guide?”
“So basically all we know so far is that we have to bake a cake in an egg and be ready to talk like Shakespeare?” Rebecca gnawed anxiously at her thumbnail. “I guess there’s still time to figure out something better, right?”
Outside, a gust of wind sent dead leaves skittering across the sidewalk. A bright maple leaf flew up and pressed against the glass door, its edges flapping.
“Maybe not. I think we need to be ready to move by next Saturday. That’s the date of the next full moon,” Clio said. “It’s one of the only times the gateway opens between our world and the Nightmare Realm. The Night Queen took Kyle during the last one.”
Rebecca remembered the silvery glow of the full moon falling across Kyle’s bedroom the night of the storm.
“Next Saturday is the Harvest Ball Fund-Raiser for the hospital. Mrs. Dunmore is on the board. She asked me to babysit,” Rebecca said. The leaf dropped to the sidewalk again before another gust came along, and it danced away down the street.
“Good,” Tanya said. “That means they’ll be out until at least midnight. Do you think that will give us enough time?”
“Let’s hope so,” Clio said, “because it may be the only chance we have.”
CHAPTER
11
THE KITCHEN WAS a mess. Broken eggshells littered Kawanna’s shiny zinc countertops, and stray drops of egg yolk dotted the black-and-white tile floor. The kitchen table was dusted with a thick layer of flour, and a pile of dirty baking pans teetered precariously on the yellow vintage stove.
Rebecca’s first challenge had been just figuring out how to make a baking cup out of an eggshell. She had lost count of how many eggs cracked open in her hands before she finally searched the internet and found a YouTube video helpfully entitled “Cutting the Top Off an Egg.” Then, on her first batch of cupcakes, the eggshell cups had tipped over during baking, spilling the batter and scorching the bottom of the pan. For her second batch, she figured out a way to line an egg carton with foil and stand the eggshells up so they wouldn’t tip over. This felt like a huge victory until she took the cupcakes out of the oven and discovered that the overfilled shells had exploded from the pressure of the expanded batter. It was on her third batch that she had found the right mix of batter and balance and made something even resembling an edible cupcake.
Rebecca put her hands on her hips and surveyed the damage. “I’m so sorry, Kawanna. I promise I’m not normally this messy when I cook. Baking in eggshells is a lot harder than I thought.”
“Better you than me.” Kawanna laughed. “Clio can tell you that I’ve never been much of a cook. We have a deal whenever her parents go away: I do all the shopping and cleaning, and Clio does all the cooking.”
“That sounds fun,” Rebecca said.
“It’s worked for us so far. Clio makes a pretty mean stir-fry.”
Rebecca picked up a stack of muffin tins and baking pans and set them on the counter next to the sink. She squirted dish soap on a yellow sponge and started scrubbing.
Kawanna stood up. “You wash; I’ll dry. Then in a little while, we’ll switch.” She grabbed a dish towel and took the dripping pan from Rebecca’s hands. “Do you and your parents ever bake together?”
“Not really.” Rebecca shrugged. “They’re not good in the kitchen. I mean, my dad cooks sometimes on the weekends, and my mom makes a big spread at Passover, but other than that, it’s mostly takeout and microwave dinners.” She handed another pan to Kawanna. “They’re pretty tired after work.”
“I don’t blame them,” Kawanna said. “The older you get, the longer the days feel.” She took the stack of dry, clean pans and put them back in the drawer under the stove. “I hope that at least they enjoy eating your culinary creations, even if they don’t help make them.”
Rebecca laughed. “They definitely like eating them! They let me take all the baking classes I want, and they’ve helped me buy some of the equipment my babysitting money doesn’t cover, like a stand mixer.”
“So what gave you the baking bug in the first place?” Kawanna asked, picking up a muffin tin.
“I have my Nai Nai to thank for that,” Rebecca explained. “She was my dad’s mom. She used to live with us when I was little, and she could make anything! She’s the one who taught me to bake, but she died when I was nine.”
Kawanna’s face softened. “You must miss her.”
Rebecca smiled sadly. “Nai Nai was so much fun. She was obsessed with basketball, and she was always yelling at the TV and cursing out the players in Cantonese. She spoke Mandarin, too, but she said that Cantonese was better for cursing. My dad would always try to cover my ears!”
Kawanna grinned. “She sounds like my kind of lady.” She took Rebecca’s place washing at the sink and glanced at the clock. “I thought the girls would be back by now. What could be taking them so long?”
Rebecca dried a bright-green mixing bowl and put it back in the cabinet. �
�I know they were going to stop by Maggie’s house after they hit the library, so maybe they’re still over there.” Rebecca pictured the bike path to the library. Part of it skirted the woods near Kyle’s house, didn’t it? She looked outside at the waning light and the lengthening shadows between the buildings across the street. She pulled out her phone. “I’ll send them a quick text to check in.”
Kawanna put a handful of freshly washed spoons on the counter and reached under the sink for a new sponge. “I was surprised Maggie wasn’t at the shop this morning.”
Rebecca shrugged and picked up a spoon, drying it slowly. “Yeah, Maggie’s kind of a heavy sleeper.” She checked her phone. No new texts. “Huh. Why aren’t they answering?”
Kawanna wiped down the counters, scraping at the burned egg with the rough side of the sponge. She walked to the kitchen doorway and peeked into the hall. “I’ll go check the shop. Maybe they’re up front and we didn’t hear them come in.” She disappeared down the hall.
Rebecca looked at her phone again. Nothing. She texted again.
Outside, the wrought iron streetlights were just starting to wink on, bathing the pavement below in pools of yellow light. A few crows perched on a power line burst into a flurry of flight, their shrieking caws fading away toward the woods. Her phone sat silent on the countertop.
In the twilight outside, a heavy shadow swooped onto the roof across the street. It fluffed its feathers, settling into stillness. An owl.
Kawanna came back into the room with her phone. “Not there. I’ll call Clio. You try Tanya and Maggie.”
Rebecca called Tanya and listened to the phone ring. And ring. Why wasn’t Tanya picking up? Rebecca hung up and tried Maggie. The call went straight to voice mail. “Any luck?”
