“We received notice that the monsters had left the places to which they were sent. We came to find them. They have failed to obey orders and will be sent for further training.”
“Further training, is it. Where did you get the monsters?” Dad asked. “And how do you train them?”
“We have the best trainers,” the woman in red replied.
“Can the monsters go to that school whenever they want to?” Koby asked.
The ladies gave a brief, dry laugh all at the same time. Obviously, they had thought Koby’s question amusing. Koby received no other reply.
“Well, everybody should be allowed to decide for themselves if they want to go to school or stay at home!” Mimi declared, riled up. “Just think if you were forced to—”
“Mimi,” Dad interrupted. “Could you fetch me a fork from that last tent, please?”
“Bah,” Mimi huffed, but went because she wasn’t stupid.
“It was all our fault that they ran off,” Koby said. “We took them to the forest and let them loose. We told them to go and eat.”
“You did not follow the instructions,” said the one in gray.
“They were hungry,” Koby replied.
“And so you decided to take them out to eat?” the one in green asked.
Koby nodded uncertainly. He didn’t want to reveal Runar’s book.
The women studied each other slowly, as if reading secret messages on each other’s faces. The one in red spoke: “So, you are the . . . father?”
“Yes, I am,” Dad answered. “Of these two here.” Dad pointed at Halley and Koby. “And the one who went to get a fork. The rest are other people’s children.”
Dad pointed around the camp vaguely.
The women nodded and looked at one another.
Halley looked at Koby and giggled. Koby grinned. These women were not quite normal.
The woman in gray turned to Koby, who quickly wiped the grin off his face. He hoped the woman hadn’t seen it.
“Are you looking after all these children?” red dress asked Dad.
Dad nodded hesitantly. The women looked at one another again. Then all three suddenly smiled at the same time. They had very white, tiny, pointed teeth.
“Are these children safe in the camp?”
“Of course,” Dad said, alarmed.
“Excellent,” the one in red said.
“May we ask where that sound is coming from?” asked the woman in green.
“What sound?” Dad was confused. There was no sound.
“Something is knocking on glass,” the woman said. “The sound is coming from there.”
The woman turned toward Koby’s tent. Koby glanced at Halley. The baby mosquito-fairy. How could the woman hear such a tiny sound? They had given the creature the last fairy candy they had found, which had evidently given it strength and made it even angrier than before. Now the mosquito-fairy baby was attacking the jar walls nonstop. The children had no idea how they could ever feed it again, because nobody dared to open the lid.
“It’s that mosquito-fairy,” Dad said, and set off toward the tent. “In fact, you could take a look at it. Perhaps you know what it is.”
Halley ground her teeth together. Dad was such an utter blabbermouth.
Dad returned with the jar and handed it to the woman in red. She raised the glass cookie jar up to her translucent eyes.
“Where did you get this?” she asked.
“It hatched out of an egg last night,” Halley said. “Its mother and siblings escaped.”
“So they’re missing too,” the woman said. “How many were there?”
“Maybe six,” Koby guessed. “What are they?”
“They are beach spikes, also known as botherfairies. They should not be here. It is best we take it with us,” the woman in gray said. “They are aggressive as juveniles.”
Koby nodded. He was happy to part with the botherfairy.
“When the monsters return, please inform us without delay,” said the one in green, and handed a card to Dad. “Here is my calling card.”
Dad took it as if it were normal to receive calling cards.
“Thank you, we certainly will,” Dad replied in a reliable dad voice.
“Good,” said the woman in the red dress. “Good evening to you.”
The women bowed their goodbyes and stepped off toward the forest behind the tents. Dad and the children stared after them. The women moved in an oddly even way. Almost as if the grass were propelling them forward.
“What a strange visit,” Dad said, and looked at the card. “Wonder whose evil fairy godmothers they were. Let’s see.”
The card was blank. Dad scrunched it up and put it in his pocket. “It takes all kinds. Didn’t seem quite normal. Scary ladies. Halley, can you turn the radio up, please? The news is on.”
The newscaster’s soothing voice filled the air. Dad flopped back into his camping chair.
“. . . particularly the forests in the eastern part of the town have suffered repeated vandalism and damage. In many places, young trees less than six feet in height have been torn off at their roots, and protected blue anemones and various mosses and lichens have been trampled and dug up. The flowers in the rhododendron park on East Beach have been pulled off, piled up in a heap, and apparently trampled or flattened with some large object. No reason has been found for the vandalism. Moreover, it is clear that these are the actions of a large band of vandals, maybe even several separate groups, as many of the sites are a long way apart . . .”
“Did you hear that, Halley?” Koby said.
“Course I did,” Halley answered.
Obviously the monsters were still somewhere nearby. A broad grin spread across Koby’s face. Dad noticed it and asked: “Children. Do tell me: Why do you want the monsters to come back?”
“We don’t want them back,” Koby answered. “We want to get them back to their own homes. So that they don’t have to lurk around the forest or live in people’s hall closets. And so those witches don’t get to train them anymore.”
Dad nodded thoughtfully. It was all beginning to make sense.
“So what we actually have here is a monsters’ liberation camp,” Dad said.
Halley and Koby nodded. Exactly.
Meanwhile, the three women walked past the last tent and stopped at the forest’s edge. Mimi happened to be standing behind the last tent, and she quickly crouched down. She could hear them speak in an unknown language. One of them was shaking a big, round object in her hands, but what was it? It was hard to see.
At last the women seemed to reach agreement. The one in green stopped shaking the object, and Mimi finally saw what it was: the mosquito-fairy’s jar. Why did they have it? But even stranger things were coming. The woman unscrewed the lid, pushed her narrow hand into the cookie jar, and brought out the mosquito-fairy, hanging by one leg. The angry spike fairy wriggled and shrieked shrilly, but the women scarcely glanced at it, just went on talking. Suddenly the woman in green threw the mosquito into her mouth and swallowed it. Mimi’s jaw dropped.
The women then quickly turned toward the forest and vanished into it like mist.
CHAPTER 26
The Map
KOBY LAY IN THE hammock reading Runar’s book. He was becoming quite certain of one thing: the book didn’t contain a single word about monster packs and their behavior. Not a word about training monsters and having them work as nannies. Nothing on botherfairies or spine-chilling fairy godmothers, witches, or whatever they were. But worst of all was that Runar’s book contained not a thing about monster chains or their returning home. Runar had had no idea about them. Everything was left for future researchers—in other words, for Koby—to find out.
Koby stopped reading and watched the ragged clouds drifting across the blue sky. It was a sunny day, there was a slight wind, and almost everybody had gone to the beach. The camp was silent apart from the slight flapping of Grah’s watercolor paintings hanging on clotheslines. Grah no longer made breakfast or hid during
the day. Ever since Dad had arrived at the camp, all Grah had done was paint. Mimi and Alice would sit next to it like two small guard dogs. As if Grah needed anyone to protect it.
Koby closed his eyes and thought for the hundredth, maybe thousandth, time: Can the bathrobe be trusted? Does a sensible human being rely on the advice of a bathrobe? If the bathrobe said that the solution was to be found in the book, could one be sure? And what if it wasn’t?
Koby opened his eyes and sighed. He carried on reading. What else could a sensible human do?
Meanwhile, at the edge of the forest, Grah’s latest painting was finished. It bore an uncanny resemblance to all the others, and they were not much to write home about. Grah’s watercolor pictures were all waterlogged messes with dark colors slapped all over the paper. Alice yawned; Mimi sighed. The guard dogs were very bored.
Grah got up clumsily. It stepped to the clothesline and tenderly hung yet another painting up to dry.
“Maybe it’s not allowed to paint in its own home,” Alice whispered to Mimi, who was rolling her eyes up to the sky. Grah had painted enough!
“Grah, let’s do something else for a change,” Mimi suggested.
Grah did not answer. It was fully immersed in the job at hand. Having hung up the picture, it moved over to the next clothesline, dust flying from its coat.
The papers painted in the morning swayed in the wind, dry, but just as ugly as before. Grah removed the clothespins and gently gathered the papers in its arms.
Mimi and Alice exchanged looks. This was something new. Up to now, Grah had only painted and hung, over and over again. This was the first time it had taken anything off the line. The monster pattered back to the grass with its pile of paper, plopped down, and started to examine its paintings in detail. Some of them it put down, adding a stone so they wouldn’t blow away.
“What is it doing?” Alice asked.
“I haven’t a clue,” Mimi replied. “Let’s go and take a look.”
“Can I help?” Mimi asked. Grah’s wild yellow eyes turned to Mimi. The creature let out a hollow growl. Mimi laughed and sat down on the ground next to Grah.
“OK, what do we do?” she asked.
A couple of hours later, the others all returned from the beach.
“Today’s cooks are Oscar, Minnie, Alba, Jenna, and Leo,” Dad called out. “Will you go to Leo’s to make the stew? Good. And clearing up after the meal, Elijah, Luke, Anna, Jemima, and . . .”
Dad saw that Koby had fallen asleep in the hammock under his book. He would let him sleep, poor lad.
“. . . and Halley,” Dad went on. “Everybody else on free time until dinner.”
The upshot of the visit by the three strange ladies was that Dad had realized that he was the only responsible adult in the camp—in other words, the camp leader. Did he want to be the camp leader? That question hadn’t been put to him, since there were no other adult leaders available. Dad had no choice but to rise to the occasion and fill the leader’s boots thrust upon him.
It was the fourth camp day, and Dad had already improved significantly. He remembered the children’s names. He did not forget mealtimes, or at least the fact that they had to eat several times a day. He realized that the jobs had to be shared and that the children could not be allowed to go swimming alone. He was feeling proud of himself. He looked around the camp for Mimi and Alice. They weren’t still sitting with the monster behind the tents? Dad walked over to the forest edge and heard Mimi’s voice.
“Here? No? Where, then?” Mimi was asking.
Dad stopped behind the two girls and the monster.
“What are you up to?” he asked.
“We think Grah is making a jigsaw puzzle, although it probably doesn’t form a picture. Look for yourself!” Mimi waved her hand.
Dad looked. He watched his youngest daughter place painted pieces on the grass according to the monster’s directions. He looked at the strange picture made up by the smaller paintings, already covering several square yards. Everything looked like it was happening as if there was some sense and logic behind it.
“How do you actually understand Grah?” Dad asked.
“Just normally,” Mimi said, and gave Dad a surprised look. “In the same way as one understands anybody. Just like I understand you.”
“Oh,” said Dad, frowning. “Are you saying it can talk?”
“In a way,” Mimi said. “Not in words, more with its eyes and fingers.”
“Eyes and fingers, is it,” Dad repeated. “Do I talk with my eyes and fingers, then?”
Mimi laughed. Dad was just like Halley. Immediately got bogged down in thinking of himself. Even if others were talking about something completely different! It seemed a bit childish, even though Dad was a grownup, beard and all.
“No, now you mostly talk quite normally. You used to talk mainly on the phone,” Mimi said with a grin.
The girls and Grah continued putting the jigsaw together.
“Which one next?” Mimi asked.
With its thick fingers, Grah clumsily flipped through the pile of paintings. When it found the correct picture, Grah picked it up between its fingers and set it in its place gently, as if it were a baby bird.
“Alice, stones, please,” Mimi asked. Alice skipped to the paper and put stones around the edges to weight them down. Dad noticed that there were four small stones holding down every picture.
“You are such clever children,” Dad said.
“Of course,” Mimi said. “Which picture comes next?”
Grah continued flipping through the paintings.
“By the way, that looks a bit like a map when you look at it from a distance,” Dad said, pointing at it. “Take a look. That is just like this field from above. There is the forest and here the field. Those red blobs at the edge of the field must be the tents. Do you see? There are those trees, one of them much bigger than the others. Don’t you think?”
Mimi stood up and looked. Maybe. It was possible.
“Grah, is this a map? Have you drawn a map for us?”
Grah grunted.
“What did that mean?” Dad asked.
“It meant, ‘perhaps,’” Mimi said.
“Perhaps? You don’t understand it after all?” Dad asked.
“I told you, I understand it in the same way as everybody else. It means: roughly speaking.”
Dad studied the picture further. The messy watercolor paintings were not just messes anymore. Looking at them from farther away, they formed figures and clear color areas. Dad shook his head, puzzled.
Grah had painted a large map.
“Look. There’s the sea. Here’s the marina. Here’s the path to it. Do you see?” Dad explained to Mimi and Alice.
The girls agreed.
“What are those?” Dad asked, pointing at little light spots near the shore on the water.
“Stars?” Alice suggested.
“Stars in summer?” Dad asked.
Grah grunted. Awkwardly, it got to its feet and scratched its right arm, as if looking for something in its fur. A small dust cloud puffed up, lumps of earth dropped to the ground, and Mimi sneezed, but Grah found what it was looking for. It handed a tiny gray bundle to Mimi with a grunt.
“What’s this?” Mimi asked, and started opening it. “Some piece of paper.”
Mimi carefully smoothed out the paper. It was gray and torn, but she recognized it instantly.
“The spike fairy’s candy wrapper !” Mimi exclaimed. “Why did you give it to me?”
Grah picked up the wrapper, bent over the map, and put the paper on it over the light spots.
“Are the spike fairies down there on the beach?” Mimi asked.
Grah grunted.
“Do you see now, this is how I understand it,” Mimi said to Dad, who nodded. Mimi turned back to Grah.
“Do you know where the other monsters are?”
Grah waved its hand over the map. It did not stop but covered all parts of it.
“Scattered
all over the place,” Mimi interpreted. “Will you help us find them?”
Suddenly Grah bent down and slapped the map hard with its hand. Its palm hit a spot on the map where there was a little rocky crag on the edge of the forest.
Dad jumped. Alice let out a little frightened squeak.
“Oops,” said Mimi. “Are you cross?”
Grah kneeled down, smoothing a rip that it had made, murring quietly.
“What is the matter with it?” Dad asked.
“Is it upset because the paper is torn?” Alice said.
“No, it’s missing something,” Mimi said in a low voice. “Grah, is your home on the map?”
Grah lifted its yellow eyes and stopped stroking the map. The big, dark hand rested over the rip.
“Is it there?” Mimi asked. “Where you hit it?”
Grah grunted. Mimi’s cheeks were pink with excitement as she turned to Dad and said: “We’ve got to get Koby and Halley here. Quickly. Now we know where the monsters’ home is.”
Mimi turned to Grah and said, her voice trembling with enthusiasm: “Grah, you darling monster. Don’t worry about anything. We will take you home.”
CHAPTER 27
The Forest at Night
“THERE,” HALLEY SAID QUICKLY, pointing up. “Did you see?”
“No,” Minnie said, peering at the sky.
“Where?” Dad asked.
Koby kept his eyes in the direction Halley pointed, but the night sky over the marina was empty. Not a single luminous botherfairy in sight.
“It’ll be back soon,” Halley mumbled, eyes skyward.
“Was it on its own?” Koby asked.
“Might have been—I didn’t see it clearly,” Halley said. “It was visible for such a short time.”
“We’ll wait,” Dad said.
The dark bushes at the forest edge were whispering, the boats clanked eerily on their moorings, and all around there were little rustlings, whistlings, poppings. It felt like there was something inexplicable, almost ominous, adrift in the summer night. Almost as if the children and Dad were sitting under a bush expecting something evil and dangerous, even though they only wanted to see the bother-fairies. Preferably from afar, but still.
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