Thieves of Weirdwood

by Christian McKay Heidicker

  “This one looks like journal entries,” Breeth said.

  “These are fan letters addressed to Alfred Moore.”

  Something heavy thudded against the roof and Wally ducked. The walls trembled. Towers of paper spilled across the floor. Downstairs, Arthur screamed, “Bring it on, you oversized toilet plunger!” His voice cut short as the floor canted to the side, the entire house tilting on its foundation. Wally widened his stance to keep balance.

  Breeth giggled. “Eww! This stack is in Miss Lucas’s handwriting, but it says it’s written by someone named Montana Marshes. Listen to this. He steamily hefted her into his arms and hungrily sniffed along the glistening nape of her—”

  The front of the house buckled and splintered as the tentacles squeezed.

  “Breeth!” Wally cried. “In case you hadn’t noticed, giant tentacles are trying to break in and kill us!”

  “Right! Sorry. You kind of forget about danger when you’re dead.”

  Wally braced himself against a shelf and took stock of the room. It would take them hours to scan every page. He wouldn’t be surprised if the tentacles crushed the house like a matchbox in the next five minutes.

  “Maybe Miss Lucas hid the story before she was committed,” he said.

  “Ooh!” Breeth said. “Smart!”

  He watched her ruffle out of the pages, creak through the floorboards, and then thump into the writing desk. “Found it!”

  “Really?” Wally said, running over. He tried the desk’s drawer. It was locked.

  “Yep!” Breeth said. “This handwriting is different from the other pages. The first line says: I met the Jangling Man among the lilies, and he offered me an object that would alter my life forever.”

  The house bucked again, sending Wally sprawling. “Can you open the drawer?”

  The drawer jiggled. “Sorry,” Breeth said. “Lock’s made of metal.”

  Wally tried to force it open. It refused to budge.

  “I’ll keep reading!” Breeth cleared her throat, swirling dust from the keyhole, and put on her best male voice. “‘My boss wants to save your life,’ the man said, drawing a strange Quill from his pocket, ‘by giving you something that can destroy your creator.’ I stared at my hands, grown spotted with age. Over the past few months, I had felt myself aging at an accelerated rate, my hair and fingernails shedding like autumn leaves.”

  The house made a terrible crunching sound. The room buckled and splintered, compacting to an uncomfortably cramped size.

  “This is taking too long!” Wally said, ducking. “Can you skim for clues?”

  “Sure!” Breeth said.

  Another inhuman screech came from outside as more tentacles slapped against the pane, blocking out the light. The roof groaned, ready to collapse. Downstairs, the front door splintered open. “En garde, slithering infidels!” Arthur shouted. “Wait. Ow! Ow! Stop!”

  Wally slammed the office door. They had to get out of there.

  “Here’s something maybe,” Breeth said from the drawer. “I returned to my office in the ferns, wielding the strange instrument, which seemed to grow warm in my ha—”

  The window exploded. A tentacle whipped into the office, catching Wally by the ankle and dragging him toward the window.

  “Breeth!” he screamed.

  Wally felt the cool air of the outdoors on his ankle before a piece of the broken ceiling came piercing down like a guillotine, impaling the tentacle. Wally scrambled away.

  “Pleh!” Breeth said, her splinters dripping tentacle slime. “That was disgusting!”

  The feeling crept back into Wally’s face as he realized she had left the desk to save him.

  “Now will you annoying tentacles stop interrupting my reading?” she said, and thumped back into the desk.

  Seven more tentacles wriggled through the broken frame and into the room. Wally backed up until he hit the desk.

  “Breeth,” Wally whispered. “There are more. A lot more.”

  “I can’t read and fight tentacles at the same time!” she said. “If they get this manuscript, we won’t find any clues about my killer!”

  “Okay,” he whispered. “Keep reading.”

  “Ew!” Breeth said. “Moore was so focused on writing monsters, he ran out of ink and started using his own blood!”

  “That information is not helpful right now,” Wally whispered, eyes on the tentacles.

  “Sorry,” Breeth whispered back. “It doesn’t say anything about where he’s hiding in the Mirror. But he did mention lilies and ferns, so he’s clearly outside, but…”

  The tentacles blindly felt their way across the floorboards. Wally held his breath. He stepped up onto the desk before a tentacle reached his foot. And he stepped off just as quickly as it slithered up and around the desk, coiling it in its grip.

  “Um,” Breeth said as the tentacle pulled the desk from the wall. “Am I moving?”

  Wally was too horrified to answer. A giant mouth had appeared in the window. It was slimy and circular, with hundreds of rows of bristling teeth.

  “B-B-Breeth!” Wally finally managed to whisper. “Get out of there!”

  “No! We have to solve this!”

  Wally grabbed hold of the desk and tried pulling in the opposite direction. But it was no use. The tentacle was a thirty-foot muscle.

  “Pull, Wally!” Breeth shouted. “We don’t have enough information!”

  Wally strained. “Huamei! Arthur!” he cried. “I need your help!”

  No response.

  “I’m flipping to the end of the story!” Breeth said.

  The office door burst open and a tentacle from the hallway slithered in. It wrapped around Wally’s waist and pulled. More tentacles swarmed through the window and grabbed the desk, wrenching it from Wally’s grip.

  “Breeth!” he screamed. “Quick! Possess something else!”

  As the desk slid toward the hole in the wall, Breeth read as fast as she could. “My doll and my ravens defeated, I summoned the one thing I knew would defeat her. The world ender. The krak—”

  Her voice broke off when the desk reached the tentacle monster’s mouth. Its teeth made short work of the wood—like a rotating saw, flinging sawdust and bits of paper—and the desk vanished into the abyss of its throat.

  The manuscript consumed, the tentacle monster slithered off the brownstone.

  “Breeth!” Wally called after it.

  There was no answer. He checked the rooftops for signs of the ghost girl. In the sky, dragon Huamei spewed seawater, washing the tentacles back into the sewers. But the tentacles retreated willingly, taking Alfred Moore’s manuscript and Breeth with them.

  “Cooper!” Arthur limped through the splintered door and clapped Wally on the shoulder, laughing with relief. “It was close, but I managed to scare the foul beast away. Did you find the story?”

  Wally was doing his best not to cry.

  Breeth hadn’t so much as screamed.

  17

  THE FOOL DREAMER

  “And then the tentacle was like, Oh no! And I was like, Oh yes! and I jabbed at it like this! Ya! And then all of the tentacles retreated in fear, slurping right back into the sewer!” Arthur lifted his golden blade over his head in triumph. “That monster will rue the day it ever messed with Arthur Benton and his trusty letter opener!”

  Wally’s eye twitched. He seemed drained. Like the tentacles had dragged a piece of his soul into the sewer with them.

  “C’mon, Cooper!” Arthur said, jostling his shoulder. “We just survived not one but two real-life monster attacks! I mean, sure, those ravens and tentacles will haunt our dreams for years to come, but we defeated them!”

  Wally stared at his hands. “I lost Moore’s story.”

  “Curse it!” Arthur said, not feeling particularly cursed at all. “I suppose this means that the adventure continues! Did you manage to read any of it?”

  Wally relayed what little information he had gleaned in the chaos: the Jangling Man who had given
Moore the Quill, the lilies and the office in the ferns, even that Moore had started writing with his own blood.

  “A Jangling Man?” Arthur said. “Who jangles? A key maker? A man who swallows treasure? And I’d always imagined Moore would be in the city. Not outside.”

  Wally didn’t respond, still deflated.

  Arthur started to feel concerned. “Come on. Let’s get to the Mirror and search for your brother.”

  They exited Valerie Lucas’s destroyed house. Dragon Huamei was perched on a mailbox, head bowed. His scales shed like leaves into the gutter. A boy’s silhouette took shape in his belly.

  “I wonder if that hurts,” Arthur said.

  “Well, this is fortunate,” a voice said behind them.

  They turned to find Sekhmet, swords drawn.

  Arthur’s heart skipped a beat, but he managed to smile. “I know, I know. You’re impressed to see me. You didn’t think I’d be able to survive the Mirror all by myself.”

  Sekhmet’s swords glowed white-hot. “The others may be too busy to arrest you for bringing Fae-born skeletons into the Real, but I’m not.”

  Arthur stepped behind Wally. “Magic her, Cooper! Like you did with the tentacles! Smack her over the head with that beam! Tie her up with that rope!”

  “I … can’t,” Wally said, only growing more deflated.

  Sekhmet raised her glowing swords. She was about to slash downward when a gruff voice stopped her. “Not Wally.” Huamei limped toward them, spine hunched, long fingernails tapping against the stones. “I owe him a boon.”

  “You,” Sekhmet said, pointing a sword at him, “aren’t supposed to be out here. Amelia told me to bring you back to the Healing Room immediately. She said you’re still fragile after—”

  “Amelia is not my authority,” Huamei interrupted. He cleared the salt water from his throat, then cracked his neck back into place and stood upright. “And Weirdwood Manor has always underestimated how difficult it is to kill a dragon.”

  “It’s true!” Arthur said. “You should’ve seen him battle that tentacle monster!” He flipped the letter opener in his hand. “Should have seen me too, for that matter.”

  Sekhmet rolled her eyes at Huamei. “It’s your funeral.” Then she went after Arthur.

  “Wait!” he said. “You need me! I know things!”

  She froze and gave Huamei a questioning look.

  “He’s right,” Huamei said. He told her all of the information that had led them to realize that Kingsport was being destroyed by someone’s pen name.

  Arthur pointed a thumb at his chest. “And I know more about Alfred Moore than anyone, so I’m the only one who knows where he’s hiding.” He hoped she didn’t realize this last part was a lie.

  Sekhmet gave him a look. “The answer’s obvious, isn’t it?”

  Arthur gulped. “Is it?”

  She pointed to the street signs. “If the author who created the pen name lives at Willow and River, then all we have to do is find their Mirror counterparts. Wallow and Reaper or something.”

  “You’re wrong,” Arthur said. “Valerie Lucas dreamt up a far more romantic and appropriate location for Alfred Moore.”

  Sekhmet crossed her arms. “Where is he, then?”

  Arthur felt his cheeks flush. “I can’t just tell you that information! You’d leave me in the dust!” He gestured down the street. “If you want to waste time at the bookstore, reading all of Garnett Lacroix’s adventures to figure it out, be my guest.”

  Sekhmet suddenly looked less confident. “We can’t access the Mirror anyway.”

  “What do you mean?” Huamei asked.

  “I wasn’t going to mention this in front of the thieves, but the Manor has been compromised. The doors to the Fae have been sealed. Lady Weirdwood is in a coma.”

  “What happened to her?” Wally asked, coming out of his funk a bit.

  Sekhmet shook her head. “Amelia couldn’t figure it out at first. But then Weston returned from the Mirror, bruised and beaten from those skeletons Arthur sicced on him. He ventured into the Abyssment and found the carcass of a Golden Scarab.”

  Arthur’s eyes widened, but he tried to play it off as surprise, like he’d never heard of such a thing.

  “The Scarab stung the Manor’s roots, injecting them with poison,” Sekhmet continued. “Because Lady Weirdwood is linked to the Manor, she collapsed. Amelia believes the Order of Eldar sent the Scarab. But until we figure out where it came from, Pyra can’t cook an antidote.”

  Arthur stared at the ground, thinking. If he told Sekhmet that he brought that Scarab into the Manor, she would slap another pair of those magma manacles on him. Besides, he had promised Wally he’d keep Graham’s secret safe.

  Arthur kept his mouth shut.

  Huamei took out his calligraphy brush. “I don’t need the Manor to get us to the Mirror.”

  “Put that thing away,” Sekhmet said. “I want to go and bring down Moore as much as you do. But we should wait until the Wardens return from the Mercury Mines and let them go instead.”

  Huamei shook his head. “If I return to the Manor, Amelia will lock me in the Healing Room. I won’t let that happen. I have reason to believe that the Quill Alfred Moore has in his possession is one of my ancestor’s bones. I’m going to track it down, retrieve it, and restore honor to my family and return to the Cloud Kingdom.” He stared at her with the ocean depths of his eyes. “If we solve this ourselves, it may be enough to earn your precious Wardenship.”

  Sekhmet sighed. She stared in the direction of Hazelrigg, considering. “The Wardens are in over their heads in the Mercury Mines. And the staff is still recovering from the Corvidians and tentacles…” She breathed deep. “Fine.”

  The entire time Huamei and Sekhmet had been talking, Arthur had been trying to puzzle out a solution to Moore’s whereabouts. He knew that Valerie Lucas loved anagrams, frequently scrambling the letters of important clues in her adventures. In The Mystery of the Gilded Thread, the Merry Rogues had learned about the Gentleman Thief’s past by unscrambling the letters in his name. Garnett Lacroix was actually an Ex-tailor named Grant C. That’s why Garnett’s outfits were so impeccable.

  If the name Alfred Moore was made up, it just might be an anagram. But by unscrambling the letters, all Arthur had come up with was Fool Dreamer. That was certainly true of Moore … but it didn’t give Arthur any clues.

  Sekhmet stared at him. “You’re trying to solve it right now, aren’t you?”

  “No!” Arthur said, stalling for time. “I’m just trying to decide whether or not I trust you to take me with you if I give you the answer.”

  Sekhmet lifted her hand and made a symbol. “I swear on the grave of my mentor Rose that I will let you come with us if you know where that author is hiding.”

  Arthur swallowed. “Okay,” he said. “I’ll tell you the answer. Right … now…”

  Sekhmet, Huamei, and Wally stared at him. Arthur had always been good under pressure. All of those eyes staring at him had always unlocked a fear in him, making his thoughts spark like fireworks …

  And then it clicked. It was the emerald of Sekhmet’s staring eyes that did it. Arthur did a little letter juggling and then cried out, “Lucas, you subtle genius! I know where he is!”

  Sekhmet crossed her arms. “So you were figuring it out.”

  “I was just building suspense!” He beamed. “By unscrambling the letters in Alfred Moore, you get Emerald Roof!” He clapped Wally on the shoulder. “All that talk of lilies and ferns threw me off at first, but now it makes perfect sense. Moore isn’t writing outside! He’s hiding in the city’s greenhouse!” He removed his hat and showed them all the daffodil. “Right where Valerie Lucas came up with the inspiration for Garnett Lacroix’s signature symbol!”

  Sekhmet did not look impressed. She merely glanced at his hat. “Your flower’s wilted.”

  * * *

  Arthur led Wally, Huamei, and Sekhmet through Huamei’s paint portal and down the oddly slanted street
s of the Mirror City, hoods drawn over their faces. Wally’s cloak was still drying after Huamei had painted it on him.

  They ventured down Gloom Avenue, through Stench Park, and past the unsettling marble statues of the Bleary Estate, keeping to the shadows and alleys.

  “We have to prepare for battle,” Sekhmet said. “Moore could summon an army of porcelain dolls or a flock of Corvidians so thick it chokes the sky.”

  Arthur slowed his pace a little. This was starting to feel less like an adventure and more like a suicide mission.

  “Huamei,” Sekhmet said, “is there any way you can neutralize the author so he doesn’t have a chance to use that Quill?”

  “I can flood the greenhouse with seawater and wash him out.”

  “Better yet,” Sekhmet said, “fill it up and seal the exits.”

  Arthur’s heart clenched at the thought of watching his beloved author drown before his very eyes. “Jeez. Why don’t you just blow up the greenhouse while you’re at it?”

  “Magicians don’t use gunpowder,” Sekhmet answered simply.

  “I was being sarcastic!” Arthur said.

  He refused to believe that Alfred Moore was completely evil. After all, Moore had created Garnett Lacroix. Kind of.

  “Don’t you think a flood is a little extreme?” Arthur asked.

  “Not as extreme as unleashing monsters on a city in order to murder an innocent author,” Sekhmet said.

  Arthur blushed. “You have a point there.”

  A few blocks later, they arrived at the greenhouse, its emerald roof gleaming in the strange starlight. Arthur squinted through the fogged glass walls. There was a silhouette, flickering and distorting with candlelight. The man was hunched, scribbling furiously.

  “Ready?” Sekhmet whispered, drawing her swords.

  “Psh,” Arthur said. “Ready is our middle name. Right, Cooper?”

  He turned back, hoping to see his friend at least smirk through his painted hood.

  Wally was nowhere to be seen.

  18

  GRAHAM

  Wally crept through the Mirror streets, slipping into an alley when a herd of Ogre Oakers trundled his way. His senses were alert, but his pulse wasn’t pounding like it had the first time he’d come to this place. Everything in his life was so mixed-up and turned around, it was hard to feel as afraid in this place as he once had.