“You can’t have Cocoa Pebbles, Sherlock. For the last time, chocolate makes you sick. Then again…if you eat too much of anything you seem to get sick.”
Exactly, so what’s the big deal?
“Tell you what, when this war is over, I’ll let you have a little bit of Cocoa Pebbles, as long as you promise to clean up the vomit…” Maria trailed off, shuddering as another image popped into her head: Sherlock eating his own chocolatey puke. “Never mind,” she said.
I like vomit! Sherlock said. Not just my own. It’s the smell of the already chewed and digested food that does it for me.
She shook her head violently, her brain rocking back and forth against her skull. “No, no, quit it. You’re gonna make me sick.”
Sherlock looked at her innocently. Well, in that case, I should probably keep going. More Fruity Pebbles for me!
“Leave the poor girl alone, Sherlock.”
Maria jumped at the new voice. Looking up, she saw Gelbus walking into the kitchen. The little bit of hair he had was tousled and up in cowlicks. He wore one of Gramps’s T-shirts—‘My best friend went to Myrtle Beach and all I got was this lousy T-shirt!’—which hung all the way to his socked feet. It looked like a homemade nightgown. Luckily for Maria, she had gotten all the giggles out of her system the previous night when she had first seen Gelbus in the outfit.
The Gnome rubbed sleep from his eyes. He had a few scrapes, and some bumps and bruises forming on his face from the battle, but other than that, he looked quite rested.
Maria, on the other hand, looked like she hadn’t gotten any sleep at all. Can blame the dreams for that one.
“How’d you sleep?” Maria asked Gelbus.
A big, goofy smile spread across his face. “Like a king. This thing you call a dog crate is one of man’s greatest inventions.”
“Wait until you sleep on a waterbed. Now that is something to get excited about,” Maria said. She rose and picked up the cereal bowl, which was slick with dog spit.
Sherlock waddled over to Gelbus and nuzzled up against him—they were just about the same height. Then Sherlock sat in front of the Gnome with his back to the refrigerator (which was a miracle in and of itself), and wagged his tail hard enough to send the dust bunnies out from beneath the fridge.
“Hiya, old friend,” Gelbus said. He hugged Sherlock tightly, and Maria’s heart warmed.
Gelbus! How did you like my palace? Sherlock asked as they parted.
“He’s asking about his palace,” Maria said. She dropped the bowl in the trash and went to the sink to wash the spit from her hands with scalding hot water and lots of soap.
“Quite good,” Gelbus said as he rubbed Sherlock’s head. Then he pulled out a seat at the table and climbed up into it.
Tell him if there’s even the slightest thing out of place, he has to pay a fine.
“I’m not telling him that.”
"Tell me what?" Gelbus asked.
"Oh nothing. Just Sherlock being an asshole," Maria answered.
Tell him if he doesn’t pay the fine then I have to execute him…and probably eat him.
Maria glared at Sherlock, who was looking back at her sheepishly.
He did the Bloodhound’s equivalent of a shrug. What? Don’t look at me like that. It’s not like I make the rules about this stuff.
“You do make the rules,” Maria said. She flicked water at him. “Now be nice to him. You guys are like best friends.”
Hardly. He is a fine soldier to do battle with, but business is business.
“Says the dog whose eyes turned into big pink hearts when the Gnome walked in.”
Maria, you don’t know anything! First, the Cat Magazine, and now you’re accusing me of actually loving something? Ha! Hardly.
“Don’t bring up the cat magazines, Sherlock. It’ll save you from some embarrassment.” She smiled as she strolled past him to the fridge and opened it.
“Are those the cute and cuddly animals all over those paper books you have hidden under your dog crate’s mattress, Sherlock?” Gelbus asked.
Maria turned to look at the Bloodhound. His eyes were darting back and forth like summer flies around a picnic.
“Busted,” she whispered.
I—uh, no, he’s just joking, Sherlock stammered. Crap, I gotta go check on something…
Sherlock took off out of the kitchen, his claws scrabbling on the tile as he tried to get some traction. He almost fell on his face on more than one occasion.
“That Sherlock is something else,” Gelbus said.
“Yeah, yeah, he is. Life was a lot less…weird when I couldn’t talk to him.”
“That must be pretty nice, talking to one’s pet,” Gelbus mused.
“Eh, maybe if one’s pet is normal. Sherlock is anything but,” Maria replied. She looked back into the fridge and the freezer. “What would you like to eat for breakfast? Eggs and bacon? Maybe some frozen waffles? We’ve got Eggos. Chocolate chip and regular.”
Gelbus’s eyes grew big. “Eggos? What are those? And Waffles?”
“Oh, sorry, I keep forgetting the whole other worlds barrier between us…somehow.”
She took the box of Eggos out of the freezer and set it down in front of Gelbus. Hesitantly, he opened it and took one of the plastic sleeves out.
“Yeah, it’s like a pancake. Do you know what a pancake is? Probably not.” She turned to the cupboard and rooted through the boxes of oatmeal, bags of chips, and cans of soup, looking for the syrup. “You put syrup on it, which is a sweet, sticky sauce. It pretty much makes the entire meal. Syrup to waffles is like Sherlock to garbage and dead squirrels.”
“OW!” Gelbus yelped as something clattered to the table and fell down to the floor. It sounded like a small piece of concrete.
Maria whirled around and saw the Gnome rubbing his mouth. Her eyes traveled to the floor, where a frozen Eggo had slid into a corner of the kitchen.
“Oh man, I should’ve told you that you have to toast these before you eat them,” she said. “Are you bleeding?” She squatted down to look closer at Gelbus’s mouth. He wasn’t bleeding as far as she could see. “Here, move your hand.” He did. Maria cocked her head to get a better look. His teeth were already jagged and misshapen, but as far as she could tell, they were all right. “Seriously, sorry about that.”
The Gnome shook his head. “No, no, it was my fault. Rule number one when it comes to traveling to strange worlds: don’t put anything in your mouth that you’re not completely sure of.”
Maria nodded. “You should share that rule with Sherlock. The first time we went to Oriceran, he put literally everything in his mouth. And in Dominion—well, the ruins of Dominion—”
“Poor Dominion.”
“Well, Sherlock tried eating a Raffin there,” Maria finished.
“A Raffin!” Gelbus said, then winced in pain.
“Yeah, and I came face-to-face with one of those little bastards in your old place of employment. I was about a thousand feet up in the stacks when it attacked me.”
“Those things are such a nuisance, don’t I know it!”
“Well, I did try to feed it,” she admitted, avoiding Gelbus’s eyes.
“Ah, a mistake to be sure,” he said. “Rule number two of traveling to strange worlds: do not feed anything whose species you can’t name.”
“A fine rule. You should write a book.”
Gelbus stroked the little scraggly hairs on the end of his chin. “You may be onto something, Maria Apple.”
“I’m smarter than I look,” she said with a wink. “Now, what’ll it be for breakfast? I take it you probably don’t want the waffles, do you?”
He looked to the frozen waffle in the corner of the kitchen, which was covered in hair and dirt. Maria followed his gaze and jumped when she saw Sherlock was there, sniffing and licking it.
“Sherlock…? How the hell—”
I’m a ninja when it comes to food. You know that, he answered between licks. He picked it up in his mouth and mu
mbled, I’ll just take this off your hands, if you don’t mind. Then he waddled out of the kitchen. Maria watched him go, a grin on her face as she shook her head.
“I hope his teeth are stronger than mine,” Gelbus said. “But I do think I’ll try the waffles.”
He pronounced them Wolf-alls. Maria thought of correcting him, then decided not to. ‘Wolf-alls’ sounded cooler anyway.
“How many?”
“Well, they’re quite small. I was thinking perhaps…eight?”
Her eyes widened. “Eight? Geez, I think you’ve been hanging out with Sherlock too much.”
“It may not look it, but Gnomes are hearty eaters.”
“I think if you had eight waffles, you’d turn into one,” she said. “Besides, there are only six left in the boxes.”
“Six’ll do.”
Maria toasted the waffles, first four, and then the remaining two. She wasn’t the world’s greatest chef, but when it came to waffles, she liked to think she made a mean batch. She buttered each one. They were warm enough for the butter to melt until a golden sheen covered the toasted surfaces of the waffles. The smell filled the kitchen, and Maria was surprised Sherlock wasn’t crashing the party to beg. He must’ve been pretty busy trying to chew through the frozen one.
After all the waffles were toasted and buttered, she drowned them in syrup. Gelbus ate them greedily, telling Maria she actually was the world’s greatest cook. She blushed.
They sat at the table together, sharing bits of information between Gelbus’s noisy chewing. Maria found she liked Gelbus a good deal more than she had liked the other Gnomes in the Light Elves’s library.
Not long after Gelbus finished eating, Gramps and Frieda came into the kitchen. They both looked well rested; Frieda practically glowed. Gramps had his arm around her waist and was talking about making his world famous eggs for her.
“Nice of you to join us,” Maria said with a wink.
Gramps frowned. “I fear Claire is rubbing off on you. Your sarcastic attitude will not get you far.” His face was a mask of seriousness.
Maria watched him warily. “Gramps?”
Then he smiled and laughed. “Got you!”
She stuck her tongue out at him.
“Ah, Gelbus, I see you’ve found the Eggos,” Gramps said to the Gnome.
There was drying syrup at the corner of the Gnome’s mouth, and more on the front of his borrowed shirt. “Why yes, I have. Delicious, I might add.”
“You haven’t seen anything yet,” Gramps said. He snapped his fingers, and the fridge opened. Out came eggs, butter, bacon, cheese, and bread. The stove came on next.
“Gramps, you’re not supposed to use magic,” Maria said as two pieces of bread floated by her head and plunged into the toaster.
He waved his hand, an innocent smile on his face. “I believe the Order of the Silver Griffins will cut me some slack today.”
“After those dreams, Ignatius, you deserve a good meal,” Frieda said in a low voice.
This piqued Maria’s interest. “Dreams? What kind of dreams?”
Eggs were cracking themselves on the edge of a pan, and the stove’s flames kicked on. A sizzling filled their ears.
“Oh, nothing,” Gramps answered. “Just dreams, that’s all.”
“Tell me,” Maria pressed. “I had dreams of my own.”
“It was a darkness,” Frieda said. The way she spoke gave Maria chills. “A darkness in the world in between that wanted out. I dreamed about it, too.”
Maria’s skin raised in goosebumps.
“The most unsettling part of these dreams,” Gramps told them, “was what happened here. People all over the world were exposed to magic; Oriceran’s secrets were out in the open.”
Maria furrowed her brow. “How did they respond?”
The wizard shook his head. “Not well, I’m afraid.”
“Well, we’ll cross that bridge when we get to it,” Maria decided.
A bag of shredded cheese floated behind Gramps and sprinkled over the eggs. The smells were enchanting, and Maria found her appetite again.
There was no more talk of the dreams or the darkness, but perhaps there should’ve been. Maria ate with Gramps and Frieda, watching them stare into one another’s eyes like lovelorn teenagers.
The food was delicious and the mood was light—though Maria knew the darkness was coming, whether she wanted it to or not.
Chapter Five
The Jewel of Deception, the scavenger thought. Now that is almost too good to be true.
Shame he had to walk into where the Arachnids dwelled to get it.
He had never been a fan of the Dark Forest. A lot of hubbub it was, but he couldn’t deny the fact that there was something evil lurking amongst these trees.
Harry wasn’t scared of anything. He was half wizard, half Light Elf, young, and full of charisma; sometimes ignorant charisma.
Still alive, though. Can’t be that stupid if I’m still alive.
The Arachnid soldiers walked in front of and behind him. He was not an enemy of the Arachnids, at least not in his mind, but it seemed the Arachnids thought of everyone as enemies.
“Why the guards?” Harry asked the Arachnid soldiers in front of him.
They didn’t answer—just marched on through the winding path of the Dark Forest. The trees overhead blocked out most of the daylight.
Really living up to the name the Dark Forest, huh?
“It’s not like I’m dangerous…well, not that dangerous, anyway,” Harry continued on. If he couldn’t get them to talk, he’d annoy them to death. “You guys ever been to Earth? They have spiders there, too, you know. Except these spiders don’t walk upright like you guys, which begs the question, what went wrong in the evolutionary process? Why did they get the shit end of the stick?”
“Shut your mouth, scavenger,” one of the Arachnid soldiers said, his voice gruff. Swinging by his side, gripped by one of his many hands, was a big, black sword with a hook on the end.
Harry knew where those blades came from, and it wasn’t Arachnid Country. Those were Orc blades. He wondered if the Arachnids had an alliance with the Orcs, or if they had killed a few of them and taken their weapons.
Probably the latter. Never trust an Arachnid.
“We’re here,” the lead guard said.
They were in a clearing. A few other guards stood in front of an opening in the gnarled branches and crooked tree trunks.
“Where?” Harry asked.
One of the guards nudged him forward.
The guards in front parted. Fear struck Harry hard, but he did his best not to show it. Though it had been rumored that Arachnids could smell fear as easily as Harry smelled the trees and dirt all around him…
It’s worth it, Harry, he told himself. You get the Jewel of Deception, and you can get those people out of the world in between. You’ll practically be a hero. Maybe people will quit calling you ‘scavenger’ and start calling you by name.
He doubted that, but a guy could dream, couldn’t he?
“Go on,” the gruff voice said from behind him. Harry spun around before the Arachnid could hit him.
“I’m going. No need for violence, my giant spider-friend.” Though Harry’s voice was calm, he was not so calm internally. The Arachnid’s features were something out of nightmares: eight red eyes, protruding fangs, stubbly black hair, and a face that looked like it had been run over by a Hummer.
Keep calm, old friend. It’ll all be worth it in the end. Harry the Hero, not Harry the Scavenger.
The guards in front waved Harry on. Reluctantly, he went, entering the black hole that was some form of a crude door. He stopped at the threshold and looked back. The guards watched him with snarls on their faces, and what Harry thought was fear in their eyes.
“What? You’re not coming?”
The guards shook their heads.
“You are called to the Widow, and you alone,” one said.
“The Widow? No, that’s—” He stopped
. She is dead, isn’t she? Lost in the Great Spider Wars.
“Go, before we cut off a finger,” another guard said.
Harry hardly heard it. His head was swimming. He walked on. The smell hit him as he entered the damp darkness: the stench of old basements mixed with decaying bodies. Harry thought about turning tail and running, but the Jewel of Deception was at the forefront of his mind.
Is it worth meeting the Widow?
He had to think about the answer for a moment as his hand trailed along the rock walls. They were moist. He tried not to think about blood.
“Yes,” he said aloud as he walked. “It is worth it. I owe it to those kids trapped in the world in between. I’ve already gotten an artifact that can use the Jewel; no sense in stopping now.”
Suddenly, the darkness gave way to a greenish light that reminded him of sickness and death. A haze hung in the air. He stopped, his feet no longer wanting to go on.
No, Harry; now’s not the time to freeze up. You gotta keep going.
So he did.
He entered a vast chamber. Webs hung from the walls, swaying in a gentle breeze. There was a tree to one side, its trunk white and ashy, and a dais in the middle with large stone steps leading up to it.
He turned his head and saw the source of the smell: two headless Orcs, their bodies shrunken with rot and ruin. It looked as if they’d been dead for years, chewed up and spat out by…something. But Harry knew better than that. They’d only been dead for days—maybe hours. Something had drained them of all their blood and life.
He heard scrabbling above him. Harry craned his head upward and saw only looming shadows, but the sound was there. It was a heavy sound.
It can’t be. There’s no way she’s alive after all these years…
But it was.
The Widow descended down the wall, her huge, black legs crawling with an eerie grace that a creature as big as she shouldn’t have possessed.
“Welcome, Harry,” the giant spider said.
Harry had to practically pick his jaw up off of the floor.
“H-Hi,” he said. “Pleased to meet you.” The fear was present in his body, but he still didn’t let it show.
Midwest Magic Chronicles Boxed Set Page 68
