Pip Bartlett's Guide to Magical Creatures

by Maggie Stiefvater

  With that, the adults started arguing. Mrs. Dreadbatch shouted about the Fuzzles. Mr. Henshaw asked about Regent Maximus. Mr. Randall told Mrs. Dreadbatch to quiet down. Callie shouted at me for sneaking out and getting her in trouble. The other adults voiced a million opinions on the Fuzzles and the pending extermination and the risks of riding an unsaddled Unicorn down the street. Aunt Emma was stuck in the middle of it all, looking overwhelmed.

  “Hey! Wait! Listen!” I said, but no one heard me.

  “You’ll have to speak louder than that, Pip,” Tomas said.

  So I took a deep breath and shouted, “I HAVE AN IDEA!”

  It was loud enough that the adults settled down and looked at me. All their eyebrows were up high on their foreheads. I took another deep breath.

  “We don’t have to exterminate the Fuzzles, because it turns out they’re only here because of the Grim!” I said, pointing to the baby Grim. He was crouched down near Regent Maximus, ears flattened back. “The Grim lost his pack, so he was wandering around eating Fuzzles. They only came into Cloverton to avoid being dinner!”

  “A ‘Grim’? You mean that dog? What is that, some sort of Labrador?” Mrs. Dreadbatch said. “I don’t see any tags. If he doesn’t have tags, we’ll need to call Animal Control.” She shot Aunt Emma a nasty look.

  But Aunt Emma didn’t notice—because she’d seen the Grim just long enough to know it was no Labrador.

  Her eyes lit up. She looked like she might cry.

  “Is that … Pip! You were right!” She dashed toward me. She nearly shoved Mrs. Dreadbatch out of the way as she dropped to her knees by the Grim’s nose.

  “Don’t think you can convince me not to call Animal Control on that dog, Emma Bartlett!” Mrs. Dreadbatch snapped. “You might think you’re in charge of magical creatures in this town, hiding Fuzzles and training Griffins and who even knows what else, but you can’t save a regular old dog!”

  “Oh, I think I can!” Aunt Emma held a hand out toward the Grim. He sniffed it and wagged his tail a little. I guessed dogs—even magical ones—can smell good people. “This, Mrs. Dreadbatch, is not just a dog. It’s an extremely rare juvenile Grim. They’re a protected species. And I’m the only person in Cloverton licensed to handle them.”

  She said this last bit with slightly more smugness than was absolutely necessary, but I think we all forgave her.

  “Well … well!” Mrs. Dreadbatch said, hitching her blazer up a bit. “S.M.A.C.K.E.D. will be speaking with your niece, since she clearly is not licensed to handle Grims and brought him here! And in the meantime, the exterminators and I will go handle the Fuzzles—”

  “Uh, about that,” one of the exterminators said. “Sorry, lady, but we’re not allowed to do anything that endangers a protected magical species. If that Grim-dog-thing eats Fuzzles, we can’t touch them.”

  “What?” Mrs. Dreadbatch’s eyes went all wide and buggy. “But they’re pests! They must be exterminated! Stop! Don’t you take another step! Don’t you get in that van! Don’t you start that—”

  The exterminators slammed the van door—they looked eager to get out of Cloverton. When they turned the engine on, rock music blasted so loud that it completely drowned out Mrs. Dreadbatch’s yelling. The tires squealed as they left the parking lot. Mrs. Dreadbatch huffed down the road after them. No one helped her give chase.

  Mr. Randall spoke first. He said, “So this little fella is the only reason we’ve got a Fuzzle infestation?”

  I nodded. “Now that he’s not roaming the woods anymore, the Fuzzles should be able to leave.”

  “Pip is right,” Aunt Emma agreed. “Sometimes one little thing can throw nature out of whack—like a rogue Grim hunting outside his normal habitat. I bet we can take the Fuzzles into the woods to release them now, and it’ll be safe.”

  The adults talked about this for a moment. Some of the neighbors weren’t totally convinced, but they were willing to give it a shot. Mr. Randall offered to take all the Fuzzles himself, since by this point he was pretty used to driving fireballs around. Everyone who’d gathered waved good-bye to the Fuzzles as Mr. Randall’s truck disappeared over the hill.

  “I will miss the marshmallows,” Callie admitted.

  Everyone filtered away—the neighbors back to their houses, Mr. Henshaw to put Regent Maximus up, and Tomas home to tell his mom about the Fuzzles—and, I hoped, to brag a little to his brothers about the adventure he’d just been on.

  “Pip,” Aunt Emma said as she held the clinic door open for me, Callie, and the Grim, “I should have listened to you. I can’t believe it was a Grim!”

  “He lost his pack,” I said. “I told him we’d take him to the Grim migration spot.”

  Aunt Emma stooped to pat the Grim’s head. “You told him?”

  I nodded. Aunt Emma didn’t say anything for a moment. Then she said, “All right, then. I guess we are going on a road trip!”

  I could tell she still didn’t believe me about the talking part, but that was okay. She was happy, and I was happy, and the Grim and even Callie looked happy. The most important part wasn’t to be believed. The most important part was that after ages of trying, I finally, really had been helpful!

  What’s a little Unicorn stampede here and there, if I can also help save five hundred Fuzzles and a baby Grim?

  I think if I had written the Guide to Magical Creatures, I would have included little sections with personal stories in them. You know, like how Bubbles got rescued by Aunt Emma. How Regent Maximus became brave enough to gallop rather than shiver. How sometimes HobGrackles want to learn ballet. Things like that.

  This sort of seems like a missed opportunity to me, because I think there’s a lot more to everyone than just the facts of their species. I mean, think about how different the stampeding Unicorns were from Regent Maximus! If there were personal stories in the Guide, readers would see that there’s more to everyone than their average height, weight, temperament, and gestation period.

  If I ever get to meet Jeffrey Higgleston, I’ll tell him my idea and see what he thinks.

  Anyway, if I was putting personal stories in the Guide, I’d include the one about the baby Grim and the Fuzzles. I’d talk about how Fuzzles aren’t just pests, and are smarter than they look, and that baby Grims—just like baby anything elses—get scared when they’re lost. I’d talk about us rescuing him and all that, but my favorite part of the story is the end.

  We got to take the Grim back to his family ourselves! The American Academy of Magical Beasts offered to send someone down to get him, especially seeing how busy the clinic was. And for a few hours, it seemed like that was going to be the way it ended. It was okay, but I was a little disappointed. I had really, really wanted to be the one to bring the Grim back to the colony. What if he got scared in the crate on the way back? Who would tell him it was okay?

  “But I can’t leave the clinic,” Aunt Emma said. “What if someone needs me?”

  In the end, it was Callie who saved the day. By accident.

  “Remember that favor you promised me?” she asked. “I want to use it. To go here.”

  She punched her finger right on a flyer for Star Lady: The Musical, which happened to be playing in Little Rover, North Carolina. Which happened to be just a few hours away from the Grim colony.

  “That’s a coincidence,” Callie told me. “Don’t look at me like that, Pip.”

  So we all piled into the car—Tomas included—and spent a whole day driving up there. Callie picked the music (Broadway’s Greatest Hits of Fall 1997), and Tomas picked the food (it turns out Grims love french fries, but they give Tomas hives), and Aunt Emma quizzed me on animal facts.

  It was the best day ever.

  Once we got to the mountains of North Carolina, Aunt Emma pulled out the directions to the colony. We left the car behind and hiked up into the forest. Aunt Emma had her camera at the ready to document the reunion for the Academy.

  “The directions aren’t very specific,” she apologized as
we circled the forest. The trees around us were close together, and there were rocks everywhere thrown between them. Boulders, really. But not a Grim in sight.

  The baby Grim made a little whimpering noise, and I rubbed his ears comfortingly. “I’m sure they’re here somewhere.”

  “Definitely,” Aunt Emma said, not realizing I was talking to the Grim. “Still—”

  “Pip,” squeaked Tomas. “Hold me!”

  I grabbed him as he floated into the air. Aunt Emma lifted her eyebrows. Callie glared.

  “Didn’t you take your allergy medicine?” I asked.

  “Of course I did!”

  “Is it wearing off?” Aunt Emma asked. “I can’t imagine it’d wear off so suddenly. I mean, if there were more Grims around maybe I’d understand—”

  “Mom!” the baby Grim yelped. “Dad!”

  He started running toward the rocks, still shouting. “Aunt! Uncle! Other aunt! Other uncle! Brother! Brother! Brother! Brother! Brother! Brother …”

  Grims have large families.

  He kept shouting to all of them as the rocks suddenly came alive. Well, not literally. But the other Grims had been lying on and around them, and when they saw the baby Grim galumphing toward them, they leaped up and galloped to meet him. We hadn’t even noticed them. They blended in perfectly!

  (I wrote a note on my hand about the excellent rock camouflage, since I clearly needed to add it to the Guide.)

  They were all shouting and barking back and forth so loudly that I couldn’t make out individual words. But I could make out my little baby Grim snuggling up against his parents, with his siblings all rolling around him gladly.

  “Touching,” Callie said. She looked at her watch. “Now can we go see the show?”

  Lowering her camera, Aunt Emma wiped a tear away from her eye. “Of course.”

  Tomas muttered down at me, “I think this was a pretty good show already.”

  I grinned. It certainly was.

  JACKSON PEARCE and MAGGIE STIEFVATER first met online through their shared love of reading, writing, and adorable animal photos. They have since become good friends and, despite living in different states, talk daily (to plan mischief) and visit each other often (to execute mischief).

  With the Pip Bartlett series, they decided to join forces to tell the sort of story they wanted to read: one with clever kids, plenty of magic, and as many animals as they could fit onto the page. Maggie’s favorite magical creature in the Pip series is the Scottish Bog Wallow; Jackson’s is the Flowerbeast. This is their first collaboration.

  Text copyright © 2015 by Jackson Pearce and Maggie Stiefvater

  Illustrations © 2015 by Maggie Stiefvater

  All rights reserved. Published by Scholastic Press, an imprint of Scholastic Inc., Publishers since 1920. SCHOLASTIC, SCHOLASTIC PRESS, and associated logos are trademarks and/or registered trademarks of Scholastic Inc.

  The publisher does not have any control over and does not assume any responsibility for author or third-party websites or their content.

  This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are either the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

  Library of Congress Control Number: 2014957884

  First edition, May 2015

  Cover art © 2015 by Maggie Stiefvater

  Cover design by Christopher Stengel

  e-ISBN 978-0-545-70928-6

  All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. No part of this publication may be reproduced, transmitted, downloaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereafter invented, without the express written permission of the publisher. For information regarding permission, write to Scholastic Inc., Attention: Permissions Department, 557 Broadway, New York, NY 10012.