by Josh Lieb
“He saved me,” said Brutilda, with her eyes back on the princess. “He saved me when the whole world had turned its back.”
There was a long silence.
“Your conversation sparkles as always, my silky cow,” said Parsifur before turning to Joey. “We should sleep while we can.”
“You sleep. I’ll stand watch,” said Brutilda.
“Of course you will,” said Parsifur, “I wasn’t talking to you. Hee-hee-hee.”
Joey did feel tired. He curled up on the ground, but guilt soon began to gnaw at him. “Are you sure it’s okay to rest?”
“Relax, little savior,” said Parsifur. “Brutilda will wake us up if we get an unexpected visitor.”
“Maybe . . .” said a very deep voice. “Or maybe the unexpected visitor will wake you up himself.”
Joey jumped to his paws and looked to see who was talking. Somehow a rat had snuck up on them. And that seemed impossible because this rat was enormous—nearly the size of Brutilda, but all rat. His fur was pitch-black and stuck out in sharp, jagged spikes that made him look even bigger. Long white fangs curved down from his upper jaw. Joey had seen fangs like that before. In drawings of saber-toothed tigers.
The colossal rat squatted in the entrance to the duct they were hiding in, nearly blocking the whole thing. Joey realized with a shiver that this meant the big rat was squatting in the exit to the duct, too. Their only way out was through this rat.
THE BIG BLACK RAT looked as solid as a wall. More solid. Walls didn’t have fangs or claws.
“Now how,” asked Parsifur, acting very cool indeed, “did you get past the cats?”
“I have a way with cats,” said the giant rat.
Brutilda moved carefully forward, putting her body between the visitor and the princess. “If you’re looking for a place to sleep, keep moving. This den is occupied.”
The giant shook his massive head. “I’m not looking for a place to sleep. I’m looking for you.”
“I see,” said Brutilda, as she pulled her massive, long sword from her back.
Parsifur stepped forward so that he stood side by side with Brutilda. “We’re not in the mood for guests at the moment. It might be safest for all parties,” he said, drawing his paper-clip sword from his side, “especially you, for you to move on.”
The giant didn’t even blink. Compared to his bulk, Parsifur’s sword might as well have been a hair plucked from an anemic flea. “Don’t pick a fight you can’t win,” he said. He didn’t say it meanly. It was just a statement of fact.
Parsifur’s merry eyes darted to the sleeping princess. “Oh, this is a fight I have to win. And don’t worry, I will. I always do. Hee-hee-hee.”
The giant rat looked at Parsifur for a second, then leaned backward a little and started shaking. A low rumbling noise bounced off the aluminum walls of the duct like rolling thunder. It took Joey a second to figure out what it was: laughter. The giant rat was laughing back at Sir Parsifur, and his big laugh was completely drowning out Parsifur’s brave squeak. The little white rat’s smile suddenly seemed a little forced.
Joey looked again at Princess Yislene, who still lay sleeping, completely defenseless. He thought of the Squagician he had to find in order to get changed back. And he thought of Mom, waiting for him to get home. He knew what he had to do, though he could barely believe he was going to do it. He pulled out Ratscalibur—it felt cool in his clammy hand—and stepped forward to join Parsifur and Brutilda. “We don’t want any trouble,” said Joey. “But we’re not afraid to fight, either. If this is your home, I’m sorry. We’ll be gone tomorrow. But for now, we’re staying here,” he said, holding Ratscalibur high, “whether you like it or not.”
The giant stopped laughing and took a step forward. Then another. He was like a tank with arms and legs. Joey could see the rat’s muscles rippling under his coarse fur. He seemed completely unafraid of Joey and Brutilda and Parsifur. He opened his coal-black eyes wide, stuck his head forward, and stared Joey straight in the face.
“Now, honcho,” said the big rat. “Is that any way to greet your favorite uncle?”
IT TOOK JOEY a second to figure out what was happening. It took him another second to believe it was true. “Uncle Patrick?” he said at last.
The giant rat laughed again and held out his arms for a hug.
Joey rushed forward, and he suddenly found himself wrapped up in the Patrick-Rat’s strong arms. The fur that had looked so spiky and scary was warm and soft. It even kind of smelled like Uncle Patrick, too: like stale beer and sweat. Which smelled just about right for a giant rat.
Joey pulled himself free and looked at Parsifur and Brutilda. They were staring at Joey like he had just chewed off his own paw. “Sir Parsifur? Brutilda? This is my Uncle Patrick.”
Brutilda recovered her senses and sniffed, “Another High-Realmer? This kingdom has truly fallen on dark days.” But Parsifur just giggled, like usual.
Joey was very happy to see his uncle but very confused to see him as a rat. “But . . . but how?”
Patrick chuckled. “Your friend Gondorff was not as dead as you probably thought.”
Parsifur surged forward: “Gondorff lives? Is it true?”
Patrick stopped chuckling. “No. I’m sorry . . . no. He woke up just long enough to tell me what he had done to Joey. So I asked him to turn me into a rat, too, because . . .” Uncle Patrick scratched the fur behind Joey’s ears, “Well, because I kind of like Joey and want to make sure he’s safe. And so Gondorff changed me, and I’m grateful. But the effort was too much for him. He’s dead now.”
“But are you sure . . . ?”
“I checked,” said Patrick. Everyone was silent for a little while. It felt kind of cruel to be given the hope that Gondorff might be alive, just to find out he was really dead, after all.
At least Joey wasn’t alone here anymore. So he started talking. He started telling Uncle Patrick everything. It felt good to tell someone about all the crazy things he’d been doing . . . someone who would understand just how crazy these things were. Joey talked fast, nonstop, barely taking a breath. The words just spilled out of him. Uncle Patrick didn’t even try to interrupt or ask a question. But when Joey was finally done, Uncle Patrick gave him a serious look and said, “That’s amazing, Joey. But I think there is probably something you want to ask me.”
Joey realized that there was something he wanted to ask Uncle Patrick. But something he was scared to ask, too. He didn’t want to know the answer. That’s why he’d been talking so much, so fast . . . so he wouldn’t have to ask the question. Now he was all out of words, and the question was the only thing left to say:
“How’s Mom?”
MOM SAT ON the couch. She had her cell phone in her lap and the landline on the table next to her. There was no noise in the apartment except for the sound of street traffic outside. She didn’t have the TV or the radio on. She didn’t want there to be any noise, in case one of the telephones started to ring.
But they didn’t ring. Mom wasn’t crying, because she never did that. But she was breathing very slowly, in and out, in and out.
She was all alone. She didn’t know anyone in the city except for Patrick. And now Patrick was missing, too.
The police had left an hour ago. They had dusted for fingerprints and examined the bars on Joey’s window. But there really wasn’t much they could do. They promised her they would call as soon as they found out anything. Mom could see in their eyes that they thought that Joey must be with Patrick. Maybe they had gone to a movie or something and just forgot to tell her.
Joey must be with Patrick, thought Mom. But she didn’t really believe it. Why would either of them, Joey or Patrick, just disappear like that?
Mom caught a look at herself in a mirror. Her red hair was clumped like a crazy, curly nest on top of her head. It’s what happened when she didn’t brush h
er hair. She looked like a crazy person.
So Mom stood up and decided that she wouldn’t be crazy anymore. She went into the bathroom and brushed her hair. Then she put on some clean clothing and did the dishes. She decided to make some coffee. That was a normal thing for her to do. Then she remembered that the coffee maker was on the floor in Joey’s room.
She went to get it. She walked quickly so she wouldn’t think about where she was going . . . but when she bent down to pick up the coffee pot, her eyes landed briefly on the hamster cage next to Joey’s bed. The rat was still in there.
Mom walked over to the cage. The gray rat was curled up dead in the corner. She shook the cage, but the rat didn’t move. She looked closely; the rat wasn’t breathing. She pulled the rat out of the cage, and it was cold in her hands. It was dead, dead, dead.
For some reason that made her sadder than almost anything, she knew she had to get the rat out of her house, immediately. So she carried it by the tail, out the door, and down the hallway, with all the neighbors staring at her. She went to the garbage can that stood on the sidewalk outside her window, lifted the lid, and dropped the rat. Her tears fell like fat raindrops onto its dull gray fur. Then she put the lid back on, made herself stop crying, and went back into the apartment to wait by the phone.
But where was the phone? She’d left it somewhere. . . .
In a panic, she searched the living room, the kitchen, under the sofa cushions. Then she went into Joey’s room. There it was, on the bedside table, next to the hamster cage.
It was only after she’d picked up the phone that she saw the message, scratched in tiny letters in the dust on the tabletop.
i m bringin him bak
There were paw prints leading away from it.
PARSIFUR WANTED to go back to traveling on rooftops—it was faster than walking on the sidewalk—but Brutilda said no. It was too dangerous on the rooftops. It was too easy for the BlackClaws to attack them. And keeping the princess safe was Brutilda’s primary goal.
Not that walking on the sidewalk was entirely safe, either. Especially when the sidewalk was crowded with people. The cats walked single file, twisting around the legs of the pedestrians like a long, furry snake. Pants legs and bare legs and skirts towered over them. Sometimes it even seemed like some of the people saw them—usually a drunk, or a little kid (maybe they could see through the -agic?)—but nobody else ever paid any attention.
Every now and then someone would accidentally step on one of the cats’ tails, and whoever was riding that cat would have to hang on for dear life as the cat leaped like a hissing rocket. But Joey didn’t mind any of it so much now that Uncle Patrick was riding right behind him. Joey hoped Squamish didn’t mind carrying two rats now instead of one (especially since one of them was as big as Patrick), but the black cat never complained.
Parsifur said they’d make it to Squirrelin’s lair by the afternoon if they made good time. Joey hoped they did. Not even for himself so much as for Mom. Uncle Patrick had said she was already pretty upset, but with both him and Patrick gone, she must have been going crazy. He was thinking about her when he felt a tap on his shoulder.
“Are you going to eat that?” asked the princess.
“Huh?” said Joey, surprised to see that she was riding alongside him.
“That,” she said, pointing to a pizza crust Joey had tucked into his belt. “Are you done with it?” She’d slept all night without moving, like she was in a coma. But when she woke up she’d been full of energy and starving. She’d been eating ever since.
Joey had been saving the crust for later—they’d had breakfast in the pizza place’s dumpster—but he knew better than to say no to a princess. “Oh, I’d forgotten it was there,” he said, and handed it to her.
Yislene smiled. “You’re a terrible liar, but I’m much too hungry to care. Ragic makes me absolutely famished.” She smacked her mouth. “Mmm, there’s a cockroach leg stuck to the cheese. Bonus!”
Joey was a little confused by Yislene. At first he’d been scared of her because she was a princess. And she could cast spells. But now, watching her wolf down cockroach parts like a kid eating tacos, he didn’t know what to think. She seemed more like someone he’d be friends with at school than a princess.
Uncle Patrick seemed to be thinking the same thing as he watched her eat. “Does Ragic have that effect on all Ragicians?”
“Yes,” said Yislene, through a mouth full of food. “But it’s worse for me because I’m so young. Ragic is fueled by a rat’s primary attribute: energy. It burns the energy right out of us, and the only way to refuel is to eat.”
“And this is the way all . . . er . . . -agic works?” asked Patrick.
Yislene shook her head to say no, and swallowed her food. “Every kind of animal has a different primary attribute. So all their -agics have different fuels. For instance, the primary attribute of dogs is loyalty. So Dagic is fueled by loyalty.”
That didn’t make sense to Joey. “So, a . . . Dogician burns the loyalty out of himself when he casts a spell?”
“It’s not as simple as that,” said Yislene. “Dagic actually intensifies the loyalty in a Dogician. The most loyal dogs in the world are all powerful Dogicians.”
“Don’t you mean dalmatians?” asked Uncle Patrick.
“I don’t know what that is,” said Yislene.
“Just a dumb joke,” said Uncle Patrick, weakly.
“Then why did you say it?” asked Yislene. But before Patrick could answer, she moved on with the conversation. “-Agic has a different effect on every species that works it. No other -agicians get as tired as we rats do, but the primary attribute of bats is hunger, so Bagicians tend to get equally hungry. . . .”
“Well, they’re sort of like flying rats,” said Uncle Patrick.
“They like to think so,” sniffed Sir Parsifur, who’d snuck up on the conversation. “It seems to me they’re more like featherless pigeons.”
The cats climbed over a low stone wall, and the questers found themselves surrounded by tall trees covered with brown-and-orange leaves. They’d reached the park.
“Ah,” said Sir Parsifur, “we’ve made good time. Not much longer to ride now.”
Arriving at the park reminded Joey of where they were going and made him wonder something. “What’s the primary attribute of squirrels?”
“Greed,” said Parsifur. “All squirrels are greedy. Nothing but nuts on the brain. But Squagic makes them almost unbearable. Powerful Squagicians . . . fie! Holing up in their hollow trees, surrounded by decades’ worth of acorns. More than they could eat in a hundred lifetimes. And always greedy for more. Lunatics, the whole lot of ’em.”
“And yet,” said Uncle Patrick, “we are at this moment on a quest to see the most powerful Squagician of them all.”
“You’ll note,” said Parsifur with a wink, “that he’s not coming to us to volunteer his services.”
Brutilda’s low voice rolled back from the front of the line. “He’ll help us . . . when he hears what Salaman’s done to Gondorff.”
Patrick whispered to Joey, “I didn’t know she was listening.”
“I have ears,” said Brutilda.
Joey decided to change the subject. “Do all animals do -agic?”
“Most ones with brains do,” said Yislene. “Not birds or lizards, that I know of. Too dumb.”
“What about cats?” said Patrick.
“Too smart,” said Parsifur. Chequers purred.
Joey was annoyed. “Can’t you ever give a straight answer?”
Parsifur winked. “As soon as you start asking straight questions.”
The princess took pity on Joey. “There isn’t much of a straight answer to give. Most intelligent animals have an -agic, some don’t—”
“Possums,” interjected Brutilda, giving an example.
“Just as m
ost intelligent animals speak,” Yislene continued, “and some don’t. Some animals talk, some don’t.”
Uncle Patrick looked thoughtful. “What about people?” he asked. “Why don’t we see people doing real Magic all the time?”
“You do,” said the princess. “You probably see it every day. You just don’t recognize it as such—and neither do they.”
“Humans have never mastered their -agic properly,” agreed Parsifur.
“When do we do Magic?”
“Gondorff explained this to me once,” said Yislene. “He’d made a study of primitive -agics. Humans do Magic, say . . . when you think you are about to drown, but you somehow get the strength to swim to the surface. Or you bump into a friend just when you need a friend the most. Or you’ve lost something that you desperately need, and then you find it . . . in a place where you’ve already looked a thousand times.”
“I’ve done that,” admitted Uncle Patrick.
“Yes,” said Yislene, “I suspect it’s strong in your family. -Agic and heroic powers run intertwined through the blood. For Joey to be the great hero he is, his parents must surely be great Magicians or heroes, or both.”
Joey felt less like a hero than ever before. You were a hero because your parents were Magicians or heroes? Well, he hadn’t seen much Magic growing up, that’s for sure.
Mom was definitely a hero, but not in the way Yislene meant. And though Mom never talked about Joey’s dad, from the little hints that Uncle Patrick dropped, he sounded anything but heroic. Joey shared a look with Uncle Patrick, who shook his head; he was clearly thinking the same thing.
Patrick cleared his throat and changed the subject. “But what powers Magic? What’s our primary attribute?”
“Oh,” said Yislene, “Well . . . please don’t be offended by this. A ‘primary attribute’ isn’t the only thing that a species has, it’s just something that a species has more of than other animals.”
