Dead Boy

by Laurel Gale

  “I’m glad to hear that. How’s school?”

  “Okay,” Melody said, looking up at the ceiling. She shuddered.

  “Is there something wrong with the food? You’re not a vegetarian, are you? Crow didn’t mention anything. He should have told me if you were a vegetarian.”

  “Huh? No. It’s good.” She ate half her food in several large bites. “Delicious.”

  They ate in silence, and everything seemed fine until Melody jumped up from her seat. A small scream escaped her lips, and she threw her glass of water at the wall. The glass shattered into wet pieces.

  “I don’t know how your father raises you,” Mrs. Darlingson said. “But around here, we refrain from breaking things if we can help it.”

  “Sorry. I saw—I thought I saw—” Melody ran out of the room.

  Crow ran after her. “It’s your wish, isn’t it?”

  She stopped in the middle of the living room, her face streaked with tears. “I doused myself with this mixture,” she said, gesturing to the oily stuff that covered her skin and hair. “It repels magic, but not enough—things still come near me; they just avoid touching me. And it makes me look ridiculous—like I needed to give people at school another reason to laugh at me!”

  Crow handed her a napkin, and she used it to wipe away her tears.

  “I thought it would be great,” she continued, “seeing magic everywhere, immediately understanding whatever I see. It should be wonderful, but it’s not. There are creatures everywhere: sprites, elves, goblins, ogres, trolls, bugbears, things made completely out of fire. And wormholes, too. Entire dimensions are hidden all around us. And I’ve learned something. Magical creatures stay hidden for a reason. They don’t like being seen. Imps—they’re like fairies but even worse—have started following me around at school just because they know it bothers me. They keep making faces and rude gestures and threatening to cause trouble—knock things over, pinch people, stuff like that—so it looks like I did it. I can’t concentrate on anything. I hate it.”

  “It was a test,” Crow said. “The wish wasn’t a reward. It was the final test. Selfish wishes always go wrong.” He picked a maggot out of his ear. “That’s why I’m the way I am.”

  “But your parents’ wish wasn’t selfish. They did it for you!”

  “They did it for themselves, too, because they were sad. And there was another wish before that.” He told her what his father had told him about his death.

  Fresh tears pooled in her eyes. “It isn’t fair. The Meera doesn’t have the right to judge people like this.”

  “No, it doesn’t. Do you think we could stop it?” He didn’t know how, but they had to do something.

  “You want to face the Meera again?” She wiped her tears away, looking so hopeful that Crow didn’t have the heart to tell her that confronting the Meera was the last thing he wanted to do.

  Crow cleaned up the shattered glass while Mrs. Darlingson washed the dishes.

  “Can she come over for dinner again next week?” he asked.

  Mrs. Darlingson frowned. “I don’t know if I have enough glassware to have her over every week. Why don’t we discuss this later? You wanted to watch that dinosaur documentary tonight, didn’t you? I think it’s starting soon.”

  To her, later meant never. Worrying that his situation might not change that much after all, Crow trudged into the living room. Sure, Melody had come over for dinner, and that had been great, aside from the glass breaking and the crying. But it had also been a onetime event. Things were already returning to normal. He was back to being a prisoner in his own home, and now it felt even lonelier than before.

  He watched the dinosaur documentary, though he didn’t enjoy it as much as he once would have. Maybe he was getting too old for dinosaurs. He’d loved them when he was little, but that had been years ago. Did other kids his age still like them, or had they moved on—and if so, to what?

  Crow’s parents had wished for him to have the chance to grow up. He was beginning to realize that nobody—dead or alive—could do that all alone.

  —

  Tuesday morning, Crow studied by his window, where he could watch Melody waiting for the bus. Luke was there as well, but the two didn’t talk much. Travis, Grace, and Hannah were not there. Melody had said they’d missed school on Monday, too, though she hadn’t said why.

  Crow rushed through his schoolwork—twenty algebra problems, an essay on the Qin dynasty of China, a chemistry experiment that involved measuring endothermic reactions, and the last thirty pages of Gulliver’s Travels—in order to make sure he was done by the time Melody got back from school. She’d emailed him to say she’d be coming over again, if that was okay, which of course it was. With Crow, anyway. He hadn’t mentioned it to his mother.

  When the doorbell rang, Mrs. Darlingson frowned and sighed and shooed Crow into the shadows before answering the door.

  “Oh, Melody, if you’re here to apologize about the broken glass, there’s really no need.”

  “Sorry about that.” She waved to Crow. “Hi.”

  Crow stepped out of the shadows. “Hi, Melody. Uh, Mom, we’re going outside.” He raced to the backyard, with Melody close behind, before Mrs. Darlingson could stop them. They sat down on the ground. “Do you think you could use magic to help me? You know, make me alive, or at least seem more alive.”

  “No. Sorry. That was one of the first things I thought of, but there really isn’t anything I can do. At least, not that I can find. I haven’t had any luck figuring out what happened to my mom, either. I don’t actually understand magic until I see it with my own eyes, and that usually only happens when something magical is messing with me.” She threw a rock at the fence; Crow wasn’t sure whether she was throwing it randomly or aiming at some magical nuisance. “This wish is awful.”

  “Is it getting any better?”

  “No.” She looked even worse than she had the day before, her eyes swollen and bloodshot. “I haven’t been able to sleep.”

  “Can you tell me about what you see?” Crow asked. Maybe if he understood more, he’d be in a better position to help.

  “Well, I always suspected that we were surrounded by magic, but there’s even more of it than I thought. It doesn’t come from here, though. On its own, this world doesn’t have a lick of magic.” She pushed her finger through the magic-free dirt. “There are other worlds, magical universes, and sometimes a passageway opens up between them, like when lightning strikes a place where the separation of the universes is weak.”

  “Is that where the Meera comes from? A magical universe?” If so, it didn’t seem like a place Crow would ever want to visit—an entire world filled with monsters like the Meera.

  Melody frowned. “No, the Meera is different. It was created. You know that collar around its neck? It’s dragon bone, not metal, and the inscriptions are in the fairy language. Someone put that on a regular animal to turn it into a shape-shifting chimera. It’s a bunch of animals all combined, including magical ones, which is why it’s so powerful.”

  “Why would anyone want to do that?”

  “I’m not sure. Maybe just to see if it could be done. Maybe they thought they could control the monster. Or maybe—Oh! Can we move? There’s an earth spirit underneath us, and I think we’re annoying her. If we don’t move, she’ll probably start biting us. It happens a lot, although most people mistake the bites for bug bites.”

  Crow looked around but didn’t see anything. He followed Melody to the other side of the yard, though.

  When they were seated again, Melody continued. “It’s horrible, but some people hunt creatures for their magical parts. Unicorn horns, dragon tears, manticore venom, that sort of thing. See, humans don’t have any magical powers on their own, so it’s the only way they can manage powerful spells.” She winced. “It’s possible someone created the Meera as a way to harvest a bunch of magical ingredients at once. And then, I don’t know, I guess the Meera escaped.”

  That would explain
the Meera’s hatred of humans. It was pretty unfair, though. Crow and Melody had never tried to hunt a unicorn for its horn. “How do you know all this?”

  “It’s kind of hard to explain. After the wish, when I looked at the Meera’s collar, I just saw it. I understood it. It’s not as great as I’d thought, though. For one thing, being able to understand magic isn’t that useful. I can’t actually control it. Although I did figure out how to lure a brownie to my room.” She saw the confused look on Crow’s face and smiled. “The elf, not the dessert. Brownies are helpful elves that’ll do anything for honey. As long as I keep feeding it, I’ll never need to clean my room again. I think I might even be able to get it to do my homework. It answered some of my questions about things I couldn’t see, too.”

  “That sounds great! See, it’s not so bad. And what about that potion you made?”

  She took the vial of the oily concoction out of her pocket. “You mean this? Some stuff in our world repels magic. I mixed together as much as I could get my hands on—castor oil, salt, pepper, iron from iron supplements, and basil—but it’s still pretty weak. Magical creatures don’t like to touch it because it weakens their magic, but it doesn’t stop them from getting close. They’re everywhere!” She buried her face in her hands and started sobbing. “It’s awful. I can’t get a break from them at all.”

  Crow patted her gently on her back, careful not to touch any part of her shirt that was obviously coated in oil. The mixture was supposed to repel magic. What if it repelled the magic keeping him alive?

  Melody sniffled. She had wanted to see magic so desperately. Why, then, did seeing a little more than she had anticipated make her so miserable? The earth spirits and imps couldn’t be that bad, and the brownie sounded wonderful. Crow thought she should be happy, but he also knew why she couldn’t be.

  The Meera punished selfish desires like hers. It had found a way to twist her wish. And if it had the power to alter her mind so that she could understand magic, surely it had the power to make her tormented by it, too.

  He’d wanted to help her, but he didn’t see how he could undo the curse, especially if humans couldn’t wield magic. The best he could do was try to cheer her up. “Some of what you see must be neat, though, like the brownie. Can you show me anything?”

  She removed her face from her hands and wiped her tears away. “You won’t be able to see most things.”

  “Most things? So there are some things I can see?”

  She pressed her lips together as she thought. “Well, there’s that earth elemental over there. You can’t see her directly, but I might get her to do something you can see.” Melody stood up and began gathering rocks, which wasn’t too hard since the yard contained little else. She took the collection to where they had been sitting and stacked one rock on top of the other. “Turn around now. If you’re looking, she won’t do it.”

  Crow wasn’t sure what the earth elemental was supposed to do, but he followed Melody’s instructions and turned around.

  “Okay, now look.”

  Crow looked. Instead of a stack of two rocks, there was a stack of three. Melody added a fourth rock, and after they turned around for a few moments again, they found that a fifth rock had been added.

  “Earth elementals love stacking rocks,” Melody explained. “In some areas, there are stacks like this everywhere. That means there are a lot of elementals around.”

  Crow smiled as widely as his dead muscles would allow. “That’s really cool! See, your wish isn’t all bad.”

  Melody started to smile, too. Then she screamed.

  “What’s wrong?” Crow asked.

  “There are gnomes here. The earth elemental is attracting them.”

  Crow searched the yard, but of course he couldn’t spot them. “Are gnomes dangerous?”

  “Not if you ignore them. But how can I ignore them when I can see them?” She took out her vial and dabbed herself with more of the magic-repelling oil.

  Melody shrieked as something small and thin struck her shoulder. To Crow, it seemed to have come from nowhere. He plucked it from Melody’s shirt. It looked like a cactus needle. “Did the gnomes do that?”

  Melody nodded as another one hit her leg. “They use needles and thorns as darts. Don’t look over there or they’ll think you can see them, too. They don’t like being seen.” More cactus needles rained down on her. “I’m sorry. I can’t stop them. I have to go.”

  —

  When the doorbell rang the following afternoon, Mrs. Darlingson made only a cursory attempt to hide Crow before answering the door. “Hello, Melody.” She looked at the boy accompanying Melody. “Who are you?”

  “Luke.”

  “Luke Ebsworth?” Her face soured, like the name left a bad taste in her mouth. “What are you doing here?”

  Crow was wondering the same thing. Melody wasn’t allowed to hang out with Luke anymore, and even though she probably wouldn’t get caught while her father was still at work, she must have had a pretty good reason to take the risk.

  “We need to talk to Crow,” Melody said. She stepped inside, pushing past Mrs. Darlingson. Because she was holding on to Luke’s sleeve, he came in, too.

  “He’s busy,” Mrs. Darlingson said, her eyes tracking Luke. “Melody, why don’t you come over later?”

  Crow stepped between his mother and his guests. “It’s okay. I’m not busy.” Quickly so his mother wouldn’t have time to protest, he led them to the backyard.

  Melody still had Luke by the shirt, practically dragging him the entire way. “Tell Crow what you told me.”

  He jerked his arm to free himself from Melody’s grip. “The monster might’ve gone back for Travis, Grace, and Hannah on Halloween night. The three of them might still be stuck in the other glass cases.”

  “They might be? What do you mean? What makes you think that?” Crow asked.

  Luke was silent until Melody punched his shoulder. “Well, when I was in the case, I couldn’t move, but I could still see and hear what was going on. I kind of saw the monster throw them into the other cases and cover them with those black sheets.”

  The words took a while to settle in Crow’s mind. The Meera had been holding Luke’s friends captive for almost four days, and Luke had known the entire time. “Why didn’t you tell us immediately?”

  Luke opened his mouth but shut it again without saying anything. The smugness disappeared from his face. He looked down at his feet, and when he finally spoke, his voice came out soft and uncertain. “I wanted to, but that monster was howling, and I—I was—I was scared.”

  So much so that he deserted his friends? Friends he didn’t even realize he was lucky to have? Crow wanted to yell at Luke, but he stopped himself. The Meera was the enemy here. And the howling had been pretty horrible.

  Crow patted Luke’s arm. “It’s okay. Everyone gets scared sometimes.”

  “Some people more than others,” Melody mumbled.

  Luke shook Crow’s hand—and the maggots that went with it—away. “I thought the monster would let them go, but it’s been a couple of days, and nobody’s seen them. People keep asking me where they are, and I think they know I’m lying when I say I don’t know.”

  “Their parents have put up signs all around the neighborhood, and the police were at school asking questions today,” Melody said.

  Crow hadn’t heard anything, but he hadn’t been watching the news recently. He’d been too busy rushing through his homework so he’d have time to spend with Melody.

  “We need to tell someone,” Luke said. “Not about that monster. Nobody would believe that. But I can tell my dad there’s somebody living under the park, some creep who took them. My dad can organize a rescue party.”

  “Your dad already knows about the monster,” Crow said.

  Luke looked confused. “How?”

  “It doesn’t matter,” Melody said. “He still won’t know how to handle the Meera. It’s powerful. If it sees a bunch of men—police with weapons—coming down
into its territory, it’ll attack. It’ll win.”

  “So what do you want to do?” Crow asked.

  “We need to go back.” She didn’t look any better than she had the night before. Her eyes were still red and puffy, her skin ashen. Things nobody else could see still distracted her. “We can rescue them. And we can stop the Meera once and for all. I think.”

  After sitting down carefully to pick a place uninhabited by elementals or gnomes, she told Crow and Luke her plan.

  —

  When Melody finished, Crow and Luke sat in silence.

  The silence stretched on a little too long, but Crow couldn’t think of what to say.

  “What do you think?” Melody asked.

  “It’s risky.”

  “But it’ll work. We’ll both get what we want, for real this time. Think of what that will mean for you. And we can’t just leave Travis, Grace, and Hannah there, can we? I think we should do it. Now. I can grab the supplies on the way.”

  “I’m in,” Luke said. “They’re my friends.”

  Crow glanced at the kitchen window, where Mrs. Darlingson watched him while pretending to do the dishes. “I’m in, too. But not yet. I need to do something first. We can meet at the park in an hour.” He hesitated. “Melody, maybe you could take a nap in the meantime.”

  “Doubtful. I used to think that the whole monster-under-the-bed thing was a myth, but it’s actually true, you know. They don’t want to hurt anyone—they just feed off people’s dreams—but having one of those things there, right under me, is still creepy.” She shuddered. “I don’t think I’ll ever sleep again. Not unless we pull this off.”

  After Melody and Luke left, Crow went inside. He needed to tell his mother something, but he hadn’t decided what. He ended up staring at her awkwardly.

  She sighed. “I know things have been difficult for you ever since—ever since—well, you know.” She left the mug she’d been washing for the last fifteen minutes in the sink, and they sat down at the table. “I’m glad that Melody’s coming over.”