The Key

by Michael Grant

  When at last the golem was completed and stood on his own two muddy feet, Grimluk smiled a toothless smile. “All right, then.”

  The golem had watched, mystified but also hopeful, as the elderly Magnifica, the sole surviving member of the first Magnificent Twelve, wrote two words on a slip of parchment.

  The words were “Be Mack.”

  “I don’t understand,” the golem said.

  “You will,” Grimluk said. “Open your mouth and stick out your tongue.”

  “What’s a mouth?”

  Grimluk helped him understand that. Then he placed the scroll on the golem’s tongue.

  What magic then!

  The transformation was miraculous. The creature of mud and twigs suddenly had skin. He had eyes with whites and colored irises. He had hair. Fingernails.

  Now, granted, Grimluk had sort of glossed over the internal organs—the golem would have to dig some of those out himself—but the result was a creature that looked very much like Mack MacAvoy.

  So much like Mack that Mack’s best friends—those who knew him really well—were only a little suspicious. And his parents never guessed at all.

  And then, he had met Mack face-to-face. A real human boy. The boy he was to be for however long it took Mack to save the world.

  That had been kind of wonderful, meeting Mack.

  But right now, here, today, he had no time for more nostalgia. He had to be a big boy now.

  The question was: just how big?

  He looked down and noticed that the mud-passing-as-flesh was oozing out over the tops of his shoes. And his jeans were already tight.

  Yep: time to be a big boy.

  * * *

  Four

  * * *

  William Blisterthöng MacGuffin’s castle turned out to be right there in the open atop a sheer outcropping, less than a quarter mile from Urquhart Castle, which was right beside Loch Ness.

  Frank had chanted a Vargran spell over the Magnifica and Stefan, and the castle had appeared in perfect clarity. Big as life.

  Then the fairies had urged them forward with encouraging words.

  “Wait, you’re not coming with us?” Mack demanded.

  “This could get violent,” Frank pointed out, “and we are peaceable folk.”

  “No fairy has ever—” Connie started in, and Xiao, who was usually very polite, said, “Yeah, right.”

  Over the years rare individuals who possessed just a little of the enlightened puissance had caught vague, fleeting glimpses of the castle. But when they reported this, they were condemned as drunk or crazy. Or as crazy drunks.

  It was even worse for those few who would also report having seen a sort of sea serpent swimming around in Loch Ness. Those people were also derided as drunk or crazy or both, plus they were often compelled to write books and set up websites in a desperate attempt to prove that they were right.

  They were right. But merely writing a book doesn’t prove you’re sane or sober (more the opposite).

  Here’s what the local folk and passersby saw as Mack, Jarrah, Xiao, Stefan, and a nonflowery and rather annoyed Dietmar climbed the incredibly steep face of the hill: nothing. That’s what. Once Mack and the gang had come within a hundred feet of the massive promontory (there’s a word to dazzle your teacher with), they simply slipped from view. A person watching from the road would have seen five kids crossing a field and passing beneath a small stand of stunted trees, and then … nothing.

  And here is what Stefan saw: also nothing. Because although Stefan had many great qualities, like, um … toughness and dangerousness … he did not possess the enlightened puissance. In fact, as far as Stefan could tell, the rest of them were crazy people gazing up at nothing.

  This made it very difficult for Stefan to climb. He could feel the ground under his feet, he could even climb, but it was sketchy work. Try climbing something you can’t see. Go ahead, try. The story can wait.

  See? It’s not easy, is it?

  The climb was mostly over tumbled boulders. At some point back in history, the side of the mountain had crumbled. The other sides were all still nearly vertical cliff. But this side offered some possibilities for ascent.

  So Jarrah held Stefan’s hand and guided him every step of the way with comments like, “Here you go, upsy-daisy, eh?” And, “Come on then, mate, just jump it.” And, “Nah, you won’t fall more than twenty feet, and that’s nothing.”

  “I could fly up there in two seconds,” Xiao muttered. “Stupid treaties. Like I would be any kind of threat to those big, leathery, murderous, fire-breathing western dragons.”

  “Still, it is a sort of law,” Dietmar said. “And we must obey the law.”

  That remark seemed to lessen Xiao’s affection for Dietmar substantially. Xiao could get a very hard look in her eyes and set a very determined jaw when you annoyed her.

  Mack brought up the rear, stepping cautiously and gazing up anxiously every few seconds to see just how little progress they had made. It was also his job as the leader to think of a plan for dealing with MacGuffin once they found him. So far his plan was to ask him very politely if they could have the Key, and would he mind releasing the Begonia clan’s All-Mother.

  He did have one other idea. He yelled to Jarrah, who was at that moment in midair between boulders. “Jarrah, make sure your mom gets you the latest Vargran.”

  “Done,” Jarrah said. She landed like a cat, stood up, pulled out her iPhone, and pointed to it with her free hand. “Nothing new: Mother is on holiday with Dad.” Then she was knocked over by Stefan, who had come to kind of like jumping over invisible boulders. From his point of view he was climbing in midair.

  Vargran was the magical language, long forgotten, and only really useful to those very few who were born with the enlightened puissance. Jarrah’s mother was an archaeologist in Australia, where she had discovered some bits and pieces of Vargran carved into a cave wall inside the massive rock known as Uluru.

  So far they had learned that Vargran had sounds that included a throat-clearing sound (ch), a click, and a sniff, as well as more normal consonants and vowels. And they had learned that Vargran had four basic verb forms: infinitive, past, future, and or else.

  Generally magical spells involved the “or else” tense, which added a ma on the end.

  To date they had used Vargran to make a small sun, to cause blue-cheese-filled Lepercons to grow, and to go shopping at Harrods department store, although they hadn’t really intended that last one.

  The whole experience had not been very satisfying. Which was why they needed the Key. With MacGuffin’s key matched to the earlier piece of the key—the part they’d obtained from the goddess Nott—they would be able to learn a whole lot more Vargran. The language was, after all, their only weapon, and they didn’t have a lot of time left to assemble the rest of the twelve, somehow convince the traitorous Magnifica Valin to switch sides, and stop the Pale Queen. They needed Vargran. And no: there was no app for that.

  About halfway up the mountain they had a lucky break: a stairway, carved into the cliff face. It had once gone all the way down, but when the mountain collapsed, so had the bottom half of the staircase—a fact that made Mack a bit nervous as he climbed his weary way up the narrow, overly tall steps.

  It was a good thing they found the stairs because the sun was setting and casting very long, deep shadows all around them, turning every jagged rock into a monster’s head. (Not literally, that was a simile. Or possibly a metaphor. One of those.)

  The staircase ended in a stone guardhouse. To their immense relief there was a fountain spouting what they fervently hoped was water. It wasn’t warm in Scotland, but it was humid, and they were all sweating and huffing and puffing, so they plopped down on stone benches, cupped water with their hands and drank, and gazed out across the landscape below: the road, Urquhart Castle, and the loch beyond.

  Mack caught Stefan’s eye, and the two of them went to take a look up at MacGuffin’s castle. Darkness was falling f
ast. It was autumn in Scotland, when days are short and nights are long.

  The castle was in perfect repair, not a ruin like Urquhart, which looked as ancient as it was. This castle looked as if it had just been built last week. The stone was clean and lichen-free. The mortar was all fresh. Even the grass below the walls looked green and new-mown.

  Also, the row of skulls used to outline the massive timber door was impeccable. They stood out white against dark stone.

  “Any way we can sneak in?” Mack wondered aloud.

  “I can’t see anything,” Stefan pointed out. “It’s like I’m standing in the air looking at a cloud.”

  “Ah. Right. Well, it’s got high walls, a couple of giant towers, and a massive wooden gate.”

  “Human pyramid?” Stefan said, and for a moment Mack wasn’t entirely sure it was stupid.

  “The walls are too high,” Mack said regretfully. “We need him to open the door. We need a diversion. We need him to come out after some of us while the rest sneak in and find the Key.”

  Then, suddenly, without warning, came a sound so terrible Mack felt as if his blood had frozen solid in his veins.

  Bleeeeeaaaat-skurrrreeeeeeeeee-waaahhhhhh!

  “Oh my God, what is that?” Xiao cried. She had come running. “It sounds as if a goat is being tortured!”

  “It sounds like all the pain in existence since the dawn of time!” Jarrah said.

  “It sounds like the cry of a newborn demon ready to destroy all peace and love!” Dietmar said. “But I believe it is merely a bagpipe.”

  “Oh, yeah,” Mack said. “A bagpipe. I was going to guess that.”

  “So, who is going to be the diversion?” Jarrah asked after Mack described his plan, which wasn’t really much of a plan.

  “You know …,” Mack said, stroking his chin thoughtfully. “Something just occurred to me: maybe the door isn’t locked. I mean, it’s not like he gets many visitors up here. Why would he lock a door no one has come to in a thousand years?”

  So they crept forward in single file with Mack in the lead. The bagpipe did not play again. There was a deep silence everywhere and the stars were beginning to blink on in the dark blue sky overhead.

  The door was about ten feet tall, maybe eight feet wide, and made of wood that looked like it could be two feet thick. It was the kind of door Mack wished he had on his room. Maybe without the skulls grinning down. That was a little too much.

  There wasn’t a handle, really, or a knocker or a bell. So Mack simply pushed on the wood where a handle might have been.

  Instantly the bagpipe screeched, and this time that horrifying sound was joined by a chorus of shrill, high-pitched voices. It sounded like a church choir of toddlers cranked up on soda and Smarties trying to sing along with a howling devil.

  “Interesting doorbell, eh?” Jarrah said. She was acting tough, but the noise had scared them all. All except Stefan, who yelled, “Hey, shut up!”

  The chorus was instantly silenced. The door moved on its own, slowly widening the gap.

  Mack was pretty sure duty required him to be the first one through, but fortunately Stefan pushed ahead. Stefan wasn’t good at fear. He just didn’t seem to get it. Even when he couldn’t see anything but the night sky.

  Mack was right behind him, shoulder to shoulder with Jarrah, with Dietmar and Xiao following closely. They formed a little knot of scared kids.

  The door slammed behind them.

  They found themselves in a dark courtyard. Only the faint starlight revealed tall, crenellated walls and arches, with hard-on-the-feet cobblestones underfoot.

  “Hey! I can see it now,” Stefan said. The spell of invisibility only worked on the exterior of the castle, like a coat of camouflage.

  “Um …,” Mack said.

  Before he could finish his thought (and we’ll never know what it was), a torch burst into wild orange flame. It was about eye level on the wall to their right.

  Then a second torch. Another. Another.

  A line of torches moved from right to left, turned the corner to cross the facing wall, then came around to trace the left wall.

  The torches whipped frantically as though they were in a strong wind, but it was perfectly still in the courtyard.

  In the flickering orange glow they could see quite clearly. Yes, there were tall walls all around. And gloomy arches outlined in gleaming white skulls. Mack noticed—because Mack noticed things—that not all of the skulls were human. There were some that were too small to be human. There were others too large, far too large, and with teeth where teeth had no business being.

  Against the facing wall, flanked on both sides by shadowed arches, a rough-hewn throne sat atop a platform. And on that throne sat a man. He was wearing a skirt. And every one of the Magnifica and Stefan had the identical thought: I hope that dude keeps his legs crossed.

  The man was built as wide as he was tall, but he was still plenty tall. He had extravagant red hair pushing out from beneath a too-small cap. His massive hands gripped the arms of the throne as if he would—and could—rip them right off at any moment.

  He stared with eyes that glittered from deep, torch-cast shadows.

  “I am the MacGuffin,” he announced in a heavily accented speech. “Wha urr ye, ’n’ how have you come ’ere uninvited?”

  The stones seemed to shake when he spoke. Or maybe it was just that Mack shook. Mack was not fond of beards. In fact, he suffered from pogonophobia—an irrational fear of beards, which only distance could keep under control.

  “We’re, um …,” Mack began, before faltering. He glanced aside and happened to see Dietmar. Somehow now Dietmar wasn’t all that interested in taking the lead. “We’re, um, hikers. Is this Urquhart Castle? Because that’s … that’s where we … um …”

  “Urquhart Castle, is it?” MacGuffin demanded, and gnashed his teeth. “Di ah keek lik’ a Durward?”

  “A what?”

  “A Durward!” MacGuffin shouted.

  “What’s a Durward?”

  “Th’ Durwards ur th’ family that runs Urquhart Castle, ye ninny.”

  Dietmar got a crafty look on his face. “Shouldn’t Urquhart Castle be run by a family named Urquhart?”

  “Na, you great eejit!”

  Dietmar did not like being called a “great eejit” so soon after suffering the indignity of being transformed into a sunflower. And, as Mack noticed grudgingly, Dietmar had some spine. The German boy was not a wimp, and he was getting ready to say something forceful to MacGuffin.

  But there was something crazy in MacGuffin’s eyes, which perfectly reflected the light of the torches from under bushy eyebrows, and Dietmar chose to do the wise thing and fall silent.

  MacGuffin leaned forward and glared at Mack. “Ah ken how come yer ’ere. Ye huv come tae steal mah key.”

  “Key?” Mack said disingenuously. “What key?”

  “Dinnae tak’ me fur a gowk. Ye huv th’ enlightened puissance or ye wouldn’t be ’ere. Ah ken th’ Pale Queen rises, wee jimmy. Ah ken wha ’n’ whit yer.”

  Or, in regular English, “Don’t take me for a fool. You have the enlightened puissance or you wouldn’t be here. I know the Pale Queen rises, boy. I know who and what you are.”

  And it was at that heart-stopping moment that Mack’s phone made an eerie sound. The sound of an incoming text message.

  Slowly … slooooowly … cautiously … Mack drew out his iPhone.

  MacGuffin stared at the oblong object in Mack’s hand. Stared at it as if he was seeing a ghost.

  “Whit’s that black magic?” MacGuffin demanded in cringing horror.

  See, that’s the problem with being stuck in an invisible castle for a thousand years: you miss out on a lot of new technology.

  Mack did the thing that really should have saved his life. “This!” he cried, holding up the phone and glancing at the message—which was from the golem, and which said, “Pocket lint is tasty”—“Is the mighty iMagic of … of Appletonia! If you harm me or my fri
ends, I will use it to destroy you!”

  * * *

  Five

  * * *

  MEANWHILE, AT RICHARD GERE MIDDLE SCHOOL10

  Thousands of miles away, Mack’s golem was eating lint from his pocket and growing larger. The lint happened to be mostly blue because he was wearing blue jeans, but there was some white as well. For variety. And it had a lingering flavor of garlic because, while Mack’s mom had washed these jeans after the golem misunderstood the name Hot Pockets and stuffed a microwaved pizza-flavored Hot Pocket into his pocket, some of that flavor had survived.

  When Grimluk tapped Mack to go off and save the world, he gave him the golem to fill in for him at home. The golem now looked exactly like Mack, albeit somewhat muddier, and quite a bit less, um, how to put this gently?

  Um … okay: Mack was a pretty smart guy. His golem? Not as smart. There: it’s been said.

  So the golem attended Mack’s school and took Mack’s classes and wrote Mack’s papers. His latest effort, six pages on the history topic “Maybe Abraham Lincoln Had Mice Living in His Beard,” had consisted entirely of the sentence, “He could have, no one knows,” written in various fonts and in various type sizes. On page four, for example, the font was so large that the entire page just read, “HE COULD HA.”

  It’s a good thing all that stuff about a “permanent record” is just something made up by teachers. Because the golem had caused Mack’s steady B+ average to drop somewhat.

  The only class where the golem was actually outperforming Mack was gym. He was helped by his ability to physically absorb dodgeballs, draw them into his body, unhinge his jaw, and shoot them back out of his mouth at supersonic speed.

  He had an A+ in gym.

  And if there was a dodgeball team choosing sides, the golem was always picked first.

  The only problem the golem had with gym was the showering part. Water had a tendency to wash him away. Imagine mud. Now imagine mud with a sort of coating of fleshlike paint. Now imagine streaming hot water. You can see the problem for yourself. A kid had once caught sight of the golem’s face after a shower, and that kid now lives with his father in another state.