Elliot and the Pixie Plot
Read Elliot and the Pixie Plot Online
Authors: Jennifer A. Nielsen
Tags: #Juvenile Fiction, #Action & Adventure, #General, #Humorous Stories, #Fantasy & Magic
Copyright
Copyright © 2011 by Jennifer A. Nielsen
Cover and internal illustrations © Gideon Kendall
Cover and internal design © 2011 by Sourcebooks, Inc.
Series design by Gothamhaus Design
Cover images © Cloudniners/iStockphoto.com, Baloncici/Dreamstime.com, Afroto/Dreamstime.com
Sourcebooks and the colophon are registered trademarks of Sourcebooks, Inc.
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems—except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles or reviews—without permission in writing from its publisher, Sourcebooks, Inc.
The characters and events portrayed in this book are fictitious or are used fictitiously. Any similarity to real persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental and not intended by the author.
Published by Sourcebooks Jabberwocky, an imprint of Sourcebooks, Inc.
P.O. Box 4410, Naperville, Illinois 60567-4410
(630) 961-3900
Fax: (630) 961-2168
www.jabberwockykids.com
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication data is on file with the publisher.
Source of Production: Sheridan Books, Chelsea, Michigan, USA
Date of Production: July 2011
Run Number: 14716
For Sierra, who amazes me every single day.
Contents
An entire floor of St. Phobics Hospital for Really Scared Children has been set aside just for readers of this book. If you are about to begin reading, then you may wish to take a minute first and reserve yourself a bed there. St. Phobics Hospital is located right on the Strip in Las Vegas, one of the brightest places on earth. You may not understand why that’s important now, but somewhere in chapter 18 you will.
As you read, you may begin to understand myctophobia (mic-to-fo-be-a), or the fear of darkness. However, do not expect this book to help you with arachibutyrophobia (a-rak-i-something-be-a), the fear of peanut butter sticking to the roof of your mouth. There is no peanut butter in this book. Elliot’s family is out of peanut butter and probably won’t buy any for another month. Nor does this book deal in any way with zemmiphobia (just show the word to your teacher and she’ll pronounce it for you), the fear of the great mole rat, although most readers will agree that great mole rats are pretty freaky.
If you can’t get yourself to St. Phobics Hospital, then there are things you can do at home to protect yourself. First, get every lamp, flashlight, and lantern you can find, and drag them into your bedroom. Next, turn them all on. Not bright enough? Before we go any further, it is very important, no matter how afraid you are of the dark, that you never, ever light a fire in your bedroom to try to make it brighter. A fire won’t give you that much more light, and it will probably burn your house down. A much better idea is to go to a baseball field and ask the owners if you can borrow all of their field lights for your bedroom. You’ll need them until you’re certain there is nothing in the dark that is going to try to kill you.
At least that’s what Elliot wishes he had done.
Deep inside, even past his intestines and kidneys and all that yucky stuff, eleven-year-old Elliot Penster wondered if there was something different about him. Like, maybe he was really a magical half-breed or a young wizard.
Usually in these stories, when a kid wonders about things like that, it’s because he’s right; that’s who he is.
But that’s not who Elliot is. He can wonder about it until his face turns purple, but it won’t matter. The fact is he’s just a regular kid.
A kid who happens to be king of the Brownies.
The story of how Elliot became king of the Brownies is pretty good. Some people think it should be in a book or something. The book could be called
Elliot and the Goblin War
, and it would probably be terrific. As a strange coincidence, a book with exactly that title does exist. Maybe it was sitting on the shelf right beside this book. But if you haven’t read it, don’t worry. Neither has Elliot.
All that’s important to know is that he did become the Brownie king. And although it would be nice to tell you more about that now, Elliot happens to be in a bit of trouble, which requires your immediate attention.
For Elliot is being chased.
Hunted
may be a better word, because the hunter is sly and tricky and finally has Elliot square in her sights. She watched for him all week, the way a hungry lion waits in the brush for the antelope to pass by. It stops at the edge of the water hole for a drink. The lion creeps forward, and BAMMO! The antelope is captured.
Now, don’t worry. That didn’t happen to Elliot, mostly because he never drinks from strange water holes, and there are no lions in his small town of Sprite’s Hollow. But something was waiting for him to pass by. The hunter searched everywhere for him at school, sort of like the way your little brother searches your room when he knows you’ve got candy hidden in there. She looked for him beneath the slide on the playground and under his desk in the classroom. Rumor is she even went into the boys bathroom to search for him. She found Elliot’s twin brothers in there, shooting spit wads onto the ceiling, but no Elliot.
Then, just when Elliot thought it was safe to come out of hiding and hurry home, the hunter spotted him. He only made it halfway home before she threw her weapon of choice, an old jump rope, around his legs and toppled him to the ground.
Elliot rolled onto his back and looked into the leering face of the scariest thing ever to cross his path—Goblins included. She was the curse of the entire fifth-grade class, the plague of Sprite’s Hollow, and if the entire planet ever imploded inside a black hole, he knew that somehow she’d have caused it. The hunter, whose real name was Cambria Dawn Wortson, had found him at last.