Unlucky Charms (The Cold Cereal Saga) (21 page)

“Merlin, please help me up the stairs.”

Merle helped him up the stairs.

“Can’t beat a prince for a good speech,” Polly agreed with herself.

With Fi gone, Scott, Polly, John, and Merle arranged themselves in the rift and waited. Merle handed Archimedes off to Emily.

“Take care of him,” he said.

They were dressed warmly, with backpacks, radios, Swiss Army knives, canteens, water purification tablets, and plastic flare guns. John had his sword. Emily got back on the radio.

“Mick, how far out are you? Over.”

“’Bout ten minutes. Over.”

“This is it,” said John. After a moment no one had confirmed or denied this, so he said it again.

“You mentioned something on the cruise ship,” Scott murmured to John. “About how actors want to be loved and are afraid of rejection. That’s why you never visited, all those years. Isn’t it. You were afraid we’d reject you.”

John pulled his lips back into a thin smile, a sad smile, and he raised his head as if to nod. But then his head just sagged.

“No.”

Scott frowned. “No?”

“Not at first, no. That wasn’t it.” John stared at his shoes. “I want to be honest with you kids, and … honesty isn’t always easy.”

Scott and Polly watched him as he gathered his thoughts.

“Your mom and I weren’t really happy anymore, but I wanted to stay together for your sakes. Then I went off on a film shoot and came home to find your mom had left, and had taken you with her.

“I called your grandparents. I called all our friends. And no one could tell me where you’d gone. But then I had to leave on a press junket, and on another trip after that, and … I stopped looking. I figured your mom would get in touch eventually, when she was ready, and so I went off and played movie star for a while. It was kind of a relief, really: knowing I could have fun, be famous, and that it wasn’t my fault.
She
was the one who’d left.”

“Didn’t you ever think of us?” asked Polly, in a voice that made you want to lift her up, carry
her
around in your pocket.

“All the time. But maybe I’d be leaving on a world tour so I’d think,
Well, obviously I shouldn’t call just now.
Then there’d be another film shoot looming, and I’d say, ‘Well, of course
now
isn’t the right time for a visit.’ And somehow seven years slipped away.”

Scott discovered he was making fists. It was startling. He abruptly unclenched and shook out his fingers, no less alarmed than if his hands had changed to werewolves.

“And now by this time,” said John, “by this time I really
was
afraid. Afraid I couldn’t blame everything on anyone but myself anymore, afraid you wouldn’t want to see me. I’m trying to be better, I
want
to be better. I want to be here. Not … not necessarily in this basement especially, but … you know. Here. With you. But even if it’s harder, even if it doesn’t make you feel any friendlier toward me, I still think you both deserve honesty.”

“Honesty,” Polly repeated flatly. Scott thought maybe she felt the way he did, like this honesty was something they hadn’t asked for, like it was an unwanted gift they had to pretend to appreciate while the Christmas music was still playing.

“Anyway,” said John. “So. Pretannica. This is it.”

“This is it,” said Merle. “Good luck, everybody.”

“Saying good luck is unlucky,” said John.

Meanwhile, Polly fiddled with something in her pocket.

She knew she could count on Biggs to hear it first. After Harvey, he had the best ears.

“Phone,” said Biggs.

“Phone?” said Emily. “I don’t hear it.” They were all silent and still, and then they could all hear it, a phone ringing faintly, somewhere in the house. “That’s one of our special rings. But everyone’s here, except for Harvey.”

“And except for Erno,” said Scott.

“Erno,” said Emily. “Where’s Erno? Oh, geez, Biggs, could you get that phone?”

Biggs left the basement, followed the noise out into the stairwell, and determined without question that the ringing was coming from the second floor. To say that he grimaced at the ramshackle staircase would be an overappraisal of his talents for expression, but he frowned on the inside. Then he took his first, hesitant step.

“I should tell Mick to wait,” said Emily. “I don’t want to try to corral four sheep by myself.”

Then the pounding started. Someone was knocking, knocking hard, on the front door of the house. Emily flinched, looked forward and back. She spoke into the radio. “Mick? Don’t get the sheep in position till I give the word. Copy.”

“Ten-four.”

“Hold on,” said Emily, and she ran up the stairs as the pounding came harder and faster.

Polly turned to her father. “I don’t want to go to Pretannica anymore,” she said.

“You don’t? Why not?”

“I’m … I’m scared. I didn’t want to admit it, but—”

“No, no, that’s okay, Polly,” said John, smiling. “Really, I’m relieved. I mean, I know you’re a very capable seven-year-old, but—”

“I’ll go help Biggs and Emily,” Polly said, and she rushed up the stairs, spooked the unicat, and took out her walkie-talkie, the one she would have taken with her to Pretannica. She switched it to Mick’s channel.

“Mick, we’re back on,” she said in her best Emily voice. “Sheep in place. Over.”

“Copy that.”

Then Polly climbed up onto the kitchen counter, opened the window, dropped down into the alley, and shut the window behind her.

Inside the house, Emily was at her wits’ end. The moment she’d get to the door, the knocking would stop. She’d peer out through the narrow windows beside it and see nothing, no one. Then she’d turn, and the knocking would start again. Meanwhile, Biggs had managed to answer the upstairs phone (hang-up, blocked) and was trying to get down again without collapsing the staircase. Erno stormed out from the back bedroom.

“Do you all mind? Some of us are
trying
to decipher a
clue
!”

Sometime later the three of them descended back into the basement to find the black adder being menaced by three of the thickest sheep in two worlds.

“Woah,” said Emily. “Mick must have gotten the sheep too close. And there’s only three? Mick?” she said into the radio.

“I’m here. Over.”

“Did everyone make it? Over.”

“Everyone made it. Your knocking stop? Over.”

Emily listened. It
had
stopped. “Yeah.”

“Maybe that little lass was right an’ the house
is
haunted. Over.”

Emily went to press the radio button, then stopped. “I’m not going to dignify that with a response.”

Outside, Polly met up with Prince Fi and Harvey.

“You were right,” Polly said to Harvey. “That was easy.”

“People like uth can alwayth manipulate otherth,” said Harvey. “We can get them to do what we want.”

“So is that what you’re doing?” said Polly. “To all of us?”

“Naw, not me.”

Polly studied him. “Why not?”

“Haven’t figured out what I want, yet.”

Fi was watching the both of them and signaled to be lifted into Polly’s pocket. “There is nothing about this I like,” he said. “The deceit. The danger for Polly. I am without honor.”

“I’ll be a big help to you. I’m even a bit stronger than you.”

“It’s not strength of body that’s required. It’s strength of mind, and of character. Which, I must admit,” Fi conceded, “you have showed in great measure if I ignore today’s escapades.”

They walked off toward the tube station.

“What I did today,” said Polly. “Was it bad?”

“It was not good,” said Fi.

“It wath fine,” said Harvey. “Ath long ath you had good reathonth. And didn’t enjoy it. You have to try not to enjoy it.”

After another block he added, “Not that I didn’t enjoy knocking on Emily’s cage a bit. Little prith.”

CHAPTER 22

Pretannica.

“What … what color is everything?” Scott asked Mick.

“’S green.”

“Are you sure?” This was the green of camera ads and television commercials for other televisions.

Pretannica.

The trees were brawny, titanic hosts for ivy and velvety moss, shade for fern and flower and fungus.
Oh, man, the fungus
, thought Scott. All prehistoric shapes and back-of-the-refrigerator colors. He thought maybe one mushroom in particular had called him a name when he passed.

But more than any particular sight was the smell, the air, the everything of the place. The
otherworldliness
of it. The magic, the glamour.
Pretannica!
He could see his father was caught up in it too, so could it be the fairyness of them both that was tuned to this trill, this connection?

“I feel like,” he said, struggling to put it into words, “like my fingers have to sneeze. I feel like …”

“Running through the hills and twirling like a nun in a movie,” finished John.

“That isn’t what I was going to say.”

Merle was watching them. “I have no idea what you guys are on about. I’m okay with that.”

They’d emerged from the rift in a tangled glen, tearing through shrubbery and scattering field mice in every direction. There was no way to get your bearings in a land with no sun, no moon, no stars, but Mick assured them they were in Ireland, in the forests near Killarney. Close to his old mound, in fact. The sky was a Prussian blue above, warming to pumpkin orange at the horizons. Everything seemed brighter than it should have. As if the whole world might be faintly luminous, like a dying glow stick.

“All right, enough gawkin’,” said Mick. He addressed Merle and John. “Unless yis have plans to the contrary, England is that way, an’ may the road rise to meet yeh. If Scott has no objections, I’d like to stop off at my old mound an’ see if anyone’s been waterin’ my plants. Finchbriton?”

The little bird chirruped.

“I love yeh like the ugly son I never had, but I wan’ yeh to consider goin’ with John an’ Merle here. They have the more dangerous mission an’ could use a real powerhouse like you. Of course Scott an’ I’d be delighted to have your company—all your little stories, your thoughts on love an’ life an’ so forth.”

Finchbriton seemed to consider the options, then he tweeted his decision and flew to John’s shoulder.

“Oh, thank goodness,” said Merle. “You know my Slumbro doesn’t even work on the Fay.”

John was lingering, like he wanted to be knighted just for refusing to lie. Honesty wasn’t all
that
hard.

“So, bye,” Scott said finally.

John nodded, taking his medicine.

They all said their good-byes and parted. Scott and Mick pressed through the woods—Mick easily, gracefully, Scott as if he were being pranked constantly by a spiteful slapstick universe. He tripped on roots, stumbled over logs, was poked by thickets, had his face raked by brambles.

“It’s just up ahead,” said Mick. “The ol’ mound. An’ when I say mound, I’m not bein’ modest—’s a mound. But inside it was as cozy as your mother’s handbag. Here we are.”

They arrived at a small clearing and a mound of earth ringed by small mushrooms. Atop the mound was a weathered and whitewashed wooden cross. Mick stared quizzically at the cross.

“Well, that’s new. I hope you won’t be offended when I tell yeh it has no place on a leprechaun’s domicile.”

“There’s something tied to it,” said Scott, and he climbed up, wondering too late if it was bad manners to just hike up another man’s house like this. At the base of the cross was a pair of very old, shriveled baby shoes. They’d probably been calfskin or something similar, but now they were hard and dry as raisins.

“Well, Monday Tuesday an’ Wednesday—it’s you, Finchfather. Isn’t it,” said a voice, and they turned to see a man in the nearby trees. He wasn’t a tall man, but he nonetheless appeared to be a sprightly, smartly dressed human.

Mick squinted. “Lusmore? By my baby teeth, it
is
you. Older, sure, but still alive, after all these years.”

“It’s thanks to all that fairy food an’ drink I ate, plus all the gifts the Good Folk gave me,” said Lusmore.

Scott gave Mick what he hoped was an appropriately what-the-heck? look.

“Exception that proves the rule,” said Mick.

“How have you been, Finchfather?” asked Lusmore. “
Where
have you been? Is it true there’s another Ireland out there, beyond the veil?”

“I’m going by Mick these days. This here’s Scott, a changeling friend o’ mine.” Lusmore bowed. “An’ there
is
another Ireland, an we’re hopin’ to speak with Her Majesty the High Queen abou’ that. Yeh know where she can be found presently?”

Lusmore smiled. “Just so happens I do. It’ll be nice to do yeh a favor, after all your people did for me.”

“Oh, come now—we only paid yeh in kind for improvin’ on that song we all had stuck in our heads. What’s the story here?” Mick asked, hitching his thumb toward the cross atop his mound.

Lusmore gave the cross a sad smile. “The day you disappeared, she arrived. Just a wee babby, no aul’ wan to care for her. The Good Folk tried to take her in, make a changeling of her, but yeh know how it is. Sometimes they don’t thrive. They gave her a Christian burial, as they thought proper for one such as she.”