Unlucky Charms (The Cold Cereal Saga) (27 page)

Return you to your thoughts, and plead your case.
”

This rhyming—it was like talking to someone who has food on her chin. Scott could barely concentrate on what she was saying.

“Um. I want to … I want …” Scott breathed. “I’ve heard rumors of a fairy invasion of Earth. I think you’ve been told maybe that humans split our world off from all the magic and the Fay on purpose, so I’ve come here to tell you it isn’t true. I know people say Merle … Merlin is responsible for the split, for the Gloria, but we don’t think that’s true either.”

The Fay murmured at this. Scoffed.

“He was really worried it was all his fault, honestly,” Scott insisted. “But … well, I know him, actually, and we’ve investigated it and this whole thing’s a big misunderstanding.”

“
Of course! The fault is ours for being blind.

When man in ancient times behav’d unkind

And stole from us the lands we’d held above

How could we doubt he played but games of love?
”

“Um—”

“
And absence made your hearts grow ever ripe!

You slandered us with fables, tales, and tripe—

How mystical we were! How fierce and fine!

Yet tame to hide our flame and keep in line.
”

Scott shifted from foot to foot. “With … with respect, I think humans have changed a lot since then.”

“
How true—once fate deprived you of the elves
,

You humans turned your swords upon yourselves.

How swiftly did you newly fantasize

Of tribes to conquer, then romanticize.

Our Nimue has told me of the wars

O’er Africans, red Indians, and Moors?

You cast us each like actors in the parts

Of all the best and worst in thine own hearts.
”

Scott thought this might be kind of an oversimplification, but he didn’t want to debate history with a woman who had lived through most of it. And
she
got to say thine! How come
he
didn’t get to say things like thine? Whatever.

“You’re definitely not wrong,” he said. “Humans are bad at dealing with things they don’t understand. So we tell stories. That’s what humans do, is tell stories. I think it’s what we do instead of magic.”

More murmuring around the hall, but a good kind of murmuring. Thoughtful.

“But I also think … in the centuries since we’ve lost real magic, and the Fay … I think we’ve gone a little crazy. I mean, glamour used to only mean a kind of fairy magic, I guess, but now humans look for glamour wherever they can get it. We look for magic in movies and clothes and stuff, and in believing that certain people can have a kind of glamour. My dad’s one of these kinds of people. We treat them like they’re more than human, but they’re not, so they always let us down.”

The room was quiet, really quiet. He thought Titania was ever so slowly leaning forward.

“If the Fay come to Earth,” Scott told her, “they won’t have to invade. We’ll worship you anyway. I’m sure of it. There are already a dozen magazines in every supermarket checkout lane waiting to do it, a hundred cable shows, a thousand websites. Maybe … maybe you don’t know what those things are, but … won’t it be better if you don’t have to rule us? Won’t it be better if we just give you our love?”

“
And does my new young friend not understand?

We cannot simply stride from land to land.

For ev’ry elf that parts this shrinking sphere
,

Some wretched soul must cross from there to here.
”

“You could trade places with animals!” Scott suggested. “Cows or sheep or something that would be happy to live out its life grazing in a place as beautiful as this.”

But here he’d hit a nerve. The elves began to grumble, to make remarks behind their hands. Apparently they found this idea distasteful.

“Or people!” Scott added quickly. “There are seven billion humans on Earth. How many elves and humans here, a few hundred thousand?” He glanced at Mick, and the leprechaun bobbed his head back and forth, then nodded. “They could totally find enough on Earth who would be willing to trade places. You know, just for the adventure of it. Humans do stupid things all the time for adventure; you have no idea. They have this thing called bungee jumping?”

Mick nudged him. “Stay focused,” he whispered.

“Well, anyway, humans are short-lived. They’d die naturally anyway before this world disappeared forever.”

Scott took a half step forward. What did they call this on lawyer shows? Closing arguments? He thought Titania might even be smiling a little.

“I know about the Fay’s famous sense of honor. I don’t believe they want to push a whole species down because of the mistakes of the past. You’re right that we tell stories about you. Over the years those stories have only gotten … kinder, and sweeter. They all have happy endings now. Let’s … let’s write a happy ending together.”

That last bit made him want to throw up a little, but he thought it was probably what was called for. Mick gave him a sock in the leg, and when Scott looked down the little man was smiling up at him.

Titania was smiling, too. She was unquestionably smiling.

“
I must commend you, boy—you’ve had your say

And honored both your people and the Fay.

And now will I confess I’ve played a trick:

I know of all your treasons, Scott and Mick.
”

“Uh.” Scott felt his heartbeat in his stomach. The throne room was suddenly small. Was everyone closer than they’d been a second ago?

“Okay,” whispered Mick. “We’re banished. We get out quick, get as far away as we can.”

Titania glared at Scott now.

“
You’re but a stranger here, so I’ll concede

Your plots have not the bite to make me bleed.

But
Mick—”

Here Scott thought he could hear Mick rasping beside him. The little man’s eyes might have been damp.

“
—the fabled father of the finch.

If fairy folk have hearts, mine feels thy pinch.

And so we’d quite agreed before you came

To strike you from our court and curse your name.

’Twas foolish to surrender to my power—

You had no claim to safety in this tower.
”

Dhanu gasped and surged forward.

“
And why was I not told? I must protest!

Upon my honor was their safety pledged.
”

Titania clasped her hands together, all girlish smiles again.

“
A necessary falsehood, pet of mine.

I longed to hear this plaything mewl and whine.

Such fun in one so young! Such grace and poise!
”

Her fingers tightened.

“
A crime, in time I
always
break my toys.
”

And the Fay, and those swords, and those axes, advanced from all sides.

CHAPTER 30

Ms. Aleister walked Polly down halls, elevators, through complicated-looking systems that analyzed retinal patterns and fingerprints and spit for some reason. She waltzed her past all the best security money could buy, and only because she was under the impression that Polly had already been wherever she was being taken.

Ms. Aleister looked like a pretty velociraptor. Her heels sounded against the tile like a raptor’s hind claw,
click click
. Ms. Aleister was explaining that little girls sometimes let their imaginations run away with them, that their eyes can play tricks, that what Polly no doubt
thought
she’d seen in Sensitive Research Area Alpha was not what it looked like.

Polly gave Ms. Aleister a dopey smile. “I know that already—daddy’s new girlfriend told me it was all special effects, like in the movies.”

“Exactly! Daddy’s new girlfriend. What did you say her name was?”

“I’ll point her out when we get there.”

“See that you do. ‘Special effects.’ Your father’s a lucky man—what a smart lady! Too bad she’s soon to be unemployed.”

“My dad has enough money for all of us.”

“And what does he do?”

“Rocket-car test pilot.”

“Uh-
huh.
”

They reached Sensitive Research Area Alpha, which was in a wing labeled
MICROFICHE ARCHIVE 1940–1959
and plastered with notices that it was shortly to be fumigated for earwigs. To pass through this door, Ms. Aleister had to press her hand against a little mirror on the wall. A green light flashed above the door, then a red.

“C’mon,” said the woman, “you too. Fairy detector. You must have done it this morning.”

Polly edged forward. Was she enough of a changeling to set this off? “Didn’t realize I had to do it every time.”

“That’s why it’s a security system, and not a hand stamp. This isn’t the county fun fair.”

Polly put her fingers, then her palm against the cold glass. She felt a buzz. All was silent for a moment.

“Got a slight blip off you,” said Ms. Aleister. “Very faint. That’s odd.”

“Daddy’s girlfriend said it’s been doing that all week.”

Polly concentrated and tried to push the fairyness down inside her. She imagined she was Scott—staying home on Halloween; doing sudoku puzzles; eating lunch alone in the library.

The lights above the door flashed green, and the door clicked open.

Inside was a wide and vaulted octagonal room lit up with a branching system of radial florescent tubes like a neon snowflake. There was a small team of researchers (three women, two men) who paused and looked up at the unexpected visitors. There were cases and refrigerators holding vials and samples of chemicals, work stations and computers and miles and miles of cables. And against one wall, cages holding a royal-looking elf and a manticore.

The former was easy to recognize: tall and lean and stately, even as it sat forlornly on the concrete floor in a hospital gown. A foxlike face with large and tapered ears and ginger hair. The latter was something Polly would have to ask about later—she didn’t know what a manticore was. But the caged thing had a scorpion’s tail on a wasted lion’s body, with a nearly human face, and a disconcertingly wide mouth so packed with teeth they were growing in sideways.

Next to the manticore’s cage there was a massive, windowless reinforced steel vault painted to say
DANGER: RONOPOLISK
. Something huge kept whanging against the door from the inside.

In one corner was a small tank filled with a thick pink liquid. Milk-7. Interesting.

But most interesting was the table near the center of the room, the table with the yellow plastic hamster cage and the Habitrail, because inside this were three pixies.

One prince paced a rut through the wood chips. Another was shirtless, his tunic drying over a tunnel entrance. There were plastic tunnels to three separate sleeping quarters, and dishes of food and water. There was even a hamster wheel, and the last of the princes was running it. Which seemed kind of demeaning to Polly, but she supposed they had to keep fit somehow. It came to her suddenly that they had to go to the bathroom somewhere too, and she looked away quickly before she found it.

“All right,” said Ms. Aleister, arms akimbo. “Who’s responsible for this kid?”