Unlucky Charms (The Cold Cereal Saga) (31 page)

Alone.

He’d tumbled to the grass, so now Merle rose near the edge of a park, squinted at a boulevard of row homes just visible through the trees. The breeze was in his face, a summer breeze. He smelled … marshmallows.

“Arthur?” asked Merle, looking all around him, but nothing. The legendary king was legendary once more.

Scott clung, stiff fingered, to the galloping pony, Mick in his backpack, with Dhanu and the Changeling Guard riding alongside. The forest was a panic of log-jumping, low-hanging boughs, grasping branches, and the ever-changing kaleidoscope of dappled twilight that pinholed through the trees. This was a truly excellent pony and didn’t seem to need steering or even the slightest encouragement from Scott, which was good—after his initial order of “Giddyap,” he’d entirely exhausted his horsemanship.

Dhanu caught Scott’s eye and nodded. The other changelings looked grim. Their treachery hadn’t escaped notice for long, and they had a battalion of the Trooping Fairies of Oberon on their tails.

“‘Why don’t you go with John and
Merle
, Finchbriton,’ says Mick,” Scott grumbled. “‘We shouldn’t have any need for you.’”

“Oh, enough already,” said Mick.

Arrows whizzed by. Small ones, like the elves only wanted to murder them a little bit. One lodged itself into a flowering elder, and Mick got a look at it as they passed.

“Ooh, did yeh see the craftsmanship on that arrow? Sure to be poisoned, too, that was. ’S like they’re tryin’ to kill us with the good silverware.”

“Neat.”

Dhanu drew his horse near and called out over the thunder of hoofbeats.

“
We’ll scatter at the border of the shire.

Perhaps my guard will draw off their pursuit.
”

Scott nodded, grateful. The changelings, all the changelings, would probably never be welcome back in fairy society again. What would happen to them?

“
The horse you ride is fairy bred, and bright
,”

Dhanu added.

“
Just tell her where you’d go, and she’ll abide.
”

Before Scott or Mick could say a proper word of thanks, Dhanu had reined his horse away, and less than a minute later they could neither see nor hear the Changeling Guard anymore. They must have crossed the county line, and now they were on their own.

After a time Scott felt Mick twist around in the backpack and lean into Scott’s ear. “Good news an’ bad news,” said the leprechaun.

“What’s the good news?” asked Scott as another arrow whistled by.

“We have us just two pursuers.”

“And the bad news?”

“It’s the same news.”

They were dogged pursuers, these last two, and better riders. They gained ground. Mick ducked into the backpack and popped up, facing backward, with a flare gun. He fired a flare, and it cut a spectral laser trail through the blue wood. The elves forked to avoid it, then came back together again, losing a little ground as they did so. Mick reloaded and played this card again and again until they couldn’t see their hunters anymore.

Scott smelled water. The trees were thinning out ahead, too—they were coming up on a river. “We can’t keep this up,” he said. “Hold on. I’m going to try something.”

“Can I maybe have a little more explanation than that?”

Scott arched forward and spoke into the horse’s ear. He hoped it understood.

It wasn’t an especially wide river—that was good. They careened down the bank and plowed into the water, sending a heavy swell to either side. Then, of course, their mythologically nimble horse became suddenly sluggish as she surged against the water and the current.

“Come on, come on,” Scott whispered, terrified the elves would catch up while they were so exposed.

Then, when they were halfway across the river, Scott fell sideways off the pony’s back and let the current take him. He and Mick took breaths and went under. They could hear the water being breached as their pony emerged on the far bank and galloped on. They heard the disturbance, underwater, as the elven riders entered the river a few seconds later, and crossed, and then were gone.

Scott and Mick surfaced, gasped, and swam to shore, panting.

“What … what did yeh say to the pony?” asked Mick.

“Told it to keep running without us, fast as it could. Wonder how long the elves’ll follow before they realize they aren’t chasing anyone?”

CHAPTER 34

In the basement, Emily was conducting an experiment with Archimedes, and a lead box with slits in it, and some photosensitive paper, and a spoon. She looked at the spoon. Why did she need a spoon? The answer was she didn’t, and she set it aside, quietly, so as not to wake the house.

In the basement, Emily returned to her experiment with Archimedes, and a lead box with slits in it, and some photosensitive paper, and she needed the spoon for ice cream.
That’s
why. Her research would lead to a heretofore unimagined flavor of ice cream, with tiny rifts in it. And brownie bits, maybe.

In the basement, Emily was nodding off.

“Don’t fall asleep—you know it’s dangerous,” says a voice.

Emily looks up, dimly. “Oh, it’s
you
,” she says. She smiles. “You found me.”

Her mother is beautiful. She’d forgotten how beautiful. Tall and raven haired, like a storybook queen. Her mother leans in close, asks what she’s working on.

“A rift! A stable rift! A really big one,” Emily tells her mother.

Her mother is silent for a long time. “You don’t say,” she breathes.

“I’ve learned so much about them,” says Emily. She’s excited to be talking about it.

“I’m so silly,” says her mother. “I don’t remember exactly where we are. Is it London?”

“Did you know that each rift is a pair of tiny white holes with a black hole in the center? Is that not crazy? And there’s no time displacement. Also I think I’ve discovered a new elementary subatomic particle I’m calling the Emilyon.”

“The house we’re in, dear. It’s in London?”

“Yes, London.” Emily winces. There is a sound, like a ringing in her ears, but it isn’t a ringing. The sound goes
shhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh.
“Can you hear that?”

“I hear nothing. What part of London?”

Shhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh
, goes the sound.

“Is … Islington. That snake … do you see that snake there? It could see something coming through the rift just before it happened. There’s no reason a reptile should be able to do that naturally, but it
has
been eating a lot of mice from Pretannica—I think that has to be the explanation.”

“Pretannica?”

“That’s … what we call the world on the other side.” Emily’s face is suddenly hot. Her forehead is damp.

Shhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh.

“Is this …,” she asks, “… is this real life?”

“Of course, silly mouse. Now where in Islington, do you think?”

Don’t.

“On a … on a street called St. George, which is funny, because
he
slew a dragon, and we have to slay a dragon, too—”

“Very good, Emily,” says her mother. “Stop talking. There we are. Now come upstairs.”

Don’t.

Emily doesn’t want to disobey her mother, who looks familiar, like someone she’s seen before, doesn’t she? Emily can’t remember. She’s sweating through her nightdress to the white lab coat Biggs made her.

She ascends to the kitchen. The woman with the coal-black hair is already standing in the center of the room like a bent needle.

“Look there on the counter,” says the woman.

Emily looks. It’s a knife.

“It’s a knife,” the woman agrees, nodding, though Emily hasn’t said this aloud. “Why don’t you pick it up?”

In Erno’s dream, there was a dog that could say Erno’s name. In fact, all it seemed to be able to say was “Erno, Emily, Biggs, come in—over.” It wasn’t much of a vocabulary, but still Erno expected the dog would make him rich, somehow. He was going to name it Walkie-Talkie because dogs like going for walkies and also this dog could talkie. He was just trying to remember why this name seemed so familiar when he woke with a start and realized Merle had been shouting through the radio for five minutes.

“Sorry. Sorry,” said Erno. “Was asleep. Um, over.”

“Don’t worry about it,” Merle answered. “But hey! Good news! John and I got the queen, and we’re on our way. So ready two sheep and the fox—we’ll have to get something else to swap for Mick later. Over.”

“We got a rabbit at a pet shop,” said Erno groggily. Then, “Hold on. Emily should be here. Shoot, I fell asleep while I was supposed to be watching Emily.”

Just then Scott came in on the same channel. “Are you guys there?” he asked. “We need you to get the rift ready soon. Mick and I are coming back.”

“How did it go with the elves?” asked John. “Did you make your case?”

Scott thought before answering. “It went pretty bad. But I told the truth, and I’m glad I told the truth.” He hoped he was being understood. “You know what I’m saying?”

After a pause John said, “I know what you’re saying.”

Scott smiled. “But yeah, otherwise I made our case pretty horribly.”

“The Fay are sendin’ us some pointed comments,” said Mick. “Some sharp retorts. Some barbed replies.”

“That’s Mick’s way of explaining that they were shooting arrows at us,” said Scott. “When he gets a lot of glamour in him he’s like a bad poet or something.”

“Guys, I’ll get Biggs up and get the animals ready, but first I have to find Emily,” said Erno. “I screwed up.” Erno rose and crossed to the door, turned the handle. But it wouldn’t budge. “I can’t open the door,” Erno said into the radio. “Guys, something’s going on—I can’t leave my room.”

Emily is in a different room, and she’s looking at Biggs there, sleeping. He sleeps standing up. He says he’s done it that way for a long time. Emily can’t remember how she got here. She can’t remember climbing up onto the desk. She’s holding a knife.

“It would be so much better if all your friends were gone,” her mother is saying. “Then it could be just you and me. None of these weird characters about. They would hurt me if they could, you know. Do you love me?”

Emily loves her
so
much. She’s crying, silently. Her mother was gone, but now she’s come back. That makes sense, doesn’t it?

No.

“I would never kill another living thing myself,” her mother is saying. “It goes against everything I believe in, you must understand that. And I would never ask another person to kill for me. But then I don’t know how
you
feel about it, this idea of killing. I don’t want to make up your mind for you. You do love me,
don’t you
.”

No. No.

But Emily nods, her breath coming loose with each jerk of her head.

“He seems like a sound sleeper, but still,” says the beautiful black-haired woman. “Can’t have him thrashing about. Is that a ratchet strap I see in your right pocket? You might secure it around his ankles.”

Emily reaches a shaking hand to the lower right pocket of her lab coat.

No. Upper pocket. Upper pocket
, says the voice in her head. The
other
voice in her head. The one that sounds an awful lot like herself.

“The strap isn’t
in
the upper pocket,” says Emily.

“What’s that, dear?” says the mother woman.

No, it isn’t. Is it.

Frowning, Emily reaches, trembling, into the upper right pocket of her coat and feels something small, delicate, like a tiny flower. She curls her fingers around it, and the sun shines inside her mind.

She pulled it out and looked at it, this tiny delicate thing. The four-leaf clover Mick gave her. Dainty little spell breaker. Emily breathed deeply, powerfully, and stepped from the desk to the bed, to the floor. Past the woman with the pitch-black hair, who suddenly looked altogether more familiar.

“Dear, what are you doing?”

“I want to show you something. It’s really cool. I’ll kill Biggs later.”