Authors: Alex Flinn
Cloaked (23 page)
I hear him breathing, hard. The hand holding the knife wavers.
“Is it worth it?” I ask. “Your mother’s a witch. She’ll get away with it. But you’ll be caught. Will she be able to get you out?”
He shakes his head. “It is true.”
I gesture toward the cowering princess. “Is this what you want? To hurt people? To make them do things they don’t want to do? Your mother’s looking for power. She wants to be the one who helped the king. But what’s in it for you? Don’t you want to be the good guy?”
Siegfried looks at Victoriana. A slight breeze riffles her golden hair, and she nods.
“If you release me,” she says in a strangled voice, “I will make sure nuzzing happens to you. I only want to be wiz my own family as you wish to be wiz yours.”
Siegfried shakes his head. “I do not know what to do.”
“Do the right thing,” I say, “the thing you know in your heart is right.”
Siegfried stares at Victoriana a long time. We all do. She’s so beautiful, as startling as the day I first met her, but more now, because I know she’s sweet and kind as well.
Finally, with a sigh, Siegfried releases his grip on her.
“You are right. I cannot do this thing. I cannot.” He holds the knife out.
I don’t want to take the knife, don’t want to touch it. But Siegfried holds it in a shaking hand. It has a streak of blood, my blood on the blade. I take it gingerly between my fingers and wrap it in my shirt.
“Go,” he says to Victoriana. “I know my mother vill be here soon, to see that I have failed again. You must go. Now.”
Victoriana nods. “You have not failed.”
“Now!” Siegfried yells. “Go now!”
Victoriana nods. She takes Philippe’s hand and runs to the car, pausing only to scoop up the sandal.
Ryan has the top up, but Victoriana rolls down the window. As Ryan pulls out of the parking lot, she yells, “Zank you, Johnny! I will never forget you. And I will wear ze shoes!”
And then, she’s gone.
We stand a long moment, me and the scary motorcycle guy. Two mama’s boys.
Finally, he says, “I knew you vere under the bar that time too.” He sighs, and I can tell he’s trying hard not to bawl. “I am a vuss. She vill kill me. It vill not matter if I go to jail because she vill kill me.”
I actually feel sorry for the guy. It’s not his fault that his mother’s an evil witch bent on Zalkenbourgian domination.
“You did the right thing,” I say, even though it doesn’t seem like enough.
That’s when Sieglinde shows up, followed by Meg. They burst through the back door. Meg runs up to me and embraces me. “You’re all right!”
Sieglinde spreads her arms. “Your police are here, but they are too late. My son has taken them! My son—” She sees Siegfried. She says, “You are here. Vere are they?”
I look at Siegfried. He says nothing for a long moment, but finally, he gestures toward me and the gun. “I let them go,
Mutter.
”
“You what? How could you?”
He shakes his head.
That’s when the cops catch up with Sieglinde. One grabs her while the other takes out the cuffs. The third is reading Sieglinde her rights.
“How could you?” she screams. “You fool!”
“I am sorry, Mama.” Siegfried is bawling. “I could not do it.”
“I cannot believe this! I disown you!”
And then, just as the handcuffs slip onto her wrists, Sieglinde disappears.
“I held her at bay as long as I could,” Meg explains in her shop an hour later. We called the airport when we got into the hotel lobby, and a few minutes before, we received word that Victoriana’s plane had taken off. “I wanted to come help you.”
“Like you helped me in the graveyard?”
She shakes her head. “No, that was all you.”
I’m not sure whether to believe her, so I say, “But you healed me from the scorpion bite? It really was poisonous.” She’s nodding, so I add, “And the swan. You fixed him too.”
Meg nods. “Yes, I’m a healer. It will come in handy someday when we have kids. In fact . . .” She touches the small cut on my neck, the one my mother covered with a Band-Aid. In an instant, it doesn’t hurt at all. “But you were the one who got Siegfried to surrender. What did you do to him?”
“Just . . . talked, told him it was a bad idea and stuff.” I can still feel the knife against my neck, and I shiver. It amazes me that I even
could
talk, like people who develop superhuman strength and lift a car off their kid or something. “It was weird. I mean, I don’t even know why I went after him. I don’t have . . . powers like you.”
Meg pats my arm. “You have powers.”
I laugh. “Right. Faster than a loose heel. Able to repair soles in a single stitch.”
Meg laughs. “They’re just a different kind of powers. You’re decent and you’re honest. That’s why Victoriana asked you to help her in the first place, and that’s what made Siegfried see the light. There’re all kinds of magic in the world.”
“All kinds of magic.” I touch her hair, then run my hand down her cheek. “It’d still be cool to be able to make a room freeze.”
“I’ll do it for you.”
“That’s why you wanted to come along with me, to protect me with your magic powers because you thought I was a wuss.”
“Because I love you,” she says, gripping my hand. “I wanted to be with you. I knew you were doing something dangerous, or you wouldn’t have lied, and I didn’t want to have to wonder what happened to you like . . .”
“Like my mom,” I say.
“Right. So I gave you the ring, and I told you to wear it if you ever needed luck,
knowing
you’d put it on if you were in a tough spot, that it would bring me to you.”
“Even though that would put you in that same tough spot.”
“Especially because of that. And then, I tried to always be ready. I told my mom I might be going suddenly, and she understood.”
“I . . . wow.” My head hurts from thinking, but I want to keep talking, so Meg doesn’t get the idea I should go home and rest or something. “So if you’ve been a witch all this time, why couldn’t magic have saved us from the dungeon in Zalkenbourg?” When Meg narrows her eyes at me, I say, “I mean, not that you haven’t done a lot of cool stuff.”
“It was too dark. My family’s magic is in our eyes. To use it, there has to be eye contact.”
I nod and get to what I’ve really been wondering about. “So did you make me fall in love with you with magic too, then?” I’m not sure if I care, really, I just want to know.
But Meg shakes her head. “Of course not.”
“Would you tell me if you did?”
“Probably not. But think about it. I’ve had a crush on you for years. If I could just cast a spell and make you love me back, that would have been a lot easier than trying to make you jealous with Philippe. It’s not that I didn’t think about it, but I wanted it to be real.”
“I want that too.”
“My family pledged decades ago to only use our powers in case of emergency, not for taking tests or making money.”
“How about housework? You use the elves for that.”
“The brownies are free to go whenever they want. They just stay out of, I don’t know, tradition.”
“Oh, okay.”
“So are you mad I didn’t tell you?”
I look up at her, and it’s like everything I know about her is different now, is changed. But everything about me is changed too. A few weeks ago, I was some poor slob, repairing shoes with no hope of a future. But now I’ve fought two giants and won, been engaged to a princess and given her up, changed six swans into humans, and found the love of my life. Who wants things to be the same?
I shake my head. “Could I just kiss you now?”
She nods, and I do.
“Johnny, come quick!” Across the way, in the shoe repair, my mother’s watching television. She’s pointing to the screen, and when we go to look, I see it’s Victoriana, filmed just before boarding her private plane, safe at Miami International.
“We had a wonderful time in Florida,” she tells the reporters. She looks at a reporter who’s asked her a question I didn’t hear. “Oh, no special reason. Just ze sun, and ze shopping. In fact . . .” She holds up her foot, the one with my shoe on it.
“My shoe’s on television!” I say.
“While I have you all here, I want to show you ze thing I love very much. And zat is zis shoe. It is a very special shoe from a new designer, Gianni Marco, who is right here on South Beach. But I am very certain zat his shoes will soon be on ze runways of Europe.”
The reporters
ooh
and
ahh
, and I hear cameras snapping, everyone taking photos of the princess and my shoe.
Oh, flounder in the sea, come come, here to me. My wife wants me to make a wish. Come to me, oh, magic fish.
—“The Fisherman and His Wife”
Mom tells me to bring Meg back to the apartment tonight for dinner, to celebrate the fact that we have electricity to cook it. And some other stuff. But when we get there, my mother’s on the floor. There’s a man crouched over her.
I cannot handle this today.
“Hey!” I rush toward her, signaling to Meg to call the police. “What are you . . . ?”
The man looks up. “She fainted. I was just . . .”
Our eyes meet. I know him from . . . somewhere.
“I just came here to find my wife,” the man says. His nose twitches.
Twitches. That’s when I realize where I know him from. It’s the first time I’ve seen him in daylight, at least in human form.
“Your wife?” I say.
He nods. “I guess she was a little shocked. I don’t blame her. It’s been fifteen years.”
“You’re saying this is your wife?”
“Unbelievable, right? She probably thought I was dead.”
“Cornelius said that all the used-to-bes have families who think they’re dead,” I say, because the man I’m talking to is the fox. Todd. “So you mean to say you’re my . . .?”
“Your father,” says my mother’s voice from the floor. “But how can it be? Where have you been all this time? And why did you come back now?”
I look at the fox who is now my father, then back at Mom. “I think, maybe, you ought to sit down.”
Meg, who knows the story, agrees. “Why don’t I get you some water, Mrs. Marco?”
We walk over to the sofa, and after Mom can breathe right, Todd, the former fox, begins to speak. Meg holds my hand, and I squeeze hers, glad she’s here.
“Many, many years ago, I had an argument with my wife.” He nods at Mom. “At this point, I don’t even remember what it was about.”
“Work,” Mom says.
Todd nods. “Work. I was young, and I was proud, and while I should have apologized to my dear wife, who was always right about everything, I didn’t want to. So the next morning, instead of going to work, I went fishing.”
“Fishing?” Mom says, and I remember the rat saying that the fox had been a fisherman.
“Yes, fishing,” Todd says. “I went early, four in the morning. I stood on the MacArthur Causeway like an idiot. I didn’t catch anything, and just as the sun was rising, and I was about to give up, I felt a tug.
“I was happy because, by that time, I had realized the error of my ways, and I thought I’d return home with a huge fish for dinner, so my wife would forgive me. When I reeled the fish in, it was better than I expected—a beautiful, big snapper with fine fins and red scales. But just as I was rejoicing, the fish spoke to me.”
Mom gasps. Me, I’m not surprised at all.
My father continues. “‘Please do not kill me,’ the fish said very clearly, ‘for I am a magic fish, with the power to grant all your wishes.’
“‘All my wishes?’ I asked. I didn’t believe it, of course. ‘I’m just overtired.’ But the fish said, ‘Why don’t you give it a try?’
“So I did. I wished for the first thing that came to mind, a boat, since I’d been feeling sorry for myself for not having one. And almost as soon as I said the word, I was standing in a twenty-foot open fisherman.
“And that should have been the end of that but I was young and stupid, and I said, ‘What? This boat’s too small. If you’re such a magic fish, I want a bigger boat, a huge boat.’”
“Let me guess,” I say. “He got mad.”
“No. In fact, he smiled in a way you wouldn’t think a snapper could smile and said, ‘Fisherman, you drive a hard bargain.’ The next thing I knew, I was standing on a yacht, sixty-four feet, twin engines, and steps leading down to what I’m sure were extremely luxurious cabins.”
“You had a wish, and you used it for a yacht?” my mother says.
“That’s exactly what I thought! As soon as I saw it, I realized I’d made a huge mistake. Here I was on a yacht fit for a billionaire, but I wasn’t a billionaire. How was I going to explain it to my wife, you, who would be upset because we had so many things we needed? So I said to the fish, ‘Wait! There’s one more thing. I’d like a big house, a mansion.’
“The fish rolled his eyes, but finally, he inclined his head toward the right. ‘Look over there, on Hibiscus Island. That big pink house is yours now.’ And I looked down and saw a set of keys by my feet.”
“And we’re not living in a big mansion because . . .?” My mother shakes her head. “I don’t believe this.”
“Give him a chance, Mom,” I say, still amazed that this is my father, my for-real father I thought I’d never see. I grin at Meg, and she grins back.
“We’re not living in a big pink mansion,” my father says, “because I was young and stupid, and in the moment the fish made the house mine, I realized I couldn’t even afford the taxes on a place like that. Better the money, I thought, an annuity, maybe. ‘Could I win the lottery?’ I asked the fish.
“And the next thing I knew, I was standing on MacArthur Causeway with nothing but a fishing pole, and the fish spoke to me.
“‘You have asked too much,’ he said, ‘So you get nothing.’ Well, needless to say, I was pretty mad about that. So I said that if he didn’t give back what he’d taken, I was going to kill him, and stuff him, and hang him on the wall.”
“Oh, boy,” I said.
“Exactly. I’d forgotten that he was a magic fish. Next thing I knew, the air was filled with the stench of garbage, an odor surprisingly pungent to me. I was in a place I’d never been before, and everything was very big because I was very small. I now know I was at the Port of Miami. I ran to the water’s edge, and there, I saw the fish.
“‘You have done too little,’ he said, ‘and asked too much. You have threatened someone who did you a kindness. Now you will pay the price. You will remain in this form until you find the feather of a golden bird. Once you do, you must ask the person who brings it to you to cut your throat with a knife, but you must not tell him why. Only when you have done this will you be human again.’
“‘Human again’? I asked. ‘What do you mean?’
“The fish flipped his tail in the water, and beside it, I saw a reflection. But it wasn’t my face I saw. Rather, the face was red and whiskered with sharp teeth and a pointed nose, a nose with a rather strong sense of smell.
“‘You’ve turned me into an animal?’ I yelled at the fish, and I lunged without thought into the water. But when I went beneath the surface, there was no fish to be found. I would have thought that it was my imagination, but since that day, I have been a fox. I called myself Todd, which means ‘fox.’ I lived on garbage and avoided dogs and waited for the day when someone would come to save me. How could I know that that someone would be my own wonderful son?”
My mother takes a long drink of water, fans herself, then looks from my father to me. “You expect me to believe this?”
My father shakes his head. “I wouldn’t have believed it if it hadn’t happened to me. But you can ask your son—
our
son. He was the one who found me, the hero who saved me.”
She places her hand to her forehead. “This can’t be happening.”
“You were the one,” I say, “who believed all along he wasn’t dead, that he wouldn’t leave you. You were the one who believed in magic.”
“But I didn’t think he was a fox!”
“I saw him as a fox, Mom. It’s true.”
My father moves closer to her, carefully, and places his hand on her arm. “I never forgot you, either of you.”
I say, “Stranger things have happened—and recently too.”
My mother takes my father’s face in her hands and gazes at him a very long time. “I thought you had left because of our fight. I looked everywhere.” There are tears in her eyes. “We’ve lost so many years.”
My father takes her in his arms. “But we have so many years left.”
“You know your son, then?” my mother asks.
Todd—my father—nods. “Fine boy, even if he did kill me. He kept his promise to me, though it was hard to do. Those are the type of values I’d have wanted him to learn, and you taught him.”
My mother nods. “He’s like that.”
“I’m glad.” My father stands and holds out his arms to me. I step into them. This has been a crazy day, a crazy week, a crazy world.
