Cold Cereal (The Cold Cereal Saga) (11 page)

“It was okay,” Scott answered. “But I had a headache today.”
And I saw a unicorn. And a unicat. And a leprechaun tried to steal my backpack
.

“Oh
no
.”

They ordered a take-out pizza and rented a video—an old movie their mother had loved as a girl. It was, coincidentally, one of those movies wherein the smart kid invents things and all his friends call him Data. Scott could sense that his mom wanted it to be a real event—a fun family night. She would be leaving after Thanksgiving (a day care worker from Goodco would be staying with them) and wouldn’t be back for a month, maybe two. But Scott’s headaches tended to wear him out, and he fell asleep during the big finale with the pirate ship, pretended not to wake when his mother covered him with an afghan, and trudged up the stairs to his
bedroom when his official bedtime compelled him to his official bed.

He didn’t notice anything unusual in his room that night. He didn’t notice anything at all until morning, when he woke up next to a leprechaun.

“GWAH!” Scott shouted, and rolled out of bed in a tangle of sheets. The tiny old man in the red tracksuit was there on his mattress, had been sleeping next to him, sharing the twin bed—maybe all night? From the cold floor Scott couldn’t see him anymore, and he held out hope that it had all been some sort of waking dream until the little pug face appeared at the edge of the bedding.

“AHH!”

“Ah, put a cork in it,” said the little pug face.

Scott rose unsteadily. “Why … why are you here?”

The man dangled his legs over the side of the mattress. He smelled like potatoes. “Didn’t thank yeh properly before. In the city. Come to make … amends.” His tone suggested that “amends” was a dish he could be persuaded to serve but didn’t care much for himself.

An early-morning memory came back to Scott, of
cuddling up to his stuffed bear Bongo—a memory complicated by the fact that he’d given Bongo to the Salvation Army three years ago. He cringed at the old man and shuddered.

Mom’s voice was at the door. “Scott, are you all right? I heard you call out.”

Scott glanced at the little man, who shrugged.

“I’m okay,” he said. “I had a weird dream.”

Mom poked her head in the doorway. “I’m making waffles. Ten minutes?” She paid no attention at all to her tiny houseguest. Scott nodded at her.

“
I
like waffles,” said the man after she left. He was drumming his fingertips together and musing at the ceiling. “If there are waffles to be had. Best thing to come out o’ the Middle Ages, waffles. The rest o’ that millennium was a bit of a wash ….”

“Who are you?” Scott asked. It was the least of the questions on his mind. Though he thought he might have to take the long way to get to the others, which included
WHAT are you
and
Why are you two feet tall
and
Don’t you think it’s maybe time you were going?

“Call me Mick.” Mick slid down from the bed and circled Scott’s small room, casting his eyes toward this and that. He had the impatient look of someone pretending to shop when all he really wanted to do was use your bathroom. Then he paused at the window. It didn’t face
much of anything apart from the alley, but if you stood at the edge and looked through it obliquely, as Mick was doing now, you could see just a sliver of the town at large: its crosshatched trees and factory on the hill. He took a drink of something from a little metal container in his pocket and grimaced as he swallowed. “Can’t believe yeh live
here
. Of all places, this.”

Scott frowned. “What’s wrong with Goodborough?” It wasn’t New York, to be sure—it was small and quiet, and nearly everyone who lived there worked for the cereal company in one way or another. But it was nicer than their last home, and it even got tourists: visitors who loved Goodco cereals so much they left bigger cities to come here, to buy souvenirs, to take the tour.

“Yeh don’t even know. Course yeh don’t. No one digs in the dirt anymore.”

“Uh-huh. In New York you said you’d explain what’s going on,” Scott said. “If I freed you.”

“Aye, I did.” Mick turned from the window. “So I am honor bound to tell yeh that I am one o’ the Fair Folk, the Good Folk of the daoine sídhe, and I am a very long way from home.”

Scott inhaled. “You
are
a leprechaun.”

Mick scowled. “I am a
clur
ichaun. A clurichaun. I amn’t no bleedin’ leprechaun. Does my suit look green to you?”

“No.”

“So I amn’t a leprechaun. But I am one o’ the Fay, one o’ Queen Titania’s court, an’ probably so are you.”

“I’m … what?”

“Scott!” called his mother. “Breakfast!”

So quite possibly the most important conversation of Scott’s life was just then interrupted by waffles, and there are worse things.

“You look at that,”
said Reggie Dwight to his publicist, but
en español
. He’d landed in Madrid twelve hours ago and kept insisting everyone listen to his second-semester Spanish.
“You look at that, below to the window, in the street.”
He paced across his suite to another window in the bedroom, then back to the first.

“I saw them,” said his publicist, Angela, in English. Below Reggie’s hotel window, on the sidewalk of Madrid’s Calle Gran Vía, were a camera crew and three lonely Spaniards with picket signs. Two of these signs were in Spanish, the third read
GOD SAVE THE QUEEN
(
FROM REGGIE DWIGHT
). He actually found it kind of clever.

“I have…,”
Reggie began, but faltered. He wanted to say he had protesters, but settled for “revolutionaries.”

“It’s nothing. Someone on the hotel staff must have blabbed.”

“Is exciting. My heart is fat.”

“Can you please stop speaking Spanish?” Angela chirped. “I wouldn’t ask except it’s making me want to stab pens in my ears.”

“I’m just saying it’s kind of exhilarating. All the sudden attention.” Both Reggie’s last movie and album had failed to meet sales expectations, and he’d been feeling a little neglected. “There’s no such thing as bad publicity, right?”

“Sure,” said Angela. “Publicists love that expression.”

Three days ago Reggie had punched the Queen of England in the face. He had done it for some very good reasons that he was nonetheless now at a loss to explain to anyone else.

“Okay,” he said, still watching the street. “What are we doing?”

“We’re still waiting to hear back from the
Late Show
people, but there is no way they’re not having you on. And this week everyone you talk to is going to call you Sir Reggie Dwight or Sir Reginald if we have to pin a note to your shirt.”

“I don’t know,” said Reggie, rubbing his neck. “I don’t really go in for titles and all that—”

“Please. The only thing you love more than your title is pretending you don’t love your title. Everyone will be reminded that you’re still a Knight of the Realm and the queen hasn’t disqualified or excommunicated you or
whatever despite you punching her in the face, so if you’re good enough for Her Majesty, you should be good enough for them. I mean, do you realize that even a couple of your stalkers have gone quiet lately?”

“Only a couple?” Reggie joked, but he recognized that the really obsessive fans didn’t tend to just fade away. They either loved you or they were suddenly sending you portraits of yourself made with dead insects.

“Well, that one accountant still sends you daily email,” said Angela.

“What about?”

“The usual. Bogeymen, secret societies. Rubbish. But here’s something nice: Goodco still wants you for that commercial.”

“I thought Steven already said no to them. I don’t do American commercials.”

“I want you to reconsider. It’s a huge vote of confidence that they’re still offering, and this could be a very good move. That talking police dog comedy you just wrapped is a family film, and you want to seem family friendly. And it doesn’t get more wholesome than children’s breakfast cereal. You’ll look like a nice guy … you know, less of a queen-puncher.”

Reggie had met the queen once before of course—five years ago, when he’d been knighted. When he’d been made a Knight Bachelor “for achievement in theatre and
music and for service to children through his charity Kids First.” He’d knelt before the small old woman and rested his knee on an odd stool that had no other earthly purpose but to receive the knees of the knighted. The queen wore a pale yellow suit with squared shoulders like a stick of butter, and she’d smiled kindly at him through her big spectacles. He remembered wishing he could touch her hair, which was gathered about her head like candy floss. He wanted to know if it was as sticky as it looked, but of course he didn’t dare—he would never have dared to touch the queen. Except, just recently, to punch her. That apparently he would do. He still marveled at this.

“And of course I’m still trying to put this press release together,” said Angela. “So once again, any help you could give me—”

“I told you already. I can’t explain it in any way that doesn’t just make me sound more crazy.”

“Are you taking any prescription medications? Something that could have gone bad on you?”

“Just stuff for hay fever … sumatriptan for migraines. You know, I
was
getting a migraine that day.”

“Hmm,” said Angela as she jotted this down. “It’s
something
.”

The second time Reggie met the queen was last week, at the racecourse in Berkshire. He had always enjoyed the races. He had always liked horses, but he’d determined
as a boy that while a love of horses might be considered faintly girlish, a love of horse racing made him one of the lads. He was enjoying box seats with two London cousins when a prim man appeared at his elbow. Her Majesty was here, dining with the jockey Sir Gordon Maris. Would Reggie please come pay his respects?

Reggie was led to an elegant dining room that overlooked the track. He’d bowed at the neck to his queen, who was dressed in pearls and another of her squarish overcoats, this one as green as a Williams pear. He wondered if anyone had ever told her that she always looked like something good to eat. Maybe Prince Philip. He decided to keep it to himself regardless.

He was feeling the first twists of a headache as he was invited to sit between Her Majesty and Gordon Maris. The little jockey was no longer a young man, but he still looked like a schoolboy in his blazer. The pink and blue diamonds on his tie reminded you of the garish silks he once wore on the racetrack.
He must have these ties specially made
, thought Reggie, and that’s when he saw the fly.

A great fat horsefly, plump as a raisin, helicoptering around the jockey’s head. Neither Maris nor the queen gave it any notice as they discussed the National Hunt race taking place that afternoon. Then the bug quit its wheeling and buzzed right for Her Majesty, attaching itself like a fresh wart to her nose.

The queen did not so much as flinch, so Reggie flinched for her.

“The young filly Baker’s Dozen is a bit of a wild card,” Maris droned, “if you’ll permit me to say so. Quite good on the hurdles but rather untested on the steeplechase.”

Reggie couldn’t believe they were still talking about horse racing. Of course, Maris was old and (Reggie remembered reading somewhere) half blind. But the queen! She’d scarcely moved, and now the fly was plumbing the soft flesh of her nostril with its tiny teeth. Reggie glanced for help at the queen’s assistant, who was maintaining a respectful distance and a complete lack of eye contact.

Her Majesty smiled at something Maris said, and the fly crossed the bridge of her nose, leaving behind a watery bead of thin red blood that slipped off its tip and dripped onto the china. The fly continued past her eye, humped over her brow, and parked again on the empty lot of her forehead. And just as Reggie began to think it might be his knightly duty to slay this beast, the queen plucked the horsefly off her face and popped it wriggling into her mouth. Then she cast a sideways glance at Reggie and winked.

Maris said, “You know who has a really good horse-breeding program now is the Danes.”

“Er,” said Reggie, fully intending to excuse himself and
return to his cousins. But then the woman turned, and he saw the darkly glinting ancient eldritch maleficence in her eyes and did what any loyal knight would when faced with the sudden certainty that his queen had been replaced by an impostor.