Cold Cereal (The Cold Cereal Saga) (13 page)

“Bait?”

“Bait for other Fay, an’ for magical creatures. Glamour attracts glamour, like I said. They used us to pull others across the border.”

There was that word again. “What border?” asked Scott. “You mean like from Mexico?”

“The border ’tween your world and mine. A magical border.”

The last time Scott had heard the word
magical
this often he’d changed the channel to a better cartoon. But now he had to admit that even a lousy TV show was better than watching a tiny old man sniff toadstools.

“This isn’t what I thought we’d be doing today,” Scott said.

Mick eased backward onto the seat of his red track pants and once more pulled a little metal flask from the hip pocket. He unscrewed the cap, and the meadow filled with a thick, eye-watering smell of lilies. He took a pull.

“Helping the clurichaun’s no fun anymore, ’s that it?”

Technically, it never was fun
, thought Scott. “I just don’t know what I’m supposed to be doing. Besides carrying the backpack.”

“Keepin’ your eyes peeled mostly.”

“For a rabbit-man.”

“For a pooka.”

“A … what?”

“Harvey is a pooka. Did I tell yeh that? He’s one o’ the old Irish Fay: a shapeshiftin’ fairy-man. He can turn into a rabbit. A full-on, normal-size rabbit. Other pooka can turn into goats or horses or dogs or things. Okay?”

“Okay.” Scott sort of resented Mick’s tone: lecturing him as if about the four food groups.

“Harvey may not be able to turn into a full-on coney right now. Might not have the magic left for it. But he’s still a rabbit-man, and his instinct is going to be to get underground, maybe wait out the winter. Now you an’ I both can see Harvey fine, but he’s tryin’ not to be seen right now, an’ with good reason, so I’m sniffin’ for some hint o’ his old glamour.”

Scott remembered that day by the drainpipe. “When
he left me he changed things around him. Made them more … magical.”

“So yeh said. He was under stress, innit? Fifty years of Goodco’s sticky fingers have robbed him o’ his control. They had machines. Magical machines,” Mick said uncertainly, as though the phrase confused him. “They made the glamour flare up in us, an’ then they sucked it out. Don’t know wha’ they did with it. Put it in cereal boxes, I guess.”

“Why?”

The question got Mick peevish. “You tell
me
why. Eh? Why d’yeh got all them Goodco cereals in your cupboard back home?”

Scott shrugged. “My mom gets them free at work. I don’t eat them—they have a weird taste.”

“Oh,” said Mick. He scratched his neck. “Beg your pardon. Anyway, when yeh saw Harvey he was newly escaped from Goodco headquarters—the one on the island in Lake Meer. Those machines wore him out, made it hard to control his own glamour, an’ it was just pouring out of him. It’s probably trickling out now.”

A flash of something across the field caught Scott’s attention. The two men were still there. The slighter of the two was closer, in fact. He had his hands up by his head, and then there it was again: two sharp points of light as if the sun were glinting off a pair of huge, glassy eyes.

“I think someone over there has binoculars,” whispered Scott. “I think he’s looking at us.”

Mick tensed. He rose and walked slowly but deliberately behind Scott’s legs. “Probably can’t see me,” he said. “S’probably just noticing you.”

Scott wasn’t accustomed to being noticed. “Don’t you think you should…”

“Aye.”

Scott kneeled and let Mick into the backpack between the city map and the Tupperware of trail mix. The lean man was crossing the field.

Scott could think of nothing to do but watch him approach. How was he going to explain what he was doing here? He wasn’t, Scott decided with an inward nod. He was just a kid in a park. Kids go to parks.

The man had binoculars in one hand, a cigarette in the other. He was as lean and tan as a belt, in skinny jeans and one of those sorts of T-shirts that appear all old and faded but actually cost forty dollars. His hair was bleach-blond and looked like a cake decoration.

“Hey, you,” said the man when he was close enough to speak conversationally. “Where are your parents? Your mom here? You shouldn’t be wandering off by yourself.”

“I’m allowed,” Scott answered. He had, in fact, asked for permission to go to the park alone. Mom likely assumed he’d meant River Park, closer to home, but legal loopholes
have always been the playgrounds of rich men and children. Besides, he wasn’t really alone, a fact that suddenly weighed on his shoulders a little more heavily than before.

“Whatcha doing out here, big guy?”

Scott shrugged. “School project. What … what are
you
doing here?”

From across the yellow field came the thin reed of the other man’s voice. “Haskoll! Get back here!”

The man called Haskoll gave Scott a prim smile, as though privately savoring whatever it was he was about to tell him. He let the silence tick for three seconds, four, before finally punctuating it with a wink.

“It’s wabbit season,” he said. “We’re hunting wabbits.”

Haskoll and Scott approached the other man, whom Scott had already been coached should be referred to as Papa. Scott didn’t care to meet Papa at all, but Haskoll had roped his arm around Scott’s shoulders, just over the backpack, and steered him across the meadow with a kind of grabby friendliness.

“Now be vewy, vewy quiet,” said Haskoll. “Elmer Fudd. Just kidding, though—Papa is a very important man. A great hunter. I think you’re really going to like him. Papa!”

The other man was older, square jawed and white haired, with a khaki vest and his pants tucked into boots and a long rifle in his faintly shaking hand.

“I’ve been calling you,” he told Haskoll. “I’ve found more fewmets. Who is this?”

“This is my new friend, Scotty. Why don’t you tell him a little about what we’re doing here?”

Papa frowned at Scott. “I don’t think that would be wise.”

Haskoll spoke to Scott directly. “Goodco has asked us to look for a rabbit they lost, Scotty. It’s sort of their … company mascot, you know? And Papa here is hot on its trail.”

“Hm. Yes. Well, I’ve found some of the creature’s … scat.” The old man must have recognized the blank look on Scott’s face, because he added, “Its …
leavings
, you know. I need you to check them, Haskoll. My back, and all that.”

“Ah … you know what?” said Haskoll. “I forgot the rock at home.”

Papa scowled. “Well, collect them for later then.”

Haskoll took a plastic bag and tweezers from one of Papa’s pockets and kneeled by the man’s foot, where there were three droppings the size of M&M’S. Once they were inside the bag he tucked it back in a vest pocket while Papa gazed with quiet dignity at the horizon.

“The spyglass, please.”

Haskoll produced a small retractable spyglass from another vest pocket and handed it to Papa. This spyglass had a pink lens.

“I see nothing. What do you see, Haskoll?”

Haskoll used his own binoculars. “Nada,” he said, and turned to Scott. “How about you, buddy?”

Scott didn’t see anything, either.

“You know what, Papa?” said Haskoll. “I wanna get that poop back to the Batcave, check it against the rock. I’ll take the van and be back in thirty minutes, tops.”

“Don’t be ridiculous. And what should I do without you here?”

“Hunt the beast. Track it. Footprints and, I don’t know, tree rubbings and whatever.”

“… Yes, but—”

“I don’t think the world’s greatest hunter needs
my
help, right, Scotty?”

This seemed to clinch it. Scott had never seen this kind of manipulation work on an adult before. He felt embarrassed for both of them, most of all Papa.

“Do you see that strip of turf?” Papa announced, pointing at the grass. “Shinier than the rest. Means the blades have been disturbed by some animal’s passing, you know.”

“There you go. C’mon, Scotty.”

Haskoll and Scott walked some distance off before Scott spoke. “Well, I should get going. My mom’s expecting me.”

Haskoll responded by clapping Scott on the back. Or rather clapping Scott on the backpack and in all
likelihood striking Mick in the head. “Oh, don’t rush off now. I thought you might like to see our little hunting lodge.”

“Ah … no thanks.”

Just then Scott felt a kick from inside the backpack. He winced.

“Well, on second thought…,” he said. “Maybe.”

Mick kicked him again.

Had they thought of it ahead of time they might have worked out a “one kick means yes, two kicks mean no” sort of system, but they hadn’t; and now Scott had no idea what Mick was trying to tell him.

“You all right, big guy?”

Scott nodded. “Sure. Let’s … go to your hunting place. Thanks.”

And now the backpack was still.

Scott watched helplessly through the van’s windshield as the last gas station and bus stop of Goodborough passed behind him and Walnut Crescent lay beyond like the curled body of some huge, regal animal. This was the rich suburb of Goodborough. Scott had never been here before.

“Nice, huh?” said Haskoll from the driver’s seat.

“Very pretty.”

Each estate sat past a vast lawn of deep pile and tasteful flower beds. Some were behind high walls and massive yet girlishly patterned gates. Even the zoo didn’t go to this much trouble.

The van turned in toward one of these gates, which parted and swung open at the touch of a keypad outside Haskoll’s window. They pulled up to a house made of great dark beams and old stone.

“I have to go to the bathroom,” said Scott as soon as the vehicle came to a stop.

Haskoll let them in the tall front doors and disabled an alarm system that had just begun to beep for his attention. “It’s the first door down that hall,” he said. “Meet me back here when you’re done, and I’ll show you the trophy room.”

The hall smelled like tobacco and vanilla. Scott closed and locked the bathroom door behind him, and unzipped his backpack. Up gasped Mick like a trout.

“I know you’re a super-old magical leprechaun and all—” Scott hissed.

“
Clur
ichaun,” said Mick.

“—but nowadays, getting into a van with a weird adult is considered a
very bad idea.”

“I only want to find out wha’ these two know. I’ll have a wander and come back to this bathroom. Please, lad. If yeh get into a pickle, just call an’ I’ll come runnin’.”

Scott privately wondered what the elf could do to help, what with his short stature and complete lack of cool magic powers. “This Haskoll guy might see you.”

“Aw, chicken teeth. If Haskoll could see me, he’d have already asked yeh about me.”

“I guess so.”

“I overheard somethin’ about a spyglass. Did it have a pink lens?”

“Yeah,” said Scott, remembering. “I saw some other guys with pink goggles the day I met Harvey, too.”

“Ultraviolet-vision glasses,” said Mick. “Helps regular people see the Fay. They don’t work so well in the daytime, though. But, lad—if these two are hunting Harvey, then they’d be really interested in someone like you. Someone who can see the Fay without a pair o’ goggles. Watch what you say.”

Scott nodded and left Mick alone in the darkened bathroom. It wasn’t until he’d returned to the front door that Scott pictured Haskoll’s binoculars clearly—heavy and black and with perfectly ordinary lenses.

“There you are. Fall in? Just kidding. Wanna see the trophy room?”

Scott let Haskoll lead him through the marble entry hall to a wood-paneled wall flanked with facing staircases. Between these was a narrow door.

Scott took a breath and forced a question to his lips. They were here to learn, after all. “What was that rock you and Papa were talking about? The one you were going to use to check the … droppings?”

Haskoll opened the narrow door and ushered Scott inside with a theatrical bow. “Cold iron,” he answered. The hall beyond was dark, with the faintest outline of another door at its end. “Iron from a meteor, ‘never heated by any human agency.’ We have a few hunks of meteor rock, and
we always take the smallest one on a hunt. Go ahead and push through that door—it’s unlocked.”

Scott did as he was told and entered a high, octagonal room that was indistinctly lit by thin ribbons of blue window glass near the ceiling. But some overhead lamps flickered on, and in the yellow, flickering lights … heads.

Heads
.

From eye line to ceiling, the paneled rear wall was lined with severed heads. Having never hunted himself, Scott had imagined a trophy room filled with silver cups and little marble pillars topped with gold figures frozen in the act of shooting or bowling or whatever; but these were
heads
: heads of the most extraordinary shapes. The head of a dark-haired woman with feline features. An eagle’s head that was as big as a lion’s. A row of toadish boys with bloodred skin. A giant—an honest-to-god storybook giant, his round pink face as big as a beach ball. A unicorn. It couldn’t be anything else, though this was no horse head. It was more like some cross between a horse and a fawn: white as cream, with a long, plaited horn of pearl. It was beautiful. Even disembodied and mounted on a rosewood plaque it was so beautiful it made Scott’s stomach turn.