Cold Cereal (The Cold Cereal Saga) (23 page)

“Finchbriton led them home, whistling bright flame. The elf supposed he had a heart after all, an’ it felt like a naked new bird in his rib cage. An’ the finch an’ he were never parted,” said Mick, his voice low and not so boisterous as before. “An’ that’s the end.”

A high breeze made the upper branches shiver but left the two of them undisturbed. Scott paused in his tree and watched Mick, some twelve feet below.

“Are you okay?”

“Tolerable. Just rememberin’.”

“So … was he really a dragon in the shape of a finch?”

“Nah, he was a finch.”

“And … he could breathe fire just because a dragon sat on him—?”

“I dunno,”
Mick snapped. “Who can say? Go an’ spend a fortnight under a great dragon’s unmentionables an’ report back; we’ll compare notes.”

Scott didn’t know what to say to Mick. The story seemed to have taken something out of him.

“Sorry,” Mick muttered finally.

“What will you do when you find Harvey?” asked Scott. “Will you try to go home?”

“Home…,” said Mick. “’Tis no home for such as us.”

“Why? I mean, you’re both from Ireland, aren’t you?”

“Different Ireland. Different isles. I don’t think I’m in my own world at all.”

“Oh, right. You said that before. So fairies and people live in different worlds.”

“It wasn’t always so,” said Mick. “Somethin’s changed.”

“What do you mean?”

“Who are you talking to?” asked a voice. A new voice. Scott’s balance failed him, and he held fast to the oak’s slender branches.

“Erno! We were looking for you.”

“We?”

“I. I was just … talking to myself.”

Erno was standing stiffly beside a large mountain bike. He grinned up at Scott. “There’s a lot of that going around. You should talk to Biggs about it.”

“Is that Biggs’s tree house?” asked Scott as he climbed back down toward the ground. Getting down was so much trickier than getting up. “I tried shouting hello up to it, but nobody answered.”

“Well, ‘hello’ doesn’t work. What you should have shouted was ‘HAPPY ARBOR DAY, PRESIDENT FILLMORE!’ That works.”

“I never would have thought to shout that.”

“Yeah, that’s kind of the point.”

Mick got to his feet and moved when it became clear that Erno was going to trip over him otherwise. “Told yeh things was coming together,” he told Scott.

Scott nodded, and tumbled kind of unceremoniously to earth. And now that he and Erno were on level ground he felt suddenly awkward. He’d been worried about his friends, and he almost bubbled over with relief to know
they were okay. He thought maybe he and Erno should hug, or shake hands, but what he really wanted was for some useful surprise to distract them until the moment passed. Then an eight-foot-tall man dropped to the ground wearing only a bath towel.

“Where
were you?”
Biggs asked Erno. He didn’t even give Scott a glance. “So worried.”

“Sorry. I’m sorry,” said Erno. “I just saw Scott through the periscope, looking for us. So I rode out to find him.” Erno shot Scott a look. “It took longer than I thought it would.”

More lies. Scott sighed.

After a moment Biggs nodded. “Sorry I took so long,” he said. “Was in the shower. ’Lo, Scott,” he finished, and then looked rather squarely at Mick as though waiting to be introduced.

“Um,” said Scott.

“All right, grab an armful of wet housekeeper,” said Erno as he hopped on Biggs’s back. Scott gave Mick a meaningful look, and the little man climbed into his backpack.

They fell, in fits and starts, into the sky. Scott regretted
the cherry water ice he’d eaten earlier as a syrupy bile rose in his throat. Biggs soon deposited Scott on a strong branch and revealed the way inside his strangely homey nest egg. Then he went back for his bike. Erno ran in ahead to announce Scott, and soon Emily came squealing to meet him in the foyer with nearly homicidal enthusiasm. Had she hugged him with any more momentum they might both have tumbled backward through the still-open door and dropped a hundred feet to their adorable deaths.

“Hi,” Scott said, blushing.

“I knew you’d find us,” said Emily. “You won’t believe what’s happened.”

Biggs returned and excused himself to go finish his shower. Emily led Scott into Biggs’s living room, which contained Erno and some 50s modern furniture and a rabbit-man perched atop a bookcase reading
Half Magic
.

Harvey looked over the edge of his book at Scott.
“You?”
he coughed. Scott set his backpack down and unzipped the top. Harvey goggled. “Mick?”

“Harv!”

Scott found it hard to concentrate on Erno and Emily’s story while the elf and pooka had their noisy, backslapping reunion. Mick produced his little flask, and the two of them passed it back and forth.

“What do you keep looking at?” asked Erno.

“Nothing. Sorry. That’s awful, what Goodco was doing. And Mr. Wilson was a part of it?”

“No,” said Emily.

Erno didn’t answer, though you could kind of tell he wanted to.

Biggs returned wearing a white shirt and a tweed vest and slacks. He watched Mick and Harvey on the bookcase, then noticed Scott watching him.

“You can see them?” asked Biggs and Scott in unison.

“See them what?” asked Erno.

“The big guy ith touched,” Harvey told Mick. “Goodco did a number on him in the thixties.”

Biggs sat heavily in the corner chair. His glacial face cracked, just a little.

“Didn’t know they were real,” he said. “The things I see. Not really real.”

“What are we talking about?” said Erno. “Scott?”

Scott glanced at Mick. Mick said, “Harvey, I think these are all good people. Yeh have any glamour left?”

“Thome.”

“Enough for us both?”

“No. No way. That’th too much.”

Mick jerked his head toward the Utz kids. “Not if yeh know their True Names.”

Harvey seemed to be considering this, then he gave a resigned little shrug. “Erno and Emily Utth,” he said as his
ears shivered, and Erno fell straight off the couch.

“Easter Bunny!” Erno shouted, pointing. “Little … munchkin!”

“Thtupid kid.”

“What?” said Emily.

“Wait—you!” Erno said to Mick. “You’re that angry leprechaun!”

“Angry clurichaun, actually,” Mick growled.

“They’re magical … refugees,” said Scott. “They’re from another world or something. Goodco has been holding them prisoner and stealing their magic.”

“Have they been here this whole time?” Erno asked, breathless.

“No, no—Mick came with me.”

“Met Harvey by the Porta-Potties,” said Biggs. “Said he needed a place to hide.”

“Why didn’t you tell us?” Erno asked him while crawling back onto the couch.

“Thought it was all in muh head.”

“I used to think they were auras,” Scott explained.

“WHAT ARE YOU ALL TALKING ABOUT?!” wailed Emily. “Are you making fun of me?”

Everyone fell silent and stared at her. Mick climbed down to the floor.

“No one’s making fun of you,” Scott said quietly. “Why do you think we are?”

“You all … planned this somehow,” Emily muttered. “You said, ‘Let’s pretend there are invisible people in the room to scare Emily.’”

Mick stepped over to the sofa. “Yeh still can’t see me, lass? Or hear me?”

Emily gave no indication she could.

“Emily…,” said Erno. “There’s a leprechaun next to you. And a … rabbit-man on top of the bookshelf.”

Emily was looking like a balloon in search of a pin. “No such thing,” she whispered as she pressed backward into the crook of the sofa.

“What’th with her?”

Mick looked up and over his shoulder. “She doesn’t believe in us, Harv.”

Harvey slumped. “That’th all right. I don’t believe in me, either.”

“Maybe Emily Utz isn’t her True Name?”

“Sure it is,” said Erno. “What do you mean?”

“A True Name isn’t just what yeh call yourself,” said Mick. “’Tis who yeh think yeh really are. It’s the name that feels like home.”

“So what difference does it make, anyway?” asked Scott. He was frightened for Emily, who was big-eyed and jerking her head back and forth like a sparrow.

“If yeh know a fellow’s True Name, it gives yeh … influence. Your magics will work better on that person.”

Erno glanced at Emily. “Try … try Emily Wilson.”

“Thatth not it,” said Harvey from the bookcase. “Thereth thomething elth up with her. Can’t you thmell it? She thtinkth of magic.”

Scott frowned as Emily started vibrating like a cell phone. And were the lights actually dimming? “Magic should make it easier for her to see you, shouldn’t it? Not harder.”

“STOP IT! STOP IT! IT’S NOT FUNNY!”

No one was laughing. Emily squirmed in her seat as Biggs rushed to take her in his arms. The lamps went out, there was a sharp crack and a flash of pink, and when the lights flickered on again the tree house was pierced in two dozen places with bony twigs. They jutted through the walls, ceiling, and floor at odd angles.

Mick hustled to the front door, and a stale hush hung in the air until he returned.

“It’s tree branches,” he reported. “Grew right in from the outside.”

Erno touched one of the thin branches. “Did … did Emily do this?” he asked.

Biggs was swaddling Emily in his arms, rocking his weight from foot to foot. She appeared to have fallen dead asleep.

“Maybe we should go,” Scott whispered to Mick.

“Aye.”

Harvey proceeded to climb down from the bookcase. “Lookth like you’re gonna have a pooka in your baythment after all,” he told Scott. “Should have jutht helped me from the thtart.”

“Wait,” said Scott. “Whoa. He can’t stay at my house.”

“He’s right, Harv. Scott here has a little sister and a da’ what can probably see us.”

“What?” Harvey sputtered, his ears stock-straight.

Mick tried to calm him. “Yeh know how adult humans can be. Been hard enough just keeping
me
out o’ sight, an’ I can fit in a backpack.”

“Inhothpitable mithcreants! Thcoundrelth! Dithcourteouth reprobateth!”

Scott glanced at Mick. “Is he still making words?”

“Promised you could stay here,” Biggs told Harvey with his quiet thunder. “Still can. Just have to not upset Emily so.”

Harvey seemed to be preparing some fresh snark, then thought better of it. He and Erno followed Scott and Mick to the door.

“What did Mr. Wilson
do
to her?” said Scott.

“I don’t know yet,” Erno answered. “I’m gonna find out.”

“That was strong stuff, that was,” said Mick. “Wild magic. No cause, no justification.”

“So … she’s got some weird powers now,” said Erno, “and she doesn’t know how to control them. You guys are
magic, right? You can teach her.”

Mick shook his head. “I couldn’t have done what your sister just did on my
best
day. Not without a very good reason.”