Elliot and the Pixie Plot (12 page)

Refuse to help us and you will never see Mr. Willimaker again. Should you fail with the Demon Kovol, no one will ever see you again.

Cheers!

The Fairies

Elliot crumpled the note into his pocket and yelled again, “Mr. Willimaker!” Then he yelled, “Fairies! I want to talk to you!”

But there was no answer.

He was alone in the Underworld, with no map either back to Burrowsville or ahead to Demon Territory. And he thought he heard a sound nearby. Something was coming toward him.

Elliot hurried back to camp and gathered up both his and Mr. Willimaker’s bundles. With his arms full, he began racing in the direction they’d been walking yesterday. He didn’t know if he was still walking toward Demon Territory or not. But he did know he was moving away from whatever was following him.

Maybe it was Goblins, who knew he was alone and wanted revenge for his ending the Goblin war.

Maybe it was Fairies, coming to capture him before he could find Kovol.

Maybe it was the ice cream man on his secret Underworld route. That’d be cool, but he sort of doubted it. Elliot didn’t have money for ice cream anyway.

Elliot ran so quickly through the bushes that he lost track of where he was going. All that mattered was getting away. Then he burst into a small clearing and took a step onto something that wasn’t hard ground.

It was a kind of mud, but no ordinary mud. His foot sank into the mud almost up to his knee. His second foot landed in the mud before he had time to stop, and he went in up to his thigh.

He didn’t think he was in quicksand. Elliot had never been caught in quicksand before, due to the fact that there was no quicksand in Sprite’s Hollow. But this wasn’t sand at all. It was mud, and the mud seemed to be holding him in. The more he struggled, the more tightly the mud held on.

“King Elliot? It’s me. Where are you?”

Elliot turned his head toward the sound. It wasn’t Goblins or Fairies chasing him. It was Patches, who had disobeyed both him and her father to follow them into the Underworlderness. But she was about to save his life, so he decided to ignore her rule-breaking.

“I’m here,” he called. “I need help!”

Patches poofed from wherever she was to stand on solid ground near Elliot. “Oh,” she said. “Gripping mud.”

“That’s what this is?”

She giggled. “In case you didn’t know, you’re not supposed to walk on it.”

“Now you tell me. How do I get out?”

Patches giggled again. “You can’t. Well, I mean you can’t get out by yourself. The more you try, the more you’ll get stuck.”

“So can you get me out?”

“If I get you out, then you can’t get mad at me for following you, okay?”

Elliot smiled. “If you hadn’t followed me, I’d be stuck here forever.”

Patches knelt on the ground. “Okay, so here’s how it works. I’m going to hand you a branch. You have to let me pull you out by myself. Don’t help me at all. Anything you do will only make the mud hold you tighter.”

“I’m pretty heavy for you,” Elliot said.

“I’m pretty strong for me too.” Patches snapped off a branch of a nearby tree and held it out to Elliot. “Just hold on.”

Elliot held to the branch. Once Patches started to loosen him from the mud, he wiggled his legs to work his body upward. Instantly, the gripping mud pulled him down again.

“You might be a king, but now you have to obey me,” Patches grumbled. “Don’t help.”

“Right,” Elliot said. “Sorry.”

This time he relaxed his body and did nothing to free himself, no matter how hard Patches groaned to pull him out. Even when it was only his toes remaining in the mud, he still let her drag him forward until he was entirely on solid ground.

“No one can get out of gripping mud on their own,” Patches said between breaths. “Sometimes the Brownies call it friendship mud. If you don’t have any friends, you stay stuck.”

“Thanks for being my friend,” Elliot said. “You saved me.”

“You’re welcome, but don’t hug me,” she said. “You’re dirty.”

Elliot heard a river nearby. “Give me a minute, and I’ll be back.” He ran to the river, this time being more careful to watch for any signs of gripping mud, then waded in. The water was cool but clean, and he splashed around until all the mud had washed away.

When he got back to Patches, she had caught her breath and was gathering up what little remained from his and Mr. Willimaker’s food bundles. “Don’t try to hug me now either,” she said. “You’re all wet.”

“That gripping mud is pretty nasty stuff,” Elliot said. “Is there a lot of it in the Underworld?”

“No, but you see it from time to time. You can sometimes see a brown glow around it. That’s how you know it’s there before you run into it.”

“So why’d you come?” Elliot asked. “It’s dangerous out here.”

“I know,” Patches said. “But I remembered a few things after you left. Some really important things.”

“Like what?”

“Well, I wanted to tell you about the Shapeshifter in case he comes back and tries to trick you again.”

Elliot shook his head. “He’s on the surface, pretending to be me. That’ll keep him busy until I get home.”

“But if he does come,” she said, “there’s a way to keep him from changing forms. Just pinch his ear.”

Elliot pinched two fingers against his own ear. “Like this?”

“The tighter, the better.”

“Anything else?” Elliot asked.

“Yes. I’m worried about your helping the Pixies. I was thinking about a treaty the Brownies have. A really long time ago, Queen Bipsy agreed not to help either the Fairies or the Pixies while they were fighting over Glimmering Forest. I think the Fairies are going to be mad if they find out.”

Elliot nodded. “Your dad told me the same thing last night.”

Patches looked around. “Where is he?”

“The Fairies got mad,” Elliot said. “They just took him.”

Patches groaned. “My mom won’t like that. After the Goblins took me, she made it a family rule that nobody else can get kidnapped.”

“I don’t think it was your dad’s choice,” Elliot said.

“My mom won’t see it that way. She’ll think he’s trying to get out of weeding the garden.”

Elliot shook his head. “He’s fine for now, but the Fairies left me a note that said to get him back, I need one of Kovol’s socks for the Fairies. I have to get to Demon Territory, but your dad had the map. Do you know how to get there?”

“Of course,” Patches said. “Let’s go.”

“I don’t want you to take me there,” Elliot said. “Just point me in the right direction.”

Patches put her hands on her hips. “It’s still a long way, Elliot, and without me you’ll be lost. Do you want my help or not?”

“Fine,” Elliot said. “Let’s go.”

He followed Patches across a wide field of tiny white flowers that made him sneeze. And every time he sneezed, it blew the flower apart into bits that created new flowers where they landed. By the time they left the field, there were hundreds more flowers than when he began. He followed her up a tall, sandy hill where with every footstep he slid almost as far down as where he began. Patches was lighter and climbed it much faster but waited for him while he heaved his way to the top.

“That wasn’t much fun,” he said once he arrived.

“Yeah, but going down makes the climb worth it.” She turned and leapt into the air, landing on the soft sand and rolling the rest of the way down the long hill.

Elliot followed, laughing as he rolled until he got a mouthful of sand and wisely kept his mouth closed the rest of the way. Once he reached the bottom, he and Patches lay on the sand and laughed a little longer.

“My dad would’ve taken you around the hill instead of over it,” Patches said. “Now aren’t you glad I’m here?”

Elliot nodded. “You have to go home soon, though. You can’t come into Demon Territory with me.”

“Oh, I forgot,” Patches said, sitting up. “That’s the other thing I had to tell you!”

But she never got a chance to tell him because at the last moment—

Dear Reader, don’t you hate it when a character is about to say something really important, but they never get a chance to say it, because they’re interrupted by something else? Maybe someday you’ll have something really important to say, such as, “Mom, did you know the house is on fire?” Even if someone tries to interrupt you, like your little brother asking for a drink of water, you should still tell your mother about the fire. Not only was it rude for your little brother to interrupt and you have to teach him good manners, but your mother will probably also want to use that glass of water for the fire.

In this case, Patches never got a chance to finish what she was going to say, because Harold the Shapeshifter poofed in right in front of Elliot. He was still in Elliot’s form, and the only reason she could tell them apart was that Harold had a small patch of white hair on the back of his head.

It took Elliot a moment to realize that it was not a mirror that had suddenly poofed in, but it was actually Harold, who looked exactly like him.

Elliot tried to say hello, but Harold spoke first. “I’m very sorry to tell you this,” he said to Elliot, “but you’ll have to stay in the Underworld forever. I won’t let you go home ever again.”

Except for the Pixie prison, Elliot quite liked the Underworld and thought if he ever did get home, he might want to return for a nice visit one day. But he didn’t want to stay in the Underworld forever. For one thing, his family was on the surface, and he missed them. For another, Underworld creatures thought chocolate was about the worst thing since liver and onions. Elliot couldn’t see himself living anywhere without chocolate.