The Key (5 page)

Against the facing wall, flanked on both sides by shadowed arches, a rough-hewn throne sat atop a platform. And on that throne sat a man. He was wearing a skirt. And every one of the Magnifica and Stefan had the identical thought: I hope that dude keeps his legs crossed.

The man was built as wide as he was tall, but he was still plenty tall. He had extravagant red hair pushing out from beneath a too-small cap. His massive hands gripped the arms of the throne as if he would—and could—rip them right off at any moment.

He stared with eyes that glittered from deep, torch-cast shadows.

“I am the MacGuffin,” he announced in a heavily accented speech. “Wha urr ye, 'n' how have you come 'ere uninvited?”

The stones seemed to shake when he spoke. Or maybe it was just that Mack shook. Mack was not fond of beards. In fact, he suffered from pogonophobia—an irrational fear of beards, which only distance could keep under control.

“We're, um …,” Mack began, before faltering. He glanced aside and happened to see Dietmar. Somehow now Dietmar wasn't all that interested in taking the lead. “We're, um, hikers. Is this Urquhart Castle? Because that's … that's where we … um …”

“Urquhart Castle, is it?” MacGuffin demanded, and gnashed his teeth. “Di ah keek lik' a Durward?”

“A what?”

“A Durward!” MacGuffin shouted.

“What's a Durward?”

“Th' Durwards ur th' family that runs Urquhart Castle, ye ninny.”

Dietmar got a crafty look on his face. “Shouldn't Urquhart Castle be run by a family named Urquhart?”

“Na, you great eejit!”

Dietmar did not like being called a “great eejit” so soon after suffering the indignity of being transformed into a sunflower. And, as Mack noticed grudgingly, Dietmar had some spine. The German boy was not a wimp, and he was getting ready to say something forceful to MacGuffin.

But there was something crazy in MacGuffin's eyes, which perfectly reflected the light of the torches from under bushy eyebrows, and Dietmar chose to do the wise thing and fall silent.

MacGuffin leaned forward and glared at Mack. “Ah ken how come yer 'ere. Ye huv come tae steal mah key.”

“Key?” Mack said disingenuously. “What key?”

“Dinnae tak' me fur a gowk. Ye huv th'
enlightened puissance
or ye wouldn't be 'ere. Ah ken th' Pale Queen rises, wee jimmy. Ah ken wha 'n' whit yer.”

Or, in regular English, “Don't take me for a fool. You have the
enlightened puissance
or you wouldn't be here. I know the Pale Queen rises, boy. I know who and what you are.”

And it was at that heart-stopping moment that Mack's phone made an eerie sound. The sound of an incoming text message.

Slowly … slooooowly … cautiously … Mack drew out his iPhone.

MacGuffin stared at the oblong object in Mack's hand. Stared at it as if he was seeing a ghost.

“Whit's that black magic?” MacGuffin demanded in cringing horror.

See, that's the problem with being stuck in an invisible castle for a thousand years: you miss out on a lot of new technology.

Mack did the thing that really should have saved his life. “This!” he cried, holding up the phone and glancing at the message—which was from the golem, and which said, “Pocket lint is tasty”—“Is the mighty iMagic of … of Appletonia! If you harm me or my friends, I will use it to destroy you!”

T
housands of miles away, Mack's golem was eating lint from his pocket and growing larger. The lint happened to be mostly blue because he was wearing blue jeans, but there was some white as well. For variety. And it had a lingering flavor of garlic because, while Mack's mom had washed these jeans after the golem misunderstood the name Hot Pockets and stuffed a microwaved pizza-flavored Hot Pocket into his pocket, some of that flavor had survived.

When Grimluk tapped Mack to go off and save the world, he gave him the golem to fill in for him at home. The golem now looked exactly like Mack, albeit somewhat muddier, and quite a bit less, um, how to put this gently?

Um … okay: Mack was a pretty smart guy. His golem? Not as smart. There: it's been said.

So the golem attended Mack's school and took Mack's classes and wrote Mack's papers. His latest effort, six pages on the history topic “Maybe Abraham Lincoln Had Mice Living in His Beard,” had consisted entirely of the sentence, “He could have, no one knows,” written in various fonts and in various type sizes. On page four, for example, the font was so large that the entire page just read, “HE COULD HA.”

It's a good thing all that stuff about a “permanent record” is just something made up by teachers. Because the golem had caused Mack's steady B+ average to drop somewhat.

The only class where the golem was actually outperforming Mack was gym. He was helped by his ability to physically absorb dodgeballs, draw them into his body, unhinge his jaw, and shoot them back out of his mouth at supersonic speed.

He had an A+ in gym.

And if there was a dodgeball team choosing sides, the golem was always picked first.

The only problem the golem had with gym was the showering part. Water had a tendency to wash him away. Imagine mud. Now imagine mud with a sort of coating of fleshlike paint. Now imagine streaming hot water. You can see the problem for yourself. A kid had once caught sight of the golem's face after a shower, and that kid now lives with his father in another state.

Where he sees a therapist three times a week.

And wakes up screaming.

But! If there were more golem to begin with, the water wouldn't be able to wash him all down the drain. It would wash some of him away, sure, and that could be pretty unsightly. But if he were a really big boy, the water would only damage a tiny bit of him.

That was math, and the golem liked math.

In addition to school, the golem also filled in for Mack at home. He performed all of Mack's important family duties: finding the remote control, nodding solemnly during parental lectures, pretending to do homework, wearing the same socks every day for weeks, taking out the trash after being asked exactly seventeen times, and heatedly pointing out examples of parental hypocrisy. Such as, “You say don't eat the leather sofa cushions but you eat bacon, which is the same as leather!”

There were days when Mack was ambivalent about saving the world, because if he did, he'd sooner or later end up back in Sedona with a lot of explaining to do.

And there were times when the golem had just the most fleeting thought
¹¹
that if Mack succeeded and returned to reclaim his life, it would be the end of a very happy time for the golem.

He wasn't sure what happened to golems after they completed a mission. Maybe he would be sent off to “be” someone else.

Then again, maybe he would just return to being unconscious mud and twigs.

Meanwhile, the golem was showing up for school, pacifying Mack's parents, and kind of dating Camaro Angianelli, one of the bullies at Richard Gere Middle School (Go, Fighting Pupfish!).

Camaro found the golem very sensitive and insightful and an amazing dancer. And no one could take a punch like the golem.

She was punching him right now, in fact, as he changed classes. “You look like you're putting on weight,” Camaro said. And she punched him in the stomach to illustrate. Her fist went all the way in, all the way up to the leather bracelet on her wrist, before bouncing back out.

“Yes. I am going to be a big boy,” the golem said.

Camaro looked up at him speculatively. “Are you any good at punching people out? Because when I make my play for supreme bully power and try to take over Stefan's old job, I could use a big boy backing me up.”

“I will be big,” the golem confirmed, and grinned.

“You have a twig in your teeth,” Camaro pointed out.

“Yes. I do,” the golem said proudly.

“I like that about you, Mack: you rock your own special style. No one else has twigs in their teeth. It's a built-in toothpick.”

The golem had to think about that for a moment before finally saying, “Yes.”

“So,” Camaro whispered conspiratorially. “Sometime within the next few days, it's me and Tony Pooch at the usual place.” She cracked her knuckles, flexed the biceps displayed by her sleeveless T-shirt, gave her neck the old, familiar Stefan Marr warm-up twist, and spit a wad of gum at a passing geek.

“You're going out with Tony Pooch?” The golem was bothered by this. He enjoyed spending time with Camaro—he found her random destructiveness charming. He almost felt jealous. Yes. Almost.

Camaro threw back her head and laughed. Then she gave him an affectionate punch in the arm—a punch that would have reduced anyone else to whimpering and a possible blood clot—and said, “No, no, Mack. I mean I'm going to kick his butt.”

“Ah.”

“I'm your girl,” Camaro said affectionately, and followed that statement up with a snarling warning that he had better never forget it. Not if he wanted to keep all four of his limbs.

He did want to keep all four of his limbs because it was crucial to passing as Mack. Coming home without an arm would definitely generate uncomfortable questions from Mom. And if he lost two or more limbs, even Dad might notice.

“You're my girl,” the golem said contentedly. “And I'm your big boy.”

Mack was going to have a lot of explaining to do when he got home.

But at the moment the golem had given him an opportunity....

“I
am the Wizard of the iPhone!” Mack cried, sounding a little desperate. “Gaze upon this and be afraid, William Blisterthöng MacGuffin! Behold, as I kill a pig using only an angry bird!”

MacGuffin sat back hard when he saw that. Then he leaned forward to look closer, because the screen was pretty small. But Mack could see the fear in the old ginger's eyes.

“I, too, am a wizard!” Jarrah cried, getting into the act. “I can make nanobots take over a human brain!”

“And I can look up words and translate them from German to English!” Dietmar announced.

This assault of smartphones baffled and amazed the thousand-year-old man. In MacGuffin's world the very height of technology was the windmill, the crossbow, and something very new and exciting: the fork.

He had never seen a phone, let alone a phone that contained tiny people within it and could play music. From his point of view, Mack and his friends were indeed magicians. Wizards! Who else could cause rectangular lights to appear in their palms? Who else could plant tiny crops of wheat and corn inside that rectangle of light? Who else could reveal pictures of themselves playing volleyball at their cousin's birthday party?

“Give us the Key, William Blisterthöng MacGuffin, or we will unleash the power of the iMagic to shrink you to the size of one of these captive pigs, and we will pelt you with the angriest of birds!”

Mack put that out there in his deepest, most impressive voice, and he wore his most serious and solemn expression.

And it would have worked. Maybe.

Except that something like a very large dragonfly suddenly zipped into the torchlight.

“It's a trick,” Connie the fairy said. “Don't believe them, Willy.”

MacGuffin leaped from his chair. He stood there and stared, stared hard like he was seeing the end of the world or maybe like he was seeing something impossible or maybe like he was seeing another
Transformers
sequel and just not believing it.

His mouth moved but no sounds came out.

And then a single great sob.

“Con?” he said through quivering mustachioed (top and bottom) lips.

“Yes, Willy, it's me. It's me, your Connie.”

“Efter a' thae lang years, mah yin true loue?”

Which, to the amazement of absolutely everyone, even Stefan, meant, “After all these long years, my one true love?”

The fairy flew—that's not a metaphor, she flew—to him and wrapped her arms around his hairy red head, and MacGuffin lifted a massive paw with amazing gentleness to cradle her tiny face.

“Willy, this is all Frank's doing,” Connie said, and made the fist of forcefulness again. “He's shown them the way to take the Key. In exchange, they've sworn to release the All-Mother.”

“She wha haes vowed tae string a fiddle wi' mah tendons, then speil a jolly tune 'n' dae a jig?”

(“She who has vowed to string a fiddle with my tendons, then play a jolly tune and do a jig?”)

“Aye, my love,” Connie said, stroking his Gandalf eyebrows.

They gazed into each other's eyes with the tenderest of love. Such love.

With sinking heart, Mack faced the terrible truth: Connie had betrayed her fellow fairies.