The Kingdom of Kevin Malone (14 page)

The passage to the back, once dark and packed with bundles that might have been garbage or people's belongings, was now lit by a wire-caged bulb and lined with neat plastic trash cans.

I held up the rose pin. It glowed faintly when I turned it toward the sink.

I went over for a closer look. The sink was not very promising as a hiding place. It looked as if it got a lot of use. Users would find anything hidden there, wouldn't they?

But where would you hide something in a sink anyway? Down—the pin's beam indicated—underneath.

I hunkered down to see if anything was taped to the underside. There was nothing, only the pipes, and the wall behind them which the painters had not bothered with since you couldn't see it unless you were down where I was. In fact, there wasn't even a plaster coating here, like on the wall above. I could see a few dark red bricks, set unevenly with pale crusts of mortar squeezed out along the seams.

I turned the faint beam of the rhinestones—were they really shining, or was I imagining it?—toward the wall. I moved the brooch back and forth slowly. Water dripped monotonously into the sink above my head.

One of the bricks took on the glow of the magic light: special effects in Kevin's old basement! Gingerly I ran my hand along the edge of the brick. Crumbly mortar fell away onto the floor. The brick rocked slightly when I pressed it.

My heart was bumping along: I didn't much like the idea of feeling around in some dank, black space for a sharp-edged weapon. Never mind the possibility of giant waterbugs. Was this the place? You couldn't fit a whole sword into the length of a brick, so maybe the blade had a detachable handle? Humble guise, Kevin had said—a folding umbrella? Too big.

Behind me the elevator descended with a whine of machinery. It stopped on the ground floor and stayed there, and then up it went again.

I dropped the rose pin back in my jacket pocket and pressed the velcro shut. Then I scrunched down by the wall and eased the brick out by sheer friction with my fingertips. It came with a grating sound, and it was so much heavier than I'd expected that I almost dropped it. I leaned it on end against the wall.

There in the back of the cavity, in plain view, was what had to be Kevin's magical Farsword. It was a little package no longer than my middle finger, all wrapped up in discolored white cotton cloth and tied around and around with a piece of green plastic lanyard.

I stared, itching with curiosity but scared, too. The stained cloth reminded me of, well, mummy wrappings, and isn't treasure always booby-trapped against robbers? Trust Kevin to forget to mention the ax blade that would drop out of the ceiling and chop my head off when I released the secret lever by removing the package.

I grabbed it. Nothing awful happened. I eased a loop of the ancient lanyard around the end of the little bundle, and then the whole thing came loose.

Folded up inside was a familiar shape: a red-handled Swiss Army knife.

I laughed. The great Farsword!

It wasn't even one of the fancy models, loaded with options so when you open everything out it looks like a mechanical porcupine. There were just two blades. Somebody had scratched a name—"Dan"—on the plastic grip on one side and rubbed in ink to make the letters show.

Poor Dan. I wondered who he'd been, and how his knife had fallen into Kevin's grubby paws. Kevin had been lucky, for once. The only thing that hadn't been changed down here was probably this old-fashioned slop sink, previously hidden behind a mattress. So nobody had found his treasure hole.

Relieved that I wasn't going to have to smuggle a giant sword into the Fayre Farre past all kinds of Famishers and whatnot, I wrapped the knife up again, stuffed it into another of my jacket pockets, and tried to replace the brick in its niche. It was a tight fit. I had to keep the brick level and straight to push it in all the way.

“What are you doing down here all this time?” quavered a voice. “You're not Paula!”

It was the old man, and he had his glasses on. He glared at me from the bottom flight of the fire stairs, clutching the rail with his knobby hands.

I jumped up. “Someone I know used to live here. I came to find something for him that he left,” I said. I was still a little high on being able to tell the truth without a moorim chomping on my head. Besides, maybe the old man would understand. Maybe he was psychic or fey or something.

“You'll find the police, that's what you'll find!” he cried shrilly. “I've already called them.”

I bolted for the door to the delivery alley. It opened easily when I hit it with my shoulder, but set off a terrific clanging alarm. Over the noise I could hear the old man yelling, “I knew you weren't Paula, you didn't fool me!”

I ran up the block, digging the pin out of my pocket again. The little stones glowed when I turned the pin southward on Central Park West. So I trotted downtown along the dark wall edging the park, holding the pin in one hand and clutching the wrapped knife in my pocket with the other.

Nobody bothered me. Maybe nobody saw me at all. Maybe the pin and the knife, between them, protected me from cops, loungers, dealers, muggers, and the regular people strolling on Central Park West on a mild spring night.

Cheery little lights were strung in the trees around the Tavern-on-the-Green just inside the park at Sixty-sixth Street. The restaurant, a pretty brick cottage with tall glass windows bowed out like the panes of a greenhouse, was always packed with people. Inside I saw waiters hovering over tables crowded with diners, the tiny bulbs of the chandeliers gleaming above them all. Outside, the fat white globes of the tall lamps on the terraces shed a cool glow over white cast-iron tables and chairs.

The pull of the pin was now almost physical. It drew me past the restaurant on a looping pathway. I paused to catch my breath and to take a long last look at all those lights.

Then I hurried along the path over the traffic-roaring Sixty-sixth Street transverse. I ran down a steep slope, to an arch that had no name on any map. It was a simple stone bridge carrying a footpath into the park at a place where the park itself lies much lower than street level.

No telling who or what I would find waiting for me on the other side of this arch, I thought. I tucked the rose pin back into my pocket and sealed it in.

Time to go.

But I hesitated, listening to the traffic roar along the park wall and to the silence inside the arch over the coal black bridle path.

Suddenly I was deathly scared, for a city kid's normal reasons: somebody of my own world—some thief or mugger or unwelcoming street person—might be lurking inside that archway. With the glowing pin tucked away in one pocket and the wrapped “sword” in the other, I felt charged with energy, but something in the real world might keep me from bringing Kevin what I had found.

Well, if I just stood there, something certainly would—my own panic if nothing else! I walked forward with the biggest, most confident stride I could muster, caught my foot on something, and stumbled against the broken drinking fountain by the arch.

I more or less fell through the cold, dividing curtain of air into Kevin's country.

 

Twelve

The Rose Traveler

 

 

 

B
EHIND ME WATER SPLASHED.
Turning, I saw a sparkling fountain shaped like a fish jumping in a stone basin, in place of the drinking fountain.

Here, it was just dusk. On a gentle slope up ahead of me a crowd of people carried flickering lights. Horns hooted mournfully in the background. No doubt about it, I was once again in the Fayre Farre breathing Kevin's air, feeling the stir of the sunset breezes of his world. My heart thudded.

With quiet movement all around me, I walked forward into a broad meadow.

Up ahead where the moving lights led, a mansion crowned a slight rise in the land. Long flags, streamers really, flew from its towers. It wasn't hard to recognize the roofline of the Tavern-on-the-Green, but with all its pointed gables multiplied and enlarged.

A figure in a swirly dress brushed by me, stopped, and pointed at me. “The Rose Traveler!” she cried in a sort of trilling whoop. “See, the Rose Traveler!”

I looked down and saw the faint glow of the rhinestones shining right through the fabric of my jacket pocket. I tore the pocket open and put my hand inside to hide the glow with my fingers.

Way too late; strangers closed around me in a dense pattern of moving lights and thin trails of smoke. They were all young looking, slim, and dressed in odd costumes—snug vests over full-sleeved shirts, tight pants and boots or skirts ending in artful tatters—in shades of gold and green. There was a strong piney scent in the air, as if all these people wore tree sap for perfume.

I had a moment of panic as they pressed in around me and more or less carried me with them, singing a song full of slip-sliding harmonies. There was a wild gleaming about them, where the candlelight touched their singing mouths and their flashing, almond-shaped eyes, that made me think of something not human—wonderful androids, maybe, every one of them beautiful, sparkling, and creepily unreal.

I almost longed for the dusty Branglefolk.

And yet I felt a deep, hungry feeling pulling at my heart, drawing me toward this part of the Fayre Farre—the graceful, dusky beauty of it. I was glad to have the solidity of the rose pin in one pocket and the weight of Kevin's knife in another to hold me down to earth and remind me of what I was doing here.

I turned to the person nearest me and asked casually, “Is Kevin here?”

She shook her head. “Kavian Prince is awaited.”

Oh, boy, I had hit the language thing at last. That made me feel more solidly surrounded by Kevin's world than anything else.

“I'm also looking for two girls,” I added, “one black-haired and chubby and one with long blonde hair?”

“No one gathers at Elf Home but elvenfolk,” she said, tossing her head with haughty amusement.

Elves! Now I saw the pattern: these almond-eyed folk were Kevin's elves, the Branglemen were his version of dwarves, and the Famishers were his horrible monsters. Somewhere there were trolls and giants, too, in whatever form his imagination had cast them. I was doing okay tonight, so far: better elves than trolls.

I hoped Rachel and Claudia were doing well, wherever they were. What a shock this place must be to them, coming into it for the first time!

If
the moorim had gotten them in. I wished I knew where they were, and whether it was actually going to be Two Musketeers and Another Musketeer and Kevin, or just Kevin and me, period, against the White One.

The mansion had a set of tall wooden doors with twisty, vinelike carvings all over them. The doors swung wide open and everybody, with me in the middle, crowded into a hall with a gallery running all around above it. It was nothing like the real Tavern, which is loaded with stained glass, etched mirrors, and wood paneling. They don't do Corner Kids there.

Instead of chandeliers of miniature light bulbs, torches burned. Banks of green branches drooped off the wall sconces and the gallery railing, and pine shavings crunched under foot. It was like a room made of forest.

I found that I was squinting, though the torches didn't seem to be giving off much smoke. The atmosphere was just peculiar, sort of blurry as if with heat-ripples—yet it felt heavy and cold. In the midst of that crowd I was shivering.

Around the edges of the hall I saw tables with circular tops made of woven slats. Some of these tables had been taken apart and the tops stacked by the walls to make space in the middle of the hall where the crowd gathered, as if they had come to dance.

The floor at the back of the hall rose in a sort of mound draped in rugs of live turf, pale green and gold. On top of the mound, on seats cut into live trees growing up into the ceiling, sat two green-skinned people in long robes, with circlets of leaves on their heads like crowns.

The crowd fell back and left me to walk up to the dais on my own. I would have paid money for a glimpse of a familiar face just then—Rachel, Kevin, Claudia, even Singer or Scarface—but there were none.

One of the crowned people stood up as I came near. He—I think it was a he, though the form was straight and sexless as a little child's and the wheat-gold hair hung almost to the waist—lifted his hand in a theatrical gesture that on him looked perfectly natural. The whole feeling was so stagey and pretty—it was like a production of
A Midsummer Night's Dream
I had seen at the theater in the park last summer.

Only this was not theater. It just had some of the same feel. The current of chilliness in the place made my skin prickle. I couldn't wait to get rid of the sword, find the girls if they were around, and get us all out of there.

The standing one spoke to me in a sweet voice. “Is it true that you have the crystal rose?”

Rhinestones at home, crystals here.

They were all staring at me expectantly. Was I supposed to bow or something? I didn't think I could do that convincingly, but better not to be too casual, either. These weren't Shakespeare's elves or Santa's elves, they were Kevin's elves, which meant I'd better watch my step.

“I do carry the rose,” I said with as much dignity as I could muster; it felt important to rise to the level that Kevin's imagination had set. “I've come to deliver something to, er, Prince Kavian. Is he among you?” I could see he wasn't, but it seemed polite to ask.

If they did know where to find Kevin, they didn't rush to let me in on the secret. Nobody said a word—no whispers, no elf nudging the elf next to him and asking what did the stranger say, huh, what did she say?

“She traveled also with one of the Oldest,” observed the other crowned person after a while, pointing at my head with a wand of what looked like braided straw. She looked female only because of the redness of her lips.