"Squash greens, turnip juice, branberries--" Mr. Willimaker looked up at Elliot. "Is there anything else you'd like me to bring, Your Highness?"
"Is there any bread left over from last night?" Elliot asked. The bread had been good.
"I'll check." Mr. Willimaker bowed slightly at Elliot and then poofed away.
Fudd tapped Elliot on the shoulder, then handed Elliot a cup with a cream-colored, foamy drink inside. It looked like a vanilla shake. "Breakfast, Your Highness."
Elliot took a small first swallow--just in case it tasted like squash greens or turnip juice, which he hadn't quite decided to like. But this was delicious. A perfect drink, really. It was different from a vanilla shake, maybe even better. He drank the rest in only a few swallows.
"That was great," he told Fudd. "What do you call it?"
"Mushroom Surprise," Fudd said.
Elliot coughed. He was surprised, all right.
"This is a favorite breakfast for Brownies," Fudd added. "I always feel it's wise to drink your daily dose of mushrooms."
"Sure," Elliot agreed. "Why not?"
"Just so you know, this wasn't made with poisonous mushrooms," Fudd said, holding up his own cup. "I made the same drink for myself."
"I know. I trust you." Elliot handed his cup back to Fudd, who held on to it with Elliot for a moment and whispered, "Thank you, sir," before poofing the cups away.
Next, Fudd folded his short, chubby arms, then unfolded them, and finally sort of held them halfway folded. "King Elliot, please don't go."
"Don't worry," Elliot said. "I'll come back. Kovol won't wake up." Elliot hoped if he said the words enough, they would come true.
"But what if the Fairies find out you're helping the Pixies? They won't like it."
"Even if they did find out, what could the Fairies do to me that the Pixies haven't already done?"
Fudd shook his head. "King Elliot, I have to tell you something." Then he fell silent.
"What?" Elliot finally asked.
Fudd coughed. "I own this book, The Guidebook to Evil Plans. It clearly states, 'Choose your friendships carefully. Good friends might weaken your evil plans. On the other hand, evil friends might destroy you so that they can take over your plans (page 16)."
Elliot waited for Fudd to explain why he was saying this. Finally, Fudd shrugged and said, "There's nothing else. I was just quoting."
Elliot asked, "Fudd, do you support me as king?"
Fudd's beady eyes shifted. "I wish you didn't have to ask, Your Highness. My point is that you need to be careful out there. The Fairies want Glimmering Woods just as much as the Pixies do. They won't be happy about this."
"They can join the club," Elliot said. "I'm not happy about this either." Then he jumped a bit as Mr. Willimaker poofed back on his right side and Patches appeared on his left.
"I found bread," Mr. Willimaker said.
"No, I found it," Patches corrected him. She held a large bundle in her arms. "Actually, I put together a whole bunch of human food. Sorry for my dad, Elliot. He doesn't know all the food humans like."
"I just drank Mushroom Surprise," Elliot said. "I liked that."
Patches made a face. "Don't you know what the surprise is?"
"No."
She grinned. "You will."
Elliot took the bundle from Patches. Whatever she'd put in there, it smelled good. And Elliot had the flashlight from Agatha tucked in his belt. Maybe this trip wouldn't be such a big deal after all.
"Are we ready then?" Fudd asked. "Ready to go to our deaths, no doubt, but we'll see some nice sights along the way."
"Only Mr. Willimaker and I are going," Elliot said.
"But Your Highness," Fudd protested. "I owe this to you."
"You can owe it to me later. I need Mr. Willimaker to show me the way, but if I don't come back, then someone will need to stay here as king."
Fudd shook his head. "I don't want to become king that way. Not anymore."
Elliot smiled and tapped Agatha's flashlight. "Don't worry. I have the flashlight, and Kovol is asleep. I'm sure it won't be as hard as everyone thinks."
"Let me come with you," Patches said.
"No," Mr. Willimaker and Elliot said together. Mr. Willimaker added, "Besides, you have school tomorrow, and no Shapeshifter is available to take your place."
Elliot and Patches both groaned, although for very different reasons. Then Patches slumped to the ground and folded her arms. "Fine, but I could've helped."
To his right, Elliot noticed a winding road paved in yellow bricks. "Oh. A yellow brick road. I suppose we should follow it out of Burrowsville, right?"
Mr. Willimaker grabbed his arm to hold him back. "Are you crazy? Don't you know where that leads?"
Elliot shook his head. "No. Where?"
Mr. Willimaker shuddered. "No Brownie who's walked that path has ever returned. We call it the Yellow Brick Road of Doom." He pointed to a hill leading in the opposite direction. "We go that way, Your Highness."
"Then let's go." Elliot took his first steps, and Mr. Willimaker quickly caught up to walk beside him. "How long will it take for us to get there?"
Mr. Willimaker pulled a map out of his pocket. "If we don't stop to see any sights along the way and we keep up a good pace, maybe a week."
"A week?" Elliot asked. "That long?"
"I said maybe," Mr. Willimaker said. "I could be wrong. It might take us much, much longer than that."
Before Elliot had become king of the Brownies, he'd done a lot of running. Mostly running away from Tubs, who would have left bruises on any part of Elliot's body he could catch. Reasons like that help a kid run away fast.
But Tubs hadn't chased Elliot since the end of the Goblin war, and Elliot was a little out of shape. Now he was thinking that Burrowsville had a lot of hills. Going down them wasn't bad, except the next hill up always seemed to be a little taller than the one before it. At least the bright colors of the Underworld trees and flowers kept things interesting. Obviously there was no sun above them, but everything was warm and light, and the sky had a cool, pastel yellow glow.
It took them a while to get out of Burrowsville. As they walked the winding road through the town, Brownies came out to greet Elliot and to thank him for what he'd done in ending the Goblin war. Mr. Willimaker pointed out that many of the younger Brownies had never seen a human up close before. After a few hours they left the border of Burrowsville and entered what Mr. Willimaker called the "Underworlderness."
There weren't a lot of trees here, but the narrow trail was lined with blueberry bushes even taller than Elliot. For nearly a mile, the thick bushes marked the trail. Elliot and Mr. Willimaker ate a lunch of them as they walked.
Mr. Willimaker tried to talk with Elliot that afternoon, but Elliot was deep in thought. It was cool to have seen Burrowsville, and Elliot was proud of the fact that he'd beaten Grissel in the time-out--not that he could tell any of his family that--but he still wished he were home. He wondered whether the twins had dug any more mud pits, or whether his Uncle Rufus had returned to his habit of stealing shiny things, or what Wendy had burned for dinner last night. Funny that he missed her burned food. Maybe she'd messed up his taste buds, and burned food was starting to taste normal to him.
And something in his stomach had been rumbling for a while, as though his own personal volcano were trapped inside. He took two more steps, and then the volcano erupted in the form of a gigantic burp. Mr. Willimaker ducked, and the burped-out air hit a large blueberry bush that promptly wilted and died.
"Did I do that?" Elliot asked.
"More correctly, your Mushroom Surprise drink did that. Better a bush than me, I always say." Mr. Willimaker brushed off his clothes and continued walking. "Warn me the next time you feel that coming, please."
"Sorry," Elliot said, although he secretly thought his toxic burp was pretty cool.
"Your Highness, if I may--" Mr. Willimaker began.
"We've got a long walk ahead of us," Elliot said. "
You don't have to call me that. Just use my name."
"Yes, Your Highness. Anyway, if I may ask, I'm a little unclear about your plan to get the hair from Kovol's head."
"I don't have a plan," Elliot said. "I think I'll just have to figure it out when we get there."
"Understood. But if you did have a plan, what would it be?"
Elliot sighed. "The thing is, I've never been to Demon Territory. I've never seen Kovol before, and I really don't know anything about him other than that he's supposed to be asleep. And to be honest, I've never tried to pull a hair out of anyone's head before, especially while they're asleep."
"Ah," Mr. Willimaker said. "To be honest, I haven't done that before either. Not the sort of thing a polite creature does, is it?"
Elliot smiled. "No." Tubs had pulled a chunk of his hair out once, in kindergarten. Actually, Tubs had put a whole glob of superglue on his own hand. When Elliot teased him about it, Tubs smacked Elliot in the head, and his hand stuck to Elliot's hair. Then when he tore his hand away, a lot of Elliot's hair had come with it. Later that day, Elliot's mom had shaved the rest of his hair really short to cover up how many bald patches there were.
They continued to walk, with Mr. Willimaker pointing out some of the sights in the Underworld. "If we went south tomorrow, we'd come to a lake where the Mermaids like to swim. You can't fish there, though. Turns out the Mermaids don't like to be fished." A couple of hours later, Mr. Willimaker pointed in another direction. "See those mountains in the distance? The Dwarves live there."
"Are there any Mermaids or Dwarves on the surface world?" Elliot asked.
"A Mermaid finds her way to the surface every now and then, but not in the numbers there used to be. You'll find Dwarves anywhere there's enough treasure to be found, though the Underworld is still rich in valuable stones. If humans knew how many diamonds were down here, they'd have found a way into our land ages ago."
"I have a question," Elliot said. "How is there light so far under the earth, and air I can breathe? This is a lot like the surface world, but with no humans."
"It's the combined magic of all Underworld creatures," Mr. Willimaker said. "Everyone gives a little, and together we have a much nicer life than most humans would expect. If they knew we had a life down here, of course."
"Does it bother you about humans?" Elliot asked. "I mean, that most humans don't believe you exist?"
"It's a good thing, actually," Mr. Willimaker said. "Hundreds of years ago when humans did believe in us, life was far more difficult. Now our only problem is the way your books and movies talk about us. You'd be surprised how wrong you are most of the time. To be fair, I suppose our books and movies get a few things wrong about humans too. For example, I don't suppose humans can leap over tall buildings in a single jump?"
Elliot smiled. "Maybe super humans. But I don't think they're real."
Mr. Willimaker shrugged. "Not long ago, you didn't think Brownies were real either." He checked his map. "What say we stop here for supper?"
"Sure." Elliot dropped his bag to the ground and untied the knot holding it together. Inside were apples, blueberries, cucumbers, and carrots. Naturally, Patches had also snuck in a large bag of pickles. Elliot pulled one out and began munching on it. "Mr. Willimaker," he asked, "what do you know about Shadow Men?"
Mr. Willimaker, who was eating something that looked like an orange artichoke, stopped chewing. He swallowed hard, then in a low voice said, "They're Kovol's army. They guard him in his sleep, which means they haven't left Demon Territory in over a thousand years. Few creatures live through an encounter with the Shadow Men, so most of what we know is from the old writings. My own great-grandfather was killed trying to fight them."
"Sorry," Elliot mumbled.
"It happened a thousand years ago, so it's an old memory now. There was a great war in which all Underworld creatures united against the Demons. They would've lost too, if not for an agreement Kovol made that put him to sleep."
"What agreement?" Elliot asked.
"A human sorcerer named Minthred got involved in the war. I don't know the terms of the agreement, I'm afraid, just that Kovol went to sleep, and the Shadow Men have watched over him ever since." Mr. Willimaker paused to finish his artichoke. Then he added, "How will we get past the Shadow Men, Your Highness?"
Elliot shrugged. "We'll go in the daytime. I figure Shadow Men are probably night creatures, since in the daytime there aren't as many shadows where they can hide."
"How do you know about Shadow Men?"
"Harold the Shapeshifter turned into one when I was still on the surface. He was scary, but I beat Grissel trying to scare me to death. I can beat the Shadow Men too, if I have to."
"Even in the form of a Shadow Man, he was still just a Shapeshifter," Mr. Willimaker warned. "And there was only one of him. Kovol's army is probably much larger."
"How much larger?"
Mr. Willimaker held out his hands. "I don't know. It's been a thousand years since anybody's seen one. I'm sure their numbers are smaller than before, but you could face an army of fifty or more."
Fifty was a lot. Elliot sighed and tried not to think about that. Because if he did, he would have to admit that he didn't know how an eleven-year-old kid and a Brownie had any chance against fifty of the scariest creatures he'd ever met.
Mr. Willimaker finished his supper at about the same time Elliot decided he might have lost his appetite for good.
"Didn't you like the food Patches packed for you?" Mr. Willimaker asked. "I tried to tell her."
"No, the food was good," Elliot said. "I'm just not hungry."
"You have Shadow Men on your mind?"
"A little." Elliot pressed his lips together. "All we have to do is sneak past them, get a hair from Kovol, and sneak out."
Mr. Willimaker smiled. "I wish it were going to be as easy as you make it sound. But if we do survive, it'll make a grand story for the Brownies." He stood and brushed off his clothes. "It's getting dark. Are you cold?"
Elliot wasn't. If anything, the clothes the Brownies had made for him locked heat in. "Did you want to make a fire?"
Mr. Willimaker shook his head. "It's usually warm in the Underworld, but a little light would be nice."
"I have the flashlight from Agatha," Elliot said. "Though with my luck, the next eclipse will happen five minutes after I turn it on, so let's wait until we really need it."
Mr. Willimaker snapped his fingers together. When he did, a spark of light remained on his thumb. He pressed his thumb to a stick, and it lit. Then Mr. Willimaker gathered a few other sticks together in a pile, and the light passed to them as well.
"Is that a magic fire?" Elliot asked.
"It's only light." Mr. Willimaker passed his hand through the center of the light. "There's no heat, and it won't burn anything. The light won't last long, but it'll do until we fall asleep."
"Can you make another fire?" Elliot wanted one to play with.
"Not for a few minutes. I need to recharge."
Elliot ran his hand through the center of the light as well. It was no warmer than the air, and yet it flickered on the sticks as a fire would. "Cool," he whispered. "I wish I had magic."
"All Underworld creatures have their own kinds of magic," Mr. Willimaker said. "Brownies aren't that powerful compared to Pixies or Fairies, or even Goblins. Elves have only a little magic but are more powerful in other ways. Same with the Dwarves. A Leprechaun has quite a bit of magic, and yet a human could easily overcome one if he knew how."
"How many Underworld creatures exist?" Elliot asked. "Are all the myths true?"
"There are creatures down here that humans know nothing about and some creatures that you know more about than you think." Mr. Willimaker shrugged. "I'm not sure how many of us there are. The Underworld is very big and not very well explored. Most of us keep to ourselves."
Elliot used his bundle as a pillow and laid back on it. Had he been sleeping on the surface, he would have expected to see stars, but the
sky here was only black.
"I miss the moon," he said.
Mr. Willimaker lay on his own bundle near Elliot. "Wait for it to get a bit darker. The Star Dancers, creatures of the night, provide us with the night sky. I think you'll like it."
And he was right. After about a half hour, the Underworld became dark enough that Mr. Willimaker's cool fire was the only light around. Elliot stared at the sky again, but now it became painted in streaks of thin neon colors. Bright lines of blue, green, and orange raced across the sky, slowly fading as new colors were drawn over the top of them.
"Those are Star Dancers?" Elliot asked. "I don't think I've ever heard of them."
"They never go to the surface world," Mr. Willimaker said. "Why would they when they can have this much fun down here?"
"I like the Underworld," Elliot said. "If I survive Kovol, I might come back again one day. Fudd said the Brownies would build me a home here that's my size."
Mr. Willimaker was quiet for a moment, and then he said, "Your Highness, I want to talk to you about Fudd."
Elliot leaned up on his elbows. "What's the matter?"
"I hope it's nothing. Ever since the Goblin war ended, I believe Fudd has been sincere in trying to earn back your trust. But last night, after the royal feast, I overheard something that worries me. I believe the Fairies had a meeting with Fudd. He worked with them for years under Queen Bipsy, you know."
"I didn't know," Elliot said. That wasn't a question he had even thought about asking.
"Yes, well, the Fairies know you're down here. They asked Fudd why."
"What did he say?" Elliot asked.
"He said he couldn't tell them anything, but then they said they already knew the Pixies brought you here and they weren't happy about it. You see, the Fairies want the Glimmering Woods too. If they think you're helping the Pixies, they'll be upset."
"But I don't have a choice," Elliot said. "The Pixies have Tubs."
"I know, but the Fairies might not understand that," Mr. Willimaker said. "Fairies aren't the most forgiving creatures. They reminded Fudd about an old treaty the Brownies have with both the Pixies and Fairies, promising not to get involved in any fights between them. They told Fudd to stop you, or else they would."
Elliot groaned. "And what did Fudd say?"