Mick nudged him. “Stay focused,” he whispered.
“Well, anyway, humans are short-lived. They’d die naturally anyway before this world disappeared forever.”
Scott took a half step forward. What did they call this on lawyer shows? Closing arguments? He thought Titania might even be smiling a little.
“I know about the Fay’s famous sense of honor. I don’t believe they want to push a whole species down because of the mistakes of the past. You’re right that we tell stories about you. Over the years those stories have only gotten … kinder, and sweeter. They all have happy endings now. Let’s … let’s write a happy ending together.”
That last bit made him want to throw up a little, but he thought it was probably what was called for. Mick gave him a sock in the leg, and when Scott looked down the little man was smiling up at him.
Titania was smiling, too. She was unquestionably smiling.
“I must commend you, boy—you’ve had your say
And honored both your people and the Fay.
And now will I confess I’ve played a trick:
I know of all your treasons, Scott and Mick.”
“Uh.” Scott felt his heartbeat in his stomach. The throne room was suddenly small. Was everyone closer than they’d been a second ago?
“Okay,” whispered Mick. “We’re banished. We get out quick, get as far away as we can.”
Titania glared at Scott now.
“You’re but a stranger here, so I’ll concede
Your plots have not the bite to make me bleed.
But Mick—”
Here Scott thought he could hear Mick rasping beside him. The little man’s eyes might have been damp.
“—the fabled father of the finch.
If fairy folk have hearts, mine feels thy pinch.
And so we’d quite agreed before you came
To strike you from our court and curse your name.
’Twas foolish to surrender to my power—
You had no claim to safety in this tower.”
Dhanu gasped and surged forward.
“And why was I not told? I must protest!
Upon my honor was their safety pledged.”
Titania clasped her hands together, all girlish smiles again.
“A necessary falsehood, pet of mine.
I longed to hear this plaything mewl and whine.
Such fun in one so young! Such grace and poise!”
Her fingers tightened.
“A crime, in time I always break my toys.”
And the Fay, and those swords, and those axes, advanced from all sides.
CHAPTER 30
Ms. Aleister walked Polly down halls, elevators, through complicated-looking systems that analyzed retinal patterns and fingerprints and spit for some reason. She waltzed her past all the best security money could buy, and only because she was under the impression that Polly had already been wherever she was being taken.
Ms. Aleister looked like a pretty velociraptor. Her heels sounded against the tile like a raptor’s hind claw, click click. Ms. Aleister was explaining that little girls sometimes let their imaginations run away with them, that their eyes can play tricks, that what Polly no doubt thought she’d seen in Sensitive Research Area Alpha was not what it looked like.
Polly gave Ms. Aleister a dopey smile. “I know that already—daddy’s new girlfriend told me it was all special effects, like in the movies.”
“Exactly! Daddy’s new girlfriend. What did you say her name was?”
“I’ll point her out when we get there.”
“See that you do. ‘Special effects.’ Your father’s a lucky man—what a smart lady! Too bad she’s soon to be unemployed.”
“My dad has enough money for all of us.”
“And what does he do?”
“Rocket-car test pilot.”
“Uh-huh.”
They reached Sensitive Research Area Alpha, which was in a wing labeled MICROFICHE ARCHIVE 1940–1959 and plastered with notices that it was shortly to be fumigated for earwigs. To pass through this door, Ms. Aleister had to press her hand against a little mirror on the wall. A green light flashed above the door, then a red.
“C’mon,” said the woman, “you too. Fairy detector. You must have done it this morning.”
Polly edged forward. Was she enough of a changeling to set this off? “Didn’t realize I had to do it every time.”
“That’s why it’s a security system, and not a hand stamp. This isn’t the county fun fair.”
Polly put her fingers, then her palm against the cold glass. She felt a buzz. All was silent for a moment.
“Got a slight blip off you,” said Ms. Aleister. “Very faint. That’s odd.”
“Daddy’s girlfriend said it’s been doing that all week.”
Polly concentrated and tried to push the fairyness down inside her. She imagined she was Scott—staying home on Halloween; doing sudoku puzzles; eating lunch alone in the library.
The lights above the door flashed green, and the door clicked open.
Inside was a wide and vaulted octagonal room lit up with a branching system of radial florescent tubes like a neon snowflake. There was a small team of researchers (three women, two men) who paused and looked up at the unexpected visitors. There were cases and refrigerators holding vials and samples of chemicals, work stations and computers and miles and miles of cables. And against one wall, cages holding a royal-looking elf and a manticore.
The former was easy to recognize: tall and lean and stately, even as it sat forlornly on the concrete floor in a hospital gown. A foxlike face with large and tapered ears and ginger hair. The latter was something Polly would have to ask about later—she didn’t know what a manticore was. But the caged thing had a scorpion’s tail on a wasted lion’s body, with a nearly human face, and a disconcertingly wide mouth so packed with teeth they were growing in sideways.
Next to the manticore’s cage there was a massive, windowless reinforced steel vault painted to say DANGER: RONOPOLISK. Something huge kept whanging against the door from the inside.
In one corner was a small tank filled with a thick pink liquid. Milk-7. Interesting.
But most interesting was the table near the center of the room, the table with the yellow plastic hamster cage and the Habitrail, because inside this were three pixies.
One prince paced a rut through the wood chips. Another was shirtless, his tunic drying over a tunnel entrance. There were plastic tunnels to three separate sleeping quarters, and dishes of food and water. There was even a hamster wheel, and the last of the princes was running it. Which seemed kind of demeaning to Polly, but she supposed they had to keep fit somehow. It came to her suddenly that they had to go to the bathroom somewhere too, and she looked away quickly before she found it.
“All right,” said Ms. Aleister, arms akimbo. “Who’s responsible for this kid?”
Of course nobody volunteered anything. They glanced at one another, trying to decipher the situation. Maybe this was a surprise team-building exercise.
“Come on, come on. The longer you string this out, the worse it’ll be for you.”
Polly moved closer to these people in lab coats, under the pretext of giving them a closer look at her. But what she was really doing was getting closer to that hamster cage.
“I don’t understand, ma’am,” said one of the scientists as he watched Polly. “Is she a test subject?”
“Oh, for heaven’s sake, shut up,” said Ms. Aleister. And while she had everyone’s attention like that for a moment, Polly stretched out her sleeve and released Prince Fi onto the table with his brothers. Then she walked swiftly away. “Girl!” Ms. Aleister continued. “Anni … Ann … What was your name again?”
“Anastasia de la Taco.”
“Just point to your daddy’s girlfriend so we can fire her and leave.”
“What’s this?” Polly asked, picking up the first thing she could get ahold of. Which turned out to be a beaker, and Ms. Ale
ister told her so. “I can make it stay over my mouth,” Polly said, and she held it there with suction.
“Little girl—”
“How many things can I stick to my face?” Polly tested her question by circling the lab, snatching objects at random and affixing them, or trying to affix them, to her cheeks and forehead. A metal washer. Litmus paper. A cell phone, a test tube, a public-radio coffee mug. Some clattered to the floor, or even broke. “My mom says I have ‘combination skin.’”
The manticore seemed to chuckle, gruffly.
“Seize the girl,” said Ms. Aleister, and you could sort of tell it wasn’t the first time she’d said it.
Polly had maneuvered her way to the Milk-7 tank, however, and as the scientists moved on her, she spun the spigot. The goopy pink stuff spilled out onto the floor.
“Pretty!” she squealed. “Strawberry! Food fight!” Then she kicked a spray of the Milk at the advancing researchers. They recoiled as if vampires before holy water. Then Polly moved to an adjacent refrigerator and grabbed a test tube of something yellow. “Ooh, what’s this?”
“It’s an antidote for children who’ve grown extra fingers and toes,” said a scientist. “Please put it down.”
Polly poured the liquid into the pink milk. “What do yellow and pink make?” she asked, then frowned. The answer, apparently, was lightning.
Now the adults were really panicking. A jet of steam rose from where Polly had mixed the chemicals, and some kind of detector started beeping. Ceiling sprinklers activated, and the lights in the room turned red. Everyone rushed for the door as a serious-looking barricade began to slide down in front of it.
“Girl!” shouted Ms. Aleister. “Hurry!”
But Polly made no attempt to escape the room. The emergency door slid into place with a thump and a hiss, and now there was two inches of steel between her and the adults, apart from a little window bricked up with Plexiglas. They stared at her through the little window, the scientists and Ms. Aleister, shouting silently. Polly found some tape and covered it over with a piece of notebook paper.
Before long Polly found a set of keys, and when the elf was free he kissed Polly’s hand while struggling to keep his gown closed in the back. He thanked her graciously while Fi heaved open a hatch on the hamster cage and lowered a string of rubber bands down to his brothers.
The elf appeared to be about to say something as Polly tried key after key in the lock of the manticore’s cage, but he checked himself. He nonetheless urged her not to release the ronopolisk.
“I would sooner face a cockatrice, a basilisk, and a catoblepas all at once than fight one ronopolisk,” he insisted.
“You’re making up words,” Polly told him. The door of the manticore’s cage clicked open, and the devil beast rubbed against Polly’s shoulder as it passed.
“Human girl,” it purred. “Though I am hungry, I shan’t eat you.” He said it like it was a pretty big compliment.
“Thanks.”
The sprinklers were cleansing the room and sending the toxic mess down a drain in the middle. The manticore hunched and looked as miserable as any wet cat. Fi introduced Polly to his brothers.
“Denzil, Fo, and Fee, this is the Lady Polly Esther Doe.” The princes bowed deeply.
“This was a gallant rescue, brother, Lady Polly,” said Denzil, the oldest. “But I fear while we pixies might clinch our escape, those larger than we are doomed.”
“I will be proud to die fighting,” said the elf, “and will relish destroying as much of this infernal apothecary as I can.”
But Fi was watching Polly, and Polly was peering at the refrigerator where she had found the yellow test tube.
“You are thinking,” said Fi. “You are hatching plans. I know this because my stomach hurts.”
“Goodco did all kinds of weird experiments on kids, I hear,” said Polly. “That’s what made Biggs big and hairy—some chemical they invented. But he said something once, when we were on the cruise—he said the chemical didn’t make everyone big and hairy, just the boys.”
“So it did not work on the girls,” said Fi.
“No,” said Polly, “it made them smaller.”
“That does not follow. Just because—”
“That’s why I’m going to drink some of the same chemical Biggs drank, and I’ll get to be the size of a pixie!”
The sprinklers had stopped. The red light had extinguished. Polly crossed back to the fridge.
“You cannot do this!” Fi insisted. “I believe it to be dangerous.” But Fi was trapped on a counter, far from Polly. “Brothers,” he said, “help me.”
Polly heaved the fridge open again and began pushing around little racks of test tubes. “Emily is always going on about how Goodco doesn’t know about any big rifts,” she said. “Right? Except that one in Antarctica, but nothing ever goes in or out of it. They don’t know where it connects to in Pretannica. That’s why the rift in Mr. Wilson’s house is so special—regular-sized people can go through it. But if Goodco can’t usually send regular-sized people through rifts, then how’d they get the Queen of England through?”
“Nimue forced her way through,” Fi reminded her. “With witchcraft.”
“Yeah, and it nearly killed her, it was so hard. So of course they shrank the queen down to tiny size to get her through one of the small rifts. Duh.” Polly uncorked a vial of something clear and fizzy.
“Please remember, if you drink the potion that grows finger and toes, that you’ve already flushed the antidote,” says Fi.
Polly swallowed a bit of the liquid. Just a bit. It didn’t have a flavor, per se. It tasted a little like the smell of a new raincoat? Or like anger? It was hard to explain. Anyway, she otherwise tried to report that nothing had happened, but nothing happened. She’d entirely lost her voice.
“A most heartrending tragedy,” said Fee.
Polly scrambled for an antidote and swallowed something blue, and her voice returned—albeit hoarse and squeaky like she’d been sucking helium and screaming.
The emergency gate was starting to come up. “I need more time!” Polly squealed.
Fi sighed and asked elf and manticore to take him and his brothers to the gate. The manticore and elf braced their hands and paws on metal handles and strained to keep it closed, while Fi jabbed with his sword at any hands that appeared under the gate from the other side.
“An elf and pixies and a manticore fighting as brothers,” said the elf. “What a rare death.”
“A good death,” growled the manticore. “I am old. I had cubs I will never again see. I am ready to die with blood in my teeth.”
Polly twisted every sample around in its container, trying to make sense of their labels. “Just another minute!” she squawked.
The elf smirked down at Fi. “Who gives the orders here, pigsie? She is but a human girl.”
“Yet see what she has done today,” Fi answered. “Is she not something?”
“Fi!” Polly shouted. “I drank another one and something went pop! Can you look?” She hiked up her shirt in the back.
“You have tiny wings.”
“I HAVE TINY WINGS? I wonder if I can flap them! Are they moving now? What about now? I don’t know which muscles to push.”
“We’ll find you the antidote,” says Fi.
“No we won’t. Oh, listen! My voice is going back down.”
“Polly, hurry!”
“She is something,” said the elf.
“The pixies have a story,” Fi continued. “You would not know it. But we say that the Spirit, the Spirit that made all things, and who separated good from evil, is reborn from time to time into a mortal person. And that this person cannot help but be remarkable. Remarkable, but not necessarily good.”
“An old story,” Denzil agreed as heavy-heeled footsteps thundered up to the gate. “The mortal Spirit must decide, as each of us does in turn, what is right and what is wrong. And in this way good and evil is redefined, and the world remade. But the story say
s the Spirit is born into a pixie, brother.”
Fo said, “You don’t think this girl is—”
Fi shook his head, and laughed, and speared a scientist’s hand. “I think it’s a story. You know I do not hold with such things, brothers. If anything, I think we might all be born with a little Spirit in us, pixie and human and elf alike, and we are each the bumbling makers of our own folly. But still and all, the girl—she might be remarkable, might she not?”
“Everyone?” said Polly. They turned to see a two-foot-tall girl, blanketed by her own clothes. “I found it, didn’t I? Just a little bit more.”
Fi and his brothers rushed to her as she sipped a little bit more of the liquid she’d found. When they’d traipsed through folds of pants and jacket, they found a pixie-sized seven-year-old, pulling a vastly oversized shirt around her. Fi passed her his topcoat, and she ducked down under the shirt collar with it. When she came up again, they saw that it made a fine little dress.
The elf and manticore were tiring. The gate was coming up by inches.
“I wish we could help you more,” Polly told them.
“You’ve done more than you know,” said the elf. “You’re a changeling, aren’t you, girl? A little agent of sacred chaos. I am your servant.”
“Then you might lift us to that air vent,” said Fi. “We are ready to leave.”
“We’re all going to leave this place,” growled the manticore. “We are all of us going to leave this place, one way or another.”