Unlucky Charms

“He shtudied at Le Cordon Bleu!”

  “I had the salmon last night,” said Erno. “It was really flaky.”

  “The shecret ish a citrus marinade!”

  “Maybe we should stick to business?” said Emily.

  Polly made a noise, and everyone flinched.

  She’d been uncharacteristically quiet that evening. Normally she could keep two or three conversations going all by herself. Now she simply asked, “Will my … will Prince Fi ever forgive me?”

  Scott just breathed a moment. “Can’t tell the fujure, Pully. Onwy the present.”

  “Maybe I made him mad when I said he could sleep in our dresser drawer?” Polly said as she tore a piece of bread into little pills. “Like maybe it reminded him how I used to make him live in a shoe box? Back when I thought he was a toy?”

  “He’ll forgive you,” Scott answered. He had no idea if it was true.

  But just then he knew Fi’s story. He knew everything there was to know.

  CHAPTER 4

  The prince himself had remained in Scott and Erno’s cabin, and from atop the television he was watching an oblivious old woman with headphones clean the floor with a stick vac. He was only four inches tall, but his proud eyes and regal bearing made him appear five, easily. His indigo tabard brought out the faint blue of his dark face.

  “I expect you cannot hear me through your ear cradles,” Fi said. “Can you? No. Still and all, I will honor you with my speech. For though you are lowborn and gruesomely ugly, you will be audience to the story of Prince Fi, last son of Dun Dinas.”

  The maid didn’t answer. Nor did she look up, which gave Fi a certain freedom of movement, and he paced the television like he was treading some high stage above an imaginary crowd of pixies assembled on the bedspread. Pixies were not naturally invisible to humans, like the Fay; but after ten months as an inanimate toy, Fi was possessed by a powerful need to fidget, not to mention the kind of recklessness that comes of having very rich parents.

  “King Denzil XXXIII and Queen Rosevear had four sons: Fee, Fi, Fo, and Denzil. And we were all happy on our islands, away from the savage humans and inhospitable Fay. Beautiful Lady Morenwyn often stayed at court, and my brothers and I undertook contests of courage and skill to win her hand. And the sun never set on the pixie empire. Nor anywhere else, I’m given to understand.

  “But darkness fell nonetheless. Morenwyn was kidnapped by her mother, the witch Fray, and stolen away to a secret island. My brother Denzil was oldest, so the honor of rescuing Morenwyn fell first to him. He took up our grandfather’s peerless sword, Wasp-Mare, and sailed east in an enchanted boat. And was not heard from again.

  “Next was Fo. And Fo chose the girdle Giantkiller, which gives a pixie the strength of a man, and the Hammer of the Jötnar, cold forged from ice that neither breaks nor melts. And he sailed south in an enchanted boat and was not heard from again.

  “The honor of saving Morenwyn should have next fallen to me. But while I made my preparations, impulsive Fee slipped into my chambers and took Armaplantae, the Living Armor, and the bow and quiver of the great pixie hero Cornwallace, whose arrows always flew straight and true. And he sailed west in an enchanted boat. And was not heard from again.

  “Here I asked around to see if anyone knew of a fourth enchanted boat, but no one did.”

  In the cruise ship cabin, Fi paused while the maid went to her cart for fresh towels. He cleared his throat as she returned. Her headphones buzzed with the waspish sounds of tinny Europop.

  “The pixies have a great talent with birds,” said Fi. “We speak to them in their own language and may even persuade them to serve as mounts, though we do this but seldom—a bird who has let a pixie ride on its back will never be accepted into polite society again. In happier times the witch Fray had sometimes flown to the castle on the back of a red-billed chough. They were monstrous black birds, some as many as seventeen inches long, but I hunted the sea crows across coastal cliffs with the best weapons left to me. I wielded the marginally enchanted sword known as Carpet Nail, and for protection a thin scrap of birch bark that I have named Hoarskin.”

  It wasn’t a dry throat now that made Fi cough. He could call his shield anything he wanted, but he knew he couldn’t make it special—it was merely one of the sort carried by every member of the pixie infantry. Hardened by resin, these shields were really only useful against fairy magics. All pixie magic, rare though it was, tended to cancel out fairy glamour, and vice versa. It would surely offend Fi’s pixie pride to admit this, but their oil-and-water magics were the only reason the Fay had not taken the pixies’ islands generations ago.

  “On the third day of my hunt I found a mangy old crow that stood apart from the rest of the flock. Indeed, if he dared come near, the others would peck at his head and neck and beat him back with their wings. A pariah. But I let him close. I speared him plump grubs and earned his trust. And when I was near enough to whisper, I told him, ‘Take me to your mistress.’”

  The maid arranged and straightened the bedclothes and struggled with the contents of one of her pockets. Her beige uniform was really too tight for her, Fi noted, and it gathered in the pits and folds of her plump body. She was like a polyester walnut.

  “I soared north, over the Irish Sea, stiff fingered and shivering as I held tight to the bird’s scruff. And when we neared the Isle of Man, I … oh, dear.” Fi trailed off and watched what was shaping up to be an epic clash of forces, suitable for song or myth. The maid had gotten her hand stuck in her own pocket and couldn’t get it out again. She looked like she was playing tug-of-war with a dog.

  “You’ll have to let it go,” Fi advised, though of course the maid couldn’t hear him. “You can’t hold on to whatever’s in there and pull your hand out at the same time, woman; give it up!”

  But with a spirited pull and a rip, the maid proved Fi wrong and produced a small white envelope from the ruined pocket. She stood still a moment, panting, then leaned over the bed and placed the envelope on one of its pillows. The pixies had their own written language, but Fi was reasonably certain that the name of the boy, Erno, was written on the front.

  “Every other evening a little dark maid has left a chocolate on that pillow,” Fi told her as she fixed her smock and made to leave. “Tonight, a secret message. What game is this?”

  In the end, Scott had not so much swallowed as sensed the salmon dissolve, like some helpful spirit evanescing back into the unknown. The séance was over.

  “It’s all gone.” Scott sighed. “My head feels like an empty circus tent.”

  “I was going to get the salmon,” muttered Emily. “It was my second choice.”

  “I knew that,” said Scott, holding his head and pointing. “I totally kinda remember knowing that.”

  Everyone stared at their plates for a moment.

  “This dinner was fun,” said Erno. “What’s for dessert, the Cheesecake of Courage?”

  CHAPTER 5

  The next morning John found Scott and Polly out on deck. He’d been jogging a circuit around the ship—sneakers and socks, shorts, hoodie, and bandages—and he stopped and rounded back after he passed their lounge chairs.

  “Isn’t it kind of awful, running with your head all wrapped up?” asked Scott as John sat at Polly’s feet, breathing hugely and evenly.

  “The worst part is changing the bandages at night,” John answered, “and finding all these tiny bugs trapped in the gauze. I mean, do they really like gauze, or is this just the regular number of face bugs?”

  Polly didn’t say anything. The silence was conspicuous. Her face was cycling through expressions like a traffic light—hopeful to cautious to halting, then back to hopeful again.

  John put a hand on her shoe. “Fi will come around. Just give him time. Getting treated like a little plaything … it was a big hit to his ego.”

  Polly sniffed.

  “Maybe you can give her some tips,” Scott told John. “You actors have huge egos, right?”

  John l
aughed. Or huffed, or something—it was hard to tell through the bandages. “Just the opposite, really. The best actors have no ego at all. No ego makes it easy to play a part, become somebody else. But it can also make you want to be loved by everyone. And when you need love that badly … you never stop being afraid of rejection.”

  “I don’t think Fi’s like that,” Polly said.

  “No,” John agreed. “I think Fi does have an ego, and it’s been bruised by all that toy business. He just wants to forget, and you’re not letting him.”

  “I’m being nice!” Polly protested. “I’ve been extra nice ever since I found out.”

  “Yes—you’re so very nice that it’s like a box of chocolates every time you speak. He wishes he could move on, but you keep giving him big Mylar balloons that read SORRY FOR YOUR HUMILIATING EXPERIENCE.”

  Polly winced and chewed it over.

  “My two bits, anyway,” said John as he rose to resume his run. “See you in three and a half minutes.” Then he charged off like a fit mummy.

  After a pause Scott felt compelled to admit, “That might have actually been good advice Dad gave you just now. I mean … assuming it really was Dad. Could have been anyone under those bandages.”

  “It was Dad. He’s smart.”

  “Maybe when you cover up his face he gets smarter.”

  One very early morning the Canadian Diamond Queen docked at Dover. They had an official disembarkation time, which they ignored, and instead sneaked out through the luggage bays.

  “Hey,” said a man in a jumpsuit as they passed. “You’re not supposed to be here.”

  “That’s so true.” John sighed through his bandages. “I should be sleeping in my big feathery bed after a night on the stage, dazzling my adoring fans,” he added, and patted the man on the arm. “Thank you for saying so.” Then he joined the others down the loading platform.

  Erno sidled up to Emily. “So you haven’t been sleeping?”

  Emily shrugged. “Nightmares. I keep dreaming of Mom. I mean … my mom.”

  Erno nodded. They’d been raised as brother and sister, and Erno had to remind himself sometimes that it wasn’t true, too. “How do you know it’s her?”

  “In my dreams I know what she looks like. When I wake up I can’t remember. She’s always looking for me, calling my name. But she can’t find me. I try to call out to her, to tell her where I am, but my voice won’t work.” When she saw Erno’s concerned look, she added, “It’s nothing. Maybe bad dreams are a side effect of not taking the Milk-7 anymore.” She glanced over at the envelope Erno was holding, the envelope he’d found on his pillow the previous night.

  Erno had examined every inch of the envelope and its contents. He’d inspected it for fingerprints, knowing full well that he hadn’t any other fingerprints to compare it to. When he thought no one was looking, he’d sniffed it.

  “It couldn’t have been Mr. Wilson,” Emily told Erno. “How could he have known we’d be boarding that cruise ship? Why would he sneak on board dressed as a maid and … not even say hello?”

  They passed quickly through the loading dock and bribed their way around customs. Erno read the enclosed riddle again, aloud. He was trusting Emily to handle this bolt out of the blue from Mr. Wilson, even though she’d been a bit high voiced and fidgety ever since learning about it.

  The new year has a week to wait till waking.

  The water’s almost frozen in the well.

  The hours of the day

  pass swiftly by, then drift away,

  and yet there’s nothing, less than nothing left to tell.

  “He sounds depressed,” said Emily. Erno continued:

  Soon the final days are numbered, then forgotten,

  and the new year’s hardly worth the time it’s taken.

  By degrees the hourglass reckons

  all the minutes, all the seconds,

  and the next year still has weeks to wait to waken.

  “And that’s it,” said Erno.

  “I don’t get it yet,” Emily groused, rubbing her temples again. “But … I will, don’t worry.”

  “I’m hungry,” said Polly.

  “There’s a grocer’s,” said John. “You lot stock up while I give Sir Richard Starkey a call.”

  Harvey sighed and thumped down on the concrete by the store entrance with Finchbriton and Grimalkin. Merle and Biggs veered off into the produce section for fruits or vegetables or some nonsense. The rest of them paced up and down aisles, grabbing bread and cheese and odd British snacks they would later regret. No one said as much, but all of them—Erno and Emily, Scott and Polly, Mick and Fi—were dreading the inevitable cereal section, as if it were lying in wait like the killer in a slasher film. Then, there it was: cheery boxes, cartoon animals, photo after photo of tumbling cereal pieces splashing up goopy crowns of whole milk. Nearly half the cereals were Goodco brand.

  “Weird,” said Erno. “In England, Koko Lumps is called Soy Capitán.”

  Scott paused in front of one box in particular. “There it is,” he whispered. “Peanut Butter Clobbers. ‘Now with Intellijuice.’”

  “It’s already out?” said Erno. “When did it come out?”

  Mick leaned out of Scott’s backpack to look. He groaned and said, “The queen on the Clobbers box—that’s just me in a wig, innit?”

  “It’s not just you in a wig. You’re also wearing a dress.”

  Prince Fi, for his part, couldn’t take his eyes off the Puftees. Or the three blue-skinned Puftees Pixies on the box front. There wasn’t much of a family resemblance, but apparently it was enough to get him thinking about his missing brothers.

  “We should be talking about rescuing Fee, Fo, and Denzil,” Fi said, clenching his little blueberry fist against his chest. “There is a correct order to things: we find my brothers, and my brothers help us rescue this human queen.”

  “Fi’s right!” said Polly. “I mean, probably.”

  For a moment no one spoke. Scott waited for Emily’s rebuttal, but she was off in her own little world.

  “I … I don’t know,” said Scott. “This meeting between the fake queen and the fake Reggie Dwight is a really big opportunity, and it’s happening so soon. We can’t miss it. The whole world will listen to us about Goodco if we show them the queen’s just a big puppet.”

  Fi was silent. Everyone was, and Scott felt like a jerk. Eventually Polly asked if Fi would like to be picked up.

  “You may place me astride your hair tail,” he told her.

  “Ponytail.”

  “Yes,” said Fi. “That.” He still wouldn’t go in a pocket. Polly lifted Fi atop her head, and he straddled her hair tie like it was a saddle. Scott suspected that he preferred to think of Polly as just a weird horse.

  They should get out of the cereal aisle, Scott thought. They should keep moving. But he wanted to tear all these poisonous boxes off the shelves. He wanted to kick them around the store. Emily, he thought, had other ideas. She touched at the corner of one of the Clobbers boxes lightly, like she was worried she’d scare it away.

  Intellijuice (or ThinkDrink, or Milk-7) was a chemical additive Goodco had developed after testing it out on Emily for ten years. Actually, chemical was a polite way of saying “mostly dragon barf and saltwater,” but it made people smarter. It opened doors in their minds. One day soon Nimue would throw those doors wide and storm into those minds, and a million kids would become her private army of sugar zombies.

  Maybe Emily was worrying about this. But Scott thought she looked more hungry than worried.

  Erno noticed this, too. “C’mon,” he said. “Let’s go.”

  “Wait,” said Emily. “Look.”

  She’d pulled a box of Clobbers out a bit, and now they could see Scott’s last school picture printed above a recipe for Clobber Bars.

  “Oh boy,” said Scott.

  Erno pulled other boxes out at random, and they found pictures of Emily, Merle, Polly, Erno, Biggs. HAVE YOU SEEN ME? was printed beneath
each, with a phone number and a web address. They were all too stunned for a moment to move. Then Scott quickly straightened the boxes. “Leave the groceries,” he said, and they walked quickly, but not too quickly, out of the store.

  John met them out front in a truck with a squarish cab and a boxy cargo area.

  “I got us a lorry!” he called from the driver-side window. “Just bought it off the driver around back! Paid way too much.” The sign on the side said it had been carrying Poppadum Crisps in Minted Lamb, Bubble ’n’ Squeak, Baked Bean, and Prawn ’n’ Pickle flavors. The kids reread the sign a few times, but it kept saying that. They piled into the back.

  Biggs drove and shared the cab with Erno and Emily. The rest sat around an electric lantern on the cold steel cargo floor, feeling it rattle against their butts as the lorry rumbled toward London. John undid his bandages and scratched his face.

  “We could play a car game,” Polly whispered to Fi, in the corner.

  “What is a car game?” asked Fi. Polly considered how to answer, but she couldn’t think of any games that didn’t need at least one window to look out of.

  The unicat (who’d apparently forgotten what had happened last time) stalked Finchbriton. It crept close, its body low and discreet but its tall tail twitching like it was advertising the Grand Opening of a tire store. Then it crept too close, and Finchbriton whistled a puff of blue fire that lit the tips of its whiskers. They burned down like fuses and ignited a little explosion of activity as the cat leaped up, and back, and ran around and around the truck interior, full tilt and sticking its claws in everyone. Then it went to sleep.

  “You could tell me about how you got here,” Polly suggested, kind of softly, kind of not wanting the others to hear her asking. Fi didn’t respond right away, and she was on the verge of repeating herself when finally his voice descended like a deflating balloon.