“No,” said Scott. “He’s a clurichaun.”
“Clurichaun, my eye. This little lepre-conman covered a field with ribbons just so I wouldn’t be able to find his stash again. I spent two days digging up that field.”
Scott turned to Mick, and the elf sighed. “All right, so I’m a bleedin’ leprechaun.”
“What?” said Scott, a little hurt. “Why did you say—”
“Soon as yeh tell folks you’re a leprechaun it becomes all about the gold.” Mick sighed. “You might as well tell ’em you’re their fairy godfather.”
“Not that I’m exactly following this conversation,” said Emily, “but shouldn’t we…?”
“Right,” said Merle. “Archimedes,” he added, though this comment seemed to be directed mostly at his wristwatch.
Then there was a sound of flapping wings, and a barn owl descended through the broken skylight, circled the room, and landed on Merle’s shoulder.
“That’s the coolest thing I’ve ever seen,” said Erno.
“It isn’t a real owl.” Emily frowned. “Real owls don’t make noise when they fly.”
“Smart girl. C’mon.”
They dragged Biggs to one of the auditorium exits just as a smoking chunk of ceiling crashed down to the stage.
Merle looked up at the blue flames and dark smoke. “Is that dragonfire?” he asked.
“Sort of,” said Scott.
“And … just ’cause I wanna be sure—we all see the bird covered in frosting, right?”
“It’s fire extinguisher foam, and yes.”
“Awesome. Okay. Now we just have to find a safe way out. Preferably something near the southeast corner.”
“Why the southeast corner?”
“Because that’s where I left my car.”
“Back to the basement,” Emily suggested. “There’s a coal chute.”
So they dragged Biggs as elegantly as possible down three flights of stairs, and soon they were on level ground again.
“Do yeh think the big guy…,” Mick huffed, “would be insulted … if I suggested he wear a little sled on his back from now on?”
“How much longer will he be asleep?” asked Emily.
“’Bout another twenty minutes.”
At the end of the hall was a door marked BOILER ROOM, and as they pushed through, Finchbriton immediately began ruffling his feathers and chirping in short barks.
“This is where they kept him,” said Erno. “In that middle furnace.”
Mick ran over and gave it a kick.
“There’s the coal chute,” said Emily. It was a rusty and curving metal slide from the ceiling to the floor. And this is when she and everyone else suddenly remembered how much Biggs weighed. “I … I should have thought of the incline. It’ll be tough getting him up the incline.” You could see that Emily found her lack of foresight genuinely worrying.
“We’ll manage,” said Mick. “The bird an’ me are stronger’n we look.”
“You have a lot on your mind,” said Erno to Emily. He grabbed her hand and turned to the others. “Literally. She memorized half a filing cabinet upstairs.”
“Doing your job?” she whispered to Erno. But she didn’t pull her hand away.
They laid Biggs against a pile of coal and tramped up the chute. At the top they huddled together and peeked through the trapdoor to the outside. “Look at all of ’em,” Merle breathed. “You see my car?”
Circling the temple was a wide expanse of sidewalk and lampposts. Parked in the midst of all this was a white van surrounded by dozens of policemen in riot gear. Just now the first of three fire engines was pulling up.
“You have a white van,” said Scott. Just the sight of one got his heart racing.
“Yeah,” said Merle. “It’s a good way to blend in. Archimedes, start the car.”
The owl on Merle’s shoulder swiveled its head all the way around, and, outside, the van’s head and taillights winked on. All around, the cops jumped and turned their rifles toward the vehicle.
“Cooool,” said Erno.
“That’s nothin’. Wait for the good part.”
Merle touched his watch; and the van lurched forward, scattered a few police officers, and ran into a lamppost.
“Was that the good part?” asked Emily. “I wouldn’t want to miss it.”
“Okay, hold on, hold on.” Merle poked at his watch some more; and the van backed up abruptly, sent another cadre of policemen flying, and shot forward again and around the temple and out of sight. The cops rushed to their own cars or tore off after the van on foot.
“What now?” said Erno.
“Now I draw the cops away, circle the car around, and pick us up,” said Merle, squinting at the little screen on his watch. “Let’s get the big guy up the chute; we don’t have long.”
“How fast is the van traveling?” asked Emily as they skidded back down.
“Forty … um … forty-three miles per hour, about.”
“We have twenty-six seconds.”
Merle shot her a look as if he expected that Emily might, at a word, swivel her head all the way around, too. She looked momentarily satisfied with herself again.
Merle guided the van while the kids pushed at Biggs’s heels and Mick and Finchbriton pulled him by his lapels. They burst up through the trapdoor to the screeching of tires, and the van ground to a halt right in front of them.
“Quickly! Quickly!” shouted Merle, as if they needed encouragement. They could hear the sirens everywhere. The police were clearly confused and hadn’t yet figured out that their quarry had just driven in a big circle. But it wouldn’t be long before they worked it out.
After a certain amount of heaving and grunting, Biggs was loaded into the back of the van. Then they turned to close the cargo doors and found two men in black just emerged from the coal chute and aiming guns at their faces.
“DO NOT MOVE!” shouted the more chatty of the two.
“These guys again?” muttered Mick.
“I told you I wasn’t good with knots,” said Scott.
“SHUT UP! EVERYONE GET IN THAT VAN! NO! EVERYONE GET OUT OF THAT VAN! PUT YOUR HANDS IN THE AIR AND KEEP THEM THERE AND PULL THE BIGFOOT BACK OUT OF THAT VAN!”
“With what,” snarled Mick. “Our teeth?”
The other soldier turned to his partner. “The elf ’s right; that was confusing—”
“EVERYONE SHUT UP!” said the other, his body practically humming with rage. “OKAY? AND GET YOUR HANDS WHERE I CAN SEE THEM!”
Merle, wand in hand, raised his arms with the rest of them. But he sort of flicked his wrist in a way that reminded Scott of all those sleeping men inside the temple. The soldiers blinked; the quiet one yawned. But that was all they did. Merle scowled at the wand. “Knew I should have charged it before leaving the house.”
“SHUT UP! OR YOU KNOW WHAT’S GOING TO HAPPEN? LET ME TELL YOU WHAT IS GOING TO HAPPEN—”
They never got to hear what he thought was going to happen, though in all likelihood he would have gotten it wrong. “My partner and I are going to be run over by a rabbit driving a Citroën” just isn’t the sort of thing that occurs to most people, no matter what kind of life they’ve led.
CHAPTER 35
“Oh my gosh,” Emily murmured through her hands.
“TA-DA!” Harvey postured from the driver’s side window. “For my nextht trick—”
Mick interrupted. “Watch me pull a rabbit out o’ this car.”
“Mick? Whoa—”
Mick flung open the door and dragged Harvey out by the ears.
“Ow ow ow ow.”
“Yeh killed these men, Harvey!”
“Bu-but they were gonna kill you!” said Harvey as he toddled along on his knees. “They were even gonna kill the children, which I’m largely indifferent about.”
“Actually, they’re still breathing,” said Erno, who was crouching to look under the Citroën.
“You thee?! Didn’t kill them. Maimed them. I did the right t
hing tonight, Mick. Honorable life, that’s my motto.”
“Yeah, look at you,” Scott muttered. “You managed not to entirely steal Biggs’s car.”
“Sun’s coming up,” Merle pressed. “Police.”
Scott wheeled around and addressed the group. “We have to warn my dad.”
“Yeah, he was on this list,” said Erno.
“I know. And he’s supposed to be filming a commercial for Goodco this morning.”
“Wait,” said Merle. “Who’s your dad?”
“Reggie Dwight.”
“Reg…” Merle coughed. “Sir Reginald Dwight? He’s in Goodborough? I’ve been trying to contact him for months!”
“All right,” said Mick. “Scott, why don’ you and the kids ride with Merlin, here? I’m gonna go with Harvey.”
Scott and Erno shared the front bench of the van with Merle and Archimedes. Emily insisted on riding in the back with Biggs, but they could see and hear her through a grated window between the cargo area and the cab.
“Wait. You’re not the real Merlin,” said Erno, who worried suddenly about using real and Merlin together in a sentence. “You’re just some guy. An accountant.”
“I am just some guy,” said Merle as he peeled away from the Freemen’s Temple. “I am also the real Merlin, and I know things. Like that, in the near future, a massive pink dragon is gonna come outta nowhere and start stepping on everything.”
“Saxbriton,” sighed Scott. “Head west.”
“And she’s gonna be followed by all the fairies and other magical creatures. And the fairies’re gonna command an army of our own children to fight against humanity, and humanity’s gonna lose. And the fairies will take over the world.”
“How do you know all this?” asked Erno.
“I lived through it. I’m a time traveler.”
“That’s impossible,” said Emily, her face at the window, her little fingers curled around the grate. “Time travel from the future to the past is physically impossible because of—”
“Emily—”
“No, she’s right,” said Merle. “Time travel from the future to the past is totally impossible. I understand that now.”
“But then … how…”
“Easy. Have you heard of the Big Crunch?” Merle asked.
Scott thought he had. “That’s the one with almonds, right?”
Merle stared. “What? No. The Big Crunch is the end of the universe. The whole shebang collapses into a tiny point. But then the Big Bang happens, and the universe reboots itself. Big Crunch, Big Bang. Big Crunch, Big Bang. Over and over.”
Emily shook her head. “I don’t believe it. Current cosmological models show that—”
“But wait,” said Erno. “Are you saying you’re…”
“From the last universe. Yeah. The universe reboots itself, and history plays out the same way every time. The pyramids always get built, there’s always a Genghis Khan, a French Revolution, the Crusades, Frank Sinatra, the Louisiana Purchase. Not, um … necessarily in that order. But every time a me, and every time a you.”
“That’s ridiculous. Quantum mechanics would make that so unlikely as to be—”
“I couldn’t figure out how to time-travel to the past, but I could do it to the future. And eventually I did it so far into the future that I traveled past the end of the universe and popped up in the new one. In Arthurian times.”
“And you became Merlin!” Scott said.
“I didn’t become Merlin, I am Merlin. I’m always Merlin. I just didn’t know it till I got there. And now I’m here, and trying to figure out how to stop the fairy invasion from happening. It’s taken me years to figure out that Goodco had … has … will have anything to do with it.”
“Huh. We know that already,” said Erno, “and we’ve only been at this a couple days.”
“Good for you. You’re very smart.”
“Can you teach us to use magic?” Scott practically squealed.
“Nope. Don’t know any.”
“But—”
“You were right when you said I’m just some guy. Some guy with a few futuristic tricks and an iPhone. Have you ever read the legends of King Arthur? Most of Merlin’s ‘magic’ is just knowing what’s gonna happen next. Which I did ’cause I could read ahead.”
“But you have a wand…”
“I have a Slumbro Mini. It’s just a gadget that puts people to sleep. In my time it’s what ladies carry in their purses instead of pepper spray. Which reminds me,” he said as he fished out the wand and plugged it into the van’s cigarette lighter.
“And Archimedes—,” Scott began.
The owl turned at the sound of its name.
“Archie’s a computer. A kid’s toy, really. I souped up the operating system a bit, and he’s got a huge historical database; but there’s still a lot of stuff I don’t know. Goodco was good at keeping secrets. Like what’s the deal with their whole two-worlds theory? Why would all the magic be in a separate world? It didn’t used to be.” Merle craned his neck to look in the back. “Hey, uh … kid. Girl.”
“Emily.”
“Yeah. So … did you really memorize a filing cabinet in the temple?”
“From the office of the Grand Ambrosius, yes.”
“Seriously?! That’s great!”
“I have to write it all down,” said Emily. She sounded antsy. “Soon. I’m not taking the Milk-7 anymore. I’m going to forget it.”
Merle whistled. “You’re one of the Milkbabies. Oh man.”
Erno didn’t like where this was going. “How did you know to rescue us?” he asked, if only to change the subject.
“I was listening in on the Initiation. I’ve managed to sneak some hidden microphones around town.”
“Turn left here,” said Scott.
The van stopped in front of Scott’s house; the Citroën stopped adjacent to the van. Scott threw open the van door and ran up his front steps.
After a minute he ran back out, shouted, “They’re already gone. Polly too.”
The van and the Citroën were taking up the whole street, blocking the flow of traffic. As they sat there, a third car approached slowly and honked to be let through.
Mick exited the Citroën and ran around to meet Scott. “Did your da’ say where they were filmin’?”
“I… I think he did. Don’t you remember? You were there too, under the bed.”
“Wasn’t really payin’ attention, lad, sorry.”
The driver of the third car gave his horn another few quick taps.
Scott planted his fists over his eyes, tried to think. Had he mentioned the factory? Or did Scott just think he had because Polly had said something about it on the way home from the airport?
The driver of the third car pressed his hand hard against the horn now and left it there. Scott flew of the handle and ran to the car, grabbed its bumper, intended to lift the whole automobile over his head in frustration. Instead he just sort of rocked it gently. “MY SISTER!” he shouted at the startled driver. Later he’d realize he didn’t really explain himself as thoroughly as he thought he did.
“The factory!” he decided finally, turning back to Mick and the rest. He was pretty sure.
“Okay,” said Merle. “Let’s go then.”
Scott crawled back into the van and rode the rest of the way with his whole body closed up like a fist. He thought about Polly. His brain helpfully called up a sort of clip show of every awful thing he’d ever said to her.
“Biggs is awake,” said Emily through the little window.
“Awesome,” said Merle. “Tell him it was an accident.”
“He knows. Merle?”
“Yeah?”
“I think I know why Goodco and the Freemen are getting rid of Knights Bachelor, but it’s so ridiculous I don’t want to be the first person to say it out loud.”
“They’re doing it because only a true knight can kill a dragon,” said Merle.
“Thank you,” said Emily.
&n
bsp; “Really?” said Erno. “Only a knight can kill a dragon? What if you just dropped a bomb on one?”
“I don’t know. We didn’t have bombs in Arthurian times. But back then it was common knowledge that a hundred men could swing at a dragon and only the knight’s sword would cut deep. I didn’t believe it either until I saw it. And the Knights Bachelor are the only order of knighthood that goes all the way back to Arthur’s day, so they’re really the only guys who count.”
“Even if this wasn’t the stupidest thing I’d ever heard, it would still be a lousy plan,” said Emily. “The queen can just knight more knights. She could knight all of England if she wanted to.”
“She could if the queen was still the queen,” Merle answered. “Which I doubt.”
“Can everyone maybe stop talking?” Scott breathed. He needed to know if Polly, and to a lesser extent his father, was safe. Or unsafe. It was the waiting he couldn’t stand. Then a useful thought managed to emerge through the noise: “Merle, do you have any microphones in the factory?”
“Huh. Yeah, I got one in the foreman’s office, overlooking the floor.” He reached for what looked like a CB radio kit under the dashboard and turned a knob to channel seven. Then he flipped a switch.
The sounds were faint, but they were the sounds of a struggle. Blunt body blows. Grunts and the clatter of metal instruments. Scott’s breathing quickened. He couldn’t get enough air. More noises through the radio speaker, and then a scream. A girl’s scream.
Scott reached over and turned it off.
REGGIE
Hello! I’m Reggie Dwight, and I’m visiting the good folks at Goodco to see how they make new Peanut Butter Clobbers™!
Ow.
Um, there are peanut buttery bumpers! And melt-in-yourmouth strawberry milk bubbles in every box of Peanut Butter Clobbers™.
REGGIE
OW! Is that going to happen every time I say “Peanut Butter Clobbers™”?
I think that one was a man. (cough) Okay. This … um … cereal not only combines the great taste of peanut butter and strawberry milk, but it’s also chock-full of IntelliJuice™, the magic juice that makes you smarter! I wish I’d had some before agreeing to do this commercial.