This Book Is Not Good for You

  “That’s just like with a bear,” said Cass impatiently. Although she’d never faced a bear in real life, she regularly included bear attacks as part of her survivalist training. “Now can we go?” she whispered to her friends.

  “Precisely!” declared the lion tamer with a crack of his whip. “Why don’t you try it on that bear there—?”

  The lion tamer pointed to the side of the tent where a rather heavy and hirsute (which you may recognize as a polite way of saying fat and hairy) woman was now standing with her arms folded. This was Myrtle, the circus’s bearded lady.

  “Alfred!” Myrtle scolded. “What are you doing with that poor kitten? Kids, what are you doing here so early? Pietro didn’t say anything…”

  “They’re here to keep me company,” said Yo-Yoji quickly. “You know Lily. She likes me to start practicing before the sun comes out.”

  Myrtle snorted. “You won’t have any fingers left by the time that woman gets done with you!”

  “Oh great!” Cass moaned a moment later.

  She hadn’t anticipated the CAT FOOD trailer being padlocked. But right there, hanging from the door handle, was a large combination lock. Compared to other devices employed by the Terces Society it looked crude, but no doubt it was effective in keeping out intruders. The one exceptional feature of the lock was that there were letters rather than numbers on its face.

  “Chill,” said Yo-Yoji. “We can always find Pietro or Mr. Wallace to let us in.”

  “No, no, we can’t because…,” Cass stammered. How to explain that they were the last people she wanted to see right now? She was hoping desperately not to run into them.

  “Don’t worry,” said Max-Ernest. “I know where Pietro keeps the riddle.”

  “What riddle?” asked Cass.

  “The one that tells you what the new combination is every day.”

  “Oh,” she said, relieved that he knew about the combination but also a bit peeved that she hadn’t been privy to this information.

  Max-Ernest returned with a slip of paper pulled out from under an abandoned cotton candy machine.

  “‘What do you call a lion bite that doesn’t hurt?’” he read.

  “A LION LICK?” Yo-Yoji offered.

  “A LION KISS?” guessed Cass.

  Max-Ernest shook his head in disgust. “No. Those are totally wrong. The answer has to be more… you know, like a pun.”

  “How about LION GUM?” asked Cass. “Like all you’re getting is his gums, not teeth? That’s a pun. Sort of.”

  Max-Ernest shook his head again. “You guys are hopeless. It’s so obvious.”

  “Oh, yeah—then what is it?”

  “Easy. CATNIP. A lion is a kind of cat—that’s why it says CAT FOOD on the trailer. That’s probably where Pietro got the idea. And a nip is like a little bite that doesn’t hurt. But it’s a pun because catnip is also that stuff that makes cats go crazy. How ’bout that?”

  “Pretty good, but I’ll save my applause until I see you open the door,” said Cass.

  “Yeah, man, we still don’t know if you’re right,” said Yo-Yoji.

  But of course Max-Ernest was right. And the door opened with ease.

  The Terces Society archives were notoriously esoteric and equally extensive, going back many generations.

  Inside the trailer, file boxes were stacked to the ceiling. The space was crammed tighter than Cass’s grandfathers’ antiques store. But here everything was in order, nothing out of place.

  Every box, every file, every photo, every scrap of paper had been meticulously labeled by Mr. Wallace:

  Cass found the Tuning Fork file wedged between Tunes, Celtic and Tunnels, Rumored Under Pyramids.

  Unfortunately, she discovered, there wasn’t much in it. Just the drawing of the Tuning Fork that Mr. Wallace had shown them and a long hand-written manuscript on yellowed paper. The manuscript was in Spanish, but there was an English translation attached.

  While Yo-Yoji and Max-Ernest looked through other file boxes to see if they could find anything else that would be helpful in their quest, Cass sat down on the speckled linoleum floor and started reading aloud:

  25 October, 1597

  I write this journal sitting on a beach, I know not where.

  New World or Old World or some Other World altogether.

  After six weeks at sea, I have washed ashore on a desert island and I am alone but for the lizards and my thoughts.

  Next to me is the fatal object that caused a great ship to sink. Yes, that small silver tool lying there so innocently on the sand killed the crew of the Santa Xxxxx as surely as if it stabbed each sailor in the back—and yet it never so much as touched their fingers.

  Myself, I am the only survivor.

  My story begins on another island, Teotihuacan, grand capital of the Aztec people. The island city that rises out of the Lake of the Moon.

  In Teotihuacan, there lived a boy of twelve or thirteen or so. The son of farmers, he worked in the royal granary, and every day he carted baskets of food and grain to the palace of the great emperor, Moctezuma.

  He was known as Caca Boy—a name that thankfully does not have the same meaning in the Aztec language that it has in ours!—because he carried so many of the seeds the Aztecs call the cacahuatal.

  You cannot imagine the importance the Aztec people place on this shriveled little seed. It is the coin of the realm. They trade the seeds for all manner of goods just as if the seeds were bits of gold.

  But it is the strange brown drink they make from the cacahuatal seeds that gives the seeds their true value. This is a frothy and spicy concoction that is quite delicious when sweetened. I would go so far as to say it is addictive. Soon, I predict, it will be all the rage in Europe.

  The Aztecs call the drink chocolatl. *

  Moctezuma had millions and millions of cacahuatal seeds stored in enormous bins of straw and clay. To scoop up the seeds, Caca Boy climbed inside the bins, sometimes sinking all the way to his chin. He spent so much time surrounded by the seeds that his skin was stained a dark brown, and his hair, his very pores, his whole body, stank of cacahuatal.

  This would not have been so terrible, for he loved the smell, save for one thing: sadly, he had never tasted chocolatl.

  Among the Aztecs, the drinking of chocolatl is restricted to the noble classes: royalty, priests, and warriors. Commoners are considered unfit for such a luxurious elixir. At the palace, the rules were even more strict: only the emperor could drink the chocolatl prepared in the royal kitchen.

  If Caca Boy took so much as a sip he would be sentenced to death.

  Every day, after making his delivery, Caca Boy would linger outside the palace kitchen and torture himself by watching the emperor’s cooks prepare the emperor’s chocolatl.

  Cup after cup they made, pouring and re-pouring until the chocolatl was whipped into a delicious froth. There was red chocolatl. White chocolatl. Black chocolatl. They served it with honey. With vanilla. With flowers. All for the emperor. Always in the emperor’s special golden goblets.

  One day, instead of frothing the emperor’s chocolatl herself, a cook nervously placed his goblet in front of a mysterious and strangely ageless man in a shimmering robe.

  In his gloved hands, the man held a silver fork that ended in two long prongs. While Caca Boy watched, mesmerized, the man carefully lowered the prongs into the emperor’s chocolatl. Then he rubbed his palms together, rolling the handle of the silver fork back and forth, causing the prongs to spin faster and faster until you could barely see them.

  Soon, the chocolatl was whipped into the biggest head of foam Caca Boy had ever seen. It grew and grew until there was a frothy white mountain ten times the size of the goblet beneath—and yet the goblet never overflowed onto the table.

  The aroma was so strong it nearly threw Caca Boy backward.

  Afterward, Caca Boy asked the cook who the man was.

  “He is a sorcerer. They say his silver fork will make your food taste like anything
in the world so long as it is something you have tasted before—or even that your ancestors tasted before.”

  “So if I had the fork, could I turn dirt into chocolatl?” asked Caca Boy, wide-eyed. “My father tasted it once. He said it was like drinking gold.”

  “Remember your place, Caca Boy! The drinking of chocolatl is forbidden to your kind,” said the cook sharply.

  “Besides,” she added, lowering her voice, “magic like that always comes with a price.”

  Caca Boy didn’t see the sorcerer’s silver fork again for three years.

  By then, the Spanish had arrived. War had broken out and the city was in chaos.

  Even the emperor’s palace was looted. From the shadows by the kitchen, Caca Boy watched the Spaniards carting away the treasures of his civilization like so much trash.

  While Caca Boy silently cursed the Spanish, he saw something silver drop out of a soldier’s arms. Caca Boy couldn’t believe his luck. In a flash, he darted into the street and pocketed it. And then he ran.

  He knew the emperor’s guards would kill him if they caught him with the silver fork. If he was lucky, he might be sacrificed to Huitzilopochtli. *

  The Spanish were even more vicious. If he were caught by the Conquistadors, he would be sacrificed to their greed—and much more quickly.

  There was only one place to hide.

  He flew down the familiar streets, flung open the doors to the granary, and dove headfirst into one of the giant vats of cacahuatal seeds. He hid there, buried, for hours. Seeds wedged between his toes and even up his nose.

  Finally, when he was sure it must be the middle of the night, he stuck his head out. And then he froze. Because he was staring into the eyes of a man. A man equally surprised.

  Luckily, this man was neither Aztec warrior nor Spanish Conquistador. He was a man of peace. A Franciscan brother. A monk.

  He was I.

  I had come in the vain hope of stopping my Spanish kin from looting the food supplies of the Aztecs. I was too late. At the far end of the granary, Spanish soldiers were upending stores of corn. Soon, the cacahuatal seeds would spill as well.

  Now my attention was focused on the young boy in front of me. So clearly frightened and alone. Thankfully, I had learned enough of the Aztec tongue to ask why he was hiding and if he needed help.

  Before answering, he looked around, measuring his chances. At one end were the Spanish. At the other, the Aztecs. In either direction, peril.

  “They will kill me if they find this,” he whispered, showing me the silver fork with obvious reluctance.

  The object itself was less remarkable than the images engraved on it. On one prong, there was a long-tailed bird, on the other a twisting snake. I thought I recognized what the images meant and they made me shiver.

  Haltingly, Caca Boy told me his story about seeing the sorcerer and then finding the fork years later.

  Naturally, I dismissed what he said about the sorcerer’s fork as superstitious nonsense. But I agreed to take it from him if that meant saving his life.

  “Wait—”

  Quickly, Caca Boy scooped up a handful of cacahuatal seeds. Frowning with concentration, he stirred the seeds with the fork…

  As I watched in disbelief, the seeds dissolved into liquid. Foaming chocolatl was now cupped in his hand.

  Blissfully, he lapped up the chocolatl, licking every drop off his fingers. At last, Caca Boy had tasted chocolatl! And it was every bit as good, nay, it was better than his father had described.

  Eyes glistening, he handed me the silver fork. Then he jumped out of the bin—and ran out of sight.

  I never saw Caca Boy again.

  It is an awkward position for a poor friar to possess a priceless object with unholy powers.

  I wanted nothing to do with the fork. Yet, I did not know how to get rid of it. And so it was still hidden in my robes months later when I found myself searching for passage back to Spain.

  We friars must often make our way by begging. Alas, ship captains do not always have a matching generosity of spirit.

  May God forgive me, I bargained for my berth on the Santa Xxxxx by giving the captain the silver fork.

  At first, the ship’s cook was under strict instructions to use the fork only in preparation of the captain’s meals. But on a ship, secrets never stay secret for long. Word of the captain’s magical feasts spread. And soon he had no choice but to share or face mutiny.

  There was no limit to the fork’s powers. With it, the cook turned old gruel into golden broth, and rancid meat into fat roast goose. There were impossibly ripe fruits and glorious sweetmeats. Roasted peacocks and stuffed pigs.

  Whatever the crew could remember, the silver fork could cook.

  Forbidden to eat such rich food by my vow of poverty, I alone did not partake of the fancy feasts. I lived on stale bread.

  Need I say what happened next?

  The sailors grew fat and lazy and argumentative. The decks were not swabbed. The brass was not polished. The ship veered off course.

  As much as I tried, I could not stop them from gorging.

  “More! More!” they cried.

  And “Get out of the way, you old monk!”

  And other things too rude to repeat.

  Soon, the chef was forced to turn hay bales into dinner. Then old sailcloth and seawater. The meals still tasted delicious, but the food no longer fattened the crew—it made them sick. It was food in taste only.

  I watched in horror as daily the sailors grew more skeletal. The more they ate the more they starved.

  By the time the big storm came, most of the crew were dead. The others had no strength left to fight. Only I had the will to live.

  If only I had also had the will to let this cursed fork sink with the ship! What new horrors does it have in store for future generations? I shudder to imagine.

  Curate ut Valeatis.

  —Fr. Rafael de Leon

  Still half-lost in the Aztec world, Cass looked up from the monk’s manuscript.

  “Do you think the Tuning Fork is really cursed?” she asked.

  “I guess it depends on what you mean by cursed,” Max-Ernest responded. He and Yo-Yoji had abandoned the other file boxes long ago and were now sitting across from her. “I mean, anybody can curse anything, right? That doesn’t mean the curse works.”

  “Yeah, things like that only happen in old legends and movies and stuff,” agreed Yo-Yoji.

  But neither of them sounded very confident. The trouble was, as members of the Terces Society, they’d already seen plenty of things that were only supposed to happen in legends and movies. It wasn’t that long ago, after all, that they’d been having a picnic lunch with a two-foot tall, five-hundred-year-old man born in a bottle. (Oh, and did I mention he was a cannibal?) *

  A man’s cough—a dry, raspy cough—made the kids snap to attention. And made the hairs on their neck stand on end.

  The worst had already happened, Cass reminded herself. Her mother had been taken from her. She was ready to face anyone, even Señor Hugo.

  Slowly, they all looked up.

  “Cassandra, Max-Ernest, Yo-Yoji, it’s a little early in the morning for clown camp, isn’t it? Don’t you know a circus never stirs before noon?”

  It was Mr. Wallace. The gaunt man lurched over them, blocking them from standing up.

  “At your age, you should be sleeping in on a Sunday,” he prattled on. “Me, I couldn’t get to sleep so I decided to get a jump start on my day. Then again, I hardly fit in in the circus, do I?”

  “Us… too,” Cass stammered. “I mean, we don’t fit in—I mean, we got up early.”

  “Hard to get your story straight sometimes, isn’t it?” Mr. Wallace queried.

  Mr. Wallace was the oldest member of the Terces Society—not necessarily in age (Cass wasn’t sure but she thought Pietro was older) but in the sense that he had been part of the society longest. According to Pietro, Mr. Wallace knew more about the history of the Secret, and more about th
e Midnight Sun, than any other living person. (At least more than anyone outside of the Midnight Sun. And to what extent the Masters were considered living was open to debate.) And yet, for some reason, Cass had never trusted Mr. Wallace. And she’d never felt that he trusted her.

  Mr. Wallace peered over her shoulder. “Ah, the memoirs of the monk, Rafael de Leon. A most vivid account, don’t you think? I’m glad you’re following your orders so assiduously.”

  “My orders?” Cass’s heart skipped a beat. How could he know about Hugo’s note? Unless…

  “From Pietro. To investigate the Tuning Fork.”

  “Oh… right.”

  Relieved, Cass stood up, gripping the Tuning Fork file tight in her hand.

  She tried to sound casual: “So where do you think it could be, anyway?”

  “The Tuning Fork? No idea. If I had, I’d be rich. Or dead.” Mr. Wallace leaned in toward the kids. “But between you and me, I’ve always had a hunch it’s somewhere close…”

  The way Mr. Wallace said close, it almost seemed the word meant something sinister—as if the Tuning Fork might be haunting them at the very moment.

  “You mean near… here?” asked Yo-Yoji.

  Mr. Wallace nodded, taking the file from Cass’s hand without asking. “We know the fork made its way to Europe with Brother Rafael. And from what I can tell, it crossed the Atlantic again a hundred years later. Possibly on the Mayflower. Or soon thereafter.”

  He put the file back in its drawer, which he closed, Cass noticed, with an air of finality. They wouldn’t be opening it again anytime soon.

  “You mean like with the Puritans?” asked Max-Ernest.

  Mr. Wallace shrugged. “Of course this is all speculation… but did you know that along with all the Puritans, there were also witches banished to the New World?”

  “So you think a… witch had it?” Cass could hardly believe they were using the word seriously. But over the past couple years, she’d learned not to discount anything—even the supernatural.

  “Well, a woman believed to be a witch anyway.” Mr. Wallace smiled—an occurrence so rare as to be nearly supernatural in itself. “All those stories about witches feeding children candy have to come from somewhere, don’t they? And I did read a report once about a witch named Clara who was famous for her frothy cups of hot chocolate…”