The Kingdom of Kevin Malone

  With Kevin’s help, I squirmed free of what seemed to be a wooden statue of the Elf Queen. It was polished brown and smooth except where the scaly bark draped like cloth. The eyes were open and blank.

  It wasn’t a statue. It was her.

  I began shaking all over. “I was talking with her just last night! She said if I waited, you’d come find me.”

  “Then she told the truth, for a wonder,” he said.

  I peered around, trying to square what I saw now, in this thin dawn light, with last night’s chaos. The hall seethed slowly with pale mist. Everywhere tree branches and vines curled in through the windows and snaked along the walls and floor, as if through an ancient ruin overgrown by jungle. A woody brown vine had even wound itself around one leg of the petrified Elf Queen.

  “They go back to the forest when they die,” Kevin said, poking the queen with the toe of his boot. She rocked, her undamaged arm sticking out foolishly over the air where my shoulders had been.

  I said, “Don’t kick her, Kevin.”

  “Squeamish?” he said nastily. “Wait till you get outside and see what’s left from the fighting.”

  “I saw plenty,” I said. “Last night, if it was last night. How could trees grow this fast?”

  “Elves don’t breed,” he said. “You know where new elves come from? The forest makes them. So the elves make new forest when they die. It all works out.”

  I shivered. I hadn’t known Elven Sobragana well, but now I felt sorry for her. While I’d slept she had died, if not truly alone then as good as, and become this wooden statue.

  “She said she hated you,” I said. “I’m not sure the elves think it works out so nicely, Kevin.”

  “Who knows what elves think?” he said darkly. “Don’t waste sympathy on them. They’re modeled after the fairy-folk my mother used to talk of, and there’s nothing colder-hearted than the Good People of Ireland.”

  “These may be different from what you meant them to be,” I pointed out, thinking of the Branglemen.

  “Maybe.” He shrugged and turned away.

  He was wearing dark blue pants and a yellow shirt with a blue vest buttoned tight over it. His Reeboks were blue, too. He was a color-coordinated hero-prince, even to the faded yellow bruise on the side of his head where the Brangleman had smacked him. The nearer we came to the final confrontation, the more fashion-conscious he seemed to get.

  “Did you bring the sword?” he asked.

  I nodded, but I didn’t hand him the knife, not right away. I remembered what the Elf Queen had told me, and with the memory came a slow burn of anger.

  “Kevin, why didn’t you go get the Farsword yourself?”

  “You do have it?” he said urgently.

  “Yes. Answer me, Kevin.”

  “I told you,” he said, “I had only one gate I could use, and I had to stay close to it. I was lucky to get as far into the park, as far from the arch and the Fayre Farre itself, as I needed to give you your pin back.”

  “I mean before that,” I insisted. “There are lots of arches in the park. You must have been back and forth a whole bunch of times to use them all up—”

  “There’s over thirty, counting the water bridges,” he said, “and every arch is different.” I heard that soft, dreamy pride in his voice as he harked back to the beginnings of his fantasy, before it had gone all dark and cruel on him. “I know them all. I started the Fayre Farre with them, did I tell you that? Great names—Dalehead, Greyshot, Dipway, Glade, Winterdale, Bank Rock—I used to recite them like a spell to get me here, when I was real small.”

  I hung on. “You must have made a lot of trips, to use up all those gateways. But you never brought the sword back here with you. Why?”

  “I already told you. I couldn’t find it,” he said. “Hell, I was scared to go look in the old house. I was afraid to run into my old man, if you want to know.”

  I froze. “Kevin,” I said, “there was an old man, I mean a really old man, at your house, living on the ground floor—”

  Had I actually come face to face with Kevin’s father?

  “My father died,” Kevin said shortly. He shrugged. “Even so, I thought I might find his ghost hanging around the old place, waiting for me, too drunk and too mad to lie down.”

  That got to me. “My mom told me how he treated you,” I said. “We’re sorry if we made things harder for you, Kevin.”

  He grunted. “Yeah? Well, you can both stick it.”

  “Hey,” I said, “you don’t have to be so nasty. Look, I know—”

  “No you don’t,” he interrupted. “You don’t know. You think everybody’s born with standard issue of a nice, happy family living in a nice, comfortable apartment with a room for each kid and plumbing that works—”

  Stung, I shot back, “Hey, nobody’s family is happy that way, like in some sit-com. I know that, even if you don’t.”

  Funny, though, somehow I’d always thought of Rachel’s family as happy, with her chipper little mom and her distracted-looking father who was a stockbroker during the day and went into the spare bedroom at night to play the violin. Of course there were the twins—nasty, spoiled brats, I’d seen them gang up on Rachel in a sly, subtle way that the parents didn’t seem to notice—how happy were they all, really? What else went on in that house that only the family living there knew about?

  “You don’t know shit,” Kevin snarled, kicking hard at a mound of shavings on the floor. “You never did, and you don’t now.” He turned and glared at me with reddened eyes. Something desperate showed there. Was this how I had looked, snarling at Mom and Dad about injustice over my rye bread? Probably. Which told me something about how Kevin must be feeling. “It’s luck for some people and lickings for others, and no understanding how it’s portioned out.”

  “It’s the luck of the draw, Kevin,” I said, my sympathy evaporating. Everybody got some kinds of lickings. Like—who had decided Cousin Shelly should die so suddenly and so young? “I’m sorry you had a rough childhood, but you’re not the only one. You sound pretty sorry for yourself, which isn’t very heroic no matter what noble title you stick on yourself.”

  He kicked up another clump of damp sawdust. “You talk a good game, but you’re soft,” he said disgustedly. “In my family you wouldn’t have survived, you know that? My baby sister was tougher than you.”

  His kicking had uncovered this big, roundish, bloody, dirty object, like a tabletop only it wasn’t. It had to be the head of the Famisher I had personally decapitated.

  I wasn’t tough enough for that.

  “Let’s get out of here,” I said.

  We walked out past the big entry doors that had been wrenched all crooked during the fighting. Beyond stretched a foggy field of dead: great lumpish mounds that had been Famishers and poor bundles of roots and stumps that were what was left of the elf warriors. If there was any way to tell who had won the battle, assuming anybody had, I didn’t know what it was.

  Kevin said, “Where were you during the fighting?”

  “Hiding in the ceiling,” I said.

  “Huh,” he said. “I never said you weren’t smart. ’Course, I’m no dummy myself, remember. Even the Branglemen couldn’t hold me.”

  “Quit boasting,” I said. “You’re protected. Does the mighty hero ever die in some accident on his way to his macho duel with the bad guy? Not a chance.”

  Kevin shook his head. “You don’t understand anything at all, do you? Even after all this.”

  I shut up, annoyed with myself. I didn’t want to fight with him, or rather I wanted to fight about real things, not get diverted into his old grudges and resentments. Only now I’d forgotten what I’d started out being angry about.

  Kevin waved his hand at the silent landscape. “Let’s get going. Soon there’ll be Bone Men all over the place looking for the Farsword, and it’s a long way from here to the castle on the Black Cliffs.”

  “Not for me,” I said. “I’ve done what you wanted. I’m going home.”


  His mouth tightened. “Not if you’re truly one of the princesses of the prophecy. It was clear, you know, anybody who heard it could tell you: the three princesses show up at the Black Cliffs for the finish.”

  “The other two can if they want to, but I’m through.” I took the knife out of my pocket. I could hardly wait to have it out of my hands. “Here, take this, it’s yours.”

  He backed away a step and put his hands in his pockets.

  “Come on, Kevin, take it,” I said.

  “Why don’t you come with me?” he asked. “Scared to?”

  I shivered, standing there in the gray morning. “Yes,” I said. It came out in a whisper.

  “Hey, I’m sorry,” he said, his eyes wide and innocent. “I guess I came down on you too hard, okay? It threw me, finding you in the middle of a battlefield. You could have been wounded.”

  “Or eaten by Famishers,” I said, mashing down a ripple of nausea.

  “Yeah,” he said, “but you weren’t, you did fine. I shouldn’t have insulted you before—I’m sorry, honest I am. You’re not some helpless weenie, whining and moaning all over the place. So look, I’d be, like, honored if you’d carry the knife for me. It would really help. Nobody would think of looking for it on a girl. You could be my squire.”

  Sobragana had been right: Kevin was not a prince and a Champion but a coward, a chicken-hearted sneak. I felt not just angry but disappointed and sad.

  “Thanks,” I said sarcastically. “I’m really underwhelmed by your graciousness, Kevin. It’s about time you carried the can for yourself, okay?”

  “Hey,” he said, all injured but with an anxious little light in his eye, “I’m trying to be nice.”

  “Nice my foot,” I shouted. “You set me up, you think I don’t know that? Those Famishers sniffed the Farsword and came after it last night, and I was on the spot instead of you. Now you want me to go on carrying it, like some kind of lightning rod. I know how come you go questing all alone, with no crew of trusty cohorts. People get killed, protecting you! Because only the mighty hero has to get to the end of the story, never mind who else drops by the wayside. All those great warriors you said had died along the way, like poor Sebbian—they’re secondary characters, perfectly disposable. Well, I’m not—got it?”

  His cheeks flamed, but he didn’t say anything. Fine—I had more to say myself.

  “So I am not standing around to catch any more crap meant for you. The Fayre Farre is your problem, not mine. I brought your sword. Carry it yourself.”

  I tossed the closed knife toward him, underhand.

  It spun, blurring as one of the blades somehow opened in the air, and landed point down, vibrating gently in the sod between us so that it made an eddy in the fog. And it stood as tall as my hip, no pocketknife now but a black-bladed iron sword with a grip bound in worn leather.

  “What did you do?” Kevin cried in a voice of terrible pain. “How did you bring it to life? I’m the one to do that!”

  He snatched at the sword hilt, stumbled, then stared in dumbstruck horror at the Swiss Army knife in his hand. He dropped it as if it were hot.

  The Elf Queen’s last words rang in my mind, drowning out everything else: the Farsword had been wakened, and had tasted evil blood: it had been elf-given, but not by Kevin or for Kevin or to Kevin.

  By me, for me, and to me.

  It was my turn to go all white in the face. Two ghostly figures in the deepening mist, it was a wonder we could still see each other. Two figures, one of them called the Promised Champion, and the other—the other the Promised Champion in fact, named so not by the Fayre Farre’s author Kevin but by dying Elven Sobragana and by Farfarer itself.

  I was horrified. “Kevin, I didn’t mean—”

  He stepped back. “Pick it up, Amy,” he said hoarsely. “Come on, I want to see you pick up the weapon of the Promised Champion.”

  “It’s yours,” I said weakly. “I don’t want it.”

  “Pick it up!” he shouted, cocking his fist at me. “Or I’ll bash your silly face in!”

  I wasn’t going to stand there empty-handed while he threatened me. I picked up the knife.

  In my hand it was at once Farfarer again, familiar and comforting. I remembered my two-handed swing at the Famisher’s snaky neck. I had been half out of my mind with fear at the time, but now the memory brought a thrill of pride.

  I pleaded, not with Kevin really but with the air, with the atmosphere of the Fayre Farre, as if something there—the will that made changes despite Kevin’s plans, maybe—could undo this terrible mistake. “It was an accident. That Famisher was after me, it was going to chomp me! I didn’t have anything else, so I—”

  “The head in Elf Home?” Kevin said, blinking from some new blow that I didn’t understand yet. “The Famisher head—that was Kram, one of their Great Ones. You killed him, with my sword?”

  “You know those monsters personally?” I gulped. It felt weird and shivery to learn the name of the creature whose blood had stained my running shoes black.

  “You’ve spoiled everything!” Kevin whispered, shaking his head in disbelief. “I never should have brought you into the Fayre Farre at all. I can’t believe you’ve done this to me.”

  He stomped up close and screamed in my face, “I’m the Promised Champion, not you! This place is my place; it belongs to me, not to you!” He swung away again, punching the air.

  “You’re like all the rest of them, you damn rich kids—you think you own everything in the world! You think you can walk into my own dream place and take it from me! Damn you, damn you for your pride and all!”

  The sword, which I was holding crossways as if to defend myself from Kevin’s anger, suddenly seemed like a sign of shame, like something I’d stolen.

  I held it out to him. “Take it, Kevin,” I begged, “come on, please. We’ll fix things somehow, we’ll put it back the way it’s supposed to be.”

  “Get out of my world!” he howled, his face crumpled with pain and betrayal almost to the point of tears. I would have given a lot right then to have been able to undo—well, something of what I’d done, if that could happen without leaving me dead on the field with all the dead elves and Famishers around us.

  Kevin lunged at me and snatched the sword out of my hand and it became a pocketknife again. He stalked off holding it away from him like a rotten fish or something, while he searched the ground intently.

  I trotted after him trying to think of something to say. There wasn’t anything.

  He found what he was looking for: a rocky outcrop at a high point across the corpse-littered meadow from the ruins of Elf Home.

  He bent and set the little red-handled knife on a flat place on the rocks. Before I knew what he was planning, he clawed up a stone the size of a street cobble and brought it down so hard on the knife that the stone rebounded out of his hands and bounced away over the springy turf.

  The knife’s remains lay at Kevin’s feet, a little mess of steel and plastic. He kicked the bits into the air, cursing wildly.

  With a deafening crash the rock that had been Kevin’s anvil swung up between us. Out of the ground shot a skeleton fist the size of a baseball glove.

  I sat down backward with a thump, my eyes bulging. What must have been a real giant, once, climbed out of the earth with a rattling and scraping of bone on bone and the dull clinking of dented armor. The air I gulped in to screech with stank so horribly that I gagged instead. I turned and tried to crawl away.

  Huge hard fingers closed on my arm and jerked me up off the ground.

  I was dimly aware of Kevin bellowing somewhere close by. I squinched my eyes shut as tightly as I could: if I saw this thing’s face I was going to die right there—or rather I was afraid I wouldn’t die, no matter how badly I wanted to.

  The next thing I knew, I was flung upward and propelled forward into space, clamped against what felt like iron bars that burned into my side. I was smothered in a rushing current of cold, stinking air so t
hick and fast-flowing that I could barely breathe.

  I couldn’t stand it. I opened my eyes.

  Below me I saw something like the double wing of an antique airplane. It was made not of wooden struts and canvas but of rags and leather stretched on a frame of bones. All the joints moved, and the whole structure creaked and shuddered as it flapped clumsily along.

  Shrieking despite myself, I struggled and squirmed in midair. Somewhere nearby Kevin cried, “Amy, don’t! You’ll fall!” Through the monster’s rib cage I saw him pinned under its other arm.

  Between the two of us reared up a towering torso that could have been a dinosaur’s, made of a crazy, crooked maze of bones with no relation to a real skeleton. The head—there had to be a head! —was blocked from my sight by the bulge of the shoulder joint, which seemed to be capped with several skulls all jammed together. The two huge wings, rooted in the monster’s pelvis where its legs should be, slowly rotated and scooped air below us. Everything creaked and groaned as the wind blew through the open places between the joins, where the bones were lashed together with raggedy twists of sinew.

  We were the prisoners of a flying bone dragon as tall as a brownstone, with the wingspan of a 727. Something that had once been a gigantic man—maybe several men buried with their war steeds—had somehow rearranged all its jumbled bones into a winged nightmare, which now carried us away into the darkening sky.

  I looked down and saw a massive hand of bone with way too many fingers locked tightly around both my ankles. The monster had tucked me under its arm with my legs doubled up under me so that I could barely move at all.

  The battlefield sank away. Elf Home became a toy-sized castle and began a slow, dizzying spin to the right as the monster banked, adjusting its course northward. A wave of sickening dizzyness swallowed me into merciful dark.

  Fifteen

  The Blockhouse

  I WOKE UP LYING ON GRITTY DIRT, hearing a kind of slow, uneven flapping noise overhead.