The Kingdom of Kevin Malone

  It was getting late. We walked Claudia home first. I didn’t say anything more about the Fayre Farre. They both tactfully let it drop, that and Shelly and this whole looming threat of going to the other end of the country to live in a place full of blondes like Rachel where I, with my mop of kinky brown hair and olive skin, would stick out like a sore thumb. To my relief, we mostly just complained about the humongous homework assignments we were getting from the new history teacher.

  Claudia made us wait a minute at the door while she got a book for me. She insisted, shyly, that I take it, although I was already carrying the shoes Rachel had returned. It was a short history of Central Park, with photographs and a map with all the arches shown on it.

  When I got home, Mom was deep in a phone conversation with her brother Ted. Dad’s plane had been delayed. I told Aunt Jennie good-night and went to bed, but I left the light on in my closet.

  Maybe the Bone Men had gotten Kevin by now. Maybe if they got you, you turned into one of them. Kevin had never been my idea of a nice guy to start with. Now he might come looking for me, rattling his skeleton fingers. Which made it that much worse that he could have done—well, what he’d done: made a fantasy world turn real.

  If he could do that, then why couldn’t I bring Cousin Shelly back by thinking about her? I’d sort’ve tried since she’d died, even going once to Cannibal’s and pretending she was there with me. I’d visualized her as hard as I could, pretending she was pouring some of her espresso into my milk and adding just a little sugar. Naturally, she hadn’t really shown up.

  Instead, I got Kevin. Give me a break. He could take his magical world and stuff it.

  In my sleep Claudia’s dog-pocketbook walked into the middle of my plate of fries and said firmly:

  “When old acquaintance or old friends

  Twist and turn to evil ends,

  Even a dog-purse gives his aid

  Unless he’s just too darn afraid.”

  I woke up next morning, thinking about it: terrible poetry, if not a prophecy exactly. But the meaning was plain: better to be a dog-purse than a ’fraidy cat.

  Four

  Family Feud

  MY DAD WAS HOME when I got up next morning. He sat at the kitchen table wrapped in his old bathrobe and looking saggy-faced and gray around the eyes, with a script spread out in front of him. He pushed the pages with their wide-spaced, narrow columns of type aside when I came in. Amazing that they paid him all that money for such small amounts of writing.

  “Hey, Amy,” he said. “Sleep okay?”

  “Fine, Dad,” I said. “How was L.A.?”

  He wrinkled his nose. “Foul. We wouldn’t be going there if the income wasn’t spectacular.”

  I sat down across from him with a bowl of cereal. “Did you find us a place to live?”

  What a relief when he answered, “Not yet, still looking. I’ve got my eye on a couple of possibilities, though. I brought some pictures—”

  I didn’t want to see any pictures. “Where’s Mom?”

  “Gone to Shell’s apartment with your aunt Jennie,” he said, sighing. “There’s lots to do over there, and pretty soon people will be coming around to sit shiva today.”

  “Somebody could have got me up to go with them,” I said. All of a sudden I felt like crying.

  “Hey, Nougat,” he said, reaching over to give my arm a pat. “Let them have some time alone at Shelly’s place. I know you have private memories of your own about Shell, right? Well, your mom has hers to sort through, too.”

  Worse and worse, though he meant well. Still, it felt really good to have him home. I blew my nose into my napkin.

  “How long before you have to go back?” I asked.

  Another huge sigh. “I’m not sure yet. There’s a story conference early next week,” he said. “It’s great to be wanted, but why now?”

  I said, “Did you tell them about Shell?”

  “Sure I told them. But they work under deadlines that do not move at the whim of a mere writer. And believe me, in Hollywood, there’s nobody merer.”

  He hadn’t shaved yet and looked, I thought, just a little bit like Humphrey Bogart. Cousin Shell had idolized Humphrey Bogart, and I had seen all of his ancient movies on her VCR.

  “I think you should stay here, and tell them to go jump,” I muttered around a mouthful of cereal.

  “I could,” he said, nodding, but I knew by his tone that he wouldn’t. “But then there’s a good chance my sweetheart of a daughter, the apple of my eye and the peg o’ my heart, wouldn’t be able to go to a decent college.”

  “I’ll work my way through college,” I said.

  “As what, a heart surgeon? Tuitions everywhere are sky high and climbing, and the California state system is in trouble.”

  “Who says I have to go to college?” I said.

  There was a pregnant pause. Dad chewed on the pencil he’d been using to mark his script. Then he said, “Your choice, of course, Bunnyhunch. But you know, don’t you, that Shelly particularly wanted you to go? She’s left you some money, rumor has it, to help with your college expenses.”

  Now I did cry. Shelly had loved to travel on her vacation time, as much as she could on her not-tremendous income. Imagine her putting aside some of her funds for me, cutting days off her one-time visit to Mazatlan, or her Maine Coast cruise to study plant life in the tide pools!

  “Hey, hey,” Dad said soothingly. “That’s what I hear, anyway. First there’s some Sturm and Drang to get through, so I’m not counting your chickens and you shouldn’t, either. It seems that Aunt Diane has some kind of claim on the estate—”

  “Diane?” I said. “They couldn’t stand each other! Shelly always said—”

  “Whatever Shelly said,” Dad interrupted, “Diane insists she’s due something because of some ancient obligation—”

  “Well, give it to her then!” I yelled, jumping up from the table. “Give it all to her, let her have everything Shelly left. Who cares?”

  “I do,” Dad said promptly. “I’ve already spoken to a lawyer—”

  “Oh, no!” I bawled. “Are you all going to court over Shelly’s stuff? I can’t believe it! It’s disgusting! I can’t believe I belong to a family like that!”

  “Sweetheart,” Dad said wearily, “all families are like that. Deaths and funerals, they bring out the worst in people, even people who are normally pretty okay. Nobody’s at their best when they’re upset. Look at your mother; look how mad you’re getting right now, without even knowing the whole story.” He smiled at me, but sadly. “Death hurts people a lot, it shakes them up and scares the bejaggers out of them—”

  “Yeah?” I gulped. “You’d never know it from the stuff you see on TV, with people getting blown away every five minutes. Nobody even says oops.” Low blow: Dad was working on an episode of Shakers and Breakers, which Mom didn’t like me to watch because of the violence on it. I felt my face get hot with shame over how I was acting, but I couldn’t stop.

  Dad, stubbly and scruffy in his old wool bathrobe, never flinched. He went right on in that reasonable tone that drove me crazy—I mean, why didn’t he break down and bawl? “When people stop feeling so awful about the person they’re missing, they calm down. If they’re lucky and everybody tries hard, things get back to normal again.”

  “Fine,” I said. “Well, let me know when that happens, okay? If ever.”

  “Amy, Amy,” he groaned, “let up, will you? Look, you loved Shelly, I loved Shelly, but she’s not the first person who ever died in this family, and we still are a family.”

  “Well, maybe it’s a good thing we’re moving away,” I said. “If all anybody can think about is fighting over Shelly’s things, maybe it’s time the family broke up!”

  Dad said, “Did you walk in here this morning determined to make me wish I’d stayed in California?”

  No adequately blistering answer occurred to me. I stomped off into my room, got dressed, and left the apartment without saying a word more. As I
walked past the living-room doorway, I heard Dad on the phone—with L.A. I could tell by the way he talked, faster than normally and laughing more.

  I wanted to go someplace where if people fought, it was against a terrible evil like the Bone Men. Nobody there was running off to talk to lawyers about their dead relative’s wills, either. I didn’t think Kevin would have bothered stocking the Fayre Farre with lawyers.

  And I hadn’t felt Cousin Shelly’s absence so much there, maybe because in Kevin’s dream world she had never existed.

  I slapped together a couple of sandwiches, pinned the rhinestone rose to the collar of my shirt, and headed for Central Park. Since Claudia’s book was too big to lug around, first I went to get a park map of my own at the Dairy.

  I was careful not to walk through any arches on the way there, which took some doing. The footpaths tend to lead you around a corner and into a tunnel with no warning, particularly in a rainy spring when everything is wildly overgrown so you can’t even see the bridges until you’re under them.

  It was a relief to find the Dairy where it belonged, within comfortable sight of the brick Chess and Checkers House and a striped arch called Playmates. I came back out of the Dairy and sat down on the huge black granite slab that slopes down from the chess house to study the map. I couldn’t help wondering who had given the arches their odd names: Trefoil, Glade, Greywacke?

  No map from the real world could show me where I would come out in the Fayre Farre when I went through one of the arches. But why not memorize as much as I could about their placement? And why shouldn’t I choose my entrance this time, instead of just falling into Kevin’s country through any old arch?

  The southeast part of Kevin’s fantasy land I already knew a bit: it had the castle ruins and the Prison City (where the zoo was in reality). Near where I sat, the Gapstow Bridge crossed the shallow lake below the Wollman ice-skating rink, which would mean wading underneath the bridge to get to the Fayre Farre, and walking—maybe running for my life—in squishy shoes. No thanks.

  Playmates Arch was closest, but that was out: Kevin and I were not and never had been playmates. On the other hand, Cousin Shelly and I had gone through that arch lots of times when I was smaller, heading to or from the merry-go-round together. Even as a grown-up, she hadn’t been above taking a ride on one of the tall outside horses.

  The map showed three arches farther up the east side of the park. I decided on the one marked Trefoil. I must have passed it a zillion times in my wanderings in the park, but now I couldn’t remember what it looked like. On the map, it was the nearest after Playmates.

  Wearing my new running shoes and carrying two bologna sandwiches in a plastic bag, I folded up the map and headed east, toward the Trefoil Arch.

  It was Sunday morning. Joggers ran in the park, people sat on the benches watching baby carriages, and old men and ladies threw crumbs to mobs of pigeons bobbing and gurgling at their feet. There was no traffic on the roadways except the hordes of bike riders and skaters that use them on weekends. The East Drive took me over the top of the Willowdell Arch. Had I really skated under this archway into another world yesterday? My mind said I hadn’t. My sore legs said I had.

  The east end of the big lake came into view. I could see the shiny black rowboat bottoms stacked along the shore behind high chainlink fencing (people will steal anything in New York). Trefoil was right under me, with steps up to the lake on one side, paths and meadows stretching eastward on the other.

  I ran down the road bank and stood on the path beneath, looking west through the arch. The near side entrance was a sort of clover-leaf shape. At the far end of the passage I could see a simple rounded opening framing the concrete steps to the lakeshore. Up on top ran an iron railing sporting lacy vines and leaves, dark against the sky.

  I climbed up over the top again and looked at the other side of the arch, from the head of the steps. From this side the arch was sunk low between its green banks and overgrown on top with hummocky grass. Something unpretentious, almost hidden—that was the frame I wanted to step through into Kevin’s country this time.

  So I scrambled back over the top, and walked in through the cloverleaf side, clutching the rhinestone pin at my collar with one hand and my sandwiches with the other. The passageway, lying so low, was sloppy with mud. Surprisingly, the ceiling was just wood, a stained plank facing under the stone structure supporting the roadway overhead.

  I looked at the ceiling because I was scared to look ahead. I asked myself, Is this real? And: Am I dumb enough to do this?

  I stepped through the thick cold air curtain inside the arch—it made me shut my eyes and shiver—and came out facing not concrete stairs going up to the lake, but a high hillside covered with huge, tumbled slabs of stone, like granite dominoes tossed down from a giant’s hand. Had Kevin been crazy enough to put giants in the Fayre Farre?

  The slabs lay at angles just off the horizontal, like a flight of steps jolted out of true by an earthquake. Great: giants and earthquakes.

  It was chilly again, and damp, and no identifiable time of day. I had forgotten my watch.

  Now I realized that I hadn’t thought about how to find Kevin in his blasted magic land when I got back into it! Suppose he was in the Prison City, or even farther away? Was I crazy, as well as a stupid idiot, to come galumphing back here like this?

  “Come on up, I’ve been waiting for you.” Kevin stood on one of the tilted stairs about twenty yards up the hill. In his dark clothes, he was almost invisible.

  I climbed, trying not to rip my jeans. A person in the normal world only has so many changes of clean clothing, let alone so many excuses to give her parents about what has happened to them all.

  Kevin looked tired, though his hair gleamed beneath his cap and his black shirt and pants and dark green vest looked fresh and clean. No sweats today. I was glad I had worn a really nice turtleneck, and a clasp to hold my hair back. My hair tends to frizz in damp weather, and the air of the Fayre Farre was damp. If there’s anything I hate it’s having my hair bunch up like old upholstery stuffing.

  “How did you know where to meet me today?” I asked. “You gave me the rose pin.”

  He dug out his handkerchief and untied the corner. “The seedstone drew me,” he said. The little crystal in his palm looked like a stone from a jewelry setting.

  Quickly I unpinned the rhinestone rose and examined it closely. Sure enough, at the very center of the cluster of petals one tiny metal cup was empty.

  “You kept one of the stones from my pin? They’re just paste, Kevin, they’re not worth anything.”

  The red strips glowed brightly in his cheeks, as if somebody had smacked his face twice with a ruler. He said, “They’re magic here. This one shines toward the other ones. That way I can tell where I’m likely to run into you. Hey, relax—you’ll get it back.”

  I held out my hand. He shook his head. “Later.”

  “I’ll remind you,” I said. “Did that little stone help you get away from the Bone Men at the Dairy?”

  “Sshh,” he said, scowling and glancing around. “Come on, this way. Sure, the seedstone helped. Things here always help me, when they’re not trying to wipe me out. I’m the protagonist so I’m mostly safe, except for, you know, ordeals and things, until the end. Don’t worry, you don’t have to hang around that long. How come you picked this arch to come through?”

  I shrugged.

  “Good thing you didn’t use the Gapstow, over by Wollman Rink,” he said cheerfully.

  “Why, what’s wrong with the Gapstow?” I asked.

  “Nothing,” Kevin said, “except with the arches that cross water, you never know. I put a family of trolls under one of them, and they tend to kind of wander from one water bridge to another.”

  “Trolls! Kevin, for crying out loud!”

  “Water trolls,” he elaborated for my benefit. “All ugly and slimy. Though a troll family looks out for its own, which is more than you can say for some people.”

&n
bsp; “Trolls are Norwegian,” I said. “I thought you were Irish.”

  “You never heard of the global village?” he said in a superior tone.

  “Sure I have,” I shot back. “I read in my spare time, Kevin, instead of mugging people for their pocket money.”

  “That was a long time ago,” he said, glaring down from the inch or so he had on me these days. “You’re not back on your old street now, telling off a brat from the poor end of the block. The Fayre Farre is my place, not yours.”

  “I wouldn’t talk so tough to someone I was asking for favors,” I said.

  “Maybe I won’t need any favors,” he said. “I won’t know for sure until I’ve got the prophecy.”

  “You still don’t have it?” I said. “Kevin, how long have you known about this prophecy, anyway?”

  He kicked a pebble off the stair he stood on. “Only a little while. I had to find out there was a prophecy, from this dragon I fought. And then Sebbian—” He turned so I couldn’t see his face. “We had a singing contest. I won him away from the White One’s service, and he went off to get me the prophecy to show his, you know, his loyalty. You’re not exactly coming in at the beginning of the story, you know.”

  “Well, let’s go get the stupid prophecy ourselves, then,” I said. I was not happy to be reminded about poor Sebbian, and it annoyed me to have missed the dragon. “If there’s stuff I’m supposed to be able to do around here, I’d like some information about it. I don’t know how it is for Prince Kavian in the Fayre Farre, but I’ve got school next week, and I’m supposed to be moving to California any day now. So where do we start?”

  Around us were gray sky, jumbled rocks, the little arch below, and beyond it long meadows down to water and what looked like another castle, far and lone looking. I pointed. “Down there?”

  Kevin laughed. “No, not down there. That’s the castle of a duke who’d like to nail my head to his gate and send his own son on the quest in my place. So we’ll just move along before he finds out I’m hanging around, okay? No, not up the Giants’ Stair either. I know the way to where we have to go, don’t worry. For starters, we follow the steps across the face of the hill.”