Champions of Breakfast

  The Freeman flinched. He clearly hadn’t seen Harvey until just that moment.

  “Oh. You’re . . . Harvey, yes? I had the wrong terminal. And the flight was early.”

  “Thloppy,” said Harvey. “Gonna hafta make the trains run on time if you wanna take over the world.”

  Emily took up “Jingle Bells” too, in unison with Erno.

  “STOP THAT!”

  “What an awful man,” said a passenger. “Talented dogs like that, and he doesn’t even appreciate them.”

  “I don’t . . . ,” the teenager said. “I don’t think those are dogs—”

  “Of course they’re dogs,” said the Freeman. “Hello? Are you the person to talk to about signing for these animals?”

  He grabbed a clipboard from an airline employee and scribbled furiously over two forms.

  “No, they’re not,” said the girl. “No, they’re not. How could a dog count? And they . . . don’t even look like—”

  “Please get out of my way,” said the Freeman, and he took up the handles of both carriers. Then they were moving.

  Emily felt panicked. “You’re right! We’re not dogs, we’re kids. Please help us!”

  “That almost sounded like English,” said the girl, following.

  “Leave me alone!” shouted the Freeman.

  “Hannah, leave that poor man alone,” said a woman, presumably the girl’s mother. “What are you doing?”

  “I think I’m going crazy,” the girl murmured.

  Now Emily just felt bad. Not that she didn’t continue to shout all the way out to the street, but it was no good.

  “That was clever,” said Harvey to the Freeman. “You have to admit.”

  They met another Freeman in a white van at the curb, and he helped the first one load both carriers into the back.

  “You boys are thupposed to have thomething for me,” said Harvey, before the van’s cargo doors closed and Erno and Emily were in darkness again.

  They didn’t see what happened next—that Harvey was presented with another clipboard, an ordinary clipboard that looked ridiculous under the curly scroll of parchment that was clipped on top. This parchment was meticulously illuminated with an illustrative border and flowing script, but it really just stated that Harvey was a free agent. As long as he took no action against Goodco, Goodco and its subsidiaries and affiliated organizations would take no action against him, in perpetuity, until the end of time. It was signed by Nimue herself, and beneath this Harvey countersigned his True Name. To the casual observer the document would have revealed only the most incomprehensible gibberish, punctuated at the bottom with the imprint of a rabbit’s paw, but it was as legally binding as they come. It drew on an authority much older and more unshakable than the laws of men.

  But neither Erno nor Emily saw this, locked up in the belly of the van.

  “I’m having trouble thinking,” said Emily in the dark. A second later she couldn’t have told you if she’d said it out loud or not.

  The van was moving. They were moving toward Goodborough. They were crossing the bridge, which Emily saw in her mind as a long white arm, leading to a flawless white face, a head. Goodborough was Nimue. It was Nimue’s mind—she couldn’t believe she’d never seen it before. The people of the town were only figments.

  “There,” said Emily. “We just entered Goodborough. Just that second. Did you feel it?”

  “Feel what?” asked Erno. “What do you mean?”

  The road here had a loping rhythm, a series of bumps that thunked under each set of tires—thunk thunk, thunk thunk, thunk thunk. A heartbeat.

  “I’m having trouble thinking,” she said again. “I have the weirdest feeling that we never left Goodborough at all. That the whole deal with the cruise ship, and England . . . that was just a dream, wasn’t it?”

  “No,” Erno told her. “No, we couldn’t both have had the same dream.”

  Emily huffed, exasperated. “But we’re not the dreamers, don’t you see? We’re the dream.”

  Erno didn’t remark on this at all, which Emily took for agreement.

  The van came to a final stop, the cab doors opened, two sets of footsteps rounded the van to the back.

  The cargo doors yawned wide, flooding their eyes with light.

  “She’s waking up,” Emily softly said. “I’m thinking having trouble.”

  CHAPTER 16

  The humans of Pretannica had not quite invented the train.

  They’d invented the steam engine, however, so the principle was there. There’d been some tinkering about with steam-powered cars, but no one had given any serious thought to laying tracks—laying iron tracks—all across the landscape. The Fay would have considered it to be outlandishly offensive, and the humans of Pretannica mostly did their best not to remind the Fay that they were there at all.

  So what John and Merle and Finchbriton and the Queen of England were hurtling through the woods aboard at this very moment was more of an all-terrain steam rover. If you had to describe it succinctly, you might have called it a Victorian monster truck. That’s what John had called it when it had rolled out of the blacksmith’s shed.

  Twelve feet high, it really looked more like a steamboat on wheels than an actual truck, with twin stacks of copper pipe belching a thick fog into the trees. Rubber had never been developed in Pretannica, so the tires were cushioned with woven strips of leather, and each tire could rock up and down with the terrain independent of the others, all behind a steel wedge like a cowcatcher that plowed smaller obstacles out of the way. It was still a jarring ride as the chassis rumbled over hills, stones, fallen trees, down gullies and up ravines.

  Despite Declan Sage’s protestations that John had agreed—in writing—to “slay” the dragon and not merely “superficially wound” it, John and Merle had still been greeted back in Reek as conquering heroes. No one had ever managed to hurt Saxbriton before (they were openly calling her Saxbriton now, as if there’d never been any doubt about it). Certainly no one had ever turned her away. The village was afire like a haystack of wild speculation—her wounds were small, but maybe she’d bleed to death of them anyway. Maybe she’d been so badly spooked she’d never show her face in Reek again.

  The butcher and baker returned and even had John’s chickadee shield with them, so this was briskly cleaned and the chickadee repainted by a local artist whose personal style looked remarkably like the ancient scroll they’d been shown earlier. They were offered fresh clothes, yards of food and drink, marriage proposals. They seemed to think Merle would be more comfortable dressed in linen robes, and he was embarrassed to find that they were right. And all the while the Queen of England clucked her tongue and pretended to check the wristwatch she didn’t have.

  So when John and Merle had started making noises like “This garland of posies is very nice, but we really need to be getting up north” and “I think perhaps a more qualified person should baptize your baby, but while I have you here maybe you could tell me where we might get some horses?” eventually the blacksmith had disappeared and reappeared a few minutes later driving the Victorian monster truck.

  “YES,” Merle had said when he saw it.

  “THAT,” John had agreed, nodding.

  The blacksmith was driving them now. When asked, he’d insisted that the truck didn’t have a name, but as he handled the wheel he kept calling it Gwendolyn under his breath.

  John wore a patchwork of his former armor, having found that it only weighed him down. So he had the breast and back plate, a gauntlet and sleeve for his sword hand, a pauldron for the opposite shoulder. Finchbriton sat on that shoulder, fluffing his feathers against the wind. Merle sat on the deck. The queen had been made comfortable in a small chaise bolted behind the steering column. Gwendolyn didn’t have any kind of windshield, so they were all eating a lot of bugs.

  In a few short hours they’d made it to a port in the northeast of Ireland. The blacksmith’s brother knew a man who knew a man who had a ship that could take t
hem to Fray’s island. They looked up at this ship now, and the name that was painted across its stern.

  “The Titanic,” said John.

  They stared at the stern for a moment, and when no one else spoke John went ahead and said it again.

  “The TITANIC.”

  “It’s just a funny coincidence,” said Merle. “I refuse to dwell on it. What are the chances that two ships called Titanic could both—”

  “Do NOT say it!” snapped the queen. “Have you not been paying attention? You are a man of science, Merle, so you might think that such careless words don’t matter, but I am telling you that this whole place is pure story. This is where stories come from. Don’t tease the bear, Merlin.”

  Merle grunted. It would turn out to be a moot point, anyway—the disaster that was coming wouldn’t be coming by sea.

  “This way,” said the blacksmith, and he led them up the gangplank to meet his brother’s friend’s friend.

  The Titanic was not quite like anything any of them had seen on Earth. It was a tall ship, three-masted, a galleon in a way. But this galleon had a wide paddlewheel in its rear and a stout steel chimney rising diagonally up from its poop deck. This chimney was greased just as John’s armor had been, so the whole ship had a pleasant fish ’n’ chips smell.

  “Is this ’im, then?” asked a bearded, strong-browed dwarf with one arm. “Is this the Chickadee?”

  John let out a long, slow breath.

  “This is he,” said the queen. “May I present Sir John.”

  John shook the captain’s hand and glanced back at the queen. “It’s Sir Reggie, actually,” he said. “You knighted me under my stage name.”

  The captain was looking at the queen too, with narrowed eyes. “One o’ the queens o’ the Fay, is she? Never had a fairy on board before.”

  “I am no more fairy than you, Captain. I’ve been bewitched.”

  “Oh. Well. That’s all right then—my apologies, mum. Any friend o’ the Chickadee, an’ all that. We’ll be under way presently.”

  “Yours is a lovely vessel,” the queen told the captain.

  “Funny thing about the name, too,” said Merle. “Where we’re from, see, there’s—”

  “Merle!”

  The trip, it turned out, was nothing but pleasant. The Titanic rocked lazily, the wind touched their faces, the masts creaked, and the gulls called to one another again and again, asking that question that all gulls ask but never answer. When an iceberg came into view, John was quick to point it out, but he needn’t have bothered.

  “What, that?” asked the captain. “That’s always there. Some kind o’ magical ice, that is. Never melts.”

  Merle went to the starboard railing and squinted at the iceberg. “Why would that be? What’s the story?”

  The captain shrugged, insomuch as a man with only one shoulder can shrug. It was like his whole body winked.

  “Who knows? It’s just one o’ those things, innit? Why’s the burial mound o’ Armnwynn Amnydd only visible on Whitsunday? Why’s the Black Tree o’ Kilcormac black? An’ why do eatin’ its apples make your beard spell out the name of the girl you’re gonna marry? Don’t know, don’t care. But when I finally meet a gal named Jenny Small, I’m gonna ask her if she wants t’ see my boat.” The captain waggled his eyebrows.

  “Iceberg just appeared a few years back,” said the first mate, a thin old man like a knotted rope. He looked as if he was going to say more, but whatever it was evaporated in the boozy haze that seemed to follow him around.

  “I’m afraid what I am not seein’ is this little island o’ yours,” said the captain. “I told your friend the blacksmith, I told ’im, ‘I haven’t never seen an island like you’re describin’ in all my days,’ but he asked me t’ take yeh out all the same, what with yeh bein’ the Chickadee an’ all.”

  “Thought I saw an island in these waters once,” said the first mate. He was rooted to one spot, swaying with the breeze while the crew hustled around him. “Years ago, a little black island. Thought I saw people livin’ on it too, but never found it again.”

  John and Merle and the queen shared a look.

  “I have an idea,” said Merle, “but no one’s gonna like it. I think we should aim this boat right for the iceberg.”

  “That’s what I like about you Americans,” said the queen. “Your can-do spirit. If a joke isn’t funny, you just keep repeating it until it is.”

  “I’m serious,” Merle said. “Captain? Would you be willing to loan us a rowboat?”

  CHAPTER 17

  Rudesby took Scott and the rest of them underground and then up a tall flight of rough stone stairs. For the sake of expediency, Scott carried Mick and his sister and all the pixies but Fee up the stairs in the backpack.

  “This rucksack of Scott’s needs a washing,” said Fi. “It smells like a bachelor’s apartment.”

  Mick clucked his tongue. “Man’s entitled to kick off his shoes now an’ then,” he muttered.

  The ghost of Haskoll was already at the top, peeking through the ceiling. “It’s a big room, Scotty!” he called down. “With some real tiny ladies in it.”

  “Are these the same steps you climbed the last time you were here?” Polly asked Fi.

  “Indeed.”

  “Did you?” asked Denzil. “I snuck in through a trapdoor in the roof.”

  “I stood before the great window and announced my intention to rescue Morenwyn,” Fo admitted sheepishly. “I was captured immediately.”

  “Captured like a gentleman?” asked Polly.

  “I feel like I should shout at you to stop talking,” said Rudesby.

  “Well, go for it,” said Mick. “Yeh gotta do what feels right.”

  “No talking!” said Rudesby. Then he glanced over his shoulder like he was looking for feedback.

  “That was really good,” said Scott.

  They’d reached a metal grate in the ceiling. Rudesby lifted it up on a hinge. Haskoll, unbeknownst to all but Scott, popped up first.

  “Through there,” Rudesby said. “Um . . . NOW!”

  “There yeh go, lad. Nice one.”

  Scott stepped up through the grate and found himself on the floor of Fray’s hollow castle. Ahead of him, some twenty yards distant, was a tapestry depicting the end of the world. And in front of the tapestry, an enormous rift as tall as the castle. From the corner of his eyes, he caught sight of two other rifts—the tiny one that went to England, and another that connected to the ocean. He knew from Fi’s stories that there was a fourth rift somewhere high above. Behind him was the magnificent window, a glittering jewel of glass and steel. Between the tapestry and the window was the golden monument, and Morenwyn, and Fray.

  “Hmm.” Fray blew through her nose. “Not quite the helpless prisoners I was expecting.”

  “Pretty,” Haskoll said of the monument. “Looks expensive. What is it, some kind of thing of some kind?”

  Scott was surprised by how small the monument was, actually. He’d heard Fi’s story, understood on some level that it was really only monumental to a pixie, but still he’d expected to be looking up at it. It was impressively shiny and jewel encrusted, but it was barely three feet tall.

  Fi stood atop Scott’s right shoulder and nodded at Morenwyn. She might have smiled.

  “I count three princes. Where is the youngest?” asked Fray.

  “Fee?” said Mick. “He’s currently showin’ your staircase what a dignified pixie he is.”

  Morenwyn was gliding forward, entranced.

  “Daughter,” said Fray, “do not approach—”

  “Mother, look. A pixie girl—and yet not a pixie girl.”

  Polly waved. “I’m human! But I’m really small and I have wings, look!”

  “She is our sister,” said Fi.

  Scott flinched his shoulders, surprised. Which meant that all of them were forced to flinch, really, whether they wanted to or not. “She is?”

  “Well,” said Fi. “In spirit, you know. I mean
no disrespect.”

  “Oh, it’s fine—I just hope you know what you’re getting into, making her your sister. She always takes the last piece of everything, for starters.”

  “Do not.”

  “Yoo-hoo,” said Fray, waving. “Scary witch here, remember?”

  She had Scott’s attention again, so he went down on one knee. “Lady Fray,” he said.

  “Whoa, now!” said Fo. “Why are you kneeling?”

  Mick slid down from the backpack and kneeled too. Fi and Polly and Denzil joined them.

  “I just want to make clear that I am not kneeling,” said Fo. “I am standing on someone who is kneeling.”

  “Lady Fray, my name is Scott. I’m from the other world, the one where your portals lead.”

  Fray watched him, silently. He tried not to let himself get distracted by Haskoll, who’d floated up into the hollow tower above. “Oh, sweet!” he shouted. “Eagles!”

  “I know that you think something terrible’s going to happen, and it will destroy both our worlds,” Scott told Fray. “I know you think it has something to do with the portals, and you’re trying to figure out how to protect everyone.”

  “You flatter me, boy. At this point I want only to save Morenwyn and myself.”

  “You don’t mean that,” Morenwyn scolded.

  “Some days I do. Oh, get up off your knees, all of you. Honestly.”

  Scott stood. “I just . . . look, I’ve figured it out. That you’re responsible for holding this world together somehow. Is it a spell you cast, or—”

  Morenwyn was smirking. Scott pressed on.

  “—or is that gold thing some kind of magical antenna, or . . .”

  He trailed off. Fray looked furious.

  “I think you offended her,” said Polly.

  “Well, no one can say yeh’re not consistent,” said Mick.

  “Did I cast a spell?” said Fray. “What, a thousand years ago? By the Spirit, boy, how old do you think I am?”

  “Whoopsie.” Haskoll chuckled.

  “The pixie people are not ageless like the Fay, Scott,” Fi muttered. “We live the same span as do humans.”