That’s where I ran into the burglar last night…
Bran thought, remembering when Shambles had knocked him off his feet. For some reason, the paper made him think of something familiar. He had seen the same style so many times before that in a second he almost felt he recognized it.
"Looks a lot like the paper with my name…" he thought aloud, but he stopped himself and gave a small laugh.
It couldn’t be.
There was no way it could have anything to do with something Mr. Swinehic found in the grass—
his
paper was eight years old!
Still, he was very curious, and started back for the house. It would be a wonderful coincidence if the papers matched. He went upstairs and almost to the end of the hall, to the ladder against the side and out of the way. It went straight up toward a hole in the ceiling. Sunlight shone on his face as his head popped through, and he drew the bag out and held his paper up to the sunlight. He looked from it to the one Mr. Swinehic had found, and smiled.
So I was right,
he thought.
It
is
the same type of paper!
He looked from one to the other. The one with his name was written on a torn scrap of yellow notepaper, with soft blue lines for writing on. Some of the lines had been blotted and blurred, but the handwriting was still crisp and black. The one from Mr. Swinehic was the same, and Bran held the two pieces close together, comparing them. The handwriting looked
exactly the same.
His heart began to pound faster, his grin disappearing. "This is incredible…" He shook his head. "Mr. Swinehic found a paper just like—"
Bran froze. He saw something he hadn’t noticed before. When he moved the paper with his name to the top of the other,
the edges fit along the tear.
He held both pieces still, though his hands shook as he studied it. He could do nothing but stare at the edges that fit so perfectly.
"I don’t believe it…" he told himself, but it was right before his eyes. Where the blue lines at the bottom of his paper ended, they continued onto the second slip of paper. He read the page:
Bran Hambric, born June 17
To: Clarence
Meet me at midnight in Dunce to pick up Bran. Since I cannot save him, you must do it for me; and in return
The rest was torn off there. Bran shook his head with disbelief. How did the paper get outside their house? He remembered again how Shambles had run into him—
he had dropped it!
Questions raced through Bran’s mind. He told himself over and over it didn’t mean anything, but as he looked at the edges of the paper and the handwriting, he knew something strange was happening. He ran his finger along the bottom.
"How did Shambles get this?" he whispered. He wondered if he had gotten it from Clarence, or worse, killed him for it. And where was the last piece, missing from the bottom?
There’s more…
he thought.
The paper goes on from there!
All those years of knowing for sure the scrap of paper was the only thing left of his past seemed to vanish in front of him. Now, there was more.
"This note is part of a whole letter," he realized with shock.
Chapter 5
The Man, the Van, and Dan
Bran didn’t say a word to anyone about the paper. He just hid it under his bed and went downstairs as the Wilomases gathered for breakfast. "What’s wrong with Bran?" Balder whispered as Rosie handed the plates out. Mabel gasped. "He handled the trash," she hissed. "He’s caught Midhampton’s disease!"
She quick-drawed a sprayer of disinfectant from her belt and shot at Bran, but he managed to dodge it. The spray hit Pansy the cat by mistake, who in turn gave a gigantic snarl, but was too fat to attack and settled with dragging herself under the table.
"That fat cat," Mabel said, crossing her arms as the feline disappeared like a worm.
"We need to put her on a diet before we all catch obesity from her," Mabel said gravely. No one listened. Rosie was filling up Baldretta’s plate, and Balder was still pouting in his chair, his arms crossed. He began kicking people’s legs under the table.
"I don’t see why I can’t have the Megamus Maximus," he whined. Baldretta sighed and held up two fingers. "Baldretta’s right," Mabel told Balder. "You’ve only had that new television for two weeks."
"It’s an old model!" Balder waved his hand. "I want that new one in the commercial!"
"That one?" she spat. "It’s so big, it won’t even fit, even if we knocked the roof out!"
"Knock it out then!" Balder screamed. "I want the television, and I want it now! NOW!"
Rosie was next to Balder and shuddered at his scream, which was comparable in decibels to the sound of a jet exploding as a horde of elephants stampeded down a hill with hundreds of roosters on their backs all crowing at once.
"Quiet down, Balder," Sewey mumbled, reading his newspaper and oblivious to the world around him.
"I will not!" Balder retorted. "I WANT THE MEGAMUS MAXIMUS."
Sewey, suddenly aware, reared up like a mad horse. "You aren’t getting
any
television, and that’s final!"
Balder screamed as if Sewey had struck him with a knife. Then, seeing he was getting nowhere, Balder snapped his mouth shut and sulked. Rosie handed him his food very slowly. He was nearly as interested in food as he was in television, so he instantly forgot his troubles and set to work making a proper hog of himself.
"Hoo hoo, funny article," Sewey started, turning the page of the newspaper. "In the Motivational section," he explained, looking up. "One of those ‘You can do anything if you try’ pieces of jabber-jobber."
"Since when did you start reading the Motivational section?" Bran asked with shock.
"Thirty seconds ago," Sewey replied, crunching a pickle. "By mistake. The writer blathered a page of hibhiggens about
how people have got to dream big or otherwise they’ll just be a nobody."
"Jabberbother!" Balder cried.
"Horseradish!" Mabel shrieked.
"Utter nonsense," Sewey agreed. "Dream big—ha! Of course I dream big.
I,
for one, would like to make gobs and gobs of money." He looked about the table. "And
then,
I would want everyone to have a parade for
me,
and bring me crowns and jewels!" He pointed to Mabel. "What about you?"
"Me?" Mabel said, sitting up straighter. A dreamy gleam leapt into her eyes.
"Of all things, I dream of one…" her voice went soft. "To one day, be oh-so-detoxed enough that I can have an entire Spotless Chocomicity Simplicity Divinity Cake to myself! And then, you could crown me
empress,
so I could have everything and everyone obey me like little dogs!"
Pansy snarled. Sewey just shrugged.
"A rational dream," he said, and he turned to Balder. "And you?"
"Pig-out week!" Balder shouted. "An entire week where we eat and eat, and watch more television than the world combined."
"A rational wish," Sewey said. He turned to Baldretta. Her mouth was full, as usual.
"Bwooshi bwishi bwoshbwibluebli bwibliboblo," she said. Sewey’s eyes followed her lips.
"Translation please?" Bran said.
Sewey spun on him. "What’s your problem? Cotton in your ears? Baldretta has every right to be the world’s most famous advanced pyrotechnist in the world if she wants to!"
"Bwamins," Baldretta said.
"Advanced
chemical
pyrotechnist," Sewey corrected. He turned again. "Rosie?"
She glanced down and looked as if she hadn’t expected for Sewey to ask her anything.
"I suppose," she said, "one day, I would like to be a world-famous journalist, and go to dangerous scenes and write reports where they pay me a thousand sib per word!" She turned to Bran. "Then, I could pay for Bran’s college, and buy you and Mabel and the children all sorts of wonderful things…and even pay off all the overdue bills."
"How irrational!" Sewey replied, moving about in his chair awkwardly. "In fact, I’ve never heard any more nonsense in my life, paying off all the bills at once." He threw his hands in the air. "You would have to be
wildly
popular to pay off all
our
bills!"
As if to prove his point, his elbow knocked an enormous pile of bills off the table. They continued to spill for some time, like a ceaseless fountain, as he struggled to catch them.
"Look!" he spluttered, waving certain ones in frustration. "This one’s for the elephant statue in the basement, unpaid, and late. This one’s for eighteen cases of Yinsworth Medicated Tinctures, unpaid, and late. This one’s for the pixie exterminator last month, unpaid, and late…"
"And these," Bran said, grabbing a pile, "are twelve speeding tickets, unpaid, and late."
"Give that here!" Sewey said, grabbing them away. He sat on them. The fact was, the Wilomas family simply didn’t have the time to deal with paying the bills for the things they bought to make them look richer than the neighbors. They were busy enough buying them.
"Well, cheer up everyone," Bran said, nodding toward Rosie. "One day, she really is going to be a famous writer, and she’ll pay each and every one of them off for us!"
All of a sudden, everyone turned their heads to look at Bran, and all along the table, a set of very confused faces stared at him, as if he had just said the most obviously stupid thing in the world.
Sewey blinked, as if for once he couldn’t come up with anything more brainless to say. "Look here," he stammered. "This is no time for jokes. We’re better off relying on a volcano of gold to erupt in here before
Rosie
of all people gets put in the newspaper—" Sewey glanced at her and added, "—or any paper!"
Rosie forced a smile on her face.
Sewey started to eat again, and then, as if he had abruptly remembered there was another person in the house, he jumped and looked up.
"Great Moby, I almost forgot," he said, tapping the newspaper article. "Bran, what do
you
dream big about?"
Bran had been hoping he had forgotten. However, an idea popped into his mind—it was because of the creature and what he had said on the roof. All of a sudden, Bran felt an urge, but he pushed it away. He knew they’d all laugh if he said it.
"Well?" Sewey pressed. "What
do
you want to do?"
Bran swallowed. "I—I think I…"
"Speak up!" Mabel insisted.
"I think," Bran stammered, "one day, I would like to find out who my family was."
Everyone was silent. And then, two seconds later, Sewey slammed his fists on the table.
"What a ridiculous notion!" he spat. "Insanely out of this world!"
"Indeed!" Mabel agreed. "Why, everyone knows we’ve looked high and low for your family, and we didn’t find them, or else you wouldn’t be
here.
"
"This entire town thinks we’re a laughingstock because of that Accident," Sewey remarked. "Even the police refused to offer any help. You might as well hang up your hopes of finding your family, because if we couldn’t find them after
that
ordeal, nobody can."
Bran resolved to leave it at that, imagining a sketch of Sewey gleefully skipping into a pool of vipers.
Sewey went on grumbling. "Grumpkins, talking like that." He tossed his napkin on the table. "Simply bumblebother!"
"Absolute poppycock!" Mabel said.
"Utter pumpledithers!" Balder squealed.
Sewey gave a cough and reached for his newspaper again. For a while, everything was quiet.
Very soon, though, Sewey began to read another article very intensely. He pulled the paper close to his eyes, as if he couldn’t believe what he was reading. He ruffled the pages out, then bent them in, huffing and puffing.
"Is…something wrong?" Rosie asked. Sewey glared at her.
"Something wrong?" he growled. "This morning’s wrong.
Everything’s
wrong." He slapped the newspaper. "Just to make my morning worse, would you believe this: another gnome, caught, sneaking around Givvyng Park!"
"In our city?!" Mabel gasped, horrified. Baldretta nearly choked on a lozenge.
"Yes!" Sewey said. "Don’t the gnomes get it? They
aren’t
allowed. It says so on the sign, and it’s carved on the Givvyng Tree:
no gnomes, no mages.
"
"Maybe they just want to go through instead of traveling all the way around," Bran said, giving up on having a peaceful meal.
"I don’t see why they can’t," Sewey snapped. "After all, they’re
gnomes
…not
people.
"
"
Gnomes, not people!
" Balder mimicked, grease from the sausage rolling down his chin.
"My thoughts exactly," Sewey went on, taking a bite. "I see no point in even acknowledging them as a species. How can some wear pointy caps and others leap around on a roof?"
"Maybe," Bran said, beginning to feel a tad irritated, "there is a
slight
chance that the officer was right, and the creature we saw last night…wasn’t a gnome."
"Nonsense," Sewey stated. "What are you trying to tell me, I don’t know my gnomes?" He fluffed his newspaper. "Can’t you remember the film Mayor Demark made?"
"Of course," Bran said. "How could anyone forget the green gnomes with dripping yellow fangs flying in on broomsticks, picking up children, and dropping them in cauldrons?"
"A very accurate depiction!" Sewey declared. "Perhaps if all the other cities were to take up the proud Duncelander flag, and banish gnomes and mages as well, maybe it would keep the children of the world safer, and the Decensitists wouldn’t have to be so decent!"
In Dunce, and even in some places outside, there was a group of parents who called themselves Decensitists, which was a name they had made up by butchering the word
decency.
They were very strictly anti-gnome and anti-mage, so severe they would make up stories for their children and tell them such things didn’t even exist. They were very careful to erase any mention of them from their lives and warned their friends that if they ever spoke of anything even borderline magic while they were present, they would do something dreadful. Those in Dunce would sometimes go to such ends as to call the city something completely different, just to be safe. Even Sewey and Mabel avoided the group, as did most of the general population.