Geek Fantasy Novel (7 page)

Of course, the Battersby family also included its magical and potentially evil aunt, who is certainly not gone from our story.

Had he been more attentive, Ralph would have seen a clear sign of Chessie’s imminent reappearance: Sunday morning, the porcelain maid again took to sighing. But Ralph, distracted by the tantalizing possibility that he might have figured out how to make the wireless signal finally transmit into Beatrice’s wing, rushed by the melancholy creature without noticing.

After dinner he came upon a much more obvious clue: While strolling past the tree with Daphne on his shoulders, she vanished entirely, reappearing hundreds of feet away on the castle roof, shrieking and hopping in astonishment.

We all behave differently on the occasion of witnessing our first teleportation: Some proceed as if nothing has happened, some faint, some develop a rare form of lockjaw. Ralph was a starer. He glanced at his shoulder, where Daphne had so recently been, then at Daphne on the roof of the castle, shouting incomprehensibly, then back to his shoulder, then back to the roof, as if waiting to see a zip line appear connecting the two.

Eventually he started toward the castle, but when he took a step he ran directly into the lacy flannel of Chessie’s fairy godmother midriff. She had evidently been standing at his side for some time, watching in bemusement. She wrapped her gloved hands around Ralph’s cheeks, kissed him on the forehead, and said, “That’s magic, darling.”

“D-Daphne,” Ralph observed.

“Now do you see why I need your help? Gert doesn’t like the old ways, sure, but she sees no problem in placing a protection ward on her children.”

“Gert teleported Daphne away?”

“She probably isn’t even aware that her Parental Protection Ward fired; she put them in place years ago. She won’t let me see my own family, dear Ralph — and the teleporting wards are yet another way to block me.”

“I’m sure she has a very good reason. If you’ll excuse me, I have to go, you know, rescue Daphne.”

“No, Gert really doesn’t have a good reason. She’s
unfeeling.
I’m certain the children still miss their silly aunt. Ask them to meet me. That’s all I ask.”

“If Gert’s got some magic wards set up, how could I possibly be any help? If I even wanted to help, of course, which I’m pretty sure I don’t.”

“Because the wards are against
me,
not
you.
You can remove them for me. All I ask is that you give my nieces and nephew the choice. They’ve got their own minds, like you. Lay everything out before them, so they can decide like reasonable adults. If they don’t want to see me, fine. But frankly I don’t think that’s likely.”

“And if I do, and they do, you’ll grant me a wish as well?”

“Once they all make wishes, you will be the fourth, yes.”

“Why are you so desperate to do all of this?”

Daphne’s cries on the roof intensified.

Chessie stepped back and held Ralph at arm’s length. She was wearing a mass of rainbow flannel ribbons; he could really see her for the first time, and saw that she was gorgeous and powerful and maybe (he was aware of his “maybe,” aware that he was fighting it into a “surely”) good-intentioned. What could be the harm, he thought, of offering the Battersby kids the option of seeing their aunt? If Cecil and Beatrice decided it was okay, then he would have reunited them with a family member. And afterward, he could wish for his dream job at MonoMyth after all.

“What would I have to do?” he asked.

“You’ve met the milkmaid. She can tell you how to remove the Parental Protection Wards. Part of the magic is that I’m not allowed to tell you personally. The rules are a real bore.”

“I’ll see what I can do,” Ralph said grudgingly, pulling away.

“Thank you,” Chessie said, a single dramatic tear marring none of the magical foundation painted on her cheek. She batted her eyelashes expectantly (slowed as they were by heavy mascara, the batting of Chessie’s eyelashes was a surprisingly involved process). “That’s all I can ask.”

As he approached the castle, Ralph saw Daphne disappear into the roof stairwell and figured that she had decided to find her own way down. He went straight to Beatrice, whom he found on the floor in her room, using a marker to ink black butterflies on her ankle. “Hey,” he said, “I need the whole truth on your Aunt Chessie. Everything you know. Now.”

Beatrice looked up at him and widened her eyes. “What kind of truth?”

“Um, let’s start with whether she’s good or evil.”

“I don’t know. I was a kid when I saw her last. Mom would definitely say that she’s evil. The tabloids definitely think she’s good. What a weird question.” Beatrice capped the marker and squinted at Ralph. “You’ve seen her, haven’t you?”

“No.”

She squinted further. “Where? What did she say to you?”

Ralph buckled. “On the grounds. She wants to see you guys again.”

“She’s here? My God!”

“I know!”

“Tell me everything she said, right now.”

“She wants to see you all. I told her that I’d have to ask your mom first, and Chessie didn’t like that, so she disappeared. She approached me again. I
told her I’d bring it up to you and Cecil, but that I didn’t think you would be okay with it. Oh, and in the process Daphne got teleported away because of some Parental Protection Ward.”

Beatrice stood up. “Where is she right now?”

“I think she found her own way down from the roof”

“No, Chessie.”

“You’re not really going to see her, are you?”

“Did she say exactly why she wanted to see us?”

“Granting a wish, apparently. What’s that about?”

Beatrice scrambled out the door.

Ten minutes later Beatrice, Ralph, and Cecil were facing one another on a circular rug in the castle basement, a thick candle flickering between them.

“So what do you think?” Beatrice asked her brother.

“No way we’re going to see her. The world doesn’t need any more of this medieval self-indulgence.”

“I wonder,” she said, “if you could wish for an end of all wishing. Would that make it worth it?”

“Ugs, listen to me,” Cecil said, nervously scratching at a blistering pimple. “It’s not that I’m against the granting of wishes. I’m against the unreflective use of power. And this seems like such idle, mystical crap. Why should royal kids, who already have so much, be the ones to get wishes?”

“I know, but … I’m curious, aren’t you?” she said.

Ralph watched the two of them and thought about how well-equipped to discuss these matters they both seemed. For his part, he was only barely able to restrain himself from running around the room and making googly sounds.

“Uh-uh. We’ve got to tell Mum,” Cecil said.

“Gertrude?! She’d freak out that Chessie even approached Ralph, and then we wouldn’t be allowed to leave the castle all summer. If we’re safe because of the wards, why bother Mum about it? Let’s at least get that possibility off the table.”

“We tell Mum about it because Chessie
killed her own son.
You don’t mess around with those kinds of people.”

“You’re as much of a snob as Gert. And we don’t
know
that he’s dead.”

“It’s not about snobbery, Ugs. It’s about safety.”

“I bet it was an accident. All she did was grant his wish. And somehow that led to his death. At the very worst, Chessie ‘got her son killed.’ ”

Ralph found himself nodding emphatically.

“Even if it was an accident, do you want us to become another accident?” Beatrice said. “She’s reckless!”

“I think we have to ask ourselves,” Ralph said after clearing his throat, “why she’s so set on granting us wishes in the first place.”

“She’s an old school traditionalist,” Cecil spat. “That’s it, plain and simple.”

“If something went wrong with her son,” Beatrice said, “then maybe she’s looking for a vindication of the whole wish-granting system. That failure has got to be weighing on her.”

“I thought of both of those,” Ralph said. “But I also thought that maybe it could be that she hopes to get her son back through this, somehow.”

“Oh,” Beatrice said. “That’s … almost sweet.”

“So you’re trying to say we could be doing a good deed at the same time as getting our greatest desires fulfilled?” Cecil asked, raising an eyebrow. “Sounds convenient.”

“Yeah, I guess I am.”

“Huh,” he said, weighing the possibility with his eyebrows. “Huh.”

“There’s been a prohibition on wish-granting for years,” Beatrice said. “We’d be doing something monumental.”

“Why are
you
so into this?” Cecil asked.

Beatrice shrugged, and Cecil probably would have pressed further had Daphne not then burst into the basement.

“There you guys are! How could you hide from me, right now, when I got, like,
moved by magic
? I swear, Ralph was there — weren’t you, Ralph?”

Beatrice drew her into her lap. “I know. We’re discussing it.”

“Sorry I didn’t go get you down right away,” Ralph said.

“It’s okay,” Daphne said. “I know how to use
stairs.
So what have we decided is going on?”

“How would you feel about —” Beatrice began.

“Don’t even,” Cecil said. “We can’t. Don’t even mention it to her, because we can’t, and we aren’t.”

“How would I feel about
what?
You are
not
going to keep this from me!”

“Fine, you explain it,” Beatrice said to Cecil.

Cecil toyed with the candle wax, dabbing a fingertip in and watching it cool.

“If you don’t tell me, right now, I’m going straight to Mummy.”

“An evil witch wants to put a curse on us, so we’re going to ignore her,” Ralph blurted. “Oh.”

Cecil held his hand out. “Everyone promise. We’re going straight to bed, and not talking about this until we get up tomorrow. Our discussion is over.”

Daphne visibly bit down on her excitement and placed her hand on Cecil’s. Ralph and finally Beatrice followed, her fingers lightly resting on his wrist.

After leaving his cousins, Ralph had to pass by the castle study, at the entrance of which he stumbled into Lord Gideon Battersby. Gideon stood watching Ralph, the frames of his spectacles lost in the silver rays of his hair.

“Hello, Gideon,” Ralph said.

“Ralph.” He nodded. “Wouldn’t you come in? I’d love to speak to you for a moment.”

Ralph stepped onto the thick carpet. The library contained a few sloping desks, and short shelves filled with books with soft brown and green spines.

Gideon gave Ralph the sort of vigorous handshake generally reserved for bank presidents. “I was sitting in front of the window, examining one of my favorite books,” he said, holding up a sun-faded tome with
The Fallacy of Magic
embossed on the cover, “and I couldn’t help glimpsing, at the same time, that you were out on the grounds with Daphne.”

Ralph nodded.

“Did you happen to notice whether the geraniums are due for cutting back?”

“No, I’m afraid I didn’t,” said Ralph.

“I also noticed,” Gideon continued, “that while you were wandering with Daphne, my wife’s sister appeared to you, dressed in some fairy godmother get-up, and caused Daphne to be teleported to the roof.”

Though he tried to speak, Ralph stood mute.

“Let’s discuss this like cool-headed men. I know I can’t hold you accountable for my sister-in-law’s behavior, but I can only imagine what she may have said to you. I have to request, in the interest of gentlemanly conduct, that you avoid dealings with her from here on. Lady Battersby and I have taken great pains that she shouldn’t penetrate the boundaries of our family. Is that clear?”

Ralph nodded.

“Very good. Now, I have an international call to make before bed, but I wanted to make sure we had a suitable understanding first. There is little I can do to further curb Chessie’s actions, but since you are a guest in my house, I’m afraid I have to insist on your proper behavior. These are my express wishes. I trust you haven’t found me too emphatic on the issue.”

“No, not at all.”

Lord Gideon Battersby clapped Ralph on the shoulder. “So glad, so glad.” He breathed a sigh of relief. “So glad we had this talk.”

Once Gideon released him, Ralph went and found Cecil in his room, stuffing shirts into an army surplus bag.

“What are you doing?” Ralph asked from the doorway.

Cecil sprang up and slammed the door shut. “Shh! Daphne’s bound to be spying.”

“What are we hiding from her?” Ralph whispered.

“She can’t know the truth!” Cecil whispered back.

“And that is?” Ralph asked, yearning for once to be fewer than two steps behind everyone else.

“Should I pack shorts?” Cecil asked, suddenly distracted. “Or face wash? Will there be showers?”

“Where?”

“Shh! When you made a wish back in the day, you entered a fairy tale where it got acted out. Everyone knows that. What I’m
asking you
is whether I’ll need
shorts
and
face wash!”

“Hold on — I thought no one was asking for a wish,” Ralph said, feeling his neck grow hot.

“I don’t want my sisters to risk themselves. But do you think I would actually pass up a chance to save the world?”

“Save it? From what?”

“Save it! Just save it! I’ll figure out the details when I get there.”

“Get where, exactly?”

Cecil paused as he was slinging the camouflage duffel over his shoulder. “I guess I don’t know. Where’s Chessie?”

“She’s on the grounds somewhere. But you can’t get close to her, because of the protection wards.”

“Well, that can’t stop me from trying,” Cecil said as he dashed from the room.

It was darkly funny, really, watching Cecil stow his duffel on the patio, wander off into the woods, locate Chessie, teleport to the roof via the Parental Protection Ward, scramble down the stairs, run out into the woods, teleport back to the roof, scramble down the stairs, and so on, all with a steadily reddening face. Ralph hovered at the edge of the patio and watched it happening,
wondering when Gideon would look up from his phone call in the study and start yelling.