Read Unlucky Charms (The Cold Cereal Saga) Online

Authors: Adam Rex

Tags: #Speculative Fiction, #Ages 11+

Unlucky Charms (The Cold Cereal Saga) (11 page)

“—We shall be married in the springtime, in the Castle Fun playset.”

It had been impossible to tell how long he’d spent in the darkness inside the fish, inside the bird, inside the museum. But now Fi could see that he’d traveled to a world with a sun that still rose and set, and he hit upon the idea of counting the days by composing a sentence. A sentence in his mind, one word each night.

At the end of the first day he chose the word
I
to remind himself that he was a man and not a toy. But by the end of the second and third days he’d written

I, Prince Fi
,

and now you must realize that he had truly begun to despair. In three days he might have written “I will escape,” or even “I am sad,” and still you would have understood that the prince was hopeful, because these were complete sentences. And to complete a sentence would have meant that he felt the witch’s magic wearing thin. But instead he wrote

I, Prince Fi
,

and those commas were the commas of the hopeless. Each was a dark teardrop from a single
i
.

The giant girl, who he’d gathered was named Polly, carried him everywhere. Her accent was strange, but he soon came to understand her when she held her face close and whispered to him every asinine thought.

“I think I saw a little man in our house yesterday,” she told him once. “Dressed in red. Well, not so little, I guess. Bigger than you.” She lowered her voice even further. “I see lots of weird things. Even more now that we’ve moved here to Goodborough. When I was little I told Mom about them, but she always said they were my imagination, so I stopped telling her.”

On the morning that Polly told him they were going to a commercial shoot with her father, he’d written

I, Prince Fi, decree that the Giant Girl is enemy to all pixies, and I hate her, and

And, and, and. It felt pointless to continue.

Fi was in the inside pocket of Polly’s coat when she and her father were seized by the camera crew at the Goodco factory. He didn’t see Polly’s dad struggle free and punch a gaffer. He didn’t see the Lady of the Lake step out from the shadows, and speak their names, and immobilize them with a spell. But he felt the spell wash over him. Frozen by pixie magic, he was now unfrozen by Fay. He felt his joints creak and come to life. With the mildly enchanted sword Carpet Nail, he ruined the lining of Polly’s coat and slid free of her pocket.

It was nearly as dark in this room as it had been in Polly’s coat. He gave his eyes a moment to warm up with the rest of his body, and adjust. They were alone in here—Fi, Polly, and her father. Fi climbed down Polly’s leg and onto the floor. The humans were still frozen, and tied up to boot. That seemed unsporting. He could just leave them now, make his escape, find his brothers … or he could cut through the ropes and give them a fighting chance if the spell wore off.

“You know the rest,” Fi told Polly in the back of the truck. “I severed your bonds, and you regained your mobility while I searched for a way out of the room. I didn’t do it for you. I did it because you had been frozen by Fay magic, so you could only be an enemy of the Fay. And my people have ever struggled against the Fay.”

Polly was faintly snuffling. “I’ve said I’m sorry,” she whispered. “I’ve said it a million times.”

“Some transgressions are beyond apology.”

“We’re stopping,” said John. “I think we’re here.”

They were let out of the back by Biggs. The truck was in the middle of a vast parking lot in front of a shopping center. They’d arranged to meet John’s friend here.

“Now to find Sir Richard,” he said, hopping down to the asphalt in a hat and sunglasses.

“How are we supposed to find one knight in all this?” said Scott, scanning the parking lot.

“He’ll be the only one on a horse,” Erno suggested.

“I shall stay in the lorry,” Fi announced, and slid down from Polly’s head. Polly shuffled off to the edge of the cargo bay with everyone else. Then she turned.

“You think you’re Prince Charming,” she told Fi. “You think you’re so good. But good people forgive mistakes. You’re not even
trying
to forgive me,” she said, wiping her eyes. When they were clear, she added, “You can sit on someone else’s head from now on.” Then she jumped to the ground, and Biggs pulled the steel door down between them.

CHAPTER 9

Harvey stood with his hands in his pockets while Mick scoured the field of clover at the edge of the parking lot on his hands and knees. Finchbriton hopped about looking for food, and the clearly amnesiac unicat stalked Finchbriton.

Mick glanced up at Harvey. “Little help?”

“Help?” said Harvey. “As if the courtly leprechaun Ferguth Ór needth my help finding a four-leaf clover. I wouldn’t inthult you.”

Finchbriton found a bug and cooked it a little bit before eating it. The brief reappearance of blue flame jogged the cat’s memory, and it slunk off in another direction.

Mick tried to see what the rabbit-man was looking at, and his gaze paused on the big black town car parked in an empty part of the lot. Biggs stood stiffly beside it. Inside the car, John, Merle, and the kids were trying to convince Sir Richard Starkey that the world was in danger.

“Sooo …,” said Sir Richard. “All these invisible fairies are going to take over the world?”

The others wished he wouldn’t keep putting it like that. Scott glanced at Emily. Emily shared a look with John. Scott and Erno and Emily and Merle were all a little cramped in this limousine seat, sitting backward, facing John and Polly and Sir Richard. They’d hired the limo to collect the famous drummer at his home in London and bring him here, and it was the biggest car they could get without renting another party bus.

Sir Richard was bearded, bald, wearing tinted glasses that made it hard to read his face. His hands were burled with thick gold rings, and he clacked these together.

“They’ll only be invisible if they want to be,” John explained. “Which they probably won’t. It’s like a … pride thing. Or something.”

“But those fairy friends you mentioned … they were both invisible?” said Sir Richard.

Scott felt the conversation slipping away. “Mick—” he said. “That’s the leprechaun—Mick is out of glamour.”

“Out of glamour.”

“Out of … magic. So he can’t turn visible. And the rabbit-man is just a jerk,” Scott added under his breath.

“Why can’t Sir Richard see them anyway?” Erno whispered to Merle. “He’s a knight.”

“Yeah, but he’s not a changeling like Scott and Polly and John. Or an invasion baby like me.”

“So he’s magic enough to slay a dragon but not magic enough to see fairies?”

Merle shrugged.

“You couldn’t see Mick and Harvey,” John explained to Richard. “So they left to look for four-leaf clovers.”

“Four-leaf clovers,” repeated Sir Richard. Scott thought he could tell how badly things were going based entirely on how often Sir Richard repeated things.

John nodded. “Apparently we need them for a … thingy.”

“Potion,” said Erno.

“Potion,” said Sir Richard.

“Come to think of it,” said John, “we should have asked the finch to stay. Everyone sees the finch, for some reason.”

“I saw that,” Sir Richard agreed, brightening. “I saw it earlier.”

“It breathes fire,” Erno told him. This was followed by kind of a longish silence.

“Maybe one of us should fetch Fi,” said Scott.

“No,” Polly flatly answered.

“And so the cereal company …,” said Richard.

“Which is run by a fairy queen,” John interjected.

“… is rubbing out Knights Bachelor because we can kill dragons?”

Emily leaned forward and handed Sir Richard a piece of paper. He flinched as if expecting it to fold itself into something dangerous.

“This is a list of Knights Bachelor who have died in the last five years,” Emily lectured, “categorized according to cause of death. Note the high number of accidents and sudden declines in health. Knights Bachelor have been seven times more likely to die during this period than an average Englishman of similar age.”

Sir Richard studied the list, and his eyebrows lifted.

“I know it’s a lot to swallow, Richard,” John added.

Sir Richard frowned. “Your behavior has been so … uncharacteristic lately. I’ve seen the news.”

“That isn’t me. That Reggie Dwight is an impostor. These people will all corroborate that I’ve only just returned to England this morning.”

Everyone nodded.

Sir Richard frowned and sucked on one of his rings.

“You don’t have to believe all of it, Sir Richard,” said Scott. “But … you’re not safe. You need to believe that.”

Richard thought for a moment. “Well. I guess it can’t hurt to go away for a while.”

“There you are.” John smiled.

“What are you lot going to do?”

“John’s going to trade places with the fake Reggie so he can meet with the queen and expose her,” said Erno. “She’s a fake, too.”

Scott sucked air through his teeth. He wouldn’t personally have volunteered this information.

“I see,” said Sir Richard. The car was fidgety for a moment.

“The whole world will know what’s going on,” stressed John. “Soon. I swear. I just need you to trust me, Richard.”

“I do.” Sir Richard smiled and slapped his knees. “God help me, I do. But if it turns out you’re wrong, I’m going to tell everyone I haven’t seen you since the Grammys.”

John laughed, and a pall lifted. “If I’m wrong, you can claim we’ve never even met.”

Everyone smiled. Even Emily smiled. “So,” Erno said. “You’re a famous drummer.”

Sir Richard beamed. “I was with the Quarrymen, a lifetime ago. You’ve heard our music?”

“No,” Erno admitted.

Mick watched the car doors open, and everyone get out. He couldn’t tell if Harvey had been looking at the car. He didn’t know what the pooka was looking at.

Mick squinted back across the field of clover for a minute, then sighed.

“Why don’t yeh go ahead an’ insult me, Harv,” he said.

Harvey slapped his hand over his eyes, bent over, and plucked a sprig at random. “Here ya go,” he said.

Mick stared at the four-leafed clover for a moment, then put it in his pocket.

CHAPTER 10

A makeup girl cried on the London set of
Salamander Hamilton and the Three Ghosts of Christmas
. A production assistant cleaned what appeared to be vomit off what appeared to be Winston Churchill. Reggie Dwight loudly explained how neither thing was directly his fault. The assistant director sighed to the second assistant director. “Forty-three takes and his scene
still
isn’t in the can,” she said. “
And
he’s supposed to record something for the soundtrack this afternoon.”

The goblins dressed as Reggie Dwight faked a tantrum and locked themselves in his trailer for two hours, just so they could shed their Reggie skin and breathe awhile. One goblin napped while the other insulted people on the internet. When time came to return to the studio, they hid away their old skin with the others and grew a new one—you couldn’t reuse them. If anyone decided to look inside the trailer’s back closet they were going to wish they hadn’t.

The goblins dressed as Reggie Dwight ate three sandwiches from the catering table, more quickly than Reggie was really able, so when they choked they did it in an entertaining way. Because they were entertainers. Afterward they got into a shoving match with an assistant who tried to give them what they later learned was the Heimlich maneuver. The goblins dressed as Reggie Dwight asked the assistant’s forgiveness with a hug that went on just long enough to be uncomfortable. Then they went into the recording booth with pickle on their chin to see how long it would take someone to tell them.

At the piano, the goblins dressed as Reggie Dwight announced that they would not be performing “The Little Drummer Boy,” as previously discussed, but would instead sing a new song they had themselves composed only that morning during toilet time. The assembled assistants and sound engineers all looked at one another and shrugged. It actually made a sound, so many people shrugging. Goblin Reggie played a chord and sang,