Cold Cereal Read online

  Erno fiddled with the U-lock in front of the station and shot suspicious looks over his shoulder as if the entire Freemen society might sneak up after he left to steal Biggs’s bicycle. He felt exposed. As soon as he could, he slipped into the train station and walked briskly away from the entrance.

  The station was high ceilinged, marble tiled, full of people, bags, and carts that sold flowers and coffee and cinnamon buns. Erno weaved through obstacles toward the hall that led to the NJ Transit train platforms. And when he found what he believed to be the exact spot where Emily had lost her marshmallows four years ago, he half expected it to feel significant: colder than the rest of the hallway maybe, or haunted by the distant wails of embarrassed vomiting. But it was just a spot. A spot next to a wall of coin-operated lockers.

  Some of the lockers had keys inside their locks, and these did not look like the mysterious key from the vacuum cleaner bag. But Erno inserted that key into the closest locker, and when it fit, he turned. The door sprung open and revealed another cardboard cylinder and a small note that read Good work, Erno.

  Despite himself Erno’s heart took flight at these simple words, then retreated sheepishly back into his chest.

  There were a lot of papers here. The rolled-up stack inside was thick, and difficult to squeeze from the tube. Once out, the pink pages stretched and uncurled in Erno’s arms. These were the notes Not-Vivian had wanted so badly to find, thought Erno, skimming the first page. They had to be. The paragraphs were dotted with references to Milk-7, and mentions of E1 and E2. Erno flipped through the contents. The notes were organized like a journal, but with the odd drawing here or diagram there. Things that made no immediate sense to him. But he was struck with a sobering thought: Mr. Wilson had stuffed ten thousand dollars into a vacuum cleaner, but what he’d really hidden well were these notes.

  CHAPTER 22

  There was a polite knock at the door, so Scott knew it was John, wanting to talk again. Polly would not have knocked so tentatively. Or at all.

  Mick crawled back under the bed. “Yeah?” said Scott.

  It wasn’t the Reggie Dwight of historical dramas and action movies that opened the door. Reggie Dwight the movie star was commanding and calm. He would dash in on a horse. Or a pair of skis. Reggie Dwight would drop from the ceiling in a tuxedo brandishing some lean German pistol. John Doe sputtered in wearing a white tee and swishy beige pants.

  “That was Goodco,” said John.

  “What was Goodco?”

  “The telephone call. A minute ago.”

  “I didn’t hear it ring.”

  “It doesn’t,” John sighed, “really matter. They want me at the factory tomorrow morning, early. For the commercial shoot. They’re going to send a car. I think it would be all right if you kids came along.”

  Scott fidgeted. “Do I have to?”

  John looked at him silently, then scratched the back of his neck. “Polly wants to go. I venture to say she is desperate to go. She may do something cartoonish, like explode or whistle like a kettle if she can’t.”

  Scott nodded. “You should take her.”

  “Yes. Well, I can’t leave you home alone … can I? A ten-year-old?”

  “I’m eleven.”

  John winced. “Oh, heck. I’m sorry—”

  Polly appeared in the doorframe. She had fixed herself a plate of frosting.

  “We get to go see the commercial!” she sang, hopping.

  John smiled warmly at her. She beamed up at him. “It’s not going to be as exciting as you think,” he told her. Then, “Are you eating frosting?”

  “Not exciting: Sounds great,” Scott grumbled. He hadn’t intended to grumble. The comment sounded light, playful in his head. Less grumbly. John glowered, and Scott added, “Why are you in your pajamas already?”

  “They’re not pajamas. They’re yoga bottoms. And this isn’t about my bottoms—”

  “Erno and Emily wanted to know if I could sleep over tonight,” Scott said quickly as the thought struck him. “That would be perfect, right? Then you wouldn’t have to worry about me tomorrow.”

  John nodded slowly. “Erno and Emily? Are they the friends we tried to visit last night?”

  “They’re back. Erno says sorry about the flowers. He thought they were … something else. I didn’t really get it.”

  Polly was looking daggers at him. Hurt, confused daggers. She could tell he was trying to get away with something but was perhaps puzzled by his lifetime record of never trying to get away with anything.

  “All right,” said John. “When you’ve packed your kit, I’ll take you.”

  “I can walk,” Scott insisted.

  “You’re allowed?”

  Polly was still staring. “He’s allowed,” she said.

  “’Twas one o’ the magic places,” Mick told Scott as they exited the bus at the edge of Avalon Park. “The Isle o’ Avalon. You’d know it as Glastonbury.” Mick glanced up at Scott’s blank face. “All right, maybe yeh wouldn’t. But yeh might know it as the place where the Lady o’ the Lake lived.”

  Scott had heard of her, at least. “She gave King Arthur his sword, Excalibur.”

  “Aye. Queen Nimue, the Lady o’ the Lake. She lived on that rich island where it was always apples an’ twilight. She raised Lancelot, too.”

  “Lancelot the knight? Really?”

  “Really. Lancelot du Lac. He was French, but he grew up beneath the water. That’s what du lac means—‘of the lake.’”

  “Beneath the water?”

  “Lotta caves down there.”

  They came to a stop in the parking lots next to the Avalon Park Authority offices. Nearby, families were grilling and throwing Frisbees in spite of the autumn air.

  “Want to get inside the backpack?”

  “I really don’t.”

  Mick was now operating under the theory that Americans were generally too afraid of personal embarrassment to make much ado over a two-foot-tall elf-man. Even those who could see him would look quickly away for fear they might appear to be staring. Even those who stared wouldn’t mention it to others for fear of saying the wrong thing.

  “Your man James Bond should’a been a dwarf,” Mick said. “He could stroll right into the secret lair an’ all the bad guys’d pretend not to notice him.”

  “I don’t think you’re supposed to say dwarf,” said Scott.

  “So what now?”

  They stared at the vast, expansive park. What now, indeed.

  “‘We’re high above where friends conspired to send him after he retired,’” said Scott, and he self-consciously scanned the sky for a hot-air balloon. “They can’t possibly be hiding in a tree, can they?”

  “I didn’t want to be the first to say it.”

  “This is a lot of trees.”

  They instinctively headed for the center of the park. If someone were trying to hide, it would be there. The trees were half bare and littered with brittle leaves. Scott and Mick crunched along a fenced and winding path until, in silent agreement, they hopped the fence and crossed a mossy glen.

  “We’re going to get deer ticks,” said Scott, just because nobody had said anything for thirty minutes.

  After another thirty minutes they decided arbitrarily that they had reached the geographical center of the park and began to trace a scribbly spiral outward, all the while watching the boughs of the passing trees. After two hours Scott was ready to call it hopeless when he noticed Mick was whistling beside him.

  “You’re in a good mood today.”

  “One o’ us oughta be. Yeh feelin’ bad abou’ lying to your da?”

  “It wasn’t a lie. I am going to Erno and Emily’s. If we can find … wherever it is they’re staying. Erno did invite us, with that riddle.”

  “All right.”

  After a respectful silence Mick started whistling again.

  “Just don’t know why you’re whistling—we’re terrible at this.”

  “We’re doin’ fine. Besides, it occurs
to me today that I am a free elf. I’m outside in Pan’s hairy arms, gettin’ pleasantly lost in a park that just happens to be named for one of the great elfin places. A park that hides both the children an’ the rabbit-man we’re hunting.”

  “We don’t know that—”

  “’Tis good luck, it is. It’s things comin’ together. It’s significant.”

  “Maybe.”

  “No maybe. We’re going to turn a corner soon an’ find our pooka. We’re going to look up, an’ there’ll be our tree. Like that one.”

  Scott looked up because Mick was looking up, but he didn’t see anything.

  “Which one?”

  “That one there, with all the dead wood like a great bloody nest.”

  It was some distance off: a huge oak with thinning leaves. But it was densely packed with loose branches, and Scott had to admit it would make a good (if dangerous) place to hide. He squinted at it for a few moments before he noticed that Mick had walked on ahead, and he hustled to catch up.

  “Y’know,” said Mick, “that tree reminds me of a story.”

  “Oh good.”

  “This was back in the old days. ’Twas coming on summer, an’ a little finch was late to lay her eggs, so she flitted from tree to tree, askin’ permission to build her nest. Each time she stopped she waited for the tree to think it through (which took its time—a tree has heavy thoughts, an’ no way to deliver them but on the backs o’ termites and ants), an’ each time the answer was no.”

  “Uh-huh.”

  “An’ eventually she happened upon a crater, a great bowl in a black mountain where nothing grew. This crater was filled with the bones o’ dead trees: a great tangle o’ kindling an’ branches an’ boughs an’ trunks. Some hard as iron, some made dark an’ soft by fire. So this lady finch

  says to herself, ‘It may be no tree, but sure an’ it’s a safe place to make my nest.’ An’ back and forth she goes with straw an’ twigs, an’ soon there’s a tiny wee egg, an egg in a snug little nest, a nest restin’ in the center o’ that vast woodpile, the pile inside the crater at the heart o’ the black mountain where nothing grew.”

  “We’re here,” said Scott. He stopped at the base of the tree and peered up into the canopy.

  “Not finished. So the finch mother looks down an’ laments, ‘Just one lonesome egg, an’ now a storm moves in.’ Ev’ry chaffinch has a rain song—”

  “Every what?”

  “Chaffinch. ’S a kind of finch. So. Every chaffinch has a rain song, an’ she sings hers then while the whole crater goes gloomy with wind an’ shadow, an’ then that shadow gets thicker, yet smaller, an’ the finch looks up to see not a cloud at all but the monstrous body of the Great Dragon Saxbriton comin’ in for a landing.”

  Scott circled the trunk, searching for a way to investigate. But the lowest braches, barely nubs, were ten feet off the ground. Erno and Emily couldn’t climb this.

  “The poor mother bird tears out o’ there; and Saxbriton, unwitting, settles down in her colossal nest atop the solitary egg o’ the finch.

  “In the coming days the crater is visited by one o’ the Good Folk, a charmin’ elf-man of Ireland.”

  “Was it you?” asked Scott.

  “What? No.”

  “Oh. It seemed like it was going to be one of those kinds of stories.”

  “It isn’t,” said Mick, and he sat down on a mossy stone to gaze up at the treetop. “The old elf weens that he’s discovered the lair o’ the Great Dragon Saxbriton, whose terrible furnace of a belly makes the air hazy with heat an’ sulfur an’ magic. Then the dragon rises, an’ takes flight, an’ the elf sees she’s left behind a tiny egg in the center of her nest.

  “It’s difficult, but he scrambles over the twigs an’ timber, and soon he’s lookin’ down at the egg o’ the largest dragon in all the isles. It’s smaller than he would have expected, but greenish an’ speckled with purple an’ rose. Some say the Fair Folk have no hearts, but somethin’ thumped hard in his chest as the elf snatched the dragon’s egg an’ raced down the side o’ the mountain.

  “He came first upon Finn, a giant of some renown. The elf showed Finn his prize and said, ‘The dragon’s egg!’ but Finn was dubious. ‘’Tis awful small,’ said the giant in his rumblin’ thunderous voice. ‘Great things come from small packages,’ groused the elf, an’ he went on his way.

  “Next he happened upon Oberon himself, consort to Queen Titania an’ commander o’ the troopin’ fairies. ‘Look here,’ the elf told his king. ‘The egg of Saxbriton!’ But Oberon sneered an’ tilted his horn’d head. ‘’Tis plain for a dragon’s egg,’ said His Majesty, but the old elf huffed. ‘’Tis its insides what counts.’ And he took the dragon’s egg to his own mound, an’ kept it warm under the earth, an’ sang it an original song abou’ loyalty to the one who hatched you an’ the smiting of his enemies.”

  Scott called “Hello!” to the sky. The day was overcast and silvery, as though the sun itself had been pulled cobwebthin and spread like gauze over the earth. Now that they weren’t walking anymore he was getting cold.

  “When the egg twitched an’ made to hatch, the old elf gathered Oberon an’ Finn and all the fairies great an’ small to watch an’ share in his triumph. An’ hatch the egg did, its fuzzy tenant laid bare. All was quiet; all were still. ‘Behold!’ bellowed the old elf. ‘The son o’ the Great Dragon Saxbriton, BORN MAGICALLY IN THE FORM OF A FINCH!’”

  “Heh,” said Scott. Mick nodded.

  “But the elf knew it was a lie. The other fairies knew it too, an’ their laughter still rang in the elf’s ears long after they’d gone,” said Mick, and he looked down at his hands.

  “He fed an’ cared for that baby bird, whom he named Finchbriton, but his heart (if he had a heart) was not in it. So when Finchbriton was fledged, the elf took him from the mound an’ placed him up in a birch tree an’ left him. But the bird followed him home. Everywhere he went Finchbriton followed, to the fairies’ amusement an’ the old elf’s consternation.”

  Scott eventually elected to climb a smaller tree nearby just to get on higher ground. “Keep going,” he said when Mick seemed to pause. “I can hear you.”

  “One day the elf had his fill o’ the taunts an’ the laughter, an’ he walked Finchbriton into Morrígan’s Wood. You won’t find its like today. They said it had grown up around the site of an ancient battle, one tree for each fallen soul, an’ crows still picked at the bark an’ the cork of these trees an’ dark sap flowed from the knotholes. The elf took Finchbriton into this forest in a wooden cage and left ’im.

  “But as he returned home, his heart (if he had a heart) turned inside him, an’ he ran back for the cage, callin’ ‘Finchbriton! Finchbriton, where are yeh?’ An’ from time to time he thought he heard the trill o’ his little bird, but he could not find him, an’ by nightfall both elf an’ bird were lost.

  “There were wolves in that Ireland. An’ the wolves of Morrígan’s Wood were large an’ silent as death. The old elf did not even know he was hunted ’til they were upon him, a whole pack o’ them. The leader, a great brute, showed his startlin’ teeth an’ padded forward on long legs to take the old elf’s throat. But then the night was brilliant as day. Finchbriton was there, breathin’ blue fire, an’ in a trice the wolves were singed an’ whimpering all the way back to their den.

  “Finchbriton led them home, whistling bright flame. The elf supposed he had a heart after all, an’ it felt like a naked new bird in his rib cage. An’ the finch an’ he were never parted,” said Mick, his voice low and not so boisterous as before. “An’ that’s the end.”

  A high breeze made the upper branches shiver but left the two of them undisturbed. Scott paused in his tree and watched Mick, some twelve feet below.

  “Are you okay?”

  “Tolerable. Just rememberin’.”

  “So … was he really a dragon in the shape of a finch?”

  “Nah, he was a finch.”

  “And … he could breathe fire
just because a dragon sat on him—?”

  “I dunno,” Mick snapped. “Who can say? Go an’ spend a fortnight under a great dragon’s unmentionables an’ report back; we’ll compare notes.”

  Scott didn’t know what to say to Mick. The story seemed to have taken something out of him.

  “Sorry,” Mick muttered finally.

  “What will you do when you find Harvey?” asked Scott. “Will you try to go home?”

  “Home…,” said Mick. “’Tis no home for such as us.”

  “Why? I mean, you’re both from Ireland, aren’t you?”

  “Different Ireland. Different isles. I don’t think I’m in my own world at all.”

  “Oh, right. You said that before. So fairies and people live in different worlds.”

  “It wasn’t always so,” said Mick. “Somethin’s changed.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Who are you talking to?” asked a voice. A new voice. Scott’s balance failed him, and he held fast to the oak’s slender branches.

  “Erno! We were looking for you.”

  “We?”

  “I. I was just … talking to myself.”

  Erno was standing stiffly beside a large mountain bike. He grinned up at Scott. “There’s a lot of that going around. You should talk to Biggs about it.”

  “Is that Biggs’s tree house?” asked Scott as he climbed back down toward the ground. Getting down was so much trickier than getting up. “I tried shouting hello up to it, but nobody answered.”

  “Well, ‘hello’ doesn’t work. What you should have shouted was ‘HAPPY ARBOR DAY, PRESIDENT FILLMORE!’ That works.”

  “I never would have thought to shout that.”

  “Yeah, that’s kind of the point.”

  Mick got to his feet and moved when it became clear that Erno was going to trip over him otherwise. “Told yeh things was coming together,” he told Scott.

  Scott nodded, and tumbled kind of unceremoniously to earth. And now that he and Erno were on level ground he felt suddenly awkward. He’d been worried about his friends, and he almost bubbled over with relief to know they were okay. He thought maybe he and Erno should hug, or shake hands, but what he really wanted was for some useful surprise to distract them until the moment passed. Then an eight-foot-tall man dropped to the ground wearing only a bath towel.