Cold Cereal

by Adam Rex

  “These folk know things,” Mick added. “Think it might do to watch this li’l mystery play.”

  “No,” Biggs rumbled. “Have to find the kids.”

  “Just for a wee bit,” promised Mick.

  While they’d been talking, a man’s name had been called, and this man just now stepped onto the stage and squinted awkwardly into the harsh lights.

  “SHAWN HIGGINBOTTOM,” a disembodied voice boomed. “YOU ARE THIS NIGHT A KNIGHT OF THE ROUND, HAVING ACHIEVED THE THREE HUNDRED AND SEVENTY-SEVENTH LEVEL OF FREEDOM.”

  Thunderous applause.

  “TAKE NOW THE SEAT OF HONOR BENEATH THE SICKLE AND THE SPOON, AND UNVEIL THINE EYES TO THE GRAND MYSTERIES OF THE UNIVERSE.”

  More applause, and Shawn Higginbottom left the stage by the same stairs. Then some prancing, staccato music started, and the grand universal mysteries were unveiled by way of a middle-aged man cavorting around the stage in green tights.

  He’d just emerged from a slit in the forest backdrop, tipped his tricorn hat, and—God help them, thought Scott—he was going to sing.

  “I am a leprechaun, spry and free—

  slipped through a rip in re-al-i-ty—

  lost and alone as an elf can be—

  poor little wee little me!”

  Scott nudged Mick. “You were right,” he whispered. “It’s a good thing we stayed.”

  Mick scowled at the leprechaun and made a furious sort of gurgling noise as two more men emerged dressed as the front and back ends of a pantomime unicorn.

  “Lost little unicorn, woe is me!

  Interdimensional deportee!

  But lo! There are gentlemen behind yon tree—

  just who can those two men be?”

  Two new players entered in old-timey clothes, mustaches and sideburns, and wet-looking hair. Any kid in Goodborough could have told you who they were.

  “I’m Jack Harmliss!

  I’m Nate Goode!

  Imagine meeting you in this tulgey wood!

  Come along with us and we’ll give you food

  and make you a part of our happy brood!”

  All the players frolicked off stage together.

  “Yeah,” Mick huffed. “That’s just how it happened.”

  Scott could sense Biggs getting fidgety behind them. “Come on,” he said. “Let’s go.”

  Just then the mood and tenor of everything changed. Cymbals crashed. The music turned very operatic, and the theater lights dimmed to a dusky red. The spectators in the mezzanine, even those in wheelchairs, inched forward just slightly in their seats. This was obviously the good bit.

  Black-gloved hands reached through a tall slit in the fabric of the forest backdrop and pulled it wide. Harsh light poured through. A chorus of men’s voices sang,

  “Rich with the magic sheared and shorn

  from lep-re-chaun and u-ni-corn

  we open reality’s wispy veil

  and bring that vale a whale!”

  Scott frowned. “What?”

  From their vantage point at the rear of the mezzanine, they’d missed the slow procession through the hall below of pallbearers carrying, between them, a mock whale decked out like a parade float. But they saw it now: a long blue whale, fabric over a wooden frame, shimmering with flowers and bits of crepe and tin. There were no seats down on the floor, so a hundred standing Freemen stepped aside as it nosed its way up the steps to the stage.

  “This play just got weird,” Scott murmured.

  “The invisible will shiver

  and will open up a sliver,

  and (delighted) we’ll deliver

  up a whale into the vale!”

  “Not so weird as yeh think,” whispered Mick. “When somethin’ living goes through the opening ’tween worlds, somethin’ of a similar size on th’ other side has to take its place.”

  Scott thought. “That’s … that’s why you appeared in that baby carriage when you came here,” he said. “Some poor baby ended up on the other side. In Pretannica.”

  “Right.”

  Scott thought some more. “Blue whales are the biggest animals that ever were. Bigger than dinosaurs.”

  Mick sighed. “Yep.”

  The opening in the backdrop was pulled wider, wider, and then the pallbearers with their make-believe whale passed through. Drums rolled like thunder. The man at the console was sliding lighting controls like a sugarcrazed toddler.

  Scott glanced back at Biggs, but Biggs wasn’t there.

  Then something pink, something big, began to emerge from backstage.

  CHAPTER 30

  The little egg man snored on the cold marble.

  “Emily,” said Erno. “I’m really, really sorry—”

  “Forget it.”

  “I had to say those things. To scare you. Do you understand?”

  Emily sighed and looked around.

  “I turned the lights off,” she muttered. “I set a fire and turned a man’s head into a flower.”

  “Yeah.”

  Emily shook her head as if someone had told a bad joke.

  “I know it’s usually my job to make you feel better,” said Erno, “not worse, but—”

  “Your job?”

  “Not … not a job like I don’t want to do it, I just mean—”

  “Yes. Fine. I understand why you did it. Good plan. Can we escape already? I really have to go to the bathroom.”

  Erno had to go as well—it hadn’t occurred to the Freemen to take them, or they just hadn’t cared.

  “When we’re outside we can run to the train station,” he said, and moved toward one of the room’s four exits.

  “No. Not that way. The Freemen left by three different doors, but nobody went through that one.” She was right: at three compass points the rooms were appointed with tall, stately double doors. The fourth door was plain, unpolished, designed as though meant only for servants or inferiors. It wasn’t even as tall as a normal door.

  They stepped through it and into a stairwell.

  “We’re upstairs,” Erno said, and then the memory—of being inside the cage, tilted then turning, tilted then turning—came back to him.

  “We’re on the third floor,” said Emily. “Facing east. If we can get all the way down to the basement, we should. Buildings this old all had coal chutes. Might be more discreet than just trying to walk out the front door.”

  “You’re doing good now,” said Erno, and he smiled. But behind the smile he was gagging a little on sour disappointment. He deserved this—a bossy Emily was just the right punishment for the way he’d talked to her in the cage. But he hated himself for wanting her to fall apart again, just a little. If Emily was suddenly going to be so brave all the time, what did she need him for?

  “I just have to keep it together a little while longer.”

  They hustled down the stairs listening for voices, other footsteps. On every landing there was a narrow window, taller but no wider than those that had been in their cage. They descended past the basement, hit bottom, and pushed cautiously through the only door.

  It was a boiler room. Dark, hot. Lit like a dying fire. Floor to ceiling it was blackened concrete and stone, vaulted with a rib cage of dark metal girders. Five ancient gray boilers like massive skulls lined the floor, with bars for teeth and eyes that were shuttered by thick iron doors. A tangle of pipes wormed up through the ceiling.

  “Let’s go down to the basement, says Emily,” Erno muttered. “It’s not like it’ll be the scariest room you’ve ever seen.”

  “Shh.”

  They crept inside, Emily peering all around in search of the coal chute or any other way out. Erno couldn’t stop looking at the boilers. They were all lit like jack-o’-lanterns, with red-orange fire behind their teeth. Except for the middle one, which glowed blue. And where the others’ fires were warm and even, the middle fire was fitful and inconsistent: it went perfectly dark, then flared up, then went dark again. It didn’t seem to be working right.

  “The
re’s the coal chute,” said Emily. It was, unsurprisingly, above a large pile of coal. Erno motioned her over.

  “Why is that one different?” he asked, pointing out the blue boiler.

  “They must have retrofit it for natural gas,” Emily said. “They should have fixed all five up that way. Coal is really—”

  Erno would have to learn about coal another time, because just then they heard shuffling outside a second door on the other end of the room. They scrambled behind the nearest boiler, crouched down low, and felt its devilish fever against their cheeks and ears. A man entered the room. An astronaut.

  No, that wasn’t quite right. He was dressed from head to toe in silver foil, with a shiny bucket helmet with a reflective gold visor and a pair of gloves that were like oven mitts that went up to the elbows.

  “I blame our upbringing,” Erno whispered, more to himself than to Emily. “If we’d been allowed to watch scary movies, we’d have realized we’re the stupid kids that get killed right away.” Beside him, Emily’s breathing quickened. She touched Erno’s hand, and he felt an ugly sense of satisfaction.

  The tinfoil man was carrying an odd box. It was like a gray lantern with a cakey brick texture. There was a metal door on one end and a hook in the top. And a coiled metal whatsit jutting out the bottom. He carried this thing over to the middle boiler and knelt on the floor.

  “You behave now,” he told the box, or the boiler, or possibly himself. Then he opened the barred doors at the base of the furnace and thrust in his gloved hand.

  “What is he…?” whispered Erno.

  The tin man fished around inside the mouth of blue flame until he found what he was after, and this he withdrew and stuffed inside the lantern-box. It was small. Erno almost thought he’d seen what it was, but no—he couldn’t have. He couldn’t have seen what he thought he saw.

  The man closed the boiler, rose, and walked back the way he’d come. “Showtime, you little firecracker,” he said to himself, or to the thing in the box. But he might as well have been speaking to a spark, just now growing in Emily’s chest, that wasn’t going to let her leave the temple without some answers.

  “Slow down,” hissed Erno. “We have to be more careful.”

  “I told you to go to the train station,” Emily whispered as she scurried through the halls of the temple. “I didn’t ask you to come.”

  “We were almost free.”

  “You heard the Freemen earlier. They’re all in some ceremony. There’s no one to stop us from going through their things. I want to know what’s going on,” Emily answered, and Erno cursed himself once more for losing Mr. Wilson’s notes.

  This corridor was paneled shoulder-high with oiled wood and wallpapered scarlet to the tin-tiled ceiling. It was lined with painted portraits of serious-looking men in robes and fez hats. The frames bore plates that said things like ASA STANDISH, GRAND AMBROSIUS 1893–1905. WHITEHEAD WILLETT, GRAND AMBROSIUS 1879–1893. If you ran by them fast enough it was like a flip-book of facial hair. At the end of the hall was a pair of ornate doors that looked promisingly important.

  Erno tried one of the handles, then the other, but the doors were locked.

  “Office of the Grand Ambrosius,” Emily read off the door. “He’s the leader of all the chapters. The top Freeman in the country.” She glared at the locks as if all the answers she’d ever wanted were behind these doors. Her whole stupid life explained.

  “It’s just a simple tumbler lock,” she said finally. “I could pick it with a hairpin.”

  “Do you have a hairpin?”

  “No.”

  “Maybe I could shoot it off for you, eh?” said someone behind them.

  The kids turned. At the other end of the hall was an old man with a gun. The same hunter they’d seen quibbling over custody of Biggs back in the surgery. He walked slowly toward them, in no hurry at all. Or rather, thought Erno, like someone trying to come off as unhurried and self-possessed even as his blood raced inside him. The man’s hands shook. His face appeared watery and fragile. But a nervous villain with a gun wasn’t any more of a comfort than a confident one.

  “I’d tell you to call me Papa,” said the hunter, “but I’m told papas are a bit of a sore point for you two.”

  Erno stepped in front of Emily.

  “Chivalrous,” said Papa. “Good lad.”

  The gun looked like an antique, but a well-cared-for antique. It probably shot antique bullets and everything.

  “They haven’t given you your Bigfoot yet,” Erno said, just as he realized it. That was good.

  The hunter was only a handful of feet away now. Even with trembling hands he was unlikely to miss. “No. It seems they thought all their old test subjects from the sixties were dead, but now they’ve grasped that your nanny was one of them, and they want to hold him for observation.”

  “Probably want his appendix,” Emily growled.

  “Undoubtedly, though I shudder to think what they want it for. Regardless, they are playing hardball, as I believe you Yanks say. So I’ve come up here looking for something of theirs to take. Some bargaining chip. But you two will do splendidly, wot?”

  “You’re not a Freeman,” asked Erno, stalling for time. “Who are you?”

  “Last of the great white hunters. The Freemen and I used to be bitter rivals, you know: they wanted the fairy-tale creatures; I wanted the fairy-tale creatures. In recent years we’ve come to a gentleman’s agreement: I hunt the occasional snipe for them, and they let me shoot the dumb animals after they’ve milked the magic out of them. But now they’re getting greedy and making me resort to common kidnappery. It’s unsportsmanlike.”

  It wasn’t easy keeping his cool in the face of this man and his gun, but now Erno looked past him and relaxed a bit. “We’re not going anywhere with you.”

  “You are, and consider this: it is my understanding that Goodco only really needs the girl. So, manners. Manners, and you’ll come through this sound as a pound. And I’ll see my Bigfoot again.”

  “Sooner than you think,” said Erno.

  “Eh? What?”

  “He moves really quietly, you know.”

  Papa frowned, but the frown soon dissolved with understanding. “Oh balls,” he said, and turned just in time to be socked in the face. He dropped at once.

  “Biggs!” Emily cheered, and rushed forward to hug the big man. “How did you find us?”

  “Tracked your scent.”

  Erno grimaced. “Mine or Emily’s?”

  “Yours. Smells like milk.”

  “It does not.”

  “Biggs,” said Emily sweetly. “I’d like to see what’s inside this door. Would you rip it off its hinges for us?”

  CHAPTER 31

  It advanced through the backdrop, the enormous pink head, the enormous pink neck of an enormous pink dragon. A dragon only slightly less intimidating for being constructed out of fabric, wood, carnations, and wire. The chorus sang,

  “Oh,

  Great Dragon Saxbriton, leave your lair—

  the door we tore in earth and air

  that lays the way ’tween Here and There

  awaits its blushing bride!”

  Scott turned to Mick. “Saxbriton? Isn’t that the dragon from your story?”

  “Aye. Mightiest dragon in all the land.”

  “And she’s pink? Just like the dragon in the Goodco logo? How have you not mentioned this?”

  Mick shrugged. “Lotta dragons ’re pink. That is, lotta dragons ’re red an’ lotta dragons ’re white, an’ … ahem … when two dragons love each other very much—”

  “I don’t need the birds-and-the-bees talk, thank you.”

  “The dreary age of man adjourns.

  Our worlds are wed, and love returns!

  The sapphire fire of Faerie burns

  a path ’cross the divide!”

  “Sapphire fire?” whispered Mick.

  At this, as if on cue, the puppet dragon lifted its head, parted its jaws, and released a plum
e of brilliant blue flame.

  “Did yeh see it?” Mick jumped. “That blue fire!”

  “It’s a gas fire,” Scott said sagely. The Doe family had a gas stove.

  “No. No gas fire is so blue. Not that blue…”

  Two new backdrops descended from the rafters. They were not as wide as the painted forest—just narrow strips, really, made to look like yellowed paper and hanging to either side of the dragon’s head. Two hundred names were inscribed on these banners—a list of knights, it seemed. Sir William Marsters, Sir Patrick Stevenson, Sir Sanjay Applethwaite…

  “My dad,” Scott breathed. “My dad’s name is written on the one on the right.”

  “Where are the knights, once brash and bold

  whom dragons fought in days of old?

  They’re tired and fat! Their queen’s a fake!

  They fall like dodoes in our wake—”

  Here there was a bit of stagecraft: the red lights brightened, were joined by blues and greens until the light was colorless—and now, in the colorless light, one could see red Xs over each and every name. Two hundred British knights crossed out as if their deaths were only items on a hideous to-do list. Again the pink dragon breathed fire.

  “Sir Reginald Dwight,” murmured Scott, testing the name. Assuring himself that he was not mistaken, because it was all too strange. “Why is my dad’s name crossed out on that list?”

  “Did yeh hear that?” said Mick, speaking over the cusp of Scott’s question. “When the dragon blazes—a whistlin’. Did yeh hear the whistlin’?”

  “No. I mean … was it part of the music? I think we should go. Did you see my dad’s name?”

  Now, the Big Finish. The lights flickered in nauseating fashion across billows of smoke and glittering confetti as though anticipating the grand entrance of some vest-wearing and puffy-shirted stage magician who would Rock Your World with Magic. And indeed, just such a puffy-shirted man walked on from the wings, though he was also sporting pointy ears and antlers and a crown of holly. And he was joined by another Freeman in drag, wiggling about with fake boobs and a big bustle. The leprechaun and unicorn were back and dancing—apparently delighted to have had all of their magic sucked out of them—and here, too, were a host of other elves, goblins, a “giant” on stilts, and a disquieting number of leotards. The dragon blazed again.