Cold Cereal

by Adam Rex

  “I could give Zachariah no heirs, so we adopted my prize pupil, Nathan, as a son. The rest I turned loose on the world. Nathan grew to adulthood, and the memories of his strange childhood faded. But what a proud mother I was when I realized he still had dreams of ruling the Earth. My boy. By chance he was reunited with another of his fellow orphans, Jack Harmliss, who was living a villain’s life on the streets of Philadelphia. Twelve years after their orthodontic ordeal I learned I had made some lasting impression on them after all: they both dreamed regularly of the Great Pink Dragon, they both craved dominion over all the peoples of the Earth, and they both had rather strong opinions about breakfast food. It seemed they did not like my flower stew.” She sniffed. “Can you imagine?”

  “Ungrateful urchins,” Pigg sympathized.

  “I know.”

  “And t’ think you slaved for so many hours each mornin’,” said Poke, “cookin’ down the leaves an’ stems.”

  “Exactly,” Nimue agreed. “Well, that is, the children cooked their own breakfast, of course. No point slaving when you have perfectly good slaves to do it for you.”

  “An’ what a good mother you were,” said Pigg, “teachin’ them a trade like that.”

  “Warms my cockles, it does,” said Poke.

  “And so my Nathan and this Jack Harmliss had rather an unhealthy obsession with sweet, easy-to-prepare breakfast foods,” Nimue continued, pacing among her prisoners.

  That’s it, Scott thought. Come a little closer.

  “And they hit upon my best idea for me: a cereal company with a Little Bit of Magic in Every Box. We’d have the humans swallow their poison, and pay for it. They’ve been doing it for years. But now that we have our Milk-7—”

  “IntelliJuice,” said Pigg.

  “ThinkDrink,” added Poke.

  “Now that we finally have a concentrated formula that doesn’t kill the children or make them grow wings or shrink them or turn them into hairy giants … now that we actually have a formula that makes them smarter? In a fortnight there will be hundreds of millions of children ready to become my slaves with the snap of my fingers. Child soldiers. Little sugar zombies. Would you like to see what that looks like?”

  Nimue stood close to Scott now, but her attention was focused entirely, ruthlessly on Emily. You could see in her face that she was really pushing herself, perhaps to her limit. That whatever she was attempting was going to be dramatic but possibly not entirely practical. Her brow shone with sweat as she raised one delicate hand and Emily snapped up straight like a soldier. The girl’s face clouded over; her expression grew vague, as though smudged by Nimue’s trembling thumb. Her eyes were pink, entirely pink.

  “Who am I, dear?” Nimue asked her.

  “My Queen Nimue, Lady of the Lake,” said something inside of Emily. Like a ghostly noise from an empty house.

  “Oh, that’s such a long name,” said Nimue. “And so formal. Why don’t you call me Mother?”

  At this Scott couldn’t stand it any longer, and he grabbed the long pole of the boom microphone that lay next to a sleeping crewman nearby. Nimue flinched, and then Emily did too. The fairy queen turned and backed away from Scott. Scott followed.

  “Scottish Play Doe!” Nimue shrieked, and gestured frantically at him. “Scott Doe… Scott … what is your name, boy?”

  It wasn’t Scottish Play, or even Scott. Not really. His name was Macbeth. His father had given him that name.

  “Not supposed to say it out loud,” Scott told her. “It’s bad luck.”

  Then he whacked her with the pole.

  CHAPTER 38

  Nimue stumbled, fell backward, nearly cracked her head against the conveyor belt behind her. Then she scrambled underneath it on her hands and feet.

  Scott’s friends fell to the floor, too, their bonds cut, and took heaving breaths. Biggs was the first on his feet. Emily looked shaken but mostly normal.

  “Pigg!” shouted Nimue. “Poke! Help me!” But the goblins were, suddenly, nowhere to be seen.

  “You witch,” growled Merle as he got to his feet. He and Biggs and soon everybody closed in on Nimue. She waved both hands in the air as if shooing flies. Then she rose up in the air, her form tumbling like a kaleidoscope, and disappeared.

  Merle said a bad word. “I was hoping she wouldn’t have enough juice to pull off something like that,” he added.

  “We still haven’t found my sister. Or dad,” said Scott.

  Then something coughed from the far end of the factory floor where it was dark. Scott and the rest rushed toward the sound, and when their eyes adjusted, they saw Pigg and Poke standing on either side of a utility closet.

  “Are you…,” said Scott. “Are you on our side?”

  “A goblin is his own side, always,” said Pigg.

  “He’s no one’s pet,” said Poke.

  “Now then: one of us always tells the truth,” Pigg announced.

  “One of us always tells lies,” said Poke. “Answer our riddle, and we’ll give you back your family.”

  Scott blinked. “Wh—seriously?”

  “Nah,” said Pigg. “Just foolin’.” He leaped atop the other’s shoulders.

  “It’s been real,” said Poke.

  “It’s been imaginary,” added Pigg.

  Then they turned into the president of the United States and ran off, whooping and hollering, into the darkness.

  Suddenly the door was kicked open from the other side. John Doe was behind it, with Polly just behind him. He had his fists in the air. Then he saw Scott standing there and put them away again. Oh,” he faltered. “I thought there would … is it over?”

  “It’s over,” said Scott. And because he was feeling especially bold, he added, “You owe me.”

  John sighed. “I know I do,” he said.

  CHAPTER 39

  They moved as a group and surveyed the factory floor. Biggs carried Emily, Polly clung to John and gaped at everyone else in turn. Everyone, including Mick. Wait’ll she sees Harvey, thought Scott.

  “We should mess this place up,” said Erno.

  “Quickly,” urged Merle. “Nimue will send reinforcements before long.”

  Merle and the twins knew the factory best, having each taken the tour three or four times. Once again a personal Bigfoot turned out to be a practical thing to have as they directed Biggs to snap conveyors, crush ovens, lift plastic barrels of grain meal over his head, destroy an eyewash station.

  “We probably could have left them the eyewash station,” said Scott.

  “This is mad,” said John. “Should you be doing this? We should call the police—”

  Merle frowned at him. “You haven’t been reading any of my emails, have you?”

  “We should find that Milk-7 business,” said Mick. “Flush it down the loo.”

  “They’ll just make more,” said Scott. “Won’t they?”

  “Maybe not,” said Erno, and his face was crowded with thoughts. “I’m just remembering something this surgeon said in the temple. That Milk-7 was mostly made from the milk of some animal. Crop-milk, he called it. Do you remember, Emily?”

  “I was a little out of it,” Emily answered from a dark corner. “Crop-milk is this stuff that just a few kinds of birds produce, to feed their young. Flamingoes and pigeons and doves. They regurgitate it into their babies’ mouths,” she added with growing distaste.

  “The surgeon said it came from draco…”

  “Draco mythologicus,” Emily remembered, and she made a face. “I’VE BEEN PUTTING DRAGON BARF IN MY EARS FOR TEN YEARS?!”

  “Here!” called Mick. “Look! The dairy!”

  In a far corner of the factory floor they could just make out a large pair of sliding barn doors that were labeled DAIRY. They slid the doors open, and there it was: Milk-7. A great big tank of it. Merle turned a valve, and gallons upon gallons of the pink stuff came down in a torrent and started painting the floor. Scott noticed Emily looking at it with something like longing. Could anyone ever be wil
ling to be less smart than they already are? he wondered. Even if just a little, even if it would make them happier?

  “Wonder how they got it across from the magical world,” said Merle.

  “Things wouldn’t be as hard as livin’ creatures,” Mick answered. “They could get great batches o’ the crop-milk across on November Day an’ May Day, I bet. What’s with the lad?”

  Erno had his hands over his ears and a look of intense concentration on his face, like he was trying to shut them all out to think. “Something that hunter guy said,” he told them. “About milking dumb animals. It’s reminding me of this clue my foster dad left in his notes.”

  “You had his notes?” said Emily.

  “Yeah, but I lost them. Thought it had all been for nothing, but if I could just remember…

  “‘There’s a short…’”

  “No. It was…

  “‘There’s a sort of … sorting shorthand

  both for magic beast and fairy.

  All the sly land on the island,

  all the dumb land in the’”

  “Dairy,” Erno finished. “It must be, right?”

  “It would make sense, separatin’ them like that,” Mick whispered. “Nimue would have no use personally for the magic o’ griffins an’ dragons. She could only steal fairy magic for herself, so she’d keep folk like me an’ Harvey at headquarters on the island. She might keep the animals here, to put their magic in the cereals maybe.”

  John flicked on the lights, which stuttered to life from caged and naked bulbs in the ceiling. They looked around them. The dairy was a smaller adjoining building with a now-empty tank and a few metal supply cabinets and an old rusty tractor with broken windows and no engine. And a concrete floor covered in four inches of Milk-7, which they were all currently wading in.

  “What are we looking for?” asked Polly. “Animals?”

  “There are no animals here,” said Scott.

  “Should go,” said Biggs. He scooped up the Utz kids, sending pink goop spattering all over.

  “Wait,” said Emily. “Does anyone else think that tractor has awfully good tires for something with no engine?”

  It was true; the tires looked brand-new. Black, shiny, a little pink goo on the bottoms but otherwise nice. Biggs set the kids down again and pushed the tractor right over, crumpling its cab and breaking what was left of the windshield. Then he started fishing around in the Milk-7 with his hand.

  “Kept me in a bunker,” he told them. “When I was a boy. Underground.” Suddenly he found what he was looking for and yanked at a metal ring in the floor. A cellar door yawned open, and the Milk started oozing down a set of stairs into a dark space below.

  Opening the door triggered the lights, and Biggs led them cautiously down the steps into a wide hall lined on either side by cages.

  “They’re all empty,” said Erno.

  “They’re not,” said Scott.

  “Look at them,” John whispered. “Amazing.”

  In the largest cage was a griffin. Its tawny, hungry-looking body ended sharply with a raptor’s head and keen eyes that were undimmed by whatever disgraces it had endured here. It stretched back on its leonine haunches and spread its piebald wings and glared.

  The griffin shared quarters with a dozen luminous owls and crackling pyrotechnic birds, all of them hemmed in by chicken wire.

  In a cage within a cage was the unicat. Beside this an aquarium filled with knotty toads that croaked “OUT OUT OUT OUT” when Biggs grew near.

  A third cage held a leopard-bodied creature with a long serpentine neck and head, and slender legs tipped with hooves. It lay on its side, throat fluttering with a hundred distinct voices that whined like a dog pound.

  And in a fourth cage…

  “Is that a unicorn?” Polly whimpered, drawing close to Scott.

  The unicorn pawed at the straw and raised its proud head.

  “We have to get it out,” said John. “I can’t stand seeing it like this.”

  “This machine,” muttered Merle. He’d approached a grotesque cube of pipes, compressors, pumps, and wires at the end of the hall.

  “They use that to get the magic out,” Mick told him. “To store it.”

  Merle winced at the hoses and arms and tubes of it with a glimmer of recognition in his eyes.

  Biggs ripped the door off the griffin’s cage, then shielded the twins as it hunched low, uncertain, then scrabbled out into the hall and through the cascading pink goo up the stairs, surrounded by a dazzling flock of birds. Everyone pressed close against the sides of the hall to let them pass. There was a great clatter above, then the crash of what must have been a skylight.

  “Mr. Wilson has some explaining to do,” Emily said to Erno.

  “He’s sick,” Erno answered. “He needs help.”

  Next Biggs released the unicat and placed its lean gray body in Scott’s arms. It didn’t protest.

  The toads stumped up the stairs (croaking “LIBERTY LIBERTY LIBERTY”), and the leopard-thing slunk out behind them.

  Finally, the unicorn. It emerged from its cage, minced through the goop, and then took off at a run, its radiant body ascending effortlessly up the stairs and into the factory darkness. Scott caught his breath, and found he was standing next to his father. They shared a glance.

  “It’s time to go,” said Merle. “Seriously.”

  They sloshed through the Milk (which seemed to be simmering now, almost boiling, though it felt no hotter against their feet) and up the stairs. Then they followed the unicorn’s trail out the exit into the parking lot.

  “That felt good,” shouted Erno. “We’ve ruined all their plans, right?”

  “Don’t bet on it,” puffed Merle as he ran. “We slowed them down a little, maybe. They still have their factories in California and Europe.”

  They neared the van and Biggs’s car. Harvey and Finchbriton watched them approach. The pooka called, “Did we win?”

  Then the factory exploded behind them.

  Everyone, even Biggs, was knocked forward. A jagged column of flame and smoke rose from the center of the factory. A rippling flood of hot air blasted through the front doors and started blistering the pink paint right off the dragon over the entrance. Steaming bits of factory and marshmallow shapes rained down everywhere.

  “Is everyone all right?” John was shouting. “Is anyone hurt?”

  Everyone was fine. They got to their feet and watched the building blaze for a moment, lighting up the sky orange, like a second sun rising in the east.

  “Wow,” breathed Erno.

  “Yeah,” said Scott. “Wait. Why did it explode? Was that something we did?”

  “Beats me,” said Merle.

  One of the grain elevators toppled and pretty much smothered the fire.

  “Huh.”

  “Well,” Scott added finally. “What should I do with this,” he said, meaning the cat.

  “Probably just stick it in the bushes somewhere.”

  Scott went and stuck it in the bushes, but it followed him back.

  “Okay, I guess we’re taking the cat. Should we go?”

  They went.

  CHAPTER 40

  They ended up at Merle’s place. They believed, and for good reason, considering the week they’d had, that if Goodco knew anything about Merlin living as an accountant in West Goodborough before tonight they would have broken his door down already. But they all knew they would have to leave soon. They were going to run, make plans, strike back, foil the invasion. John had actually used the phrase “save the day” more than once and didn’t even seem embarrassed about it.

  Scott traipsed around the tall house, up and down stairs, just getting the feel of the place. Nearly all of the rooms and hallways were clogged with books, filing cabinets, stacks of papers. Merle’s owl-shaped supercomputer could handle a lot of people’s tax returns, freeing up Merle for world saving and a lot of breaking and entering.

  Scott found Polly sitting at the breakfast table
, alone. Usually when he came upon her like this he’d find her whispering to her little prince, but His Tiny Highness wasn’t making an appearance today.

  “Hey,” said Scott.

  Polly didn’t respond right away, or even seem to recognize that he was there, so deep was she in thought. When she finally turned her head, she looked so serious, adult.

  It was an unseemly sort of look for a seven-year-old. I had a few days to get used to all this business, thought Scott. She got it all at once, and in the worst way possible.

  “Dad’s looking for you,” Polly told him.

  “I’ll find him later. I want to email Mom first. So … what happened to you guys in the factory?”

  “I don’t know. They all jumped on us as soon as we came in. Dad fought a couple of them off,” she said, and her voice rose in both pitch and volume with this last bit of news, “but there were so many. Then the pretty woman said our names, and we couldn’t move, and these two terrible but kinda polite little monsters came over and touched Dad’s face. Then the men tied us up and put us in that closet.”

  Scott thought. “We didn’t untie you. How did you get loose?”

  “My little prince cut us loose. With his sharp sword.”

  Scott smiled, and he went to hug his sister awkwardly, where she sat. “I’m glad you’re still weird,” he told her.

  She pushed him away, but when he stepped back she was smiling. “It runs in our family I guess,” she said. “You smell like corn.”

  “You smell like corn.” They all smelled like corn. Turns out, if you stand near an exploding cereal factory it just happens. “Where is your little prince, anyway?”

  “He wanted some time to himself.”

  “Uh-huh. Is that the door to the basement?”

  “Yeah. Emily and Erno and Biggs and the old guy are down there.”

  Scott went through the door and stepped down the creaky wooden stairs to a vast unfinished basement. The walls were concrete to his chest, brick above that, and then a hanging labyrinth of beams and pipes. Merle was sitting on a plastic milk crate, facing Erno and Emily. Erno sat in a torn and battered chair from an old card table. Emily sat on Biggs, her legs draped over his shoulders, a notepad propped atop his head. It was a nice scene, like one of them had finally gotten the father she deserved.