Unlucky Charms

by Adam Rex

For lack of glamour’s blush they’d wilt and waste.”

  “Thassa crock,” Mick said cheerily. “We’ve gotten it all turned around, we Fay. I think we used to tell ourselves we needed to be good, to be honorable, an’ that the glamour was our reward. Now ’s our barometer. If we still have our glamour, then we’re sure we must be good, no matter how heinous we’ve become. I think yeh know what I mean.”

  Dhanu watched them for a moment.

  “It was my honor pledged, mine on the line

  When conduct safe I promised in the court.”

  “I know,” said Scott. “I’m sorry.”

  Dhanu smirked.

  “And now apology, from you to me.

  From jailed to jailer; that is passing strange.

  For all your folly, still I’m fain to think

  You spoke with honest valor in the court.”

  Scott and Mick were silent.

  “If I arrange your swift release, will first

  You swear what you foretold will come to pass?

  The Fay, all Fay, led safely to your world?

  Admired and living free among your kind?”

  “Sure,” said Mick. “That’s what he thinks. That’s what we both think.”

  “He made predictions all his own in court,

  So now I’ll have his answer for myself.”

  Scott opened his mouth to reassure Dhanu as well, and it would have been easy, so easy to lie. Instead he grimaced as he realized he was about to be honest. It really wasn’t all that simple after all. What do you know.

  “No.”

  Mick turned his head. “Lad?”

  “… No,” Scott told Dhanu. “I won’t promise that. It wouldn’t be right. I think that’s what will happen … mostly … but I can’t make any guarantees. I’m just a kid—I don’t have any power in my world.”

  “Scott,” said Mick.

  You couldn’t read Dhanu’s dim face there, in that small frame in the door, but when he spoke again it seemed to be with greater urgency.

  “I trust you grasp the pact I’m offering?

  An oath, mere words, and then I’ll set you free.”

  “Sorry, Mick,” Scott breathed. He turned to Dhanu. “Yeah, I understood you the first time. Thanks, but … I guess I’ll have to stay in here.”

  Dhanu studied him, then turned and motioned to someone who must have been standing with him there, in the hall. There was a jangling, and the bolt slid free of the lock. The door opened, and Scott and Mick scrambled to their feet.

  Dhanu was accompanied by another changeling Scott recognized from before. This second teen had Scott’s backpack. Now Scott could just see Dhanu’s face in the blue light of the cross-shaped window, and he was smiling. Sort of a rueful smile.

  “Our horses wait in secret down below.

  Now softly, and attend to what I say.

  And if your drop of fairy blood bestows

  A drop of fairy grace, do use it now.”

  Scott was stunned. “Thank you.”

  “I think you’ll be a king among your kind,” said Dhanu.

  “Nah,” said Scott, shrugging uncomfortably. “I’m thinking maybe a lawyer.”

  CHAPTER 33

  “If you were truly Merlin,” said the queen, “then I think you have much to answer for. All that I-know-the-terrible-future-but-I’m-going-to-let-it-happen-anyway business.”

  “Oh.” Merle laughed. “That.”

  Merle and John were still dripping wet, though Her Majesty and Finchbriton had remained relatively dry inside the backpack. They walked back through the southwest of Ireland, toward the rift, on their guard but otherwise enjoying a rare moment of triumph.

  “Putting aside the tragedy of Lancelot and Guinevere,” said the queen, “you must have known that Arthur would have a bastard son who would grow up to oppose him.”

  “Mordred,” Merle agreed, nodding. “So why didn’t I stop it? I actually tried. I did. Just like I got Arthur born by doing everything wrong, I got Mordred born by doing everything right. All the old accounts agreed that Mordred’s mom was Morgause, so I never left her and Arthur alone together for even a second. Sure, some newer versions of the legends said Mordred’s mom was Morgan le Fay, but I knew that was just because modern writers think Morgan’s a fun villain and they wanted to make the stories simpler by getting rid of characters. Right? So I’m watching Morgause like a hawk, and meanwhile Arthur and Morgan le Fay are sneaking out the back together.”

  The queen pursed her lips but said nothing. John said it for her. “Arthur and that … wild child?”

  “She had a more alluring glamour back then, I swear. And actually ran a comb through her hair every now and then. So Mordred was born after all, but I was there to meet Arthur on the battlefield of Camlann. Arthur killed his son, but Mordred got Arthur pretty bad, too. The books all say that four queens took him off to Avalon to rest and heal, but I guess that’s just ’cause no one was around to know the truth. It was actually me.”

  Merle drove his skittish horse and cart through the field of the dead, a hundred thousand men, looking for movement that was not some crow or snake in the grass. Quiet as an anvil. Only the dry curses of scavengers creaking under a leaden sky.

  When his horse quailed and wouldn’t go any farther, Merle got down and walked, slipping occasionally on things he didn’t care to identify, looking for that extraordinary sword and the Pendragon device on a shield, looking for his friend.

  He found Arthur breathing shallowly on the ground next to the body of his son. He pressed on the king’s wound until the bleeding stopped, mostly, and dressed it with fresh linen.

  “Merlin,” said Arthur, fluttering his papery eyelids. He looked so much older than Merle remembered, so much older than his years. “So I’ve died, then. Is this heaven or hell?”

  “What a thing to say. I’ve missed you too.”

  “What are you doing now?”

  “I am trying,” Merle grunted, “to drag you back … to my cart. The books said Lucan … and Bedivere would be hanging around to help?” (Cough.) “But I guess they just made that up?”

  After the better part of a sweat-soaked hour, Merle had Arthur in the wagon, and they were away. Merle had to keep nudging Arthur to keep him awake.

  “Whither we travel?” asked the king after one of these proddings.

  “Avalon.”

  “Good. I shall return the sword Excalibur to the lake and fulfill my vow.”

  “Mmm … yeeeah. Why don’t you hold on to that, actually,” said Merle. “You’re gonna need it where we’re going, and I don’t intend to let you die.”

  “Old friend,” said Arthur. “My wound is mortal.”

  “Let’s let twenty-first century medicine decide what’s mortal and what isn’t. You’ll be amazed how different the doctors are from the ones you have here. Like, do you know what they’ll almost never put on an open wound? Moss. And they’re gonna wash their hands and everything. You’ll feel like a king. The Once and Future King.”

  He snuck them both through the back door tunnel to his secret cave, explaining all the while that there was a new kingdom, another world that needed his help more than any other. They were going there. Inside the cave Arthur found Archimedes, and some work benches, crude tools, copper and tin wire, pipes. The time machine Merlin had built for him was a hundred times larger than his own and would have looked to the modern eye more like plumbing than science. But to the medieval man, plumbing was science, and Arthur was much impressed. Merlin told the king that he must place himself within a large octagonal ring, surrounded by batteries of fairy gold.

  “You can sit,” said Merle.

  “I will stand.” Arthur was barely on his feet, but he raised Excalibur, pointed it before him as if ready to cleave his way into the next millennium.

  Merle and Archie gripped their little octagon. “Okay, Archie,” said Merle. “Sync us up and do the math. Then jump.”

  Arthur’s machine rattled and hummed. And glowed. The
re was a lot more light than Merle expected. Especially from Arthur’s trembling sword. Excalibur was incandescent.

  Then there was a pop, and Merle and Archie were in New Jersey.

  Alone.

  He’d tumbled to the grass, so now Merle rose near the edge of a park, squinted at a boulevard of row homes just visible through the trees. The breeze was in his face, a summer breeze. He smelled … marshmallows.

  “Arthur?” asked Merle, looking all around him, but nothing. The legendary king was legendary once more.

  Scott clung, stiff fingered, to the galloping pony, Mick in his backpack, with Dhanu and the Changeling Guard riding alongside. The forest was a panic of log-jumping, low-hanging boughs, grasping branches, and the ever-changing kaleidoscope of dappled twilight that pinholed through the trees. This was a truly excellent pony and didn’t seem to need steering or even the slightest encouragement from Scott, which was good—after his initial order of “Giddyap,” he’d entirely exhausted his horsemanship.

  Dhanu caught Scott’s eye and nodded. The other changelings looked grim. Their treachery hadn’t escaped notice for long, and they had a battalion of the Trooping Fairies of Oberon on their tails.

  “‘Why don’t you go with John and Merle, Finchbriton,’ says Mick,” Scott grumbled. “‘We shouldn’t have any need for you.’”

  “Oh, enough already,” said Mick.

  Arrows whizzed by. Small ones, like the elves only wanted to murder them a little bit. One lodged itself into a flowering elder, and Mick got a look at it as they passed.

  “Ooh, did yeh see the craftsmanship on that arrow? Sure to be poisoned, too, that was. ’S like they’re tryin’ to kill us with the good silverware.”

  “Neat.”

  Dhanu drew his horse near and called out over the thunder of hoofbeats.

  “We’ll scatter at the border of the shire.

  Perhaps my guard will draw off their pursuit.”

  Scott nodded, grateful. The changelings, all the changelings, would probably never be welcome back in fairy society again. What would happen to them?

  “The horse you ride is fairy bred, and bright,”

  Dhanu added.

  “Just tell her where you’d go, and she’ll abide.”

  Before Scott or Mick could say a proper word of thanks, Dhanu had reined his horse away, and less than a minute later they could neither see nor hear the Changeling Guard anymore. They must have crossed the county line, and now they were on their own.

  After a time Scott felt Mick twist around in the backpack and lean into Scott’s ear. “Good news an’ bad news,” said the leprechaun.

  “What’s the good news?” asked Scott as another arrow whistled by.

  “We have us just two pursuers.”

  “And the bad news?”

  “It’s the same news.”

  They were dogged pursuers, these last two, and better riders. They gained ground. Mick ducked into the backpack and popped up, facing backward, with a flare gun. He fired a flare, and it cut a spectral laser trail through the blue wood. The elves forked to avoid it, then came back together again, losing a little ground as they did so. Mick reloaded and played this card again and again until they couldn’t see their hunters anymore.

  Scott smelled water. The trees were thinning out ahead, too—they were coming up on a river. “We can’t keep this up,” he said. “Hold on. I’m going to try something.”

  “Can I maybe have a little more explanation than that?”

  Scott arched forward and spoke into the horse’s ear. He hoped it understood.

  It wasn’t an especially wide river—that was good. They careened down the bank and plowed into the water, sending a heavy swell to either side. Then, of course, their mythologically nimble horse became suddenly sluggish as she surged against the water and the current.

  “Come on, come on,” Scott whispered, terrified the elves would catch up while they were so exposed.

  Then, when they were halfway across the river, Scott fell sideways off the pony’s back and let the current take him. He and Mick took breaths and went under. They could hear the water being breached as their pony emerged on the far bank and galloped on. They heard the disturbance, underwater, as the elven riders entered the river a few seconds later, and crossed, and then were gone.

  Scott and Mick surfaced, gasped, and swam to shore, panting.

  “What … what did yeh say to the pony?” asked Mick.

  “Told it to keep running without us, fast as it could. Wonder how long the elves’ll follow before they realize they aren’t chasing anyone?”

  CHAPTER 34

  In the basement, Emily was conducting an experiment with Archimedes, and a lead box with slits in it, and some photosensitive paper, and a spoon. She looked at the spoon. Why did she need a spoon? The answer was she didn’t, and she set it aside, quietly, so as not to wake the house.

  In the basement, Emily returned to her experiment with Archimedes, and a lead box with slits in it, and some photosensitive paper, and she needed the spoon for ice cream. That’s why. Her research would lead to a heretofore unimagined flavor of ice cream, with tiny rifts in it. And brownie bits, maybe.

  In the basement, Emily was nodding off.

  “Don’t fall asleep—you know it’s dangerous,” says a voice.

  Emily looks up, dimly. “Oh, it’s you,” she says. She smiles. “You found me.”

  Her mother is beautiful. She’d forgotten how beautiful. Tall and raven haired, like a storybook queen. Her mother leans in close, asks what she’s working on.

  “A rift! A stable rift! A really big one,” Emily tells her mother.

  Her mother is silent for a long time. “You don’t say,” she breathes.

  “I’ve learned so much about them,” says Emily. She’s excited to be talking about it.

  “I’m so silly,” says her mother. “I don’t remember exactly where we are. Is it London?”

  “Did you know that each rift is a pair of tiny white holes with a black hole in the center? Is that not crazy? And there’s no time displacement. Also I think I’ve discovered a new elementary subatomic particle I’m calling the Emilyon.”

  “The house we’re in, dear. It’s in London?”

  “Yes, London.” Emily winces. There is a sound, like a ringing in her ears, but it isn’t a ringing. The sound goes shhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh. “Can you hear that?”

  “I hear nothing. What part of London?”

  Shhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh, goes the sound.

  “Is … Islington. That snake … do you see that snake there? It could see something coming through the rift just before it happened. There’s no reason a reptile should be able to do that naturally, but it has been eating a lot of mice from Pretannica—I think that has to be the explanation.”

  “Pretannica?”

  “That’s … what we call the world on the other side.” Emily’s face is suddenly hot. Her forehead is damp.

  Shhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh.

  “Is this …,” she asks, “… is this real life?”

  “Of course, silly mouse. Now where in Islington, do you think?”

  Don’t.

  “On a … on a street called St. George, which is funny, because he slew a dragon, and we have to slay a dragon, too—”

  “Very good, Emily,” says her mother. “Stop talking. There we are. Now come upstairs.”

  Don’t.

  Emily doesn’t want to disobey her mother, who looks familiar, like someone she’s seen before, doesn’t she? Emily can’t remember. She’s sweating through her nightdress to the white lab coat Biggs made her.

  She ascends to the kitchen. The woman with the coal-black hair is already standing in the center of the room like a bent needle.

  “Look there on the counter,” says the woman.

  Emily looks. It’s a knife.

  “It’s a knife,” the woman agrees, nodding, though Emily hasn’t said this aloud. “Why don’t you pick it up?”

  I
n Erno’s dream, there was a dog that could say Erno’s name. In fact, all it seemed to be able to say was “Erno, Emily, Biggs, come in—over.” It wasn’t much of a vocabulary, but still Erno expected the dog would make him rich, somehow. He was going to name it Walkie-Talkie because dogs like going for walkies and also this dog could talkie. He was just trying to remember why this name seemed so familiar when he woke with a start and realized Merle had been shouting through the radio for five minutes.

  “Sorry. Sorry,” said Erno. “Was asleep. Um, over.”

  “Don’t worry about it,” Merle answered. “But hey! Good news! John and I got the queen, and we’re on our way. So ready two sheep and the fox—we’ll have to get something else to swap for Mick later. Over.”

  “We got a rabbit at a pet shop,” said Erno groggily. Then, “Hold on. Emily should be here. Shoot, I fell asleep while I was supposed to be watching Emily.”

  Just then Scott came in on the same channel. “Are you guys there?” he asked. “We need you to get the rift ready soon. Mick and I are coming back.”

  “How did it go with the elves?” asked John. “Did you make your case?”

  Scott thought before answering. “It went pretty bad. But I told the truth, and I’m glad I told the truth.” He hoped he was being understood. “You know what I’m saying?”

  After a pause John said, “I know what you’re saying.”

  Scott smiled. “But yeah, otherwise I made our case pretty horribly.”

  “The Fay are sendin’ us some pointed comments,” said Mick. “Some sharp retorts. Some barbed replies.”