Pondscum gave his forefinger a little lick. “You can relax, ladies,” she said. “He’s no saltier than Neef here. Okay, young mortal. Show us how they swim in the Harbor.”
While I wondered how Pondscum knew what I tasted like, Airboy took off his outer clothes. Underneath he was wearing short, scaly-looking pants and a kind of chest harness with pouches on it. I watched him unbutton a pouch and pull out what looked like an oversized acorn cap, patterned with scales.
“What’s that?” I asked.
“My merrow cap.”
I added merrow caps to my mental list of Folk lore Astris had never taught me. “I’ve always wondered what they looked like,” I remarked.
Airboy’s mouth twitched a little, like Astris’s whiskers. “It lets me breathe underwater.”
“When I was in the Harbor, they put me in a magic air bubble.”
He dunked the cap in the Reservoir and pulled it over his close-cropped hair. “Air bubbles are for tourists,” he said. Then he stepped up to the edge of the Reservoir and disappeared into the water. He didn’t even make a ripple.
I stood for a while, watching for him to surface. When I got tired, I sat down, took off my sneakers, and dangled my feet in the water.
What if Pondscum changed her mind about Airboy and snatched the cap off his head? What if the other Water Folk hurt him or threatened him? What if someone told Astris? What if someone told the Lady?
A fury of bubbles roiled the water’s surface, followed by a swirl of sleek, wet bodies. I saw Airboy leap out of the water, twist, and dive back in, lithe as a fish. Was he playing or swimming for his life? He was too far out for me to see. I pulled a curl into my mouth and chewed it.
The roiling moved closer. Airboy dolphined again. This time I could see he was laughing.
Laughing. Airboy.
I spat out the curl. Airboy liked my friends. He’d be my ally in the court of the Mermaid Queen. Maybe he’d be help me find her stupid mirror.
The game moved to the middle of the Reservoir. The water surged and boiled like Astris’s tub on wash day. It looked like the whole Reservoir had joined in.
Algae’s head popped up by my feet. She looked amused. “Trouble. One of the naiads tattled to a vodyanoi. He and his friends are going for the mortal tooth and nail. Your boyfriend’s still in one piece, but the girls are starting to lose interest. Just thought you’d want to know.”
I panicked. Totally and entirely. On land, there were things I could do, words I could say. I was totally helpless dealing with Water Folk I couldn’t talk to. My fingers clumsy with fear, I fumbled in my pocket for the Pooka’s tail hair. I wasn’t supposed to use it except in case of extreme emergency, but if this wasn’t an emergency, I didn’t know what was.
The hair was long and black and coarse. I held it in my fingers, blew on it gently, and whispered:“By thy oath and by thy faith,
Come thou quickly by me.
Gallop, gallop to my aid;
Danger draweth nigh me.”
At the third line, I heard the pounding of unshod hooves on the Reservoir path. By the last words, a wild black pony was prancing by my side.
“I’m here,” said the Pooka, blowing down his nose. “Where’s this danger I’m to save you from? Are you hurt, at all?”
“It’s Airboy—a friend of mine from school. He’s in the Reservoir, and the vodyanoi are after him. You’ve got to rescue him.”
The yellow eyes fixed on me, their expression far from godfatherly. “I do not so. Your friend is no concern of mine. Why does he not call on his own godparent, for all love?”
“He can’t,” I wailed. “He’s from New York Harbor. And if anything happens to him, it’s going to make this whole thing with the Mermaid Queen so much worse I can’t even imagine. Plus, I’ll get in trouble at school.”
“Trouble, is it?” the Pooka’s voice was dangerously mild. “I’ll show you trouble, my girl. Just as soon as I’ve fetched your friend out of the Reservoir—presuming there’s anything left to fetch.”
The Pooka leapt into the water. I stuck a big hank of hair into my mouth at once and bit down. It didn’t help.
A wave surged up over my feet, closely followed by the Pooka. Airboy was on his back, clutching the Pooka’s mane. He was gasping and coughing and retching water down the Pooka’s neck, but he was alive and he wasn’t bleeding, and he still had his cap and his Harness.
I felt awful.
I can’t remember what I babbled at him: how sorry I was, mostly, and was he feeling okay and had I said yet how very, very sorry I was about the vodyanoi, and why hadn’t he used the Words of Protection?
“Be silent,” the Pooka snapped. “If there’s anything to be salvaged from this sorry mess, you must provide the plan. It’s far too disgusted with you I am, my girl, to be putting myself to the trouble.”
The Pooka is always more Irish when he’s angry. I reminded myself crying wouldn’t help and took a couple of deep breaths.
“The Historian doesn’t expect us until right before sunset,” I said. “We’ll go back to the Museum, find the Old Market Woman, and let her take Airboy somewhere he can dry out until it’s time for the class to leave.”
I looked at the Pooka, who blew a gusty sigh. “Very well. I shall deliver this soggy morsel to the Museum, after which he may shift for himself. You, my girl, will wait here until I return.”
“But I’ll get in trouble,” I protested feebly.
“You are in trouble,” the Pooka said.
“The cat—” Airboy coughed and tried again. “The cat can tell the Historian you went home early.”
I’d almost forgotten the actual boy in the process of making plans for him. “That’ll work,” I said gratefully. “Airboy? They liked you—Algae and Pondscum and that crew. And you were having a good time, right? Until the vodyanoi showed up?”
Airboy coughed again, wetly, and turned his face from me.
Chapter 12
RULE 600: STUDENTS MUST NOT SPREAD RUMORS.
Miss Van Loon’s Big Book of Rules
The rest of the afternoon and evening were the absolute pits. I tried to explain what I’d been doing, but nobody would listen. The Pooka scolded me in Gaelic and Astris’s whiskers drooped in mute disappointment. Satchel gave me dry bread and warm water for dinner. It rained.
Astris even took my silver dress away.
By morning, the rain had stopped, but the sky was gray and the air heavy and chill. My hair was an explosion of frizz and so was my brain. I slipped into Assembly still half awake and definitely grumpy. We were on the second chorus of “It’s a Beautiful Day in the Neighborhood” when I felt someone tugging at my Inside Sweater.
Looking down, I saw a tightly folded note sticking out of my pocket. The kid standing beside me glanced at it significantly, then went back to telling the world he wanted to be its neighbor.
I unfolded the note. Ding-dong, the witch is gone!it said. Pass it on.
Shrugging, I refolded the note and stuck it in the next kid’s pocket. She smiled when she read it. I would have asked her what it meant, but Rule 14 (No talking in Assembly) is one of the harder ones to get away with breaking.
After a reading of Rules 160 (Students must not bully, intimidate, tease, or otherwise provoke other students) through 165 (Students must never curse, ill-wish, or use strong language in the presence of another mortal), Assembly finally came to an end. As we filed out the doors, I heard a clinking noise, like someone rolling in a leprechaun’s hoard. It was Mukuti, draped in olive green silk and about a million protective charms.
“What’s with all the metal, Mukuti?”
Mukuti rushed up to me, amulets clashing like cymbals. “You don’t know? Drat. That means I can’t tell you.”
I remembered the note. “I know the witch is gone, if that’s what you’re talking about. I don’t think it counts as spreading rumors if you just fill in details.”
“I guess.” Mukuti lowered her voice to an almost inaudible whisper. �
��Tiffany’s disappeared.”
“Tiffany’s what?”
Mukuti winced. “Shh! My fairy godmother heard it on the Grapevine.” She glanced down at her magical breastplate. “She made me wear these, just in case there’s a sudden wave of magical kidnappings.”
“Don’t the East Siders know what happened?”
Mukuti’s shrug set her amulets jingling. “East Siders don’t talk about stuff that happens at home, even to each other. It’s like a geas or something. I think Bergdorf knows though. She looks like the ghost of a ghost.”
By this time, we’d reached the Talisman Room. The Magic Tech took one look at Mukuti’s amulets and made her take them off. Then he lectured us on how too many charms cancel one another out.
“Most of these are junk,” he said. “If they weren’t, the humming would drown out the jingling. Enchanted things hum. You just need to learn to listen.”
We spent the rest of the lesson listening to each one of Mukuti’s amulets and throwing out the duds. By lunch, Mukuti was down to three working amulets and every changeling at Miss Van Loon’s knew that Tiffany had disappeared. The lunchroom buzzed with conversations that bent Rule 600, but didn’t break it. The East Siders sat in a silent island of gray wool, hunched over their identical quilted leather Shoulder Bags and Briefcases, pretending to eat their salads.
Bergdorf, who was staring into space with a frozen look, didn’t even pretend.
I sat down by Espresso and got out my lunch. Bread and dry cheese and water. Satchel was still mad at me.
Fortran cantered up and started talking before he even sat down. “You guys hear what happened to Fish-Face yesterday?”
Stonewall lifted his eyebrows. He’d recently dyed them golden, to match his new hairdo. He looked like a gilded cherub at the Metropolitan Museum—if cherubs were into spiked hair and gray sweaters. “Airboy, too? Miss Van Loon’s hasn’t seen so much excitement since Tony of the West Side got thrown out for turning magical.”
Fortran stopped rummaging in Backpack. “That really happened? Wizard!”
“I don’t think he enjoyed it,” Stonewall said. “He was bitten by a werewolf.”
Espresso punched Fortran on the arm. “What’s up with Airboy?”
“Oh, right. Fish-Face threw up on the Betweenways on the way back from the field trip. All over some ogre’s feet and everything. It was unbelievably gross—the Historian had a real fairy fit. I can’t believe he didn’t notice Fish-Face was sick before we left the Museum. He was all kind of droopy and green around the gills.” He laughed. “Get it? Fish-Face? Green gills? Hey, maybe he was land-sick !”
Everyone groaned. I tore off a piece of bread. It was stale.
“Fortran,” Espresso said, “you are the living end.”
“Thanks,” he said. “So, what’s up with Tiffany?”
After much discussion, we boiled down our theories about Tiffany’s disappearance to three:1. She’d been banished from Miss Van Loon’s because she’d finally broken so many rules that the Tutors couldn’t ignore it anymore.
2. She was locked in a tower polishing cockroaches for breaking some rule of the Dowager’s—refusing to kiss a frog, maybe, or getting a pimple or eating some actual food.
3. She’d spontaneously turned into the wicked witch she was so obviously destined to be and was learning to make poison apples.
Number 3 was Espresso’s idea—and my personal favorite—but I thought number 1 was most likely.
The next day the Schooljuffrouw announced in Assembly that the Hallowe’en Revels were less than a moon away. Anyone interested in helping run the Haunted House should report to the Magic Tech, and the library would be open for people researching their costumes. “The Librarian has been notified, and will make the relevant books freely accessible to all.”
If Fortran changed his mind once about what he was going to be, he changed his mind a million times. Each time, it was going to be the scariest costume ever and he’d win the costume competition for sure. Espresso announced she was going to be a flower child, which didn’t sound very scary to me.
“That’s ’cause you haven’t seen my threads. They’re outasight, man. What are you going to be?”
I shrugged. “I’ve had other things on my mind.”
Stonewall grinned. “Remember—no Tiffany, no challenge. No challenge, no being scared out of your mind. Now you can concentrate on the true meaning of Hallowe’en.”
“Being scared out of your mind is the true meaning of Hallowe’en, Daddy-o,” Espresso said.
They’d forgotten about my quest for the mirror. I wished I could.
The days went by. Still no quest pass. I didn’t understand. I’d passed the test, I’d filled out the forms, I’d sorted feathers. I hadn’t complained. The Schooljuffrouw had said it wasn’t her decision. Couldn’t she tell whoever’s decision it was that I was in a hurry?
I knew I had to be patient, but I couldn’t help poking my head in the Secretary’s office occasionally to see if there was any news. After a few days, I found the door wouldn’t open. I rattled the doorknob, just in case it might be stuck. A folded sheet of pink paper slid under the door.
It had Neef written on it in green ink. I picked it up and unfolded it.
Do that again, it said, and there’ll be no quest pass for you, young lady.
The day before the next full moon, the Diplomat kept me after the final horn. Wondering what I’d done this time, I watched her open her desk drawer and pull out a large white envelope. She put it in my hand. The contents shifted heavily from one corner to the other.
“Your quest pass.” The Diplomat’s voice was a study in mixed feelings. “I feel I should tell you, Neef, that if there were another changeling available with any working knowledge of Central Park, we wouldn’t have given it to you.”
Fury rose up inside me like a swarm of bees. I clenched my fists.
“You’re volatile,” the Diplomat went on, her eyes on my face. “You speak before you think. You jump in without a plan and hope for the best. You can’t keep your temper. All this is perfectly natural behavior for a mortal adolescent or even for a Genius, but it’s unacceptable in an official Voice.” She sighed. “You’re turning purple, Neef. Take a deep breath and count to ten. Aloud. Or I’ll put this quest pass right back in my drawer.”
The breath almost choked me, and the numbers shook a little at first, but by the time I’d reached ten, I was calmer.
“That’s better,” the Diplomat said. “There are rules, of course. First, the quest pass is nontransferable. No other student may accompany you or break a school rule to help you. Second, you may not speak to any Genius except your own. Third, a quest pass does not permit you to skip lessons. You must limit your quest to weekends, holidays, and after school.”
She paused. I held on to my volatile temper and waited.
“Well, Neef?” she said patiently.
I took another deep, calming breath. “I understand, Diplomat.”
“I’m sure you do.” I thought she sounded amused. “Good luck with your quest, Neef. I fear you’re going to need it.”
The quest pass was a medal on a chain. The symbol of New York Between was engraved on one side—a beaver, looking annoyed. The other side bore the familiar profile of Miss Wilhelmina Loes Van Loon. I hung it around my neck, under my jacket and T-shirt, where it pressed against my breastbone.
What had the Diplomat called me? Bad-tempered? Not my fault. Volatile? There wasn’t anything wrong with that. Being unpredictable was un-Folklike: a strength, under the circumstances. Jumping in and hoping for the best? It had worked just fine last summer.
The Diplomat might know a lot about contracts and manners, but I’d bet anything she’d never been on a quest in her life.
I went out into the yard, which was full of kids darting around like imps and screaming. The sun was low and golden, the shadows long and black. The wind from the East River was cool on my face.
Autumn was coming.
&
nbsp; Hugging my coat around me, I headed for the swing. Fortran was standing on the seat with Espresso sitting between his feet, both of them hanging on to the ivy ropes and pumping for all they were worth. Espresso was kicking at the top branches of a maple, which was dodging.
“I got it,” I shouted as they whooshed backwards into the sky. “I got the quest pass.”
The swing swooped forward.
“Wiiiiizard!”
“Groooovy!”
As soon as they’d slowed down enough to jump off, they were on either side of me, jittering with excitement and curiosity.
I took off the quest pass and held it out for them to look at.
“This is deeply groovy, Neef,” Espresso said. “Dig that crazy beaver!”
Fortran put his ear to the medal and listened. “It’s not magic,” he said, surprised. “I thought it would be magic.”
“It’s plenty magic, Number Man,” said Stonewall, who’d strolled up with Danskin just in time to hear. “It lets her do what she wants without worrying about the Loonie Rules.”
I put the quest pass back around my neck. “I wish it was magic enough to get me out of lessons. I can only quest on weekends and after school.”
“Then it’s a good thing that the next performance of Swan Lake is going to be the night after the Full Moon Gathering,” said Danskin. “Do you have anything to wear?”
I smoothed the lapels of my black coat. “What’s wrong with what I’ve got on? I thought you said my coat was dashing.”
“Oh, it is,” Stonewall said. “But it doesn’t exactly say ‘Evening at Lincoln Center,’ does it? What did you wear to Autumn Equinox?”
“A Dress Silver as the Moon.”
“You have one of those?” Danskin was impressed.
“Excellent!” said Stonewall. “Wear that. And lose the sneakers. You think your fairy godmother can magic up some glass slippers for you?”
The Magic Mirror of the Mermaid Queen Page 10