Falcon Quinn and the Black Mirror

by Jennifer Finney Boylan

  The sun burst from behind some small, wispy clouds on the horizon, and the rays touched the side of Falcon’s face. The sun sat like an orange eye above the ocean.

  Falcon finished humming the songs, then put the sheet music back in his pocket.

  I’ll tell you this much, he thought. I’m not going to rip this music up. They can do what they want to me, but I’m not destroying my friends. Does that make me a monster? Or a guardian? A gonster? Or something else? He didn’t know anymore.

  All he knew was that it made him Falcon.

  The wind blew through Falcon’s hair, and he thought of Megan. Was it really possible that she’d blown away with the wild winds?

  He remembered the prophecy of Quimby.

  “Megan Crofton, crushed by fears, leaves her friends and disappears.”

  He thought of her dark expression as they’d waited for the bus on the day they’d come to the Academy, that look of melancholy and loss as the snow gathered in her hair. How different she had looked just a few weeks later, how alive and fierce, when they stood before the clockface in the Tower of Souls.

  “Megan,” said Falcon, and the sun began to set over the sea.

  A breeze blew against his face. For a moment he felt as if she was blowing right through him. “Megan,” he said again, in a voice so soft that he was not even sure he had said her name out loud.

  In the distance, above the ocean, he saw a small black dot on the horizon. At first he thought it was a bird, but it appeared to have no wings. It was a globular, oval thing, drifting toward the Pinnacle of Virtues on the warm ocean breeze.

  A smile slowly crept across Falcon’s face as he realized what the thing was. He watched it grow larger and larger as it slowly drew near, and as it did, the smile on Falcon’s face grew larger too.

  Falcon raised his hands as the thing drifted over the platform at the top of the Pinnacle of Virtues. His fingers clasped tight around the rope, which trailed below the thing, and then his feet slowly left the ground.

  He began to sail, grasping the rope, high above the Hidden City.

  “What have we here?” said a voice. “Falcon Quinn? For heaven’s sakes. I never know where you’re going to pop up next!”

  Falcon smiled. “Hello, Quimby,” he said.

  “I’m Quimby!” said the floating head. “I’m Quimby!”

  23

  FLOATING

  They floated. Below them was the Hidden City with its green and brown streets and houses. The shadows of twilight were lengthening across the city, and windows glowed with light. Behind them rose the towers of the castle, the Pinnacle of Virtues casting a long shadow. In another smaller tower, Falcon saw a woman standing in an arched window, looking out at the gloaming, and it took a moment before he realized that it was his mother. She lifted one hand to her face, then reached forward through the window and called to him. From far away he heard her voice echoing through the twilight.

  “Falcon!”

  “Always the life of the party,” said Quimby.

  “She’s my mother,” said Falcon. “The queen.”

  “I know,” said Quimby.

  “You know?” said Falcon.

  “Hel-lo,” said Quimby. “I’m the spirit of the crystal. I know your past as well as your future.”

  “What’s my future?” said Falcon.

  “Now, now,” said Quimby. “If I told you, it’d spoil the surprise.”

  In the distance Falcon heard her voice calling him faintly. “Falcon! Come back!”

  Falcon held on to the rope, his feet resting upon a knot tied at one end, and as he held on he felt a great sadness creeping over him. He remembered sitting in the kitchen of the beach house again, watching his mother make dinner, listening to her play the piano.

  “Oh, for heaven’s sakes,” said Quimby. “You’re not—crying, are you?”

  “No,” said Falcon, and sniffed. “I’m not.”

  “I’m sorry she turned out to be such a disappointment,” said Quimby. “Your mother, I mean.”

  “Why does everybody have to be so determined to kill each other?” Falcon said. “Why is everyone so—”

  “So mental?” said Quimby. He sighed, and the escaping air made his floating form sink in the air a little bit. “You got me, Falcon Quinn. Maybe because it’s easier to have enemies than not to have them?”

  “How is it easier?”

  “If you don’t hate people, you have to learn to like them,” said Quimby. “And liking people? That’s not easy. Believe me, the way people behave? There are times I wish I was back in that jar.”

  There was a sudden blast from the city below them, and an arrow sailed past Falcon’s head, missing them by several feet.

  “Here we go,” said Quimby. He huffed and puffed and inflated himself to twice his present size. They rose higher in the air as more arrows sailed past them.

  “They’re shooting at us!” said Falcon.

  “Exactly,” said Quimby. “What was I just saying? This is a very good example of what I was talking about—the fundamental inability of creatures to get along with each other. It’s so boring!”

  “Can we have this conversation later?” said Falcon. Another arrow whizzed past.

  “Fine,” said Quimby, puffing himself larger. “How’s that?”

  They rose higher in the air. The arrows passed beneath Falcon’s feet now.

  “That’s good,” said Falcon. “I think.”

  In the streets below, Falcon could see men in uniforms assembled, with spears and longbows pointing up at him. But soon Falcon and Quimby floated beyond the borders of the city, over the green expanse of the rain forest, above the sand beach, and finally out over the sea.

  Falcon sighed.

  “Penny for your thoughts!” said Quimby.

  “It’s like I lost her twice,” said Falcon. “Once when I was little. And now, all over again.”

  “Falcon Quinn,” said Quimby. “You’ve lost your friend Megan. Jonny turned out to be a spy. Max and Pearl have been transformed to sheet music. Woody and Peeler are stars. And you’re in mourning for—your mother? What has she ever done for you? Besides try to kill you?”

  “You’re right. All those monsters were more like my family than she ever was,” Falcon said. “I didn’t even have time to think about Peeler and Woody! All they wanted to do was live their lives. And eat bananas. Now—”

  “It is a pity that nothing comes for free,” said Quimby. “Even bananas.”

  They floated above the waves of the ocean. From this height the water looked cold and green.

  “Where are you taking us?”

  “Hey, I’m just a floating head,” said Quimby. “I don’t have any control over where we’re going. I blow with the breeze!”

  Falcon looked confused. “Seriously?”

  “Looks like we’re headed south,” said Quimby. “Same direction as the sunset.”

  “The sun sets in the west,” said Falcon.

  “Oops,” said Quimby. “Boy, is my face red!”

  Quimby deflated a bit and he sank down a little closer to the surface of the water. “I wish Megan was here,” said Falcon. “She could blow us in the right direction.”

  “But what is the right direction, Falcon?” said Quimby. “Where is it you want to go now? You busted out of the Academy because you didn’t like it there. Then you jumped off of a tower in the Hidden City because you didn’t like it there either. You’re running out of islands.”

  “I don’t know where I want to go,” said Falcon. “It’s like there’s no place for me.”

  “Yeah, well,” said Quimby. “Welcome to my world. All I wanted was to get out of that jar, all those years. And now that I’m out of the jar, guess what—I just blow around like a balloon. Does that sound like fun? It’s not.”

  “I’m sorry we cracked your jar,” said Falcon. “I’m sorry you got loose.”

  “Oh, don’t be sorry,” said Quimby. “Who knows what will happen next? It all depends on wh
ere the breezes take us.”

  “Megan’s the wind now,” said Falcon. “Jonny Frankenstein saved her. He told her what was going to happen and got her to disappear before the guardians came.”

  “Whatever did he do that for?” said Quimby.

  “He says he did it for me. He says he was my friend.”

  Quimby sighed. “I was wondering how long it would take for you all to see through him.”

  “Wait—you knew?”

  “Falcon,” said Quimby. “I know everything.”

  “What do you mean—everything?”

  “Everything. What everyone is. What they will become. You think I like it? You’re wrong. Nothing ever surprises me anymore.”

  Falcon yawned.

  “You tired, sonny boy? Why don’t we flip you up on top of the dome so you can get a little shut-eye?”

  Quimby gave the rope that Falcon was clutching a sudden twitch, and Falcon was swung up onto the top of Quimby’s inflated head, which was springy and spongy, like a water bed.

  “It’s soft up there, isn’t it?” said Quimby.

  “It is.”

  “Go on, grab yourself forty winks. I’ll wake you up if we run into any dragons. Which we won’t, not this journey anyhow. Like I said, I can see the future.”

  Falcon lay back on the spongy giant head and looked up at the night sky. He felt his eyelids growing heavy.

  “Do you have another prophecy for me?” said Falcon.

  “What was wrong with the old one?” said Quimby.

  “Nothing was wrong with it,” said Falcon. “You just never finished it.”

  “What? Oh yes. Falcon Quinn gets ripped in half—you have to admit that’s very dramatic. Let’s see. Oh yes. Makes his choice, and—aaaaaand—wait for it!”

  “And what?”

  “You mean you still haven’t finished it yet?”

  “I thought you were the one who wrote the fortunes.”

  “Falcon Quinn,” said Quimby, “we already had this conversation. I don’t write your fortune. You do.”

  The next thing Falcon knew, he was waking up, staring at a blue sky, feeling the morning sun upon his face. He sat up and looked around at the Sea of Dragons. They were approaching a small green island. Falcon saw the shapes of castles and towers.

  “Good morning, merry sunshine!” said Quimby.

  “Where are we?” said Falcon, rubbing his face.

  “Gee,” said Quimby. “I wonder.”

  They floated over a wall, and Quimby began to exhale air. They sank down lower to the ground.

  “Good luck, Falcon,” said Quimby.

  “Good luck?” said Falcon. “With what?”

  The rope that hung down beneath Quimby twitched upward like a tail and swept Falcon off of the top of Quimby’s head, flicking Falcon into the air. He fell for a few feet, then hit the earth. He had landed in the midst of a large green lawn.

  To his left was the Wellness Center; to his right, the gymnasium. Before him, brooding in shadow, loomed the five towers of Castle Grisleigh.

  From a high window in the Tower of Science, a light suddenly flicked on.

  “Good-bye, Falcon,” said Quimby, blowing away toward the wall that separated Castle Grisleigh from the Upper School and Castle Gruesombe. “Don’t go all to pieces!”

  “Wait,” said Falcon. “Come back!”

  But Quimby was already rising. Watching Quimby blow away, Falcon put his hands deep in the pockets of Jonny Frankenstein’s jacket, and his fingers closed around something. For a moment he wasn’t sure what this was. Then he realized what it was he was touching, and he did the thing that he was least expecting: there in the sunrise, in the quad of Castle Grisleigh, Falcon Quinn began to laugh.

  It was funny, if you thought about it. It was a riddle, and like most riddles, it was frustrating and obscure before you knew the answer, but afterward obvious and inevitable. It had been staring him in the face all along.

  Now, finally, Falcon knew exactly what he needed to do and where he needed to do it.

  IV

  THE TOWER OF SOULS

  24

  MORTIA’S DEFECTION

  He found the three green men sleeping in three parallel beds, lined up against one wall of their gingerbread house. Their eyes were open, and they were looking at Falcon thoughtfully, almost as if they had been expecting him. Their shiny green hands clutched the white linen sheets.

  “I’m sorry to bother you,” he said, stepping into the room. “I’m Falcon Quinn, and I know I probably have, like, eighty-five million unhappiness stars as punishment for escaping from the Academy. So, if you want to call Mrs. Redflint and have her haul me off to the dungeon, that’s fine. But I’m back—I went on this journey with my friends, and we got captured by guardians. Do you know who they are?”

  The green men looked at each other, their eyes wide. They all sat up in their beds, in unison.

  “Jonny Frankenstein was helping them—he—well, I guess he led us to them. They killed two of the Sasquatches—Peeler and Woody—and they turned Pearl and Max into this.” Falcon pulled the sheet music out of the inside pocket of Jonny Frankenstein’s leather jacket. “I got away from them and came back. I think the way to turn Pearl and Max back into themselves is by playing the music, loud. I mean, it says right here on the sheet music, ‘quadruple forte.’ I know you guys have those drums and the tube things you play. So I was thinking if maybe you played this music, that they would come back?”

  The green men looked at each other thoughtfully. Then they stood up simultaneously and went toward Falcon. They looked him in the eyes. One of them took the sheet music and stared at it for a moment, reading the notes. He nodded to the other two, who took the music from him and also examined it. Then the first green man clapped Falcon on the shoulder, and they opened the door and looked cautiously outside.

  From the quad you’d have seen first one green head peek out behind the door, then another just above this, and then a third at the top. A moment later, all of them moved stealthily out into their small yard, then paused by the gate. One green man looked back at Falcon and gestured. Come on. Follow.

  Falcon raced after them as the men hurried across the quad and up the stairs.

  The green men scurried past the trophy cases and into the gym, where their instruments were strewn all over the stage at the far end. They pulled the covers off of their instruments—the glass bottles containing a glowing liquid, the enormous collection of tubes wrapped around a gyroscope, the kettledrums. The men put the music on their music stands and picked up their mallets.

  “Do you think this will work?” asked Falcon.

  The man in the middle glanced left, then right, then began to pound his ear-splitting kettledrums. The others waited a measure, then joined in. The man on the left had the music of Max; the man on the right had the music of Pearl, and each of them began to play the melodies that Falcon recognized from the moment of crystal transcription. Falcon recognized the hot, infectious rhythm of “La Chupakabra Bossa Nova” and the raucous, joyful groove of “The Sasquatch Waltz.” The windows in the gym rattled as the green men made their blasting sounds.

  A wind blew through the air, and for a moment Falcon thought of Megan. She’s here too, Falcon thought. They’re all coming back.

  The music bounced and popped and raged. The green men’s mallets flew through the air faster than Falcon’s eyes could follow.

  The music built to a climax, and then the green men hit their instruments hard, for four final unified beats. The last notes echoed in the gym, and then they all stood there as if frozen. The wind blew through the room, catching the pages of the music, and the sheets fell off of the music stands and drifted onto the floor.

  Then the wind stopped. The green men cast nervous, uncertain glances at each other. Falcon looked around the room. “Max?” he said. “Pearl?”

  It took a moment for the obvious to sink in: it hadn’t worked. One of the green men nervously picked up the music off the floor
and put it back on his stand.

  “Tony?” said a voice from across the gymnasium floor. “Tony Cucarillo?”

  Falcon looked over at the door, where a girl in a plaid school uniform was standing; on her head was a pink and orange beanie with her name in sequins: VIOLET. It took Falcon a moment to remember who this was.

  “Mortia?” he said.

  The girl looked afraid and confused. “My name is Violet now,” she corrected him. “Violet Humperdink. What are you doing here? No one’s allowed in here at this hour! This violates Rule Forty-seven K!”

  “We escaped,” said Falcon, “me and Pearl and Megan. And the Sasquatches. We floated down the River of Crud down in the catacombs, and—Are you okay?”

  “They told us you would try to sneak back in,” said Mortia, “and attack us!” Mortia looked very nervous. “Shall I call Mrs. Redflint, Professors?” she said to the green men. “Do you want to have them get Reverend Thorax?”

  The green men looked at each other, then back at Mortia.

  “They’re helping me,” said Falcon.

  “They’re helping you?” said Mortia. “I don’t understand. The faculty has been very specific. We’re all supposed to be watching for you. If I don’t report you, they’ll send me to the dungeon for violating Rule Eighty-six B.”

  “Mortia,” said Falcon. “After we escaped, we were captured by guardians. Monster destroyers.”

  “You’re a guardian,” said Mortia. “That’s what they told us! That you were a spy, sent by your mother, to turn us all into balls of fire!”

  “I’m not a spy,” said Falcon.

  “Isn’t your mother their leader?” asked Mortia. “Didn’t you leave here to go join her?”

  “She’s…,” said Falcon. “Listen, I don’t have time to explain—”

  “What’s that music you were playing?” said Mortia.

  “That’s Max and Pearl,” said Falcon. “They got turned into music. I’m trying to bring them back. That’s what we’re doing. I was hoping I could do it by playing the music, loud.” He held up the sheet music. “It’s quadruple forte. See?”