The Enchanted Egg

by Kallie George

  “Oh! Kittens!” exclaimed Clover. “They’re so cute!”

  However, when she reached in a hand to pet one, its orange eyes lit up bright blue. Out shot icicle-like beams, which sent an icy shock through her fingertips.

  “Ouch!” she cried, pulling away her hand at once. The kitten blinked and his eyes turned orange again. But the tail of the kitten beside it was causing new trouble—sparks crackled from it, like lightning.

  The third kitten was balancing on the tip of its tail like an acrobat, while the fourth kitten had started to float up, hovering at the top edge of the box like a mini thundercloud, threatening to float away. She gently pushed the kitten down and shut the lid, reusing a piece of tape to hold the lid closed.

  These weren’t regular kittens, that was for certain. Clover examined the box, searching for a clue. She found something tucked underneath it—a piece of paper. She pulled the paper out and unfolded it:

  TO THE GIRL AT THE AGENCY—

  I WANTED TO GET RID OF THESE CREATURES BY OTHER MEANS, BUT MY CURSED CURSE WON’T LET ME. IT’S ALL YOUR FAULT. SO HERE. TAKE THEM.

  The note was unsigned but Clover knew it must be from Ms. Wickity, the witch she had accidentally splashed with lucky potion and who could now cast only good spells. Clover felt happy about that as she pocketed the note. In a way, she had helped save these kittens.

  I wonder what Dipity will think of them, she thought as she struggled to unlock the door with the box under one arm and the bag of feathers hanging from her shoulder.

  When she finally got the door open, what she saw was a total surprise. There were no tracks on the floor. But that wasn’t the surprising thing—there was no stardust either.

  It was all on the ceiling!

  Clover closed the door and the room glowed. The whole ceiling twinkled like the night sky crowded with stars.

  She didn’t know that stardust floated. Maybe it was attracted to the real stars at night? But how did Mr. Jams get it to stick to the unicorns’ horns? She should have read up about it before dusting it everywhere.

  It was going to be really hard to clean up. She couldn’t reach the ceiling, even standing on a chair. And it was bound to be all over the stables’ ceiling too, and that was even higher up. So much for her great idea.

  As Clover scanned the room for any sign of the animal, she noticed some pamphlets that had been on the table were now on the floor, and when she went to put them back, she saw that the table leg was chewed.

  The animal WAS in here! thought Clover. So if the stardust had been on the floor, it would have worked!

  That made her feel better, and she picked up the box of kittens and carried it to the small animals’ room. The two fire salamanders were asleep in their tank, and the fairy horses were asleep too, standing up in a huddle. Dipity was snoring under the table in his basket. He opened one eye, then shut it again. She put the feathers down and checked the cages.

  There were quite a few empty ones in the room. Only one, however, looked suitable for a litter of energetic kittens. It was very roomy, with a scratching post, a litter box, and bowls for water and food. She filled the bowls and then quickly moved the kittens one by one into the cage. The acrobatic kitten nearly flipped out of her hands, and the one with the sparking tail gave her a jolt that sent a tingle up her hand. She was relieved when she finally hooked the door shut.

  Clover had never taken in any animals at the Agency, only adopted them out. Mr. Jams had mentioned checking them for diseases. She tried phoning Dr. Nurtch, but only got her answering machine again. What good was an emergency help number if it never provided help!

  So, after feeding everyone breakfast, Clover decided to work on the kittens’ card. All the other animals had cards that listed their names, species, age, and history. Clover had been looking forward to writing up the card for the animal inside the egg. But that would have to wait—right now she needed to focus on the kittens. The quicker she found them a home, the better.

  She sat down at the desk in the front room and took out the quill pen. She had tried once to use the quill for paperwork, but ended up splattering ink on the front of her brand-new dress. Since then, she had watched carefully how Mr. Jams used it.

  Clover dipped the tip of the quill into the inkwell.

  She left the space beside Name blank to fill in later when the kittens were named. Beside Species, she put Grimalkins, proud of remembering that was the name for magic cats. The ink blobbed a bit on the n of Grimalkin, so it looked a little like an o. Unfortunately, quills didn’t have erasers.

  Age came next. Clover wasn’t sure. She put Kittens. Now for the tricky part. History. She dabbed the tip of the quill in the inkwell again. It took a lot of thinking and scratching out to get it right.

  History: These engergitc lively kittens were abonded abanonded left at the Agency and owned by Ms. Wickity a witch before coming here. Each has a speshul magic ability. If you have the time for an active kitten, these guys girls kittens one of these is for you.

  Finally she was done. It was a bit messy, but she was certain it would look better when it was pinned up.

  She was wrong.

  It looked worse. The ink, still wet in places, trickled down like tears. She had forgotten to blot it, like she had seen Mr. Jams do.

  I’ll have to redo it later, she thought, but first she needed to deal with the stardust. She had put that off long enough.

  If she stood on a chair and held up a broom, the bristles just reached the dust. Slowly, she swept it into a corner of the ceiling, where it glowed softly like the last embers of a fire. The stables were much trickier because she had to stand on a ladder. It took all afternoon, and she couldn’t get the dust that had floated above the unicorns’ stalls. Her arms ached from lifting up the broom and she was completely worn out, but she still needed to figure out another way to find the hatchling.

  Any chance of planning was interrupted by a crash from the small animals’ room.

  Clover hurried there, to find the kittens’ cage door wide open and the kittens running wild. Or, more specifically—floating, tumbling, and zapping!

  The kitten with the magic eyes was shooting blizzard beams at a table leg, causing frost to appear, while lightning tail played with the twisty-tumbling one. The floating-cloud kitten, meanwhile, was hovering in the center of the room. The bag of feathers, which Clover had left there, was lying half-empty on the floor. The floating kitten’s tail was sticking straight up and he was hissing—at her, it seemed. “Shh, shh,” she said, trying to calm him down as she hurried over to scoop him up. Just then, there was a cracking sound.

  She turned to see that the blizzard-beam kitten had caused frost to inch up the table leg, across the tabletop, and right to the salamanders’ tank. The cold had caused the hot glass to crack.

  “Oh no!” cried Clover. “Stop that!” she scolded blizzard beam, but he had already stopped—because the twisty-tumbling kitten had rolled right into him and now they were play-fighting. “Get back here!” Clover ordered, but, of course, they didn’t listen. She examined the glass. The crack was only a hairline, but both salamanders were now huddled on top of their rock, sticking out their red tongues, which, Clover knew, meant they were frightened.

  Lightning tail was staring at his reflection in an empty tank. A spark from his tail bounced off the glass, rebounded, and hit him in the nose, making him howl.

  “Ahh!” cried Clover, running to get him. But the instant she put her hands on him, his tail sparked and burned her skin.

  “OUCH!” she exclaimed, letting go of him at once. Lightning tail bounded away to play with the others—who were all tumbling together in the feathers in the center of the room, even the floating one. “This is a disaster!” Clover groaned. They were disasters, little forces of nature. Blizzard, Cloudy, Twister, and Lightning. Those were the perfect names for them. If only she had a perfect way of dealing with them.

  “I wish I was magic. Then I could—Dipity, no!” cried Clover.

/>   Her green kitten had slipped out from under a table and was padding toward the playing kittens. He was clearly fascinated by them. His tail was twitching furiously. His ears too. Even his whiskers seemed alert.

  “Silly cat!” Clover said, reaching down to pull him away—the last thing she wanted was for him to get hurt—and in that split second she heard purring. To her amazement, the four little kittens were asleep in a pile on the floor, like the calm after a storm.

  Dipity mewed, pleased.

  Clover seized the opportunity, ignoring her smarting hand, and scooped up the sleeping kittens one at a time, putting them in the cage. Then she fastened the door. Since she figured they must have been able to lift the simple latch, she hurried to the storage room to find a lock.

  When she returned, Dipity was sitting regally beside the cage, staring at the kittens inside. They were still sleeping. Was it her imagination, or did the snores of the kittens seem to deepen the longer Dipity watched? Maybe Dipity did have a magical ability too, other than just being green. Mr. Jams said he might. Maybe he could calm other animals. Green was a calming color.

  “Did you have something to do with this?” she wondered aloud.

  Dipity just licked a paw.

  Clover left him with the kittens to find a bandage for her hand, then checked the salamanders again—no heat was escaping from the crack in their tank, so she knew it was okay—and she checked the fairy horses as well, to make sure they weren’t too startled. Some seemed extra rambunctious—Hickory was prancing around and around the tiny ferns—and Tansy, the gentlest, was trembling. Clover reached in and smoothed her miniature mane for a while to quiet the horse down. Then she cleaned up the feathers and put them away in the stables.

  Now, totally exhausted, Clover returned to the front room and slumped down on the couch. Her hand hurt. But her head hurt more.

  Dipity mewed and pawed at her lap. “Not now, Dipity,” Clover said.

  But he mewed again, and Clover sighed and pulled him close. She rubbed behind his ears and he purred. It almost sounded like he was chuckling. Maybe he was. If those kittens hadn’t been such a handful, it would’ve been funny. Especially when Lightning hit himself with his own spark. A day of sparks and sparkling, she thought, gazing at the ball of stardust twinkling up in the corner. “You probably knew it would float, didn’t you?” she asked Dipity. But he didn’t even twitch his tail. He was so relaxed. And so, she realized, was she. Her headache was gone.

  Whether it was his magic working or not was impossible to tell. After all, it’s hard not to feel better when you’re cuddling with a kitten.

  It was a hot walk home, the air muggy. Clover took the shadiest route, which led her past Emma’s house.

  She glanced up at her friend’s window. She still hadn’t written back to Emma. Although Dipity was a good listener, she missed her best friend. Emma wouldn’t be home till the end of summer. Mr. Jams, however, would be home tomorrow! Part of her wanted him back, but a bigger part was worried about what he’d think at the state of things. She wasn’t the miracle worker he thought she was—he would see that now. If only she could come up with a foolproof plan to catch the hatchling. But how could she catch it when she still didn’t even know what it was? The calmness she’d felt earlier, with Dipity, started to disappear. By the time she got home, she had a knot of worry in her stomach.

  Her mom, home early for once, was making lemonade in the kitchen.

  “Are you okay, Clover?” she asked.

  Clover nodded, then, truthfully, shook her head. “Not really.”

  “What is it?”

  “It’s the Agency. I love it there, but I have so much to do. I don’t know if I can manage it.”

  “You are the pluckiest girl I know,” said her mom. “I’m sure you’ll find a way.” She handed Clover a tall glass of lemonade.

  Clover took a big gulp. It was icy and delicious, and she felt a little better.

  But the feeling didn’t last. All night, Clover tossed and turned. It was so hot and humid she kept kicking off her covers, and in the morning, although there were clouds in the sky, it was hotter than ever. Her clothes stuck to her and her hair did too. She tied it up with her favorite ribbon, the one with four-leaf clovers on it.

  The inside of the Agency was roasting when she got there, and she wished she could open the windows to let a breeze through. But she couldn’t risk the hatchling escaping.

  The unicorns were all clearly bothered by the heat too. Clover made sure they had plenty of cool water in their buckets.

  In the storage room, she dug out four fans from behind a stack of spare cages. She set up two in the stables and another in the small animals’ room, for the kittens and fairy horses. (The fire salamanders, of course, didn’t need a fan. They were happily sunbathing on their rock.) The last she set up in the front room, near the desk.

  She sat beside it, trying to cool herself down and wondering what to do. She still had no new ideas for how to catch the animal. And the heat wasn’t helping.

  Then she remembered Mr. Jams’s request. She could follow up on the adopted animals, to see how they were doing. She pulled out the files on Snort the dragon, Moondrop the unicorn, and Esmeralda (Flit) the toad, and took the phone down from the high shelf.

  She tried Henry first. His mom answered. “Clover! Thanks for calling. Snort’s settling in well. Henry’s out with his Spell Scout troop right now. Snort is helping them roast hot dogs.”

  “That’s great,” said Clover. In Snort’s file she put a check mark by Follow-up call satisfactory.

  Next she tried Susie. No one picked up, but the answering machine message made her smile: “Olaf, Susie, and Moondrop are away from the phone at the moment. Leave a message after the tone.”

  Moondrop was clearly part of the family. She put a check in Moondrop’s file too.

  Next was Miss Opal. The phone rang a few times, and then a soft voice answered, “Miss Opal, your friendly fortune-teller here. What can I see for you?”

  “Hi, Miss Opal. It’s Clover from the Agency. I was just wondering how you and Flit are doing.”

  “Oh, dear girl! It is such a blessing to have Flit back. I was just thinking of you the other day. Is everything all right there? I had a terrible sense of trouble.”

  Miss Opal really was a good fortune-teller!

  Clover didn’t want to get into the problems with the hatchling, so she said quickly, “Don’t worry, Miss Opal. Nothing bad’s happened today.” That was true, sort of.

  But then, CRASH!

  Clover jumped up and turned around. What was that? It had to be something in the room! Was it the animal? “Sorry, Miss Opal, but I’ve got to go.”

  “Do take care of yourself, dear. There’s a storm coming.”

  “Thank you,” hurried Clover, hanging up the phone and running around the desk. Would she see the animal at last?

  But it wasn’t the animal. Only the Wish Book.

  Or what was left of it. One corner of the gilt cover was completely chewed up. Tattered pages were scattered around the floor.

  Some chewed-up cleaning rags and a table leg were one thing, but this was another thing altogether! This was the MOST important book in the Agency.

  “Now it’s ruined!” Clover stomped her foot in frustration.

  How had the animal gotten up to it? And why hadn’t she noticed? Sure, she had been on the phone, but she was sitting only a few feet away.

  She took a deep breath and picked up the Wish Book gingerly. The corner was dripping with drool. She gathered the loose papers together and carried the book to the washing room, where she carefully toweled it dry and tucked the pages back in their spots. Then she examined it again. It really was a mess. Luckily it seemed like most of the entries were readable, but the book itself was beyond repair.

  Mr. Jams would be horrified. SHE was horrified. She took the book back to the front room and searched for other important objects that the animal might get at. She slid some pamphlets into a des
k drawer, and was just putting the Wish Book away in the cupboard behind the desk when the bell rang. She turned around.

  I hope it’s not another new animal, thought Clover.

  It wasn’t a new animal. At least, it didn’t appear to be, for no creature accompanied the figure standing in front of the desk.

  He was a very short man wearing a very tall, very green top hat. In fact, he was so short, all she could see from over the desk was the top of his forehead and the hat. Clover hurried around the desk to greet him properly.

  The rest of him was dressed in shades of green too—a suit the color of freshly cut grass, shoes as green as watermelon rind, and a scarf that looked like a giant spinach leaf. Only his brown leather belt and the golden buckles on his shoes were not green.

  “Are you a…a leprechaun?” she asked.

  He laughed. “Yes, of course. Leonard Hue is my name,” he said, shaking Clover’s hand so hard her whole arm jiggled. “Is Mr. Jams here?”

  “He’s out at the moment. How can I help you?”

  “Not me—my daughter. Come on out, Lulu.”

  A little face peeked from behind Leonard’s stocky legs, then disappeared again. “Come on, Lu. Look—it’s a nice girl who will help you find a pet.”

  Clover bent down. “Hello, Lulu. I’m Clover.”

  “She has a very lucky name, doesn’t she, Lulu?” said Leonard.

  Clover smiled as the little leprechaun girl shuffled out and stared at her with big round eyes, magnified by the roundest, thickest glasses Clover had ever seen. The glasses took up half her face, and had sparkly rainbow-colored rims. Instead of wearing green like her father, the girl was an explosion of color. She was dressed in a multicolored tutu, which stuck straight out like a mushroom top, and a shirt striped like a peppermint stick. Her red hair was tied up on the top of her head in a messy ponytail, and tamed by a whole jungle’s worth of animal-shaped barrettes.