When Mom had worked at the old school on Grim Hill, she’d been held under its dark enchantment. She was like a puppet on the evil strings of the fairy folk – as mesmerized as a zombie.
Suddenly I was glad I wasn’t able to forget about the magic that befell our town. There was no way I’d let that happen to my mother again. I hurried to dry the last of the dishes and ran up to my room.
In my dresser drawer under my soccer uniform was a pink scarf that Lea had given me. I held the shimmering scarf in my hands admiring its softness, then I tied it around my waist. The second I wrapped it around me my feather heated up. Of course, the scarf was a fairy object. I thought back to another time I’d come into possession of a fairy object – my feather.
My fairy feather had been a bookmark in the Book of All Magic. Even though I didn’t like recalling that terrifying moment, I forced myself to picture the book in my mind again. How I had held out the feather and spoke and it was as if the book knew what I wanted, flipping its own pages at my command. I’d simply asked for information, and the book turned its pages and stopped at just the right spot.
The last piece of my secret plan slid into place. I might have figured out a way to use my feather and the Grimoire to save us from Fairy and win back my sister. A warm glimmer of hope lit me up from the inside.
“Hang on, Lea,” I said to the empty room. “We’ll save you.” Then I hurried downstairs.
“Mom, I’ll be back later,” I called.
“Before dark, right, Cat?” Worry edged Mom’s voice.
I hurried out the door before she realized I hadn’t actually promised any such thing.
CHAPTER 9 A Witch’s Poppet
As I walked to Sookie’s, I spotted Amarjeet and Jasper waiting for me beside the graveyard fence. The iron gate swung back and forth with a clang. I tried to focus my eyes straight ahead and not look at the gathering shadows inside the cemetery.
“I’ve been remembering so many things,” said Amarjeet. “I can hardly believe our friend, Lea, is a fairy.” She shook her head.
“Yeah, I thought you said those creatures were treacherous. Lea seemed nice.” I jumped at Clive’s voice as he crept up behind me.
Graveyards always left me uneasy. I spun around and faced him and his little brother. “It doesn’t matter what she is. Lea’s captured and we have to save her. And we’ll need all the help we can get.”
“I know we have to help.” Clive shot me a withering look. “I just wonder why Lea’s not like the others.”
I had to give Clive some credit. It was a good question. “She isn’t typical,” I pointed out. “Lea spent most of her life in the human world, so…” I began thinking.
Lea had told me that she and her horrible aunt had moved from town to town. I couldn’t help but think that Lea had seen terrible things, and she should have become as ruthless as her aunt. But instead it seemed to have only made her sad.
“Maybe our world rubbed off on her, and she’s become less like a creature of Fairy.” Jasper pushed his glasses around his head like he always did when he was deep in thought.
“That would make sense,” said Amarjeet. “Because the more Sookie has had dealings with Fairy, the less human …” Amarjeet stopped and looked at me. More gently she said, “The more magical she’s become.”
“Whoa,” said Clive. “That explains a lot.”
I held back my anger. I’d figured out myself that the more magic Sookie was exposed to, the less she was like a human child. What’s more, in order to make Sookie more normal again I’d have to trick her and reverse Fairy’s hold on her. Did I have the nerve to go through with it?
I put my hand on my chain belt, and slid my fingers over the silky feather hidden there. Touching it helped me find my steely determination. “Enough chatting,” I said, “Let’s do this.”
***
“Why’d you have to bring your wagon,” Clive complained.
“Sookie told me to,” said Skeeter. He’d given up tugging it and raced ahead while Clive dragged it along.
Mitch and Mia stood at the edge of Sookie’s yard. They looked uneasy. I didn’t blame them a bit. Sookie was a wild card – you didn’t want to catch her in a bad mood. But fear of Sookie didn’t seem to affect Skeeter. As soon as we neared the fence, he broke off and rushed up the steps and straight into the witch’s house.
“Cool,” we heard him shout.
“Did you bring an object from Lea?” Sookie’s grownup lady voice called out of the kitchen window. That voice grated on my ears. I wasn’t sure if it was because it seemed so strange that Sookie sounded like an adult, or that her voice was tainted with the supernatural.
“Right here, if you bother to come out,” I said, untying Lea’s scarf. “You’d better be ready.” I doubted Sookie had lost her pokey ways.
We heard some grunting as if a heavy object was being lugged around. “Bring my wagon to the steps,” Skeeter’s muffled voice ordered.
Clive rolled the wagon to the porch steps. Jasper and Mitch climbed the steps to help a struggling Sookie and Skeeter who were dragging a large poppet doll across the porch.
How puzzling. Why would a grownup Sookie have such a hard time carrying a doll? Or why would Skeeter?
“Oomph,” said Mitch lifting up the poppet. “This thing is as heavy as a person.” He stared at the red wool dangling from the poppet’s head. “Ugh, it’s also creepy.”
He had that right. The thing was hideous – wrapped like a mummy in white straw and gauze bandages. Black button eyes had been sewn onto its face, two white buttons marked its nose, and a gash of crooked red stitches formed its mouth. Long strands of thick, red yarn poked through the doll’s scalp to make a head of hair.
“A little help here,” said Clive.
I grabbed the wagon from Clive and steadied it while he and Mitch lowered the poppet. Jasper pulled its legs out and tried to shove it into a sitting position. “Why is it so heavy?”
“I’ve enchanted it to weigh about the same as a person,” said Sookie. “Otherwise the fairies might suspect something when we switch the poppet for Lea.”
“Oomph.” I grunted as I helped Jasper tug the doll into a sitting position. “Couldn’t you have waited until we got the poppet all set up before making it so heavy?”
Sookie shrugged her shoulders. “I never thought of that.”
Jasper and I yanked the doll forward. Mia and Amarjeet propped up the poppet by wedging a small chair behind it. Then as a finishing touch, I pushed the poppet’s head down and scooped the red wool hair over its face to resemble how Lea had looked in the mirror.
“They’ll never believe this thing is Lea.” Mitch shook his head.
“You’re right,” Sookie said. “It needs one last touch.” She ran back into the kitchen and emerged carrying a ridiculous object. I had to bite back laughter because silly or not, it didn’t pay to anger a witch.
Sookie had collapsed cardboard boxes of Frosty Oats and taped them into an enormous book cover. She’d stuffed pages and pages of newspaper between the cover. Written in glitter pen with scrawling third grade lettering was the word Grimoire with a line crossed out of a misspelled letter.
“Maybe it needs another last touch,” I suggested.
Sookie ignored me and simply said, “Help me shove this under the poppet.”
Clive and Mitch hoisted the poppet while Jasper pushed the book underneath.
“Even if you were completely nearsighted you’d never think this was an actual person,” said Mia. Her eyes darted to Sookie and she nervously added, “No offense.”
Sookie drew herself up and adjusted her floppy witch’s hat. She lifted her arms and waved them in the air. Her voice deepened and she began singing an eerie tune. Suddenly it was as if all the shadows of the darkening day gathered in one spot, and we were all plunged into a gloom. Sookie wove strange words into a spine-tingling chant.
A flash of witch green light lit the wagon as if it had been struck by lightning. We all jumped b
ack.
“O … M … G,” rasped Mia.
Sitting in the wagon, slumped over the Grimoire, was the spitting image of our friend Lea.
CHAPTER 10 A Treacherous Exchange
A bitter wind whistled down from the forested hill and wound around Sookie’s yard, making her creepy plants tremble in anticipation. We stood around staring at the poppet doll in the wagon – the witch’s doll that Sookie had cast a spell over to make it appear the spitting image of Lea.
“Now we have another problem,” said Mitch. “Won’t the fairies think we’ve already rescued Lea and stop us as we walk through the carnival gate?” Mitch stared doubtfully at the wagon.
“I’ve already thought of that,” Sookie sneered dismissively. “Go get the others, Skeeter.”
Skeeter ran back into the house.
“Do you have to do everything she tells you?” Clive called after him. But it was half-hearted. Clive was beginning to realize he didn’t win many arguments with his brother when the subject was Sookie.
I thought Clive didn’t have it so bad. Imagine trying to win an argument with Sookie herself. Or, as that worrisome voice in my head whispered, try pulling something over her eyes so you can boss her around. This is exactly what I planned to do.
Skeeter came out with an armful of other poppets. He dumped them into the wagon, but there weren’t enough of them to cover up the Lea doll.
Mia tossed her sweater on top of the red-haired poppet, and we rearranged the other dolls around it again. Definitely a strange sight, but it wouldn’t appear any odder than when Skeeter had left the carnival with his wagon full of poppets.
“Wait,” I said as we got ready to roll. “How will we know which tent holds Lea? We can’t exactly ask where she’s being held captive or burst into every tent and do a search.”
“Remember what Lea said the day we met up with her on the hill?” Jasper repeated her words: “… it is you who will have to find me. And it won’t be your eyes that will see.”
“Did you figure out what that meant?” I scratched my head but that didn’t unlock any good ideas.
Jasper fiddled with his glasses. Okay, that meant he was stumped.
Amarjeet’s eyes darted from the wagon to the direction of the carnival. The tinny music from the calliope echoed in the distance, and the sun turned into a crimson globe and began sinking on the horizon. “We’d better hurry. What should we do?”
Nothing was coming to mind except a growing sense of dread. “What about you, Sookie? Could you detect her?” I recalled the way Sookie had sniffed the air for traces of magic.
“As soon as I set foot near that carnival, Fairy will set up extra guards over Lea and the Grimoire,” said my sister.
Very reassuring, I thought.
“Guess we have to hope something comes to you,” Clive said to me with more than a hint of impatience.
“Feel free to contribute your own ideas,” I shot him a pointed look.
He grabbed the wagon handle. “Let’s just go.”
That was like Clive all right – when in doubt, barrel on through. I shrugged my shoulders and followed. After all, twilight was upon us …
***
We made an odd looking troop as we marched down to the river dragging the poppets, but the town was still deserted and we arrived at the carnival gate without any problems. It looked stranger in the dusk – if that was possible. We entered the carnival again. There were fewer carnival goers milling about, and I wondered if they also had a keener sense of its danger at dusk. The carnie with the big nose and old cap simply waved us by, but I could feel his eyes bore into me from behind, and it felt as if a spider traced a path across my shoulders.
Beneath the shadowy tents, colored lanterns winked in different shades of phosphorescent blues, yellows, and greens. It was as if the lanterns were lit by fireflies. If people stood too close, the eerie glow painted their faces in an unsettling ghostly light. My imagination was working overtime, and it took a moment to realize that the vague warning bell screeching in the distance was clanging inside my skull.
“Where should we start?” asked Mia.
“In the mirror, the tent was purple,” I said. “That should cut down our search.”
“Are you sure, Cat?” Amarjeet swept her arm over the carnival ground.
“Point taken,” I sighed. None of the tents were all purple. Some had purple stripes but they also had green stripes or red or yellow, and some were orange or brown, but there was no purely purple tent. We wandered aimlessly through the twisting paths between the tents and booths.
“Get a load of that,” said Clive pointing to a red and purple striped tent. Under the open canopy, trumpets, trombones and clarinets played a scratchy tune like a song on an old-fashioned record player or radio. The music reminded me of the old days, and then I realized that was the kind of music that played in the background of the DVDs Mr. Morrows showed us in history class. I remembered practically nothing about those movies. Too bad the music was never a test question. But that wasn’t what Clive was pointing at.
The dance floor was crowded and straw was strewn over the wood floor. Personally I thought it looked like a total fire hazard with bales of hay everywhere and the straw strewn across the ground. A lot of people were in costumes – some girls in long dresses and bonnets, guys in overalls, and some people dressed in clothes like in those old World War Two movies. That still wasn’t what Clive was pointing at.
Zach and Emily were dancing arm and arm. “Is that the foxtrot?” I asked, incredulous. I remembered some of the dance steps our teachers had taught us that one horrible month when we were forced to endure dance lessons to learn team building. I couldn’t imagine Zach ever willingly dancing like that again.
“They’ve been here all day,” said Jasper.
Something just wasn’t right. “Zach,” I called. As if he were a million miles away, Zach slowly turned his head and it took several long seconds before his eyes flashed recognition.
He dropped Emily’s arm and came over. “Oh, hi, Cat, want to join us? The music really gets your feet moving.”
Clive stepped between us. “We’ve got a lot more important things to do.”
Funny, when I had finally figured out I liked Clive, that’s when he decided we wouldn’t work out. But now it seemed like he was still acting jealous of Zach? Not that there was any time to waste wondering about boys liking me.
“We could use more people if you two are interested,” I said to Zach.
“Another song has started,” Emily called to him.
Zach shrugged his shoulders and turned away from us. “Sorry, maybe later. I love this dancing.” Then he rejoined Emily for a waltz.
Jasper put his hand on my arm. “We’ll have to figure out what’s wrong with them later.”
He was right. Once more we took our wagon and started scouting between the tents, weaving between games, souvenir booths, and rides.
Ouch! It was as if an electric shock had brushed my leg. I looked down. My feather was glowing red hot. “Jasper, I think …”
Jasper cut me off. “I feel it too. And Lea was right. It’s not our eyes that see.”
Of course! Our feathers made excellent fairy detectors. I grabbed the feather and let it dangle on my chain. It spun and the feathery tip lifted as if caught in a wind and pointed to a purple and green tent a few feet away. “Lea’s in there,” I said without a doubt.
“We should sneak around back,” Mitch suggested.
“Or maybe we need a distraction,” said Clive.
“Right, a decoy.” I looked at my friends. “Any ideas?”
“Just leave it to us,” said Mia.
Mia took Mitch and they strode back onto the main path and stood in front of a booth kitty-corner to Lea’s tent. Those nasty porcelain faced dolls and old-fashioned toys cluttered the shelves.
“I told you I want to play more arcade games,” Mia said loudly. “Win me one of those.” She pointed to a small troll doll with a mop
of florescent orange hair.
“And I said I’m half-starved and want to go home for dinner,” shouted Mitch.
“Well, you don’t have to yell,” Mia said, yelling.
And they weren’t the only ones helping. “I’m lost,” Skeeter started howling behind them. “Help, I’m lost.”
“Could somebody direct me to the lost and found,” said Amarjeet. “This little boy is lost.”
Soon a large crowd had gathered in front of the booth where our friends had caused a commotion. They also blocked any vantage point of our tent. Jasper, Clive, and I rolled the wagon to the back. Jasper produced a scout knife and cut the cords holding the tent flap. We scrambled inside, and I held up the tent flap while Clive shoved the wagon underneath.
In the gloomy lamplight of the tent we could see Lea. She was still tied up with the silver chain, just like in the mirror, but her face showed no worry – as if she’d expected us. “We have to hurry,” she hissed, “they’ll come back any moment.”
For a second, Clive and Jasper just stared. Lea had that effect on boys. I elbowed Clive gently. “C’mon, you heard her.”
The tricky part was undoing the silver chain. At first we tried tugging it, but it didn’t budge. Then Jasper tried sawing through it, but he only bent his knife. I had seen the chain when I spotted Lea in the mirror. I should have remembered to bring tools to break the chain. I needed to plan better.
“Wait,” said Clive. “Pass me the knife.” Then he shoved the blade into the keyhole of a tiny lock. He twisted the knife and the lock sprang open.
“That was too simple,” Clive said uneasily.
“Not really,” Lea answered in her whispery voice. “Fairy would not expect anyone to dare rescue me, or even know I am captured in this world.”
I gulped. “Even so, we’d better get out of here.”
Lea jumped up and unwound the chain while we heaved and tipped the wagon, dumping its poppet and fake book. Then the three of us reached down to hoist the real Grimoire up from the ground into the empty wagon. Touching the Book of All Magic was like picking up an electric generator. I could feel it buzz and thrum beneath my hands. When Clive touched it, he dropped one end in surprise before grabbing it again. The Grimoire was cold – like picking up a frozen pie out of the freezer. In seconds I could feel my fingers grow numb and my arms started to ache. The book was heavy, but we finally wrestled it into the wagon. Then we dragged the heavy Lea doll and Sookie’s silly imitation of the magic book and set them next to the pole.
Grim Hill: Carnival of Secrets Page 6