Cold Cereal (The Cold Cereal Saga)

by Adam Rex

  “Not there?”

  “Most of it, anyway. Gone. Iceland too, and Saxony. An’ all other points north, south, east, an’ west. All gone, except for Britain an’ Ireland, Ireland an’ Britain. Let’s call the two o’ them Pretannica—the Greeks did.”

  “Pretannica,” Scott repeated. The magical world. Sounded like one of those thick fantasy books with a lot of complicated maps inside.

  “Pretannica’s there; everythin’ else’s missin’. Yeh travel too far an’ you’d find an ever-thickening fog o’ enchantment that could not be crossed. Which drove the humans nutty as conkers. Suddenly a farmer who’d never been so much as ten miles from home pined to see all the riches o’ Araby. They tried to get through the fog, they never came back.”

  “That’s scary.”

  “Sure. Can’t say I thought of it much at first, though. Ireland was my home, an’ I’d never really believed the rest o’ the world existed, anyway. I’d always lived in a bubble. It was maybe a hundred years before anyone realized the bubble was closing in.”

  “You mean getting smaller?” asked Scott. He imagined his desk globe, and half a Ping Pong ball covering the British Isles.

  “Right. The bubble was contracting. Slowly, but still. Now the Good Folk take notice. We figure it’s all the humans’ fault somehow. We remember the Battle o’ Camlann, even if they mostly don’t. Father an’ son killed one another on the battlefield, an unnatural act. Maybe this was punishment. People believed in things like that back then.”

  “You said Arthur retired. He died in battle?”

  “Well, some said he died; some said he was only badly wounded an’ taken to Avalon to rest up an’ return. I wasn’t there.”

  There were three white vans now, though thus far Scott hadn’t noticed anyone get out. He realized they must be Park Authority vans, the way they were lining up in front of the building like that.

  “So how did you fairies fix things? Make the world as it was before?”

  “We didn’t. The Good Folk aren’t much for makin’ plans. We’re a flighty bunch.” Mick sat up. “Rumors start spreadin’, though, abou’ the Fay disappearin.’ The superstitious fairies (an’ we’re all a little superstitious) revive all the old stories abou’ elves going to hell to pay a tithe to the devil, but truth is, it’s not just the Fay disappearin’. It’s all manner o’ magical creatures. They’re slippin’ away, three or four a year. Then one morning it happens to me, an’ I’m in New Jersey.”

  Afterward, when the reporters from the Goodborough Telegraph asked Mary Coleman just how her baby daughter had come to be replaced by a tiny bald Irishman, she told them that two burly kidnappers had made the switch right before her eyes. When Harper’s Weekly asked her to recount the same story three days later, it was four kidnappers with pistols and a getaway carriage. But in truth she’d only looked away from where her baby lay for a moment, and when she turned back, there was a wrinkled little man in the pram, looking every bit as surprised as Mary.

  “Dear Ann!” Mary screeched. “What’s become of you?!”

  “What?” said Fergus Ór.

  “You’re not my baby! What have you done with my baby?!”

  “I’ve nothin’ to do with your baby, lass, an’ I—”

  “Kidnapper! An Irishman! Help! Help!”

  Fergus could see where this was going. He struggled up out of the soft quilted poufs of the cradle and tumbled over the side of the carriage to the street. He was in a narrow cobblestone lane, slick with rain and lined with shops. It was day. There was true sunlight here, such like he hadn’t felt for centuries. It made him squint. Through his squint he saw people, all of them staring back at him.

  “He stole my little girl!” the woman was telling them. “He’s Irish!”

  They were approaching from all sides. Men in long coats and top hats, a barefooted boy. A peddler pushing a cart hung with knives and holding a long whetstone like a cudgel. Fergus pivoted about, looking for an alley, but there were no alleys. Then he composed himself—grabby human hands were something else he hadn’t felt for centuries, and he wouldn’t feel any today either if he kept his head. He let the glamour slide off him as he ducked to avoid the swing of a walking stick and leaped to escape the lunge of the peddler, and heard the sharp crack of the one connecting with the other. He tore off down the street, the cobblestones so punishing against his feet, and left the men and boys to discuss in high voices just what had become of him.

  Within a week the Telegraph warned that substantial numbers of hungry Irishmen might now be posing as infants, looking to be fed. It was a popular story and gave rise to the slang term “paddy wagon,” which initially referred to a baby carriage but later became synonymous with the police van. A chapbook published later that year intimated that the little man may well have been a changeling—an Old World fairy left in place of a stolen child—but of course this theory was widely regarded as hogwash.

  Fergus wended his way north to the edge of town, feeling naked without his glamour. More than once a dog, unable to see him but still haunted by apparitions of smell and sound, would whimper or bark in his direction. Once only, in a poor shantytown at the edge of the thin woods, he thought twin girls might be watching him pass; but he didn’t stop to make conversation. He walked briskly through the camp, came to a river and a bridge, checked for trolls, and came away disappointed.

  In the centuries since the Gloria (or the Morning Glory, or the Marvel—that world-changing-sphere of light and magic had inspired as many names as it had questions), the forests of Pretannica had grown tangled and primeval. So the woods here looked comparatively precious, almost cute. Like a crowd of reedy, earnest children. When Fergus realized the forest was getting no thicker, he paused to rest, and to reach out with his senses. He raised a glamour and felt about for some magic. Anything. Even before the Gloria, the air of Pretannica had always held some faint trace of magic. It infused the air like humidity—the sort of thing you’d only notice when it was suddenly gone. This forest was a desert, and Fergus began to panic.

  After half a day of walking it was sunset, and Fergus could feel that familiar light unwind him a little. He searched again for magics and sensed something slight but not so far away. A kinsman, he thought, and put on his best glamour. Enchantment was not just for the humans, after all; with his glamour, Fergus appeared a full two inches taller, and magnificently wrinkled, like a cabbage. He slid down a mossy hill toward a dying oak, its roots laid bare by erosion. And huddled beneath that rib cage of dry roots was the fairy.

  “Well met, cousin,” said Fergus before the creature lunged.

  It fell upon Fergus and pressed him to the ground, its chapped hooves grinding the dirt on either side of the old elf’s head. It had a long face like a horse. But not exactly like a horse. It had a pair of large, limp bat’s wings that dangled uselessly from its shoulders.

  “Cousin!” Fergus panted. “I meant no offense! Grant mercy on your poor Irish relation!”

  The fairy flared his nostrils and breathed a sulfurous wind that made Fergus’s eyes water. Then it withdrew and sat back on its haunches.

  “Cousin,” the fairy repeated hoarsely. Fergus scrambled back a bit on his hands and heels and stopped when his rump hit a stone.

  The fairy sat like a man, with its spindly legs crossed in front. Both hands and feet were hoofed, and horns grew like briar from its temples.

  Was it some strange kelpie? No, it wasn’t dripping anything, especially. It was a pooka, Fergus realized, though he’d never seen one so anatomically confused. Best not to mention it, he thought. “Cousin, where am I?”

  “New Jersey.”

  Fergus frowned. “There’s a new Jersey now?” He supposed there should be—the old Jersey had been swallowed five hundred years ago by the Gloria wall.

  It was an odd characteristic of the Fay that, though none of them could claim to have seen a true fairy birth, they were all nonetheless connected like a family. No one remembered back far enough to say j
ust how this had started. There was an old human’s tale that claimed the fairies had become enchanted by the notion of human families and decided to imitate them. But (the story said) they’d gotten it wrong: they made an ancient-looking boggart the son of a beautiful elf who was the very picture of youth, or perhaps a bone-eating giant was now uncle to a swarm of electric little sprites. The Fay had no comment except to note that the humans’ tales tended to flatter the humans.

  So the two fairies compared family trees and determined that they were indeed third cousins, on their mothers’ sides. It was dark when Fergus asked, “What d’yeh call yourself, friend?”

  “The Jersey Devil,” said the Jersey Devil.

  “That’s … nice,” said Fergus, forcing a smile.

  The fairy’s wings shivered and then once again lay still. “You’re in a new world. You’ve crossed an ocean and something far greater than an ocean to get here. You’re just arrived?”

  “This morning’,” Fergus answered. “Blimey, I’m one o’ the disappeared now, amn’t I?”

  The Jersey Devil stood up on its hind legs and, with visible strain, spread its rank wings. Fergus could see moonlight through the skin. “Run as far as you can from this place. There is a … grain mill nearby. They trap our kind. They take our magic, I know not why. I escaped, but I am drained, and my glamour is addled.”

  “It’ll be restored, friend,” Fergus whispered. “Yeh need only live honorably—”

  “It does not come back, here.”

  The pooka was still standing, still spreading its wings, though it trembled with the effort.

  “This earth does not love us. Run, or out of kindness I will kill you myself and drink your blood, and with stolen glamour I will set upon the men of the grain mill and make their hearts to brast. Run or perish!” hissed the Jersey Devil.

  “So I ran,” said Mick. “Holed up in Washington during the war. Ran some more after Lincoln died. Tried to stow away to Ireland, an’ that’s when they caught me. The first time.”

  Mick heaved a great sigh.

  “I think it’s like…,” he added, then faltered. “Like the whole universe got cracked. Like an egg with two yolks. An’ the yolks, the worlds inside, they got split apart, an’ this yolk’s a lot bigger than the other.” Mick chewed on his lip. “It’s not one o’ my better metaphors.”

  Scott didn’t know what to say, so they were quiet a minute.

  “Maybe the buses don’t run this late,” he spoke finally, and stood up to examine the sign beside the bench. That’s when he saw them: eleven white vans in the parking lot, two blocks away, and a twelfth just pulling up. “Um.”

  Mick looked up. But he was short, and there was a hedge. “What is it?” he whispered. “I can’t see.”

  In a rapid drill of clunking doors and pattering feet, seventy men emerged with rifles and black jumpsuits and glinting eyes. Among them was a small detachment of men in pink rubber suits carrying what looked like an aluminum crate between them. And two more men not dressed like the others.

  “Haskoll and Papa,” Scott whispered. He had never felt so sure of anything.

  Mick was standing atop the bench. “Maybe they don’ know exactly where they’re goin’,” he said. “Maybe we can get to the tree first.”

  Papa was giving the assembly some orders, but he was interrupted by Haskoll. Scott couldn’t make out any of it.

  Five of the men mounted four-wheel ATVs. The rest saluted Haskoll. Then they all trooped off around the Park Authority building, and Scott and Mick sprinted back into the trees.

  CHAPTER 25

  Here are some of the things that lined up in Erno’s favor tonight:

  • He learned that Emily is a very sound sleeper on evenings when she’s been magically spazzy.

  • Even if you trip over her.

  • He found that Biggs is a very sound sleeper too and will not wake if you

  - bang your knee into the coffee table

  - trip over Emily again

  - drop a tube full of your foster father’s notes onto the kitchen tile

  - and noisily pull back a dinette chair so you can sit down and read them.

  E1 and E2. E1 and E2. Were they chemicals? No, not chemicals. But they were mentioned all throughout the notes, on every page.

  E1 shows increasing signs of agoraphobia and anxiety disorder.

  Later,

  E2 exhibits normal socialization skills and no verifiable neuroses.

  Too many of the words were unfamiliar. Erno couldn’t tell if E1 and E2 were people or lab rabbits. Or rabbit-people.

  Then his eyes strayed over a highlighted paragraph:

  In short, E2 is, in many respects, an average and acceptably adjusted boy.

  Boy, thought Erno.

  He is outgoing, athletic, and inquisitive. E2 consistently tests among the 99th percentile nationally and has an IQ of 135 (with a two-point margin of error). He would seem gifted in any company other than E1. Her IQ, as previously stated, is too high to be measured in any conventional sense.

  “Oh,” Erno whispered. “E1 and E2. Emily and Erno.”

  Despite both children’s intelligence, however, neither seems to suspect, much less understand, that they are not actually siblings. Regarding E1 in particular, we must infer that she’s constructed strong walls in her mind to protect herself from knowledge she does not wish to possess.

  “Jeez.” Erno sighed. “Give me some credit. I know we’re not brother and sister.”

  He read on, occasionally pausing to read and reread the same sentence, trying to spin meaning from some of the longer, tangled words. What he gathered, though, was that there seemed to be something seriously wrong with Emily. She was smart, of course, wickedly smart, but the notes suggested that the Milk-7 was hurting her too. Poisoning her mind. That was what he thought it said, anyway. Maybe it was why she cried all the time. One thing seemed clear: Emily thought she’d been taking it to stop her dizzy spells, but the Milk was probably giving her the spells in the first place. There was a whole paper about it.

  Erno began to tremble with anger. Mr. Wilson had done this. To his own foster daughter he had done this. Erno flipped carelessly through the notes, treating them roughly, thinking about what he’d do and say if Mr. Wilson were there.

  He stopped at a strange page. The handwriting was different, looser. He checked it against the other pages. No, he thought, it’s Mr. Wilson’s writing. There was the same funny letter g. But this new page was more relaxed, like he was writing a diary rather than a book report. It said:

  October 19—I’m forty today. That also means I’ve been taking the Milk for ten years.

  Erno frowned and whispered, “He was taking it, too?”

  There was even an unfinished verse in the margins, possibly the clue to some new game he’d been devising.

  There’s a sort of sorting shorthand

  both for magic beast and fairy.

  All the sly land on the island,

  all the dumb land in the

  “Gary,” suggested a voice. Erno flinched. “Interethting reading?” added Harvey, who was leaning over his shoulder.

  Erno rolled up the notes. “You can’t sleep, either?”

  “I take little napth through the day. Are there uthually tho many people in the park at night?”

  “What do you mean? What people?”

  “I heard voiceth.”

  Erno couldn’t hear anything. He swung his legs around and walked past Harvey to the tree house periscope. He pressed his eyes up to the eyepieces: two cold rings against his face. Outside, the night sky was bleeding light.

  “Are those flares?” Erno whispered.

  “Which way?” called Scott. He and Mick had found the tree before by accident, and things weren’t quite coming together this time.

  “This way! This way!” answered the little man.

  Above them, flares flickered and fell like slow stars. The air buzzed with the roar of ATVs. The roar grew louder, and Scott and Mick
dived into a clump of ferns just before an ATV rider with a big helmet-mounted lamp thundered by in a blaze of light.

  “This is too dangerous for you,” Scott hissed. “You should get in the backpack.”

  “Nah. That’d just slow us down.”

  They emerged and took off running again.

  “What we need is one o’ them motor-bikes,” Mick said in a plainly hyphenated fashion.

  “I’ve asked for something like that every year for three Christmases.”

  “Good luck. I can’t even get Kris Kringle to pay back the twenty quid he owes me.”

  Scott ran for another few beats. “You’re friends with Santa Claus?”

  “Former friends. Next time he’s in jail he can find someone else to bail him out.”

  The sound of another ATV grew closer. Mick grabbed Scott’s sleeve and brought him to a stop. “Hold up,” he said. “Christmas’s come early this year.”

  When this second ATV rider rounded a copse of trees, he saw, in the pink of his helmet-mounted arc light, a squinting old man with a tiny head. He screeched to a halt and peered through the pink lenses of his big black goggles.

  “You!” he barked as he dismounted. “Stay there! Keep those hands where I can see them!”

  The normal-sized man with the tiny wrinkled head raised his arms. “These hands?” he asked.

  The rider was all in black, with some kind of thick and undoubtedly bulletproof vest and an oily black gun slung over his shoulder. He reached back to touch this gun as if drawing some shallow sense of strength and security from it, which of course he was. He also had a small stone around his neck on a tether, a coldstone, and this was busily giving off purple sparks. But in the glare of his headlamp, the rider hadn’t noticed.