by Henry Clark
“Last Sunday. I made thirty-eight cents, including a Mercury dime.”
“Did you hear any rattling from the safe, like money was trying to get out?”
Modesty’s outstretched arm drooped a bit.
“I didn’t recite the spell in the kitchen; Fidelity was in here making croutons. She wouldn’t have heard anything over the sound of the blender.”
“Twelve thirty-four,” Drew announced.
Modesty raised her arm and thumbed her phone.
Blippity-blippity-blip.
We stared at the safe. I expected the dial to start turning, going through the long-lost numbers of the combination, and then the door to pop open.
It didn’t.
The dial didn’t turn; the door didn’t budge.
Modesty checked the screen of her phone, frowned, then extended her arm again, her thumb poised to play the Magic Bite once more.
From behind us came the sound of two glass bottles clinking together, followed by a soft mechanical hum.
Drew and I straightened out of our crouches. Modesty dropped her arm, and her shoulders sagged. The three of us turned slowly, knowing full well what we were going to see.
We had used a magic spell to open the door to the refrigerator.
“Is that carrot cake?” Drew asked.
“Turnip cake,” Modesty muttered, then raised her voice. “What good are these spells? What’s the point of changing the color of a room if you can’t pick the color? What’s the point of a spell that opens a door if you can’t specify which door—”
A hurricane wind blew out of the fridge. The icy blast was strong enough to push the three of us back against the counter. Grimalkin’s fur stood on end, and the cat shot out of the room. All three of us gasped.
The turnip cake had vanished. The glass shelves, and everything on them, had vanished. The inside of the refrigerator was suddenly lined with blocks of stone. It looked identical to what I thought I’d seen inside the portable toilet in the corn maze the previous day.
And surrounded by the stone walls, a figure wrapped tightly in a snow-covered gray cloak teetered, then pitched forward and sprawled on the floor at our feet.
CHAPTER 10
PREFFY ARROWSHOT
Nobody moved. The figure on the floor lay facedown, blanketed under the hooded cloak. Suddenly an ice-cold hand shot out from a baggy sleeve and clutched my ankle.
I yelped, and the figure rolled over, the face framed by the hood. I expected the old guy we had seen in the maze, but this was a boy’s face. His lips were blue, and frost dusted his cheeks. Two dark-brown eyes stared briefly at the ceiling, then closed, and the hand on my ankle lost its grip.
Modesty threw herself to her knees and lifted the stranger’s head. A boy falling out of her fridge didn’t seem to faze her. I made an effort to be just as cool as she was.
“That’s a—It’s a—Wh-wh-what?” I stammered, pretty much blowing cool right off the bat. Drew had climbed up on the counter, as if the floor might be covered in snakes, so he wasn’t doing any better.
Modesty pressed a hand to one side of the stranger’s face.
“Freezing,” she said. “Quick. Second shelf, yellow bowl—zap it!” She gestured at the fridge. The shelves had returned, along with everything that had been on them. I recovered myself enough to step over the body and get the bowl. Drew dropped down beside me and popped open the microwave. The bowl sloshed as I put it in, so I decided it was soup. I loosened the plastic cover and punched in three minutes on High.
“Help me get him out on the porch.”
Modesty lifted shoulders, Drew grabbed feet, and I caught the droop in the middle. Together we maneuvered the body out of the kitchen, down the hall, and into the warm sunlight that was flooding the front of the house.
We put him on the porch swing, and while Modesty chafed his hands, Drew and I pulled off snow-dampened moccasins and tried rubbing some life back into a pair of frozen feet.
The microwave beeped.
“Sit him up.” Modesty twisted the stranger around on the swing, then ran into the house. The stranger’s eyes fluttered open but didn’t focus.
“I shouldn’t have skipped breakfast,” he mumbled.
“It is the most important meal of the day,” Drew agreed.
“I gave my porridge to Master Index.” The stranger looked imploringly at Drew.
“Of course you did.” Drew nodded approvingly.
“There’s something… I have to… do…” He squinted, as if trying to remember.
Modesty returned, bearing the bowl.
“This is chicken soup,” she said, holding it to his lips. “My sister Fidelity made it, so there may be a little too much peanut butter in it. But it will warm you up.”
The stranger took a sip, then another, then reached up with two trembling hands, grasped the bowl, and gulped down the steaming liquid. Modesty took the empty bowl, and we watched as the boy’s shoulders straightened and his eyes went wide.
“You didn’t close the door, did you?” He grabbed Modesty by her elbows and looked at her imploringly.
“Wh-what? The refrigerator door?” Modesty stuttered. “I kicked it out of my way when I was leaving the kitchen—I’m not sure whether it closed or not.”
Our visitor jumped up and stumbled through the door to the house. He stopped in the hall, not knowing which way to go. We crowded in behind him.
“Where?” he shouted, his restored strength a good advertisement for peanut-butter-chicken soup.
Modesty darted past and led the way to the kitchen. The refrigerator door had stopped an inch shy of closing. The stranger flung it open, and two water bottles flew from the door rack and went skittering across the floor.
He turned to us and pulled the cloak’s hood away from his head. The skin of his face was no longer frosty. Its normal color appeared to be… green. A pale green, not sickly and only noticeable when the light hit it just right, but green, no argument about it. He was shorter than Drew, thinner than me, and his cheeks were a little sunken, as if he had been missing meals. Curly hair was gathered in a frizzy ponytail.
He reached into the fridge, his arm passing through a jar of mayonnaise and vanishing.
“Good! It’s still open. If the connection had been broken, we’d never get back.”
“We?” asked Drew.
“Who are you?” demanded Modesty.
“Third apprentice librarian, second class, Preffy Arrowshot. Preffy is short for Preface, which I don’t really like—it sounds so formal. You could also call me ‘Pre.’ And you are?”
“Uh… first-class swim team captain and, uh, friend to animals Modesty Brooker. Don’t call me ‘Mod’—I hate that.”
“Cal Sapling,” I said.
“Drew Higgins.”
“You have my notebook!” Preffy lunged at the loose-leaf binder lying open on the countertop, snapped it shut, and hugged it to himself. “Of course you’d have to have it; otherwise, I wouldn’t be here. You must have figured out the door-opening spell—it has to be incanted from both sides of the door; otherwise, the door won’t open. Oh!”
Pre froze with an expression of horror on his face. The notebook slipped from his hands and hit the floor.
“I am such a coward!” he wailed. “Master Index told me to hide, but I should have stayed with him! Instead, I went out on the seventh-floor balcony, in the wind and the snow, and I didn’t think they were there to arrest him, but he thought they might be, and they might be after me, too. I was growing numb; I found myself incanting the door-opening spell to stay awake—I’ve incanted it at least twenty times a day, ever since I put the notebook in the gniche—but I must have fainted. The next thing I knew, you were pouring that strange fluid down my throat. Was that something scientifical?”
“My sister’s s-soup?” Modesty sputtered. “Scientifical? It’s barely edible.”
“Master Index hasn’t come looking for me. Maybe they did take him away. But how could they arrest somebody
just for writing letters to a newspaper? They weren’t even his letters. They were mine, but he signed them. How could I have been so spineless?”
“We’re not following a word of this,” I informed him.
“Sorry. Sorry.” He snatched up the notebook from the floor and returned it to the counter. “I have to go back. But they may still be in the tower, so we’ll have to be ready to defend ourselves.”
“Who is this they you’re talking about?” I asked.
“The Quieters.” In reply to my puzzled scowl, he added, “What you would call, I think, police?”
“So,” said Drew, “on the other side of the refrigerator, there’s a place where the police arrest people… for writing letters to newspapers?”
Pre nodded a little too quickly.
“The letters were highly critical of the Weegee Board,” he added, as if this would clarify things.
“The Ouija board… hasn’t been contacting the right type of ghosts lately?” I said, feeling it made about as much sense as anything else he was babbling.
“The Weegee Board is our governing council. Named after Regina Weegee, who started it in the seventh year of the reign of Panacea Irksome. Seven hundred years ago. Lately, the board’s been a bit touchy when it comes to criticism.” He snatched a blender from the counter near the stove. “Is this a weapon?”
“Only if you hit someone over the head with it,” said Modesty.
“Does it possess scientifical powers?” Pre held the blender between himself and the overhead light. He peered up at it quizzically.
“It, uh, whizzes around,” Modesty answered.
“It whizzes around!” Pre hastily put the blender back. He looked at his hands as though they might be contaminated. “That won’t do—I need something more controllable. What about this? Is this a weapon?”
He snatched a spray can from a shelf near the ironing board. The label had lightning bolts on it and the words:
CLING-BE-GONE
ANTISTATIC
“No,” Modesty snapped, grabbing the can. “This-prevents-a-black-sock-from-sticking-to-the-seat-of-your-pants-without-you-knowing-it-and-causing-kids-at-school-you-thought-were-your-friends-to-not-tell-you-about-it-while-they’re-laughing-at-you-behind-your-back-and-posting-pictures-that-make-it-look-like-you-had-an-accident. Leave it alone.” She jammed the can into one of the pockets of her smock. Drew and I looked at each other and blinked.
“Accident? What kind of accident?” asked Pre, foolishly trying to make sense of Too Much Information.
“We don’t talk about it,” muttered Modesty.
“There must be something here that will help.” Pre sounded desperate. “But—maybe just yourselves will be enough. You have to come with me. I’ll feel so much braver if you do. You must be very clever scientists to have figured out how to open the door. If they’ve taken away Master Index, that means I’m alone in the tower, and I can’t do this on my own. You should put on warmer clothing. Where are my shoes?”
“They’re soaking wet,” I said. “They’re out on the porch, drying in the sun. Why don’t we all sit down and discuss this?”
“There’s no time! I have a dragon to feed! May I have these?” He jammed his feet into a pair of fuzzy pink bedroom slippers that were below the ironing board.
“Those belong to Serene,” said Modesty. “If you take them, she’ll hunt you down, and you won’t be able to walk again for a week.” When Pre looked alarmed, she added, “Go ahead. It’s fine.”
Pre snugged the backs of the slippers over his heels, then flipped up his hood.
“Are you coming?” he asked.
“Did you say… dragon?” inquired Drew.
“Dragon, yes. One of the only two surviving, and we have only twenty-eight days of dragon food remaining, so you can see how serious this is. We lose either dragon, it will be the end of life as we know it in Congroo. A world is hanging in the balance.”
“Congroo,” I said.
“Yes. Have you heard of it?”
“As a matter of fact, I have.” I was pleased to be on top of things for once. “The first seven rulers of Congroo were, uh, Roy, Orion, Yo-yo… uh, Green, B-something, Irksome, and Veranda. Irksome had Seven Insights, and Veranda did something with dead dragons.”
“Viridis,” Pre corrected me. “She found a way to resuscitate dead dragons. But you have to be quick about it. How do you know this?”
“A woman named Delleps told me. Delleps is spelled backward.”
Pre looked stunned. I assumed it wasn’t because he hadn’t known Delleps was spelled backward.
“Delleps is the greatest of all our oracles,” he said, a touch of awe in his voice. “She is also the most eccentric and most difficult to get in touch with. Her crystal is booked up for decades in advance. How were you able to consult with her?”
“The Congroo Help Line. I didn’t find it very helpful.”
“If Delleps used the Help Line to contact you three,” said Pre, “then you are, without a doubt, vital to the survival of Congroo. That means I’ve found the right people. We should get going.”
“Wait!” Modesty caught him by his robe as he took a step toward the fridge. “Did you say… you have a species on the brink of extinction?”
“More than one, actually.”
“What’s dying out other than the dragons?”
“First the dragons, then the rest of us. Everything’s connected.”
Modesty’s head snapped up at the words everything’s connected. She looked from Drew to me. “Okay, then. We’re in. We’re coming with you.”
“You gotta be kidding,” I informed her.
“You have something better planned?”
“Uh, no, but—”
“Then, it’s settled. Let’s get some coats.”
Modesty spun on her heel and left the kitchen. Drew and I exchanged looks and followed her into the entrance hall, where she pulled open a closet and began rummaging. Preffy came up behind us.
Modesty thrust a light-blue winter coat at Drew and threw a scarf and a wool hat at him. She started to hand a large red plaid jacket to me but began a tug-of-war when I tried to take it.
“This used to belong to my dad,” she said. “Don’t do anything to mess it up.” She released the jacket, and I shrugged into it as respectfully as I could. I caught my breath when I realized that by doing so, I was agreeing to jump into a refrigerator with her. It seemed completely insane, but then I also realized I had been preparing myself for completely insane stuff from the moment I had seen the first moving coin in Onderdonk Grove.
She handed me mittens, and I stuffed them into the jacket’s pockets; then she pulled an annoyingly long stocking cap—it had a pom-pom—down over my ears.
The hat she’d given to Drew turned out to be the shape of a cooked turkey, a woolly drumstick on either side pointing skyward like Viking horns.
“This is a joke, right?” he asked.
“My sister Joy wears it every Thanksgiving. You’d think it would make her smile, but nothing ever does.”
Modesty shrugged into her own bright-green coat, then bent down and fished a pair of fur-lined boots from the back of the closet and handed them to Pre.
“Put these on,” she commanded. “You don’t want Serene as an enemy.”
Pre kicked off the pink slippers, sat down on the floor, and pulled on the boots.
“Something’s wrong,” he said after a moment. “These boots are loose, and I just envisioned the final three syllables of the To Alter Clothes to Fit spell, and they didn’t adjust to my feet.”
“That’s because magic only works here for five minutes each day, and this isn’t one of them,” I explained, amazed by how quickly the explanation had come out of my mouth—and how normal it felt. “The next Magic Minute won’t be for another twelve hours or so. Are you telling me it only takes three syllables of a spell to make it work?”
“Only if you’ve said all the other words and syllables of the spell completel
y at an earlier time. Everyone in Congroo has a few of the more useful spells prepared in advance, with only the final three or four syllables left unsaid. You never know when you might need a spell in a hurry.” Pre got to his feet. “These are only a little loose anyway. Are we ready?”
“Are you trying to tell me,” said Modesty, “there’s a spell called To Alter Clothes to Fit?”
“It’s one of the first ones we’re taught,” said Pre, stepping past her and heading for the kitchen. “We find it fairly useful.”
“Fairly useful?” Modesty grinned. “It’s a game changer! Can you teach me that one later?” She fell in behind him.
We arrived back in the kitchen. Drew adjusted his turkey hat in the black glass reflection of the microwave and turned away from it, frowning.
“I can do this, now that I have the three of you,” Pre said gratefully. “Promise me you’ll follow?”
“The boys and I wouldn’t miss it,” Modesty assured him, giving each of “the boys” a look that dared us to contradict her.
“Okay. Good. Here I go.” He set his jaw, strode forward, and vanished into shelves filled with almond milk, avocados, and string cheese.
“Are we really just going to plunge in after this guy?” I asked. The harvester fire had taught me caution. Or I thought it had.
“He asked for our help,” Modesty said indignantly. “We opened the door for him using magic. In a way, we started this. We have a responsibility. Plus, we just promised him.”
“I have to be back at the farm stand by three,” I said.
“I’m sure that won’t be a problem.” Modesty whisked a chair away from the wall and jammed it under the dairy shelf on the inside of the door to prop it open. “Besides,” she continued, “he says it’s dragon-feeding time. You’ll kick yourself later if you pass up your one opportunity to see that.”
“What if it turns out,” said Drew, “we’re the dragon food?”
“That’s a chance I’m willing to take,” Modesty snapped. “My dad would have. If I can help save an endangered species, I’ll be doing something he’d be proud of.”
With that, she threw herself at the fridge and disappeared the same way Preffy had.