The Curse of Greg

by Chris Rylander

  “Um, okay. You know my name?”

  “Why, do you think you’re famous or something?” she asked, but again she was nearly grinning, having fun at my expense rather than actually annoyed or offended.

  “Well, yeah, sort of,” I played along, since I had recently discovered that I was actually famous (at least among Dwarves). “As the only actual prisoner in this massive prison, it makes me one of a kind.”

  “Come on, Greg,” Lixi said dryly. “You only have an hour, so you better get walking if you want to stretch your legs out.”

  I took her advice and kept walking. Since I’d never been to Alcatraz (or the West Coast at all for that matter), I didn’t really know where to go. So basically I sort of just aimlessly wandered the exterior grounds. Taking in the sun and the view of the Bay and the fresh, briny sea breeze. I just enjoyed getting to walk around an area larger than a broom closet.

  Lixi let me relish the first part of my walk in silence, aside from the sounds of birds and waves.

  “So, Your Elven Highness the Great and Lustrous Princess Lurora,” I eventually said, turning to face her as we walked out into the prison’s old exercise yard. She laughed at me using her “full name,” but she also didn’t correct me. “How did you end up with babysitting duty anyway?”

  “What if I volunteered?” she asked.

  My cheeks grew hot and I looked away.

  “Of course I didn’t,” she added, and I instantly felt foolish for feeling even slightly flattered. “Edwin asked me as a favor. Said I was the best one because of my background with you.”

  “What does that mean?” I asked.

  “You still don’t remember, do you?” Lixi said, shaking her head. “You really can be as thickheaded as Edwin described.”

  I shook my head, feeling terrible for not having any idea what she was talking about.

  “I don’t get it, do I know you?” I asked. “I mean, I guess you look sort of familiar . . .”

  “Edwin always said you were bummed about nobody at the PEE liking you,” she said. “He said you never complained about it, that it wasn’t your style, but he knew that it bothered you. Except he always added that you could have had way more friends if you’d actually tried. Instead of assuming we all hated you, if you’d just once or twice talked to a classmate who smiled at you, or didn’t look away when you made eye contact . . . Maybe if you’d not been such a self-defeating Dwarf about it, you could have been nearly as popular as Edwin.”

  I stared at her in stunned silence. He had said those things to me in one fashion or another all the time. But surely he’d seen what had happened the few times I did try. I just wasn’t as naturally likable as Edwin—and I was fine with that. We can’t all be that charismatic; the world would be insufferable. I’d always assumed he kept saying those things to be nice and encouraging and not because he actually believed them.

  “Greg, you saw me every day for a whole school year,” Lixi finally elaborated. “I was in your sixth-grade English class at the PEE. Hot Sauce was our teacher, remember? He really disliked you and your witty comments. But I used to laugh at all of your lame jokes. I was the only one that did.”

  It hit me then.

  “Oh man,” I said. “You went by Alexis there, didn’t you?”

  Lixi smiled and framed her face with her hands sarcastically.

  “I always thought you were laughing at me,” I said. “Not at my jokes. I thought you hated me. That you thought I was just a fat, goofy nerd who tried too hard.”

  “You were all of those things,” Lixi said. “But I liked that about you. It was funny. Your heartfelt, awkward inability to even try to be cool in any way was sort of . . . well, cute. More of us felt that way than you probably realize.”

  I sighed.

  Could that really be true? Or was this a simple trick of Elven manipulation? Make someone feel liked, open them up, then move in for the kill? Lixi seemed genuine, but if she was right, then that meant that everything I’d thought had made up my whole existence at the PEE might not have been true. It would mean the entirety of my two and half years there was suddenly uncertain. It would make my memories totally unreliable.

  And she could have been right.

  My memories of the PEE very easily could be misleading. Maybe if I had framed my experiences differently back then, as someone slightly less cynical, as someone hopeful about making friends rather than as someone who was sure that everyone hated him (or at the very least thought he was a total dork), then I could have seen a different reality? The real one. Maybe I could have had a lot more friends all along?

  I’d gone into the PEE thinking like a typical Dwarf.

  Had I gone in thinking more like Edwin or my dad . . .

  “Man,” I said.

  “This is a real mind-bender for you, huh?” Lixi said with a smile somehow displaying equal parts sympathy and triumph. “I knew a lot of kids who would have liked to hang out with you and Edwin. And do the weird things you guys did. Even play chess with you. In fact, one of them tried to get a Chess Club started, hoping you guys would join.”

  “Really? I had no idea.”

  Lixi nodded. “That’s because they were too afraid to ask you directly. They thought you thought they were too . . . like, basic, or something for you guys. You two brilliant nerds. That just because you were smart enough to get into the PEE on a scholarship, it put you above them. That their accomplishments weren’t earned, but rather they were only there because of Mommy and Daddy’s money.”

  “I . . .”

  But I was speechless. Had I really come off that way at the PEE? Had a few isolated instances of getting bullied, and my own Dwarfy tendencies, really made me come off as standoffish and superior? Had my bitterness over seeing them only as spoiled rich kids blinded me from the reality of who they were as people? Edwin had always tried to include me more with his other friends. And I’d almost always declined. The few times I did go along, I bailed at the first sign of his pals laughing at me. But what if they were laughing with me the way Edwin did?

  Or, again, maybe this was just some sort of Elven mind game. Maybe I had it right all along and Lixi was using her Elven mind tricks on me? If so, they were clearly working.

  If I could be uncertain about something as simple as going to middle school, then how could I trust anything I believed anymore? I’d never doubted myself quite like this before, and it was terrifying. Because if what Lixi said about me at the PEE was completely true, then it opened up a very frightening possibility:

  What if I was wrong about everything?

  CHAPTER 31

  Never Touch a Kiwi Fruit Unless You’re Prepared to Taste a Rainbow

  The next morning, before even a glint of sunlight had filtered into the prison, a guard clanged a sword on the iron bars of my cell.

  I sat up and looked groggily toward the dark hallway. A middle-aged woman in a business suit was standing just outside my “room.”

  “Sorry to be so early,” she said. “But it was the only time I could fit into my schedule.”

  I mumbled something incoherent back—not even sure myself what I said or was trying to say.

  “So let’s make this quick, then,” she insisted, ignoring my half-asleep rambling. “I have a lot to do.”

  “Make what quick?” I managed, still trying to push away the lingering fog of a surprisingly (and rare) deep sleep.

  “Elf Lord Aldaron said you had a somewhat urgent need for me.”

  Elf Lord Aldaron? He was dead, wasn’t he? What was going on? But once I fully sat up and put my feet on the cold concrete floor, everything clicked into place. She was referring to Edwin Aldaron, not his dad, Locien.

  “Who are you?” I asked.

  The woman sighed as if she was one more dumb question away from bailing on this assignment.

  “I’m Dr. Zaleria Yelwarin,”
she said stiffly. “Chief of Internal Medicine at UCSF Health and part-time professor at Tulane University School of Medicine in the Human world. But also the Chief Alchemy Adviser to the Elf Lord.”

  For a few seconds I was at a total loss. But then I realized why Edwin had sent her. A pang of guilt stabbed my chest. Guilt and something close to relief. If Edwin had sent Dr. Yelwarin to help me figure out what was wrong with my dad, then maybe deep down he was still the same person who’d once been my best friend. And why would he do this at all if he didn’t plan on letting me go eventually? If he didn’t truly want my dad to be alive and well someday?

  “My dad has been acting funny lately,” I started. “Not funny ha-ha but funny strange. And scary.”

  She started to turn away, rolling her eyes.

  “Wait!” I said, resisting the urge to leap to my feet. “It was an Elven poison. Or the antidote did it. We don’t know what caused it or how to cure him.”

  She faced me again, cautiously.

  “And you expect me to help out a Dwarf after what you did to our former Elf Lord and his queen?”

  “Well, I mean . . .”

  I stopped and considered the complications of trying to explain the nuances of everything that had happened. But I figured that such a lengthy clarification might outlast her clearly thinning patience. So I tried a different angle instead.

  “Didn’t you take an oath of some sort?” I asked. “As a doctor? To not let anyone die if you can help them?”

  “Acting funny strange and scary doesn’t sound very life- threatening to me,” she said coldly.

  “Why would Edwin have sent you here if he didn’t want you to help me?” I asked.

  Dr. Yelwarin stared at me, her sharp blue eyes not seeming to blink. Ever. They burned like white flame and she finally nodded ever so slightly. Almost as if her neck had simply gotten tired for a second rather than it being an intentional gesture.

  “What happened to him?” she asked.

  I started explaining how he’d been poisoned and then how I’d found maybe the antidote but a bunch of other potions, too. And how our own doctor didn’t know much about Elven potions so we just gave him all of them. And now we weren’t sure which substance might have caused it, but—

  The doctor cut me off somewhere in the middle of my babbling.

  “Just tell me his exact symptoms,” she said.

  I explained what had been happening lately. The random fits of wacky advice (such as this gem: Never touch a kiwi fruit unless you’re prepared to taste a rainbow) and the hauntingly empty reveries and whatnot, expecting her to scoff at the bizarre nature of it all and then actually walk away for real this time.

  But instead she nodded.

  “Yes, I know what caused this,” she said.

  “You do?!”

  “It was a rare Elven concoction that I personally brewed for the former Elf Lord some time ago,” she said. “Though I only made a very small amount since I wasn’t even sure I could do it without full use of magical herbs and ingredients. Only he and I had any. It’s a variation of an ancient Elven Separate Earth potion called Shawara Marar Yarda. It contains a neurotoxin that seeps into various parts of the brain and remains there forever, severely altering the person’s behavior in ways identical or similar to what you’re describing with your father.”

  “Forever?” I asked, my heart crashing into a dark ocean of dread.

  “Yes,” she said. “Without treatment.”

  I kept my breath in, not wanting to get hopeful all over again for nothing. She seemed to understand this and continued quickly without prompt.

  “It is, however, theoretically curable with proper treatment. It would involve finding a few potion ingredients that haven’t been known to exist since the times of Separate Earth.”

  “What are they?”

  “They’re very rare. You won’t be able to find them,” she said. “Especially not if we undo the return of magic the way the new Elf Lord claims we will . . .”

  “Well, then, there’s certainly no harm in telling me anyway,” I argued.

  Dr. Yelwarin hesitated, but finally relented.

  “The potion requires many ingredients, most of which can still be found today,” she said. “But the three items that would be most troublesome to find, since they haven’t been seen in tens of thousands of years, are three finger-lengths of tafroogmash root, a single wing from an Asrai Fairy, and seven petals from an extinct, toxic flower called nidiocory.”

  “A Fairy wing?!”

  “They grow back,” Dr. Yelwarin said. “Besides, the Fairies banished themselves forever to bring us all these years of peace. I doubt even this New Magical Age could bring them back. I’m sorry.”

  She didn’t sound sorry, but I did think she was. At least a little bit. Nobody who wasn’t a total monster would have enjoyed telling a kid (Dwarf or not) that his dad was likely going to be messed up forever. As if to confirm this, before leaving she told me about a book I could find in most Elven libraries that contained the full recipe for the antidote.

  As she stalked away down the dark hallway, I sank back into my cot. Though there was certainly no way I’d be able to get back to sleep now. At least not without incurring more nightmares.

  It was weird: I’d finally gotten what I went to New Orleans for in the first place: finding out what exactly what was wrong with my dad and how to fix it.

  So why wasn’t I happier?

  I mean, this was what I’d risked my life (and let my friends risk theirs) over. And now I had it. But instead of relief, the pit of despair in my stomach only seemed to deepen. And it wasn’t just because she’d said it would be virtually impossible to cure him, though that was definitely also a problem. Because if Edwin succeeded and magic was vanquished once again, then the doctor was definitely right: there’d be no way to find those three elusive, enchanted ingredients.

  But that wasn’t the main reason I felt so sick inside.

  It had more to do with still not knowing if my friends were okay. Now that I had obtained what I’d been seeking all along, I finally realized that if they weren’t okay, it wasn’t worth it. I’d rather have a kooky dad forever and all my friends alive than be able to cure him and lose even one of them. That seemed so obvious now—why had I been so clouded before? Why had I been so convinced it’d be worth it just a few days ago, but now the very thought sounded horrible and selfish? What else could have possibly changed in just a few days to shift my thinking so dramatically?

  And then the answer hit me all at once:

  The Bloodletter.

  CHAPTER 32

  I Tell an Elf I’m a Dipstick

  I’m ashamed to admit that I sort of enjoyed my next four days of captivity.

  And Lixi was the main reason.

  It started the very day the doctor had come to visit me and delivered the crushing news about my dad. After she left, I basically just lay there and stared up at the ceiling trying not to cry about it all (though the Dwarves never cry rule hardly seemed to matter anymore). I did what I could to push my friends, my dad, and our future from my thoughts, and tried to focus on my breakfast, which I attempted to nibble on, mostly unsuccessfully.

  And then, just before lunch, Lixi showed up again for a daily recess.

  Her initial presence alone wasn’t enough to pull me from my funk, but after we started walking, it didn’t take long for me to start legitimately smiling. I mean, for one thing: Lixi was funny. At least, I found her funny. Our walk started out with this:

  “Greg, can I ask you something serious?” she said, after we’d gotten just a few dozen feet down the hall from my cell.

  “Um, okay?” I’d replied, my mind still on other things (aside from my dad and my friends, I now had the corrupting powers of the Bloodletter to worry about, too).

  “I mean, I hate to get all dark on you right
away this afternoon,” she said. “But it’s important I know the truth.”

  “Uhh . . .” I managed, not sure I could handle any more darkness in my head.

  “When you ate Fun Dip, were you the sort of kid who ate the sugar and threw away the Lik-a-Stix afterward?” she asked, her expression grim, as if she were asking me what I wanted my own funeral to be like. “Or were you the kid who threw away all the sugar uneaten and just ate the dipstick plain?”

  I was so caught off guard by the inanity of the question and the deadpan way she’d asked it that all I could do for a few seconds was stare at her and stammer like I had no tongue. But then I burst out laughing. Which really shocked me, because I didn’t think I was even capable of smiling in my current mood, let alone giggling like I was eight again.

  And that, I would quickly discover, was the power of Lixi.

  No matter how down or depressed I was feeling, she could find a way to get me to smile or laugh. I mean, even if my life depended on staying grumpy and frowny, Lixi could probably still get me to break in less than a minute.

  “Thanks,” I said, when I’d managed to calm down. “I needed that.”

  “Greg,” she said, still not cracking a smile. “You still haven’t answered my question.”

  I let out a final guffaw and then considered her question, ridiculous or not.

  “I guess I was a dipstick guy,” I said. “I rarely ate the sugar at all, unless it was grape. I usually just ate the stick and gave away the sugar packets. It wasn’t as sweet.”

  “That’s what I figured,” Lixi said, sounding disappointed. “I guess we can’t be friends, after all, since I’m also a Dipsticker. We’d be constantly fighting over who gets it. You know, a very famous psychiatrist once did a study on the psychology of Fun Dip. Her name was Dr. Maeve Shula and she was actually able to accurately predict psychosis and mental illness in her patients based solely on whether they were a Sugarhead or Dipsticker.”