Cold Cereal (The Cold Cereal Saga) (38 page)

Biggs ripped the door off the griffin’s cage, then shielded the twins as it hunched low, uncertain, then scrabbled out into the hall and through the cascading pink goo up the stairs, surrounded by a dazzling flock of birds. Everyone pressed close against the sides of the hall to let them pass. There was a great clatter above, then the crash of what must have been a skylight.

“Mr. Wilson has some explaining to do,” Emily said to Erno.

“He’s sick,” Erno answered. “He needs help.”

Next Biggs released the unicat and placed its lean gray body in Scott’s arms. It didn’t protest.

The toads stumped up the stairs (croaking “
LIBERTY LIBERTY LIBERTY
”), and the leopard-thing slunk out behind them.

Finally, the unicorn. It emerged from its cage, minced through the goop, and then took off at a run, its radiant body ascending effortlessly up the stairs and into the factory darkness. Scott caught his breath, and found he was standing next to his father. They shared a glance.

“It’s time to go,” said Merle. “Seriously.”

They sloshed through the Milk (which seemed to be simmering now, almost boiling, though it felt no hotter against their feet) and up the stairs. Then they followed the unicorn’s trail out the exit into the parking lot.

“That felt good,” shouted Erno. “We’ve ruined all their plans, right?”

“Don’t bet on it,” puffed Merle as he ran. “We slowed them down a little, maybe. They still have their factories in California and Europe.”

They neared the van and Biggs’s car. Harvey and Finchbriton watched them approach. The pooka called, “Did we win?”

Then the factory exploded behind them.

Everyone, even Biggs, was knocked forward. A jagged column of flame and smoke rose from the center of the factory. A rippling flood of hot air blasted through the front doors and started blistering the pink paint right off the dragon over the entrance. Steaming bits of factory
and marshmallow shapes rained down everywhere.

“Is everyone all right?” John was shouting. “Is anyone hurt?”

Everyone was fine. They got to their feet and watched the building blaze for a moment, lighting up the sky orange, like a second sun rising in the east.

“Wow,” breathed Erno.

“Yeah,” said Scott. “Wait. Why did it explode? Was that something we did?”

“Beats me,” said Merle.

One of the grain elevators toppled and pretty much smothered the fire.

“Huh.”

“Well,” Scott added finally. “What should I do with this,” he said, meaning the cat.

“Probably just stick it in the bushes somewhere.”

Scott went and stuck it in the bushes, but it followed him back.

“Okay, I guess we’re taking the cat. Should we go?”

They went.

They ended up at Merle’s place. They believed, and for good reason, considering the week they’d had, that if Goodco knew anything about Merlin living as an accountant in West Goodborough before tonight they would have broken his door down already. But they all knew they would have to leave soon. They were going to run, make plans, strike back, foil the invasion. John had actually used the phrase “save the day” more than once and didn’t even seem embarrassed about it.

Scott traipsed around the tall house, up and down stairs, just getting the feel of the place. Nearly all of the rooms and hallways were clogged with books, filing cabinets, stacks of papers. Merle’s owl-shaped supercomputer could handle a
lot
of people’s tax returns, freeing up Merle for world saving and a lot of breaking and entering.

Scott found Polly sitting at the breakfast table, alone.
Usually when he came upon her like this he’d find her whispering to her little prince, but His Tiny Highness wasn’t making an appearance today.

“Hey,” said Scott.

Polly didn’t respond right away, or even seem to recognize that he was there, so deep was she in thought. When she finally turned her head, she looked so serious, adult.

It was an unseemly sort of look for a seven-year-old.
I had a few days to get used to all this business
, thought Scott.
She got it all at once, and in the worst way possible
.

“Dad’s looking for you,” Polly told him.

“I’ll find him later. I want to email Mom first. So … what happened to you guys in the factory?”

“I don’t know. They all jumped on us as soon as we came in. Dad fought a couple of them off,” she said, and her voice rose in both pitch and volume with this last bit of news, “but there were so many. Then the pretty woman said our names, and we couldn’t move, and these two terrible but kinda polite little monsters came over and touched Dad’s face. Then the men tied us up and put us in that closet.”

Scott thought. “We didn’t untie you. How did you get loose?”

“My little prince cut us loose. With his sharp sword.”

Scott smiled, and he went to hug his sister awkwardly, where she sat. “I’m glad you’re still weird,” he told her.

She pushed him away, but when he stepped back she
was smiling. “It runs in our family I guess,” she said. “You smell like corn.”

“
You
smell like corn.” They
all
smelled like corn. Turns out, if you stand near an exploding cereal factory it just happens. “Where
is
your little prince, anyway?”

“He wanted some time to himself.”

“Uh-huh. Is that the door to the basement?”

“Yeah. Emily and Erno and Biggs and the old guy are down there.”

Scott went through the door and stepped down the creaky wooden stairs to a vast unfinished basement. The walls were concrete to his chest, brick above that, and then a hanging labyrinth of beams and pipes. Merle was sitting on a plastic milk crate, facing Erno and Emily. Erno sat in a torn and battered chair from an old card table. Emily sat on Biggs, her legs draped over his shoulders, a notepad propped atop his head. It was a nice scene, like one of them had finally gotten the father she deserved.

“I have no idea why the elves are in some separate universe now,” Merle was saying. “We all shared the same world back in Arthur’s day. I just thought they’d been hiding. Like, underground or whatever. Hey, kid,” he said when Scott approached.

“Then why did you tell Nimue all that about Arthur coming back in another world?” asked Erno.

“I just meant the future. ‘A world you can’t imagine.’
A world with cars and celebrity dance competitions and really small dogs. The future. It’s the legend of Arthur, you know, that he’s the ‘once and future king.’ He’s supposed to come back when Britain needs him most. So I got the idea of bringing him into the future with me—to slay the dragon, and maybe even lead the world against the Fay. We left Avalon together, but when I reappeared here in New Jersey a few years back, I was all alone.”

“I wonder what happened to Arthur,” said Emily. As she listened to Merle, she was writing rapid lines across and down the yellow pad of paper. As Scott watched, she filled a page and flipped it over to start on the next. Archimedes was perched on a nearby lamp and appeared to be reading over her shoulder.

“I don’t know,” sighed Merle, and he looked down at his hands. “I don’t know
what
happened to Arthur. If I … if I killed him … well. He was gonna die anyway without some twenty-first century medical attention. Mordred stabbed him pretty bad.”

“But Nimue really trapped you in a cave?” said Erno.

“Yep,” said Merle, and he actually brightened at this change of subject. “Of course, I
knew
she was going to, ’cause I’d read the books. With all her powers, I couldn’t have stopped her from doing whatever she really set her mind to, but I could make sure she put me in the exact cave where I wanted to be put.”

“How could you do that?” asked Scott, but he didn’t sit down with the rest. Instead, he circled around them, eyeing the back stairs.

“Nimue wasn’t kiddin’ when she said the Fay like a good story. They think story’s the magic of the universe or some bull. So I checked out a bunch of caves around Avalon on my own and found one that had a good back door. Then when Nimue and me are walking one day, I point out the cave entrance and tell her this tall one about two ancient lovers who got closed up inside. There was no other way out, I tell her, and the cave became their tomb. Then I say—get this—I say, ‘What a chilling apparition I see there!’ So of course she asks, ‘What apparition?’ and I say, ‘Why, I see my own fetch (that is, a specter of my own death) above the door! But what harm could possibly befall me in Avalon when the Lady of the Lake herself is my consort? Ha ha!’ And Nimue laughs, too, but I can see it in her face: she’s just found my tomb. There’s
no way
she’s gonna trap me in any hole but that one, ’cause otherwise it’d ruin the joke. You know?”

Scott excused himself and left them still talking as he ascended the back stairs. He came up through the concrete floor of an enclosed porch that overlooked the scant and weedy backyard. Mick, Harvey, and Finchbriton were sitting on a vinyl sofa in front of an old television set.

“’Lo, lad,” said Mick. Finchbriton whistled. Harvey
ficked his ears in Scott’s direction but otherwise didn’t turn away from the set. “We’ve been havin’ a long talk, the three of us.”

Scott had to take Mick’s word for it. To the casual observer it looked an awful lot like they were watching cartoons. “Everything okay?” he asked.

Mick shrugged. “It’s a lot to take in. An invasion. Saxbriton comin’. One o’ the Great Queens o’ the Fay, of the
Seelie Court
, doin’ the things she’s done.”

Scott nodded. “So … uh. Do you know what you’re going to do? Where you might go if you … go anywhere?”

“Think we need to stick together on this one,” said Mick. “An’ I still owe yeh.”

Scott shook his head. “You don’t owe me anything any—”

“I think we all of us owe one another somethin’. All the time, like. I think that might be the way t’ live,” Mick said as he turned his attention toward the start of another cartoon. “Honorable.Your da’s lookin’ for yeh, by the way.”

“I know. I’m going to send my mom an email first.”

“Shh,”
shushed Harvey. “Thith ith the one where he’th a bullfighter.”

Scott left the room and walked back to the staircase in the center of the house. At the top of the stairs he heard a sound like
whoop
. After a pause he heard it again.

Merle had shown Scott a laptop he could use. Email
had to go in and out through Archimedes for security’s sake, but at least this computer had a keyboard. Scott did not yet feel comfortable dictating personal letters to a superintelligent owl.

The laptop was in a mostly empty room in the corner of the house. So was John Doe.

“Thought I might run into you if I stayed in one place long enough,” said John.

“You have a sword,” said Scott just as John brought the blade of it down and around, slicing through the air.
Whoop
.

“Haven’t you heard? There’s this rumor going around that I might have to slay a dragon.”

Scott didn’t answer but thought privately that there must be
some
Knight Bachelor left who wasn’t an actor or a singer or some pampered billionaire.

“You know they found Sir Gordon Maris this morning, dead of a heart attack?” said John. “He was a jockey, years ago. Seventy-nine years old, no threat to anybody. I just
saw
him. And now he’s dead.”