Green (18 page)

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became useless instantly. Golden lassoes flew over my head, pulling me down by my neck.

"Balthazar!" I screamed, but he couldn't hear me anymore, not under the spell of Scarlet binding gold.

"I'll come collect you personally the instant your time is up," he promised. "You won't wait an extra minute."

"I don't want you to collect me! I want to go home
now!"
I crashed to the floor. Scarlets swarmed around me, making their knots tighter.

Balthazar stood beside my head, gazing down with true sympathy. "I'm sorry, Lil. I did my best. If it's any consolation, one day you won't remember any o' this."

Because they're going to erase my memory!
I realized. No way were the Greens waiting five years for their new keeper. I began screaming at the top of my lungs. I wasn't just going to jail and losing every memory of Gigi; I was losing five years of my life! I would "wake up" one day like a coma patient and discover I'd completely missed high school and my sweet sixteen and prom and every normal thing about being a teenager--and I wouldn't even remember why!

"You can't do this to me!" But I was no match for so many Scarlets. They picked me up like a rolled carpet and marched me out through the crowd.

Just before the doorway, I found myself looking up at

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Kylie. I could guess why he'd done it: no one would ever say boys couldn't be good keepers again. Making it look as if he'd caught me at my own plan made him seem even more clever. But he'd never thought too deeply about what would happen to me--I could read that in his eyes. For a moment, I thought I saw remorse there too.

Then his gaze flicked away.

"Kylie!" I screamed. "Don't let them do this!"

The last thing I saw in that hall was Kylie turning his back on me, abandoning me to my sentence.

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Chapter 15

Things went kind of black after that, what with the panic and screaming and all. The next thing I remember is a long blur of branches overhead, then hitting the dirt on my back.

"Get the door," Tully's voice ordered.

My head crunched through fallen leaves as I looked side to side for a building. We were out in the middle of the woods somewhere, not a thing around us but trees, dirt, and boulders the size of minivans.

Hinges squealed.

"Hoist her up and in she goes!"

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Hands pushed me back into the air. I saw the short, squeaky door as I was carried past it--a six-inch-thick slab of wood reinforced with iron bars. Daylight gave way to dim shadows. There was stone overhead, stone all around. I hit the ground again, harder. There was stone beneath me too.

"Good enough," a rough voice said. "Lively now, lads."

I felt tugging on the binding gold around my legs and neck. "Crying shame to turn this over to that maggot o' an ambassador," someone said.

"Aye, but what can we do? Council's ruled in the maggot's favor," Tully replied disgustedly.

Hinges squealed and the door slammed. I lay motionless another minute before I realized I'd been untied and all the leprechauns had gone. I was free--free inside a smaller, drearier, even more escape-proof cell than I'd been held in before.

My prison seemed to be a huge, hollowed-out boulder. Chisel marks pocked the curved walls and ceiling, making a rounded space the size of my bathroom at home, only with a lower ceiling. Near the center, I could stand up straight; everywhere else I had to stoop. A ledge along the wall held a moldy mattress. There were two buckets against the opposite wall, one filled with water and an empty one the purpose of which I didn't want to think about.

The only way in or out was through the battering-ram-proof

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timber door. The single other opening was a hole eighteen inches square, crisscrossed with so many bars I could barely reach my hand out. The stone through which that window had been cut formed a foot-wide ledge in front of the grate. Resting my chin there, I tried to see where I was, but there was nothing I recognized outside, just rocks and trees and a pond so small it looked more like a puddle. I had been carried so far from town I couldn't even guess which direction it was in.

Something clanged loudly behind me. A bag was being shoved through a slot that had opened in the door. Sprawling flat, I peered through the slot before it closed again.

"Help! Stay! Wait!" I cried, startling the leprechaun on the other side into nearly tumbling over. He was too young to grow a beard, and he wore a waiter's apron.

"Don't try anything, Green, or I'll call Tully!" he warned.

"I just want to see Balthazar. Or Cain. When are they coming?"

The waiter collected himself and ventured back to the door. "Here? You're in confinement, aren't you? No visitors."

The slot cover slammed in my face.

"No visitors
when?"
I shouted. "You don't mean ever! No visitors
ever?"

"No visitors for prisoners in confinement. Everyone knows that."

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"No, they don't!" I cried. "No visitors? Are you kidding me?"

No answer came from outside the door. Silence descended over the woods, driving me into a fresh panic.

"Let me out!" I shrieked, charging the window. I scraped my knuckles trying to shake the bars loose, but the iron didn't budge. Screaming until my throat was raw, I collapsed into a hysterical heap on the mattress.

No one is coming to rescue me
, I realized.

I was on my own. Abandoned.

For all I knew, the Greens had already left.

I sobbed inconsolably, heartbroken by all I had lost. I had arrived desperately missing Gigi, and in a few years I wouldn't remember her. I couldn't even be certain I'd ever see my mother again; one of us could
die
in five years. I had taken her completely for granted, and now it was too late. Never once had it crossed my mind that I could lose her too.

I huddled tighter in Gigi's sweater. Its yarn was getting grubby, but it was still the most comforting thing there, next to Gigi's key. I reached for that under my collar.

There was no gold chain around my neck.

Bolting upright, I frisked myself, then looked wildly about the cell. Gigi's key was gone.

They took it!
I realized. I remembered the tugging around my neck, hearing something about a maggot of an ambassador ...

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Ludlow!
I thought, furious.
This was all his doing!

If my wardens were bringing him my key, though, that meant the Greens were still in the Hollow. And unless Fizz wanted to drive in the dark, they probably wouldn't leave before morning.

Which did me exactly no good at all.

I sank back onto the mattress, watching miserably as a square of light from the window inched slowly across my cell wall. I would never survive five years in this place. I'd lose my mind the first week.

I had to escape.

But how?

It wasn't as if I had much to work with. I took an inventory: one moldy mattress, two buckets, the clothes I was wearing, a pack of peppermint Life Savers, and Lexie's good-luck charm--which obviously hadn't been lucky for me.

How was I supposed to accomplish a jailbreak with that?

Words from Gigi's letter popped into my head:
Be what you'd become
.

Okay, fine
. Except that I had no idea what that meant.

I struggled to reason it out:
I want to go home now with my memory intact. That means I have to become keeper. Keepers are clever. I have to be clever
.

Great
.

The last thing I felt at that moment was clever, but I forced myself to start trying.

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Was there any way I could use Lexie's gold button? Untying it from my wrist, I laid it before me. The belt on Gigi's sweater could serve as a short rope; I put that on the mattress too. Then I took out her Life Savers.

I wish these were butter rum now
, I thought, examining the worn foil of the roll's unopened ends. If that was the only candy I'd see for the next five years, it could at least have been one I wanted to eat.

Placing the Life Savers next to the belt, I stared down at my meager tools. Maybe I could tie the belt to the window and use it to pull out the bars?

No way. That yarn will break before those bars ever do
.

I got up for another look anyway. The woods outside the window had slipped into twilight and were darkening fast. I longed to lose myself in them, but the iron bars were spaced so tightly that even a leprechaun couldn't slip through. There was barely room for a pisky.

I froze where I stood, struck by a sudden inspiration. Was I completely insane to be thinking what I was thinking?

Do I have any choice?

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Chapter 16

T
his is a stupid idea
, I thought.
Give up now and admit it
.

It had to be past midnight, and my legs were so cramped from crouching that I wasn't sure I'd be able to stand, let alone spring up to the window. But I stayed where I was.

I had no Plan B.

Directly above me, on the window ledge, my meager offerings were spread: Lexie's gold charm and four peppermint Life Savers. I'd shredded the foil off the candy's waxed paper and scattered those shiny scraps around too. They glimmered in the moonlight, adding badly needed

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flash, but I didn't have any real silver, or ale, or anything else that a pisky might like. All I had was hope and my desperation.

A pisky will come
, I argued with the part of me that wanted to quit.
Lexie's gold button is worth taking, and I put that right up front
.

My cramped legs began to quiver--I had to stretch them out. Scooting over a few inches, I rose painfully beside the cell window, flattened my back to the wall, and peered out sideways. The sky above the pines was full of stars. Beneath the trees, a pattern of silver and shadow patch-worked the ground like a quilt. I was jiggling blood back into my feet when a blur of wings cut through a moonbeam and a pisky landed on my windowsill.

I went as still as the stone wall. The pisky hesitated, listening, then walked in through the bars, headed for Lexie's button.

Don't move. Don't even breathe!
I warned myself. I'd only get one chance.

The pisky bent to pick up the gold.

I pounced.

Launching myself at the ledge, I grabbed for the pisky as if my life depended on it. The startled creature fell backward onto its wings. Before it could flip over to fly, both of my hands clamped down like a dome, trapping it on the ledge.

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"Sorry! Sorry!" I cried as it flailed against my palms. "I'm not going to hurt you! I'm really, truly sorry, but I've got to have a wish."

The whirring wings slowed to a flutter. I imagined the pisky baring its fangs, choosing the juiciest spot to sink them. I braced myself to hold on despite any amount of chomping.

And then the pisky started to laugh.

Its reedy giggle filled my hands, my ears, the entire cell. "Release me!" it chirped mirthfully.

I watched in disbelief as my hands peeled away on their own, leaving the pisky completely uncaught. The creature brushed off its skinny arms and wriggled its spotted wings, twitching itself back into position. My hands hovered inches away, but no matter how I tried, I couldn't force them to grab. The scars on my thumbs glowed silver, tiny clovers in the moonlight. The pisky grinned as it pointed them out.

"No double-dipping," it gloated. "You've been marked."

My fingers strained toward the ledge but refused to move.

"Put your arms down," the pisky commanded. They dropped to my sides. "Good girl. Now stay."

Being told to stay made me even more determined to move. I tried to lunge again, only to discover that my feet had stuck to the floor. My shoulders barely twitched. And I couldn't lift my hands. "What have you done to me?" I cried.

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"Well now," the pisky said with, a smile, "the first time you catch a pisky, we're in your power. The next time, you're in ours. Those chuckleheaded leprechauns didn't tell you that?"

"You wouldn't believe how much they didn't tell me," I answered sullenly.

The pisky smiled and picked up Lexie's button. "I'll be having this, for starters. What did you get off Kinkle?"

"Excuse me?"

Cradling the button in one arm, it pointed toward my right hand. My arm flew up, thumb first, forcing my glowing scar into the moonlight. "That's Kinkle's work, yes?"

"I, um, didn't get a name."

"Well now," the pisky said approvingly, "it isn't polite to ask, is it? But I'd recognize Kinkle's mark anywhere. What did you wish for? Wait, let me guess!" The pisky glanced around my stone cell. "A house no one could break into? A long vacation someplace you wouldn't be bothered?"

"I didn't ask for anything! I only wished that Kinkle would accept our silver buttons and my apologies for bothering, um ... Kinkle." I wasn't exactly sure if these piskies were boys or girls. "My clan made me do it. All I really wanted was to go home."

The creature gave me a skeptical look. "Then how did you end up here?"

"That's a long, sad story. Hey!" I said, sensing a possible