Oscar from elsewhere, p.13
Oscar From Elsewhere, page 13
“And I am Tiger’s Eye.”
“Green Aventurine.”
“Agate.”
They recited their names, smiling tenderly, along one side of the table, and down the opposite. One of them gave a little shiver, and the others said, “There she goes, vibrating again. That’s Rose Quartz. Like clockwork, she is,” and they all laughed as if it at some private joke.
“Come along, children,” Sapphire beckoned, and we left the room—even though I looked very pointedly at the food.
In the next room, peacocks scuffed through the rose petals. In the following, flamingos admired their own reflections in a fishpond. Giant silk and paper snowflakes had been attached to the walls, some of them fixed to form letters.
“AFEEBA,” Alejandro read aloud. “This is a word I do not know. What does it mean?”
Because he was raised by pirates, Alejandro’s vocabulary is not always complete. However, I did not know this word either.
“Afeeba?” I repeated and shook my head.
In the next three rooms, the same word was strung up, formed of paper stars, paper swans, and—simple paper.
“What does afeeba mean?” I asked.
Sapphire turned and smiled as if I was her lost teddy bear returned to her after a long absence. “Come,” she murmured. “I will show you the exit.”
The next room was lit with lanterns. A door stood open down the back.
“Take that door,” Sapphire told us. “It leads to a slide, which will carry you gently to a perfect campsite for this night.”
“Thank you,” I replied, still remembering my manners, just. “Only, our packs are near the waterfall entryway. We’ll go and get them.”
Sapphire laughed gently. “Your luggage has been taken to the campsite for you. It awaits. The site is close to the Tumbling River, where you can rent boats for your onward journey in the morning. Come. Hurry.”
She shepherded us toward the door and paused. “Oh, but Esther!” she exclaimed. “You will stay with us! You will visit our Faery treatment center and sleep on a golden bed of satin and silk!”
“Will I?” Esther asked, surprised. “I thought that you said I should visit one of these days … I didn’t know you meant …”
“Today.” Sapphire nodded. “Today is certainly one of these days. It is this day. You will join the others at their campsite at 7:00 A.M. tomorrow. Farewell, others. It’s been a pleasure.”
At that point, Oscar squirmed, probably because Gruffudd had been riding in the hooded part of his jacket and was clambering up the back of his neck.
“Ah, a perfect place for an Elf.” Sapphire smiled. “And yet tremendously dangerous. Perhaps he should ride in somebody’s pocket for now. The slide is rather steep and somewhat hasty. Gentle, of course. It’s a gentle slide. Although it is also … Well … Enjoy!”
And then, while everyone was shooting Esther worried looks, and I was whispering to her that she did not need to stay if she didn’t want to, and Esther herself was looking bewildered, Sapphire gave us all a great shove right through the door and onto a huge and giddyingly fast slide.
Nothing gentle about it.
CHAPTER 37
OSCAR
TO BE HONEST, I didn’t take to the Crystal Faeries. I see Imogen’s point about bright magic being too tricky—I couldn’t figure out what was going on a lot of the time, and it was all about how pretty things were. It reminded me of the way some girls comment on other girls’ Instagram posts—“OMG! So beautiful! Love you!” and you know they don’t mean a word of it.
I mean, don’t shower us with roses that only make us slip. Don’t take a hungry bunch of kids into a room full of food and then whisk us right back out of there.
The slide part though?
That, I liked a lot.
Pitch-black, more twists and turns than a garden hose, and we were skidding along so fast we got friction burns.
The others liked it too. We tumbled out the bottom onto a patch of grass and everyone was laughing. I had thought the girls might complain about the bumps, but right away they tried climbing back up for another go. (Not possible. Too steep and slippery.) Even the smallest one, Astrid, who had a bruise on her leg the size of a pizza slice, was raving about it.
Still psyched from the slide, we looked around the campsite the Crystal Faeries had found for us. It was a perfect patch of soft green grass encircled by fir trees. Our packs had been placed in a line at the base of a tree, and it was good to see my skateboard, still looped onto my backpack. The blue bottle also looked fine peeking out of the pocket.
There was even a stack of firewood ready. You could hear the river nearby, birds calling to each other, rustles of little animals.
So then I thought: Huh, maybe bright magic isn’t so bad.
Dusk was closing in, so Imogen decided we’d have dinner right away. She set Gruffudd up in a sort of chair made of bark, told Alejandro and Astrid to start pitching the tents, and asked Bronte to form a Spellbinding ring around the campsite to keep it safe, and then to head out with me to fetch water from the river, and kindling from the forest for the fire.
“Esther might be having a luxurious night in a golden bed of satin and silk,” she finished, shifting packs around and unbuckling straps, “but we’ll have a feast with toasted marshmallows for dessert.”
* * *
“What’s the story with Esther?” I asked Bronte as we walked into the darkening woods, squinting around for sticks and twigs. “Why did the Crystal Faeries want to keep her for the night?”
Bronte had crouched to gather kindling. She stopped and looked up at me. Her eyes went glinty in the falling light. “Esther is amazing,” she said, straightening up. “It’s strange to me that you don’t know this, since it was in all the newspapers. However, it’s not your fault you’re from another world.”
“Cheers,” I said.
Bronte grinned. We walked slowly, scuffling through bark and fallen leaves as we talked. “She only discovered she was a Rain Weaver recently, when she had to battle an ancient Fiend. She was so strong. She saved all the Kingdoms and Empires.”
“Esther?” I said, double-checking. No offense to Esther, but hadn’t she been that dreamy, absentminded girl tripping over things in the forest?
Bronte nodded. “And as a Rain Weaver, she’s the only person who can cure shadow magic spells. True Mages have always been able to treat them a little, taking the edge off their effect, but Esther can actually cure them. She can also sense both shadow magic and bright magic, and she’s learning how to spellbind.”
We’d reached the river now. “I’m so proud that she’s my cousin,” Bronte added, looking around. The riverbank was mostly overgrown, with a small sandy beach cut into the bank. A few battered, upturned rowboats lay on this beach, alongside a painted sign: RYAN CORDUROY’S ROWBOATS FOR RENT
No sign of Ryan himself though.
We returned to the campsite, bundles of kindling under our arms, tins full of sloshing water, feeling pretty chill.
Turned out, though, that the Crystal Faeries had forgotten to deliver the pack that contained our food—the only things to eat were some stale oatcakes—and, if that wasn’t enough, the matches were in the food pack as well.
Then, at the exact moment Alejandro got the fire going—using some trick where he snapped rocks together—it started pouring.
The rain kept up all night. Gruffudd cried himself to sleep in his hatbox bed because he was so hungry. The tents leaked. We’d dragged everything under cover as soon as the rain started, which meant there was no room to lie down. My skateboard wheels were rammed into my side. Outside, birds made sudden screeching noises.
And I lay there, water dripping onto my nose and running down the side of my neck, thinking this: Let me get this straight. I’m on a trip with the following people:
A former pirate/current prince who escaped from a pirate ship and can shoot arrows and make fire from stones
A smart ten-year-old girl who can read minds
A girl who makes “Spellbinding” rings
A girl who steals keys from the caves of Radish Gnomes, escapes using Olympic-speed sprints, and reads broken maps
A girl who saved her entire world from some ancient monster, and
An Elf.
And who am I again?
A kid who skips school to ride a skateboard.
What did Mrs. Kugelhopf call me? A—
SCREECH! went another bird outside before I’d finished that thought and, for the third time in a row, I jumped and hit my head on the tent pole.
Eventually, I guess, I fell asleep.
When I woke up, of course, it was …
CHAPTER 38
IMOGEN
ESTHER WAS MISSING.
I woke at 8:00 A.M. to the feeling of fingertips being pressed all over my face.
“STOP IT!” I said and opened my eyes, ready to blast whoever thought it was amusing to play my face like a piano.
It turned out to be Gruffudd. He was dancing on my face. “I remembered my next song and dance! For the next key keeper!”
“Stop it,” I repeated, pushing him off my face. “All right, well done, but don’t remember it on my face. What time is it? Is Esther here?”
I couldn’t quite believe I’d just woken up. I’d have sworn on the backside of a seven-horned rhino (as my father likes to say) that I’d never fallen asleep. Screeching birds, dripping tent, snorts and snores, crowded packs, hunger cramps, worry about finding keys in time—they’d all kept me awake.
Now my first thought was: We should never have left Esther with the Crystal Faeries.
I don’t know why that thought was so clear. Crystal Faeries are True Mages. They would keep my sister safe, wouldn’t they? Even if bright magic can be frustrating, and sometimes dangerous, it wasn’t malicious, was it?
I scrambled out of the tent anyway, calling, “Esther? Are you here?”
The others were all stretching and yawning. No sign of Esther.
“She was supposed to be here at seven,” I said, and I rammed my head into the opening of the slide.
“HELLO?” I called. “ESTHER?”
Esther, Esther, Esther, the slide echoed back.
“Do not worry,” Alejandro told me. “She will be here. I will go to the river for water while we wait.”
Bronte followed to help him.
It had stopped raining, which seemed to have put the sun, trees, and birds into wildly good spirits. The sun blazed excitedly, the trees dripped splashily, and the birds exclaimed to each other in loud whistles. I found all three irritating.
“I suppose we should pack up the camp while we wait,” I told Astrid and Oscar, and there was a cry of protest from Gruffudd.
“My song! My song!”
“All right, you sing and dance while we pack up,” Astrid suggested, and so he did.
He seemed to like this song. It had an ominous tone, and a dramatic beat (provided by Gruffudd himself, stamping his feet), and he sang it several times. It went like this:
“Oh, Edward T. Vashing
He’s so dashing
He’s a driver crashing
A chef potato mashing
A banker cashing
Checks!
Oh, Edward T.
He’s a honeybee
Works in biology
And in zoology
In psychology
Pharmacology
We’ll have to wait and see
If he will agree
To give us the key
Who knows!”
When he reached “Checks!” and “Who knows!” Gruffudd emphasized the words by kicking something. Once, he kicked my ankle, and another time it was a tent peg. The tent peg sent him flying and he landed inside a boot.
“All right,” I said, helping him out of the boot. “Thank you, Gruffudd. So the fourth key keeper is a fellow named Edward T. Vashing. Whoever that is. Wherever he is.”
My mood had not improved. I squinted into the slide again—it continued not delivering Esther to me.
“He sounds a bit overworked,” Oscar observed.
“Yes,” Astrid agreed. “Too many jobs. Driver, chef, banker, biologist, and so on. He ought to choose just one.”
That made me smile, although only for a moment.
Gruffudd carried on singing and dancing while Oscar, Astrid, and I stepped amongst the muddy, squelchy grass, peeling our shoes up and placing them back down, gathering our possessions and shaking them out—shaking our heads as we did at how waterlogged our things had become.
At one point I glanced sideways at Oscar, who was helping me to roll up the sleeping-bags. As usual, he was quiet and self-contained, but now I saw there were shadows beneath his eyes, and his face was pale. I shook off my worry about Esther for a moment and tried to imagine what all this might be like for him.
“I suppose this is not the best vacation you’ve ever been on,” I suggested.
He chuckled. “It’s not Disneyland,” he said, the dimple appearing in his cheek. At once, though, it faded, and he squeezed the sleeping bag tight, stuffing it into its cover.
Disneyland. I suppose that’s a territory in his world.
When Alejandro and Bronte returned from the river, Gruffudd was still singing.
“Edward T. Vashing,” Alejandro breathed, emerging from the forest. “You are not saying that he is a key keeper? You are not! You are surely not!”
His eyes were lit up like fireworks.
CHAPTER 39
OSCAR
IT TURNED OUT that Edward T. Vashing was a movie star.
Alejandro could not get over the fact that Imogen, Astrid, and I hadn’t recognized the name.
“You, I will maybe forgive, Oscar,” he decided eventually, “because you are from another world, although even so …” Still a bit much for him. “As for you, Imogen and Astrid! You have no excuse! Edward T. Vashing! Writes, directs, and stars in some of the greatest films of our time! I cannot … I do not— Well, I have lost my respect for you.”
Bronte raised an eyebrow and stage-whispered, “I hope he doesn’t ask if I knew who Edward T. whatever is.”
We all laughed, and Alejandro whirled around, spilling water everywhere.
It was pretty funny, which was good for Imogen. She was really fretting about Esther. She was pretending it was all good, so she wouldn’t scare Astrid, but you could see it in her eyes. And in the fact that she kept ducking her head into that slide and shouting Esther’s name.
Alejandro explained that Edward T. Vashing had played the role of driver, chef, banker, and so on, in various movies. That’s what Gruffudd’s song was referring to. He also told us he’d read in a movie magazine that Edward T. Vashing’s latest film was being shot each morning this week in a village on the Tumbling River named …
He borrowed the map from Imogen, checked it closely, and then pointed.
“Glenhaven. There,” he said. “It is maybe an hour’s boat ride downriver from us. As soon as Esther arrives, we will rent boats from this man on the beach—Ryan Corduroy—he is there now. We have just seen him, Bronte and I. And we go. Yes?”
The excitement in Alejandro’s eyes was at the exact same level as the worry in Imogen’s.
We finished packing up and we waited.
And waited.
Staring at the slide.
Imogen’s worry started to infect everyone. There was a sort of restless itchiness around. Where was Esther, anyway?
This was why they should have mobile phones.
(I kept that thought to myself, as I didn’t think it would be helpful.)
“I hope the boat doesn’t sink,” Bronte said—I think she was just making conversation to fill the time. “It looked pretty old.”
“Well, you’re an excellent swimmer if it does,” Imogen told her.
“You’re a better swimmer than me,” Bronte replied. “You win all kinds of races, Imogen!”
“No, no, you’re better than me, Bronte, I’m sure,” Imogen argued. “And Alejandro is also better, of course.”
“Not at all,” Alejandro replied.
Astrid sighed. “You’re all lying.”
Everyone looked at Astrid. “You all secretly think you’re the better swimmer,” she explained. “I can see it on your faces.”
Everyone burst out laughing, and then Alejandro said, “I am certainly the best. I have grown up on a pirate ship and spent my days swimming in the ocean.”
Imogen and Bronte didn’t argue with that, although Imogen told her little sister that she didn’t always have to point it out when people were lying. “Sometimes we just lie from politeness,” she explained.
That broke the tension for a bit. Not long later, though, it slid back in.
Esther didn’t slide back in though.
It got to be almost 10:00 A.M., and Alejandro was properly agitated. He kept that to himself too, but his knees kept bumping up and down. He’d said that the filming was happening in the mornings, I realized. He was thinking he was going to miss his chance to meet Edward T. Vashing.
“Imogen?” Gruffudd spoke up. He’d been surprisingly still and quiet for the last hour, but now he’d climbed onto Imogen’s lap and was gazing up at her. “Imogen, may we go and get the key? Before it’s too late? For my … city? We still have … many pieces of key to collect.”
Imogen blinked and gazed back at him. “You’re right,” she said eventually. “We might have trouble finding Edward T. Vashing if we miss him this morning. We should go, only—”
Bronte spoke up. “I’ll wait here for Esther,” she offered, “and we’ll join you in Glenhaven once she gets here.”
“You can’t wait alone,” Imogen argued. He eyes roamed over Astrid (too young) and me (too otherworldly) and ended on Alejandro. “Do you mind waiting with Bronte, Alejandro?” She frowned. “No, wait. You want to meet the movie star. I’ll stay. Will you be …?”
Bronte shook her head. “You all go. We don’t know how difficult it’s going to be to get the key from Edward T. Vashing. You might all be needed. I’m sure Esther can’t be much longer. Go. And I’ll see you there.”
