Oscar from elsewhere, p.32
Oscar From Elsewhere, page 32
“Exactly. That’ll do the trick. It simply means to look into each other’s eyes. Because you’re so alike, the pair of you. So different, from different worlds, and yet so connected. I’ll let you carry on.” He swiveled around, but then swiveled back.
“One final thing,” he said. “This issue you two have with magic. Oscar, you say there is none in your world; Imogen, you say you don’t like it. Children, listen: magic is life. Life is twisty-turny, topsy-turvy, and breaks as many rules as bright magic. Life can be as dark and cruel as shadow magic. And life can zigzag between them both. You’ll meet good people who are vain, self-absorbed, and careless, like the Crystal Faeries. You’ll meet bad people who reform and start jewelry shops in cities. Wise old innkeepers will infuriate you with their absentmindedness yet surprise you with their generosity; distinguished judges will be mulish and cantankerous yet ultimately fair. Those meant to care for you will fail you, or fade from your life; strangers will offer shelter, or step in and become family. Find the thread of love and beauty in it all—beauty like occasional descriptive language, Imogen. Beauty like a kickflip for no reason, Oscar.” He fell silent, gazing across the Elven city to the celebration. The sound of the party was fading, his words taking its place.
“Right, you’d best get home, Oscar,” he said. “You can come back anytime, by the way. By moving through a crack between worlds in both directions, you open up a path that’s just for you.”
CHAPTER 94
IMOGEN
OSCAR SMILED AT that. He slung his backpack over his shoulder and propped his skateboard under his arm.
“Take a small step back, Imogen,” Reuben said. “Take a small step forward, Oscar.”
We both obeyed.
“I meant that metaphorically,” he murmured, and he vanished.
Oscar chuckled. “Well,” he said, “it’s been real”—then he looked me in the eye and, like the Genie, he was gone.
As usual, I was confused by Oscar’s turn of phrase for a moment. Still, it was true that it had been real. Those five days we spent together had been neither imagination nor fancy.
There were tears in my eyes then, which blurred my vision, so I thought I imagined it when I saw two familiar figures approaching carefully down the Elves’ main street.
Then one of them called, “Imogen!” and I knew it was true. My parents had come to fetch us all home, and that’s what made me properly cry—the fact that I didn’t have to track down my sisters and cousins and our things, find our way to the coach stop, buy tickets, and get the coach home.
But that is incidental.
And now, Mrs. Kugelhopf, here it is.
A complete account of Monday through Friday of last week.
EPILOGUE
OSCAR
IMOGEN AND I decided that our story needed a short postscript.
I’ll start and say this: Reuben was right about me being able to get back to this world. All I have to do is return to the skate park where I first came through, and skate back. It’s like a choice. People never notice me disappear. (Since then I’ve run into the two boys who first told me about “the other skate park.” They seemed pretty embarrassed to have believed in it. They said an old guy with a beard had turned up and told them about it. He’d been so convincing they’d gone off to buy themselves a mirror.)
Anyhow, so I came back here to the Kingdoms and Empires the very next day, Saturday, and the Elves were welcoming and called me “Your Majesty.” That was pretty funny.
They told me that Imogen and the others were still around and hadn’t taken the coach back to the mountains yet.
Imogen’s parents had decided to spend the rest of the school holiday at the Apple Blossom Bed and Breakfast with the kids. So I’ve been coming through each day after school ever since, and hanging out with them. It’s good to get to know them without having to hunt down key keepers. We do more relaxed things, like go horse riding across the countryside, ride bikes, swim in a water hole, meet baby ducklings, chill with the Elves.
Also, of course, Imogen and I have been writing our account for Mrs. Kugelhopf.
When I gave it to her, though, Mrs. Kugelhopf flicked through the pages, then chucked it in her wastepaper basket. She gave me a lecture about how I had “clearly stolen somebody else’s school assignment.”
I should have guessed she wouldn’t read it. She never wants the truth—I’ve told her so many times that I was mucking up because I was bored out of my mind, and that only ever makes her angrier. All she actually wants is for me to say that I’m a terrible human being who’s been wasting time in a skate park and that I’m sorry and will never do it again.
Ah, well. I’m still glad we wrote it. It’s good to have a record. You forget things otherwise. I fished it out of her wastepaper basket, shook it clean, and left.
The other thing we’ve been doing is looking through the list of Elven powers. It needed a big magnifying glass to read. Funnily enough, Imogen and I both chose the exact same power. I’ll leave it to Imogen to tell you what we chose.
IMOGEN
YES. IT WAS a good choice.
In other news, we heard the other day that the Doom Lantern Witches had tried to attack Mrs. Chakrabarti’s school. Only, they found that their broomstick crochet had absolutely no effect. The schoolchildren were able to overcome them and lock them in the school supply closet, and Mrs. Chakrabarti then forced them do a number of cleaning chores.
We were all having ice cream sodas to celebrate this news, and laughing with delight that Esther’s spell had been successful, when Alejandro spoke up. “Esther, if you can weave cures into a sock, what if you could weave them into stories?”
As I’ve mentioned, Alejandro is very good at gadgets and repairs, using whatever object is at hand, and I think he was applying that lateral thinking here. Esther is extremely excited by the idea and she has made her first attempt on our account of Monday-to-Friday (retrieved from Mrs. Kugelhopf’s wastepaper bin).
She says that it has now been spelled so that anyone who reads its words will be immediately cured if they are affected by shadow magic. If they are not affected by shadow magic, Esther says, the spell will transmute so that the next time the reader feels cranky, sad, lonely, or confused, that emotion will fall away, replaced by a swelling of joy in the heart.
It’s been wonderful having Oscar visit each afternoon after his day at school. (He says that he does have homework, only he finds it “unnecessary.”) As well as having fun using our new power, Oscar has been teaching us all to ride his skateboard—it’s much trickier than it looks, and Bronte is the best at it so far.
Another thing I’ve done is to make telephone calls to the principal of Nicholas Valley Boarding School for Boys. This is in the next valley along from our own boarding school, the Katherine Valley Boarding School for Girls. The school has a division especially for students with concentration issues—they do most of their learning outside in the form of games—and they have agreed to offer a scholarship to Oscar. My parents were helpful with this as my father is an esteemed history professor, and my mother does something important to do with committees. Not sure what. My parents spoke to the principal of Nicholas Valley Boarding School for me, and they were very persuasive, pointing out that a boy who had been crowned an Elven king and who came from another world would be an asset to their school.
Therefore, when we go back to school next week, Oscar will be at the school that is close by. He will be well fed there, and well taken care of, and will not need to sleep with a baseball bat by his bed. We will be able to meet up with him in Pillar Box Town and keep an eye on him.
Also, we have invited him to spend school holidays with our family whenever he likes. We can be his family. (Although, I’ve told him he should have a serious talk with his mother about how his life has looked lately, and how that makes him feel. And what about his father’s family in the Kingdoms of California and Chile? He should ask about contacting them. Maybe they are better family than his mother and stepfather? He has promised to try. He mentioned that I have not exactly “taken a step back,” despite Reuben’s advice. He was smiling as he said that though.)
Finally, I don’t think I’ll tell you the Elven power we chose. Instead, I’ll finish with this newspaper article. Oscar tells me it was “posted online” yesterday and that he “printed it out” to show me. I don’t know what any of that means, but read it, if you like: it contains a strong clue about our choice.
DRAMATIC RESCUE
CAUGHT ON FILM:
HOAX OR THE REAL DEAL?
www.news.com.au
REMARKABLE FOOTAGE IS currently circulating on social media, apparently taken at a school in Sydney’s Lower North Shore.
In the brief clip, a very young child, around four years old, is seen climbing along the roof of a school building that is two stories high. The child was precariously close to the edge, so this is heart-stopping footage, distressing to watch.
In the next shot, a boy of twelve literally “soars” through the air. After “hovering” by the toddler for a few moments, he reaches out his hands, gathers up the child, and “flies” back to safety on the ground below.
While the clip is obviously a hoax, we contacted the school for comment and were able to speak with the deputy principal, Clara Kugelhopf. That’s where our story takes an unexpected turn.
“It all happened exactly as you see in the video,” Mrs. Kugelhopf insisted. “My little boy Eddie was at school with me that day, as he had a cold and couldn’t go to preschool. Well, one moment he was playing with his coloring-in books on my office floor, the next I heard screams from the school playground.
“When I ran outside I saw Eddie climbing up the scaffolding that had been placed there by window cleaners. He loves to climb. He’d already reached the roof and must have decided to explore. Honestly, I have never been so terrified in my life. My heart was in my throat. A moment later, though, one of our students flew through the air, lifted Eddie from the roof, and carried him safely to the ground.”
When pressed to explain how the school had edited the footage to make both the danger to Eddie and the boy’s flight appear so convincing, Mrs. Kugelhopf doubled down on her story. “I’m not joking! The footage is the real deal!” she exclaimed. “Eddie was in life-threatening danger and it turns out that that child—truly a gem of a child, oh, what a lovely boy—can literally fly. He is apparently leaving our school next week though, which just absolutely breaks my heart.”
We tracked down the boy himself in a local skate park. “No comment,” he said with a crooked smile—and he skated out of sight.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
Thank you so much to the superb people at Levine Querido, especially the truly wonderful Arthur Levine and Madelyn McZeal: you are insightful, brilliant, funny and very, very patient.
To Antonio Gonzalez Cerna and Irene Vazquez, thank you for your marketing and publicity prowess and kindness. Thank you to Susan M. S. Brown for copy-editing, Liberty Martin for proofreading, and Paul Kepple for interiors.
I am speechless with delight over Jim Tierney’s cover for this book, and very, very grateful to him.
Special thanks also to my Australian and UK publishers (Allen & Unwin, and Guppy Books, respectively), to my fantastic agents, Tara Wynne and Jill Grinberg; to Laura Bloom, Jared Thomas and Michael McCabe, who all answered text requests for help like lightning (comprehensive, very helpful lightning); to Rachel Cohn and Corrie Stepan; to my nieces and nephews; to the Menasse family; to my sister Liane, without whose kind and considerable support this book would have dissolved into a puddle; to my other sisters, Kati, Fiona and Nicola, who each deserve individualized praise of their own but I’m already going on too long; to Mum, who is so lovely and funny; to Dad, who I know is still right here with us, as exuberant as ever; to my Charlie (and his skater friends) for the inspiration and expertise—and for being your own hilarious, thoughtful and original self; and to Nod, who knows how to make life an adventure.
Some Notes on This Book’s Production
The art for the jacket and the title lettering were hand-drawn by Jim Tierney using a Cintiq tablet and Adobe Photoshop. The text was set by Westchester Publishing Services in Danbury, CT. The body text is set in Gazette, designed in 1977 at D. Stempel AG, a type foundry in Frankfurt founded by David Stempel in 1895. The Gazette font family was designed to with newspaper print in mind; to withstand high-speed presses and coarse newsprint, and to guarantee legibility despite long press runs. The chapter headings are set in Rough Cut, a sturdy, gothic font designed by Simon Walker, and the illustrated framings for each initial cap were created by Jim Tierney. This e-book was created by Westchester Publishing Services.
Production was supervised by Freesia Blizard
Jacket design by Jim Tierney
Interior design by Paul Kepple at Headcase Design
Editor: Arthur A. Levine
Editorial Assistant: Madelyn McZeal
Jaclyn Moriarty, Oscar From Elsewhere
