Elliot and the Pixie Plot (4 page)

The only thing Elliot knew about Pixies was that during the Goblin war, Fudd Fartwick had borrowed some of their magic to make Elliot’s bedroom disappear. Fudd had been an advisor to the queen of the Brownies before Elliot took her place. Then Fudd had worked with the Goblins to try to get Elliot killed so that Fudd could become king.

When Elliot won the Goblin war, Fudd had confessed to his crimes and promised to change. No one had worked harder in getting Elliot’s blown-up house rebuilt than Fudd Fartwick. He even made it so that the stairway didn’t squeak anymore.

If Tubs weren’t walking beside him now, Elliot would have called for Fudd to come talk to him and tell him everything he knew about the Pixies and their princess, Fidget Spitfly.

But Tubs had started talking again. Elliot wasn’t paying much attention, but it sounded like a story about Tubs last Halloween.

“My mom says I’m too old for trick-or-treating,” Tubs was saying, “but I think, who’s too old for candy? Not me.”

Elliot smiled. Finally he and Tubs had something in common.

Tubs continued, “Did I ever tell you about a few years ago when I saw these kids in Goblin costumes? They looked so cool, I could’ve sworn they were real.”

Elliot shoved his hands into his pockets. “Do you think Goblins exist, then?”

Tubs snorted. “They weren’t real Goblins, dork. They were eating all these pickles, and a real Goblin wouldn’t eat pickles.”

“Right,” Elliot muttered, thinking about how the Goblins had started a whole war with the Brownies over a bag of pickles.

Elliot’s mind wandered back to his own troubles. If Princess Fidget was so dangerous, why hadn’t Mr. Willimaker warned Elliot about her? Mr. Willimaker had told Elliot everything he needed to know about the Goblins during the war. Why hadn’t anyone told him about Pixies? Maybe Harold was making Princess Fidget sound worse than she really was. Just because he got himself tricked into becoming a marshmallow didn’t mean Elliot was in any danger of being tricked. After all, Elliot couldn’t turn himself into a marshmallow, even if he wanted to. Which he didn’t, by the way.

He also wondered about the Shadow Men. When Harold had turned into one, everything in Elliot’s body froze with fear. And that wasn’t even a real Shadow Man. It was just a Shapeshifter pretending to be one. He was glad Kovol remained asleep, because he’d rather face a hundred Goblins trying to scare him to death before he faced a real Shadow Man.

“Hey, Tubs,” Elliot said. “Are you afraid of anything?”

Tubs shrugged. “You’d have to be stupid not to be afraid of something.”

“But you are—” Elliot stopped. It didn’t seem like a good idea to point out the obvious, which was that several important pieces of Tubs’s brain seemed to be missing, such as the thinking piece.

“So what are you afraid of?” Elliot asked instead.

“Same thing everyone’s afraid of,” Tubs said.

“Snakes?”

“No, you wimp. Afraid that the ground beneath us will suddenly turn to quicksand and all of Sprite’s Hollow will be swallowed up under the world.”

“Why are you talking about the Underworld?” Elliot said quickly. “There’s no Underworld.”

“Sure there is,” Tubs said.

Elliot stopped walking. “How do you know?”

“The clouds are over the world. We’re on the world. The dirt is under the world.”

Elliot breathed a sigh of relief and kept walking. “Oh, yeah, sure.” When he first became king, Mr. Willimaker had told Elliot that if he ever shared the secret of the Underworld with anyone, the Brownies would never be able to return to him again.

When they got home, Wendy met Elliot at the front door. “Why didn’t you save me any dinner?” he scowled at her.

Wendy’s eyes widened, then she said, “Mom told you to hurry home. But I can make you something else if you want.”

“Nah. I can ruin my own food later on.”

Wendy frowned, and Elliot knew he had hurt her feelings. But she shrugged it off and said, “You need to go to the backyard. You have a visitor.”

“Who?” Elliot asked.

“Oh, just a
special
visitor who wants to see you. Better hurry.”

Elliot handed her his backpack, then walked around his house into the backyard. Beyond the grass was the end of Sprite’s Hollow and the beginning of a thickly wooded area that went on for miles. Since nobody had ever bothered to think of a name for it, everyone just called it “the woods.” When Elliot saw who his visitor was, his eyes flicked to the woods. The idea of hiding there for a couple of years until it was safe to come out again crossed his mind.

Cami was sitting on the ground weaving blades of grass together. She was working on a chain that was now almost as long as her arm.

“Hey,” he said, “stop using up all my family’s grass.”

“Sorry,” she said, throwing the grass chain down. “I didn’t realize you were down to your last gazillion blades.”

“Never mind,” he said. “What’s going on? I thought you weren’t coming here until tomorrow morning.”

“Yeah, but when I got home my mom said I have a soccer game in the morning. Are you just getting home from school now? You’re slow.”

Elliot let Cami’s comment pass and followed her to a big white bucket with a black lid on it. “I’ve added the ingredients already,” she said. “I won’t tell you everything that’s in there, because you really don’t want to know. The recipe says it has to sit in the sun for five days, then it’s ready.”

“Can I look in it?”

“Sure. Just don’t smell it too deeply, because it’ll probably kill brain cells.”

Elliot opened the lid and immediately slammed it closed. “It smells like something died in there.”

Cami nodded. “Like I said, you don’t want to know about the ingredients.”

Elliot cracked the lid open again. The liquid inside was clear and thick like syrup. Every now and then a thick bubble rose to the top and popped, even though it wasn’t cooking. Elliot shut the lid. “So what do I have to do?”

“Nothing but let it sit. Stir it if you want.” Cami began to walk away but then turned back to him. “Oh, and one more thing, if it starts making noises, then you’d better get everyone out of the house, because that means it’s going to blow up.”

“What kind of noises?” Elliot asked.

“I dunno,” Cami said. “It’s a liquid, so it probably shouldn’t make any noises at all. Anyway, I’ll come back in a day or two and check on it.”

As she began to leave, Kyle and Cole, Elliot’s six-year-old twin brothers, ran to Cami and Elliot. “Secret lovers, hiding place. Secret lovers, kissy face,” they teased.

Elliot picked up a stick and hurled it toward his brothers. “Stop bothering me all the time!” he yelled, although this was in fact the first time they’d bothered him all day.

Cami shrugged. “I have to go anyway.”

“You really should go out through the gate on the other side of the house,” one of the twins said. It was probably Cole, Elliot thought. He had trouble telling the twins apart.

“But there’s no fence in your yard,” Cami said. “Why do you have a gate if there’s no fence?”

“It’s rude to cross the grass where there would be a fence if we had a fence. Use the gate.” Kyle winked at Cole as he finished, but Elliot didn’t think Cami noticed.

“All right,” Cami said and followed the twins to the gate. She waved at Elliot in such a nice way that he couldn’t help but wonder what devious tricks she had up her sleeve. Then he noticed she wore a short-sleeved shirt, so she probably didn’t have room for any tricks up there. And if she did, they probably weren’t very good tricks.

Elliot was so busy wondering about Cami’s tricks, he didn’t notice how watchful Kyle and Cole were being until it was too late. Kyle and Cole only watched what entertained them, and something about Cami leaving through the gate definitely had their attention.

She stepped on a pile of grass that instantly sunk beneath her feet, leaving Cami knee deep in mud.

Only a few weeks ago, Kyle and Cole had been fascinated with water. It only made sense that by now they had moved on to mud.

Cami’s face turned red, the color a face gets when a person is really mad. She tried to pull her legs out but only got more mud on herself. “I’m stuck,” she said to the twins. “Help me.” They only laughed, which of course made her face even redder.

Elliot didn’t wait around to see what happened next. He yelled, “Okay, well, I’ll keep an eye on the science project for you,” and ran away.

Those readers who lived near Lake Baikal in Russia on June 30, 1908, will remember the meteor explosion that occurred a few miles up in the sky. Some 80 million trees were knocked over from the force of the explosion, and glass windows shattered as far as a hundred miles away. If there is anyone reading this story who did
not
happen to be living near Lake Baikal over a hundred years ago, then you should know it is considered to be the loudest single event ever to happen on this earth. It was a hundred times louder than a one-ton bomb and was more than three times the sound required to cause hearing loss.

Lying in his room that night, with his ears sandwiched between two pillows, Elliot was sure he had discovered the second loudest sound in history.

Tubs was snoring.

Tubs snorted in air, and Elliot thought this must be what it’s like inside a tornado.

Then Tubs exhaled, and Elliot imagined a million tiny Tubs germs being sent as far away as the jungles of Africa, all riding on a single breath.

Mother had insisted that Elliot let Tubs use his bed for the night. “He doesn’t have things as good as you,” she told Elliot. “Be nice and let him have the bed.”

Tubs could literally have his bed now, Elliot thought. He didn’t think he ever wanted it back again.

When Tubs took Elliot’s bed, Elliot took his older brother Reed’s bed and made Reed sleep on the floor. It had seemed fair at the time, although now Elliot wasn’t so sure. Reed didn’t stay on the floor for long. He had finally left about an hour ago, saying he was going in to work at the Quack Shack, his fast-food duck burgers job, either on the really late night shift or on the really early morning shift, whichever was closer. Elliot rolled over in Reed’s bed and tried to plug his ears with Reed’s pillow.

Tubs drew in another breath. It sounded like a train running through Elliot’s room.

Elliot threw off his covers and shoved his feet into a pair of slippers beside his bed. They were Reed’s, but he’d only borrow them for a minute. Elliot trudged downstairs and into the kitchen to get a drink of water. Maybe he could take some of that water upstairs and throw it on Tubs. That’d get him to stop snoring.

Elliot was halfway through his glass of water when he heard heavy footsteps clomping down the stairs. Tubs must’ve woken up for a drink too.

“Snoring must make you thirsty,” Elliot said, but as Tubs entered the kitchen he didn’t answer. He didn’t even really seem to be awake.

“Tubs?” Elliot asked.

“Pretty mist,” Tubs mumbled, reaching out his hand.

Elliot squinted. The kitchen was dark enough that he hadn’t noticed it, but in a beam of moonlight through the window, he did see what appeared to be a silver mist. His first thought was of the Shadow Men, but theirs was a dense, black smoke. This was lighter, and it was pretty in a spooky sort of way.