Mr. Willimaker swallowed a lump in his throat. If Elliot needed his help to solve this problem, then they were definitely in trouble.
Patches had decided there were worse things than being stuck in the cave full of carrots. It was better here than at school, where all the other Brownie kids still teased her about her father and the field mouse scare. It was better than being stuck in the rock hole, where she had only gotten a single carrot after she told them an idea to get King Elliot. However, it was not better than going on vacation to Underworld World, the happiest place under the earth. But that was an entirely different matter.
For now, all Patches cared about was being stuck. Every time she tried to sneak out, the Goblin guarding the cave peeked inside as if he'd heard--or smelled--her. Trapped with nothing to do but eat carrots left Patches with more than enough time to think about what might have happened to King Elliot. She'd barely slept all night, so anxious for him that she'd only managed to eat 214 carrots.
It was with great worry the next morning that Patches heard Fudd and Grissel return to the rock hole. Their voices were angry. Patches felt a little relief. If they were arguing, then things had probably not gone the way they wanted with Elliot.
The guard quickly ran off when Grissel ordered him to go away. Then Fudd and Grissel began talking right outside the entrance to the carrot cave.
"Your plan to scare King Elliot to death failed!" Fudd said. "How could it fail? You told me you'd use your scariest Goblins!"
Grissel growled. "I did. They were so good they almost scared me to death."
"Then what went wrong?"
"It seems your king has a hag. Her beauty forced us away." Grissel threw out his chunky hands. "Why didn't you tell me Elliot had a hag?"
Fudd sounded offended. "They told me that the hag was broken. I didn't think it was important."
"Well, she wasn't broken last night. Maybe her curses don't work as well as usual, but when she transforms, she puts off a lot of light. She burned my eyes!"
"Ouch. That's why they're so red."
Grissel whimpered. "No, that's because after I came back I tried to put some burn cream on them. I guess you can't put the cream right on your eye."
Fudd huffed. Even a river troll knew that. "So what now?" he demanded.
"We're done," Grissel said. "Let the Brownies have a human king if they want. We'll continue our war against the Brownies as we have for the last three years. Pretty soon we'll have eaten every Brownie, and there won't be anyone left for the human boy, Elliot Penster, to rule."
"No!" Fudd said, stamping a foot. "The idea is for you to get revenge against Elliot and for me to become the Brownie king! We had an agreement."
"Whatever happens next, you'll have to do it on your own," Grissel said. "So far we've done all the work. If you want to get Elliot, then it's up to you."
Fudd kicked at a rock. It rolled into the cave, not far from where Patches was carefully listening to every word.
So the Goblin plan hadn't worked! Elliot was alive! For now.
"You tried the not foolproof plan, and it failed," Fudd mumbled. "You tried the Chocolate Cake of Horror plan, and it failed. Then last night you tried the foolproof plan, and it also failed. So maybe it's time to try something that isn't either one. Something no one can protect Elliot from, because it's never been done before."
"I like it," Grissel said. "Better yet, I love it. Whatever it is, it's got to be great!"
"That's right," Fudd agreed. "If it's never been done, then it's never failed yet. And something that has never failed is certain to succeed! We'll do something final. Something really, really awful." Fudd thought about all the plans he'd formed that first night in Elliot's room. Then he smiled. The last idea was so crazy that it just might work. It was evil, cruel, and only required a bit of black market Pixie magic. Besides, rule number twelve in the Guidebook to Evil Plans clearly stated, "Think big. Small plans have never produced great villains (page 33)."
Fudd turned to Grissel, his grin so wide it showed most of his pointy teeth. "Wait until tomorrow," he said. "After tomorrow, Elliot Penster, king of the Brownies, will be no more."
Inside the cave, Patches gasped. They were going to get Elliot this time. And there was nothing she could do about it. She had to make a run for it. Her short Brownie legs weren't made for running really fast, but the Goblins didn't know she had escaped the hole. Hopefully they'd be so surprised that she'd get free before they caught her.
Patches waited until it was quiet outside and then took a deep breath and began running. She ran from the cave as fast as she could--maybe as fast as any Brownie had ever run before. But even a fast-running Brownie is still pretty slow. It was no trouble at all for Grissel to grab on to her hair as she exited the cave and pull her back to him.
"Did you think I couldn't smell you in there?" he snarled at her. "Where were you going in such a hurry?"
"I had to warn King Elliot," she said. "I have to help him."
"You will help him," Grissel said with an evil grin. "You'll help him lose." He tossed Patches to a couple of Goblins waiting nearby. "Tie her up good. I have a feeling we're going to need her help soon."
Due to being almost dead, Elliot had missed school on Thursday. By late afternoon he was completely alive again. He was so completely alive that the rest of his family decided he must've only had a case of the stomach flu the night before. Wendy baked him another cake to celebrate his getting better. Elliot thought it was chocolate, but it was actually a very burned white cake. He crunched it down anyway. Reed brought him a whole bag of pickle relish from the Quack Shack in case he felt like having any. (He didn't.) And Kyle and Cole flooded the woods behind Elliot's house again. Not really to celebrate Elliot getting better. It's just what they liked to do.
The next day was Friday, and if you remember from chapter 9, Elliot had to stay after school for detention because his teacher thought he'd made a joke during science class. He couldn't explain to his teacher at the time why he had Brownies on his mind. And now he was fairly certain that even if he tried to tell the teacher that he was the king of the Brownies, it would only earn him more detention.
As it turned out, getting detention probably saved Elliot's life, because while he was at school, Fudd used his Pixie magic plan. When Elliot came home later that afternoon, he noticed one very different thing about his house. His room was gone.
It wasn't simply that everything in his room had disappeared, although that was true. It was that where he once had four walls, a door, and a window, there was nothing.
Elliot patted on the hallway wall where he used to have a door to enter his room. But it was only solid wall.
He walked outside and stared at the new shape of his home, which now looked as if it were missing a piece, right where his room had been.
"What's wrong?" Wendy said, walking outside.
Elliot pointed at where his room wasn't. "My room is gone."
"Hmm, you used to have a room there. How strange."
"Strange? Do you think?"
Reed came out to join them. "What are you looking at?"
"Our room is gone," Elliot said. "Look."
"Oh, bummer," Reed said. "I had a new pair of shoelaces in there."
Elliot threw up his hands. "Everything was in there!"
"No need to get so angry," Wendy said. "So what if your room disappeared? Did you ever think about the poor kids in this world who never had their own room at all?"
"It doesn't strike you as odd?" Elliot asked.
"I already said it was strange, didn't I?" Wendy said. "But look at Reed. He lost his shoelaces and he's not complaining."
"I'm complaining a little bit," Reed pointed out. "I really liked those shoelaces."
Wendy and Reed entered the house, fighting about who had to call their parents at work and let them know that there was one less bedroom in the house.
"Consider it good news," Cole said. Elliot jumped. He hadn't realized the twins were behind him.
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"What's good about this?" Elliot asked.
Kyle shrugged. "We were home when it disappeared. It happened right after you usually get home from school. If you had been in your room when it happened, you would've disappeared too."
"So you saw it?"
Cole shook his head. "I don't know if you can see something disappear. It's just that we were in your room looking at that shiny bracelet you had, and then your room started to shake. So we ran out really fast. We shut the door and turned around, and the door was gone."
"Where's Agatha?" Elliot asked. Maybe one of her curses had worked. Could she do that? Did she have that much magic?
"Agatha hasn't been here all day," Cole said. "She said she was tired of cursing our family and wanted to curse some of the other people in town for a while."
Elliot's shoulders slumped. He had hoped this would have been Agatha's doing. Because if it wasn't her, then the Goblins were already trying to kill him again. It was a warm Friday afternoon, the start of what should have been a nice weekend. He'd gotten all of his homework done in detention, and wherever in the universe his room was, he'd already cleaned it this morning...so he was really looking forward to a relaxing weekend.
But as you well know, Dear Reader, nothing ends the fun of a weekend faster than someone trying to kill you all the time.
"Anyway, you're going to be in trouble when Mom comes home," Kyle yelled to Elliot as he and Cole ran away.
"What for?" Elliot yelled back.
"Remember that time we lost our gloves at school? We were grounded for a week. But you went and lost your whole room!"
As soon as his brothers had left, Elliot turned and shouted, "Mr. Willimaker!"
"No need to be so loud, no need for that," said a voice from the trees in Elliot's backyard. "I'm already here."
Elliot trudged into the trees a little ways. He found Mr. Willimaker sitting on a fallen tree stump, his head in his hands and a wide frown on his face.
"I'm so sorry," Mr. Willimaker said. "This is all my fault."
Elliot pressed his eyebrows together, wondering why Mr. Willimaker might need to apologize. After all, he hadn't scared Elliot half to death or made Elliot's room disappear. Elliot didn't know that Mr. Willimaker was actually thinking about how he had written Elliot's name in as king. Queen Bipsy had been one of Mr. Willimaker's last friends in the entire Brownie kingdom. She had believed in him when no one else did. That's why she trusted him to choose the name of the next king. She would be so disappointed now to see that once again, instead of making things better for the Underworld, he had only made them worse.
The future wasn't looking too rosy for Elliot now either.
"I'm sorry, Your Highness," Mr. Willimaker repeated.
"You didn't do this," Elliot said. "Was it the Goblins?"
"It must have been, but I don't understand how they could've done it on their own. Making an entire room disappear needs Pixie magic. But Goblins can't use other creatures' magic. They can only use their own. So they must've had help."
"Whose?"
Mr. Willimaker sighed. "I wish I knew. I hate to say it, but I fear it might be a Brownie who has done this. We don't have a lot of magic of our own, but we are very good at borrowing it from other creatures. If only we had Patches back. She could help us figure this out."
"Can I help to get her back?" Elliot asked.
"I wish you could come with me to the Underworld. The Pixies could poof you there. But since they just helped the Goblins, I don't think they'd help us."
Elliot nodded. "I don't think I'm allowed to go to the Underworld anyway. My parents don't like me to go to new places by myself."
Mr. Willimaker smiled sadly. "King of the Brownies, and you still need permission from your parents."
"But if my parents knew why I was going to the Underworld, they'd probably understand," Elliot said. "We can't trust the Pixies to poof me there, but you could do it, right?"
Mr. Willimaker's eyes widened. "No, sir. I wouldn't dare, not even to rescue Patches. My magic isn't strong enough to poof a human anywhere. I'd probably get your feet into the Underworld and your head and maybe a few of your fingers, but I'd lose the rest of your body. It'd be very hard to rescue Patches with only half of your body."
"Oh," Elliot said. His parents might understand if he had to go to the Underworld to rescue Patches. They definitely would not understand his having only half a body. "Then we have to think of a different way to save her."
"We will." Mr. Willimaker cocked his head. "Where is your crown, Your Highness?"
Elliot turned to where Cole and Kyle were now at the side of the house. "Wait one minute."
He ran to his brothers. They had dug a ditch in a circle, filled it with water, and then had put several ants on the dirt island in the middle.
"What are you doing?" Elliot asked.
"We want to see what the ants will do," Cole said. "They want to get off the island but can't swim."
"Oh. Where's the cr--I mean, the bracelet you took from my room? You didn't leave it in there, did you?"
"No," Kyle said. "Cole, you had it last. Where'd you put it?"
"I left it in the kitchen. But next time I looked it wasn't there. It's pretty shiny. Maybe Uncle Rufus got it."
Elliot ran back and knelt beside Mr. Willimaker. "My uncle won't lose it or anything. He'll just carry it around for a while, and then I can get it back later."
Mr. Willimaker's face went green, like the color of canned peas. Not a good color for either peas or Brownies. "Do you know why your room disappeared?"
"Because the Goblins knew it was my room. They hoped I'd be in it."
"A king always wears his crown, and if your crown was in your room, then they thought you were in your room. Wherever your crown is now, when the Goblins try again, they'll think they're attacking you."
Elliot stood. "What will they do to the crown?"
Mr. Willimaker shook his head. "Goblins don't make things disappear. They blow them up."
Elliot began racing toward his house. "I've got to find Uncle Rufus!"
But there was no time. He fell onto the grass as a rush of wind knocked him flat on his back. It was followed by a boom. Then his entire house exploded.
It took a moment before Elliot realized exactly what had happened. He stood on shaking legs and staggered toward what just ten seconds ago had been his home. Now it was rubble, a heap of wood and broken pipes and chunks of furniture. Shreds of paper and fabric still rained from the sky like confetti, and there was an eerie silence, as if even the breeze didn't dare make any sound.
In the center of where the Penster home had stood, the bathtub had somehow survived. On top of it was a mattress that had fallen from the second story.
"No, no," Elliot whispered. He sat on what had once been a toilet and buried his face in his hands. The kitchen must have blown this way. He saw pieces of his mother's dishes, half of a chair, and Reed's large jar with his collection of leftover pickle relish in it. A crack ran down the jar where it had landed, but amazingly it hadn't shattered.
If he could have chosen the two things to have left in this world, it probably wouldn't have been a bathtub and a jar of pickle relish. But his luck seemed to work that way lately.
Then he heard a sound. It was muffled, but someone was speaking nearby. "Hello? Hello?"
It came from the bathtub. Elliot pushed the mattress off the top and then smiled with relief. Uncle Rufus was lying inside it, fully clothed, with the crown between his fingers.
"I didn't realize we had such a lovely view of the sky from the bathroom," Rufus said.
"The house blew up," Elliot told him.
"Oh." Uncle Rufus sat up and glanced at the mess around him. "So it did."
"Didn't you hear the explosion?"
Blushing, Uncle Rufus said, "I, er, passed gas. I thought that was what I heard."
"Our whole house exploded," Elliot said. "It was very loud."
"Yes, but I don't hear so well a
nymore. I thought it was me. What a relief."
"That our house blew up?"
"No, that I don't have gas. Although if I did, it would be a good thing that we're out here in the open air." Rufus remembered the crown between his fingers. "I think this is yours. I thought you might allow me to give it as a gift to Agatha. It was just so shiny, and I know she'd like it. But I shouldn't have taken it without asking you."
"I wish I could let you have it, but I can't give this up now, even if I wanted to." Elliot took the crown and then helped Rufus out of the bathtub. "I have to find everyone else."
But everyone else found him. Wendy walked across the rubble holding Cole and Kyle by the ears. "Look what you two did," she said to them.
"We didn't blow the house up," Cole protested.
"That's just what someone who did blow up a house would say," Wendy replied.
"We promise," Kyle insisted. "Tell them, Elliot. You saw us outside. Did it look like we were blowing up the house?"
"They didn't blow up the house," Elliot told his sister. "Where's Reed? Is he okay?"
Wendy released Cole and Kyle. "He left for work. Then I saw that he forgot his name tag, so I went running down the street to catch him. I was on my way back to the house when it exploded. What happened?"
Elliot hung his head. "I think the Goblins blew it up."
"Fine time for making jokes." Wendy put her hands on her hips. "Okay, well, let's see if we can get everything cleaned up before Mom and Dad get home from work."
"I didn't make this mess, so I'm not cleaning it up," Cole said.
"I'll clean up my exploded room parts, but that's all," Kyle said.
"I don't think it matters," Elliot said. "Mom and Dad are pretty smart. I think they're going to notice when they sit down for dinner tonight that THE ENTIRE HOUSE IS GONE!"
"Of course they'll notice," Wendy said. "But we've got to have dinner somewhere, and I think it's better to have it in an organized blown-up house than a messy one. That's all I'm saying."
"Well, you'll have to burn our dinner somewhere else tonight," Elliot said. "I'm not hungry anyway."
He stomped off back into the woods. Wendy called after him, but he had bigger problems than his sister's hurt feelings. Mr. Willimaker waited for him at the edge of the trees, right at the border of sunlight and shadow. "What a waste of a perfectly good house," Mr. Willimaker said. "Well, a somewhat good house anyway."