Anything, however, would have been preferable to the trip he was currently embarked on.
It was the first day of school, and Max-Ernest was standing still in the hallway, stalling, while chattering students strode past him. Eventually he tore himself away from the bulletin board and stepped nervously into the administration office.
Behind the counter was a woman he didn’t recognize. She was chewing gum—against school rules, Max-Ernest noted silently—and painting her fingernails.
“Hi,” he said, his voice louder than intended. “I’m—”
“Max-Ernest, I know—Mrs. Johnson is waiting for you,” said the woman in a nasally New York accent, not looking up.
“Oh. Um, who are you?”
“New school secretary,” she said, popping a bubble. “Name is Opal. Like the rock.” The secretary dangled her hand in front of Max-Ernest, showing off a gold ring inset with a milky, iridescent stone.
“Er, nice to meet you…?”
“Likewise, I’m sure.” She pronounced it shoo-ah.
Max-Ernest didn’t know what to think of the new secretary. Even sitting down, Opal was very tall, and she had a big head of blond curly hair that made her look even taller. Her hands were exceptionally large, and her face wore a seemingly permanent smirk punctuated by a sizable mole on her right cheek. All in all, not a very reassuring presence.
“You sure she’s not too busy?” Max-Ernest asked hopefully. “I’m sure there’s a ton of stuff she needs to do. Maybe I should come back tomorrow. Yeah, that’s a good idea—how ’bout that?”
“Sorry, Max-Ernest. No such luck.”
Was it his imagination or was she stifling a laugh?
Max-Ernest took a tentative step in the direction of the principal’s door. The last time he’d seen Mrs. Johnson she had told him she never wanted to see him again. And for good reason. He and Cass and Yo-Yoji had stolen Mrs. Johnson’s family heirloom, the Tuning Fork, and blackmailed her to boot. (It all had been for the noble purpose of saving Cass’s mother’s life, but that certainly didn’t matter to Mrs. Johnson.) He would be lucky to leave her office with a semester’s worth of detention; expulsion was more likely.
“She said not to knock,” Opal added brightly. “Just walk right in.”
Max-Ernest nodded weakly. His throat felt dry, his palms sweaty. Finally, he steeled himself and turned the doorknob.
“Max-Ernest, for shame! Didn’t anyone ever teach you to knock?”
“Uh, sorry… Mrs. Johnson,” Max-Ernest stammered, silently cursing the new secretary. It appeared that she had set him up.
“We will be most satisfied if you address us as Your Majesty, please,” said Mrs. Johnson in an exaggerated English accent. “Well, don’t just stand there, come in.”
Max-Ernest couldn’t help gaping. He almost didn’t recognize the woman standing in front of a full-length mirror. In place of her usual polyester pantsuit and matching hat she was wearing a long velvet gown and a rhinestone tiara. A black stone pendant on a black velvet ribbon hung around her neck; it was shaped like an inverted eye and polished to a glossy sheen.
“I, or rather we, will be Queen Elizabeth this year at the Renaissance Faire. And as you see, you have interrupted us in our royal chambers. Normally, the punishment for such an offense would be death.”
“Sorry, Mrs…. I mean, Your Majesty.”
“Much better. So, tell me what you think of the dress. Too plain? Too gaudy? It has only just arrived from the tailor.”
“Um…” Max-Ernest looked down, unsure how to answer the question.
When he looked up, he gasped out loud. The pendant she was wearing appeared to be floating in the air.
“It’s a magnet,” said Mrs. Johnson, following Max-Ernest’s eyes.
Oh, that explained it. Sort of.
The magnet was pointing directly at him. Or rather at the Tuning Fork in his pocket, he thought.
“A very strong magnet,” she added. “It attracts and absorbs all negative energies. It has transformed my, I mean, our life.”
She patted the pendant and it settled back against her chest.
“You see, something terribly important has happened to us. We have received a message from… ourselves.”
Before Max-Ernest could ask what that meant or declare that it made no sense or even ask just what message she had received, she continued: “And we went on a journey to a land far, far away. We call it the I—.”
Max-Ernest didn’t think he’d heard her correctly. “The I love me?”
“Well, there is that play on words, yes. But what we said was: the Isle of Me. The island of pure self that lies within us all… And what sent us on this trip from us to us, you ask?” She paused for emphasis. “The answer is: you. You and your friends.”
“Me… er, us?”
Mrs. Johnson nodded. “In your own way, you’ve done me a favor.”
Carefully adjusting her dress, she sat down behind her desk, a principal once more.
“After you took the Tuning Fork, I went through a kind of withdrawal and I realized that the Fork had been ruling me—that I wasn’t the master of my own isle, so to speak,” she explained, dropping the royal “we” and the English accent at the same time. “It was time to put the I back in me.”
“You mean the letter I? There is no I in me,” said Max-Ernest, who was struggling valiantly to follow along. “Or do you mean put the E-Y-E back in me?” he asked, looking at the eye-shaped pendant hanging from her neck.
“Whichever. Both. I was speaking figuratively,” said Mrs. Johnson impatiently. “Somehow, I knew the Tuning Fork would come back to me. And I wanted to be ready when it did. ‘What force could protect me?’ I asked I. What would draw the Tuning Fork away from me even as I was drawn to the Tuning Fork? And do you know what I told me was the answer to my problems?”
“A magnet?” Max-Ernest guessed, taking a seat opposite the principal. It was indisputably odd that the subject of magnets would be brought up by both Pietro and Mrs. Johnson in the space of two days, but Max-Ernest had a hunch this was the answer she was looking for.
“Very good.” Mrs. Johnson looked impressed and at the same time slightly disappointed, as if she’d been hoping to provide the answer herself.
“Naturally, being the principal of a magnet school, I had considered the significance of magnets before. But I had never considered they might have a personal application,” Mrs. Johnson continued.* “And lo and behold, what should I find in my attic? In a box of things that belonged to my Great-Great-Great-Aunt Clara? The same woman to whom the Tuning Fork belonged, incidentally? The one everybody says was a witch?”
“The magnet?”
“That’s right—the very magnet I am wearing around my neck.”
She held up the pendant for Max-Ernest’s inspection. At close range, it seemed to be some sort of black stone with a thin vein of gold running through it.
“I have decided no longer to be ashamed of my ancestor but to embrace her memory,” continued Mrs. Johnson. “It may be there is much to learn from her so-called witchcraft…. Now, I cannot wait any longer. Do you have the Tuning Fork? I take it that’s why you wanted to see me.”
She looked anxiously at him, craning her neck, inspecting his pockets for bulges, trying to peek into his schoolbag.
“Yeah, it’s right here, Mrs. Johnson.”
This time she didn’t bother to correct him on the name.
As soon as Max-Ernest brought out the Tuning Fork, Mrs. Johnson’s eyes were drawn to it—as if her eyes were magnets themselves.
The pendant around her neck was floating again, straining against the chain. Max-Ernest, meanwhile, felt an invisible force pulling him toward the principal.
“You see its power—?” She gasped.
Tearing her gaze away from the Tuning Fork, she stood up and walked around her desk to Max-Ernest. “We will make a circuit, you and I,” she said, grasping him by the hand and pulling him out of his seat. “We will draw out all the negative energy and
create a positive flow.”
Positive or negative, all Max-Ernest could think about was that he and the principal were holding hands. Holding hands! He gritted his teeth and prepared to wait it out.
At least it looked like he wouldn’t be expelled.
Back on your feet, gents! Do not tarry, m’ladies.”
The knights and the footmen, the lords and the ladies, and the entire procession reassembled relatively quickly, albeit grumblingly, after the robbery—rather as if it all had happened before. Cass got the sense that the masked woman and her band of thieves regularly set upon travelers in the area—like bandits who staked out stagecoach routes in the Old West.
Miraculously, nobody appeared to have been hurt in the fracas.
Cass slipped in among the last of the footmen and was soon following the procession down the road in the direction, she hoped, of the King’s palace—and of the Jester himself.
The trip took hours and the procession became increasingly bedraggled. Sweat trickled down noses and made shirts stick to backs. Mud splattered breeches and filled soldiers’ boots. Humans and animals alike complained of aches and pains, thirst and hunger. Despite her ghostly state, even Cass was beginning to feel the toll.
Eventually, however, the bumpy road gave way to smooth stone, and the wild countryside was replaced by carefully tended gardens. A matching formality overtook the procession. Backs stiffened, soldiers fell into stride with each other, flags were held erect. The lords and ladies or whoever they were in the finer clothing stopped and primped themselves.
Even before she saw it, Cass knew they were nearing the palace.
While the palace was not a white and sparkling fairy-tale castle on a hill, nor an austere fortress with a moat and a drawbridge, it was nonetheless grand, and certainly it was very impressive to Cass. A vast redbrick edifice, it stretched out on either side the length of several city blocks and boasted row after row of white-framed windows that blinked in the flickering sunlight like hundreds of eyes on an enormous face.
After the procession had passed through the palace’s outer gates and into its expansive grounds, some of the soldiers and footmen peeled away, presumably heading for their barracks, while others escorted the more important travelers toward the twin towers that buttressed the palace’s arched front entrance.
Cass shivered, reminding herself that she had nothing to be afraid of—except failing her mission. She peered through the Double Monocle into the courtyard that lay beyond the entrance. A group of dignitaries waited. Could the Jester be among them?
Woof woof! Ruff ruff! Bow wow! Yap yap! Grrrrrrrrr…*
Cass was about to follow the others past the lines of royal guards and into the palace’s interior courtyard when she was suddenly descended upon by a dozen barking beagles. The beagles nipped angrily at her heels, somehow sensing that the invisible girl was an interloper, unwelcome on royal grounds.**
A tired-looking man in leather breeches—their trainer, Cass guessed—trotted up to the beagles.
“Terrence? Bailey? Hunter? What are you little gits up to? Found a groundhog, have you? Or another partridge fallen?” he asked solicitously, almost as if the dogs were his master and not the other way around. “No need to fight over the spoils. Plenty of delicious treats waiting for you in the kennels! Come on now, quit your barking.”
To the trainer and anyone else around, it must have looked very odd—the beagles circling for no apparent reason, pawing at the air. Her invisibility had protected her until now; Cass didn’t want to press her luck. Desperate, she tried to shoo the dogs away from her—a difficult task to perform without making any noise.
Fortunately, the trainer was able to coax them away with a few treats he happened to be carrying in his satchel.
Unfortunately, by the time all the dogs had been rounded up, the procession had disappeared and the gate was clanging shut. Cass had missed her chance to get into the palace.
Trying not to be discouraged, she started walking the perimeter of the royal residence.
Where would she find the Jester? Did he have regular work hours or did he come and go as he pleased? (She imagined being a jester was something like being a stand-up comedian, but more mobile—like being a walking comedian.) She remembered a red-and-white-striped tent. Did he pitch his tent on royal grounds or did he hide it out in the woods somewhere?
Being invisible, she figured it wouldn’t be too much of a risk to climb through an open window, but it was chilly out, and every window she saw was shut. She was, however, able to look inside a few windows where curtains were not drawn, and she saw some of the palace rooms. Cass knew that some people, like her antiques-collecting grandfathers, would have given their right arms to see the furnishings inside, but to her, all the rooms looked the same: filled with uncomfortable-looking chairs and gold-framed paintings that were either dark and scary or silly and heaven-ish. Nowhere did she see a wiry man wearing a three-pointed hat with bells.
After turning a corner, she noticed a stairwell on the side of the building. Walking down the short flight of steps, she found a small iron door—the first door she’d come across since the front entrance. She tried the handle. It was locked.
As she turned away, the door opened, nearly pushing her to the ground.
“Ow!” she exclaimed, the sound obscured by the clanging of chains.
Recovering from the blow, Cass turned to see a uniformed soldier dragging a small creature out the door—a monkey, Cass assumed at first glance.
A scowling man in a dark cloak presided from the doorway. “Let him sleep in the kennels. If he will not speak, he is no better than a dog!”
The cloaked man spit on the creature’s back and then slammed the door before Cass could slip inside.
Dismayed, she looked down at the whimpering creature at her feet.
“Come on, you heard your master,” said the soldier, tugging on his collar. “It’s the kennels for you.”
The creature had exceptionally large eyes, and to Cass’s shock she found they were staring directly at her. He could see her! But the greater shock was that she knew those eyes very well….
“Mr. Cabbage Face!” she cried out before thinking better of it.
The creature looked at her oddly, as if he didn’t quite understand.
But she was certain of it: although he was even shorter (if that was possible) than when she’d last seen him, and although there were fewer folds in his leathery skin, the creature in front of her was none other than a younger incarnation of her long-lost old friend, the homunculus. She would recognize him anywhere, she thought: the huge hands (for grabbing fistfuls of meat), the huge nose (for sniffing out roasts and sweets), the little torso with the big belly (for filling with meal after meal). The homunculus was literally one of a kind. The reason he could see her, she suspected, was that he was not entirely mortal.
The soldier drew his sword. “Who’s there?”
How awful to see her friend in chains! How was she going to free him? That was all she could think of.
Cass put her finger to her lips. The homunculus nodded slightly. He wouldn’t give her away.
Shrugging his shoulders, the soldier sheathed his sword. “Guess it’s that blasted ringing in my ears again….”
He gave the homunculus a tug. “Let’s go, dog.”
The homunculus grunted in complaint but started shuffling after him, chancing only a quick backward glance at Cass.
What is the homunculus doing at the palace? she wondered, silently following. And why is he being dragged to the kennels?
Then she remembered “The Legend of Cabbage Face.”
In the story, the homunculus’s creator, Lord Pharaoh, brings the homunculus to an audience with the King. When the homunculus won’t perform on command, Lord Pharaoh grows angry and punishes him by sending him outside to sleep in the mud with the hogs.
Was it possible she was witnessing in real life the events she’d previously only read about?
In that c
ase, Cass realized with a chill, the cloaked man she saw in the doorway must have been the dreaded Lord Pharaoh—the brilliant but evil alchemist who was not only the father of the homunculus but also the founder of the Midnight Sun!*
As for the hogs, the writer of the story had obviously gotten that part wrong.
Not hogs, she thought.
Dogs.**
It was lunchtime, and Max-Ernest was still preoccupied with his bizarre encounter with Mrs. Johnson in her Renaissance Faire costume. What a powerful magnet that must have been to float like that, he thought. He had to admit Pietro was right. To someone who didn’t know about magnetism, it would look like magic.
Automatically, he headed for his regular lunch spot: the Nuts Table.
Only as he was sitting down at his usual seat did he become aware that he was about to commit that capital schoolyard crime: having lunch alone.
He stared at the empty seats around him: Cass’s directly across the table and Yo-Yoji’s to his right. For years he hadn’t thought twice about eating by himself. But now that he’d experienced the pleasure of having friends to eat with, lunch didn’t seem like lunch without them.
What to do?
He wasn’t very hungry, and in any case he hadn’t taken a lunch with him to school that day. (In past years, he’d always had two lunches: one packed by his mother, one by his father. Lately, neither parent seemed to remember he might sometimes need to eat.) The only thing he had with him as far as food goes was a single chocolate bar—and that had to last until he got home. Besides, it had been in his pants pocket and was almost certainly melted. He needed to put it someplace cool and let it harden again.
Should he get up? He would look pretty silly, considering he’d just sat down. Besides, he had nowhere to go. At least not until after school.
He glanced down at the blue plastic surface of the Nuts Table as if his instructions might be written on it; and in fact there was plenty of graffiti etched into the plastic, but nothing helpful (or even repeatable).
Max-Ernest, it is fair to say, was at a loss.
I’m lonely, he thought with a sense of discovery.