The Dreadful Tale of Prosper Redding by Alexandra Bracken
I tried to fade into the background to give them their moment, but I couldn’t help but ask, “Eleanor? The spider? That Eleanor? She’s, what, another changeling?”
“My own,” Missy said.
No wonder Nell hadn’t wanted to use her during the spell to get Al out of me.
The witch smoothed her hair back, taking a moment to consider her words. “Prosperity, perhaps…I misunderstood your situation. I did not think anyone controlled by a malefactor would be capable of such a kind act. But I need to warn you—”
The front door slammed open, and Nell’s shocked gasp carried through the house to where we stood.
Quickly, I turned back toward Missy. “Warn me about what?”
But the witch was already across the yard, disappearing into the woods.
“—didn’t do it, Nell, I don’t know how many times I have to tell you that,” Uncle Barnabas was saying as he stepped onto the porch behind Nell. “I would never disrespect your mother’s memory in such a way.”
“So you say, but you never wanted the responsibility…” Nell’s words trailed off. A second later, I heard her footsteps pounding around the corner. “Prosper! Did you do this? How? The magic—”
Uncle Barnabas, as pale in the face as I’d ever seen him, appeared behind her.
“I know, right?” I said, quickly, shooting her a look. “You did a great job with it before you left.”
“I did?” she said. “Oh—I did.”
I followed her upstairs, bracing myself for her judgment. Uncle Barnabas and Toad trailed behind us.
When she reached the new spider room, the words “I couldn’t put it back exactly right, I’m sorry!” sprang to my lips.
Nell whirled in its threshold, pointing a finger at me. “Skúffuskáld!”
“Gesundheit?” I offered back. Just to be sure, I reached up and touched my nose, to make sure it was still in the right place.
“No, no,” she said, laughing. “It’s Icelandic. It literally means drawer poet—someone who writes poems but tosses them in a drawer before showing them to anyone. The painting in here is amazing. Why would you hide something you obviously like and are really good at? Because, Prosper, you are really good. Trust me.”
Uncle Barnabas looked around, scratching at his pale hair. “So I suppose this means the run-through’s back on for tonight, then. Nell, why don’t you go give the agencies a call and let them know? The Witch’s Brew Café will let you use their phone.”
Nell’s eyes were narrowed as she looked at him, and was silent, as if still waiting for him to confess.
“I can do it,” I offered. “You two have to get ready, right? And it’s just down the street. What’s the worst that could happen two doors down from here?”
After a beat of silence, Uncle Barnabas relented. “All right. Be quick about it.”
“But—” Nell began, looking between us.
He fished out a crumpled sheet of paper from his pocket and handed it to me.
I knew Nell was watching me from the front door as I ran down the street. Al’s power was still moving through me, swirling just beneath my skin. I reached the café in no time, almost flinging the door open in the face of its owner.
“My goodness!” She looked like a storybook grandmother, all softness and silver hair.
“Can I borrow your phone? Just for a second?” I said in a rush of breath.
“O-of course, dear, it’s behind the counter,” she said, pointing. “I’m closing up, but let me know if you need anything else.”
The landline phone looked like it had time-traveled out of the 1950s. I smoothed the paper out over the counter, scanning down the three numbers. When I reached the last one, I startled—it looked like—
No. It wasn’t Mom’s cell-phone number. Hers ended with a 5, not a 2. But it was close enough to make my stomach twist.
“All right,” I said, dialing the first number and leaving a message with the tour group’s receptionist to confirm. The second call went the same way, and I was told by the woman who answered how excited she was and how she loved haunted houses and how—
“Okay, see you soon, bye!” I hung the phone up quickly, glancing around to make sure the café’s owner was still busy sweeping. I punched in the third and final number and sat back on my heels, eyeing one of the carrot cakes in the café’s refrigerator case.
“Hello?”
That was—that was Mom’s voice.
Crap, crap, crap, crapcrapcrap—I punched in the wrong last number.
I choked on my spit, my hand gripping the phone so hard the plastic handle cracked. I released my grip and, with a deep breath, forced myself to hang the receiver up just as I thought I heard her say, “Prosper?”
Oh no.
Oh, well done, Maggot, Al said, irritated. Now you’ve done it!
I started to make a run for the door, only to realize I hadn’t actually called the third tourist office. I concentrated so hard on inputting the right number this time I almost gave myself a headache. The woman I spoke to happily confirmed her group would be there as sweat soaked through my shirt and my stomach began to roll.
I messed everything up, I thought, hanging up the phone. No. No, I was okay. I didn’t reveal myself intentionally, right? And I definitely hadn’t confirmed who I was. Mom would just think it was a random wrong number. In any case, the owner of the Witch’s Brew didn’t give me a second look when I thanked her and stepped out. My breathing was finally under control by the time I made my way back over to the House of Seven Terrors.
Stopping under the sign that Missy had helped me hang, I couldn’t stop the warm curl of pride that wound its way through me. Nell’s voice drifted down to me from the attic window.
“Everything good?”
“Yup, everything good!” I called back.
And that was the truth. It was a small thing in the grand scheme of life, but I finally felt like I had returned the favor for Nell and Uncle Barnabas’s help. Alastor’s influence was slipping away, and my limbs felt suddenly heavy, making me so exhausted it was a struggle to get up the few porch steps. I sat down instead, trying to catch my breath, wondering at how easy everything had felt only a few minutes ago. How good.
My parents ran Heart2Heart but sat on a dozen charity boards, struggling to divide their time and energy among them. It would make things so much easier to have a life spilling over with luck and strength and fortune, and turn around and share it with others. I could do more. Be better.
As I sat there, watching the sun set and the moon rise, I could almost understand why Honor Redding had made a contract, thinking he could do real good and help his family in the process.
Almost.
The boy fell asleep far faster on the second night than the first. It irritated Alastor to no end to have to suffer silently through the ridiculous game of pretend one more time. Well. Truthfully, it was a bit hilarious too. Watching the little witch’s face as she went through the pocket spell again, “binding” him back, feeling the boy’s smug satisfaction. By the realms, humans truly were the stupidest species haunting their world.
No wonder Alastor’s great ancestors had thought to bring their worthless spirits Downstairs and put them to work doing tasks appropriate for the size of their miniature brains. The boy’s head was so empty Alastor was convinced he could hear his own voice echoing inside his skull.
He sat the boy’s body up, folded the blanket back, and escaped to the hallway. There was much to do tonight, and so few hours to accomplish it.
Nightlock awaited him on the other side of the window. He panted with excitement, fogging up the glass with his breath and saliva. The hob’s face split into an enormous, crooked grin at the sight of Alastor. He wasted no time in scratching at the window, as if the malefactor could have possibly missed him.
“My lord and master!” Nightlock was balanced on the top rung of a ladder, but risked releasing one hand to scratch a pointy ear. Alastor merely took this as an opportunity to flick
He heard the hob’s startled shriek of surprise as he tumbled onto the grass, but was not concerned. If Alastor actually had a heart, it might have broken at Nightlock’s huge, glowing eyes. The hob’s rotting pumpkin cap lay a few feet away, smashed beyond recognition.
“What have you to say for yourself?” Alastor asked.
Nightlock’s forehead wrinkled. “Banana?”
“Pardon me?”
Nightlock’s face screwed up, as if the hob was capable of deep thought. “Pigeon?”
“What are you on about?”
“Wind?”
The boy’s hand shot out, easily closing around the small fiend’s neck. Its already bulging eyes seemed in true danger of popping out.
“Master did not specify what he would like me to say,” the hob choked out. “What word would please you? What has Nightlock done to displease you?”
“The house!” Alastor wanted the words to roar out of him, but had to settle on a whisper. “You cleaned the house and nearly exposed us!”
At that, the little hob gathered himself up, the snot and tears literally sucked back up his bulbous nose. He looked indignant. “That house was not fit for my lord and master! No, this hob would not stand for it, not Upstairs, not Downstairs, not anywhere in between! My prince must be cared for, and not live with the filth of sickening humans—pwah!” The hob launched a blue-tinged wad of snot at the ground to emphasize his disgust.
Alastor sat back, releasing him slowly. Thinking. “You did this for me?”
“Only ever for you, My Eternal Prince of Nightmares that Lurk in Every Dark Sleep.”
The boy’s wounded arm flopped around useless and unfeeling as Alastor forced his body to rise.
“You must take my other horn.” Nightlock was rambling. “You must, you must, you must—otherwise there will be no forgiveness, you will look at me in despair, Master, you must! I am a stupid, stupid creature. I do not deserve to bear horns!”
In truth…Alastor had always been silently disgusted by the practice of taking a hob’s horns. Perhaps it had to do with the way they screamed and thrashed around as it was done. But then, it was almost worse to watch them suck up all of their tears at the task’s completion and pretend nothing had happened. To see them immediately go back to work, fighting through the terrible pain. He had seen his own father maim countless hobs—and all for trivial things, like a spilled glass of troll milk. Sometimes, it was done out of anger when tasks did not turn out the way the emperor had hoped.
The worst had been when their father had forced Alastor and Pyra to watch as their nannyhob’s right horn was sliced off, all because of something Alastor had done. An order he had disobeyed. As the eldest of five brothers and a single sister, Alastor should have known better than to sneak off to the human world.
He had only wanted to prove himself to his father; his brothers were constantly trying to get him to stumble on his path to greatness. He only meant to bring a human spirit down for eternal servitude—but he had left the gate between the worlds open by mistake. A witch had come through and nearly murdered his father. A single, filthy human had nearly destroyed their empire, and yet, to Alastor, his nannyhob losing her horn had been the hardest fact to bear.
Alastor glared down the boy’s nose at the groveling servant’s small body and sighed. “Do not touch the humans’ possessions again unless I ask it of you. Do you understand?”
Nightlock nodded, clutching his clawed hands together under his chin. Alastor thought he was about to start crying again, this time with tears of joy, and so pressed onward.
“You found the fiend you spoke of this past night?” Alastor had made a hollow bargain with the boy, giving him the illusion it was a fair trade rather than a trap for his heart. He was curious to find out if the witchling had heard anything about what might be happening Downstairs, but he would not hold the boy’s breath waiting to find out. No, Alastor always had a second plan.
Nightlock nodded. “Yes, yes, I found him. He will speak the truth of our world to you. He is not under the curse; no, he is not. He is beyond the black throne’s reach.”
“How is this possible?” Alastor asked. No fiend was beyond the black throne’s influence. His family was the most powerful in the realm.
The hob trembled slightly, the knob in his throat bobbing as he swallowed.
“Because, my lord and master,” Nightlock said, “he is not a fiend at all, but an elf.”
Alastor could not decide whether or not he was annoyed or disgusted at the thought of dealing with an elf. In truth, he had only ever met one of their kind, and that had been when he was very young—only 103 years of age. The elf, with its humanlike form, hunched at the shoulders, had come to the Dark Court to speak with his father on behalf of the fiends that had been banished from Downstairs.
Elves were neither human nor fiend, but something far more gentle and quiet and tender—in other words, utterly repulsive. They were smaller in stature than men, their skin green and mottled with sprouts and leaves. If superstition was to be believed, the elves began their existence in the innermost of the four realms—the realm of Ancients.
The mysterious elves did work with great creativity and craftsmanship, but they refused to use their natural gifts to do something useful. Something such as creating a deadly blade with which to stab one’s enemies.
This was likely also the reason the elves had been foolish enough to choose to live in the realm of humans over that of the fiends. Their own innate magical gifts allowed them to use a glamour when they wished to pass as men or women, but they more often seemed to live just at the edge of mankind’s awareness and sight.
The elf that arrived at court that day was advanced in age, well into his tenth century, by the look of his skin. As elves aged, it became rough, thick. Their hair darkened to a forest green. And when it was their time to pass on to the next life, they found a parcel of open land and became what humans called trees.
The whole notion of dying to become something useful to the humans made Alastor want to vomit.
“This way, this way, this way,” Nightlock said, scampering ahead on all four limbs. Alastor forced the boy’s body into a run to keep up with him, choosing to ignore the strange decorations and sights that had baffled him the night before. It seemed that they were heading straight for the section of the village that the little witch had called some sort of trap—a tourist trap?
Worse yet, Alastor had seen grown men and women who were dressed in ridiculous imitations of witches and monsters that did not, in fact, exist. For the life of him, he could not figure out why a village that had once prided itself on hunting and killing witches should now display their image everywhere.
If this elf was here now, Alastor could only imagine the green sprouting from his head, and the scratchy skin, and the creaking joints that slowly were stiffening into timber. His brain would likely be just as useless.
Alastor slowed his pace as he rounded a corner, darting through the flickering streetlight’s orange glow. Nightlock had all but faded into the shadows. Every now and then the light would catch his eyes and set them ablaze.
“Who is this elf,” Alastor whispered, “and what business does he have with the humans?”
“Oh, Master”—the hob said the word like a sigh—“he is an elf of rare talent, oh yes. He sells his jewelry wares on the street—the likes of which will never be duplicated. He has promised this hob a crown worthy of you when you are rid of the human boy’s skin!”
A crown made by elf hands? Why would an elf ever agree to such a thing when their kind loathed fiends as much as they adored humans? Alastor would rather melt the gold down and fling the boiling liquid at his own face than wear a crown that came from such disrespectful, disgraceful, disgusting—
He heard their mindless chattering only moments before the boy’s dull nose picked up on their rancid, sweet scent.
“Faeries,” he warned the hob. “Step lightly, man—it seems as thoug
Their smell was…different, somehow. It had been several hundred years, but Alastor was sure he would have remembered a stench so sweet, touched by a hint of sourness. Already, he could feel the boy’s stomach churning.
Downstairs, the faeries fed on other small creatures—like three-headed lizards or fire-horned beetles. Pests controlling the population of other pests. When the faerie infestations became too large, they began seeking larger prey. They gnawed on the bones fiends used to build their houses and shops. They left their droppings all over the streets and on the fine hats of lordly fiends. Really, they were flying rodents, and they reproduced with the same ease as hay catching fire.
Nightlock brought him down one final backstreet, toward the rear entrance of what looked to be some sort of shop filled with sweet confections, frozen and baked. He looked at the hob for confirmation.
“Oh yes, it is what the humans be calling ‘ice cream.’ Much milk. Much sugar. Blegh!”
Alastor had to agree—there were few things more poisonous to his delicate, refined innards than sweets. The only thing he liked iced were the guts of dragons—but only with a hearty side of nymph blood, and served from a bowl carved from the skull of an imp.
The faeries, however, did not share his refined taste. A cloud of them clung to the clear sacks of garbage. If it hadn’t been for the rapid fluttering of their wings, they might have looked to the human eye like a skin of thick moss. Their paper-thin black wings were coated with white dust and splotches of sticky drips of brown and gold. Each had a gray body that normally had a velvet sheen, two sets of stick-thin arms, and frail, spidery legs.
They were no bigger than the boy’s hand—or, at least, they should not have been. These faeries were twice as wide as they were long. They slurped and sucked loudly with their whiplike tongues. Their faces, closely resembling those of miniature cats, were as bloated as their bellies.
“By the realms…” Alastor breathed out, horrified. The rodents could hardly fly. He watched as they bobbed under their own weight, crashing to the ground with loud splats, wheezing farts, and deep-bellied burps.