The Key

Now, granted, Grimluk had sort of glossed over the internal organs—the golem would have to dig some of those out himself—but the result was a creature that looked very much like Mack MacAvoy.

So much like Mack that Mack’s best friends—those who knew him really well—were only a little suspicious. And his parents never guessed at all.

And then, he had met Mack face-to-face. A real human boy. The boy he was to be for however long it took Mack to save the world.

That had been kind of wonderful, meeting Mack.

But right now, here, today, he had no time for more nostalgia. He had to be a big boy now.

The question was: just how big?

He looked down and noticed that the mud-passing-as-flesh was oozing out over the tops of his shoes. And his jeans were already tight.

Yep: time to be a big boy.

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William Blisterthöng MacGuffin’s castle turned out to be right there in the open atop a sheer outcropping, less than a quarter mile from Urquhart Castle, which was right beside Loch Ness.

Frank had chanted a Vargran spell over the Magnifica and Stefan, and the castle had appeared in perfect clarity. Big as life.

Then the fairies had urged them forward with encouraging words.

“Wait, you’re not coming with us?” Mack demanded.

“This could get violent,” Frank pointed out, “and we are peaceable folk.”

“No fairy has ever—” Connie started in, and Xiao, who was usually very polite, said, “Yeah, right.”

Over the years rare individuals who possessed just a little of the enlightened puissance had caught vague, fleeting glimpses of the castle. But when they reported this, they were condemned as drunk or crazy. Or as crazy drunks.

It was even worse for those few who would also report having seen a sort of sea serpent swimming around in Loch Ness. Those people were also derided as drunk or crazy or both, plus they were often compelled to write books and set up websites in a desperate attempt to prove that they were right.

They were right. But merely writing a book doesn’t prove you’re sane or sober (more the opposite).

Here’s what the local folk and passersby saw as Mack, Jarrah, Xiao, Stefan, and a nonflowery and rather annoyed Dietmar climbed the incredibly steep face of the hill: nothing. That’s what. Once Mack and the gang had come within a hundred feet of the massive promontory (there’s a word to dazzle your teacher with), they simply slipped from view. A person watching from the road would have seen five kids crossing a field and passing beneath a small stand of stunted trees, and then . . . nothing.

And here is what Stefan saw: also nothing. Because although Stefan had many great qualities, like, um . . . toughness and dangerousness . . . he did not possess the enlightened puissance. In fact, as far as Stefan could tell, the rest of them were crazy people gazing up at nothing.

This made it very difficult for Stefan to climb. He could feel the ground under his feet, he could even climb, but it was sketchy work. Try climbing something you can’t see. Go ahead, try. The story can wait.

See? It’s not easy, is it?

The climb was mostly over tumbled boulders. At some point back in history, the side of the mountain had crumbled. The other sides were all still nearly vertical cliff. But this side offered some possibilities for ascent.

So Jarrah held Stefan’s hand and guided him every step of the way with comments like, “Here you go, upsy-daisy, eh?” And, “Come on then, mate, just jump it.” And, “Nah, you won’t fall more than twenty feet, and that’s nothing.”

“I could fly up there in two seconds,” Xiao muttered. “Stupid treaties. Like I would be any kind of threat to those big, leathery, murderous, fire-breathing western dragons.”

“Still, it is a sort of law,” Dietmar said. “And we must obey the law.”

That remark seemed to lessen Xiao’s affection for Dietmar substantially. Xiao could get a very hard look in her eyes and set a very determined jaw when you annoyed her.

Mack brought up the rear, stepping cautiously and gazing up anxiously every few seconds to see just how little progress they had made. It was also his job as the leader to think of a plan for dealing with MacGuffin once they found him. So far his plan was to ask him very politely if they could have the Key, and would he mind releasing the Begonia clan’s All-Mother.

He did have one other idea. He yelled to Jarrah, who was at that moment in midair between boulders. “Jarrah, make sure your mom gets you the latest Vargran.”

“Done,” Jarrah said. She landed like a cat, stood up, pulled out her iPhone, and pointed to it with her free hand. “Nothing new: Mother is on holiday with Dad.” Then she was knocked over by Stefan, who had come to kind of like jumping over invisible boulders. From his point of view he was climbing in midair.

Vargran was the magical language, long forgotten, and only really useful to those very few who were born with the enlightened puissance. Jarrah’s mother was an archaeologist in Australia, where she had discovered some bits and pieces of Vargran carved into a cave wall inside the massive rock known as Uluru.

So far they had learned that Vargran had sounds that included a throat-clearing sound (ch), a click, and a sniff, as well as more normal consonants and vowels. And they had learned that Vargran had four basic verb forms: infinitive, past, future, and or else.

Generally magical spells involved the “or else” tense, which added a ma on the end.

To date they had used Vargran to make a small sun, to cause blue-cheese-filled Lepercons to grow, and to go shopping at Harrods department store, although they hadn’t really intended that last one.

The whole experience had not been very satisfying. Which was why they needed the Key. With MacGuffin’s key matched to the earlier piece of the key—the part they’d obtained from the goddess Nott—they would be able to learn a whole lot more Vargran. The language was, after all, their only weapon, and they didn’t have a lot of time left to assemble the rest of the twelve, somehow convince the traitorous Magnifica Valin to switch sides, and stop the Pale Queen. They needed Vargran. And no: there was no app for that.

About halfway up the mountain they had a lucky break: a stairway, carved into the cliff face. It had once gone all the way down, but when the mountain collapsed, so had the bottom half of the staircase—a fact that made Mack a bit nervous as he climbed his weary way up the narrow, overly tall steps.

It was a good thing they found the stairs because the sun was setting and casting very long, deep shadows all around them, turning every jagged rock into a monster’s head. (Not literally, that was a simile. Or possibly a metaphor. One of those.)

The staircase ended in a stone guardhouse. To their immense relief there was a fountain spouting what they fervently hoped was water. It wasn’t warm in Scotland, but it was humid, and they were all sweating and huffing and puffing, so they plopped down on stone benches, cupped water with their hands and drank, and gazed out across the landscape below: the road, Urquhart Castle, and the loch beyond.

Mack caught Stefan’s eye, and the two of them went to take a look up at MacGuffin’s castle. Darkness was falling fast. It was autumn in Scotland, when days are short and nights are long.

The castle was in perfect repair, not a ruin like Urquhart, which looked as ancient as it was. This castle looked as if it had just been built last week. The stone was clean and lichen-free. The mortar was all fresh. Even the grass below the walls looked green and new-mown.

Also, the row of skulls used to outline the massive timber door was impeccable. They stood out white against dark stone.

“Any way we can sneak in?” Mack wondered aloud.

“I can’t see anything,” Stefan pointed out. “It’s like I’m standing in the air looking at a cloud.”

“Ah. Right. Well, it’s got high walls, a couple of giant towers, and a massive wooden gate.”

“Human pyramid?” Stefan said, and for a moment Mack wasn’t entirely sure it was stupid.

“The walls are too high,” Mack said regretfully. “We need him to open the door. We need a diversion. We need him to come out after some of us while the rest sneak in and find the Key.”

Then, suddenly, without warning, came a sound so terrible Mack felt as if his blood had frozen solid in his veins.

Bleeeeeaaaat-skurrrreeeeeeeeee-waaahhhhhh!

“Oh my God, what is that?” Xiao cried. She had come running. “It sounds as if a goat is being tortured!”

“It sounds like all the pain in existence since the dawn of time!” Jarrah said.