The Key Read online

  “When you say, ‘They have all,’ what do you mean by that?”

  “The Tong Elves. Bowands. Skirrit. They say there is even a Gudridan—a giant—and maybe more. All under the command of two people: the man in green and his apprentice—he who is the twelfth of us.”

  “Valin?”

  “Yes,” Sylvie said. “My half brother, Valin, the twelfth of the Twelve.”

  * * *

  Twelve

  * * *

  Sylvie had a short and emotionally repressed parting from her grandparents, who apparently understood that she would have to be gone for a while saving the world. There were shrugs, a few small hand gestures, and they did the kiss-kiss-on-the-cheeks thing.

  The now–Magnificent Five plus Stefan crammed back into the car and drove with their usual destructiveness—two sideswiped cars, a crushed stop sign, and a young woman on a bike who had to plow into a ditch to escape injury19—to reach the Clansman Hotel, where a boat could be found to take them out onto Loch Ness itself.

  Normally the boat would take a whole load of tourists, but the tourists were all still busy at Castle Blisterthöng—as it would come to be known—so Mack and his friends had the boat to themselves.

  The captain was extremely reluctant to allow them to stop in the middle of the loch and use his megaphone to begin shouting at the water. But, as you may recall, Mack had a million-dollar credit card and, again, it’s kind of amazing what you can get people to do when you have that much money.

  Boat rental: 500 GBP.20

  So the boat, HMS Heather Lochlear, stopped and wallowed in the midst of Loch Ness. It’s a fairly narrow lake—you can see both sides at once—but quite long, so you can’t see end to end. They could see Urquhart Castle quite clearly and Blisterthöng Castle beyond—a sight that had the captain losing his meerschaum pipe into the water when his jaw dropped in amazement.

  He had a bit of the enlightened puissance, the captain had. After all, you don’t spend your life floating around and looking for the Loch Ness monster without possessing a powerful imagination.

  After seeing the castle that had never been there before, the captain was very cooperative.

  Mack had no clear idea how to let the All-Mother, aka the Loch Ness monster, know that he had the two pieces of the Vargran Key in his possession and was now ready to free her from the curse that had been placed on her.

  If you think about it, talking to a sea serpent whose very existence is in doubt is not an easy proposition.

  So he borrowed the captain’s megaphone, climbed out onto the very tip of the bow, and yelled, “All-Mother. I have what you need!”

  When that didn’t work, he yelled, “Frank the fairy sent me!”

  Which also didn’t work.

  “Her names,” Dietmar said. “Frank told us her names. Maybe they have the power to summon her.”

  “Does anyone remember the names?” Mack asked.

  Dietmar raised his hand.

  “Anyone besides Dietmar?” Mack asked.

  The rest all looked down at the ground.

  “Okay, Dietmar,” Mack said. He handed the megaphone to the blond boy and let him take his place in the bow.

  “Eimhur Ceana Una Mordag!” Dietmar cried.

  Nothing.

  “And All-Mother to clan Begonia,” Dietmar added.

  Still nothing. Just faint ripples from the chill breeze that blew across the surface of the water.

  “Beloved of the Gods and Ultimate Warrioress?” Dietmar tried, obviously beginning to doubt his plan now.

  Still nothing.

  “But that was all,” Dietmar said, shrugging his shoulders and looking perplexed.

  “No, there was one more thing,” Xiao said. “I remember! Holder of the record for longest sustained note on the bagpipes!”

  “But that is silly,” Dietmar protested.

  “Try it,” Mack said.

  So Dietmar pressed the button on the megaphone and said, “Eimhur Ceana Una Mordag, All-Mother to clan Begonia, Beloved of the Gods, Ultimate Warrioress, and a past holder of the record for longest sustained note on the bagpipes, please speak with us!”

  “Thar she blows!” the captain cried. Not exactly in those words, because that’s from Moby-Dick. What the captain actually said does not bear repeating and should never have been said in front of a bunch of twelve-year-olds. But you have to understand: the man was excited. He had navigated these waters for thirty-two years and never even caught a glimpse of Nessie.

  The captain was the first to see—but then Mack did as well—the bulge of water, a moving wave. It was as though a submarine were powering by just beneath the surface.

  Then an eruption! A geyser of water, and up and up and up rose something like a snake. A very big snake, but not with a snake’s head. No, the head was more distinct, more elongated, more like something that ought to be attached to a dinosaur.

  The head was the size of the car they’d been driving. The mouth had a bit of a quirky dolphin smile about it, and the eyes were intelligent and alert.

  Nessie’s body surfaced only partially, like a whale. There were fins, four of them, that lay on the surface of the water acting as stabilizers. A long tail, almost as long as the elevated neck, swished back and forth like the tail of an agitated cat.

  Nessie could train only one eye at a time on them. She chose to aim her left eye at them.

  “You have summoned me,” a voice said, but the voice did not seem to come from that massive dinosaur head. Nor was it the sort of voice you would associate with a giant sea serpent. It sounded like the voice of a woman, perhaps a bit haughty, maybe a little proud, a little sure of herself, with maybe just a bit of Queen Elizabeth II falsetto in there.

  “Well, yes,” Mack admitted. “We summoned you.”

  The head lowered and the eye peered hard at Xiao. “What is your kind doing here, dragon?”

  “I am here as a girl,” Xiao said, and made an open-arms gesture of “I’m harmless” and “so please don’t kill me.”

  Nessie—the All-Mother of clan Begonia—did not seem happy about the presence of a Chinese dragon, however much she disguised herself as a girl. In fact Nessie looked very much as if she might be really annoyed. So Mack moved quickly in front of Xiao and said, “We were sent by Frank. We have the Key.”

  Nessie stopped caring about Xiao in a heartbeat. “You have the Key of William Blisterthöng MacGuffin?”

  “That’s right,” Mack said. “Totally.”

  He drew out the smaller center piece from his pocket.

  The All-Mother’s eye glittered.

  Then he pulled out the second part, heavier, rather awkward, from where he had slipped it into the waist of his pants.

  “The Key!” the sea serpent hissed.

  “The deal with Frank was that if he helped us get it, we’d use it to free you,” Mack explained.

  “And then, with the Key in my possession, I can have my revenge!” Nessie exulted. “My foes will flee before me! I will crush all other fairy clans! I will rain down fire on Blisterthöng! I will sink every boat that has ever chased me around this forsaken lake. And then, on to the destruction of towns and villages!”

  “Um …,” Mack said.

  “What happened to fairies being a peaceful people?” Jarrah asked.

  “We aren’t giving you the Key,” Mack said. “That wasn’t the deal.”

  “Frank is a good fairy,” Nessie said. “But he doesn’t make decisions like that. I do! Now: give me the Key!”

  “No, we can’t do that if you’re going to go rampaging around and … you know. Kill everyone.”

  Nessie got a crafty look in her sea serpent eye. “You’re right; I won’t do that.”

  “I kind of don’t believe you,” Mack said.

  “You can absolutely believe me,” Nessie said with utmost sincerity. “I could not be more trustworthy. That other stuff I said? Fairy humor. Ha. Ha-ha. See?”

  “Look, all I can do is what I agreed to,” Mac
k said. “I can free you from the spell. But there’s no way I’m going to let you have the Key. We need it to defeat the Pale Queen. Plus, you’re obviously nuts.”

  At this she lowered her head until it was level with Mack’s. “If the Key were to sink to the bottom of the loch, I would be the only one who could find it.”

  “Well, I’m not going to drop it into—” And then Mack stopped, because he got where she was going. “Oh.”

  Up shot the massive dinosaur head.

  Then down it came in a rush, water spraying and then surging up, and the head slammed (!) straight down at the deck.

  Mack shoved Xiao aside and Stefan tripped backward, accidentally knocking Dietmar out of the way.

  The monster’s head hit the deck like someone had dropped a safe. The whole boat shook. But the deck was steel so it didn’t break.

  The same could not be said for the railing, the deck chairs, and the chest where they kept life jackets. These were all bent and splintered.

  Rrraaaww-chug-chug-rrraawww!

  The captain threw the boat into reverse. The engines responded quickly but not quickly enough. Nessie, the All-Mother of clan Begonia, was quick. She spun around more like a cat than a massive sea serpent and slammed her tail into the side of the boat. There was a loud splintering sound, and Mack, who had just gotten to his feet, was knocked off balance again.

  The boat gathered speed, but it was moving backward, which was not its best angle.

  Nessie easily kept pace, swimming alongside, her head high out of the water, then veered into the boat. The boat and the sea serpent were roughly the same size, but Nessie had the speed and the agility. The impact pushed the boat over so that the deck canted sharply and Jarrah went flying, hit the tangled railing, and was barely saved by Stefan’s quickly outstretched hand.

  He yanked her back aboard. The captain killed the engines—at this angle and moving backward, he was going to poop the boat.

  (This requires some explanation. For a boat to be “pooped” means being swamped by a wave coming over the stern. Get your mind out of the gutter.)

  That’s right: they were seconds away from the boat being pooped.

  So the captain killed the engine and turned the rudder hard, trying to use the momentum to spin around forward.

  This almost worked. It worked in the sense that Nessie sheered off and the boat wallowed wildly in its own wave. Water rolled over the sides, drenching everyone.

  The captain hit the throttle—going forward this time—and the boat began to move slowly.

  Nessie was way too quick for that move. She came racing alongside, and before the boat could gather way (get going), she soared up out of the water like a whale showing off, twisted just slightly in the air, and landed directly across the bow.

  It was like an elephant dropping from the sky.

  Fortunately there was some yielding give in her rubbery flesh because Sylvie and Dietmar were both slammed to the deck, crushed beneath her massive bulk, and only saved from being popped like a couple of stomped hot dogs by the fact that the boat hit a trough and dropped away, lessening the impact.

  Nessie slithered off, leaving two kids down, unable to move. And all of a sudden, things had gotten very, very serious. There was blood coming from Dietmar’s eyes and nose, gushing and mingling with water on the deck.

  Sylvie didn’t move at all. She just lay there like she was unconscious. Or something worse.

  “That breaks the deal,” Mack snarled. “Stefan, Jarrah, get them inside. Xiao: with me. We need to do some fast decoding.”

  * * *

  Thirteen

  * * *

  The boat was under way again, but the captain had been injured in the latest attack. He was up on the flying bridge with what might be a broken arm and leg, trying bravely to keep going, but looking like a guy who was likely to pass out cold at any … and there he went.

  The wheel spun free and the boat veered straight for a rocky shore.

  “Stefan!” Mack yelled.

  Stefan swung out through a shattered cabin window and swarmed up to the bridge with the powerful agility of a chimpanzee. Although it would be a bad idea to ever compare him to a chimp to his face.

  The boat turned away from shore. Mack fumbled the pieces of the Key together. The center stone fit perfectly.

  For the first time he had a chance to really take a look at the two pieces together.

  In the very center was a symbol of an eyeball. The eyeball didn’t do much but stare at you.

  Around the outer edge of the outer ring were a large number of pictures—tiny images carved into the stone. Some were fairly easy to understand. For example, a circle with rays coming out was probably the sun. Three wavy lines probably meant water. A wild boar with puffed-out cheeks was surely wind. Or maybe just a wild boar.

  Others were even more obscure. There was the head of an animal that might be a horse but might also be a cow. It wasn’t that easy to tell. Mack didn’t have time to count, but there were 144 symbols: twelve times twelve.

  “They are objects. Nouns,” Xiao said, pointing.

  Mack had noticed that, too.

  The inner circle was a different set of symbols but with some overlap. For example, there was a second puffy-cheeked cloud. There were also really odd symbols like a fist, a held nose, a sign on a stick, what looked like a rabbit in a hat, a foot with wings, a fluttering leaf, a knife, a wheel, and so on.

  “Those are verbs,” Mack said, rushing to get it out before Xiao could.

  “Verbs and nouns. But …,” Xiao said.

  And that’s when Nessie dived under the boat and surfaced beneath it. The entire boat, but especially the bow, rose up out of the water. All the way clear. As in, the bow was pointing roughly at the highest part of Urquhart Castle.

  Mack and Xiao slammed back into the front cabin window. Mack held on to the Key for dear life.

  Then Nessie rolled beneath the boat and, just as the bow was beginning to plunge, she raised the stern. The Heather Lochlear went down like a skipped rock that had had its last skip. Mack was underwater. All the way under.

  Freezing, foaming loch was in his clothing and in his nose and ears and smearing his vision. His fingers gripping the Key were instantly numb. And it’s funny just how quickly you start to need air when you’re underwater and you were caught on the exhale.

  Both Mack and Xiao floated free of the deck, which fell away beneath them, farther and farther, and then, right in their faces, there was the monster. Her dolphin grin wasn’t looking so quirky now because she opened her jaws and showed row upon row of very white, very sharp teeth.

  But then the boat reached the bottom of its plunge and rose, fighting its way back to the surface. The bow caught Nessie right in the neck. Mack heard an underwater bellow of pain, and all at once the bow was bursting up through the silvery barrier between water and air.

  Mack gasped for air. His fingers were so numb he couldn’t feel the Key, but through dripping eyes he confirmed that both pieces were still in his hands.

  Nessie was a hundred feet away, twisting her neck back and forth above the water like an athlete limbering up.

  Stefan did what Stefan could be absolutely relied upon to do. He shoved all throttles forward and aimed the boat for the All-Mother of clan Begonia.

  “My turn,” Stefan said.

  The sudden attack threw Nessie off her game. At first she stared like she couldn’t believe it. And in that time the boat closed half the distance.

  By the time she realized that yes, yes, they were actually attacking her, she only had time to run. Or swim; let’s not get literal here.

  “Get some of that encapsulated pissant going!” Stefan yelled down at Mack. “She’s faster than the boat!”

  Mack and Xiao fumbled with the Key. “I don’t know how to use it!” Xiao cried.

  “Me neither!”

  “Verbs and nouns. What do we do with them? And what about modifiers?” asked Xiao.

  “Look!”
Mack pointed with one trembling finger. “That’s a picture of rocks!”

  “So what?”

  “And that symbol with two hands making a ball … I think that means ‘make.’”

  “Quick, line them up!”

  They did that. And instantly … nothing!

  “Are we making a rock?”

  “I guess not,” Mack gibbered.

  “Wait, wait. I have it! Okay, first line ‘make’ up with that monster. Then the rocks. We’ll sink her!”

  “Say what?” Mack asked.

  But together they did it.

  And instantly … still nothing.

  But then, two instants later, there came a voice.

  The voice said, “A-ma belast dafee.”

  “Did you hear that?” Mack asked.

  Xiao nodded, or maybe just shivered in a vertical direction, but it looked like a nod and, anyway, Mack had no better plan. Because now, as Stefan had predicted, Nessie had outrun and outmaneuvered them. She had come around behind them, and although the boat was going heck-for-leather, battering its way through the light chop, sending spray everywhere, and despite the fact that Mack had a sneaking suspicion that Stefan was having the time of his life, Mack said to Xiao, “Together. Let’s try it.”

  He took her hand. He didn’t actually feel it, but he took it. And together they cried, “A-ma belast dafee!”

  It didn’t happen all at once.

  Nessie was rearing up ready to smash the stern and probably kill the engines, leaving them helpless, when feathers suddenly rippled all across her rubbery, reptilian flesh.

  Nessie didn’t notice right away. But it was hard to miss if you were watching in wide-eyed terror.

  Then her toothy dinosaur jaw began to stretch and flatten.

  That, Nessie noticed.

  And she noticed the way her forward fin-arms melted and were then covered with feathers.

  “That’s not rocks!” Xiao cried.

  And Nessie’s rear fins spread wide and became leathery triangles. In fact, became the world’s largest duck feet.