The Curse of Greg Read online

  “Foluda, don’t you know whose kid this is?” the assistant said to the head of security. “It’s Trevor Stormbelly’s son.”

  “You’re Trevor Stormbelly’s kid?” Foluda asked in shock. “So sorry about that. I—I didn’t know. Why didn’t you just say so?!”

  Okay, so I was having a hard time getting used to my dad being a celebrity. I hadn’t quite learned the power of name- dropping yet. Part of it was surely my dad’s new condition— I just didn’t see how anyone could revere him while he was basically losing his mind right in front of us all. But either way, once they knew I was a Stormbelly, they immediately admitted me into the administrative wing of the Underground. Almost an hour later, Dunmor’s secretary, a young bearded guy named Whukgrek Jadehand, was able to arrange a short meeting with Dunmor.

  “Ten minutes tops!” Whukgrek said before ushering me into Dunmor’s office.

  It seemed the approaching return of magic had turned the Alderman’s office into pure chaos. As I’d waited for the meeting, there had been people running this way and that with armfuls of scrolls and ancient books, as if everyone was a panicked sixth grader running late for class on their first day of middle school.

  “Greg, you can’t just do this every time you need something,” Dunmor started as he sat down in his small wooden chair, looking flustered. “I have so much going on right now, plus your father is back and so . . .”

  His normally well-groomed beard looked stringy and frazzled at the same time.

  “This is important,” I said.

  “Yes, well, so is all of this.”

  He gestured at the heaps of parchment and scrolls scattered about his desk in piles so disorganized the word pile would be offended to even be associated with the mess.

  “Okay, I’ll get to the point,” I said.

  “Please.”

  “It’s about Stoney.”

  “Who?” Dunmor asked.

  “The Rock Troll we just brought back from Wisconsin,” I said.

  “Oh, yes, that,” he said. “You will get your credit, do not worry. You kids did an incredible job, just incredible. With that incident alone I should be able to finally talk the Council into allowing more kids to volunteer for MPMs. Rest assured we will show our appreciation in time, but—”

  “It’s not that,” I interrupted. “It’s about where Stoney is being held. I promised him he wouldn’t be our prisoner. We can’t lock him in his quarters.”

  For a moment, Dunmor just stared at me. His eyes seemed to run circles around my head as he pulled a piece of elk jerky from his pocket and absently chewed on it. My stomach rumbled at the sight of it. Then he finally sighed and placed his empty hand under his sad, damaged beard.

  “Right,” he said slowly. “Greg, you have to realize that we can’t possibly just let a Rock Troll, one who only recently was allied with the Elves no less, roam the Underground at will. It would be irresponsible, negligent even. He needs to be debriefed first. We need to know he can be trusted before freedoms can be granted. I’m sure you can understand that we must look out for the safety of all Underground residents first and foremost?”

  “I get that, I really do,” I said. “But I wouldn’t exactly say he was allied with the Elves. Imprisoned is a more fitting way to describe the association. He won’t cause harm. You have my promise. Stoney means well, he really does.”

  “Greg, please don’t take this the wrong way, but we can’t govern our society based on the promises of thirteen-year-olds,” Dunmor said. “We must instead rely on prudence, intelligence, and history. Besides, it’s not my decision to make. This isn’t an autocracy. It’s a democracy. There are established procedures for all incoming potential assets. Every monster or creature or other being brought in after a successful MPM must remain in lockdown until it is fully interviewed, assessed, and determined to be nonthreatening to the general Underground public. Only a Council vote can unlock his chamber door, Greg. I’m sorry.”

  “How long will that take?” I asked.

  Dunmor shrugged helplessly.

  “This is relatively new for all of us,” he said. “Some MPM creatures have been cleared in as little as twenty-four hours. Some still haven’t been cleared at all. The Council has been meeting once a day to discuss and vote on every pending case. And so your Rock Troll’s case will be discussed and voted on tomorrow along with all of the others.”

  I nodded and let my shoulders relax a little.

  “But I must warn you,” he continued. “He is a Rock Troll. And so it’s highly, highly unlikely he will be cleared tomorrow. Maybe not ever, given our history with others of his kind.”

  “What history?” I demanded. “None of you had even seen a Rock Troll in your lives before we brought him here.”

  “Greg, you know what I meant,” Dunmor said. “I was referring to our long, well-documented struggles with these creatures during Separate Earth times.”

  “So you’re going to make decisions based on things that happened hundreds of thousands of years ago instead of based on what you see and hear and witness firsthand now, today?” I asked, hardly believing what I was hearing. “If you don’t trust him, he’ll never trust you. Keeping him locked in his room will ensure that he never gets cleared. He may even . . .”

  I stopped just short of telling him that Stoney could simply break his way out of his room quite easily if he wanted to. Did they really think two locked wooden doors could hold a huge Rock Troll in check?

  “May even what?” Dunmor asked, eyebrows raised.

  “Nothing,” I said, knowing that threatening violence on Stoney’s behalf would not help his case at all.

  I’d have to figure something else out.

  “I’m afraid I’m out of time to discuss this, Greg,” Dunmor said shortly. “Will that be all?”

  I sighed and reluctantly nodded. This was over for Dunmor for now. But it certainly wasn’t over for me.

  Not yet.

  CHAPTER 13

  Fairy Wings Make Wonderful Snacks

  My dad was seated at the dinner table when I finally got home.

  Spread out in front of him was a small feast: a huge bowl of smoked-whitefish mousse, tallow-fried beet chips, a platter of beef tartare, assorted cheeses, and a plate of roasted bone marrow with bacon-and-fig jam.

  “Smells good,” I said, my stomach growling angrily.

  My dad’s mouth was stuffed too full of tartare to speak, but he motioned at the other seat, a plate already set out for me. I sat down and scooped a big spoonful of bone marrow onto a beet chip. I hadn’t really eaten a proper meal since breakfast. I mean, we did stop at a fast food place on the drive home from the Dells, but three Big Macs and a twenty-piece McNuggets only gets you so far.

  After eating enough to calm my angry belly, I finally explained to my dad how the MPM went and what was going on with Stoney.

  He nodded sympathetically.

  “It’s a tough spot,” he said. “But it sounds like you did well.”

  “Yeah, but I didn’t,” I said. “Not if I can’t fix this. I gave Stoney my word, and it will be broken if we have to keep him locked up. I just don’t understand Dwarves sometimes, Dad. I mean, we claim to be all enlightened and not like the Elves, who judge people and look out for themselves first. But then in the next breath we’re talking about how savage and stupid Rock Trolls are when nobody living has ever really met one before now. I mean, my experience with Stoney doesn’t even come close to what the old texts say Rock Trolls are like. It makes me wonder how much of anything I can trust in those dusty, ancient Separate Earth books.”

  My dad was silent for a few moments and my stomach sank as I fully expected the onset of another round of nonsensical talk. But then he nodded slowly as he took a bite of smoked-whitefish mousse on a beet chip.

  “Everyone is misunderstood,” my dad said, mumbling with his mouth full
. “I’ve always said that.” He paused to swallow his food and take a drink of tea. “You know, I think that if everyone in this world understood each other perfectly all the time, then pretty much nothing bad would ever happen.”

  I nodded. I wanted to ask him for more. In these rare, brief clear moments, I fully appreciated just how smart my old dad really was. How kind and generous and thoughtful. Things I’d perhaps always taken for granted. I was desperate for his advice, but I was afraid to ask anything at all. His weird new Kernels of Truth quirk had been sort of funny at first, if annoying. But lately I’d been finding his lapses into vacant, meaningless wisdoms sort of frightening. It’s like he wasn’t even my dad anymore when he was having an episode. Like he wasn’t even a real person. They were creepy and disturbing in the same way as seeing someone sleepwalking.

  But I had to keep trying—maybe that was what would finally help him get better?

  “What should I do, Dad?” I ventured quietly.

  Right away his eyes glazed over the way they so often did these days, and my heart sank into my belly.

  “Sage words of wisdom you seek,” he said darkly. “And I shall nobly comply with this Kernel of Truth: To be without friend or foe is to be at peace. But what is peace without meaning?”

  He paused, waiting, as if he actually wanted an answer to his overwrought question.

  “Um, maybe—”

  “It’s bull-horn stew!” He cut me off, raising a finger into the air dramatically. “Boiled and boiled and boiled down to nothing. Until all that’s left is the Fairy wings. Which, might I add, are wonderful for snacking. Wonderful indeed. Ah! Don’t be so aghast! I am no brute, no barbarian. For they grow back! Ho-ho! I bet you didn’t know that, did you? Ha. You did not! Well, it’s true: Fairies shed their own wings naturally every few months. Now where was I? Oh, yes, the best way to skin a Barbegazi without poisoning yourself. First, you’ll need a yellow lance with blue stripes, a wooden bucket, preferably oak, and a wide-gap grundledung. Then you’ve got to go to a frozen pond and . . .”

  Shaking my head, I was unable to keep a mournful groan from escaping my lips.

  I needed to fix this. I could no longer sit by and watch him get worse. Witness him slowly lose his mind. Once I figured out this Stoney problem, and once this MPM stuff calmed down, I would devote everything I had, every last ounce of energy, to finding out what had happened to my dad and how (if at all possible) I could fix it. I couldn’t go on like this. Watching my dad become this shell of a Human being was slowly tearing me apart. Even if it meant going to the Elves and begging for their help (since it was their potion that had caused this), I’d do it.

  But it would have to wait, since I still somehow had more pressing problems at the moment. Namely: I needed to figure out how to keep a solemn promise I’d made to a new friend.

  I stood up from the table, my dad still chattering away to nobody. He wasn’t even looking at me anymore. He gazed across the room at a blank wall while he spoke nonsense.

  “Thanks for dinner, Dad,” I mumbled.

  He ignored me and continued his ranting as I left. I had one more stop to make before returning to Stoney’s quarters to relieve Ari. It was becoming increasingly evident that I wouldn’t be able to fix this tonight. That Stoney would be a prisoner at least for one day.

  But I wasn’t about to let him spend it in jail alone.

  * * *

  – –

  Eagan answered the door in a T-shirt and flannel pants, rubbing sleep from his eyes.

  “Greg,” he said groggily. “I heard you guys were successful in getting the Rock Troll back without incident. I meant to stop by to congratulate you, but I’m just so tired. There is a lot to learn, being on the Council.”

  He gestured behind him, where dozens of huge tomes as thick as my head were piled all over his desk and around his bed.

  “What are all those books?” I asked.

  “The Annals of the Council,” he said wearily. “All new Council members are expected to read the entire recorded history of the Council within one month of taking their appointed seat.”

  He sighed.

  “Oh man,” I said.

  I’d always liked to read, but those books were so thick (and surely super-boring), that they probably added up to more than I’d read my in whole life, times a hundred. Maybe even a thousand.

  “Yeah,” Eagan said. “I’ll be okay, though.”

  He didn’t sound very convinced.

  “Well, now I feel bad for bothering you,” I said.

  “No, no, it’s fine,” he said. “Come on in.”

  He stepped aside and motioned for me to sit at the table. It was piled so high with the Council Annals that I couldn’t even see the chair across from me. Eagan heaved a huge stack of books onto the floor, creating a sort of window for me to look through. He sat down across from me, his weary face framed by a canyon of weathered books.

  “So what’s going on?” Eagan asked.

  I was still so shook up from what had happened with my dad, I almost led with that. I wanted to tell Eagan how I’d finally reached a breaking point, and maybe even ask him for help. After all, if there was any Dwarf around here who might be able to successfully negotiate with Elves to find out what was wrong with my dad it’d be him (with the Mooncharm family historically being the most effective lobbyers in Dwarven history and all). But that wasn’t why I’d come here tonight. Besides, he probably wasn’t the right person to complain to about my “kooky” dad, since his dad had actually died* and was gone forever.

  So instead I laid out what I’d come for, explaining my predicament with Stoney.

  “Can you help?” I asked at the end.

  “Well, I can try,” Eagan said, but he didn’t sound very confident. “I mean, I am the youngest Council member ever. And the newest. I have so much more to prove than anyone else. Already probably at least half of the Council won’t take me seriously because of my age. But I’ll do everything I can to appeal Stoney’s case at the MPM Council Session tomorrow.”

  “Thanks, Eagan,” I said. “It means a lot.”

  And it did. Given the fact that a Mountain Troll had basically orphaned him, it would be hard to blame Eagan for not wanting to help out another one—even if it was a totally different subspecies altogether.

  I had to admit it was comforting to find even a few other Dwarves (Eagan and Ari for sure—and probably Lake, Froggy, and Glam as well) who didn’t seem stuck on believing the narrative from Separate Earth about Rock Trolls being stupid, bloodthirsty beasts. It actually gave me hope that we could find others who were open to new ideas based on their actual experiences rather than on unsubstantiated claims passed down to them by their dead ancestors.

  As if to confirm this, Eagan looked at me and said: “What’s right is right, Greg.”

  I nodded.

  This was why Eagan was now on the Council, despite his age. He had more integrity than any Human, Elf, or Dwarf, kid or adult, I’d ever met. His ethics could not be compromised, not even by his own emotions. The Bloodletter had been wrong before when he’d said it should have been me on the Council. Eagan was clearly the perfect choice—he certainly made me want to be a better Dwarf, which was precisely the sort of people we should have as our leaders.

  So why couldn’t I muster more hope that he’d somehow find a way to sway the Council tomorrow? But I had to force myself to believe he could. Because a promise is a promise. And for Dwarves, promises actually mean something. So if Eagan failed to convince the Council, my last option would be to break Stoney free and then find somewhere for him to go.

  Which surely wouldn’t end well for him.

  Or me.

  Or Chicago, for that matter.

  CHAPTER 14

  Ari Convinces Me That Killing Your Friend’s Parents Is Almost as Bad as Not Eating Meat

  Wh
en I finally got back to Stoney’s cell, I found him and Ari sitting on the floor across from each other.

  Ari was laughing. In fact, her face was so red, it looked like she’d been laughing for the entire four hours I’d been gone. Stoney was waving his arms all about him like he was telling an insane story.

  “STONEY CRASH!” he shouted in his gravelly, loud voice. “SHALE FRAGMENT. STONEY DISCERN PUERILE AMPHIBIAN AND BLUE CAKE COALESCING!”

  It made no sense to me, of course, but Ari kept laughing like it was the end of the funniest story she’d ever heard.

  “Sorry I took so long!” I said.

  Ari shook her head.

  “It didn’t feel like any time at all!” she said. “Stoney is hilarious.”

  “STONEY MOTHER COMEDIC ENTERTAINER,” he said.

  “Wait, your mom was a Troll comedian?” I asked him.

  He nodded with pride.

  Ari shrugged.

  “There’s actually a lot more to his backstory,” she said, the smile quickly fading. “And it’s terribly sad. For one thing, Rock Trolls don’t require magic to exist—they never actually went extinct, like we all assumed, when the Fairies banished magic. The Rock Trolls merely went into hiding to escape the being pulled even further into the growing violence of the war between Elves and Dwarves. From what I can tell, there is, or was, anyway, a whole community of Rock Trolls that lived deep inside a vast, mostly unexplored cave system in the jungles of Vietnam for many millennia. They had a whole sophisticated society and civilization down there. For thousands and thousands of years they lived in this sprawling maze of caves undetected. Until the Elves found them several decades ago, when Stoney was just a child. Most of the Trolls got away, but many others were captured or killed, including Stoney. He hasn’t seen his family since. He doesn’t know if they’re still alive. And even if they are, where they might have gone next. There are more unexplored caves remaining in this world than anyone is aware of. They could be anywhere.”