Michael Grant - The Key

Then a second torch. Another. Another.

A line of torches moved from right to left, turned the corner to cross the facing wall, then came around to trace the left wall.

The torches whipped frantically as though they were in a strong wind, but it was perfectly still in the courtyard.

In the flickering orange glow they could see quite clearly. Yes, there were tall walls all around. And gloomy arches outlined in gleaming white skulls. Mack noticed—because Mack noticed things—that not all of the skulls were human. There were some that were too small to be human. There were others too large, far too large, and with teeth where teeth had no business being.

Against the facing wall, flanked on both sides by shadowed arches, a rough-hewn throne sat atop a platform. And on that throne sat a man. He was wearing a skirt. And every one of the Magnifica and Stefan had the identical thought: I hope that dude keeps his legs crossed.

The man was built as wide as he was tall, but he was still plenty tall. He had extravagant red hair pushing out from beneath a too-small cap. His massive hands gripped the arms of the throne as if he would—and could—rip them right off at any moment.

He stared with eyes that glittered from deep, torch-cast shadows.

“I am the MacGuffin,” he announced in a heavily accented speech. “Wha urr ye, ’n’ how have you come ’ere uninvited?”

The stones seemed to shake when he spoke. Or maybe it was just that Mack shook. Mack was not fond of beards. In fact, he suffered from pogonophobia—an irrational fear of beards, which only distance could keep under control.

“We’re, um . . . ,” Mack began, before faltering. He glanced aside and happened to see Dietmar. Somehow now Dietmar wasn’t all that interested in taking the lead. “We’re, um, hikers. Is this Urquhart Castle? Because that’s . . . that’s where we . . . um . . .”

“Urquhart Castle, is it?” MacGuffin demanded, and gnashed his teeth. “Di ah keek lik’ a Durward?”

“A what?”

“A Durward!” MacGuffin shouted.

“What’s a Durward?”

“Th’ Durwards ur th’ family that runs Urquhart Castle, ye ninny.”

Dietmar got a crafty look on his face. “Shouldn’t Urquhart Castle be run by a family named Urquhart?”

“Na, you great eejit!”

Dietmar did not like being called a “great eejit” so soon after suffering the indignity of being transformed into a sunflower. And, as Mack noticed grudgingly, Dietmar had some spine. The German boy was not a wimp, and he was getting ready to say something forceful to MacGuffin.

But there was something crazy in MacGuffin’s eyes, which perfectly reflected the light of the torches from under bushy eyebrows, and Dietmar chose to do the wise thing and fall silent.

MacGuffin leaned forward and glared at Mack. “Ah ken how come yer ’ere. Ye huv come tae steal mah key.”

“Key?” Mack said disingenuously. “What key?”

“Dinnae tak’ me fur a gowk. Ye huv th’ enlightened puissance or ye wouldn’t be ’ere. Ah ken th’ Pale Queen rises, wee jimmy. Ah ken wha ’n’ whit yer.”

Or, in regular English, “Don’t take me for a fool. You have the enlightened puissance or you wouldn’t be here. I know the Pale Queen rises, boy. I know who and what you are.”

And it was at that heart-stopping moment that Mack’s phone made an eerie sound. The sound of an incoming text message.

Slowly . . . slooooowly . . . cautiously . . . Mack drew out his iPhone.

MacGuffin stared at the oblong object in Mack’s hand. Stared at it as if he was seeing a ghost.

“Whit’s that black magic?” MacGuffin demanded in cringing horror.

See, that’s the problem with being stuck in an invisible castle for a thousand years: you miss out on a lot of new technology.

Mack did the thing that really should have saved his life. “This!” he cried, holding up the phone and glancing at the message—which was from the golem, and which said, “Pocket lint is tasty”—“Is the mighty iMagic of . . . of Appletonia! If you harm me or my friends, I will use it to destroy you!”

Meanwhile, at Richard Gere Middle School 10

Thousands of miles away, Mack’s golem was eating lint from his pocket and growing larger. The lint happened to be mostly blue because he was wearing blue jeans, but there was some white as well. For variety. And it had a lingering flavor of garlic because, while Mack’s mom had washed these jeans after the golem misunderstood the name Hot Pockets and stuffed a microwaved pizza-flavored Hot Pocket into his pocket, some of that flavor had survived.

When Grimluk tapped Mack to go off and save the world, he gave him the golem to fill in for him at home. The golem now looked exactly like Mack, albeit somewhat muddier, and quite a bit less, um, how to put this gently?

Um . . . okay: Mack was a pretty smart guy. His golem? Not as smart. There: it’s been said.

So the golem attended Mack’s school and took Mack’s classes and wrote Mack’s papers. His latest effort, six pages on the history topic “Maybe Abraham Lincoln Had Mice Living in His Beard,” had consisted entirely of the sentence, “He could have, no one knows,” written in various fonts and in various type sizes. On page four, for example, the font was so large that the entire page just read, “HE COULD HA.”

It’s a good thing all that stuff about a “permanent record” is just something made up by teachers. Because the golem had caused Mack’s steady B+ average to drop somewhat.

The only class where the golem was actually outperforming Mack was gym. He was helped by his ability to physically absorb dodgeballs, draw them into his body, unhinge his jaw, and shoot them back out of his mouth at supersonic speed.

He had an A+ in gym.

And if there was a dodgeball team choosing sides, the golem was always picked first.

The only problem the golem had with gym was the showering part. Water had a tendency to wash him away. Imagine mud. Now imagine mud with a sort of coating of fleshlike paint. Now imagine streaming hot water. You can see the problem for yourself. A kid had once caught sight of the golem’s face after a shower, and that kid now lives with his father in another state.

Where he sees a therapist three times a week.

And wakes up screaming.

But! If there were more golem to begin with, the water wouldn’t be able to wash him all down the drain. It would wash some of him away, sure, and that could be pretty unsightly. But if he were a really big boy, the water would only damage a tiny bit of him.

That was math, and the golem liked math.

In addition to school, the golem also filled in for Mack at home. He performed all of Mack’s important family duties: finding the remote control, nodding solemnly during parental lectures, pretending to do homework, wearing the same socks every day for weeks, taking out the trash after being asked exactly seventeen times, and heatedly pointing out examples of parental hypocrisy. Such as, “You say don’t eat the leather sofa cushions but you eat bacon, which is the same as leather!”

There were days when Mack was ambivalent about saving the world, because if he did, he’d sooner or later end up back in Sedona with a lot of explaining to do.

And there were times when the golem had just the most fleeting thought 11that if Mack succeeded and returned to reclaim his life, it would be the end of a very happy time for the golem.

He wasn’t sure what happened to golems after they completed a mission. Maybe he would be sent off to “be” someone else.