un/FAIR Read online

  “No,” Ryan interrupted. “It makes perfect sense.”

  “Yea and yes.” The brownie dropped the scroll, which vanished. “Everyone and everything makes sensible sense. So you’ll understand when I say you can’t lollygag or linger.”

  “No. We have to go in,” Ryan said. “I’m her grandson.”

  The brownie looked shocked. “’Tis in neither rules nor regulations.”

  “This should be fun.” Alison crossed her arms. “Irresistible force, meet immovable object.”

  “Force,” agreed Nox. “Morse, course. Force!”

  “We have to see my grandmother!” Ryan reached into the loose silk bag and drew out the ebony box. This would be difficult. Normally he demanded perfect order, too, but now he was bringing chaos. Everything in this world was backward.

  “’Tis not in the—”

  The front room burst into motion again. The fireplace changed into an enormous fountain. A chandelier made of ice crystals plunged from the ceiling. Blue wallpaper crawled over the walls and the carpet swirled into white sand patterned into a spiral like a nautilus shell. The furniture rushed about like children playing tag, changing into beach tables and chairs as they went. Ryan wrenched open the box. The cards fluttered out in a butterfly cloud and scattered all over the sand.

  “No!” the brownie cried. “Not! Nix!” He dove to the floor, snatching up the cards one by one, but the furniture kept getting in the way.

  “Go!” Ryan dashed into the room. The furniture moved in a pattern. It was simple enough to plot a course through it, to twist aside to avoid getting smacked or trampled. He made it to one of the side hallways before he realized Alison wasn’t there.

  “Help!” she yelled. She stood bewildered in the middle of the room, surrounded by moving glass-topped tables and wicker couches, with Nox on her shoulder. Exasperated, Ryan dove back into the maelstrom.

  “Grab the back of my shirt!” he said sharply. She did, and they wove through the room back to the hall. Alison was breathing hard, and she rubbed her shin where an ottoman had bruised her. The brownie was still gathering cards and shaking sand off them.

  “How did you do that?” Alison demanded.

  “Easy. Watch the pattern.” Ryan jogged down the hallway. The pillars had become giant watery mirrors, and thousands upon thousands of Ryans ran beside thousands upon thousands of Alisons and Noxes.

  “I can’t see it. It’s hard,” she puffed.

  “Just look,” Ryan said. “It is obvious.” He reached the end of the hall and turned. The entire house felt comfortable and correct. Every angle, every measurement, was precise and correct. No bad numbers anywhere. Everything happened on a regular schedule. Even the changes weren’t chaotic—they were all perfectly patterned. After only a few minutes inside, it felt as if he had lived here all his life. It was the best house he had ever visited, and he wondered what it would be like to live here instead of in his room back home.

  Where his house had burned down. Where he had no home.

  “This way,” he said when they reached the end of the hall. “The house is spiraling inward, just like the road.”

  “How can you tell?”

  “How can you not? But we have to hurry—the Red Caps will come next.”

  “Red Caps?” Alison yelped. “More than one? Why will they be coming?”

  Ryan ticked off his fingers in exasperation. “Look at the pattern. Each element tried to stop me in the mortal world. Now each one is trying to stop me from reaching my family at the center of the fairy world. Here, they’re stronger, but now I can use opposite magic to stop them. First I used earth to hide from the sylphs. Then water to defeat the salamanders. Then the burned wood to stop the undine. The Red Caps will come next. They have to. They can’t help themselves.”

  “How was I supposed to know any of that? I wasn’t there,” Alison said hotly. Then she added, “Wait. The opposite magic came from the sundial stuff. So that feather will stop the Red Caps when they come?”

  “No. I used the feather to bring a sylph back to life. It’s gone now.”

  “What?” Alison squawked. “Why did you do that?”

  “The sylph was just a baby,” Ryan replied. “And it gave you your breath back after the undine drowned you. If I had not used the feather to save the sylph, you would be dead.”

  “Oh.” Alison thought about that. “Okay. So what are we going to do about the Red Caps?”

  “I don’t know.”

  They entered a library. Tall shelves of books went all the way to the high ceiling. A graceful staircase led up to wide balcony that ringed the room halfway up. Velvet curtains hung between the book shelves to hush sound. The only furniture—all cushioned wicker and several aquariums—was up on the balcony. Another ice chandelier provided light. The main floor, which was as wide and long as an elementary school gymnasium, was made of perfectly flat stones. Lying on top of the stones was a mass of multi-colored paper—drawing paper, construction paper, notebook paper, printer paper, plain white paper, and more.

  “What is it?” Alison said.

  “Paper,” Ryan said. “All the paper.”

  “No kidding,” Alison drawled. She leaned down for a closer look. “Hey! That’s my math homework from last week! And this one’s yours.” She snatched a handful of papers off the floor and brandished them. “What’s going—”

  The brownie appeared in the room so suddenly, Ryan couldn’t tell if he had run in or simply popped out of nothing. His tattered cloak swirled about his scrawny body. “Don’t dare disturb or displace the precious paper!” he shrieked. “No one takes hold or touches! The Lady has ordered!”

  His eyes bulged and he was frothing at the mouth. Spittle flecked his cheeks.

  Alison thrust the papers at him and backed away. “It’s okay. I didn’t know. Won’t do it again.”

  “You will pay for soiling and staining the papers!” the brownie screamed. “You will pay! The Lady has ordered!”

  Nox dove to the floor between Alison and the brownie and exploded into the shape of a three-ton elephant seal. His bellow shook the library walls. Ryan clapped his hands over his ears.

  “I eat you like a fish, clowny brownie!” Nox thundered.

  The brownie clutched the papers to his chest and stood his ground. One of his fists glowed orange. Ryan didn’t know what to do.

  “That’s enough!” Alison shouted. She clambered over Nox, who was at least fifteen feet long. “We don’t need to fight. You have your papers, Mr. Brownie. You can put them back, and we promise not to touch them again.”

  The brownie, who was clearly having a very bad day, glared a moment longer at Nox, who glared right back. Then, muttering to himself, he stalked over to the spot where the papers had come from, set them carefully on the floor, and, still muttering, stomped out of the room.

  “What was that all about?” Alison said. She held out her arm. Nox blooped back into a seagull shape and landed on it. “That was great, Nox.”

  “Brownie won’t hurt Alison,” Nox replied. “Hurt, squirt, yurt.”

  “We can’t touch the papers,” Ryan said.

  “I got that. He’s not going to throw us out?”

  Ryan shrugged. “We’re in the house now. We’re part of the pattern. He will not throw us out if we do not hurt the pattern.”

  “What pattern, Ryan? I don’t understand.”

  He shrugged again. It was too hard to explain the Fibonacci arrangement of the house. Instead he said, “This is the math section.”

  “What do you mean ‘the math section?’ How can there be a math section?”

  “This is math. That’s English. Art is in a circle over there.” Ryan pointed at the papers. “See?”

  Alison’s expression tightened and Ryan couldn’t read it, but in this place, it didn’t matter so much. “How many do they have?”

  “All of them.”

  “What? But why? What for?”

  “You can’t see? It is actually cool.”


  “No, I can’t see. I can’t see a thing, Ryan.” Alison’s lips were white now. “It’s scaring the crap out of me.”

  “The library will rearrange itself in eight seconds,” Ryan said in a voice that sounded kind of like Mom’s. “You don’t have to be scared. It’s just us.”

  “Just us. Rust us. Justice. Just us,” chanted Nox.

  “I don’t understand.” She looked ready to cry, and Ryan wondered if that was how he looked just before he had a melt-down.

  “Come on,” he said. “I’ll show you.”

  He climbed the stairs to the balcony. Alison came right behind. As they went up, the library burst into motion. The shelves changed from carved sandstone into light crystal and brass. The books rushed through the air, rearranging themselves in a new order. The furniture on the lower balcony trundled around, changing shape from beach wicker to austere wood. The curtains changed color from blue to gold. Alison tried to retreat back down the stairs to stay out of the way and found she couldn’t.

  “What’s wrong?” she demanded as the furniture moved about. “Why can’t I go back down?”

  “This is an up staircase,” Ryan told her. “It does not go down.”

  “That’s ridiculous! Stairs don’t work that way.”

  Ryan shrugged. There was no point trying to explain it to her. Instead, he waited until the furniture settled down, then led Alison to the balcony rail.

  “There,” he said, pointing down. “The papers are us.”

  Alison looked down. The library floor hadn’t changed. On it was a giant portrait of Ryan and Alison formed from the papers, a pattern easily visible from a distance.

  “What is this place?” Alison whispered.

  “Grandma’s house,” Ryan said promptly. “Grandmas are supposed to put pictures of you on the refrigerator. Those are the rules.”

  “Fool the rules,” Nox said.

  “She’s not my grandmother,” said Alison. “Why am I in the picture?”

  “We have the same birthday. And you have Nox. We could ask Grandma about it.”

  “But she wants to kill you!”

  Ryan gave her a look. “She doesn’t. The other fairies want to kill me. Not her. We’ll see her to get my parents and aunts back.”

  “I don’t understand any of this,” Alison complained. Then she looked at Ryan, hands on skinny hips, her elbows making points. “Is this you feel all the time back home? When everyone else just knows how to act or how to talk or how to be polite and you don’t? We can see the patterns back home and you can’t. But here, you know how the world works and I don’t.”

  “I like this place,” Ryan replied. “I am a prince. My grandmother will help.” He held up the sundial. The shadow pointed to VIII.

  “If she could help,” Alison asked, “why hasn’t she helped already?”

  “We’ll ask her.” He put up a hand. “Do you hear that?”

  Alison froze. “What now?”

  “Just listen.”

  They did. The library was silent except for their breathing. Then they both heard a slight scratching noise, like a mouse behind a wall.

  “Scritchy, itchy, twitchy,” Nox said. He flicked into a plover shape, fluttered over to one of books, and pecked at it. “Scritchy.”

  “What is this?” Alison took the book down. The scratching was coming from inside. It was big and heavy, and on the cover in gold letters was written Ryan Benjamin November. Alison gasped and almost dropped the book. “No way!”

  “Look at this one.” Ryan pulled down the book next it. It was equally heavy, though the designs on the cover were different. The letters read ALISON GLENDILLA FERRIER. “Your middle name is Glendilla? You told me it was Linda.”

  “I lied, okay?” Her face was red. “I hate my middle name. Mom just made it up or something because she thought it sounded cool, but it’s stupid.”

  “You are not supposed to lie about your name.”

  “And you’re not supposed to—oh, just drop it. What are these things?”

  “I don’t know,” Ryan admitted, genuinely mystified. “But they don’t have a dangerous pattern. Two is a good number.”

  Alison set the book on a table and opened it to the first page. In clear, handwritten letters was Ryan November opened his eyes, but he didn’t cry. The doctor looked down at him, worried. Babies should cry at birth, but this one didn’t.

  “Whoa!” Alison put a finger on the page. “It’s about you! When you were born!”

  “Mom said I never cried,” Ryan said.

  “Book of Life,” Nox said from Alison’s shoulder. “Pretty.”

  Alison heaved several pages over. Ryan November woke up on his eleventh birthday and knew he’d be able to see the future by breakfast. He rolled over. His clock said 6:56, so he couldn’t get up for four more minutes. That was all right. He didn’t mind waiting.

  “That was this morning,” Ryan breathed. It was creepy.

  “You knew you’d be able to see the future?”

  “Sort of.”

  “Isn’t knowing that you’ll be able to see the future later already seeing the future?”

  “Dread in the head,” Nox said.

  Ryan flipped open Alison’s book to the middle. Alison looked down at her father’s coffin as it was lowered into the ground. She felt dry and empty inside, like she would never cry again. Her sister Theresa stood behind her, and Alison heard her whisper, “I hate you, Daddy. I hate you for drinking. I hate you for leaving us.”

  Alison turned and looked at her. “How can we hate him when he’s dead?”

  “Hey!” Alison snapped the book shut in his hand and shoved the other one at him. “That’s mine. Read your own.”

  “You hated your dad?”

  Alison clutched the book to her chest. “He drank so much he died. I hate him for that. So did Theresa. I thought later the two of us might … never mind. It’s not important.”

  “Sad.” Nox nuzzled her ear.

  “What’s yours say?” Alison finished.

  Ryan flipped to the very last page. Even as he watched, letters scribbled themselves across the paper. He read aloud, “Ryan read the last page, unaware that six Red Caps were storming through the cottage toward the library. He slammed the book shut just as—”

  Startled, he slammed the book shut just as six Red Caps stormed into the library.

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  The Red Caps pointed up at Ryan and Alison. They were much smaller here in the fairy realm, only seven or eight feet tall, and they looked more like blocky humans with flinty noses and sandy hair, though their eyes glittered ruby red and they wore the red caps. They also carried ugly bronze swords.

  “Eep,” said Nox.

  All six Red Caps charged up the staircase in perfect two-by-two formation, their boots tromping the stairs and making them shake. Alison screamed. Both of them dropped the books. Ryan’s mind flashed to the objects in the bag, but he had used the feather, opposite to earthy Red Caps, to save the little sylph’s life.

  You don’t need the feather, my prince, murmured the voice. You have power! Use it!

  The two lead Red Caps drew back their arms, sharp bronze swords in their fists. Ryan felt their patterns, too. He saw the lattice of pieces that held the metal together, bound the copper and tin together. He reached out and twisted. One Red Cap’s sword fell into copper and tin dust. It paused, startled, which held up the ones behind it. Its partner charged ahead and swung at Ryan. But Ryan saw that as well. He saw the pattern in the crackling earth that made up the Red Cap’s muscles and he felt the pattern in the air that the blade swept aside. The power of the pattern flowed through him. Easily, he twisted aside and the blade rushed through the spot where he’d been standing. Without thinking about it, Ryan stepped inward and grabbed the Red Cap’s wrist. He hated the nasty feel of its stony skin on his, but it was only for a moment. He wrenched the pattern around, and the sword flipped from the Red Cap’s grip to Ryan’s instead.

  The moment his hand c
losed around the sword, he felt the world change again. The sword was a weapon, built for combat, and just as touching the water allowed him to see how the lake worked, touching the sword allowed him to see patterns in fighting. His body knew what to do. While the Red Cap was recovering from the surprise of losing its sword, Ryan planted a foot behind its ankle and shoved. The Red Cap tumbled backward and crashed to the floor.

  “Ryan!” Alison cried behind him.

  The other Red Caps, however, were still moving. They shoved past their compatriots and moved in to kill.

  “Time’s child!” one of them growled in the gravelly voice Ryan remembered from the attack on the van. “We pop your joints and crush your skull! Your blood will—

  “—stain your cap,” Ryan finished, and swung hard. Two Red Caps swung back, and their blades met in a strange cross that clanged hard. The blow should have knocked Ryan backward, but he was already tapping into the pattern of the stones beneath him, and they held him solid. He kicked one Red Cap in the knee and heard the satisfying crack of stone. The Red Cap howled and backed away. The other one yanked its sword away and thrust at Ryan’s chest. Ryan saw it coming and slipped aside. He wanted to split this one’s sword too, but that took concentration, and he didn’t have time for that. They traded blows, one-two-three, and each time Ryan saw where the Red Cap’s blade would be and where he needed to put his own blade. It was scary and exhilarating all at once. He felt a control he had never felt back home, despite a fear that if he made a mistake, the Red Cap would have his head.

  The other Red Caps were reaching the top of the stairs now, and the ones Ryan had disarmed were coming to their feet. They didn’t have swords, but they were no less formidable for that. They also outnumbered him badly. Ryan cast about for a solution. He glanced over the railing at the floor and the strange collage far, far below, then back at the gold curtains that lined the walls beside the balcony from high ceiling to low floor.

  “Alison!” he shouted, still trading blows with the Red Cap. “Back up! Toward the curtains!”

  “Why?” she asked.

  Couldn’t she just once get what was going on? “Just do it!”

  “Hurry!” Nox piped. “Worry and scurry!”