me and looked wistfully at waffle recipes in a large cookbook he had pulled from a shelf in the pantry.
The book was in pristine condition; I don’t know why my mom had so many cookbooks. It seemed an odd thing to collect, especially for my mom who seemed to take great satisfaction in producing incredible (and some decidedly not incredible) meals from whatever she had on hand. Her concoctions always came together through her culinary instincts rather than at the behest of some lady’s orders in a cookbook. She would grab a “test bite” out of the pan and pop it into her mouth, then, wide-eyed and with her mouth hanging open, laughingly call for me to bring her some water to sooth her burning hot tongue. Whooo! she would say, Do not eat that yet! Butohmygoditissogood. I shook my head and blinked hard.
“Lassie, ye must be focused,” Baert said quietly but sternly. “Yer wee tears shan’t help our lot now.”
I nodded and wiped away a tear that had escaped.. I pulled out the waffle iron and heaved the heavy thing onto the counter.
“Ok, we’ll need eggs, flour, sugar, milk, vanilla,” I listed off, gesturing Baert toward back toward the pantry, “probably some cinnamon, baking soda, and,” I paused thoughtfully, “can you teach me to control the bouncy balls?”
Baert’s head popped back out of the pantry. He wasn’t holding any other ingredients I had said, but rather had his entire hand inside a jar of peanut butter that was balanced on his palm against his chest.
“I dinnae ken ye had the wee hoppin’ orbs! But ye do, then? Aye, this changes things,” Baert said happily, bringing a peanut butter-laden hand up to his mouth. He licked each of his fingers eagerly. “That’s right pure barry news then!”
“Could you – I mean, maybe just stop doing that for a minute … We’re running low on epi-pens, and, honestly, I have no idea how safe it is to just keep popping those into your leg so frequently. Anyway, when we were with Uncle Seb, he and Dragon seemed to know how to talk to the balls. But they, like, literally glommed onto me.”
“Mmmm, true, true, lassie.”
“So I think I should learn how to control them. Unless … well, I was really hoping to get, like, a sword or something a little more … normal.”
Baert stopped licking and looked up, his orange beard spattered with peanut butter.
“Ye trained in foil arts? Swordfightin’ other lassies?”
“No.”
“Dinnae blether on, then.”
“But I’m not trained in … in … weird colorful bouncy ball arts either. It hardly seems like that’s a fair prerequisite. Isn’t there a weapons hold or something you guys have?”
“And just who told ye about that,” Baert suddenly looked up and narrowed his eyes at me.
“N-n-nobody,” I stuttered, very uncomfortable with the way he eyed me so suspiciously. “Isn’t that, just, like, a common thing? I’ve read a lot of books where the hero has to go on some great insane quest to another land, and, you know, usually they have access to all these weapons.”
“Hmph,” Baert seemed unconvinced.
“You have got to be kidding me,” I groaned as I swiped the peanut butter jar away from him.
“Heid doon arse up! Give it here!” the little elf shouted angrily.
“Baert! Why don’t you get this? You see your arms? Your legs? Those splotches are hives – you are allergic to peanut butter. And I only have one epi-pen left and I’m not stealing another one from a kid who actually needs it.”
I held a kitchen towel under cold water and handed it to him. He just stared at me; his stupid expression was compounded by the bits of peanut butter sludge that were shaping his beard at grotesque angles.
“You know the drill. I’ll get you some Benadryl.”
“Aaaaarrrrrrggggghhhhh!” Baert groaned hideously. “Al-lerrrr-geeez, bahn-ee-drill, I dinnae ken these confounded words ye be bletherin’ at me heid!”
His over-pronunciation of the r’s made me giggle. Still wearing my jammies, I took a running start and slid down the hall in my socks, passing Philippa’s room along the way. Something caught my eye as I careened past her open door. My neck jolted around to grab a better look, throwing me off-balance.
“Gah! Whoa!”
My arms teetered at my sides and my socked feet flew away from each other. I landed hard on my backside. Oof. I crawled across my sister’s tidy floor. Something was shining, shimmering from the corner of her white fluffy rug. I was ready to pounce if the object should attack. I peered closer.
“Dammit,” I muttered. “Just a stupid earring.”
I brought my middle finger against my thumb and flicked the little bauble away.
“But that’s not! Baert! Baert!” I screamed, picking up a brilliant purple stone that lay just beyond the tacky earring in the thick rug fibers.
I held the small gem in my palm. It was maybe the size of a fruit snack and shaped similarly, like the little strawberry gummies I loved to pick out of the bag. (The grape ones were gross, everyone knows that.) The stone flashed darkly, glowed radiantly, shook spastically, then turned burning hot.
“Aaaaah!” I yelped and dropped the odd little rock back onto the rug. It singed the white fibers, bringing a very unpleasant odor into the room.
“Aye, Lassie? What can I – uuuggggh! That radge smell!” Baert walked into Philippa’s room grimacing. He still held a wet towel against his neck.
“I was getting you Benadryl! Gosh, I’m so sorry. It’s just that I saw this thing flash – I mean, the last time I was in here it was still dark, so I guess I didn’t notice, but now, well now the sunlight obviously helps everything, but this thing shook and then burned me and –”
“Lassie, breathe then. That dreich odor be fae this wee trinket?” he said, his voice slowed in curiosity.
Baert brow furrowed as he examined the singed spot on the rug. He spotted the purple gem and gasped. He jumped back as if the tiny stone had propelled him away.
“What is it? Baert?”
Baert collapsed onto the floor. He sat, his legs straight out, his toes pointed up, his hands on either side of him. He breathed so heavily that the tips of his beard danced with every exhale. Little crumbs and peanut butter blobs dislodged themselves and rolled down his heaving torso.
“It cannot be, Lassie,” Baert whispered as he shook his head. “It cannot be. They den destroyed’t all – their own heids, even – they were obliterated, I saw the mighty fires o’destructin’ from me own eyeballs. It cannot be, it cannot be.”
He mumbled that phrase over and over. He pulled his knees against him and rocked back and forth. I glanced back at the purple stone – it looked plain if not innocuous now in its little nest of blackened rug fibers.
I scanned Philippa’s room. I didn’t look for anything particular; I just hoped something would stand out. My eyes crawled along her neatly arranged bookshelves, her carefully stacked records, her color-coordinated piles of sweaters.
“Aha!” I brightened and lunged forward. “Philippa’s phone!”
But then my heart dropped. My sister was definitely taken – she wouldn’t even go to the bathroom (gross), without her phone. I guess I was still holding hope that she’d appear with some quirky explanation. But this phone, dutifully plugged in and charging, was the final confirmation that they were gone, and it wasn’t by choice. I shook away pain and fear. I had to solve this; I had to get them back.
I swiped the screen of her phone and rolled my eyes. Her background image was a photo of her holding a photo of Barbra Streisand. At the password prompt I frowned, worried, then typed in i-l-o-v-e-b-a-r-b-r-a-2. The little screen unlocked. I smiled at my own ingenuity and my sister’s predictability.
Into the internet browser I typed, “signs of shock.”
“Yeah, Baert, you’re in shock,” I called over my shoulder after a quick scroll. “Try to relax?”
Next I typed in “weird purple stones that shake and burn.”
This search produced absolutely nothing.
Hmm. I paused, thought hard, then typed, “ancient purple stones with magical powers.”
Results!
My excitement drained as I scrolled the millions of hits, most of them silly. Titles of articles like, “Ancient Purple Stone Solves Fertility,” “All Your Weight loss Issues Vanish with this Purple Flower Grown in Stones,” and “Fix Your Erectile Dysfunction with Miracle Purple Pill” saw my optimism fizzle and die.
“Alright, Baert. Back to you then,” I said despondently, crawling back over to my little friend.
He had relaxed some and was now flat on his back. His hands, still slightly swollen from his allergic reaction, sat folded on his chest. He stared at the ceiling and said nothing.
“Not feeling super helpful, I see,” I muttered, annoyed.
I examined the purple stone again. It looked so benign buried in its little burnt nest. Its brilliance had dulled, and it certainly wasn’t moving now. I reached my hand toward it, then stopped at the sound of Baert’s voice.
“Let it be, Lassie. Ye shan signaled yer very location now,” he said flatly.
“Wait, what? What signal? How? I didn’t do anything!” I argued. “Who or what was signaled? Baert? Please?”
Baert sighed for at least eight minutes, I swear. Then he slowly unfolded his hands and brought them up to his face. He kneaded his eyelids petulantly, stretched, sighed again. Finally, when I thought he was going to get up and be helpful, he just flipped himself over and buried his face in the carpet, his arms dead at his sides.
“Baert!” I shrieked. “Uuuuggghhh! Elves!”
I grabbed Philippa’s phone and stomped out of her room. My fallen comrade and the weird gem that cast him into that state were beyond my help at the moment. I scrolled through her contacts, stopped on one toward the bottom, and hit Call.
As I listened to the phone ring on the other end, my stomach growled loudly again. I still hadn’t had a waffle. And now, even if I had one, I didn’t have any peanut butter to smear on it, which was the best thing: it gets all warm and melty and oozes into the waffle’s delectable crevices. Elves ruin everything.
“Philippa?” a confused voice answered.
“No, it’s me.”