Uncle Seb asked as he marched through the front door.
He arrived at my house in record time. I mean, I assumed he had come from some far-off exotic place, so it seemed like record time. He was also in a car – a small black convertible MG – not a plane. I blushed slightly, realizing how silly it was to think that just because he was a pilot, he only traveled via plane. How childish a thought! But a tiny English coupe? It even had a steering wheel on the right side.
I eyed my uncle suspiciously, noting his Indiana Jones-esque garb as he wiped his leather boots on the colorful woven mat in the entry. The mat was more decorative than functional, but my mom wasn’t here to defend her odd home purchases. The thought of my mom made the journal entry float to the front of my thoughts. An icy disdain for Uncle Seb – now known as The Reason My Sister Doesn’t Still Have Her Dad – rose up inside of me. I hadn’t spoken to him since that discovery.
“This way,” I gestured coolly toward the hall. “He’s in Philippa’s room, and he’s just, well, you’ll see.”
I followed my uncle into the bedroom. Baert was exactly where I had left him: face down, flat on the carpet. His beard stuck out on either side of his neck. His palms faced up and his peanut-buttered fingers had bits of carpet fuzz stuck to them. The bottoms of his feet were dirty – black, even – and speckled with crumbs.
“What’d you do to him?”
“Me? Nothing! He won’t stop eating freaking peanut butter, and then there was this stone—”
“What stone?”
“Don’t you want to make sure he’s, like, um, alive first?”
“He’s alive. Just being an elf.”
Uncle Seb walked over to the prone elf and stuck a booted foot right into Baert’s side. I started to protest, but Uncle Seb’s arm shot right out in front of me. He jostled his foot against Baert and shook the obdurate elf side to side. He received no response.
“Ahoy! I say, let’s go! Enough of this, you silly brunaidh.” [another soft kick landed at his torso] “You’re the first leftennant of Shinney O’Gagnnion.” [now a nudge in the little bicep] “This is no way for a Lowlands tartan to act.” [another gentle shove against the lower ribs] “You’re just a common balloon, then, scared? Is that it?”
Finally, Baert stirred. Still face down, he raised the arm closest to us. A choice finger – a finger I was forbidden from using singularly – rose straight up from his clenched fist. I giggled. Uncle Seb did not.
“Show me, Egg. What stone?”
Impressed with and maybe partly intimidated by his no-nonsense demeanor, I lead my uncle beyond the fallen elf to the corner of the white fluffy rug. We squatted down low on either side of the burnt patch to inspect the purple stone like little kids examining ants. It was triangular, opaquely colored.
“Just like a grape-flavored fruit snack,” I murmured.
“What’s that?” Uncle Seb asked.
“Oh, uh, nothing,” I said quickly as my stomach rumbled again.
“Have you handled it?”
“Me? No, I mean, not again. When I found it, I picked it up,” I said, fidgeting with my sleeves.
“And?”
“And … then it flashed for a second, almost glowing – it was so beautiful and brilliant! – and then it kind of shook a little,” I paused, my face turning red. I suddenly felt like a little kid recounting these crazy things and felt very unsure of myself. For I was certain my galactic traveler uncle would just wave me off in favor of math equations or something more sophisticated than my clumsy attempts at recounting the unbelievable actions of an inanimate object.
“And?” he said again. I looked at his face and was surprised by his earnestness. He was looking eagerly at me, his pupils wide with concern and intrigue simultaneously somehow. I never realized what an expressive face my uncle had; he was … well, he was beautiful like my mother, wild and wondering. I felt my breath catch in my throat and my eyes tear up.
“Egg, it’s alright. I need to know what you experienced so I can know how to help,” Uncle Seb said gently.
“I guess it scared me more than I realized,” I said pathetically. But I cleared my throat and refocused my thoughts. “Yes, it shook; it did this funny little gyration in my palm and then it burned white hot and I dropped it and –”
“What I was afraid of. Heliotropum will have signaled its hosts – that’s what that shaking was. It emits a kind of shock wave that travels at Mach speed to breach sound barriers and dimensional strongholds.”
“And it burned me to mark me for its hosts to find?!”
“Nah, it burned you because it’s a jerk and that’s its defense mechanism,” chuckled Uncle Seb. “At any rate, you’re not safe here. They’ll be back – these guys are ruthless egomaniacs. If they know there’s one who escaped, they’ll be back for vengeance.”
“But I didn’t escape anything! Can’t you tell them to leave me alone?”
“Not you. Baert.”
“Aaayyyyye,” groaned Baert from behind us, his face still smashed into the carpet.
“That’s enough of that. Cuithbaert, up and at’em.”
Baert slowly rolled over. The sight of the little elf, red with hives, laden with crumbs and carpet fuzz stuck to his sticky parts shocked my uncle. He jerked back, shouting a few things my mom would not approve of. I stifled a giggle.
“He’s actually gotten better.”
“Better than what?!”
“I think he has a peanut allergy … but Baert, maybe you do want to clean yourself a bit?”
As I said this, a fly buzzed around and landed on Baert’s left eyebrow. He swatted the fly away, and then, looking at this same hand, licked the back of it.
“Good god, Cuithbaert. Have some self-respect,” Uncle Seb said. He shook his head. “How the mighty have fallen. Meet me downstairs when all of that is cleaned up.”
A few minutes later, I could hear Uncle Seb banging around in the kitchen as I drew a bath for Baert in my mom’s fancy jetted tub. I didn’t know if it was actually fancy – I didn’t have a lot of other whirlpool tubs to compare it to. But to me, the massive white tub had always been the pinnacle of luxury. I reverently removed her shampoos and conditioners and weird bath gels and replaced them with a single tube of off-brand bubble bath we kept around for when my sister was babysitting the neighbor kids.
Baert watched with fascination as I squirted the liquid into the stream of warm water. Fluffy white bubbles gently rose up. He dipped his sticky index finger into the pool of rising water. He took it out, licked it, and immediately spit.
“Ugh! Gross! Baert! Just get in.”
I turned the faucet off, threw a few towels to the ground near the tub, and closed the door.
“I will probably regret this,” I said to myself as I trotted out of my mom’s room toward the kitchen, “but he’s a freaking grown man, right? He’s, like, a thousand years old or something?”
I was still trying to convince myself everything was fine when I stumbled upon another man struggling basic modernity: Uncle Seb’s arms and chest were covered in waffle batter and there was steam – a lot of steam – coming from the waffle iron.
“Yours is, uh, a little more hi-tech than mine,” he said sheepishly.
I walked around the kitchen island, swatted his sticky hand away from the small appliance, and turned the lever on the waffle iron. Once flipped, it stopped steaming. Uncle Seb said nothing, and I didn’t dare mock his waffle struggles.
“How are you holding up, Egg?” Uncle Seb asked, sliding a plate of warm waffles over to me. “Do you, uh, want to talk about … anything?”
I grabbed a fork and perched on a barstool near him. I swiveled back and forth uncomfortably. On one hand, I had stopped crying and was desperately trying to keep a heroic level of focus on my mission. On the other hand, I was so freaking scared over everyone missing … and I had no idea what that mission even was. And then there was the added bonus of learning that this man who had just made me incredibly delicious waffles was harboring a dastardly past, but I couldn’t venture on said unknown mission without him.
I didn’t know how to answer him.
“I’d be overwhelmed, too,” he said simply.
I responded by sticking a giant syrupy bite in my mouth.
“It has to be the work of the Amythystic,” he said. “There’s no other way you would have gotten a piece of heliotropum, right?”
“Helio-what?” I blurted between chewing, “That thing that burned me? What’s an ami- … that thing you said?”
“That purple stone: it’s known as Heliotropum. And heliotropum stones are controlled by Amythystics,” Uncle Seb explained, then frowned. “Surely Baert told you all of this?”
“The guy you found lying prostrate in a sticky mess on my sister’s floor? Um, no, he wasn’t especially talkative,” I said dryly.
Uncle Seb’s face darkened. He pushed away his plate of half-eaten waffles dramatically and folded his arms. He started to lean back, then realized the barstools have no backrest on them and caught himself awkwardly. His hand slapped the countertop as he balanced. I looked down quickly and shoved another gooey bite of mapley waffle into my mouth to keep from laughing. Uncle Seb cleared his throat.
“Baert’s entire race was wiped out. Or rather, they were taken control of.”
My uncle fell silent after that and things started to gel and solidify in my mind. The yellow stone, Jonah; the purple stone, that weird dark elf thing I saw last night … each person, species, thing – I didn’t know what to call them – must be influenced by a different colored stone. I knew what Uncle Seb was going to say then.
“We’ve got to go back to Obrenox’s lair, Eve.”
He said my actual name, which was wholly unsettling.
“I can do it,” I said. I think I was trying to convince myself more than him.
A drop of water landed on my waffle. Then I felt a drop of water fall on my head. Then another. I looked up, examining the ceiling. Above us, little beads of water were pooling between the light fixtures. Small water droplets fell one by one and within seconds turned into a steady stream of water. The stream grew larger, heavier, and careened onto the counter.
“Egg, is there a chance your mom’s bathroom is above this kitchen?”
“Um, yes. Yes, there is,” I said.
SPLOOOOSH! A mighty deluge of soapy water splashed through the kitchen and down onto the counter. Bits of waffles floated off the counter in the wake.
“Baert!” I screamed. “Baert, what are you doing?!”
I bounded up the stairs and arrived in my mom’s room, panting. I stomped to the bathroom door and flung it open. There was Baert, happy as could be, slipping and sliding and flipping about. His tunic hung neatly on the towel rack. The water was frothy and brown, the same shade as Baert’s undershit.
I stepped back to find dry ground and took in what was going on: Baert had shoved towels into the drain holes of the tub, presumably to keep the water level high. With every flip and slide, more and more water gushed out of the tub and onto the floor. The faucet was on – a small but steady stream of water lightly teemed out at a consistent enough rate to keep the bathtub warm and very, very full.
“Lassie, look, look here!” Baert said gleefully upon seeing me.
He pointed to his hair, which he had molded into a bubbly mohawk. He scampered ungracefully onto the rim of the tub and, raising his arms above his head, dove down into his bubbly swamp. He was so happy, and finally so clean, that I didn’t want to scold him. But, I looked around at the sopping room again, but oh my god.
“Baert, you’ve, um, well,” I trailed off. Anger mounted and took over. “Baert, you’re flooding everything! You’re ruining my mom’s bathroom! You’re ruining it!”
I didn’t mean to scream. I was glad he was clean, that he was happy and recovered from his earlier state, honest. But I was also so, so angry. I was so angry at so many things. I wished I could talk to Malcolm, I wished I could talk to my mom. I ran out of the bathroom and threw myself face down on my mom’s bed. I didn’t have any tears left in me. I screamed into the soft quilt. Feelings compounded feelings. And they were heavy. Unbearably heavy.
I heard Uncle Seb come into my mom’s room, and then I heard Baert’s voice.
“Just let her have a go, lad. The bairn be a bit wrought over all this ado,” he murmured. “But I’m right clean, how about that?”
The door closed. And with that, my mismatched duo left me with my own thoughts, which was maybe the most dangerous thing they could have done. I’m not known for finding rationale and calm in such instances.
I crawled into my mom’s bed and hid under mound of carefully matched pillows. I longed to be back in math class. I‘d happily exchange this current stress for Libby’s anxiety-inducing mocking, or the angst of getting marked down because I had drawn too many dragons on my lit homework.
I didn’t have any tears left, but I apparently still had snot left. You know what ruins an intense rumination? Needing to blow your nose, like, yesterday. I slid off my mom’s bed and quietly walked to the bathroom between mine and Philippa’s room. I spotted the list I had started making on the floor near my open door. I picked it up and I stared at it. More foes than friends. I sighed and added “Evil Elves (Amithis-something?)” and “Purple Heliotropum” to the Foe column.
“Progress,” I said encouragingly to myself, “I know more than when I started. I can do this.”
Armed with Kleenex and my list, I returned to my mom’s bed. I think being in there helped me feel closer to her. I imagined what she would do in a tough situation. She would go on run … Pass. She would stretch … Fine, I’ll give that a go. to I took a big breath in and tried to stretch, standing tall with my arms over my head. Then I hinged forward, intending to touch my toes with my legs still straight as I had seen my mom and other athlete-type people do. The backs of my legs immediately tightened in a burn and my knee buckled.
“Ok, nope. Stretching will be for another quest. Yikes, that’s rough,” I said, and I shook my legs out.
Uncle Seb peeked into the room. He motioned toward the bathroom. I gave him a thumbs up and he walked quietly over to the swampy mess, mop, bucket, and towels in tow, with Baert dutifully following. They closed the door behind them.
Good, I thought. Now, what would my mom do in this situation … I looked around her room. Hers was a world of ongoing projects, of tidy progress and neat success. She definitely wouldn’t sit around doing nothing. I spotted a sticky note on her mirror. In her handwriting was a simple reminder for herself: “discipline over motivation – you got this.” I groaned, ignoring the jab in my heart. How dare she be all inspiring and whatnot.
“Uncle Seb!” I hollered. I will force myself to be resolute, a person of action. “Bring on the weird bouncy balls. I’m ready to get my mom back!”
“What about your sister?” he called back.
“Oh yeah. I’m ready to get her back too!”
“And Dragon?”
“Ugh. Fine. I had a thing going, and you’re kind of ruining it. I’m ready to get back my mom, and Philippa, and Dragon!”
“We’ll need, uh, a minute longer to clean up.”
“Boot just one more!” Baert’s voice sounded from the bathroom.
“That’s your last flip!”
I heard a splash, then a thud.
“What did I tell you?”