SADDERDAY

I played sick today. I hadn’t even started Operation Dark Lord, and I’d already suffered more setbacks than I could count. So I stayed in bed and sniffled. I groaned a bit and wrapped the sheets around me, which is what a sick person always does. I put on a good show. But just after I’d finished a long fit of sneezing and sniffling, Gorey thundered into the room and told me he needed to see some “boots on the ground.” He said a “failed mission” was no reason to “surrender.” Then he ordered me to provide the “details” of my upcoming operation, at which point I had to admit that I was fresh out of ideas. In truth, I was hoping to just hide from the world. But he sent his hounds into the room, which forced me to immediately recover from my “cold.”

I got out of bed and threw on my warlock robe. Cold and miserable, I sat down for morning feast. I’d made a complete fool of myself in the courtyard yesterday. But I’d also made a fool of myself last Sadderday and pretty much every day since then. Honestly, I had to wonder if this was how my life was supposed to end up. Was this really what Dad wanted for me? Was this the life my parents planned? I doubted it.

If Mom and Dad were around, I can’t help but think things might be a little different. Dad would be able to show me the secret to his magic. I’m sure Mom would make certain I ate something other than eel. I bet I’d have a few of those “special privileges” Gorey denies me. And the grimmies would have to call me Junior Dark Lord or something like that.

I’ll never really know what my life would have been like if they’d lived. My parents are gone. Everyone tells me they’re out there. “They put their essence in the scepter!” That’s what Gorey always says, so I know their spirits exist. But I don’t really know what that means. I’ve never met them. Even if they were just a cloud of smoke, I wouldn’t mind meeting that cloud. I’ve asked the warlocks if Mom and Dad can be summoned, but the spell casters don’t have a clue. I’ve tried calling out to my parents too, but they’ve never answered.

As far as I know, I’m on my own.

So I finished my eel soup, gathered up my books, and went to school. That’s right, the grim folk go to school on Sadderday. How do you think the day got its name?

I attended Grim History and a lecture on nail-polishing spells by Dies Irae. We learned how to cast Irae’s Magical Manicure. Things were quiet. No one said a peep about the “elf attack.”

Had everyone forgotten about it?

As I’ve said, ogres don’t exactly have the best memories. For all I knew, that prank could have been ancient history—or at least that’s what I hoped.

At midday feast, I sat down by Oggy. “So let’s talk about that incident in the courtyard,” I said, but I could tell Oggy wasn’t listening. At long last, he’d found a new little friend.

“What is it?” I asked without even looking at the thing.

“Oh, it’s an imp . . . a bottle imp. You know, because he lives in a bottle,” Oggy said.

“Got that . . .” Having acknowledged the little guy, I hoped to turn the conversation toward Operation Dark Lord and yesterday’s disaster in the courtyard, but Oggy wouldn’t let up with the imp thing.

“So yeah, he likes all sorts of bottles, big and small, you know. But I found him a warlock’s decanter, and he seems to REALLY like it.” Oggy went on to list the various types of bottles he’d offered the imp. I think he was trying to bond or something. Or maybe he just wanted to take my mind off that “elf attack.” But the imp was just chewing away at a piece of moldy bread, which was exactly what I was doing. So I found it kind of difficult to share Oggy’s enthusiasm.

I went back to my midday feast, and I was about to dig my knife into some mutton when someone hooted, “Dork Lord!”

Oggy and I both looked at each other. Neither of us said a word. Even the imp bit his lip. A moment passed.

I thought if I ignored the insult, the grimmie might not say it again. But sure enough, a minute or two later, a pair of ogres hollered, “Dork Lord! Dork Lord!” And after that about a dozen orcs joined the chorus. The goblins must have been feeling bold, because even they gave it a shot. Pretty soon everyone except Oggy and the imp was chanting, “Dork Lord.” And amid all that racket, Bob Ogreson hollered, “The elves are coming!! Save us, Wick! The elves are attacking!!”

I wished they WOULD come. Maybe Bob could be their first VICTIM.

The room erupted into laughter. I looked to Oggy for assistance, but he just gave me one of those sad, comforting stares—the kind you gave to a grimmie when his pet bat died.

Oggy’s a big guy. He could probably have clobbered half the folks in the feast hall if he wanted to, but he doesn’t have a violent bone in his body. Seriously, it’s a problem. His mom expects him to be a soldier someday, but I doubt he’d be willing to squash one of those limping lice if his life depended on it.

As for me, I’m not cut out for confrontation. I prefer to issue orders and watch others do the hard work. But since I didn’t have anyone to order around, I laid down my knife and slipped out of the hall with Oggy and the imp following close behind.

We took our time on the school stairs while Oggy explained Operation Dark Lord to the imp. I asked the little guy if he’d be willing to join my army, but he said he’d have to pass. Apparently, bottle imps don’t go on adventures because if their glass breaks in the wilderness, they’re pretty much out of luck until they get back to civilization.

Some time around then, the great and terrible bell rang. So Oggy and the imp went off to pleasant pillaging while I headed up the stairs to cryptogeometry, which is really just a fancy name for math class. Believe it or not, higher-level spells make you trace ridiculously complex shapes like that pentagrammic thing.

This kind of geometry is used in ensnarement spells, and if you don’t draw out the lines perfectly, the knight you’re trying to trap can break the enchantment and cut you in two. So we start our studies early.

Our professor is Rats’s dad, Kravos Wormfinger. He’s a warlock, but you wouldn’t know it if you saw him. He doesn’t have a long white beard or a fancy black robe like most warlocks you might know. I figured out a long time ago that he must not be a very good spell caster. If he had any talent, he would be our magical arts lecturer. But they don’t even let him teach the remedial spells, stuff like the Fart Revealer. Instead, he teaches us mathematics, which is pretty much the opposite of magic. Still, he’s always going on about the magical qualities of geometry, but I don’t think anyone buys it.

In class today, Professor Wormfinger said, “I’m splitting the class into two magnificently magical groups, high and low, based on your skills.”

Exactly what I didn’t need. I already felt like an outsider. And the class was still whispering, “The Dork Lord is panicking! The elves are attacking!” Things were bad, but then Wormfinger went and made my life a GAZILLION times worse.

He said, “I want all the orcs and ogres and goblins in the LOW math group, and you, Wick, you’re in the high math group.”

That’s right, he placed me in a math group of one. Wick, the kid who almost burned down the castle. The boy who thought the elves had attacked.

For maybe two seconds, I thought things were okay. I mean, I am the son of the Dark Lord Who Vanished. Maybe I SHOULD be in my own group. Then I looked at the rest of the class and I saw they didn’t exactly have the same idea.

Bob in particular was angry. I’m not even sure why he enrolled in cryptogeometry. He’s not a warlock. Maybe he just got lost and wandered into the room? Who knows.

But lately he’d gotten it into his head that he was good at math. Of course, it was all just a mistake. I think. Something to do with his penmanship. I once saw his test sheet, and the handwriting was impossible to read. So I figured Wormfinger didn’t even bother to grade Bob’s tests. He’s not the most motivated warlock. Most of the time, he’s downright lazy. I bet he just marks half the answers right and the other half wrong, which is why Bob almost always gets a fifty percent score on his tests.

Now, by faire folk standards, fifty percent is a low score, but for the grimmies, it’s pretty high. Phenomenal, even. In general, the goblins test well, but the orcs average twenty or maybe thirty percent on most tests—the ogres even less. Bob’s fifty percent scores made him seem like a grim folk math GENIUS.

So no one was more surprised than Bob to find himself in the low math group. When an eight-foot-tall, twelve-year-old, one-ton ogre discovers that he isn’t a genius, things can get ugly pretty quickly.

The moment our class ended, Wormfinger hurried out of the room. And as soon as he was gone, Bob tried to smack me on the head. But he missed completely and hit his fist on my desk. His aim was as good as his math scores. And today he earned another fifty percent. Bob hit me dead center on the second try.