Family Meeting
When William got back to the Marigold Castle, the restaurant patio was a disaster. The too-small heart starter lay on the ground, chairs and tables were overturned and dishes with old food littered every surface. The puddle of soup from Mr. G’s bowl had dried into a leathery, lumpy, soup pancake, and sharp chips of pottery from the broken bowl were everywhere.
It was daunting. But William found a starting place—wiping the chairs and putting them on one side—he realized he knew how to clean up this mess, one step at a time. It was Mr. G’s illness that was unsolvable. William wished his parents would come home. They would say it couldn’t possibly be his fault, right?
He carried cart after cart of dirty dishes into the kitchen, filled up the massive sink with hot soapy water, and dropped the dishes into the suds to soak. Then he went back outside to finish cleaning up the restaurant patio before it was too dark to see.
By the time he’d washed off all the tables, chipped off the old soup, and scrubbed down the patio, he was aching all over. When he mounted the too-small heart starter back on the restaurant kitchen wall, he pinched his finger between the device and the wall, so that when he finally got to the dishes, his first finger was purple and throbbing and he didn’t notice the broken glass in the dishwater until he sliced his other fingers.
“I’m trying to help out here—” he shouted to the anonymous kitchen “why am I getting hurt?” It wasn’t fair. But then Mr. G hadn’t done anything to lay him out on the Magenta parade grounds. He hadn’t deserved that either. That sobered William.
He cleaned up his cuts, bandaged them with the restaurant’s first-aid kit, used a long cooking spoon to open the stopper and let all the water out, and washed the other dishes, one-handed. When he was finally done, it was late.
Dropping into a kitchen chair, he folded his arms on the table, and put his head down. His stomach growled. He was too tired to get something to eat.
Why was his family the one to run the Welcome Café? The Marigold Kingdom was the newest of the Seven Kingdoms. There were six other kingdoms in line ahead of them. Let them do it. And if his parents needed to welcome others, how about starting in their own restaurant? William had a list of difficult and probably expensive ways to make things better for Mr. G, from a table at the window, to a crane that reached the Mosel River.
The most difficult and most expensive thing on the list was the cure for Mr. G’s mysterious sleeping sickness. William settled his head more comfortably and forced his weary brain to think. It showed him his comic strip with Mr. G’s bowl broken on the ground.
It’s a coincidence!
But his brain kept playing the frames of his comic strip over and over in his head, like a horror movie. William dragged himself up, went out to the cold room, and lifted the lid of the soup.
It smells . . . good.
Recklessly, he dipped out a portion into a small pot on the stove, heated it to boiling, and poured some into a bowl. He took a spoonful—see you in a hundred years, world!—and swallowed. His stomach growled in appreciation. It was delicious. He shrugged and took another spoonful.
Too late to be careful.
Halfway through his soup, he got up to get some chapati. The flatbread had to be fine. William had eaten it and had been giving it away all day as bribes, and no one had keeled over. He’d taken it right out of Mr. G’s bread basket, so the chapati didn’t need testing. But William figured if this was his last meal, he might as well enjoy it.
He laid a chapati on the stove to heat it up and flipped it over to toast the other side.
Just then, his little sister, Bea, walked into the restaurant kitchen, shouting, “Give me all your chapati!” She flung out her arms like she wanted to hug the world.
His family was home. Sleeping for a hundred years was much less appealing. William staked his claim on his warm bread with a big bite and finished his soup. He told himself he’d made mountains out of Mr. G’s sudden illness, because he was hungry and tired. His family would help him fix it.
Queen Studentenblume swept into the kitchen, ruffled William’s hair, and went right to the sink to wash her hands. “How was everything?” she asked.
“Fine,” William said, as long as Mr. G woke up before Bridget published his comic strip in the Proclamation. He’d finished the soup and he felt fine. He hadn’t fallen over. He wasn’t even sleepy. He’d wait until tomorrow to be sure, but he thought the soup was okay.
The king came into the kitchen and went right back to the cold room. His voice was muffled by the heavy door. “Any soup left?” he called, banging a few pot lids. “It’s freezing out there.”
William jumped up. He didn’t want his parents to sleep for a hundred years.
“William?” The queen pointed at his leftover soup on the stove.
He rushed over and yanked the pot away from her.
“Uh, maybe don’t eat that. Yet,” he said. “There’s something I have to tell you—”
“Monu?” the queen called without taking her eyes from William’s face. “Can you come out here?”
Monu was the king’s real name, but everyone in the Seven Kingdoms called him Monsoon, because they couldn’t get their mouths around it. Only the queen called the king by his real name.
The king came out of the cold room just as Cordelia and Jens wandered into the kitchen. Cordelia yawned and William reminded himself that she hadn’t eaten any of the soup. Jens was reading a comic book.
William lifted it out of his hands and laid it on top of a tall cupboard. “You shouldn’t read those,” he said in his best older-brother voice. “They’re not good for you.”
Jens turned his head slowly, getting William into his sights, then shot back. “You draw them.”
“Not anymore,” William said.
“But you always draw comic strips.” Bea accused him, her eyes narrowing until her thick black eyelashes nearly touched. “You promised to make one for my birthday.”
“I’ll get you something else.”
The kitchen fell silent. Like the air was full of tripwires and no one wanted to set one off.
Now they knew how he felt.
Oh, he knew a comic strip couldn’t make someone sick. Comic strips weren’t magic. Every royal in the Seven Kingdoms was given a magical christening gift by the Fairy Kingdom. To promote peace or something.
His was called “Jack Frost” and, as fairy godparent gifts went, it was less than lukewarm. When he was little, he’d enjoyed drawing frost flowers on the windowpanes or the dessert plates by reciting a jingle:
Jack be frosty
Jack be chill
Jack freeze over
What it will:
Dessert plates!
He still used it to chill food in the restaurant sometimes, but it was a party trick, not a weapon to defend the kingdom.
The point was, he knew what magic felt like. His comic strips weren’t magic, but the feeling that his comic strip had stirred something up wouldn’t go away. Somehow, by drawing his comic strip, he’d set a story . . . loose in the world. He’d set a trap, that Mr. G had sprung.
He’d set a trap that would grab him next, as soon as Bridget published the comic strip in the Proclamation. That would ruin the restaurant’s reputation and gobble up his family’s livelihood.
This story he’d set loose might already be on its way around the Seven Kingdoms.
Even with his parents’ help, he couldn’t stop it. William closed his eyes, took a deep breath, and opened his eyes again, hoping things would look better. They didn’t. He wanted to explain, but he couldn’t see where to start.
King Monsoon cleared his throat. “I’m going to make some omelettes. Who wants some?”
Jens, Cordelia, and Bea chimed in.
“Me!”
“I do.”
“Me too.”
“That sounds lovely,” the queen laid a hand on the king’s arm and smiled up at him.
When they were all eating omelettes—even William who wasn’t hungry but needed something to do—the queen turned to him and asked, “So, what happened here today?”
William rubbed his aching forehead. “Mr. G passed out in the restaurant. I keep wondering if it could have been the soup, but nobody else got sick.”
“We can go over the soup, later.” The king put down his fork. “Go on. What happened to Mr. G?”
Taking a deep breath, William launched into the day’s adventure, beginning with the giant earthquake. When he got to the part about the Heart Starter being too small for a giant, the king called for a wax tablet and made a note.
“You’re right, we need to be able to serve all of our customers,” the queen said.
“It’s just that I don’t think the Welcome Café is the most important way to make everyone feel at home,” William said.
“You have a point, William,” King Monsoon said. “We should look into a crane.”
“I like the Welcome Café,” Bea said. “But we have to take care of Mr. G.”
Cordelia surprised William by saying, “I think William’s right. Making everyone welcome is about more than cake.”
Jens was the only one who wasn’t saying anything. He must still be annoyed about losing his comic book. His arms were crossed and his eyes were boring holes into William. Too bad. William had done it for his own good. Comics caused more trouble than anyone knew.
His parents listened all through the tricky giant transportation and promised to honor all the coupons he’d given out to get Mr. G to the RAA Hospital.
“That’s an excellent use for your comic strips,” the king said, approvingly. “Make some more and we’ll give them out to customers.”
Jens’ eyebrows lifted and William felt like the biggest hypocrite alive.
Ignoring the king’s compliment, William explained how he and Vlad had set up the Magenta royal pavilion to protect Mr. G from the weather. “And then I came home and cleaned up.”
“It looks wonderful,” the queen said, her gaze traveling around the clean kitchen.
“The outside is perfect too,” the king said. “I looked before I went into the pantry.”
Then everyone fell quiet, but it felt like a we’re-all-working-on-it-together silence.
After a few moments, the king said, “That does sound like it wasn’t the soup. Especially since you had some. Did anyone else get sick later on?”
“There were no messages last time I checked,” William said.
“Let’s check again,” the king said. He sent a page up to the dovecote. A new message had arrived, but it wasn’t a complaint. It was the family that had ordered everything from the soup to ice cream, and they only wanted to know how much they owed. They asked if Mr. G was okay.
By then, William’s neck was burning up. All this attention was hard to take.
“That must have been difficult,” the queen said, and the distant look in her eyes showed she was letting it play out in her mind’s eye. Then she focused on him. “You did very well. I’m proud of you, William.”
“And quick thinking with those coupons,” the king added. “Nice way to build up the business. We can go over the soup ingredients tomorrow, but I think it must be okay.”
His family’s reaction would have made William feel better, except for Bridget’s threat about printing the comic strip. He hoped she never would—not until Mr. G was there to laugh about it too--but he didn’t have the strength to tell his family about that too.
The king’s words had somehow unknotted William’s shoulders. His body was limp and shaky and the stairs to his bedroom were going to be a serious problem. Whatever had been getting him through this day had suddenly run out. He couldn’t sit here another second. “I’m kinda tired. Good night!” he said, and fled across to the main castle and up to his bedroom.