The fable of Little Red Riding Cap teaches us to share, because if she’d shared her basket of food with the wolf, he wouldn’t have eaten her grandma. You can’t blame a wolf for being hungry.
—RUNT HIGGINS’S LITERATURE ESSAY
The number one item on my to-do list was impossible, but the number three item on my list, finding out where I came from, just got a little more interesting. Sara had said, “We are Ohtee.” Now I had a real library to find out what that meant.
Uncle Ludwig had never heard of anything called Ohtee. He suggested I start looking in the Cyclop-edia, which was a whole row of books about everything. I found the “O–N” book, but when I opened it, I saw that large sections had been blacked out.
“That set came from Bluetorch,” Uncle Ludwig said, sitting beside me at a table. “When Dark Victor came to power, he censored books but soon decided it would be easier to burn them.”
I didn’t find an entry for Ohtee, or Otee, or O/T, but there was one for Oti. It read:
The Oti tribe hails from the western slope and foothills of the SMUDGE mountains in SMUDGE.
It didn’t say “SMUDGE”—that’s just what it looked like.
The Oti were hunter-gatherers who lived in small bands without centralized political leadership. They were peaceful, but bound together to defend their territory from invaders. Known for their fierce fighting and SMUDGE.
All the rest was blacked out.
“Do you have another Cyclop-edia?” I asked Uncle Ludwig.
“Encyclopedia. No, and my set is incomplete,” he said. “I don’t have an M. Do you see now how important it is to find the Great Library? Who can live in a world with no knowledge of things starting with M?”
Syke had been exploring the stacks, but she returned to the table where Uncle Ludwig sat. “So where are your files on Runt?” she asked. “You must have collected lots of clues about where he came from, right?”
“Er . . . files?”
“Cook said you’ve been researching where Runt came from,” Syke continued. “For years. So what have you found out about him?” She sat down opposite him and leaned over the desk, capturing him in her glare.
“I . . . um . . . that is . . . my files are upstairs, but I remember . . . Runt arrived here a few years ago—”
“Eight years ago,” I corrected.
“Right. Cook took him in, gave him her last name . . .” He looked around the room, then at his watch. “Goodness, look at the time. I must be off.”
“You two must leave as well.” He stood up and shooed us out.
Syke’s brow was furrowed, and she walked like she was punishing the ground.
“What’s wrong?” I asked. I pulled her to a stop in the castle’s foyer. We were still a few minutes early for Literature.
“Uncle Ludwig. Heck, everyone here is so self-centered. Critchlore, Vodum, Frankenhammer, every one of them. They only care about their own stuff.”
“What about Mistress Moira, Professor Zaida, Tootles and Riga . . . ?” I said.
“Okay, fine, not them. But Uncle Ludwig is just like Dr. Critchlore—so wrapped up in his own work that he ignores everyone else. Which just reminds me of the fact that all my hamadryad relatives hate Dr. Critchlore, but they won’t tell me why.”
“Really?”
This conversation was making me nervous because I knew why the hamadryads hated Dr. Critchlore, why oak trees regularly pelted him with acorns when he passed near. I’d just found out from Dr. Frankenhammer that Dr. Critchlore had destroyed the forest where Syke had lived, killing her mother. He told everyone that he’d saved Syke from the fire, but it was a fire he’d caused on purpose. I didn’t want to tell Syke the truth, because then she would hate him, and if she hated him, she would leave the school.
The sudden realization of what a huge hypocrite I was made me feel heavy with guilt, so I stepped away from Syke and sat down on the staircase.
“They despise him,” Syke said, sitting next to me. “So I asked—why would you let me be raised by someone you hate?”
I didn’t really understand that either. I knew she couldn’t live in the trees like regular hamadryads. I’d assumed Dr. Critchlore was their only option. Still, it made me wonder. “What did they say?”
“They said I was too young to understand. I’m thirteen; I’m not a baby. I don’t know why they won’t tell me why they hate him. It must be something terrible.”
It was. And I had to tell her. He’d killed her mother! But there had to be an explanation. Why hadn’t Critchlore known it was a hamadryad-protected forest? His family had lived in the castle for generations. I told myself that I needed more information before I could tell Syke the truth, but I knew I was stalling.
“Syke,” I said, “I’m not mad at you anymore for not telling me I’m not a werewolf.”
“Thanks, Runt.”
“Even though it really hurt my feelings, because I felt like everyone was laughing at me, I know you just didn’t want me to be hurt.”
“Exactly.”
That said, I felt better. I was still hurt that she’d let me make a fool of myself for so long, but not as much since I realized I was doing the exact same thing. Keeping secrets.
The bell rang, and we headed up one of the winding staircases that led from the foyer to the second floor.
“What am I going to do now?” I said. “I have no idea how to find out where Sara and I come from.”
“You go find your own CLOUD,” Syke said. “With this.” She showed me a book. It was The History of Worb.
“Syke, are you crazy? You stole this book.”
“Serves him right,” she said. “He’s had years to research your curse, and all he’s done is look for that stupid library. You take this illegal book on your field trip tomorrow, sneak off to the capital library and ask if anyone is interested in it. Find a CLOUD yourself. But be careful.”
She stuffed it into my bag.
That night, after dinner, I went to see Cook in the kitchen.
“Hi, everybody,” I said, waving to the dishwashers, the food preparers, and Pierre, my foster brother, who was setting out lunch bags for our field trip.
They all nodded hello. Cook sat at a table, checking a printout of her menus, still wearing her apron and hairnet, and the cat-eye glasses she loved.
“Hi, Mom,” I said, sitting next to her.
“Runt,” she said. “Great game yesterday.”
“Thanks. We should have won.” I thought about telling her that I’d lost The Top Secret Book of Minions, but I shrugged that idea away. There was nothing she could say to make me feel better about that. She might be able to help me with my Uncle Ludwig problem, though. “Hey, you know what?”
“Hmm?” She raised her eyebrows as she scratched off something on her list.
“I went to see Uncle Ludwig after the game, to see what he’s found out about me?”
“Yes?” She looked up at that. “What’s he found out?”
“Nothing,” I said. My stomach got all twisty when I said that, like it only now realized the danger I was in. “He has been . . . working on something else. He has no clue where I’m from.”
“That can’t be right,” Cook said. “He’s told me over and over that he’s getting close.”
I shook my head. “He thought I’d been left here a few years ago. I’ve been here eight years.”
Cook slammed her pen on the table. Anger seemed to inflate her, like bread rising. “That man promised me he would work on nothing else! I gave him everything you had with you. Except your medallion, of course, because you cried whenever I tried to take it off. I told him, ‘You find out where he’s from.’ And he told me he would make it his top priority.” Cook slapped the table, hard. “That man lied to my face, and after I gave him my family’s treasured book collection!”
“What am I going to do?” I felt tears pool in my eyes and then burst free. In a flash, I was sobbing. All at once, my impending death seemed to be rushing at me like a flood I couldn’t dodge.
Cook got up and squeezed me in a hug. “I’ll talk to Dr. Critchlore. He owes you.”
I slumped. The last thing I wanted was for Cook to tattle on Uncle Ludwig for me, especially since Dr. Critchlore was already mad at me for losing the book.
“No, don’t,” I said, wiping my face with my sleeve. “Uncle Ludwig thinks he can find the answer to my problem if he solves his own problem. Let’s give him some more time.”
She let go of me and stood up. “Really? Because I have a mind to—”
“Don’t say anything yet,” I said. “What exactly did you give him?”
Cook sat back down. “You were a mess when they brought you to me. Like you’d been rolled in mud. You wore a loose dog collar around your neck, and you howled at me when I tried to take it off.” She chuckled at that. “I managed to clean you up and wash your clothes. You wore an undershirt, a silky shirt with a fluffy collar that peeked out over a jacket that was probably once a very pretty shade of blue. Your pants matched and had a gold stripe down the side. It was like you’d been playing dress-up in a medieval play.”
“I’ll ask Uncle Ludwig if he still has them,” I said. “Hey, what are you packing in our lunch tomorrow?”
“The usual: sandwich, fruit, cookie for most of you. Something disgusting and crunchy for Frieda.” She smiled at me. “Your first trip to the capital, Runt. It’s going to be so exciting!”
I smiled back. It was exciting. I wasn’t just going to see the capital for the first time; I was going to take Uncle Ludwig’s book and find a CLOUD. Tomorrow was the day I took matters into my own hands.
