Chapter Five

Sam

“Dad, what do you do when you can’t find the right word?” Sam asked at breakfast. “When the one you want is just gone?”

Mr. Culver poured more batter on the griddle as he thought about Sam’s question. He was making their traditional Saturday-morning chocolate-chip pancakes. The batter was two parts pancake mix, one part chocolate, and the pancakes would be gooey and messy, exactly the way Sam liked them.

As his dad mulled the question and cooked, Sam relaxed a little. If we’re still having the good pancakes, maybe they’re not still mad about what happened at school.

“A dictionary is a good place to start.” His dad slid two thick pancakes onto Sam’s plate, then two onto Bella’s. Anita passed Bella her juice and sat down next to her to cut the pancakes up into squares, the way Bella liked it.

Sam felt a little guilty. He’d left his dictionary at the foot of the Little Free Library, and it had rained overnight. Would that qualify as “careless” enough to attract the goblin’s attention or just make the book smell moldy?

No matter what, the silver-haired creatures would want their tiny pig. And when they came back, he’d hold on to them this time instead. And then they’d give Sam his words back.

That morning, he’d made sure the white pig had water and some vegetable scraps from the compost, and he’d left it happily curled up in the shoebox on top of his desk. Then, before breakfast, Bella had helped Sam cut out letters and paste them on two plain pieces of paper. Folded, the paper made cards. One card for Ms. Malloy. One for Mason. Both cards said the word Sam couldn’t say. The one he couldn’t even write. Bella could say them, though. And she could spell them. Barely.

Even if the cards looked a little like a five-year-old did them instead of an eleven-and-a-half-year-old, he’d found a solution. Sam felt pretty proud of that.

“A dictionary’s not exactly what I need,” Sam said, trying not to argue. He put a slab of butter on top of his pancakes, then poured syrup over everything. It sloshed off the plate and onto the table.

“Oh no,” said his stepmom.

“_____!” Sam said—or tried to.

His stepmother’s expression, as Sam sopped up the sticky mess, was two parts frustration, one part puzzlement.

“Sam,” his dad said, bringing a mug of coffee to the table. “We talked about this with Ms. Malloy, and if your stubbornness about saying sorry continues through the weekend, we’ll all have to go meet with Dr. Vane on Monday. You said you have a plan? Good. Until you’ve sorted yourself out, no movies. No baseball.” He turned to Anita and she nodded grimly.

Pancakes or not, they were still mad.

Sam pushed his fork around in the syrup, glum. How could summer turn this awful? “I’ll make things better, I promise. But—haven’t you ever heard of someone losing their words? Isn’t it possible?”

His parents looked skeptical. He wasn’t off to a good start. Still, Sam was sure that once he gave Mason and Ms. Malloy the cards, things would get better.

“I’m sorry you still can’t say it, Tham,” Bella said. “Sorry I made you mad too.”

“Bella, you don’t need to apologize for that,” their dad said. “You didn’t do anything wrong.”

“Sometimes a word can mean a lot of different things, right Bella?” Anita sipped her coffee. “Words like ‘sorry’ especially. I say it sometimes when I’m mad or when someone’s sick and I wish I could make them feel better. It’s a way to reach out to someone else, to empathize with them. It’s one of those really special words that can mean a lot of things.”

She turned and whispered to Sam, “Even if it sometimes gets taken for granted.”

Sam blushed. Was his stepmom right? He didn’t think he’d been taking the word for granted. He loved that word. He stared at his plate, grumpily pushing at a bite with his fork.

Everyone else at the table can say it except me. How is that fair? Lots of people are careless with words. So why is it just me who has to miss out on baseball?

Sam’s pancakes didn’t have any answers. They got mushier while he moved them around on the plate. He took a bite. They still tasted really good.

“Mmmmm.” Bella nodded agreement while chewing. She had chocolate at the corner of her mouth. Bella’s hair—dark and glossy like her mom’s—got caught in her mouth and tangled in the chocolate. She wiped at it, smearing everything. Sam handed her a napkin.

“Thorry.”

“Bella . . .,” Dad groaned.

As Sam chewed, he saw a nimbus of silver hair right outside the window. He coughed as the top of a baseball bat—one of his dad’s old bats!—waved back and forth.

Then a small, glittery ribbon fell from Bella’s lips, to the floor.

Was it happening again? Sam shook his head, trying to make sense of what he was seeing.

While his parents’ backs were turned, a black pig, smaller than the white one had once been (but much bigger than the white one was now), pushed through the dog door and grabbed the word, then ran back out.

Another pig! Sam stared as the dog door flap swung back and forth loudly. “Hey!”

“We need to get that door fixed,” his dad muttered.

“Or get a dog,” his stepmom added.

Normally, Sam loved conversations like that—he really wanted a dog—but what he had right now was a pig problem. A word-stealing pig problem.

He slid around the breakfast nook and jostled the table hard, trying to see where the pig went. Bella’s juice spilled, making a pink puddle.

Sam’s dad sopped up Bella’s juice with a rag and raised his eyebrows at both of them. “Guys, the weekend’s just started, can we have a nice breakfast at least?”

Bella looked up at her dad, then back down at the juice. “______,” she said. Or tried to say.

Sam froze, watching her try. Oh no.

Her mouth opened and closed like a fish. “I can’t thay it. Maybe I caught your cold, Sam.”

Sam stomped his foot. “Thieves!” he shouted out the door. Whoever the creatures were, they were not going to steal his sister’s words too. Or his dad’s bat.

“Bella,” his dad said. “Stop teasing Sam. And Sam, knock it off. You can say sorry— It’s all right to stop pretending. Look how Bella’s following your example.”

“I’m not trying to set a bad example!” Sam had just watched a black pig steal a word right off his little sister’s plate, and now his dad was talking to him like a little kid. “I’m trying to help fix everything. We made cards this morning! Remember, Bella?”

He held up the card Bella had helped him make. Multicolored letters, cut out of magazines. His dad nodded approvingly. “Good.”

“Bella, what does this say?” Sam continued. She studied the magazine letters she’d cut out and helped Sam stick on the cards and shook her head. “_____.” She started to cry.

That’s when Sam knew. His Saturday was only going to have one goal. Catching the word thieves. And, after that, making them say they were _____. “Dad, they got Bella too!”

“‘They,’ who?” Anita looked between them both, concerned.

Sam’s dad shrugged. “Sam, buddy, this isn’t how you sort things out. I don’t know what else to say to you.”

Sam froze. His dad always knew what to say. Even when it was hard. And he’d always tried to listen to Sam. He was really good at that, because that was his job. When he’d met Anita, he’d known what to say and he’d listened. Why not now?

Back then, for Sam’s fifth birthday, his dad had invited him to the office for lunch, which he thought was really cool. He’d asked his babysitter to let him go up the elevator to the office by himself. They’d lived in the city, and his babysitter was all about independence. Until Sam got to the office, he’d felt very important and grown up. Sam had held his breath, waiting for his father’s secretary to tell him to go away, that little kids didn’t belong there. But she hadn’t. In his dad’s office, where a whole wall glittered with awards, his dad had taken a big, nervous sip of water, and said, “Okay, buddy. I’m going to ask you a question, because what you think matters a lot.”

That had made Sam feel really important again, and he’d nodded.

“You like Anita, don’t you?” His dad had asked. And Sam had nodded, because he really did. Anita Vasquez was an architect who sometimes came over for dinner, and sometimes she and Sam’s dad went out. She was really nice. And Sam was pretty sure he knew what was coming next. Knowing had made him feel better and bigger.

Mr. Culver hugged Sam. “I’m glad. Do you think you’d like to try to be a family? You don’t have to call her Mom or anything like that, unless you want to, okay?”

That was the beginning of the next part of Sam’s life, where his dad married Anita, and it felt like all he had left of his real mom was the postcard she’d left in his crib with one word—”Sorry”—on it, before she disappeared. She’d gotten really bad depression, his dad said, after Sam was born, but it wasn’t his fault. And now with Anita they were going to be a new family. And then Bella came, and they were.

So now, Sam knew it was very important for him to help his sister. Then, afterward, he’d make things right with Mason and finally Get Out of Trouble. “Don’t worry, Dad. I know what I need to do.” He was in the middle of saying this when the black pig and the old woman crossed the lawn, heading for the Lockhearts’. The woman carried his dad’s baseball bat over her shoulder.

“Mayibeescusedplease?” Without waiting to hear the answer, Sam bolted from the kitchen, chasing the pig and the silver-haired woman down the sidewalk.

“Sam!” His dad’s voice followed behind him.

He would get the words back, then he’d talk to his parents. I’m doing it for Bella. And for me. And for Ms. Malloy too.

He chased the pig all the way to the Little Free Library. Sam heard the old woman talking with the boy beside the library as they tightened the leash and saddle on the pig.

“What did you get?” The boy sounded like they planned to steal all the words in the world.

“Another ‘sorry’! From the boy’s sister.” The old woman said. “And a lead on a few more in the neighborhood! What did you find?”

“Three ‘awesome’s and one ‘amazing’ that were lying around.”

“Tolver—you know we can’t use those. We don’t have the right converter,” the old woman said.

“Maybe we could rent one? Or borrow—”

“Tolver, no.”

As the two of them bickered like umpires and coaches, Sam edged closer to the Little Free Library. All he had to do was grab Bella’s word and then the goblin-fairy-creature.

He wasn’t sure what he’d do then. Maybe they’d have to give back his word when he caught them, like in Bella’s fairy tales.

“I know,” the boy continued, as Sam drew closer, “but the kids were so careless, and you hate seeing words like that just lying there, poorly used. Besides—” He wiped his hands on his shirt. “You said we can’t come back here for a long time. This will be enough to help us against the prospectors.”

The old woman said, “I hope you’re right,” and then the pig bent its knees and prepared to leap inside the library.

“Oh no you don’t,” Sam yelled, and slammed the broken plexiglass door shut.

The pig crashed into it nosefirst and lay stunned on the ground. The silver-haired woman fell from its back. In seconds, they shook themselves. Stunned, but waking up. Sam took the opportunity to grab at the pig’s leash.

The broken door squeaked open on its hinge.

The leather strap wrapped around his wrist, trapping him. Sam tried to snatch back his sister’s word, which was dangling from the pig’s mouth, but as soon as he did, the pig startled from its daze.

Snorting, the pig rolled to its hooves, and, caught in the kind of panic that comes from being suddenly awake, it leapt again, crashing past the doorframe. This time, it left the old woman behind and pulled Sam into the Little Free Library instead.

The corner of Sam’s favorite Ponyo shirt tore on a hinge. His knees and elbows burned from paper cuts and splinters. “OW!” Being dragged through a Little Free Library—even a really big one—by a miniature black pig on a leash really hurt.

The pig didn’t care about Sam’s yelling. Sam bumped along behind as it shoved aside the books with its snout, barreling through the library, all the way to the back. Sam saw a blue sky and one puffy cloud where he’d once helped build a back wall.

He would have been absolutely certain that it was a blue sky, except that the pig jostling—and with its backside blocking the view— and the leash tightening around his wrist and the experience of being pulled over and through the books, and somehow him fitting into the library at all, had him really shaken up.

In the summer heat, the wooden box—stamped MOUNT CLOUD HARDWARE in green ink on the unpainted inside—smelled like books and the memory of trees.

Except it also began to smell damp and breezy, like the ocean. Sam didn’t recall it smelling this way when he’d helped Mr. Lockheart and his stepmom build the Little Free Library.

A salty wave of air hit his face, even as the books got denser and he kept getting pulled through them. And though Sam somehow—Magically? he wondered—fit inside, he wasn’t that little. Everything felt very squished and uncomfortable.

Sam held the strap tighter.

He’d promised himself he wouldn’t let go of the word thief, and that meant the pig too. He kicked a lot of books as he struggled to hold fast. They tumbled from the Little Free Library with a clatter that was louder than the old woman’s voice. She was yelling—at Sam, at the pig, at everyone.

And then there was a loud scraping sound and a pop. The pig disappeared, and Sam felt like he was being stretched and pulled a lot like the homemade spaghetti he sometimes helped Anita and his dad cook. He was growing longer from head to toe, and skinnier too, and then there was another pop and he fell out the back of the Little Free Library into a sky as blue as anything.

Sam lost his grip on the pig’s leash. And as he fell, he saw the ocean below, and a bright pink bird flying upside down.

Wait—it’s me who’s upside down! Sam realized. When he windmilled his arms and flipped right side up, he discovered that the bird wasn’t pink. That had been the sunset reflecting on its belly. Then the bird—a seagull, Sam thought—flew away, and Sam kept falling.

Falling felt as uncomfortable as being pulled through a Little Free Library, except with fewer books.

After a few seconds, Sam landed in the mud, right next to the black pig and a white cottage with a thatched roof and a blue door.

The pig snorted at Sam as if to say, I hadn’t expected to see you on the other side of a Little Free Library.

“Same here, pig.” Sam coughed. He sat in the mud for a minute, catching his breath. Sea air filled his lungs.

Mount Cloud, where Sam lived, wasn’t anywhere near the sea.

The mud began to soak through Sam’s jeans, making them heavier. Wet too. He shivered and pulled one leg up with a loud squelch.

“What are you doing here?” The strange boy’s voice held a sharp edge, right by Sam’s ear. “Where’s my nana?” Green fingers curled over Sam’s shoulder. He looked up into black eyes and at silver hair.

“Your nana hit me with a stick!” Sam said. That’s probably the worst way to start out a conversation with a magical creature, he realized, too late. “What was that? Some kind of witch’s wand?”

The boy blinked. “My nana’s not a witch. She’s a goblin. And you? You’re terrible.” He said this, Sam thought, with the kind of scorn people used about new batters who struck out on the farm team. “And you’re on the wrong side of the worlds.”

With his heart pounding in his ears and his mind trying to process so much strangeness at once, Sam panicked. He shouted at the boy. “That’s your doing! I wouldn’t be here if you hadn’t taken . . .” He trailed off, finally losing steam. The shock of falling and landing—here? It was too much.

The goblin boy balled up his fist, and Sam put up his hands and shut his mouth, deeply shaken. “I’m ____.” Sam knew from lots of playground experience when he’d first started school in Mount Cloud that he was on this strange kid’s turf. He needed to make amends fast or the fight might get much worse.

But Sam couldn’t say the right words.

“It’s all a big accident,” he finally said. “I’ll fix that—tell me how to go home.”

“I wish I knew,” the boy said. “Humans can’t be in the marsh-bogs. This is our side. No one wants you here. If the city finds out . . .” Sam thought the boy looked even greener at the possibility.

Well, you shouldn’t have stolen my words, then, Sam thought. Serves you right. But he didn’t say so. “Who are prospectors?”

The boy didn’t answer. Sam shivered as a breeze kicked up over the water. He sat in the mud near a small cottage, looking up at a shrinking hole in the sky where the Little Free Library had been. Stranded with these green—goblins—who had taken his sister’s word, plus several of his.

The black pig beside Sam snorted and rammed its snout into Sam’s hand until he absently scratched its ears. At first, the pig grumbled. Then it sighed happily.

Sam kept scratching, even though he felt like yelling.

“Gilfillan likes you,” the silver-haired boy said. He’d unclenched his fists. “You can’t be all bad. But you have to go back. You being here might attract the prospectors’ attention. They’ll take all the words you have and then Nana and I can’t—” The boy stopped short.

“Prospectors steal words?” Sam asked. “Just like you do?”

“They take a lot of things,” The boy looked so upset and pale that Sam didn’t press. “Not like us. Boglins are better than that.”

Sam wanted to ask better how, but questions only seemed to make the boy more upset. He bet his dad would have known what to say. “Okay.” He stood up. “We have two problems: first—you want me to leave. So let’s start there. How do I go back up?” He pointed at the sky, showing the way he’d come.

The boy shook his head. “It’s hard. Someone has to make you a portal—and then you have to be small enough to get through. And that takes a pookah—they’re shape-shifters. And we’ve got only one pookah right now, and I need him to go get my nana, right, Gilfillan?”

Gilfillan snorted and leaned in for more ear scratches. Then, as Sam kept scratching behind its ears, wondering what a pookah was, it lay down and went to sleep.

The boy groaned. “I wish I could magic us out of this.” He looked for a moment as if he were going to cry. But then the boy shook his head at the pig and at Sam. “Come on. We can’t get Nan across without you.” He nudged Gilfillan, who snored louder. “Get UP.”

“Why are you talking to a pig like that?”

The goblin boy blustered at Sam. “This is a pookah. They only look like pigs.” He nudged Gilfillan with his foot. “They’re goblin shape-shifters. You hold on to one, even just the leash, they can change you too—that’s how you fit through the portal.”

The pig snorted in agreement and closed its eyes again.

“Are you—polkas also?” Boy, how Sam wished he’d paid attention to Bella’s books.

“POOKAH, not polka. They’re not dances. Be careful how you say it. And no, I’m a boglin, from the hobgob family. My nan’s a kobold, I think. It doesn’t really matter so much over here though. Goblins are goblins. We just want to be left alone.”

Goblins. Not witches or fairies. He couldn’t wait to tell Ms. Malloy. “You can’t come to my neighborhood, take what’s not yours, and then say you want to be left alone. So I’m leaving, but not without our words. My sister’s and mine. And whatever else you’ve taken.”

It was a brave thing to say, given that Sam was covered in the mud of what looked like half the small island, near a strange white cottage with a low, thatched roof, and arguing with a goblin.

If Mason and Gina called me weird before, this is even weirder.

The goblin boy grew quiet. “I want to send you right back, and your words too. Your town’s getting to be bad luck for my nan and me.”

“Then why don’t you find a better town?” Sam said.

“My nan’s been using ill-used and taken-for-granted Mount Cloud words to power our boat for years. Your town has so many— they’re all just lying around for the gathering.” He walked around Sam, nervously flexing his fingers near his pockets. “That’s our second problem, isn’t it? My nana’s stuck over there, and Starflake too. And she’s the one who knows how to open the portal, not me. Why did you leave Nan behind, Gilfillan?”

This last question was directed at the pig. The pookah, Sam reminded himself.

Instead of an answer, Gilfillan got up and waddled away behind the cottage. The boy followed, muttering, looking all around the cottage and out to the water’s edge, as if he thought he’d find his Nana hanging there by her fingertips.

Sam knew that wouldn’t happen. “It’s not Gilfillan’s fault. I was trying to get my sister’s word back when you dragged me through our neighbor’s Little Free Library. And your nana fell off the pig. I don’t know what happened to her then, but she didn’t come through with me to—wherever we are.”

“You,” the boy said, his voice wavering, “are in the marshbogs. My home. I’m Tolver Boglin, master of this island until my nana gets back. So you have to do what I say.”

Sam bristled a little at that, but then Tolver began to pace again. “Nana might be okay for a little while over there. Maybe. At least she’s got a new switch. And if we’re lucky, she’ll find someplace to hide, or find Starflake and come back on her own. Meantime, I can figure out how to—”

“A new switch? Is that my dad’s old baseball bat? Is Starflake the white pig?” Sam guessed. That was the pig he’d seen first, when he lost his words. The one that he’d trapped in a shoebox in his room.

Tolver turned and stared at him, then took a step forward, backing Sam nearly into the water. “You’ve seen her? Is she okay?” Worry edged the boy’s voice as he looked at the sky again. “I really wish both of them were here. Then I’d know what to do.”

Gilfillan grunted in agreement.

Sam felt a tug of familiarity in Tolver’s frayed words. “She’s okay. I put a Band-Aid on her scraped hoof. I wanted to help. I still do,” he added.

“If you really did help Starflake, that means I should help you too. But I’ll need you to do me a favor.” When Sam agreed, Tolver went inside the cottage. Sam heard him rummaging around.

When the goblin emerged, he carried something metal, wrapped in a cloth. “I’ve watched Nan do this. Now it’s my turn,” he muttered. The boglin’s forehead creased in dark green wrinkles. “You can’t do any magic, can you?”

“No,” Sam said. “No magic. I can play baseball. And I’m pretty good at fixing things. But that’s it. Can you do magic?” With all the strange things he’d seen so far this week, Sam wouldn’t have been surprised if Tolver said yes.

“Not yet,” Tolver said. “Unfortunately.” He kicked a clump of grass with his foot. Sam understood so well how he felt. “But . . .” he stared for a long time at the cloth-wrapped object in his hands. “I think I know how I might change that.”