“GWAH!” Scott shouted, and rolled out of bed in a tangle of sheets. The tiny old man in the red tracksuit was there on his mattress, had been sleeping next to him, sharing the twin bed—maybe all night? From the cold floor Scott couldn’t see him anymore, and he held out hope that it had all been some sort of waking dream until the little pug face appeared at the edge of the bedding.
“AHH!”
“Ah, put a cork in it,” said the little pug face.
Scott rose unsteadily. “Why … why are you here?”
The man dangled his legs over the side of the mattress. He smelled like potatoes. “Didn’t thank yeh properly before. In the city. Come to make … amends.” His tone suggested that “amends” was a dish he could be persuaded to serve but didn’t care much for himself.
An early-morning memory came back to Scott, of cuddling up to his stuffed bear Bongo—a memory complicated by the fact that he’d given Bongo to the Salvation Army three years ago. He cringed at the old man and shuddered.
Mom’s voice was at the door. “Scott, are you all right? I heard you call out.”
Scott glanced at the little man, who shrugged.
“I’m okay,” he said. “I had a weird dream.”
Mom poked her head in the doorway. “I’m making waffles. Ten minutes?” She paid no attention at all to her tiny houseguest. Scott nodded at her.
“I like waffles,” said the man after she left. He was drumming his fingertips together and musing at the ceiling. “If there are waffles to be had. Best thing to come out o’ the Middle Ages, waffles. The rest o’ that millennium was a bit of a wash ….”
“Who are you?” Scott asked. It was the least of the questions on his mind. Though he thought he might have to take the long way to get to the others, which included WHAT are you and Why are you two feet tall and Don’t you think it’s maybe time you were going?
“Call me Mick.” Mick slid down from the bed and circled Scott’s small room, casting his eyes toward this and that. He had the impatient look of someone pretending to shop when all he really wanted to do was use your bathroom. Then he paused at the window. It didn’t face much of anything apart from the alley, but if you stood at the edge and looked through it obliquely, as Mick was doing now, you could see just a sliver of the town at large: its crosshatched trees and factory on the hill. He took a drink of something from a little metal container in his pocket and grimaced as he swallowed. “Can’t believe yeh live here. Of all places, this.”
Scott frowned. “What’s wrong with Goodborough?” It wasn’t New York, to be sure—it was small and quiet, and nearly everyone who lived there worked for the cereal company in one way or another. But it was nicer than their last home, and it even got tourists: visitors who loved Goodco cereals so much they left bigger cities to come here, to buy souvenirs, to take the tour.
“Yeh don’t even know. Course yeh don’t. No one digs in the dirt anymore.”
“Uh-huh. In New York you said you’d explain what’s going on,” Scott said. “If I freed you.”
“Aye, I did.” Mick turned from the window. “So I am honor bound to tell yeh that I am one o’ the Fair Folk, the Good Folk of the daoine sídhe, and I am a very long way from home.”
Scott inhaled. “You are a leprechaun.”
Mick scowled. “I am a clurichaun. A clurichaun. I amn’t no bleedin’ leprechaun. Does my suit look green to you?”
“No.”
“So I amn’t a leprechaun. But I am one o’ the Fay, one o’ Queen Titania’s court, an’ probably so are you.”
“I’m … what?”
“Scott!” called his mother. “Breakfast!”
So quite possibly the most important conversation of Scott’s life was just then interrupted by waffles, and there are worse things.