The Somebodies Read online

  Lucess’s face was lit up too. She was stiff with fear.

  The Blue Queen beckoned the souls, and the books flapped wildly in the box. The crowd cheered. They knew she was the Blue Queen. They’d known all along. The dusky, egg-shaped souls lifted up over Fattler’s head, and into the mouth of the Blue Queen.

  “No,” Fattler said. “Stop this! You’ll never get away with it!”

  But the books were now being dragged from the trunk by the sheer force of the Blue Queen’s will. Some of the books struggled. Fern was close enough, having made her way down the hedgerow, to read the titles. The covers fought to stay shut. Crossing Jordan and Dragon Rider clapped violently in resistance. But it was little use. The bits of souls eventually were wrestled loose. They were all sucked down by the Blue Queen, who was now as full as a tick, blue and lit from within. She was so full, in fact, that she staggered for a moment.

  Lucess jumped up and shut the trunk. “That’s enough! You can’t take any more.”

  The crowd grew quiet. The Blue Queen leaned on the back of Fattler’s chair, and when she found her balance, she spoke with a voice like a loud, growling engine. “Of course I can! And later I will!”

  Fern wondered if she would stop with just the books. Or would she use her powers to take the souls of all her followers? Fern remembered the terror of being under the bed in the Blue Queen’s hotel room, her hands turning to books, the pull and drag on her own soul.

  “Now!” the Blue Queen said. “Hand over the key, Fattler! Now that you really know who I am!”

  Fattler stared out over the crowd. “I don’t have it,” he snapped, his face tight with anger.

  The Blue Queen had enormous strength. She picked up Fattler, chair and all, and spun him around to face her. “Of course you do! Don’t lie to me! I want that key now!”

  “I don’t know where it is!” Fattler said.

  Lucess was sitting on the trunk. She’d retrieved her father’s fishbowl and was cradling it in her lap, the three fish jostling. “I don’t like this,” she said. “Stop, please.”

  But her mother, torch-lit and reeling with her own enormous heft, ignored her. “The key, now. So that I can move on to your death.”

  “This is crazy! Listen,” Fattler said, shaking his head nervously. “You’ll never take over the Anybodies again. Even if you have the key to the castle, even if you’re stronger than ever, even with this Secret Society to back you up. The Great Realdo will find a way to lead an uprising. The Anybodies will revolt. You’ll be defeated again.”

  The Blue Queen started laughing. She laughed so hard and loud that it hurt Fern’s ears. The crowd of Somebodies laughed along with her. Fattler glanced around nervously.

  “Do you think that’s all she’s after?” a Somebody in the crowd shouted. “Ruling over the Anybodies?”

  “You don’t know anything about her powers!” another shouted.

  Lucess spoke up too. “The plan’s so much bigger than you think.”

  The Blue Queen shouted, “The soul of Willy Fattler is pretty powerless and weak these days. In fact, I’m surrounded by weak souls. You know, I don’t have to rely only on books for souls, Fattler. That’s the old me. I’ve invented a new way to get souls. A brand-spanking-new way! And I plan to unveil it tonight!”

  The crowd roared. Fern knew that they shouldn’t be so excited. She knew the Blue Queen’s new way of gathering power. Fern clenched her fists so she wouldn’t feel her hands stiffening into books, her fingers light as pages. She knew how powerful the Blue Queen had become.

  “In fact there is one certain soul that I’ve been eyeing for years.”

  Fern felt heat creep up her neck and flush her face.

  “Not…You don’t mean…,” Fattler said.

  “You know exactly the soul I’m talking about. You know. Don’t you? Why don’t you name her?”

  “Not Fern,” Fattler said. “Not her.”

  “Bingo!” the Blue Queen said. “Exactly! Let’s go after the young, get rid of them before they become more of a nuisance.”

  Fern’s heart started beating even harder, like hooves in her chest. She worried that the Somebodies would be able to hear it pounding away and would find her hiding in the hedgerow.

  “Yes,” the Blue Queen went on, “I’m sure that Fern is on her way! I’m looking forward to the power trapped in that young royal.”

  “It won’t work,” Fattler said. “Never!”

  “Don’t worry. It will work. My whole plan will work,” she growled loudly, the motor revving as she pointed at the castle with her thick blue arms. “I will take the castle up! Straight up!”

  The crowd of Somebodies let out a loud cheer.

  Fern watched Fattler’s eyes dart over the crowd. “Up? Why would you want to go up?”

  “I’m going to rule over it all, Fattler. The city beneath the city and the city above! The castle itself is going to shoot straight up through the ground.” She poked her finger in the air, her fingernail as sharp as the castle’s steeple. “We will start by transforming New Yorkers into peasants. They’ll be as weak as the Anybodies who were hypnotized by my speech today. Street by street, avenue by avenue, we will take them over. And I will rule! I will rule it all!”

  Fern was stunned. She couldn’t move. She imagined Central Park, the field that she’d thought of earlier with the family having its picnic. She imagined the castle shooting up through the sky of dirt, through the rocky geography, up, up, up, into Central Park itself. Could New Yorkers be turned into peasants? Could they be bossed and bullied and herded? Well, Fern only had to think for a moment about this, because, as you know if you’ve been to New York, New Yorkers are already herded, by one another, quite naturally, in and out of subways, across crosswalks, up and down elevators, in and out of fashion. How long before the most ambitious New Yorkers wanted to be big and quite blue? Hours, minutes, seconds?

  “The key, Fattler!” the Blue Queen demanded. “I need the key!”

  “For the last time, I DO NOT HAVE THE KEY!” Fattler shouted so loudly and with such vigorous anger that the crowd went silent, as if it dawned on them suddenly that maybe Fattler really didn’t have the key. What then?

  Overhead in the distance, Fern heard the screeching—the terrible, eerie, warbled screeches of the flying monkeys. She watched them circle overhead, and she could see what one of them had in its claws: a piggy bank with one fat leg.

  The Blue Queen raised her eyes straight up. “What is this?” she said. “What have we here?”

  3

  THE BATTLE FORETOLD

  EVERYONE’S EYES WERE NOW FIXED ON THE flying monkeys, their wings paddling through the damp night air: Fattler, roped to the chair; Lucess, holding on to her father’s fishbowl; the Blue Queen, gasping with hope. Fern kept her eyes on the one with Howard-as-a-piggy-bank in its grip. It turned its wings and careened over the mound. What happened next seemed like it was in slow motion. She watched the flying monkey’s talons open, and Howard-as-a-piggy-bank falling, falling, toward the mound.

  Fern stood up in the hedgerow. Fattler saw her first. He’d been distracted by the flying monkeys even as the miniature pony was gnawing on the ropes behind his back. Fern didn’t think about what she should do. She just started running toward the mound.

  Howard’s shiny ceramic coat shone in the torchlight. His ceramic eyes looked terrified. He fell in the direction of the Blue Queen, but it was clear that she wouldn’t be able to catch him with her big, blue, ungainly arms. Howard seemed to pick up speed as he fell. Fern dived, arms outstretched. She wasn’t alone. The Brainkeeper and the two maids dived to catch Howard too.

  They all landed hard on their ribs. Fern’s chin struck the ground, and she closed her eyes tight for a second. She heard a terrible thud and crack. When she opened her eyes, she realized that her hands were empty. So were the Brainkeeper’s and the two maids’.

  Howard-as-a-piggy-bank lay between them on the grassy mound, now only shards of pottery. His hollow belly
was broken into about ten thick pieces. His face was the only thing to remain whole—his snout pointed at Fern, his eyes a blank stare. Fern let out a small pop of air from her lungs, a sob. Her eyes flooded with tears. “He’s gone,” she whispered. Howard! She’d put him in danger. She’d sacrificed him—just like Dorathea had sacrificed her brother Merton—in the hope of somehow saving everyone. But it didn’t seem worth it. Saving everyone didn’t even seem possible now. And Howard was gone. Gone!

  The Brainkeeper was crying too.

  The exploded-bun maid said, “Maybe if we collect the pieces…”

  The wrestler woman said, “Maybe we can glue them…”

  Fern wasn’t listening. A fat blue arm appeared overhead, reached into the broken glass and grabbed a long white ivory key! Fern hadn’t spotted the key until that moment; it had been lost to her, white on white. She watched the key, now in the grip of a blue fist, shoot up over the Blue Queen’s large round head.

  “Yes!” the Blue Queen shouted. “Yes! It belongs to me! To me! And, look, Fern has shown up as well. Just in time!”

  The Secret Society of Somebodies was screaming with joy now, shouting and whooping.

  Fattler looked defeated and weak, but, if anyone had looked closely, they would have noticed one arched eyebrow, and the miniature pony breaking through the ropes.

  The Blue Queen’s arm came down again. Fern could see it swooping toward her.

  “Run,” Fattler said, seeing it too.

  The Brainkeeper tried to shove the Blue Queen out of the way. The maids grabbed on to her skirts. But she was so powerful that she whipped them off into the crowd.

  Fern didn’t have time to run. She could only scramble downhill.

  The Blue Queen stomped after her.

  Fern, on her hands and knees, reached the bottom of the mound, where the Somebodies were still hooting and cheering.

  The arm came down again, and that’s the moment Fern felt something under her hand—it was round and small. She grabbed it, and as the Blue Queen swept her up and away, she could see what it was: one of Howard’s sample minibottles of Correct-O-Cure. Since it had been in his pocket, it must have wound up alongside the ivory key in his hollow piggy-bank belly and then rolled downhill when he broke. Fern grabbed hold of it with all her might, and she thought back to what Howard had said when she’d called it a scam: Everyone has to have faith in something.

  Fern shouted to Fattler while kicking and fighting the Blue Queen’s hold as she was being hauled off to the castle. “Remember! You are a genius, Fattler!”

  “Fern,” Fattler shouted. “Fern! No, don’t take her!” He wrestled the last of the ropes free and ran toward her.

  The Brainkeeper and the maids tried to make it through the crowd too.

  “Hold them back!” the Blue Queen shouted. “Hold them back!”

  The crowd pushed in around Fattler and the Brainkeeper and the maids, grabbing their arms.

  The Blue Queen passed by Lucess and grabbed the fishbowl from her. “I’ll take this!”

  “No!” Fern shouted, watching water lap over the edge of the bowl. The three fish—Merton, Dorathea, and the Bone—were sloshing around inside.

  The Blue Queen turned to the crowd again. “Hold this one back too,” she said, meaning her daughter. This confused the Somebodies, but two of them did as they were told and took Lucess’s arms.

  “Mother!” Lucess cried out. “You can’t go without me! I’m coming!” She struggled. “I’m coming! Wait!”

  The Blue Queen ignored her.

  The crowd was so thick now—all of them collected around the Blue Queen as she ascended the marbled stairs to the entrance, with Fern in one arm, the goldfish bowl in the other, and her blue fist holding the key. Fern didn’t fight too hard now. She knew this was inevitable. She had to battle the Blue Queen.

  The Blue Queen stared out into the crowd with something that looked like love or kinship, but it wasn’t. “Oh, look at all of you with your cow eyes, gazing at me! Gazing! Oh, my underlings! Let’s unveil the new way of stealing souls right here, right now. With you. I’m ready for boost number one!”

  She raised her hands in the air. She threw back her head.

  Fern gasped. “No!” she shouted.

  But the Somebodies in the front of the circle had already begun to change. Their hands were pulled from their sides. They flapped open like books, and their souls glowed there in the lit pages skittering in the wind. Their eyes grew wild with fear. The other Somebodies nearby pushed away and watched in horror as the souls quivered and then were released. The Blue Queen gulped them down greedily. And the bodies grew weak. They slumped to the ground.

  Fern heard Fattler shout, and then saw him bucking away from the Somebodies who’d been trying to hold him down. He shook loose and ran to a clear spot on the lawn, where he transformed the Somebodies whose souls were still being pulled from them, as well as a few standing close to them, into bronze statues—the kind one might find spitting water in a fancy hotel fountain. (Fattler’s imagination was always hotel oriented.) He glared up at the flying monkeys who’d been circling above, and they fell to the ground with the weight of bronze. One lost a wing, the other a tail.

  The Brainkeeper and the two maids looked at him, quite stunned.

  “I am Willy Fattler, you know!” he said.

  The Blue Queen didn’t like the quick turn of events. Before Fattler could do any more, she fit the ivory key into the lock and twisted the black iron knob. The huge, heavy door swung slowly open.

  “Mother!” Lucess cried, surrounded by Somebodies who were dazed by what had just happened. “Wait for me!” Lucess shouted.

  The Blue Queen slammed the large door shut with a final gong.

  4

  THE CASTLE

  PINNED UNDER THE BLUE QUEEN’S MONSTROUS arm, Fern held on tightly to Howard’s sample minibottle spray of Correct-O-Cure. She knew it didn’t work. She knew it! And yet she couldn’t let it go. Howard would want her to have some hope that it might help. Howard! Were the maids right? Could he be fixed? Fern was heartbroken and angry—at herself mostly, but also at the Blue Queen.

  From her awkward view in the clutches of the Blue Queen, Fern seemed to be looking at the castle upside down. The castle had been left empty for eleven years, and so Fern wasn’t surprised that it was dark and cold and musty. She was surprised, however, that as the Blue Queen walked over the threshold and flung one arm into the air, the wall sconces lit up, the dust and cobwebs fizzled away to nothing, and the marble floor and the gold walls took on a freshly scrubbed shine. The Blue Queen was still powerful even though she’d missed out on the souls of the Somebodies on the lawn.

  “So good to be home again!” she said, leaning heavily against the door. “I’m going to put you down,” the Blue Queen said. “No need to run. The whole place is sealed up!”

  As the Blue Queen flipped Fern over to stand her on her feet, the apple fell out of her pocket and rolled across the floor.

  “What’s this?” the Blue Queen asked, picking up the apple.

  “My last meal?” Fern said with a shrug, hoping that the Blue Queen wouldn’t register that it wasn’t an apple at all, but was really something quite valuable: The Art of Being Anybody by Oglethorp Henceforthtowith.

  The Blue Queen tossed the apple high into the air. Fern watched it rise up and fall. The Blue Queen caught it. She was on to Fern now. She knew that the apple meant something to her. “This apple,” she said “sure looks sweet!”

  “I guess so,” Fern said.

  The Blue Queen led Fern to a parlor where, with a quick wave, the dusty, yellowed sheets flipped off the plush wingback chairs and divans and love seats. Embroidered curtains dropped from gold rods above the windows and draped themselves. The room instantly gleamed. Fern wondered if the Blue Queen was already strong enough to take the castle straight up. Could such a thing be done?

  Fern had been thinking about the castle for a long time. Did it belong to her? She was royalty
, wasn’t she? She looked up into the oil paintings that hung on the wall: a pheasant hunt, a man in a captain’s suit, a woman with a wrinkled nose. It didn’t seem like home to her. Fern noticed the large windows. They were barred, and through the bars, the eager faces of Somebodies peered inside. She didn’t belong here at all.

  She tried another tack. “Nice place,” Fern said calmly, even though she didn’t feel calm at all. She didn’t look at the apple.

  “It is, isn’t it.” The Blue Queen looked at Fern. “Stop staring at me!” the Blue Queen said. “Stop gawking with those big, ugly eyes!” She fiddled with her larvae-moth brooch nervously with one hand, and then anxiously plucked the short stem out of the top of the apple.

  Fern looked away, but liked how she’d made the Blue Queen uncomfortable. It gave Fern enough confidence to ask a question. “What are they doing out there?” She pointed at the Somebodies.

  “Who cares!” the Blue Queen said, peeling a small sticker off the apple. “I never intended to give them any real power. I only need them for a boost from a stolen soul now and then.”

  “What about Lucess?”

  “What about her?” the Blue Queen said flatly.

  “Are you just going to leave her?”

  “Lucess is too squeamish. Too weak. Like her father,” she said, tapping the fishbowl. “A loveless man, in the end. He turned me in to that awful sister of his!” She leaned in to look at the three fish spinning in the bowl. She said, “And now you’re paying for it, aren’t you!” She smiled at the fish devilishly and touched the brooch. The brooch. Fern hadn’t paid much attention to it until now. What was that brooch? Why did she touch it just then, in such a knowing way?

  The Blue Queen turned back to Fern. “Lucess would be more of a problem than she’s worth. You’ve seen her with her sniveling love, with her Wait for me. She would only disappoint me, like her father.” She glanced at Fern again, and began rubbing the apple on her shirt.