Pip Bartlett's Guide to Magical Creatures Read online

  The woman returned. She was holding an enormous pair of flowered underwear. Tomas flinched.

  “You were right!” she exclaimed. “There were two of them in there! I’m not touching them. Here, take all of it!”

  Tomas was still staring at the underwear with wide eyes, so I snatched off the pot lid. She dropped the underwear inside; it landed with a soft thud. I guessed that was because of the Fuzzles inside it.

  “I don’t need those back,” she said. “Tell your mother hello, Tomas.”

  She shut the door.

  “I don’t believe it!” Tomas peered into the pot with his head turned sideways, like he couldn’t look at the underwear straight on.

  “Let’s try the next house,” I said.

  The man at the next house knew Tomas as well, and obligingly went to check his drawers. He returned holding some bright red-and-green boxer shorts with a set of tongs.

  “I didn’t want to touch them,” he said. “Are they poisonous?”

  “Underwear, or Fuzzles?” I asked.

  “You’re funny,” he said, but he said “funny” as if it meant “strange.” He dropped the boxer shorts inside the pot. “I don’t need those back.”

  The next house was the same story, only this time it was an orange pair of underwear, and there were three smaller Fuzzles inside them. When the lady showed it to us, three pairs of eyes peered out of the leg holes.

  “I think they’re nesting,” she said. “Do they normally live in hammocks or something like that?”

  “Nobody knows what they normally live in,” I replied. “But that’s a good idea.”

  The house after that didn’t have any Fuzzles in it, nor the one after, but at the one after that we struck Fuzzle gold. When the woman went to check her underwear drawer, we heard a mighty scream. It was so piercing that both Tomas and I went running inside to see if something terrible had happened. The woman stood in a very fancy bedroom, staring in horror at the top drawer of her dresser. Flames roared out of it.

  “Tongs!” I ordered. “Then drop the Fuzzles in the pot!”

  The woman ran out of the room and returned with a large pair of barbecue tongs. She fished out a pair of fancy purple underwear. Fire shot out of both leg holes like a dual flamethrower. Tomas lifted the pot lid, and she dropped the underwear in. Then she retrieved another flaming pair. And another. The pot was filling up, and the dresser was still producing Fuzzles. Plus, some of them kept on burning even after they were dropped inside the pot.

  “Ow!” Tomas said. “The handle’s getting hot! There are too many to tickle!”

  Plus, the dresser was still on fire. The smoke detector overhead began to shriek. Any Fuzzle that wasn’t already ignited went up in flames.

  Far too many to tickle.

  The woman clapped her hands to her cheeks. “Oh, dear! I think I need to call 911! I must find my purse!”

  “Where’s the bathroom?” I shouted. “I’ll pour some water on this!”

  She pointed. As she ran to find her purse—and her phone, I guess, inside it—I ran into the equally fancy bathroom. There was nothing to put water in except for her toothpaste holder, so I began to make trips back and forth. Soon her underwear drawer was entirely doused, but the drawers below still seemed to be smoldering.

  Outside, a fire engine wailed. Unexpectedly, the fancy lamp on top of the lady’s fancy dresser caught on fire too, and the lightbulb exploded with a brittle bang. Somewhere, the lady began to shriek again, a fancy sort of shriek. It felt like every sound that could possibly happen was happening. Tomas seemed to agree with the Fuzzles, because he did the Tomas version of bursting into flame. He kneeled beside the smoking saucepan and covered his ears.

  A fireman charged into the room. “How many of you are there?”

  Tomas didn’t reply because his ears were covered, and I didn’t reply at first because I was just staring. Then I replied, “Two! And a lady. And a lot of Fuzzles.”

  “You need to get out!” he said.

  “We were just trying to help!”

  He said, “This is way too much for two kids. This is too much for any of us, probably. It’s a disaster.”

  Luckily for everyone’s underwear, Aunt Emma came up with a plan that evening. We were going to pack up all the Fuzzles and take them to a little island in the middle of Two Duck Lake. It wasn’t a perfect plan—the Fuzzles couldn’t stay there forever—but it was at least a place to put them while Cloverton came up with a better plan. And the island, even though it was small, could still hold more Fuzzles than the clinic.

  “Would you like to help?” Aunt Emma asked me.

  She didn’t really have to ask.

  An hour later, she and Callie drove off in the clinic van to collect a few more Fuzzles from the neighbors, and Tomas and I set off on our way to Two Duck Lake with Mr. Randall, one of Aunt Emma’s friends. Mr. Randall’s pickup truck was very large and very metal. Fuzzle-proof.

  Off we went. Mr. Randall played some country music. I drew a Fuzzle on the back of my hand. Tomas scratched a rash on his arm. And the Fuzzles bounced along calmly in metal animal crates in the back of the truck.

  Things seemed to be going well. Things were going well enough, in fact, that I was able to think about how we might spend the evening if we didn’t have to return to a clinic full of Fuzzles. Callie had said something about a taco night when I first arrived, and I loved tacos. Plus I was starting to make friends with Regent Maximus. Maybe I could read him some entries from the Guide, so he’d know he didn’t have to be afraid of things like Peruvian Squash Bunnies or Lightning-Hooved Deer. I even had time to feel a tiny bit homesick, even though I didn’t exactly understand why. I was used to my parents going on long trips, and I was very interested in the magical-animal events here at Cloverton. I wouldn’t have expected to feel a pang in my chest when I thought about home. Maybe I would ask Aunt Emma if she thought tonight would be a good night to try to check in with my parents.

  As we approached the bigger highway, we hit a bump in the road, which brought my thoughts back to the present. The smell of warm fur wafted into the cab. I peered in the passenger-side mirror. No smoke. So far, so good? Maybe?

  But as the truck got to full speed on the highway, the Fuzzles suddenly began to scale the crate walls.

  Sudden movement was never a good sign.

  “Uh-oh,” Tomas said.

  “What’s happening back there?” Mr. Randall asked.

  Neither Tomas nor I answered, because we weren’t sure. The Fuzzles clung to the tops of the crates. They began to hum. Their fur flapped wildly in the wind. Every time the truck hit a bump, their humming hit a bump too.

  Hhhhhhhhhmmmmm-heck!-hhhhhhhmmmmmm.

  “They like it!” I exclaimed.

  They really did! The Fuzzles were humming with excitement.

  But then one of them began to smoke.

  And then another one.

  Soon clouds of smoke roiled from the back of the humming pickup truck. A single Fuzzle burst into flame.

  “Oh, no,” Tomas wailed.

  The flaming Fuzzle was still humming happily. Other Fuzzles followed its lead, bursting into flame like corn kernels exploding into popcorn. Soon there was so much fire in the truck bed that it was hard to look directly at the Fuzzles. Tomas aimed his fire extinguisher out the back window and sprayed, but it didn’t seem to do much—all the powder got blown away too fast. It scudded off the back of the pickup truck, like we were a disintegrating parade float.

  A disintegrating parade float that was on fire.

  On my hand, I jotted a hasty note to myself to remember to add this to my Fuzzle page in the Guide. It wasn’t just fear that made Fuzzles catch fire—excitement could do it too.

  Another car pulled alongside us. The lady in the passenger seat rolled down her window and called kindly, “Did you know that you have a truck full of animals on fire?”

  “I did, but thanks,” Mr. Randall called back.

  “Slow down!” I told
him. “The wind is making it worse!”

  “I’ve seen worse than a truck bed of flaming lint rabbits!”

  “Please slow down!” Tomas and I said at once.

  “Okay, okay,” Mr. Randall said. He slowed down.

  Sure enough, as the wind stopped playing with the Fuzzles’ fur, they grew less excited. The fires slowly died down until only a few of the Fuzzles were glowing like embers.

  Tomas scratched his rash in a relieved sort of way, and I let out a big breath.

  By the time Mr. Randall had offloaded us at our final destination, there was not a smoldering Fuzzle among them. We had made it to Two Duck Lake.

  Everyone’s been to a place like Two Duck Lake. It’s one of those public lakes that people like to visit—locals, not tourists. There’s a gravel parking area with a faded wooden map of hiking trails, rickety boat docks, and faded picnic benches. Mostly it’s the kind of place where some people come to jump in the water and go “Wahoo!” and other people say, “Ew, don’t splash that brown water on me.”

  Our final destination was the island right in the lake’s center. It was tiny, but so were Fuzzles, so it would work nicely. Mr. Randall paddled us and the Fuzzles across the lake in a little metal canoe, then gave me his phone so I could call Aunt Emma and tell her we’d arrived.

  “This is my first real job,” Tomas remarked as I finished the call and shoved the phone into my pocket. He was helping unload the crates and had a small wad of tissue stuffed into each nostril. He’d told me this would keep him from inhaling the deadly dander of the Georgia Swamp Cretin, which he’d heard had been seen near the lake.

  “I like—oof—that they—oof—trust us with something so—oof—important,” I said, jumping in to help. All of the fire had welded the metal crates shut, so both Tomas and I had to yank on the closest crate door to get it open. As soon as we did, a batch of Fuzzles rolled out happily, leaving furry drag marks in the sand. Immediately, two squirrels (possibly Fancy Winged Squirrels, but I couldn’t see their backs to tell) began to chatter in the trees overhead.

  I heard one of them mutter, “Well, there goes the neighborhood.”

  They probably weren’t wrong. I felt a little bad about taking over their little island. But squirrels could live anywhere, especially Fancy Winged Squirrels. Fuzzles couldn’t seem to live anywhere without causing problems.

  As Mr. Randall inspected the shoreline to make sure there was nothing really important the Fuzzles could destroy, Tomas and I sat on the sand and watched the Fuzzles roll around and bask in the sun.

  “What now?” Tomas said. “This island can hold a lot of Fuzzles, but it can’t hold infinity Fuzzles.”

  He had a point. I kicked at the dirt as a flock of ducks floated close to shore. Emerald Dunking Ducks. They have super-shiny head feathers made out of actual emeralds and are pretty common in public ponds. Even though they were pretty, I wasn’t happy to see them. They’re terrible.

  Terribly judgmental, that is.

  They don’t actually have mustaches. I just drew those in because I really don’t like them. Trust me, you’ll understand why in a second.

  As this flock paddled up, all of the shiny green heads turned toward shore and muttered among themselves. To Tomas, they must have sounded like ordinary ducks quacking back and forth. But this was what I heard:

  “Can you believe that girl’s dress? Does she really think yellow is her color?”

  “She looks like a mallard duckling. Speaking of mallards, did you see that family of mallards by the docks? I am pretty sure they have lake fleas because they look so shabby.”

  “Oh! Shabby! That reminds me of that grandmother we saw. Did you see her toenail polish? Is that what she considers fashion?”

  “The times are changing.”

  “Changing.”

  “For the worse.”

  “Except for us.”

  “Yes.”

  “Oh, look at that boy with tissues in his nose and that weird girl staring at us.”

  “Maybe they have bread.”

  “I don’t think they have bread. They look too stupid to have remembered to bring food to the island.”

  “That girl wouldn’t share bread with us, anyway. I can tell. She’s staring at us like we’re pests. She’s the pest. Humans and lake fleas! They’re all so—”

  I couldn’t take it anymore. I said, “Hey! I can hear you, you know!”

  Tomas blinked. “I didn’t say anything.”

  “Not you! The Ducks.”

  The line of floating Ducks blinked at me. One of them said, “You can understand us?”

  “Yes,” I replied, as Tomas watched.

  “Everything we said?” one of the other Ducks asked.

  “Yes.”

  The Ducks looked at one another. Then the first one said, “So don’t you agree that that girl in the blue bathing suit looks like a potato?”

  I jumped up. “No! That’s a horrible thing to say about someone. Why are you always so horrible?”

  The Ducks muttered under their breath before drifting a little bit away and glancing back at me. I heard one of them say, “Well, I guess someone’s feeling a little touchy today!”

  There is absolutely nothing worse than a flock of judge-y magical Ducks.

  “What did they say?” Tomas asked. He had one eyebrow raised. I couldn’t tell if he believed me or not.

  “I don’t think you want to know,” I replied. “They—”

  Mr. Randall’s phone—which was still in my pocket—rang. I looked at the screen: It was the clinic.

  “Mr. Randall!” I shouted down the beach. He was depositing Fuzzles on the sand, one every few yards; they smoldered nicely without igniting anything. I held up the ringing phone for him to see. “It’s the clinic!”

  “Go ahead and answer. Might be your aunt calling back,” Mr. Randall said, then went back to dropping Fuzzles.

  I tapped the “answer” button. “Mr. Randall’s phone, Pip speaking.”

  “Pip? It’s me.” I recognized Callie’s voice at once. She said, “You and Tomas and Mr. Randall need to come back quick.”

  “Why?”

  “Because Mrs. Dreadbatch is here—sorry, ma’am—Mrs. Dreadbotch—is here and she’s mad. Something about a flaming truck?” Callie’s voice was irritated, and I could hear Mrs. Dreadbatch talking—well, yelling—in the background. Now that I thought about it, her voice was an awful lot like those Ducks.

  “Pip? Are you there?” Callie asked. “On the phone, you have to talk.”

  “I’m here. We just dropped the Fuzzles off. Mr. Randall’s almost done.”

  “Seriously, Pip.” Now Callie whispered right into the phone. “She’s super-mad. She says since she’s high up in S.M.A.C.K.E.D., she’s allowed to personally arrest Mom and Mr. Randall. Something about ‘reckless transportation of flammable material.’ Hurry.”

  “ ‘Flammable material’! They’re animals!”

  “Something wrong, Pip?” Mr. Randall asked, rejoining us. He set down an empty Fuzzle crate and dusted off his hands. “That’s quite a serious face you’ve got on there.”

  “Mrs. Dreadbatch is at the clinic, and she’s mad.”

  “I know Mrs. Dreadbatch,” Mr. Randall said. He looked more grave than he had when driving a truck full of flaming Fuzzles. He said, “We better get back there.”

  * * *

  There were a few people in the waiting room when we got back—a lady with a Multicolored Mongoose, a man with a very talkative Phoenix on his arm, and a pregnant lady quietly reading one of the brochures.

  Then I spotted Mrs. Dreadbatch standing at the counter. Her back was to me as she spoke to Callie. But when she turned, I saw the face. She was holding a handkerchief over her mouth and nose, and still I could see it. The you’re-in-trouble face.

  Dreadbatch pulled the handkerchief away from her mouth just long enough to spit, “I’d like to know, Joseph, why a rolling fire hazard just made its way through Cloverton?” She clapped the
handkerchief back over her mouth. Everything about her posture indicated that something about the clinic was too gross to breathe in directly.

  “What’s this all about now?” Aunt Emma asked, pushing through the clinic’s door, Bubbles right behind her. She had glittery gold goo all over her hands. When Dreadbatch saw it, she swayed a little and pressed the handkerchief so tightly to her face that her knuckles turned white. Personally, I thought the gold was way better than the purple HobGrackle sweat she’d seen on her last visit.

  “I’ve had it, Emma!” Dreadbatch said. “We didn’t have a single Unicorn in this town before you opened your clinic. Now you’re transporting Fuzzles? In a truck? On fire?”

  “They weren’t on fire when we left the house,” Tomas piped up—bravely, I thought. Dreadbatch glared at him so hard that he pulled out his inhaler and took a puff.

  Aunt Emma scrubbed goo onto a towel. “Mrs. Dreadbatch, everyone in Cloverton brought their Fuzzles here. We can’t house them, obviously. In fact, another fifty have come in since this morning. They’ll be perfectly fine on the island in Two Duck Lake—they can’t swim, and the island is big enough to hold hundreds and hundreds of them. What else were we supposed to do?”

  Mrs. Dreadbatch shook her handkerchief in Aunt Emma’s face. “You’re supposed to destroy them!”

  Destroy them? They didn’t mean to burn everything down!

  Aunt Emma looked rather thin-mouthed all of a sudden. “I am not an exterminator, Mrs. Dreadbatch. I’m a veterinarian.”

  Dreadbatch eyed the Phoenix with distaste before looking back to us. “Which is why S.M.A.C.K.E.D. will be hiring an exterminator from Marshview to deal with the problem. My organization is getting tired of paying visits to your clinic. So if you have any more of these things, please refrain from trotting them through town with no regard to your neighbors! A flaming truck! What if you’d run into someone’s private property? Imagine the horror!”

  “Are you questioning Mr. Randall’s driving skills?” Aunt Emma asked. “He was a police officer for twenty years!”

  “That’s not the point, Emma! The point is that those creatures are unsafe. The point is that they need to be destroyed, not moved. The point is that—”