boy meets frog

I was sitting in class the first time that I saw the frog.

Miss Weaver had been my teacher for a few months, and was best known around Stagwood for having a stack of black hair that rose a foot above her head. Before the school year started, I'd heard rumors about her, and within a week I realized that they were all true. For one thing, she did, in fact, wear the same outfit every day; the colors changed, but she always had on striped pants and a striped jacket. For another thing, she was mind-numbingly boring. The kind of boring that makes your eyes shut without your permission. The biggest problem, though, was the stories. She was obsessed with tales of former students who had become some kind of famous. The first couple of times weren't bad, maybe even kind of interesting, but by the second week of school she had started repeating herself, just like her outfits.

By then, I knew all the stories by heart. The professional football player who was good at math. The politician who was a teacher's pet. I knew every word. Instead of trying my hardest to listen, I spent most of class drawing in my notebook. Most classes, I drew imaginary places and then whipped up some creatures to fill them. They had horns where horns don't go, fur where scales should be, and all the wings. They were odd, and they each had a story that I wanted to tell. But, on that day, I never even got to the first pair of wings. I had barely gotten started when the frog appeared and changed my life forever.

It was a moment of exceptional boredom when I saw it. Its little green face was pressed up against the window nearest to me. My pencil stopped dead in its stubby tracks. I couldn't stop looking at the frog and it couldn't stop looking back. We were locked in a staring contest with unknown stakes. Maybe some frogs blinked, but with its eyes smushed against the glass, this one didn't. Stagwood Forest was just beyond the schoolyard and it was riddled with frogs, but they always avoided people. I knew right away, in a way that I could think better than I could say, that this frog was different.

I tried to listen back in to Miss Weaver, just in time to hear the end of her story about Martin Shandals, the now-famous comedian. Martin had transferred schools half way through the year, so I always felt to me like that one shouldn't count. We were supposed to be learning long division, but something had reminded her of Martin. I knew exactly what bad joke she would end the story with, and much less about long division.

"Whenever he acted up in class I'd say, 'we've got a real comedian on our hands don't we?' And I was right!" she said with a giggle.

I was sure that Miss Weaver would see the frog eventually, but I was wrong. Nobody did. When I looked again to see if it was still there, I noticed something shiny. It made me forget all about class, and Miss Weaver and Martin Shandals. There was no denying it: this frog had put on a tiny pair of glasses.

I wanted to lecture it, to explain that frogs don't wear glasses. It bothered me that it didn't already know that. On top of that, it had been staring at me for at least five minutes. It seemed to be bordering on rude. Could a frog even be rude? I wasn't sure. But, the bigger question was why it was so interested in me.

I wasn't the type of kid who got attention. Teachers always wrote "needs to participate more" on my report cards (with a smiley face to make my parents feel better). I never got into trouble and barely ever stood out on purpose. A few years earlier, I accidentally peed my pants because my zipper had gotten stuck in the bathroom at the last moment. I tried to convince everyone that I had fallen into a puddle at recess. The custodian, Mr. Salazar, charged outside with a mop and brought me with him to point out the puddle. My guess is that we wasted a half-hour looking around at the dry gravel. Luckily, my mom dropped off some new clothes and nobody really noticed my wardrobe change (…or that it hadn't rained in weeks).

That's how it was. Whether I did something spectacular or sneezed myself out of a chair, nobody cared, and almost nobody said my name. As far as school was concerned, all those things had happened to "some kid". So, why would a frog with glasses jump up on a windowsill to stare at "some kid"?

Teachers, on the other hand, were a different story. Once her lesson started back up, it didn't take Miss Weaver long to realize that I wasn't paying attention. She called me up to the blackboard to make an example out of me.

"Since you don't feel the need to listen, why don't you solve a problem on the board instead?" she said, sitting down at her desk.

My stomach immediately did a flip. Then it did a flop. The problem would take a minute or two to solve, and being in front of the class always made me nervous. How could I be expected to do anything when there was a spectacled frog staring me down?

I walked to the right of the equation on the board so that I could check on the frog with a glance. Despite the distraction, I did my best to focus. Halfway through, I saw that the frog had moved towards the front of the classroom. It stopped at the window by Miss Weaver's desk. It took me a moment to figure out what it was doing. I couldn't believe what I was seeing. It was trying to lift the window!

Finishing the problem became almost impossible. I made a mistake and then quickly erased it. The next time I looked over, the window was open. Why should that surprise me? Of course a frog with glasses would also be super strong. The window was only open an inch, but that was enough for it to slip through. I dropped the chalk, and some of my classmates laughed. Bending down to pick it up, I tried convincing myself that when I stood back up again the frog would be gone. "It's not there. I just think it's there."

When I straightened up, the frog was sitting on Miss Weaver's left shoulder.

This was a brave frog.

Her head blocked the class from seeing it, and I realized that I was still the only one who could. Either the frog was real or my imagination had outdone itself. It wasn't all that surprising that Miss Weaver didn't feel it there, because the shoulder pads inside her jacket were large and fluffy. I had heard that she rested her head on them like pillows during her breaks. There was a frog sitting on Miss Weaver's shoulder and nobody else knew it. And I was supposed to be doing math.

Now that it was closer, I could see the frog better. It didn't look like some new species of frog to me. It looked like every other frog I had seen (except for the glasses). I wondered if they made contacts small enough for a frog. But, it wasn't the right time to worry about frog vision. That would be a job for a frog eye doctor, anyway.

I had daydreams all the time when I was drawing, and sometimes I got lost in them. It was possible, I thought, that my imagination had just carried me away. I tried one last time to explain the frog away as part of an elaborate daydream. I concentrated hard, finished the problem, and put the chalk down. The frog couldn't be real. I shook my head confidently.

When I turned to Miss Weaver, I saw the frog look me square in the eyes and nod. A moment later, it disappeared into Miss Weaver's hair.

2. SOY

I didn't see the frog for the rest of the day. Maybe it stayed in Miss Weaver's hair or maybe it jumped back through the window when I wasn't looking. All day long, I expected her to find it and scream, but she never did.

When the bell rang, I ran out of the school onto the side of the yard with bushes. I had seen frogs hide in there before, but there was no sign of it. Truthfully, I wouldn't have known what to do with the frog if I had found it. Would I capture it? Would I ask it questions? If I was caught talking to a frog outside the school, I think people might finally start to remember me, but in a #donttalktothefrogkid kind of way.

I liked most of the kids in my class just fine, but I was only really close with one. His name was Soy, and he was definitely, without a doubt, my best friend. Soy had kind of reddish-blond hair and a round face. He and I had been friends since preschool, and I knew that I could talk to him about anything. The downside to that was that he also felt he could talk to me about anything. Since he had eight older brothers and two older sisters, his questions were always about things that I didn't understand.

Here's how it would usually go: Soy's brothers would talk about older kids things, and then make fun of him for not getting it. He would ask me about it, and we'd look it up. It only took a few Google searches for me to get banned from using the Internet with Soy.

The bottom line is that if I was going to tell anyone about the frog, it would be Soy. I decided that our walk home would be the most opportune time.

"Did you see anything outside today during math?" I asked Soy as we started walking.

"What do you mean? Like in the sky?" he asked, jumping over cracks in the sidewalk.

"I mean right outside the window. Like right up against it," I answered.

"Like a person?" he asked, still hopping.

Soy sat in the row farthest from the window, so it was possible, but unlikely, for someone to walk by without him noticing.

"No. It's more like… I saw a frog up against the window," I explained.

"Awesome," he said.

"Yeah, but this frog wasn't normal. It opened the window and it came in the classroom and jumped on Miss Weaver's shoulder and it jumped inside her hair," I spit out.

Soy stopped jumping and looked at me. "That happened… today?" he asked.

"Yeah, I mean I'm pretty sure. And when I thought I might be making it up, the frog nodded at me," I said.

Soy looked confused. I thought I heard something move in the tree above us, but Soy answered before I heard it again.

"It nodded at you? I don't even think frogs have necks, do they?" said Soy.

"This one did, I guess. I mean most frogs don't wear glasses either, but this did," I explained.

All of a sudden, Soy seemed a couple steps further away.

"The frog was wearing glasses?" he asked suspiciously.

"Yes," I shot back.

"Why would someone go around putting glasses on frogs?" he asked.

"I dunno… maybe it bought them itself," I replied.

Soy was standing at least twenty steps away now.

"Totally. Well, maybe Miss Weaver will let us look in her hair tomorrow, and we can ask the frog where it got them. So, I think I'm just gonna head back home today instead of coming over. My mom has lots of stuff for me to do. See you later!" Soy said, turning to run away.

"Soy!" I yelled, "Stop right there. I can prove the frog is real."

"How?" he asked.

"It's sitting on your backpack," I said.

3. DAYDREAMS

Soy had the frog in his hands within seconds. He was always good with outdoorsy stuff like that. His mom was usually busy with his siblings, so Soy was left to play outside a lot. By third grade, he had caught a pet turtle, salamander, and flying squirrel. Unfortunately, his older brothers Rick and Hank stole the squirrel and kept it in their room. Once a week they played a game where Rick threw the squirrel from the second story window, and Hank caught it midair with a trash can as it glided down. Soy tried to get them to stop, but they never listened.

The frog didn't put up much of a fight. I started to wonder if it actually wanted to be caught.

"Do you believe me now?" I asked.

Soy peaked inside his hands, and then lifted his head. "Well… this frog is wearing glasses. I'll give you that."

Both of our minds were racing with questions.

"Let's bring it to my treehouse, so we can figure this out," I said.

I had built most of the treehouse in my backyard myself. My mom and dad insisted on one of them being there when I used certain tools, but that was about it. Building things always made me feel good afterwards, and I had gotten pretty good at it. The treehouse had been done for a while, but there were still a few things I wanted to add to it before winter.

When we got there, I told Soy to use the elevator. It was really just a rope with a weighted pulley system, but I called it the elevator anyway. We used it when we needed to carry things that we couldn't bring up on the ladder. I climbed up and then lowered it down for him. All those years of critter-handling had paid off, and he got it inside the treehouse without any problem. I shut the door and quadruple-locked it, so that the frog couldn't run away (and also to give us some privacy).

"Okay, Soy," I said, "let him loose."

Soy lowered his hands and opened them, letting the frog hop to the floor of the treehouse. I had a small drafting table, drawings, and bits of wood all over, which provided plenty of places for the frog to hide. Luckily for us, it didn't move at all.

Instead it looked up at me, and in a loud voice said, "What do you mean, him?"

Soy fell backwards from a crouch onto his rear. The frog was looking right at me, waiting for an answer, but all I could do was shake my head.

"It's rude to assume I'm a 'he', don't you think? I happen to be female," said the frog proudly. Soy was now holding his head with both hands.

"It can talk!!" he said in disbelief.

"Well, now calling me an 'it', after I just told you I was a girl, is just plain inconsiderate, Soy," she said.

I knelt down closer, looking for anything that might make sense of it all. Maybe the frog was a robot? But nothing about the way it moved was robotic. And would a "Made in China" sticker really make me feel better? It… she… had just called my best friend by his first name! Soy was so flabbergasted that he was gnawing on his backpack strap, so I doubted that they had met before.

"I'm sorry," I said to the frog, kneeling down, "we didn't mean anything by it. Truly."

The frog hopped even closer and said, "You've always been kind," then whispered, "it's a powerful thing. Remember that."

"I will," I said, amazed that I had just gone from meeting a talking frog to taking advice from a talking frog in a matter of seconds.

"But, um, if you don't mind me asking, how is it that you can talk?" I said.

By that point Soy had half of the backpack strap in his mouth.

The frog crooked her head at me slightly. "Do you think that humans are the only animals that can talk?" she asked.

I was startled. Was it possible that animals could talk, and somehow no one in the world knew about it? Was everything that I thought about animals wrong? I took a seat on the floor, too. Soy spit out his strap.

"That's not cool," he said. "I tell my pet iguana all of my secrets. If he can talk, I need to know who he's been talking to."

The frog gave out a little laugh, then she said, "Oh, I'm just kidding. Animals can't talk any more than humans can flap their arms and fly."

I was embarrassed, but mostly relieved.

"What about some kind of iguana sign language?" asked Soy, still nervous.

Ignoring Soy's question, I asked the frog, "How is it that you can? Talk, I mean."

"For starters, I'm not a frog," she explained. "The only reason that I—"

Without any warning, there was a knock on my treehouse door.

"What are you up to in there? Why is this door closed?" asked my mom sternly.

I searched my brain for an answer that didn't have the word frog in it.

"Soy and I were, um, we were doing homework, and the breeze kept blowing our papers away." I replied.

"He's a clever one" the frog whispered to Soy.

I gave the frog a signal to be quiet. It may have been the first time in the history of the world that a frog had spoken, but for the time being, she needed to stop. If my mom heard a female voice, she would break down that door, quadruple-lock or no. I added another lock every time she broke down the door. A few weeks earlier Soy had lit a firecracker inside the treehouse and she had noticed the smoke. I added the fourth lock that night, but was more sure than ever that metal was no match for "mom strength". For the moment, I needed this frog's vocabulary to shrink back down to "ribbit".

"Well, come on inside the house. There's a man from the school board here who needs to speak with you," my mother said. Then she lowered her voice and spoke softly into the crack of the door, "and he looks pretty official. He's even wearing a fancy suit with a shiny yellow bowtie. Don't worry though, he assured me you've done nothing wrong."

"Yellow!" screeched the frog.

"What?" asked my mom.

"Oh, I said, 'Hello!'" I lied, using the best high-pitched voice I could muster.

"Honey, 'Hello' usually comes at the beginning of conversations. We're pretty far into this one," she said.

"Ah, right. I just sometimes forget when you're supposed to say it," I said nervously.

"Oh. I didn't realize. Maybe we can work on that, sweetie," she said, getting even closer to the door, "because that's definitely a problem. Just hurry up and come down, please."

I heard my mom climb down the ladder and then watched her go back inside the house. The frog jumped up to the open window which faced the woods behind my house. I was amazed at how high she could jump. It was immediately clear that she could have left any time that she had wanted.

"Whatever you do, don't mention me," the frog whispered frantically. "I'll find you later."

And with that, she jumped out the window into a bush below.

4. TIGER LILLIES

I sent Soy home and told him not to say a word until we could come up with a plan. He was too frazzled to argue. Soy walked home along the path behind my house that crossed the woods to his, while I headed inside. When I slid the back door open, I saw my mom and the man in the bowtie sitting in our living room. She sat by the fireplace, and he sat closest to the front door. My mom and the man were mid-conversation when I walked in. He looked at me from the corner of his eye, but kept speaking.

"They're absolutely beautiful, Mrs. Caelum. I don't believe I've seen lilium bulbiferum that vibrant since my last trip overseas," said the man as he touched the lilies that were on the table between them.

"Oh, you're too nice!" said my mom with a giggle.

My mom wasn't known for giggling, but flowers were one of her most favorite things in the world. She filled the house with them whenever she could. The most that my dad would say about it was that fake flowers cost less.

"Does your son have an appreciation for flowers as well?" the man asked, turning to look at me.

His blond hair was pressed firmly against the top of his head, and his pale skin looked almost shiny. The thing that stood out the most though, was his toothy grin. I felt uneasy. I wished that I was still talking to the frog instead.

"Ah, there you are! Come have a seat and say hello to mister…," my mother said, stopping for a moment.

"Ream," he finished for her, "and it's a pleasure to meet you, young man."

"Hello," I said.

"Good job," my mom whispered happily, "that's exactly where a 'Hello' goes! Mr. Ream is from the school board," she said louder, "and he's here to…"

Once again she wasn't sure how to finish her sentence.

"I'm here to speak with you about Miss Weaver's class," he interjected, "we've begun an initiative where we, the board members, speak directly with students to learn more about their experiences in the school system. We'd like to have an open dialogue between the administration and the children."

"I think that's just wonderful," said my mom.

She was smiling ear to ear, looking for me to agree. I gave a nod, then I waited for someone else to speak.

"Mrs. Caelum, we've found that students tend to be more free and honest with their feelings when their parents can't hear. I assure you, I've been trained in creating an atmosphere where students can speak their mind without fear of unjust punishment," said Mr. Ream.

"I see," said my mom. She turned to me and spoke in her usual kind voice, "I'm going to be right here in the kitchen if you need anything, sweetie. Remember that you can be honest with Mr. Ream, and nothing bad will happen. Okay?"

I nodded and watched my mom leave for the kitchen. I looked at Mr. Ream's clothing. He wore a blue suit with a yellow bowtie. It wasn't a regular yellow, though, so I could see why my mom had mentioned it. As he moved, the light reflected off of it in every direction. It didn't move like clothes usually do. In fact, it didn't move at all. I also noticed just how tall Mr. Ream was. He was taller than my mom, even when he was sitting down.

"Has anything strange happened at school in the past couple of days?" he asked right away.

I shook my head hard and fast.

"You can tell me. I'm here to help," he said in a friendly voice. "You see, I didn't tell your mom this because I didn't want to worry her…"

Now Mr. Ream leaned in closer. His mouth looked larger by the second. I was almost positive that he could eat a whole sandwich in one bite.

"There's a…" he said, pausing, "person who has been bothering students. Some little birdies told me that perhaps they've been bothering you. "

He gave the largest smile I had ever seen. Two sandwiches, at least. I knew, deep down, that he meant the frog. That's why she had acted so funny when she heard about his bowtie.

"Well, what does the person look like?" I asked shyly.

"That's the tricky part," he replied, "This… person likes to disguise themselves in different ways. Ways that might even seem impossible."

He was only a foot away now. Three sandwiches and a side of fries, I decided.

He continued, "They may even be disguised as an animal."

My eyes got wide. Mr. Ream's got small.

"You have seen them!" Mr. Ream said, trying to hide his excitement.

I shook my head.

"I didn't say that, you did," I said defensively.

"But you have, haven't you," he said sympathetically. "Tell me what happened. It's for your own safety."

I didn't know what to believe.

"What's so dangerous about her, anyway?" I asked.

The moment I said it, I wished that I could take it back; that I could grab the words out of mid-air and zip them right back into my mouth. But that's not how words work.

"'Her?'" he said.

I couldn't look at him. I had said too much.

He spoke sharply in a whisper. "So, it's true. She has come to see you. Tell me why."

I shook my head.

"Why did she choose to reveal herself to you? Tell me!" he demanded.

"It was nothing," I answered despite myself. "I was just..."

"You were just? You were just what?" he prodded.

I was confused, but I knew that I did not want to tell this man anything more. And I was not going to make the same mistake twice.

"I was just catching frogs in the woods with Soy and we didn't know it was a special frog when we caught it, I swear, and she asked us to let her go, so we did," I said in one breath.

Mr. Ream sat back in his seat and listened to me ramble on.

"And she made me promise not to tell anyone. Am I in trouble?" I asked, pretending to cry.

I had learned how to fake cry the year before when I tried out for a small part in the school play. As it turned out, the role of "Weeping Willow" wasn't even a speaking part. It's just a tree. No crying required. Still, after forty minutes of standing up on stage, not being allowed to move, I cried a little anyway.

"No," he hissed, "you've just disappointed me. I thought for a moment that you were the…"

My mom walked in smiling, with a vase in her hand.

"Sorry to interrupt but I thought you might enjoy seeing my latest- " she stopped when she saw me.

"What are you two talking about in here?" she asked, a bit concerned.

"Oh, Mrs. Caelum, your son and I were just —," Mr. Ream sputtered.

"Why is he crying??" my mom asked more forcefully. She rushed to my side to console me.

"It's nothing," Mr. Ream pleaded, "sometimes these talks can be emotional, and if you wouldn't mind my asking just a few more questions…"

The tears were flowing more freely now. I had become the Weepiest Willow in the world.

"I would mind," she said firmly, "and if you'd like to keep your job, you'll leave right now."

Mr. Ream straightened his jacket and grabbed a briefcase from behind the couch. "Yes, of course. Thanks for your time," he said.

He opened the door and turned to me.

"Be sure to let me know if your story changes," he said with an unfriendly glare.

My mom put her arm around my shoulder.

"Out!" she shouted.

I spent the rest of the night listening to my mom speak on the phone with people from the school district. Apparently, Mr. Ream was highly regarded, but my mom didn't care. She was beyond angry. She yelled at some of the school people and even threatened to call the police once. By bedtime she seemed a little calmer.

Whatever Mr. Ream wanted with that frog, it wasn't good. I decided then and there that I wasn't going to let him get to her.

The next morning my mom gave me an extra long hug and apologized (for the tenth time) for letting Mr. Ream in the house. I told her (for the tenth time) that it was all right. Soy and I met in front of my house to walk to school, as usual. I hadn't spoken to him since the treehouse, but it was immediately clear that he had gotten over the backpack-chewing phase.

"How do you think it learned to talk? She, I mean. How come she could talk?" he asked. Without waiting for answer, he continued, "And how did it know my name? She, I mean."

"I don't know, same as you," I said honestly.

"What about the dude with the bowtie?" he asked excitedly.

"His name is Mr. Ream. Soy… he knew about her," I said.

"About the frog?" Soy asked.

"Yeah. He said that he was looking for someone who could disguise themselves as an animal. She was right to warn us. There was definitely something off about him." I said.

"You didn't tell him anything, right?" asked Soy.

I looked down at the ground.

"I accidentally let on that I knew her," I confessed.

"You did what?" Soy said in shock.

"I didn't mean to. It came out by accident. And then Mr. Ream grilled me on why she had come to talk to me. Apparently, it's a big deal that she did."

"So what'd you do? Draw him a picture of it and tell him everything? Are you recording this conversation for him right now? If you're wearing a wire, you have to tell me," Soy said angrily.

"No, quit it, Soy," I said. "I told Mr. Ream that we were catching frogs, found her by accident, and let her go."

"Oh. Okay, that's not bad actually," Soy said.

"Thanks," I said with my head still hanging.

"And if he looks into it at all, the story will check out since I do love catching frogs. I should catch a few extra this week, just to be safe. So what now?" Soy asked.

"I really don't know, but we need to find out why that frog's here and why Mr. Ream is after her," I answered.

"I'm in," said Soy, "I'd take a frog in glasses over a man in a bowtie any day."

I smiled. It felt good to have Soy on my side.

He lowered his voice a little and asked shyly, "If we do see it again, could you tell it that I've been really good about calling it a 'she'?"

"Sure thing," I said, promising to lie to a frog for my best friend.

5. THE UN-TRADABLE LUNCH

The first half of the day was pretty normal. Miss Weaver continued a lesson on government and only stopped once for a story.

"The legislative branch of the government is important. Probably the most important, if you ask me. As it turns out, a former student of mine is actually a state senator, and since I was his favorite teacher, I can ask him for favors. I don't want to brag, but he's gotten me out of at least twenty parking tickets," she said with a proud laugh.

I always wondered how many parking tickets you could get before they stopped letting you park. I didn't know how to drive yet, but of all the things you had to do, parking seemed the easiest.

I had been too preoccupied to eat breakfast, so by lunchtime I was starving. Soy and I sat together in the lunchroom everyday, but weren't picky about which table we used. The lunchroom was long and narrow with a dozen brightly colored tables. Soy and I sat down at the far end of a skinny blue table, as close to the corner as you could get. There were at least ten seats between us and any of our classmates, which was good because Soy's voice was known for being loud. So loud that after our third grade spelling bee it was agreed, for everyone's sake, that Soy would never be allowed to speak into a microphone again.

"How are we going to find the frog?" he asked.

"Why are you asking me? I've never looked for a talking frog before," I said.

"Well, I've been thinking. Frogs like flies, right?" he asked.

"Yes," I replied as I started pulling my lunch out of my bag.

"And they like ponds?" Soy added.

"Yes," I said again.

"Well, that's something," he said.

"That's not a plan though, Soy," I replied.

"The rest is on you! I spent all morning on that," Soy shrieked.

When I reached inside my bag again, I stopped trying to think of a plan.

My mom didn't really know how to pack a good lunch. Every once in awhile, she made one so bad that it was completely un-eatable and un-tradable. Still, she had never given me anything slimy. Never anything wet. And definitely never, ever anything that moved. There was no doubt in mind that my hand was on a frog.

It had to be her. It was the only thing that made sense. Then I reminded myself that none of this truly made sense. I tried not to panic, but knew that I had to warn Soy from across the table. I had to find a way to be discrete. The frog sat still, breathing in and out from inside my hand.

"Sheez een my beg," I said through clenched teeth.

"What did you say?" Soy asked.

"I said, sheeez eeeenn my beg," I repeated.

"Huh, who's seen your pig?" he said.

"No, sheeeez eeeeeen myyyy begggg," I said slowly.

"Wait, when did you even get a pig?" Soy asked with his arms crossed, "You'd better let me ride it…"

Soy was convinced that you could ride any animal larger than a cat. Also, sometimes cats. My mom had made it clear that Soy was the reason we could never own any pets.

"Soy," I said, unclenching my teeth, "put your hand in my bag."

As he did, his facial expression changed.

"Ohhh," he exclaimed, "it's in your bag!"

The frog must have understood what was going on because she was still waiting patiently.

"Let's bring it out and ask it some questions," Soy said.

The bag moved a little bit.

"She, I mean! Let's bring her out!" he said too loudly.

"Shh, we don't want anyone to hear," I whispered, trying to think of what to do next.

Soy was eating make-your-own soft tacos that he'd bought from the cafeteria. They were one of his favorite lunches. He still had the ingredients for two more tacos, with the tortillas waiting on the side. I had an idea, but he wasn't going to be happy with it.

"Give me your tortillas," I said.

"What? Why?" he said, almost hurt.

"Soy, I'm sorry," I said, "but I need your lunch."

"But… it's soft taco day," Soy replied sadly, handing them over.

I used the tortillas and our milk cartons to build a small fort for the frog. The opening faced me, so that only I could see inside. I laid my lunch bag down nearby, so the frog could see what I had built.

"Listen," I whispered at the bag, "when I say so, jump out into the fort, okay?"

There was no reply, but I was pretty sure that she had heard. Soy and I both looked around, trying to seem relaxed. The kids who were sitting closest to us had gotten up to talk to the girls sitting two tables over. Soy looked left, then right, and gave a nod.

"Now," I whispered.

In a quick green blur, the frog jumped from the bag to inside the fort. She turned around, and I saw her glasses. It was her. She spoke loud enough for Soy and me to hear, but nobody else.

"Are you all right?" she said. "What did the man in the bowtie ask you? What did he do to you?"

"He didn't do anything to me, but he did ask about you," I answered.

"Ream has been on my tail for a while now," she said.

"Frogs don't have tails," said Soy.

Nobody respond.

But I did realize something at that moment.

"I don't know your name yet," I said.

"You may call me Delilah, or Deli for short," she replied.

Her face got much more serious (as serious as a frog's face can get).

"It's very important that you tell me exactly what you told Ream. Can you do that?" She asked.

"Yes. I, well… I accidentally told him that you and I spoke. I'm sorry," I said, and I meant it.

"That's all right," Deli said, "it's not your fault."

"Then he asked why you came to talk to me. Why did you come to talk to me?" I asked.

"Don't worry about that now," she said. "What did you tell him?"

"I told him that Soy and I caught you by accident, and that you told us not to tell anyone," I answered.

"Brilliant!" she said. "It won't hold him off for long, but it'll confuse him. Then what happened?"

"Then my mom saw that he had upset me and kicked him out straight away," I told Deli.

"Oh, she did wonderfully! Your mom is a strong one, you know," she said.

I wanted to know how she would know that, but there were other things that I wanted to know more.

"Who is he?" I asked.

"That," she said with a deep breath, "is a complicated answer."

"He's an alien, isn't he?" asked Soy in an excited voice.

"No, he's not an alien," Deli replied, but in a way that didn't make Soy feel silly for asking.

It made me like her a bit more.

"Can you tell us who he is then?" I asked.

Deli paused for a while before answering. "He's a dragon," she said.

I wasn't sure how to respond. I thought the word must mean something different than how it sounded.

"Technically, he's the King of the Dragons," she added.

Soy rolled his eyes.

"Thanks for clearing that up," he said, "I was going to guess unicorn." Deli couldn't see his eye roll, but Soy's tone made it clear that he thought she was delusional.

"You mean like a dragon-dragon?" I asked.

"Wait, maybe she meant a sea dragon," interjected Soy, "like this guy Ream must be the dreaded King of the Sea Dragons."

Deli wasn't amused.

"I mean dragons!" she said firmly, "as in fire-breathing, hard-scaled, flying-not-swimming dragons," she rebutted.

"But…" I said like I was breaking bad news, "dragons aren't real."

Deli brought one of her frog legs up to her head and smacked it.

"Listen to me. There are things in this world that we don't know, until we do," she said.

It was a good point, and it was made by a talking frog. If we were arguing in a courtroom, that would have been her "Exhibit A".

"Okay, fair enough. But if dragons are real, then why hasn't anybody ever talked about them before?" I asked.

"They have. You can read about them in hundreds of books," she countered.

"You mean fairytales?" asked Soy as he raised his head above the fort, trying to peek in.

Before Deli could say another word, a hand hit the table and started tapping its nails. Deli tucked herself back under the cover of the fort as far as she could go.

"The bell has rung, boys," said Miss Weaver. "Lunch is over, and Principal Lance would like to see you."

I had completely forgotten about the bell, on account of the existence of dragons.

Miss Weaver was not in a good mood. She always got that way when it was her turn to chaperone the lunch room. I assumed it was because it cut into her shoulder pad naps.

"We're not done with our lunches, Miss Weaver," I said politely.

"This looks more like playtime than lunch! I can't have you building houses out of food," she said, struggling to find a reason, "because… because then everyone would want to do it!"

Soy was nodding in agreement.

"It's true. I'm kind of jealous of it myself," he admitted.

Miss Weaver started walking away to grab one of the garbage cans at the other end of the table.

"Deli!" I whisper-shouted, "she's bringing a garbage can. You've gotta hide!"

Without a word, Deli leapt forward. A split-second later Miss Weaver turned around and dragged the trash can over to us. She used one arm to push all of our food into the can. That put Soy in a worse mood than Miss Weaver. His taco lunch was gone forever. Never to be eaten.

"Get moving. Don't keep Principal Lance waiting," said Miss Weaver.

At that moment, I didn't care about the principal or Miss Weaver. I cared about dragons and the frog named Deli inside my shirt.

6. BATHROOM BREAK

It would be hard to imagine a better principal than Principal Lance. He had grey hair down to his shoulders, even though he was bald in the front. He was the oldest person at Stagwood, but he didn't act like it. I had never heard anyone say a bad word about him, and I wouldn't have either. Every year, on my birthday, he called me into his office and gave me a candy bar. I know he did the same for Soy (who usually finished his before he got back to the class and showed up with chocolate all over his face) and probably everyone else in my class. Still, he had a way of making me feel like I was more than some kid.

Principal Lance's office was small and crowded with stuff, but felt friendly. He had stacks and stacks of dusty books that looked like they were hundreds of years old. I heard that a girl once sneezed on one of them by accident, and it blew away in pieces. The way the story goes, Principal Lance laughed so hard that he forgot why he had sent for her. But, as Soy and I walked into his office, it seemed less friendly than usual. Miss Weaver gave a small, awkward bow and left us. As it turned out, Principal Lance wasn't alone. What I saw first in the chair next to us was a yellowish-gold bowtie, and then the large grin of Mr. Ream. My heart sank.

"Have a seat, kids," said Principal Lance. "You've done nothing wrong, but Mr. Ream has insisted that he speak with you. And I insisted on being present. And so, with all this insisting going on, here we are!"

I always enjoyed the way that Principal Lance explained things.

I had expected Ream to speak to me, but he turned to Soy instead.

"I don't believe we've met. Hello, Soy. My name is Mr. Ream," he said.

"Hello, my name is Soy," said Soy.

"Yes… as I said, hello, Soy," said Ream, already losing patience.

Soy had a knack for making people lose their patience faster than anyone I'd ever met. My dad called it "impressive". My mom preferred not to talk about it.

"Hello," said Soy a second time.

"Soy, do you know why I'm here?" asked Ream.

"No. Do you know why I'm here?" Soy asked back.

Ream was about to lose his cool. He turned to Principal Lance.

"If you would let me speak with them alone, we could be done with this much faster," Ream said.

"As I've told you, if you'd like to speak with my students, you'll do it with me present," said Principal Lance.

"I'm here as a representative of the school board," Ream said sternly.

"And I am here as caretaker to these children. Unless you are their parent or guardian, you may not speak to them without me present," Principal Lance said even more sternly.

Soy's face was already covered in chocolate from a small bowl that Principal Lance had left unguarded. Ream looked over at Soy, shuddering at the thought of being his parent or guardian.

"This will not be brought up in front of the children again," finished Principal Lance.

"Very well," resigned Ream. "Soy, I need to know if you've noticed anything unusual in the past couple of days."

The conversation was starting just like mine had, and that got me worried. The longer Ream questioned Soy or me, the more chances we would have to slip up again, even with Principal Lance there. I could still feel Deli inside my shirt, and I didn't want to think about what would happen if Ream got his hands on her. Or, if we believed Deli, his claws.

"Sir, may I go to the bathroom?" I blurted out.

"Of course," said Principal Lance.

Ream gave the slightest hint of a smile. He relished the idea of talking to Soy without me around.

"Um, also, I'm not allowed to go without my bathroom pal," I said.

"Pardon?" said Principal Lance.

"Miss Weaver told us that we have to go with a bathroom pal if we want to use the bathroom. I could get in a lot of trouble if she finds out that I went alone."

I realized that I was learning how to think on my feet more and more since meeting Deli. It wasn't the greatest lie ever told, but I hoped it would do.

"Bathroom pal? Seems a little unnecessary at your age. 'Bathroom buddy' has a nicer ring, anyway. Well, so be it. Go on then, Soy," said Principal Lance.

I nudged Soy before he could object.

"Yeah…" said Soy, "I'd better go with him. He always gets lost without me."

Soy was the one who had walked into the girls' room by accident, not once, but twice that year already. But I wasn't about to argue with him. Not then, at least.

"You can't let them both go," said Mr. Ream, "what if they..."

"What if they run away?" interrupted Principal Lance. "Would you like me to disable their getaway car, just to be safe?" he laughed. "Mr. Ream, when my students need to use the restroom, they use the restroom."

He rose and ushered us towards the door.

"And that goes for their bathroom pals, as well," he said, giving me a small wink.

As we walked out I could tell that Ream was upset, but he dared not argue against Principal Lance again. Ream knew that we were up to something, but luckily for us, he didn't know what. Not-so-luckily for us, neither did I.

Walking through the brightly lit hallway, I didn't stop at the nearest bathroom. Instead, I kept walking and looked down at the green tiles under my feet, wondering what to do next.

"Where are we going?" Soy asked.

"I don't know yet," I told him.

We passed the library, then turned the corner and passed two more bathrooms: one for students and one for visitors. Either one would have done if I was actually looking for a bathroom. At the moment, the last place I wanted us to be was somewhere that Ream expected us to be. I was pretty sure that if there was a book called Dealing with Dragons, Chapter One would be: "Don't Corner Yourself and Tell the Dragon Exactly Where to Find You", or some version of that.

"What are we supposed to do now," I whispered to Deli inside my shirt.

"You need to get home," Deli answered, "it's not safe here anymore."

"What's she saying?" asked Soy.

"She said we need to get to my house," I told him.

"What's at your house?" he asked me.

"What's at my house?" I asked Deli.

A mop splashed onto the floor, and my head shot up to see the custodian, Mr. Salazar, staring at me.

"I sometimes talk to my belly button. Sometimes," I stammered to Mr. Salazar.

"Me too," said Soy without skipping a beat.

He pulled his shirt away from his body, stuck his head down, and said, "Hey, little guy, come on out and say hi!"

Soy's bellybutton was sometimes an innie and sometimes an outtie, so I wondered if this was actually a conversation that he'd had with it before. Mr. Salazar shook his head, and continued mopping in the other direction.

I didn't want to risk running into anyone else, so we snuck into the empty auditorium. When I got inside, I remembered that there was an exit behind the stage that would lead us straight into the woods. During play rehearsals, when the auditorium got too hot, they opened the door and let the breeze in. "No sense wasting money on air conditioning," Miss Weaver would say. She was the self-appointed director every year since she, "knew how to deal with talent."

I was pretty familiar with the stage area. Not only had I been the (first truly) Weeping Willow, I had also been a stagehand. Soy knew a little about the stage, too. He had tried out for the lead once, but was given the role of a crocodile instead. He was mentioned in every review, although indirectly. "Was the crocodile supposed to talk?" and "Why did it have an accent?" were two of his favorite comments.

Now the stage exit was our best shot at escaping without being seen.

"This way," I said, hurrying down the side aisle.

The set for the next play was still being built. There was a forest, and a small hut with pieces of wood scattered all around it. I hadn't paid attention to what the production was, since deciding not to try out again. Soy had gotten a lifetime ban* for his crocodile performance and it wouldn't have been much fun without him.

*Soy had told me that he outgrew the theater. It wasn't until I saw "BANNED FROM THE THEATER" posters with his face on them that I found out the truth.

I let Deli out onto the stage, and then Soy and I hopped up after her. The glowing red exit sign was in sight when we passed the hut, but a loud noise from the front of the auditorium stopped us in our tracks.

"Get down!" yelled Deli.

We crouched behind the flat wooden hut. Deli instinctively crouched too, which I thought was strange. Then I saw the terrible news for myself through a window in the hut. It was Ream, and he was being escorted down the aisle by Mr. Salazar.

"They came in here. They were acting all odd, talking to their tummies," said Mr. Salazar.

"Hmm, I see. Thank you, that will be all," Ream said with a wave of his hand.

"Who did you say you worked for again?" asked the janitor.

"The school board. The one that decides your salary," replied Ream as he strode down the aisle towards us.

Mr. Salazar mumbled something I couldn't hear and left the auditorium.

Ream was looking down each row of seats as he walked. When he was halfway down, he started speaking.

"I know that you're in here," he said.

"Is he talking to us?" whispered Soy.

"We need to get out of here!" said Deli.

"He'll see us if we run for the exit," I said.

"We need to find a way to make him angry," she whispered.

"If he really is a dragon, is that such a good idea?' asked Soy.

"It's the only way. Trust me," said Deli.

I looked around the set. I'd never set out to make an adult angry before (especially one that worked for the school) but this was cause for an exception. My eyes settled on a handwritten sign that I had seen many times before, attached to the switch beside us. It read: DO NOT TOUCH.

"I know how," I said shakily, "but he'll need to get closer."

"Not a problem," whispered Soy.

Ream vaulted up onto the stage, apparently finished searching the seats. He was the tallest person I'd ever seen. If we didn't do something soon, he would find us in seconds.

"I knew he was hiding something. You've been following these two for a few days now, Delilah. Have you finally found him?" Ream asked with a villainous grin.

Soy was about to ask a question, but Deli quieted him with one look. Ream was ten feet away, right where the set began.

"Whatever you're going to do, do it now!" she whispered.

I lunged to the side, tore through the warning sign and flipped the switch. Ream shot his head towards me with a sinister snarl. There was a loud crack from above the stage. A wave of red came crashing down on Ream's head, covering him and the ground completely. I was in shock. The curtain had fallen directly on him, just as I had planned, but seeing it happen startled me.

"Do you think I hurt him?" I asked.

I approached the pile slowly, but Deli jumped in front.

"No! We have to go now!" she exclaimed.

The pile began to rise from the center. It kept growing until it almost reached the ceiling. In a burst, the curtain was split in two by sharp claws. There, standing in front of us, was the King of the Dragons.

7. DRAGON BREATH

"HOW DARE YOU!" said the dragon in a booming voice. His scales were bright yellow and shiny (like they were wet). He was more terrifying than any dragon I had ever seen in drawings. His head alone was larger than my whole body.

Ream breathed a heavy breath and then let out a puff of steam that blew over me and Deli. Soy was still tucked down behind the hut, but he said later on that he had felt it too.

"Go!" yelled Deli as she jumped between my legs to lead the way.

The three of us sprinted toward the exit door. Soy charged through first and, as Deli and I ran behind him, I felt more of the steam. This time it was much hotter. I slammed the door shut behind us and we ran as fast as we could to the tree line. I didn't stop running until the school was out of sight. We hopped over logs and under branches. Soy and I both fell more than once, but never stopped to look back. When we were deep enough into the woods, Deli finally told us that it was okay to walk for a minute.

"He'll have to hide in the auditorium until he can take human form again. It takes much more effort to build a disguise than to let your true form show," she explained.

"That was a DRAGON!" yelled Soy, catching his breath.

"I don't understand what just happened," I muttered.

Deli replied, "Listen boys, I know this is a lot to take in, but it's time that you started believing me. It will make this a lot easier."

Slowing up had helped me to calm down and think a little more clearly.

"Did you know that he was going to do that? Change like that?" I asked.

"I was counting on it," she said.

"That was pretty risky, don't you think?" Soy asked angrily. "Especially since he would've passed right over you and gone for the main course!"

We found the worn dirt path that led to my neighborhood. It was quiet in the woods, except for a few birds.

"What happened when you flipped that switch?" Deli asked.

"That curtain's been broken for two years. Miss Weaver told Mr. Salazar to fix it, but he just put up a sign instead," I told Deli. "She doesn't mind because without a curtain falling she can bow as many times as she wants when the play is over."

"Miss Weaver finally did something right, then," said Deli.

I stopped in my tracks.

"How is it that you know Miss Weaver?" I asked. "And what did Ream mean back there when he asked if you've found 'him'?"

Soy stopped walking, too.

Deli replied, "Okay, I'll explain. But keep walking. We still need to get to your house, and it's another five minutes away."

I almost asked how she knew that, but decided not to bother.

She continued, "I've been watching Stagwood for a long time. My job was to find the hero before Ream did."

"What do you mean by 'the hero'?" I asked.

"Over twelve years ago, a hero was born here in Stagwood," she answered.

"I was born in Stagwood twelve years ago!" said Soy.

"Yes, I know," Deli responded. She was looking at me as she spoke, but I pretended to be interested in the leaves at my feet instead.

"Do you know who the hero is?" I asked, staring so hard at the leaves that my eyes hurt.

"We know that it's a boy," she said.

"Well, duh," interrupted Soy with a proud smile, "aren't most heroes?"

"Actually, no. About 51% of heroes are female. The males just brag a lot more about it," Deli explained with a smaller, but louder smile.

"Yeah, well…" Soy sometimes started a sentence without knowing how to end it. "Go on," he said.

"As I mentioned, we know that he was born here in Stagwood, and we also know that it was in the summer," she answered.

"Right, and I was born in May. I think we've decided that it's me," said Soy.

"And when were you born?" she asked me.

My stare pierced the leaves and was well on its way to the center of the earth.

"July," I mumbled.

"Guys, guys, guys. It's me," said Soy with a hand on my shoulder, "When you're a hero, you can just… feel it."

"For years we weren't sure who the hero was, because not much else had been written about him," Deli told us.

"Written by who?" I asked.

Nearby, a woodpecker was knocking on a tree. I couldn't see where it was, but Deli had noticed the sound, too.

"The fairies write down the stories. The battles between good and evil, darkness and light, and magic and sorcery are all found in the fairytales," she said.

"Fairies?" I asked, looking at Deli.

"Of course," she said, "that's why they're called fairytales. Fairy's tales. Who did you think wrote them?"

"People!" answered Soy.

Deli shook her head. "People can't write the way that fairies do. Fairies are able to be places without being seen, and to know what is happening as it happens. They are the first and true storytellers."

"Wait, are you saying… those stories are real?" I thought out loud.

"Yes," said Deli, "as I was trying to tell you before, the creatures you've read about are real, and so are their adventures. And the hero of this story has the most important adventure of all ahead of them."

"So what is it that the hero has to do? I should probably know before I get started with my heroicalisms," Soy boasted.

"Heroics," I corrected, "and this adventure sounds kind of dangerous."

Deli's eyes became serious behind her glasses. "It is. He will have to face the gravest of foes."

Soy had lost his smile. He lowered his eyes, choosing rocks to stare at instead of leaves. "Foe, like an angry gnome?"

"Afraid not. More like a dragon," she replied.

Soy and I looked at each other. "You mean Ream? He's part of the fairytale?" I asked.

Deli nodded and said, "Perhaps he wasn't always meant to be, but he is now." She looked at the trees above us.

"Guys, I've thought a lot about it, and I don't think that I'm the hero," said Soy definitively.

Deli smiled. "It's all right, Soy," she said. "After years of searching, I've already found him."

"And who is it?" asked Soy.

Deli shot a glance behind us towards the path.

"There's no time for that now," she said, "Ream has spies all over these woods and we've taken too long. Unless my ears are deceiving me, they're getting closer. It's time to get inside." Deli sprinted ahead with long jumps.

Soy whispered in my ear, "Okay, she might have a neck, but ears? She seriously has no idea how to frog."

8. LAUNCH

We ran the rest of the way to my house, which didn't take more than a minute. Once we were inside, Soy started to make a snack from the fridge. This was despite the fact that ever since the "Midnight Sleepover Snack Incident of 2012", Soy was only allowed to take food from a special drawer labeled: FOOD THIEF.

My mom had woken up that fateful morning to find our kitchen in shambles. At first she blamed my dad, then what she estimated must have been fifteen raccoons, and then, finally, Soy. He was sprawled out on a pile of containers and wrappers (and not nearly enough napkins) when my mother came for him. "Worth it," was all he had the energy to say.

Afterwards, my parents and Soy's made an arrangement to give Soy his own drawer and only stock healthy food inside. That's also the reason that I never once saw him open it. Sometimes I ate from it to help cover for him.

"Soy, now's not the time for food," I said, shutting the fridge.

"No, it's all right," said Deli. "Soy, I want you to gather as much food as you can carry inside both of your backpacks and then bring them upstairs. Anything you want, okay?"

Soy was too shocked to speak. It was like she had just asked if he would mind testing every toy in the toy store. He nodded (and drooled a little).

I picked up Deli and ran up the stairs to my room. "Okay, we're here. Now what?" I asked.

"Now we get ready for liftoff," she said. "Open that window as far as it will go."

"Got it," I said.

I ran over to the window across from my bed and dresser, pulled up the blinds and lifted the glass as high as I could manage.

"That won't do it," she told me, "get it higher."

I used a baseball bat to get an extra two feet and built a base out of three books and an empty glass to hold it up. Deli gave me a little frog nod.

I ran back over to her and asked, "What else do you need for, wait… liftoff?"

Soy had to drag the backpacks into my room. By the time he got to us, his smile looked like it hurt.

"Great work, Soy!" Deli said. "Now lift them up onto the bed."

As Soy heaved the bags up one at a time, I heard crinkles and clinking and sloshing. My guess was that Soy must've taken absolutely everything in the kitchen except for the contents of his drawer.

"Do you have a smartphone?" Deli asked me.

I opened my desk drawer and pulled out a dark blue smartphone. It was a birthday gift from my mom. The cover was custom-made with a picture of me at three years old with spaghetti all over my face. I was pretty positive she had glued it on.

Even though I had the phone, my parents didn't really let me use it much. They told me it was only for emergencies, and they made sure to check the bill every month. On top of that, they looked at my text message history every week, just to be sure I wasn't using it improperly. Once, I used it to vote for my favorite singer on a reality show. When my parents found out, they grounded me for three weeks. They let me off the hook after two weeks, but I never got to see the finale.

"Now, hop on the bed," said Deli.

All three of us sat in a row facing the window, with Soy in the back with our bags, Deli in the center, and me at the foot of the bed.

"What do we do now?" Soy asked.

"We've got to fly this bed out of the room," she answered.

Soy was silent for a moment. "I decided I'm not asking any more questions," he said.

"How are you going to make a bed fly?" I asked her.

"I won't," she said, "you will."

"Me?" I asked with a squeak. "But I'm… I can't even drive yet!"

"Listen, your bed already has the magic that you need to make it fly," she explained.

"I've slept in this bed every night, and it's never once flown," I rebutted quickly, before Soy could accuse me of holding out on him.

Deli explained, "There is a magic in the stories your parents read to you when you were younger, and the ones you read to yourself. It's a form of magic called lore. Most of it goes to you and helps fuel your dreams. Some of it, though, falls around you, building up inside your bed."

Soy was staring at her blankly.

She continued, "Imagine a single flower in a field of dry grass. If you watered that flower every single day, not only would the flower bloom and grow, but the grass surrounding it would become green and strong, as well. Your bed has been sprinkled with lore, growing stronger every night. Now it's time to use it."

I had never heard of lore before and, from the look on his face, neither had Soy. He shook his head as he opened a bag of chips.

"Nope. Nope. Nope. What you're looking for is an airplane. This is a bed." He took a bite and made a loud crunch. "I do sleep on both of them, though," he said to himself.

I put my hand on top of the blanket for a moment. Maybe it was time that I started to trust Deli. She had warned us that Mr. Ream was a dragon, and there was no denying that now. She had helped us escape and had risked her own skin more than once. If she said my bed could fly, maybe she was right.

"Okay, what do I need to do?" I inquired.

"Wharffs??" Soy said with a mouth full of chips.

"Excellent!" Deli responded, "First things first, pick your steering wheel. It can be anything you'd like."

I picked up the smallest pillow on my bed. It was one that my grandfather had made for me when I was little. It was dark grey with an apple tree sewn onto the front of it.

"Got it," I said.

"Place it in front of you," she told me.

I put both my hands on the pillow in front of me, acting like it was a steering wheel. Without a noise, I felt it lock into place. I could rotate it around, but when I pushed or pulled it too far, it snapped back into position. When I let go, it hung midair. It was like it was held in place by invisible rubber bands.

"Whoa," I said, turning back to Soy, "are you seeing this?" He nodded with wide eyes.

"That will do nicely. Items with meaning tend to absorb more lore," she told me. Soy was starting to creep up to watch more closely.

"Now, place your phone down," she instructed me.

I put the phone down on the bed to my left, next to the steering wheel, and it stuck there. The smartphone glowed orange, and the screen began to change. There were all sorts of gauges and levels on the screen that I had never seen before. Most prominent, were five buttons:

CRUISE MODE

SPY MODE

SQUEEZE

NEVER PUSH

and the largest, LIFTOFF.

I was so nervous and excited that I didn't realize my mom had come home until I heard the door slam shut.

"What are you two doing here?" she yelled upstairs. "Was it a half-day today?"

She had seen the books from our backpacks that were emptied onto the kitchen floor when Soy made room for the food.

Deli started to speak faster. "Do you see the LIFTOFF button? Press it now."

I pushed the button and the mattress immediately began to shake. And then, slowly, it lifted itself up into the air. It was only a few inches off of the frame when it stopped shaking and hovered smoothly. My face gave way to an involuntary smile. Of all the things that I had seen and experienced that day, this was the most amazing. We were flying!

My smile was cut short when we heard the sound of cabinet doors opening and closing with loud bangs.

"He did it again!" she yelled. "He ate it all!"

My mom immediately started storming up the stairs, speaking to herself. "This time Soy's going to replace everything he took! How did he even… No, I don't care how! He's going to be punished!"

"We don't have time for proper instructions," Deli panicked. "Push the brown button and tilt the steering wheel forward."

"Okay, but it -" I began to say.

My mom knocked angrily on my door and then started to turn the knob.

"There's no time, just do it!" Deli shouted.

I pushed my finger down hard onto the brown button, labeled: SQUEEZE.

The sides of the bed shot up towards our heads, wrapping us up. The door started to swing open. I had just enough room to push my hands forward on the pillow. In the blink of an eye, we shot straight ahead, pushed through the window, knocking the bat away, and popping us out the other side as it shut.

I could barely hear my mom shouting when she opened the door to an empty room. "Beds?!? He's taking beds now?!"

9. FLIGHT OF THE BED

Our house sat on the forest end of Windfall Drive. There were eleven and a half houses on our side of the street and twelve on the other. The "half" was because of a house on the corner of the block, owned by two elderly ladies who were both named Miss Trinket. They were identical twins and didn't seem to like anyone, most of all each other. Miss Trinket got her mail addressed to Windfall Drive and her sister, Miss Trinket, insisted on getting her mail addressed to Slope Street. According to my dad, it all started forty years ago with an argument over who should mow the lawn.

"Miss Trinket doesn't think she should do it because Miss Trinket has slightly longer legs than her, and it would take her less time. However, Miss Trinket thinks Miss Trinket should do it because she has a bad back and Miss Trinket doesn't. Ever since the argument started, they refuse to live at the same address, so Miss Trinket changed hers to Slope Street. Understand?" my dad asked. My answer was always no, no matter how matter times he explained it.

Sometimes their grass would get so long that Soy refused to walk by. "Who knows what's inside there?!" he would say. Most likely it was just bugs and maybe snakes, and Soy liked both of them. Still something about not being able to see inside rubbed Soy the wrong way, so we took the long way around or went through the woods instead. Besides that, there was always a Miss Trinket outside on the porch waiting to get mad about something. They yelled at the mailman every single day for scaring their dog, Marshall. He was a small border collie with white and black hair, and he was always laying down next to one of them. I sometimes wondered if he could tell them apart. If animals really could talk, that might have been my first question.

Once a summer, my dad sent me over to mow their lawn for them, secretly hoping to make our side of the street an even twelve again (he said that the other side of the street looked down on us). Mowing their lawn didn't make our street whole, but it did make me the only person who the Miss Trinkets liked.

They would each make me a lemonade if it was a hot day, and deliver it to me when the other one wasn't around. One of the Trinkets made hers too sweet and the other made hers too tart, but when I combined them the lemonade tasted perfect. The best part was that they always paid me separately, as well.

"Remember, I'm the nice one," a Miss Trinket would say as she handed me money.

Two minutes later the other Miss Trinket would say the same thing and hand me the same amount of money. I decided that they were both the nice one, partly because it was true, but mostly because I had no way of picking.

Flying on my bed, we rocketed down the middle of Windfall Drive, past twelve houses to our left, and eleven and a half to our right. Luckily for us, there was only one person outside that day, and it was a Miss Trinket, with Marshall by her side. She was sitting on her porch with a lemonade in hand, looking out over a foot of grass.

Marshall lifted his head and wagged his tail as he looked up. Miss Trinket gave me a friendly smile and wave as we zipped by her. I waved back as best as I could from the smushed bed. She put a finger over her mouth to tell me that she knew how to keep a secret, and gave a wink. Say what you will about a Miss Trinket, but they are pretty good people to have on your side when you're flying down the street on a magical bed and don't want it getting back to your mom.

Flying was like nothing I'd ever felt before. It was like being on a roller coaster that jumped its tracks and decided to explore. My excitement changed to worry when I spotted the bookstore getting closer and closer. I'd forgotten that my street ended abruptly at Finnegan's Books, and we were running out of road. It looked like a house, but it was one story taller than all the others.

"Press the button again!" shouted Deli from behind me.

I looked above me at the smartphone, but it was hard to see now. I stretched and shimmied until I could just reach it. The brown button now read: FLOPBACK.

There wasn't a second to spare as I pushed it. The mattress flattened out in an instant. The pillow steering wheel was moving easier now, so I lifted it slightly as we shot up higher. The bookstore was passing safely below us when Soy spoke.

"How are you so good at steering?" he asked me.

"I don't know," I said, looking back, "I'm just doing what feels right."

Deli seemed to be smiling, but it can be hard to tell sometimes with frogs.

The sky was clear blue as far as I could see. I saw the wind blowing crumbs off of Soy's shirt. We were flying faster and higher by the second.

"Keep climbing," said Deli.

I steered the bed upward until I could see all of Stagwood Forest below us. To the west, it thinned out and then faded into the slope of Saltridge Hills. The forest was thicker to our right, where it spread out until hitting Merrywater Creek.

I decided to test out the bed a little more. Better to learn how to fly it when there was nothing else around. I turned the pillow to the right, and the whole bed started to fly right. I turned the pillow slightly left, and we shifted back. When I pushed forward, the bed sped up and the wind blew through my hair, making my cheeks flap. I pulled towards me, and we slowed down, which made the bed begin to dip. Lifting and pushing forward, we floated right back up.

I was so focused on learning that I barely felt the tap on my shoulder. When I turned around, I saw that Soy's face had turned green, and it looked like he was about to throw-up.

"I'm starting to get car sick," he said.

"This isn't a car," reminded Deli.

Soy didn't have time for a rebuttal. He got sick over the side of the bed. I concentrated on keeping the bed straight from then on.

"You okay?" I shouted, so he could hear me over his vomiting.

A few moments later he was laying back on the bed. "You can't zigzag around like that!" he scolded me. "I almost fell off the bed!"

"I'm sorry, Soy," I answered.

I felt pretty bad about making him sick, but it felt much worse to think that I had endangered all of us.

"Where am I supposed to be going?" I asked Deli, to change the subject.

She hopped over to the phone and looked at the screen. I watched her leg stretch out and press the button that said: CRUISE MODE. A map application came up that looked like one my parents used on their phones all the time. She typed out the word, "Pavidale" and entered it.

The pillow popped out of my hands and dropped, attaching itself to the bed. All of a sudden, a see-through bright orange shield started to rise from all sides of the bed. It locked together above our heads. We were completely encased.

"Luckily, your bed has more than enough lore to spare for the shield, too. It will make sure that nobody falls off," Deli told us happily. "And Soy, if you need to throw up again, let me know, because you don't want the shield up when you do."

"And we're going to... Pardivale?" I blurted out.

"Pavidale. Yes. Right now, it's over Iceland," she told me.

"Right now?" I asked.

"Right now," she said and left it at that. "The bed knows where to go. It will take care of the rest. But remember this: the shield is better at keeping things in than keeping things out, so pay attention to anything that might get in our path. Take back control anytime by pressing the CRUISE MODE button again to turn it off."

Soy reached his arms out wide and looked around. "What could we possibly hit out here?" he asked.

"Birds for one thing, planes for another… or dark clouds. Those would be the worst of all," she answered gravely.

"What's so bad about dark clouds?" I asked Deli. I had a feeling that we wouldn't like her answer.

"Dark clouds can be a source of a magic that we call rile. Rile is the opposite of lore. It fuels nightmares, and it gives the worst kind of creatures their magic. There's no telling what we'd find inside if we passed through a cloud with rile," she said.

"Okay," I interjected, "but we learned in school that clouds are just water vapor. And that they're white because of something to do with how they scatter light."

"We learned that?" Soy asked.

"And that dark clouds, or rain clouds, are only dark because they have more water inside," I finished.

"When did we learn that?!" Soy questioned.

"Last week. That's why you should pay better attention in class sometimes," I responded proudly.

"And you looked out the window, saw a frog with glasses, and got a dragon chasing us on your flying bed. That's why you should pay better attention in class," Soy responded.

Soy must've been saving that one up.

"That's how most clouds work," said Deli, "but these clouds are different. They don't operate by the same rules, just like a dream doesn't operate by the same rules as the real world. Lore and rile are stronger than you can possibly imagine."

"How do we know a dark magic cloud from a regular one?" I asked.

"Magic clouds take the shape of something unusual. Extraordinary even," she answered.

Soy and I both looked around the sky. There were no clouds around with interesting shapes. And I still had more questions.

"Deli, if there are clouds with rile inside, does that mean that there are clouds with lore inside too?"

Deli smiled back at me.

"That is an excellent question," she said.

The bed dipped a few feet, riding on an air current that was invisible to me.

"But I don't have to tell you," she said, lying back, "because you're going to find out soon enough."

Deli took over a little while later, leaving me to patrol the sky until the sun began to set. She told Soy and me to get some sleep while we could, so we'd be rested. I tried to remember whether frogs were nocturnal or not. Then I wondered whether it mattered, since Deli did say that she wasn't a real frog. Those were my last thoughts before drifting off to sleep.

I hadn't had a nightmare in a long time, but that night I did. I dreamt about big red dragons who were attacking me from the sky and from underground. And then I saw the shape I had been drawing in class when Deli appeared. I didn't recognize what it was then, and I didn't even know why I drew it. It felt like maybe I had dreamt of that shape once before, but I couldn't be sure. Then the shape was floating right above me. I hear a thousand small voices shouting for me to grab it. It was shining now, and I wanted to grab it more than anything. I felt the breath of the dragon behind me as I ran towards it. But just as I reached out, Deli woke me with a startle. She said that she had seen something following behind us. After we looked more closely, we decided that it was nothing.

"Probably just a plane passing by," she concluded.

I went back to sleep easily. The rest of the night I dreamt of flying around the world on top of an enormous marshmallow. It was much nicer than the dragon dream. By the time the sun rose, we were almost there. I didn't tell Deli or Soy, but I knew almost nothing about Iceland. When we first caught a glimpse of it, I couldn't believe my eyes. I thought it was the most amazing place that I had ever seen. There were big green mountains and hills with snow on top. We flew over huge lakes and waterfalls cut into the side of rocks, and the air smelled nicer than any air from back home.

"This reminds me of Scotland!" Soy said.

"You've been to Scotland?" I asked him.

"Yep, my whole family went when I was a baby," he replied proudly.

"How can you possibly remember it then? I can't remember a thing about being a baby," I said.

He put a hand on my shoulder and said, "Some babies are smarter than others."

I took my position at the head of the bed, and Deli jumped up beside me. "Press the CRUISE MODE button again," she commanded. I may have been flying the bed, but I didn't feel much like I was in charge.

Right after I pressed it, the bed started to shake. The orange shield receded slowly, and I felt the temperature drop. The pillow popped up into my hands, and I grabbed it, doing my best to steady the bed. Deli pointed to a large cloud which was now directly in front of us. I noticed that it was in an odd shape: long in the body, but still thick, and there was a wisp of cloud coming out of the top.

Soy recognized it before I did. "It's a whale!" he shouted.

I steered the bed upward, heading for the tail. We followed its curve and headed up the back. I had underestimated how fast we were going and we passed right over most of the body in a few seconds.

We were almost at the head when Deli yelled, "Drop us down!"

I pushed down hard on the pillow, and we broke through the top edge of the cloud, just a little past the blowhole. There was a flash of white, and I felt a cool wet breeze. A split-second later I felt warm, like it was a spring day. The white surrounding us turned to open space, and I realized that this cloud wasn't solid. It was hollow.

I looked down and saw green speckled with small squares, and there were shapes moving around in-between them on tan lines. There was also a blue circle. My brain searched, trying to match what I was seeing with everything I knew about clouds. But it was somewhere else in my mind that I found the answer. What I saw reminded me of a map. I was looking down at a village.

We were falling faster and longer than I'd ever fallen before. My stomach felt like it was inside my throat. I tried yanking up on the pillow, but it was not responding to my touch; it felt like there was something stronger controlling it. As we got closer to the bottom, lights flew up from below us and began whizzing by the bed.

"Do something!" yelled Soy, "I don't want to die inside a whale cloud!"

Deli hadn't moved since we entered the cloud. She looked as calm as ever.

The back of the bed hit first, and then the front came crashing down. To my surprise, water shot up from all sides and splashed down onto our heads.

"Welcome to Pavidale," Deli announced.

10. PAVIDALE

The water was clear and blue. When I peeked over the side of the bed I saw strange fish swimming below us. They had long snouts and small fins, and most of them were purple and yellow. The fish were sprinting through tubes made of something spongy and, every once in awhile, they jumped above the water to do a flip.

I saw that that we were in a small pond. The bank had bright emerald grass and a group of houses that were the size of dog houses, but fancy as mansions.

At the far edge of the pond was a flat stone with dozens of glowing lights dancing around on top of it. They were the same lights that had flown by us during my "landing". They were moving in a way that even the best Christmas lights in the world couldn't mimic.

"Why aren't we sinking?" asked Soy.

But before he got an answer, the bed started to float towards the stone platform. I got a closer look at the lights and realized that they weren't just lights. They had a human shape, with one big difference.

"Are those over-sized fireflies?" Soy asked.

"I think… those are fairies," I said, when I saw their wings.

"That's right," said Deli, "Pavidale is the home of the fairies."

"… Do you ever do anything normal?" Soy asked.

The fairies wings were glowing brightly, and you could almost see right through them. Their ears were tall and pointy on the sides of their long faces. Each fairy had its own colorful glow, and they all hummed with excitement as we drifted closer. Without a sound, the bed tapped the edge of the stone.

I guessed that the fairies must be about six inches tall. Almost all of them were a shade of green or blue, but there were a few yellow and red ones, too. There was only one pink fairy, and its glow was stronger than any of the others. The pink fairy floated forward from inside the crowd.

"Allow me to introduce, Tryt," Deli said as she gestured towards the pink fairy.

"It's a pleasure to meet you, Miss Tryt," Soy said, bowing his head low behind me.

"We have waited a long time for your arrival. Although, I had hoped that you both would have learned some manners by now. Just because a fairy is pink, does not mean that it is a female," Tryt said.

Soy picked his head up and blushed. As we stepped off the bed onto the stone, the fairies swarmed us. They fluttered and giggled, and gossiped in whispers.

"Come now," commanded Tryt, "leave them be. They've traveled far, and there's much to do before they leave."

I had never seen a place like this before. There was something magical and comforting and serene about it. I wasn't ready to think about leaving anytime soon. We followed Tryt down a wide, tan road. He flew low to the ground, at the same height as Deli's hops.

Tryt had a regal look about him. He wore a magnificent clear robe that glimmered (with holes in the back for his wings). Somehow he always seemed to be talking down to us, even when he was speaking from a few feet below.

"There were some fairies here who were beginning to wonder if you'd ever find him," Tryt said to Deli.

"Yes, well. It's just that, I needed to be certain," she responded meekly.

After a long pause, Tryt spoke again. "Of course," he said calmly, "I knew you wouldn't fail with so much at stake."

Tyrt led us to a circular building much bigger than the houses, with pillars and some letters above the entrance that I did not recognize. As we walked through, I discovered there was no roof in the center, just an open garden with a round table. Around the table were four chairs that looked like they were made of glass.

"The pond fairies will take care of your bed. Although I must say, we did not expect you to land so abruptly," he said to me. "Have a seat and let us get down to business."

Tryt showed us to our chairs around the table. Soy was to my right and Tryt was to my left, with Deli straight across. I noticed that the chair was super hard and strong, but somehow still really comfortable. It was like mine had been made specifically for me. I also noticed that Tryt's chair was the perfect size for him, and so was Soy's. Deli's chair was the only one that wasn't the exact right size. It was even taller than mine, and she had to hop up to sit on it.

"These are beautiful chairs, Mr. Tryt, sir. Are they made out of glass, Mr. Tryt?" said Soy.

"Your words are more transparent than this fairy glass, Soy," answered Tryt.

Soy shot me a puzzled look.

"Transparent," I whispered, "it means he can see right through it and knows what you're trying to do."

"Ah," Soy whispered back, "… I don't like him."

"Soy, I think he can hear everything we're saying," I responded shyly.

"Oh, because of those pointy elf ears? You might be right. He can probably hear Miss Weaver's lesson from here with those things."

By this point, Tryt was glaring at Soy.

"Miss Weaver isn't teaching right now," Tryt said.

I looked at Tryt and wondered if he was being serious. His face hadn't changed and, besides that, Tryt didn't seem like the type of fairy who was known for joking around. Although, to be fair, I could count the number of fairies that I knew on one finger.

"How do you know what Miss Weaver is doing right now?" I asked.

"I told you, it's the pointy ears," whispered Soy.

Tryt took a calm breath. "A fairytale begins when a single sentence appears in the Book of Lore. After that, it is up to the fairies to record what happens. In order to do so, we must keep a close eye on all those who may be involved in the story. For this we use lore," Tryt said. When he spoke, it wasn't with the same kindness as Deli, but it still made me feel better to know that he and his fairies had been looking out for us.

"And our ears aren't that pointy," he added crisply.

Soy smiled back, rubbed the top of his ear and then pretended to cut his finger on a pointy edge. Apparently, Soy was no longer worried about staying on Tryt's good side.

Given his history, it wasn't all that surprising. Soy never got along with authority figures; it usually took less than a day for him to battle with one. The fastest that I ever saw it happen was when he held a "special election" on the walk to school and decided that he would only respond to "President Soy" from then on. (I was the only other person who voted, and Soy told me there was an error with my ballot). The substitute teacher never made it past roll call that day.

"So are the fairies speaking to you right now?" I asked, still not understanding.

Tryt pulled out a shiny yellowish pen from the pocket of his robe. It had a broad tip, and the top of it was an even shinier crown of gold. There was something about the shape that grabbed my attention, but I couldn't put my finger on it.

"Magic pens are extremely powerful. They can use lore in many ways. I use the Fairytale Pen to collect information from fairies all over the world. It's how I'm able to write the stories as they happen," he explained.

"This isn't a story. It's our lives," Soy protested.

"I see no difference," replied Tryt coldly.

"How do the fairies collect the information? Are they watching Miss Weaver right now?" I wondered out loud.

"As you know by now, magic can be used to disguise. The fairies take the form of small creatures that go largely unnoticed by humans," Tryt explained.

Deli hadn't spoken in a little while. She just sat and listened. I looked at her for a moment and thought about what Tryt had just said.

"Small creatures… so, does that mean that Deli…" I asked.

"No," replied Tryt, "a fairy would never choose the shape of a frog. And Deli isn't a fairy, she's —"

Deli cut him off before he could finish. "What about Ream?" she said loudly.

"Ah, yes. The King of Dragons," he responded.

Deli nodded, happy to have changed the subject.

"He took his human form again and stole a costume from the set of the school play," said Tryt, "he left the campus twenty minutes after you fled." He was staring at Soy as he emphasized "fled".

"Where did he go?" I asked.

Tryt paused for a moment and looked at Deli. Deli looked back at Tryt blankly. She waited for an answer. It was clear that Deli was just as much in the dark as we were since leaving the school.

"He went to your house," Tryt said to me. "My fairies tell me you missed each other by less than two minutes."

It took a moment for the news to sink in. I stared down at the table. A dragon. At my house. With my mom! The thought scared me beyond words. And then I got angry. I stood up from the the table and pressed my hands down hard.

"My mom was home when we left!" I shouted.

"Yes," said Tryt, "now calm down and have a seat."

"No! He's a dragon, and he could destroy my entire house with one breath and my mom is inside!"

I was hysterical. The tears came pouring out. My view of the courtyard blended into watery colors. Deli hopped onto the table and then onto my shoulder. She patted the back of my head. It was so soft that I could barely feel it, but still, it was nice. She spoke to me in a soothing voice.

"She's all right," Deli said.

Tryt spoke in a matter-of-fact way. "Ream cannot enter your home. He was struck with stonegold in a battle many years ago, and it cannot be removed. Stonegold is an ancient metal with a strong magic. It's the same magic that forged The Fairytale Pen," Tryt explained, gesturing towards the pen he had shown me. Through my teary eyes, the shape looked even more familiar to me.

"That's the same color as his bowtie," I said.

"Yes," said Deli, "Ream's stonegold took the form of a bowtie when you met him. Lore is able to control stonegold, and nothing that touches it may enter your home unless the fairies permit it. It's the same magic that has protected Pavidale for centuries." Her voice faltered a bit as she spoke the last words.

Soy stood up now, looking just as upset as I had moments ago.

"What about my mom? What about my family?!" he asked.

"We've done the same for your home," replied Tryt, "although your brothers proved to be a challenge."

Soy laughed a little in relief. "Ha, yeah that sounds right."

"My fairies found them throwing a squirrel out of a window upon their arrival," Tryt said with disgust.

"I've told them not to," said Soy, a bit more relaxed.

"Yes, well it won't be a problem anymore. Two of my most trusted fairies gave the squirrel enough lore to truly fly. When your brothers tried to throw it out the window this morning, the squirrel simply kept on going and flew away."

Soy smiled now. "How did they take it?" he asked.

"Rick accused Hank of throwing the squirrel too hard. Hank accused Rick of secretly attaching it to a drone. They wrestled for seven minutes, and then looked up "flying squirrels" online for the next two hours on their phones," Tryt elaborated.

It occurred to me then that fairies must be better with details than any other creature in the world, imaginary or real (although, I felt like I really didn't know which animals belonged to which category anymore).

"I always liked that squirrel," said Soy.

"So what happens if our families leave our homes?" I asked, becoming nervous again.

"I wouldn't worry about that," said Tryt, "Ream left Stagwood hours ago and is headed straight for us."

11. FOR FAIRY EYES ONLY

"Why didn't you tell us that right away?" Soy asked as he stood up.

"You did not ask," replied Tryt, still seated.

"I also didn't ask to be flown here to hang out inside a cloud with a pointy-eared jerk. But here I am!" Soy shouted.

Tyrt stood up too, but as a fairy, it didn't have the dramatic effect that he had intended.

"Soy, just calm down," I said to him. "They're trying to help us."

"They're the whole reason we're in this mess," Soy said gruffly. "How do we even know that we belong here?"

Soy had made a pretty good point. It seemed that Ream was only interested in us because Deli was, and she still hadn't shown us any evidence that either Soy or I was the hero. For a moment, I thought that maybe everything was a mistake, and that we might be able to end this all and go home. The thought didn't make me sad, but it didn't make me happy either.

"I believe we can answer that," said Deli from my shoulder.

As she hopped onto the table in front of Tryt, she spoke only to him. "It's time to show them," she asserted.

Tryt's face told me that he wasn't thrilled about the idea. He wore the same expression that I had when my mom insisted that I do my homework right when I got home. I knew that she was right, and that it wasn't her fault she was right, but still… harumph.

Tryt raised one of his neon pink wings and motioned some fairies over, using it like an arm. Four fairies came flying in from the side of the courtyard opposite from where we entered. They were carrying a large, dark brown book.

These fairies had on medieval-looking armor made from the same glass as the chairs. The book they were carrying was thicker than a dictionary and wider. It was the kind of book that Soy would have openly protested if we had been assigned to read it for our class.*

It also seemed that the book was heavier than it looked, since the fairies were out of breath by the time they put it down on the table. Tryt shooed them away with his wing, and they disappeared straight up and out of the courtyard.

*Soy once proclaimed that making kids reading anything over one hundred pages was technically illegal, but he never found the documents to support it.

When the fairies left, Soy and I stood up at the same time to inspect. It was a dusty, rundown book. There were no words on the cover, but it was hard to say whether they had rubbed off, or were just never there at all. Along the center, a buckle with a lock ran horizontally across, made of the strange yellowish-gold that I now knew.

"Stonegold?" I asked.

"Yes," said Tryt, "only a magic pen may write in the Book of Lore, but it does not hurt to be safe."

"Why would anybody want to mess with the book?" asked Soy.

"The Book of Lore chronicles every fairytale throughout history. Changing them would change the fate of the world," answered Tryt indignantly. Soy didn't respond this time.

All four of us gathered closer, hovering over the book as Tryt held up his shiny pen. Without a word, he turned it over, placed the crown on top inside the stonegold lock and turned it. The buckle surrendered, opening up with a low hiss. I thought the pages smelled like pine trees, but didn't say it out loud. Tryt began flipping through the book and it was hard to see the words. Whenever I did catch a glimpse, the writing started off hard to focus on, but then got more clear. The words were written in fancy, old looking letters.

Soy's face was getting closer and closer to the pages by the second.

"It's in English," he said finally, "I thought it might be in fairy or elvish, or something weird like that."

Tryt didn't look up to acknowledge Soy, but it was obvious from his voice that he was agitated.

"It is not 'in English'. The fairytales in the Book of Lore appear in the first language of whomever is reading it," he said.

"That's English," said Soy, pointing at the book.

"Soy, to you it is in English, but to someone else it may be in French or German," said Deli.

"If it was in French of German, I wouldn't be able to read it," Soy explained politely, "so that's how I know it's in English."

Tryt let out an un-fairylike grunt and continued flipping through the pages while he spoke.

"The characters in these stories had their fates sealed by the outcomes written here. But Ream's first fairytale is unique in its ending."

"Ream was in a fairytale?" I asked with surprise. That seemed like a big deal to me.

"Yes," Tryt replied. "When a hero or heroine defeats a villain, their story and their fate are sealed within this book. All the rile of those defeated, all of their magic, is confined within the book so that they may never use it against the world again. And every villain inside the Book of Lore was defeated, save one."

"Ream," I said gravely.

"Yes," replied Deli, "instead of defeat, his tale ended with an escape. That is why he was able to hold onto his rile."

"He was injured. Pierced with stonegold, to be exact," Tryt said as he slowed his page turning. "And once stonegold pierces you, it may never be removed or covered. That is why Ream always has a piece of stonegold visible, regardless of his disguise."

"But nobody has explained yet why he's after us," said Soy. "We didn't do anything to him!"

"You're not a patient child, are you, Soy?" asked Tryt in a half-question.

"And you don't own a bookmark," rebutted Soy, not at all in the form of a question.

Tryt turned one last page, then covered it with his fairyhand, unleashing a slew of sparkles that shot out to conceal the center.

"This is your fairytale. And this is the reason that Ream is after you," Tryt said, looking directly at me. "It may be the last fairytale ever written. All the fairytales that came before it, and all the creatures inside of them are at stake. Ream and the forces of rile are trying to change their fate."

"But, why are you calling it mine?" I asked shyly.

Deli looked up at me.

"Because you are the hero," she replied.

Tryt moved his hand, and the sparkles flew away. Written on the page in a thousand languages, but English to me, was the title: The Boy and The Flying Bed. And underneath it, there was a small draw