Clemency Pogue Read online

  SIMON & SCHUSTER BOOKS FOR YOUNG READERS

  An imprint of Simon & Schuster Children’s Publishing Division

  1230 Avenue of the Americas, New York, New York 10020

  This book is a work of fiction. Any references to historical events, real people, or real locales are used fictitiously. Other names, characters, places, and incidents are products of the author’s imagination, and any resemblance to actual events or locales or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

  The author acknowledges that Jeffrey Srob Odell has tiny teeth.

  Text copyright © 2005 by JT Petty

  All rights reserved, including the right of reproduction in whole or in part in any form.

  SIMON & SCHUSTER BOOKS FOR YOUNG READERS is a trademark of Simon & Schuster, Inc.

  Book design by Mark Siegel and Jessica Sonkin

  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

  Petty, JT (John T.)

  Clemency Pogue / JT Petty.—1st ed.

  p. cm.

  Summary: Clever and resourceful Clemency must travel the world to reanimate fairies she has accidentally killed.

  ISBN: 1-4169-1433-1

  [1. Fairy tales. 2. Fairies—Fiction. 3. Goblins—Fiction. 4. Characters in literature—Fiction. 5. Humorous stories.] I. Title.

  PZ8.P45Cl 2005

  [Fic]—dc22

  2004001567

  Visit us on the World Wide Web:

  http://www.SimonSays.com

  For Lina & Kate

  Prologue

  OF EVERYTHING there is good and bad. This is just how things work.

  Ideas, dogs, smells, behavior, songs, guys, machines, cheeses, rabbits, shoes, friends, enemies, days, dreams, fairies; of all of these things and others, there are good and bad.

  But rules cannot be viewed except by exceptions, and the exceptions are these: newborn mammals and bees. Newborn mammals are invariably good. Bees, however, are all bad.

  If you are a bee sympathizer and find yourself insulted by the above remark, you can petition for the refund of the cost of this book. If this book was a gift and cost you nothing, the author will gladly refund you the love of the giver. If you paid for this book yourself and would like a refund, you may mail the author a self-addressed stamped envelope and a brief note explaining your case.

  The author will promptly throw away everything but your address, which will be passed on to the authorities, in the hopes that they will detain you as a bee sympathizer, obviously insane, and in need of either treatment or imprisonment before you can do yourself or others harm.

  Chapter 1

  CLEMENCY POGUE was a child who listened to the stories she was told. It was a quality that saved her life once, and started her on a great adventure.

  These stories were spun for Clem by her parents, who were good, kind, and creative people. Unfortunately they worked far away in the mansion of a very rich, very fancy man on the other side of the forest. In the gray of every morning they would march off to work, leaving Clem to her own devices until twilight time, when they would rush back home, her father carrying the evening’s meal, her mother percolating with richly embellished stories distilled from the day’s events.

  “We met a polo player today with a face longer than his horse,” she would say, or, “This afternoon the millionaire’s nephew was pushed into a river by the lady he was courting. The young man was kidnapped by beavers and ended up as part of a dam. The millionaire is waiting until tomorrow to pull the boy out because the fishing on the other side of the dam is so good.”

  As Clem’s mom unraveled these tales, her father would prepare the meal he had brought home, piling cornucopious gobs of savories and sweets onto the big wooden kitchen table. During dinner Clem would describe what discoveries and imaginations had occupied her day.

  “Today,” she would say, “I made cold sassafras tea that was sweeter than makes sense. So sweet, so sweet that when I left it alone, it was overwhelmed by its own sweetness. It bubbled and fizzed and could very well change the world.”

  After supper, from huge earthen mugs, they would drink steaming hot cider or tea or chocolate, and Clem’s dad would sift through one of the many old and good stories he knew.

  Her dad’s stories were far too fantastic and sensible to have taken place in the world we take for granted. He told the old stories like Peter Pan and Wendy . He told stories that he made up as he went along like The Epic of Gilbert and His Ambulatory Tub. He told stories that were combinations of the two, mongrel tales like The Tragi-Comic Blinding of Three Mice.

  The steam from her hot chocolate rising to tickle the cuddle of her chin, Clem sat listening to her dad:

  “…and as soon as Wendy had spoken, Tinkerbell dropped dead. Dead as a gossamer-winged doorknob.

  “‘What have I done?’ cried Wendy.

  “‘You’ve killed her, you brute!’ said Peter. His shadow covered its eyes in horror.

  “‘But how?’ she asked.

  “‘Why, you disbelieved her to death.’ Peter explained, ‘Fairies are strong, but such delicate things. Not too much more than intentions with wings.’”

  Clemency listened, and a good thing, too.

  Chapter 2

  IN EARLY GRAY of the morning, Mr. and Mrs. Pogue marched off through the woods to work.

  The sun crept upward sluggishly, fat and golden. As it just passed the horizon, setting aglow the tops of the trees but leaving the forest dark and secret below, Clemency walked out into the woods to begin the day’s distractions. There would be no school until the leaves began to turn brown and the days began to shorten. That season was not so very far off, and Clem intended to make the most of her remaining vacation.

  She held in her left hand a walking stick that she slung over her shoulder, with a basket hanging from the back end like a hobo’s satchel. The basket was for the collection of sassafras roots; she intended to continue with her experiments in fizzing bubbly sweetness.

  The walking stick was not for walking. Clem knew that there were places in the forest where danger lurked. And where it did not lurk, danger squatted, crouched, or lounged. There was one place where danger reclined, but Clemency usually avoided it. The walking stick she carried in case of danger, in case she came upon a wolf or a troll who needed to be shown what for.

  Clem’s pants rasped softly, swst swst swst, as her knees brushed with every stride. The pants were made of burlap and were a point of pride for Clemency. She had sewn them herself, and they were quite stylish. Unfortunately, the only fabric she could get her hands on was burlap, so they were a little rough around the seams.

  The trees in the forest were as dark as cast iron, older than the dirt they grew in, fatter than walruses, and more twisted than yours truly. A carpet of moss covered the earth and climbed the trees, and was faintly luminous in the green light filtering down through the leaves.

  Clem walked slowly about, following her nose toward the patches of sassafras saplings. The tingly, earthy smell led her farther and farther into the deep, dark woods, her path dotted with sassafras that she pulled from the soft earth, shook clean of dirt, and tossed over her shoulder into the basket.

  As the sun approached its zenith, Clem came to a great gorge that dropped abruptly from the edge of the trees. The ground just stopped at a rocky precipice, the exposed roots of ancient oaks dangling precariously into empty space.

  Clem, tempter of fate and gravity, kicked a pebble over the edge and watched it tumble slowly down—a tiny white dot that grew tinier as it tumbled through space, falling and falling and falling for ages before tapping against the side of the gorge and bouncing out to tumble farther and farther still, before plunking into the lazy stream at the bottom.

  Clem whistled in admiration of the g
orge’s depth. She felt the weight of her sassafras basket and decided it was about half as heavy as she could bear. She turned and started back home through the woods.

  The moss underfoot had dried with the noon sun and crunched slightly as Clem wove her way through the trees. The woods were otherwise quiet. The slight crunch of moss underfoot, the swishing of her burlap pants, and a light rustle whenever Clem shifted her sassafras basket, but no more. Until a small waspish buzz entered Clem’s ear for the briefest moment before a burning pinprick presented itself on her basket hand.

  “Oh! Drat!” Clem dropped the walking stick and basket, sassafras spilling out aromatically. She looked at her hand, a tiny red dot midway between her thumb and pointer finger, a wasp’s sting perhaps. But then another, near her elbow.

  “Drat! Drat!” Clem swatted at the air by her elbow and saw the culprit, a tiny insect, slightly smaller than a wasp, the color of yam flesh. The insect descended onto her side and stung her again.

  The otherwise peaceable Clem, thrice stung, lost her gentle disposition. She slapped the insect against her side mightily, with a gesture like a very fat man swarthily admiring his own girth.

  The insect took no heed, and stung her again, by the navel. She slapped it again, with surely enough force to kill a cow, let alone this bug. Despite the blow, the tiny scoundrel stung her again on the arm.

  Clem turned and ran. The insect pursued, diving between Clem’s flailing arms and stinging her again several times. Clem stumbled over the giant roots of the ancient trees, calling out a forlorn “Drat!” with every sting.

  Clem turned, focusing on the buzzing sound, and swatted at it. She batted the tiny aggressor against one of the great oaks. The tiny monster was stunned momentarily, and Clem turned again, falling over a root, but still moving, still running.

  The great trees whirred past like locomotives. In the back of her head Clem could still faintly hear the buzzing. The little beast was on her again. She tried to run faster, but her legs had filled with lead, her lungs were white and frozen for lack of air.

  Clem burst through a low hedge of shrubs and out onto the gorge. The exposed roots of the mighty trees dangled before her over the void.

  “Oh.” Clem was so tired. “Drat.” She turned just in time to see the infinitesimal fire bug buzz right up to her face. In the brief instant before it stung her on the tip of the nose, Clem realized what the tiny creature was.

  Its body was that of a human, tiny arms and legs, little fingers and toes like threads, a little person perfectly formed save for any bits that you could not show on television. It had a sweet-potato pallor, its skin the vibrant orange of cooked yams. From its back, four dragonfly wings whirred and buzzed like water spattering on a hot griddle.

  The tiny aggressor was a fairy, and a mean one. In its hand it held a wand like a tiny cigarette, dull white all the way up with a searing orange tip, which it thrust into the end of Clemency’s nose.

  Clem swatted at the imp in a mad-ape rage. The fairy dodged backward with malicious grace, dove forward again and stung Clemency’s cheek. Only an inch away from her eye, Clem could see the fairy grinning, bubbling over with her own evil.

  Clem drew in a great bellowsful of air, shaped her lower lip like the spout of a pitcher, and puffed upward. The fairy was blown from her face, tumbling in midair. Clem raised her arms and brought her hands together in a clap that would easily have brained an elephant.

  The fairy emerged from her hands unshaken, grinning like a barracuda. It was invincible. It dove forward at Clem’s neck, and she fell backward, trying to evade the tiny burning barb.

  She realized an important thing as her legs buckled and she fell backward. She realized that there would be no ground to catch her for the next thousand feet or so; she was falling into the gorge.

  Clem’s breath left her as the treetops arched away in a rush. Her arms pinwheeled backward. Straight as a board, she fell like a domino into the emptiness.

  Hard wood smacked her in the back; the exposed roots of the mighty oaks dangling over the nothing caught and cradled her in their gnarled bark.

  Clem was thankful for the roots, not for saving her so much as for delaying her doom. She knew there was no escape. Above her, she could see the whirring wings of the fairy glowing in the afternoon sun. It hovered, seeming to savor the anticipation of cutting off a girl’s life after a scant ten years, just on the verge of a great discovery in cold sassafras technology. She knew the fairy would not let her back onto land, and she knew that all that awaited her in the other direction was the “Big Fall,” followed by the “Big Splat.” She imagined she would not be in any state to care when it came time for the “Big Getting Eaten by Ants.” Even if she somehow managed to land in the stream at the gorge’s bottom, it would only mean that she would end up soup instead of porridge.

  And how could she fight? The fairy was indestructible, as had been amply demonstrated. But then again…

  Clem, as I said, was a child who listened to the stories she was told. Balanced over her final resting place, and the “awfully big adventure” waiting for her when she fell, the story of Peter Pan and Wendy returned to her.

  There was, in the story of the little boy who never grew up, instruction for the extermination of fairies. Clem, secret weapon on her tongue’s tip, saw past the certainty of her own death.

  She looked at the little yam-colored beast hovering above her and narrowed her eyes like a gunslinger.

  “I don’t believe in fairies,” she said.

  The fairy lurched backward and crossed its arms in front of its face. An uncertain, tense moment passed like a fart in a crowd, and then the barracuda grin returned to the fairy’s angelic face. The little monster descended on dear Clem.

  “I don’t believe in fairies!” she said again. “I don’t believe in fairies!”

  The fairy landed gracefully on Clem’s burlap pants and hopped upward toward her face.

  “I don’t believe in fairies! I don’t believe in fairies!” Clem edged backward, trying to keep the fairy away from her face. The roots began to creak, as her weight leaned more heavily on their extremes.

  “I don’t believe in fairies!” Clem stopped edging and wrapped her fingers tightly around the roots below her. The fairy arrived at her neck, took its burning-hot wand in both hands and raised it above its head like an ax.

  “I don’t believe in fairies!” Clem shouted, her words tumbling down below her into the gorge.

  The fairy’s grin faltered. An expression crossed her face as if, despite scale, she had just swallowed a bug. She did a tiny pirouette, and dropped dead as a gossamer-winged doorknob, lying in the tiny hollow where Clem’s neck and chest met.

  Clem lay for a moment, trying to gather her thoughts, which had scattered like elephants from a mouse. A perilous creaking in the roots below her put an end to her ruminations, and very carefully she turned herself around so that she was facing the edge of the cliff. She gathered herself onto her hands and knees, and the fairy fell from its cradle at the base of her neck.

  The tiny imp spiraled down into the gorge, a sunlit glint that flickered and twirled down slowly toward the rocks.

  Clem crawled up the fattest root and onto the safety of the ground just as, near the edge of the woods, the ground, in a mighty soil geyser, exploded.

  Chapter 3

  “STOP!STOP!STAHHHHHHP!” a voice bellowed from the shower of dirt.

  Clem considered falling backward from the shock, but decided instead to express her surprise with raised eyebrows, as she would not have stopped falling for quite some time.

  The geyser of dirt shot up as high as the treetops, and then fell to the ground in sheets, dead leaves fluttering down more slowly. From the earth and chaos purposefully strode, on the squat little legs of a pig, a hobgoblin.

  He was three feet tall at best. At worst, he was also three feet tall. His legs and one set of his ears were those of a very fat pig. Each of a second set of ears protruded from either side of hi
s head, ears like those of a hairless rabbit. He had the face of a child, only with the mouth two times too wide, and the eyes three times too large. His great round belly suggested nothing so much as a pumpkin. Left to its own devices, his belly often suggested things like pastries, puppies, doughnuts, dandelions, maidens, or milk shakes. But to the observer, his belly suggested a pumpkin, for the skin that covered it and the rest of his body was tight and thick like the rind of a winter gourd, the color varying between a slightly yellower pumpkin-orange and the deep green of acorn squashes and alligators. Atop his head sat a tight-fitting metal cap that tapered to a wickedly sharp point.

  “Well,” said the hobgoblin to Clem, in a voice like apathetic molasses and not at all resembling the great bellow of before. “Now you’ve catastrophisized every last thing.” Then he added, for good measure, “Murderer.”

  Clem, shocked and discombobulated, was a long time in formulating a response.

  “Murderer?” she managed.

  “Certainly, you venom-tongued basilisk, you maul-muttering monster. Put seven more notches in your belt, fairy killer.” His voice remained overwhelmingly bored.

  “But, she was trying to kill me,” Clem protested, gesturing to the gorge that held her deceased fairy antagonist.

  “Oh, suretainly.” The hobgoblin rolled his eyes. “Self-defendo on that account for certain, but what about the other six? If wishes were basketballs and fairies players, you’ve cleared the court.”

  “Six others?” Clem said. A glimmer of dawning sorrow appeared in the corner of her eye.

  “Seven knives for seven navels and no point wasted on a deaf ear. Seven times you stabbed wicked with what you do and don’t believe, and six times you missed before the last hit its mark.”

  And what the hobgoblin was getting at, slowly crept up on Clem and bit her on the bottom. She had not specified which fairies she did not believe in when she had said, “I don’t believe in fairies.” Before her misbelief matched her intentions, she had been killing fairies around the world. The phrase was like magic bullets she was releasing into the world that would find a mark, even if not the one she intended.