The Chestnut King: Book 3 of the 100 Cupboards (46 page)
Read The Chestnut King: Book 3 of the 100 Cupboards Online
Authors: N. D. Wilson
Behind Henry, Uncle Frank began to laugh. Hyacinth and Mordecai were simply confused. By all of it.
A tall, heavily freckled boy stepped around the corner with his arms full of shirts. He was wearing
GIVE FRANK BACK
in blue. “I’m sorry,” he said. “How’d I miss you all coming in? Can I help you? Have you been here before?”
Henry nodded.
“I thought so,” Freckles said. “You look familiar. We have a few new displays. And of course the sea window.” He pointed at the glass spot on the floor. Beneath it, a pipe sprayed an even seam of water down into a brown pond. “We keep it all filtered and salt-water treated so the crabs and shrimp don’t die. In the front, you can buy copies of different shows about the place.” He smiled. “I’m in most of them as a fat little kid.”
Henry moved past Freckles. At the other end of the shop, a television was mounted to the ceiling, and it was playing a looped tape. As he got closer, he bit his lip so he wouldn’t burst out laughing. The screen was black, and then suddenly, a rectangle of light appeared in the sky, and there he was, from the lips down, and Henrietta and Zeke with him.
“No one hits the Maccababy,” Henrietta’s voice said
quietly—the sound was turned down—and then blackness swallowed up the light with a crash, and it began again.
“That tape paid for all of this,” Freckles said. “You wouldn’t believe. Of course, now this all pays for itself. My stepdad and I have a barn out back full of stuff that we sell online and ship all over the world.”
Henry laughed and nodded. “It’s a cool tape.”
Freckles pointed to a picture of a fatter version of himself on the wall. Beneath it, a long printout had been framed. “That’s my story right there. Read it if you want to.”
“Thanks,” Henry said, and he moved on. He moved past mugs and key chains, and alien dolls wearing
WHERE’S HENRY?
shirts. And then he stopped. In a glass box in front of him, a mannequin’s disembodied hand was wearing his first baseball glove. A plaque beside it was labeled
HENRY IN HIDING?
, and it had a picture of a thick cop holding the glove. Another picture was a close-up of Richard’s handwriting.
Henry Yo
.
Freckles looked over from his shirt rack.
“That’s not really his glove,” he said. “The cop is full of it, but we try to represent every theory.”
“It’s not his glove?”
Freckles shook his head. “No way. I knew Henry. He wasn’t here long, but we got pretty close. Always playing ball. That’s not his glove.”
Henry raised his eyebrows. “Huh.”
Somewhere, a phone started ringing, and Freckles hurried away.
Henry’s mother gripped his arm. Frank and Dotty were already outside. Mordecai stood in the door.
“Henry!” Hyacinth whispered. Henry had sprung the lock, and the case was open. He shut it quickly and shoved the glove down his pants while his mother dragged him out of the air-conditioning and into the sun.
“I need one of those shirts,” Frank was saying.
“Need
is the wrong word,” said Dotty.
Mordecai looked at his son and smiled. “What did you thieve?”
“Nothing,” Henry said. He grinned and lifted his shirt, flashing the top half of his glove. “But I found something.”
There was a large parking lot beside the souvenir shop and the little saltwater hole. There were signs about the paranormal salt lake and alien crabs. As the five of them walked on, heading for the bus station, they saw stranger things. The Kansas Crab Shack. The old antiques store on Main Street was called Frank’s Trading Post. There was a little storefront called Dorothy’s Pies. There were two bed-and-breakfasts and, in the distance, a brick outline of a new school. The old gas and bait shop had managed to turn into the Tumbleweed Motel and Galaxy Steak House.
The bus station was entirely remodeled, and the first town fathers would have been proud of themselves for not putting it on Main Street. They’d known something like this would come, and they hadn’t wanted the extra traffic.
The restrooms were still the color of a swimming pool. But in one of them, someone named Greg said that he loved someone named Tiff. And he had said it with spray paint.
Henry didn’t use the benches. He sat on the curb in the sun with his bag on his knees. His uncle sat beside him. Henry, Kansas, was still a quiet town. A fat, lazy fly circled above the street, buzzing and riding tiny updrafts and buzzing again.
“Henry York,” Frank said, and his eyes were staring at something even Henry couldn’t see. “I reckon we’ve grown some, you and I.”
Henry smelled the warmth of the street, and he nodded.
“We wear life a little better now,” Uncle Frank said. He put his hard arms behind him and leaned back on the sidewalk, squinting at the blue sky. “It’s almost like it fits us.”
Henry laughed and looked at his uncle. “Almost,” he said.
The rumble of the diesel engine arrived long before the bus, and when the bus finally did pull up and air roared out of it, kicking up dust, and the driver levered that heavy door open, everyone was on their feet.
Henry climbed on last and settled into a seat beside Hyacinth. It was a long ride to Boston, but there was a woman he had long called mother, and he wanted to see her. And meet her new husband. If his dreaming told him no lies, she had changed a great deal. And there was a small
boy to meet, too. A boy almost three years old, who played ball with his father with a giant red bat and could hit like a champion.
Hyacinth was talking, chatting with Dotty. Henry stretched over and kissed his mother’s cheek, and then he leaned his head against the window. A new park crept by, with six permanent barbecues and two separate pavilions. Boys were playing ball.
He smiled and yawned, wondering how many miles one nap could handle. A large sign, blue with bright red letters approached. It told him what to do.
SAY GOOD-BYE TO HENRY
He did. And then he shut his eyes.
Wallace
Merten liked to keep his feet on his desk. He was a coach, and he wanted to feel like one. Even if he didn’t have a team to coach. A desk got in the way. Unless he tipped back in his chair and pried his inflexible legs out from underneath it. Right now, with his legs crossed and his arms behind his head, he was staring up at the photos still on his wall. The ones he’d taken down were already in boxes.
Opening day was in a week, and he was done. Not officially The team was taking batting practice out the window behind him. No pink slip had been nailed to his chest. But his tires had been slashed three times in a month. It worked out to the same thing.
“Dad?” Mary stepped into his office. Her dark hair was pulled back tight. He didn’t like her hair that way. It made her look stark, and she scared people already, being tall. Especially boys. “These boys want to play for you. I told them your roster was full.” She cupped her hand and whispered loudly. “A little full of themselves.”
Wallace swallowed back a laugh, dropped his feet to the ground, and stood up. Mary was gone, and he was left with the two boys, both wearing jeans and T-shirts. They were
tall, about the same height, but the one with the squarer head and the gray eyes had more muscle to his body. The other kid was lean and had a nasty scar on his jaw. Wallace blinked. His eyes were strange. They were green, but the centers were flecked with gold. As he stared into them, his brain paused, and he felt like he wouldn’t be able to look away. The boy stuck out his hand, and his palm was scarred, too. Wallace shook it and shook his head at the same time. The boy’s grip was hot.
“I’m afraid my daughter’s right. My roster’s full. The season kicks off next week. You could give one of the assistants your names, and we’ll check you out for next year.” He gestured toward the door.
The two boys sat down in chairs facing his desk.
Wallace put his hands on his hips. He didn’t sit down. His daughter had been right. Too much confidence. “I don’t have any scholarships,” he said. “And if I did, I wouldn’t just hand them out to anyone who walked into my office.”
“We don’t need scholarships,” the lean one said. “We just want to play. Watch us play.”
“Your team’s taking BP right now,” said the bigger one. “Name your bet. Not one of them will hit his heater.”
“You pitch?” the coach looked back at Henry. “Right-hander?”
Henry smiled and held up his left.
“Okay,” the coach said. “I’ll give you ten minutes. I’ll watch you throw.” He turned to Zeke. “And you?”
Henry straightened up in his chair. “He can hit my heater.”
Twenty minutes later, two boys in jeans stepped onto the diamond. An hour after that, they were back in the coach’s office, while he giggled and rubbed his temples.
“You didn’t play high school ball?” he asked again.
Zeke and Henry shook their heads.
“Do you have any more players for me?”
“One,” Henry said. “In a couple years. Great second baseman. Placement hitter. Kid named Richard Hutchins.”
The coach sat back and crossed his arms. “Why me? Why this school?”
The two boys looked at each other. “You’re in Kansas. We like Kansas.”
“It’s a hard school.” The coach shook his head. “I’ve lost great recruits before. We have language requirements. A tough math core.”
Zeke laughed.
“We’ll be fine,” Henry said.
Henry, Kansas, was dead in the moonlight. Henry Maccabee guided the car slowly through town and pulled into a parking lot.
“You did not get me dressed up to bring me here,” Mary said. “You said it was formal.”
“It is,” Henry said. He hopped out of the car and hurried around to Mary’s door.
She stepped out into the silver light, holding her skirt up off the asphalt. Her hair was pulled back tight. He loved that. He loved everything.
“Do you know what I think?” she said. “I think you can
throw harder, and you just don’t. For some reason, you don’t want to.”
Henry shut the door and took her arm. “I throw hard enough.”
“You do,” Mary said. “But not your hardest.”
Henry sighed. “My hardest doesn’t go straight.”
“Why are we here?” Mary asked suddenly. Henry had led her to the dark little shop. “This is the town where that kid and the family disappeared, and all that weirdness.”
“Just trust me,” Henry said. He put his hand on the lock, and after a moment, it popped open.
Mary looked at him. “Do you know the owner or something?”
Henry laughed and led her in. “He says I do.”
The door locked behind them, and they began to move through the shirts.
“This is creepy,” Mary said. “What are you thinking?”
They stopped on the glass above the pond. Henry shut his eyes, and breathing slowly, he put out his right hand.
“Where’d you get that scar?” Mary said. “Or am I still not allowed to ask?”
“Ask me in an hour.”
“And why does my dad think I’m going to meet your family?”
“You are,” said Henry. And a door opened in the air.
Spenser for
The Faerie Queene
Robert Kirk for Disappearing
Kansas for Being
Henry for Winning
Rory D. for Loving
Jim T. for Scrubbing
Heather Linn for Waiting
Baseball
At the age of twelve (and thanks to a house fire),
N. D. WILSON
spent nearly a year living in his grandparents’ attic. The ceilings were low and baggy, and a swamp cooler squatted in a window at one end. Inviting crawl spaces ran the length of the attic on both sides. If there were cupboards in those walls, he never found them. But not for lack of trying. He loves barns, still checks walls for hidden doors, and is certain that dandelions are magic.
N. D. Wilson and his wife live in Idaho, along with their four young explorers. For more information, please visit
www.ndwilson.com
.
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.
Text copyright © 2010 by N. D. Wilson
All rights reserved. Published in the United States by Random House Children’s Books, a division of Random House, Inc., New York.
Random House and the colophon are registered trademarks of Random House, Inc.
The frontispiece illustration by Jeff Nentrup, copyright © 2007 by Jeff Nentrup, was originally published in
100 Cupboards
by N. D. Wilson.
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Educators and librarians, for a variety of teaching tools, visit us at
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www.100Cupboards.com
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Wilson, Nathan D.
The Chestnut King / by N. D. Wilson. — 1st ed.
p. cm. — (100 Cupboards ; 3)
Summary: Twelve-year-old Henry York, finally reunited with his family,
works with them and the Chestnut King, the long-deposed and mythic leader
of the faeren people, to destroy Nimiane and her forces of evil.
eISBN: 978-0-375-89320-9
[1. Magic—Fiction. 2. Space and time—Fiction. 3. Kings, queens, rulers, etc.—Fiction.
4. Fairies—Fiction. 5. Doors—Fiction. 6. Family life—Kansas—Fiction.
7. Cousins—Fiction. 8. Kansas—Fiction.] I. Title.
PZ7.W69744Che 2010
[Fic]—dc22
2008032748
Random House Children’s Books supports the First Amendment and celebrates the right to read.
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