Bran Hambric: The Farfield Curse Read online

  Balder screamed as if Sewey had struck him with a knife. Then, seeing he was getting nowhere, Balder snapped his mouth shut and sulked. Rosie handed him his food very slowly. He was nearly as interested in food as he was in television, so he instantly forgot his troubles and set to work making a proper hog of himself.

  "Hoo hoo, funny article," Sewey started, turning the page of the newspaper. "In the Motivational section," he explained, looking up. "One of those ‘You can do anything if you try’ pieces of jabber-jobber."

  "Since when did you start reading the Motivational section?" Bran asked with shock.

  "Thirty seconds ago," Sewey replied, crunching a pickle. "By mistake. The writer blathered a page of hibhiggens about

  how people have got to dream big or otherwise they’ll just be a nobody."

  "Jabberbother!" Balder cried.

  "Horseradish!" Mabel shrieked.

  "Utter nonsense," Sewey agreed. "Dream big—ha! Of course I dream big. I, for one, would like to make gobs and gobs of money." He looked about the table. "And then, I would want everyone to have a parade for me, and bring me crowns and jewels!" He pointed to Mabel. "What about you?"

  "Me?" Mabel said, sitting up straighter. A dreamy gleam leapt into her eyes.

  "Of all things, I dream of one…" her voice went soft. "To one day, be oh-so-detoxed enough that I can have an entire Spotless Chocomicity Simplicity Divinity Cake to myself! And then, you could crown me empress, so I could have everything and everyone obey me like little dogs!"

  Pansy snarled. Sewey just shrugged.

  "A rational dream," he said, and he turned to Balder. "And you?"

  "Pig-out week!" Balder shouted. "An entire week where we eat and eat, and watch more television than the world combined."

  "A rational wish," Sewey said. He turned to Baldretta. Her mouth was full, as usual.

  "Bwooshi bwishi bwoshbwibluebli bwibliboblo," she said. Sewey’s eyes followed her lips.

  "Translation please?" Bran said.

  Sewey spun on him. "What’s your problem? Cotton in your ears? Baldretta has every right to be the world’s most famous advanced pyrotechnist in the world if she wants to!"

  "Bwamins," Baldretta said.

  "Advanced chemical pyrotechnist," Sewey corrected. He turned again. "Rosie?"

  She glanced down and looked as if she hadn’t expected for Sewey to ask her anything.

  "I suppose," she said, "one day, I would like to be a world-famous journalist, and go to dangerous scenes and write reports where they pay me a thousand sib per word!" She turned to Bran. "Then, I could pay for Bran’s college, and buy you and Mabel and the children all sorts of wonderful things…and even pay off all the overdue bills."

  "How irrational!" Sewey replied, moving about in his chair awkwardly. "In fact, I’ve never heard any more nonsense in my life, paying off all the bills at once." He threw his hands in the air. "You would have to be wildly popular to pay off all our bills!"

  As if to prove his point, his elbow knocked an enormous pile of bills off the table. They continued to spill for some time, like a ceaseless fountain, as he struggled to catch them.

  "Look!" he spluttered, waving certain ones in frustration. "This one’s for the elephant statue in the basement, unpaid, and late. This one’s for eighteen cases of Yinsworth Medicated Tinctures, unpaid, and late. This one’s for the pixie exterminator last month, unpaid, and late…"

  "And these," Bran said, grabbing a pile, "are twelve speeding tickets, unpaid, and late."

  "Give that here!" Sewey said, grabbing them away. He sat on them. The fact was, the Wilomas family simply didn’t have the time to deal with paying the bills for the things they bought to make them look richer than the neighbors. They were busy enough buying them.

  "Well, cheer up everyone," Bran said, nodding toward Rosie. "One day, she really is going to be a famous writer, and she’ll pay each and every one of them off for us!"

  All of a sudden, everyone turned their heads to look at Bran, and all along the table, a set of very confused faces stared at him, as if he had just said the most obviously stupid thing in the world.

  Sewey blinked, as if for once he couldn’t come up with anything more brainless to say. "Look here," he stammered. "This is no time for jokes. We’re better off relying on a volcano of gold to erupt in here before Rosie of all people gets put in the newspaper—" Sewey glanced at her and added, "—or any paper!"

  Rosie forced a smile on her face.

  Sewey started to eat again, and then, as if he had abruptly remembered there was another person in the house, he jumped and looked up.

  "Great Moby, I almost forgot," he said, tapping the newspaper article. "Bran, what do you dream big about?"

  Bran had been hoping he had forgotten. However, an idea popped into his mind—it was because of the creature and what he had said on the roof. All of a sudden, Bran felt an urge, but he pushed it away. He knew they’d all laugh if he said it.

  "Well?" Sewey pressed. "What do you want to do?"

  Bran swallowed. "I—I think I…"

  "Speak up!" Mabel insisted.

  "I think," Bran stammered, "one day, I would like to find out who my family was."

  Everyone was silent. And then, two seconds later, Sewey slammed his fists on the table.

  "What a ridiculous notion!" he spat. "Insanely out of this world!"

  "Indeed!" Mabel agreed. "Why, everyone knows we’ve looked high and low for your family, and we didn’t find them, or else you wouldn’t be here."

  "This entire town thinks we’re a laughingstock because of that Accident," Sewey remarked. "Even the police refused to offer any help. You might as well hang up your hopes of finding your family, because if we couldn’t find them after that ordeal, nobody can."

  Bran resolved to leave it at that, imagining a sketch of Sewey gleefully skipping into a pool of vipers.

  Sewey went on grumbling. "Grumpkins, talking like that." He tossed his napkin on the table. "Simply bumblebother!"

  "Absolute poppycock!" Mabel said.

  "Utter pumpledithers!" Balder squealed.

  Sewey gave a cough and reached for his newspaper again. For a while, everything was quiet.

  Very soon, though, Sewey began to read another article very intensely. He pulled the paper close to his eyes, as if he couldn’t believe what he was reading. He ruffled the pages out, then bent them in, huffing and puffing.

  "Is…something wrong?" Rosie asked. Sewey glared at her.

  "Something wrong?" he growled. "This morning’s wrong. Everything’s wrong." He slapped the newspaper. "Just to make my morning worse, would you believe this: another gnome, caught, sneaking around Givvyng Park!"

  "In our city?!" Mabel gasped, horrified. Baldretta nearly choked on a lozenge.

  "Yes!" Sewey said. "Don’t the gnomes get it? They aren’t allowed. It says so on the sign, and it’s carved on the Givvyng Tree: no gnomes, no mages."

  "Maybe they just want to go through instead of traveling all the way around," Bran said, giving up on having a peaceful meal.

  "I don’t see why they can’t," Sewey snapped. "After all, they’re gnomes…not people."

  "Gnomes, not people! " Balder mimicked, grease from the sausage rolling down his chin.

  "My thoughts exactly," Sewey went on, taking a bite. "I see no point in even acknowledging them as a species. How can some wear pointy caps and others leap around on a roof?"

  "Maybe," Bran said, beginning to feel a tad irritated, "there is a slight chance that the officer was right, and the creature we saw last night…wasn’t a gnome."

  "Nonsense," Sewey stated. "What are you trying to tell me, I don’t know my gnomes?" He fluffed his newspaper. "Can’t you remember the film Mayor Demark made?"

  "Of course," Bran said. "How could anyone forget the green gnomes with dripping yellow fangs flying in on broomsticks, picking up children, and dropping them in cauldrons?"

  "A very accurate depiction!" Sewey declared. "Perhaps if all the other c
ities were to take up the proud Duncelander flag, and banish gnomes and mages as well, maybe it would keep the children of the world safer, and the Decensitists wouldn’t have to be so decent!"

  In Dunce, and even in some places outside, there was a group of parents who called themselves Decensitists, which was a name they had made up by butchering the word decency. They were very strictly anti-gnome and anti-mage, so severe they would make up stories for their children and tell them such things didn’t even exist. They were very careful to erase any mention of them from their lives and warned their friends that if they ever spoke of anything even borderline magic while they were present, they would do something dreadful. Those in Dunce would sometimes go to such ends as to call the city something completely different, just to be safe. Even Sewey and Mabel avoided the group, as did most of the general population.

  "At least we’ve got those black boxes to keep us safe when we’re watching television," Sewey said as he fluffed his paper again. The year before, he had come home with a set of black boxes and plugged one into the back of each television in the house. He proclaimed they were for the preservation of the household’s decency, so that channel zero, the Mages Entertainment Channel, would be nothing but static.

  "Under the rule of the Imperial Countries," Sewey went on, "Dunce has a legal right to make up its own rules, as long as it doesn’t go against the orders of the Queen or the Senate, and they haven’t made any address making magic or gnomes legal or illegal anywhere." His voice grew louder. "Gnomes are animals like dragons and duggins and ogres. Those all live far away from civilized towns, and gnomes should just as well join them." He slammed his fist on the table yet again, making Baldretta jump. "We’ve gotten along just fine without them!" he roared, and seized with a sudden fit of anti-gnome zeal, he leapt upon his chair and pointed toward the sky.

  "No gnomes!" he shouted. "No mages! And no ETCETERAS!"

  "Hear, hear!" Mabel and Balder chanted, raising their glasses of milk, and Baldretta looked at them as if they had all gone mad.

  Sewey stood in that position for a whole minute, looking very patriotic, until he looked down and saw Mabel and Balder cheering for him. He bowed, but lost his balance and came crashing to the floor.

  Everyone gasped. His head popped from under the table, an envelope stuck in his hair.

  "Ahem…" he stammered. "Well then…I’m off to work!"

  He stood and stretched, reaching into his coat for his pocket watch. His hand came out empty.

  "Hmmm," he said suspiciously. He went on to search through every pocket in his shirt and pants, and then even in his shoes. No pocket watch.

  "Rot," Sewey said. "Where’s that bloody watch?"

  "Maybe a gnome took it," Bran said with a fake gasp. Sewey crossed his arms.

  "You’re right!" He kicked the pile of bills in fury. "Filthy gnomes! Can’t escape them!"

  Sewey left his dishes behind and went downstairs, taking his briefcase and coat. He rushed to his car, only to find that his keys were nowhere to be found.

  "Rot," he breathed. Then he remembered his emergency key. However, after checking under the car, he found that he had taken it inside with him the night before. "Double rot." But then he remembered he kept two emergency keys, and walked to the other side of the car and reached above the wheel. He kissed the key and slid it in. He noticed Mr. Swinehic outside, tossing birdseed to the pigeons. An etcetera if he’d ever seen one.

  "Makes too much money for his own good," Sewey murmured. Then, turning the ignition, he noticed something else: a curious new vehicle parked down the street. "A black van?" he said aloud, wondering who was visiting. He kept tabs on every Bolton Roader’s vehicle, because he was nosy and abhorred parties. Any time there was a gathering of new cars at a house, it meant a party. It also meant a courtesy call from Sewey to the police department the moment he heard a peep of their awful party music. However, he shrugged and decided not to let it bother him…yet. He turned his dial to the Radio Dunce morning show as he passed the van and continued on his way.

  "You’re listening to Dan the Man on Radio Dunce! " the announcer said over a jingle that Sewey abhorred. He turned out of the neighborhood and onto the major road, crowded with cars and trucks heading for downtown. He abhorred them too, each and every one.

  "Hello, I am Dan the Man," the familiar voice of Sewey’s favorite talk show host came on. "You’re just in time for your morning Dash of Dunce news, and this just in: Mr. Parget’s cow is loose down on Eggsworth Street!"

  "Oh joy, a cow loose in Dunce," Sewey snorted. "That will surely drive up property value."

  "Cows in the city! The idea! " Dan agreed. "Here’s another news item: Reports of sleezebirds migrating early next month. That means no more firecrackers or sky shooting."

  "Even worse than cows." Sewey sniffed. Every year, the sleezebirds would migrate north over Dunce after fattening themselves to the size of cars on atom rats in the Chubbie Wastelands. Last year, the city had tried firecrackers to scare them off, but then the birds only landed to watch the show, denting the car roofs and snapping the power lines they perched their weight upon.

  "Speaking of loud noises," Dan went on. "Last night, a madman was reportedly shooting on Bolton Road, as heard by twelve witnesses!"

  "Imagine," Sewey said, shocked "That was on my street!" He came to a red light but ignored it, sending cars swerving to avoid him, honking their horns. "Quiet down, I’m trying to hear!" he roared, turning the radio up to cover their awful racket.

  "And," the radio went on, "there was reportedly the same madman causing a disturbance in the alley next to Crab, Nab, and Hawkin Law Firm, where he was boxed in by a police officer."

  "I can’t believe it. I was there yesterday!" Sewey scolded himself for not keeping a sharper eye out for the madman. He wished he had been there to catch him and be featured on the news.

  "Since there’s nothing going on here…" A stack of paper was thrown across the room in disgust, "I might as well go on to international news, and, surprise, surprise: the Activists for Gnome Equality are on the move again with marches in capitol Hildem."

  "Gnome equality, my foot," Sewey growled. Even though laws outside Dunce allowed gnomes, many outsiders were still vastly prejudiced against them, causing much controversy.

  "They stood outside for hours, waving ‘Gnomes are People too’ signs. Thankfully, resident senators from Dunce took care of the matter, and promptly set their dogs loose on the picketers."

  "A perfectly sensible idea!" Sewey nodded with satisfaction, proud that his senators were doing such a good job protecting his freedoms.

  Dan gave a giant guffaw. "Looks like the gnomes’ beards and pointy caps can’t help them this time! I can’t believe that creatures so small could cause such big problems! "

  "Small?" Sewey echoed, not sure he had heard Dan correctly. "Pointy caps? Beards? Well, the gnome that came to my house was certainly not small." Dan and the officer must not know their gnomes, he thought. He was so glad he was one of the smartest men in town, knowing all he did. He decided that there must be two types of gnomes—the tall and the small—and that Dan, the officer, and the rest of the world for that matter, were just confused.

  In fact, his wisdom was so distracting, he ran another red light. A car nicked his rear fender, sending the Schweezer soaring into a crosswalk and through oncoming traffic. An old woman leapt to safety, leaving her cane and wig behind; however, at just that moment, a gigantic ice-cream truck hurtled in Sewey’s direction.

  "Dah!" Sewey yelped, pulling on the wheel. Both vehicles swerved from each other in the nick of time. The truck teetered and rocked, tipping over so far that entire canisters of Vanilla Vonsway and Tattered Da-Chocolate tumbled into the street.

  Sewey swerved the Schweezer back onto his side of the road and weaved into the highway, turning Dan up even louder to drown out his overworked engine.

  "And for the top Mage-news story today! " Dan went on. "The Mages Council announced they would allow Mr.
Tomstone, a gnome, into the Guild of Historians! Can you believe it? I do—that’s what those mages are coming to these days…little, creeping, garden-planting rats!"

  Sewey and Dan both broke out into peals of laughter. Between chortles and chuckles, Sewey managed to glance at his rearview mirror.

  Suddenly, he went stiff. He took a second look at what was following him.

  "That’s odd," he said with a hint of fright. "It looks just like the black van I saw earlier!"

  Chapter 6

  Secret Letters

  The black van lurked behind Sewey’s car in the flow of traffic, on the side. Its windows were tinted darkly and he couldn’t see inside.

  He continued to drive, trying to ignore it. However, it appeared to be overtaking his mirror, as if it might run him off the road, chariot-races style. No matter how he weaved through the cars, the black van always seemed to be right behind him. Sewey’s first thought was that it might be an undercover police car, so he immediately looked away. But then he figured the driver of the van was probably in league with the gnome on the roof of his house last night.

  "The rude pig," Sewey sniffed. "As if ruining my evening wasn’t enough!"

  His revolver was in his briefcase, so while swerving through traffic with one arm, he used the other to dislodge the gun from one of the pockets, in case it might soon be needed.

  "Wait until Adi hears of this!" he snarled as he drove, keeping a cautious eye on the van.

  Sewey worked at the Third Bank of Dunce, sometimes simply known as the TBD. It was the only bank nearby, as the First and Second Banks of Dunce had already gone bankrupt. It sat in a row of buildings in the old downtown— one of many large and crumbling establishments, with a plain brick front, a plain wooden door, and a pair of plain columns. The gigantic clock above had been stuck at 3:14 for half a dozen years, but the building was so boring anyway that no one had bothered to fix it, because hardly anyone even noticed.

  Luckily, that was just the way Sewey liked it. When he had parked in his usual spot at the NO PARKING: TOW AWAY ZONE sign, he opened the car door very slowly and looked down the street. The very second he did, the black van passed.