Notebook for Fantastical Observations Read online

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  Promises I’ve broken:

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  My drawing of the most magical place to live:

  Sketches of exquisite metal jewelry handcrafted by dwarves:

  A picture of my left hand drawn with my right:

  A picture of my right hand drawn with my left:

  “We make our homes in the sparse forests left to us. Soon even those will be gone.”

  FROM BOOK 3: LUCINDA’S SECRET

  ELVES

  One night when Mandy and I were having a sleepover at her house, we got bored with watching videos on the little television on her dresser and with looking through fashion magazines.

  “I’m hungry,” I said.

  She looked up. “There’s nothing to eat here. You want to walk down to Quick Stop?”

  It was very, very late and we knew that we weren’t supposed to go out. Her parents were zonked out, though, her mom snoring gently, and we figured that no one would notice. We pulled on jackets and sweaters over our pajamas and tiptoed to the door.

  Outside it was warm and a little damp from dew. I took a deep breath of summer air and fresh-mown lawns. Mandy did a little dance in the middle of the empty road. It was weird to be out there in the middle of the night—as if, while everyone else was sleeping, the world was ours and ours alone.

  At the store we bought a package of doughnuts and two cans of soda and laughed at the way the clerk stared at our pajamas while we paid. Feasting as we walked back, we didn’t notice the music at first.

  It was almost discordant, almost noise, but there was something about the sounds that made them compelling. The notes were so pure, the melodies so beautiful, even as they crashed against one another.

  Mandy grinned and wiped off the powder that dusted her lapel. “Maybe it’s a band practicing.”

  “It’s probably just someone with a CD.” I pulled on her sleeve. “Let’s go home.” I didn’t know what or who it was, but I didn’t want to find out. I liked the feeling of being a little bad and sneaking out, but I wasn’t sure I wanted to hang out with some weird people I didn’t know. I just wanted to be with Mandy, drink soda, eat crappy food, and gossip.

  Mandy barely noticed me. She was already walking toward the wooded area that the music came from. I had no choice but to follow her.

  We walked for a while, the tall weeds soaking the hems of my pajama pants. The music swelled, but we still saw nothing.

  The summer breeze rustled the leaves of the trees and with it, I thought I heard a voice. “Come dance,” it called. “Come dance.”

  “I’m going back,” I said, but all I did was go no further. Mandy walked on. After a while, the music faded and I figured she’d come back, but she didn’t. I stood there and stood there. Finally I tried to follow the way she’d gone. I called her name, but she didn’t answer. Despite all my looking that night, the search parties that came later, the newspaper articles, and the backs of milk cartons, no one ever saw Mandy again.

  —Linda L.

  ANALYSIS: Elves sometimes dance in faerie rings. It is said that if a human joins their dance, he or she can be spirited away for years and sometimes forever. Often, a loose circle of toadstools will be the only evidence of the faerie dancing.

  —H. B. & T. D.

  A creature perfectly camouflaged to blend in with its environment:

  Here’s what else I know about it:

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  A list of friends I haven’t seen in a very long time:

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  A nighttime adventure I’ve had that my parents don’t know about:

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  Things I’ve cut apart or opened up to see what they’re made of:

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  Things I can do to help protect the environment and make sure faeries always have a home:

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  Leaf rubbings:

  Pictures of the weirdest bugs I’ve ever seen:

  Pictures of bugs that give me the creeps:

  “Fidirol, Fidirat!

  Catch a dog, catch a cat

  Skin it raw, skin the fat

  On the spit, turn like that

  Fidirol, Fidirat! ”

  FROM BOOK 2: THE SEEING STONE

  GOBLINS

  When my dad got a new job teaching at a university, we had to move to a town nearby it. It wasn’t that different from our old town, so my dad was surprised when the neighbors warned us about animals getting into our garbage cans. At the old house, sometimes squirrels would get into the trash if we put it out too early or something, but it wasn’t anything we had to be warned about. Mom said our neighbor must think we were city people or something and didn’t have any common sense.

  That was until we found our new plastic garbage can with the handles still locked and a hole gnawed in the side.

  “What could do that?” Mom asked.

  “Maybe raccoons,” I said.

  “Raccoons my a—,” said Dad.

  Mom frowned at him.

  “Sorry.” He looked at m
e.

  I grinned.

  We bought new cans, metal ones this time, and a Havahart trap big enough to catch a bobcat. Mom baited it with some gnawed-on chicken drumsticks from dinner the night before and we left it out by the garage where the trash cans rested when they weren’t sitting out at the curb.

  Nothing much happened that night, but when I got home from school the next day, I checked the trap. Inside was the hugest, most disgusting frog I’d ever seen. Its blubbery body actually pressed against the hatched metal sides of the cage. It rocked back and forth—something I didn’t think frogs could do—and when I walked closer, it turned its gold-flecked eyes in my direction.

  “Hey,” it said, voice rough and croaky. “Let me go.”

  “Mom!” I yelled, and ran for the house.

  She was washing carrots in the sink when I found her. I pulled her outside. We both looked at the giant frog.

  “It told me to let it go,” I said, feeling, I admit, like a bit of a tattler.

  She laughed. “It sure looks like it would say that, doesn’t it? Let’s just leave it alone until your father gets home. Maybe he’ll know what to do with it.”

  With that, Mom went back inside. As I turned back toward the cage, out of the corner of my eye I could have sworn I saw the frog smile and I could have sworn that it had a mouthful of sharp teeth.

  “I know you can talk,” I said.

  “I can,” said the frog. “Now let me out. The metal burns my skin. It is very ouchey.”

  “You bit a hole in our trash can,” I said.

  “No, no.” It bugged out its eyes even more. It might have been trying to make an innocent face, but it wasn’t doing a very good job. “Not me.”

  “Are there more of you?” I asked, looking around. “Did one of them do it?”

  “Maybe,” said the frog.

  I squatted down by the cage. There really did appear to be scorch marks striping the creature’s skin. “What ARE you?”

  “What will you give me if I tell you?” it rasped.

  “Nothing,” I said.

  It gurgled a little.

  I got up and brushed off my jeans like I was going to walk away.

  “Wait,” it croaked. “Goblin.”

  “What?”

  “I’m a goblin. Let me out and I’ll give you something.”

  “Give me what?” I asked. I was thinking of magic wishes, but I was also concerned that I might have to kiss that enormous green lump. There wasn’t much I wanted enough to put my lips on that. Then the first part of what it’d said filtered into my brain. “A goblin?”

  “How about me and my friends don’t bite your things. No eating cans or cats nothing.”

  “You eat cats?” I felt like all I was doing was repeating the last thing the goblin said.

  “Kittens better,” it said. “Not so chewy.”

  “I don’t think I should let you out,” I said. “You like kittens? Okay, I’ll promise not to eat any cats. Nothing from your house and no cats.”

  “Forever?” I asked.

  It grunted and groaned, but finally it said, “Forever.”

  I opened the latch and let it shuffle out. For a moment the shape shimmered and I thought I saw another shape, something still froggy, but more upright and with claws. Then it jumped into a patch of thick weeds at the border of our neighbor’s yard and disappeared from sight.

  Dad was disappointed, of course, but I told him that frogs didn’t have the teeth to bite through a garbage can and we couldn’t hold it without more than circumstantial evidence. My dad said I needed to stop watching cop shows.

  The goblin must have stuck to his side of the bargain because our trash was never troubled again, even when it was put out a day too soon or overripe with party trash. I saw lots more cats in the neighborhood and felt pretty good about that, at least until the day my neighbor’s pair of long-haired pet rabbits disappeared.

  —Devon L.

  ANALYSIS: Goblins are malicious scavengers that can be dangerous in groups. Luckily, this one seems to have been willing to strike a bargain.

  —H. B. & T. D.

  This creature might eat our trash:

  Here’s what else I know about it:

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  Things a goblin might use for teeth:

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  Things I like about visiting the dentist:

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  Creatures I’ve tried to catch:

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  Creatures I’ve caught:

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  Creatures I’ve caught accidentally:

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  Creatures I’m glad I haven’t caught:

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  My drawing of the cutest house pet imaginable:

  My drawing of the ugliest house pet imaginable:

  “The Case of the Missing Kitty ”

  A Goblin Mystery

  “Only a bunch of chuckleheads would mess with a wounded griffin.”

  FROM BOOK 2: THE SEEING STONE

  GRIFFINS

  When I was eleven, my older brother brought home two puppies. They were little white balls of curly fur with undershot teeth and tiny pink eyes. Some neighborhood dog had given birth and the owners were giving them away to any sucker that walked by. John hid the puppies up in his room, but Mom and Dad heard their little nails scratching over the wooden floors and busted him. They yelled and yelled, but he promised that he would walk them and feed them and train them. Finally, half-convinced, they looked over at me, lurking in the hallway, and asked what I thought. I told them that as long as the puppies weren’t allowed in my room, I didn’t care. I was afraid of dogs. I think my dad let John keep them mostly because I said that. My dad was big on confronting your fears.

  John got bored with the dogs fast. He named them Voltron and Vexxor and liked to chase them around the yard, but the only thing he ever taught them was how to jump high enough to bite your fingers and scratch your pants. My parents yelled at him, but it was in that half-hearted, I-told-you-so-but-what-can-I-do? way that meant he wasn’t really in that much trouble. It was around then that we figured out that Voltron was actually a girl. It turns out that she was going to have puppies of her own. Mom took both dogs over to get them “fixed” after the puppies were born, but by then, it was way too late.

  We soon had eight new puppies, meaning we had ten dogs total. They ran in a pack, peed on the furniture, and chewed up anything that hit the floor. In desperation, my parents locked them out in the backyard during the day with a couple of dog igloos. They ruled the lawn, digging pits in the dirt and fighting with one another until their white fur was muddy gray. At night, we had to bring them in because they barked so
much they would have kept the whole neighborhood awake. The dogs would run through the house, nipping at our fingers, fighting on top of our laps, and jumping onto the dining room table to eat any leftovers.

  I locked myself in my room. It was the only place I was safe.

  Then, one day, one of the dogs—Nibbles—went missing. He was just gone. The fence was still there, secure as ever, and there was no sign of a disturbance. My mother seemed worried, but I think she was just pretending. My dad didn’t bother.

  “Hopefully it won’t come back,” Dad said.

  John looked in all the holes and behind all the shrubs, but he couldn’t find the dog. The next day, another one was gone. The rest of the dogs seemed subdued, too, like they were worried.

  The next day another dog disappeared. Each day we lost another one. My brother’s distress grew.

  John accused our dad. “You’re doing this,” he said.

  Dad just laughed. “Kiddo, if I was going to get rid of those dogs, I wouldn’t bother doing it one at a time.”

  I sneezed, which was good because it covered my laugh. I was just getting a cold and was busy holding my mug of chicken soup above the reach of the remaining dogs.

  My brother made a face and whispered to me, “If Mom keeps you home tomorrow,” he said, “can you try and figure out what’s happening?”

  “I guess,” I said, thinking that if I didn’t, he would never know.

  But the next day, I found myself pretty curious. I was alone in the house—Mom had made me buttered toast and tea, then headed off to work—so I put on my robe and sat at the kitchen table and watched the dogs out the window. It would have been boring normally, but I was sick enough that that was about all I had the energy to do.

  Late in the afternoon I saw a shadow darken the lawn. Then a huge creature swooped down out of the sky, grabbed a dog in its claws, and flew off. It was massive, with a body like a lion and a head, wings, and talons like an oversized hawk.