Read Online Unlucky Charms (The Cold Cereal Saga) by Adam Rex - Free Book Online

scratched his face.
    “We could play a car game,” Polly whispered to Fi, in the corner.
    “What is a car game?” asked Fi. Polly considered how to answer, but she couldn’t think of any games that didn’t need at least one window to look out of.
    The unicat (who’d apparently forgotten what had happened last time) stalked Finchbriton. It crept close, its body low and discreet but its tall tail twitching like it was advertising the Grand Opening of a tire store. Then it crept too close, and Finchbriton whistled a puff of blue fire that lit the tips of its whiskers. They burned down like fuses and ignited a little explosion of activity as the cat leaped up, and back, and ran around and around the truck interior, full tilt and sticking its claws in everyone. Then it went to sleep.
    “You could tell me about how you got here,” Polly suggested, kind of softly, kind of not wanting the others to hear her asking. Fi didn’t respond right away, and she was on the verge of repeating herself when finally his voice descended like a deflating balloon.
    “The lady Morenwyn had been kidnapped,” he began. “Taken by her witch of a mother, the lady Fray.”

CHAPTER 6
    “Why was she a witch?” asked Polly.
    “She was a sorceress,” Fi answered. “The only one born in a generation. Pixie magic is rare, but powerful. We aren’t all possessed of little glimmers like the Fay.”
    “But why not call her a sorceress or … enchantress or something? Seems like a witch is just a sorceress who doesn’t get asked to parties.”
    “Do you want to hear this story?”
    “Sorry.”
    “One by one my brothers quested to rescue Morenwyn, and one by one they disappeared. Only I was left, so I hunted for a sea crow that Fray might once have used as a steed, and when I found such a creature I asked it to take me home to its mistress.”
    “You can talk to birds?” asked Polly.
    “Forsooth.”
    “Can you teach me to talk to birds?”

    “No,” said Prince Fi. “So: I flew north over the Irish Sea on the chough’s back, shivering from cold, shivering with the thrill that soon I would see my brothers again, and sable-haired Morenwyn. In my reverie I’d scarcely noticed that the bird was plunging down toward something jagged and dark rising out of the ocean, like a colossal bit of backbone. Then I saw this was a castle, larger and stranger than any I’d seen. It was squat and bowlegged, jutting up from a forsaken strip of rock and strutted with buttresses and staircases too monumental for any pixie. Blunt stone towers jutted out at impossible angles like new antlers. A web of windowpanes comprised the whole of one end of the fortress, as delicate as a snowflake but tall as a tree. The chough sailed toward it and might have taken me directly into Fray’s sitting room if I hadn’t the presence to leap off its back and onto the parapet.”
    “Parapet?”
    “Yes, parapet. The … toothy bits on the tops of castles.”
    “Oh, right.”
    “How I wished for the ancient times of story and song when the great Spirit had cloven the hours ’tween night and day. I might then have waited for cover of darkness before acting. Instead I steadied myself against the salty wind and vaulted over the parapet. I slid slowly down the sloping castle wall and caught hold of the first window ledge I encountered. And now I pried open the wide windows with my sword and tumbled into the warm scarlet bedchamber of the most alluring pixie woman on a thousand shores.
    “Morenwyn leaped to her feet and dropped her sewing. She had been mending some white sail or tent that lay curdled all about on the floor. Now she stood, tall and proud, brandishing her sewing needle. Her hair like a storm cloud, her face as rare as a night sky. The lost stars, remembered in her eyes.”
    Here Fi seemed suddenly to compose himself, and shift uncomfortably atop Polly’s ponytail.
    “So she was pretty?” asked Polly.
    “No, not pretty . Not merely pretty . She was the