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

dream of the world. She looked down on me, kneeling in the folds of that white tent, or sail, and sighed.
    “‘And finally Fi,’ she said. ‘Goody.’
    “‘Lady.’ I bowed.
    “‘That’s the last of the princes, now. Who’s next after you lot, the dukes? Are the dukes going to rescue me next? Just tell me how long I’ve got before it’s butlers and washerwomen.’
    “‘Lady,’ I said. ‘I am here for my brothers, and for you, if you need a champion. Do you need a champion?’
    “Morenwyn covered her plum mouth then, with her fingers. ‘You’re asking?’
    “‘I am asking if you require rescuing.’
    “I didn’t get my answer,” Fi told Polly, “not then. For the window beside me shattered, and the white hand of a giant yanked me out by my cloak. I was whipped through the air, half choking, and understood that Morenwyn was mending neither sail nor tent as a shirtless monster of a man dangled me in front of his thick, bovine face.

    “He was on the tallest landing of a staircase outside her bedroom. It sickened me that he’d been watching us there.
    “‘Gentle!’ Morenwyn called from the window. ‘Don’t hurt him!’
    “‘Won’t.’ The giant grinned. ‘Much.’
    “‘I like to think,’ I rasped, ‘that she was talking to me.’ And then I reached as high as I could and drove my sword beneath the giant’s black fingernail.
    “He howled and I dropped, holding my shield like a canopy above me to slow my fall. I caught hold of his leg on the way down and slid into the rolled cuff of his pants, where I huddled and waited. It was nauseating, being lurched this way and that as the giant turned about on the slick bricks, searching for me. He peered over the edge of the landing to the rocks below.
    “‘Where he go?’ the monster bellowed. ‘You see?’
    “I heard Morenwyn say, ‘Sorry, Nim, lost track.’
    “The monster rushed off and wist not that he had a passenger. He took me to the mouth of a dry sea cave and down beneath that cathedral of rock, to a fire pit where sat four other giants in queer and mismatching dress.
    “‘Pixie man!’ my giant, Nim, told them. ‘Help me find!’
    “Three of the giants jumped to attention and made ready to follow. A fourth giant, wearing only his undergarment, hesitated. Nim took a serious tone.
    “‘You come also, Rudesby. New ones must come when Nim say.’
    “When this Rudesby spoke, his language was strange, the accent unfamiliar.
    “‘Pleez.’ He seemed to plead. ‘Aye juhst haave too tahlk too thaat tynee wumman. Aye dohnt beelahng heer!’
    “Nim grappled with Rudesby and pulled him along by the ear, and that’s when I jumped free of his pant leg, dashed across the sand, and tucked myself into the shadows until they were gone.
    “‘Pleez!’ Rudesby struggled as Nim led him aboveground, his voice getting washed out by the sea air. ‘Aye juhst wahna goh hohwm !’
    “I ventured deeper into the cave, this cave that must form a hollow under Fray’s castle, then scrambled up a set of steep and rough-hewn steps until I noticed another staircase of pixie proportions running parallel to the first. I climbed for an age, toward faint light. Finally I came to find a kind of metal grate, albeit one so large I could just squeeze up through its openings, and found above it the largest room I have ever seen.
    “I think you’d call it vast even by human measure. Vast enough to hold hundreds of humans, or even to play a match of that sport of yours, with the basket and the ball?”
    “Basketball,” said Polly.
    “Yes. Basket and ball. What is the sport called?”
    “It’s called basketball. That’s what we call it.”
    “Ah, of course. You are the poets of the new world. So: I could see that the castle was immense on my approach to the island, but never could I have guessed that below Morenwyn’s bedchamber it housed little more than one cavernous void, lit on its end by the tall leaded window I’d seen outside. Here was a room