This Isn't What It Looks Like (7 page)

Hear Ye! Hear Ye!

All lads and lasses of the
Xxxxx School are hereby summoned to
Her Majesty’s court at the
Renaissance Faire on Friday, October
10.

Be there, or a pox be upon you!
Prize for best costume will be awarded by
Queen Elizabeth herself.

School Field Trip sponsored by Medieval Days Family Restaurants.

Eat, Drink, and Be Medieval!

The yellow flyer showed a picture of a pair of knights jousting on horseback.

Max-Ernest shook his head. “Why doesn’t anybody ever know the difference between Renaissance and medieval?” he muttered to
himself. “They’re almost exact opposites—”

The Xxxxx School visited the Renaissance Faire every fall; it was the first big event of the season, coming about a month
after the start of school.
Usually Max-Ernest was excited for Ren-Faire. He’d never worn a costume, but he always found something to be interested in:
whether it be solving obscure Renaissance riddles or distinguishing between English and Italian styles of armor. This year,
he couldn’t have been less interested in the annual field trip. As far as he was concerned, with Cass’s life on the line,
it was no time for merriment. And if he absolutely had to take a trip to the Renaissance, he would have preferred that it
be to the real Renaissance—so he could retrieve Cass in person. That is, assuming she’d made it all the way back to the Jester’s
time and hadn’t gotten stuck at her mother’s high school prom.

Anything, however, would have been preferable to the trip he was currently embarked on.

It was the first day of school, and Max-Ernest was standing still in the hallway, stalling, while chattering students strode
past him. Eventually he tore himself away from the bulletin board and stepped nervously into the administration office.

Behind the counter was a woman he didn’t recognize. She was chewing gum—against school rules, Max-Ernest noted silently—and
painting her fingernails.

“Hi,” he said, his voice louder than intended. “I’m—”

“Max-Ernest, I know—Mrs. Johnson is waiting for you,” said the woman in a nasally New York accent, not looking up.

“Oh. Um, who are you?”

“New school secretary,” she said, popping a bubble. “Name is Opal. Like the rock.” The secretary dangled her hand in front
of Max-Ernest, showing off a gold ring inset with a milky, iridescent stone.

“Er, nice to meet you…?”

“Likewise, I’m sure.” She pronounced it
shoo-ah
.

Max-Ernest didn’t know what to think of the new secretary. Even sitting down, Opal was very tall, and she had a big head of
blond curly hair that made her look even taller. Her hands were exceptionally large, and her face wore a seemingly permanent
smirk punctuated by a sizable mole on her right cheek. All in all, not a very reassuring presence.

“You sure she’s not too busy?” Max-Ernest asked hopefully. “I’m sure there’s a ton of stuff she needs to do. Maybe I should
come back tomorrow. Yeah, that’s a good idea—how ’bout that?”

“Sorry, Max-Ernest. No such luck.”

Was it his imagination or was she stifling a laugh?

Max-Ernest took a tentative step in the direction
of the principal’s door. The last time he’d seen Mrs. Johnson she had told him she never wanted to see him again. And for
good reason. He and Cass and Yo-Yoji had stolen Mrs. Johnson’s family heirloom, the Tuning Fork, and blackmailed her to boot.
(It all had been for the noble purpose of saving Cass’s mother’s life, but that certainly didn’t matter to Mrs. Johnson.)
He would be lucky to leave her office with a semester’s worth of detention; expulsion was more likely.

“She said not to knock,” Opal added brightly. “Just walk right in.”

Max-Ernest nodded weakly. His throat felt dry, his palms sweaty. Finally, he steeled himself and turned the doorknob.

“Max-Ernest, for shame! Didn’t anyone ever teach you to knock?”

“Uh, sorry… Mrs. Johnson,” Max-Ernest stammered, silently cursing the new secretary. It appeared that she had set him up.

“
We
will be most satisfied if you address us as Your Majesty, please,” said Mrs. Johnson in an exaggerated English accent. “Well,
don’t just stand there, come in.”

Max-Ernest couldn’t help gaping. He almost
didn’t recognize the woman standing in front of a full-length mirror. In place of her usual polyester pantsuit and matching
hat she was wearing a long velvet gown and a rhinestone tiara. A black stone pendant on a black velvet ribbon hung around
her neck; it was shaped like an inverted eye and polished to a glossy sheen.

“I, or rather
we
, will be Queen Elizabeth this year at the Renaissance Faire. And as you see, you have interrupted us in our royal chambers.
Normally, the punishment for such an offense would be death.”

“Sorry, Mrs…. I mean, Your Majesty.”

“Much better. So, tell me what you think of the dress. Too plain? Too gaudy? It has only just arrived from the tailor.”

“Um…” Max-Ernest looked down, unsure how to answer the question.

When he looked up, he gasped out loud. The pendant she was wearing appeared to be floating in the air.

“It’s a magnet,” said Mrs. Johnson, following Max-Ernest’s eyes.

Oh, that explained it. Sort of.

The magnet was pointing directly at him. Or rather at the Tuning Fork in his pocket, he thought.

“A very
strong
magnet,” she added. “It attracts
and absorbs all negative energies. It has transformed my, I mean,
our
life.”

She patted the pendant and it settled back against her chest.

“You see, something terribly important has happened to us. We have received a message from… ourselves.”

Before Max-Ernest could ask what that meant or declare that it made no sense or even ask just what message she had received,
she continued: “And we went on a journey to a land far, far away. We call it the
I—.
”

Max-Ernest didn’t think he’d heard her correctly. “The
I love me
?”

“Well, there is that play on words, yes. But what we said was: the
Isle of Me
. The island of pure self that lies within us all… And what sent us on this trip from us to us, you ask?” She paused for emphasis.
“The answer is:
you.
You and your friends.”

“Me… er, us?”

Mrs. Johnson nodded. “In your own way, you’ve done me a favor.”

Carefully adjusting her dress, she sat down behind her desk, a principal once more.

“After you took the Tuning Fork, I went through
a kind of withdrawal and I realized that the Fork had been ruling me—that I wasn’t the master of my own isle, so to speak,”
she explained, dropping the royal “we” and the English accent at the same time. “It was time to put the
I
back in
me
.”

“You mean the letter
I
? There is no
I
in
me
,” said Max-Ernest, who was struggling valiantly to follow along. “Or do you mean put
the E-Y-E back in me
?” he asked, looking at the eye-shaped pendant hanging from her neck.

“Whichever. Both. I was speaking figuratively,” said Mrs. Johnson impatiently. “Somehow, I knew the Tuning Fork would come
back to me. And I wanted to be ready when it did. ‘What force could protect me?’ I asked
I
. What would draw the Tuning Fork away from me even as I was drawn to the Tuning Fork? And do you know what
I
told me was the answer to my problems?”

“A magnet?” Max-Ernest guessed, taking a seat opposite the principal. It was indisputably odd that the subject of magnets
would be brought up by both Pietro and Mrs. Johnson in the space of two days, but Max-Ernest had a hunch this was the answer
she was looking for.

“Very good.” Mrs. Johnson looked impressed
and at the same time slightly disappointed, as if she’d been hoping to provide the answer herself.

“Naturally, being the principal of a magnet school, I had considered the significance of magnets before. But I had never considered
they might have a personal application,” Mrs. Johnson continued.
^*
“And lo and behold, what should I find in my attic? In a box of things that belonged to my Great-Great-Great-Aunt Clara?
The same woman to whom the Tuning Fork belonged, incidentally? The one everybody says was a witch?”

“The magnet?”

“That’s right—the very magnet I am wearing around my neck.”

She held up the pendant for Max-Ernest’s inspection. At close range, it seemed to be some sort of black stone with a thin
vein of gold running through it.

“I have decided no longer to be ashamed of my ancestor but to embrace her memory,” continued Mrs. Johnson. “It may be there
is much to learn from her so-called witchcraft…. Now, I cannot wait any
longer. Do you have the Tuning Fork? I take it that’s why you wanted to see me.”

She looked anxiously at him, craning her neck, inspecting his pockets for bulges, trying to peek into his schoolbag.

“Yeah, it’s right here, Mrs. Johnson.”

This time she didn’t bother to correct him on the name.

As soon as Max-Ernest brought out the Tuning Fork, Mrs. Johnson’s eyes were drawn to it—as if her eyes were magnets themselves.

The pendant around her neck was floating again, straining against the chain. Max-Ernest, meanwhile, felt an invisible force
pulling him toward the principal.

“You see its power—?” She gasped.

Tearing her gaze away from the Tuning Fork, she stood up and walked around her desk to Max-Ernest. “We will make a circuit,
you and I,” she said, grasping him by the hand and pulling him out of his seat. “We will draw out all the negative energy
and create a positive flow.”

Positive or negative, all Max-Ernest could think about was that he and the principal were holding hands.
Holding hands!
He gritted his teeth and prepared to wait it out.

At least it looked like he wouldn’t be expelled.

B
ack on your feet, gents! Do not tarry, m’ladies.”

The knights and the footmen, the lords and the ladies, and the entire procession reassembled relatively quickly, albeit grumblingly,
after the robbery—rather as if it all had happened before. Cass got the sense that the masked woman and her band of thieves
regularly set upon travelers in the area—like bandits who staked out stagecoach routes in the Old West.

Miraculously, nobody appeared to have been hurt in the fracas.

Cass slipped in among the last of the footmen and was soon following the procession down the road in the direction, she hoped,
of the King’s palace—and of the Jester himself.

The trip took hours and the procession became increasingly bedraggled. Sweat trickled down noses and made shirts stick to
backs. Mud splattered breeches and filled soldiers’ boots. Humans and animals alike complained of aches and pains, thirst
and hunger. Despite her ghostly state, even Cass was beginning to feel the toll.

Eventually, however, the bumpy road gave way to smooth stone, and the wild countryside was replaced by carefully tended gardens.
A matching formality overtook the procession. Backs stiffened, soldiers fell
into stride with each other, flags were held erect. The lords and ladies or whoever they were in the finer clothing stopped
and primped themselves.

Even before she saw it, Cass knew they were nearing the palace.

While the palace was not a white and sparkling fairy-tale castle on a hill, nor an austere fortress with a moat and a drawbridge,
it was nonetheless grand, and certainly it was very impressive to Cass. A vast redbrick edifice, it stretched out on either
side the length of several city blocks and boasted row after row of white-framed windows that blinked in the flickering sunlight
like hundreds of eyes on an enormous face.

After the procession had passed through the palace’s outer gates and into its expansive grounds, some of the soldiers and
footmen peeled away, presumably heading for their barracks, while others escorted the more important travelers toward the
twin towers that buttressed the palace’s arched front entrance.

Cass shivered, reminding herself that she had nothing to be afraid of—except failing her mission. She peered through the Double
Monocle into the courtyard that lay beyond the entrance. A group of dignitaries waited. Could the Jester be among them?

Woof woof! Ruff ruff! Bow wow! Yap yap! Grrrrrrrrr…
^*

Cass was about to follow the others past the lines of royal guards and into the palace’s interior courtyard when she was suddenly
descended upon by a dozen barking beagles. The beagles nipped angrily at her heels, somehow sensing that the invisible girl
was an interloper, unwelcome on royal grounds.
^**

A tired-looking man in leather breeches—their trainer, Cass guessed—trotted up to the beagles.

“Terrence? Bailey? Hunter? What are you little gits up to? Found a groundhog, have you? Or another partridge fallen?” he asked
solicitously, almost as if the dogs were his master and not the other way around. “No need to fight over the spoils. Plenty
of delicious treats waiting for you in the kennels! Come on now, quit your barking.”