TEA WITH THE MIDNIGHT MONSTERS

MAX'S TURN

Pim gathered a pile of twigs, and Max mapped out the bunker on the floor of the flight cage. He had explored the tunnels for miles, for eighteen months, and now he knew the place by heart.

Pim and Millie studied the map, as he showed them where the synagogue was, where to find the trap door -- that led to a stairwell, down down down -- that led to a tunnel that led on for miles to another trap door -- down down down -- to one last tunnel that led to a some kind of construction site; a sandhog site.

The "sandhogs" were -- and continue to be -- the men who built the city's underground; urban miners responsible for all the city's tunnels, all the train tracks, sewage pipes, waterways, building foundations; anything and everything underground.

"I think they were building a subway," Max said. "It looks like they might have quit. I don't know."

There he had buried a dynamite stick.

So once they found the dynamite stick, they had to come back and follow the Main to its last left. They'd take the last left and follow a set of old tracks until they came to a dead end wall.

This was the wall with the hole inside, the wall that belonged to somewhere else, Max said, to a city building and not the bunker.

"I dug a hole in the wall with a spoon," Max said. "It took me four months. The dynamite stick will fit in the hole. Put it in the hole and light it up."

"So blow up the wall and leave through the wall?" Pim asked. "Get out through the wall? That's the plan?"

"That's it," said Max. Sometimes escapes are as simple as that. "The wall is a part of another building. I'm sure of it. It's made from stone. Like they hit it by mistake when they built this place."

"Well, why not?" Pim said, shrugging. "We might as well try. There's nothing to lose."

"Except your lives," Max said, and smiled wryly, and the sunbeam began to dim. "Well, we're about to turn," he said. "Turn" was the word they used for "change," for when they turned into monsters at night. With his hand, Max mussed the ground so the Crumbs wouldn't see the map. "I wouldn't watch us if I were you," he warned the siblings of the turn.

"Why? Is it gruesome?" Millie asked. "When you transform? Is it painful?"

"Not so much," Max said, "it's more like a pressure. You feel like one of those long balloons at birthday parties? The kind that get twisted into a dog or a sword or something."

"Do you choose your own creature? In your mind?"

Max smiled at Pim. Millie was funny. "How would you choose?"

"I don't know. Close your eyes and will yourself?" She looked at Pim. "I wonder what you and I would be, if we ate the turnips."

Pim glared at his little sister. "You sound as if you'd like to try."

Millie shrugged. "I won't pretend I'm not curious..."

"Well, do pretend, Mills. We're human beings. We're not monsters. We're human, with human hearts and minds. And bodies. We should stay this way."

Millie looked at her shoes, then at Max. "I'd love to fly. My father flew."

Pim glared at her furiously. Ben had also died flying. "Well, I'm fine with my feet on the ground, and you should be, too."

And then it happened.

The last of the light evaporated, and Max gripped the bars and started to tremble. Pim walked off and shut his eyes tight. "Don't look," he mumbled to himself.

But Millie kept her eyes open. She wanted to see the transfiguration. And anyway, she thought, the void had suddenly turned so dark, surely it would spare her the gorier detail.

But the blast door was open and the light was good.

Transformation is an interesting thing.

We start out as babies, and then we transform. We grow a little in lots of ways. Our arms and legs stretch. Our feet grow wide and long. Our heads expand. Our hair turns lighter or darker, and grows...

But we fail to notice these changes daily. Sometimes we notice when our pants don't fit, or our shoes feel too tight, or our dress stops short, and our mother decides it's scandalous and must be sent to a younger cousin...

In time, we realize that growth was happening all along, but in the moment, we're not aware. The children, however, were perfectly aware and transformed entirely in less than two minutes.

Millie watched as Max's shoes and socks withered. Then all that was plump -- the water, flesh, fat -- shrunk as if sucked by the ether through straws -- leaving only skin and bones. Then suddenly scales, tiny and yellow, sprouted from his skin, rough and flaking, and his toes grew smaller and then disappeared.

Can you imagine?

Can you imagine watching toes -- your friend's toes -- shrink and shrink until they vanished?

Three new toes grew out from each foot -- six all together -- four inches long -- and curled into the shape of a claw. His toenails grew, too, a whole inch long, and tapered to points.

And while Millie was gaping at Max's strange feet, his nose curved down and formed a beak; his face broke out into thousands of feathers and his eyeballs grew to the size of apples.

In his back, his scapula bones opened out and grew into the shape of wings. They burst with feathers, while a five-foot long tail sprang from the bottom of his now curved spine. With rooster legs and body and head, the eyes of a toad, and eagle wings, and last, the tail of a jungle python -- Max finally looked up and blinked.

"Done," he said.

"What are you?" asked Millie.

"A basilisk."

She smiled, awed. "You're marvelous!" He was a handsome monster. "Pim!" she called. "Max is amazing. You're amazing. Pim, you can look!"

But Pim was still hiding his face in his hands.