The Badlings

Chapter 25. On the Importance of Doughnuts

The smallest kindnesses (or follies) can bring about the biggest fortunes (or disasters). If Grand didn't feed doughnuts to the ducks, they wouldn't have followed the trail of crumbs, found and destroyed Mad Tome, accidentally releasing the badlings. And if Bells didn't stop reading 'The Snow Queen' to Sofia, or if Peacock didn't rip Dracula, none of this would've happened.

Only it did.

And it wasn't over yet.

Bells sat stock-still in the shallow end of the pond. She was submerged to her waist, although she hardly registered this fact and the fact that the water was cold and the air was crisp—the air of a September morning. To her left was a tall skinny boy and to her right a petite girl, both staring ahead with vacant expressions.

Behind the boy sat Grand. "Um. Is this our duck pond?" He stirred up the water, gazing at the leaflets of duckweed floating in circles.

"Holy buckets," croaked Peacock a few children away. "I'm back." He absently raked his hair and stopped, frozen, then pulled a few strands down, looking at them cross-eyed. "My hair, it's my hair, my blue hair." He felt his teeth. "I'm not her anymore."

"Guys! Guys! We made it! We're out!" Rusty energetically sloshed over. His voice jolted Bells from her stupor.

"Rusty!" she cried, standing up. "You're not a monkey anymore!"

"I know! I kind of miss it, though."

"Can this be true? Did the ducks really do it?" She rubbed her eyes, to make sure the pond stayed in place. It did. It wasn't in a hurry to vanish.

"Look at all the badlings." Rusty swept his eyes over the kids. "Hey, guys. Cheer up. Mad Tome is gone!"

They didn't react, silent and still. The sight of them was unnerving, even spooky. At least a hundred of them sat along the shore, their faces blank, their reflections quivering in the pockets of dark water. Where it was deeper, more of them bobbed up and down, only their heads showing, their bodies submerged.

Rusty shivered, then immediately found a new reason to be giddy. "Grand! Peacock!" He waved at them. "Man, I thought I'd never see your faces again."

Elated at this bit of news, Bells quickly glanced at Peacock to make sure he was back to himself. Assured that he was, she demonstratively turned away, still miffed at him for implying that she stinks and for wanting to leave them at the last second.

She wrung out her ponytail and plodded over to Grand. "Hey, it worked. Just like you said it would. The ducks did it. I can't believe it. Can you believe it?"

"I guess." He stood. Rivers of water cascaded off his shoulders. He wiped his face and nodded at the motionless children. "I don't like this."

"Yeah, something is wrong," agreed Bells. "They're acting really weird." She looked back at the petite girl who sat still, ominously silent. "Let's get out of here. The water is freezing."

They clambered onto the shore. A piece of something dark lay half-buried in the dirt. Bells stooped to pick it up. It was a scrap of leather, flimsy and wet, patches of mushy cardboard stuck to it. She turned it over. What remained of ornate letters, shallow depressions once filled with golden paint but now empty, spelled two words.

"Aesop's Fables," she read. "It didn't lie to me after all."

"What's that? What did you find?" Rusty ran up to her.

Peacock trudged behind him. "Did you find another book?"

"No," said Bells, "I found what's left of Mad Tome." She gave it to Grand.