Geek Fantasy Novel Read online

  GEEK

  FANTASY NOVEL

  BY E. ARCHER

  SCHOLASTIC PRESS

  FOR THE GEEKS,

  AND EVERYTHING THEY BECOME

  Contents

  Cover

  Title Page

  A GEEK FAMILY TREE

  BOOK I: BORING (BUT IMPORTANT)

  CHAPTER I

  CHAPTER II

  CHAPTER III

  CHAPTER IV

  CHAPTER V

  CHAPTER VI

  CHPTER VII

  CAPTER VIII

  CHAPTER IX

  CHAPTER X

  CHAPTER XI

  CHAPTER XII

  CHAPTER XIII

  CHAPTER XIV

  BOOK II: CECIL’S WISH: FAIRY REBELLION

  CHAPTER XV

  CHAPTER XVI

  CHAPTER XVII

  CHAPTER XVIII

  CHAPTER XIX

  CHAPTER XIX (CONTINUED)

  CHAPTER XX

  CHAPTER XXI

  CHAPTER XXII

  CHAPTER XXIII

  CHAPTER XXIV

  CHAPTER XXV

  CHAPTER XXVI

  CHAPTER XXVII

  CHAPTER XXVIII

  CHAPTER XXIX

  BOOK III: DAPHNE’S WISH: THE SNOW QUEEN

  CHAPTER XXX

  CHAPTER XXXI

  CHAPTER XXXII

  CHAPTER XXXIII

  CHAPTER XXXIV

  CHAPTER XXXV

  CHAPTER XXXVI

  CHAPTER XXXVII

  CHAPTER XXXVIII

  CHAPTER XXXIX

  CHAPTER XL

  CHAPTER XLI

  CHAPTER XLII

  CHAPTER XLIII

  CHAPTER XLIV

  CHAPTER LXV

  BOOK IV: BEATRICE’S WISH: THE UNDERWORLD

  CHAPTER XLVI

  BOOK V: THE PRIVATE LIVES OF NARRATORS

  CHAPTER XLVII

  BOOK IV: BEATRICE’S WISH: THE UNDERWORLD

  CHAPTER XLVIII

  CHAPTER XLIX

  CHAPTER L

  CHAPTER LI

  HOW PURGATORY GOES

  CHAPTER LII

  CHAPTER LIII

  CHAPTER LIV

  CHAPTER LV

  CHAPTER LVI

  CHAPTER LVII

  CHAPTER LVIII

  CHAPTER LIX

  CHAPTER LX

  BOOK V: THE PRIVATE LIVES OF NARRATORS

  CHAPTER LXI

  CHAPTER LXII

  CHAPTER LXIII

  CHAPTER LXIV

  NARRATOLOGICAL GUILD NOTE

  ROYAL NARRATOLOGICAL GUILD TECHNICAL REVIEW BOARD: SUMMER SESSION EMERGENCY ADDITIONAL MEETING

  Copyright

  A GEEK FAMILY TREE

  BOOK I:

  BORING

  (BUT IMPORTANT)

  CHAPTER I

  Wishes are dangerous.

  Or at least that’s what Ralph’s parents had always told him. After all, why should a random fairy grant a child power out of nowhere, because, say, the child had wastefully tossed a coin into a fountain? Childhood, Ralph’s parents informed him, was all about learning your limits, not learning your limits only to break them in one spectacular moment for all the wrong reasons.

  Ralph believed his parents. But he remained curious.

  His parents kept the family tree hidden under their bed, wedged so far behind the dusty holiday decorations that Ralph had to be careful not to set off the dancing Santa when he sneaked it out. He’d creep back to his bedroom, secret himself under his superhero comforter, and tremulously unfold the parchment. It was a lengthy and complicated thing, as trees go, with many wild touches. Branches ended abruptly, marked with skulls and crossbones and labeled with cryptic phrases like NASTY CAULDRON INCIDENT or WHOOPS — DANGLING MODIFIER or WHUMP BY DRAGONTAIL? All until it got to the most recent century, where the deaths were labeled with words that still sounded magical but were actually commonplace, like ANEURYSM and METASTASIS.

  Steve and Mary Stevens were not the sort of parents to make a lot of rules. They didn’t need to, because their son wasn’t the sort of boy to need them. Ralph had always been a peaceful child. Some might even have called him happy. But had anyone sat him down and asked him whether such a thing were true (which, incidentally, no one ever had), that person would have discovered that he was an awfully serious boy. He would have replied that he’d always felt directionless — that even the most clever of minds couldn’t piece his life together in such a way as to produce meaning.

  And Ralph certainly didn’t have the most clever of minds, much as he may have believed otherwise. In a boy of average looks and below average athletic ability, cleverness was simply the one attribute relatives could find to compliment him on. So his self-esteem grew a little out of whack. Seven years old: He challenged the Ukrainian kid in his class to a lunchtime game of chess, dared Becky Phister to finish the Belgian Bears books before he did, and argued passionately with his teacher that Portland was the capital of Oregon. Ralph failed in all these things: The Ukrainian kid trotted out a textbook four-move checkmate, Becky Phister finished The Last Strudel while Ralph was still on Boofer Makes a Bungle, and his teacher made him look up the capital of Oregon. Which was, in fact, Salem.

  Despite such defeats, Ralph had something many of his classmates did not have: permission to make mistakes. Ralph’s mother and father never punished him when his so-called cleverness led him astray — as when, for example, vapors from his homemade chem lab eroded the floorboards and caused the dining room to tumble into the basement. They were, in fact, endlessly tolerant — except when it came to their one ironclad rule:

  Ralph must never, ever, make a wish. Not under any circumstances whatsoever.

  As a result, for the first nine years of his life, Ralph was blissfully unaware of what his peers were doing whenever they spied the first star of the night or caught an eyelash or ripped apart a turkey’s Y-shaped furcula.

  Once fifth grade came around, though, the school calendar finally shook out in the right way that he could celebrate his birthday on the very first day of class. His parents sent him to school with two dozen chocolate-frosted cupcakes, along with a sealed note to his teacher informing her that while the Stevenses were happy to provide treats for Ralph’s birthday celebration, he was to sit out in the hallway for the whole thing. The risk of someone’s adding a candle and peer-pressuring him into making a wish was too great.

  The first day of school is an ordeal for anyone, but it was especially hard for Ralph, who had to wait in the hall staring at a SCHOOL is COOL poster (a bespectacled worm emerging from an apple) while everyone inside ate his cupcakes. His humiliation only grew when he found out that, while he was outside, Johnny Keenes had gotten into the secret pocket of Ralph’s backpack and pilfered the portrait of a level-eight paladin, whom Ralph had spent a great amount of time sketching in case he ever came across anyone willing to play a role-playing game with him. The character’s life story was written on the back, and was soon lampooned in Bic graffiti and pasted on the wall of the classroom, where a stream of cupcake-eating cretins shuffled past and made fun of the missing birthday boy’s hero. Sir Laurelbow was of a forgotten order of Lamp Knights responsible for journeying the realm and spreading their light, both ideologically and literally (ha ha!), following a lonely quest until the day the Lamp Knights would rise again, aided by the Priestesses of Julanisthra (Julanisthra! Geek!), should they ever be awakened from their slumber by the suitable sequence of magical runes ((Magical runes! Woot, woot!).

  When Ralph returned and saw his hero smeared with marker and spit-balls and chocolate icing, he ran from the room, seeking refuge in the nurse’s office. Through the glass cylinder of tongue depressors he could spy a corner of the infirmary door’
s chicken-wire window, at which Johnny Keenes regularly found reason to peer, sneer, and leer “Sir Laurelbow!” before bolting away. Laurelbow, Ralph thought angrily. Why couldn’t I have named him Sir Commando? Sir Heart of Steel?

  Once he got home, Ralph typed out a spreadsheet of arguments he could draw from to convince his parents how very cruel they had been. Foremost among them, of course: If they’d let him make a stupid wish, he’d have been saved massive humiliation and pain.

  The Stevenses read the spreadsheet, listened politely to their son’s accompanying rant, served him a pair of chocolate-frosted cupcakes Mary had placed in the bread box that morning precisely in case Ralph had felt left out at school, then gave him the Talk.

  The real reasons for his parents’ wish prohibition was far more gruesome than anything Ralph had anticipated. Wishes, they told him, had destroyed many of his ancestors. Those who hadn’t been destroyed were maimed, crippled, hobbled, enfeebled, deranged, or made to disappear. The examples they used to make their case were certainly graphic. Margaret Battersby (b. 1750, d. I76I) had wished for money and wound up with a coin-shaped tunnel through her body after a gold piece was shot at her from a cannon. Xavier Battersby (b. 1752, d. I76I) had wished for his sister back, wound up with Evelyn’s rotting backside affixed to his own, and died of infection. Amy Qualin (b. I8I9, d. I84I) had wished for children and wound up financially ruined when she was deeded an orphanage built over a sinkhole. Rupert Battersby (b. I830, d. I894) had wished for peace in Europe, and caused Prussia to disappear entirely. Sigmund Seinhold (b. I899, d. I9I7) had wished to be better at rugby and kicked a ball so hard at his next game that it disemboweled three teammates. Bethany Heald (b. 1940, d. 1949) had wished for magic ponies, gone on a long quest to find them, and finally wound up squashed beneath magic ponies.

  The ends of most wishes, the Stevenses finished sadly, were less dramatic but equally tragic. The child never returned, forever lost on a quest to obtain his or her heart’s desire.

  Thoroughly swayed by his parents’ parade of gruesome examples, Ralph gave up on wishes and settled on hard drives instead. He played as many computer games as he could, tinkering with them and developing his own mods and maps and dungeons. He even, unbeknownst to anyone else, applied to the holy grail of jobs, the only job that he’d ever really, really wanted: video game designer.

  Not a programmer, mind you, but a designer: the guy who dreams it up and puts it all together, then sees his vision fulfilled by millions of kids mashing buttons at his command. And not at just any company — at MonoMyth, the one with all the coolest licenses and long-running franchises, designed simultaneously for all platforms. MonoMyth had famously employed a teenager to develop the bestselling Goddess of Misery line of console games, and Ralph was sure that someday he could best even that.

  Yes, Ralph was only fourteen. But he had a programming portfolio to dream of, a sheaf full of game concepts inked into bent spiral notebooks, and a flash drive’s worth of code. What had the ad in the back of Computer Gamer said?

  MonoMyth seeking designer with intimate knowledge of the electronic gaming industry, 3—4 years programming experience, and employment history reflective of capacity to helm high-profile projects.

  Check, check, check. Surely the genius of Ralph’s ideas would make up for his lack of any employment history beyond mowing lawns! He assembled all his samples (they filled a shoebox that he wrapped in brown paper and banded twice over in packing tape) and mailed them off well before the deadline.

  The MonoMyth rejection letter, a fuzzy photocopied slip of paper addressed to “applicant,” suggested he reapply as an entry-level software coder. At the bottom of the letter was a scrawled blue consolation:

  Appreciate the breadth of your work, but find that your otherwise adequate preparation would be assisted by more life experience. Attending high school, for example. Suggest you steer your efforts in less derivative directions.

  Derivative! Who could find the Green Wizards of Cartesia derivative, or the subtle group dynamics of The Elementalists? Could anyone read his description of the final boss fight in The Chosen Four and not realize that gamers having to hit Lord Lavish’s thighs in order to kill him was the most unexpected development in gaming history?

  Derivative, indeed! More life experience, indeed!

  Ralph was about to wish some very bad things upon the men and women of MonoMyth, but stopped himself just in time.

  No wishes.

  And no job.

  A murky, geeky despair filled his soul.

  CHAPTER II

  Luckily (or not so luckily, depending on whom you ask), another letter arrived the day after the horribly thin envelope from MonoMyth. It was a card from the long-lost British side of Ralph’s family. He’d never received a card before! He raced back from the mailbox, put his backpack down on the kitchen table, and read the card over ramen noodles and Cocoa Puffs.

  Ralph,

  I hear from my Cecil, who happened to do a web search on you and found your “blog” (sp?), that not only are you alive and well (we never hear a peep from your parents — are they scared of us?), but that you’re applying to design your own games! You must feel so very proud of yourself, to have developed so interestingly despite such murderously dull parents…. I do hope that you don’t mind that I wrote that. One never knows quite how to phrase things in such situations. I know it’s been a long time since you’ve seen us, but in any case we have a request. We’ve moved back into our remote old castle (little Daphne calls it a “chateau,” as if she’s ever really seen one, can you imagine?), and the walls are crumbly and the electricity’s bad, but nonetheless we’re intrepidly trying to get a wireless network set up! Do you smell a challenge? We need someone to come and be our “tech guy” for the summer — sound like anything you’d be interested in? I imagine you have to set your charming games in castles all the time — you could call it research. We’d pay, of course, your travel expenses and beyond. I’ve purchased you an open-date ticket (redemption info enclosed).

  I know we could get someone nearby to do it. But honestly — can you imagine a local bloke being any good at this stuff? I can’t, either. And my own children live in the clouds.

  All best,

  Your Aunt(ie),

  Gert Battersby

  Had Ralph allowed himself to believe in fantastic fulfillments of fate, he might have seen the timely receipt of the card as evidence of some higher power. But as it stood, he saw Gert’s card as a lucky break.

  He emailed immediately and accepted her offer.

  Then he wondered how (or if) he was going to tell his parents….

  CHAPTER III

  After confirming his departure time with the airline and making sure he had enough allergy medication for the trip, Ralph went to face his parents. The Stevenses lived in an imposing but slipshod mansion of recent construction, purchased not through their public school teachers’ pensions (no, no), but with funds skimmed off the extensive coffers of Mary’s extended family, a family that included the aforementioned British aristocracy.

  As retired schoolteacher parents so often do, Mary and Steve had settled in the front room to read: Steve his paper, Mary a novel about a young woman who challenges conventions but realizes in the end that family is the most important thing. Mary’s book was from the library; the cellophane covering the call number had partially peeled away, and she slid it between her fingers as she read, rubbing away flakes of old glue.

  Yawn.

  I’m not trying to slight Mr. and Mrs. Steven Stevens, understand. But remark on this — I’ve given them boring names (I couldn’t go with their true names — they never sent back a release form to be included in this book). They’re boring people. Don’t get too attached to them, because our tale will be rid of them at the first opportunity.

  I’ve been improper. I promise not to butt in ever, ever again.

  When Ralph came in, Mary was more than ready to put her book down and engage in some reassuringly dull f
amily conversation. She balanced the novel on the slipcover of the armrest and greeted her only son.

  “Greetings, Mom. Greetings, Dad,” Ralph said.

  Steve grunted and maintained his focus on his paper. It was his most reliable trick, to seem to ignore conversation while following it intently, so that when he finally said something it would emerge pre-written, as if spoken with semicolons.

  “So what’s going on?” Ralph asked.

  We’ll skip forward in the conversation — even the most well-spoken person is ninety percent dull, unless he’s appearing in a book. Ralph and his family are only somewhat well-spoken, barely averagely so, so I’m obliged to excise whole chunks.

  Ralph stood in the hallway and said a few sentences, to which his mother responded with smiles and mute wisdom. Ralph said something more, switching his weight from one leg to another. (When will he be comfortable enough with himself to stand up straight? wondered Mary.) Steve’s pages flipped with more and more velocity until finally he cleared his throat to coin his aphorism — but that’s when Mary shouted and he discovered that Ralph had carried home meat scraps from the grocery store to feed his cats and the plastic bag was dripping something vile and red onto the carpet. Ralph put his hand over his mouth and nodded — yes, it was blood, or at least meat juice — and now everyone was scurrying, Ralph to get the carpet cleaner from the garage and Mary to pour ice from her diet soda onto the beige pile, Steve using the energy that he had been building for his declamation to bounce to his feet and swat the spreading stain with his newspaper, dancing a frantic little jig.

  Then Ralph was back and running the carpet cleaner over the splotch, now made darker with newsprint and soda, taking pains to avoid bumping his parents’ feet. This was tricky, as they were pacing. Once he was finished, Ralph prudently excused himself to feed the cats.

  When he was younger, when imagination seemed safe, Ralph thought that his cats were lions. It was easier back then, when they had that postkitten leanness and instinctual aggression that hadn’t yet been deadened by a mouseless life. But he still refused to feed them cat food — it was one of the few fancies he allowed himself. He imagined being fed bran flakes for three meals a day, even for snacks and late night desserts, and couldn’t wish that on his charges. So they got meat. When he dropped the slick scraps into their bowl, the cats beelined for the feast and then conspicuously ignored it, as cats will do.