The Key. Michael Grant

hillside in . . . well, now that he thought about it, the golem wasn’t really sure where it was. Not around here, anyway.

      He had begun to achieve consciousness when his head was formed. He had opened his eyes to see Grimluk’s ancient, grizzled, wrinkled, rheumy-eyed face staring down at him. Grimluk’s gnarled fingers had literally smoothed the mud that made the golem’s forehead.

      The golem had blinked and looked around, confused. He was in some ways no different from a newborn baby.

      He had looked down to see that his body was nothing but some tree branches—bark still on for better mud adherence9—tied together with rattan to form a sort of bare scarecrow form.

      There was a massive wooden tub full of mud. And a smaller crockery pot with more sticks and loops of rattan.

      “I’m getting too old for this,” Grimluk had muttered.

      “Mama?” the golem had asked, gazing up hopefully.

      “No, fool. You’re a golem. You have neither father nor mother. You have a maker. That’s me.”

      “I . . . I feel like . . . like we should hug,” the golem had said.

      Grimluk had been somewhat taken aback by this. But after he’d harrumphed a bit and chewed on his lip and forgotten what he was doing a few times and made some grunting noises and scratched and hitched up his robe, he’d finally said, “Eh? Let’s shake hands.”

      Then after Grimluk had packed mud onto the golem’s stick arm and stuck in five twigs to act as supports for fingers and then carefully formed the hand, the golem had shaken hands with his maker.

      “What’s my name?” the golem had asked.

      “You don’t have one. Until I place the scroll in your mouth—and then you’ll know what part you are to play in the great events that rush toward us like an enraged boar.”

      “What’s an enraged boar?”

      “An angry wild pig.”

      “What’s a pig?”

      Grimluk was not a great teacher. The golem never did find out what a boar was. But Grimluk was a good golem maker.

      When at last the golem was completed and stood on his own two muddy feet, Grimluk smiled a toothless smile. “All right, then.”

      The golem had watched, mystified but also hopeful, as the elderly Magnifica, the sole surviving member of the first Magnificent Twelve, wrote two words on a slip of parchment.

      The words were “Be Mack.”

      “I don’t understand,” the golem said.

      “You will,” Grimluk said. “Open your mouth and stick out your tongue.”

      “What’s a mouth?”

      Grimluk helped him understand that. Then he placed the scroll on the golem’s tongue.

      What magic then!

      The transformation was miraculous. The creature of mud and twigs suddenly had skin. He had eyes with whites and colored irises. He had hair. Fingernails.

      Now, granted, Grimluk had sort of glossed over the internal organs—the golem would have to dig some of those out himself—but the result was a creature that looked very much like Mack MacAvoy.

      So much like Mack that Mack’s best friends—those who knew him really well—were only a little suspicious. And his parents never guessed at all.

      And then, he had met Mack face-to-face. A real human boy. The boy he was to be for however long it took Mack to save the world.

      That had been kind of wonderful, meeting Mack.

      But right now, here, today, he had no time for more nostalgia. He had to be a big boy now.

      The question was: just how big?

      He looked down and noticed that the mud-passing-as-flesh was oozing out over the tops of his shoes. And his jeans were already tight.

      Yep: time to be a big boy.

      William Blisterthöng MacGuffin’s castle turned out to be right there in the open atop a sheer outcropping, less than a quarter mile from Urquhart Castle, which was right beside Loch Ness.

      Frank had chanted a Vargran spell over the Magnifica and Stefan, and the castle had appeared in perfect clarity. Big as life.

      Then the fairies had urged them forward with encouraging words.

      “Wait, you’re not coming with us?” Mack demanded.

      “This could get violent,” Frank pointed out, “and we are peaceable folk.”

      “No fairy has ever—” Connie started in, and Xiao, who was usually very polite, said, “Yeah, right.”

      Over the years rare individuals who possessed just a little of the enlightened puissance had caught vague, fleeting glimpses of the castle. But when they reported this, they were condemned as drunk or crazy. Or as crazy drunks.

      It was even worse for those few who would also report having seen a sort of sea serpent swimming around in Loch Ness. Those people were also derided as drunk or crazy or both, plus they were often compelled to write books and set up websites in a desperate attempt to prove that they were right.

      They were right. But merely writing a book doesn’t prove you’re sane or sober (more the opposite).

      Here’s what the local folk and passersby saw as Mack, Jarrah, Xiao, Stefan, and a nonflowery and rather annoyed Dietmar climbed the incredibly steep face of the hill: nothing. That’s what. Once Mack and the gang had come within a hundred feet of the massive promontory (there’s a word to dazzle your teacher with), they simply slipped from view. A person watching from the road would have seen five kids crossing a field and passing beneath a small stand of stunted trees, and then . . . nothing.

      And here is what Stefan saw: also nothing. Because although Stefan had many great qualities, like, um . . . toughness and dangerousness . . . he did not possess the enlightened puissance. In fact, as far as Stefan could tell, the rest of them were crazy people gazing up at nothing.

      This made it very difficult for Stefan to climb. He could feel the ground under his feet, he could even climb, but it was sketchy work. Try climbing something you can’t see. Go ahead, try. The story can wait.

      See? It’s not easy, is it?

      The climb was mostly over tumbled boulders. At some point back in history, the side of the mountain had crumbled. The other sides were all still nearly vertical cliff. But this side offered some possibilities for ascent.

      So Jarrah held Stefan’s hand and guided him every step of the way with comments like, “Here you go, upsy-daisy, eh?” And, “Come on then, mate, just jump it.” And, “Nah, you won’t fall more than twenty feet, and that’s nothing.”

      “I could fly up there in two seconds,” Xiao muttered. “Stupid treaties. Like I would be any kind of threat to those big, leathery, murderous, fire-breathing western dragons.”

      “Still, it is a sort of law,” Dietmar said. “And we must obey the law.”

      That remark seemed to lessen Xiao’s affection for Dietmar substantially. Xiao could get a very hard look in her eyes and set a very determined jaw when you annoyed her.

      Mack brought up the rear, stepping cautiously and gazing up anxiously every few seconds to see just how little progress they had made. It was also his job as the leader to think of a plan for dealing with MacGuffin once they found him. So far his plan was to ask him very politely if they could have the Key, and