Alcatraz Versus the Knights of Crystallia

“Of course they do! You’re a celebrity, Alcatraz—the Smedry who disappeared mysteriously as a child! There have been hundreds of books written on you. When word came out a few years back that you were being raised in the Hushlands, that only made things more interesting. You think all those people over there are staring because of me?”

I’d never been in Nalhalla before (duh), so I hadn’t thought it strange that there were people standing along the streets, watching the road. Now, however, I noticed how many of them were pointing toward our carriage.

“Shattering Glass,” I whispered. “I’m Elvis.”

You Free Kingdomers may not know that name. Elvis was a powerful monarch from the Hushlander past known for his impassioned speeches to inmates, for his odd footwear, and for looking less like himself than the people who dress like him. He vanished mysteriously as the result of a Librarian cover-up.

“I don’t know who that is, hon,” Aunt Patty said. “But whoever he is, he’s probably a lot less well known than you are.”

I sat back, stunned. Grandpa Smedry and the others had tried to explain how important our family was, but I’d never really understood. We had a castle as large as the king’s palace. We controlled incredible wealth. We had magical powers that others envied. There had been volumes and volumes of books written about us.

That was the moment, riding in that carriage, when it all finally hit me. I understood. I’m famous, I thought, a smile growing on my face.

This was a very important point in my life. It’s where I started to realize just how much power I had. I didn’t find fame intimidating. I found it exciting. Instead of hiding from the people with their silimatic cameras, I started waving to them. They began to point even more excitedly, and the attention made me feel good. Warm, like I’d suddenly been bathed in sunlight.

Some say that fame is a fleeting thing. Well, it has clung to me tenaciously, like gum stuck to the sidewalk, blackened from being stepped on a thousand times. I haven’t been able to shake it, no matter what.

Some also say fame is shallow. That’s easy to say when you haven’t spent your childhood being passed from family to family, scorned and discarded because of a curse that made you break whatever you touched.

Fame is like a cheeseburger. It might not be the best or most healthy thing to have, but it will still fill you up. You don’t really care how healthy something is when you’ve been without for so long. Like a cheeseburger, fame fills a need, and it tastes so good going down.

It isn’t until years later that you realize what it has done to your heart.

“Here we are!” Aunt Patty said as the carriage slowed. I was surprised. After hearing that my cousin Folsom was in charge of guarding former Librarians, I’d expected to be taken to some sort of police station or secret service hideout. Instead, we’d come to a shopping district with little stores set into the fronts of the castles. Aunt Patty paid our driver with some glass coins, then climbed down.

“I thought you said he was guarding a Librarian spy,” I said, getting out.

“He is, hon.”

“And where does one do that?”

Aunt Patty pointed toward a store that looked suspiciously like an ice cream parlor. “Where else?”

Chapter 6

Once when I was very young, I was being driven to the public swimming pool by my foster mother. This was a long time ago, so far distant in my memory I can barely remember it. I must have been three or four years old.

I recall an image: a group of strangely shaped buildings beside the road. I’d seen them before, and I’d always wondered what they were. They looked like small white domes, three or four of them, the size of houses.

As we passed, I turned to my foster mother. “Mom, what are those?”

“That is where the crazy people go,” she said.

I hadn’t realized there was a mental institution in my town. But it was nice to know where it was. For years after that, when the topic of mental illness came up, I would explain where the hospital was. I was proud, as a child, to know where they took the crazy people when they went … well, crazy.

When I was twelve or so, I remember being driven past that place again with a different foster family. By then I could read. (I was quite advanced for my age, you know.) I noticed the sign hanging on the domed buildings.

It didn’t say the buildings were a mental institution. It said that they were a church.

Suddenly I understood. “That’s where all the crazy people go” meant something completely different to my foster mother than it had to me. I spent all those years proudly telling people where the asylum was, all the while ignorant of the fact that I’d been completely wrong.

This will be relevant.