Mother, Wendy, and…“Oh dear, Elliot. I forgot you wouldn’t want earrings, your being a boy and all.”
Elliot didn’t want the earrings or the key chains. “Stealing is against the law, Uncle Rufus.”
“It still is?” Uncle Rufus sighed. “Well, you never know. Laws are always changing.”
Mother held out her hand, and everyone passed their gifts to her to return to the store. “Elliot’s right, Rufus. Besides, you can see this wonderful meal, and we have all our family together. There’s nothing more we need.”
Wendy cleared her throat. “Mom, you have to tell Kyle and Cole to stop playing with the hose in the yard.”
“Why?” Mother asked.
“Tattletale,” the twins grumbled in unison.
Wendy continued, “They pulled the hose all the way into the woods today and let the water run until it made a swamp back there.”
Mother gave Kyle and Cole the “we’re going to have a talk about this later” look and then turned to the rest of the family. “Who saved room for dessert?”
Elliot had forgotten to save any room for dessert, but it was his favorite, cherry pie. There was probably room behind his eyeballs. “I want a big piece.” He handed his dinner plate to Wendy, who was clearing the table. Then he winced as something kicked his foot.
“Stop it,” he said to Kyle. Or Cole. He wasn’t sure which one was sitting next to him.
“Stop what?” Kyle or Cole said. Elliot stared at both of them. It was Kyle. Probably.
Something kicked him again. He quickly looked under the table to catch the guilty person and then realized it wasn’t a person at all. It was a Brownie…well, two Brownies: Mr. Willimaker and another mean-looking one he hadn’t met yet.
Mr. Willimaker bowed at him, and after a very long sigh, so did the other.
“What?” Elliot hissed. “I’m eating.”
“This is an emergency,” Mr. Willimaker said. “You must come with us.”
“Where?”
“To the Brownie Underworld.”
“Not before dessert. And I’m not going to anyone’s Underworld. My mom doesn’t want me out of the house after dark.”
“Then where can we talk?”
“Up in my room. Ten minutes.”
Elliot glanced up just as his mother set a thick slice of warm cherry pie in front of him. “Who were you talking to under the table?” Mother asked.
“Oh, uh, my feet.”
She blinked. “You were talking to your feet?”
“Nothing wrong with that,” Father said. “I used to talk to my feet all the time as a boy. They’re very good listeners.”
“As long as your feet don’t talk back,” Rufus agreed. “That’s when you should worry.”
Elliot didn’t have time to worry about whether his feet would ever talk to him. He wanted to enjoy every bite of his pie. Now he had to hurry and eat it so he could see what the Brownies wanted.
Ten minutes later he ran to his room and shut the door. Mr. Willimaker and the other Brownie stood on his bed. They bowed again.
“You don’t have to do that,” Elliot said. “I haven’t even agreed to be your king yet.”
“You probably won’t want to either, when you hear our news,” the mean-looking Brownie said. His thin lip curled in a sneer, and his bushy gray eyebrows were pushed so tightly together Elliot could barely see his eyes. Elliot had seen that same expression on Tubs’s face plenty of times and knew what it meant. For some reason, this Brownie didn’t like him.