"What about Reed?" he asked.
"He had to work at the Quack Shack," Wendy said. "I told him not to go, but Reed says he'll get fired if he doesn't have a good reason for not showing up."
"The Quack Shack is in the middle of all those sinkholes," Elliot said. "I think he has a really good reason not to go!"
"Reed didn't k
now about the holes when he left. But when they started happening, Cami said she'd go try to stop him. I'm sure they'll be back soon. Shh, the reporter's talking."
The cameras went live on Main Street, where the reporter explained that although most sinkholes are round, these new ones on Main Street had different shapes to them. "It's as if someone below the earth collapsed them to look just this way," he explained.
Then the camera cut to an overhead shot from a helicopter. At the angle the cameraman was shooting from, the shapes didn't appear to mean anything. The one at the top looked like a square M. Down from that shape were two sideways lines, and then there was a third, shorter line with a dot beside it. Next was a perfectly round hole, and finally, another sideways line at the bottom.
"What could these symbols mean?" the reporter asked. "Is it some message from aliens to Earth? A warning perhaps?"
"It's not aliens," Elliot mumbled. But it definitely was a warning.
"I guess we'll never know what it means," Wendy said. "I'll bet scientists will study this for years."
Elliot tilted his head to the side and looked at the Main Street sinkholes differently. "It's my name," he said. Looked at sideways, the square M was an E. The two lines were lowercase Ls. Then the rest of the letters in his name followed.
Wendy laughed. "What? No." She tilted her head too, and said, "Your name has a T at the end. That last sinkhole shape just looks like another lowercase L. Your name isn't Elliol."
"I'm telling you, that's my name," Elliot said.
"You're being ridiculous!"
Then the camera shook and the reporter yelled, "It's happening again!" A puff of dirt rose in the air. When it cleared, the camera focused in on the newest sinkhole. Elliot sighed. Kovol had crossed the T.
"Oh, well, now I see your name," Wendy said. "That's weird."
"Not as weird as you might think," Elliot said. "I've got to go."
"Still working on that secret paper-mache project?"
"Huh?"
Wendy smiled. "You don't have to be embarrassed. Cami told us that you were working on a paper-mache doll of her and that you didn't want anyone to bother you in your room."
Elliot rolled his eyes. "That's what she said I was doing?" Couldn't she have picked something better? Like maybe he was lifting weights all morning or rescuing pets from burning houses? Then he sighed. A part of him wished Cami would have told Wendy the truth. It would have helped to talk to his sister about the Brownies and the Underworld war and about why there was a sinkhole on Main Street in the shape of his name. He was tired of keeping so many secrets from his family.
But it was not his secret to tell. The knowledge of the Underworld belonged to the creatures who lived there, not to him.
"Yeah, whatever Cami said, I have to go back and do that," Elliot said. "I'll be busy for a while, maybe a really long time."
"Okay." Wendy shrugged, then returned to watching the television.
Elliot ran back upstairs. As soon as he was out of sight, he closed his eyes, pictured the scene on Main Street, and poofed himself there.
Elliot might have thought about the shops and stores on Main Street, but he never could have pictured all the people running in the streets, pushing one another to get as far from the sinkholes as possible. He had tried to poof into a quiet part of the street, but when he got there it was obvious that nothing on this street was quiet today.
The sinkholes were in the middle of the road. From here, Elliot couldn't see his name, but he knew that hundreds of feet below this very spot, Kovol was sending Elliot the message that he was angry. Well, duh. Did he think Elliot hadn't figured that out yet?
"Excuse me," a woman said, nearly running him over.
He moved for her, which put him in the way of a man who only looked down at Elliot long enough to tell him to go home before he also hurried away.
Elliot wanted to get to the Quack Shack, but it was a little farther up the road. Elliot hoped Reed had seen the sinkholes and gotten away before he came into work. Elliot pushed past people who were pushing past him even harder. At first he had tried getting through politely by saying things like "Excuse me," or "Can I get by?" But now he just yelled "Move!" at anyone in his way.