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.
* * *
Four
* * *
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.