The Kingdom of Kevin Malone Read Free

way,” Kevin said, not deigning to acknowledge my judgment of his character. “It’s one time through each gateway for everybody, only one time between worlds. You just used the Willowdell. We need another arch to get you home.”
    Getting wobbly again with panic, I squinted through the arch. On the other side I saw not Central Park but more ruins, convincing ruins. I believed him.
    â€œWillowdell,” I said, stalling. I did not want to leave that familiar arch. “It has a name?”
    â€œMost of them have names,” Kevin said. “It was the names that grabbed me first, on a map of the park that I saw one time: Willowdell, Greyshot, Riftstone—”
    The scowl that had seemed to be his main expression relaxed as he said the names. His whole face changed, taking on an open, far-off look that made me think: Amy, you do not know this person. Maybe you did once, a little, but he’s a stranger now.
    This was unnerving, but intriguing, too. What kind of stranger? Still, it would be insane to stick around any longer than I had to to find out.
    â€œWhat’s the closest arch besides this one?” I asked, playing along.
    He looked around nervously. “We’ll walk over to the Denesmouth Arch. It’s not far.”
    I started to object, but gave it up. I didn’t seem to have a lot of options.
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* What I heard was “fair far,” but I learned later that Kevin used his version of ancient-type spelling for the name of his magic kingdom, the Fayre Farre.—Amy

 
    Two
    Corner Kid
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    T HE MOSAIC SLABS OF THE PATHWAY looked manageable even in socks. I tied the laces together, slung the skates around my neck and followed Kevin. Once we got started walking, I felt sort of relieved. I didn’t really want to go right back to listening to my mother saying over and over that she couldn’t believe it about Shelly, who was her cousin really and only second cousin to me, and my aunts grabbing me in these tearful hugs all the time as if that could change anything.
    Soon would be soon enough. Meanwhile maybe I was ready for all hell to break loose, which could happen, in Kevin’s company. He had never been dull to be around. And I realized I was very curious, even excited, about the Fayre Farre itself; I was glad I hadn’t tried to go back through the Willowdell Arch, but had trusted Kevin’s word that it wouldn’t take me home. Home could wait.
    â€œWhat is this place, Kevin?” I asked.
    He said expansively, “I told you—my country. It’s a real place, Amy. It’s got history and everything, just like America or England or any place on the other side of the arches. Take these ruins, here—that’s what’s left of a great castle. There was a lot of battles and things fought here in the time of the First Kings.”
    As we hurried along, he talked. I do not remember a word. It was all fake history anyway, the kind you can find by the yard in any sword-and-sorcery novel, especially along about Volume Two or Three: kings, nobles, great warriors or adventurers messing around with magic, princes squabbling over this or that kingdom or girl or spell or enchanted weapon.
    I began to expect a gaggle of wizards to shuffle by spouting spells and smoke through their beards. They always have beards and they all smoke pipes, ever since Tolkien’s Gandalf set the style.
    But how would Kevin even know about things like that? He was not the kind of person I associated with reading literature. Kevin had been one of about ten kids in a family down at the end of the block where I’d lived then, in the West Eighties. We’d had a cramped but sunny apartment in a fourteen-floor building halfway between Central Park West and Columbus Avenue. Kevin had lived in one of a row of what were then brownstone tenements down near Columbus.
    Every time Mom