Arthur had known he was adopted since he was little. Bob and Emily treated all the children the same way, and the children considered themselves all brothers and sisters. They never introduced one another as "half brother" or "half sister" and never explained the fact that there were twenty years between the eldest, Erazmuz (born in Bob's rock music heyday), and the youngest, Arthur. They also didn't explain the difference in looks, skin color, or anything else. They were simply all part of the family, even if only the youngest three were still at home.
The four eldest were Erazmuz, who was a major in the army and had children of his own; Staria, a serious theater actress; Eminor, a musician, who'd changed his name to Patrick; and Suzanne, who was at college. The three at home were Michaeli, who was at a local college; Eric, who was in his last year of high school; and Arthur.
Arthur's father, Michaeli, and Eric had already been to see him the night before, and his mother had popped in early in the morning to check that he was okay. Once she was sure of that, she lectured him about it being better to look like a total loser in everyone's eyes than to be dead.
Arthur always knew when his mother was approaching, because doctors and nurses would appear from all over the place, and, by the time she arrived, Emily would be trailing eight or nine white-coated people behind her. Arthur was used to her being a Medical Legend, just as he was used to his father being a Former Musical Legend.
Since all of his family in town had already visited once, Arthur was surprised when two more people came to see him early on Tuesday afternoon. Kids his own age. He didn't recognize them for a second, since they weren't wearing black. Then he realized who they were. Ed and the girl who had helped him use the inhaler. This time they were in regular school uniform, white shirts, gray trousers, blue ties.
"Hi," said the girl from the door. "Can we come in?"
"Uh, sure," mumbled Arthur. What could these two want?
"We didn't meet properly yesterday," said the girl. "I'm Leaf."
"Leith?" asked Arthur. She'd pronounced it strangely.
"No, Leaf, as in from a tree," said Leaf reluctantly. "Our parents changed their names to reflect their commitment to the environment."
"Dad calls himself Tree," said the boy. "I'm supposed to be Branch but I don't use it. Call me Ed."
"Right," said Arthur. "Leaf and Ed. My dad used to be called Plague Rat."
"No!" exclaimed Leaf and Ed. "You mean from The Ratz?"
"Yeah." Arthur was surprised. Normally only old people knew the names of the individual members of The Ratz.
"We're into music," said Leaf, seeing his surprise. She looked down at her school uniform. "That's why we were wearing real clothes yesterday. There was a lunch-time appearance by Zeus Suit at the mall and we didn't want to look stupid."
"But we missed it anyway," said Ed. "Because of you."
"Uh, what do you mean?" asked Arthur warily. "I'm really grateful to you guys �"
"It's okay," said Leaf. "What Ed means is we missed Zeus Suit because we had something more important to do after we... I mean I saw those two weird guys and the wheelchair thing."
"Wheelchair thing? Weird guys?" Arthur repeated. He'd managed to convince himself that he'd flipped out and imagined everything, though he hadn't wanted to put it to the test by checking his school shirt pocket for the notebook. The shirt was hanging up in the closet.
"Yeah, really weird," said Leaf. "I saw them appear in a flash of light and they disappeared the same way, just before we got back to you. It was mighty strange, but nobody else blinked an eye. I reckon it's because I've got second sight from our great-great-grandmother. She was an Irish witch."
"She was Irish, anyway," said Ed. "I didn't see what Leaf said she saw. But we went back to have a look around later. We'd only been there five minutes when these guys came out of the park and started saying, 'Go away. Go away.' They were plenty weird."
"Kind of dog-faced, with jowly cheeks and mean-looking little eyes, like bloodhounds," interrupted Leaf. "And they had really foul breath and all they could say was 'Go away.'"
"Yeah, and they kept sniffing. I saw one of them get down on the ground and sniff it as we were walking away. There were lots of them ... at least a dozen, wearing kind of... Charlie Chaplin suits and bowler hats. Weird and scary, so we took off and I reported them to the office for trespassing on the school grounds, and the Octopus came out to check. Only he couldn't see them, though we still could, and I got a week's detention for 'wasting valuable time.'"
"I only got three days detention," said Leaf.
"The Octopus?" asked Arthur weakly.
"Assistant Principal Doyle. 'The Octopus' because he likes to confiscate stuff."
"So what's going on, Arthur?" asked Leaf. "Who were those two guys?"
"I don't know," said Arthur, shaking his head in mystification. "I... I thought it was all a hallucination."
"Maybe it was," offered Ed. "Only both of you had it."
Leaf punched him hard on the arm. Ed winced. Definitely brother and sister, thought Arthur.
"Of course, that doesn't explain why the Octopus couldn't see the guys with the bowler hats," Ed added quickly, rubbing his arm. "Unless all three of us were affected by something like a gas or weird pollen."
"If it wasn't a hallucination, then there will be a small notebook in my shirt," Arthur said. "Hanging up in the closet."
Leaf quickly opened the closet, then hesitated.
"Go on," said Arthur. "I only wore the shirt for a couple of hours and I hardly ran in it."
"I wasn't worried about the smell," said Leaf. She reached in and felt the pocket. "It's just that if there is a notebook, then I did see something, and those dog-faced guys were scary, even in daylight with Ed there ..."
She stopped talking and withdrew her hand. The notebook was in it, held tightly. Arthur noticed she had black nail polish on, with red streaks. Just like his father used to wear years ago in The Ratz.
"It feels strange," Leaf whispered as she handed the book to Arthur. "Kind of electric. Tingly."
"What does it say on the cover?" asked Ed.
"I don't know," replied Leaf. There were symbols on the cover, but they didn't make sense. She didn't seem able to focus on them somehow. At the same time, she felt a strong urge to give the notebook to Arthur. "Here, it's yours."
"Actually, it fell out of the sky," said Arthur as he took it. "Or kind of out of a whirlwind made out of lines of letters... type... swirling in the air."
He looked at the notebook. It had hard covers, bound in green cloth that reminded him of old library books. There was some type embossed on the cover. Golden letters that slowly swam into focus and rearranged themselves. Arthur blinked a couple of times as the letters climbed over one another and shoved others out of the way to make room so the words would be spelled properly.
"It says A Compleat Atlas of the House and Immediate Environs," Arthur read aloud. "The letters all moved around."
"Hi-tech," said Ed, but he didn't sound very convinced, or convincing.
"Magic," said Leaf, very matter-of-fact. "Open it up."
Arthur tried to open the book, but the covers wouldn't budge. It wasn't as if they were stuck together.
He could see the pages rippling a bit between the covers like they were free, but he simply couldn't open the book. Even when he applied so much force that he would have ripped the covers off any normal book.
The sudden effort made him cough, and then it was hard to get his breath back. He could feel another asthma attack coming on, that sudden tightening of the lungs. The monitor that was checking the oxygen level in his blood began to beep, and there was the sudden sound of a nurse's hurrying footsteps in the corridor outside.