His expensive suit hung in rags and his formerly perfectly coiffed hair stuck out in every direction, with twigs and leaves tangled in it. If he’d been shorter and wearing green, he’d have looked like some of the less-sanitized drawings I’d seen of Peter Pan.
Out of the corner of my eye, I noticed Earl slipping into the throng of park denizens, probably so his supposed boss didn’t catch him hanging out with the enemy. I didn’t think he was in too much trouble, though, because Sylvester was too far gone to notice anything but the brooch and anything that stood between him and the brooch.
The closer he came to us, the madder he looked. He was breathing heavily, sounding like a bull gearing up to charge. “Mine! It’s mine! And you’ve got it!” he snarled. He advanced slowly, but then, all of a sudden, he ran at us, waving his tree branch like a club. Rod stepped out in front of him and hit him with a spell that left the air feeling charged with magic, but it didn’t slow Sylvester down at all.
Owen caught my arm and we jumped out of the way, but no matter how we dodged, Sylvester kept up with us. The whole time, he made a musical keening sound in the back of his throat. It was part rage, part yearning, part mourning, and entirely creepy. I’d heard music that I thought ought to be classified as a weapon, but the elves really had music in their arsenal. The noise grew even worse as some of the park denizens took up his cry and added their keening to his.
Then there was a thud and a cry of pain, and I looked back to see Sylvester lying full-length on the ground and Granny standing nearby, twirling her cane like a victorious gunfighter twirling his six-shooter. Rod rushed over and kicked Sylvester’s branch out of reach, then Granny gave Sylvester a good whack on the back of the head with her cane.
Only when it appeared that the Elf Lord was completely unconscious did Earl emerge from his hiding place among the park denizens. “He’s really taking this seriously, huh?” he said, kicking his boss’s leg.
“He must have been around the Eye for a while between the time he found it and the time he sent it to the gnomes to be merged with the Knot,” Owen said. “It’s infected him. I’m not sure he’ll ever be truly happy again without it.”
“I wonder if he’s got some residual protection from having owned the Knot,” Rod said. “That spell should have dropped him. It did drop him when I used it on him earlier, but this time it didn’t even slow him down.”
“We’d better split before he wakes up,” I said. We headed out, our strange retinue following us. They kept a respectful distance from me, but I still worried that one of them would pull a Sylvester and go mad trying to get the brooch.
As a result, I probably overreacted when I felt someone reaching for my right pocket. I kicked out while throwing an elbow, then cringed when I recognized Rod’s voice, sounding strained with pain, saying, “Sorry! Don’t know what came over me.”