The Big Shrink Read online

  For Rachel Feld, with jumbo dumpling-size thanks for

  her support of this series

  Contents

  Title Page

  Dedication

  1

  2

  3

  4

  5

  6

  7

  8

  9

  10

  11

  12

  13

  14

  15

  16

  17

  18

  19

  20

  21

  Teaser

  Acknowledgments

  About the Authors

  Card Page

  Copyright

  Elinor Boxwood Horace loved her family. Obviously.

  She loved her demanding father, who could turn things invisible.

  She loved her bossy, sporty older brother, Hawthorn, who had fire magic.

  And she loved her giggly older sister, Dalia, who could make animals do whatever she wanted.

  What Nory Horace did not love was being home in Nutmeg with the three of them for Thanksgiving break.

  Four days was so loooooong. Nory missed living in Dunwiddle with her aunt Margo, who served pizza for dinner several nights a week.

  She missed her tiny bedroom with the stack of library books by the bed.

  And she missed her friends from Dunwiddle Magic School, who were braver and more unusual than anybody here in Nutmeg.

  Nory looked at her hard-boiled egg. It sat primly in one of Father’s special egg cups. She didn’t want to eat it, so she spun it around and around.

  “Nory,” Hawthorn whispered. “Don’t fiddle.” Father had stepped into the kitchen to get more jam for Ms. Cheddarlegs, who had come for Sunday brunch.

  Nory groaned. Ms. Cheddarlegs worked with Nory’s father at Sage Academy, the fanciest magic school in the country. Father was the headmaster. Ms. Cheddarlegs was head of the history department. She was the kind of person who always wore pantyhose.

  Ms. Cheddarlegs cleared her throat and rapped her own egg cup with a tiny spoon. “Elinor,” she said. “Sage Academy now makes all students study the history of dreary men who wrote dusty old books. Do you study dreary men and dusty old books at your school?”

  Ms. Cheddarlegs didn’t actually say “dreary men” or “dusty old books,” but she might as well have. Everything she said was so boring. Plus, spending Sunday morning with an Important Educator made Nory feel dumb.

  Last summer, Nory had flunked the Sage Academy admissions test. She flunked because her magic was upside down. Or “wonky,” if you were being mean about it. Only students with strong and typical magic got to attend Sage Academy.

  Hawthorn went to Sage. He was sixteen years old. He was an excellent Flare. There were five Fs of magic: Flares, Flyers, Fuzzies, Flickers, and Fluxers.

  Like all Flares, Hawthorn was great in the kitchen. He could cook eggs in his hands, for example. And roast marshmallows and peppers. But that was everyday Flare stuff. For the Thanksgiving feast, Hawthorn had cooked the turkey, the stuffing, and the green-bean casserole using magic instead of the oven. Father had wanted him to show off his skills for the invited guests.

  Dalia went to Sage, too. She was thirteen years old and she was a Fuzzy. That meant she had animal magic. She’d shown off for Father’s friends as well. Her rabbits had done a hopping dance to the tune of “The Lonely Goatherd.”

  Nory had not been asked to show her magic to Father’s friends. She actually thought they really might like seeing her dritten. To become a dritten, Nory fluxed into a kitten, then added some dragon. She became a combination of the two creatures—a winged kitten with fangs and fire breath. It was massively cool. When it didn’t go wrong.

  See, Nory was a Fluxer. That meant she could turn into animals. Only, unlike typical Fluxers, Nory often mixed those animals up together.

  For example, she might flux into a mosquito, but add in kitten, and become a mitten. Or she’d flux into a dolphin, add porcupine, and become a porcuphin. Or maybe a puppy with squid legs. A squippy!

  But mixed-up animals were not the kind of thing Father was proud of. Even though Nory was getting so good at them.

  At Dunwiddle Magic School, the public school near where Nory’s aunt Margo lived, Nory was one of eight fifth graders in a special Upside-Down Magic class. With Ms. Starr as her teacher, being upside down was fine by Nory. It was even fun. The students in the class were learning to make the most of their unusual abilities, even when the going was tough.

  But being upside down around Father?

  Not fun at all.

  Now he returned to the dining room. “Here we go,” he said, presenting a pot of strawberry jam to Ms. Cheddarlegs. “Homemade by Hawthorn.”

  Nory sighed and pushed back her chair. “May I be excused, please?”

  Dr. Horace nodded.

  “Thank you for the delicious breakfast, Hawthorn,” Nory said. “Have a lovely morning, Ms. Cheddarlegs.”

  She zoomed to the kitchen with her breakfast dishes.

  Dalia followed Nory. The two of them wiped the counters and loaded the dishwasher. Dalia sighed as she scraped leftover granola into the compost bin. “I know you get Fruity Doodles for breakfast at Aunt Margo’s,” she said.

  “All the time,” said Nory, grinning.

  “I wouldn’t mind some Fruity Doodles. Father is always talking about protein and fiber.”

  Huh, Nory thought, looking at her sister. Did Dalia, like Nory, also think Father was a bit much sometimes?

  Dalia’s eyes lit up. “Ooh, I have something to show you. Come to my room.”

  Upstairs, Dalia dug a paper shopping bag out of her closet. She presented it to Nory. Inside was an egg-shaped toy. It was made from something softer than plastic, something spongy and squishy. It was pale green, dotted with orange polka dots. “Go on,” said Dalia. “Squeeze it really hard. You’re supposed to!”

  Nory squeezed. And squeezed again.

  The egg jiggled. The egg wiggled.

  After ten or so seconds, it cracked into two even pieces with a loud farting sound.

  “Wait,” Dalia said, bouncing. “Look.”

  From inside the toy egg, a bitsy toy dragon emerged.

  Not a real dragon.

  Not a live dragon.

  Just the most awesome toy dragon in the world. Nory had been studying dragons at school. This one looked like a Parsley Dragon: green with orange stripes.

  The toy Parsley Dragon waddled around. It flapped its bitsy wings.

  “They’re called Dreggs,” said Dalia. “Like a Dragon Egg. Get it? All the kids at Sage have them. Some are special. Some are more ordinary. A Parsley Dragon is a pretty good one.”

  Dalia explained that the toy dragons learned more and more tricks the more attention you gave them. “Just like real pets,” she said. “For example, they have to sleep for ten hours a night.”

  “But that’s boring,” said Nory.

  “No, because they sleep when you sleep. You tuck them back into their eggshells, and in the morning you squeeze the shell and they wake up. They re-hatch, which is cool because the hatching part is always funny.”

  Dalia showed Nory two more Dreggs, both of them currently in their eggs. One egg was blue and the other was a grayish beige. Dalia squeezed them both vigorously. The blue Dregg hatched first with a giant fart noise. Out popped a tiny Luminous Dragonette. It fluttered its lashes adorably.

  “Aw!” said Nory.

  “Hi,” crooned Dalia. “Hi there, cutie!”

  She tipped the dragon onto her bed, where it stood on first one leg and then the other. It made a tiny firbling noise, the special, flutelike sound of that kind of dragon. Then it stretche
d its wings and began to glow a beautiful lemon yellow.

  “Cool, huh?” said Dalia. She snapped the empty halves of the eggshell together. She nodded at the tiny dragon. “Now, wait for it …”

  The toy dragon cocked its head. It hopped toward Dalia. “Play with me?” it said in a cute voice. “Play with me!” It jumped up and down. “Play! With! Me!”

  Nory ran her finger down the toy dragon’s back. It firbled and cooed. “So cute.”

  “I know,” Dalia said. “You have to play with them twice an hour if you want them to learn more and more tricks.”

  “If I had one, I’d play with it all the time,” Nory said. She watched as Dalia’s beige Dregg wiggled and cracked. Pthhhhhb! Out hatched a miniature Sludge Dragon.

  It blinked. Dalia put it on her bed, and it blinked again.

  “Why isn’t it doing anything?” Nory asked.

  Dalia reassembled the empty beige eggshell and put it in her pocket with the blue one. “Um. I’ve kind of been ignoring it.”

  “Dalia!” Nory scolded. She petted the Sludge’s head and waited for it to do something.

  It didn’t. It just sat there, being beige. Then it lay down and dropped its chin onto its front paws.

  “I like my other ones better,” said Dalia. “But if I played with this one, it would start doing stuff. Anyway, aren’t they awesome?”

  “Yes. I want one!” cried Nory.

  Dalia smiled. “You can get them at Brilliant Ned’s. Maybe Aunt Margo will take you?”

  “I’ll ask,” said Nory. “They’re the best toys ever.”

  Aunt Margo was a Flyer, and a very skilled one. She ran a one-woman taxi service—meaning, she was the taxi. She flew her passengers wherever they wanted to go, within one hundred miles of Dunwiddle. When she came to pick up Nory after the holiday, she swooped down from the sky like a giant bird and skidded to a stop on the sidewalk.

  Aunt Margo was Nory’s mom’s sister. Nory’s mom had died when Nory was little. Aunt Margo had spent Thanksgiving with her boyfriend, Figs, and his family. Now, at last, she was here to take Nory back to Dunwiddle. Hooray!

  Nory ran down the porch steps and zoomed across the lawn to give her aunt a tackle hug. “I have spending money from Father,” she cried. “Can we go to Brilliant Ned’s? Pretty please?”

  Margo wrinkled her brow. “Perhaps. How come?”

  “For Dreggs! They’re dragon toys!”

  “Sure, why not?” Aung Margo said with a laugh. “But first, let’s go inside. I want to see Dalia, Hawthorn, and your father.”

  Father and Aunt Margo chatted for an hour. They talked about grown-up things like winter coats and scheduling and “How was your holiday?” “Fine, how was yours?” Father thanked Margo for looking after Nory. Margo said it was her favorite thing in the world to do.

  It was weird for Nory to have her two worlds mix. Life with Margo was pizza and flying, watching tigerball on TV and sleeping late on weekends. Life with Father was manners and chores, nutritious foods and homework. But whatever. Sometimes Aunt Margo made her eat nutritious food, too.

  Anyway, the grown-ups were done quickly enough, and soon Nory and Margo were flying across town to Brilliant Ned’s in Nutmeg.

  The Dreggs came in packs of one, two, or ten. Some of the packs were more expensive than others, and they had fancier Dreggs inside. Nory had just enough money for the cheapest bag of ten. Ten! She could give one to every kid in her class, including herself, and still have two left over.

  In the crisp evening air, Nory linked one hand with Aunt Margo’s and clutched her bag of Dreggs with the other. Aunt Margo grabbed Nory’s suitcase and launched them both into the air.

  It was twilight when they reached the outskirts of Dunwiddle. Nory thought the rooftops below looked cozy and welcoming. The houses weren’t grand, but they were friendly-looking, lit from within. There was Pepper’s house, with her little brothers’ toys all over the backyard. Hi, Pepper’s house! And Elliott’s house, with an ice sculpture melting on the grass in front of it. Hi, Elliott’s house!

  There was Dunwiddle Magic School, and suddenly, right below them, Aunt Margo’s small clapboard house, with its tiny backyard. There were the plants, the toolshed, the picnic table. And in front, there was Aunt Margo’s small yellow car in the driveway. Ahhh. Home.

  They landed and went inside. Nory ran up to her room and spread the Dreggs out on her bed. She couldn’t tell which eggs held which kinds of dragons, although she wondered if the color of the eggs might provide a clue. Would the pink one be a Blurper Dragon? Or would it be the purple one instead? Would the deep orange one with red spots be a Tangerine Dragon or a Flaming Nugget Dragon?

  Do Right by Your Dregg! read the directions that came with each. They explained what Dalia already said: Play with them lots. Pet them, tickle them, pat them, carry them around. That way, they will learn new tricks. Also, make sure they get their sleep by closing them into their eggs at night.

  Easy-peasy, thought Nory.

  The only hard part would be deciding which Dreggs to keep and which to give to her friends.

  On Monday before lunch, Marigold Ramos adjusted the volume on her hearing aids. They were small and tannish-pink so they blended in with Marigold’s skin. Most kids noticed the aids eventually, but before that, they noticed Marigold’s creative fashion sense. Or her original way of thinking. Or her clarinet playing. And what really set Marigold apart was her upside-down magic.

  Marigold was in Nory’s UDM class. That meant that like the other UDM kids, her talent wasn’t one of the typical five Fs: Flare, Fuzzy, Fluxer, Flyer, or Flicker. For example, Elliott Cohen was an Upside-Down Flare. Elliott froze things instead of lighting them on fire. Willa Ingeborg was an Upside-Down Flare, too, but made water instead of ice. She caused it to rain indoors.

  Pepper Phan was an Upside-Down Fuzzy. She frightened animals instead of taming them.

  Bax Kapoor was an Upside-Down Fluxer, same as Nory, only Nory turned into mixed-up animals while Bax usually turned into a rock or a swivel chair. Or, one time, a player piano.

  Andres Padillo was an Upside-Down Flyer. He could swoop high in the sky, but he had trouble getting down. Most of the time, he floated on the ceiling.

  And last but not least, Sebastian Boondoggle was an Upside-Down Flicker. Typical Flickers could turn things invisible. Sebastian could not. He could, however, see things that were invisible to other people, like sound waves. Sebastian wore goggles to block the worst of the visible sound waves so that they didn’t drive him bonkers.

  Marigold shrank things. That was her magic. It wasn’t Upside-Down Fuzzy magic, or Upside-Down Flare magic, or upside-down any of the other Fs. It just was what it was. She shrank things—and not always on purpose. She had no idea how to make them big again.

  When her very, very unusual magic had come in, her parents hadn’t known what to do. How could she learn to use her magic at their local school? None of the teachers would know how to teach her, or what to teach her!

  Then her parents saw a TV show about a new school program for kids with upside-down magic. Would Marigold want to go live with Granddad Lorenzo and Grandmom Flora in Dunwiddle, where the program was offered?

  Marigold said yes. She knew there was no way she could study magic with typical students. What class would she even be in?

  So Marigold moved in with her grandparents. Sure, she missed her mom and dad. And yeah, she’d shrunk her grandfather’s mattress, and his car. That had all been quite embarrassing. But she’d gotten used to life in Dunwiddle. And she loved her UDM classmates.

  Now that she’d adjusted her hearing aids—it was crazy loud in the school cafeteria—she got a tray of school lunch and went to sit at the table they always shared. It was the first day back after Thanksgiving break. Everyone was full of talk.

  “Hey-hey,” she said to her best friend, Willa. Willa was the one who made indoor rain. Marigold wasn’t sure Willa should really be called an Upside-Down Flare, though. Honestly, raining h
ad nothing to do with Flaring.

  If Marigold were in charge of the world, she’d say that Willa had water magic. She had told that to Willa, and the two girls decided maybe Willa was a Fluid, not an Upside-Down Flare. And Marigold thought of herself as a Fitter. That is, someone who fit objects into new sizes. In her case, smaller sizes.

  Willa, a pale girl with straight blond hair, made room for Marigold on the bench. “Nory brought presents! For all of us! Look!”

  Everyone was holding up … what were they? Eggs?

  “You squeeze the shell, like this,” said Sebastian. He had a rosy round face and wore a shirt with a collar and his goggles. He flexed his fingers around a small magenta egg.

  The egg rolled back and forth on his palm, then cracked in half with a farting noise that made everyone laugh. Out wobbled a tiny magenta Blurper Dragon.

  “Whoa,” said Marigold. That was insanely cool, probably the coolest toy Marigold had ever seen.

  The tiny Blurper Dragon lashed its tongue.

  “You got a Blurper,” Nory cried. “That’s the dragon in my dritten!”

  “Yup,” Sebastian said. He grabbed the Blurper Dragon and closed it back into its eggshell. “I love re-hatching him. It never gets old.”

  All around the table, eggs jiggled, then farted and hatched. Andres, who was wearing his brickpack to keep him from floating up to the ceiling, showed Marigold his miniature green Arbor Dragon. It opened its mouth and squealed.

  “I love you, little guy,” Andres told his Dregg.

  “Here,” said Nory importantly. Her eyes did that sparky thing they often did. “For you, Marigold.”

  She dropped a turquoise egg into Marigold’s hand. “Oh, thank you,” Marigold cried. She squeezed the eggshell the way she’d seen the others doing, and it hatched into a bright blue Bubble Dragon.

  “Well, hellooo!” Marigold cooed. “You are the cutest thing ever. Willa, look.”

  The itty-bitty Bubble Dragon lifted its tail and farted. Everyone fell apart laughing. Marigold named her Tootsie.

  “Play with her and she’ll learn more tricks,” urged Nory.

  “Yeah?” said Marigold. She got straight to work playing with Tootsie and patting her on the head. Oh, she was adorable.