The Wrong Side of Magic (20 page)

Hudson got to his feet, brushed himself off, and grinned. As Charlotte stood up, she took the jar of hope from her jacket. She jiggled it to produce a glow so they could see their way to the campsite. Hudson walked beside her, pulling the magnet and miniature sword from his pocket. He showed them to Charlotte. “We've got the key. We're on our way.”

“We need to be,” she agreed. “The farther we go tonight, the better. You heard King Vaygran—he recognized my voice. He knows who I am.” As she said the last words, she shuddered.

Charlotte had never said what sort of relationship she'd had with the king when she'd lived here before, but Hudson could tell it wasn't good.

*   *   *

They made slow progress through the forest. Hope, after all, can only cast away so much darkness. The trees that had been so colorful in the daytime seemed gray and tangled now. Hudson couldn't see farther than a step or two away and kept running into bushes. Before long, they grew too tired to keep going, and they set up a quick camp—quick in this case meaning laying out damp sleeping bags and falling asleep on them.

Hudson awakened a few hours later with Pokey pecking at his hair. Hudson swatted at him. “What are you doing?” he grumbled, and turned over. It wasn't even dawn yet.

“The other birds said I should wake you with a welcoming birdcall. Penguins don't do that, so I decided to root around in your hair for bugs. I found one.”

The morning didn't get much better after that.

Hudson and Charlotte packed up their things, checked the compass, and set off walking through the undergrowth toward the Land of Desolation. The Skittles-colored forest wasn't nearly as charming when you had to keep pushing branches out of your face. He knocked into an oak branch and was promptly pelted by acorns, bcorns, and even a few ccorns.

He hoped the unicorns would pick them up soon. He didn't know how far away the soldiers were, or if King Vaygran would send a new group of bloodhounds from the city after them.

“We should change our appearances again,” Hudson said, shooing away some dragonflies that buzzed by his head. They shot tiny flames at him before darting off. “King Vaygran's men will be on the lookout for Isabella and Andy now.”

“You're right.” Charlotte rifled through her bag for the disguise paste. “I'm sorry Isabella will have to go.”

“Why?”

“Well, I know how much you like looking at her.”

“What?” Hudson asked, flushing. “What are you talking about?”

Charlotte sent him a meaningful gaze. “Back in school, you stared at her a lot.”

“That was only because”—Hudson made an airy, pointless gesture—“I was sort of suffering from…” He had meant to say something along the lines of vision problems, but Charlotte was staring at him in a way that didn't allow for flagrant excuses.

“Stupidity,” he finished.

His answer made her smile. That was another thing that wasn't very Isabella-like—Charlotte's easy smile. It was genuine, not like Isabella's precise and perfected smiles.

Charlotte found the disguise paste and pulled it out of the bag.

“Will you be sorry to see Andy go?” he asked.

“No,” she said. “Every once in a while, I expect you to sneer at me and say something horrible.”

“Andy and Caidan were jerks to you.” More quietly, Hudson added, “Sorry I didn't stick up for you.”

“It's okay,” she said, and smiled again. He wouldn't have traded that smile for ten from the real Isabella.

After a few minutes of discussion, Hudson decided to change into Trevor, and Charlotte became Macy. She got Macy's light brown hair and hazel eyes right but somehow missed the air of judgment Macy always had. They both wore less flamboyant clothes this time, and Hudson insisted upon wearing regular boots instead of the stupid banana shoes.

While they walked, he took King Vaygran's sword from his bag. Last night, it had been too dark to get a good look at it. Now he turned it over in the palm of his hand, examining it. The blade wasn't much bigger than a car key. It was straight, silver, and shone in the sunlight. Besides the fancy markings on the hilt, it seemed like a normal sword.

He gave it to Charlotte and then considered ditching the magnet. The entire time Charlotte held the sword, the magnet announced directions to it, calling out things like, “Turn right in ten inches.”

When Hudson ignored these directions, the magnet's voice became snottier. “Just reach out and take it,” the magnet insisted. “It's right there. Can't you see it? Right there.”

Finally, for the sake of quiet, he put the sword back on the end of the magnet. It hummed happily like a child who'd been given a favorite teddy bear. “My destination,” it murmured.

Yeah, magic could take some weird turns.

He tucked both sword and magnet back into his bag. Charlotte kept checking her compass to make sure they were headed in the right direction. While they hiked through the forest, she told him the story behind the Land of Desolation. “Two cities used to be there: the City of Rhyme and the City of Reason. One was supposed to teach and study all things factual and the other to study and teach all things beautiful. However, there's too much fact in beauty and too much beauty in fact, and the cities never did stop arguing about where history should be. So finally, King Arawn decided they should combine their efforts, and he united both places into the Land of Scholars.”

“Oh,” Hudson said, not quite sure he followed the part about beauty being in facts.

“Rhyme and Reason were growing together a bit in the middle lands anyway, which meant the Land of Scholars was shaped like an hourglass. Everyone in Logos thought it was fitting, because there should always be time for learning.”

“Right,” Hudson said, still wondering if there were indeed facts in beauty.

“After King Vaygran took the throne, some of the scholars criticized his policies. They knew if enough people realized what the king was doing, they would oppose him. They told stories about the plight of the banished poor, and of citizens who were imprisoned for having wrong opinions. They wrote poems about freedom and songs that asked for the princess's return.”

“So King Vaygran attacked them?”

“He had some of his wizards cast a spell on the Land of the Scholars. Everything disappeared. The people, the cities, the land. And worst of all—the memories of them.”

“If he took your memories of them,” Hudson asked, “then how do you remember what happened to them?”

“He took the memory of people, not the place,” she said. “None of us remember the people. I could have had friends or brothers and sisters who went to study in the Land of Scholars, but as soon as the spell came over the land, I forgot them. We all did. And nothing will bring back those memories while King Vaygran rules.”

“That's horrible.” Hudson's hands tightened around the straps of his bag. He wanted to take out the sword and hold it, to reassure himself that he had the key that would bring the princess back.

“As retaliation for the way the scholars used words against King Vaygran, his wizards created a border around the land that sucks words away. It's dangerous to cross it.”

“Why?”

“It's
wordless
,” she emphasized, as though that explained everything.

“So?”

“People get hopelessly lost there.”

He still didn't understand what she meant. “You mean because there aren't any signs?”

“It's not just signs. You can't speak, and thinking is almost impossible. Without words, you're reduced to reactions, wants, and fears. Who you are,” she said slowly, “depends a lot on the words you have.”

Hudson didn't quite believe her. Who he was didn't have to do with words. It had to do with the choices he made. It had to do with his Hudsonness.

He and Charlotte didn't talk about it more. Nigel and Cecil trotted through some trees in front of them.

“Greetings, good unicorns.” Charlotte gave a curtsy, and Hudson remembered to bow.

Cecil let out a happy whinnying sound. “See,” he said to Nigel, “I told you they were still alive. I win the bet. King Vaygran doesn't kill
everyone
who crosses him.”

Nigel pawed at the ground with one hoof. “I said he
tried
to kill everyone who crossed him.” He turned to Charlotte. “Did King Vaygran try to kill you?”

“He nearly stabbed Hudson, and then his guards shot arrows at us.”

“Ha,” Nigel said. “You didn't win. And besides, the day is still young.”

It is never a good sign when unicorns are wagering on your death. Still, in a perfectly cheerful voice, Charlotte asked, “Could we trouble you for a ride to the isthmus of the Land of Desolation?” To Hudson, she explained, “The isthmus is what we call the narrow strip of land that connected Rhyme to Reason. It's only a couple of miles long, so it is the easiest place to cross.”

Cecil raised his horn, and it glistened silver in the sunlight. “We'll take you as far as the forest allows.” He knelt before Charlotte to allow her to get on his back. Nigel did the same for Hudson.

He was glad the unicorns had finally stopped questioning whether he was pure enough to haul around.

They trotted through the forest at a good pace. The unicorns seemed to know every secret path and hidden way. They went through a bower of trees that bent together to make a tunnel and swam across a river with a current so strong that swirling hands seemed to grab at them.

Charlotte sang for most of the time, although every once in a while Hudson sang to give her a break. The unicorns were polite enough about his singing, but as soon as he finished, they always requested another song from Charlotte. Hudson didn't blame them. She sounded happy when she sang. Well, except for when she sang songs about good King Arawn; then she always sounded wistfully sad.

Charlotte and Hudson ate fruit that the birds brought them for lunch, and then more fruit for dinner. Hudson was tired of fruit and wished they could buy some real food. He thought longingly of the warm and buttery
read
he'd eaten in Scriptoria. He would have done anything to have a good read again.

Nightfall came, and they'd only traveled two-thirds of the way to the Land of Desolation. They needed to get some sleep, so the unicorns dropped them off in a safe spot and promised to return in the morning.

That night, as they lay in their sleeping bags, Charlotte asked, “What are you thinking about?”

He'd been wondering how dangerous tomorrow would be. What was waiting for them at the tower in the Land of Backwords? “Nothing,” he said, because he didn't want to worry Charlotte. “What are you thinking about?”

“Nothing,” she answered.

Apparently, she didn't want to worry him, either.

 

12

THE NEXT MORNING,
while Hudson and Charlotte repacked their things, the unicorns trotted up. Nigel ambled over to Hudson, swishing his golden tail.

Hudson shoved his pillow into his bag. “Hey, what's up?”

Nigel nickered. “The sun, the moon, and the constellations.” He turned to Charlotte and lowered his voice. “He's a rather simple boy, isn't he?”

“The people from the Land of Banishment are very concerned with things that are up,” she said confidentially. “Some of them are also curious about what's going down.”

Hudson slipped his bag over his shoulders. “Those are just sayings. They mean, ‘How's it going?'”

Nigel knelt to allow Hudson to mount. “That depends on what you mean when you say
it. It
generally refers to the last noun a speaker used. So when the first thing you say is ‘How's it going?' you could be referring to any of the hundred thousand nouns in the language. Wouldn't it be helpful to narrow your subject down a bit?”

Charlotte had already mounted Cecil, and the two unicorns headed out through the trees. “Are there only a hundred thousand nouns?” Cecil asked. “I would have put it closer to two hundred thousand.”

“Actually, I think a hundred thousand is a generous number,” Nigel replied. “I was rounding up.”

“That can't be right,” Cecil said. “Did you count flothbartens, shimshorns, merritongs—”

“Okay,” Hudson said, breaking into their conversation. “‘How's it going?' is just another way of saying, ‘Hello. How are you?'”

The unicorns considered this as they went past a strand of cotton-candy-pink trees. “People from your land should learn to express themselves without confusion.”

Charlotte nodded in agreement. “You have no idea how right you are about that.”

Hudson didn't bother explaining any more of his expressions.

Four hours later, the trees thinned out, and the sky changed from light blue to nearly white. Even the dirt on the ground ahead was bleached to a salty tan. Where the forest ended, the ground turned pale and desertlike and spread out in a long band, both left and right, as far as Hudson could see.

“We're here,” Charlotte said.

The unicorns slowed to a stop. “We are indeed,” Cecil said. “And we wish you a merry isthmus.” Both unicorns let out whinnies of laughter at the joke.

On the other side of the Land of Desolation, sloping hills with forests of white trees were visible. Charlotte pointed to them. “That's the Land of Backwords.”

The forests there seemed as thick as the ones on this side. In the middle, though, only a few spindly bushes grew here and there. Spots of yellow grass dotted the landscape. Mostly it looked like a huge bulldozer had scraped everything away.

A sign of some sort stuck out of the ground a few yards into the Land of Desolation. Probably a warning sign. Its words were too small to read.

Nigel knelt to make it easier for Hudson to get down. “This is where we say adieu, cheerio, and all other words of parting.”