The Wrong Side of Magic (32 page)

“I'll help you,” Fantasmo said. “As will your other advisers. You still have time to learn everything.”

“Time,” she repeated, and her gaze went to Hudson. “We need to pay the Cliff of Faces our year.”

“Right,” Hudson said, and then scowled.

Mr. Brown tilted his head. “Come again?”

Charlotte explained how they had gone to the cliff and asked their questions. At the end of the story, Hudson let out a grunt. “Seeing as Charlotte turned out to
be
the princess, it doesn't seem worth a year of my life.”

Mr. Fantasmo sighed in agreement. “Sometimes education can be costly.”

Mr. Brown stepped in between Hudson and Fantasmo, his hands raised in protest. “Wait—a cliff of faces bought a year of Hudson's and Charlotte's lives? That can't be legal. What kind of contract is that?”

Mr. Fantasmo sighed again. “One that must be taken at face value, I'm afraid. Magic has its own laws, and they must be obeyed.”

Mr. Brown shook his head, and his expression darkened. “No way, no how. I'm not letting anyone or anything take a year of my son's life. If the debt has to be paid, I'll let them take one of
my
years instead.”

“Unfortunately,” Mr. Fantasmo said, “one cannot pay the price of education for someone else.” He held up his hand, warding off the objection already coming from Mr. Brown. “Some people try, but it never works. It's up to each person to decide what they'll learn and what price they'll pay for knowledge.” He forced a smile. “If the children have learned well, then the education is worth it.”

Mr. Brown let out a frustrated growl that indicated he didn't agree.

“We'll set off tomorrow,” Mr. Fantasmo said, apparently immune to Mr. Brown's disapproval. “Now I must take the princess to see her other advisers.”

Charlotte looked at Hudson wistfully, and for a moment he thought she was going to ask him to come with her, but then she glanced at Mr. Brown and seemed to change her mind. When she turned her attention back to Hudson, she said, “You should show your dad around Grammaria. The two of you are heroes now. The people will want to thank you.”

“Okay,” Hudson said, even though he didn't want to go talk to a lot of strangers.

“And of course, I do, too,” Charlotte said.

“Do what?” Hudson asked.

“Want to thank you,” she said, and added almost shyly, “and I think you're heroes.”

Hudson smiled, glowing at the compliment. “Thanks.”

She smiled back at him. “Thank you. For everything.” Then she turned and walked away with Mr. Fantasmo.

*   *   *

Hudson and his father decided to skip touring Grammaria and went to a large game room in the castle to play the Logosian version of basketball. Instead of using a ball, you pulled a word out of a bin. Groups of letters appeared around the room on different baskets. You had to figure out which groups of letters would make a word if you threw your word into the basket.

Hudson reached into the bin and pulled out the word
cat.

It was furry and purred. It also stretched its
t
around like a tail. “I can't dribble this,” Hudson said. “I'll hurt it. Besides, if I throw it, it might scratch me. We should exchange it for another word.”

Cat
went all bristly, as if Hudson had offended it. The word curved itself into a ball and waited. So Hudson dribbled it. It purred again.

Really, he would never get used to Logos.

Hudson scored with
catch, scatter, catalog,
and
educate
—he couldn't forget
that
word. His dad went for the fancier shots and got
advocate, duplicate, category,
and
disqualifications
. While they threw and rebounded, they talked about the places they had been in Logos. They also talked about how much Bonnie would have loved it here, and how much Hudson's mom would have hated it—at least the dangerous parts. He wasn't sure he should tell her about breaking into King Vaygran's room and stealing his sword.

It felt good to talk to his dad like they used to. Hudson was going to write down this memory to make sure he could hold on to it forever.

*   *   *

Hudson and Charlotte didn't go to the Cliff of Faces the next day. Charlotte addressed the Logosians in the morning, telling them she'd sent King Vaygran to a secure place out of the country.

She had, in fact, sent him and several guards to the gray tower in the Land of Backwords, the same tower he had imprisoned her in for eight months. She told Hudson about it at breakfast. “We'll see how he likes performing for the dust bunnies for a while.”

Charlotte also outlined new policies for Logos, striking down many of King Vaygran's laws. The ten villagers who had been disguise-pasted into looking like Proval came to the courtyard and begged for her help in restoring their identities. She used some revealing powder to change them back to their normal selves. She reported that a team of wizards would study the spell Nepharo had cast on the Land of Scholars to see if they could find a way to locate and retrieve the lost people.

While the crowd was cheering at this news, the soldiers who had first captured Charlotte and Hudson returned to the castle. They were surprised to find King Vaygran deposed and Princess Colette ruling. They were even more surprised to learn that the girl they had captured was the princess and that they were almost accomplices in her death. Mr. Fantasmo brought the soldiers to the balcony, where they knelt before her, hats clenched in their hands, apologizing to the point of groveling.

Charlotte regarded them without showing emotion, either anger or pity. “You might not have known you caught the heir to the throne, but even the lowest-born citizen of Logos has rights. From the moment my uncle had discovered that Hudson and I wanted to free the princess, you hunted us like criminals.”

The soldiers' leader, the man with the curly beard, put his hand to his chest. “We only followed the king's orders, Your Highness. He told us you were dangerous enemies. If we had refused him, the king would have thrown us in his dungeons.”

Charlotte didn't speak for a moment. She lifted her chin, eyes firm. Several of the soldiers gulped nervously.

“On the day you chased us into the forest,” she finally said, “a polar bear, a wolf, and a tiger fought your bloodhounds so I could escape. What happened to them?”

The bearded man fingered his clenched hat. “They weren't killed,” he said, offering this news with emphasis. It was clearly the good news that would shortly be followed by bad news. Bad news often tags along like that. “When Nepharo realized they were magical animals, he thought he could get information about you from them.” Another gulp. “After the dogs brought them down, we tied them up, and Nepharo questioned them. They weren't what you would call cooperative, so the wizard sent them to the castle so they could be questioned later.”

“They're here?” Charlotte asked, brightening.

The soldier nodded. “They should be.”

Charlotte turned to Mr. Fantasmo. “Can you check the dungeons for them?”

While he left to do that, she had the soldiers swear an oath of loyalty to uphold her laws. Hudson imagined she would spend a lot of time trying to straighten out the messes King Vaygran had caused. When the soldiers had finished, Charlotte sent them away and said her good-byes to the crowd, then she and Hudson made their way through the castle hallways.

“I hope my animals are all right,” she said, hurrying so quickly Hudson could barely keep up with her. “Why didn't I have someone check the dungeons earlier?”

They rounded a hallway, and the dungeon doors came into sight, swinging open. Mr. Fantasmo was holding them open for the animals. The polar bear loped out first. His fur was so matted and dirty he looked more like a brown bear than a white one. He was favoring one paw, moving slowly. The tiger limped out after him. She had several gaping holes in her fur, slashes where the bloodhounds had ripped into her. Bits of stuffing poked out everywhere. One of her ears was torn loose, and a piece of her tail was missing altogether.

Charlotte ran toward them, arms outstretched. “Chancellor! Blaze! It's me!”

They recognized her voice. Their ears perked up, and both immediately hobbled toward her. The polar bear bellowed in happiness, and the tiger let out a rumbling purr.

She hugged the polar bear and petted the tiger, both of whom licked her face in appreciation.

The wolf hobbled into the hallway last. His side had been shredded and was nothing but loose stuffing. His tail was in tatters. One paw hung by a thread. He took two steps, whimpered, and fell to the ground.

Charlotte left the polar bear and tiger and knelt down beside him. She gingerly stroked his head. “It's all right,” she told him. “We'll have you sewn up, and you'll be as good as new.”

The wolf rested his muzzle against Charlotte's leg. His eyes were sad, and his ears drooped. “I'll never be as good as new again.”

Charlotte kept petting his head. “You'll be better, because the scars you carry are proof that you love me.”

*   *   *

The palace seamstresses spent the next couple of hours restuffing and stitching the animals. They were patched, bathed, dried, fluffed, touched up, and given seats beside Charlotte to watch a celebration in her honor.

As soon as it got dark, the wizards put on a fireworks display. Lighted words zipped through the air—
shine
,
dazzle
,
sparkle
—crackling and popping before they faded away.

The party could have easily stretched into a weeklong event, but at the homonym feast that night, Mr. Brown reminded Charlotte that he and Hudson needed to go back to Texas. “We've been gone for too long,” Mr. Brown said as he scooped some green
P
's and golden
karats
onto his plate. “My wife and daughter must be worried sick about us.”

Mr. Fantasmo buttered a freshly baked
role
. “Don't trouble yourself about that. I sent a messenger to your wife last night telling her the good news.”

Hudson dipped his spoon into a chocolate
moose
. “How did you do that?” Part of him dreaded going home, where things were so ordinary and dull. If he still had a way to communicate with Charlotte, it wouldn't be quite so bad.

Charlotte raised an eyebrow at Mr. Fantasmo. “I thought you said it was nearly impossible to send people to the Land of Banishment.”

“People, yes.” Mr. Fantasmo took a bite of a juicy red
beat.
“Bugs, however, can get through to just about anywhere. I simply wrote out a message to Mrs. Brown, enchanted a cockroach so it felt compelled to deliver any messages given to it, and then I sent the bug on his way.”

“You sent an enchanted cockroach to my house?” Mr. Brown repeated.

Hudson's mother didn't like bugs. Especially cockroaches. She had probably killed the thing on first sight.

Charlotte cut into a roasted
meet
. “Cockroaches are so small. How could it have delivered a message that Mrs. Brown would even see?”

“Oh, I took care of that,” Mr. Fantasmo said with a wave of his hand. “Part of the enchantment is that the bug grows two feet as soon as it enters the Browns' house.”

Well, that had probably been an interesting sight. Hudson could just imagine his mother finding a two-foot cockroach wandering around the house with a letter grasped in its pincers. The next moments had no doubt been filled with a lot of shrieking and objects being hurled at the insect. Hudson probably shouldn't have laughed at the thought, but he did.

“Great,” Mr. Brown said, sounding less than happy. “That is very…”

“Reassuring,” Mr. Fantasmo supplied.

“Yeah.” Mr. Brown cleared his throat and shifted in his seat. “But we should still get home as soon as possible.”

*   *   *

The next day, Hudson, Mr. Brown, Charlotte, and Mr. Fantasmo set out on horseback to go to the Cliff of Faces. As they went down the streets of Grammaria, the stone bee flew up to Charlotte. “Welcome home, Your Highness.”

“Thank you,” Charlotte said. “And thank you for your help earlier.”

As Hudson remembered it, the bee hadn't been that helpful. The bug had said, “The princess is closer than you think, but rescuing her is a process, not an event.”

Hudson narrowed his eyes at the hovering bee. “Did you know all along that Charlotte was the princess?”

“Her looks changed,” the bee said, “but her voice didn't. Bees notice those sorts of details.”

“I came alone to ask you the question,” Hudson pointed out. “You never heard Charlotte talk.”

“I didn't hear her,” the bee said, flying in a lazy circle above Hudson's head. “The other bees did, though, and we're very social. It's hard to keep secrets from us.”

Charlotte frowned at the bee. “If you knew I was the princess, why didn't you tell me?”

The bee bobbed up and down in the air between Charlotte's and Hudson's horses. “It wasn't enough that
I
knew it.
You
had to know, and you wouldn't have believed me even if I'd told you. Just like Hudson wouldn't believe me if I told him he would one day be the president of his land.”

Hudson sat up straighter in his saddle. “What?”

The bee didn't answer, just flew higher.

“Wait,” Hudson called. “Was that just an example, or am I really going to be president?”

The bee buzzed upward in a spiral. “You'll have to find out yourself.” Then the bug zipped off toward the castle garden.

The squirrel ran across Charlotte's shoulder, nose twitching at the departing insect. “If you ask me,” Meko said, “bees are a bunch of gossiping biddies.”