The Wrong Side of Magic (8 page)

A worse thought came to Hudson. He'd been counting down the days until his dad came home from overseas. He'd imagined a hundred different reunions: going to the airport and seeing his dad emerge from the crowd—tall, confident, and wearing his Marine uniform. Or being at home and having his dad walk through the front door, drop his duffel bag on the floor, and hold his arms open wide. Or Hudson and Bonnie walking home from school and seeing him waiting on the sidewalk, grinning as they raced to him.

How could Hudson be around
any
of his family if he didn't get rid of the curse? He sat back on the couch, feeling defeated. “I don't want to give the trolls your compass, but I can't keep the mirror. It will ruin my life. What else can I do?”

Softly, Charlotte said, “We could find the princess.”

“What?” Hudson asked, not sure he'd heard her right.

“We could rescue the princess,” she said more firmly. “And then she could retrieve her scepter and use it to defeat King Vaygran. If we rescue her, she'll help you get rid of the troll mirror.”

“How could we rescue her? You said Vaygran's wizard used magic to hide her.”

Charlotte gazed at the tree, a cautious excitement growing in her expression. “Most people wouldn't be able to rescue her, but I know things about magic, and my dad has stuff we could use—so that's half the battle.” She paused, correcting herself. “Actually, it's probably more like a quarter of the battle.” She looked upward, still calculating, “Well, depending on where Princess Nomira is hidden, an eighth of the battle … maybe a sixteenth.”

Hudson stopped her before she could do any more fractions. “I thought you couldn't go to Logos.”

“It's not that I can't go—it's that it isn't safe for me.” She bit her lip again, grazing it along the edges of her teeth. “My father and I lived at the castle, so King Vaygran knows what I look like. He'd love to capture me. But I could disguise myself.…”

Hudson scratched the back of his neck, thinking. Earlier that day, Charlotte had asked him if he would face danger to save someone he didn't know. What had he told her? Oh yeah, that he wasn't that stupid. “Wouldn't Vaygran have soldiers guarding the princess? And wouldn't those soldiers have weapons?”

“Maybe,” Charlotte conceded.

“So actually, trying to rescue the princess is a really bad idea.”

Charlotte's lips pursed into a scowl. Her brown eyes took on an angry look, and even the freckles peeking out from her blue lotion seemed suddenly offended. “Having boils follow you will brand you for life. But the compass isn't yours, so if you give it to the trolls, you'll be a thief and a coward—and that's a worse brand to carry.”

Hudson nearly said,
Yeah, but it's still better than an untimely death.
She was right, though. If he cut off Charlotte's way back home, he'd never be able to undo it. And that would always weigh on him.

He let out a long sigh. What other choice, really, did he have? “Okay. We'll try to rescue the princess.” He didn't even want to think about how dangerous it might be. “Where do we start and what do we do?”

Charlotte smiled, her eagerness making her stand straighter. “We'll need to pack some things. Go home and get a change of clothes, some food, and all your stuffed animals. Bring a sleeping bag and pillow, too. Hurry,” she added, because he hadn't moved. “We've got to leave before my dad gets home.”

“Right.” Hudson stood up and trudged to Charlotte's front door. “I wouldn't want to face an angry wizard.”

Even as Hudson said the words, he had the sinking feeling that angry wizards were exactly what he would face when he went to Logos.

 

5

FORTY MINUTES LATER,
Hudson was back on Charlotte's doorstep with his backpack, sleeping bag, pillow, and a sack full of trail mix, granola bars, and peanut-butter-and-jelly sandwiches. He didn't know how long he would be in Logos, so he'd explained the situation to Bonnie. Their mother wasn't going to believe one word of it. And she'd be mad at Hudson for going somewhere without her permission. That was a grounding offense. He didn't even want to think about what the punishment would be for heading off to a dangerous foreign country to overthrow a tyrant.

Bonnie believed him about the troll curse. Just as he had finished packing things into his backpack, boils flared up on her skin, polka-dotting her face. She had been sitting on his bed while he told her about his trip to Logos.

He'd checked the clock on his dresser. It had been a half hour since he'd come home. Apparently, anyone who was around him for that amount of time would break out. “Sorry,” he told her. “They'll fade away as soon as I'm gone.”

He had expected Bonnie to get weepy about his leaving. After all, he might never return. His sister seemed to miss this point altogether. “You got to meet unicorns, and now you get to have an adventure and rescue a princess, and I bet you'll meet fairies, too.”

“I brought you catflower,” he reminded her. Sunshine was completely recovered and darting around his bedroom, pouncing on his shoes. A fierce battle with his shoelaces ensued.

“Yeah,” Bonnie said, “but
I
was supposed to be the one who went, and you wouldn't let me, and now I have boils.” She flounced off dramatically, an action that sent Sunshine scurrying under the bed.

Pure in heart. Right. Bonnie probably would have been trampled by the unicorns after she annoyed them to death.

Hudson rang Charlotte's doorbell, and she let him in with a smile. The blue lotion had dried into an opaque film.

“I'm almost done packing,” she said, and headed across the living room to the hallway. “Do you have any more room in your backpack?”

“A little.” He followed her down the hall and into a room. He expected it to be her bedroom, but it wasn't. Bookcases lined the walls and stood in the middle of the room, library-style. Instead of books, odds and ends covered the shelves: bowls, jars, boxes, a ball of yarn, a candle, a pair of glasses. Charlotte had made a pile of things on the floor—clothes, a sleeping bag, a pillow, and a half-dozen stuffed animals.

He raised an eyebrow at those. He'd always thought Bonnie was silly for sleeping with a bunch of stuffed animals. Charlotte was actually going to lug toys around Logos? He hadn't planned on taking any, even though Charlotte had included them in the list of things to bring. He was in middle school. He didn't sleep with teddy bears anymore.

Right before he'd left his bedroom, he grabbed a stuffed penguin Bonnie gave him last Christmas. Since Charlotte was willing to help him get rid of the mirror, he didn't want to start out the trip by not following her instructions.

“Show me what you brought,” Charlotte told him.

He took out his clothes, a toothbrush and toothpaste—his mom would be proud of him for remembering that—the stuffed penguin, a sack full of food, a flashlight, a pocketknife, and a first-aid kit.

“You only have one stuffed animal?” Charlotte asked in disbelief.

“Yeah, I gave Bonnie the ones I had when I was little.” Come to think of it, this was probably the reason his sister had chosen the stuffed penguin for a present. She knew that sooner or later he'd give it back to her.

“Oh,” Charlotte said in that tone of voice girls get when they think something is really sweet. “That's so self-sacrificing.”

He shrugged. At the moment, Bonnie didn't think he was such a great brother.

Charlotte picked up his first-aid kit, flipped it open, then set it aside. “You don't need to bring this. I've got better stuff. Which reminds me, I still need…” She walked along a row of shelves until she came to a metal box of candy hearts, the kind stores sold on Valentine's Day. “These.” She added the box to her pile.

Hudson noticed a black calculator sitting with her things. It had symbols he didn't recognize. Must be calculus. He picked it up for a closer look. Why would she bring a calculator on their trip?

Charlotte saw him and snatched the calculator out of his hand. “Don't play with that. It's dangerous.”

“Only if your teacher catches you with it during a test.”

She didn't smile, and he realized she was serious. “It's not a calculator.” She put it firmly back on her pile. “It's a calcu
later
. It's used to subtract or add to a person's memories. If you push the wrong buttons, you'll end up giving yourself amnesia.”

“Really?” He couldn't decide whether that was frightening or cool. He regarded it with added interest. “Why would anyone make a calculater look like a calculator? Isn't that unsafe? Don't people make mistakes?”

“Most people don't have them.” Charlotte rummaged through some jars on the shelves. “My dad made that one, and he likes to make magic objects look like ordinary things from your world. That way, there's less chance anyone will steal them.” She pulled two small jars from the shelf, each no bigger than a cell phone. “Do you have room for these?”

“Will they break in my backpack?”

“Probably not. They're sturdier than they look.”

He unzipped the front pocket of his backpack to make room. “What's in them?”

“Hope,” she said. “We're bound to need it.”

Jars full of hope. Okay. He wondered if she had boxes of optimism, too.

Charlotte took an intricate silver bell from the shelf. Tiny colored crystals studded its surface in swirling patterns.

“What's that for?” Hudson asked.

“Calling fairies. Otherwise, we'll never find one when we need one. I mean, when was the last time you saw one?”

“Um, never.”

“Exactly.” She slipped the bell into her jacket pocket, then took a tube of toothpaste from the shelf. She fingered it tentatively. “My dad will be mad at me for taking this, but I'm going to need it.”

“Your dad will be mad at you for brushing your teeth?”

“It's not toothpaste. It's disguise paste. Plenty of people know I fled with my father when King Vaygran took power. I can't let anyone recognize me.”

Hudson looked closer at the tube. What he'd thought was the word
COLGATE
actually read
CLOAKGATE
.
Underneath that, it said,
WITH FLOHIDE
.

“I should disguise myself before we go,” Charlotte decided. She left the room, and he figured she was getting a hat or a wig or something. Instead, she came back with an advertisement ripped from a magazine. It showed a girl with brown curls and hazel eyes sporting cotton-candy-pink lipstick. Charlotte squeezed a tiny dab of the paste on her hand and shut her eyes. Almost immediately, her red hair darkened and twisted into short brown curls. The blue lotion on her face disappeared, and her nose and chin changed shape to match the model's. When Charlotte opened her eyes, they were hazel. The only difference between her and the picture was the color of her lips. Instead of pink, they were vivid purple.

Hudson stared at them.

“What?” she asked. It was still Charlotte's voice. “Didn't I get it right?”

“Mostly right.”

Charlotte picked up a small mirror from the shelf and looked at herself. She frowned, pursed her lips, then sighed and put the mirror back. “Well, at least no one will recognize me.” She handed the tube of disguise paste to Hudson. “Can you put this with your things? My pack is going to be full.”

Judging from the pile of stuffed animals on the floor, she would need her backpack and a suitcase, too. He slid the tube into his backpack's side pocket.

Charlotte took an orange calculator from the shelf and pointed it at him. He nearly dropped his backpack in alarm. “What are you doing? I thought you said that was dangerous?”

“This isn't a calculater,” she said. “See, it's orange. It's just a compactulator. It shrinks belongings, so they're easier to carry.” She pushed a button, and his sleeping bag and pillow shrank to the point where they looked like doll accessories.

“Cool.” Hudson picked up the sleeping bag. It was lighter than he'd expected. The compactulator must change the weight, too.

Charlotte shrank her pile of stuff, then went back to the shelves to rummage for more things. While Hudson packed up her backpack, she opened a jewelry box full of silver four-leaf-clover necklaces. She slipped one around her neck and gave him another. “These are for warding off wizards' spells.”

He put in on, tucking it into his shirt.

Charlotte took a small metal bar from a shelf and handed it to him. “Iron to give us extra strength.”

He slid that into her backpack, as well.

She grabbed a plastic bag from the floor that he'd missed. “And some hair bands,” she said, handing him those, too.

“What are these for?” he asked.

She lifted one eyebrow like it was a stupid question. “For putting up my hair.”

“Right,” he said. “I knew that.”

Finally, when they'd packed up everything, Charlotte wrote her father a note telling him where they'd gone. She placed it on one of the branches of the tree and gave the room a last look. “I'm ready. Wait until we're both touching the compass, then pull the knob.”

Hudson took the compass from his pocket and held it out to Charlotte. As soon as she touched it, he flicked the knob upward. The living room vanished, replaced by a panorama of multicolored trees.

The earthy scent of plants swirled around them, and the strange pianolike call of the birds chirped overhead. A dirt path at their feet wound haphazardly through the forest like an indecisive river.

How far away were they from the troll village? “Does the compass always take you to the same place?” Hudson asked, looking around.

“No, we could be anywhere in the Forest of Possibilities. And it's a bigger place than most people realize.”