Elodie spent the last day worrying. Would her father be able to conquer his fear of her friends? Would her mother try to wrench her away from them?
Albin and His Lordship shared her fear. His Lordship even offered to shape-shift into his monkey, although Elodie asked him not to. In midafternoon they reached the track that wound up the mountain to Potluck Farm, and Albin went ahead to prepare the way.
After an anxious two hours, as the sun was setting, he returned with Goodwife Bettel and Goodman Han, Elodie’s mother and father, the faces of both bathed in joy. They’d heard reports of the good ogre and the good dragon, but even if they hadn’t, they’d have welcomed any creatures who brought their daughter home. Albin made the introductions. Elodie’s father bowed so deeply, his nose touched his knees.
His Lordship almost equaled the courtesy. In his opinion, Elodie’s parents ranked with royalty. Nesspa performed a dog version of a bow, chest on the ground, rump in the air.
Masteress Meenore performed ITs elaborate bow and curtsy. “You are to be congratulated for producing a mansioning and detecting prodigy.”
Lambs and calves!
Despite her happiness, Goodwife Bettel merely crossed her arms. “If you value my daughter so highly, why did you leave her in danger at the Oase?”
Hastily, Albin—who had already told the story of the theft and of Elodie’s connection with her masteress—suggested they continue talking at the Potluck cottage. The party began to ascend.
Elodie noticed ITs smoke rising in white spirals as they climbed.
Her father came to her side. “Is IT”—he lowered his voice to a whisper—“a he or a she?”
Enh enh enh. IT had heard.
“IT doesn’t say.”
The cottage could accommodate only an ogre’s arm or a dragon’s leg, so the humans brought a meal outside, and IT kept everyone warm. His Lordship sat on a tree stump with Nesspa at his feet while the humans perched on stools.
As she ladled pottage into bowls and a butter tub for His Lordship, Elodie’s mother returned to her accusation. “Neither of you took good care of Lodie.”
“Lodie?” Masteress Meenore’s nasal voice rose in pitch. “You call her Lodie, too?”
Goodwife Bettel gaped at IT.
Elodie smiled.
IT collected ITself. “Life is risk, Madam, for children as well as for adults. By being in danger, Lodie became more of what she can be. Why did you send her to Two Castles town?”
“To apprentice as a weaver.”
“A weaver? Mmm.”
Elodie hadn’t confessed this to IT, since weaving had never been in her plan.
“You let her go because she showed no ability as a gooseherd. You let her go, although cogs have sunk in the strait and she had no one waiting for her and no preparation for the thieves of Two Castles, and she was, in fact, robbed on her first day.”
Elodie’s mother paled. Her father gasped. Albin sent Elodie a worried look. His Lordship grinned.
IT pressed on. “You sent her away because she wanted a different sort of life than she could have on a farm, because existence here has its own perils: blizzards, rockslides even without a volcano, drops over cliffs, floods, fires. You sent her away because you love her. And I took her in because—” IT broke off, perhaps surprised at where ITs rhetoric was leading. “Come, Madam, we both regard your daughter as precious. Let us be friends in this.”
The contest ended. Goodwife Bettel busied herself with cutting bread for everyone. Elodie had never before seen her mother lose an argument.
“Elodie,” IT said, “your parents have heard the broad outline but not the particulars of discovering the thieves and the Replica.”
This was an invitation to mansion. By firelight the two mansioners enacted events at the Oase and on Zertrum, Albin taking the male roles and Elodie the female. They did well and the applause was enthusiastic.
Elodie sat back down between her parents.
Goodman Han sighed. “It’s a happy ending, but . . .”
“But it’s very sad,” her mother finished. “Master Uwald . . . Johan-bee . . . I don’t want to feel sorry for them, but I do.”
“Masteress?” Elodie said. “When there’s a crime and you detect, when it’s finished, is the ending ever truly happy?”
“Rarely.”
Silence fell until IT said, “I do not relish a life lived out of doors. Your Lordship, when we reach Tair—”
“I’m not going to Tair.”
“You’re not?” Elodie cried.
“Nesspa and I will be bees on Zertrum for a while.”
Dismayed, Elodie wondered if her masteress would stay on Lahnt, too. Would she have to herd geese again?
ITs smoke turned green—a confused dragon. “You will rusticate here, Your Lordship?”
“Wonderful!” Elodie’s father put his arm around Elodie’s shoulder.
Elodie flashed a look of appeal at her masteress.
Goodman Han continued happily. “Folks will need help, Your Lordship, and you can stay with us when you’re not—”
“Nesspa and I will live better than most bees.”
Meaning His Lordship didn’t intend to live in the open outside a cottage. Elodie blushed for her friend’s rudeness, which she knew he hadn’t meant.
IT scratched ITs snout. “In the spring Elodie and I will continue on to Tair.”
Phew! Elodie thought.
“Why?” Goodwife Bettel sounded ready to start another argument.
“I am a creature of town and city, of lair and hoard.” ITs smoke spiraled. “I prefer the rub and chafe of people, fools though most of you be.”
“Mother?” Elodie’s father said, clearly hoping she would forbid their daughter to go.
But Goodwife Bettel accepted ITs decision. “Masteress, do you usually allow my daughter to be awake so late into the night?”
EPILOGUE
A week after Elodie and her companions left the Oase, the earl of Lahnt arrived. High Brunka Marya pleaded for leniency for Johan-bee, taking on herself some of the blame for his part in the theft.
The earl, whose orchards on Zertrum had been ruined, condemned Master Uwald to spend the rest of his life in prison. Johan’s sentence was ten years, and he was no longer a bee.
Master Tuomo visited his former master occasionally, perhaps out of gratitude for saving his sons. At first he gave Master Uwald a few coins so he might wager with the prison guards, but generosity became unnecessary, because Master Uwald had regained his luck, and he amassed considerable wealth in his confinement, which he put aside as an inheritance for Master Robbie.
Nockess Farm had taken the worst of the volcano: buildings collapsed, soil stony, flocks and herds scattered. Master Tuomo soon grew disgusted with the character of the new owner, Master Erick, and quit to purchase his own farm with his sons.
Master Robbie never visited Master Uwald. He finished out his childhood at the Oase. Deeter-bee taught him to read, and he devoured every book on healing. Even before he was fully grown, the high brunka ceased sending for a barber-surgeon when a bee was ill or afflicted with toothache. He wrote often to Elodie. She answered, and a correspondence flourished between them.
The Replica on its pedestal had pride of place in the center of the Oase’s great hall. When guests came, Deeter-bee stood next to it, recounting the tale of its latest theft.
In the spring, Masteress Meenore and Elodie left Lahnt, after a tearful farewell that was made less sad by ITs promise to return regularly on the wing with Elodie, who was sure she had been granted the best of everything: frequent visits with her parents and Albin and the fascinating life of a detecting dragon’s assistant.
In the northern harbor village of Dew they boarded the cog for Tair, where they planned to see the sights and where Elodie would proclaim, as she’d been hired to do: “Today, in the kingdom of Tair and only in the kingdom of Tair, the Great, the Unfathomable, the Brilliant Meenore is available to solve riddles, find lost objects and lo
st people, and answer the unanswerable. Speak to IT with respect.”
BACK AD
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Photo by David Levine
GAIL CARSON LEVINE’s first book for children, Ella Enchanted, was a Newbery Honor Book. Levine’s other books include Ever, a New York Times bestseller; Fairest, a Best Book of the Year for Publishers Weekly and School Library Journal, and a New York Times bestseller; Dave at Night, an ALA Notable Book and Best Book for Young Adults; The Wish; The Two Princesses of Bamarre; A Tale of Two Castles; and the six Princess Tales books. She is also the author of the nonfiction books Writing Magic: Creating Stories That Fly and Writer to Writer: From Think to Ink, as well as the picture books Betsy Who Cried Wolf and Betsy Red Hoodie. Gail Carson Levine and her husband, David, live in a two-centuries-old farmhouse in the Hudson Valley of New York State. You can visit her online at www.gailcarsonlevinebooks.com and at www.gailcarsonlevine.blogspot.com.
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BOOKS BY GAIL CARSON LEVINE
FEATURING THE CHARACTERS
FROM STOLEN MAGIC
A Tale of Two Castles
NOVELS
Dave at Night
Ella Enchanted
Ever
Fairest
The Two Princesses of Bamarre
The Wish
THE PRINCESS TALES
The Fairy’s Return and Other Princess Tales
The Fairy’s Mistake
The Princess Test
Princess Sonora and the Long Sleep
Cinderellis and the Glass Hill
For Biddle’s Sake
The Fairy’s Return
PICTURE BOOKS
Betsy Red Hoodie
Betsy Who Cried Wolf
NONFICTION
Writing Magic: Creating Stories that Fly
Writer to Writer: From Think to Ink
CREDITS
Cover art © 2015 by Greg Call
COPYRIGHT
STOLEN MAGIC. Copyright © 2015 by Gail Carson Levine. All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the nonexclusive, nontransferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, downloaded, decompiled, reverse-engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins e-books.
www.harpercollinschildrens.com
* * *
Library of Congress Control Number: 2015931902
ISBN 978-0-06-170637-0 (trade bdg.)
ISBN 978-0-06-170638-7 (lib. bdg.)
EPub Edition © March 2015 ISBN 9780062378767
* * *
15 16 17 18 19 PC/RRDH 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
FIRST EDITION
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Gail Carson Levine, Stolen Magic
(Series: A Tale of Two Castles # 2)
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