Charlotte shook water out of her museling bag and set it on the sand. “Why love?”
“Love is always the answer. That’s why people are always writing songs about it.”
The tiger and wolf trotted up to Charlotte. Panting, the wolf said, “We found duty, endurance, humor, patience, and sympathy.”
The tiger sat on her haunches, flicking her tail. “We also saw greed, resentment, luck, materialism, sloth, and indulgence, but those won’t get you anywhere. They didn’t look seaworthy.”
Water dripped from Charlotte’s long sleeves. She wrung them out the best she could. “Duty and endurance must be good. And you need humor to get through life.… There are so many boats to choose from.”
“It’s going to be love,” Hudson said. “Trust me on this one.”
“Trust,” the tiger said pointedly, “wasn’t on the list.” It was clear the tiger didn’t like Hudson telling Charlotte what to do.
Charlotte gave up on her sleeves. “Hudson is probably right. Love is the most important thing in life, so that’s what will get us over the sea.” She brushed sand from her clothes and addressed her animals. “I want you to stay here and guard our things. We’ll be back as soon as we’re done at the Cliff of Faces.”
A birdcall sounded overhead, and Hudson looked up, expecting to see a seagull. Instead, the falcon sped toward Charlotte, calling out, “Beware! Beware!”
9
THE BIRD SWOOPED down onto Charlotte’s outstretched arm. “What’s wrong?” she asked.
“Soldiers,” the bird cried, high-pitched with alarm. “They’re on the way to Scriptoria.”
Charlotte’s gaze swung to the road they’d come from. “Why?”
The falcon fluttered his wings in agitation. “I heard the general and the wizard talking. They’re coming for Hudson.”
“Me?” Hudson asked. A cold feeling washed over him, a feeling that had nothing to do with his soaking clothes.
The falcon’s head bobbed up and down. “When Princess Nomira’s tree bloomed, King Vaygran asked the lion statue if he’d heard any news about the princess. The lion told him a boy had asked the bee how to rescue her. They know you’re going to the Cliff of Faces.” The falcon flicked his tail feathers. “The king was so furious he tried to smash the bee. She flew off vowing never to return to the king’s courtyard until Princess Nomira reigns.”
Charlotte stared at the road again and gulped. “How far away are the soldiers?”
“Two hours,” the falcon said. “Maybe three.”
The tiger prowled in circles around Charlotte, kicking up spurts of sand. “They’re only searching for the boy. He should head off in a different direction to lead the soldiers away from you.”
“No,” Charlotte said with a reprimand in her voice. “That’s not how to treat friends.”
Hudson gestured to his clothes, now wet and sticking to his legs. “I’m in disguise. How will they know who I am?”
The falcon hopped from Charlotte’s arm to her shoulder. “They’ve a wizard with them and a pack of dogs following your scent. They took it from the silver coin you gave the guard.”
Charlotte surveyed the things they’d left drying on the ground. “When you see us sailing back to shore,” she told her animals, “pack up our bags.” She set out for the dock, motioning for Hudson to follow her. “If we hurry, it will only take us half an hour to row to the island, half an hour to hike to the cliff and back, then another half an hour to row back to the beach. We’ll be gone before the soldiers reach here.”
Neither she nor Hudson said anything else until they sat down inside the boat marked love. “Are we still rowing with the work paddles?” he asked. “You don’t want to use intelligence?”
She laughed, and he realized how that sounded. “We probably ought to use some intelligence once in a while,” she said.
“You use work,” he told her, “I’ll use intelligence. That way we’re working smart.”
They pushed off from the dock. The wind gusted around the boat, making Hudson’s wet clothes feel colder. The waves seemed higher now, choppier. He and Charlotte concentrated and timed their strokes, pushing through the water as quickly as they could. No water leaked inside.
Pokey popped up next to Hudson’s side of the boat and backstroked along with them. “Taking the love boat, I see.”
Hudson dug his oar into the water. “You’re supposed to be onshore so you can help repack our stuff.”
“But instead, I’m helping by showing you the way to the Cliff of Faces.” Pokey pointed a wing in the direction of the island. “There it is.”
“Thanks.” Hudson looked at the floor again. Still dry. Love was good. It totally deserved Valentine’s Day.
Pokey kept pace with the boat. “Love will keep you together. Love conquers all. You and Charlotte are definitely in love.”
Hudson shot Pokey a sharp look and swiped at him with his paddle.
Pokey darted out of the way. “Missed me. Love is blind.”
“Yeah, but I can still smack you with all of the intelligence I’ve got.”
Pokey flipped onto his back again. “Which isn’t much.”
Hudson glared at the penguin. “The tiger insulted me earlier. I should make you fight her to defend my honor.”
Hudson didn’t hear Pokey’s response to that because Charlotte nudged him. “You shouldn’t threaten your shabti. Honestly, Hudson, don’t you know how to treat your magical helpers?”
“You’ve got magical helpers,” he said. “I’ve got a taunting, worthless penguin.”
Charlotte pulled on her oar. “Well, maybe he’d be better if you treated him kindly.”
This sentence seemed completely out of place coming from Isabella’s mouth. Which made Hudson realize again how different Charlotte was from her. He could have told them apart even if the real Isabella was sitting in the boat with them. Charlotte was more caring. And braver.
It made him wonder why he had ever liked Isabella to begin with.
He wanted to tell Charlotte that, to tell her that everyone at school had been stupid to judge her. He didn’t know how to say it, though. Then he felt water lapping against his shoes. The boat was leaking, and this time they were farther away from shore.
Charlotte noticed the leak at the same time he did. “Oh no!” She looked around the boat for something, anything, that might help.
Hudson searched, too, even though he knew he wouldn’t find anything. “Not again,” he said. “Not now.”
The water rushed in faster until it swirled around their legs, chilling them. They were still too far away from the island, so they let the boat sink and swam for the beach again.
Pokey popped up alongside Hudson. “Sometimes love lets you down.”
Yeah, obviously.
Charlotte’s polar bear had seen what happened and swam toward them to help tow them back to shore. When Hudson and Charlotte were halfway there, the sunken boat resurfaced near the dock. It sprayed water from its middle, twirling streams into the air like a fountain, then it glided serenely into the empty space near the dock.
Stupid boat.
By the time Charlotte and Hudson reached the beach, his muscles ached and his hands and feet felt numb. He shivered and wished he had something to dry himself off with. Charlotte sat down on the sand, shaking with cold. The wolf loped up to her and wrapped himself around her to warm her up.
The tiger glared at Hudson with accusing eyes. “So love wasn’t all you expected it to be.”
“Love sucks,” Hudson admitted.
The squirrel gave a sympathetic chitter. “He can’t help it if he was unlucky in love.”
Hudson hadn’t noticed that Charlotte had taken the iron bar from his pack until she handed it to him. “Here, we need some of this.”
Iron for strength. As Hudson gripped the bar, it grew smaller, and he no longer felt as tired.
The road that led to Scriptoria was empty, but how much time had they wasted? How far away were Vaygr
an’s soldiers now? “Maybe we should use the talent oars,” Hudson said. “People with talent glide through life, right?”
Charlotte shook her head. “We chose the wrong boat. We need to figure out the right one.”
Hudson pushed strands of wet hair away from his face. “I wish we’d bought some excelleration.”
“Then we would have been farther away when we sank.”
“Maybe we should use strength,” he said. “It’s got to be the strongest boat, right?”
Charlotte glanced at the dock uncertainly. “We don’t have time for another mistake.”
“What else could it be?” he asked.
Charlotte shut her eyes. “I’ll see what my inner compass says.”
Inner compass? “What’s that?” he asked.
She didn’t open her eyes or answer. She sat perfectly still on the sand.
Probably to keep him from bothering her again, the falcon flew over and landed on Hudson’s shoulder. “An inner compass,” the bird said, “is the part inside Charlotte that tells her what she should do.”
Oh. It must be another one of those magical Logosian things.
The falcon cocked his head at Hudson. “Don’t you have an inner compass?”
“No,” Hudson mumbled. “The only thing that tells me what to do is my mother. Or if I’m at school, my teachers.”
“Pity.” The bird kept his dark eyes on Hudson. “How will you find the roads you should travel in life?”
“GPS, I guess.”
With her eyes closed, Charlotte listed the names of the boats. “Duty, endurance, humor, patience, sympathy, hope, strength, gratitude.” She repeated the names again and again.
Hudson couldn’t help noticing that Charlotte’s notebook lay drying nearby. It was open to a page with two columns. One listed museling colors. The other listed memories. The brown color was “Eating chocolate ice cream on July Fourth while I watched the fireworks.” The speckled blue was “When Mrs. Clark said in front of the class that I was creative.” The green striped description read, “When I couldn’t understand an algebra problem and Hudson showed me how to do it.”
That one surprised him. He remembered the day. She had been trying to do the last problem of their math homework while she walked to school. She was concentrating on the example in the book so intently she nearly ran into him. He explained how to do the equation, walking beside her so she didn’t step off the sidewalk and get hit by a car.
Why had she chosen to give that memory away? Was he like Isabella and Macy to her, and she didn’t care about remembering him? The thought made him feel like he’d swallowed more than bitter salt water.
Charlotte’s eyes fluttered open. “I know which boat we need.” She stood up without bothering to wipe the sand off her clothes. She just headed, fast-paced, to the first dock. Hudson followed her.
“Gratitude will keep us afloat,” she said.
Hudson didn’t question her. His choice had already sunk. They climbed into the rickety gratitude boat, untied it from the dock, and pushed off. Hudson dug his intelligence oar into the water, glad for the shot of strength the iron had given him.
Charlotte timed her strokes with his, and they made their way slowly, steadily into the waves. A few minutes went by. No water came through the bottom. “I’m grateful this boat is working,” she said, which in Hudson’s opinion was tempting fate. An odd thing happened, though: The boat pushed forward with an oomph it hadn’t had before. Charlotte noticed it, too. “I’m grateful to be back home,” she added.
The boat picked up a little more speed. “I’m grateful Bonnie’s cat is better,” Hudson said, and the oars seemed to slice through the water.
After that, Charlotte and Hudson took turns saying what they were grateful for. They covered birthday parties, sunsets, indoor plumbing, soft beds, candy bars, friends, family, books, computers, and Hudson’s favorite one: “I’m grateful that my dad will be home soon.”
Charlotte smiled. “I’m grateful that my dad will be home soon, too.”
Neither of them mentioned that this would only be true if things went well. They were busy being grateful. The boat kept skimming along the water. Waves knocked into it, but the boat went faster than Hudson ever would have hoped. He hadn’t even run out of things to be grateful for when they landed on the island’s shore.
He and Charlotte dragged the boat up the beach, then hurried along a dirt path toward a sheer rock cliff. It towered above the vegetation like a craggy, grayish-brown skyscraper. When Hudson first heard the term Cliff of Faces, he’d envisioned something that looked like Mount Rushmore. As far as he could tell, the Cliff of Faces was a normal cliff. Rocks jutted here and there with bits of moss growing in patches.
Charlotte stepped around some overgrown brush blocking the path. “I think we’ll only need to ask two questions: Where did King Vaygran put the princess, and how do we get her out? Will you ask one?”
“Sure,” Hudson said. “Will the cliff just tell us the answers?” He hoped—but didn’t think—it could be that easy.
“Um, more or less,” Charlotte said.
“Which part is more and which part is less?”
“Each of the faces on the cliff gives truthful answers,” she explained. “The problem is that only one is answering your question. The rest are answering questions asked by someone else in some other place. You’ve got to figure out which face has your answer. It changes every time you ask a question, so the face that gives you the right answer the first time will probably answer someone else’s question the next time.”
Hudson and Charlotte had reached the base of the cliff. He still didn’t see any faces, unless you counted the odd assortment of bugs that were sunning themselves on the rock wall. He reached out and touched one that resembled a toothbrush with legs. It bristled, shot him a suspicious look, then scurried away.
“The more important the question,” Charlotte went on, “the more faces speak. You could have hundreds of answers.”
Hudson suppressed a groan. He and Charlotte didn’t have time to waste. By the time they figured out the correct answer, the soldiers would not only have arrived at the Sea of Life, but they also would have had time to build their own ships to sail to the island. Hudson ran a hand through his hair in aggravation. “How did I get myself into this?”
He’d barely finished speaking when patches in the cliff wall changed and moved. The lines on the rocks formed into sets of eyes, noses, and mouths until three old men were outlined in the rock.
The first said, “By being vain and wanting through magic what wasn’t yours.”
The second exclaimed, “She ends up with Edward.”
“Forty-two,” the third pronounced.
Hudson nodded. “Okay. This doesn’t seem too hard.”
Charlotte let out a sigh. “That’s because you asked something really easy.”
“Then how do we find the right answer?”
He had been asking Charlotte the question, but two more rock faces appeared on the wall next to the others, all of them looking like stern old men. They didn’t wait before they spoke, and their answers ran into each other.
“Bake at three hundred and fifty degrees for sixteen minutes.”
“Be. It is much better than not being.”
“Years of practice.”
“Put others before yourself.”
“By paying with a life coin.”
Hudson narrowed his eyes, searching each face. “Which was the right answer?” he asked.
“Mine,” all the faces said at once.
Charlotte shifted her feet. “I already know how it works. Those piles over there are our life coins.” She pointed to a spot, not far off, where two piles of colored coins sat on the ground. Some were silver-, gold-, and copper-colored, but others were blue, green, red, and purple, making them look like Mardi Gras favors.
They hadn’t been there a minute ago. It wasn’t this fact that bothered him, though. His name hovered above one pile and Ch
arlotte’s name above the other—floating there like a neon sign.
“Each coin represents a year of your life you haven’t lived yet,” Charlotte said. “In order to have only one face answer, we have to agree to come back here after our quest and pay the faces one of our coins.”
“Wait,” Hudson said, sure he misunderstood. “We don’t literally have to pay them a year of our lives, do we?”
He ignored the jumble of answers that came from the cliff.
Charlotte nodded solemnly. “Actually, we do.”
Hudson’s mouth dropped open. “Are you crazy?”
“Yes,” a rock face chimed.
“No,” another insisted.
“Multiply the base times the height, then divide by two,” a third declared.
Hudson turned his back on the cliff so he could concentrate on Charlotte. “You never told me that asking a question would cost a year of my life.”
Charlotte straightened and lifted her chin. “Knowledge has a price. You should know that. In your land, people spend thirteen years in school before they can even start college. That’s much longer than a year.”
“Yes,” he said, “but you only have to sit in class for that, not die earlier.”
She folded her arms. “The troll mirror isn’t my curse. I’m not the one that has to find the princess and give it to her.”
She had him there. It was worth a year of his life to get rid of the troll gift. Still, he hesitated. “Isn’t there another way? What about your inner compass? Can’t that help us instead?”
The faces had multiple opinions on that, all of which Hudson ignored.
Charlotte held up her hands. “My inner compass isn’t telling me where the princess is. Is yours?”
“I don’t have an inner compass,” Hudson said.
“Of course you do. If you can’t hear it, that means you stopped listening to it.”
Many of the rock faces—who had been throwing out random answers during Charlotte and Hudson’s conversation—now mumbled in agreement and nodded their heads.
Hudson turned to Charlotte in frustration. “I’ve never heard anything from an inner compass. What would it have told me?”