He kicked at the king’s legs as hard as he could. “Get the sword!” he yelled to Charlotte.
His kicks didn’t do any good. The king wore thick boots, and Hudson had on the stupid banana shoes.
“Where are my guards?” King Vaygran shouted.
Something heavy thunked against the door. It shook, but held. The door had obviously been built to keep the king safe from intruders.
Charlotte reached the chair and the scabbard lying there. She picked it up and turned back to Hudson with an expression of horror. The scabbard was empty. The sword hadn’t been in it at all.
Where was it? The sword had to be somewhere in the room. The magnet had told them it was here. If Hudson could get the magnet out of his jacket pocket, it would be able to point them to the sword.
King Vaygran pulled Hudson toward his bed, threatening him with various painful deaths along the way. Hudson couldn’t reach his pocket, let alone get to the magnet.
Charlotte headed back across the room toward them, the scabbard still in her hand. Hudson didn’t know what she planned to do with it and didn’t get to find out. In one fast move, King Vaygran reached beside his bed and pulled out his sword. Before Hudson could break the man’s grasp on him, King Vaygran brought the sword to Hudson’s neck, pressing the edge into his throat. Hudson stopped struggling. One wrong move, and the sword would cut him.
“Halt!” King Vaygran yelled at Charlotte.
She did. Her eyes went wide, staring at the sword.
Hudson’s heart beat like a basketball team full of panicked dribblers. It was hard to breathe.
He had wanted to find the sword, but this was not how he had envisioned locating it.
“You will tell me everything,” the king said through gritted teeth. “Or your friend will be dead before you can cross the room.”
King Vaygran held on to Hudson’s left arm, but his other hand was on his sword. This meant Hudson’s right arm was free. Carefully, slowly, he reached into his pocket.
Charlotte saw what he was doing but kept her gaze on King Vaygran’s eyes so as not to draw attention to Hudson. “Don’t hurt him,” she pleaded. “I’ll tell you the truth. I promise.”
The door banged. The castle guards were still fighting against the lock. Splinters flew across the floor. The men would break in soon.
“Who are you?” the king demanded.
“A student,” Charlotte stalled. “A daughter. A friend—”
Hudson carefully fingered through his pocket, feeling for the magnet.
King Vaygran pressed his sword farther into Hudson’s neck, sending a sharp pain into his throat. “Don’t play games with me,” the king spat out. “What’s your name?”
“Charlotte,” she said. This was true, although it wasn’t the name King Vaygran would recognize.
“Where did you come from?”
“The fireplace.”
King Vaygran let out an impatient grunt. “Before that.”
“Before that, I was downstairs, and then in the forest.”
Hudson tugged the magnet free from his pocket. The time for moving slowly was over. He slid the magnet onto the sword blade. The move startled the king, and he pushed his sword into Hudson’s neck. Fortunately, the sword shrank as quickly as the king pushed. Soon he held nothing at all.
The disappearance of the sword so surprised King Vaygran that, for a moment, he just stared at his hand. Hudson broke away from the king’s grasp and headed toward the window, putting both the magnet and the sword into his pocket.
Charlotte pulled out the bell and rang it fiercely.
The king gasped. Perhaps he recognized the bell, or perhaps he’d finally placed Charlotte’s voice. He pointed at her. “I know who you are!”
Immediately, Hudson felt himself shrinking. His arms stretched into wings, already flapping before the transformation was complete.
King Vaygran grabbed at him, managing to pull out a couple of tail feathers before Hudson sped across the room. Charlotte, already in her bird form, chirped angrily at the king, then dove out the window. She zoomed downward, going so fast she seemed hardly more than a blur. At first, Hudson had no idea what she was doing, and he hovered in the air, uncertain whether to follow. Then he saw the bag of revealing powder lying on the ground. She snatched it in her talons, pushed upward, and headed toward the city wall.
From the window, the king yelled, “Shoot those birds! Bring them down from the sky!” King Vaygran’s guards must have finally managed to come into his room.
Hudson heard the twang of bows, and arrows whizzed by, piercing the air around them. None hit them. It was hard to hit a small moving target in the dark.
He and Charlotte flew over the city, skimming through the air as they raced against time. He felt a growing relief with each flap of his wings. They were free and cloaked by the night. The king’s men couldn’t catch them now.
As they flew over the city walls, a feeling of wild elation filled him. They’d done it. They’d stolen King Vaygran’s sword—not while he slept, but while he was awake and fighting them. Now they had the key to the princess’s tower. After they freed her, everything would be set right in Logos, and Hudson could return to Texas. He could go back to his normal life.
He and Charlotte soared over the river, then flew low to the ground as they made their way over the farmland. They were nearly to their campsite when the transformation overtook them. They tumbled to the ground, human again.
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.