After the song ended, Charlotte looked out across the crowd. “I need to talk with my fa—um—wizard.” She motioned to Mr. Fantasmo, who had joined Hudson and Mr. Brown in the crowd.
Charlotte wasn’t any taller than she had been when Hudson went to school with her in Texas, but she seemed more regal now. She stood straight, chin lifted. Her long black hair looked nothing like her old unruly red hair. Freckles no longer dotted her skin, and the upturned elflike nose was gone, too. Her eyes seemed the same, though, large and kind.
At Charlotte’s words, Mr. Fantasmo grew a bit paler. His pretense of being her father was gone now. She knew the truth. He was only a wizard, and one who had helped Vaygran keep her prisoner before he switched loyalties.
Fantasmo lifted his arms so his long sleeves looked like dark wings. Then, faster than Hudson could see the change coming, the wizard turned into a speckled brown owl. He flew over the crowd with quick wingbeats and landed on the balcony railing. The bird hung his head, then flapped off the railing and hovered before Charlotte. He transformed back into his human form, his head still bowed.
“You’re not my father.” Her voice sounded sad and heavy. “You changed my memories and tricked me about my identity. Why?”
He didn’t meet Charlotte’s gaze. “You weren’t ready to fight King Vaygran or rule, and until you were, knowing that you were the princess only made you miserable. You felt the responsibility of your people’s suffering, and it made you ill with worry. I was going to give you back your real memories when you were older, so you could return and challenge him, but I thought it would be years until you were ready.” His head drooped even lower. “I ask forgiveness for underestimating you.”
She considered his words, then stepped toward him and touched his sleeve. “Of course I forgive you. You took care of me like a father and fought Nepharo in order to protect me. For that, I will always love and thank you.”
Mr. Fantasmo looked up at her for the first time. His shoulders lifted with relief. “Thank you, Your Highness.”
“Will you be my top wizard and adviser?”
He smiled, happy again. “I will.”
She reached toward him with arms outstretched, and he gathered her into a hug. For a moment, they stood like that, her head resting against his chest. When he released her, the pride was evident in his eyes. “This quest has strengthened you. You are now truly a princess who sees.”
Charlotte nodded. “My name will no longer be Nomira. It won’t be Erica, a ruler, or Charlotte, one who is free. Now my name is Colette—victory for the people.”
The crowd clapped and cheered at this announcement, then burst into the national anthem again. They might have gone on singing it all night if Charlotte—Hudson couldn’t think of her as Colette, even though the crowd had instantly incorporated her new name into the national anthem—hadn’t cut the song short.
She called for Hudson and Mr. Brown to join her on the balcony. As Hudson walked to the castle, he looked around for Proval and Glamora. They were nowhere in sight. He checked the compass. No warnings appeared on its surface. He supposed the trolls had fled Grammaria as soon as they realized Vaygran would no longer rule the city.
Good riddance.
Charlotte ordered King Vaygran’s wizards, advisers, and officials to come to the balcony to explain their part in King Vaygran’s government and to swear an oath of loyalty to her. It was easy to see that they supported her, since they hadn’t come to King Vaygran’s aid while he fought her.
After she finished taking oaths of fealty from the wizards, she decided which of the castle guards to pardon. This involved a lot of kneeling, and quite a bit of pleading on the part of the guards, since some of them had dragged Charlotte, bound and tied, before King Vaygran. Others had constructed the gallows she was supposed to hang from.
In the end, she forgave most of them. The only ones she sent to stockades were the ones who had still followed King Vaygran’s orders after it became clear that he was trying to kill her.
Charlotte then thanked the crowd for their support, told them she needed to meet with her advisers, and said she would address the people of Grammaria again tomorrow. As she turned and went into the castle, the people sent out a final cheer.
Hudson, Mr. Brown, and Mr. Fantasmo followed her inside. It was odd to see long black hair swishing down her back. It would take some getting used to. She’s still Charlotte, Hudson told himself. Still the same on the inside, no matter what she looked like on the outside.
Servants lined the large hallway, all bowing to her like trees in a windstorm. “We’re so glad you’ve returned,” one man said. A woman teared up and kissed Charlotte’s hand.
Charlotte murmured her thanks to them and walked to a large meeting room. She swept inside and waited for Hudson and the others to follow her.
Once inside, she shut the door and leaned on it. Her regal bearing slipped away and her brown eyes grew anxious—or maybe it was just exhaustion. “I need my old memories back. I can’t run a country if I have amnesia.”
Mr. Fantasmo nodded. “Where is the calculater? I saved them there.”
“I have it,” Hudson said, getting it from his pack. He’d had no idea how valuable the contraption was and was glad Nepharo hadn’t seen it when he’d captured them. He might have guessed what it was and destroyed Charlotte’s memories.
Mr. Fantasmo took the calculater from Hudson and looked at it sadly.
At first, Hudson didn’t understand why anyone, especially Mr. Fantasmo, would be sad at this moment. They had defeated King Vaygran and returned the princess—returned Charlotte—to the throne. This was the definition of happily ever after.
The very next moment, Hudson understood the sadness. When Charlotte’s memories returned, she wouldn’t be Mr. Fantasmo’s daughter anymore. And she also wouldn’t come back to Texas and go to school with him again. That thought took some of the happiness out of ever after.
Mr. Fantasmo pushed several buttons on the calculater, putting in a sequence of numbers—some sort of code. “I’ll also take away the memories I added about you being my daughter. My own daughter will be happy to have them back.”
“Your daughter?” Charlotte repeated. “You have a real daughter?”
He punched in a few more buttons. “She’s grown up now, but you always reminded me of her.” He paused, noticing Charlotte’s distress. “Don’t worry. She gave her memories to you willingly. We thought that if you believed you were my child, you wouldn’t be so homesick for Logos.”
Well, Mr. Fantasmo had either underestimated Charlotte’s bravery or her foolishness. Sometimes it was hard to tell one from the other. Or perhaps, Hudson thought, looking at the determination in her expression, perhaps sometimes the knowledge of who you were ran deeper than your memories.
While Charlotte waited, she fingered the scepter, making lights flicker on its jeweled surface.
Hudson gestured to it. “If you don’t remember hiding the scepter, how did you know where to find it?”
She gazed at the scepter as though still amazed she had it. “I asked myself where I would have put it if I was the princess. Inside the heart of the tree seemed like the safest place to hide something.”
Fantasmo lifted the calculater, pointing it at Charlotte. “You’re ready to take your memories back—the bad along with the good?”
“Do I have to take the bad memories back, too?” she asked.
“One without the other is a dangerous thing,” he said. “Wisdom requires both.”
She took a deep breath, bracing herself. “Then give me both.”
Mr. Fantasmo pushed the last button, and a flash of light went off from the calculater. As though something physical had hit her, Charlotte stepped backward, her eyelids fluttering. When she righted herself, she glanced around the room with sudden recognition. “I remember everything,” she said with happy awe. The next moment, her voice lost some of its excitement. “I remember everything.”
Mr. Fantasmo put a
consoling arm around her shoulder. “Wisdom requires both.”
She nodded, swallowed, and leaned into him a bit. Her gaze went around the room again. “My father used to meet in here with the leaders of the different guilds. He made me stay and listen so I would know how the guilds worked, but I always thought it was boring and drew pictures instead of paying attention.”
Fantasmo gave her an encouraging smile. “Perhaps you won’t find it so boring anymore.”
“I should have listened better,” she said. “I don’t know enough about running a country.”
“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 did
n’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.”