Hudson glanced down at his jacket. It was not only ripped in places, but it was also peppered with flecks of bark. He brushed those away. “I climbed a thorn tree. It messed up my clothes.”
Isabella scrunched her nose. “Thorn tree? What’s that?”
“And why would you climb one?” Macy added.
Hudson considered telling them the truth about Logos and quickly dismissed that idea. Good looks could only earn you forgiveness for so much craziness. Case in point: Charlotte. She was pretty enough, but the popular girls avoided her. And Andy and Caidan had made fun of her to her face today. Besides, if Hudson told Isabella and Macy about Logos, they’d want to see the compass—maybe even use it—and it belonged to Charlotte.
“Uh, I was goofing around. You know, climbing stuff.” Hudson wiped his jacket some more. His mom wouldn’t be happy he’d ruined it. She’d just bought it for him.
“Is that how you scratched your hands?” Isabella asked.
The skin around his scratches was tinted an angry red, and the scratches stung a little, too. “Yeah,” he said.
Macy shook her head. “I will never understand boys.”
Isabella kept peering at his hands. “Those scratches look infected. Maybe you should put something on them.”
“I will,” Hudson said. “Later.” He didn’t want to go home now, not when he was having his first real conversation with Isabella. She had to have noticed by now the handsomeness oozing off him. Any moment now, she’d start flirting.
Macy stared at his hands, too. “Was there any poison ivy around? I walked through poison ivy once, and my legs got red like that.”
“No.” Hudson put his hands in his jacket pockets, so the girls would stop gaping at them. “Just thorns.”
“If you say so.” Macy clearly didn’t believe him.
After that, Macy talked to Isabella about the social studies Civil War assignment. Macy thought it would be fun to dress up like a Southern belle for her report, and she wanted Isabella to go dress shopping with her.
Really, Macy thought boys didn’t make sense? At least they didn’t go on and on about hoop skirts.
When the group got to the park, the game had already started. People lined both sides of the court, sitting in the grass there. Some of them shouted out instructions to the players.
“Steal the ball! C’mon!”
“Make the shot!”
Out on the court, Andy dodged around another player and went for a layup. The ball swooshed effortlessly into the basket, and a cheer went up from the crowd on the far side.
Without saying good-bye to Hudson, Macy and Isabella walked off, heading toward a group of girls sitting in a cluster behind one of the baskets.
So much for the power of his new good looks. Hudson spotted Trevor and went to sit with him. Did the mirror even work? He slipped it out of his pocket, shifting it one way and then the other to look at his face. From what he could tell, he looked exactly the same. Wide nose and crooked teeth. Maybe the magic took a while to kick in. He put the mirror back in his pocket, watched the game, and forgot about it.
A half an hour later, Macy and Isabella made their way over to Hudson. He was so engrossed in the game he didn’t see them until Isabella snapped out, “Hudson!”
He looked at her and gasped. Small red boils dotted both girls’ faces and arms. “What happened to you?” he asked.
“That’s what we want to know,” Isabella said stiffly. “What plants did you tromp around in? Because whatever it was, we’ve got an allergic reaction to it.”
Hudson checked his own arms. No spots. No boils, just the scratches on his hands. “It couldn’t be from me,” he said, and then stopped. He noticed faint pink spots blooming on Trevor’s cheeks—the beginnings of boils.
Macy saw them, as well. “It is you! Trevor is getting them, too!”
Trevor put his hands to his face, worried. “What? I’m getting those ugly spots?” He held up his arms, revealing a batch of budding red marks. “Oh man,” he moaned. “What did you do?”
“It isn’t me,” Hudson insisted. And then he noticed the people sitting on his other side. Every single one of them had spots sprouting on their faces and arms.
Isabella gave Hudson a squinty-eyed glare and put her hands on her hips. “If these scar, I will kill you.”
“I don’t have them,” Hudson insisted, “so it can’t be me. It must be something…” Then he realized what had happened, and he felt as if he’d been kicked in the stomach. Rex had said that once Hudson owned the magic mirror, he would be the most handsome person around.
And he was. Hudson was the most handsome, because he was the only one who didn’t have boils erupting on his face. This was bad. Horrible, actually.
Hudson got to his feet, gulping hard. “I, um, I think I’d better go home.” He dashed away from the court and sprinted the rest of the way out of the park. Why had Rex given him the stupid mirror? It wasn’t a gift. It was a curse.
Hudson needed to get rid of it. Would throwing away the mirror get rid of everyone’s boils? Did he need to break it? He wanted to but didn’t dare. Maybe the mirror needed to be whole to reverse the curse.
How did this sort of magic work? His only hope was that Charlotte would know what to do. She would help him—had to help him. He couldn’t go to school if he gave everyone around him boils. He couldn’t go anywhere.
Hudson didn’t stop running until he reached Charlotte’s house.
He was out of breath and panting when he rang her doorbell. Even after she opened the door, all he could do was gulp in air and mutter, “Charlotte…”
Her ponytail was more lopsided than it had been during school. It looked sort of like an auburn snake leaping off her head. She watched him curiously, as though a person panting on her doorstep might be some strange custom she didn’t understand. “Hi, Hudson. Do you need something?”
“Yeah,” he managed, and waved vaguely in the direction he’d come from. “Everybody is breaking out in boils. I think it’s because of a mirror this guy from your land gave me.” Hudson reached into his pocket, tugging the mirror free. “Shouldn’t this thing come with a warning label?” Without waiting for her answer, he added, “How am I supposed to get rid of everybody’s boils? They’re all mad at me.”
Charlotte tilted her head at him. “What?”
He started again, this time from the beginning. “I pushed the knob up on your compass—”
“Wait,” Charlotte interrupted. “You went to Logos instead of Bonnie?” She let out the sort of sigh you give a toddler who has dressed himself and proudly put on his pants backward. “It was nice of you to go in your sister’s place, but…” Instead of finishing the thought, she said, “Just tell me you brought back my compass.”
“I did. Look, can you help me with the boils?”
Charlotte opened the door wider and motioned him inside. “You’d better tell me everything.”
Hudson hadn’t expected Charlotte’s home to be like anyone else’s, but he still was surprised. A potted tree stood in the middle of the living room. Not a fake silk tree as he’d seen demurely decorating the corners of other people’s houses. This tree was about as tall as Hudson, with a half-dozen branches holding droopy royal-blue leaves. They hung limply from the branches like raindrops waiting to fall. It needed more sunlight, or water, or a bigger pot of dirt. Maybe a tree medic.
Across the room, a battered red couch sat in front of a dresser with a TV perched on top. Four framed photographs hung on the wall—one of a forest in Logos. Hudson recognized the multicolored trees and white jellyfish flowers. The second picture showed a murky blue sea with waves crashing into a beach. The third was a picture of a white castle full of towers and turrets. The last was a close-up of a boot.
Charlotte sat down on one side of the couch. Hudson sat on the other side and told her the entire story.
When he finished, Charlotte took the mirror from his hand, fingering it like it had sharp edges. “I bet this is a
troll gift. Those are always cursed.” She turned the mirror over, squinting at the glass. “But if trolls were around, the compass should have warned you.”
Hudson’s stomach clenched. It already knew what his mind was still denying. “The compass did say BEWARE OF TROLLS a lot.”
Charlotte blinked incredulously at him. “Wait a second—the compass warned you, and you still didn’t realize that Glamora, Proval, and Rex were trolls?”
Hudson’s hands rose in frustrated protest. “How could I know they were trolls? They looked like normal people.”
“Of course they looked like normal people,” Charlotte said. “They use magic to disguise themselves. If trolls were easy to spot, you wouldn’t need a magic compass to warn you about them, would you?”
In the fairy tales and movies, trolls were always big, monstrous, thudding creatures. “I thought the compass was just warning me that trolls were somewhere in the forest.”
Charlotte shook her head in disbelief. “The schools here don’t teach you anything important. The first thing people should know is to stay away from the wrong side of magic.”
A feeling of dread settled into Hudson’s chest. “So Rex gave me the mirror just to be a trollish jerk?”
“No, he gave it to you so you would have to come back and give him my compass.” She straightened. “You can’t do that, by the way.” She handed Hudson the mirror and then held her hand out, palm up. “Give me my compass.”
Hudson didn’t. “So how do I get rid of the curse? Can I just break the mirror?”
“No, that would make everything worse. You would have to keep track of all the pieces, every sliver, to get rid of the curse.” She got up from the couch, went to the dresser, and took a stack of bills from the top drawer. She handed them to Hudson, then sat down and held her hand out again. “Now you’ve got Bonnie’s money back, so you need to return my compass.” Hudson put the money in his pocket.
“Tell me how to get rid of the mirror. Once it’s gone, I’ll give you back your compass.”
Charlotte let out a squeal of protest and slapped her hand down on the couch. “You can’t hold my compass hostage! I only gave it to Bonnie as a favor.”
Hudson folded his arms defiantly. “Yeah, about that—Bonnie doesn’t even remember to look both ways before she crosses the street. Why would you send her to a place with trolls and giants and who knows what else?”
“Bonnie would have been fine, because she’s pure in heart. The unicorns would have helped her and kept her safe. It’s not my fault you’re not pure in heart.”
Hudson’s mouth dropped open. “I accidentally took a swing at the unicorn. That doesn’t make me blackhearted.”
“You’re not pure in heart.” Charlotte sounded haughty. “Don’t even deny it. And you’d better give me back my compass or I’ll…” She broke off, frustrated, and looked like she might burst into tears. Her hands clenched at her sides. “Well, I won’t do something worse to you, because the pure in heart don’t take revenge like you’re doing right now. But I’ll tell my dad about this. And he might do something worse to you.”
The conversation was not going in the direction Hudson wanted. He had the unsettling fear that if Mr. Fantasmo got angry, he might turn Hudson into a rabbit.
Hudson cleared his throat with new nervousness. “Can’t you just tell me how to get rid of the troll curse? Once it’s gone, I’ll give you back the compass. Besides,” he added, “you should want to help me. Any second now you’re going to break out into boils.”
Charlotte put her hand to her face. “I can’t break out. My dad will realize I’ve done something.” With a groan, she shot off the couch, ran across the living room, and disappeared down the hallway.
Hudson stared after her, not sure whether she was returning. After a few moments, he stood up and stepped tentatively into the hallway. “Charlotte?”
“I’ll be right back,” she snapped from behind one of the closed doors. “I’m putting on enchanted lotion to keep my skin clear.”
Hudson went back to the living room and waited, looking around the room again. If the picture on the wall was the Forest of Possibilities, then the other pictures might be places the compass mentioned. The Sea of Life, Grammaria, and Gigantica. That would explain the close-up of the boot.
He was studying the castle picture when Charlotte came back. A blue sheen covered her skin. It looked like she’d smeared a thin layer of finger paint over herself.
“Well,” Hudson said, “your dad won’t notice anything different about you now.”
“It’s less painful than boils, and the protection lasts for a day.” She’d brought out a large tube of ointment. She squeezed some onto her fingers, walked over to Hudson, and applied it to his hands. “Thorn-tree scratches will make your hands swell up like balloons if you don’t treat them.” Her touch was light, thorough, and for some reason made him blush.
“Thanks,” he said, feeling all the guiltier for not giving her the compass back. “Can this medicine get rid of everyone’s boils, too?”
Charlotte put the ointment on a side table by the couch. “Everyone’s boils will fade away once you’re no longer around.”
Well, that was good news for the rest of the eighth grade. “So how do I get rid of a troll curse?” he asked again.
Charlotte walked to the couch and gingerly sat down so as not to get lotion on it. “There are only three ways. You can give the mirror to someone else and stick them with the curse, you can get a troll to take it back, or you can give it to a member of the Logosian royal family. They’re born with a magic protection that absorbs troll curses and things like that.”
Hudson thought about these options and began pacing in front of the tree as he tried to figure out a solution. “If I give the mirror to someone else…”
“That,” Charlotte said pointedly, “is something a person with a pure heart wouldn’t even consider. It’s cruel to whoever gets the mirror and to everyone who comes in contact with him.”
She was right, but Hudson wasn’t willing to give up the idea so easily. “Couldn’t I give it to some recluse who never went out? That way, I’ll be rid of the mirror, and no one else will get hurt.”
Charlotte lifted a blue eyebrow at him. “Do you know any recluses who never go out?”
“Um, no, although maybe I could find one on the Internet.…”
“You can’t just send the mirror someplace. You have to physically give it to someone, tell him what it does, and he has to say he accepts the gift.”
Rex had tricked Hudson into taking it by not being clear about how the mirror worked. It made him mad to think about it now, but not so mad that he wanted to face an entire village of trolls and demand that Rex take the mirror back. That was a meeting that probably wouldn’t go well for Hudson.
He kept pacing. “So the best thing to do is to give the mirror to Logos royalty?”
“Logosian,” Charlotte corrected.
“How do I find one?”
She sent him another pointed look. “Haven’t you ever paid attention to my father’s stories? Only two members of the royal family are left. King Vaygran, who’s a tyrant, and Princess Nomira, who’s missing.”
“Missing how?”
Charlotte huffed in exasperation. “It’s a good thing you only ran into trolls while you were in Logos. If King Vaygran’s wizards saw the compass, they would have hauled you off to a dungeon. They know it belongs to my father.”
Hudson tilted his head at her. “I thought you said the compass was yours.”
Charlotte flushed, turning the lotion on her cheeks light purple. Instead of commenting on who actually owned the compass, she summarized what Hudson should have already known. “A year ago, when King Arawn died, his brother, Prince Vaygran, left his estate in the country and came to the castle. He said Princess Nomira was too young to rule and made himself regent king. Then, when she wasn’t expecting it, he had his top wizard kidnap her and lock her up somewhere magical.
&nbs
p; “Vaygran told the people he’d just hidden her in order to protect her until she was old enough to reign, but he won’t ever let her out. My father knows. He was King Arawn’s wizard and refused to work for Vaygran. That’s why we had to come here.” Charlotte looked down at her hands sadly. “To the awful Land of Banishment.”
Hudson felt a twinge of guilt, which was quickly joined by several others, twinging guiltily around in his chest. No one at school had been understanding of Charlotte. But in their defense, how could they have known she’d told them the truth about Logos?
Hudson wanted to apologize, to show her there were lots of nice things about Texas. But he needed to get rid of the curse first. “Is there any way I can give the mirror to King Vaygran?”
She let out a scoff. “He wouldn’t care about helping you. More likely, he’d think you were a spy sent by my father.”
Hudson went back to pacing, a pointless walk that was getting him nowhere. “Is there some way I could convince the trolls to take the mirror back? Is there some way to trick them?”
She shook her head. “It’s almost impossible to trick a troll. They can tell the things you’re trying to hide. Besides, the trolls know you’ll be desperate to get rid of the mirror, and they know you’ve got a powerful magic object—one that’s not only a portal from this world, but one that also warns people about trolls. They’ll only accept the compass or something just as important. I can’t give you anything like that.”
Hudson let out a groan. It was easy for Charlotte to shoot down his ideas. She wasn’t the cursed one. “Then the only thing I can do is go back to the troll village and give them the compass.”
Charlotte’s head jerked up. “No, the only thing you can do is become a recluse, because you can’t give away the compass.”
He stopped pacing. “Why do you need it? You don’t live around trolls anymore. What’s the point of having a compass that warns about them?”
She stood and walked over to him, hands on her hips. “I’m going back someday—whether my father wants me to or not. Sooner or later, someone will stand up to King Vaygran and rescue the princess. Once Logos is safe, I’ll need the compass to take me home.” Charlotte held out her hand to Hudson. “So give it back.”