The Wrong Side of Magic (7 page)

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.

“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.”

He felt sorry for her. He really did. He promised himself that after he got rid of the troll curse, he would do his best to make sure people treated Charlotte nicely. Still, he didn't take the compass out of his pocket. “Look, I hate to break it to you, but Princess Nomira is probably dead. King Vaygran wouldn't want anybody around who could challenge his power.”

Charlotte kept her hand outstretched. “King Vaygran has to keep the princess alive, because she's the only one who knows where the ruling scepter is.” Her gaze drifted to the picture of the castle, and her eyes filled with sadness. “The scepter is the most powerful object in Logos. It can do all sorts of magic and counteract wizards' spells. It could even raise an army out of stones.”

Hudson said the obvious: “Then why didn't Princess Nomira use it to keep Vaygran from stealing the throne?”

The sadness in Charlotte's eyes switched, traffic-light fast, to defensiveness. “Princess Nomira was ill with grief. Her mother died when she was a baby, so King Arawn was all she had. After his death, she was lost. She didn't know how to deal with the army, the guilds, the laws, or the taxes. When her uncle said he would help her rule, she believed him.”

Charlotte paused, and her voice grew quieter. “Or maybe she was just too young and afraid to fight him off. But at least she had the sense to refuse to give him the scepter. She hid it before he took power and wouldn't tell him where she'd put it, no matter how many times he asked her. And then one day without warning, his wizard vanished with her. No one has seen her since.”

Hudson considered this. “King Vaygran is ruling fine without the scepter, isn't he? What if he decided he didn't really need it and…”

Charlotte bristled. “The people wouldn't support him if he killed her. They can tell she's alive because her tree is still in the castle courtyard.” Seeing that Hudson didn't understand, she added, “The royalty trees were a gift from the fairy queen to the people of Logos. Whenever a new ruler reigns, a magical tree grows in the castle courtyard. That way, the people can always tell how their leaders are doing. Before my father and I left Logos, we took a branch from Princess Nomira's tree. Charlotte gestured to the droopy blue tree in the middle of the living room. We planted it once we got here. If the princess wasn't still alive, both this tree and the one in the courtyard would have died.”

Hudson gave the tree a closer look. The limp leaves seemed like a bad omen. “Her tree isn't doing very well.”

Charlotte walked over to the tree and gingerly lifted one of the branches. “The princess must be sad … locked up where she doesn't belong … with no friends.” Charlotte prodded a leaf upward, helping it stand. As soon as she let go, the leaf sagged again.

The longer Hudson stared at the tree, the more depressed it seemed. He could relate. If he didn't get rid of this mirror, he wouldn't ever be able to go to school again. When he was older, he couldn't have a regular job or date a girl. He'd go through life as an outcast, a wanderer. Maybe that was the deal with Bigfoot—he wasn't a mythological creature, just a guy who had made a stupid deal with trolls.