How to Break an Evil Curse

by Laura Morrison

  “We’re at the guards’ headquarters. And yes, she’s here. She’s been with you the whole time—just left a few minutes ago to get the wizard when you started to stir.”

  “A wizard? Not a doctor?” Warren asked with a frown. He was a progressive guy in this regard and would have preferred a doctor. But since he was not currently dead or in a coma, Warren supposed he had to admit the wizard must have been competent enough. It was scary to think about what weird potions the wizard might have used, though.

  “Yes. A wizard. He seemed to know his stuff—”

  The door swung open and Corrine walked in, followed by none other than the wizard himself. Since Warren’s only experience of wizards up to this point was Farland and fictional wizards with capes and pointy hats, he at first didn’t think the man accompanying Corrine could be one. However, when the little guy strode up to him and sprinkled green glittery powder over Warren’s head, Warren figured a wizard he must be, even though he was short and skinny and young and wearing just regular old clothes that didn’t fit well: worn old brown pants, a worn old yellow shirt, and worn old leather boots.

  When the wizard spoke, his voice was not a deep boom that resonated with a confidence born of a sure knowledge of his mastery of the supernatural world. He just sounded regular. “Hey, how ya feeling?”

  “Er. Okay. My head hurts a bit, but actually not as bad as when I woke up from my last concussion,” Warren said, as he realized with cautious optimism that he was really feeling pretty good.

  “I bet you had a doctor treat you last time,” the wizard guessed.

  Warren narrowed his eyes, and said, “Well, yes, it was a doctor who treated me.”

  “Well, that explains it,” the wizard said smugly. “I bet you had to recover for a long time, too, huh?”

  “Yeah, I guess. Few days.”

  “Well, you will be up and walking in a few hours’ time with my spells and my magic,” said the wizard with a proud smirk.

  “Er, thanks,” said Warren.

  “No thanks necessary,” said the wizard. “Payment is the only thanks I need.”

  Warren raised an eyebrow. “Jennifer’s got all the gold, I think.”

  The wizard peeked into Warren’s eyes, felt his head, sprinkled more powder on him, and said, “Well then, I’ll go find her. You’ll be fine by nighttime.”

  Warren and Corrine watched the wizard go, and then Corrine sat down on the bed and said, “Warren, I am so glad you are okay! I was so scared for you back there!”

  “Thanks for saving me,” he said with a smile. “I’m glad you’re safe too.”

  “Thank you for saving me,” she said. “Warren, if you hadn’t come when you did—” and here Corrine looked around cautiously even though they were the only two people in the room, “If you hadn’t come, I wouldn’t have been able to get word out in time—it may already be too late—I overheard Mirabella and Farland talking about another plot they’re working on. They’re going to kidnap the Prince and brainwash him so that Farland and Mirabella can go live at the castle; Farland wants to be rich and powerful like he used to be before the King kicked him out.”

  “They’re plotting what?” Warren said and a flash of pain stabbed through his head. “When?”

  “When the Prince is out on his hunting party. I guess the guards are always on the lookout for Farland, so he can’t swoop in and take the kid without risking being killed, but Farland’s going to magic Mirabella out of the Forest, and he’s going to take her to where they’re hunting, and she’s going to pose as the Queen and take the Prince. She’s going to sneak him somewhere away from the guards, get the kid’s anti-magic amulets off him, and then Farland’s going to take him.”

  Warren stared in horror. “Did you tell the guards?”

  “Yeah. They’re trying to get the signal beacon working, but no one here seems to know how to use it. And they’ve misplaced the manual,” Corrine said with frustration.

  Warren sighed. Based on what he’d seen of the guards before they’d gone into The Forest, he wasn’t surprised. “But they’re sending messengers?”

  “They sent out two guys. It’s all they could spare. They’re stretched pretty thin here. They need two guys per watch station all around the perimeter of the Forest, and they need enough on reserve so they can rotate.”

  Well two messengers were better than nothing. “Does Julianna know?”

  “No. Copper and I figured it was best not to tell her until after sunset. She’d go crazy worrying all day about her brother, and there’s nothing she could do anyway.” She sighed and said, “But once the sun sets, we’re going to set out to find the hunting party, and we’re going to make sure the King knows. I don’t trust that the messengers will do their job. As I learned when I was a prisoner in the cave, the Forest of Looming Death is positively crawling with spies. Some of the prisoners are working for the guards, some of the guards are working for the prisoners. A lot of intrigue going on.”

  Warren stared at the blankets, trying to organize his bruised brain. Fortunately, it looked like while he’d been lying there unconscious, Copernicus and Corrine had worked out the plan already anyway, so all he needed to do was what they told him to.

  It was a good thing that with two moons there was always at least some degree of light at nighttime, because otherwise our intrepid travelers would not have been able to be racing at an irresponsible speed through the forest on their way to the nearest inn, where they hoped to hear word of the Prince’s hunting party, which had started the previous day.

  Innkeepers were always in the know about social whatnot, so our heroes figured an inn was probably the best place to start on their quest to save Conroy Jr. A Forest guard had directed them to the nearest inn, and as soon as the sun had set, they had collected a confused Julianna from where she’d been whiling away the day in the barracks basement sleeping on a spare cot and messing with the guards’ pool table. Then they were on their way, dashing off on Copernicus’s wagon past the frantic group of guards blundering around trying to figure out the signal beacon.

  Julianna was thrilled to see that Warren was doing much better; the last she’d seen of him before going down into the barracks basement to hide from the sunlight, he’d been blathering incomprehensibly and staggering around. Now he was sitting on the jostling wagon with focused eyes and barely a wince at even the biggest bumps in the road. “That wizard sure knows his business,” she commented.

  “Yep,” Warren said from where he sat across from her. “He does. I didn’t dare ask what he did to me, but I sure feel better.” He gave her a sidelong glance and said, “How are you doing?”

  When they had explained to her all about the threat to her little brother, she had seemed to handle it pretty well—or at least she hadn’t flipped out and panicked. She’d stayed pretty quiet and listened intently to the plan Corrine and Copernicus had worked out, then she’d darted out to help ready the wagon. Once they’d finally set out, she had pretty much just sat in the back of the wagon staring ahead into the darkness, occasionally urging Copernicus to speed things along.

  But Warren was pretty sure she must be scared even though she wasn’t acting like it.

  “I’m fine,” she answered shortly, in a way that clearly meant she was not fine but also was not in the mood to talk about it.

  “All right,” he said lightly, deciding to respect her desire not to talk. He instead opened up his banjo case, took the instrument out, and started playing some scales, which was somewhat difficult due to the sling and the motion of the wagon, but he was in the mood to play.

  They both looked up at Copernicus and Corrine, who were sitting side by side on the bench and seemed to be deep in conversation.

  “Nice of him to help us with this next leg of the journey,” Julianna said, nodding to Copernicus.

  “I think he has ulterior motives,” Warren whispered with
a significant eyebrow wiggle and a look from Copernicus to Corrine. The banjo went from scales to a romantic tune for a few moments.

  Julianna grinned and nodded. She’d thought she had noticed something going on between them.

  Warren smiled to see her thinking of something other than Conroy Jr.

  They looked idly around the dark forest and listened to Copernicus and Corrine as they talked about the publishing industry in Fritillary; Copernicus seemed all fired up to begin his first true crime novel once he was done with this adventure, and Corrine was more than willing to give him pointers.

  Before too long, they saw the inn up ahead. It was a small two-story building sitting right at a crossroads between the north/south road they were on and another road that was running (you guessed it!) east/west. Over the door, the inn had the usual wooden sign hanging from an iron rod sticking out at a ninety degree angle from the building; the sign was flapping gently, and sporting an intricately carved blob that must have been supposed to be a guy with an axe, because above the blob were words that read: The Lonely Woodsman.

  Copernicus parked the wagon, and Julianna and Warren hopped down and went into the inn to see if they could get some intel on the hunting party. The Lonely Woodsman was a sad little establishment with just two lonely patrons bellied up to the bar and one lonely barkeeper bellied up to the other side. The two lonely patrons didn’t even look up when our heroes walked in, which was odd because usually when one walks into a backwoodsy bar, the locals all turn and stare, and someone says something confrontational that causes a fight.

  The barkeeper asked them what they wanted, and they both ordered Bitsy McGoverns because they needed their wits about them. They leaned against the bar, and Julianna asked, “Any news from the Capital?”

  Sure enough, the hunting party was the hot topic out in this far flung little establishment, just like it was in the city. The barkeeper said, “The talk’s all about that hunting thing with the Prince. They rode past going east yesterday. Big, fancy group they were.”

  “Oh?” asked Julianna.

  “Indeed. Yesterday evening. They’re headed toward that wildlife refuge up past the coal mines36.”

  Warren and Julianna exchanged significant looks and engaged in a bit more small talk with the barkeeper while they finished their drinks, then they moseyed out.

  “Lucky they’re hunting so near us,” Warren commented as they hopped back into the wagon. And while it was lucky that the wildlife refuge was pretty close to them, it wasn’t actually so much to do with luck as it was to do with the fact that Fritillary was only about 200 square miles in size. So, with a wagon and a good pair of horses, nothing in Fritillary was really all that much of a trek.

  “Head east. They’re at the refuge past the coal mines,” Julianna told Copernicus.

  They trotted off.

  Julianna would have been quite interested to know that the mining town they rode through a few hours later (Coal Harbor) was the very one where Mortimer Perkins lived. They actually trotted right past his front door. He was inside leading a secret revolution meeting.

  Warren checked in with the magical pool of raven blood to see if it had an update.

  It didn’t have much to say that was relevant to their current situation, but it did let him know about the situation with Jane and McManlyman.

  Not much of consequence happened for the next few hours. So how about if we just skip ahead to when stuff happens again? Onward to the national wildlife refuge!

  * * *

  36In a rare instance of foresight, the royal family had, a few generations back, realized that if logging progressed at the rate it was going, then, in the not too distant future, there’d be nowhere good left to do their hunting. So, they’d come up with a national wildlife refuge system. The one past the eastern coal mine was the biggest and wildest, so it was the most logical place for the big hunting shindig.

  Chapter Forty

  The hunting party was camping just past the big sign that read King Moltar National Wildlife Refuge. Lots of big, white tents were scattered about. Lots of maids and servants were busy bustling around, trying to create a nice outdoorsy experience that made the rich folks feel as though they were roughing it.

  Meat and asparagus were cooking over fire pits, lake water was being boiled, s’mores were being assembled, some annoying ladies were pretending to be scared of the wildlife so that they could get some easy attention from the guys they had crushes on, some annoying guys were taking advantage of this fact in order to appear more woodsy and capable than they really were.

  Farland and Mirabella were peeking through some trees beyond the outer circle of soldiers who were keeping an apparently very ineffective watch over the party. “So, you’re sure my sister’s there?” asked Mirabella.

  “Yeah. She’s in the big tent in the middle. Sneaking in there will be the tough bit, but once you’ve tied her up and disguised yourself as her, its smooth sailing! Get the anti-magic amulet off the kid, get him to our prearranged meet up location, and BAM! we’re out of here and the brainwashing begins,” Farland sleazed.

  Mirabella glared at him; just because he was able to sum up the plan succinctly, that hardly meant it would really be smooth sailing. She was further irritated because, while she was going to be doing all the work, he was just going to be lazing around their meet-up location and waiting.

  “All right,” she said abruptly. “Let’s do this thing.” She reached into her bag for some vials that Farland had given her. They couldn’t use the ol’ asparagus/tangerine mix because (1) they were outside so it would disperse too quickly to be of much good, and (2) if she knocked out the whole crowd, it would be a dead giveaway that something was up. Since stealth was the order of the day, she had a few vials of some brown concoction that she would just shove under the nose of anyone who got in her way. A few passed out people was nothing that would draw attention, especially the way they were partying down there at the camp.

  She thought it was hardly the right example to be setting for the young Prince, but perhaps he was already sleeping. Mirabella then froze and gave a sort of gasp; had she really just felt concern about the example that was being set for her nephew? It was an odd feeling. But it passed quickly. She stood abruptly and shook her head to clear it.

  Farland stood when Mirabella did, and they both got to work. The one thing Farland had to do besides magic Conroy Jr. out of the refuge was distract the nearby soldiers so that Mirabella could sneak through their ranks to get to the tents. He scampered off to a hollow tree they’d found earlier and yelled, “Yes! I think the camp’s over here! Let’s just scout it out and then we can come back with the other guys and all the weapons!”

  Sure enough, this attracted the attention of the soldiers.

  “What was that?” one yelled.

  “Was some guy just yelling about attacking the camp?” asked another soldier incredulously.

  In moments, half a dozen soldiers were darting off in the direction of Farland’s voice. Farland watched from behind the hollow tree as, behind their backs, Mirabella snuck through their ranks.

  Once he was sure she had gotten far enough toward the camp, he simply bent down, crept into the hollow tree, and disappeared; the smoke that accompanied his disappearing spell stayed contained in the tree trunk, so no one even noticed.

  Eventually the soldiers gave up their search and went back to their stations, but not before notifying their captain, who summoned all the extra soldiers from the camp to reinforce the outer ring, handily making things easier for Mirabella once she reached the camp.

  Inside her tent, Queen Lillian was humming tunelessly as she brushed her hair before her little golden fold-up camping mirror. She was glad she’d decided to accompany Conroy Jr. on this trip. At first, she had not wanted to go because hunting dear woodland creatures made her sad, but she knew that she had to shove aside her disapp
roval of hunting and stand by him for this rite of passage. Never mind that she considered it a silly, pointless rite of passage. Conroy had been so excited about it that she hadn’t had the heart to point out that Conroy Jr. really didn’t seem that into it. Also, she figured going along on this little adventure would help her to keep her mind off the fact that her daughter had run away again and that there had been no sign of her.

  So, here they were.

  And here also, she saw through the reflection in her mirror, was Mirabella.

  Lillian whirled with a gasp and managed a hoarse cry that was too weak to be heard over all the carousing going on outside the tent. “Mirabella! How did you escape?” she gasped, looking around wildly.

  She and her evil twin sister were alone.

  Mirabella didn’t waste her breath saying a word in response. Her sister didn’t need to know that because of Farland’s magic, she was able to leave the Forest of Looming Death whenever she felt like it. Instead of speaking, she just swooped in with a vial at the ready and held it under her sister’s nose. Before Lillian had a chance to get it together and manage a respectable scream for help, she hit the dirt, sprawled out in an ungainly pile of unconscious queen. Mirabella wasted no time and was quickly switching clothes with her sister and letting her hair down, then giving it a hearty brushing so that it looked all glossy and wavy like Lillian’s was. Next, she stuffed her unconscious sister into a nearby trunk that contained a few forest green and camo patterned gowns, propped the vial up amongst the folds of the dresses so that the fumes would keep floating out, and then she slammed the trunk shut.

  Before exiting the tent to find her nephew, she glanced in the mirror with a look of surprise; she really did look indistinguishable from the Queen (except for her empty eyes). In the dark of the camp it shouldn’t be too difficult to pretend to be Lillian as long as no one engaged her in conversation—she imagined she wouldn’t be able to manage talking like her insipid, soppy twin for too long.