Joey looked up at DeMayne. He was watching the fight unfold from the pedestal of his statue, clearly concerned that the tide was turning against him. Just like that, Joey understood that DeMayne didn’t have absolute power in the mindscape. He was at the mercy of his own subconscious fears just like everybody else.
“I’ve got it!” Joey shouted. “Follow me!”
“What? Where?” asked Janelle.
“To the castle—this way!” He sliced through a bush, opening up a path into the woods. “Come on!”
“Are you sure?” Shazad asked, eyeing the uneven terrain with trepidation. There was no clear path forward.
“Trust me,” Joey said, leading the way in. “He can’t catch us! That’s who we are to him. The more we believe it, the more it’s true. Follow me—and keep up!”
Joey and his friends charged through the forest. Moving faster and more agilely than ever, they flew across the land. Joey felt his confidence rising with every step. He reminded the others how DeMayne had spent the last year looking for them without success. That meant in DeMayne’s mind, they were elusive. They used his impression of them to their advantage, leaving the elves behind as they ran toward the Memory Palace. It was closer than it looked. Growing more comfortable with the malleable nature of the dreamscape, Joey realized it was just a thought away. He stepped out of the forest right at the castle gates with his friends alongside him. Grayson Manchester brought up the rear. “You’re getting the hang of this,” he said with a smile.
They weren’t alone. High up in a tower window, Ledger DeMayne looked down at the group, scowling. He turned away in a huff, retreating into the palace.
“Let’s get what we came for,” Joey said.
Outside, the Memory Palace was a fairy-tale dream. Inside, it looked like someone’s storage unit had thrown up. Everywhere Joey looked, the space was littered with mounds of junk, knickknacks, and worthless odds and ends. Clear plastic bins stuffed with random trinkets lined the walls. Cardboard boxes full of letters, receipts, and hastily drawn sketches covered the floor. It was dark, musty, and claustrophobic.
“What is all this?” Janelle asked, wrinkling her nose in disgust.
“A lifetime of memories,” Manchester explained. “Nothing ever gets forgotten completely. Even the things he can’t quite remember, they’re all in here somewhere.” He led the group into the next room, a vast chamber overflowing with old newspapers. There were rows and rows of them, stacked up on top of each other, forming the walls of a maze that took up the whole room.
Joey pulled a paper out of one of the stacks. “ ‘The DeMayne Ledger,’ ” he said, reading the masthead. “Cute.”
“These articles are all events from his life,” Shazad observed, looking at a paper of his own. “ ‘April 20, 1977. Woke up at 7:02 a.m., brushed teeth, had eggs for breakfast…’ Day by day, it’s all here, however mundane.” He looked around, overwhelmed by the ocean of newsprint. “We have to read all this?”
“We can’t. That would take forever,” Leanora said. “There must be thousands of papers here. Hundreds of thousands.”
“These papers are a record, not a searchable database,” Manchester said. “They aren’t meant to be read. Even DeMayne wouldn’t be able to find anything in here without help from hypnosis or guided meditation.”
“I’m guessing some things are easier to remember than others,” Janelle said. She pointed up at a banner that had Grayson Manchester’s face and the words MR. GRAY emblazoned upon it. Dozens more banners adorned the walls displaying a variety of colors and faces: Mr. Crimson, Ms. Magenta, Mr. Indigo, Mrs. Violet.… The list went on and on. It was like a hall of fame for members of the Invisible Hand going back through the ages. Joey scanned the timeline from era to era, skipping from 1950s America to Victorian England and all the way to medieval times, where people named Duke Cerulean, Lord Silver, and Lady Emerald were hung in places of honor. Most of the faces were new to Joey, but some of them were all too familiar, such as Scarlett, Ivory, and Clear. He noticed that Ivory’s and Clear’s banners appeared fresh and new, while the others were all faded and worn. Manchester’s banner, on the other hand, looked like an angry person had gone at it with a pair of scissors.
“That’s a bit extreme, isn’t it?” Manchester said, noting his carved-up image on the wall. “He could have just drawn a mustache on my face or given me a black eye.”
“I know these names,” Leanora said, looking over the banners. “My family tells stories about some of these people.”
“Mine too,” Shazad said. “None of them are good.”
The sound of angry voices started building outside the room, coming from back the way they’d come. The unwelcome realization that they wouldn’t be alone much longer quickly set in. “We can’t stay here.” Joey pushed forward, knocking down the walls of the newspaper maze, hoping to find a way out before generations of Invisible Hand members came to greet them. “These aren’t the memories we want, anyway. Remember what Hypnova told us. We have to dig up the stuff that’s hidden—even from DeMayne.” He reached the edge of the room, where a large tapestry with the symbol of the Invisible Hand hung on the wall. “We came here to find out where it all began. What’s behind the Invisible Hand?” Joey tore down the tapestry, revealing a secret door that was boarded up and covered in dust. Someone gasped behind him. It was DeMayne.
“Where did that come from?” he asked, genuinely shocked by Joey’s discovery.
After everything Joey had seen in the dreamscape, another sudden appearance by DeMayne didn’t faze him, but he was definitely surprised when a collection of elves, orcs, townsfolk, and Invisible Hand alumni burst into the room, only to stop short when their boss held up his hand.
“Has that been here this whole time?” one of the orcs asked, squinting at the door. His voice was surprisingly distinguished. He sounded like an actor who had just broken character.
DeMayne didn’t favor the orc with an answer. Unable to take his eyes off the newly found door, he dismissed the eclectic gathering of minions with a careless wave. Joey breathed a sigh of relief as they shrank away, realizing their presence was no longer required.
DeMayne went to the door, which he couldn’t open because of the boards that had been nailed in place over it. He tried to pry them off with his hands, but they wouldn’t budge. Realizing he couldn’t do it alone, he turned around with a sheepish look, silently asking Grayson Manchester to help him open it.
Manchester shook his head. “Sorry. I’m just a self-defeating extension of you, mate. Self-defeating. I can’t beat whatever’s beating you.”
“We can,” Leanora said, stepping forward. She swung her sword at the wooden planks blocking the door. The others joined in, chopping them to pieces and breaking the latch. The door swung out freely on its hinges to reveal a stairway winding down, but not into darkness. The undulating glow of orange light waited around the corner.
Ledger DeMayne pushed his way to the front of the group and went down the steps first. Joey and the others followed him into the depths of his blocked memories. They didn’t get far before reaching another obstacle.
“The good news is we’re getting warmer,” Joey said.
The group came to a halt at a landing where the next set of steps descended into lava. Leanora sighed. “Not again.”
The fiery orange sludge appeared to flow out of a grate at the top step that fed the river of magma. A large wheel valve on the wall presented an obvious solution, but DeMayne couldn’t touch it. He tried to turn the wheel, but it turned red hot, burning him badly. He jumped back, shaking his hand out. Once more, he turned to Grayson Manchester for help, but Manchester put his hands up and backed away with a “don’t ask me” look. Joey and the others had to turn the valve, but for them, it was cool to the touch. Working together, they closed off the source of the lava and watched it vanish into drainage slots on the stairs.
Ledger DeMayne tapped the top step with his foot, checking it for heat. Once he was sat
isfied it was safe to proceed, he hurried down the steps without a word.
“You’re welcome!” Janelle called out to his back.
The group hustled after DeMayne, eventually catching up with him at the bottom of the staircase. They found him in a small room with a large treasure chest. He had his back to them and was hunched over the chest, breathing heavily. As they came up alongside him, they saw him as he truly was—an ancient, withered man. His perfect, unblemished skin was spotted with age and crisscrossed by a network of deeply set wrinkles. His thick wavy blond hair was actually white and scraggly, and there was hardly any left on his head. DeMayne’s back was bent, and his feeble hands were curled and useless. He looked at Joey with pathetic puppy-dog eyes. “Please. I can’t lift the lid. Help me.” Joey was stunned to see him this way. It was shocking to think about how old DeMayne really was and even more shocking to hear him asking for help. He actually said please! Joey knew it had to be killing DeMayne to have this memory on the tip of his brain but still out of reach. He was dying to know what it was that had been hidden from him for so long.
For once, the Invisible Hand and the Order of the Majestic wanted the same thing. Joey, Janelle, Leanora, and Shazad opened the chest. A blinding light poured out.
“What’s inside?” Shazad asked.
“I don’t know. I can’t see!” Leanora said.
A creaking mechanical noise, followed by a loud clack, drew Joey’s attention away from the chest. The lava door at the top of the steps had made that sound when they’d closed it. A creeping orange glow in the stairwell told Joey it had just opened back up.
“What do we do?” Joey asked as lava coursed down the stairs. It was coming fast, as if some kind of volcanic dam had burst.
The image of Hypnova appeared, flashing in and out. “Inside!” she said, pointing at the chest. “Go inside!”
Everyone was so eager to escape the lava, they didn’t even blink at Hypnova’s surprise return. They just took her advice and ran with it. Shazad, Leanora, and Janelle climbed over the side of the chest and jumped in. Joey and Grayson Manchester helped the frail Ledger DeMayne in after them. Joey sat on the edge of the chest and reached out for Manchester as lava poured into the room.
“Come on!”
But Manchester stayed where he was. Looking at the flickering image of Hypnova, he gave a nod as the lava overtook him.
“Manchester!” Joey shouted, but it was too late. He was gone—this time, Joey knew, for good. Lava rose around the edges of the chest, and Joey dove in after his friends.
He fell through a void of light and landed softly in a green pastoral field. It was beautiful, serene, and safe—the polar opposite of the secret basement in the Memory Palace. Joey’s friends were all there with him. An endless run of rolling green hills stretched out before them, and a thick wall of trees filled the space behind them. Beyond the horizon, a massive crystal mountain with a nearly vertical slope and a razor-sharp summit towered over everything. Sunlight reflected through the mountain like a prism, creating a rainbow that was one of a kind. DeMayne, who was young again, looked around in wonder. “I know this place. I’ve been here before. Ages ago.” He was in a world of his own, ignoring Joey and the others completely.
“Where’s Manchester?” asked Shazad.
Joey looked up at the clear blue sky they had just fallen out of. “He didn’t make it. He didn’t even try.”
“You don’t need him anymore,” Hypnova said, appearing on the field. No longer flickering, Hypnova was every bit as solid as the rest of them. “The memory of Manchester served his purpose. You made it. We’re here.”
“Hypnova!” Joey said, delighted to see she was still with them. He and his friends rushed to her, taking the time for a proper reunion that they didn’t have before.
“You’re back!” Shazad exclaimed.
“Where’ve you been?” asked Leanora.
“Looking for you, of course. I was finally able to find you now that he’s not keeping us apart. His mind is elsewhere.” Hypnova nodded toward DeMayne, who was hiking up a nearby hill, determined to get a look at the other side.
“Where are we?” Janelle wondered as they trailed after DeMayne. “Do you recognize this place?”
“I do,” Hypnova said. “We’re in the Outlands. The untamed edges of the Imagine Nation.”
“The Imagine Nation?” Joey repeated. “We’re here?” A charge of excitement ran through him. Dream or no dream, he was getting his first look at what was arguably the most wondrous place on earth—a magic island that roamed around the world in secret, hidden even from magicians like him and Shazad’s and Leanora’s families. He noticed the position of the crystal mountain on the horizon had moved. Most likely, they were moving around it. He hustled after DeMayne, eager to see more, but when he crested the hill, the view disappointed him. He saw a castle in the distance, obscured by fog. Upon closer examination, he realized the castle was made of fog. The land beyond the hill was too. Everything was wavy and intangible. They could go no farther. “What is this?” he asked Hypnova.
“This is all very normal,” she said, joining him on the hilltop. “His memory of this place has been unlocked, but it’s still hazy. Unclear. We need to give him time. And, if he’ll allow it… some assistance.” She approached DeMayne from behind and went to put a hand on his shoulder. He regarded her with a look that was both suspicious and vulnerable, but he didn’t pull away. As soon as she touched him, flashes of memory entered Joey’s mind. Instantly, he knew without a shadow of a doubt that Ledger DeMayne had been there when the Imagine Nation was created. The final battle had taken place in the mad emperor’s palace. Joey saw glimpses of the conflict and the aftermath.
He saw Merlin in his bright blue robes, with his long white beard. “This isn’t the end. It’s the beginning,” the old wizard said, struggling to speak. Joey could tell he didn’t have long to live. “You have to carry on without me. Keep magic alive in the world.”
A woman took Merlin’s hand. “I will. I swear it.”
Someone else was there too—a woman in a cloak much like Hypnova’s. “I’ll keep it safe,” she promised Merlin. “This place and what’s hidden here… I’ll make sure men like the Hand won’t ever find it again.”
“You’re going to have to kill me,” a younger version of DeMayne said. He looked angry and beaten. “I don’t care if it takes the rest of my life, I’ll be back. I won’t forget what you’ve cost me today.”
The woman in the cloak held out a hand to DeMayne. “Yes, you will.”
There was a flash of light, and Joey knew they had reached the limit of Ledger DeMayne’s knowledge. This was the moment that Merlin, his apprentice Kadabra, and the first Secreteer had rewritten history, hiding the Imagine Nation from DeMayne and the rest of the world. This memory couldn’t contain the information they were seeking. What kept the Imagine Nation moving? What force had kept it hidden all these years?
Before they could probe deeper and try to learn any more, the ground shook with a tremor that knocked Joey off his feet. He snapped out of DeMayne’s foggy memories as he and the others tumbled back down the hill. “What just happened?” Joey asked once they had all come to a stop. “Was that an earthquake?”
“More like a skyquake,” Leanora said, pointing up.
“No way.” Joey looked up to see a massive, lightning-bolt-shaped crack had split the sky in two. Lines ran out from the breach as both sides began to break apart. Soon, huge chunks of solid blue sky were falling to the ground like meteors ready to crush them.
“Not now,” Hypnova said, cursing their luck as DeMayne’s mindscape collapsed. “We’re so close.”
“What’s going on?” Janelle asked. “What is this?”
Hypnova stood up and dusted herself off. “We’re under attack.”
9 Abandon Ship
The world shook again, blasting Joey out of DeMayne’s mind. He blinked and he was back in the captain’s cabin on board Hypnova’s ship. He looked around
, feeling disoriented and sluggish. His eyelids were heavy and his vision was warped, but his friends soon came into focus. They were rubbing their eyes and groaning, every bit as dazed as he was. DeMayne would have likely rubbed his eyes too if he could reach them. He was still tied up on the floor.
The ship rocked from side to side, making it hard for Joey to stand up. The room spun on him, and it wasn’t because of vertigo. Something outside was knocking them around the sky. Joey went to the window to see what was out there. Driving rain beat against the glass, and howling winds pushed the ship along an erratic, unpredictable course. The gentle, drifting fog had been replaced by a violent storm. Lightning flashed in the distance, and Joey thought he saw something—or someone—flying through the clouds.
“What is it?” Shazad asked. “What’s going on?”
“They found us,” Hypnova said.
“Who did?” asked Leanora. “The Invisible Hand?”
“I’m afraid not,” Hypnova said. “Those are Secreteers out there.”
“Secreteers?” Joey repeated.
“HYPNOVA!” someone outside shouted. “SHOW YOURSELF!” Hypnova’s eyes widened in alarm. It was obvious she recognized the voice. Hypnova looked worried, which worried Joey. He left the window and went to the door, but Hypnova got there first.
“No!” she said, blocking his path. “They haven’t seen you yet. They don’t know you’re here. I want to keep it that way.” Outside the window, smoke trails flew by and lightning zigzagged across the sky in a way that was beautiful and terrifying at the same time.
“What should we do?” Joey asked.
“Stay out of sight while I try to lose them. I’ll be back.”
Hypnova slipped outside, leaving Joey and the others in the cabin. They waited in silence as the storm raged outside. Seconds later, Joey had to grab the wall to keep from falling over as the ship banked hard to port. He hoped it was Hypnova taking evasive action, as opposed to the ship falling out of the sky. A quick change in course brought relief as the ship came around, turning back the other way. Joey didn’t know how Hypnova was able to steer the ship with such control, bobbing and weaving through the clouds, but he was glad to have her at the helm. He stepped over DeMayne on his way to the window to get a better look at the Secreteers. Standing alongside Janelle, Shazad, and Leanora, he watched as the ship climbed above the clouds and into clear skies. Twin trails of smoke rose from below, chasing after them. One was gray and the other was deep purple. This time Joey clearly saw cloaked figures inside the smoke. Storm clouds gathered around their pursuers as they circled the ship, flying through the air.
The New World Page 10