“Are you kidding me?” Janelle said to Joey when she saw him by the mirror. “This place is amazing!”
“It is pretty cool,” he said.
“Where are we? Is this another dimension?”
“It’s the mirror world,” Shazad said. “Every magic mirror back in our world comes out on this beach. You can go through one mirror on your way in and use a different mirror on your way out. It’s like a magic transportation hub.”
“We can pick any mirror? Go anywhere?” Janelle asked.
“Oh no,” Leanora said. “You don’t ever go through a mirror in this place unless you’re absolutely certain where it leads. There’s no telling where you might end up.”
Janelle looked around at the rows and rows of mirrors, flabbergasted. “You knew about this place?” she asked Joey.
“I’ve been here before,” he admitted.
“You’ve been holding out on me.”
“I didn’t want to blow your mind,” Joey said. “Besides, I was only here the one time, and it’s not a good memory. I ran into Grayson Manchester on this beach, and not as friends. It was pretty much the exact opposite of what happened in DeMayne’s head.”
“Joey’s right,” Leanora said. “As beautiful as this place is, we can’t stay. We’ve got to go.”
“Why?” Janelle asked. “What’s wrong?”
“It’s like Shazad said. These mirrors link back to their counterparts in our world. The Invisible Hand controls most of the known magic mirrors, which puts us in a very vulnerable position.”
“Can they see us?” Janelle asked, suddenly wary of the mirrors surrounding her.
“They can if they happen to be looking through their mirrors right now,” Shazad answered.
“We should assume they are,” Joey said. “You know they’re going to be looking for DeMayne. Which means we have to be on the lookout for Mr. Ivory and Mr. Clear.”
“Ivory and Clear,” Shazad said. “From the banners in the Memory Palace?”
“We met them in DeMayne’s office.” Janelle spun the Staff of Sorcero out to its full length, putting her guard up. “I’m not in any rush to see them again. What about you guys? Did you run into anyone from the Invisible Hand on your missions?”
Shazad and Leanora both said they had not, which Joey found interesting.
“What’s the plan?” asked Janelle. “There have to be a thousand mirrors here. Which one do we take?”
“I can find my family’s mirror,” Shazad said. “We’ll escape to Jorako and regroup.”
“No.” Joey shook his head. “Hypnova showed me where to go. Somewhere on this beach, there’s a mirror that leads to the Imagine Nation. That’s the one we want.”
“You know where to find it?” Shazad asked.
Joey held out a finger. He looked around the beach, trying to feel out which way to go. As he scanned the collection of mirrors, he pictured the mirror Hypnova had shown him before they parted company. Joey closed his eyes and saw it clearly in his mind—a rectangular full-length mirror with a patchwork frame made up of six different design patterns, none of which went together. Part of the frame was ornate and extravagant, like a mirror from a medieval castle. Part of it was plain white stone with no markings whatsoever. The other elements of the frame were equally distinct. One portion was made of red wood with a decorative golden line that formed an endless knot in the corner, and there were three vastly different high-tech sections of the frame. Hypnova had implanted the image of the mirror very clearly in his brain. It would be hard to miss. But where was it? Had Hypnova also told Joey its location on the beach? He wasn’t sure, but eventually he settled on a direction that felt right.
“This way.”
Joey struck off down the beach, trusting to instinct. He was going with his gut, but it felt like something more as well. He was following a deep-seated feeling, hoping that it had been placed there by Hypnova and that it would lead them to the Imagine Nation.
As they passed mirror after mirror, searching the beach, Joey grew increasingly uncomfortable. He kept spotting people in random mirrors. At least, he thought he did. Every time he double-checked a mirror to catch a glimpse of the person inside it, he saw nothing but his own reflection.
“How much farther is it?” Leanora asked. Her burned-up boots were coming apart at the seams.
“I don’t know.” Joey looked ahead, hoping to see the mirror he was searching for nearby. The beach seemed to go on forever.
“Are you sure we’re going the right way?” Shazad asked him.
“I think so,” Joey hedged. He didn’t want to admit it, but he was starting to wonder that himself.
“Anyone else get the feeling we’re being watched?” Janelle said.
“No doubt about it,” Joey said.
He described the mirror to his friends, telling them what to look for, and picked up his pace, trying to hide his concern. He knew the mirror was on this beach, and he was fairly confident he would find it if he kept going in this direction, but he had no way of knowing if the mirror was ten feet ahead or ten miles away. A blurry figure appeared in a nearby mirror and quickly vanished. Joey felt a knot tighten in his stomach. It had been a long time since the Invisible Hand had known about him and his friends. He didn’t like having them back in his life. He also remembered the last time he had felt like they were watching him. One of their agents, Ms. Scarlett, had tagged him with a magic paintbrush that allowed her to track and follow him everywhere. She was gone now, but he kept looking over his shoulder for Mr. Ivory or Mr. Clear. What if it had been them in the mirror?
Fortunately, he didn’t see them anywhere. What he did see was a mirror with a strange, multicolored, and multi-styled frame planted firmly in a nearby dune. “There!” he said, pointing. Joey and his friends ran to the mirror. Sure enough, it was a perfect match for the image Hypnova had placed in his mind—their ticket to the Imagine Nation.
“Let’s get out of here before we have company,” Leanora said.
One by one, they went through the mirror, this time without any difficulty.
They came out the other side in an empty room crafted entirely from white wood. It was sparsely decorated, but cozy, like a rustic hotel room. There was a bed, a night table, and a comfortable-looking chair. Outside, the room opened up onto a terrace. A gentle breeze came in through flowing white curtains that separated the bedroom from the balcony. There were unlit lanterns on the floor and what looked like a string of lights hanging down from the ceiling. Little jars filled with white crystals dangled over Joey’s head. The crystals in the jars had a soft glow in the darker corners of the room, but outside the sun was coming up. Joey had been the last one to enter the room. Shazad, Leanora, and Janelle were already outside admiring the view. He joined them on the balcony and saw they were high up in a tree overlooking a forest. A winding staircase with a sturdy railing led down to another room below them, but it was hard for Joey to see. The exterior of the lower level was covered with mirrored shingles that reflected the dense thicket of trees around it so perfectly as to make it nearly invisible. The upper level was built the same way. It was a treehouse hideout. The best Joey had ever seen.
He went to the other side of the balcony. His friends’ eyes were firmly fixed in the opposite direction. Squeezing between them, he saw it. The massive crystal mountain from the long-lost memory buried deep in DeMayne’s mind. It was even bigger and more awe-inspiring in person. The peak was impossibly tall and knifelike. It was as if the whole mountain was a pointed shard that had been cleaved from a diamond the size of the moon. The mountain sat above the horizon, hovering in midair. High up near the summit, crystalline fragments floated around, orbiting the apex. The sun was rising behind the mountain, and the dawn’s first light bent out in a halo of rainbows. The sight took Joey’s breath away. It was the most wondrous and beautiful thing he had ever seen, and that was saying something.
“This is it,” he whispered with stunned reverence. “The Imagine Nation.�
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11 Wild Imagination
“We made it,” Leanora said. “We’re actually here.”
“I don’t even know what to say anymore.” Janelle held her hands out toward the crystal mountain, astonished. “I thought the mirror world was amazing, but this… Look at this!”
“What’s that over there?” Shazad asked, pointing in a new direction. As he spoke, the wind pushed away a fine white mist that coated the forest treetops. High atop a faraway hill, a city came into view. It was unlike anything Joey had ever seen and beyond anything he had ever imagined, which was fitting given where they were.
“What the…?” Joey’s voice trailed off in stunned disbelief.
For almost a full minute no one spoke. There were no words that could possibly do the moment justice. The city on the hill defied explanation. It was like a mash-up of several different cities that had somehow been crammed into one space. Joey counted six distinct, fantastical boroughs within it. One section of town was made up of gothic castles and medieval villages. Three separate sections of the city looked like something out of a sci-fi movie, but the sci-fi elements didn’t conform to any one particular style. One of them was a next-generation metropolis with impossibly tall, flashy skyscrapers. Another one had clean, high-tech towers with minimal design, and yet another had an otherworldly, alien quality to its architecture. The final two boroughs of the city were equally diverse. One of them appeared to be constructed from a blend of futuristic buildings and ancient temples, and the final unique section of the city was an assemblage of interlocking white stone buildings that fit together like puzzle pieces. Ships filled the air above the city with an inexplicable mix of sporty flying cars and dirigible airships that resembled Hypnova’s airship. The city was miles away, but it was clearly alive and full of people. Joey wondered who they were and what their lives were like. Most of all, he wondered what they had been doing for the last thousand years.
“What is this place?” Shazad asked, breaking the silence. “I thought it was supposed to be a refuge for magic.”
“It is,” Joey said with his eyes full of wonder. “Magic and more. Redondo told me that—in a dream,” he added, trying to explain. “He said this place was home to all the spectacular and unbelievable things the world has to offer. I didn’t understand what he was talking about. I didn’t think it would be anything like this.”
“I thought it was going to look like a lost kingdom from the past,” Leanora said. “This place looks like the future.”
“It’s both,” Janelle said, thoroughly entranced. “Look at the skyline. It’s like the mirror.”
Joey turned around to look back inside the room at the mirror they had used to enter the Imagine Nation. “The mirror,” he repeated, wondering how he had managed to miss that. Janelle was right. Each varied piece of the mirror’s frame matched up with a specific section of the city on the hill. Joey grabbed the mirror by the frame and pushed it over.
“Wait!” shouted Shazad, reaching out for the mirror.
It was too late. Joey stepped back as the mirror fell. It landed hard on the floor, shattering the glass in the frame.
Janelle was baffled. “What are you doing? Why did you—”
“Watch out.” Joey stepped in front of Janelle and turned her around. Knowing what to expect, Shazad and Leanora covered up before the mirror exploded outward. Shards of glass shot up and filled the air as the magic energy that was trapped inside the mirror escaped.
When the dust settled, Shazad was at a loss. “What is it with you and magic mirrors? Why did you do that? Again?” he asked, referring to when Joey had smashed one of Redondo’s magic mirrors after escaping the mirror world a year ago.
“I had to,” Joey said. “We can’t have anyone following us.”
“What about Hypnova?” Shazad asked. “How is she going to catch up with us if we break her mirror?”
“Hypnova told me Oblivia would be right behind her. She said she’d buy us as much time as she could.”
“Did she say to leave her stranded in the mirror world?” Shazad asked. “She’s going to run her ship into the ground. If it comes to that, she might need the mirror on her ship to get away, and this one to join us. She could end up trapped there with no way out now.”
Joey paused for a moment. “I didn’t think about that.” He hoped that he had not acted too rashly. “She wanted us to keep going. She didn’t tell me to hold the door for her.”
“She probably didn’t think she had to,” Leanora said quietly. “How was she supposed to know you were going to smash her only escape route?”
“Oh no.” Joey put his hands to his head. His friends had a point. “Guys, I’m sorry. I wasn’t thinking. I just acted. I…” He trailed off, looking at the broken pieces of glass on the floor. The person he really needed to apologize to wasn’t there. He felt horrible.
“Leanora, look over here,” Janelle said suddenly. She held up a pair of sandals she found near the door. “These have your name on them.”
Janelle was right. The sandals she held had a note tucked into one of them with Leanora’s name written in what, Joey realized, was most likely Hypnova’s handwriting. “What is this?” Leanora asked as she took the sandals and sized them up against her feet. They were a perfect match. Just the thing to replace her ruined boots before they completely fell apart. “How did she know to leave these here? How did she know I’d need them?”
“Hypnova always knows more than she lets on,” Joey said hopefully. “She said we’d see her again. This mirror can’t be her only way of getting here, can it?”
“Let’s hope you’re right,” Shazad said. “For her sake as well as ours. We’re going to need help to get past the Secreteers and the Invisible Hand.”
“You think the Invisible Hand will show up here?” Joey asked.
“DeMayne said there would be a reckoning,” Leanora said. “He was looking right at you when he said it.”
Joey groaned. “Don’t remind me.”
“Don’t worry. He’s not coming for us,” Shazad said. “Not yet, anyway. Did you see the look on his face when we unlocked his memories? Whatever threats he made on board Hypnova’s ship, his first priority won’t be revenge. It’ll be this place—the Imagine Nation. This island makes Camelot look like a sandcastle. It’s the biggest magical artifact of all time. He’s going to want a piece of it. He’s probably already on his way.”
“You think he’ll be able to find it?” Joey asked. “He doesn’t have the map in his head like we do.”
“No, but he’s been here before,” Shazad replied. “DeMayne has a connection to this place he’s only just beginning to understand. My guess is he’s going to want to find out everything he forgot about it. Everything the Secreteers made him forget. There’s only one place he can do that.”
“The Secret Citadel,” Joey said.
“DeMayne’s going the same place we are,” Shazad confirmed. “We have to get there first.”
Joey grimaced, coming to terms with the reality of the situation. He had hoped to avoid another confrontation with Ledger DeMayne, but he realized now that wasn’t an option. If Joey and his friends wanted to change the world, they would have to go through the Invisible Hand to do it. There was no getting around that—especially now that DeMayne had his memory back.
“We better get moving,” Shazad said. “Any idea which way?”
“That way,” Janelle said, pointing deep into the woods. “As much as I want to go explore every inch of that city, there’s obviously nothing secret about it. Not to the people who live here, anyway. Also, DeMayne had no memory of the place. In the vision we saw, these woods were behind us. We have to go through them.”
“Into the Outlands of the Imagine Nation,” Joey said. “That’s where Hypnova told us to look.”
“What are we waiting for?” Leanora asked. “Let’s go.”
The group started down the steps to the lower level of the treehouse. Janelle tapped Joey on the shoulder and n
odded back toward the city. “Look at that place. It’s magic and science together at the same time—just like I’m always talking about! You and I are going back there the first chance we get.”
Joey put on a thin smile as they descended the staircase. “It’s a date,” he said, hoping he would be able to keep it.
The journey down from the treetops took a long time. The platform below them had steps that led to another platform below it. There were more platforms after that, followed by a network of rope bridges and ladders. Together, they created a winding path that led down to the ground, but the mist that covered the forest canopy was thicker inside the trees. The deeper Joey and the others descended into the forest, the harder it became to see and the slower they had to go.
Joey tried to wave away the murky haze, but it was no use. The greenish-white vapor was heavy in the air and seemed to grow denser with each passing minute. The fog had a creepy supernatural quality that seemed to amplify every random noise in the forest, causing Joey to wonder what kind of creatures were in there with them. He hoped that any animals they encountered would be furry and cute, but judging by their habitat, it didn’t seem likely. If any predators were living in the trees, Joey knew he and his friends would have no warning against them. He could hardly see two feet in front of his face. Everyone had multiple missteps that nearly sent them tumbling down through the branches. The fog was so thick they couldn’t see the ground, and no one had any idea how high up they were or how far they had to fall. The uncertainty of it all made the group move even slower despite their desire for haste. After an hour, Joey was sweaty, tired, and very much over Hypnova’s treehouse. He would have liked to use Houdini’s wand and whisk them all away—not just down to the ground, but out of the forest altogether. However, he couldn’t do that and no one asked him to. Everyone knew he was saving the wand to be ready for whatever they found in the Secret Citadel, including Oblivia, the head Secreteer, and Ledger DeMayne if he made it there before them.
The New World Page 12