The old lady shook her head, tittering. “You asked the wrong questions. Don’t blame me. I could have told you about the Lost Kingdom. The Caliburn Shield. The Imaginary Vortex!” She turned up her empty, withered hands. “I’m afraid you’ll have to find out on your own.”
“What are you talking about?” Joey asked. “Who are you?” He knew it was pointless to ask, but he couldn’t help it.
The old lady wagged a finger at Joey. “If I tell you everything, you won’t learn anything.” She pulled a scroll of parchment from a shelf on the wall and pressed it into Shazad’s hands. “You have to find your own way.”
“What’s that?” asked Joey. “What did she give you?”
“I don’t know,” Shazad said, feeling flustered. The scroll was tied up with a string and double knotted. He put the Staff of Sorcero down for a moment and tried to pry the knot loose with his fingernails as the old lady pushed past him, hobbling toward the door.
“Where’s she going?” Leanora asked. “Hey, where are you going? Don’t leave,” she pleaded.
The old lady left without another word and shut the door behind her, eliminating the theater as a light source. It had not been especially bright before, but without the Majestic’s backstage lights, the cottage was nearly pitch-black. Leanora hurried to the door, no doubt hoping to bring the old lady back and coax more information out of her. She wrenched the door open. Blinding light and cold air poured into the cottage.
“What the…?” Joey said, turning around as a chill sliced through his body. The light was so strong he had to shield his eyes.
Shazad did the same, holding up a hand and squinting. “Now what?” He stopped fumbling with the scroll and went with Joey to find out what was happening inside the theater—but the theater wasn’t there anymore.
Joey’s heart jumped up into his throat once he reached the door. He couldn’t speak—he could hardly breathe—when he saw that the cottage was no longer “attached” to the Majestic. It was on a cliffside road, halfway up a snowy mountain, high above the clouds.
“Watch your step, boys,” Leanora said, putting her arm out to block the exit. “We’re not in Midtown anymore.”
5 On Top of the World
The view outside gave Joey vertigo. His hand instinctively went to the door to steady him as he gazed out upon the tips of snow-capped mountains, and a rolling landscape of clouds stretched thin over a perilous drop. Joey’s fingers tightened around the wood frame, tacky with wet paint, as he craned his neck to look up at the frozen peak a thousand feet above him. The cottage rested on a narrow ledge, set inside a sheer rock face at the end of a frosted, white path. The unforgiving rock wall that enveloped the cottage was beyond steep—beyond vertical even. Its incline was inverted, angling out over Joey’s head. He withdrew into the relative safety of the cottage, wondering why anyone would ever build a house in such a terrible place, and for that matter, how? The winding trail that led to the cottage door was rocky and uneven, ten feet wide in some places and little more than two feet across in others. The ground broke off sharply past the edge of the trail, giving way to a long steep slope riddled with jagged speed bumps. One wrong step and it was human toboggan time, scraping over the mountain’s sharp teeth on the way to a very sticky end. Joey tried to imagine someone hiking up the mountain, weighed down with building materials and all the contents of the cottage. He couldn’t picture himself doing it. Ever. The idea of being out there under any circumstances sent a shiver up his spine, but maybe that was just the wind.
Joey took another step away from the door. He wasn’t a big fan of heights and he liked the cold even less, but this wasn’t just cold. This was icy death. The harsh wind that came off the mountain was like nothing Joey had ever felt before. If he had bundled up for an arctic expedition it would have still been tough to take, and he was dressed for springtime in New York. A wave of snow swept into the room. Joey put a hand up as tiny ice particles whipped into his face like frozen grains of sand. Through his fingers, he saw someone way down at the end of the trail. Someone dressed in red.
Joey tried to say something, but the words got stuck in his throat. He felt as if the air in his lungs had frozen into ice crystals. He dropped his hand and darted outside without thinking. The wind cut right through him, but he stood there and took it, scanning the mountain for Scarlett. He didn’t see her.
“Shut the door!” Shazad called out.
Leanora pulled Joey back inside, closed the door and latched it, fighting hard against the wind the whole way. She turned around and put her back to the door, breathing heavy.
“What were you doing going out there like that?” Shazad asked him. “Not cold enough for you in here?”
“Sorry,” Joey said. “I thought I saw someone on the trail.”
“What?” Leanora said. “I didn’t see anyone.”
She went to open the door back up, but Joey shook her off. “Don’t. It’s nothing. There’s no one.” Joey told himself he was being paranoid. He always thought he saw Scarlett, and nothing ever happened. She couldn’t have possibly followed him up here.
“Anyone else feel like they’ve got an anvil on their chest?” Shazad asked. “Or is it just me?”
Joey nodded. He was panting himself. “We’re too high up. Our bodies aren’t acclimated.”
“Acclimated?” Leanora repeated, squinting at Joey.
“To the altitude,” Joey explained. “The air’s thinner up here. The actual air molecules are farther apart than what we normally breathe. Our bodies need time to adjust and make more red blood cells to carry more oxygen.”
“How much time?” asked Shazad.
“The kind of time we don’t have. It takes mountain climbers weeks to acclimate. We didn’t do that. We just kind of showed up here.”
“I feel tired,” Shazad said, looking for a place to sit down.
“If we were any higher up, we’d pass out in a couple minutes.” The room darkened for a moment, then returned to normal. Joey realized he was feeling light-headed. “We still might,” he said. “Lea, let’s get out of here. Use your doorknob.”
“I’d love to,” Leanora said. “Too bad it’s back in Redondo’s office.”
“What?” Shazad said.
“You don’t have it with you?” Joey asked, his voice rising with panic.
Leanora held out her arms, physically stating the obvious. Her hands were empty and the bag of tricks she usually carried was nowhere in sight. Joey’s stomach turned.
“That’s going to be a problem,” Shazad said.
Joey grimaced. It certainly was. He took out his phone to see if he could use it to call for help, but that was another problem. Even if the phone worked, who was he going to call? What was he going to say? He tried reaching Janelle first. Joey didn’t fully expect the call to go through, but he tried to catch a signal anyway.
“The phone again?” Leanora asked, scrunching up her face. “Really?”
“Don’t worry. I’ve got location services turned off,” Joey said, noting the feature that Grayson Manchester had previously used to track him. “I learned my lesson.”
“You’re not going to get any service up here,” Shazad said.
“You never know. I saw a documentary on Everest one time. That’s how I learned about acclimation and stuff.”
“And?” Shazad probed.
“And, believe it or not, they had Wi-Fi at base camp, more than five thousand feet above sea level.”
“This isn’t exactly base camp,” Leanora said.
“It isn’t Mount Everest, either,” Joey replied. “I hope,” he added under his breath. The call failed, as expected. “Maybe I can send a text,” he said, typing away with his thumb. He hit send, casting the text out into the ether like a digital message in a bottle. Joey held his breath, praying it would somehow reach the shore. “Ha!” Joey blurted out. “It’s working! It went through!”
“Thank goodness. We’re saved,” Shazad said without feeling.
&nbs
p; “Can she call someone for us?” Leanora asked in a more hopeful tone. “Someone who can help?”
“Call who?” Shazad countered. “What’s she going to tell them? We don’t even know where we are.”
As if on cue, Janelle texted to ask Joey where he was and what time he was coming back. They were supposed to leave for the airport soon.
Joey grimaced, realizing his phone would not be the lifeline that he and his friends needed. Even if he could tell Janelle their exact location, it would take hours for a search-and-rescue team to find them. He rubbed his head, feeling woozy. They didn’t have that kind of time.
“Shazad’s right. This is no good.” He fired off another text telling Janelle he’d meet her in California (he hoped) and put the phone away. “There has to be some magic way off this mountain. That old lady, or ladies… they were helping us. They wouldn’t just leave us here to die.”
“What did she give you?” Leanora asked Shazad.
“I don’t know,” Shazad said, turning his attention back to the scroll the old lady had pressed into his hands. “Let’s see.” He undid the knot and spread the golden-brown parchment out on the floor, hoping for written instructions on how to get home. “It’s a map,” he said, disappointed.
“A map? Of what?” Leanora asked, coming over for a look. “The mountain?”
“No,” Shazad said. “The world.”
Joey cleared a space on the table to lay the map out flat and used a cup and a bowl as weights to hold it down. It was an old atlas of the seven continents, hand painted with a colorful, ornate border and intricate details that modern mapmakers didn’t bother with. Sea serpents surfaced off coastlines, and clouds with faces blew strong winds from the four corners of the earth. Set inside a gilded crest in the lower-right-hand corner of the map were the words “The Secret Map of the World.”
“This looks like something out of a pirate adventure,” Leanora said, joining Joey at the table. “Look here. X marks the spot.” She pointed to a thick black X drawn somewhere in South Asia.
“I don’t think that’s buried treasure,” Shazad said, noting the mountain range near the X.
“Shazad’s right,” Joey agreed. “It’s probably our location. The Himalayas. Wonderful.” He studied the map closer. It was crisscrossed with bright red lines connecting cities all over the world, some of them spanning great distances. Joey traced a few of the routes with his finger, growing intrigued by the names he came across. “Some of the places on this map… I’ve never heard of them. But the ones I have…” Joey trailed off, astonished. “Look at this: Transylvania, Waywayanda, Caloo-Calay, Celestia… Jorako?”
“What? Let me see that.” Shazad nearly knocked over the bowl of orange paint as he leaned in for a closer look. “That isn’t possible. We have charms in place. Jorako can’t appear on any map!” He stared hard at the map, scrutinizing a little black dot in the middle of Egypt. Joey could have sworn he was trying to will it out of existence. When that didn’t happen, Shazad let out a sigh. “I don’t understand,” he said, deflated.
“I guess Jorako’s easier to find than you thought,” Leanora told him.
Shazad straightened up in a hurry, eager—as ever—to contest that point. “Let’s not go there,” Joey said, jumping in before Shazad dove into a monologue about the impenetrable nature of Jorako. “First things first. Let’s get out of here before it’s too late.” Joey felt the room whirl on him. He gripped the edge of the table as his legs wobbled. Fatigue was setting in. We must be really high up to feel it this fast, Joey thought. “There’s got to be a way back,” he said. “It’s got to have something to do with this map. Otherwise, why give it to us?”
“Why do any of this?” Leanora asked. “You’re assuming there has to be a logical explanation. I hate to say it, but maybe we’re not here for a reason. Maybe we just messed up.”
“There’s got to be a reason,” Shazad said. “Whoever that was in here… she clearly wants us to keep the magic we’ve got safe from the Invisible Hand, but she wants us to do it our way.” He pressed two fingers to his temple and closed his eyes, making a face like he had a headache. “I don’t know what that means. We don’t have a way. That’s our whole problem. We have three ways and no plans.”
“I think she was telling us to change that,” Joey said. “She said she knew Redondo. I believe it. Remember he told us a woman gave him these cards?” Joey took out Redondo’s deck of cards, nearly fumbling them all over the table. His reflexes were going. He grumbled and put the cards away carefully. “Redondo said the woman told him he’d inspire a new age of magic.”
“I remember that,” Leanora said. “That’s our job now. Redondo did his part. He inspired us.”
“So we,” Shazad began, “the people without a plan, are somehow part of this old lady’s plan to inspire a new age of magic?” He grunted, passing judgment on that notion. “It would have been nice if she told us how to do that. I don’t have any ideas, except—”
“Don’t say the wand,” Joey cut in.
Shazad put his hands up. “I didn’t say anything.”
“Neither did the old lady,” Leanora said. “She couldn’t say anything.” Leanora paused, the wheels in her head turning. “Three questions. That was all we got. It seemed like a rule. Maybe she got around it by telling us what she couldn’t tell us. You know what I mean?”
Joey blinked at Leanora. “Huh?” Her voice sounded far away, soft and dreamlike. He was getting foggy.
Joey could tell Leanora felt it too. Her eyes swam in their sockets for a second, but she took a breath and blinked them clear. “Think about it. What if…? What if when she said she couldn’t tell us anything, she was really trying to tell us something?”
“Okay,” Joey said, trying hard to concentrate. “I get it. What didn’t she tell us, then? Specifically? She said we asked the wrong questions, otherwise she could have told us about—”
“The Lost Kingdom,” Leanora said. “That was one of them.”
“The Caliburn Shield,” Shazad said next. “That was another. What was the third one again?”
Joey thought for a second. “The Imaginary Vortex!” he said, raising a proud finger in the air. Unfortunately, he had no idea what to do with that information. “Any of that mean anything to you guys?” he asked Shazad and Leanora, but they were just as lost as he was.
“You think she gave us the map to find those things?” Shazad asked.
“How does that help us get out of here?” Leanora replied.
“I don’t… I don’t thinkit doez,” Joey said. He was slurring his speech, getting more and more tired. Leanora looked sleepy too. Joey shook his head to wake himself up, and the room shook with it. His arms felt like they had weights tied to them. He wanted to sit down on the floor and rest for a moment, but he stopped himself from following that impulse. He knew what was happening to his body. The warning signs were clear. “Lizzen guys…” Joey paused and slowed down his speech, trying to get the words out clearly. “If we don’t get out of here soon, we’re going to die. We’ve got hypoxia. Oxygen deficiency. It’s going to make you tired, but don’t close your eyes. Don’t sleep. We won’t make it dressed like this.” They needed parkas, hats, gloves, goggles, face masks, boots, and long underwear. That was just the bare minimum, and they didn’t have any of it. The closest thing they had to a jacket was Shazad’s cape. “Up here at these temperatures… without protection? Sleep equals death. Everybody got it?” Shazad and Leanora nodded, their faces grim and weary. “Okay. Glad we got that straight.” Joey shivered. “So, how do we get out of here?” he asked again, as if for the first time.
“Don’t ask me,” Leanora said.
Shazad gave a listless shrug. “I’ve got nothing.”
Joey looked around the room, hoping to spot an answer. He was scared, but his thoughts were too jumbled for the fear to hit him properly. His eyes settled on the fireplace that was carved in the shape of a face. It was still staring at him. “How about you?” he
asked it. “Any ideas?”
“I have some thoughts,” said the fireplace. “It’s bad luck to go in one door and out another. You should always leave a house the same way that you came in.”
Joey nearly fell over. He looked back and forth between the fireplace and his friends, sending the room into a spin. After that he did fall over. Being on the floor felt better than standing, so Joey decided to get comfortable. He sat up and slid over to lean his back against the wall. “Is it just my oxygen-deprived brain, or did the fireplace speak?”
The fireplace grunted. “Obviously I can speak.” Its voice was deep and haughty.
Joey stared at the fireplace in disbelief. “Obviously,” he deadpanned. This was next-level weirdness, even for someone who was used to seeing magic in action.
“Why didn’t you talk before?” Shazad asked the fireplace.
“With a fire going?” the fireplace scoffed. “Didn’t anyone ever tell you not to talk with your mouth full?”
“Of course. What was I thinking?” Shazad asked sarcastically.
“Manners make the fireplace,” Leanora said with a dazed smile. “The fire-face,” she added, chuckling to herself.
Uh-oh, Joey thought. She’s getting loopy. Then he realized he was laughing at her joke. He was getting loopy too. Fortunately, Shazad seemed to be keeping it together. For now.
“What’s going on?” he demanded. “What are you? Who was that old lady? Or ladies? Whatever! Why are we here?”
The fireplace chuckled. “It doesn’t matter.”
“Why not?”
“Because you can’t stay.”
Shazad threw his hands up. “Who said we want to stay? We want to go home! Why is everyone talking in riddles?”
“No choice,” said the fireplace. “Old rules. Old magic. The sisters did what they could, but it’s up to you to choose your path. Time is running out.”
“I picked up on that,” Joey said, his eyelids drooping.
“Don’t go to sleep, Joey,” warned the fireplace. “You’ve got hypoxia. Next comes hypothermia. You don’t want that.”
Lost Kingdom Page 7