Lost Kingdom

by Matt Myklusch

  But the map was hard to follow through the untamed forest. For one thing, it was darker in the woods. The thick canopy of trees blocked out any light from above. Out on the street, the moon had been covered with clouds, but even that weak light was better than nothing, and the moon’s absence made for slow going on the trail. That was the other problem. There was no trail. Joey, Shazad, and Leanora struggled with uneven terrain that was crowded with trees and overgrown plants. The earth seemed to rise and fall at random, keeping them off-balance, staggering through the night. After a while Joey began to wonder if the rocks and roots were jumping up to trip him on purpose. It didn’t help that he flat-out couldn’t see where he was going. Shazad was using the map and its compass to keep them on track, which meant he was the one who got to hold Leanora’s pendant—otherwise he wouldn’t be able to see which way the compass needle was pointing. Joey and Leanora did their best to follow in Shazad’s footsteps, but he was stumbling just as much as they were.

  The hike got easier as dawn approached, as the morning light made everyone more sure-footed. Joey’s stomach rumbled, looking for breakfast. He had worked up an appetite in the night, but he didn’t bother mentioning it. They weren’t likely to find any food in the forest. They were in the middle of nowhere, which presented a bigger problem. “Where’s the castle?” Joey wondered aloud. “I was hoping it would be there when the sun came up. Even if it was way out there, up on the mountain.”

  “That would have been nice,” Leanora agreed. “I’d like to have an idea how close we are. Or how far.”

  Shazad was standing alone at the crest of a small hill. He was looking back and forth between the map and the land beyond the ridge. “The map says the castle’s just up ahead.” Joey heard uncertainty in Shazad’s voice, like he was worried they were lost but didn’t want to say so out loud. Joey and Leanora joined him on the hilltop. There was nothing but trees, trees, and more trees as far as the eye could see.

  “Are you sure we’re going the right way?” Leanora asked.

  “The map says—”

  “I know what the map says, but castles are big and hard to miss. There’s nothing here.”

  “Exactly. It’s hidden,” Shazad decided. “What? You thought this would be easy? It’s out there. I can feel it. Come on.”

  Shazad tucked the map under his shoulder and started down the hill, trying to find the easiest path through the trees. The look on his face was so determined, Joey and Leanora could do little but fall in line behind him. What else were they going to do? Turn back? Not likely. Shazad was right. They had come this far, and it made sense that the castle would be hidden. If not, someone would have surely discovered the castle—and the magic gate to the next city on the map—long ago. Joey had no idea how they were going to find it, but he knew only a fool would bet against Shazad, who was as focused and driven as Joey had ever seen him. The more Joey thought about it, the more he realized Shazad’s mind-set presented another kind of problem. It was obvious why Shazad was so hot on finding Camelot. He wanted to impress his parents. He was going to blow them away with his monumental accomplishment. Joey remembered his exact words before jumping into the Devil’s Teeth:

  I didn’t get the wand. I lost the staff. I am getting that shield.

  Joey had to say something.

  “Should we talk about what’s going to happen if we find Camelot?”

  “When we find Camelot,” Shazad said.

  “Sure. When we find it,” Joey agreed. “What happens then?”

  Moving swiftly, Shazad climbed over a large fallen tree that was blocking their path. “What’s going to happen is, no one’s going to give me grief about losing the wand ever again.”

  Coming up behind him, Joey struggled with the same tree that Shazad had effortlessly scrambled over. “I wouldn’t mind that, but what happens specifically? With the shield?”

  Shazad turned. “What do you mean? The shield is an Arthurian artifact. It has to be protected.”

  “Protected where?” Leanora asked, bounding over the tree in her magic boots. “In Jorako?”

  Shazad cast his eyes skyward and pretended to momentarily lose strength in his legs. “Here we go.”

  Leanora frowned. “I don’t think that’s why the Fates stepped in to give us this quest, do you?”

  “I don’t know. Maybe the Fates are giving me another chance to get things right,” Shazad replied.

  “This is a chance for all of us,” Leanora said. “You realize that whoever—or whatever—it was that gave us this map has been guarding the Majestic Theatre for us, and they’re going to stop guarding it soon. We’re looking for a magic shield, Shazad. Something with the power to protect what we have in the theater once the candle burns out.”

  “We don’t know that. We don’t know what the shield does yet,” Shazad replied.

  “It might do that and more,” Joey said. “It might be just the thing Janelle and I have been searching for. Something to provide all the energy the world needs.” He tapped the backpack on his shoulder. “This mask is going to run out of magic one day. If your mother’s right, the shield won’t.”

  Leanora’s face contorted. “We’re not going to turn the shield into some kind of environmentally friendly battery, Joey.”

  “Why not?”

  “A hundred reasons,” Shazad replied. “We’ve talked about this. People need to believe in magic for it to work—and they don’t believe. The world’s been trained not to believe. They put their faith in technology. You can’t introduce magic as part of some new tech and expect to change the world.”

  “Why not?” Joey asked again. “Most people don’t have any idea how technology works. They still trust it to do things that used to be considered impossible. That’s faith. That’s belief.”

  “Even if you’re right, it’s too high profile. Too public,” Shazad said. “The Invisible Hand would come after the shield if we used it the way you want. Not just them, either. We’re talking about something that could be the most powerful object on the face of the earth. People, good and bad—governments, good and bad—from all around the world are going to want that power. It needs to be somewhere safe, or it’s going to do more harm than good.”

  “Unbelievable,” Joey said, throwing up his hands. “We still can’t agree on anything.”

  “Let’s stop talking about it,” Leanora advised. “We have to actually find Camelot and the shield for any of this to matter. We’ll deal with it then.”

  “And if we can’t find it?” Joey waved a hand at the empty woodlands. “Then what?”

  Leanora shook her head, done with the conversation. “We’ll jump off that bridge when we come to it.”

  As they moved on, the forest grew dense. With every step, the space in between the trees was increasingly overtaken by pricker bushes. A torrent of thorny branches seemed to rise up in waves, reaching out to snag Joey’s clothing and scrape at his skin. The tightly packed thicket was impenetrable in some places, forcing the group to change course more than once. Joey wove in and out of dead ends as if navigating a labyrinth. The more turns he and his friends had to make in search of an open path, the more the distance between them expanded. As Joey worked his way through the maze, he felt himself getting turned around and losing his way, but he pressed on, telling himself he would regroup with Shazad and Leanora after they cleared the brush. Soon everyone was walking alone. At first they called out to each other often, to keep from straying too far apart, but the calls grew less and less frequent, then eventually stopped altogether. In time Joey’s sole focus in life became the frustrating task of fighting his way through the forest. He was sweaty, scratched up, and bleeding. He wanted out.

  “Guys?” Joey shouted. “I made a decision. I hate the Dead Woods!”

  He got no answer from his friends, but the woods, which up to that point had been actively resisting him, extended an olive branch by removing several hundred branches from his path. Joey pushed a cluster of pointed barbs out of his face
and found an open fairway on the other side. A clear track of land stretched out before him like a park promenade. It was a hundred feet long, but Joey could see an opening at the far end. He was elated. It was almost too good to be true, but he didn’t doubt it for a second. “Guys, I found something! Over here. I think I found the way out!”

  Again no one answered him.

  “Shazad? Leanora? Can you hear me?” Silent seconds stretched into minutes as Joey waited anxiously for a reply. He heard nothing but thrashing in the bushes. Joey whirled around and scanned the forest, unable to pinpoint where the noise was coming from. Was it a wild animal? His friends? Someone else? He wanted to hightail it out of there, but he couldn’t leave Shazad and Leanora behind. At the same time, he was worried if he went to search for them, he’d never find his way back to this spot. He was almost out of the briar patch! It was hard to resist, but he did it. Joey was turning around to go look for Shazad and Leanora when the rustling noise stopped and his friends’ voices drifted through the woods. They were talking over each other, their words overlapping in such a way that Joey couldn’t make out what they were saying, but one thing was clear—the sound was coming from up ahead.

  “They’re already out,” Joey whispered to himself.

  Relieved, he sprinted down the open path, chasing his friends’ voices and calling their names. It felt good to be running free after the arduous hike, but halfway down the lane, he had to slow to a jog. The passageway narrowed as he moved through it, like a shrinking hallway of branches. Joey wondered if it was actually getting smaller, or if it was just a matter of perception. He called out to his friends and heard them call back to him, but now it sounded like he was ahead of them. He stopped and backpedaled a few steps, bumping right into a pricker bush.

  “What the?” Joey turned around and found that he had nowhere to go. A tight nest of thorns now occupied the space he had just run through. They formed a sturdy, instant barricade. “No way. I was just there! That’s imposs—”

  Rather than waste time finishing his sentence, Joey spun back around, praying the same impossible situation wasn’t unfolding behind him. He was relieved to find the trail out of the forest was still clear, but it definitely looked smaller than it had a moment ago. Joey squandered precious seconds staring as the branches grew before his eyes.

  “I think I’m in trouble here,” he said, moving forward again tentatively.

  “Joey!” Leanora shouted. Her voice was coming in clearer now. “Don’t stop! Keep going!”

  Joey did as he was told, charging into the dry white branches. They broke off against his body and scratched his face as he barreled toward the rapidly closing exit. He didn’t make it. Before he reached the finish line, the passageway closed off completely and he was trapped with nowhere to go.

  “I’m stuck!”

  “No, you’re close!” Shazad told him. “This way! Follow my voice!”

  Joey gritted his teeth and forced himself to keep moving forward. He felt like he was caught in a spider’s web of spiky branches. The world was closing in on him, and he started to lose his cool. Joey called out for help and his friends called back again. They sounded nearby. He wondered if it was really them, or just a trick to lure him deeper into the forest. Were the Dead Woods cursed? Were they trying to kill him? Joey was running out of steam, but Shazad and Leanora shouted more encouragement.

  “Joey, we can hear you! You’re almost there! Don’t give up!”

  He had no choice but to push and believe. Tapping into a life-or-death adrenaline reserve—the kind of thing that allows mothers to lift cars off their children in emergency situations—Joey found the strength to keep going. He stomped into the thicket with renewed vigor, squeezing his body through one gap after another. It was painful, but he was making progress and building momentum, not to mention confidence. Near the end, the forest seemed to give a bit, loosening its hold on Joey. He picked up speed, storming through the bushes until finally he burst into the clearing—right at the edge of a cliff.

  “Ahh!” Joey pulled up short and tried to stop, but his ankle was snared in a tangle of branches. He fell forward, headfirst over the ledge. A hand caught him by the collar just before he went tumbling to his death.

  “Got you!”

  Joey gagged as his shirt dug into his throat. It was a welcome sensation considering the alternative. Choking, he looked back over his shoulder and saw Shazad holding on to him and Leanora holding on to Shazad, anchoring everybody to the ledge. It was their voices he had heard after all. Joey exhaled as they pulled him back to safety. “I hate the Dead Woods,” he said again, once he caught his breath.

  “We all do,” Leanora said. “Trust me.”

  Joey saw that Leanora and Shazad were just as scratched up as he was, but Leanora looked particularly upset. There was an edge in her voice and her cheeks were flushed. “What did I miss?” he asked. “What happened?”

  Leanora looked back into the pricker bushes, packed tight like a knot of barbed wire. She wiped her eyes, and Joey realized she was angry and sad at the same time. “I lost something in there. One of my necklaces.”

  “No,” Joey said, feeling awful for her. He knew they couldn’t go back for it. The branches he broke getting out of the pricker bushes had regrown behind him, bigger and stronger. There was no way back into the forest, and even if there were, they couldn’t risk it. There was no guarantee they’d get out a second time. “Which one did you lose?”

  “The one my grandmother gave me. The mental protection amulet. It must have caught on a branch and snapped off. I didn’t even know it was gone until I got out.”

  Everyone was quiet for a moment.

  “This is why the shield belongs in Jorako,” Shazad said. “Out here, things get lost. You lost your necklace. I lost the staff. Joey lost the—”

  “Shazad,” Joey cut in. “Not a good time.”

  Shazad noticed how upset Leanora was getting and abandoned the topic. “The good news is we found the castle,” he said.

  Joey lifted his chin. The fog was thick on this side of the pricker bushes, but within it, he could see the shadowy outline of a large black stone castle. It sat across a wide chasm on the opposite cliff. “What’s the bad news?”

  “The bridge,” Shazad said, pointing. “And I use that term loosely.”

  Joey’s eyes fell on a shaky rope bridge that was tied to a rocky outcropping a few feet away. His spirits fell immediately after seeing it. “Is that the only way across?”

  Shazad gestured to the vertical drop-off beyond the edge of the cliff. “Unless we can fly.”

  Joey groaned. The bridge was one step up from a tightrope at best. Two thick lines ran out across the abyss serving as handrails, with straps tied to short wooden planks that were spaced out every couple of feet. “Sure would be nice to have a magic carpet right now. Tell me again why we didn’t take that with us?”

  “We had to leave it,” Shazad said. “My parents have ways to track their belongings. They’d catch up to us if we had the carpet.”

  “I’m starting to wish they would.” Joey peered over the edge to see what he had almost fallen into. It was like looking into a cloud. The chasm was so filled with fog that he couldn’t see the bottom. Joey kicked a stone into the mist. He didn’t hear it hit the ground. “Did I miss something? Is there even a ground down there? And how long is that bridge?” he complained. “For all we know, it goes on forever.” The rope bridge disappeared into the fog after about ten feet. The other side of the canyon was as much a mystery as the ground below.

  “It can’t be that far,” Leanora said. “The castle’s right there.”

  Joey stared at the ancient turrets and towers rising up out of the mist. “All right,” he said, trying to find the courage to act. “Let’s get this over with.”

  Trading one danger for another before he got too comfortable, Joey clenched his fists and walked up to the start of the bridge. With great effort, he forced his hands to open and grab hold of the
ropes. His feet were another story. They didn’t want to move. Shazad and Leanora stood behind Joey silently, not rushing him. No doubt they were just as nervous as he was. “Suck it up,” Joey muttered under his breath, knowing the longer he waited, the harder it would be to begin. There was no going back. He had a wall of thorns behind him and a mysterious void in front. The only way out was through.

  Joey took a deep breath and held it as he stepped onto the bridge. The ropes stretched and the bridge dipped as he walked across the planks. His stomach tied itself into the shape of a pretzel, but he crept forward, sliding his hands inch by inch over the rope. He was holding on tight enough to get friction burns. The rope felt old, like it could snap at any moment, and the whole bridge swayed when he leaned too heavily to one side or the other. Joey moved slowly, doing his best to keep his back straight and his weight perfectly centered. He breathed sparingly, deluding himself that having less air in his lungs made him that much lighter, and every little bit helped. The more Joey thought about it, the more he was glad he couldn’t see how high up he was. He didn’t want to know.

  Joey felt the bridge strain under Shazad’s and Leanora’s weight as they followed him out. He grimaced, wishing they had opted to cross one at a time, but it was too late now. Shazad and Leanora were already on the bridge. Joey wasn’t going to ask them to turn around and wait for him to reach the other side. He didn’t even know if they’d be able to tell when he got there. They couldn’t see the other side from the safety of the cliff. For all Joey knew, his friends wouldn’t be able to hear him over there, either. As he journeyed deeper into the mist, something shifted. The air felt strange. It was colder and murkier. It smelled different too. Not better or worse, just different. The fog grew so thick, Joey couldn’t see more than two feet in front of him. He glanced back over his shoulder to check on his friends, but it was no better in the other direction. Shazad and Leanora were just shadows in the mist.