“Good job, Motley!” Cora praised. She turned to the rest of the group and called out, “Look guys! Motley’s found something!”
As the fresh trail jogged to the right and connected with an established one, Cora began to recognize where they were headed. She was certain they were close to the entrance to the Invisivator’s grove.
“The Invisivator’s up ahead,” she excitedly announced.
Mr. Catlin perked up in an instant, recalling Cora’s stories of the enchanting transportation device. Mrs. Catlin, on the other hand, continued to trudge along as if she was their prisoner.
Suddenly a sound of commotion erupted from ahead.
“Orion?” Mr. Catlin bellowed. He raced toward the source of the noise while the rest of the group sped to catch up.
“Dad—wait!” Cora raced behind her father but as she rounded a patch of small plum trees that flanked the grove, she nearly rammed him. She turned to ask why he had stopped so abruptly—but the reason was obvious the second she looked up.
Orion was saddled in chains and held by a dark figure with a long, jet-black whip. Though the pegasus fought against his shackles, the man was too strong, yanking on the brutish bridle with such force that it grounded Orion’s efforts to escape.
Cora stomped toward the pair with Patrick on her heels. She was crafting a plan of attack when Patrick suddenly quickened his pace and planted himself in front of her.
“Dad, what are you doing?” he called out.
Barnibus’s features hardened. “I think we’d be better served if I were to ask that of you, son!”
“It’s none of your business,” Patrick spat.
Cora’s mind reeled as she realized what Patrick had said. “That’s your dad? That’s Barnibus?”
“Yes,” Patrick replied, raising his arm to shield her, his eyes glued to Barnibus.
Barnibus countered his weight against Orion, who flailed and yanked at the bridle. Cora could see Barnibus’s anger building up, the hatred and poison in his eyes burning hotter with each and every jerk. He reached down for the whip that hung loosely in his belt loop and before anyone could object, he lashed out and beat Orion with it. Cora winced as her friend nickered in pain.
“Back off!” Barnibus growled, holding the whip high over his head. He withdrew a small blue vial from his pocket and proceeded to dump its contents on the tip of the whip’s tail.
Patrick gasped sharply. “It’s poison. He’ll use it on Orion.”
A maniacal grin curled the corners of Barnibus’s mouth. “That’s the first smart thing I’ve heard you say in a while, Patrick,” he scoffed with an unsettling chuckle. “Now get over here. We’ve got some business to attend to.”
Cora’s grip tightened on Patrick’s arm where she’d been unconsciously clamped for the past several minutes. He looked to her with gravity in his manner. The pair locked in silent discussion, each immobilized by their indecision.
“Who’s that girl, Patrick?” Barnibus asked, returning their attention to him.
“No one,” Patrick sputtered, shaking himself from Cora’s grip.
“It’s her, isn’t it?”
“No, Dad, it’s no one.” Patrick was now inching toward his father. “She’s just a girl.”
Barnibus was studying Cora now, as if trying to see beyond her Backworlds appearance.
“Is that you, little Finnegan?” he asked with sickly sweetness.
Cora didn’t know how to respond.
Mr. Catlin stepped up beside his daughter. “You’re mistaken, sir, this girl’s my daughter. She’s a Catlin.” He placed his arm firmly around Cora’s shoulders.
Barnibus eyed the pair suspiciously before turning back to Patrick.
“Get on,” Barnibus directed with a wave toward Orion’s back. Patrick shook his head fervently and backed away. “Get on or…” Barnibus seethed, this time raising the poison-soaked whip toward Orion’s frightful blue eyes. Patrick stepped forward then, climbing onto Orion’s back and Barnibus quickly followed suit.
As Cora watched Patrick and Barnibus disappear into the sky, she broke down. Mr. Catlin took her in his arms while she wept. He stroked her tussled hair. “It was a lovely adventure,” he admitted. “But it’s over now.”
Cora continued to cry, too consumed by her misery to disagree with him. Mrs. Catlin slowly made her way over to the pair with Motley close behind. She bent down to the ground where Cora had collapsed, and placed her hand on her daughter’s back, trying to comfort her.
“I, for one, am glad all this foolishness is done,” Mrs. Catlin said sharply. “Now that we’re all back together we can return to our normal lives.”
Amid her sobs, Cora imagined her “normal life” in The Backworlds. She saw piles of musty algebra and geometry books. She saw a twelve-year-old girl with no friends, save a scraggly dog with whom she couldn’t even talk to anymore. She saw Zach Taylor and his cronies, in all of their Backworlds glory—regarding her with spite and laughing as she failed at life, again and again. She saw endless days of misery in a place where she didn’t belong. She saw no escape.
Cora found she’d lost the will to fight as Mrs. Catlin tightly gripped her arm and raised her to a standing position. Cora breathed Mrs. Catlin’s stifling perfume of bleach and furniture polish. The rigid woman gave her a good hard squeeze and lamented, “We’ll have to get you on a diet straight away. I’d dare say you’ve gained a bit of weight since you were home last.”
A vapid indifference numbed Cora’s mind and body so entirely that she wasn’t even aware of the motion of her legs moving beneath her as she and the Catlins left the grove. If it wasn’t for Motley tugging ferociously at her pant leg, Cora reasoned she might have existed in a state of paralysis for the next several weeks at least.
“Motley! What are you doing?” Mrs. Catlin growled, trying her best to shoo him away. Motley would not budge. His grip tightened. Cora felt teeth!
The haze of apathy clouding Cora’s mind dissipated as acute pain grounded her in the physical world. She tugged against Motley’s grasp.
“What are you doing, Motley? Quit it!” Cora snapped.
Repeated objections from the Catlins seemed only to fuel Motley as he pulled Cora in the direction of the grove, snarling viciously. As Cora fought, he fought harder. Finally Motley managed to pull her all the way back to the grove, to the very spot she’d watched Patrick fly away. Yet he was seemingly unsatisfied with the progress he’d made and raged on, inching Cora along a bit farther until they were standing at the base of the enormous oak tree riddled with knots. Cora fell silent and Motley loosened his grip on her pant leg.
“Of course, Motley! The Invisivator!” she exclaimed, bending down to smother him with kisses.
Cora was frantically searching for the appropriate knot-knob to open the Invisivator door when Mr. and Mrs. Catlin moved in.
“What on earth are you doing?” Mrs. Catlin demanded as Cora fumbled with various lumps on the trunk, twisting and turning in every direction.
“Looking for the knob that opens the door,” Cora explained.
“This is ridiculous!” Mrs. Catlin retorted as she made her way toward Cora. When her mother was just footsteps away, Cora felt one of the knobs give way beneath her fingers and twist counterclockwise. The bark moaned as the Invisivator door separated from its trunk, slowly revealing the hollow interior of the tree. A faint mist of stardust trailed from the opening, like the puff from a candle being blown out. It was nothing in comparison to the spectacular display orchestrated during Cora’s first encounter, but Mr. Catlin was amazed just the same.
“What is it, Cora?” he whispered with curiosity.
“Stardust.” She breathed, just as happy to see a bit of magic as he was.
Motley waddled in through the door and plopped down in a soft cloud of stardust. His eyes were like shiny coins peering out at them from the darkness within. They looked expectantly in Cora’s direction.
“I’ve got to go,” she said, turning to face the C
atlins.
“But, I thought we were going home,” Mr. Catlin sputtered with disappointment.
“We are going home,” Mrs. Catlin reiterated, reaching toward Cora’s arm.
Cora dodged her grasp and stepped backward toward the Invisivator door.
“Yeah, we are going home. You to yours and me to Clouden. Where I belong,” she insisted. “I’ve got to escape The Backworlds. I just don’t fit in here.”
“You most certainly are not! You are my daughter and you’ll be coming home with me!” Mrs. Catlin nearly shouted.
Cora couldn’t take it anymore. She knew what she needed to do and she wasn’t about to let anyone stop her, not even Mrs. Catlin.
“I don’t belong here,” Cora repeated. “I’m not really a Catlin. I’m a Finnegan. I’m Finnegan Cora, the Princess of Clouden.”
Mrs. Catlin’s lips pinched into a tight line and a blue vein popped from her neck.
“A princess?” Mrs. Catlin repeated doubtfully.
“A princess,” Cora echoed, standing tall and proud. “This isn’t me.”
The mist from the Invisivator had leaked out and it began to climb Cora’s thighs, bathing them in a cool, soft vapor. It was only seconds before the dust had enveloped her body, making her lose sight of the Catlins altogether.
“Cora, what’s happening? Where did you go?” Mr. Catlin called out to her.
The dust began to settle, twisting back down around Cora’s body like a rope uncoiling and then retreating into the Invisivator. Back inside, it lit the interior just enough to cast a luminous glow around Motley, who had returned to his true form. He stepped from the shadows and bowed toward the Catlins.
“I am the true Motley,” he announced with a superior huff.
Mr. Catlin’s eyes widened and Mrs. Catlin gasped. Cora turned to provide an explanation and was surprised to see that they were not staring at Motley, but at her. “You’re so beautiful,” Mrs. Catlin whispered, eyeing her daughter with admiration and envy.
“My baby girl! Just look at you!” Mr. Catlin boasted. He was grinning wider than she’d thought possible.
Cora looked down to find that her Backworlds body was stripped away with the stardust, revealing her true Clouden form. She arched her back proudly, feeling at home in her own bones once again.
“Maybe you should go back,” Mrs. Catlin admitted.
“But we’ll see you again, right?” Mr. Catlin was close to tears as he watched Cora duck inside the Invisivator.
Cora found herself tearing up too. She returned to her father’s side and wrapped her arms around him, squeezing tightly.
“Don’t you worry, Daddy. You couldn’t keep me away if you tried.” They were both smiling and crying by now. “Besides, you’ll have to come and visit Orion soon or I’ll never hear the end of it!” Mr. Catlin’s grin returned as Cora blew both of her Backworlds parents a kiss good-bye.
Nineteen: Whole in the Clouds
A stream of air tickled Cora’s neck as she and Motley began the ascent up to Clouden. As the Catlins, the forest, and the town disappeared beneath her, she breathed a sigh of relief.
When they erupted through the clouds, Motley made a goofy, ding! sound and followed it with a smirk.
“I’m home,” Cora said wistfully.
“And it’s about time!” Patrick shouted, breaking her trance.
“Patrick!” Cora exclaimed, rushing toward him. “But how?”
“Let’s just say my father found it a little easier to control the scrawny twelve-year-old boy in The Backworlds than the strong one who arrived with him in Clouden.” Orion made a deliberate cough, and peered back expectantly. “Oh, yes,” Patrick obligingly added. "And I couldn’t have escaped without Orion.”
Orion immediately perked up and made a feigned attempt at alarm and modesty. Cora noted that his grin was no longer shackled in chains, and saw the cruel bridle on the ground in the distance, clearly thrown away in anger. The crimson welts that had littered his back when last she’d seen him were also gone, having melted into his snowy-white coat.
“My greatest thanks and gratitude goes out to you,” Cora praised him with a royal bow. “I see that Clouden has restored you to your handsome self.”
“’Tis true that I seem to have saved the day
and now I am ready to whisk you away.
For time is of essence to capture that cad.
That evil Barnibus is the baddest of bad!”
“You’re right,” Patrick agreed. “We’ve got to get going!” He reached out and pulled Cora up onto Orion’s back with ease and after a bit of negotiation, sandwiched Motely between himself and Cora.
As they sped toward the castle Patrick related Barnibus’s plan. “My father’s gone to the castle. He’s going to—”
“He’s going to what?”
“To kill the king.”
Cora’s heart jumped into her throat.
“I won’t let him, Cora. I’ll stop him,” Patrick promised, leaning into Orion, and urging him on with a swift nudge to the ribs.
“But why?” she sputtered. Her words were choppy and irregular in volume due to Orion’s rocky canter.
“He knew, Cora. He knew we were gone. He knew I’d gone to The Backworlds in search of my mother, and his spies got word to him that you were missing too. Apparently he thought it was an ideal time to overtake Clouden, with your parents distracted with searching for you. That’s why he came to The Backworlds to get me. I guess he thought I’d help him.” Patrick swallowed back his rage. “When we arrived here, I begged him to understand, Cora. I begged him to call the whole thing off, but he just got madder and madder. And once I told him that I’d met you and fallen in love, it got even worse. He didn’t even want to rally his war party anymore. He just said he’d take care of it himself.”
“Love me?” Cora repeated, having already forgotten most of what Patrick had said, save those two words.
“Uh yeah, I’m pretty sure that’s what he said,” Motley interjected.
Cora tightened her grip around Patrick and gave him a squeeze. She felt the warmth of the same light that had first connected them in the Grand Ballroom coursing through her as they approached the edge of what she recognized as the Unicorn Valley.
“We’re never going to catch him at this rate,” Patrick observed. “Any ideas, Orion?”
The jostling torrent of Orion’s gallop steadily faded to nothingness as his wings spread wide and they ascended into the sky. Great portions of Clouden whizzed by beneath them and Cora’s already speeding heart accelerated. Up ahead she could see the Faerie Mounds fast approaching and Patrick shouted against the wind, pointing at the outline of a wagon speeding along the road out of the Mound town. “Take us down, Orion! I think that’s him!”
“Nah, nah, that’s not the dastardly rouge!” Orion chided as they touched down. “That’s a harvesting wagon from the Goody Grove.”
Patrick lifted his chin and arched forward, straining to make out the wagon as is rumbled along in the distance.
“It’s going so fast, though. Kind of strange, don’t you think?”
“A little, I suppose. Could be anyone, who knows!” Orion’s pace picked up again, trying to make up for the distance between them. “Perhaps being the devilish thief that he is, Barnibus took the old wagon for his!”
As they got closer, Cora could feel Patrick’s apprehension mounting. It reached its peak as Orion overtook the cart and they saw a hideous figure driving two burros beyond their capabilities with a familiar, sinister whip.
“Dad!” Patrick called, trying fruitlessly to capture his father’s attention. Barnibus didn’t even glance in his son’s direction. He was focused on the castle with a look of pure loathing in his eyes. It took a few more rounds of shouting before the cad noticed his son.
“Dad, please stop!” Patrick pleaded as Barnibus cracked his whip. The wagon pulled ahead, Orion quickening his pace to match.
Barnibus spun his head toward them, casting his glare not u
pon Orion or his son, but on Cora. His skin was taut over his cheekbones, revealing gaunt indents of limey green where plump flesh had once been. His eyebrows were bushy and mangled. Their thick black hairs stood out like prickly needles against the pale white of his forehead. As he regarded her, his thin pale blue lips snarled to reveal missing teeth beneath them.
“It was you,” he seethed. “That rotten little fat brat in The Backworlds, none other than The Finnegan princess!”
The sight of the looming castle caught everyone’s attention. Barnibus cracked his whip again and reined the burros in Orion’s direction, causing the alarmed pegasus to stop abruptly in an effort to avoid crashing into the back of the wagon. In a handful of seconds, Barnibus was leagues ahead.
Patrick fixated on the fleeing wagon, which was closing in on the castle. “He’s getting away!”
The luxury of time was no longer on their side. Cora and Patrick urged Orion on toward the castle and his sides heaved with effort. As they neared Barnibus, Patrick began calling out to his father with every breath, beseeching him to stop.
Amid all the yelling and confusion, no one in the group noticed when the commotion alerted Serene and Thomas, who appeared outside the castle doors, both wearing expressions of alarm. Thomas was just drawing his sword from its sheath and extended his free arm toward Serene in a gesture of protection. When Barnibus charged the pair, Thomas ran at him and met his foe’s blow with a defensive block.
Cora could make out the sharp metal clang as the blades slashed against each other again and again.
“You die today, Finnegan!” Barnibus raged. “And finally she’ll be mine!”
“Never!” Thomas spat as he fought back with increased tenacity, further enraged by Barnibus’s words.
The swords sung, drowning out Patrick’s repeated pleas for the men to stop fighting. Thomas advanced on Barnibus, forcing him farther and farther from the castle but when Barnibus caught sight of Serene, he seemed infused with a new power that turned the tables, pushing Thomas backward. Suddenly, with a slip of his heel, Thomas had lodged his boot heel in a rock on the cobblestone pathway. He went down, hard and fast, and was knocked unconscious. Barnibus advanced with relish, standing over Thomas with sword held high. He drew his weapon to strike but stopped cold at Serene’s shrieking plea. “Please! Please spare him!”
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