Order of the Majestic

by Matt Myklusch

  “This way!” Leanora said. She led them down a dark, winding path, guided by the light of the moon and a phantom vision of Kuriev only she could see. They ran as hard as they could, charging through bushes and leaping over ditches. Joey’s lack of sneakers didn’t slow him down, but the terrain seemed a lot rougher the second time around. It was hard to watch your step when you were running for your life. He ran until his lungs burned and every breath scorched his windpipe.

  Huffing and puffing, he paused to look back again, hoping they had lost their pursuer. Listening intently, he heard rapid, light footsteps in the quiet night air. It didn’t sound like the man in the top hat and scarf chasing after them. It was something else. A snarling growl came out of the shadows at the end of the trail, and a wolf came flying around the bend.

  “WOLF!” Joey screamed, and started running again.

  “It’s his!” Shazad shouted as the wolf gave chase. “It’s got to be with him. Run!”

  Joey gave it all he had, but he was already tired and the wolf was way too fast. It caught him by the heel and bit down hard. Joey shrieked again, this time in pain rather than terror, as the beast’s gnashing jaws brought him down. “No!” Leanora called out as he hit the dirt, but she was too far ahead to help him. Joey covered his face, trying to protect himself, but the wolf didn’t go for his throat or any other part of his body. Instead, it pulled on his ankle with agonizing force, dragging him back down the trail toward Kuriev’s cabin.

  “Get this thing off me!” Joey screamed, struggling to twist his leg free, but it was no use. Every move he made was excruciating, and the wolf was ravenous. He wanted to pry its jaws off his ankle, but he had no leverage. Even if he had, he didn’t dare put his hands anywhere near the wolf’s mouth. He turned around on his belly, clawing at roots and dirt, desperate to stop the wolf from dragging him off. Looking up, Joey saw Shazad nearby and thought he was a goner, but Shazad surprised him. Joey saw him curse under his breath and come charging in. Shazad whipped off his cape and dove at the wolf without a trace of fear in his eyes. The beast relinquished its hold on Joey’s ankle and turned its face up to snap at Shazad. He got the cape up to block its jaws just in time.

  The wolf was much bigger than the cape, but somehow it didn’t matter. Just like the time Redondo had flapped the cape open like a parachute and used it to fold Joey up like a pretzel, Shazad threw the cape over the wolf, covering its body all the way to the tail. Joey scurried out of the way as Shazad wrapped it up, capturing the wolf. It bucked hard, and he fell on top of it, using his body weight to keep the wolf trapped where it was. It fought tenaciously against Shazad’s efforts to contain it. Joey heard it snarling and clawing under the cape, and then suddenly, the fighting stopped.

  Shazad breathed a sigh of relief and released the animal. When he stood up and lifted the cape away, the wolf was no longer beneath it. In its place, a fluffy white bunny rabbit sat twitching its nose in silence.

  “Shazad…” Joey breathed in shock as the bunny hopped off down the trail. “You… You saved me. I thought… I didn’t think—”

  “What?”

  “You said you didn’t want to fight.”

  “I don’t. That doesn’t mean I’m going to stand there and watch you get eaten alive. Come on, we’re not out of the woods yet.” He threw the cape back over his shoulder and helped Joey to his feet. “Can you run?”

  “Do I have a choice?”

  “No.”

  Joey tested his ravaged ankle. He felt like he had gotten his foot caught in a blender, but there was no time to recover. The man in the top hat and scarf was coming around the bend. He paused briefly to watch the little bunny that had once been his wolf hop past him. “Ugh,” he said, loud enough for Joey and Shazad to hear. “What did they do to you?”

  Leanora called out for Joey and Shazad to pick up the pace, and they started running again. Trees flew by to the left and right of Joey as he pushed himself to the limit, ignoring the pain in his ankle. The man in the top hat and scarf stalked after them. Soon they reached a clearing in the forest. The woodshed was right in front of them. “We made it,” Joey said, heaving.

  Shazad shook his head. “He’s still with us,” he said, breathing hard.

  The man in the top hat and scarf was visible behind them, not too far off. He was still not running. He was toying with them. Joey wondered what tricks he had up his sleeve, but it turned out the real danger came from his hat.

  “That was an ugly thing you did to my wolf. I suppose I’ll have to think bigger.” Joey watched as the man removed his top hat and pulled out a baby wolf by the scruff of its neck. He tossed the wolf away with a lazy motion, and the creature was full grown by the time it landed. More than full. The beast was a lion-size dire wolf, as in Joey felt a dire need to get the heck away from it as soon as possible. It padded in front of the man. He stroked its back as if it were a friendly household pet. “Too bad you don’t have the wand with you this time, eh, Joey?”

  Shazad looked at Joey. “You really did wield the wand,” he said, stunned to hear the man in the top hat and scarf confirm Joey’s story.

  “Yeah,” Joey said. “Not that it matters now.”

  “It matters,” Shazad disagreed. He pinched the bridge of his nose and exhaled strongly. “How am I ever going to explain this to my parents?” He removed his cape once more, holding it at the ready like a matador. “Help Leanora get the door open. I’ll hold him off.”

  Joey stared at Shazad. He didn’t understand his newfound fighting spirit, but he wasn’t complaining, either. Joey half limped, half ran to join Leanora at the woodshed door. “We have to remove the doorknob,” she told him, fishing through the many pendants she wore around her neck to find the one she needed. It was the firestone pendant—the one she had threatened to use against Shazad the night they met. The giant wolf growled at the edge of the woods, pawing the dirt, ready to pounce. Leanora gripped the medallion with one hand and made a fist with the other. The last time Joey saw her do that, her fist lit up like a fireball, but this time her hand barely flickered with energy. “I just need a second to get it going,” she said, looking back nervously at the wolf.

  Joey wasn’t sure they had a second to spare. Then he realized they didn’t need one. “Wait a minute—my key!”

  “What?” Leanora said.

  Joey cursed himself for not seeing it sooner. He had been thinking only of using Leanora’s doorknob to escape, because that was the way they had come. He hadn’t even considered the possibility that he might have something to contribute. Joey couldn’t have opened the door to Siberia, but his key could get them back home. “I have a way back into the theater,” he said, holding the key up in front of the woodshed door. As before, a keyhole opened up in the wood with blue light shooting out of it. Joey inserted the key into the magical lock and opened the door. The Majestic Theatre lobby was on the other side. “Shazad, time to go!” Joey shouted.

  Shazad looked back over his shoulder and saw the light of the lobby chandelier burning bright in the dark forest. “That’s a sight for sore eyes.”

  “It certainly is,” the man in the top hat and scarf agreed, standing back at the tree line. “Off you go, Fido,” he said, siccing the wolf on Shazad.

  Shazad backed up a few steps. He held out the cape, ready to catch the wild dog inside it, just as he had its little brother. The massive wolf bounded across the clearing in seconds and leaped through the air. Joey worried that Shazad’s cape wouldn’t be strong enough to hold it this time, but he never got the chance to find out. The second the wolf reached Shazad and hit the fabric of the cape, it dissolved into a thick cloud of smoke.

  What the…?

  The man in the top hat and scarf could be heard laughing inside the cloud. “That’s just a bit of misdirection, son. I never do the same trick twice.” Shazad flapped his cape to clear the smoke, and when enough of it had wafted away, the man was right on top of him. He took off his top hat and offered it to Shazad. “Here. Hold th
is. For luck.”

  Shazad didn’t take the hat, but the hat took his cape, sucking it in like a vacuum cleaner. He lunged after it, trying to tug it back out, but the hat clamped down on his wrist like it was alive, quickly swallowing his arm up to the elbow.

  “SHAZAD!” Joey and Leanora both screamed as the hat pulled more of him in. It was up to his shoulder now. Shazad seized the hat by the brim and struggled to pry it off, but it had him now. He made a guttural noise, straining against it, and fell to the ground, where he was momentarily hidden by the smoke. Joey and Leanora took a few steps toward Shazad, but by the time the smoke cleared, he was in the hat up to his waist. It was as if he were being swallowed by a giant python, only there was no place for him to go, no stomach for his body to fill. That didn’t stop him from disappearing inch by inch into the hat.

  “What do we do?” Joey asked, helpless. “We have to help him!”

  There was nothing they could do. They watched in terror as Shazad’s legs slid writhing past the brim of the hat and vanished into oblivion. The whole thing was over in seconds. Any shrieks that Shazad might have let out were muffled by the hat, and after he was gone, all was quiet.

  Joey’s knees wobbled as the hat rolled around on the ground, seemingly empty. It came to rest a few feet away from him, helped along by a gust of wind. He felt the strength drain from his legs. The situation was already critical, but this was a whole other level of bad. What were they going to do now?

  “Don’t worry. I’ll give him back,” the man from the Invisible Hand announced. “Assuming we can all be reasonable,” he added, nonchalant. “We’ll talk it over with Redondo. I’m sure we can work out a trade. Hold the door for me please, if you don’t mind,” he added, walking toward the woodshed.

  Leanora tugged on Joey’s sleeve. “We have to get out of here.”

  “Buh—but, Shazad…,” Joey stammered in shock.

  “He’s gone. We have to go now,” Leanora stressed.

  She was right, of course. Even in his rattled state, Joey understood the danger they were in, but he also saw the hat that Shazad was in, a few short feet from where he stood. The man from the Invisible Hand spotted Joey eyeing the hat on the ground and realized a second too late what he was thinking. His glowing eyes widened as Joey went for it.

  “No! You can’t do tha—” His words broke off as Joey snatched the hat and raced back toward the open woodshed door, where Leanora was waiting for him.

  “Bring that back!” the man shouted. “Bring that back!”

  But they were already gone.

  15 Together Again

  The second Joey got his key out of the lock, Leanora slammed the door on the Siberian forest. Joey opened it back up two seconds later to check that they were safely away. Several boxes tumbled down on top of him, and he jumped back. Leanora flinched too, thinking for a second that the magician from the Invisible Hand was coming in after them, but it was just the contents of an overstuffed closet in the Majestic Theatre lobby. Joey composed himself and shut the door. He leaned against it, then turned around and slid down to sit on the carpet, completely drained. “What did we do?” he asked, thumping his head lightly against the door, punishing himself. “What did we just do?”

  Leanora shook her head and took a seat at the bottom of the lobby staircase. “We lost Shazad,” she said in a dazed voice. “He was right. I thought I was ready, but he was right. I couldn’t help him. I was useless out there.”

  “No, you weren’t. There wasn’t anything you could have done.”

  “That’s the problem—I couldn’t do anything! Look here.” Leanora grabbed her firestone with her left hand. Immediately, her right began to glow. “It comes so easy now. In this place. I can turn it on and off.” Grasping and releasing the pendant, she worked her magic effortlessly, demonstrating the skill that had proved so elusive in the forest. “Over there I… I couldn’t find the fire. I panicked.” She looked at Joey, crushed. “Shazad didn’t. And now he’s in there.”

  Joey’s eyes fell on the top hat, which he had thrown to the floor upon entering the theater lobby. He tried not to see it as a tombstone, but it was no use.

  “I don’t understand,” Leanora said. “He told us over and over we couldn’t fight the Invisible Hand. Why did he do that?”

  “It was me,” Joey said, feeling awful. “He saw me in trouble, and wouldn’t leave me. I never would have made it back here without him. He saved my life.”

  Leanora grimaced at the sight of Joey’s bloody foot. “How’s your ankle? It looks bad.”

  Joey grunted. “It feels worse.” He leaned forward to peel off his sock and get a closer look at the wound, but he stopped himself midway. He felt guilty thinking of himself after what had just happened. “What are we going to do?” Joey pointed to the top hat, which was lying on the ground between them. “Is there any way to get him out of there?” Joey asked, hopeful.

  Leanora shook her head, unsure. “We need Redondo.”

  Joey pressed a hand to his forehead. He had expected her to say that. He was dreading the conversation, but there was no avoiding it. “What do we tell him?”

  “Hello?” Redondo’s voice called from upstairs. Joey and Leanora looked up to the balcony overhanging the lobby. They couldn’t see him yet, but he had apparently emerged from his office and heard their voices. The sound of footsteps descending the staircase came next. He was on his way.

  Leanora sighed and stood back up. “We have to tell him the truth. What else can we do?”

  Redondo shuffled into view and descended the steps slowly. He looked better than he had when Joey had left him—more rested—but it was clear from the way he moved that the beating he’d received in the mirror world was taking a heavy toll on him. “What’s all this?” he asked in an ill-tempered voice. “What are you two up to?” Redondo looked at Joey, who was a pitiful sight, sitting on the floor to give his chewed-up ankle a rest. His consternation gave way to alarm. “Kopecky, what happened to you? What’s going on?”

  “We’ve got a problem,” Joey said.

  “I can see that.” Redondo hobbled over to inspect Joey’s injury. “Who did this?”

  “Our friend from the mirror world came back.”

  “Here?” Redondo twisted about, scanning the lobby before dismissing the notion altogether. “Impossible.”

  “Not here,” Joey said.

  “Did he bite you?” Redondo was aghast.

  “He had a wolf,” Leanora said, clearing up the confusion. “We were in Siberia,” she added.

  Redondo’s face contorted as he tried to make sense of what he was hearing. Leanora might as well have told him she and Joey had been visiting the moon. “What were you doing in Siberia?”

  Leanora looked at Redondo, her expression grim and sad. “We wanted to find out what happened to Grayson Manchester.”

  “What?” Redondo said, taken aback. “Why? How did you even—” Redondo stopped himself. He was quiet for a moment. Then he looked at Joey with accusatory eyes. “What did he tell you?”

  “Only what I knew,” Joey said.

  “That must have been a short conversation,” Redondo said pointedly. “You don’t know anything about Manchester.”

  “Because you wouldn’t say anything,” Joey said, unwilling to be criticized for wanting to know more about the mysterious disappearance of Redondo’s old assistant. Especially after everything he had just seen. “I knew enough to be curious. I knew the Invisible Hand came after me twice in two days. Three times if you count Siberia. I also knew your old assistant died in a fire and that if we weren’t careful, one of us could be next.”

  Redondo ground his teeth “That’s not what happened.”

  “We watched your last performance,” Leanora chimed in, backing Joey up. “We saw it in a crystal ball. We know it’s true. We stood onstage and saw your last assistant burn up right here in this theater.”

  “No,” Redondo said, adamant. “I never got anyone killed. I saved this place and every
thing in it.”

  “What about him?” Joey asked. “You couldn’t save him. This place is great and all, but Redondo… somebody died. We saw what happened.”

  “You don’t know what you saw,” Redondo said.

  “We saw you run away,” Leanora said in a judgmental tone.

  “No, I…” Redondo faltered. “Yes, I ran, but only—only because I thought—” Redondo’s cough spiked his sentences with staccato-burst interruptions. “You don’t understand,” he said, trying to get a handle on it. “At the time everyone thought…” Redondo’s cough intensified, momentarily sparing him the difficulty of having to go on, but every time his chest heaved it was agony for him. Joey felt sorry for the old man. It did no good to keep harping on this. No matter what had happened in the past, the fact was they needed Redondo’s help now.

  “Forget Manchester,” Joey said. “We’ve got more immediate concerns. We went to find out the truth so we could decide if we wanted to keep going with this competition or not—all three of us.”

  “All three?” Redondo said, checking the lobby for Shazad.

  “We ran into trouble.” Joey grimaced, stating the obvious. “Only two of us made it back.”

  Redondo wiped his mouth with a bloody handkerchief, a dark realization setting in behind his eyes. “Shazad’s not here,” he said, terrified by what his absence might mean. “He’s not…? Please tell me he’s not… dead,” he said, stumbling over to Leanora.

  “No,” she said, shaking her head vigorously. “I don’t think so.”

  “You don’t think so? Where is he?”

  “In there,” Joey said, pointing to the top hat. His voice had gone jittery. “The guy from the mirror world, he—he sucked him into his hat! We got it though. We stole it off him.”

  “You what?”

  Redondo turned, paying his first real attention to the hat. He picked it up and examined it briefly. Then he dropped the hat as if it had been sewn together from radioactive material. “What have you done?” Redondo’s voice was barely a whisper.