by Brian Olsen
Oh, no. How did we not see this?
Alisa and Zane get it too. I see it on their faces.
“Amplified,” Zane says.
“Kenny.” Alisa taps her phone. “Calling him.”
“I’m so stupid!” I snatch a fallen pizza roll from the floor and chuck it across the room. “Kenny was so weird around me last time I saw him. He must have his memories back. Knows I was the Common King.”
“He probably doesn’t remember everything.” Zane twists a couch pillow in his hands. “Miller might be feeding him bullshit, like he did with you.”
“No answer.” Alisa ends her call and starts another. “Zane’s right. Kenny was on Liefer’s side before the Moment. If he’s helping Jasmine now, they’re either tricking him or forcing—” She holds up a finger. “Hi, Mrs. Pillman? This is Alisa Green, Kenny’s friend?…Is Kenny home?…Oh…Oh, no, I’m sure he wasn’t…No, I’m sure he wasn’t downtown when…Yes, I will…I will…Bye.” She ends the call. “Oh, god. He’s been gone all day and she doesn’t know where. She saw the minotaur attack on the news and she’s scared he was there. I didn’t know what to say.”
I smack my palms against my forehead. “This is ridiculous! We’ve got a million ways to connect to one another, why is it so hard to find…” I drop my arms. “Oh. Here’s an idea. Alisa, do you have Find My Friends on your phone?”
“Yeah. You don’t think Jasmine would still—”
“Not Jasmine. Kenny. That’s how he found Jasmine in the park, remember? He might have his on.”
Alisa nods and taps her screen. She scrolls for a second, then taps again. “Got him! He’s…oh.”
Zane and I run to her, leaning over her shoulders to see the map.
“That’s near the Rocks,” Zane says.
“It’s where we left the fairies,” I add.
“I’m texting Lily.” Alisa starts typing. “We can’t do this alone.”
“I’m with you, but we can’t wait for them. Come on, outside.”
Zane and I steer Alisa out the front door while she finishes her message. “Get ready,” I say. “Miller and my mom might be there, too. I’ll shine some light to blind them. Zane, lock Jasmine in shadow as soon as we appear, before she can react. Alisa, if Kenny looks like he’s stuck in a dream, truth him out of it. We grab him, Nate and my dad, and we get out. We’ll take them somewhere safe and then figure out our next step. Good?”
“Good.” Shadows form around Zane’s hands. “I’m ready.”
Alisa shoves her phone in her jeans’ pocket. “Me, too.”
We stand with our backs together, an outward-facing triangle. I press my shoulders against theirs.
“Okay.”
I want us to appear in the exact spot where we left the fairies this morning. Right next to the painting.
“Sun.”
A jolt like electricity runs through my body and I’m flying backwards through the air. I land on grass and Zane is under me and Alisa is on top of me and then we separate and all three of us are skidding across the ground. Suddenly there’s nothing beneath us and we’re dropping down a slope, rolling over dirt and rocks and sticks until we hit bottom. I roll into Zane, Alisa rolls into me, and we stop.
“Ow.” I don’t want to move. I’m tingling from that jolt and I’m sore from hitting the ground. “Ow ow ow.”
“What—” Zane sits halfway up, then drops back. “What?”
Alisa moans. “That wasn’t great. Chris?”
“I don’t know. It’s like we bounced off something.” I don’t think I broke anything. I pat myself wherever I feel pain but don’t feel any blood. “You both okay?”
“Yeah.” Zane coughs, then tries to sit up again and makes it. “Bruised but not broken.”
“Same.” Alisa pushes herself up on her hands and gets her knees under her. “Where are we? This isn’t where we left the painting.”
I grab Zane’s hand and use it to pull myself to a sitting position. We’re in a ditch or something, a couple feet deep. Trees are above us. We’re in the woods. Or a woods, anyway.
“Ugh.” I stand, leaning against the side of the ditch for support. I’m too woozy to fly so I climb up a little and peer over the edge. Not far off I spot a cluster of big boulders in a little clearing. Piles of trash, mostly beer bottles and empty food wrappers, litter the ground.
I jump back down. “We’re near the Rocks, so we’re not far from the fairies.”
“How did they stop you from teleporting in?” Zane asks. “None of them have powers that can do that. Do they?”
I shrug. “Maybe they found a new logomancer.”
Alisa picks a twig out of her hair. “We won’t find out at the bottom of a ditch. I guess we’re going in on foot.”
“Any word back from Lily?” I ask.
She takes out her phone. “Oh, you’re kidding me. The screen is cracked to hell.” She taps it a few times. “No messages. I don’t know if she got my text or not.”
“We can’t wait,” I say. “If Miller and Jasmine are the ones who sent us flying then they’re prepared for us. Are you sure you still wanna come?”
A stern look from both of them gives me my answer.
“Same plan then, I guess.” I brush my hands together. “We’ll have to be fast and ready to improvise.”
With a little effort we crawl out of the ditch on the opposite side from the Rocks and head for the large clearing where we left the fairies’ painting.
I stretch my arms. “I think I could fly now. Should I scout ahead? Get a bird’s eye view?”
“No way.” Zane puts a firm, grounding hand on my shoulder. “What if whatever stopped you from teleporting stops you from flying? I don’t want a pancake for a boyfriend.”
“Even with syrup?”
“Ssh.”
Alisa points. Up ahead, lights twinkle through the trees. Fairy lights. Lots of them. Even in the bright afternoon sun they shine like a beacon.
“The fairy folk,” she says. “And in such numbers. Perhaps Desh should use his logomancy to conceal our approach?”
“What?” I say. “Who?”
“Desh.” She blinks. “I mean Zane. Why did I say Desh?”
Zane frowns. “That was my name before.”
Our clothes sort of flicker. I feel mine change, just for a second. They’re heavier, and courser. Alisa goes from jeans to a vivid purple gown, while Zane is dressed in a dark tunic and cloak. We’re back in our own clothes again so quickly I don’t see much detail, but they were obviously outfits from before the Moment.
“Holy crap balls!” Zane pats himself down. “What the hell was that?”
Alisa touches her necklace. “They’re breaking the Moment. We need to hurry.”
“I could try to cover us.” Zane shades his eyes and looks up. “But it’s too bright out. If we’re all shadow we’ll stand out more.”
I nod. “Try to stay behind trees until we’re closer.”
I lead us forward, darting from tree to tree, choosing ones with trunks thick enough to hide behind. The fairy lights get even brighter as we approach, and I hear the buzzing of the little creatures’ wings. Then a voice cuts through.
“Mr. Miller, it hurts!”
“That’s Kenny,” Alisa hisses from behind me.
Mr. Miller’s voice replies, “Hang on, Kenny. You can do it. You have to.”
“I know,” our classmate yells back in a shaky voice. “I’ll try!”
I can’t see them yet, just the lights of the fairies. “Can either of you see anything?”
Zane moves forward, to a tree next to mine. He peeks out, then shakes his head. “Some shapes moving around. Can’t make out who’s who.”
“I can tell you.”
I spin around. My mother has Alisa pinned, her arm around my friend’s neck.
“One move from either of you and I freeze her blood solid.” She smiles. “Now why don’t you come say hello? We’ve been waiting for you.”
Thirty-two
&n
bsp; Fairies fill the clearing, mostly flying above head-height. Mom marches us in past the painting, sitting on the stump where we left it. I don’t see any fairy folk getting sucked in. I also don’t see any sign of a portal to their home, the fay.
I do see Kenny. He’s right in the middle of the clearing, sitting in the grass with his legs folded. His eyes are closed and his curly red hair sticks to his forehead from sweat.
Mr. Miller stands above him, his hands on Kenny’s shoulders. His eyes are closed too, but they snap open as we approach. “Ah, Your Majesty. Your timing is perfect.”
“I told you they’d find us.” Jasmine steps out from behind Miller. She’s ditched the pink elephant backpack and instead hugs the book to her chest. “You figured out we’d be with the fairies because I was pushing so hard for them to be the next creatures we freed, right? I thought that was a pretty big clue.”
“Actually,” I say, “we figured out Kenny was amplifying your powers and tracked him by his phone.”
“Oh.” She pouts, then shrugs. “Whatever. Either way, I was right.”
“Chris? Chris, get out of here! Run!”
My dad. He’s a few feet away, inside a glimmering, translucent cage of ice. He presses against the bars, reaching through. Nate is in there too, imprisoned with him. I bolt for them, running past Jasmine and Miller, who make no move to stop me.
“Dad!” I reach through the bars and grab his hand. “Dad, you’re okay!”
Dad squeezes my hand back. “She told me, Chris. Your mother or…” He shakes his head. “Or whoever she is now.”
“It was a little twisted, what she told him,” Nate says. “She left out the bad parts. I told him the rest. Sorry, buddy, it seemed like—”
“I’m sorry, Dad.” I drop my head. “I wanted to tell you. So much. But I didn’t want you…I didn’t want you to look at me like…”
“Ssh, ssh, ssh, hero.” He lifts my head. “I don’t care what the world was a month ago, Chris. You’re my son and I love you. That’ll always be true.” He brushes my hair from my forehead. “But you have to get out of here. I don’t understand what they’re doing but it’s dangerous—”
I can’t feel his fingers. He and Nate fade away for a second. They’re just not there. Then they snap back into reality.
Nate grabs his stomach. “What the hell was that?”
“I’m getting you out of here.” I want the bars to melt. Heat up and melt. “Sun!”
A little moisture forms on the bars, but that’s it. I touch them and they’re not even warm. My magic is working. I can feel it. I can hear the Logos nice and strong. But the bars are freezing faster than I can heat them.
“Don’t bother, Chris,” my mother calls out. “Kenny is amplifying our connection to the Logos. I can counter any heat or fire you make before you finish saying your word.”
“Hang on, Dad,” I say softly. “Both of you. We’ll get you out of this.”
“Chris.” Nate grabs my wrist through the bars. “I know you won’t forget that your mom is still your mom. Promise me you won’t forget that Jasmine is still Jasmine, too.”
“I promise. We’ll get them back.”
Before my father can tell me to run again, I rejoin Alisa and Zane. Mom lets Alisa go but keeps a close eye on all three of us.
“There’s no need for us to fight,” Miller says. “We’ve no intention of harming any of you.”
“You’re shattering the Moment,” I say. “That’s pretty harmful.”
“Not to you. Not to any of us. Our true lives will reassert themselves, but we’ll retain our memories of the last few weeks.” He gestures to Alisa and Zane. “You’re so confident that your feelings for your friends are true, Your Majesty. Their fates will be yours to decide. Perhaps this is how the rebellion dies – by the most adamant traitors joining the court out of love for their king.”
“How are you doing this?” Alisa asks.
Miller smiles. “It’s really quite ingenious. And much simpler than it seems. I had the idea to—”
Jasmine coughs. “Excuse me? Mr. Miller?”
He frowns. “Yes?”
“Whose idea was this?”
He tugs on his jacket. “I’ve been trying to undo the Moment ever since—”
“Yes, I know.” Jasmine grins. “Without much luck! But the plan we went with, the plan that’s, you know, actually working. Whose plan was it?”
His saggy cheeks fall. “Yours.”
“That’s right.” Jasmine scratches her head. “And could you remind me, I keep forgetting. Who’s in charge here?”
Miller clears his throat. “Er. Well. You are, Jasmine. Of course.”
“Sorry, who? Who is?”
Miller stiffens for an instant, then bows his head slightly. “Your Majesty. You are in command, Your Majesty.”
I remember from my dream. The Common King liked the Nightmare Queen a lot more than Muln did. I guess the tension between them continued into this world.
Jasmine rocks back and forth in happiness, hugging the book tight. “That’s right, I’m in charge! So if anybody gets to do the evil exposition, it’s me. Hold this.”
She smacks the heavy book into his gut. He catches it and staggers back a step. She jumps in front of him with her arms out in a “Ta-da!” gesture.
“Isn’t it great, you guys? I always thought of myself as a princess but I’m a for-real queen!” She twirls, her red hair flinging outward. “This is going to be so great!”
She skips over to us and hugs Alisa, who keeps her arms stiff at her sides.
“Alisa, we can totally be friends still after all this! Lily too! And we weren’t friends at all, I didn’t have many friends besides Chris before, so that’ll be great!” She lets go and hops over to Zane. “Zane, you can still be Chris’s boyfriend, it’s cool. Like I told Nate, we were only married for show. You and Chris were mortal enemies and now you can be his Royal Consort! Isn’t that amazing!” She dashes over to me and takes my hands. “Chris, I know you don’t remember much except what I showed you. But trust me. Things were great before but they’re going to be so much better now. We get to have our real lives plus all the best parts from our fake lives!”
“Jasmine, how?” I ask. “How are you doing it? Is it just Kenny amplifying your powers?” I point to our friend, still sitting in the center of the clearing, muttering his word to himself over and over.
“Yeah.” Zane smirks. “Evil exposition, remember?”
Jasmine laughs. “Oh, right! It was super clever. I’m much more clever than anyone gives me credit for. Except you, Chris.” She lands a playful punch on my shoulder. “That’s why you’re my buddy. And Nate. Nate, can you hear me okay? I want you to hear what I did. I think you’ll be proud.”
“I hear you, Jaz.” Nate and Dad press against the bars of their cage, watching and listening intently.
“Awesome!” Jasmine looks around the clearing. “Let’s sit. Mrs. Armstrong, can you make us some chairs? For Nate and Mr. Armstrong, too. They must be tired.”
“Of course, Your Majesty.”
Chairs of ice appear behind me and my friends. Alisa’s and Zane’s and the two in the cage are just stools, but mine and Jasmine’s are high-backed with armrests. More like thrones.
Jasmine gestures and we sit. It’s not all that comfortable, sitting on a block of ice, and the butt of my jeans gets wet almost instantly. But I don’t know what to do except go along. Maybe Jasmine will reveal something we can use, or maybe she’ll talk long enough that Mr. Liefer and his crew will show up to help us.
“Your mom is the best, Chris.” Jasmine stretches out in her ice-throne. “I can’t remember if I ever met her before the Moment. And that’s not the amnesia because I have almost all my memories back. I mean she was so unimportant to us that if I met her she didn’t even register.” Her eyebrows pop up and she looks over at my mother. “Oh, sorry, Mrs. Armstrong! That was rude.”
Mom bows her head. “No offense taken, Your Majesty.”
“Oh, you can still call me Jasmine, Mrs. Armstrong.” She cups her hand around her mouth and in a fake loud whisper says, “It’ll drive Mr. Miller crazy.”
Mom laughs. Mr. Miller, who’s moved back near Kenny, pretends not to hear, but I see him bite his lip in annoyance.
“We’ll totally put her in charge of our army or something, if she wants to be,” Jasmine continues. “Or she could be Queen Mother! Wouldn’t that be funny?”
“Jasmine,” I say gently. “Your plan?”
“Oh, right!” She slaps herself lightly across the cheek. “I’m so excited about what’s going to happen I keep getting distracted. So after the prom Mr. Miller used his illusion powers to give me some of my memories back. That was like a crack in the dam and I remembered a bunch of stuff on my own. My parents are away, so I invited Mr. Miller and your mom to hide out at my place.”
“What?” Nate says. “But if I’ve been over to your house a bunch of times since then!”
“Illusion, babe.” She blows him a kiss. “They were there the whole time.”
His face falls. “They didn’t…watch us, did they?”
“Ew!” Jasmine’s face contorts in a grimace. “No way! Gross!”
“I assure you, Nate,” Mr. Miller calls out, “I had no desire to watch you let loose your overactive teenage hormones.”
“If I may, Jasmine,” Mom says. Jasmine nods, and my mother continues, “It was a good place to hide out from Mr. Liefer. With Jasmine’s ability to invade dreams, we always knew when Liefer would check in. Mr. Ambrose’s disruption magic is still weak, so with preparation Mr. Miller could reinforce the illusion hiding us enough that it couldn’t be penetrated.”
Jasmine laughs. “It was easy to stay ahead of them! Liefer and Mr. Ambrose and Lily and Andy, they’re all so scared and guilty about everything all the time! I got everything I needed from their nightmares. You guys, too.”
“You were in our dreams?” Zane asks. “All of us?”
“Oh, yeah. I had to be.” She shrugs. “Sorry, not sorry. Chris was the only one I showed myself too, though.”