by Temre Beltz
Pippa clucked her tongue and squeezed her legs around Ferdinand’s belly. He surged forward with more speed than Pippa remembered from the night she and Oliver rescued him. Her ponytail streamed behind her, the trees and sights around them zipped by in a blur, and she gulped in the fresh mountain air. If they weren’t coming up on such a monumental night, Pippa might consider riding Ferdinand to be one of the greatest thrills of her life.
But before she knew it, the South Peak was flattening out. They were drawing near to the very same plateau where Pippa had first met Oliver and discovered she had never been writing to a fairy godmother at all, but a magician. She only hoped the topic of today’s conversation wouldn’t be quite so unsettling.
Pippa pulled Ferdinand to a stop. He snorted and tossed his head, as Pippa slid carefully off his back. She didn’t see Oliver anywhere, but maybe that wasn’t surprising considering his transportation complications. Pippa squinted and looked toward the horizon, wondering if she should be expecting him by broomstick again.
She never saw the tall, skinny man with the tall hat slip up behind her.
“Hello, Pippa.” His voice slithered toward her.
Pippa whirled around. It was Master Von Hollow, the magician she and Ernest had bumped into in the Triumphant Training Forest. The one whose showcase was scheduled for that very evening, and the one who Oliver said was the nastiest magician in the Swinging Swamp.
Ferdinand took one look at Master Von Hollow’s hat and let out a piercing whinny. He pranced backward. He reared up on his hind legs twice in a row. He strained hard against his halter, and his eyes rolled wildly back in his head. Pippa could barely hold on to him.
“Your hat!” Pippa said through a grimace. She tried desperately to dig her heels into the springy grass for leverage. “If you don’t take off your hat, I can’t guarantee he won’t trample you!”
The magician’s smirk faded just a little as he eyed Ferdinand. He reluctantly took off his hat and cast an accusing glare at Pippa. “What have you done to him?” he asked. “He looks so . . . so . . . healthy.”
But Pippa hardly thought it was wise to engage in conversation with a magician. She took a running leap at Ferdinand and had nearly managed to swing her leg up and over his back when Master Von Hollow said, “Aren’t you going to ask about Oliver?”
Pippa hesitated. She looked over her shoulder. “What do you know about Oliver?”
Master Von Hollow drummed his fingertips on the hat he held against his chest. “I know lots of things about Oliver. For instance, I know Oliver has received his magician’s hat. Just today, in fact. Aren’t you happy for him, Pippa? We certainly are.”
Pippa frowned. Oliver said he wasn’t like any of the other magicians; he couldn’t possibly be working with them. Not when he had stolen a broomstick solely to warn Pippa, helped free Ferdinand, and risked his life going to the Capital to find Ms. Bravo. Oliver definitely hadn’t had a hat during any of that, but even if one had arrived, that wouldn’t really change anything, would it? Oliver wasn’t the sort to switch sides, was he?
Master Von Hollow and Pippa both whirled around at the sound of something thrashing through the underbrush. Footsteps pounded against the hillside, and Oliver burst onto the plateau. His face was covered in sweat.
“Pippa!” he shouted. “Pippa, you’ve got to go!”
Master Von Hollow licked his lips. He swept closer to Pippa, and Pippa leaned closer to Ferdinand. “Oliver! I didn’t realize I’d get the pleasure of your company. Did you come to assist with our little arrangement?” Master Von Hollow asked.
“Arrangement? What arrangement?” Pippa’s eyes darted toward Oliver. “Oliver, what is he talking about? And is it true? Did you really get your hat?”
But Oliver didn’t answer. “You’ve got to leave, Pippa. Now!”
Master Von Hollow huffed. “Oh, I do wish you’d stop saying that, Oliver. You’re not even trying to help out now, are you?”
Hearing the urgency in Oliver’s voice, Pippa tried again to mount Ferdinand, but Master Von Hollow was too quick. He tossed his hat back on his head and with a flick of his wrist a trio of snarling tigers surrounded Pippa and Ferdinand. Pippa yelped out loud and Ferdinand began pummeling his hooves out in front of him. In his panic, one of his high-powered kicks just barely missed Pippa.
“It’s all right, Pippa,” Oliver shouted above the commotion. “A magician’s illusion can’t actually hurt you! It feeds off your fears, but if you touch it, it will disappear.”
“But I—I don’t have my magic umbrella!” Pippa cried.
“Magic umbrella?” Master Von Hollow echoed. And he brought his fingertips to the brim of his hat and conjured two more tigers.
“Just touch it, Pippa!” Oliver begged.
Pippa’s heart pounded. The illusions looked so real! She knew she had to do something, but could she trust Oliver? Was it just another trick to capture Pippa and Ferdinand both?
She turned at a sudden flash of movement coming from Master Von Hollow’s direction. The edges of his cape swirled to and fro as he rummaged about for something. When he pulled his hand loose, he held a small glass vial with a wooden stopper.
“NO!” Oliver screamed from the other side of the tigers. He rushed forth and began batting his hands against them, but they didn’t disappear, and he couldn’t get past them.
“If all you have to do is touch them, why isn’t it working for you?” Pippa cried.
“Because they’re feeding off your fears. It has to be you, Pippa. And it has to be now! Master Von Hollow’s got the Black Wreath!”
Pippa’s heart sank as she watched Master Von Hollow pour the potion onto the brim of his hat.
“Watch, Oliver,” Master Von Hollow said. “Watch and see what a real magician can do. The impossible, that’s what! Now I shall fit this fire horse inside my hat and make it disappear. If you think that’s impressive—just imagine what’s in store for tonight!”
With both hands gripping the edge of his hat, Master Von Hollow closed his eyes. Pippa gasped as a wreath of black smoke began to snake, wind, and twist away from the hat’s brim. Everything inside the wreath began to spin about. Faster and faster and faster. Pippa tried to push Ferdinand out of the way, but he was frozen in place and the wreath of black smoke was growing thicker.
“Get out, Pippa! Get out of the way!” Oliver shouted. “The potion’s extending the brim of his hat. Pippa, he’s going to make you disappear!”
“I hardly meant for the girl to go too,” Master Von Hollow said, “but the more the merrier, hmm?”
Oliver didn’t appear to be listening. His eyes were fixed on Pippa as he took a running leap, soaring clear over the backs of the still-prowling tigers. He stretched out his arms as if he meant to push Pippa out of the way and knock her outside the smoky radius of Master Von Hollow’s hat.
But his timing was a half second off, and the moment he pushed into the wreath was the precise moment it sent Pippa, Ferdinand, and now Oliver hurtling away from Triumph Mountain and into a place so sticky, humid, and odious that Pippa knew without asking where they were: the Swinging Swamp.
Pippa lifted her head with a groan. Her right cheek was buried in sticky mud, and some of it even clumped her eyelashes together. She heard the high-pitched whinny of a horse and called out in alarm, “Ferdinand? Ferdinand, is that you?”
Beside her, Oliver answered softly, “It’s not Ferdinand, Pippa. Just look.”
Pippa forced herself upright and gasped. They had landed inside a gated paddock and Ferdinand was surrounded by a cluster of nearly two dozen horses. They snorted and snuffled and nuzzled against him. They bobbed their heads and stamped their hooves and became so tangled up with one another that Ferdinand was hard to distinguish. Anyone else would have mistaken the horses as ordinary—less than, even—but Pippa knew in an instant what they really were.
“This is where the fire horses have all gone to?” Pippa whispered. “Master Von Hollow has been keeping them all here
, hidden in the Swinging Swamp? No wonder Ferdinand was terrified of hats. It was at the hand of a hat that he’s watched everything he loves . . . disappear.”
Pippa blinked back tears. With so much going wrong, it seemed monumental to have something go right. Ferdinand had found what he was missing. This was what Ferdinand had needed help with, and now they’d done it. Ferdinand hardly seemed to care that he’d been dropped into the least desirable location in all of Wanderly or that the other fire horses seemed to be in an even weaker state than he’d been when he and Pippa first met: Ferdinand and his herd were at last together.
Pippa could only imagine what that felt like.
Oliver turned from watching Ferdinand. His head hung low. “I’m sorry I messed up so badly, Pippa. If I wouldn’t have written that letter, you never would have gone to the South Peak, and then you and Ferdinand would be safe on Triumph Mountain.”
“Why did you do it, Oliver? Is it because of what Master Von Hollow said? Because you got your hat? And, um, where is it?”
“Master Von Hollow wouldn’t give me my hat until I wrote you the letter, and I figured it would be a piece of cake to fix. As soon as I put my hat on my head, I was just going to vanish away to Triumph Mountain and tell you all about it.”
“And then?” Pippa implored.
“And then Master Von Hollow gave me the hat all right, but it wasn’t real. It was a fake.” Oliver’s expression was pained. “I don’t know why I keep hoping my hat’s going to come. I don’t know why I can’t just accept that I’m never going to be a magician!”
“‘Never’ is a strong word, Oliver. And I don’t think there’s anything wrong with hoping for something, but I think it’s important to consider why you want it.” Pippa took a deep breath. “Why do you really want to be a magician, Oliver?”
Oliver looked down at the ground. He shrugged his shoulders. “Before, it was because I didn’t want to be kicked out of the swamp. But yesterday, aside from getting out of the Den of Traitorous Individuals, it was because I wanted to help you. I thought it would make me . . . better.”
“Magic can do a lot of things,” Pippa said. “But it doesn’t make a person better. That comes from inside. Oliver, in these past few weeks I’m not sure anyone has helped me more than you. And all without a drop of magic. You just need to be you. Oliver. That is, and will always be, enough.”
Oliver swiped at his eyes with the back of his hand. “Just Oliver, huh?”
“Just Oliver,” Pippa said. A moment later she peeked behind his back and asked, “You’re not hiding that broomstick of yours anywhere, are you? That would really come in handy right about now.”
“I didn’t return to Triumph Mountain by broomstick, Pippa,” Oliver said quietly. “I came by Council cloak.”
Pippa’s head snapped up. “Ms. Bravo came for you?”
“Only because of your letter. We would have made it to Triumph Mountain sooner, but she wanted to bring help.”
“So that means our families will be okay? Back on Triumph Mountain there are Triumphants waiting to protect them?” Pippa asked, her voice rising hopefully.
But Oliver was quiet.
“Oliver?” Pippa asked.
Oliver shook his head. “No one wanted to come, Pippa.”
“But—but we’re talking about Triumphants! This is what they do. This is what—” Pippa froze when the ground began to tremble. All around them, the mud began to split apart and blasts of green fog hissed up from the depths. Ferdinand and his herd jittered nervously to and fro with their ears pinned back.
“Oliver, please tell me this is normal for the Swinging Swamp,” Pippa said.
But Oliver’s face had gone pale. “It’s normal, but it’s not any good. It’s a sinkhole, and it looks like this time it’s after Master Von Hollow’s land.”
“Oliver, the horses!” Pippa cried. “We’ve got to open the gates; we’ve got to get them out.”
Oliver sprinted toward the gate, but when he reached his hand out to pull on the latch, he froze. His face was stricken. “Master Von Hollow’s put a lock on it! It—it didn’t used to have a lock on it, but now he’s put one there because of me.”
“I don’t understand,” Pippa said, shaking her head.
“Remember?” Oliver said weakly. “I tried to sabotage his showcase by freeing the horses.”
“But the horses are still here,” Pippa cried.
Oliver’s voice rose. “I know; it didn’t work. I tried to warn you, Pippa. The things I do don’t usually work out.”
A cold wave of fear washed over Pippa. She turned from Oliver and looked hard at Ferdinand, wondering how much experience he had with jumping. But even if he managed, she didn’t know if the other horses would—they looked so weak and sickly. Now that they had been reunited, Ferdinand would never leave them behind, and she could never ask him to.
Pippa threw her arms out for balance as another violent tremor rumbled through the Swinging Swamp. In its wake, Oliver straightened up with an unusual glint in his eye and a determined tilt of his chin.
“I’ll be right back!” he called out over his shoulder as he quickly scaled the fence and sprinted up the hillside. Pippa barely had time to blink when he disappeared into the thick cover of trees, leaving Pippa all alone with the trapped horses.
Despite the humidity of the swamp, Pippa shivered. She felt so far away from Triumph Mountain. She felt so far away from her family. Even if a miracle occurred and they managed to get Ferdinand and his herd out of the paddock, they were at least a full day’s travel away from Triumph Mountain. Master Von Hollow’s showcase would be long over by then. Surely nothing Oliver had in mind would be able to fix that.
When Oliver reappeared at the top of the hill, Pippa blinked. He held something in his hands. Something he clutched tight against his stomach. It almost looked like . . . a hat?
“Oliver, what are you doing with that? Where did you get that?” Pippa asked as he ran closer and climbed back into the paddock.
“Master Von Hollow’s rock garden. He keeps them there for decoration.”
“He dresses up rocks in hats?” Pippa exclaimed. “That’s maybe the strangest thing I’ve ever heard. I also don’t understand how that hat is going to help us.”
Oliver reached beneath the fabric of his short cape and into his shirt pocket. He pulled forth a small vial with a wooden stopper in it. It must have been the one he’d accidentally swiped from Helga Hookeye. The dark liquid inside swirled like midnight sky. “Because I’ve got this. And with both of these, I can do the same trick that Master Von Hollow did. I can send us all back to Triumph Mountain. You, me, Ferdinand, and his herd.”
Pippa’s stomach flip-flopped. “Have you ever tried anything like this before? And if getting a hat was as easy as stealing one from a rock, why didn’t you do it earlier?”
“Because . . . well.” Oliver paused. His cheeks flushed a hint of pink, as if maybe he wasn’t being completely honest. “I never took one because everybody would know I stole it. A hat’s only meaningful if it’s your own. Otherwise anyone could be a magician, right?”
“I guess,” Pippa said. She had a fair amount more to say about it, but a particularly large jolt jiggled the swamp. Several of the cracks in the ground merged into one sizable hole. Pippa watched as rocks and swamp goo slid down into the hungry earth.
“Come on!” Oliver cried, tugging on Pippa’s wrist and positioning them in the center of the herd. His hands trembled violently and beads of sweat rolled down his face. He looked hard at Pippa. “Sometimes tricks like these can have a strange effect on a magician. But no matter what you see, you mustn’t doubt in the magic. Magic is sensitive to that sort of thing, and if you interfere, something might go wrong. Also, it’s possible we might not all end up in the same place, but I’ll try my best.”
Pippa shook her head. “But we will be on Triumph Mountain, right? And what sort of strange things are you talking about, Oliver? I didn’t see anything strange happen to Mast
er Von Hollow!”
“You have to trust me, Pippa. You have to let me play my part, so that you can play yours. Even if the Chancellor’s been terribly wrong about everything else, that may be the only thing he’s gotten right: a storybook kingdom is all about working together. Commoner or Triumphant, our actions affect one another. They change the story. Pippa, let’s tell a good story.”
With her chin trembling, Pippa nodded. In one continuous motion, Oliver planted the hat firmly on his head and poured the infamous Black Wreath all along its brim. Pippa waited warily, but in less than half a second the same twisting, winding snake of black smoke swirled away from Oliver’s hat. It began to huff and puff and push its way beyond Pippa and Oliver. Inside the wreath of smoke, a racing wind began to howl, and Pippa’s fingertips tingled in anticipation of the magic. The smoke continued to crawl along the fractured swamp floor, but it barely covered half of Ferdinand’s herd. In a panic, Ferdinand began to run in and out of the wreath. Pippa realized that the diameter of the hat wasn’t only coming up short, but it also wasn’t as strong as it had been on top of Triumph Mountain. What if it couldn’t send them as far either?
Pippa tugged on Oliver’s arm. “Oliver, the wreath’s not big enough! We’ve got to make it bigger!”
Oliver, however, was completely silent. His eyes were closed and his skin was a pasty shade of gray.
“Oliver!” Pippa shouted, shaking him harder. “Oliver, are you all right?”
But Pippa might as well have been alone. Oliver wasn’t responding. Pippa had never been so terrified. The sudden crackle and pop reminded Pippa that the wreath wasn’t going to last forever. Whether she was ready or not, it was going to take them somewhere, and it was going to do it soon. Oliver had told Pippa not to interfere in the magic, he had told her not to doubt it, and so Pippa closed her eyes and thought of the most magical thing she knew. If the real, true magic of Wanderly was in working together, then perhaps nothing could be so powerful as the thing that had brought her and Oliver together from the start, the one that could be in all places at once, the one to whom nothing had ever been lost.