The Magician's Key
Also by Matthew Cody
The Secrets of the Pied Piper: The Peddler’s Road
Powerless
Super
Villainous
The Dead Gentleman
Will in Scarlet
THIS IS A BORZOI BOOK PUBLISHED BY ALFRED A. KNOPF
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.
Text copyright © 2016 by Matthew Cody
Cover art and interior illustrations copyright © 2016 by Craig Phillips
All rights reserved. Published in the United States by Alfred A. Knopf, an imprint of Random House Children’s Books, a division of Penguin Random House LLC, New York.
Knopf, Borzoi Books, and the colophon are registered trademarks of Penguin Random House LLC.
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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Names: Cody, Matthew, author.
Title: The magician’s key / Matthew Cody.
Description: First edition. | New York : Alfred A. Knopf, 2016. | Series: The secrets of the Pied Piper ; book 2 | Summary: Max, nearly thirteen, is determined to find her way back to Summer Isle to reunite with her brother and the children of Hamelin.
Identifiers: LCCN 2015035545 | ISBN 978-0-385-75526-9 (trade) | ISBN 978-0-385-75527-6 (lib. bdg.) | ISBN 978-0-385-75528-3 (ebook)
Subjects: LCSH: Pied Piper of Hamelin (Legendary character)—Juvenile fiction. | CYAC: Pied Piper of Hamelin (Legendary character)—Fiction. | Magic—Fiction. | Brothers and sisters—Fiction. | Fantasy.
Classification: LCC PZ7.C654 Mag 2016 | DDC [Fic]—dc23
LC record available at http://lccn.loc.gov/2015035545
Ebook ISBN 9780385755283
Random House Children’s Books supports the First Amendment and celebrates the right to read.
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Contents
Cover
Also by Matthew Cody
Title Page
Copyright
Dedication
Epigraph
Map
Prologue
Part 1: Two Worlds
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Part 2: By Land and Sea
Chapter Ten
Chapter Eleven
Chapter Twelve
Chapter Thirteen
Chapter Fourteen
Chapter Fifteen
Chapter Sixteen
Chapter Seventeen
Chapter Eighteen
Part 3: Children of Summer, Children of Winter
Chapter Nineteen
Chapter Twenty
Chapter Twenty-one
Chapter Twenty-two
Chapter Twenty-three
Chapter Twenty-four
Chapter Twenty-five
Chapter Twenty-six
Chapter Twenty-seven
Chapter Twenty-eight
Chapter Twenty-nine
Part 4: The Winter Isle
Chapter Thirty
Chapter Thirty-one
Chapter Thirty-two
Chapter Thirty-three
Chapter Thirty-four
Thank you
About Matthew
For Katherine Minton, who shares the joy of reading with so many
He plays up and down the street,
Then draws quickly to the stream,
A hundred and more children
A-moving away with him.
He plays them to a faraway land,
Of the type that is yet unknown,
Where milk and honey flow,
Thereto they advance cheerfully.
The pipe plays at all times.
The land—I don’t know where it is.
Oh, you poor German youth,
How good it was at home.
—FROM A GERMAN FOLK SONG (1806)
Detail left
Detail right
The crow paced back and forth across Vodnik’s desk, using stacks of paper as stepping-stones. Vodnik watched as it stumbled over a stapler, sending pens rolling off the edge. Yet the filthy bird strutted around like a little monarch, careless of the mess it was creating.
“Did you know,” asked Vodnik, “that back in my day the peasants didn’t stuff scarecrows with straw? Oh, no, they stuffed them with dead crows. Stitched them all together and hung them in the field as a warning. Can you imagine?”
The crow cawed at him, flapping its wings in agitation. Perhaps he shouldn’t have goaded the creature so. Crows loved to gossip, and one could learn much if one knew how to listen. The crows had been talkative lately, and the talk was all about magic. Magic this world hadn’t seen in centuries…
The crow grew quiet as something caught its attention—a cockroach scuttling across the office floor.
Vodnik leaned back in his chair and stroked his long beard, fingers absently working at the tangles. Magic had all but died out many centuries ago, when mankind stopped fearing the dark. A great exodus followed, and most of the magical creatures, or the Folk, as some called them, fled this world. There were pockets still here and there. Hints of the old powers lingered in certain bloodlines, but most of those lived in the shadows—descendants of beings too stubborn or too stupid to have made the journey to the last sanctuary of magic, the Summer Isle, back when the way was still open. Now the door was shut, and if you asked anyone, they would tell you: Vodnik had the only key.
But the crows were talking.
Poor wretched Vodnik. Once just a farmers’ fable, a miserable hedge magician haunting mills and riverbeds, waiting for sailors to drown on the treacherous waterways so that he might jar their souls to fuel his petty magic. But that was long, long ago. Before Vodnik had discovered the key to real power, the Key of Everything.
His desktop exploded in a shower of papers as the crow suddenly launched itself after the unfortunate cockroach. Vodnik hurled a paperweight—a dead scorpion encased in cheap plastic—at the horrible bird, but he was a terrible aim. The crow dodged it easily, and flew out the open window, its meal clasped firmly in its beak.
Vodnik looked down at the mess the crow had left behind. Someone would need to clean up all these papers. “Mr. Twist!” he yelled.
Luckily, the bird hadn’t disturbed Vodnik’s precious box. He kept it on a little table against the back wall, safely out of the way. Vodnik loved the box with a mixture of nostalgia and obsession. It was an antique fisherman’s tackle box, centuries old, and it had belonged to Vodnik’s first victim. Fashioned from the wreckage of a sunken riverboat, it had a latch shaped in the likeness of drowned sailors, and the leather shoulder strap was worn soft with years of travel. The wood was thickly lacquered with varnish and blood, stained in sorcery, and when you opened the box, the little trays within expanded, but instead of fishing lures they held Vodnik’s collection of jars. The oldest were opaque with dust and age; others were shiny and new. But inside each one was something precious.
These days he used the jars less and less, however. Magic was scarce in the modern world, and it had to be rationed. Vodnik’s key was all the magic he needed to get anything he wanted. Those who dreamed of the Summer Isle, the desperate and afraid—those people had to come to Vodnik. He was their only option.
But now the crows were talking
about strange new developments. They told Vodnik of two children who had left this world for the Summer Isle. They’d left the village of Hamelin and crossed over to the land of magic.
Without needing Vodnik’s key.
The crows were saying that the two children had come to the continent with their father, a professor of some sort who’d been searching for a lost story. The search led them to Hamelin, an infamous place for children to go missing. Vodnik was old enough to remember the Pied Piper’s vengeance upon that village, how he’d used his magic flute to lure all the children away. Vodnik hadn’t been there himself, but word traveled fast among the Folk. A magician had stolen Hamelin’s children.
Vodnik couldn’t help but feel a pang of professional jealousy. The whole world knew of the Pied Piper, but few if any remembered Uncle Vodnik. And how many had Vodnik lured into the dark reeds near the riverbank? How many souls had he claimed over the centuries? Fame had eluded him.
But it was power, not fame, that mattered most to Vodnik, and now, nearly eight hundred years later, two more children had gone missing from Hamelin. Did that mean that he was at work again in the world? Was this modern world big enough for Uncle Vodnik and the Pied Piper? Was Vodnik’s hard-earned power at risk?
The crows were garrulous but not always trustworthy, so Vodnik would have to gather more reliable information on his own. He had the children’s name, Weber, and that was enough to start with.
“Mr. Twist!” Vodnik called again, exasperated. He needed new help, that much was obvious. He’d been putting it off for as long as he could, because he hated the idea of having to train a new man, but things around here were getting sloppy, and this was no time for sloppiness. Mr. Twist had been with Vodnik for so very long, and until recently he’d been dependable and efficient, slavishly so. But the years seemed to be catching up with poor Mr. Twist. Perhaps it was time for a fresh face.
There was a heavy-handed knock at the door, followed by the slow scraping of knuckles across wood. Finally.
“Enter,” Vodnik called.
No response.
“Enter!” he called again, and still there was no answer. With an angry mutter, Vodnik crossed the room and opened the door himself.
Standing there in the doorway was Mr. Twist, his ancient face drawn and ghostly, his cloudy eyes staring off into nothing. A fly had landed on the tip of his nose, and it busied itself there, unnoticed. In one hand Twist held a stack of Vodnik’s forgotten letters, ones he was supposed to have mailed days ago.
A family was waiting in the hall with Mr. Twist. Favor seekers. The crows’ gossip would have to wait.
The father was a tall, broad-chested man—a blue-collar worker, judging by the rough calluses on his hands and the state of his work boots. And perfectly ordinary. But his little girl’s skin was the color of birchwood, and her ears came to distinctive points that poked out well past her silver hair, marking her as one of the Folk. The mother was beautiful, though less exotic, and she wore a flowered hat with its brim pulled down low, hiding her own ears.
It’s the mother’s side of the family, then, thought Vodnik.
The man and woman were staring at Mr. Twist. They had polite enough manners to at least try and hide their revulsion, but their young daughter pinched her nose closed with her fingers as she made a face. Vodnik sighed. Poor Mr. Twist, he had taken on an odor these past few decades. How Vodnik had let him go this far was beyond him. But good help was hard to find.
“Ah, yes, you knocked, Mr. Twist?” said Vodnik, snapping his fingers in his man’s face to get his attention. Twist seemed to come back to himself, at least somewhat, and grunted in the family’s direction.
“Visitors?” said Vodnik. “Lovely. Be so kind as to fetch us a few candles, would you, Mr. Twist? Sun’s nearly set.”
Wordlessly, Mr. Twist began dragging himself back down the hallway, his feet scuffing the floor with that shambling walk of his.
“Why do we need candles?” asked the little girl. “Don’t you have a light switch?” The mother quickly hushed her.
“It’s all right,” Vodnik reassured her with an unctuous smile. “This old mill hasn’t had power for many years, my dear. And besides, there are customers of mine who prefer the dark.”
Vodnik eased himself into his chair. The family stayed standing because there were no seats to offer them, which was entirely intentional on Vodnik’s part. “I apologize for Mr. Twist. He’s been in my employ for ages, and I suppose I’m too sentimental to let him go.” That was true, he thought. Even beyond death. “So, what can I do for you?”
The man nervously cleared his throat. “Well, my name’s Jon Wick, and my family and I, well, we were told by some…that you were, that is, they say you’re a magician.”
“Well, you were told wrong,” answered Vodnik. “I’m not a magician, I’m the magician. And what else do they say about me?”
The man blanched. “There’s stories, is all.”
“Stories about Vodnik who traps souls in jars?” said Vodnik. “Vodnik who haunts an old mill near the North Sea, and has cold river water in his veins instead of warm blood? Those sorts of stories?”
“I’m sorry,” said the man, nervously fumbling with his hat. “I don’t mean to offend. Eh, I’m just not really sure how this works.”
Vodnik smiled. “How this works is you tell me what you want, and I tell you what it’ll cost you. Really, simple as hiring a plumber.”
“Yeah,” said the man. “Okay. See, it’s about my daughter. You see, she’s always taken after her mother, and we’ve managed so far. But lately…”
The man looked back at his little girl. It was funny, thought Vodnik, that the man seemed unable or unwilling to call his daughter what she was. An elfling. That he’d married an elfling woman and had an elfling child was obvious, yet the word eluded him. Still, there was genuine love in his eyes as he looked upon his child. And he’d braved a magician’s dark den for her. People were such deliciously contradictory creatures.
“Yes, the elfling genes are recessive in some,” said Vodnik. “Dominant in others. And they only grow more pronounced the closer the child comes to adulthood. But I cannot make your daughter human, Mr. Wick. I cannot change who she is.”
“I never said anything about changing her!” snapped the man. Then he realized what he’d just said and quickly looked away. “I’m sorry, it’s just she’s perfect the way she is and I don’t want anyone changing a hair on her head. That’s why we’re here.”
Vodnik let him stand there for a moment in silence. He let Jon Wick wonder if he’d gone too far, raising his voice at the magician.
“What will Vodnik do?” he must be wondering. mused the magician. “Add us all to his collection for our impudence?”
“No, I apologize,” said Vodnik at last. “Obviously, you love your family very much, and it was wrong of me to assume anything to the contrary.”
Jon Wick and his wife let out sighs of relief. The daughter just stared wide-eyed at Vodnik. It took all of Vodnik’s self-control to keep from laughing at their collective stupidity.
“Eh, it’s all right,” said the man. “Just hit a sore spot, is all. You see, we’ve managed this far, my wife and I, but now it’s getting harder and harder and folks stare at our little girl. We’re afraid that she might attract the wrong sort of attention.”
“Secrecy is the best weapon we have,” said Vodnik.
At this, the father looked down at his shoes and his cheeks darkened. “It’s too late for that. See, the neighbors have been talking. We live in a small town, and folks there are superstitious. Last week a bunch of teenagers followed my girl home. They were shouting things.”
“So you want me to take care of the teenagers?” asked Vodnik. “For a price I can send Mr. Twist…”
“No!” said the man. “Nothing like that! We just…we heard there’s a place…a place where she wouldn’t have to hide from anyone anymore.”
Vodnik leaned back and steepled his fingers under
his chin. Of course. They wanted Vodnik’s key. They all wanted the key. “I, too, have heard of such a place.”
The father exchanged a look with his wife and took a deep breath. “And we heard that you are the person to get us there.”
“The name of the place is the Summer Isle,” said Vodnik. “But it’s very hard to get to. Nearly impossible. You see, the paths are all but forgotten. There’s only one left that anyone knows of, and that door is locked.”
“But they say you have the key,” said the man. “Look, we can pay. I’ve got some savings.”
“You’d have to take a long journey. The door is hidden across the ocean,” said Vodnik, “beneath man’s greatest city.” He reached into his desk drawer and took out a small brass chest, tinged green with age. Vodnik flipped open the lid and spun the box around to face the family.
“Is that it?” asked the man.
“The Key of Everything,” said Vodnik, nodding. “One key that can open any door, even the door to the Summer Isle. But if you want to use it, it’ll cost you.”
Vodnik picked up a chewed-on pencil and a sheet of paper off the floor, and scribbled down a figure. He scooted it across the desk to the man, then sat back and savored the moment the man’s eyes grew wide as he read the price.
“We don’t have…,” sputtered the man. “You must be joking!”
Vodnik shook his head. “There’s only one Key of Everything. That means I can charge what I please. Supply and demand.”
“But there has to be another way,” the man pleaded. “Who can pay that much?”