The Magician's Key Read online

  “It’s true,” she said, with a sad nod.

  “But the land of magic has been lost to us for centuries,” said the cobbler. “No one has crossed between the Summer Isle and this world since…”

  “Not since the Pied Piper stole the children of Hamelin away,” said Mrs. Amsel. “And left the Winter Children in their place. Not for nearly eight hundred years.”

  “He’s back,” said Max. “And this time he plans on stealing away all the children of earth, if he can. He was going to use a magic mirror, like a portal, to do it, but my brother stopped him. Carter smashed it to pieces just after I fell through….” Max looked away and bit back the memory. “That’s how I ended up here and Carter got trapped there. It should have been the reverse. It should have been me.”

  Even though Mrs. Amsel had told her time and again that it wasn’t her fault, it still felt to Max that it was her failure that her little brother was alone. No, he wasn’t alone. He had friends with him; he had Lukas, Emilie and Paul, all children of Hamelin. He even had Leetha, last child of the elves on the Summer Isle.

  But he didn’t have Max. He didn’t have his big sister, who’d looked after him his entire life, even on those occasions when he was a complete and utter pain in the backside, which was pretty often.

  “Even if you are telling the truth,” said the cobbler, “what can I do for you?”

  “We’ve heard rumors,” said Max. “A few of the other elflings we visited let some things slip before they kicked us out.” She felt the air around her stir in agitation, and the cobbler held up his hand.

  “It’s all right now,” he said to the invisible air. “Shush. Why don’t you run along and play outside. Go on, now.”

  A breeze swirled around Max’s head, whipping her hair in front of her face. Mrs. Amsel cried out in surprise as the door flew open and then slammed again. The inside of the shop was still. Despite the three of them, it felt empty somehow.

  “He has been with my family for generations,” explained the cobbler. “A minor air elemental who didn’t make the journey to the Summer Isle when the Great Winds and the rest of his kind left this world. As the cities spread and the air grew dirty, my great-grandfather took him in, and he has looked after us ever since. Protective, but he can get overly excited.”

  “Like a family dog,” said Max.

  The cobbler actually chuckled. “Not nearly as much trouble as a dog. The wind doesn’t get fleas.”

  “Please,” said Max. “We heard rumors about a door to the Summer Isle.”

  “The door to the Summer Isle is just a fairy tale elflings tell their children.”

  “Well, I’ve learned to put a lot more trust in fairy tales,” said Max. “Believe me.”

  The cobbler sighed. “I don’t know much about it, other than the door’s connected to stories about the Winter Children.”

  Max gave Mrs. Amsel a questioning look, but the old woman shrugged. “Sounds right.”

  “But they do say the door is locked,” said the cobbler, glancing around warily, as if they were sharing secrets on a crowded street. “And Vodnik has the only key!”

  “Who’s Vodnik?” asked Max.

  “He’s a magician. Maybe the last one.”

  “A magician? You mean the kind that pulls rabbits out of a hat, or the real kind?”

  “I mean the kind that traffics in dark powers and is best avoided!” said the cobbler. “He offers people things, he does favors, but they always come at a steep price. Few have dealt with him, and all those have lived to regret it.”

  Max ignored the cobbler’s warning. “Where can we find him?”

  “They say he lives in an abandoned mill near the coast. But again, I wouldn’t go looking for him if I were you. Not unless I had no other choice. And maybe not even then.”

  Max studied the Peddler’s map laid out in front of them. Indeed, in a dark forest along the coast of the North Sea were the tiny words The Magician’s Mill. She couldn’t remember seeing them there before. The Peddler’s map grew stranger and stranger.

  “Thank you,” said Max.

  “Don’t thank me,” said the cobbler. “Because if you’re going to be dealing with Vodnik, then you were better off when you were dodging my shoes. The nicest thing I could have done would have been to kick you out onto the street and lock my door.”

  “Well,” said Max. “Thank you anyway.”

  “Petrof,” said the cobbler.

  “What?”

  “My name’s Petrof.”

  Max smiled at the lumpy little shoe-elf. “It was nice to meet you, Petrof.”

  “One more thing,” said Petrof the cobbler. “That is…if you don’t mind.”

  “Okay.”

  “What was it like?” said Petrof. “The Summer Isle, I mean. I’ve heard the tales of it. Every elfling grew up on them. The sun that never sets, and the trees that sing you to sleep. Did you see such wonders?”

  Max hesitated before answering. She had seen wonders, that was true, but in her estimation the Summer Isle was more terrible than wonderful. The days of seemingly endless summer could change to frigid night in a matter of hours, and monsters roamed the land. The Summer Isle was every child’s dream, until it turned to nightmare. “I met some really great people on the Summer Isle,” said Max, finally. “And some of the worst. So, in that way, I guess it’s a lot like any other place. It’s funny how quickly strange can seem normal, huh?”

  The answer seemed to satisfy the cobbler, and he nodded and bid them goodbye and a safe journey. As Max followed Mrs. Amsel out of the shop and into the fresh air, she watched a plastic bag blow in lazy circles along the street and wondered if it was just a breeze or an air elemental at play. A pair of crows perched on a nearby power line and cawed noisily at each other. The strange had become normal, and the normal had become strange.

  She lingered there for a moment, then stepped back into the shop. She’d lost something on the Summer Isle, and it was about time she found a replacement.

  “Well?” called the cobbler, without looking up. “You staying or going?”

  “Going,” answered Max. “But just one more question—are any of your boots for sale? I’m looking for a girl’s size seven.”

  On the Summer Isle, for as long as any creature could remember, nearly every day was as hot as July. The trees stayed lush and green, and the flowers bloomed. In the evenings the sky would dim to early twilight, but the sun wouldn’t go down. It hung low and orange until dawn, when it would rise again and resume its trek across the blue sky.

  The Winter’s Moon had always been the exception. On certain rare days, the seasons changed in a matter of hours, and that evening the sun would sink, exhausted, beneath the horizon and a cold moon would rise to take its place. True darkness would fall, and the land would suffer a single night of winter. Those nights could be deadly.

  But dawn always came and the trees always blossomed, and by midday the near-constant summer would rule again. That had always been the magic of the Summer Isle, but now that magic was breaking. Summer was over, and autumn had come at last.

  Carter and his companions stood in the middle of a young bonewood grove only days old and gazed down at the cause of the breaking. A pile of freshly upturned earth marked the Peddler’s grave, and somewhere beneath the ground, his bones now fed a lone skeletal tree. An odd assortment of knickknacks, the odds and ends that had once stuffed the Peddler’s pack near to bursting, hung in the branches, like ornaments on Christmas morning. A broken birdcage here, a lute with no strings dangling over there. It was a sorrowful grave marker for a person who’d sacrificed everything for the good of others.

  For ages the Peddler’s magic had kept the wildness of the Summer Isle in check; the Peddler’s Road marked the boundaries evil dared not cross. Once, long, long ago, the Peddler and the Pied Piper had been close friends, teacher and student. But then the Piper kidnapped the children of Hamelin, stealing them away to the Summer Isle, and the Peddler had been forced into bat
tle with his old pupil. Aided by the Princess of the Elves, the Peddler imprisoned the Piper inside a black tower as punishment for his crimes. Ages passed, and the Piper continued to scheme, even from within his dark tower cell. By making use of an enchanted mirror, he brought Carter and Max to the Summer Isle. He believed the siblings to be the descendants of the one child of Hamelin who’d been left behind. There was power in that bloodline, a prophecy that could return the children of Hamelin home and free him from his centuries-old captivity.

  The Peddler went to battle once more, to help Max and the small band of New Hameliners rescue Carter from the Piper’s clutches. They’d succeeded, but at great cost. Now Max was home, and Carter was stuck here on the Summer Isle along with the children of Hamelin. The Piper was free of his prison and the Peddler…the Peddler was dead, murdered on this very spot by the witch Grannie Yaga. The whole Summer Isle mourned the loss. The July days were gone, and the green leaves on the trees bled to orange and red. A chill wind blew even at noontime, and the past few evenings had grown so dark that the sun was hardly more than a dull pink glow in the west.

  After untold centuries, the Summer Isle was changing.

  Despite Leetha’s warnings, Carter and his friends had made the dangerous journey to this new bonewood grove, to see the Peddler’s grave for themselves. Though Carter had never actually met the old magician, Lukas revered him. Even Emilie and Paul seemed pained by his loss. Carter suspected that they’d hoped to find a miracle here, some evidence that the Peddler had survived his battle with Yaga. But all they’d found was the spot where he’d fallen, where the roots of the bonewood trees had sunk in deep, and the contents of the Peddler’s pack were strung up like mementos.

  Paul had wanted to set fire to the whole wood, though it seemed wrong to Carter to burn down trees out of spite, no matter how ugly. He couldn’t believe that the trees themselves were malevolent, even if the witch who had planted them was.

  But as it turned out, they had no time to debate burning the grove because, as Leetha had feared, their side trek to visit the Peddler’s grave had taken them dangerously close to rat territory. And the rats had picked up their trail.

  As they climbed the hills that sheltered the new bonewood grove, they spotted the rats crossing the open moors less than a few hours’ hike behind them. The rats of the Summer Isle weren’t like rats back home. They were as big as a person and nearly as smart. Some even fought with knives. But they usually hid during the bright light of day, preferring to scavenge in the dimmer evenings. These rats, however, were traveling fast in the open sun, which meant they were hunting something, or someone.

  As the six companions stood silently in the middle of the bonewood grove, Lukas, Emilie and Paul bowed their heads and paid their respects to the deceased magician. Leetha, the elf princess, kept her knives drawn and her eyes on the trail behind them, alert for the slightest sign of their pursuers. Carter hugged his arms around himself and wondered how long they had before the rats caught up with them. And Bandybulb wouldn’t shut up.

  It was by pure luck that they had stumbled upon Bandybulb. They’d found the furry kobold wandering the hills lost. Carter and Bandybulb had been prisoners together in Grannie Yaga’s hut; after Yaga’s hut was destroyed in her battle with the Peddler, Carter had feared he’d never see the kobold again. Now he was starting to wish that had been the case. Bandybulb liked to talk, and from what Carter could tell, he liked to talk exclusively about two things—the greatness of his king Tussleroot, and the obvious.

  “If the rats find us, they will stab us with pointy things until we stop moving,” said Bandybulb. “Everyone knows this, yes?”

  “Shh,” whispered Carter. “Show some respect.”

  But Leetha glanced back over her shoulder. “The kobold’s not wrong. We can’t stay here much longer.”

  “If great King Tussleroot were here, I’m sure he could fend them off with his battle prowess,” said Bandybulb. He pointed to Paul. “But all that boy has to fight with is a frying pan, which is best saved for cooking.”

  Paul cut the kobold off with a look, but it was true. He had lost his bow, and all he had to fight with was a cast-iron pan. Of course, Carter still had his little carving knife, but if there was one thing he’d learned on this adventure it was that he wasn’t much of a fighter. That had been his sister’s area of expertise. Except for Leetha, they were all fairly defenseless. And wasting time.

  “It doesn’t matter how fast we run,” said Lukas. “The rats have our scent by now. I’d hoped that we’d find…help here. I didn’t want to believe that the Peddler was really gone.”

  Emilie put her hand on Lukas’s shoulder. “He didn’t die in vain, but it will have been in vain if we don’t escape the rats.”

  Lukas took a deep breath and wiped his eyes. “Leetha, you summoned the great North Wind to carry us away from the Piper’s tower. Is there a chance he owes you another favor?”

  The elf girl shook her head. “I’m afraid not. The only way we are escaping the rats is on our own legs.”

  “We can’t outrun them,” said Lukas. “We have an hour’s head start at the most, but they are quicker over land. And this grove isn’t dense enough to lose them in.”

  “Will we have to fight them?” asked Emilie.

  “I hope not,” said Lukas. “We’re not up to it.”

  Carter might not have been a fighter, but he was a problem solver. If they couldn’t fight the rats and they couldn’t outrun them, then there had to be a third way.

  “Well, is there any place we could lose them in?” asked Carter. “Any place we could reach in an hour?”

  Lukas and Paul exchanged a look. “There’s the Chillwood just to the east of these hills,” said Paul. “Doubt even the rats would venture in there.”

  Leetha barked out a laugh. Sometimes—most of the time, actually—Carter didn’t get the elvish sense of humor.

  “What’s the Chillwood?” asked Carter.

  “A cold, wet forest that’ll freeze your toes off on a hot summer’s day,” said Paul. “Cursed place.”

  “Okay, sounds awful,” said Carter. “But is it worse than fighting the rats?”

  Leetha snorted. “The rats would be fools to follow us into the Chillwood, just as we’d be fools to go there in the first place.”

  “No, Carter’s right,” said Lukas. “Reaching the Chillwood before they catch us won’t be easy, but we should try.”

  Carter knew what Lukas wasn’t saying was that it would be doubly hard to escape the rats with him along. The others could at least run, but with his bad leg the best Carter could hope for was a fast limping walk. And that was on even ground, not these rocky hills.

  Emilie pulled her shawl closer about her shoulders. “The woods might be dangerous, but we know the rats are deadly. I say we do as Carter suggests.”

  Leetha the elf girl said nothing but nodded slightly, her wide eyes watching them all with something like amusement.

  “Then we make for the woods,” said Lukas. “We’ll have to hurry.”

  This Chillwood forest sounded like one of the last places Carter wanted to visit, and yet now he and his friends were racing for it like barefoot children running for the ocean across hot sand. Lukas stayed near Carter, even though Carter’s leg brace slowed him down. At Lukas’s insistence, Paul scooped up Bandybulb and let the little kobold ride on his back, while Bandybulb shouted in Paul’s ear what a fantastic sprinter King Tussleroot was.

  Twice as they were fleeing, Carter’s leg brace caught on some hidden rock, and Bandybulb was right there after Carter tripped, the lumpy little creature staring down at him.

  “You fell over!” Bandybulb would say.

  “You think?” Carter would respond through gritted teeth.

  “Yes,” Bandybulb would reply innocently. “I do.”

  This would usually be followed by the kobold’s sage wisdom, passed on to him by his lost king Tussleroot (never mind that Bandybulb was his king’s only servant and th
at the kingdom consisted of a five-foot by five-foot patch of toadstools). “You know what my wise king Tussleroot used to say about falling down?” Bandybulb would ask.

  “It teaches us to get up again?”

  “No, it is painful and best avoided.”

  The one consolation of being caught—if the rats caught up with them—at least, Bandybulb would become someone else’s problem.

  After an hour’s hard march, they reached the outskirts of the forest known as the Chillwood. One could feel the unnatural cold radiating from the evergreen forest as a sickly mist hung over the treetops, subjecting everything beneath it to the constant drizzle of icy rain. Stepping beneath the branches was like opening a freezer on a balmy July day. The climb through the hills and subsequent sprint to the forest had left the children sweaty and overheated, and so at first the drastic drop in temperature came as a relief. As they passed beneath the boughs of the mighty fir trees, steam rose from their sweaty garments. Carter lifted his face to the sky and let the mist cool his burning cheeks.

  Paul led the way as usual, scouting the trail ahead as the rest of them followed a few paces behind. Usually Lukas stayed near Carter, and Carter suspected that his sister had made the young Captain of the Watch promise to watch over him. At ten years old, Carter was the youngest, but he still resented being treated like a little kid. The rest of them looked no older than thirteen, and Leetha looked even younger, with her spindly legs and wide eyes. Carter had to constantly remind himself that these children were almost eight centuries old.

  If the rats had dared to follow them into the Chillwood, there was no sign of them. Lukas now spent most of his time alongside Emilie. Carter had caught the two of them whispering to each other when they thought no one was paying attention, and by the looks on their faces, whatever they were discussing was serious. With Paul scouting ahead, and Emilie and Lukas conferring, that left Bandybulb or Leetha for Carter to walk with. Carter chose Leetha.

  Leetha was a daughter of the elves, but other than the pointed ears, she wasn’t what Carter had expected. She was small and earthy and dark, with hair of tangled leaves and clothing spun from vines. Her face was broad and childlike, but her eyes shone in the dark like a cat’s, and when she smiled, she showed long, pointed teeth. This wasn’t an elf from the movies; this was an elf of old folktales—the kind that stole away naughty children in the woods.