“Not that one,” he whispered.
She turned to him, confused. “You said the second door.”
“I know what I said. That was just in case she follows us.” Joey nodded toward the stepping-stones. Scarlett was almost at her brushes.
“Pretty smart,” Shazad said.
“We’ll see,” Joey replied, moving past Leanora to the third door on the platform. He tried the handle, but it wouldn’t open. It was locked. He pulled harder. “I don’t get it.”
“Use the hand,” Leanora told him.
“What?”
“A Hand of Glory can open any lock,” she said. “Touch it to the door.”
Joey held up the repugnant, green-black hand. “For someone who didn’t want any part of this thing, you know an awful lot about it.”
“I know stuff about things,” Leanora said. “We’ve established that. Can we go now?”
“Love to.” Joey touched the hand’s dead fingers to the door and heard a dead bolt turn. “Here goes nothing.” He pulled back on the door, hoping he wasn’t about to get rushed by a stampede of sharp metal objects. Fortunately, a warm fuzzy feeling washed over him as golden light poured out of the open door instead. Joey smiled and dropped the Hand of Glory like it was a microphone.
“Say goodbye to Transylvania, guys. We are out of here.”
12 Painted into a Corner
Joey couldn’t see anything. He doubted Leanora or Shazad could, either. In the cave, before the blue light, it had been so dark he couldn’t see his hand two inches in front of his face. He had the same problem now in the space beyond the dungeon door, but for a different reason. It was too bright. Joey squinted hard, barely able to open his eyes. He kept moving forward, trusting that he would end up someplace good. Or, at the very least, someplace better.
His faith was soon rewarded as the light softened and a vision of emerald green emerged behind it. He felt the earth grow wet and mushy beneath his feet. He was back in the forest, but the creepy, black twisted trees of the Dead Woods had been replaced by a vibrant jungle overflowing with plant and animal life. He heard birds chirping, along with other animal sounds he couldn’t recognize. He was surrounded by towering trees. Thick vines hung down all around and sunlight poured in from above. It was hot, humid, sticky, and wonderful.
“We made it,” Joey said, eyeing a red bird with bright blue and yellow tail feathers perched overhead. Monkeys watched from the trees, making chittering noises as he and his friends materialized in the jungle. “The next stop on the map was in Brazil. This must be the Amazon rain forest. It’s got to be.”
Leanora spun around, taking a quick look behind her.
“What is it?” Joey asked immediately. “Something back there?” He had learned in school that the Amazon rain forest was possibly the most biologically diverse place on the planet. That meant tropical birds and monkeys, but it also meant crocodiles, jaguars, anacondas, tarantulas, brightly colored poisonous frogs, and more. The happy feeling Joey got from leaving Transylvania faded as he realized they weren’t at all prepared for what they might find in the largest jungle on Earth. They didn’t even have any bug spray.
“It’s nothing,” Leanora said. “I wanted to shut the door behind us, but…” She motioned to the space behind her. There was nothing there. It was as if they had stepped out from behind a tree.
Shazad took out the map, confirming their location. “I guess all these passages are one-way.”
“No going back,” Joey said, the familiar sentiment resurfacing. “Not that we’d want to anyway.”
“Look ahead,” Shazad said, pointing.
Joey turned around. It was hard to see at first, camouflaged in the jungle, but an old, abandoned village ran up the side of a hill in the distance. Joey could tell it was abandoned because it was completely overgrown and empty. Creeping ivy and vegetation covered every inch of every house and hut. From far away, it looked like the entire village had a thick layer of lime-colored fur.
“Gives new meaning to the phrase ‘going green,’ ” Joey said.
“Is that Celestia?” asked Leanora.
“No,” Shazad said, studying the map. “Celestia’s upriver. That’s where we need to go.”
“We should rest in that village first,” Leanora suggested. “Find some cover and figure out our next move.”
Joey looked quizzically at Leanora. “I thought we just did.”
“Joey, you left the hand.”
This confused Joey even more. “You didn’t want to keep that, did you? I know it was a magical item, but it was disgusting. I don’t want to carry that thing around. Not even in my backpack. You said yourself it was vile.”
“It is, but what about the doors in the dungeon? Scarlett can use the hand to follow us.”
Joey made a sour face. “I don’t think she’ll try the doors with the keys. She won’t have to. She’s got me.”
“What are you talking about? How did you know that was her back there?” Shazad asked him.
“And what was that with the paint on your neck?” Leanora checked Joey’s neck and shoulder for multicolored splotches of paint, but his skin was clean again. It was time for Joey to come clean too.
“I’ve been seeing it ever since Scarlett hit me with her paintbrush outside the theater.”
Leanora gasped. “All this time? That was a month ago.”
“Not all the time,” Joey said. “It comes and goes. I thought it was just my mind playing tricks on me. I’d scratch an itch and find paint under my fingernails. Then I’d glimpse Scarlett, but only for a second. I was never sure. I just thought she got in my head.”
“More like she got under your skin,” Leanora said.
Joey gave a grim nod. “For a second I saw her on the mountain, but I thought it was just the lack of oxygen. I realize now, the paint materializes when she’s close by. It shows up when she’s watching me.”
“You’re just now telling us this?” Leanora asked.
“I just figured it out. I didn’t even think it was real until Ali said he saw paint on my neck when I was a camel.”
“Ali saw it?” Shazad put his hands on his head, reeling at the implications. “Scarlett said she can follow you anywhere. If that’s true… If she’s able to track you and just show up wherever you are, she could have followed us to Jorako. If my brother saw the paint, she must have been there too!” He covered his face, afraid of what he had done. “If the Invisible Hand finds Jorako because I took you there, I’ll never forgive myself.”
“I wasn’t in Jorako when Ali saw the paint,” Joey said. “We were still in the desert. Anyway, she’s not going to Jorako. After what we just did, she’s going to stay on us. Especially now that she knows about the map—and Camelot.”
Shazad winced. “I wish I didn’t tell her all that.”
“You couldn’t help yourself,” Leanora said. “You wouldn’t have told her anything if I still had my grandmother’s necklace.” She shook her head in disgust. “Of all the things to lose in the forest.”
“It could have been worse,” Joey said. “You could have lost the firestone. That thing’s saved us a bunch of times, including just now.”
Leanora nodded. “True,” she said, finding comfort in the stone around her neck.
“So they know what we’re going after now,” Joey said. “It doesn’t change anything. Even if Scarlett didn’t know about Camelot, she’d still be following us to find out what we’re up to. The way we’re hopping around the world, going through lost magical places… I must be leaving a pretty interesting trail.”
Leanora’s face turned sad again. “That does change things, Joey. If she can follow you anywhere, it puts everything at risk.” She paused a moment, trying to choose her next words carefully. “There’s no way to say this nicely, so I’m just going to say it. You should probably sit the rest of this trip out.”
Joey blinked. The suggestion hit him like a bucket of ice water. “Are you kidding?”
“I wi
sh I were,” Leanora said. “I don’t like it any more than you do, but…”
“She’s right, Joey,” Shazad agreed. “I hate to say it, but she’s right.”
“You too?” Joey whipped his head around to look at Shazad. “I can’t believe what I’m hearing. I thought we were past you guys telling me to leave this stuff to the professionals.”
“That’s got nothing to do with it,” Leanora assured him. “No one’s doubting your ability, Joey. It’s just this situation. You have to admit, it’s a problem.”
“Well, I don’t want to be a bother,” Joey said, getting testy. “I’ll just go home. Let’s see if my parents can pick me up.” He took out his phone and acted like he was making a call. “Hi, Mom? Dad? You think you guys can come get me? I’m in South America.” He dropped his hand, having made his point. He couldn’t leave the group even if he wanted to. Or so he thought.
“My mom and dad can pick you up,” Shazad told him.
“What?” Joey gaped at Shazad. “How?”
Shazad took out the Tiger’s Eye crystal. “I still have this. It’s my mother’s. You remember, she has the other one. The Tiger’s Eye is a two-way seeing crystal. There’s no sound, but the jewels have a connection. You can write a message and turn the crystal so she can read it.”
Joey was quiet for a moment. He felt like he’d been punched in the gut. “What message?”
“That you need help. It’s the truth. You don’t want that paint on your neck. Maybe they can help you get it off.” Shazad closed his fist around the Tiger’s Eye, hiding it from sight. He held his hand out toward Joey, ready to drop the stone in his palm. “They’ll be able to home in on your location as long as the eye can ‘see.’ If you cover it up, it goes dormant. To turn it on, all you have to do is hold it in the light.”
Joey made no effort to take the stone. “Are we really talking about this?”
“Joey, it’s Grayson Manchester tracking your phone all over again,” Leanora said.
“No, it’s not,” Joey protested. “I told you, I’ve got location services turned off. That’s a sacrifice, by the way. You know how many apps I can’t use because of that?”
“Joey,” Leanora said, trying to get him to focus. “The Invisible Hand can track you everywhere you go. That puts all of us in danger. I don’t want to do this without you, but what are our options here?”
Joey looked down at his hand. He was gripping the paintbrush he had stolen from Scarlett hard enough to snap it in half. He cursed the moment she had tagged him with the paint, and he cursed himself for not doing a better job of throwing the rest of her brushes into the purple lava back in Transylvania. Most of all, he cursed the fact that Leanora was right. It killed him to admit it, but he couldn’t ask his friends to keep going with the Invisible Hand hot on their tail like this. Still, he didn’t want to give up. There had to be another way. “We’re supposed to be working together,” Joey said, his voice faltering.
The question no one wanted to ask was, working toward what? Not one of them knew what they were going to do when they found Camelot. They all still wanted different things. Tears welled in Joey’s eyes. He tried to blink them away before anyone noticed. “This trip was supposed to be about finding our way together. All of us.”
“It should also be about doing the right thing for all of us.” Leanora put a hand on Joey’s shoulder. “I know it’s hard, but can you do that?”
Joey backed away from Leanora’s touch, feeling hurt. He racked his brain, trying to think of another way out of this, or a hole in Shazad’s and Leanora’s logic, but they were right. As long as he had that paint on his neck, he was a danger. The problem wasn’t him. It was the situation, and it had to be dealt with.
“Joey, say something,” Leanora said.
He was staring at his shoes, dejected. Leanora’s voice brought his eyes up. He looked at his two friends and nodded. “I can do it.”
* * *
An hour later, Joey was alone in the village. The minutes crawled by as he sat there waiting on ancient, leaf-covered steps. He reached for his phone more than once, but stopped short of turning it on each time. Back home, he would have scrolled through social media, or occupied himself with a game, but he couldn’t do either one in this place. Unless he found somewhere to plug in his charger, the phone was for emergencies only. As Joey sat there waiting, his mind turned back to his empty stomach. He hadn’t eaten anything since Jorako. The more Joey thought about it, the hungrier he got. He had to do something to occupy his mind. Joey decided to pass the time checking out Scarlett’s magic paintbrush. He tore the ivy off the side of one of the buildings, exposing the stone wall underneath. It became his canvas. He didn’t have any paint, but he didn’t think he needed it. He had never seen Scarlett use any. The brushes just provided whatever color she wanted, on demand. Anyway, Joey didn’t need much in the way of art supplies. He wasn’t planning to paint a masterpiece that would require a full artist’s palette. He was just going to mess around with the brush and try it out. That was the plan, anyway. The brush had other ideas.
Joey addressed the wall, and the brush took over. His movements were surprisingly involuntary as he painted. It was as if he was being remotely controlled by some unseen creative force or impulse. Colors flowed from the bristles, changing in between strokes, putting together an image comprised of geometric shapes and sharp angular lines. It wasn’t Joey’s style, but it did look familiar to him. He didn’t know what he was painting, but he trusted the brush, and found the picture in the process. When he stepped back and looked at the finished product, a prophetic vision decorated the wall. He, Shazad, and Leanora were on horseback, dressed in armor. Joey had the wand in his hand and held it forward like a sword as they rode into battle. The ghostlike image of a king with a golden crown watched over them, standing next to a blue-robed wizard with a long white beard. Joey recognized them as King Arthur and Merlin, despite the abstract style of painting. Behind them, a castle floated on a hunk of rock in the distance. Joey took this to be Camelot. He wondered if he’d ever get the chance to see it in person. There were other magicians in the picture. More ghosts. Joey couldn’t identify most of them, but he thought one might be Houdini, and one of them was definitely Redondo the Magnificent. Joey was shocked by what he had painted. Where had it come from? What did it mean? Looking at the picture of Redondo, Joey realized how much he missed him. He wished the old man were there to explain everything, but then he remembered explanations weren’t Redondo’s style. “He’d probably tell me to figure it out myself,” Joey said under his breath, the trace of a grin on his lips. “Find your own way, young Kopecky,” he added in Redondo’s voice.
Thinking of Redondo prompted Joey to take out his magic deck of cards. He drew three off the top to see what his future held. The pictures on the cards were as strange as ever: a stage curtain with THE FINALE written underneath it. A castle in the clouds dubbed THE LOST KINGDOM, and a wild cat with a gemstone for an eye—the EYE OF THE TIGER. Joey couldn’t say for sure what the cards meant, but they all felt very final. Like his part in this adventure was coming to an end.
He wondered how much longer he’d have to wait there by himself. He scratched an itch on his neck and found paint under his fingernails. “Not much longer, I guess.” He turned around and saw a large, empty frame at the edge of the abandoned village. It hovered a foot off the ground as if hung on an invisible wall. The bright gold frame stood out against the green of the jungle. There was nothing inside it, but Joey knew there soon would be. His mouth went dry. The jungle swayed around him. He felt an odd, dizzy weightlessness as the moment of confrontation approached, but he told himself to suck it up and stood his ground. “Here we go,” Joey said, glancing quickly at the scene he had painted on the wall. “Showtime.”
Joey watched as the leaves rustled beyond the gold frame and a figure in red appeared. Scarlett pushed her way through the trees and stepped out of the frame, looking fashionable as ever in her designer coat and dark
sunglasses. She seemed surprised to find Joey waiting for her.
“So, that’s how you do it,” he said, trying to sound casual. “These brushes really are amazing.”
Scarlett took her sunglasses off. Her eyes narrowed into slits at the sight of Joey holding one of her brushes. Joey watched her jaw muscles flex as she clenched her teeth, but she didn’t let her anger off the leash. Instead, her features relaxed into the superior smile of someone who had the upper hand and knew it. “That they are,” she said. “Art has the power to transport you anywhere, anytime. All I have to do is think about you and start painting. Inspiration strikes, and I end up painting a picture of exactly where you are in the world. After that, I just add myself into the scene, and voilà!” She flared her fingers, presenting herself as if she were an eagerly anticipated guest of honor. “Here I am. I see you’ve been doing a little painting yourself,” she added, examining Joey’s artwork. “I hope you don’t need me to tell you who that brush belonged to.”
“I’m guessing Picasso?” Joey noted the exaggerated boxy figures and shapes he had painted. “He was a cubist, right?”
“He was more than that,” Scarlett said in a pretentious tone. “Picasso cofounded the cubist movement, yes, but he was a little bit of everything. The man had many styles. Personally, I prefer his blue period. His work is a gift, even with your uninspired hand holding the brush.”
Joey looked at the picture he had made. It was his handiwork, and at the same time, it wasn’t. He didn’t really like it. Joey would have preferred a more straightforward image. He was tired of everything being so warped and unclear. “Picasso’s okay, I guess. I’m more of a Jim Lee fan myself. I also like Bryan Hitch.”
Scarlett squinted at Joey. “Who?”
“They’re comic book pencillers,” Joey said. His explanation earned an eye roll from Scarlett. “They’re more than that, actually,” he added, matching her know-it-all attitude. “Jim Lee cofounded Image Comics, and Bryan Hitch’s work inspired the whole Marvel movie aesthetic.”
Lost Kingdom Page 17
