by Liz Marsham
Her hand stayed empty. A second later, Piper’s hoops clattered to the ground.
“Huh?” Piper opened her eyes. “What happened?”
“I’m not sure.” Zarya closed her hand, shook it, and then opened it again. Still, her hand was empty.
“Zarya,” said Arkayna, a tense edge to her voice. “What’s going on?”
“Nothing. I told you, I’m fine,” snapped Zarya. She held both hands out in front of her and stared at them, concentrating. “Mysticon Ranger!” she demanded. But nothing happened. No familiar tingle of energy. No rush of power.
“Oh no.” Em put a hand to her head. “Zarya, you are not fine.”
Zarya looked up, fear in her eyes. “You’re right. My magic is gone.”
7
In Which a Truck Leaves a Trace, but a Mysticon Vanishes
“Okay, let’s not panic yet,” said Em nervously. She began to pace. “Let’s think this through.”
But Zarya had already figured it out. “I was in the light!” she exclaimed. “I was in front of the footlights, and we got distracted by the accident, and she never turned them off! They took my magic, but I never got it back!”
Em brightened. “Okay! Okay, that makes sense. So your magic is still in the lights, and we just have to go get it.”
Arkayna put her hands on her hips. “How could she have forgotten to turn them off? That’s so careless!”
“Or maaaaaaaybe,” Piper chimed in, “she did it on purpose, because she didn’t want you to have magic anymore!”
“Hey!” Zarya flung a hand out toward Piper. “Stop that. She wouldn’t do that, and besides, I never even told her I have magic.”
“But maybe she suspected somehow,” said Arkayna, nodding. “She told you her family made her feel bad for not being magical; maybe this is a trick she plays on people to even the score. Or maybe she was just mad that you turned down her offer.”
“Or maybe it was just an accident!” Zarya said.
Em and Choko jumped in between the others. Choko began waving his paws in “calm down” motions and cheeping soothingly.
“Look, no need to jump to conclusions,” said Em. “Let’s just go to her truck, ask her what happened, and get the magic back. Easy, right?”
Zarya pointed at Em. “See? She agrees with me. We’re going to sort this out in, like, ten minutes. You’ll see.”
* * *
Ten minutes later, the three Mysticons and Zarya, wearing a hooded cloak to hide her face, landed in the small field and jumped off their griffins.
“You still think this is going to be easy?” Arkayna said, motioning around her at the empty grass.
Amileth’s truck was gone.
Em winced. “Okay, I have to admit, this doesn’t look great.”
“I knew she was tricky!” Piper blurted. “Oooh, I wish we knew where she was going!”
Arkayna pointed at the ground, where the truck’s wheels had left fresh ruts as it drove off. “These are pretty deep tracks. I bet if we follow them we’ll catch up with her. No way that truck is as fast as our griffins.”
“Yeah, we’ll catch her, and we’ll make her give the magic back!” said Piper, shaking her fist in the air. “No one steals from my best friend!”
“Whoa, whoa, whoa, everyone stop!” Zarya stared at the other girls in disbelief. “I can’t believe you’re turning on her like this. You don’t know anything for sure; you just want to think she’s bad somehow. Especially you,” she finished, rounding on Arkayna.
“Why would I want that?” asked Arkayna.
“Because you’re jealous, obviously!” Zarya said. “You’re jealous that I like her, and that she’s smart and funny and we have more in common than you and I do, and none of that is her problem, it’s yours.”
Arkayna gasped.
“Arrrrrgh!” Zarya tipped her head back and growled in frustration, trying to get ahold of herself. “Listen, I didn’t mean it to come out like that. I’m just … you’re all ready to assume she’s evil or something, and that’s weird! So here’s what we’re going to do. I know where she’s going, and I’m going to go find her. By myself.”
“Uh, Zarya, I’m not sure that’s the best idea,” stammered Em.
“Yeah, Z!” Piper added. “We’re a team!”
“We are a team,” Zarya replied, “but this doesn’t need a team. I’m just gonna go talk to her, and we’ll fix this, and then I’ll be back. Besides, her house sounded pretty private, and she only invited me.”
“She only invited you to visit her truck, too, and look how that turned out,” said Arkayna. “I am not letting you go on your own!”
Zarya raised her eyebrows. “Letting me?”
Arkayna either didn’t hear Zarya’s warning tone, or didn’t care. “Besides,” she went on, “now you don’t even have your powers. What are you going to do without us if something goes wrong?”
“Oh, so now I can’t even take care of myself?” Zarya spun on her heel and marched toward her griffin. “This is ridiculous. Come on, Archer.” She sprang up on the griffin’s back, and with a powerful leap, Archer took to the air.
“Zarya, come back!” Arkayna yelled, running for her own griffin. “You know I didn’t mean that!”
To herself, Zarya huffed, “I’m not so sure.” She watched as the other three Mysticons mounted their griffins and flew after her. “So it’s gonna be like that, huh? Come on, boy, let’s lose ’em.”
Zarya turned Archer toward the busiest part of Drake City. They banked and swooped between skyscrapers, heading for the twisty passages of the Undercity.
Zarya finally flew Archer down low and landed in an out-of-the-way back alley. In seconds, she had convinced a friendly dumpster she knew to let her and Archer hide behind it. The dumpster opened its mouth wide, its upper jaw tipping up to cover their heads. A minute later, the Mysticons soared by overhead, and Zarya nodded in grim satisfaction.
“Nice work, buddy, thanks,” she told the dumpster. Then she patted Archer’s flank. “Let’s get going.”
She mounted up, and she and Archer flew for the Weaving Woods. I’m on my own, and that’s what I wanted, she thought as they traveled. Definitely. My stomach hurts for some other reason. Maybe I’m hungry. This was a good plan. Then she sighed. What she really wanted, badly, was to be right.
8
In Which Everyone Gets Nowhere
A long flight later, Archer banked in low circles over what, as far as Zarya could tell, was the center of the Weaving Woods. The moon shone brightly overhead, and Wells’s Comet was now easy to pick out in the night sky; it was visibly larger than the other stars and twinkled dramatically as it continued to approach Drake City.
Below Zarya and Archer, things were a lot less clear. The trees for which the woods were named stretched in an unbroken tapestry, growing so densely at their tops that the branches wove themselves together. It was impossible to see anything below the canopy, and there was no safe place to land anywhere near where Zarya wanted to go.
“Well, it wouldn’t be much of a challenge if we could just drop right on top of the house, I guess,” Zarya said. “Come on, Archer. I think we flew over a clearing back there.”
The griffin wheeled around, and soon they found a space big enough for him to land in. Touching down, Archer chuffed in dissatisfaction as his feet sank into the muddy ground.
“Yuck, sorry.” Zarya patted his feathery flank as she peered into the trees. A small path led in the direction she wanted to go, but it was barely wide enough for her. “I think I’m gonna have to take it from here. You head home and get cleaned up, okay?”
Archer squawked in concern as she slid down his side and squelched into the mud.
“Hey, not you, too,” said Zarya sternly. “I’ll be okay, you big softie.”
Zarya’s phone chirped. It was maybe the twentieth glyph the girls had sent her since she set out, and the noise was starting to get on her nerves. She looked down. The message from Piper read plzzzzzz where r u.
look Choko is sad! In the accompanying picture, Piper’s fingers were pulling the corners of Choko’s mouth down in an exaggerated grimace.
Archer tipped his head to the side, staring at her phone.
“Oh yeah, good idea.” Zarya quickly typed a glyph to the other girls. Archer on his way back. I am good. Back soon. STOP WORRYING. “Okay, now they won’t panic when you show up by yourself.”
Butting his beak up against her shoulder, Archer gave one last squawk and then took to the air. Zarya watched as he flapped out of sight.
Bee-doop! A glyph came in from Piper, followed by bee-doop bee-doop bee-doop: one from Em and two from Arkayna in rapid succession. Zarya sighed. “They really need to chill out,” she muttered as she squished through the mud and out of the clearing.
* * *
They did not chill out. After an hour and what she estimated was at least a zillion glyphs, calls, and chat requests, Zarya was feeling less than calm herself. The moon shone through a thousand gaps in the leafy canopy, which meant Zarya could see exactly how dirty her boots were getting as she stomped along the muddy trail. The path twisted and turned and split, but there was always a fork that seemed to be going toward the center of the forest. Now, though, as Zarya stood at the latest fork, peering left and right into the gloom, she could swear she had just been here. Maybe more than once.
She looked at the trees around her and thought for a moment. Then, reaching into the dense underbrush that crowded the path, she pulled out a fallen branch bent in an L-shape. She placed the branch carefully on the path so that the leafy side pointed back the way she had come and the sharp, broken bit pointed down the right-hand fork.
Arrows, she thought, admiring her handiwork. Always useful. Then she headed down the right path. At the next fork she made another arrow and took the right-hand path again. And again. And again, until she lost count.
She was trudging along, dismissing another round of glyph notifications on her phone, when her foot hit something. In front of her was another fork, and under her foot, unmistakable in the mud, was her first makeshift arrow. She was going in circles.
Bee-doop! went her phone.
“Arrrrgh, that is enough!” Zarya burst out. “Enough of you,” she said to her phone, silencing it and shoving it deep in her pocket. Then she bent and picked up the branch. “And enough of this!” In her frustration, she hurled it off the path and into the woods on the left.
Crack. Midflight, the branch changed direction and fell to the ground.
“What the hex?” muttered Zarya. She stepped to the edge of the path and peered into the dim forest. As far as she could tell, there was nothing between the trees. But the arrow had definitely hit something. She looked more closely at the underbrush in front of her. It was thick, and there were more than a few bugburs. Zarya sighed. She needed to know.
Carefully, she stepped off the path and picked her way toward where the branch had fallen. Arms out to either side for balance, staring at her feet, she was totally unprepared when she slammed forehead-first into the mirror.
9
In Which Zarya Reflects on Many Things
“OW,” Zarya yelped, her hand going to her head. With her other hand, she reached ahead of her and splayed her fingers across the mirror, looking up and around to check for edges. She had to admit, it was very clever.
The mirror was mounted between two of the closely set trees at a sharp angle to the path, and it went up much higher than Zarya’s head. She walked along the mirror to the tree on its right and reached out again; sure enough, another mirror was set at a complementary, opposite angle, filling the gap between the next two trees. Glancing over her shoulder at the path and then back, Zarya confirmed her suspicion: The mirrors reflected the trees back on themselves, and the angle made the deception invisible to anyone on the path.
“I’m in a maze,” she realized. Then she smirked. “And I know just how to get out of it.”
She looked up. The lowest branch on the tree in front of her was ten feet up, but that didn’t stop Zarya. Grabbing hold of the knobs on the trunk and cramming her feet into the wedge between the mirror and the tree, she shimmied up. Swinging a leg over the branch, she braced her hands in front of her on the trunk and looked around.
At what was now the level of her waist, the mirrors ended. Their silvered tops glinted in the moonlight in jagged lines, zigging back and forth as they stretched away from her in branches, forks, and switchbacks. This, Zarya realized, was the part of the maze she would have been lost in if she had taken any of the left-hand turns.
“But the right forks all led me in a circle,” she murmured. “So what’s in the middle of the circle?” She scooched around on the branch until she could see behind her.
It was a house. And even though it was still a little ways off, and even though some of it was still blocked by the trees, Zarya knew it was the strangest house she’d ever seen. The part on the first floor, roughly in the middle, looked more or less like a regular cottage. But oddly shaped rooms and wings and balconies and towers had been stuck on wherever they would fit, in different styles, bending around trees and at one point bridging a small creek, until the whole thing was a huge, ramshackle structure. The tallest point, an elongated pyramid perched on a three-story-high clapboard tower on the left side, ended just below the tree canopy. And as best Zarya could make out in the dim light, all of the various styles of roof, all over the house, were painted green.
No wonder Archer and I couldn’t find it from the air, she thought, grinning. Then another thought hit her, and she peered into the trees again. I wonder if Ami has cameras set up. I bet I looked pretty dumb walking in circles out here. Oh, hey: I wonder if she times people to see how fast they can make it through! Zarya’s grin sharpened as she slid down to the ground.
Quickly, she ran across the path and into the brush on the opposite side, cursing as the thorns snagged her pants. In less than a minute she had scaled a tree, swung her legs over a mirror wall, and dropped down outside the maze.
On this side, the underbrush was much less thick, and the bugburs disappeared entirely. Zarya jogged toward the house, already planning what she would say when Ami swung the door open. She felt like she had definitely figured out the maze faster than most people would have. Maybe she should play it humble: “Sorry it took me so long”? Nah, that’s lame, Zarya thought, scolding herself as she mounted the steps to the porch. You can do better than that. Think, girl, think. She stepped onto the welcome mat and reached for the doorbell, then stopped short.
The shiny silver doorbell wasn’t real. It was just painted on. Zarya leaned closer. The brass doorknob was paint, too, just a flat decoration on the wood of the door. Or, more accurately, on the wood of the house; the whole door was a fake.
There was no way in.
10
In Which Zarya’s Mind Is Sharp, but Something Sharper Awaits
Zarya chuckled. Should have known it wouldn’t be that easy, she thought. She stepped back, away from the house, her eyes crawling over the exterior, looking for clues. Above the gabled roof of the porch, a window on the second story caught her attention. It looked like its bottom half was slightly raised, and its glass panes glinted in the moonlight, so it definitely wasn’t painted on.
Zarya climbed onto the wooden porch railing, reached high, and boosted herself up to the low overhang. She put a hand out toward the window but immediately drew it back, shaking her head in amusement. The window glass and frame were real, yes. But they were mounted directly onto a blank, unbroken wall, painted black to look like a dark room beyond.
After jumping back down, Zarya did a quick survey of a few more windows on ground level. The first few she tried were like the one above the porch: real windows, mounted over paintings of black rooms or drawn curtains. She felt a brief surge of elation when the fourth window actually opened onto an interior space, but it was just a small, isolated storage room with no access deeper into the house. Idly, she lifted the lid of a crate in the
storage room and laughed out loud; it was full of more window frames.
I’m being too obvious, Zarya thought. And I’m acting like a thief, crawling in windows and stuff. This isn’t right. She climbed out of the storage room and approached the porch again. I’m an invited guest, so how would Ami want invited guests to think? She did say I was welcome anyt—Hey.
Zarya bent down and examined the blue mat in front of the painted-on door. WELCOME was written across it in bold black letters. She tugged on one corner of the mat, but it was tightly attached to the porch. Bending back the stiff fibers at the mat’s edge, though, she could see a definite crack in the floorboards below.
This has gotta be it! thought Zarya. It’s a trapdoor! She scrabbled all around the edges of the mat, looking for a way to open it, but nothing budged. Sitting back on her heels and staring into space, thinking, she found herself looking at the doorbell again. It was definitely painted on, and fairly cartoonishly, now that she was up close to it. But …
Stepping closer and leaning way in, so her nose almost brushed the paint, Zarya squinted. Right along the edges of the round bell, she could see the faintest of cracks, almost as if the circle actually pressed in a bit. She shrugged. “Why not?” she muttered, and pushed on the fake doorbell.
The painted wood gave slightly, but nothing happened. Zarya realized she had been holding her breath, and she let it out in a disappointed huff. Bugbears, I really thought I had it. She allowed herself a small stamp of frustration, which was muffled by the fiber of the mat.
Whoa, hold up, she thought, eyes widening. I’m standing on the mat. What if I … She hopped to one side of the mat and, stretching her arm out, pressed the “bell” again.
This time the whole welcome mat popped up—its back edge acting like a hinge—and swung open, banging to a stop against the fake front door. The underside of the mat was bright yellow, with a black winky face on it. Peering into the newly revealed hole in the porch, Zarya saw the first few rungs of a ladder, stretching down into the darkness under the house.
