by Temre Beltz
Dedication
For Mom and Dad
Map
Contents
Cover
Title Page
Dedication
Map
Prologue
OneA Soggy Invitation
TwoThe Boy Without a Hat
ThreeDear Fairy Godmother
FourA Snake Named Delilah
FiveA Toothless Witch
SixMagician’s Assistant, Anyone?
SevenA Sizzling Companion
EightPignapped!
NineA Hater of Hats
TenCrows Ruin Everything
ElevenA Missing Goat
TwelveSaved by a Sinkhole
ThirteenDueling Fairy Godmothers
FourteenA Red Hot Rescue
FifteenTriumphant Training 101
SixteenThe Most Wanted Magician in All of Wanderly
SeventeenDown in the Dumps
EighteenA Hat Worth Waiting For
NineteenThe Worst Magic Trick of All
TwentyTake a Bow
Epilogue
Acknowledgments
Excerpt from The Tragical Tale of Birdie Bloom
About the Author
Books by Temre Beltz
Copyright
About the Publisher
Prologue
Salutations.1
I hail from the kingdom of Wanderly, and in the kingdom of Wanderly, there is no tale quite so beloved as a Triumphant one.2
Indeed, those books lucky enough to be selected for the telling of a Triumphant tale enjoy a great deal of fanfare, glowing reviews, and all-around gushing while being adoringly passed from household to household and village to village.
I have chosen a wildly different path.
I have left behind the grand comforts of my position in Wanderly and braved an indescribably exhausting trip—traveling all the way to the shores of your somewhat perplexing kingdom, simply to sit here on this shelf and wait for you.
IT’S ABOUT TIME.
Oh dear. Was that rude? You must forgive me. Triumphants in Wanderly have grown used to not waiting for a single thing. But, then again, perhaps that is one of our problems.
Problems, you ask?
Problems for Triumphants?
Ha! If there weren’t any problems, do you think I would bother prattling on in such an undignified manner? I don’t know how the books in your kingdom typically behave, but in Wanderly we prefer to let our stories speak for themselves.
This worked out fine and well at one time, but things have changed.
As a storybook kingdom, Wanderly is filled with capable writers—we call them “scribes”—who string together an astonishing slew of words with admirable prowess. But you and I both know that all the words in the world do not equal a good story if they are lacking in one crucial element: truth.3
The trouble is, the scribes seem to have rejected that guiding principle. Or perhaps they have merely grown so accustomed to hearing the Chancellor’s version of things that the difference between truth and outlandish fabrication has become dangerously blurry.
This simply can’t be allowed to go on.
Especially with a story like this one.
And so, here I am.
Based on what I shared about Wanderly’s Triumphants you are likely settling in for a story with bravado, celebratory trumpets, spouts of shimmering confetti, and perhaps even a trophy or some sort of prized blue ribbon.
Please take a moment to adjust your expectations.
Ahem, maybe even dial them down a bit more.
Yes, that should do. Of course, I’ll do my best to ease you into things. For now I won’t mention any wily, scheming magicians or the creatures that slink and slither through their hopelessly muggy swamp. We needn’t spend even a minute mulling over conniving bullies named Bernard Benedict Bumble V (it’s never a good sign when a numeral appears at the end of a bully’s name, is it?) or bemoaning getting singed by a magical, flaming horse whose kind many deem a legend but are as real as the handsome nose on your face.
Yes, we shall have a much cheerier start in a gloomy little pocket of Wanderly known as Ink Hollow, where a girl named Pippa North looked desperately out the doorway on an impossibly rainy day while a mysterious stranger wearing a more mysterious hat slunk nearer and nearer and nearer—
Um, on second thought, that doesn’t sound very cheery at all, does it? Nevertheless, these are precisely the sorts of ominous details the scribes in Wanderly would have left out, and I have pledged to tell you the whole story.
Alas, a story must begin where it begins . . . shall we proceed?
One
A Soggy Invitation
Pippa North stood in the doorway of her family’s tiny two-bedroom cottage and took a small (very small) step backward. She was certain she’d never seen so much rain in all of her eleven years. It was falling from the sky by the bucketful.
Pippa glanced down at her black-buckled shoes. Other than a few scuffs to be expected from a pair of hand-me-downs, they were in excellent shape. They looked especially smart when paired with her favorite nearly white socks—the ones with the dainty lace cuff. But regrettably, Pippa’s shoes and socks were not at all well-suited for the rain.
A pounding even louder than the rain erupted on the steep, narrow staircase to Pippa’s left. It was her four-year-old triplet brothers, Artie, Miles, and Finn, streaking past. Miles and Finn had her two older sisters’ fanciest (and only) plumed feather hats perched on their sweaty little heads with Artie leading the charge.
Pippa sighed. She waited one, two, three—
“MOTHER!” cried her fifteen-year-old sister, Jane.
“Oh, Mommy, they’ve done it again!” shrieked her thirteen-year-old sister, Louisa.
At a mere eight months, the smallest North, Rose, was cradled safely in her mother’s arms, but even she offered up her own plaintive little “WAHHH!”
The “WAHHH” grew a bit louder when Pippa’s mother emerged from the tiny pocket of a kitchen, waving a pancake spatula about in her free hand as if it were a magic wand.4 When she spied Pippa standing by the door, her eyes lit up. She bustled across the room (a mere three steps), tucked Rose into Pippa’s arms with a breathless “Thank you, dear,” and then turned on the triplets. She plucked them up by the collars of their flannel pajamas (Miles and Finn in one hand and Artie in the other because he was just a smidge taller) and let them dangle in the air for a half moment before setting them gently down.
“Boys,” she said in that mysterious way mothers have of condensing an entire list of arguments into one aptly spoken word.
The triplets’ shoulders slumped. At a nod from Artie, the pouty-faced Miles and Finn slipped the prized hats off and into Mrs. North’s waiting hands. Without bothering to look, Mrs. North expertly tossed the two hats over her shoulder, where Jane and Louisa snatched them up and pranced back up the stairs to resume their Very Important Business, which typically meant trying out a new hairstyle they’d seen in the pages of the Wanderly Whistle.
Mrs. North handily plucked Rose out of Pippa’s arms. She bustled back toward the kitchen, presumably to resume her pancake making before the triplets could involve themselves in yet another shenanigan, when she caught sight of Pippa and froze. “Pippa, what are you still doing here? Have you forgotten that it’s—it’s . . . Wednesday?”
But Pippa merely closed the front door, which, up until then, had been hanging wide open. The drumming rain had blended rather seamlessly into the typical morning chaos of the North family cottage, but it hadn’t at all been a part of Pippa’s plans. She sighed and glanced down at the lunch sack she’d carefully prepared side by side with her father earlier
that morning. It seemed to have lost its jaunty tilt and now slouched hopelessly against her ankle.
“I suppose I’ll be staying home today. Just this once, I guess,” she said.
“Staying home?” Pippa’s mother echoed, aghast.
A door upstairs flew open. “Staying home?” Pippa’s sisters cried in unison.
“Pippa, home?” the triplets chimed in with their eyes wide.
“Goo-goo?” Rose queried.
Because if Rose enjoyed a good cry, if the triplets craved mischief, if Jane and Louisa appreciated beautiful things, and if the oldest North child, Charlie, enjoyed trekking off with Mr. North—not necessarily to assist with his book peddling but to attend to the cogs, wheels, and fastenings of his cart—there was one thing that everyone knew about Pippa. Pippa loved school.
In the town of Ink Hollow, commoner children were allowed to attend school one day of the week and one day of the week only. Pippa’s scheduled day of attendance was Wednesday. And since first beginning school at the age of five, she had never once—no, not even once—missed a single day of instruction. But the town of Ink Hollow had also never seen such a rainstorm. Indeed, it had blown in on a most peculiar wind mere moments after Pippa’s father and oldest brother had walked out the door.
A wind so peculiar that when Pippa first heard it she had almost—almost—considered whether it was the Winds of Wanderly come to visit. But then, very quickly, she came to her senses. Though the kingdom of Wanderly was full of a great many magical things, the Winds of Wanderly were set apart somehow. Grand. Powerful. Maybe even more powerful, some dared to whisper, than the Chancellor himself. And so, if all of that were true, Pippa could come to no other conclusion except the Winds of Wanderly could never be bothered with a town as ordinary as Ink Hollow.
So she’d pushed the matter out of her head entirely.
Mrs. North chopped her hands through the air. “No, no,” she said. “This simply won’t do. You shall don some of my things—” At this, Louisa went sprinting toward their mother and father’s bedroom and emerged with Mrs. North’s faded yellow rain galoshes and a moth-eaten cloak. Jane took the steps three at a time and bounced to a stop in front of her mother, the bow on her half-finished hairstyle flopping madly about. She held her arms out expectantly for baby Rose.
“I’ll take Rose and finish the pancakes, Mother. You tend to Pippa,” Jane said.
The triplets, caught up in the shift in momentum, drew up to their knees and began chanting, “Go, Pippa, go! Go, Pippa, go!”
Pippa couldn’t help the smile that spread across her face. Because of all the very many elements of daily life that Pippa liked to plan and measure out, her family was the one thing that—on occasion—caught her by surprise.
Living in a family of eight children was not without its challenges, but Pippa couldn’t imagine there existed any family that wasn’t. And, certainly, the one thing that didn’t exist anywhere else in all the kingdom was another Mother and another Father, another Charlie, Louisa, Jane, Artie, Miles, Finn, and Rose. The North family. They were hers, and she was theirs.
With Mrs. North’s help, Pippa was nearly armed and ready for the rain when a loud pounding suddenly exploded from the other side of the front door.
Pippa instinctively jumped backward. In a town as tightly knit as Ink Hollow, children skipped up to neighbors’ doors laughing and chattering, adults politely lifted their hands for a genteel knock or called out warmly, “Halloo? Anybody home?”
But no one, ever, not once, pounded.
Though Pippa saw a quick flicker of concern in her mother’s eyes, Mrs. North nevertheless swept toward the door while smoothing the front of her apron. “Excuse me, dear,” she said to Pippa with a tight smile. “In a storm such as this, someone might be in need of some real help.”
Of all the children in the North home, however, none were more well-read than Pippa. And in a storybook kingdom, this came in quite handy considering all of Wanderly’s citizens were required to adhere to their Chancellor-assigned roles. Roles that were intended to build the great story lines of the kingdom and that were spelled out in minute detail in the Chancellor’s authorized storybooks (the only sort available in Wanderly). These roles ranged all the way from ordinary commoners, like Pippa’s family, to celebrated heroes like Triumphants and even included magical citizens such as wizards and fairy godmothers. In regards to commoners, however, one thing was made very clear throughout all of the Chancellor’s stories: they were not, by any means, guaranteed a happy ending. In fact, at least half of the commoners were destined to receive an unhappy ending, and it was hard for Pippa to imagine that anything good could follow on the heels of an ominous knock at the door in the midst of a dark and stormy morning. Maybe it was even something as terrible as a witch, maybe—
“Mother, WAIT!” Pippa cried out.
But it was too late.
Mrs. North swung the door open.
There was a man standing on the front porch.
A very tall, very skinny man wearing a very tall, very skinny hat. And before either Pippa or her mother could breathe a word, the man brought his very long, very skinny fingers to the brim of his hat and disappeared.
The triplets exploded into a round of delighted applause. Pippa and her mother, together, breathlessly slammed the door shut. Louisa, who was poised halfway down the stairs, stood pale-faced with her jaw agape. Jane, who had taken over the pancakes, poked her head out from the kitchen and asked breezily, “Everything all right in there?”
Reader, it was not.
Certainly four solid walls and a locked door are adequate forms of shelter in many kingdoms, but Wanderly is a magical kingdom—composed, at least in part, of people who can perform said magic.
And so, the tall, skinny man with the tall, skinny hat reappeared smack-dab in the center of the North family’s cottage, perched, of all places, on top of the worn and splintered coffee table like it was a stage.
“Ta-da!” he exclaimed, as rainwater rolled right off his very fine but very mud-splattered clothing and plip-plopped onto the floor.
Pippa’s heart pounded. The man who had found his way inside their home was most definitely not a witch: he was a magician.5 There was no mistaking the magical hat, the fancy clothes, and the penchant for performance.
Pippa dutifully lifted her hands in the air and began to applaud. She cast a pointed look in her mother’s direction until her mother followed suit. The man’s expression softened a hair. His lips spread into a toothy grin. “Thank you, thank you,” he said, bowing profusely, and entirely missing Mrs. North’s erratic motion for the triplets to get up off the floor and scurry behind her.
Mrs. North greeted the man as if it wasn’t one bit unusual to magically pop into someone’s home without an invitation and drip rainwater all over their furnishings. “What brings you to Ink Hollow this morning, sir?” she asked.
The magician’s grin disappeared. He crossed his arms against his chest the way the triplets did when their mother announced bedtime. “Is the weather always this foul here? I have swept through the entire village and seen not one other soul! Indeed, the only living thing I came across were chickens. Wet, scraggly chickens that haven’t an ounce of appreciation for magic.”
Though Pippa could hear her knees knocking, Mrs. North’s voice was smooth and steady. “So are you on a magical tour, then?” she asked.
A dark shadow crossed over the magician’s face. “I should be, shouldn’t I? But alas, I am not.” He reached beneath the lapel of his jacket and pulled out a shiny gold badge. Even though Pippa had never seen one in person, she recognized it immediately as a Council badge. The magician sighed and continued, “I’m here, instead, on official Council business. You shall call me Council member Slickabee. I am the magicians’ representative on the Council, and today as you all must know is—”
“The examination for admittance to Peabody’s Academy for the Triumphant!” Louisa burst out from her position on the stairs. “Every
year, on the day of the exam, Council members travel far and wide to select suitable examinees. That’s why you’ve come to Ink Hollow, isn’t it?” With all eyes in the room fixed on her, Louisa’s cheeks flushed pink. “I—I only know because Jane and I were just looking through the Wanderly Whistle. There was an advertisement about it.”
The magician, or rather Council member Slickabee, looked long and hard at Louisa before regrettably shaking his head. With his lips set in a thin, determined line, he crossed closer to Jane, who was still caught in the kitchen doorway and clinging protectively to baby Rose. Council member Slickabee eyed the adorable, angel-faced baby—whom everyone in the North family readily agreed was by far the most extraordinary North of them all—and promptly wrinkled his nose. “Ugh! She smells like . . . old milk!”
“Yes, sir,” Jane replied, letting out a small sigh of relief. “No matter what we do, the smell insists on lingering.”
“Pity,” Council member Slickabee said before click-clacking his boots to where the triplets bounced eagerly up and down behind Mrs. North. Upon peering more closely at the boys, however, Council member Slickabee let out a croaking gasp and leaped backward.
“They all have the same face!” he exclaimed. He cast a suspicious glance in Mrs. North’s direction. “Why?”
Mrs. North tried her best not to look annoyed, but she wasn’t entirely successful. “They are triplets.”
Though Council member Slickabee’s eyes looked hopelessly dim, he forced his head into a knowing nod. “Triplets,” he mused. “Yes, I’ve heard of the place. Quite far away though, isn’t it?”
And that was the last ridiculous thing he said before his gaze came to rest on Pippa.
It lingered for a moment or two before he suddenly clasped his hands together in delight and cried, “You!”
Pippa looked immediately over her shoulder. But nobody else was there.
“Me?” she said, turning back around with a quizzical expression on her face.
“Her?” Louisa said, shoulders sagging just a hint.
