by Temre Beltz
Master Von Hollow reached beneath the fold of his cape. He emerged with a swirling vial of the Black Wreath potion—a vial nearly three times the size of the one he’d poured onto the brim of his hat when he made Pippa, Oliver, and Ferdinand disappear.
Pippa took a deep breath and sprang up from where she lay hidden in the shadows. She didn’t have any plan other than to tackle Master Von Hollow with all her might and hope it was enough to send the Black Wreath hurtling out of his grip. But as she lunged in Master Von Hollow’s direction, he whipped around to face her. He quickly stuffed the vial of the Black Wreath beneath his lapel and caught Pippa by the shoulders.
“HELP!” Pippa shouted desperately. But no one could hear her over the screaming of the audience as the dragon prowled about the lawn, and Pippa’s friends shuffled bravely toward it with their umbrellas drawn.
“Honestly, Pippa, this is starting to get very annoying,” Master Von Hollow growled into her ear. And in his eyes Pippa could see a reflection of fire.
Pippa whipped her head around and there, on the front lawn of Castle Cressida, the shrubs were burning.
“But . . . how can that be?” she said, aghast. “I—I thought an illusion couldn’t hurt us. I thought they weren’t real!”
“Of course they’re real, because fear is real,” Master Von Hollow said, his tone chilling. “And the amount of fear a creature like this generates in an audience this large is nearly impossible to overcome. It would take something ridiculously brave to destroy it, and I hear that’s very difficult to find up here.” Master Von Hollow licked his lips. “But just in case, let’s seal the deal, shall we? I would like you to join me onstage now as my assistant. This will be a clear signal to the Triumphants that they have no choice but to do as I say!”
Pippa was horrified. “No,” she choked out, struggling to free herself from his grip. But when a familiar cry rose up from the crowd, Pippa’s heart sank. It was Rose. Baby Rose. Her sister was being held up in the air by the magician known as Razzle, and Rose just so happened to be hat-size.
“Razzle can make her disappear even without a potion,” Master Von Hollow said. “And I’m sure you don’t want to see her separated from her mummy now, do you?”
And he was right. Pippa could see her mother standing alongside her father. Their faces were stricken, but they were bound so tightly by the magician’s thread that when Pippa’s father attempted to lunge at Razzle, he crashed helplessly against the ground. Razzle dipped a wailing Baby Rose lower into his hat.
“No!” Pippa begged. “No, you mustn’t!”
Even among all the shouting, even with the dragon setting the lawn ablaze, Pippa could pick out the anguished cries of her family. With tears streaming down her cheeks, she fell down to her knees. It was more than she could bear. And she found herself wondering if perhaps she should accept Master Von Hollow’s offer. Perhaps if she agreed to be his assistant, it might spare some of his wrath against not only Rose but others too. Regardless, she had to do something.
Pippa drew in a shaky breath. She tried to stand. But then a sound rolled out over Triumph Mountain. A sound that was not the fire-breathing dragon.
It was Castle Cressida. This time Castle Cressida wasn’t settling into its foundation and causing the ground to rumble, but puffing itself up, soaring, reaching, striving, until in one loud burst a deafening blare of trumpets exploded over the landscape.
Pippa marveled.
Castle Cressida did have a warning system; it had just gone so long without any real reason to sound its cry that it had forgotten it even existed at all. But on that night it remembered. On that night Castle Cressida did precisely what it was built to do, and on that night, because of Oliver’s sacrifice, Castle Cressida’s call was answered.
The outline of a flaming mane and tail emerged from the Triumphant Training Forest.
“Ferdinand!” Pippa cried out. She could scarcely believe it! Ferdinand was here; Ferdinand hadn’t gone scuttling off to some unknown location but had made it to Triumph Mountain. Oliver had managed to save not just Pippa . . . but Ferdinand too. And Ferdinand’s timing couldn’t have been better.
What Pippa wasn’t at all prepared to see, however, was another mane and tail bursting into flame fifteen feet away from Ferdinand. And then five feet away . . . another mane and tail caught fire. And another, and another, and another, until Ferdinand and his entire herd stood poised at the edge of the forest in all of their flaming glory. Pippa gasped for breath. She was certain she’d never seen anything so beautiful. And she knew now why no one had ever thought to represent the fire horses as being small in stature. When they were together as they were meant to be, when they were planted on the soil they were meant to defend and in the presence of true heroes, their flames combined to create one enormous aura of light.
Beside Pippa, a strange choking noise erupted from Master Von Hollow’s throat.
But he didn’t have time to say a word before the fire horses charged. They galloped full speed across the front lawn of Castle Cressida. Castle Cressida puffed another deafening round of trumpet blasts, and the audience all cheered. At the sight of the fire horses blazing past, Pippa’s friends raised their umbrellas up to the sky and began to jump up and down in celebration. The entire mountain held its breath as the fire horses barreled headfirst into the dragon, and it disappeared in a giant blast of crackling red smoke that reached all the way to the sky.
Before the smoke had time to clear, Pippa struck Master Von Hollow’s vial of the Black Wreath. It tumbled free of his jacket and shattered on the floor with a sizzling hisssssssss. And Master Von Hollow did exactly the sort of thing a villain like Master Von Hollow would: he abandoned his fellow magicians. He brought his fingertips to the brim of his hat and—
This time, quite surprisingly, it was Council member Slickabee who stopped Master Von Hollow. He knocked Master Von Hollow’s hat right off his head! It tumbled off the stage and rolled at the feet of the other magicians, who were busy doing precisely what Master Von Hollow had attempted to do, but with greater success: disappear.
“You clumsy fool! What is wrong with you, Gulliver?” Master Von Hollow shrieked.
But Council member Slickabee merely clasped his hand around Master Von Hollow’s wrist. “I spent years working my way into a Council position. And right now it seems like staying in one is my best option. The tides have turned rather quickly, Victor. And it seems I have no other choice but to sentence you to a Council detention on account of treason.”
Council member Slickabee tilted his head and shouted at the magician named Razzle, who had sheepishly placed baby Rose back in Pippa’s mother’s arms, “You’re not going anywhere, Razzle! You’ve got an entire audience full of people that you and only you can untie. If you do so satisfactorily, I’ll make note of that to the Council. Oh, and I’ll take your hat too, please.”
A very flustered-looking Magician Razzle tossed his hat toward the stage while Master Von Hollow huffed. “You won’t be able to get away with this, Gulliver! You were a part of every planning committee; you were an indispensable part of the plan!”
“Yes, I was,” Council member Slickabee said, “and wasn’t I the perfect undercover agent? At least that’s the way it looks anyhow, and we all know there’s nothing more important to the Chancellor than a neat and tidy appearance. It’s much easier to place the blame on one rogue mastermind than an entire swamp full of magicians, isn’t it? Who’s the most distinguished magician now, hmm?”
Before long, the majority of Triumphants and their families had been untied and the magician’s thread handily wound up and collected by Ms. Bravo. Castle Cressida’s front lawn was awash with a chorus of victorious whooping, joyous greeting, and deep sighs of relief. Pippa stood on tiptoe, certain it shouldn’t be that hard to pick out a family of nine even among the large crowd, but when she felt a warm hand on her back she knew in an instant she had been found.
Pippa felt her feet lift right off the ground as her father�
��s arms wrapped tight around her, and he spun her in the air, much to the triplets’ delight. As she twirled, Pippa felt the heavy weight of all those days away from home slip right off her shoulders. Pippa’s father set her down and the North family simply drew near, pressed near, and surrounded her. Tears streamed down Pippa’s face, because in the entire kingdom of Wanderly there was only one Mother and one Father, only one Charlie, Jane, and Louisa, only one Artie, Miles, and Finn, and certainly only one baby Rose. The North family. They were hers and she was theirs, and at last, they were back together.
Artie tugged on Pippa’s hand. “Why Pippa sad?” he asked, looking up at her. “Pippa a hero!” At which Miles and Finn joined in, chanting enthusiastically, “Pippa a hero! Pippa a hero!”
“I’m not sad, Artie,” Pippa said, smiling through her tears. “In fact, I’m quite certain I’m the happiest I’ve ever been.”
To her right, Louisa’s shoulders slumped a bit. “Is that because you’re a Triumphant? Triumphants always get the happiest endings, right?”
Pippa squeezed Louisa’s hand. “Not at all. It’s because I already had the happiest ending I could ever imagine—being with all of you—and I was afraid I’d lost you forever.”
Louisa’s eyes widened. “Us? You think we’re the best thing in Wanderly?” She glanced down at the triplets, who had already grown a bit bored with the reunion and had dropped down to search for interesting things like slugs and beetles in the grass.
Louisa wrinkled her nose, and Pippa giggled. “You’d be surprised what life is really like up here on Triumph Mountain. And how there’s no place like home.”
Pippa’s oldest brother, Charlie, tugged on her ponytail, while Jane slipped her arm through Pippa’s. Rose gurgled and blew little bubbles and didn’t make even a hint of a protest though she was likely awfully hungry (because, indeed, she was always hungry). Pippa’s mother kissed Pippa fiercely on the top of her head.
“Nothing was the same without you, absolutely nothing,” she said.
“Really?” Pippa asked in a small voice. “I figured with nine of you left, it’d be easy to sort of, you know, fill in the gap. . . .”
Jane snorted. “Ha! Gap? More like gaping ravine. I never realized all that you did to help Mother, Pippa. If she asked me one more time to fold Father’s socks—” Jane stopped abruptly at the impeccable arch of their mother’s eyebrow. She cleared her throat. “As I was saying, if Mother asked me one more time to fold Father’s socks, I would have been happy to do it.”
Pippa’s mother nodded approvingly, and then gently cupped Pippa’s cheek in her hand. “But if you hadn’t been here at Peabody’s Academy for the Triumphant, I’m not sure anything would have been the same for the entire kingdom. I want you back in Ink Hollow more than anything, Pippa, but I think it’s also important you know that family is one of those things that cannot be lost. No matter where you go.”
Pippa bit her lip. “I—I think I know that now. I felt it, when I was here and so far away. But there’s nothing like having a hug every now and again, is there?”
“Nothing at all,” Pippa’s mother agreed, and she pressed Pippa so close against her chest that Pippa could hear her heart beating, and everything at last seemed right with the world, except for one thing.
“Mother,” Pippa said, pulling gently away, “there is something I need to do. Would you mind if I excused myself for a bit?”
Pippa’s mother squeezed her shoulder while Jane and Louisa began strolling toward the glittering front steps, pointing and gushing and oohing over “just how lovely everything is!” much to Castle Cressida’s delight.
“Don’t worry about us,” Pippa’s mother said. “We should have more than enough to do.”
Without another word, Pippa ran toward Ms. Bravo, who was busy reassuring the Triumphant families that the situation hadn’t been nearly so dangerous as it appeared. One of them was a woman who bore the same exact nose as Prudence and a scowl to match. “Hmph! I suppose there was something to that Pippa girl, then, wasn’t there?” she said pointedly. Ms. Bravo looked more than a bit relieved when Pippa touched her gently on the arm.
“Ms. Bravo,” Pippa whispered. “I need your help with something. It-it’s important.”
“Certainly,” Ms. Bravo said. She excused herself from the crowd and followed Pippa, who sped up to a slow jog. A short distance away, Maisy and Ernest spotted them and hurried to catch up.
“Where are you going, Pippa?” Maisy asked. “Is something the matter?”
Pippa swallowed back the knot in her throat because something very much was the matter, but she also had the faintest, smallest twinge of hope, and she didn’t want to do anything to squelch it. “Come on,” she said, and she ran faster until they all four skidded to a halt in front of the statue of Oliver.
Sheltered beneath the trees, with the hat he’d spent a lifetime longing for perched on his head, with Triumph Mountain as it should be, he almost looked content. Pippa’s chest squeezed tight. She looked over at Ms. Bravo, whose eyes glistened with tears.
“So he used the Black Wreath after all,” she said softly. “It’s amazing what something dark can do when someone is bent on using it for good.” Ms. Bravo’s shoulders collapsed. “Oh, Pippa, I am so, so . . . sorry.”
Pippa’s heart skipped a beat. Ms. Bravo was a Triumphant. Ms. Bravo had always been the one she could count on. Of course she was sorry, but wasn’t there something she could do?
“You can’t bring him back?” Pippa asked. “You can’t unfreeze him or reverse the effects or do anything at all?”
“I’m a Triumphant, Pippa. I’m just like you. I haven’t any magic, and even if I did, I’m not sure that’s the way magic works, even in Wanderly.”
“Excuse me, pardon me,” Maisy said, brushing in front of them and drawing near to Oliver. With her lips pressed determinedly together, she buried her ear against his chest. And her face lit up. Her eyes sparkled, and her cheeks flushed a perfect shade of rosy.
“I hear his heartbeat!” she exclaimed. “It’s faint, but I can hear it. If his heart’s beating, that means there’s still a chance.” She whirled around to face Ms. Bravo, gesturing excitedly. “Ms. Bravo, as the resident fairy godmother in training at Peabody’s Academy for the Triumphant, I am quite certain this is nothing more than a very sophisticated sleeping curse. But in order to wake him, I will need to undo magic that’s already been set in place. That will require Council authorization.” Maisy paused. She took a deep breath. “Do I have your permission?”
Ms. Bravo looked to Pippa with a questioning expression. “Fairy godmother in training?”
Pippa nodded. “We couldn’t have done any of this without her, Ms. Bravo. Please let her try. She’s been waiting a long time for this.”
“But she doesn’t even have a wand!” Ms. Bravo said.
Maisy proudly held up her wooden spoon. “You’d be surprised what this can do, Ms. Bravo.”
With Ernest, Maisy, and Pippa watching her expectantly, Ms. Bravo let out a sigh and nodded her head. “I never imagined I’d be surrounded by so many precocious children,” she muttered.
Maisy, meanwhile, began walking circles around Oliver. She removed the hat from the top of his head. She waved her spoon up, down, and all around, and then came to stand just in front of him. She closed her eyes; she laid her wooden spoon on his shoulder; and when she did, everything around them began to stir. The Winds of Wanderly rolled near. They slipped through the leaves on the trees, they rustled the folds of their capes, they playfully skipped over the tops of their heads. And then, as Oliver began to stir awake beneath Maisy’s magic, the Winds swept over him, gently blowing away the layers of crumbling stone and scattering it through the air like nothing more than a bit of harmless dust.
Oliver opened his eyes.
Maisy squealed.
Ms. Bravo gasped.
And Pippa rushed at Oliver, nearly knocking him to the ground. “You’re alive! Oh, Oliver, you’re alive!” At
the same time, Ms. Bravo asked incredulously, “Do you mind if I take a look at that cooking spoon of yours?”
Oliver meanwhile looked down at his hands. He wriggled his fingers. He brought them to the top of his head and, feeling the absence of a hat, he looked down at where Maisy had placed it beside him. His face broke into a wide grin. “Would it be weird to say that for the rest of my life, I hope I never ever have to wear a hat again?”
“Not weird in the slightest! Isn’t that what I’ve been trying to tell you all this time?” Pippa asked.
Oliver looked right at Pippa. “I’d have to say that depends.”
“Depends on what?” Pippa asked.
“On whether you finally believe me that you’re a real hero.”
Ernest slid his glasses up along the bridge of his nose and cleared his throat. “I would just like to take this moment to say that I was the one who said it first. I’m claiming full responsibility for Pippa’s hero status.”
Ms. Bravo snorted. “Let’s not forget our manners, children. Wasn’t I the one who chose Pippa at the examination for admittance to Peabody’s Academy for the Triumphant?”40
Pippa was thoroughly mortified. “I am not hearing this conversation. I cannot believe this is a conversation that anyone is having.”
“In all seriousness, though, Pippa, great things were accomplished today on this mountain. By each one of you.” Ms. Bravo paused. She looked directly at Oliver, Maisy, Ernest, and finally, Pippa. “I know all you’ve ever wanted to do was go home, but I do hope you’ll consider what it would mean to the kingdom if you stayed. Not to mention, I promise to establish regular family visiting hours immediately, among quite a great many other things that need serious attention.”
Pippa looked down at her feet. She’d spent so many hours imagining her feet running away, running home, and never once returning. How could so much have changed in so little time? How could she really, seriously, be considering that she belonged at a place like Peabody’s Academy for the Triumphant? But maybe, on this day, she just needed to take a single step. Maybe she could handle that.
