by Alex Flinn
Travis shrugs. “Weird, right?”
I look up at the cottage. It’s stone, like Talia said, and at the top of the hill. And still as far away as ever. I shiver in another gust of wind.
“We have to keep walking,” I say.
After another five minutes, it’s almost completely dark. I hear Travis’s stomach growl.
“I am going back,” Cuthbert says. “There’s no way we shall reach it tonight. Look.” He gestures down the hill.
I look. We’re near the bottom, as if we’ve been sliding backward. Has someone placed a spell on this hill? Not impossible, not here. But if someone has, that someone must be Malvolia. That would mean I’m on the right track, that Talia’s here.
I look up at the top of the hill, at the cottage so far away. A light burns in one of the windows. Is Talia there? I remember what I saw in the chestnut tree. She is.
I make a decision. I turn to Pleasant, Cuthbert, and Travis. “Look, guys, why don’t you go back to the castle and have dinner?”
That’s all Pleasant and Cuthbert have to hear. They say their good-byes and go. Travis tries to protest. “Bud, if you want me to stay…”
“I don’t. I have a feeling this is something I need to do myself. All by myself.”
“Well, if you’re sure…” I can tell he’s dying to leave.
“I’m sure,” I say.
“Okay.” He turns and walks away before I can change my mind.
I keep going up the hill. The sun is down now, and the moon is barely a sliver. The only light is the light in the window of the cottage. I can see someone moving inside. Is it Talia?
I pass the wedge-shaped rock again.
“Are you messing with me?” I yell up toward the cottage.
No answer but the wind in the trees. It’s not that late. My body is still on Miami time, so it’s really not. But I’m hungry and tired from walking so far. I look at my watch. I’ve been walking uphill for four hours, wearing sneakers, getting nowhere.
An hour more. Then another in the pitch darkness. I can’t see where I’m walking, but once, I feel something sticky on the bottom of my shoe. Travis’s gum. I look up at the cottage, still so far away. This is the hardest I’ve ever worked, the most exhausted I’ve ever been. But still, I keep walking against the wind.
If Talia’s not here, then where is she? Did she run away in Miami because she didn’t want to go home? Could she be on the street somewhere? Could she be dead?
An hour later, I pass the same wedge-shaped rock. But something is different. By the dim light of the skinny moon, I can make out a shape lying beside it. I walk closer and reach out to touch it.
It’s a blanket and a pillow. There’s something attached to the blanket: a piece of paper. I take out my cell phone to use as a light.
Sleep, it says.
Although I want to resist, I can’t. I fall down almost like I’m fainting and go quickly to sleep.
But I don’t sleep well. I have this strange dream where I’m playing Jeopardy, and the host is this weird old woman in black. I know from Talia’s description that it’s Malvolia. We’re on Final Jeopardy, and the category is “Princess Talia.”
The old woman reads the question.
“What was the name of Talia’s art teacher?”
I look at her. “What if I don’t remember?”
She fixes me with a dark stare. “True love would remember.”
The other contestants, Pleasant and Cuthbert, are already writing. The Jeopardy music begins to play. When it’s almost over, I suddenly remember Meryl showing me the Wikipedia article yesterday.
I write, Carlo Maratti.
I wake with a start before I can find out if I got it right, if I won the game.
The sun has risen, and maybe it’s getting in my eyes, because now it looks like I’m a quarter of the way up the hill.
How did I get there? Did Malvolia really appear to me in my dream, the way she did to Talia? Did she ask me that question, and did I move closer because I got it right?
Beside me is a loaf of bread, a wedge of cheese, an apple, and a jug of water. Although it grosses me out to eat something that just appeared on the ground, I have no choice. I’m too hungry. I eat some of the bread and cheese, drink the water, and save the rest for later. I don’t take the blanket or pillow with me. They’re too heavy, and I hope not to need them. I begin to walk. As soon as I start, the wind, which had been silent, begins to howl again.
It’s just like yesterday, except now I’m closer to the cottage. It looks like a normal cottage, like every other cottage in Euphrasia. What if it’s just a mirage? I’m clearly hallucinating.
But the fullness in my stomach tells me I didn’t imagine the bread and cheese. I keep walking. I don’t see the gum or the wedge-shaped rock. Instead, there’s a line of bushes that looks like a dinosaur and a clump of blue flowers. I see them over and over, like I’m on a treadmill.
Again, at the end of the day, it gets dark. Again, I find the blanket and pillow. Again, I sleep.
This time, I’m playing Who Wants to Be a Millionaire. I’m on the million-dollar question, and it’s multiple-choice.
“What is Princess Talia’s fondest wish?” Malvolia reads. “A—to fall in love? B—to travel? C—to be a great queen? D—to please her father.”
They all seem like pretty good answers. She wants all those things. “I can’t decide.”
“Then you will fail.” Malvolia looks a lot happier about that than the host of Millionaire usually does. “Of course, you could take the prize you have already earned.”
“What’s that?” I ask.
“A first-class ticket back to Miami…with your father questioning why you wasted his time in this manner!”
I groan. “Hey, wait!” I try to remember when I watched this game. What were the rules? “Do I have any lifelines left?” I ask Malvolia.
She looks annoyed. “You can phone a friend.”
Phone a friend. Phone a friend. But who would I call? Travis is here in Euphrasia, and my other friends don’t even know Talia.
Then I have an inspiration. “Can I call Talia?”
Malvolia sighs. “She is on your list.”
I hear the sound of a ringing phone, then Talia answers. Thank God she remembered how to answer the phone. But where would she get a phone?
Oh, yeah. Dream.
“Hello?”
“Thirty seconds,” Malvolia says.
“Hey, Talia, I’m trying to get up this hill to save you, and I need to know: What’s your fondest wish? A—to fall in love? B—to travel? C—to be a great queen? D—to please your father?”
Talia laughs. “Oh, silly, you know the answer to that one.”
“No, I don’t. That’s why I called you.”
“But you do. I told you about it, remember?”
“No. No! Just tell me!” She’s maddening. But that’s Talia.
“When we went to get the passport, Jack. Think.”
The buzzer rings, and Malvolia says, “Time’s up. What is your answer?”
And suddenly I remember Talia, that day at the passport guy’s place. She was so excited about the airplane. She clapped her hands and said, “It is my fondest wish to travel!”
So that’s what I tell Malvolia. B. Final answer.
Again, I wake before I can find out if I got the question right, if I won the million dollars. Again, I look around and find that I have moved up the hill. Now I’m at the halfway point. There’s food and water. I eat and drink. I wonder if it’s even worth it to walk uphill, since by now I’m pretty sure that my getting there is more tied to answering questions in my dreams. But I have a feeling Malvolia wants me to walk. I’m tired and have muscle aches where I didn’t even know I had muscles. I need some Bengay bad.
But I walk. Everything swims in my head and I wonder what I’ll be asked next. I can barely concentrate for it. Still, I push uphill, against the wind.
When I collapse on the blanket for the third time,
I dream that I’m playing Trivial Pursuit with Malvolia. We’re sitting in my parents’ house, and I’m looking across the game board at her. We both have all the wedges, and I’m in the center of the board. Malvolia reads from her card.
“What is Princess Talia’s full name?”
“Full name? She had seven or eight of them!”
Malvolia holds up her hands. “’Tis difficult to win. Oh, and you must recite them in the correct order.”
“Wait a second,” I say. “I used to play this game with Meryl all the time. This isn’t how it works. I get to choose the category for the final question.”
Malvolia shrugs. “All right, then. Choose.”
“I want a sports question.”
She chuckles. “There is no sports category in this version of the game.”
“So it’s like, what, the Silver Screen edition?”
She hands me the box.
I read, Trivial Pursuit: Insanely Difficult Edition.
I look at the instructions for the list of categories:
Yellow—Neolithic Civilizations
Green—Theoretical Physics
Pink—Twelve-tone Composers
Blue—Sino-Tibetan Languages
Brown—The Norse Saga in Literature
Orange—Princess Talia
“Uh-huh,” I say.
Malvolia drums her fingers on the table. Her nails are long and purple. “Which category do you wish to try, then?”
“These are impossible.”
“Not if you are smart.”
Well, that kills it. “I’ll take the Princess Talia question. Just give me a minute.”
“Very well.”
She continues drumming her fingers on the table. I glare at her, and she stops but begins to whistle the Jeopardy theme song, like Meryl used to do when I was trying to think of the answers. I put my hands over my ears.
Talia Aurora. I remember Aurora for her grandmother. Then, there were three kings’ names, in alphabetical order. What were they?
“I’m gonna wi-in,” Malvolia chants.
“No, you’re not,” I snap.
“I think I am.”
I put my fingers in my ears and begin to hum. Talia Aurora Augusta… Three kings, then three queens.
“There is a time limit for this,” Malvolia says, loudly enough to be heard even with my ears stopped up.
“No, there isn’t.”
“Yes, there is.” She sounds exactly like Meryl.
I throw the rules at her. “Find it, then.”
“You lose points for your rudeness.”
“I’d be able to think better if you’d be quiet.”
She is, for a second while she examines the rules, and in that time, I hear Talia’s voice.
“Talia Aurora,” I repeat after her. “Augusta Ludwiga Wilhelmina Agnes Marie Rose…of Euphrasia.”
In an instant I am awake and three quarters of the way up the hill. There is no food beside me this time, and the wind howls louder than ever before. Is Malvolia angry that I got the hard question right? It doesn’t matter. I’m almost there, and I need to keep going.
This time, when I walk, I do get closer to the cottage. I see the distance closing, and I can examine everything more carefully. It’s just an ordinary cottage made of stone, with a thatched roof and big windows in the attic. Shouldn’t it be a dark castle like in The Wizard of Oz or maybe guarded by a three-headed dog like in Harry Potter? But it’s special, for now I know for sure that Talia’s inside.
Chapter 48:
Jack
I reach the top of the hill, the cottage door. A chill wind howls across me. The door flies open.
But how could it be open? It’s too easy.
I walk inside. There’s no Talia. No Talia. Instead, there’s only Malvolia, Malvolia in the flesh. I’ve never seen her, but I recognize her from her piercing, black eyes.
“Where’s Talia?” I say.
The old woman shakes her head. “She’s here, if you can get to her.”
“Get to her? I got past your never-ending hill. I answered your questions.”
She chuckles. “Mere trivia. To be worthy of a princess, one must face a dragon.”
“A dragon? I can’t…” I picture getting fried by a dragon. But then I think about it. I couldn’t answer any of those questions, either, and yet I did. I wouldn’t have thought I’d be able to walk uphill for three days, but I did. I was motivated, maybe for the first time in my life. So if I have to slay a dragon, maybe I can do that, too.
“Do I at least get a sword?” I say.
“’Tis not that kind of dragon,” she replies.
“Then what…?”
She moves aside to reveal a part of the room I hadn’t seen. It’s a sort of office setup with a desk and chair. In the chair sits my dad. He has a stack of paper about three feet high in front of him and another, marked URGENT, to the side.
“Can this wait, Jack?” He gestures toward his work. “I’m a little busy.”
“I didn’t…I came to find the princess. You know that.”
“To be worthy of a princess, you must face your dragon,” Malvolia says. “Your greatest fear.” She gestures toward my hands. I look down and see that I’m holding the notebook where I’ve been drawing my garden design. I glance at Dad, then at Malvolia. “You mean I have to show it to him?”
Malvolia nods. “Your greatest fear.”
Outside, the wind whistles through the trees. I take one step toward the desk. Then another. “Dad? I have to tell you something.”
Dad tears his eyes away from his work. “What is it?” He looks back at his papers. His phone and his cell phone both start ringing at the same time.
But I hold out the book. “I…it’s just something I’ve been fooling around with.”
Malvolia clears her throat, and when I turn, I see her disapproval.
“No, that’s wrong,” I say. “I’ve been working on this. It’s a design. My design for a garden.”
My dad opens it. For a long moment, I can only hear the pages and the wind outside. I can’t look at Dad, so I look out the window at the chestnut tree, the one I saw before with the streamer of green fabric blowing at the top. I’m sure now that Talia is here. She climbed the tree, like I taught her, and tied the green fabric to the branch, so I would see it, so I would come rescue her.
“So?” Dad says.
“So I want to do this,” I say, “to do landscape design. I’m good at it.”
Dad rolls his eyes. “You think so?”
I can tell he doesn’t, but I say, “Yeah, I do.”
And then the dragon does the thing I most feared. He doesn’t breathe fire. He laughs. Uproariously, as if he’s never heard anything more hilarious in his life. There are tears running down his face, and between gales of laughter, he says, “You, a landscape designer? You!”
“What’s wrong with it?” I fight the urge to stomp my foot. I’m reverting to infancy around my dad, but I know I have to hold my ground.
Dad clutches his sides to contain his hilarity. “I pay a guy fifty bucks a month who has more talent than you!” He holds out some brochures for business schools, brochures that seem to have materialized in a third big pile on his desk. “Here’s what you need, an education, a degree from a good school—I’ll pay someone off to make sure you get in and get through. And then, after that, I can get you a job.”
“You’ll get me a job? Why?”
“Haven’t you noticed, Jack? You’re a loser, a slacker. You’ve never succeeded in anything in your life, no matter how much we do for you. We have some hope for Meryl, but the only way you won’t be a complete embarrassment to your mother and me is if you let us control every aspect of your life.”
“That’s…” I feel wet heat behind my eyes, and I try to control it. I have to stay calm. “That’s not true.”
“Loser. Party boy. You couldn’t even get Amber to stay with you.”
“Amber?” This is so out of left field I don�
�t comprehend his words for a second. “I don’t even want Amber.”
“But you see, that’s what you do. Whenever anything gets difficult for you, you walk away, you give up. You couldn’t keep Amber, so now you want this girl. When you fail to save her and she dies, you’ll decide you didn’t like her, either. That’s just your way. You’ve never been serious about anything in your life. You’re a screwup.”
I can barely see his face through the clouds of anger inside me. How dare he say that about Talia? How dare he even compare her to Amber? “That isn’t true. I love Talia. I’m serious about her.”
Dad starts to laugh again, so hard I have to raise my voice to be heard over him.
“And I’m serious about this, too, about landscape design. This is what I’m going to do with my life. If I go to college, that’s what I’m going for.”
Dad stops laughing, and I think he’s finally hearing me. “Listen to me, Jack. If you’re serious, I’m going to get serious with you. To make it in a field like landscape design, you have to have talent. And the fact is, you don’t.” He reaches for my drawing, which is under a pile of B-school pamphlets. “This isn’t any good. It sucks.”
“It…” I stop. “What?”
“It sucks.”
Sucks? Dad would never say sucks.
And that’s when I realize this isn’t the real Dad. He’s just a fake thing, a test Malvolia came up with, like all the game shows. In fact, maybe this Dad is all in my head, my worst fears of Dad. In which case, the way to pass the test is by standing up to him. I take a deep breath.
“I’m sorry you think my design sucks…Dad. But that’s what I’m planning on doing with my life. And the other thing I’m planning on doing is rescuing Talia. So if you could please get out of my way, I’d really appreciate it.”
“You can’t speak that way to me. You can’t show such disrespect.” He’s tearing out what little hair he has with one hand while pushing papers to the floor with the other.
“I know you don’t really feel that way. You came all the way to Euphrasia. You wouldn’t have done that if you thought I was just a stupid slacker. And when I see the real you, I’ll be sure and show you my designs. I’m excited about them, and I bet you’ll like them, too. But now…”
