Professor Manley’s eggish head shivered as if it might explode. “Suit yourself,” he snarled, stomping into the tunnel, now three pairs of feet chasing him.
Make that four.
“Ain’t leavin’ me behind!”
Agatha spun to see Hort bundling after Sophie, half-naked and barefoot. “Not this time, Fatima! Not ever!” the weasel spewed.
Sophie blinked at him. “Who in lord’s name is Fatima?”
“Don’t ask,” said Agatha, pulling her best friend ahead.
HIGH IN THE School Master’s tower, the Storian was paused over a nearly blank page. Professor Manley looked down at it, Agatha and her friends circled around him.
There was no painting. No scene.
Only a single line, in bold, black script beneath the empty space.
“There was a way.”
Tedros frowned. “That’s it? That’s all it says?”
“How is that supposed to help us?” Sophie asked Manley.
“What good is a ‘way’ if we don’t know what it is?” Hort piled on.
Agatha had the same questions.
Then, suddenly, the Storian began to glow.
A deep, urgent gold.
The ring on Tedros’ finger began to glow the same hue.
Tedros’ eyes widened. “What’s happening—”
The glowing Storian stabbed down to the page, inking a painting in furious sweeps of color. A painting of Agatha and Tedros in this very tower. The couple was standing at the back window, the prince’s arm around her waist as Agatha clasped a baby to her chest, the two of them gazing into the sun.
Beneath the painting, the Pen’s words remained: “There was a way.”
Prince and princess looked at each other, baffled.
Agatha saw Manley peering at her intently, as if she already had the answers.
Then Agatha remembered.
The last time she was in this tower. It happened then too. The Storian painted something that had yet to take place. At the time, she’d questioned why the pen was acting out of turn. The Storian’s job was to write the story as it happened. But suddenly the pen was jumping ahead . . . warning them of dangers . . . guiding them to clues . . .
“Sometimes the story leads you,” Yuba the Gnome had told her.
Agatha examined the Pen closer.
“The Storian needs our help to keep it alive,” she said, studying its steel, a single swan left. Camelot’s swan. The last tether of the Pen’s power. “That’s why it’s helping us.”
“You’re not making sense,” Tedros dismissed, pointing at the painting. “How is this helping us?”
But Sophie seemed to understand. Sophie, who’d always had her own mysterious connection with the Storian, from the very first time she and her best friend had found it.
Sophie looked at the Pen . . .
Then at Agatha.
In a flash, the two girls were on the move, pushing Tedros towards the back window.
“We have to do it!” Sophie exerted.
“Do what?” the prince asked, mystified.
“Do the pose!” said Agatha, matching her stance in the painting, Merlin fussing against her shoulder. “Hold me the way you are in the painting, Tedros! Hurry!”
Tedros slung his arm around Agatha’s waist. “I really don’t get why—”
“Other side,” Sophie badgered.
Tedros growled, letting her position him, but Merlin twitched restlessly, delivering a slap to the prince’s eye. “Ow! Why’d you bring the damn baby! Get rid of him!”
“It’s Merlin!” Agatha barked.
“Shhh! Both of you!” Sophie snapped. “Now look out the window.”
Grumbling, Tedros angled towards the Woods, Agatha trying to subdue Merlin, while Sophie waited carefully out of frame.
Nothing happened.
Hort yawned against the wall. “I’ve seen a lot of daft things in my life but—”
Manley kicked him. “Stay focused,” the teacher directed Agatha and Tedros. “Follow the pen—”
The Storian crackled with blue static, pointing in Manley’s direction, as if he risked punishment by interfering any further.
And yet, he’d said all he needed to.
“When Man Becomes Pen,” Agatha remembered.
That was August Sader’s theory.
Man and Pen in balance.
A calm came over Agatha as she nestled against Tedros, the wizard baby settling down, taking her cue. Soon Agatha was as still as the Agatha in the painting. And with Agatha’s stillness, Tedros stopped fidgeting, too, and found his own place of quiet, their living selves in union with their ones on the page. Fate and free will in perfect flow, each feeding the other. The silence in the tower thickened, as if the story had taken a breath . . .
Then Agatha heard it.
A galloping sound below.
Tedros’ eyes widened.
Together, they looked out into the Woods . . . at the gates of the school flying open . . . a blur of motion rushing through . . .
A masked rider in black atop a horse.
No. Not a horse.
A camel.
It skidded to a stop at the edge of the lake, the rider standing atop its hump before tilting masked eyes up towards Agatha and Tedros in the tower window.
“Animals can help you if you help them. First thing I taught you at school!” a bright voice called. “You must have learned your lesson well.”
The rider took off the mask.
Princess Uma smiled. “Because this animal’s found a way to help you.”
The camel grinned, too, craning its head up to Agatha.
A camel Agatha knew.
A camel she’d saved from its own trap.
Now come to save her and her prince.
“Mama llama!” Merlin giggled. He pointed at the camel. “Llama! Llama!”
Agatha gaped at the baby.
“Definitely keeping him with us,” said Tedros.
15
SOPHIE
Trust Is the Way
“What do you suppose they’re talking about?” Sophie asked, watching Hort wrap his arms around Tedros in the sky while she wrapped her arms around Agatha on the ground.
“What do boys talk about at all?” Agatha replied, Merlin strapped to her back.
The camel could seat three, anticipating Agatha, Tedros, and Princess Uma as its passengers, only to be confronted with Sophie and Hort, too, plus a baby. When it became clear that Agatha wouldn’t leave Merlin, Sophie wouldn’t leave Agatha, and Hort wouldn’t leave Sophie, Princess Uma summoned a stymph to ride with the boys, tracking Agatha and Sophie from above, while the girls rode the camel below. (“I can ride with Sophie,” Hort volunteered. “And me with Agatha,” Tedros seconded. “Uma already assigned teams,” Sophie nipped.) As for their destination, they had no clue, because the camel refused to disclose it: “So no one can betray us to the enemy,” it told Uma. When the princess pressed the animal to at least reveal the way they were going or the way to save Agatha from the second test, the camel replied: “Trust is the way.”
“Or at least, that’s what I think it said,” Uma sighed later. “In Camel tongue, ‘trust’ and ‘death’ are the same word, though it’s safe to assume it meant the first over the second.”