The Wizard Returns Read online

  The blue field gave way to rolling hills of flowers that moved like waves even though there was no wind, stretching all the way to the horizon on either side. In front of them loomed an immense black forest, with trees so tall that even at a distance Hex had to tilt his head all the way back to see where their inky tips speared the blue sky. As they drew closer, he saw that the trees grew so closely together they almost resembled a wall. The forest had an unmistakable air of menace—and they were unmistakably headed directly for it. “You want us to go in there?” Hex asked, trying to keep his voice casual, and though Pete’s back was to him he could hear the sneer in Pete’s response.

  “Don’t like it? Too bad.” After that, Hex resolved not to ask any more questions. His situation was bad enough without giving Pete any more opportunities to make him feel like a fool.

  Suddenly, an earsplitting howl echoed across the sea of flowers, and Hex saw half a dozen jagged black shapes bounding toward them through the blossoms at a terrifying speed—wolves, he thought, but like no wolves he had ever seen. They were twice as big, and from their brindled backs sprouted huge, leathery black bat wings that flapped madly as the animals raced toward them. Every so often one of the wolves would give its wings a tremendous pump, propelling itself several feet into the air and hurtling even more quickly toward them. “Wolves! Run,” Pete yelled, and took off for the forest. Hex didn’t need to be told twice. His throat closed up in terror as he ran after Pete. But the wolves were gaining on them; they would never make the forest in time. Pete risked a glance backward and stumbled. Hex, unable to stop his momentum, thumped into him, sending them both tumbling to the ground. Pete cursed aloud, and then the first of the wolves was upon them. Pete threw up his arms. A crackling curtain of purple energy sprang up behind them. The wolf skidded to a halt, but too late: it crashed into Pete’s magical wall and yelped frantically as its fur caught fire. Pete scrambled to his feet, dragging Hex up with him. The other wolves had stopped, eyeing the wall of magic warily, but one of them was already trying to push through, and Hex saw in horror that rather than burning its snout, the wall was beginning to give. “That’s not going to hold them,” Pete gasped. “Come on.”

  Hex was pretty sure he had never run so hard in his life—of course, he couldn’t remember, but it didn’t seem likely. Behind him, he heard a triumphant yip, and knew one of the wolves must have broken through Pete’s spell. He put his head down and pumped his legs harder. “Almost there,” Pete said at his side. Dimly, Hex realized that Pete had slowed down to match his pace. And then the wall of trees reared up before them, and Hex nearly crashed into one of the enormous trunks before Pete grabbed his arm and pushed him at a narrow opening between two trees. Up close, the forest was more like a fortress. The huge trees loomed over them, sinister and forbidding, like an army of conjoined soldiers forming a hermetically sealed barricade. Hex struggled to squeeze through the trees. The wolves had reached them; Pete held them off with crackling sparks of magic, but they were so close Hex could smell their awful, meaty breath and see the serrated edges of their huge fangs as they snarled. One leapt through the magical barrier, yowling but undeterred as its fur caught fire, and Hex hurled a rock at the wolf with all his might, hitting it squarely on the nose. It jumped back, growling. “Go!” Pete yelled, giving him one final shove, and with that Hex popped through the wall of trees and tumbled to the ground on the far side. Pete heaved himself through the opening after him, landing on top of him as the trunks snapped together like a door slamming. First one, then several more disappointed howls rose up on the other side of the wall. Hex lay where he had fallen, gasping for breath. They had done it. They were safe.

  Something sharp jabbed him in the neck and he looked up. A monkey loomed over him, dressed incongruously in a velvet jacket and neatly tailored velvet pants. A small, red velvet fez with an ostentatious black tassel sat at a rakish angle on its head, and a pair of pince-nez was perched on the end of its nose. The sight was so ridiculous that Hex would have laughed. Except the monkey was holding a very serious-looking spear, and the business end of the spear was shoved up against Hex’s throat. Hex turned his head just enough to look for Pete; maybe he had some idea what was going on. But Pete had vanished as if into thin air, leaving him alone with a crazed overdressed monkey on the verge of impaling him.

  “Who the hell,” the monkey said, “are you?”

  FOUR

  “I’m just a traveler,” Hex whispered, barely able to get the words out past the pressure of the monkey’s spear. It seemed like a bad time to explain that he had no more idea than the monkey did who he was or what he was doing here.

  “What, like a tourist?” The monkey snorted. “Are you kidding? Nobody comes here without a reason. What do you think this is, the Riviera? Look around you, human.” If Hex had tried to look around, the monkey’s spear would have decapitated him, but now did not seem the best time to point out this small fact.

  “I came with a—” He faltered. A what? Pete was hardly his friend. “A guide,” he wheezed.

  “Don’t you think I would have noticed two of you?”

  “I don’t know where he is. He was just with me, I swear it. I lost my memories in the poppy fields, and he—”

  “Oh, great,” the monkey groaned. “A delusional hallucinating junkie. Just what we need. As if Oz isn’t going to hell in a handbasket already. Do you even know how busy I am right now? I’ve got fourteen reports to finish by the end of the week, and my boss is on a rampage, I have all this data on the rival factions and no one will listen to me when I point out their strategic flaws because they say my methods are too newfangled, as if we’re supposed to just swing around in trees hooting for the rest of our—” The monkey sighed deeply in frustration. “Anyway, what am I supposed to do with you?”

  “You could move that spear,” Hex whispered. The monkey scowled down at him, but it lessened the pressure of the spear a little and gestured roughly for him to sit up.

  “Thank you,” Hex said in a normal voice, gingerly rubbing his throat.

  “Don’t thank me just yet,” the monkey said curtly. “Dealing with you is way over my pay grade. I think it’s time for your first audience with the queen, human. Get up.”

  The monkey kept the spear trained on him as he cautiously got to his feet, surreptitiously looking around for Pete. There was no doubt about it: the mysterious boy had vanished. He was totally on his own—and he had no idea why he was even here or what he was supposed to do next. “Thanks a lot,” he muttered under his breath, but the monkey heard him.

  “Are you sassing me?” it snapped. “I’ve always thought humans were stupid, but you seem to be an extra-special case of idiot. Can’t you see I’m a fierce warrior?” The monkey waved its spear threateningly. Hex considered responding to this, and then decided his safety was worth more than his dignity—for now anyway. “Come on. I don’t have all day. If you hold me back I’ll make you finish my statistics reports—and believe me, anyone as dumb as you won’t make it through the first of my equations. Customized them all myself. You wouldn’t be able to make head nor tail of them.” The monkey poked him firmly, and Hex obediently began to walk. On this side of the wooded wall, the forest looked a little more like an ordinary jungle. Heavy green vines dangled from the treetop canopy far overhead. Brightly colored birds flitted past in a whoosh of jasmine-scented air. The ground was covered with thick, broad-leaved plants that gleamed wetly in the dim green light that filtered through the branches. It was a beautiful place, actually, although his first choice of companion would definitely not have been a talking monkey with an itchy trigger finger.

  After they had been walking a little while—the monkey’s spear at his back the whole time—they came to an immense rock face. At its base, a monkey-high crack fissured the rock. Hex could see light on the other side. “In you go,” the monkey said. “Better duck. You don’t want to lose your head until Queen Lulu decides it’s time.” It cackled hysterically. Hex, gritting his teeth,
stooped low enough to clear the top of the natural doorway. The monkey followed him nimbly. Hex caught sight of the scene around him and stopped short, his jaw dropping in awe.

  The monkey village looked like some little kid’s dream. Hundreds of feet up, the huge trees were filled with wooden houses that seemed to grow directly out of the trunks. The houses were connected by an intricate system of hanging walkways that swayed gently in the breeze. And there were monkeys everywhere: monkeys swinging from vines, monkeys leaning out the windows of their little houses, monkeys hurrying along the walkways, monkeys lounging on park-like platforms where bright flowers grew in carefully tended patches. Even from the forest floor Hex could see they were all dressed, like his captor, in well-fitted but incongruous clothes. He made out monkeys in suits, monkeys in dresses, monkeys in uniforms—even one lone monkey in a wedding dress and veil, looking for all the world like a monkey cupcake. His captor did not allow him much time to look around, shoving him roughly forward. “No funny business on the stairs,” the monkey snapped, pushing him to a perilous-looking staircase that wound its way up from the ground, looping dozens of times around the trunk of one of the trees until it reached the dizzying heights of the forest canopy. “You’re my first prisoner, and I’m not going to lose you! Finally, the queen will have to pay attention to me. I’ve captured a human! You’ll probably be executed! Everyone will take me seriously!”

  The staircase didn’t even have a railing; each of its steps had been cleverly wedged into the living wood of the tree itself. Hex swallowed past the lump in his throat, wondering if his former self had been as afraid of heights as his present self was. He took a deep breath and started up the stairs.

  The climb was a nightmare. As he made his way up the staircase, the insistent breeze tugged at his limbs and threw him off balance. Behind him, the monkey, obviously enjoying his palpable fear, alternated between laughing at him and poking him in the back with the spear, more than once almost causing him to lose his footing. With no railing, he could only cling desperately to the rough bark of the tree as he made his way up.

  At last, after what felt like a century, the staircase joined up with one of the hanging walkways. Hex collapsed on the slats, not even caring anymore if the monkey stabbed him in the back. The narrow, dangling walkway, swaying alarmingly under his weight, was hardly the safest place, but after the staircase it seemed as good as solid ground.

  “Well, well, well,” the monkey said behind him, a note of grudging admiration in its voice. “You’re made out of sterner stuff than you look. I didn’t think you’d make it. We always end up having to carry humans the last part of the way. Trial by fire, they say. Pain in the ass, I tell you, and if you ask me it’s an outdated system, but nobody asks me anything around here. I have so many ideas about streamlining efficiency and data management—you should see the spreadsheet I designed last week—but they don’t even care. ‘Not the monkey way,’ they tell me. As if we should be stuck living in this backward—”

  Hex interrupted the monkey’s beleaguered monologue. “The stairs are a trial? You mean the monkeys don’t use them?”

  The monkey shot him an amused glance. “Are you kidding? We use the elevator. Look, I’m sure the queen is going to execute you—probably even with torture. Since you won’t live to see tonight, we might as well introduce ourselves. I’m Iris.” Hex gaped stupidly at the monkey.

  “Iris? But that’s a girl’s name.”

  The monkey gave him another look, this time one of disdain. “Because I am a girl, you moron. You think only men can crunch numbers and be honored members of the queen’s guard?” Iris brandished the spear at him.

  “No!” Hex yelped hastily. “No. Of course not. Forgive me.” Apparently mollified, Iris looked at him expectantly. “Oh, right,” he said. “I’m Hex. Sorry.” Iris offered him a paw and he shook it gravely.

  “Pleased to meet you, Hex,” she said. “And now it’s time for me to escort you to your doom.”

  FIVE

  To reach the monkey queen’s palace, Hex had to climb yet another flight of stairs. This one, however, wasn’t half as bad as the first; there was even a handrail. His fear of heights had settled into a kind of numb dread in his belly. Soon enough he’d be swinging around on vines like the monkeys themselves, he thought drily. Iris’s attitude had improved considerably since their formal introduction. She was whistling cheerfully behind him, and, though he had no doubt she’d be delighted to stick him again if he made any attempt to flee, she had laid off poking him with the spear.

  The queen’s palace was a hut, a little larger and grander than the others Hex had seen but otherwise unremarkable. It sat in the center of a broad platform of planks that had been built above the treetops. From the platform, Hex could see for miles in every direction. There was the wall of trees, and just beyond it the heaving sea of flowers where the wolves had attacked; there was the blue plain he had crossed with Pete, and in the distance he could see the crimson splatter of the poppy field. He thought wistfully of how wonderful it would be to be back there again, nodding off under a huge red flower without a care in the world, but there wasn’t much point in longing for something that clearly wasn’t going to happen anytime soon. He wondered again what had happened to Pete. Had he been captured by the monkeys, too? But Iris’s disbelief had seemed genuine when she’d found him just after the wolf attack, and surely he would have seen if someone else had abducted Pete after they’d escaped from the wolves. No, Pete had abandoned him. Did this have something to do with the mysterious test he was supposed to take? Either way, he was on his own, and there was nothing he could do about it.

  Iris cleared her throat loudly, and Hex realized he’d been staring off into space like an idiot. “Sorry,” he mumbled, slouching toward the door at Iris’s prompting. The hut was windowless, its smooth round walls interrupted only by a single door—monkey height, like everything else in the village.

  “Go on,” Iris said impatiently, and he stooped and entered.

  The inside of the hut belied its humble exterior. Its smooth, round walls were painted an eye-searing yellow; here and there, the yellow was augmented by even brighter murals depicting the queen floating regally over her subjects, outfitted for battle, and surrounded by bunches of bananas that looked—well, as though they had been finger painted by a monkey. An elaborate chandelier hung from the low ceiling, looking rather out of place. It had no doubt once been very fine, but was now bedecked with dried banana peels in various stages of decay.

  Queen Lulu herself was lounging against a raft of brightly colored pillows with a surprising amount of dignity for a ridiculously dressed monkey. She wore a vibrant, ruffled pink dress, leopard-print stockings, and rhinestone-studded sandals, and her eyes were hidden behind enormous sunglasses. In one hand she held a jeweled scepter; in the other, a half-eaten banana, which she was busily gnawing. She swallowed the last bites as Hex approached the throne and chucked the peel up at the chandelier, where it added to the collection.

  He had never met a royal monkey before, but it seemed prudent to err on the side of caution. He executed a sweeping bow, so low his forehead nearly brushed his shins, and the queen grunted with approval through a mouthful of banana. “This one has manners, at least,” she said. Her voice was rough and heavily accented—and strangely familiar. Staring at her, he thought he’d surely seen her before—and then a flash of memory leapt to the surface of his mind. A stooped, haggard old woman in a black hat—he was giving her a shapeless old felt hat that he knew was terribly important despite its appearance. “This seals our bargain,” the old woman hissed. “Giving me control of the monkeys? You’re even crueler than I am, human, and that’s saying something. They must raise you differently in the Other Place.” And then the memory was gone as quickly as it had come, but looking at the queen, he was flooded with a sudden sense of sick, terrible shame. The hat had had some kind of power over the monkeys, and it had been his. Why had he given it away? What had his past self done? />
  The queen was looking at him quizzically, and it was evident that whatever he had done, she had no memory of it—or, more likely, she didn’t recognize him thanks to Pete’s transformation spell. He patted his cheeks cautiously. The soreness was gone, but their shape was still unfamiliar. The queen was still staring at him, and he realized he was behaving like a lunatic.

  “Er, Your Royal, um, Highness,” he stammered. “May your, uh, bananas be plentiful and the branches that hold your houses aloft remain strong.”

  The queen raised an eyebrow. “Well, you’re an odd duck, but you’re charming enough,” she said. “Where’d you find this one, Iris?”

  “I caught him trying to invade!” Iris piped up excitedly. “At the Wolf Gate! I think he might be a barbarian! He tried to tell me some nonsense story about a guide, but he’s clearly a spy.”

  “A barbarian or a spy?” Queen Lulu asked drily, bemused by Iris’s enthusiasm. “How perfectly terrifying.”

  “He could be both!”

  “I’m neither!” Hex protested. “I’m only trying to—” What was he even trying to do? Without Pete, he was at a loss.

  “I think we should execute him!” Iris was bouncing up and down on her heels in excitement. “For treachery! I mean treason!”

  The queen reclined even further and waved a paw. Another monkey—this one dressed in a black velvet suit with a dapper red ascot—sauntered out of the shadows, bringing her a fresh banana, which she peeled languidly. He shot Iris an unmistakably evil look, which Iris returned haughtily. “Iris, calm yourself,” the queen said. “We haven’t executed a human in—well, we haven’t executed anyone ever.”

  “Think how fun it would be!” Iris squealed in glee. “May I be the executioner, Your Majesty?”

  “Be silent, you little fool,” snapped the monkey in black. Iris drew back, an expression of genuine hurt flashing across her face.