“Better than a moat!” Collin said happily.
“And much better than a volcano,” Marigold said. “Don’t you agree, Pettifog?”
The imp’s tail twitched. “Yes, but —”
“I’m improving,” she said. “At using the traveling powder, I mean.”
“Perhaps,” said Pettifog, “but —”
“So I must be more wicked than you think!”
“Princess!” said Pettifog. “Turn around.”
Grudgingly, Marigold did. There, in plain view beyond the edge of the wildwood, was Torville’s dank and dismal fortress. Marigold’s heart must still have been much larger than a currant, because she could feel it sinking in her chest. “Oh,” she said softly. “I see.”
Collin pushed his hood back and followed her gaze. “Don’t worry, Marigold,” he said. “Maybe we’ll reach Queen Hetty’s palace on our next try.”
His kindness only made Marigold feel worse. “Of course we’ll reach the palace!” she snapped. “I’ll get us to Blumontaine if I have to use the rest of Torville’s powder to do it.” She tipped a mound of the purple stuff into her palm. It was probably too much; the jar was a quarter empty now. But her pinches hadn’t been working, and she was thoroughly tired of watching her spells go wrong. “Blumontaine Palace!” she shouted, throwing the powder as high as she could.
“Wait!” shouted Collin. Too late, Marigold realized she hadn’t linked her arm with his. She grabbed onto his robes, but the cloth slipped through her fingers as the air around them turned purple.
The only thing Marigold noticed at first was the cold. There were three kinds of it, all at once: the kind of cold that bit at her cheeks, the kind that set her bones chattering, and the kind that seeped through her boots. The ground beneath her feet was covered with snow; a fierce wind blew around her shoulders. She was on the steep slope of a hillside, and she was entirely alone.
“No, no, no,” Marigold whispered. She looked behind her, where the crags and peaks of mountains filled up most of the space that should have been sky. She looked into the valley below her, where dirt roads wound past grassy meadows and little farmsteads. She didn’t know exactly where she’d ended up, but she certainly wasn’t at Blumontaine Palace, and she couldn’t see Collin or Pettifog anywhere.
She could hear something, though — a steady, mechanical rumble, coming closer on the back of the wind. “Hello?” she shouted. “Pettifog? Collin, is that you?” The noise didn’t sound anything like Collin’s footsteps or the flapping of Pettifog’s wings, but she couldn’t imagine who else — or what else — might be out on this hillside, moving through the snow.
Soon, through the stubby trees, a remarkable contraption appeared. It was a carriage, a motorized one like the palace coach Marigold had ridden in before, but smaller and painted a gleaming white. The roof of the coach was open — Marigold couldn’t imagine why, in weather like this — and its wheels rolled easily across the snow, although there didn’t seem to be any sort of road for it to follow. The driver was a man with a neatly trimmed white beard, improbably dressed in a suit as white and expensive-looking as his coach, with white furs draped across his legs and a white top hat that didn’t budge from its perch on his head, even though the wind was growing stronger. Marigold stared.
The carriage squealed to a halt as the man in white noticed her. If he was surprised to see her standing there in the snow, he didn’t show it for long. “Hello, child,” he said, tipping his hat. “What in the world are you doing out here? Are you lost?”
Marigold was lost, she realized now. “I’m trying to get to Blumontaine,” she said through chattering teeth. “And I’ve gotten separated from my friends.” Collin and Pettifog might still be back in the wildwood, for all she knew, or the traveling powder might have dumped them somewhere else entirely.
“I see.” The old man considered the jar in Marigold’s hand. “Well, Blumontaine is just beyond this valley,” he said, pointing down toward the meadows she’d noticed earlier, “and I’m headed in that direction myself, if you’d care to join me. As for your friends, I haven’t seen them in these hills, but I’ve found over the years that people usually end up where they need to be, one way or another.” He patted the spot on the bench beside him.
Marigold climbed into the carriage without a second thought. She was getting so cold that she didn’t much care how she got off the hillside. The furs that the old man tucked around her shoulders and over her lap were wonderfully warm. And once Marigold was settled in next to him, the wind didn’t seem to touch her no matter how fiercely it howled.
The old man started the carriage again, driving down the roadless slope toward the valley. There was a sharp, singed smell coming from the engine, Marigold noticed once she’d gotten warm enough to think more clearly — a smell that reminded her strongly of Torville’s workroom. “Are you a wizard?” she asked.
The old man looked amused. “You could call me that,” he said. The sound of the wind died away as he spoke, as if it wanted Marigold to hear him. “I’m familiar enough with that traveling powder you’re holding to know how you ended up on the farthest edge of the kingdoms. It looks like one of Wizard Torville’s specialties.”
Marigold was impressed. “You know Torville?”
“I know him well, but I’m sorry to say that I haven’t had the pleasure of seeing him recently. Have you?”
Although the wizard’s voice was calm and pleasant, there was an icy edge to his words that made Marigold sit up straighter inside her cocoon of furs. “I saw him this morning,” she said, “at his fortress.”
“And did he seem well?”
Marigold hesitated. She could tell it wouldn’t be wise to lie to the wizard outright. How had Torville seemed? Sticky? Yellowish? “He seemed grumpy,” she said, honestly enough.
“Ah,” said the wizard. “He usually is. I wonder, though: Did you notice anything different about him? Or about the fortress? Have there been any changes lately, anything out of place?”
The carriage gave an unpleasant jolt beneath them, and Marigold gripped the side of the bench. She didn’t think the wizard could have found out that Torville was a blob of glop, but his questions were making her nervous. “I’m not sure I should be telling you anything at all about Torville,” she said. “I don’t even know if you’re his friend.”
The wizard sighed. Marigold thought he must be angry with her, but when he spoke again, some of the ice had gone from his voice. “Tell me, child,” he said, “do you like stories?”
This, at least, seemed like a question that was safe to answer. “Of course I do.”
“Then let me tell you one of mine.” The wizard looked out across the snow. “Once upon a time,” he began, “there was a boy who escaped.”
“What was he escaping from?” Marigold wanted to know.
“His brother was brutish,” the wizard said, “his sister was cruel, and their parents were long gone and no use at all. Now, don’t interrupt. One night, the boy slipped away from home and ran out of his kingdom into the hills. The sky was so dark that he couldn’t see the path in front of him. Rocks scraped his legs, wind stung his cheeks, and then, worst of all, it began to snow. The boy thought his heart might freeze. He thought he wouldn’t mind that one bit.
“As the sun began to rise, the boy reached the peak of the farthest, coldest mountain. Daylight glinted off the snow and off the walls of a gleaming white mansion with a gleaming white door. The boy had hoped he might find this place. He stumbled to the door, blew on his numbed fingers, dried his eyes, and knocked.
“The door was opened by a man dressed all in white. He seemed as tall as the mountains to the boy, who was still quite small — not even old enough to grow that famous mustache of his. But he drew up his courage and said, ‘I need you to teach me everything you know about magic. Please.’”
The wizard smiled at Marigold. “How could I say no?”
Marigold drew the furs more tightly around her shoulders. It seemed impossible to her that Torville had ever been a child, let alone a child who cried or said please. “What happened next?” she asked. “After you took Torville in?”
“That,” said the wizard, adjusting his hat, “is a different story.” Marigold waited, but he didn’t say any more.
When the carriage reached the bottom of the slope, it bumped along under taller trees and over rocks covered with only a dusting of snow. Ahead of them, Marigold could make out farmers’ fields and the beginning of a dirt road. It was marked with a signpost that she saw as they drew closer: the road to Blumontaine. The wizard had stopped asking about Torville, but Marigold wasn’t sure she liked his silence any more than his questions.
