“Another black and blue,” she muttered. “Mom’s not going to believe me when I tell her how I got all these bruises.”

Even though her body ached, she managed to push herself onto her feet and take a look around. She could see the assembled army in the distance. With Kay gone, they were breaking away and moving on, thankfully leaving the villagers in peace. Kay’s spell had whisked them away from trouble there, even though the magic wasn’t at all gentle. Next to her, lying in a heap of purple cloth and lanky limbs, was the bumbling sorcerer himself.

“Five more minutes,” mumbled the boy when Sarah shook him. Unfortunately for him, Sarah was in no mood to let him rest.

“No, you get up now! Get up, or I’ll go find a cold river to drop you into.”

Kay’s eyes fluttered, and he sat up. He surveyed the area, and then stood up to look down the hill. Finally satisfied that he was safe from the battle, he dusted himself off and smiled. “Well I guess I showed them.”

“What did you show them, other than that you can throw us half a mile in any direction? What spell did you cast from that book, anyway?”

“Um…well, truth be told, I’m not quite sure.” Kay scratched the back of his neck innocently. “I meant to cast a spell that would summon up a ball of fire, but I think I might have misread the text a bit.”

“How do you misread things that badly? At least when you turned yourself into a frog, you were somewhere close to what you wanted to do.”

Kay opened the spellbook and started thumbing through its pages. “It’s not as easy as just reading the spell I want, you know? Well, it would be that easy, if the words were written in a language I understood. But who’s to say what some of these old runes mean?”

“You…you can’t even read that book?”

Kay stepped back and clutched the spellbook defensively against his chest. “Of course I can read it!” He blinked, and then shrugged. “Well, I can read some of it, at least. My father never really got a chance to teach me all the runes. But I can still cast spells, and that’s all that matters!”

“You haven’t managed to get any of those spells right! If it wasn’t for me, you’d still be a frog. And who’s to say you won’t mess up even more someday and light yourself on fire or something?”

Kay sniffed and shrugged his shoulders. “That would never happen. Sorcerers are immune to their own magic. Or, if they’re not, they should be.”

Feeling quite cross, Sarah didn’t feel like talking about what should and shouldn’t be. She had already jumped out a window, been attacked by men with swords, and gotten thrown halfway across the countryside – all while still in her pajamas. If things were the way they should have been, someone would have at least given her a decent change of clothes before forcing her along this adventure.

“Anyway,” continued Kay, growing more cheerful as he spoke, “what’s done is done. I got us to safety, and we’re hardly any worse for wear at all.”

Sarah sat down on the very boulder that she had hit her head against. She watched the army in the distance scatter into several smaller groups, each going in a different direction. It didn’t take her long to figure out what they were doing.

“They’re forming into search parties,” she said. “They’re going to come looking for you.”

“Of course they are,” responded Kay grimly. “Baelan will never stop looking for me.”

“Why not?”

“Because I have the spellbook.” Kay proudly held up his old tome. “It contains every piece of magical lore ever studied. With it, Baelan could finally open up Castle Greystone.”

“What’s Castle Greystone?”

Kay blinked at Sarah and gave her a perplexed look. “Wow…you really aren’t from around here.” Clearing his throat, he continued. “Castle Greystone was the home of the oldest wizard in Greystone Valley. It’s the gateway to all the other worlds that the valley connects with. People like you and Baelan come here from lands beyond the mountains, but only Castle Greystone holds the key to returning to your own world.”

“You mean Baelan’s not from here, either?”

“Right. No one knows exactly where Baelan came from. He appeared from somewhere beyond the valley’s mountains about a year ago, and started raising an army right away. He bought as many human mercenaries as he could. Worse than that, he allied himself with the beast-men of the northern foothills.”

“Beast-men? What are those?”

“They were one of the first people to live in the valley, and they’re very ill-tempered. They’ve got the body of a man, but the head and hooves of an animal.”

“That doesn’t seem too bad.”

“Maybe not to you, but you’ve probably never met a goat with a bad attitude who could talk and swing a club.”

Sarah pursed her lips and tried to imagine such a creature. Her parents had taken her to her uncle’s farm in the country once as a vacation. The cows were heavy and smelly, so she avoided them. The horses, though, got her attention. She particularly liked one black mare…until it bit her on the shoulder. She still had a small red mark from the teeth. “Okay,” she said. “I can see how those could be a problem.”

Kay nodded. “Greystone Valley is small, though – too small for a warlord like Baelan to find any satisfaction. There are no great kingdoms for him to conquer here. All we have is a scattering of towns and villages.”

“Then why did he come here in the first place?”

“Before he died, the wizard of Castle Greystone cast many strange spells on this valley. Now, Greystone Valley pulls people in – people from other worlds and other times. Baelan probably turned up here in the same way you did. And once you’re in the valley, there are only a few ways out. The mountains are too high and treacherous to climb, and the tunnels underneath them are too dangerous to crawl through. Getting into the Greystone Valley is easy; getting out is hard.”

Sarah shifted nervously. It was starting to dawn on her that she wasn’t going to just wake up. She was really stuck here with this strange boy. But she didn’t know whether to be afraid of never going home again or happy. This was the excitement she had always wanted – a world where magic really existed and where adventure could be found anywhere. She wouldn’t have to spend her days locked away reading about such stories. Now she could make them happen. But would the thrill of adventure be enough to make up for never seeing her mother or her friends again?

“So…Castle Greystone,” mused Sarah. “That’s the key. Baelan wants to go there so he can lead his armies into other worlds.”

“Yes,” interjected Kay. “And you probably want to go there so you can return home.”

Sarah didn’t respond. Was that really what she wanted?

“Either way,” continued the boy, “My spellbook holds the secrets to entering the castle. The gates are sealed to everyone without it.”

Sarah cast a glance back down the hill. It wouldn’t take long for the patrols to find them if they didn’t get moving. “So what do we do now?” she asked.

“Well, I know what I’m going to do,” responded the boy. “As for you, I don’t even know why you’re still following me.”

Sarah thought about it for a second, and then responded. “Well, because you’re all alone. I mean, those people back in the village were about to turn you in to Baelan just because he threatened them. That just seems…wrong to me.”

Kay put a hand on Sarah’s shoulder. “I think you’re the first person who has actually sided with me instead of against me. Thank you.”

They stood there for an awkward moment, neither one knowing exactly what else to say. Then, with a manic energy that surprised Sarah. Kay hopped backwards and put a madcap grin on his face.

“Well, then,” he said. “If you’re going to team up with me, the first thing we need to do is dig a nice, deep hole.”

“What? Why would I do something like that?”

Kay had already turned over a large rock, and was digging through the soft dirt underneath. He ignored the spiders and ants that lived under the rock, pushing them gently to the side whenever they crawled onto his hands.

“I just realized that I forgot my staff back in my room. I need to hide the spellbook, just in case any of Baelan’s soldiers find us sneaking back there.”

Sarah cocked an eyebrow, but moved to help Kay despite her doubts. The ground was soft and cold, and the bugs made her jump back a couple of times out of fright. “But won’t the book get eaten by bugs and worms if we bury it?”

“Of course not. What part of ‘magic’ don’t you understand?” Kay opened the book to a random page and pulled at it with all his strength. The seemingly fragile page didn’t tear in the least. “There’s nothing in the entire valley that can destroy this book. The only real danger is letting Baelan find it.”

“What about your staff? Is that magical, too?”

This time it was Kay’s turn to look confused. “A magical staff? Of course not. Who ever heard of a magical staff?”

“Then why are you in so worried about getting it back?”

They finished digging the hole. Kay dropped the book in and covered it up. Then he pushed the heavy rock back on top. “I just need it, is all. I wouldn’t be much of a wizard if I didn’t have a staff, would I? You might as well as me to shave my beard.”

“But you don’t have a beard,” said Sarah.

Kay jumped back defensively. “Yes I do! It’s just taking time to grow in! See?” He stuck his head forward and pointed at his chin. Sarah squinted, and only found three short brown hairs on an otherwise naked chin.

“Um…yes,” she said. “It’s quite…lovely.”

“You bet,” said Kay, going back to his energetic self. “In another few months, it will be down past my neck. Then we’ll see who’s the proper wizard, eh?”

Without another word, he spun around and began walking down the hillside toward the distant village. He moved in a zigzag pattern, ducking behind trees and rocks in hopes of keeping out of sight of Baelan’s troops. Sarah hesitated, looked at the rock that covered the spellbook, and then jogged after him.

“What an odd boy,” she muttered before she caught up with Kay. “I wonder if I know what I’m getting myself into, following him around.”