The Magic Door opens with a flash, and your eyes are temporarily blinded by the brilliance.
When the light fades, a gate looms before you.
The Gate.
The gate keeping you and everyone else in Norwood safe.
The gate is enormous, arching, and ancient. Thick vines seize the iron bars and hold fast to the black, twisted hinges. The grass stops a few feet away, exposing cracks at the base of the threshold. Beyond the gate and on each side of the entrance are impossibly large pines and impenetrable brush that snag around the sharp iron fencing. An icy breeze laced with an acrid and putrid scent slices through the gate. The air feels . . . wrong.
Because you are so brave—and surely the tales are wrong—you decide to open the gate.
​
A black wolf saunters up to you. “We can consider this choice later, if we survive.” His words reverberate inside your mind. He nods his head in greeting. “Adventurer.”
You rally a smile. “Ancient Wolf . . .”
He sighs, the end finishing in a low grumble. “Call me Jax, if you please. I see you go into the woods where the aunties still live. What exactly are you after?”
Treasure, freely given. But you wouldn’t say that out loud, not to such a proud beast. “I seek the prince.”
Jax tilts his head this way and that. Looking behind you once before stepping forward, he huffs. “Very well, this will tell you who you seek. Thank the stars Queen Kevali isn’t feeling quite as murderous these days. Her wrath once reached past the spires!” The wolf passes through the threshold of the gate ahead of you.
With a gulp you follow him through and into the pitch-black woods.
The silence of the forest acts like a physical force, like jumping deep into a lake—stifling and suppressive. The light from above the pines is hazy. The boughs keep the strong beams of light in the canopies. No birds sing. No squirrels shuffle. The whole forest is muffled, but more like a blanket than a dangerous presence. Your sense of doom lifts a fraction.
​​
You pace forward one step. Then two. Suddenly you’re enveloped in a solid beam of hot white light. You cannot see the forest. You cannot see the wolf. Your hands are bleached white before your face.
Memories race in your mind, pulled out and thrown before you by the blinding magic. Then everything stops as quickly as it began. You hear Jax as if from afar. “Oh good. You lived.”
Before you can respond, an echoing chorus of voices warble and waver around you from the light itself.
“The prince you seek. The prince you shall find. Return to the beginning to discover his name:
Kingdoms need a leader.
Inside, we don’t fear.
Life is sweet for readers.
Lovers take solace here.
In truth we find our anchor.
Altered silence we can hear.
Now go find the prince without rancor.
​
With a tinkling of bells, the light vanishes, and you blink several times to make out the enormous wolf before you with his nose nearly on yours.
“So . . . what did it say? Did you discover the prince’s name?”
​
When you think back on the clue, you realize . . . the answer is hidden in plain sight! Now to find his name, and the coin!
Need a hint?? Look at the first letters of the poem above and put them together in to make a name! It starts with "K"!