by Zoe Chant
Now she’d find out for sure if she actually measured up, and she could feel the pending judgement like a storm on the horizon.
The doorbell rang again, and the knights abruptly remembered their candy duties, excusing themselves.
“Do you have questions?” Heather asked kindly, when the three of them were alone in the kitchen.
“I don’t think I have any questions,” Gwen said brightly. “I kiss the ornament and bam, naked knight. Beats hiring a stripper in a cake!”
Daniella and Heather exchanged a look that Gwen couldn’t quite identify. Pity, maybe? Amusement? It was definitely at her expense.
“You’ll know before that,” Daniella warned her. “I saw Trey’s ornament and I had to have it. Like Fabio getting a whiff of steak. I was in the middle of a job orientation, and I practically shoved Ansel out of the way to get it. He must have thought I’d had a mental break or something.”
“I almost accosted a customer who wanted to buy Rez’s ornament!” Heather giggled. “Like, I was fully prepared to vault across the counter and start a fistfight if they didn’t give it up to me.”
“So don’t...you know...punch Lawson’s mom in the mouth when you see her, or anything,” Daniella warned her with a grin.
Gwen smiled stiffly. It was a sore point with her; when people found out she had a black belt in karate, they liked to tease her about beating people up, but she’d never actually fought anyone off of a sparring mat. Twisted out of a few holds, maybe, but she stayed out of trouble for the most part and had never been in a place where she needed to prove her skills.
Not until she’d battled the bleak in Ansel’s warehouse, and that had been an exercise in frustration as her physical sword had been able to do little damage to the shadowy creature.
“I’ll try to avoid brawling with the woman who has already agreed to sell me the fragile glass ornament,” she quipped.
Heather and Daniella both laughed.
“It’s worth it,” Heather said contentedly. “All the bleaks and dours and horrible oncoming darkness to battle, and I wouldn’t trade it for the world.”
There was a moment of awkward silence where they all remembered that the world might actually end with the year…and if not this year, the one after that, or the one after that.
Swiftly, Gwen said, “Well, I hope you’re right, because oh my God, I will never hear the end of it from my mother if I traveled halfway across the country for a boyfriend I haven’t even Internet-met and it turns out we don’t actually get along.”
2
Gwen was glad for the warning that Daniella and Heather had given her the following day when Lawson’s mother opened the door holding Henrik’s ornament. They had offered to pick it up with her, but Gwen insisted on coming alone. She wasn’t going to ask someone else to do something this important for her. Also, she didn’t want witnesses if she ended up making a fool of herself.
And making a fool of herself seemed like a very likely possibility now.
The ornament in the woman’s hand was wrapped in tissue paper, but Gwen didn’t even need to see it to know that it was the glass gryphon that they’d been searching ten months for; the wave of possessiveness that swept over her was as irritating as it was undeniable. Gwen found herself feeling angry and helpless all at once, dizzy with need.
“Ornament! I’m here for the ornament!” she blurted.
Lawson’s mother was understandably dismayed by her ferocious statement and stepped back in alarm, sending Gwen into a tizzy of panic. She couldn’t lose Henrik now! Not when they were this close! She was furious with herself for being so weak and so ridiculous.
Gwen stuffed her swimming emotions back down. “Sorry, I mean, we, ah, talked on the phone. Forty! I brought forty dollars! For the ornament!”
The woman paused in the act of shutting the door, eyeing the bills that Gwen was desperately waving. “It’s fragile,” she cautioned, not offering to hand it over.
Not supposed to punch her in the mouth, Gwen repeated to herself. “I’ll be careful,” she promised cheerfully.
They made the exchange like a hostage negotiation, with exaggerated, careful motions. Even through the layers of tissue paper, Gwen felt like she was taking a handful of angry bees.
Angry bees, but sexy, because she was absolutely on fire. It was so embarrassing.
“Thank you,” she squeaked, and she turned and fled, certain that Lawson’s mother must think she was utterly insane.
She’d chosen to walk the few blocks to pick up the ornament, and that also appeared to be a terrible mis-judgement. It had been a brief, brisk trot to get there, but going back was the longest walk that Gwen had ever taken.
She desperately wanted to unwrap the ornament and see it with her own eyes, but she feared that if holding it through layers of paper felt like this, if she held the bare glass, she’d arrive home soaked to the knees.
She concentrated on her goal, on the prize at the end. She’d spent the morning clearing out Henrik’s room with Ansel. No one gave her any grief for insisting he got his own room, but the knowing looks could stop any time. Trey and Daniella had helped her pick out clothing for him.
She’d kiss the ornament, there would be a flash of light, she’d explain the circumstances, they’d save the world. How hard could it be?
Really hard, apparently, because she was still half a block from the house and putting one foot in front of the other was sheer torture.
They would all be waiting in the living room, Robin and the knights and the keys. They wouldn’t be unkind, but they would grin at her and look knowing, and Gwen didn’t think she could face them in her current state.
So she crept around the back of the big house like a thief, climbed up on the back balcony, and snuck in through the room that Rez and Heather shared. Sure enough, the room was empty, but Gwen’s secret entrance was spoiled when she ran into Robin heading the opposite direction in the hall.
Anyone else, she would have cracked a joke and squeezed past as fast as she could, but Robin’s face arrested her as much as their words did.
“You...found him?”
Their voice was plaintive, uncharacteristically full of longing and grief, and they floated to a bench along the wall and sat down, hard.
No matter what was happening between her legs and spinning in her head, Gwen wasn’t going to leave Robin like that. She sat beside them and held out the ornament. The tissue was sweaty from her hands, and it was hard to peel her fingers away.
“I found him.”
Robin gave a sigh and unwrapped the layers of tissue away without removing it from her hands; it was an unwieldy size for their diminutive frame; they were about the size of an American Girl doll, and that was an improvement over how tiny they’d been after the effort they had expended during the battle against the bleak. Gwen didn’t understand exactly how it worked, but something about the magic of this world was difficult for Robin to access, and as a creature entirely of magic, their stature was based on their power.
Robin called themself a fable, but Gwen’s Brothers Grimm and Disney movie-influenced childhood made her think of them as a fairy, with wings that Gwen saw as translucent and fluttery, and their tiny size. A crabby, wise-cracking, gender-neutral fairy more in nature like Captain Hook than the Tinkerbell that she teased them for being, but a fairy none-the-less. Right now, they didn’t seem to be interested in making jokes or trading good-natured insults.
But then, this was pretty momentous.
Gwen worried that unwrapping the ornament would crumble the last of her restraint, but seeing the ornament at last was actually better than the gnawing anticipation.
It was a deep orange-honey color, with delicate outspread wings and tiny white curved claws. A lion’s tail lashed behind it, and an eagle-like head arched from the four-legged body. The white ring of glass was wrapped separately, and Robin only folded back a bit of that tissue before they bowed their head and let all of their breath out.
Were the
y...crying?
Gwen was unnerved and wished she could comfort Robin, but wasn’t sure how. And what if she wasn’t really Henrik’s key and she couldn’t break the spell? Certain nether parts were quite convinced, but...
“Why...why me?” she had to ask.
“There were two spells at work, possibly three if Henrik got off a counterspell also,” Robin explained. “Multiple spells are tricky and unpredictable at the best of times...and it was surely not the best of times. Cerad and his witches cast a curse that would make the knights fragile, because they alone had the potential to take back the world from his darkness. I was the one who gave them a loophole for escape. Part of his spell said that no magic of our world could free them, so I found a new world, and bound them to a key that would complete them. I didn’t know who my spell would find, I only knew that you would be a perfect match, a resonant creature from this realm, someone good at heart and brave, as they are.”
They were silent a moment, stroking the cool glass, then sourly added, “And I swear by your gods that if you compare me to Merryweather from Sleeping Beauty, I will turn you into a mouse and set you loose in this house to be eaten.”
Gwen had been thinking of exactly that, so she had to laugh.
“You can’t do that,” she challenged. “You’re diminished here!”
Robin cracked their knuckles. “Do you want to find out?”
Gwen folded the tissue paper back over the gryphon. “I’m not going to take the chance,” she admitted. “I’ve got to save the world, remember? And Socks is a mighty hunter.”
Robin gave her a warm smile. “Henrik probably wouldn’t be happy with me if you were half chewed up and left in his shoe,” they agreed.
“That’s definitely not how I imagined meeting him. I was hoping for a few shreds of dignity.”
Downstairs, Vesta had caught sight of Socks, or perhaps a bird through the glass windows out the porch and began barking her head off. Fabio, not to be left out, added a few bass woofs while Heather scolded Vesta.
Gwen cradled the ornament into her hand. “I’d better go do this,” she said, as bravely as she could manage. “Before I lose what’s left of my nerve.”
Robin’s small hand on hers kept her from standing for a moment. “I never meant to cause you trouble,” they said solemnly. “I was trying to protect my knights and save my world’s last hope, not trap you to a destiny you didn’t want, and I never meant to endanger your world.”
They looked up at her with fathomless dark eyes in a pale face, grim and sincere.
There was probably something kind or thoughtful or poetic that Gwen could say in reply, perhaps insist that she wanted a destiny, that she wanted to be a hero. Instead she grinned. “Sure thing, Tinkerbell,” she teased them. “Let’s see about this world-saving, shall we?”
Robin’s face darkened into a scowl, but there was a twinkle of humor around their eyes as Gwen stood. She cradled the tissue-wrapped ornament in her hands and went down the hallway to the room that they’d set up for Henrik, just one door down from hers.
Pucker up, ornament.
3
Henrik was swimming through a sea of confusion. He had no body to direct, no power to control, and his helplessness ate at him. There had been a battle, he remembered. Robin had cast something. No, he had cast something? There had been such a chaos of spells, at least three of them colliding in a way that he knew meant trouble.
Cerad’s witches, his bleak forces, the dours...Henrik struggled to remember, to focus. He was glass, fragile, and the light he grasped for slipped through him as if he was transparent.
He was adrift, and angry for his weakness. He was a gryphon warrior! A knight of the fallen kingdom!
He couldn’t tell how long it had been, only knew that when he felt his limbs at last that they were strange and unfamiliar. He was clumsy, frustrated, and dazed, flailing wildly as life returned to him at last, feeling the unexpected brush of soft lips.
“Careful! Careful!” There was a woman before him, a sweep of silky black hair, short around an oval face. She was back-pedaling from him, and her dark eyes were wide.
She was holding his glass prison away from them, like she was protecting it, and Henrik felt a surge of rage. Was she the one responsible for his long enchanted slumber?
“Who are you?” he growled, but when he reached for magic to persuade her to answer, he was dismayed to find that nothing responded.
A weapon then, but when he reached for his axe, he realized that he was not only defenseless, but also completely naked, and he took a staggering step forward.
“What have you done to me?” he demanded.
“I’m your key!” the woman said wildly. “My name is Gwen. Your shieldmates are here, Trey and Rez, at least, and Robin is here, too, and it’s okay, we’ll explain everything I brought you clothes please put them on now.”
Henrik had a perverse desire to taunt her with the nudity that she was clearly appalled by, but he swiftly realized that this was only going to backfire; she must have cast some kind of seduction over her flawless skin and entrancing figure and shape-hugging breeches.
The woman—Gwen—was staring at his chest as if she’d never seen one before, and the world around them was so strange and unexpected that Henrik could not discount the possibility. They were in a fancy sleeping chamber of some kind, hung with fine fabrics and finished in metal and materials that Henrik could not identify, smooth and unmarred. Strange, smokeless lamps lit the room quite brightly, and the floor beneath his bare feet was curiously plush. A strange construct perched on a small table glared at him with what looked like blocky red numbers.
“Where am I?” he asked. Having fingers again was unsettling, and he flexed them experimentally, rolling his shoulders and testing his range of motion.
Gwen’s eyes got larger, something that Henrik had not thought possible, then screwed shut as she spun around. “Clothes!” she squeaked, pointing back at a pile of folded cloth. “There!”
Henrik could not make sense of this witch casting a seduction on him but not acting on it, but she had named his shieldmates; he would go along with her at least until he found them and got answers to his many questions.
The top garment was a simple, short-sleeved tunic in black. Holding it up, he feared it was tailored too small, but the black fabric was unexpectedly stretchy and he was able to pull it over his head and down his chest without trouble. The undergarments were similarly constructed, and more comfortable than he expected. Over this went a pair of heavy pants in a regal blue. It took him a moment to figure out the curious combination of zipper and button. There were even socks, knitted from some of the finest wool he had ever seen.
Whatever fate the witch Gwen had in mind, he would go to it well-dressed.
“I am dressed,” he growled.
“Thank goodness,” Gwen said, turning back. “Oh my God.”
She did not look much more settled, but after a moment of gaping at him, she managed a breathless laugh. “Well, that didn’t help as much as I was hoping it would. Okay, then. I’m Gwen. Right, I already introduced myself. You’re Henrik, welcome to Wimberlette.”
“I do not know this Wimberlette,” Henrik grumbled. He had considered himself proficient in geography, but he’d never heard of a place with that name, or seen people wearing clothing like this.
“You’re in another world,” Gwen explained, sounding sympathetic. “You came to this place, Earth, almost two years ago, in some kind of battle, and you’ve been imprisoned in an ornament for all that time. Robin could tell you better than I could. I’m kind of new to all the magic and enchantment stuff myself. Not as new as Heather, of course, but um...yeah.”
Henrik reached again to control the lines of magic with his will and counter the spell she’d cast, because he was feeling not only base attraction to her, which might be explained by her beauty, but also a strange sense of tenderness. It must be a complicated spell indeed.
But there was simply no pow
er, anywhere that he could sense. It was a curious and unsettling curse indeed, like being wrapped in cotton. “You said you were a...key.”
Gwen drew in a shaky breath. “Yeah, a key. Your key. Your key to power here, I guess. I mean, Heather and Daniella are, for Rez and Trey. I’m supposed to be yours. Robin said I was. And...I mean, here you are.” She laughed and gestured to him in awe. “All of you.” She licked her lips. “Anyway.”
“My key.”
“Yeah. Kind of like your anchor in this world. We’re supposed to...um...you know what, let’s go find the others and maybe they can explain it all better than I can.” She backed away into the door behind her and then turned to open it.
Henrik bowed his head to her. “I am at your command,” he said, resigned.
“No,” she said, turning swiftly to face him. “Not like that,” she insisted, looking up fiercely. “We’re supposed to be partners. Equals. I don’t command, you don’t follow.”
“Partners,” Henrik echoed.
Gwen gazed at him, looking full of longing, much as he was, and also just as confused. “Come on,” she said, and she led the way out of the incredibly smoothly-hinged door to a sunny hallway and a stairway down. He followed her hesitantly, pausing at the curious view out one of the crystal-clear windows over strange large houses in straight lines. There was light snow on the ground.
They were greeted at the bottom of the stairs by two hounds, one tall and gloriously golden, the other very small, silvery, and nervous. Both barked, clearly guarding their domain, but they retreated briefly at the call of women’s voices. Then Trey and Rez were enfolding him in back-pounding embraces as the dogs swirled and barked again. For a moment, Henrik felt nothing but relief and they leaned their foreheads against each other in turn.
“My shieldmates,” he said. “I see you with pleasure, though this place is very strange.”
“You have only just begun to appreciate how strange,” Trey told him. “Wait until you see the amazing technology they have. They have wardrobes of cold, and amazing entertainment devices. There are slots in the floor that make warm air. And perhaps oddest of all, cylinders of thin metal filled with beer.”