by Lucia Ashta
Our team consisted of formidable magicians, some who’d survived centuries. I was the weakest of them all, and if she believed she could defeat Mordecai and Arianne, whom I’d already witnessed do amazing things, and the dragon rider Clara, and all the rest of them, well, then there was no hope for me.
“Look who missed me,” Miranda taunted.
If I was going to die, or suffer some other terrible fate, then so be it. I wasn’t about to cower before such a nasty woman.
I tilted my chin upward and pursed my lips in defiance, though she likely didn’t notice in the dark of night.
Miranda was in the lead, the others following a few paces behind her. Close enough for her to command them, but not so close that they’d appear to be her equals. She had them well trained. Even the bat flew toward the back of the group, next to the waddling firedrakes.
“Thanks so much for telling me where you were,” Miranda continued, the mockery thick. “Once you managed to open a portal under my nose, I very much wanted to meet you again. You saved me a lot of trouble by coming out here alone and opening a portal so I would know exactly where to find you.”
She chuckled, a terrible sound. “It was very kind of her, isn’t that right boys?”
‘The boys’ guffawed and snickered behind her. “Yeah, that’s right,” Sinter said. He sounded just as mean as she did, but I suspected it was possibly a show. He was probably as terrified of Miranda as I was.
Miranda came to a halt an arm’s length from me, and her entourage drew to a stop right behind her.
I gulped. The air coming off the creek behind me was suddenly terribly cold, and I started shivering. I didn’t want to show any sign of weakness, but whom was I kidding? I gave in and crossed my arms across my chest for warmth.
“What? You have nothing to say, girl?” Miranda said.
I refused to say a word. It wasn’t much of a victory, but at the very least I wouldn’t whimper or grovel. She’d get nothing out of me... unless she tortured me, then I’d almost certainly give in.
I swallowed so loudly she heard it. I made out a wide, wicked grin on her face right after.
“See, this girl has an appropriate level of respect for me and what I’m capable of doing.”
Sure, if respect means fear.
Miranda opened her mouth to say some other nonsense, but I didn’t hear it.
Suddenly I experienced a sharp tug on my body. I didn’t think it was real, but I swung my arms around my torso and legs as though I belonged in a sanitarium anyway. Something or someone was clutching at me, now pulling on my limbs, but I couldn’t tell what it was.
I began to slide from the strength of the pull on me until I dug my feet into the dirt beneath my shoes. What’s going on? Feeling things I couldn’t see was nearly as frightening as the reality of Miranda and her cronies.
With wild eyes, I shot a look to Miranda, making sure she wasn’t moving any closer. But her attention was trained on the spot right behind me.
I heard the popping crackles before I saw the lights, and the tugging sensation on my body let up. It wasn’t smart to turn my back to Miranda or her crew, but I was a goner anyway, so I spun to face the water.
I knew exactly what it was before the portal materialized into existence in front of me.
“Oh, good,” Madame Pimlish said on a sigh, looking straight at me, my face illuminated by the light of her portal. “I’ve been looking for you!”
Then her beady pig eyes darted out to find Miranda. “You!” she spat, and I was taken back to her greeting of Wizard Meedles, who peered over her head of bouncy orange curls, when he’d just arrived at Acquaine Manor. “Of course it had to be you. You’ve never had any kind of notion of what’s right and what’s wrong.”
“Hello, Prudence.” Miranda put an extra measure of dislike into her pronunciation of the witch’s name. “I’d say it’s lovely to see you, but then I’d be lying.”
“All you do is lie and scheme and bring nastiness to the world.”
Hunh. Go Madame Pimlish. She wasn’t doing the least bit of cowering. In fact, she looked like she was considering bursting out of the portal to take on Miranda.
“Why not stop cowering in your portal and come join us? We can have a civilized discussion.”
I turned my body halfway between Madame Pimlish’s portal and Miranda. The sorceress didn’t really think Madame Pimlish was going to fall for that, did she? If I’d learned anything from my teacher, it was that she had a healthy sense of self-preservation.
But when I looked to Miranda, my attention was drawn behind her. That’s odd. The firedrakes were looking frantically at each other, at Miranda, and the three sorcerers she’d brought with her.
The flickering light of Madame Pimlish’s portal illuminated the firedrakes’ long faces, and if it didn’t make absolutely any sense at all, I would’ve said that they looked frightened and were trying to escape.
There were five firedrakes, I noticed, and the two in the front were nodding their heads over and over, until finally the one in front skirted to the side and took a few small, waddling steps forward.
Hunh. That was interesting. Ordinarily, the sight of dragon-looking creatures sidling in my direction would have terrified me. But I’d been around their gentle side at Acquaine, and these firedrakes didn’t scare me at all. You’ve definitely lost your mind, Isa. They should scare you. They were all teeth, talons, and wings. Still, they didn’t.
The one in front seemed to notice I was looking at him—or her, I had no idea how to be sure of the difference, though it felt like a he—and met my gaze timidly. Since when did a flying, fire-breathing creature have reason to be timid?
It was as if the firedrake were asking me for permission. It made no sense—permission to do what? Yet I found myself nodding without understanding. For some totally bizarre reason, it felt like the right thing to do.
I would’ve sworn the firedrake looked relieved as he peeked over his shoulder, nodded encouragingly to the others, and slunk into the shadows beyond Miranda and her thugs.
What on earth is going on? Instinctively, I didn’t follow their progress because I didn’t want to alert Miranda or the men behind her to whatever it was they were doing. I returned my attention to Madame Pimlish, Wizard Meedles, and what I hoped were nine very ferocious-looking hellhounds behind him.
Sweat had formed across Madame Pimlish’s forehead. I suspected it was taxing her to keep the portal open. No one had taught me exactly how portals worked, but I was very much hoping that they didn’t function in only one direction.
I started taking small steps toward the portal, hoping not to draw attention to my movements prematurely, and wildly hoping that Madame Pimlish could simply reverse the direction of the portal and whisk us back to the Magical Arts Academy.
“Do you still transform into that ridiculous pig?” Miranda was asking. If she knew Madame Pimlish liked to transform into a pig, then she certainly knew the witch well enough to realize that her question, so posed, would outrage the sometimes-pig teacher.
“I transform into whatever I need to in order to whip some impudent, ugly, sorceress butt.”
My jaw dropped before I quickly snapped it shut. I couldn’t believe Madame Pimlish had just said that! But it was the perfect distraction to get me closer to the portal.
Miranda, who looked quite a bit different than the last time I saw her, fumed. I thought steam might escape her ears from the way her face turned tomato red, making her yellow hair look an unnatural color. “You’re going to call me an ugly, sorceress butt? Have you admired all there is to see of you in a looking glass lately?”
Madame Pimlish lifted her tiny foot to step out of the portal—to give Miranda a beat-down from her furious expression—but Wizard Meedles clamped down on her arm and bent to whisper something in her ear. Whatever he said made her blush and giggle with feminine charm. It also calmed her right down.
I wasn’t going to imagine what he said to her—yuck—instead I just
focused on skirting toward the portal.
I sensed someone’s gaze on me in the form of an uncomfortable pressure and looked to discover one of the sorcerers behind Miranda staring straight at me. He’d noticed what I was doing, and reached a hand out to tell the sorceress.
When he touched her, she spun on him in fury, turning her back for a few quick seconds on the portal and my progress toward it.
While Miranda screamed at him not to ever touch her again, I made a run for it. I clutched my skirts and moved as fast as I could toward the portal.
Wizard Meedles was encouraging me, waving me forward with the hand that didn’t clutch Madame Pimlish to his side. Come on. You can do it, his eyes seemed to say. Yes I can, I thought.
The portal was starting to waver, as if Madame Pimlish had maintained it open for too long, especially in her distracted state. It stood right above the flowing water, but close enough to the bank that I could leap into it.
“Stop her!” Miranda screamed. I made the mistake of flicking a glance at her, and my step faltered. Her relatively-normal looking face had morphed into a hideous, murderous mask. She flung her hands out to the sides as her palms erupted in flame.
Holy... oh wow. Her hands are on fire!
I no longer was certain I could make it, until Wizard Meedles released his hold on Madame Pimlish and streamed fire from the portal straight at Miranda. Her eyes blazed in anger, but she and her minions were forced to step back.
“Now, Isa.” Madame Pimlish spoke with urgency, and I realized with a start that her enraged act had been nothing more than that. She’d been egging Miranda on, and wasn’t nearly as much the ridiculous woman I’d believed her to be.
She didn’t need to tell me twice. I raised my skirts above my knees, sloshed into the water, and leapt into the portal, nearly falling on top of nine nervous-looking hellhounds, all bared teeth, wanting to join their master in the fight. They made room for me while never diverting their murderous snarls from the sorceress who was trying to harm Meedles.
The second I was inside, Madame Pimlish started chanting to take us away.
“Wait,” I said.
“Wait for what?” she snapped.
Wizard Meedles’ magic was breathtaking, incredible, and awesome, but Miranda was no slouch. She’d recovered from the shock of his abilities and was streaming a beam of her own magic straight at his.
“We don’t have time for anything else,” Madame Pimlish said, and I didn’t blame her.
“The firedrakes,” I whispered urgently. “I don’t understand it, but they seem to be trying to escape her.” Madame Pimlish was no Arianne. If it had been Lady Arianne, we’d be rescuing the firedrakes, I had no doubt about it.
Madame Pimlish was selfish, and delaying to allow the creatures to escape with us would endanger those of us already inside the portal.
She whipped her attention to them. The five firedrakes had been right behind me. They looked back at us now with desperation. Oh, they want away from Miranda, all right.
“Please,” I started to say, but Madame Pimlish surprised me. “Come on already then,” she was saying to the dragon-like creatures. “Hurry up!” She waved them toward us, pushed me to the back, and stepped to the side herself to make room for them.
Miranda screamed as if she realized what we were doing, but she didn’t move her attention from Wizard Meedles, whose own face was contorted in a grimace of strained effort. The great, big man was breathing heavily.
The firedrakes waddled toward us too slowly for the circumstances, but when they were close enough, they pumped their wings just once before pulling them tightly against their sides, and dove inside the portal. One after the other, they rolled against the air above the water, which somehow supported our weight, out of the hellhounds’ way, and sprung to standing, leaning against me. Against me! As if I could do anything to help them....
Awkwardly, I patted the nearest one on the back. The firedrake’s scales were cold, smooth, and silky.
Once they were all inside, I whisper shouted to Madame Pimlish, “They’re all here.”
She nodded, curls bouncing, and whispered to Wizard Meedles, “The second I tell you, you’re going to need to drop your magic. The portal won’t close while you’re engaging with the outside.”
“If I do that, Miranda’s magic will stream right in here.”
“I realize.” Madame Pimlish’s voice was squeaky. I didn’t blame her. Miranda’s stream of blue fire-like magic was formidable. No doubt it could slice one of us in half—or light us on fire or deliver us to some other terrible fate—in a second.
Madame Pimlish said, “You’ll still have to do it. We have no other choice. We’ll be stuck here until one of you runs out of strength to maintain your magic.”
One look at the sweat dripping down Wizard Meedles’ temples suggested that Madame Pimlish feared he’d be the one to give out first.
“Are you sure you can’t portal us while I maintain the stream?” he grunted.
“I’m sure.” She sounded crushed by the admission. “It’s the only way. If you snap it off in the very moment I portal, she shouldn’t manage to get more than a quick shot at us.”
But a quick shot would be enough to kill at least one of us. No one had to say it.
Miranda’s minions were gawking at the light show playing out in front of them, and doing nothing to help their mistress. I was grateful, though I suspected they’d get an earful about their failure after she was finished.
“I’m going to count to three,” Madame Pimlish said, and I squeaked. She spun on me. “What!”
“Sorry, the, uh, bat flew in the portal.”
“Vladimir?” Madame Pimlish asked, but the bat did nothing to respond, other than to land on my shoulder.
I cringed at the sensation of bat feet clamped against my body, but obviously didn’t swat the rat-looking flying creature away—though I really, really wanted to. But if I could bear the company of vicious-looking firedrakes, and snarling, foaming-at-the-mouth hellhounds, I could bear the weight of a small bat. My discomfort was great. I forced myself to get over it fast while leaning my face to the side so the hairy, veiny bat wouldn’t accidentally bump up against my cheek.
Madame Pimlish was back to whispering to Wizard Meedles. “I’m going to count. You shut it down on three.”
She started chanting something, which I assumed was the spell that would reverse the direction of the portal’s travel, her hands moving out to the sides, as if they were actually going to be the ones to direct the portal once it snapped shut on this side.
“One,” Madame Pimlish said, and Wizard Meedles looked over his shoulder not to her, but at his hounds. Just as quickly, he snapped his eyes back on Miranda. Even a second of distraction seemed like too much, and I wondered why he’d risk looking away from the sorceress’ very dangerous-looking beam of magic. The light of it alone was enough to make me squint if I tried to look straight at it.
Miranda’s magic was bad news, just as she was.
“Two.” Madame Pimlish spread her little feet out to the sides in preparation. She’d finished saying her spell, and had started moving her hands back and forth in front of her face as if they cradled a large ball.
“Three,” she yelled.
Wizard Meedles leapt out of the portal, his beam still connected to Miranda’s, keeping her from hurting us.
Madame Pimlish gasped and frantically tried to reverse the spell she’d already put in motion.
The portal started to shrink in size as the hellhounds dropped out of it behind their master. One hellhound, two, three, and the portal shrunk to half its size.
The last of the nine hellhounds squeezed through a hole just big enough for it, and then the view of Wizard Meedles fighting Miranda zipped out of sight, and my insides were being tugged far away from them.
Chapter 12
I couldn’t believe what Wizard Meedles had done. The shock of his actions reverberated through me as Madame Pimlish’s portal swept
her, five firedrakes, a bat, and me away.
I barely experienced the squeamishness I expected from portaling. All I could think was that we’d left Wizard Meedles and his nine hellhounds to die. No doubt Miranda would become enraged at my escape—though I still didn’t understand why she wanted me in particular. Was it only because I’d managed to open a portal under her watch? She seemed the type who’d hold a grudge when someone one-upped her.
Madame Pimlish’s portal snapped open in the middle of the parlor of Acquaine Manor, right where I’d disappeared from in the first place, somehow pulled by my memories and Count Vabu’s interest in them.
The portal made popping noises and decided to spit me out first, very unceremoniously. I half jumped, half fell from the portal to land hard on the large, ornate rug in the parlor. The magicians gathered there, presumably discussing a rescue plan, scurried out of the way.
I tripped on my stupid skirts and stumbled. I broke my fall with my hands as my knees slapped painfully against the rug, which did little to cushion me from the hardwood floor beneath it. I groaned. Frazzled and distressed by our abandonment of Wizard Meedles, I wasn’t moving out of the way quickly enough.
Nando dashed in to place his hands under my arms and lift me to safety. I limped after him as he led me to the chaise lounge, the one I’d longed to return to. But as I fell into it, its relief wasn’t what I’d envisioned.
Things weren’t getting better; they were getting solidly and squarely worse.
The bat flitted out of the portal next, flying straight at me. I shrieked before I remembered I didn’t want to, and stiffened awkwardly as the bat landed on the back of the chaise lounge, right next to my head.
Every muscle in my body clenched while five firedrakes popped out of the portal, waddling to its edge, then hopping down, and waddling off to the side. The first out looked around, found me, and started toward me. The other four followed.
I was becoming a one-person menagerie for bizarre and magical creatures.