Hero

by Alethea Kontis

  “I’m dreaming,” whispered Saturday, for that was the only sound explanation. The cries of the gulls mixed with the cries in her mind of the drowning people she’d seen in Monday’s mirror. Now she knew how Thursday felt when she saw the future. Her stomach rebelled again, but not from spelled stew.

  “It is no dream,” said Erik.

  “What happened?” asked Saturday.

  “There was a wicked storm, the air rumbled, and the earth broke,” said Erik. “It was like nothing I’d ever seen before. It still isn’t.”

  “Rumbold and Sunday are trying to assess the damage and keep everyone calm,” Monday explained. “The palace is in chaos. They could not get away, but we came as soon as we could.”

  “I felt the rumbling,” Saturday said. “Right before I fell . . . asleep.” She wasn’t sure what else to call it. Trix had poisoned them all and run away. Had he done this, too, so they couldn’t follow him? Was this some sort of wild animal magic?

  “Perhaps you should tell us what happened here first,” said Monday.

  Saturday was starting her story in the wrong place again. She persuaded her fuzzy brain to remember. “A messenger came.”

  “Conrad,” said Erik. “Yes, he brought us the same message.” Monday tried to interject something, but Erik stopped her, urging Saturday to continue.

  “Mama was upset.” It took Saturday an incredible amount of energy to open her mouth wide, work her tongue properly, and make her words understood, but she managed it slowly and surely. “Trix got quiet. Papa sent the messenger to the palace. Mama went to pack. Trix said he didn’t want to go with her. Peter and I set the table.”

  “Trix said he didn’t want to go?” asked Monday.

  “If he’d stated his intentions, Mama would have forbidden him, and then he would have been compelled to stay. He planned it that way. He told me so as I was falling asleep. Right before he ran off.”

  Erik chuckled. “Clever little bugger.”

  The anxiety that came with retelling the tale woke Saturday up even more. “He stirred the pot, Monday. He took over stirring the pot when Mama got the message, and we were all so tied in knots over the news that no one bothered to tell him to stop. And when the stew tasted so good”—she could still smell the cold leavings in the bowls on the table and the burned remnants in the stewpot long boiled dry—“Mama didn’t even scold him. But she made me eat, even though the sword didn’t want me to, because she can’t ever keep her mouth shut.”

  It wasn’t fair of her to say that about Mama, but Saturday got swept up in the telling and she wanted to get it all out of her. Besides, Mama was still snoring softly on the table. “Trix poisoned us. He poisoned us, and he didn’t care, not one bit. Did he make the ocean too?”

  “This is no fey magic, wild or otherwise,” said Erik, nodding to the view outside the door. “This is godstuff.”

  “Why would the gods make an ocean?” Saturday asked.

  Monday turned her gaze from the watery horizon and shrugged. “Why not? The gods are responsible for miracles and misery alike.”

  Erik and Monday shared a look across the room that spoke volumes, much like Saturday and Peter did, only Saturday didn’t understand this secret language. Erik bowed his head and resumed his interrogation. “Did Trix take something from the library? Is that why you were up in the tower?”

  Saturday shook a head that felt considerably lighter. “I wanted to see which way he ran,” she said. “I thought I could call him back. But he was already too far, and the sleep was taking over my body. I was so angry! I screamed at him and I—” The room lost focus as Saturday recalled what she had thrown from the window of the aerie, and the tremors she had felt right before she’d surrendered to the fairy-poisoned stew.

  She’d killed him. In a fit of rage, Saturday had killed her little brother.

  Peter stirred at the table. Mama and Papa had stopped snoring. Saturday white-knuckled the sword’s pommel to give her strength, physically and mentally. She sat up in the chair, ramrod-straight. “It was me,” she confessed to the kitchen. “I called the ocean.”

  This was what Monday’s looking glass had shown them: the flooding, the terror, the storm. Wind and rain and death. Monday had asked Saturday who she was, and only then had the mirror sprung to life. Perhaps it didn’t know what Saturday was, but it knew who she would be: a chaos dealer. A murderer.

  Why hadn’t she paid more attention? Why hadn’t Monday said anything? But Saturday didn’t bother chasing after futile answers. Peter had told her often enough that she was as unstoppable as a runaway horse. The visions in the looking glass had been as inevitable as day after the dawn.

  Even the sword couldn’t lend her enough courage to voice the rest of her crime. Silence was the only immediate comment, and that was lost to the task of tending to Peter and Papa and Mama’s waking. One by one, Monday and Erik checked to make sure they were each all right, ignoring specific questions until Mama said, “Someone had better explain what is going on, right now!” So Saturday’s tale waited that much longer for the telling.

  “Slowly,” Erik advised Mama, who, wincing, put her hand to her head. “One step at a time,” he said softly.

  “Trix,” said Papa. “Gods bless that boy.”

  “He magicked the stew,” Peter deduced, wincing like Mama had at the sound of his own voice.

  “Yes,” said Erik. “And he ran . . .” He looked to Saturday for help.

  “North,” said Saturday. “Across the meadow, alongside and away from the Wood.”

  “Fool child,” said Mama, but with care instead of anger. “He’s gone to the abbey by himself.”

  “I agree with you,” said Erik. Saturday stopped herself from chuckling—the soldier was a quick study. A good way to keep Mama happy was to constantly remind her how right she was. “Do you have any idea why he would have gone to such lengths to travel alone?”

  “No.”

  Erik tried to be reassuring. “He can’t have gone far on foot.”

  “He won’t need to,” said Peter. “The animals will help him.”

  Guilt burst from Saturday’s lips. “But the ocean! I’ve killed him!”

  Any other sister might have warranted hugs and petting. For Saturday, Peter harrumphed and put a hand on her shoulder. “Trix is fine. He can travel three times as fast as any of us. He just asks the animals.”

  “But you don’t know for sure,” said Saturday.

  “Yes, we do,” said Monday. “The animals aid him whenever they can.” She rubbed her arms briskly against the cold bite of the breeze in the warm, salt-aired kitchen. “They will also protect him. Wherever he is, he’ll be fine.”

  Saturday felt sick in her bones. Her siblings’ reassuring words bounced off her thick skin. There was a dread in the pit of her stomach she could not ignore, and it nagged at her. The only way to know for sure that she hadn’t killed her brother was to see for herself.

  Mama wisely said nothing and simply nodded. She knew too well what it was like to doom one of her children to death.

  “He’ll be fine until I get my hands on him,” Peter growled. He met Saturday’s eyes and they both smiled. Peter’s bark was far worse than his bite. She’d been on the receiving end of that bark often enough to know. But then Peter’s smile fell. His brow furrowed, and he cocked his head at her. She answered the question he didn’t ask.

  “I was the last to fall asleep,” she said. “Trix bade me farewell, after he poisoned us all.” So maybe it was fairy magic instead of poison, who cared. It worked the same way. “I tried to talk some sense into him, but he’d made up his mind. I offered to go with him, but he refused my help. He left. I got mad. And then I broke the world.” She pointed at the wide-open door leading to a wider-open landscape.

  Slowly, Peter, Mama, and Papa stood and followed Monday into what was left of the backyard before it fell away into endless waters. The sun burst through cracks in the clouds now, and the sea was calmer. But it was still the sea.

/>   Saturday stood with them, her strength fully returned, and breathed in a deep lungful of salt air. She’d sat beside lakes and creeks and rivers, but this water was alive, mesmerizing and chaotic, gorgeous and unforgiving. It scared her. Who knew how many innocent lives she had taken in her heedlessness? She had no business making such a thing happen, and yet here it was. Papa put his arm around her.

  “Nothing small for you, eh, m’girl?”

  “No, sir,” said Saturday. She prayed that the gods had spared as many lives as they could. Miracles, like Monday had said. Hundreds and hundreds of miracles.

  “What’s happened to the barn?” cried Mama. “All that lovely dry hay wasted! And no place left for the chickens to run, and nowhere to hang the laundry. Good thing I kept the goose in the pantry, despite everyone’s grumbling. There will be no pies this winter if the apples are gone too.”

  Chickens? Pies? Saturday had possibly just murdered hundreds of people. There were waves lapping upon their back doorstep, and all Mama could think about was hay and laundry? And the racket that goose made—it’s a wonder one of them hadn’t crept downstairs in the wee hours and put it out of its misery. Saturday could hear it in there now, barking louder than the gulls.

  “Next time I call the ocean, I’ll ask it please not to encroach so far onto the property.”

  “See that you do,” was Mama’s reply.

  “Who’s normal now?” teased Peter.

  “I’m still just me,” Saturday snapped. “The magic was in Thursday’s mirror.” That’s right—part of this devastation was Thursday’s doing, and she would have them know of it.

  “You have a mirror?” asked Monday. Saturday wondered if her sister was regretting the talk they’d had earlier.

  “Had,” said Saturday. “It wasn’t a looking glass like yours. Trix and I tried to see in it. It didn’t work. It didn’t do anything.”

  “Except split the earth and fill it up with seawater,” said Erik.

  “Well, yes, that.”

  “Mirror,” said Peter. “That fancy silver one from the trunk this spring?”

  “The mirror you hated and hid the moment you received it and never looked at again?” Papa clarified.

  Saturday rolled her eyes. “Yes.”

  “Wasn’t it a set with a brush?” asked Peter.

  “Best keep that brush in a safe place,” Erik said to Papa.

  Saturday opened her mouth to object to the insinuation that anything in her possession would be deemed unsafe, when the air filled with bright spots of sunlight and tinkling bells. Everyone stopped what they were about to say and involuntarily smiled as one at the sound. Even the gulls seemed to silence and wonder what new divine presence had manifested. Saturday could have sworn she smelled sugar on the briny breeze.

  Monday was laughing.

  It was odd that such a sound would present itself during such a stressful occasion, and from such an unlikely source, yet it was refreshing as candied lemons. Monday’s profile, backed by the sea and crashing waves with her iridescent skirts and gossamer hair swirling about her, would have made master artists weep if they’d known what a sight they were missing.

  Saturday tried to look past that, tried to block out the sunshine and the happiness and the loveliness that dazzled so hard it made everyone forget, if just for half a moment, all their worries and pains. She tried to see Monday for who she was, and not just the pretty packaging. Trouble was, the beauty was both within and without; an integral part of her soul.

  Saturday shaded her eyes from the brilliance. “What?” she asked, while the rest were still dumbstruck.

  Monday lifted a slender arm to the eastern horizon, where the sea met the parting storm clouds in a thin line. As if realizing it had been noticed, the morning sun split through the gray cover, showering both Monday and the far horizon in light. A rainbow appeared, bold against the exiting darkness, framing a small, dark gray blur on the water. Perhaps there had been some miracles after all.

  Peter squinted into the distance. “Is that a rock?”

  “A tall tree,” guessed Papa.

  Monday smiled, and the sun shone all the brighter in competition. “It’s Thursday.”

  4

  Sulfur and Stone

  THE PRIVY CAVE stank of brimstone. More than usual, since Peregrine’s nose didn’t typically register the acrid smell anymore. The stones of the walls and floor took on an orange hue and began to perspire. Peregrine hiked up his skirt and hopped from foot to foot out through the archway, barely making it around a corner before a burst of flame engulfed the narrow stone hallway.

  This particular alcove probably wasn’t the safest place to do one’s business, but Peregrine couldn’t beat the cleanup. The perpetual venting flares came with a decent enough warning and kept the place from smelling like anything worse than the usual sulfur and stone. He’d been singed a time or two, but it was worth it.

  Peregrine swung his lantern and watched the shadows dance along the shimmering, uneven walls of the tunnel. He danced a jig with them, his skirt swirling around his legs as he stomped gleefully through Puddle Lake. Disturbing the water marred the reflection he didn’t care to see.

  “Hello there, boy,” Peregrine said to Shaggy Dog in greeting. “Find any good treats today?”

  Shaggy Dog said nothing, just like it always did. Peregrine patted the giant rock formation on its hind leg.

  Leila had selected exactly the right target on which to perform her spell. The witch’s daughter and Peregrine had shared the same build and the same dark features—it would have required far more magic to curse some tiny, fair young thing into taking Leila’s place at the Top of the World so that she could escape her mother and the dragon who slept here.

  But Leila (he realized now) was not capable of that level of magic, and so her curse had not completely transformed him, thank the gods. He’d retained his manhood, for all the good it did him here in the White Mountains, on a peak higher than time itself. Though his height remained the same, the line of his jaw had softened and his skin had paled, taking on a subtle olive shade. His muscles had thinned and corded, like a dancer’s, not surprising with all the climbing and exploring he did on top of all the housework . . . or whatever one called chores when one’s home was a great mountain of fire and ice.

  Peregrine passed the mushroom forest and growled at the stone bear that met him there, peering down from the ceiling. Big Bear marked the spot where the air began to grow cool again. Peregrine stopped to don the boots he’d been carrying. He took the shawl from his waist, pulled it over his bare arms, and continued on with his thoughts. At least his thoughts were still his own.

  He’d collected every mirror he found and hidden them away in a cave beyond the dragon. He’d learned to ignore crystals and reflecting pools as he encountered them. Over time, he’d become quite adept at not seeing the face that wasn’t his: the black eyes beneath arched eyebrows, or the silver-blue streak in the thick black hair that always fell to his elbows in the morning, no matter how many times he hacked it off with implements, enchanted and otherwise. He’d learned to wear skirts and speak in whispers. Peregrine had kept the witch at arm’s length enough to fall beneath her notice. After a while, those habits had come as naturally as breathing.

  He had considered exposing the ruse to the witch, in those first days. He’d contemplated revealing himself and facing the witch’s wrath simply to end his imprisonment. But Peregrine never quite found himself ready to forfeit both his life and the dream of triumphantly returning to the world of men. Eventually, he’d grown to enjoy the puzzles that these caves provided him. He relished the idea that he would never age or die. He didn’t even mind the witch so much, on the days when her demon blood wasn’t running wild.

  And then that nice young woodcutter had stolen the witch’s eyes and made Peregrine’s life so much easier.

  The cave floor grew drier and more even beneath the soles of his shoes; his breath turned whiter than the walls. Inside the kitchen,
Peregrine banked the smokeless fire and swapped out the steaming laundry pot with another he’d readied with that night’s supper. Betwixt—currently a very ugly dog with a rattlesnake’s tail—twitched in his sleep in response to the reduction in heat.

  Peregrine smiled. Betwixt was the main reason he stayed.

  Betwixt was a chimera who’d been captured by the witch long before Peregrine, so long ago that he remembered neither his name nor his original shape. While the witch held him captive he had no control over where and when and how he changed form, but he was always some creature betwixt one animal and another, so the moniker suited him. And as Betwixt had not cared overly much for Leila, Peregrine’s presence suited him as well.

  Peregrine nudged the dogsnake with his foot.

  “If you intend on waking me up before I’m ready, you’d better intend to share some of that stew as well,” Betwixt growled without opening his eyes. “And a bowl of water.”

  “Absolutely!” Peregrine said cheerily. “I was hoping you’d taste the stew for me. The spider meat is fresh, but it’s possible the brownie bits have gone rancid. And some of the mushrooms might have had a touch of color on them . . . it was hard to see. But then, it always is in this place.”

  “Pantry Surprise again already?”

  “Waste not, want not,” Peregrine replied.

  “I’ll choose ‘want not,’ thank you,” said Betwixt.

  Peregrine laughed at the retort. When one was forced to stay in another’s company in a cave beyond time, it was best to keep the atmosphere jovial. Peregrine and Betwixt explored together, hunted together, and avoided the witch together as best they could. In the time of Peregrine’s imprisonment Betwixt had become his best friend and closest confidant. It was a rare bond Peregrine had shared with no one since his father.

  Peregrine took up a dagger and set to chopping shards of icerock out of the wall. He collected them in a bowl fashioned from an old warrior’s helmet and set them nearer to the fire to melt. After the fourth or fifth shard chipped away, the dagger snapped. The blade flew across the room and landed behind a clump of pillarstones.