Hero

by Alethea Kontis

  “I should stay here,” said Peregrine. “Perhaps I can kill the dragon before it fully wakes. You and Betwixt might have a chance then.”

  “No,” Saturday said flatly. “If anyone stays on this mountain, it will be me. I will leave no one behind. That’s final.”

  Peregrine hoped the spirits of the warriors on whose bones he stood could see the headstrong young woman who walked that last footstep that they could not. “Where have you been all my life?” he asked.

  “Cutting down trees,” she said. “Now come on. Cave-in or no, I mean to find the witch before she finds me. And I am not leaving here without my sword.” Saturday paused and turned away from the dragon. “Wait, a real cave-in? You mean, where the ceiling collapses and there’s a giant gaping hole to the outside world?”

  “That’s exactly what I mean,” said Peregrine.

  Saturday jumped; stone skulls shattered beneath her boots. “Then that’s our way off the mountain!” She grabbed him by the cheeks and kissed him heartily.

  His pleasure at her vigor was tempered as he realized the flaw in this plan. Like she, he hoped they would survive, against all odds, so that they might experience the rest of their lives together. But if they did survive, he still had a promise to keep. To Elodie.

  Damn the gods and their sense of humor.

  Peregrine sighed and reluctantly led Saturday into the caves of the witch’s lair. It was a short distance from the dragon’s chamber, under a small archway and through a tunnel with only one turn. At that turn the air grew freezing.

  Saturday, flushed with energy, gave no indication that the chill affected her. She slowly crawled up the enormous pile of rubble, all the while staring at the sky. “I wasn’t sure when I would ever see daylight again,” she whispered.

  Peregrine found purchase on a nearby boulder and climbed to the top to see the sky for himself. Rife with deadly frost or not, there was nothing like fresh air after breathing in a cave. “I hate to disappoint you, but that’s not daylight,” he said.

  “It’s too bright to be starlight,” said Saturday. “What, then? Dusk? Dawn?”

  Peregrine motioned for her to join him at the top of the boulder. “In the far north, especially during the White Months, the skies fill with ice clouds shot through with color. We call them the Northern Lights.”

  “I see that now . . . look at all the colors! It’s like a strange rainbow.” Her raised chin revealed the graceful lines of her neck and the cords of muscles that ran down into her broad shoulders. “It’s so beautiful. I’ve never seen anything like it.”

  Peregrine might have said the same thing to her. But he didn’t. Nor did he take her hand again, despite the nagging, incessant need to do so. It was enough for him to sit beside her, shoulder to shoulder, and share the moment.

  Like most moments, it didn’t last long.

  In a blue flash, the giant fallen pillars and rubble blocking the old entrance glowed brightly before dissolving into ash. A flame-yellow Cwyn flew through the newly opened space and circled over Saturday’s head, presumably speaking to her the same way Betwixt spoke while in fully animalian aspects.

  “Don’t apologize,” Saturday told the bird. “She was going to find me eventually.” Saturday brought her gaze back to the hole in the ceiling. “I need wings.”

  “And a thicker skin,” said Peregrine. Slowly he stood up, reluctant to go. “I must leave. It will only be worse for you if she discovers me here.” He rolled off the boulder with practiced grace and landed on the opposite side of the pile, near the entrance to the witch’s bedchambers.

  Saturday leaned down to him. “I’ll try to keep her distracted as long as I can. Find my sword. Please.”

  Peregrine curtseyed. He would have given her his heart had she not already possessed it. “As you wish.” The raven descended and beat her wings in his face to hurry him along.

  “JACK WOODCUTTER!” he heard the lorelei shriek. Cwyn disappeared; she did not want her mistress seeing what should not be seen.

  Needing no further prompting, Peregrine crept stealthily back to the far wall, disappearing down a tunnel similar to the one that led to the dragon. The rubble caught his feet but he stumbled only once. Thankfully, the racket the lorelei was making hid his missteps. He only hoped he found Saturday’s sword before the lorelei rendered her unable to wield it.

  “Congratulations,” he heard Saturday reply calmly. “You’ve found me.”

  The lorelei’s response was muffled as Peregrine quickly and quietly crawled his way to the witch’s bedchambers.

  He needed to hurry, but it wasn’t easy. The caves were in a state of chaos. They had not looked this bad when he and Betwixt had pulled Cwyn and the witch from the wreckage. Every artifact had been swept off every shelf, leaving only a fur-covered bed surrounded by piles of broken rubbish.

  Logically, the bed was the only place here that could conceal something as large as Saturday’s sword. Peregrine kicked through the piles gently, so as not to injure himself, but as quickly as he could manage. He stepped over an array of broken vials; his footsteps smeared their contents across the floor. With a giant shove he flipped the witch’s bed over, fur sheets, pallet, and all. There was one deep clang followed by many other higher-pitched ones as the pile on the far side of the bed spilled and scattered. Peregrine ripped the covers away to reveal something he expected and something he didn’t. The first was Saturday’s sword. The second was a small golden cup.

  He bent down and gingerly lifted the cup from the furs. It seemed so innocent, this instrument of his demise. He’d assumed it had been left beside the stream where he’d disappeared. His fingers remembered clutching it in his frozen hand. The dim lantern light drained the color from the gold, but he could tell it still shone. The gems along the edge matched the gems in the ornamental dagger at his hip. These were the only artifacts left from his life before, and both were stamped with the arms of Starburn.

  He slipped the golden cup into the pocket of his skirt. Then he bent and retrieved Saturday’s sword.

  His temples throbbed mightily. The sword sizzled in his hand, though it did not burn. “No!” he cried. In his haste he had forgotten to cover the sword before touching it.

  There was a new smell in the air, a burning not of flesh but of spices he’d forgotten how to name. The image of the sword in his hand wavered and shrank, shifting into something else. He only hoped that Saturday would be able to change it back into a sword. He also knew that, whatever object the sword became, it would be inextricably tied to Saturday’s destiny, as the ax had been, as he now was.

  The lantern began to flicker. In that dying light, Peregrine watched Saturday’s once-majestic sword solidify into a ring.

  He closed his fist around the golden band and held it to his chest, to the other ring there. “She’s going to kill me.”

  Beneath his feet, the mountain began to tremble.

  15

  Wicked and Whole

  “JACK WOODCUTTER!” shrieked the witch. She stood, glorious, triumphant, and almost naked amidst a sea of dust as vivid blue as her skin. Cwyn, her feathers a sunset fire of orange, hovered above her like a flame above a fairy candle.

  Saturday forced herself to remain calm. She needed to stall as long as possible so that Peregrine had a chance to search for her sword. “Congratulations,” she said. “You’ve found me.”

  “You should know by now you can never hide from me.” The witch sniffed the freezing chamber air. Her tongue darted out to taste it. The powerful magic with which she was suffused emanated from her in waves. Around her, the cold, wet air turned to snow, falling in fat white flakes to the blue cave floor.

  “Stealing your eyes hindered you for a while,” Saturday guessed.

  “But not for long,” said the witch. “Never for long. Just as it will not be long now before I finish my Grand Spell. Do you have the ingredients I asked for?”

  Saturday raised the sack. “Spiced moss and mushrooms, as requested.”

 
“And the seeds?”

  A cold gust whipped down her back and froze her feet inside her boots, but Saturday maintained her balance atop the boulder. She had forgotten about the seeds . . . but Peregrine had not. She hadn’t eaten all the tomatoes, and she knew there was at least one pomegranate left from the small harvest he’d picked for her in the garden.

  “Seeds, too,” she announced proudly. But she did not budge.

  “Excellent! Now, are you coming down from there, or will I have to send my familiar to fetch you again?”

  Saturday tossed the sack into the drifts of snow piling up around the lorelei’s bare feet. “There you go. All yours. You don’t need me.”

  “Your second visit has entertained me far less than your first,” said the witch. “You will come down here right now, and you will take this sack to the cauldron in the kitchen.”

  Saturday put her hands on her hips. “And if I don’t?”

  The witch lifted a finger, and Saturday’s muscles stiffened again, but not from exhaustion. Her hands and feet were drawn into the air, one after another, marching her like one of Peter’s wooden puppets down the pile of rocks to the cavern floor before the witch. Her boots slipped on the snow-covered ground but she did not fall, buoyed as she was by magic. She fought against the pull, breaking into a sweat as she struggled, but her body’s will was no longer her own.

  Guided by the raven’s eyes, the witch captured Saturday’s chin in her cerulean claws.

  “No more games, Jack.” The lorelei sucked her pointy, yellowed teeth. She took a deep breath of the steam that rose from Saturday’s skin into the frozen air between them. “I will bathe in your blood,” she whispered. “I will strip the skin from your flesh, fill my stomach with the meat from your bones, and then grind those bones to make my bread. I will consume every part of you, and when I have done so, all your strength will be mine. Together, we will open the portal back to my home, and my brethren will fall to their knees in despair at my power.”

  “I will fight you with every ounce of my being,” Saturday said through her teeth.

  The witch grinned again, lashing out with her free hand and slicing the swordbelt from Saturday’s waist with her claws. Saturday felt the weight fall from her hips as her dagger, empty scabbard, and Peregrine’s hairbrush clattered to the ash-strewn cavern floor.

  “Come,” said the witch. “I’ve made you a cage.”

  The lorelei released Saturday’s face to grasp the front of her shirt. With preternatural strength, the witch pulled her along the clear path she had created in the fallen stone—away from her bedchambers. Saturday’s dragging feet kicked up the blue dust and she sneezed mightily. The longer Saturday kept the witch occupied, the longer Peregrine would be safe.

  The witch stomped unceasingly up through the tunnels, up and up some more, the caverns around them lit only by the light of her stone bracelet. Eventually, Saturday began to recognize rock formations that led to the kitchen.

  As they turned the corner, the witch threw Saturday sideways across the room, as if she weighed no more than a sack of potatoes. Saturday got barely a glimpse of the cage before her face hit the far wall of it. Catching her breath, she sat up and put a hand to her cheek. It came away bloody.

  Dozens of short swords and long swords and maces and daggers made up the bars of Saturday’s cage. She recognized both the flaming sword and the ruby-bladed one—she grabbed at the latter’s handle and tried to pull it away, but to no avail. A fine blue sheen ran along the metal and bound all the pieces, one to another, like magical glue. Weapons that might have meant her escape had become the very instruments of her capture.

  “Clever,” said Saturday, because it was. “The cleverest thing would have been for your bird to kill me the minute it found me instead of bringing me back here.”

  “But I couldn’t have done all this without you, Jack,” said the preening lorelei. “I didn’t recognize the power surrounding you the first time you visited. I will not make that mistake again.”

  Saturday’s hands searched for a loose weapon in the cage’s makeup. Failing that, she began to feel along the smooth floor for a pebble, a spoon, a bit of ice, anything she might use as a weapon.

  The witch tossed a skull into the cauldron, followed by what looked like several shards of calcite and the tip of a waxen fingerstone. The thick liquid swallowed it all, each bubble emitting the stench of rancid flesh. Clouds of deep purple gathered above the cauldron, snapping and churning with lightning and thunder. The fingerstones overhead sparked and glowed with power.

  “Stone of Memory, hear my plea,

  From worlds away I call to thee.”

  She danced as she sang the couplet over the fire; the rags of her dress waved as she swayed backwards and forward. With each word she spoke, her skin turned a deeper and deeper blue. The knobby horns on her head seemed to grow.

  Saturday grabbed the hilt of every sword in the cage, pushing and pulling them one by one in another effort to free them from the bars and attack the lorelei or turn over the cauldron or destroy the ingredients. She needed to stop the spell!

  Out of the corner of her eye, she spotted a small pile of rocks that had been shoved to the side, the discarded remnants of a fallen fingerstone. Saturday moved slowly to the far end of the cage, careful not to catch Cwyn’s attention. She stretched her right arm out behind her, as far as she could, praying to reach a stone sizeable enough to hide in her hand, or sharp enough to pierce skin.

  The blades of the swords bit into her shoulders as she pressed against them, splitting the fabric of her shirt and dotting the tears with blood. Thankfully, the overwhelming presence of magic in the room healed the shallower cuts almost as quickly as she acquired them.

  “Basselure, hear my call,

  Jinni, pyrrhi, lilim, all.”

  Saturday never thought there would come a moment in her life when she wished she were taller, but a few inches would have been quite the mercy. The clouds over the cauldron spun faster. Lightning shot out from its center and cracked against the cage of swords. She felt the jolt, but she continued to stretch with all her might.

  The witch held spears of icerock above the cauldron and melted them in her hands. Saturday’s fingertips collected only pebbles. She risked a rather deep slice in her forearm to reach a slightly larger rock, but she only managed to nudge it aside. There!

  Beneath the rock, slipped into a crack in the floor, was the broken blade of a small dagger. Saturday scooted the blade gently to her and slipped it inside her palm, giving no hint that she had discovered anything at all. Cwyn watched her with traitorous raven eyes.

  The witch tossed a few more small skulls into the cauldron, along with the fresh heads of several brownies and a generous portion of the spiced moss Saturday and Peregrine had collected. The clouds above the cauldron spun and popped and grew; Saturday gagged at the new stench that filled the kitchen.

  The witch’s voice deepened.

  “Teeth for taste as scent is sown . . .”

  Cold . . . taste . . . scent . . . The witch had used her ingredients to represent every physical sense inside her cauldron. The colorful mushrooms could be for sight, but how did one put sound into a stew?

  The answer came quickly. The geis seized Saturday’s muscles once more and compelled her back to the witch’s side of the cage. Saturday squeezed the broken dagger blade inside her fist. Blood slowly dripped from cuts in her palm that opened, healed, and reopened again.

  The witch now held a dagger of her own, wicked and whole. With it she sliced off Saturday’s left ear and dropped it in the cauldron.

  “ . . . the snip and snap of blood and bone.”

  Saturday dropped the blade and clapped her hand to the side of her head where her ear had been. It had not been a neat slice; she could feel a jagged tear of skin and sinew left behind. She would not scream for the witch’s satisfaction. Instead, she growled through her clenched teeth and concentrated on slowing the blood and healing herself. This scar would
never fade—the ear was lost. Even if she’d had her sword, the appendage couldn’t have regrown in the time she had left. The witch needed to die now.

  As Saturday suspected, the mushrooms were next into the pot.

  “Though I lack the eyes to see,

  Doorway show yourself to me!”

  The mist above the cauldron swirled with a myriad of colors, as if each was fighting the others. The clouds grew up to the high ceiling, encompassing the chimney and the large pillars on either side of it. The fingerstones in the ceiling glowed like the moon.

  Saturday needed to shift the lorelei’s focus. Biting back the pain, she forced herself to keep on her feet and address the witch.

  “Your daughter should be here to witness your triumph,” Saturday screamed over the howl of the wind generated by the churning cauldron-clouds.

  “I was just about to call her,” said the witch. With that, she tossed the fruit and the remnants of a half-charred book into the fire.

  “From seed of birth to page of death,

  I hail the daughter of my breath.”

  As the book burned, the acrid cauldron stench was replaced by one of charred cinnamon. An image appeared in the clouds above the cauldron of a woman with pale olive skin, long dark hair, sculpted lips, and eyes of starless night. The vision even gave a sense of the palace behind her. She was standing in the bedroom of a queen, addressing her looking glass.

  “Hello, Mother. Miss me?”

  So this was Leila.

  Cwyn croaked, but Saturday could not tell if the animal’s exclamation was one of joy or frustration.

  “How can you be in the fire, child? You are right here.”