Hero

by Alethea Kontis

  “Silly Mother. I haven’t been with you for a very long time, and you never even noticed. I should be wounded, but how can I be? You seem to have misplaced your eyes. Here. Let me help you with that.”

  The image of Leila waved her hand. Green lightning shot out of the cauldron-clouds. The witch blinked.

  No, said Cwyn. She can see!

  The witch still had no eyes to speak of, but somehow the empty sockets were doing the job anyway. She raised a thin blue claw to the vision in the clouds. “Daughter? Is that you?”

  “Yes, Mother,” Leila said impatiently.

  “Then who is here with me?” asked the witch. “Who is the daughter I know, the daughter who keeps my house, the daughter who inspired this spell?”

  “An imposter,” said Leila.

  The witch instantly whipped her head around to the cage. “Jack Woodcutter, this is all your fault!”

  “Use your eyes, Mother,” said Leila. “That can’t be Jack Woodcutter. She’s a girl.”

  Saturday wanted to reach through those magical clouds and wring Leila’s neck. If she managed to make it off this mountain alive, she vowed to someday perform that task.

  “Not Jack Woodcutter?” asked the witch calmly. And then, “NOT JACK WOODCUTTER?”

  “Goodbye, Mother,” Leila said passively. “Much love. Have fun destroying the world.” And with that, the vision was gone.

  The lorelei didn’t seem to care. She stretched out a hand and Saturday slammed forward against the cage bars, slicing her arms again and jarring her bad ear. The lorelei took her by the shirt collar and shook her mightily. “NOT JACK WOODCUTTER!”

  “Saturday Woodcutter, at your service.” Saturday clasped the hand the lorelei had on her collar, locking the demon’s thin fingers inside her own large and bloody ones. “You rescued me from a ship full of bloodthirsty pirates! I’m so glad this ruse is over so I can finally thank you properly.”

  “You were in this together,” said the witch. “You and the imposter.”

  “If you say so,” said Saturday. “But you will not be harming him today. Or ever again.”

  The pronoun had the desired effect. “Him?” The lorelei’s skin swirled black and blue. The clouds shot lightning into her claws and the cage and Cwyn’s scarlet wings. Saturday swore she heard a crack in the very ether itself.

  “FILTHY HUMAN! I WILL KILL HIM!”

  “I can’t let you do that.” Saturday threw her weight back, pulling the lorelei’s arm. This time the witch slammed against the blade-bars of the sword cage. Her demon skin split into even lines where the blades bit into her face, and blood dripped down to her chin. Saturday only wished she’d gotten an ear.

  Cwyn fluttered frantically, like a silk scarf tossed in a sea of lightning. Her crimson wings began to swirl with black as well.

  The lorelei stared Saturday down with her empty, bloody eye sockets. Every inch of the witch was blue-black now, even the tips of her hair and the pointed horns at her temples. The air in the kitchen crackled with power.

  “I WILL KILL YOU ALL.” The lorelei’s unearthly voice echoed throughout the chamber. Faint voices from the world beyond the cauldron answered her cry.

  “Not if I kill you first,” said Saturday.

  She moved one hand to the demon’s struggling wrist, braced the other against the handle of the stuck fire sword, and slammed the lorelei against the bars again. The enchanted sword began to glow, but Saturday had no time to wait for its magic to manifest. Throwing her head back, she called out a rhyme of her own to the gods.

  “Fire from earth’s hallowed ground,

  Help me take this demon down!”

  Saturday inhaled and felt the power from the cauldron-clouds enter her body. Her bones became iron in the heat of the forge. Lightning shot from her fingers. The blue-green bracelet at her wrist burned with an inner fire . . . and the sword in her hand burned with an outer one. Flames erupted along the blade of the sword and then the lorelei, pressed against it. Saturday’s clothes and Cwyn’s feathers caught fire too, but Saturday held the demon against the burning bars with all her might.

  The lorelei gasped as she took her last breath of this life, but she did not scream. “Thank you,” she said. Her body seemed to melt at the edges, and then disappeared in a puff of brilliant blue steam.

  Behind her, the raven fell into a pile of crimson ash.

  The flames engulfing Saturday and the cage vanished, though the blade-bars still glowed red with heat. The swarming clouds of colors shrank to the size of pebbles before exploding in one last great burst of sound and light. The explosion cracked the cauldron and spilled its corrosive contents to the floor. The liquid quickly burned its way down through the icerock, down and down to the Earthfire far below.

  The hungry screams from the world beyond had been silenced. In the aftermath, Saturday heard only her ragged breaths and the stubborn beat of her defiant heart. She was glad there was no one to witness her tears.

  A bright red glow filled the cave. Saturday raised her head. It was not the bars emitting the light, but the pile of Cwyn’s ashes. From those ashes rose the silhouette of a young woman. As the shadow solidified into radiant flesh, the beautiful woman grew old and round. “Well done, child,” was all she said before she vanished completely in a puff of black smoke.

  Two-faced witch. Saturday was not sorry to see her go. She only lamented that Vasilisa had not freed her from the cage of swords first.

  Alone again, Saturday blinked into the quiet darkness. If the witch’s geis on Vasilisa had broken with her death, then why hadn’t the cage fallen to pieces? Saturday leaned back and kicked her boot against the bars. They didn’t budge. She tried again, the force of the blow resonating in her bones. She might as well have been kicking the wall of the cave. Carefully, she reached out and felt along the bars with her fingers.

  The blades of the swords were no longer sharp. The heat of the fire she’d summoned had melted the weapons together, solidifying the bonds the demon had created with her magic. Grasping the bars with both hands, she tried to lift the cage, but its weight was beyond her strength. Stubbornly she tried again. And again.

  Sweating with the effort now, Saturday fell back into the middle of the cage. She had defeated the lorelei, and in doing so had imprisoned herself even further.

  Beneath her, the ground rumbled. Saturday had felt this sort of tremor before, on the day she’d broken the earth and called the ocean. The rumble came again.

  As predicted, the mountain was waking up, and the dragon with it. And if she had truly fulfilled her destiny, then she could die now and would, here in this cage of her own making at the Top of the World.

  “NO!” The screech Saturday let loose would have made the witch proud. She railed at the bars. She pulled and lifted and kicked and strained. She made up nonsense rhymes and cried them into the darkness, one after another, but the magic in the walls did not answer her. She screamed at the ceiling in fear and frustration, her shrieks turning to hysterical laughter at her predicament.

  “I thought you’d killed the lorelei, but I could swear I still hear her.”

  The voice that split the darkness was not Peregrine’s. “Betwixt?”

  “To the rescue,” said the chimera. “Though to be fair, you rescued me first.”

  In the blackness Saturday could not see what new form Betwixt had taken, but the sound of the bars creaking apart was a blessing in her ears. She stood to face the noise, and was subsequently embraced by a pair of very large and very fuzzy arms.

  “My hero,” Saturday said into the musky fur of the chimera’s shoulder.

  “My hero.” Betwixt returned the greeting. The mountain shivered and rocked. “We need to get out of here.”

  “Do you have a light?”

  “There’s no time,” said Betwixt.

  “I’m naked,” said Saturday. “And unlike you, I can’t see in the dark.”

  “Ah.” Saturday stood still while Betwixt rummaged in the dark. A bundle of
cloth hit her in the midsection. “Put those on. I’ll see to a light.”

  One of the items Betwixt had tossed her was a shirt. She quickly put it on. The other was a skirt, but she could not tell the top from the bottom. Eventually, she discovered a drawstring in the thing and pulled it tightly around her waist. Though she was covered in yards of cloth, she still felt naked, but there was little time to care. She heard flint strike steel and waited. And waited. Her ruined ear throbbed. She pushed her muddy hair over the ragged lump of flesh. The mountain bucked and chuckled at her predicament, tickling the dust between her toes.

  She heard the unmistakable crack of a fingerstone before it plummeted to the floor behind her. It was nothing like the crack of the portal to the demon world the witch had almost made. Those inhuman cries would haunt her for a long time.

  A spark burst into life, and within moments Saturday could see the torch. It was held by a hulking, ugly minotaur. Dark fur bristled over his wide chest and bare human feet. Dark horns sprouted from either side of his head. His well-muscled arms and legs radiated pure brute strength.

  He was the most beautiful thing Saturday had ever seen.

  Betwixt handed her the torch. “Let’s go.”

  “Is Peregrine with you? Is he safe?”

  “He’s fine. I’ll take you to him. But we must hurry.”

  Saturday followed the chimera’s lead through the caves. Around them, boulders trembled and fingerstones fell. The blasted skirt continued to tangle in her legs, catch on protrusions, and trip her up. When the floor became too steep for her to climb and hold the torch and her skirt at once, Betwixt grabbed the back of her shirt and hauled her up the rest of the way.

  Saturday’s torchlight fell on the walls of the small cave they had entered. “These rocks are unfamiliar to me.”

  “Peregrine would not have brought you to this place. But this is the faster path. And I thought you should see this before it crumbles into legend.”

  On every wall there was a picture of her. In shadows and colors Peregrine had captured her wide smile and bright eyes. There were axes and swords and trees and her, over and over again. “Peregrine did all this?”

  “Yes.”

  “When did he have the time?” As the words left her mouth, Saturday felt a fool for asking.

  “He has been dreaming of you his whole life,” said Betwixt.

  “He told me as much, but I never . . . I guess I never realized what that meant.”

  “I thought you should know.”

  Saturday touched the closest cave painting, wondering how it felt to love someone so completely, for so long. The sheer grandeur of his passion made her feel small. She wasn’t sure her own meager feelings would ever measure up to this obsession.

  “Come,” said Betwixt, and in a heartbeat he had morphed into a lizard with batwings. Saturday followed him through a gap where the ceiling dipped low, tossing her torch to the other side before crawling under to retrieve it. Betwixt had changed back into the minotaur; he held the torch aloft to light her passage.

  This chamber’s walls held no paintings, only hash marks. “Peregrine began marking his days here. Eventually he gave up.”

  Betwixt blew softly on the torch, and the flame rose. With it, Saturday could see more marks, so many that they completely blackened the calcite, as far up as a human hand could climb or reach.

  “How long has he been here?”

  “Too long,” said Betwixt. He blew on the torch again, this time extinguishing it completely. As her eyes adjusted to the darkness, Saturday saw a glow coming from a hole in the space before them.

  “It is a slide to the witch’s lair,” said Betwixt. “I will go first, so I can catch you when you fall.”

  A shadow moved across the hole, and Saturday heard Betwixt’s mass barrel down it. She counted slowly to five, giving him a moment to land. The mountain groaned, and Saturday felt a blast of air from the aperture behind her as the back half of the cave collapsed.

  She blew a kiss to the dark walls around her, crossed her arms over her chest, and jumped.

  16

  Wings of Ice and Stone

  PEREGRINE HAD just crossed the moat outside the witch’s lair when a minotaur dropped from the sky. The beast landed well, but hard, and then turned his snout back up to the ceiling as if he were waiting for something. The mountain groaned.

  “Betwixt! Is that you?”

  “Yes, my friend.” The chimera’s gravelly voice came from deep inside his hefty bull chest.

  “What about Saturday?” Peregrine lost his footing and fell backwards into the moat. The water was hot. The Earthfire was rising up the mountain to meet them.

  “Close behind me,” said Betwixt. “The witch is dead.”

  Peregrine considered the mountain’s revolt. “So we are free now? Truly free?”

  “As free as any band of misfits trapped on top of the highest mountain in the world as it begins to crumble.”

  A cascade of pebbles and dust fell from the hole onto the minotaur’s outstretched arms. He roared mightily. The mountain roared and shook in answer. Another shower of rocks fell and Saturday came immediately after. Betwixt caught the large bundle of blond hair and rags easily in his brawny arms.

  Saturday smiled at the minotaur. “No one’s been able to catch me like that since I was a girl.”

  “You still are a girl,” said Betwixt.

  “We must go,” said Peregrine.

  Betwixt set Saturday down gently. Peregrine let her gain her footing before catching her up into an embrace of his own. “You did it.”

  “Yes. I did.”

  Peregrine tried to examine her face, but her hair was a wet mess again, caked with either red dirt . . . or dried blood. “Are you all right?”

  He moved to cup her head in his hands, but she leaned in and kissed him instead. This was no kiss of exuberance or companionship; it was one of relief and hope. In the brief moment that she held him, he let himself hope as well.

  “Any sign of the dragon?” she asked.

  “Not yet.” Peregrine caught her arm as she tripped over the uneven floor. She was wearing one of his old kitchen skirts. “You really are a girl!”

  Saturday rolled her eyes. “It was either this, or stay naked.”

  Peregrine raised his eyebrows.

  Saturday punched him in the shoulder. “I could still take lessons from you.”

  “You never know,” said Peregrine. “One day you may need them.”

  They ran back into the witch’s lair and stopped at the base of the cave-in. Saturday sifted through the ash and rubble to find her savaged belt and scabbard. “Where’s my sword?”

  He could put off her disappointment no longer. Peregrine pulled the transformed ring from his skirt pocket and placed it in Saturday’s hand. “I’m sorry.”

  There was no singing in the air as she touched it—it simply stayed the ring that it was. Saturday stared into her palm, snapping her fingers into a fist around it when she felt the mountain buck and lost her footing again. “You have got to be kidding me.” She closed her eyes and held her closed fist to the cold sky. “Change, damn you! I command it!”

  The incredible magic she’d been able to perform now abandoned her. Try as she might, the ring would not transform. Their only decent weapon was the runesword at Peregrine’s waist. “Take this,” he said.

  Saturday stopped him. “There’s no time. We need to go.” She raised her arm as if to throw the ring across the cavern. “Stupid, useless magical—”

  Peregrine caught her hand. “Never lose hope. The gods have ways of returning such items to their owners.”

  “The gods also have ways of forcing unwilling humans into destinies,” she said. “Here. You take it. I’ll just lose it.” With a nod, Peregrine dipped his head to remove the chain that held his father’s wedding band. Saturday recovered a dagger from the ground near where her sliced swordbelt lay. She also found the wooden hairbrush Peregrine had given her. He expected her to toss t
he useless item away, but instead, she tucked it in the pocket of her skirt. The gesture warmed him.

  Meanwhile, the rest of the cave began to warm by other means. Molten Earthfire poured through the hole in the ceiling from which Saturday had dropped, turning the moat to steam as it slid across the floor.

  Peregrine scrambled higher on the pile of rock and tilted his head back at the night sky. Pillows of steam venting from the mountain blotted out the stars. The hole in the ceiling had widened as the mountain shuddered. “We need a rope,” he called down to his friends.

  “I need wings,” Saturday said.

  “I can give you those,” said Betwixt. The air crackled with magic and a song much like the one Peregrine had heard when Saturday’s sword had changed in his hands. Betwixt was swallowed inside a ball of golden light.

  Peregrine caught her by the neck and kissed her hard. “In case we never get this chance again.”

  She kissed him back. “We will. We have to.”

  “Because you’re going to save us.”

  Saturday smiled. “We’re going to save each other.”

  Betwixt whinnied. The chimera stood proudly before them, a great stallion of white and gray and silver like a well-muscled cloud on a summer’s day. From his haunches unfurled wings, each almost as large again as he was from tip to tail. The feathers shimmered in the hot air like new-fallen snow and hope.

  “Pegasus! Brilliant!” Peregrine whooped at his friend. He scrambled down from their perch, dragging Saturday after him.

  “I’m a woodcutter,” she said. “I’m no good on a horse.”

  “I’m the son of an earl,” he shot back. “I was born on one. Hop on.”

  “I’m wearing a skirt.”

  Peregrine reached down between her feet and pulled the back hem of her skirt forward and up, tucking it securely in the front of her waistband. “Voilà, pantaloons. Now, up!” He knelt, and she used his leg to launch herself onto Betwixt’s back.

  Peregrine rested one hand on Betwixt’s back and vaulted himself up after her. “Let’s fly!” he announced.