Hero

by Alethea Kontis

  “Where do we go first?” asked Betwixt. “Starburn?”

  Peregrine nodded and put a hand on Betwixt’s scruffy shoulder. In his other hand was a small satchel that contained his worldly possessions: a shard of mirror, a vial of gryphon’s tears, and a golden cup. He had left the runesword with Jack, and the wish that it had better luck besting the dragon a second time around. Saturday had given him no token to take with him, nor had he asked her for one.

  “Before you set out on this journey with me, my friend, I must ask you one question.”

  “I promise to give you the straightest answer I can,” said Betwixt.

  “Is there a home you need to visit? A family to which you need to return? A quest of your own to finish?”

  Betwixt scratched at his stubby faun horns, like the witches’, only furrier. “Whatever home or family I was born into I left by choice long ago. I’m a useless sack of trouble on my own. You’re stuck with me.”

  “It’s a burden I’m prepared to bear.”

  “And you are a burden I’m prepared to bear,” replied Betwixt. In a flash of golden light, he was the pegasus again, silver coat, white mane, angel wings, and all.

  As he galloped to speed and took flight, Peregrine looked back down on the gardens of Rose Abbey. But for a few hooded acolytes, no one had come to see him off.

  It was just as well.

  From the air he looked north, to the White Mountains, but nothing stood out against the jagged horizon. No plumes of smoke and Earthfire spewed from the Top of the World, no hued clouds shot down colorful lightning, no dragon spun on lofty breezes.

  More terror and tragedy would come, in time, and he would do his part to remedy the damage he’d had a hand in, but today the world was peaceful. Today, the sun would trek across the sky and march time onward. There would be a tonight, and then another today, and soon he would be back where he belonged. He only hoped that place was at Saturday’s side.

  Selfishly, he prayed once more that Elodie had forgotten him and gone on to live a full life.

  It had been so long since he’d seen the castle at Starburn that he didn’t recognize it the first time they flew over. He motioned with his hands and legs for Betwixt to circle around and land in the woods, just outside the gates. Hidden in the brush, Betwixt changed from his regal pegasus form into that of a tri-horned mule. And so the long-lost son of Starburn returned to his castle at sunset, on the back of a humble pack animal.

  No one seemed to care.

  In fact, there seemed to be no one there at all. No soldiers looked down from the towers. No market stalls populated the bailey. There was no smell of horses or hearth fires or children, fresh fruit or rotted meat. There were no sounds but for that of a few empty pennant poles, rusted and banging about in the wind.

  “Do you think it’s a spell?” Peregrine whispered into the silence. “That they’re all asleep somewhere?”

  Betwixt snuffled warily in reply. “Or dead.”

  Peregrine dismounted at the front of the keep, walked up the steps, and banged on the door. The knock echoed through the empty bailey. He knocked a second time, and a third. He’d just about given up when the grilled porthole in the door opened.

  “Go away! We’ve nothing to give!” The woman’s voice was common; the top of her kerchiefed head barely reached the porthole.

  “Not even scraps for a beggar?” asked Peregrine.

  “We’ve barely any scraps for ourselves. Go on, then, and leave us in peace.”

  “I have a message for your master.”

  “Bah. You mean the mistress.”

  Mistress? “Yes, she will do.” Perhaps he should have asked for Hadris straight off.

  “She’s not here.” It sounded like the woman spat at the door. “And thank the gods. We’ve nothing left to give her, either.”

  “What on earth is going on here?” Peregrine asked. Betwixt snuffled again. The chimera was right. It was time to get to the point.

  “I am Peregrine of Starburn,” he declared to the porthole, “and I have come to reclaim my lands.” Not that there appeared to be much to reclaim.

  There was a riot of giggles and the porthole slammed shut. There was a dragging, a rattle of chains, and then the door opened. Two small people stood before him, a man and a woman, both middle-aged, and both flushed with repressed amusement. Peregrine could tell from their complexions that they were not dwarves from the mountains but petelkin, a rare diminutive breed of human.

  “Pleased to meet you, Your Lordship,” said the female petelkin. “I’m the Queen of the Troll Kingdom, and this here’s my brother, God of the North Wind.”

  At that announcement, the two of them collapsed in laughter.

  “I actually am Peregrine of Starburn,” he repeated. He simply had no idea what else to say.

  “Bah,” said the woman. “Peregrine of Starburn is a myth. Peregrine of Starburn is a wish young girls make on stars.”

  The man, who indeed could have been her brother, eyed Peregrine. “Did you come from the stars?”

  “Very near there,” he said. “Look, I can prove it. I have items in my possession that bear the Starburn coat of arms.”

  “You and half the countryside,” said the woman. “Everything was sold to pay the mistress’s debts before she got herself married off.”

  “When she ran out of furniture, she sold the people,” said the man. “We only got to stay because of the contract.” The woman gave her brother a good smack before he could say anything else on that particular matter.

  “Out of curiosity,” said the woman, “what exactly is it you’ve got?”

  “Only what I was wearing or holding when I was cursed. This dagger”—he held the piece out for examination—“and this cup.”

  The woman snatched the cup from his grasp. Peregrine let her take it. She poked at the scrollwork and prodded the gems to see if any were loose. She made what looked like a sign of the Thief God over the Starburn seal, and then spat upon it. Peregrine waited patiently while she continued to find what he knew she would: nothing.

  She did not return the cup to him. “Come inside,” she said.

  “May my companion come as well?” asked Peregrine, motioning to the odd mule.

  “Just so long as he don’t scat on the floors,” said the man.

  In a flash of light, Betwixt became a faun again. “I promise to leave your floors exactly as I find them,” he said with a jaunty bow.

  The woman raised her eyebrows at the magical display, or Betwixt’s nakedness. Her brother stared at Betwixt in full, open-mouthed bewilderment. “You did come from the stars.”

  Peregrine followed the woman down the long hallway, straight through to the kitchens at the opposite end of the house.

  He couldn’t recall what the kitchens of Starburn had looked like before he left, but he marveled at them now. Floors that could be swept, a pantry for storing dry goods, and air that smelled of wood smoke—wood!—instead of brimstone. There would be chickens beyond that back door, and cows, for eggs, milk, butter, and cheese. Mixing bowls and dishtowels made of proper cloth, not something an ancient soldier had worn up the side of a mountain to meet his death.

  The woman stood before a low cupboard that faced away from them, still holding his golden cup. “Never seen a kitchen before, great man?” she teased.

  “The kitchen where we were kept was far more humble,” Peregrine answered honestly. “We didn’t have a lot of the luxuries this house affords.” Like windows. Or daylight.

  “It’d have to have been a fire pit and a stick broom to be less extravagant than this,” said the man.

  “No sticks at all,” offered Betwixt. “May we sit?”

  The woman nodded and gestured to the small table beside the chopping block.

  “As I said before, I’m Peregrine—”

  “If you like,” said the man.

  “—and this is my companion, Betwixt.”

  “Pleasure,” said the woman. She opened the cupboard, exa
mined the contents inside, and then joined them at the table with the cup. “I’m Gretel. This is my brother, Hansel.”

  “God of the North Wind,” said Hansel, letting loose a rowdy fart in illustration.

  “Impressive,” said Betwixt.

  “If you really are Peregrine of Starburn,” said Gretel, “and I’m not saying you are, when did you leave these lands?”

  “Right after my mother’s funeral,” said Peregrine. “My father was still lying in state when my mother died. The living death took everything he had, and then everything my mother had, in the end. I wasn’t the bravest of sons; staying here was simply too much for me to bear. I collected a handful of men at the funeral and left after the first mass with an eye to embarking on the adventure that was to be my life.”

  “What was the name of your horse?”

  Gretel had used the past tense; Peregrine gave up hope that his faithful steed might still be alive. “Scar. Ugly as his name, but the finest piece of horseflesh east of Arilland.”

  Hansel pounded a fist on the table, as if Peregrine had got the answer right (well, of course he had), but Gretel put out a hand to curb her brother’s enthusiasm.

  “And who did you leave in charge of accounts?”

  “Hadris,” Peregrine said without hesitation. The estate accounts were something Hadris, the earl’s steward, did anyway, but Peregrine had made a formal announcement to the effect before he’d left, to allay any doubts.

  Hansel pounded the table again.

  “As I live and breathe,” said Gretel.

  Peregrine finished the story for them, one they could have only known from the perspective of the men in his party who’d lost him in that tiny grove of trees by the streambed that day. “We stopped at a creek to rest on the way to Cassot. A fairy found me there and offered me a wish and a drink. But she wasn’t a fairy, she was the daughter of a witch—a demon—who lived high in the White Mountains, at the Top of the World. She cursed me to take her place there, in her guise, for as long as I lived . . . or until I escaped, which was only a few days ago.”

  Hansel eyed Peregrine’s outfit dubiously. “In her guise? Skirts and all?”

  “Skirts and all,” answered Peregrine.

  “The sinking ocean,” said Hansel. “The rising forest. The chaos rain. That was you?”

  “Afraid so,” said Betwixt. “We woke a dragon on our way out. It’s pretty angry.”

  “But I’ve come back to set things right,” Peregrine said, before the rest of them got lost in the twisted tale of the escape. “I don’t know what that witch has done to my lands, but I intend to fix it. I promise you both, I will fix this. But first, I need to make my amends to Elodie of Cassot.”

  Gretel sighed. “We’ve kept three frivolous things in all this time. We’ve sold off the rest of the estate, bit by bit, but even when the walls were bare and the well dried up we kept them. It was our uncle’s dying wish.” She hopped off the chair and went back to the low cupboard, from which she removed three pristine, jewel-encrusted golden goblets. His own goblet completed the set.

  She returned to the table and put her hand over Peregrine’s own. For such a small thing, it was exceedingly warm. Or he was just exceedingly cold. “You’ve been gone a hundred years, milord,” said Gretel gently. “Elodie of Cassot is dead.”

  Peregrine stood up fast, knocking the stool over in his haste. Elodie waiting, he had been prepared for. Elodie forgetting him, he had been prepared for. A hundred years passed and Elodie dead and gone had never crossed his mind.

  “Pour our master a drink, Hansel.”

  Betwixt righted the stool and Gretel guided Peregrine back to the table. Hansel handed him a glass—actual glass!—of a tawny brown liquid that burned his nostrils. Peregrine forced himself to take a swallow, and it scorched a path of Earthfire down his gullet. He handed the glass to Betwixt, who gulped the rest of the contents whole.

  “Forgive me, but this is easier for me to tell as a story,” said Gretel. “You’ve only ever been a story to me.” Peregrine nodded for her to go on. “When Peregrine of Starburn vanished on the way to claim his bride, people across the country were devastated. Gossip began to spread that there was a curse on Starburn, that none who lived here would ever be able to find true happiness.”

  “They weren’t far off,” said Hansel.

  Gretel ignored her brother’s interruption. “Not long after, a young lady appeared at the castle, claiming to be a cousin of the Earl of Starburn, and thus its rightful heir. She was the most beautiful creature anyone had ever seen, possibly the most beautiful woman in the world. And because she was so beautiful, everyone believed her.”

  “What did she look like?” asked Peregrine, but he already knew.

  “Hair and eyes as black as the midnight sky, skin a dusky olive hue, and everywhere she went, it smelled like cinnamon.”

  Leila, it seemed, had not simply cursed Peregrine to take her place at the Top of the World. She’d taken his place here in Starburn as well.

  “She was not as kind as she was beautiful. She cared nothing for people, only power. She traveled the world in style, attending party after party, drowning herself in one extravagance or another until Starburn was bankrupt. When there was no blood left in these stones, she married a dark prince from a kingdom west of Arilland and was never heard from again.”

  “It is said she lives there still,” added Hansel. “That her beauty never dies. Just like you.”

  “The witch’s daughter,” said Peregrine. “Leila. She had that kind of power.”

  “I would believe that now,” said Gretel.

  “She only ever had us call her Mistress,” said Hansel.

  “And how do you two fit into all of this?” asked Betwixt.

  “Our birth was seen to be part of the curse on this estate,” said Gretel. “I was the first petelkin, and then my brother. Our mother died in childbirth. No woman was brave enough to bear a child in Starburn after that.”

  “I’m sorry,” said Peregrine. “But I am glad that Leila didn’t force you to leave.”

  “She couldn’t.” Hansel smiled proudly. “Because of the contract.”

  Gretel explained. “Before Peregrine left these lands, he publicly gave power of his estates over to his steward.”

  “Hadris,” said Peregrine.

  “By virtue of that power, none could remove Hadris or his family from these lands, not even the dark mistress herself.”

  “He fought long and hard, Great-Uncle Hadris,” said Hansel. “To the bitter end.” He raised his own glass in a toast and drained it.

  Poor Hadris. He’d been a good, strong man, kind but strict, so much like the earl. Peregrine clapped Hansel on the back. “You’re a credit to his memory. I can’t think of two people I’d rather have in charge of Starburn.”

  “Don’t you want to run the estate, now that you’re back?” asked Gretel.

  “Yes. And no,” said Peregrine. “There are still some things I need to do first.”

  Hansel elbowed Gretel in the side. “It’s a girl,” he whispered.

  “You are not wrong, my good man,” Peregrine said proudly. “She saved me from a demon witch. I owe her my life.”

  “Same here,” said Betwixt.

  Hansel grimaced. “She’d have to be the sister of Jack Woodcutter himself to be worthy of our Peregrine.”

  “Funny you should say that,” said Betwixt.

  “Her name is Saturday Woodcutter,” said Peregrine.

  Hansel stared at them.

  Gretel smiled. “A fortunate name for a fortunate girl; I hope she is prepared to prove herself worthy. Peregrine’s story has been told at children’s bedsides for a century. Every pretty little thing for miles has fancied herself Elodie and dreamt that her own Peregrine, done with his adventures in the Vanishing Lands, would appear to sweep her off her feet and take her as his bride. You’ve been wished for upon more stars than years you’ve been gone, I’ll wager. I wished for you a time or two myself as a g
irl, I’m not ashamed to say.” Gretel’s blush convinced him otherwise.

  “I’m honored.” Peregrine took her tiny hand in his and kissed the back of it.

  “And here I am, no longer the pretty little thing I was, and here you are, Peregrine of Starburn, done with your adventuring and knocking at my doorstep. Who would believe it?”

  “Not I,” said Hansel.

  “Nor I,” said Betwixt. He snorted and magicked himself back into a pegasus, much to Hansel’s delight.

  “I will be back soon,” said Peregrine. “We will refill the coffers and stock the cupboards and open the market and Starburn will live again.”

  “Thank you,” said Gretel. “Thank you for coming back to us. To me.”

  Peregrine bowed to the woman. As much as he wanted to stay, he desperately needed to catch up with Saturday and stand by her side for as long as she’d have him. “Thank you for telling me the story. In a way, Elodie will live on forever.”

  “That she will,” said Hansel.

  Gretel put out her arms and Peregrine knelt to hug the little woman. “From what I know, the real Elodie did wait for you, long past her prime, but a wandering knight fell in love with her anyway and followed her day and night until she finally accepted him. I don’t know how many they had, but there were children, and I believe her family still resides in Cassot.”

  “I look forward to meeting them,” said Peregrine, “and sharing with them the rest of the story.”

  Hansel crooked a finger and Peregrine leaned over to hear him whisper, “You might want to leave out the part about being a girl for a hundred years.”

  19

  A New Adventure

  “HE’LL BE BACK, love. Trust me on this one. I’ve seen enough besotted men to know.”

  Love. The very word rankled, no matter what its use.

  “Who, Peregrine?” Saturday asked Wolf nonchalantly. “Whatever. He’ll be back, or not. Who cares?” She glowered at the path in front of them. Even the trees of the forest they rode through didn’t make her happy anymore.