by Holly Hook
“It was Alric, wasn’t it? He wanted to make sure he didn’t die in his story.”
“Shorty, go away. Do not mention this again.”
The way she said that made me about die inside.
This was why my grandmother didn’t want to hang around me. I was the son of the man who had killed her son as well as the son of her missing daughter. It didn’t get much more complicated than that.
So I turned and left. The whole world seemed surreal. This wasn't just about where I had come from after all.
No wonder my grandmother couldn’t stand to have me around. She’d been nice at first, but maybe I looked too much like Alric and the pain got to her after a while.
I kicked the wall when I got to the bottom of the stairs.
“Shorty,” Candice said from down the hall.
I looked up. She stood there, brushing crumbs off her white dress. She was beautiful despite that. Candice was always gorgeous.
"You asked your grandmother something, didn't you?"
"Yes," I said. Rae and Henry must have told her. "I asked her if my mom had a brother. It's him who's supposed to kill Alric."
“I wanted to tell you about that."
“You knew?” I asked after a pause. “You knew my mother had a brother?”
“Nori told me a while ago. She didn’t want you to know about it. You have enough to feel bad about, Shorty.”
I couldn’t feel mad at her. This whole thing did suck and it did hurt that I had to carry the guilt of someone else. “How are we going to stop Alric, then, if he's gone?”
Candice walked up to me and put her arm around my shoulder. She pulled me close to her and for a second, I wanted to be the one supporting her. “There’s got to be a loophole,” she said. “We’re the ones who found one with the Frog Prince, remember?”
“I had to be the frog,” I said.
“But it still worked without Lawrence. Even with the main character of the Glass Coffin gone, we can find a way to make it work.”
“Is there anyone who can resurrect the dead?” I asked. “Or will he just get reborn again? That always happens to everyone in Fable.”
Candice let go of me and thought. Alric would have made sure that no one would ever kill him. “I’m sure it’ll take a while,” she said. “Maybe generations, since your grandmother would have to be reborn, too. Right?”
I thought about it. “I don’t know how long it takes,” I said. “It’s never clear. I don’t know how long ago he died or how Alric did him in. It’s not like I can turn myself into a stag and then go kill Alric.” I paused. "Or can I?"
“You couldn’t kill him with that wand,” Candice said.
I made sure the corridor was quiet. Only a torch popped on the wall and sunlight streamed in through the stained glass, forming the shapes of stars on the floor. “No. I couldn’t.” I was half relieved that I’d failed. Even the killing spell couldn't finish him. Alric had grown too powerful from all the gold under his castle, the gold he had inherited from King Henrik when he disappeared. “We have to find a way, Candice. And I might have to be the one.”
“But you’re not even in that story.”
“You’re right. I’m not,” I said. “I wasn't in the Frog Prince, either. I’m like an extra.”
“That’s right,” Candice said. “Maybe you’re an extra. Someone who can stand in whenever they’re needed.”
I hated the thought of having that burden but I didn’t have a reason not to believe it. I had stood in for Lawrence in every way at the end of the last story.
Maybe I could stand in for my mom’s brother and Alric had no idea.
Or he had. Alric had sent that wall of fire after me and Candice, after all.
“Shorty, you shouldn’t have to do all of this. Life isn’t treating you fair.”
I could see the moisture in Candice’s eyes. She cared about me. Candice actually gave a crap about how I felt. She was the first person who ever had.
We hugged and started making out. Her kisses were salty and wet but I could do this all day. I didn’t dare let go.
Until the trumpets blew again outside.
And again. And again.
We separated. “What’s that?” Candice asked, facing the direction she had come.
“Don’t know.” I’d heard those trumpets blow at least once per day, but not three times in a row. My gut told me something was off. “I think we should investigate.”
Candice and I ran back towards the courtyard, pushing open the wooden doors only to about get trampled by the crowd. We pressed to opposite sides of the corridor as the peasants poured in, pushing around each other and screaming. The trumpets blew again and the elf pushed in, too, holding the hand of another blond girl. Rae and Henry were the last inside and Henry pointed to the sky. “Annie’s found us.”
I looked.
And swore.
A moving black cloud approached the castle. I blinked and realized it was a huge flock of ravens. The cloud got thicker and spread over the small city while the two knights posted at the gates watched. They flipped their visors down. I had to commend those brave guys for getting ready to face that.
Ravens weren’t bloodthirsty unless they were in the dark region or someone with a lot of dark power was controlling them.
And also nearby.
That meant—
“Close the doors!” I shouted as the two knights drew their swords.
Henry and I got on either side and pulled the heavy doors shut. Nobody was left in the gardens. They clicked as the cawing met my ears.
Alric had a thing about controlling ravens.
And Annie, being his sister, must too.
Henry and I made sure the doors were pulled tight and there were no cracks for any birds to get under. My heart raced and I wished I knew a bird repellent spell, but without a wand and lots of practice with magic, I was useless there.
“We’ve got to make sure the castle is secured,” I said. I thought. Most of the windows were glass and the ravens might not break through that. But this place had lots of doors and passages that even I hadn’t explored.
So we did the only thing we could.
The four of us ran after the peasants and Franco, screaming that all doors had to be closed. I knew we’d left those two knights out there. Their armor might protect them, but none of us in here would stand up against the flock of birds and whoever was coming with them. I might see him again and within minutes. I wasn’t ready for the fight.
“Shut all the doors!” I shouted down every corridor we passed. A few maids stopped there and stared after me. “If you don’t want to die a horrible death, close them now!”
We ran past the stained glass windows.
A bird hit the outside, and then another. It sounded like someone was throwing rocks at the castle from all directions. We were getting pelted.
My grandmother.
The Astronomy tower was open to the world.
I cursed and ran up the stairs. Candice must have realized the same thing, because she joined me, leaving Henry and Rae at the bottom to yell at anyone within hearing distance.
I didn't bother knocking this time. I yanked the door open and found the Queen at her globe again. She looked up at me and glared at me with annoyance, but I rushed in, grabbed her arm, and pulled her out of the room. She managed to grab her star staff and before she stumbled out after us.
"Shorty!" she shouted, raising the staff with her other hand like she wanted to use it on me. I'd seen her fight Alric and she was tougher than she looked. "What are you doing?"
"Ravens!" Candice shouted, closing the tower door behind us just as two black birds fluttered in, cawing with their sharp beaks and ready to peck and cut.
"Haven?" Nori asked.
"Ravens!" I yelled. Her hearing must not be as good as I thought. No wonder she hadn't noticed them. "Someone from Alric's family must be here. They're trying to get into the castle." I realized too late the irony of those words coming from my mo
uth.
Lots of thumps sounded on the other side of the door. I had rescued my grandmother in time. Barely.
She wrenched her arm from my grasp and faced the door, uttering a curse that I didn't think she was capable of.
"Can't you do something?" I asked. "What is that staff good for?"
Shouts echoed off the stairwell. Everyone in the castle was panicked.
"For creating shooting stars," Nori said. "That's it. The wand you stole from Alric's mother is down in the safe room, locked away in a chest. I need that in order to use any other magic."
"The safe room?" I asked. I'd forgotten about the wand I had swiped from my other grandmother. Nori had taken it after we had escaped the Fox Kingdom and I'd been glad to see it go.
"It's under the castle, in the tunnels."
"There are tunnels?"
My grandmother had lost her patience. "All castles have them, Shorty. We always need to be ready for invasions. We need to get everyone down there before the ravens figure out they can fly down the kitchen chimneys. The tunnels lead to the underworld so we can cut through there if we have to."
The underworld.
King Henrik had been sucked down there. I'd heard that it wasn't pleasant in most places and that things lived down there like trolls and hermits and evil elves. Alric never even ventured into it. It was a zone that was neither light nor dark and with many layers. Some stories took place down there but I couldn't remember them off the top of my head.
Candice grimaced at me. I could tell Nori wasn't thrilled about the idea, either.
The thumps increased on the other side of the door. The ravens were trying to bust it down. More pounding echoed from the windows below.
And then there was a distinct, high cracking sound of glass.
That sent all three of us running back down the stairs, where Henry and Rae were waiting. We joined them and all three of us bolted down the hall just as glass shattered far behind us. The cawing and fluttering of wings followed as the ravens broke into the castle. We turned a corner and I prayed they hadn't seen us. Getting pecked to death wouldn't be a great way to die.
The corridor ahead was empty. The servants had all fled. Torches blazed, then went out one by one, casting the whole place in darkness. Rae screamed and I flailed, trying to find Candice's hand. I did and we kept our fingers linked. I hoped that the entrance to the tunnels wasn't by the kitchen. The main chimney was there.
"We need to go past the kitchen," Nori puffed as she ran. "The tunnel entrance is under the pantry."
Awesome.
We burst through blue light as we ran past narrow, plain glass windows. Shadows of ravens danced on the floor. They had the whole place surrounded. Voices echoed from somewhere but the castle seemed to have emptied. I wondered if the servants had some evacuation plan and I'd been left out of the loop about it.
Nori might have even prepared them to escape from me.
We passed the kitchen. The doors had been closed and no servants shouted from inside. I followed her around another corner and into a very narrow corridor only wide enough to let two people through at a time. Candice and I had to squeeze together like conjoined twins to get through, which wouldn't have been a bad thing if the cawing wasn't getting a lot louder. The ravens had found the chimney. Even more awesome.
I guessed the kitchen was on the other side of this wall.
"Do you think they know we're in here?" Candice hissed in my ear. Her hot breath blew against my ear.
We hurried along. "I don't know. I tried to stay away from ravens."
The corridor got darker and Nori led us down some stairs. I had to fight to keep my footing. The stone here was loose like this hadn't been used in a long time. Alric might not think to search down such a crappy stairwell, but I couldn't put that past him. Candice held my hand tighter and Henry and Rae pushed us from behind. I hoped someone had found Mica and Ignacia in time and led them down here, that no one was left in the castle, but I seriously doubted that. Any servants outside would be getting pecked to death right now. Ravens liked to go for your eyes first and then you were fair game.
The stairwell got so dark that I could barely see. It was just me and Candice, pressed together. It smelled of earth and dust now. No one said a word. I kept thinking about that ball of yarn. We might need it if we got lost down in these tunnels. I knew just as much about them as anyone else.
The floor evened out and Nori whispered something. Her staff tapped the floor and a breeze blew against my face. The air smelled damp. We were below the castle, all right. I was glad we couldn’t see a thing. I imagined we were surrounded by mossy stone, tree roots and vines judging from the reek of this place. The cawing got fainter. We were headed down and putting ground between us and the ravens.
“Is this the underworld?” Candice asked.
“No,” Nori said. “This is only the tunnel beneath the castle. I hope we do not have to go down any further. I’ve never been in the lower tunnels myself, but my knights have and what they have reported to me is not pleasant. The safe room is straight ahead and to our left. The floor will change to sand when we are near it.”
More cawing exploded behind us, but the sound echoed now. The ravens must have filled the castle behind us. I wondered if tunnels would spook them. They weren’t bats, after all. Those had to be down here but I had never heard of Alric or anyone else controlling bats.
Candice kept her hand in mine. I just wished there was some light, but that would give us away. Darkness would keep us cloaked for a while.
Wings fluttered right behind us and stopped as a single raven hit the wall with a faint boink sound. It was pitch black down here. I didn’t dare say a thing in case it came to its senses and decided to go get its buddies. Ahead in the distance, lots voices bounced off the walls. We had come down here behind everyone else. The servants were all ahead of us, trying to save their own lives. I didn’t blame them. I wondered if the king and the girl with the yarn were up there, too. Franco had gone ahead. If the yarn could take you wherever you asked it to and she asked it for safety, it might have led her down here.
I really, really wanted to use that yarn.
But first we needed the wand.
My feet hit sand and we all stopped, our footsteps drowned in it. Sand crept in through my leather boots and sneaked in between my toes. No one spoke in case the raven behind us was still alive. I heard no signs of movement. More voices floated back at us. A woman said something in panic. I could see nothing up ahead. We were all fleeing through darkness and it wouldn’t get lighter.
“Shorty,” Nori whispered. She was very close to me. “Go and get the wand. The door handle is near the ground.”
"Okay." I crept across the sand, shocked that Nori wanted to let me handle it. I had saved her from the ravens. That might have built some trust up. I needed all the trust I could get, so I walked through darkness, hands up, and bumped right into what felt like a solid stone wall. I felt down the cold, ancient brick until my hands scraped wood. I got on my knees, hoping no rats had made nests in this sand, and felt a cold handle. I slid the door up with a horrible screech. I would have to crawl.
But there was faint light on the other side.
“Go,” the Queen whispered. No one else dared to speak. I knew Candice and the others were with them, helpless to wait in the dark.
I did. I got on my belly and crawled through, emerging in a room that was as strange as I could imagine.
The ceiling was black and domed—but it had stars dotting it just like the night sky did. An entire galaxy spread over my head with stars of every possible color. It looked so real that I swore I was outside for a second. The room was huge. The false sky spread over the whole space and for a moment I wanted nothing more than for Candice to be here, enjoying the scene with me.
But she was waiting out in the dark.
I stood and a shooting star streaked overhead, landing somewhere to my right. My eyes adjusted and then I saw that this room was almost as
large as the one under Alric’s castle…and that treasure was heaped up everywhere.
It was mostly gems, not gold like Henrik had stockpiled for generations. They shone in the starlight in every color and lay in piles taller than me. I was in a field of colorful hills and I felt like I’d woken up in some weird dream.
“A table,” Nori said from under the door. “I can’t get on my hands and knees, but the wand is on a table in the middle of the room.”
I walked straight through the space, kicking gems out of the way. I couldn’t care less about the treasure and neither would Candice. A square shape took form in front of me and I blinked, only to find the gnarled piece of wood on it.
My other grandmother’s wand.
The same one I had used to kill Prince Lawrence and the same one that had failed to kill Alric.
I wasn’t sure how I would feel, seeing it again, but I recoiled and backed away. Now that my life wasn’t in immediate danger I didn’t want to touch it. Even the wood it had been carved from looked evil, with faces forming in the lines and grimaces between the cracks.
“Shorty, hurry,” Candice said from outside. “Grab it and get out of there. We need to go.”
She sounded nervous.
And the air around me was getting colder.
Sharper.
It was the feel of dark magic nearby and it wasn’t from the wand. It was in the air everywhere and dread crept into my gut.
The air felt like this whenever Alric was near and I had learned to hate that feeling.
I seized the wand and turned towards the door, which was a black square on the bottom of the sky. I ran for it, but not before something fluttered into the room and hit me in the chest.
I pedaled back as the bird bounced off me and went falling into a pile of gems. The raven cawed and flew around my head, a dark shadow against the stars. I got up and slipped again. The roar of thousands of rolling gems filled the room and another shooting star zipped across the sky like it was fleeing.
The bird fluttered again I kept ahold of the wand, glad that I had it with me. I could deal with a single raven. I clutched the wand tight and relished the cold energy that thrummed through it. This was a very powerful wand. I wasn’t sure where my grandmother had gotten it and I wasn’t sure I wanted to know.