Moments later, the man, still holding Emma, stepped up onto the patio. He was wearing a long bearskin coat, and snow had gathered on his shoulders and hair. The face was more lined than Kate remembered, and there were gray streaks at his temples. Emma’s face was buried in his collar.
“Hello,” Gabriel said.
Kate nodded, still dumbstruck.
“You’re cold. We should go inside.” And he stepped forward and opened the door.
“Ah,” Dr. Pym said as Gabriel approached with the two girls, Emma walking beside him now, clutching his hand, “you made it. I heard there was quite a bit of snow your side of the mountain.”
Michael stared, his expression, Kate suspected, much as hers had been a few moments earlier. “I thought he was … Wait … How …”
The wizard was smiling, enjoying the confusion and saying nothing.
“It is good to see you,” Gabriel said in his deep, serious voice.
“I’m sorry,” Kate said. “But Michael’s right. How …”
“Am I not dead?”
“Well … yes.”
“Because Gabriel’s too tough for some stupid monster!” Emma blurted. “Ain’t that right?” She wiped at her face, and Kate saw that she was crying with happiness.
“I have you to thank,” Gabriel said to Michael.
“Me?”
“Him!” Emma said. “He didn’t do anything! I’m the one who took apart those mine thingies! I’m the one who pushed you off the catwalk!”
Gabriel looked at her.
“I mean,” Emma said quickly, “found you on the catwalk. After you fell there, when you’d bounced off the first one.”
“Had it not been for your brother,” Gabriel continued, “it might not have occurred to me that the monster feared water. But that was how I finally defeated it. As the water rose, I was able to drown the hellish creature.”
“And you still escaped,” Kate marveled.
“The last thing I remember is running up the stairs as the dam fell to pieces around me. King Robbie and his dwarves found me unconscious at the edge of the gorge.”
“That we did.” The dwarf king tucked his thumbs in his vest pockets and swayed back and forth. “ ’Ad a devil of a time trying to move ’im. Lad weighs more’n a draft ’orse.”
“Wow, I guess dwarves are good for stuff after all,” Emma said generously.
Then she pulled Gabriel down, and Kate saw her whisper something in his ear, and she heard Gabriel reply, “I know, me too.…”
Kate looked at Dr. Pym. “So it’s all right, then. Everyone’s okay?”
“Much more than okay. Look about you; this is all thanks to you.”
And Kate looked at the families arrayed before them and thought, We did this, whatever else happens, we did this.
“Now,” Dr. Pym said, “if you will excuse me, I’ve been eyeing that cider—”
“No! I have to tell you something—”
“Yes, my dear?”
“I …”
The old wizard was waiting. So, in fact, were Michael and Emma, Emma holding Gabriel’s hand, Michael standing with King Robbie and Wallace. Both looked happier than Kate had ever seen them.
“Yes, Katherine?”
Kate knew that the moment she told them what the Countess had said, that it was up to them to rescue their parents from the Dire Magnus, the night was over. She thought of what a long journey they’d had to get here, how far they still had to go. Michael and Emma would need tonight.
“I … just wanted to say Merry Christmas, everyone.”
And so the evening went on, and there was singing and dancing, caroling around the fire; Stephen McClattery apologized for having tried to have Michael hanged, and they told him not to worry about it; the children saw Abraham, hobbling about with a camera, and they hugged him and thanked him for everything; Wallace and King Robbie taught the children dwarf Christmas carols that seemed to have only passing mentions of Christmas and be much more about the benefits and drawbacks of various mining techniques (Michael took notes); there was a long table with the best kinds of food imaginable: roast pig with maple glaze, lamb and mint jelly, crispy golden potatoes, garlic-and-cheese mashed potatoes, steaming bowls of chowder; the desserts alone took up two tables, one of which was devoted entirely to different varieties of donuts: chocolate donuts, cinnamon donuts, chocolate-and-cinnamon donuts, powdered donuts with raspberry filling, with blackberry filling, with strawberry or blueberry filling; Michael pressed Emma to try what he promised was a delicious mushroom donut, but she told him not to be disgusting; there were apple and pear and honey ciders, steaming vats of mulled wine, great frothy mugs of hot chocolate, a keg of dwarf ale that King Robbie had brought and that seemed to be extremely popular; and adults who’d already come up and thanked the children came up a second and a third time, dragging along Abraham to take their picture; and they met children named Kate and children named Michael and children named Emma, so many that Kate wondered how when a mother called her son or daughter home in the evening, she didn’t get half the town’s children stomping through her door; and the children ate too much and drank too much, and the only person who was grumpy in the least was Miss Sallow, and that was simply the way she was.
Kate tried her best to join in, but the thoughts of all that had happened and all the Countess had said wouldn’t go away. Who was the Dire Magnus? What did it mean that she could use the Atlas without a photograph? Was there more to the prophecy than what the Countess had mentioned? And what about the other two Books? What powers and secrets did they contain? There was so much she didn’t understand.
And then there were the questions about their parents.
Thinking of what they must have gone through, what they must still be going through, made Kate dizzy with fear and sadness.
But even so, there was one thing she did know for certain.
If their parents were alive, then she and Michael and Emma were going to find them. She didn’t care how powerful the Dire Magnus was, or that to rescue their parents they would have to find a pair of magical books that had been missing for thousands of years; she and Michael and Emma were going to put their family back together and nothing was going to stop them.
“Kate!” Emma ran up, Michael just behind her, their faces bright with joy. “King Robbie’s gonna whistle ‘Deck the Halls’ through his nose! Dwarves, right? This should be hilarious!”
“Nose-whistling is an ancient dwarf tradition!” Michael protested, then added, “But it should be pretty funny.”
“Come on, Kate! You gotta come!”
“You really shouldn’t miss it.”
“Robbie’s gonna whistle Christmas carols through his nose?” Kate laughed. “What’re we waiting for?” And, smiling, she let herself be led away by her brother and sister.
JOHN STEPHENS spent ten years working in television and was executive producer of Gossip Girl and a writer for Gilmore Girls and The O.C. He holds an MFA from the University of Virginia.
John and his wife have a dog named Bug and live in Los Angeles. Visit EmeraldAtlas.com to find out more about The Emerald Atlas, the Books of Beginning, and John.
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