by Carrie Jones
The buzzards began dancing on the table a mere fifteen minutes into the festivities, and Mrs. Tullgren flew mugs of Party Pizzazz Potion and Joyful-to-Jolly Juice around to the guests. Pixies and fairies cavorted in between the paper leaves, and for a moment Annie felt almost content. It was beautiful and good and magical and special.
“Pretend your name is Emily from Canada and you are a nice low-level witch,” her grandmother said. “If you don’t mind. That should be a good cover.”
And so that’s what Annie did, introducing herself as Emily from Canada over and over again, even as Eva and Johann began dancing some strange, magical line dance that involved a lot of stomping and hovering. She hunkered in a corner with Jamie and Mr. Tullgren as the fairies began preening Bloom’s hair and SalGoud discussed philosophy with a cliff dweller.
“It’s lovely.” Annie sighed, admiring the party decor and the happiness, then asked her grandfather if their magical community was set up like Aurora’s.
“No, we’ve got no Stopper here, nothing to protect us other than your grandmother’s little traps. Most of us who can pass interact with non-magical humans daily. Others hide. There’s an acceptance of magic here in Ireland; they call it myth or fairy tale, but it isn’t as huge a deal as it is in the States. Magic gets found out and someone will blink hard and wonder, but that’s about it,” he explained, and when Annie asked why they didn’t need a Stopper he added, “We’d love one, but there aren’t that many of you, you know. Hardly enough to go around. You are all precious, but few and far between, if you know what I’m saying.”
She did. They stood together watching the fiddling and the dancing, the arm-wrestling and then floor-wrestling dwarfs, the banshee and ghosts twirling through the tables in impossible fox-trots and tangos, and the pixies getting tipsy and passing out into the drinks and the stew. Mrs. Tullgren survived it all, too, with a smile plastered to her face but worry in her eyes.
“Annie, you may be thinking of doing dangerous things,” her grandfather said after a long pause. “Please don’t.”
“What do you mean?” Annie asked, untangling a pixie who had passed out in her hair and gently placing her on a table. She put a napkin over her like a blanket, tucking it in, and wadded up another one beneath the pixie’s head for a pillow.
When Annie looked up again, her grandfather had tears in his eyes. “This … this is what I mean … This kindness … I don’t want you to lose that.”
Bloom sidled over, obviously eavesdropping. “There is no way Annie will ever lose that. It’s part of who she is. But what she may lose is her rest. Do you think that we could all head off to bed now?”
“Of course … of course!” Mr. Tullgren flushed and called over his wife. Mrs. Tullgren gathered Annie up in her arms, apologizing again for what had happened earlier in the evening. She was unprepared, she said. She was terrified, she added. She had not handled it well.
She walked them all to their rooms and took Annie aside for a moment, fondly touching her cheek. “I will understand if you never forgive me, but I—I am so scared for you. To suddenly have you alive, but then … you know that your grandfather writes these books.”
“About me.”
“About who he thought you might become. But we never thought they could be part of his visionary powers because we thought for so long that you were dead—just dead and gone like your poor mother and so many others.” She sighed. “And now that you are alive—the first thing I thought is that maybe those books are prophetic, too, and maybe some terrible things might happen to you. I do not want terrible things to happen to you.”
“They already have,” Annie said, patting her grandmother’s arm. “I’m sure it will be okay.”
Her grandmother shook her head. “That is not the sort of thing that a grandmother wants to hear.”
Annie bit her lip, feeling a bit sorry, but she had work to do. “Why is the castle locked up?”
“To keep it safe,” her grandmother said, eyeing her oddly. “And to keep visitors safe. It needs to be renovated.”
And that was the end of the conversation. Her grandmother abruptly whirled around and unlocked the room that Eva and Annie would share. Once they were inside, Annie checked the doorknob.
“She’s locked the door,” Annie said, disappointed.
“Of course she did,” the dwarf said, whisking out her lock-picking tools with a mischievous glint in her eye. “It’s a good thing I’ve got these.”
Jamie ended up sharing his room with Johann, which he was not particularly happy about. He didn’t trust the dwarf much, plus Johann made a huge mess the moment he got in the bedroom, pulling up the covers on the bed so that it looked more like a nest than a bed, throwing pillows around, and putting the lamp shade on his head for a hat before abruptly falling into a snoring slumber.
“We’re supposed to all be meeting up,” Jamie told him, shaking his leg.
“Just tell me when the others get here,” Johann murmured before he started snoring again.
Jamie glared at him. Then he went in the bathroom and ran the shower so that he wouldn’t have to hear the snores. He actually jumped in the shower because he suddenly felt dirty and icky. He wasn’t sure if that was from Johann or the long flight and hectic day. He felt much better when he got out, dried himself with a super puffy white towel, and dressed in some clean clothes he had packed. By the time he was done, everyone else was waiting for him in the bedroom.
Annie was sitting on the bed next to Johann’s nest of covers. Eva bragged a bit about her door-unlocking skills and then nestled right in there near Annie, pulling a comforter around her.
SalGoud stood by the door, listening for footsteps, just in case the Tullgrens decided to check up on them. Bloom paced back and forth. Jamie stashed his dirty clothes in his backpack and sat in a chair.
Bloom began. “So, where do you think the arrow is?”
“The castle. It has to be,” Jamie said. “Did you see how frantic they were when the gate was left open? That wasn’t about the cows.”
“That’s what I think, too. My grandmother acted kind of sketchy about the castle. I mean—I think we should go now,” Annie said nervously. “If we wait, they might hide the arrow or … I don’t know … We should just go now.”
Eva flailed about on the pillows. “But the bed is so comfortable.”
“Dwarf? Are you choosing a bed over a mission?” Bloom demanded.
Her snore seemed to be her answer.
“It’s okay.” Annie swallowed hard. “We don’t need her. Let her rest.”
“She’ll pummel us if we don’t bring her,” SalGoud said, but they decided to let Eva rest there anyway. Johann was snoring away next to her. So they were out two dwarfs.
Annie, Jamie, Bloom, and SalGoud gathered up their supplies and snuck out the window, not daring to risk going down the hall and alerting the Tullgrens. The party was still going full tilt in the restaurant. The sound of fiddles and whistles and dancing happiness spilling into the outside air. Annie paused for a moment.
“What is it?” Jamie asked, stopping next to her.
“I just want them to always be happy. I don’t want the Raiff to ruin it.”
“He won’t, Annie,” Jamie said as they continued walking toward the castle.
But she wasn’t so sure. The Raiff had taken all the elves, had kidnapped Miss Cornelia out of her own home in a town that should have been safe. Whatever his plans were, the Raiff obviously didn’t care how many people or creatures died. She had to stop him no matter how worried her grandparents were about it. She wasn’t going to let some demon ancestor of hers ruin the whole magical world.
Magical was the perfect description of the ruined castle on the limestone outcropping above her. It was at least a two-story house that resembled a tower. Holes gaped in the rock walls. They’d once been windows.
“It looks more like a fortress than a castle,” Jamie whispered.
She agreed and stormed up the hill to the castle,
the cold night wind whisking her hair up off her shoulders and behind her. She imagined she looked like a witch. Bloom and SalGoud caught up with her.
“They relocked the gate,” she said, pulling on it.
“No problem.” Bloom scaled up with a rope. He tossed it down and pulled each of the others up and over. They landed in the soft grass. There weren’t any cows around, but a couple of sheep milled nearby. Something moved in one of the castle’s upper windows.
“Did you see that?” Annie’s breath came out in a tiny whisper, but the others heard it, stopping still and staring up at where she pointed.
None of them saw anything, but she insisted it had looked like an archer.
“I’m not going crazy from the stress,” she said. One of her foster moms used to think that about her when she saw things.
“Of course not.” Jamie looped his arm through hers and Bloom got out the flashlights, giving one to each of them. They seemed terribly modern for magical people, but they were all glad to have them, even if just to help avoid stepping in cow patties of unnaturally good-looking cows.
“Why do they call them patties?” Jamie asked. “And not just poop?”
Nobody had time to answer because a great rattling came from their left. Bloom whisked out his dagger and Annie did, too. Jamie didn’t even realize she had it. He was surprised by how easily she grabbed a weapon.
“It’s just the dwarfs,” Bloom said, sighing and heading back to the gate. “Hold on, sleepyheads. I’ll haul you over.”
“Can’t believe you left without me,” Eva said, once she and Johann had joined the others. “I should kick you in the neck for that.”
“It’s not our fault you dwarfs are all about the sleep.” Bloom strode off toward the castle, not waiting for anyone.
“I don’t think anyone is thinking about Bloom’s feelings enough …,” Annie said but was cut off by Eva cursing about feelings being ridiculous. She began again. “I mean, we have to save all his people. That’s a really huge responsibility, and he already has feelings of doubts and worry about his own abilities as an elf.”
Jamie was going to agree with Annie, but Eva slapped her leg and started laughing. “You sound like a guidance counselor. Oh my freaking banshee brains. Feelings.”
With that she strode off after Bloom, still laughing. The others followed in an awkward sort of silence. Now that they stood right in front of it, it was obvious that the castle was much taller than they had thought. The castle rose at least four stories high. Vines covered the bottom stones that were gray from age. A huge wooden door, heavy and thick and ancient looking, blocked the entrance, which was on the opposite side of the manor house and the hill. Bloom stood there, staring at it.
“It wouldn’t budge,” he said. “I tried. I think maybe I should scale the sides and go up a window, then throw down the rope.”
“I can’t climb no more ropes,” Eva grumbled. “Rather just haul myself up.”
“Any more,” SalGoud corrected.
“Whatever.” She harrumphed and kicked the door. The door didn’t move. “I think this is a stone giant’s job, hate to admit it. Unless I use my ax. Maybe I should use my ax …”
“SalGoud?” Jamie asked.
Bloom looked to his stone giant friend. “Have you ever noticed how big SalGoud’s bones actually are?”
“Big,” Jamie admitted.
“Big? They are like, if you took an elephant’s bones and then multiplied their thickness by two. It makes him very strong.”
“How strong?” Annie asked.
SalGoud used his right hand to chop the door. It cracked in half.
“That strong,” Eva said as they followed him into the castle.
Towering pillars supported thick walls. A chamber overgrown with moss and littered with pieces of crumbled ceilings lay in front of them, and to the right was a staircase, narrow and steep. Their flashlights didn’t seem to emit nearly enough light, so Bloom made balls, one after another, illuminating the first floor and the staircase. They searched the chamber of the main floor, doom and dread filling their bones.
“It’s a two-stage manor house,” SalGoud whispered, “built on a limestone outcropping. That’s what the pamphlet said.”
“When did you have time to read a pamphlet?” Annie asked.
“When I was sitting in the chair, sobbing, it made me sob more,” he admitted. “It belonged to the O’Brien family. They are gone now, all their power just gone. Poor family.”
Annie petted SalGoud absently on the shoulder, glad he wasn’t crying any longer. That feeling of dread seemed bigger, thicker. She mentioned it, and since they all felt it, Jamie guessed it might be part of the security system her grandmother had set up. Maybe she was manipulating all of their emotions so that the dread feeling would make intruders want to get out of the castle right away and hide. He had to admit that he wanted to do so and was resisting the urge.
“Maybe we should look upstairs,” Bloom suggested.
Jamie pointed at the collapsed ceiling. “Is there even an upstairs?”
“There’s a stairway,” Bloom said.
Bloom led the way up steps so narrow that the children had to climb them sideways, except for Annie who had strangely small feet. They all hunkered at the second-floor landing, balancing precariously on a small piece of remaining stone slab. The rest of the floor was gone.
“This is a bit of a dead end,” Annie said. “Should we go straight up to the top of the castle?”
Pointing, she showed them. The other floors above them were completely gone, too, which meant that the shadows or archers she thought she saw at the windows those times weren’t real. She had imagined them, she guessed.
Bloom looked utterly defeated.
Eva started back down the stairs. Johann followed her.
“We’ll pound some stuff and see if it shows up,” he announced.
“Don’t pound too hard!” Annie called after them. She had a feeling they could make the whole castle topple if they really got going.
“Maybe I’ll go babysit them,” SalGoud suggested. “As Chuck Yeager said, ‘You don’t concentrate on risks. You concentrate on results. No risk is too great to prevent the necessary job from getting done.’ ”
That left Annie, Bloom, and Jamie balanced on the outcropping of floor at the second-story landing. Annie peered down across the floorless room and then up, before asking, “What do you think, Bloom?”
“I …” He cringed, seeming to doubt himself. “I think I can feel it. I mean … It feels like there is something powerful and elfin here. But … I should see it, shouldn’t I?”
“When you say you can ‘feel’ it,” Jamie asked, “do you mean like, feel it in a way that you can find it? Like follow-the-feeling-to-it kind of thing? Don’t you think you should use that feather?”
“Of course!” Bloom stashed his dagger in its hilt and took the red feather out of his pocket and let it go. It moved straight through the air, unaffected by wind or gravity. Following it, Bloom took a step forward right into the open air and Annie shrieked.
He was standing in midair.
“Bloom?” Annie’s voice squeaked out.
“What the heck is he doing? You ain’t supposed to walk on thin air!” Eva hollered from below, rushing so that she was directly underneath Bloom, her arms out to catch him, but he didn’t fall.
“It feels solid,” he said. “I mean, it is solid.”
Eva kept her arms outstretched. “I’m not taking any chances.”
Jamie stepped forward, testing the floor with his foot. “It’s not solid for me.”
“It must be enchanted because of the feather,” Annie said nervously. “Hurry, Bloom.”
“I’ll be okay, Annie.” Bloom gave her an encouraging thumbs-up, and stepped forward again, one foot after the other, following the red feather. Annie held her breath until he reached the far wall. He touched it with his hands, feeling the stones. The feather scurried into his hair. He didn’t seem to no
tice, his attention totally focused on the wall in front of him.
“What is it? Do you see it?” Johann yelled.
“We really should stop yelling. Someone is going to hear us,” SalGoud scolded.
Johann growled at him, but stayed quiet.
“I feel something,” Bloom said, groping the stones on the wall. The castle seemed to shake, and suddenly there were archers, real-looking archers at every window. Like the elf, they seemed to levitate in midair.
“Bloom …,” Annie whispered.
“See them,” Bloom answered.
The archers didn’t seem to notice him, but they did notice the others. Two archers turned and pointed their bows at Eva, Johann, and SalGoud.
“Run!” Jamie yelled, “Get outside!”
Jamie rushed down the stairs, meeting up with Eva, Johann, and SalGoud. They barreled through the castle doors and out into the fields, where the cows surrounded them, mooing protectively.
Bloom reached his hand into what looked like a solid wall and pulled.
“Got it!” he yelled, rushing across the floor, the Golden Bow and Arrow in his hand and the red feather still stuck in his hair.
The archers bowed at him as he passed. “Good tidings, elf. Take what is likely yours. We will deal with the others.”
“They are my friends,” he ordered. “Do not shoot!”
The elves merely repeated their message. “Good tidings, elf. Take what is likely yours. We will deal with the others.”
Bloom stood in front of Annie, stopping, protecting her with his own body and said again, “Do NOT shoot. They are no danger. They are my friends.”
“They are not elves and have not the red feather of finding,” the archers said and repeated once more, “Good tidings, elf. Take what is likely yours. We will deal with the others.”
“They are entranced,” Bloom said over his shoulder. He stashed the bow and arrow into his cloak, hiding them.
Annie swallowed cautiously. Something strange was happening inside of her. She could feel a calling, a pull. The feeling of dread expanded and seemed to squeeze at her heart. She crumpled at the waist, reaching out to Bloom.
“Annie?” He whirled around, trying to hold on to her, but she was being yanked up toward the next flight of stairs. Her legs leading the way, straight up and out. “ANNIE!”