by Lucia Ashta
I slumped farther into the chair.
“You come here, clearly exhausted,” Wizard Meedles said to me, “and the first thing you think of is the well-being of my hounds?”
They hadn’t been my first concern, but I smiled tiredly anyway. “I was worried about her.” I shrugged. “I’m glad she got to make it here before delivering.”
Wizard Meedles grinned, the expression barely visible beneath his gruffy beard and mustache. His eyes twinkled when he turned to speak with Madame Pimlish. “See? I told you I had a sense about this one.”
“This one?” I asked.
He faced me. “You.”
Clara cut in. “I’m relieved Holly and the pups are well also, but now we have a problem we hadn’t anticipated. Grand-mère should have arrived by now.”
“Humbert is still recovering from his injuries, remember?” Gertrude said.
“Even so, he’s much faster than this.”
The sisters pursed their lips in identical grim expressions. If they were this worried, then it seemed that I should be too. I sighed loudly, and didn’t bother to transform my frustration into some version of a ladylike sound. Apparently there’d be no rest for any of us, no matter whom we’d killed or what threat we’d put to rest.
But then the portal sizzled, hissed, and brightened.
“Thank goodness,” Clara exhaled. “They shouldn’t have taken this long.”
It was true. Had I been more alert, I would have noticed that there was no reason for the others not to follow immediately behind us—no happy reason, at least.
Every set of eyes in the room, even those of the seven hounds with us, honed in on the sputtering portal.
“Come on, come on,” Gertrude chanted. “What’s taking them so long?” She looked to her sister. Both of their sweethearts were back in that dungeon, even if Gertrude might deny the depth of her connection to Brave.
But then Angelica came through the portal—more like ran through it. She skidded to a stop right before knocking into a coffee table. Her chest heaved and her eyes were wild.
Clara and Gertrude were on her in an instant, and Wizard Meedles crossed the space to be at her side. Even Madame Pimlish stood and interwove her fingers nervously, and I edged forward in my seat, which was all the oomph I had at the moment.
Sir Lancelot adjusted on Clara’s shoulder as she put a hand on Angelica’s upper arms. She and the owl peered into the girl’s eyes, partially hidden by a disarray of strawberry blonde hair. Gertrude leaned in to stare at her. They entirely blocked the girl from my sight.
“Angie,” Clara said. “What is going on?” She enunciated each word clearly, in what I assumed was an attempt to bring order to the girl’s panicked mind.
Angelica breathed heavily, her eyes glazed as she moved and caught my own for a moment, but didn’t hold.
“Angie!” Gertrude snapped. “We’re freaking out here. You need to tell us what’s going on at once.”
Angelica shook her head as if to dispel the cloud of emotions muddling things. “They’ll-they’re coming. The others will come as soon as they can. Once... the goblins...”
“Goblins? As in, plural?” Gertrude said.
Angelica nodded.
“Goblins?” Wizard Meedles asked, voice fully alert. “Where are the goblins?”
“At one of Maurisse’s places,” Gertrude said.
“You mean, the castle?”
“No, the castle’s gone. Another place.”
Wizard Meedles looked properly confused. Given how much had gone down since he left with Holly in his arms, I didn’t blame him. Thankfully, he had the good sense not to try to get caught up before taking action.
“How many goblins?” he asked Angelica.
“Four? Five? Maybe as many as ten.” She shrugged. “They started popping out of the corners. It was so dark to the sides that not even Nando or Vlad noticed them until they attacked.”
But I knew better. My brother’s sight was so impressive that it must have been something else. Maybe there were passageways or hiding places in the walls. That was more likely.
“They attacked?” Clara asked, her eyes wide, and it didn’t take a genius to figure out she was wondering whom the goblins had attacked of all the people we’d left behind there, including her husband.
Angelica nodded. “All at once.” She swallowed visibly.
“Is anyone hurt?”
“I really don’t know.” Her eyes swam in unshed tears. “Mum shoved me through the portal.”
“I’m going in,” Wizard Meedles announced.
“No!” Madame Pimlish said. “Goblins are vicious.”
“With more reason. I must help the others.” He crouched down low to speak with his hounds, I imagined in a way similar to how Elwin and I did.
Elwin! Poor firedrake, I’d forgotten him again. Although, I couldn’t really be blamed. There was too much going on in so many different directions. “Has Elwin arrived?” My tone was fierce enough that all, including the distraught Angelica, placed their attention on me.
“Elwin?” Wizard Meedles stood back up and put his hands on his hips, looking angry, though I didn’t understand all the reasons why. “Did he travel with Humbert?”
I shook my head with urgency. “No, he flew on his own to warn you of what was going on.”
He scowled and shot a somewhat reproachful look at Madame Pimlish, who fretted with her dress. “I told you we should have gone back once Holly was all right.”
“We couldn’t have known,” she said, her voice hesitant.
“We should have.”
“It wouldn’t have mattered anyway,” Clara said. “You wouldn’t have found us at the castle.”
Gertrude grimaced, then smiled. “More like, you wouldn’t have found much left of the castle.”
“What?” Wizard Meedles’ eyes were fierce and frantic, but Gertrude waved him away. “Back to the goblins.”
His nostrils flared above his bushy mustache, but he nodded. “I’m going.” He turned back to his hounds. The moment he crouched in front of them, every one of them (but Holly of course) stood and stared at their master. In less than half a minute, Wizard Meedles was lined up at the portal with seven ferocious hounds at his back.
“Anything else I should know before I go?” he asked Angelica.
“Yeah, they’re ugly things, and mean. They gang up to attack.”
“I already knew all that. Are they using their magic?”
Angelica nodded while I wondered at it. First of all, goblins were real and not just legends of frightening storybooks, that was a big one. But they also had magic? I had so much to wrap my mind around once this all calmed down... if it ever did.
“Very well.” His tone was grim as he stepped right through the portal without hesitation—or a final look for Madame Pimlish, who gasped when he and his hounds disappeared from sight.
The portal popped and sizzled and swallowed the giant wizard and seven hounds whole.
Moments later, Simon shot from the portal like a ball from a cannon.
He hit the table his sister had narrowly avoided and rolled to the floor next to it, groaning. “Simon,” Angelica said, suddenly fully possessed of her faculties. She shoved off Clara’s hands and raced to his side. “Are you all right?”
“Mum,” he groaned.
Angelica’s eyes widened with terror. “Is Mum all right? Please tell me she is, please let her be fine.”
“She’s fine, don’t worry. She’s fighting those things tooth and nail. She just”—he pushed to his elbows with another loud groan—“she shoved me super hard. I went flying through the portal.”
Angelica sat back on her heels and breathed. Poor girl, she seemed nearly as bad off as I was. A psyche could only take so many ups and downs. “And Da?”
“He’s fine too. He and Mum managed to kill one of them.”
Angelica helped Simon to sit. “How many are left?” she asked.
“A lot. Too many. It’s like they’
re coming out of the walls or something.”
“Of course Maurisse would have goblins hidden in the dungeon,” Clara grumbled. “It’s just like him to do that.”
But all I could think about was how lucky Nando, Sir Lancelot, and I had been that the goblins hadn’t attacked sooner. There’s no way the three of us would have survived, even with my magic and Nando’s sword. If hoards of them had attacked, we would’ve been goners.
I gulped and met eyes with Sir Lancelot, who was staring at me. From his huge, wide eyes, wide even for him, he was obviously thinking the same thing. He gulped too.
It had been a close call and we hadn’t even realized it.
“What do we do?” Gertrude asked. “Should we go back and help them?”
“I have no idea how to take down a goblin, do you?” her sister said.
Gertrude shook her head, and the sisters turned to Simon and Angelica, Madame Pimlish all but forgotten at the other end of the room.
“How did your parents kill one?” Gertrude asked Simon.
“With magic of some sort, but I didn’t recognize it.”
Angelica said, “We haven’t learned too much of magic yet, other than some of our natural gifts.” She was obviously referring to Simon at the very least. “That was why Mum and Da were so excited that we ended up here. They hoped we’d get to learn everything there is to learn about magic.”
Yeah, join the club.
Ahem. Madame Pimlish cleared her throat. “Goblins have to be blasted with light magic at the precise time that their heads are sliced off.”
No one said anything until Gertrude finally said, “Oh.” What more was there to say? Light magic? Cutting off heads? Yeah, not my thing. I didn’t think it was the “thing” of any of us there.
“I’m not qualified to help with this,” Madame Pimlish continued. “My magic is in transformation,” she said as if we didn’t already know. I suspected that even if she’d had the ability to take on goblins and dispatch them, she wouldn’t be volunteering, even though Wizard Meedles had already done it.
Clara ran a comforting hand along Sir Lancelot’s back, which he seemed to enjoy. “So what do we do then?” she asked. “We can’t just wait here while our friends are in danger.”
That part, I did agree with, even though I didn’t much like the sound of having to do something.
“I’m afraid that’s all we can do.”
“Madame Pimlish might be right,” Simon said, completely unaware of the glare she gave him. “Mum wanted Angie and me out of there. I fear that if we go back, we’ll just distract them, and then they could get hurt. I don’t think Marcelo, Brave, or Nando would appreciate it if any of you went back either.”
I didn’t bother to deny his point, nor did Clara or Gertrude. No matter how much we didn’t like it, he was right. If we distracted any of them, they could get hurt.
Clara ran her free hand through her long hair, but quickly aborted the mission when it caught in tangles. “All right. If we can’t help them, what about the others? What about finding Humbert and the firedrakes?”
But before any of us could point out the difficulty of that mission, she herself said, “Though I don’t know how we’d find any of them, not even Elwin. We have no way to fly.”
“You can fly,” Gertrude said.
“True, but not like that. I can’t just soar across the skies until I find the dragon or the drakes.”
Uh, what? I blinked at their conversation as if I were several degrees less intelligent than I actually was. Certainly I’d misheard them. I was tired to the point of hallucination, maybe.
But even as I talked myself out of believing the seeming impossibility of what they said, a part of me, which lived deep within me, was interested in what they’d said. This part of me believed what they said and suggested, Why not? You too can do whatever you believe you can.
Surely I couldn’t fly. I laughed nervously at my own ridiculous internal dialogue and drew stares, but the others quickly dismissed me. Maybe they were used to crazy. It seemed they’d have to be to endure days like this one. And from what I’d seen, the world of magic was filled with eternal, absurdly frightening and wild days.
Clara and Gertrude had moved on, and I struggled to rejoin the conversation. The red-headed sisters consulted with Simon and Angelica, continuing to dismiss Madame Pimlish, since she was unwilling to do anything much to help anyway.
“So, what? We wait?” Gertrude asked the foursome. They didn’t consider me either, probably because I looked delusional in my corner armchair. Like a person could fly.... A person can’t fly, but a witch? Why not? My magic whispered dreamy suggestions to me.
Simon nodded. “For now.”
Clara asked Sir Lancelot, “Do you have any better ideas?”
“Not at the moment, Lady Clara, but the very instant I have one, I’ll let you know. I’ll ponder our problem while keeping watch.” With that, the owl flew to the windowsill that afforded an unimpeded view of the sky, in the direction Arianne and Gustave were likely to direct Humbert.
The owl was obviously better, as his flight was nearly perfect and smooth. “I have centuries of magical history to offer me a solution. I’ll find something.”
I believed the owl. Barely able to move, but unwilling to distance myself from the group as Madame Pimlish had, I stood on wobbly legs and made my way to the others. Together, we stared at the portal, prepared to wait however long it took for the others to cross through... or until we decided they were taking too long and we had to go no matter what danger in distraction we posed.
Whatever happened, we were a team.
Come on, Nando. You’d better be safe. Because otherwise... well, I wasn’t going to go there. I was in believing mode, and I held onto it with everything I had.
Chapter 8
Every one of us in the parlor stared at the portal, nerves on edge. Simon clutched at his side, but refused to stay away, and even Sir Lancelot alternated between watching the portal and watching the skies above Acquaine for the arrival of Humbert and the many firedrakes, who flew with the dragon.
The portal sputtered and swirled. Then it flashed and spun dizzyingly fast. As a group, we leaned forward in expectation.
We held our breaths.
The light wobbled off axis, and then, as if the magic fueling it had been interrupted, the light began to fade. Like a dying star, it was there one moment, looking as if it would always be there, and the next... it petered out of existence.
The portal was gone.
Clara, Gertrude, Angelica, Simon, and I uttered a collective gasp. What Madame Pimlish did, I had no idea. No one was paying attention to her since she’d announced she wouldn’t be of any help.
Sir Lancelot flew over and landed clumsily on my shoulder proving he wasn’t entirely recovered yet, despite his improvement. “It just vanished,” he said. “Why?”
It was the question we were all undoubtedly asking ourselves. And none of us had the answer.
I gulped and clutched at my chest. Everything inside me was suddenly hurting. If anything happened to my brother, I seriously didn’t know how I’d manage to survive.
The loss of any of the magicians in Maurisse’s dungeon would be too great to bear.
It was written all over our faces, even the feathery owl’s.
“No, no, no,” Gertrude said. “This is not happening. We have to open it back up. We have to get over there and help them.” Her voice was rising in pitch as she spoke, but I didn’t blame her one bit. I wasn’t saying the exact same thing because shock was making it difficult to process what had happened.
“I agree,” Angelica said. “There must be a way.” Simon was nodding enthusiastically next to her. We were all ready to go through the portal now that it wasn’t there to transport us.
“Who among us can open a portal?” Simon asked.
Clara and Gertrude looked at me, and the brother and sister followed suit. “You can portal,” Gertrude said.
Yes, but...
. I swallowed all the buts, including the fact that portaling last time had almost killed me, and I hadn’t even been trying to bring through a bunch of other people with me. “I can portal,” was all I said. Because when it came to the safety of my brother and the others, I’d do anything; I’d put myself into any danger.
“Good,” Angelica said, voice fierce. “Then open one now and let’s go.”
I nodded, biting at my lower lip. I can do this. Piece of cake, right? I managed to kill Maurisse. Surely my magic has advanced since I last portaled, since the magicians warned me that unless I learn to balance my magic it’ll kill me.
“Come on, then,” she said.
“All right, I’ll do it.” But I didn’t move to do anything.
As Angelica opened her mouth, to urge me along again, no doubt, Clara shot her a look and came to my side. She placed a hand on the shoulder Sir Lancelot didn’t occupy. “What is it, Isa? You seem nervous.”
“We don’t have time—” Angelica started, but she stopped as soon as Clara glared a warning at her.
“Don’t look at Angie right now, she’s just worried about her family. Look at me.”
“I’m worried about my family too,” I said, “about all our families.”
“I understand. We’re all worried. But you can create a portal, it should be easy for you after what you were able to do to Maurisse.”
“Yes.”
She squeezed my shoulder. “It’ll be fine, I promise.”
But how could she promise that? The fate of our loved ones was entirely out of our control at the moment, unless we took into account the power of our beliefs. And I was holding onto my faith that they’d all arrive back in Acquaine safely.
I breathed deeply and said, “I’m ready,” though I was far from it.
“Good,” Clara said to me, then addressed the others. “Keep in mind that we’re probably going straight into the middle of a fight. Who knows how many goblins there might be. Be prepared that they might attack you the second we cross through. Have your magic at the ready.”
Everyone nodded, even Sir Lancelot, and then, in the literal blink of an eye, poof, Gertrude transformed into a ginger tabby cat.