She’d won back her lost book. But it would have to wait. Mister Edwards squirmed in her arms.
Annalise set the white bundle holding her friend on the grass and broke through the sticky web of the bone spider’s cocoon. His sleek black fur stuck up willy-nilly. Sticky threads clung to his eyes, sewing his lashes together and webbing his ears shut. Annalise cleared them while counting to four.
“Mister Edwards, can you hear me?”
No answer, no breath, no sound.
The poor fox lay slack on the grass, front paw bleeding, one of his claws shorn free. Annalise stroked his forehead, smoothing the downy fur at his ears until slowly he came around.
“What happened?” he asked, squinting around the brightly lit room.
Annalise grinned and pulled him into a hug. “You’re okay! Mister Edwards, you’re okay!”
He sat up on his own and regarded her with gratitude, and a sheepish sort of love. “I am, thanks to you.” A ray of sun drenched him in light. “What is this place? I’ve never seen it before.”
Annalise twisted uncomfortably and glanced up at the window. “I’m not sure where we are, but it feels safe, don’t you think?” Her big hand smoldered outside her cloak. When she caught him staring, she blushed and hid it away. “What happened to you, Mister Edwards? How did the bone spider get you?”
He shivered, ears flat to his head. “The walls must have switched on us. When I stepped through the mirror, the spider was waiting for me. I tried fighting it off. Mister Amoureux and I had beaten something like it before, but I couldn’t do it alone. I tried calling you, but you didn’t hear me.” He shook his head and stared at his broken claw. “I thought reaching the end of the labyrinth would be easier this time, but clearly I was mistaken. I’m sorry, Miss Meriwether, for not being a better guide.”
“And I wish I could have gotten to you sooner.” Annalise stroked her long blackberry hair, some of which was burnt. “The path to one’s dreams isn’t always all it seems, is it?”
The fox hung his head and closed his eyes. “No, it certainly is not.” He picked nervously at the sticky fur of his tail. “Look, Miss Meriwether, I need to tell you something. Something I should have told you long ago. I—”
A wisp of onyx smoke puffed out from the mirror facing east. Four words blossomed on the gold glass in curling black script: There Be Dragons (Honest).
“Mercy,” Annalise said with a sigh. “The mirror that tricked us earlier is back.”
A new level of horror struck the fox. “I . . . don’t know if I’m ready to face what awaits us there. . . .”
“Mister Edwards,” Annalise cried excitedly when another mirror image swam into view. “Food!”
The golden mirror door to the south resembled the front counter of an old-world bakery. Bixx-cakes with whipped caramel frosting under glass. Mugs of autumn-spiced pumpkin tea with savory curls of steam. Puffed rolls stuffed with avocado, pimiento, and cucumber on white china plates. Cubes of black anise cheese speared with toothpicks, and pink lemonade in a pitcher dripping with cool-water sweat.
A feast fit for a queen.
Practically drooling, Annalise pressed her small hand to the glass. When she did, the mirror shouted back. “There is a key!” the mirror declared in a screech. “You have exactly four seconds to use it properly. GO.”
Annalise and Mister Edwards stared at each other agape. A key?
What key?
One second.
A voice whispered from inside her big hand, “The thing that sets you apart.”
Two seconds.
Mercy. Did my cursed hand just answer me?
Three seconds.
My big hand. Not everyone has a big hand!
A black cupboard-like hole opened in the glass, big as a bread box.
Four seconds.
Annalise whipped her cursed hand from her cloak and stuck it inside. Her dark mark prickled and tingled and zinged, and then—
“Ahhhh,” the mirror sighed. “It is you. . . .”
Heart flapping like a manic bat, Annalise removed her big hand from the opening and stroked her still tingling marked palm.
Again, her big hand had helped her.
Thank you, she thought to her monster. Very much . . .
An overwhelming and sudden remorse filled Annalise for having wanted her big hand gone the same way everyone had always wanted her gone. For hating it as her town hated her. For fearing it as Annalise had always feared her curse.
The broken black heart on her palm warmed but said nothing more.
Annalise decided to think of her cursed hand a bit differently after that. Less of a cursed big hand and more like a great one.
Sweet scents wafted toward them from the dark space in the mirror. Annalise and Mister Edwards drooled. “And now,” the mirror said, “you may feast!”
A shelf holding two plates loaded with mouthwatering food drew forth. Annalise had been ravenous for hours. She and the fox almost cried.
“Oh-my-glop,” Annalise mumbled with an overstuffed mouth. “This ish ermazerng.” Her great hand felt no pain. She and Mister Edwards were racing toward their dreams. Though she did worry for her parents, and feel anxious about those suffering in Carriwitchet, in this moment, Annalise was happy.
Mister Edwards shoved cupcakes and fancy sandwiches into his muzzle like nobody’s business, his eyes swirls of hypnotic joy. He sloshed down the raspberry lemonade and passed it to Annalise with a burp. “Pardon me,” the fox said with a bashful grin.
Annalise bowed. “You are forever pardoned, good sir.”
The two laughed and ate and burped until they were full—until they’d swallowed their last bites and sips, and the skylight dimmed overhead.
The room submerged in sudden twilight.
Still licking their lips, Annalise and Mister Edwards turned to each other and then scanned the miniature room. Of the four gold-glass mirrors, only the one that read There Be Dragons (Honest) had conjured a view. The glass reflected a wide corridor, and inside the corridor sat her dream cat—Muse.
“Do you see my dream cat, Mister Edwards?” Annalise gestured toward the light. “Just there.”
The fox shook his head and turned away. “No. I see only . . . fear. But whatever you see, I trust you. I suspect you may know the way to Dreamland better than I.” He smiled with a desperate sadness Annalise wished she could take away.
It’s hard to love a friend, Annalise thought. To wish so hard that their dreams came true only to watch them suffer again and again.
Annalise hoped, with whatever power she possessed, that she and her friend both found their dreams at the labyrinth’s end.
A roar from behind the eastern mirror shook the walls. Red ash puffed out through the glass. Muse tipped his hat to Annalise. When she waved back, he disappeared.
“Um, Miss Meriwether?” Mister Edwards said, gaping at Annalise’s cloak. “There seems to be something rather glowing in your pocket?”
The book. She’d forgotten about her reward!
When Annalise pulled The Book of Remembering from her pocket, it lit the room in a sunny glow. “This is the book I lost,” Annalise said, her face bathed in soft light. “The magical one my dream cat gave me I never thought I’d see again.”
Mister Edwards leaned over and squinted anxiously at the light. “A book, Miss Meriwether? Is it very tiny?”
She narrowed her eyes. “You really don’t see it?”
The black fox rubbed his paw over his forehead. “No. All I see is light.”
“How strange,” Annalise said, before images bloomed on the page.
The king and queen, the parents of the Spinners of Fate and Dreams, reappeared. The dark-skinned king wore a cloak of white feathers and a crown of crows and wolves. The pale queen, dressed in a red velvet cloak and a crown the same as her husband’s, smiled up at her. Something came undone in Annalise’s chest.
They reminded her of her parents.
Annalise’s great hand pulled toward t
hem. Her dark mark sparked flecks of gold, which skittered across the pages. As the magic melted into the book, the king and queen spoke:
“We are lost somewhere in this labyrinth,” Queen Saba said. They stood inside a great courtyard before two elaborate thrones.
“Find us,” continued King Noll, “and you will be rewarded with items that have been lost with us for thousands of years.”
“Items you will need to defeat our daughter of Fate and find our daughter of Dreams.”
“Set us free,” King Noll continued, “and your enemy will fall.”
“Good luck, child of dreams,” Queen Saba said gently, then bowed. “And may the magic of dreams be yours.”
The book snapped shut. The glow fell away. Annalise stared at the fox expectantly, but he still appeared confused.
“Did the magical book show you something?” He worried the fur on his tail. “Because it looks like you saw something surprising. And if that something was about me, I’d like a chance to explain.”
Reeling from what the king and queen had told her, Annalise almost hadn’t heard him. She returned the enchanted book to her pocket and furrowed her brow. “What do you mean, Mister Edwards?”
The fox sighed and brushed his paw over his stump. “Before we go, I really do need to tell you something. Something I’m not proud to admit, but must get off my ch—”
A rumble wrenched the room. Immediately, the walls began closing in.
In seconds, they’d be squished.
“Tell me later, Mister Edwards,” Annalise said. “We need to go.”
A twinge of electric excitement pierced her great hand. On instinct, she pressed her shattered black heart to the mirror that read, There Be Dragons (Honest).
The glass dissolved into golden smoke, and a dim entrance appeared.
“Yes. Later,” the fox said, as the walls closed in behind them.
Chapter 23
Annalise Battles a Dragon
Somewhere ahead were dragons.
As Annalise and Mister Edwards squeezed out the small door of the Room of Secrets, her reward for besting the giant bone spider slipped from Annalise’s pocket. She grasped The Book of Remembering before it fell.
At the binding’s touch, the second half of Annalise’s reward came. A memory from years earlier replayed in her mind in vivid detail, as she and Mister Edwards stepped into the crimson light. . . .
“How many types of dragons are out there, Grandpa Hugo?” Annalise asked. A book of dragons lay open before them as she sat in his lap: Horrific Mythological Beasts through the Ages.
“Until the Fate Spinner stole them all for herself? There were so many, the world was overrun with them,” her grandfather answered.
“Mercy.” Annalise blinked rapidly in surprise.
“This one is a water dragon—a Hydra. See all its heads?” Annalise nodded gravely. “When those trying to defeat it cut one off, two more grew in its place.”
Annalise gasped.
“Oh, and see this one.” Grandpa Hugo pointed to a dragon with spiked wings, red eyes, dark feathers, and a razor-like beak. “That type of dragon is a cockatrice. It has a magical gaze that turns enemies to stone, and it has only one weakness. Within the silver spike at the tip of its tail lies its heart. One blow to that spike with a strong enough weapon will take it down.”
Annalise placed her small hand on her grandfather’s cheek and peered into his tincture-black eyes. “Why do such dangerous creatures exist, Grandpa Hugo?”
Her grandfather smiled. “So brave girls like you can grow up and tame them.”
Annalise shrank against his warm-sweatered chest and clenched her cursed hand tight. “Do you think . . . someone like me could ever do such great things?”
“Oh,” her grandfather replied. “I think you’re just the girl for the job. The perfect candidate for greatness is often the one who feels least qualified.” He patted her big hand with love. “Never doubt your greatness, Annalise. You are the very definition of the word.”
As Annalise emerged into a familiar red light, her memory faded. She and Mister Edwards stood in a sprawling courtyard of gray stone. Black-bladed ivy twined the walls. The scent of smoke clung to the air, burning her lungs. The sky was as dark as death’s shroud, the winds cold, cruel, and disturbed. In the distance, the Fate Spinner’s palace rose sharp as stalagmites, glowing ruby against the night.
Directly before them, crumbling quartz statues littered the courtyard in various states of disarray. Sculptures of animals, women, children, and men; their pained and fearful faces pointed helplessly at the red moon. As she studied the lifelike statues, the memory of Grandpa Hugo and the dragons returned.
He’d mentioned how the cockatrice turned its victims to stone.
Mercy, Annalise thought, when she realized the memory of her grandfather was the second half of the bone spider’s reward. The memory was a clue. They wouldn’t be confronting just any ordinary dragon. They’d landed in the den of a cockatrice. A cockatrice that turned its victims to stone.
Mister Edwards darted from statue to statue with tears in his eyes as if searching for a familiar face. Annalise wondered if he’d lost other loved ones to the Fate Spinner’s maze. Friends or family who’d left seeking a dream and never made it home? She hoped that whoever Mister Edwards was searching for wasn’t here but somewhere safe and happy, living their greatest dream.
Annalise turned her focus to the twin thrones near the far wall and suddenly remembered what the book had shown her about the Spinner King and Queen. “We are lost somewhere in this labyrinth,” Queen Saba said. “Find us,” continued King Noll, “and you will be rewarded with items that have been lost with us for thousands of years.”
“Items you will need to defeat our daughter of fate and find our daughter of dreams.”
“Set us free,” King Noll continued, “and your enemy will fall.”
Maybe one of the items they needed was here?
An enormous mirrored door hung on the wall directly ahead, glittered with falling snow.
Another to the left cascaded with endless black feathers.
The towering wall to the right had no mirror, only a yawning black entrance resembling the mouth of a cave, pluming with dark crimson smoke.
The cockatrice must be inside that cave.
“Mister Edwards?” Annalise’s pulse rose and rose and rose and rose to a soaring crescendo. “You mentioned being here before, didn’t you?”
The fox, tail looped between his legs, studied the mirrorless arch. “I did.”
The blocks surrounding them shook.
“And we’re nearing the labyrinth’s end?”
“Yes. We’re three-quarters through the labyrinth.” He faced her and trembled something fierce. “Prepare, Miss Meriwether, for the battle of your life.”
BOOM-BOOM-BOOM-BOOM.
Footsteps pounded toward them. A shriek ripped through the air. Fire roared from the darkened entrance, and a twenty-foot cockatrice emerged.
The dragon had black-feathered wings. A forked tongue slithered from its sharply curved beak. Spikes the length of Annalise’s legs lined the sides of its body, crown, and throat. It moved carefully toward them in a blaze of fire and smoke.
“Don’t look it in the eye!” Mister Edwards shouted, pointing at the statues. “It’ll turn you into one of them.” She’d never seen him so scared.
Annalise moved in front of the fox, blocking his way from the dragon. “I know, Mister Edwards. Stay behind me. I’ll keep you safe.”
The traumatized fox resumed his place at her side. “No. I’m really scared after what happened last time I was here, but you’ve done enough for me already. I—I want to fight.”
“Okay.” She grinned nervously. “Then we’ll fight together.”
Annalise focused on the cockatrice’s lower half as it pounded forward, wings flared, talons scraping stone. She couldn’t see its eyes, and with its eyes, its intentions.
When would it strike?
/> A thick slime of dread slipped down her spine. The horn in her great hand had yet to show, and no fire had gathered in her dark mark.
Where was her power?
Where was her monster now that she needed it?
If her great hand didn’t help fight, what would she do?
There weren’t enough fours in the cosmos to count her panic away completely. Still, Annalise removed her great hand from her cloak, aimed it at the dragon, and mentally recited her dream.
I wish to rule my own destiny and rid myself of this curse!
Annalise and Mister Edwards ducked behind the statues of two children holding hands. The cockatrice lifted into the air, flapping its gargantuan wings and roaring flames. “How did you beat the cockatrice last time?” Annalise asked, ducking from a rain of cinders.
“I had Mister Amoureux with me,” Mister Edwards squeaked, peering around the statue. “He’s an expert marksman. He blinded one of its eyes with a shard of quartz. An exit opened, and . . . we managed to escape.”
The cockatrice obliterated the statue before them with one swipe of its wing. Annalise grabbed Mister Edwards’s paw and jerked him toward the mirror of snow. The cockatrice swung around and lunged as they ran toward the winter glass.
“How did you escape?” Annalise shouted over the dragon’s roar. “Maybe we can get its other eye and leave the same way.” They dodged another round of fire and hid behind the black throne.
“No!” Mister Edwards stared fearfully at the mirror raining black feathers. “That dark door led to . . . to—Oh, Mister Amoureux . . .”
Annalise needed to stop running and get them out of here.
She locked eyes on the dragon’s tail. Within the silver spike at the tip of its tail lies its heart, Grandpa Hugo had said. One blow to that spike with a strong enough weapon will take it down.
Its tail was the key.
The cockatrice rushed forward, shooting flames. Annalise and Mister Edwards jumped back, patting cinders from their hair and fur. The dragon pinned them against the mirror of white. They were trapped.
The Spinner of Dreams Page 15