He had barely said these last brave words before he collapsed, snoring loudly, and began to slide downward on the door.
Snore, snore.
“Bodkin! Wake up!” yelled Wish, and Xar had to give up shooting arrows at the Witches while he and Wish took hold of Bodkin by both arms to prevent him from slipping off the door entirely.
Bodkin woke up with a start, mumbling, “Who? What? Where?”
“Forest in Drood Territory…” panted the little princess. “Being chased by Witches… Squeezjoos attacking my mother’s forces entirely on his own…”
“Oh! Yes!” said Bodkin, scrambling back onto the Enchanted Door. “We can do this! My iron arrows will work much better on Witches than Xar’s bone ones!” Bodkin fitted an arrow into his bow, took careful aim, and then fell asleep again, shooting himself in the foot and falling heavily on Wish. This jogged her hand, and the key that was controlling the steering shot out of the keyhole so violently that the door went into abrupt reverse, traveling backward with such speed that it nearly shot into the open jaws of the pursuing Witches.
What with one thing and another, the young outlaws weren’t really working together in the most brilliant fashion…
The key had gotten entangled in Wish’s hair, so the fork came to the rescue, leaping into the keyhole, using its prongs as a key substitute. Wish took hold of the fork and got control of the door again, narrowly avoiding the swiping talons of the Witches.
The upside-down fork looked up smugly at the furious key, and that look meant: “Look at me, spoon, look at me!… Us forks can be important too!”
“Forks are mere food carriers—they’re not qualified to operate keyholes!” squeaked the key. “Come out of there right now or this flight will end in disaster!”
“SQUEEZJOOS! COME BACK!” roared Xar.
REEEEOOOOOOW! The flying door swooped and swirled and dodged through the treetops, shaving off leaves and nearly unseating its riders, who were hanging on for dear life. Bodkin reawoke, and this time didn’t even attempt to shoot anything, shaking the arrow out of his foot and concentrating on not falling off the door.
Wish was trying not to lose sight of Squeezjoos, who was flying at full speed over the burning trees toward the approaching torches and flares of the Warriors. Goodness knows how the little hairy fairy thought he was going to attack an entire Warrior army all on his own, but that appeared to be his plan.
Down below on the forest floor, Queen Sychorax and her iron Warriors were at full gallop as they raced through the trees on horseback.
Queen Sychorax didn’t look a bit like Wish.
It was most out of character for Queen Sychorax to have a daughter so unlike herself, but even great queens cannot entirely control what their offspring are going to look like.
Queen Sychorax was dressed for war, with an iron breastplate, iron helmet, and so many weapons she looked like a statue to some alien god of war. She was also loaded with jewels, furs, and clothes of the finest materials the early Iron Age could supply, for Queen Sychorax felt that if she was going to be forced to travel into the wilderness of the godforsaken forest in pursuit of a disobedient daughter, she should jolly well do it in style, for mistletoe’s sake.
She was in a bit of a mood.
“Witches,” breathed Queen Sychorax, looking upward from the back of her galloping horse. “I knew it! I KNEW they’d be after her! SHOOT DOWN THE WITCHES!”
ZING! ZING! ZING!
Arrows shot upward from the forest floor, narrowly missing both the door and the Witches.
“Your mother’s shooting at us!” said Bodkin in amazement. “As if we haven’t got enough problems…”
“She’s not shooting at us—she’s shooting at the Witches,” said Wish, grim with determination as she flew that door—really rather well, actually, considering that she was having to use a fork in the keyhole instead of a key, if anybody had had the time or been in the mood to appreciate her growing door-flying skills—at astonishing speed just above the smoke and the chaos of the burning forest.
Arrows rained upward, narrowly missing their targets.
“Oh for goodness’ sake!” snapped Queen Sychorax to her Warriors. “Can’t you even hit a couple of great gawping Witches at close distance?”
She sighed.
“If you want something done you have to do it yourself…” Queen Sychorax pulled up her horse, got out her bow and arrow, and took careful aim.
REOOOOW!
Wish made another desperate turn of the door through the billowing smoke, but this time it was just a smidgeon too late, and one of Ripgrizzle’s talons got hold of the door and sent it revolving in circles, shooting into the talons of Breakneck. Breakneck got a good hold of the spinning door and kept it steady, and Ripgrizzle gave an evil grin as he prepared to swoop.
They couldn’t get away now.
But one final zing! from below, and Ripgrizzle’s grin of gloating triumph turned to an expression of acute surprise.
And then Ripgrizzle fell from the air, dead as a stone, with one of Queen Sychorax’s arrows in his heart.
BOOM! He landed on the forest floor, scattering the Warriors in all directions from the ensuing Witch crater and a whole load of billowing green smoke.
With a whine of horror and fright, Breakneck let go of the Enchanted Door and fled for her life in a whirr of black feathers.
Sychorax’s arrow also stopped the charging Squeezjoos.
On the arrow’s path to Ripgrizzle, it had skimmed so close to Squeezjoos that it had removed the tip of one of Squeezjoos’s antennae, giving the little hairy fairy such a shock that he stopped mid-charge. He blinked twice and the green faded from his little spotty eyes, as if he was just waking up from a sleep, like Bodkin, and—
“Where am I?” squeaked Squeezjoos, giving a violent start as he took in Sychorax’s Warrior army gathered in horrifying masses below him.
“Save meeeeeeeeeeeeee!” He panicked and turned around, flying as fast as his little humming wings could carry him back to what he thought was the safety of Wish and Xar and Bodkin on the back of the door, and hiding himself in Wish’s hair beside the spoon and the key.
“Good shot, Queen Sychorax!” said Bodkin in relief, looking down over the side of the door and trying to see Wish’s mother through the smoke of the Witch’s landing way below. “Yes, you were right. She was shooting at the Witches. Thank goodness she’s such a good shot…”
Xar hated Queen Sychorax, but even he was impressed. “Maybe she’s not as bad as I thou—Hang on a second! What is she doing?”
Sychorax straightened herself on her horse. “Now shoot down the door,” she ordered her deputy. “I’m presuming you can at least hit something as large as that?”
“But, Your Majesty!” spluttered the deputy. “Your own daughter is on the back of that door!”
“My own daughter,” spat Queen Sychorax, grinding her pretty little teeth, “has more than one life.* And if she didn’t want her door shot down, she shouldn’t have gotten born with this Magic-that-works-on-iron in that abnormal and eccentric fashion. SHOOT DOWN THE DOOR!”
Arrows rained upward once more.
“Put the door in reverse!” yelled Xar. “I take it back! She IS as bad as I thought!”
“But what on earth is Queen Sychorax doing? Why is she shooting at us?” said Bodkin, thoroughly bewildered. “Has she gone totally mad?”
“Well, she’s never been exactly a HUGGY sort of mother,” said Wish. “But I’m sure there’s some sort of perfectly reasonable explanation…”
And they were about to get that explanation.
BAM!
A direct hit on the Enchanted Door by a carefully aimed spear pierced the Magic that was delicately holding the jigsaw pieces of the door together.
“Keep it together, Wish!” shouted Caliburn. “Think of the door as a complete door!”
But Wish was not yet sufficiently in control of her Magic powers when taken by surprise like this. The door shattered
into a thousand pieces, and the three children plummeted toward the ground.
3. Queen Sychorax Is Not a Huggy Sort of Mother
They were extremely fortunate that their door was shot down right above Crusher and the running animals.
“LOOK OUT ABOVE!” cried Crusher, coming to a crashing halt as bits of door rained down. The animals, mad with terror though they were at the following fire, came to a trembling halt, for they loved their humans, and they ran back to see if they could help.
Xar and Bodkin fell into the branches of a tree, and Wish was saved by all six sprites catching bits of her clothes and breaking her fall before she finally fell into the cupped palms of Crusher.
Little Squeezjoos nearly came to an untimely end. He fell out of Wish’s hair and was too late to duck from a flying fragment of the shattered door that hit him momentarily unconscious, and he would have fallen down into the blazing undergrowth if Xar had not risked his life by reaching out way too far from the tree and saving him.
Crusher then gently extracted Xar and Bodkin from the tree and put them and Wish on the ground, telling them to climb aboard the snowcats who would carry them quicker than the giant could run.
“RUN SWIFT,” said the giant.
Bodkin and Wish and Xar leaped aboard the snowcats. “FLY!” cried Xar, and with great, terrified bounds, their soft fur blackened and raised in petrified quills, Kingcat, Nighteye, Forestheart, the wolves, and the bear leaped through the dark dusty rain that was now falling, bits of soft gray ash, and ROOOOARR! The hot roar of the fire pursued them, mixed with the noise of the Warrior hunt, the scream of the dogs, the screech of the Warrior horns, the iron sound of the beating hooves as they pounded through the burning forest.
That was the sound of the new Iron Age, that Warrior hunt.
The forest was being burned down, so that the Warriors could build their forts and their fields and their new modern world. For the Warriors argued that the modern way was the right way, surely? Time cannot run backward, could it? That would be nonsense, and Warriors do not believe in nonsense. The forest had to come down so the Warriors could move humanity forward in a civilized and forward-looking manner. The giants had to leave because they took up way too much room. The sprites had to die because their habitats were needed to make all the THINGS that Warriors need. It was regrettable, but there it was. It was all in the name of progress.
So all over the wildwoods, these hunts were being carried out, with the mad barking of dogs and the shrill crying of horns, and Warriors on horseback hunting down the giants or the shining elves or the long-haired ogres or the lumpen boggarts.
This time it was slightly different of course, for Queen Sychorax was hunting down her own daughter.
There she was, right at the front of the stampeding Warrior force, for Queen Sychorax always had to be the fastest, ramrod straight on the back of her hunting horse, crying out orders, entirely oblivious to the roar of the fire behind her.
They caught up with Crusher first.
Even with his great giant strides, he moved slower than the snowcats because he kept on stopping to reassure the trees. Calm in the chaos, he laid his giant hands on oak, on elm, on ash, on alder, on blackthorn, on beech, on hawthorn, hazel, holly, on lime and maple, on yew and poplar and willow, all the dear, soon-to-be-torchlight trees, saying, “Do not be afraid, dear trees. The forest will grow again, I promise. I will cherish your descendants… This too will pass…”
BAAAAAM! The Warrior hunt was upon him.
Queen Sychorax launched her spear first. Crusher looked down with a bemused expression, picking it out of his leg as if it were an irritating thorn or needle. The Warriors surrounded the giant, confusing him with the clamor of their horns, for giants have very sensitive hearing, and the loudness and the pitch befuddled his ears so much that he lost his balance and fell to the ground as suddenly as a great oak struck by lightning. The Warriors scattered in all directions as he dropped, and then regathered again around the fallen giant, winding strands of his hair and the edges of his clothes around their weapons and then driving those weapons into the ground so that when he opened his eyes, blinking, he was stuck to the earth by a pincushion of spears, axes, and arrows.
One of the Warriors then rode her horse right up the chest of the giant, rearing it up into the air and punching up her spear in a victory salute, shouting, “GOT HIM, YOUR MAJESTY!”
“Very good,” cried Sychorax. “Stern-and-True Justice! Vengeance! Tenacity! Unrelenting! Unforgiving! Drama!”
These were the names of Wish’s six elder stepsisters, tall, good-looking, blond young women with bulging biceps and golden torques around their necks, heavily armed with spears and axes and every kind of helpful weapon. “Hunt down your sister and the other two!” ordered Queen Sychorax, adding, “Be careful not to hurt her, mind…”
Wish’s stepsisters nodded, and with great whooping cries, they kicked their heels on the leopard-spotted flanks of their hunting horses and galloped off after the retreating snowcats.
The stepsisters were excellent Warriors, strong of arm, fast of throw, with any softness of heart well drilled out of them, so they very quickly ran down the snowcats. They brought down the sprites with sprite nets so exquisitely thrown that it brought tears to the eyes of their teacher, Madam Dreadlock, who was galloping on a sturdy horse beside them, crying with pride at the brilliance with which her pupils knocked Wish and Bodkin and Xar off their snowcats in single blows around the midriff, and then entwined them in iron nets.
“Call off your beastly animals!” snarled Stern-and-True Justice. “Or I will KILL your disgusting sprites!”
“She means it,” said Wish, who knew her eldest stepsister well. Justice was perfectly capable of killing a sprite in cold blood. Wish herself had automatically curled up into a defensive little ball like a hedgehog.
Wish’s Enchanted Pins, Spoon, Fork, and Key were all attacking the stepsisters, the pins pushing themselves into any soft fleshy bits they could find, but Wish called them off, shouting, “Enchanted things! Snowcats! Wolves! Bear! Keep your distance…”
Reluctantly, the iron enchanted objects backed away, but not before Justice grabbed the Enchanted Spoon and all of Xar’s animals dropped to the ground, growling.
Xar started to curse the sisters, but Justice stopped him with a gentle tap of her mace that knocked him out. And then the pleasant young Warrior women dragged the three children in the nets behind them, back to where Queen Sychorax was waiting with her Warriors beside the fallen giant. The victorious stepsisters gave poor little Wish some good healthy whacks with their mace and spear-sticks along the way, just to punish her for getting them all out on this horrible journey into the middle of nowhere.
Queen Sychorax’s Warriors were getting a little fidgety, looking over their shoulders somewhat anxiously at the howl of the fiery furnace getting louder and louder, hoping that the mother-and-daughter chat wasn’t going to go on too long, for mistletoe’s sake. But Queen Sychorax herself was sitting bolt upright on her horse, apparently unaware of the advancing danger.
Her stepdaughters dragged the three nets in front of her.
“Here she is, the weird little rat,” said Stern-and-True Justice, “looking even more odd and weak than ever. She really is a dreadful, dirty little beast. Do you want us to kick her for you some more, Mother?”
“Not now, Justice,” said Queen Sychorax, getting off her horse and opening up the net containing Wish with the end of her scepter.
Wish uncurled herself and stood up.
Queen Sychorax took off her helmet and her face underneath the helmet was rather colder and sterner than the helmet itself. As I said before, Queen Sychorax was in a bit of a mood.
“You broke your promise,” said Queen Sychorax grimly, with that awful edge of disappointment in her golden pear drop of a voice. “You said you would return with me to iron Warrior fort, and instead you ran away.”
“I told you, Mother, Xar and Bodkin and I are searching for
the ingredients for a spell to get rid of Witches,” said Wish, very white. “And what are you doing setting fire to the forest? I think you should calm down and stop overreacting.”
“Calm down?” raged Queen Sychorax. “Overreacting?
“Look, Wish!” said Sychorax. She got hold of Wish’s shoulder, turned her around and pointed her finger at a huge mushrooming cloud that was rising above the trees where the dead Witch had landed. The cloud was at least a hundred feet wide, a nasty sulfurous green, and pulsating with a poison that made the Spell of Love Denied look like lemonade.
“That crater with the dead Witch in it will still be poisonous in another twenty years,” said Sychorax. “These are Witches, not mischievous little curse sprites. There is no such thing as a spell to defeat them—that is pure fantasy and wish fulfillment on your part. Return to the iron Warrior Castle, behind my wall, and I will keep you safe…”
Sychorax’s tone had changed and became coaxing, pleasant.
“…and Dreadlock here, your beloved teacher, will teach you how to be a proper Warrior, won’t you, Dreadlock? And then you’ll forget about all this silly Magic business…”
Madam Dreadlock, sitting like a judgmental walrus on horseback beside Wish’s older stepsisters, bowed obediently but shot Wish a look of the purest dislike. Wish was the most unsatisfactory pupil she had ever taught, with absolutely not the foggiest idea of whether the angles of the hypotenuse added up to x or y, and she couldn’t do spelling HOWEVER loudly Madam Dreadlock shouted at her.*
“Your trigonometry homework was due last Tuesday,” barked Madam Dreadlock automatically. “And I need the door of my Punishment Cupboard returned in tip-top mint condition—”*
“Yes, not now, Dreadlock,” said Queen Sychorax hurriedly. “I’m sure you can make allowances under the circumstances…”
But Wish had had quite enough experience of Madam Dreadlock and her mother’s iron Warrior fort. She backed away from her mother.
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