Knock Three Times

by Cressida Cowell

  They were getting near the Beach of Shoes, and from the sky the Witches could see something that Encanzo and Sychorax could not yet see.

  The approach of Sychorax’s army.

  Sychorax had sent word for them to follow her, and the Witches could see the torches of many, many Warriors moving through the trees in the distance. The Witches were scared of the iron-tipped arrows, the spears, the swords. They let out snarls and screams of disappointment. But they would get another chance, they knew that. Screeching like banshees, the Witches whirled around, back toward the Isle of the Nuckalavee.

  “Oh thank goodness,” sighed Wish in trembling relief. “But what are they doing now?”

  “They’re going to collect the treasures that the Nuckalavee has been guarding for all these years,” said Encanzo grimly. “The Witches will now get hold of staffs of power so old and so evil that they were put there out of harm’s way centuries ago. This has been the Droods’ hiding place for hundreds and hundreds of years, and you have just allowed all these terrible weapons to fall into the hands of the Witches!”

  Oh, those parents were so, so cross.

  “Why can’t you be more like Drama or Unforgiving? Why is my own daughter so much less obedient than my stepdaughters!” stormed Sychorax.

  “When will you children learn that we know best, and you shouldn’t break the rules?” raged Encanzo.

  “But you broke the rules!” Xar pointed out. “All those years ago, you came to the Nuckalavee on a shadow quest! You stole some of his treasure yourself…”

  “I tricked the Nuckalavee,” said Encanzo. “I stole a few little bits of treasure… I didn’t blow up the ENTIRE WHOLE SPELL that bound him!”

  The force of Encanzo’s anger carried that boat with such alarming speed that when it finally landed on the Beach of Shoes it just carried right up on the sand for a good thirty feet or so, before coming to a sludgy halt.

  Encanzo helped Sychorax out of the boat, and guiltily, the children climbed out after them.

  The two royal parents stood in front of their children, hands on their hips.

  “Every single thing that you two do makes things WORSE!” roared Encanzo. “We are TRYING to help you, but you just get deeper and deeper into more and more serious trouble… What if the Droods find out that you were the ones who released the Kingwitch, on top of everything else?”

  “And what if the Kingwitch were to break out of that iron prison that holds him?” cried Sychorax. “You have just armed his Witch army with forces that will be impossible to contain!”

  “What’s more, on top of everything else, because of your willful disobedience, your selfishness, that silly woman Perdita has lost Pook’s Hill! The Droods removed her when they found out she had been harboring you two outlaws…” said Encanzo.

  Oh no!

  That made Caliburn cry too. “My poor sister! How she loved that learning place. I should never have taken you there…”

  Wish and Xar bowed their heads in front of their furious parents.

  “You two just have to face facts. Wizards and Warriors are enemies, and they should never be together,” said Sychorax. “Encanzo and I learned that years ago…”

  “But you’re working together now,” Wish pointed out miserably.

  “Only to try and contain the DISASTERS that you are bringing on the wildwoods by persisting in this catastrophic friendship of yours!” said Sychorax.

  “Xar will come back with me to the prison of Gormincrag, and we will do what we can to try to find a cure for that Witch-stain,” said Encanzo.

  “And Wish will come back with me, to my iron fort, and I will keep you safe from the Witches forever,” said Sychorax. “You must never see each other again, and we will remove all these unsuitable companions from you because they are clearly unable to control you or offer you good advice…”

  “But Ariel and I are bound to look after Xar until he grows into a wise and thoughtful adult!” protested Caliburn.

  “I release you from that duty!” said Encanzo from between gritted teeth. “From this moment you are FREE!”

  “But we do not wish to be free,” said Caliburn. “It is not yet time…”

  The quest had failed.

  What had Perdita said in her note, wrapped around the bottle with the Droods’ tears in it?

  There’s a reason that tears are such an important ingredient in so many spells. “Life is made up of sorrow as well as joy, and so you may fight as hard as you can, and yet still fail…”

  They had indeed fought as hard as they could… but they had still failed. There was no way they could get hold of the scales of the Nuckalavee now, for the Nuckalavee could be anywhere in the vast and lonely wastes of the great green ocean.

  So they had no scales, Perdita had lost her learning place, and they had released the Kingwitch from the Nuckalavee’s safekeeping and lost Squeezjoos.

  Surely Fate was trying to tell them something. They were on the wrong track. Wish’s idea about the spell was nonsense. Every single thing they had done really had made things worse.

  Xar could feel his arm with the Witch-stain on it burning him like fire. He could feel the desire to grow black wings and join the Witches now raiding the undefended island of the Nuckalavee. There was no hope for him.

  Wish and Xar were feeling so deflated and confused and depressed by the outcome of the adventure that they nearly forgot to fight back.

  Until…

  “Excuse me,” said a quiet voice behind all of them.

  “Who is this?” snapped Encanzo.

  Everyone had forgotten Bodkin.

  “Oh, it is just Wish’s bodyguard…” said Queen Sychorax, waving a contemptuous hand. “A person of no importance. He betrayed Wish to me, but he should never have let her go astray in the first place. Assistant Bodyguard, you are dismissed from your position.”

  “I am Wish’s bodyguard, not yours, Majesty,” said Bodkin. “And I wanted to talk to you about Encanzo’s heart.”

  There was a short pause while everyone tried to think what this might mean.

  “My heart?” said Encanzo. “What about my heart?”

  “We took your heart out of the Nuckalavee,” said Bodkin.

  “On top of everything else you took my heart out of the Nuckalavee?” gasped Encanzo. “But it was safe there… What have you done with it?”

  “I’ve hidden it,” said Bodkin.

  25. X Marks the Spot

  Sychorax sniffed. “Very foolish of you to hide it in the Nuckalavee in the first place, Encanzo.”

  “How was I to know that anyone would be totally idiotic enough to go in there and remove it!” stormed Encanzo. “How could I have predicted the absolute madness of these ridiculous children? It’s absolutely nonsensical of them.”

  “Well, if you will be so careless with your heart, accidents are going to happen,” said Queen Sychorax.

  “There’s a bit of YOUR heart in there too, Sychorax,” snapped Encanzo.

  Ah yes. When you have exchanged a true love’s kiss, a little mixing up of hearts is unfortunately inevitable, even if the kiss is later regretted.

  Sychorax blushed. She tapped her pretty little foot on the beach.

  “Yes, all right, all right,” admitted Sychorax irritably. “I too may have been a little careless with my heart in the past… But it’s all under control now. Where have you hidden this heart, you beastly bodyguard?”

  “I’m afraid I can’t say,” said Bodkin. “I’ll tell you where I’ve hidden it after King Encanzo gives me the four scales that he stole from the Nuckalavee twenty years ago. I expect you keep them in one of those handy pockets you have hanging from your belt, sir.”

  There was a stunned silence.

  Wish’s and Xar’s heads lifted. Wish could feel her spirits lifting as well.

  “Oh, very clever, Bodkin!” said Wish. “Of course! That’s why the Nuckalavee said we had the scales already… We WERE meant to find the last ingredient in the spell to get rid o
f Witches after all!”

  “WHAAAAT!” cried Queen Sychorax. “I keep on telling you! There is no such thing as a spell to get rid of Witches!!!”

  But Xar and Wish were not listening.

  For them, this changed everything. Fate meant them to get the ingredients, and that meant they had a chance.

  “Hand the scales over, Father,” said Xar.

  What could Encanzo do? You can’t leave your heart laying around for just anyone to find it.

  Absolutely and completely and totally raging, Encanzo reached into his pocket, pulled out the four scales of the Nuckalavee, and gave them to Bodkin.

  “Okay, we’ll be off now,” said Bodkin briskly.

  “Where have you hidden my heart?” yelled Encanzo.

  “I’ll tell you once we’re on our way,” said Bodkin.

  “Where are you going, you foolish children?” asked Sychorax.

  “Well, we have all of the ingredients now, don’t we, guys?” said Bodkin. “So I expect we’ll go off and put them together and make that spell…”

  Wish put up her eyepatch a smidgeon and conjured up an image of the Enchanted Door of the Punishment Cupboard in her mind, and the door that they had hidden under some old bits of wood on the edge of the beach shook off the undergrowth covering it and flew over the sand, hovering helpfully in front of them.

  And then Wish thought of shoes, and Wish’s and Crusher’s shoes walked out from the line of shoes on the edge of the beach, and they put them on. Xar and Wish and Bodkin climbed on the back of the hovering door.

  Wish moved the key to UP, and as the door moved up and into the air, Bodkin shouted down to the parents while they were still in earshot:

  “I buried your heart under the sand about fifty feet behind you. X marks the spot…”

  Sure enough, while Encanzo and Sychorax were busy telling Wish and Xar off, Bodkin had crept away and buried the stone, putting two crossed twigs on top of it because it’s surprisingly difficult to remember where you’ve put something when you bury it on a beach.

  Encanzo and Sychorax ran across the sand and dug underneath the crossed twigs, and to their great relief, Encanzo’s heart-that-had-turned-into-a-stone was just where Bodkin said it was.

  “They’ve done well, really, haven’t they? All on their own and everything,” said the voice of Madam Perdita. “X marks the spot was a clever touch of Bodkin’s…”

  Queen Sychorax jumped. Standing at her elbow was Madam Perdita, laughing quietly to herself, with Hoola on her head. “I wish you wouldn’t do that,” snapped Queen Sychorax. “It’s very rude to materialize out of nothing without first announcing your presence…”

  “Oh, hello, Madam Perdita! Hello, Hoola,” Wish shouted down so guilty that she nearly fell off the door. “We’re so sorry about you losing your job at Pook’s Hill…”

  “Don’t worry, it wasn’t your fault!” Madam Perdita called up to Wish. “And we needed a break from that learning place anyway, didn’t we, Hoola? You just carry on with what you’re doing. You’re doing really well… We’re very proud of you.”

  “What on earth are you talking about?” said Queen Sychorax.

  Queen Sychorax shook her fist up at the door hovering just above the adults.

  “Come back, Wish!” said Queen Sychorax. “There is no hope! Life is complicated! Here in the real world, your bodyguard has already betrayed you!”

  “I know that,” said Wish. “But he’s sorry, aren’t you, Bodkin?”

  “I’m very sorry,” said Bodkin. “Couldn’t be sorrier, but Xar and Wish have forgiven me, and I won’t do it again.”

  “Is that IT?” raged Queen Sychorax. “He just says he’s sorry, and you FORGIVE him? How can you ever trust him again, you fool?”

  “I don’t know,” explained Wish. “I just can…”

  Isn’t it strange that the only conversations that mother and daughter seemed to have were shouted ones from the backs of doors?

  “The thing is, Queen Sychorax,” Bodkin shouted down over the edge of the door, “in your Warrior world, there’s these immovable class distinctions and everything—once a servant, always a servant… Whereas in Wish’s world, a bodyguard can still be a hero.”

  “Wish’s world has never existed and it never will!” Queen Sychorax yelled.

  “Come back down here, or I will arrest your snowcats and your giant! I’M GOING TO LOCK UP THAT GIANT AS AN ENEMY OF THE PEOPLE!”

  Crusher was lumbering out of the sea. He looked mildly surprised and anxious to find that Queen Sychorax had drawn her bow and arrow and was pointing it at him.

  “UH-OH…” said Crusher.

  In front of Queen Sychorax’s and Encanzo’s eyes, the mountain of a giant disappeared, faded into the wind as if there were no giant there at all.

  The snowcats and wolves were also there one minute and gone the next.

  And when an extremely frustrated Sychorax pointed her arrow upward at the door, it too had vanished, melted into air.

  “It is incredibly ill-considered of you to teach them invisibility, Madam Perdita,” said Encanzo. “They are way too young to be able to deal with such a dangerous power.”

  “I told them how risky it was,” said Perdita. “I warned them not to stay invisible too long. I trust them to cope.”

  “You have taught Wish too much,” said Encanzo grimly, looking up at where the door once was. “Beware, Madam Perdita, for you may have signed her death warrant. Once Wish is too powerful to be contained, she can only be destroyed.”

  “Tut-tut-tut,” tutted Perdita. “Such violent talk is unnecessary. You and Sychorax still have so much to learn.

  “Children have a way of growing, even if you try and stop them,” said Perdita. “Catch them if you can…”

  “Well, real life has caught up with you, hasn’t it, Madam Perdita?” snapped Queen Sychorax. “You’ve lost your precious learning place. See what happens if you meddle? You should never have taken the child in.”

  “I know,” said Perdita sadly, eyes already welling with tears, for Perdita cried easily. “But they are worth it, the young people. And they are more grateful than they sometimes look.”

  “HOO!” hooted Hoola rudely, as if she did not agree with Perdita. “Twenty-five years! Twenty-five years of building that Pook’s Hill up from nothing!” she mourned. “In the face of all those dreadful Droods saying a woman could never be the head.”

  “Did they say that?” said Sychorax, outraged. “How dare they?”

  “I’m sorry, Madam Perdita, I know you will miss the teaching and all your experiments, not to mention your beautiful garden,” said Encanzo, with genuine concern.

  “I’m even missing those pesky pixies,” admitted Perdita, tears running down her face with such regularity that her rose-colored glasses were misting up. She clicked her fingers, and one of Sychorax’s handkerchiefs wormed its way out of one of Sychorax’s pockets and danced up to Perdita’s nose, and Perdita blew her nose on it with a great trumpeting blast.

  “I’m sorry too, even if it was all your own fault,” said Sychorax, sympathetic despite herself. She could appreciate the struggles of fellow women trying to run things. “Keep the handkerchief,” (for Perdita was offering it back to her).

  “Oh! Thank you, how kind,” Perdita said, smiling and recovering her composure. “Never mind. If you ever need any help with your children in the future, all you need to do is… knock three times.”

  “If we need any help?” said Sychorax, recovering from her moment of sympathy and remembering what a danger Perdita was to the future of the wildwoods. “We’re never going to need any assistance from you! You’re a total liability! You’re completely irresponsible!”

  “And in the meantime, well, you’re never too old to start again.” The sparkle had come back into Perdita’s eyes. “I’ve always wanted to see what went on in the northern territories… to find out what happens if you follow the Giants’ Footsteps to the utter bitter end. So I’ve got out my favorite wal
king staff and the old trusty walking boots.”

  She looked down at her feet. The boots really were old, decaying at the edges and falling to bits, and, frankly, even a bit smelly. Perdita stamped them a bit and one of the heels fell off, with, yes, a definite stinky whiff. “A little brisk walking will work off the smell,” said Perdita enthusiastically. “You could see this as a bit of a godsend… Wandering free, once again, with the wind in our hair and a song in our hearts, just as a Wizard ought to do. Isn’t it wonderful to be given a chance to go a-wandering once again, eh, Hoola?”

  Hoola ruffled her feathers indignantly. “We’re way too old to wander, Madam. Personally, I prefer a roof over my head.”

  “That can be arranged,” said Sychorax with grim promptness. “I’m going to put out a warrant for the arrest of you and your owl, Madam Perdita, throughout my Warrior kingdom. You’d better get used to being invisible…”

  Sychorax had drawn her bow and arrow once more.

  But Perdita hadn’t worked with teenagers for twenty-five years without learning to be prepared for unexpected changes of emotion. One minute she stood in front of them as a human in very old walking boots. The next she was a bear—a great roaring bear. And then she vanished. And all about the beach around them, bearprints appeared, one line going this way, another that way, wandering around in scatterbrained circles, myriad illusions of multiple bearprints appearing, disappearing, here one second, gone the next, lost and found all at the same time, in a way that thoroughly confused Sychorax, for she didn’t know where to shoot.

  Hoola hovered before them for a moment longer, hooting: “HOOO! HOOO!” (which meant, “How ruuuuuude! How ruuuuuude!”) before disappearing like mist into the sea.

  And King Encanzo and Queen Sychorax were left alone upon the beach.

  The Witches up in the sky had disappeared. It was just the two of them, and Encanzo’s very ancient sprite, his old snowcat, and the wind.

  “Being a parent is very, very hard,” said Encanzo after a while.

  “It most certainly is,” agreed Sychorax.