But how to stall him? She was pretty sure that spraying him with Bogey Away would not cut it.
“You should not trouble Miss Griffin,” Nastasia announced clearly. She skated up beside Rachel, hooking her arm through her friend’s. Rachel had wanted her friend to flee to safety, but she gave her a grateful smile.
From the trees, Valerie called, “The Raven will come save her, you know.”
“He will do nothing,” scoffed the ogre. “I am here by invitation. He will not bend his precious rules, that one.”
Rachel swallowed. She knew what the brute said was true. Jariel would not act to interfere with any worldly things where men were involved.
The princess’s voice snapped with authority. “Invited? Within the school wards? Under whose authority?”
That was a good question! Rachel threw her friend an admiring look.
Mambres chuckled darkly. “By the authority of one who has agents inside this establishment, and who means it harm. An old enemy seeking revenge. Who are you who asks?”
The princess stood ramrod straight. “I am Nastasia Romanov, Princess of Magical Australia.”
“Romanov!” The ogre actually took a full step backward, startled. Rachel’s heart leapt with hope. Then its face split into a terrible, eager, hungry grin. “Why heckle the servant when you can heckle the master?”
He lunged toward Nastasia. His footfalls slapped the ice like thunder.
“Graarrr!”
With a noise like a falling sequoia, the ogre fell flat on his face. The ice beneath him broke with a cannon-like crack. In the faint light of the wisps, Rachel could see that his thick, stump-like legs were entirely entangled by roots that had mysteriously broken through the ice.
Behind him, Kris Serenity Wright stood among the trees. Fox ears had sprouted from her head, and a thick cloud of wisps swarmed around her. At first, Rachel wondered if Kris had played the song they had learned in class. Then she remembered what the De Vere girl had said about the fey-born having special talents. In Japan, wisps were called kitsunibi. Most likely, even the domestic ones would obey to the kitsune’s daughter.
In the lavender glow of the wisp-light around Kris, Rachel could see Hekpa the dryad’s daughter, glaring at the ogre, her arm outstretched. Around her, the trees swayed back and forth, as if an angry wind blew through their branches, but no other trees, anywhere else, were swaying. Following the young woman’s outstretched hand, Rachel saw the tree roots moving and growing around the ogre’s legs, seeking to bind them. Rachel gave a soft cheer.
The ogre ripped through the roots, breaking them.
Hekpa shouted in wrath. “Tree murder!”
The ogre climbed to its feet and lunged toward the princess again.
“Eeeyyaahhh!” Out of the darkness, Sigfried leapt onto the brute’s back, stabbing it repeatedly with his knife, which he had somehow recovered in the dark. The knife skittered off the ogre’s skin. Still, despite the blood running over his eyes, Siggy did not give up.
“You’re alive!” cried Valerie, tears of joy on her cheeks.
“Incoming!” A red and gold dragon dropped from the snowy sky, fire billowing from his mouth.
“Finally!” cheered Rachel, jumping up and down on her skates.
Bellowing with rage, the ogre uprooted another hemlock and swung it at Lucky. The dragon lithely ducked out of the way of the tree-club. Swooping low, Lucky scorched the ogre, red-orange flames curling over the brute’s head and shoulders. There came a loud Pop. The monster let out a strange, strangled cry.
“Get him!” cried Rachel. “His life’s no longer charmed!”
“Die, monster!” shouted Sigfried, stabbing it again.
His knife sank into the creature’s flesh up to the hilt. At the same moment, Lucky set the brute’s top knot on fire.
The girls attacked. Rachel whistled a stream of blue sparks. Nastasia knocked the monster over with a powerful silvery wind. Valerie shouted out the Glepnir cantrip, binding the monster with a band of glowing golden light. Farther away, Hekpa, Kris, and Rhiannon cast spells as well, though Rachel could not see what they were doing.
The ogre let out a loud bellow of pain and alarm, his agonized face lit by the light of his own burning hair. Then Sigfried, still clinging to its back, reached around and, using the Bowie knife that Valerie had bestowed upon him—which he had apparently recovered from where it had dropped on the ice—he slit the ancient monster’s unprotected throat.
Valerie’s camera flashed.
Gargling, Mambres tried vainly to raise his trapped arms, but the glowing Glepnir bond restrained him. With an enormous crash, the great body fell to the ground, dead.
“Way to go, Luck!” declared Sigfried, fist bumping his dragon. “Nice work.”
“Sorry about that,” said Lucky, in his gravelly voice. Rachel noticed that his fur was a bit charred. “That Mexaxkuk proved surprisingly wily. Then I had a bit of a run-in with lightning imps. Nothing to worry about.”
“Is it really dead?” cried the young woman they had rescued. Her pink hair looked lilac in the glow of the lavender wisps. Her fox ears twitched as she turned her wide eyes toward Sigfried and bowed low, Japanese-style. “Thank you very much for saving me.”
“It was nothing,” announced Sigfried, his hands on his hips, a dark stain dripping down the side of his face. “I kill ogres every day, just for kicks. Besides, I did it for Valerie.”
Then he fainted.
Chapter Thirty-Eight:
Forgiveness in the Snow
“Rachel,” Vladimir’s voice spoke in her ear. “Gaius indicated that you might need help?”
“It’s all right, Vlad, we’re…” Rachel looked at the fallen Sigfried, six girls kneeling around him, including a frightened Joy—who had come out of the princess’s purse-house to fuss over Siggy—and a worried Lucky licking his face. “Actually, one of our party is badly wounded. Can you help get him to the infirmary?”
“I am coming.”
A tall pillar of bright light reached toward the sky, illuminating the snowy night. The dark puddle and stain on Siggy’s head suddenly flashed blood red, causing two of the girls to gasp in fear. The light swirled, instantaneously forming bones, organs, and then flesh, all of glowing whiteness. Then color filled in, and Vladimir Von Dread stood on the ice beside them, his arms crossed.
Vlad immediately stepped forward and knelt beside Sigfried, girls scattering before him like frightened doves. “What happened? Has he been moved?”
“He was standing just a moment ago.” The princess addressed the prince with chilly formality. She still knelt by Sigfried, cradling his head in her lap and trying to stop the bleeding with her handkerchief.
Valerie, who also sat beside her boyfriend, holding his hand, said, “The ogre slammed Sigfried’s head against the ice, twice. I…don’t understand how he can be alive, much less how he was able to wake up, stand, jump on the ogre’s back, and slit its throat!” She shook her head, amazed. “If any one of us had taken that kind of trauma to the head, we’d be dead!”
“Maybe he really is a robot,” murmured the princess, faintly.
“If he has been walking around and fainted, I can move him.” Vladimir scooped Sigfried up into his arms and stood up, as if the tall, muscular boy weighed no more than a toy poodle. Lucky darted forward and wrapped himself around Siggy’s body, forming a fuzzy stole. “I shall bring him to Nurse Moth.”
Vladimir’s eyes traveled over the scene, taking in the girls, the fallen trees, the cracked ice, and the dead ogre, but his face betrayed no reaction.
“Um…may I come along?” Valerie clambered to her feet, balancing again on her skates, and grabbed the stern upperclassman’s sleeve.
Dread turned to regard her. She let go and nervously slid away from him.
“Of course, Miss Hunt,” he replied. “Put your arm through mine.”
Valerie did so, relieved. Gazing at him, so tall and impressive amidst the blue and lilac wisps, Rachel could not h
elp feeling the least bit wistful, regretting that she was not the one with the reason to stand so close to Vlad. She quickly glanced away, glad that her blush would not show in the faint lavender light.
“Gaius…and Topher?” she asked, determined to be loyal to her boy. “Are they all right?”
“They are well. Topher may have broken his arm, and Gaius has a few minor scratches, but they will recover.”
“Oh,” Rachel mouthed, wide-eyed and curious. She could not wait to hear what adventures had befallen her boyfriend, but she asked no questions. Gaius would have to tell her himself.
With a nod to the rest of them, Vladimir jumped. The pillar of light briefly illuminated the brilliant red bloodstain on the ice. Then it faded, leaving them all temporarily night-blind.
“Is it really dead?” Kris Serenity Wright walked over and kicked the ogre’s body several times with her booted foot. “Good!” Then, she frowned, “Oops. That’s going to be hard for Grandda to explain. The Concords that keep peace between us and the fey depend on us not troubling them. Of course, the ogre did invade our wards and kidnap me! So maybe he was fair game.”
The princess came up beside Kris and said kindly, “You seem quite collected, Miss Wright, considering the remarkable circumstances.”
Kris laughed and shook her head. Her pixie-short, pink hair bounced around her face. “Actually, I’m totally freaking out. But it hasn’t caught up with me yet. Just watch, though. I’ll be screaming like an uwan any moment now!”
Her two roommates came up beside her. Rachel noted that the three wore their boots. The ogre must have grabbed Kris as she was returning to campus. Rhiannon gazed apprehensively at the ogre, as if she were afraid that it might leap up and grab her friend again. Hekpa, on the other hand, looked more angry than scared.
“I tried to save you!” she said to Kris, her tiny mouse peeking out from her fur-lined hood. “Two hemlocks helped. They moved to trip your captor when I called to them, but that brute just ripped off their branches! Poor things! And after they tried so hard. It takes great effort for trees to move like that!”
Stomping over to the fallen hemlock that the ogre had used to try and club Lucky, she sorrowfully laid a hand on its shaggy bark, shaking her head sadly.
Kris patted herself down from head to thigh. To Rachel, she said, “Everything seems to still be here. I guess I’m all right. Thanks all of you and Mr. Smith. Good job!”
“And Lucky,” murmured Rachel. “It was Lucky who saved us all.”
“Lucky?” asked the princess, rising to her feet and brushing off snow. “How so?”
“He broke the enchantment maintaining the ogre’s charmed life,” said Rachel.
“Ah!” the princess nodded, suddenly understanding. “That’s what we were waiting for.”
Rachel nodded. “He had popped the protection on the wraith in September, and Siggy had mentioned that he and Lucky attacked the dragon in the sewer together. Sigfried’s first blow bounced off, but, by the second blow, he was able to strike the creature. That second blow was after Lucky breathed on it. Also, according to Siggy, the sword that slayed Baba Yaga had been forged in dragon fire.”
She did not add that the Comfort Lion had promised her that she had the clues she needed within her memory. Explaining how she had received that message would be too complicated.
“Very clever, Miss Griffin. I commend you.” The princess smiled kindly, her eyes crinkling.
“Wow!” Kris said, still gazing at the supine brute. “Without Lucky, we would all have been ogre chow! I’ve got to thank him and Siggy somehow.”
Rachel smiled. “They like food.”
“You were pretty brave yourself,” said Kris, grinning at Rachel.
Rachel ducked her head, embarrassed.
“What happened?” Joy joined them. “The ogre just grabbed you?”
“He was angry with my grandfather, for binding him. Making him not eat humans,” said Kris. “I guess he wanted me as a hostage or something.”
“So, he hunted you down?” asked Joy with a shiver. “Picked you out from everyone else? That’s…scary!”
“Grandfather was v-very angry about the boy that got eaten,” said Kris. Her teeth started to chatter, and her body had begun to tremble. “H-he made sure the o-ogre felt his wrath. I-I th-think it wanted re-venge.”
Nastasia sent Joy into her purse to bring up a blanket. When Joy did, the princess wrapped the fluffy pink comforter around Kris’s shoulders. “You are showing signs of shock, Miss Wright. Why don’t you go inside, where it’s warm.”
Nodding mutely, Kris climbed inside and headed down the stairs, helped along by her two best friends. Rachel could hear Joy below, offering encouragement. Once Kris was settled, Nastasia closed her bag, and only Rachel and the princess remained.
• • •
Nastasia held out her arm and offered her muff again. Rachel accepted, slipping one arm through her friend’s elbow and the other into the warm fur. The two girls smiled at each other.
“Did you understand what the ogre meant about something not being gray any more?” asked the princess, presently.
“Not at all,” replied Rachel, truthfully. “I’m not even sure to what category of thing he referred.”
“How did you know that it was from Egypt?” asked Nastasia.
“It was just a guess, something to keep him talking. He said that Morgana le Fay had taken their book,” replied Rachel. “Mr. Fisher told us at the beginning of the year that Morgana had made herself immortal using The Book of Going Forth by Day. The other name for that book is The Egyptian Book of the Dead.”
“Ah! Interesting. You were very quick on your feet there, Miss Griffin. I admit, I am impressed. I don’t think I could have kept him distracted as long. It was only because you showed such spirit that I was able to rally.”
“I was grateful for your support,” Rachel replied loyally, not adding that she had wished that the princess had fled and not risked both of them.
“Mr. Smith conducted himself quite handsomely, as well.” The princess sighed. “I have been thinking about what you said earlier. Perhaps, I am too hard on him. Being at school is much more difficult than I expected, too.”
Rachel recalled how she had felt that the princess, too, had seemed withdrawn during the last few months. Perhaps, now that she herself was not so depressed, it was time to begin thinking about others, to try to find out what was bothering her friend.
“In what way is school difficult?” Rachel prodded gently.
The princess sighed again. “I had thought that the work would be hard but that being with other students would be pleasant. The work is difficult, yet it’s fascinating, but…”
“Is it the secrets?” asked Rachel. “That make it hard, I mean?”
Nastasia was silent for a bit, then she let out a long sigh and nodded. “Wulfgang came to talk to me again. While we were skating. Again, he asked that we might be friends. We talked just a little. It was pleasant talking to a boy of my own rank. Too pleasant, in a way.”
“You mean you like him,” Rachel teased happily.
The princess shook her head somberly. “I mean that I nearly forgot myself and spoke of things that are secret.” Nastasia stopped skating and turned to face her friend. Rachel stopped as well. “I…just cannot do this. I cannot be his friend and remember what not to say. I am not like you, with your gift of memory.”
Now it was Rachel’s turn to sigh. “My memory does not help me with that sort of thing. I say the wrong thing often.” She thought but did not add, You would be amazed how often.
“I must make it clear to him that we cannot be friends at this time,” the princess said sadly. “We cannot risk the whole world for the sake of our own pleasures.”
“That’s…rather sad,” Rachel said softly.
Nastasia was silent. Their blades zipped along the snowy ice.
Suddenly, the princess announced, “I am sorry, Rachel. I know you will be angry with me, but I am
happy that I did not bring you and Sigfried with me when we took Illondria home.”
“What?” Rachel cried, as if stung. “Why?”
The words burst from Nastasia like the whistle of steam from a boiling kettle, as if she had been holding them in for far too long. “Because I might have lost you, too!”
Rachel’s mouth formed an O, but no sound came from her lips. Then, sniffing slightly, she smiled. “I’ll forgive you, if you forgive me for this.”
Despite Nastasia’s dislike of intimacy, Rachel threw her arms around her friend and hugged her. With a happy little laugh, the princess wiped away a tear and hugged her back.
• • •
The two girls started skating again. The tension that had been growing between them, ever since the princess had brought the Elf home, evaporated. It was a day for forgiveness, Rachel decided, with her hand snug in the furry white muff, and forgiveness brought a lessening of burdens. She felt so light; she wondered if her skates were still touching the ice. Maybe Nastasia’s arm, tucked through hers, was the only thing that kept her from floating away.
“Joy? Joy?” girls’ voices called from the darkness.
“My sisters!” cried Joy, from the bag. “Oops! They sound worried. Um…you’d better let me out.”
Joy climbed out of the purse and skated toward where several of her sisters were searching for her. A moment later, Ivan Romanov’s voice called, “Nastasia, is that you? Where have you been? Alexis is frantic.”
“Better go,” Nastasia gave her friend a kind smile and skated toward her siblings.
Rachel waved as the princess went. To the right, beneath the bright wisp sculptures, she spotted Gaius. She zipped across the ice toward him, the last of her dwindling wisp entourage departing to join their fellows. Gaius’s face split into a big grin when he saw her, and he gathered her into a tight hug. She lightly ran a finger over his bandaged cheek.
“It’s nothing,” he scoffed. “Just a scratch. We got into a scuffle with some red caps and a trow.” He paused and hugged her more tightly, resting his chin on her head. “I would have been much more scared, if I had realized that my girlfriend was facing off against the ogre! You should have called me! We could have spared Vlad, especially after William arrived.”
The Awful Truth About Forgetting (Books of Unexpected Enlightenment Book 4) Page 44