Of Witches and Wind

by Shelby Bach

  But he wasn’t totally a fairy—and now Fael was in his debt. “But why would he mess with you in the first place?” I asked. “Just general evilness?”

  Chase scratched the back of his head. “When he turned the lock, he said something about his sister. I was the last one to see her before the Snow Queen killed her and my brother, Cal. They were betrothed.”

  A memory lurked in the back of my brain. Something about Solange and the Unseelie princess. Lena would have already figured it out. “His sister,” I repeated slowly.

  An instant later the puzzle clicked into place. Lena had told this story too: The Snow Queen had killed the princess and her betrothed. Their death had angered the Fey so much that they had joined the fight. It had turned the tide of the war.

  Lena had told me this last year. Chase had been there when she told me.

  “You never said anything,” I whispered. “You didn’t even flinch when Lena was telling the story.”

  He shrugged again, leaning back slightly, like he was shrinking away from all the emotion in my voice. “I grew up in the Unseelie Court. If you can’t hide your emotions, you don’t survive.”

  Lady Aspenwind wasn’t just borderline nuts. She was grieving. She was afraid that Chase would die too—

  I shoved my sympathy away. Chase didn’t want me to make a big deal over it.

  I focused on some pretty obvious math. Chase had just turned thirteen, and the war had been a couple decades ago. I was about to ask if his brother had been a time-traveling fairy, but Chase rambled off an explanation. He sounded so matter-of-fact he reminded me of Lena when she recited something from her photographic memory:

  “Halflings age like whichever parent they live with. Fey children age whenever their parents decide it’s okay. If they cast a certain spell at dawn, the Fey child grows for the next twenty-four hours. If the spell isn’t cast, they don’t age at all.

  “Babyhood and toddlerhood usually go by pretty fast for Fey kids, because even fairies don’t like dirty diapers or temper tantrums. Ages four and five last longer.

  “Amya really loved five. I turned five the year before Cal died,” Chase added, “and Amya had parties for my fifth birthday every year until I lived with Dad. It all kind of blurs together. You don’t remember things as well when you don’t grow.”

  I didn’t know what bothered me more: the fact that turning a year older every 365 days was apparently a luxury, or that one of my best friends was an old man. Definitely more of a shock than finding out he was half fairy.

  If Lena had been here, she could have smoothed this over by asking about all these details: what the components of the aging spell were, if his fingernails grew when he didn’t turn a day older. But Chase would have hated that. He would have felt like one of her experiments.

  Chase would want me to treat him exactly the same. “If you’re so old,” I asked, “how come you’re so immature?”

  When Chase laughed, I felt like I’d won a prize. I’d said the right thing again. Maybe I could handle this.

  “Thanks, Rory,” he said in the voice he used when he was trying to sound sarcastic but he really wasn’t.

  I didn’t tell Chase I was sorry about his brother, but I really wanted to.

  So instead I answered his earlier question, the one about growing up human. The story Mom always told about when I was four: She put me down for a nap when I wanted to go to the park, so as soon as she was asleep, I opened the front door and walked five blocks to the nearest playground. On the first day of kindergarten, I was extremely jealous of a little girl with long braided pigtails because she could tie her shoes all by herself and I couldn’t. But then she showed me how, by the swings during recess, and Marta and I were best friends for the next four years. How Marta fell out of a tree and broke her arm in second grade, and how I made a pretend bandage out of paper towels when she came back to school, so we could both have casts. How in third grade Mom and Dad couldn’t talk to each other at all unless they were arguing. How after they decided they needed a divorce, our house turned as quiet and polite as a museum, where no one spoke at all unless they had a question: “Have you seen my car keys?” or “Will you sign this permission slip?”

  It wasn’t anything particularly meaningful, just some random memories, but Chase stared out into the witch forest, eyebrows pinched together, even after my voice drifted off. The moon had risen higher while we’d been talking, casting strange shadows, making his face seem more angular, less familiar, less human. It was like—

  Well, it was like someone had taken away my best friend and left some weird, distant fairy in his place.

  He was one of the best friends I’d ever had, but he’d spent years and years at the Unseelie Court before he’d met me. He’d had a whole lifetime before I was even born. I might not be as important to him as he was to me.

  He might leave. He might go back to the Unseelie Court.

  I fell asleep leaning against the troll-trap stone, so clearly it didn’t bother me too much yet.

  I knew I was dreaming as soon as I saw Mia—her eyes closed, her lashes casting long shadows over her cheeks. Her dark hair was still lovingly combed out, her expression serene.

  On the table her head stood not on its neck, but on a marble pedestal shaped like shoulders, like she was one of those old-fashioned busts you sometimes see in libraries. My dream self stepped closer, and I could see an arm lying beside the pedestal—Mia’s arm. Whoever had cut off her head had also cut up her body into little pieces.

  Bile rose in my throat at about the same time as someone shook my shoulder. I opened my eyes and almost threw up all over Chase’s shirt.

  “You know, there’s a sleeping bag over there with your name on it.” Chase nodded back at the rows of sleeping figures.

  I bolted awake. “The watch!”

  “It ended a while ago,” Chase said. “I’ll wake up Kenneth for the next one. But seriously, your name is stitched on. Lena must have snuck it in there. It’s probably an untested prototype. If it starts smelling too strongly of dragon scales, I would get out. It might ignite.”

  “Well,” I said, stepping carefully over the others, “with that cheery thought, I’ll sleep really well. Night.”

  “Night, Rory.” Our eyes met. Things were different between us, and we both knew it. We weren’t exactly being polite, but we were being careful—like we didn’t know what to expect.

  I crawled into the empty sleeping bag by my pack, and couldn’t help but let out a small, satisfied sigh. I didn’t feel one stone, not one bump. It was as soft and yielding as any of the mattresses in the houses Mom rented. Enchanted sleeping bags—definitely a Lena LaMarelle invention.

  The worst part about the new Chase was that I couldn’t talk it over with Lena. She would know exactly what to think about him. She would be able to guess when things would get back to normal.

  • • •

  We all agreed, the next morning, that we should go find the West Wind right away.

  It got a little more complicated after we carefully climbed through Morgian’s Glen, a tiny, lumpy valley so green that it looked like it was covered in emerald felt. Beside the dirt path at the glen’s bottom, we realized that nobody knew where the West Wind lived.

  “I would guess . . . west,” said Mia in her quiet way, so deadpan that it was impossible to tell if she was being sarcastic or if she thought she’d said something helpful.

  I shook the thought out of my head. I couldn’t believe I was so snarky. Her head would end up on a marble pedestal.

  “Evan said he passed the West Wing’s palace. It was near the Twilfark Hills,” said Kenneth.

  “Evan spent most of his time in Atlantis in a troll’s cage,” Chase pointed out in his you’re the biggest idiot on the whole hidden continent voice. “Do you really think we should follow his directions?”

  “I trust his directions more than you,” said Kenneth.

  “Then you’re stupid. My dad—you know, Jack? Champion of the C
anon?” Chase said. “He was the one who said it was in the mountains of the western forest.”

  Amazing. Chase had reverted straight back to his usual bossy, bragging self. I guess he’d recovered from yesterday’s talk.

  “This could go on for a while,” Ben said. “Is there any other way to figure out where to go?”

  So I opened the M3’s cover, and I was really disappointed to see just my own ginormous chin shining back at me, complete with a zit a little to the left. “Lena?”

  Melodie’s face appeared. The harp looked away toward someone I couldn’t see and called, “Rory’s on the mirror!”

  “Hey!” Then Lena popped in, her eyes bloodshot behind her glasses. I wondered if this was a new symptom, or if she’d stayed up late reading in the reference room, looking for backup antidotes.

  Chase and Kenneth were arguing toe-to-toe now. Ben looked like he might restrain someone, but he couldn’t decide who.

  “Hey, Lena. We’re trying to get to the West Wind’s house, but we don’t know where it is. Is there a map over there somewhere?” I asked.

  “No . . . wait, yes!” All of a sudden her face jumped around in the mirror, like she was running with it. I didn’t know where that burst of energy had come from, but I certainly hoped Jenny didn’t catch Lena moving that fast. “Rumpel keeps some in the library!”

  “Good, because Chase and Kenneth are about ten seconds from punching each other.”

  Lena’s image stilled. “Found it!”

  “Great. Now tell these two idiots.” Ben plucked the M3 from my hand and marched over to the other boys.

  Sighing, I checked my watch. “Wow, we just lost ten minutes. Do you think it’s true what they say about guys and directions?”

  Mia ignored me. Or maybe she didn’t hear me. Or maybe she didn’t realize that the comment had been directed at her. Or maybe she just didn’t have much of a personality. She just stepped closer to the guys.

  It took Kenneth a second to process what Ben was telling him. “Wait, that’s Lena? You’re not supposed to have contact with EAS during a quest.” He kind of sounded like he considered it cheating.

  “Are you nuts? We milk it for all its worth,” said Chase.

  “Those two could wake Snow White from her poisoned sleep.” It was an old woman’s voice, maybe two feet behind us. I whirled around, my hand on my sword.

  Nothing behind me except a tree. I stiffened. Attacking trees were one thing. Talking trees were somehow creepier.

  “Down here.” The voice sounded irritated now.

  The old woman sat hunkered down at the base of the trunk, her limbs so gnarled and knobby that I had mistaken her for the roots. It didn’t help that her skin was only a couple shades lighter than the tree, or that her dark linen dress almost perfectly matched the bark’s rough pattern. The only feature that didn’t blend in was her eyes—dark and narrowed, sweeping over the whole clearing.

  Gnome. That was my guess.

  “Oh. Hi. Good morning,” I said, wondering how much she’d seen and if she could curse us for being so noisy. “I’m sorry if we disturbed you.”

  “Ever Afters do not disturb me,” she said wearily, and I looked at her curiously. “Ever Afters” was an old-fashioned term for Characters. Hardly anyone still used it—usually only people born centuries ago. “You humans are like lightning. You’re here in brief flashes, and your destruction is always localized.”

  “We’re not trying to destroy anything,” I said, a little miffed.

  “No?” The old woman smiled, and for a second her face looked kinder—more like someone’s great-great-grandmother than a tree. Then that faded. “I lied. They do bother me. They remind me of my sons.”

  “Do you want me to get them to shut up?” I felt kind of sorry for her. “Kenneth might not listen to me, but Chase—” I pointed him out. “He’s my friend. He listens to me about half the time.”

  “Ah, I see you travel with the Turnleaf,” said the gnome.

  “Right. But it’s just Chase Turnleaf,” I said. “Turnleaf isn’t a title.”

  Her gray eyebrows disappeared under the wide brim of her hat. “It is a title. It’s what they call a fairy who shirks his heritage and chooses the lifetime of a human. It hasn’t happened in hundreds of years. The Fey dislike seeing their gifts scorned, and to a half fairy, immortality is a gift. I believe the human term ‘turncoat’ comes from Turnleaf.”

  Only the Fey could be such snots. “But it’s not like he had any choice. He was just going to live with his dad. His parents decided—”

  “Has he told you that?” asked the old gnome. “Are you sure he wouldn’t do such a thing?”

  Chase smirked as Kenneth shouted, red-faced.

  I wasn’t sure of anything. We hadn’t covered “Turnleaf” in our talk.

  “The home of the West Wind is that way, child.” The gnome woman pointed toward a couple peaks looming over us. “You’ll find it nestled between the two mountains. He likes to blow figure eights around each summit for his morning workout.”

  I perked up. We weren’t that far away.

  “But you will not be able to reach it without aid. It is enchanted to turn away visitors.”

  That leached all the hope from me. “Oh.”

  “Here.” Suddenly, she leaped onto the branch hanging just beside my face, pretty spry for an old gnome. Before I could react, she reached out and poked my forehead with two fingers. “This will lead you straight there. Do not wait for your friends. Do not attempt to convince them. To do so would break the spell, and they will follow you soon.”

  “Um, okay.” Sometimes a wise old woman would help questers out. I knew that from all the fairy tales I’d read for research. Usually, you did something for them first—like sharing your lunch or something. I didn’t think it counted that I had offered to tell off Chase and Kenneth. “Thank you.”

  The gnome woman disappeared. Her chuckles still hung in the air. “Do not thank me, girl. I cannot interfere directly in the affairs of my children, but perhaps you can. Perhaps you’ll do them a good turn.”

  I imagined little wrinkly gnomes in diapers and baseball caps.

  Then my legs lurched forward—toward the two mountains. Another step, and another. I gulped. I didn’t realize that she’d meant that the spell would take over my body.

  he spell forced me to move—almost at a run. I gritted my teeth, put my hand on my hilt, and pretended that it was my sword’s magic guiding me down a winding path no bigger than a deer trail.

  It took a while for the other questers to realize I was gone. I was breathing hard by the time Chase called, kind of panicked, “Rory! RORY!”

  “Here!” I shouted back. “I got directions!”

  They crashed noisily through the woods behind me.

  “Wait up!” said Ben.

  My legs moved faster. The spell knew the others were following me now. I vaulted over a boulder in the path, much higher than I ever thought I could jump. “I can’t! Follow the sound of my voice.”

  Chase caught up first. He probably cheated and flew. “Crap.”

  “Hello to you, too.” A tree limb crossed the path ahead of us, and I had just enough control to duck before I walked straight into it.

  “What do you mean you can’t wait up?” Kenneth had reached us too.

  “She’s enchanted,” Chase explained. “Rory, who did this to you?”

  “Some gnome woman.” I shrugged. I hadn’t even gotten her name.

  Chase made an aggravated sound. I could sense him glaring at me, but I couldn’t turn my head to glare back. “Gnomes can’t do this kind of spell.”

  “Rory, it’s the one that moves against the current,” said Ben. I heard two sets of feet with his voice. Mia was with him.

  “What?” I asked, confused.

  “Rapunzel said to tell you,” Ben said. “Well, Lena said that Rapunzel said.”

  “And you think now’s a good time to tell her?” Chase said. “Look at her.”

 
“Wait, what happened to Rory?” asked Ben.

  “Enchanted. I think you’re going to lose a Companion soon,” explained Kenneth smugly. I would have told him off, but then the path turned and I spotted the building straight ahead.

  “Rory, you’re the most gullible smart person I ever met,” Chase started. “Why would you let some stranger enchant—”

  “Look.” That was all I had breath for.

  “I am looking,” Chase said. “You can’t stop, can you?”

  “No, look.” Ben pointed. “She found the West Wind’s palace.”

  It looked like a cross between a cliff and a sandcastle, the kind you make when you hold a soup of sand and seawater in both hands and let it dribble out drop by drop. In the front yard was a strange garden—cypress trees and skinny pines, all growing at a tilt, like they were windswept.

  “I still want to know who enchanted Rory,” Chase said, in a grudging way.

  My legs carried me up the rocky driveway. My feet picked out an easy path over the stable stones, like they had walked this way many times before. Behind me I heard the others scurrying after, scattering rocks. I marched right up to the weather-beaten door and put my hand on the pitted wood.

  “It’s probably locked,” said Ben doubtfully.

  It was locked, bolted shut in three separate places, but after I touched the door, the bolts slid open one by one—clicking two, five, and seven feet above my head. Whatever spell the gnome woman had put on me, it had been very thorough. My hand tugged the handle, and the immense door squeaked open.

  It was basically Good Manners 101 not to go into a stranger’s house uninvited. It was even more important to be polite when you were dealing with someone as ancient and powerful as the West Wind. I locked my knees and clung to the door frame.