by Shelby Bach
“You’re out of wood. You know where you left it,” said Hans.
Chase burst into the air with a flurry of peachy wings—like he couldn’t get away from us fast enough.
“Okay, here’s what I don’t understand,” I told Iron Hans, mainly to lighten the mood. “How did you manage to get Chase to chop wood? Chase only does chores if a giant threatens to throw him down the beanstalk if he doesn’t sweep to her satisfaction.”
“He destroyed my winter’s woodpile last night,” Iron Hans said. “I offered him a boon if he would chop up the two trees you smashed to the ground.”
“Chase would do anything for a boon.” I ignored the fact that a thirteen-year-old would need more than a few hours to chop up two whole trees. “But I would have loved to see Chase’s face when you told him to split firewood.”
The corners of Iron Hans’s mouth quirked up. “His exact words were, ‘Don’t you have any armies you need slain? I also kill a mean griffin.’ ”
The idea was too strange—it took me a second to recognize that Iron Hans was smiling. He liked Chase, even if he’d spent the last ten minutes chewing him out.
“I learned of Solange’s misdeeds after the war, in prison—what she did to Chase’s brother and to her own sister, and to so many others,” said Iron Hans. “I will never enter another war. I no longer trust a side enough to kill for it.”
“She had a sister? What did Solange do to her?” Images of torture and beheading flooded my brain.
Chase dropped out of the air, hugging a circular piece of tree trunk, mud splattered over both knees. “Duh. Stuck her in the tower. The Snow Queen played the witch in Rapunzel’s Tale.”
“Rapunzel?” It sank in slowly. “Our Rapunzel? She’s Solange’s sister?”
“Half sister, technically.” Chase buried the hatchet so deep into the wood he had to wiggle it free.
I stopped breathing.
They looked similar. I knew that. I’d noticed it in the beginning, but I’d forgotten. They felt so different, the Snow Queen always cunning, Rapunzel always so sad.
A squirrel—with two metallic stripes of gold down its back—scampered into the clearing and up Iron Hans’s leg. I stared at it, uncomprehending, as it chittered away. Apparently, Lena’s gumdrop translator didn’t cover animal speech.
When I took a deep breath, the air rattled on the way down, and Chase looked so startled I wondered what my face was doing.
He stepped closer, hatchet in hand. “Rory, you really didn’t know? You didn’t even suspect?”
I shook my head, too shocked to trust my voice. I should have suspected.
Iron Hans looked up from the squirrel. “I am sorry to rush you, but the human questers are a quarter mile north of us. They tried to outrun their enemies, but they have been attacked. They are fighting for their lives.” His warm brown eyes met mine, mournfully. “They are losing.”
e didn’t have time for a proper good-bye. Or for any of my questions, and definitely not time for answers. I yanked the smelly bandage off my ribs and strapped on my sword belt. “Bye, Iron Hans. Thanks for all your help.”
Chase buckled on his own sword. “Rory, he had to help us, remember? We made him take an oath.”
“Then maybe we should apologize, too,” I said.
“Go.” Iron Hans pointed toward a ridge lined with firs. “There. That is where you must run.”
Of course it was uphill. I took off at a sprint. At least we weren’t carrying our packs.
“See ya, Iron Hans!” I heard Chase call, right behind me. I was panting within ten seconds, but Chase said, “Are we going to tell people about metal man?”
“Is this a good time to talk about it?” I asked, annoyed at how out of breath he wasn’t. “Our friends are in trouble. Besides, the Binding Oath won’t let us.”
“The oath only keeps us from telling people where he is, not that we met him,” Chase said. “Anyway, I don’t know if you noticed, but our friends are almost always in trouble. As soon as we handle the fight, they’ll ask us where we’ve been all night.”
I was so sick of keeping secrets. Keeping track of what I could talk about was exhausting.
“If the Canon finds out, they’ll send my dad to track him down,” Chase said. “Dad will have to kill him. Iron Hans is that dangerous.”
That would probably end worse for Jack than for Iron Hans, but I couldn’t tell Chase so.
“It would be a shame for him to die just because we found him. And he likes you, Rory—he told me you have to be as tough as dragon scales to fight with your ribs that bruised.”
We ran up the ridge, along a narrow path probably made by deer or goats or the Atlantis equivalent. My foot found a loose rock, and when I stumbled, Chase caught my elbow and hauled me up. Wings fluttered, but I didn’t see them.
“Fine,” I said. Iron Hans had been really nice for a famous villain. “But we’re telling Lena.”
Chase grimaced. “You want to tell the biggest Goody Two-shoes in the whole seventh grade? Iron Hans is doomed.”
Sounds drifted through the trees: metal clanging on metal, and a human girl’s scream.
I pushed myself faster. “Lena needs to know what he said about the Triumvirate, and she’ll want to know where we heard it.”
Chase was quiet, except for a rasping shink as he drew his sword. “Let me do the talking when they ask. You’re not very good at lying.”
We reached the top of the ridge just about the same time my thighs started burning so much I thought they would combust. I spotted the EASers first—three figures defending someone on the ground. Crooked metal limbs dove down at the questers, red leaves flapping.
Trees, I thought, watching their gnarled black roots creep along the ground like inchworms, dragging their trunks along lurch by lurch. Trying to kill us.
Another witch forest, and this one was moving.
“My arrows are useless!” Her face sweaty with pain, Darcy sat behind the others. It seemed like a stupid thing to do—until I saw that her leg was bent in a nauseating way. She couldn’t get up, not with a broken leg.
An iron branch shot forward. Someone—Chatty?—swung a spear like a baseball bat, so hard that the tree swayed and almost fell.
“Geez. It is always the quiet ones,” said Chase.
Another figure drew closer to Darcy’s tree—Ben. Darcy was the best fighter among them, but arrows couldn’t hurt metal trees. They were in serious trouble. The sword’s magic tugged me across the ridge at an even faster sprint than before.
“Did you guys miss us? I get the feeling that you did.” Then Chase leaped onto the nearest witch tree and stood where the trunk split into branches.
Ben straightened a little. “Chase?”
“At your service,” Chase said. “When did Chatty get here?”
“Yesterday. Lena walked us through how to send Rory’s ring of return back without her. She cried a lot, mind you, but Chatty still showed up. Kenneth is still healing, but she’s supposed to come and replace—” Ben started. “Look out!”
Another witch tree—this one with a giant slash on its trunk—plunged three branches toward Chase, but he jumped out of the way. The crooked limbs of both witch trees tangled together, so tightly that the metal squeaked.
“See?” Chase said. “More mobility, but absolutely no brain. Not so scary.”
It took me slightly longer to catch up, but I was there in time to see a squat witch tree take a twiggy stab at Ben. My sword parried, and the deflected blow shot straight into the forest floor and stuck.
“Rory?” asked Ben.
I waved over my shoulder, too breathless to answer.
“Watch out!” Ben said, as the scarred tree whipped a limb at Mia’s head. Mia was busy with a witch tree with a silvery-looking trunk, blocking branches right and left. She was pretty efficient for someone who hadn’t even attended one of Hansel’s training classes yet.
I stepped forward, ready to protect her, and the runner’s high disappe
ared.
I didn’t think anyone else noticed—there wasn’t time. I just snap-kicked the limb from the scarred tree away, one twig an inch from Mia’s hand.
When the squat witch tree swung a branch at Ben’s head, my sword’s magic flared again, and I shoved Ben six inches down. The branch sailed harmlessly over his hair, the momentum of the swing spinning the tree all the way around.
I stared at my sword. Its magic had hiccupped. Just for a second. Just while I was defending Mia. I wondered if I’d given away Chase’s secret and broken the Binding Oath.
The scarred witch tree lashed another limb at Mia. This time she dodged. The limb sailed toward my nose, and I was so stunned, Chatty had to shove me out of the way. Then she gave Mia a reproachful look that clearly said, Even a new kid like you could have blocked that, easy.
Mia clearly didn’t mind if I got hit.
Suddenly I knew. The sword’s enchantment wasn’t wearing off. It only worked if I really wanted to protect the person I was defending. I just didn’t like Mia enough to keep her alive. I was a sucky warrior and a terrible person.
“Run, you guys. Seriously.” Darcy would have been a lot more convincing if she hadn’t been sweaty with pain.
“We’re not leaving you here to die,” Ben said, and Chatty nodded.
“Don’t be stupid,” Darcy said grumpily. “They’re metal trees. It’s not like they can be killed. Once you get tired, those branches will get past your guard, and you’ll die. And so will everyone else back at EAS.”
She had a very good point. The battle was more evenly matched with me and Chase there, but there wasn’t much human kids could do against killer trees, except run. Running was how we’d gotten away last time. “We’ll make a sling,” I suggested, turning aside a whip-thin branch aimed at my face. “We’ll carry Darcy out of here.”
Mia shook her head. “No matter how far we run or how fast, they catch up. They’ve chased us from the beach all the way up here.”
So moving metal trees were more of a challenge.
The scarred tree smashed three branches down at once, scattering our line. I jumped back and nearly lost my balance when I glimpsed the huge ravine behind Darcy’s boulder. The twenty-foot-wide crack stretched down and down and down, until you could barely see the jagged rocks and tiny waterfall winding its way through the bottom.
I swallowed hard, overwhelmed by the sudden urge to vomit. Ugh. Not another battle around heights.
“Head in the fight, Rory!” Chase shouted.
My eyes snapped open. “We need a plan, Chase!”
“What makes you think I don’t have a plan?” Chase ducked out of the way of a swinging branch and pointed back to a black mass of metal tree limbs. It had four trunks. He’d managed to get all the witch trees with the same dodge at the last second trick. “I tangle them all together. You make sure everyone else is safe. We questers go on our merry way while the trees spend all week trying to get loose. Simple.”
“Oh.” Ben straightened up, obviously feeling better about the whole situation. “Brilliant.”
“Exactly. Simple, but brilliant,” said Chase, grinning. Then Chatty hit my shoulder and pointed again at the clump of trees Chase had defeated.
They were untangling themselves.
“I hate to break it to you guys, but there’s a hole in your plan,” Darcy said.
The four trees stood apart now, but even worse, with the rustle of red leaves and the earsplitting squeak of black metal, the roots slithered out of the ground and twisted themselves into two separate, near-identical pillars—I mean legs. And the branches twisted into two arms, complete with knotted fists. Perfect for smashing Characters with.
Worst of all, even though the trees didn’t have faces, even though they didn’t have heads, they whispered one word with voices like dead leaves crackling underfoot: “Aurora.”
“The Snow Queen,” I whispered, because I could only think of one bad guy who could do this. “She found us.”
“Oh,” said Mia. “I was going to guess that the Wolfsbane clan caught up to us.”
That made more sense, actually.
One of them lunged forward and punched.
“Chase!” I shouted, but he’d already leaped back.
“Okay. Now we need a new plan,” Chase said, frustrated.
Another tree ran forward. It wasn’t very fast, its root legs were too stumpy, but it raised a hammerlike fist dotted with blood-red leaves.
Mia pulled Ben away, up the path, farther from the edge. Chatty hooked her arms under Darcy’s and pulled. Darcy cried out as her broken leg slid over the ground.
The tree punched toward me. I blocked with my sword. A mistake. The blade flew from my hand and skittered to the side, stopping inches from the ravine.
I knew I was faster than the tree—I could grab my sword—but Chatty and Darcy had barely budged. They’d be smashed instead. I couldn’t leave them.
The tree struck again. I pulled a Chase and dodged at the last second. The metal fist swung through the empty air beside me instead. The tree tipped forward, off balance and perilously close to the edge of the ravine, and I put two hands against its trunk and shoved.
It shot through the air and smashed against the rocks so hard it flattened against them, all bent out of shape.
“Wow,” said Darcy.
I stared at my left hand, at the West Wind’s ring on the middle finger. I ran a little farther away from Chatty and Darcy, scooping up my sword and sheathing it on the way. “I’m Rory Landon! Me! Rory right here!”
The trees all turned at once, like they’d been waiting to hear my name. Then they staggered toward me on their stumpy legs.
“I don’t think I like your plan!” Chase said.
I stood as close to the ravine as I dared, less than three feet from the edge, and watched the trees run closer and closer. Twelve feet. Eight. The closest one tried to clobber me, but I ducked.
The trees were five feet from the edge. That had to be good enough.
Aiming carefully, I punched the way Chase had taught me. My fist connected.
Pain flared over my left knuckles.
The tree I’d punched knocked into the one behind it, straight back toward the ravine.
That was all I had meant to do, but the trees had stupidly come at me too close together. All three tumbled like bowling pins and rolled over the edge, tangled together. They smashed into the boulders below.
I made myself step closer to check, but the trees were still. The West Wind’s ring had knocked all the magic out of them. I waited for someone to tell me off for setting the Wolfsbane clan on us, but the other questers were just staring at me.
“Geez, Rory,” Chase said. “Three trees with one punch. I need to stop ticking you off.”
I didn’t feel ticked off. I felt like I’d almost broken my hand. I was really glad I hadn’t needed to shove all three into the ravine one by one, which had been my original plan.
“Hear, hear,” Ben said.
That broke the tension.
“Did you just say ‘hear, hear’?” Chase asked. “What decade do you think we’re in?”
“You can’t say stuff like that without a smoking jacket, and maybe a cigar,” said Darcy, sitting on the ground, her leg broken.
“Guys, it’s time you all knew—I’m a huge dork. I hope we can still be friends.” Ben grinned, only slightly sheepish, and then he threw up beside Darcy’s boulder.
“I’ll think about it,” said Chase, looking a little worried about him.
“We thought you were dead, dummy.” Darcy tried to sound irritated, but her voice shook. “You guys fell, and we were so high up. It was all my fault—I shot the arrow at the troll, and made it so angry . . .”
I didn’t know what to say.
“Nah, I think it’s safe to blame Rory and her bridge-breaking skills,” said Chase. “Luckily, one of us happened to have a spare boon from the West Wind.”
“The West Wind got there really fast . .
. ,” said Mia. “And why didn’t you just have him fly you straight back up to us?”
Ugh. Mia was always really logical at all the most annoying times.
“Didn’t think of it.” Chase was much better at lying than I was. “We figured you guys would head this way, and if we wandered around for long enough, we would find you.”
Ben wiped his mouth. “Well, Darcy, your Companionship has been a real pleasure, but we should probably return you now. Your leg needs looking after.” Ben moved toward the carryalls, and now that we were talking about broken bones, both Darcy and Chase went suddenly pale.
Chase hated bones—you couldn’t even mention them without him breaking into a cold sweat. He changed the subject, like he was hoping no one would notice how freaked out he got. “Good news, though—we ran into a friendly Fey on vacation. She said the Unseelie royals know where the spring is. You know, for the Water of Life.”
Hope flared across Ben’s face. “And we’re close to them, right?”
Chase nodded. “About a day’s journey.”
Ben placed a ring of return in Darcy’s hand. Her lip trembled as her fingers closed around it. “Bring the Water home, you guys. I would have poured it straight into Bryan’s stupid little fawn mouth if I could have.”
“Of course we will—” started Ben, but Darcy was already gone. In her place appeared one of my least favorite people.
“I thought you were dead,” Kenneth told me, obviously disappointed.
“I thought your arm was broken,” I shot back.
“My shoulder was just dislocated. Good as new now.” Kenneth turned to Ben. “You’re running through all the good fighters, man.”
“Can we eat? Where’s the Lunch Box of Plenty?” Chase’s appetite always astounded me. “Me and Rory haven’t eaten anything since yesterday.”
• • •
Rapunzel had sent Chatty and Kenneth because there wasn’t anyone else left to send. Kenneth told us that all the remaining healthy Characters had left. Their parents had found out about the poisoning and ordered them home. Only Jenny and Rapunzel were left at EAS to tend to the others. Jenny couldn’t leave—she was in charge of Hansel’s practice dummies, which Lena and Melodie had converted into an army of nurses.