Of Witches and Wind

by Shelby Bach

  “Interesting.” The prince’s wings hummed, and he flitted upward. His dark eyes glittered—the only hint he was angry. “They were all so meek; I never suspected that one of them had a mouth on her. Ori’an.”

  The boulder he’d been sitting on detached itself from the beach. A stone statue of a huge, ugly man, with a silver chain clanking around his ankles and tusks coming out of his mouth. A troll! No, he had gritty, cementlike wings.

  I didn’t get a chance to run. The stone troll fairy picked me up, squeezing me so tight all the air escaped my lungs. If Iron Hans hadn’t healed my ribs, I would have screamed in pain.

  “And then there were five,” said Chase. I tried not to think about my legs dangling above empty air, or estimate how far away I was from the sand, or pay attention to how much the troll fairy’s breath smelled like rotting garlic. “That’s closer to the allotted number. Will you grant us safe passage now?”

  My head whipped toward Chase. He couldn’t have said what I thought he said.

  The prince’s eyes narrowed. “So, you wouldn’t mind if we killed this girl, squeezed her to death right in front of you?”

  Chase glanced at me. His face shot ice down my back. He looked . . . bored. I had seen him angry, cocky, hopeful, wry, impatient. Bored was new. Bored was too much like the stupid, bullying prince.

  “If you want.” Chase sounded bored even talking about my death. “But personally, I’m more interested in finishing our negotiations.”

  If I’d had any more breath left, it would have whooshed out in a relieved sigh. That face was a bargaining tactic.

  It is nearly impossible for a human to get exactly what they want in Fey deals, Rapunzel had said.

  Not a problem, I told my panic. Chase wasn’t totally human.

  Fael frowned, suspicious but unsurprised. “I could never allow you to simply walk away. You understand. We Unseelie have a reputation to maintain. We can’t be known as being needlessly helpful.”

  Chase nodded, like this was reasonable. “But you’re missing a great opportunity by imprisoning us questers. I’m sure there’s something out there you would like to send us after.”

  I slapped the giant rock fairy’s thumb to let him know he was holding too tight, but he only squeezed tighter.

  Eagerness flickered across the prince’s face. “Only one could go. The rest would have to serve as hostages.”

  “Fair,” said Chase. “As long as we get to choose which quester.”

  Right. Because it would be all over if the Fey wanted to send Mia.

  “I choose the object. You won’t find out what until an agreement has been reached,” said Fael.

  “Naturally. And the chosen quester must have access to all resources we brought to Atlantis. For the full period of the quest.”

  “You understand that this will render the Unseelie agreement with your Director null and void,” said Prince Fael lazily. “If you fail, I’ll be free to kill whoever I wish.”

  Seven years in prison, or sending one person on a second quest and risking everybody else’s life?

  Chase nodded, considering it, his face smooth. “Yes. I’ll need to run it past the other questers first, of course.”

  Fael waved a hand, which must have meant okay, because Chase looked significantly at me and the stupid rock fairy and added, “All the other questers.”

  Fael sighed. “Let her down, Ori’an.”

  As Chase went over to explain things, Ori’an lowered me down, and sand became my new favorite thing in the world. I walked over to the others on shaking legs.

  Chase finished explaining just as I reached my pack and unzipped it.

  “Chase, you suck at negotiating,” Kenneth said, and Chatty looked just as horrified.

  I pulled out my M3. “Lena,” I whispered. Her face appeared almost instantly. She had bags under her eyes that hadn’t been there the night before. She opened her mouth, but I put my finger over my lips.

  “If it was your mother, what would you do?” Ben asked Chase.

  Lena caught on fast. She pulled out a pen and paper to take notes.

  “Imprisoned, we definitely won’t find the Water of Life in time,” Chase said grimly. “We still have a shot if we add a second quest.”

  “Then that’s what we do,” Ben said.

  Chase turned back to Fael and switched back to Fey. “We’ll take it. What do you want us to find?”

  “The scepter of the Birch clan,” Fael said. He could speak English. Then he smiled, obviously relishing the way Chatty covered her face and Chase went pale.

  “The what?” Kenneth asked.

  “I feel generous today. I’ll tell you everything I know about its whereabouts: Iron Hans traded it to the king of the Hidden Trolls,” the Unseelie prince told the other questers. “That court is located in one of the largest cities on your continent, where no Fey would deign to tread.”

  “The Hidden Troll Court that hasn’t been seen for the past hundred years?” Kenneth said, furious. “That one? There’s no way we can find that.”

  “It’s in Los Angeles,” Chase said. “That’s what the Fey and the Canon think anyway.”

  That didn’t make me feel any better. L.A. was kind of a big, crowded place.

  Fael smiled wider. He knew it was impossible to find. He expected us to fail. He thought we’d just given him permission to kill us all.

  “I know where to look!” Lena burst out. Her image bobbed in the mirror, and the infirmary background blurred. She was running.

  “What is that?” Fael pointed down at my M3.

  “One of the resources we brought to Atlantis,” Chase said, with all his usual smugness.

  Lena coughed, a hacking that sounded like it scraped the inside of her lungs, and then the M3 showed me a glimpse of fancy, leather-bound volumes. She was in the EAS reference room. A book thumped against a table, and Lena flipped through the pages. “Okay, the EAS encyclopedia on trolls doesn’t really list a location for the Hidden Troll Court. It’s just a riddle: ‘In the land of sun and silver stars, / where all that is gold and not gold glitters, / the ugly ones live in the land of stories, / false for the chosen few, but for most, greater than real,’ ” Lena read. I could hear her pen tapping against her notebook.

  “Oh,” I said, ever so slightly more hopeful, but the other questers slumped a little. Ben rubbed his eyes and blinked hard, like waking up more would solve the riddle for him.

  “In Troll, it rhymes,” Lena told us. “Now, I can do a scrying spell, but with that much area, it will take a lot of dragon scales and about a week. It would help if we could to narrow it down.”

  “What’s that sidewalk? With the stars and the handprints?” Kenneth asked.

  “The Walk of Fame?” Ben said eagerly.

  They were totally on the wrong track. “No, it’s not that. It’s a movie set. An abandoned one, probably.” Someone would have probably noticed a bunch of trolls if it was an active one.

  Kenneth blinked at me. “Movie set.”

  “Are you sure, Rory?” Ben asked.

  I nodded. “ ‘Land of stories’ makes me think some sort of entertainment. ‘Silver stars’—Hollywood. ‘False for the chosen few’—that would be all the film people who work behind the scenes, but everyone else gets sucked into the illusion.”

  “Oh, my gumdrops,” Lena said, wide-eyed. “It’s so obvious.”

  I shrugged, face hot. I didn’t like the way the other questers were staring at me. “Hollywood is kind of in my blood.”

  Something clicked for Ben. “Oh, Rory Landon.”

  “The scrying spell will only take about an hour now.” Lena was moving again. Past her, the M3 showed blue sky and then the ceiling of the workshop. “Rory, we need to figure out how to explain to your dad why you’re coming to L.A. after all. I think Gran can handle that—”

  “Wait—who said Rory was going?” Kenneth burst out.

  I was about to agree with him, for the first time ever, but the others had turned to me
too.

  “Well, Mia and I are out,” said Ben, “because we can’t fight a whole court of trolls. Chatty’s out, because she can’t talk. Kenneth would probably lose his temper—”

  This was too much responsibility. “So send Chase.”

  “What are you going to do, Rory? Tell your dad you can’t visit, and then ask him if he can cart a complete stranger around L.A.?” Despite what he said, Chase obviously wished he were going instead. “Besides, I really doubt His Unseelie Highness over there would let me go.”

  It was really up to me. I struggled to breathe through the huge knot in my throat.

  Through the M3 I could hear Lena opening and closing cupboards—grabbing what she needed for the scrying spell.

  “I suppose I should tell you: You have twenty-four hours,” Fael said, and I froze, hoping I hadn’t heard him right. The only thing worse than searching for an impossible-to-find Hidden Troll Court and stealing a scepter was doing it with a time limit.

  “Wait,” Kenneth said. “That’s not fair. You can’t just start changing the rules.”

  But Chase’s gutted expression said that Fael could. “Forty-eight hours—”

  “She can have that long, if she wants,” said the Unseelie prince. “But every dawn that scepter isn’t in my hands, I’ll kill a hostage. I’ll start with that one.”

  Fael pointed at Mia. I felt extremely relieved. I was a terrible person.

  “Thirty-six hours—” Chase tried again.

  “Turnleaf, you fail to comprehend the situation. You are my prisoner, and I am no longer required to keep you alive,” Fael said, his mouth curling even more. Chase went still. I knew he was going over the whole morning again, trying to think of everything he had forgotten to ask for. “The time for negotiation is over. Unless you would rather reject our new understanding. Then I can just kill all six of you now.”

  “I don’t think,” Chase said in an extra-loud voice, “that we’ll be able to talk our way out of this. We better just cooperate.”

  I stared at Chase, almost positive that the Fey had abducted my friend and glamoured one of their knights to impersonate him. The word “cooperate” did not exist in Chase’s vocabulary.

  “I have a better idea.” With a roar, Kenneth rushed at Prince Fael with both fists raised. Two Fey knights had the eighth grader’s arms twisted behind his back and his face pushed in the sand before Kenneth had even gone two steps.

  Chase stepped closer and whispered, “Go to L.A. I’ll try to arrange a jailbreak on this end, but you need to concentrate on getting that scepter.”

  Chase, master of diversions and brilliant backup plans.

  Getting the quest back on track wasn’t all up to me. I could move again.

  “I’ll do it.” I dug around my pack until I found the ring of return. Then I turned to the Fey knight holding my sword—shorter than the others, with gleaming clawlike nails. I reached for it.

  “I never said anything about you taking your sword with you,” Fael said lazily.

  I was not heading to some troll court unarmed. “Yeah? Well, I never said anything about bringing you the scepter in one piece. If you want that to happen, I’ll need my sword—and I’ll need to be able to reach Chase through this mini magic mirror at all times.”

  “Oh, snap,” said Kenneth. One of the fairies holding him shoved his face harder into the sand.

  Scowling, the Unseelie prince gestured. The silver-clawed Fey knight passed me my sword.

  But I didn’t have time to feel triumphant.

  “Rory.” Ben looked at me, and I remembered his poisoned mother, Lena’s five-minute coughing fit. “Hurry.”

  I nodded, heart in my throat, and slipped the ring on.

  ran got in touch with your dad. She said we had a family emergency, and we had to send you to L.A. He seemed pretty excited. You have an hour and a half before your flight is supposed to land.” Lena looked much worse than she’d seemed through the M3. Her face was haggard, her eyes half-lidded, the bags under them bigger and more purply than before. I’d been stunned for a few seconds when I first found her, eyes glued to her scrying spell, in the back of the workshop. When she’d hugged me hello, she’d smelled like cough drops. This was usually the moment when she had some brilliant idea, but she looked at Melodie. “Now, we need to get you back to Atlantis in twenty-four hours . . .”

  The golden harp said gently, “So we’ll need a temporary transport spell to the beach where the questers are.”

  “Right,” Lena said, relieved.

  She hadn’t been able to think of the next step. That was how bad she was feeling.

  “Do you have any sand on you? From that beach?” Melodie asked.

  I opened both hands. To my surprise, my right palm was covered in a fine layer of it. Lena drew a beaker out of her pocket and scraped a few grains off. Then she shuffled around the workshop, pulling dried herbs and a jar of powdered dragon scales out of a cupboard. She even walked like she didn’t feel well, bent slightly forward like an old woman.

  “Can I do that?” I asked.

  “No.” If I hadn’t been looking at Lena when she said it, then I would have sworn the voice came straight from Jenny. “You need to worry about the scepter and about what you’ll tell your dad when you leave to go back to Atlantis. Now shower.”

  I didn’t even try to argue. I came back when I was clean and L.A.-ready, as close to looking like I’d just climbed off a flight as I could look, but Melodie was the only one in the workshop.

  The golden harp lifted both arms toward me. “She’s in the ballroom.”

  “And she didn’t take you with her? Did you guys have a fight?” I asked, trying to lighten the mood. I picked her up and wove my way back through the tables to the door.

  “She can’t pick me up anymore, Rory.” Melodie’s golden chin wobbled. “And don’t you dare tell her I told you, but she’ll be bedridden soon.”

  Bedridden, from a tiny taste of Fey fudge pie.

  “How do we make her better?” I stepped into the courtyard. “Besides, you know, the Water of Life.”

  “Make her sit still.” Melodie sighed. “But you know how impossible that is.”

  Telling Lena not to move was like telling Chase not to eat—it only made them cranky. Besides, I needed Lena’s help to save the others. I’d never get to the Hidden Troll Court and back without her help.

  I pushed open the door to the ballroom infirmary. It smelled like burned cheese—like the ointment juice. The patients were all so still. For one horrible second I thought that someone had finished the poisoning job while we were gone, but then I heard people breathing, some more raspily than others.

  “Rory, these are the healthiest ones,” Melodie said, much nicer than usual. “The bad cases are farther in.”

  One of Hansel’s practice dummies, an evil fairy, held out a spoonful of something to a boy, who stiffly slurped it, grimacing with pain. Kyle Zipes. I hadn’t recognized him at first—his skin was ashen, his lips almost white.

  Melodie tugged on my sleeve and pointed. Ellie. Her lips were white too.

  “Lena asked about the Hidden Troll Court and went back to the workshop,” Ellie said before I could ask. Kelly had crawled into the same bed, and Ellie stroked her daughter’s hair. Puss-in-Dress sat sphinxlike on top of their pillows.

  Beside their bed, reeking, was Rapunzel’s flask of giant ointment juice, less than a third full. There wasn’t enough of it to fill a milk jug. That couldn’t be all we had left. It didn’t seem like enough to last through Friday.

  The golden harp threw her hands in the air. “This is why it’s so much easier when she keeps me in her satchel.” She was trying to lighten the mood too—for Ellie’s sake.

  Poor Melodie—she’d been here the whole time. She’d watched everyone get sicker and sicker.

  “Melodie, these practice dummies follow anyone’s orders, right? Even yours?”

  “Yes,” Melodie said, clearly not sure where I was going with this.

/>   “You. Come here.” I pointed at a witch practice dummy, friendlier-looking than the others. When it was close, I passed the golden harp over. “Melodie, this dummy will be your legs, and you’ll be Lena’s hands. Let her boss you around. Maybe she won’t move around as much.”

  Melodie nodded, her face brightening slightly. When she ordered the friendly witch dummy back to the workshop, Ellie explained Jenny needed to know that I had commandeered one of their nurses, and pointed me deeper into the infirmary, past the sleeping Director. Her blond hair fanned out perfectly from her pillow, her hands clasped over her stomach.

  Only a few beds were occupied in the next section. I stood and stared. I knew the person in the closest bed was Rumpelstiltskin—he was the only Character at EAS as short as a fifth grader and as wide as an adult—but his skin was so blue. His lips were almost black, and it looked like someone had drawn spidery vines across his hands, over his face.

  “The final stage of cockatrice poisoning,” Jenny said grimly, appearing beside me. “We have to feed him some of the ointment every fifteen minutes, just to keep him alive.”

  It was so much worse than I’d thought.

  I wanted to shout at the top of my lungs, I’ll save you! just to break the silence above all these beds. I’d find that scepter and get it back to Prince Fael.

  Someone else screamed first, so loudly that it echoed down the hall. “I won’t die here!”

  Apparently, this had happened before. Most people just rolled over and pressed their pillows over their ears. Jenny and I hurried down the row of beds.

  The witches had an entire room to themselves, ringed off by a curtain and guarded by huge troll dummies. Past the curtain, two evil fairy dummies held the raving witch down, while Rapunzel struggled to tip a potion into her mouth.

  The witch shoved the medicine goblet away, and I recognized her: Kezelda.

  “What would you do,” she shrieked, trying to twist free of the dummies, “if your mother had been killed by a Gretel, and your grandmother killed by a Gretel, and your great-grandmother, and your great-aunt, and four of your cousins? Wouldn’t you want revenge too? Would you be so tempted to kill a Gretel that you would let one into your gingerbread house? Wouldn’t you want to change your family’s fate?”