by Rin Chupeco
What came out were several stone-sized dark pink lumps, each carefully wrapped in a green leaf. “It’s called mochi,” Ken said proudly, setting the bowl down and displaying the fresh plate with a flourish. “My grandma makes it all the time, and it’s great.”
“Ken,” Zoe said.
“This one’s an Avalonian version, made with green tea and witch’s apples. The leaf is edible too.”
“Ken.”
“It’s gelatinous rice, and it’s soft and chewy, and I had it all the time as a kid. Plus, it fills the stomach pretty quickly, if you eat enough of it.”
“Ken!”
“Yeah?”
“It’s a dessert, isn’t it? A bite-sized dessert.”
A pause. Ken scrutinized his dish. “Well, so maybe there’s not as much here as I was hoping for. We could eat it with our meals. How many servings of food did the count say we can yank out at a time?”
“Only enough for three or four people, I think. But at the rate we’re going, there won’t be any other meals to have. We can only do this thrice a day, remember?”
Ken considered it. Then he looked to Tala. “The food your mum cooked was great. Maybe you should have a try at this.”
“Are you sure?”
“Of course. I wouldn’t mind eating more of that beef in that bloody good orange sauce.”
“It’s called kaldereta,” Tala said, warming to the idea. She missed her mother’s cooking already. She’d be safe in London at least, in whatever place the Cheshire called his hideout. She placed her hand inside the bowl. “But that’s not even my favorite food. My favorite is called adobo, and it’s chicken marinated in this blend of vinegar and soy sauce, and it’s fantastic with white rice.” She could use one of her mom’s home-cooked meals right now. Tala closed her eyes, trying to will everything she remembered about her mother’s adobo, hoping to channel it into the dish. She missed her terribly.
Loki laughed. “I’m hungry already.”
“Let’s go,” Ken urged. “My mouth’s watering just imagining it.”
“So here’s—” Tala pulled her arm out of the cornucopia, only to come up empty-handed.
She tried again, with the same results.
“Maybe it’s broken?” West asked.
The curse, you fool.
“No,” Tala said. “It’s not.”
And then, much to her surprise, she burst into tears.
* * *
“Sorry,” Tala whispered. “I don’t know what came over me.”
“It’s nothing to apologize for,” Alex insisted. His shoulder was still wet from her crying, but he didn’t seem to mind. “Maybe if a couple other people had the foresight to remember how an agimat works,” he shot Ken and Zoe dirty looks, “this wouldn’t have happened.”
“We didn’t think,” Ken conceded, ashamed.
“We should be the one apologizing,” Zoe agreed. “I should have remembered. I’m so sorry, Tala.”
“No, don’t,” Tala said, wiping her eyes. “I just got a little overwhelmed, is all. I’m okay now.”
“If you’re sure?” Maybe it was because of what had happened earlier at the village, since Alex wasn’t always this protective. It felt nice, for a change.
“Positive. I just didn’t realize how much I miss my family. You guys better get your third meal for the day so we can start eating.”
“Well, what else is in here, anyway?” West asked, reaching down into the cornucopia himself.
Tala had never seen Ken and Zoe move so fast. The boy had clamped onto West’s wrist while the girl had taken a hold of his forearm, but it was too late; West’s hand had already plunged inside the cornucopia.
“Real talk, West,” Ken said hurriedly. “What’s your favorite food?”
“And please don’t say anything weird,” Zoe added. “Like bull testicles or flowers.”
“I had a really good dish made of borage flowers once,” West responded promptly. “It was a delicacy from northern Albion. It’s normally used for salads but the chef served it up to me on chocolate ca—”
“I swear by the goddamn power of Grayskull, West,” Ken threatened, “if your hand leaves this pot with a bouquet of flowers I am going to throttle you.”
“Of course not,” West said, injured. “That’s not my favorite food. It’s steak.”
Zoe and Ken glanced at each other, and both relaxed their hold on him.
“Good choice, West,” Ken growled.
“I’m vegetarian,” Zoe admitted, “but I’ll eat meat in an emergency. And since this didn’t technically come from an actual cow…”
“Steak tartare,” West finished proudly, bringing his hand out. “The rarer it is, the better it tastes.”
* * *
They cooked West’s steak tartare over the fire, leaving enough of it raw for West’s portion, and only his portion. Zoe had also set out into the nearby woods, returning half an hour later with a bundle of mushrooms Loki confirmed were safe to eat.
Tala sat on a small tree stump and watched them at work, feeling helpless. It was becoming very apparent that she had no outdoor skills to speak of, and felt she was only going to get in everyone’s way if she attempted to pitch in, especially after her adobo disaster.
“Is there a way to tell if the animals aren’t shape-shifters?” she asked. “It might be awkward if we do find an animal out here, only to, uh…”
“West would have spotted them immediately,” Zoe assured him. “Shifters recognize their own. And you can see their real forms if you stand them by a mirror, like a reverse vampire. I won’t eat them, so that really isn’t my problem.”
“But meat is delicious, Zoe,” Ken invited, with a wide grin.
Zoe threw a large twig his way. “Not my fault if you accidentally eat someone’s enchanted mother.”
Tala swept some snow aside with her foot. “Were there instances in Avalonian history of those?”
“Yeah, but they’re not so much accidents as they were punishments.”
Tala nibbled on a piece of cheese. Zoe was right; it tasted better than it smelled. “That sounds awful.”
“The other kingdoms don’t have the monopoly on wickedness,” Alex said, staring into the fire. “In our defense, we did finally stamp those things out.”
“Isn’t the Cheshire a shifter himself, like West?” Not much was known about the Cheshire after the Wonderland Wars. There’d been rumors he survived because he’d been transmogrified into a cat after a particularly potent spell had backfired, inadvertently saving his life. Wild magic was a Wonderland oddity; unlike Avalonian spells that had structure and restrictions and demanded equivalent exchange, Wonderland magic had no self-imposed limitations, no common framework, and the same spell cast twice can often end up with two completely different results. It was powerful magic, which was also bad because the powerful magic could blow up in their users’ faces without warning.
The savory smell of cooked food filled the air. Loki had volunteered and was surprisingly good at it.
Ken shook his head. “Not quite, since he doesn’t want to be a cat but can’t do much about it. But even stuck in that form, they still consider him dangerous. He’s the only person left capable of performing wild magic after Wonderland was destroyed, and every president and king have got bees up their bunghole searching for a way to use those sort of spells.”
“Still styles himself the Duke of Wonderland too,” Zoe added. “Like it’s gonna be there waiting for him once he decides to leave the United Kingdom. Wonderland’s been gone since the third World War, and I don’t think anything’s left of it but a giant crater, but he really loved that place.”
“Does he even age?”
“Enchanted people live for as long as the enchantment remains in effect, and I suppose that’s a pretty potent spell, to turn one of the most powerfu
l people of Wonderland into a cat.”
“I hope I’m not asking too many questions.”
“Not at all. Once we liberate Avalon”—she laid particular stress on once—“I’d be happy to show you around, answer more. Maidenkeep was once an academy, you know. Scholarships for students the world over with an aptitude for magic. Had Avalon been free, I would have studied here. The Cerridwen School for Thaumaturgy was set up after Avalon’s freezing, which is where the rest of us met one another, but I’m told it’s not quite the same experience. Besides, you’re a quick study. I’ve tutored worse.” She looked back at Ken. The tall boy hovered around the cooking pot, ignoring Loki’s attempts to shoo him away. She shuddered. “A lot worse.”
They ate heartily despite the cold and the early false starts. The firebird finished two full bowls of mushroom soup on its own. The skies were dark now, clear enough to be dotted by a few sparse stars. It was a curious blackness that Tala, who was used to cities and the convenience of electricity, found worrying. In the near darkness, with only the small campfire for light, the dark outlines of the trees above seemed grim and foreboding; the hooting of distant owls seemed all the more ominous because she had yet to see any bird since arriving.
“So,” Ken said, with a faint shiver, “if the time spell’s still active, we’d be, what, a full month missing outside, right?”
“We’ve been here two days, Ken,” Loki corrected him. “That means we’d have been gone a week at this point.”
“Ah. Not really good at math. But at least that’s not too bad, right? We’ll just have to ride on quick to Maidenkeep, do whatever we need to do there, and our families and friends won’t have died out on us by the time we return, right?”
“Ken,” Zoe said wearily. “Shut up.”
Ken and Loki took first watch, West shedding clothes again to scout around. Surprisingly, Cole took the pots and utensils away to clean, earning him a reluctant thanks from Zoe. Alex had already disappeared inside one of the tents. Still too keyed up to sleep, Tala took out her arnis sticks and selected a nearby tree for her fighting partner. It wasn’t her father, but it would have to do.
Thinking about him sent a shot of pain through her chest; angry now, she delivered a particularly heavy blow that splintered part of the bark.
“Stressed?” Zoe asked sympathetically, watching nearby.
Tala huffed out a breath. “You think?”
She laughed. “Need a sparring buddy?”
Tala paused. “I think I’m good, but I don’t think I’m that good yet.”
“Not true. You held your own pretty well against the ogre, from what I remember.” Zoe drew out her whip. “And I was thinking more of pitting your segen against mine instead of actually fighting.”
“I haven’t really practiced using it in an offensive way,” Tala admitted, “if you don’t count Carly Rae Jepsen.”
Zoe looked confused. “You…don’t like her?”
“What? No! I absolutely do! It’s just that I use her songs to, um…it’s not important. That is, it’s that I don’t have much experience, so I could use all the help you can give me.”
“Cool.” Zoe flexed her wrist, and the whip made slow, circular loops in the air. “How about this. I’m going to spell your name in the air. Your goal is to use your curse to stop me before I can finish. Sound fair?”
“All right.” Tala lifted her sticks up, watching the whip rise and fall. Without warning, the tail lashed through, leaving a thin line made of some immobile static electricity before her. Tala reached out with her agimat, but Zoe’s whip had already retreated out of her grasp.
“You have to be faster than this,” the other girl warned, attacking again and leaving a bright parallel stroke this time, forming a T in the air.
Tala tried to block her at every turn, but Zoe was too fast. Pretty soon, the words TA marked the empty space between them, missing only two more letters for the blitzsegner to claim the win.
She was doing it all wrong. Watching the whip wasn’t working, because by the time she thought to react, it was already too late. She focused on Zoe’s hands instead.
She waited out the next flicks spelling the L before she finally spotted Zoe’s tell; the girl flicked her hand just a centimeter higher than normal, and the whip struck through, adding another line. “Two more and it’s done,” the other girl warned.
“I know,” Tala muttered, still waiting. This time, when Zoe’s hand shifted one last time, Tala flung the curse at her. The tail end of the whip actually sparked like it had caught on something solid as the curse batted it away, leaving her name unfinished.
“Oh, well done!” Zoe exclaimed with a grin. “Now we’re talking.”
“I don’t understand.” Tala’s arm tingled, and she felt tired, like she’d just scaled a twenty-foot wall. “Magic doesn’t work around me even when I don’t concentrate, so why was it so difficult for me to stop yours?”
Zoe let the whip spiral around her like a gymnastics ribbon. “Because segen takes a little more conscious effort to undo, even for someone with an agimat. It’s all the difference between a sword cutting through air and one cutting through wood. Segen is basically a concentration of magic packed in solid form, so the density of its spell is mainly what you have to fight through.”
The words were barely out of her mouth when a peculiar howl echoed through the woods. The firebird hissed, the light around it disappearing abruptly.
Ken was on his feet, swearing quietly under his breath. Loki snatched up their staff and scanned the woods quickly, trying to peer farther into the gloom. A tawny fox came trotting up to them; an instant later West had taken its place, his fur cloak wrapped around him and ears twitching. “There are ice wolves out there,” he chattered.
“What?” Tala asked.
“Ice wolves.” Zoe coiled her whip, her blue eyes intent. “Lots of ice wolves.”
“They’re moving too quickly and making too much noise to be setting up an ambush,” Loki said quietly. “I don’t think they know we’re here.”
“I want you to stay inside the tent with His Majesty,” Zoe told Tala. “It’s camouflaged with enough leaves that they may not notice. Don’t make any sound, and don’t come out until we tell you to. Ken, move the horses closer to the trees.”
“The ice wolves will sniff them out either way,” the boy argued.
“Leave that to me.”
Loki and West immediately began shoveling dirt onto the campfire remains to stamp out the smoke.
“What are you going to do?” Alex whispered. The prince was half out of his tent, jaw tense. “Are we going to fight?”
“Even better,” Zoe said. “We’re going to hide. And if that doesn’t work, then we fight. If anything happens, I want you both to take the firebird, get on your horses, and keep riding east toward Lyonesse, as fast as you can.”
“We’re not leaving you behind!” Tala protested.
“We don’t have much choice. And as bad as it sounds, we’re a lot more expendable than either of you are.” Zoe flashed them a small, terse smile. “Don’t worry. Let us handle this.”
The inside of the tent smelled faintly of fresh grass and clean soil. Alex tugged her as far away from the tent’s opening as he could, as if that was going to make a difference.
The firebird tried to edge its way out of the tent, reluctant to hide if there was something out there to annoy, but Alex tugged it back inside just as quickly. It mewled in protest, but then obediently fell silent.
The baying sounds continued for a while, and then Tala detected a faint shift in the air. Several tree branches outlined against the tent, swaying gently back and forth, stopped moving abruptly. “What’s happening?” she whispered.
“Wind’s absolutely dead,” Alex said. “There isn’t any moving air for at least a mile around.”
“How do you know that?”
“I…” Alex trailed off. “I just know, that’s all.”
They waited tensely for several more minutes. “You think they can still smell us?” Alex asked softly after a moment.
“I don’t wanna think about it. I’m too nervous.”
“Want to talk about your dad, then?”
Tala froze. “That’s the last thing I wanna talk about. We should be quiet.”
“Normally that’s true, except the last time I tried to talk to you about him, you brushed me off.”
“He’s not worth a conversation at this point.”
“You do know that once upon a time, it was he who commanded these ice wolves, right? He was the Snow Queen’s immortal general, he could control all those nightwalkers like she could.”
“Do you really want to die?” Tala hissed. “Because I’m going to lose my temper and start yelling at you before I think this through, and they’re going to find us.”
“Are you ashamed of him?”
That stopped her. Was she?
She should be. Being her father didn’t exempt him from the horrible things he’d done.
Alex’s shoulders sagged. “I felt bad about not telling you. Still do. I wanted to, but I knew it wasn’t my place to say.”
“I’m not blaming you, Alex. You’re not responsible for him.”
“I am, actually. He’s one of the few subjects I have left, and I wouldn’t be alive if it weren’t for him. I owe your father that much, and I hate that it’s giving you pain.”
“What do you want me to do? Forgive him? Because I can’t. I don’t even know how Mom could stand to stay with him.”
“You’re going to have to forgive him at some point. Or do you intend to cut him out of your life now?”
“I don’t know what I’m gonna do yet.” She wasn’t going to think about him trapped at the sanctuary with the ogres and the ice maidens. He had to be alive for her to be mad at.
A low, growling noise came out of nowhere, surprising them both—a noise that was coming from directly outside their tent.