by Lisa McMann
Thisbe gave Fifer a hard look. “Listen, Fife. You’ve got a lot more good in you than I do. You’re so good that even I can sense it, and I’m only part dragon. But with Kitten losing two lives back-to-back, she’s too vulnerable to be hit by any more sledgehammers. And we need her. If we can’t figure out how to use that secret door, I can think of only one other way to get our people out of the remote rooms immediately. Before it’s too late to save them.”
Fifer stared at her twin. “What do you mean? What way?” And then a flood of realization swept over her as she thought through the fallout if she took Frieda out permanently. “Oh,” she said. And then: “Oooh. I see.”
“I’ve got to go help the others,” Thisbe said quietly. “Don’t die, okay? At least not until after we figure things out. I can’t stand to lose another sibling like that.” She gave Fifer’s arm a gentle squeeze and left her, rushing to aid her friends before they got pounded to death. Fifer’s heart tripped in her chest and throttled her throat as she realized what a huge moment this was. What a large decision she was faced with. Barely able to comprehend the severity of it, Fifer helped Ishibashi sit up, all the while thinking hard about what she needed to do next. And exactly how she’d go about doing it. But could she actually defy her inner goodness and go through with it? Either way, this moment would be life changing. For better… or worse.
A Fatal Mistake
Fifer took an extra moment to care for Ishibashi under the cover of the staircase after he’d so valiantly stepped in front of two heart attack components meant for Fifer. All the while she frantically tried to plan her next move and attempted to not think about how her actions this evening would impact her life forever, no matter what she chose to do. As she helped the old scientist take a drink from his canteen and held his shaky hand, she thought back to the books she’d read over and over again when she was a child—the books Lani had written about the battles she and Alex and the older generation had experienced. Lani was one of Fifer’s heroes, and she’d done some pretty brave and dangerous things. Things she’d performed selflessly and hadn’t take credit for, like secretly helping to end the very first war in Artimé.
Sky was also someone Fifer admired, and if it hadn’t been for her, Artimé might still be lost after the first time a head mage died. She’d helped Alex figure out how to bring the magical world back. And then there were Kaylee, and Alex, and Aaron… and Thisbe, for that matter. All heroes in different ways. They’d done incredible things. Made unbelievable sacrifices. Risked their lives for the sake of Artimé and its people. And… sometimes they’d taken someone’s life in order to do it.
But none of these Artiméans had ever purposely taken the life of a fellow Unwanted. There was nothing to compare this moment to. Nothing to help Fifer come to terms with it, other than knowing Thisbe was for it. But Thisbe had more evil inside her than Fifer did, apparently. Fifer wrung her hands and peered out at the roofline.
Not to mention Frieda Stubbs wasn’t exactly easy to target. She was invisible. She was most likely using invisibility paintbrushes to stay hidden up there on the wall. And probably moving around whenever Simber got too close. How was Fifer going to locate her? She wasn’t sure, but she was going to use her best instincts to figure it out.
Ishibashi noticed the torment on Fifer’s face. He put his other shaking hand on top of hers. “Is it a very difficult decision for you?” he asked.
Fifer gulped and nodded. “Yes. It’s terrible.”
“Your compassion is one of your many strengths, Fifer Stowe. You will know what to do when the time comes.”
“Thank you, Ishibashi-san,” Fifer whispered. Her eyes welled up. “I hope you are right.”
“The older I get, the more right I am,” said Ishibashi with a glint in his eye.
Fifer pressed her lips into a small smile. There was always something wonderful to be learned from the grandfathers. And though she still hadn’t made a decision about what to do, she felt a little better about being able to make it if the time came.
Through the windows Fifer could hear a few dissenters in the cage outside, catcalling and chanting Frieda’s name as Simber flew around above the mansion. And she could see the dragons circling the pen, keeping order. But the dissenters were getting restless. Fifer needed to make a move. Draw Frieda out so they could do something. With instinct guiding her, Fifer gave Ishibashi’s hand a final squeeze. She stepped out from under the stairs and held her hands out, empty and visible. “Hey, Frieda! You nearly killed someone who doesn’t even live here!” she called out. “How does that feel?”
“Ishibashi is a fraud!” Frieda called back. Her voice seemed to be coming from a totally different place now than it had been before. When Frieda spoke, the dissenters heard her and became louder. Fifer wasn’t sure if they were encouraging Frieda or if they were angry with her, but they were being rambunctious enough that the dragons breathed a spurt of fire in through the doorway to help control them. Screams rose and died down, and Florence barked out a warning. Fifer cringed. She stole another glance out the window into the darkness, seeing that one wall of the makeshift corral was tipping precariously outward. Gorgrun was on the ground pushing it back in place with his head.
A single scatterclip whizzed past Fifer’s ear in that distracted moment. “Die a thousand deaths!” Frieda cried, a bit too late to be effective. Fifer startled and realized that Frieda had tried to kill her for the third time. She wasn’t hesitating.
“Nice try,” Fifer said snidely after the clip harmlessly skittered across the floor. “I’m glad you’re so terrible at magic. Did you run out of sledgehammers?”
“At least I still have other components!” said Frieda. Again, her voice seemed to be coming from a slightly different place. Fifer peered toward the spot, knowing that eventually the woman would run out of invisibility paintbrushes. Simber turned sharply in the air toward the head mage’s voice. He swept along the wall, nice and low, trying to catch her or anyone who might be sitting on the top of it. But there was a scrambling sound that Fifer could just barely hear above the noises happening on the lawn, and a few pebbles and bits of silt filtered down in the front west corner of the mansion. Fifer turned carefully, catching Simber’s eye and pretending she could see Frieda.
“Do you have her in your sights too, Simber?” Fifer called out.
“I do now,” Simber said, playing along.
“You are a terrible liar, traitor!” shouted Frieda. More silt filtered down, this time from above the mansion’s main doorway. “Everyone knows you are putting Artimé in danger. You won’t survive this.”
“You can surrender if you like,” Fifer said calmly. “Or I can freeze you from here, and you’ll probably fall to the ground and break into a thousand pieces. It’s up to you.”
“You’re out of components!” Frieda cackled. “I hardly think you should be threatening me. A freeze spell? That’s your answer? Weak.”
There was another scraping sound, and then a flash of color. A tiny swath of Frieda’s robe was in plain sight. Her invisibility spell was wearing off.
Fifer glanced at Simber, giving him a warning look, and he circled, pretending he hadn’t seen it.
“Simber, you don’t deserve to be the head mage’s right-hand cheetah!” Frieda shouted angrily. She threw a handful of heart attack spells at the statue, but they didn’t hurt him in the least. “You abandoned me. You turned away from the head mage. How could you fail so badly? What kind of servant are you?”
“The worrrst kind,” said Simber, dolefully playing his part. “Apparrrently.”
Fifer breathed a sigh of relief—Simber was nobody’s servant, and he was smart enough not to take the bait. But she knew Frieda’s words must have hurt him deeply. “Simber’s on the side of Artimé. We all are. All but you.”
“What are you talking about, you silly little pirate child?” said Frieda with a laugh, but there was an edge to her voice. “You and your siblings brought the Revinir in sight of Artimé, rea
dy to attack us with her dragons. This threat is all your fault, and I have the majority of the people on my side in agreement! Listen to them all rioting because of the way I’ve been treated!”
Fifer kept her expression stony and lifted her chin slightly, feeling a small surge of confidence. There was no rioting, only a few people shouting. She ignored the woman’s name-calling. She could tell she’d gotten under Frieda’s skin. And now, whether the head mage knew it or not, Fifer could make out the shape of her robe. If Frieda wouldn’t surrender, it was almost time to make a move. Fear leaped into Fifer’s throat, but she swallowed it back down.
Fifer knew she had to be cautious. Frieda had mistakenly assumed she was out of components, which was what Fifer had wanted her to think. But Fifer wasn’t sure if Frieda had many left, so she did some calculations in her head. The woman must have filled her pockets with sledgehammer components in order to release so many. Was she out of components? But then there was the head mage robe, which had pockets too. She could carry a lot of ammunition. Could Frieda have burned through all the components in her vest and the robe? It was hard to say, since Fifer hadn’t seen the sledgehammer component before and didn’t know its size in component form.
She recalled what Thisbe had whispered to her a few moments ago, about people like Frieda accusing their enemies of the very crimes they’d committed. Did that work for the situations they were in, too? Was Frieda accusing Fifer of being out of components because that was Frieda’s way of foolishly telling Fifer that she was the one who was out? Fifer couldn’t possibly know. But she didn’t want to waste this opportunity. Who knew what would happen when Frieda discovered she was visible now. Fifer stepped out farther from behind the broken bannister, being careful not to reach for any components.
Simber saw her empty hands and growled a warning, but Fifer pretended not to hear him.
“Climb down, Frieda,” Fifer said. “Let’s talk this through. I’m sure we can come together and figure out a way to end this standoff and free our friends from the remote rooms. Maybe you didn’t intend to put them in such danger—if not, let’s figure it out.”
“Let them die there,” said Frieda coldly, almost fully visible now but still not realizing it. “Then all I have to get rid of is your sister and you, and Artimé will be at peace again.” She reached into her pocket and pulled out another scatterclip, turning it in front of her and letting the metal glint in the mansion light.
“You want all of those people in the remote rooms to die?” said Fifer loudly, hoping the penned prisoners were hearing all of this. “Are you really okay with that many deaths on your hands? I’m not sure the people of Artimé want that. Those trapped people are our most skilled fighters! They’re our friends and relatives. They’re the ones who have made sacrifices to save Artimé time and time again while people like you get to hide in your rooms. Without them, Artimé is vulnerable… especially if the Revinir comes back.”
“You don’t know what you’re talking about,” Frieda said. “The Revinir is afraid of me. And if I get rid of you, she won’t have any reason to come back.”
“Maybe,” said Fifer. “Or maybe she was afraid of you when she knew you had a notoriously powerful group of fighters behind you. Remember, she’s fought us before, and we beat her. Who knows what she’ll think when she gets word that you’ve left your best fighters to die. She’s more power hungry than you. If you think she’s not going to come back to take over this island, you’re dead wrong.”
“Be quiet,” Frieda said, her voice pitching upward. “You’re a bore. Boring, screeching Fifer. That’s my name for you.” She pinched the scatterclip and held it up.
Fifer refrained from rolling her eyes at the ridiculous woman. Instead, seeing the move, she glanced at Simber and gave a slight hand signal. The cat blinked in response.
Without another word, Frieda wound up and threw the single scatterclip hard at Fifer, shouting the verbal component correctly this time. “Die a thousand deaths!”
On cue, Simber dove in front of it. It struck his side and bounced off, doing him no harm but shielding Fifer from the deadly hit and giving her a chance to aim with a weapon of her own. Simber swooped up and out over the wall.
Just as swiftly, Fifer raised her hand, needing no component for her plan. “I have a name for you, too,” she said. She grimaced, her heart heavy and thumping wildly, and pointed firmly at Frieda Stubbs. As the woman gasped in anger and reached for another clip, Fifer shouted a phrase that hadn’t been uttered in many years, first used by none other than her hero, Lani Haluki. “Evermore nevermore!” The power left her fingertips. Fifer ran straight for the nearest window and dove out of it.
The spell hit the head mage. She froze, shocked. A second later she slumped over. Her body deflated like a balloon. Soon all that was left of her was a flat rubber shape that slid and fell backward off the wall. Her head mage robe slipped off and caught the wind. It floated down to the beach. In that instant, everything in Artimé went black. And everyone who remained in every part of the mansion was flung together into the gray shack, all squashed on top of one another.
Regrouping
Fifer rolled to a stop on the hard ground where the lawn used to be. She scrambled to her feet and turned to see that the mansion was gone. An old, roofless gray shack stood in its place.
Shouts rose up from inside it as people fought to get out. More yelling came from the corral, for the mansion roof that had covered the dissenters had turned into the much smaller roof of the gray shack and had fallen in on top of everybody, trapping them under its weight. The pen’s log walls disappeared in a puff of smoke, for even the jungle trees were magical and had disappeared, with every vine and root going with them.
Nearby, Florence froze in place. And Simber, in mid-flight, came crashing down. He bounced and skidded on the harsh cement for twenty yards toward Quill, coming to a stop at the startled dragons’ feet.
The sudden loss of the magical world caused terrible confusion, and people everywhere, covered in splinters of lumber and pieces of shingles or trapped beneath the roof, were certain they were close to death. Gorgrun and Quince rose up in confusion and began flying around in circles overhead, unsure what was happening but wanting to stay off the ground in case that disappeared too.
Fifer crouched in place and covered her head to protect it. When everything stopped changing or moving, she rose, shocked and bewildered by what she’d just done. She’d killed Frieda Stubbs. Ended a life—an Unwanted’s life. The thought was horrifying. Fifer could hardly make sense of it.
The noise and confusion made everything worse. Fifer had never seen the magical world disappear before; she’d only read and heard about it.
“Thank the gods it’s still daylight,” someone nearby murmured, limping around bloodied and dazed. “This would be so much worse in the dead of night.”
Fifer couldn’t process any of it. A voice churned in her head. You killed an Unwanted. It made her sick. The satisfaction of doing something right was easily drowned out by the horror of doing something wrong. And now everything was complicated and overwhelming—what was Fifer supposed to do? She had to act before this scene got even further out of hand. After a second to gather her wits, she remembered the robe, which they’d need to restore the world. Fifer whirled around and located Florence, then went straight to the frozen statue and, in spite of her shaking limbs, climbed up on her back. She moved Florence’s arrows aside, then shoved her arm deep down into Florence’s quiver and pulled out the robe. She jumped to the ground and returned to the gray shack, searching the faces of the walking wounded as she went, desperate to see Aaron.
People were coming out of the doors and climbing through windows. “Is everyone okay?” Fifer called out. “Aaron! Is Aaron in there? Sky? Thisbe? Kaylee?” Her voice hitched with a sob. “Seth! Where are you?” Now that Frieda Stubbs was no longer, Fifer felt all the emotions and stress of her friends’ capture, combined with the fear and doubt of making the decision to t
ake down Frieda Stubbs, come to the surface and let loose. She started shivering. “Ishibashi! Are you in there?”
In addition to Fifer’s indecision about what to do with Frieda had been deep worry that her dearest ones might not survive being trapped. Or that the dissenters had used permanent spells on them. If they were alive, would they be injured? Wondering how these next moments would play out was paralyzing Fifer. And where was Thisbe? What if she wasn’t okay? That thought sickened her more than ever. Their relationship had been in such a bad place. This couldn’t be the way it ended.
“Thisbe!” Fifer screamed. “Aaron!” She stumbled to another window and spotted Rohan working to help people out of it. Then Fifer spied a few of the black-eyed fighters and Maiven, limping out of the shack’s back door. “Thank goodness,” Fifer breathed. It was a relief to see them—they’d been the ones Thisbe was tending to in the classrooms and kitchen. Then Fifer spied Sky and Ishibashi coming out the door together looking shaken but safe. She saw Kaylee climbing up and over the wall of the roofless shack and down the outside while simultaneously calling out the same names that Fifer was shouting. Fifer ran over to her. “Have you seen anyone from the remote rooms?”
“Not yet.” Kaylee gripped Fifer’s hand. “I’m so scared. What if—”
But Fifer gasped and pointed. Carina was exiting a window, and Seth was right behind. Fifer gripped Kaylee’s shoulder. “They’re going to be okay. They have to be.”
“Go help Seth and Carina,” said Kaylee. “I’ll keep calling for Aaron.”
Fifer nodded, feeling slightly more grounded now that her friends were surfacing. She ran over to Seth and threw her arms around him in a rare embrace. “I’m so glad you’re okay.” She searched his face. “Where were you? Was Aaron with you?”