Of Enemies and Endings

by Shelby Bach

  I slowed to a walk. I shouldered through the others.

  A yellow sheet covered Lena from chest to knees. Her face twisted with pain, her skin shining with sweat. Red bloomed on the fabric, soaking through in two places. She was losing too much blood.

  Jenny knelt at her sister’s side, crying. She held a short bit of rope out, but Lena squirmed away from it.

  Their grandmother stroked Lena’s forehead, brushing away the too-long braids so gently, but her voice was firm. “You have to let Jenny apply the tourniquet.”

  “I don’t want it,” Lena said, her voice shaking.

  I didn’t see what they needed a tourniquet for, and then, all of a sudden, I did. There, peeking out of the cloth near Lena’s foot, was my friend’s small palm and slender fingers, too far from her arm.

  General Searcaster’s voice. Her laugh. Lena’s scream. The axes had been so sharp.

  “I can be your hands.” I hadn’t noticed Melodie, held by the metal Fey dummy chauffeur. Golden tears slid down her nose. “I can be your hands, like the statue is my legs.”

  “Lena . . . ,” I breathed.

  Jenny looked up. She spotted me. “We need the Water of Life. Now.”

  But I’d given it up. I’d let Likon carry it off to the Arctic Circle. Rapunzel had told me to.

  “No, please,” Lena murmured. I wasn’t sure she’d noticed how many people had gathered around us. “I should have guessed Searcaster would come. I threw the self-destruct switch, but it was too late. It was my fault—”

  Mrs. LaMarelle turned away. She pressed a hand over her mouth.

  Lena’s lips were bleached and cracked, her eyes sunken, scared. She was dying. We couldn’t save her.

  “Rory, snap out of it,” Jenny said. “The Water.”

  I shook my head.

  Chase guessed the truth first. “It’s gone. The Snow Queen got it.”

  No one spoke for a moment, and the silence stretched out. Even the sounds of the final skirmishes seemed to grow quieter.

  Then Jenny said, not sounding very sure, “Then we tie the tourniquet. We get her to the hospital.”

  Mrs. LaMarelle shook her head. “Too much blood. Not enough time.”

  “We have to try something,” Jenny told her grandmother. “We can’t just let this happen.”

  A dozen metallic clatters disturbed the silence behind us. Rapunzel soared over the house where the Tree of Hope had fallen, riding her purple magic carpet through the smoke. It had a new rip down its middle. Trailing them were a dozen evil Fey dummies, looking like one of the giants had stepped on them. They lurched along with crushed feet, twisted knees, flattened heads, bent wings, and missing shoulders. Behind them, jogging to catch up, were the human Itari warriors.

  “George!” Chase said. “Get over here!”

  “Can’t! The Director’s orders!” George called back, irritated. He had no idea.

  “It’s Lena!” Chase said. Then George’s jog turned into a sprint.

  Rapunzel’s carpet pulled up beside me. She stepped onto the ground. “I could not find Gretel. Someone needs to tell her to search under her bed for that which was lost.”

  I couldn’t believe she thought any of us would leave Lena now. “I’ll go later.” My voice gave out on the last word. I didn’t mean later. I meant after.

  “Not you, and not later.” Rapunzel turned to the triplets and pointed at Kevin and Conner. “You. Tell her those with the most dire wounds are beside the doors to Baltimore, the kitchen, and Atlantis.”

  Kevin and Conner looked at Chase, who nodded. They took off.

  For once, I wasn’t the one who understood her first. Hope blazed across Jenny’s face. “The Water?”

  “I only had time for one,” Rapunzel said again. “I hope I made the right choice.”

  “You switched them,” I said, understanding. “You let Solange think she had the Water.”

  Rapunzel nodded. “She would not leave unless she had what she sought.”

  Mrs. LaMarelle wasn’t comforted. “Jenny, it won’t come in time.”

  The blood had soaked through most of the sheet, and still, it spread, creeping out in a circle around Lena, dying the snow crimson.

  Lena saw it. She squeezed her eyes shut. “I’ve read about this. You do get cold.”

  The crowd parted. George barreled through, so fast he would have fallen on his sister if Chase and Kyle hadn’t steadied him. “Lena,” he whispered. “God, no. Lena.”

  “Come and say good-bye.” Mrs. LaMarelle’s voice seemed to come from a different person, someone not losing her granddaughter. Her face was so serene. “Saying good-bye is a gift. Not many people get it.”

  But I didn’t want to say good-bye. Neither did George and Jenny. We wanted something in this big, complicated magical world to turn up and save her.

  Rapunzel dropped her hand over my head. She waited until my eyes met hers.

  “Rory, this was always my ending, and I have always known it. You did not fail to save us. This is my choice.” I was taller than she was, but on her tiptoes, she still managed to kiss my forehead.

  I was barely listening. Lena filled the corners of my mind, and nothing else processed. “I have to say good-bye.”

  “No. You need her more than you need me, and I can give her back to you.” Rapunzel turned to the LaMarelles. They’d gathered around her so tightly they crowded everyone else out. “Excuse me. I must speak with Lena.”

  Jenny and George glared up at Rapunzel. Mrs. LaMarelle didn’t bother to lift her head.

  George started to push Rapunzel back, but Kyle dragged him away. Rapunzel knelt in the space he’d left behind, blood staining her skirt. She held something hidden in her hands.

  “Lena’s the new Rapunzel,” Kyle told George, and then I understood.

  The Canon’s golden apple had saved Rapunzel’s life once. Two hundred years later, she was passing on the favor.

  “Lena, I can pin this token upon your person, but the spell will only transfer if we make a verbal agreement,” Rapunzel said. “Do you take this gift and this burden?”

  Lena struggled to swallow. “You’re making me part of the Canon?”

  “I am asking,” Rapunzel said.

  “Yes,” Lena croaked.

  As calm as you please, Rapunzel reached under the sodden cloth. Her fingers moved, sliding the golden apple onto Lena’s clothes. But what she was giving away had kept her alive for hundreds of years, longer than her natural life span. When she let go, she would be gone. Forever gone, and her prophecies would go with her, and her advice, and her kindness.

  “But—” I had to say something. At this point, words were all I had left. “I need you both.”

  Rapunzel looked up, and the smile she gave me was real and warm. “No. I needed you. We cannot choose our family in this life, but if I could have chosen myself a sister, it would have been you.”

  And before I could answer, she let go. In a heartbeat, she turned translucent—a soft pretty gray pearly dust, exactly the same shade her hair had been. For an instant, it still held Rapunzel’s shape.

  A dry sob ripped out of my throat.

  Then the dust began to blow away, swirling across the courtyard in a stream of silver, mixing with the falling snow.

  Lena kicked the sheet away, not even looking at the blood. Her lips were pink again, her eyes bright. She sat up. She looked at her hands. Gold covered the left one up to the wrist and the right one halfway to the elbow, like a pair of mismatched metallic gloves.

  “Just like Madame Benne,” whispered Melodie, awed.

  Mrs. LaMarelle grabbed one of the new hands, and Lena promptly burst into tears.

  y eyes burned, but I didn’t cry.

  A second grief doesn’t cancel out the first. It just scoops a bigger chunk from your insides. Losing Hansel had hallowed out a vast cavern, echoing and empty. Losing Rapunzel cut even farther, piercing the heart of my world, a hole so deep and so dark I couldn’t imagine that it had an end.

>   But Lena was okay. I clung to that thought. It was the only thing keeping me from falling apart completely.

  Rumpelstiltskin ran toward us, his plaid blazer singed. He carried an enormous book over his shoulder, and it knocked into people as he shoved through the crowd.

  He didn’t stop until he saw Lena and her golden hands. Then his whole body sagged with relief. His favorite student was safe. “So it’s true, then. You have one of the double Tales.” He opened the blue book and read, straining to hold it up without a table supporting its weight. “ ‘The Rapunzel Without Hands.’ ”

  Wow, I thought leadenly. The magic around me was working overtime today.

  “That’s creepy,” said George. Jenny smacked his arm.

  Lena stared at her golden palms. “And the apple still let me into the Canon? Even though my Tale is contaminated?”

  “Not contaminated, just combined,” Rumpelstiltskin said. “ ‘The Maiden Without Hands’ is another Grimm Tale. Two other Tales fused this spring—‘The Pied Piper’ and ‘The Snow Queen.’ You can see it here in the book.”

  At first I thought the library had just automatically started a new volume of tales when the other one was stolen. But this book was bound in blue leather, the edges of its paper gilded, almost identical to the one I’d seen the goblin carrying through the portal. My voice was hoarse, like I’d actually been screaming instead of just wishing that I could. “You switched the current volume for one of the older ones.”

  Melodie nodded. “Lena and I held them off while Rumpel hid it.”

  “I didn’t even think about the maps.” Lena wiped her tear-streaked face on her shoulder, like she was trying not to use her new hands.

  “She got the maps?” Chase said.

  “The maps and the volume of Tales from Summer 1990 are gone forever, I fear,” Rumpelstiltskin said mournfully.

  But keeping the current volume was good news. It should have made me glad, like Lena being alive should have, but that got smothered by the unfathomable emptiness. Rapunzel was gone.

  “Where is Rapunzel?” cried a voice so cold that I was sure for a second that Solange had come back, but it was the Director. Sarah Thumb flew up behind her. Mr. Swallow was missing a few tail feathers. His clumsy flight was zigzaggy, but he still managed to land on the Director’s shoulder. “Where is the traitor?”

  I couldn’t even muster up the energy to argue. I’d said it all before. The Director never listened to me anyway.

  But this time, it wasn’t me who piped up.

  “She’s dead,” said Jenny.

  Rapunzel would have loved to see the Director’s face then. Shocked, then baffled, then hastily stern as she backtracked. “It does not clear her. Someone gave the Snow Queen the means to enter this place. Our fortress held for the entirety of the last war. Someone must have aided the invasion. What Rapunzel did—”

  “Was save my grandbaby,” interrupted Mrs. LaMarelle, like her word was final.

  “They had to get in somehow,” the Director insisted.

  “There’s an easy way to figure it out.” Lena climbed to her feet and swayed, still woozy. Her grandmother clamped her hands on Lena’s shoulders, holding her up. “A simple scrying spell could find the item the Snow Queen used to make the portal. All you have to do is—”

  The wreckage around the portal shuddered. We all jumped. Chase and a few others drew their swords again.

  But something else zoomed out of the rubble. Glinting, it whistled through the air and landed on Lena’s outstretched palm with a clink. A coin, tarnished on one side and as gold as Lena’s new hands on the other.

  “Oh my gumdrops.” Horrified, Lena looked at me, but I didn’t know how magic could happen without anyone casting a spell.

  Melodie did. “You’re a sorcerer now!”

  “Gretel has never cast a scrying spell just by thinking it before,” said Sarah Thumb.

  “You must be more powerful,” Melodie told her mistress.

  Miriam frowned at the object resting in Lena’s hand. “Isn’t that a wishing coin?”

  I’d forgotten about those. The day after we’d returned from the Snow Queen’s palace, the elves had confirmed the coins were embedded with recharge capabilities that tapped directly into the Snow Queen’s own magic. So much had happened since then.

  “Didn’t the elves gather all those and toss them to the bottom of the ocean?” asked Chase.

  They obviously missed one.

  “If you wished on this coin enough, if it kept recharging, the link between it and the Snow Queen would get stronger,” Lena said slowly. “It could turn into the receiving end of a portal, just like the letter in Matilda Searcaster’s desk during my Tale up the beanstalk.”

  “I am uninterested in how the magic was performed,” said the Director. “I am only interested in who planted this coin here. Create a scrying spell for that.”

  Trust the Director to start commanding Lena to use a new power we’d just found out about two minutes ago.

  Lena straightened up and opened her mouth, already distressed, but Melodie raised her hand, obviously eager to help her mistress any way she could. “I can! Well, as long as nobody has destroyed the scrying spell ingredients from the workshop.”

  “Hold on. We need to get this out of here.” Chase pointed at the coin in Lena’s hand, careful not to touch it. “It’s still active. The Snow Queen is still listening.”

  A hush fell over the crowd.

  Solange knew her sister was dead. She knew Lena was alive. She knew Lena was a sorceress. Had she gotten anything else?

  “I’ll take it.” Golden face grim, Melodie picked up the coin and gestured to the workshop. Her metal fairy chauffeur lumbered off, clumsier than usual. Some enemy blade had chopped off half its foot.

  So much damage. I’d fought as hard as I could, and nobody had come out of this intact.

  Once the door to the workshop closed safely behind Melodie, the hush broke. The Director did what she did best. She issued orders. “Send Jack to inspect the dungeons. We’ll need somewhere to hold the villains in the training courts, and the traitor as well.”

  We needed to find the traitor first, but my mind couldn’t hold on to that thought. One spy didn’t feel as important as Rapunzel’s death and the Snow Queen getting what she’d wanted.

  Chase thought so too. “All that is just cleanup,” he told the Director impatiently. “You can do it later. We need to figure out a plan. The Snow Queen got the maps.”

  He made it sound like it was a huge catastrophe, but considering all the destruction around us, lost maps seemed pretty minor.

  But Lena acted as nervous as Chase. “What would the Snow Queen want with . . . ?”

  “Think about it,” Chase said. “What was on those maps?”

  “Just the locations of all the known portals between the human world and the Arctic Circle,” Lena said. “But it wouldn’t help her kill Characters. We all live here now. It wouldn’t help her unless she planned to—”

  “—invade the human world,” Chase finished.

  Of course. What had happened here could happen everywhere.

  “I can see why you waited until the wishing coin was gone before mentioning this to us,” the Director said, arms crossed. “Solange would laugh to hear such a ludicrous theory.”

  “It’s not a theory,” Chase said. “She always said she would take back the lands the humans stole and return them to their rightful owners. After tonight, she’ll be even stronger than before. When she has her army together, her forces will march on DC, Ottawa, and Mexico City, but she has assigned a task force to every major city on those maps. Getting the witches back was part of the Snow Queen’s plan too. She has a spell that can stop all human machinery in a mile radius. Guns, tanks, fighter jets—it doesn’t matter. They’re useless with this enchantment, and now she has the witches to cast it for her. After she controls this continent, she’ll go after the rest. The humans won’t know what hit them.”

  S
o this was what would happen if I didn’t stop the Snow Queen. Forget the fate of magic. The fate of the world depended on whether or not I failed my Tale.

  “It’s a possibility,” the Director admitted, “but you can’t know—”

  “He can,” I said. Chase had known about the invasion as soon as he woke up. He’d known exactly what Solange was after. He’d been right about all of it, and now he had time to explain how. “What haven’t you told us, Chase?”

  “Did you dream when you were under the Sleeping Beauty curse?” Chase asked the Director.

  She frowned. “Did you?”

  “I dreamed I was in the Snow Queen’s war council,” Chase said. “I dreamed I was hovering right over the room, listening to all their plans, and the last thing I heard before the questers woke me up was the Snow Queen telling General Searcaster to begin the invasion of EAS’s North American chapter.”

  This time, they believed him.

  “The sleeping enchantment backfired,” Lena told Chase, her voice barely a whisper. “It was only meant for human Characters, and you’re half Fey.”

  “Nice to go behind enemy lines when you’re having a nightmare,” Chase said bitterly.

  “We need to contact the other chapters,” Sarah Thumb said, panicked. “We need to convince them that they’re next if they don’t help. Oh my God. Should we even be talking about this here? We still don’t know who planted that coin. They could be listening right now, waiting to report everything—”

  “No,” Chase said in his Do you think I’m an idiot? voice. “The Snow Queen called it a sweetened deal—she said she got the end of the portal and a way to hurt the Triumvirate, all in one clueless little idiot. Whoever had that coin had no idea.”

  “It . . . ,” came a choked voice near the back.

  The crowd shuffled to the side so we could see our accidental traitor.

  Adelaide’s cheeks were sticky with tears. Her blond hair had matted to them. “It was me,” she said, and hiccuped.

  She looked so pale and stricken. She really hadn’t known.

  “We took your coin,” Sarah Thumb said, scowling at Adelaide. “I processed the paperwork myself.”

  “The coin I gave you wasn’t real.” Adelaide hiccuped again. “I mean, it might have been, but it wasn’t the one Chase gave me. When the elves came for it, I wished I didn’t have to give it back. A second coin appeared. It looked exactly the same as the first. That’s what I gave you.”