by Lisa Fiedler
“Play me for it? What do you mean?”
“Our game! Nothing too taxing, mind you, just a little linguistic challenge.”
“A word game?”
“Precisely. If you win, I will send you off to the Mystic and give you back your buddy.”
Glinda gulped. “And if you win?”
Roquat winked, and the collide-o-scope reappeared in his grasp. “I guess you didn’t hear me,” he said, giving the gadget a gentle shake in her direction. “I said there’s room for two in this little beauty.”
Glinda narrowed her eyes at him. “How can I be sure you won’t cheat at this game?”
“Oh, you can’t be sure, you can’t be sure at all.” Roquat stroked his long white beard. “But you are between a rock and a hard place. Indeed, you’ve hit rock bottom.”
“If Locasta were here, she’d give you a kick in your rock bottom,” Glinda muttered. But because he was right, she lifted her chin, met his smirk with a steely gaze, and said, “All right, then, Your Highness. Game on.”
14
THE GREATEST PRIZE TO EARN
Locasta Norr was no stranger to loneliness.
Her beloved mother and sisters had been ripped away from her at the hands of the Witch Marada. Her adoring father had disappeared one winter’s night without a hint as to why he’d gone or if he was ever coming back. And most recently she’d been betrayed by her dunderhead brother, who believed he could barter a hero like Glinda in exchange for his own freedom.
But not until this very moment—seated in the opulent dining hall of the Foursworn Stronghold with Miss Gage, Ursie Blauf, and two Mentir alums, Trebly and D’Lorp (who’d proven themselves far braver than she’d ever imagined)—not until this moment, with Glinda, Ben, and Shade all gone and unaccounted for, had Locasta ever felt completely and utterly alone.
“Please, Locasta,” Miss Gage was saying as she slid a fancy cup and saucer across the table. “Drink this.”
“Yes, do—hic,” said D’Lorp. “Razzleberry is good—hic—for calming the nerves.”
How is it for healing the heart? Locasta wondered as her gaze wandered to Illumina on the tabletop. It hurt just to look at it, since without Glinda there to . . . well, to simply be Glinda, the sword had gone from being an instrument of light to nothing more than a cold slab of metal. Her spirit leaped with hope every time a shimmer skittered along the blade . . . until she remembered that the fleeting twinkle was only the reflection of the firefly chandeliers above.
“Did the Fairy say when they’d be back?” asked Trebly.
Locasta shook her head.
“Did she say if they were safe?” asked Miss Gage.
Locasta took a gulp of tea. “She really wasn’t much of a conversationalist.”
“But she didn’t say they weren’t safe,” Ursie prodded. “Right? So perhaps that means—”
“Stop it!” Locasta barked, cutting her off. “I already told you that slimy little fishfairy didn’t tell me anything that could be considered encouraging, promising, or even marginally useful. Ben’s gone, Glinda’s gone, and we’re all just going to have to get used to it.” Then she slammed the teacup down so ferociously into the saucer that they both shattered into a thousand tiny pieces.
The sound caused Ursie to let out a little squeal, and the next thing they knew, the chandelier nets had burst wide open, showering crystals down on them like glassy rain.
“Ursie,” cried Trebly, “not again!”
D’Lorp was already running for the door, shouting for jars to catch the fireflies, which were running amok. Miss Gage lowered her eyes to her hands folded in her lap and pretended to ignore the clicking rhythm of the falling crystals ricocheting off Illumina’s blade.
But Ursie Blauf (who had some prior experience with this sort of thing) was looking up.
Up toward the ceiling, where the fireflies were now going into a kind of interpretive dance. “Look!” she breathed. “Locasta, Miss Gage. Look!”
Gage tilted her head back and gasped. “My goodness!”
What had begun as bioluminescent pandemonium had turned to graceful choreography as the fireflies darted back and forth among themselves, skillfully spinning light into letters and using their brilliant backsides to spell out, in glittering penmanship, a phrase that made Locasta’s breath catch in her throat:
Terra, Elemental Fairy of Lurl
The words twinkled briefly overhead. Then, like the stitches on Tilda’s linen map, they began to disappear as the fireflies abandoned their calligraphy and fell into one long, single-file line, which was suddenly winging its way down from the ceiling and fluttering straight for Locasta. The glowing bug parade circled her once, inviting her to join them before continuing on their way.
“I think they want you to follow them!” cried Ursie, but Locasta had already grabbed Illumina and was dashing after the fiery fleet.
The glimmering procession led her (with Gage and Ursie running along after) directly to the library. Locasta slipped Illumina into her sash and reached into her pocket, gently wrapping her hand around the amethyst stones. For good luck.
Tilda’s Magical linen map still lay on the table, but it was not the map over which the fireflies chose to hover. Instead they positioned themselves like a halo above the creased sheet of parchment the map had been wrapped in (before Ursie’s triumph over the knotted string), and onto this they cast their pearly glow.
In the excitement of the stone game, they had all failed to notice that the parchment was inscribed: A HERO IS HE . . .
Here again, as in the chapbook Glinda had read from, and Maud’s embroidered sampler, was the poem from the Reliquary floor. But as Locasta gazed at it, she was not surprised to see that the words had altered themselves:
So solemn is this affair yet errant souls
Can soon return to those who yearn and there shall learn
To welcome that which surpasses hurt;
That with which all wounds are as good as healed:
Forgiveness
The greatest prize to earn.
She ran a finger over the unfamiliar lines, and the gemstones in her hand suddenly began to shimmy and squirm. Opening her fist, she watched with wide eyes as the amethysts tumbled from her palm and landed on the parchment.
“Here we go again,” sighed Ursie. “Another game! Honestly, can the Foursworn never be direct?”
But Locasta felt herself smiling for the first time since she’d burst into the toolshed and found it empty but for a reticent Sea Fairy and Glinda’s sword. “Not if they wish to protect their secrets, they can’t,” said Locasta, and as if to confirm it, the purple stones flew into action.
In a Magical fervor, they began to roll from word to word, back and forth, up and down, sliding and spinning until they became a purple blur. Occasionally they would linger on a certain letter ever so briefly, then they’d be off again like a shot.
Locasta tried to keep up with them, her eyes darting wildly across the parchment. She wished she could glimpse the letters through the translucency of the stones, but they were moving much too fast for her to make sense of what, if anything, they were rushing to spell out. And once they’d rolled off a letter, it disappeared from the page without a trace.
“Slow down,” Locasta commanded. “I can’t keep up.” But the stones continued to roll and pause, roll and pause, with the same lightning speed.
When at last her father’s good luck charms fell still, she scooped them up and read the poem again:
So solemn is this af
Can soon return to those who yearn and there shall learn
To wel e that which sur es hurt;
That with which all wounds are as good as healed:
Forgiveness
The greatest prize to earn.
“Af?” read Ursie. “Wel e? Sur es? It’s gibberish.”
“Maybe we’re missing something,” said Miss Gage.
Locasta stared at the remaining pieces of poetry, at first baffled, then furious. �
�We are missing something,” she stormed. “A bunch of letters! The ones that vanished when the stones touched them.”
“Maybe the stones accidentally erased the wrong ones,” Ursie offered. “Maybe amethysts are just poor spellers.”
But the stones had once again begun to rattle in Locasta’s grip. Unfurling her fingers, she peered down at them and saw that something was different.
Deep inside each of the gems was a series of squiggly black flecks. No, not flecks . . .
“Letters! The stones didn’t erase them, they absorbed them!”
“So the letters are inside the stones?” said Gage. “How in the world are you supposed to read them like that?”
Locasta’s first instinct was to shake them hard, hoping she might be able to dislodge the secret words from where they were trapped inside the stone. Then, in a flash, she remembered her father, sitting on the stoop of their ramshackle little house back in Gillikin, holding the amethysts up to his eyes and aiming them toward the sun.
“I need light,” she blurted.
Ursie lifted an eyebrow in the direction of the fireflies still floating above the table. “Won’t that do?”
“I need bright light,” Locasta clarified. “Extremely bright light, and lots of it.” She reached for the sword at her hip and swung it high above her head. With her best friend’s blade in one hand and her father’s good luck charms in the other, she closed her eyes and pictured herself dropping Miss Gage’s mirror outside the toolshed, and Glinda retrieving it from the grass. A chuckle escaped her when she saw herself shoving the girl in the silly ruffled dress up against a cherry tree.
Illumina gave a slight flicker, and Ursie gasped. “I think it’s working,” she cried. “Whatever you’re doing, keep doing it.”
Locasta squeezed her eyes tighter and imagined herself hoisting Glinda up onto her shoulder to run from Bog’s wagon into the Woebegone Wilderness. She could almost hear herself laughing at the sight of Haley Poppet poking out of Glinda’s pocket; laughing so hard she could barely catch her breath.
Again Illumina gave off a faint glow; this time the light lasted a little longer, and shone a bit brighter.
“Good girl, Locasta!” cheered Gage. “Almost there!”
Finally Locasta let her mind return to the Reliquary, where she pictured Glinda lying silent and motionless on the tile floor, clutching the handle of her newly acquired sword. The panic of that moment came back to her in a cold rush, but in the next moment she felt the great relief of watching Glinda awake from that strange and sudden slumber.
I thought you were gone from us.
I thought I’d lost you, too.
Illumina flared, a bright beyond brilliant. And with trembling fingers, Locasta held the amethysts up as she’d seen her father do a hundred times before, backlit not by the sun but by a radiant sword. Illumina’s light shone through the stones, magnifying the letters and making them glow from within.
“What do they say?” asked Ursie.
Locasta read the words that only she could see: “Fairy . . . Terra . . . Compass . . . As Healed.”
The moment she’d uttered the final word, Illumina cooled back to metal in her grasp.
“I do believe we’ve just been given the exact hiding place of an Elemental Fairy of Lurl,” said Gage. “She’s in a compass!”
“A compass in the Witch Marada’s castle,” Ursie added with a shudder.
“Yes,” said Locasta. “Although I confess, I don’t know what ‘as healed’ means.”
“Perhaps the Entrusted is a physician?”
Locasta shook her head. “No. Not a physician.”
“How can you be sure?”
“Because,” said Locasta, slipping first the amethysts, then the linen map and the parchment it had been wrapped in, deep into her pocket, “I know exactly who was keeping Terra in a compass.”
“Who?!” Miss Gage and Ursie cried in unison.
“Norr,” Locasta answered softly. “My father.”
* * *
“Locasta . . . no!” Miss Gage was shaking her head so hard her upsweep became a downsweep, and this time without any help from Ursie. “As you yourself told Glinda, traveling out of Quadling now is far too dangerous.”
“That’s right,” Ursie chimed in. “I believe your exact words were, ‘Uh-uh-uh.’ ” She waved her finger, mimicking Locasta’s earlier gesture.
“Too dangerous for Glinda maybe,” Locasta said, with forced calm. “But I’m much savvier than she is. And besides, I’ll have a Road of Red Cobble and a sword of light. What could possibly go wrong?”
Miss Gage let out a strangled bark of laughter, though it was clear she did not find Locasta’s aplomb in the least bit amusing. “You’re going off alone to confront the Witch of the North! I doubt very much the red road will reward such recklessness by carrying you there. I understand you want to retrieve the Elemental Fairy, but now is the time to exercise caution.”
“Caution was Glinda’s specialty,” Locasta said dully. “She was the careful one.”
“Is,” Ursie said pointedly. “Glinda is careful. And Good.”
“So was my father,” Locasta snapped. “He hummed songs, and taught us to fight, and fanned the fires of freedom, but in the end, it didn’t stop him from leaving my brother and me—not to mention the Elemental Fairy of Lurl—completely in the lurch. Now it’s up to me to fix it. And that means going home to Gillikin.”
“You’re absolutely sure the Witch has this compass?” asked Ursie.
“Yes,” Locasta muttered, looking away. “I’m sure.”
Gage let out a weary rush of breath. “Then we’ll leave it up to the road. If the red cobbles come for you, I will not stand in your way. But if they don’t . . .”
“If they don’t,” said Ursie, “we’ll all wait for Glinda to return and devise a new plan.” She turned a desperate look to Locasta. “All right?”
Locasta thought about it, then nodded and said, “All right.”
To which Ursie gave a little squeal of joy, and Gage looked visibly relieved.
“And I’m sorry for being stubborn,” Locasta added, her tone genuine. “I know you’re just looking out for me.”
“Shall we go to the kitchen and treat ourselves to a light supper?” Miss Gage suggested. “I think I saw some biscuits and a pot of quince jelly-jam in the larder.”
“And pickles,” cried Ursie. “Wouldn’t pickles be lovely right now?”
“Thank you just the same.” Locasta managed a sleepy smile. “But if you don’t mind, I think I’ll turn in. Between the monkey battle and the fireflies and discovering that my father was an Entrusted . . . well, I’m exhausted. In fact, I bet I’ll sleep right through breakfast.”
“Sleep as long as you need to,” said Gage, smoothing Locasta’s riot of purple curls. “When you’re ready, we’ll meet on the back lawn and see what the Road of Red Cobble decides.”
“See you after breakfast,” said Ursie, as Locasta turned and headed for the Grand Drawing Room.
But she had no intention of seeing Ursie after breakfast or meeting Miss Gage on the lawn.
Because she planned to be gone long before that.
Whether the Road of Red Cobble liked it or not.
15
WRITTEN IN STONE
When the Nome King clapped his rocky hands, the sound was almost deafening. Kaliko came rushing to do his bidding, carrying a shiny pail that rattled noisily as he ran. He had a large piece of slate tucked under his arm.
Glinda’s eyes remained fixed on the collide-o-scope, which Roquat was now tossing lazily into the air, watching it turn end over end before catching it again. Poor Ben.
“Let’s get on with it,” she said. “What is the contest?”
“A simple little word game, actually. Tell me, have you much knowledge of rocks?”
“Only a passing familiarity,” Glinda admitted. “I took an elective course at Mentir’s called Geology for Girls, Why Bother? The professor put far more emph
asis on the ‘why bother’ portion than the geology part.”
“Too bad for you, then,” Kaliko chirped, grinning as he placed the slate on the floor. On it was scrawled a word puzzle in a standard fill-in-the-blanks format—a short paragraph interspersed with empty spaces in which the game player was expected to inscribe the proper answer.
“Supremely creative, isn’t?” crowed Roquat, as Kaliko plunked the pail of rocks down beside the slate. “It’s multiple choice. All that you’ll need can be found in that bucket.”
“There are just rocks in the bucket!” Glinda protested. “How am I supposed to write in the answers? This doesn’t make any sense.”
“Isn’t that the job of a hero, dearie?” asked Roquat with a craggy chuckle. “To make sense out of that which does not make sense? To find the answers when there appear to be none?”
With a heavy sigh, Glinda crouched down beside the slate and read:
A HERO ON A JOURNEY MUST HAVE AN ______ FOR ADVENTURE. YOU MUST TAKE NOTHING FOR _______. TAKE NOTICE OF ________ SHINES YOU TOWARD THE PATH YOU ARE TO FOLLOW. BUT FIRST, YOU MUST BE BRAVE ENOUGH _______ THROUGH _______. BEYOND IT YOU WILL FIND A DOOR; ITS COLOR IS A __________.
“This is impossible. I can’t write with rocks!”
“You disappoint me,” Roquat lamented; he was now spinning the collide-o-scope on the tip of his finger. “I would have imagined that you of all people would be able to think outside the rocks. But I’m feeling rather charitable today, so I’ll give you a hint.” He tapped the collide-o-scope on his knee, deciding how to phrase his generous clue. “Oh! All right . . . think of this: What do you fairyfolk say about a rule, or a decision that is unchangeable? Something that is nonnegotiable, if you will. Permanent. You say it is . . .” He made a coaxing gesture with the scope, indicating that she should complete his thought.
“Written in stone!” cried Glinda. “Something that is unchangeable is said to be written in stone.”
“And there is your hint!” said the king, looking inordinately pleased with himself for helping.