Jinx's Fire

by Sage Blackwood

  Put up a ward, you idiot, Jinx told himself, and did so . . . a quick, messy ward that stayed with him as he slid. He skidded down the last of the slope and bowled ward-first into the Bonemaster. The ward knocked the wizard flying.

  The Bonemaster picked himself up. He stood there for a moment, his thumbs twitching, and Jinx could see from the whirring and slashing of the knives in his thoughts that he was working up a big spell.

  Standing inside the ward, Jinx frantically grabbed handfuls of ribbons and threw them into the air. Colors and lights twisted and flashed in the air, then flamed out. One of the ribbons was orange and jagged on one side, warm and blue on the other—Simon. He’d freed Simon and Sophie from the deathbinding curse. That left only—

  The Bonemaster threw the spell at Jinx.

  It was a whole storm of spells. The first one froze the ward and shattered it, sending shards of magic flying everywhere. The second froze Jinx so that he couldn’t move. It wasn’t the clothes-freezing spell; it was Jinx himself, cold and frozen and unable to blink or breathe. He could see, though—the Bonemaster’s tight, pleased smile. And he could hear—a crackling sound as the ice of the corridor grew inward, from the ceiling and walls, toward him. And he could hear the thud of his own heart, which hadn’t stopped yet, but would soon, and the swish of something coming down the steep slope behind him—

  Which smashed into him, hard. If he hadn’t been frozen, he would have dropped the bottle. He crashed into the Bonemaster, and they zoomed the length of the flat space.

  “BAWK! Buckbuckbuck BAWK!” cried Elfwyn, flapping her arms and stretching her neck. The three of them skidded and screeched down the next slope, Jinx frantically working his way into the spell the Bonemaster had cast on him. As soon as he’d undone enough to move his hands, he tore wildly at the last few ribbons on the bottle. He got Elfwyn’s ribbon free—it was green woven through with blue. That was everyone he knew who’d been held captive by the Bonemaster, except himself. There were four ribbons left, and then three, and two, and one—

  The last ribbon, deep green with angry red streaks, zipped free of the bottle and burned out in a bright green flash.

  Jinx hadn’t seen his own ribbon, which meant the Bonemaster had probably deathbound him somewhere else, in some other way. Drat!

  Elfwyn pointed and clucked wildly.

  The Bonemaster, fighting to regain his feet as he slid, was readying another spell. There was no time for Jinx to worry about his own deathbound life. Killing the Bonemaster was likely to prove fatal to Jinx.

  So was not killing him, though.

  There was nothing else for it. Concentrating hard, he did three things at once.

  He let go of the ice and reached for the fire, hard. He threw the bottle at the Bonemaster, harder still. And he sent all of the flame, all of the vast lifeforce of the Path of Fire into the bottle with all his might.

  The bottle burst into flames and shattered into a million pieces.

  Blue, ice-cold smoke washed over Jinx and Elfwyn. Flames filled the corridor—red flames, pale blue flames, deep green fire that crackled and rippled over Jinx’s skin.

  When the smoke cleared, Jinx saw the Bonemaster engulfed in an ice-blue column of fire. Then water from acres of ice came rushing down the path, sizzling. The flames around the Bonemaster fizzed and spat.

  For a moment a cold white skeleton stood there. Lightning streaks of blue and green flame rippled up and down it, and then flickered out.

  Then the skeleton flew apart, and, with a surprisingly quiet clatter, the bones slid away down the Path of Ice.

  Bonesocket from Within

  The second thing Jinx noticed was that he was still alive.

  The first was that he was holding on tightly to Elfwyn. They were standing on a stone slope from which all ice had vanished.

  “Sophie!” said Jinx. “Is Sophie—”

  “Bawk! Bawk! Bukka-bukka,” Elfwyn replied.

  Jinx felt his way into the spell. It was a nasty thing, and full of power. But he was able to undo it by drawing on the fire.

  “She’s okay,” said Elfwyn. “I shrank the bones to the size of pins, and I put up a ward to keep her from coming after us, because I knew she couldn’t walk the Paths.”

  “Neither could you,” said Jinx.

  “I had this.” Elfwyn nodded at a sprig of tiny leaves pinned to her dress.

  “Mistletoe?”

  “It’s supposed to connect lifeforce and deathforce. Satya told me it might work.”

  “It might not have!” said Jinx. “You could have been killed! You—”

  “Oh, shut up,” said Elfwyn. “I have just as much right to get myself killed as you do. Ouch! What are you doing?”

  She pushed away from him.

  “I just thought, if I could take the chicken curse off you, then maybe I could get rid of your truthspeaking curse as well.” But he couldn’t—it wasn’t like the Bonemaster’s spell. It was so completely intertwined with Elfwyn that he could hardly see where Elfwyn ended and the curse began.

  “You can’t,” said Elfwyn flatly. “It’s a witch’s curse, and it’s old. You heard what my grandmother said. It’s part of me, like my skeleton.”

  At that they both looked down the corridor, to where the last bits of the Bonemaster had rattled away.

  “That was weird,” said Jinx.

  “Yes,” said Elfwyn.

  “Do you think—” Jinx caught himself. “I hope he’s really gone now.”

  “I think he is,” said Elfwyn.

  “I thought I was going to die,” said Jinx.

  “When he froze you. It was awful. You turned blue, and bits of you looked like ice. I was trying to—”

  “No, well, that too,” said Jinx. “But also because I didn’t undo my deathbinding. Maybe he didn’t do one on me.”

  “The ribbons?” said Elfwyn. “You did, I saw you. You undid me, and a woman who used to live in Butterwood Clearing, and a couple other people, and then you undid yourself last of all.”

  Jinx thought of that last ribbon he’d pulled off the bottle. Did he really look like that? The deep green was okay. When he did magic, it often seemed that color. But what were all those jagged red slashes? “Was I—” Jinx caught himself in time. “I wonder if I was green and red.”

  “No, you just looked like you,” said Elfwyn. “I mean not you on the outside, but you the way you are.”

  She flopped blue-white embarrassment.

  “Overbearing?” said Jinx.

  “No, of course not,” said Elfwyn. “That was a question. You’re not overbearing, you’re just . . . forthright.”

  “That almost sounds like a good thing,” said Jinx.

  “Of course it is.” For some reason Elfwyn’s face turned red. “You’re really . . .”

  She trailed off.

  “Really what?” said Jinx.

  “Nice,” said Elfwyn, turning even redder. “But that was a question, and that’s not nice.”

  “Sorry,” said Jinx.

  He was grateful for his ability to see feelings. Because right now, if he didn’t know better, he might have thought she was thinking pink fluffy thoughts about him. And then he might have made a horrible mistake, and said or done something that would not have turned out well. Possibly even stuck his face at her and gotten bitten.

  “Did the Bonemaster—” Jinx had a ton of questions, but this was Elfwyn. “Um, I’d like it if you told me what happened while you were at the Bonemaster’s house.”

  “He put the chicken curse on me as soon as I got there,” she said. “He told me it would be triggered if I acted against him. And he’d done something to the doors and windows—there was no way out of the house at all. He’d already done it when I got there, so that Sophie wouldn’t escape. She tried, of course.”

  “Why— I mean. He didn’t bottle your—”

  “No,” said Elfwyn. “He doesn’t use ghast-roots, so he would have had to kill Sophie to bottle my lifeforce, and he wanted her
as a hostage. For now, anyway.”

  “How long—” Jinx began, and stopped.

  “It’s been about two months since you went underground,” said Elfwyn. “Or it had been, anyway.”

  They didn’t know how much time had passed since they’d left the Bonemaster’s crypt, of course.

  “When the magicians attacked Bonesocket—”

  “Oh, yes. That went all right,” said Elfwyn. “At first. They were wonderful, all flying pink goo and dragons. The Bonemaster rushed outside to fight them, but he left us locked up in the house of course, and then after a minute, he came running back in, and . . .” Elfwyn trailed off into a deep blue cloud of embarrassment.

  “He asked you if the attack was just a distraction,” said Jinx.

  “Pretty much,” said Elfwyn.

  “And he asked you what was really going on.”

  “I’m sorry,” said Elfwyn. “Unfortunately, I’d figured most of it out.”

  Jinx shrugged. “It came out all right in the end.”

  “And I saved your life,” Elfwyn pointed out. “When I came down that icy slope and knocked you both down.”

  “Oh, right,” said Jinx. “Thanks.”

  “You’re welcome,” said Elfwyn. “Thank you for taking the chicken spell off me.”

  “No problem,” said Jinx.

  “It was horrible.” She shuddered. “I couldn’t stop flapping. I must have looked like an absolute idiot.”

  “No, you looked nice.” The color of her thoughts told Jinx this was the wrong thing to say, so he hurried to fix it. “I mean, you always look nice, even like right now when your face is dirty and your hair is—”

  The color of her thoughts was not getting any pleasanter. He shut up.

  “Shall we go back up?” she asked.

  “First we have to go get Simon,” said Jinx, and explained.

  “Oh, no,” said Elfwyn. “I hope she’ll give him back.”

  “She said she would.”

  “If she was sure you weren’t going to take over the Bonemaster’s power,” said Elfwyn. “But why would she be sure of that now? It seems like she’d think just the opposite.”

  Suddenly Jinx remembered something. “She said people drift away. We’d better hurry.”

  Simon glowed bright blue relief when he saw Jinx and Elfwyn. He struggled to his feet, tottering inside his prison of sapphires. “Where’s Sophie?”

  “At Bonesocket,” said Elfwyn. “She’s— I think she’s all right.”

  “We defeated the Bonemaster,” said Jinx.

  The Elf Princess arched her beautiful eyebrows. “Defeated him? Does he know he’s been defeated?”

  “I don’t know if he knows or not,” said Jinx. “He’s dead.”

  The Elf Princess looked startled. “Are you sure?”

  “Pretty sure,” said Jinx. “He turned into a skeleton and then he went all to pieces.”

  “Tell me everything that happened,” said Simon.

  Jinx did, with Elfwyn filling in the parts he hadn’t seen.

  Simon looked worried. “You didn’t kill the Bonemaster. You understand that? You broke a spell that he’d created himself.”

  Jinx shrugged. “Anyway, it’s done.” He turned to the Princess. “So now you have to let Simon go.”

  “I don’t think so,” said the Princess.

  “But I confronted the Bonemaster, and I, well—killed him—”

  “You didn’t kill him,” Simon said firmly. “His own magic killed him.”

  Jinx knew Simon was trying to make him feel better. But Jinx didn’t actually feel bad about killing the Bonemaster. Not yet, anyway. He hoped he would, later. Right now what he felt about it was a sense of accomplishment, and this bothered him.

  “And I didn’t seize his power,” said Jinx. “I had to embrace the ice, and as soon as I was done, I let go of it. No more ice.”

  “As I said, you are young,” said the Princess. “You may change. You have walked both paths now, and achieved knowledge. You may decide to embrace the ice later on.”

  “And how long will it take until you realize I won’t?” said Jinx.

  “Not so very long.” The Princess thought, prettily. “Perhaps a couple of centuries.”

  “What?” said Simon.

  “You can’t do that!” said Elfwyn.

  “No way,” said Jinx. “You’re going back on what you said before.”

  “I didn’t say how long I’d keep your friend hostage,” said the Princess. “However, I am not an unreasonable elf. Let’s say one hundred years.”

  “Let’s not,” said Simon.

  “Let’s say one hundred seconds,” said Jinx.

  “Elves are creatures of ice, aren’t they?” said Elfwyn.

  The Princess’s perfect face was impassive, but Jinx caught the silver flicker of nervousness in her thoughts.

  “That’s right,” said Jinx. “I don’t need the Path of Ice to be dangerous to you, do I? All I need is fire. And I’ve got plenty of that.”

  The Princess had aeons of practice in controlling her expression, and it didn’t falter. But her thoughts were definitely tending toward alarmed.

  “Let him go,” said Jinx. And then, because he didn’t like the idea of himself as someone who barged in and threatened people, not even if they were elves and not even if they were holding his friends hostage, he added, “please.”

  “As a favor to you,” said the Princess. “And as a reward for a job well done.”

  There was a crackling sound. Gems cascaded to the floor. Simon kicked them away, stiffly. He stomped his feet; Jinx supposed they must be all pins-and-needles.

  “Thank you,” said Jinx. And then he remembered that elves had taken his mother, and had not given her back. “And if you ever take anybody of mine again—no, if you ever take anybody of anybody’s again—”

  “If is a big word,” said the Princess. “It is our tradition to take people.”

  “Well, make it a tradition not to,” said Jinx. “Please. Or I’ll make it a tradition to come down here with all the fire I can find.”

  The Elf Princess gave a tiny shudder. “How rude and importunate you organic beings are. If it’s really that important to you, then I suppose we can agree to that temporarily. For your lifetime.”

  Jinx was surprised she’d conceded that much. “That’ll do to start with.”

  “After all, you won’t live long,” said the Princess.

  “In elf terms, she means,” said Simon.

  It was night when they reached the cave above the Glass Mountains—a warm, summer-smelling night.

  “Can’t you make a doorpath from up here?” Simon demanded.

  “No. Not with just our knowledge,” said Jinx.

  “Then down below. With the trolls’ knowledge.”

  “We don’t want the trolls to have a doorpath to the clearings,” said Jinx.

  There was the horrible glass stairway to get down. Jinx hugged the mountainside and was grateful for the darkness that hid the drop.

  Jinx and his companions picked their way through the sleeping, snoring troll town. Then they hurried down the Troll-way in the dark.

  “We don’t know how long we were down there,” Jinx pointed out. He and Elfwyn were jogging to keep up with Simon’s rapid strides. “Sophie might not be at Bonesocket anymore.”

  “Then we’ll go home,” said Simon. “You can go home now, if you want.”

  But Jinx didn’t want. He wanted to see Bonesocket, devoid of the Bonemaster.

  And Elfwyn didn’t want to go home, either. So they stepped through the Doorway into the dark shadows of the Doorway Oak, and then through another arch and onto Bonesocket Island.

  All the windows in Bonesocket were alight. People were strolling around the island in pairs and groups, talking. In the moonlight Jinx recognized some people from Simon’s house, and some from Blacksmiths’ Clearing. There were a few witches and wizards, too.

  The front door stood open. Several butter chur
ns were parked beside the steps.

  There was a fire crackling in the great hall, and people were sitting around the Bonemaster’s big table, eating and drinking. Jinx was glad to see that they weren’t using the skull cups.

  “Elfwyn!” someone called. It was a woman from Butterwood Clearing. Elfwyn went over to her. Jinx and Simon went looking for Sophie.

  They found her upstairs, in the room where Simon had been imprisoned. The slab of ice was gone now. Instead there was a table spread with maps, and a chair, and Sophie, who jumped up when she saw them.

  She stared at both of them. Then she stared at Simon. Then she hugged Jinx, embarrassingly. “Jinx, you’re all right! I thought, when you vanished into that hole in the floor . . . Where’s Elfwyn?”

  “Downstairs,” said Jinx. “She’s fine. And this is Simon, you remember Simon? You must’ve married him at some point.”

  Sophie looked at Simon. Simon looked at her. Jinx hadn’t really thought about it, but if he had, he would have expected that they would cry out in delight and rush into each other’s arms. After all, they hadn’t seen each other in three years.

  Instead, there was this staring, and not a word or a smile. And their thoughts rippled with trepidation, and worry, and resentment.

  And guilt. Jinx had no idea at first what the guilt was about, but then he remembered that Sophie had told Jinx to destroy the seal if he had to, and that Jinx had rescued Sophie from prison, instead of Simon doing it.

  These feelings were knotted like cords, holding back the old silver-sweet stuff. The silver stuff glowed, as if it was trying to burn the cords away.

  They both looked horribly dignified.

  “I’m sorry you had to come here,” said Simon.

  “Oh, are you?” said Sophie.

  “To the Urwald, I mean,” said Simon.

  “I’m sure you must be dreadfully sorry,” said Sophie tightly.

  “I mean,” said Simon, “I know it’s not what you wanted.”

  Really, Jinx could have shaken both of them. “You’re both thinking the same things, if that’s any help,” he said.

  They glared at him.

  But the silver glow brightened anyway, and one of the cords holding it back snapped.