Both Xar and Wish looked at him as if he were crazy.
“Oh, Bodkin, we’re not going back to Warrior territories, or to Gormincrag,” said Wish casually.
“Wha-a-a-a-at? But you promised! You gave your Warrior and your Wizard words!” said Bodkin.
“A promise can be broken,” said Xar piously, “in pursuit of a higher good. Anyway they lied to us, and so that promise doesn’t count.”
“What are you going to do?” squeaked Bodkin in alarm.
One of the many reasons Bodkin wanted to go home was that back in the Warrior fort, he had Wish all to himself, he and the spoon were her only friends. But out here, in the wildwoods with the wayward but undeniably charismatic Xar, Bodkin had to share her.
Bodkin told himself it was for Wish’s own good, that all he was concerned about in his official capacity as a bodyguard was Wish’s health and safety—but he knew really in his heart of hearts that he was ever so slightly jealous. Even though (and this made Bodkin very sad) out here in real life, an Assistant Bodyguard would never end up with a Warrior princess, not even a slightly odd one.
That was just in fairy stories.
“We’re going to run away, while they’re all busy celebrating,” said Wish. “We have work to do. We have to find the rest of these ingredients for the spell to get rid of Witches.”
“But Encanzo said that spell wouldn’t work!” cried Bodkin. “Caliburn! Are you going to let them do this?”
The old bird flew hither and thither. “Yes, the bodyguard is right!” said the bird in extreme agitation. “It’s probably a really bad idea…”
However, Caliburn said this without total conviction because frankly he had not been looking forward to going back to Gormincrag. It was all very well for the bodyguard to speak. He hadn’t been there, in those dripping gloomy depths.
“But then,” said Caliburn, “the adults are making such an almighty mess of things maybe we have to put our faith in the children, crazy and unrealistic and reckless though they are… What did I say earlier?”
“You said, and actually I wrote it down because I thought it was rather good: ‘I suppose this is all such a disaster that it doesn’t really matter WHAT we do, as long as we’re with our friends and we do it TOGETHER…’” said Wish, checking back in the Spelling Book.
There was a small scuttling sound from behind them, and the werewolf pounced, and when he straightened up, he was carrying in his mouth the Creature-That-Once-Was-Looter, who had broken away from the Drood holding him earlier, and had been spying on them. The Creature-That-Once-Was-Looter was now on its way to sound the alarm, and warn everyone that Xar and Wish were planning to run away, for the Creature-That-Once-Was-Looter was absolutely determined that Xar should go back to Gormincrag, preferably indefinitely.
The bulging-eyed Unknown-Creature-That-Once-Was-Looter, swinging upside down by his four hind legs, looked so absolutely petrified to find himself actually in the JAWS of a werewolf, that he passed out for a second.
“Don’t worry, Whatever-You-Are!” said Wish. “This is a very NICE werewolf, and he wouldn’t bite you, would you, Lonesome?”
Lonesome shook his head, a little too vigorously, but stopped when the creature woke up with the shaking, and squeaked fearfully.
“Greeaggle Barg,” apologized Lonesome.
And then he added, “Greaggle Barg Rurgle”—this time apologizing because Caliburn had told him that he shouldn’t speak with his mouth full.
“Xar, you promised you would tell Encanzo what that creature is, so he can turn him back into Looter,” urged Caliburn. “And remember what the giant said: You’re supposed to be forgiving your enemies…”
Xar sighed. “He’s going to be hopping mad when he gets back to being Looter. Trust me, he’s never going to forgive me back.”
But Wish passed him the Spelling Book, and Xar tore out the page where it said what Looter was. It was in a section of the book where Xar had been making up mythical beasts, just beside that section where Xar had made up a whole load of stories about “The Exploits and Superdeeds of Xar, Boy of Destiny,” and what Looter was, apparently, was a Graxerturgleburkin.
No wonder they’d never guessed what he was, for Xar had made that up. Xar had drawn a rather marvelous picture of the Graxerturgleburkin, and they all admired it, for it really was very like the Graxerturgleburkin himself, slowly turning a deep purple as he hung upside down, dripping from the werewolf’s mouth.
With a flourish, Xar showed the picture of the Graxerturgleburkin to Looter. “You actually got away pretty lightly, Looter,” said Xar. “You’ve only been a Graxerturgleburkin for one month. I was stuck in Gormincrag for over two months!”
The Graxerturgleburkin didn’t look like he was looking on the bright side of things.
Wish wrote a message to her mother on the bottom of the piece of paper, and the message read:
“I’m sorry we lied to you, Mother. But the ends justify the means… A fine outcome excuses a bad method… You’ll understand when you’re older.”
Xar wrote beside it, a message to his father: “I’ll be good, Father, I promise.”
And then, carefully, Xar put the torn piece of paper on the ground and got the werewolf to put the Graxerturgleburkin on top of it.
“Now he can’t move,” said Xar with satisfaction. “Because it’s a windy night, and if he moves that piece of paper will fly away, and then Father won’t know what to change him back from again…”
The Graxerturgleburkin’s eyes bulged with fury, but also alarm. His many little talons gripped that piece of paper for dear life. He squeaked, as loud as he could, curses and insults in the Graxerturgleburkin language, but no one understood that language or would hear that squeaking above the sound of merrymaking and dancing.
He was stuck there now, to that piece of paper, and he did not dare scuttle or sludge away to sound the alarm.
But Xar was right.
There was a look in that Graxerturgleburkin’s eye that said Looter wasn’t going to be forgiving Xar anytime in the immediate future.
“We’ll never get away,” said Bodkin, in a last-ditch attempt to change their minds. “Encanzo and Sychorax are watching you both like hawks…”
Encanzo and Sychorax were indeed clever enough to know not to trust the children’s words, so they had been keeping a sharp eye on those little rebels.
Sychorax was sitting on a rock, ramrod straight, her face a lofty regal mask, to show she was above such common things as dancing or celebrating. But every minute or so her eyes snapped across to check that her daughter was there, and that she wasn’t escaping with any bad influences. (And maybe the very TIP of her toe was tapping in time to the music. She was human, after all.)
And Encanzo was prowling in the shadows, his face bleak as a midwinter cliff, great storm clouds billowing from his head, muttering under his breath: “I can’t go back to that dark place… I can never go back…” while gripping tight to his Wizard’s staff. “Never again… never more…” (And what he meant by that I have no idea.) But every now and then he cast a Magic glance over to check that his rascal of a son wasn’t running away with Queen Sychorax’s dangerous little daughter.
Xar told Crusher that he could join them later, at an agreed meeting place, because a Longstepper High-Walker giant was a little visible for a stealthy escape. But in the meantime he said the Once-sprite, perched like a little nightingale on Crusher’s shoulder, should start up a song.
Wish suggested the song choice, and it was an unusual one.
It was a song that had not been heard in the wildwoods for many a long year, a song that began like this:
“I am young, I am poor, I can offer you nothing,
All that I have is this bright pair of wings,
This air that I eat, these winds that I sleep on,
This star path I dance in, where the moon sings…”
As soon as Sychorax heard the opening words, she turned white as a spirit, and Encanzo stopped sti
ll and lifted his head.
Sychorax marched right up to the giant and shouted up to the Once-sprite. “Stop singing that song!”
But Encanzo heaved a great sigh as if he could no longer bear it, stepped forward out of the shadows and said, “Wait a moment, Sychorax!”
And then Encanzo gave her a look that was a question, and he said:
“Just one night… one night out of time… for old time’s sake…”
And he held out his hand toward her, and Sychorax paused as the sweet haunting words floated on the midnight air, for the Once-sprite had not listened to her, and he was singing on regardless.
It was Sychorax’s own fault really, for it was she who had created that voice, in her dungeons at Warrior Castle, when she removed the Once-sprite’s Magic. Beautiful things can be created out of loss and out of pain, and the Once-sprite’s voice, which had always been sweet, now conveyed such a yearning sense of longing for the Magic that had been lost, the love-that-might-have-been, that it seemed like he was no longer a mere mortal, but a supernatural ghost of a sprite, blown in like a white winter leaf from the underworld, singing the past into the present with such pure intensity that it could even pierce the iron breastplate of the frozen queen herself.
“See the swifts soar, they live well on nothing,
You are young, you are strong, if you’ll give me your hand…
We’ll leave earth entirely and never go back there
We’ll sleep on the breezes and never touch land…”
“It IS true, the giant’s story about Encanzo and my mother, whatever she may say!” whispered Wish triumphantly, looking at her mother’s white face, which was unfreezing just a tiny, tiny fraction as she listened to the music. “I knew it! Otherwise it would not affect her like this…”
“I promise you gales and a merry adventure
We’ll fly on forever and never will part…
I am young, I am poor, I can offer you nothing
Nothing but love and the beat of my heart…”
…sang the voice of the Once-sprite. He sang with a little less melancholy than he had before, in Queen Sychorax’s dungeons, because the Once-sprite had found a new life as a spell-raider, but there was still an overpowering bittersweetness to his song that was hauntingly seductive.
Sychorax, diamond-hard Sychorax, could not resist.
It was Midwinter’s End Eve, after all.
And what happened on Midwinter’s End Eve did not really count. Even a queen can be a fool on Midwinter’s End Eve.
Queen Sychorax reached out her own hand, touched Encanzo’s.
For old time’s sake.
They both bowed, very regal, very courtly, very stiff.
And they began to dance.
They danced a little more stiffly than they might have done, once. Time had tempered them, just as bendy little saplings harden into immovable tree trunks. Fine lines had traced their way across their faces.
But their eyes were the same eyes that had gazed out on the world a couple of decades before. One pair a fierce blue. The other a wild gray.
The two of them danced, and they were lost in the music for one fatal moment.
The song took them up into the air like the swifts, out of time, where there were no rules…
And in that fatal moment the children left, tiptoeing out of the courtyard. Crusher gave them the broken door, which he had kept in his pocket. So engrossed were the adults in their dancing and their merrymaking and eating and singing, that nobody noticed the broken door soaring off quietly into the night.
It was Midwinter’s End Eve, ages long ago.
In a British Isles so old it did not know it was the British Isles yet.
A broken door, soaring through the quietness of the midnight sky, like a small flying carpet. Three children, all thirteen years old, poised in that moment between childhood and adulthood, lying on their backs, looking up at the stars. A talking raven, perched on Wish’s foot. A spoon, lying fast asleep on her heart. The sprites, joyously swooping and diving, and buzzing around them. Down below them three snowcats, a werewolf, a bear, and a pack of wolves running, softly, quietly, their footsteps disappearing magically as they ran, in a spell cast by Ariel.
After a while of peaceful contemplation, Wish sat up and peered over the edge of the door.
“All right, we couldn’t persuade our parents to join us, but let’s not forget that we’re doing really well!” said Wish. “The werewolf has learned some manners… The Once-sprite is happier now he’s a spell-raider… and Xar is making definite progress in being good…”
“He still has some way to go,” said Caliburn, a trifle gloomily, for only Encanzo had the power to set Caliburn and Ariel free.***
“And we do have ABSOLUTELY NO IDEA where we are going NOW,” Bodkin pointed out.
Xar’s arm was burning, and it gave him an idea. He sat up and opened the Spelling Book onto the page with the spell to get rid of Witches. And then he gave Wish Caliburn’s feather. “Write!” urged Xar. “Write down the next ingredient! Think as hard as you can, and write!”
“Oh, that won’t work,” said Wish, dipping the feather in the ink. “I’ve tried that so many times before and it just won’t—oh!”
To her astonishment, the feather, warm in her hands, began to write, almost as if by itself.
“Four scales of the Nuckalavee from the Western Whirlpools…” read Bodkin, in growing horror, “and five tears of the Drood from the Labyrinth of the Lake of the Lost…”
“Is there any more?” asked Xar.
“No, that seems to be it,” said Wish, for whatever had animated the feather had run out, and all she was making now were a series of unintelligible blotches.
“I knew it! I knew it! We have the last ingredients in our quest!” said Xar, punching the air in his excitement. “Key!” he said to the key, who was steering them from the lock of the Punishment Cupboard. “Turn due southeast! Next stop… THE LAKE OF THE LOST!”
“Wha-a-a-a-a-a-a-t?” cried Bodkin, waving his arms around in horror. “But the Lake of the Lost is the DROOD STRONGHOLD! We can’t go there! It’s a suicide mission! Didn’t you learn anything AT ALL from the Giant’s Last Breath story? Pentaglion just took TWO tears of the Drood and those scary Droods came and destroyed his whole castle and his giant, and we’re thinking of taking FIVE…? They’re not listening to me are they, Caliburn?”
“No.” Caliburn sighed. “They’re not listening.” Trying to control the uncontrollable little princess was bad enough, but trying to control both her and Xar together… well…
“It’s impossible,” moaned Bodkin, lying back on the door and putting his helmet over his head.
But Xar and Wish were not paying attention to such gloomy thinking. They were excitedly surveying the spell to get rid of Witches.
“We’ll get rid of those Witches in no time at this rate!” said Wish, with great enthusiasm. “Let’s put a tick against the ingredients we’ve already got to make us feel like we’re progressing. We’ve got the tears of the queen, and the Witch feathers…”
“Yes, but I’m annoyed that we’ve lost our first and most important ingredient in the spell to get rid of Witches by using it on the Drood,” said Xar.
“The moral of that is worrying me,” said Caliburn. “The giant’s last words were about forgiveness, but it was the breath of forgiveness that actually got rid of the Drood in the end. So how does that work?”
This is the problem with stories.
Stories always mean something. The question is…
What exactly do they mean?
“It means we’re going to have to start all over again finding ANOTHER Giant’s Last Breath before we can find anything else!” said Xar. “It’s very annoying.”
Squeezjoos hovered joyfully above them.
“Yous don’t have to start again!” said Squeezjoos. “I hass a secret that I’s hassn’t told anybody! I’s saved the day without anybody realizing!”
“Nonsss
ense…” hissed Tiffinstorm. “An insignificant little hairy fairy like you could never save the day.”
“But I has!” said Squeezjoos triumphantly. He paused for effect.
“There’sss a tiny little bit of the breath left in the collecting bottle! I sssaved it! I’s put the sstopper back in just in time!”
Xar got out the collecting bottle, and there was the very, very faint whisper of green smoke in the center of it.
The last remains of the Giant’s Last Breath.
“You see! I may’s be sssmall but I is mighty! I is NOT too tiny to be a spell-raider after all!” crowed Squeezjoos.
“You most certainly are not,” said Xar heartily. “That was extremely quick thinking of you. For this, Squeezjoos, I make you not only an official spell-raider, but the Chief Spell-Raider of our entire team!” said Xar, and the little hairy fairy was so overcome with excitement that he blew up like a puffer fish and turned three cartwheels in a row, and collapsed panting on Wish’s shoulder. The spoon, who had woken up, gave him a celebratory bow.
“And look!” said Wish. “I can now tick off THREE of the ingredients! And there are only two more to collect!”
Wish lay back down on the door with a sigh of satisfaction and went back to dreamily surveying the stars.
“The universe is sending us a sign,” she said. “Look! I’m sure that star up there is winking at us!”
And indeed, one of the stars did seem to be blinking on and off at them.
“Is it winking in a friendly way, though, or in a laughing-at-us way?” worried Caliburn. “Is it a good sign or bad sign? Are we really only being led by Xar’s Witch-stain in escaping from your parents for the second time? Look! The Witch-stain is worse than ever! How can we know if Xar is EVER going to be able to control or get rid of it?”
Xar’s hand was indeed still burning green in the moonlight.
“We just have to believe and hope that he can,” said Wish simply. “If we believe in Xar hard enough, then we’ll find our way to a happy ending.”
Twice Magic Page 17