Hero

The roaring was not in his head. From far above, pieces of the cave ceiling began to fall all around the lorelei. Fingerstones trapped her in a crystalline cage before crumbling to the floor. The rumbling got louder and the pieces got larger. A tiny shaft of daylight hit her hair, and then another, reflecting blue on the walls around them. The lorelei threw back her head and screamed to the sky.

The witch was making a hole in the mountain.

Terror swept through Peregrine. The lorelei could bring the mountain down with her insanity. If she woke the dragon, the world would soon be finished with them all. The lorelei needed to harness the dragon’s magic for her infernal spells. Surely she wouldn’t be so stupid, but he knew she had the potential. Right now, he had no idea what Fate had in store for him.

Betwixt, however, had other plans. The snake tail yanked his arm, almost pulling it out of the socket. Peregrine landed quite unceremoniously on his backside in a lump of skirt and hair and chimera. He rolled under a very large, very old outcropping and prayed it would be enough to withstand the chaos.

Before them, in a raven’s shriek and a shower of glittering blue calcite, the ceiling collapsed.

5

Earthbreaker

SOMEHOW, MAMA had fresh bread in the oven and a bowl of fruit on the table by the time the gray-sailed ship weighed anchor. Papa and Peter were hard at work on the well, pumping out water into buckets and testing each. Papa was worried that the salt brought by the new ocean might taint the groundwater. Saturday had a vision of bodies shriveled up beside the lapping waves, crusted in crystals and parched to death. She wondered if she could solve this problem as easily as she’d caused it, but trying anything now would put Thursday and her crew in jeopardy.

Mama had ordered them all to diligence save Monday, who had held up a graceful finger and stopped Mama mid-sentence. So Monday was the only one who watched over the ship that carried their beloved, long-lost, pirate-wed sister until her feet touched the meadow now acting as a reluctant shore.

“She’s here!” Monday ran down to meet the skiff. Saturday watched to see if her eldest sister’s feet touched the ground.

Saturday and the rest of the working brood paused to look at Mama, who wiped floury hands on her apron and said, “Well, let’s go, then,” as if she’d been waiting impatiently for hours. The words broke the spell, and they dropped their pails and pots and made their way toward the shore. Having banished the dark clouds far to the west, the shining sun sparkled mercilessly on the magical sea.

Monday embraced Thursday with an eye for never letting go. Saturday could only make out two ta

When she was near enough, Thursday escaped Monday’s heavenly clutches and almost tackled Saturday in her enthusiasm.

“You’re stronger than I remember,” said Saturday. “And ski

Thursday threw back her head, gave a raspy laugh that scared the gulls, and kissed her sister on the cheeks. “Well met, Earthbreaker,” she said. “I am here to escort you on your travels! My humble boat is at your service, Mama.”

Mama’s joy at the reunion quickly hardened. “Then you know about Tesera.”

“Yes,” said Thursday. “I ca

“But—” Saturday started, and then silenced at the look Thursday gave her. Effectively, the Woodcutters had lost most of their daughters over time: Monday to marriage, Tuesday to Death, Thursday to her Pirate King, and Wednesday to Faerie. Sunday, in the palace, was still close enough to home, and Friday’s apprenticeship wouldn’t be forever . . . but it was enough to make Saturday keenly aware of what it would be like to never see one of her sisters again. For all that she wished it aloud sometimes, she never really meant it.

“You saw this in your spyglass?” Mama asked.

“I did.” Thursday still looked pointedly at Saturday. “In a ma

“What was it supposed to do?” Saturday asked cheekily.

“Does it matter? Sea glass isn’t supposed to be shattered into a million pieces . . . but I should have expected nothing less from you. Where’s your bag?”

“My bag? But . . . how do you know . . . ?” And then Saturday remembered the properties of Thursday’s enchanted spyglass. It could not only see across leagues to other sides of the world, but it could also see certain events through time. Thursday must have known that Mama would want Saturday to accompany her.

Finally, a chance to leave the towerhouse, and on a pirate ship to boot! But what should have been excitement over a journey on the high seas was dampened by the thought that Saturday would spend the whole trip looking for Trix’s dead body floating among the waves.

“Erik ought to go with you,” said Monday. “He can accompany Mama and Saturday to their destination once they reach the northern shore.” Erik bowed deeply to Monday, as if she had just bestowed upon him some very important royal honor.

Thursday tilted her head a moment in thought and then said cheerily, “The more the merrier! Always nice to have another hand on deck. Mama, Saturday should really get a move on before the ocean dries up again.”

Saturday considered the new horizon. Was that even possible? Anything was possible today, it seemed.

Mama clicked her tongue. “You heard her, Miss Molasses. Fetch your things so we can be off.”

Saturday grumbled sullenly and stomped back into the towerhouse, compelled to collect her things at Mama’s enchanted behest. Clever Thursday, using Mama to shoo her along. Peter followed her up to her room, as Saturday knew he would. He was the only one besides Papa—and Thursday, apparently—who knew about her bag.

Though she had been quite young, Saturday clearly remembered the day Thursday ran off with the Pirate King. There had been little warning. Thursday had spent the morning as usual, full of chores and breakfast and stories. She’d disappeared sometime that afternoon. No one thought to look for her until di

That day, little Saturday rescued an old feedbag from the barn and started putting things in it, readying for her own journey. The feedbag became an old pillowcase, then a laundry sack, and finally a threadbare messenger bag that Friday had mended for her after a certain amount of bribing and begging. The summer of her sixteenth year, Saturday had been so sure that adventure would call her that she took the bag to work in the Wood every day.

She was ready for anything, but anything never came.

The summer had passed uneventfully, and she stowed the bag in her room once again. She’d found a hinged floorboard beneath her bed, cleaned out what looked like ash and dried leaves and bound sticks to make room. It was the perfect hiding place.

Now Saturday shimmied behind the stout headboard and Peter got a firm grasp on the footboard. Together they shoved the bed aside. Peter hopped onto Saturday’s mattress and sat cross-legged while Saturday fetched the bag.

“You must be thrilled,” said Peter.

Saturday was not especially thrilled about breaking the world, but that wasn’t what he meant. She always knew what Peter meant. “Overjoyed,” she said sarcastically.

“Unemployed,” rhymed Peter.

Saturday wasn’t in the mood for games. In one great yank, she extracted her bag from its hiding place. She plopped both it and herself on the bed beside Peter. Almost as an afterthought, she added the ebony-handled brush to its contents.