Hero

The lorelei grasped Saturday’s arm in an iron grip. Her seemingly frail and withered appendages were as much muscle and bone as raven’s claws. “If you do not find my eyes,” said the witch, “I will simply take yours.”

Not if I kill you first, thought Saturday. She considered the dagger in her waistband. She could do it now, dispatch the witch and be done with all of this. But she wanted to find her sword first and, if possible, a way off the mountain. She knew there would be very little chance of survival against the dragon, but she had to try.

Saturday turned her face away, but the witch’s hand found it anyway, lovingly tracing the contours with her wrinkled blue claws. “Your skin is smooth,” the witch said dubiously. Her cheeks flushed a deeper blue. She smelled of frostbite, cold and sharp.

Saturday tried to hold her jaw as arrogantly as she could. Jack, she repeated the lie to herself. I am Jack. She let her voice fill her whole chest and deepen in tone. “I should get to work.”

“Work!” The witch threw back her head and cackled at length, all soberness melting into hysteria. “Live to fail another day, Jack Woodcutter! Come, Cwyn. Your mistress tires and there is much to do.” But the raven had already taken wing, quietly riding the chilly drafts down the cavernous hall, her glowing wings illuminating the path with soft green light. “Foul fowl,” the witch grumbled.

Taking one last lungful of icy air from the hallway, Saturday entered the disgusting bird’s nest. Immediately her nose wrinkled and her eyes watered. Before her towered pile after pile of once dried, now soiled, moss, easily four times the amount there had been when she’d started. Saturday brushed her uneven forelocks behind her ears, sickened by the griminess of herself, and set to work. She lifted the rake like a club and thought about Peregrine’s armory, procured from an era’s worth of fallen warriors.

“What idiot came to best a dragon with a rake?” Amused at the images the thought evoked, she took a shallow breath. “Here goes nothing.”

She grasped the rake just below the business end and poked the handle into the moss pile. As if skewered by an invisible pitchfork, a heaping helping of soiled moss rose into the air. Ridiculous and implausible it may have been, but Saturday could not deny what she saw. It was nothing that lifted the straw, nothing that held it, and nothing that tossed it away from a pile that this time shrank instead of grew.

“I’ll be damned,” she whispered.

The soldiers in the practice yard used this expression all the time, but it wasn’t one Mama encouraged. The Woodcutters’ lives were strange enough without tempting Fate with a request for punishment. Considering her circumstances, Saturday wasn’t terribly worried. It would be considerable work for the gods to make her life more complicated than this.

Before going any farther, Saturday dropped the invisible forkful of moss and exited the cave again. She poked around in the crystalline darkness for Peregrine’s promised sacks and found them behind a large pillarstone, about thirty yards from the cave opening, far enough away that a meandering witch wouldn’t have tripped over them. Three were full of fresh, clean moss. The rest were empty. Saturday filled her arms with the sacks—it took her several trips—and then dutifully began filling them one by one.

While she worked, Saturday thought about every member of her family. She made up rhymes about them all, and what they might be doing. But she couldn’t stop her mind from constantly drifting back to the swordfight with Peregrine . . . and that kiss. On and on she worked and thought and blushed and worked some more. She considered what Peregrine had said before about the length of a “day” in these caves. Saturday could go on for hours in the Wood without getting tired. She didn’t even stop to eat unless Papa or Peter reminded her. If left to her own devices, exactly how long might a full day’s work be?

The chill air kept Saturday from sweating profusely, but she was forced to stop and carve untainted ice chunks from the wall as she grew more and more weary. Saturday filled fewer and fewer sacks between breaks until, finally, her body gave up.

She woke to water splashing in her face and a chunk of ice wrapped in linen at the base of her neck.

“Wake up, Woodcutter. You’re too big for me to carry, and you’re no good to me dead.”

Wasn’t she? Without her, the witch would have her blasted stew, may it give her heartburn and spoil her stomach and ruin her spells. Peregrine and Betwixt could continue on with their freedom to live, if not their true freedom. Freedom. Sword. Water. Trix.

“Trix,” she croaked. “I’m so sorry.”

“I’m the one who’s sorry. If I’d known you were going to wake up and work yourself to the bone straight off, I would have left you some food. Why didn’t you come find us first?” Droplets of water on her face again. “No, no, come back to me. Here, drink this.”

Saturday could not manage to open her eyes, but she knew a cup of cool water in her hands when she felt it. She drained it.

“More,” she croaked, but her stomach was louder.

“This first.” The cup was ripped from her reluctant hands and replaced with bread. Gods of heaven and earth, a small roll of bread. Saturday could imagine it was still warm from her mother’s oven. In her kitchen. At home. On a winter’s day. Or maybe Friday had baked this one, because it was chalky and flat and had a fu

“Peter, shut the door.”

There was a crack and a sting in her cheek as Peregrine slapped her.

Saturday’s eyes flew open. In the next heartbeat, she had her dagger pointed at his throat.

He caught her hands in his easily, too easily, and lowered his head to look deep into her eyes. “There she is.”

“Welcome back,” said Betwixt.

“Where—” But Saturday didn’t need to ask. The answers came and disappointed her as quickly as they had upon waking. “Right. Sorry.”

“I hit her and she apologizes!” Peregrine said far too loudly. “I was going to congratulate her on not having lost her mind, but now I’m not so sure.”

The food settled in her nauseous belly and sanity slithered back under her skin. Saturday watched Peregrine’s mouth as he spoke, imagining what it would be like to kiss him once more and telling herself to stop. Warm, she thought. It had been warm in his arms. She’d like to be warm again.

“Her brain’s still addled,” said Betwixt.

Saturday was inclined to agree.

Peregrine handed her another rough bread roll and the cup, which he’d replenished from the helmet at his feet. She drained the cup again and inhaled the roll while he refilled the cup once more. Peregrine emptied the bags of fresh moss and scattered it across the clean room while she chewed and drank and slowly came back to life.

“I’m okay now,” she said finally, glad that he had goaded her into conversation before she was conscious enough to worry about what to say. Actions spoke louder than words and he was helping her, despite the fact that she was about to be the cause of his death. “The witch gave me new tasks. She wants me to find her mushrooms and seeds and some sort of spiced moss.”

“No brownie teeth?” asked Peregrine.

“She must already have some,” said Betwixt.

“What’s a brownie? Wait, no . . . If it has teeth, I think I saw one earlier. What’s spiced moss? And where am I supposed to find seeds in a cave?”

“Don’t worry. I’ll help you with all of it,” said Peregrine. “But first things first. Are you okay enough to help me lug these bags across the mountain?”

Saturday groaned.

“I have a wagon,” he said.

“Really?”

Peregrine shrugged. “It’s a small thing, more of a litter or a wheelbarrow, I suppose, but it’s useful enough. And it functions! Sort of.”