Hero

“Congratulations,” he heard Saturday reply calmly. “You’ve found me.”

The lorelei’s response was muffled as Peregrine quickly and quietly crawled his way to the witch’s bedchambers.

He needed to hurry, but it wasn’t easy. The caves were in a state of chaos. They had not looked this bad when he and Betwixt had pulled Cwyn and the witch from the wreckage. Every artifact had been swept off every shelf, leaving only a fur-covered bed surrounded by piles of broken rubbish.

Logically, the bed was the only place here that could conceal something as large as Saturday’s sword. Peregrine kicked through the piles gently, so as not to injure himself, but as quickly as he could manage. He stepped over an array of broken vials; his footsteps smeared their contents across the floor. With a giant shove he flipped the witch’s bed over, fur sheets, pallet, and all. There was one deep clang followed by many other higher-pitched ones as the pile on the far side of the bed spilled and scattered. Peregrine ripped the covers away to reveal something he expected and something he didn’t. The first was Saturday’s sword. The second was a small golden cup.

He bent down and gingerly lifted the cup from the furs. It seemed so i

He slipped the golden cup into the pocket of his skirt. Then he bent and retrieved Saturday’s sword.

His temples throbbed mightily. The sword sizzled in his hand, though it did not burn. “No!” he cried. In his haste he had forgotten to cover the sword before touching it.

There was a new smell in the air, a burning not of flesh but of spices he’d forgotten how to name. The image of the sword in his hand wavered and shrank, shifting into something else. He only hoped that Saturday would be able to change it back into a sword. He also knew that, whatever object the sword became, it would be inextricably tied to Saturday’s destiny, as the ax had been, as he now was.

The lantern began to flicker. In that dying light, Peregrine watched Saturday’s once-majestic sword solidify into a ring.

He closed his fist around the golden band and held it to his chest, to the other ring there. “She’s going to kill me.”

Beneath his feet, the mountain began to tremble.

15

Wicked and Whole

“JACK WOODCUTTER!” shrieked the witch. She stood, glorious, triumphant, and almost naked amidst a sea of dust as vivid blue as her skin. Cwyn, her feathers a sunset fire of orange, hovered above her like a flame above a fairy candle.

Saturday forced herself to remain calm. She needed to stall as long as possible so that Peregrine had a chance to search for her sword. “Congratulations,” she said. “You’ve found me.”

“You should know by now you can never hide from me.” The witch sniffed the freezing chamber air. Her tongue darted out to taste it. The powerful magic with which she was suffused emanated from her in waves. Around her, the cold, wet air turned to snow, falling in fat white flakes to the blue cave floor.

“Stealing your eyes hindered you for a while,” Saturday guessed.

“But not for long,” said the witch. “Never for long. Just as it will not be long now before I finish my Grand Spell. Do you have the ingredients I asked for?”

Saturday raised the sack. “Spiced moss and mushrooms, as requested.”

“And the seeds?”

A cold gust whipped down her back and froze her feet inside her boots, but Saturday maintained her balance atop the boulder. She had forgotten about the seeds . . . but Peregrine had not. She hadn’t eaten all the tomatoes, and she knew there was at least one pomegranate left from the small harvest he’d picked for her in the garden.

“Seeds, too,” she a

“Excellent! Now, are you coming down from there, or will I have to send my familiar to fetch you again?”

Saturday tossed the sack into the drifts of snow piling up around the lorelei’s bare feet. “There you go. All yours. You don’t need me.”

“Your second visit has entertained me far less than your first,” said the witch. “You will come down here right now, and you will take this sack to the cauldron in the kitchen.”

Saturday put her hands on her hips. “And if I don’t?”

The witch lifted a finger, and Saturday’s muscles stiffened again, but not from exhaustion. Her hands and feet were drawn into the air, one after another, marching her like one of Peter’s wooden puppets down the pile of rocks to the cavern floor before the witch. Her boots slipped on the snow-covered ground but she did not fall, buoyed as she was by magic. She fought against the pull, breaking into a sweat as she struggled, but her body’s will was no longer her own.

Guided by the raven’s eyes, the witch captured Saturday’s chin in her cerulean claws.

“No more games, Jack.” The lorelei sucked her pointy, yellowed teeth. She took a deep breath of the steam that rose from Saturday’s skin into the frozen air between them. “I will bathe in your blood,” she whispered. “I will strip the skin from your flesh, fill my stomach with the meat from your bones, and then grind those bones to make my bread. I will consume every part of you, and when I have done so, all your strength will be mine. Together, we will open the portal back to my home, and my brethren will fall to their knees in despair at my power.”

“I will fight you with every ounce of my being,” Saturday said through her teeth.

The witch gri

“Come,” said the witch. “I’ve made you a cage.”

The lorelei released Saturday’s face to grasp the front of her shirt. With preternatural strength, the witch pulled her along the clear path she had created in the fallen stone—away from her bedchambers. Saturday’s dragging feet kicked up the blue dust and she sneezed mightily. The longer Saturday kept the witch occupied, the longer Peregrine would be safe.

The witch stomped unceasingly up through the tu

As they turned the corner, the witch threw Saturday sideways across the room, as if she weighed no more than a sack of potatoes. Saturday got barely a glimpse of the cage before her face hit the far wall of it. Catching her breath, she sat up and put a hand to her cheek. It came away bloody.

Dozens of short swords and long swords and maces and daggers made up the bars of Saturday’s cage. She recognized both the flaming sword and the ruby-bladed one—she grabbed at the latter’s handle and tried to pull it away, but to no avail. A fine blue sheen ran along the metal and bound all the pieces, one to another, like magical glue. Weapons that might have meant her escape had become the very instruments of her capture.

“Clever,” said Saturday, because it was. “The cleverest thing would have been for your bird to kill me the minute it found me instead of bringing me back here.”

“But I couldn’t have done all this without you, Jack,” said the preening lorelei. “I didn’t recognize the power surrounding you the first time you visited. I will not make that mistake again.”

Saturday’s hands searched for a loose weapon in the cage’s makeup. Failing that, she began to feel along the smooth floor for a pebble, a spoon, a bit of ice, anything she might use as a weapon.