Hero

The acolytes filled two tubs for Saturday. She’d need them. This bath was a far cry from the crystal lake with its hot springs, but it came with large cakes of soap. Saturday stripped quickly and jumped in, eager to scrub the curses and weariness out of her skin.

Thursday spoke to the waiting acolytes and they left quickly with the dirty things. “I had them fetch you some proper clothes,” she said, and Saturday thanked the Earth Goddess (whose house she currently stank up) that her companion was the sensible sister. “Do you know you’ve been missing for more than a month?”

Had she really? “It felt like only days,” said Saturday. “But time passed strangely on the mountain where we were held. Where is your ship?”

“I was dubious of your fickle ocean,” said Thursday. “I told Simon Silk to leave at the slightest inkling of magic, with or without me onboard. At the first sign of green lightning, he was gone.”

“So you’re stuck here?”

“I’ve been landlocked before,” said Thursday. “Don’t worry. I’ll find my ship. If she doesn’t find me first.”

“Trix is alive,” said Saturday. “I saw him in a magic mirror. But you already knew that.”

“I knew the lingworm had saved him, but I do not know his plight. My spyglass has spotted him only once since then. Speaking of . . . where’s your sword?”

Saturday sank beneath the surface of the water to put off answering. “Lost,” she said when she came back up for air. She lathered the soap into her hair a third time for good measure. It smelled of lavender and rosemary, sweet and green and alive.

“I wouldn’t worry about it. Things have a way of turning up again in the strangest of places. Unfortunately, the same can’t be said about your ear. May I have a look?”

Saturday only acquiesced because Thursday didn’t make a big deal about it. Friday would have fainted dead away. It wasn’t painful anymore, but Saturday was genuinely curious as to how the stump of it had healed.

“It’s not bad, actually.” She felt Thursday trace the scalloped edges where her lobe had been, and the cauterized scar tissue beneath it. “It looks rough, but you’ll be able to hide it well enough with your hair until the color fades. I’ve seen worse on my ship.”

“I imagine so.”

“Men who fight trolls regularly learn not to get too attached to their limbs,” said Thursday. “The price of adventuring.”

“It was a witch,” explained Saturday. “Of the evil demon variety.”

“Ugly breed.”

“She locked me in a cage and used my ear as an ingredient for a terrible spell that would have torn the world apart. I had to stop her.”

“Did you kill her?”

Saturday could have said a thousand things. She’d had no choice; they had to escape; she was saving the world. But the only answer she gave her sister was “Yes.”

“Did you stop the spell?”

Among other things. “After breaking the world, I felt I had no choice.”

“Fitting, then, that your flesh and blood were part of the equation. Fortune favors the blood, you know. I fully believe Luck has always smiled upon our family because of all the Woodcutter blood Jack has spilled into the ether.” Thursday’s lips curved into one of those wry smiles that hid secrets, but Saturday was too tired to let it frustrate her. “Do you feel different, having killed someone?”

“She was a beast,” said Saturday. “I’ve hunted beasts before.”

“Not like this, you haven’t, and you know it.”

Saturday stood up from the warm bath and dunked herself into the cool one. Soap and herbs and dust remnants merged into a film on the surface. “Killing the witch set us all free, including the dragon that slept in the mountain. I should have tried to kill it, too, while it slept, but I didn’t.” And now every bit of damage it did to the countryside would be on her head.

“You are a warrior,” said Thursday, “not a killer.”

“The price of adventuring,” said Saturday, mocking her sister. She held her breath and sank beneath the surface of the water again, wishing a part of her soul clean that would never again be pure.

“So, do you love him?” Thursday asked when she surfaced.

“The wagon driver?” said Saturday. “We’ve only just met.”

Thursday reached into the bath and flicked water at her. “Peregrine, you dolt.”

“I might,” she told her sister. “I haven’t had much time to think about it. We’ve certainly been through a lot together. The place we were kept, the things we’ve seen . . .”

“Hard to explain to anyone who wasn’t there?”

Saturday nodded.

“I know what you mean. The three of you have a special bond now, no matter what your future holds.”

Saturday nodded again. Thursday no doubt had the same sort of bond with her crew.

“It’s just . . .”

“Spit it out,” said Saturday.

“He was a prisoner up there for how long?”

“I don’t know,” said Saturday. “Years, probably a decade at least. A long time.”

“And the first time he’s offered a bath and clean clothes, his only response is to never take his eyes off you,” said Thursday. “Most girls would make a big deal out of that.”

“I’m not most girls,” said Saturday.

“Preaching to the choir, sister dearest,” said Thursday. “I just wanted to make sure you knew. Special breeds of stubborn idiots like you and me tend to miss these not-so-subtle clues.”

Saturday laughed then, because she knew it was true. Peter and Papa teased her enough about her hard head. The memory made her heart ache. Pain shot through her chest. She slipped in the tub and Thursday reached out to her, but she’d already grasped the sides and caught herself.

“You’re bleeding,” Thursday noted.

Saturday followed her sister’s gaze to the tip of her finger. Her tight grasp on the lip of the tub had reopened the wound where the brownie had bitten her. She stared at the small droplets of blood welling up out of her unhealed skin. She was no longer indestructible. She’d fulfilled her grand destiny. What was she supposed to do with the rest of her life?

Thursday tossed a hand towel over the finger and pinched it. “Welcome to the mortal world.”

The acolytes returned with fresh clothes: shirt, vest, and trousers. They located some ointment and a bandage scrap to knot around Saturday’s finger to stop the bleeding. A new belt was provided, but it felt cheap and empty without a scabbard. She slid the dagger underneath the leather strap on her left side, but it didn’t have the heft of the sword, or her ax. She felt unbalanced.

“I have a present for you,” said Thursday. Saturday hoped it wasn’t a sword. It wasn’t. What Thursday held out to Saturday was her old messenger bag. She opened it up and checked the contents: a change of clothes, some rags, a small sewing kit, a ball of twine, a canteen, some fishing hooks, three stones Sunday had given her for good luck, and Thursday’s ebony-handled brush . . . little of which would have been much good to her up on the mountain, but all of which set her mind more at ease now. The bag even smelled like her old room.

“I took the liberty of tossing out all the old hardtack and replacing it.”

Saturday put the strap over her head and felt the reassuring weight at her side. “Thank you.”

Thursday winked.

The Woodcutter sisters followed the acolytes down several hallways and through a garden to the chapel behind the main building. Sunlight spilled in through the stained-glass windows. It fell in patterns of color on the marble floor, like the Northern Lights on the eve of their escape.

They were the first to arrive in the nave of the chapel, with its intricately carved pews and columns shaped in stone likenesses of the animals dedicated to the Earth Mother. Bear, Cat, Wolf, Serpent: at their heart, they were just pretty rock formations. It was a pity so few had witnessed the natural temple at the Top of the World, so much more organically magnificent than this fabricated, orderly chapel. Saturday felt sure the Earth Goddess would agree.