Hero

“Go away! We’ve nothing to give!” The woman’s voice was common; the top of her kerchiefed head barely reached the porthole.

“Not even scraps for a beggar?” asked Peregrine.

“We’ve barely any scraps for ourselves. Go on, then, and leave us in peace.”

“I have a message for your master.”

“Bah. You mean the mistress.”

Mistress? “Yes, she will do.” Perhaps he should have asked for Hadris straight off.

“She’s not here.” It sounded like the woman spat at the door. “And thank the gods. We’ve nothing left to give her, either.”

“What on earth is going on here?” Peregrine asked. Betwixt snuffled again. The chimera was right. It was time to get to the point.

“I am Peregrine of Starburn,” he declared to the porthole, “and I have come to reclaim my lands.” Not that there appeared to be much to reclaim.

There was a riot of giggles and the porthole slammed shut. There was a dragging, a rattle of chains, and then the door opened. Two small people stood before him, a man and a woman, both middle-aged, and both flushed with repressed amusement. Peregrine could tell from their complexions that they were not dwarves from the mountains but petelkin, a rare diminutive breed of human.

“Pleased to meet you, Your Lordship,” said the female petelkin. “I’m the Queen of the Troll Kingdom, and this here’s my brother, God of the North Wind.”

At that a

“I actually am Peregrine of Starburn,” he repeated. He simply had no idea what else to say.

“Bah,” said the woman. “Peregrine of Starburn is a myth. Peregrine of Starburn is a wish young girls make on stars.”

The man, who indeed could have been her brother, eyed Peregrine. “Did you come from the stars?”

“Very near there,” he said. “Look, I can prove it. I have items in my possession that bear the Starburn coat of arms.”

“You and half the countryside,” said the woman. “Everything was sold to pay the mistress’s debts before she got herself married off.”

“When she ran out of furniture, she sold the people,” said the man. “We only got to stay because of the contract.” The woman gave her brother a good smack before he could say anything else on that particular matter.

“Out of curiosity,” said the woman, “what exactly is it you’ve got?”

“Only what I was wearing or holding when I was cursed. This dagger”—he held the piece out for examination—“and this cup.”

The woman snatched the cup from his grasp. Peregrine let her take it. She poked at the scrollwork and prodded the gems to see if any were loose. She made what looked like a sign of the Thief God over the Starburn seal, and then spat upon it. Peregrine waited patiently while she continued to find what he knew she would: nothing.

She did not return the cup to him. “Come inside,” she said.

“May my companion come as well?” asked Peregrine, motioning to the odd mule.

“Just so long as he don’t scat on the floors,” said the man.

In a flash of light, Betwixt became a faun again. “I promise to leave your floors exactly as I find them,” he said with a jaunty bow.

The woman raised her eyebrows at the magical display, or Betwixt’s nakedness. Her brother stared at Betwixt in full, open-mouthed bewilderment. “You did come from the stars.”

Peregrine followed the woman down the long hallway, straight through to the kitchens at the opposite end of the house.

He couldn’t recall what the kitchens of Starburn had looked like before he left, but he marveled at them now. Floors that could be swept, a pantry for storing dry goods, and air that smelled of wood smoke—wood!—instead of brimstone. There would be chickens beyond that back door, and cows, for eggs, milk, butter, and cheese. Mixing bowls and dishtowels made of proper cloth, not something an ancient soldier had worn up the side of a mountain to meet his death.

The woman stood before a low cupboard that faced away from them, still holding his golden cup. “Never seen a kitchen before, great man?” she teased.

“The kitchen where we were kept was far more humble,” Peregrine answered honestly. “We didn’t have a lot of the luxuries this house affords.” Like windows. Or daylight.

“It’d have to have been a fire pit and a stick broom to be less extravagant than this,” said the man.

“No sticks at all,” offered Betwixt. “May we sit?”

The woman nodded and gestured to the small table beside the chopping block.

“As I said before, I’m Peregrine—”

“If you like,” said the man.

“—and this is my companion, Betwixt.”

“Pleasure,” said the woman. She opened the cupboard, examined the contents inside, and then joined them at the table with the cup. “I’m Gretel. This is my brother, Hansel.”

“God of the North Wind,” said Hansel, letting loose a rowdy fart in illustration.

“Impressive,” said Betwixt.

“If you really are Peregrine of Starburn,” said Gretel, “and I’m not saying you are, when did you leave these lands?”

“Right after my mother’s funeral,” said Peregrine. “My father was still lying in state when my mother died. The living death took everything he had, and then everything my mother had, in the end. I wasn’t the bravest of sons; staying here was simply too much for me to bear. I collected a handful of men at the funeral and left after the first mass with an eye to embarking on the adventure that was to be my life.”

“What was the name of your horse?”

Gretel had used the past tense; Peregrine gave up hope that his faithful steed might still be alive. “Scar. Ugly as his name, but the finest piece of horseflesh east of Arilland.”

Hansel pounded a fist on the table, as if Peregrine had got the answer right (well, of course he had), but Gretel put out a hand to curb her brother’s enthusiasm.

“And who did you leave in charge of accounts?”

“Hadris,” Peregrine said without hesitation. The estate accounts were something Hadris, the earl’s steward, did anyway, but Peregrine had made a formal a

Hansel pounded the table again.

“As I live and breathe,” said Gretel.

Peregrine finished the story for them, one they could have only known from the perspective of the men in his party who’d lost him in that tiny grove of trees by the streambed that day. “We stopped at a creek to rest on the way to Cassot. A fairy found me there and offered me a wish and a drink. But she wasn’t a fairy, she was the daughter of a witch—a demon—who lived high in the White Mountains, at the Top of the World. She cursed me to take her place there, in her guise, for as long as I lived . . . or until I escaped, which was only a few days ago.”

Hansel eyed Peregrine’s outfit dubiously. “In her guise? Skirts and all?”

“Skirts and all,” answered Peregrine.

“The sinking ocean,” said Hansel. “The rising forest. The chaos rain. That was you?”

“Afraid so,” said Betwixt. “We woke a dragon on our way out. It’s pretty angry.”

“But I’ve come back to set things right,” Peregrine said, before the rest of them got lost in the twisted tale of the escape. “I don’t know what that witch has done to my lands, but I intend to fix it. I promise you both, I will fix this. But first, I need to make my amends to Elodie of Cassot.”

Gretel sighed. “We’ve kept three frivolous things in all this time. We’ve sold off the rest of the estate, bit by bit, but even when the walls were bare and the well dried up we kept them. It was our uncle’s dying wish.” She hopped off the chair and went back to the low cupboard, from which she removed three pristine, jewel-encrusted golden goblets. His own goblet completed the set.

She returned to the table and put her hand over Peregrine’s own. For such a small thing, it was exceedingly warm. Or he was just exceedingly cold. “You’ve been gone a hundred years, milord,” said Gretel gently. “Elodie of Cassot is dead.”