Hero (22 page)

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.

The witch tossed a skull into the cauldron, followed by what looked like several shards of calcite and the tip of a waxen fingerstone. The thick liquid swallowed it all, each bubble emitting the stench of rancid flesh. Clouds of deep purple gathered above the cauldron, snapping and churning with lightning and thunder. The fingerstones overhead sparked and glowed with power.

“Stone of Memory, hear my plea,

From worlds away I call to thee.”

She danced as she sang the couplet over the fire; the rags of her dress waved as she swayed backwards and forward. With each word she spoke, her skin turned a deeper and deeper blue. The knobby horns on her head seemed to grow.

Saturday grabbed the hilt of every sword in the cage, pushing and pulling them one by one in another effort to free them from the bars and attack the lorelei or turn over the cauldron or destroy the ingredients. She needed to stop the spell!

Out of the corner of her eye, she spotted a small pile of rocks that had been shoved to the side, the discarded remnants of a fallen fingerstone. Saturday moved slowly to the far end of the cage, careful not to catch Cwyn’s attention. She stretched her right arm out behind her, as far as she could, praying to reach a stone sizeable enough to hide in her hand, or sharp enough to pierce skin.

The blades of the swords bit into her shoulders as she pressed against them, splitting the fabric of her shirt and dotting the tears with blood. Thankfully, the overwhelming presence of magic in the room healed the shallower cuts almost as quickly as she acquired them.

“Basselure, hear my call,

Jinni, pyrrhi, lilim, all.”

Saturday never thought there would come a moment in her life when she wished she were taller, but a few inches would have been quite the mercy. The clouds over the cauldron spun faster. Lightning shot out from its center and cracked against the cage of swords. She felt the jolt, but she continued to stretch with all her might.

The witch held spears of icerock above the cauldron and melted them in her hands. Saturday’s fingertips collected only pebbles. She risked a rather deep slice in her forearm to reach a slightly larger rock, but she only managed to nudge it aside.
There!

Beneath the rock, slipped into a crack in the floor, was the broken blade of a small dagger. Saturday scooted the blade gently to her and slipped it inside her palm, giving no hint that she had discovered anything at all. Cwyn watched her with traitorous raven eyes.

The witch tossed a few more small skulls into the cauldron, along with the fresh heads of several brownies and a generous portion of the spiced moss Saturday and Peregrine had collected. The clouds above the cauldron spun and popped and grew; Saturday gagged at the new stench that filled the kitchen.

The witch’s voice deepened.

“Teeth for taste as scent is sown . . .”

Cold . . . taste . . . scent . . . The witch had used her ingredients to represent every physical sense inside her cauldron. The colorful mushrooms could be for sight, but how did one put sound into a stew?

The answer came quickly. The geis seized Saturday’s muscles once more and compelled her back to the witch’s side of the cage. Saturday squeezed the broken dagger blade inside her fist. Blood slowly dripped from cuts in her palm that opened, healed, and reopened again.

The witch now held a dagger of her own, wicked and whole. With it she sliced off Saturday’s left ear and dropped it in the cauldron.

“ . . . the snip and snap of blood and bone.”

Saturday dropped the blade and clapped her hand to the side of her head where her ear had been. It had not been a neat slice; she could feel a jagged tear of skin and sinew left behind. She would not scream for the witch’s satisfaction. Instead, she growled through her clenched teeth and concentrated on slowing the blood and healing herself. This scar would never fade—the ear was lost. Even if she’d had her sword, the appendage couldn’t have regrown in the time she had left. The witch needed to die
now.

As Saturday suspected, the mushrooms were next into the pot.

“Though I lack the eyes to see,

Doorway show yourself to me!”

The mist above the cauldron swirled with a myriad of colors, as if each was fighting the others. The clouds grew up to the high ceiling, encompassing the chimney and the large pillars on either side of it. The fingerstones in the ceiling glowed like the moon.

Saturday needed to shift the lorelei’s focus. Biting back the pain, she forced herself to keep on her feet and address the witch.

“Your daughter should be here to witness your triumph,” Saturday screamed over the howl of the wind generated by the churning cauldron-clouds.

“I was just about to call her,” said the witch. With that, she tossed the fruit and the remnants of a half-charred book into the fire.

“From seed of birth to page of death,

I hail the daughter of my breath.”

As the book burned, the acrid cauldron stench was replaced by one of charred cinnamon. An image appeared in the clouds above the cauldron of a woman with pale olive skin, long dark hair, sculpted lips, and eyes of starless night. The vision even gave a sense of the palace behind her. She was standing in the bedroom of a queen, addressing her looking glass.

“Hello, Mother. Miss me?”

So this was Leila.

Cwyn croaked, but Saturday could not tell if the animal’s exclamation was one of joy or frustration.

“How can you be in the fire, child? You are right here.”

“Silly Mother. I haven’t been with you for a very long time, and you never even noticed. I should be wounded, but how can I be? You seem to have misplaced your eyes. Here. Let me help you with that.”

The image of Leila waved her hand. Green lightning shot out of the cauldron-clouds. The witch blinked.

No,
said Cwyn.
She can see!

The witch still had no eyes to speak of, but somehow the empty sockets were doing the job anyway. She raised a thin blue claw to the vision in the clouds. “Daughter? Is that you?”

“Yes, Mother,” Leila said impatiently.

“Then who is here with me?” asked the witch. “Who is the daughter I know, the daughter who keeps my house, the daughter who inspired this spell?”

“An imposter,” said Leila.

The witch instantly whipped her head around to the cage. “Jack Woodcutter, this is all your fault!”

“Use your eyes, Mother,” said Leila. “That can’t be Jack Woodcutter. She’s a girl.”

Saturday wanted to reach through those magical clouds and wring Leila’s neck. If she managed to make it off this mountain alive, she vowed to someday perform that task.

“Not Jack Woodcutter?” asked the witch calmly. And then, “NOT JACK WOODCUTTER?”

“Goodbye, Mother,” Leila said passively. “Much love. Have fun destroying the world.” And with that, the vision was gone.

The lorelei didn’t seem to care. She stretched out a hand and Saturday slammed forward against the cage bars, slicing her arms again and jarring her bad ear. The lorelei took her by the shirt collar and shook her mightily. “NOT JACK WOODCUTTER!”

“Saturday Woodcutter, at your service.” Saturday clasped the hand the lorelei had on her collar, locking the demon’s thin fingers inside her own large and bloody ones. “You rescued me from a ship full of bloodthirsty pirates! I’m so glad this ruse is over so I can finally thank you properly.”

“You were in this together,” said the witch. “You and the imposter.”

“If you say so,” said Saturday. “But you will not be harming him today. Or ever again.”

The pronoun had the desired effect. “Him?” The lorelei’s skin swirled black and blue. The clouds shot lightning into her claws and the cage and Cwyn’s scarlet wings. Saturday swore she heard a crack in the very ether itself.

“FILTHY HUMAN! I WILL KILL HIM!”

“I can’t let you do that.” Saturday threw her weight back, pulling the lorelei’s arm. This time the witch slammed against the blade-bars of the sword cage. Her demon skin split into even lines where the blades bit into her face, and blood dripped down to her chin. Saturday only wished she’d gotten an ear.

Cwyn fluttered frantically, like a silk scarf tossed in a sea of lightning. Her crimson wings began to swirl with black as well.

The lorelei stared Saturday down with her empty, bloody eye sockets. Every inch of the witch was blue-black now, even the tips of her hair and the pointed horns at her temples. The air in the kitchen crackled with power.

“I WILL KILL YOU ALL.” The lorelei’s unearthly voice echoed throughout the chamber. Faint voices from the world beyond the cauldron answered her cry.

“Not if I kill you first,” said Saturday.

She moved one hand to the demon’s struggling wrist, braced the other against the handle of the stuck fire sword, and slammed the lorelei against the bars again. The enchanted sword began to glow, but Saturday had no time to wait for its magic to manifest. Throwing her head back, she called out a rhyme of her own to the gods.

“Fire from earth’s hallowed ground,

Help me take this demon down!”

Saturday inhaled and felt the power from the cauldron-clouds enter her body. Her bones became iron in the heat of the forge. Lightning shot from her fingers. The blue-green bracelet at her wrist burned with an inner fire . . . and the sword in her hand burned with an outer one. Flames erupted along the blade of the sword and then the lorelei, pressed against it. Saturday’s clothes and Cwyn’s feathers caught fire too, but Saturday held the demon against the burning bars with all her might.

The lorelei gasped as she took her last breath of this life, but she did not scream. “Thank you,” she said. Her body seemed to melt at the edges, and then disappeared in a puff of brilliant blue steam.

Behind her, the raven fell into a pile of crimson ash.

The flames engulfing Saturday and the cage vanished, though the blade-bars still glowed red with heat. The swarming clouds of colors shrank to the size of pebbles before exploding in one last great burst of sound and light. The explosion cracked the cauldron and spilled its corrosive contents to the floor. The liquid quickly burned its way down through the icerock, down and down to the Earthfire far below.

The hungry screams from the world beyond had been silenced. In the aftermath, Saturday heard only her ragged breaths and the stubborn beat of her defiant heart. She was glad there was no one to witness her tears.

A bright red glow filled the cave. Saturday raised her head. It was not the bars emitting the light, but the pile of Cwyn’s ashes. From those ashes rose the silhouette of a young woman. As the shadow solidified into radiant flesh, the beautiful woman grew old and round. “Well done, child,” was all she said before she vanished completely in a puff of black smoke.

Two-faced witch. Saturday was not sorry to see her go. She only lamented that Vasilisa had not freed her from the cage of swords first.

Alone again, Saturday blinked into the quiet darkness. If the witch’s geis on Vasilisa had broken with her death, then why hadn’t the cage fallen to pieces? Saturday leaned back and kicked her boot against the bars. They didn’t budge. She tried again, the force of the blow resonating in her bones. She might as well have been kicking the wall of the cave. Carefully, she reached out and felt along the bars with her fingers.

The blades of the swords were no longer sharp. The heat of the fire she’d summoned had melted the weapons together, solidifying the bonds the demon had created with her magic. Grasping the bars with both hands, she tried to lift the cage, but its weight was beyond her strength. Stubbornly she tried again. And again.

Sweating with the effort now, Saturday fell back into the middle of the cage. She had defeated the lorelei, and in doing so had imprisoned herself even further.

Beneath her, the ground rumbled. Saturday had felt this sort of tremor before, on the day she’d broken the earth and called the ocean. The rumble came again.

As predicted, the mountain was waking up, and the dragon with it. And if she had truly fulfilled her destiny, then she could die now and would, here in this cage of her own making at the Top of the World.

“NO!”
The screech Saturday let loose would have made the witch proud. She railed at the bars. She pulled and lifted and kicked and strained. She made up nonsense rhymes and cried them into the darkness, one after another, but the magic in the walls did not answer her. She screamed at the ceiling in fear and frustration, her shrieks turning to hysterical laughter at her predicament.

“I thought you’d killed the lorelei, but I could swear I still hear her.”