Hero (26 page)

“I have to go find my ship,” said Thursday.

“I should return to Arilland and bring this news to the king,” said Erik. “And someone needs to tell Jack Woodcutter about his wife.”

And Peter,
thought Saturday. Poor, sweet Peter. At least Papa would not have to bear the news alone. “All right, then Peregrine and Betwixt and I will go to Faerie. If that’s all right with you?” she asked Wolf.

Wolf bowed his head. “It would be my honor.”

“Saturday,” said Peregrine.

“Don’t argue. It’s a good plan,” she told him.

“Saturday, stop. Please.”

It was the “please” that shut her up.

“There’s something I have to do.”

“I know,” she said. “You want to return to Starburn. And we will, in time. But this may be another matter of life and death.”

From beneath his linen shirt, Peregrine pulled the chain around his neck that held both her ring . . . and another’s. It was then that she realized exactly what he was trying to say to her.

Peregrine slid her ring-that-was-a-sword off and then refastened the chain around his neck. “I wasn’t supposed to survive.”

“But you did,” said Saturday. “I saved you.”

“We saved each other,” he said.

Those words, the ones she had spoken at the Top of the World before the mountain had exploded, shredded her heart like crystalwings.

“I would love nothing more than to kneel at your feet right now, put that ring on your finger, and bind my destiny to yours, whatever that may be. But I cannot.” Peregrine placed the ring in Saturday’s hand and curled her fingers closed around it. “I must keep my promise to Elodie.”

Saturday could say nothing to this; she would not have respected him if he were the sort of person who did not keep his promises. Peregrine had to leave, and she had to let him. “What if she did not wait for you?”

“Then I will catch you on the road to Faerie.”

“And if she did?”

Peregrine reached out a hand to touch her but let it fall short. “I do not want to say goodbye.”

“Nor do I,” said Saturday.

“I will return,” Betwixt told her. “Either way, I will return to you with word.”

It was the best Saturday could hope for. “Thank you.”

With polite nods to the rest of the sacristy and a pained look at Jack, Peregrine and Betwixt made their exit.

Saturday stared at her palm and tried to summon power to her like she had in the mountain. “Change back into a sword!” She willed magic into the ring with every fiber of her being. “Change, damn you!” But the stubborn metal would not budge.

A small, cool hand slipped into her free one, and Saturday turned to see Thursday at her side. “Men are bastards,” said her sister. “Amazing, wonderful, fabulous, heartbreaking bastards.”

“I couldn’t agree more,” said Jack.

“Come now,” said Rose Red. “Let’s get you all fed before you set out on your respective journeys.”

Saturday, Thursday, and Jack all planted a kiss on Mama’s forehead and the company slowly filed out of the sacristy.

“I think I missed something,” Erik said to Jack as they crossed the threshold back into the chapel. “Who’s Elodie?”

18

PEREGRINE HATED himself for leaving Saturday, but he’d have hated himself more for staying. No matter who he had been—sheltered earl’s son or demon witch’s daughter—he was a man of his word. He would not dishonor Elodie or the legacy of his father. Saturday deserved no less. Neither did he.

“Where do we go first?” asked Betwixt. “Starburn?”

Peregrine nodded and put a hand on Betwixt’s scruffy shoulder. In his other hand was a small satchel that contained his worldly possessions: a shard of mirror, a vial of gryphon’s tears, and a golden cup. He had left the runesword with Jack, and the wish that it had better luck besting the dragon a second time around. Saturday had given him no token to take with him, nor had he asked her for one.

“Before you set out on this journey with me, my friend, I must ask you one question.”

“I promise to give you the straightest answer I can,” said Betwixt.

“Is there a home you need to visit? A family to which you need to return? A quest of your own to finish?”

Betwixt scratched at his stubby faun horns, like the witches’, only furrier. “Whatever home or family I was born into I left by choice long ago. I’m a useless sack of trouble on my own. You’re stuck with me.”

“It’s a burden I’m prepared to bear.”

“And you are a burden I’m prepared to bear,” replied Betwixt. In a flash of golden light, he was the pegasus again, silver coat, white mane, angel wings, and all.

As he galloped to speed and took flight, Peregrine looked back down on the gardens of Rose Abbey. But for a few hooded acolytes, no one had come to see him off.

It was just as well.

From the air he looked north, to the White Mountains, but nothing stood out against the jagged horizon. No plumes of smoke and Earthfire spewed from the Top of the World, no hued clouds shot down colorful lightning, no dragon spun on lofty breezes.

More terror and tragedy would come, in time, and he would do his part to remedy the damage he’d had a hand in, but today the world was peaceful. Today, the sun would trek across the sky and march time onward. There would be a tonight, and then another today, and soon he would be back where he belonged. He only hoped that place was at Saturday’s side.

Selfishly, he prayed once more that Elodie had forgotten him and gone on to live a full life.

It had been so long since he’d seen the castle at Starburn that he didn’t recognize it the first time they flew over. He motioned with his hands and legs for Betwixt to circle around and land in the woods, just outside the gates. Hidden in the brush, Betwixt changed from his regal pegasus form into that of a tri-horned mule. And so the long-lost son of Starburn returned to his castle at sunset, on the back of a humble pack animal.

No one seemed to care.

In fact, there seemed to be no one there at all. No soldiers looked down from the towers. No market stalls populated the bailey. There was no smell of horses or hearth fires or children, fresh fruit or rotted meat. There were no sounds but for that of a few empty pennant poles, rusted and banging about in the wind.

“Do you think it’s a spell?” Peregrine whispered into the silence. “That they’re all asleep somewhere?”

Betwixt snuffled warily in reply. “Or dead.”

Peregrine dismounted at the front of the keep, walked up the steps, and banged on the door. The knock echoed through the empty bailey. He knocked a second time, and a third. He’d just about given up when the grilled porthole in the door opened.

“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 announcement, the two of them collapsed in laughter.

“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 announcement to the effect before he’d left, to allay any doubts.

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.