Of Sorcery and Snow (31 page)

Before I even thought,
Hey, struggling might be a good plan,
Arica raised her hand, and a thread of magic unfurled from her fingers. When it struck me, my muscles went all . . . floppy. Something sent me rushing down, twisting my insides together. The pain lasted only a second, and then I was sitting on the floor.

I was also only a few inches tall. With emerald and yellow petals lying beside me instead of arms.

“Oh, crap,” I said, my voice much higher than usual.

The flower-birds in the cages didn't realize the damage was done. The whole flock started shrieking. “Run! Run! Run!”

“Hush, little ones.” Arica tipped up a mask—it must have had an illusion embedded in it to make it look real. Underneath, her skin looked like crumpled paper. “Unless you would like to join your fellows in the garden.”

The bird room was instantly and eerily silent.

Oh no. The blue flower, who had spoken to me, had been planted outside for rebelling. Freezing had turned its edges white and garbled its words.

Not “won.”
Run. Leave. Listen!

I was an idiot. And now I was a flower-bird.

If Chase started calling me birdbrain after this, I would totally deserve it.

I sprinted toward the door, my petal wings spread for balance, because my awkward little body was
definitely
not built for running.

Arica scooped me up off the floor and held me to her chest. “You're so much more trusting than the other one.”

I was too freaked out to reply. My green legs dangled over empty air as she carried me across the room. I didn't want to know what would happen if I fell. I could barely
walk
in this body. Flying must have been a lot more complicated.

The sorceress thrust me inside an empty birdcage and latched the door. The woman puppet tied my cage to a ribbon, and horror of horrors, the cage started
rising
. My claws clutched the bottom of the cage as tightly as I could. That was a weird feeling, like making a fist with my feet.

Arica folded her arms, the metal one and the real one, with a stern look that reminded me a lot of Gretel. “Solange would never have been caught in such an obvious way, and yet they say that you'll—” She stopped suddenly, looking like she had swallowed her own tongue.

The sorceress was trying to tell me how I was like Solange.

“Ah, Mildred has kept the Pounce Pot. She has
used
it.” Arica's eyes blazed so much that the flower-birds chirped with alarm. “It was
mine
before it was stolen, but that little Triumvirate paid the price for taking it from me.”

Then I knew how this sorceress fit in. Way before she turned into the Snow Queen, Solange and her friends went on a quest for the Pounce Pot. I'd never thought about who it had belonged to
before
.

“You won't ask me what kind of price?” Arica asked. “You
are
a strange one.”

She didn't get a lot of visitors out here, in the middle of a frozen nowhere. I guessed I could play along until someone rescued me. “What kind of price?”

“They left behind one of their own,” said the sorceress, sounding like Jack bragging about the giants he'd slain. “I caught Solange
taking the Pounce Pot from its pedestal. I flicked a finger—in those days, that was all I needed to turn someone to stone—but the boy stepped between us. The spell hit him instead.”

My petal-feathers ruffled—another very weird sensation. “You're the one who turned Sebastian into a statue.” I'd seen him at EAS, in the same room I'd seen the Pounce Pot.

“Yes,” said Arica, “and despite all her sorcery, Solange could not turn him back.”

“She was a sorceress when she was a Character?” I said. “How did
that
happen?”

Arica shot me a dark look, like I should know what a stupid question that was. “No one knows, and no one knows how she became so strong. She did not have such power as a child.”

Another
mystery about the Snow Queen. Just what I needed.

Arica was obviously way more interested in her story. “Solange and Mildred couldn't carry Sebastian, so they had to leave him behind. Three months later, Solange lost Mildred to the Sleeping Beauty curse, and she was alone.” She sounded so proud of herself, but Solange had been a kid then—a Character just like me, facing a destiny she wasn't sure she could handle.

“I sang the day I heard of it. I sang the news straight into Sebastian's ear,” said the sorceress. “One day, after her curse was broken, Mildred and her husband came to collect Sebastian. She paid me with a comb that could keep the Snow Queen from crossing my threshold, and I was happy to receive it—I knew it was only a matter of time before Solange came for her revenge.”

Yeah, well, I couldn't fault Solange for that. Look what I'd done when Mark bit Lena. “What did the Director want with Sebastian?” It obviously wasn't to break the spell.

“Poor naive Mildred, she rolled the boy into battle,” said Arica
gleefully. “Fresh from her curse, she did not know her friend was beyond saving. She asked Solange what Sebastian would think if he could see them. And in answer, the Snow Queen thrust an icicle through the heart of Mildred's beloved.”

I'd known Solange had killed the Director's husband right in front of her, but not why. Geez. “And the Director swore a Binding Oath to stop the Snow Queen.” No wonder the Canon had refused to explain all this to me, Lena, and Chase. The last Triumvirate was so messed up.

That couldn't be our future. It didn't matter what had transformed Solange from a Character mourning her friends to the villain hurting them. I wouldn't become her. Never.

“She wasn't the Director of you Ever Afters then,” said Arica, “but yes. The best friends make for the best enemies. With Mildred's help, they defeated her.”

And they hid Sebastian away, deep inside EAS.

“But even Mildred could not stop her for long,” said Arica.

I knew she meant that was my job, but the Pounce Pot wouldn't let her say so.

“Are you so blind?” Arica said, annoyed with me. I fought the urge to remind her which one of us had turned the other one into a flower-bird. “Solange will come after your loved ones before she comes after you, because that's what happened to
her
.”

The thought sliced through my little petal body, straight into my tiny heart.

Down the hall, the front door squeaked open. “Hello? Rory?!”

Chase.

I panicked.

“R—” That was as far as I got in my
Run! Save yourself!
speech. Arica flapped both hands at me, and it was like she'd hit the mute
button on my squeaky-toy voice. No matter how much I squawked, no noise came out.

“Don't worry, my little one—you will both leave this place. I want what you want. I want Solange dead,” she said. That was definitely
not
what I wanted, but I couldn't exactly argue. “However, you must allow me my little games. I cannot leave this house, but I
can
keep my reputation intact.”

“Where are you?” Chase called again, his voice closer now. “The others are coming in after us if we don't leave in ten minutes.”

“In here!” Arica called, and she used
my voice
.

Oh no.

She stepped away from the cages, and when she flicked her mask down, she was wearing my
body
too, plus my new sword belt, my carryall, and my jeans, complete with the pizza sauce stain on the knee. She smiled at me, but it wasn't
my
smile—it showed way too many teeth.

Chase
had
to know that wasn't me.

He walked in, his sword swinging at his side. “Hey. Where's the sorceress?” he asked Arica.

If Arica had been impersonating
him
, I would have guessed right away. I tried to yell again, indignantly, but no sound came.

“Getting the comb. She'll be back in a minute,” Arica-Rory said. “Then we can get out of here.”

Chase nodded, glancing around the room. I threw my little body against the cage bars, waving my wings frantically, but it didn't do any good. All the other flower-birds were doing exactly the same thing. “Yeah. Can't say much for her decorator.”

“I think they're pretty. But thanks for the rescue,” said Arica-Rory, smiling at him with a syrupy Adelaide-like smile. Then she made a huge mistake: She slipped her hand through Chase's.

He would know
now
. Maybe Sebastian and Solange had had been like that, but never in my life had I ever grabbed Chase's hand. Not unless I was dragging him away from a dragon or trying to break an enchantment.

But he just stared at her and then their hands. He didn't even drop it.

Arica-Rory's eyes shone. “We could be there by tonight.”

“Yeah,” he said in a tiny, un-Chase-like voice, the corners of his mouth tilting up, and I started to wonder if
he'd
been replaced too.

“We could kill her before the—”

Chase's sword pricked Arica-Rory's throat.

Okay. So he'd been playing along to get her to lower her guard.

“What are you doing?” said Arica-Rory, all pouty. Now she
really
reminded me of Adelaide.

“Where
is
she?” Chase hissed.

“Getting the comb—” started the sorceress.

“No, Arica—where's the real Rory?” Chase pushed the blade closer to her skin. “And get out of her body before I cut it to pieces.”

Now she smiled with the smile that wasn't mine, and she flicked her mask up again, revealing her true ancient face. “You wouldn't want that. My death would bring yours. Only my magic is holding this house together, and it will vanish if you kill me. The roof will collapse and crush you all. Better to simply ask me to break the spell.”

“
What
spell?” Chase's gaze strayed to the flower-birds. “You turned her into one of those?”

“Very good. You're quicker than she is,” said Arica. I resented that like whoa. “If you can tell me which one she is, the comb is yours.”

“I could torture you until you turned her back,” Chase said,
and for a second, I thought he really might do it. He looked mad enough.

I really hoped he didn't. This whole day was already guaranteed to give me nightmares.

“Finding her in the crowd would be faster,” said Arica calmly.

Chase didn't lower his weapon, but he skimmed the cages.

“Me! It's me!” the flower-birds chirped, throwing themselves at the cage bars. I stopped feeling sorry for them. Now that I was enchanted, it was every flower-bird for herself.

I figured waving just one wing would look pretty human, but trying threw my cage off balance. It swung crazily, and for a second, all I could do was squeeze my eyes shut and trust my stupid stem legs to hold on.

“There,” Chase said, and when my eyes snapped open, he was pointing straight at me. “She's the only one who looks like she's afraid of falling.”

He didn't
need
to keep telling people I was afraid of heights.

“Are you sure?” asked Arica.

“Positive. Only Rory gives me that look when I rescue her.”

I was busy wondering what
that
was supposed to mean when Arica flapped both hands at me again. My body grew—I yelped when that sharp twist hit me, and yelped again when the twiggy cage busted to pieces around me—and then I was
falling
. Thirty feet to the floor.

Luckily I crashed into someone first. Chase. I'd knocked him flat.

He looked me over, his peach-orange wings fluttering into view behind him. He must have flown to get over to me so fast. “You okay?”

“Yeah, you threw me a little bit when you let her grab your hand.
You
know
I'd never do that.” I stood, reaching out to help him.

Chase's jaw clenched. He knocked my hand away and got to his feet.

Arica laughed, a soft sound that made all the flower-birds go a little crazy, screeching and flapping their wings. “Oh, Rory. You
are
blind.”

That did
not
help my mood.

I drew my sword. The sorceress took a nervous step back, but I turned to the puppets sitting quietly in the corner, hacked off the dragon's tail, and tucked it and all its nice scales under my arm. “I was going to ask nicely if I could have this, but then you turned me into a
bird
. Maybe I should just keep chopping to make sure you can't catch anyone else.”

Chase caught on fast. He pointed his sword at the woman puppet. “Give us the comb, or the puppets get it.”

“Such impatience.” From her pocket, the sorceress drew out a comb, decorated with the same emerald-and-silver tree as the others. She held it out and said, “I will even pass on a warning: that comb may not help you. I threw it across my threshold when Solange came for her revenge. Magic cannot pass through its bars, and the walls here were fortified with similar protective enchantments. And so, instead, the Snow Queen cast her spell over the house itself, locking me inside this crumbling prison.”

Oh. Well, I guessed that explained why she wanted to kill Solange.

“Sucks for you,” Chase said. Then he stomped down the hallway. I hurried after him.

“Protect them, Rory. Doubtless, you'll need their help,” the sorceress called, but I slammed the door behind me.

The enchantment had left me kind of confused, but I didn't
know what Chase's excuse was. By the time I'd caught up to him, he had his hand on the front door's handle.

“Chase,
wait
!” I said, throwing myself against the door before he could walk out.

“I don't want to talk about it, Rory,” he said at the same time I started, “Your wings—”