Of Witches and Wind (36 page)

“Great choice in friends, Chase,” Kenneth said.

Chase would defend me. He had stood up for me in front of the Snow Queen. Of course, he'd do the same with kids only a year older than us.

“Yeah, well,” said Chase uncomfortably, “there's not exactly a wide selection in the seventh grade.”

No. Don't say that.

“If I may extend such an invitation,” Ben said, “you're always welcome to hang out with us eighth graders.”

Chase's face lit up. Of course he would jump at the chance. They were guys, and besides, they were closer to his real age than Lena and I—

My sneaker found an uneven ridge of mirror, one I didn't see,
because it reflected twin images of my ponytail. As soon as I stumbled, I threw both hands out to catch myself. But that was a mistake too—the ring on my left hand was too strong. I smashed through the fragile mirror, and the cavern filled with the tinkling of broken glass.

God. I
was
a walking disaster.

“Rory!” Lena cried.

“I'm okay.” But I wasn't. Something warm and wet filled my palm. Blood. I was cut somewhere.

“What happened? What is it?” Chase sounded pretty panicked for someone who was only hanging out with me and Lena until someone better came along. “Did the troll king decide to come after you anyway?”

“No, calm down—I just tripped.” The cut started to hurt, and that helped me think a little more clearly. “Lena, I still need to go straight, right?”

Lena paused, retracing the maze. “Yeah.”

I couldn't listen to many more of these.
I should really put my hands over my ears.
But then I wouldn't be able to hear Lena's directions.

One more scene emerged from the clutter of sneakers and big chins, a mirror filled with round tables. At one of them, a couple held hands across the violet tablecloth. Brie stared at Dad as he twirled a spoon in his soup.

I cringed. I couldn't hear this one, not right now. I hurried down the path between the mirrors, hoping to outrun whatever was coming out of Dad's mouth.

“Rory, what is it? Do you see something?” Lena asked.

“A skeleton?” Chase said, hushed.

My voice was thick, my cheeks wet. I was already crying, and Dad hadn't said even anything yet. “Lena, just tell me when to turn.”

“There's still a hundred yards to go,” Lena said.

“You're right, Brie,” said Dad's image to my right. “Rory didn't turn out like I hoped. But we can have other kids.”

One sob escaped before I could slap a hand over my mouth, and the noise echoed all around me.

“Was that you?” The idea obviously freaked Chase out more than the skeleton.

“What's wrong? What did you see?” Lena asked.

“It's okay.” A hiccup-y sob crept into the middle of the sentence. My eyes were full of tears. I rubbed them away quickly and strode forward, hugging my bloody left hand to my chest so I wouldn't accidentally break anything else.

I'd suspected that Dad didn't need me in his life—hadn't wanted me for a while now.

“Rory, talk to us,” Chase said.

If I couldn't talk without crying, I wouldn't talk at all. I had to find the stupid scepter.

Ahead and to the right I spotted the long, elf-size tables, the furnaces full of fire salamanders, the golden harp gleaming on top of Lena's workstation, and my friend bent over a book.

“Oh, my gumdrops,” Lena breathed.

“Don't gumdrops now. Do something,” Chase snapped. “I'm in manacles, so it'll have to be you.”

“Rory, look at us. Take the mirror out of your pocket!”

But her voice blended with the other Lena's. “I know Rory's not as smart as me. But sometimes I wish she was just a little quicker. I mean, it just gets so tedious having to explain things all the time. Can't she do her own research?”

No wonder my dad hadn't stuck up for me, didn't want me—I was worse than useless.

I stopped, just for a second. I couldn't help it.

No. These were just words. Was this really worse than fifty armed trolls? What was the point of crying?

My steps were slow, but at least my legs moved when I told them to.

Walking out of earshot of the Lena-in-the-mirror scene, I pulled the M3 out of my pocket. I licked my lips and tasted tears.

Chase looked horrified. If he'd been on the fence about whether or not he should be my friend, seeing me cry was definitely making the choice easier.

“Lena?” I don't know what I would have said or asked, but when her image replaced Chase's, I saw the pillow behind her—recognized the gilded woodwork on the sky blue wall behind her. “Are you in bed?”

“You're crying,” Lena said, pulling the M3 closer. “You have to tell us what's wrong.”

“Lena, you're in the infirmary,” I said.

She couldn't deny it. Melodie leaned toward the M3, enthusiastically nodding her golden head.

“Yeah,” Lena said with a small cough, clearly not happy about it. “But I've got everything I need to help you here. Look.”

She reached toward the M3. Her palms filled the screen for an instant, and the bottom dropped out of my stomach. Dark gray lines crept up her hands. The final stages of cockatrice poisoning. Pretty soon she would be as bad off as Rumpelstiltskin.

Lena tilted the M3 toward her table. The golden harp stood above books, dragon scales, various herbs, and the bowl of water that held the scrying spell.

Melodie wrung her hands. “Hi.”

If I stayed here crying, wasting time figuring this out, we would run out of time.

I didn't care what Lena had said about me. She didn't deserve to die.

“Lena, I need you to draw a map of the maze and mark the fastest way to the center. Then I need you to leave it flat on top of the mirror.” I knew I'd said the right thing when Melodie smiled.

Lena's chin jutted out. “But I can—”

“I hear stuff that you guys can't. I need to plug up my ears.” I drew my sword, sliced my shirt, and ripped off a strip. I cut away two bits for my ears and used the rest of it to bind up my bleeding left hand. “I won't be able to hear you anymore when you give me directions.”

Her face fell. She reached over to her nightstand for a pen and paper.

I'd hurt her feelings, and a part of me—the part of me furious at her for calling me stupid when I was trying so hard to save her—was kind of glad. I
was
a terrible person.

Chase came back, scowling. “You won't be able to hear anything else, either. The troll king could ambush you.”

I couldn't meet his eyes right then, so I concentrated on tying the bandage one-handed. “This is the only way. You need to sign off too, Chase. If you keep talking, you'll cut in on Lena's signal, and I won't be able to see the map.” And then he could hang out with his new friends as much as he wanted.

Chase's face closed. “Okay. Mirror, mirror, go to sleep, they'll leave a message after the beep.” His image disappeared.

Lena didn't look too happy either as she sketched. It took her
an excessively long time and I nearly had second thoughts—the maze must have been bigger than I thought. Then she finally finished her drawing and turned it facedown on top of the mirror.

“We'll be back soon, Lena.” But if she said anything else, I didn't hear it. I'd already stuffed the torn scraps of shirt in my ears.

Checking the map, I found the next turn and followed it. I wasn't exactly surprised to see a scene of Lena and Melodie in the ballroom infirmary up on my right, but I definitely didn't want to hear what Lena had to say about me now. I clapped my hands over my ears, humming as I ran past.

A big improvement.

•  •  •

Even with Lena's map, I hit about a thousand dead ends. The mirrors were too confusing. I only saw a few more scenes—one of Chase on a dark beach, and another of my dad at his car, and one of Rapunzel speaking to someone through an M3, but I didn't stop to torture myself anymore. I didn't know how long the maze took. The mirror vault messed up my sense of time. It felt like only thirty minutes or so, but by the end of the maze, my feet throbbed. My shoulders ached under the straps of my carryall, and my eyelids scraped over my dry eyes every time I blinked. Hours must have gone by.

Finally the path widened and funneled out to a door made of black marble. Four statues stood guard at the columns—the regular kind, not the enchanted kind. They wore golden outfits somewhere between togas and dinner gowns, their shaved heads held high, their ears and their noses sticking out from their skulls in perfect triangles, their skin dusted with gold. They were at least two feet taller than me.

The goblin priestesses. They had to be. But they just seemed so . . .
dignified. Most of the goblins we ran into were a lot seedier. These were a whole different kind of intimidating.

And as glad as I was not to see more mirrors, I still drew my sword. With the night I was having, something worse than this vault might be waiting on the other side.

I opened the door.

The closet space inside was empty except for two things—a pedestal and the two-foot-tall silver birch tree sitting on top, glinting in the moonlight.

I picked it up cautiously, expecting a trap, but the scariest thing that happened was me almost dropping the scepter of the Birch clan on my foot. It was a lot heavier than I had expected.

Well. That part was easy.

Touching it, I'd expected to feel triumphant, or at least relieved. Hollowness gnawed at my insides.

We had the Birch scepter, but that only solved one of our problems. We needed to force Fael to tell us where the spring was. We only had three days left to find the spring—not enough time to just go searching.

I lowered the scepter gently to the floor and sheathed my sword.

I pulled the T-shirt bits out of my ears cautiously, but I didn't hear anything except how hard I was breathing. I slipped the M3 onto the pedestal. “Lena?”

The map disappeared, and then the M3 showed a picture of Lena—not as she was when I'd seen my best friend last, but healthier, happier.
Hello! I'm not here right now, but please leave a message and I'll get back to you via mini magic mirror as soon as I can. Thanks! Bye!

She was either asleep or I'd hurt her feelings so bad she didn't want to talk to me until I had the Water of Life for her.

Easing my carryall over the scepter, I sighed and tried again. “Chase?”

“Rory? RORY?” His eyes were humongous. Sand stuck to half his face.

“It's okay,” I said, showing him the silver tree inside my carryall. “I got it.”

“You have to put it in his hands. Fael said—” A gauntlet arm reached for Chase, but he wrestled away from it. “He's taken us to—”

Two more hands came into the picture—with a piece of silk stretched between them—and gagged Chase.

Another mistake. I'd told Fael I would need to be able to reach Chase at any time, but I hadn't said Chase had to be able to talk back when I spoke to him. I wondered how long it had taken Fael to figure out that little loophole.

“It doesn't matter.” I reached into my carryall and felt around all the glass bottles until I found the baby food–size jar. “I'll take Lena's temporary transport spell back to the beach, give this dumb scepter to Fael, and everyone will be fine.”

But Chase still struggled—while I carefully painted the frame attached to the marble door, when I set the bottle and brush down carefully on the floor stripe, and even while I read the spell from the paper Lena had written out for me.

I didn't realize what he was so upset about until I stepped through the doorway and onto Atlantis sand. The sky was charcoal, and greenish-gray waves lapped the abandoned beach.

Prince Fael had taken the questers somewhere else.

And by the looks of things, I had less than an hour to find them before the sun rose.

couldn't believe this night wasn't over already.