Of Witches and Wind (44 page)

No, we wouldn't die.

“After all,” the Snow Queen added, “you didn't even tell Melodie what Mia was before you cut off all communication with your Chapter. Rapunzel is the only suspect. Well, besides the witches, and all the witches are disposable.”

She will attack you with words,
Rapunzel had said.

Well, that was obvious, especially after the mirror vault and the staircase of talking stones.

I just needed more time. My mind raced back over what Rapunzel had told me the day we left. The part that hadn't come true yet, that would get us out of here.

“Why do you want the Water of Life?” I asked.

“Who doesn't?” she replied. “Next question.”

Chase took over distracting duty. “Tell us how you and Rory are alike, then.”

“You—” But then Solange made the same expression everybody
made, like she'd swallowed her tongue. Fury crossed her face. She didn't like losing control any more than the Director did.

“Two words, Snow Queen: Pounce Pot,” Chase said gleefully. “I just wanted to see if I could get you to shut up.”

Where others see a wall, or a mountain range, you see an escape
.

The snowy peaks gleamed through the glass. Rapunzel had meant
this
wall. This was the way out.

On the other side, the rings of return would take us back to EAS. If we could just smash through, we would have an exit for approximately 1.1 seconds. Even the Snow Queen couldn't reach us that fast.

And I just happened to have a new ring that specialized in smashing.

“You are nothing compared to me, Rory.” The Snow Queen had apparently gotten her tongue back, and she sounded extremely happy about it.

Good. She hadn't noticed I finally had a plan.

“Guys,” I whispered, “I think this Tale needs more broken glass.”

Ben stared at me like I'd lost my mind. “What?”

Chase understood. He glanced at the wall over my shoulder, sighed deeply, and shoved the M3 in his pocket.

“I will kill you today, of course, but I was to be your future. I was the direction your life was headed,” said the Snow Queen. I thought she was just confirming my Destiny, but then she added, “You would have become me, if you had lived.”

The idea hit me like ice injected straight into my bones, but my left hand curled into a fist. A new breeze rippled over my arm.

Chase grabbed my other hand and Ben's shoulder, and he gave me a look that clearly said,
This is going to hurt, and I blame you
.

Then the Snow Queen was on her feet. “No!”

I punched through the wall of the Glass Mountain. A hundred thousand clear slivers fell over us like confetti, and I dragged us through.

e tumbled to the ground. The grass burned my knees. Through the new slices in my jeans, tiny new cuts welled up red—like a rash of paper cuts. I looked up.

The Tree of Life's branches stretched across the sky. We were back. The courtyard hadn't even changed. Waves lapped the Tree's roots, and sea breezes rippled through the leaves.

I ripped my pack off and unzipped it.

Ben moaned, clutching his shoulder. “I think I've been shot. Can you say you've been shot when you get hit with a throwing star?”

Chase's face had the same paper-cut rash. “I got him, Rory. Go save Lena.”

Then, a bottle in hand, I sprinted across the courtyard. I threw open the door to the infirmary. Hundreds of faces turned to me, but none of them were Lena's. “Melodie, you little gold dummy, scream if you're right next to Lena!”

“YOU MADE IT OUT OF THE GLASS MOUNTAIN A SECOND TIME?”

The voice came from the row on the right, eight beds down. Then I spotted Lena, lying way too still, her breath rasping way too loud. I leaped across the room in three strides and knelt on her
cot, unscrewing the lid and pouring a quarter of the bottle into her open mouth.

“She doesn't need that much,” Melodie said, disapproving.

The snaky vines under Lena's skin disappeared. Her lips grew pink again. Then she sat up, choking, raising her hands to her mouth. The Water of Life dribbled through her fingers. “Oh, no—I just wasted so much of it. If I could have just spit it into a cup—”

I grabbed her by both shoulders and hugged her so hard that the wet spot on her T-shirt bled a wet spot on mine. “Lena, why wouldn't you stay in bed? I told you to rest.”

Those aforementioned hundreds of faces stared at us from the beds stretching out beyond her, but then a voice from the ballroom door made everyone turn away.

“Mother?”

Ben held a water bottle in both hands, searching the faces just like I had.

“Benjamin!” A few beds beyond Lena, Mrs. Taylor sat up weakly.

Every eye in the infirmary watched him as he sprinted down the hall.

“Hello, Miss Rory. You better have a little Water of Life yourself.” Lena's grandmother sat right next to us, an apron over her rumpled navy suit. She would have looked like she was just politely welcoming me inside for dinner—if she hadn't had tears in her eyes.

I obediently took the tiniest sip possible from the water bottle. The stinging paper-cut rash immediately cleared up, and some glass fell from my left forearm and clattered to the floor.

Lena frowned at the dime-size pieces. “Rory, sometimes I think you're way too tough for your own good.”

Wiping her tears away, Mrs. LaMarelle stretched across me and
squeezed Lena's hand. “I take it you had some trouble with the quest?”

“No more than usual.” Grinning, Chase strolled into the infirmary, his arms full of Lena's special bottles. My neon-green carryall hung from his shoulder. “Okay, which of you nurses want to take these off our hands? They've got Water of Life in them. Fresh from the spring.”

The whole room perked up. The practice dummies clanked forward to take them. Mrs. LaMarelle stood to help and took the golden harp with her.

Jenny brought the eyedroppers. “Everyone needs three drops each. That's what Gretel says.”

Ben unscrewed the water bottle and helped his mother sip from it anxiously. Mrs. Taylor's color immediately returned, but as soon as she put on her glasses, she paled again. “You're covered in blood.”

“Just my clothes, Mother.” Then he turned to the bed beside him, where Darcy stroked her brother's spotted back. The fawn was apparently too sick to lift his head from her leg cast. “For you, milady Darcy.”

Trembling, Darcy took the bottle and carefully poured a little water into Bryan's mouth.

One second he was a sleeping fawn, and the next he was a boy hastily covering himself with a blanket before we could recognize what body part that big shock of skin belonged to.

“You couldn't have waited until I got clothes?” Bryan asked his sister. His hair was the exact same shade of brown as his fawn fur had been. “I'm never going to live this down.”

Almost every Character in the infirmary laughed, and for the first time ever, I saw Bryan blush.

We were still missing something.

Then Jenny passed by, staring into her bottle. “Is the Water of Life supposed to look like breakfast?”

No, we were still missing
someone
.

I snatched the bottle away from her. “This one has Chatty.”

Ben and Chase suddenly looked a lot less smug.

“No, wait. I have an idea.” I grabbed an eyedropper and the Water of Life I had used to heal Lena. “You coming?”

“I'll be back soon, Mother,” Ben told Mrs. Taylor, who looked kind of shocked to be abandoned so soon after her miraculous recovery.

“Now?” Lena glanced at the iron practice dummies moving from bed to bed with their eyedroppers.

“Didn't we all just escape certain death?” Chase said.

“Now. We have only about three minutes before the Director gets healed and takes over.” I pointed at the exit.

They followed me to the shore outside, and I knelt in the sand. The Water of Life had worked on Ben's enchantment, and on Bryan's. As long as mermaids weren't completely different from humans, it might just work for Chatty.

“You guys are covered in glass.” Lena brushed a fine, clear powder off my shoulders. “What did you do? Punch through every wall in the Glass Mountain?”

I filled up the eyedropper. “Not all of them.”

“Just the outer one,” said Ben.

“Oh,” Lena said, impressed and jealous. “I can't believe you guys went to the Glass Mountain without me. Again.”

Chase grinned. “That's the last time Rory and I visit the Snow Queen without you, I promise.”

“Yeah, you could have definitely taken my place,” said Ben.

“Here it goes!” Unscrewing Chatty's lid, I held the eyedropper over the top and counted out five drops. It started to steam. “Lena, quick—good or bad sign?”

“Pour it! If she re-forms inside, she could get hurt!” Lena dumped out the bottle before I could tell her how hard it had been to spoon Chatty in there the first time.

But a mermaid splashed headfirst into the waves, her powerful cobalt tail lashing out hard. Ben fell over. I couldn't tell if he had actually gotten hit or if he was just surprised.

Then Chatty sat up in the shallows, still wearing the faded green T-shirt she had been wearing that morning. “Look! I'm not dead! Or sea foam!” She pressed both hands to her face, checking to make sure she still had two eyes, two lips, and a nose. A beige glob came away with her hand. She sniffed it delicately. “Who thought I needed an oatmeal facial?” Then she spotted Ben, who was staring at her tail. She dove under with a little “eeep.”

“Right,” Ben said. “Well, I wouldn't want to see me either.”

“I was going to ask her for some of her hair,” Lena said, so disappointed that I knew she'd wanted to use it for spells.

But Chatty came back up, her face clean. She was fine. She wasn't even missing any body parts.

“Hey,” said Ben.

“Where's Mia?” Chatty asked, clearly not happy with him.

Ben wiped his palms on his bloody jeans. “Turns out she's evil.”

Lena gasped. “She was?”

“Puppet. Controlled by the Snow Queen,” explained Chase swiftly.

“I knew it. She kept snooping in my workshop,” Lena said, like this was an obvious sign of villainy.

“Oh.” Chatty tried not to smile and failed. Then she looked
exactly like she did right after she had pulled some sort of prank. “Well, then.”

“So,” Ben said awkwardly, “have I said I'm sorry yet?”

Chatty cupped a hand behind her ear. “Could you repeat that? Mermaids are kind of hard of hearing.”

I grinned so wide my cheeks hurt.

“I'm sorry,” Ben said louder.

“Dude, she's messing with you. Mermaids hear fine,” Chase said, and Chatty stuck her tongue out at him.

“I have a question,” Ben said. “What's your real name?”

“I have fifty names. It's a mermaid thing.” She rolled her eyes. “But my sisters call me Sherah.”

“I'm not calling you anything but Chatty,” Chase said.

“See if I answer,” the mermaid shot back.

We were safe. I sat back on my heels, my hands twisting in my shirt to hide how much they were shaking. We were
more
than safe. We had saved EAS.

Relief turned my bones to liquid, and I breathed out slowly.

Lena saw my face. She hugged me so hard her shoulder pressed into my windpipe. “It's okay now, Rory.”

But I was barely listening. The door to the infirmary banged open. The Director glided out, clutching a bathrobe around her as elegantly as a fine silk coat. You could tell by the tilt of her chin that she felt better, and that she was back in charge.

“Take her to the dungeon,” she told the Characters coming out behind her.

Then Hansel and Stu walked out, fully recovered too, ushering Rapunzel between them. This time Rapunzel didn't struggle. Her head hung low, her hair trailing over the ground like a cloak, picking up stray leaves.