The Wizards of Once Page 15
“The Witch will have let you take Squeezjoos away!” said Caliburn, hovering in terror over the stone. “Whereas it won’t want to let you go at all…”
With her hands stuck to the stone, she couldn’t perform Magic independently of the Witch, even if she had known how to perform Magic in the first place. Any separate thought was being sucked out of her through those hands. She could feel the numbing effect of the Witch’s thoughts entwining with her own, as if she were being eaten by a large animal and was coming around to its point of view in the digestion process.
After all, the Warriors have sworn to destroy Magic, so it is perfectly reasonable for Witches to fight back… said her thoughts, and she did not know whether they were her own or the Witch’s.
“GIVE ME YOUR MAGIC GIVE ME YOUR MAGIC GIVE ME YOUR MAGIC…”
Wish could see right into the Kingwitch’s body where his two black hearts were beating, and every little artery was lit up like a tiny green network of roads or the veins on a leaf. But there were other roads too: roads of Magic crisscrossing the Kingwitch’s bright green arteries, tiny little paths winding through a white forest.
Both the Kingwitch’s palms were pressing right up against the stone, on the inside, exactly opposite where Wish’s hands were stuck on the outside, and she could feel the Magic flowing out of her fingers and into the hands of the Kingwitch in steady, rhythmic pulses in time to the beating of her heart.
I wish to get away… I wish… I wish… I wish… wished Wish.
Chaos in the chamber of Magic-removal as the hypnotic chanting of the Witch grew deafeningly stronger, and the sprites let off their spells randomly, and the snowcats howled and roared.
“FIGHT IT!” cried Caliburn. “TRY WITH EVERYTHING YOU HAVE TO BREAK AWAY! BE DISOBEDIENT! Think of Xar, defying his father! Get angry, Wish, and fight back! Curse the Witch! Don’t give up your Magic because you think that’s what a Warrior ought to do!”
Wish thought of Xar, earlier in the camp, yelling at his father, and as she did so, she could see the flow of Magic going from her to the Witch slowing.
“It’s too late…” said Bodkin. “The stone is moving…”
The stone had begun to rock, gently at first, and then wilder, faster, wilder, faster.
Oh Witches’ whiskers and murmuring mistletoe and yellow toenails of the barmiest bog-ogres in bogdom, thought Bodkin.
The Witch might have finally soaked up enough Magic to break out of the stone!
“Leave! Leave! Leave!” shrieked the sprites and the hairy fairies, burning bright as meteors.
But they couldn’t leave Wish there on her own. Not Bodkin, not Xar, not Caliburn, not the snowcats, not even the sprites.
Sprites have a bad name for themselves. People say they are treacherous, flighty creatures who do not know the meaning of love, or loyalty.
But all I can say is: These sprites, despite their terror at the rocking stone, at the Witch about to emerge, at the fear of death itself, stayed by their master’s side. They were hissing and spitting like bonfires, but nonetheless they stayed.
Without thinking, Xar drew the Enchanted Sword.
The light shone on the blade.
Once there were Witches…
…but I killed them.
He held the sword up over his head, gave a great big yell, and plunged it right into the stone with all his strength.
Of course, that ought to be impossible. A sword made of iron… to enter a stone?
But that Magic sword sank into the stone right up to the hilt, as if Xar were plunging it into the earth.
BOOOOOOMMMMM!
Every single strand of Wish’s hair sprang up and shone like fire. A smell of burning hair added to the smoke of the room. The door of the chamber exploded out of its hinges and slammed into the opposite wall. Lightning shot off the surface of the stone, and Wish was catapulted off it. She shot backward through the air and landed with a horrible thud at the back of the room.
Little lines shot all over the surface of the stone, just like the lines that appear on an egg before a chick is born.
“The stone is cracking!” screamed Tiffinstorm. “The stone is cracking!”
The stone cracked from side to side.
A great jagged split an inch wide zigzagged across the stone with the sword stuck in the center of it.
And out of that split, something slithered.
20. The Story Gets Even Twistier
At first the something looked like a little slick of black oil, leaking out of the stone, like the yolk leaking out of a broken shell.
It couldn’t be the Kingwitch, could it, for how could that thing they had seen inside there creep out of a split only an inch wide?
Surely the Witch must be dead, when a great big Witch-killing sword had been driven right into the stone enclosing it?
That must be the dead Witch’s blood, leaking out of the broken stone.
But in front of their eyes, the pool of liquid grew larger and larger.
And then the black water solidified, turned in front of their eyes into something flesh and blood that moved, a real and living body.
A feathery, soggy scarecrow of a something, feathers soaking wet.
Sometimes people like to reassure themselves that Witches can’t possibly ever have been as bad as the fairy stories said they were. One look at the Kingwitch told you that they were every bit as bad, and maybe even somewhat worse.
Just looking at a Witch has been known to scare a person to death. They can, of course, assume many forms, some of them quite pleasant, but mostly they find it helpful to look as scary as possible.
The thing had a nose like a knife, so razor-sharp and pointy at the end that it looked like you could cut onions with it. There were just two black holes instead of eyes on either side, like deep wells with something flinty and slimy as mercury glinting queasily at the bottom of them. The mouth dripping that revolting black saliva from the fangs. Jaws that could unhinge to swallow a deer in one gulp. A body like a human mixed with a panther and those black feathery wings.
All in all, the Kingwitch was not a pretty sight.
Power reeked from that slithering thing, as slowly, slowly he unfurled his wet black wings to their full extent, and they dripped onto the dungeon floor, black smoking drips, as he lifted his beak and looked straight at Xar and Bodkin.
And then he vanished.
“Where is it… Where is it?” said Xar, whirling around.
The animals howled in horror, the sprites opened up their fang-filled mouths and shrieked in fear, for there are few things more scary than an enemy you cannot see.
Wish, over on the other side of the room, picked herself up, shaking.
“Nobody panic…” said Caliburn, panicking like crazy. “Where is it? Can anyone see it?”
The three of them whirled around and around, trying to see the invisible Witch.
But there was nothing there.
“It’s going to attack Wish!” said Xar. He knew this, but he wasn’t sure why.
Sure enough, the air above Wish seemed to thicken and darken.
Bravely, the Enchanted Spoon, standing on Wish’s head, turned to face that darkness.
But an Enchanted Spoon is the sort of thing you might want on your side if you were making dessert, not if you are facing one of the most terrifying life-forms who has ever walked this planet.
Xar tried to drag the sword out of the stone, but it was stuck fast, as if it had been rooted there all along. However hard he pulled, it would not budge.
So with another bloodcurdling yell, completely unarmed, Xar, the boy who cared for nobody but himself, launched himself at the diving Witch.
As the Witch screeched downward, diving at Wish, he was turning himself visible as he plunged, and turning yourself visible is not as easy or p
ainless as lighting a candle. It looked, indeed, as if the atmosphere itself were being ripped apart like a curtain, as first the head appeared, half melting at the edges with black sparks and smoke, and then, with a terrible smell of burning feathers, the Witch himself, screaming like a falcon.
Wish ducked automatically.
The Witch had been aiming straight for her head, intending to tear it off. (Dear little creatures, these Witches, aren’t they?)
But Xar and the snowcats leaped the mightiest leaps they had ever leaped, and they caught the diving Witch by his tail.
So instead the Witch’s talons scraped across Wish’s face, ripping off her eyepatch as the Witch soared up into the air, and Wish yelled and put her hands over her head as she fell to the floor.
With a furious scream, the Witch shook off Xar and the snowcats, swirling around viciously, and turned to attack the insignificant and irritating human boy who had shoved the sword into the stone, and frustrated his pursuit of Wish.
The Witch smiled, and oh by mistletoe and all things sweet and juicy and poisonous, a Witch’s grin is a terrible thing. He unhinged his jaws, so that he could swallow Xar in one gulp.
The hot Witch’s breath reeked so revoltingly of rotten eggs and death that Xar nearly passed out from the stink of it.
At least I’m going to die gloriously, thought Xar through his terror, not some kind of non-entity. I’ll be the first person to be killed by a Witch in hundreds and hundreds of years…
How like Xar to be thinking of fame and glory even at the point of death.
The Witch swooped. This time he would not miss.
21. Wishing
Bodkin shouted, “No!”
Over in the other corner of the room, Bodkin saw Wish uncurl her hands from over her face.
She lifted her head, and she too shouted, “NO!!”
The Witch had torn off her eyepatch, and it had fallen to the floor.
Wish’s eye that was normally hidden underneath the eyepatch was closed and there was a deep scratch over it. It was ever so slightly larger than the other eye, and all around the edge was a deep purple bruise, as if the poor human skin found the burning force of it difficult to bear.
As Wish shouted, she opened her eyelid just a tiny, tiny crack, and the color of the eye underneath was very odd indeed. It was a color that no one had ever seen before, a hitherto-unimagined color. I can’t describe it, apart from comparing it to other things. It was a color that managed to be both warm and cold at the same time, a color that reminded you of volcanoes, of thunderstorms, of electricity, of POWER.
Wish could feel the power within her, and it was truly terrifying, a rage and a riot, a thunderstorm in her head, so violent it made her head ache as if goblins were hammering it from the inside. The individual hairs on her head twitched upward vertically in the air.
A confused sickening wind ricocheted around the room, sending the sprites and the feathers and the dust bowling through the air, and the floor bent and shivered like it was a nauseated sea.
In the depths of that extraordinary eye, strange clouds formed, like the beginning and the churning and the building of ideas, and there was a tiny snapping noise and…
… the Magic screamed out of Wish’s eye so forcefully you could see the impossible color of it, in the shape of a bent and twisted star, hitting the Witch at exactly the same moment that the Witch pointed his taloned finger to shoot one piercing blast of white-hot Magic back at Wish.
… And then…
BANG!!!!!
The Witch exploded into a mass of charcoal and black feathers.
Bodkin and Xar and the snowcats were blown off their feet.
The dust and feathers of the Witch fell through the air like dark rain.
22. Making Amends and Paying the Price
The walls and the floor ceased their wild shaking and came to a shuddering halt with such violent abruptness that a few large stones fell out of the doorway.
“Oh my goodness… I don’t believe it… I did it!” Xar gasped in astonishment, raising himself onto one elbow, coughing and spluttering, and then staggering to his feet in the dust clouds, trying to catch the dropping feathers in his joy. “I killed the Witch!
“Wake up, Assistant Bodyguard, wake up!” Xar gently prodded the prone body of Bodkin with his foot, for Bodkin had fainted once again with the shock of it. “I’VE KILLED THE WITCH! I DID IT!”
“The Witch iss dead! The Witch isss dead!” sang the sprites, joyfully turning somersaults in the air.
Groggily, Bodkin came to, rubbing his head. “What happened?”
“He EXPLODED!” marveled Xar excitedly, for Xar was a boy who loved an explosion. “He actually EXPLODED! It was magnificent! The loudest explosion I have ever heard! I can’t believe you missed it!”
Xar whooped joyfully as he held out his hand to help Bodkin to his feet.
“He exploded?” said Bodkin in a dazed way, reaching out a hand to catch one of the feathers still dropping through the wreck of the room.
“Look!” said Xar, pointing at the feathers lying all around them. “That’s all that’s left of the Witch… Wish’s Magic exploded it… but it was MY brilliant sword-thrust that made him weak enough for the explosion to work.”
He raised his fists in the air: “I AM THE BOY OF DESTINY! FEEL MY POWER!!!”
“Oh my goodness, we did it!” shouted Bodkin as he realized the enormity of what they had achieved. “We’ve killed the Kingwitch! Wizards and Warriors working together!”
Xar and Bodkin hugged each other as the snowcats capered joyfully around them on the churned-up floor, howling with happiness.
“Yes, I have to admit, Wish, you were a bit of a help with that weird thing you did with your eye. What WAS that?”
Xar turned to congratulate Wish…
… but Wish was not there.
It was only then that they realized how silent it was.
The walls were not shaking; the churned-up floor was perfectly still beneath their feet.
And it wasn’t only feathers that were falling quietly through the chamber and landing on the floor beneath them.
There were also flakes like snowflakes, and each individual flake was a very unusual color.
Silence, apart from the gentle falling of black feathers, snow-of-an-unusual-color, and dust.
“But where IS Wish?” said Bodkin in a bewildered way, looking around the room, at the open doorway with the door blasted out of it. “Did you see where she went?”
“Look! The door has come off its hinges!” said Xar. “So maybe she ran out to fetch help or something…”
And then he noticed the spoon, lying motionless in the center of the floor.
Xar knelt and picked up the spoon.
It was hard and cold now that all enchantment had gone from it.
A perfectly ordinary iron dinner spoon.
Carefully, Xar laid it back down on the floor again.
Silence in the chamber of Magic-removal.
Caliburn flew to Xar’s shoulder with long, slow, reluctant wingbeats and perched there in misery.
“I am so sorry, Xar…” said Caliburn. “But in the confusion I think you did not notice a second explosion nearly at the same time as the first. Wish was taken by surprise… She was shocked into letting down her guard… The Kingwitch let off a final burst of Magic, and it hit her directly…”
“She exploded as well as the Kingwitch?” said Xar, unable to believe it because he hadn’t seen it with his own eyes.
Impossible.
Inconceivable.
Come back, Wish! thought Xar fiercely…
COME BACK!
“I WISH! I WISH! I WISH YOU WOULD COME BACK!”
But he couldn’t breathe life back into those fragments, however much he longed to.
“BREATHE! BE ALIVE AGAIN! MOVE OF YOUR OWN ACCORD!”
But the strange-colored dust that was once Wish lay cold and still, and not any of Xar’s wishing could make it move again. Even t
he very greatest conjurer in the world could not do that.
Actions have consequences. You must pay the price of making amends, and some things happen that cannot unhappen.
Xar cried.
He and Bodkin knelt down in the room, and they cried together, their heads bowed, while the black feathers and the weird-colored dust lay quiet and unmoving in a circle all around them.
Even the sprites wept, and fairies do not cry.
It is one of the things about them. They never ever cry.
But their tears dropped down onto the feathers and the snow.
And then…
And then…
And then, through streaming eyes, Xar thought he saw the edge of the spoon twitch.
He blinked.
Maybe it was an illusion.
But no, there it was again, a definite wriggle of the outline of the spoon.
“What’s happening?” whispered Bodkin with round wondering eyes.
“Whatt’sssss going on…” whispered the sprites, gripping tight to their pin-sharp needles of wands. Their hair shot out electrically. The room bristled once again with Magic.
The strangely colored little flakes of Wish lifted themselves up from the floor, a great cloud of little fragments that sang like birdsong as they flurried around in the air, shuffling and rearranging themselves as if they had some internal memory of exactly where in the infinitely complicated jigsaw puzzle that makes up a human being their tiny individual piece was supposed to be.
They never bumped into one another, those millions and millions of tiny, dusty, ashy pieces, flying around in a whirling flurry of animation, until they settled gradually onto the floor, forming the nose, eyes, ears, mouth, legs of Wish, like they were creating a sculpture out of thin air, building LIFE itself in front of Xar’s and Bodkin’s very eyes.
For a second, the perfect sculpture was still, dead, perfect but inert, the robotic outline of what once had been Wish.
But above Xar’s and Bodkin’s heads, the last fragments of Wish were forming themselves into the shape of a human heart, suspended in the air.