Of Giants and Ice (Ever Afters, The) (32 page)

Then he leaped in the air, both blades high above his head. I dodged and repositioned myself carefully so that I was in front of Lena again.

The man grunted, frustrated, and the blows fell faster.

I still sucked. I couldn’t do more than block whatever he threw at me, but somehow it was enough.

He did this flourish-y thing and stabbed at my torso eight times
in a row. I blocked the first seven and sidestepped the eighth. Then he brought each sword to a different leg. I knocked one out of the way with my sword, and I kicked the hand holding the other one.

It was like a weird runner’s high. I was only vaguely aware of my body, blocking and dodging. I couldn’t let him reach Lena, and that was the only thought in my head.

He shouted again and spun so quickly that his swords turned in one circular blur like a chainsaw. I stepped out of the way easily. “Rory! Your sword’s longer than his,” Lena told me eagerly and made a jabbing motion.

Chase was only halfway across the desk, too far to reach me in time. “No!” he shouted, too late.

I shouldn’t have tried. As soon as I moved, the man stopped spinning, and he locked my sword up with his left one.

“Fell for it!” The man hooked his hilt guard with mine and twisted the way I remembered so well from Hansel’s class. “Finally, I get to kill one of you.”

My sword left my hand, and I didn’t even
try
to catch it. I lifted one knee and then kicked up the other leg as fast as I could. My sneaker connected with his chin.

His head snapped up with a loud crack, and he stumbled back, his sword falling from his left hand.

“Whoa,” Chase said, close by.

I slid over the wood on my knees, snatched my sword from the floor, and stood up slowly, right in front of Lena.

“You little brat!” the man said, holding his jaw. He spit little white bits to the floor. “Those teeth have lasted me well over a hundred years. Now you’re
really
going to die.”

I braced myself, but then I felt a hand on my shoulder.

“Fall back, Rory,” Chase said. “I got this.”

I would never admit it to Chase, but I was incredibly glad one of Lena’s Companions actually
did
know what he was doing.

“Another one?” The man picked up the sword he’d dropped. “How many of you
are
there?”

Expecting a surprise attack at any second, I slowly sidestepped over to Lena.

“You okay?” I whispered, and she nodded without looking away from the fight.

Chase raised his sword, smirking like he does before he pulls some sort of stunt. Then he did a front flip seven feet in the air and stabbed downward as he passed over the man’s head.

The man blocked easily.

“He’s just showing off,” I said, annoyed with Chase all over again.

“Whatever you do, don’t help him,” Lena said. “You’ll only get in his way.”

I believed her. This guy was really good—good enough to keep up with Chase anyway. Chase did this cartwheel thing in midair—kick, blade, blade, kick—and the man blocked four blows, one after the other.

So, how had
I
fought him?

I remembered the runner’s high feeling and examined the Fey lettering etched into my blade. Maybe it
was
magic after all.

When I looked up again, the man was down to a single sword. “Oh, Chase stole one.”

“That’s Ferdinand,” Lena told me.

“The name of the move?”

“No, the name of the guy,” Chase said, landing lightly, and he lunged in again. “Ferdinand the Unfaithful.”

I snorted, wondering how they named these guys. “Is there a Ferdinand the
Faithful
?”

“Yep.” Then Lena grabbed my arm and pulled a few cubbyholes away from the fight. “But Chase
is
showing off. Makes him less effective.”

Ferdinand ducked under Chase’s arm and dashed for the safe. He had stolen his second sword back. Chase muttered some curses and leaped into the air after Ferdinand.

“Let him go,” Lena said unexpectedly.

“What?” Chase said, still a few feet above our heads, and privately, I agreed with him.

“The safe,” Lena reminded him.

Chase made a face, but he dropped to the floor between me and Lena, breathing hard.

“Oh, you think the safe will finish me off?” Ferdinand panted too, but he was trying to hide it. He stepped backward, toward the safe, sheathing the sword in his right hand. “This is
too
good. I’ll have to kill you
after
I open the safe, just to see the looks on your faces.”

Chase sent Lena a pleading look, but she just shook her head, her eyes on Ferdinand.

He reached up for the dial and spun it confidently. Raising one eyebrow in our direction, he turned it clockwise, then counterclockwise, and then clockwise again.

“Do you think that Searcaster gave him the combination?” I whispered to Lena.

“Yep.” Then Lena began to smile.

Ferdinand looked at us and grasped the safe’s handle firmly. The door swung open easily, but Lena’s smile didn’t falter.

Ferdinand waggled his fingers at us. “Not even a
hint
of stone.”

“Can we attack him now?” Chase said.

Lena shook her head, and Chase sighed. I could relate. I wanted to put a sword through Ferdinand myself.

“Now, I’m in a generous mood,” Ferdinand drew his second sword with a lazy flourish. “You three can choose who gets to die first. Now, my money’s on—”

Still smiling, Lena pointed at Ferdinand’s feet. We all looked down.

His boots were gray—the same smooth, granitelike gray of the safe.

“No!” Ferdinand fumbled in his pocket and pulled out a slip of paper. “I got the combination exactly right, I’m sure of it.”

We watched as the fabric of his pants turned from green to gray. The stone color had reached his knees.

“You should’ve made sure that you had the
whole
combination,” Lena said smugly.

With a cry of rage, Ferdinand threw a sword at her. I knocked it out of the way, and Chase caught it by the hilt.

My sword
had
to be magic. There was no way I knocked something out of the air
by myself
.

The stone color traveled past his waist, up his chest, toward his neck. He screamed and raised his other sword over his head.

“Too late,” Chase murmured gleefully.

The stone had reached his shoulder and his upper arm, all the way up to his elbow. His muscles froze. He couldn’t throw.

“You’ll pay for this. You’ll—” His mouth grayed and stopped moving. His eyebrows pinched together.

“I believe he’s screaming insults with his eyes,” Chase said, but then Ferdinand’s nose turned gray, and his eyes, and brows, and hair. The last thing he did was curl his fingers toward us, crookedly, like he wanted to claw our eyes, but then those became granite too.

I did pity him, but only a little.

“Lena, that was awesome. How did you do it?” I said, sheathing my sword.

“There’s a second combination.” Lena pointed to the inside of the door. “I watched Jimmy tap out a pattern. He looked like he was concentrating. I was pretty sure General Searcaster didn’t see it.”

“You were pretty sure?” Chase stared at Lena. “
You
gambled?”

Lena shrugged, pleased. “I figured we could always fight him after he opened the safe. The harp would’ve slowed him down.”

“He came out of the letter?” I asked.

“Yeah, it’s a simple spell,” Lena said. “It’s a variant of the Door-Trek system. All you need is a doorway and something to tie you to your destination.”

“Like a letter you sent there yourself?” I glanced back at Lena’s lamp. The letter still leaned next to it, white and square in the dim light.

“It takes a lot of power, though,” Chase said, walking toward the safe and Ferdinand.

Lena nodded. “Definitely the Queen’s man.”

“She must really want that harp,” I said quietly. Lena looked at me, suddenly nervous again. “I bet that won’t be the last one.”

Chase whistled a low note, only a few inches from the Ferdinand statue’s face. “Rory, that was some kick.”

“Snap kick,” I said absently, still thinking about the Snow Queen. “It’s pretty much the only thing I remember from karate in first grade.”

“Well, I think you broke his jaw.” Chase stared at me over the statue’s shoulder. “If you were a little taller, you would have knocked him out cold.”

I shrugged, feeling pleased and foolish at the same time—and
really
grateful to have a magic sword. I didn’t
want
to know what would’ve happened to Lena without it.

“Shh,” Lena said. “Listen.”

We strained our ears. Outside the desk, we heard the clicking of claws on the floor and an animal’s rumbling growl.

“The guard dog,” Chase said, shrugging.

“It must’ve heard all the commotion,” I said.

Lena wrinkled her nose. “Do you guys smell rotten eggs?”

“Hey.” Chase raised both hands in the air. “Whoever smelt it dealt it.”

I rolled my eyes. Boys are boys, no matter how good their sword skills are.

“It’s not
that
,” Lena said shortly, but she did look kind of embarrassed. “I was thinking Ferdinand left something behind. Maybe something to attract the dog—”

“Yeah, blame the stone guy. He can’t defend himself,” Chase said, and he wandered over to the other side of the desk where he’d left a half-eaten, boulder-size bag of Matilda’s potato chips.

Glancing at the letter, I tried to guess how long it would be before we had another visitor. The hair stood up on the back of my neck. “Somebody tell me about the Snow Queen.”

“Bon appetit,” Chase told us happily and then began to munch on an enormous potato chip. “Hey, Lena. Are we really going to sit around and eat and tell stories while we’ve got evildoers coming out from bits of paper?”

“I do need to
know
this, you know,” I said.

“Do you have a better idea?” Lena asked, hands on her hips.

“As a matter of fact . . . ,” Chase said. “Rory, come here and pull out your sword.”

I did, expecting him to examine the blade and tell me everything
he knew about its magical qualities, but instead he inspected my grip around the hilt and adjusted the position of my thumb. His fingers were oily with potato chip grease. “That’s really the way you should hold it. Also, keep your elbow up a little more. When you keep it tucked in close to your body like that, it slows you down just a bit. It won’t matter in practice, but it will when somebody big and bad tries to kill— What?” Chase asked, finally noticing the way that Lena and I were staring at him.

“You’re being uncharacteristically helpful,” Lena said slowly.

He shrugged. “I don’t know if you noticed this, but Rory’s going to kick butt.” Chase met my eyes, smirking. “I have to get on her good side while I still can.”

I couldn’t tell if he was making fun of me. “I think the sword’s magic.”

“Well, you weren’t holding the sword for the Mighty Snap Kick,” he pointed out. “That was all you, Rory.”

I had a sudden vision of Hansel’s sword spinning out of his hand, my blade in the kill position, and the shocked look on the instructor’s face. Grinning, I looked to Lena for permission.

Lena glanced from the statue to the letter. “Go ahead. If the Snow Queen wants the harp as much as we think she does, then we’ll need all the help we can get.”

I made a face at that cheery thought, and swallowing another mouthful, Chase showed me a drill to help keep my elbow away from my body.

Lena told war stories as I practiced.

By the end of the twentieth century, most magical creatures weren’t happy. They had long gone into hiding, pushed into the forgotten corners and continents of the world. There were
more humans than there had ever been, and it looked like they were leaving magic behind for good. They believed in antibiotics and vaccination shots, not in the Water of Life. Old-fashioned storytelling was replaced by radio, and then television. A lot of the old Tales were forgotten. If parents wanted to scare their children, they talked about bombs exploding, not big bad wolves.

“Watch where you’re putting your feet, Rory,” Chase said. When Lena gave him a dirty look, he added, “What? Did you want her to learn the wrong way?”

Then the Snow Queen began to advocate bringing back the world of yesteryear—where wolves could eat people’s grandmothers in peace, and dragons could steal cattle and princesses, and giants could demand human sacrifices from villages to decrease their grocery bill.

You can see how it would sound appealing. Especially if you’re, for example, a highland troll living hand-to-mouth so high in the Rockies that you always have icicles in your fur, and the only warm thing you can catch to eat is a mountain goat or two.

The Snow Queen had an army at her disposal—the trolls and ogres and giants and wolves. They followed the Snow Queen blindly. She also got a bunch of villains to swear allegiance to her—people like Ferdinand—usually for specific rewards. Ms. White’s stepmother wanted all of Rhode Island.

“What did the Snow Queen want?” I asked, slashing and parrying and jabbing with my elbow up past my ear the way Chase had shown me.

“Oh, you know, the usual,” Chase said.

“Power.” Lena sighed. “World domination.”

The Characters banded together to stop her. That was the easy part. Ever After School had been around for years, and they have a chapter on every continent except Antarctica. The Canon keeps meticulous records—so it was easy to recruit some of the older Characters.

The problem was that both sides were evenly matched. If you think about it, there’s usually a villain for every hero. The stalemate lasted for decades. The threat tainted everything. Even the humans noticed and took precautions the best way they knew how.

“Then why is this the first time I’ve heard of it?”

“Oh, you’ve heard of it,” Chase told me.

“Why do you think they called it the Cold War?” Lena said.

I blanched, and Chase grinned. “Left side.”

Obediently, I started slashing, parrying, and jabbing to the left.