Of Sorcery and Snow (29 page)

“One of the kids must have dropped it,” Miriam said excitedly. “Leaving a trail, like Hansel and Gretel in the woods. Philip would do that.”

It could be. Some more dark squares were scattered on the ice. But I couldn't figure out why the kids would start dropping them
here
. I nudged my reindeer a little closer.

“Is it Philip's?” Lena asked. “Do you recognize it?”

“No. But that doesn't mean anything,” Miriam said. “He's always picking stuff up.”

I jumped off my mount and crouched over the nearest little cardboard square. It was a book of matches, inside a silver and black case, easy to see against the white snow. I didn't see any lettering.

Light flared up. Miriam had struck a match. “Well, at least it's warm.” She stared at the flame.

My mitten closed over the matches in front of me, and suddenly I shivered, like someone had stuffed icicles down my jacket. The matches were making me
colder
.

The Snow Queen's magic could do that. The letter in the giant's desk, the one she sent villains through, it had chilled me when I touched it too.

“Miriam, I wouldn't—” I started.

She turned my way and gasped. “The trail! There it is!!!”

I glanced over my shoulder, searching the flat white space. “I don't see it.”

“Does anyone else see it?” Chase said, but no one answered.

“But it's— Oww!” The match had burned too low, all the way down to Miriam's fingers. She dropped it, and it sputtered out on the snow. She scowled. “Great. Now
I
can't see the trail.”

“Miriam, I think the Snow Queen made these—” I started, wanting to explain.

“That must be it! It might cancel out whatever spell Searcaster used on the trail,” Miriam said. “To help her minions get back! Let's see.” She struck another match and looked around wildly.

“Lena, have you ever heard of such a thing?” asked Forrel.

“I don't think so. . . . ,” Lena said.

“There's the trail again!” Miriam cried. “Oh my God, is that—? That bump on the horizon, it's the Snow Queen's palace, isn't it?”

We all turned again to check it out. Hadriane stood in her stirrups, like the extra height would help her see farther.

I looked too. Sometimes your Tale
did
bring you to the only thing that could possibly save you. But sometimes an enchantment discovered your deepest desires and used them against you.

“Hold on, Miriam. Let Lena take a look at it really quick,” I said. “Maybe she can figure out what the spell is—”

“OWW!” The second match had burned too close to Miriam's hand, and she dropped it too. “Stupid matches. They're too short.”

“Miriam, wait!” Lena said.

Without even glancing at us, Miriam struck another one, and I was furious at her for blowing us off, Tale bearer or no.

“Put it out!” I shouted, running at her.

“I see some people. Some kids! They've escaped!” Miriam said,
and it was so far-fetched that we didn't even bother looking now. My hand shot out. I was ready to rip the box of matches away, even if I had to wrestle her to the ground to do it. “Look, it's Phil—”

Then flames whooshed across Miriam's whole body. She screamed. I flinched away from the fire and tripped. Before I hit the ground, she was gone.

All that was left was a small pile of ashes, dotted with scorched shreds of her jacket. The wind began to scatter them across the ice.

We'd lost our Tale bearer. We'd lost Miriam.

t was Hadriane's idea to scoop up the ashes, so we could take them back to Miriam and Philip's parents. Lena held one of the little vials she used to collect samples, and the dwarf princess packed them in until her fingertips turned blue.

I was sure I would cry, or at least throw up. But I didn't. The tears and the vomit just hung out close to the surface, making sure I felt good and rotten.

And I was pretty sure I deserved it. “It's my fault,” I whispered to Chase.

“You told Miriam to stop,” he reminded me, as Forrel rode up with the two reindeer that had bolted away from the fire. “We all heard you.”

But that's not what I meant.

Miriam was a Failed Tale now. She would have still been a Failed Tale if she'd stayed at EAS, but she would have been alive, too. She wouldn't have died if I hadn't had the brilliant idea to come out here.

We pitched camp to discuss our options. They weren't good, and everybody knew it after Lena explained about the dragon scale supply.

“I wish we'd found those rings of return,” Lena said.

“Can't you make a temporary-transport spell back to Portland?” Chase asked.

The dwarves would look pretty weird there, but we could probably get them through the pavilion and back to Kiivinsh. And then Lena, Chase, and I could take the Door Trek door back to EAS.

And explain what happened to Miriam.

Sometimes, it is better not to know too much. You will learn soon enough,
Rapunzel had said. She
must
have seen this. She hadn't wanted to tell us. We wouldn't have gone if she had.

“I can try,” Lena said slowly. “The ingredients for a temporary-transport spell are a little different than the one I was planning. I may be able to do a substitution, but there's no guarantee that it'll work.”

“We should avoid that then, until the worst happens,” said Forrel.

“It's true that Characters' quests have a much greater chance of completion if they have a Tale bearer among them, isn't it?” Hadriane asked.

Chase, Lena, and I all nodded glumly. Without the magic swirling around the Tale bearer, putting the helpful things in her way, our impossible task became even
more
impossible.

Mom would want us to try the spell that could bring me home.

But Rapunzel wouldn't have let us go on the quest just so Miriam could die. She had to see more than that. She had to have seen us do
something
right. Otherwise she would have stopped us. Plus, she'd told us that we would find the fourth comb with that sorceress. This quest couldn't be over yet.

“We have to keep going,” I whispered. “We have to rescue Philip and the others.”

Lena half smiled. “I knew you'd say that.”

Forrel stared at me, so Chase explained, “Rory has this annoying habit of looking on the bright side.
All
the time.”

I didn't feel like I was looking on the bright side, but I didn't
want Miriam's death to be for nothing. At least I could save her brother for her. “We can't be
that
far away.”

“That is true.” Hadriane probably still wanted to save the twins, more than anything.

“
If
we have traveled in the right direction,” Forrel pointed out. “We could already be going the wrong way.”

“They are the new Triumvirate, Forrel,” the princess said. “If anyone could find their destination through sheer luck, it's them.”

And the second the decision had been made, I started worrying again about what we'd gotten ourselves into.

Hadriane and I took the first watch. We huddled in our bedding and sipped hot chocolate from the Lunch Box to keep warm. I tried not to think about how Miriam would be sharing the shift with the princess, if she were around.

I wished I hadn't felt
so
sure that we needed to come, and I also
really
wished that feeling would come back.

“Guilt is a useless emotion,” the dwarf princess said suddenly. “The loss of Miriam is no more your fault than the loss of the twins is mine. The Snow Queen is behind it all.”

I goggled at her. “You want me to just stop thinking about it?” I wasn't sure that was possible.

“My advice is to turn your thoughts to the future, to things you might actually be able to change, rather than imagining different outcomes of your past choices,” said Hadriane. “Such tiresome thoughts have taken many of my nights. I remember when my father first allied with the Snow Queen. Back then, my people lived in a small town on Atlantis, crowded because the Unseelie refused to let us build a bigger one. I knew the alliance was a mistake. I used to fantasize about convincing my father not to move to the Arctic; I used to imagine picking
just
the right
words—what Mother would have said—to make him see.

“But the lure of our homeland, the hope of returning to the land of Petrified Stone . . .” Hadriane sighed. “It would take much more than words to fight it. When we first left the place you call Arizona, the only home our grandfather's grandfathers could remember, the dwarves of Living Stone walked softly on the earth, heads down, always apologizing for their presence.”

Honestly, I couldn't see Cranky Beard apologizing for anything.

“So,” the princess continued, “it was easy to listen when the Snow Queen told us that we had been pushed to the forgotten corners of the earth, that we should take back what was rightfully ours.”

I resisted the urge to shudder. I'd heard the exact same words come out of Searcaster's mouth.

“In Kiivinsh, my people were proud to be dwarves once more. Even if I cringed every time they spoke of murdering humans and taking the land back again, the Snow Queen's task gave my people hope again. It made them come alive. Sometimes people don't mind being wrong as long as they feel alive, too. I do not blame them,” she added softly, “but I don't want our homeland back the way they want it.”

“How
do
you want it?” I asked.

Hadriane didn't quite smile, but her face softened. “Before the Snow Queen reached out to my father, I had a different daydream. I imagined the humans learned what they had done and invited us back to Arizona. They helped us rebuild our City of Living Stone, and my mother's human family came to visit me as much as I wanted.”

I didn't see why they couldn't go back. National parks had a bunch of rules to keep people out—the dwarves would probably have to hide during the day, but . . .

“But these were the daydreams of a lonely child,” Hadriane
said swiftly, like she was kind of embarrassed. “For now, I'll just settle for the twins' safety.”

Miriam had been a good sister too.

“It would take something truly tragic for my father's people to change their minds,” Hadriane said softly. “I'll warn the twins of that when we reach the Snow Queen's palace.”

When
, she'd said. Not
if
.

I wished I could believe it wasn't an
if
.