Of Witches and Wind (12 page)

“But Gretel's actually seen one,” Chase said. “This might be as close as you ever get to the real thing.”

“What's a Dapplegrim?” I asked.

Chase looked exasperated. He always gave us that look when we reminded him his best friends were girls. “Only the biggest, most awesome horse to ever stand on four hooves.”

“They talk. They have their own herd,” Lena explained.

“They're freaking endangered. They only live in the south of Atlantis,” Bryan said.

“If there's an awesome talking horse in a fairy tale, it's usually a Dapplegrim,” Chase added. “Now where is it?”

Onstage, a horse the size of an elephant walked through the forest, Rikard on its back, with Maerwynne walking beside them.

The Dapplegrim's coat was glossy black, reflecting the lamplight from Maerwynne's lantern in every muscle. Its mane and tail hung in coal-black waves. With every stride, sparks flew up from the ground.

I sneezed. Yep, definitely a real horse underneath the illusion. I knew from experience that horses being magic didn't stop me from being allergic to them. And I was really allergic.

“Seriously?” Chase said, like my sneeze had messed up an awesome fake-Dapplegrim sighting. “Even from twenty feet away?”

Then, when the air filled with silvery streaks (“Elf shot,” Lena whispered) and Rikard swung Maerwynne up into the saddle in front of him, the Dapplegrim opened its stride. Flames puffed from each nostril, and the trees slid away in a green blur, nauseatingly fast.

Practically every guy sprang to his feet, stamping, clapping, and whooping all at once. They were even more excited about the Dapplegrim than the witches had been about Madame Benne.

A wolf howled, loud and sudden, onstage. Maerwynne yanked the reins, the Dapplegrim whirled, and Rikard grabbed Maerwynne's waist to keep from falling off.

The Dapplegrim plunged through the woods and stopped in front of a log cabin. Scary movies had taught me to be wary of these.

Maerwynne jumped off the Dapplegrim's back and drew Rikard's sword from the saddle. A gray blur leaped through the door. Maerwynne struck. The wolf's head fell to the ground.

“Oh,” Lena said anxiously. “I forgot about this part.”

Gretel's illusion brought us and Maerwynne into the cabin, and Chase whistled. “That's a lot of magenta.”

It flooded the floor, splattered the walls all the way up to the ceiling. Blood. Gretel must have turned it pink to make it less scary. If it had been its normal color, every Character at the feast probably would have lost their appetite.

“What did I miss? Not dessert?” Hansel reappeared at his place, Kenneth-free. Seeing Mrs. Taylor's horror, he added, “Don't worry.
This happened a very long time ago. Characters rarely confront this today.”

But it had happened. And Hansel was talking about it so calmly, like it was a movie we'd gone to see.

On the floor was an old woman's nightgown, ripped to bloody pieces, and a magenta-smeared girl, wrapped in a red cloak—barely alive. She was younger than we were.

Maerwynne fell to her knees at the girl's side.

Lena clutched my arm so tightly it hurt. “All these years later, she still wishes she could have saved her sisters.”

Maerwynne stretched out her hand, and a golden apple rested on her palm. The wounded Red Riding Hood reached for it. When the girl's fingers closed around it, Maerwynne disappeared in an explosion of silver, finer than glitter.

“If the apple keeps you alive past the day you would've died, then you turn to dust as soon as you give it away,” Melodie said sadly, like she was apologizing for the one thing Madame Benne couldn't perfect.

I glanced at Lena, who bit her lip. That would happen to her if she got that extra century.

The magenta-covered Red Riding Hood onstage stood up, apparently unhurt.

“But it can also heal you instantly, as you take the apple and a place in the Canon.” Rapunzel twisted around and pulled her braid aside. A thick scar wrapped all the way around her neck. “Even if the wound is fatal.”

Mrs. Taylor gasped. “What gave you that?”

“Yeah, what—” Lena started, but she remembered. “Oh right, the witch in your Tale.”

Rapunzel ignored Hansel's glare, the one that clearly said,
Don't
bring that up during a parent visit
. “The golden apple can even regrow limbs, if the wound is fresh. And a limb regrown by magical means would make a person into a sorcerer.”

At the high table, the Director stood and raised both hands.

“Finally!” Chase muttered.

“Silence now, if you please,” the Director said. “I've ordered the elves to deny pie to anyone who fails to obey this instruction. The time for the ceremony has come.”

Threatened with no dessert, the courtyard grew eerily quiet.

Beside the Director, the two real Red Riding Hoods stood up together, side by side, in unison.

The woman in the old-fashioned red Sunday hat passed something to the woman in the red baseball cap. I couldn't see what it was. Her hand kept it hidden from view.

The second their hands fell back to their sides, the one in the Sunday hat suddenly looked thirty years older, her makeup folded into her new wrinkles. She stared at the age spots on her hands with horror, and the new Red Riding Hood, the one in the baseball cap, squeezed her arm in sympathy.

I didn't want that. I didn't want to stop aging if the price was losing decades in a second.

The Director clapped loudly to get our attention back. “Thank you. And now, our guests . . .” She gestured to the witches' table. Many witches leered back, and one waved. Kezelda scowled—she didn't feel like much of a guest. “Our guests have prepared a special treat for you tonight: Fey fudge pie.”

The elves streamed among the tables. Each piece of pie had a perfect dollop of whipped cream. When they delivered plates first to the tables closest to the kitchens, Chase said, “Ugh. It'll take forever for them to reach us.”

“What is Fey fudge?” asked Mrs. Taylor.

“Think of the best chocolate you've ever had in your life, and then times that by a thousand,” said Lena.

“I guess it's too much to ask for it to be gluten-free, huh?” Ben said sadly.

I shook my head. I'd watched the witches put the flour in myself.

Ben sighed. “Wheat allergy.”

“Better not chance it then, dear,” said Mrs. Taylor.

We all felt sorry for him until Ben said, “It's all right. I'm watching my girlish figure.”

Chase turned to me, trying so hard not to comment that he looked like he was in pain.

At the high table, the Director lifted her fork, laden with a dainty bite, and closed her eyes with satisfaction. The witches dug in, spearing the chocolate-mousse-y goop. After that first taste, a lot of compliments passed from witch to witch.

The table just behind us got their plates, and the eighth graders dove in without hesitation. Well, except for Darcy.

“It's almost too pretty to eat. Where's my camera?” As soon as she stuck her head under the table to look, her brother darted forward and gobbled up her slice. “Bryan!”

“What?” said the fawn, chocolate stuck to the fur on his nose. “I didn't get one. And I'm sick of eating grass.”

“Yeah, well, I just hope it doesn't kill you.” Darcy folded her arms over her chest. “I would hate to spend the whole night at the vet again because some stupid baby deer can't control his chocolate cravings.”

Then an elf appeared at Lena's elbow, carrying three plates on each arm.

“Rufus, you are a king among elves,” Chase told him, completely serious.

Rufus grinned crookedly. Lena and I passed plates down the table.

“Didn't we have spoons?” Henry asked.

When everyone searched the table, peering under plates and around glasses, Chatty started giggling silently once again.

“Chatty,” Chase said, annoyed, “the lemonade thing was funny, I admit. But you don't mess with dessert. We're been waiting all night.”

Rolling her eyes, Chatty produced the silverware from under the table. We reached for them.

Rapunzel's spoon fell through her fingers, like her hand had forgotten how to grip. Then she whispered, in a low, cracked voice, “Don't let them eat cake.”

But she wasn't staring at cake. It was the pie on my plate.

“What?” My spoon halted right over the whipped cream.

“Are you crazy? Did you not see me drooling earlier?” Chase caught the spoon Chatty tossed him.

Rapunzel sprang to her feet with a Hansel-worthy bellow: “Don't let them eat cake!”

Some fifth graders a few tables over laughed, thinking that she was joking, but they didn't see her face. Horror stretched her eyes so wide you could see whites all around her irises.

“What did I tell you? Crazy,” Chase said, like he knew the scene was going to get ugly very fast.

Everyone had told me, for almost as long as I'd been at EAS, that Rapunzel was insane, but this was the first time I had seen her act like it.

She lurched up onto the table, swung her leg back and kicked—her plate and mine flew off the table. Both slices fell to the lawn, demolished into brown blobs covered in grass clippings.

I slid out of the way, but Chase, Lena, and Henry grabbed their plates before she could kick those too.

All across the courtyard, heads turned toward us and then questioningly up at the high table, trying to see what to do. The Director forked a big bite of pie and shoved it in her mouth with a flourish. Everyone else followed her example.

I couldn't believe it—they were really going to ignore the warnings of someone who saw the future?

“DON'T LET THEM EAT CAKE!”

“Hansel!” said the Director, smiling in a strained way.

With a long-suffering sigh, Hansel took one last bite of his dessert and rose to his feet. “Come on, Rapunzel. Not now.” When she shied away from him, he lifted her bodily off the table.

“NO! DON'T! DON'T LET THEM!”

Mrs. Taylor's mouth hung slightly open. You could see fudge on her tongue.

“Born right after the French Revolution,” Henry said conversationally. “Bound to be a little scarred.”

Hansel dragged her across the courtyard. Rapunzel struggled so much that the Shoemaker got up to help.

“Easy now, Rapunzel,” Stu said, gently but firmly, like she was a kid having a tantrum. “We'll get you to your tower.”

Up at the high table, the Director bent her head toward the unnerved ambassadors from other chapters—probably explaining or apologizing.

“She never changes.” Then Chase raised a forkful to his mouth.

I batted it out of his hand automatically.

Chase scowled. “Not you, too.”

Scowling back, I shoved Lena and Chase's plates into the grass for good measure.

“She dreamed she saw the Snow Queen in the kitchens!” I went for Chatty's next, but she was already on her feet. She
dashed to Hansel's table and knocked Ben's untouched plate to the ground, and his mother's mostly finished one, and Hansel's, and Kenneth's, and Mia's.

“Was that one mine?” said Mia confused, returning from the bathroom.

“DON'T LET THEM EAT CAKE!” Rapunzel shouted one last time, at the edge of the courtyard, before Hansel slammed an orange-gold door behind them.

Henry still held his plate, but when I reached for it, he pulled it out of my reach. “You can't deny an old man his pleasures, Rory. Do you know how many times she has seen the Snow Queen here?”

“Last month she said she saw a ‘many-eyed, many-legged monster' lurking in the training courts. We found a spider. This big.” Chase made a dime-size circle with his hands.

Now that Rapunzel was gone, and the courtyard slowly filled with murmurs, laughter, and the clink of forks on plates, a tiny bit of doubt crept into me. I didn't know how many times she had seen the Snow Queen. I'd only known Rapunzel for a year, and then only between three and six o'clock on weekdays. Most weeks I didn't even see her two days in a row.

“She saved our lives so many times,” I said stubbornly. “All she asked us to do is not eat the pie.”

“But it was Fey fudge,” said Lena weakly.

Chatty slipped back into her seat, her shoulders hunched forward, uncertain. She was wondering if we had completely overreacted too.

Then, behind us, Darcy said, “Bryan? Are you okay?”

The fawn's slender legs trembled, and he sank slowly to the grass. “Just don't feel so great.”

“It was probably the chocolate. It's too rich for deer.” Darcy
reached into the pocket of her hoodie. “Hang on. I'll call Mom. We can go to the vet.”

Up at the high table, the Director cleared her throat, loudly and uncomfortably, like something was stuck in it.

Across the courtyard, the witches were all in disarray: one vomiting under the table, Kezelda sticking her fingers down her throat to do the same. The rest were clearing their throats in the same slightly panicked way that the Director was. They couldn't breathe.

“Treachery,” croaked one.

Kezelda wiped her mouth and stood. “Poison!”

Panic swept across the crowd, Characters wheezing or crying, the two Red Riding Hoods bent double around their stomachs as if something gnawed at them from the inside. Two of the ambassadors fell from their seats, unconscious.

Mrs. Taylor moaned, and Ben rushed around the table. “Mother?” And when she didn't answer, he turned to me, like I knew what to do. “We need a nurse.”

“Gretel.” I swung out of the bench.

The illusion of Rikard and the Dapplegrim thundering through the trees flickered and faded. Gretel had eaten the pie too.

“We need another, unpoisoned nurse,” I said.

Chase jumped to his feet. “Rapunzel.”

This didn't feel like good news. If she was still hysterical, I didn't see how she could help us. But it wasn't like we had much choice. “Come on, Lena.”