Of Witches and Wind (2 page)

“Who rescued you?” I asked Ben.

Ben frowned. “A girl. Long dark hair. Great swimmer.”

That didn't sound like anyone on this mission. “Did you recognize her?”

“Not precisely,” Ben said. “She might be a student here.”

“Give him a break, Rory.” Dripping, Chase squatted down beside the eighth grader. “The kid was busy drowning.”

“Well, that explains the huge splash,” said someone behind us. Adelaide, one of my least favorite seventh graders at EAS. “We were wondering.”

Four figures marched down the beach, their bows and quivers slung over their shoulders—Adelaide, Daisy, Tina, and Vicky. They were the seventh-grade archer squadron. I liked the last two the best. Tina's dad and Vicky's mom had just gotten married in January. They spent a lot of time bickering over who would be Cinderella and who would be the ugly stepsister. Daisy just did whatever Adelaide said.

“We heard all the shouting and came to see what was up.” Tina whirled around suddenly, bow raised, like she'd heard something behind her. But it was only Lena, sprinting along the water.

Chase carefully peeled Ben's red blazer away from his shoulder. “Just two talon punctures. Your shoulder pads took the brunt of it. Once we get back to EAS, we'll get you fixed up before you get home.”

“Did you guys find the Snow Queen's target?” Vicky asked.

Lena shook her head and glanced at me. She knew my stomach always flip-flopped whenever that name came up.

The Director had never mentioned it, but every Character at
EAS knew: Only one villain commanded armies of ice griffins and dragons—Solange, the Snow Queen. During the war that had lasted half of the twentieth century, she'd almost wiped out everyone who opposed her, including all Characters. These days she was locked up in the Glass Mountain, but apparently that didn't stop her from sending monsters after defenseless kids.

“Ooooooh! I forgot!” Lena started digging in the tiny electric-blue backpack she carried everywhere.

It always worried me when she did that. Since she was a magic inventor, Lena's bag of tricks was more unpredictable than the average seventh grader's. Once, in the Boston Common park, when we were flushing out the troll that lived under the bridge, she whispered a spell to a painted dragon scale, and a phoenix as big as a limo flew across the sky, a riot of flame and feathers. She told us it was the most beautiful light show she could whip up on short notice. Since trolls can't resist pretty things, she guaranteed that the trick would lure the troll straight to us. Which it did, but every other troll in a ten-mile radius came too.

Humans can't do magic. That was one of the first things the grown-ups told you when you joined EAS.

But every rule has exceptions, and Lena was one of them.

Lena becoming a magician was the weirdest thing that had happened since we'd climbed the beanstalk last May. Melodie, the golden harp we took from the giant's safe, had taught Lena a whole bunch of spells, where she could use dragon scales, phoenix feathers, or unicorn hair like magic batteries. Usually, Lena enchanted them to power new inventions.

All Lena's searching woke up Melodie. She stuck her golden head out of Lena's backpack and yawned. “What is it you're looking for, Mistress?”

“Got it!” Lena waved a fabric-covered square triumphantly in our faces. It kind of looked like an e-reader cover, but I knew from experience that the hard casing held a square mirror. An M3, to be exact—the EAS version of a walkie-talkie. “My mini magic mirror.”

“Big whoop.” Adelaide never missed a chance to criticize us. She had been Chase's closest friend before Lena got the Beanstalk Tale, so we definitely knew why. “You invented those back at Thanksgiving. You can't expect us to still be impressed.”

“When was the last time you invented something, Adelaide?” I snapped.

“I've been modifying the mirrors.” Lena's eyes gleamed behind her glasses. She was obviously too excited to get her feelings hurt. “I'm trying to give them new capabilities, so they can do anything smartphones can do.”

“Text?” Tina said, interested.

“Tetris?” Vicky asked, impressed.

“No, not those,” Lena said, in a smaller voice.

The others looked disappointed, so Melodie sniffed. “All practical uses.”

Lena just opened the M3 and muttered something in Fey. Chase, the only other kid in earshot who spoke that language, burst out laughing.

I sensed a joke. “What?”

“Don't you dare translate, Chase Turnleaf,” Melodie warned. “If you do, Lena and I will turn you into something small and slithery. Like a salamander. We just perfected that potion.”

For someone about a foot tall and attached to a golden harp without legs, Melodie could be really scary when she felt like it. Chase abruptly stopped laughing.

“Tell me later?” I whispered to him.

“Do I look like I want to turn into a salamander?” Chase whispered back. “If she'd said frog, I would've considered it. ‘The Frog Prince' isn't a bad Tale.”

Ben laughed, but then he choked a little and brought up another round of puke. My chest squeezed in sympathy.

“Wow,” Adelaide said mildly. “Did you swallow half the lake?”

Lena angled the M3 at Ben and his watery bile. His face was nearly as red as his jacket.

“Geez, Lena.” I pushed the magic camera down with maybe more force than was necessary. The paparazzi had recorded enough of my ugliest memories for me to know that it sucked. “Do you have to film this?”

But Ben perked up. “You filmed it? Did you get the whole thing?”

“I wish.” With a sigh Lena swung the M3 around, toward the eighth graders' fight. The wind thinned the fog, and past the lumpy dunes and half the soccer field we caught a glimpse of feathers. “I just turned it on.”

“How far did I fall?” Ben asked eagerly.

“Fifty feet or more,” Chase said.

“Really?” Ben sat up with a wince. He actually sounded pleased with himself.

Adelaide and Daisy both rolled their eyes.

“You're gonna be one big bruise tomorrow,” Chase said, with the air of someone bequeathing bragging rights.

“I don't think it's very funny.” The voice came from the lake, so soft that you could barely hear it. “He was underwater for a long time.”

We all turned. A girl splashed to shore, water dripping from her plaid skirt and jacket. Her long black hair was the kind that got very wavy when wet—but it made her look elegant, not scruffy.
She had the beginning of a tan, which gave her skin a golden sheen, and her light blue, long-lashed eyes took up most of her heart-shaped face.

She was beautiful. Not just normal beautiful, but too pretty to feel real. Like a sculpture, or a painting, or an airbrushed photo.

She didn't seem to notice that everyone was staring at her with dumbfounded expressions. Even Ben's mouth hung open. We weren't used to kids outside EAS approaching us on missions, and definitely not ones who looked like models for school-uniform catalogues.

“Who are you?” Adelaide shook her blond hair back. She only did that when she felt threatened.

“My name is Mia,” the dripping girl said uncertainly.

“You're the girl who saved me!” Ben burst out.

I did a double take. Mia didn't seem like the rescuing type.

Encouraged, Mia slipped out of the water and glided to Ben's side. She held out something oblong and leather—his missing loafer. “You lost this.”

“Right,” Chase said. “Because that makes sense. Diving back into Lake Michigan to rescue his shoe.”

I personally thought this was a fair point, but Ben shot to his feet in knight-in-shining-armor mode. “She saved my life. That doesn't happen every day.”

Poor new kid. After he spent more time at EAS, somebody saving his life wouldn't impress him so much.

“She might be the Character we've been looking for,” Lena said distractedly. She was busy glaring at her M3. “It's too foggy. We won't be able to record anything this way.”

“Maybe if we got a little closer, Mistress,” Melodie suggested.

“Good idea.” Lena hurried toward the dunes between the shore and the soccer field.

Adelaide turned to the other archers. “Who has the mirror the Director gave us? For the test?” Tina and Vicky both pointed at Daisy, who pushed her arrows aside and reached into her quiver.

The chimera roared extra loud, and I glanced back toward the battle—all I saw were dunes, fog, more fog, and a soggy stretch of grass.

But Chase tensed too. He took his sword belt back and buckled it on.

“Test?” Mia asked, drawing closer to Ben.

“It's not hard. You just look into a magic mirror and tell us what you see in it,” Ben explained.

I was sure Mia would never suspect that he had just taken the test himself three days ago. “We need to know if you're a Char—”

“Incoming!” one of the eighth graders called.

The chimera galloped across midfield as fast as its lion paws could carry it, all three heads focused straight on us.

I dropped Chase's stuff and hurriedly drew my sword.

“Oy! Monster!” cried Ben.

Snorting, Chase unsheathed his blade. “Did you seriously just say that?”

Only one Character stood between us and the charging chimera, and she was too absorbed with her updated M3 to draw her sword.

Lena.

Chase and I erupted forward. The second my hand curled around the sword hilt, my body seemed very far away, like someone else was moving for me. This was normal. I had an enchanted sword. This runner's-high feeling happened every time the magic kicked in.

“I got it.” Chase ran so fast he practically skimmed over the sand. “You go cover Lena.”

The sword's magic sent me weaving through the dunes to Lena's side, right at the edge of the soccer field. Her eyes were still glued to her M3. “Rory, you have to see this!”

“The image is so clear,” Melodie added.

They clearly hadn't noticed the chimera barreling over the grass, twenty-five feet away and closing.

“Lena, we've got company!” I tried to tug her back through the dunes. She would be safer behind the archers.

“No, I can't move—” Then she glanced up and found herself practically face to face with a three-headed monster. “Oh!”

“Don't worry. I'll take care of it.” Chase charged out, and, seeing him on the field, the chimera slowed. Its snake head hissed. “Yeah, you know it's all over for you—don't you, ugly?”

Lena dashed back through the dunes and behind the archers before Chase and the chimera even came to blows. She wasn't the fastest runner in seventh grade for nothing.

When I was halfway to the others, Chase said, “Crap!”

I whirled around and raised my sword, its magic thrumming.

But Chase wasn't hurt. The chimera leaped from the edge of the grass to the nearest dune. It had gotten past him.

He sprinted after it. “I still got it, Rory!”

The chimera glanced at Adelaide, Daisy, and the stepsisters, their arrows notched to their bows, and then closer to the water, where Ben just watched. His mouth was open. Mia peeked nervously around him.

The new kid didn't even have a weapon.

“It's after Ben and Mia!” Lena cried, panicky, but I was already running, racing the monster as it bounded over the sand.

The stepsisters recovered fastest. They loosed their arrows. The chimera's lion head yowled as it dodged, but it gave me the extra two seconds I needed.

I tackled Mia and Ben, knocking them to the sand an instant before the chimera pounced.

Somebody's bare elbow struck my cheekbone, right outside my eye, but the three-headed monster sailed over us—so close that its tufted tail brushed my neck.

I scrambled to my feet as the chimera landed half in the water. Its goat head bleated angrily, and the back legs bent. It was ready to attack again.

“Rory, I said I got it,” said Chase, somewhere behind me. He still wasn't close enough to do any slaying.

The chimera leaped.

My body knelt, and the sword's magic guided the blade straight into the monster's heart. Chase's sword flashed above, and the beast gave a wet sort of roar-bleat. Two somethings thumped to the sand with a squish.

The chimera collapsed on the beach, a couple feet away from its goat and lion heads. Gross, but definitely dead.

I straightened slowly. “Is everybody okay?”

“Do you recall those talon punctures?” Wincing, Ben reached into his red jacket. “I'm almost positive they have sand in them now. But,” he added hastily when I opened my mouth to apologize, “better sand than a chimera bite.”

Mia gingerly sat up. Her skirt had a palm-size rip out of the hem, stained black at the edges, but otherwise she seemed all right.

Lena ran over, biting her lip.

Chase scowled at me. “What part of ‘I got it' do you not understand?”

I knew what he was really upset about. Whoever slayed the chimera got the most bragging rights. I smirked. “You were too slow.”

“Still my kill,” Chase said.

“No, this round goes to Rory. When you're beheading a chimera, you have to make sure you get all three heads. You missed one, Chase. It took a bite out of Mia's clothes.” Melodie pointed a golden hand at the body. Between the fangs of the viper head, a plaid patch flapped in the breeze.

“But it was two-thirds dead by the time Rory got it,” Chase protested, and I snorted.

“Who are you people?” Mia said, voice shaking.

“It's okay.” Ben squeezed her hand. I bet the gesture would have been ten times more comforting if his fingers hadn't been streaked with blood. “The chimera's their leader. Hansel told us earlier that the ice griffins always scatter after the chimera is killed—”

Something Jeep-size swooped down out of the fog, shrieking. Everybody ducked automatically. Except for Chase, who leaped up and sliced once at the monster's white throat.