“Sorry?” Trix didn’t know what else to say.
“Not your fault, poor chicken. You’re just the next in line to be brought in to right the wrongs. You aren’t the first, and you won’t be the last.”
What Sassy said made him feel a little less special, but it was nice for something not to be his fault for a change. “And what was that about a double wedding?”
“Well now.” Sassy chomped down on a healthy patch of grass before going on, whetting Trix’s appetite for her next bit of gossip. It was too bad Papa couldn’t hear animals the way Trix did. Trix suspected that Papa would like Old Sassy very much. “As you know, your Uncle Bear is married to your Auntie Snow White.”
“Yes,” said Trix.
“…and your Auntie Snow White and your Auntie Rose Red are twins…”
“Named after the rose bushes on either side of Grandma Mouton’s front stoop,” Trix confirmed.
“…and your Uncle Bear and Wolf have been best friends their whole lives…”
Trix slapped himself in the forehead for not putting it all together the first time, which gave Sassy quite the chuckle. “I completely missed that.”
“So did Wolf,” said Sassy. “He had his chance with Rose Red, but his stubbornness—and hers, might I add—are the reason she left and moved halfway across the countryside. Didn’t stop him from losing his heart to her, though, and wolves only fall in love once. It’s why he is the way he is.”
“Growly and surly and ready to bite someone’s head off at a moment’s notice?” Trix guessed.
“Humanish,” said Sassy. “Wolves like him, the enchanted kind, have the ability to change into human form during the full moon. Always been that way, always will be. Until a wolf like that falls in love. Then his shape takes after that of his beloved. And his beloved is human.”
Human and fey, technically, but both were far more human in appearance than animals. “So he’s in love with Rose Red, and always will be, and she knows it, because now he’s trapped in half-wolf, half-human form. But neither one of them will do anything about it?”
“That’s about the size of it, clever boy.”
“Wow.” Trix shook his head. “I suppose I’d be growly too.”
Armed with this new information, Trix did his best to treat Wolf with more kindness upon returning Old Sassy to the wagon. A difficult prospect, as Wolf seemed even more cross than ever. For the life of him Trix couldn’t understand why, because they were well into the Enchanted Wood now.
“Welcome to my home,” Trix said to Lizinia. These were his trees, his soil, his animal friends. No matter where he had been born, the Enchanted Wood was where he’d been discovered and taken in by the Woodcutter family, and where he’d spent all of his growing-up years. The air smelled better. The birds sounded happier. Even the ground beneath the wagon’s wheels felt more forgiving.
“Magnificent,” Lizinia breathed.
“It smells divine,” Trebald chimed in from his perch on Lizinia’s shoulder.
Trix was pleased by their reverent expressions. “To me there is not a more perfect place in the world.”
“I agree,” said Saturday as she and Betwixt rode up beside them. “But I’m a great deal more comfortable on the days when the magic of the world is in balance.”
If they traveled without incident, by tonight they would be on the border of Faerie. They’d arrive at the Hill—the high seat of the Faerie Court—by the next morning. At which point Trix and his small army could ride in and save the world. The Faerie Queen would be so pleased!
The deeper they drove into the Wood, the thicker the trees became. Bushes began crowding the path, making the road almost impassible in some areas. Twice, they had to work together to pull fallen trees out of the way so that the wagon could cross. Eventually, it felt as if they spent more time clearing the path for the wagon instead of riding in it at all.
“This couldn’t have been the way you came,” Saturday called to Wolf as she and Peregrine hacked at branches with their swords.
“This is the main road through Faerie,” said Wolf. “Leads straight to the Hill.”
“It’s the magic already,” Trix said quietly. “It has to be.” If fey magic had been used to keep the road clear, then its sudden impassability made more sense.
Finally, they managed to break through the worst of it. The road led on to a forest of tall trees and stones, with little brush or grass to speak of. Peregrine mounted Betwixt, while Saturday hopped into the wagon beside Trix and Lizinia, but neither of them sheathed their swords. As much as the Wood felt like home, the sense of something sinister remained in the air. Trix kept his bow to hand. Lizinia noticed and did the same.
“How funny would it be if Peter walked by,” said Saturday. “Or Papa.”
Trix had been thinking very much along the same lines. Before enchanted frogs and giant kings and the splitting of the world, Papa, Saturday, and Peter had gone into the Wood every day to work. Trix wondered if Papa and Peter still kept up the routine. “How far away do you think home is?”
Saturday answered without taking her eyes off the trees around them. “Maybe a day south?”
“Do you think they hate me?”
He’d been burning to ask Saturday the question since they’d met back up again, but he’d been afraid of her answer. Saturday was not one to pull punches, literally or figuratively.
“Mama called you a fool,” she said after a few steps.
“Mama calls us all fools,” said Trix. Mama’s fey power was that every word she spoke came true. “Luckily, there are more ways than one to be a fool.”
“They understood why you’d gone, though not why you felt you needed to do it alone.” Saturday fiddled with the pommel of her sword. “Keep in mind, I’d just broken the world and there was an ocean lapping up on our back stoop, so we had bigger things to worry about. Like pies.”
Trix’s attempt to hold back his laughter made him burst into a guffaw. “Pies?”
“Mama took one look at the backyard and started fretting about the chickens, the fruit trees, and the barn, all of which were underwater.”
“And no fruit trees means no pies,” said Trix.
“She was actually thankful that you’d sold the cow this past spring. For all the good it did.”
Trix selling that cow had set an incredible sequence of events in motion that might have ended very differently if Fate hadn’t intervened. The most important part, however, was that none of his family was angry at him for running away. “Thank you.”
Saturday must not have heard him, for she kept on. “And then Thursday showed up in her ship to take Mama and Erik and me to Rose Abbey, so we were all sort of busy with that. Mama got seasick right away. Did you know Thursday has seven men on her ship, all named Simon? I didn’t really get to know any of them because the witch’s bird snatched me up not long after that. I was glad to see that Erik was okay. He arrived at the abbey with Thursday. She cheered when I punched Jack. Put a nice dent in that legendary lantern jaw and his pride.”
Trix narrowed his eyes at his sister. She was mistelling the story on purpose, just to goad him. Saturday knew he’d give his right arm to have spent a day on the deck of a pirate ship. “You’re such a pest,” he said.
“I am the best,” she rhymed, and punched him in the arm playfully. Thanks to his bigger frame, Trix was able to experience the punch without being knocked sideways, which was a first.
If Saturday noticed, she didn’t comment on it. “I keep looking for somewhere—anywhere—that Papa and Peter and I have worked before,” she said. “Gods know we’ve been all over this Wood.”
“You don’t recognize anything?”
Saturday shook her head. “Not that it means much. The Wood can erase the footsteps of a human in an evening. In a fortnight, you’d never have known anyone was there to begin with.”
“Then I hope we don’t lose our way,” said Trix.
“We’ll be fine,” said Saturday. “Woodcutters hav
e tricks. Breadcrumbs. Stones. Things like that.”
“Do you happen to have any stones on you?”
Saturday paused, listened to the wind in the leaves for a moment, and then resumed talking. “I do, actually. Remember the three fairy stones Papa gave Sunday?”
He did, and the memory made him smile. Papa had come home from work and told Sunday all about a leprechaun he’d trapped in the woods that day, and the three gold coins the leprechaun had given him as payment for setting him free. How disappointed Mama had been when the fool’s gold had turned out to be fairy stones…if it had ever been gold in the first place. Not that it mattered. To Trix and his siblings, Papa’s stories were priceless.
Saturday reached into in her pack and retrieved the stones: one hazy pink, one green and mossy, and one blue shot with veins of white. “Take one. For luck. Lizinia too.”
“Thank you,” said Lizinia as she chose the pink stone.
Trix took the green. “It feels right to leave you the one that looks like waves on the deep ocean.”
Saturday dropped the blue stone back in her pack, then ruffled his hair for good measure. While she had him close, she whispered, “Trix, I’m worried about Wolf. Have you noticed anything…strange about him?”
“Like, the deeper we get into the Wood, the surlier he gets? It’s been a long journey for all of us, and I don’t know him very well, but Sassy says he’s a good man. I’m inclined to trust her.”
“What else did Sassy say?”
“He has history with Rose Red.”
Saturday nodded. “I know. I mean, I don’t know the whole story, but I figured out the important bit. It’s just… Something feels wrong.”
Trix wasn’t sure about his animal instinct, or even his fey instinct this close to Faerie, but his human self was definitely on edge. “I feel it too.”
Fireflies rose up into the Wood after sunset, like stars blossomed from the earth. From beside Trix, Lizinia sighed. “I don’t think I will ever tire of that sight.”
“I never have,” said Trix. Trouble was, other than the fireflies, he hadn’t noticed a wild animal in the Wood for a very long time. They were a large party and made a fair amount of noise, so it wasn’t too odd, but odd enough to make Trix extra attentive.
Right about the same time, the wagon began thumping oddly and took on a terrible wobble.
“Busted wheel,” growled Wolf. He pulled Sassy into a halt and jumped down from his seat to examine the far side of the wagon.
“Maybe we should make camp for the night,” Saturday said warily.
Trix nodded. Old Sassy began to prance restlessly, but she hadn’t said anything to Trix.
“I’ll set her loose.” Saturday walked to the hitch, fiddled with it a while, and then cursed like a Simon. “This is impossible. These straps are old as grave dirt, Wolf. Why on earth do you still use them? Peregrine, hand me your dagger. I’m just going to cut her free.” Saturday held out a hand and waited. And waited.
“My dagger is gone,” Peregrine said finally.
“You lost your dagger?” Saturday asked with exasperation.
“Of course not,” said Peregrine. “I…” But it seemed he didn’t have a better explanation. He began retracing his steps down the path. Betwixt helped him.
Lizinia hopped down from the back of the wagon and joined Trix. “Something is wrong,” he whispered to her. He didn’t want to alarm everyone if there was no cause for it.
“Trebald is shaking like a leaf,” she whispered back. “Something is off. And I swear I keep seeing movement in the shadows. Not fireflies.”
There was a resounding crack and Old Sassy hopped away from the body of the wagon.
Peregrine, still searching for his missing dagger, called out, “Saturday, did you just use your sword on that strap?”
“No,” Saturday said calmly. Too calmly. “The wood of the hitch just rotted away. Peregrine, you and Betwixt should come back. Trix, why don’t you and Lizinia come up here with me?”
Trebald sniffed at the uneasiness in the air. “I don’t like this.”
“Wolf!” Saturday whisper-yelled, but if he heard her from the other side of the wagon, he didn’t respond.
“I’m scared,” Lizinia said, almost inaudibly. In moments, the small group was huddled together before the wagon. The waxing moon cast the shadows of the Wood sharply across the road, both the way they were going and the way they had come. Apart from his companions’ heavy breathing, the road remained silent. Even the fireflies had moved on to safer paths.
Shadows. Thievery. Broken wheels and rotten hitches. Fear. Too much of what was happening reminded Trix of a conversation he’d had earlier. “Sassy,” he whispered, “would spriggans hurt us?”
“I suppose they could,” said the horse, “but I’ve never known them to. Mostly they’re just mischievous.”
“What are spriggans?” asked Saturday.
“The stone giant Guardians of Faerie,” said Trix. “But they’re only the ghosts of giants. Sassy says they normally only steal things and play tricks on people.”
“The magic of the world is out of balance.” Saturday raised her sword. “Nothing is normal right now.”
Betwixt had ideas about that. “If fey magic tethered the spriggans’ spirits to their stones like it kept the road clear…”
Peregrine held his sword high. “…then we are in big trouble.”
“Trix,” said Lizinia, “do spriggans look like bumpy evil shadow blobs with warts all over?”
“Sassy said they were so ugly that grass dies beneath their feet.”
He looked down as he said it. They all did. Even in the darkness they could tell that the grass beyond their small circle was brown and dead.
“That qualifies,” said Saturday. A monstrous dark shape rose out of the shadows and headed straight for Lizinia. Saturday swung her sword but it passed right through its body, as if it there’d been nothing there at all. Lizinia screamed as the spriggan touched her—a black spot appeared on her sleeve.
“You get away from her!” Trix yelled at the spriggan. Betwixt reared up as if to strike the spriggan with his impressive hooves, but the spriggan had already melted back into the shadows.
“Our weapons are useless!” cried Saturday. “What do we do?”
“I’m not strong enough to fly everyone out of here,” said Betwixt.
“Peregrine, go,” ordered Saturday. “Take Lizinia.”
“I am not leaving you,” Peregrine said adamantly.
“Nor me,” said Lizinia, but her words were strained.
Trix was too busy worrying about his golden companion to argue. The attack had brought her to her knees. “Are you all right?” he asked.
“Tremendous…pain.” The discovery of the right word to describe what she was feeling seemed to shock her. The expression on her face scared Trix worse than the spriggan. “I have not felt such pain in a very long time. Am I going to die now?”
He examined the dark spot without touching it. It didn’t seem to be spreading. “No,” he said with complete uncertainty. “You are not going to die. I bet a bit of cantaloupe will clear that right up. Can you hold your bow?”
“Trix,” she whispered to him as he helped her stand and handed her the rain-bow, “are you positive I’m not dying? Papa Gatto’s ghost is haunting that tree over there, smiling wistfully, as if he knows I’ll be joining him soon.”
Trix followed her gaze. Sure enough, that blasted incorporeal cat was staring down upon them from his perch in the nearest tree, but Trix saw no wistful smile upon the spectre. It looked more like the cat was scowling, at him particularly, and with much disappointment.
“Is that a—” Before Saturday could finish asking the question, Papa Gatto leapt from his perch. Saturday swung her sword again, to no avail. The sword passed through the cat just as the cat itself passed through the center of Trix’s body.
Trix felt no impact, but the air left his lungs and his skin tingled. There was a damp spot on hi
s shirt, right in the middle of his chest, marking the path of the ghostly feline. Trix laid his hand over it. It was not water, he realized, but frost. Beneath the cloth of the frozen shirt he felt the lump of Wisdom’s tooth beneath his palm. He wished he knew what question to ask it to get them out of this mess.
As if he had said the words aloud, the tooth lit up like a star. Trix pulled the cord around his neck and lifted the tooth high above his head. The magic light illuminated the road and the trees of the Wood around them, revealing every spriggan hiding in the shadows.
“Dear Gods,” breathed Saturday.
They were completely surrounded. Silhouettes rose up from the ground and hung down from thick branches. Some were smoky and insubstantial like Papa Gatto. Those that were more opaque had more sense of form, as if a shadow had come to life and grown arms and legs and…rocks. Their mouths were rocks. Their teeth were rocks. Their fingers were rocks. The rocks that made up their faces had depressions, but there were no eyes. Like Trebald, they didn’t need to see.
The tallest, bumpiest form shuffled in the direction of the group, crunching the blackened grass beneath substantial feet. The ground beneath them appeared scorched.
“I smell death,” whispered Trebald.
The spriggan turned its blind face to the sound of the brownie’s voice and groaned, the loud keening of a corpse risen from the grave. The other spriggans answered the call. They began closing in as well, their footsteps becoming audible as they shifted from shadow into flesh.
Trebald scurried up Lizinia’s arm and hid in the relative safety of her hair.
Trix held his breath. He didn’t know what to do. If Saturday’s magic sword had been useless, his arrows would have made no difference, goddess-given or not. He pulled the golden dagger from his belt. The lingworm had blessed the dagger with its blood and told Trix it would cut anything. He might be able to take down one spriggan, assuming it did any damage at all. Whichever form came closest to Lizinia would die before he touched her. And then Trix and Saturday and their friends would all perish at the hands of the rest.