A Fiery Friendship

  “So says the invitation,” her mother replied absently, placing a stem in the vase; it was much too long and needed to be clipped, but Tilda made no move for the shears that lay upon the table.

  “Is something wrong?” asked Glinda, nibbling the crispy edge of the popover. “You seem distracted.”

  “Do I?” Tilda reached for the last bud, but abandoned it to take up a scrap of linen fabric instead, then a needle threaded with black string. Without a word of explanation, she began to stitch the shape of a circle.

  “I have some concerns,” said Glinda. “About my future.”

  “As do I,” Tilda murmured, her needle dipping and rising expertly until the tiny image of a winged being had appeared on the fabric within the circle.

  Glinda waited for Tilda to expound, but she didn’t. “Mother!”

  Startled, Tilda looked up from her sewing. “I’m sorry, darling,” she said, setting aside her work. “You were saying?”

  “I was saying that I’ve been thinking about Declaration Day. I had a dream—at least I think I did—though I can’t quite catch hold of it in my memory. Even so, I do believe the dream was trying to tell me something. But it’s all a bit fuzzy.”

  “Fuzzy?” Tilda went to the fireplace to remove the teakettle, only to realize that the water had not yet begun to boil. Glinda furrowed her brow and watched as her mother returned the kettle to the fire; it wasn’t like Tilda to be so distracted.

  Pouring herself a cup of buttermilk from the pitcher, Glinda said, “It’s common knowledge that Aphidina inscribes the scrolls in advance, and in order to graduate with her kind favor, every girl’s Declaration must match the future the Witch has written.”

  “Yes,” Tilda muttered. “That is the grand tradition.”

  “And of course,” Glinda went on, reaching for the abandoned bud and slipping it into the vase, “everyone also knows what happens when a girl misdeclares.”

  “I suppose everyone does.”

  “But doesn’t it seem tremendously unfair that we are only allowed to choose from four possible careers? Why only four? And why those four? Chambermaid, Seamstress, Governess, and Nurse. Why must our options be so limited? What if I wished to become—oh, I don’t know—a dancer? Or a dealer of rare coins? Or a botanist?”

  Tilda frowned, preoccupied. “Do you wish to become a botanist?”

  “Not really,” said Glinda with a shrug. “But I did earn highest honors in Horticultural Expressionism for Girls.”

  The teakettle whistled, but Tilda made no move to fetch it. Once again she reached for the fabric scrap.

  Glinda noticed that there were now four faces embroidered around the circle, though she didn’t recall seeing Tilda add them. With a sigh, she got up, removed the kettle from the fireplace, and poured her mother a steaming cup of tea.

  “Now that I think of it,” Glinda grumbled, “why is it that at Madam Mentir’s, the title of almost every course ends with the qualifier ‘for Girls’? Does educating female students somehow require a specific approach?”

  Secretly, Glinda had always marveled at the subjects her friend Leef Dashingwood was exploring at Professor Mendacium’s Institute for Intellectually Promising Young Boys: Intro to Cartography, Essential Metallurgy, and the Basics of Sword Forging. Glinda would have given anything to sit in on a sword-forging lecture! In fact, not long ago, just before his unexpected departure from Mendacium’s Institute, Leef had loaned Glinda one of his reference books, The Particulars of Pointy Combat. At first she’d been excited about studying something that hadn’t been assigned to her. After further contemplation, however, she determined that it might not be wise to take such a risk, since at Madam Mentir’s, reading outside the classroom was profoundly frowned upon. She’d returned the book to Leef without ever getting past the illustrations in the first chapter.

  “Why do you suppose Aphidina takes such an interest in what we are taught?” Glinda asked, gulping down another bite of popover. “And in what we are not taught as well?”

  “That’s an excellent question,” Tilda replied. “In fact, all questions are excellent questions, if they are asked at the proper time, and under the appropriate circumstances.” Her eyes darted to the window overlooking the backyard. “Unfortunately, this is not that time and these are not those circumstances.”

  Glinda scowled, propped her elbows on the table, and dropped her chin into her hands. “Governess, Nurse, Seamstress, and Chambermaid,” she lamented. “I just don’t feel . . . appropriate for any of these vocations. Or maybe it’s that the vocations are inappropriate for me. But I do have to choose something. I must declare my path, accept my scroll, and determine my future.”

  “That’s exactly what you must do,” said Tilda, an anxious tremor in her voice. “Trust me, child. This is not the time to be contrary.”

  “Isn’t it?” Glinda leaned against the back of the bench and folded her arms. “If I’m meant to declare myself, then shouldn’t I actually declare myself? Why shouldn’t I exercise a bit of independent thought?”

  “This is not the time for such flights of fancy,” said Tilda firmly. “For one thing, I do not relish the thought of watching you experience the consequences of misdeclaring!”

  “Neither do I,” Glinda agreed. “So I suppose I’ll just do what everyone expects of me and declare myself a boring old Seamstress.”

  For the first time since Glinda had come to breakfast, her mother smiled. “A boring old Seamstress? You? Never!”

  “Oh, Mother! I’m sorry!” Glinda felt her cheeks flush with shame. “I didn’t mean to imply—”

  “It’s all right,” said Tilda, reaching out to stroke Glinda’s red hair. “I take no offense. It is simply my occupation. And as you seem to be discovering for yourself, an occupation can only ever be what one does, and not, in the truest sense, who one is.”

  Glinda had never thought much about who her mother was. She only knew that as a girl, Tilda had been apprentice to an old woman called Maud, who was said to have been the best Seamstress Oz had ever known. They had not seen her in some time, but when Glinda was small, they had often gone along the Road of Yellow Brick to visit Maud in her cottage on the outskirts of Quadling. Maud had come to visit at their house only once—Glinda remembered that occasion fondly as the day Maud had given her the gift of Haley Poppet.

  As Glinda drank her buttermilk, she tried to remember the song Maud had sung that day: Count by one, a quest begun, Count by two, with hearts so true . . .

  Tilda stood and carried her tea to the kitchen window to again gaze out at the yard. As Glinda’s eyes followed her, she noticed the glistening glass panes—for some reason she was expecting one of them to be broken.

  An image flashed in Glinda’s mind, a piece of the dream: her mother in a sheer, sparkling cape, dark figures gathered on the lawn, the splintery web of a broken windowpane . . . a red gown and headdress . . .

  “I’ve only just remembered,” she began with a shudder. “Last night, in my nightmare, I saw—”

  Before she could finish, there was a knock on the kitchen door.

  “That will be Ursie,” said Tilda, referring to Glinda’s classmate and best friend, with whom she had walked to Madam Mentir’s every day for the last six years. “You’d better hurry along and get ready for school.”

  Since there was no point in delaying the inevitable—whatever the inevitable might turn out to be—Glinda rose from the bench and headed to her bedroom. As she did, she gathered up a handful of her long rusty hair and began to twist it into a braid. Then a thought struck her that had her deftly weaving fingers halting mid-twist.

  “Perhaps I shall leave my hair down for today,” she said.

  Tilda looked stricken. “All the girls at Mentir’s wear their hair in plaits or pinned up,” she said. “And on Declaration Day of all days, you must follow suit!” She closed her eyes and shook her head. “What I mean to say is that it’s a lovely thought, my darling. But I doubt Madam Mentir would allow you to accept y
our scroll with your hair unbound.”

  With an exasperated huff, Glinda went to dress for school.

  And Tilda tossed the linen scrap with its hasty black stitches into the fire.

  3

  INCENDIARY COMMAND

  Aphidina’s castle was a thing of stalks and vines, of pollen, pods, and petals—a suitable dwelling place for the Haunting Harvester Witch of the South.

  Ages ago Aphidina had stood upon the most fertile spot in all of Quadling Country and thrown a handful of enchanted seeds into the dirt. In a voice blooming with dark Magic she demanded of the land a palace.

  And the land had given it to her.

  The castle had grown up around her from the rich Lurlian soil—a living edifice of stems and creepers shooting off here, trailing there, climbing and clinging and bending toward the sun in a magnificent melding of agriculture and architecture. Like nonliving castles, this one had windows and sweeping staircases, larders, sculleries, and a frightful dungeon deep within its root system, all protected almost to the point of impenetrability by Wicked enchantments. Every spring season, fresh buds would burst forth from the palace and burgeon into hallways and ballrooms and chambers for reflection. Sometimes rooms died off and needed to be pruned away to allow for the growth of new ones. But Aphidina didn’t mind. She enjoyed redecorating.

  Deep in the heart of the castle was the Witch’s audience chamber, where one day long ago a throne had pushed itself up through the cracks in the floor. It began as a stumpish thing with dull gray bark and gnarled branches prickling with cones. But in time the throne had grown into an appropriately elegant seat for Her Witchliness of the South. It had a tall back and smooth limbs for armrests, whereupon the Witch might strum her fingers and think her Wicked thoughts.

  It was upon this throne that Aphidina was sitting when the candles began to flicker. She flinched in her fancy chair. The Harvester knew a visitation when she saw one.

  She was here. She who ruled all.

  Mombi. The Krumbic one, who could turn Good Magic to dark.

  And today she had turned herself to fire.

  Aphidina understood that Mombi could have just as easily arrived as a stallion with a tail of braided snakes, or a horned salamander with burning coals for eyes. She could be anything, but she could not have everything. Not yet.

  That was what Aphidina and the others were for—to get it for her.

  Through the snapping of the candlelight, the announcement came without preamble: “The Grand Adept has revealed herself at last.”

  Aphidina’s cold green eyes locked on the flickering flames. She was not overly fond of fire.

  “Her name is Tilda Gavaria, and she is a mighty Sorceress, to be sure.”

  “This is extraordinary news,” was Aphidina’s cautious reply. After a moment’s hesitation she asked, “And where was she found?”

  “She is a citizen of Quadling Country.”

  Aphidina’s jurisdiction. Her lips twisted and her long fingers fussed with the chainmail vest she wore over her gown of poppy-red satin. “My deepest apologies. But if I may ask, how precisely did you locate this Tilda?”

  “I sensed the expansion of a mind,” the fire hissed.

  “You felt someone learning?” Aphidina couldn’t help being impressed. “I was not aware that you could do that.”

  The flames sputtered. “It has not happened in quite some time. The Foursworn have been cautious. So cautious I had begun to think they’d given up.” There was a pause, in which the fire grew even hotter, as if from the force of its own excitement. “Last night I felt Gavaria requesting information from the Moon Fairy, who sent a vision in reply. A vision of the future, and to this I attached myself, like a virus.”

  “Contamination is an excellent skill,” Aphidina noted. “What did you discover?”

  “That the Ritual of Endless Shadow can indeed take place.” Something like a chuckle, but uglier, crackled beneath the fire’s voice. “I saw a fusion of Magic and sacrifice in which you and your sister Witches—”

  “They are not my sisters,” Aphidina muttered petulantly.

  “—drag the Moon Fairy from her celestial perch, plunging the world into perpetual twilight.”

  The Harvester felt the chainmail pressing heavily against her chest as she resisted the urge to gasp. She knew that the Ritual of Endless Shadow was Mombi’s greatest goal. For eons it had been beyond her grasp, but today Mombi’s long-abandoned thirst for the moon had been reignited.

  All because of Tilda Gavaria.

  “A question, My Incendiary Liege: you said that the ceremony ‘can’ happen. Am I to understand that it is not a certainty?”

  The flames writhed upon their wicks. “A vision of the future is a prediction, not a promise. Do you know what that means, Aphidina?”

  “Yes.” Aphidina pretended to smooth her satin gown, when in fact she was just wiping the sweat from her palms. “It means there is work to do.”

  The fire flared in agreement. “We must hunt down Gavaria if we are to find the Elemental Fairies and collect the Gifts of King Oz.” A plume of angry black smoke billowed out of the flames. “A task you should have accomplished the first time I assigned it to you.”

  At this, the Witch stiffened. There had been no mention of the Elemental Fairies or King Oz’s Gifts for centuries, although Aphidina suspected that not a day went by when this Krumbic nightmare didn’t wonder about them.

  “I need not remind you that of all the Magic in Lurlia, the power contained within your sisterhood is the only power that can destroy those odious Elemental Fairies.”

  “Again, not my sisters,” Aphidina murmured, “and no, you need not remind me of that.”

  The more important fact of which she also did not need to be reminded was that, other than the power of the Krumbic one herself, “those odious Elemental Fairies” were the only things standing between Aphidina and her doom; it was cold comfort that the same was true for the other three Wickeds. She supposed this was what one might call a cosmic balance, or a “fair fight.” But of the many things the Harvester hated, fairness was the one she detested most.

  “I believe,” the fire crackled on, “that one of the Fairies—your own nemesis, in fact—is rather close at hand.”

  Aphidina gave a little croak of horror. “How close?”

  “Extremely,” the candlewicks sputtered, sending a shower of sparks sizzling through the air. These rained down around Aphidina’s throne, igniting into a ring of flames encircling the Witch and licking at her feet. “Gavaria has the Fire Fairy in her possession. We need only arrest her and she will deliver him directly into our hands.”

  “A most fortuitous coincidence,” Aphidina said, all but gagging on the words. “But you know it is altogether possible that the Fairy might destroy me before I extinguish him.”

  “That is a risk I am willing to take,” the fire crackled. “Though I strongly advise that you do not allow such a calamity to occur. If you can destroy this Fairy and steal the Gift, then there will be no need to perform the ceremony beneath the moon.”

  “Your concern for my well-being is humbling,” Aphidina drawled, drops of perspiration forming on her brow; more trickled down her spine. She wondered if the dampness might have an adverse effect on her Silver Chainmail.

  A flash of motion near the doorway caught her eye. A sense of something that had not been there before, the sprouting of a new chamber perhaps, or the dying-off of some long-forgotten room.

  “I shall have the Sorceress Gavaria arrested as soon as possible, Your Combustibleness,” she said, though she was not looking forward to gathering the mass of muck and swamp gas she called a bounty hunter. Sometimes she regretted having created a thing of such repugnance in the first place; Aphidina preferred to look upon beauty and elegance whenever possible, and Bog, while effective, was ugly.

  Aphidina quickly crooked a finger at her handmaiden, a tiny girl blossom she’d cultivated herself from a bulb in a clay pot.

  The girl f
lower had eyes the color of spring grass, and on her head instead of hair grew delicate pink and white petals. She was obedient, lovely to behold, and smelled delightful. Indeed, the only evidence that she’d been brought forth from Wickedness was the ridge of thorns that grew down the middle of her back. As she neared the sweltering circle of fire, she wilted a bit.

  “Daisy,” said Aphidina, her skin beginning to blister, “summon the prison wagon back from its rounds.”

  “As you wish,” said Daisy, and the flower girl ran off to see it done.

  “I will send the bounty hunter to apprehend the Foursworn Sorceress Gavaria the moment the wagon returns,” Aphidina promised the fire.

  At Aphidina’s feet, the fire roared up in a conflagration of anticipation. Tongues of flame curled themselves into fireballs and shot out from the circle to explode in every corner of the room. If this was Mombi happy, it was nothing short of spine-chilling.

  A long moment of broiling silence passed in which the Harvester took a deep breath of scalding air and mopped at her forehead. Drawing her sizzling toes up under her gown, she inquired, “Majestic Malevolence, will you be taking the flames with you when you go?”

  But Mombi was already gone; unfortunately, the circle of fire remained, blazing around Aphidina’s throne. She recognized it for the warning it was:

  CAPTURE THE SORCERESS.

  DESTROY THE FAIRY.

  DO.

  NOT.

  FAIL.

  The Witch sighed and slumped in her chair. Had the roar of the fire not been so great, she might have heard the faint sound of boot heels retreating along the corridor that led away from her throne room. She might have even noted the slight disturbance in the air of the audience chamber, caused by the whipping retreat of a heavy cloak.

  But Aphidina was too intent on watching the encroaching blaze to realize that her order to arrest the Sorceress had been overheard.