Trix stepped back. He had seen smoke of this like before, when his family had defeated the giant. Aunt Joy had slit the monster’s throat and from it had issued what remained of the evil king, a vapor as black and rancid as his soul. That dark cloud had disappeared into the Enchanted Wood. The smoke illustrated here on the curtain continued rising upward and became a dragon, spreading its wings against a star-scattered sky. There was a white, four-legged beast in that sky as well, maybe a tenth the size of the dragon, and on its back were two riders. The dragon sped after the beast and its passengers just as the curtain before him parted.
It seemed that Trix was not to know the outcome of this event, either. Just as well…he wasn’t sure if he was supposed to be cheering for the white beast or the dragon.
The stage was set to look like a forest—if not the Enchanted Wood, then a very similar wood all the same. A young man walked carefully through the brush. It was as autumn in the scene as it would be autumn here soon, and the young man did his best to avoid crunching as many of the dried leaves as he could. (Trix could have done better.) He looked about as old as Trix in human years…about as old as Trix now appeared to the rest of the world thanks to Papa Gatto. That rotten, grinning spirit cat…
Trix’s wandering thoughts were brought to a halt by a movement in the trees. A movement of the trees. It had been so subtle he had almost missed it; in fact, try as he might it was difficult to keep his eyes from losing the anomaly in the foliage. Trix had no firsthand experience with dryads—the people of the trees, the Green Children—but based on tales the animals had told him, Trix gathered that’s what he or she was.
“Watch out!” Trix called to the young man as the dryad approached. The young man did not hear him, or pretended not to hear.
In a flash the dryad was upon him from behind, one arm around his neck, one hand over his eyes. The young man yelled and spun around. He grabbed the dryad around the waist, lifted her up and…tickled her? Peals of laugher rang out through the trees. The young man carried the dryad to the stream and quite unceremoniously dropped her in the water.
“Friedrich!” she squealed as the water muddied the paint on her face, arms, and legs. “That’s not fair!”
“It’s as fair as it is for you to sneak up on me, Ghost.” With a smile, Friedrich leaned over the girl in the stream and kissed her soundly. She kissed him back with equal enthusiasm, taking advantage of his precarious state and pulling him down into the water with her.
As the indigo curtains closed over the scene Trix finally recognized the girl.
It was Tesera.
The curtains opened again on a room that looked very similar to the library at the palace in Arilland. A large fireplace lit one end of the room, casting long, dancing shadows across the floor. Friedrich stood in the middle of the room. He had aged since the scene in the woods, but the golden circle on his brow and the thick doublet that he wore made him appear much older.
“I will accept no more excuses from you,” Friedrich said to the man before him, with his brown coat worn through in places and his back hunched either by nature or penitence. “Have that gold to me by sundown tomorrow, without exception.”
“Yes, sire.” The man bowed even lower to Friedrich and politely backed out of the scene. Trix never saw his face.
Friedrich waited a beat in the silence of the room before addressing the emptiness. “I want you to follow him. Make sure he does what I ask.”
From a corner of the room that had previously held nothing but shadow, stepped a woman. Her boots, jacket, and trousers were brown and green. All looked to be fashioned from the same supple leather. She wore her cinnamon hair pulled back in a queue. Tesera. Unlike Friedrich, she looked just as young as the girl she had been before…but, like him, her bearing was of someone far older than her years.
“And if he does not?” she asked.
“Then kill him.”
The reply did not seem to startle Tesera, who remained in the room with her head bowed.
“You are the only one I can entrust with this task, Ghost,” said Friedrich. “You are the only one I trust at all.”
“I will do this for you,” Tesera said to her boots. “But it will be the last thing you ever ask of me.”
Friedrich gave no thought before his reply. “As you wish,” he said, and then marched out of the scene in the same direction the sniveling man had departed.
Tesera, now alone in the room, stepped forward. She was but an arm’s length from Trix when she stopped and reached behind her back to slide a hidden weapon from its sheath. It was a stiletto, thin and sharp and bright and covered in blood. Tesera’s hands were covered in blood now, too.
She looked up—looked Trix dead in the eyes—and dropped the bloody stiletto at his feet as the curtain closed again.
The curtains opened once more onto a forest scene. This was most definitely the Enchanted Wood; Trix knew of no other place in the world where Elder Trees grew as tall and mighty as they did deep in the Wood. A ragwoman sat beside a small campfire, readying a pot of something to set in the embers.
Now that Trix knew what to look for, he began scanning the trees, their trunks, their roots, their leaves, the grass, even the fire itself. Tesera was there somewhere, he knew it, or would be there soon, and he would be ready to spot her. What he was not prepared for was the small rock that randomly tossed itself into the fire. Within seconds the clearing was filled with a sparkly violet fog not unlike the curtain that kept revealing these images to him. When the fog dispersed, there was a knife at the ragwoman’s throat. But the attacker was not Tesera.
It was Sorrow.
The evil fairy godmother’s ebony hair melted into the darkness around her, but her midnight blue eyes flickered with the flames from the campfire. “It is a rare day indeed that I get the upper hand on you, my slippery, stealthy, sister dearest,” Sorrow said in silky tones.
Trix gasped. Tesera had not been hiding from the ragwoman. Tesera was the ragwoman.
“What do you want, Sorrow?” Tesera asked in bored tones.
“What do I always want?” Sorrow’s grin was even more disturbing than Papa Gatto’s. “To make mischief, darling. Same as you.”
“I’ve retired from that life,” said Tesera. “I’m naught but an actress now.”
“Interesting.” Sorrow did not move from behind her sister, nor did she remove the knife from her throat. “I wasn’t aware that we could stop being what we are just by deciding it. How marvelous for you.”
“You are a pest, Sorrow.”
“And you are one of my greatest achievements.” Sorrow shifted about, rummaging for something in the pockets of her voluminous cloak. The dagger bit into Tesera’s neck, drawing blood and making her wince. Sorrow didn’t seem to care. “Drink this.” She held out a vial to Tesera with her free hand.
“No, thank you,” said Tesera. “I’m afraid you’ll just have to kill me.”
“Drink it, Ghost. Or I will tell him where to find you.”
Tesera’s body tensed, and then relaxed. She took the vial from Sorrow, pulled the stopper, and drained it.
“NO!” Trix cried futilely. He was baffled. Who was “him?” Friedrich? Trix’s birthfather? Trix himself? Someone else entirely? Whoever it was had a powerful enough sway over Tesera to force her to do her chaotic eldest sister’s bidding.
Tesera slumped back into Sorrow’s arms, unconscious. Sorrow drew a symbol on Tesera’s forehead before leaning down to kiss it. The clearing glowed a violet blue again, and then faded.
“Family must stick together,” Sorrow whispered to her. “Sweet dreams, my sister.” With that, Sorrow shifted into a ragwoman, lifted Tesera’s pack, and exited the scene.
Trix tried to run into the Wood to chase Sorrow, to help Tesera, but the stage had already vanished. When he turned back Tesera had reappeared, bedecked once more in white gossamer and flowers.
“Do you understand now?” she asked in a coy voice. H
is voice, when it had been higher pitched and coming from a smaller body.
He understood a lot of things now. Tesera—and no doubt her seamstress sister—was not dead but asleep, under a powerful spell cast by Sorrow. With this spell it seemed that Sorrow had appropriated the sisters’ fey gifts as well. Trix also understood that his birthmother’s gift was not simply acting, as Aunt Joy had recounted in her stories. Tesera was a glamourist. A chameleon. A ghost.
An assassin.
“Yes,” Trix said. “I get it.”
“And you do not regret your family?” She honestly sounded like she cared.
He shook his head ever so slightly, his eyes never leaving her translucent form.
“Good,” she said. “The Woodcutters were the family you were meant to have. That is how it was meant to be. You were meant to be, sweet Trix. You and I….well…we never were. And that will always make me sad, a little. But I will never regret it, as I do not regret the young man standing before me now.”
Trix allowed one tear to escape down his cheek.
Tesera slid the large signet ring off her finger and placed it in Trix’s hand. “You must take this to the King of the Eagles,” she told him. “Will you do that for me?”
It was on the tip of his tongue to tell her that he owed her nothing, but the words dissolved in his brain the moment after he thought them. He could not blame Tesera for being the person she was, nor could he blame her for giving him a family he wouldn’t have wanted to grow up without. As much as he wished to be angry, he could not be. However, there was one thing he could do.
He could save her.
“Yes,” he said again.
For his acceptance, Tesera gave him a smile that nearly tore his heart in two. “Earth breaks. Fire breathes. Waters bless. Fly away, my son.” She reached up, as if to touch him. He felt a cold breeze and the slightest ruffle of hair on the nape of his neck. And then she was gone.
The room did not return right away, nor did the sparkling curtain. Trix took a deep breath into the nothingness and waited.
“DO NOT FEAR, TRIX. I AM WITH YOU.”
Trix felt the booming voice deep in his chest. It was a woman’s, to be sure, but not his mother’s. Before he could ponder it further, the nothingness was gone and the gray sacristy had returned, just as he’d left it.
“If you recognize her at all, then you know her better than you think, child,” Rose Red was still in the middle of saying. Now that he fully understood what his aunt meant, he smiled. Trix lifted his hand from his birthmother’s. The ring that had previously bit into his fingers now rested loosely in his palm. He clenched the bit of metal in his fist, raising it up to his lips. When he stepped back from the oaken table, he staggered.
Lizinia was by his side in an instant. “Are you all right?”
Trix quickly regained his composure. “I’m fine. I just…” He looked down again at the thick gold and ruby ring in his hand.
“What did she say to you?” asked Rose Red.
Trix gaped at his aunt. “How did you know?”
“There is magic here,” Rose Red replied. “I have had visions too, of loved ones passed. A specter came to me last night, as a matter of fact, and informed me of your impending arrival.”
“Tesera came to you as well?” he asked.
“It was not my dead sister who spoke to me,” said Rose Red. “It was yours.”
Trix’s heart skipped a beat. Monday’s twin Tuesday had danced herself to death in a pair of red shoes not long after his arrival in the Woodcutter home. He’d been but a babe then. It spoke volumes of her character that Tuesday’s shade would still concern herself with her family—never mind her foster brother—even in death.
“But I don’t…” As much as Trix would have liked to compare visions and inquire after the possible identity of the goddess who had addressed him at the end of this last one, he decided it was more important to stick to the task at hand. So he started again. “Tesera is not actually dead. She mentioned something about this being a rehearsal, and then I saw… I saw Sorrow. She made Tesera drink a potion, and then she stole her gift.”
“Goddess.” Rose Red cursed under her breath. “It does explain how she managed to overwhelm our other sister so soon after. It explains a great many things.” Rose Red lifted her eyes to the heavens. “And I am afraid of them all.” She crossed to the oaken table and adjusted the flowers in Tesera’s hair. “Either way, I will keep her body safe from harm. I can promise you that.”
“Thank you,” said Trix. “But there was something else. She told me to take her ring to the King of Eagles. I hope he’ll know why, because I’m sure I don’t. Do you?”
He opened his hand to reveal the ring in his outstretched palm. The look his aunt gave him was one of patient benevolence. Trix had seen that same look on his sister Friday’s face whenever she delivered bad news.
“My dear nephew,” said Rose Red. “The King of Eagles is your father.”
10
The Decision of Every Adventurer
“The Boy Who Talks to Animals is an age old prophecy,” said Rose Red. She had invited Lizinia and Trix back to her rooms for tea and refreshment and further clarification.
Trix was glad for all of those things, but mostly the food. This new body seemed to require far more sustenance than Trix was used to and he was starving.
“After Sorrow and Joy turned out to be such forces of nature, it was always thought that my twin would be the one in whose womb that prophecy would be fulfilled. We were the fifth and sixth daughters born to our family,” she explained to Lizinia. “Unlike Seven, Trix’s foster mother, the rest of us took names instead of numbers as we grew into ourselves. And so my twin and I became Snow White and Rose Red, after the roses outside our front door.”
“Like the roses on the abbey wall,” said Lizinia.
The abbess smiled at the golden girl. “Those grew from clippings of the very same bushes.”
The red velvet cushion of the abbess’s guest chair was thin and lumpy. Trix didn’t relish the thought of sitting here all afternoon chatting about flowers. “The lingworm said that I was ‘a story told before the gods were gods,’ and that I was meant to be a voice for all the animals. When were the gods not gods?”
Rose Red closed her eyes and shook her head. “Of course you met the lingworm.”
Before his aunt could answer his question, Lizinia asked another one. “If this prophecy has been around for so long, why hasn’t it come to fruition before now?” She sat perfectly still, the picture of ease and contentment. Trix was convinced that the layer of gold on her skin and clothes made Lizinia impervious to discomfort.
“This has been the issue of much theological debate,” answered Rose Red. “A boy who could communicate with every animal on earth would need powers beyond that of the ancient Animal Kings.”
Trix agreed. There were three kinds of animals in the world: regular animals, humans who had been cursed into taking animal form, and magical animals with the enchanted blood of the Animal Kings. It was said that this last group had the power to change form under the light of the full moon. To the best of Trix’s knowledge, he had never met one of the enchanted beasts in human form, but the Animal Kings certainly knew of his existence.
“So the prophetic progeny would need to be one half Animal King, and one half…god?” asked Lizinia.
“Or fey,” said Trix. “There are some fey powerful enough to be gods.” His aunts were two of them. His sister Wednesday was a third.
“Snow White and I befriended a bear when we were young,” Rose Red said to Trix. “Did your Papa ever tell you that tale?”
“No,” said Trix. Aunt Joy had revealed their family’s true magical nature to the Woodcutter siblings only that spring. What with the killing of the giant and Sunday becoming Queen and all, there hadn’t been time for Papa to tell many tales.
“That is a shame. You’ll have to ask him sometime. I can’t do it justice, for all th
at it happened to me. Suffice it to say that my sister and I saved the bear from a wretched little man. Mother allowed him to stay with us. Upon the full moon, he revealed that he was the son of the King of Bears, and he asked Snow White to marry him.”
“Weren’t you jealous?” asked Lizinia. “I know a thing or two about jealous sisters.”
“Not in the slightest,” said Rose Red. “I loved Bear, truly, but I have never been as romantic as my sister.”
“So a Bear Prince married one of the most powerful fey daughters that has ever lived,” said Trix.
“It was the perfect match,” said Rose Red. “Unfortunately, Snow White is barren.”
Lizinia gave a small gasp. “Oh! How sad.”
“I agree,” said the abbess. “They would have had many happy children together, raised them all in a household where they knew they were loved.”
“As I was,” murmured Trix.
“As you were meant to,” said Rose Red. “The stars had aligned. Our world shook with chaos. It was time for the Boy Who Talks to Animals to be born. And since Snow White and Bear could not have that child, the gods arranged a dalliance between your birthmother and the King of Eagles.”
A brown-robed monk finally appeared with a tray of tea that smelled of jasmine and raspberries and a pile of cakes, which Trix immediately fell upon and devoured. “So what happened between Tesera and the King of Eagles?” he asked between bites.
“You’ll have to ask him,” was all Rose Red supplied before she sipped her tea.
“Do you know where we can find him?”
“Farther to the north and east, for his is one of the Lands of Immortality. Beyond that, I cannot tell you.”
Trix contemplated the small weight of Wisdom’s tooth, still hung around his neck. “My animal friends will help. I’m sure we can manage.”
Slowly, Lizinia’s head turned to him and her amber eyes met his. “We?” she asked.
Trix froze with a third cake halfway to his mouth. He had forgotten the deal that they’d made. Lizinia had offered to accompany him to his mother’s grave, and she had done that. As much as he would have loved her company on this next leg of his journey, the image of her golden form smothered in black wasps niggled at the back of his mind. Yes, she could hold her own in a fight well enough, and he could learn to deal with her smarmy feline godfather. But even in this new body, he didn’t want to be the one responsible for her getting hurt. To whatever extent Lizinia could be hurt.