He took a deep breath and held it, waiting for the ocean to swallow him. Fray appeared near his shoulder.
“I feel like I ought to offer you something,” she said. “Cup of tea? Water? You might be here for some time.”
Scott shook his head and tried to smile in a friendly way, which was hard to reconcile with his puffed cheeks and little ziplocked mouth.
“You know,” Fray continued, “if that really is the scabbard of Excalibur you’re clutching, then I wonder if you need to breathe at all. There’s an interesting thought. Are you accustomed to holding your wind this long?”
Scott was about to agree that yes, he had been holding it awhile, hadn’t he, when he was suddenly struck by the feeling that he was sharing interdimensional space with a giant fish. Which is a hard feeling to describe. Like love, you just know it when you’re in it.
Then the ocean was all around, and Scott hadn’t the chance to tell Fray thank you, nor say good-bye, nor hear the witch announce over the wet flopping body of Scott’s replacement that they’d be having tuna tonight.
CHAPTER 31
The middle of the Atlantic Ocean was frigid and dark. Scott tumbled in the water, feeling the brush of smaller fish against his skin and a cold ache in his eyes. His ears opened and closed. Then, panic—he didn’t know which way was up. In his fright he gave a shout that bubbled out and away from him. There. Follow the bubbles. He let the rest of his breath go and trailed the dotted line of it to the surface.
When he breached and gasped for breath, he gasped for breath because it seemed like the thing to do—though his lungs felt fine, really. He swiveled in the water, looking around him. The sky was dark and gray above, with a light rain whipped into mist by a fitful wind that made the ocean choppy. There was no land, nothing to be seen in any direction. No, that wasn’t true—there was a little wedge of something cresting the waves to his right. A gray, triangular something. A fin.
“Oh, come on,” Scott whispered. He thrashed his arm through the water and reached for the merrow’s cap in his back pocket.
The fin had disappeared and then reappeared again about thirty feet to his left.
He was nearly positive that he’d put the cap in one of his back pockets, but he went ahead and checked his front pockets anyway.
“No no no no no,” he said, and scanned the wavelets for a glimpse of red. Then he dunked his head and was treated to a good face-to-face look at the great white shark that was stalking him—fifteen feet of sleek gray fighter jet with a dead black pit of an eye and a humorless grin. A “why are you hitting yourself?” kind of grin.
Then, just past the shark, Scott spotted the cap. The red of it was nearly black in the water, slipping listlessly along just below the surface. He tucked the scabbard down his shirtfront and kicked under the shark’s tail as it passed. He supposed that nothing good would come of taking his eyes off the cap, even for a moment, so he wasn’t watching the shark as it turned and hurtled suddenly toward him like it had finally decided what it wanted for dinner.
Scott reached for the cap, too soon, and actually swept it a little farther out of his grasp. If the shark bites my leg off, he thought, at least I won’t bleed—the scabbard won’t let me. Not to mention the world’s ending, so no use crying over eaten legs, he added as he kicked one last time, and grabbed the hat, and pinwheeled around to see the shark’s nightmare face barreling down on him. A child’s drawing of a monster, with a great circular mouth and triangle teeth. Scott jammed the hat on his head, thought, The rift at the bottom of the ocean, and the beast’s jaws snapped shut. But Scott wasn’t where he had been.
He dove, spinning, plummeting faster, the water growing darker all around him. After a while he wondered why he was still alive—he hadn’t taken a breath in over two minutes. He hadn’t noticed that the scabbard was oxygenating his cells for him. Something had to, after his heart had stopped and his blood had turned to sap inside him. Arthur had never noticed any of this either, because it turns out it’s hard to convince a body not to keep pumping air like the machine it is. But through force of will Scott relaxed his chest and emptied his lungs, and in the starless space at the bottom of the sea his body felt heavy and at rest for the first time all year. The scabbard pressed into his chest, warm as a heart.
Only after he slowed and stopped did Scott realize he’d closed his eyes. So now he opened them and could see the thin plane of another octagonal rift all around him. Even here in the dark, he could see it. And he barely had a moment to think about that when the wraith of some new animal passed through him and he found himself blinking in a cow pasture in Pretannica.
Pretannica was darker than he remembered. But the grass was still dense and lush and as green as a traffic light. He clutched at it, dripping salt water, and got to his feet. The other cows were looking at him.
“You’re staring like you’re probably wondering what happened to the cow that was just here,” he told them. “I don’t really have any good news for you.”
“Never had a cow turn into a boy before,” someone answered, and for a moment Scott thought one of the animals might be talking to him. He’d seen stranger things lately. But it was a girl about his age, slightly taller. “Once in a while this pasture turns a cow into a big fish, or an octopus. Never a boy.” She smoothed her clothes and seemed to flush dimly in the twilight.
“Oh. Hi, maybe you can help me,” said Scott. “I’m in a really big hurry. Have you seen, like, a whole lot of elves all marching in the same direction recently? Or something?”
The girl stepped toward him. “I bet you’re a prince. Are you? I always expected something like this would happen to me sooner or later.”
“What? No. Please, do you know where the elves are?”
“Why would you want to know?”
“I need to find them. All the Fay should be heading for the same spot, and I need to get there too.”
“You can’t leave,” the girl said. She came close enough to sniff him. “You’re mine. I traded Harold Cryer three goats for you.”
Something like pink lightning split the sky. Every blade of grass quivered in the thunder that followed.
The girl squinted at the clouds. “What’s going on, cow?” she asked him. A fitful wind whipped her hair in every direction. “I haven’t never seen a day like today.”
“Look,” Scott said. He backed away, but the girl kept pace. “I’m sorry, but your cow didn’t turn into me. I traded places with your cow. Your cow is at the bottom of the ocean.”
One of the herd mooed. “Ohhhhhh,” she mooed, like she should’ve guessed the ocean, like she would’ve gotten it herself if she’d had another minute to think about it.
“What’s an ocean?” asked the girl.
“I don’t have time. I’m sorry. Have you heard anything about the elves?”
The girl nodded at something over Scott’s shoulder. “Word around town is they’re all trooping toward London. But London’s no place for a cow.”
“Thanks!” Scott called as he ran off. “Sorry again!”
He was barely a mile into the forest before he began to get antsy. How long had it been since he’d left the Grand Canyon? An hour, maybe? Two? How much time did the world have left? Reality was being made to swallow something impossible, and it rumbled again in its guts. The colossal trees shivered. The leaves above crackled like burned skin and molted free of their canopies. A dark scar was twisting its way across the sky.
He paused on a stump, panting. So much of his plan was just stupid. He hadn’t even known the scabbard would save him from drowning. He just thought the ocean floor would be a lot closer than it had been. And now he was running like an idiot with barely an idea where he was going. What he needed, he decided, was to climb up high and have a look around.
There was a tree nearby with so many climbable limbs it almost seemed like a trap. He kicked it a couple times around the base just to see if it would kick back. Of course, the trees might just be trees now—magic was lea
ving this place through a hole in the universe.
He started climbing, making a spiral ascent up the trunk until the lightning flashed again and he had to cling motionless to a branch and wait out the thunder. Then upward again as the limbs narrowed and his face was raked by twigs and dying leaves, and finally his head breached the top of the canopy to the open sky, and he was immediately slapped in the head by something flimsy and dark.
“Wh . . . hey!” he said to the flimsy slapping thing, and he turned to see that it had only been the wingtip of a passing raven. A colossally monstrous raven. “Waitaminute,” he murmured, and swiveled his head to see a second colossally monstrous raven swooping down on him.
CHAPTER 32
“AAAAA!”
“CAAAAW!” the raven answered with its colossally monstrous beak, the same beak that would, in an instant, separate Scott’s head from the rest of him if he didn’t duck below the safety of the leaves. He crouched fast—too fast—and lost his footing, snapping branches as he dropped ten feet and finally caught a stout branch with the crook of his elbow.
He paused. He had cuts all over him. None of them bleeding, though. He patted the scabbard under his jacket. Then he realized he was missing an opportunity, and he scrambled to the top of the tree again. The canopy swayed as another raven passed overhead. Scott prayed there’d be another as he popped his head above the tree line.
There was another raven, the last of the flock, it seemed, a short distance away. Scott waved his arm around and tried to put on an appetizing expression, which in the heat of the moment turned out to be sort of a puckery kissy face. But whatever, it worked. The raven dived and Scott tensed his legs, waiting for the right moment.
The bird was so close now it blotted out the sky, and Scott ducked, felt the horny beak graze his cowlick, and hooked his arm around a leg. He was yanked at once from the tree in a burst of leaves and twigs, and jostled as the raven attempted to hover in place and nip at his face. It loosed a greasy stool and a tuft of feathers.
“Ugh. Just . . . just keep flying!” Scott told it. “Ignore me!”
The talon of the leg he was holding snicked and snapped below him, tearing his jeans and nicking his legs.
“WRAAAAK!”
The raven’s cry was faintly answered by several others farther on. Finally the pull of the magic castle or the prospect of losing its flock became too much for it to bear, and the raven continued after the others with Scott in tow.
He could not believe how much his arms were hurting already. And was the bird crapping again? It seemed to be crapping more than the normal amount of crap. The stuff was just narrowly missing Scott’s shoes.
“Please stop,” he said.
“CAWK,” the bird answered.
The raven kept the others in sight but couldn’t gain any ground. Scott switched arms and squinted against the cold air. Tears were streaming down his face, and when he coughed he accidentally swallowed a bug. He felt sorry for himself—just for a moment, just for fun—and that moment was like a warm blanket over his aching shoulders. If his plan worked he’d be a hero, and no one would know how much he’d suffered for them. No one had ever suffered so much.
His reverie was interrupted by a couple of details that suddenly came to mind. Things he’d seen for just an instant as the raven had nearly decapitated him—a certain notch in its beak, a patch of missing feathers around the left eye. This was the same raven that had swallowed and later thrown him up a couple of weeks ago. He was almost sure of it. To the raven, Scott wasn’t a hero but rather some horrible kid who kept pranking him like a jerk.
Now they were descending, and banking to follow the snaking course of a wide river below them. Scott supposed it must be the Thames, which ran straight through London, and then it struck him—the Tower of London used to rest permanently on the bank of the Thames before Morgan le Fay magicked it up. It probably returned there whenever Titania wanted to visit the city.
“Thanks for the ride,” Scott shouted hoarsely into the wind. “Again. And, um. Sorry.” Then, when the bird had descended as low as it seemed inclined to, Scott let go of its leg.
It was still a long drop to the river. Long enough to have time to think about what a long drop it was. He clutched the scabbard and the merrow’s cap and hit the water harder than he expected. A few seconds later he was underwater, and he realized he had blacked out.
That’s no good, he thought. His arms felt numb. With some effort he slipped the cap over his head and added, Take me to the elves. And was whisked five miles down the river in a spray of foam.
Too late he realized that what he should have thought was “Take me near the elves,” as the magic of the cap, unable to get him all the way by water, just skidded him up an embankment.
“Ow.”
He got shakily to his feet. From a great distance came the sound of drums. The London of Pretannica was a much smaller city than the London he knew, and it huddled behind a Roman wall. Here, outside the wall, it was barely more than fields and cobblestone roads. Scott stumbled up one of these roads toward the drums, which, as he drew closer, were joined by flutes and fiddles and fifes. All of which were drowned out momentarily by a bone-shaking thunder. The Fay were having an end-of-the-world party, and Scott was the party pooper.
Before he saw the elves, he saw humans—hundreds atop tall rocks, huddled in trees with spyglasses, or just milling on the ground below.
“Boy,” an old woman said to him, “you’re hurt.” Her face was aghast—did he really look that bad?
“I’m . . . fine,” Scott answered. “Just some scrapes.” All the men and women and children in the trees were focused on some distant spot he couldn’t see. The elves, he figured. The rift.
“Your wounds are fresh, but they do not bleed,” the woman told him.
Scott felt like a change of subject. “I just got here. What are the elves doing?”
The woman wrung her hands and winced at the horizon. “They’re all there. All of them, and certain beasts as well. My daughter tells me that they walk beneath an arch of roses that wasn’t there yesterday. She says that when they walk beneath the arch they change into children. If we come any closer, the elves shoot arrows at our feet.”
Scott found himself wanting to comfort her. “It’ll all be over soon,” he said, even as the sky darkened above him. “And then it’s gonna be great. I promise.” He started to move toward the crowd.
“How do you know?” called the woman.
That was a good question. “I’m . . . from the future,” Scott lied.
The woman turned her eyes toward the sky. “I don’t think there’s any such thing,” she said.
Scott moved through the people, who for the most part were too preoccupied with anxious gossip to pay him any attention. But occasionally someone, usually a child, would look his way and gasp. Soon both the crowd and the trees thinned, and someone grabbed his shoulder.
“Ow,” said Scott.
The man grimaced at him. “Boy, you look—”
“Great, right? I feel great. What do you want?”
The man blinked. “Only to tell you . . . to tell you not to step into the clearing. It isn’t safe.”
It wasn’t a natural clearing. A thousand trees lay felled on the ground. The elves had cut a path for themselves to the rift. He could see the throng of them now: Fay of every size and description, trailing banners and garlands of flowers and ivy. Playing instruments and making merry even as the sky opened like a great black mouth above them. They faced a large arch of rose vines that reminded Scott of the steps he’d once climbed into Titania’s court. Titania herself oversaw the festivities from atop a pillowed sedan chair held aloft by her giants, while griffins and birds and even a Pegasus gyred above.
The rift itself was contained inside the rose arch, as wide as a Ferris wheel. Did the elves see the way its edges trembled? No, of course not—they couldn’t see it at all. And as Scott watched, the rift actually grew larger. It was out of control, fee
ding on glamour. So. This was the way the worlds ended—swallowed by an oily hole in reality.
Already a thousand children or more had made the Crossing from Goodborough and were marching with lifeless eyes from the rose arch to the opposite end of the clearing.
“Okay, good tip,” Scott said to the man. “Thank you. I’ll have to be sneaky, then.”
“What do you mean?”
Before the man could stop him, Scott crouched low and darted into the clearing, up to the nearest fallen tree trunk, then along that to the next trunk, always keeping out of sight, always—
There was an arrow in Scott’s foot. He hadn’t even felt it land. But he felt it now like an electric pounding drumbeat up his left leg. He dropped to the ground.
“OW! JEEZ!”
The clearing got dead quiet. A lyrical voice turned like a music box in his mind:
“I trust my shining eyes be not deceived?
It seems young Scott hath got himself mischieved.”
“I’M TRYING TO SAVE YOU!” Scott called across the clearing. “OKAY? I’M TRYING TO SAVE EVERYONE, FAY AND HUMAN!”
“You had your day in court—you pled your suit.
We listened to your point and found it moot.
I trust you see our own has pierced thine boot.”
“OH, COME ON! YOUR POINT PIERCED MY BOOT? THAT’S NOT SHAKESPEARE, THAT’S LIKE BAD ACTION MOVIE DIALOGUE.”
Titania was silent for a moment.
“The Scottish Doe of old was ne’er so bold.”
“YEAH, WELL, I’VE HAD A REALLY BAD DAY.”
Tall elves wended their way through the felled tree trunks toward him. They carried long pole weapons topped with jagged arrays of hooks and spikes like huge keys—keys that could open any part of Scott they liked.
With a wave from Titania, the drums and fiddles started up again. Like she wanted Scott to know that he was such small potatoes she wasn’t even going to turn down her music.