Of Witches and Wind (19 page)

“Your shoulder's dislocated.” Chase fumbled through the front pockets of Kenneth's pack. Everyone knew he was searching for the ring.

“Stop.” Kenneth tried to shove him off, but moving clearly hurt too much.

“Sorry, Kenneth.” Ben wiped his mouth and stood up. “This isn't about you. This is about saving my mother. And I need four healthy Companions for that.”

“See ya, man.” Chase shoved the ring on Kenneth's finger. The eighth grader vanished with a shout.

Then, before Chase could even stand up, Darcy appeared with a crunch of glass, an arrow already notched in her bow, mouth gaping. She glanced around. “Oh. This is why Rapunzel told me to stand in the corner with my longbow. I thought she was just trying to freak out the witches.”

“Hey, Darcy,” said Ben.

“Hey.” She took in the glass under her feet, and the hole in the window, and Mia trembling beside me. “So, no spring yet?”

“Whoa. You weren't here when I left,” said a voice in the middle of the room.

West stood shirtless and barefoot in some glass shards. The only thing he wore was an unfortunate set of board shorts, orange and blue and very, very bright. With his long, tangled blond hair and his deep tan, he didn't look much different from a surfer. Except twice as big.

In the stained-glass window behind him, one wind figure with bulging cheeks stood triumphant, fists in the air. I guessed he'd beaten East.

But West must have looked sufficiently scary to freak Darcy out, because she blushed and stammered. “Uh, no. You see,
Rapunzel gave us these rings of return, which were really rings of exchange, and when Kenneth went back, we sort of switched—”

Speaking of rings, I pulled West's off—before he could ask for it back and see I was still wearing it.

“Rings of exchange?” West's face broke into a smile. “But they haven't been seen since Madame Benne's time. How did you manage five?”

Not exactly what I'd expected to hear from an extremely powerful dude, especially not one who had been trapped in a magic vial all day long. “Lena made them.”

“You know Lena LaMarelle?” said West, surprised.

When he looked at me, I could kind of tell why Darcy had reacted the way she had. The room didn't actually fill with wind the way it had earlier, but his gaze was forceful. It left me unsteady, like I was still fighting my way through a gale.

He squatted down, peering at me with the same eager hopefulness I usually saw when Mom's fans asked for an autograph. “Can you introduce me to her?”

“Um . . .” I glanced at the others. It couldn't be safe to introduce my poisoned best friend to this guy. His brother had called us little mice.

West's gaze swung around, and I could breathe a little more easily. “Quest, I'm guessing? Why are there five of you?

“This quest is important,” Ben said eagerly. “We came to see if you know where the spring for the Water of Life is.”

West grimaced. “It's in the South—my brother's territory. That's all I know.”

“Oh,” Ben said, disappointed.

But Chase had studied a few more fairy tales than Ben had. He knew what to ask next. “Can you take us to him, then?”

“Not a good idea,” said the West Wind. “South's in with East, who's not your biggest fan.”

“Great,” Chase said with a sigh.

“But I can make sure you reach the southern coast this afternoon,” said West. “Save you three days' journey.”

Ben grinned. “Deal.”

“Well, wait until I finish,” the wind said, uncomfortably. “I can't take you myself. I'll have to put you on the Fey railway.”

“What about Rory?” interrupted Chase.

“Rory?” repeated West, confused.

Chase pointed at me with two hands. “Rory Landon? Girl with crazy punch action? The one who just freed you from centuries of imprisonment?”

“So you do know Lena LaMarelle,” said West. “You guys are buddies.”

It was news to me that people kept tabs on who my friends were. But maybe he had just heard what had happened up the beanstalk last year.

“I still have your ring.” I held it out, hoping to distract him.

But he didn't take it. “That ring only accepts one user. You'll have to keep it now.”

“What are you going to give her?” Chase asked West.

“Keep in mind: You probably won't be able to use them for this quest. I'll need to stay here recovering for the next four days, but three boons,” said West, and Chase's eyes bulged in a way that clearly said,
Jackpot
. “All you'd have to do is to tap my ring three times and say my name. But no deal unless you introduce me to Lena.”

“Wait. Can't we find out why he's obsessed with Lena first?” asked Darcy.

“Why?” repeated West, astonished. “Lena LaMarelle is the greatest inventor in living memory, or at least she will be. Aren't you obsessed with her?”

I couldn't wait to see Lena's face when she'd heard that. “But you already gave me the ring—”

“Rory, trust me,” Chase said quickly. “This is how it works. You save the big powerful guy, and he grants you one, two, or three boons, depending on how dangerous it was. You'll want them. With the kind of trouble you get into, they'll definitely come in handy.”

He probably meant my Great Destiny. I sighed. “Okay. Then thank you, sir.”

West smiled, his eyes crinkling at the corners. But behind his back Chase gave me a big thumb's-up—like those three boons were the best thing that had happened all week.

est changed before he let me introduce him through the magic mirror. Not just into another outfit, but into a whole new body. The surfer was replaced with a tall slender man, clad in a pin-striped suit, pink shirt, and silver tie. He looked very distinguished, especially with the gray hair.

My jaw hit the floor, along with Ben's and Darcy's. Even Mia's eyebrows rose. Chase explained that West wasn't a person so much as a personification. He could pretty much change his appearance at will.

“The only limitation is that East and I have to be opposites. He probably looks like a young tobacco farmer right now,” West said, straightening his tie. “Okay, I'm ready.”

On the magic mirror Lena was extremely flattered when she realized who the dapper old man was. He wanted advice. Apparently, the ring I had used to smash through his prison was his first successful invention in two and a half millennia. He told her all about his many experiments-turned-explosions as he led us questers outside, grew eighty feet tall, stuck us into his suit pocket and rose into the air, flying low over the trees. West's voice boomed so loudly the pocket shook with every word—that made it impossible to figure out what he was saying as the forest slid by in a blur of green below us.

Chase leaned so far out of the pocket that I thought, kind of panicked, he might fall out. “When we're around the Fey, it's better if you guys don't speak. Not at all. Not even English. Half the Fey understand it. You won't know what'll tick them off.”

Ben didn't look like he minded, and Mia was still too dazed to offer an opinion, but Darcy said, “Why? We're not at the Unseelie Court yet.”

“We might as well be. A lot of Fey will be on their way to it. The last station on the southern line is about a half morning's flight to the court.” Chase probably knew from experience. The thought would have weirded me out much more if West hadn't just swooped upward over an extra-tall tree.

“So you expect us to just sit there for the whole ride?” Darcy scowled, obviously not going to take part in any plan where she couldn't talk all day.

“No, just at the station and during boarding. We won't sit with them, but it could seriously suck if you insulted a Fey at the platform,” Chase explained. “They view us as playthings, especially us Characters. They've been better since the war, but it'll be a miracle if we make it out of there.”

I rolled my eyes. Clearly, Chase was trying to spook Darcy into shutting up.

“No, Rory—I'm serious. Going to the Unseelie Court will probably be the most dangerous part of the quest,” Chase said, like he knew what I was thinking. “They might turn you into a statue. They might steal your voice, or scar your face. They might kill you outright, or they might set you an impossible task and then execute you when you Fail. You know the phrase ‘like trying to find a needle in a haystack'? It came from the Unseelie Court. It was King Klarion's favorite task for humans who accidentally wandered
through a portal. One hundred fifty-seven mortals died in the fifteenth century because they couldn't find a needle in a haystack.”

I couldn't remember the last time I'd seen Chase so serious. Even during Lena's Tale, surrounded by man-eating giants, he hadn't talked like this. Atlantis had knocked all the wisecracks straight out of him.

Then the West Wind swooped down toward an empty clearing. My churning stomach forced all thoughts out of my head except the fact that I couldn't vomit in the pocket of an eighty-foot personification.

Darcy scooted as far away from me as the fabric would let her go, whispering, “You're not gonna hurl, are you? God, how did you manage the beanstalk?”

But when West touched down, she helped me out of the pocket and watched with concern while I had some quality bonding time with solid ground.

I couldn't see any sort of platform or ticket counter, but we weren't the only group waiting. When West landed, the other passengers all reacted in different ways: A small army of dwarves with silver chains braided into their beards turned their backs to us. A few witches did that cheer-squawk thing—this version sounded angry. Some goblins adjusted greasy wigs over their triangular ears and clanged the manacles that chained them together, looking hopefully over at West, but their jailer—a smallish Fey with slate-colored wings and armor to match—snapped at them.

West shrank down to a more manageable twenty feet and strolled over to the trees to finish talking with Lena. I wondered if we should stick close to him, if those witches might attack us when his back was turned.

Somewhere to our right, metal clanged on metal—Ben, Darcy,
and I jumped about a mile. I thought for a second that an actual fight had broken out among the passengers, but then I spotted them. Small figures leaped together, clashed swords, and sprang apart with an aerial sort of grace that reminded me of circus performers on silk ropes—impossible-looking tumbles and soaring sorts of spins.

Others stood in a circle around them, waiting for their turn. I saw delicate white wings, and ones that were grayish and stumpy like a moth's, and others as bright and intricate as stained glass. Fey kids. I'd never seen any, unless you counted Chase.

“Sword class,” Chase said before we could ask. “A field trip so the students get experience fighting on a bunch of different terrains.”

No wonder Chase always looked so good when he fought. He'd probably had way more years of practice, just like these two duelers.

One stumbled away, straightening quickly before he fell over on his little fairy behind. The fight paused. I wasn't sure why. It didn't look like the Fey kid was hurt.

Someone moved in the shadows, a full-grown fairy with slender light-green wings. He held something that looked suspiciously like a wand.

“Don't do anything, Rory. It won't help them,” Chase hissed. I stiffened.

The Fey child waited with wide eyes, his slender tangerine-colored wings fluttering nervously, watching the grown-up Fey approach. The Fey instructor just kind of lightly slapped the kid on the shoulder with the stick. But the fairy child screamed, so full of agony that Ben sprang back and almost knocked Mia over.

“The Iron Hemlock method,” Chase said quietly, as the
tangerine-winged kid trudged to the back of the class, his hand pressed to his shoulder like it still burned. “Same concept as the one behind invisible fencing for dogs. One jolt of pain to make sure you don't make the same mistake twice.”