Of Witches and Wind (40 page)

Mia was the closest to them, but she just lay in her sleeping bag, watching.

Lena appeared in the mirror, rubbing her eyes. She sounded just like one of those talking dolls when their batteries start to wear out—unnaturally slow and crackly. “What is it?”

“Quick, Lena. What do the Little Mermaid's sisters tell her about the knife?” I said.

“Um . . .” Lena dropped her hands, and I saw her face. Ice splashed down my spine. Her lips were turning black, just like Rumpelstiltskin's.

“Wait, pass me to Melodie.” If Lena got any sicker, she would fall into a coma and never wake up.

Lena gave me a dirty look. “I'm fine. ‘We have given our hair to the witch, to obtain help for you, that you may not die tonight.' ”

“Wait. You're a mermaid?” Chase asked Chatty.

Chatty nodded vigorously. Her smile was so delighted you would have never guessed she was holding a knife to someone's throat.

“ ‘She has given us a knife: Here it is; see, it is very sharp. Before the sun rises, you must plunge it into the heart of the prince.' ” Then a cough overtook Lena, a wet hacking deep in her lungs.

My throat ached with sympathy. I shouldn't have asked. It was killing her. “Please, Lena. Let Melodie.”

“I have the book, Mistress,” said the golden harp anxiously.

“The prince?” Ben glanced at Chase and Kenneth. “The guy who married the wrong girl?”

“Guess who.” Chase pointed down at Ben's and Mia's interlaced fingers. I hadn't even noticed. Blushing, Ben dropped Mia's hand. “Chatty, Ben's chest is a little lower down.”

“Whose side are you on?” Ben asked.

“Don't you see?” I said. “She's not actually going to do the spell. She just wanted us to figure it out.”

Chatty removed the knife from Ben's throat and pointed to me, nodding again.

Ben covered his neck and scrambled out of the way.

Melodie must have found the right passage: “ ‘When the warm blood falls upon your feet they will grow together again and form into a fish's tail, and you will be once more a mermaid and return to us to live out your three hundred years before you die and change into the salt sea foam.' ”

Sea foam. I knew she was going to turn into
something
. I shoved the magic mirror toward Chase and hurried across the campsite, to the Lunch Box of Plenty.

“Bowl,” I told it fiercely. “Big widemouthed bowl.”

“ ‘Haste, then; he or you must die before sunrise,' ” continued Melodie. Lena coughed.

Chatty sighed, glancing up at the sky for the first time. I fumbled with the latches on the lunch box. The Little Mermaid straightened and took a few steps back toward the water.

“ ‘Our old grandmother moans so for you that her white hair is falling off from sorrow, as ours fell under the witch's scissors.' ” Melodie said.

The lip of a metal bowl appeared inside the lunch box, and I pulled it out with both hands. Apparently, the lunch box couldn't
supply any dishware without putting food in it. Oatmeal bounced in the bottom as I ran.

“ ‘Kill the prince and come back. Hasten—do you not see the first red streaks in the sky?' ” Gold glimmered on the horizon, but, smiling, Chatty looked straight at Ben and tossed the dagger into the sea. The water turned red where the blade plopped in, like the ocean was bleeding.

“ ‘In a few minutes the sun will rise, and you must die.' ”

“You die?” Ben took a step closer.

The sun climbed above the cliffs beyond us, red blazing around it. One eyebrow quirked up, Chatty blew Ben a kiss. Then in her place was a Chatty-shaped statue, made out of a substance like soap bubbles, almost the same color as dirty snow, but slightly greener.

Before it started to fall back into the ocean, I shoved the bowl under it—the fastest scoop of my entire life.

For a few seconds the only sounds were Lena's coughing and a crackling noise like tiny bubbles popping, as the sea foam formerly known as Chatty collapsed slowly over the oatmeal.

“So what happened exactly?” Lena said hoarsely from the M3, and Chase started to explain.

“How did you know, Rory?” Ben asked.

I hugged the bowl to my chest. I'd thought catching her would make me feel better. I explained about the mermaids the night before, and about Chatty skipping rocks, and the dagger. “I promised to help her.”

“And you didn't wake us up and tell us about it?” asked Mia.

“I don't want to hear any accusations out of you, Mia,” I snapped. “I'm onto you. You're the fake.”

“There's no need to call Mia names, Rory,” Ben said, a little bit mad.

“Don't you get it, Ben? Mia never saved your life during the griffin fight,” I said. “
Chatty
did. She saved you when she was still a mermaid, and Mia took the credit. That's how the Tale goes. Mia lied to you, to all of us. She's evil.”

Mia blinked at me. Infuriatingly calm again.

“Not necessarily,” said Melodie from the M3. “In most Little Mermaid Tales, the fake isn't actually bad. She was just in the right place at the right time. Taking the credit is usually an accident.”

“How do you
accidentally
take credit?” I said.

“Rory,” Ben said, like a warning. “Is that true, Mia?”

Mia looked down at the sand, her beautiful hair falling over her face. She had perfected the
look
of being innocent. Ben wouldn't even be mad.

“Or did you just not have the heart to tell us?” Ben's voice softened. “I mean, I just assumed it was you. You were the only girl around with long, straight, dark hair, and it happened pretty fast.”

“I wanted you to like me so much. I'm sorry.” Mia hadn't even come up with her own excuse. She'd just let Ben create one for her.

“It's okay,” Ben said, so eagerly that I hated him as much as Mia for a second.

“It's
not
okay.” I shoved the bowl of sea foam under their noses.

Ben looked ashamed, but he sounded firm. “Rory, I understand you're upset. I'm upset too.”
Not upset enough,
I thought savagely. “But we can't afford to start fighting now. We have to work as a team. This is bigger than us.”

I refused to let it end this way. Chatty deserved so much better.

“Chase, I need one of the water bottles from my carryall.” I must have seemed pretty intense, because he didn't argue. He just stuck his head in my pack to look.

“Why?” asked Lena from the M3. “Rory, what are you doing?”

I didn't know exactly what I would do, but it involved keeping Chatty safe until I could figure out a way to save her. “Magic turned her human. Magic turned her into sea foam. Magic can bring her back.”

My hands shook, and I put the bowl down carefully in the sand so I wouldn't drop it.

“Rory, this is how ‘The Little Mermaid' is supposed to end—” Coughing interrupted Lena again. When she covered her mouth, I glimpsed her hands—the black vines had almost reached her fingertips.

I couldn't stand to lose her, too. “Lena, please go back to sleep. We're almost there. We'll be back with the Water of Life soon.”

Lena stopped coughing and nodded. She was feeling too weak to protest, to even say good-bye. The M3 went blank.

“She knew what she was doing, Rory. Chatty knew she was going to die,” Chase said, but he handed me a water bottle anyway.

“Chatty,” Ben repeated. It was clearly sinking in—how much she'd given up to help him. Knowing how long he'd feel guilty made me feel slightly better. “That's just what we called her. We don't even know her real name.”

•  •  •

Breakfast was a silent activity. Mia broke a muffin into smaller and smaller pieces. Ben gnawed absently at a bagel. Only Chase and Kenneth attacked their egg sandwiches with any enthusiasm. Chase was worried—he kept glancing my way. He didn't come over while I spooned Chatty into the water bottle, but when Kenneth muttered something I couldn't hear, Chase told him, “Leave her alone, Kenneth.”

Maybe Chase and I still were friends after all.

By the time the others had finished packing up camp, I'd slid
the last spoonful of the Little Mermaid in the bottle—oatmeal and all. Even the tiniest bit of forgotten sea foam could turn out to be a fingernail or an earlobe or one of Chatty's teeth.

Chase brought me my carryall and approached with caution, ready to run away at the first sign of tears.

I pushed the water bottle inside. “Don't worry. I'm not going to cry.”

But I definitely felt like crying. I took deep breaths to calm down as we all assembled in front of the huge
X
-marks-the-spot pines.

It was my responsibility now to turn Chatty back. I didn't know if I could do it.

Giving Chatty a footbath in Ben's blood couldn't be the only way to save her. That was just the sea witch's way. She wouldn't blab about other solutions. That would be bad for business—

“Rory, now would be a good time to look up,” Chase said beside me.

Underneath the arch, you could see the path, covered with stones and boulders—a straight rocky staircase to a cliff above. All we had to do was walk through the legs of this humongous pine guy bending over us.

“Oh, my god,” I whispered.

The
X
-marks-the-spot trees weren't just a gate. They were the guardian's limbs, each leg about as big around as a door, each arm as big as my bedroom window, with huge hands furry with pine needles. A head sat where the trunks twisted together. It was human-size, which explained why we hadn't noticed it in the dark the night before.

“Just FYI, getting lost in thought on a hidden continent is a bad idea,” Chase said.

“Shh! Don't attract its attention!” I hissed.

Chase snorted. “It's a little late for that.”

The humongous pine guy bent toward Ben, who stood bravely up front. Now that it was closer, we could see the head better—a man with tiny gray eyes, matted dark blond hair in half-unraveled braids, a mustache with moss growing on it.

“I will never smash any more innocent baby trees again, I promise,” I whispered, covering West's ring, and Chase valiantly tried not to laugh.

“Well?” asked the humongous pine guy. “What do you seek?”

Ben's voice was surprisingly steady. “The Water of Life.”

“Not the Talking Bird? Or the Tree of Beauty?” said the pine guy.

“Um, no.” Ben glanced back at us, unsure. “I don't know what those are.”

The pine guy squinted at us Companions with mild surprise—like he'd just noticed us. Maybe he was nearsighted. “Usually, questers arrive one at a time.”

“Do we have to separate?” Ben said, obviously hoping the answer was no.

“You may pass together, if you wish. I will give you the same advice I give the single travelers,” said the pine guy. “Climb to the top of the slope. The path is so full of stones you will hardly find places to step. It will feel as if every stone in the world mocks you. Do not turn your head to the right. Do not turn your head to the left. If you can continue on, paying the stones no heed, you shall reach the spring. Few have returned.”

“Those other people couldn't deal when
rocks
teased them?” Kenneth said. He obviously had no idea what we were getting into.

This was the rock version of the mirror vault. This morning was just getting better and better.

“Beware.” The giant pine guy straightened up. When he stood
at his full height, his face was too far above our heads to see. It was easy to pretend that he was just a couple of trees.

“That's our cue,” said Chase cheerfully.

“I think we should travel in pairs,” I said.

“Really? The buddy system?” Kenneth said. “This isn't kindergarten.”

I glared at him. “This will probably suck. We don't know for sure what's out there.” Not to mention I didn't think I could survive this alone twice.

“I'll go second,” volunteered Kenneth. “Without a buddy.”

“Yay. Rear-guard duty,” Chase said unenthusiastically.

The climb wasn't easy. If you guessed wrong and placed your foot on an unstable rock, you had to scramble to a steadier one before you slid backward. I tried to tell myself that with the heights and all, it was a good thing I couldn't look behind me. But the steepness was the real problem. After a few minutes, the only person who wasn't out of breath was Chase, and I strongly suspected that he was cheating and using his wings. I heard a flutter every now and then.

“I take it back,” said Kenneth, panting. “I definitely feel mocked by these rocks. They're saying, ‘You're gonna fall, sucker.' ”

“What?” called Ben, from way up front. Of course he didn't turn around. “I can't hear you guys.”

A few minutes later we didn't even think about talking. I didn't know about everybody else, but my thighs were mocking me too. They were saying something like,
This is the magical StairMaster of doom. You will never reach the top
.

Chatty should have been there. It wouldn't have mattered if she'd been out of breath. She would have started a cheerleader clap—something to distract us from the climb.

“Did anybody else hear that?” said Kenneth, half freaked out and half ticked off.

Right. Quest,
I reminded myself firmly.
Concentrate
.

“No,” said Chase. So, the rocks really would start talking in a second. I didn't look around to check if the stones had faces in them.

“I heard my brother. You seriously can't hear him?” Kenneth said. “Older guy? Not a Character. Plays football for Notre Dame.”

“What's he saying?” Chase asked.

Kenneth hesitated. Obviously nothing he wanted to share “He said—”