One True King

by Soman Chainani

  “That was a stone’s throw. This is half a mile,” Hester dismissed, her demon quivering, afraid to fly. “We need a cocoon or raft to ride in. Something to survive the fall.”

  “Made from what?” Anadil prompted. “What don’t crogs eat?”

  “Boys!” Dot piped, her face perilously red. “That’s how Sophie evaded them at school. By turning herself into a boy.”

  “Well, we don’t have that option, or is there something about you that we don’t know?” Hester blistered.

  “Crogs eat everything, though,” Dot lamented, watching the spiny creatures wrestle over the last of the seagull. “Well, except each other . . .”

  Hester wasn’t listening.

  She was watching a shadow in the fog behind Anadil, getting bigger . . . bigger . . . Hester’s finger glowed, prepared to attack—

  Slowly, she lowered it.

  It was a boat.

  A small dinghy, hanging out of the upturned water, made from white wood.

  No, not wood, Hester realized as it floated closer . . .

  “Bones,” she said, gaping at it.

  “Crog bones,” said Anadil, mystified.

  The boat had no passengers. No captain.

  Like a ghost ship, it moved silently, deliberately, until it stopped hard in front of the coven. Hester held her breath, shielding her friends—

  Two rats poked heads up from the prow, like stealth pirates.

  “My babies!” Anadil gasped. “You’re alive!” She hugged her pets to her chest, then spotted the scrapes and gashes on their bodies, their fur caked with dried blood. “What’s happened?” she asked and listened attentively as they babbled in her ear.

  “They found Merlin in the caves,” Anadil translated breathlessly. “Then one went to tell Dovey where he was, while the other built this boat, knowing the Dean would send someone to rescue him.”

  “Wait. How’d a rat build this? These are crog bones,” said Dot, bewildered. “How’d a rat kill crogs?”

  “Talented rats, remember?” Anadil grinned.

  The rats started inflating, bigger, bigger, the size of dogs, the size of tigers, the size of elephants, teeth sharpening to fangs. They loomed over Dot in the water—

  “I get it,” said Dot.

  The rats shrank down, showing off the wounds they’d gotten in the fight. But then they looked at Dot and seemed to remember something, their faces sobering. Together, they whispered to Anadil. The pale witch tensed, her gaze moving to the boat’s basin.

  Wedged between panels of bone was a bloody Sheriff’s badge, the gold crest of Nottingham dented and scratched.

  Dot went still.

  A rat flipped the badge over.

  The back was covered in desiccated fireflies, flickering with light, as if they’d held on to life as long as they could.

  Gently, the rat stroked the fireflies’ bellies.

  Shades of orange filled in across their bodies, forming a projection from the past. This was footage from the dark Woods, footage the fireflies had captured of the Sheriff of Nottingham, soaked in blood, cradled by Sophie as he spoke his last words.

  “Tell Dot . . . me and her mother . . . it was love,” the Sheriff breathed.

  The fireflies went dark.

  Slowly Hester and Anadil lifted eyes to the Sheriff’s daughter.

  “Those were scim wounds,” Dot said. She picked up her father’s badge. Held it close to her chest. “The Snake killed my dad. Japeth killed him.”

  There was a calm to her. A quiet rage.

  “Tedros will win the tournament. Even if I have to die to help him,” Dot promised, steel-cold. “Excalibur will take that scum’s head.”

  She turned to her friends. “Get in the boat.”

  Hester and Anadil obeyed.

  With the rats pushing from below, Dot seized on to the prow, teeth clenched, eyes afire, as the bone-boat surged forward, plummeting over the fall.

  She was the only one who didn’t scream.

  HESTER AND ANADIL clasped hands as the boat drifted through crogs, their crocodile snouts sniffing at the witches, drool coating their black teeth. Some snapped their jaws, others blew steam through nostrils, but none attacked, recognizing the threat of the bony vessel in which the girls rode.

  Dot was relishing their frustration, Hester noticed, the round-bellied witch posed with a foot atop the fore, Anadil’s rats on her shoulders, her dress stained with chocolate, like the least menacing sea captain ever. There were times over the years when Hester wondered if Dot was put in the right school . . . if her sweetness and sympathy and soft heart should have made her an Ever instead. But watching Dot clutch her father’s bloody badge, her eyes pinned to the brewing crogs, daring them, wanting them to attack, Hester sensed a darkness that her friend had held in reserve.

  A fly hovered near Dot’s ear. Pzzt. Pzzt.

  Dot snatched it dead.

  Hester and Anadil exchanged glances.

  Perhaps the School Master had placed their roommate well after all.

  As the boat approached the island, Hester saw that penetrating the caves would be no easy feat. First, there was a crumble of jagged rock, twenty feet high, before the main thrust of stone even began—a smooth, circular tower, rising off the crumble, with the entrance to the dozen caves symmetrically arranged at the hours, each opening barbed with closely packed spikes. To rescue Merlin, they’d have to scale the rock heap, regather at the base of the caves, and hope the one with the wizard was closer to the six o’clock end at the bottom than the twelve o’clock end up top.

  “Which cave is he in?” Anadil asked her rats.

  The rats squeaked back.

  “Two o’clock,” Anadil groaned.

  Hester wasn’t surprised. There was too much on the line for this to be easy.

  As the witches started climbing, another fly besieged Dot, this one peskier and more frenzied than the last.

  “Today is not the day to mess with me,” she seethed, swatting at it.

  “Wait!” Hester cried, staying her hand just in time.

  It wasn’t a fly.

  The witches kneeled atop a flattish rock, looking up at Tinkerbell, sour-faced and droopy-winged, clearly having flown a long way to see them and resenting both the journey and murder attempt. Panting hard, the fairy drew a wad of parchment from her green dress and stuffed it at Hester, who quickly opened it—

  Merlin’s Beard

  Bloodbrook Inn

  “Agatha’s handwriting,” said Anadil.

  “Merlin’s beard?” Dot questioned. “What kind of message is that?”

  “Answer to Tedros’ first test,” Hester decoded. “Merlin’s beard must be what the Green Knight wanted. Agatha’s telling us that they need it. That they need us.”

  “Why Bloodbrook Inn, then?” Anadil asked.

  “Halfway between Camelot and Borna Coric. Must be on their way there,” Hester ventured. “Bloodbrook’s inn is famously haunted. No one ever checks in. It’ll be a safe meeting place. Right, Tink?” She turned to the fairy. “We figured out Japeth is king. Killed Rhian and took his name. Which means the Snake’s trying to win the first test too.”

  Tinkerbell jingled, ratifying her conclusions.

  Relief burned through Hester’s chest. If Merlin’s beard was the answer, then clearly Japeth hadn’t figured it out. He was headed to Putsi, after all. Nowhere near the wizard.

  “This is why our side will win. Because we work together. Because we finish missions,” Hester boasted, reminding her friends that they’d doubted her. She turned to Anadil’s rats. “And you’re sure Merlin’s inside the caves? That he’s still alive?”

  The rats responded. “Heard him snoring under his cape,” Anadil translated.

  “Caves didn’t curse him, then,” Hester said, resuming her climb. “He is a wizard, after all.” She looked back at Tinkerbell. “Tell Agatha we’ll be there by nightfall.”

  Hester scaled higher, watching the fairy fly off. Dot and Anadil followed, the co
ven pulling over rocks swiftly, bolstered by Agatha’s message and the ease of this climb compared to sky-high chocolate. By the time the witches reached the base of the caves, clouds had moved in, a harsh rain falling.

  “Doesn’t look like anyone’s been here in a while,” said Anadil, scanning the island perimeter. “No footprints.”

  “For good reason,” said Dot. “Daddy told me the tale of ‘The Ill-Timed Queen.’ The Storian’s history of a queen who discovered the Caves of Contempo that didn’t obey time. One of these caves kept the queen and her king young forever. Meanwhile, their children continued to grow old, and soon older than her and the king. Unsettled, the queen tried another cave to keep pace with them, to age her and the king just enough . . . only to mistime it and revert her and the king to their real ages, well over a hundred years old, upon which they dropped down dead. That’s why, to this day, rulers of Borna Coric keep the caves fortified and off-limits—not just to stop trespassers from using them, but to stop themselves.”

  Hester thought back to those royal statues in the square: the king and queen, who looked younger than their own children . . . A fitting fairy tale for a realm upside down . . .

  Anadil’s rats were already bounding up the cave face, dodging the lethal spikes and landing on the barbs outside the two o’clock hole, squeaking urgently for the witches to follow.

  Dot probed one of the spikes around the lowest cave, drawing blood at the touch. “No way can we climb all the way up there without getting skewered like a kebab.”

  Hester looked into the rain. “Dot’s talent got us to the sea. Ani’s talent got us to the caves.” Her dark-painted lips curled into a grin. “My talent gets us inside.”

  The demon on her neck swelled with blood, teeth gnashing, claws flexing . . . this time, ready to fly.

  DOT WAS FIRST. Then Ani. By the time the demon flew Hester up, she felt the toll it had taken on them both. His heaving breaths sucked her lungs; his weakened muscles ached as her own. She didn’t know where she began and her demon ended. All she knew was between the torture to get to this island and now her soul pushed to its limits, she’d willingly sacrifice a few years of age to crawl into one of these caves and take a nap.

  Dot and Anadil were farther down the tunnel, staring upwards.

  Anadil blinked. “From the outside, I didn’t expect it to be so . . .”

  “Pretty,” said Dot.

  The cave walls were like an aurora borealis frozen in time, a bloom of a thousand neon glows, coated in a glittery sheen. Even Hester found herself hypnotized by the storm of colors, instinctively reaching a hand for the glitter—

  Loud squeaks stopped her.

  She looked at Anadil’s rats, eyes glowing up ahead. They shook their heads.

  Hester lowered her hand.

  Quickly, the witches tracked the rats through the bending caves, turning off at new forks every few paces, like an impossible maze. And yet somehow the rats knew their way, even with the colors changing at every turn—atomic orange, alien green, sizzling yellow—as if they were burrowing into the deepest part of a rainbow. Soon, they reached a new fork in the path, and for a moment, the two rats diverged, before they glanced at each other and began gibbering intensely.

  “Each is saying Merlin is the other way,” Anadil muttered.

  The rats persisted arguing, neither giving in.

  “Take Dot and go right,” said Hester. “I’ll go left.”

  “And leave you on your own?” Anadil asked, wary.

  “Have your rat, don’t I?” said Hester. She patted her demon. “And him.”

  Anadil frowned at the shriveled tattoo on Hester’s neck, clearly in no shape to protect anyone, but Hester was already splitting off, following her rat.

  She kept her head down, the tunnel dimming as she went, the colors muting from fluorescing pastels to steel blues, amber browns, foggy grays. She could only see a few yards ahead now. Then Hester noticed a roach skittering overhead, lit by the glow of the ceiling. Suddenly glitter from the ceiling dusted its body, magically shrinking the roach into a young larva, oozing along . . . before glitter of another color coated it and aged it back to a mature insect . . . Onward the roach plowed, old then young, young then old, intent on its destination. Agatha had been a roach like this once, Hester remembered, trying to help Sophie find love. Little did Agatha know Sophie would be the real bug in her story. It was Sophie who’d kissed Rhian . . . Sophie who’d thought the Lion a friend instead of a foe . . . Sophie who’d confused Good with Evil . . . Fitting, wasn’t it? That a mix-up had been the seed of all these thorns. For it had been a mix-up that had brought Sophie and Agatha to this world in the first place: two girls dropped into the wrong schools . . .

  Meanwhile, Hester made sure not to touch any walls.

  A rhythmic snuffle echoed from up ahead. Ffft . . . Ffft . . . Ffft . . .

  Hester’s muscles clamped. “Merlin?” she called out.

  Ani’s rat was scuttling faster now, into a dark part of the passage where the colors faded away. Hester couldn’t see anything: not the rat, not the walls, not even her feet. She lit her finger, casting red glow at a dead end ahead, a solid wall lacquered with glittery sheen.

  The snuffling grew louder. Ffft. Ffft. Ffft.

  “Merlin?” Hester tried again.

  The closer she got to the dead-end wall, the more she saw shimmer slipping off before magically replenishing, the glitter cascading to the stone floor of the cave.

  Then she saw it.

  Pressed against the wall, buried in glitter.

  A purple cape, swaddled around a lump, the snuffling emanating from beneath.

  Hester welled tears of relief.

  “Merlin, it’s me,” she gasped, rushing towards his cape. She knew better than to touch the glitter on it. Using her fingerglow, she magically swept the velvet away, flinging the glitter against a wall and revealing the wizard’s body beneath.

  Hester gasped.

  She fell backwards in shock, her demon letting out the screams Hester couldn’t get out of her own throat.

  No no no no no no.

  She turned to run . . . to find her friends . . . to find help . . .

  “Hester!” a voice cried behind her. “Hester, come quick!”

  She turned to see Anadil sprinting towards her—

  It was only when the witches saw each other’s faces that they both stopped cold.

  Because whatever horror each had found in their cave . . . it seemed the other had found something worse.

  BY THE TIME they made it to Bloodbrook, it was nightfall.

  The inn was pitch-dark, save a tiny flicker of light in a window on the top floor.

  They were prepared to stun the innkeeper, but the Ingertroll on duty was fast asleep, slumped over her guest book, a single name printed on an otherwise blank page.

  Agoff of Woodley Brink

  A sign next to the register warned: Do Not Disturb the Haunts.

  They tiptoed past the troll, witch one, two, and three.

  Up the stairs they slunk, in their usual formation.

  The door at hall’s end was unlocked.

  Agatha and Tedros sprung up from the bed, overcome with relief. So did Guinevere, Nicola, and Hort, lit by a single candle on a table. All of them looked exhausted—Hort, especially, itching at his receding fur and picking burrs out of his foot as if he’d wolf-carried the others here.

  “Where is he?” Agatha lunged breathlessly, accosting Hester and Anadil. “Where’s Merlin?”

  “And who’s this?” said Tedros, pointing at the woman with them. “You shouldn’t have brought strangers here. You know the risk—”

  “It’s m-m-me,” the woman said, tears rising.

  Agatha and Tedros froze.

  Slowly the prince and princess honed in on her the same way Hester had when she’d first laid eyes on this paunchy, middle-aged matron with brown skin, thick curls, and a chocolate-stained dress.

  “Dot?” Agatha choked. “But . . . but
. . . you’re . . .”

  “Old,” Dot wept.

  The room went so still they could hear the sounds.

  Ffft. Ffft. Ffft.

  Coming from under Hester’s arm.

  Horror trickled over Tedros’ face.

  “Hester . . . ,” he whispered, staring at the bundle in her grip. “Where’s Merlin?”

  Hester’s hands were shaking.

  She pressed the bundle down onto the bed.

  No one moved, listening to the snuffles beneath the purple velvet.

  Ffft.

  Ffft.

  It was Agatha who had the courage to unfold the cape.

  To reveal the wizard as he was now.

  The answer to Tedros’ first test.

  Merlin, the wise.

  Merlin, the powerful.

  Merlin, the sweet,

  sleeping,

  entirely beardless,

  baby.

  10

  AGATHA

  Think Like Me

  On the way to Bloodbrook, Agatha couldn’t shake the thought. That they were on the wrong track.

  She looked at Tedros next to her, clinging to Hort’s furry shoulder, but he was lost in his own haze, no doubt still processing what they’d seen in Sader’s history. A Green Knight connected by name to a Snake . . .

  As the man-wolf bounded through Bloodbrook’s crimson-leafed forest, Agatha knew they should be on the lookout. Japeth surely still had his magic map: the one that tracked their whereabouts. The Snake’s men would hunt them down wherever they went. Plus, they’d lost their fairy spies, who’d gotten so drunk on Pifflepaff’s cotton candy that Tedros had to cut them loose after Tinkerbell went to find the witches.

  But even knowing all this, Agatha struggled to keep watch. All she could think about was what Nicola and Guinevere had told her back in Pifflepaff.

  About the squirrel and the nut.

  “And you’re sure that’s what it said?” she pressed the first year and old queen, both cradled in Hort’s paws. “That Japeth is heading to Putsi?”

  “Ate the squirrelly nut and found the message inside,” said Guinevere, looking nauseous from the wolf ride. “Secret note from the Queen of Jaunt Jolie to her daughter, Betty. Told her she’d given Japeth the key to the first test. And that he was on his way to Putsi.”