Wedding Bells and Midnight Spells

by Sarina Dorie

  When the unicorns had finished their song, they quietly hummed, “I Love You Always Forever.” I had specifically selected the Donna Lewis song, though I didn’t know if a song from the nineties was too modern for them. It appeared they were doing fine.

  The captain read from a piece of paper in a hoarse, reedy voice, each word coming out at a snail’s pace. When he got my name wrong and called me Carissa, Vega corrected him.

  He snapped at her. “That’s what I said. Carissa.”

  Vega’s face flushed red. I knew how much energy she had put into trying to make this a perfect wedding for me despite having little notice to do so. A geriatric captain hadn’t been her first choice. I smiled at her reassuringly. The wedding was still going to be perfect.

  As long as the Raven Queen didn’t come.

  Or Derrick.

  Or Quenylda, Elric’s sister-wife.

  The ceremony was supposed to be short, only ten minutes total. I had selected just enough background music for the unicorns to sing, but after cycling through the songs I’d requested, they started humming “Tainted Love” followed by “You’ve Lost That Lovin’ Feelin’.” Josie made eye contact with me, her smile wavering. They weren’t singing the lyrics, at least. Being raised in the Morty Realm like me, Josie was probably the only other teacher present who knew those weren’t actually love songs. They were more love-gone-wrong songs.

  At least they had pretty melodies.

  I could tell the unicorns were at a loss for what to sing as the captain droned on. When Bart started to get too loud singing the solo in Barbara Streisand’s “Woman in Love” he drowned out the captain’s voice.

  The elderly man shook his cane at Bart. “You keep it down now.”

  Bart was so into his ballad, he didn’t hear.

  Thatch leaned toward me. “Do you mind if we skip ahead?”

  “Yeah, that’s fine.”

  Thatch spoke loudly to be heard over the unicorns. “Skip ahead. To the end.”

  The captain grinned and inclined his head. “Mawiage. Mawiage is what bwings us together today. Mawaige, that bwessed event. That dweam within a dweam.”

  Josie tilted her head to the side, eyebrows furrowed. I caught it too. He was doing the minister from Princess Bride. Was that intentional? Was this some kind of joke?

  Mom shook her head at me. She had caught it too.

  “Love, twue love, will follow you fowever. So tweasure your love,” the captain said.

  Thatch sighed in exasperation. Vega glowered at the man, her arms crossed. Pinky stared up at the sky, his eyes alert. He nudged Pro Ro. The divination teacher slid his wand out of his sleeve.

  Something wasn’t right. The captain had drawn this ceremony out as long as possible and now he was pulling out Princess Bride. It had to be some kind of sign. A trap? A delay?

  I turned to the old captain. “Ask me if I do. The answer is yes. Ask him.”

  The old man clucked his tongue. “I’m getting there.”

  “He says yes,” I said quickly, afraid the officiant was trying to prevent us from being married.

  The captain sprayed spittle as he spoke. “Young lady, you are putting words in his mouth. Are you forcing him to marry you?”

  “He says… .” I nudged Thatch.

  Confusion wrinkled his brow as he stared at the bushes. “What’s that? Yes. I do.”

  “Pronounce us man and wife,” I ordered.

  The captain pushed his hat out of his eyes. “We skipped part of it. There were important parts.”

  I grabbed him by the lapel and shook him. “Just say it. Man and wife.” If anyone had to be Prince Humperdinck, at least it wasn’t Thatch.

  “Man and wife,” the captain said. From the mischievous grin on his face, I suspected he knew something I didn’t.

  Dread settled in my belly. We were legally married now, weren’t we?

  “Have you the wing?” the captain asked.

  That’s when I heard the noise. At first like a buzzing drone of a mosquito, just barely audible over the singing of the unicorns.

  “What is that sound?” I asked.

  Before anyone could say another word, the air was full of ravens diving at us, appearing out of thin air. They tore at my bridal veil and clawed at me. I covered my head with my arms. The unicorns screamed and slashed out. People shouted. Magic flashed like brilliant fireworks.

  “Did someone forget to invite his fairy godmother?” A woman cackled.

  Thatch shoved me back, shielding me with his body. I thought of Thatch’s prediction that he would die, which he’d seen in his art. What if this was the moment?

  Through the shifting dance of wings, I saw the Raven Queen strolling toward us. Her long hair wafted in the maelstrom around her. She radiated darkness, sucking light like a black hole.

  Elric stepped into her path, so luminescent white I couldn’t look. “How dare you interrupt the ceremony of one in my court.”

  She lifted her chin. “No. How dare you interrupt me blessing one from my court.” Black figures flanked her from behind.

  Elric wasn’t alone. Golden lights as brilliant as stars but shaped like people blazed around him. As if the attacking birds weren’t enough to keep us busy, bees filled the sky. Their buzzing grew so loud I couldn’t hear the voices of those around me. I didn’t know who from the Silver Court had joined Elric, but they’d brought their swarm with them.

  Thatch crouched beside me, shoving me from the chaos. I crawled on the ground, wings beating me, stray bees dive-bombing in a random kamikaze chaos. I had a sting on my cheek and several on my arms.

  Someone screamed. It sounded like Josie. I turned to find her towering in her jorogumo form, a giant spider woman, throwing a winged woman off Pinky’s limp form. His eyes were bleeding. Crimson dripped down one of Josie’s hairy legs, the spindly appendage bent unnaturally.

  Pro Ro levitated inside a bubble, shooting spells out from his shield until a woman in a black down dress shot a bolt of lightning at him. I recognized her. It was Odette, Thatch’s sister. She openly used electrical magic on him, something no Witchkin could tolerate except another Red.

  My friends were getting hurt. I couldn’t stand by and allow them to be harmed in this Fae battle.

  “Where’s my Mom?” I asked.

  I didn’t see her anywhere.

  “Get to safety,” Thatch said. His other words were lost in a banshee scream from the melee.

  Thatch’s skin already crackled with blue light as he drew himself up. Bees and birds sizzled and fell away.

  Strong arms pulled me through a hedge. I screamed and struggled until Vega slapped me in the face.

  “Get ahold of yourself. If you want to make it out of here alive, you’re going to need to act smart and follow me.” For once, her perfect hair was mussed. The pink sequins on her dress didn’t look right. They were marred with blood.

  “But Thatch—” I pointed to the other side of the foliage.

  “He can handle himself. You can’t.” She circled an arm around me, hurrying me into the tunnel of flowers toward the cottage.

  “Take that, pegasus breath!” a unicorn with a Bronx accent shouted.

  Hooves trampled closer. A unicorn charged toward us, a harpy half-woman impaled by his horn. The unicorn’s fur was dappled gray, but now speckled with blood. I knew it was Bart from the black horn protruding from the other side of the harpy’s back. Blindly he blazed through the tunnel, trying to shake the warrior of the Raven Court from his horn. Vega’s fingers sank into my arm like talons, and she heaved me to the side.

  A rainbow shot out of Bart’s horn as he thrashed, propelling the body impaled on his horn aside. Rainbows tore through a bough of flowers above and fell onto Vega and me, sending us sprawling to the ground. When I rolled over to see if she was all right, I found half of her pink dress black with feathers. One side of her hair was long and wild with curls and one eye black like ink. The pink of her face
was lumpy and scarred, unlike Vega’s perfect skin. One of her feet was a talon like a bird’s.

  Half the woman looked like Vega. The other half didn’t. I stared in confused horror as the woman righted herself, but she fell over, imbalanced by her mismatching feet.

  “Clarissa, get away from her!” Bart said. “That isn’t your friend. She’s an imposter.”

  I understood then. This woman of the Raven Court had tried to trick me. I rolled away and then picked myself up. I ran toward the cottage. Rainbows flashed, making pew-pew-pew sounds like TIE fighters from Star Wars. The woman shrieked, her voice dying out in a gurgle. Bart grunted and thundered toward me.

  He stopped at my side. Slick scarlet rivulets painted his face. “Get up. We’re getting out of here.”

  I grabbed his mane, only halfway up as an explosion came from behind us. He started galloping before I was on his back. He raced down the path. I clung to him, my legs flailing as I tried to scramble up.

  Bart charged toward the cottage, abruptly twisting and bursting through the side of the flower tunnel. Branches and vines raked my skin, and I fell from my precarious perch. I was lucky he didn’t trample me.

  I picked myself up, and he stooped to allow me to scramble onto his back. This time I actually sat astride him as he galloped. He headed toward the school. The spidery limbs of the building spread out in different directions, the monstrosity of architecture more menacing than ever. Even if we reached the school, I didn’t know what we could do. The most proficient users of magic were behind us. If we headed toward the school where students would be, we’d put them in danger too.

  I screamed at Bart to stop, but he didn’t listen.

  The sky grew dark, and a shadow fell across us. I looked up, finding myself staring at the underbelly of a ship. It looked a lot like an ocean vessel except for the hot air balloon above it. The vessel plummeted at an alarming rate, looking like it was about to fall down on us. Men hung from ropes with cutlasses and pistols, shooting ravens out of the air and cutting them down. Others used magic to attack stray birds.

  At first this seemed like a good sign. They were attacking the Raven Court. Then I noticed the flag of the Jolly Roger.

  “Elfing donkule mongers,” Bart cursed. “It’s airship pirates!”

  Not only were we fighting the Raven Court, but there were pirates we had to escape as well?

  The ship descended right in front of us, the massive hull blocking our escape.

  Bart reared up and screeched. I fell off his back, landing hard in the grass. A man dropped down from the ship on a rope, free falling until he stood right before us. He wore all black with a matching mask and head sash. He looked a lot like the Dread Pirate Roberts from The Princess Bride, only his face was covered in a blue beard and mustache. He glided forward, his feet not even touching the ground.

  I had only met one other person in my life with blue hair, but Derrick didn’t have a blue beard. I couldn’t tell if he was Derrick or someone else. Derrick had said he wouldn’t let me marry Thatch. If this was him, he’d succeeded.

  “You’ll never take Clarissa! Never!” Bart said.

  A burst of blue lightning shot out of the figure’s hand and struck Bart full in the chest. The unicorn turned toward me, pain and terror in his dark brown eyes before he collapsed. I rushed to his side, placing my hand on his chest.

  His heart was still. Bart the Unicorn was dead.

  Before I could do anything to try to revive him, hands pinned my arms to my sides. A foul-smelling cloth covered my nose and mouth. It reminded me of the smell of corpses and embalming fluid. I realized it must have been chloroform.

  I tried to twist away, but the world became a tunnel closing in on me.

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  Steampunk Pirates and Other Wedding Crashers

  My dreams were a strange kaleidoscope of seemingly random puzzle pieces that didn’t make sense. My fairy godmother was a child in a cage made of plants while ravens fluttered around her. Thatch turned into a dragon with red eyes and black scales, battling with flying monkeys. Josie and Pinky sat in a fifties-style diner, looking like they’d stepped out of the movie Grease, with Pinky’s hair combed back like a greaser’s. Their milkshakes were interrupted when the black and white tiled floor turned into clusters of black spiders and white spiders that flooded everywhere. Elric married Vega, but he wore my wedding dress and she wore ruby-red slippers. My face was green, and I cackled like the Wicked Witch of the West.

  Usually I excelled at lucid-dreaming techniques, but in a drug-induced state, some of my abilities at focusing were lacking.

  An old hag who vaguely resembled Mrs. Keahi stooped over a basket, throwing tomatoes at me. “Your true love lives. And you marry another.” She turned to face a crowd who hadn’t been there a moment before. “True Love saved her from the Raven Queen, and she treated it like garbage. Boo. Boo.”

  Derrick had saved me in his misguided way, but he had still murdered me. Felix Thatch was the one who had resurrected me.

  A sea of faces looked at me, all my students at Womby’s. Maddy, Imani, Hailey, and Greenie stood at the front. They snatched up lettuce and threw it at me. Standing a few rows behind them were Chase and Pierre, even though they’d both died when the King of the Silver Court had come. Martin was there too and Camelia Llewelyn and Brogan McLean. They all booed.

  I woke with a start, finding myself in a bed under a patchwork quilt. For a long moment, I didn’t understand what I was seeing. My surroundings were just as foreign and surreal as the dreams.

  The room was small and cramped, full of maps and telescopes, a globe, and barrels used as chairs at a bulky table. Large arched windows let in light on the far end of the room. The chamber reminded me of something one might see in a period movie of a captain’s quarters, with an eclectic array of medieval decorations and Persian carpets, Oriental vases, and even a lamp that looked like it should have housed a genie.

  It was the origami crane, hot pink and covered in cherry blossoms on one of the barrels that sent reality sinking its claws into me. I threw off the blankets and ran to the other side of the room to the windows, tripping on shreds of fabric hanging from the hem of my gown. It was no longer white and pristine but smudged with dirt and stained by grass and blood.

  I picked up the hem and made my way to the window. The view below showed farmland and cottages a long way down. The sky was pale blue, mist clinging to patches of trees below, giving me the impression it was morning. The ceiling creaked above. I heard men shouting, though their words were indiscernible.

  I was on the steampunk airship, kidnapped by pirates. The last thing I remembered before passing out was the pirate dressed in black with a blue beard. He’d killed Bart. I wondered which of my other friends were dead. What about Thatch and my mom? The memory of Josie covered in blood as she stood over Pinky’s inert form made me feel ill.

  There had to be something I could do.

  I looked to the lamp again on a shelf and ran to it. If there was a djinn housed inside, I could rub the lamp and free him to save my family and friends from the Raven Queen.

  “Nyet. I wouldn’t do that if I were you,” a creaky voice said from the corner.

  I whirled, not realizing I wasn’t alone. An old crone sat in a rocking chair knitting. A tuft of snowy hair puffed out from under a red kerchief. Her nose and chin protruded from a face matted in wrinkles. For a moment I thought she was the old crone from my dream who had booed me and thrown tomatoes at me. When she spoke again, I realized she wasn’t.

  “The djinn in that lamp only grants one wish.” Her accent was thick, perhaps Eastern European, though I didn’t know for certain. “He asks you how you want to die.”

  Khaba had once told me that was the only wish he had been willing to grant when he’d been an evil djinn.

  I approached the old woman where she sat knitting. I had met her before at the Oregon Country Fair when I’d first discovered the world of
Witchkin and Fae.

  “You’re my fairy godmother’s adoptive mother,” I said. Baba Nata.

  “Nyet. Not anymore.”

  “What do you mean? Does that mean she’s dead?” Tears filled my eyes.

  She didn’t answer. She continued knitting.

  “Why am I here?” I asked.

  “A better question. . . . Why am I here? Why anyone kidnap nice old lady? Huh?” she asked. “Hardly any meat on my bones. Too tough to make good meal. But you, dearie . . . you are still tender and young.”

  I trudged back over to the bed and began making it out of habit, then stopped. It wasn’t my bed. I wasn’t going to do anything nice and be all Snow White by doing domestic work for pirate kidnappers.

  I needed to come up with a plan. I had lightning magic. I could strike anyone who tried to hurt me. I could possibly kill the entire crew in a lightning storm, though I didn’t know if I had enough power for that many people. And even if I did, I wasn’t certain what I would do afterward. I didn’t know how to sail a normal ship, let alone a magic-powered airship.

  Eventually a young woman with elf ears poking through her strawberry-blonde hair came in with a tray of food. She was attired in white breeches and a stained cotton shirt. I rushed past her toward the door, but it was already locked. She set the tray of food on the table and edged back from me, her eyes large and frightened like a rabbit’s.

  “Where’s Derrick? I want to speak with him,” I said.

  She averted her eyes. “Don’t know no one by that name here.” Her accent was coarse and British.

  I walked toward her. “What about the captain?”

  She flinched back from me. “The Dread Pirate Bluebeard? He’s about.”

  I halted, noticing the bruises on one side of her face and the way her hands trembled.

  “Are you . . . okay?” I asked.

  She didn’t answer. She just kept shrinking back.

  “Did someone hurt you?”

  She was tall, but lean. She could have been the age of one of my students.