by Shelby Bach
“I got it.” Chase ran so fast he practically skimmed over the sand. “You go cover Lena.”
The sword’s magic sent me weaving through the dunes to Lena’s side, right at the edge of the soccer field. Her eyes were still glued to her M3. “Rory, you have to see this!”
“The image is so clear,” Melodie added.
They clearly hadn’t noticed the chimera barreling over the grass, twenty-five feet away and closing.
“Lena, we’ve got company!” I tried to tug her back through the dunes. She would be safer behind the archers.
“No, I can’t move—” Then she glanced up and found herself practically face to face with a three-headed monster. “Oh!”
“Don’t worry. I’ll take care of it.” Chase charged out, and, seeing him on the field, the chimera slowed. Its snake head hissed. “Yeah, you know it’s all over for you—don’t you, ugly?”
Lena dashed back through the dunes and behind the archers before Chase and the chimera even came to blows. She wasn’t the fastest runner in seventh grade for nothing.
When I was halfway to the others, Chase said, “Crap!”
I whirled around and raised my sword, its magic thrumming.
But Chase wasn’t hurt. The chimera leaped from the edge of the grass to the nearest dune. It had gotten past him.
He sprinted after it. “I still got it, Rory!”
The chimera glanced at Adelaide, Daisy, and the stepsisters, their arrows notched to their bows, and then closer to the water, where Ben just watched. His mouth was open. Mia peeked nervously around him.
The new kid didn’t even have a weapon.
“It’s after Ben and Mia!” Lena cried, panicky, but I was already running, racing the monster as it bounded over the sand.
The stepsisters recovered fastest. They loosed their arrows. The chimera’s lion head yowled as it dodged, but it gave me the extra two seconds I needed.
I tackled Mia and Ben, knocking them to the sand an instant before the chimera pounced.
Somebody’s bare elbow struck my cheekbone, right outside my eye, but the three-headed monster sailed over us—so close that its tufted tail brushed my neck.
I scrambled to my feet as the chimera landed half in the water. Its goat head bleated angrily, and the back legs bent. It was ready to attack again.
“Rory, I said I got it,” said Chase, somewhere behind me. He still wasn’t close enough to do any slaying.
The chimera leaped.
My body knelt, and the sword’s magic guided the blade straight into the monster’s heart. Chase’s sword flashed above, and the beast gave a wet sort of roar-bleat. Two somethings thumped to the sand with a squish.
The chimera collapsed on the beach, a couple feet away from its goat and lion heads. Gross, but definitely dead.
I straightened slowly. “Is everybody okay?”
“Do you recall those talon punctures?” Wincing, Ben reached into his red jacket. “I’m almost positive they have sand in them now. But,” he added hastily when I opened my mouth to apologize, “better sand than a chimera bite.”
Mia gingerly sat up. Her skirt had a palm-size rip out of the hem, stained black at the edges, but otherwise she seemed all right.
Lena ran over, biting her lip.
Chase scowled at me. “What part of ‘I got it’ do you not understand?”
I knew what he was really upset about. Whoever slayed the chimera got the most bragging rights. I smirked. “You were too slow.”
“Still my kill,” Chase said.
“No, this round goes to Rory. When you’re beheading a chimera, you have to make sure you get all three heads. You missed one, Chase. It took a bite out of Mia’s clothes.” Melodie pointed a golden hand at the body. Between the fangs of the viper head, a plaid patch flapped in the breeze.
“But it was two-thirds dead by the time Rory got it,” Chase protested, and I snorted.
“Who are you people?” Mia said, voice shaking.
“It’s okay.” Ben squeezed her hand. I bet the gesture would have been ten times more comforting if his fingers hadn’t been streaked with blood. “The chimera’s their leader. Hansel told us earlier that the ice griffins always scatter after the chimera is killed—”
Something Jeep-size swooped down out of the fog, shrieking. Everybody ducked automatically. Except for Chase, who leaped up and sliced once at the monster’s white throat.
The ice griffin thudded onto the sand beside the chimera. Its spotted tail twitched once and then was still.
Chase grinned. “That one was definitely mine.”
“They’re coming!” Adelaide aimed her bow straight up. A dozen griffins sailed across the soccer field toward us. “God. Didn’t the eighth graders kill any of them?”
“They’re supposed to scatter. Why aren’t they scattering?” Ben said, eyes wide.
“The snake head wasn’t trying to bite Mia,” I said, realizing. “It was marking her.”
Mia gasped. Ben shoved her behind him, which seemed equally gallant and useless.
“Archers, aim for the wings!” Chase said. “Where are the spears when we need them?”
“Coming!” cried someone down the beach.
It is extremely hard to run with a spear and not stab the guy running next to you, but the seventh-grade spear squadron—the Zipes triplets and Paul Stockton—managed it. Very impressive, considering Paul had only been at EAS a couple months.
“I want two of you defending them.” Chase pointed to Ben and Mia. “She’s the Snow Queen’s target. Rory, you help them. The other two, help me finish off the griffins our archers bring down.”
“Got it.” Something flapped behind me. I whirled around, heart sinking. “Three more incoming! Lakeside.” They were close, just a hundred feet away, fifty, moving so fast the fog rippled away from their wings.
I lifted my sword, but at the last second all three griffins plowed into the lake at once and sent an enormous wave crashing over our heads.
I choked on a lungful of water.
When I opened my eyes, my throat raw with coughing, the griffin was ten feet from me. It knelt down, breathing its icy breath across the puddle. I darted forward, swung my sword two-handed like a baseball bat, and sheared its head from its feathery shoulders, but I was too late—the beach was already frozen. The griffins were trying to screw us up the same way they’d dealt with the eighth graders.
Unfortunately for the griffins, we seventh graders had more experience fighting on ice. And we had a magician.
“I’m on it!” Feet planted far apart, Lena dug through her backpack again.
With quick measured slides, like I was wearing ice skates, I hurried back toward the fight, three times slower than normal.
The archer’s bows twanged. From the shrieks above us, I guessed their arrows were hitting their marks.
“Okay, raise your hand if you want spikes on your sneakers!” Melodie shouted over the griffin cries. “We need to know how many dragon scales to use!”
“We all do.” Chase leaped on the back of a griffin as it frantically flapped its arrow-riddled wings ten feet above the sand. He stabbed its neck and hopped off before the dead griffin hit the ground. Someday he would have to teach me how to jump that high. “And what kind of idiot is going to raise his hand during a battle?”
Ben sheepishly dropped his raised hand.
Lena held out what looked like three mini CDs, colored green and gold, and shouted another Fey spell. As the dragon scales crumpled in her hands, spikes sprouted on the soles of every seventh grader’s shoes.
“Thanks, Lena.” I could run again. I sprinted straight for the new kids.
Kevin Zipes’s spear was pinned under a dead ice griffin. He struggled to free it, glancing back anxiously at Ben and Mia, but three more flockmates closed in.
The runner’s high came back. I ducked under the closest one and slashed at the belly, where the brown feathers gave way to leopard spots. It screamed above me, but by the time it turned around, I had al
ready moved on. I stabbed the next griffin in the ribs, but when it clawed at me, I dodged at the last second. The blow fell on the first griffin.
The third one bit toward me and pinned my blade in its beak. Great. Of course I’d get stuck fighting a smart griffin.
I kicked it in the throat, hoping it would let go, but the spikes on my shoes barely knocked any feathers loose. The griffin tugged, almost yanking me off my feet, but then an arrow thunked into its forehead.
“Yes!” Tina cried behind me, bow in hand, as the griffin keeled over. “Did I get the last one?”
I looked up, surprised. The icy beach was littered with seventeen bodies, arrows poking out of most of them.
“Is it over already?” Ben said, still crouched in front of Mia. Both of her hands were clamped over her mouth, her face white.
Another griffin soundlessly glided up behind them, almost fast enough, but Paul threw his spear, nailing it in the feathery chest. Its wings hit the water with a slap.
“That was the last one,” Paul said, smirking.
An eighth grader limped out of the fog. Kenneth, their best fighter. He was furious. “You didn’t leave us any?”
glanced at Mia. Ever since we’d returned to EAS, her beautiful face had stayed calm. Her eyes stared straight ahead, even as a bunch of boys shoved each other for the privilege of walking beside her. Either she didn’t notice, or she did a really good job of pretending not to.
She was definitely less freaked out than I had been when a dragon almost killed me my first day. She could have been in shock—or she could have still felt like she was dreaming. Those were normal reactions when people first learned magic was real.
Either way, ever since Hansel had confirmed she was a Character using the mirror test, she hadn’t seemed all that curious about finding herself at a magic after-school program.
She barely glanced at the Tree of Hope, the three-story live oak whose branches swooped low to the ground and twisted skyward again. She didn’t even look at the hundreds of doors lining the courtyard’s outer walls, each one a different color. Maybe they would seem more interesting after she found out that they were EAS’s Door Trek system. Almost every door led to a different city in North America.
But she’d only asked one question on our way here from Wisconsin: “What does this Snow Queen want with me?”
Nobody had answered her.
Lena and I stationed ourselves next to Vicky on an overstuffed leather couch underneath the Tree of Hope. A griffin had clawed Vicky’s forearm. She was the only seventh grader to lose any blood, but the wound wasn’t that serious—just painful. Her face was pinched behind her freckles, and she didn’t even touch the chocolate cake we had grabbed her from the Table of Never Ending Instant Refills.
“The nurse is coming.” Tina dropped into the armchair beside her stepsister. “Geez, the guys are still fawning over that new girl? She’s an eighth grader. It’s not like they have any chance with her.”
All three Zipes triplets and Paul Stockton had joined the crowd around Mia. Only Chase was missing. He’d gone to tell the instructors that we’d found the new Character.
Lena couldn’t have been happy about it—she’d had a crush on Kyle Zipes for as long as I’d known her—but she kept her voice light. “What do we think Mia’s Tale will be?”
“Snow White, maybe.” I gestured to Adelaide. She hovered beside the boys, shook her long hair back, and scowled when no one looked away from Mia. She obviously hated losing her title as prettiest girl in middle school. “Adelaide will play the role of her evil stepmother.”
The girls laughed, even Vicky, but she immediately winced and clutched her gauze-covered arm. Whoops.
“Hey.” Chase perched himself on the arm of the couch. His T-shirt and his hair were soaking wet. “It could take a while. Another new Character showed up about ten minutes back. She doesn’t talk. She can’t write. The Director thinks she has a mute Tale from one of the other continents. We get all sorts of weirdos here.” Chase pointed to the chocolate cake. “Anybody going to eat that?”
Vicky shook her head.
Chase reached across me and Lena to grab the plate. Something dripped on me. I made a face. “Why are you all wet?”
“I suggested we call the other new girl Chatty,” he said.
I hoped she didn’t think we were all as rude as he was. “Chase,” I started.
He shoveled a ridiculously large bite in his mouth. “She didn’t like it either. She used some water from the Director’s fountain to tell me so.”
Lena and I grinned. We would have definitely started teasing him, but the amethyst door to the Director’s office swung open, and Ellie strode out. You would have never guessed that she had been a Cinderella, not with her frizzy brown hair and the grease marks on her apron. She was kind of EAS’s housekeeper. She basically made sure all the day-to-day stuff ran smoothly.
An odd girl with a tiny smile wandered out behind Ellie. Her damp blue dress was all ripped up, trailing lace from its skirt like bits of seaweed. Her dark hair hung down to her waist, very straight, except for slender braids and random seashells that ran through it—the kind of hairstyle five-year-olds gave each other. Her black eyes widened as she took in the courtyard. She moved a little bit like a sparrow, running forward with a flurry of steps and freezing, head tilted. She kept darting off to inspect a pretty door, or an interesting armchair, or the bark on the Tree of Hope.
Mia looked a little stunned when Ellie clamped both hands on her shoulders and steered her out of the crowd. Ben watched her go. “Gooey-eyed” was the word that came to mind.
Chatty took three swift steps toward him and peered into his face—way inside his personal bubble. Ben jumped back so fast he jarred his injured shoulder and winced. She grinned kind of apologetically, her teeth extremely white in her tan face.
“Chatty!” Ellie called from the doorway of the Director’s office, and the new girl rushed off.
Chase stuffed the last cake crumbs in his mouth. “See! I knew the name was catchy.”
“Wait, Rory killed the chimera?” someone shouted.
The crowd backed out of his way. He always wore sleeveless shirts, because they showed off two things: His muscles were as big as a high schooler’s, and his armpit hair had grown in early.
I braced myself. It was Kenneth.
Kenneth stomped to our couch, his pimply face sneering. “It doesn’t count. You’re not strong enough to fight on your own. Without that sword, you’re nothing.”
Shame flamed across my cheeks. I couldn’t argue. Everybody at EAS knew my sword was enchanted. I could keep up with Chase, but only when the magic was turned on. Without it I was a pretty average fighter. My sword had really slain the chimera and those griffins, not me.
Chase stood up. “Says the kid who face-planted on griffin ice. Rory didn’t have any trouble staying on her feet. She’s worth ten of you.”
Darcy scowled. “How are we supposed to learn how to fight on ice if you seventh graders keep taking over our battles?”
“Yeah. So shut up before I head-butt you,” added her brother, Bryan. It would’ve sounded a lot more threatening if he hadn’t looked like a fawn. The scariest thing about him was his spiked collar.
Paul snorted. “Bring it, Bambi.”
“My name is Bryan,” snapped the fawn, and Bryan did head-butt Paul, knocking him to the ground and trotting across Paul’s chest with sharp cloven hooves. The triplets shoved through the crowd to help.
But somebody else was faster—Hansel. “That’s enough.”
Directly behind him stood Gretel, his sister and EAS’s top nurse. One of her feet was made out of iron, and that combined with her slate-gray hair and her usual don’t even think about misbehaving frown made her three times as intimidating as Hansel. She cupped pale green ointment in her palm. “Eighth graders with injuries, line up here in front of me.”
Ben shrugged off his blazer. His blue button-down shirt was spotted with blood.
“But aren’t you going to punish them, sir?” Kenneth asked.
Every seventh-grade head whipped to Hansel. He was known for punishing kids with gingerbread jacks. Trust me, you don’t want to know what those are.
“No,” said the sword master. “You don’t learn how to fight on ice in a middle of a battle. You train for it here, out of danger. When the Director sent you today, she assumed that you’d already put extra time in, like the seventh graders.”
Jaws dropped across the courtyard, including mine. Hansel had just taken our side.
What he’d said about our extra practices was true. When Chase has started giving me private lessons last spring, the other seventh graders had joined in pretty fast. But Hansel never took sides.
“Luckily for you, we’ve arranged some extra training for you eighth graders. Right now.” Hansel pointed to a heavy wooden door studded with iron—the entrance to the training courts.
I didn’t smile, but I was so tempted.
Throwing us dirty looks, the eighth graders began to file silently out of the courtyard.
Chase smirked. “They won’t be our biggest fans for a while.”
“Except for me. You saved my life today,” Ben told me and Chase cheerfully. Gretel had finished with his shoulder fast. He pushed his shirt aside. The talon punctures had already scabbed over, the edges pink with newly healed skin.
“Well,” Chase said, “it probably won’t be the last time.”
Yeah, Chase was always this modest.
“Excuse me!” Tina said, irritated. “We need a nurse too!”
“I am here,” said a quiet, musical voice behind the couch, and we all jumped.
Rapunzel, EAS’s resident seer and backup nurse, stood over Vicky with a small smile. “The deepest wounds cause the most pain.”
Vicky gulped.
Rapunzel was kind of a startling sight: pale silver braid hanging down to the ground; slim body of a sixteen-year-old ballerina; wide, unblinking eyes that looked too wise and dark for her face. She also happened to be my favorite grown-up at EAS.
She held out what looked like a metallic toothpaste tube.
I had seen it three times before: when Chase had gotten a dragon bite up the beanstalk last spring, when Adelaide had busted her chin running away from a troll around Thanksgiving, and when I had sliced my arm capturing a dragon for Lena in February.
