Of Witches and Wind

by Shelby Bach

  I drew my sword and turned to join the fight.

  Then Mia did the bravest and stupidest thing I’d ever seen her do. She dove between the troll’s legs.

  The troll spun around before she even straightened up. He reached for her. Mia shrieked, cowering away, a second too slow. His fingers were just inches from her cheek. I sliced through the air between them, driving him back.

  “Mean pointy,” said the troll. No, I’m not kidding. And he stamped hard, faster than I expected, and pinned my sword to the marble beneath his foot.

  “I can’t shoot without hitting someone!” said Darcy from her boulder.

  But the troll had turned his back a little. Chase shoved Ben past the fight. “You two go on ahead.”

  The bridge vibrated as Ben and Mia ran for the other side.

  The troll raised his fist again—Chase didn’t see the blow coming down on his head.

  “No!” My sword was still trapped, so I did the only thing I could think of—I shoved at the troll’s chest with both hands.

  I felt the West Wind’s ring work this time. A swift gust flickered over my left arm and blasted the nearest target. The troll flew back and hit the railing ten paces behind him with an enormous crack.

  “Whoa!” said Darcy. “Rory, you need to teach me that Jedi trick.”

  But I scooped up my weapon, concentrating on protecting Chase. The sword’s magic tugged me across the bridge. It pulled my arm back.

  The troll bent over the railing and stared at the fractures in the marble.

  “Bridge!” You could hear the grief in his voice, like a child whose favorite toy is broken.

  We had outnumbered him and destroyed his home. He never had a chance. “Sorry!” I said.

  Then my sword thrust its blade forward. It would stab the troll in the back, kill him, I realized, and the idea was so startling that my hand uncurled.

  I dropped my sword.

  Not a great idea in the middle of a battle.

  The troll turned around and kicked out with both feet.

  Chase yanked me out of the way. “Rory, come on—we do not drop our weapons and apologize to the enemy.”

  Flushing, I snatched up my sword.

  “That ring—you need to be careful what you do with your left hand,” Chase said, his eyes on the troll. His sword was smeared with blood, just a little too orange to be human. As the troll lumbered to his feet, I spotted the slice on his calf—not enough to stop him, but it might slow him down. “The bridge can’t take another blow. The Fey architect built it to look pretty. Making a strong structure isn’t something fairies worry about.”

  The drop flashed through my mind—maybe a half mile of open air, separated from me only through a thin layer of sneaker and fragile marble. My mouth was suddenly so dry that my tongue stumbled over words. “Are you saying that this bridge is going to collapse under us?”

  “Don’t look at me like that. You’re the one who smashed it,” Chase said. “Maybe you should run across too, and let me handle this—”

  I shot him a dirty look. He couldn’t seriously think I would leave him.

  The troll rushed us. Maybe it was my imagination, but with every heavy footfall I thought I heard stone cracking.

  Horror locked my knees exactly where they were. I glanced back at the other three questers, at solid ground, at safety.

  Chase stepped slightly ahead of me, like he knew my fear of heights had transformed me into a Useless Rory statue. An arrow thwacked into the troll, right where the neck met the shoulder, so quickly that it was like he’d sprouted a feathered branch below his left ear. Too fast to stop, he toppled toward me and Chase.

  The hand not holding my sword shot out to push him away, but as soon as my skin brushed his coarse, grimy tunic, the troll’s feet left the ground.

  Crap.

  “Rory!” Chase snapped. “What did I tell you about your left hand?”

  The troll landed back-first against the nonsmashed railing. The white stone splintered. Cracks crawled under us. The troll’s flailing arms knocked Chase over the side.

  I reached out automatically. My hand caught his—

  The troll fell past us, howling, and disappeared in the waterfall’s mist, but Chase looked freakishly calm for someone whose feet were dangling over a ten-story drop.

  “I’m sorry!” Darcy cried from the far side. “I’m so sorry.”

  —and before I could use the ring’s strength to haul Chase back up, the bridge crumbled beneath my feet.

  e dropped so fast my stomach scrambled up to my throat. Bridge bits fell all around us—big, jagged pieces struck me hard in my calf, my shoulder, my ribs—

  Then, sliding into the waterfall, I couldn’t see anything. Water roared in my ears, and my scream turned to choking. I might drown before I reached the ocean.

  I clutched at Chase’s hand—only to realize that my hands were empty. I had lost him.

  I was going to die—

  Someone seized me under the arms, and I could breathe again, I could see again. Waves crashed around colossal stones a hundred feet below my sneakers.

  I groped around. I needed something to hold on to.

  “Rory, stop squirming. You’ve still got your sword out, and if you injure me so bad I have to leave the quest, I swear I’ll drop you here and let you swim to shore.”

  I froze. I didn’t risk twisting upward to look, but only one person could sound that cocky this far off the ground. “Chase?”

  “Two words, Rory: fairy wings,” he said.

  I would have felt a lot more relieved if we weren’t still in the air. “Can we land someplace?”

  “What? The wind’s too loud. I’m only getting every other word. Hang on. I’ll land.” He steered us toward shore, so sharply that I forgot myself a second and kicked my legs. “Whoa. Relax. Flying is one Fey thing I’m really good at, but I’m not really big enough for passengers yet. Don’t throw your weight around.”

  Great. I stiffened, straight as my sword. We wobbled again, but Chase recovered. “See?”

  We glided around for what seemed like an excessively long time. The high cliffs on shore turned into shorter cliffs, and then to stony hills, and then to sand dunes. We passed several stretches that I could have sworn were completely acceptable landing spots.

  “Head’s up.” Chase swooped lower and dropped me.

  I was sure he meant for me to land on my feet, but my legs were numb with wind. I skinned both knees in the sand and then fell on my side, staring up at the sky. Everything hurt.

  “I couldn’t fly up to the top of the cliffs. You’re too heavy. We had to land here. Did I lose you?” A winged figure loomed over me, and then Chase knelt in the sand and snapped his fingers in my face. “Did you faint with your eyes open?”

  I shoved his hand away. “Yes.”

  “Sarcasm intact. Definitely alive,” said Chase, grinning. “I don’t think the other questers saw me. I waited until the waterfall blocked us before I caught you.”

  Of course he would care more about keeping his secret than me screaming myself hoarse. “The troll?”

  “Drowned, I guess. Did you expect me to save him, too?”

  I shot Chase a very well-deserved glare and spotted his wings. They rose up over each shoulder and extended past his head, slightly pointed—kind of like how I’d expected fairy ears to look. They fluttered nervously. Chase’s face turned slowly red.

  I had to press my lips together, but I didn’t laugh and embarrass him more. “Well? Turn around.”

  I pretended not to be surprised when Chase actually stood up and did. The wings extended all the way to his ankles, as long as he was tall. And they—well, they didn’t glitter, or shine, but they seemed to be made of light, like a hologram projection.

  “How come I haven’t seen them before this?” I asked.

  “They’re invisible unless I move them for longer than five seconds,” Chase said, voice tight.

  Then he’d probably perfected using them fo
r four and a half seconds. “Is that true for all Fey?”

  Chase snorted. “No. It’s not even true for all halflings. Fey wings are normally forty percent physical and sixty percent magic. I just got the magic part. Believe me, that’s much better than the other way around. Almost all the flying ability is in the magic.”

  “Why didn’t they show up when we fell off the beanstalk? Did you see the flying carpet, or were you going to let us hit the ground?” I sat up. Pain shot over my ribs and ripped the air from my lungs. Not good.

  Chase didn’t notice, his back still to me. “I couldn’t fly then. That’s why I was so freaked out. All the flying muscles in my shoulder were torn up. My wings aren’t physical, but I still have the same back muscles as a fairy—you know, adapted to flying. Now, if you had fallen on the way up the beanstalk, you would have been very impressed with how awesomely I would have caught you. I’ve always been good at flying. That and glamours and picking locks and Binding Oaths and—” He stopped. “Well, that’s actually it.”

  I reached a hand toward Chase’s wings and then stopped. I probably shouldn’t touch them without asking. “They’re pretty,” I said finally.

  “They’re pink,” Chase said, exasperated. They were—two shades lighter than salmon. I’d been trying not to mention it. That sword class for mini Fey would especially suck for a boy with pink wings. “They’re supposed to get darker. You know, like your hair color as you grow up.” Chase obviously counted on it.

  “You know, they’re actually more peach here,” I said. “Right by your shoulder blades.”

  His fists clenched. The wings vibrated again. This was an angry flutter, not a nervous one. “That doesn’t make it any better!”

  “Yes, it does,” I said. “That means it’s already getting darker. You’ll probably have a cool orange in a couple years. Flame-colored.”

  That cheered Chase up. “Well, nobody’s going to see them until then. Nobody else.”

  Sometimes, I didn’t like being the only one who knew Chase’s secret. It was kind of a lot of pressure.

  “Well, thanks for saving my life.” I sheathed my sword, gritting my teeth against the pain.

  “Good,” Chase said. “Now hold on to that gratitude. I need to tell you something, and you can’t bite my head off. We’re twelve miles away from the others. I couldn’t find a closer spot to land, not at high tide.”

  I pressed a hand to my sore ribs. Chase had told me to run before the bridge cracked. He knew that he’d be fine. He could fly. I just hadn’t realized he’d had it under control. If I hadn’t fallen too, he would’ve just flown straight back, made some excuse, and rejoined the quest.

  Darcy had my pack with the M3, so we couldn’t even remind Lena to text my mom.

  I’d screwed the whole thing up. Again. Between getting us kicked off the Fey railway and breaking the bridge, I’d probably cost us a whole day.

  I suggested calling the Dapplegrim, but Chase said that boon was too awesome to waste. He still had his ring of return in his pocket, I pointed out. He could head back to EAS and explain what had happened, but Chase refused—if he left the quest, they might not send him back. Then I tried to convince him to fly off and tell the others where I was. I could stay in one place so they could find me again.

  Chase rolled his eyes. “First of all, we still have two days to get to the Unseelie Court, and we’re not that far away. Only about a three-hour flight. I mean a day’s walk. Second of all, I’m not leaving you—not on a hidden continent, not at night, not alone. End of discussion.”

  That was an unexpectedly nice and terrifying thing to say. I would have come up with a great argument for that, but I got distracted. “Your wings just disappeared.” Without warning, Chase looked like a regular, human kid.

  “I told you they would. That’s what happens when I don’t use them for a while,” he said, shrugging. “We’ll just walk. If the others are keeping to the coast, and we’re keeping to the coast, we’re bound to run into each other. We’ll reach them by midnight or so.” He strode up the sand dune, slipping once on loose sand but catching himself with a flutter that made his wings visible. “As long as we don’t run into trouble. By trouble”—he swung around to grin at me—“I mean bad guys. I can’t believe you dropped your sword, by the way.”

  I followed along more slowly, step after painful step. “It was going to kill the troll.”

  “Yeah, so? What do you think we’ve been training for?” Chase said.

  This was what we’d been training for. I’d been so focused on getting better I’d forgotten that.

  Chase rolled his eyes. “You’ll need to get over it sometime.”

  I hated that he was right. “I just want to get through middle school without killing anyone. That would be a really normal thing to want if I wasn’t a Character.”

  Chase looked a little taken aback. It took him a couple seconds to change the subject. “Have I told you yet how awesome smashing the troll was?”

  “Even though it broke the bridge?” I asked grimly.

  “Minor detail.” He pointed to the grove of pines we walked into. “Hit one of those.”

  “Why?”

  “I wanna see. I’d do it myself, but the ring only lets you use it.”

  “It seems like a waste of a perfectly good tree.”

  “Please please please.” He poked me in the shoulder with every word. He apparently thought I’d give in if he annoyed me enough. “You need to learn how to use that left hook anyway. Better a tree than my face.”

  “You shouldn’t call your face a target. That tempts me.” But I swung my fist at the nearest trunk, mainly to shut him up. My ribs were not happy when I connected. The tree cracked and fell.

  Chase grinned. “Except for the way you punch like a human, that was the greatest thing I’ve seen all week.”

  “What do you mean I punch like a human?” He couldn’t expect me to punch like anything besides human. It was a biological fact.

  “You don’t put any of your body weight behind the punch. You need to punch and kind of lurch with it—like you’re going to do a shoulder roll.”

  “Does it matter how I punch if this ring gives me superman strength?”

  “Well, first, you have two arms and just one ring.” It amazed me how quickly Chase could go from goofball to teacher. “Second, I’m almost positive that the ring responds to the intensity of the blow. If you punch harder, it’ll hit harder too. Try.” He tapped the nearest trunk.

  I did, tired of arguing now that the adrenaline was draining away. And if the other one broke, this one exploded. I squeezed my eyes shut against the splinters flying everywhere. Chase whooped.

  “I think I’ve reached my tree-killing quota for the evening.” My left hand was all scratched up. I could feel it.

  “We’ll see how bored we get later. But you know what this means?” Chase said. “We have to rework your fighting style. You’ve got the sword work down pretty well, but if you throw in your natural kicking skills and that kind of punch, you’ll be unstoppable. If you had pulled a Mighty Snap Kick at Lake Michigan with just the right timing, you could have stunned the chimera and stopped it without tackling anybody.”

  I couldn’t even think about the chimera without seeing Mia’s head on the table. The dream was definitely bothering me. “Chase, what do you think of Mia?”

  “Useless,” said Chase with such disgust I felt kind of pleased. “I don’t know why Ben asked her to be his Companion.”

  I told him what I’d dreamed. “Do you think I should tell her?”

  Chase shot me the look he always gave me when I asked for advice—the one that Lena called the why the hiccups are you asking me? expression. “Some Characters get beheaded in their Tales.”

  “Which Tales?” Maybe I could list them for Mia.

  “No idea,” Chase said.

  “Lena would know.” But without the M3, I couldn’t ask her.

  “Yeah, well—Lena can’t fly,” Chase said short
ly. “How many times have you dreamed it so far?”

  “Two.” It was darker in the trees. I stared at the ground to make sure I didn’t trip over any roots.

  “Then you don’t need to worry unless you dream it again. Besides, it’s really rare for someone to dream about someone’s Tale besides their own. It could just be a regular dream.”

  “But last year, I dreamed about falling out of a beanstalk four times. That’s how I knew to jump off.”

  “Glad you had a plan then. Other than dragging me down to my death,” Chase said. I lifted my fist threateningly. He skittered out of the way, laughing.

  I hoped it was a regular dream, but somehow I doubted it. “But it feels like the dreams that come true. You know. Kind of still. Focused. Not jumbled and confusing like regular dreams.”

  Chase shrugged. “The Fey don’t dream.”

  “You mean, you’ve never dreamed of your Tale?” This would be news. Chase liked to brag about how he would have the biggest and best Tale ever.

  “You have?” Chase said, clearly skeptical.

  I nodded, smirking. I didn’t usually have an advantage with Tale-related stuff.

  “Oh,” Chase said.

  A stack of split wood stood in the next clearing, as tall as I was. A giant double-headed ax leaned against it.

  Chase delicately kicked out a piece near the bottom. Then he kicked out another.

  “That’s probably a whole week of some poor woodcutter’s work.” Woodsmen were fairy-tale staples, just like fairy godmothers and big bad wolves.

  Chase shrugged, kicking out a third. He flew up and landed on the top. “See? It’s still stable.”

  Then the whole thing toppled, scattering logs down the slope.

  Chase hovered, shocked, his peach-colored wings blurring behind him.

  I burst out laughing and immediately regretted it. My ribs enjoyed laughing even less than smashing trees.

  “Time to go.” He landed at a half run.

  I rolled my eyes. Now he was worried about the woodsman.

  “I don’t really dream, you know,” he said. “I’ve only had one dream my entire life, but it gets longer and longer every time I have it.”