Remembering those words made Quicksilver stiffen. “You were stupid.”
“The most stupid,” Sly Boots agreed.
“Of all the boys, ever,” Quicksilver declared.
Sly Boots glanced up at her with a small smile. “Throughout all of time.”
Quicksilver worked very hard to keep from smiling back at him.
“Can you forgive me, Quicksilver?” asked Sly Boots.
She considered him—his long, skinny arms, his soft, pale hair, the freckles across his cheeks. He wore such a gentle expression just then. If she had to put a word to the look in his eyes, she would have chosen . . . hopeful.
“Not yet,” she said at last. “You really hurt me, Boots.”
He did not look away. “I know.”
“I don’t know when I’ll forgive you, in fact, or if I ever will.”
“That’s fair. In the meantime, I’ll wait, and do whatever I can to help you. I’ll spend the rest of my life helping you, if I must.”
Quicksilver unfolded her hands, folded them again, unfolded them once more, and then realized she had no idea what to do with them. She fiddled with her boots so he would not see her flaming cheeks. “Yes, well. There’s no need to be so weird and dramatic about it.”
A soft knock on the door alerted them to Lars’s presence. He poked his head in, smiling Olli’s familiar smile. “Hello, you two. Quicksilver, you should get some sleep. We’ll leave at nightfall, and the far northern road is a long and harsh one.”
Sly Boots shot to his feet, his back straight as a board. “I’m coming with you.”
“This is our fight, Sly Boots, not yours. You’re not a witch.”
“No, but I’m Quicksilver’s friend,” Sly Boots replied, “and I won’t let her do this alone.”
Lars raised an eyebrow, his mouth twitching. “Quite an admirer you’ve got, Quicksilver.”
“He’s hardly that,” Quicksilver said, her cheeks growing even hotter. “He’s just feeling guilty, is all.”
Sly Boots stuck out his chin. “All right, so I feel guilty. But what does that matter? I can still help you. I know things about the Wolf King no one else knows. Let me prove to you how sorry I am, Quicksilver. Please?”
Lars shrugged, still far too amused for Quicksilver’s liking. “It’s your choice.”
Quicksilver headed to the attic without once looking back at Sly Boots. “I suppose he can come, if he must,” she said airily—but with a secret joy fluttering inside her. For she realized that, out of everyone alive, Sly Boots was the only person who had known her and Fox as witch and monster. And there was something special, even precious, about that.
She supposed, then, that she might be moved to someday forgive Sly Boots, if only so they could share stories about Fox, and remember him through the words.
.48.
THE FAR NORTHERN ROAD
At first the journey north wasn’t so terrible. They were six altogether, including Quicksilver, Sly Boots, and Lars. One of Lars’s coven, an older witch with a bad knee, named Matias, volunteered to stay behind and care for Sly Boots’s parents. They hoped, as frightening as it was, that the Wolf King would leave Willow-on-the-River alone and focus his attention on tracking the last monster skeleton—the ermine—stowed safely in Quicksilver’s pack.
As they traveled north through Lalunet and then through Valteya, they joined with other covens who had been in hiding and waiting for Lars’s arrival. These witches lived deep in forested mountain canyons, and in underground compounds, safe from the Wolf King’s pack.
“But now that you’ve gone back in time and changed this future,” Lars explained one cold night as they wound through a Valteyan forest of tall, whispering pine trees, “we witches are not so frightened as we once were.” He stopped and looked at Quicksilver, his eyes shining but serious, just like Olli’s had been. “We’ve been waiting—for you, Quicksilver. We’ve been waiting to fight. And we’re not afraid.”
Quicksilver didn’t know what to say to that. The idea that generations of witches had been telling her story for so many long years, waiting for her to return so she could lead them into battle, made her feel, even after everything she’d been through, rather nervously floaty.
What if I mess things up for everyone after all this time, Fox?
No answer, of course—just the hissing pines overhead, the whispers and rustles of the coven, Sly Boots humming quietly to himself beside her.
Three days into the journey north, they stopped at a tiny mountain settlement of witches who lived in deep, narrow caves facing the northern horizon. The snow-covered mountains of the Far North loomed there—and somewhere within them was the Wolf King’s Black Castle.
Witches crowded out of the caves, quiet and wide-eyed, some with shy smiles, some with beaming ones.
“We’re glad to have you back, Quicksilver,” said a man with faded rose-colored hair. “And glad to fight with you at last. Otto, at your service.” He took off his cap and bowed. His monster, a pink and downy vole, stared at Quicksilver long after Otto had moved away to give others a turn.
A boy around Quicksilver’s age, with a shaved head and a scarred scalp, attacked Quicksilver with a fierce hug.
“I’m Tommi,” he said. “My father told me stories about you every night before bed, when I was little.” He looked up, grinning. His red cat monster wound around his ankles. “He would have loved meeting you, my dad. He was never afraid to stand up to the Wolf King.”
Quicksilver tried not to recoil at Tommi’s words, nor at the scars running down his face. It wasn’t that they were ugly to her; it was that they looked, horribly, like claw marks, and she wondered how many people would have been spared the Wolf King’s wrath, had she not so thoroughly angered him, long ago.
And what if, after all that, they could not defeat him, even now? He had six skeletons, and she had one. The ermine skeleton in her pocket felt like a measly thing in the face of the Wolf King’s power—and in the face of the losses these witches had suffered.
Two girls, a few years older than Quicksilver, one with faded grass-green hair, the other with pale sea-blue hair—but identical in every other respect—knelt at Quicksilver’s feet.
“I am Irma,” said the green-haired girl.
“And I am Veera,” said the blue-haired girl.
“We are honored to fight for you, Quicksilver Foxheart,” said Irma.
“And have been training since childhood to do so,” said Veera.
“We will not fail you,” they said together, with solemn nods.
Their monsters—two raccoons, one green and blue, one blue and green—stared at Quicksilver from their perches on Irma’s and Veera’s shoulders, whispering excitedly to each other.
An older woman with a white streak in her dark hair came forward, holding a steaming bowl of stew. “Thank you for saving us,” she murmured. She clasped Quicksilver’s hand and kissed it. “We won’t fail you, Quicksilver Foxheart. My name is Karin, and I am ready to fight for you, as are all of us here.” Karin’s mottled black-and-white bat monster hung off her shoulder and peeked out at Quicksilver from behind its leathery wings.
“Foxheart,” it whispered after her.
When Quicksilver bedded down to sleep that morning on the floor of one of the caves, she felt heartsick and tired. It had been a long night on the road, and then a long couple of hours talking to every witch in the settlement, accepting their thanks, accepting their careful hugs. Lars had finally steered Quicksilver away to a quiet corner of the cave, and given her a bedroll and a thick fur blanket, and instructed her to sleep.
But even though she was exhausted, Quicksilver found it difficult to shut her eyes. Her chest ached, her head ached; she felt hollow and brittle, like the slightest thing could break her in half.
After a few quiet minutes, the black-and-white bat fluttered over and curled up in the crook of her arm, its tiny claws hooked in her sleeve.
“What was he like?” asked the bat.
Quicksilver startled at the small voice, so near. “What?”
“Fox.” The bat gently placed one of its wings on Quicksilver’s chest. Foxheart. “What was he like? Will you tell us?”
“Us?” Then Quicksilver looked around, and realized that all the monsters of their new, growing coven hovered or crouched or coiled nearby—Karin’s bat, and Lars’s soft orange-gold squirrel. Otto’s pink vole and Tommi’s thin red cat. Irma’s and Veera’s green-and-blue raccoons. All of them watched her, bright eyed and eager.
Quicksilver swallowed hard. How to put into words what Fox was like? How to explain to these monsters what it had been like to know with certainty that she, Quicksilver, would never feel love—and then to receive it from Fox every day, every hour, even when she hadn’t realized it?
How blind a girl she had once been.
She spotted Sly Boots, sitting with Lars at the mouth of the cave, on first watch. His eyes met hers, and he waved, his smile lopsided.
Quicksilver waved back and then took a deep breath. “Well,” she began, “first of all, Fox was a dog, and so he of course loved sticks best of all. After me, of course.”
The monsters nestled closer to hear, and as the morning sun crept through the cave, turning everything soft and drowsy, Quicksilver talked about Fox until Lars told her sternly to get some real rest. Night would come sooner than she’d like, and then they’d be on the road again.
So she lowered her voice, whispering so Lars couldn’t hear, and when her eyes fell shut at last, the monsters curled protectively around her, she slipped into a warm and gentle sleep.
Foxheart, the monsters called her, and it was true. For there he was, inside her, and he always would be.
.49.
A WORLD FULL OF MONSTERS
By the time the coven—twelve witches and monsters, altogether—reached the Wolf King’s castle, which was past the border of Valteya in the Far North, they had crafted a plan that, in the broad light of day, had seemed to Quicksilver both sound and promising.
But now, looking up at the Black Castle towering over them, she felt . . . differently.
The two moons, white and violet, cast soft colored shadows over the high, snowy mountains of the Far North—but the Black Castle did not shine. Its black stone swallowed up even the near moon’s violet glow, leaving the castle looking like a dark castle-shaped hole cut out of the sky.
It was narrow and tall, its lines clean and sharp. It stood on a rocky plateau and seemed to loom over everything, even the cloud-piercing mountains that surrounded it. Hugged by snowy rock, crowned with pointy towers, it reminded Quicksilver of a beast scanning the mountains, poised and ready to hunt.
Beside her, Lars let out a long, slow breath. His squirrel monster, Naika, glared at the castle and snarled softly.
“That’s quite a sight,” muttered pink-haired Otto, his vole monster perched on his shoulder.
Sly Boots, on Quicksilver’s other side, whispered, “Don’t be afraid.”
Quicksilver poked him. “I’m not!”
“I wasn’t talking to you. I was talking to myself.”
“Let’s move in,” Lars whispered, signaling to the others. Naika scurried ahead to scout.
They followed the icy road across the plateau and up a series of foothills, cloaked only by the shadows. If they used magic this close to the Wolf King, they would lose the element of surprise—which was their one real advantage.
Quicksilver tried not to think about when the First Ones would sense the ermine skeleton and attack. Instead she focused on moving as quietly through the trees as she could. Maybe if she focused hard enough, she would stop thinking about Anastazia and Fox, and wishing desperately that they were there beside her.
Sly Boots seemed to know what she was thinking. “Feels strange to be going on adventures without them, doesn’t it?” he whispered.
She glanced at his snow-dusted self and clamped down on a surprising feeling of fondness. “Just keep singing,” she snapped. “And stay close so the bones can hear you.”
Nodding agreeably, Sly Boots resumed singing “The Thief Dagvendr” under his breath. He had chosen that particular song at Quicksilver’s request—a request she now deeply regretted. But this close to the Black Castle, the ermine skeleton in her pocket no longer seemed to care that Quicksilver was magicless, and had begun to fuss and scrape and snarl. She feared it might soon claw through Anastazia’s thick cloak to freedom.
At last they reached the castle’s front entrance, and Sly Boots fell silent. Stubby evergreen trees shivered around them; the ground was a choppy sea of rock and snow. The ermine skeleton thrummed and chattered, pricking Quicksilver’s side with a stinging pain each time it thumped against her. She couldn’t imagine how it would feel to have all seven of them in her possession at once—but she would soon find out.
She hoped.
Beside her, Lars’s monster, Naika, transformed into a small orange-gold rat and disappeared with a soft puff of light.
Silent and tense, they waited, flat against the castle walls. The stone felt unnervingly strange—warm and damp and prickly. Quicksilver imagined she could feel the castle breathing against her back, and hoped fear was simply getting the best of her. Who knew what sort of spells the Wolf King might have crafted since she had last seen him?
One of the tall black castle doors creaked open. Naika, a squirrel once more, hurried back to Lars and curled around his boot. “The way is clear,” she whispered to him, and Quicksilver forced herself to look at them, though their obvious connection made her miss Fox all the more.
She was Quicksilver Foxheart, and she would have to learn how to be alone in a world full of monsters.
If there was still a world left, after what they were about to do.
Lars placed his hands on her shoulders. “You’ll be all right, Quix?” he asked one last time.
She nodded, bracing herself—and then someone screamed.
They whirled.
The Wolf King’s black wolf was dragging Karin across the snow, his jaws tight around her leg. Karin’s black-and-white bat monster shifted into a mountain cat and sprang onto the wolf’s back with an ear-piercing yowl.
More wolves darted out from the shadows. The brown wolf lunged for Tommi, jaws open wide. Tommi ducked and swerved. His cat monster shifted into a great red stag and crashed into the brown wolf, antlers first. Another witch screamed, and another—the blue wolf, the gray wolf. Irma and Veera shifted their monsters into green-and-blue stallions and sent them galloping toward the blue and gray wolves. The blue wolf saw them first, let out a fierce howl, and leaped for the nearest horse, sinking its teeth into the horse’s neck.
Otto bellowed a war cry. His pale pink monster, now a coiling, fat serpent, struck at the red wolf with glistening black fangs.
The First Ones—six long shadows with grinning faces and reaching arms—swooped down from the castle walls and rushed at them, a black tidal wave.
Quicksilver staggered back when they raced past her, choking on the sudden, shivering, furious cold. She couldn’t breathe, she couldn’t see. The howling shadows of the First Ones clogged the fight with thick, smoky darkness.
Lars threw himself in front of Quicksilver and Sly Boots.
“Ready?” he cried.
Quicksilver squinted through the darkness, found the tall, narrow castle entrance. One door still stood open.
She grabbed Sly Boots’s hand, her heart a frantic drum. “Ready!”
Suddenly the gray wolf jumped out of the blackness, running straight for them.
Lars shifted Naika into a snarling wolverine and sent her flying toward the wolf.
“Go, Quix!” shouted Lars—but Quicksilver was already running, tugging Sly Boots after her.
They slipped through the open castle door and into a massive entrance hall. Seven staircases branched off in seven different directions. Behind each staircase was an immense painted-glass window. Each one depicted a First One, robed and imperious, with a monster: a starl
ing, and a snowy hare. A hawk, a cat, a mouse. An owl. An ermine.
The ermine skeleton in Quicksilver’s pocket rattled and shrieked. Claws raked her skin through her cloak and winter clothes.
“Where do we go?” Sly Boots squeezed Quicksilver’s hand, looking wildly about the massive room. “Which way?”
Quicksilver withdrew the ermine skull from her pocket and held it out in front of her. She had no Fox, and no access to her magic, so this time she could not use the Wolf King’s stolen memories to help her. But the skull’s excitement was obvious. It vibrated so hard she thought it would shatter. It jerked her body right, then left, then right again. Had she let go of it, it would have flown toward the second staircase from the right.
The staircase was crowned by the glass portrait of an ermine and its First One, painted in moon white and blood red, autumn-sky blue and shimmering moss green.
Quicksilver hoped the ermine skeleton wasn’t trying to trick her.
“This way!” she cried.
The screaming sounds of the battle outside faded as she and Sly Boots raced up the stairs and down a series of shadowy corridors with high, arched ceilings. Quicksilver held tight to the ermine skull as it hissed and shook, letting it pull them where it wanted to go. Animal skeletons were everywhere—crowning each doorway, lining window panes, embedded in the very stone beneath Quicksilver’s feet.
“Disgusting,” Sly Boots muttered as they ran.
No, it’s clever of the Wolf King, Quicksilver thought to Fox. Who would ever think a few monster bones were special, when there are so many normal ones lying around?
When Fox did not answer, Quicksilver gripped the ermine skull harder. She needed to think, not cry. Lars and his coven couldn’t hold off the wolves forever.
The skull led them deeper into the castle and down a set of narrow stone steps. Quicksilver had to hold on to the skull with both hands to keep it from throwing itself down the corridor ahead of her. She was concentrating so hard on keeping it under control, in fact, that she almost stepped into a pit of stone.
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