by Temre Beltz
Birdie glanced toward the little table covered in a dancing skeleton tablecloth. Its edges jitterbugged up, beckoning her to Come, come and hide! Ms. Crunch’s mangy, one-eyed kitten peeked out at Birdie and meowed softly in agreement.
Birdie straightened up. “I’m not going anywhere without Ralph! That is so long as he isn’t already . . .” Her voice trailed off as she eyed Ralph’s terribly limp posture.
Ms. Crunch stomped her foot. “Of course he’s not dead! Why else do you think my hair’s lost its frizz? This night’s been a disaster! Keeping this bugger alive has been the most exhausting thing I’ve ever done, and frankly, I don’t know why he’s worth the trouble—”
“Oh my warts! He’s got me! He’s got me! HE’S GOOOOOOTTTTT MMMMEEEE!” a raspy voice shrieked outside the kitchen door. Birdie and Ms. Crunch listened to the awful thud-thud-clump as a witch presumably went down. A moment later, a monkey’s wild laughter erupted, and from the teeny-tiny window crowning the kitchen door, Birdie could see the silhouette of a monkey perched on a witch’s head! The witch had been roped with a feathered boa and was being taken for a joyride that didn’t look to end anytime soon.
Ms. Crunch shook the stunned look off her face. “That’ll only keep ’em away for so long. Any minute now, Rudey-Poodey is going to be marching her black tooth back in here, and then our real trouble begins.”
“It seemed like our real trouble began when you showed up with a whole gang of witches and kidnapped Ralph! Ms. Crunch, I trusted you.” Birdie paused. She took a deep breath. She set free the words that had haunted her ever since she watched Ms. Crunch carry Ralph away. “I thought you were my . . . friend.”
Ms. Crunch stared at Birdie. Even the warts at the end of her nose seemed to quiver. To Birdie’s astonishment, Ms. Crunch nodded and croaked, “I am.”
Birdie thrust her hand in Ralph’s direction and cried, “Then why is he hanging over a cauldron?”
“Because I can’t get him off it! Rudey’s enchanted it so that only she can get him down. I snuck back in here to try to keep him out of the flames.”
As if to prove her point, a long bead of perspiration rolled down Ms. Crunch’s sooty cheek and splashed against the toe of her witchy boot. Could it be true? Despite how it looked—despite how everything looked—was Ms. Crunch actually trying to help Ralph?
Birdie shook her head. “Wait, this is all Rudey’s fault? Is Rudey the green—”
“The green-haired gal with the nasty tooth? Yep, you guessed it, and she’s a nightmare!”
“Oh,” Birdie said. And her heart sank. She wrapped her arms around her stomach—which was busy executing somersaults, cartwheels, and even a backflip or two—because how was she supposed to save Ralph from a witch even Ms. Crunch found formidable?
That’s when she saw it.
A little flash of purple.
Because Birdie was still wearing Mistress Octavia’s Council cloak—the most powerful form of travel in all of Wanderly!
“Ms. Crunch!” Birdie cried. “Is Council magic more powerful than witch magic?”
Ms. Crunch scowled. “That’s a question I don’t like to think about.”
“But is it? Please! I have to know!”
“Eh . . . maybe,” Ms. Crunch said through the side of her teeth.
“Oh, Aaaaagnes!” a voice cried out.
Birdie and Ms. Crunch exchanged glances. The flames in the cauldron leaped with extra vigor. Pooky dove back under the skeleton tablecloth. “It’s her!” Ms. Crunch hissed. “Rudey is coming!”
“Quick, put me over the fire, too!” Birdie cried.
Ms. Crunch’s jaw dropped. Birdie could see every one of her crooked teeth. “WHAT?!” Ms. Crunch shrieked. “Have you gone bonkers? Is this a symptom of being a Tragical, or did you eat something off the hors d’oeuvres tray because, let me tell you, you should never EVER taste anything at a witch event.”
“No! Please! Just listen, it’s the only chance Ralph’s got—”
“Yeah, well, this whole fiasco was about saving your life, and you’re not gonna roast it on my watch!”
Birdie reached around her shoulders and flipped the Council cloak right side out. “But I’ve got this! And if Ralph can’t get out of those flames, I have to go to him. But I need your help. I need you to—to put me in there and keep me out of the flames too.”
Ms. Crunch licked her prune-y lips. “They’ll think I’m doubly wicked. They’ll think I’ve pulled you out of my sleeve for dessert.”
Dessert. Birdie gulped. Why would Ms. Crunch even think such a thing? Had she really meant what she said earlier about being friends, or was Birdie walking into yet another trap? Another trap that could mean the end for both her and Ralph?
“Aaaaaggggnnneeesss!” Rudey shrieked again, and this time, much, much louder.
Ms. Crunch stomped her foot on the ground. “Gah! There’s got to be another way!”
“There’s not time! Put me up there! Do it!” Birdie begged.
Ms. Crunch leaned forward and pricked her finger against Birdie’s cheek. “Only if you take me with you.”
“What? Why?”
“Because we can still do Octavia in! We can still get to that blasted dragon.”
“But wasn’t all this wicked enough for you?”
“I told you already. None of this was my plan! Now promise me!” Ms. Crunch hissed.
Birdie glanced at Ralph. His black shoes had almost dripped entirely off his rosy-looking toes. His cheeks were flushed an awful shade of danger red, and his breath was coming in shallow bursts. “All right,” Birdie said weakly.
And before she could close her eyes and gather in a deep (and possibly final) breath, the door to the kitchen burst open.
Rudey Longtooth skidded to a halt.
She looked from Ms. Crunch to Birdie and back to Ms. Crunch again.
Ms. Crunch quickly curled her fingers in the air and shot them straight at Birdie. “ALAKAZAM!” she shrieked.
A long, twisting snake of smoke shot out of the cauldron and wrapped clean around Birdie’s ankles. It wrenched her to the side. She whirred upside down through the air at a dizzying speed. The air crackled and popped.
But she was with Ralph. She was right beside Ralph. In much the same way he had been right beside her earlier that evening.
Birdie looked out past the shimmering wave of heat. Rudey slapped Ms. Crunch on the back in a gesture of hearty congratulations while Ms. Crunch subtly gestured for Birdie to wait for her.
But Birdie hadn’t specifically uttered the words, “I promise.”
And it wasn’t just Birdie’s life at stake.
She had trusted Ms. Crunch once, and whether it was Ms. Crunch’s plan or not, Birdie had put Ralph’s life in dangerous peril. She couldn’t take that chance again, not when she’d worked so hard to rescue him.
Before Ms. Crunch could take a flying leap for the cauldron, Birdie held tight to one end of the Council cloak and flung the other corner around Ralph’s shoulders. Birdie tried to ignore the panicked flicker in Ms. Crunch’s eyes and the resounding ache in her own heart. Birdie whispered the words that would take her and Ralph far, far away from Castle Matilda and far, far away from Ms. Crunch.
“To the Deepest, Darkest Bog!”
The world around Birdie went black.
Nineteen
Down in the Bog
Birdie awoke in a pile of muck.
Gooey, sticky mud clung to her skin, her hair, and had even squished its way through the cracks in the soles of her shoes, making her toes feel slimy.
At first glance, the supposed home of the Blue Dragon hardly seemed a hospitable place, but it did offer one very important feature: Birdie couldn’t see a hint of a pointy hat or a pair of witchy boots. The witches were all gone. And, most important of all, she and Ralph were alive.
Birdie looked over at Ralph lying in a mud puddle beside her. His face was streaked with grease and black soot. His eyelids fluttered every now and again, and he began to spu
tter and cough. Birdie could only imagine how many cooking fumes he’d inhaled and was worrying over how he was going to trek about the Deepest, Darkest Bog with his toes poking out from his half-melted shoes, when his eyes popped open.
“Oh no!” he cried out. “No, no, no!”
Birdie frowned. It was hardly the reaction she was expecting, but maybe Ralph wasn’t fully awake yet. She placed her hand on his shoulder and shook him softly. “Ralph, it’s just me. It’s Birdie.”
But Ralph merely rolled up into a little ball and groaned. “I didn’t want it to be your Tragic End too! I really, really didn’t.”
“But that’s just it, Ralph. It’s not our Tragic Ends. We are . . . alive. Both of us!”
Ralph lifted up his head. “We’re—we’re not dead?”
“Not in the slightest!” Birdie said.
“But I was—the witch, she had me.” Ralph paused and took a deep breath. “The very last thing I can remember is being held over a boiling cauldron that made my feet itch.” Ralph glanced down at his feet and gasped aloud when he saw that a portion of his shoes had indeed vanished. He wriggled his soot-covered toes at Birdie. “See! Look! I’m not making it up! I bet I was already cooked to medium rare by the time I conked out.”
“I know,” Birdie said. “That’s where I found you.”
“Found me? But that’s impossible. Your witch flew me all the way to Castle Matilda. The Castle Matilda. It was even worse than Mistress Octavia said. And there were witches everywhere—”
“Ralph,” Birdie said gently. “I was there too.”
Birdie reached down beneath her. She pulled the Council cloak free. As she held it up, long sheets of mud rolled off, and the brilliant purple fabric gleamed. Ralph’s jaw gaped open.
“How did you get that?” he asked.
“It was where Mistress Octavia always keeps it. In her Room of Sinister Plotting. I—I covered my arm in blueberry mush, got past the cobras, and found it inside her file cabinet. It isn’t at all hard to work. You just slip it on, give it some directions, and well, whoosh!”
“Directions?” Ralph whispered.
“Well, not directions directions. I actually didn’t even know I was headed to Castle Matilda. I just told it to go to the Annual Witches’ Ball.”
Ralph swallowed. Hard. He reached out for the cloak, and Birdie pushed it closer to him.
“Would you like to touch it? Despite the fact that it’s had to drape across Mistress Octavia’s shoulders, the fabric’s actually really lovely.”
Ralph touched the cloak ever so gently. When he spoke, his voice was thick. “With this, you could have gone anywhere in all of Wanderly—you could have escaped the Drowning Bucket—and you . . . and you asked the cloak to take you to a witches’ ball? Why?”
“Because that’s where you were. And it’s the place where I would have been if you weren’t out on the Plank with me. And . . . Oh, Ralph, I’m sorry. I’m so sorry that because of me you were kidnapped and nearly roasted!”
Birdie buried her head in her hands.
A few moments passed before Ralph said softly, “I don’t think you were entirely wrong to trust her. Ms. Crunch is still a witch, of course—and she doesn’t have any warm, fuzzy feelings for me, I’ll tell you that—but I don’t think she was lying about wanting to help you. I think those other witches set her up. And I think the only reason she kidnapped me was so she could save you. Where . . . where is your witch now?”
Birdie’s voice was hollow and empty. “I left her. She wanted to come with us. It was because of her that I was able to get you off the cauldron. But I was . . . afraid. I couldn’t put you in danger a second time.”
Ralph met Birdie’s gaze. “You rescued me,” he said.
“We rescued each other.”
“And now, after all these years, after so many close calls, it’s really happened. Finally, we’re free!”
As if on cue, an awful, melancholy moan ripped through the bog. “MWAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAR!”53
Ralph’s face fell. “Oh no,” he said. And for the first time, he took a good, long look around. He looked up and down the trunks of the dense, swampy trees that called the Deepest, Darkest Bog home. He looked all around at the mysterious layer of smelly green fog winding about. “Was that sound what I think it was?”
Birdie smiled nervously. “Weren’t you always kind of hoping to meet a dragon one day?”
“Possibly,” Ralph said. “But definitely not on the first day I was freed from the manor after being trapped for four awful years.”
“Oh,” Birdie said. And then, seeing the hard look on Ralph’s face, she settled back down into the mud. “Oh,” she repeated.
“Don’t look at me like that,” Ralph said.
“I’m not looking at you like anything.”
“Well, then stop thinking things.”
“But it’s good to think. Thinking is what led Francesca to—”
“Then think about it from my perspective, all right? I know what the sky looks like when the sun’s setting. I know what it feels like to step into a stream and have the cold water rush across my toes. I’ve rolled down hills and ran through grass so tall it came up to my waist. Birdie, I don’t want to go back there! I don’t ever want to wind up at Foulweather’s Home for the Tragical again!”
Birdie felt a pricking at the corners of her eyes. This wasn’t what it was supposed to be like. All along she’d been worrying about whether she could possibly survive an attempted rescue of Ralph from among a gang of witches. What happened afterward was supposed to be the easy part. Because what else could they possibly do but try to find a way to rescue the others? How could they leave them all behind?
Birdie’s voice was low. “I didn’t rescue you by myself. If it weren’t for the others—for Cricket, for Francesca of all people—I never would have gotten Mistress Octavia’s cloak.” Birdie paused. “Ralph, we know what it’s like to be forgotten. How can we do the very same thing to them?”
“I don’t know. But I also don’t know how I can go back,” Ralph said. “Birdie, you’re asking too much! And if you’re mad about that, I’m sorry. Maybe . . . maybe you saved the wrong person.”
“What are you talking about?”
“Maybe you would have been better off saving your witch, so she could go with you to see that dragon. Birdie, out there on the Plank, everything happened so fast. I don’t . . .” Ralph paused again and took a breath. “I don’t really know if I meant to be some sort of hero. What if it was just a fluke?”
“But don’t you see?” Birdie said. “You didn’t have to be a hero. I didn’t need a hero because I already had a friend. Only a friend would have been standing beside me. Only a friend would have put himself in that position. Ralph, you can make that choice again.”
Ralph didn’t say a word. Ralph stared hard at his bare toes, now caked in mud. And it gave Birdie a chance to notice the green fog ripple and twirl. Because the Winds of Wanderly were tumbling across it. The Winds of Wanderly were billowing about the horizon. And flapping vehemently toward Birdie was a bright orange bird with the pointiest beak Birdie had ever seen. The bird barreled toward Birdie at full speed before it exploded into a pile of tart orange zest, with a scent sour enough to make Birdie’s lips pucker. Within seconds, the zest spun itself into a letter, and Birdie plucked it out of the air.
Ralph sucked up a little breath. “So that’s what it looks like when the Winds of Wanderly delivers letters?”
Birdie shook her head. “Ms. Crunch’s letters usually arrive like dark and spooky things. You know, bats, giant moths, and—oh, yes—the first one was a hairy hornet.” Ralph’s jaw gaped, but Birdie continued, “This letter is too bright and plucky. I think it must be from . . . someone else.”
With shaking fingers, Birdie drew the letter near and read it aloud:
To Birdie:
I never thought I’d write a letter to you. I never thought I’d need to write a letter to anyone. Even worse, I never imagined I’d
have a thing to do with the Winds of Wanderly (which, if you ask me, seem very anti-Council), but that’s how bad things have become around here.
Mistress Octavia has gone berserk. After you made it out of the manor, she roused Sir Ichabod, marched into our dormitory, and did a head count. After about ten tries, she finally realized not one but two Tragicals were missing, and she screamed loud enough I bet you could hear her at the Witches’ Ball.
She couldn’t figure out who the second missing Tragical was, so she’s blaming you for everything. I guess she remembered that Cricket’s your favorite, because she pulled Cricket up by the ear, and told her that unless you get back to the manor as soon as possible, Cricket will be the one to take your place in the Drowning Bucket.
Look, I don’t know if you’ve found Ralph. I don’t know if this letter arrived too late and you’re busy boiling in a cauldron somewhere, but it just seemed like telling you was the right thing to do. It seems funny to wish a Tragical good luck, so I won’t, but I guess I’m thinking it all the same.
Cordially,
Francesca Prickleboo
PS: Considering our ship’s sinking fast, you may be wondering if I regret my decision to help. But I don’t. Being a loser is not as hard as I thought it would be, and maybe some things aren’t worth winning after all.
Birdie stared hard at the letter. But no matter how many times she blinked, no matter how many tears clouded her eyes, the words didn’t change. They wouldn’t change, until Birdie found her way back to the manor. Birdie tossed the letter into the mud and sprang to her feet.
She grabbed hold of the Council cloak. She shook out the wrinkles and prepared to toss it over her shoulders when Ralph cried, “Wait! Birdie, wait!”
“I know what you’re going to say, Ralph. But if friends are friends because they show up, how can I do anything else?”
“But this isn’t just about not needing to be a hero; this is about you walking into something that’s guaranteed to be your Tragic End. And what about the Blue Dragon? We’re so close! He’s right here! We have to at least try!”
