“But you only think that because you’re young and don’t know any better!” agonized Caliburn. “When you’re young you think that love conquers everything… You don’t know the problems it can cause… You haven’t seen the times where the Witches triumph, there is no second life, and the werewolf dies!”
“Well, I never want to grow up, then,” said Wish. “I want to stay young forever. You know I’m right anyway, Caliburn. It’s why you came with us and didn’t betray us to our parents…”
“And if you want to stay with us, Caliburn, you have to stop being so negative!” said Xar. “Wish is right. It’s a good sign. It’s a sign that everything will be all right in the end.”
Caliburn sighed.
Some of his thoughts he kept to himself.
About LOVE, for example.
For as they lay on the door, the key, swiveling happily in the lock, was looking longingly at the spoon, and the fork was lookingly longingly at the key, and it was not so very different from the longing way Bodkin looked at Wish sometimes, and the longing way Wish looked at Xar.
There may be trouble ahead… thought Caliburn.
Who knows if Wish and Xar were right, on that midnight long ago?
For there would be storms tomorrow, there is no doubt.
But if we worry too much about tomorrow, how can we enjoy today?
So let us leave our heroes there, in the happiness of NOW, soaring gloriously through the sky, in the triumph and satisfaction of a quest completed, and in that blink of a moment before another quest begins.
And let us leave the grown-ups dancing.
In a while they will discover their children gone, the birds have flown, and then there will be tears and rending of clothes and wringing of hands, and Warriors blaming Wizards, and Wizards cursing Warriors, and their war and their worrying will begin again anew.
But for now they are dancing, in a moment out of time.
So let us enjoy that moment, lost in the music, a small sweet bittersweet smile on Queen Sychorax’s face, for she knows this is a stolen time.
In that moment Sychorax and Encanzo are young again, free from all parental and regal responsibilities of being mothers, fathers, monarchs. In that moment they have no tribes to run, worlds to conquer, countries to rule, traditions to uphold.
They have earned those moments, the poor parents, just a few minutes to go back into the past, and unbend, relax, for an eyeblink or two, to be once more a young Warrior princess, who has just met a Wizard in the wood.
The Once-sprite is singing a different song now, another forbidden one.
“Once we were Wizards,
Wandering free
In roads of sky and paths of sea…
And in that timeless long-gone hour,
Words of nonsense still had power.
Doors still flew and birds still talked,
Witches grinned and giants walked…
We had Magic wands and Magic wings
And we lost our hearts to impossible things
Unbelievable thoughts! Unsensible ends!
For Wizards and Warriors might be friends.
In a world where impossible things are true
I don’t know why we forgot the spell
When we lost the way, how the forest fell.
But now we are old, we can vanish too.
And I see once more the invisible track
That will lead us home and take us back…
So find your wands and spread your wings
I’ll sing our love of impossible things
And when you take my vanished hand
We’ll both go back to that Magic land
Where we lost our hearts…
Several lifetimes ago…
When we were Wizards
Once.”
Dance on, Sychorax.
Fly on, door, through the quiet night.
With the three young heroes, lying on their backs, looking up at the stars.
And a very pleased-with-himself little hairy fairy, buzzing on Xar’s chest, with his ear to the collecting bottle in Xar’s breast pocket, whispering to himself.
“I’s saved the day! ME, Squeezjoos! The smallest of them all has saved the day!”
For it was definitely the final fragments of the Giant’s Last Breath in there.
There was no doubt about it.
If you held the bottle up to your ear, extremely close, you could still hear it, very, very faintly like an echo.
“Forgive them,” the echo whispered.
“Forgive them.”
Epilogue 1
Two weeks later…
Many fathoms down, far farther than five, for the ocean was terribly deep at the bottom of the Cliffs of Eternity, lay the Ball-of-Iron-That-Enclosed-the-Kingwitch on a bed of coral.
The ball of iron was silent, still.
But then from within it, there came a faint, muffled scraping, as of talons against something metal.
And the ball of iron began to move…
Softly, at first, and then a little faster.
The Kingwitch hadn’t died.
He was in there.
He would keep scratching.
He had a little Magic-that-works-on-iron and he would keep using that Magic to break out of his iron prison.
The Kingwitch was nothing if not patient.
In the meantime he rolled over the watery landscape of the bottom of the ocean steadily, gradually, like a dark malignant glacier, or a slow but certain fate.
Epilogue 2
So that was the story of…
A word that froze, a heart that soared,
A boy who flew, a girl who ROARED.
Have you guessed which of the characters in the story I am yet?
I could be any of them, Wish or Xar, or Caliburn, the-raven-who-has-lived-many-lifetimes, or Bodkin the Assistant-Bodyguard-who-wished-he-was-a-hero, or Crusher, the-dreamy-Longstepper-High-Walker-giant, or one of the sprites, or the hairy fairies, ANY of the characters at all. (Not Eleanor Rose or the werewolf—I couldn’t be either of THEM, because they weren’t in the first book, so that would be cheating, and the narrator can be tricky but should not actually cheat, otherwise it’s extremely annoying for the reader.)
I still cannot tell you who I am, I’m afraid, for as you can see, the story has not yet ended.
I can only tell you at the end…
but the end is getting closer.
Wish’s and Xar’s stars have crossed for the SECOND unlikely time, and for good, or for evil, their stars are now joined together and they are traveling in the same, very dangerous direction.
I left them, peacefully enjoying the present.
One of the reasons that looking into the future, or dwelling too much on the past, are such dangerous practices, is that what we see there might stop us enjoying the excitement and pleasures of the “now.”
But pity me, for I have the curse of being able to see into the future, and although they do not know it yet… that door our heroes are lying on so peacefully is headed toward the Lake of the Lost, which, as Bodkin pointed out, is the Drood stronghold, and Droods are unrelenting, unforgiving, and the greatest Wizards in the wildwoods, and they will want to obliterate anyone who has Magic-mixed-with-iron.
The emperor of Warriors will be told by the Witchsmeller about Sychorax’s daughter, and he too will want to eliminate the threat posed to the Warrior world by Magic-mixed-with-iron…
Encanzo and Sychorax will be chasing Xar and Wish, but Encanzo is in trouble with the Droods himself. And Sychorax is in trouble with the emperor of Warriors… and everyone will be chasing everyone else.
The forces of darkness will be closing in on our young heroes.
But WORST OF ALL…
The Kingwitch will be after them both. And he will not rest until he gets them. And he has a single piece of tiny blue dust that he thinks he may find helpful.
Can Wish and Xar break out of the sad circles of the history of the wildwoods?
/>
They are young, they are hopeful.
Can they really write their own story?
Is that even possible?
Keep hoping…
Keep guessing…
Keep dreaming…
Never and Forever (Tor’s Song)
Don’t blame the wolves, for winter is bitter,
Don’t blame the wolves, for wolves need to eat,
The winter has chased all the game from the forest,
The wolf cubs are hungry, and I would taste sweet…
I don’t want to die before I have children,
I don’t want to die when the world is so young,
I don’t want to die on this glorious midnight
With words not-yet-said and songs not-yet-sung…
I am young, I am poor, I can offer you nothing,
All that I have is this bright pair of wings,
This air that I eat, these winds that I sleep on,
This star path I dance in, where the moon sings…
See the swifts soar, they live well on nothing,
You are young, you are strong, if you’ll give me your hand,
We’ll leave earth entirely and never go back there,
We’ll sleep on the breezes and never touch land…
I promise you gales and a merry adventure,
We’ll fly on forever and never will part…
I am young, I am poor, I can offer you nothing,
Nothing but love and the beat of my heart.
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ACKNOWLEDGMENTS (THANK YOU)
A whole team of people have helped me write this book.
Thank you to my wonderful editor, Anne McNeil, and my magnificent agent, Caroline Walsh.
A special big thanks to Samuel Perrett, Polly Lyall Grant, and Rebecca Logan.
And to everyone else at Hachette Children’s Group, Hilary Murray Hill, Andrew Sharp, Valentina Fazio, Lucy Upton, Louise Grieve, Kelly Llewellyn, Nicola Goode, Katherine Fox, Alison Padley, Rebecca Livingstone.
Thanks to all at Little, Brown, Megan Tingley, Jackie Engel, Lisa Yoskowitz, Kristina Pisciotta, Jessica Shoffel.
Thank you to Eleanor Rose and her Mum for donating money to the National Literacy Trust for her name to appear in this book. Find out more about the vital work the NLT does here: literacytrust.org.uk
And most important of all, Maisie, Clemmie, Xanny.
And SIMON for his excellent advice on absolutely everything.
I couldn’t do it without you.
ALSO BY CRESSIDA COWELL
How to Train Your Dragon
How to Train Your Dragon
How to Be a Pirate
How to Speak Dragonese
How to Cheat a Dragon’s Curse
How to Twist a Dragon’s Tale
A Hero’s Guide to Deadly Dragons
How to Ride a Dragon’s Storm
How to Break a Dragon’s Heart
How to Steal a Dragon’s Sword
How to Seize a Dragon’s Jewel
How to Betray a Dragon’s Hero
How to Fight a Dragon’s Fury
The Complete Book of Dragons: A Guide to Dragon Species
A Journal for Heroes
The Wizards of Once
The Wizards of Once
Twice Magic
* The Spelling Book didn’t seem to mind a little creativity in spelling out words as long as you made a reasonable guess at them.
** The narrator would like to gently point out that life was a whole load more uncertain in the Iron Age, which is why there are so many stepparents in fairy stories.
*** When Xar grew into a wise and thoughtful adult—and helping Xar run away from his own parent may have put Caliburn’s moment of freedom back a bit.
Table of Contents
Cover
Title Page
Copyright
Dedication
Prologue
Part One: Escape
1. Escape from Gormincrag Is Impossible
2. Did I Mention That Escape from Gormincrag Is Impossible?
3. Inside the Punishment Cupboard
4. The Pointing Finger of the Witchsmeller
5. The Finger Lands on Wish… and Everything Gets a Bit Chaotic…
6. And a Little More Chaotic Still
7. On the Other Side of the Wall
8. Following the Sweet Track
Part Two: The Witch-Trap
9. A Couple of Nasty Surprises on the Way to Castle Death
10. The Giant’s Last Breath
11. The Story Takes a Surprising Turn, as Is the Way of Stories
12. A Bad Moment for Your Escape to Get Held Up
13. Two Angry Parents
14. They Really Shouldn’t Be Fighting Each Other
15. The Kingwitch
16. The Witches Attack
17. Taking Off the Eyepatch
18. Forgive Them
19. Midwinter’s End Eve, Also Known as “Fool’s Day,” One Night Out of Time
Epilogue 1
Epilogue 2
Acknowledgments (Thank You)
Also by Cressida Cowell
Twice Magic Page 18
