“Be careful!” Marabel said as she and Ellie hurried down the steps.
But Floriano wasn’t listening. His horn glowed, and he pawed the ground. The girls jumped off the last step onto the rug at the same instant that the unicorn reared high, high up. With the tip of his horn, he tapped the door right where it was latched.
With a loud click, the knob turned and the door popped open, knocking over the blocks and tossing Floriano into the air. He let out a surprised whinny, and landed on the thick rug with a thud. He didn’t stir. Was he dead?
Marabel was about to run to him when Abigail raised her head and blinked, so she held herself back with difficulty. She tried desperately to see if the unicorn was breathing, but she couldn’t tell. What was Abigail doing?
The giant girl peered into the cardboard box. They held their breath as she shook the box slightly, thankful the hole was on the opposite side from where she was looking. Evidently satisfied that the lumps of shredded paper were actually Marabel and Ellie, Abigail put her head back down on her arms.
Floriano raised his head and looked around, blinking. He appeared confused, but in a moment his eyes cleared. Marabel pressed her hand to her heart in relief.
Marabel and Ellie ran to him, their footfalls muffled by the rug, and helped him to his feet. “You did it, Floriano!” Marabel whispered, and then they hurried out the open door.
The girls had entered the house inside a satchel, and Floriano had been closed in the picnic basket, so they didn’t know which way led out. Keeping close to the walls, they hurried down one long corridor after another without finding anything that looked like a door to the outer world, until finally they saw a giant woman dressed in a maid’s uniform go by, carrying a bucket. Ellie nudged Marabel. “We have to follow her,” she whispered. “She’s going outside to dump the mop water.”
Marabel hung back. Following someone down this empty corridor would be risky, with so few places to hide. “How do you know she isn’t going someplace else to clean another floor?”
“It’s the end of the day,” Ellie said. “Trust me; I know how servants clean a house. She’s done for the day.”
They ran after the maid and caught up with her as she opened a side door, letting in late-afternoon light. They watched, all three huddled together in a shadow, as she swung the bucket in a big arc and tossed out its contents. A plume of water, higher than the largest waterfall in Magikos, flew into the air and splashed on the ground. The maid turned and went back inside. Before she closed the door, Marabel, Ellie, and Floriano sped through the opening and down the steps. They ran across the yard, faster than they had ever run in their lives.
Marabel thought she heard a distant bellow of “Mama!” followed by a shout of “Papa!”
“Faster!” she gasped. But how far away was the bridge? They hadn’t been bounced around in the giant mother’s bag for very long, but her enormous strides might have carried them miles away, even in that short time.
“This way!” Floriano cried. The girls followed him onto a rope bridge that bounced and swayed and bobbed as they sped across it.
The other side was tantalizingly close, when a sudden jolt tossed them in the air. The girls grabbed the ropes, but Floriano nearly went over the side. He whinnied in terror as Marabel clutched his horn and Ellie grasped his tail. Marabel looked back and saw a horrible sight: the giant father shaking the end of the bridge and yelling at them in rage.
Holding the unicorn steady between them, the girls each kept one hand on the railing and took off as fast as they could while the bridge swayed and bucked beneath their feet.
“I don’t… think… I can… do this… much… longer,” Floriano gasped.
“You have to!” Marabel called back over her shoulder. “We’re almost there!”
Finally, they arrived at the other side. They leaped off onto the nice, solid cliff and didn’t stop running until they were well within the shelter of the trees, sure at every moment that they were going to hear the BOOM, BOOM, BOOM of giant footsteps behind them. But all they heard were their own gasps and footfalls, and the squirrels and birds and the wind in the trees.
After they had all caught their breath, Ellie asked anxiously, “Do you think they’ll come looking for us?”
“They can’t fit on that bridge,” Marabel said, “and even they aren’t big enough to step across the canyon.” She shuddered at the thought that enough people—and probably a lot of magical beasts as well—had crossed that bridge that they’d beaten out a path to the giants’ mountain. How could Mab allow such danger in her land? She called herself the ruler of the Barrens, so she should make it a safe place for its citizens!
All Marabel wanted right now was to stay here, resting in the nice green forest with its normal-sized trees and normal-sized flowers and bugs and grass, but time was getting short. Only five days of the thrennight remained.
They had to move on. Marabel got to her feet and glanced at the sky.
“Huh.” The others looked, too.
“What is it?” Ellie asked.
“We’re on the other side of the mountain from where we started,” Marabel said. “That must have been a different bridge than the first one we crossed. See?” She pointed at the sun, now clearly visible through the leaves. “We’re to the east of the mountain now. We crossed the first bridge from the west onto the giants’ land, and then went to their house”—Ellie shuddered at the mention—“and then we crossed this bridge, and now we’re on the other side.”
“That puts us closer to the castle!” Ellie said.
Marabel nodded. “A lot closer. We might actually get there in time!” She grinned, and Ellie grinned back at her.
“Let’s see if we can find a road going the right way, or at least another path, before night falls,” Floriano suggested.
After they had walked for a few minutes, Floriano snorted. “Don’t you wish you could have seen those girls’ faces when they realized you were gone?”
Ellie broke into a laugh. It was the first time in what felt like ages that any of them had laughed. Marabel joined in, and Floriano whickered. “And that mother!” Ellie mimicked the giant woman. “‘Go? You’re not going anywhere!’ We showed her!”
“‘Don’t break them like you broke the other ones!’” Marabel said. “Ha!” The relief of being safe and on the road again made her giddy.
Their bellies were full, they had escaped the giants, and several hours of daylight still remained. Surely their luck had changed, and they’d find a road that led to Mab’s castle before nightfall.
Surely.
hey carried on for four more days without seeing a road, much less a path or even another signpost. Anxiety gnawed at Marabel’s insides. She didn’t know how far they were from her aunt’s castle, and she had no idea how they would rescue Marco once they arrived.
A squirrel chittered at them. They thought it might be trying to tell them something, but when they tried to talk to it, it spiraled up a tree and vanished from sight.
They were tired and hungry and needed to stop frequently. It grew more and more difficult to convince Floriano to get up after each break. “I don’t see what’s the big hurry,” he complained when they practically had to hoist him to his feet after a rest late in the day. “We still have two days to get there, and we must be close by now. Why not stop and find a place to sleep?”
“We have to keep going,” Marabel said. “Even if we get to the castle soon, we don’t know how long it will take to find Marco and free him.”
“Oh, Book give me patience,” Floriano said. “You’re not going to be able to free him!”
Marabel stopped short and turned to glare at him. “What do you mean? What are we doing out here, then?”
“Beats me,” Floriano said. “I’m just along for the adventure. The rest is your problem, not mine. And speaking of problems, didn’t you tell me that Mab has a powerful wizard working for her?”
“She does,” Marabel said, although admitting it made her uneasy.
“We’re going to do something.” Marabel hoped she sounded more confident than she felt. “I can’t leave him there.” She strode off, followed by Ellie. She refused to look back to see if Floriano was coming. She didn’t want to admit, even to herself, how anxious his words made her.
“Wait!” Floriano called after them.
Marabel and Ellie didn’t answer. “I don’t want to listen to him anymore,” Marabel said, worry making her grumpy. “If he wants to take a rest, he can catch up later.”
“Guys, I see something in the woods!” the unicorn called, more urgently this time.
“What is it?” Marabel called back reluctantly. She didn’t stop; she was sure he was just making an excuse to take a break.
“Something pretty!” His voice faded as the girls continued on their way. “Come see!”
“Sure he found something pretty,” Ellie scoffed.
“Something imaginary, more like,” Marabel agreed. “Let’s keep going.”
“It’ll be nice not to have to listen to him complaining,” Ellie said.
But after they had continued on for another few hundred yards, Marabel began to feel guilty. Floriano had dropped behind before, but never for this long.
She stopped. “I guess we have to go back and look for him,” she said reluctantly.
They called him, but nothing—not even an echo—answered. Marabel tried to tell herself that if he was lost it wasn’t her fault, but that didn’t help. She knew she should have made sure they all stayed together.
“Where do you think he got to?” Ellie asked.
Before Marabel could answer, she heard the welcome sound of hooves on dry leaves, and a flash of pale blue and gold between the trees. Floriano trotted up to them. Marabel sighed in relief.
“Dear girls!” the unicorn said with a flash of his bright teeth, in what looked like a grin.
Marabel and Ellie exchanged glances. Dear girls? He had never called them anything like that before! What was he up to?
“Sorry to keep you waiting,” he went on. “The day is so delightful that I quite lost track of time.”
“Um… That’s all right,” Marabel said. He sounded so weirdly cheerful. Also, something about him looked different, but she couldn’t figure out what it was. He was the same size as always, and the same colors, and his horn was in the same place, but still, something was off.
“And the truth is,” he said, “that I found the most charming thing down the hill. Come along and I’ll show you. You’ll be spellbound.” He switched his tail and turned back the way he had come. He looked at them over his shoulder, and it seemed that a flicker of annoyance crossed his face before it smoothed out into an unfamiliar blandness. “Why, what are you waiting for?”
“What is this… charming thing?” Ellie asked.
“Oh, I can’t describe it,” he said with a light laugh. “You’ll have to see for yourselves! But you’ll be quite enchanted; you’ll see.” And he set off again.
The girls glanced at each other. Marabel shrugged and said quietly, “What harm could it do to go back a little way?”
“I don’t like it,” Ellie said. “He’s not behaving like himself.”
“He’s just acting strange because of our quarrel,” Marabel said, to convince herself more than Ellie. “Let’s go a little ways with him, and then we can come back.”
“La-a-a-dies!” Floriano called in his new, oddly sweet voice. “I’m waiting!”
Marabel started toward him, but Ellie grabbed her arm. “No!” she said. “I’m serious, Marabel. There’s something wrong. Did you hear what he said when he was describing this… this thing?”
“He didn’t really describe it,” Marabel said. “All he said was that it was charming.”
“And that we’d be enchanted and spellbound,” Ellie added. “Charms? Enchantment? Spells?”
Marabel couldn’t believe what her friend was saying. “Are you trying to tell me that he’s seen something magical that will cast a spell over us? You don’t really think that Floriano—”
Right on cue, the unicorn reappeared. His nostrils flared. “Is there some problem?” He looked from Marabel to Ellie and back again.
And then Marabel realized what was different. “His eyes!” she cried, tugging Ellie back. “His eyes! They’re not stars—they’re regular round pupils!”
As the words left her lips, Floriano disappeared in a sudden green flash and a puff of smoke. In his place there now stood a tall, elegant man with a dark, curled mustache and a pointy little beard. He was dressed in flowing robes of beautiful shades of blue and purple, and his hat was decorated with feathers that flashed in the sun.
“You—you little brats!” he shouted. “You destroyed my beautiful magic!”
“Who are you?” Marabel asked, striding toward him with clenched fists. “What have you done with Floriano?”
The man slid backward into the woods. He grabbed at branches and shrubs, but they slipped from his grasp as he continued to recede into the trees. Someone or something they couldn’t see was pulling him away. “I spit at you!” he shouted at Marabel. He wriggled to escape from an invisible grip. “I throw mud at you!” he wailed, and then disappeared into the deep, dark woods.
Silence. Even the birds seemed startled and didn’t make a sound.
“What was that?” Ellie’s voice trembled.
“I’m not sure,” Marabel answered, “but I think it was a faery who did some magic to make himself look like Floriano. He must not have noticed Floriano’s eyes, though—did you see?” Ellie shook her head. “Well, like I said, they were round. He was trying to get us to follow him. Faeries lure people into their world, you know, and then they make you live there for years and years that seem but a day—”
“And I suppose that once you recognized the enchantment, the spell was broken and he turned back into his regular self,” Ellie said. “So where do you think the real Floriano is?”
“I don’t know,” Marabel answered. It was suddenly all too much for her. “I don’t know any more than you do about magic or faeries or giants or anything else in this place.” She sat down on a log with a thump that sent a flock of birds fluttering away, cheeping.
“I’m sorry, Ellie,” she said. “It’s not your fault. I’m so worried about Marco, and now Floriano’s missing, and I don’t know what I’m doing.…” She bit her lip to keep from crying.
Ellie sat down next to her and rubbed her back. “It’ll be fine,” she said. “Just remember we’re on the same side, though, all right?”
Marabel leaned into Ellie’s touch. “We should never have come,” she said miserably. “We’ll never find Marco, and now we’ve lost Floriano. I don’t even know how we’ll ever get home. We can’t go back through the giants’ mountain without risking getting caught again, so we’ll have to walk around it. It’s so huge, that will take days and days. And even if we do manage to free Marco, Mab’s army will surely chase us all the way back to the Wall. What if we can’t get through the door without Floriano? All the people and creatures in this country will be on the lookout for us.” She made no effort to wipe away the tears that ran down her cheeks.
Ellie patted Marabel’s hand. Marabel sighed and blew her nose on a leaf. “We should go home,” she said. “My father’s probably furious that I disobeyed him, and I miss my little brother and sisters.”
“I miss my mother,” Ellie said softly. “I hope she’s not too terribly worried about me. But we can’t go back now, don’t you see? We’ve come too far. We can’t give up and leave Marco, and Floriano, too. It’s time someone put a stop to Mab, and it doesn’t look like anyone will do it but us.”
“What can the two of us do against Mab and a lot of Evils?”
Ellie stood up. “I don’t know,” she said, “but there’s only one way to find out.” She gave Marabel a hand up.
&
nbsp; “Thanks,” Marabel said. She still wasn’t confident, but she owed it to Marco to keep trying. She dusted leaves and grass off her garb. “Thanks especially for reminding me of what’s important. But before we go, let’s look for Floriano one more time.”
Together, they returned to the spot where they’d last seen the unicorn and poked around the bushes. Ellie saw what might have been hoofprints and might have been nothing, but they didn’t go much of anyplace. They shouted Floriano’s name, startling squirrels and birds. But nothing answered.
It grew dark, and they decided to spend the night where they were. If Floriano didn’t show up, they’d have to go on without him in the morning. They managed to find some nuts and even a few handfuls of berries that still clung to the bushes despite how rapidly autumn was approaching. Ellie recognized a plant that had edible roots. The long blue roots didn’t look appetizing and they had no way to cook them, but even raw they were better than nothing.
The weather the next morning didn’t improve their mood. It was gray and chilly, and when they set out, they felt a light drizzle. It was not the kind of day that would cheer them up. And knowing that it was the twelfth day of the thrennight didn’t help any. Anxiety gnawed at Marabel’s stomach. Would Mab launch her attack at dawn the next day, or would she wait until the evening? Even if she waited until a few minutes before 13:13—exactly a thrennight since she made her threat—would that be enough time for Marabel to reach the castle, enter it, find Marco, and somehow rescue him?
It seemed hopeless. But she was determined to try.
A few hours later, the rain stopped. Marabel climbed a tree to harvest some nuts, and threw them down to Ellie. She was about to climb down when something came crashing through the woods. The noise grew louder and seemed to be heading straight toward them.
“Run!” Marabel commanded, trying her best to slither down the tree.
“Not without you!” Ellie countered. “Can you see anything from up there?”
Marabel peered through the leaves. Something large was coming their way. She freed herself from the branches and scrambled down the trunk.
Marabel and the Book of Fate Page 10
