and groan.
Whisper wicked, curse and moan.
Awake, awake from your bed.
Arise, arise, now, living dead!
Suddenly the vines and branches near Jozlyn and me began to move. They slithered like snakes through the mud. They crawled over us, twisted around our hands, and pinned our arms behind our backs. Before we could react, we were tied and trapped.
The mud-creatures came to life again, too. Sticks, mud, and vines sloshed and slapped together, reforming the beasts. Half a dozen of them stood up and shambled into a ring around us.
One of the mud-beasts stepped on my rapier and ground it into the mud. As I watched its silvery hilt disappear, my hope for escape went with it.
“What to do?” Zeila wondered aloud, tapping her pointy chin. “You see,” she admitted, “I used up my frog magic on your pathetic town and during our meeting on the edge of the woods yesterday.”
Yesterday? I thought in disbelief. Had it only been one day since Jozlyn and I had gone in search of Rosie? It hardly seemed possible. So much had happened.
Zeila cackled again and shrugged. “No matter. I will think of something particularly nasty. You deserve it for the trouble you’ve caused me.”
With a quick flick of her wrist, she commanded her mud-creatures to haul me and Jozlyn to our feet. Then the creatures poked us in the back with their sharp, pointy fingers. It was their way of telling us to move.
We didn’t argue. We’d lost the rapier, destroyed the wand, and our hands were tied. There was nothing we could do except march exactly where the mud-beasts pushed and prodded us.
Oddly, something tickled my stomach, but with my hands tied, I couldn’t do anything about it. I tried to ignore the feeling as much as possible.
A short time later we climbed a tall, oblong hill and stopped. It was bare of the gnarled trees and plants that grew elsewhere in the swamp.
At the top, Zeila strode to the front of our small group and held her broom above her head. In a loud voice, she shouted a sentence or two of harsh words that I couldn’t understand. One of them sounded like griznt but I couldn’t be sure.
Lowering her broom, the witch turned back to us and smiled smugly.
Behind her, something moved. It appeared out of the trees at the bottom of the hill. At first I thought it was a giant insect, but then it staggered closer. It was a small wooden hut built on eight spider-like legs.
The hut shuddered and creaked and stalked up the hill like a predatory cat through tall grass.
I tried not to react but the hut was amazing. In ten great strides, it scaled the hill and came to a stop. Its jointed legs bent and lowered the hut to the ground.
Jozlyn let out a soft whistle that only I heard. We’d seen all kinds of magic in the last two days, but the hut still surprised us. Was there nothing magic could not do? How could we hope to defeat it?
The mud-creatures prodded us again, so we didn’t have more time to gawk.
The inside of the hut was much larger than I expected, but we weren’t allowed to look around there either. Zeila led us to a small storage room and closed the door without saying a word.
From the other side of the door, we heard a heavy bolt turn and tumble. We were prisoners.
35: ROSIE IS REAL
I sank to the floor and Jozlyn did the same. We said nothing for a long time. We just sat there feeling sorry for ourselves.
At first a small open window gave me a tiny bit of hope, but I quickly realized that it was too small for Jozlyn or me to wiggle through.
I hung my head and rested my chin on my chest, and the tickle on my stomach came again. I was too busy sulking to pay any attention to it.
“Don’t give up,” Jozlyn squeaked in a high-pitched whisper. At least I thought it was Jozlyn. But when I looked at her, she had her head down, too.
“Did you say something?” I asked her.
She tried to smile but didn’t seem to have the energy. “No, I thought you did.”
The tickle inside my doublet hit me again, and I couldn’t control a giggle. It made me wiggle and squirm so much that I ended up tipping over onto my side.
When I thumped onto the floor, the tiny voice squeaked again. “Aha!” Then the tickle wiggled across my stomach, over my chest, and up onto my collarbone.
Rosie suddenly popped out of my doublet and flitted into the air. She hovered on her delicate wings inches from my face.
“Hi, Josh-a-bear,” she chirped. Josh-a-bear was a nickname Mom called me. She was the only one who had ever used it before.
From the other side of the room, Jozlyn gasped. “Rosie!” she sobbed and scrambled across the floor.
Rosie twirled in the air like a dancer. Her little pink dress spun about her legs. “Jozlyn!” she exclaimed, flying to embrace my sister. Her tiny arms hugged Jozlyn’s cheek.
“I thought you were lost,” Jozlyn cried. “Where have you been?”
Rosie zipped backward to look Jozlyn in the eye. “Josh will explain everything later when the time is right. Right now, I must leave. My magic will not last long.”
She glanced up at the window overhead then back to Jozlyn. “You will see me again, my Jozlyn, but only as I was before. I will not be able to call upon the magic of the broken wand again.”
Rosie fluttered toward the window then returned to hover near Jozlyn’s face. “I love you with my whole heart,” she squeaked, kissing my sister on the nose.
Then Rosie turned to me. With one hand on her slender hip, she winked. “And you’re pretty cute, too, Josh-a-bear.”
She twirled a final time and then disappeared through the window.
“I love you, too,” Jozlyn whispered as tears streamed over her smiling cheeks.
36: VANQUISHED
“I told you Rosie was magic,” Jozlyn reminded me confidently. Despite having her hands tied and being a prisoner of Witch Zeila, she smirked.
In my mind, I rolled my eyes, but I wasn’t about to disagree. Doing so would only start a fight. Rosie had magic because we’d broken the wand, not because she was a real pixie.
But Jozlyn wouldn’t admit the difference, and I guess it didn’t matter. Rosie had come to life and was trying to rescue us. That was what counted.
“Now scoot over here and turn around,” Jozlyn said. “Let’s get our hands untied.”
I smiled to myself. That was the take-charge big sister I knew. Seeing Rosie had really boosted Jozlyn’s spirits. I knew Rosie had boosted mine. We could hope again, at least a little.
Sitting and leaning against each other’s back, Jozlyn and I fumbled with the vines around our wrists. I’d tug and wiggle hers until my fingers ached, and then Jozlyn would take a turn at mine.
The small room was dim and full of shadows when the binds on my hands finally came loose. I stretched my arms and wiggled my wrists. They felt cramped and sore, but a whole lot better now that they were free.
I quickly finished untying Jozlyn’s hands.
She massaged her wrists and frowned. “Rosie’s been gone a long time. We might have to escape on our own.”
I hadn’t wanted to say it, but I’d been thinking the same thing. Rosie had vanished through the window hours earlier, sometime in the afternoon. I feared that the magic of the wand hadn’t lasted long enough for her to come back with help.
I tried to rub some feeling back into my wrists. “We can’t fit through the window,” I said, “and the door is locked. Got any ideas?”
Even in the faint light coming through the window, I saw Jozlyn’s eyes narrow. “We fight,” she said with determination. “I’m tired of being afraid, Josh. I’m tired of hiding and I’m tired of witches.” She threw up her arms. “And we don’t even know this Witch Zeila!”
I was about to respond when the door suddenly burst open in a shower of splinters. There wasn’t even a click from the lock. The door just flew back and smacked into the wall as if it’d been kicked by someone as big as an ogre. The impact shook the whole hut.
“I smell
a fairy!” Zeila roared from the doorway. Her wrinkled face was red with rage. “Where is the winged rodent?”
Jozlyn was on her feet and had her hands balled into fists at her sides. I could tell that she was about to do something brave, or something stupid.
Then again, when an angry witch was in the room, maybe brave and stupid were the same thing.
“We don’t know what you’re talking about,” Jozlyn lied. “What’s a fairy smell like anyway? Not as bad as a witch, I hope.”
Zeila hissed in fury and her whole body quivered. “Insolent brat!” she screeched. She raised her broom and pointed the handle at Jozlyn.
With a clap of thunder, Jozlyn flew across the room and landed against the wall with a thud. Her arms and legs were pressed flat against the wall as if she was lying on a floor with something heavy on top of her. It was obvious that she couldn’t move.
Then Zeila turned her dark eyes to me.
In that moment, I thought of my parents and how they’d been turned into frogs. I thought of my friend Connor, of Wizard Ast and Sheriff Logan, and even silly old Pa Gnobbles. Everyone in Tiller’s Field. They believed that Jozlyn and I could save them. They were depending on it. They were depending on us.
I thought of them all and I wasn’t afraid anymore. Screaming, I ran at the witch with my arms out to tackle her.
One second my feet were pounding across the floor and the next they were spinning in the air, touching nothing. I was floating helplessly like a leaf caught in the wind.
Zeila threw back her head and howled savagely. “What now, little ones?” she taunted. “Eh-heh-heh-OW!”
Something crashed into the back of
Cauldron Cooker's Night (Epic Fantasy Adventure Series, Knightscares Book 1) Page 17
