Category: News

Once, there was warmth. I remember fires, the way I’d leap and curse when a spark popped out to land on my arm. Meat and apples on my tongue. The soundless beat of my own heart. Flashes of those feelings return when I’ve forgotten too long. My suffering would not be complete without the occasional haunting memory.

There are things my body remembers, deep to the bones, things my father must have taught me, though I do not remember him now: how to row, sail and navigate. How to wield a blade and command men. How to disarm an enemy and snap his neck. There are other memories, so detached from me now that I am never certain if they are real… or just parts of songs I’ve heard sung belowdecks.

It seems impossible that once I breathed. That I feasted with brothers. That I ever held a woman, my nose buried in her hair, while she slept.

Now, there is only the pain.

I have carried this torment since the time of your grandfathers’ grandfathers, and if what I seek is not in the Halcyon Fold, I may well carry it generations longer.

I hunger. I desire. But fulfillment never comes. There is no peace in this cursed life, if this can still be called life.

One hope remains. One more chance to be rid of my soul and the steel that binds it – and find my final rest. Every pull of the oar, every splash of sea spray, draws me closer to salvation.

Don’t go out there! I saw it… him… with my own eyes. An impossible creature. A man no longer a man, with a colossal sword through his chest. The glowing blade went clear through him and out the other side. Just imagine the gaping hole of a wound. An unthinkable sight. And then he reached for me. I got away with only a scratch, but…

The pain crept upward. It went deep into my bones, rose up my legs, churned my belly, gripped my throat. I crawled to the bushes to hide and watched as the minions died, writhing. I watched seasoned warriors twist in agony and collapse without ceremony. I didn’t dare move; I curled up and prayed.

I will never forget: He came out of the shadows, his jaw opened wide in a battle scream, eyes glowing with hate. He is some cursed dead thing that cannot be stopped. You don’t believe me, but it’s true; nothing should be able to survive that wound!

He ripped apart the minions. There were only pieces of things left on the ground when he was done. He clambered away and I crawled here on my belly like a coward. Believe me, he will come for you, too. You’ve been warned.

Now, let me die.

“Do it!” roars the undead monster at the round metal eye of the turret, half grown over with brambles and rattan. “Put a hole in me! Blow me apart!”

If only it would work.

The turret remains silent, but he can smell recent explosions. Someone is keeping it loaded. Someone is summoning the minions that come through the choke point beyond the turret, past the shambles of what must have once been a rock fortress, in waves. And beyond that someone may be what he seeks.

So close…

Krul drags his left leg, nursing a nagging sting of magic in his thigh where some spell hit him earlier. Another someone, now lost to the world. The smell of summoning drifts over the rock face and he grimaces, grinds his teeth. More minions coming. Ugly bastards, no necks, no language, nothing in them but fight. He punches his leg to get the sting out and takes an unnecessary deep breath. A habit from a former existence. The air leaks out through the sucking wound in his chest, fogging up the cold steel trapped there.

Every step is pain, and he runs hard. Catches the biggest of the idiot minions by surprise, flattens him fast, ignore the pain, ignore the pain, ignore the… Tearing into the minion’s belly is good, the only good thing. A distraction from the misery that threatens, in every moment, to lay him flat. The minion’s dark insides are slippery in his hands; their bellies come apart like cobwebs, their legs detach easy as fly wings. He screams into their faces, spewing spittle. His insane laughter echoes through the battleground. Their souls suck away from their dying carcasses and feed him. It is his only satiation.

There is blood, there are limbs, there are gurgling death-screams, there are pieces of once-living creatures clinging to Krul’s teeth and nails when he sees her standing atop the ruins of the fort. Human from the look of her, tall and still as morning, a sword buried between cracks in the rock, eyes impassive. His face, or what is left of it, cracks open into a grin.

“Hullo, beauty!” he calls.

Her response is the slow pulling of her weapon from the rocks, that shing of steel.

“You cannot protect it from me,” he growls. “Best run now and let me at it, before I destroy your best assets.”

She leaps, falling hard onto him, sword front, magic buzzing around her like bees. She is good with her weapon, well trained. He might have respected her, once. She gets a few slashes into him, his half-dead flesh sagging apart where she aims. He swings at her, hits only air, circling, snorting like a devil, dodging as best he can until she turns the sword over her shoulder and pounds him good in the brow with the hilt. He lunges, closes the gap between them, roaring his dead breath onto her, then her valiant cry is cut short by his fist round her throat.

“Pretty thing.” He licks her cheek while she squirms; her sword clatters on the stones between them and he kicks it away. He’s had enough of swords. A squeeze, and her neck breaks in his grip. Her life flows away from her and into him and she collapses, forgotten the moment he steps over her, toward the turret.

So close…

There is no one left to man the cannon, to feed it gunpowder and magic, no one to summon the thick-necked bastards. His right foot leaves bloody footprints and his left leg drags smears of minion gut all the way through the choke point, beyond the fortress, to the well.

To the dead well.

Perhaps once, the well had charged crystal; perhaps heroes had once guarded it. Perhaps he would once have found salvation here. But there is nothing now, nothing stirring in the well, only shards of broken crystal lying about, hardly anything worth defending.

Hope lost, the world comes back to him. The rhythmic bzzt bzzt of insects. Birds complaining. Cold coming on, sinking into his muscle, cramping him up all around his eternal wound, whatever is living about him trying to reject the foreign thing rammed through him. Pain and hatred.

He allows himself one agonized scream before stalking back into the bush. There is another road there, to the Halcyon Fold, that he must now take.

---

Ages ago, the desert people learned to heat the pink, blue and white crystal sand of the desert to make glass, and from it they created a city so strong, glittering and beautiful that even the seraphim took notice.

Adagio was not like his siblings, dabbling in the idiocies of humankind – why should he, when the silly creatures died off in a blink? – but he had taken a liking to the Glass City and was not pleased to see it destroyed. Flying over the glass ruins, he watched lightning spark in the dark, oily smoke rising from the fire breath of monsters – the humans called them so, though Adagio knew that Churnbeasts were just a natural part of the world’s endless cycle of annihilation and regrowth.

He landed a safe distance away on one of the crushed-crystal dunes that gave the desert its name: The Shimmer.

~

Idris left his goat-hair tent at dawn with his weapons strapped to his back, squinting into the sunrise. He stopped short at the sight of green in the sand: Tiny leaves poked through, splitting and stretching forth as he watched. Before, spontaneous plant growth in the midst of The Shimmer would have been a wonder; now, he sighed with dread and turned to face the city. At a half-hour walk away, the choking smog and the jungle vines that tumbled away from its gates were almost beautiful. On a high dune just outside the city, he saw a djinn with blue wings.

He blinked to be rid of the illusion, then turned away. In The Shimmer, people knew well the dangers of mirage; once the mind began tricking itself, hope for reason was lost.

Moving between the tents and past the morning fires, he inhaled the scent of new bread and boiling tea. He eased down a goat kid that had leaped its way atop a cannon, then greeted the elders with rubbed noses and grim news: the growth in the sand meant they had but a few days to move back their line of defense.

In the blood-soaked no-man’s land between the camp and the city, he went to work dragging away the Churnbeasts that had wandered too close in the night; oftimes new terrors grew from the bones. The beasts came each night in waves, spitting, gnashing their teeth, whipping claws or tentacles, roaring or gurgling, ever bigger, with scant respite for the fighters. It had become daily life. Everything Idris had learned of the spear and chakram was put to good use.

Again he gazed toward the dune. The azure-winged man had not disappeared.

Idris closed his eyes, set the dune where the djinn stood in his mind, then willed himself there.

~

Adagio could not remember when last he’d been startled, but his azure wings twitched in surprise when the desert warrior appeared before him.

“Welcome, djinn,” said Idris in a soft tone. “If you have come to join us in our war, then you are welcome at my fire.”

“Astonishing,” said Adagio, though his musical voice trilled out as if at any moment he might yawn. “I did not know magic was cultivated in The Shimmer.”

“I am not familiar with magic,” said Idris. “Mine is a skill of nature.”

“If that were so, then all men would accomplish it,” said Adagio.

“A man without fear reaches his destination the moment he chooses to depart.”

“Perhaps mankind should fear more, not less.” With a flick of his slender fingers, Adagio indicated the devastated city.

“The people live in fear now,” said Idris, his voice soft. “If the stories are true, then the emerging of horrors from the Fabled Well is the failing of your ancestors, for the seraphim and the elder dragons created the wells of power to control the release of their destructive energy.”

“Nature cannot be controlled forever. It shall destroy and outlast us all,” said Adagio.

Idris nodded. “The astronomers claimed that the lights of the heavens had aligned to create the syzygy that would wreak havoc inside the wells of power, but it had been so long that none believed them. A year ago, the Churnbeasts spilled out of the well and drove us out of the Glass City. Every day we fight, and every day we are pushed back farther. Most of these refugees have never even milked a goat, much less hefted a spear… but those who did not escape, and did not die, had it the worst.”

“Indeed, that is a horror,” sighed Adagio. “What the Churn does not kill, it swallows.”

“Tell me what can be done,” said Idris.

“There is nothing to be done except save yourselves. In another year, all you see in every direction will be predatory jungle and fearsome creatures. It is not the first time the Churn has destroyed a civilization so near to great understanding.” Adagio chuckled. “You remind me of the sisters, Rana and Ayah. They questioned me as an equal as well. I tasked them, as promising young engineers, to write a book. Perhaps some future creatures shall discover it among the city’s ruins and have a head start against their apocalypse.”

“There is a book that can save us?”

“Other civilizations have fought back the Churn, for a time, with technology.” Adagio gazed to the city again, wrinkling his sharp nose as the mists of the Churn trailed on the warm morning breeze. “But Rana and Ayah failed, as all of your kind do, when they became greedy with their knowledge, and now…” He waved a dismissive hand toward the defensive trench. “…it is irretrievable.”

“I shall retrieve it.”

Adagio’s expression, for a moment, softened. “What the Churn does not kill, it swallows,” he said again.

“Thank you for your advice, djinn.” Idris took a chakram into his fist and looked back no more. He inhaled to his belly and let out the air in a long, thin stream.

“I gave no…” But before Adagio could finish his thought, the ground beneath Idris crumbled and the sand rose in a spectacular swirl. Then the young man was gone from the dune, and Adagio could only look after him, his arms crossed, shaking his head. “Once an eon or so,” he murmured, “a mortal casts an interesting shadow.”

---

Idris appeared inside the Glass City coughing, a painful sting in his nose when he tried to inhale, his eyes pouring water, the sharp chakram dropping from his fist. He wrapped his turban around his mouth and nose but it was no respite from the swirling green-gray smog. His skin burned even beneath his sandstorm-proof clothing. He dropped to his knees, choking, blind but aware on all sides of things waking, sniffing and growling. He tried to escape in the same way that he had come, but he was gripped by fear and could not move. So he would die like this, smothered, sniveling, helpless.

In that realization, however, there was peace. He allowed death inside, and death flowed through him. His mind settled. He breathed deep, pulling the noxious gas into his lungs, and forced his eyes open to watch death come. The strength of the old destructive force filled him – or was he being drawn into it? – and he remembered the cryptic words of the djinn.

What the Churn does not kill, it swallows.

It felt like a dream of breathing underwater. His vision cleared, and he saw that he was near to a broken fountain that still poured water forth. The water streamed out in several directions onto the ground, over books strewn everywhere. Books in stacks, books torn apart, books held by the skeletons of the dead. The fountain water ran black with ink.

Idris dropped his turban and gripped his chakram again. He drew his spear, raised himself up and walked toward a door worked with colorful, geometric glass tiles, now broken and jagged. The sign above it remained:

GOOD CANNOT BE BROUGHT FORTH
NOR EVIL AVOIDED
EXCEPT BY KNOWLEDGE

He had arrived at the House of Insight, inside which the engineer sisters Rana and Ayah had written their book.

The air tasted like strong spices now, and blood, and green things growing wild. Inside the destroyed house of learning, vines grew over ornate tiles and murals. The leaves had sharp teeth and tongues; they hissed at him but he threatened with the tip of his spear and the vines shrank back from him. Other creatures scuttled away: overgrown insects with snapping claws and horn-backed reptiles the like of which he’d never seen. He moved nevertheless through room after room, determined but lost. He found shattered telescopes attached to windows and maps crowding walls and desks. Some floors were covered in the slivers of glass that had been the tools of chemists. All the rooms were filled floor-to-ceiling with books tumbled off of shelves. How would he find one book among these thousands?

Then he came upon a tidy room. On display inside were strange machines and models of inventions: watermills and chain pumps; a robotic peacock that pecked at him as he passed; clocks of all kinds ticking in unison; and a helmet. There were weapons, too, in varied states of repair, and blast marks on the walls where some had discharged. Curious, Idris placed the helmet on his head and startled when a holographic visor appeared before his eyes that gave him a view of the room behind him and to his periphery. And then he heard whispering.

“He was not choked by the smog.”

“He passed the first test.”

Idris whirled around and the display whirled too, so that what was behind him showed in the visor. He saw no one. He moved through the room until his back was against a wall and waited, spear and chakram at the ready.

In the year of nightly battles he had seen many kinds of Churnbeasts, horrific evolutions of animals and plants, but what slithered through the door was another thing altogether, a thing fashioned after a giant serpent but made of steel and the conjoined bodies of two women, their fingers mutated to resemble viper fangs, tubes and wires grafted into their flesh as if grown there, a single glowing eye separating their torsos. It was a sickening amalgam of wildlife, humanity and technology. The serpent slithered in a spiral so that one and then the other of the sisters faced up, and Idris could see that they had been beautiful once.

---

Adagio gazed into the mists. He knew well what lay at the center of the ruined city, for he had watched the Churn overtake the desert before; the earthquakes had crumbled the crystal peaks to the dust that mankind would later name The Shimmer. He had seen to the building of the Fabled Well himself, had set it in a place so hot and desolate that he’d thought it would be safe from civilization. And yet the people had come, drawn to its power. They had created beauty within the desert. He had dared to hope that the people’s ingenuity would triumph, and in the end he had been wrong.

Hope was such a silly thing. And yet he looked into the mists, hoping that the desert warrior would return.

~

“Adagio sent a man to take our work,” said one of the serpent sisters, and her eyes twitched over to a single book preserved under a glass case.

“Rana and Ayah,” Idris said, sliding his spear from his back, “The book of mechanical devices must be brought to civilization, so that the horror that has overcome you can be defeated.”

“Horror?” mocked Rana.

“Civilization is the horror,” crooned her sister.

“And if we are a horror, then so are you,” said Rana.

“The Churn is within you now, ” said Ayah, and they advanced together on him.

Idris felt the Churn streaming along with his blood, power and chaos pumping through his heart. Reflected in the visor, he saw his eyes glowing. The Churn was swallowing him… and he did not wish to resist. The Churn sang of evolution; it beckoned to him from the very center of the world. A Churnbeast sprouted within and begged to be born.

Shaking his head with violence to be rid of the evil song, he lunged for the glass case. The serpent shot forward, rising up between Idris and the book, hissing. The women reached for him with their clawed hands and fanged mouths opened wide, and Idris threw his bladed chakram, leaping away, twisting mid-air to land behind the beast. In his visor he saw the chakram returning and caught it behind his back while steel scales crashed to the ornate tiled floor.

Rana and Ayah screamed in rage and reared up again to strike; Idris threw the chakram again, set his gaze on the book and willed himself there. The chakram followed, slicing off one of Rana’s arms, which bled an unnatural green while she howled. The sisters whipped and coiled in their confusion. Idris did not pause; he rammed the butt end of his spear into the glass case and it shattered. The engineers attacked again, their powerful metal tail lashing with so much force that it crashed through a wall. Idris somersaulted aside with a fraction of a second to spare and landed under the women, so that Ayah’s spine loomed above him. He thrust upward with his spear and felt the engineer’s vertebrae separate and crack. Holding the spear inside her while she howled, he threw the chakram again and swung upward, using the spear as leverage, and watched the blade’s return flight through the visor as it sliced through Rana’s neck and crashed into the serpent’s eye.

The tail of the serpent thrashed without control. Idris scooped up the book and ran through the broken wall, leaped through one of the astrological rooms’ observatory windows and landed by the fountain.

For a moment he paused, wavering, hearing the song of the Churn thrum. It came from the Fabled Well at the center of the city. Stay, it whispered. You are home.

He focused the djinn in his mind as an anchor point, let all of the fumes out of his lungs, and returned.

~

The man who stumbled to the shimmering sand before Adagio was not the same man who had left. Adagio caught Idris into his arms and felt the wild thrum of the Churn inside his pulse. “Has it turned you?”

“I am myself,” whispered Idris, and closed his eyes. The book fell into the sand.

Adagio sighed. How annoying it was to care for humans. From his hands burst the gift of fire; it flooded into the dying man, radiating beneath his skin. “This will revive you, but not even I can draw the poison from your blood. The Churn will always call to you.”

Idris’ shining eyes opened and he grasped for the book in the sand. “But I have this. Now we can win.”

“Oh dear, no.” Adagio laughed, but then he met Idris’ steady, glowing gaze. His tone softened. “Your people are brave, but how will they engineer the devices in this book? With spears and goats and campfires? No; this book must go to those around the world who can use it. I suppose I can take you to the Technologists.”

Idris shook his head. He tried to sit up. “I will not leave my people to this horror.”

“There is no hope for your people without help from the rest of the world.” Beneath his hands, Adagio could feel the conflicting forces fighting for dominance: the gift of the seraphim and the curse of the Churn.

Idris clenched his fists. “I will go with you, then. But I swear I will return, with warriors and technology to fight this evil horde.”

“You are… almost impressive in your naivetè,” said Adagio. He drew up the reviving warrior into his arms, spread his great wings, and took flight.

---

Ages ago, the desert people learned to heat the pink, blue and white crystal sand of the desert to make glass, and from it they created a city so strong, glittering and beautiful that even the seraphim took notice.

Adagio was not like his siblings, dabbling in the idiocies of humankind – why should he, when the silly creatures died off in a blink? – but he had taken a liking to the Glass City and was not pleased to see it destroyed. Flying over the glass ruins, he watched lightning spark in the dark, oily smoke rising from the fire breath of monsters – the humans called them so, though Adagio knew that Churnbeasts were just a natural part of the world’s endless cycle of annihilation and regrowth.

He landed a safe distance away on one of the crushed-crystal dunes that gave the desert its name: The Shimmer.

~

Idris left his goat-hair tent at dawn with his weapons strapped to his back, squinting into the sunrise. He stopped short at the sight of green in the sand: Tiny leaves poked through, splitting and stretching forth as he watched. Before, spontaneous plant growth in the midst of The Shimmer would have been a wonder; now, he sighed with dread and turned to face the city. At a half-hour walk away, the choking smog and the jungle vines that tumbled away from its gates were almost beautiful. On a high dune just outside the city, he saw a djinn with blue wings.

He blinked to be rid of the illusion, then turned away. In The Shimmer, people knew well the dangers of mirage; once the mind began tricking itself, hope for reason was lost.

Moving between the tents and past the morning fires, he inhaled the scent of new bread and boiling tea. He eased down a goat kid that had leaped its way atop a cannon, then greeted the elders with rubbed noses and grim news: the growth in the sand meant they had but a few days to move back their line of defense.

In the blood-soaked no-man’s land between the camp and the city, he went to work dragging away the Churnbeasts that had wandered too close in the night; oftimes new terrors grew from the bones. The beasts came each night in waves, spitting, gnashing their teeth, whipping claws or tentacles, roaring or gurgling, ever bigger, with scant respite for the fighters. It had become daily life. Everything Idris had learned of the spear and chakram was put to good use.

Again he gazed toward the dune. The azure-winged man had not disappeared.

Idris closed his eyes, set the dune where the djinn stood in his mind, then willed himself there.

~

Adagio could not remember when last he’d been startled, but his azure wings twitched in surprise when the desert warrior appeared before him.

“Welcome, djinn,” said Idris in a soft tone. “If you have come to join us in our war, then you are welcome at my fire.”

“Astonishing,” said Adagio, though his musical voice trilled out as if at any moment he might yawn. “I did not know magic was cultivated in The Shimmer.”

“I am not familiar with magic,” said Idris. “Mine is a skill of nature.”

“If that were so, then all men would accomplish it,” said Adagio.

“A man without fear reaches his destination the moment he chooses to depart.”

“Perhaps mankind should fear more, not less.” With a flick of his slender fingers, Adagio indicated the devastated city.

“The people live in fear now,” said Idris, his voice soft. “If the stories are true, then the emerging of horrors from the Fabled Well is the failing of your ancestors, for the seraphim and the elder dragons created the wells of power to control the release of their destructive energy.”

“Nature cannot be controlled forever. It shall destroy and outlast us all,” said Adagio.

Idris nodded. “The astronomers claimed that the lights of the heavens had aligned to create the syzygy that would wreak havoc inside the wells of power, but it had been so long that none believed them. A year ago, the Churnbeasts spilled out of the well and drove us out of the Glass City. Every day we fight, and every day we are pushed back farther. Most of these refugees have never even milked a goat, much less hefted a spear… but those who did not escape, and did not die, had it the worst.”

“Indeed, that is a horror,” sighed Adagio. “What the Churn does not kill, it swallows.”

“Tell me what can be done,” said Idris.

“There is nothing to be done except save yourselves. In another year, all you see in every direction will be predatory jungle and fearsome creatures. It is not the first time the Churn has destroyed a civilization so near to great understanding.” Adagio chuckled. “You remind me of the sisters, Rana and Ayah. They questioned me as an equal as well. I tasked them, as promising young engineers, to write a book. Perhaps some future creatures shall discover it among the city’s ruins and have a head start against their apocalypse.”

“There is a book that can save us?”

“Other civilizations have fought back the Churn, for a time, with technology.” Adagio gazed to the city again, wrinkling his sharp nose as the mists of the Churn trailed on the warm morning breeze. “But Rana and Ayah failed, as all of your kind do, when they became greedy with their knowledge, and now…” He waved a dismissive hand toward the defensive trench. “…it is irretrievable.”

“I shall retrieve it.”

Adagio’s expression, for a moment, softened. “What the Churn does not kill, it swallows,” he said again.

“Thank you for your advice, djinn.” Idris took a chakram into his fist and looked back no more. He inhaled to his belly and let out the air in a long, thin stream.

“I gave no…” But before Adagio could finish his thought, the ground beneath Idris crumbled and the sand rose in a spectacular swirl. Then the young man was gone from the dune, and Adagio could only look after him, his arms crossed, shaking his head. “Once an eon or so,” he murmured, “a mortal casts an interesting shadow.”

---

Idris appeared inside the Glass City coughing, a painful sting in his nose when he tried to inhale, his eyes pouring water, the sharp chakram dropping from his fist. He wrapped his turban around his mouth and nose but it was no respite from the swirling green-gray smog. His skin burned even beneath his sandstorm-proof clothing. He dropped to his knees, choking, blind but aware on all sides of things waking, sniffing and growling. He tried to escape in the same way that he had come, but he was gripped by fear and could not move. So he would die like this, smothered, sniveling, helpless.

In that realization, however, there was peace. He allowed death inside, and death flowed through him. His mind settled. He breathed deep, pulling the noxious gas into his lungs, and forced his eyes open to watch death come. The strength of the old destructive force filled him – or was he being drawn into it? – and he remembered the cryptic words of the djinn.

What the Churn does not kill, it swallows.

It felt like a dream of breathing underwater. His vision cleared, and he saw that he was near to a broken fountain that still poured water forth. The water streamed out in several directions onto the ground, over books strewn everywhere. Books in stacks, books torn apart, books held by the skeletons of the dead. The fountain water ran black with ink.

Idris dropped his turban and gripped his chakram again. He drew his spear, raised himself up and walked toward a door worked with colorful, geometric glass tiles, now broken and jagged. The sign above it remained:

GOOD CANNOT BE BROUGHT FORTH
NOR EVIL AVOIDED
EXCEPT BY KNOWLEDGE

He had arrived at the House of Insight, inside which the engineer sisters Rana and Ayah had written their book.

The air tasted like strong spices now, and blood, and green things growing wild. Inside the destroyed house of learning, vines grew over ornate tiles and murals. The leaves had sharp teeth and tongues; they hissed at him but he threatened with the tip of his spear and the vines shrank back from him. Other creatures scuttled away: overgrown insects with snapping claws and horn-backed reptiles the like of which he’d never seen. He moved nevertheless through room after room, determined but lost. He found shattered telescopes attached to windows and maps crowding walls and desks. Some floors were covered in the slivers of glass that had been the tools of chemists. All the rooms were filled floor-to-ceiling with books tumbled off of shelves. How would he find one book among these thousands?

Then he came upon a tidy room. On display inside were strange machines and models of inventions: watermills and chain pumps; a robotic peacock that pecked at him as he passed; clocks of all kinds ticking in unison; and a helmet. There were weapons, too, in varied states of repair, and blast marks on the walls where some had discharged. Curious, Idris placed the helmet on his head and startled when a holographic visor appeared before his eyes that gave him a view of the room behind him and to his periphery. And then he heard whispering.

“He was not choked by the smog.”

“He passed the first test.”

Idris whirled around and the display whirled too, so that what was behind him showed in the visor. He saw no one. He moved through the room until his back was against a wall and waited, spear and chakram at the ready.

In the year of nightly battles he had seen many kinds of Churnbeasts, horrific evolutions of animals and plants, but what slithered through the door was another thing altogether, a thing fashioned after a giant serpent but made of steel and the conjoined bodies of two women, their fingers mutated to resemble viper fangs, tubes and wires grafted into their flesh as if grown there, a single glowing eye separating their torsos. It was a sickening amalgam of wildlife, humanity and technology. The serpent slithered in a spiral so that one and then the other of the sisters faced up, and Idris could see that they had been beautiful once.

---

Adagio gazed into the mists. He knew well what lay at the center of the ruined city, for he had watched the Churn overtake the desert before; the earthquakes had crumbled the crystal peaks to the dust that mankind would later name The Shimmer. He had seen to the building of the Fabled Well himself, had set it in a place so hot and desolate that he’d thought it would be safe from civilization. And yet the people had come, drawn to its power. They had created beauty within the desert. He had dared to hope that the people’s ingenuity would triumph, and in the end he had been wrong.

Hope was such a silly thing. And yet he looked into the mists, hoping that the desert warrior would return.

~

“Adagio sent a man to take our work,” said one of the serpent sisters, and her eyes twitched over to a single book preserved under a glass case.

“Rana and Ayah,” Idris said, sliding his spear from his back, “The book of mechanical devices must be brought to civilization, so that the horror that has overcome you can be defeated.”

“Horror?” mocked Rana.

“Civilization is the horror,” crooned her sister.

“And if we are a horror, then so are you,” said Rana.

“The Churn is within you now, ” said Ayah, and they advanced together on him.

Idris felt the Churn streaming along with his blood, power and chaos pumping through his heart. Reflected in the visor, he saw his eyes glowing. The Churn was swallowing him… and he did not wish to resist. The Churn sang of evolution; it beckoned to him from the very center of the world. A Churnbeast sprouted within and begged to be born.

Shaking his head with violence to be rid of the evil song, he lunged for the glass case. The serpent shot forward, rising up between Idris and the book, hissing. The women reached for him with their clawed hands and fanged mouths opened wide, and Idris threw his bladed chakram, leaping away, twisting mid-air to land behind the beast. In his visor he saw the chakram returning and caught it behind his back while steel scales crashed to the ornate tiled floor.

Rana and Ayah screamed in rage and reared up again to strike; Idris threw the chakram again, set his gaze on the book and willed himself there. The chakram followed, slicing off one of Rana’s arms, which bled an unnatural green while she howled. The sisters whipped and coiled in their confusion. Idris did not pause; he rammed the butt end of his spear into the glass case and it shattered. The engineers attacked again, their powerful metal tail lashing with so much force that it crashed through a wall. Idris somersaulted aside with a fraction of a second to spare and landed under the women, so that Ayah’s spine loomed above him. He thrust upward with his spear and felt the engineer’s vertebrae separate and crack. Holding the spear inside her while she howled, he threw the chakram again and swung upward, using the spear as leverage, and watched the blade’s return flight through the visor as it sliced through Rana’s neck and crashed into the serpent’s eye.

The tail of the serpent thrashed without control. Idris scooped up the book and ran through the broken wall, leaped through one of the astrological rooms’ observatory windows and landed by the fountain.

For a moment he paused, wavering, hearing the song of the Churn thrum. It came from the Fabled Well at the center of the city. Stay, it whispered. You are home.

He focused the djinn in his mind as an anchor point, let all of the fumes out of his lungs, and returned.

~

The man who stumbled to the shimmering sand before Adagio was not the same man who had left. Adagio caught Idris into his arms and felt the wild thrum of the Churn inside his pulse. “Has it turned you?”

“I am myself,” whispered Idris, and closed his eyes. The book fell into the sand.

Adagio sighed. How annoying it was to care for humans. From his hands burst the gift of fire; it flooded into the dying man, radiating beneath his skin. “This will revive you, but not even I can draw the poison from your blood. The Churn will always call to you.”

Idris’ shining eyes opened and he grasped for the book in the sand. “But I have this. Now we can win.”

“Oh dear, no.” Adagio laughed, but then he met Idris’ steady, glowing gaze. His tone softened. “Your people are brave, but how will they engineer the devices in this book? With spears and goats and campfires? No; this book must go to those around the world who can use it. I suppose I can take you to the Technologists.”

Idris shook his head. He tried to sit up. “I will not leave my people to this horror.”

“There is no hope for your people without help from the rest of the world.” Beneath his hands, Adagio could feel the conflicting forces fighting for dominance: the gift of the seraphim and the curse of the Churn.

Idris clenched his fists. “I will go with you, then. But I swear I will return, with warriors and technology to fight this evil horde.”

“You are… almost impressive in your naivetè,” said Adagio. He drew up the reviving warrior into his arms, spread his great wings, and took flight.

---

The moon, full as a fat white fruit, dangled just out of reach, just like everything Blackfeather craved. “Ah, Phinneas,” he murmured, whistling through his teeth as he gazed up at the moon beyond the castle balcony, “the best songs are written on nights such as these.”

“Can’t dance to a song about kidnapping,” replied Phinn. He scratched deep into his ear with a single long claw. The two ne’er-do-wells huddled in a dead end of the thorned Hardy Orange maze under the balcony. Phinn towered over the tallest thorny bush.  

“Danger is our dance partner!” Black clothes camouflaged Blackfeather in the night, but he refused to hide his gleaming golden hair in any circumstance. Beauty, he said always, was its own weapon. “One can’t be a proper adventurer without abducting a princess. It’s what’s done.”

“Isn’t polite to pluck a poor girl from her home.”

“There’s nothing poor about this lady. Far and wide they’ll laud us …”

“… and hunt us.”

“With my steel and charm, and your … brawn … nothing can stop us. The very sight of you inspires fear in this kingdom, there not being many river trolls about.”

“I hear her parents are nice people, far as royalty goes.” Phinn cared little for matters of adventure, having been alive a good long time and seen a good many things. He thought it healthiest to avoid drama.

Blackfeather clasped his hand onto his friend’s giant, meaty shoulder. “My noble friend. Don’t you like money?”

“Better to have money than not.”

“There, then, is your reason. For in the hostelry where last night we lodged, I heard there is a considerable bounty out for the princess whose chamber turret I took the responsibility of scouting this afternoon during your second nap.” Blackfeather pointed up.

“What’s considerable?”

“Is there to be no thanks for my labor? No apology for your incessant slumber?”

Phinn slid two claws through the thorns to pluck out a bitter orange. “I get tired after lunch.”

“In this case, ten thousand gold bits is considerable. Half and half we’ll split it, a good three thousand each, and we’ll live a grand life.”

Phinn bit into the fruit, rind and all. “Until we can’t afford it anymore.”

“And then we shall set out on our next adventure.”

“What’ll we do with her?”

“With whom?”

“The princess. The one from the kidnapping.”

“Well. We’ll turn her over to whomever set the bounty for her.”

“And how will we …”

“Trivialties! We’ll be rid of her by your second nap on the morrow, and ten thousand gold bits richer. We’ll live as good as that king yonder for as long as we can and tell a great story after.”

“Right, then,” agreed Phinn. Though he could add better than Blackfeather supposed, a loyal friend was on occasion a better thing than a fair one, and he hadn’t the care to argue further. “How will we get up there?”

“We shall scale the wall, naturally.” Blackfeather rested his fists on his waist and stared up at the balcony, as if the way to manage this would appear by magic. “What I wouldn’t give for a grappling hook.”

“Would this do?” And with that, Phinn pulled from his back an anchor.

“How did you get that?”

“At the ship we took here. It fit me so nice, I decided to keep it.”

“Well done, Phinneas! The princess awaits us. Tie a rope to that anchor and hook it to the balcony. Then we shall climb…”

“You have rope?”

“Of course I have rope. I’m an adventurer.”

“Well, then I suppose I’ll discard this chain.”

Blackfeather added an exaggerated head tilt to his eye roll so that it would be apparent in the darkness, and within minutes, the chained anchor sailed from Phinn’s hand to the balcony, locking into place with a great, satisfying, safety-inspiring ch-ch-CHOCK.

Phinn and Blackfeather began their ascent.

The balcony gave a disconcerting creak under Phinn’s clawed bulk. Blackfeather drew his sword before bursting through the door to Princess Malene’s silken-pillowed, antique-furnished, monogrammed-everything room. The princess sat on a mahogany curule chair, her gown poofed over its sides, peering at her pretty young face in a silver mirror. The mirror reflected no shock when her abductor entered, though one of her eyebrows rose to a judgmental point when Blackfeather tore the rose from his teeth.

“Resistance is useless, Princess. I have come to …”

“Kidnap me, yes. For the bounty.” The princess stood, smoothed her dress and kicked over the curule chair. “It took you long enough.”

Blackfeather’s rose dropped to the plush carpet. “Aren’t you even going to scream? What kind of princess doesn’t scream?”

The princess swished ’round the room, mussing up bedcovers and papers. “Obviously I’ll scream. I’m no amateur. But if I scream too soon, the guards will… AAAHHmmmmff!”

With a grand leap, Blackfeather slapped his palm over Princess Malene’s mouth as Phinn bent double to fit himself through the balcony door. “Are we having a giggle or a kidnapping, then?” Phinn grumbled.

The princess wrenched her face away from Blackfeather’s grasp. “What is that?”

“That, your defenseless highness, is a river troll, the second of your captors.”

“And the handsomer,” muttered the princess, who tried to swish away from Blackfeather and was deterred by his blade at her throat.

“I’ll ignore that, seeing as how you are suffering such great trauma.”

Phinn stomped in his slow way to a gilded birdcage, inside of which perched a small white bird. “That’s a rare bird. Is it a Trostanian White?” he said, then whistled through the fork in his tongue.

Princess Malene bopped Blackfeather over the head with her mirror and, while he wailed, sashayed over to a ring box by her bed. “Obviously. One of fifty left in the world.”

“Pretty thing. Shouldn’t be in a cage. What’s its name?” Phinn unlatched the cage door with surprising dexterity and the bird hopped onto his head.

Blackfeather struck a daring, adventurous, lunging pose and began again. “It’s no use resisting! Away we go and no more delay!”

The princess whisked past Phinn and his newfound pet to rifle through another drawer. “Coocoo D’Etat.”

Blackfeather’s lunge drooped. “Ah … what?”

“It’s the bird’s name.”

Phinn shook his great scaley head. “I don’t like that. I’ll name it Susie, after my old uncle.”

“No use resisting!” Blackfeather tried a third time. “Away we…”

“I won’t go anywhere without my signet ring,” snapped Princess Malene. “How will you prove you have me if your ransom note doesn’t bear my insignia?”

“Ransom note?” asked Phinn.

“Ransom note?” asked Blackfeather.

The princess sighed. “Do either of you know anything about kidnapping, at all?”

The boys looked at one another, then back at her.

“No use resisting,” said Blackfeather, quieter this time.

“Ah! There it is.” Princess Malene slid the ring on her finger, threw back her head, and let loose a terrorized shriek. Phinn winced. Blackfeather jumped. The bird pooped on Phinn’s head. “No! Please! Do not take me! I’ll give you anything!” She swung out one arm and knocked down a blown-glass lamp; it shattered into a million shards on the floor below. “You filthy rogue! You beast! Unhand me!”

Guards pounded at the door and the three made a dash for the balcony, Princess Malene screaming her protests even as she rode down the chain, holding onto Phinn’s neck. Once they landed in the thorny maze, though, she smoothed out her dress and peered into the dark. “Which way to your hideout?”

“It’s almost as if you have ordered this enterprise done yourself,” complained Blackfeather.

“Of course I did,” huffed Princess Malene. “One can’t be a proper princess without being kidnapped for ransom. All the best ones are.”

“Seems fair,” said Phinn as he jerked on the chain, pulling the anchor loose along with much of the balcony railing.

The roar of engines and barking dogs in the near distance sent the three running through the maze without further conversation.

---

“Beware, Princess! Ruffians are about!” Blackfeather posed in a deep lunge, his hand on his sword hilt, as a trio of cagey foes in tattered black cloaks emerged from the dead-end shadows of the thorny maze.

“Thanks for doing the climbing and grabbing part,” said the largest of the hooligan trio with a gap-toothed smile. He gestured toward the princess with a spiked mace. “We’ll take it from here.”

“I guess they’ll get the bounty, then,” said Phinn.

“Ludicrous!” cried Blackfeather. “I will make ribbons of these scruffy barbarians.”

“Outnumbered, aren’t we?” mused Phinn, though no fear edged his voice.

“They are no match for me. Look at them. It is as if they have never heard of a tailor,” scoffed Blackfeather.

The princess crossed her arms and drummed her fingers. “Could whoever is kidnapping me please put a rush on it? The maze guards should be on their way.”

“Yer guards aren’t feeling well.” The second-largest enemy spat on the ground, then jabbed a thumb over his shoulder. “We bopped their heads together and now they’re napping. We’ll do the same to you if you can’t otherwise keep quiet.”

“I shall acquaint you with my blade for threatening royalty in that fashion, you boor.” Blackfeather drew his sword with a satisfying shhhiinnnggg. “Uncouth louts, meet my sword, Blackfeather.”

The Princess paused her dramatic despair. “You named your sword after yourself? Of all the egomaniacal …”

“I have much in common with my sword,” smouldered Blackfeather.

“I don’t even want to know.”

“Not sure which of these fussy chickens is the princess,” quipped the smallest of the thieves, cutting short the quarrel. He yanked a sabre free of his belt.

“Shame to muss the boy’s hair,” hooted the largest.

“You s’pose he’ll be offended if the blade that kills him ain’t clean?” The second-largest produced two knives from his vest.

“Leave these imbeciles to me, Phinneas,” commanded Blackfeather. “I will take them all together!”

“Alright,” said Phinn, who amused himself by catching fireflies for Susie’s supper.

The mace had not completed its first arc before Blackfeather dashed straight into the foes, his blade leaving a blooming crimson kiss in the torso, arm and face of each in turn. Quick lunges kept him out of reach; his flashing sword seemed to extend to twice its length. The slice of the sabre, the flash of knives, the swings of the mace caught only air and earned the hoodlums stinging lacerations. Down the dangerous pathways Blackfeather dueled, blocking, feinting, ducking and slashing with grace and pithy insults. “You strike with the speed of a tortoise! Tell me the name of your blademaster so that I may blame him for your untimely demise! I will plant a rosebush on your grave, fiend!”

But while Blackfeather chased the bigger two down a blind dead-end, the smallest tough guy ducked round the fray and grabbed the princess.

“He’s made off with your bounty,” called Phinn.

Blackfeather sprinted after the abductor, but lost him in the dark labyrinthine passageways. He returned to find the other two had squirreled off as well.

“Help, Phinneas!” cried Blackfeather.

“Thought I was to leave the imbeciles to you.”

“We cannot allow these ingrates to steal what we have rightfully seized!”

“Fair enough.” Phinn hoisted up the anchor by its chain and threw it forward into the darkness. When he yanked it back, its hooks had dug into the jackets, belts, and thighs of the three blubbering, thorn-raked goons, not to mention a tumbleweed of prickly thorns. Princess Malene toppled off the shoulder of her captor and into Blackfeather’s embrace, a single thorn scratch weeping blood onto her pale cheek.

“Well done, Phinneas!” whooped Blackfeather.

“You fools,” whimpered the princess. “Don’t you know … the Hardy Orange thorn… is poisonous… to princesses?”

Her eyes closed as she went limp in Blackfeather’s arms.

Royal guards rushed out in a absurd tumble to the balcony above. “They escaped this way!” cried one.

Blackfeather whirled in a panic. “Never fear! I memorized the way… left, left, right… no, it’s backward on the way out…”

“No time for puzzles, I’d say,” said Phinn, and he lumbered straight into the Hardy Orange maze wall, stomping it down into a crumble-squish of finger-long thorns and half-ripe fruits.

---

Phinn chewed on his pipe while a bobber floated on the still water of a pond. He sat on a rock, half snoozing, jerking awake whenever his fishing pole slipped out of his claws.

On the grass beside him, Blackfeather had surrounded the unconscious princess with plucked flowers. “Look at her,” whispered Blackfeather in awe. “Is she not the most captivating thing you have ever seen? Her hair. Her pale skin. Her delicate fingers, how they clutch her prized mirror! Her eyebrows, arched as if to say… as if to say…”

“…let me sleep,” said Phinn.

“No, that’s not it. There is a… a dare in her expression. ‘Do you dare to do what must be done?’ Yes, your highness, I…”

“I meant, let me sleep,” said Phinn with a sharp-toothed yawn. “You kept me up all night with your princess-stealing.”

“How can you think of slumber when such an adventure is about?” Blackfeather dropped with great drama to his knees beside the princess and tucked her hair behind her ears. “When such a beauty needs aid? Never fear, my lady. Blackfeather is here.” With that, he bent and brushed his lips against hers.

Phinn snored.

Susie, perched comfortably on Phinn’s nose, tweeted a morning song.

A red-whiskered carp poked its head out of the pond to peer with suspicion at the bobber.

Princess Malene did not stir.

“That’s bizarre,” said Blackfeather, startling Phinn awake. “Something went wrong with the kiss.”

“Like as not, it’s your technique,” said Phinn, making eye contact with the carp. “Kissing is an art. It’s all in the incisors.”

“I weep for troll women.”

“I haven’t yet had a complaint,” said Phinn as he casted again, landing the bait closer to the curious carp. “Come on, now. Heeeere my little breakfast. Take the juicy worm, now.”

“Your provinciality would drain the romance out of any but this exquisite moment,” said Blackfeather, and again he lowered himself to press his lips to Princess Malene’s, lingering longer this time.

Susie ate a fly out of Phinn’s ear.

The carp nibbled the bait.

Phinn snorted awake and yanked up his pole, piercing the carp through its coquelicot-mustachioed lip.

Princess Malene did not stir.

“Preposterous!” cried Blackfeather. He pouted with crossed arms while Phinn reeled in the carp. “Something is wrong with her, because I am the best kisser in this land.”

Phinn raised up his wriggling catch, but Blackfeather was too despondent to admire it. “Maybe she needs to be awake to enjoy it,” offered Phinn.

“That is the point of the kiss,” cried Blackfeather, startling Susie. “To wake her up.”

The carp died.

“Kisses don’t wake up princesses. Who told you that nonsense?” Phinn bit the head off his breakfast and chewed while shaking his head at his friend.

“They don’t?”

“Of course not. Only the tickle of a seraphim’s feather will wake a sleeping princess. Blue feathers work best.”

Susie nodded in agreement.

“That … that makes so much sense!” Blackfeather sighed with relief. “Why else would my kisses be ineffective? Now, where do we get this famed azure plume?”

“Beats me. Not as many seraphim about as there used to be. Why do you care anyway? I thought we were her kidnappers, not her heroes.”

“We can’t very well collect a bounty on a princess in a coma.”

“Seems you rather like her.”

“Like her? Dear, sweet Phinneas. The crevasse between heroism and villainy is not wide, but it is deep.”

“Take care not to fall in when you jump over, then.” Phinn swallowed the remainder of the carp and, as was his habit after eating anyway, fell again to napping. Once he was sure that Phinn wasn’t watching, Blackfeather took Princess Malene’s hand.

“I shall be the one to tickle you awake, your highness,” he whispered. “I care not where the adventure takes me.”

‘The Forest Witch’

Through the forest Blackfeather, Susie and Phinn journeyed, the slumbering Princess Malene draped over the troll’s shoulders, until they reached a cottage, roundish and squat, with vines overtaking the stones and pleasant-smelling smoke coming from the chimney.

Blackfeather flourished one arm. “At last! We have found the old witch’s cottage!”

“Which witch?” asked Phinn.

“Whichever witch witches in this forest.”

Phinn flung one of the princess’ flopped arms, the mirror clutched in her grasp, back over his shoulder. “Maybe we should leave a forest witch alone.”

“Normally I would, Phinneas, but witches collect magic items. Unless you have the address of a generous seraphim?”

Phinn shrugged, toppling Malene into Blackfeather’s arms. Blackfeather oofed, then rang the doorbell with his nose.

A gray-haired woman dressed in gray answered, drying her hands on her skirt.

“Greetings, old witch!” cried Blackfeather. “I am in dire need of -”

“No,” she said.

“But, dear old witch, I have not yet made my enquiry.”

“Go on then,” she said.

“I am in dire need of an azure plume from the wing of a seraphim,” said Blackfeather.

“No,” she said.

Blackfeather, who had not been told no often enough in his life, wavered. “But I… I have carried this princess across all of the forest…”

“I carried her mostly,” muttered Phinn.

“I figured,” said the witch.

“What reason could you possibly have for refusing us?” asked Blackfeather, flabbergasted.

“You called me old.”

“I didn’t mean old so much as ugly,” whined Blackfeather. “Of course you understand.”

“I do,” said the witch. “Handsome men like you only keep company with beauties.”

“Precisely,” said Blackfeather.

“Like the dead one there,” said the woman.

“Yes… I mean no!” cried Blackfeather. “She is only partly dead. She was poisoned by…”

“…a Hardy Orange thorn,” sighed the witch. “Those moronic mazes.”

“You must help me.” Blackfeather’s eyes filled with tears. “I have never loved as deeply as this.”

“Then don’t wake her up,” said the witch. “Nothing kills a good love story like a conscious woman.”

“You know nothing about love,” said Blackfeather.

“You know nothing of women.” The witch bent to sniff at the princess’ thin exhales, then lifted one limp royal wrist to peer into the mirror. “Within every beautiful princess sleeps a powerful shadow.”

“There is no shadow inside this girl,” said Blackfeather.

“You’re right, but you don’t know why,” said the witch with a wry smile. “Give me the mirror, and I’ll give you the feather.”

“The mirror isn’t ours to give,” said Phinn.

Susie agreed.

Malene snored.

“Done!” oofed Blackfeather with the desperation of a man whose arms are buckling under the dead weight of a princess.

“Come in,” said the witch.

Malene felt a feather-soft tickle on her nose and opened her eyes.

“Phinn! She’s awake!”

She laid on a kitchen counter in a witch’s cottage, made evident by the shelves of stoppered jars, the dried herbs hung on the walls, and the witch sitting by the fire.

A golden-haired man holding a shining seraphim’s feather bowed. After a blink or two, Malene recognized him, fuzzily, as her recent captor. “My lady,” he crooned, “I have carried you across a vast forest to find the feather that would tickle you awake.”

“I carried you mostly,” said a troll at the door. He was too big to fit inside, so only his head was stuck through. Coocoo D’Etat preened herself on his head.

Malene, satisfied at having been awakened in suitable fashion, rounded out the adventure by falling in love. “My hero,” she gasped, touching her rescuer’s cheek with the back of her hand while trying to remember his name. “How can I ever thank you?”

The feather floated to the floor as the man gathered her into his arms. “I ask only for a kiss, my love.”

The princess melted into his arms and they kissed. It was a fantastic kiss, pulled off with nary a tooth bump and minimal halitosis, the kind of kiss that kicks off a proper happily ever after.

“Be sure to invite me to the wedding,” said the witch.

“The what?” asked Malene’s true love with his mouth still full of kiss.

“The wedding,” repeated Phinn helpfully.

“The wedding!” squealed Malene.

“Now now…” The lover boy backed up a step, his palms outward. “Marriage is… it is such a big leap from the first kiss, is it not?”

“Not in these stories,” said the witch.

“Oh, we shall have a huge royal wedding, much bigger than my sister’s, and the train on my dress will be a mile long,” cried Malene.

“However,” mused the witch, “you do need two royals to have a royal wedding.”

“Indeed,” said the man. “Though I am courageous and fierce and the best kisser on the continent, I am not of royal blood, and so our love must always be the forbidden kind… which is anyway my favorite.”

Malene wept. “But I want a royal wedding.”

“A queen can promote a rogue to a royal,” suggested the witch.

“A pauper to a prince,” said Phinn.

“A bandit to a baron,” said Coocoo in bird language.

“A degenerate to a duke?” said Malene, sniffing away tears.

“A loser to…”

“That’s enough,” said the man.

“Then again,” mused the witch, “you are just petty royalty. If only you were, say, Queen of the Eventides.”

“Then I could marry whomever I please!” cried Malene. “So all we must do is defeat the Storm Queen.”

“Unlikely,” said the witch.

“We have a troll, and my lover’s blade,” said Malene.

“You’ll need a powerful mage,” mused the witch, gazing into her new mirror. “And a dragon or two.”

Malene shrugged. “Then I shall have a dragon or two.”

“Can’t just pick up a dragon from the market,” said Phinn.

“A mage, though, is very near,” said the witch.

“Wait.” Malene pointed at the witch. “Is that my mirror?”

“A price had to be paid for the feather,” said Malene’s nervous fiancé.

The witch twirled the mirror in her hand. “He didn’t know the mirror’s purpose, I assume.”

Malene leaped to her feet – then stumbled from the painful poking-pin sensation of her limbs waking. “You will return it.”

“No,” said the witch. “But I will return this.” She rapped her knuckles on the mirror’s back, and out of the glass swirled a dark shadow that collected itself into the shape of Malene.

The rescuer clamped his fist around the hilt of his sword, but Malene stopped him with one raised finger. The shadowy mirror-Malene’s finger raised, too. Their fingertips touched.

“Once upon a time,” said the witch, “a king and a queen had a baby.”

The two Malenes pressed their palms together, and their hands became one.

“The princess was beautiful, but if she didn’t get her way, she became a tantruming horror. And this princess, having been born with some… not insignificant magical ability, made an obvious mess when angry. And obvious Mageborn children go straight to the Storm Queen’s army.”

The shadow and Malene moved closer until they stood nose-to-nose.

“I would tell most parents to deal with their own brats, but the king and queen were quite generous. So I trapped their daughter’s shadow in this mirror, and ever after, she behaved like a useless, spoiled princess. But now…”

The two princesses enveloped one another, the shadow hidden completely away. “Now,” said Malene, “it is time to be queen.”

“I don’t think it’ll work,” said Phinn.

Malene spun to face the troll and the swordsman, and in a flash of long-dormant magic transformed into the shadow once trapped within the mirror. “I will have a dragon!” she announced. “I will have a dragon in every color! And I will be Queen of the Eventides, and we will live happily ever after, and that is final!”

As quickly as it had appeared, the shadow faded, and the lovely princess remained. With a flouncing of skirts and a charming smile, Malene squeezed through the door past Phinn.

The adventurers stumbled from the cottage in shock. “So, Blackfeather,” said Phinn, “We’ll be going the other way, right?”

“That’s it! Blackfeather!” cried Malene from the garden. “I had completely forgotten his name.” And with that, she skipped away down the forest path.

“Look at her, Phinneas,” sighed Blackfeather. “Such pluck. Such moxie!”

“So we’re going with her, then,” said Phinn. “Toward dragons.”

The witch scooped up the feather from the floor. “Have fun storming the Storm Queen,” she called, then slammed the door behind them.

Scratching at her elbows under her ripped up jacket, Joule tells us, “It’ll be the biggest thing we’ve pulled off.” From under the dusty mat she sleeps on, Joule pulls out folded-up papers. “This one,” she says, “this one I got from an army guy, don’t ask how. Okay, go ahead and ask how. Go on. Okay, nevermind. Look.” She spreads out this blue paper and there’s an outline of something we ain’t seen before. Some big machine that walks.

 

“And we are gonna steal it.” Like it ain’t in a military hangar behind all kindsa guards and cameras and firepower, that’s how Joule says it. She has a plan for that, too. Joule always has a plan for everything. Outta her stocking she yanks out another paper, this one her own creation, a map of the compound, and all our instructions. “We get a buncha smoke bombs. I know Gator is hoarding a bunch. Some flashbangs for distracting. And I know Petey has that anchor he borrowed from the docks. We’ll totally use that like a grappling hook.”

By now, all the hungry kids are milling around Joule’s corner of the floor, rubbing their snotty noses on their knuckles and hoo-hooing at the blueprints. Clover doesn’t like it when we congregate, but none of us are tattlers.

“You can’t pull that off. Ain’t any way.”

“We can. Remember that time I hotwired the flamewalker? This can’t be all that different.”

Nobody’s dumb enough to believe her, but nobody wants to be the one who chickens out. Once volunteers start raising hands, Joule has herself a gang.

Nobody wants to be a chicken but still, after Chester cuts open the fence, no one goes through. We’re all staring at one another: Chester with his wire cutters, his sis Chatter with her mouth X-taped shut ‘cause she talks too much, Gator with his bulging backpack, SBD and Petey oofing under the anchor, Bell the only one of us with a weapon. Only Joule, hunkered down like a frog, is looking at the compound a short sprint away.

“We all know the meeting spot yeah?”

Just like that, we’re running, maybe just ‘cause she didn’t give us time to think about it. We’re running with red puffy cheeks through the dark yard, running like we’d stole from the Carnies. Can’t see anything in the moonless night, but we know the spot, and we land there at the door marked HEAD in an unruly pile, kicking and grunting trying to get inside first.

Joule’s standing on a toilet, wiggling at the grate to the air ducts with a screwdriver when Chester grunts. “Where’s Chatter?”

We all peek out the door just in time to see the floodlights snap on, and Chatter right in the middle of all that light, yanking at the knob to the wrong door. It’s not even seconds before she’s got guards all over her, barking in her taped-up face.

“She’s gonna squeal,” whines SBD.

“Sure she is,” whispers Joule. “And I told her we were going a whole other direction, so that oughta buy us a few minutes. Boost me up!”

Sure enough, one guard holds onto Chatter while the rest of them go racing off away in the other direction.

“Hurry!” whispers Bell, stuffing her weapon in her pants, and Petey boosts her into the duct.

Only Joule’s pockets make noise. We all know how to be silent, ‘cept for Chatter, but she’s gone and Chester ran off after her. Whatever; he wouldna fit in the ducts anyways.

Bell goes straight toward the security room. SBD, Petey, and Gator head for the distraction points, moving slow with all their stuff. Joule and Bell stop over the security room grate and get busy, Joule with her screwdriver, Bell with a makeshift blow dart she fashioned for the occasion. The hollow reed fits through the grate, but aiming ain’t easy. Joule loosens the grate screws just enough to keep it in place. Nobody’s breathing. Bell gets a clear shot on the guard inside and tap-tap-taps on the duct wall with her fingernails.

One tap, faint from around the corner, answers. The boys ain’t ready.

Bell looks down, and the guard is looking back up at ‘er. Bell curses and exhales, the dart flying with a glob of spittle. But the aim’s all wrong, so Joule stomps her foot into the grate and lets it fall, bam! right on toppa the guard’s melon. Bell bashes her fist three times on the duct wall, ‘cause it’s on now like it or not, and the girls jump down into the security room.

The outer halls fill with the boys’ stink bombs. Guards are shouting and coughing; they grab Petey and haul him outta the duct howling. Bell gets nabbed too, but Joule’s already sprinting toward the hangar door with the KO’d guard’s key card in her fist and a screwdriver in her teeth.

“Listen up, ya baldy-heads!” yells Joule. “You all know what this is! Flatulo-virus! All I gotta do is open it and we all drop dead!”

When the smoke clears, Joule’s in front of the mechs in the middle of the hangar, waving a little corked vial around. SBD’s leaning on her, breathing hard. Guards flood in, including the ones holding our friends. Two of ‘em tackle Gator, anchor and all. Echoing in the back we hear Chatter wailing. “It’s ooooover! We’re deeeeead!” Soldiers pour in through the choke point, some of ‘em holding us while we struggle, some of ‘em pointing guns right at Joule, who laughs all crazy.

“We’ll never surrender! We’ll die first!” she howls, and yanks the cork outta that vial so hard her elbow bashes into SBD’s belly.

With an “Oooooof,” SBD doubles over and a familiar silent but deadly stink fills the room.

Bell collapses in a guard’s arms, her eyes rolling up. Petey groans, Gator foams at the mouth, Chester chokes. Joule spins and drops, tongue lolled out. Soldiers flee the hangar in a panic, gagging and gasping for air in the massive stench. All around the compound doors slam, sirens wail and a calm female voice on the speakers announces full lockdown due to biological weaponry.

“Eeny meeny,” mutters Joule, wiggling her finger between the two closest mechs. Bypassing a slick black one, she climbs up into the one with the sweet yellow stripes. Bashing on buttons and poking the key card in random spots makes it roar to life. “Look at this thing! Look how cool this is!”

“There’s no way out, dummy!” Bell kicks at the mech’s leg. “How’re we supposed to…”
With loud whirring and a clunk of machine joints, the mech lurches forward. Joule nearly falls outta the thing, rights herself and takes another clunky step forward. The huge machine’s fists open and close. There’s zapping sounds from inside the guns. We’re all running for cover while she spins the sword around, whooping like all of us aren’t about to get dead. “One ‘a these things should…” she mutters, then pushes the big red button…

Everything goes silent. The sirens and announcing lady voice stop. We scream without sound, and when the mech starts walking again, we can’t hear it. Whatever button Joule pushed left us all deaf, and a big freaking hole in the opposite wall of the hangar.

We all bail, running like mad for that hole, jumping out and fleeing toward the fence. Joule comes last, Chatter held in one ‘a the big mech fists. There’s no point in opening the fence anymore; she slams it flat under those big metal feet. Ringing starts up in our ears, then we start to hear each other shouting. Slam, slam, slam go the mech’s footsteps as we all trip and sprint toward our meeting spot outside town, where the jungle grows up on the city walls.

“Toldja we could do it,” says Joule, powering it down. She hops off and hides it under thick vines and weeds.

“Yeah sure,” says Bell, “but what’re you gonna do with it?”

Joule stops, looking up at the lumpy, camouflaged shape of her new toy. “Um…”

---

The moon, full as a fat white fruit, dangled just out of reach, just like everything Blackfeather craved. “Ah, Phinneas,” he murmured, whistling through his teeth as he gazed up at the moon beyond the castle balcony, “the best songs are written on nights such as these.”

“Can’t dance to a song about kidnapping,” replied Phinn. He scratched deep into his ear with a single long claw. The two ne’er-do-wells huddled in a dead end of the thorned Hardy Orange maze under the balcony. Phinn towered over the tallest thorny bush.  

“Danger is our dance partner!” Black clothes camouflaged Blackfeather in the night, but he refused to hide his gleaming golden hair in any circumstance. Beauty, he said always, was its own weapon. “One can’t be a proper adventurer without abducting a princess. It’s what’s done.”

“Isn’t polite to pluck a poor girl from her home.”

“There’s nothing poor about this lady. Far and wide they’ll laud us …”

“… and hunt us.”

“With my steel and charm, and your … brawn … nothing can stop us. The very sight of you inspires fear in this kingdom, there not being many river trolls about.”

“I hear her parents are nice people, far as royalty goes.” Phinn cared little for matters of adventure, having been alive a good long time and seen a good many things. He thought it healthiest to avoid drama.

Blackfeather clasped his hand onto his friend’s giant, meaty shoulder. “My noble friend. Don’t you like money?”

“Better to have money than not.”

“There, then, is your reason. For in the hostelry where last night we lodged, I heard there is a considerable bounty out for the princess whose chamber turret I took the responsibility of scouting this afternoon during your second nap.” Blackfeather pointed up.

“What’s considerable?”

“Is there to be no thanks for my labor? No apology for your incessant slumber?”

Phinn slid two claws through the thorns to pluck out a bitter orange. “I get tired after lunch.”

“In this case, ten thousand gold bits is considerable. Half and half we’ll split it, a good three thousand each, and we’ll live a grand life.”

Phinn bit into the fruit, rind and all. “Until we can’t afford it anymore.”

“And then we shall set out on our next adventure.”

“What’ll we do with her?”

“With whom?”

“The princess. The one from the kidnapping.”

“Well. We’ll turn her over to whomever set the bounty for her.”

“And how will we …”

“Trivialties! We’ll be rid of her by your second nap on the morrow, and ten thousand gold bits richer. We’ll live as good as that king yonder for as long as we can and tell a great story after.”

“Right, then,” agreed Phinn. Though he could add better than Blackfeather supposed, a loyal friend was on occasion a better thing than a fair one, and he hadn’t the care to argue further. “How will we get up there?”

“We shall scale the wall, naturally.” Blackfeather rested his fists on his waist and stared up at the balcony, as if the way to manage this would appear by magic. “What I wouldn’t give for a grappling hook.”

“Would this do?” And with that, Phinn pulled from his back an anchor.

“How did you get that?”

“At the ship we took here. It fit me so nice, I decided to keep it.”

“Well done, Phinneas! The princess awaits us. Tie a rope to that anchor and hook it to the balcony. Then we shall climb…”

“You have rope?”

“Of course I have rope. I’m an adventurer.”

“Well, then I suppose I’ll discard this chain.”

Blackfeather added an exaggerated head tilt to his eye roll so that it would be apparent in the darkness, and within minutes, the chained anchor sailed from Phinn’s hand to the balcony, locking into place with a great, satisfying, safety-inspiring ch-ch-CHOCK.

Phinn and Blackfeather began their ascent.

The balcony gave a disconcerting creak under Phinn’s clawed bulk. Blackfeather drew his sword before bursting through the door to Princess Malene’s silken-pillowed, antique-furnished, monogrammed-everything room. The princess sat on a mahogany curule chair, her gown poofed over its sides, peering at her pretty young face in a silver mirror. The mirror reflected no shock when her abductor entered, though one of her eyebrows rose to a judgmental point when Blackfeather tore the rose from his teeth.

“Resistance is useless, Princess. I have come to …”

“Kidnap me, yes. For the bounty.” The princess stood, smoothed her dress and kicked over the curule chair. “It took you long enough.”

Blackfeather’s rose dropped to the plush carpet. “Aren’t you even going to scream? What kind of princess doesn’t scream?”

The princess swished ’round the room, mussing up bedcovers and papers. “Obviously I’ll scream. I’m no amateur. But if I scream too soon, the guards will… AAAHHmmmmff!”

With a grand leap, Blackfeather slapped his palm over Princess Malene’s mouth as Phinn bent double to fit himself through the balcony door. “Are we having a giggle or a kidnapping, then?” Phinn grumbled.

The princess wrenched her face away from Blackfeather’s grasp. “What is that?”

“That, your defenseless highness, is a river troll, the second of your captors.”

“And the handsomer,” muttered the princess, who tried to swish away from Blackfeather and was deterred by his blade at her throat.

“I’ll ignore that, seeing as how you are suffering such great trauma.”

Phinn stomped in his slow way to a gilded birdcage, inside of which perched a small white bird. “That’s a rare bird. Is it a Trostanian White?” he said, then whistled through the fork in his tongue.

Princess Malene bopped Blackfeather over the head with her mirror and, while he wailed, sashayed over to a ring box by her bed. “Obviously. One of fifty left in the world.”

“Pretty thing. Shouldn’t be in a cage. What’s its name?” Phinn unlatched the cage door with surprising dexterity and the bird hopped onto his head.

Blackfeather struck a daring, adventurous, lunging pose and began again. “It’s no use resisting! Away we go and no more delay!”

The princess whisked past Phinn and his newfound pet to rifle through another drawer. “Coocoo D’Etat.”

Blackfeather’s lunge drooped. “Ah … what?”

“It’s the bird’s name.”

Phinn shook his great scaley head. “I don’t like that. I’ll name it Susie, after my old uncle.”

“No use resisting!” Blackfeather tried a third time. “Away we…”

“I won’t go anywhere without my signet ring,” snapped Princess Malene. “How will you prove you have me if your ransom note doesn’t bear my insignia?”

“Ransom note?” asked Phinn.

“Ransom note?” asked Blackfeather.

The princess sighed. “Do either of you know anything about kidnapping, at all?”

The boys looked at one another, then back at her.

“No use resisting,” said Blackfeather, quieter this time.

“Ah! There it is.” Princess Malene slid the ring on her finger, threw back her head, and let loose a terrorized shriek. Phinn winced. Blackfeather jumped. The bird pooped on Phinn’s head. “No! Please! Do not take me! I’ll give you anything!” She swung out one arm and knocked down a blown-glass lamp; it shattered into a million shards on the floor below. “You filthy rogue! You beast! Unhand me!”

Guards pounded at the door and the three made a dash for the balcony, Princess Malene screaming her protests even as she rode down the chain, holding onto Phinn’s neck. Once they landed in the thorny maze, though, she smoothed out her dress and peered into the dark. “Which way to your hideout?”

“It’s almost as if you have ordered this enterprise done yourself,” complained Blackfeather.

“Of course I did,” huffed Princess Malene. “One can’t be a proper princess without being kidnapped for ransom. All the best ones are.”

“Seems fair,” said Phinn as he jerked on the chain, pulling the anchor loose along with much of the balcony railing.

The roar of engines and barking dogs in the near distance sent the three running through the maze without further conversation.

---

“Beware, Princess! Ruffians are about!” Blackfeather posed in a deep lunge, his hand on his sword hilt, as a trio of cagey foes in tattered black cloaks emerged from the dead-end shadows of the thorny maze.

“Thanks for doing the climbing and grabbing part,” said the largest of the hooligan trio with a gap-toothed smile. He gestured toward the princess with a spiked mace. “We’ll take it from here.”

“I guess they’ll get the bounty, then,” said Phinn.

“Ludicrous!” cried Blackfeather. “I will make ribbons of these scruffy barbarians.”

“Outnumbered, aren’t we?” mused Phinn, though no fear edged his voice.

“They are no match for me. Look at them. It is as if they have never heard of a tailor,” scoffed Blackfeather.

The princess crossed her arms and drummed her fingers. “Could whoever is kidnapping me please put a rush on it? The maze guards should be on their way.”

“Yer guards aren’t feeling well.” The second-largest enemy spat on the ground, then jabbed a thumb over his shoulder. “We bopped their heads together and now they’re napping. We’ll do the same to you if you can’t otherwise keep quiet.”

“I shall acquaint you with my blade for threatening royalty in that fashion, you boor.” Blackfeather drew his sword with a satisfying shhhiinnnggg. “Uncouth louts, meet my sword, Blackfeather.”

The Princess paused her dramatic despair. “You named your sword after yourself? Of all the egomaniacal …”

“I have much in common with my sword,” smouldered Blackfeather.

“I don’t even want to know.”

“Not sure which of these fussy chickens is the princess,” quipped the smallest of the thieves, cutting short the quarrel. He yanked a sabre free of his belt.

“Shame to muss the boy’s hair,” hooted the largest.

“You s’pose he’ll be offended if the blade that kills him ain’t clean?” The second-largest produced two knives from his vest.

“Leave these imbeciles to me, Phinneas,” commanded Blackfeather. “I will take them all together!”

“Alright,” said Phinn, who amused himself by catching fireflies for Susie’s supper.

The mace had not completed its first arc before Blackfeather dashed straight into the foes, his blade leaving a blooming crimson kiss in the torso, arm and face of each in turn. Quick lunges kept him out of reach; his flashing sword seemed to extend to twice its length. The slice of the sabre, the flash of knives, the swings of the mace caught only air and earned the hoodlums stinging lacerations. Down the dangerous pathways Blackfeather dueled, blocking, feinting, ducking and slashing with grace and pithy insults. “You strike with the speed of a tortoise! Tell me the name of your blademaster so that I may blame him for your untimely demise! I will plant a rosebush on your grave, fiend!”

But while Blackfeather chased the bigger two down a blind dead-end, the smallest tough guy ducked round the fray and grabbed the princess.

“He’s made off with your bounty,” called Phinn.

Blackfeather sprinted after the abductor, but lost him in the dark labyrinthine passageways. He returned to find the other two had squirreled off as well.

“Help, Phinneas!” cried Blackfeather.

“Thought I was to leave the imbeciles to you.”

“We cannot allow these ingrates to steal what we have rightfully seized!”

“Fair enough.” Phinn hoisted up the anchor by its chain and threw it forward into the darkness. When he yanked it back, its hooks had dug into the jackets, belts, and thighs of the three blubbering, thorn-raked goons, not to mention a tumbleweed of prickly thorns. Princess Malene toppled off the shoulder of her captor and into Blackfeather’s embrace, a single thorn scratch weeping blood onto her pale cheek.

“Well done, Phinneas!” whooped Blackfeather.

“You fools,” whimpered the princess. “Don’t you know … the Hardy Orange thorn… is poisonous… to princesses?”

Her eyes closed as she went limp in Blackfeather’s arms.

Royal guards rushed out in a absurd tumble to the balcony above. “They escaped this way!” cried one.

Blackfeather whirled in a panic. “Never fear! I memorized the way… left, left, right… no, it’s backward on the way out…”

“No time for puzzles, I’d say,” said Phinn, and he lumbered straight into the Hardy Orange maze wall, stomping it down into a crumble-squish of finger-long thorns and half-ripe fruits.

---

Phinn chewed on his pipe while a bobber floated on the still water of a pond. He sat on a rock, half snoozing, jerking awake whenever his fishing pole slipped out of his claws.

On the grass beside him, Blackfeather had surrounded the unconscious princess with plucked flowers. “Look at her,” whispered Blackfeather in awe. “Is she not the most captivating thing you have ever seen? Her hair. Her pale skin. Her delicate fingers, how they clutch her prized mirror! Her eyebrows, arched as if to say… as if to say…”

“…let me sleep,” said Phinn.

“No, that’s not it. There is a… a dare in her expression. ‘Do you dare to do what must be done?’ Yes, your highness, I…”

“I meant, let me sleep,” said Phinn with a sharp-toothed yawn. “You kept me up all night with your princess-stealing.”

“How can you think of slumber when such an adventure is about?” Blackfeather dropped with great drama to his knees beside the princess and tucked her hair behind her ears. “When such a beauty needs aid? Never fear, my lady. Blackfeather is here.” With that, he bent and brushed his lips against hers.

Phinn snored.

Susie, perched comfortably on Phinn’s nose, tweeted a morning song.

A red-whiskered carp poked its head out of the pond to peer with suspicion at the bobber.

Princess Malene did not stir.

“That’s bizarre,” said Blackfeather, startling Phinn awake. “Something went wrong with the kiss.”

“Like as not, it’s your technique,” said Phinn, making eye contact with the carp. “Kissing is an art. It’s all in the incisors.”

“I weep for troll women.”

“I haven’t yet had a complaint,” said Phinn as he casted again, landing the bait closer to the curious carp. “Come on, now. Heeeere my little breakfast. Take the juicy worm, now.”

“Your provinciality would drain the romance out of any but this exquisite moment,” said Blackfeather, and again he lowered himself to press his lips to Princess Malene’s, lingering longer this time.

Susie ate a fly out of Phinn’s ear.

The carp nibbled the bait.

Phinn snorted awake and yanked up his pole, piercing the carp through its coquelicot-mustachioed lip.

Princess Malene did not stir.

“Preposterous!” cried Blackfeather. He pouted with crossed arms while Phinn reeled in the carp. “Something is wrong with her, because I am the best kisser in this land.”

Phinn raised up his wriggling catch, but Blackfeather was too despondent to admire it. “Maybe she needs to be awake to enjoy it,” offered Phinn.

“That is the point of the kiss,” cried Blackfeather, startling Susie. “To wake her up.”

The carp died.

“Kisses don’t wake up princesses. Who told you that nonsense?” Phinn bit the head off his breakfast and chewed while shaking his head at his friend.

“They don’t?”

“Of course not. Only the tickle of a seraphim’s feather will wake a sleeping princess. Blue feathers work best.”

Susie nodded in agreement.

“That … that makes so much sense!” Blackfeather sighed with relief. “Why else would my kisses be ineffective? Now, where do we get this famed azure plume?”

“Beats me. Not as many seraphim about as there used to be. Why do you care anyway? I thought we were her kidnappers, not her heroes.”

“We can’t very well collect a bounty on a princess in a coma.”

“Seems you rather like her.”

“Like her? Dear, sweet Phinneas. The crevasse between heroism and villainy is not wide, but it is deep.”

“Take care not to fall in when you jump over, then.” Phinn swallowed the remainder of the carp and, as was his habit after eating anyway, fell again to napping. Once he was sure that Phinn wasn’t watching, Blackfeather took Princess Malene’s hand.

“I shall be the one to tickle you awake, your highness,” he whispered. “I care not where the adventure takes me.”

‘The Forest Witch’

Through the forest Blackfeather, Susie and Phinn journeyed, the slumbering Princess Malene draped over the troll’s shoulders, until they reached a cottage, roundish and squat, with vines overtaking the stones and pleasant-smelling smoke coming from the chimney.

Blackfeather flourished one arm. “At last! We have found the old witch’s cottage!”

“Which witch?” asked Phinn.

“Whichever witch witches in this forest.”

Phinn flung one of the princess’ flopped arms, the mirror clutched in her grasp, back over his shoulder. “Maybe we should leave a forest witch alone.”

“Normally I would, Phinneas, but witches collect magic items. Unless you have the address of a generous seraphim?”

Phinn shrugged, toppling Malene into Blackfeather’s arms. Blackfeather oofed, then rang the doorbell with his nose.

A gray-haired woman dressed in gray answered, drying her hands on her skirt.

“Greetings, old witch!” cried Blackfeather. “I am in dire need of -”

“No,” she said.

“But, dear old witch, I have not yet made my enquiry.”

“Go on then,” she said.

“I am in dire need of an azure plume from the wing of a seraphim,” said Blackfeather.

“No,” she said.

Blackfeather, who had not been told no often enough in his life, wavered. “But I… I have carried this princess across all of the forest…”

“I carried her mostly,” muttered Phinn.

“I figured,” said the witch.

“What reason could you possibly have for refusing us?” asked Blackfeather, flabbergasted.

“You called me old.”

“I didn’t mean old so much as ugly,” whined Blackfeather. “Of course you understand.”

“I do,” said the witch. “Handsome men like you only keep company with beauties.”

“Precisely,” said Blackfeather.

“Like the dead one there,” said the woman.

“Yes… I mean no!” cried Blackfeather. “She is only partly dead. She was poisoned by…”

“…a Hardy Orange thorn,” sighed the witch. “Those moronic mazes.”

“You must help me.” Blackfeather’s eyes filled with tears. “I have never loved as deeply as this.”

“Then don’t wake her up,” said the witch. “Nothing kills a good love story like a conscious woman.”

“You know nothing about love,” said Blackfeather.

“You know nothing of women.” The witch bent to sniff at the princess’ thin exhales, then lifted one limp royal wrist to peer into the mirror. “Within every beautiful princess sleeps a powerful shadow.”

“There is no shadow inside this girl,” said Blackfeather.

“You’re right, but you don’t know why,” said the witch with a wry smile. “Give me the mirror, and I’ll give you the feather.”

“The mirror isn’t ours to give,” said Phinn.

Susie agreed.

Malene snored.

“Done!” oofed Blackfeather with the desperation of a man whose arms are buckling under the dead weight of a princess.

“Come in,” said the witch.

---

Malene felt a feather-soft tickle on her nose and opened her eyes.

“Phinn! She’s awake!”

She laid on a kitchen counter in a witch’s cottage, made evident by the shelves of stoppered jars, the dried herbs hung on the walls, and the witch sitting by the fire.

A golden-haired man holding a shining seraphim’s feather bowed. After a blink or two, Malene recognized him, fuzzily, as her recent captor. “My lady,” he crooned, “I have carried you across a vast forest to find the feather that would tickle you awake.”

“I carried you mostly,” said a troll at the door. He was too big to fit inside, so only his head was stuck through. Coocoo D’Etat preened herself on his head.

Malene, satisfied at having been awakened in suitable fashion, rounded out the adventure by falling in love. “My hero,” she gasped, touching her rescuer’s cheek with the back of her hand while trying to remember his name. “How can I ever thank you?”

The feather floated to the floor as the man gathered her into his arms. “I ask only for a kiss, my love.”

The princess melted into his arms and they kissed. It was a fantastic kiss, pulled off with nary a tooth bump and minimal halitosis, the kind of kiss that kicks off a proper happily ever after.

“Be sure to invite me to the wedding,” said the witch.

“The what?” asked Malene’s true love with his mouth still full of kiss.

“The wedding,” repeated Phinn helpfully.

“The wedding!” squealed Malene.

“Now now…” The lover boy backed up a step, his palms outward. “Marriage is… it is such a big leap from the first kiss, is it not?”

“Not in these stories,” said the witch.

“Oh, we shall have a huge royal wedding, much bigger than my sister’s, and the train on my dress will be a mile long,” cried Malene.

“However,” mused the witch, “you do need two royals to have a royal wedding.”

“Indeed,” said the man. “Though I am courageous and fierce and the best kisser on the continent, I am not of royal blood, and so our love must always be the forbidden kind… which is anyway my favorite.”

Malene wept. “But I want a royal wedding.”

“A queen can promote a rogue to a royal,” suggested the witch.

“A pauper to a prince,” said Phinn.

“A bandit to a baron,” said Coocoo in bird language.

“A degenerate to a duke?” said Malene, sniffing away tears.

“A loser to…”

“That’s enough,” said the man.

“Then again,” mused the witch, “you are just petty royalty. If only you were, say, Queen of the Eventides.”

“Then I could marry whomever I please!” cried Malene. “So all we must do is defeat the Storm Queen.”

“Unlikely,” said the witch.

“We have a troll, and my lover’s blade,” said Malene.

“You’ll need a powerful mage,” mused the witch, gazing into her new mirror. “And a dragon or two.”

Malene shrugged. “Then I shall have a dragon or two.”

“Can’t just pick up a dragon from the market,” said Phinn.

“A mage, though, is very near,” said the witch.

“Wait.” Malene pointed at the witch. “Is that my mirror?”

“A price had to be paid for the feather,” said Malene’s nervous fiancé.

The witch twirled the mirror in her hand. “He didn’t know the mirror’s purpose, I assume.”

Malene leaped to her feet – then stumbled from the painful poking-pin sensation of her limbs waking. “You will return it.”

“No,” said the witch. “But I will return this.” She rapped her knuckles on the mirror’s back, and out of the glass swirled a dark shadow that collected itself into the shape of Malene.

The rescuer clamped his fist around the hilt of his sword, but Malene stopped him with one raised finger. The shadowy mirror-Malene’s finger raised, too. Their fingertips touched.

“Once upon a time,” said the witch, “a king and a queen had a baby.”

The two Malenes pressed their palms together, and their hands became one.

“The princess was beautiful, but if she didn’t get her way, she became a tantruming horror. And this princess, having been born with some… not insignificant magical ability, made an obvious mess when angry. And obvious Mageborn children go straight to the Storm Queen’s army.”

The shadow and Malene moved closer until they stood nose-to-nose.

“I would tell most parents to deal with their own brats, but the king and queen were quite generous. So I trapped their daughter’s shadow in this mirror, and ever after, she behaved like a useless, spoiled princess. But now…”

The two princesses enveloped one another, the shadow hidden completely away. “Now,” said Malene, “it is time to be queen.”

“I don’t think it’ll work,” said Phinn.

Malene spun to face the troll and the swordsman, and in a flash of long-dormant magic transformed into the shadow once trapped within the mirror. “I will have a dragon!” she announced. “I will have a dragon in every color! And I will be Queen of the Eventides, and we will live happily ever after, and that is final!”

As quickly as it had appeared, the shadow faded, and the lovely princess remained. With a flouncing of skirts and a charming smile, Malene squeezed through the door past Phinn.

The adventurers stumbled from the cottage in shock. “So, Blackfeather,” said Phinn, “We’ll be going the other way, right?”

“That’s it! Blackfeather!” cried Malene from the garden. “I had completely forgotten his name.” And with that, she skipped away down the forest path.

“Look at her, Phinneas,” sighed Blackfeather. “Such pluck. Such moxie!”

“So we’re going with her, then,” said Phinn. “Toward dragons.”

The witch scooped up the feather from the floor. “Have fun storming the Storm Queen,” she called, then slammed the door behind them.

The berserker dropped to the ground between the fire and the old druid, axes clinking at her belt, a caribou hock in one fist. Behind them, the others daubed the wattled longhouse walls with dung and straw where freezing wind whistled through.

“It’s explanation time, old man,” she demanded. She took a big bite of the meat, leaving strips dangling, and pointed the hock at the druid. “That’s the fifth earth tremor in an hour. It’s knocking holes out of the walls now. I know you have some old story for every little thing that happens.”

“There is a truth for everything,” he corrected in a low drone. “Beneath us slumbers Gudmund, the giant elder, son of Gunnr the Great Oak, and brother of Gymir, his bitter rival.” His fingers danced like punctuation in the firelight. “The brothers’ war grew so violent that nothing could live among the ruins of their hatred, so Gunnr sang a song to make them dream, then buried them deep underground, one in each hemisphere of the world. Gudmund was banished to the northern half, and Gymir was banished to the south…”

“Wait. Gymir was the father?”

“Gymir is the brother of Gudmund and the son of Gunnr,” groaned the old druid. “Pay attention.”

“I am.”

“Gunnr transformed herself into the Great Oak that spears through the world, its branches growing on either side, its roots holding her sons captive. Where their breath seeps through to the surface, there are life-giving wells from which can be drawn great power.”

“I will find one of those!” the berserker announced, her mouth full. “The west people wouldn’t hunt at our borders if we had ancient power-breath.”

“The nearest well is at the center of a temple, guarded by the enormous Fortress, so that humankind will not kill itself with the power therein.”

The berserker gnawed at the meat, her brain clicking through calculations. “I could scale a fortress,” she mumbled.

The old druid chuckled. “Do not wander away with your mind. You must learn this story well, for it is you who will tell it after I’ve gone.”

The berserker snapped up her eyes to the old druid. “Where do you think you’re going?”

There was a long silence, during which the berserker did not breathe, until it was apparent that the old druid had nodded off into sleep. The berserker poked him in the shoulder; the old druid snorted and resumed: “Gudmund the Elder stirs. His breath comes stronger through the well. The ice has melted, and it is this elder’s breath that shakes the earth. I must go to the other side of the world to see to the wells of Gymir the Elder.”

“You? You cannot wander to the other half of the world. You are eight hundred years old.”

The old druid croaked, his version of a laugh. “I am not quite so helpless as you think. Not all battles are won with steel.”

“If this Gudmund man is causing the quakes with his bad dreams, I shall put him permanently to sleep. I will go down the well and bury my axe in his eye. I will fish him up by the nostrils and punish him before the people, at the Thing.” The berserker rose, holding up one axe, her voice rising. “I am not afraid of any man who can be held captive by a silly tree!”

The old druid rose with a groan and creak of joints, then patted her back. “It is difficult to see clearly through a blood-soaked helmet. No, this battle is not yours, nor mine. This is a terror from which we must run. You will lead our people as far from the well as you can, and I will pass through the womb of the Great Oak. I will not be alone.”

“Then who will…”

The earth shook again, stronger than before, rolling logs away from the fire. The berserker muttered to herself as she kicked them back into place with one boot heel. When she turned back, the old druid had already shuffled out of the longhouse.

In the distance, the howls of wolves sounded through the frozen air.

---

A dire wolf raced out of the temple’s fourth circle, tongue lolled out to one side, panting, exhausted terror in his eyes, his thick fur matted with dried blood. His back legs were caked up to the stifles in red loamy mud; he’d kicked free in time to get bit in the muzzle by something venomous. He skidded to a stop where mud met ice, into the forelegs of the alpha, his eyes down, unsure whether to be more frightened of what he’d run from or what he’d run into. The ground rumbled, the ice cracking outward in long lines. The alpha’s hackles rose, ears twitching at the sound of his pack howling, whining and yipping in pain. He could name every one of those sounds: son, daughter, mate, packmate, friend.

After the first quake, the alpha had inspected the inner circles of the ancient temple, his nails tapping on the ice, his breath fogging in the frozen air. A foreign scent bothered at his nose. The tremors intensified, the scent grew stronger and the pack’s restless whines and tail-chasing had to be contained with barked orders. Within hours, the ice in the first circle melted into pools of water that the ground drank up with greedy thirst. The second and third circles, once ice and brick, became mud. The scent choked every inhale, and the constant shaking set the wolves to howling.

Then, the vines appeared.

They were like nothing the wolves had seen. They whipped out from the mud, piercing blind in all directions. They wrapped around the temple pillars, crumbling them to gravel. The pack tore them apart, but within minutes the thick stems grew anew. The well itself, once richly decorated with sculpture and carvings, became nothing but a dark hole in the ground leaking putrid air. The inner sanctums turned to rubble.

Eggs frozen for untold millennia bubbled up from the mud and broke open, spilling out long-toothed reptiles. The wolves went to battle, ears flat, snarling, leaping in fast and retreating in the way of the hunt until the blood of their prey dribbled out in thick clots that fed the carnivorous mud. But the creatures could not be contained – and the surviving reptile hatchlings grew larger than the wolves. Everything birthed in the fertile mud was bloodthirsty and more dangerous than anything the wolves had hunted before. The mud itself was an enemy, drinking the wolves into itself, forcing them farther and farther back from the well.

They might have fought back the horde if not for the insects. Clouds of bloodsucking mosquitoes and hives of venomous wasps burst upward. Crimson ants burrowed into the wolves’ fur and chomped into their belles. The pack snapped their teeth into the stinging swarms to no avail, bit into their own itchy hindquarters, limped on poisoned limbs.

The guarding of the Halcyon Well had been the alpha’s vocation since the temple had been built, from materials found nowhere near the frozen tundra, by a people whose lineage had died out before their story could be told. It was unthinkable to abandon it. Yet without a pack, an alpha commands nothing.

“Get the others out,” he snarled at the beaten-down wolf, who turned without protest and ran again into the doom. The alpha turned snout to the moon.

“Old friend,” he growled into the empty air, “I have need of you.”

Then, Fortress let loose a wild howl that carried for miles.

The old druid cut a formidable figure, antlers bursting from his headdress, ceremonial furs draping from shoulders to boots. Before him stood the enormous tree, her branches concealing the soupy-gray sky for one-hundred steps, her trunk so wide around that it took 10 men gripping hands to encircle it, the face of the Mother carved into it at eye-level with the druid.

“My pack has pulled your old bones on the sled through snowdrift these many days,” grumbled Fortress. “Why have you not yet opened the door in the tree? Have you forgotten how?”

“Patience, old dog. She is perplexing and must be appeased.”

“It has been far too many seasons since you appeased any woman,” growled Fortress.

The druid’s face wrinkled into a smile. “There is a saying among the people. The maiden requires a strong gaze, but the mother, a hungry stomach.” He dug through the snow at the base of the tree, producing a handful of green acorns. He rapped the shells off with his staff, then gnawed at the bitter nut meat. “Let us see what nourishment the Mother has for us,” he said, feeding one also to Fortress.

They waited in silence, side by side. Although he expected it, the ensuing stomach cramps bent the druid double. he leaned against the tree trunk, his head swimming. His vision blurred. The world darkened and peeled away. Fortress, too, fought the sick that threatened to overtake him. Sensation drained from him like water drops from an icicle until his spirit floated above, watching.

“Why has a child come so far from his home?”

The voice came from the tree. The druid looked for the Mother’s face and found it far above him, her stern eyes looking down.

“I have come to beg passage to the other side of the world, Mother,” he said, and his voice was high and breaking. He looked absurd in his ceremonial furs, which had grown to tent him. His beard vanished. Even the stag horns on his headdress shortened until they were the nubs of a fawn. Where the formidable druid had stood, Fortress saw a boy.

Branches stretched out from the trunk to touch the boy’s face. “It has been so long since I held a son,” crooned the voice within the tree. “Your companions may pass, but you will stay with me.”

“No!” Fortress tried to lunge forward but felt as if he were moving through mud.

The boy held out his arms to embrace the dire wolf, burying his face in Fortress’ furry neck, petting his nose and ears. “Go on, old dog. This is the only way.” Then, his body collapsed into the embrace of the branches.

A wolf whined, then another. Fortress backed away from his old friend. “Call out to the spirit of our fallen packmate,” he commanded, then craned his neck to the moon and let loose a mournful howl. The others followed, one after another wolf song ringing out as the Mother hugged the druid, wrapping her branches round and around him until he was pinned against the trunk.

The pack watched as the face of the Mother turned into a wide hollow. A thick, humid scent leaked from it, steaming the freezing air. Fortress moved closer, tentative, sniffing. Inside, a wooden staircase spiraled down into the dark.

Rona wriggled her nose to dislodge frozen boogers as she hiked along the wolf-drawn sled tracks, catching up to the old druid. Days behind her was her village, her hunting ground and her people, who had abandoned their homes to escape the Churn. Her mother and father had expected her to follow, but she’d never see them again.

She had never disobeyed a direct order from the druid before. His kind had civilized the tundra generations before Rona’s people arrived. They kept the secrets of mathematics and letters and stars. If the old druid had told Rona to jump to the sun, she’d have died leaping. But this, she could not abide.

She was crouched down, checking the freshness of the tracks, when the horned skvader attacked.

The white-furred monsters flew up from the snowdrifts, at least a score of them, wings spread, horns spiraling up between long ears, eye level with Rona’s knee.

Rona cursed, dropped her pack, unleashed the axes from her belt with practiced thumb flicks. “Always skvader,” she groaned, eyes flicking from opponent to opponent as they circled her, shrill squeaking sounding from between their mean, nasty, pointed teeth. “…or bears…” The frenzy of battle built up a drumming beat within her ribs. Her left axe swung out, sliced a jagged opening in one of the demon hares’ throats. The beast fell with a bubbling sound in time for two more to jump up. “…or reindeer or stink oxen.” Her arms crossed. The axe blades clashed together and sparked as she let loose a barbaric yawp; the noise scattered the skvader, but they rounded back on their long thumpers, running horn first straight at her goodies. One sailed up to her jugular and lost its head for its trouble. Another dug its front claws into her belly; she whirled, spinning up snow, shook it loose and opened up a hole for the creature’s guts to spill out.

“Same beasts all the time,” she griped as the others came at her. “And the old man thinks he’s going to the other side of the world without me?” Front, back, side, she whirled, axes slashing, spinning, her vision washed red with her fury. The skvader jumped and flanked, shrieking out their madness; Rona shrugged off her cloak and her skin steamed in the freeze.

“He thinks I’ll run from danger!” she cried. “Hide with the children!” She carved the snow back with her rear foot, shifted her weight low, swung wide with her left axe, hooking up three hares by their horns on the blade. “I never run!” she roared, and jumped into the center of the herd, spinning, axes flying, flinging away hooked skvader, dropping dead hares one after another with soft foomph sounds into snowdrifts.

“Never!”

She whirled, hacking and slashing in wide arcs through the air, twisting too sharp at last so that she fell onto her butt in the midst of what had once been a herd of enraged skvader. Her breaths came fast and foggy; snow sizzled on her overheated skin. It took a good minute to realize the danger was over.

Groaning, she sheathed the axes and reviewed the damage. She’d taken a few scrapes. Some claw marks on her belly. New scars to join the old, and nothing needing stitches, so she drew on her cloak and pack and went about collecting bunny carcasses for the night’s dinner. Never a bad idea to bring a fresh, bloody present to a pack of wolves.

The tracks and spoor were fresh; she’d overtake the old druid within the hour.

---

Rona sniffed the air, searched the empty sled, dug into the fresh tracks, then peered into the tangles of The Great Oak. Buried in the winding branches, she caught the old druid’s eye.

She startled and skidded backward. Without the vision of the poisoned acorns, the druid appeared old as he’d been, but his eyes and complexion were empty and mealy gray.

“Oh, no.” Realization smacked into her. “No, no.” She dropped her pack and drew out her axes, War Screech and Whistle. She chopped at a branch that held the druid’s throat fast, then another, splitting through branch after branch while her eyes welled up. “No!” But green shoots burst out and turned into new hard branches that wrapped the old druid up all the tighter. “Stupid tree!” she shouted, tears freezing into icicles on her cheeks.

Rona glared at the tree, wiped her nose on her cloak and huffed out a resolute breath. “Welp,” she said to no one, “north is always forward.” She hooked her axes back on her belt and stuck her head into a gaping hollow in the tree. The spiraling dark yawned up.

“Hallo?” she called, and her greeting echoed back. There was nothing left to do but climb inside.

Down and down and down she went into the enveloping black, slipping on moss and jutting roots, butt-bumping down. Down into the heat, so that she threw away her cloak. Down into the thin air that made her drowsy, though she napped only a nightmarish hour at a time, stairs jutting into her sides and knees, before continuing down and down and down, until, somehow, she found she was going up. As bad as down had been, up was worse. She sweated and grumbled and drank the last of her waterskin. Up and up and up, she counted the steps to keep her mind on something.

Just before she would have gone mad, she saw a thin light high above. With a last great effort, she climbed toward it. The light came from another hollow, and she tumbled out of it into the other half of the world.

The jungle air felt like drowning to breathe. The sunlight was orange instead of the white-gray she had always known; the trees burst with colorful leaves and flowers. She climbed a set of stone steps, axes at the ready, her tongue sticking to the dry roof of her mouth, past crumbling stone statues and ancient architecture no longer loved. Echoing from somewhere unseen, a merchant called out his wares. At the top of the stairs, the stone path widened into a courtyard. In the middle, a great crystal hung suspended in the air over a glowing well. Her mouth opened and closed like a fish; she was so stunned that she almost missed the wolf pack that surrounded the well.

The alpha was almost as tall on all fours as she on two. She gripped her axes, glaring, but the alpha’s hackles didn’t rise. “Ah, good,” growled the alpha. “The druid hoped you would follow.”

War Screech and Whistle dropped loose in her fingers. “And who are you?”

“I am Fortress,” he replied.

“You are the fortress?”

“And you are Rona the Berserker.”

“I am,” she said, and as if he had reminded her of herself, she squared her shoulders.

“Then come with me,” said Fortress. “There is fighting to be done.”

The berserker dropped to the ground between the fire and the old druid, axes clinking at her belt, a caribou hock in one fist. Behind them, the others daubed the wattled longhouse walls with dung and straw where freezing wind whistled through.

“It’s explanation time, old man,” she demanded. She took a big bite of the meat, leaving strips dangling, and pointed the hock at the druid. “That’s the fifth earth tremor in an hour. It’s knocking holes out of the walls now. I know you have some old story for every little thing that happens.”

“There is a truth for everything,” he corrected in a low drone. “Beneath us slumbers Gudmund, the giant elder, son of Gunnr the Great Oak, and brother of Gymir, his bitter rival.” His fingers danced like punctuation in the firelight. “The brothers’ war grew so violent that nothing could live among the ruins of their hatred, so Gunnr sang a song to make them dream, then buried them deep underground, one in each hemisphere of the world. Gudmund was banished to the northern half, and Gymir was banished to the south…”

“Wait. Gymir was the father?”

“Gymir is the brother of Gudmund and the son of Gunnr,” groaned the old druid. “Pay attention.”

“I am.”

“Gunnr transformed herself into the Great Oak that spears through the world, its branches growing on either side, its roots holding her sons captive. Where their breath seeps through to the surface, there are life-giving wells from which can be drawn great power.”

“I will find one of those!” the berserker announced, her mouth full. “The west people wouldn’t hunt at our borders if we had ancient power-breath.”

“The nearest well is at the center of a temple, guarded by the enormous Fortress, so that humankind will not kill itself with the power therein.”

The berserker gnawed at the meat, her brain clicking through calculations. “I could scale a fortress,” she mumbled.

The old druid chuckled. “Do not wander away with your mind. You must learn this story well, for it is you who will tell it after I’ve gone.”

The berserker snapped up her eyes to the old druid. “Where do you think you’re going?”

There was a long silence, during which the berserker did not breathe, until it was apparent that the old druid had nodded off into sleep. The berserker poked him in the shoulder; the old druid snorted and resumed: “Gudmund the Elder stirs. His breath comes stronger through the well. The ice has melted, and it is this elder’s breath that shakes the earth. I must go to the other side of the world to see to the wells of Gymir the Elder.”

“You? You cannot wander to the other half of the world. You are eight hundred years old.”

The old druid croaked, his version of a laugh. “I am not quite so helpless as you think. Not all battles are won with steel.”

“If this Gudmund man is causing the quakes with his bad dreams, I shall put him permanently to sleep. I will go down the well and bury my axe in his eye. I will fish him up by the nostrils and punish him before the people, at the Thing.” The berserker rose, holding up one axe, her voice rising. “I am not afraid of any man who can be held captive by a silly tree!”

The old druid rose with a groan and creak of joints, then patted her back. “It is difficult to see clearly through a blood-soaked helmet. No, this battle is not yours, nor mine. This is a terror from which we must run. You will lead our people as far from the well as you can, and I will pass through the womb of the Great Oak. I will not be alone.”

“Then who will…”

The earth shook again, stronger than before, rolling logs away from the fire. The berserker muttered to herself as she kicked them back into place with one boot heel. When she turned back, the old druid had already shuffled out of the longhouse.

In the distance, the howls of wolves sounded through the frozen air.

---

A dire wolf raced out of the temple’s fourth circle, tongue lolled out to one side, panting, exhausted terror in his eyes, his thick fur matted with dried blood. His back legs were caked up to the stifles in red loamy mud; he’d kicked free in time to get bit in the muzzle by something venomous. He skidded to a stop where mud met ice, into the forelegs of the alpha, his eyes down, unsure whether to be more frightened of what he’d run from or what he’d run into. The ground rumbled, the ice cracking outward in long lines. The alpha’s hackles rose, ears twitching at the sound of his pack howling, whining and yipping in pain. He could name every one of those sounds: son, daughter, mate, packmate, friend.

After the first quake, the alpha had inspected the inner circles of the ancient temple, his nails tapping on the ice, his breath fogging in the frozen air. A foreign scent bothered at his nose. The tremors intensified, the scent grew stronger and the pack’s restless whines and tail-chasing had to be contained with barked orders. Within hours, the ice in the first circle melted into pools of water that the ground drank up with greedy thirst. The second and third circles, once ice and brick, became mud. The scent choked every inhale, and the constant shaking set the wolves to howling.

Then, the vines appeared.

They were like nothing the wolves had seen. They whipped out from the mud, piercing blind in all directions. They wrapped around the temple pillars, crumbling them to gravel. The pack tore them apart, but within minutes the thick stems grew anew. The well itself, once richly decorated with sculpture and carvings, became nothing but a dark hole in the ground leaking putrid air. The inner sanctums turned to rubble.

Eggs frozen for untold millennia bubbled up from the mud and broke open, spilling out long-toothed reptiles. The wolves went to battle, ears flat, snarling, leaping in fast and retreating in the way of the hunt until the blood of their prey dribbled out in thick clots that fed the carnivorous mud. But the creatures could not be contained – and the surviving reptile hatchlings grew larger than the wolves. Everything birthed in the fertile mud was bloodthirsty and more dangerous than anything the wolves had hunted before. The mud itself was an enemy, drinking the wolves into itself, forcing them farther and farther back from the well.

They might have fought back the horde if not for the insects. Clouds of bloodsucking mosquitoes and hives of venomous wasps burst upward. Crimson ants burrowed into the wolves’ fur and chomped into their belles. The pack snapped their teeth into the stinging swarms to no avail, bit into their own itchy hindquarters, limped on poisoned limbs.

The guarding of the Halcyon Well had been the alpha’s vocation since the temple had been built, from materials found nowhere near the frozen tundra, by a people whose lineage had died out before their story could be told. It was unthinkable to abandon it. Yet without a pack, an alpha commands nothing.

“Get the others out,” he snarled at the beaten-down wolf, who turned without protest and ran again into the doom. The alpha turned snout to the moon.

“Old friend,” he growled into the empty air, “I have need of you.”

Then, Fortress let loose a wild howl that carried for miles.

The old druid cut a formidable figure, antlers bursting from his headdress, ceremonial furs draping from shoulders to boots. Before him stood the enormous tree, her branches concealing the soupy-gray sky for one-hundred steps, her trunk so wide around that it took 10 men gripping hands to encircle it, the face of the Mother carved into it at eye-level with the druid.

“My pack has pulled your old bones on the sled through snowdrift these many days,” grumbled Fortress. “Why have you not yet opened the door in the tree? Have you forgotten how?”

“Patience, old dog. She is perplexing and must be appeased.”

“It has been far too many seasons since you appeased any woman,” growled Fortress.

The druid’s face wrinkled into a smile. “There is a saying among the people. The maiden requires a strong gaze, but the mother, a hungry stomach.” He dug through the snow at the base of the tree, producing a handful of green acorns. He rapped the shells off with his staff, then gnawed at the bitter nut meat. “Let us see what nourishment the Mother has for us,” he said, feeding one also to Fortress.

They waited in silence, side by side. Although he expected it, the ensuing stomach cramps bent the druid double. he leaned against the tree trunk, his head swimming. His vision blurred. The world darkened and peeled away. Fortress, too, fought the sick that threatened to overtake him. Sensation drained from him like water drops from an icicle until his spirit floated above, watching.

“Why has a child come so far from his home?”

The voice came from the tree. The druid looked for the Mother’s face and found it far above him, her stern eyes looking down.

“I have come to beg passage to the other side of the world, Mother,” he said, and his voice was high and breaking. He looked absurd in his ceremonial furs, which had grown to tent him. His beard vanished. Even the stag horns on his headdress shortened until they were the nubs of a fawn. Where the formidable druid had stood, Fortress saw a boy.

Branches stretched out from the trunk to touch the boy’s face. “It has been so long since I held a son,” crooned the voice within the tree. “Your companions may pass, but you will stay with me.”

“No!” Fortress tried to lunge forward but felt as if he were moving through mud.

The boy held out his arms to embrace the dire wolf, burying his face in Fortress’ furry neck, petting his nose and ears. “Go on, old dog. This is the only way.” Then, his body collapsed into the embrace of the branches.

A wolf whined, then another. Fortress backed away from his old friend. “Call out to the spirit of our fallen packmate,” he commanded, then craned his neck to the moon and let loose a mournful howl. The others followed, one after another wolf song ringing out as the Mother hugged the druid, wrapping her branches round and around him until he was pinned against the trunk.

The pack watched as the face of the Mother turned into a wide hollow. A thick, humid scent leaked from it, steaming the freezing air. Fortress moved closer, tentative, sniffing. Inside, a wooden staircase spiraled down into the dark.

Rona wriggled her nose to dislodge frozen boogers as she hiked along the wolf-drawn sled tracks, catching up to the old druid. Days behind her was her village, her hunting ground and her people, who had abandoned their homes to escape the Churn. Her mother and father had expected her to follow, but she’d never see them again.

She had never disobeyed a direct order from the druid before. His kind had civilized the tundra generations before Rona’s people arrived. They kept the secrets of mathematics and letters and stars. If the old druid had told Rona to jump to the sun, she’d have died leaping. But this, she could not abide.

She was crouched down, checking the freshness of the tracks, when the horned skvader attacked.

The white-furred monsters flew up from the snowdrifts, at least a score of them, wings spread, horns spiraling up between long ears, eye level with Rona’s knee.

Rona cursed, dropped her pack, unleashed the axes from her belt with practiced thumb flicks. “Always skvader,” she groaned, eyes flicking from opponent to opponent as they circled her, shrill squeaking sounding from between their mean, nasty, pointed teeth. “…or bears…” The frenzy of battle built up a drumming beat within her ribs. Her left axe swung out, sliced a jagged opening in one of the demon hares’ throats. The beast fell with a bubbling sound in time for two more to jump up. “…or reindeer or stink oxen.” Her arms crossed. The axe blades clashed together and sparked as she let loose a barbaric yawp; the noise scattered the skvader, but they rounded back on their long thumpers, running horn first straight at her goodies. One sailed up to her jugular and lost its head for its trouble. Another dug its front claws into her belly; she whirled, spinning up snow, shook it loose and opened up a hole for the creature’s guts to spill out.

“Same beasts all the time,” she griped as the others came at her. “And the old man thinks he’s going to the other side of the world without me?” Front, back, side, she whirled, axes slashing, spinning, her vision washed red with her fury. The skvader jumped and flanked, shrieking out their madness; Rona shrugged off her cloak and her skin steamed in the freeze.

“He thinks I’ll run from danger!” she cried. “Hide with the children!” She carved the snow back with her rear foot, shifted her weight low, swung wide with her left axe, hooking up three hares by their horns on the blade. “I never run!” she roared, and jumped into the center of the herd, spinning, axes flying, flinging away hooked skvader, dropping dead hares one after another with soft foomph sounds into snowdrifts.

“Never!”

She whirled, hacking and slashing in wide arcs through the air, twisting too sharp at last so that she fell onto her butt in the midst of what had once been a herd of enraged skvader. Her breaths came fast and foggy; snow sizzled on her overheated skin. It took a good minute to realize the danger was over.

Groaning, she sheathed the axes and reviewed the damage. She’d taken a few scrapes. Some claw marks on her belly. New scars to join the old, and nothing needing stitches, so she drew on her cloak and pack and went about collecting bunny carcasses for the night’s dinner. Never a bad idea to bring a fresh, bloody present to a pack of wolves.

The tracks and spoor were fresh; she’d overtake the old druid within the hour.

---

Rona sniffed the air, searched the empty sled, dug into the fresh tracks, then peered into the tangles of The Great Oak. Buried in the winding branches, she caught the old druid’s eye.

She startled and skidded backward. Without the vision of the poisoned acorns, the druid appeared old as he’d been, but his eyes and complexion were empty and mealy gray.

“Oh, no.” Realization smacked into her. “No, no.” She dropped her pack and drew out her axes, War Screech and Whistle. She chopped at a branch that held the druid’s throat fast, then another, splitting through branch after branch while her eyes welled up. “No!” But green shoots burst out and turned into new hard branches that wrapped the old druid up all the tighter. “Stupid tree!” she shouted, tears freezing into icicles on her cheeks.

Rona glared at the tree, wiped her nose on her cloak and huffed out a resolute breath. “Welp,” she said to no one, “north is always forward.” She hooked her axes back on her belt and stuck her head into a gaping hollow in the tree. The spiraling dark yawned up.

“Hallo?” she called, and her greeting echoed back. There was nothing left to do but climb inside.

Down and down and down she went into the enveloping black, slipping on moss and jutting roots, butt-bumping down. Down into the heat, so that she threw away her cloak. Down into the thin air that made her drowsy, though she napped only a nightmarish hour at a time, stairs jutting into her sides and knees, before continuing down and down and down, until, somehow, she found she was going up. As bad as down had been, up was worse. She sweated and grumbled and drank the last of her waterskin. Up and up and up, she counted the steps to keep her mind on something.

Just before she would have gone mad, she saw a thin light high above. With a last great effort, she climbed toward it. The light came from another hollow, and she tumbled out of it into the other half of the world.

The jungle air felt like drowning to breathe. The sunlight was orange instead of the white-gray she had always known; the trees burst with colorful leaves and flowers. She climbed a set of stone steps, axes at the ready, her tongue sticking to the dry roof of her mouth, past crumbling stone statues and ancient architecture no longer loved. Echoing from somewhere unseen, a merchant called out his wares. At the top of the stairs, the stone path widened into a courtyard. In the middle, a great crystal hung suspended in the air over a glowing well. Her mouth opened and closed like a fish; she was so stunned that she almost missed the wolf pack that surrounded the well.

The alpha was almost as tall on all fours as she on two. She gripped her axes, glaring, but the alpha’s hackles didn’t rise. “Ah, good,” growled the alpha. “The druid hoped you would follow.”

War Screech and Whistle dropped loose in her fingers. “And who are you?”

“I am Fortress,” he replied.

“You are the fortress?”

“And you are Rona the Berserker.”

“I am,” she said, and as if he had reminded her of herself, she squared her shoulders.

“Then come with me,” said Fortress. “There is fighting to be done.”