Текст книги "Hero"

Автор книги: Alethea Kontis

Соавторы: Alethea Kontis
сообщить о нарушении

Текущая страница: 10 (всего у книги 17 страниц)

He caught her hands in his easily, too easily, and lowered his head to look deep into her eyes. “There she is.”

“Welcome back,” said Betwixt.

“Where—” But Saturday didn’t need to ask. The answers came and disappointed her as quickly as they had upon waking. “Right. Sorry.”

“I hit her and she apologizes!” Peregrine said far too loudly. “I was going to congratulate her on not having lost her mind, but now I’m not so sure.”

The food settled in her nauseous belly and sanity slithered back under her skin. Saturday watched Peregrine’s mouth as he spoke, imagining what it would be like to kiss him once more and telling herself to stop. Warm, she thought. It had been warm in his arms. She’d like to be warm again.

“Her brain’s still addled,” said Betwixt.

Saturday was inclined to agree.

Peregrine handed her another rough bread roll and the cup, which he’d replenished from the helmet at his feet. She drained the cup again and inhaled the roll while he refilled the cup once more. Peregrine emptied the bags of fresh moss and scattered it across the clean room while she chewed and drank and slowly came back to life.

“I’m okay now,” she said finally, glad that he had goaded her into conversation before she was conscious enough to worry about what to say. Actions spoke louder than words and he was helping her, despite the fact that she was about to be the cause of his death. “The witch gave me new tasks. She wants me to find her mushrooms and seeds and some sort of spiced moss.”

“No brownie teeth?” asked Peregrine.

“She must already have some,” said Betwixt.

“What’s a brownie? Wait, no . . . If it has teeth, I think I saw one earlier. What’s spiced moss? And where am I supposed to find seeds in a cave?”

“Don’t worry. I’ll help you with all of it,” said Peregrine. “But first things first. Are you okay enough to help me lug these bags across the mountain?”

Saturday groaned.

“I have a wagon,” he said.

“Really?”

Peregrine shrugged. “It’s a small thing, more of a litter or a wheelbarrow, I suppose, but it’s useful enough. And it functions! Sort of.”

“Sort of?”

“When it doesn’t, he fixes it,” said Betwixt.

“Works for me,” said Saturday.

“And I’ve brought you a change of clothes for that bath I promised.”

“Gods, yes.” Those were the very words she’d wanted to hear. She expected some small retort from Peregrine at her blatant enthusiasm, but when none came, she turned to find him staring at her like an idiot. Seizing the opportunity, she moved to return his earlier favor by slapping him out of his dazed state. He caught her hand before it connected.

“Don’t start,” he said, shaking off his brief catatonia. “That look on your face just reminded me of . . .” He shook his head again and dropped her wrist. “I’ll explain later. Let’s go.”

Saturday jumped up. “Yes, sir!” She wavered a bit as the blood rushed to her head. That was dumb—she should have remembered to rise more slowly. Mama called it the curse of the tall folk.

Peregrine shot her a look. “Remember who you’re addressing, Woodcutter.”

“Yes, ma’am? Whatever.” Saturday tapped her temple. “Addled brain, remember?”

“Fools,” said an exasperated Betwixt.

“Cats,” mocked Peregrine.

The cat in question stuck out his large pink tongue.

Now that her belly was temporarily sated, Saturday’s muscles complained as she hefted the bags onto Peregrine’s strange cart. It had been stupid of her to faint and lie still on such cold ground for so long—the frost from the unforgiving icerock had seeped into her sinew and frozen her limbs stiff once more. As much as she longed to be clean, she loathed the thought of bathing from a metal helmet-basin the same temperature as the walls, but she’d suffer through it if it meant not having to smell herself for another night. Peregrine might even take pity on her and let her sleep by a fire again. If she didn’t open her gob and screw it up first.

Peregrine’s “wagon” had been cobbled together from what looked like the broken wooden handles of axes, spears, and maces. She’d noticed a dwarf’s hammer or two in the armory before their sparring match, but she wondered what Peregrine had used for nails. The wheels of the wagon were shields, hammered down and reinforced with leather straps. It wasn’t the smoothest device she’d ever pulled, but it was indeed functional.

Once the cart had been filled, Saturday grabbed the handles and began jogging down the corridor. “Where are we off to?”

“Let me carry that for a while,” said Peregrine. “You’ve already done enough for today.”

Why was he being nice to her? She’d been nothing but rude to him, and that was before the pyrrhi had come bearing tidings of doom. When Peter was nice to Saturday like this, it was always because he wanted something.

“I need to stay warm,” she told him. “I’ll hand it back over to you when I tire. I promise.”

Peregrine agreed, silly boy. Peter never would have accepted such a deal. He knew that Saturday never tired.

True to her word she ferried the moss all the way to their destination. Peregrine called out twice to get her to stop and change direction, and twice to pick the mushrooms and moss for her second task.

“Do you think it’s wise to collect these ingredients for a spell we’re trying to stop?” she asked him.

“With the amount of magic at her disposal, thanks to your presence, I suspect the ingredients don’t matter much,” he said. “And fulfilling her task will keep you alive long enough to fulfill your destiny.”

“Destiny” was a kind word for the chaos Saturday was meant to unleash here. She only hoped she found her sword first. It would be a shame to die without it.

Saturday did not recognize any part of these caves. She had no idea where they were. It hurt her head less to concentrate on stretching and keeping her footing instead of the twists and turns around and through as their path gently sloped heavenward.

She was grateful that most of the way had been level and wide enough for the cart—only once did they have to unload and reload the wagon, after moving it to an opening several feet off the ground. The air was considerably warmer here. Her muscles relaxed even as her boots slipped on the perspiring rocks beneath her.

Once Saturday was able to relieve herself of her burden, she looked around and lost her breath at the sight.

They had climbed all the way to paradise.

12

Beyond Saving

OF ALL the nooks and crannies Peregrine had discovered in the caves, the garden felt the most like home. Under different circumstances he would have kept this room from Saturday, but their time on the mountain had been cut short. In a fortnight, the garden might no longer exist.

The walls here were solid quartz crystal instead of cloudy calcite and icerock. Ironically, these towering, flowering crystals looked more like ice to him than the rest of the rime-ridden caverns. The ceiling came to a point, creating a clear pyramid, with walls thin enough to let the sunlight through when there was any and the starshine in when there wasn’t. Currently, there wasn’t.

Not that one could track days reliably under this skylight by any means. In Starburn the sun came for summer days and fled for the winter ones, but the Top of the World lay even farther north. If one truly meant to monitor the passing of time, this room would only be good for marking seasons instead of days. Peregrine knew this because, eventually, he had given up on those as well.

He rubbed out the simple ward he’d drawn on the floor to keep the brownies away—something he’d learned from Leila’s book—and led Saturday over the threshold with the wagon. Betwixt carried the lantern he clenched in his beak to a pillar on the far side of the room.

“The garden was here when I arrived,” Peregrine said to Saturday’s stunned silence. He removed a dagger and flint from inside his skirt pocket and set about lighting the torches he’d wedged in between various crystals on the wall. “It was much smaller then, but the rudiments had been started. We’ve built up the soil from the detritus of the other plants that can’t survive this environment and Cwyn’s used peat. That silly magicked rake turned out to be useful after all.”

Saturday paid him little mind. She focused instead on the greenness around her, the life that this garden brought to the dead mountain as it stretched up to the crystal peak. Peregrine remembered feeling that same reverence once, so very long ago, and he hadn’t been born and bred in a forest as she had. It meant the world to him that he could share this with her.

“This garden was Leila’s alone; I’ve never heard the witch mention it, and we’ve never brought it to her attention. I suspect it was one of the reasons Leila devised her plan to escape. Being here does make one miss—”

“Everything,” finished Saturday. Her voice filled with more emotion than he’d thought her willing to share. “The Wood. My family. So much work to do.” The wistfulness in her voice trailed away with the thought. She reached out to caress a leaf of the closest plant. “Seeds. Where did you get the seeds?”

“The same place I got the swords and lanterns: from the dead.” She did not shudder at his words as he might have, but she was a warrior, not he.

“Provisions,” she deduced.

“Most of what they carried was rotted to nothing, but some desiccated seeds remained dormant. Whatever dust I found, I scattered here.”

“Any dust is fair game for compost,” Betwixt added. He flew to a crystal outcropping above the garden and stretched out like a sphinx. “Since most of the dust here is of a magical origin, seeds that might never have sprouted were convinced to do otherwise.”

“We had a garden at home,” said Saturday, “and the Wood has its own bounties, but I don’t recognize many of these plants.”

“Nor did I,” Peregrine admitted. “Some are still a mystery. Many times I didn’t recognize the skeletons from which I took them. Some of the fruits of my labors—”

“Our labors,” corrected Betwixt.

“ . . . our labors—my apologies—have been tested by good old trial and error. Most are palatable. Others are just beautiful. There was a particular inedible orange specimen with incredibly tough skin that stank of sour milk when it blossomed.”

“Trollish,” said Betwixt. “Had to have been.”

“That’s the only plant I’ve ever weeded on purpose. There’s a goblinfruit here that’s unappetizing to look at but delectable on the inside . . . like goblins themselves, I suppose. I was lucky to cultivate a patch of wheat and corn for grains and tea for . . . well, tea. Then there are the more familiar vegetables: the potatoes and gingerroot took quite well, as did the onions and the—”

“—beans,” Saturday finished for him, tilting her head back to admire the winding stalks that grew farthest up the wall, twining in and out and around crystals all the way to the peaked roof. This time she did shudder, but Peregrine hadn’t the faintest idea why.

“But this is my pièce de résistance.” Peregrine moved aside the large leaf that hid his tomato plants from view. Saturday’s eyes widened. She quickly snatched one of the fattest ripe red fruits and sank her teeth into it. Her eyes closed in bliss and she made that face again, the same one she’d made when he’d offered her the bread and the bath.

She had yet to thank him in so many words, but at the moment he’d forgotten what a pest she could be. She couldn’t argue with him if her mouth was full. Peregrine vowed to keep her clean and fed so long as she kept making that face.

Saturday groaned in delight and bit into the tomato once more. Peregrine smiled so hard, his cheeks hurt.

“Behave yourself,” Betwixt said to him.

Peregrine raised both hands innocently. “She’s the one making noises, not me.” He took a full step away from Saturday for good measure, though, in case he accidentally ended up kissing her again.

Saturday took another bite and scowled at them both for interrupting her delightful communion with the divine fruit. She made to wipe the juice from her face with her sleeve and then stopped, no doubt reminded of exactly how disgusting she was from head to toe. “It’s warm in here,” she said with her mouth full, as if she’d only just realized that the change in temperature wasn’t solely from the effort she’d exerted in lugging the cart far longer than she should have.

“The heat, damp, and sun make this spot ideal for growing things,” said Peregrine. He motioned for her to follow his outstretched arm. He did not trust himself to touch her—let her think his need for space was because of the smell.

Their destination lay beyond a thick, low wall of crystal and stone that looked solid but for the steam that rose up from behind it, betraying the true breadth of the cavern. Saturday led the way around the wide outcropping, startling a colony of ice bats. The torchlight caught their clear wings, showering the floor beneath them with sparkles of light. Peregrine tried to stop her as she reached out to the crystalline wings, but he was not close enough to grab her filthy arm in time. Saturday flinched and pulled away fingertips scored with lines of blood.

“Sorry. Should have mentioned those. Crystalwings. They’re as beautiful as they are sharp, and completely useless as a food source. Don’t put that in your mouth.” His fingers slid in the slime that covered her elbow and he quelled his gag reflex. He wasn’t sure how she’d been able to stand herself this long. “Just wash it off.”

The boulder they stood on overlooked a vast chasm, but one could guess from the steam that it was a real lake and not a mirage. Still, Saturday tossed a small handful of the pebbles from her pocket and watched the ripples mar the ceiling’s reflection in happiness.

“Clever girl,” said Peregrine. It had taken him much longer to come up with the same trick.

The water was clear as far down as the meager torchlight permeated. Now that the ripples had dispelled the deceitful reflection, the crystals under the water could be seen. Those at the perimeter were beautiful and sharply pointed. But unlike in most lakes, there was no wildlife, and no discernible bottom.

Peregrine attempted to coax Saturday forward with his voice in an effort to refrain from touching her again. “It’s deep. Impossibly so. The water is heated from the heart of the mountain. This high up it’s tolerable. Pleasant. Blissful, even.”

“For humans,” Betwixt interjected.

“A mile or so down and you’d be boiled alive.”

“The witch would have her stew,” said Saturday.

Threatening to put Jack in her cauldron was one of the witch’s favorite pastimes. “Woodcutter bouillabaisse,” said Peregrine. “Quite the delicacy. Now, if you walk back this way, there’s sort of a path down to—” But she had already removed her clothes.

The soiled rags lay in a puddle at her feet. Above them stood a statue of uninterrupted golden skin, save for that thin blue-green bracelet at her wrist. She was built like a man, her incredible upper body tapering down to a small waist, thin hips, and strong legs that went on for miles, but there were subtle curves there, if one knew to look for them. Her unfortunately matted hair—short in the back and long in the front—did not mar the perfection that was her body. Peregrine was fit and lithe himself, but he was nothing compared to this monument of womanhood now framed by equally giant and exquisite crystals. She raised her arms straight out to the sides, revealing little in the way of breasts, and in one fluid motion dove neatly from the boulder into the clear crystal water beneath them.

She took his breath away. His visions of this woman instantly morphed from enjoyable and innocent to absolutely torturous. He needed to concentrate on something else, quickly, before he completely embarrassed himself.

“Impressive,” said Betwixt.

It all happened so fast that by the time it occurred to Peregrine to look away, she was already gone. He averted his gaze anyway, and busied himself by picking up her filthy clothing with as few fingers as possible and tossing it down to the water’s edge. He took his time retrieving the sack from the cart that contained the fresh change of clothes he’d brought for her, as well as a hairbrush for her lank locks and a horse brush with which to clean her clothes. If they were beyond saving he’d chuck them in the privy cave. As his talents at fabric restoration had grown, he’d found few things in these caves beyond saving.

He carried all these items back to the water’s edge, keeping his head down to watch his footing, and then tended to the washing. He glanced up only to make sure she had surfaced again, even though her intake of breath echoed in the crystal chamber and gave her away.

“If you swim gently along the edges of the pool, you’ll find a yellowish sediment on some of the ledges. Rub it into your skin and hair—it’s nothing like soap and smells a bit like rotten eggs, but you’ll find it does a fair job of tackling the grime.” Peregrine addressed the stains on her shirt instead of the dirty blond head bobbing in the water not ten feet from him. He did not raise his voice; the echo carried his words adequately.

“Aren’t you coming in?” She asked the question in her normal voice, too strong for this chamber, but the tone was lighter than it had been. Peregrine could tell she felt better, and he was glad. “The water is lovely,” she said, more softly this time. Almost sweetly. “And that skirt looks warm.”

Right now, his skin felt hotter than the sun. No, Peregrine had absolutely no intention of going into that water. No, indeed. Not tonight. And never in her presence. “I’m fine, thank you,” he replied. “You enjoy it. I brought a brush for your hair, if you want it.” Without taking his eyes off the clothes, he nudged the wood-handled brush closer to the water’s edge.

“What’s the matter with you?” asked Saturday.

Peregrine dunked her soiled clothes in the water again, sprinkled them with sediment, and attacked them with the horse brush. Dirty clothes. Must get them clean. Very dirty. Whenever she was finished, they would unload the moss and pick ingredients for a stew. Didn’t need to unload the sacks tonight—that chore could wait for another day. Peregrine dunked the clothes again. Very dirty clothes.

“Hello?” said Saturday.

“What? Nothing,” said Peregrine. “I’m fine.”

Betwixt choked back a laugh, or a hairball. Either way, Peregrine continued ignoring his traitorous friend. He could blame his flushed cheeks on the fumes wafting off Saturday’s dirty clothes. The clothes she didn’t happen to be wearing.

“Come, now. You act like you’ve never seen a girl without her clothes on before.”

“I haven’t, actually.” Peregrine said the words under his breath, but they reverberated throughout the crystal chamber regardless. He braced himself for the raucous laughter he felt sure would follow from his companions, but none came.

“Seriously?” Saturday asked.

Peregrine soaked the clothes again and wrung them out. “Serious as a night without stars.” From what he could tell, what looked like dirt on the shirt and trousers was only stains now.

“Don’t you have any siblings?” He could tell by the sound of her voice and the slap of small waves that she had drifted closer to where he was sitting. She would choose the moment when he was at his most uncomfortable to ask him about his life.

Betwixt continued to subtly hack up hairballs. Peregrine wished fleas upon him. “My father suffered from a forgetting sickness,” he explained. “My mother felt it unwise to have more children. I was promised to a girl named Elodie of Cassot when she was a small child, but I never saw her again after that.”

“Forgetting sickness? I’ve never seen such a thing,” said Saturday.

“And I hope you never do. It is a living death, where a man’s mind dies, yet his body lives on.”

“That’s horrible.”

“You have no idea. We began to notice it, my mother and I, in the summer of my seventh year. He forgot small things at first, like phrases and appointments. Over the next few years he began to forget his past, and then his present. He forgot about Starburn—he could no longer leave his bedchamber because every room was strange to him. Finally, he forgot how to speak altogether. Mother dedicated her life to him, long after every memory he had of her was gone. I tried to be a son for as long as I had a father who remembered me.”

“How long did he last?” asked Saturday. “His body, I mean.”

“Too long,” answered Peregrine. “Long enough for me to hope he would die and put us all at peace. A terrible, selfish thing for a son to wish on his father.”

“But a sensible one. I assume his body finally complied?”

Peregrine laid the clothes out to dry. “It did. My mother followed him soon after.” He leaned back against the jagged crystal rocks and looked at her. She idly rubbed sediment in her hair while he talked. The fabric bracelet at her wrist looked dry as a bone.

He forced himself to remain calm while he handed her the brush for her hair; he was amazed his pounding heartbeat didn’t echo in the chamber louder than his voice. “I took my horse and escaped directly after the funeral, so eager was I to finally get away from that prison and on with a life of my own. I left Starburn in the hands of Hadris, my father’s—my—steward.”

“And you trusted this Hadris?”

“Enough to leave him in charge of the only world I ever knew,” said Peregrine. “Leila met me on the road from Starburn. She pretended to be a fairy granting me a wish.” He took up his long black and blue locks and shrugged with both hands full of hair. “I hate this stuff, but I can’t cut it. The curse won’t let me.”

“What did you wish?” asked Saturday.

“To live a long and fruitful life until I lost my mind—”

“—or any other major organ,” added Betwixt.

“Thought I was quite the clever young man for that bit,” said Peregrine. “In hindsight, I probably deserved what Leila did to me. It was rash to leave like that, and not at all honorable. My father would have been ashamed.”

“What?” Saturday gritted her teeth and growled at the ceiling. “Oh, you are a complete fool. I have half a mind to throw this brush at you.” What she did instead was worse: she lifted herself out of the pool.

Peregrine closed his eyes, thought about solemn things, and listened for the telltale sounds of her dressing.

“If I were your father, I would have wondered why you didn’t run away sooner. Do you honestly think he would have been happy knowing that he’d trapped his wife and son for so long? Would you wish the same upon your son? Or upon anyone for that matter?”

“No,” said Peregrine.

“You went straight from Starburn to this mountain, from one prison to another. No one deserves to be cursed, Peregrine, least of all you. You can open your eyes now.”

He was blushing again, but this time he wasn’t sure if it was from her presence or her words. He’d said as much to himself over the years, but like anything said too often, it had lost the weight of its reason over time.

“And yet I was cursed with you,” he said. “I don’t regret that one bit.” Now that she was clean, the urge to touch her again was overwhelming. He wanted to bury his face in her hair and make sure all the stench was gone.

“My family would likely disagree with you.” Dressed, though still damp, she’d finished with her hair, also still damp, and now stared at the small wooden brush in her large hands. “My sister gave me a brush like this once,” she said softly. “May I keep it?”

Because the request had been so genuinely polite, it caught him off-guard. “Yes,” he said, with probably more enthusiasm than he meant to reveal. She tucked the wooden handle inside her belt with its empty scabbard. She did look at him then and yanked his silver-blue lock of hair, just like a schoolboy.

“Maiden fair, oh, maiden fair,

What clever mischief do you dare?”

Her singing voice was not lovely, but it wasn’t meant to be. Peregrine responded to her schoolyard teasing by mimicking one of the scowls she loved so much and he was rewarded with an actual smile. He dared to hope a laugh might follow it, but the blinding light erased all thoughts from his mind.

The crystals in the cavern were glowing.

Saturday and Peregrine both raised an arm to shield their eyes from the glare. Peregrine heard more than saw Betwixt fly down and land with soft cat feet on the crystal boulder above them. “Look,” he said.

They lowered their arms. Peregrine no longer needed to squint at the crystals surrounding them. The harsh light was gone, as was any trace of torchlight or water’s reflection. What shone now from every flat surface they could see was the face of a skinny young girl.

This girl also tried to hide her beauty beneath formless boy’s clothes, but unlike Saturday the girl in the crystals would never be able to hide her porcelain skin, the curve of her full red lips, or her hair, thick and black as the night. Her large eyes were as blue as the twilight sky and just as full of mystery. Her dark brows, like thin raven’s wings, furrowed in concentration or determination. She seemed to be climbing a rope into the heavens, surrounded by the billowing gray sails of a ship.

As quickly as it had appeared, the scene in the crystals vanished. The shattered speckles of torchlight returned to their places scattered about the cavern as if they’d never left.

Nothing broke the silence for a while but ripples in the clear water.

“Did you recognize that girl?” he asked Saturday.

“I think that was my sister’s cabin boy,” she answered. “I only ever caught a glimpse of her, so I can’t be sure. But it looked like Thursday’s ship.”

Thursday the Pirate Queen—Peregrine remembered Jack’s stories well. There was sure to be a certain amount of mischief on that ship, and this girl was doubtless the only maiden aboard. Peregrine tried to wrap his mind around the inadvertent spell Saturday had cast.

“You were too humble with regard to the extent of your god powers,” he said.

“I did that?” she asked softly.

“Yes,” said Betwixt. “You did.”

So everything Cwyn had told them in the armory was correct, though Peregrine hadn’t thought he’d be witnessing an example so soon. “You can work a magic mirror.”

“I guess?” Saturday replied with little emotion. “I mean, I don’t know. My eldest sister can. Does. Whatever. I don’t have any magic.”

For someone so strong, she was excessively hard on herself. Beauty and godstuff may not have been the fey powers she wanted, but they were powers she possessed, and it was foolish of her to eschew them.

“Cwyn said you could control magic,” Peregrine reminded her, “not that you created it.”

“There is no need to create magic here,” said Betwixt. “Magic permeates the walls around us. You appear to siphon it far more easily than the lorelei can manage.”

Saturday remained defiant. “But I don’t know anything about magic.”

“You don’t have to know about it to wield it,” said Peregrine.

“Still, it’s a good idea to know about it so you don’t get anyone killed,” said Betwixt.

She threw up her hands. “How can you say that, while you look to me to lead you to your death?”

“I still have hope,” said Betwixt. “I believe in heroes.”

“What about you?” Saturday asked Peregrine. “You don’t believe we’ll survive the dragon, do you?”

She would value his honesty more than pretty words. “I don’t. But our lives don’t end here. There is still a spell to stop and a witch to kill and a dragon to wake, and I plan on doing all that next to the woman I love.”

He did not expect smiles and shouts of jubilation at his statement, which was good, for he did not receive them. Saturday’s brow furrowed. “You love me?”

Once more, he thought it best to be honest. There wasn’t time left to play games. “The gods have sent me dreams my whole life of a wild young woman with golden hair and bright eyes. I have always been in love with her. I had thought she was Elodie. Turns out, she was you.” He made no move to touch her.

“But what about Elodie? What about your betrothal?”

The last thing Peregrine wanted was for Saturday to think he was not an honorable man. “Elodie is a girl I never knew from a fate I was never meant to have,” he said. “True to Leila’s curse, I have experienced a long and fruitful life on this mountain. We may die up here in the next few moments, but I want to live those moments with purpose, filling them with as much as I possibly can. Don’t you?”

“Yes,” she answered, and he was pleased to see that her eyes were bright again. He hoped the last things he saw before his death were those eyes.

“We should make a plan,” said Betwixt. “The witch may be comfortable enough walking into this spell blind, but I’m not.”

“Agreed,” said Peregrine. “She’ll be preparing her cauldron even now. We’ll usher Saturday to the farthest end of the mountain with her bag of ingredients to lure the witch away from her lair. Then, Betwixt, you and I can—”

Saturday raised a finger. “I just have one question.”

“Yes?”

“You said I could work a magic mirror. Do you see a mirror anywhere?”

“Ah,” said Peregrine. She had a good point, which meant there was even more to her abilities than he had originally believed.

“And what does ‘ah’ mean where you come from?”

“If I may,” said Betwixt. “My dear, I believe you are a Transformer.”

“A . . . what?”

“Perhaps ‘mutant’ is a better word,” said Peregrine.

Saturday grimaced. “No. That sounds worse.”

“Changer? Transmograficationist?” Peregrine drew the long nonsense word out, making up each syllable as he went along.

“That sounds ridiculous,” said Saturday.

“That sounds familiar,” said Betwixt.

“Whatever you want to call it,” said Saturday, “I know I can’t change myself at all. If I could, I’d be taller.” She smiled at her joke. It was so nice to see her smile.

“Shapechanging is different,” said the shapechanger. “Cwyn described you as a vessel. Think of yourself as a tool through which magic uses itself to alter itself.”

“You are an enchanted weapon, all on your own.” Peregrine indicated the runesword still at his hip.

Saturday thought about it a moment. “That doesn’t make any sense.”

“It will,” said Betwixt.

“So . . . magic is using me?”

“This time it did, yes, like a petulant child wanting to be noticed. But only because you are ignorant.”