Two rats poked heads up from the prow, like stealth pirates.
“My babies!” Anadil gasped. “You’re alive!” She hugged her pets to her chest, then spotted the scrapes and gashes on their bodies, their fur caked with dried blood. “What’s happened?” she asked and listened attentively as they babbled in her ear.
“They found Merlin in the caves,” Anadil translated breathlessly. “Then one went to tell Dovey where he was, while the other built this boat, knowing the Dean would send someone to rescue him.”
“Wait. How’d a rat build this? These are crog bones,” said Dot, bewildered. “How’d a rat kill crogs?”
“Talented rats, remember?” Anadil grinned.
The rats started inflating, bigger, bigger, the size of dogs, the size of tigers, the size of elephants, teeth sharpening to fangs. They loomed over Dot in the water—
“I get it,” said Dot.
The rats shrank down, showing off the wounds they’d gotten in the fight. But then they looked at Dot and seemed to remember something, their faces sobering. Together, they whispered to Anadil. The pale witch tensed, her gaze moving to the boat’s basin.
Wedged between panels of bone was a bloody Sheriff’s badge, the gold crest of Nottingham dented and scratched.
Dot went still.
A rat flipped the badge over.
The back was covered in desiccated fireflies, flickering with light, as if they’d held on to life as long as they could.
Gently, the rat stroked the fireflies’ bellies.
Shades of orange filled in across their bodies, forming a projection from the past. This was footage from the dark Woods, footage the fireflies had captured of the Sheriff of Nottingham, soaked in blood, cradled by Sophie as he spoke his last words.
“Tell Dot . . . me and her mother . . . it was love,” the Sheriff breathed.
The fireflies went dark.
Slowly Hester and Anadil lifted eyes to the Sheriff’s daughter.
“Those were scim wounds,” Dot said. She picked up her father’s badge. Held it close to her chest. “The Snake killed my dad. Japeth killed him.”
There was a calm to her. A quiet rage.
“Tedros will win the tournament. Even if I have to die to help him,” Dot promised, steel-cold. “Excalibur will take that scum’s head.”
She turned to her friends. “Get in the boat.”
Hester and Anadil obeyed.
With the rats pushing from below, Dot seized on to the prow, teeth clenched, eyes afire, as the bone-boat surged forward, plummeting over the fall.
She was the only one who didn’t scream.
HESTER AND ANADIL clasped hands as the boat drifted through crogs, their crocodile snouts sniffing at the witches, drool coating their black teeth. Some snapped their jaws, others blew steam through nostrils, but none attacked, recognizing the threat of the bony vessel in which the girls rode.
Dot was relishing their frustration, Hester noticed, the round-bellied witch posed with a foot atop the fore, Anadil’s rats on her shoulders, her dress stained with chocolate, like the least menacing sea captain ever. There were times over the years when Hester wondered if Dot was put in the right school . . . if her sweetness and sympathy and soft heart should have made her an Ever instead. But watching Dot clutch her father’s bloody badge, her eyes pinned to the brewing crogs, daring them, wanting them to attack, Hester sensed a darkness that her friend had held in reserve.
A fly hovered near Dot’s ear. Pzzt. Pzzt.
Dot snatched it dead.
Hester and Anadil exchanged glances.
Perhaps the School Master had placed their roommate well after all.
As the boat approached the island, Hester saw that penetrating the caves would be no easy feat. First, there was a crumble of jagged rock, twenty feet high, before the main thrust of stone even began—a smooth, circular tower, rising off the crumble, with the entrance to the dozen caves symmetrically arranged at the hours, each opening barbed with closely packed spikes. To rescue Merlin, they’d have to scale the rock heap, regather at the base of the caves, and hope the one with the wizard was closer to the six o’clock end at the bottom than the twelve o’clock end up top.
“Which cave is he in?” Anadil asked her rats.
The rats squeaked back.
“Two o’clock,” Anadil groaned.
Hester wasn’t surprised. There was too much on the line for this to be easy.
As the witches started climbing, another fly besieged Dot, this one peskier and more frenzied than the last.
“Today is not the day to mess with me,” she seethed, swatting at it.
“Wait!” Hester cried, staying her hand just in time.
It wasn’t a fly.
The witches kneeled atop a flattish rock, looking up at Tinkerbell, sour-faced and droopy-winged, clearly having flown a long way to see them and resenting both the journey and murder attempt. Panting hard, the fairy drew a wad of parchment from her green dress and stuffed it at Hester, who quickly opened it—
Merlin’s Beard
Bloodbrook Inn
“Agatha’s handwriting,” said Anadil.
“Merlin’s beard?” Dot questioned. “What kind of message is that?”
“Answer to Tedros’ first test,” Hester decoded. “Merlin’s beard must be what the Green Knight wanted. Agatha’s telling us that they need it. That they need us.”
“Why Bloodbrook Inn, then?” Anadil asked.
“Halfway between Camelot and Borna Coric. Must be on their way there,” Hester ventured. “Bloodbrook’s inn is famously haunted. No one ever checks in. It’ll be a safe meeting place. Right, Tink?” She turned to the fairy. “We figured out Japeth is king. Killed Rhian and took his name. Which means the Snake’s trying to win the first test too.”
Tinkerbell jingled, ratifying her conclusions.
Relief burned through Hester’s chest. If Merlin’s beard was the answer, then clearly Japeth hadn’t figured it out. He was headed to Putsi, after all. Nowhere near the wizard.
“This is why our side will win. Because we work together. Because we finish missions,” Hester boasted, reminding her friends that they’d doubted her. She turned to Anadil’s rats. “And you’re sure Merlin’s inside the caves? That he’s still alive?”
The rats responded. “Heard him snoring under his cape,” Anadil translated.
“Caves didn’t curse him, then,” Hester said, resuming her climb. “He is a wizard, after all.” She looked back at Tinkerbell. “Tell Agatha we’ll be there by nightfall.”
Hester scaled higher, watching the fairy fly off. Dot and Anadil followed, the coven pulling over rocks swiftly, bolstered by Agatha’s message and the ease of this climb compared to sky-high chocolate. By the time the witches reached the base of the caves, clouds had moved in, a harsh rain falling.
“Doesn’t look like anyone’s been here in a while,” said Anadil, scanning the island perimeter. “No footprints.”
“For good reason,” said Dot. “Daddy told me the tale of ‘The Ill-Timed Queen.’ The Storian’s history of a queen who discovered the Caves of Contempo that didn’t obey time. One of these caves kept the queen and her king young forever. Meanwhile, their children continued to grow old, and soon older than her and the king. Unsettled, the queen tried another cave to keep pace with them, to age her and the king just enough . . . only to mistime it and revert her and the king to their real ages, well over a hundred years old, upon which they dropped down dead. That’s why, to this day, rulers of Borna Coric keep the caves fortified and off-limits—not just to stop trespassers from using them, but to stop themselves.”