So she crept around the back of the big house like a thief, climbed up on the back balcony, and snuck in through the room that Rez and Heather shared. Sure enough, the room was empty, but Gwen’s secret entrance was spoiled when she ran into Robin heading the opposite direction in the hall.
Anyone else, she would have cracked a joke and squeezed past as fast as she could, but Robin’s face arrested her as much as their words did.
“You...found him?”
Their voice was plaintive, uncharacteristically full of longing and grief, and they floated to a bench along the wall and sat down, hard.
No matter what was happening between her legs and spinning in her head, Gwen wasn’t going to leave Robin like that. She sat beside them and held out the ornament. The tissue was sweaty from her hands, and it was hard to peel her fingers away.
“I found him.”
Robin gave a sigh and unwrapped the layers of tissue away without removing it from her hands; it was an unwieldy size for their diminutive frame; they were about the size of an American Girl doll, and that was an improvement over how tiny they’d been after the effort they had expended during the battle against the bleak. Gwen didn’t understand exactly how it worked, but something about the magic of this world was difficult for Robin to access, and as a creature entirely of magic, their stature was based on their power.
Robin called themself a fable, but Gwen’s Brothers Grimm and Disney movie-influenced childhood made her think of them as a fairy, with wings that Gwen saw as translucent and fluttery, and their tiny size. A crabby, wise-cracking, gender-neutral fairy more in nature like Captain Hook than the Tinkerbell that she teased them for being, but a fairy none-the-less. Right now, they didn’t seem to be interested in making jokes or trading good-natured insults.
But then, this was pretty momentous.
Gwen worried that unwrapping the ornament would crumble the last of her restraint, but seeing the ornament at last was actually better than the gnawing anticipation.
It was a deep orange-honey color, with delicate outspread wings and tiny white curved claws. A lion’s tail lashed behind it, and an eagle-like head arched from the four-legged body. The white ring of glass was wrapped separately, and Robin only folded back a bit of that tissue before they bowed their head and let all of their breath out.
Were they...crying?
Gwen was unnerved and wished she could comfort Robin, but wasn’t sure how. And what if she wasn’t really Henrik’s key and she couldn’t break the spell? Certain nether parts were quite convinced, but...
“Why...why me?” she had to ask.
“There were two spells at work, possibly three if Henrik got off a counterspell also,” Robin explained. “Multiple spells are tricky and unpredictable at the best of times...and it was surely not the best of times. Cerad and his witches cast a curse that would make the knights fragile, because they alone had the potential to take back the world from his darkness. I was the one who gave them a loophole for escape. Part of his spell said that no magic of our world could free them, so I found a new world, and bound them to a key that would complete them. I didn’t know who my spell would find, I only knew that you would be a perfect match, a resonant creature from this realm, someone good at heart and brave, as they are.”
They were silent a moment, stroking the cool glass, then sourly added, “And I swear by your gods that if you compare me to Merryweather from Sleeping Beauty, I will turn you into a mouse and set you loose in this house to be eaten.”
Gwen had been thinking of exactly that, so she had to laugh.
“You can’t do that,” she challenged. “You’re diminished here!”
Robin cracked their knuckles. “Do you want to find out?”
Gwen folded the tissue paper back over the gryphon. “I’m not going to take the chance,” she admitted. “I’ve got to save the world, remember? And Socks is a mighty hunter.”
Robin gave her a warm smile. “Henrik probably wouldn’t be happy with me if you were half chewed up and left in his shoe,” they agreed.
“That’s definitely not how I imagined meeting him. I was hoping for a few shreds of dignity.”
Downstairs, Vesta had caught sight of Socks, or perhaps a bird through the glass windows out the porch and began barking her head off. Fabio, not to be left out, added a few bass woofs while Heather scolded Vesta.
Gwen cradled the ornament into her hand. “I’d better go do this,” she said, as bravely as she could manage. “Before I lose what’s left of my nerve.”
Robin’s small hand on hers kept her from standing for a moment. “I never meant to cause you trouble,” they said solemnly. “I was trying to protect my knights and save my world’s last hope, not trap you to a destiny you didn’t want, and I never meant to endanger your world.”
They looked up at her with fathomless dark eyes in a pale face, grim and sincere.
There was probably something kind or thoughtful or poetic that Gwen could say in reply, perhaps insist that she wanted a destiny, that she wanted to be a hero. Instead she grinned. “Sure thing, Tinkerbell,” she teased them. “Let’s see about this world-saving, shall we?”
Robin’s face darkened into a scowl, but there was a twinkle of humor around their eyes as Gwen stood. She cradled the tissue-wrapped ornament in her hands and went down the hallway to the room that they’d set up for Henrik, just one door down from hers.
Pucker up, ornament.
3
Henrik was swimming through a sea of confusion. He had no body to direct, no power to control, and his helplessness ate at him. There had been a battle, he remembered. Robin had cast something. No, he had cast something? There had been such a chaos of spells, at least three of them colliding in a way that he knew meant trouble.
Cerad’s witches, his bleak forces, the dours...Henrik struggled to remember, to focus. He was glass, fragile, and the light he grasped for slipped through him as if he was transparent.
He was adrift, and angry for his weakness. He was a gryphon warrior! A knight of the fallen kingdom!
He couldn’t tell how long it had been, only knew that when he felt his limbs at last that they were strange and unfamiliar. He was clumsy, frustrated, and dazed, flailing wildly as life returned to him at last, feeling the unexpected brush of soft lips.
“Careful! Careful!” There was a woman before him, a sweep of silky black hair, short around an oval face. She was back-pedaling from him, and her dark eyes were wide.
She was holding his glass prison away from them, like she was protecting it, and Henrik felt a surge of rage. Was she the one responsible for his long enchanted slumber?
“Who are you?” he growled, but when he reached for magic to persuade her to answer, he was dismayed to find that nothing responded.
A weapon then, but when he reached for his axe, he realized that he was not only defenseless, but also completely naked, and he took a staggering step forward.
“What have you done to me?” he demanded.
“I’m your key!” the woman said wildly. “My name is Gwen. Your shieldmates are here, Trey and Rez, at least, and Robin is here, too, and it’s okay, we’ll explain everything I brought you clothes please put them on now.”