The celebration on the plain lasted long after the battle fires had died, despite the injuries that many had suffered before the monster horde had stopped fighting. The Seven and their gallant witnesses were hailed as heroes. Everyone wanted to congratulate them and thank them. The heroes in turn wanted to express what it had meant to them to see so many come to their aid.
Leo was especially in demand. To his great confusion, he was widely believed to have caused the miracle that had freed Rondo from the Blue Queen’s reign of terror. No one but Spoiler and Mimi had been close enough to see the queen snatch the Key to Rondo, but in the stillness of the frozen battlefield, many had heard Leo call the queen by her true name. They had also heard her do the unthinkable, and reject it. To reject one’s true name, the golden dragon and all the witches and wizards agreed, was to court disaster, as Indigo, the Blue Queen, had found to her cost.
Leo, Mimi, Hal, Tye, Conker, Freda and Bertha were besieged with invitations to attend the many celebration feasts that were being planned. They politely declined them all. But when at last the golden dragon had flown away, and the happy crowds had departed for the Black Sheep, Macdonald’s farm, the Hobnob Snug, Innes-Trule, the Castle of Cruelcliff and the Crystal Palace, Hal led his friends to the place where they all wanted to be – the little cottage by the river.
As Tye lit a fire, and Conker raided Hal’s pantry and began energetically making pancakes, the others threw open the windows and doors and sat together around the table. A gentle breeze wafted through the room, bringing with it the scent of growing things, and blowing away the smell of dust and fire. At the back of the house, the river flowed peacefully, carrying its secrets to the sea.
‘You did a good job with those willow trees, Mimi,’ Bertha said, looking approvingly at the feathery green branches bending and swaying just beyond the front door. ‘Lawks-a-daisy, they look exactly like they did before they were burned. And you unfroze the dragon. And you made the plain green again, and vanished all the queen’s monsters as well!’
‘Excellent work!’ Conker agreed, flipping a pancake.
Mimi smiled, her hand tightening on the pendant in her jacket pocket. ‘I couldn’t have done any of it if Leo hadn’t used the Key on me first,’ she said.
Leo hunched his shoulders. He still remembered how hard it had been to force all doubts from his mind, focus on the scruffy little dog tied to the drawbridge and imagine it changing back into Mimi Langlander. He had managed it – just – but the effort had been exhausting, and he had handed the Key to Rondo back to Mimi without a moment’s regret, and with a huge sense of relief.
‘How did it feel, being a dog?’ Freda asked Mimi curiously.
‘It felt really strange to be so small,’ Mimi told her. ‘I could hear really well, though – and I never realised how many different smells there were in Rondo! The worst thing was not being able to talk – not being able to tell Leo that the Tideseer had given us a clue about the queen’s name by telling us her own. But in the end that didn’t matter. Leo worked it out for himself – and worked out the name, too. I couldn’t have done that. I didn’t know there was such a colour as “indigo”.’
‘It’s one of the seven colours of the rainbow,’ Leo took pleasure in telling her.
‘You see? That rainbow was a good omen,’ she retorted smartly.
Conker brought a platter heaped with pancakes to the table, Hal found a pot of honey, and everyone began to eat.
‘I must admit I still don’t quite understand exactly what happened,’ Bertha confessed. ‘The name didn’t stop the queen. And even after denying it, she kept on for quite a while –’
‘The name weakened her,’ Hal said. ‘It made her desperate enough to snatch the Key from Spoiler and try to use it after he’d told her she couldn’t. And that was what brought her undone.’
Mimi nodded vigorously. ‘The Key can’t be used without the permission of a Langlander,’ she said with her mouth full. ‘That was the Artist’s safety-switch. When I saw the queen take the Key I suddenly had this really strong feeling that she was making a big mistake. I was sensing a disturbance in the Key’s magic, I suppose. I couldn’t be sure I was right, but… but it turned out I was, thank goodness.’
‘Leo was right, too,’ Hal said. ‘The Artist did see Langlanders as Rondo’s guardians.’
‘Just not in the way I thought,’ Leo said, looking down at his plate. Whatever the final result, he still felt ashamed when he remembered the reason for his frenzied rush to reclaim the Key.
‘And the Tideseer was right,’ Tye said quietly. ‘A Langlander’s decision led to the end, just as she predicted. But it wasn’t Hal’s decision, as we thought. It was Spoiler’s. We forgot that Spoiler is a Langlander too.’
Seeing that Bertha still looked puzzled, Mimi slowly repeated the last part of the Tideseer’s rhyme.
A Langlander who must decide,
May thrust old ways and thoughts aside
Or may instead refuse to break
The chains that fear and weakness make.
But if that choice is as I see,
The end will follow faithfully.
A gift she never cared to use,
And in the flame of battle fires,
Will gain the prize she most desires.
Bertha shook her head till her ears flapped. ‘Well, I might be being dense, but if I can see how that last bit is right, I’m a mushroom!’ she declared. ‘The queen didn’t –’
‘My brother broke the habits of a lifetime by refusing to let the queen use the Key, Bertha,’ Hal explained soberly. ‘Then the queen acted in character by seizing it. But in trying to use it against Spoiler’s will, she broke the magic that had given her life. As a result, she lost the gift she had never used or valued – the ability to grow and change – and gained the deepest desire of her heart – beauty that will never fade.’
Leo shivered, thinking of the exquisite, lifeless painting on the castle door.
‘So in the end we owe the victory to Spoiler,’ Conker grumbled, sucking honey from his moustache. ‘That’s a hard dot to swallow – right, Freda?’
‘Right,’ said the duck. ‘Where is Spoiler, by the way?’
Hal smiled ruefully. ‘I asked him to come with us, but he slipped away with Brewer. They’re heading for Flitter Wood, I’d say – to try to work out where you buried the heart-shaped box, and steal back the rest of the dragon’s heart.’
‘What?’ Conker spluttered, spraying crumbs all over the table.
‘But – but I thought Spoiler had reformed!’ Bertha cried in dismay. ‘He risked his life to save Leo! And he let Leo pick up the Key after – well, after the queen wasn’t a threat any more. He didn’t say a thing when the ogre took the magic mirror. Lawks-a-daisy, he even returned Princess Pretty’s boots! She was wearing them when she went home with Claude!’
Leo sighed. ‘Spoiler couldn’t wait to get rid of them. He said he didn’t like the way they made him feel.’
‘If stolen magic is regained, / Light will break where darkness reigned,’ Tye quoted with a smile.
‘Bertha, the stolen magic in the rhyme wasn’t the ogre’s mirror or the dragon’s heart,’ Mimi said gently, as Bertha again shook her head in bewilderment. ‘It was Princess Pretty’s boots! Everything changed when Spoiler took them back and put them on, because their magic is special. Anyone who wears them understands what it feels like to be the person who wore them before.’
‘Oh, my lungs and liver!’ Conker exploded. ‘Are you sure?’
Mimi nodded. ‘Leo and I suspected it because – well, mainly because of what Spoiler said and did after he had them on, but also because we remembered that when I’d worn them, I seemed to understand what it must be like to be Princess Pretty, who had worn them before me.’
‘I thought that was weird at the time,’ Freda said to Conker, who nodded.
‘And then we remembered that when Princess Pretty put on the boots for the first time, she felt sorry for her mother, who had tried them before her,’ Leo put in hastily, as Mimi went pink. ‘So we checked it with Clogg before he left, and he said we were right. He said that’s why he and Mistress Clogg had thought the boots would make a good wedding present. When they sent them they enclosed a note suggesting that Pretty and her new husband take turns wearing them, but the note must have been thrown away with the wrapping paper by mistake, because no one read it.’
‘Anyway,’ Mimi said, recovering her poise a little, ‘when Spoiler took the boots off Leo’s feet and put them on himself, he suddenly realised what it was like to be Leo! He understood exactly how Leo felt. And that’s why…’
‘Why he couldn’t bring himself to let the queen kill me and release her monsters to slaughter everyone else,’ Leo finished for her. ‘It must have been a shock to him. It was probably the first time in his life that he’d ever got outside himself and thought about someone else’s feelings.’
‘So now Pretty will know how it feels to be Spoiler,’ said Conker. ‘I wouldn’t fancy that myself.’
‘Me neither,’ said Freda, looking queasy.
‘Lawks-a-daisy, she might decide that stealing and cheating for a living is fun!’ Bertha exclaimed.
Mimi grinned. ‘I doubt it,’ she said. ‘Knowing how someone feels isn’t the same as wanting to be exactly like that person. It just helps you to understand them. And anyway, Spoiler might go back to his old ways a bit, but I’m sure he’ll think more carefully before he really hurts other people from now on. Standing in someone else’s shoes, even once, makes you see the world differently. I don’t think the effect will wear off completely. It hasn’t with me.’
‘Or me,’ Leo agreed, carefully not looking at her.
‘You don’t really need magic boots, Leo,’ she said. ‘You already think about how other people feel. It’s half your trouble – and one of the nicest things about you.’
‘It runs in the family,’ Tye murmured, glancing at Hal.
Bertha snuffled. Freda snorted. Conker cleared his throat noisily and bustled to the fireplace to make tea. Hal and Leo sat with identical embarrassed expressions on their hot faces.
They sat together for another sweet hour, talking over all that had happened. Bertha bemoaned the fact that Sly the fox had escaped yet again, though she finally agreed that having his tail bitten off by a Flitter Wood tiger as he ran away would probably dampen his spirits for a while. Mimi said that Officer Begood and Candy Sweet of Hobnob had left the battlefield arm in arm, and she was sure they were about to announce their engagement. Tye commented on how valiantly Suki had fought, and Freda said that in her opinion courage was what being a real princess was all about. Conker swore he had heard Brewer and the Ogre of Cruelcliff haggling over the price of a long-lasting love potion. Then Leo saw that Bertha’s head had begun to nod, met Mimi’s eyes across the table, and knew it was time to go.
They all moved out of the house, through the willow trees, and onto the grassy plain beyond.
Everything looked as bright and clear as if it had been freshly painted. The golden dragon soared over the western hills, her scales glinting in the sunlight. The river was like a shining ribbon, winding slowly down from the distant mountains on its journey to the sea. The rolling plain was deserted except for a few goats peacefully cropping the grass. The towers of the fairytale castle on the hill gleamed against the sky, and from a distance the beautiful blue-gowned woman painted on the castle door looked almost real.
‘Hal, do you think there could be other worlds like Rondo?’ Leo asked abruptly, as Mimi took his hand and raised her fingers to the Key. ‘Do you think the Artist might have…’
Hal smiled. ‘For all we know the Artist painted as many worlds as there are stars in the sky or grains of sand on the shore. But I doubt that any of them is quite like this one.’
‘No world could be like this one,’ said Mimi seriously, looking from him to Conker, Freda, Bertha and Tye. ‘This is where you are!’
‘You too, young Langlanders,’ Leo heard Tye murmur as the chiming rainbows closed in around him. ‘Whenever you wish.’
And her words were still warming his heart long after the last chime had faded away.