“Cassie, Cassie, Cassie,” the old woman lamented, as if she’d not heard her name in an age.
Kay released Artie’s arm and moved closer to her estranged mother. “It’s really you?”
“Yes,” whimpered Cassie, unable to look her daughter in the eyes.
“But how did you get here? Why are you so old?”
The woman shifted her shoulders and sighed. “I… I don’t remember everything—it was something like when he came into your bedroom those many years ago…” She trailed off. “He” clearly meant Artie. And she clearly didn’t like him.
Thumb said solemnly, “A dark magic has made her old, Kay; I can see it as plain as day.”
“Yes, yes,” Cassie confirmed. “So dark. So many false promises faded into that darkness. A new life, a new child, a new beginning…”
“A new child.” Kay shuddered at what she was about to ask. “Not Lavery?”
“Yes, Lavery,” Cassie said quietly.
“But how?” Kay wondered. “He’s at least five years older than me.”
“Wood elves age very quickly in the beginning, and very slowly at the end, Kay,” Thumb explained.
“Yes,” Cassie hissed. “He’s your half brother. And he’s more your true brother than this, this … thing!”
Artie didn’t like being called a thing, but since his parents were a finger bone and a lock of hair, he silently admitted that she had a point.
Then Cassie spun and raised her arms. Bizarro Cassie was back in full effect. She yelled, “Copy! Experiment! Puppet!”
“Now, wait one moment, Miss Cassie,” interrupted Thumb.
“Shh! Silver-tongued gnome, be quiet!”
With a crooked finger she pointed at Artie and said accusingly, “You think you have a destiny? Toadswill! Swallerwash! She is coming! She is sending her servants as we speak! If you escape her now, then she will use other means to draw you to her! Where is the one whose name begins with Q? Isn’t she with you?” Spittle drained from the corner of her mouth as her radiant eyes darted around the room, desperately seeking someone who wasn’t there.
Kay asked, “Who are you talking about?”
But Artie knew, and his heart fell into his shoes. “Qwon,” he simply said.
“Qwon! Yes! None of you are safe! None of you are safe from the fine wrath of the high lordess Lady Morgaine!”
At the mention of her title and name, two deafening sounds came at once: the roars of the saber-toothed cats, and a fierce howl of wind tearing through the forest around the little building.
Thumb said, “Artie, sire, I have a bad feeling. I think we ought to go. Now.”
Thumb was right, but Artie felt that he owed his sister a big favor where Cassie was concerned; it was crazy, but he didn’t think it would be right to hightail it out of there without her. He was about to say as much when Kay yelled over the din, “I think Thumb’s right, Artie! We’ve got to leave her for now. It’ll be okay!”
But they weren’t so sure of that last point because the underground booming intensified, and then the map house simply disintegrated in a poof of black dust. One minute it and all its contents—including the map and the table that stood in front of Bedevere—were there, and the next minute everything was gone.
Artie’s back was turned to where the cottage’s door had been. Kay unsheathed Cleomede and lunged at her beloved brother with blinding quickness as if she was going to run him through to the hilt.
And she would have if Artie hadn’t pivoted at the last split second; Cleomede whisked past his neck, touching it like a feather, before continuing on into the space behind him.
Which was suddenly occupied by the silent and gaping mouth of Mrs. Tibbins. In the same instant that the walls had disappeared, this cat jumped from where the door had been, landing catlike—which is to say, freakishly quietly—just a few feet behind Artie.
Cleomede slid between the cat’s knifelike teeth and into its mouth. The blade effortlessly ran through everything that made up the head and neck of the feline. Cleomede sang for blood in Kay’s fingers, and it was terrifying.
The cat died instantly. It was very gruesome. Cleomede’s bloody tip extended at an angle into the air above the cat’s scruff. The animal collapsed and whip-lashed Kay’s arm, forcing her to release her sword. She had to turn around to extract Cleomede and that was when she saw her mom.
Cassie had her back to the darkened forest. Suddenly a thick and gnarled oak, draped in Spanish moss, came to life. A pair of boughs surged forward like giant arms, wrapping up the old woman in a tangle of wavering flora.
Cassie screamed. Kay ran to her mother, intent on hacking this plant creature to pieces, but the woods were too powerful. Kay’s eyes locked on her mother’s, and for a moment they could read each other’s thoughts as if they were written in the air between them. Cassie’s eyes said, I’m so sorry. And Kay’s eyes said, I forgive you, Mama!
And then the tree creature retreated into the deep forest in a blur, and Cassie was gone.
Kay fell to one knee.
Artie, standing next to Mrs. Tibbins’s corpse, wanted to run to his sister and comfort her, but other stuff was going on behind him.
“Artie!” Thumb and Bedevere yelled in unison.
Artie spun.
Schrödinger reared several feet away. He looked pretty angry that his kitty friend had been killed so easily. So did Lavery, who was on Schrödinger’s back. The elf was still dressed in his jeans and D&D T-shirt, but he was no longer unarmed.
He had chosen his weapon, and it wasn’t some stupid gaming die. Instead it was a really odd-looking silver rifle with a sword on the end of it, and he spun it over his head like a spear.
Turned out Lavery wasn’t so geeky after all. In fact, he looked pretty darn tough.
Vorpal initiated the fight. Taking a massive leap, he walloped the tiger’s cheek with his hind legs. He bounced again and landed near the cat’s rear, where he took a deep bite out of one of its legs.
Following Vorpal, Thumb leaped on top of the cat so he could pester the elf at close range. In seconds Lavery was covered in cuts and lashes. Thumb took some lumps too, but the little knight was possessed. After one impressive, Yoda-like flurry of twists and turns, Artie swore that Lavery lost a finger. Then the elf screamed as Thumb did him the disservice of lopping off his long red ponytail in one blazing swipe.
Meanwhile, Bedevere was busy making huge, loping swings at the cat’s face. As Vorpal tormented Schrödinger’s hind legs, Bedevere brought down the claymore cleanly through the cat’s right forepaw.
The cat roared just as Lavery’s disembodied lock of hair fell to the ground next to Bedevere.
Bedevere smiled. It was obvious that he loved to fight.
But he smiled too soon, because at that exact moment Lavery fired his rifle at Bedevere’s arm, which suddenly lay on the ground, quite separated from Bedevere.
The wounded knight howled. The sound tore Kay from the forest that her mom had disappeared into. When she saw the arm, she nearly fainted.
But not Artie. He bounded forward to join the battle. As Artie arrived, Lavery fell from the wounded feline, Thumb following. Vorpal occupied the cat while Artie stood next to Thumb so they could take on the elf.
Lavery fought hard. He made several deep gashes in Artie that instantly healed. He also managed to thump Artie in the ribs so violently that Artie felt them snap. These too healed instantly.
Still, it all hurt wicked bad.
But Artie and Thumb were too much for Lavery, and in a desperate flurry the elf was laid on the ground and disarmed. The young king lorded over him; the little man was at his head, the Welsh wakizashi’s edge drawn tight over the skin of his neck.
Artie breathed hard as he demanded, “Witch-elf, bring Cassie back!”
Lavery’s eyes were closed. His chest heaved.
He shook his head slightly. “I didn’t take her!”
Thumb, wild with anger, said, “Let me kill this thing, sire.”
Artie seriously considered it. But something about Cassie and Kay—something about being even slightly-kinda-theoretically related to this wood elf—turned him off from this idea.
He looked over his shoulder at Kay, who comforted Bedevere, and turned back to Thumb.
“No. Enough killing and hurt for one day. We need to take care of Bedevere.”
Artie began to turn to his fallen knight, hoping that his sword’s sheath and his healing skill might mend him like they had the wolf. Thumb continued to hold Lavery with his sword.
It was then that they all became very aware of something that didn’t sound good at all.
And it was then that Lavery, his mouth full of blood-stained teeth, began to laugh.
“What is that sound?” Artie demanded of the elf.
The elflaughed more. Thumb pressed on his neck ever so slightly with his blade. The elf said nothing.
He didn’t need to. An explosion went off somewhere under their feet as a section of grass about fifty feet away lifted up like a big trapdoor. Smoke rose from the scar in the ground. Somewhere from within the smoke came a series of deep, rabid chokes and burps.
Thumb moved away from the elf as he rushed to Artie.
Artie was momentarily dumbstruck.
“I think we’re in trouble,” Thumb said ominously.
The smoke cleared. What remained, aside from a mound of upturned earth, was an elephant-sized wild boar.
“Yes. We’re in trouble,” Thumb confirmed.
The animal’s hair was wiry and shiny, his feet were completely bloodstained, and his nasty tusks were way longer than they should have been. He was an honest-to-goodness hellion.
Except that, for some reason, he had a dainty silver comb tied into the hair on the very top of his head, like a bow affixed to the head of a cute little lapdog.
“I have a bad feeling, guys,” Kay said from somewhere behind them.
“What is that?” Artie demanded as he and Thumb began to backpedal.
Thumb cleared his throat and said quietly, “That’s Twrch Trwyth.”
Lavery continued to laugh quietly.
“It’s Welsh for ‘divine boar,’” Thumb explained.
And then, before Artie could say anything, the boar charged.
Charged isn’t really the right word, though. It was more like he teleported in a blurry zipping motion.
Before any of them could react, the creature had passed Artie and Thumb and was standing over Kay and Bedevere, rearing his hideous head.
Except that Kay wasn’t on the ground next to Bedevere anymore—she was up in the air, in the boar’s teeth, screaming.
More quickly than he thought possible, Artie ran to
Kay, dragging Thumb with him.
The boar was wildly happy with the prospect of gobbling down Kay and didn’t really notice Artie as he moved in under his chin.
A drop of his sister’s blood hit Artie on the head.
They really, really had to go.
Artie hoisted Excalibur, drove it to the hilt into the ground and screamed, “Lunae lumen!”
Thumb grabbed Artie’s leg, Artie touched his sister’s foot, and Bedevere reached out with his remaining arm and grabbed Artie’s hip.
Vorpal, still guarding the cat, wasn’t going to make it.
The moongate crackled open and took them away, an express train to Merlin, where Artie hoped his knights would be healed.
The last thing he saw, past the electric glow of the moongate and the dripping jowls of the evil pig, was the slender form of a great green dragon, high above them, turning wheels in a purplish Otherworld sky.