“Your trigonometry homework was due last Tuesday,” barked Madam Dreadlock automatically. “And I need the door of my Punishment Cupboard returned in tip-top mint condition—”*
“Yes, not now, Dreadlock,” said Queen Sychorax hurriedly. “I’m sure you can make allowances under the circumstances…”
But Wish had had quite enough experience of Madam Dreadlock and her mother’s iron Warrior fort. She backed away from her mother.
“No,” said Wish defiantly. “Xar and I are going to show you how Wizards and Warriors CAN work together to fight the Witches!”
“HA! HA! HA!” Wish’s stepsisters laughed so hard at this that they nearly fell over.
Queen Sychorax’s eyes hardened into stones.
“Now she’s in for it,” said Drama, Wish’s sixth stepsister, with satisfaction.
“YOU, a leader?” spat Queen Sychorax in a voice like an adder strike. “A worm with the flu would make a better leader than you! I have met jellyfish with greater leadership potential! Look at what trouble you’ve already led your wicked and foolish companions into! Covered in wounds, even weaker than you normally are, you haven’t eaten for days, you have NO FRIENDS and nowhere to hide… and I only just saved you from falling into the talons of the Witches! You call this leadership?”
Wish flinched. Every single poison arrow of a word her mother said was something Wish had already been worrying was true. But Queen Sychorax hadn’t finished yet.
“Consorting with Wizards and werewolves and other lowlifes! Riding beasts! Performing Magic! I cannot believe that my own daughter is so miserably unworthy compared to my stepdaughters!” said Queen Sychorax.
The stepsisters giggled smugly.
“YOU, Wish,” finished Queen Sychorax with magnificent scorn, “are an embarrassment and a traitor and a disgrace to your tribe!”
Six months ago a speech like this would have crushed Wish. But that was before she met Xar, and Xar had given her courage, and she found that she was no longer afraid of a mother who set fire to forests and imprisoned her beloved vegetarian giant with spears and called her horrible names.
“I am not an embarrassment or a traitor or a disgrace to my tribe,” said Wish coldly. “Release my giant, release my friends Xar and Bodkin, my sprites, my animals, my enchanted objects, and stop the fire!”
Queen Sychorax stared in astonishment. But she recovered quickly.
“It is a great deal easier to start a fire, than stop it,” said Queen Sychorax.
She reached out and grabbed Wish’s arms so that she could not put up her eyepatch.
“You are coming back home whether you like it or not!” said Queen Sychorax grimly. “This so-called spell of yours to get rid of Witches isn’t a proper spell. You have to understand that your best hope of survival is to be locked up safe forever. You need to face real life and grow up sharpish!
“And to help you do that, when we get back home I will put your evil bandit friends in the deepest darkest dungeon I can find, and I will melt down that ridiculous Enchanted Spoon of yours and turn him into hairpins!”
Now Queen Sychorax probably didn’t mean that—she had just lost her temper—but with that last, bitterly snapped-out comment I think you can safely say that the mother-and-daughter negotiations pretty much broke down for the moment.
“Oh dear, oh dear, oh dear…” moaned Caliburn, for with Wish’s arms imprisoned so firmly by the grim hands of Queen Sychorax, there was absolutely nothing Wish could do—she couldn’t reach her eyepatch to use the Magic eye…
Xar was out like a light; Crusher was entirely incapacitated; the sprites and Bodkin were all tangled up in iron-clad nets; Justice was looking delightedly at the Enchanted Spoon, hoping that she was going to be able to melt him personally; the snowcats, wolves, and bear were too scared of something happening to Wish or the sprites to move; and fire was now reaching the edges of the clearing and was heating up the bottoms of the Warriors at the back of the crowd so fiercely that only the most iron-strict of Warrior training was preventing them from leaping from their saddles shouting “YARROOOOO!” or something similar…
Yes, I think you could definitely say that this was a crisis, and we’re only at the end of CHAPTER THREE, for mistletoe’s sake.
And quite a lot had happened already—what with the Witch attack and the capture by Warriors, it had been a very busy half an hour, what with one thing and another. You have to feel for poor Caliburn in this situation. He was the oldest creature in that clearing by far, and this really wasn’t good for his old bird heart.
“What’s going to happen now????” panicked Caliburn. “I mean, I’m only a bird. I could peck someone, but I’m not sure it would help…”