4. Exit, Rescued By a Bear

ROOOOOOOOOAW!”

Into this scene in which Queen Sychorax appeared to have regained control of the situation—apart from the FIRE of course, for as Queen Sychorax said herself, fires are easier to start than they are to stop, and once started they are difficult to keep in check—there leaped a gigantic brown bear.

The bear was unimaginably enormous, three times the size of a normal bear. Its ragged fur, upraised either in fury or fright, made it seem even bigger than it actually was.

It leaped into the clearing, reared to its hind legs, and beat its gigantic chest with its enormous paws. On its entrance, Warriors scattered in all directions in shock. Behind the bear came the thunder and shaking of colossal feet pounding into the ground like mini earthquakes, and one, two, three, four, five Thunderdell giants stormed into the clearing, followed by a little owl with spotted brown wings.

Whatever Caliburn or anyone else was expecting to happen next, they weren’t expecting this.

Queen Sychorax was so surprised she relaxed her iron grip on Wish’s arms.

Wish leaped away from Queen Sychorax and hauled up the edge of her eyepatch with shaking hands.

One of the many advantages of having a Magic eye is that you can make things happen extremely quickly. Wish had been taught by Caliburn how to make iron things move just by looking at them.

So she looked across at Crusher and then at Bodkin, Xar, and the sprites, and…

PING! PING! PING! PING! PING! The spears, daggers, axes, and maces that were pinning the edges of Crusher’s clothes and his hair to the ground rocketed into the air, releasing him. The iron nets entangling the sprites and Bodkin and Xar fell open.

Then Wish looked across at Justice holding the Enchanted Spoon tight in her hands and… the spoon plunged forward with extraordinary strength toward Wish. For some strange reason, Justice’s hands were now magnetically attached to it, as if by supernatural glue. Justice was dragged, still holding on to the spoon, off her horse and did a swallow dive into the mud of the forest floor with phenomenal velocity. And boing! Boing! Boing! As the Enchanted Spoon jumped toward his beloved Wish with an attraction that was really quite touching to see, boing, boing, boing, Justice was dragged behind him, her nose and tummy and entire front being slammed into the mud at each bounce. The fork jabbed into her bottom to make her let go, and the key rammed her knuckles, and although it was all rather undignified, I’m afraid I’m not a bit sorry for her.

“ROOOOOOOOOOAAW!” The bear continued to roar on its hind legs.

The noise woke Xar, who came to, sitting upright abruptly. Bodkin had already scrambled out of the net entangling him and got to his feet.

“REOOOOOOOOOAW!” The bear crashed back to the ground on all four legs.

“Get on my back,” said the bear to Wish. And the bear slumped right down on the forest floor on its tummy so that they could climb onto it.

“Quick, quick!” snapped the bear. “We haven’t got much time!”

“Bears can’t talk,” said Wish stupidly, because that was the first thing that came into her head.

“I’m not really a bear,” said the bear.

“Of course not,” said Wish. “How silly of me.”

“But I am a friend,” said the bear.

Now, even in a situation as grim and disastrous as this one, I am not recommending that you climb on the back of a bear who is a total stranger.

But Caliburn swooped downward, shrieking, “The bear is my sister! She’s definitely my sister! I’d recognize her anywhere!”

Six months ago, Wish would have found this extremely disconcerting.

But after spending some considerable time in the world of Magic, the idea of Caliburn having a bear for a sister suddenly seemed reasonably normal.

So, shaking with nerves, Wish hauled herself onto the back of the bear, taking hold of her long brown fur as she climbed it like a hillock. The bear generously barely even flinched even though Wish must have been pulling her hair, and Xar and Bodkin climbed up behind her.

“Hold tight,” said the bear, getting to her feet.

“Don’t forget the door!” Caliburn reminded Wish.

“Oh! Yes! Quite right—we can’t leave the door behind!” said Wish. She turned around, lifted up her eyepatch a smidgeon, and focused on the fragments of the door lying all about the clearing in thousands of tiny little pieces, and they rose, whizzing and humming into the air, delighted that they hadn’t been forgotten. There wasn’t time to put all the fragments back in the right places, so they just jammed together any old how, forming a very eccentric impression of a door.

And then the bear charged straight at the most fiery part of the forest.

“What is the bear doing? It’s going to burn us all to death!” shouted Bodkin, terrified.

“Stay close to the bear, sprites!” said Caliburn, landing on Bodkin’s shoulder and gripping so tight with his claws that Bodkin cried out. The sprites landed on the bear and the bear ran right through the flames and they did not burn. “Illusions…” explained the owl, crouched down on the bear’s back just in front of Wish. “Some of these flames are illusions.” Behind the bear ran Lonesome, the snowcats, wolves, and Xar’s much smaller, more-normal-sized bear, followed by the Thunderdell giants, who tore up the burning trees on either side and threw them down behind them, and the flames leaped up and the Warriors could not follow.

Queen Sychorax was left, mouth open, unable to stop them. One second the children were there, and in her power. The next they were gone.