His clothes are there, in a slightly singed pile. His love poetry rains softly through the room, blackened and blasted. But of Thunderous Thighs Himself, no sign at all.

However there is a small round bead, circling on the floor at Queen Sychorax’s feet, that hadn’t been there before.

Delicately, smoothly, Queen Sychorax bends down and picks up the small round bead.

Gently, tenderly, Queen Sychorax attaches the bead next to the many other beads hanging on the necklace around her throat.

The bead she attaches is, by coincidence, exactly the same pattern as that on the helmet of Thunderous Thighs Himself…

“That,” says Queen Sychorax, “is what I think of LOVE.”

Oh, she’s a cold one, that Queen Sychorax.

And she will not rest till she has got hold of Wish and put her back in iron Warrior fort, locked her up as tightly as if she were trapped in the bead of a necklace.

Queen Sychorax is very confident that she will find out EXACTLY where the children are, and EXACTLY how to find them. For as the narrator, I know something you do not know.

Xar was right. It was not a coincidence that Queen Sychorax had discovered them in that forest.

SOMEONE had betrayed them.

There was a traitor in their party.

Who could it be? Was Tiffinstorm right? Can you REALLY not trust a werewolf you met in a prison?

They had better WATCH OUT, for the traitor is still there with them…

And even if the traitor did not carry on betraying them, it was already too late.

Queen Sychorax had one of Wish’s pins.

In the confusion of running away through the fire, it had stuck itself particularly firmly into a bit of Queen Sychorax’s armor, and it could not work its way out in time.

Queen Sychorax had that pin, and all she had to do was set it free and follow it, and it would lead her back to Wish.

Encanzo’s out there, somewhere, too, brooding on Queen Sychorax.

Farther away than that, I can see through the ball of iron where Wish has imprisoned the great bad Kingwitch himself. He is all curled up in his ball of iron, scratching, scratching, pecking his way out, like a chick from an egg. If you think that the two Witches whom you have seen already are bad enough, well the Kingwitch is badder by far and makes the pair of them look like a couple of dusty old scarecrows. The Kingwitch has the salt-ditch, rotten-egg, corpse-breath, arsenic-wicked stench of the truly evil, and he has a tiny speck of blue dust that belongs to Wish, and he will use it when he gets the chance.

The Kingwitch will take his time.

But the Kingwitch will find a way.

So Perdita and Caliburn and Hoola and Crusher are going to have to hide our heroes, teach them, guide them well, if they’re going to have any sort of chance against the future that is waiting for them.