21. Will the Parents Be Too Late?
Meanwhile, Encanzo and Sychorax had reached the beach opposite the Isle of the Nuckalavee and were following on a boat, in a sea of curse bottles, and every curse bottle now had a name in it. Encanzo reached down and picked out a curse bottle. He smeared away the seawater, and there, gleaming bright in the sunlight, was a name picked out in sprite-writing, and the name was “Encanzo.”
Sychorax looked out at the sea of bobbing bottles, the name “Encanzo” trapped in the heart of them, gleaming, an “o” here, a “z” there, as the sunlight caught the letters. “Someone out there really doesn’t like you,” said Sychorax.
Encanzo turned white as snow when he saw his name in the bottles.
“What did you do to deserve this hatred?” said Sychorax.
“I came here to get rid of my heart,” said Encanzo bitterly. “What use did I have of it? You betrayed me, and I was in a state of despair. This was my shadow quest…”
Sychorax was now seeing with her own eyes the consequences of her actions on another heart, another soul, and that is always a difficult moment. It is one thing to know something vaguely. It is quite another to plant your feet in the exact footsteps of where another has gone. Sychorax was planting her pretty little feet in the hopeless footprints of the young Wizard she had once loved, the boy named Tor whose heart she had broken twenty weary years ago, and it was a most uncomfortable feeling, for with each step she could feel the lost boy’s despair.
“But you endured, as I did,” said Sychorax, making herself feel better. “There are very few who come away from a shadow quest and live, and those who do are stronger than ever.”
“I have endured without a heart,” said Encanzo. “And in the course of stealing myself a second chance, I tricked the Nuckalavee most royally.”
“Ah…” said Sychorax. That explained all the curse bottles. The Nuckalavee was looking for revenge.
“Now that the Nuckalavee knows my name, Wish and Xar are in terrible trouble,” said Encanzo grimly. “We must be quick now, Sychorax. If you want to come with me, you’ll have to transform. Don’t pretend you don’t remember how to do it… it was I who taught you, long ago, don’t you remember?”
Sychorax did remember.
“I only use Magic for a purpose,” said Queen Sychorax.
“Ah…” taunted Encanzo, “so you never enjoy it?”
Sychorax blushed.
“What better purpose are you waiting for?” said Encanzo. “We will have to transform into swifts, for they are the fastest—”
“Oh, not swifts…” said Sychorax, for swifts were symbolic of an uncomfortable memory for her. “What’s this obsession with swifts, with you? Why not eagles? Peregrine falcons? Sparrow hawks? They’re all fast flyers, particularly when they’re hunting… And eagles are royal birds, Encanzo—don’t forget our pedigree. We need to maintain our dignity, we should at least be birds of prey.”
“Oh for goodness’ sake,” snapped Encanzo. “There isn’t a snowflake in a bonfire’s chance of me ever falling in love with a she-wolf like you again, Sychorax! I have no heart. I’M going as a swift, because swifts are the fastest and most agile flyers, but you can be whatever you like! TRANSFORM!”
Encanzo thrust his arm with his staff up into the air, shouting out the word, and, sighing, Sychorax closed her own fist around the staff as well. Sychorax was highly competitive, so if swifts were the most agile flyers, Sychorax was going to have to be one too. She wasn’t going to have Encanzo shooting off into the distance leaving her behind, however royal the wings of an eagle might be.
There was a great chemical explosion, and there, where there had been Sychorax and Encanzo, were two small brown swifts, wings beating the air.
Sychorax had forgotten how wonderful it was to live life as a bird. All the weary gold that weighed her down, the thick furs, the heavy flesh, lightened to paper-thinness before vanishing. She could feel her heart, so dull, so leaden, lightening with it, feel the air rushing into the quick of her bones with such a heady haste that she launched herself into the air the instant her flagging arms turned into joyous wings.
Encanzo hovered before her, crying with a bright pure call.
They ought to have been eagles. With eagle wings she might have remembered she was hunting. With eagle eyes she might have only focused on the prey.
But swifts can stay in the air for six, ten months at a time. In a single lifetime, a swift spends such a time flying that they could have flown seven times to the moon and back.
It was impossible not to be distracted by the pure joy of flying when you had wings so reactive to the breeze that it was almost like they were part of the wind itself, the sky above calling her to stay up there forever and never to go down.
With every beat of those curved bright wings, she was going back in time to when the young Wizard Tor first taught her to transform, a time when she was a careless young princess, as wild and fast and free as the swift itself.
The will-o’-the-wisps called after them their haunting cry:
Love is weakness…
Love is kindness…
Love is childish…
Love is thoughtless…
Care-less, love-less, heart-worn, soul-blast?
Come this way…
Thought-less… shoe-less… hope-less?
Come this way…
No more second chances
No more silly dances
LOVE is weakness… so
Come this way…
Will the parents-transformed-into-swifts be able to reach their children in time to be able to save the situation?
Swifts fly swiftly, as their name suggests.
But unfortunately, even the wings of swifts will be too slow for this task. Even Magic has to obey logic and the laws of physics. I am the narrator, and even MY Magic will not get them there in time.
The children are on their own, and the situation is dire.
