My goodness, that boat went fast when Encanzo was spelling it. The boat skimmed across the open water of the sea. Encanzo muttered a few words and the front end of the boat reared up, and then they fairly flew across the water, humming on the top of the waves, sending three horrible Witches who had landed on top of the force field spiraling away.

The onslaught of the Witches was relentless. Again and again they attacked. The boat was in imminent danger of being capsized, and Wish was struggling to maintain the force field. Just when she was thinking once again, I can’t hold on much longer… the attacks abruptly ceased.

They were getting near the Beach of Shoes, and from the sky the Witches could see something that Encanzo and Sychorax could not yet see.

The approach of Sychorax’s army.

Sychorax had sent word for them to follow her, and the Witches could see the torches of many, many Warriors moving through the trees in the distance. The Witches were scared of the iron-tipped arrows, the spears, the swords. They let out snarls and screams of disappointment. But they would get another chance, they knew that. Screeching like banshees, the Witches whirled around, back toward the Isle of the Nuckalavee.

“Oh thank goodness,” sighed Wish in trembling relief. “But what are they doing now?”

“They’re going to collect the treasures that the Nuckalavee has been guarding for all these years,” said Encanzo grimly. “The Witches will now get hold of staffs of power so old and so evil that they were put there out of harm’s way centuries ago. This has been the Droods’ hiding place for hundreds and hundreds of years, and you have just allowed all these terrible weapons to fall into the hands of the Witches!”

Oh, those parents were so, so cross.

“Why can’t you be more like Drama or Unforgiving? Why is my own daughter so much less obedient than my stepdaughters!” stormed Sychorax.

“When will you children learn that we know best, and you shouldn’t break the rules?” raged Encanzo.

“But you broke the rules!” Xar pointed out. “All those years ago, you came to the Nuckalavee on a shadow quest! You stole some of his treasure yourself…”

“I tricked the Nuckalavee,” said Encanzo. “I stole a few little bits of treasure… I didn’t blow up the ENTIRE WHOLE SPELL that bound him!”

The force of Encanzo’s anger carried that boat with such alarming speed that when it finally landed on the Beach of Shoes it just carried right up on the sand for a good thirty feet or so, before coming to a sludgy halt.

Encanzo helped Sychorax out of the boat, and guiltily, the children climbed out after them.

The two royal parents stood in front of their children, hands on their hips.

“Every single thing that you two do makes things WORSE!” roared Encanzo. “We are TRYING to help you, but you just get deeper and deeper into more and more serious trouble… What if the Droods find out that you were the ones who released the Kingwitch, on top of everything else?”

“And what if the Kingwitch were to break out of that iron prison that holds him?” cried Sychorax. “You have just armed his Witch army with forces that will be impossible to contain!”

“What’s more, on top of everything else, because of your willful disobedience, your selfishness, that silly woman Perdita has lost Pook’s Hill! The Droods removed her when they found out she had been harboring you two outlaws…” said Encanzo.

Oh no!

That made Caliburn cry too. “My poor sister! How she loved that learning place. I should never have taken you there…”

Wish and Xar bowed their heads in front of their furious parents.

“You two just have to face facts. Wizards and Warriors are enemies, and they should never be together,” said Sychorax. “Encanzo and I learned that years ago…”

“But you’re working together now,” Wish pointed out miserably.

“Only to try and contain the DISASTERS that you are bringing on the wildwoods by persisting in this catastrophic friendship of yours!” said Sychorax.

“Xar will come back with me to the prison of Gormincrag, and we will do what we can to try to find a cure for that Witch-stain,” said Encanzo.

“And Wish will come back with me, to my iron fort, and I will keep you safe from the Witches forever,” said Sychorax. “You must never see each other again, and we will remove all these unsuitable companions from you because they are clearly unable to control you or offer you good advice…”

“But Ariel and I are bound to look after Xar until he grows into a wise and thoughtful adult!” protested Caliburn.

“I release you from that duty!” said Encanzo from between gritted teeth. “From this moment you are FREE!”

“But we do not wish to be free,” said Caliburn. “It is not yet time…”

The quest had failed.

What had Perdita said in her note, wrapped around the bottle with the Droods’ tears in it?

There’s a reason that tears are such an important ingredient in so many spells. “Life is made up of sorrow as well as joy, and so you may fight as hard as you can, and yet still fail…”

They had indeed fought as hard as they could… but they had still failed. There was no way they could get hold of the scales of the Nuckalavee now, for the Nuckalavee could be anywhere in the vast and lonely wastes of the great green ocean.

So they had no scales, Perdita had lost her learning place, and they had released the Kingwitch from the Nuckalavee’s safekeeping and lost Squeezjoos.

Surely Fate was trying to tell them something. They were on the wrong track. Wish’s idea about the spell was nonsense. Every single thing they had done really had made things worse.

Xar could feel his arm with the Witch-stain on it burning him like fire. He could feel the desire to grow black wings and join the Witches now raiding the undefended island of the Nuckalavee. There was no hope for him.

Wish and Xar were feeling so deflated and confused and depressed by the outcome of the adventure that they nearly forgot to fight back.

Until…

“Excuse me,” said a quiet voice behind all of them.

“Who is this?” snapped Encanzo.

Everyone had forgotten Bodkin.

“Oh, it is just Wish’s bodyguard…” said Queen Sychorax, waving a contemptuous hand. “A person of no importance. He betrayed Wish to me, but he should never have let her go astray in the first place. Assistant Bodyguard, you are dismissed from your position.”

“I am Wish’s bodyguard, not yours, Majesty,” said Bodkin. “And I wanted to talk to you about Encanzo’s heart.”

There was a short pause while everyone tried to think what this might mean.

“My heart?” said Encanzo. “What about my heart?”

“We took your heart out of the Nuckalavee,” said Bodkin.

“On top of everything else you took my heart out of the Nuckalavee?” gasped Encanzo. “But it was safe there… What have you done with it?”

“I’ve hidden it,” said Bodkin.