Indeed it could be.
The invisible assailant sl-o-o-owly became visible in front of Wish’s eyes, as the iron of the soldiers surrounding him made whatever invisibility spell he was using wear off. It was the Wizard boy Xar, son of Encanzo.
“XAR!” exclaimed Wish, completely forgetting where they both were in her delight at seeing her old friend again. “But… but… what are you doing here?”
“I’m saving you, even though you’ve completely sabotaged my mission!” shouted Xar.
“That tricky wretch of a Wizard boy!” gasped Queen Sychorax.
Xar, you see, had gone to considerable trouble to get into iron Warrior fort. He needed his Spelling Book.
Caliburn had begged him not to involve Wish in all this trouble, but Xar had said he would just sneak in and take back the Spelling Book without her realizing. Everything had initially gone to plan. He had gotten through the Wall by the simple trick of approaching the gate wearing Queen Sychorax’s hooded cloak, which he had stolen from her six months ago. Queen Sychorax made a habit of wearing these spectacular cloaks that didn’t show her face, so she could come and go through her own Wall without people recognizing her. Xar passed through the gate unchallenged by the sentries, the sprites hidden underneath the folds of fabric.
It took a while for them to find Wish, creeping through the corridors of the fort, using invisibility spells and lurking in quiet corners.
When Wish and Bodkin had run out of the schoolroom, they had been followed by an invisible Xar and his sprites. Xar had tripped Wish up at the bottom of the stairs, so that the Once-sprite and Squeezjoos could search her pockets for the Spelling Book, but once they were in the courtyard, all the surrounding iron had turned them both visible, and by the time Wish had reached the Royal Stage it didn’t seem a very good moment for the sprites to escape.
Tiffinstorm and Hinkypunk were all for leaving Wish to fend for herself when the Witchsmeller accused her of being a Witch.
But Xar was determined to stick to his resolution to be good. He couldn’t abandon Wish… particularly when it was his sprites in her pockets that had gotten her into trouble.
So he made his invisible charge at the Witchsmeller… only to be tackled around the legs by Bodkin the bodyguard, who mistook Xar’s drawn sword for the talon of a Witch.
But this was all news to Wish, who hadn’t realized any of this was going on.
Saving me? Sabotaged his mission? What IS Xar talking about?
Blink! Blink! Blink! Blink! Blink! Blink! Out of nowhere, six sprites came blinking into visibility, and then—Blink! Blink! Blink!—three smaller lights of the hairy fairies.
Wish had been missing these sprites so badly, and at any other time she’d have been thrilled to see them, but right now…
“I have to say, I don’t want to be unwelcoming, but this is a really, really bad moment for you to drop by,” said Wish.
This was the understatement of the Iron Age.
The effect of a Wizard boy, a talking raven, six sprites, and three hairy fairies rapidly appearing in an iron Warrior fort full of blood-crazy Magic-hunters who have already been whipped into a Witch-finding frenzy by a barking mad Witchsmeller is a rather similar one to that of a large plump juicy chicken with ten dear little yellow fluffy baby chicks suddenly appearing in the middle of a pack of ravenous wolves who’ve had a bit of a lean streak lately.
“A WIZARD and its WITCH COMPANIONS!” shrieked the Witchsmeller.
(He really couldn’t ever have seen a real Witch if he thought a Witch looked like Squeezjoos, but the other Magic-hunters weren’t in a mood to be picky about their species identification so they all joined in joyfully.)
“GET THEM!” they cried.
Queen Sychorax’s Warriors might rush to stop the Magic-hunters from seizing their unsatisfactory little princess, but they weren’t going to do the same for Xar. Indeed they might even join in. After meeting him six months ago, Xar wasn’t exactly top of Queen Sychorax’s Midwinter’s End Eve present list.
Yes, it was most definitely a crisis.
But Wish, though she didn’t look much like her mother, did in fact have a few things in common with Queen Sychorax.
She was rather good in a crisis. Cool. Collected. Tricky, if by tricky you mean clever.
In that split second when it became apparent that Xar might be killed if she didn’t come up with a pretty nifty solution right now, Wish reviewed her options.
She was a bit hampered by the fact that no one had taught her how to use her Magic properly, so these choices were a little limited.
She could take her eyepatch off entirely.
That would make the castle fall down, which would create a diversion, but would also be dangerous and a little messy.
She could use the Spelling Book to do a spell of invisibility or transformation.
But Bodkin had the Spelling Book, and it would take way too much time for him to retrieve it, carefully hidden as it was beneath many layers of body armor.
Or… she could cast a spell that she had seen someone do before, so she could copy it.
Wish thought back to six months ago, when Tiffinstorm had cast the spell that made Xar’s bedroom door shrug out of its frame like an old man shrugging out of his jacket, and turned it into a flying door so that they could escape from Wizard fort.
She wriggled up her eyepatch, just a tiny, tiny smidgeon and looked up toward the Tower of Education. She imagined the door of the Punishment Cupboard (she knew that door well) gently shrugging out of its door frame in the same way as Xar’s bedroom door had done. She spelled out the word that Tiffinstorm had said as she cast the spell: M-O-U-V-E…
Luckily, Magic did not seem to care about the exact positioning of the letters. Indeed, it seemed to positively LIKE creativity in the spelling department. It invigorated the Magic, like adding oxygen in some kind of chemical experiment.
As the Magic-hunters thundered toward them, swords drawn, shouting, “KILL THE WITCHES—”
BOOOOOOOM!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Above their heads, the broken door of the Punishment Cupboard EXPLODED out of the top window of the Tower of Education and rocketed at breathtaking speed, neck-height across the courtyard. Everybody had to stop charging toward Xar and the sprites-misidentified-as-Witches and throw themselves on the ground for fear of being decapitated.
The Witchsmeller rubbed his eyes and stared upward at the door sailing up into the air and turning back around again for another dive.
“What’s that?” whispered the Witchsmeller in a hollow voice of disbelief.
“It seems to be a door, sir,” said his sergeant smartly.
“I know it’s a door, idiot!” spat the Witchsmeller. “But what is it doing flying through the air like a bird?”
The door came to a screeching, manic, hovering halt in front of Xar and Wish.
“The Wizard boy’s kidnapping me!” shouted Wish, grabbing Xar by the arm and dragging him onto the door. The sprites, already finding it difficult to fly because of all the iron around, threw themselves down on the door beside them.
Xar grinned. “Quick thinking, Princess.”
Neither he nor the sprites could make this door fly themselves, because the door had iron hinges and an iron lock.
“How do I make it work?” panicked Wish. She’d never driven a flying door before.
“Use the key!” advised Caliburn.
Without thinking, Wish put her hand on the key, and then moved her arm back sharply, as if she had been stung, as the head of the key moved like a mouth, asking: “Where would you like to go?” in its cozy, creaky, upbeat little voice.
“Up…” said Wish. “We want to go UP!”
She put her hand on the key again a little more cautiously this time and moved it gently upward, and the door went shrieking up into the air so wildly that all of them nearly fell off.
“We have to go back for Bodkin!” yelled Wish. “We can’t leave him there—my mother is hopping mad, and she’ll say it’s all his fault for not looking after me!”
“HA!” said Xar. “Do we have to? He does kind of get in the way. If it wasn’t for Bodkin interfering, I’d have SMOOSHED that horrible guy with the sniffing nose…”
“Er… I’s thinks that Bodkin might have the Spelling Book, Boss,” wheezed Squeezjoos. “It wasn’t in Wisssh’s pockets…”
“We go back for Bodkin!” said Xar, punching the air.
Wish slammed the Enchanted Key to the right and the door of the Punishment Cupboard veered violently around in a circle and made a great swooping dive back down again, sending everyone who was beginning to get up BACK onto their stomachs for the second time.
Xar and Wish both had to lean over and drag Bodkin onto the door, such was the heaviness of his armor.
“Nobody shoot, or the princess will die!” shouted Wish over the side of the door as it sailed up into the air, a little shakily because of Bodkin’s weight, and swooped backward and forward over the crowd.
The only person still standing on the Royal Stage was Queen Sychorax. She would have DIED rather than throw herself on her stomach.
Nonetheless, she was rattled, really rattled.
The situation had gotten thoroughly out of hand.
She waved her sword up at the door shouting, not with her usual cool, for Queen Sychorax had lost her temper, “COME DOWN IMMEDIATELY, WISH! A Warrior princess does not fly about on the back of doors! A Warrior princess does not allow herself to get kidnapped!”
“Oh dear, she really is angry,” said Wish, peering over the edge of the door. “I’m so glad we didn’t leave you down there with her, Bodkin…
“You’re right, you don’t ALLOW yourself to be kidnapped, Mother!” Wish shouted back down. “A kidnapping just happens…”
But Queen Sychorax was not fooled. She knew perfectly well who was kidnapping whom.
“DO NOT, ON ANY ACCOUNT, LEAVE THE SAFETY OF THIS FORT!” commanded Queen Sychorax. “DO NOT, ON PAIN OF MY MOST SEVERE DISPLEASURE, GO OVER THAT WALL!”
Take the usual look of disappointment on Queen Sychorax’s face when she looked at her daughter, then times that by about TEN, and you’ll have an idea of what Queen Sychorax looked like as she gazed up at Wish and her disreputable companions lying on their stomachs on the back of the flying door.
“I’m so sorry, Mother!” said Wish guiltily. “Don’t worry! I’ll be right back, I promise I will!”
And then the door of the Punishment Cupboard sailed UP, UP, and away…
Over the battlements…
And on toward Queen Sychorax’s Wall.
Queen Sychorax gave a sigh of fury and resignation. Maddening though her daughter might be, she really did not want her shot down.
She called up to the sentry on the Tower of Education. “Nobody shoot down the door! The princess is going over the Wall!”
And the astonished cry went up from sentry to sentry, and tower to tower, all along the fortifications and the battlements of Queen Sychorax’s Great Wall.
“Orders of the queen! Nobody shoot down the door!”
The Wall of Queen Sychorax was supposed to be impregnable, unclimbable, unbreachable by Witches and everything Magic. The arrow-hands of those sentries were absolutely itching to shoot that door down as it sailed majestically and a little erratically over their heads, particularly when Xar leaned over the side of it and gave them all a cheeky wave.