But their eyes were the same eyes that had gazed out on the world a couple of decades before. One pair a fierce blue. The other a wild gray.
The two of them danced, and they were lost in the music for one fatal moment.
The song took them up into the air like the swifts, out of time, where there were no rules…
And in that fatal moment the children left, tiptoeing out of the courtyard. Crusher gave them the broken door, which he had kept in his pocket. So engrossed were the adults in their dancing and their merrymaking and eating and singing, that nobody noticed the broken door soaring off quietly into the night.
It was Midwinter’s End Eve, ages long ago.
In a British Isles so old it did not know it was the British Isles yet.
A broken door, soaring through the quietness of the midnight sky, like a small flying carpet. Three children, all thirteen years old, poised in that moment between childhood and adulthood, lying on their backs, looking up at the stars. A talking raven, perched on Wish’s foot. A spoon, lying fast asleep on her heart. The sprites, joyously swooping and diving, and buzzing around them. Down below them three snowcats, a werewolf, a bear, and a pack of wolves running, softly, quietly, their footsteps disappearing magically as they ran, in a spell cast by Ariel.
After a while of peaceful contemplation, Wish sat up and peered over the edge of the door.
“All right, we couldn’t persuade our parents to join us, but let’s not forget that we’re doing really well!” said Wish. “The werewolf has learned some manners… The Once-sprite is happier now he’s a spell-raider… and Xar is making definite progress in being good…”
“He still has some way to go,” said Caliburn, a trifle gloomily, for only Encanzo had the power to set Caliburn and Ariel free.***
“And we do have ABSOLUTELY NO IDEA where we are going NOW,” Bodkin pointed out.
Xar’s arm was burning, and it gave him an idea. He sat up and opened the Spelling Book onto the page with the spell to get rid of Witches. And then he gave Wish Caliburn’s feather. “Write!” urged Xar. “Write down the next ingredient! Think as hard as you can, and write!”
“Oh, that won’t work,” said Wish, dipping the feather in the ink. “I’ve tried that so many times before and it just won’t—oh!”
To her astonishment, the feather, warm in her hands, began to write, almost as if by itself.
“Four scales of the Nuckalavee from the Western Whirlpools…” read Bodkin, in growing horror, “and five tears of the Drood from the Labyrinth of the Lake of the Lost…”
“Is there any more?” asked Xar.
“No, that seems to be it,” said Wish, for whatever had animated the feather had run out, and all she was making now were a series of unintelligible blotches.
“I knew it! I knew it! We have the last ingredients in our quest!” said Xar, punching the air in his excitement. “Key!” he said to the key, who was steering them from the lock of the Punishment Cupboard. “Turn due southeast! Next stop… THE LAKE OF THE LOST!”
“Wha-a-a-a-a-a-a-t?” cried Bodkin, waving his arms around in horror. “But the Lake of the Lost is the DROOD STRONGHOLD! We can’t go there! It’s a suicide mission! Didn’t you learn anything AT ALL from the Giant’s Last Breath story? Pentaglion just took TWO tears of the Drood and those scary Droods came and destroyed his whole castle and his giant, and we’re thinking of taking FIVE…? They’re not listening to me are they, Caliburn?”
“No.” Caliburn sighed. “They’re not listening.” Trying to control the uncontrollable little princess was bad enough, but trying to control both her and Xar together… well…
“It’s impossible,” moaned Bodkin, lying back on the door and putting his helmet over his head.
But Xar and Wish were not paying attention to such gloomy thinking. They were excitedly surveying the spell to get rid of Witches.
“We’ll get rid of those Witches in no time at this rate!” said Wish, with great enthusiasm. “Let’s put a tick against the ingredients we’ve already got to make us feel like we’re progressing. We’ve got the tears of the queen, and the Witch feathers…”
“Yes, but I’m annoyed that we’ve lost our first and most important ingredient in the spell to get rid of Witches by using it on the Drood,” said Xar.
“The moral of that is worrying me,” said Caliburn. “The giant’s last words were about forgiveness, but it was the breath of forgiveness that actually got rid of the Drood in the end. So how does that work?”
This is the problem with stories.
Stories always mean something. The question is…
What exactly do they mean?
“It means we’re going to have to start all over again finding ANOTHER Giant’s Last Breath before we can find anything else!” said Xar. “It’s very annoying.”
Squeezjoos hovered joyfully above them.
“Yous don’t have to start again!” said Squeezjoos. “I hass a secret that I’s hassn’t told anybody! I’s saved the day without anybody realizing!”
“Nonsssense…” hissed Tiffinstorm. “An insignificant little hairy fairy like you could never save the day.”
“But I has!” said Squeezjoos triumphantly. He paused for effect.
“There’sss a tiny little bit of the breath left in the collecting bottle! I sssaved it! I’s put the sstopper back in just in time!”
Xar got out the collecting bottle, and there was the very, very faint whisper of green smoke in the center of it.
The last remains of the Giant’s Last Breath.
“You see! I may’s be sssmall but I is mighty! I is NOT too tiny to be a spell-raider after all!” crowed Squeezjoos.
“You most certainly are not,” said Xar heartily. “That was extremely quick thinking of you. For this, Squeezjoos, I make you not only an official spell-raider, but the Chief Spell-Raider of our entire team!” said Xar, and the little hairy fairy was so overcome with excitement that he blew up like a puffer fish and turned three cartwheels in a row, and collapsed panting on Wish’s shoulder. The spoon, who had woken up, gave him a celebratory bow.
“And look!” said Wish. “I can now tick off THREE of the ingredients! And there are only two more to collect!”
Wish lay back down on the door with a sigh of satisfaction and went back to dreamily surveying the stars.
“The universe is sending us a sign,” she said. “Look! I’m sure that star up there is winking at us!”
And indeed, one of the stars did seem to be blinking on and off at them.
“Is it winking in a friendly way, though, or in a laughing-at-us way?” worried Caliburn. “Is it a good sign or bad sign? Are we really only being led by Xar’s Witch-stain in escaping from your parents for the second time? Look! The Witch-stain is worse than ever! How can we know if Xar is EVER going to be able to control or get rid of it?”
Xar’s hand was indeed still burning green in the moonlight.
“We just have to believe and hope that he can,” said Wish simply. “If we believe in Xar hard enough, then we’ll find our way to a happy ending.”
“But you only think that because you’re young and don’t know any better!” agonized Caliburn. “When you’re young you think that love conquers everything… You don’t know the problems it can cause… You haven’t seen the times where the Witches triumph, there is no second life, and the werewolf dies!”
“Well, I never want to grow up, then,” said Wish. “I want to stay young forever. You know I’m right anyway, Caliburn. It’s why you came with us and didn’t betray us to our parents…”
“And if you want to stay with us, Caliburn, you have to stop being so negative!” said Xar. “Wish is right. It’s a good sign. It’s a sign that everything will be all right in the end.”
Caliburn sighed.
Some of his thoughts he kept to himself.
About LOVE, for example.
For as they lay on the door, the key, swiveling happily in the lock, was looking longingly at the spoon, and the fork was lookingly longingly at the key, and it was not so very different from the longing way Bodkin looked at Wish sometimes, and the longing way Wish looked at Xar.
There may be trouble ahead… thought Caliburn.
Who knows if Wish and Xar were right, on that midnight long ago?
For there would be storms tomorrow, there is no doubt.
But if we worry too much about tomorrow, how can we enjoy today?
So let us leave our heroes there, in the happiness of NOW, soaring gloriously through the sky, in the triumph and satisfaction of a quest completed, and in that blink of a moment before another quest begins.
And let us leave the grown-ups dancing.
In a while they will discover their children gone, the birds have flown, and then there will be tears and rending of clothes and wringing of hands, and Warriors blaming Wizards, and Wizards cursing Warriors, and their war and their worrying will begin again anew.
But for now they are dancing, in a moment out of time.
So let us enjoy that moment, lost in the music, a small sweet bittersweet smile on Queen Sychorax’s face, for she knows this is a stolen time.
In that moment Sychorax and Encanzo are young again, free from all parental and regal responsibilities of being mothers, fathers, monarchs. In that moment they have no tribes to run, worlds to conquer, countries to rule, traditions to uphold.
They have earned those moments, the poor parents, just a few minutes to go back into the past, and unbend, relax, for an eyeblink or two, to be once more a young Warrior princess, who has just met a Wizard in the wood.
The Once-sprite is singing a different song now, another forbidden one.
“Once we were Wizards,
Wandering free
In roads of sky and paths of sea…
Doors still flew and birds still talked,
Witches grinned and giants walked…
We had Magic wands and Magic wings
And we lost our hearts to impossible things
Unbelievable thoughts! Unsensible ends!
For Wizards and Warriors might be friends.
In a world where impossible things are true
I don’t know why we forgot the spell
When we lost the way, how the forest fell.
But now we are old, we can vanish too.
And I see once more the invisible track
That will lead us home and take us back…
So find your wands and spread your wings
I’ll sing our love of impossible things
And when you take my vanished hand
We’ll both go back to that Magic land
Where we lost our hearts…
Several lifetimes ago…
When we were Wizards
Once.”
Fly on, door, through the quiet night.
With the three young heroes, lying on their backs, looking up at the stars.
And a very pleased-with-himself little hairy fairy, buzzing on Xar’s chest, with his ear to the collecting bottle in Xar’s breast pocket, whispering to himself.
“I’s saved the day! ME, Squeezjoos! The smallest of them all has saved the day!”
For it was definitely the final fragments of the Giant’s Last Breath in there.
There was no doubt about it.
If you held the bottle up to your ear, extremely close, you could still hear it, very, very faintly like an echo.
“Forgive them,” the echo whispered.
“Forgive them.”