A camp of humans was hiding near the bottom of the hill, taking shelter within a patch of pine trees. They were speaking in whispers too low for Cordelia to catch, but the scent of aggression floating through the air was unmistakable.
“Bandits,” Rosalind pronounced when Cordelia ran back to the others to report. She had been scowling and muttering to herself when Cordelia arrived, but she brightened at this news and started scouring the ground in the darkness for a new sword-stick. “Lying in wait for rich travelers to pass, I’d guess.”
“They’re out of luck with us, then,” said Giles. “We don’t even have any food for them to steal. Do you think we should warn them we’re bad pickings? I could sing very loudly about how much my stomach’s rumbling. I’ve been practicing a song about it in my head for the last few hours.”
“I expect I’ll just have to fight them off.” Rosalind straightened, holding a fallen branch, and started busily stripping off the leaves. “Don’t worry, Giles. You can write an even better ballad about that. In the meantime, though, I don’t want either of you hurt—so you stand back and hide with Cordy while I take care of all the fighting.”
“What? No!” Giles squawked. “Why would you pick a fight with grown-up bandits? That makes no sense! You don’t even have a real sword!”
Cordelia didn’t bother to argue. She just shifted into bear shape, big and clawed, looming over both of them … and not about to hide from anyone.
Rosalind shook her head pityingly. “Oh, I know you look fierce now, Cordy. But if any of those bandits had ever practiced wrestling with you …”
Cordelia growled down at her arrogant sister and lifted her muzzle in a sneer.
“Couldn’t we just walk a different way and avoid them?” Giles was still protesting as Rosalind stalked down the hillside five minutes later with Cordelia padding in her wake. He followed well behind them both, streaming complaints at his sisters with every lagging step. “If we only went around instead—”
“They probably have lookouts waiting to ambush travelers at several different points.” Rosalind didn’t even slow her confident stride. “Best to face them head-on so we know exactly where they are.”
“But what travelers could they be waiting for?” Giles tripped over a rock, but it didn’t slow his argument. “How many travelers ever come out of our forest? We’re the only ones who live there!”
“Well, then maybe they’re hoping to kidnap their new queen.” Rosalind smacked her stick menacingly against her side. “We’ll see how they like the ransom we’ll give them!”
“But—”
“Who goes there?” It was a man’s warning shout, high and angry.
Cordelia’s bear nose caught something unexpected in the air: the scent of fear beneath the anger. She tilted her big, shaggy head, sniffing harder.
Why would ferocious bandits be frightened of any passersby?
“Stand back if you value your lives, villains!” Rosalind shouted. “You’ll regret it if you try to face us down, I promise you!”
Giles let out a heartfelt groan.
Cordelia huffed warningly at her sister. There was more going on here than they’d realized …
But as usual, Rosalind was barreling ahead without bothering to ask any questions first. “Lay down your weapons, now!” she bellowed.
“Never!” the man bellowed back. Agitated rustling sounded in the trees—more humans hurrying to take up places behind him. Metal clanked ominously. Voices whispered. Fear filled the air.
And then—
Cordelia couldn’t have caught it with human ears: the sound of a hastily muffled cry.
Wait. There were other children here. Babies, too—she could smell them. That was why these strangers were afraid! They were hiding in the dark, trying to protect their own families.
“Come on, Cordy.” Rosalind started forward. “Attack!”
The strangers started toward them in return.
Cordelia slammed herself in front of Rosalind in her big bear form. Then she shifted back into a girl. The shock of her transformation made the adults jerk back, breaths hissing loudly through their teeth.
Rosalind’s mouth dropped open, too. “What are you doing?” she hissed. “You can’t do us any good like that!”
It was true that Cordelia had no claws in girl form. But she needed distraction, not physical strength, to defuse this particular battle … and luckily, she knew someone who was always happy to be the center of attention.
“Giles,” she said to her triplet, “you can sing us that ballad now.”
It was the moment that Giles had been born for. As Cordelia watched in awe—and Rosalind groaned in despair—he flung both long arms out in a dramatic flourish and bounded to the center of the confrontation.
Both sisters knew exactly what that deep, indrawn breath heralded.
“My stomach!” His bell-like voice pealed at top volume through the air, throbbing with intensity and sending onlookers lurching involuntarily backward. “Oh, the tale of my stomach is a tale of woe, of pain even greater than my throbbing toe …”
On every side, weapons lowered as strangers stared in slack-jawed disbelief. Metal glinted in their hands, the source of those earlier clanking noises—but it was the metal of spades and weed hooks, not martial swords or spears. Cordelia pointed them out, wordlessly, to Rosalind—who scowled more ferociously than ever.
“… For berries are few, and now I rue that I never ate more of Alys’s stew …”
“He couldn’t have eaten any more of it,” Rosalind muttered under her breath to Cordelia. “He would have burst!”
“… And now that we’re here, I greatly fear that I may well shed more than one—”
“What is going on?” A tall, broad-shouldered older girl with skin a darker brown than Connall’s shoved past all the staring adults and held up a flickering candle to light the scene. “Where are those ferocious bandits you were ordering us all to hide from, Hal?”
“They … well …” The blond, bearded man who’d shouted back and forth with Rosalind shook his head now, blinking rapidly as he turned to face the new arrival. “This lot threatened us, Tilda, so we had to—”
“Threatened you?” She took one sweeping look across the group. “For goodness’ sake, they’re only children!”
Rosalind opened her mouth with a furious huff of air. Cordelia kicked her, hard.
Luckily, Tilda wasn’t looking at them anymore.
“What were you thinking?” she demanded of the armed group. “Or did those dukes claim your eyes as well as all our farms?”
Shaking her head in disgust, she turned back to Cordelia, Rosalind, and Giles. “You poor things. Did we frighten you horribly?”
“He didn’t seem frightened,” a different woman muttered behind her, pointing at Giles. “He’s just thinking about his stomach!”
“Aren’t we all?” Tilda sighed, beckoning Giles closer. “You certainly have an impressive voice, lad. I’m sorry it was wasted on an unappreciative audience.”
Rosalind snorted. Cordelia rolled her eyes.
Giles gave her a fabulous bow. “At your service, milady,” he said grandly. “I’m afraid we’ve been lost in the forest for some time. It was lonely and frightening—and there weren’t enough berries, as I may have mentioned—and my sisters are both terribly excitable, so—”
“The forest?” Tilda took a rapid step back, pulling her ragged shawl tighter around her shoulders. “You went into the enchanted forest? By yourselves? Why would you ever do such a foolish thing?”
“Ah …” Giles faltered, and Hal seized his chance.
“She was a bear!” he said, pointing at Cordelia. “I saw her! She—no, she really was, Tilda!” he added plaintively as she turned to give him a severe look. “Those soldiers told us to watch out for demons from the forest. And everyone here can tell you, too! We all saw her change shape … didn’t we?”
Whispers and mumbles circled around the men as Tilda tilted her candle to look each one of them in the face.
“It was dark,” another man said weakly. “I thought … but I mean, I suppose I might have—”
“She doesn’t look like a bear to me,” said Tilda. “You’re seeing specters in the shadows, and you should know better, at your ages! But you children,” she added sternly to Giles, “should never have done anything so wild and reckless! Your poor parents must be—”
“Our father is dead,” said Rosalind flatly. “Our mother was in the forest with us.”
“Ohhh.” She breathed out the word, exchanging a look with the men and women around her. “Was she one of the soldiers forced inside to face that wicked enchantress? Oh, you poor things. No wonder—!”
She cut herself off, wincing. “Never mind. You’re safe with us for the night, at least. This lot won’t leave so much as a sparrow unchallenged. You can have a good sleep before you make any decisions about what to do next. I only wish—”
“We need to go to Raven’s Nest,” said Cordelia, just as Rosalind said ominously, “Wicked enchantress?”
“Shut up, shut up, shut up!” Giles hissed at Rosalind. To Cordelia, he added urgently, “We haven’t actually decided—”
“Can you tell us where it is?” She focused on Tilda, shutting out the others’ nonsense. “All we know is that it’s somewhere up in the mountains. But it looks like there are a lot of those.”
“A … lot of mountains?” Tilda shook her head, sounding dazed. “I think we’d better sit down and talk all of this over. But first …” She glanced at Giles as his stomach let out a loud and unmistakable growl. “Let’s find something to fill that stomach before it starts singing to us, too.”