Hero Read online

  “You care, that’s who,” said Wolf. “You’ve been scowling for the past ten miles.”

  “I always do that,” said Saturday.

  Wolf looked skeptical.

  “I’m just tired. This wagon is bruising my backside. And it’s too bright.” She held up a hand to shield her eyes from the glowing red sun setting through the leaves ahead of them. After spending so long cooped up inside a mountain, she still hadn’t acclimated to the light.

  The wheels began to kick up sticks and stones. “Whoa, Sassy.” Wolf snapped the reins and guided the old gray mare back onto the path. “From what I hear, you could make our journey a lot shorter if you wanted to.”

  It was true enough; her knapsack still held the ebony-handled brush Thursday had given her. She could throw it like the one she had thrown from the back of Betwixt, calling the Wood to them and Faerie with it. Assuming that the power would do as she willed. So far, there was no evidence that she could harness anything from the ether outside the mountain.

  “I’ve had enough of magic shortcuts,” she said. In the back of her mind, Velius crossed his arms over his chest proudly. She wanted to slap that vision. She spun the ring-that-used-to-be-a-sword on her finger: once, twice, thrice. Stupid teachers. Stupid ax. Stupid sword. Stupid witches. Stupid gods.

  “Suit yourself.” Wolf directed his attention to the road. It was a small comfort. “They call you Earthbreaker, you know.”

  “They who?”

  “Bards, minstrels, the usual folk. They all come to Faerie to play for the queen.” Wolf risked a glance at Saturday from the corner of his eye. “I knew Jack wouldn’t be able to lord his legendary status over his sisters forever.”

  This time Saturday did smile. “I suppose not. So what is it they say?”

  “Just verses about mirrors and swords and oceans, for now, bits about you taking over a pirate ship before trapping a giant bird that you rode to the Top of the World.” Wolf tilted his hat back. His sideburns covered most of his face; those and his long, wavy locks were almost every color Saturday had ever seen on a head of hair. Tufts peeked out from his tall collar and beneath the long sleeves of his coat. His hands were weathered and his nails were thick. His eyes were yellow shadows beneath bushy brows.

  “I look forward to hearing the new tales, once word gets out about the witch and the mountain and all,” he went on. “Instead of batting their eyes at idiots, young girls will start taking up stick swords to slay a dragon and save the prince.” He chuckled at the idea. “Yes, I do look forward to that.”

  “He’s not a prince,” Saturday grumbled. “He’s the son of an earl.” And unlike in Jack’s tales, Saturday hadn’t gotten to keep her prize in the end.

  “‘Prince’ is more romantic,” said Wolf. “Give it a fortnight, Hero. He’ll be a prince. Mark my words.”

  “If you say so.” Saturday took up the scowling again in earnest. It had been so hard to let Peregrine leave the abbey. Too hard. She had stolen an acolyte’s robes and watched him fly off with Betwixt. She spun the ring on her finger again: once, twice, thrice. She would not beg the gods to let him come back to her. She was done asking for anything, in rhyme or otherwise.

  “Wolves mate for life, you know,” he said, apropos of nothing.

  “Yes. So?”

  “So I know love when I see it. No two people who love each other as much as you and that boy do will ever be apart for very long, so there’s no sense in you wasting life worrying. Besides”—he pulled his hat back down—“your sour face is ruining my evening.”

  Saturday had half a mind to jump off the wagon and walk to Faerie. Everything Wolf said was gods-meddling rubbish. How could he be so sure that Saturday loved Peregrine if she didn’t even know it herself? All she knew was the hollowness in her chest and the ache in her head. Her mind didn’t seem to be able to focus on anything. She felt angry and empty and overly warm and slightly ill. Perhaps she’d caught a chill in their rush from the mountain, or the abbey’s rich food had disagreed with her. There was a madness inside her that wanted nothing more than to scream and cry its way out.

  Oh no. Saturday sat up. This was no malady. Wolf was right: this was love. She loved Peregrine, so much that it actually hurt.

  Saturday stood in the wagon, raised her face to the gods, and vented all her frustration at the sky.

  Old Sassy startled, and Wolf snapped the reins again to keep her in check. “Worked it out, did you?”

  “Why?” Saturday cried.

  “Love works in mysterious ways,” said Wolf.

  “No, why did he leave me?”

  Wolf reached up and pulled her back into the moving wagon before she toppled out. “Look,” he said. “Some things you have to go out and do to prove to everyone else that you’re good enough, right?”

  Saturday had worked hard the whole of her life to be as special as the rest of her family. The fey-unblessed sister had longed for years to leave the confines of her quiet, mundane life, until the day she finally did . . . wrecking half the countryside and blowing up a mountain to boot.

  “Well, sometimes a man needs to go out and do something to prove that very same thing to himself.” Wolf drew Old Sassy to a halt. “We know just how amazing you are—in a month every child from Faerie to the Troll Kingdom will know too. This is not about you, love. It’s about Peregrine proving to himself that he deserves you.”

  Wolf clicked his tongue to set the mare going again while Saturday brooded in the twilight. “That’s stupid,” she said finally.

  Wolf shrugged. “I don’t make the rules,” he said. “You don’t think he’d actually go back to a betrothal after all you’ve been through, do you?”

  “Yes, I do,” said Saturday. That was the trouble. Peregrine was stubbornly honorable enough to keep a promise made by someone else.

  “Then let’s hope this Elodie is smarter than he is.”

  Saturday and Wolf passed the next two days in companionable silence. They let the horse graze at intervals while they hunted for their dinner, and they slept under the stars. Saturday rested, letting the soul of the forest nourish her from the inside out, bringing her back to herself.

  On the third day they stopped at a creek outside the borders of Faerie, and Saturday decided to test her magic once more. She took the ring from her finger and placed it in the palm of her right hand. The tiny circle of metal mocked her pain, symbolizing the loss of a sword she’d always wanted and a man she hadn’t, but loved all the same. Unbidden, a single tear fell from her cheek and landed in her palm.

  Weight forced her hand to the ground. Saturday smiled down at her sword. “Hello, stranger.”

  “Probably not wise to go flashing that around the halls of the Fairy Queen,” Wolf said from over her shoulder.

  Saturday picked up the sword and examined it. Other than a dull sheen to the blade, it didn’t look worse for the wear. “I just wanted to see if I could still . . . if I was still . . .”

  Wolf tossed down the bundle of firewood he’d been collecting. “You’re not going to get any less special, if that’s what you’re afraid of. You’ve burned that bridge. There’s no going back.”

  There was a rustle of white feathers in the trees across the stream.

  Saturday remained calm. She’d been jumping at birds the whole journey, and Wolf had teased her for it every time. None of them had been the pegasus. There was no reason to think this was either, until a silver-white horse emerged from the brush on angel wings.

  She took her sword in both hands and forced the stupid look off her face. Her fingers and toes tingled. She told herself it was an aftereffect of the magic. Her heart knew this was a lie.

  “Took you long enough,” she said as Peregrine dismounted.

  “I see you got your sword back.”

  “It wasn’t easy.”

  “Come on,” Wolf said to Betwixt. “There’s a lovely meadow full of nice, peaceful buttercups this way.”

  Saturday let them go and tried concentrating on th
e sword. Swing. Block. Parry. Thrust. “How’s the old homestead?”

  “Not the trip down memory lane I thought it would be.” He’d crossed the stream now. “A lot changes in a hundred years.”

  Saturday dropped both the sword and the pretense. They hadn’t survived two witches, an exploding mountain, and a dragon just so Peregrine could lose everything.

  “A hundred years?” It was bad enough having no family left to speak of; after a hundred years, every bit of the world he’d known would have vanished completely. Saturday couldn’t imagine the loneliness.

  “About that, yes. I told you time passed differently up there.”

  Saturday remembered the hash marks on the cave walls. He must have had some inkling, but every time she’d asked about it, he’d evaded the question. She wondered how long a person had to be a prisoner before he stopped thinking of time altogether in order to stay sane.

  “Peregrine, I’m so sorry.” She touched his jaw, dark with beard stubble. Only a few strands remained of the silver-blue streak in his dark hair. His eyes were truly green now, without a trace of black. “Leila’s curse. It’s broken? Even though she’s still alive?”

  “The curse has been fulfilled,” he said. “I lived a long and fruitful life. And now I’m dying.” He turned his face in toward the palm of her hand, taking a deep breath of her scent.

  “What?!” Saturday swore. “What happened in Starburn?”

  “This happened long before Starburn. It started happening even before we left the mountain. Leila cursed me to die, so I am dying.”

  “But you’re not ill!” cried Saturday. “And the part about losing a vital organ? We all came down from that mountain in one piece. You’re not sick, and you certainly haven’t lost your mind.” She shook her head. “I have, maybe. But not you. Never you.”

  “I lost my heart,” he said, looking straight into her eyes. “That’s pretty vital.”

  “Over me? No. No one should have to die for me. You can’t die, Peregrine. You can’t. I just got handed the rest of my life and I have no idea what to do with it, but I knew at least I had you. You and Betwixt and me, we all have each other. Now what do I do?” She pounded his chest with her fists. “What do I do?!”

  “You’re the strongest woman I’ve ever met—”

  “I’m one of the only women you’ve ever met,” said Saturday.

  “—and your life will be full of amazing things. You don’t need me for that.”

  Saturday couldn’t look at him anymore. She stared at her feet instead, at the toes of boots that had seen the Top of the World and the edge of an ocean. “But I want you there,” she said to the ground. “I just want you, period. I love you.” She took a deep breath, inhaling as slowly as she exhaled. Damn the gods. Damn Fate. Damn everyone. “How long do you have?”

  “Until I die?”

  Saturday turned on him with the full force of her anger. “No, until the moon dances, you idiot.”

  “Right.” Peregrine pressed his lips together. “I suspect I have only as many years left as any other mortal man.”

  It took a beat for his words to register. “Why, you—”

  Saturday raised her fists to punch him again, but couldn’t bring herself to do it. Laughter erupted from the other side of the bush that hid Wolf and Betwixt from sight.

  “That’s enough from you!” she yelled at the shrubbery. She pushed Peregrine hard enough to topple him over, turned on her heel, and went back for her sword.

  “Calm down,” said Peregrine. “It’s not like I’m dying tomorrow.”

  “Keep it up and you might be.” Saturday picked up her sword.

  “Saturday, you can push me away all you want, but I’ll have you know that I plan to fight for you. I will fight to stand beside you, and I mean to die beside you.”

  “I could run you through right now,” she offered.

  “I wish you’d wait. We’re desperately low on gryphon’s tears.”

  Peregrine regained his footing all too quickly, and when he turned her back around to face him, he noticed the tears she didn’t want him to see. He wiped them away for her. “We should bottle these instead,” he said. “They’re far more rare.” He held her then, like he hadn’t held her since that first cold night on the mountain after Cwyn had captured her, like she wished he’d hold her every day from now on until the end of their adventures.

  “So,” he said finally. “You love me.”

  “You loved me first.”

  He hugged her tighter. “And don’t you forget it.”

  There was a smattering of applause at Peregrine’s declaration. From the shadows and the fireflies stepped the figure of a thin young man with a quiver of arrows at his back and a bow slung across his chest.

  “Trix!” Saturday ran and embraced her little brother, bow and all.

  “Watch it, sister, you’re armed.”

  She let her sword fall to the ground again. “I’m sorry,” she said.

  Trix reached up, took her face in his hands, and kissed both cheeks. “I’m sorry too,” he said. “Will you ever forgive me?”

  “Hmm.” Saturday scrunched up her face in thought. “Well, I’d make you promise to do the washing up for a month, but since I don’t think either one of us is going to see the towerhouse for a while, how about you just owe me one?”

  “Deal,” said Trix. He spat in his hand and they shook on it.

  “It is so good to see your face,” said Saturday. “I missed you.”

  “Really?” asked Trix. “I didn’t miss you. You were with me the whole time.”

  “Was I?”

  “Oh yes. Every time I needed to be strong, I thought of you, and you gave me your strength.” He pointed to the blue-green band at her wrist. “And every time you needed my strength, I gave it to you. Didn’t you notice?”

  Saturday ran her finger across the strip of fabric with her siblings’ hair inside it—even Jack’s, now. She had thought it was the magic of the mountain funneling through her the whole time she was imprisoned—and maybe it was—but it was her family’s strength, too. That strength and love had let her shift the ring back into a sword, once the Top of the World was a distant memory behind them. “I did,” she said. “Thank you.”

  “Once or twice I swore I could even hear your voice,” said Trix.

  Peregrine and Saturday exchanged glances, remembering what had happened in the cave of mirrors. It was probably best that particular room had been consumed by Earthfire.

  “Amazing thing, magic,” said Peregrine. “I’m Peregrine, by the way.”

  “Trix,” he said as they shook hands. “I’m the reason Saturday got into all this mess.”

  “I fell in love with your sister in the middle of this mess,” Peregrine replied.

  “Really?” said Trix. “Which sister? I have seven, you know.” Saturday grabbed Trix before he could get away and tickled him mercilessly, as they had done back home, before she’d broken the world. She didn’t know how much she’d needed that until just then. Who’d have ever thought that one day she’d long for a moment of normal life?

  “How did you find us?” Saturday asked when they’d caught their breaths.

  “A brownie told me,” said Trix. “A wild one, from a tribe I’d never heard of. He showed up at the Hill spouting all sorts of wild tales about dragons and witches and falling off a mountain. Said he was rescued by a bad-tempered giant in a skirt. I can only assume he meant you.” Trix examined Saturday from head to toe, and then Peregrine, in his long, full coat. “Then again, maybe he meant you,” he said to Peregrine. “Either way, I’m here. We need your help, Saturday.”

  “I’m here to give it,” said Saturday. “Who’s ‘we’?”

  “I come to you as the emissary of the Queen of Faerie,” Trix said in his noblest voice.

  “Do you, now?” asked Saturday.

  “I speak to the animals,” he said. “And for the animals.”

  “So it’s the animals who need help?” asked Satu
rday.

  “Yes. And the Queen of Faerie, too. And . . . well . . . pretty much everybody in the whole world.”

  “Again?” said Peregrine.

  Saturday sighed melodramatically. “Typical. You in?” she asked Peregrine.

  “Always,” he answered.

  “Same here,” said Betwixt as he emerged from the bushes.

  “I’m headed in that direction anyway,” said Wolf.

  “Saturday,” Trix whispered, “why didn’t you tell me you have a pegasus?”

  Saturday planted a kiss on her brother’s cheek before he could cringe away. “Trixie, dear, I have a lot of new surprises. Do we need to leave now?”

  Trix looked up at the clear night sky. “We can wait until dawn.”

  Wolf’s eyes flashed yellow in the darkness. “Sassy and I don’t mind traveling through the night if you don’t.”

  “Then let’s go!” cried Saturday.

  Peregrine tugged at her elbow. “One quick thing.”

  “Make it snappy.”

  He pulled Saturday into his arms and kissed her soundly.

  Somewhere on the forest floor, a sword shifted back into a ring. Somewhere above them, a silver moon danced among the clouds. Somewhere on a peak in the White Mountains, a dragon drifted lazily through the air. And somewhere on the borders of Faerie, Saturday Woodcutter embarked on a new adventure.

  As their lips parted, Saturday smiled up at the gods. Those troublesome bards could sing all they pleased—she’d won her prince after all. She tossed her short hair in the forest breeze and laughed until two strong hands captured her head and turned it to the side.

  “Ah . . . beloved?”

  “Yes, dearest?”

  “What on earth happened to your ear?”

  Acknowledgments

  Publishing is an interesting exercise in time compression and expansion. For instance, it took me almost five years to write Enchanted, but it took many of you less than a day to read it. Similarly, in between writing the dedication for Hero and the writing of these acknowledgments, my beloved grandmother, Madeleine DeRonde, passed away.

  Much like Peregrine’s father, Memere suffered from Alzheimer’s disease—a terrible, horrible thing that sneaks up on you too gradually to notice until it’s too late. By the time my first book was published in 2006, Memere no longer remembered who I was. I still love her with all my heart and miss her every day. I know she would be proud of my silly, shiny books; I only regret not being able to share them with her in this life. So I am here to tell you all right now: Thank those heroes in your life, every single one, as soon and as often as you can.