Hero or villain—it was up to me to decide.
I let the flame come to my hand. The power was sluggish, sleepy without having an immediate target. I thought back to the times I had used it, especially at the Ivory Tower. That voice, guiding me to burn it all. And the feeling of being invincible, being powerful—of having control. But who had really been in control? That was the question. If I didn’t use the power in anger, if I only gave it my life to eat, was I strong enough to harness the flame and use it to my benefit? I’d used it to save Kato once…
Let’s hope that in addition to my mother’s temper, I also got her strength.
Leaving Kato and Rexi to finish their cloudball fight, I went back in the storage unit to find Hydra. “What do I need to do to put back the rules of magic and set everything right again?”
“Iz bout time you grow brain and stop vith the froo froo and play. Iz like carryink fire in one hand and vater in other. Maybe vere you to listen to me first time, you vould not have been burned, da?” Hydra spoke to me but didn’t bother looking up while she sifted through piles of her things. She tucked the strands of her new salt-and-pepper hair behind her big gold hoop earrings.
Squatting down to her level, my dress pooled around my feet. “No offense, but you smelled and looked like the headless horseman’s long-dead granny.”
Hydra muttered under her breath. “Vise men say to never judge book by cover.” She tossed a cannonball over her shoulder, narrowly missing me.
I cocked my head to the side and chuckled. “Hello…princess here. My whole life was about the cover—the clothes, the wrapping on the package.” I put a hand on her arm, stilling her search. “But I was wrong. And I’m ready now to hear what you have to say.”
She cocked her head to match mine and searched for the truth in my words. Apparently satisfied, she pulled her hand out of the pile. Opening her fist, Hydra’s palm held a wishing star. Not just any wishing star—my wishing star.
“Rule #83: When on a quest, there’s safety in numbers. The dumb one that goes off alone always gets cursed first.”
—Definitive Fairy-Tale Survival Guide, Volume 1
31
What Goes Up…
I hadn’t thought I’d ever see that star again after I’d left it at Hydra’s house the first time. “But I’ve already used up the wish. I’ve tried unwishing on it. Nothing works,” I protested.
Hydra grasped my hand and placed the star in it. “Vish is not gone, just stuck inside. Vere you to find some magic bleach to be unstickink it, perkhaps vish would be dasvidanya.”
Rolling the star in my hand, I contemplated what that might mean. “As in never happened? Or everything just goes back to normal?”
Hydra shrugged. “Oy! How I be knowink? Pig might fly. Might be breakfast. Nyet. All my years, never see big mess as this.” She stood, her back cracking underneath her shawl and floral housecoat.
Great. If the wish had never happened, I would be the same shallow princess I was before. But it wasn’t like I had a whole lot of options. I would do whatever it took to make things right. “Okay. So where do you keep your strongest cleaners?” I started, looking through the piles for a big bottle of bleach.
“Say I be havink? Is not been made for hundred years or more.” She shook her head and made a face, showing a mouth full of sharpened teeth. “Case of cure being more trouble than the curse.”
I threw my hands up in sheer exasperation. “First, there was a killer rainbow that no one could find. Then we got the Book of Making, just to have it swiped by the wizard and Griz. And after all that, we’re back to page one again.”
Hydra clucked her tongue at me. “In sense. Book would be helpful, but that is flown coup, so back to plan A and finding of glasses.”
And I used to think it was tough to get a straight answer out of Verte, that it had to be something with being incredibly ancient. The cobwebs built up in the brain and got their thoughts tangled or something.
Hydra harrumphed around the storage, opening baskets and boxes, and crawling under tables until she spied a leather sack. “Ahh,” she said, opening the satchel. Then she frowned and shook it upside down. Nothing came out.
She stormed out the door, grabbing a walking stick and miniature suitcase on the way.
Rexi and Kato were outside, breathless, but still in one piece. I was glad that the play fight hadn’t turned into a war. With those two, you never could tell.
Whistling through the points of her front teeth, Hydra caught Rexi’s attention before sweeping under her legs with the walking stick. “If not vanting to be made into soup, then save rotten tuchus and give back spectacles.”
Rexi opened her mouth to protest, looked again at the pointy stick, and thought better of it. Reaching around to the back of her shirt, she pulled out a pair of goggles with multicolored lenses.