The ice shattered. With the sound of breaking glass, it fractured into thousands of razor-sharp edges, glinting in the darkness. And at that instant, Puck unleashed the whirlwind.
With a roar of Summer glamour, Puck’s cyclone whipped through the thorns and surrounded the boat, shrieking and causing the small craft to lurch sideways. It picked up debris in its wake, branches, spider bodies and thousands of fractured ice shards, spinning them through the air with the force of a tornado. I grabbed Ariel a and pulled her close as the Wolf hunkered down beside us, hunching his shoulders against the wind.
When the winds finally ceased, we were surrounded by twigs, branches, melting ice and spider parts, oozing over everything. Icicles 186/387
stuck out of the benches and walls like crystal shrapnel, and black ichor was splattered everywhere.
“Yes!” Puck cheered as I sat down on the f loor, leaning against the railing. “Home team, one—spiders, zero!” Ariel a looked at me with wide eyes. “I never saw you two do that before.”
“It was a long time ago,” I said tiredly. “Before we ever met. When Puck and I…” I trailed off, remembering the years when Robin Goodfel ow and Prince Ash thought they could take on the world. Reckless and defiant, spurning the laws of the courts, they sought out new and greater challenges, always reaching for more, and got into more scrapes then anyone had a right to come out of alive. I shook my head, dissolving the memories. “It was a long time ago,” I finished.
“Regardless.” Grimalkin abruptly materialized, sitting on a bench with not a hair out of place, his tail curled around himself. “If the two of them have any more tricks like that, they would do well to remember them. Summer and Winter glamour, when used in conjunction instead of against each other, can be a powerful thing. Thankfully, neither of the courts has ever figured this out.” The Wolf shook himself, spraying ichor and spider parts everywhere, making Grimalkin lay back his ears. “Magic and parlor tricks,” the Wolf snorted, wrinkling his muzzle, “will not get us to the End of the World.”
“Well, duh,” Puck shot back. “That’s why we’re on a boat.” The Wolf gave him a sinister look, then stalked to the front of the boat, not caring about the spider parts scattered about the deck. For a moment, he stood there, sniffing the air, ears pricked forward for any 187/387
hints of trouble. Finding none, he curled up in a relatively clean spot and closed his eyes, ignoring us all.
Ariel a looked down at me, then at Puck, who was yawning and scrubbing the back of his head. “That took a lot of power, didn’t it?” she mused, and I didn’t argue. Releasing an explosion like that would leave anyone drained. Ariel a sighed and shook her head. “Get some rest, the both of you,”
she ordered. “Grim and I will take last watch.” I didn’t think I would sleep, but I dozed fretfully as the ferry made its way through the endless tangle of brambles. Despite assurances from Ariel a and the Wolf that nothing followed us, I found it impossible to relax. Often, I would be jerked awake by a splash or a snapping of twigs somewhere in the thorns, and every once in a while the scream of some unfortunate creature would echo through the branches. Eventually, everyone gave up trying to rest and spent the journey in a constant and exhausting state of high alert. Except Grimalkin, who vanished frequently and made everyone nervous while he was gone.
The Briars went on, never changing, never still. I caught glimpses of various doors through the thorns, trods to places in the mortal world, doorways out of the Nevernever. Creatures seen and unseen skittered through the branches, furry or shiny or many-limbed, peering at us through the thorns. A giant centipede, over twenty feet long, clung to the roof of the tunnel as we drifted beneath it, close enough that we could hear the slow clicking of its huge mandibles. Thankfully, it didn’t seem interested in us, but Puck kept his daggers out for several miles afterward, and Grimalkin didn’t reappear for a long, long time.
Hours passed. Or days—it was impossible to tell. The Wolf and I were standing at the rear of the boat, watching an enormous snake glide 188/387
through the branches overhead, when Ariel a’s weary voice f loated up from the front.
“There it is.”