“Slow, was I in the past? Now, I am the fastest wizard alive!
Weak? Now I have the power of instantaneous strength. I have finally programmed my wand with every counter-jinx, every protective charm, every repulsion hex in the Caster’s Lexicon! Thus primed, it can sense and deflect any spell that anyone dares attack me with!” He drew a huge, firming breath and held it. “With this tool finally perfected, I knew I was unstoppable. But I also knew that it was not enough. I needed not only to silence those who had tormented me, but to stand up against all who cling to the pathetic illusion of their own superiority. All of those who bumble through this life so convinced of their own goodness, their own virtue, their own idiotic delusion of right! And then… Judith found me.”
He looked aside at her, finally stepping up onto the warped floor of the gazebo and joining her.
“She found me,” he said with sudden, soft rapture. “And she helped me to understand. Petra, my old school friend, would come to me. Judith divined this directly from Petra’s thoughts, for as yet they are still, if barely, connected. And when Petra did come to me, I would assist her. Judith helped me to see that it was my duty. I must help Petra to rid herself of her curse once and for all. I must do this, with Judith’s help… by ending her.”
“No!” James exclaimed, straining to extricate his leg from the broken railing.
“It’s the merciful thing,” Judith agreed in her cracked, swampy voice. “Secretly, even Petra herself desires her death. And then, with her out of the way, Donofrio will become my new host. Thus fully restored and once again rooted to this realm, we can finally rejoice that power will be in the hands of those who truly deserve it, and who are unafraid to use it.”
“Because, James,” Odin-Vann said, looking down at him now with a sort of benevolent sadness. “Judith really is right. It isn’t just some people who stumble through this life under the delusion of their own rightness. It’s all of them. And they are all… every one… fatally, insultingly, wrong.”
His voice grew leaden as he spoke the final words, and raised his wand, pointing it at James.
“Oh, bugger this!” a voice said from some distance away. James glanced up and saw that it was Rose. She jerked her wand upright, releasing the levitation spell.
“Swim, James!” she shouted desperately. Next to her, Zane staggered, suddenly supporting the gazebo entirely with his own wand.
He grunted, gasped, and broke his spell as well.
The gazebo dropped precipitously, struck the water, and began to roll over, immediately capsizing.
Odin-Vann stumbled, fell past Judith, and struck a side railing, smashing it and following it into the water.
A bolt of brilliant red struck the waves where he had fallen, exploding in a burst of steam. Rose was firing attacks from the ship, aiming for both Odin-Vann and Judith. Zane gripped his wand to join her.
Judith whirled. In a blink, she transformed into a cyclone of stinking black water, her force tearing the gazebo apart all around.
Writhing tentacles uncoiled and scooped Odin-Vann from the water.
His body was borne up into the throat of the waterspout, which roared, circled James with fury as he thrashed amidst the ruin, and then fled away out over the lake, bypassing the Gertrude and vanishing into the dense pall of fog all around.
“James!” Zane called, stabbing out his wand again. Breathlessly, he repeated the levitation spell. James, along with a messy assortment of broken railing, floor planks, and destroyed roofing, rocketed up out of the waves with breathtaking speed, streaming water in a corona.
“Yikes!” Zane gasped, grabbing onto his wand now with both hands. “You’re a lot lighter than that crazy gazebo. Hold on while I rein it in a little!”
Clumsily, trembling with exhaustion, he bobbed James, along with his entourage of sodden debris, over the deck and set him down.
James stumbled as his feet met the planks.
“We have to go after them!” he gasped, grabbing onto a railing for support.
“None of us even knows how!” Rose cried helplessly, dragging a still-woozy Scorpius to his feet. “We don’t know how to sail this ship!”
“How hard can it be?” Zane said, stuffing his wand back into his pocket. “We watched Hagrid do it, didn’t we? All we have to do is set the destination lever back to Hogwarts. Down we go and we’ll be on our way back!”
“I don’t think it’s going to be quite that straightforward,”
Scorpius said, pushing fully to his feet and nodding toward the deck near James’ feet.
James glanced down. A chunk of rotten railing lay on the deck, transported aboard along with himself by Zane’s levitation spell. But as James watched, the broken wooden chunk melted away like an ice sculpture, losing all colour and draining into a loose puddle.
Behind him, a hunk of roof did the same. In a moment, all the gazebo debris had vanished into nothing but melted seawater.
“Oh no,” Rose said, her voice high and faint. She ran to the railing and peered out over the waves.
Beyond her, the fog was drifting away, fading from view.
Revealing…
Nothing. There was no encircling shoreline or fringe of woodland. Only dark waves marching off into further and further leagues, eventually stretching all the way to the horizon.
James reached the railing alongside Rose and looked out, speechless.
Faintly, Zane asked, “We’re not in any country lake… are we?”
“They got rid of us,” Scorpius mused aloud, almost as if he was impressed. “Odin-Vann and The Lady of the Lake. They got rid of us because we were the only ones who know enough to stop them.”
“But, where are we?” James asked, banging his fist down onto the railing.
“I think where we are matters less,” Zane said, nudging James and pointing upward, “than that does.”
James looked up. Revealed by the retreating fog, a low, hulking boil of clouds bore down on the Gertrude, driven before a rising, whipping wind. It was a storm front, dark as a bruise and flickering with gouts of lightning, rumbling with distant thunder.
“Am I crazy,” Rose breathed, eyes wide, “or does that storm seem to be aiming directly for us?”
“Into the wheelhouse,” James cried, finally engaging to action.
He turned, grabbing Zane and pulling him along. “We need to get back into the tunnels below, and as soon as possible! The storm won’t be able to reach us there, and we can get back.”
Fat drops of rain began to pepper the ship, striking with stinging force, pinging off the metal wheelhouse and pattering in the sails.
Together, the foursome poured through the door of the wheelhouse.
Scorpius tugged it shut with a heavy clang.
James moved behind the wheel, which was turning loosely back and forth with the increasing rock of the ship.
Wind suddenly tore over the deck outside, whumping in the sails and singing a high, whipping note in the rigging.
Scorpius scanned the instruments ranged below the window.