“Told ya,” I said weakly as my skin blistered and popped. My victory at being right was hollow as the strength left my arms, and I couldn’t hold on to Kato’s back anymore.
I let go.
Kato screamed my name as the lava rose up to greet me.
“Rexi!” that same voice echoed from outside the memory. “Come back right now.”
I wanted to, but Kato was so far away, and I could still feel the lava burning into my bones…
“Rule #16: Since amnesiatic spells are a preferred weapon of villains everywhere, it’s always a good idea to carry illustrated ID. Many a royal has found themselves a serving girl due to this simple oversight.”
—Definitive Fairy-Tale Survival Guide, Volume 1
4
Waking Ugly
A broken claw scratched my cheek while a growl snapped my soul back into body. “Ashes and iron, Rexi!” Kato said. “Start breathing or so help me…”
Breathing was hard. Maybe because there was a heavy, weeping weight on my chest. I opened my eyes a sliver, just enough to see an ocean of flaming curls sparking against my opal necklace. “For the last time,” I wheezed. “Get off me, you pixing cow!”
Dorthea raised her head, a delicate trail of tears on either cheek. Ech. The moron even cried beautifully.
She whacked me in the gut less beautifully as she scolded, “Don’t scare me like that! You took too long to come to.”
With a grunt, Kato rose off his haunches. Including his twisted horns, he was now nearly twice my height and his set of white-and-tan mismatched wings were easily as wide when extended. He wrapped his scaled dragon tail around me and started to pull me to my feet.
“Well, excuse my rudeness,” I said, rolling my eyes at Dorthea. “Maybe I wasn’t too excited to get back since it’s mostly your fault that I’ve died three times!”
Kato stilled, halting before I was all the way standing. “Rexi,” he said quietly, the creases in his brow growing deeper. “You’ve died six times.”
“Ha. Ha.” I stood up the rest of the way on my own. “Hil-hexing-larious. Make fun of the zombie girl.”
“No, really.” Even in chimera form, Kato had humanlike expressions. Just fuzzier. And at the moment, his muzzle showed no sign of his teasing.
I turned to the others, who’d gathered around me. Dorthea looked like she might burst into tears again. Hydra was still perched on the bow, which was now stuck in the grass like a head on a pike. Her decrepit forehead wrinkled even further. And Verte stared off into space, the carved emerald eye in her belt growing cloudy.
I chuckled awkwardly, trying to fill the silence. “C’mon, guys. I think I would remember.” No one laughed with me. One: storm bolt to the back. Two: tree to the gut. Three: ground to the spine.
I staggered, feeling as if something were trying to pull me under the soil as I tried to remember more. Kato was by my side, supporting my weight before I fell. On its chain, the bright-green swirl in the opal pendant pulsed and widened slightly, swallowing a piece of the surrounding iridescent red.
Dorthea’s emotions welled in me—concern for me as well as a tidal wave of love for Kato. I’d felt this particular combination before, but I couldn’t place when.
As Kato looked down at me, I wanted to drown in those borrowed feelings and his wintery-blue eyes.
“Turning into a swooning maiden, little hero?” my shadow whispered beneath me.
Morte.
Rejecting the warmth growing in my chest and cheeks, I shoved myself away from the lion-bodied King of Beasts. “I didn’t ask for your help, you big mutt. Don’t you have to get back to your mountain and toast marsh-spellows over Blanc’s prison?”
I thought it was quiet before.
I was wrong.
Even the wind seemed to hold its breath.
“What’s wrong?” I asked.
With everyone else so quiet, I couldn’t block out the grim chuckling that no one else seemed to hear.
“You are wrong. Allow to refresh memory. The vhite empress is running off. This vorld is doomed to kerput. And you seem losing slowly mind.” Hydra clucked her tongue. “Any questions?”
Questions? Only enough to fill all the pages of Witchipedia. But I hated all the pitying looks on their faces, like I was Dopey’s half-as-smart little sister.
“Oh that.” I snorted. “Yeah. I know. Totally just messing with you.” I forced a laugh and a smirk, punching Kato in the haunches. “I sure got you good, didn’t I? And you,” I said, pointing to Dorthea. “Just a little payback for killing me off six times. Make it seven and don’t blame me if your gowns magically turn into hammocks.”
Dorthea’s lips curled, and her hair flared green in disgust. “You are soo—AHHH!”
“Right back atcha,” I said, ducking while Kato took a fake swipe at me with his paw.
We were an odd group. My life force was trapped in a necklace, Dorthea’s in her hair, and Kato’s in his nails. I hadn’t noticed until then, but one of his nails was shorter than before I plunged to my death.
Now Kato was down to four claws and I was more indebted than ever.
“So what now?” I asked, tearing my eyes away from Kato.
Answering me with a groan, the earth beneath our feet shifted. Cracks spread out as the magic workshop sprouted from the dirt. Like an ill-omened weed, it popped up randomly and obnoxiously from time to time. On each occasion, a bit more of the structure seemed to have been eaten by the earth. I refused to go inside anymore since the building wouldn’t even pass the three little pigs’ building code. The current workshop was two and a half walls of mossy stone and about half of a thatched roof—unless you counted the giant hole as a skylight.
A small, slimy, green worm inched its way out of the workshop. It stared at us with large eyes magnified by thick glasses that wiggled a bit as it chewed on a meal of paper.
“Oh, get on with it already, you old meddler.” Verte’s eyes refocused and narrowed on the bibliobug, but her belt’s eye remained cloudy.
At the sorceress’s prompting, the creature flickered and transformed back into an old man with untamed salt-and-pepper hair. As he tried to spit out the wad of paper cud, it got stuck in his mustache. He sure didn’t come off as an all-supreme magical being. But I could feel his power thrum through me, similar to Dorthea’s—but stronger. The Storymaker of Oz. One of the beings responsible for writing everyone’s fate.
I shook my head. The Storymaker of Oz was a lie. A fable taught to children to help them sleep at night. An excuse to absolve the wicked of their sins. One look at my story was all the proof I needed that nobody was looking out for me but me.
Oz was a Storyfaker if you asked me.
But chock-full of magical goodness to protect us all the same.
Oz was supposed to be training Dorthea to be Maker’s apprentice, so she could fix all the rules of magic and get her parents back. Part of that meant harnessing the Emerald curse to work with creation magic. I didn’t think it was going so well since she kept killing me with it.
My back flared again in pain at the thought. “What are you doing here?”