“Seeds, too,” she announced proudly. But she did not budge.
“Excellent! Now, are you coming down from there, or will I have to send my familiar to fetch you again?”
Saturday tossed the sack into the drifts of snow piling up around the lorelei’s bare feet. “There you go. All yours. You don’t need me.”
“Your second visit has entertained me far less than your first,” said the witch. “You will come down here right now, and you will take this sack to the cauldron in the kitchen.”
Saturday put her hands on her hips. “And if I don’t?”
The witch lifted a finger, and Saturday’s muscles stiffened again, but not from exhaustion. Her hands and feet were drawn into the air, one after another, marching her like one of Peter’s wooden puppets down the pile of rocks to the cavern floor before the witch. Her boots slipped on the snow-covered ground but she did not fall, buoyed as she was by magic. She fought against the pull, breaking into a sweat as she struggled, but her body’s will was no longer her own.
Guided by the raven’s eyes, the witch captured Saturday’s chin in her cerulean claws.
“No more games, Jack.” The lorelei sucked her pointy, yellowed teeth. She took a deep breath of the steam that rose from Saturday’s skin into the frozen air between them. “I will bathe in your blood,” she whispered. “I will strip the skin from your flesh, fill my stomach with the meat from your bones, and then grind those bones to make my bread. I will consume every part of you, and when I have done so, all your strength will be mine. Together, we will open the portal back to my home, and my brethren will fall to their knees in despair at my power.”
“I will fight you with every ounce of my being,” Saturday said through her teeth.
The witch grinned again, lashing out with her free hand and slicing the swordbelt from Saturday’s waist with her claws. Saturday felt the weight fall from her hips as her dagger, empty scabbard, and Peregrine’s hairbrush clattered to the ash-strewn cavern floor.
“Come,” said the witch. “I’ve made you a cage.”
The lorelei released Saturday’s face to grasp the front of her shirt. With preternatural strength, the witch pulled her along the clear path she had created in the fallen stone—away from her bedchambers. Saturday’s dragging feet kicked up the blue dust and she sneezed mightily. The longer Saturday kept the witch occupied, the longer Peregrine would be safe.
The witch stomped unceasingly up through the tunnels, up and up some more, the caverns around them lit only by the light of her stone bracelet. Eventually, Saturday began to recognize rock formations that led to the kitchen.
As they turned the corner, the witch threw Saturday sideways across the room, as if she weighed no more than a sack of potatoes. Saturday got barely a glimpse of the cage before her face hit the far wall of it. Catching her breath, she sat up and put a hand to her cheek. It came away bloody.
Dozens of short swords and long swords and maces and daggers made up the bars of Saturday’s cage. She recognized both the flaming sword and the ruby-bladed one—she grabbed at the latter’s handle and tried to pull it away, but to no avail. A fine blue sheen ran along the metal and bound all the pieces, one to another, like magical glue. Weapons that might have meant her escape had become the very instruments of her capture.
“Clever,” said Saturday, because it was. “The cleverest thing would have been for your bird to kill me the minute it found me instead of bringing me back here.”
“But I couldn’t have done all this without you, Jack,” said the preening lorelei. “I didn’t recognize the power surrounding you the first time you visited. I will not make that mistake again.”
Saturday’s hands searched for a loose weapon in the cage’s makeup. Failing that, she began to feel along the smooth floor for a pebble, a spoon, a bit of ice, anything she might use as a weapon.
The witch tossed a skull into the cauldron, followed by what looked like several shards of calcite and the tip of a waxen fingerstone. The thick liquid swallowed it all, each bubble emitting the stench of rancid flesh. Clouds of deep purple gathered above the cauldron, snapping and churning with lightning and thunder. The fingerstones overhead sparked and glowed with power.
“Stone of Memory, hear my plea,
From worlds away I call to thee.”
She danced as she sang the couplet over the fire; the rags of her dress waved as she swayed backwards and forward. With each word she spoke, her skin turned a deeper and deeper blue. The knobby horns on her head seemed to grow.
Saturday grabbed the hilt of every sword in the cage, pushing and pulling them one by one in another effort to free them from the bars and attack the lorelei or turn over the cauldron or destroy the ingredients. She needed to stop the spell!
Out of the corner of her eye, she spotted a small pile of rocks that had been shoved to the side, the discarded remnants of a fallen fingerstone. Saturday moved slowly to the far end of the cage, careful not to catch Cwyn’s attention. She stretched her right arm out behind her, as far as she could, praying to reach a stone sizeable enough to hide in her hand, or sharp enough to pierce skin.
The blades of the swords bit into her shoulders as she pressed against them, splitting the fabric of her shirt and dotting the tears with blood. Thankfully, the overwhelming presence of magic in the room healed the shallower cuts almost as quickly as she acquired them.
“Basselure, hear my call,
Jinni, pyrrhi, lilim, all.”
Saturday never thought there would come a moment in her life when she wished she were taller, but a few inches would have been quite the mercy. The clouds over the cauldron spun faster. Lightning shot out from its center and cracked against the cage of swords. She felt the jolt, but she continued to stretch with all her might.
The witch held spears of icerock above the cauldron and melted them in her hands. Saturday’s fingertips collected only pebbles. She risked a rather deep slice in her forearm to reach a slightly larger rock, but she only managed to nudge it aside. There!
Beneath the rock, slipped into a crack in the floor, was the broken blade of a small dagger. Saturday scooted the blade gently to her and slipped it inside her palm, giving no hint that she had discovered anything at all. Cwyn watched her with traitorous raven eyes.
The witch tossed a few more small skulls into the cauldron, along with the fresh heads of several brownies and a generous portion of the spiced moss Saturday and Peregrine had collected. The clouds above the cauldron spun and popped and grew; Saturday gagged at the new stench that filled the kitchen.
The witch’s voice deepened.
“Teeth for taste as scent is sown . . .”
Cold . . . taste . . . scent . . . The witch had used her ingredients to represent every physical sense inside her cauldron. The colorful mushrooms could be for sight, but how did one put sound into a stew?
The answer came quickly. The geis seized Saturday’s muscles once more and compelled her back to the witch’s side of the cage. Saturday squeezed the broken dagger blade inside her fist. Blood slowly dripped from cuts in her palm that opened, healed, and reopened again.
The witch now held a dagger of her own, wicked and whole. With it she sliced off Saturday’s left ear and dropped it in the cauldron.
“ . . . the snip and snap of blood and bone.”
Saturday dropped the blade and clapped her hand to the side of her head where her ear had been. It had not been a neat slice; she could feel a jagged tear of skin and sinew left behind. She would not scream for the witch’s satisfaction. Instead, she growled through her clenched teeth and concentrated on slowing the blood and healing herself. This scar would never fade—the ear was lost. Even if she’d had her sword, the appendage couldn’t have regrown in the time she had left. The witch needed to die now.