Chapter Nine: The Dragon’s Curse
The Dragon struck before anyone could scream.
It did not spring or lunge. It simply moved, the way a mountain moves in an earthquake, vast and slow and utterly unstoppable, and one enormous golden wing swept down across the plateau with a sound like the sky being torn in half. The wind of it hit Codette like a wall. She was flung backward across the grass, rolled, and came up gasping with her ears ringing and her hair full of smoke.
Where she had been standing, the ground exploded.
A shower of molten rock hurtled down out of the dark, great blazing lumps of it, glowing white at the heart and trailing red tails of fire, and each one hit the earth with a crack that shook the plateau. Grass burst into flame. A tree went up like a torch. The garden gate, the little stone bench, the whole neat row of herb beds where the Cat Witch had grown her sage and thyme, vanished in a roaring curtain of sparks.
“Move!” Tom bellowed. “Everyone MOVE!”
She was already moving. She didn’t remember deciding to. She flung herself sideways as another wingbeat came down, and the heat of it scorched the back of her neck, and a chunk of burning rock the size of a dustbin whistled past her ear and slammed into the ground so hard the whole mountain rang. She tripped. She rolled. A hand closed on her collar and dragged her upright, and she found herself looking into Tom’s face, streaked with soot and wild-eyed and fierce.
“Behind me!” he yelled. “Get behind me! Phillip! Smile! BEHIND ME!”
“Tom, what are you—”
“Just do it!”
He planted his feet. He flung both arms wide. And something happened that Codette would remember for the rest of her life.
The ground answered.
It began as a low, grinding groan, a rumble that came up through the soles of her shoes. Then the earth in front of Tom buckled. A great slab of black stone heaved itself up out of the grass, ten feet high, twelve, twenty, rising with a long, slow, grating shriek until it stood like a wall between the four of them and the Dragon. Another rose beside it. Then a third. They locked together, edge to edge, in a rough, jagged, glittering rampart, and Tom stood in front of it with his arms spread and his teeth bared and his whole big body trembling, as though he were holding up the sky.
“Strength,” he panted. “To protect. That was the — it’s — I wished for it. It’s working!”
The Dragon’s next blow came down like a hammer.
The wall shook. A long crack ran up its face, and a spray of grit rattled down on their heads, but it held. Tom roared. He drove his heel into the ground, and a fresh buttress of stone leapt up beside the crack and sealed it. “Is everybody here?!” he shouted. “Anyone hurt?!”
“I’m here!” Phillip’s voice came from somewhere near her knee. “I’m fine! I’m — oh, dear, I’m so much less fine than I’d like to be—”
“Smile?” said Codette.
“I’m here,” said a hoarse voice.
He was crouched at the foot of the wall, in the lee of the largest slab, with his knees drawn up and his arms wrapped round his head. He looked small. He looked terribly small. His fur was gray with dust and scorched at the tips, and a long, dark streak of soot ran down his cheek, and when he lifted his eyes to hers, they were wide, and fixed, and utterly calm.
That was the worst part. He wasn’t afraid. She’d seen him afraid, in the dunes, on the cliff, in the dark of the swamp, and she had known what it looked like. This was something else. This was the face of a creature who has stopped fighting.
“Smile,” she said, sharply. “Smile. Look at me.”
“I’m looking.”
“Don’t you dare.”
“Don’t I dare what?”
“Don’t you dare give up.”
He gave her a very small, very tired smile. “I’m not giving up,” he said. “I’m just — being realistic.”
“Smile—”
The wall exploded.
It didn’t crumble. It burst, in a blinding white flash, and a great wedge of stone flew past her head and tore a smoking furrow across the grass. Tom screamed. He was flung backward off his feet, and landed in a heap, and lay stunned on the ground. Through the gap in the shattered rampart, framed in smoke and flame, rose the Dragon’s enormous golden head.
It looked at them.
It looked down at the four small figures huddled in the wreckage with its great, blazing, furnace-bright eyes, and for a long moment, nobody breathed. Then its jaws opened, and a glow began to gather in the back of its throat, a pale, rippling, terrible light.
“Phillip!” shrieked Codette. “Do something!”
“What?!”
“Anything!”
“I don’t know how! I’ve only had it for ten minutes! I can only move a teaspoon!”
“Then move a very big teaspoon!”
He stared at her. His mouth opened and closed. And then, with a sudden, wild, desperate look, he spun toward the nearest patch of burning garden, where a drift of pale white blossoms still clung to the scorched earth, trembling in the wind: the last few of the Cat Witch’s moon-bells.
“Oh,” he whispered. “Oh, I wonder—”
He raised both paws.
It was a tiny gesture. It was clumsy, and fumbling, and entirely unlike anything a wizard in a book would have done. But the air around his fingertips shivered, and went silver. A thread of light unspooled from his hands and reached out, quick as thought, across the grass, and wrapped itself around the blossoms. They lifted. They unfolded. They shivered, and spread, and sprouted slender wings, and soared up into the air in a great, silent, glittering flock: a hundred little birds, made of light, with feathers like falling stars.
“Go!” cried Phillip. “Go! Go! Go on! Dazzle him!”
They flew.
They swept up past the wreckage in a long, luminous ribbon and burst around the Dragon’s head like a swarm of fireflies. They darted into its eyes. They fluttered round its horns and wheeled around its jaws, a thousand tiny flashes of pure white light, and the great beast recoiled. It reared back with a roar, shaking its head, snapping blindly at the air. The glow in its throat guttered and went out. A sheet of fire spewed wildly over the plateau, and missed them by fifty feet.
“It’s working!” Tom croaked, dragging himself to his knees. “Phillip! It’s working!”
“I know!” Phillip sounded stunned. Tears were streaming down his face. “I did it! I made a bird! I made a hundred — oh, I do hope they’re not real, I’d feel terrible if I’d hurt them—”
“They’re fine, they’re fine!”
“I’m a wizard!”
“You’re a great wizard! Now keep going!”
Phillip kept going.
It was a very strange battle.
Codette would think about that afterward, in the long, quiet hours when she tried to put it all in order. At the time there was no thinking; there was only the heat, and the noise, and the choking smoke, and the endless, desperate, breathless scramble from one patch of cover to the next. She ran. She ducked. She hauled Tom out of a burning bush. She dragged Phillip, who had gone stiff with concentration, out of the path of a falling boulder. She flung herself flat as a long, curling lash of fire swept over her head and set the grass alight a yard from her face.
But between the blows, in the brief, ringing, smoky silences, she began to notice.
It was the little things. The way the Dragon hesitated.
It came at them in great, sweeping, murderous charges. It lashed its tail. It spewed fire. It brought down its wing like a ship’s mast. And every time, a heartbeat before the blow landed, it faltered. The wing skewed. The tail veered. The fire, which ought to have swallowed them whole, would scorch a patch of grass a yard to the left, a yard to the right, and go roaring harmlessly out over the cliff edge.
It’s missing, she thought. On purpose.
It was a mad thought. It was impossible. Surely it was only chance, the flailing of a blinded beast. But she saw it again, and again, and a third time, and the cold, bright, prickling feeling in her stomach grew and grew, until she could not look away.
“Phillip!” she shouted. “Phillip, look at its eyes!”
“I’m a little busy!”
“Look at them!”
He looked. He had just flicked a flurry of silver birds across the Dragon’s brow, and in the brief, shimmering gap, as the beast tossed its head, he caught a glimpse of one great, golden, furnace-bright eye.
It was wet.
A single drop of liquid gold was sliding down the side of the Dragon’s face. It gleamed in the firelight. It slid over the scales, and gathered at the corner of its jaw, and fell, hissing, onto the burning ground.
“It’s — it’s crying,” said Phillip, in a faint voice.
“It’s fighting,” said Codette.
“What?”
“The curse. It’s the same — it’s in the voice. It spoke in her voice. Phillip, don’t you see? She isn’t gone. She’s in there. She’s trapped. She’s inside it. The Dragon’s the curse, but the Witch is still in it! She’s fighting it! Every time it tries to hurt us, she’s pulling it away!”
“That would explain,” said Phillip slowly, “the pattern. The angle of deflection. The pronounced hesitation on the left side. I did think it was strange. It’s like — it’s like an archer trying to hit a target, and somebody keeps knocking his arm.” His eyes went wide. “Oh, my goodness. You’re right.”
“What?” Tom had come limping up, with soot on his whiskers and a long burn across one shoulder. “What’s going on? What are you two on about?”
“She’s in there,” said Codette. “The Witch. She’s still alive. She’s still fighting.”
Tom stared at the Dragon, which had reared back again with a roar and was shaking its head as if to clear it. He stared at the thin, shining line of gold that ran down its cheek.
“Well, I’ll be,” he said, very softly. “Poor old girl.”
“We can’t kill it,” said Codette.
“We weren’t going to.”
“I mean, we can’t. If we kill the Dragon, we kill her. We have to — we have to find some other way. We have to wake her. Whatever’s left of her. Whatever’s good. We’ve got to reach her.” She drew a breath. “And we have to keep him alive in the meantime.”
“Him?”
“Smile.”
They turned.
He was standing alone at the far end of the little ring of rubble, a good thirty feet from the nearest cover. She hadn’t seen him go. He stood with his back to them, very still, with his paws hanging by his sides, facing the Dragon across the burning grass.
“Smile?” said Codette.
He didn’t answer.
“Smile! What are you doing? Come back!”
“No,” said Smile.
He said it quietly, without turning. His voice carried across the roar of the flames as if he’d been standing at her elbow.
“I’m tired of watching you all get hurt,” he said. “I’ve been watching for ten minutes. I’ve watched Tom get thrown against a wall. I’ve watched Phillip nearly pass out. I’ve watched you — I’ve watched you run through fire. And every one of you is doing it for me.” His voice cracked. “It’s me it wants. It said so. It said it, plain as day. The one who made the forbidden wish. That’s me. That’s all it asked for. So why should anybody else—”
“Don’t you dare,” said Tom.
“It’s the only sensible thing.”
“I’ll knock you flat.”
“Tom, please—”
“I’ll knock you flat!”
“Listen to me!” Smile spun round. His face was wild, and wet, and white as paper. “It wants me! It doesn’t want you! It’ll stop, if I give it what it wants! It’ll stop — you can all go home, you can all be safe — and I’d rather—” His voice broke. “I’d rather it was me. I’d rather. I made this mess. I’m the one who said it. I’m the one who—”
“Stop!”
Codette was across the rubble before she knew she had moved.
She hit him in the chest with both hands and drove him back a step, and then she seized him by the front of his jerkin and hauled him bodily around to face her. He stumbled. He gaped at her. She was shaking so hard she could barely stand, and tears were pouring unchecked down her face, but her voice, when it came, was cold, and clear, and absolutely steady.
“I’ve come a very long way,” she said.
“Codette—”
“I’ve come four hundred miles. I’ve crossed a desert and a marsh. I’ve scrubbed a king’s kennels. I’ve been chased by dogs, and soldiers, and a pack of crocodiles. I’ve lied to my friends. I’ve lost my phone. I’ve ruined my shoes.” Her voice cracked. “I did every one of those things with you. Every one. And I’ve never — not once — asked you for anything.”
“I know.”
“I’m asking now.”
He closed his mouth.
“I’m asking you not to decide.” She was gripping his jerkin so tightly her knuckles ached. “I’m asking you not to decide, all on your own, in the dark, that your life is worth less than ours. You don’t get to. You don’t have the right. You walked beside me. You carried me through a swamp. You gave up a palace. You said, ‘Whatever happens, I’m staying.’ You said it, Smile. You made me a promise.” She drew a long, shaky breath. “You don’t get to take it back. Not like this. Not by going off to die alone.”
“I’m not—”
“You are. That’s exactly what you’re doing.” Her eyes blazed. “And I won’t let you.”
For a long, silent moment, he just looked at her.
The firelight danced across his face. His eyes were huge, and dark, and shining. A thousand feelings seemed to pass across them, all at once, too fast and too deep to name. His lips parted. They trembled.
“I’ve never had anybody say that to me,” he whispered.
“Then get used to it.”
“I don’t — I don’t know how to—”
“You don’t have to know. You just have to stay.” She pressed her forehead against his. “Please. Stay with me. We’ll find a way. We always do. We’re Sergeant Sensible and the — the — the—”
“The Idiot With A Rope,” said Smile, in a choked voice.
“The Idiot With A Rope.” She laughed. It broke in the middle. “We’re a team. We’re going to win. So you stand here, and you let us help you. And you don’t go anywhere.”
He closed his eyes.
“All right,” he said.
“Promise?”
“I—” He swallowed. His arms came up. They closed around her, tight, trembling, fierce. “I promise.”
That was when the Dragon drew breath.
She heard it before she saw it.
It was a long, deep, rushing, indrawn sound, like a furnace door being thrown open. The air shivered. The flames on the grass flattened and streamed toward the great gaping throat, as if sucked into a vacuum. Every hair on her body stood on end.
“Down!” shrieked Phillip.
She looked up.
The Dragon had reared to its full, towering height. Its wings were spread. Its chest was swollen. Its head was thrown back against the stars, and in the cavern of its jaws a light was gathering, white and gold and blinding, bigger than a house, bigger than a hill, brighter than the sun. It was the biggest fire she’d ever seen. It was big enough to swallow the whole plateau. It was big enough to melt the mountain.
That’s it, she thought, with a strange, clear, distant calm. That’s the end.
It lowered its head.
The fire came.
It poured out of the Dragon’s mouth in a river of pure white light. It tore across the grass. It ate the rubble, the burning bushes, the shattered remnants of Tom’s wall. It was coming straight for them. She saw it. She saw Tom, flinging himself in front of Phillip. She saw Smile’s face, frozen in horror. She saw, with an odd, floating clarity, the tiny sliver of Sun Banana still glowing in the palm of her hand, where the Cat Witch had laid it.
My wish.
The thought struck her like a bell.
I’ve still got my wish.
She had wished for a door home. A door to the world she’d left behind. A door that would stand open, someday, when the time was right. It’s yours, the old woman had said. It’s already yours.
And suddenly she knew exactly what to do.
“Smile,” she said.
“Codette?” He was staring at the fire. “What—”
“I’m sorry,” said Codette.
She shoved him.
It was not a gentle shove. She put her whole weight behind it, both hands against his chest, and he went flying sideways with a startled yelp and landed in a heap on the grass, ten feet away, out of the line of fire. Then she turned, and spread her arms, and ran straight toward the blaze.
“CODETTE!” screamed Tom.
“NO!” shrieked Phillip.
She didn’t look back. She couldn’t. She ran with her eyes fixed on the blinding white wall, and her heart roaring in her ears, and the tiny, glowing shard of banana held high in her fist. The heat hit her like a physical blow. Her skin tightened. Her hair began to smoke. She opened her mouth, and the words came out of her in a long, cracked, ringing shout, over the roar of the flames:
“I wish! I wish for the door! Now! Open it now! Right here! Let him through! Let him go home! Let him—”
“CODETTE!”
A body hit her from behind.
It was small, and light, and astonishingly fast. It slammed into her back like a cannonball. Two thin, wiry arms wrapped around her waist and spun her around, and a voice, hoarse, cracked, enraged, shrieked in her ear, “Don’t you DARE!”
She screamed. She tried to fight. She clawed at the arms around her. “Let go! Let go of me! It’s the only way, he’ll be safe, you don’t understand—”
“I understand perfectly!”
“Smile, let GO!”
“NEVER!”
The fire hit them.
It came down like the end of the world. There was a roar, and a flash, and a long, high, ringing silence. She had a single instant of pure white agony, a blinding flare of heat and pressure and light. And then she felt a body wrap around her, tight as a vice, curling over her head and shoulders like a shield. She felt a chest against her cheek. Arms around her ribs. A hand cupped around the back of her skull.
He’s holding me, she thought, stupidly. He’s holding me.
The world shook. The air was solid. A tremendous weight bore down on the two of them, on his back, and she heard him cry out, a thin, high, broken sound. She felt him shudder, once, from head to foot. His arms tightened. And then, with a final, tearing jolt, something hurled them both across the plateau like a pair of rag dolls, and she hit the ground, and rolled, and the stars wheeled overhead in a long, slow, dizzy spin.
Then everything went quiet.
She came to herself slowly.
She lay on her back on something hard and smooth and cold: the broad flat steps of a ruined stair, the last remnant of the banana house, tumbled and charred and half-buried in ash. The sky overhead was a roiling, copper-colored mess of smoke and cloud. Somewhere far off, she could hear the Dragon roaring. It seemed to be getting farther away. Or perhaps she was.
Her head hurt. Her lungs hurt. Her skin felt as if she’d been sunburnt over every inch of her body. But she was alive. She was whole. She could feel her hands, her feet, the ache of her ankle, the pounding of her own heart.
I should be dead, she thought.
She sat up.
Something warm and heavy slid off her lap. She looked down.
“Smile.”
He lay across her knees, on his side, with his head against her shoulder. His eyes were closed. His face was gray with ash and streaked with blood. His red scarf, which he had given her a hundred years ago, in the desert, and which she had somehow never given back, hung in charred shreds around his neck. There was a long, terrible, blackened wound across his back, from his shoulders to his tail, where the fire had caught him, and the white fur had been burned away to reveal raw red skin.
“Smile!” she cried. “Smile, wake up! Wake up, wake up, please!”
His eyelids fluttered.
They lifted slowly, heavily, as if each one weighed a hundred pounds. His eyes were hazy and unfocused. For a long moment they roved across her face, vague and bewildered, as though he were looking at someone very far away. Then something in them sharpened, and found her, and stayed.
“Hello,” he said faintly.
“Smile—”
“You’re — you’re all right.”
“I’m all right. I’m fine. It’s you. You’re—”
“Good.” He let out a long, shuddering breath. A faint, crooked smile stole across his face. “That’s good. I’m — I’m glad. I did think — I wasn’t sure — I did it rather fast.”
“You idiot.” She was sobbing. She couldn’t stop. “You idiot, why did you — I told you — I had a plan — the wish — it would’ve opened a door — you’d have lived!”
“I know.”
“Then why?!”
“Because it was a terrible plan,” said Smile, mildly.
“It was a perfectly good plan!”
“It had you dying in it. That’s a very big flaw. I’d have given it a — a four. Out of ten.” He coughed. A thin trickle of blood slid from the corner of his mouth, and she wiped it away with a shaking hand. “I’d have lost a lot of points for the door. A door’s no good, if you’re not there to walk through it.”
“Smile, don’t talk. Please, please, don’t talk. Save your strength. Tom! Tom! Phillip!” She looked wildly round. “Somebody help us!”
But the plateau was empty.
The smoke had thickened, and drifted down, and for the first time she realized how quiet it was. The roaring had faded. Somewhere in the distance she could hear the thud of heavy wings, and shouts, and a thin, high, desperate “This way! This way!” She could see the dim, golden flicker of Phillip’s birds, far away, circling in the smoke. Tom and Phillip had drawn the Dragon off. They were buying her time.
They were buying her a minute. Perhaps two.
“Codette,” said Smile.
“I’m here.”
“Look at my hand.”
She looked.
It lay on the stone step between them. It was his paw, small and thin and white, the pads rough and worn from a thousand miles of road. And as she watched, a strange thing began to happen. The tips of his fingers were glowing. A soft, silvery, shimmering light was seeping out of them, like starlight through a tear in cloth. It spread slowly down his hand. It crept up his wrist. As it touched the fur, the white began to loosen, and lift, and drift away in tiny, glittering motes, like dandelion seeds, up into the dark.
“No,” said Codette.
“It’s all right.”
“No.”
“It’s — it’s all right. It doesn’t hurt.” His voice was very soft. “It’s rather pretty, really. Like — like snow.” He lifted his arm, slowly, and looked at it with an expression of mild, faraway wonder. A long ribbon of light curled from his elbow and vanished into the air. “I always wondered what it’d be like.”
“Smile.”
“Hm?”
“Don’t leave me.”
“I’m not leaving,” he said, gently. “I’m just — dissolving. It’s a very different thing.” He turned his head, and looked at her, and his eyes, in the red firelight, were clear and warm and calm. “Codette. I’d like to say something. If you don’t mind. I’d like to say it while I still can.”
“Not now. You don’t have to say—”
“I do.” He smiled. “I think I do. It’s — you know. It’s important.”
She pressed her hand over her mouth.
“All my life,” said Smile, very quietly, “I’ve owed people things. It’s what I was. I was a — a debtor. A scrounger. A cat who took what he could and ran. I owed the baker. I owed the tavern. I owed Nack. I owed forty coins to half the Kingdom, and a favor to the other half, and an apology to my mother.” His breath hitched. “I thought that was all a person was. A list of what they owed. And every night I used to lie awake, and add it up, and think: I’ll never be free of it.”
“Smile—”
“And then I met a girl in a yellow hood, in the dark, by a windmill.” His smile widened. “And I thought: oh, no. Now I owe her too.”
A tear fell on his cheek.
“I owed her a bun. I owed her a rope. I owed her a lot of very awkward conversations. I owed her a life. And she kept — she kept giving me things. And I kept thinking, I’ll never pay this back. I used to lie there at night and panic.” He gave a faint, breathless laugh. “But you know what? I think I finally did.”
“Did what?”
“I paid it.” His eyes were shining. “The biggest one. The one I thought I’d never — I paid it, Codette. Today. I got to do for you what you did for me. I got to — to go back. I got to be the one who stayed.” A single tear spilled over and ran down into his whiskers. “I’ve been in debt my whole life, and I finally paid it off. I’m — I’m free.”
Something in Codette broke.
It broke so suddenly, and so completely, that for a moment she couldn’t even cry. She just sat there, on the cold stone, with the dying cat in her arms and the stars wheeling overhead, and felt it go: a thick, tight, aching knot that had been in her chest for weeks, that she hadn’t even known was there. It came apart like a rotten thread.
“No,” she said.
“Codette?”
“No. No. That’s wrong. That’s completely wrong.” She was shaking her head. She was clutching him against her so hard it must have hurt. “You’re not a debt. You’re not — you were never a debt. You were never a — a responsibility. I never owed you anything, and you never owed me.”
“I—”
“Listen to me!” Her voice broke. “I’ve been trying to say it for days. For weeks. I never had the — I never knew how. You said it was a debt for a debt. You said it was business. And I let you. I let you, because I was afraid, because it was easier. But it was never business, Smile. It was never debts.”
He stared up at her.
“You came back,” she said. “That’s what you did. Every time. Every single time. I was in the dark. I was in the storm. I was in a tavern full of enemies. I was in a dungeon, in a swamp, on a cliff. I was terrified. And every time I looked up, you were there. You came back. You came back for me, over and over, even when you were scared, even when you didn’t have to, even when it was the stupidest thing in the world. You protected me. You carried me. You made me laugh when I wanted to cry. You gave up a palace.”
Her tears fell on his face.
“This place was never supposed to be a home,” she whispered. “It was never supposed to be anything but a — a mistake. A wrong turn in the woods. I should have been miserable. I should have hated every second. And instead, I—” She laughed, a high, helpless, broken sound. “I loved it. I loved it, and I never wanted to leave it, and I couldn’t work out why. And it was you. It’s always been you. You made it a home.”
“Codette—”
“I love you,” she said.
The world went very still.
It was the simplest thing she had ever said. It came out of her in a whisper, small and cracked and breathless. But it rang across the silent plateau like a bell. She felt it go. She felt it leave her lips, and sink into the air, and hang there, trembling, bright and plain and perfectly true.
“I love you, Smile,” she said again. “I’m in love with you. I think I have been since the first night. Since you stood in front of a door and wouldn’t tell me why.” She was crying so hard she could barely speak. “And I don’t want to go home. Not if you can’t come with me. I don’t want a door. I don’t want a — a life where you aren’t in it. I’d rather stay here. I’d rather stay in the dark. I’d rather be a — a dragon’s snack, than go back to a world without you.”
His mouth had come a little open.
He was looking up at her with an expression she had never seen before: stunned, and hushed, and unguarded, like a creature who has stumbled into a room full of light after a lifetime in the cold. His eyes were enormous. His lips trembled. A long, silver ribbon of light curled from his shoulder and spiraled upward, and he didn’t even seem to notice.
“You—” he said. “You can’t. You — I’m a — I’m a cat.”
“I don’t care.”
“I’m a thief.”
“I know.”
“I owe Nack forty coins.”
“I know.”
“I’m — I’m rubbish at everything — I can’t even—” His voice cracked. “I lick trees, Codette.”
“I know you do,” said Codette, and kissed him.
She kissed his forehead first.
It was a small thing. A tiny, soft, trembling press of her lips against the warm fur between his eyes. She hadn’t planned it. It was just where her mouth had landed. But he made a small sound, a gasp, a half-choked breath, and she felt his whole body go perfectly still.
She drew back.
His eyes were open. They were very wide. They were looking at her, and in them was something so bright, so clear, so utterly naked, that she thought her heart would burst.
“Codette,” he whispered.
She bent her head again. And this time, with her hands cupped around his face and her tears falling on his cheeks, she kissed him on the mouth.
It was not a long kiss. It was not a practiced one. It was clumsy, and wet, and tasted of smoke and salt and ash. But it was the truest thing she had ever done, and she knew it as she did it, with every nerve of her body, with the whole of her trembling, aching, hopeful heart. It was not a plea. It was not a spell. It was not a bargain, or a debt, or a wish. It was a girl, free and unbound, in a world that wasn’t hers, saying to a creature who had chosen her over every comfort and every fear: Yes. I choose you too.
The world held its breath.
And then, from the place where their mouths met, a light began to spread.
It was a quiet light. It was very soft, and very white, like the first pale glimmer of dawn on a snowfield. It spilled out from between them in a slow, silent ripple, and ran along the steps, and over the grass, and out across the ash-strewn plateau. It lit the smoke. It lit the shattered stones. It lit, one by one, the glowing bananas on the mountainside, and they flared, and brightened, and sang: a long, low, shimmering chord, like a thousand voices rising in a hymn.
The forbidden wish changed.
She felt it happen. She felt it in her own chest, in the hollow beneath her ribs: a great, gentle, golden turning, like a key finally finding its lock. What had been a curse, a cold, grasping, terrible thing, a debt written in blood, was no longer that. It was something else. It was a choice. It was a gift. It was a wish that had been spoken, and answered, freely, by two hearts that had each said yes. It was love, given with consent, and nothing in the world could stand against it.
Up above the plateau, the Dragon screamed.
It was a long, huge, agonized sound, and it was not the sound of a monster. It was the sound of a creature in pain, and it ended on a high, trembling, human note, like a sob. The great golden body convulsed. The wings clenched. A long crack ran along its flank, and light poured out of it, white and warm and pure. Another crack opened. Another. The scales began to flake and fall, like burning leaves, and under them, dimly, a smaller shape began to show.
“Look!” gasped Phillip, somewhere in the dark.
The Dragon roared once more.
It was a roar of grief, and of release, and of enormous, endless relief. It rang out over the mountain like a bell, and the whole sky shook. Then the great shape shrank. It folded in on itself, wings and tail and horns and claws, like a flower closing at dusk. It fell, in a long, slow spiral of golden sparks, down to the edge of the plateau, and landed on the grass with a soft, silent thump.
And a small, bent, tired figure in a yellow cloak lay curled in the center of the scorched earth, with a crooked hat beside her, and a single, tiny, glowing banana-peel clutched in her hand.
Smile was gone.
Codette felt it first as an absence, a lightness in her arms, as though a great weight had been lifted. She opened her eyes. The white light had grown too bright to bear. It had risen in a tall, shimmering column from the place where he lay, a pillar of pure radiance, reaching up and up into the stars. She flung up a hand to shield her face. She couldn’t see. She couldn’t hear. She could only feel the wind rising around her, soft and strange and warm, and a faint, gentle pressure on her shoulders, like a pair of hands.
“Smile?” she cried. “Smile?! Where are you?!”
The light flared.
And then it began to fade.
It dimmed slowly, like a lamp being turned down. The pillar softened, and thinned, and shrank to a single glowing thread that wavered and winked out. The stars came back. The smoke came back. The cold air brushed her face. And Codette, blinking, half-blind, with the afterimage of the light still floating before her eyes, saw that someone was kneeling in front of her.
It was a boy.
He knelt on the broken stone, with his hands braced on his knees, swaying slightly, as if he’d just woken from a very long sleep. He was about her own age. Perhaps a year older. He was tall, and rangy, and narrow-shouldered, with long, loose, pale limbs and a spray of fine silver-white hair that stuck up in all directions like a dandelion gone to seed. He was wearing a patched leather jerkin, and a tattered red scarf, and a long coil of rope slung over one shoulder, and a worn, bulging satchel that looked very familiar. Along the line of his jaw, just under the chin, ran a curved, faint, silvery mark, like a lazy, crooked crescent.
Like a grin.
He lifted his head.
His eyes were gold.
They were pale, and bright, and shining, and enormous, and they were fixed on her face with an expression so dazed, and so frightened, and so unspeakably hopeful, that she forgot how to breathe. He had a long, thin, clever face, with sharp cheekbones and a stubborn chin, and a curl of white hair falling over his forehead. His mouth was parted. His hands were trembling on his knees.
He looked down at them.
He turned them over. He spread the fingers. He stared at them, open-mouthed, as though he had never seen such things before. He flexed them. He touched his own face, very slowly: his nose, his cheeks, his lips, the smooth bare skin where whiskers had been. He raised a hand to the side of his head and felt a small, round, rosy-pink ear.
“Oh,” he said.
His voice was lower than she remembered. But it was the same. It was warm, and husky, and a little cracked, and so achingly, impossibly familiar that her eyes flooded all over again.
“Oh,” said Smile. “I’ve got — I’ve got hands.”
“You do,” said Codette, in a very small voice.
“I’ve got—” He wiggled his toes inside his boots. “I’ve got legs. Two. Only two. It’s — that’s very — I’ve got no tail.” He looked behind him, in dismay. “Where’s my tail?”
“It’s gone.”
“It’s — hm. Well. That’s a significant loss.” He turned back to her. A single flush of color crept slowly up his neck. “I — this is — I’m — is it — I’m sorry. This is a bit — it’s a lot to take in. Is there — I’m not — am I doing it right?”
“You’re doing it perfectly.”
“Good. That’s — that’s good.” He swallowed. He raised his eyes to hers, and held them. His lips curved, just slightly, in a smile that was uncertain, and shy, and unbearably hopeful, and for all the world exactly the same crooked, gleaming, mischievous smile she had followed across four hundred miles.
“Codette,” said Smile, in an awkward, anxious, breathless whisper.
“Yes?”
“Do you still — I mean, is it — do you still recognize me?”
She didn’t answer.
She couldn’t. Her throat had closed. She sat there on the cold stone steps, with the ashes of the world drifting round her, and looked at him: at the white hair, and the gold eyes, and the silly, lopsided smile, and the faint pale crescent under his chin. She looked at him for a very long time.
Then she flung her arms around his neck, and burst into tears.
“Yes,” she sobbed. “Yes. Of course I do. I’d know you anywhere. I’d know you in the dark.”
He caught her. His arms closed around her, tentatively at first, awkwardly, as if he weren’t quite sure what to do with them, and then all at once, tight and fierce and warm. He buried his face in her hair. He was shaking. She could feel his heart, beating wildly against her own, and the strange, new, wonderful roughness of his jaw against her neck.
“I’m alive,” he said, in a choked, wondering voice. “I’m alive. I’m here. I’m — you’re — I can feel you. I can feel your hair.”
“I know.”
“It’s really, really nice.”
She laughed. She was crying and laughing at once. “You’ve got it all over your face.”
“I know. Is that — am I supposed to be doing that? Is that normal?”
“It’s called crying.”
“I hate it.”
“You get used to it.”
“Is it always so — so wet?”
“Yes.”
“Terrible,” said Smile, with enormous feeling, and held her tighter.
It was Tom who found them.
He came stumbling across the plateau with Phillip riding on his shoulders, both of them black with soot and scorched at the edges and limping badly. His ear was bleeding. His shoulder was a mass of burns. Phillip’s glasses had finally given up the ghost, and he was peering at the world through a single, cracked, smoke-stained lens. But when they saw the pair of them, sitting together on the broken steps, the big tabby stopped dead.
“Codette?” he said, hoarsely. “Is that — are you—”
“We’re fine,” said Codette.
“Where’s Smile?”
“Hello, Tom,” said Smile.
Tom stared.
He stared for a very long time. His mouth opened, and closed. He turned his head to look at the pale, gold-eyed, white-haired stranger, and back to Codette, and back again, with a stunned, bewildered, incredulous expression, like someone who has just been told that the moon is made of cheese.
“Smile?” he whispered.
“In the — in the flesh. Very much so.”
“But you’re—”
“I know.”
“You’ve got—”
“I know.”
“You’ve got no fur!”
“It’s an adjustment,” said Smile.
Phillip slid off Tom’s shoulder and trotted forward, squinting, with his one good lens held up before his eye. He examined Smile from head to toe, circling him slowly, with a perfectly grave, perfectly scientific expression. He prodded one knee. He lifted an arm. He peered into an ear.
“Fascinating,” he said. “Quite fascinating. A complete morphological transformation. I’d very much like to take notes.”
“Not now, Phillip.”
“No. No, of course not. Quite right.” He cleared his throat. His voice was a little thick. “I’m — I’m terribly glad to see you. I’m so glad you’re not dead.”
“So am I.”
“We saw the light. From the other side of the mountain. We thought — we thought—” His small face crumpled. “Oh, bother. I’m crying.”
“Come here, you fool,” said Smile.
Phillip came. The three of them collapsed into a heap on the steps, in a great, tangled, tearful, laughing knot, and Codette found herself being squeezed from every side at once, by a pair of enormous, trembling paws, and a pair of tiny, damp, wiry ones, and a pair of long, thin, gloriously human arms. She didn’t mind. She didn’t mind in the slightest. She sat in the middle of the pile, with her face pressed into somebody’s shoulder, and thought: this is what it feels like. This is what it means to be home.
“Ahem,” said a thin, dry, quavering voice.
They looked up.
At the edge of the steps, leaning on a gnarled stick, stood a woman.
She was not the Cat Witch they had known. She was not small, or bent, or wrinkled. She was tall, and slender, and as straight as a young tree, with a long, flowing mane of golden-brown hair, and a heart-shaped face, and wide, clear, laughing eyes, the color of honey. She could not have been more than thirty. She wore a long, plain, yellow robe, singed at the hem, and a crooked, floppy pointed hat, which she held in one hand, slightly sheepishly, like a girl caught trying on her grandmother’s clothes.
Her ears, long and tufted, poked out through her hair. They were the ears of a cat.
“Well,” said the Cat Witch. “That was exciting.”
“I’d like to apologize,” said the Cat Witch, a little later, in the ruins of her garden.
They had made a fire in the shelter of a fallen wall. The night was cold, and the sky had cleared. A silver moon hung low over the plateau. Somewhere in the wreckage of the banana house, Phillip had located a surviving teapot, and the Cat Witch had insisted on brewing a pot, quite as though nothing whatsoever had happened. She sat on an overturned bucket, with her skirts tucked round her knees and a tin mug in her hands, looking about twenty-five years younger than she had that afternoon, and nine hundred years more tired.
“For the Dragon,” she said. “And the shouting. And the fire. And the — well. The whole thing. It’s very rude to try to kill one’s guests.”
“It wasn’t you,” said Codette.
“It was a little bit me.”
“It was the curse.”
“The curse is me. Or part of me. A very old part.” She sighed. “I’ll tell you the story. I owe you that, at least. It’s a short one. A very sad one.”
Nobody spoke. She stared into her tea.
“A long time ago,” said the Cat Witch, “there was a cat. A very clever cat. A very ambitious one. He was a friend of mine. A dear one. We grew up together, in the hills.” Her voice was quiet. “He wanted power. He wanted it more than anything. And one night, he came to me, and he said: ‘Make me a human.’ He’d heard that humans were the greatest creatures in the world. That they ruled everything. That they had armies. He wanted to be one. He wanted to rule.”
“And you did it?” said Tom.
“I did.” She closed her eyes. “I was young. I was foolish. I loved him. I thought he only wanted to be great. I thought it would be harmless.” Her mouth twisted. “He used it to start a war. A terrible one. The Kingdom burned for ten years. Thousands died. And when it was over, and he lay dying in my arms, he said: ‘I’m sorry.’ ‘I’m so sorry.’ And I made a promise.”
“The rule,” said Phillip, softly.
“The rule. A cat may not become a human. I wrote it into the mountain. I put a curse on it, a terrible one. A Dragon, to guard the wish. A guardian that would destroy anyone who asked for it, so that nobody, ever again, could do what my friend did.” She opened her eyes. They were very bright. “I thought it was mercy. I thought it was justice. I thought, if I just made it hurt enough, nobody would ever want to.”
“But Smile did,” said Codette.
“But Smile did.”
Everyone turned to look at him.
He sat very still, wrapped in the red scarf, with his knees drawn up and his chin on his arms. He was still adjusting. He kept looking at his hands. Every few minutes he would flex one, absently, and a look of astonished delight would cross his face. But he lifted his head as she spoke, and met the old, young woman’s eyes, and held them.
“I didn’t mean to,” he said. “I didn’t — I didn’t know. I’m so sorry. I never meant to bring a — a dragon. I just—” He broke off.
“I know, dear.”
“I wasn’t trying to rule anything.”
“No.”
“I couldn’t even rule a card game.”
“No,” said the Cat Witch, and smiled. “You couldn’t. That’s the point.”
She leaned forward.
“Do you see?” she said. “That’s what I never understood. In all those long centuries. My poor friend wished to be a human to seize things. To take. To rule, and conquer, and own. It was a wish of hunger. And every cat since, who ever thought of it, has wanted the same: to be bigger. To be more. To flee what they were. That’s what the curse was for.” She shook her head. “But you didn’t want to rule. You didn’t want to run. You didn’t want one single thing for yourself. You wanted only to stand beside someone you loved. To walk with her. To be near.”
“I—” said Smile. His face had gone scarlet.
“That’s not a wish of hunger,” said the Cat Witch, gently. “That’s a wish of love. And the curse has no power over that. None at all. Not when it’s freely given. Not when it’s chosen.” She turned to Codette. “And you, my dear. You didn’t have to say yes. You could have walked away. You could have closed your ears. But you stood in the fire, and you chose him, with your whole heart, with nothing to gain, and nothing to ask. And that—” Her voice trembled. “That broke it. After all these centuries. That’s the only thing in all the world that could.”
Codette’s eyes were wet.
“So the wish is—” she said.
“It’s granted. Fully. Freely. It’s a gift, now, and not a theft.” The Cat Witch smiled. “He’s human. He’ll stay human. He’ll grow old, and tired, and grumpy, and he’ll have a wife, if he’s lucky, and a very small dog. All the troubles of the world. I can’t imagine why anyone would want them.”
“I’ll manage,” said Smile faintly.
“I’m sure you will.”
There was a silence. The fire crackled. A long, soft, silver wind came sighing across the mountain, carrying the scent of pine and woodsmoke and ripening fruit.
“And now,” said the Cat Witch.
She set down her cup.
“I think,” she said, “it’s time we talked about doors.”
Codette’s heart skipped.
“Your door,” said the Cat Witch. “The one you wished for. I’ve been thinking about it. I thought it would take a few days to prepare. But—” She tilted her head. “Well. In the circumstances. With the Dragon gone, and the curse broken, and all my old magic coming back like a tide— I find I’m feeling extraordinarily generous.”
She stood. She brushed off her skirts. She picked up her crooked stick, and held it out in front of her, and closed her eyes.
The air shimmered.
It began as a thin, fine thread of silver, hanging in the air between two blackened posts, like the first line of a drawing. It widened. It grew. It opened. A tall, narrow, shining rectangle rose up out of the dark, glowing like a sheet of moonlight, and through it, faintly, as through a window onto another world, Codette caught a glimpse of a green, wet, familiar hillside, and a grey sky, and a ragged line of birch trees, and the muddy ruts of a path she knew.
Miller’s Woods.
“Oh,” she whispered.
She rose to her feet. She couldn’t help it. She took a step toward the door, and another, and stopped, with her hand pressed to her heart. She could smell it, the damp earth, the wet leaves, the tang of an English autumn. She could hear, very faintly, far away, the sound of a car passing on a road. She could almost taste it: tea, and toast, and rain.
Home.
“It’ll only stay open for one night,” said the Cat Witch.
Codette turned.
“One night?”
“It’s all I can manage, dear. The magic’s very new. It’s very unsteady. It’ll hold until dawn, and then it’ll close.” Her voice was gentle. “And I’m afraid I won’t be able to open another. Not for a long time. Not for years.”
“Years,” said Codette. It came out as a whisper.
“I’m sorry.”
“No. It’s — it’s fine. It’s—” She drew a breath. She couldn’t think. She stood in the flickering light of the doorway, with her hands knotted in front of her and her whole body trembling, looking at a place she hadn’t seen in a month. A place she’d dreamed of every night. A place where her mother was waiting, and her father, and her little brother, and her old gray cat.
She looked over her shoulder.
Smile was standing at the edge of the firelight.
He had risen, very slowly, and was standing on his own two legs, unsteady and awkward and ridiculously tall, with one hand pressed against the broken wall for balance. He wasn’t looking at the door. He was looking at her. His face was very pale. His eyes were huge. In them, she saw everything: every hope, and fear, and unspoken question, every careful, desperate, aching thing he had never once dared to ask.
I’ll go, said his eyes. If you want me to. I’ll go anywhere. Or I’ll stay. Whatever you need.
Whatever you choose.
“Codette,” said the Cat Witch, softly. “It’s a very big decision. And you have until sunrise.”
A single bell rang, very far away, across the mountains.
“You can go home alone,” said the Cat Witch. “Step through, and be done, and let it close behind you. Go back to your family, and your school, and your life, and forget all this as a beautiful, strange, sad dream.” She paused. “Or you can take him with you.”
Nobody breathed.
“He’s a human now,” said the old woman. “He has no place here. Not anymore. He’s not a cat. He’s not of this Kingdom. He could walk through that door beside you, and nobody in your world would know he was anything but an ordinary boy.” Her eyes were bright. “But it would be a very, very strange thing, to bring a stranger from another world into your mother’s kitchen. And a very great leap, for a creature who has never so much as seen a motorcar.”
Smile swallowed.
“Whichever you decide,” said the Cat Witch, “I’ll understand. But you have to decide. And you have to decide tonight.”
Codette looked at the door. She looked at the boy. She looked at Tom and Phillip, huddled together on the broken steps, watching her with wide, wet, anxious eyes.
The wind sighed. The fire popped. The silver door glowed, and glowed, and waited.
And on the other side of the sky, a long way off, the first pale thread of dawn began to creep over the edge of the world.