Page 111 of Wickedly Ever After
“If you can do it, even for a few minutes, I think I can transform Alistair enough to help him hold his shape, at least long enough to get him out the door.” But at what cost? He shivered.
Ida closed her eyes. “If I use the eagles or ravens here for magic, perhaps I could do it. But I feel terrible. It’s not nesting time here yet, is it? The chicks might starve.”
He winced. “We don’t have a lot of choice.”
“No, I don’t suppose we do. But what will you do? You have to kill someone long enough to get Alistair to the princess. Who?” She blanched. “Not a dragon…”
“No. I don’t need a dragon’s death for this. I know what I’m going to do.” He couldn’t bring himself to meet her eyes.Please, let her think it’s the pony.
Tinbit wouldn’t be harmed. At least not irreparably.
52
Ida
The one drawback to immortality no one ever tells you about? Remembering every mistake you’ve ever made makes for a lot of sleepless nights.
Mischief and Mayhem—A Thousand Years of Happily-Ever-After: A Memoir
Ida North
Ida had been a witch for centuries, but still, each swish of her wand reminded her of every hour she’d spent learning the basics of magic and all the endless mistakes too. Standing over Alistair wedged in the rock and snoring like an asthmatic ogre, she remembered so many mistakes, she almost feared to begin.
The time she accidentally gave an elf a mermaid’s tail and couldn’t take it off.
The time she charmed a dryad’s hair red, and it turned her leaves red for the entire year.
The time a whole village of people barked for a day.
She glanced at Hector, standing with his staff poised to cast the reanimation spell once she wakened Alistair. “Ready?”
He nodded grimly.
She held her wand at waist level, pointed it at Alistair’s snout, letting the magic flow through her, and thought about eggs.
Somewhere, in some great nest, a great eagle laid an egg. She felt the formation of it, the way the life crept into it, the meeting of two parts to make one whole. Sadness overwhelmed her. It might not survive hatching, even if the weather went back to normal. There had been ice in that air. But as Hector said, there wasn’t anything else they could do. A warm, springlike sense of early blooming flowers, green leaves, and cool rain filled her middle, moved into her arm, and ran down her hand, breaking forth from the tip of her wand with the smell of basil and orange blossoms.
Alistair blinked his eyes once or twice, gave a tremendous stretch, and shuddered. He yawned.
“Hurry, Hector. I don’t know how long I can keep him awake.”
Hector raised his staff and pointed it at the sleeping dragon. A shock of cold, frozen meat aroma startled Ida. She wrinkled her nose. But the effect on Hector was more marked. Every part of him seized up, his face clenched into a grimace of pain, and then relaxed, but not in the way of relief. More like the way a body relaxes when life leaves it. A stench filled the cave—rotting death and roses. Alistair’s hands and feet changed shape, then his nose, until he became a handsome man, wedged in a cozy crack in the rock.
“Are you all right?” she asked.
“Yes,” he said, but he was shaking and a film of sweat coated his forehead. “It was a lot after last night, that’s all.”
Alistair flexed his long arms. His fingers curled like claws.
“I don’t know how long I can keep him moving withoutreversion.” With a wave of his staff, the inert form of Alistair became active, wriggling and flailing its way out of the crevice with a peculiar snakelike twisting and writhing.
Ida shuddered as the dragon-man fell on the floor with a thump and eagerly wriggled forward toward her. “Ugh. Can you make him move…more like a human?”
“No,” Hector said. “He went in there in dragon shape. His mind still thinks he’s a dragon. Let’s go.”
Ida led, and Hector followed. Alistair squirmed between them with interminable slowness, inch by inch, out of the back of the cave and into the corridor. Each second, more of him took on a dragonish quality beyond the rippling movement. He grew claws again. His nose elongated into a snout. His mouth, too, took on a sharper shape, and his head grew larger.
“Hurry,” Hector said as the wiggling became frantic. “Go tell Amber to get ready!”
