Strike, Shew, strike! One more moment of hesitation and he’ll kill you.

Shew slashed hard at Loki’s arm. When her sword met his flesh, she didn’t pull away. She cut hard through it like a cake. Her guts churned from the inside, but she had to do it. She thought the wound would slow him down and allow her to escape on her unicorn.

Loki held his arm and looked at it as if no one had ever dared to injure him before. He returned his gaze to her, and Shew feared his wrath even more. He had the same look in his eyes he had when he was at Furry Tell.

Out of fear, she slashed at his other arm, forcing him to drop his sword.

Loki glared at her with snake-yellow eyes now. A tight scream escaped him briefly, but then he swallowed it. He was not going to show he was in pain. Still, he sank to his knees from the pain.

Shew did her best not to feel sorry for him, imagining he was someone else.

In his pain, his veins surfaced on his neck and arms. As Shew looked closer she noticed that they weren’t his veins, but his Ariadne Fleece running through his body. Carmilla, wherever she was, must have pulled it harder, urging him to get up, and he did, empowered by the Fleece.

For the first time, Shew realized she wasn’t only fighting Loki, but Carmilla Karnstein as well.

Loki stood up. There wasn’t the slightest sign of playfulness on his face.

He was going to kill her mercilessly.

Shew walked backwards, slowly, unable to take her eyes off him. Where would she go? There was no way she could outrun or escape him.

Loki slashed at her hand, but she managed to hold on to her sword. She raised her hand against the pain and plunged the sword into his stomach.

He bent forward and gripped the blade with both hands, glaring back at her as his hair fell over his eyes.

“Not good enough, princess,” he smiled against the mild pain, but unable to raise his voice.

Afraid he’d part her from her sword, Shew pulled it back, slitting his palms while he still clenched to it.

Loki stretched his back, stretched his neck, and cracked his bleeding knuckles one by one. He took a deep breath as if the pain meant nothing to him. His strength was unimaginable, “feels much better now,” his said, bleeding from his stomach.

Shew realized that killing him wasn’t going to be easy. She turned around and headed toward her unicorn, praying Loki’s wound would slow him down.

It didn’t.

“Going somewhere?” she heard him come after her.

Shew continued toward her unicorn, not looking back, but her unicorn had started running away. For a moment, she didn’t understand, then she realized it must have been running from the huge silver light that was now shining in the sky.

Shew, chasing the unicorn, thought the light might have been the moon, even though it wasn’t a white light. It was like the reflection of glass, as if the part of the sky had turned into an enormous mirror reflecting its light onto the forest. She had no time to look. Loki scared her more than the light.

“Ahhh,” Loki screamed behind her. She heard him fall back on the ground, giving her a fraction of a second to look at the glaring light.

She tilted her head and saw a dragon, a glass dragon.

Shew stopped, afraid of it the same way the unicorn feared it. Looking sideways, she saw the floating glass dragon had knocked Loki down. The look of terror on Loki’s face was priceless. He had never seen anything like it—hell, she hadn’t seen anything like it either.

The dragon was the size of Splash, Cerené’s water horse, and it was made from living glass. It was both beautiful and scary. Its eyes were diamonds, and it breathed orange fire at Loki who crawled on all fours away from it.

A little lower, the dragon’s tail was attached to a blowpipe. Cerené’s blowpipe.

There was nothing to doubt anymore, Cerené was what Charmwill Glimmer was to Loki. She used all of her breath, urging the dragon to fire at him.

“What kind of witch are you?” Loki shouted at Shew, raising his sword to fight the glass dragon.

“Cerené,” Shew yelled. “You’re going to die if you keep breathing. Let the dragon fade, and escape with me.”

“I’m glad I found you,” Cerené panted, giving up on the pipe, the huge dragon dimming a little.

“Did you follow me?” She wondered.

“No,” Cerené said. “I followed the chalk marks on the trees and the Rapunzel plants all over the forest. It wasn’t the smartest of moves, Joy. Even though the Rapunzel plants helped slow down the Huntsmen, the chalk on the trees was how Loki must have tracked you.”

“And my singing, too,” Shew added.

“Now the Queen is sending other huntsmen for you.”

“Why did you risk your life coming for me again?” Shew walked to her and grabbed her arm. Loki was fighting the diminishing dragon behind her. Soon it was going to die.

“I had to give you this,” Cerené pulled out Loki’s necklace, and smiled.

“I hope you didn’t hurt Alice,” Shew said, looking at the necklace one more time. She still couldn’t read it, but she put it back on.

“I don’t care about her,” Cerené said vaguely. “Come on. We have to hide in the cottage,” she pointed behind her.

Shew squinted harder, looking for it, “how did I miss it,” she wondered.

“Doesn’t matter,” Cerené said. “It’s our only hope, although it’s not going to be as safe as I thought, now that Loki found you. The whole idea about the cottage was no one could find it. But we have no choice now.”

They ran toward the cottage, holding hands; Cerené held her blowpipe with the other hand while Shew carried her newly tested sword.

36

The Cottage and the Wolf

Shew and Cerené entered the cottage.  Cerené turned to lock the door behind them while Shew hurried to lock the windows.

Shew’s first impression was like Déjà vu again. She had been there before, but she couldn’t remember the details. If Cerené met Charmwill here, then the cottage was part of her erased memory. She expected to come across clues to the Lost Seven.

The cottage was small and separated into two levels. Three creaking wooden steps led to the higher level, which was occupied with seven beds. They were big beds, used by real people, not dwarves.

The lower level was smaller, lit by pumpkin shaped lanterns, and mostly occupied with an oval-shaped dining table. It was an old table, its surface filled with cracks and engravings. She hurried to it, comparing the cracks to Loki’s necklace.

Still, nothing made sense.

Shew wondered again how such scribbled engravings could hold an important message. She could neither read the engravings on the front or the back of the pendant.

Another thing that caught Shew’s attention was the absence of chairs. There was only one chair while the table that was big enough for eight people. She brushed the tips of her hands over the chair’s back, hoping she’d remember something, the way she remembered her father’s training.

Again, nothing. It was just a chair.

On the table, Shew saw five items: a knife, some scattered beans, breadcrumbs, an empty plate, and a fork. The image of each item gave her a momentary, but acute, migraine. With each item, an image flashed. She caught the image of a boy with a green hat, a girl in a red cloak, and a moon. The rest of the images were unclear. Shew was almost sure these were the Lost Seven, and that each item belonged to one of them.

Why hadn’t she seen an image of Cerené, and what was her item?

Shew altered her gaze between the items and chair for a while. Her gut feeling told her the chair was the sixth item—that’s why there were no other chairs in the house.     “They belong to the others I told you about,” Cerené said, pointing at the items on the table. She had begun nailing logs on the windows as if preparing for a zombie attack. “I haven’t been lucky enough to meet them,” she added with a nail between her teeth.