Chapter 51 #2
The hobgoblin cuffed Leo with a palm bigger than my skillet.
I watched as he fell to his knees and the hobgoblin kicked him.
Tears spilled from my eyes as I sang. I loved Leo, even if I could never be with him, I would always love him.
I also loved my magic and yet I couldn’t be with that either, not fully, not when it caused me to release goblins.
Maybe one day I’d learn to unleash the sweet magic without the bitter kind, but today wasn’t that day.
Today, magic was hurting Leo.
And that, I would not allow.
As I sang, my grip tightened on the book and magical geometries shifted across the clearing.
A web of neumes and notes connected me to the manuscript, to Leo and the folk—and even to Hattie and the hobgoblin.
I understood the web. I knew how to tug at the strands, how to loosen, to adjust. How to free the memories.
But I wasn’t trying to free anything this time. Instead, I was trying to bind the memories. Which I almost understood. I was so close. So I kept singing—
The hobgoblin kicked Leo one more time, sending him hurtling through the air. He banged against the outside of my iron cage, then slid to the ground.
“Keep going, Pan,” Leo gasped. “I’ve got him… right where… I want him.”
He smiled at me with his bloody mouth, then rolled in front of the cage door. Putting himself between the monster and me, even though he’d already lost, even though he didn’t have a single chance of winning.
Why? Because he loved me. Maybe he loved me incompletely, but he loved me—and my song turned warmer.
I loved him, too. I loved the pixies and the gnomes, shivering in their cages.
I even loved the brownies. I loved my family and friends, my faerie-kin and my normal neighbors, and Hattie was wrong. Beane Island didn’t belong to her.
It belonged to us.
As I sang, that love unsealed the manuscript. I felt the link between myself and the folk grow stronger. I could almost reach them…
“Kill her!” Hattie shouted in that raspy voice. “Now!”
The hobgoblin clomped forward, looming over Leo. I sang more desperately, trying to force the creatures to return to the manuscript—and I failed.
There wasn’t enough power in the pages anymore.
After releasing the folk, the illuminated manuscript was empty and exhausted.
Even the color had bled from its pages.
The hobgoblin reared back to stomp on Leo—and Violet flew between its thick legs and threw open the door to the cage. At the same instant, a bloodied and trembling Bob slashed with his wings at the hobgoblin’s ankle.
“There isn’t enough magic left in the book,” I half-sobbed, in the breaths between notes.
The hobgoblin howled as green blood sprayed from its ankle, then clapped its palms together.
The shockwave sent Violet and Bob tumbling through the open cage door.
They crashed into the bars on the other side and fell still…
and Leo managed to crawl into the cage with us and slam the door closed behind himself.
“Kill them!” Hattie rasped. “Crush the cage. We will drink their blood and seed their flesh!”
“I’m so sorry,” I whispered to Leo, lifting his battered head onto my lap beside the manuscript. “I’m not strong enough.”
“You are,” he whispered.
“I’m not! I can’t even—”
“You are.” He touched the manuscript with his trembling hand. “The book just needs… a little more… oomph.”
A blue light glowed around his fingers, and I felt an ethereal rush of power around us, like a powerful wave gathering.
“What are you doing?” I asked.
His eyes closed. “Feeding it my gift.”
“Then you won’t have one!”
His bruised mouth smiled. “You’re more important than any gift. More important than being faerie-kin. What matters most isn’t magic, what matters most is you. You were right.”
The blue light spread around us and I said, “Stop, Leo. You’ll forget your life! Leo, no, you won’t remember anything!”
“I’ll remember I love you,” he told me, and the glow brightened.
Blue light filled the world for two heartbeats. Then Leo went limp, his eyes closing, and the manuscript surged with magic.
Magic stolen from Leo’s gift—and strong enough to power mine.
With tears running down my cheeks, I tapped into that renewed magic.
At my silent command, golden threads unfurled from the pages and stretched through the air.
One thread touched a vine, another touched a leaf.
More arced overhead, lofting beyond the clearing to reach miles across the island.
A few threads curled around the pixies fluttering in my cage.
The pixies giggled and sparkled, their fear fading as their colors brightened.
Then they rode the golden threads into the manuscript.
A dozen more threads extended from the page, then a hundred.
I was in the center of a golden web that stretched to every corner of Beane Island.
Magic flowed past me into the book. Jera saluted me with his hammer as he and other gnomes vanished.
Pixies twirled and danced, brownies capered—and Diary, I half-smiled through my tears as one mooned me before he left.
Weird gnome constructions flashed in front of my eyes.
I caught a glimpse of mosquito netting before the iron birdcages siphoned away.
The released pets looked dazed but unhurt as goblins streamed past, fangs snapping and claws slashing.
After them, the threads tugged at vines, endless miles of vines, pulling them up by the root, swallowing them into the book.
The hobgoblin howled before it blinked away into a flash of gold.
Violet and Daffodil and Bob were the last to go, with Violet carrying a motionless Daffodil, and Bob clutching his bleeding wound. Dames! I hoped they’d be all right. Tears streamed down my cheeks as I realized how much I would miss them all.
Finally, only the twisted fragments of Hattie remained.
They spat and hissed but my song didn’t falter.
A hundred threads dug them from the ground and pulled them into the manuscript.
There was a final flash of gold, then the manuscript rose from my arms, floated above me in a nimbus of light, and—ping—vanished.
Hattie was gone. No trace of her remained. The woods looked like woods again, the air smelled like home. For a moment, the moonlit clouds high above me looked like baby hedgehogs.
In the silence, I cradled Leo’s unconscious head on my lap. His hand was still clenched, like he was trying to hold onto his gift. The gift he’d sacrificed for me. I twined my fingers between his and then I—I sang again. Without purpose, without reason. I sang for Leo, and for him alone.
We were still alive. Still in love.