Chapter 24
Chapter
Twenty-Four
Braiden winced and sucked on his fingertips, burned by the cinderling silk for the third time in a row. How was he supposed to work with this stuff when it wouldn’t even work with him? He’d never met a more uncooperative fiber.
“This is impossible,” he said. “I thought the Mothergoat wool was hot enough to handle, but this is just ridiculous.”
He threw his hands up in frustration, letting the cinderling silk fall to the ground. It burned a snakelike squiggle into the grass, which was very impressive indeed because the grass itself was functionally already on fire.
He’d tried to temper its heat by braiding the silk with moongrass filament, to no avail. It only burned through the moongrass. He turned to the others helplessly, but especially to Newt, who gave an apologetic shrug of his shoulders.
“I’m sorry,” he said, opening his hands and showing his palms, which gleamed like brass by the light of the campfire. “I guess I’m built for handling hot things and never considered it would be impossible for you to work with.”
“It’s not your fault. You’ve never known any different. I should have been more prepared to work with unconventional materials.”
He thought of the enchanted fingerless gloves he would have loved to craft for nullifying the heat of Mothergoat wool, except for how he never had the chance to actually make them because of Bones’s abrupt abduction.
His eyes flitted momentarily toward Valefour, but he felt guilty for placing the demon at fault. They were here now, deep below the surface in the fiery meadow, and they would just have to deal with the situation.
Augustin snapped his fingers. “What if we asked friend Newt to help string the Heirloom with the cinderling silk? With your permission, of course.”
“Sure, why not? It’s worth a try.”
Newt gathered a length of cinderling silk, gingerly approaching the Heirloom held reverently in Valefour’s hands. The silk would need braiding or strengthening nonetheless, but it was worth the rudimentary attempt.
Would the silk even hold on the Heirloom? He knew the instrument was supposed to be magical, but it was still only made of wood. The cinderling silk could burn right through all of Gregor’s hard work.
Newt laid the cinderling silk along the leftmost grooves on the instrument, the part meant to hold the lightest strings. Braiden held his breath — then breathed in sharply through his nose when the silk began to scorch into the Heirloom. The smell of burning wood filled his nostrils.
Newt yanked the silk off the Heirloom, batting at the last remaining cinders. It hadn’t left any lasting damage — in fact, the burned black line gave the instrument a bit of character.
But what now? Braiden kneaded his temples with the tips of his fingers.
“This was supposed to work,” he muttered.
Elyssandra patted him on the back. “It’s not all bad, is it? We’ll find something to use on the Heirloom.”
Warren nodded. “It may take some time, and certainly a trip to the surface. Didn’t you mention other kinds of magical spiders when we met Gregor in his hut? How long might that take?”
“Who can say?” Augustin said. “We lucked out with the othergoats, but we may not be so lucky this time. It could take days, weeks, perhaps months. Setting expectations realistically, of course.”
It didn’t feel right to have come all this way only to disappoint the demons again. This was the thread of Braiden’s destiny, a length of yarn first unspooled back in Bethilda Beadle’s day.
Valefour handed the Heirloom to Augustin and gave the party a tight smile. “We’ve waited decades to return home. What’s a few months more?”
“Not years, one would hope,” Ophidia said.
“We’ll find a merchant,” Braiden said, his eyes flitting around the clearing as his mind worked for answers. “Travel to another town, even, and buy up whatever delicate magical strings we can find.”
“So we’re not going home yet?” said a small, new voice from the bushes.
A young demon girl had parted the leaves, still half hidden in the foliage. She stood almost at the same height as Newt, but from her features alone Braiden could tell that she was actually a child.
Valefour and Ophidia’s child, it seemed, the way they gazed at her with a mixture of fondness, concern, and parental disapproval.
“Lucie,” Ophidia said. “What did I tell you about staying hidden?”
“That I was supposed to go behind the bushes with the others until we knew the humans wouldn’t hurt us.”
Something sharp and sour twinged in Braiden’s chest. Could he blame them? History and prejudice had shown how humanity had made up its mind about demonkind.
“We wouldn’t dream of hurting you,” Braiden said softly.
“Now,” Ophidia said, fighting to keep the accusing tone out of her voice. “You wouldn’t hurt us now. Lucie. Come to me.”
Ophidia waited with outstretched arms, embracing her daughter when she burst out from the bushes.
She twirled, then passed her child to Valefour, who hugged Lucie tight, squeezing a giggle out of her.
He hoisted her up on his shoulder. Lucie perched there comfortably like she’d done this a thousand times, gazing imperiously over Braiden and his party.
“Promise you won’t hurt us?” Lucie asked.
“We wouldn’t dream of it,” Elyssandra said. She curtsied and the others followed suit.
“Her ears are sharp like mine,” Lucie said to her father, in the kind of conspiratorial child’s whisper that a roomful of people could hear.
Valefour laughed, and so did Elyssandra.
Around the encampment, the bushes rustled again. Out stepped six, seven, then over a dozen more demons of different ages and sizes.
Braiden’s heart swooped and fell like the crest and trough of ocean waves, the emotions churning in his chest. So many people for them to help — an entire community stranded on the wrong side of their home portal — and it rankled at him knowing he couldn’t help them here, now, immediately.
“We swear we’ll be back,” Braiden said, addressing the entire encampment. “We’ll find the right weight of magical thread for the Heirloom, and we’ll come back just as soon as we finish stringing it.”
An abrupt snort erupted by the campfire, the kind that followed the loud snoring of a man who was just waking up. The drone of Elder Bahul’s nap had turned into such a familiar background noise that Braiden had forgotten about him entirely.
The elder sat up on his treasure chest, rubbing his eyes blearily. “What’s this about magical thread, now?”
Braiden held still, suspecting he had an idea where this was going. “Yes, actually. We need something fine and delicate to string the Heirloom.”
“Well, why didn’t you say so?”
Elder Bahul hopped off his chest, commanded it to open with a snap of his fingers, then took a moment to rummage through, muttering to himself.
“Ah, there it is.”
He thrust his hand in the air, clutching a fistful of something fine, lustrous, and golden. Braiden nearly teetered off balance in shock.
“That’s unicorn hair,” he breathed. “It’ll be perfect for the Heirloom, better than any spider silk.”
Elder Bahul rubbed the tips of his fingers together, his teeth sparkling to match the merchandise in his hand.
“And just like the flutterbutter, this too can be yours — for the right price.”
Braiden sighed, again barely listening when Augustin asked for a number, then when Augustin himself nearly staggered to the ground in surprise.
“We’ll take it,” Braiden conceded, pinching the bridge of his nose.
He focused on the stranded demons instead. He could always earn back the money. As long lived as they might be, the demons could never earn back their time.
Elder Bahul unfurled a scroll out of nowhere, his cheeks rosy as he eagerly scrawled another entry at the bottom of their bill.
The sudden weariness in Braiden’s bones told him that night must have fallen above ground. The fact that the demons had gathered around the campfire to prepare dinner was a giveaway, too.
He felt so undeserving, imposing himself on these people, making all these assumptions about them, and yet they had been so welcoming to his party, making space for them at the proverbial table.
There had to be something they could do for the demons, even if it was only some temporary way of bringing some sparkle to their lives. He sidled over to Elyssandra, nudging her with his elbow.
“How supplied is your cottage’s kitchen at the moment?”
Her emerald eyes lit up as she scanned the encampment. “Enough to make something worthwhile for everyone here, I would say.”
Braiden nodded. “We can always replenish when we go back to Weathervale. What are your thoughts on preparing a feast for our new friends?”
Augustin, who’d clearly been eavesdropping, cracked his knuckles. “Count me in.”
Elyssandra planted her hairpin in the ground several paces away from the campfire.
It was a good thing Braiden and his friends had decided to pack tents and sleeping rolls, just in case.
It didn’t seem proper to let the demons sleep in their tents while Braiden and the others slept in the comfort of the cottage’s warm bedrooms.
The demons paused in their food preparation, casting wide-eyed glances as elven magic took hold of the hairpin and quickly grew the cottage to its impossible proportions.
Elyssandra clasped her hands, turned to the demons, and cleared her throat. “If everyone is amenable, my friends and I would like to thank you for your hospitality by making you a meal.”
Valefour turned to his comrades and shrugged. “Hardly the worst idea. Show us what you’ve got.”
Ophidia rose from her place by the campfire, wiping berry-stained fingers on her trousers. “Yes, show us what you have in the kitchen. Tell us how we can help.”
Elyssandra shook her hands at them frantically. “No, no — you should just take it easy and rest. We’ll handle the work.”
Newt strode up to the cottage’s door. “Nonsense. We’ve got plenty of hands, and we can put them all together for a feast. Have you got any flour? We rarely get to eat bread unless Valefour brings it back from up top.”
Braiden regarded the demons guiltily. Even the most basic of amenities were denied them.
He didn’t know how long or how far Valefour truly could stray from the ruined portal below, but it clearly hadn’t allowed them to secure many comforts beyond what they could craft from materials readily available within the burning meadow.
If all this business with the Heirloom and the portal somehow fell through, Braiden resolved that he would make the trek up and down the dungeon as many times as it would take to help equip the demons for a better life underground. Perhaps they could even request some help from the burrowfolk.
The demons streamed in through the front door of Elyssandra’s cottage, even as the elf waved her hands and clutched at her hair in a panic. She sidled over to Braiden, whispering out of the side of her mouth.
“I really appreciate them being so enthusiastic about this, but I am a little embarrassed that they’ll be putting any effort into cooking for themselves at all. Doesn’t that defeat the point of us cooking for them?”
Warren watched the doorway warily as the demons filed in. “More than that,” he said, “can your cottage even accommodate all of these visitors all at once?”
Well over twenty of them, Braiden had last counted.
“At least I’m petite,” Bones said, “because I don’t have any meat. I barely take up any space.”
Augustin laughed, clapping Bones on the back. The skeleton rattled and clacked. “You take up plenty of space, friend Bones. Don’t you worry about that.”
“Thanks,” Bones said. “I think.”
They followed the demons into the house.
The cottage had maintained its usual size, or at least the same configuration for accommodating Bones, Elyssandra, and Warren.
There was a door for each of their bedrooms in the walls, as well as one for a common lavatory.
And then Braiden noticed the door in the far wall.
Lucie was running about, touching things, oohing and aahing, marveling at the elven furniture. With a twinge, Braiden realized this must have been the first time the demon child had ever seen anything like this. This was the first time she had been indoors.
“What’s this?” Lucie asked, heading for the same door Braiden had been wondering about. “Is this how it works?” she asked, turning the knob.
The tinkerer inside her must have given her the correct instincts for operating a door, something she’d never actually seen before. Braiden smiled and said nothing. Let the little girl explore to her heart’s content.
She turned the knob and pushed the door open. The breath rushed out of Braiden’s body.
The cottage now extended into a long hallway, opening into a vast space as big as a palatial ballroom. Stairs wound upward on either side at the far end of a pair of long tables. It was a banquet hall, he realized, somehow doubling as a foyer.
And up on the second level, past the gleaming wooden banisters, he saw several doors lining the wood-paneled walls — nearly twenty of them.
Elyssandra rushed up to him, staring wide-eyed at the great new room.
“The cottage turned itself into a mansion,” she breathed. “It’s making room for everyone.”