The Witch, the Sword, and the Cursed Knights

TWO

CAEDMON

NEW WORLD REALM, BOULDER FALLS, WISCONSIN, 2019 AD¹

CAEDMON LIKED TO WANDER.

Those looking for wanderers never found them. It had to happen by accident. Caedmon didn’t mind meeting people that way. It was his parents he wanted to avoid. Fortunately, parents only ever found footsteps, which were easily concealed.

This particular wander brought Caedmon to a great tree with drooping leaves cascading into a bubbling brook, near the edge of the forest of Boulder Falls, Wisconsin.

He didn’t know how many minutes passed as he dropped sticks and stones into the water, watching them float and sink, float and sink, again and again.

Maybe his friend Jimmy would like to join.

Maybe his ghost would come spend time with him.

Or, more likely, tease him for moping.

Caedmon stretched out in the grass, the sweet smell tickling his nose. Ghosts weren’t real. He knew that. And neither was Jimmy.

Not anymore.

Mom said she understood. Dad said Caedmon would get through it, though as far as Caedmon could tell, there was nothing to get through. There wasn’t one side and another, like the tunnels he and Jimmy used to race through, listening to distant trains screech.

There was only empty space where his best friend should be. Only the sound of plunking stones in water. Plunk, plunk, plunk, buzz and chirp and a whistling wind.

Caedmon preferred it to people speaking.

Mr. Barnsworth had warned Caedmon he couldn’t miss another class, and that next time, he really would tell the principal. Words like “expelled” and “failed” had floated through his ears.

Caedmon couldn’t bring himself to care.

He ran a hand through his floppy brown hair, scrunching his pale forehead. School had always been his thing, even to the point of letting Jimmy copy his homework.

But what was the point if your best friend could die, your life could change, and there was nothing you could do to stop it? No amount of learning could help him. Nothing helped him.

He flipped to his back and lay utterly still, despite the faint tickling of a worm inching across his ankle and the warmth against his cheeks warning him to wear sunscreen. Maybe, if he were still enough, he could stop time. Stop his mind from replaying those final days in the hospital.

No one knew how Jimmy got so sick, so quickly. No one knew why he died. Only that one day he was fine, and the next his heart stopped working.

And he was gone.

Sometimes he thought he saw Jimmy out of the corner of his eye. Laughing, as usual, his hair sticking up in all directions. Jimmy would’ve hated the funeral. If ghosts were real, Jimmy would’ve pulled pranks on everyone there. When Jimmy’s little sister slipped on a banana peel at the wake, Caedmon could’ve sworn he’d heard his friend cackle.

But it’d only been Jimmy’s mom screaming, afraid a second child of hers was about to die. Another sound Caedmon would have to banish from his embarrassing, terrified thoughts at night.

A faint rustling stirred the grass.

Probably a squirrel.

Though that didn’t explain the hairs rising on Caedmon’s neck.

The rustling grew louder.

Caedmon peeked through nearly closed lids. If his mom or dad had found him, would he run? Trudge home and sneak out again later? Groaning, Caedmon propped himself up on his elbows. “Sorry, Mom.”

Silence.

No one was there.

Even the brook seemed to have stopped bubbling. The cicadas didn’t stir; the grass stood still.

Something crinkled, like pieces of paper, as a red droplet appeared on Caedmon’s foot.

Red like… blood.

Caedmon lurched upright, though his ankle felt healthy enough, free from scrapes or bites. Something wet and warm dripped onto Caedmon’s neck—there, a letter, tied to a branch.

That explained the crinkling.

The paper was blank but for the dripping of blood from the corner. Like it hurt to reveal what it needed to say. The weeping willow creaked, listening. Waiting for him.

In majestic, looping handwriting, words began to scratch the page. Every fiber in Caedmon’s body wanted to bolt, but his feet refused to move.

Because his own name stared back at him.

Caedmon’s cheeks flamed. Okay, it’s not that he believed in Santa Claus; he just thought it was stupid to rule it out completely just because nobody had met him. There was a difference. And he’d never told anyone about Mellie, not even Jimmy. He shook his head and continued reading, only to be reprimanded for ignoring a previous letter telling him he’d receive this letter. Come to think of it, his mom had mentioned something a couple of days ago—but he cared so little about anything these days, he’d promptly forgotten.

Poisons? Knights? And what on earth was a rogle root? Was pixie’s breath a flower? Caedmon turned the paper over, his mind catching up to his fear. That couldn’t actually be blood. There had to be a trick to it. But no matter how many ways he turned the paper and squinted at it, he couldn’t find the trick.

Unless… ghosts really were real and Jimmy was playing one of his darker pranks. Goose bumps rippled up his arms.

He dropped the letter in the dirt and ambled toward home. Pranks or no, Jimmy was dead.

And it was unfair to remind Caedmon that all Jimmy could ever do again was play pranks from the grave.

Footnote

1 Which happens to be the same as 715 YATRDOC, for those of you who have not taken my Lessons for Children on the Importance of Timelines in the Twenty-Five and a Half Realms; How Realm Thirteen, the Dragon Realm, Severely Miscalculated the Length of Its Existence, Sending All Realms into Chaos for a Hundred Years; and How We Shall Not Forgive Them No Matter the Price, Particularly Stanley.

THREE

CAEDMON

CAEDMON NEARLY FORGOT IT WAS HALLOWEEN UNTIL trick-or-treaters showed up on his doorstep wearing costumes. Of course, it wasn’t actually Halloween; Boulder Falls’s superstition banned trick-or-treaters from asking for candy on Halloween because the last time they did, the mayor fell into a beehive. So instead, kids dressed up a week earlier. Tonight, a goblin, a princess, and a ghost held out plastic orange jack-o’-lanterns.

The smallest—the ghost—grabbed Caedmon’s hand, her fingers sticky. “Do you have lollipops?”

For a moment, Caedmon only stared at her. He hadn’t thought of Jimmy’s ghost note in days, banishing it to the back of his mind along with everything else, so all that existed in his head was a pleasant buzz. A complete absence of anything.

But the girl’s oversize white sheet reminded him of Jimmy’s ghost sending him letters. He didn’t like being reminded. Caedmon glowered. “No.” He slammed the door and stalked back inside, ignoring the little girl’s wails of protest.

From the living room, the TV flicked off. “Were those trick-or-treaters?” his dad called. Though Robert Tuggle looked like a ferocious bear with his wild beard and broad frame, he was one of the gentlest people Caedmon knew and probably wouldn’t approve of his behavior.

“No,” Caedmon lied. Lying felt good. It was the only thing that did these days.

“I made apple pie, bud,” his dad continued. “Your mom and I were about to have some. Come join us?”

“No,” Caedmon repeated, jumping the stairs two at a time so he could escape to his room.

Once inside, he leaned against the door. His blue walls were the same. The orange bedspread was the same. The comic books on the floor, the abandoned Xbox in the corner he hadn’t wanted to play since Jimmy died.

All the same.

And all… empty.

Caedmon didn’t even reach the bed before collapsing in exhaustion, sprawled on the floor. He squeezed his eyes shut as hot tears prickled. Crying was stupid. It wouldn’t change anything.

“That’s an odd place to spend your time,” murmured a strange voice.

Caedmon’s eyes flared open. He screamed.

Upside down from his spot on the floor, a woman with a sparkling blue dress, tiara, and violet spiky hair swung her legs from his windowsill. She pouted. “Wait, why are you screaming? I put my face on and everything!”

“You… you put your face…?” Caedmon shook his head. “Who are you and why are you in my room?”

Rather than answer him, she hopped off his windowsill and started picking random items off his bookshelf and flicking through them. “Peculiar taste in books, too.” She pulled out his school textbook on ancient civilizations and squinted at it, turning it upside down, her strange silver eyes roving over the pages. Eyes that didn’t look… human. “What’s this Rome place?”

“That… that’s for school!” Caedmon protested, flipping upright and inching toward the door. “Rome is… it’s a city in Italy and… the ancient Romans were really powerful.…”

He grabbed the doorknob. It didn’t budge.

The woman threw her head back and laughed, the sound too large for someone so small. “Oh, I forget how delightful it is to talk to New World recruits. You have nothing inside your skull, little knight, and it pleases me.”

Caedmon took some offense to that. If nothing else, he was good at school. Maybe not these days, but still.

“Who are you and what are you doing here?” Caedmon tried again.

“Roxie, Roxie, I go by sweet Roxie,” she chanted. “And trust me: This is the worst part of the job. But you know, it pays the bills, and I like my rum collection.” She pulled out a bottle of rum from her poofy dress. “Rum?”

“I’m twelve,” Caedmon stammered.

Roxie shrugged. “Legal age is fourteen in the Dragon Realm. Though that might be because they’re terrible mathematicians and miscalculated… well, everything.”

“The Dragon Realm? What?”

Roxie grinned, revealing pointed, glittery teeth. Caedmon flattened himself against the door. He was embarrassed to admit it, but for the first time in weeks, he wished for his parents.

All they’d done since Jimmy’s death was rush upstairs to coddle him, and now was the time they chose to leave him alone?

“It’s a realm far from here.”

“Like… a parallel universe or something?”

Roxie cackled. “Oh, you delightful fool. Not that far. All this universe, all this world. Realm is the ancient word for kingdom, and our kingdoms are ancient, honored things. The magical realms are simply unknown.” Her eyes sparkled. “Secret.”

“That’s impossible,” Caedmon whispered.

“Nothing is impossible with a healthy dose of magic, dear one. There are twenty-four and a half magical realms hidden around the world, with walls of fire and ice and brittle bone to keep out sneaky, pesky, prying things.”

Caedmon cleared his throat. “Sure. Okay.” He had a feeling if there were walls of bones around the world keeping them from magical kingdoms, someone would have put it on social media by now.

Her eyes narrowed, as if reading his mind. “You would never see the walls from this side. All you would see is barren nothingness that stretches into the rest of time. It fills human hearts with such sadness, such unending grief, their souls unable to understand why they cannot touch and taste our magic, that they ignore. They do not see. So, what is empty to your eyes remains magical to ours.”

Caedmon blinked. Her description stirred something in him. Some long-forgotten emotion. Like… want. Curiosity. He buried it back down. “I don’t believe you.”