Authors: Janette Rallison
Several years back I taught a fairy chap how to
spin straw into gold. He still owes me something
for that one, he does. I could have him send you
back for a bit. That way you could talk to your
sister and convince her to come back.”
Perhaps it was dishonest for me not to tell
them about the contract, and they may have
been under the false assumption that all they
would have to do to come home was to convince
Savannah to ask her fairy godmother to send
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them all back. I may have even told them that
fairy godmothers were akin to angels, just waiting to bless the lives of the deserving. But I ask
you, since when have the mortal folk been honest with us? It’s never been their way. Deeds for
deeds, I say.
I called me friend Rumpelstiltskin, and he
sent them back right quickly, he did.
Yours,
Jane and Hunter looked as they had on many school mornings: jeans, tennis shoes, and backpacks on their shoulders. But streaks of dirt smudged their clothes, and the knee of Jane’s jeans was torn. They looked tired and frazzled, and seeing them made it seem that the world had suddenly ripped open, mixing old with new, blend-ing the centuries together.
Tristan turned to me, a look of accusation darkening his eyes. “You sent them here too?”
“I didn’t!” I said, then turned to Jane. “What are you doing here?”
Frustration flashed across her face. Her eyes had a panicked look, a loss of composure that wasn’t like her.
She dropped her backpack onto the floor. “That’s how you greet me? I’ve just spent the last two hours wandering around a forest in the dark—which I’m sure was your leprechaun’s idea of a joke— and we never even would have found the village if it hadn’t been for the church bell and the bonfire. And I kept falling down, and my jeans are ripped, and now we’ve finally found you and you ask me what I’m doing here?” Her voice spiraled in volume. “This is the Middle Ages, Savannah.
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This is not a safe place for a teenage girl. It’s dangerous.
It has the plague, and wars, and—”
“One less monster.” Hunter took a step toward Tristan. He held up his hand to give Tristan a high-five.
“Way to go, dude. They’re making up songs in your honor downstairs.”
Jane didn’t take her eyes off me. “Mom and Dad are going to flip out about this. I don’t know what you think you’re doing here, but you’ve got to come home. Right.
Now.” Jane folded her arms and finished her lecture with an aggravated breath.
“So you’re admitting that I’m not crazy,” I said.
“What?” she asked.
“You thought I was crazy when I told you about the leprechaun and the Middle Ages. But you opened the package and found out the truth, didn’t you?”
“Okay,” Jane said, cutting me off. “You’re not crazy.
Now will you please come home?”
“Trust me, I want to come home but I’m here until Tristan can leave.”
As calmly as if he were discussing the weather, Tristan added, “I can’t leave until I become a prince.”
“You? You’re the prince?” Jane’s voice took on an agitated edge and she turned in my direction. “You’re not going to get married, are you?” 299/431
“Not to each other,” I said and couldn’t keep my lips from pursing. “Tristan wants to marry Princess Margaret.”
“I don’t
want
to marry her,” he said. “It’s all part of the deluxe prom package Savannah ordered.” Then I had to explain to Jane and Hunter how my fairy godmother had misunderstood certain statements I’d made and had sent Tristan back in time to become a prince. He still had two tasks left before he could achieve that goal and return to our time.
“Kill a dragon?” Hunter said as though he both envied and feared for Tristan. “Can you do that?”
“I’ve got to.”
Jane shook her head, disbelief seeping into her tone.
“But your leprechaun told us that all you had to do to come home was to ask your fairy godmother.”
“Oh, well, that just means you were duped by a leprechaun,” I said.
Hunter cocked his head and looked at me narrowly.
“Your fairy godmother won’t help you at all?”
“My fairy godmother won’t even take my calls. She’s sort of a teenage, airheaded shopping diva who didn’t pay attention very well in fairy school.” Jane sat down on my bed and rubbed at her forehead wearily. “Well, that figures.” I followed her with my gaze. “Meaning?” 300/431
“They must match fairy godmothers to people by type.
You pretty much just described yourself.”
“I did not,” I said. “I’m not . . .” I ran through the list of qualities I’d just said, deciding which one to protest first.
Shopping diva
, okay that was sort of me.
Didn’t
pay attention in school
. . . um, ditto for that one. I wasn’t an airhead though, was I?
I thought of all the ways I’d messed things up in the last two days and wasn’t sure. Still, I folded my arms. “I am not like her.” Which was true. I always return my phone messages. “And besides, I didn’t ask you to come.
So if you don’t want to be here why don’t you just call your responsible, punctual fairy godmother and leave?”
“Because I didn’t get a fairy godmother,” Jane said. “I got a creepy little man who may in fact have been Rumpelstiltskin. The leprechaun said your fairy godmother would take all of us back when you asked.” Jane let her hands fall to her sides in exasperation. They were smeared with dirt and tiny scratches ran across them.
“How could you mess up a wish from your fairy godmother?”
Tristan spoke, and his voice had a calmness to it that almost didn’t belong in the room. “What did you bring with you?”
“What?” Jane asked.
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“You knew you were going to the Middle Ages. You must have brought along things you were going to need.
Savannah brought supplies. Things to barter. What’s in your backpacks?”
It was more of a point than a question and Jane blushed at the reprimand.
Hunter said, “We only have our schoolbooks. We didn’t think we were going to
stay
here.” He thrust his hands into the pockets of his jeans. “I thought fairies were supposed to be good and do nice things for people.”
Tristan picked up Jane’s backpack from the floor, took it to the bed, and unzipped it. “In the original fairy tales, fairies were often seen as mischievous, dangerous tricksters. They did things like steal children. Smart people didn’t trust them.”
I let out a grunt. “Where were you with that information when I needed it?”
He dumped Jane’s books out onto the bed. Without cracking a smile, he said, “Sitting in my room trying to work up the courage to call you.” Then he put Jane’s pens and pencils into one pile and her books into another. The notebooks he handed to me. “Paper is valuable.
We’ll be able to barter with these at least.” He pulled out a makeup bag, opened it, and shook his head. He tossed it back on the bed along with her cell phone, then 302/431
walked over to Hunter and took his backpack from him.
“Anything in here that could be used to slay a dragon?”
“Paper. Pens. And my lunch.”
“Well, at least you’ll have one good meal in the Middle Ages then.” Tristan took the backpack and looked through it anyway. While he did he said, “Savannah, your job tomorrow is to take Hunter and Jane to the market and buy them clothes so they fit in.” I said, “It takes days, sometimes weeks, to make clothes.”
“Buy them off someone’s back if you have to. I’ll be gone all day at the castle. They’ll want me to tell the story of the cyclops over dinner, and besides, I should practice my archery some more. According to everyone at the castle, the only way to kill a dragon is to shoot a poisoned arrow into its throat. It’s a small target, but it’s the only unarmored part. If I miss, the dragon is likely to swoop down and barbecue me.” A tremor went through me. I hadn’t really thought about Tristan fighting the dragon. But now that he was planning it, I couldn’t help but picture him standing underneath a monstrous dragon with only a bow and arrow for protection. Little waves of panic spread across my chest.
Tristan went through the contents of Hunter’s backpack with a shake of his head. “What I really need is a 303/431
small handheld missile. How come no one carries those in their backpacks anymore?”
I knew he was joking, but still I said, “Could we make one?”
Jane and Hunter looked at me with that condescending expression smart people get when they think you’re being an idiot, so I said, “Didn’t the Chinese have rockets in the Middle Ages?” After all, I’d seen the movie
Mulan
. Hey, for a cartoon character, Shang was hot.
“They did,” Tristan said. “But I have no idea what sort of fuel they used.”
“Besides,” Hunter said, “the body of a rocket has to be perfectly cylindrical or it won’t fly straight. The chances of hitting a dragon’s throat are slim.”
“What about cannons?” I said. “Didn’t they have those in the Middle Ages?”
Tristan calmly refilled Hunter’s backpack. “They had trebuchets, which worked more like catapults—great for hitting castles, but not so accurate at hitting moving objects.” He looked over at me, and his voice softened as though he appreciated my worry. “Trust me, people here have tried lots of ways to kill dragons—poisoning their food, drugging them. An arrow to the throat is the only thing that’s worked.”
I went and sat on the bed, just so I could be near him.
“That’s because the people here haven’t considered 304/431
everything. But we’re from the twenty-first century. We know what’s possible.”
Jane shook her head. “Knowing what’s possible and being able to replicate it are two entirely different things.”
And so there was Tristan standing alone underneath the dragon again, and no one seemed to be bothered by this except for me. I poked at the blanket on the bed with irritation. “If you’re not going to use your knowledge, then what’s the point of being smart? Anyone could shoot a bow. I could do it.”
“But you’re not going to,” Tristan said with more forcefulness than he needed. To Hunter he added, “Your job tomorrow is to make sure Savannah stays out of trouble.”
“Could we feed it explosives?” I asked. “You told me it cooks its food inside its mouth.”
“They didn’t have explosives in the Middle Ages,” Hunter said.
“But that doesn’t mean they didn’t have the ingredients,” I said. “What’s dynamite made out of? Or gunpowder?”
Tristan tilted his head back, his eyes narrowed in concentration. “She’s right. Gunpowder was made from natural components. Fertilizer is one of them and they have plenty of that here. What are the other ingredients?” 305/431
Hunter leaned forward. He snapped his fingers trying to remember. “Saltpeter. The colonials made it during the Revolutionary War. It’s part potassium nitrate and you mix it with something . . .” I looked at Jane to see if she knew the answer, but she was turning pages in her history book. “Black powder,” she said. “Developed in China in the ninth century . . .
spread to Europe between the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries.”
Tristan’s brows furrowed with concentration. “But what are the ingredients?”
Hunter picked up his chemistry book and flipped through the pages. To himself he said, “What reacts with potassium nitrate?”
Black powder. I never even remembered hearing about it in history class, but I had plenty of practice guessing for tests. “It’s got to be something black,” I said.
Tristan’s gaze shot over to mine and he smiled. “Charcoal. It’s mixed with charcoal.”
“And sulfur,” Hunter said. He turned the book around and pointed to a bunch of letters, numbers, and arrows that meant nothing to me but made the other two say,
“Ahhh.”
Now everyone leaned together, making a semicircle around Tristan. “What about the ratios?” Hunter asked.
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“We’ll have to experiment,” Tristan said. “I’ll see how much charcoal and sulfur I can buy from the castle alchemists.”
“Do we know how to make saltpeter?” Jane asked.
The guys looked at each other and laughed.
“What?” I said.
“That’s the fertilizer part,” Tristan said. “It’s basically what happens when you combine a decaying material and urine. Your basic dung heap.” I sat up straighter. “How do you guys know this sort of thing?”
Tristan shrugged. “You hear it once and you never forget it.”
“Gross,” I said.
“Yeah, but you’ll never forget it now,” Tristan said.
I held up one hand. “For the record, I refuse to be in charge of the saltpeter.”
Which is how I was put in charge of buying a pig.
Tristan figured we could tie bags of black powder to a pig and put it near the dragon’s lair.
We talked long into the night about who was going to do what, and what supplies we’d have to buy, and the fact that we needed to buy more horses for Hunter and Jane. It grew very late and even the villagers downstairs went home. Then Hunter went to Tristan’s room and 307/431
Jane stayed in mine. I scooted over so she had room on the bed to sleep.
I thought it would be awkward being in the room alone with her. We hadn’t really talked, not normally anyway, since Hunter broke up with me, but I fell asleep before she even climbed into bed.
• • •
I had wanted to see Tristan before he left, but the innkeeper told me he’d gone at first light. I wondered if he’d gotten any sleep at all last night. I hadn’t been able to tell him good-bye, which bothered me more than it should have.
He’d be gone all morning long, telling his story at the castle and being knighted by the king. At least I knew he wouldn’t be spending much time with Princess Margaret. He wanted to get back to the inn and get things ready as soon as possible so he could go to the dragon’s lair.
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Celebrating aside, everyone figured it would be best to try and kill the dragon today instead of giving Sir William a chance to exhibit his archery prowess and shoot it first. Or as Jane had put it last night, “Anyone ever heard of William Tell?”
Sir William had said he was going up to the castle to pay his respects to the king and Princess Margaret today, but after that, it only made sense that he’d go after the dragon. Both he and Tristan needed the reward money that would enable them to challenge the Black Knight.
I hadn’t said much about the Black Knight to the others last night, but that didn’t mean I hadn’t thought about him. I’d been so frightened when I’d gone to fight the cyclops and the enchantment hadn’t worked. Had the Black Knight already figured out that his enchantment was gone? Did he realize I was the one who had taken it?