mirrors.
The four companions stared at the wall of thorns. 'We aren't getting anywhere trying to stare a hole into it,' Siegfried said finally. With a stiffening of his back, he walked toward it, sword at the ready, prepared to start chopping his way through.
But the hair on back of his neck rose when, as he neared it — the vines started to move. They uncoiled like sleepy snakes just aroused, then they reached for him. Slowly at first, then —
With a yelp, he leapt back just in time, as a vine with one of those evil thorns on it whipped through the space where he had been, and buried the thorn all the way into the dirt where he had been standing. He looked at the huge tangle of the things — hundreds of vines, thousands of thorns — he tried to imagine himself chopping through them and fending them off at the same time.
It wasn't possible.
He had to try.
'No' said Luna sharply. They all jumped, and turned to stare at her. She took a deep breath and dipped her horn. 'No. It is our turn, I fink. Yes, bird?'
'Definitely,' trilled the firebird. 'Why else would the Godmother have transformed me?'
'Then fowwow,' Luna replied with immense dignity, and walked forward, her horn leading, as if she was planning on battering her way through the tangle.
The vines seethed and writhed, as if they weren't quite sure what to do about her. As she reached the edge of the tangle, several of them reared back to strike — but then reversed themselves, and buried themselves in the mass of their fellows. It was clear that they didn't want to get anywhere near Luna, her horn, or both.
She stepped right into the edge, confronting the thicket with her presence, and they withdrew from her in what looked like a panic, leaving her standing in a hollowed-out alcove of thorns. Luna moved in deeper, her horn glowing faintly in the gloom, then deeper still. The thorns slowly began to move to close in behind her.
That was when the bird moved in.
With a trumpetlike call, she dived after Luna, and when she got just inside the wall of thorns, she hovered and burst into flames, a fire so intense that Siegfried winced and looked away for a moment. That was when the vines screamed. They sounded like mice screaming, a thin, high-pitched keen.
The firebird continued to hover, and burned brighter. The vines turned themselves into knots in an effort to escape the fires. In vain. They caught and burned with a sullen green flame and an ugly green-black smoke that gave off a stench like burning carrion. When the vines around the firebird were truly dead, she hovered forward a little, deeper into the wall of thorns, following Luna.
Luna keeps them away, and the firebird can kill them without getting hurt! Siegfried was astonished. It was brilliant! The firebird moved deeper still, into the wall of thorns, leaving behind her a charred tunnel. Soon she was nothing but a ball of fire at the end of the long, blackened expanse.
Then — suddenly, the fires vanished.
'Siegfried!' cried Leopold, but Siegfried was already racing for the thorns, his heart sinking. But it rose again when Luna emerged from the tunnel of char, head hanging, the firebird clinging exhausted to her mane. She was sweating as badly as the horses had at the end of their run, and it was clear that she and the bird were at the absolute end of their strength.
'Luna! You are brilliant!' Siegfried cried, throwing his arms around Luna's neck. With a sigh, she rested her chin on his shoulder. He could feel every muscle in her body trembling with exhaustion.
'We know,' sang the bird. 'It took both of us — Luna to make the tunnel, me to burn it in. The thorns can't cross the threshold of their own purified dead.'
Luna pulled her chin off Siegfried's shoulder and tapped him with her horn. 'Now go,' she said. 'Wescue your Pwincess. We'll fowwow when we can.'
Siegfried kissed her nose, then turned and ran into the tunnel of dead, crackling thorns, Leopold beside him. And the sudden thought that he was off to rescue a Princess by crossing what had been a ring of fire gave him a sudden burst of hope that the Tradition might once more be moving in his favor. And just as he thought of this, he looked up at the sound of flames. There was still fire up there in the thorny canopy, fire that winked out just as he crossed beneath it. Just as the magical ring of fire around his Aunt would have. Hoy-yo toho!
Chapter 21
Leopold reached the door first, and stopped — he held out his hand and Siegfried all but ran into it. Outside the tunnel of burned and dead thorn-vines, the still-living ones had recovered and were trying in vain to get to them. The burned 'bower' above their head shook and rattled, and little bits of ash and burned wood rained down on them. Both of them glanced up. There was no telling how long the protection would hold.
Leopold put his finger to his lips, signaling for quiet, and pressed his ear to the door. Siegfried nodded, and held his breath, wishing there was some way he could get the vines to stop making noise.
'They may not know we're out here,' Leopold whispered, his eyes narrowed in concentration. 'Better if we can surprise them.'
Siegfried nodded again, and waited. Finally Leopold shook his head. 'I can't hear anything,' he whispered. 'But we aren't doing Rosa any good out here.' He grimaced a little. 'The man who trained me always told me to try the door before I tried knocking it down — '
'I'm ready,' Siegfried breathed, and watched as Leopold carefully tried the handle. To his shock and disbelief, it began to turn. Leopold eased the door open as slowly as a snail crawling, while Siegfried held his breath expecting a loud creaking at any moment. When it was open a mere crack, Leopold put first his ear, then his eye to the tiny gap.
'I think they're upstairs,' he whispered, and eased the door open farther. 'I can barely hear them at a distance, and it sounds up.'
When the door was open just enough to allow them to slip inside, they did so, Leopold first, then Siegfried.
