“Love and light,” she whispered. Greta’s phrase… and Callixta’s, too.
Just then, a spotlight switched on. Had she done that? Would she get into trouble? Argh, maybe a detention. A beam like a stage light pierced through the half darkness and landed on a statue, illuminating it.
No, not a statue.
A living thing. A cat.
Gofflesby.
Greta’s familiar was sitting under a crape myrtle tree in sphinx position, blinking against the bright, unnatural light. Iris hurried toward him. It was going to be okay, after all.
“Nice kitty. Have you seen Greta?” she asked.
“Elle est avec ma reine,” Gofflesby replied. She is with my queen.
“Oh, okay. Huh. Where is this queen, then?”
“Elle arrive bientôt.” She will arrive soon.
“How soon? Who is she, anyway? What country is she from? Does she know Jadora or Amarantha? Or Ilyara and Draska from the Valkyrie Valley High Council? Why are you speaking French?”
Gofflesby meowed, once, twice, three times. The purple blossoms on the crape myrtle tree turned yellow, then silver. A moment later, someone stepped out from behind the tree, shrouded in shadow. A girl. She wore a fancy black dress. A crow sat on her shoulder. Its eyes were milky and opaque, unseeing.
She looked like…
“Ridley?” Iris said, confused. “What are you doing here? It’s not a school day.”
“Did you take the red pill or the blue pill, Iris?”
“I think I took one of each. Is that your familiar?”
“Yes. It’s blind. Do you like blind crows?”
Just then, the crow began breaking up into pieces… feathers, bones, flesh. A macabre kaleidoscope of crow parts. Slowly, the pieces spun around and gathered together and re-formed into a thing, into a violin.
Ridley bent down and picked up a long sycamore branch. She tucked the crow-violin under her chin and positioned the branch on top of the strings.
“Écoutez.” Listen.
She began to play, bowing back and forth with the branch. Iris closed her eyes and hummed along.
The tune was eerie, familiar.… What was it?
It was that piece by Schumann. Schubert. “Death and the Maiden.”
“Why are you playing that?” Iris asked.
“Because she’s dead.”
“Yup. Uh-huh. I understand.”
Ridley continued to play her violin. Iris watched and listened, mesmerized.
There is so much I need to learn, she thought.
Gofflesby was still sitting in his sphinx position under the crape myrtle tree. A crow, a different crow, flew down and landed on his back. Its glossy black feathers were flecked with red nail polish.
“Sollst sanft in meinen Armen schlafen!” the crow sang. Softly shall you sleep in my arms.
Gofflesby’s head swiveled, birdlike, and his emerald-green eyes fixed on some distant place in the forest. Iris turned to follow his gaze, but all she saw was a labyrinth of trees… and beyond the trees, a cave of darkness stretching endlessly into an infinity of sky and space.
“There she is! Ta-da!” Ridley announced.
“Who? Where?”
An ethereal figure was wafting toward them through the cave of darkness. She wore a gold brocade dress with a high neck and long sleeves. An elaborate jeweled crown covered her head. She held a listless body across her outstretched arms. Green velvet cloak, long auburn hair. Was that Greta?
“Greta! Finally! I found you!”
Iris began running, running, toward Greta and the woman in gold, the queen. As she got closer, she could see that Greta was asleep in the queen’s arms.
No, not asleep. Unconscious?
“Greta?”
Something was very wrong. With Greta. With this place. With everything.
“This isn’t fun anymore!” Iris cried out. But no one was listening.
Her chest heaved as she gasped for breath. She was hyperventilating, having a panic attack. She stopped running and reached for her smiley-face moonstone pendant, to calm herself, but it was gone.
Fear coursed through her, and her brain felt scrambled, dizzy. The queen was standing in front of her now. She was beautiful, so beautiful. Greta’s face—no, actually, it was Penelope’s face—was sickly white. Her eyes were open, unblinking, staring vacantly up at the prison of tree branches.
“No!”
“It is her time,” the queen told Iris.
“Her time for what?”
“You know the answer. You’ve always known the answer. It is the fate of all crows.”
The queen lowered Penelope gently, carefully onto the mossy ground. In the same instant, the earth opened up and engulfed Penelope’s body.
Iris tried to scream. Instead, she began singing.
“Sollst sanft in meinen Armen schlafen!”
The earth closed up over Penelope, the dirt particles glinting red and gold and copper as they avalanched onto her lifeless form, covering it entirely. A hundred, a thousand, a million wildflowers shot up, blossoming frantically into a wild tapestry of colors.
“Let us pray for the crows,” said the queen.
She reached up and pulled something out from under her high collar. It was a pendant—Iris’s pendant. Except that the edges of the moon shape were changing, bending, curving. Soon, it became a heart.
“I’ve lost my heart!” Iris cried out.
“That is not your heart. It belonged to Penelope and Greta, but no more.”
Gofflesby joined them, the crow still on his back. “Les sorcières n’appartiennent pas ici,” he and the crow said in unison.
“Witches do not belong here,” the queen repeated.
“Witches do not belong here,” Iris repeated, too.
“Witches do not belong here!” Dozens—hundreds?—of angry-looking people holding signs and pitchforks came marching through the forest toward them. Some of the signs said 1415.
It was over.
They had won.
The forest, the dreamscape, began to fade to black. At the last second before it faded, too, the crow whispered something to Iris.
“You must find Margaret.”
“Iris! Iris! Hey, doofus!”
Iris bolted up. She was drenched in sweat, and her limbs were tangled up in a jumble of sheets, stuffed animals, and dirty laundry.
“Greta!” she cried out.
Nyala was standing over her, her hands on her hips. Her expression was a typical Nyala mash-up of annoyed and skeptical. “Wake up, it’s time for school. And why is Lolli with you? Stupid mouse, I am so replacing you with a new pet that’s loyal. Maybe an iguana!”
Confused, Iris rubbed her eyes. She reached for her glasses, which were on her nightstand. Lolli was curled up on the pillow
