“Keep Tinn safe,” said Cole.
Evie gave him an earnest nod, and Cole returned it.
“Stay close,” Fable said.
“Right behind you,” Cole promised.
And then Fable and Cole were through the gap and back into the field of battle. The screams and shouts and snarls hit Fable like a charging bull. The air tasted like spent matches. The smoke had only gotten worse, and it made her eyes water as she and Cole pressed forward. A gun went off so close Fable’s ears rang.
Cole put a hand on her shoulder and pointed.
Thirty feet ahead, Jacob Hill stood atop the wide stump of the Grandmother Tree. He held his iron rod in both hands as he peered through the fog.
“Don’t let them get around you!” he shouted over his shoulder at the ragtag battalion of farmers, carpenters, and grocery clerks who formed his motley front line. “Hold! Hold there and wait to advance together! We will finish this as one!”
Hill’s perch was in the eye of the storm, a no-man’s-land between opposing forces. It gave him a view overlooking the melee, but it also made him the clearest target on the field. He swung the rod at a throng of brownies as they buzzed around his head, and the swarm scattered, chittering angrily.
“Mr. Hill!” Cole cried as they neared the stump. “Mr. Hill, we know how to end the fighting!”
“What in blazes?” Hill’s eyes widened as he locked on to them. “Get behind the line! You kids are going to get yourselves killed! Hurry!”
“You don’t understand,” Cole called up to him. “Listen!”
“I said fall back!”
On their right, a troll let out a bellow—something between the roar of a lion and the rumble of a rock slide—and then broke into a run toward the human forces. To the left, the humans answered with a cry of “Attack!” and the whole line charged forward.
“Please!” Fable yelled. “We know how to stop this!”
“You think you can stop this?” Hill looked incredulously down at her. “Little girl, you can’t. Now fall back!”
Fable’s fists clenched. “It’s no use,” Cole said, tugging her arm. “Come on!”
You can’t. To the right, more forest factions had joined the charge behind the lumbering troll, and to the left, humans were pouring out of the hills. You can’t. Great waves of combatants were now closing in on either side of them. You can’t. Every you can’t Fable had heard over the past frustrating week echoed back at her. You can’t have a foot in both worlds. You can’t attend people school. You can’t have human friends. You can’t make the world what you want it to be. You can’t compel people.
Fable felt the tingling pressure building inside her skull again. “No,” she said aloud. The word was quiet but firm, and it cut across the smoky air like a blade. “Everyone else can fall back.”
The universe, which had been listening in the background like a patient hound, responded to her command without hesitation.
Reality lurched. The charging troll felt it first. Not pain—which was surprising, given his understanding of how war was supposed to feel—but tightness. The sensation wrapped itself around his bones and lifted him off his meaty feet. The naga, nixies, and nymphs all felt it, too, a gentle yet inescapable grip as the universe pulled them backward toward the forest’s edge. The centaurs’ hooves dug deep grooves in the soil as they were dragged away. On the human side, several fighters dropped their pitchforks and cleavers in alarm as the invisible cords of Fable’s will drew townspeople up into the hills.
In a matter of seconds, the battlefield was empty, still, and quiet.
Fable could hear her heartbeat in her ears. She swallowed.
Jacob Hill’s eyes were wide as he stared down at her. “You have my attention,” he managed.
Silence hung over the empty field and clung like dew to the hillside. The queen felt her feet slide to a halt in the damp pine needles, her eyes still fixed on Fable in the foggy distance. She wanted to race across the desolate field toward her daughter, but her body refused to respond.
“Yer Majesty.”
The queen’s eyes flicked to her left. In the underbrush beside her, a drab green face peered up at her from beneath a weathered top hat.
“Thief King,” she acknowledged drily. “Have you been hiding in the bracken this entire time?”
Chief Nudd gave an unapologetic shrug.
The queen rolled her eyes and turned them back to her daughter. “So glad you’re here to help with all those small things,” she said under her breath.
“Otch. Small things is easy. Anyone can handle a small thing. Right times is harder.”
“You keep waiting for your right time, then,” the queen growled. “The rest of us will have to do what we can with the time we’ve got.”
On the other side of the barren field, Annie Burton swayed as she tried to catch her breath. Even from this distance, she recognized the boy in the middle of the clearing. “Cole?” Her chest ached to run to him. That man on the tree stump—Hill—was saying something to her son, and then Cole’s hands gestured frantically as he responded. Annie’s muscles strained. Oh, why couldn’t she move?
“Now do you understand?” Cole finished.
Fable’s mind was still reeling from the magic that had coursed through her. She had felt connected to all of those people, all at once. For just a moment, they were her and she was them, and all of them were one.
Hill’s eyes drifted between the two children, warily. “I believe you,” he said at last. “But they’re not getting my powder.”
“What?” said Fable. “But you just said you believe us!”
“I do. But do you think I’m a fool? We are in the middle of a war, and you expect me to give my enemy the means to annihilate us? You think I don’t know what you’re asking me to surrender? You think I don’t see you for what you are?”
“For what we are?” said Fable. “We’re the ones trying to
