In which there is one bad idea after the other.
Sofia crosses the deserted gardens at a run, as though something was on her kitten's tail once again.
Nothing's on my tail, she had to tell herself. She knows the way, and the eerie purple light of her Amulet splits the fog in front of her, like the icebreaker ship she's seen one time, far off the coast, in the coldest winter of her life. Her hurried steps deadened on the brittle grass, the Gardens are nothing but silence, right until she gets to the Well's gate.
There, even after all she's seen since the Amulet had been clipped around her neck, the scene that unfolds before her still brings her to pinch her goosebumps-covered arm in incredulity.
"Wormwood...?" she calls out to the raven, but he doesn't seem to hear her.
She would laugh, maybe, at how absurd it all looks. If her scalp wasn't prickling with raised hair and her feet weren't ice-cold in her lilac shoes, if sunlight was there instead of all this smothering fog, and if there wasn't that odd acrid smell pinching her nose so hard.
Now she wishes Clover had come with her. She could laugh, if Clover was there to make a joke―if he and Wormwood could bicker, and if the raven had his usual collected smirk on his face, instead of―
"What are you doing out here?!" Wormwood shouts at her, and the snarl of his voice makes her choke on her words for a moment. He hasn't turned to look at her: his eyes are trained to the Wishing Well and what surrounds it.
High up, suspended above the Wishing Well's little roof, there is a sort of green egg-shaped thing. She squints: it looks like it's made of leafy vines wrapped and twisted over each other. It might be pretty, in a way, so shockingly lush and green in the greyed cut-out, with some bright red leaves towards the top.
"I-I came to help!" she shouts back, her voice shrill in the war-zone that has been made of the clearing. "Wormwood, what's going on?"
The raven doesn't answer. His narrowed eyes burn as he stares at the green thing―like there is nothing he hates more in the entire universe. In a movement so fast she barely sees it, he leaps over and hacks at the slithering twisted mass, like he's trying to break through it with his teeth and claws alone.
Why is he so angry at that thing? Sofia wonders, espying the raven's fine features, so twisted in his fury he looks like those ancient Wei-Ling theatre masks. The plant moves, slithering and crawling like giant green earthworms. She shudders a bit, hesitating to step closer. Why doesn't he use magic?
Punched hard by a thicker structure of intertwined vines, Wormwood lands hard on his back and the earth vibrates under her feet. He's bleeding from a cut to his temple―thorns, Sofia notices―but Wormwood doesn't stay down for long: all of his claws dig down into the soil in the haste of getting himself back up, to run at the thing again.
Sofia would have never guessed he could jump so high, how loud and frightening his war-cry would sound, how long and sharp his teeth would look all exposed in a feral grimace.
Yet, it's the other voice―the voice that is soothing and metallic, the voice that she recognises―that puts new chills on her bare arms.
"If you had just used the wand I've given you, and broken my lock, instead of making such a fuss," the voice says invitingly. "I would have returned him to you already."
"You're lying―like hell I'm making deals with you, you―" and Sofia cannot help but cover her ears, and watch transfixed as the raven rears his head back and curses the Well at the top of his lungs. "Give him back this instant―!"
Though she is sure they were together when she saw them in the crystal ball, Sofia finally notices the missing piece in this disconcerting puzzle.
"Wormwood," Sofia yells, putting two and two together and staring up in horror at the pod of thorns above them, "is Mr. Cedric... trapped in that?"
The raven barely spares her a glance, back to hacking and tearing at the makeshift trunk. His claws cut deep, snapping the crawling woven tendrils, but he doesn't seem to be making any progress in breaking the thing open.
"What do you think?!" he growls, punching the fibres with so much momentum the wind lifts in Sofia's face. His knuckles are in really bad shape.
"But how―?"
"This thing is controlled by that bloody Well―no time to explain!" The branches shoot out and slam the raven to the ground again. Straining against them, he shouts, "Cedric is wounded, I cannot use magic―if you came to help, find a way instead of running your mouth!"
Sofia gasps. Wounded! She looks around for something to use as a weapon, a stick, a branch―a wand! Mr. Cedric's purple wand lies there, on the dug-up grass. She dives to it.
Waving it, she calls to the raven, "Tell me how to help you!"
"Attack spells!" He kicks wildly against his bindings, and breaks free with a mighty growl. "Use any attack spell you can think of!"
Sofia's back chills over with sweat.
"I… I don't know any!" she cries, splaying her hands. So this is how Mr. Cedric feels when he can't deliver the right spell on the spot? No wonder he's always so nervous! "They don't teach you those at Princess School!"
"Figures," Wormwood spits. He fights back another assault, struggling. "Anything!"
Anything, she repeats on the brink of panic, anything, anything, anything. And something from over a year ago flashes in her mind like a flint-spark.
"M-Mutato Emeraldi!" she shouts, with all the confidence she can muster.
Not that much, really. Not enough at least: her spell hits one of the roped branches, and changes it into a jumbled rope of green gems. The mass flops stiffly to the ground, twitching, and Sofia glances in amazement down at the wand.
"Hey―it worked!"
Then, the lumpy thing cracks like a stone whip. Sofia's hands fly to her mouth, muffling a scream. Oh no, she thinks, as it lashes down hard on the raven's face and chest, it can still move it, oh no.
"… indeed," Wormwood coughs, spitting blood to the side. And his eyes are still fixed up there, to the pod, like nothing else exists. He's heaving, his lip split and his hair sticking down with sweat, and in his eyes there's a desperation no one has let Sofia see on their face before. She feels it like it is her own, for a long sharp moment.
"I'm sorry," she stutters, Mr. Cedric's wand almost dropping from her shaking grasp. "I'll... let me try talking to the Well!"
"No! No, Sofia, don't go near that―" but another blow from the emerald vine cuts Wormwood off. The noise of impact, stone to jaw, is that of a wooden pestle coming down in a mortar, and Sofia feels tears run hot on her cheeks. Her legs are frozen.
I must, says a firm voice inside her, and she forces herself to move. She had hoped she would never have to go near that Well again. But I made it worse, now I must fix it. Maybe if she runs to it all at once, she reasons, she'll outrun the fear snapping at her heels.
"That Amulet," the Well breathes when Sofia nears it, with a chilling, soft intensity. The high voice isn't as mechanical as she recalled, and the Well's face-slab looks different too, almost expressive, almost... human? "I cannot let the Amulet be so near, not now that my power is nearly at peak!"
A vine, thick like a young branch and sharp as a spear, comes spinning towards Sofia so fast all she can feel is a whiff of cold air. Her teeth gritted, in the seconds dilated by fear, a flash of violet glows through her screwed shut eyelids.
When the acrid smell of sizzling green wood reaches her nose, she dares crack one eye open.
Wormwood is in her line of vision, knelt with his hand outstretched, as if he had just missed the green spear directed at her. The thing itself is crumbling to ashes before their eyes, writhing in the scorched grass like a living thing, a green leafy snake that just ran face-first into a wall of fire.
"It cannot touch it," Wormwood mutters, staring. The Amulet's bright glow paints a strange light in his fevered eyes. "It cannot touch her Amulet. A three feet range―it might be enough..."
"What is this thing, what happened?" Sofia squeaks, clutching the jewel in her hands. "My Amulet did that...?"
"Yes―I'll explain when we're all out of here," the raven says urgently, covering the distance between them in a single, feral leap. In that terrible hard voice, he orders, "Get up, now."
Sofia tries to move her stiffened legs, but before she can manage, Wormwood has bent and grabbed her at the waist. It's the same as when he lifted her to get the Crocus, but this time his bloodied hands leave smudges on her dress.
"Hey! What―" She twists in incomprehension, accidentally kneeing him in his split lip. A huff of hot air flares out his nostrils. "Oh no, sor―"
"Sofia," the raven says intensely, as though nothing had happened. The fevered light shines again in his eyes, and he sees nothing but his aim. "I need you to fly, and burn that thing down."
They have to leap away as the plant tries to strike them, and Sofia's teeth clack on her answer. "Wait―I don't know how!"
"Let the Amulet burn it to the ground! Free him!"―it's the only warning before he pulls his arm back like a slingshot, and propels her into the air with the force of an enchanted swing―"Fly!"
Sofia can't do much but watch the tangle of vines rush towards her, a sharp cry tearing from her throat. She shields her head, going through like an arrow, screaming.
The Amulet glows and burns and the smell smothers her, terrible and metallic, like rusty iron pokers forgotten in the fireplace. She opens her eyes a little, and she's inside the pod of vines.
"Mr. Cedric!" she calls, voice shrill.
He is in there, curled up and asleep as the red thorny tendrils crumble to ashes around him―Sofia has just the time to grab him, before the structure starts to collapse around them, under them, and she knows a ten feet drop awaits.
I've seen worse, she thinks desperately, holding on to Mr. Cedric's arm for dear life, praying they miss the Well's roof, that another haystack magically appears to catch them. I've seen worse, I've seen w―something hits her hard in the stomach, knocking her breath out―but not as hard as the ground would. Sofia looks down, taking in the cape billowing under her.
She is propped on Wormwood's shoulder, a royal sack of potatoes. On her left, Mr. Cedric hangs limply from the raven's other shoulder. Wormwood must have leapt forward and caught them both in mid-air, before they could hit the ground.
The raven lands hard, falling to his knees and springing up immediately, running to what's left of the clearing's hedge. He stops, at a distance that seems safe, and lets Sofia climb down his side using his cape like a rope. She tries to thank him, still winded, but he's turned away from her, whispering to himself.
The soil tickles her feet: she lost her shoes somewhere. She turns back to the clearing and, alone, Sofia witnesses the monstrous bramble shrivel and hiss and burn to the roots.
Just then, picking up a stray piece of vine, she sees it's a thorny blackberry, the kind that grows abundantly in the back gardens, the kind Chef André bakes into delicious pies and muffins. The very fibres of the vine are dripping an odd red sap. What is this? she wonders, crushed fruits...?
Her attention is diverted by a noise of splintered wood: the tall tree that stood at the hedge, now dead and brittle, needs only the weight of the collapsing bramble to come crashing down, right onto the Wishing Well.
The thing goes to pieces, in a crash of metal, wood, and stone, without a word. My Amulet did that, she thinks, in stupefied awe. Was the plant alive, like Miss Nettle's rose? Why would it trap Mr. Cedric...?
She turns to Wormwood, who doesn't seem to have noticed anything of what happened in the clearing. He's still whispering, and Sofia realises he isn't talking to himself. In a voice she didn't think could come out of his throat, so cracked and shaky, he's calling and calling for Mr. Cedric to wake up.
"I've told you, I've told you something bad was going to happen―I swear, if you don't wake up―" he repeats over and over. He has crouched down, sliding the sorcerer until he rests in the crook of his arm, feverishly plucking away the pieces of vine from his clothes. A panicked whisper all that's left of his voice, he mouths, "It's over now, please―"
Gradually, as an edge of lucidity settles on her rattled nerves, Sofia becomes aware of the wetness on her hands. She lifts them up to her eyes, and inspects the scratches that mar her to the elbows. Probably the blackberry thorns, she reasons. But her hands... they are red, as though she had just made cranberry jam for another pie filling...
It's definitely not the first time she gets a scratch on her, so she knows she can't have bled that much from them. Absentmindedly, she picks up Mr. Cedric's purple wand, rolled nearby, and the Family Wand, not far either; she cleans them summarily along with her hands, on the hem of her dress. It means that all this blood is―
Hit by it so suddenly her head gives a spin, she lifts wide, fearful eyes on her two friends, and realises Mr. Cedric might not, after all, be asleep.
"W-wormwood, what happened?" she asks for what feels like the umpteenth time, desolated, stepping around them to see for herself.
Mr. Cedric, his poor purple robe in tatters, has burns all over his arms―the tendrils her Amulet burned off must have been wrapped tightly around him, she thinks anxiously. It looks really painful, but even if Wormwood keeps putting his hands on them in his efforts to wake him up, Mr. Cedric doesn't stir.
"Why won't he wake up...?"
"I don't know," Wormwood says, in a hiss that is half a sob.
He moves his hand from Mr. Cedric's chest, to dab at the thin strip of blood trickling down his chin. He only smudges it some more, his hurt knuckles so raw and swollen. Sofia feels a lurch in her stomach. Then, her gaze slides down, to the area left uncovered by the raven's hand, and on Mr. Cedric's chest―
"There is―a hole there," she squeaks, pointing at it. It's perfectly round, barely visible in the robe stained near-black. "It looks like... an arrow wound...?"
"A vine, like the one that almost hit you," Wormwood croaks. "Ran him straight through, like it was nothing―why do you think I was in such a hurry?"
Sofia takes a breath, trying to remember her Buttercup first aid training. "Y-you should keep pressure on it," she says, kneeling at Mr. Cedric's other side, and pulling out her white handkerchief to soak up the blood. He's barely breathing, she notes distantly, pressing gingerly into the cold skin. I almost can't feel his heartbeat. "T-to stop the bleeding."
The raven shakes his head, gesturing at the red drops barely climbing through the white fabric. Gravely, he mutters, "It... doesn't bleed much. Not anymore."
That can't be right, if he's been ran through. The realisation hits her right in the stomach. The red sap, too, wasn't sap at all.
"It must be an enchantment," she says, her eyes welling up again. She dries them stubbornly. The raven remains dejected, as though lost somewhere far away. "Maybe we can break it."
"I don't―" Wormwood clips, "I'd have to scan him to see what's wrong. And I cannot. This is all my fault… and now I can't do anything to fix it."
Sofia looks at the two wands she put next to her knee, and hands the black one back to Wormwood. "Can't you try, at least? Is it an advanced spell?"
"I―it's not that simple." He hangs his head, and speaks without looking at her, his big hands trembling, "There are limits to magic, and I have already... I've been doing spells using his magic until now, and if I use it again when he's like this, I'll kill him."
Sofia's breathing hitches, her hands clutching Mr. Cedric's sleeve protectively. The idea should feel worse than this, she reasons, but it's too much to even start to think about. Mr. Cedric can't just die and leave them, she reasons, there must be a solution. She searches her friend's ashen face for answers; he reminds her of Snow White in her glass coffin, with his dark hair and cold pale skin, with his lips bloodied red.
"I... have an idea," she says tentatively. Wormwood doesn't raise his head, one of his long ears barely twitching at her. "You should kiss him!"
And at her words, the raven does lift his eyes. Sofia has never seen them so wide, their bright emerald hue as innocent as newborn leaves. He splutters, "I should what?"
"There is a chance this is an enchanted sleep, right? So, a kiss might just break it. We have to try!"
"But," the raven gestures, half-panicked, "he's not awake―I can't just... and how do you know it would even work?! Shouldn't I be a prince? Shouldn't it be true love, or some fairytale nonsense?"
Sofia scoffs. "Well, don't you truly love him?"
"I―" Wormwood falters, and he looks as tortured as one of those witch trial victims painted in her history books. "I'm not sure... it's the right kind."
"How could there be a wrong kind of love?" Sofia asks, with learnt certainty. "If anyone can do it, it is you, Wormwood."
From the look on his face, so anguished, one would think she asked him to shove Mr. Cedric off a cliff or something. He takes a deep, steeling breath, whispers an apology, and leans in.
Sofia looks away: something in the raven's eyes, and in the way his long fingers cup Mr. Cedric's waxen cheek while leaning over him, feels like it's not for her to see. She waits for the little sound, the way her parents sound when they drop a kiss between them, but it's a kiss so small that there is no sound at all.
"What in the name of―" she hears instead, the raven's voice thick with incredulity.
She whips around to see Wormwood fight to keep upright, one arm shakily propping on the ground across Mr. Cedric's shoulder, leaning the sorcerer down without dropping him as he struggles not to fall unconscious. A pulsing green light glows between them, glinting oddly on the wounds on Wormwood's face, and in the centre of Mr. Cedric's chest.
Wormwood is breathing hard, sweat trickling down his temple as he battles the enchantment pulling him down. But it is too strong: he collapses alongside Mr. Cedric, facedown on the ground, the arm slung over him like a final, desperate reach.
Sofia, after the first moments of stunned disbelief, leaps over to him to call and shake him awake. No answer. She is left in the dark clearing, her eyes glued to the bright green light.
It was my idea, she thinks, chilled to the marrow. I keep making everything worse... I should find help.
But something tells her the light mustn't get weaker, that she must stay and watch over it. That something important is happening, somehow, somewhere.
Sofia steps back from the pattern that expands at her feet, grass growing lush and soft in the shape of a magic circle. It's not any that she's ever seen, though, not even leafing through one of Mr. Cedric's advanced books. It resembles a curled plant, with tiny, snowflake-like leaves. Sofia has never seen it before.
Breath held and full of apprehension, she waits.
The maze falls away from the world right under Wormwood's gaze.
Then he blinks, and he's up in the air as though he had been lifted by the wind, updraught strong through his feathers, filling his open wings like sails. He is flying.
His body painless and compact, his bones light and his plumage gleaming black in the sunlight, his heart soars with pure, absolute relief. For a moment, just for a moment, he forgets his predicament, he forgets he was ever human, he forgets his own name.
The current pulls him to a rock at sea, an unknown place where the wind speaks a familiar dialect, and the smell takes him back to the tower, back home. On the nearby rocky shore, though none are in sight, he can hear the ruckus of crow and seagull calls. Even farther in the distance, a barely audible peal of bells.
When he alights on the flattish top of the seastack, the ones he lands on are his human feet. The transition was so smooth he wouldn't be able to pinpoint the exact moment he changed, as coordinates too vague to describe.
He moves a few steps in the brackish wind plastering his clothes to his body like tar, reacquainting with the weight and girth of a human form. It must be a dream again, he would think. But the waves slam white foam almost up to his ankles, and look too intensely real to be a dream.
He can feel how treacherous the rock is under his toes, how ready to crumble and trap. His breath halts and his gaze, as though destiny guided it, darts to a fissure in the rock, no more than two feet wide.
"So... this is that place," he mutters, stepping towards it. His heart starts beating loud in his throat as he nears the edge, fists clenched. Bravely, he leans over to peer down the hole in the rock. Cedric, he thinks, what has been of―
"You'll find nothing in there, raven," a voice says behind him, and he almost falls in from the scare. He braces his hands back on the brittle limestone, and a glance down the tight crevice confirms the voice spoke the truth: from the jagged walls of the hole, only the foxfire from his night out in the forest blink back at him.
He turns around. A woman is standing opposite of him, blue robes fluttering in the overcast light. It takes him a moment to recognise her: her form has been different, older, for a very long while.
"Winifred the Wise?"
Even Sofia doesn't do everything right all the time. Guest Star, Winifred the Wise (!)