I took a deep breath and remembered what the kid had said:
They’re afraid of all of us.
Well, they clearly were at least a little afraid of a furious fifteen-year-old firebrand flying toward them with her arms spread wide, screeching like a total maniac,
“Fire really, really hurts!”
and
“I’m a bad, scary witch!”
I burst right through their ranks, not even a little upset by the shouting as their clothes caught on fire. Yelling
“Stop, drop, and roll, you idiots,”
I dashed into the next cell block.
“Everybody
out!
” I screamed at the kids there as well as those from the last block, who had been following me—sensibly—at a safe distance. “Fire! Everyone get out. Right now! See that stairwell there?
That’s the way out!
”
I was actually starting to feel a little scared myself. This was the longest I’d ever stayed on fire. Was there a point of no return from being charbroiled?
I couldn’t think about it now, because suddenly hundreds of skinny, dirty, terrified kids were pouring past me. And them, I didn’t want to catch on fire.
AFTER WE DROPPED the kids off at Garfunkel’s, we decided to bypass Death by Subway and take a different route back to the prison. True to my word, I avoided directions from Emmet at all costs.
This time Margo was my copilot. We were in the van alone; the others would meet us close to the prison gates.
I’d done a pretty successful “abracadabra” on the van before we left, turning it an uneven shade of dark blue, with Idaho license plates.
But that wasn’t the only big change.
A short time ago I’d looked like I was about thirty years old. Then I’d changed back to a teenager—
with no warning
—right as I was going up the stalled escalator at Garfunkel’s. It had made me trip and fall down several steps. Very uncool.
As Margo and I headed back to the prison, I thought about that and wondered,
Has Wisty suddenly changed back into herself also? Has the spell simply worn out?
I had no idea where she was, what she was doing, or what form she’d be in when I found her. Flat as a pancake, maybe? Or with one or two limbs, the rest left behind in a spring-action mousetrap?
“You look worried, Whit,” Margo said with a concerned glance my way.
“Well,
yeah,
” I said, in more of a “no duh” kind of voice than I’d intended. “Aren’t you?”
“Yes and no,” Margo said, surprising me. “I mean, sure, anything could happen. But… I mean, this is my life now. It’s what I do. No parents, no brothers or sisters left. I have nothing to lose, really. And I have everything to gain by helping these kids and your mom and dad.”
I sat in stunned silence. Then I said, “I’m sorry.” I actually couldn’t remember the last time I’d uttered those words with any real meaning. And I wasn’t exactly sure why I said them now. But it felt right.
“Don’t be
sorry,
Whit! I’m no big hero.” Margo scoffed. “It’s heroic to face your own pain, and you’re the one who’s facing that right now. I get it. You have a sister you love in there. You have parents who were wanted, dead or alive, in there. The love of your life is dead but still haunting you. Oh yeah, and I hear you’re due to be executed on your birthday.”
“Well, actually,” I said with a weak smile, “they revised the order to execute me immediately.”
“So when is your birthday, anyway?” she asked.
Wow. I really wasn’t sure. Time had felt warped. And with all the portals we’d traveled through, time actually
was
warped.
I looked at Margo in surprise.
“I think it already happened.”
“Well, how about that?” Margo said with a rare smile. “And you didn’t even get to celebrate.”
She continued to grin, her brown eyes shining brightly, and sucked in a deep breath. I knew a windup to a song when I saw one.
“Don’t you dare—,” I protested, but she went on gleefully.
“Happy birthday to you! Happy birthday to you! Happy birthday, dear Whit…”
She trailed off as her gaze shifted past me, and then she frowned. “What’s
that?
There, in the top windows of the main building?”
I jerked the van to a sudden stop. “It’s flames. The prison is on fire.”
Oh, Wisty, what have you done?
“GET OUT!” I shouted. “Get out of here now!
Fire!
”
The kids pattered barefoot down the metal stairs, most of them unable to take their eyes off me. One of them finally squeaked, “But the guards—”
“Forget the guards!”
I screamed with a new level of hysteria I didn’t know I had in me. “The guards are afraid of you. They’re afraid of me.
They’re afraid of everything!
”
A new burst of energy surged through the kids. As soon as the first one reached the ground floor, I pointed toward the main doors, careful not to get too close to any of them.
More New Order guards began arriving now, billy clubs out, but I rushed straight at them, arms open. They drew back as if I were the plague. “Stay where you are!” I warned them. “You come near me, and I won’t give you a choice between regular and extracrispy!”
By now waves of kid prisoners were pushing through the main exit, escaping right underneath a huge portrait of The One Who Is The One. It occurred to me that I didn’t even know if Whit and the others were waiting outside.
“Out, out!” I shouted, my voice hoarse now. I was starting to feel a little hot and crackly, and I hoped I wasn’t cooked extracrispy myself.
Flames started to lick around the office doorway, and then the whole room was ablaze. I’d left a stream of several fires in my wake. With any luck, after the kids got out, this hideous prison would burn to the ground.
It seemed to take forever for the last kids to get through the hallway and out the doors as the guards avoided the flames in terror or tried to extinguish their own personal infernos. Meanwhile, I was getting so hot that it didn’t seem out of the realm of possibility that I might explode like a piece of popcorn in a microwave.
By the time the last prisoner passed out the gate, the few guards who were left were ready for vengeance. They lumbered toward me, zombielike and charred, waving their billy clubs.
“Uh-uh!” I warned them. “Or I’ll burn you to cinders!”
Then I turned tail and raced out the exit myself, touching the walls and anything else I could reach as I went by. Streaks and handprints of fire marked my path. Cool—I mean,
hot!
Then finally I saw streaks of moonlight, and the outer doors ahead of me, and then, at last, the final gates.
Please be there, Whit,
I prayed.
Please, wizard.
The inner courtyard was filling rapidly with more guards and New Order soldiers. But then I heard Feffer barking like the hellhound she’d been trained to be. I could see her scaring the bejesus out of some guards as Margo herded kids outside to safety.
I did a fast head count. Margo, Feffer, Emmet, Sasha… and yes,
Whit!
They were all there, helping the prisoners get away.
I was gasping for air, feeling completely burned out, like there was nothing left of me for the fire to consume. Whit was looking all around, searching for me.
Am I so unrecognizable?
Then he saw me, and alarm flashed in his eyes. Fear—like I’d never seen on his face before, not even the time he fell out of our tree and broke his leg in two places.
I tried to run to him, but the last thing I remember was falling to my knees and hearing a most hateful voice.
“Wisteria Allgood, you are condemned to death!” it said.
I GAGGED AND CHOKED ON the smell of smoke and burning paint as more and more kids, hundreds of them, flowed out the doors of the Overworld Prison. It was a beautiful sight, really.
Bless Wisty,
I thought.
She did it.
Now I just had to make sure she was safe and had found our mom and dad. Where was she? Where were they?
It had seemed like forever since we’d first caught sight of the flames in the prison windows, but it had just been minutes. “Hurry!” Margo was shouting as we herded more kids through the gates in a kind of fireman’s line. “We’ve set up an escape route through the sewers!” Margo yelled.
I craned my neck, looking desperately for Wisty—as girl or mouse—but couldn’t see her anywhere.
Was she with our folks? Or was my sister trapped inside the burning building? Had she been caught?
The street outside was filled with kids who were gathered up by our second team, led by Sasha. Traffic had stopped, unable to move. Alarms everywhere were flashing and wailing. But still no Wisty.
Then the last kids burst through the doors, and I finally saw her—totally aflame.
It was different this time, worse—she was glowing more brightly, more white-hot than I had seen before. And her wild-eyed face, her newly gaunt frame, looked weaker, closer to terror and death than I ever could have imagined.
She saw me, and her face—even through the flames—sparkled with hope. But then her eyes rolled back in her head, and she dropped to the pavement like she’d been shot.
“Get the van!” I shouted over my shoulder to Margo as I made a break toward Wisty. “I’ll bring Wisty!”
“I don’t think so, wizard,” came a terrible, gravelly voice right behind me.
IT WAS LIKE a recurring nightmare of the worst kind.
There loomed the foul Matron, swaddled in bandages and pale as chalk. Next to her was The One Who Judges, Ezekiel Unger—her
brother,
I remembered—still in his depressing black robes, looking like the Grim Reaper.
Security “specialists” armed with scatterguns backed them up.
Next to them stood… our Jonathan. Looking smug and complicit.
Despair descended on me like a funeral shroud. It had never occurred to me that anyone from Freeland could stoop to the traitorous level of Byron Swain, but apparently Jonathan had.
“Jon?” Margo gasped.
Jonathan just shrugged. “It’s too hard, and hopeless, living like you do. The New Order offers a better life,” he said. “It beats prison and death. I believe in The One.”
Margo’s eyes filled with angry tears. She’d made me feel stronger before, and I wanted to make her believe that everything was going to be okay. Even if it really wasn’t.
Words sprang into my brain. I didn’t know where they came from. “Margo, they’re afraid of us. They’re afraid of everything.” And then I kept on talking without really thinking, until it turned into a chant:
They’re afraid of change, and we must change.
They’re afraid of the young, and we are the young.
They’re afraid of music, and music is our life.
They’re afraid of books, and knowledge, and ideas.
They’re most afraid of our magic.
Margo stared at me and sniffled, her eyes wide, but the tears were gone.
I scooped up Wisty—who was unconscious and nearly weightless in my arms—and said the words again. Louder and more forcefully this time.
They’re afraid of us, they’re afraid of everything.
They’re afraid of change, and we must change.
They’re afraid of the young, and we are the young.
“Silence!”
roared Judge Unger, his pinched beetle’s face turning a shade of funereal purple.
“Wait till I get my hands on you again,” the Matron snarled at his side, her icy eyes narrowing into thin slits that wouldn’t take a dime.
“I don’t think so, Matron. Not going to happen,” I said. “Actually, you are petrified of us. And you should be. We have the magic. You don’t.”
The next time I spoke the words, everyone—Margo, Emmet, Janine, the prison kids, everyone but Jonathan—repeated them with me.
They’re afraid of us, they’re afraid of everything.
They’re afraid of change, and we must change.
They’re afraid of the young, and we are the young.
They’re afraid of—
“
Enough!
More than enough, actually!” Judge Unger pounded his fist into his hand, then raised it as if he would hit me.
“The witch and wizard must be put to death at once!”
In my arms, my sister suddenly opened her eyes. I stared at her in amazement.
Wisty’s eyes had been blue before. Now they looked almost clear, like sea glass. Her hair was more auburn than its former red, more like our mother’s. Her eyes glowed, and she tried her best to smile at me. “Hey, brother.”
“You and your sister are going to burn. Right here in this prison!” Judge Unger spewed powerful hatred our way. “The fire’s going to take care of our society’s problem once and for all!
“You!” he snapped at the security specialists. “Take them back into the prison and lock all the doors! They like fire. Let them burn. That is my final judgment. It is the law of the land. I am The One Who Judges!”
“No!”
came a powerful voice.
Wisty’s voice.
“I DON’T THINK SO,” Wisty went on as she unwrapped herself from my arms. I had no idea what she was up to, but I knew I couldn’t stop her. She turned her head slowly to look at the Matron, then stared at Judge Unger. I sensed a spell coming on, and I cringed involuntarily. We didn’t have time for trial and error.
“Trust me,” Wisty whispered to me. She turned back to our accusers. “You say that you’re The One,” she said with a tone of authority I’d never heard in her before. “But your form will now
become undone.
”
For the first time in all of Wisty’s spellcasting, a shiver went through me.
“We’re a witch and wizard,” Wisty continued, her voice sounding stronger and stronger.
As you can clearly tell.
But since you don’t deserve