Twice Upon a Marigold (21 page)

Angie fell back onto the pillows with a thump and squeezed her eyes shut, as if expecting a blow.

Mr. Lucasa, humming softly, set a stone bowl on the bedside table and began asking Wendell for items. "One tablespoon slime mold, half a cup of wrack, pinch of Venus flytrap. Thank you. Two grams figwort, one of deadly nightshade, dash of bittersweet. Thank you. Now the hairpins, three shakes powdered canker-worm, and a third of a cup of slivered snout beetle. That's it."

"They
do
seem to know what they're doing," Marigold whispered to Christian. He patted her hand and held his breath.

Mr. Lucasa stopped humming and began muttering as he crushed the ingredients in the bowl with a big stone pestle. Wendell muttered along with him, reading his lines from the recipe card. A strong odor was released—part sweet, part rotten, part spicy. "Like most people," Wendell commented, while the others held their noses, and Angie squinched her eyes more tightly closed.

A dark purple cloud rose above the stone bowl and swirled like a little tornado. It meandered about the room indecisively and then stopped, as if gathering strength. After a moment, it tore across the room like a purple arrow, straight for Angelica.

Marigold gripped Christian's arm so hard he winced.

The purple arrow went straight into Angie's right ear and disappeared. Everyone gasped at once as Angie began to thrash and writhe on the bed.

Swithbert covered his eyes with his hands. Susan covered her mouth with her hands. Mr. Lucasa covered his ears with his hands. Marigold clutched Christian hard enough to leave bruises. And Wendell's
mutterings changed to whimperings. "Oh, dear. Oh, dear. Oh, dear," he moaned.

The battle inside Angie went on for several minutes. Then suddenly she was still. Totally, utterly still. A pale lavender vapor leaked out of her ear and lay on the pillow, a misty smudge. All that remained of the odor was a faint sweetness.

Susan was the first to move, taking Angie's limp hand in her own. "Angie, dear," she whispered. "Are you there?"

No answer.

Susan put her arms around Angie, tears welling in her eyes. "You were the bravest person I knew," she said, weeping.

Angie coughed, and Susan sat up. "Angie?"

"Huh?" Angie opened her eyes. "What happened? I feel so strange. As if I'd been turned inside out or something."

"Wait," Swithbert said. "You
are
Angie, right? You wouldn't answer to the name Olympia if I called you that, would you?"

"No," Angie said, and coughed again. "Because that's not my name."

"What about me? What's my name?"

She started to speak, and then frowned. "I guess I
never heard it. I'm sorry. We were never actually introduced."

Still not convinced, he stepped over to the jewelry chest and took up a handful of sparkling baubles. Carrying them to the open window, he said, "What would you say if I were to drop these out the window?"

"I would hate to see such valuable things thrown away, but they're not mine. I can't tell you what to do with them."

"She's Angie, all right," Swithbert crowed. "Olympia would have been out of that bed in a flash, saving the jewelry and dropping
me
out the window!"

Mr. Lucasa stepped up to Wendell and shook his hand. "We did it! We actually did it! I don't know how much call there is for that kind of a spell, but you really nailed it. I feel like giving you a present. How would you like a new robe? That one's definitely seen better days."

Wendell tottered weakly and held on to Mr. Lucasa. "It really did work, didn't it? To tell you the truth, I was pretty sure we couldn't do it."

That wasn't exactly what Marigold would have preferred to hear, but it didn't matter now. The spell had vaporized Olympia.

Wendell recovered himself and went to examine
the pale lavender stain on the pillow. "I thought there'd be more left," he said. "But Olympia fought like a tiger. There was just barely enough."

"Where—," Swithbert began, "where is she now? Do you know?"

"I don't," Wendell said. "But it's somewhere she can't come back from, we're sure of that. I just hope we acted in time, and there isn't any negative energy left behind."

As he said that, the big gold-framed mirror over the vanity table cracked right down the middle, releasing a little puff of lavender smoke.

"Oooh!" they all said, as a shiver went up their spines.

"I guess there is," Wendell whispered. "But maybe that was the last of it."

At that, a picture on the wall next to the door fell off its hook and hit the floor with a crash, breaking its frame.

"I should have known she wouldn't go quietly," Swithbert said.

"But she
is
going, right?" Marigold asked.

"Oh, she's going, all right," Mr. Lucasa said. "She's
gone.
But I'm afraid we weren't quite in time to vaporize
all
her bad energy. At least it's not in Angie, but some of it got left behind in the atmosphere. So just remember that. If you're having a rough spot and feel extra cross and critical, that's probably just leftovers from Olympia getting in your head and making you behave badly."

"What should we do to stop it?" Christian asked.

"You should work extra hard to be your best selves. True evil has a hard time operating in the face of strenuous manifestations of good. Especially if you act right away. The longer you let evil hang around and get a grip on you, the harder it is to get rid of it."

"Yes, I know." Swithbert sighed, thinking of all the years with Olympia.

"You never acted evilly, Papa," Marigold said, consoling him.

"I never acted at all," he said. "I was weak."

"Evil can do that to you, too," Wendell said, packing up his bowl and pestle and the leftover ingredients. "Scare you into inaction."

"Is there something I can take? Some powder or elixir that will give me strength against it?"

Wendell shook his head. "Not that I know of. The only antidote to evil I've ever heard of is what Mr. Lucasa told you—just to be as actively good as you can be in the face of it. Now, about my fee—"

"It's not going to be a firstborn child," Marigold said, stepping in. "I can tell you that right now. And not an arm and a leg, either."

Wendell shook his head. "I wasn't even going to ask."

"Come with me," Swithbert said. "We can discuss terms." He took Wendell by the arm with one hand and guided Mr. Lucasa with the other, and they went out into the sitting room.

Marigold turned back to Angie. "Still feeling all right?" she asked.

"Just fine," Angie said, fussing with her hair—always a sure sign that someone is improving. "I suppose I should start thinking about what I'll be doing next. I think it would be a mistake for me to hang around here looking like the queen everybody disliked so much."

"You could go back to Granolah," Chris said. "I hear you liked it there."

She turned to Susan. "We could do that."

"Oh," Susan said. "I'm ... I'm not going back to Granolah. I'm going into business with Mr. Lucasa. But you could come with us. We're going to need lots of help."

"You're going into business? But you never liked working when I knew you in Granolah."

"Well, that's changed. I'm not
gorogoro
anymore."

"Gorogoro?"

"It's Japanese for lying around doing nothing. I'm learning languages from Mr. Lucasa. In our new business, it will be an advantage to speak as many as we can."

"What is this new business?" Angie asked.

Susan looked around. "It's still sort of a secret."

Chris took Marigold by the arm. "We were just leaving," he said. And they did.

They strolled along the terrace that had been the scene of so much drama during their acquaintance: where they had first communicated by p-mail, where Marigold had saved Christian's life, where they were married, where Olympia had fallen into the river.

"A lot has happened to us on this terrace," Chris said.

"I was just thinking that," Marigold said. "This seems like a good place to make another big important decision."

"Perhaps you're right," Chris said. "Do you want to be queen of Beaurivage
and
Zandelphia?"

"I have a lot of unhappy memories of Beaurivage. Maybe coming back and correcting some of the sad things would be good for me."

"Olympia's gone. That's one big correction. But I wouldn't want you to do something you don't feel right about." He took her into his arms. "I already feel terrible about every little thing I've ever done that's made you sad."

"I've been thinking about that, too," she said, resting her head on his chest. "I'm starting to believe that happily ever after includes people doing things that upset each other. We all get cranky, or impatient, or worried, or careless enough to do or say things that hurt someone else. Like it or not, that's normal. We can't blame it all on Olympia's bad energy. The important part is that we feel sorry about what we've done and make up for it. That's something Olympia never did."

"That makes perfect sense. You were brilliant to think of it." Chris had begun to figure out that most people got way more criticism than praise, and that any bit of praise that could honestly be given, should be. Especially to a loved one. "I'll go along with whatever you want to do. Because I want what makes you happy. If you're happy, I am, too."

Marigold raised her head and looked at him. "I think we'll make perfectly splendid rulers of Zandelphia-Beaurivage."

He kissed her with his whole heart, and it was as glorious a kiss as the first one they'd ever shared.

Swithbert, Mr. Lucasa, and Wendell negotiated a decent price for the vaporization of Olympia, and in the process Swithbert discovered that Wendell had accumulated master points in snipsnapsnorum.

"Is that because you use magic?" Swithbert asked. "I cheat, but I'd be open to learning something even more helpful."

"No magic is allowed in any card game," Wendell said sternly. "Only cheating."

"Then would you be interested in joining Ed and me in some play?" Swithbert asked. "We'd welcome some new blood at our table. And if Chris and Marigold accept my offer to combine our kingdoms, I'd like to start running snipsnapsnorum tournaments in my retirement. I want to do something lots more fun than ruling a kingdom. Maybe you'd be interested in helping with that."

"I suppose I could stay on." Wendell restrained himself from jumping up and down. "I have no other immediate commitments." He actually had none at all, and had been wondering what he would do with himself as wizardry technology passed him by, leaving him fussing with lungwort and salamander eyes and chicken feet while the younger wizards had moved on to runes and telepathy, snake stones and divining rods.

He'd never been very good at wizardry anyway, but he'd been pushed into it by his father, who had been something of a legend in his time. It's always hard to follow in the footsteps of a legend, especially when you don't even want to. What Wendell really loved was working with animals, which was why he and Hannibal got along so well. The vaporization spell had used up everything he had—he could feel that—and its success he could only call a miracle, which he actually thought he believed in more than magic. But he was done now, and he knew it. As ready for retirement as Swithbert was.

"You don't mind having an elephant as a guest?" he asked Swithbert.

"Not at all. I'm a great animal lover myself. I'll have to introduce you to my unicorn, Razi. And I saw how Christian looked at your beast. He'd love having him around for as long as you want to stay. Now, what do you say we go downstairs and get ourselves one of those nice big desserts Mr. Lucasa made for the rebels, and dig up Ed for some snipsnapsnorum?"

"It would be my great pleasure."

Magnus wept with relief at finally being back in his own beautiful house. He took a long, hot bubble bath, and dressed at last in clean clothes. Then, remembering how it felt to think he was close to extinction, he vowed not to waste a single moment of every precious day he had. He had to see Sephronia. Right now. In his fanciest coach with his pranciest horses. He was going to convince her that she had to marry him, the sooner the better. And he wasn't going to take no for an answer.

Sometimes, he was beginning to understand, you had to give what you wanted a pretty big push so it would fall into your lap.

***

S
EPHRONIA SAT
at her harp plinking on the strings while tears ran down her cheeks. She was overjoyed that Magnus hadn't been executed, but she missed him so much it hurt in her stomach and in her head. She couldn't even remember exactly what had made her so sure he wasn't interested in her anymore. She hadn't been able to explain it to her puzzled parents the very night it happened, either.

As she plinked and wept, through the French windows of the music room she could see a fancy carriage coming up the curving drive, pulled by a pair of prancing horses. She stood up to get a closer look. Could that be Magnus driving?

She ran to the door and was waiting when Magnus stopped the coach and jumped down from the driver's seat.

"Sephronia!" he called, waving a letter he had written to her in the dungeon. "I love you!" His declaration came out somewhat more suddenly than he'd planned, but it had the desired effect. Sephronia ran across the drive into his arms.

There are times when a personal visit is ever so much more effective than even the best letter or p-mail.

Susan, Mr. Lucasa, and Angie sat in Olympia's sitting room discussing plans for the new business.

"I'll have to sell my cottage," Mr. Lucasa was saying, "and the workshop will take some time to build, but while that's happening, we can hire the workers—Ed can help with that, I'm sure—and finalize all the details."

"We're going to need a lot of space and seclusion," Susan said, "so I think we should go somewhere far away."

"I have a place in mind," Mr. Lucasa said, "on the top of the world. Doesn't that sound like the perfect
place from which to oversee everything we're planning?"