“It might not be good for you.”
“We don’t have a choice.”
“I don’t suppose pock face has any magic to contribute?”
Heike glanced at Fritz. “No, I don’t think so.”
They fell silent, and Fritz had the strangest sensation that they were still communicating somehow, in a way he couldn’t even perceive. Watching them, he understood what Heike meant about being in a different world, except he was only living in itright now,and they lived in italways. It was a world governed not by the laws of nature or reason but by a will of its own, fickle and beautiful and dangerous.
Heike raised her head. The flounder said, “Okay, pock face, here’s your riddle. Are you ready? The wording of the wish doesn’t have to be so specific—the magic will know what you want.”
“B-but,” Fritz said, feeling himself slipping from that precipice of adulthood, “I said I would wish you human again.”
“Don’t worry about that now,” said the flounder. “I’ve been a fish for so long I don’t remember what it’s like to be human anyway.”
“But you’ll die.”
“We’ll all die,” said the flounder.
Fritz scrubbed a hand over his face. He had to do this. For Greymist Fair. “Okay. What’s the riddle?”
“What leaves you empty and fills you up?”
It was the simplest one yet. Fritz answered, “Home.”
The flounder seemed to sink into Heike’s dress as the magic took hold.
“I wish Greymist Fair was right again.”
There was a silence. A pause. An intake of breath. Both Heike and the fish went very still. Fritz felt nothing but cold. Then the flounder slipped from Heike’s hands and onto the ice, and Heike herself slumped sideways.
Fritz leaped up as soon as he saw her, but his frozen knees made him stumble and he fell across the body that lay between them.
“Oh,” the body moaned. Fritz pushed himself up. Where the flounder had been, there was now a man in an embroidered coat and tall boots, his dark hair neatly styled and glossy in the torch’s light. The man threw a hand over his face and moaned again. “Oh, death! I knew hell would be cold! Even here I can’t get warm!”
Fritz rocked back on his heels, dumbfounded. “You aren’t inhell,” he said. “You’re—I suppose you were the flounder, weren’t you? You used up all your magic and now you’re human again. But you didn’t die.”
“Stop lying to me to make me feel better, pock face. I’ve justdied,can’t you see?”
The man turned his head away, then turned it back, lifting his arm and squinting at Fritz with dark eyes. The flounder hadn’t been lying before, Fritz had to admit; hewashandsome. “Pock face?” said the man. “What are you doing in hell?”
Fritz rolled his eyes and crawled to Heike, who still hadn’t moved. She was unconscious, and when Fritz put his ungloved hand to her cheek, she felt hot despite the freezing air. Her color was high and her breaths were short.
“I think there’s something wrong with her,” Fritz said. “She needs help. And you’ll start freezing in those clothes. Help me with her.” When the man just stared between the two of them and his own human hands, Fritz said, louder, “Fish brains! We need to get her back to the village so that we can find help!”
That got the man moving. He stood—he was maybe only a hair or two taller than Fritz—and easily scooped Heike off the ice. Rising on unsteady legs, Fritz grabbed his net, the iron poker, and the torch.
Now it was only him and a man who had once been aflounder, and Heike was looking worse by the second.
You’re the reason you’re in this mess,said the small voice in his head, the same one that had told him to be friends with Hans because no one else seemed to want to spend time with him.
But there was another voice in his head now, one that felt more like his own, and it was stronger than the first.
This mess is my fault,it said,and I’m going to clean it up.
Seven
The flounder had told the truth. The magic had known what Fritz wanted. Greymist Fair was right again.
