Page 44 of Disenchanted

“Footsteps,” she said simply and waved him on. “Next.”

She was fairly sure that a deeply fossilized marking in the troll’s face burrowed into something that looked like a dimple. He sat a little more upright, the boulders at his joints spinning on themselves to adjust their posture. Another grumble came.

“I brew without thirst. Cook without hunger. Bubble without suds. Stir without a spoon.”

Sage tapped her chin. Was vanquishing monsters supposed to be this fun?

“Cauldron!” Casimir bellowed from across the path, sounding thoroughly exasperated. He was trying to wrap Patrick’s arm around his own shoulders and stagger him back to his feet.

The knight gave a rather tragic hiccup of pain, whimpering into Casimir’s neck.

Sage gave Casimir an impressed smile. After all their years together, his brilliance (often buried beneath laziness) was a given that she took for granted. She felt a flush of fond pride. He never steered her wrong.

“Cauldron,” she repeated confidently to the troll. This time, the smile was more definite; the boulder of his face split wide open and revealed a row of rocky teeth. They were almost there.

“A final third, your magic word,” the troll rumbled in rhyme, with a deafening scrape of rock on rock as he shifted himself forwards. “I speak no language but tell the truth.”

Sage waited, but nothing more came. “Is that it?” she asked the troll crossly. “That’s hardly much to go off.”

The troll gave a “mrrgghhh,” by way of apology, she supposed.

“Any ideas?” Casimir shouted across the park, bent almost in half under the weight of Patrick’s slumped armour. “Hurry up, Specs. If we could crack this one before my spine gives way, it would be much appreciated.”

“If you two would stop moaning and blathering for a moment, then it might give me a second to think,” she snapped back. Nothing made her temper rise more quickly than someone interrupting while she was trying to solve a problem.

The heart? The mind? Intuition? All too connected to speech or too subjective to be a certain truth. She racked her brain, thinking through everything that the spell had shown them so far. Books? No, that wasn’t it. Her hand flew to her forehead to try to concentrate as best she could, and the chain around her wrist caught a glint of the dusky sunlight.

“Say it again,” Sage suddenly barked before adding a hasty “please” in case he was the sort of troll who appreciated good manners.

“I speak no language but tell the truth.”

The next charm along had changed. What was once a small sphere covered in stars had become a minuscule handheld mirror. A fairy-tale trope that always told the truth.

“Mirror! It’s a mirror! Of course!” Sage said, so uncharacteristically excited that her hands started clapping of their own accord. She tucked her hair behind her ear demurely, attempting to reclaim some form of dignity. Solving a puzzle really was one of life’s smallest, most magical moments.

It was a slow but undeniable nod of creaking, contented approval that came from the troll. He rose to his feet with great effort, boulders each slotting into place, and after giving her what she assumed was supposed to be a very stiff bow, he moved out from under the bridge to take a step closer to Sage. The smell of dewy moss and petrichor was overwhelming as he held a sluggish arm out to her in what seemed to be an offer of a handshake. She could hardly leave a troll hanging, so she reached out and gave him something between a high five and a fist bump, which he seemed pleased enough by. The troll gave a chuckle so low-pitched and earthy that the entire sandstone bridge rattled around him, then he made his way slowly back into the dense hedges that surrounded the dell to slip between the overgrowth and disappear from view.

Sage puffed at a ringlet. “Quite.”

Casimir beamed at her. “Your first vanquishing, Specs. I’m so proud.”

Sage was about to make a quip about him not being entirely useless when Patrick suddenly sprang out of Casimir’s grasp. The knight brandished his sword again, giving a whimper of pain in the process but trying his best to hide it.

“All part of my plan, you see. Now I’ve got you right where I want you! You shan’t get away with this! Conspiring with a troll—a miserable witch and her mischievous gremlin crony!”

Casimir looked incredulous. “Call me that again, mate. I dare you.”

Patrick waggled his sword around in a wobbly, dramatic figure of eight. “Fight like a man, hideous goblin of the depths!”

Sage couldn’t pounce quickly enough to shove him out of the way. But before she could reach him, Patrick lunged for Casimir. The finest point of his sword caught Casimir’s cheek and slashed a sharp red line across his cheekbone. Casimir roared, hands shooting to his face. Blood trailed between his fingers.

“Cas!” Sage cried, running to him.

“I’m all right, I’m fine…” He sounded more pissed off than in pain, wincing as he dabbed his shirtsleeve at the cut, soaking the white sleeve in blood. “It probably looks worse than it is. If you’ve ruined my looks, Gamble, I swear…”

Thunderous, Sage turned on the knight, who looked surprisingly concerned that his sword seemed to have actually caused damage. “You are an imbecile!” Sage shouted at Patrick. “Look what you’ve done!”

She was too furious to acknowledge it, but deep down she knew it wasn’t technically his fault. It was the spell. That was Laurel and Casimir now, both injured at its hands, perhaps not terribly, but coming dangerously close to disaster all the same. A fearful prickle crept its way up the back of her neck at the realization.