Hero by Alethea Kontis

ago.”
    Betwixt swatted at Peregrine with his tail. He wandered to an opaque section of the wall where calcite had dripped down long ago in rippled lines and scratched his back against it. “You didn’t exactly have a choice. You got cursed, remember?”
    “How could I forget?” Enough of this folly; it was time to lighten the mood. “But if I hadn’t been cursed I never would have met you, my dearest friend.”
    “That
would
have been a pity,” Betwixt agreed, and they chuckled in unison.
    Neither was ready when the first tremor struck.
    Startled and confused by the sudden sense of vertigo, Peregrine lost his footing. Betwixt—fully awake now—snapped the sleeve of Peregrine’s shirt between his massive jaws and dragged him away from the fire. Peregrine huddled with Betwixt in a small archway. The mountain shivered beneath him. Fingers of icerock that had pointed down from the ceiling now joined them on the floor. Some crushed the pillarstones that grew up from the ground, splintering into white shards and glittering dust. Crystalline protrusions rang out like church bells as they crashed. Mighty columns that were created with the mountain toppled and fell. The air grew thick with ice and chalk. Peregrine coughed and hoped that slow, molten Earthfire was not soon to follow. Betwixt howled, his tail rattling madly.
    “Dragon?” Peregrine yelled to Betwixt over the thunder of the cave. “Could it be?”
    Happily, Betwixt’s canine hearing had not been compromised. “If so, it’s been lovely knowing you,” said the chimera.
    The thought of death had once given Peregrine a great sense of relief. Now he prayed to gods unknown to preserve his meager life, pretense and all.
    After what felt like a lifetime, the vibrations dulled like a forgotten note on a harpsichord and the caves wrapped themselves once more in a shroud of cold, dark silence. Peregrine shook debris out of his hair. He was unhurt. In the dim light of the dust-covered fire he examined Betwixt from head to toe, giving his unscathed friend a hearty pat on the hindquarters in both reassurance and gratitude. He retrieved the overturned lantern, all the while silently counting to himself. Shortly thereafter, the shrieking started.
    “Thirteen seconds,” he said to Betwixt. “She must have been knocked unconscious.”
    Betwixt huffed, sneezed, and rattled his tail for good meas-ure. He pointedly ignored the banshee wail, returning instead to the fire and nosing rocky debris from his former spot there. The screeching began to resolve itself out of the echoes.
    “HE’S ALIVE!”
    The witch’s familiar burst out from behind a still-standing column, a flurry of black wings. Cwyn’s usual perch had been upset by the quaking, so she flew once around the room and landed on Betwixt’s giant head. The chimera snapped at the mischievous raven.
    Now that Cwyn could see the room, so could the witch: she used the bird’s eyes as her own to move about the caves. The witch had summoned the bird in the mad wake of her blindness for just this purpose. Peregrine had worried about being found out, but this secondhand sight was less than perfect. Even better, the witch had a new obsession to distract her from sensing that her daughter no longer shared her demon blood.
    “JACK WOODCUTTER!” The witch stood in the archway, eye sockets gaping blank holes in her pale blue face, a contrast to her pink, gaping mouth.
    “That scoundrel again? I will summon him directly and order him to clean this up.” Peregrine had found that jesting and teasing were the best way to converse with the witch. Betwixt had found that the best way was not conversing at all.
    The witch blamed everything on Jack Woodcutter, from burned hair to errant farts, so this conclusion did not surprise Peregrine. Jack was the only human he’d ever known to venture this far up into the White Mountains by choice. The witch had captured Jack and forced him to complete her list of impossible chores.