The haze in the workroom began to fade, and Marigold’s feeling of triumph faded with it. Torville still sat on his plate under the cheese dome, looking just as much like a blob of glop as he had before. But the rest of the workroom had changed. A clump of trees had appeared behind the gazing ball, and another clump loomed near the blackboard. One particularly large tree had grown by the doorway, directly over Pettifog, who reached up and plucked a plump round fruit from its branches.
“Peaches,” he said. He took a bite, slurping. “Ripe.”
“You can’t be serious.” Marigold marched over to the largest peach tree and scowled up into its leaves. She pushed against its trunk, but it didn’t seem to be going anywhere. The peaches on its branches quivered.
“But I didn’t want peach trees!” Marigold said. “How is this” — she waved at the trees — “the opposite of that?” She jabbed a thumb toward Torville, who had pressed himself up against the near side of the cheese dome, probably to get a better view of Marigold’s latest calamity.
Pettifog dabbed the peach juice from his lips with one of his handkerchiefs. “I think,” he said, “that your spell must not have been backward in the right sort of way. In addition to the tree growing at the foot of my bed, there are three in the second-floor hall, and probably quite a few more I haven’t seen yet.”
Marigold fumed down the stairs and into the hall, where the three peach trees Pettifog had mentioned were just coming into bloom. “I don’t understand what’s gone wrong,” she moaned. “They’re not even all in the same season!”
There was a peach tree growing out the window of Torville’s bedroom, a peach tree in the dining room, a peach tree in the dungeon, and a peach tree in the kitchen, crowding out the pots and pans that neither Marigold nor Pettifog had remembered to wash. Worst of all was the enormous peach tree that filled the upstairs bathroom. “I don’t suppose you know how to undo this spell, either?” Marigold asked as Pettifog examined its roots.
“As shocking as it might seem to you,” said Pettifog, “I don’t have any experience cleaning up the messes of foolish princesses. Rosalind was smart enough not to tangle with Torville’s spells. The only thing she ever filled this fortress with was delight, and to be honest with you, I enjoyed it.” He stepped back and dusted off his pants. “Unless we can chop this tree down somehow, we’ll have to use the cursed toilet.”
This was one more disappointment than a wicked child could bear. “I will not use the cursed toilet!” Marigold shouted. “I won’t help the Miseries, and I won’t pretend to be Torville! I don’t know how to get him back, I don’t know how to make you stop talking about Rosalind, and I’ll never eat another peach if I live to be a hundred! I quit!”
Unlike the royal guards and the royal steward, Pettifog didn’t seem impressed by Marigold’s tantrum. He simply tucked his hands into his pockets and looked at her. “What, exactly, are you quitting?”
“I don’t know! Everything!” Marigold stomped down the hallway and into her midnight-dark room, taking care to slam the door behind her.
Marigold had intended to sulk in her usual way: alone in her room with her storybooks and her contraptions, far away from the unfair world. But as soon as she sat down on her bed in the midnight-dark room, she remembered that there were no storybooks in Wizard Torville’s fortress (unless you counted Gentleman Northwinds’ Magical Artes, which Marigold didn’t), and she didn’t have the materials to make even a simple contraption. Besides, there was no point in sulking if you couldn’t see anything while you were doing it. Marigold stood up, bumped her shin on the wardrobe, fumbled for the doorknob, and stomped downstairs, grumbling as she went to make sure Pettifog knew she was still upset. She thought he might try to stop her from gathering an armload of supplies in the storeroom or from leaving the fortress in a huff, but he didn’t even stick his head out a window to complain. Outside, Marigold sat with her back against the cold stone wall and looked out across the wasteland.
In the moat, the Thing splished.
“Leave me alone,” Marigold told it. “I’m in plenty of trouble without your help.” She set out her supplies on the ground: a scale pan, a few lengths of wire, some mismatched buttons, some string. The nicest thing about a contraption, she decided as she took up the wire, was that it could solve a problem so simply. If you needed to dig a hole, you could build a hole-digging contraption. If you needed to stir a pot, you could build a pot-stirring contraption. And if you needed a contraption that would help a blob of glop speak to you more easily — well, then, you could build it, no bottled yawns or strange incantations required. Bending and twisting the wire, she was almost able to forget how thoroughly her spell to curse Rosalind had failed. Fastening and tightening the string, she refused to think about the promise she’d made to the Miseries. And she tied three fierce knots in a row to shove aside the worst thought of all: that while she wasn’t any good at being good, she didn’t seem to have much talent for being wicked, either.
Marigold was so caught up in her tinkering that she didn’t notice when the Thing started flolloping with enthusiasm. She didn’t notice the boy who appeared at the edge of the wildwood with a satchel slung over his shoulder, and she couldn’t see his puff of dandelion hair until he was halfway across the clearing.
“Marigold?” Collin shouted, waving his arms wildly above his head. “Marigold! Is that you?”
“Collin!” Marigold dropped her contraption in the grass and started waving her arms, too. She couldn’t believe he’d made it through the wildwood, and she couldn’t imagine why he was so far from Imbervale in the first place, but she was awfully glad to see him. “What are you doing here?” she called.
“That’s what I’m supposed to be asking you!” Collin ran toward the fortress, grinning from ear to ear. “I knew I’d find you eventually,” he said when he finally reached the far side of the moat, “but I never would have guessed —”
The Thing made its move. Before Marigold could shout out a warning, an inky tentacle wrapped itself around Collin’s ankle and yanked him down into the water. He made an awful noise that started as a yelp and ended as a burble.
“Stop that!” Marigold charged down the hillside, shouting at the Thing. “Didn’t anyone ever tell you not to eat kitchen boys?” At the edge of the moat, she lay down on her stomach and reached under the water where Collin had disappeared. She couldn’t feel anything but slime and muck. “I know you must be hungry,” she told the Thing, “but Collin isn’t a meal; he’s my friend. And I don’t think he knows how to swim.”
Five feet to her right, something burbled again. Collin thrashed to the surface of the moat, pushing away the tentacle that was trying to pull off his satchel. He gasped for air, and Marigold scrambled to reach for his arms. “Hold on to me!” she said. “I won’t let it eat you.”
Collin clutched Marigold’s wrists. He looked relieved, but only for a moment; the Thing was still tugging him down into the murk. “Eck!” he spluttered. “Leg. Monster. Teeth. Help!”
“Let him go!” Marigold snapped at the Thing. “Isn’t there anything else you want? Do you like peaches?”
The Thing stopped tugging. Collin stopped thrashing.
“You can have as many peaches as you like,” Marigold told the Thing, “but you’ve got to give up Collin first.”
The surface of the water rippled. The Thing glurped. Then Collin came free from its tentacles, and Marigold pulled him onto the bank.
“Are you all right?” she asked him. “Did any chunks of you get eaten?”
Collin coughed and dripped. “I don’t think so,” he said. There were rips in his pants, but the Thing hadn’t broken skin, nor had it made a dent in his good cheer.
“Thank goodness,” said Marigold. “I don’t think Pettifog remembered to give the Thing its breakfast this morning. It’s been a terrible day.” She sighed and stood up. “Wait here,” she told Collin, “and don’t dip even a toe in the water while I’m gone.”
By the time Marigold returned from the fortress with an armload of peaches for the Thing, Collin had dried off a bit. He looked healthy enough, but his arms were covered with scratches and welts that didn’t look as if they’d come from the Thing, and there was dirt caked behind his ears that even a dunking in the moat hadn’t removed. “You’ve really been looking for me?” Marigold asked.
“Of course!” said Collin. “You’re not easy to find — did you know that?” He helped himself to a peach. “I asked fourteen farmhands, six ornamental hermits, and thirty-two wildwood goblins if they’d seen you, but none of them had. Oh, and a sorceress, but she sent biting flies after me, so I stopped checking with sorceresses after that. I even went by the Imbervale dragon’s cave to see if you might be there. He told me a princess wandering alone in the wildwood at night had probably been eaten.”
“I wasn’t!” said Marigold indignantly.
“I know,” Collin said. “I was sure you’d be able to find a way out of the wildwood. And I hoped I would, too, eventually.” He looked around at the walls of the dank and dismal fortress. “But where are we? Who lives in this place?”
Marigold threw a peach into the moat. “Wizard Torville does,” she said, “and now I do, too. I asked Torville if I could stay.”
“What?” Collin almost choked on his peach. “Why?”
“Because I’m wicked, Collin! Don’t you remember what I did at Rosalind’s party?”
“With the water bucket, and the birds, and half the guests running away screaming?”
Marigold nodded. “I pushed you, too. I’m sorry about that.”
“It’s all right,” said Collin. “I ran after you as far as the gates, but then I had to go back and clean up the mess. All of us servants did.”
