“Yeah,” agreed Curtis, his voice shaking. “You wouldn’t, right?”
“Try me,” said Prue. She craned her head over to see Darla, who’d stopped on the fourth plank of the bridge.
“You’re bluffing,” said Darla.
“No, I’m not,” said Prue.
“Are you sure you’re not bluffing?” asked Septimus.
Prue held the blade of the knife to the frayed rope. Darla watched her intently. She nodded to Callista, and the woman began to back away.
“Put down the knife, dear,” said Darla. “This is all very foolish. How about this: You submit to us and we’ll consider letting you live.”
Prue scoffed, “That’s the biggest load of junk I’ve ever heard. You killed Iphigenia. You evil, evil woman. Fox. Whatever. What’s going to stop you from killing us?”
“Alas, then we are at an impasse, yes?” sighed the fox. She set a single paw forward, closer to the children. Prue could see her haunches begin to quiver. It became clear she was about to pounce.
“Hold on, guys,” said Prue as she took a deep breath and cut the rope.
Someone screamed. Prue, in the flash of the moment, couldn’t tell who it was. It sounded like a woman, though she’d heard Curtis scream like that before. In any case, the world pinwheeled beneath her feet as the bridge gave way on one side and the wooden slats tipped sideways in a quick, violent motion. She heard someone else yell “NO!” as if they were mourning the loss of a dear loved one, as if they were witnessing one of the great traumatic experiences of their lifetime. In that flicker of time, she came to realize it was Darla, and she experienced a flush of sympathy for the woman-turned-fox. Prue’s hand, as if under the control of someone other than herself, shot out and grabbed one of the rope struts of the bridge, which was in the process of losing its bridge-ness, like a puppet snipped of its strings. Her body swung around, at the mercy of the crazed motion of the rope, and she saw Callista pitch, screaming, into the blank emptiness below them.
The strap of Prue’s knapsack made a hard jerk and was suddenly pulling heavily at her neck; she saw that it was Curtis, Septimus doggedly affixed to his shoulder, who’d managed to grab hold of the bag and was dangling above the ravine by a single buckle. The boy and the rat screamed in unison, at which point Prue realized it was, in fact, Septimus who’d made that very ladylike shriek just moments before. Her fingers steadily turned from bright, ruby red to bloodless white in the fraction of a second as the weight of both her and Curtis bore down on the thin rope in her hand.
“Curtis!” she shouted hoarsely. “I can’t!”
But at that moment she looked over to see Darla, having shape-shifted back into human form, swinging hand over hand toward her. Her floral dashiki was torn at the cuffs and stained with mud and blood. A look of absolute rage was in the process of distorting her face. She seemed to straddle the world between human and animal, as if in the violence of the instant, she was frozen in transformation. She reached out to Prue, and Prue could see the little filigree of black hair on her wrists and the claws of her fingernails. The world slowed to a crawl.
That was when the last support of the bridge broke and the entire apparatus split in two, with Prue and Curtis swinging one way and Darla swinging the other. Septimus clung to a single strand of fringe on Curtis’s epaulet, his feminine howl having turned into a steady stream of pronouncements: “Oh oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh.” Prue watched Darla hit, hard, against the opposing cliff face, though she barely had a chance to revel in this turn of events when she, too, slammed against the rock. Her fingers, having valiantly obeyed the commands of their master for so long, simply went slack, and the three of them, Prue, Curtis, and Septimus, went spiraling downward, down into the blackness.
CHAPTER 13
A Promising Commission
The door shut heavily behind Unthank and he paused by the jamb, staring at the clutter of his office in quiet despair. He leaned backward against the hard wood of the door, which made the fedora on the crown of his head tip forward and fall to the ground. Swiping it up in a quick, agitated motion, he walked to his desk and threw himself into his chair, which gave up a squeaky moan. He tried to Frisbee the fedora onto the hat rack by the wardrobe, but he missed, pitifully. It tumbled into a nearby wastebasket. Unthank sat frozen for a time before he let his head fall into his palms on the surface of his desk.
A knock came at the door. “Joffrey, dear?” It was Desdemona.
“One moment, honey,” he called. He sat up straight and wiped his eyes free of the few tears that were beginning to show. “Come in.”
The door wheezed open. Miss Mudrak, in her sparkling gown, entered carrying a briefcase. “Are you ok
ay?” she asked.
“Yes, yes,” said Joffrey. “Just taking a moment, that’s all.”
“I have here the equipment.”
“Oh, right. Go ahead.”
Desdemona brought the briefcase across the room and, undoing the buckles, began placing the three white boxes on the shelf with their nearly identical counterparts. The little strips of tape on them read R.M., E.M., and M.S. She gave them an almost motherly look before she turned and faced Unthank.
“They will show, I think,” she said.
Unthank laughed under his breath. “Yes, maybe they will.”
“It seemed to me that the Chinese stayed longer on the screen. Her blip did not so disappear quickly.”
“You think?”