Page 45 of The Broken Mirror
“Oh, you know what it means!” he says, poking Jack in the arm. “Wow. Sadie’s back in the picture, huh?”
“No, she’s not back in the picture, if she ever was in the picture. Just drop it, okay?”
“How are her reindeer doing?”
“They’re still reindeer.”
Gretel frowns. “Am I missing something here?” she asks. “Do we know a Sadie?”
“Jack definitely knows a Sadie, that’s for sure,” Alistair responds with a grin. “We often detoured to Snow Countryduring our quests, and it wasn’t to visit the giants, I’ll tell you that much.”
“Knock it off, will you, Alistair?” Jack says tightly.
Filomena’s starting to get the picture. She feels another crush-induced sting. But Zera is captured! Jack’s crush history issonot the thing to focus on here.
Gretel leans in and whispers to Filomena, “Are you following this? Does this Sadie own a reindeer ranch?”
“I guess,” Filomena whispers back. “Or at least she works on one.”
“Well, I’m going to bed,” Jack announces, and then leaves.
“I guess he’s not hungry tonight,” Alistair says sadly as Beatrice calls them to the table for dinner.
CHAPTERTWENTY-TWOSWANRIVER
The next evening they finally finish making the star flower shirts. Rosie leads Filomena, Alistair, and Gretel to the frozen river where she says she meets her brothers most nights.
“I usually bring them leftovers from dinner with the giants,” Rosie says, leading them down a snowy path. “But sometimes when I start feeding them, I worry that I’m feeding the wrong swans! It’s good that swans don’t often travel in groups of seven. Makes my brothers easier to pick out.”
Filomena gives a light laugh, but she hasn’t been in a very fun mood today. Alistair feels morose for teasing Jack when Jack was obviously terribly upset about what happened to Zera. Jack’s barely left his giant bed today. Filomena went to check on him at one point in the afternoon, and if he hadn’t looked so sad, she would’ve laughed at the way the bed seemed to swallow him whole.
She’d asked if he planned to come down anytime soon. Without looking at her, he’d said only that he might as well wait until the famous League of Seven was ready; they couldn’t do anything until the League was found, anyway.
Filomena had never heard him be rude like that before.Whoever Sadie is, she can have him!
Soon enough they arrive at a beautiful frozen river. Not frozen like still water with a thick layer of flat ice on top. Frozen like waves and swirls of water stopped cold in midair. It is stunning, like someone pressedPAUSEduring a particularly spiky wave crash.
They’re carrying bowls of leftovers from that night’s dinner. Alistair made ramen—with luscious noodles, spicy broth, soy eggs, and bok choy—at Filomena’s request. She was craving some hot ramen in this cold weather. Plus it was elaborate enough to cook that she thought doing so might distract Alistair from Jack’s bad mood.
The four of them sit down on a log, bowls of ramen in their laps.
“This ramen is actually a great lap warmer,” Gretel says.
“And an even better internal warmer once you eat it!” Rosie adds. “Alistair, seriously, it was so good.”
The three girls alloohandahhover Alistair’s cooking skills, hoping to lift the spirits of the evening a bit. It doesn’t appear to be working. Alistair just nods in thanks.
They wait and they wait. No swans appear.
“Rosie, are you sure we’re at the right river?” Filomena asks.
“Of course. This is odd. We always meet at this time.”
The longer they wait, the more Filomena starts to feel panic rise in her chest. What is it about waiting for something important that’s so intensely anxiety inducing? It feels like at any moment the swans could appear…
But there are no swans…
Still no swans…
