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“Why marry a boring, two-legged human,” she urged the troll king, “when I can offer you this if you call the wedding off?”

“I accept!” the troll king conceded at last, and shoved Jules toward Yudit and Lulach. The three of them wasted no time, rushing out of the caves to the surface, leaving the troll king behind to coo over his gargantuan salamander and tickle it under the chin.

“Ye’ve git nae shoes,” Lulach noted as the three of them emerged, blinking, into the light. “Dinnae yer feet hurt?”

Jules was too exhausted to relate the entire story. “I sold them. How did you find me?”

“Those two idiot ‘friends’ of yours disappeared at the same time you did,” Yudit explained. “So we figured they had to have done it. We tracked them down and made them tell us where they’d sent you. Sorry it took so long.”

She led the way to a rocky shore where a small boat bobbed in the waves. A rope had been tied to the bow. Lulach transformed himself into a fish and dove into the water. When Yudit and Jules climbed aboard, he grabbed hold of the rope with his mouth.

Jules collapsed in the stern as Lulach tugged the boat away from the shore. “Thanks for coming to my rescue.”

Yudit laid a comforting hand on their arm. “Any time. You’d do the same for me.”

The moment between them was broken when the strange little man appeared in the boat. Yudit jumped up in startlement, nearly sending herself toppling over the side.

“Fiddle-dee-dee and fol-de-rol!” the little man sang. “ ’Twas I who saved you from the troll. Now guess my name, or pay the toll!”

“I told you, I don’t—”

“Guess it!” he shouted angrily.

Jules sighed. “Fine. Is it Rumpelstiltskin?”

The strange little man was once again taken aback. “That’s your first guess?”

“I knew who you were from the start,” they admitted. “You’re kind of famous.”

“Maybe you should change things up if you want to keep doing this,” Yudit suggested. “You could ask how many jellybeans are in a jar or something.”

The strange little man—or Rumpelstiltskin, more properly—stamped his foot in rage, making the boat rock disconcertingly. Then he vanished for the final time. Jules never saw him again.

“What did you offer him?” Yudit wondered as the boat settled.

“My firstborn child.”

“But you don’t want children!”

“I know. I told him.”

“What an idiot.”

“Yeah.”

The two of them sat side by side in the back of the boat. Jules fell asleep on Yudit’s shoulder as Lulach towed them home.

Chapter Twenty-Eight

I’ve Seen Fire and I’ve Seen Rain

“This,” Ilyana said as we watched fiery droplets pour down from the clouds, “is some kind of nut-pickling magical ball-shoot. Someone doesn’t want us to go that way.”

“Maybe it just happens here every now and then?” I asked. “The Swamp of Monsters is a weird place.”

“Nope. I’d have heard about it. This is a spell.”

We’d been fighting through a dense thicket of ferns, so we hadn’t seen the rain of fire until we’d nearly walked into it. At first, we’d been worried it was going to sweep right over us. But its edge stayed eerily still, a downpour fixed in place. The wall of falling flames curved away gently to either side, and I couldn’t see an end to the rain in any direction—left, right, or straight ahead. Which was a definite problem, since straight ahead was the direction we needed to go.