Suddenly a movement on the riverbank, dark against the snow, caught Jenna’s eye. Two figures were moving fast toward the landing stage. With a sinking feeling Jenna guessed it was witch reinforcements—witches always traveled in threes. An old rhyme came into her head:
One Witch to Find you,
Two Witches to pay,
Three to remind you
You won’t get away.
And she’d bet anything that one of them was Marissa. But suddenly a very un-Marissa voice boomed out. “Stop right there!”
Never had Jenna been so happy to hear that voice. “Milo!” she yelled. “Help, help!”
The rickety planks shook as Milo pounded toward them. Morwenna gave Jenna a massive shove, but Jenna was ready. Using the momentum—and the fact that Morwenna could not let go—Jenna swung around the mooring post in a full circle, taking the witch with her. She had heard that witches and water did not mix well. Her only hope was that the shock of the water would make Morwenna break her Grasp. As Morwenna began to topple, Jenna prepared herself for the fall into the icy water.
Milo’s heavy hand suddenly landed on Morwenna’s shoulder, pulling her back from the edge. “Eerf ym dlihc!” he yelled.
Morwenna gave a cry of fury and Jenna felt the witch’s Grasp fall from her arm. She jumped back and both she and Milo gave Morwenna a hefty push. The witch landed neatly in her coracle, feet sticking out, arms flailing like a beetle stranded on its back. The coracle began to do what coracles do best: go round in circles. Around and around it went, spinning off into the middle of the river. Milo and Jenna watched the witch twirl through the moon’s reflection; then the current took the coracle and pulled it rapidly along, bouncing through the choppy waters in the middle of the river, taking the Witch Mother back to the Forest.
“What was it you said that made her let go?” asked Jenna.
Milo had made a decision that morning after Jenna had blown him her kiss. At last, Jenna was allowing him to be her father, and he would start acting like one. Probably for the first time ever, he answered a question directly. “I said, ‘Free my child.’ In Reverse.”
Jenna had not expected that. “Oh . . .”
It was not easy, but Milo made himself continue. “When . . . yes, when Cerys, your mother, was first expecting you she got very worried about CradleSnatching. It is something that the Wendron Witches used to do, snatch baby girls from their cradles to bring them up as witches—and they particularly liked to take Princesses. A Princess is a great prize for a Coven, so they say.”
Jenna nodded. She knew all about that.
“By the time Cerys was Queen, the Wendrons had stopped taking Castle babies, but your mama was afraid that they might still be tempted by a baby Princess. So she told me a powerful Reverse.” Milo smiled at the memory. “Well, actually, she sat me down and made me learn it over and over again.”
Once again Jenna was overwhelmed with the what-might-have-been feeling. “And you remembered. After all this time.”
Keeping to his resolve to be straight with Jenna, Milo had something to admit. “Well, I almost did. Actually, I’m sure I would have done. But luckily your mother reminded me. It’s something you want to get right the first time. There’s not always a second chance with a witch.”
Jenna knew she’d been lucky: she had escaped from the Port Witch Coven once and from the Wendrons twice now. “Third time unlucky,” was another well-known witchy saying. But something Milo had said did not make sense to Jenna. And as he seemed to be actually answering her questions for once, she asked,
“What do you mean, my mother reminded you?”
Milo looked at Jenna with an odd expression in his eyes. She seemed so young to him, too young. But what did he know? The Queen was always right. “Jenna, your mother, or rather the ghost of your mother, is here.”
“Here?”
“There.” Milo gently guided Jenna around so that she was looking toward the Palace.
“Oh!” Jenna gasped.
Standing on the riverbank at the far end of the landing stage was the ghostly figure of a young woman wearing the long red robes of a Queen.
Milo asked softly. “Shall we go and meet her?”
Jenna was lost for words. She nodded.
Milo put his arm around Jenna’s shoulders and together they walked toward the ghost. As they drew nearer Jenna saw that her mother was just as she appeared in her dreams. She was surprisingly young, her long dark hair was caught up in a golden circlet, and her large, violet eyes did not leave her daughter for a moment.
