Agatha and Tedros gaped at him, as if still stuck on the honey and cheese.

“Reconvened?” asked Agatha, her brain catching up. “The League of Thirteen existed before?”

“Why did it convene in the first place?” Tedros asked.

“Here come the questions,” Merlin moaned, yanking his hat down over his eyes. “I wish I was a seer. Then I would have an excuse not to answer them. No questions until after dinner. Both of you must be ravenous.”

“Not for old-people food,” Tedros grouched, eyeing the others finishing up their carrots, gruel, and prune stew.

“Well, then I’m afraid you can’t have any of this,” Merlin said and began pulling a sumptuous spread out of his hat, with pork ribs, sweet potato mash, creamed corn and bacon cubes, pickled cucumbers, and coconut-curried rice heaped on silver platters which he lay across a white silk picnic blanket which had magically appeared on the cave floor. “After all, given that I, an old person, just made it, I believe it would fall squarely under the term ‘old-people food.’ Come, Agatha.” He drew a plate out of his hat for her and lavished it with pork, cucumbers, and corn.

Mouth salivating, Agatha was about to start shoveling food, when she saw Tedros’ face, like a beaten puppy’s. She cocked a grin and held out a rib. “Want to try?”

Tedros beamed and the two of them assaulted the spread in rapturous silence, while Merlin rocked pleasantly in his chair and licked a new lollipop.

“What I miss most about being young,” Cinderella crabbed, slurping liquefied prunes as she watched them.

“Fun?” said Peter Pan wistfully.

“Feasting,” Cinderella grumped.

“Looks like you’ve done enough feasting for a lifetime,” snorted Pinocchio. He saw the whole table staring at him. “Did I say that out loud?”

The young prince and princess ate and ate until they were stuffed, topping it off with a hunk of cappuccino mousse cake, before they collapsed against the wall, groaning against each other, letting their puffed bellies rest. Afterward Yuba brought them a pot of hot water and a scrub cloth and Agatha and Tedros took turns behind the curtain washing themselves, once Merlin conjured cottony white pajamas for each of them. As the other League members tucked into their mattresses for an early bedtime, Agatha looked up at Merlin nervously.

“We have to convince Sophie her happy ending is with Tedros and me. You can help us get into school to see her?”

“What if she won’t destroy the ring? What if the School Master catches us?” Tedros pushed worriedly. “Merlin, he still has my sword. Father’s sword! I can’t be crowned king without Excalibur—”

Merlin huddled into the pair of pajama-clad Evers. “Let’s go someplace where we can think.”

Agatha frowned. “We can’t go into the Woods after dark. Suppose one of those old villains finds us—”

“Who said anything about the Woods?” said Merlin. He flung open the lining of his cape, revealing a swathe of dark purple silk embroidered with five-pointed stars, like a child’s crude rendition of a night sky. “This, my dear, is where wizards go to think.”