She was thinking of the ingredients for the lip balm. Surely it would be too easy to just run into a retired druid straightaway …
“Yes,” said Hedric. “Though I’m on a sabbatical right now. Between sacred groves at the moment, though I have the acorns and I expect I’ll get around to planting one up sooner or later—”
“Later, I expect, just like everything else,” said Martha. “I’m not any kind of druid, I’ll have you know. I don’t go around whispering to trees or helping hedgehogs with their problems, instead of helping their own sister, I can tell you that!”
“Now, Martha, I have tried—” the druid started to say, but Martha gave him a scowl so intense the words dried up in his mouth. He shrugged and pretended the fire under the soup pot needed tending, adding a few sticks and spreading things around.
Anya decided not to ask about retired druids, at least not immediately. Perhaps after they got some soup Martha’s mood would improve.
“We’d just like to buy two bowls of soup,” said Anya uncomfortably.
“What are you doing with that frog prince if you’re not going to kiss him?” asked Martha.
“Well, I am going to kiss him eventually,” Anya replied. “I have to make a special lip balm first, because, as I said, I’m not his true love. Look, don’t worry about the soup. We’ll just go.”
“No soup?” asked Ardent mournfully.
Anya shook her head and began to walk away.
“Wait!” exclaimed Martha. “You said you had to make a special lip balm to transform him back? Without true love?”
“Yes,” said Anya, not stopping. Ardent followed at her heels. He was still distracted by the smell of pea-and-ham soup, so his nose hit Anya behind the knees with every second step.
“No! Please! Wait!”
Martha scurried after Anya, lifting her apron so she could run faster. “I’ll give you two bowls of soup, if you can help me! It’s a matter of … of gruesome transformation!”
Anya stopped.
The old lady now had her attention.
Anya turned on her heel. Ardent crashed into the front of her knees this time, pretended he hadn’t, and got in a bit of a tangle with Anya’s legs and his own tail.
“What do you need help with?” Anya asked the woman. “Oh, Ardent. Just sit down!”
Ardent sat. Martha wiped her face with her apron.
“I thought only true love could break a transformation spell, and no princess could love my boy, since none ever knew him before he was turned. I mean, how could even the nicest princess fall in love with a newt?”
“You have a boy who has been turned into a newt?” asked Anya.
“My son,” said Martha, kneading the edge of her apron nervously.
“Who turned him into a newt?”
“A spell,” said Martha. She looked away as she answered, and her voice grew a little shifty.
Anya frowned.
“How exactly did this happen to him?” she asked. “I can’t … I won’t help you unless you tell me the truth.”
“He was just lost in the dark and he slipped on the roof—”
“Why was he on a roof?”
“He said he thought there were loose tiles, so he’d better climb up and fix them before they blew down and hurt someone. He slipped and fell down the chimney—”
“How could he fall down the chimney?” asked Anya. “And whose house was this anyway?”
“It wasn’t exactly a house,” said Martha. “At least I don’t think anyone was living in it. More a meetinghouse. Anyway, poor Shrub was blinded—”
“His name’s Shrub?”
“My husband was a druid too,” Martha explained. She looked across at her brother, who was still fiddling with the fire and pretending he wasn’t listening. She scowled. Clearly, druids were not popular with her.
“He liked the name Shrub. It’s better than Acorn, which was his second favorite. Anyway, my poor boy was blinded by the soot from the chimney and bruised by the fall. He was simply trying to find his way out when the thief-taker caught him—”
“He was caught by a thief-taker inside someone’s meetinghouse?”
“It wasn’t his fault that when he was staggering around blinded he ran into a cabinet and it broke and the Only Stone fell out and went down the front of his tunic! He could have been badly hurt if it had hit him on the head!”
“Oh, come on, Ma!” called a strangely squeaky voice from inside the hut. “Tell the truth!”
“Who … or what is that?” asked Anya.
“That’s Shrub,” Martha said sadly.
“He can talk?” Whoever or whatever had transformed Martha’s son wasn’t as thorough as Duke Rikard. Anya looked at Denholm in his wicker cage. It would be handy if he could talk. He could tell her exactly where Gornish was, for a start. She knew roughly, but there were so many little kingdoms …
“Yes, he can talk,” Martha replied. “It really wasn’t his fault … ”
“Yes, it was,” said the voice from inside the cottage. The door creaked open and an enormous newt emerged, his huge bulbous eyes blinking against the sunlight. He was bright orange, the size of a large rabbit, and about the biggest and ugliest lizard-type thing Anya had ever seen.
“I’m Shrub,” said the newt, to nobody’s surprise. “And I was trying to steal the Only Stone. I’m training to be a thief. Or at least I was, until this happened.”
Anya frowned. The Only Stone … She had a faint recollection of reading something about that. She could clearly remember the story of the One and Only Talking Salmon. And the Once and Forever Stone, now sadly destroyed. But try as she might, could not summon up anything useful on an Only Stone …
“What is the Only Stone?” she asked.
“A magical stone that protects the owner against dark magics,” said Shrub. “That’s why I’m so big and can talk. Even just sitting in the front of my tunic it half turned the transformation spell. If I’d been holding it, the spell would have failed completely.”
Anya’s interest was piqued. “Who owns the Only Stone, and who transformed you?”
“The stone is kept in the meetinghouse of the League of Right-Minded Sorcerers in New Yarrow,” said Shrub. “But that’s so no one good can use it. Right-minded just means evil sorcerers. The one that transformed me is called the Grey Mist, because he … or she … or it … is always surrounded by a cloud of choking gray mist. Or actually he-she-it is a cloud of choking gray mist. Are you really a princess?”
“I am,” said Anya. Then she hesitated, wondering whether it was a good idea to reveal her identity or not. Ultimately good manners prevailed, possibly over good sense. “I’m Princess Anya of Trallonia. And this is the royal dog Ardent. We’re on a Quest.”
“Can you really transform me back into a human?” asked Shrub.
“If I can make a magical lip balm, I should be able to. But I’m not just going to transform anyone who asks. I mean, you admit you’re a thief—”
“In training to be a thief,” said Shrub. “A good one, though. You know, stealing from the rich, giving to the poor, that sort of thing. And I was trying to steal the Only Stone for a good reason.”
“Why?”
“To give it to Bert,” replied the newt, as if this explained everything.
“Who’s Bert?” Anya was a little exasperated. After all, she’d only wanted to get two bowls of soup, not get caught up in a long conversation with a transformed newt, the newt’s mother, and his druidic uncle.
“Bert is Roberta, the leader of ARR—the Association of Responsible Robbers. I want to join up with them, but she says I’m too young. I thought if I could steal the Only Stone and give it to her, that would prove I wasn’t. Too young, I mean.”
“How old are you?”
“I’m ten,” said Shrub. “Next month. But I’ve been training to be a thief since I was six.”
“If you change him back, I’ll give you two bowls of soup and a big piece of ham to take with you, wrapp
ed in cheesecloth,” said Martha encouragingly.
“Yum,” said Ardent.
“Hmmm,” said Anya. “I’ll buy the soup and think about this while we eat. Is one small silver enough?”
“Plenty!” said Martha, taking the proffered coin. She surreptitiously rubbed it on her apron to make sure the tarnished metal really was silver. “Please be seated. I’ll get bowls and spoons.”
Anya looked around and eventually sat on a half-rotten log that had fallen nearby, setting Denholm in his cage next to her. Ardent sat on her feet and leaned against her, already drooling.
“I could help you,” said Shrub. He climbed up onto the log and sat next to Denholm, who eyed him balefully. Frogs and newts were not traditionally friends. “On your Quest. What are you questing for?”
“To get help against an evil sorcerer who wants to usurp the crown of Trallonia,” Anya explained. “And to get the ingredients to make the lip balm to turn Prince Denholm back into a man.”
“The Only Stone would be a great help against an evil sorcerer,” said Shrub. He blinked as he spoke, and his long tongue came out and whisked across his eye.
“Perhaps,” agreed Anya. “But as it is, I already have one evil sorcerer as an enemy. Why would I want to go up against a whole society of evil sorcerers? Particularly if one of them can turn into a gray mist. Or is a gray mist. That sounds really bad.”
“No problem if you’ve got the Only Stone,” said Shrub.
Anya sighed. This boy-turned-newt seemed to have an obsession that had clouded his thinking.
“It is a problem because we haven’t got it and they do,” she said. “Besides, I have to stay focused on getting the ingredients. One thing at a time!”
“Always eat the food in front of you first,” said Ardent. He looked across at Martha, who was ladling soup into bowls, and licked the gathering drool off his lips.
“I still think you should … mumble … the Only Stone … mumble … ” Shrub complained, his voice receding as Anya gave him one of her very stern looks. Anya’s stern looks were legendary, and not something anyone wanted to experience twice.
“Here’s your soup,” said Martha, passing Anya a bowl and setting one down on the ground for Ardent. The dog made a slight lunge towards it, but managed to stop himself and look at Anya.
“Wait,” she said to the dog, lifting her spoon. “Very well. Begin.”
She had just got her first spoonful in her mouth when Ardent finished his bowl and started licking up the spots that had been spilled around by his frantic gulping.
“Greedy-guts,” said Anya between mouthfuls. The soup was wonderfully good and did a great deal to improve her temper and outlook. Sitting down to eat also reenergized her mind, and for the first time since her hurried departure from the castle, Anya’s brain began to work at its usual highly intelligent rate.
“I might be able to take Shrub along and turn him back when I make the lip balm,” she told Martha. “If you can help me find one of the ingredients. Specifically, four drops of blood from a retired druid.”
A sudden, shocked intake of breath from both Martha and Hedric wasn’t what Anya was expecting. She lowered her spoon and looked at them.
“What?” she asked. “I just need four drops.”
Hedric looked at the ground and shuffled his large feet. Martha took another deep breath and glanced quickly to the left and right, and then up at the sky.
“It’s not something respectable people talk about,” she whispered.
“What?” asked Anya. “The blood, or the retired part?”
“Druids don’t really retire,” said Martha, still whispering. She came closer to Anya and knelt down by her side. The princess leaned in close so she could hear. So did Ardent and Shrub—at least till his mother clapped her hands over his head to stop his ears. Then he tried to wriggle away.
“You behave, Shrub!” scolded Martha. She added to Anya, “It’s not suitable for children to hear, you know.”
“I’m a child,” said Anya. “Technically.”
“But you’re a princess,” said Martha.
“Yeeees,” said Anya doubtfully. “Why is talking about retired druids unsuitable for children?”
“Druids don’t retire,” said Martha. “They either die with their sickles on, so to speak, or they … ”
She took another deep breath.
“They what?” asked Anya.
“They take up with the tree spirits,” mumbled Martha. “And, you know, become one.”
“They become tree spirits?”
“No, they become a tree! With a tree spirit, ahem, living in it. Together.”
“That doesn’t sound terribly bad,” said Anya. “I expect it’s quite nice for both of them.”
“No, no, no,” said Martha. “It’s not the done thing. Some of them don’t even become oaks. They turn into beeches or pines or even … even chestnuts.”
“I suppose the blood would be the sap,” said Anya thoughtfully.
“Don’t you talk about sap in front of my newt!” exclaimed Martha, shocked.
“He can’t hear us anyway,” said Anya.
“Yes I can,” said Shrub, twisting out of his mother’s hands.
“Well, I guess I need to get four drops of sap from a tree that used to be a druid,” said Anya. “Do you know where one is?”
Martha stood up, crossed her arms, and frowned.
“I can’t help Shrub otherwise,” said Anya firmly.
Martha’s mouth twisted about as if it was fighting itself, before finally opening.
“Oh well, I suppose he had to know sometime,” she said.
“Who?” asked Anya.
“Shrub,” said Martha with a sniff. “It’s his own father who’s become an ex-druid! He’s turned into a chestnut tree and is living with a dryad called Elisandria!”
She burst into tears and fled into the cottage.
“I already knew all that,” said Shrub companionably, shrugging his newt shoulders, which looked quite disturbing. “Uncle Hedric told me ages ago. I’ve even been to see my old dad and everything, though he don’t talk much now, being a tree.”
“You don’t listen properly,” said Hedric. “Chestnuts talk a lot, they do. Compared to an elm, say, or a willow. Willows talk so quiet, and they lisp. If you listened—”
“I’m not a druid, Uncle,” said Shrub crossly. “Don’t want to be one, neither. I’m a thief.”
“You’re a newt right now,” Anya pointed out. “And likely to stay that way unless I help. Is your father nearby?”
“Edge of the forest, above the downs,” Shrub answered. “Maybe five miles from here. Got to know the right path, though—he’s not near the road.”
“The downs are the low hills between the forest and Rolanstown, right?” asked Anya, trying to picture the map in her head. “And I suppose you know the path?”
“Course I do.” Shrub raised one webbed limb. “Like the back of my hand … my foot.”
“He does know the paths,” said Hedric. “Been a wanderer ever since he was six, that boy, causing his mother no end of apprehension. If you can help Shrub, Princess, it would be greatly appreciated. Poor Martha has been beside herself, what with Dannith … retiring himself … and this transformation business.”
Anya thought for a moment. She hadn’t planned on recruiting a newt to their questing party, but Shrub might be useful in some way. If he could get over his obsession with the Only Stone, and if he could help her get the ex-druid’s blood before they even got to Rolanstown to find an alchemist, they’d be ahead.
“Very well,” she said. “But you must agree to follow my orders, Shrub. No independent thievery, you understand?”
“You’ll turn me back into a boy?”
“When I get all the ingredients for the lip balm.” Anya grimaced, thinking about kissing a newt. That would be even worse than kissing a frog. She also vaguely recalled that newts were poisonous, or had poison slime on their backs or something. “I will t
urn you back.”
As she spoke, the wind shifted around the clearing, lifting the lower branches of the surrounding trees with a sudden susurration of leaves. Which is a fancy word for rustling. Ardent’s nose twitched and his head turned swiftly. He let out a single sharp bark and leaped at the undergrowth, twisting around in the air to attack something hidden there.
“Princess Anya Plans to Kiss Lizard!” shouted a nervous, out-of-breath voice, accompanied by the sound of branches snapping, Ardent’s deep barking, and the bark-shredding noise of someone desperately climbing a tree.
Anya turned around, the words for the Withering Wind spell on her lips, to see Ardent just missing out on delivering a tremendous bite to the foot of a man who was ascending a tree as if his life depended on it.
Which quite possibly it did.
“Herald Assaulted by Vicious Hound!”
Anya looked up at the long-limbed tatterdemalion who had successfully reached a fork between the trunk of the oak and a long, reaching branch. A man neither old nor young, with a thin beard and a draggling moustache, he wore a parti-colored jacket that was yellow on one side and red on the other, and his legs were encased in hose that were blue on the left and green on the right. It was not a pleasing combination, made still worse by the grubby hat he wore, which resembled a stiffened nightcap and might have been striped like a rainbow if it was clean. It was hard to tell in its current state.
Anya knew who he was, because he had been thrown out of the castle more than once in the past few years: a wandering herald, who traveled through all the little kingdoms spreading news and gossip. Most of the “news” he spread sounded to Anya as if it was entirely made up.
“Gerald the Herald,” she said. “I don’t suppose there is anything I can say or do that will make you forget what you’ve overhead?”
“Princess Tries to Suppress News!”
“Can you please stop talking like that?” asked Anya.
“Herald’s Announcements All the Rage in New Yarrow!” said Gerald. He took a breath and shouted, “Death-Wish Princess Takes On Duke!”