Over the Sea

  While PJ was whining threats and complaints as he straightened his clothes, Lesa calmly stepped behind him. Just as he looked up she pricked him in the back. “Halt!”

  He froze into a statue, his pimple-spotted sallow face going red with rage. “Who’s the bully now?” he snarled.

  Lesa grinned, but she didn’t let any of her grin get into her voice as she stated calmly, “In my land, it is customary to kill any suitor who persists. I shall consider it now. While I think, if you remain very still, perhaps my mood will improve and I will be merciful.”

  PJ gulped.

  Lesa eased the sword onto the table where the baldric still lay, and left it balanced there, with the point still in PJ’s back, his hands still high.

  She put her hands on her skirts to keep them from rustling and backed slowly out, while I raced to find Irene.

  The noise of the ballroom drew me. As the orchestra played, and courtiers danced, at the grand pavilion Kwenz sat before a great map poring over it, while Fobo chattered away about her great plans for running an empire, if only a suitable young king came along to combine his kingdom with hers.

  Between them Irene sat, her jaw locked in boredom.

  I flew at her as hard as I could, and whether it was desperation, or boredom, or whatever, this time she felt me.

  She rose, fluttered her fan, and said, “Oh, Your Gracious Majesty. My dear friend has been away ever so long with your char-r-r-r-rming son, and I so wished to dyawnce with him!”

  “Of course, my dear,” Fobo proclaimed brightly.

  Lesa and Irene met outside the door, both cast sighs of relief, and Irene called up Hreealdar.

  o0o

  By the time I made it back — and that transfer was the worst of all of them — I knew I was in danger. The entire world had gone smeary by now, sight, sound, and even touch.

  Using the last of what energy I had left, I released the spell, and felt as if someone had thrown me off a fifty story building into a lake of ice.

  Back in the Chwahir palace, Faline kept watch.

  She had insisted she could guard all on her own. We were desperate enough not to ask too many questions about how.

  It was in the middle of the night by then, and even villains sleep. No one came down that hall at all. Faline could hear the murmur of voices inside, Clair’s among them. It made her both glad and a little forlorn.

  But she was just fighting sleep when furtive noises caused her to sit up, and moments later Sherry and Diana appeared, Diana with all her lock-picking tools on her, plus a guard’s spear she’d gotten from somewhere.

  It didn’t take her long to force the lock open, and one by one the girls slipped out.

  o0o

  Clair met Dhana and me, and happy we were, though I couldn’t speak, or even move. I felt as if I’d turned into ice. The girls carried me back to the Junky, another long nasty trip, bearable only because Clair’s voice was next to me all the time, as she asked for everyone’s story.

  As soon as we got to the Junky, Clair zapped upstairs, got that pink stuff, and brought it down. Once I drank some I felt a lot better, though I knew I’d sleep all day, but that didn’t matter anymore, because Clair was back.

  As were Lesa and Irene.

  At first everyone talked at once as the two girls shed their finery, then Irene, who had the loudest voice and was always the most determined to hold the center of attention, took over. She had everyone cracking up as she described Fobo and her desire to meet this mysterious king, and was he married? While Kwenz kept asking exactly where these powerful kingdoms lay, and Irene kept having to make up lies to keep him busy with his old map.

  Everyone else took a turn, except me, for though I didn’t hurt, I was too listless.

  At last Dhana said, cheerfully, “It’s almost dawn! We’ve been up all night!”

  “And a good night’s work it was,” Faline put in, no longer jumping around. She gave a great, cracking yawn, then laughed, her eyes wide and blue and happy, as she looked around at us. Tired she was, as were we all, but her happiness at having Clair back seemed to make her hair a brighter red, even her freckles more distinct and charming.

  “And all our thanks to you two,” Seshe said to the visitors. She was grubby, her hair ruffled, a sight seldom seen, but she paid no attention as she sat there cross-legged on my other side. “We would like very much to give you whatever reward we can.”

  “A party? With NO PJ?” Sherry asked. “And all the chocolate you can eat?”

  “Or would you like to stay here with us?” Faline asked, yawning again.

  Lesa and Lena looked at one another, but before they could speak, there was a strange buzzing in the air and they winked out.

  Everyone turned to Clair.

  She shook her head. “I didn’t do it. And I don’t know any way to find out who did. Or why.” She sank back on the brightly colored rug. “It is possible it was one of those strange slips between worlds and there wasn’t anyone behind it. One of two things I know: I was caught in part by my own carelessness, and in part by believing in Fobo’s good will. She has none. Kwenz had laid a trap there, and I walked into it, led by Fobo, who didn’t want to talk to me at all.”

  ‘Fobo’ and not Glotulae. Before Clair has at least tried to talk of her with respect, but not now. It wasn’t so much that she’d treated Clair with disrespect but that she had proved to be so petty, so greedy and nasty, that Clair no longer believed any good of her at all.

  “Trap,” I repeated, my tired brain catching at the word. “Should we make some for them?”

  Clair shook her head, her white hair even whiter against the crimson and blue and purple and green rug. “I can’t trap people, I just can’t. I thought about it a lot while we waited for Diana, and Lena was telling us about Shelanya, and asking us questions. Oh, she did seem to like it here! Kept telling me over and over it felt like home.”

  “She did indeed,” Seshe said. “And it felt so right to have her here.”

  Clair rubbed her eyes. “As for the finish to my first thing, I can’t make traps, but,” she smiled, “I can try to make up some wards to protect myself from other attempts.”

  Seshe nodded, and Dhana said, “I think it’s about time.”

  Irene smacked her hands. “And if one of those turns Kwenz into a toad, what more does he deserve?”

  “What is your second thing?” Diana murmured. “Is it about the visitors?”

  Clair nodded, still smiling. “I don’t know about Lesa, but Lena — if she can, she will be back.”

  SEVENTEEN — A Surprise for Clair

  Though it certainly didn’t happen any time soon.

  The days drifted by, as days do, and we settled back into our usual patterns. The girls started up patrols, making sure to check the north and east, but there was no sign of Kwenz or Fobo.

  We did not know what had happened when Kwenz returned and discovered his prisoner gone. Clair told us he’d threatened her with some kind of spell that would destroy her will and make her into a puppet ruler, so he could take over Mearsies Heili, but the magic had to come from his horrible brother over on the other continent in Land of the Chwahir. He was experimenting with such spells, Kwenz said — and Clair could be his next subject for those experiments.

  It took me a few days to recover from that invisibility spell. Clair assured me that I would not have vanished forever. The spell would have probably dissolved on me not long after I released it, and flung me back into my body from wherever I was. Only marginally comforting. A black magic spell would have held until I lost contact with my body altogether — that was a horrible thought. Once again I felt very wary of magic and its power. As for that invisibility spell, I wouldn’t use it again except in desperate need.

  Despite her assurances, and the fact that I felt better in body, my spirit was still low, until one morning Clair came down to the Junky and found me alone.

  Rain roared on the ground above. I’d lit a Fire Stick in our fireplace, and sat
next to it, enjoying the warmth, watching the glowing flames leap and vanish, but my mood stayed dull.

  “No one came to Open Court. I’m not surprised,” she said, emerging from the little kitchen alcove with a mug of hot chocolate. “Want some?”

  “No, not now.”

  Clair cocked her head. The girls were all elsewhere; Dhana (loving the stinging cold rain) had chosen today’s patrol. Sherry and Faline had gone up to the white castle to play a game they were making up, asking Seshe to act as trial dummy, and Irene lay in her hammock down below, reading. Diana was out who knew where.

  “What’s wrong?” Clair asked.

  I flopped down. “I think you should take away that crown,” I whispered. I really didn’t want anyone else hearing. “I’m no good as a princess. That is, not a real one — that might have to be a queen.”

  “Ah,” Clair said, sipping her chocolate.

  “I was half ready to run away, if anything happened to you,” I admitted in a rush, and it was only then I realized how knotted up my guts had been. In truth, they’d knotted a whole lot when I lived on Earth, so constantly I’d gotten used to it as an everyday thing, and now I’d slipped unheeding right back into the old feelings. Only it wasn’t fear this time, it was guilt. “I hate Fobo and PJ and his pals worse than anything because they keep calling me an imposter. They call you one! Maybe they’re right about me. Maybe that’s why they make me so mad.”

  Clair said, “I think you’ve discovered something. It must makes me laugh. Like if they called me a flower pot or a marble statue. I may not be much of a queen yet, but I was born with everyone expecting me to rule. So the job is here and I’m trying to do it. She could hurt me worse by calling me a bad queen. That is, if I cared anything for what she says. Saying I’m not a queen at all is just funny.”

  “I see. And I’m a real princess because you picked me. But I still feel like a clod kid from LA. So it does bother me. Maybe in time it won’t.”

  “That’s right.” Clair looked up at the roots in the ceiling, her eyes following their pattern. Then she said, “One thing I realized when I was lying there in that tower was that I won’t be around forever. I mean, I’ve always known that, but thought it would be far in the future. Not like it could happen now.”

  I winced.

  “When I had to face the fact that you girls might not know where I was, or couldn’t find me, and if Kwenz or his horrible brother overseas did away with me, well, I’d be gone. Just like my mother one day didn’t wake up after she drank too much wine on top of sleepweed, and there I was, with an empty throne I didn’t know how to fill.”

  I hunched over, knees under my chin, toes digging into the rug. “Do you think you should get a real princess, or, well, find some grownup to be in charge?”

  Clair sipped again, then said, “I asked myself the same question a long time ago, and I finally found an answer in something Mearsieanne wrote, right after she took over the throne. She was just a seamstress’s assistant, did I tell you? Anyway, she wrote in this big new book — it was new then, you see — something like ...” She shut her eyes and quoted. “I might not last ten years, or a year, or even a week, but starting right now I’m making good changes. So even if I don’t last, whatever I do will, if it’s truly good for all.” Clare opened her eyes. “Whatever good we do will last, in its way. But if I find some grownup, how can I know they will do the good that I want to do? Maybe all they want is power, or maybe they see as good a thing I don’t see as good. Like having nobles, and a court. Or an army.”

  I nodded. “So we keep trying to do good things. And hope we last.”

  “As well as fun things! As for you and the empty throne, I don’t think you would have run away. You might have tried to talk Seshe into ruling, but when she told you she wouldn’t, you might have done your best, for a time. Not forever. I know that. There is no forever with human things. There can’t be. That goes for me being on the throne. What if Kwenz does get me, or even PJ? What if my cousin returns — and he’s decided to grow up after all, and he wants the throne? His mother was heir ahead of mine, after all. I haven’t seen him for a couple of years. When Kwenz was talking about subjects for that horrible spell, he made some reference to his brother and his ‘pet project’, and I had an awful feeling that my cousin was their prisoner again.”

  “Ugh,” I groaned.

  “Then there’s my other aunt, who just flat vanished — I don’t even know if she’s alive. What if she comes back some day — with an army? I don’t even know what she was like, except that she loved magic, and wanted to learn it. What if her goal is to be a great sorcerer-queen?”

  I heaved a sigh, feeling sick.

  “Don’t fret, CJ,” she said. “We do our best. You did right — and we won. If another situation happens, I know you’ll do right. I know it.”

  “I don’t,” I muttered. “Oh, maybe I’ll try, but if I flub?”

  She laughed. “We all flub. I flubbed when I walked into that stupid trap. I should have seen it when Glotulae was so friendly and sweet and smiling in that nasty way. That’s why we all have to look out for each other. Nobody else will! Come on upstairs. Faline wants more bodies for whatever game it is they cooked up. Let’s go play.”

  “Faline,” I repeated, then hesitated.

  Clair paused, her greenish eyes wide. “You saw it too?” She asked, and came back in and shut the door.

  I felt my face heat up. It seemed disloyal to even think anything negative about the girls.

  “That she has ... a secret,” Clair breathed.

  “Something,” I mumbled.

  Clair whooshed out her breath — and I knew right then that she’d been feeling exactly the same. She gave me a little nod. “You too. Well, we’ll just let her find her time and place then.”

  “Yes,” I said.

  And we went to see what fun the others had cooked up.

  o0o

  And so the days continued to slip by, full of games, laughter, good food, and beauty all around us outside. Yes, beautiful even was the bareness of autumn, for that long rain, full of hail and sleet, had stripped the rest of the trees and made mush out of the beautiful carpet of fallen leaves. The silvery and chocolate-brown branches and twigs etched against the cold blue sky, the way our breath plumed silvery in the mornings when the light slanted, low and golden, in the north, the rich smell of duff, were all beautiful to me.

  I had to wear shoes at last, but even that made me gloat because the passage of time just emphasized the truth: that I was here forever!

  We continued our patrols, and Clair continued her magic studies and went to work on those wards. I swung between times of furious study and times of furious running about trying to spy out any Chwahir or Auknuge spies.

  We had some close calls, and even some tangles with Chwahir poking their noses into our area, and we learned to use our knives to do things like cut the girths of saddles, or branches to tangle between legs, for the Chwahir, with their enchanted eyes, had trouble seeing during the daylight.

  PJ’s ‘army’ continued to be easy enough to get rid of. They were not picked for brains but for obedience, and all they were taught was to march and not muss their fancy uniforms. A few pies and illusions (one time giant spiders, another time the gloppy road again) usually chased them right back. PJ and his pals tried once or twice more to invade the forest. The first time they came with the yew canes themselves. One time mud balls took care of them. The second, a sudden sleet storm.

  Meanwhile, Clair had gone on a campaign to get all the tradespeople of the cloud top to stop trading with Glotulae. The guilds promised to spread the word.

  And so the autumn days got colder as the sun slipped farther and farther north.

  One evening I was settling down to write up my records (I’m skipping a lot of things I wrote out in detail in those days, not knowing how a lot of our adventures would end up being pretty much the same sort of thing over and over) when Sherry came running in, panting.

/>   “Trouble?”

  Sherry gulped and nodded, her cheeks flushed. “Clair said to help. The Night-eyes are chasing someone.”

  “One of us?” I hopped to my feet.

  She shook her head. “But if they are chasing someone, it’s gotta be someone on our side.”

  “Of course.” I turned toward the entrance to the other room. “Girls! We got some decoying to do!”

  And so we did, Diana being detailed to find out where the fugitive was, as she was by far the best at trail-craft. The rest of us fanned out, moving toward where the fugitive was being chased.

  I stayed with Sherry. We actually saw Chwahir a couple times. Daytime they were clumsy, but at night they could move quickly and well, because they could see well. A couple of patrols went by, slashing at bushes and low branches with spears and swords.

  Sherry and I slunk away, hiding in a blasted tree that had long gone to moss on one side. They moved straight west, staying north of us. We eased out and continued on, Sherry falling down only once, when we climbed a pair of trees to scout — and she didn’t notice that the Chwahir had hacked nearly through a low branch, a typical piece of pointless meanness.

  But the duff on the ground cushioned her fall and we continued on, our breath clouding briefly in the cold, pale-blue moonlit air.

  Presently we heard running, and persistent bird calls; the signal pulled us northwards, well toward the Shadow. Uncomfortably close, but I didn’t have time to think about it because I heard girl voices clear on the cold air. One sharp girl voice, one low, angry one. Irene and Dhana.

  Sherry sighed, whispering, “Oh, no, back to that again.”

  Squabbling.

  Then we heard crashings and cracklings behind us, and Sherry and I both took to the nearest tree. I swung myself up onto a branch just moments before a figure stumbled into the clearing below, kicking up leaves and duff.

  “Pst! Up here!”

  The figure stopped, arms windmilling, looked around, and then up. Through pleated bare branches the sinister red glow of magic torches bobbed nearer.