“Wait!” Scillia called out, her voice still thick with emotion. “Jem, we have to stick together now.”
It was such a sensible thing to say that even Jem had to acknowledge it, and he came back.
“All right,” he said. “But you have made such a hash of things, I am going to get us back. I am the oldest boy, after all. And the king’s true son.” He said it on purpose, knowing how it would hurt Scillia, and smiled when her face took on a stricken look. Then, glancing around, he added, “No one move. We will have to be careful not to make any more new trails.”
They stood still and tried to unravel the proper direction to take, but it was quite beyond them all.
Finally Jem said, “I think this is the way,” and started toward an opening between the trees with such authority, Scillia and Corrie followed at once.
When they came at last to a stream tumbling around enormous boulders in its spring spate, Scillia sat down grumpily on the bank. “We did not pass a stream before.”
Jem nodded miserably, his failure too obvious for excuses. But he made one anyway. “I was not the one who got us lost first.”
“Never mind,” Corrie said, “we could all use a drink.” He kneeled down at the water’s edge and proceeded to lap at the icy water.
There was no warning growl as the great cat leaped from an overhanging branch, landing on Corrie’s back, and tumbling him into the river. Corrie screamed with pain and shock and Jem, on the bank, screamed back in fright. But Scillia tore off her cape, grabbed up a fallen tree limb, and waded into the water. She began to whack hysterically at the floundering cat, and occasionally landed a blow.
The cat was flustered by the attack, hampered by the rushing water. It backed away, snarling, then was caught by a heavy undertow and swept downstream a hundred yards. When it emerged, it was on the other side of the river and too far away to mount a second attack. It shook itself angrily, growled once in the direction of the children, then turned and trotted off to find easier prey.
“Are you hurt?” Scillia cried, pulling the sodden Corrie onto the bank where he stood shakily, staring into space.
“What a stupid question,” Jem said, his voice still high with fright. “His neck’s bleeding.”
“Where?” Scillia turned Corrie around. His eyes were cloudy with shock and his teeth chattered. Two deep holes on the left side of his neck bled profusely now that the cold water was no longer staunching them. “Does it hurt, Corrie?”
“Hurt?” The word was ghostlike, breathy, full of pain. He began to tremble. “Hurt?”
Scillia put her arm around his waist.
“Of course it hurts.” Jem was in charge once more. “We have to get him some help.”
“Help?” Corrie seemed incapable of more than one word at a time. He looked as if he were about to fall down.
“Jem, we will have to carry him.”
“Carry him? He weighs more than I do.”
“If we hold our hands together, hand over wrist, we can make him a seat,” Scillia said.
“Seat?” Corrie was breathing funny; his face had lost all color.
“The first thing you had better do,” a sensible voice, a bit out of breath, said behind them, “is to get him out of those wet clothes and see how bad the bites are.”
Scillia turned so suddenly, she nearly let go of Corrie. The speaker was the laughing man, though he was not laughing now. He took Corrie from her and laid him down on the ground. Stripping off the boy’s wet jacket and shirt, the man rolled him gently onto his right side.
“Deep punctures but no tears,” he said. “Good news—and bad.” He swabbed at the bleeding wounds, then held Corrie’s wet shirt hard against the punctures. “We need to get you a good salve, my lad. And dry clothes.”
“He can have my cape,” Scillia said.
“Give me your jacket, boy,” the man said to Jem, ignoring Scillia’s offer.
“Wouldn’t Scillia’s cape be better?”
“You young snot! She was in the water herself after that cat, and you still wetting your pants on shore.”
“I never!” Jem said. But he handed over his jacket quickly. Then he asked, his voice suddenly sly, “If you were close enough to see all that, why weren’t you in the river, too?”
Scillia stared at the man, her face full of the same question.
He shrugged. “I had my bow out and an arrow nocked, boy. I was waiting for a shot that wouldn’t hit your brother. But then your sister waded in with her cudgel and the cat was gone downstream before I could let it fly. You can go back and pick up my gear. I dropped it and came at a run.” He gestured back along the river bank with his head. “I was out hoping for some deer meat. I didn’t expect to be carting home such a young buck!” He laughed. “Up you come, my lad.” He picked up Corrie easily in his arms and walked along the river side.
Scillia trotted next to him, holding on to Corrie’s hand.
After a moment’s hesitation, Jem ran back, found the bow and arrows on the trail, gathered them up, then followed quickly after.
Buy The One-Armed Queen Now!
A Personal History by Jane Yolen
I was born in New York City on February 11, 1939. Because February 11 is also Thomas Edison’s birthday, my parents used to say I brought light into their world. But my parents were both writers and prone to exaggeration. My father was a journalist; my mother wrote short stories and created crossword puzzles and double acrostics. My younger brother, Steve, eventually became a newspaperman. We were a family of an awful lot of words!
We lived in the city for most of my childhood, with two brief moves: to California for a year while my father worked as a publicity agent for Warner Bros. films, and then to Newport News, Virginia, during the World War II years, when my mother moved my baby brother and me in with her parents while my father was stationed in London running the Army’s secret radio.
When I was thirteen, we moved to Connecticut. After college I worked in book publishing in New York for five years, married, and after a year traveling around Europe and the Middle East with my husband in a Volkswagen camper, returned to the States. We bought a house in Massachusetts, where we lived almost happily ever after, raising three wonderful children.
I say “almost,” because in 2006, my wonderful husband of forty-four years—Professor David Stemple, the original Pa in my Caldecott Award–winning picture book, Owl Moon—died. I still live in the same house in Massachusetts.
And I am still writing.
I have often been called the “Hans Christian Andersen of America,” something first noted in Newsweek close to forty years ago because I was writing a lot of my own fairy tales at the time.
The sum of my books—including some eighty-five fairy tales in a variety of collections and anthologies—is now well over 335. Probably the most famous are Owl Moon, The Devil’s Arithmetic, and How Do Dinosaurs Say Goodnight? My work ranges from rhymed picture books and baby board books, through middle grade fiction, poetry collections, and nonfiction, to novels and story collections for young adults and adults. I’ve also written lyrics for folk and rock groups, scripted several animated shorts, and done voiceover work for animated short movies. And I do a monthly radio show called Once Upon a Time.
These days, my work includes writing books with each of my three children, now grown up and with families of their own. With Heidi, I have written mostly picture books, including Not All Princesses Dress in Pink and the nonfiction series Unsolved Mysteries from History. With my son Adam, I have written a series of Rock and Roll Fairy Tales for middle grades, among other fantasy novels. With my son Jason, who is an award-winning nature photographer, I have written poems to accompany his photographs for books like Wild Wings and Color Me a Rhyme.
And I am still writing.
Oh—along the way, I have won a lot of awards: two Nebula Awards, a World Fantasy Award, a Caldecott Medal, the Golden Kite Award, three Mythopoeic Awards, two Christopher Awards, the Jewish Book Award, and a nomination
for the National Book Award, among many accolades. I have also won (for my full body of work) the World Fantasy Award for Lifetime Achievement, the Science Fiction Poetry Association’s Grand Master Award, the Catholic Library Association’s Regina Medal, the University of Minnesota’s Kerlan Award, the University of Southern Mississippi and de Grummond Children’s Literature Collection’s Southern Miss Medallion, and the Smith College Medal. Six colleges and universities have given me honorary doctorate degrees. One of my awards, the Skylark, given by the New England Science Fiction Association, set my good coat on fire when the top part of it (a large magnifying glass) caught the sunlight. So I always give this warning: Be careful with awards and put them where the sun don’t shine!
Also of note—in case you find yourself in a children’s book trivia contest—I lost my fencing foil in Grand Central Station during a date, fell overboard while whitewater rafting in the Colorado River, and rode in a dog sled in Alaska one March day.
And yes—I am still writing.
At a Yolen cousins reunion as a child, holding up a photograph of myself. In the photo, I am about one year old, maybe two.
Sitting on the statue of Hans Christian Andersen in Central Park in New York in 1961, when I was twenty-two. (Photo by David Stemple.)
Enjoying Dirleton Castle in Scotland in 2010.
Signing my Caldecott Medal–winning book Owl Moon in 2011.
Reading for an audience at the Emily Dickinson Museum in Amherst, Massachusetts, in 2012.
Visiting Andrew Lang’s gravesite at the Cathedral of Saint Andrew in Scotland in 2011.
All rights reserved, including without limitation the right to reproduce this ebook or any portion thereof in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of the publisher.
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, events, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, businesses, companies, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.
Copyright © 1989 by Jane Yolen
Cover design by Kat JK Lee
ISBN: 978-1-5040-3452-4
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Jane Yolen, White Jenna
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