Mearsies Heili Bounces Back

  The deep, husky voice growled, “Well known, and easy. So you put limits on who can cause the antidote to work?”

  The old man said, “Yes! And here’s the cream of the jest. Listen, you, before you freeze. The only ones who can free you are that drunken queen of yours, or her brat. Neither of whom would ever spend a heartbeat thinking about you. Or caring if they did. Neither of them will ever come seeking you. Ever! Whereas, if you had stayed in my service, you would be free right now. Think about that as time passes while you are stone, ha ha ha!”

  “Lethal.” The deep voice laughed. It was a growly, scary laugh. “Quite lethal. But are they able to think?”

  “My brother insists they can. He was very careful with his experiments on—”

  The voices faded away. Clair looked around, fearing to see dark magic—black smoke—lightning strikes. All things that had scared her when she was littler, because she was scared now. The lesson about the difference between black magic and light magic made sense now.

  That old man wasn’t going to listen to reasonable children. And he certainly wasn’t going to smile and offer people cookies. Not if he could laugh while turning someone to stone, and call Clair’s mom bad names and say she didn’t care. She did care, she did! She was just ... not always well enough to care, but when she was, she did!

  Clair stomped in a circle, mired in unhappy thoughts until Jennet pattered up, her eyes huge.

  “Did you hear that?” Clair asked, whispering now. “What he said about Mama?”

  Jennet nodded. “He called you a brat. You’re not a brat.”

  “He’s icky. I don’t care if he calls me a brat. What it means,” Clair realized as she turned around, “is that I can free them. I think.”

  “Let’s try one!”

  They looked around, avoiding the tall men who all looked so angry. Clair picked one of the women holding a child. She touched the top of that cold stone hand, saying, “Ala! You are now awake!”

  But nothing happened.

  She struck the stone hand harder—and then tried giving the statue a hug. Then tried the ‘clear-away-illusion’ spell, which is one of the simplest there is, illusions being temporary as well as unreal. But nothing happened.

  Clair scowled, remembering those words about ‘easy’.

  Jennet said, “They are staring at us, Clair. Try their eyes.”

  Clair had noticed that the gleams of the dim light outside made the eyes look real, though that could be the smoothness of the stone over the eyeballs. In any case, she disliked the idea of touching someone’s open eye, even on a statue, but anything was worth trying once. So she stood on tiptoe, just barely able to reach the woman’s face, and lightly tapped each eye.

  And the statue made a weird crackling noise, then shuddered.

  Quickly Clair touched the baby’s eyes so the woman wouldn’t be holding a stone baby, and they both wriggled and moved, the baby sinking with a sigh against its mother. The woman squinted down at Clair as if she had a terrible headache, but then tears welled up in her eyes. Her real eyes, that blinked and moved.

  Clair hated to see tears. She felt even worse as the woman dropped to her knees, murmuring broken words of gratitude. That made Clair feel hot pricklies because she didn’t feel she’d earned such praise, so she said, “How’d you get froze?”

  “I refused to remain in the Shadowland to serve in the kitchens of Kwenz of the Chwahir.”

  “He’s the old man with the beard?”

  “Yes,” she whispered. “Stay away from him, child.”

  Clair and Jennet nodded, having already come to that conclusion.

  The woman looked around fearfully, took a slow step, then moved faster and faster, fading into the shadows as she made her way out.

  Jennet said, “Maybe we better go away.”

  “Not until I set them all free.”

  Jennet said, “But my parents aren’t here. I looked at them all.”

  “I’m sorry,” Clair said. “I wish they were. But I can’t leave these others as statues.”

  Jennet did not argue, just followed Clair from person to person. To help Clair reach the taller men, Jennet bent over and made a turtle back for her to climb on. Soon the creak and crackle of breaking magical stone and restored flesh and blood filled the gloomy, cavernous space. Some people took off without speaking, others found the girls to thank them. Many lingered, telling one another their stories; if they were young, Clair asked, for she saw that the adults tended to speak to one another.

  All had refused to serve Kwenz, and some said he had gloated about saving them for a full generation’s time, till everyone they knew was dead, and they’d be a fresh crop of servants. By then his brother would find will-binding spells.

  When Clair came to the boy—she’d saved him for last—he shook himself all over. Jennet laughed, saying, “He reminds me of a puppy!”

  Clair laughed. The boy blinked, squinted, then said, “You have to be Clevarlineh Sherwood.”

  “Yes.”

  “Hi, cousin!” He grinned.

  “I do remember you, Puddlenose,” Clair said happily. Then looked puzzled. “But you went away.”

  He made a face. “That’s because Uncle Doumei came after me again. It was after the last nephew disappeared.”

  “What?”

  “Oh, never mind,” he said, eyeing the five-year-old. He was about eight, then, and felt that life in the Land of the Chwahir wasn’t anything his five-year-old cousin needed to hear about. “Let’s get out of here,” was his next thought. “While we can.”

  “... and so he showed us the way out, explaining that he’d been sent to Kwenz to be taught a lesson, but he suspected it was because someone had broken into Shnit’s magical wards over Narad, his capital. It was, and probably still is, the worst warded city in the entire world,” Clair said, sitting back, then sipping her now-cold chocolate. “Puddlenose says that nothing will grow in that city, there’s so much black magic leaching away at life and light.”

  “So he got turned into stone? How grotty!” Gwen exclaimed.

  “Oh, he kept making jokes about it. Insisting it was a good day’s rest, but heavy on the dreams. Stuff like that. Maybe it was better than life with King Shnit.” Clair pinched her nose on the word ‘Kwenz.’

  “Isn’t that about the time you met Rosey?” I asked.

  Clair grinned. “Oh yes. He kidnapped us, you see. Right afterward.”

  Gwen snapped upright, jaw dropping.

  Faline chortled. “Wish I coulda met him. Even if he is a villain.”

  “If he is.” Clair made a face. “The more I think about those days, the more I think that whatever else he was, he was not a real villain.”

  Gwen looked from one to another of us, and I sensed that our knowledge and her lack were dividing us, so I pointed upward. “That rain is louder than ever. We’re not patrolling any time soon, so why don’t you tell us about Rosey, Clair?”

  Clair gave us one of her question-looks.

  “I always like hearing about Rosey.” Seshe leaned forward. “He is such a mystery! Just when you think you know how villains will act—you get someone like Rosey.”

  Irene still had her chin in her hands. “Why don’t we see him now?”

  “I hope nothing horrible has happened to him,” Clair said. “The more I learn about magic, the more I think he’s actually Shnit’s enemy, though he seems to be Kwenz’s friend. I don’t know how that could be—”

  “Euw!”

  “Pshooie!”

  “Glug!”

  “I didn’t even think you could be friends with a villain,” she said doubtfully.

  “You can’t,” I pronounced, bulling in. “You can’t trust ’em, so why be friends?”

  “Okay, now I’m really curious,” Gwen admitted.

  “Well ...” I could tell Clair was relieved that the rest of us weren’t bored. “Remember that deep, growly voice I mentioned?”

  Nods all around, as above us the rain roared
. Seshe got up to make some more hot chocolate, and Sherry gave the whipped cream a brisk stir.

  “It was right after we started out of the castle. See, it was then that I realized I had no way to get us safely back up to the white castle. I was pretty sick with worry. My cousin said, ‘Which way out? Seems to me we should wander on up to Aunt Mearsieanne’s.’

  “‘We can’t,’ I said, and I was trying hard not to cry. Jennet was already upset because we hadn’t found her parents among the statues, and here was my cousin—the very one who’d been stolen away so long ago. I had truly messed everything up.

  “And just then, this massive, dark-bearded man loomed out of the darkness. I think now he was coming down to the statues, and Puddlenose was sure that Rosey was going to steal him away, maybe to ransom against Shnit, but anyway, there he was, booming out, ‘What have we here? Some hostages, hah hah hah!’ It was the deep, growly voice! ‘It seems my over-confident friend needs a lesson in caution.’ And next thing we knew we were transported a long distance ...” Clair sat back, that far-away look making her smile a little as the firelight leaped and gleamed in her eyes.

  She went on to describe how awful they all felt after the long transfer. They came out of it hearing the booming-voiced fellow saying things like You’re all my prisoners now, ha ha, ho ho! Now you must learn how terrible the Chwahir are, and a lot of similar threats.

  “He said he was going to throw us in a cell, which turned out to be a small bedroom. Not much was in it but a bed with an old quilt, and a tiny window that looked straight up a rocky cliff-side. He brought us all what he called prisoner-slop—saying we’d have to get used to it, and the like, but what he gave us was boiled grain with honey and milk, and biscuits with a hunk of cheese and some tasty greenstuff put into each. We gobbled the food down, drank the milk he left in a big bowl—we shared, a sip apiece until it was gone—and then we all jumped up onto the bed, and in the middle of trying to figure out where we were and what was going to happen, we fell asleep.”

  When the little kids woke up, the man let them out. Rosey’s house was indeed a small house built high on a cliff. It overlooked a vast distance, a quilt of farms and forests, all embroidered by the twinkling blue of rivers, streams and a couple of small lakes.

  He was a big, stout man in a black robe, with a bristly black beard and unkempt hair. The house was comprised of the main room, which had walls solid with books, and upstairs of a kind of loft with two small bedrooms, one of which the kids had been put in.

  Rosey claimed they were his prisoners, and he would ransom them because King Shnit of the Chwahir wanted to get his hands on them to make them statues, or make them scrub all the floors in his giant castle, and as soon as they were done to start again, never pausing to eat. All scary things to five-year-olds. Puddlenose knew the king was far worse, and for a time he teased the girls by making even more dire threats—he was a little jealous of their easy life.

  But a little bit of conversation ended that pretty fast, when he found out why Jennet was living with Clair, and why Clair had so much free time. He was able to put together the clues about Clair’s mom better than the girls at the time, so he soon started making up stories to get them to laugh, and promising that as soon as the black-beard fellow put them to work or threatened them, he’d show them how to run away.

  The growly-voiced villain left them alone for a time, and they explored outside—discovering soon that the mountainside was far too steep to get away on foot. Obviously the fellow came and went by magic.

  Next time Blackbeard showed up, Clair asked his name. The deep, rumbling voice mumbled something that sounded like ‘Mount Rose’ or Mondros, which soon became Rosey to the kids. At first they didn’t use it to his face, but when he heard it, he laughed and said that that was close enough to his name, and he liked it right fine.

  The thing was, after putting a good scare into them about the Chwahir, and about kids who didn’t learn their transport magic before using it, and such-like, he left one of his books open after a day or two—and right there on the page was the transport spell. It took several subsequent kidnappings for Clair to realize that it was the white magic spell, not the faster, but far more dangerous black spell—but Rosey explained his having a white magic book by saying that one ought to always know one’s enemy.

  Clair took that as a lesson, as she did the one about magic. When they got home, she applied herself earnestly to her studies, and at first, the other two played happily enough. But Puddlenose soon got restless, as he always was going to do. And since there was only a five-year-old girl to play with, he took to wandering farther and farther, just to explore, he’d explain. He’d be gone longer and longer. Clair and Jennet missed him, but as Clair’s mom didn’t seem to notice him whether he was right there at the dinner table or gone, there was no one to stop him—and then came the day that stretched into two, then three, then a week, and then a year. And longer.

  Clair set her cup down, and sat back.

  Everyone tried to guess whether Rosey was a villain or not, and why he might kidnap Mearsieans just to let them easily escape. “I think it’s because he’s Kwenz’s old friend, and hates Shnit,” Clair said at the time.

  We know a lot more now, of course.

  But there’s more about Rosey way, way further along in the records, so I’ll stop the rewrite of this one just where it ended when I first put it down, not so long after I came.

  “Hey, the rain is stopped,” Sherry yelled—breaking into her own story of her first clash with Kwenz, which wasn’t all that interesting (though it had been awful at the time).

  Kwenz, the Shadow, Sherry’s fumbling attempts at being a housemaid (causing Kwenz to fire her from the job and send her out—she wasn’t even worth turning into something!), all were forgotten at the prospect of running around in the fresh air.

  We all raced up into the brisk wind. The sun was just emerging from the clouds, birds trilled again, rain dripped from the trees—and we just had to run around and have a mud fight, leaving storytelling for another day.

  TWO

  “How to Cure the Romantically Minded in One Easy Lesson”

  Gwen was thoughtful after that last story, and for a while we didn’t have any more personal ones, just made up ones. We also acted out what seemed the millionth variation on Faline’s new play, When PJ Meets the Goat at the Bridge.

  One day Gwen was walking beside me as the bunch of us headed out to do a whole-forest patrol, and she said, “Why doesn’t Clair like to talk about her past? Everything is so good now!”

  “I dunno.” I flapped my arms. “She might feel differently than we do. I mean, I love gloating over nastarooni I don’t have to put up with any more.”

  Sherry usually didn’t talk seriously, so when we heard her speak up behind us, we both jumped.

  “She doesn’t talk about the things she can’t fix,” Sherry said, her big blue eyes kind of sad.

  Gwen looked puzzled. I thought this over. “You mean, about Puddlenose and their creepy uncle trying to grab him back to Land of the Chwahir?”

  Sherry nodded so hard her curls jiggled. “That and worse ones.”

  “Like when her mom died? She’s hardly said a word about that.” I shuddered. I’d never asked, either. If Clair wanted to talk about it, I figured, she would. Meanwhile, it wasn’t anything I wanted to hear about.

  Sherry nodded again. “Ones like that.”

  “There’s stuff as bad as that?” Gwen asked, her droopy eyes going round.

  Sherry looked around at the forest. Fog wreathed through the upper branches, obscuring them. The air was just cool, not cold, and soft, and the forest as beautiful as ever, but Sherry shivered, bent her head, and said in a murmur, “She didn’t tell you why she didn’t go around to the provinces. Maybe I better tell you, so nobody asks.”

  Gwen was silent, her eyes huge.

  My stomach squinched. “Go ahead.”

  “Well, she started with the Auknuges. Her meeting with Fob
o was horrid enough, but when she went out to the woods—what used to be the North Wood—and saw it all cut down. All the trees. Every one. She just sat down and cried and cried. Then we came home. She didn’t go out again. Until we all did, you know. When we did.” Sherry wound her hands in a circle.

  “Of course. She couldn’t fix the forest.” I whistled—that made a lot of sense. Then I snarkled. “But we’ve kept the Auknuges from cutting down any more trees!”

  Sherry grinned. “That we have.”

  “And Clair’s been getting the guilds to not trade with them. Though I guess it’s slow going,” I added, pointing my thumb down in the “stinker alert!” sign. “Seems like a bunch of clods like all that money Fobo’s brother sends, so they hold their noses and deal with Fobo anyway. Because she spends so much on marble and gold and stuff, trying to make the Squashed Wedding Cake bigger and fancier than ever.”

  Diana scowled. “Is that why Clair looks sour some days after morning boredom?” ‘Morning boredom’ was our slang for Clair’s queenly interviews.

  “She told me she’s trying to find ways where the people can still trade outside of the country. Thanks to Irene, it’s actually working—we’ve got the Tornacio Islands again. We just have to get trade from here to the Torns going, when we don’t exactly have a really good harbor off Wesset North.” When I finished explaining that, I thought, wow, I sound like I actually know this stuff.

  “Wow, you really know this stuff,” Dhana said, walking backwards as she stared at me.

  I had to snicker, but I also had to be honest. “That’s about as much as I do know.” When I caught Seshe looking at me, I said in a kind of protest, “Hey, I can’t do anything at those interviews. Clair says if we girls keep an eye out for the Chwahir down here in the forest, we’re helping much more than if I sat there trying not to snore during morning boredom, because none of the grownups would listen to me anyway.”

  “Snore!” Faline repeated, and of course had to make snoring noises. That started off a snorting contest so it sounded like a herd of wild boars surrounded me.

  Seshe said, “I wasn’t giving you a fish eye, CJ. In fact, I was thinking, you’ve learned a lot. So has Clair. I think—I think you’re where she was last year.”