Clair went back to her magic chambers to tackle the mystery ring and box. Puddlenose joined the three who were going to pick the border for the tree chase. I headed for my room, but stopped when I heard a quiet step.
Gwen joined me. In the distance, Faline and Sherry hooted and laughed—they were sliding down the grand banister again.
Gwen said, “I think we’ll get another chance for the rain thing.”
“Okay.” I had to work hard not to show how annoyed I was—fair was fair.
She grinned. “Don’t you see it? Puddlenose might not be good in trees. So if he loses ... and he’s much taller than PJ ... well, when else would we ever see him wearing one of Fobo’s dresses?”
My annoyance vanished, and I laughed all the way to my room, then hit the books.
o0o
Next day, we gathered in the clearing that was the agreed-on start of our boundary.
The forest isn’t all one kind of tree. It not only is a mix in any given part, but the whole changes. It’s oakier toward the southeast, and as the land rises toward the western border, there’s a lot more pine that grows thick and wild. In fact, it’s really wild, in places dark even at noon, and though we’d poked westward a few times, it was tough going. We’d retreat, always talking about planning a camping trip so we could explore all the way to the mountains.
Anyway, the boundary for our game was pretty much in the southeast, where the trees were old, and spread out, making a wonderful living ceiling.
Perfect for us.
We cut into two teams, and Clair unpocketed our tossing coin. We don’t have a lot of coinage, and what we have is hammered, one at a time, with a spell on it to keep it from being messed with. Most people either trade, or they have letters of credit, with magical marks called sveds so you know it’s honest, and they work kind of like checks. On one side of the coin is the Mearsies Heili crest, or flag, with its six lilies in a stripe—one for each province—and the three stars signifying the alliance between humans, Arusians, and the Lake People.
On the flag, at the bottom right, is a crown, but on the coins, the crown is on the reverse side. This crown is a picture of a real one, a hideously ugly and uncomfortable thing that Clair hates, but wears for formal occasions, because it has Historical Significance. (Also, because the six spiky thingios sticking up with their golden carving and diamond tips make her look taller.) I’m mentioning Six Stix now, because that crown ends up in one of our biggest adventures, later on. Who could have guessed?
Anyway, we called “crown” and the other side got “flag”—Clair tossed the coin—and it landed flag side up. That meant we had to chase.
We looked at one another, then turned to Seshe. I hate counting, but I know we shouldn’t stick it on Seshe.
“I don’t mind.” She laughed. “It keeps me in practice.”
She has this method where she flickers fingers and toes, which makes the count go in twenties, so she doesn’t have to do every number. (I’ve tried, and get lost somewhere after 200.)
So she started, and Dhana watched Seshe, then turned away when a butterfly fluttered from a shrub nearby. Dhana’s fingers fluttered, somehow making us see a tree full of butterflies.
“I love hands,” she exclaimed. “They do so many things!”
And she was off, whirling around the clearing, eyes half closed, doing a butterfly dance while Seshe’s fingers and toes did their little taps. Irene rolled her eyes, but before she could say anything, Faline spoke up.
She’d been quiet, which was unusual. “We have to win.” Even her freckles looked serious. “I am determined we are not going to miss the chance to see Puddlenose wearing that Fobo gown with the giant polka-dots and the lace bustle. It will be the funniest sight of a lifetime!”
“What’s Clair going to wear?” Irene asked. “She’d be lost in a Fobo dress.”
“PJ’s pink-and-orange suit,” Faline declared. “She hates orange, but she really hates pink.”
“Especially pepto-bismo pink,” I said.
They all knew that pepto-bismo pink was bright anti-barf medicine pink, the ugliest pink of all the pinks.
“I think Fobo needs to see them, to really make it funny,” Irene declared. “Let’s get Puddlenose a really ugly wig, and he can be a princess from Lisalottaloony Land, like Lesa was.”
“What could be worse than one of Fobo’s own wigs?”
Seshe opened her eyes. “Fobo’ll just commend Puddlenose for his good taste,” she said. “And make fun of him behind his back for his terrible figure.” Her eyes closed and she went right back to her counting rhythm.
Faline turned a handspring, her bright red braids flopping. When she was upright, she said, “I think Seshe’s right. I bet you anything Fobo doesn’t even remember what dresses she has, unless they’re a day old, because she’s got so many in that closet.”
Seshe’s eyes opened again. “I know she doesn’t. When Diana and I pretended to be maids, that time, we overheard the seamstresses downstairs. They were deciding which gowns to take out and take apart and remake in new combinations. Fobo thinks the gowns all new.”
Irene said, “You mean, she’s paying for new ones, but getting old ones?”
Seshe’s eyes were closed again, but she nodded once.
“Serves her right.” Irene crossed her arms.
“I wonder if all the servants are in cahoots, stealing right and left,” I said.
“Probably.” Faline chortled.
I scowled, wondering why it bothered me, then lit on a reason. “They’re really stealing from Clair.”
Faline’s scowl was worse than mine. “That’s right!”
“Five hundred,” Seshe said. “Shall we split up?”
“No.” Faline waved her arms. “Then we bumble all over, and some do the same places twice, and skip others. Let’s do like we patrol when we’re looking for someone, spread in a line where we can see one another, and go round the whole boundary, then in, smaller and smaller circles.”
Dhana landed in the middle of us, twirled around so lightly the long grass didn’t even mash down. “Good idea.”
She leaped into the nearest tree without rustling a leaf, leaving the rest of us to scramble, grunt, and swing our way after her.
“Okay, we’re officially in the trees,” I said. “Spread as far as we can still see each other. I’ll stay at the boundary trees.” I added that when I realized I was already in a boundary tree, practically sitting on the tied cloth.
So everyone spread out to one side of me. I couldn’t see Seshe at the far end, or Dhana, but I was able to keep Irene’s lacy sky blue top in view, and Faline’s red hair. And I made sure all the trees between me and them were empty of hiding kids.
Along we went, at first calling back and forth, but as the day began to wane, and we’d only found Sherry (who was the worst at climbing) and Diana (the best, but she picked a place that Dhana already knew, to her disgust) we stopped babbling and started pushing harder.
That’s when we heard the noises. Rustling—voices—a crack of laughter.
Sherry and Diana were climbing along just for fun.
“Hey, who’s cheating?” Faline bellowed. “They’re on the ground!”
And Sherry began pegging the cheaters with pods. Pok! Pok!
Someone yelled, “Ow!” and someone else laughed.
I didn’t recognize that laugh, but one thing for sure, it was the nasal, braying laugh of a boy more or less Puddlenose’s age. We girls can be just as loud, but we don’t bray. Unless on purpose.
The noises stopped abruptly, then one of them said in Chwahir, “Hey! There’s someone up there!”
Sherry thought that was funny, and cackled with laughter. I froze. Zizzed my head to the side, to meet Faline’s bug eyes.
“It’s them,” she whispered so loud it sounded like a forest fire.
“It’s them!” one of the clods said in Chwahir, which I could understand because of my medallion.
We dropped out of the tr
ees onto a knoll, where the Chwahir boys had gathered in a clump, some of them staring up at the trees for more of us, others looking around. For a second or two, everybody eyed everybody else.
Their uniform was the usual ill-fitting, rusty-black, sturdy linsey-woolsey typically worn in the Shadow. Seshe insisted it wasn’t fair for them to be stuck living in the eternal dark of the Shadowland, but wow, ol’ Kwenz sure liked black. His castle was black, his people wore black, and he’d put that horrible spell on them so their eyes were black.
That made it difficult to see exactly who they were looking at.
The one in the middle was a beanpole more or less Puddlenose’s age, tall and lanky, his posture a kind of awkward capital S. His face was long, chin slightly receding, his mouth and eyes kind of reminding me a little of Barney Fife, this goggly-eyed guy on TV back on Earth. His hair was black and lank, and his skin the usual pasty-pale Chwahir color that reminded me of dead mackerels.
He pointed at me. “I know who you are.” His Mearsiean was flat-accented, but perfectly understandable.
“Princess Cherene Jennet Sherwood.” I copied Irene’s dramatic arm-crossing. “You must be Jilo, accompanied by Poopdeck, Lunkhead, Pig-eye, Fonesmish, and Glotsnotsplatglue.” Best ones I’d made up on the spot in a long time! But did he appreciate it? Talent wasted!
Instead, he muttered, made a familiar sign—and the world around me shimmered. The boys burst into brays, howls, and snackles of laughter.
Illusory spell! I mirrored it back—one of the first things I’d learned—and there he was, looking like a rotting zombie like in one of those movies on Earth.
Jilo did another spell, I mirrored it—and we girls appeared to the other side as purple pod people with tentacle arms.
Then it was time for animals. He turned me into a goose (his clods began giving sound effects, cluing me in) and I made him a giraffe. Then the battle was on, and we both started including the people on the other side.
Jilo called a halt when some of the spell-casting caused half of our people to look like snails, which meant the other half all started lunging forward, feet raised. Apparently the clod gang had as much trouble as my excellent, brilliant friends understanding when a spell was illusion and when real. Anyway, nobody wanted their feet stomped.
“What are you doing here, anyway?” I demanded. “This is our territory.”
“No it isn’t,” he shot back. “You people usurped it. We have as much right to it as you do. More.”
“Figures you’d think that, you and that grundge-bearded ol’ geez. Where’d he dig you up, anyway?”
“I earned my place,” Jilo nasalled. “My father’s captain of the first guard.”
“Oh, the stupidest of the stupids.” I was mad as fire about that ‘earned’ biznai. I knew immediately it was a crack aimed at me, and my becoming a princess.
Their braying laughter made it clear that, yep, it had been aimed at me, and further, my retort had lead-ballooned.
“A lot you know about anything,” Jilo said.
That wasn’t any better as a comeback, heh heh, and the girls ranged behind me offered an entire barnyard of disapproving noises.
“I know everything worth knowing. Which does not include you,” I said loftily, copying Irene when she was being most maddening—and knew it.
One of the clotpoles had muttered something to Jilo while Faline was leading the hooting squad; I heard the word “promotion”.
Jilo looked up with a considering expression, like he was counting us, and I realized they were going to try to make the grab on us. After all, Kwenz had made it clear that if he got his mitts on us, he’d use us against Clair.
So? “Get ’em, girls.” I pointed, field marshal at the brink of battle. “Throw ’em clear back to their pig sty!”
Everybody jumped to action, Sherry flying over by a branch to land squarely on the back of a big clod.
It was getting dark, which meant their best seeing time and our worst, and they were bigger. But they were trying to grab us, which is a lot harder than trying to air condition one’s innards with a pointy thing, which neither side had thought to bring along.
So the air filled with mud, bits of grass, and thuds and oofs and pocalubes from us and curses from them. Elbows, knees, way too many feet got in my way, but I gave back in plenty.
I hadn’t wanted Puddlenose on my team, but it occurred to me when I was squished under a dogpile that his size would’ve been useful now. But he and Clair were hiding somewhere way far away, and I knew Puddlenose would even be mad he’d missed the fun.
Not that it was fun right then. I got my hair pulled far too many times, and I also learned that Jilo (unlike PJ) was not ticklish, when Diana did a flat launch, bowling over a couple of them, so that three girls could pounce on Jilo. We both tried to take the others prisoner, got kicked or heaved off, until at last the scramble stopped, everyone out of breath, and we discovered that roughly half had the other half pinned down in some way or other.
I couldn’t stand offering a truce, but Jilo probably felt the same. We all heard a distant horn, and the Chwahir looked up. I remembered our game. Nobody really said much beyond insults and threats, as we disentangled and separated off, us to troop to the Junky, where we found the rest of Diana’s and Sherry’s team gathered in triumph.
Turned out to be even-steven: they were mad to have missed the fun (ha, some fun) and of course we?
Had to get and wear the Auknuge fashion specials.
At least PJ was madder to see me in his pink-and-orange suit than I was to be wearing it.
FOUR
“Halfway Around the World in a Mess of Days”
We girls hadn’t thought about leaving MH—why should we? We were happy at home. But one thing about adventures, they seldom ask what you would like before you wake up and find yourself on one.
So, the next one followed on pretty fast.
Puddlenose insisted on sneaking into the Shadow to spy out Jilo and his pals. When he didn’t reappear for a couple of days, Clair got worried, and so Gwen and Seshe went down the mountain to see if they could find him.
When they didn’t reappear, Clair got more worried. I’d been helping out with some of the morning boredom, mostly listening to people who wanted to complain about things. Clair had told me that a lot of folks just want to blab on and on, and if you listen politely often they either talk themselves into doing the right thing, or else they demand something so ridiculous the answer is an easy no. I could help her by sorting those ones out when she ended up with a lot of people to see. If someone had a real problem, I set them aside for her.
Well, after a long morning of really dumb stuff, Clair was still worried, so I said, “How about I go check?”
“I think I should. Except I’ve still got that Mage Council person coming. I don’t know which day.”
I made a sour face. “I’d rather check then have to deal with some super-important flooble! What if I bow wrong and they turn me into a cactus?”
Clair laughed her kitten-squeak laugh, and I ran off to change my clothes—forgetting about my little silver crown. I wore it as my Badge of Respectability when I helped with morning boredom, and since it was small, and fitted my head, it acted like a fancy headband, so half the time I forgot it was there.
I ran off to change back into my favorite outfit—white shirt, black vest, green skirt, bare feet—and then to find out whose turn it was to patrol.
Meanwhile, Klutz and Id (the kid mayors of Wesset North) had gotten the news about Puddlenose being captured through a spy they had in the Shadowland. They decided to investigate ...
Dhana and I ghost-footed down the trail, pausing like super-spies to peer around every corner. We snaked to the outskirts of the Shadow, scanning carefully before we started down the last of the rocky trail, and—
White painful light exploded.
And I woke up groaning. A warm thing bumped my neck. I moaned, “Doooooon’t,” rolled away ... and found myself next
to Dhana. Our eyes were about four inches apart, hers bleary. “Huh?” she whispered.
“Baggies!” I croaked.
Slowly I put together the clues: we’d walked into some kind of magical trap. Only ... I looked around. How did all the others end up in it? Because Puddlenose lay face down, his feet near my face. “So that’s what woke me up,” I said, pointing.
Gwen gave a weak laugh. Stinky feet was her favorite joke—she never got tired of it.
I rolled the other way. Red hair—Faline? No, it was long and bristly-straight rather than short and bristly-curly. Klutz and Id? Yep. How’d we end up with Wesset North’s mayors?
Those of us who’d wakened worked on the others.
“Arrrrgh,” Puddlenose groaned.
“Hey, it’s your feet stinking us into comas,” I cracked, and Gwen and Klutz shook with laughter.
Then Klutz grimaced, rubbing her ankle. “I tripped while trying to escape. It hurts.”
“We better wrap it up,” Seshe said doubtfully. “We don’t know where we are, but it’s for certain we’ll need to be walking if we want to get home.”
We looked around, then. Not that there was much to see: we were in a bare room, the walls whitewashed, the floor smooth, worn tiles of a color pretty much like mud.
Gwen hopped to the door—locked. The one window was shuttered from the outside. The light came from a glow globe on a sconce, high up above the door.
While she checked that, Dhana ripped out the hem of her skirt, which had been floor length. She and Seshe passed the length back and forth, binding Klutz’s ankle. When it was done, Klutz wiggled her toes. “Better. Thanks! Gotta wake up Id.”
“I already tried,” Gwen said. “Because he landed with his arm over my nose. I think you squished him when you fell.”
“Nonsense. He’s just worse than a log. I know from our days back in France.” Klutz leaned down close to Id’s ear, and said (in French) “Here comes the Committee of Public Safety!”
Id shot up, eyes bugging.
“Works like a cactus to the seat,” Klutz gloated, as Gwen went back to the door, and began fiddling with it.