Seshe waved her finger regally, but I could feel it, the play was just dead.
Gwen looked around, then plunged away, Sherry following, her snickers almost as loud as the rustles and the “Do they know what they’re doing?” comments from the back.
Finally Seshe said, “You bow like this!” and demonstrated—Puddlenose butted her—she flew across the room, arms windmilling.
There were a couple laughs at that. Puddlenose grinned at the audience, gave a loud goat noise, and came after us.
As we passed by a clump of kids, a girl looked at my crown, sneered on down to my bare toes, then back at my crown. She curled her lip. “If they were even half as funny as they think they are, people wouldn’t be asleep.”
That made Id, Klutz, and Puddlenose almost collapse with laughter, as we filled in behind the other performers. My ears burned and my guts boiled.
Some kids sang a song, a kid juggled bottles, three boys did a dance with a lot of handstands and kicks, somebody else sang, and then they were done. When the man called for each performer or group to stand, we got about ten claps.
None of the others seemed to care, but I brooded about that as funny as they think they are for the rest of the evening.
o0o
The next day, we returned to the harbormaster’s. Because half the shanty town was gone, leaving little for the scavengers, we were told we could either wand again, or move on.
“There’s real work in Danai harbor, next up eastward,” a woman behind the counter told us. “Follow the coast road. But be careful. Rumors are, there’s trouble in the governments of those little countries.”
“Well, we’re not about to get mixed up with any government slobs,” I said. “Thanks!”
“So do we go east?” I asked, when we were outside.
“East if you go far enough is Chwahirsland,” Puddlenose said, holding his nose.
“Ugh!”
“Ech!”
“Pfui!”
“How far?” I asked.
Puddlenose shrugged. “Never been in these parts either, that I remember.”
“But the harbor is before it, sounds like.” Klutz cracked her knuckles.
“I vote for the harbor, and we be careful,” I said, still fuming over that nasty comment. I wanted to get away from the river town, the sooner the better.
Shrugs, hands turned out, rolled eyes—and eastward we tramped.
The land looked much the same as Bermund, and the first couple of small villages like most places, villages clumped along water and roads. (Or maybe the water came first, then the village, and then the road.) Anyway, Autumn asked at the tavern or inn at each village if there were any leftovers, and if the people were nice (and gave out leftover food) she also asked if anyone had seen a boy and girl more or less our age, both musically talented—the boy could play popular tunes on several instruments, the girl’s voice was like birdsong.
Nobody had seen any kids like this, but I guess word went out that strange kids were going along asking questions, because late that day, as we were toiling over the last low hill wondering where and how we’d get something to eat, we heard galloping. We got to the side of the road, thinking that whoever was coming was traveling too fast to stop.
The horseback riders crested the hill—and before we knew it, we found ourselves surrounded by guys dressed all alike in rusty-brown tunics, trousers, and riding boots. A uniform.
Klutz and Id exchanged sour faces. In their experience, uniforms led straight to Madame La Guillotine.
They outnumbered us by about five to one, and had a lot of steely things to help convince us to come along. So we each had to ride on a horse with a guy, over two more hills past more brushy country, some of it farmed, until we reached an outpost castle. This one was made of granite, like most, and not designed to be pretty. It was full of the guys in the brown, and some women. Most of those didn’t wear the brown tunics and pants. The ones who did were obviously riders. The other women wore long gowns in the same color.
The men herded us inside, where somebody yapped questions. Autumn was the only one who spoke the language, and so she introduced us, being polite and helpful.
And gave our real names.
Puddlenose smacked his hand over his eyes.
Autumn had just a moment to give us a bewildered What did I do wrong? look before they separated off “the princess with the crown” and shoved me up some stone stairs and into a bare cell. They hadn’t finished the ceiling in it—the rafters were bare timbers and iron bars, with a rusty-barred window just above.
I tried jumping, but the ceiling was like other ceilings, above my reach.
However ... I looked down at myself. Why not?
I took off my vest, which is good, sturdy linsey-woolsey. Even in summer, this world is seldom as hot as I was used to on Earth, so I’d taken to wearing the black vest over a white shirt. If the air was cool, the sun on the vest kept me warm, but not too warm. The white cotton shirt was perfect for most weathers.
Linsey-woolsey is linen and wool combined, not easy to tear. I managed to get it to rip in strips, but I knew they’d be tough. I twisted my strips into a kind of rope just long enough to loop over a rafter. By swinging and climbing (all that tree work got me in good shape, I discovered) I got my fingers on the rafter. Once I got up on that I crawled along to the window. The rafter was wider than some tree branches.
The window only had two bars in it. A grownup would have a tough time getting through, but I squeezed by, though the bars scraped my ears when I turned my head sideways.
When I popped out, I found myself on a ledge.
The sun had gone down by then, and darkness was falling. Afraid that my white shirt would catch attention I spread my black hair around me as best I could, then eased along the ledge.
I was on a tower, I discovered. It was round, and the top part was narrower, the wall less thick than below, which created the ledge. When I felt my way along, I found another window and peeked in. This window had been built at the same level as the other one on the outside, but the room inside was much higher: the window looked in at floor level, revealing a lit chamber with no people.
I was going to spring to the door when I realized I’d fumbled into a mage’s magic chamber! I recognized that weird kind of lightning-feel to the air and some of the smells of a room where magic’s been done. There were books, but a quick glance at spines, and at the words on the open one, revealed some lingo I didn’t know.
Next to the open book sat vials and some faintly glimmering stones.
The stones gave off a greenish light that gave me the creeps, so I didn’t touch them.
But a clear glass vial full of blue liquid caught my eye, and I reached out a tentative finger to touch it. Nothing happened. I unstoppered the vial—and a smell I will never forget wafted out.
Shrinking fluid!
I looked at the door, wondering if I could sneak out and find the others. But as I neared, I spied a faint orangish glimmer on the latch: a magic ward. A nasty one, judging from the strength of the glitter.
So I returned to the table. I didn’t touch the other vials—didn’t trust them—but the two blues ones got put into the pocket of my skirt, then back I went again into the same room where they had put me.
I pulled down my vest-rope and tied it around my waist, then lay down on the stone floor, since there was nothing else to do.
Not long after that, the door clanked open. In clomped a tough-looking, jowly older guy. He looked like a mean school principal or one of those guys who thinks he can boss everyone else around. He said in very accented Mearsiean, “There are too many suspicious circumstances attached to you and your group. You will be sent to the capital, where they will decide what to do with you.”
“Me?” I said, because in Mearsiean, ‘you’ singular is not the same as ‘you’ plural—at least, in our Mearsiean.
“Yes. The rest of them will remain here, and if we cannot put them to use, they will be ...”
I didn’t understand the word, sounded like ‘dispelled’—that means, killed.
I didn’t want to wait around to find out.
“When?” I asked, trying not to let him see how scared I was.
“Morning, we will have an escort assigned, since we have no transfer tokens left, and the mage is away.”
He slammed the door, and locked it from the outside.
Since it was dark, now was the time to act.
I took out the vial, and dropped some on my head.
The feeling of shrinking was horrible. What happens is, your essence rearranges, and the air and water that makes us what we are kind of goes away. So it feels like a giant hand squooshing you into a doll-sized shape. The last dose was difficult because the vial had become the size of a barrel. I scooped out the sludge and smeared it over my head, but at least it vanished, kind of like that dry ice stuff.
This mage was better than Kwenz, or had better books, because my clothes shrank as well. I kept shrinking until I knew I could fit under the door.
Then the problem was, how to get the vials out?
Roll ’em.
So I got the vials and myself under the door, and then came the fun of bumping them down the stone steps. Blech, that seemed to take forever before I reached the landing outside the next room down. But when I got under the door, I made out vague kid-sized shapes.
“Gwen?” I screeched the name of the most familiar one. “GWEN!”
“Say, Dhana, did you hear something?”
“I think it sounded like—is that you, CJ?”
“By cracky! She’s gone and shrunk!” Klutz cackled.
Reunion—and pretty soon the gang was carefully measuring drops on one another until everyone was shrunk. It used up most of the stuff in the bottle, but it worked.
Then came the long toil to get out of the tower. Now, suddenly, the place was as big as a kingdom. But at least the stable was right next to the room in which they’d questioned Autumn. Puddlenose said that if we could get into the dispatch bag of whoever was taking messages, since they didn’t have transfer tokens, then that would be our way out.
Puddlenose and Seshe, the tallest, rolled the vials after us.
Thank goodness they took the saddle down and stuck it over a wooden thingie while they got the horse readied with its blanket and belly band and so forth. During that time, we scrambled up the wood, using nicks and gouges as handholds, and by pushing and pulling, got ourselves and the vials into the big bag—alongside a delicious-smelling lunch wrapped in some kind of waxy cloth.
Sherry burrowed into that cloth and brought out some sandwich and cheese. The sandwich was kind of pretzely, and very coarse as we were so small, but all was tasty, and very welcome to our empty guts.
Then the rider showed up, and I won’t describe the next bit. I’ve always hated roller coasters.
We flattened ourselves against the canvas of the bag when the rider got his lunch. Then the fellow stopped to change horses, and we managed to get out in the confusion.
After a mile-long trek across the stable, we made our way into the yard of the castle where he’d stopped. It was early morning, and the smell of fresh baking biscuits just about made us go nuts! But Klutz and Id, old hands at sneaking, figured out how to pinch us some eats. So we ended up under a table in some store room, and after we ate, we curled up and slept.
I woke when my body started feeling that kind of itch when you just have to stretch. The spell was wearing off! I discovered my arms and legs all tangled with those of the other kids, just like when we first got transferred.
We crawled out from under the table, all of us incredibly thirsty, but there was a barrel of rain water just under the window, with a spout worked from the roof to inside, and the reassuring glow of a cleaning spell round the rim. We each drank a couple dippers full. The storeroom was lit by a tiny window. There was fruit in baskets, and nuts, along with all kinds of other foods.
We helped ourselves to some fruit and nuts, and half of a drying cake someone had set on a shelf.
When we were done, we eased out through the window, having to boost and pull each other. Then away.
o0o
After a couple of rides on a hay wagon and another wagon transporting barrels that sloshed a little, we ended up in a good sized trade town. Again we went from inn to inn, and at one, Autumn hit what she thought was gold: someone had seen a pair of kids somewhat like her description, who sang as they traveled.
It would turn out to be a wild goose chase, but that was way later. The thing is, Autumn said she was heading south, but first she got us work waiting tables so we could earn a meal.
“It’s strawberry season,” she explained to us, after a talk with a local. “And the growers here usually hire kids for the picking. You can earn good money that way—just be out in front right after dawn, when they come by with the hiring wagons.”
So that was what we did. It was boring work, and your back ached in a short time, but we blabbed and sang as we worked. Since none of the other kids understood us, we talked over everything we’d done. Everything we learned. Which I summed up when we broke for the lunch they brought us.
“Okay, from now on, we don’t say who we are, especially if clods in uniforms bumble around and grab us. No off-world, no princesses!” I took my crown off, realized I had nowhere to put it, so I replaced it, and spread some of my hair over it as much as I could.
“And no Mearsiean,” Seshe said. “I wonder if that might be part of the problem: Mearsies Heili.”
“Hoo yeah.” Puddlenose whistled.
“Got it. So, my name from now on is Klodilla.”
“Clompetta,” Sherry said promptly.
“Splatnik,” Gwen said.
“By cracky! I think I’ll be Byekrakee,” Klutz said, laughing.
“I already got an insult name,” Puddlenose mourned.
“Then you can be Montmorency,” I suggested. “Or Ignatz, or Theodophilus.”
“Those are worse than insults.”
“I’ll be Grunch,” Id finally said, with an air of tasting a new soup.
“Then I want to be Grackle,” Sherry said.
“Splatoon!”
“Footleodion!”
The names kept us busy until our arms were about to fall off—then the wagon came to pick us up, at last.
The person to whom we’d brought our baskets had kept track, and everyone got paid according to how many they got, and how good the berries were. We pooled our earnings, then followed a lot of the other kids away. Turned out that there was a kind of kid way station on the outskirts of town, in an old barn. Leftover dinner from the local inn was brought out, and since there was plenty for everyone, we saved our cash.
So. We still had to get back home, of course, and we had no idea where we were—and even if the people told us, we still wouldn’t know where it was. I mean, if you find yourself in Timbucktoo and they tell you the next town is Glockenspiel, so what? That’s two unknown places. The only thing we were sure of, we had to go north to reach the sea.
We hoped we’d gotten away from those bad guys, but if we saw them, we’d take another direction.
Who wants to read a description of slogging along, and looking at scenery? We did see a couple of castles in the distance, but on this world, there were pretty much always castles of some sort to be found. The countryside gradually got more hilly, with patches of woods, which made Dhana smile, because that meant water. The weather was hot and clear, which was fine for traveling, but you got sweaty and thirsty fast.
We sang all the songs we knew, and made up more, and I (being me) kept stewing about that totally flubbed contest, until one time, when Puddlenose, Klutz, and Id were ahead, gabbling about something or other, I grinched, “Is it just me, or is that really, really mean? When that girl said if we were half as funny as we thought we were.”
Seshe said, “I thought we were funny. And people seemed to be listening, so I thought they liked it, too.”
&nb
sp; “Maybe they were listening because they wanted to make fun,” Gwen said. “Used to happen to me a lot, back you-know-where.”
“Earth or here, you humans are a lot alike,” Dhana said. “You’re interested in each other, but more interested in yourself. I am too, which is why I like being human,” she added, her candor so matter-of-fact that none of us could get mad. (Though Irene might have, but she was not there.)
“Aren’t your underwater people interested in each other?” Gwen asked.
“It’s different,” Dhana said.
Where have we heard that before? I thought, but didn’t say it.
Her graceful fingers flickered through the air, she looked up at the swirls of feathery clouds overhead, then shrugged. “We’re all together, kind of, and kind of not.”
Gwen was frowning. “So what you’re saying is, we sound like those girls who have secret codes, and want you to ask what they are, just so they can tell you it’s secret?”
Dhana started to shake her head, tipped it, then said, “I don’t think I’ve seen that.”
Seshe said, “I have. It’s one way courtiers shut out people they think beneath them.”
“We have all kinds of codes,” I said, uneasy. “I was all ready to tell them what it all meant, though. Well, I wanted to tell them, but I thought they were interested. Well, I wanted them to be interested. Ecccch!”
Sherry shrugged. She liked it when people showed off.
“We just have to make sure we don’t make people feel like they’re pushed out,” Gwen said, her brow puckered when she said ‘we’.
And I wondered how long she’d felt like the rest of us girls had been a we and she a her.
Ugh!
SEVEN
“Halfway: Straight into the Soup”
Don’t let anybody ever tell you that bad guys don’t gossip.
Hah.
Okay, what we didn’t know was, this whole area was made up of three different kingdoms that had been inventing themselves, conquering their neighbors, and being reconquered a bunch over the past few years, plus some smaller bits like duchies and principalities trying to split off from the three main messes.