Garden Princess (7 page)

It was the princess. She straightened, looking up and down the path. “Marguerite?” she said, louder this time. “If this is some sort of trick, it isn’t funny!”

Too loud! thought Krazo.

The princess looked as if she agreed; she seemed to shrink into herself as if she, too, feared the return of Hortensia. She tiptoed over to the daisy and reached out with a trembling hand to touch its blossoms and leaves. “Marguerite?” she whispered. Then she gasped, and Krazo saw her hand close around the diamond earring. She stared at it, then fell to her knees beside the daisy.

But what was that in her other hand? Coral beads? Where had she found those? Krazo was sure he had just seen Hortensia wearing them.

Then he remembered. There were two strings of coral beads: two sisters, two necklaces. Hortensia had taken one, but not the other, and the princess had taken it for herself.

Oh! Oh! This was too much! Now she was pushing aside the leaves of the daisy. She was looking for the other earring!

Krazo darted forward. The princess gave a cry of surprise as he bit down — hard — on her wrist.

“Ow!” she yelped. Krazo seized the earring in his beak and yanked it away. He skittered down the path, craning his head to see if the princess would follow. When she did, he would rush back and get the other earring, too.

But she wasn’t coming after him. Krazo slowed, and then he stopped.

The princess’s wrist was in her mouth, and she was crying. Foolish girl! She wasn’t even looking at the diamond! He could run back and grab it before she even noticed. He could grab the coral beads while he was at it.

But he didn’t. For he could feel the familiar catch in his throat. And as the princess’s tears went on, the catch in his throat grew worse. It became a pain in his breast.

Such a thing had never happened to him before. The girls he had seen cry had never cried this long. That was because Hortensia was changing them into flowers, and once that was finished, so was the crying. But now Hortensia was nowhere in sight, and Krazo was in agony; he felt as if an eagle’s talons were ripping at his heart. He opened his beak to cry out, but he couldn’t make a sound. A tremor ran through his body, and he closed his eyes.

Stop crying, he thought.

The princess didn’t stop.

Stop crying!

And then a strange thing happened in his mind. He seemed to hear someone else crying as well. It was a woman. And — Krazo stumbled sideways — he could see her in his mind! She was sitting huddled on a rough stool in the corner of a foul little room, the stub of a tallow candle on a table next to her. The room was freezing cold. Krazo knew without knowing how he knew that this room was often cold because there wasn’t enough money for a fire. He knew the woman, too. And he knew that someone had made her cry like that. Someone very close to her . . .

Who?

The pain in Krazo’s breast was killing him, but still he asked himself the question.

Who?

He felt as if he should know the answer, if only he could remember.

Who?

And then the pain overwhelmed him, and his mind went dark.

Adela rarely cried. Perhaps that was why it was so hard to stop now. The tears kept coming, even as she wiped them away, even as she tried to convince herself that there was nothing to cry about. Nothing but a crazy magpie attacking her out of nowhere. As for the rest . . . “I must have imagined it,” she whispered as she rubbed her eyes against her arm. And yet the grotesque vision in her mind would not go away: Marguerite twisting and turning into a daisy, as if by . . . as if by . . .

Resisting the word
magic,
Adela looked down at her hand. It was bleeding just below the thumb. She looked at the magpie. It had collapsed on the path a short distance away, a diamond earring clutched in its claw.

Which made her think of the other earring. There it was, tangled up in the leaves of the daisy. Carefully, Adela worked it free, watching the white-and-yellow flowers bob on their long stems, staring up at the sky the way daisies always did.
Day’s-eyes,
Garth’s father called them. “I must have imagined it,” Adela whispered again. She closed her eyes and murmured a reassurance to herself: “Marguerite must have dropped the earrings. And the diamond necklace, too. That woman picked up the necklace, and here are the earrings, and poor Marguerite must be worried silly that she’s lost them.”

Poor Marguerite.
It didn’t matter that Adela’s eyes were closed. For with those words, the vision rose up again in her mind — ridiculous and horrible, impossible and yet real, because, after all, she had seen it. Feeling tears coming on again, Adela gave a low moan.

“Don’t cry!” said a voice.

“What?” Startled, she opened her eyes.

The magpie was on its feet again, its head tucked low, its plumage puffed out as if it were trying to keep warm. Adela saw it open its beak: “Don’t cry!”

She shook her head. She really
was
imagining things.

The magpie shifted its head back and forth — fixing her with its left eye, its right eye, its left again. “Where is it?” asked the bird.

Adela gasped. “Are you — are you talking to me?”

“Give me the diamond!”

One of Cecile’s ladies-in-waiting had a parakeet that could talk. The silly thing could say
Hello
and
Pretty bird,
but it couldn’t carry on a conversation. Adela looked at the earring in her hand. She looked at the magpie. “Do you mean this diamond?” she asked.

“Give it to me!”

She sat up, as shocked as if she had been hit in the face with a bucket of water. The word she had resisted earlier came more easily now. “Are you — are you a
magic
bird?”

It lifted its head, stretched its wings out, and pulled them back in, smoothing its feathers as it did so. “I am a magpie!”

I am talking to a bird, thought Adela. But birds don’t talk! Then again, she told herself, people don’t get turned into daisies, either. Excited now, she said, “I saw that woman turn Marguerite into a flower. Did that really happen?”

“Give me the diamond!” said the magpie.

“That woman was Lady Hortensia, wasn’t she? Can you tell me if she changed the others into flowers, too? You see, I found this, and I thought . . .” Adela held up the string of coral beads.

The magpie regarded the necklace with one black eye. “How many?” it croaked.

“How many? Well, there was Marguerite, and Bess, and those sisters, and that girl with the dark hair, and Garth, and —”

“How many
beads
?” said the magpie.

“B-beads?”

“On the string! How many beads on the string?” The magpie stretched out its neck and opened its black beak as if it wanted to eat them.

“What?” said Adela. “How should I know? What about the other guests? Do you know if any of them are left? Or did Lady Hortensia turn them into flowers, too?”

The magpie looked at her with its other eye. “Give me the necklace, and I’ll answer.”

Greedy thing, thought Adela. But she tossed the beads onto the grass between them.

The magpie seized them in its claw and dragged them backward. “Yes,” it said once it was a safe distance away.

“Yes, what?”

“Yes is the answer to the question,” said the magpie.

“To which question?” Adela said in frustration. “I want to know if I’m the only one left!”

The magpie appeared to be counting the beads.

“Well, am I?” she demanded.

The magpie looked up. “Another question! Give me my diamond, and I’ll answer.”

“It isn’t yours!”

The bird went back to counting, but Adela saw it steal a look at the diamond earring. She tossed it to him. “Did Lady Hortensia change all the guests into flowers?” she asked.

The magpie placed the new earring next to the other and said, “No.”

Not all the guests . . . Did that mean Garth was safe?

“Who?” asked Adela. “Who did she change?”

“What else have you got?”

“What do you mean?”

“Treasure,” said the bird.

It wanted more jewelry; it was looking at her necklace. Adela undid the clasp and held it out. The magpie’s head waved back and forth as it followed the movement of the swinging chain. Adela pulled her hand back. “I want to know everything!” she said.

“I’ll tell you what I saw.”

She tossed the necklace onto the grass. “What? What did you see?”

The magpie grabbed the stone in its beak and pulled the necklace into its pile of jewelry. “I saw her change that girl into a flower.”

“Which girl? Do you mean Marguerite?”

“Another question,” said the magpie. “More treasure.”

“I haven’t got anything else!”

The bird gave her one of its sideways looks.

“I really haven’t!” said Adela. “You have to tell me what happened.”

But the magpie made an angry noise:
Ackkkk!
Then, as she watched, it looped the coral beads around its neck. It picked up her necklace in its beak, grasped an earring in each claw, and hopped once, twice, three times down the path before launching itself into the air.

“Wait!” cried Adela. “Come back!”

Too late! The magpie was gone.

It was dark by the time Adela found her way out of the garden.

By then she was tired and hungry and cold and — more than anything — filled with doubts. She couldn’t help wondering if she might have dreamed it all. Who ever heard of a talking magpie? How could Hortensia have turned Marguerite into a daisy?

On the other hand, Adela couldn’t help recalling Dr. Sophus’s comment about keeping an open mind with regard to magic. Was it possible that Hortensia was some kind of witch? Adela tried to remember what she knew about witches in stories. Weren’t they always old hags with green faces and warts? No, that wasn’t true. Sometimes there were beautiful witches. King Ival had once faced one just like that. What if Hortensia was that kind of witch?

Until she knew for sure, Adela decided, it was best to be cautious.

She circled around to the front of the house and saw that there were lights on inside. Not only that, but she could also see shadows flickering on the walls. She could even hear muffled laughter. Hope quickened in her. Maybe she
had
imagined everything.

Resolute, she walked to the front door and raised her hand to knock. Then she thought better of it and tried the knob instead.

The door was locked.

She put her ear to the door, straining to hear what was going on inside. She couldn’t pick out individual voices, only a lot of laughter — rather drunken laughter from the sound of it. People were having a good time. That was promising, wasn’t it?

It was easy to believe that everyone was safe inside — Bess, Marguerite, and Garth — even if it wasn’t exactly comforting that they had forgotten about her. Still, under the circumstances, being forgotten was preferable to having everyone turned into flowers.

Yes, Adela could almost believe that everything was fine.

Almost.

She decided that she needed to leave Flower Mountain. She would ride down the mountain, find the nearest village, and ask for help.

The trouble was that there didn’t seem to be any horses to ride. Adela went back around the house and down the road she thought might lead to Hortensia’s stables, only to find that it ended at a high stone wall.

Never mind, she decided. I’ll walk down the mountain.

She returned to the front of the house. She found her shoes and stockings where she had left them beside the fountain. Tucking them under her arm, she ran barefoot across the lawn to the front gate.

But, to her dismay, the gate was locked. It was also much too high to climb: she tried, but the long vertical bars provided no foothold. The walls encircling the estate were also too high. When Adela had noticed them earlier in the day, she had assumed they were there to keep wild animals out. Now it seemed as if they were there to keep her in. She grasped the bars of the gate and stared at the road on the other side.

At last she turned back toward the house. The lights were still on. The shadows were still flickering on the walls. Adela had no doubt that the people inside were laughing and enjoying themselves.