Mearsies Heili Bounces Back (3 page)

“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.

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 Fobo
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.”

Diana gave a short nod. “Good thing.”

“Let’s split up and get this patrol over.” Irene thumped her
fists on her hips. “I want to get back to rehearsing the play—if Clair is in a
sour mood, it seems to me the best thing
we
can do is make her laugh.”

No one had any argument against that, so we did.

o0o

For a while, as the season warmed up, things stayed pretty
much the same.

We were increasingly curious to get a glimpse of Kwenz’s
heir—though none of us wanted to meet a new villain face to face. But we knew
it was going to happen, as there were more signs of the Chwahir snouting around
in our woods. We were either just missing them, or else they were snouting
around in the middle of the night.

That plus the trade stuff made Clair worry enough to study
magic long into the night. After all, how could we resist if Kwenz did send his
Black-eyes against our traders? Clair didn’t have any guards and wasn’t about
to hire any. So we had to be watchful, and she worked on magical plans.

Meanwhile, regular life went on.

Like the time that we really didn’t come out looking so
good. Though of course we
thought
we were perfectly in the right at the
time, and when I first wrote it up, wow, talk about gloating and spackling all
over the place!

But really, what do you expect we’re going to do if some
snotty aristo clod rides into
our
forest just to—

Argh. I hate it when I start in the middle.

So okay. Here’s what happened. The girls patrolling the
northern road saw a guy in super fancy clothes riding a horse down the road.
Because of the fancy clothes and the direction he came in, they assumed he was
from Fobo, which meant he was up to nothing good. They ran to get me.

We picked a spot to confront the clod, but I felt we should
take a look first before doing anything.

So up into the trees we climbed. I sat on a branch, mentally
reviewing my nasty pie spell, when the sound of horse hooves became distinct.
Riding along the road below us came a guy maybe in his early twenties or so,
wearing a riding coat with a lot of gold-work along the broad collar and down
the frogs attaching the front, and on the big rolled-back sleeves and the hem.
The buckles across the tops of his tasseled, two-toned fineweave riding boots
were made up of diamonds. Visible at wrist and collar was expensive linen, and
the horse’s trappings were all fancy.

The fellow himself was tall, blond, and rode with an air
that made it plain he was certainly no enemy to his mirror, no sirree Bob.

Irene was wearing sturdy patrol clothes, but with
embroidered flowers along the sleeves and neckline of her top, and ribbons in
all her hems. She felt immediate challenge at somebody daring to enter the
forest dressed more fancy than she was. She swung down from the tree and
planted herself squarely in the pathway, hands on her hips.

The clod seemed to pay no attention, but you know how you
can just tell when someone is really very aware of you, but for some reason
wants to pretend you aren’t there? Like you’re beneath notice? A Fobo trick, by
the way.

That’s what this slobbo was doing—because he very gently
guided his horse around Irene, while he looked up and around like he was
counting leaves for his life. No, that’s not right. He was signifying to the
forest that it had earned the right to be looked at.