Quite Contrary (38 page)

The baby frog waved his arms excitedly. “I asked the water mother to carry her here. She was attacked by a horrible monster!”

“What is that on her breast?” the fish girl asked. Her body lashed, and I jerked in surprise at the speed with which she darted up and grabbed Rat in both hands. The only reason she didn’t get a boot in the face was the water dragging at my leg as I kicked. That gave her plenty of time to back off, well out of leg’s reach, and hold Rat up to crow, “It’s so adorable!”

“Adorable and mine!” I snapped, paddling to follow her. I moved like a wallowing cow compared to her, but she had my Rat.

“Please give me back, Miss. I’d rather not be parted from my mistress,” Rat said. His tone was all politeness, but he wriggled right out of her grip and swam towards me, right into my open hands. I yanked him to my chest.

Hey, we could talk underwater. I should have expected that, shouldn’t I?

Hands pressed against my back, pushing me forward through the water. At least four. Two belonged to the frog, and I glowered back into the friendly, eager smile of a girl a little older than me with a skinny body covered in very obvious scales in a mix of brown, white, and black spots. She had tiny, sharply pointed teeth, and she had a lot of them, but she didn’t look even slightly threatening. She looked annoyingly spastic.

“Listen, thanks for the rescue, but we have to get out of here,” I said as they pushed me through the water towards the palace.

The woman who drifted up from behind those sparkly walls was definitely a woman. My tarty Red Riding Hood costume wouldn’t have fit on her, not just because of her height, but her curves. They might have been why she was the only one wearing clothes. Her soft looking, gray-black body had ropes of seaweed tied over it, seemingly random but covering the most important places. Of all of them, she seemed almost human, except her hair was a rippling mass of thin tentacles instead of real hair. Eeewww.

“Are you certain, child? We can see a good heart in you, and you’ve proven it with actions. We would love for you to stay with us for a while.” The others sounded garbled, not quite human. Her voice was very smooth, and she spread her arms in obvious welcome.

Rat answered for me, and more politely than I would. “We cannot stay, my lady. We cannot stay anywhere. The Wolf is following us, and he will track us to the ends of the Earth.”

“Let us help!” the frog pleaded, swimming out from behind me.

“You could become one of us for a while!” the sharp-toothed girl added, speeding out and then diving into the castle. She moved faster than the girl with the fins.

“Your Wolf cannot catch you underwater. You will be safe with us until you choose to leave,” the dark-skinned woman said.

I’d heard that before.

The skinny girl with the spots returned, spiraling out of the castle and up to me, holding out a chunk of yellow sponge cake. I swear it looked exactly like yellow sponge cake. It might have actually been sponge. “And if you’re one of us when you leave, it can be on the far side of the ocean, and then what’s he going to do?” She held the cake up in front of my face.

They’d saved me. I really ought to be polite. I did my best. “I’m not staying. I’m not even staying five minutes,” I answered, kicking my legs and beginning to head sluggishly up towards the surface. I moved so slow compared to them. They kept pace with me and still looked like they were drifting.

“But why?” the frog baby begged.

So much for polite. “Because you’re fairies,” I snapped. “Because you’re fairies and I don’t trust you even a little bit, because I sure am never going to eat any fairy food, but absolutely most of all because I left Scarecrow behind and I’m not going to abandon her. Thanks for saving me, but goodbye.”

I turned away and paddled with my arms too, swimming up abysmally slowly towards the surface. To my surprise, the fairies didn’t follow me, or argue, or try and force me to stay.

“I’d like to find Scarecrow too, Miss Mary, but the Wolf is between her and us. You’ll walk right into him,” Rat whispered.

I already knew that. I just didn’t want to think about it. I bet we weren’t even far from where we left him, and I’d be walking right into those jaws. My legs felt like jelly, but I forced them to give the last few kicks to make my head break the surface. My shoe dug into muddy lake bottom, and I waded up onto the shore. I was going to retrace my steps and find Scarecrow. I was not going to give up on her to save myself.

Water spilled off and around me as I trudged out of the lake. The fairies hadn’t turned off their magic, so I didn’t freeze to death. Rat and I just looked and felt like drowned rats.

The lake was big, but I could see both ends. One end looked higher, and hadn’t the current swept me down from that direction? That was back the way I came. I shook as much water as I could out of my shoes, and squashed up to the river’s mouth.

The Wolf was this way. I was walking towards him, right now.

I’d been protected from the cold, but now I felt warm as the sun rose enough to shine on me. A breeze helped dry me, so faint that I wouldn’t have noticed it if I wasn’t soaked right down to the skin. Now, how was I going to find Scarecrow?

I wasn’t going to find Scarecrow. The Wolf was going to kill me first.

What—a rabbit bolting into the trees, that’s what that movement was. I gritted my teeth. I’d left poor Scarecrow behind, a child lost and alone—more lost and alone than me, and much more a child. If it came to it, I’d kick the Wolf in his teeth and fling Rat past him to go find Scarecrow while I was lunch.

I really did not want to be lunch. That jagged-toothed, red mouth had been bigger than my head.

I would manage.
Push it all aside and put one foot in front of the other, Mary. Scarecrow can’t be left behind.
While I was moping and panicking, the lake had pinched tighter and tighter. I could see the ripple of the current flowing past me. The lake had become a river, and I was heading in the right direction. Generally.

I wasn’t doing great at thinking right now, but that was why I had a rat. “I could use a trick to find Scarecrow right now. Any ideas?”

He paused in the middle of wringing water out of locks of my hair. I’d been brooding so hard I hadn’t noticed. Straightening way up like a hairy, matted little lighthouse, he twisted his head to peer around. A pink hand pointed upriver. “I believe we won’t need one.”

There was a lump floating down the river. Rat must have seen it better than I could, but that red color could be a bad imitation of my Red Riding Hood costume, worn by a wooden girl who reached up an arm and waved at us enthusiastically.

The river’s current crawled, and Scarecrow moved much too fast without swimming. Water rippled around her. There, that gray shape surfacing momentarily—the frog baby was delivering her to us. It was the nicest thing I could imagine a fairy doing. Maybe they weren’t fairies, just transformed children or something.

Scarecrow wasn’t the only thing moving. The heavy gray shape of my Wolf rounded a tree in the distance, loping down the opposite shore. He’d followed Scarecrow right to me. He could see me by now. I was wearing bright red and white, for pity’s sake.

“Miss Mary, run! You have to run, please!” Rat squeaked in my ear.

“I have to save Scarecrow. You only get one please.” I splashed my feet up to the ankles in the water, reaching out for Scarecrow’s hand as the river swept her closer. The Wolf trotted up the opposite bank. All he had to do was cross.

“Jump in!” the frog begged me, “We’ll take you far, far away from here!”

Scarecrow’s outstretched fingers touched mine. I leaned forward a few more inches and wrapped my fist around her wrist, hauling her up onto the shore with me. She threw her arms around my shoulders, squeezing her wooden body to mine. It still felt weird that I could see over the top of her head.

“You didn’t leave me! Thank you!” she squealed.

I pulled back out of her embrace and tugged on her wrist. We had to run. I took the first step, and the second, and my Wolf jumped the river.

He could jump so far. He soared through the air like a bird, rather than a barrel chested monster the size of a horse. I staggered back, trying to turn and run, but he’d closed the distance in a couple of seconds. His front paws were reaching for the shore in front of me when half a dozen arms grabbed his back legs, and he fell out of the air and into the river.

Water splashed everywhere, and the river sucked him down away from me, into the lake. He snarled in animal frustration and rage, clawing at the air, biting at the darting, half fish, half boy and girl shapes that pulled at him. Then, he disappeared under the water.

“We’ll take him as far away as we can,” the frog baby promised. He hadn’t gone with the others. Lucky him. There’d be blood in that water in a moment.

“Miss Mary, run, please!” Rat pleaded again.

I finally listened to him. Hand in hand with Scarecrow, I ran straight away from the river and into the woods.

e didn’t get far. That was my first thought. I didn’t believe for a second those fish kids could slow my Wolf down much. When Rat lifted his nose to sniff and squeaked, “Miss Mary—” I thought he could smell my Wolf coming, and had to force my legs to keep running and not seize up.

Instead, he pointed off to the side. “I smell asphalt.”

I ran that way. Jogging was the best I could do, but I needed to keep moving and not give out. I couldn’t smell anything but trees and wet rat. I still couldn’t when I saw the break in the forest ahead of us, or when I stumbled out onto the edge of a highway.

Just a highway. But it would lead somewhere that wasn’t the woods the Wolf called home.

One way led off between the trees as far as I could see. Rat pointed down the other way. There was an edge to the forest, which I could mainly tell because the road looked like it ended in bright sunshine. “This is a way out of fairy tales. It leads back to modern stories, maybe all the way back to a city that appears on a map,” he said.

I walked; fast, but not running.
Distance, Mary. I’d get farther by being smart than I would by panicking.
Except of course that this was completely stupid.

“This isn’t a very safe direction for you, Miss Mary,” Rat warned, because he knew it was stupid, too.

“It’s better than the woods. The farther we get from magic and fairy tales, the harder it is for the Wolf to find me, right?” I shot back.

“Yes, but the stories on the edge of civilization are horrible things. They’re as cruel and violent as the nastiest fairy tales, but they don’t have any hope or happily-ever-afters. They have victims, not heroes. The best you get is to escape and go home.”

I kept walking the whole time. Scarecrow followed right behind me, listening. What did she think about all this? I didn’t care. Right now, I didn’t care. I had a chance to not wander around in my Wolf’s backyard.

“Between us, we’re getting really good at escaping,” I said.

His voice got real quiet and awkward now. “I don’t want to take you back home, Miss Mary.”

Crap. I’d told him too much. “We’ll go around the edge of civilization. We’ll stay in places like you found me until we see an exit that’s less wolf friendly fairy tales.”