Zally's Book (6 page)

I took a deep breath and nodded.

I must have looked uncertain, because Queen Patchouli gave me a look that reminded me of my mother. “Although I have asked you to lead, Zally, remember that you are not alone.” Her eyes turned to Imishi as well. “Success for all of you depends on finding each other's strengths and combining them to solve problems.”

“I … okay,” I said, then looked at Imishi and added, “I guess we'd better get started.”

“I am ready,” Imishi said. Wincing, she overlapped the halves of her wings, then folded them back and upward so that her splinted wing was neatly tucked in. It looked almost as if she had only one half-sized wing at the center of her back. After that, the fairies helped us up onto Kir. I was in front, Imishi behind me.

A faint feeling of direction unexpectedly tugged at my mind. I remembered the few riding lessons I'd taken from my friend Cody's aunt, who owned a stable upstate. I doubted that a horse prince like Kir would respond well even to gentle kicks or nudges. So I simply wound my left hand into the base of his thick golden mane.

“May I tug your mane, just a little, to show you which direction to go?” I asked Kir. He whinnied and bobbed his head. To my surprise, I
felt
a stronger answer from Kir—as if he was not just saying yes, but trying to reassure me that I could guide our small group on this quest. “Turn this way.” I pulled his mane gently in the direction of the feeling that tugged at me, noticing with surprise that I sounded far more certain than I felt.

“All speed and safe travels,” Queen Patchouli called after us.

She and her Willowood Fairies rose into the air and waved as we headed down the path and through the trees toward the stream. When I looked back, I could still see the fairies hovering up above the Willowood, watching.

We rode all morning long, following my instincts on which direction to go. It was sunny and just warm enough to be comfortable as Kir alternately walked and cantered. I don't know if it was because Aventurine is a magical place or because Kir is a wonderful horse; either way, Imishi and I seemed to be in tune with him and adjusted to his gait automatically. I loved the sound of the hoofbeats and feeling the sun on my face and the breeze in my long hair as we rode.

You may have ridden a horse before, so I won't explain that part to you, or if you haven't ridden one yourself, you have friends who can tell you how wonderful it is. But here's the part no one usually mentions. First of all, after a couple of hours, you begin to wish that you could sit or stand or lean or lounge in any other position. Second, no matter how exciting your ride is, or how beautiful the scenery is,
or how nice the weather is, or how pleasant your companions might be, after four to five hours, riding a horse can get tiring. We stopped every few hours to rest, usually when Kir came across a pond or a stream where we could all drink and splash our faces with the cool water.

I'm pretty sure Imishi's wing was giving her trouble, because whenever something bumped it, all of her muscles tightened up. But she didn't complain. Instead, she would make comments like “This is taking a long time,” or “I don't know if I can survive a year without flying.” The one that got to me—and only after the tenth time she said it—was “Are you
sure
this is the right way?”

The tenth time she said it, I did get, well,
grumpy
.

I know, I should have been more understanding. Imishi was concerned about her queen and her tribe, and she had a painful broken wing. I almost always get along with people, really I do. But I was doing my best, and I was hungry, and my muscles were sore, and every time she said it, it felt like she meant it personally.

“Look,” I said through gritted teeth, “I didn't ask to be the leader here. I never said I knew how to get to the Kib Valley, but Queen Patchouli thought I was—am—your best chance. Plus, I'm pretty sure
you
don't know the way, either, or you wouldn't have gotten lost for weeks trying to find help.”

“Well, it looks like I'm still lost and still need to find help,” Imishi retorted.

I sighed. “Let's have lunch,” I suggested. When I started babysitting last summer, my mother told me one of the easiest ways to get children to stop fighting was to offer them food, not as a bribe but because eating is relaxing and brings people together. It couldn't hurt to try with Imishi.

We sat on a couple of boulders beside a stream. Imishi passed around some of the food from the fairy saddlebags: an oat mixture for Kir and bread for Imishi and me. The bread had nutmeg and cinnamon in it. After eating, we did all seem happier, even though we hadn't talked much. I rinsed my hands and face and drank from the stream. Then I sat on the grass beside the boulders and tried to think of what direction we should go in next.

I took the roll of parchment paper out of the bag at my side, along with the brown quill, thinking that even if I didn't know where I was going, I could map out where we had been, and that might give me some inspiration. Unrolling a piece of the paper, I started to write on
it with the quill, only to groan when nothing appeared. I wondered if the ink was stuck. I shook the feather and tried again. No luck. I licked the tip of the quill. Nothing. I tried scratching the tip on the bottom of my fairy boot—a trick that sometimes gets ballpoint pens started. Ink still did not appear.

No ink? But Queen Patchouli had said that I had everything I needed. What was I supposed to write with? Blood? Invisible ink, maybe? I growled with frustration.

“So you really don't know where we're going, do you?” Imishi said. Her voice sounded a little bit smug, a little bit accusing, and very worried. Maybe the food hadn't helped so much after all.

“I'll figure it out,” I said. “I just don't know how I'm supposed to draw my map without any ink.”

“You must have ink,” Imishi said. “Queen Patchouli said you had everything you needed in your bag. So if you needed ink, it would be in your bag, wouldn't it?”

I pressed my lips together. I never thought I'd be annoyed by a fairy. “There is no ink,” I said, shooting for Queen Patchouli's firm tone.

“Then you don't need any ink,” Imishi replied.

“Yes, I
do
,” I said, trying to control my temper.

“Then you have ink,” Imishi said.

“How can you say that?” I asked. “I've looked in my bag; there is no ink.”

Imishi shrugged, then grimaced with pain. She took a deep breath and insisted, “Queen Patchouli said you had everything you needed.”

“I know, I know! But look!” I snapped, pointing to the parchment paper, the quill, and my bag. I snatched up the bag and emptied its contents onto the grass. Only my cacao pod talisman fell out, with a soft thump. “See? This is it. It's all I have. NO INK.” I glared at her.

Her aqua eyes avoided mine, and she said, “The fairy queen would not have lied to us.”

“¡Ay, mira!”
I exclaimed, throwing my hands in the air.

Kir walked over, neighed, and shook his mane as if he were chiding Imishi and me. I wondered if I was just imagining that he was trying to communicate. Either way, I knew I was being grumpy, and it wasn't really fair of me to take my uncertainty out on my traveling companions. I groaned and ran a hand through the tangle of my long hair, trying to decide what to do.

“Maybe Queen Patchouli forgot the ink,” I said, trying for a neutral tone.

Imishi shook her head.

Kir nudged the cacao pod with his muzzle.

I picked it up and put it on my lap. “That's not horse food, Kir.”

“Prince Kir would no more take something of yours than you would steal something of his,” Imishi said.

The palomino gave an emphatic snort.

My face got warm. She was right, of course. I had just spoken to him as if he were a toddler. “I'm sorry, Kir,” I mumbled.

Imishi looked with interest at the cacao pod, which I realized she hadn't seen before. “Did you know that is a magical fruit?”

“Yes,” I said. “But how did
you
know?”

“Plants are my specialty. I can sense the magic in that one, though we do not have anything like it in Kib Valley.” A fleeting frown crossed her face when she mentioned her home. “We should keep traveling while it is still light.”

Kir nuzzled her shoulder.

I sighed. “I know our mission is urgent, but I need to make a map. It's not just part of my quest—if I don't find the right direction, we'll waste time.”

Kir bent down and nudged my hand, which was still holding the feather quill.

That nudge gave me the strangest idea. I prodded
the cacao pod with my quill. Nothing happened, of course. I gave the cacao pod a whack against the closest boulder and managed to make a little crack in the shell. Feeling a bit guilty for this treatment of a family heirloom, I wondered what Mamá would think if she could see me now.

Imishi did not try to stop me. “I want to stretch my wings for a while. Let me know as soon as you are ready to go,” she said. She climbed onto one of the boulders and unfolded her shimmering wings.

I felt less self-conscious without her looking over my shoulder. I whacked the cacao pod again. Soon it was open far enough that I could get my thumbs inside, and I pushed until it cracked wide open.

The inside of the pod surprised me. It was full of pulpy lumps that looked like slimy garlic cloves. I sniffed. Definitely not garlic. The smell was fruity. I pried out a few beans with my fingers and touched my tongue to the squishy pulp, which tasted sweet and refreshing.

I'm not sure what possessed me then. I ate the pulp, leaving a few almond-shaped beans in my hand. I nibbled one and quickly spat the bitter bean out. Using the quill, I poked at one of the dry cacao beans to see what it was like inside.

You know the hollow tube that runs up the
middle of a feather? Well, when the tip of the quill touched the cacao bean, that tube started to fill up with a dark liquid—kind of like the liquid that goes up and up in the center of a thermometer on a hot day, only this liquid was brown. When the feather looked completely full, I pulled the tip of the quill away and gingerly touched it to the map paper. A small dot of deep brown ink appeared.

“No way,” I muttered. There hadn't been any juice in that cacao bean, as far as I could tell, and I had never heard of anybody making ink out of cacao beans. It didn't make any sense.

I put the dry beans into my bag, set the cracked cacao pod on the ground next to me, smoothed the paper down, and began to draw. I drew the ponds and meadows and groves of trees we had gone through that morning, and made a general map of the Willowood from as much as I had seen of it. The knots in my stomach began to untie themselves. This was something I
could
do.

I don't know how long it took, but I couldn't help myself; I kept drawing and drawing. I didn't even look at the parchment anymore, but my hand knew what to do. I was so absorbed that I saw nothing of the world around me, until a voice from behind me said, “I see you found your ink.”

I turned and blinked several times before Imishi's face came into focus. I nodded.

“What's that?” she asked, pointing to a detailed picture at the center of the paper.

I studied it in surprise. I didn't remember sketching the image. A kind of magic had been flowing through me. I gave a relieved laugh.

“That
is where we're going next. It's the shortest way to Kib Valley.”

5
The Marsh