Heart of the Staff - Complete Series

by Carol Marrs Phipps

  “Ugleeuh!” cawed Hubba Hubba at the sight of her above the trees. He sprang from the ground, flapping his wings in a frenzy, only to screech out in agony at the pain he caused his swollen foot. He fell back to the ground, cawing in greater anguish than ever. The sound of his cries brought Ugleeuh to a an ungainly landing, stumbling right up to him.

  “Hubba Hubba!” she rasped. “What has that demon boy done to you, dearest?”

  “My foot. I can't walk.”

  “Where is he?” she yowled, springing to her feet. “He's going to pay for this!”

  Lukus was picking up wood and had strayed down the side of the hogback which led away from the clearing where they had made the bonfire. Hearing Hubba Hubba's faint cries from up over the top of the hill, he dropped his pile of wood at once and hurried uphill to go to his aid. The instant he broke through the brush into the clearing, Ugleeuh spun and leveled a finger at him, muttering a spell. Purple lightning shot from her finger at the very instant Hubba Hubba gathered his wits to shout: “No! Ugleeuh! Don't! Lukus didn't do this to me!”

  She jerked aside, scattering her magical bolt into a tinkling shower of sparks and lavender smoke. Lukus found himself in the leaves on his backside, crumbling the ashes of his singed hair in his fingers as twigs and leaves of the nearby peppermint trees sputtered and flared.

  “Well dearest,” said Ugleeuh. “What exactly did happen to your foot?”

  “What exactly did happen to your foot, dearest?” said Lukus under his breath. “No! Don't think twice about that boy. I only nearly fried him, not that it matters. All that matters is that you're all right.”

  Ugleeuh looked up with a jerk, suddenly swiveling her head all the way around to glare at him with her chin centered directly over her spine.

  He stared as the bristles of his scorched hair stood on end.

  “I could fry you now,” she said with an owlish glint in her eye. “Toast you for the scavengers,” she said in tones fit for the Angel of Death. “I could easily tell Rose how you abandoned Hubba Hubba after he was injured, how you told him you were going for help but never returned and how Hubba Hubba and I searched and searched for you. Alas! What happened to poor Lukus? Something must have got him.”

  “Yea? You just go ahead and do that,” said Lukus roundly, startling her with his pluck. “But if you're trying to win over your long lost daughter, you'll bungle it. Rose would never believe you. She knows I'd never leave her here alone with some rotten old witch who can't be trusted without at least saying good bye.”

  “Excuse me!” cawed Hubba Hubba in the echoes of the trees. “Have you both forgotten the injured bird here? I'd really just like to go home now, take something for the pain, put my foot up, eat and hopefully get some rest. Could we please?”

  Lukus and Ugleeuh stopped at once to stare at him stupidly. Ugleeuh rushed to his side. “I'm sorry dearest. As you can see, the whelp here is being more than his share of tedious. Do you think you can perch on my broom or do I need to conjure up something for you to ride in?”

  “I only hurt one foot. I roost on just one, don't you know. I'll do just fine if you'll help me onto your broom. But I won't do just fine if we don't go.”

  “Of course,” she said as she set her broom to hovering in the air. “Here.” She put him crosswise on the stick and sat astride it behind him.

  “Hey!” cried Lukus. “What about me? Are you just going to leave me out here in the dark to get eaten by something?”

  “Capital idea, mouth. But as you say, there's Rose, and I'd allow that she'd be upset for a day or two if something happened to you.”

  “You bet, but Rose isn't just 'a day or two' shallow. And I'm her one and only brother, after all.”

  “Not quite,” she said with a rattle of laughter. “You've forgotten recent events and revelations, boy. But we've no time for pointless chit chat. Hubba Hubba is suffering and I must get him home immediately. You just wait right here and I'll return for you in good time.” With that, she shot off over the treetops, leaving Lukus in the minty darkness.

  ***

  “Where’s Lukus?” said Rose, looking beyond Ugleeuh and Hubba Hubba into the inky darkness, as they came through the door.

  Ugleeuh settled Hubba Hubba on a thick folded coverlet that she laid across her bed, speaking to him in low, soothing tones as she scratched his head. Presently, she rose to heat water and hunt through various jars and containers in the kitchen, laying out a careful assortment of aromatic herbs which she steeped in a cheesecloth.

  “Please!” said Rose, fighting down a rising hysteria as she looked on, wondering what had become of Lukus and wondering what the meaning was of not being answered by Ugleeuh. “Please. Won’t you just tell me what has happened to my brother?”

  Ugleeuh fished in a drawer for a length of clean cloth, rummaged in a cupboard for several large dried leaves that Rose did not recognize, which she put into her jar of freshly made herbal tea, and then tramped right by her to Hubba Hubba's side. “Your disagreeable cousin,” she said, without looking up, “is safe enough for the moment, provided he has the good sense to remain exactly where I left him, until I'm through here and can go back for him.” She took the strange leaves from her tea and wrapped them around Hubba Hubba's foot and leg. “How does that feel, dearest? It isn’t too tight is it?”

  “No Ugleeuh, and I believe to my soul it's working already. Yes. I’m certain the pain is going away. You do such amazing things. Thank you. Now, if I could just have a little food.”

  “What?” spat Rose. “Lukus is out there alone in the dark woods and you're wasting time to prepare a feast for your already overstuffed bird?”

  Hubba Hubba gaped in wounded astonishment. “So! Lukus lied to me after all. You don’t like me one bit.”

  Rose’s eyebrows shot up at this, seeing at once that Lukus's manipulations must have been behind the remark. “Oh Hubba Hubba!” she said. “I do like you. Truly. It's just that I'm very worried and upset about Lukus right now. Surely you know that when people are upset they sometimes say mean things without thinking. I'm sorry that I hurt your feelings, and I’m not mad at you.”

  To Rose's great relief, Hubba Hubba gave a convincing nod.

  “Look,” she said, “I’ll fix Hubba Hubba a complete feast if it will help, if you'll just go find Lukus and bring him safely back from wherever it is that you left him. Please?”

  Ugleeuh glared at her for a long hard moment. “Would you be all right for a short spell if I go after the boy, dearest?”

  “Well sure Ugleeuh. That's fine, especially if Rose is going to fix me something to eat. If she does, there's no reason at all for you not to go.”

  Ugleeuh stared at Hubba Hubba and Rose as if looking for some excuse not to go, then stamped to the corner for her broom. “Had you really tried to learn anything today, Rose,” she said, bristling like a cur, “you could've taken my broom and flown after Lukus yourself. As it is, all you can do is wait in the shadows and be a cook and serving girl to someone else’s pet.” With that, she slammed the door.

  Rose stared angrily after her. She jumped in alarm when the place on the door where she was looking scorched and gave off a thin puff of blue smoke. “I've never done anything like that before!” she said, trading looks with Hubba Hubba. She went to the door in awe and studied the darkened dumbbell shaped spot. “Can you believe? It's still hot to the touch,” she said with a shake of her head as she started for the kitchen. “Well, what would you like to eat?”

  “Oh don’t go to any trouble, Rose. How about, say, just some candied sweet corn, blackberry cobbler, and...umm...chocolate layer cake for desert?”

  “Just candied sweet corn, blackberry cobbler, and chocolate layer cake? Hubba Hubba! No wonder you're so, so large. Sometimes I wonder if she really wants you to fly. How 'bout just the cobbler for now? Then, if you're still hungry, I’ll fix you something else. Besides, the cobbler's already made. Ugleeuh must have made it earlier today, so if you eat that, you won’t have
to wait.”

  “Yea. That sounds fine. Blackberry cobbler. But hurry, will you? I’m drooling here.”

  ***

  “Well, I see nothing you deserve has happened to you, boy!” hollered Ugleeuh, as she landed in the clearing to find Lukus squatted unhappily by the last embers of his fire. “Let’s get cracking. Hubba Hubba still needs my attention, and Rose is getting in the way with her fretting over your whereabouts.”

  “Yea? Big hurry now, but no hurry coming back to get me,” he thought as he gave her a hate stare under the cover of the black night. “I’m coming,” he said, speaking out peevishly as he stood up. “I’m not a witch, so I’ve never ridden a broomstick before. What, exactly do I do?”

  “Witches don't give rides, boy,” said Ugleeuh as she and her broom rose up into the air to just beyond his reach. “If you want out of here, you'll be graciously obliged for your ride with a sorceress.”

  “Yea all right, all right! Sorry!”

  “So, I'm a what?”

  “Sorceress, then...”

  “No. Not quite, boy. I'm the greatest sorceress alive.” she said, as she fluidly came back down to rest her feet on the ground. “You just straddle the broom right behind me. And if you think me any less than that, you might not manage to hang on.”

  He hesitated. A mint owl shrieked, as it settled into the crown of a peppermint tree overhead.

  “Well? I'm leaving now. Throw your leg over.”

  He gingerly mounted behind her and grabbed the broom with a white knuckled grip. At once they catapulted away like a shot, nearly yanking the broom out of his hands. She flew in great surging loops, leaving his heart in his throat. When he attempted to shift his grip for a better hold, she suddenly flew upside down. When he thought that she'd do better with regular baths than with more sandalwood and cloves, she let them fall like a stone, lunging back into the icy black air only inches above a tumble of boulders in a creek bed.

  Within another few moments, which seemed a harrowing eternity to him, they halted in front of the porch. Ugleeuh dismounted, kicking him in the lip with her heel. As he grabbed his mouth in pain, the broom collapsed with him onto the ground, smacking his hip and cheekbone. He heaved himself onto his elbows and hands and then stood, reeling with nausea. Ugleeuh opened the door and peered around it at the scorched spot as though she had somehow seen it from the outside, and without a word looked straight at Rose, causing her to wince with fear, before making directly for Hubba Hubba. Lukus staggered into the house as the door closed, white as a sheet.

  Hubba Hubba was shamelessly high spirited, basking in everyone's attention. Ugleeuh softened up in degrees, like some ancient sponge put into a pan of water, as she fixed him his candied sweet corn and chocolate layer cake.

  “I'll declare!” thought Lukus when he had recovered enough to be interested in following what was going on around him in the kitchen. “Sometimes it looks like that old bat holds him prisoner by deliberately keeping him too fat to get around.” Aside from his scheme, Lukus was now starting to like the bird in spite of himself. They ate eagerly while he and Hubba Hubba recounted their adventure. Soon, weariness and sukere sent them to bed, leaving the little slave sparrows to chase the crumbs in the light from the fireplace.

  ***

  “Up, you two!” snapped Ugleeuh. “It's late summer now and you should've gotten the routine down months ago. Breakfast at seven sharp every single day. From now on, if you lie about like worthless louts, you'll go hungry. Though I must say, the pair of you look like you need to. And getting into such shape after harassing and tormenting poor Hubba Hubba, back when you came. Fie on you!”

  “Rose, you'd better move if you want to eat. I think she means it this time,” said Lukus with a yawn, throwing back his covers and running his hand through his hair as he stood and stretched. “If we don't get to the table before she and Tubba Tubba get done, we'll have to wait until noon for dinner. I don't think I'd make it.”

  “I don't care, Lukus,” she said, glaring at him with one eye. “I'm too tired to get up. I'll eat more at noon. Let me go back to sleep. Leave me alone.”

  “Well stinky ol' poop hole. Starve if you must,” he said as he turned his back and pulled on the breeches and shirt Ugleeuh had just made for him in order to keep up with his ballooning middle. “I guess I'm getting pretty pudgy, needing fatter clothes and all, but what does the old bat expect when she feeds us nothing but sukere sweets morning and night? I guess she just gets foul smelling and rotten rather than fat like the rest of us. What I wouldn't give for a nice roast joint and some boiled vegetables and greens.” The sound of Ugleeuh complaining to Hubba Hubba halted his musings. He held his breath, listening.

  “Dearest, I've had about all of those two slobs that I want. I don't care if Rose is my daughter. And some daughter! She couldn't be less like me if she came from the moon. She refuses to put forth any effort at all to learn her magic. She's the bloomin' laziest thing I've ever seen. She won't cook or do anything to help around here. She stuffs her piggy face and sleeps. I'm wearing my fingers to the bone, waving wands and conjuring up new dresses for her. I no sooner divine one than she puts on more weight and I have to conjure up another. And I don't even want to talk about the whelp. All he does besides eat and bicker with her is torment you and sass me. I'll declare. I used to pine about my daughter and wonder if I'd made a big mistake giving her up, but now I know that it was the smartest thing I ever did. Their nuisance mocks my very powers. Oh why did they ever leave Goll? King Brutelee and Queen Bee are right wealthy, after all. They had everything they could possibly have wanted. It makes no sense at all.”

  Lukus snapped shut his gaping mouth and turned to stare at Rose. “She is my sister! She's not Ugleeuh's daughter at all! We certainly never grew up in Goll.” He went to her bunk and gave her a gentle shake. “Rose! Wake up! It's important. This is something that just can't wait.”

  “Go away Lukus!” she snapped as she burrowed further into her covers. “Get out of here! You don't have anything important. I told you. I'm too tired to be awake yet.”

  “Too bad Rose,” he said, giving her covers a mighty yank onto the floor. “When you find out what I've just heard, you'll be glad I woke you, believe...” Whereupon she flipped over with a bounce and planted her fist in his eye, scattering stars as he sat back hard onto the floor.

  “The Pit take you, Hippo! What did you do that for? I think my eyeball fell out!”

  Quite awake now, she struggled to a sitting position and glared at him. “I told you I wanted to sleep, Lukus. But you don't care. So what is this terribly important thing, anyway?”

  “Poop on you, Rose! I think I'll just go have breakfast, and you can find out on your own, if you can move your old thunder buns that far.” Rubbing his eye, he sprang to his feet and headed to the breakfast table and the smell of pancakes and candied ham.

  “I see that you and your sister were enjoying each other's company again this morning young Lukus,” said Ugleeuh, looking up from some old papers beside her plate to hand him syrup. “What now, broken nail, split ends? Pimples? What?”

  “Nothing really. With hippos you can't always tell. I might merely have been addressing the wrong end.”

  Ugleeuh threw back her head for a single horse laugh, flinging out a stinking piece of pancake onto the tablecloth beside his plate.

  He poured a fat dollop of syrup onto his stack of cakes, obviously enjoying his effect on the foul old dame. “Oh, I don't know,” he said, “I think she might be a little homesick. I don't think she really believed it possible in the first place, that you'd turn out to truly be her mother.”

  Ugleeuh gave Lukus a keen stare, making him feel like a bug being studied by a giant fowl for just the right angle to snap him up. He shuddered.

  “Tread lightly boy, else you may end up with a matching set of bruised peepers.”

  He paused to champ a mouthful of pancake and candied ham. “I wouldn't like that much. In fact, I was hoping you might have
some sort of herbal remedy to take down the swelling of this one.”

  “Yea? I might, but we'll have to see if you can be civil through an entire meal first, and I'm not sure what kind of start you have.”

  “I guess that's fair enough,” he said amiably. “You probably won't believe this, but I didn't mean anything nasty by what I said about Rose being surprised to find out that you were her real mother. It's just that, well, you aren't exactly what she expected you to be, you know, based on who my mother is and all.”

  “What? Did she think her royal highestness was too good to adopt a child born from a lowly sorceress, like me?”

  “Oh no, not at all. It's just that you look nothing like my mother. Rose just thought there would be some kind of familial resemblance. Truth to tell, Rose looks more like my mother than she looks like you.”

  Ugleeuh's face clabbered with a deep dark scowl, and Hubba Hubba, now finished with his own meal, had become so keenly alert that he was in real danger of toppling off his perch if he leant one bit further forward. “If there's a point to this verbal game of hide and seek boy, I suggest you make it right soon,” she growled. “It's getting old.”

  “It's just that I think Rose is having problems feeling at home here,” he said with a shrug. “It's so very different from Niarg and even though...”

  In a flash, Ugleeuh was on her feet, leaning dangerously across the table, her purply face twisted with a hideous sardonic grin. Lukus shot back from the table in his chair like a crayfish to keep her out of his face. Hubba Hubba gave an alarmed caw and plopped unceremoniously onto the peppermint wood floor, causing her to wheel aside for a look.

  Lukus was grateful for Hubba Hubba's nose-dive, for it had distracted her enough to calm back down from her burgeoning rage. He had not expected that kind of reaction from her over what he had had to say, in the first place. In fact, he had fancied that she would actually be happy to learn that Rose wasn't her daughter after all and that she might even be pleased enough about it to let them go home. “Now,” he thought grimly, “who knows what I've gotten us into?”