“You got me this far. Life with Ugleeuh's made me tough as nails, so you may as well tell me the rest. Besides, I'd actually like to know.”
“Very well, my feathered friend. Ugleeuh changed you when she stole you away.”
“Ha! So what? Big deal. So I was a nice, adorable little guy until she got a hold of me. So I got mean from coping. So scare me with something else.”
“Yea? Well by changed I meant that Ugleeuh turned you into a crow. You weren't always a crow.”
“What?” said Hubba Hubba with a bug-eyed honk. “So what on earth was I before I got bespelled by Ugleeuh?”
“You were a magnificent double yellow head parrot.”
Hubba Hubba squawked in such violent alarm that he stumbled off the table top, landing in the seat of a chair with a sound like a spoilt melon. “I had two heads and you think I was magnificent?” he said amidst his gasping. “I mean, she always said I ate like I had two of them. No wonder Ugleeuh hated me. I was a freak. I'd 'ave hated me, too. Mercy! Spare me from being turned back.”
“No, no! Good grief! Here again you misunderstand me. Double yellow head simply refers to the amount and depth of color of the yellow feathers on the head. It doesn't mean you had two heads. And you were indeed a truly magnificent parrot, my friend.”
“I am? I mean, I was...? A parrot? Truly? My! That explains... And that also might explain...” he said, loosening his plumage and running his beak along a flight feather, letting it go in with a snap. He ruffled up with a shake and straightened up. “Well, that's a relief.” He lunged up to the table top, coming to a rolling halt, propped up on a wing. He stood, shook himself off again and immediately waddled up to the desserts and resumed his gorging. Soon the food was a grand bulge in his crop. Smacking his beak in satisfaction, he turned to Razzmorten, who still sat patiently by. “You know, I still have a lot of questions that need answering,” he said, shaking off an eye watering yawn, “but at the moment I think I'm more tired than curious, so how about taking me to the king and queen right now so I can deliver Ugleeuh's message? With that out of the way, maybe I can get the first decent night's roost since I was forced into this fiasco. And after that, you can answer the rest of my questions,” he added in a tone that triggered a low growl from Fifi. “That is if you wouldn't mind taking the time for a humble crow's queries, kind wizard?”
“If I have the answers you seek, I shall be happy to share them with you, at your leisure,” said Razzmorten with a straight face and twinkling eyes. “I feel I owe you that much, at least.”
“Indeed,” said Hubba Hubba as he tossed a smug look at Fifi. “By all means, then.”
“At your service,” said Razzmorten as he held out his wrist. “Let's be off to the king and queen, then.”
“What about them?” said Hubba Hubba, looking at the sparrows, still perched atop Razzmorten's hat.
“Mercy. I quite forgot they were there,” he said, as he removed his hat and studied them. “We can leave them here, if you prefer...”
“I certainly do prefer. They're quite nosey.”
“Really? Ah. That got by me altogether. I'm so glad you brought it to my attention. They'll stay behind by all means in that case.” He returned the sparrows to their seed dishes and once again offered his wrist to Hubba Hubba.
“If you don't mind, I'd feel safer on your shoulder,” said Hubba Hubba, looking Razzmorten up and down.
Razzmorten nodded, dropping his arm to his side.
“I guess you forgot that I can't quite fly without the help of my slaves. You'll need to help me up.”
“Oh. Certainly,” said Razzmorten, stooping to allow him to mount. “Well then, we're off to the throne room.”
“Yea, this ought to be great fun,” said Hubba Hubba.
“Don't worry. I'm sure that you'll find the king and queen much nicer than Ugleeuh's led you to believe.”
“I hope so,” said Hubba Hubba as he preened madly. “I truly hope so.”
Chapter 44
“Rose. Lukus. Time to get up,” said Fuzz softly. “You need to hurry, since I let you sleep and we have a very long way to travel today.”
It was still dark. “Can't we please sleep a little longer,” groaned Rose, nestling deeper into her blankets, “at least 'till the sun comes up?”
“No way, I'm afraid,” said Fuzz, as he gently jostled her. “There are a good number of hazards ahead and right few places to camp. The first safe place is a very long way away over rough country. We'll be in big trouble if we don't reach it by dusk. And if we manage that, we'll have to be on our way as quick as possible. Besides, if Ugleeuh suddenly puts two and two together, she'll come straight here, first thing. We can use the cover of darkness to get well away.”
Lukus was out of bed, digging through his pack for something to eat before Fuzz had finished talking. Rose sat up immediately and rubbed her eyes with her fists. She closed off her yawn with a vague smile for Fuzz, though her eyes bore a definite look of urgency as she stood up out of her cozy straw pallet. She slopped a bit of water into the basin, dashing it onto her face to get going, and picked up her brush as she sorted through her bag for something to eat. Satisfied that he had them up and going, Fuzz gave a twitch of a smile and disappeared to finish up his own preparations for their journey.
“Boy, oh boy,” said Lukus, as he fixed his blankets into a tight roll. “Sure hope this works.”
“It will,” said Rose with firmer confidence than she bore. “It has to. Lukus, I want you to know that I'm really sorry I got you into this mess. I hope you don't hate me or anything.”
“There you go again, and you're getting worse all the time. How could I ever hate my sister? Why do you keep thinking you made me come along? Holy Niarg! Did you lie in the shadows and sneak after me in the dark? Did you spring on me and force me into going? I was the one, dear Poop Hole, who blackmailed you into bringing me along. Don't apologize. You're in entirely too much danger for me not to want to be here.” He turned away, carefully avoiding her eyes as he hurriedly gathered up things for the journey, hoping to escape the room before she managed a reply.
Rose knew that she was older, and that this made her feel responsible for him, but she knew that he would resent being made to feel like a child at the very moment he needed to feel grown and capable. How very much she needed to feel grown and capable! She dropped it at once and resumed her hurried preparations. Lukus slipped out to join Fuzz. The moment Rose emerged, Fuzz ushered them out into the darkness.
It was windless and oddly warm in the velvety blackness. The air had a humid freshness, though the ground was quite dry, and the leaf litter crushed and rustled crisply underfoot, as Rose and Lukus stumbled off and onto the path in their struggle to keep up with Fuzz. Away in the east, a faint red glow of dawn let them make out features of the treetops from time to time, while the dead stillness allowed them to hear the shrieks and wails of mint owls from considerable distances away. “Right queer,” said Fuzz as he paused to listen. “I don't believe I've ever heard quite so many mint owls at one time. Wonder what got them roiled up?
“Say,” he said, after a long spell of tramping hurriedly on. “We can see and so can she. Here. I've got the striped capes. Put them on. The last thing we need now is to have Ugleeuh swoop down and grab you two. It's also extremely important that you stay close and not lose sight of me. As I've said, the way to the sea is very hazardous.” He stopped short, looking Rose up and down. “Rose dear, are you quite sure those bags aren't too heavy for you? I can carry them right easily with my own things, don't you know.” Without waiting for a reply, he took her panniers and swung them onto his back.
“Why Fuzz, you're just like an old hen fussing over her chicks,” said Rose with a grateful smile.
“Young ladies were never intended as pack animals, my dear.”
“Oh? And I suppose that crusty old bespelled bears are?” she said with a broad smile. “I'm sorry, just teasing. You truly are a dear sweet soul. It's a great relief,
but I wasn't about to let on. Thank you.”
“So,” said Lukus. “How about Gastro?”
“All right, young Lukus,” said Fuzz, as he stopped to sniff the air and look at the sky. “What do you want to know?”
“Well, how does he feel about old Wart Face now that she's made him a sea monster? Surely he can't still be mooning over her. And then...”
“Whoa! More than one question at once can boggle an old moss back's mind...”
“Oh, go on! You're not all that old.”
“No, I suppose not,” he said, looking pleased as he cleared his throat, “but you really need to ask me only one question at a time. I go for such long spells with only my bats to talk to. But youthful impetuosity is refreshing and inspiring before it dies out in time, as it will...”
“Really? Sounds pretty boring.”
“I suppose it does. It must sound that way to you now, but as you grow older you'll become rather more...dignified, maybe.” he stopped talking for a moment and rubbed his fuzz-covered head. “I'm afraid I'm venturing into territory beyond my experience. I've never sired anything, boy, girl or cub, so I might not be the best one to give advice on such matters. Besides, I've been a bear for so long that I'm sort of forgetting about people. My! I'm in over my head. Let's talk about Gastro. I can manage that, at least.”
“I'll buy that,” said Lukus, stopping short at a glare from Rose. “Oh! That sounds awful. What I meant...”
“The last I knew, Gastro was indeed still 'mooning' over Ugleeuh, as you put it,” said Fuzz, ignoring the trifles.
“But that's not natural,” said Lukus with a look of disbelief.
Fuzz sniffed the air again. “It is incredible, isn't it? Well you know the old saying that love is blind. It's either that or Ugleeuh has bewitched him in some way. What I do know is that he still seems to see her exactly as he did when they were in Niarg. I certainly agree with you that after what she did to him, it makes no sense at all, so I'd reckon his attitude must be some spell of hers.”
“So that's why you don't know if he will help us or not?” said Lukus. “It doesn't sound as though there's any way possible. I mean, we can't talk him out of being a sea serpent.”
“Yes indeed. I doubt if it is possible to get him to see Ugleeuh as she is. In fact, I'm sure that's out. However, he's been my close friend for most of my life, and there's nothing about his bewitchment that keeps him from remembering me as his lifelong confidant. Who knows? Maybe he'll help you as a way of doing a favor for me. It's quite possible he'd go on thinking she was wonderful the whole time he was helping you escape for me.”
“I bet if we had Gastron's Staff of Power we could convince him,” said Lukus, decisively. “You don't suppose Rose and I should try to sneak back into Ugleeuh's cottage and try to find it, do you?” he said, jerking back his zeal with a stricken look at his own pronouncement.
Everyone stopped walking. Rose looked wide eyed as she studied Fuzz, then Lukus and then Fuzz again. “That's a hard question to answer, Lukus,” said Fuzz as he scratched his head, “and a right serious spot to put yourselves in, too. So tell me, did you see a staff of some sort at Ugleeuh's that could have been the very Staff?”
“No, neither of us saw anything there like that,” he said, exchanging shrugs with Rose. “She must have it hidden. Convincing Gastro with it is the first thing that occurred to me, but hidden or not, isn't it just plain crazy to go off and leave her with such an instrument of power when she's furious?”
“You can count on it,” said Fuzz. “It's probably far more dangerous for her to have it than you realize, but it would almost certainly be a death sentence for either of you to try to go back and look for it. If she caught you, you'd never survive her wrath. No. Unless you were absolutely certain that the Staff was in her cabin and that you could go right to it while I managed to distract her, then it is utterly, utterly out of the question.”
“But surely even Ugleeuh wouldn't seriously harm Lukus or me,” said Rose. We are her blood relatives, after all.”
“You may have spent the summer with her, but you've never really seen her in action, have you?” said Fuzz with a sigh. “Has no one ever told you the tale of Bailitheoir Cailli?”
“Then we were right!” gasped Rose. “So Ugleeuh really is the Collector Witch!”
“You got it. And I suppose that by now you also grasp that she wouldn't bat an eye over murdering the pair of you, since she was trying to kill both your parents when her evil plot was exposed by the Elves. Fates! Her own sister. Have either of you heard this?”
“Sort of,” said Rose, “but we put it together from snippets and pieces. Nobody ever set us down and told us the whole thing, so we haven't been sure about anything.”
“Oh, I'm so very sorry,” he said, shaking his head with pity and regret in his eyes. “I can see by the look on your faces, that at best you were only guessing about any of this. Had I only known, I would never have blurted it out this way.”
“You're probably the most kind hearted gentleman we've ever met,” said Rose. “Please don't go feeling guilty on us. How could you possibly have known we didn't have the whole story? We still don't, really. We don't know one bit more of it than was said just now. Can you tell us more as we walk? We're pretty tough, these days.”
Fuzz nodded, still hanging onto an ear he was scratching, itching from an insect which had dropped onto it from one of the peppermint trees. He turned at once and resumed tramping down the path at a good clip, almost as though he hadn't heard them. “As good fortune would have it,” he said, breaking the silence after a considerable spell of earnest walking, “Ugleeuh grew foolhardy after all of her successes, a-stirring up havoc in the realm. She went, bold as brass, straight to Talamh Coille Graham, the court herbalist to King Neron of the Elves and demanded that he fix her the strongest possible decoction of nimh bitsi, the deadly nightshade. You might know it as 'death weed...'“
“Same as numb betsy?” said Lukus.
“Yea, that too.”
“A poison? You mean, that's what she tried to use on Mother and Father?”
“That's right.”
“But what was she doing, going to the Elves?”
“You might want to keep the hood up on that cape, Lukus. You too, Rose. It's broad daylight,” said Fuzz, pausing once again to check the sky and sniff the air before launching back into full stride. “Well you see, that's the strongest poison known, if it's prepared right, and the only place on the entire continent it grows is in the Jutwood Forest. That stuff is mean business. It's a kind of nightshade and one drop'll knock you dead as a rock in the blink of an eye. It only grows in two or three wee patches, and the Elves keep their whereabouts secret and maintain a constant watch to steer the rest of the world away from them. It's generally reckoned that Graham pretty well had to have been thinking at first that he was preparing the stuff for Razzmorten, because anyone asking for it would almost certainly be up to no good, particularly Ugleeuh.”
“He'd 'ave known her?”
“She was already infamous, known as a stinker far and wide to good people, and he was no dummy, so it's entirely possible that she used some sort of glamourie to make herself appear to him as though she were Razzmorten himself. Anyway, by the time he had the poison prepared, it's fairly certain that he'd also got her figured out, because she struck him dead right where he stood. King Neron was so alarmed that he sent a raven to warn Castle Niarg and followed himself as soon as he could manage.” Fuzz paused with a sigh to gauge how Rose and Lukus were taking these revelations. Satisfied, he cleared his throat and continued. “When the raven arrived, your mother and father were just sitting down to their anniversary supper in the dining hall balcony. He warned them that they were about to be poisoned by Ugleeuh and said that Neron had sent him, and that Neron was going to come as soon as he could. A gift from Ugleeuh had indeed appeared with their food as it came from the kitchen. When they gave orders to find her, a pair of young guards saw her crouching under
the board in the dining hall, right by the balcony. They arrested her and called for me and I sent for Razzmorten, while she still held the incriminating vial in her hand...”
“You?” said Rose. “Just who were you, anyway? Gastro's friend, sure, but you know so much. What was your connection with Niarg Castle?”
“Captain of the Royal Guard, if you must. Sir Karlton Strong. And I remember the very day you were born, Rose.”
“So when did you come?”
“Here? Well, I was Fuzz the Bear well before Lukus came along, I should think. But as I was saying, Ugleeuh still had the vial in her hand when we got there. The dishes were set on the floor before two good hounds which fell dead, gobbling them up.” By now Fuzz had found a rock to sit on beside the path. He shook his head as if to clear away the memories. “That's the main reason for Ugleeuh's exile,” he said as he clapped his forepaws onto both knees at once, launching himself onto his feet. “We've got to move. It's a long, dangerous way, yet.”
“So Rose, you were right,” cried Lukus. “Getting a knight all sukered up before he was killed was indeed not enough to explain her exile. She'd murdered Graham and was caught attempting to murder Mother and Father.”
“They were keeping it quiet,” said Rose, “and that's why we never...”
“What? Never heard the whole story about Bailitheoir Cailli?” said Fuzz. “Probably. She was the queen's own sister, and it would have been a right nasty public tidbit, if you think about it... Oh, dang!” He stopped short, as if he'd come to the end of his tether and began scratching furiously behind his ear, flinging a large colorful insect onto the ground. “Got the little varmint.”
Lukus found the bug on its back, struggling to right itself, sputtering profanities about bears with no hair. “Hey, this one talks,” he said, grabbing it up. “Looks like a peppermint stick with legs.”
“Absolutely,” said Fuzz, curling a lip as he peered at the creature. “Everyone calls them 'peppermint walking sticks.' They're all over, though you hardly ever see 'em. They're hidden, just like we hope you are in your capes. Every once in awhile, they drop out of the trees to annoy you, like this one. Mercy, but they itch. I'll be itching for quite a spell.”
Heart of the Staff - Complete Series Page 47