“Pirate, eh? So she’s not adverse to dating guys on the wrong side of the law?”
“She’s not too bothered about that sort of thing. Not a big respecter of authority. Though I’m sure she’d draw the line at murderers. To her, the most important thing for a long-lasting relationship is that the guy’s kind and respectful.”
Copernicus pondered. He’d never murdered anyone before. That was where he drew the line as well! What were the odds?! And he was kind and respectful. To ladies, anyway. And to dudes who didn’t make him mad. “Pretty?”
“Oh, sure. She’s plenty pretty. She’s related to me, after all, and look at how dreamy I am.”
Copernicus contemplated Warren’s visage for a few moments and imagined him as a lady. “Yeah, I bet she is pretty.”
Warren flashed him a smile, and said, “You know, she’s a writer as well. Published writer.” Ah ha! Yes, this would ensure that Copernicus would let them go. “You said that was your dream? I should introduce you to her once I’ve freed her. She does poetry and plays, not novels, but I’m sure she could give you some pointers and introduce you to some people in the biz.”
Copernicus stared. “For real?”
“Oh yeah, Corrine’s got connections in the literary world. She’s a great playwright. And poet.”
“Anything I might know?”
“Well her most famous play is The Lady Who Tamed the Roguish Pirate. And she’s got a book of poems called Wistful Musings from a Crow’s Nest.”
Copernicus froze mid hog slop and stared at Warren in disbelief. He’d never heard of the play, but he had found Wistful Musings from a Crow’s Nest in a suitcase in a carriage he’d once robbed. That night back in his team’s hideout, he had curled up by the fireplace and read it from cover to cover while his friends had divided the spoils and partied around him. He’d barely even registered their mocking jokes when they’d realized he was reading poems. And, since that day, not a day had gone by that he hadn’t cracked open the book and read a poem or two.
Copernicus wordlessly reached into his pocket, drew out his much-worn copy, and showed it to Warren.
Warren grinned at the sight of the book. Perfect. “I bet she’d sign that for you,” was all he said.
Copernicus was in no state to respond. He was too busy thinking about the fact that, if all went well, he’d soon be meeting the lady who wrote those poems. Those poems. All revolving around the same general topic: she wanted to find love. True love. With the man of her dreams. Could he, Copernicus, a lowly ex-criminal and budding true crime author, begin to hope that he could be the man of her dreams? Heart all of a flutter, Copernicus grabbed the slop pail and walked back to the house, with Warren trailing a few steps behind, oblivious to the can of worms he’d just cracked open in Copernicus’s heart.
* * *
29When Copernicus had taken a career assessment test in school and the results had come back (1) Criminal, (2) Club bouncer, and (3) Bodyguard, she had been unsurprised; when he had gone off to the big city in search of work, and had started mailing back hefty chunks of money, she had assumed he must have gone for option (1), but had never inquired via the mail, because one didn’t put things like that in writing unless one wanted one’s permanent mailing address to change to The Forest of Looming Death, or worse yet to The Graveyard. Not that you get mail when you’re dead
30She was the type of mom who had favorites, which generally is a cold and unnatural thing for one who is a practitioner of the Maternal Arts, but in her case, it was at least a tad forgivable considering that some of her kids were murderers.)
31In Fritillary they didn’t know about antioxidants, but they still did eat things from the broccoli family because they were among the only plants that produced in cold weather.
Chapter Thirty-three
Julianna was woken from a deep sleep by the sound of someone knocking on the door to the root cellar. She cleared her throat and yelled, “Yeah?”
“The sun’s set!” Warren hollered down. “I’m going to open the doors, if that’s cool with you.”
“Go for it,” she said and stood up, stretching. He opened the root cellar, and Julianna clambered out, and took a breath of the cold night air, which was quite refreshing after a day spent in a small dirt-walled underground room full of aging vegetables. “Let’s get moving,” she said without preamble. Wanting to cover as much ground as she could before sunrise, she was in no mood to fritter away what time they had with small talk about how their respective days had gone. “Did Copernicus tell you what direction we should be heading?”
“He’s doing better than telling us; he’s showing us.”
“What’s that now?”
“Copper said he’d take us. I guess he’s even got some pals and relatives in the Forest who might be able to help us if he can get in touch with them.”
“Wonderful!” she enthused. “And are we taking his wagon then?”
“Yes. He said we’ll get there tonight easy as pie. Maybe in just three hours or so.”
“Awesome!” she said, though the closer they got to the Forest, the more nervous she got. But she didn’t want to mention that to Warren and risk making him get worried too. She followed Warren from the root cellar behind the house to the front of the house where Copernicus was busily loading the wagon. “Copper, eh?” she then asked Warren a bit jealously.
“Yeah. We bonded today talking about Corrine. Apparently, he is a fan of her poetry. He’s excited to meet her. That’s why he’s helping us out, actually.”
“I didn’t realize Corrine was a poet,” she said with interest. “Anything I’d have heard of?”
“Probably, if you like poetry. Her compilation was a big deal about two years back. She made a ton of money. It was pretty awesome.”
“What’s the book called?”
By now they were at the wagon, and Copernicus supplied the answer eagerly, “Wistful Musings from a Crow’s Nest. It’s the best ever! I have a copy on me if you want to read it.”
“Oh! I actually have read that!” she said with surprise. She’d gotten it as a gift from the son of some lord or other a while back and did not mention to either of the guys that she had found the poems to be way too sentimental and sappy, and some were, in her opinion, rather anti-feminist (not that she was judging; to each her own); she had not even been able to finish it. Julianna was surprised that Corrine, who could be so cranky and rude in person, had been the writer of those syrupy verses. Perhaps the poems were an attempt at irony that hadn’t quite hit the mark? Or maybe Corrine had a super emotional side hidden deep, deep down?
“Good stuff, huh?” Copernicus asked.
“Oh, yeah, it sure was good,” Julianna lied. She didn’t want to insult the guy who was supplying them with a wagon for their journey. She was saved from elaborating on what specifically it was about the poems that was so great by the arrival of Copernicus’s mom, who came out of the house to see them off.
Copernicus hopped down from the back of the wagon, where he’d been arranging boxes and barrels. “Thanks again, Ma.”
“It was nice to see you again, dear,” she said fondly. “Do you think you’ll be coming back my way?”
“Oh sure. Once I’m done helping these two out, I was planning on coming back and visiting with you for a while.”
“Lovely,” she said with a smile, then handed him a basket of food. “Just some veggies and bread and some of my prize-winning spiced peach preserves,” she said.
“Super. Thanks, Ma.”
“Send Phil my love, will you? And your cousins.”
“Will do.” He took the basket, gave her a hug, and hopped up into the driver’s seat. “Ready, guys?” he asked his passengers. He was no good at farewells and wanted to leave before his eyes got all teary. They nodded, and Copernicus took the reins and started the horses up.
“Who’s Phil?” asked Warren.
Copper frowned and cleared his throat. “My brother.”
Copper’s frown told Warren quite clearly that this Phil was not a topic of conversation that Copper would like to chat about, but all the same, Warren couldn’t hold back a few questions. “Is he one of your brothers?”
Copper gave a short nod.
“He’s a prisoner in the Forest?”
Another short nod.
“Is he—”
Copper turned and gave Warren a glare.
“You don’t want to talk about Phil.”
“Clever lad.”
Warren bit his lip and looked at Julianna, who was sitting in the back of the wagon, having opted to keep a bit of distance from the ex-thug who still wouldn’t let her call him by his nickname.
She shrugged and rolled her eyes.
Warren decided to leave Copper to his brooding. He hopped off the front bench and went back to sit by Julianna. Within minutes, they were ensconced in a game of Twenty Questions.
The further they went, the more nervous they all got. Consequently, they (even Copper!) got pretty chatty, since talking took their minds off what they were about to do. Warren and Julianna found themselves telling Copernicus all about Julianna’s curse, and how Warren was supposed to be the guy who would break the spell. “Except,” Julianna said, “I think something must be wrong with the spell.”
“Why’s that?” asked Copernicus.
“Well,” Warren said, “For one thing, some sort of smoke or sparks always seems to accompany spells, and when we met there wasn’t any of that stuff. Also, it seems like if the spell was working right, we would have fallen in love, or at least felt something, by now. But I haven’t.”
“And nor have I,” Julianna agreed. “I’m starting to wonder whether maybe Farland was lying about the curse. Or he messed it up. But the only way of testing that theory is to put my life at risk. So that’s not happening.”
“Maybe you two just need to get to know each other a bit better,” Copernicus said, trying to be helpful. “Talk about your hopes, your dreams, your fears, the deepest longings of your hearts. Relationship stuff.”
Julianna and Warren exchanged skeptical glances.
“Yeah,” Julianna said, “My mom said the same thing.”
“Maybe it’ll happen eventually? My Ma always told me you can’t hurry love,” Copernicus said sagely. “Nope, you just have to wait. It don’t come easy.”
“Again, my mother gave the same general advice,” said Julianna. “But I maintain that Warren and I are not meant to be. We would have felt some connection by now. Feeling a connection with someone can happen pretty quick.” The image of Mortimer floated into her mind then, and she sighed wistfully.
Warren nodded and said, “And there’s no way I’m going to marry into royalty. No way.”
Copernicus asked, “Why not? Seems like it’d be pretty cool.”
“But you’d have to act all proper and learn about public policy and go to lots of meetings. And worry about how the decisions you make impact the entire population. And weigh the pros and cons of wars, and then carry out the actual wars when they became necessary and have all the deaths weighing on you. And do all sorts of other stuff that people who are born into that lifestyle are taught from day one.”
“I guess…” Copernicus said doubtfully. He, like King Conroy, thought of being royal more in terms of having lots of money and power, and being able to do whatever you wanted without fear of consequences.
As Copernicus and Warren began to discuss politics, Julianna got quiet. An inconvenient thought had just occurred to her. In explaining why he didn’t want to be royal, Warren had just made a good argument for why he might actually be good at it; his views about what royalty should be were spot on. Someone with those sorts of views was the kind of person who should be running things. Was she, in a way, being as selfish as her father? She was a princess after all, so shouldn’t she be thinking about marriage in terms of what was best for the country, not what was best for her heart?
But, she reminded herself with relief, it wasn’t as if the decision was hers alone, and Warren was even less inclined to get married than she was. This line of thinking was too troubling for her since she was already plenty troubled about their impending romp into a forest full of murderers, so she stuffed it away to the back of her brain for later. With a sigh, she directed her attention back to her traveling companions, for they were now talking about what to do once they got to the Forest.
“—no clue what we’re going to do when we get there,” Copernicus was saying unhelpfully.
“Yeah, I’ve got nothing either,” was Warren’s input.
“The only thing I can think of is that I need a disguise, so the guards don’t recognize me,” Julianna said. “But, aside from that, I don’t think there’s really much that we can plan. Corrine’s got to be rescued, so we’ve got to try, but that doesn’t mean we can plan for the unknowable.”
“I guess so…” said Copernicus. “Anyway, as long as we’ve got money, getting in won’t be too tough.”
“It won’t be tough as long as they don’t look too close at me when we go in, that is,” Julianna said.
“Which brings us back to finding a disguise for you,” Warren said, grasping eagerly onto the only practical thing that they could accomplish at this point. “I learned a lot about applying theater makeup for the plays I did with my family, but I don’t have a makeup kit on me. Um...” he said and looked around vaguely as though he expected to see something helpful hanging off a tree branch.
“We could do the ol’ Disguise Her as a Dude trick; you might think it’s a bit cliché, but it’s only the disguises that work that stick long enough to become clichés,” said the career criminal, who knew his business when it came to disguises.
Julianna shrugged. “Sounds good. All we need is some guy clothes.”
Neither Warren nor Copernicus had packed a spare, because in those days travelers weren’t as particular about having a fresh outfit for every day they were on the road. For one thing, clothes were expensive, and harder to come by in Fritillary than they were for you and me, because their garment industry was a long way from developing big factories with huge machines operated by grossly underpaid, overworked employees, thus supplying cheap and disposable clothing for the masses. For another thing, it was best in Fritillary to travel in dirty old clothes because it made you look like less of a target for highwaymen.
“We could steal something off a clothesline,” Copernicus suggested.
Julianna didn’t much like the sound of that, but it didn’t seem there was any other option, so every time they passed a house, they kept their eyes peeled for a clothesline.
It was thus that, about an hour later, a wagon carrying what looked like three dudes approached the Forest of Looming Death. But it wasn’t really three dudes at all, but two dudes and Julianna. They rode across the wide, treeless expanse that ran around the perimeter of the Forest; the treeless space was there so the guards could easily spot any prisoners running away.
Pretty quickly they attracted the attention of the guards, who stood in pairs at regular intervals around the Forest. Little bonfires and folding chairs marked their stations. There was a flurry of excited talking amongst them at the sight of the wagon; their job was exceptionally boring for the most part, since prisoners so rarely tried to escape, and even when they did try they never did it in groups32. While it was important for the guards to be there, their mere presence meant that there was nothing to do, so for the most part they just killed time doing target practice and bird watching (and often both at the same time); they also played some epic games of Telephone that stretched around the entire perimeter of the Forest33.
“Ooh, it looks like the wagon’s coming toward us!” a guard named Murray said to his partner Clive.
“I think you’re right! Awesome!” said Clive excitedly, pocketing his bird identification booklet and watching the wagon as it rolled toward them. “What do you think they want?”
Too excited to wait to find out, Murray started to trot out to meet the wagon.
“Why’s that guard running at us?” Julianna whispered, gripping Warren’s wrist.
“I dunno. Don’t panic,” said Warren, looking down at her hand.
“Hey!” yelled Murray as he trotted up to them.
Copernicus halted the horses and looked down at the guard.
“What brings you to the Forest of Looming Death?” asked Murray. “Do you have any news from the Capital?”
“If it’s all the same to you, we’d rather keep the particulars of our business to ourselves. And no, we don’t have any news. Not much going on in the Capital except that the Royal Family and all the lords and ladies are getting all excited about the Prince’s first hunt.”
“You guys haven’t gotten news in a while?” asked Warren casually. They might not even know yet that Julianna had run off.
“Nope. No one really bothers with us out here unless they’ve got a prisoner to deliver. Or if, in theory, we send a signal for help via yon signal beacon,” he said, waving a hand toward what looked like a big torch sitting out in the middle of the treeless expanse. “I’m not sure how to use it, but I think you can send a message to folks on the outside, letting them know what kind of help we need if we run up against some trouble.”
“You don’t know how to use your signal beacon?” Warren asked, eyebrows raised. “That doesn’t seem safe.”
“Oh I’m sure someone here knows how,” Murray said with a shrug. “And there’s a manual for it too, back at HQ. They showed us how it worked in training, and as I recall, it wasn’t too tough.” It had been so long since the signal beacon had been needed that most of the current guards had only used it for training exercises when they first started the job.
How to Break an Evil Curse Page 29