Wisteria Wrinkle

by Angela Pepper

  Beth smiled and nodded. Test passed. “And what are you, Zinnia Riddle? My high priestess tells me you’re a witch.”

  Zinnia lifted both hands in a gesture of helplessness. “I’m nothing in this world of yours. My magic doesn’t work here.”

  Beth’s eyes twinkled. “Oh, there is abundant magic all around.” She winked. “Who knows? In time, you may learn to use it. Once you learn how to pull...” She smiled. “You’ll see.”

  “I’m looking forward to it. Forgive my ignorance, but where exactly is here?”

  Beth pressed her lips together in a mirthful smile. “This ol’ place? We’re in my castle, as you probably already guessed. As for the land that surrounds it, the land is what you make of it. Some call it Heaven. Others call it Hell.” She wrinkled her nose. “But people don’t call it Hell quite as much as they used to in the old days. When I first met my husband, he wasn’t a very nice man.” She paused and rolled her eyes. “Men.”

  “You’re married?”

  Beth climbed onto the purple velvet couch between them, sitting on her knees in a childlike gesture. She thrust her left hand toward Zinnia, wiggling her fingers so that the enormous diamond on her ring finger caught the light.

  “Beautiful,” Zinnia said. “It must have been quite the engagement party, with a ring like that.”

  Beth picked at the ring casually. “The funny thing is, diamonds aren’t scarce here at all, but I suppose I’m an old-fashioned girl. The king likes to keep me happy.”

  “You’re the queen,” Zinnia said. “Queenie Gilbert.”

  Beth squinted. “That’s a curious thing for you to say. I’m Queen Beth. We don’t have last names here.”

  “Queenie Gilbert is your name in the future. After you come back to Earth.”

  Her honey-brown eyes widened. “Oh, I could never leave this place. You must be mistaken.”

  “People change,” Zinnia said. “You might not be ready to leave now, but you will eventually.” Zinnia looked more closely at the young woman. Beth didn’t look a day over twenty-five. “Have you really been here for hundreds of years?”

  “Something like that. I stopped counting a while back.”

  “How are you still so young? Does the orange sun in this land keep you from aging?”

  “The locals age, but my beloved king keeps me from changing. He wants me to stay exactly how I am.”

  “He must be very powerful. Is he some kind of sorcerer?”

  Again, Beth’s eyes twinkled. “You could say that.” She whispered, “He’s a god, actually.” She giggled as she patted the seat of the couch next to her. “Come and sit. I’m dying to hear gossip about what’s happening on Earth.”

  Zinnia looked at the couch seat but didn’t take Queen Beth’s invitation. She did want to soak up as much knowledge as possible, but she had to stay on mission. Plus she didn’t trust the queen, who was displaying a careless attitude about the captives, as though Zinnia and the others were nothing but playthings for the bored royal.

  “I’d love to chat more,” Zinnia said diplomatically, “but I need to know about the others who came through with me. Where are my friends?”

  Beth’s posture slumped as her head rolled from side to side in an expression of boredom that struck Zinnia as particularly childish. The queen had been spoiled by hundreds of years of marriage to a powerful god-king, and she expected her playthings to not ask so many questions.

  Zinnia repeated, “Where are my friends?”

  In a bored, monotone voice, the queen said, “I assure you that the other humans from the future, or the past, or from wherever it is you call now, are all quite comfortable. They are being fed.”

  “Being fed?” Zinnia hoped they were not being fed... to monsters.

  “They’re in the dining hall enjoying a feast,” Queen Beth said with limp posture and vague hand waves. “My personal chef wasn’t happy about the short notice, but he’s a good ogre. He does try his best with his big, brutish hands.” She perked a little and clapped her hands girlishly. “Want to know a secret about ogres? If you talk in a really high voice like this,” she pitched up her voice to cartoon-fairy levels, “they can’t hear a word you’re saying.”

  “That’s a fascinating fact about ogres, but I should go meet up with the others.” Zinnia glanced around. “Which way is the dining hall?”

  Just then, the white marble floor moved, rippling like water. Then the white marble became a snake—a sparkling, pure-white snake. The snake coiled, extended its head up, and turned once more into its female human form. This time the woman they’d dubbed Susan had hair that was pure white.

  “Hello, again,” the snake-woman said to Zinnia. She offered a smile that might have been friendly if her teeth weren’t pointed like those of a barracuda. She was nude again, but not for long. With another shimmer, she was wearing a dress made of lace. The dress was cornflower blue, and matched her eyes in their current hue. As she continued smiling, her sharp teeth turned square and human-looking.

  Queen Beth squealed with excitement. “There you are!” She swatted the snake-woman on the arm. “You’re always sneaking up on people, you naughty girl.”

  The snake-woman gracefully flipped her long, shimmering white curtain of hair over one shoulder. “I have to do something to amuse myself,” she said haughtily. “Since you don’t allow me to torture the villagers these days.”

  They both laughed like two old friends sharing a private joke. Zinnia didn’t find the idea of villagers being tortured very amusing.

  The snake-woman stopped giggling long enough to point at Zinnia and tell the queen, “I actually told her people that we didn’t know about chocolate.”

  Queen Beth slapped her own knee with apparent delight. “You’re so naughty!” She said to Zinnia, “Of course we have chocolate. Duh.”

  “But we don’t have ice cream cakes,” the snake-woman said to Zinnia. “Or at least we didn’t until now. Fortunately, your companions were able to explain them to the chef. The gnome with the white teeth offered to help, but the chef wouldn’t allow it. Gnomes in the kitchen ruin everything with their fussy ways. They can’t simply let a thing be as it is. They always have to change one thing.”

  Zinnia noted to herself that the snake-woman was not wrong about Gavin’s ways. She hadn’t realized it was a gnome thing.

  “What about the troll?” Queen Beth asked. “He thinks he’s a sprite!”

  Susan snorted. “We should roast him on a spit for dinner, and see if he tastes like a sprite.”

  The two laughed some more.

  “That’s not funny,” Zinnia said. “Karl is my friend. He’s a person.”

  The blondes stared at Zinnia.

  Zinnia turned to the more human one. “Beth, have you been here for so long that you think it’s amusing to joke about eating people?”

  “It was just a joke,” the queen said.

  The snake-woman asked, “Why are you defending a troll?”

  “He’s a sprite, and his name is Karl.”

  Two blank stares.

  “He’s my friend,” Zinnia said.

  The two started giggling again.

  Zinnia shook her head, picked a doorway, and started walking toward it. “I’ll find the dining hall myself,” she muttered.

  As she left the palatial sitting room, Zinnia heard the words of her mentor in her head. A little diplomacy never hurt any relationship, especially the delicate kind of relationship that exists between two powerful beings who can easily destroy each other.

  Zinnia mentally thumbed her nose at her mentor. She’d been kidnapped. Again. Perhaps the ambush and capture had been a test, or cautionary measures, or simply for the amusement of the queen. Regardless, she didn’t care. She wasn’t going to play the role of the simpering victim. She was getting her friends and going home, with magic powers or without.

  A witch could be down, but she was never out. Fate had a way of turning things around in the blink of an eye.

  Chapter 32


  The banquet hall was as large and palatial as Zinnia had expected.

  She found her coworkers enjoying a sumptuous feast along with a dozen people from the village, all regular-sized humans, as well as another dozen of the tiny people who’d captured Margaret under their net. The ambush had happened quickly, but Zinnia recognized a few of the people.

  Zinnia approached cautiously, even though her coworkers didn’t appear to be in any distress.

  Dawna was eating with enthusiasm. Gavin was picking at his food, pulling it apart with a single utensil that was both spoon and fork—a spork. Margaret and Karl were both eating as though in a contest to see who could put away more food.

  Zinnia was disappointed to note that Xavier and Liza were not present.

  When Zinnia reached the table, the locals introduced themselves one by one, by name, and invited her to join them in the feast.

  The tiny people were sitting on special chairs that had higher seats as well as access ladders.

  In addition to the thirty people seated at the long table, there were a half-dozen attendants dressed in black and white. Most appeared to be human, although two were strange colors—green and blue. Zinnia tried not to stare at the people who came in colors she wasn’t accustomed to.

  Karl paused his inhaling of a black-colored pudding long enough to grunt, “Pull up a chair. These people are okay.”

  “How quickly things change,” Zinnia said. “The last I saw everyone here, some of us were being ambushed and captured by the others.”

  The tiny people tittered in their tiny voices.

  “We hope there are no hard feelings,” said the tiny person who’d introduced herself as Tippi. She had a high, squeaky voice that matched her appearance. “We love our queen—”

  She was interrupted by a chorus of “Long live Queen Beth! Long may she rule!” Glasses and goblets clinked in toasts.

  Tippi continued, “We love our queen and will do anything to protect her. We had to test your abilities to make sure you couldn’t harm our beloved and benevolent queen.” She raised her thimble-sized goblet and started off another cheer as the others joined in. “Long live Queen Beth! Long may she rule!”

  A tiny man to Tippi’s left, Tottothot, asked Zinnia eagerly, “No hard feelings?”

  “No hard feelings,” Zinnia said, which wasn’t entirely true. “But you could have tried talking to us. I wouldn’t have reached for my supplies if your group hadn’t attacked us first.”

  “We had no choice,” Tottothot said. “Look how small we are compared to you.”

  Tippi shook her head. “The worst enemies are the ones who talk their way in through your front door.”

  Zinnia thought of Jesse, which made her thumb ache. Tippi and Tottothot made a good point. The worst enemies really did talk their way in through the front door.

  Margaret caught Zinnia’s eye. “Over here,” Margaret said, using an enormous piece of food that looked like a turkey leg, except much larger, to point at the chair beside her. “Come and sit with me.”

  One of the attendants, a blue-skinned man who was dressed in a traditional Earth-style tuxedo, pulled out the chair for Zinnia. “Be seated,” he said. “Enjoy the queen’s hospitality. We have sent for the other two humans from Earth.”

  Tippi said, “As soon as we can figure out where the timewyrms have stashed them!”

  All the tiny people laughed.

  Tuxedo Man said, “The timewyrms mean well, but they cling to the old ways.”

  “Stupid brainless timewyrms,” Tippi said with evident distaste.

  “They are brainless,” Tottothot agreed.

  Tippi continued, “They’re as troublesome as the giant ravens who try to steal our young.” Tippi looked across the table at the drumstick in Margaret’s hand. Cheerfully, she added, “But at least the ravens taste excellent when roasted. I can’t say the same for grilled timewyrm.”

  Margaret paused in her chewing, looked down at the raven drumstick in her fist, shrugged, and continued eating.

  Zinnia said to Tuxedo Man, “I guess if you haven’t located Liza and Xavier yet, the queen hasn’t met either of them.” What she meant was, the queen hadn’t met her own granddaughter.

  “Not yet.” Tuxedo Man frowned. “Why do you ask with that tone? Your friends are not assassins, are they?” His eyes widened, and an array of sharp spikes suddenly erupted from his blue face. “Your people swore to me the first two came here by accident. If I find out you’re plotting to kill the queen and seize the throne, my mistress will have you chopped to pieces and fed to the bone-crawlers.”

  The table went quiet. Everyone stared at Zinnia, awaiting a response.

  “They came here by accident,” Zinnia said. “The two of them were using the hidden floor and came here by accident.”

  Tuxedo Man, or Pufferfish Man, slowly pulled in his face spikes. The Earth people gave him wary looks and slowed their eating.

  Tippi asked Zinnia, “What were they using the portal for?”

  Zinnia felt herself blushing. “We believe they were, um, hooking up.”

  Everyone at the table who wasn’t from Earth looked confused. A few of the human-sized villagers muttered to each other in a language Zinnia didn’t understand.

  “That means kissing,” Zinnia explained.

  Tippi put her tiny hands on her tiny hips. “Then why didn’t you say they were kissing? Are you trying to deceive us?”

  “Hooking up means kissing plus other stuff.”

  Tippi got to her feet, which only made her a few inches taller. “They were practicing sex magic?”

  The human-sized villagers gasped. They understood English, even if they weren’t speaking it.

  “No,” Zinnia said. “Not sex magic. They were kissing for their own amusement.”

  “Sex magic,” Tippi said, nodding.

  “No...” Zinnia became aware of her coworkers hanging on her every word. Of course. This was exactly the sort of thing they would enjoy—watching their forty-eight-year-old spinster coworker explain hooking up to people from a foreign land.

  One of the other tiny people ran across the table to Tippi and whispered something in her ear. Both tiny people blushed.

  “Now I understand,” Tippi said. “They didn’t realize they were engaging in sex magic. That must have been the magic signature that attracted the timewyrms. The timewyrms do love to interrupt mating rituals.” She waved for Zinnia to take the chair next to Margaret. “Be comfortable,” she said. “The staff will return with your friends soon.”

  Zinnia walked around the thirty-foot-long table and took a seat next to Margaret. She hadn’t realized how hungry she was until the smell of the food hit her nostrils.

  Considering the chef was an ogre who’d never made an ice cream cake before, the results were truly impressive.

  Gavin moaned and held his stomach with both hands. “Somebody stop me before I take a fourth helping and explode.”

  “Go ahead and take another helping,” said the green-skinned attendant dressed in what could have been a French maid Halloween costume. “I will sew you back together,” she said. “My stitches are the neatest in all this great land.”

  Gavin didn’t look pleased at the idea of being sewn back together at all, let alone by a green-skinned woman, but he did take another slice of the ice cream cake.

  Further up the table, Karl made a HARUMPH sound. “Since you’re having another piece, Gavin, I’d better have some, too.”

  “It’s not a contest,” Dawna said.

  Tippi clapped her hands and jumped up and down on the table. “We love eating contests! It’s one of the main things we do now that we don’t battle to the death for the enjoyment of the king.”

  Zinnia asked Tippi, “When did that practice stop?”

  Tippi held her chin between two impossibly small fingers and looked up—way, way, up—at the high ceiling. “Two hundred and seven years ago,” she said. “I was just a little girl at the time.”

 
Zinnia did a double take. “How long do your people live?”

  Tippi shrugged. “Nobody knows. Most of my people used to die in sport-battle or being fed to the king. Our beloved queen stopped the rituals, and now we are...” She smiled. “Living our days and nights without certainty.”

  Her male companion Tottothot, who had the familiarity of a spouse, raised his thimble-sized goblet in a toast. “To living our days and nights without certainty. Long live our beautiful and wise queen!”

  The others cheered in agreement.

  Zinnia and Margaret exchanged a look. It sounded like Beth’s arrival in the land had benefited its people greatly.

  One of the other tiny people, a man with a black goatee and a bald head, said, “I’m not so sure about life without certainty. Call me old-fashioned, but the nice thing about being eaten by the king at his weekly party was knowing death would be quick and certain. I have lived to see my father’s father become weak and feeble of mind.”

  “Oh, shut up, Riollobo,” said one of the other tiny people. “You don’t speak for us.”

  The goateed man, Riollobo, grabbed a piece of cake bigger than his whole head and slunk off to the corner of his chair with it.

  “Don’t listen to him,” Tippi said to Zinnia. “There is always someone who is unhappy no matter what.”

  “So it goes on Earth,” Zinnia said.

  Margaret raised her glass, spilling red wine as she did so. “A toast to the queen! Long live the queen!”

  People of all sizes and origins joined the toast.

  Zinnia clinked her glass with as many people as she could reach, and resumed eating.

  While they dined, Zinnia looked around at the villagers. She knew that a person’s outer appearance didn’t necessarily reflect what was going on in their lives, but the people of this world certainly seemed happy enough—other than grumpy Riollobo—and it was all thanks to their Earthly queen.

  Some day their queen would have to leave her people to return to her own time and land. She had to become Queenie Gilbert, and have children who would have Liza, who would bring the people from Earth back here.

  Beth’s fate was inescapable, because it had already happened.