“No crocodiles; it’s the mosquitoes and the swamp plants that will eat you alive.” He took a small bottle out of his travel bag. “Vinegar. Mosquitoes don’t care for the smell.” He poured some of the clear liquid into his hand and scrunched his nose as he wiped it on his wide forehead and cheeks, and then he handed me the bottle.
“Horses don’t like the swamp. There are stinging plants. Whatever you do, Dory, don’t get off your horse.”
“Is there no other way?” Beginning with my forehead, I wiped the vinegar on my face.
“There is, but it would take a week longer.” Clicking the sides of Plenty’s belly, Felix started down the hillside. I wanted to follow precisely in his steps and prodded Waluga to keep up. Skunk cabbage—pretty from afar—sent out a strong sour odor as we edged closer to the basin.
Knee-deep in the frothy green water, our horses slowly made their way over decaying logs and through thick, sinewy fronds. I swatted at mosquitoes as they dipped for blood. Up ahead, Felix’s horse whinnied, high stepping forward and then back. My own horse plodded into reverse; I didn’t resist her. In the fronds below, a creature the size of a muskrat darted toward us.
Then, all I saw was sky, as my horse went back on her hind legs. Waluga rocked down and bucked, and I was catapulted over her head into the muck below.
“Get up, Dory!” Felix yelled.
A noxious green slime burned my skin and blurred my vision.
“Get back on your horse!” On foot, Felix appeared through the gray-winged fog. He grabbed Waluga’s reins and lifted me back onto her. I held tight to the saddle horn as sanity and delirium struggled for position. I was no longer in charge of the reins as Felix on horseback towed us up the hillside. Everything about me stung as if I’d taken a bath in poison oak and ivy. With no assistance from me, we crested the summit.
“There’s fresh water in a couple of miles,” Felix yelled back at me, and then he rode the horses hard. A burning itchiness enveloped my being, and my vision narrowed to a slit as thin as paper. “Fifty more…” Felix’s voice carried in the wind.
I held on to the saddle horn for dear life, as if I were hanging on to a root at the edge of a cliff. Finally, the animals halted. Felix carried me like a rag doll over one shoulder, and when he was knee-high in the water, he tossed me into the deep.
I plummeted deep and bobbed up gasping. Everything about me itched. Sputtering, I went down again, and then Felix pulled me out by the back of my collar.
“The swamp plant’s bite is bad. I’m sorry, Dory,” he said, towing me to shore.
“I itch! I itch!” Everything itched so fiercely that I wanted my life to end.
“You can’t scratch! It makes it worse.” Felix hoisted me onto his horse. “You’re going to be all right. You’re going to be all right.”
‡
Chapter Six
“Felix! Felix!” Yelling his name, I awoke from a terrible dream. My skin pulsed with an itchy fire. Everything about me tingled and throbbed.
“He’s in the garden,” said an unfamiliar voice beside me. We were in a cluttered one-room cottage, and a wizened old woman sat in a chair beside my bed. Bundled herbs hung overhead in the open rafters.
“Is he alive?” I whispered. Was he buried in the garden?
“Yes, of course he’s alive. Lie down, you’re delirious.”
I lay back against the straw ticking and studied the woman’s sage-green eyes. Her bony face was a cross-stitch of wrinkles.
“I’m Dixie, the herbalist.” She dabbed at my forehead with a warm muslin bag.
“We were entering a heavenly meadow.” Trembling and chilled, I felt extremely fatigued, and every inch of my skin itched.
“Shepherd’s Field.” Dixie closed her eyes and nodded.
“Very large women—giants—appeared from the shadows.”
The herbalist clicked her tongue against the roof of her mouth. “After hibernation, the giants are always starving.”
“They were.” My memory traveled from the dream of terror to the terrible swamp. I lifted my tingling hands and stared. My long, piano-playing fingers felt swollen… tight, and were covered in a red, bubbly rash with bright pink centers.
“My hands. My piano-playing hands.” They belonged to a strange creature, not to me.
“Shhh!” The old woman hushed me. “Anxiety only makes the symptoms worse.”
“Do you have a mirror?” My lower lip felt numb, yet plump.
“I have never owned one,” the old woman lied.
“Then bring me one of your shiniest kettles.”
“I only have copper, and its reflection is blurry.”
“Bring me that kettle you have on the stove.” Lifting my arm, I pointed across the room. The hunched little woman ambled to the stove before I lay back, exhausted. She held the kettle out in front of me. With great effort, I propped myself up on my elbows. I had never seen such tarnished copper. My reflection was a mottled blob.
Felix appeared in the doorway with an armload of herbs. He was truly alive! It had only been a terrible dream.
“You’re back.” Dixie rose from the chair. “I’ll make tea.”
“She’s awake.” Felix set what smelled like fresh mint on the table.
“I had the most awful dream.” I peered up at him. “At the entrance to Shepherd’s Field, there were these giants.”
“Don’t tell him!” the old woman snapped.
“Tell me.” Felix swiveled a chair from the table and sat down.
“There were these huge women with stringy brown hair, and the whites of their eyes were the size of… teacups!”
“Teacups?”
“The tea I’m making will take away the dreams.” Dixie puttered near a potbellied stove.
With a slight nod, Felix encouraged me to continue.
“It was so real.” I stared at him. “They lumbered out of the shadows.”
“Now is not the time to tell him. You are weak. You must rest.”
“I’m so glad you’re alive.” I gazed up at Felix, my lifeline. He was the only one who knew where we were going. Up until the terrible nightmare, I had no idea how important he was to me or how much I’d come to care about him.
“You need your rest, Dory.” He patted the gray wool quilt in place about me.
“Does my face”—I touched it with my swollen fingertips—“look like my hands?” I searched the mirror of Felix’s eyes.
He closed his eyes and nodded.
“Is it another lesson?” I recalled the muskrat, and the way Waluga had reacted. If it was, Felix was ever so clever.
“No.” He shook his head.
“The final straw to teach me humility?”
“We must get you well.” His Adam’s apple bobbed up and then down.
“It may be months, even years. But what’s done is done,” the old woman muttered. Carrying a chipped mug, she neared my bedside.
Chopped leaves floated in a strange green brew. “I’m too tired.” I slumped back into the straw-ticked mattress.
“Three sips.” As thin as a fence post, Dixie hovered over me.
“No, I’m tired. I won’t have bad dreams.”
The old woman needled my shoulder with her bony finger for several minutes before I finally sat up to sip the hot tea. “No more dreams,” she whispered, removing the mug from my hand.
As I drifted to sleep, I remembered the faces of Dr. Krawl and Father looming over me, and my mother’s, as she clutched her hands to her heart on the other side of the bed. No more nightmares, only memories.
Then, I was dancing, swishing back and forth in my sky-blue gown and light-as-air dancing slippers. A young man bowed before me. “Princess Alia, is your father really Felix?” He waltzed me onto the floor. It was a riddle. How could my father be Felix, if I was Princess Alia?
“You do not dance like a chicken farmer’s daughter.” He waltzed me about the room and spun me until I was dizzy, and then he spun me again, like he was trying to unravel the tru
th.
When I awoke, Felix sat oddly slumped with his cheek to the table.
“I’m writing down remedies for you, my dear.” Seated across the table from Felix, Dixie held a writing quill. “The herbal recommendations for swamp pox are: Parsley. Cut small and add to a cup of boiling water. My most common recommendation is queen of the meadow.” She lifted her gaze. “It grows in meadows, but only where the soil is very rich. It’s a tall plant, five to six feet high, with tubular-shaped purple flowers. It’s the root that’s medicinal. You’ll see it when you ride through Shepherd’s Field, but you are not to get off your horse. People, horses… shoes… disappear in Shepherd’s Field. Be careful or you’ll want to lie in the meadow and stare at the clouds.”
“Do you believe my dream?”
Her mouth bunched tight. “In the first few hours after the swamp pox bite, you see the fate of someone you love.”
I glanced at Felix. “I love my father very much.”
“Many have tried to bottle the swamp plant’s bite as a truth serum.” Dixie rose from the table and dabbed my forehead with the moist muslin bag. “When Felix was gathering herbs, Princess Alia, you told me your real name.”
I stared overhead at the bundles of dried, crunchy plants suspended from the rafters. Were we safe? Had she drugged Felix, too?
“Yonder kingdom awaits Princess Alia’s arrival, yet you will arrive common. Be careful that you are not deemed a counterfeit. They will take you to the hills to never find your way out.”
Counterfeit?
“What do you mean?” My skin felt stinging and stretched.
“You’ll arrive filthy and in rags. Your beauty guised.” She glanced over her shoulder at Felix. “Tell no one. No one will believe you.”
Unknowingly, Felix had brought me to a witch. Or with Felix, maybe knowingly. This lesson was simply to teach me discernment.
I suppressed a smile. “How long will my spots last?”
“It could be days or years. The problem with swamp pox is that remedies vary; everyone responds differently. One Yonder guard’s spots improved when he ate garlic, while another had to eat chicory on everything.”
“Years?” I managed a weak laugh. If my future husband was anything like Prince Dell, it served him right.
Dixie sat down again at the table. Perhaps Felix was indeed asleep; it was difficult to tell. With her back to me, Dixie continued with her writing. “Duron is the guard who ate garlic. He is a very robust man. He told me if there was anything he could do to repay me, he would. I will ask him in this letter to help my friend Dory.”
Had the witch given Felix some strange kind of tea?
“What did Felix tell you under your spell?”
She laughed softly under her breath. “He is very torn about something. Very.”
Could I believe her? “Did you know I would stop here?”
“Yes, I saw that your sickness would bring you here.”
“Then surely you know how much I dislike my shoes.” I smiled. “If you were a true servant of Yonder, you would have seen that those boats”—I pointed toward my ugly, square-toed plain Janes near the door—“are not fitting of a queen. And you would have provided me with a beautiful new pair.”
Dixie returned to her writing and with her back to me said, “You will arrive to Yonder… barefoot. To provide you with a new pair would only have been squander.”
I didn’t find her comments very comforting, except for the fact that she had not mentioned alone. Perhaps Felix would survive my dream.
ΦΦΦ
After we left Dixie’s, we spent a long day on horseback. We set up camp near a small stream. I found kindling and started a fire, while Felix skinned a rabbit for our supper.
“If we are separated, there are tricks in the forest,” he said.
“In the Forest Maze?” On several occasions, he’d mentioned the odd maze.
“Yes, the fir trees, not the cedars, are the secret. When in doubt, look up. Fir trees are not as lacy or as pretty. When I’ve been near the end of the forest, there have always been talking ferns. There are little people in the ferns who try to confuse you.” A smile stretched across his broad features. “They think it’s funny to see big people lost in the woods.”
Please, Lord, keep Felix safe.
“If you stay too long in the forest, there are red berries under the shiny plants. They taste like licorice, but you can’t eat too many.” He placed the skewer of meat over the fire.
Please, Lord, I don’t want to go through this alone.
“If for some reason Father doesn’t make the wedding on time, Felix, I want you to walk me down the aisle.”
“Your father would not miss your wedding for the world.” He molded the sourdough onto a stick.
Though it was not a lie, I found Felix’s last statement comparable to his sentiments of better queen. His own take on the subject.
“Felix, though you’ve been like a father to me, you are not like my father.” Sadly, I inhaled the truth. “My father shipped me off without even a good-bye.” One salty tear escaped, stinging my pox on its way down. “A father like that could very well miss his own daughter’s wedding, Felix.”
“He has every intention of making your wedding. Never question your father’s love.”
I’d spent my childhood questioning my father’s love. How he could be away from us for years at a time? One year I’d asked Mother, Why couldn’t he just stop the war for Christmas and be home with us? Wasn’t he the one in charge?
Mother often said that I asked for too much. Perhaps it was a royal trait.
ΦΦΦ
The next morning, while Felix made oatmeal over the campfire, I set a hand to his shoulder. “How did you sleep?”
“If the giants are not hibernating, I will slide off of my horse. I want you to take Plenty’s reins, or the giants will eat them. You are to ride as fast and as hard as you can through Shepherd’s Field. You must not look back, and whatever you do, do not get off your horse.”
“We’ll go back to Merner and take the other route.”
“No, we are only a few days from Yonder, and you need rest to get well. We won’t be able to prove who you are until you’re healed.” He pointed beneath his chin. “In my saddlebag are three dresses for you to wear in Yonder.”
“Is that all? Did Father provide a letter?” I voiced my frustration. “Something with his royal seal?”
Felix shook his head. “We didn’t foresee the pox. If the giants are awake, I’ll catch up to you. Do you understand?” He waited for me to meet his gaze. “Do not wait for me. I’ll catch up to you.”
In the first few hours after the swamp pox bite, you see the fate of someone you love. I recalled Dixie’s words.
“Are you listening to me, Dory, or to the witch?”
I’d known she was a witch!
“If the giants are awake, I will serve as a distraction and catch up to you. If they are still asleep, we will ride together.”
Despite my dream, his words gave me hope.
“Listen to my voice.”
For several miles, Felix rode behind me, and then he rallied to within only a few strides. A hundred yards ahead, the gray-cast sky changed to a brilliant, ethereal blue.
I turned to look at him, this gentle man with his soft features and bag-ridden eyes. “Thank you for all… everything—”
“Something isn’t right.” His gaze locked on the foliage-laden trees ahead of us. He slid off his horse. “Take Plenty’s reins and ride hard. Do not look back.” As he spoke, the enormous, long-haired women from my dream emerged from the shadows.
“Go!” Felix slapped the rears of both horses. “Go!”
Unlike the dream in which I’d frozen in terror, I dug my heels into Waluga’s sides. Leaning close against her neck, I focused on the open trail ahead, and clutched onto Plenty’s reins behind me.
Barefoot, the giants lumbered out of the brush and trees. The ground shook with their strides. Up ahead, one edg
ed dangerously close to my path, and then another, and another.
“Breakfast!” they yelled. “Breakfast!” The Goliath-sized creatures bounding toward me yelled similar chants, and then within strides of me, they veered off in the direction of something or someone behind me. I relived my nightmare as, head down, I kicked Waluga’s flanks. I did not look back, all the while knowing that Felix served as a distraction.
I rode hard through brush and open plain for what felt like miles before I dared to glance over my shoulder. I was now in the heart of Shepherd’s Field. Off in the distance, a grove of maple trees appeared to mark the edge of the meadow. Where to look in the meanwhile, as everything was curiously beautiful.
Underfoot, large, yellow clematis-like flowers blanketed the ground. The sky had never appeared as brilliantly blue or the clouds more picturesque. I recalled Dixie’s words: Be careful, or you’ll want to lie in the meadow and stare at the clouds. A floral fragrance nipped with honey permeated the air.
Behind me, Plenty snorted. Perhaps the horses were also affected. Birds sang sweetly back and forth to one another. My mind wanted to drift, relax, and drink in the serene surroundings.
“I am not to get off my horse.” Even my voice sounded happy.
I glanced down at my hands. The spots were gone. I was healed! Turning them over, I marveled at how my skin had changed back to a healthy pink hue.
“The meadow has made me well,” I said, brightly. Over my shoulder, I noted tall, hardy green foliage with purple flowers. I could get my own herb—queen of the meadow. I slid off Waluga, touching my feet to the ground.
What am I thinking? I am well; I don’t need the plant. I need to ride out of here. Holding on to the saddle horn, I tried to lift my knee, but I couldn’t budge my feet. Clematis vines had climbed over my shoes, weaving my feet to the ground.
I giggled. The meadow had affected my state of reason.
“Get back on your horse!” I yelled at myself.
My tone shocked me, yet I could not budge my feet. The vines climbed up my calves. I slipped out of my shoes and, shaking off the clingy, tentacle-like plant, climbed onto Waluga’s back.
The Piano Girl - Part One (Counterfeit Princess Series) Page 7