by Robyn Fraser
Several times she asked them to hush up, and they would, for about three-point-five seconds. Then they’d start talking again, gradually getting louder as they forgot Deanna’s request. Eventually she gave up and resigned herself to a sleepless night, keeping her eyes closed so they wouldn’t try chatting to her directly.
Now, as she opened her eyelids just a smidgen and peeked through her lashes toward the open beach, she saw that the sun was starting to rise in the east. She needed to somehow get rid of these two, get the surfboard, and wait for Hercules, who she hoped was punctual.
“Good morning,” she said, feigning just waking up. She turned over to where the two were sitting in some ferns, just a few feet away. Archibald was teaching Mirtranda how to play the tuba, to no good effect since, in Deanna’s pained opinion, he didn’t know the first thing about it himself.
“Oh, good morning, Deanna!” said Mirtranda as the two of them jumped up excitedly, broad smiles displaying gleaming white teeth behind their bark-like skin. They looked even uglier and stockier in the daylight. (Ouch! Deanna normally tried not to judge people on appearance, but she was tired and grumpy and the thought just slipped out.)
“Did you sleep well?” asked Archibald, and before Deanna could lie, he added, “We kept very quiet for you, didn’t we Mirtranda?”
Mirtranda nodded vigorously. “Oh yes! I’ve never spoken so little. It was like silent mediation! In fact, I feel quite relaxed, don’t you, Archibald?”
“Yes, Mirtranda, I do! Yes, exactly like I’ve meditated, not that I’ve ever done that before, though I have read about it in a book. Do you remember that book that washed up on shore—”
Before Archibald could go off on yet another frustrating tangent, Deanna cut him off. “Hey guys, why don’t you go get your family now and bring them to visit with me? But,” she added, raising a hand to stave off more chatter—both of them having opened their mouths to speak, “I need you to wait until at least an hour after sunrise to bring them here, okay? There are a few things I need to do alone first. Can you promise that?”
The two of them jumped up and down ecstatically. “Oh yes, yes, we can do that!” said Archibald. He picked up his tuba and shoved it in a bulging canvas sack that was about four times his size, and then glanced wide-eyed at Deanna. “You’ll love our family. They’ll have so much to talk to you about. We’ll spend the whole day chatting!”
Deanna forced a smile. “I’m so looking forward to it.” She sat up. “Now just remember, you must wait for an hour after the sun has fully risen over there.” She pointed to the eastern horizon, which was glowing a pinkish-orange.
“Yes, yes!” they both cried. “We’ll be back soon, Deanna!” With that, Archibald grabbed the open end of his sack and the two of them took off, surprisingly quickly, through the jungle.
As soon as she couldn’t hear them anymore, Deanna jumped up. She checked her t-shirt and jeans. Thankfully, they’d dried in the warm air, so she quickly changed out of her sweatshirt and into them.
As Deanna hefted the pack onto her back, her stomach growled and she realized just how hungry she was. And thirsty.
Deanna glanced around. Just thirty feet away was a tree thick with mangoes, the air heavy with the scent of ripe fruit. She rushed over, grabbed six of the lowest hanging ones, and stuffed them into the pack. There was a gurgling of water from somewhere not far off. Pushing through five-foot tall ferns and vines, she followed the sound and, just a dozen paces in, stepped right into a small, trickling creek.
Deanna pulled out her empty fruit juice bottle, filled it with water and gulped back the whole thing before refilling and repeating. The third time, she replaced the lid and added that to the pack.
“Now, back to the beach.” Deanna retraced her steps, grabbed the surfboard—it was bright yellow with a blue flower design—and dragged it to shore. The sun was now just over the horizon.
At the edge of the water she stopped and scanned, searching for Hercules. A small object, several hundred feet out, caught her eye. It was coming closer. She began to be able to make it out—it looked like a very small rowboat with someone inside, rowing. And next to the boat was…she couldn’t be sure, but…but…Yes! It was Hercules. Even from this distance she could see the grand, upward curling moustaches.
Deanna waved at him and he waved back. The sun had fully risen now. As they neared, the person between the oars became more distinct: a small colorful being with their back to Deanna. It looked remarkably like—
“Deanna! Deanna!” The shouting came from somewhere behind her. “We’re back with our family! Everyone has come to meet and talk to you!”
Deanna whipped her head around and stared wild-eyed at the jungle greenery. Though she couldn’t see them yet, wide swaths of ferns were folding like dominoes down the gradually slopping hill, coming closer. She had only minutes to escape.
She whipped around to the water—the rowboat was only a hundred feet away now. The person in the boat had turned to see what the commotion was all about. Deanna had been right. It was Rose.
“Rose!” she shouted, never so happy to see someone in all her life. “Hercules, please hurry!”
Hercules waved at Deanna and then disappeared under the water, while at the same time, Rose lifted the oars inside. Suddenly, the boat began racing forward. In seconds, it had lodged onto the shore.
Rose hopped out, ran to Deanna and gave her lower legs a big hug. “I thought you were dead, Deanna!” she cried. “I’m so glad you’re not.”
“I’m really glad too, Rose, but right now, hundreds of really annoying creatures are about to burst out of the jungle to talk to me. We need to get going.”
“Right, right,” said Rose. “I’ve heard about the Mignons. Hop in.”
“Do I need the surfboard anymore?” Deanna glanced at Hercules, who was holding the boat steady with one fin, but glancing past the beach to the jungle. He was frowning.
“No, mademoiselle, there is no time for that,” he said, shaking his head. “Hop in most quickly, unless you want to be accosted most insufferably by the Mignons.” He pointed with his free fin.
Deanna followed the gesture. Emerging from the jungle ferns were hundreds of Archibald and Mirtranda look-a-likes: stocky brown and wiry-yellow haired beings. They were stampeding toward her, talking the whole while.
“Deanna, you found more friends for us to meet!”
“Deanna, I can’t wait to talk to you! I’m Archibald’s older brother!”
“Deanna, Deanna! I want to talk to you first, I’m Mirtranda’s mother!”
And on and on. The Mignons were shoving and tripping over one another in their eagerness.
Deanna turned and hopped into the rowboat, taking the seat near the bow. Rose followed, sitting stern side.
“Hold tight, mademoiselles, Hercules Poisson, he will push you to the safety.”
Deanna, who was facing the island as her fish friend pushed them into deeper waters, felt a mix of relief and guilt as she watched the falling faces of the Mignons, many of whom had just reached the shore.
“Deanna, come back!” one of them called. She thought it might be Mirtranda.
“I’m sorry, I’ve had an emergency!” Deanna yelled out. “I’ll come back to visit you all some other time!” She felt the lie was worth the sudden smiles on their faces.
“Yay, she’s going to come visit us again!” they cried. “Bring your friends too, okay? Okay?”
“Okay!” shouted Deanna, but by now Hercules had removed them several hundred feet from shore and it was hard to see or hear them very well.
A few minutes later, once the island was a distant dot, Hercules appeared from under the water. He groomed his moustaches and then bowed to Deanna.
“I see you have had the experience of the Mignons, yes?”
“Yes. It was kind of awful. They just wouldn’t, or couldn’t, stop talking. About nothing at all, most of the time. It’s not like they were mean or anything, they were just so…so…”
Deanna didn’t want to admit that she didn’t know what the word meant. “Yeah, I guess so,” she said.
“When I led you to Insufferable Isle, I had hoped you might not meet with the Mignons,” continued Hercules. “But it was a chance that had to be taken. And I knew that your physical safety would not be in question.” He raised an eyebrow—or he would have, had he had eyebrows. “Though I presume, mademoiselle, that your sleep was…how do you say? Crappy?”
Deanna nodded. “You can say that again.” She turned to Rose and found the chicken staring back, smiling broadly. Deanna returned the smile, a sensation of warmth filling her chest. “How did you find me, Rose?”
“Oh, that is a story and a half,” said the chicken dramatically, drawing a wing across her brow. “It’s almost too much to tell.”
Deanna waited for her to continue but quickly realized her chicken friend was expecting something. “Oh, please do tell it to me, Rose,” she said with equal dramatic flourish.
Rose nodded. “Alright, I will. I must.” She cocked her head as though trying to consider how to begin. “When I left the Carnivorous Cavern to speak with my friend Annabelle, they warned me that word had leaked that I was collecting you from Mundaland and that Mr. Sactual had hired lookouts to capture you. So—”
Deanna raised her hand. “Wait. They warned you? Who are they?”
Rose cocked her head. “Oh, I just mean Annabelle. They’re a member of the Magus Safety Committee. Annabelle doesn’t think of themselves as he or she particularly, so they go by they or them or their. And sometimes by Abel.”
Deanna frowned. She didn’t get it.
So Rose continued. “They/them/there are just pronouns for people who don’t necessarily feel like they are he or she. They might feel somewhere in between, or both he and she at the same time, or one or the other at different times. Or even neither at anytime.” Rose frowned. “Does no one in Mundaland talk about this? I mean, I know Mundanians can be awfully narrow-minded, but I can’t imagine….” She shook her head. “Anyway, does this make sense?”
It took Deanna a minute to answer. In twenty seconds, Rose had just explained something that Deanna had felt and wondered about for the past several years, but had never had the words for. They. Not he. Not she. They. She took a deep breath and attempted to tuck this new and most magical information away for later.
Deanna nodded. “Yeah, um, sure. That makes sense. But sorry, I interrupted you. You were saying that Annabelle…that…um, they,” what a wonderful word, she thought, “had warned you that people were looking for me?”
Rose nodded. “When I returned to the bar and you were gone I was distraught. And the bartender was no help. He told me you’d gone to the toilets with a stomach ache.” She shook her head. “So I waited and waited and finally I went to the toilets to check for you and they were empty!”
“Some pirates caught me in a net in the back of the building and carted me off to their boat on the dock. And the bartender is brother of one of the Mother Puck pirates. He’s the one who ratted on us.”
Rose raised a feathered eyebrow. “Really? Well that’s good to know, even if it’s a little too late. As soon as I realized you weren’t there, I feared the worst. I ran down to the docks thinking that if Mr. Sactual’s people had captured you, then taking you across the lake would be the fastest route back to Cold Cockle. That’s the Capitol of Concreta. Folks at the dock told me that the Mother Puck had been anchored out from shore and some pirates had taken their rowboat and some cargo back to it not long before I got there.”
She shook her head. “But by that time the Mother Puck was gone. I rented this rowboat and set off in search. I had a general idea of their direction. And, of course, I had my tracker.” She stuck out her tongue, displaying the heart stud.
“Then the storm hit. Luckily for me, I was behind the clouds, so I never got the worst of it. But after it had cleared and I kept rowing, I saw all the debris from the shipwreck.”
Tears began to roll down Rose’s feathers. “I thought you were gone, Deanna,” she sniffled. “I rowed and searched and tried to follow your ring’s homing device, but there was no sign of life and I thought it might have fallen off your finger and was just floating or sinking or something.
“Then night came and I couldn’t see anything. I decided to stay in the area overnight and continue searching in the morning. But then,” she pointed at Hercules, who was leaning one fin over the boat, listening politely to the conversation, “my savior appeared.” She smiled at him.
“Ah, mademoiselle, you honor Hercules. Truly, it was nothing.”
“You found Rose?” asked Deanna. It was such a large lake, the idea of finding a chicken in it seemed almost too incredible.
“Oui, mademoiselle.”
“How did you do it?”
Hercules smiled, and with his free fin, tapped the side of his head.” I used the little grey cells, mademoiselle.” He opened his fin to display the smart-phone-like object he’d shown Deanna the night before. “The grey cells, they are magnifique! On the way to my date, I say to myself, ‘Hercules, you must be on the alert for pirates, they still could be floating in the waters. So I applied this to the task and, voila!” He gestured with a flourish to Rose. “It shows me the heat imprint of your friend here.”
“I was a little nervous at first, to be honest,” said Rose, chirping in. “But Mr. Poisson is an extremely intelligent person.” Hercules bowed his head modestly. “And he realized right away that I was the friend you’d mentioned to him, who’d brought you here from Mundaland.”
Rose’s face clouded. “Oh, bumblepoop,” she said. “I’m wondering if I should never have brought you to Illusiland, D. You’ve already been kidnapped and shipwrecked and suffered the Mignons and Mr. Sactual is looking for you, and—” Rose broke down in tears, hiding her golden face behind her purple and red wings.
“Yeah, believe me, I know. It sucks,” said Deanna. She felt sorry for her friend. Not too sorry, though. A new resolve was taking hold. “But you said that it’s up to me to save Magitoria from invasion by Mr. Sactual and his Concretian army, right?”
Rose lifted her head and nodded. Her eyes were blood shot.
“Well then, that’s what I need to do.” Deanna took a large breath. “What I’m going to do.” She pointed to the west, to the opposite direction of the sun that was now well and fully over the horizon, though currently half-hidden by dark, looming clouds. “Magitoria is west of the lake. We must be close to it now. In fact, I think I can see land in the distance.”
She glanced over at Hercules, who for some reason was frowning. “Hercules, can you help us to get to land? I would very much appreciate it.”
“But of course, Mademoiselle,” he replied. “There is one problem, however.” He pointed in the same direction as Deanna had. “Over there, it is the east. Where Concreta lies. Hercules knows this because the sun rises in the west and sets in the east.”
“No it doesn’t!” But Deanna glanced quizzically at Rose, a sinking feeling in her gut. “Does it?”
The chicken nodded. “Here in Illusiland it does, yes. Sorry.”
Hercules gestured up to the ever-darkening skies. “And I am most sorry also, mademoiselle Deanna, but it is imperative that we take you there now, to the Concreta shores. The storm that is coming, it will put the last one to the shame.”
Chapter Twelve
Where We Learn Why Concreta Sounds a lot like Concrete
The clouds grew darker and closer as Hercules sped the rowboat and its occupants to the Concreta shores. Deanna decided to pass the time by pulling out her sketchpad and pencil and drawing.
It began to rain just as they reached land—a grey, rock-strewn beach riddled with rusted metal and chunks of concrete, as though a building had once stood there, but had crumbled into this. Beyond the rocky beach was a line of spindly-looking trees, all standing an equal distance from one another, making it clear
that they’d been purposely planted.
“I must leave you now,” said Hercules, pushing the rowboat firmly onto land and wedging it between a couple of large rocks. “Hercules, he will be in the, how do you say? House of dieu with his lady friend.”
He glanced at Deanna and massaged his moustaches. “I failed to contact her last night to say that I would not be in attendance for our date after all. It is not good, that. But before I depart,” he reached under the water and produced a large, folded piece of thick, laminated paper, “I shall give to you this map. Come, let me show you.”
Rose and Deanna stepped out from the rowboat and gathered around Hercules, who had risen out of the water and was standing on his huge tail fin, a black walking cane with an ornate silver handle hooked over one of his arm fins.
Hercules unfolded the map and held it for them to see. In the center of the page was a large blue body of water, its length running north-south. He pointed to it. “This here, it is Slightly Silly Sea.” He moved the tip of his fin to a spot on the far right—or east—side of the lake, about halfway between its northern and southern sides. “This is where we are right now.”
Deanna scanned the rest of the map and caught site of a region in the top left corner of the page, which read ‘Magus: Capitol of Magitoria’. In the top right corner of the map, almost directly north from where Hercules’ fin was pointing, was another region labeled ‘Cold Cockle: Concreta Capitol’.
“I suggest, mademoiselles, that you follow the shoreline north and then west.” He ran his fin up along the eastern shore, then left, along its northern border, past a yellow-shaded region labeled ‘The Dehydrated Desert’. His fin stopped at an area of pointed triangles, which Deanna took to represent mountains. It was labeled ‘Riddled Ridge’.
“It is mostly the small factory towns along this route.” He glanced at Rose. “You know, do you not, mademoiselle, that you must not be seen?”
Rose shivered and this wasn’t because the rain had picked up—it was quite a warm downpour. She nodded. “Yes, I know only too well, Mr. Poisson. Only too well.”