by Julie Berry
His lamp slipped from his hand and snuffed out.
Something swiped his feet out from under him, and he toppled to the floor. The impact stunned him. He was young and no fighter, but he fought and kicked at the limbs of the assailants surrounding him. In the dark, there seemed to be a dozen. They kicked at him, then one huge person kneeled on his chest and belly, crushing his ribs till he could barely breathe.
He decided to stop resisting.
“It’s that nosy kid butler,” a voice said. “I told you he was spying on us.”
Rudo, the butler thought, as the air in his lungs slowly left him.
“Did you get the signet ring?” another voice asked.
Baxa.
“Yanked it off the old man’s finger myself,” said the man squashing him.
Hacheming. His bullfrog voice couldn’t be mistaken. Nor could the weight of his knees bearing down upon the butler’s lungs.
“What about the scepter?” asked the first voice.
“Search for it, Rudo,” was Baxa’s reply. “Hacheming. Is that one knocked out?”
The butler went still as a corpse. Far better that these traitorous snakes should believe he was unconscious than use a poker from the fire to make sure of it.
The glow of a lamp shone pink through his eyelids now, but the butler didn’t peek. From the sounds they made, it was clear they were rifling through the room in search of the Imperial Scepter. What a calamity if they found it!
To think, he’d left Uncle Moon’s farm to seek a more refined and elegant life for himself than keeping livestock. Pigs were genteel creatures compared with this.
He felt someone’s breath on his face. They were examining him, the villains, as a wild dog might sniff its freshly killed prey.
“I think he’s out,” said Hacheming’s voice, close by his ear.
“No sign of the scepter, though.” Baxa cursed. “Grab them both by the ankles. There’s a stairway at the end of the corridor. I’ll keep watch until you’re through the door. Then you can drag them both to the dungeons.”
“Hey!” came Rudo’s oily voice. “How do you get off so easy? Why do we have to do the hard part? Suppose they wake up and fight us?”
“Give them a thrashing if they do,” Baxa purred. “But go easy on the older one. Until the scepter is found, we may need him. Then hurry back. With the chancellor’s signet, it’s time for us to start writing letters.”
“Letters?” Hacheming huffed and wheezed as he dragged the old chancellor across his own bedroom floor. The butler felt his own ankles grabbed and tugged by hands that must have been Rudo’s. He thought of the long, twisting stairs to the cellars, and then the dungeons below the cellars, with his head bumpety-bumping down the whole way, and nearly fainted.
“Starting,” Baxa said, “with warnings about the dangerous criminal now roaming the countryside who kidnapped the emperor. Short, but dangerous.”
“Short and dangerous and stupid, you mean,” rumbled Hacheming.
Baxa chuckled. “If he’s still alive, we’ll smoke him out and lock him away for good.”
The other men laughed.
The emperor, the butler realized. Our emperor. They hadn’t killed him, but they were about to frame him as his own kidnapper and lock him in the dungeons from which no prisoner had ever returned. The thought made the butler sick. True, he may have been impossibly selfish and demanding, but he was their emperor by rights. He’d inherited the throne. Not Baxa. Not these ruthless traitors.
“Once we’ve locked him up,” Baxa went on, “we’ll make a proclamation announcing the retirement of the old chancellor and naming me as the new one.”
“Chancellor?” Rudo asked. “I thought you wanted to be emperor.”
Baxa sounded as smug as a cat that’s given itself a nice bath. “All things in time, my friends,” he said. “Chancellor today, emperor tomorrow. Soon, I’ll be known throughout the Three Continents as Baxa the Conqueror.”
14
A STRANGE ROMANCE, AND A COW-COAXING COMPROMISE
Begonia woke slowly. She’d been dreaming about the windmill in her village. A soft summer breeze fragrant with the smell of new hay and rose petals slowly turned the windmill’s mighty blades. The breeze blew deliciously over her skin.
In warm, noisy puffs.
Of breath.
Cow breath.
She sat up in the early-morning light and collided with a moist cow snout.
“Phhht,” said the snout in a welcoming sort of way.
“Alfalfa?” Begonia cried. “Is it really you?”
A large, long, loving lick from Alfalfa’s enormous cow tongue was her reply. It felt like a kitty lick from Catnip, back home, times a hundred.
There was Alfalfa’s huge cow head, white with a black spot on the forehead that looked to Begonia like a black splotch and nothing more.
Meanwhile, a tiny, flat, fuzzy head with huge eyes and blinky lashes poked around Alfalfa’s head like a puppet on a long, bendy stick. Here, then there, left side, right side, up, down. Strange squawky sounds came from its throat. At the end of the long neck, Begonia saw the ostrich fluff his puffy brown feathers. Then she saw his powerful pink legs, almost taller than she was, and his terrifyingly huge, scaly, two-toed feet.
Begonia scrambled to her own five-toed feet and slowly backed away from the ostrich.
It returned to her then, the memory of last night, of clinging to her tree perch in terror, until this ostrich galloped in and saved them. He certainly wasn’t Begonia’s idea of a hero.
Was it only yesterday?
Alfalfa approached Begonia, lowing and mooing. Begonia noticed how full and heavy her milk-bag looked, and she forgot to be afraid of the ostrich.
“Key!” she cried. “Wake up! Breakfast is here!”
Key’s shaggy head had accumulated a fresh crop of twigs, leaves, and mosses from his bed on the forest floor. He rose up, groggy and blinking, then saw Alfalfa.
“Hooray!” he cried. “I found your cow for you. I told you I would.”
Begonia squatted beside her cow and began working the udders gently. “What are you gibbering about? The cow found us. You didn’t find anything.”
“I dispute that point,” said Key, “but we were talking of breakfast.”
“Breakfast?” came the unpleasant voice of the short stranger. Him! That cowardly beast!
“Come on over here, Key,” she called to him, “and I’ll give you breakfast. Stick your head under Alfalfa’s udder.”
Key soon figured out what Begonia had in mind. He crawled underneath Alfalfa and lay there, face upward, mouth open.
Begonia aimed a shot of milk at his open mouth and squeezed.
“Hffft!”
“Oops,” she said.
“That’s my nose.”
“Stop talking, and open wide,” she ordered.
She milked and milked poor Alfalfa, who sighed with relief, while Key nearly drowned in his breakfast. The gray cat came over, sniffing, and mewed for its own meal. After a few missed shots, Begonia managed to squirt creamy milk straight into the kitty’s mouth until it was satisfied. Then she squirted more at Key.
The ostrich bobbed his head down below Alfalfa for a better look at the milking operation. Begonia flinched as his huge googly eyes blinked at her.
The stranger sidled over, too—curious, yet keeping his distance, with distaste curling his upper lip. Begonia stole a glance at him, her first full look at him in the light.
He was thin, and small of build. His pajamas had been purple, she decided, or possibly red, and the fabric was undoubtedly silk. It had once been shiny, but now the dirty, oily cloth stuck to his skinny frame. His hair clung to his head in greasy wisps, and two long, limp mustaches dripped from his upper lip like black rats’ tails.
“Where did you buy that cat?” he demanded.
She laughed out loud. “Who buys a cat?” She aimed a long shot of milk at Key. “This cat chose me. She escaped from an imperial wagon full of te
rrified cats.” She shook her head. “What kind of an emperor would be mean to cats?”
The stranger wrinkled his nose. “Cats are bad luck.”
“Only to mice and rats,” Begonia said. “Cats are the best luck a farm family could have.”
“Pay attention, please,” came Key’s voice.
“Oh, did I squirt your eye?” asked Begonia. “Sorry.”
Her own stomach began to grumble as the warm, creamy scent of milk filled her nose.
“Key, in your bag of stuff, you have a cup, haven’t you? Fetch it here, and hold it for me so I can have some breakfast, too.”
Key yielded his spot reluctantly to the cat and rummaged through his sack.
“Disgusting procedure,” said the stranger. “Barbaric and revolting.”
Squirt, squirt. The gray cat’s tail flicked with pleasure.
“Don’t you ever drink milk?” Begonia asked the stranger.
“When I wish to, but certainly not milk that comes from an animal!”
Begonia tried not to smile. “Where do you think your milk comes from, then?”
“From the finest porcelain pitchers,” he said. “And they come from the kitchens.”
Begonia hid her face against Alfalfa’s warm flank so she wouldn’t laugh. How could a full-grown person be so ignorant? Key returned with his tin cup and held it while Begonia filled it with milk. The joyful ping, ping of milk against metal made her mouth water.
She gulped down her warm milk and sighed with pleasure, filled another cup and drained it, too, then filled one for Key and another for herself, until they both felt satisfied. Begonia threw her arms around Alfalfa’s neck and pressed her cheek against her warm hide.
“Here you are, old girl,” she said. “What trouble you’ve given us!” She stroked her neck and back until her finger pricked something so sharp it made her cry out in pain. “Ow! Thorns!”
A nasty briar that Alfalfa had acquired on her journey grabbed hold of Begonia’s finger and wouldn’t let go. It took some fussing and a fair bit of bleeding before Begonia rescued herself and her cow from its vicious point.
“There you go, Alfalfa,” she told the cow. “I’ll wash all this blood off you at home.” She ripped a strip from her faded pink scarf and wrapped it around her cut finger. Out of the corner of one eye, she saw the strange man pretend he wasn’t watching her.
“Here, you,” she called to him. “There’s still plenty left. Since you don’t have your kitchens or your pitchers today, wouldn’t you like some of this milk? It’s quite good, even if it does, er, come from a cow. You’re hungry, aren’t you?”
She filled a cup of foamy milk and held it out temptingly. He sniffed it like a twitchy rabbit, then seized the cup with both hands, guzzling the milk so desperately that half of it ran down his face. He cried out in dismay as milk dripped from the ends of his mustache.
Begonia laughed. “It’s all right. There’s plenty more.” She filled him another cup, and another, and another. They passed the cup around once more, then lay there, each of them, with full bellies and fuzzy brains. The stranger moaned something about sugar buns and quail eggs.
Then they heard a faint sound of bells ringing through the trees.
Key looked up. “What’s that?”
A faraway look of longing passed across the stranger’s face. “It’s the bell-ringing,” he said, “for the celebration on the eve of the birthday of the … of the … the…”
“The emperor!” Begonia cried. “I forgot. We were all going to go to the ceremonies in town today, after chores.” She smiled sadly. “My little sister was so excited about her silly hair ribbons for the celebration.”
“How old will the emperor be this year?” asked Key.
The stranger practically snarled at him. “You mean, you don’t know?”
Key shrugged. “I’ve been wandering awhile. One loses track of less important things.”
“Less important!” The stranger was incensed.
“He’ll be twenty-two,” Begonia explained. “That’s why there’s such a fuss. He’ll receive the scepter of rule from the chancellor tomorrow.”
The stranger sank to the ground and rested a forlorn chin on his knees.
“What’s so special about twenty-two, anyway?” Key wondered aloud. “I’ve never understood it. I’ve got siblings and cousins that age and older, and I can tell you, I wouldn’t trust them to run a family supper, much less an empire.”
“If you’d ever learned your history, you’d know,” said the stranger irritably.
“Pig farmers,” said Key loftily, “don’t see much reason to study history. At least, not the ones in my family.”
“Some emperor from ages ago won a big battle at twenty-two, I think,” Begonia said. “I can never remember which one. Too many of them have the same names. So confusing.”
“Stupid peasants,” muttered the stranger. “Well? Aren’t you doing the worship ritual?”
They stared at him. “What, here?” asked Begonia. “Now?”
“At the chiming of the bells any time during the birthday week, all subjects must stop what they’re doing, bow, and recite the Praise Hymn,” the stranger said. “It’s the law.”
“Subjects?” Key repeated.
The stranger ignored him. “Bow.”
Begonia felt ridiculous. But complying was easier than squabbling. They bowed.
“No, bow toward me,” the stranger said.
What a pig! Begonia sighed. She might as well humor him. She bowed toward him.
He rubbed his hands together. “Good. Now, sing the song.”
“How does the first line begin, again?” asked Begonia. “Something like tah-tee-tah, tah-tee-tah, tum, tum, tum, and then the cymbals…”
The stranger glowered at them, then cleared his throat and began to sing. “O gracious, noble, kind and merciful … Um…”
“Emperor,” supplied Key. “Obviously.”
“Your goodness blesses all our lives, O…”
“Emperor,” Begonia said. “You keep forgetting the whole point of the line. Did you hit your head on something?”
“That’s not how they describe him,” said Key. “People say his parents were great rulers, but this one’s a joke.”
The stranger flushed red. “The Praise Hymn! With the heart of a panther…”
“Ugh,” said Begonia. “Who wrote this nonsense?”
“And an arm of iron in battle, and the patience of a statue…”
“How is a statue patient?” asked Key. “Does it even have a choice?”
“Time for the chorus,” the stranger said. “We love thee, glorious…” He glared at them. “Sing this part!”
Key and Begonia joined in. “We love thee, glorious emperor!”
But the stranger had faltered. He seemed to give up. Key tried to help. “It goes like this: Em-peror. You sing it like this: Bum-badum. High-and-low. Sing it after me. Em—”
“Oh, stop it!” the stranger cried. “Never mind!”
“If you say so,” Begonia said. “It was your idea, you know.”
The stranger gnashed his teeth. “Silence, little girl.”
Begonia took a step back. “That’s fine talk,” she said, “for someone whose cow fed you.”
“See here,” said Key. “You can’t speak so rudely to a damsel in distress! You’ll only add to her distress.”
“Oh, just stop it, Key,” Begonia cried. “I can manage my own distress.”
She turned away, for she couldn’t bear the sight of either of them just then. It was time to go home. She would get Alfalfa and be off. But the sight of her cow made her stop and stare.
Alfalfa lay down in a mossy patch, and the ostrich sat with his huge body on the ground beside her, nuzzling his long neck around hers. Snuggling. Alfalfa made a loving little moo.
“Look at those two,” Key said. “Like true lovers from a heroic ballad.”
“It’s the strangest thing I’ve ever seen,” Begonia said.
> “It’s been like this since she first appeared yesterday,” said the pajama man. “Absurd.”
“Maybe,” Begonia said slowly, “Alfalfa is confused and thinks your ostrich is her calf.”
“But what does the ostrich think?” asked Key.
“In my experience,” said Begonia, thinking of her chickens back home, “birds don’t think much.” She squared her shoulders. “Well, no matter. I have my Alfalfa now, so I’ll take her home. You, Key, can be off to wherever you’re going, and you, erm, sir, can travel on with your ostrich, without any further aggravation from my cow.”
Key made a sound of protest, but Begonia marched over to where Alfalfa lay snuggled up with her ostrich friend.
“Come on, Alfalfa,” Begonia called.
“Come on, girl! Let’s go home!”
“Al-fal-fa!”
“Come on, Alfalfa, let’s get moving.”
“Alfalfa, you ox, get up!”
Key watched all this with a grin on his dirty face. “Are you sure she’s really your cow?”
“Of course she’s my cow!” Begonia addressed Alfalfa sternly. “Now you listen here, my girl. I’ve got aching feet, and a sore bottom, and a stiff neck, all because of you. So you are coming home with me right now!”
Begonia bellowed the last words into Alfalfa’s face. Alfalfa chewed a bit of mossy grass as though she hadn’t a care in the world. But the ostrich seemed upset by Begonia’s outburst. He rose to his terrible feet, fluffed his wings angrily, and hissed at her.
An eight-foot-tall, two-toed, small-brained bird hissing its battle cry in your face is certainly an experience to remember. Not an experience to repeat. Begonia froze.
“Don’t move,” Key told her in a low voice.
“I’m not moving,” she whispered. “Don’t tell me what to do!”
The ostrich waved his wings a few times, just to show Begonia who was boss, then turned and wandered off as though nothing had happened. Alfalfa rose and ambled off after the ostrich.
Begonia shook her head in disgust. “She’ll follow that stupid bird-monster, but not me, who’s fed and milked her every morning of her life … Oh!” She snapped her fingers. “That’s it!”
“That’s what?” asked Key.