Quite Contrary

by Richard Roberts

  A rope was indeed fed over the edge of the well, with a bucket on the end. I grabbed hold as soon as it came within reach, and planted my feet against the edge of the bucket. The metal handle started to bend, and I gripped the rope tighter and tried to support my weight that way. I wasn’t strong enough to do this, but the rope lurched, water pouring off me as I was hauled upwards. The bucket handle bent further. Closer, closer—there! I threw my arms over the rim of the well and pulled myself damply over to sit on the low stone wall.

  I wanted to feel more grateful to the man who pulled me out, but aside from his irritatingly disappointed expression, all that really struck me was his chin. He could have won “hayseed farmer” costume contest awards, and that lantern jaw completed the image perfectly. Maybe I just didn’t like him because of his angry stare. It promised trouble.

  Trouble that Rat moved in to intercept. Picking up my sleeve to examine me critically, he asked the guy, “Ah, Sir. Where did you get that coin?”

  He kicked the edge of the well in frustration, and complained, “I had a bad coin, didn’t I?”

  “No, Sir, the opposite,” Rat said apologetically, “Judging by her age, I’d say the coin was absolutely pure. The spell worked, but I think you were hoping for a girl with a bit more tarnish.”

  Rat’s coy wink made the guy laugh tiredly. “I guess I cheated myself You delivered on your end. Here’s your money, and next time I’ll think a little harder before I buy a wish.” He flipped a coin into the air, and Rat leapt off the side of the well to grab it, rolling in the grass. The chin and its owner hoisted a ridiculous red and white checkered bag and walked off across the field towards a raised road, without another word.

  I dripped. Holding the coin in his teeth, Rat climbed up my soaking wet dress and stood on the well next to me. When my disinterested savior reached the road and I judged him well out of earshot, I commented as neutrally as I could, “My rat’s a pretty good liar.”

  “I don’t like to lie, Miss Mary,” he corrected me primly. I felt so much relief that he’d accepted what I really meant, I had to force myself to pay attention to what he was saying. “Lies bite you when you least expect it. Tricks are part of my job, but it’s best to trick with the truth. For example, this is a real wishing well.”

  That drew me up short. “A real wishing well?”

  “It was hard to find, but easier than finding you directly.” He sounded guilty. I’d abandoned him, and he sounded guilty!

  “So, if I throw this extra coin into that well and wish for the Wolf to die?” I pressed. Things were never this easy.

  They weren’t. I could tell by the deflated way Rat sighed. “That would break the well. It would try and grant that wish, and the Red Riding Hood story would crush it. It was perfect for bringing you here, but this well’s wishes aren’t very strong.”

  “And you only get one, right?” I predicted.

  “Exactly,” he confirmed. Holding up the silver coin, he went on, “And you’re right that I asked for this so that you could make a wish, but I am hoping I can convince you to wish for the two of us to get back to Lady Elizabeth.”

  Who wasn’t here. “Rat, I told you to save her. You were supposed to be her rat, and make her a princess.”.

  My expression must have been harder than I thought, because he shrank into a fat little hairy ball, black eyes staring up at me guiltily. “I tried, Miss Mary. I got very, very close, but I made a mistake at the last test, and now she’s trapped.”

  “And you left her?!” I shrieked.

  “To find you! I can’t save her al—”

  “Shut it!” I barked over him. Grabbing the coin, I flung it as hard as I could down into the well. When I heard the loud plunk of it hitting the water, I announced, “I know he can’t be stopped, but I wish for every stupid coincidence, accident, and distraction possible to slow down my Wolf.”

  Rat straightened up, becoming more a tube than a blob. “That was a good wish.” He sounded impressed. “It might be within the well’s power.”

  “I’m in the Wolf’s backyard, aren’t I? This is home to him, just like it is to you.” I pointed at the trees on the far end of the field from the road. “Those are his woods, right there.”

  He stared up at me like I’d accused him of betrayal. Dumb Rat. That wasn’t what I meant. “Then hopefully my wish will give me time to save Elizabeth,” I explained to him, “After that, I’ll figure something else out.”

  “Thank you so much, Miss Mary!” Rat squeaked. I resisted the urge to yank my arm away as he grabbed my wrist and hugged it.

  “You got to this well the hard way. Can you get us back to Elizabeth the hard way?” I asked Rat as I hopped off the well. My shoes squelched. At least the rest of me was merely unpleasantly damp now.

  “I can. I’m not sure how yet, but I can,” he assured me. He jumped off the well too, landing with a thump in the grass. He dragged a pair of boots that must have belonged to a toddler out of the grass. He pulled them by the strings, which had been tied together. “I’ll manage it faster if you give me these. Without them I’m just clever, Miss Mary. That’s why I failed Lady Elizabeth. When I’m officially Rat-In-Boots, the story will guarantee I’m right.”

  “Why didn’t Elizabeth give you a pair?” I asked, trying to sound like it was no big deal.

  “She offered to,” Rat failed to explain, dropping the strings and crouching guiltily again.

  I took a step back over to him, reached down, and lifted the shoes up by their laces. “She gave you these boots, didn’t she? And you wouldn’t wear them. You wanted me to give them to you instead.”

  He crouched there, a little ball of brown rat hair, paralyzed with fear and guilt, and said nothing.

  I gave the boots a swing by their laces and threw them like a bola out across the field, towards the distant woods. My eyes stung. I hoped he couldn’t see any tears, or hear the relief in my voice as I scolded him, “I’m not giving you Elizabeth’s gift. If you want to be my rat, then you’ll get the boots I give you when I feel like giving them to you.”

  I felt so good all of a sudden. I tried not to grin and not to fall over as Rat jumped up and grabbed the edge of my dress, clawing his way up to sit on my shoulder. “There’s a hay wagon coming down the road, Miss Mary. It’s the easiest way to get to town, if you want to take it.”

  “I don’t, but I want to walk even less,” I answered.

  I stomped across the overgrown field from the wishing well to the dirt road, with my talking rat on my shoulder and my wet shoes making absurd squeaky, farty noises with every step. It was getting hard not to smile.

  Apparently, you catch a ride on a hay wagon by waiting for it to pass and climbing up onto the bed. Then, you sit there, kicking your legs off the edge. The wagon keeps rolling along at a plodding gait. That simple, although Rat’s tiny legs didn’t kick very well. The driver might have had something to say about our hitching a ride, except there wasn’t one. The reins lay on the seat and the horse walked patiently down the road pulling the wagon anyway.

  Something else caught my eye. As the wagon left the well behind, I saw sunlight flash off it. A naked high school girl crawled out of it, with a gleaming silver body and gleaming silver hair so long and thick that it trailed down over the ground behind her.

  “I guess Shovelchin’s wish worked,” I told Rat, pointing at her. “He should have been more patient.”

  “The story of a girl as pure as silver,” Rat breathed, “I did that. Once upon a time, a country boy met a rat on the road. To his surprise, the rat asked him if he had a girl. When the boy admitted he did not, the rat admitted he had a spell to make a girl as pure as a silver coin, but had no use for a girl of any purity. The boy bought the rat’s spell, and threw his silver coin into a well as the spell instructed, and pulled out a girl. The girl he pulled out was just a child in a red hood, and he left disappointed. His impatience cost him his wish. He never met the real silver girl, beautiful and pure as his coin, who climbed out
of the well by herself after he left. So this, my child, is not the story of the boy whose name no longer matters. It is the story of Sterling, the girl as pure as silver.”

  I raised my eyebrows. “You really get into this.”

  “It’s what I’ve always wanted, to be the mysterious rat who knows all the tricks and makes stories happen.” He sighed. He slumped back against the wooden floorboards of the wagon, which would have looked very human if his belly didn’t squish up into a bulgy, furry lump.

  “Should we help her?” I asked, concern pricking at me.

  “No. Watch,” Rat urged.

  I was about to slap him off the wagon and tell him we couldn’t abandon a naked girl in the middle of nowhere, when Sterling lifted her arm. Water swept up out of the well, rolling around her until it solidified into a dress that sparkled as much as she did. “Huh.”

  “If anybody’s sure to live happily ever after, it’s a girl made of silver.” Rats don’t smile well, but he sure sounded proud of himself.

  The wagon drifted away from Sterling, and it got harder to tell what she was doing. Not my business, I supposed. So I sat back too, focusing on the feel of the warm sun drying out my clothes, the smell of the still-green grass and the autumn forest beyond it, and the gentle breeze. Eventually, I propped my back against the sideboards and drifted off to sleep. I’d needed the nap, but when I couldn’t sleep anymore, I had to face another problem.

  I was bored.

  Sighing, I sat up and hung an arm over the side, staring at the dilapidated, crazily tilted barn we were passing. It was cool, for about thirty seconds.

  Rat scampered back from the edge, claws pricking my bare knees as he climbed over them. He dragged a handful of hay and a long string out of the bales strewn over the wagon. Tying a knot around the hay, he climbed back over my knees and lowered the clump over the edge, dragging it along the dirt road behind us with the string.

  I hadn’t even noticed we were about to pass a man in a dark suit. I didn’t like the look of him, but he fell behind the wagon eying the hay intently. “What are you doing?” he asked Rat.

  “Fishing for gold, Sir!” Rat answered him cheerfully.

  The guy eyed the lump of hay suspiciously, but he did keep eying it. “How does it work?”

  “Just as you see, Sir.” Rat could pull off a perfect jovial salesman act. “I lower my special lure onto the road, just like if I were fishing in water.”

  “And gold takes the bait?” the main asked, sneering in disbelief.

  Rat laughed. “Of course not, Sir! Why, the bait would have to be magic.”

  That seemed to be that. Rat went back to watching his lump of hay with the focus of a zealous fisherman. The man in gray lagged behind. Except he didn’t lag behind very far, and it didn’t seem to be over. He also kept watching the lure. It wasn’t long at all before he caught back up to us and offered, “I’ll buy the lure from you. Since it’s not magic, you can make another one easily.”

  “You’d think that, Sir, but I’ll keep fishing all the same. Maybe I’ll get lucky and catch a gold coin after all,” Rat refused affably.

  Now it was getting hard to lie around and look disinterested. I kept wanting to smirk. Especially as the man in the gray suit pulled out a yellow coin and held it up in front of Rat. “Why fish for gold, when I’ll give you a gold crown right now for the lure?”

  Rat hesitated. “I could make another, I admit, but magic’s not easy to come by,” he hedged.

  “Gold right now is better than waiting for a bite,” the man urged him. Now he was the one trying to sound oily and convincing!

  “I suppose so.” Rat sighed. “I can make another eventually. We haven’t had a nibble yet, we’re almost to town, and I’ll need to buy my mistress dinner.”

  The man pressed the coin into Rat’s paws and took the string from him quickly, grinning with sly triumph as he asked, “So it is magic after all?”

  “Oh, no, Sir,” Rat answered, voice suddenly far too innocent as he stared up at the guy with focused black eyes. “How could that be? No one can fish for gold.”

  “Right,” the man in gray said, smugly skeptical. He stopped walking, reeling up the bundle of hay to hold it in his hands as we left him behind.

  “Here you go, Miss Mary. You must have a pocket in that dress somewhere. Did that chase the weariness of the road from you?” Rat asked, climbing up on my lap and offering me the coin.

  I didn’t even bother trying to find a pocket. I dropped the coin between two layers of my Red Riding Hood costume’s bodice. Nobody was going to look in there. “Did you just trick him into thinking you were tricking him?” I asked, letting myself smile now.

  Rat preened, lifting his nose and wiggling his whiskers with pride. “It keeps me in practice, and if he’d trusted me, why, he wouldn’t have been cheated. He might even fish up gold with it after all. Magic loves trickery.”

  “And are we really almost to town?” I asked. It was really a rhetorical question, because I only had to turn and stare ahead down the road to see the buildings ahead of us.

  Now that we were near whatever passed for civilization in a land far away, farmhouses and outbuildings lurked in the distance in every direction. An elegantly sleek black cat sat by the side of the road next to a bulky, muscular pit bull. As the wagon brought me eye to eye with them, the dog whispered anxiously, “She’s looking at us!”

  “Just stay calm, would you? They can smell fear!” the cat murmured back in a clipped, feminine voice.

  It would have been mean to panic them, so I rolled around and stared the other way. That hid how I grinned from ear to ear nicely.

  The sign read ‘Now Entering Somewhere.’ Fair enough. I slid off the back of the hay wagon and stared up at it. I’d seen metal road signs like this plenty of times, this one bent awkwardly to the side and its pitted, ragged surface looked a hundred years old.

  The town looked a hundred years old. I saw one car, but while I knew they hadn’t built them that boxy in my lifetime, that was all I knew. There were three horses on the street besides the one pulling the wagon. Square little buildings had a lot of wood or bare brick, and the inhabitants’ clothes looked either stiff and formal or hillbilly casual.

  Obviously, the whole town had fallen off the map. Just in case I wasn’t sure where it had landed, a girl leaned out of an attic window ahead of me, whispering to a blue jay cupped in her hand. No, the bird stood wrong. Birds tilted forward, and this one stood upright. It was a fairy. When the fairy blue jay flew off, I sidestepped discreetly, and the bird poop splatted down right where I’d been standing. Yep, fairy.

  Rat and I walked down the street into the middle of town. The town was big enough that I couldn’t be sure if this was really the middle, but the streets formed a square around a big pavement and grass plaza with a statue in the center. It looked like your standard “Our Noble Founder” monument with a guy in a pioneer outfit posing with his gun and one foot propped on a buffalo, except for the featureless mask over his and the buffalo’s faces. This town had been begging to get lost from day one, I could see.

  I walked up to the statue to give it a closer look. Up close, the buffalo’s mask was clearly stitched to its head over the weird flat buffalo face. Yeah, any moment now this place would be hip deep in Ancient Gods. I resolved not to stay the night.

  Turning around, I sat down on the lowest level of the statue’s pedestal and demanded, “Okay, Rat. Give. Where is Elizabeth and what do I have to save her from?”

  The mangy little vermin ran off. Of course, he didn’t run far. He dragged a whiskey flask from under a bush over to me. Then, he ran over and got a beer bottle. Next, he climbed into a trash basket and threw out a bunch of bent tin cans. Running back to me, he arranged them in a crude square, before running off to grab the next piece of junk.

  That was when he started narrating. “Once upon a time, Miss Mary, there was a city of iron and yellow smoke. It had always been a city of iron, but the yellow smoke came later
. The town did not need to be made of iron, but its people loved metal. They smelted and forged, and wagons and trains brought them every kind of ore to be turned into something useful. A haze of ash hung over the city and its fogs became thick and foul-smelling, but that was not their mistake. They worked from the rising of a sun they couldn’t see until only their lamps could pierce the darkness, then collapsed into bed to be ready to work the next day, but that was not their mistake. They chose this life and would not give it up. But they knew that what happiness their town had was corroding, day by day, like the rust spreading over the walls of their buildings. Their mistake was to think that, being smelters, they could create this happiness, distil it, and purify it. They would not give up their lives of hard work, but they wanted to make a princess who could be happy for them. Just one pure heart, they thought, would be enough for the whole city. And they loved pure things.”

  By the time he’d run through all that, he’d built a little model city out of bottles and cans, ringed it with pipes to make walls, and was dragging a little wooden crate up in front of it to stand on. The story sounded like a disaster waiting to happen, except that obviously, it had already happened.

  But you know what? “So far, I’m on their side, Rat. I wouldn’t want their life, but they did. Wanting someone else to be happy for them doesn’t sound like a crime.”

  Rat spread his tiny hands. “I don’t know if it was a crime, or a bad idea, but they thought like smelters. They smelted happiness, melted and focused all of the happiness of the whole city into a single, beautiful crown. A girl would have to be very pure to begin with, but wearing that crown, she would become the true princess of the city and her happiness would fill it and give it life.”

  I sighed. “Elizabeth qualifies, I’m sure. What was the catch?”

  Rat stared up at me with solemn, pitch-black eyes. “They smelted their own happiness to make it. All the happiness of a whole city to make one crown. It is a terrible place now, and no one lives there. The giant forge at the center of town warped itself into a castle, imprisoning the crown within layers of traps before a girl could be found to wear it. I guided Elizabeth all the way to the last trap, and there I messed up. She’s … well, you’ll see, Miss Mary. She’s trapped in a cage of the shadows of her own heart.”