“Yes, Dad,” she mumbled, shuffling backwards and curtseying twice.
I stumped after her.
Maybe she hadn’t bought it. The moment the four of us were out of sight of anyone else, Breeze sighed. “I think I got out of it. Thanks to you!”
The trip back to her rooms went much faster, since Breeze was in much more of a hurry. So much so that her feet didn’t always touch the ground. Where I swung my legs and hit the floor with my shoes hard, and Scarecrow bounced and skipped every other step, Breeze would lift both feet and glide forward a few paces.
The wind-powered escalator going back up was just as cool as the one going down.
When we got back to Breeze’s rooms, I knew just where to go. The food had gotten here first, and I left Breeze behind as I followed the smell down the hall and into another bedroom. This one had way too much pink in it. I was twelve, not six, for pity’s sake. But it had three trays of every possible combination of eggs, bacon, fruit, fried bread, and hot cheese. Plus, more root beer. Or something like root beer. Carbonation must not have been a big mystery for people who were friends with the wind.
I’d slept pretty well before, but the meal made me logy and the bed had a lot of cushions. I propped myself up on them and fell asleep watching Scarecrow poking at a mobile that hung from the ceiling.
woke up about forty times, each of them just long enough to register that Scarecrow had wandered into the bedroom or out of the bedroom or opened a drawer or made noise some other way. When I finally woke up properly, with sunlight filtering through the curtains, I was impressed I’d slept at all with Rat and Scarecrow in the room. Rat had curled up on my shoulder, and with me leaning back against a mountain of pillows, he’d fallen asleep with all four legs sticking in the air again. All I could smell was rat, which prompted a thought.
“How hard do you think it would be to get a bath in this place?” I asked.
“I think they have showers!” Scarecrow answered. She’d gotten hold of a little stuffed doll and a miniature version of Breeze’s wings, and had the doll flying in short circles on the end of a string.
“Two hot showers in twenty-four hours. This is a turn for the better.” I let out a sigh of momentary contentment.
Rat rolled over on my shoulder, and I shook him onto the mattress. I headed straight for the bathroom, working the laces on my Red Riding Hood dress. As Rat scurried to follow me, I pushed him back out with my foot and shut the door on him—although why either of us bothered, who knows?
I liked the bathroom. It looked pretty modern, although it had multiple faucets for everything. If the marble walls, floor, and everything were real marble, well, Breeze was a princess, right? She had at least two more bathrooms like this.
Scarecrow was right, too. It had a shower stall, but no bathtub. I leaned in and turned one of the knobs, and then yelled very loudly indeed.
“I’m fine! I’m fine!” I had to shout as I heard Rat squeaking through the door.
“Just wet,” I added under my breath. I turned the not-a-shower off, and dripped. It had sort of been a shower, but more like standing in a washing machine. The locals liked to be vigorously clean, and the stall door was definitely not meant to be open when the miniature hurricane turned on.
I wrung out as much water as I could from my clothes into the stall’s drain. Well, okay. I was soaking wet. The bathroom was past ‘soaking wet’ to ‘covered in puddles’. But even my costume felt clean.
I found a small towel and did my best to scrub my hair dry, then stepped out of the bathroom. At least my shoes were out here and dry, and Rat didn’t say anything about my condition. Wonder of wonders, neither did Scarecrow.
Breeze, on the other hand, peeked in the door, which I’d have to tell Scarecrow never to leave open. “I heard voices. Are you—oh, my. Why—no, of course. You don’t have your own winds to dry yourself, do you? Here!” Her breeze rolled into the room, flapping loose covers and blowing all around me. Feeling it touch me everywhere gave me the heebie-jeebies, especially if it might be alive, but the result was as good as standing in a blow dryer. I soon became merely damp.
“Thanks,” I told her reluctantly.
“Would you like a late breakfast? I’m sure my father would love to meet you properly!” Breeze asked. She was transparent as glass. She wanted a distraction in case her dad still wanted to chew her out.
Eesh. I guess I owed it to her.
“Okay, if you’ll feed Rat too,” I grumbled.
The hesitation showed that it hadn’t occurred to her. “Yes. Of course.”
“C’mon, Scarecrow.” I, tugged her upright as we trailed after Breeze.
The princess’s feet hardly touched the floor this morning, although without her wings, an inch off the ground seemed to be her limit. It explained why she didn’t wear shoes.
My shoes were squishy from damp feet, but I was sticking with them.
Breeze guided us to the hall where she’d said her father’s rooms were, and into what had to be a dining room for the royal family. Lots of wood, glass skylights, and a table that would only fit a dozen people, tops. Laid with enough food for forty, of course.
“Good morning! May our guests eat with us?” Breeze chirped at her father, as if she had absolutely no reason to be afraid she might be in trouble at all. She could not have been more obvious.
On the other hand, she clearly knew her audience.
King Torr set aside a tray cover. “Of course. In fact, we have another guest. I’m sure you felt the storm blow over us at dawn. My lady, are you ready to eat?”
“I believe I’m finally cleaned up. Thank you, Torr. You’re so generous.” A woman stepped into the room, wrapped in a dressing gown. It hugged her figure, but trailed down almost to the floor and wasn’t actually immodest. It just clung as she walked, and accented her model perfect face and the faintly pearlescent green of her long hair. My brain caught up. It had taken a few seconds. After all, she looked and sounded different when she wasn’t screaming in rage.
Eyes wide, Breeze said it for me. “Dad, that’s the sea witch who attacked me last night.”
“What?” The fairy was so much better at this than Breeze. Her puzzled frown suggested nothing more than she didn’t understand what Breeze had said.
“And we need to talk about you being out over the sea last night, Breeze,” the King answered.
The fairy laid her hand on the King’s wrist, distracting him for a moment and softening his stiff expression.
I took it as my chance. “This you have to face alone, Princess. Just show me the way back to your room,” I grabbed Scarecrow and Breeze’s wrists and pulling them back out of the dining room. Just for good measure, I shut the door behind us hard, so everyone would know how mad I was.
It hadn’t been a good performance. I just hoped this was something fairies were stupid about. “We are getting out of here, now,” I hissed under my breath.
“She must be staying in a nearby room. She’ll have a cloak, or a shawl. It’ll be lined with fish scales. We can prove what she is,” Rat whispered from my shoulder.
“Yes!” Breeze whispered, entirely too loud.
“No,” I contradicted both of them flatly. “Which way is out?”
“We could get you and the wooden girl wings—” Breeze started.
“And be visible for miles. A door. Out. We need to run, Princess, right now!” I whispered. In fact, since I knew which way Breeze’s rooms were, I dragged her and Scarecrow in the opposite direction. Plotting right outside a room the fairy was in would be idiotic.
“Miss Mary, all we have to do is expose her. To leave the water she had to carry some proof of what she was!” Rat insisted.
“He’s not going to listen,” I snapped. “Door! Which way? It’ll have to be on the ground floor, right?” I remembered how to get to the escalators. I dragged a stumbling Breeze that way. Fortunately, she didn’t have enough spine to fight me. Which was good. She was at least twenty pounds heavier.
“Where’s your mother?” I glared at the princess, hard and vicious. I had to get this through her thick skull, and we didn’t have any time!
“She died. Two years ago.” Breeze’s expression turned bleak, her eyes glisteny. Not how I’d meant to do it, but I’d gotten her to be serious.
I jerked my head back behind us. “That’s your new stepmother. She just walked out of your Dad’s bathroom wearing next to nothing. She’s a fairy who wants to kill you. You put the rest of the pieces together yourself.”
She shivered, and the first tears slid out of the corners of her eyes.
“Cry later. We get out of the castle now,” I growled. We stepped into the stream of air that carried us gently down the escalators towards the ground floor. “Everybody would rather fly. There are doors on ground level nobody notices, right?”
Breeze nodded. She’d given up. Thank goodness. We were getting out of here.
Getting out stayed easy. Breeze stopped arguing, and the castle was riddled with unguarded ground floor doors. The town wasn’t much different. A few people walked the streets, but most of them buzzed over the rooftops on wings smaller and less gaudy than Breeze’s. We were still too visible, but it beat flying.
“Miss Mary,” Rat whispered into my ear, and pointed down the street.
Looks like freight was too heavy to fly. Plain old ordinary wagons, or at least wagons with an engine in front that was no doubt wind powered, lined up by the side of the street. I walked up to one that had been unloaded and was being reloaded, with Breeze shuffling despondently behind me and Scarecrow gawking at the town with her hands clasped behind her neck.
“Hey, Mister,” I told the guy loading bags onto the wagon bed, “Can we get a ride out of town to pick up her wings?”
He didn’t argue, so I pushed Breeze up onto the wagon, and gave Scarecrow a shove until she figured it out and climbed up herself. The next bag dropped onto the wooden boards must have been the last, because the wagoner leaned down and whispered to me, “She looks miserable. The King must be furious.”
“If we can get her wings back fast and quiet, I’m hoping it’ll blow over.” I lied with the appropriate solemn face. I couldn’t have hidden who Breeze was, so I’d bet on it instead.
After that, the wagon pulled out and we sat, swinging our legs over the edge, as it took us down the hill and out of the town. The wind engine pulled smoothly, slightly faster than we could have walked. It wasn’t a great solution, but it worked.
Eventually, Scarecrow leaned over and asked, “Is there a way to make her stop being so unhappy?”
She meant Breeze, of course. The princess sat slumped forward with her hands on her knees, staring over the edge of the wagon bed at the ground. I shook my head at Scarecrow, and so did Rat.
“There has to be something,” Scarecrow leaned in closer. If Breeze heard us, and she had to hear us, she didn’t show any sign. Rat and I shook our heads again.
“Geez,” Scarecrow complained, leaning back and propping her hands behind her on the boards. Being Scarecrow, she sounded perky about it and stared at the birds and people flying around in the sky with all signs of interest.
The wagons ambled down the hill. The town shrank behind us at the top. Finally, the wagon stopped and the guy up front called back, “You girls going farther? We stop here at the depot.”
“They’re stuck in a tree, right inside the woods,” I lied, pointing at the forest right ahead of us. The road turned around it. We’d get good and lost in five minutes in there.
“No wonder King Torr’s mad. Good luck. There should be a wagon heading back up around sundown,” he said.
I nodded and pulled Breeze down onto the road top, which turned to asphalt where it curved away from the trees. Scarecrow hopped down, her shoes plopping almost as loudly as mine. I slipped an arm around Breeze’s shoulders and walked her out towards the woods. It was a little too close for my tastes, not to mention awkward since she was most of a head taller than me, but it put on the right show. Maybe it would do something for her. She hadn’t recovered at all.
Rat must have been thinking about that, too. “It will work out, Your Highness. I know all the tricks of the fairies. Either a prince will come rescue you, or more likely, the witch will expose herself now that you’ve run away. When your father figures out what she is, the spell on him will be broken.”
“The only spell on him is a magically perfect body, and he doesn’t want it broken,” I snapped.
Rat didn’t let me break his flow. “His love for his daughter will win out as soon as the witch reveals herself. She’ll be getting desperate right now.”
Branches arched over our heads, cutting us off from being spotted from the sky. “We won’t rely on it, or on a prince. If it happens, great. Until then, you save yourself.”
If he hadn’t been clinging to my cape right by my ear, I wouldn’t have heard the little husky breath, the angry cut off sigh as Rat tried to hold his temper. Mine flamed up, burning up my spine. It was time for our big fight. It had to happen sooner or later. I waited for him to make whatever little jab would start it.
He didn’t. And he still didn’t. He wasn’t going to. That was almost as infuriating. Didn’t he have the guts to stand up to me? He obviously didn’t think I was right. He just didn’t want to fight with me.
Crap, and I didn’t want to fight, either. I reached up and rubbed the top of his head with my thumb. He didn’t press into it or anything, but we’d push this confrontation off a little longer.
Or maybe he was smarter than me, and he hadn’t wanted to argue because we were already freaking out Breeze. She stopped suddenly and yelped, “I want to go home!” Pressing the heels of her hands to her eyes, she started to bawl.
Geez. I didn’t want to blame her, but this was stupid and dangerous as—
Too late. Branches rustled and snapped, and leaves flew everywhere. Two men strapped into wings crashed down through the canopy to land in front of us, spears pointed in our direction. Another two came down behind, and I saw a guard on either side of us crouched up in the treetops. There might be more.
One final soldier landed more carefully, holding onto the sea fairy with her arms wrapped around his neck. I’d say he didn’t mind that job, but his eyes were too spaced out. Fairies loved their mind control magic.
“Thank the wind, we’ve caught them. I told you, that tiny witch cast a spell over the princess and kidnapped her. We’ll take them both back with us.” She pulled off the concerned and good-natured stepmother act perfectly.
I wanted to argue, but the guards didn’t look ensorcelled, they just looked completely convinced. They knew what they wanted to believe already.
Someone argued for me. A choked off scream and thump gave me all of a second and a half of warning, then my Wolf leaped down off a branch and landed barely five feet away from me. Great. My Wolf could climb, too.
Is that really the first thing you can think at a time like this, Mary?
“Red Riding Hood is mine,” he announced in that deep, always confident voice.
He’d misjudged his audience badly. No one wanted to talk. Everyone screamed. I was one of ‘everyone.’ The guards weren’t paying attention to me. I turned and ran.
Out of the corner of my eye, I saw a guard grab Breeze by the arm. I was leaving her and Scarecrow behind. The Wolf was right behind me. There was no way I could escape anyway. He yelped, boomingly loud. I didn’t look back to see what happened.
The fairy snapped, “They’re both mine.”
My Wolf’s deep, smooth voice went suddenly ragged. “I am out of patience.”
Everyone started to scream again, and I pushed my legs harder, my whole body hurting as I put every step between myself and the violence going on behind me as fast as possible.
But, “Breeze,” I panted.
“She’s safe. Your story just killed hers,” Rat said by my ear. H
e sounded afraid. That was the right way to sound right now.
Noise. Feet pounding on fallen leaves, coming up behind me. “You can run faster than that, right?” Scarecrow asked.
I tried. I had nothing to worry about but putting distance between me and the shrieking and snarling and snapping wood behind me. Behind me, and getting quieter.
Still too close. My Wolf had caught up with me so fast.
e was right behind me this time, and I couldn’t possibly outrun him. How long would it take to kill a few guards and a fairy? Is that what he was doing? I ran some more. My shoes pounded against the forest floor. A log lay in front of me, and I jumped over it. Stupid. I couldn’t outrun him!
I needed a clever plan right now. I tried to tell Rat, but pain stung my lungs. I wouldn’t be able to run much longer. “Need a door, or—something!” I wheezed. My legs sped along, but my lungs jolted me again.
“We could try the maze,” Scarecrow chirped. “Maybe he’ll get lost!”
She grabbed my wrist, and I yanked it away. She grabbed it again. “Come on, let me save you this time!” She sounded so cheerful. Did she not understand that my life was on the line? That I wouldn’t even hear the paws that were catching up behind me? What game was she playing now?
She’s not playing a game, Mary. She wants to help.
Her head was made of wood, and she was about that smart. She wanted to help me. I couldn’t step on that. I couldn’t.
“What maze?” I croaked.
“The one we’re already in. This way!” Scarecrow answered. She was still skipping. She yanked me to the side, and we ran in a different direction. She turned suddenly and pulled me in yet another direction.
“What—there’s no—” I tried to ask, but I couldn’t. My lungs ached.
“We can stop running. You can walk, right? Will walking be good?” Scarecrow asked. She drew up short, and I wished she’d needed to pull me to a stop. Instead, I bent over, hands on my knees, and fought to breathe.
Quite Contrary Page 23