Geez, I hated being right sometimes. Most of the time.
Scarecrow leaned up on her tiptoes to peek at me, and I saw how I was getting out. She’d opened the window by the bed. I was already dressed. I had my satchel and everything. Still, “Can you open it a little wider?” I whispered.
“I could, but that would break a web, and I thought that was bad,” she whispered back. Forced to be quiet, she bobbed her head up and down like a pigeon on speed, instead. I stopped that by placing my hand on her face and pushing her head back through the window’s gap.
“Breaking a web is bad. I’ll make do,” I said. I had just barely room to get my head through, and my shoulders scraped the sides, but they did get through. I slid my body around sideways, pulled a leg out, twisted my hips past the gap, and dropped onto the midnight grass.
We were out on the lawn. Rat pulled the shoulder strap of the satchel out, and scurried up my arm as I slung the satchel into place. Should I close the window? Forget it. What would it hide?
I bit down on my desire to just pick a direction and run. I was sick of playing by the witch’s rules, but I wanted to use them against her, and especially against my Wolf.
“Lead us out, Scarecrow. You’re the only one who can see the maze,” I whispered. Crap, I should have told her to be quiet about it.
I didn’t have to. She ducked down and crawled under the next window. This was what I’d wanted her to do, so I did the same. Rat clung more tightly to my shoulder until we were past. The view in there must have been unpleasant. After that, we turned the corner of the house, and Scarecrow straightened up and walked in uncharacteristic silence to the gap in the fence. I stayed right behind her. We reached the stone lined path, and Scarecrow headed us straight into the woods. The third tree we passed on the left was especially fat, and after we circled around it, I couldn’t see the house anymore. We were in the maze.
Just to be sure, I kept my mouth shut until we turned two more invisible corners. Even then, it was Rat who broke the silence first.
“I’m glad you knew something was up, Miss Mary. I thought she was just an old grandmother with a harmless story, the kind of witch people think is bad because they don’t know her. She fooled me completely.”
I grimaced. “She had the attitude down perfect, but the maze, the way she treated Scarecrow—I don’t know. I knew something was wrong, but I wasn’t sure until I noticed that for someone who wanted me to know she was a grandmother so badly, she didn’t have any photos of her kids.”
“She had photos. They were in the bath,” Rat whispered.
Whoah. There was a bleak tone.
“Is this a ‘murdered her own grandchildren’ story I’m about to hear? Spill, Rat,” I ordered.
Come to think of it, if we could talk, we could be a little less quiet and pick up the pace. I lengthened my stride, and as soon as I pulled ahead of her, Scarecrow leaped two steps ahead, then copied my walk exactly—except when she turned abruptly, and I knew to follow her.
Rat clung low to the off-the-shoulder sleeve of my dress, and stared at the ground. “No, not her own grandchildren, I guess. She couldn’t have. But the room next to yours was full of knives and magic and bones, and a bathtub stained with blood.”
My stomach rolled a little but, “This sounds like something besides gobbling up little children.”
“Not all children. Girls.” There was one expression a rat could do well–wrinkling his nose in disgust. “It’s an old story; a story that lurks in the background. She bathes in the blood of virgins to make herself young again. It’s not a story I ever expected to meet in person.”
I snickered. It could be funny, because I’d gotten away. “She was so concerned about why the Wolf wanted me, wasn’t she?” I asked sarcastically.
“She had to know your blood was good,” Rat sighed.
“Why?”
He paused, then answered, “Don’t tease me, Miss Mary. You’re too young for that not to be true.”
God, he couldn’t even say it. That was just a little bit too much. “You’re assuming I had any choice. You’re assuming a lot of things,” I snapped
“Mi—” he started to ask, but it was a question. His voice was full of doubt. I grabbed him in one hand, ripped him free of my sleeve, and stormed forward to shove him into Scarecrow’s hands so that I didn’t have to touch him. Then, I turned away and leaned my shoulder against a tree.
“Don’t worry, I’m still a virgin,” I said, “After Mom’s boyfriend made me take off my clothes, he was idiot enough to let me go to the bathroom. I crawled out the window and hid in the bushes until morning. Then, I just had to stay out of his sight until she broke up with him. That didn’t take long.”
“What did your mother say when you told her?” His voice had gone blank. I couldn’t see him from this angle, and didn’t want to.
“That if I hadn’t been such a difficult little bitch, he’d have left her alone when she was drunk and wanted to sleep,” I answered. My voice had evened out again. He’d believe me or he wouldn’t.
He didn’t answer. I straightened up again, and walked up to Scarecrow, who held Rat up in both hands. She didn’t have an expression, and aside from ears flat against his head, I couldn’t read his.
“You have to get over something, Rat.” I tried to keep my voice from rasping. “You must have had great parents, and you really want to believe that all parents love their children. Some of them don’t. You could go on believing your pretty little fairy tale like that, but it’s going to get me killed, and I’m a little too close to that already.” Now my voice did crack. Don’t think about it, Mary.
That was not a good time for a light to go on in the distance, a glow visible through dying branches.
“Fuck!” I swore. Oh, crap, crap, crap. Apologize to Rat later.
“Scarecrow, we need to speed up!” I said, and we started walking again, fast. Not fast enough. I sped up, as fast as I could go without running, and I couldn’t run in this maze. Scarecrow stopped. “The maze just shut ahead of us.” She tilted her head quizzically. “Okay, we can go around this way!” She turned to the right, and with a loud creak and a lot of snapping, a rotten tree fell over in front of us.
Mrs. Bathory didn’t want us getting out.
In the distance, I heard a howl. Mrs. Bathory didn’t howl. A very deep voice shouted something I couldn’t make out.
“‘Little girl, little girl, let me come in’,” Rat repeated.
I didn’t want to—stop being difficult, Mary. I had no time for that. I grabbed Rat out of Scarecrow’s hands and squeezed him in both of mine to my chest. “Is there a wall in the way, or just a tree?” I asked her.
“Just a tree. Uh, things are breaking,” Scarecrow said, twisting her head around to look in every direction.
I grabbed her hand and leaped up on a fallen branch, crushing some twigs and ignoring the others that scraped at my legs. I jumped up onto the tree trunk, then off the other side. Scarecrow landed on both feet beside me.
“But the maze is still here, right?” I asked. I was trying not to beg.
“Yeah, but it’s a mess.” She almost sounded discouraged.
“It gained us most of a day coming in, Miss Mary. We’ll be at least a few hours ahead coming out.” Rat sounded confident. He did.
“Is it okay if we run again?” Scarecrow asked.
“Yes!” I shoved her forward with one hand. The other tucked Rat into the hood behind my neck. We ran.
Way behind us, a light went out. My Wolf howled again.
t was really, really dark, and that made this worse. I had no idea where I was going, and tree trunks emerged from the blackness only when I got so close I almost hit them. I looked down, watching for roots that might trip me up, following Scarecrow’s running feet.
We turned. My feet thudded across the hard dirt of the forest floor. We turned again. My legs twinged.
The backs of my thighs were getting stiff already, and my lungs itched when I took
deep breaths. I’d run too much today.
I couldn’t say anything. I was NOT going to give up.
Behind my head, Rat called out to Scarecrow, “We can’t just run. We need to find a path somewhere the Wolf can’t follow. Do you see anything? A rabbit hole? A fairy ring?”
I didn’t know if I should be angry or grateful that he’d guessed I couldn’t last much longer.
“There’s a break in the maze down there!” Scarecrow shouted back. She pointed, turned a corner, and pointed in a new direction.
“Lead us there!” Rat barked.
We took another turn. The backs of my legs stiffened and resisted each step a little more, but I gritted my teeth and ran faster. This invisible passage had already lasted longer than most. Up ahead, was that a light?
I slowed down. Bad idea. The moment I did, my thighs thickened into knots and I staggered forward, stopped, and propped my hands on my knees, taking deep breaths. I wasn’t done. No way. I looked up. The light came from a lantern hanging on a fishing line, tied to a fishing pole, held by a little old man whose beard stuck out crazily in both directions. He had the overalls and plaid flannel shirt that screamed fairy tale resident. As he stared at us, a fish flopped and twisted in his hands, still hooked to the line.
And that line of blackness cutting across the grass next to him must be a stream. My lungs were easing, and my eyes were getting used to the glare of the lantern enough to see past it. I didn’t know where a stream became a river, but this had to be pushing that boundary.
An old man fishing in the middle of the night. I was waist deep, again, in another fairy tale.
“Sir, you are just what we needed. I’d like to buy that fish from you, if you please!” declared Rat, scrambling out of my hood and onto my shoulder.
“Let me clean it first. How much are you offering?” the old guy asked. With one eyebrow raised, he studied us with obvious amusement and curiosity. A girl in a red dress, a girl made of wood, and a talking rat. He must be thinking he was waist deep in a fairy tale.
“We want it just the way it is. We haven’t any money on us, but I don’t think that will be a problem.” Rat sounded jovial again, and he slid down my sleeve with ease onto the satchel. Burrowing into it, he pulled out a bottle and lifted it up enough for the old man to see. “Bottle of fresh root beer is worth a fish, don’t you think?”
I would have turned tail and run from Rat’s used car salesman voice, and the old guy got a little of that, too. He hesitated suspiciously, but it must have been a good deal. Or maybe he took pity on an exhausted middle schooler and her weird sidekicks.
“Sure,” he said.
Rat pulled the bottle out the rest of the way, and I took it from him, stepping forward to pass it to the fisherman. He gave his line a swing, and a slimy, spastically struggling fish landed in both my hands. Fantastic. Thanks loads, Rat.
Was this a magic wish-granting fish or something? It flopped again, then paused to lay there gasping in my hands. No, it was just a mindless everyday fish choking to death with a hook stuck in its mouth. I shouldn’t care about that. I didn’t feel bad eating them. It had a brain the size of a pinhead, and probably couldn’t suffer. It just looked like it was suffering.
The fisherman popped the top off my bottle of root beer and took a pull at it. He grinned at Rat, and nodded. “Fair deal. Don’t know what you want from the fish, but I hope you get it.”
Rat was about to tell me what we wanted from the fish. Forget it, he might convince me. I had to not think about that, or about anything, so I could reach into this horrible slimy thing’s mouth, pinch my fingers around the fish hook, and twist it loose. The fish didn’t react. It really was too dumb to hurt. Whatever, I’d chosen my way. I let the fish hook go and the line swing back to the fisherman, and threw the fish as hard as I could back into the water.
Rat didn’t complain at all. He climbed back up my sleeve, and I asked him, “You didn’t want the fish. What are you up to?”
Right then the old guy finished off the bottle of root beer and threw it into the stream after my fish. “That’s what I’m up to! Go get the bottle!” Rat whispered to me.
“Wade into a stream in the middle of the night and try and find a drink bottle?” I hissed. “Are you kidding me?!” I knew he was trying to get me out of here. I had to trust him. At least enough to step down the bank and dip one of my feet into the water. “It’s ice cold!” I added. Added vehemently. My teeth wanted to chatter just touching it, and now I had a shoe full of ice.
I ignored him while he tried to figure out how to argue with me, and put my foot back in the stream. Criminy, it was cold. This was some kind of stupid fairy tale thing to make me too scared to get out the bottle, wasn’t it? Oh, forget all of it. I stomped out into the water. By the time I got to where the bottle had hit the surface, I really was waist deep in a fairy tale, with my body shaking and my teeth clicking rapid-fire and my legs numb below the knees.
Rat called back to the fisherman, “Sir, you’ve been fair with us. I want to be fair with you. Trouble is coming, and it’s trouble that kills. Grab your catch and get out of here, fast.”
I had to hand it to the old guy. He was smart, and he got the message. This was a fairy tale he didn’t want to be in. He did exactly what he was told, grabbing a big toolbox and taking off upriver, away from us and away from where we’d come. He dropped his fishing rod in the process, and Scarecrow lunged forward and caught the lantern as it fell. The old man disappeared into the dark, and I wasn’t going to argue with him leaving us the light.
Now the numbness was creeping up towards my hips. It was time for Rat to get a taste of his own medicine. He still clung to my sleeve, after all. I ducked down, bending forward and plunging myself into the water to begin feeling around the riverbed.
I could hardly feel anything but the shock of the cold. Dirt. Mud. Plant. Rock. Slimy plant. Another rock. A skinny rock? The bottle! I’d actually found it! I closed my fist around it and stood up, gasping for breath as water exploded off me and Rat.
Oh jeez, this was cold. My body shook all over again. Even my feet ached all over again.
My feet weren’t numb anymore. It wasn’t supposed to work that way, was it? A fish—the fish I’d saved before, some other fish, I didn’t know—broke the surface next to me, then shook itself, bulging into a grossly cute cross between a baby and a frog.
“On behalf of the water who is mother of us all, I thank you, my lady!” he said. His voice wasn’t as high pitched as Scarecrow’s, but it tried, and had a throaty lisp.
“I feel rude asking tit for tat, but we may be running out of time—” Rat started to say.
“You are completely out of time. I’m tired of delay after delay after delay,” the deep voice of my Wolf finished for him.
So big. He stepped out of the trees and into the lamplight, and he was taller than Scarecrow. Scarecrow, who stood on the shore right in front of him.
“If you want to repay her, get her out of here now!” Rat squeaked at the frog.
“I’m not leaving Scarecrow!” I barked, dragging my legs through the water and wading towards shore. Towards my Wolf. Oh geez, Mary, how stupid are you? Too stupid to leave helpless Scarecrow behind like I had Breeze.
“This? You’d die for this? By all means,” purred the Wolf. He swung his head around and fastened his teeth onto Scarecrow’s shoulder. Scarecrow swung the lamp around to hit him in the head. I beat her to it. I threw the empty root beer bottle as hard as I could, and smacked him in the top of his skull with it.
That did it. He threw Scarecrow down and leaped forward, snarling. Straight at me. I’d come too close. Those teeth were coming right for my head, until I got yanked backwards off my feet by a savage undertow.
I pulled with my arms and my head broke the surface again. The slight current had become a tidal wave, shoving me downstream. Scarecrow had gotten back to her feet. As I watched, she dropped the lantern and sprinted forward, then jumped into the water. She reached
out her wooden hand and shouted, “Mary!”
I fought too, groped to catch her hand, but it was worse than useless. The water picked up speed with every second. By the time Scarecrow hit the water, I was more than a body length away, and getting faster. The current only affected me. The Wolf splashed furiously, clumsily trying to charge after me, and Scarecrow waded at a snail’s pace.
I left the lantern way behind. Scarecrow and the Wolf disappeared, becoming unidentifiable textures in the patch of light. I fought, twisting and kicking my feet against the current, but what could I do against water? It dragged me under into blackness.
ot the blackness of unconsciousness. This was the blackness of dark water on every side, rushing me along. Scarecrow. I’d left Scarecrow behind. What would she do? I twisted and flailed and tried to swim against the current, and accomplished nothing whatsoever. There wasn’t anything to fight against, just water. Frog-baby magic ensured I didn’t freeze to death. The water didn’t feel hot, or cold, or anything. It was just dark, rushing me along, and felt like standing in a strong wind. Rat? Did I still—I did, his little claws tugged at my clothes as he crawled from my arm to a more secure footing on my bodice. I closed my arms over him just in case and waited.
I didn’t think I slept, but that was the only explanation I had for the sun rising. I couldn’t see the horizon from underwater, but pitch-black water became murky, shadowy water, and the current spilled me out of the river and into a deep bowl. A lake. A lake on no map, inhabited by horrible little frog babies who’d saved my life.
Inhabited by somebody. Mud, seashells, logs, crystals, and scales were the ingredients for a crude, sparkly cathedral at the very bottom of the bowl. Uneven walls and arches rather than roofs made it hard to tell if the thing was one building or half a dozen. Or maybe it was a palace. Yeah, a glittery palace made of garbage at the bottom of a lake. Sounded about right. The whole thing was trying too hard.
The rest of the lake bottom was filled with rotting tree trunks, piled up stones, tangles of seaweed, and mud. Lots and lots of mud. Plenty of room for the fish girl to hide before she came zooming up out of a hollow log. Maybe more of a fish woman. She had the shape of an adult, or at least a teenager, but the scales and extra fins made it hard to put an age to her. She had a lot of fins. She didn’t have a fish tail, but with fins like wings stretching off her arms and legs, she didn’t need one.
Quite Contrary Page 25