Princess Juniper of the Hourglass

by Ammi-Joan Paquette

  “Hold up for a moment,” she said, then turned to Jessamyn. “There. Take his spot on the bench. It will give your behind a rest, and there are some provisions in the carriage.”

  Jessamyn squinted at Erick in confusion. “Up there? On the driver’s seat?”

  “If you thought to ride inside the princess’s carriage—” Erick started, and Tippy chipped in: “There’s no room in there, and that’s a fact. It’s crammed with bags and boxes and, er, her princess-pants, of course!” She winked audaciously at Juniper, but Jessamyn was too steamed to notice. Indecision crumpled the noble girl’s face as she opened and closed her mouth.

  “It’s your call, Lady Jessamyn,” said Juniper curtly. “I shall head back to the front now, but we need to get the carriage moving again one way or another, for all the rest await behind us.”

  “Oh, very well,” said Jessmyn, sliding off her horse and tottering toward the carriage on fish-belly legs.

  “You will manage these magnificent creatures the rest of the way, Miss Tippy?” Juniper asked.

  “Will I ever!” the little girl chirped, bobbing up and down on the seat. “I’ve been leading them along all by myself for the last hour, haven’t I, Erick Dufrayne?”

  “She most certainly has. Lady Jessamyn won’t have to do a thing but recline at her leisure, shield her face from the sun, and nibble on dainties.”

  The switch was quickly accomplished, and in a matter of minutes, Juniper and Erick breezed past Cyril and Root to reclaim the front of the train. “Let’s pick up the pace, shall we?” she said. “I’m certain it’s not too far to the next stage of our journey.”

  “Next stage?” Erick’s voice sounded faint. “The sun is nearly set. How much longer do you intend us to go out here?”

  Juniper grinned. “Out here? Not long at all.” She paused, then gave in to the thrill of her disclosure. “Oh, all right. The next, and the final, trek we’ll need to make—wait now, don’t disagree just yet, not until I tell you just why we can and must make the journey tonight! Well, a cave is what it is, and the entrance can’t be too far off, if the map tells true.”

  “A cave? Inside the Hourglass Mountains?”

  “Just so. And not a cave alone, but a whole network of them. They tunnel right through the mountains, and my father said the way is wide as walls. The floor is rough, so we’ll have to go slow, but we can make it for sure. Even the wagons. It’s a good thing we used the smaller narrow ones, and had the blacksmith outfit them with his sturdiest wheels.”

  Erick seemed to consider this.

  “There’s a secret, too, inside the caves. Wait till you see it.” She patted her waist-pouch, the parchment inside giving off a faint crinkle. “So, what do you say? Can we push all the way through tonight?”

  Erick bit his lip, obviously more than a little uncertain.

  “Look,” Juniper said, looking sidelong at him across their mounts. “I realize this is all new. But you’re my adviser. My. Adviser. That means I want your advice. So none of this holding back. Got it? Next time I catch you stammering and biting off your words, I’ll . . . I’ll . . . bop you on the nose.”

  Erick’s face whipped through a rainbow of conflicting emotions. Finally he settled on a slow smile. “All right, then. You’re the queen, and I’m your adviser. So what if I . . . that is, how do you want me to respond to you when I . . . you know—disagree?”

  “Do you?”

  “What?”

  “Do you disagree? With this plan?”

  Erick grinned. “This plan? Not at all. I think it’s smashing.”

  Juniper felt a surge of relief. “I’m glad to hear it. But to answer your question: As my chief adviser, you may have any opinion at all, and you should express it at will. I’m not just saying that because you’re agreeing with me right now—I really do want your counsel.” She paused. “And I meant it about the bopping.”

  “I got it,” Erick promised. “My nose is precious to me, as it happens.”

  “Now let’s be off, shall we?”

  She dug her heels into Thunderstar’s side. The horse had been traveling for hours with very few breaks, and she knew they needed to stop and rest soon. But they didn’t have much farther to go. The Hourglass Mountains completely filled the near sky, stretching across the continent like a great, impassable wall. But if her father’s map was to be believed, they were not nearly as impassable as they seemed.

  The way through was there. It was close.

  They just had to find it.

  THE CAVE’S MOUTH LOOKED IMPOSSIBLY small—in fact, if the moon hadn’t been so bright and full over this clearing, Juniper might have missed it altogether, overgrown as it was with bluevine and clinging pink-and-red mandevilla.

  “This way, everyone!” she called out. “We enter here!”

  She galloped ahead of the slow-moving group, with Erick close on her heels. At the entrance she dismounted, gathered up the reins, and pushed through the opening with gusto, tugging Thunderstar in her wake.

  “Isn’t this something?” Erick’s voice behind her was pure awe.

  Once inside, Juniper bent to feel along the floor. “Shine your torch over here,” she said, wishing her father’s scribbled instructions had been just a little bit easier to follow.

  “I still can’t figure out what you’re doing.”

  It was as close as Erick had ever come to complaining, and Juniper grinned. It was mean to keep him in suspense, but she couldn’t help it. The moment of revelation would be worth it. Finding a sharp rock that fit comfortably in her hand, she stood up and patted along the wall. It was surprisingly dry—well, perhaps not surprisingly, given what she was about to do—but for long minutes, she found only bare, smooth rock.

  “Well?” Erick asked curiously.

  “Almost . . . oh! I’ve got it!” Her questing fingers had finally reached their goal: a deep, wide groove chiseled out of the rock wall, the inside rough and ridged and ever so slightly tacky. Victory! Juniper shifted the rock in her hand, pulled back, and thumped hard in the center of the dip. She missed the first time, and the second strike didn’t have nearly enough force behind it, bringing nothing but a dim flash. But the third time—the third time—

  Under her striking stone, the groove burst in a flare of hot white light. It was brighter than she’d expected, and Juniper dropped her rock and scrambled backward, bumping into Erick. She could see him clearly now in the brilliant glow, standing with his mouth agape.

  “Worth waiting for?” she crowed.

  “What in the mighty storms is it?”

  “That’s the secret I was telling you about. My father wrote about it on the map. I’ve no idea where he learned it, or why we’ve never put something like this to use in the palace. It’s a sort of alchemical powder, and when struck hard enough, the spark ignites the pitch that’s left on the wall. And then . . .”

  She turned to look at the glowing indentation, which cast enough light that the cave walls around them were clearly visible. As they watched, a strip on the far side of the groove caught flame and blazed outward, a wide fiery band licking along the wall away from the cave’s entrance.

  “It’s pointing the way?” Erick asked.

  “Yes! And it gets even better. The burn span is quite brief—five to eight minutes, no more. See how the bowl is already starting to flicker ever so slightly lower? It lights up, leads the way, then burns itself out. And it can be reused time upon time, so long as it has some hours to replenish. Oh, what’s keeping the others?” From just outside, she could hear Cyril’s voice raised in a complaint about tight spaces, over the sound of clearing and hacking as the opening was tested before the vehicles’ passing. “Do you have those moonstones? We’ll drop some along our way in case this burns down before they all make it through.”

  Erick fumbled in his bag and set one of the stones down by the wall. They had
been coated in a luminescent resin, which glowed an eerie green in the wall’s flickering light. At that moment, the vines at the opening rustled and Paul burst through, tugging his mare behind him. His eyes were wonder-wide in the flickering ghost light. The other horseback riders quickly followed. Despite the assurances her father had given, Juniper held her breath, then let it out as the first of the wagons cleared the opening with ease. Those vines sure covered a wide-open space! As the chamber filled, the gathering torchlight brightened it further, and the reflection on the moonstones was like a signpost calling them forward.

  “We’ll lead on down the passage. Just follow the lighting,” she called to the others. “Come on, Erick—let’s blaze ahead!”

  • • •

  Getting through the rest of the cave took hours. The curving passage wound upward in wide, lazy loops, but the flare along the wall burned steady and true. It kept them moving at a stiff pace, though. Despite their growing exhaustion, the rest of the group caught up double-quick once they realized how brief the light’s span was; nobody wanted to be left in the warren of caves with only torchlight-off-the-moonstones to point the way.

  The horses took the journey surprisingly well, clip-clopping meekly behind their equally silent riders. Even Cyril was subdued; more than once, Juniper looked back to see him blinking uneasily in the semidarkness. At every step, Juniper waited for a corner too sharp, a ceiling too low, or walls too narrow for the carriage and wagons to pass, but each time she was relieved to find an adequate, if not entirely comfortable, fit.

  “Do you suppose this tunnel’s been widened at all?” Roddy mused, running a palm along the smooth passageway wall.

  Juniper would have answered him, but just then, the strip of light flickered sharply. She raised her torch for a better look. The flare jumped to another hollow on the wall, which blazed up like a miniature sunrise. The space around them was instantly bathed in a day-bright glow, and Juniper’s mouth dropped open. The cavern they’d just entered was enormous. She might have been in the ballroom back at the palace, so high were the ceilings and so far off was each wall from the next.

  “Hellooooo!” Juniper shouted, her voice bouncing around the room like a dizzy chipmunk. Hello-llo-llo-llooooo!

  Behind her, others took up the buzz of call and conversation, tiredness giving way to a sudden excitement at having apparently reached their destination—or some stage of it, anyway.

  Erick was still walking straight ahead, and in another moment, Juniper saw what had caught his eye. The bright splay of pitch-light was already starting to burn down, but clear across the cavernous room, one of the walls looked slightly less shadowed. “I think this is the exit,” Erick said. “It’s full night out there, so it’s hard to say for sure, but we’ve certainly walked for long enough. We could have cross-tunneled six mountains by this time.”

  “The air current is fresher here,” Juniper agreed, waving a hand through the open recess, “and look at all this bluevine covering! Just like the entrance down below. I think you’re right—this is the way out.”

  “Well then, what now?”

  “We’ll stay in here tonight—it’s got to be ever so late. And there’s no point venturing out to a new territory in the dead dark. I’ll make the announcement now, have everyone bed down for the night.”

  Erick raised an eyebrow, looking pointedly at her rugged, muddy cloak. Juniper looked down. “Oh. I’m still Alta, aren’t I? I’d almost forgotten. You’d better spread the word, then.” She grinned. “Imagine traipsing through the caves in my silken gowns! That Alta does know how to dress for adventuring.”

  As Juniper pushed through the group toward the carriage, her head down, word spread around her that this was journey’s end. The wagons were lined up along the walls and weary travelers staggered about, beginning the process of settling down for the night. Lit torches were set up around the camp, and as Juniper reached her carriage, the flames set shadows dancing off the wolverine figurehead on the gilded front panel. Just below it, the familiar Torrence crest—a fist crossed with a short dagger—filled Juniper with mingled pride and homesickness. Approaching Thunderstar, she patted the stallion’s quivering flank. He had more than earned this time of rest. They all had. She looked proudly over the straggly band of settlers and felt a sudden rush. This was her kingdom now—a traveling kingdom, still, but it was a start.

  Then Tippy was next to her, with a currycomb in hand, tugging on Thunderstar’s reins and beginning to groom the horse for the night. Juniper nodded and began to move away, then stopped. In her new kingdom, everyone would be allowed to receive their ruler’s gratitude, no matter who they were. Her Comportment Master could go dandle in his own ditties. “Thank you, Tippy,” she said.

  “No problem, Your Princessness,” Tippy chirped. “Only you might want to go and nose in over yonder. Erick’s getting some pain from the snooty lot.”

  It was all too obvious who Tippy was referring to, and Juniper hid a smile. Still, there was one thing she had to do first. Spotting Alta’s anxious face at the carriage window, Juniper dove up the steps and in three minutes flat had resumed her easily recognizable outfit. Her time as a pretender had been deliciously freeing, but she was glad to feel her familiar cornflower-blue cloak swirling around her skirts.

  As Juniper picked her way across the rocky floor to the far side of the cave, a whine cut through the buzz of tired activity. “You want me to do what?” She found Erick cowering in front of a horrified-looking Jessamyn.

  “Everyone is pitching in to help out,” he said, trying for firmness but not quite succeeding. “There’s over a dozen horses that need feeding and tending, and plenty of other chores besides.” He shot a glare at Cyril and Root, who stood nearby looking studiously relaxed.

  “Who died and made you ruler?” Cyril said scornfully.

  Juniper clenched her hands into fists. “He might not be ruler, but he is right. We all have to do our part.”

  Cyril looked her up and down, then yawned into his hand. Without another word, he turned and strode off into a shadowed passageway, his torch flickering in his wake. Root glanced in Juniper’s direction, then followed his friend. Jessamyn looked from Erick to Juniper. Then she pulled her fur wrap tighter to her shoulders and swept over to a nearby boulder. “Oh, heavens, I do feel faint with weariness! I simply must rest after this frightfully long day. I’m sure you understand.” She swanned down onto the stone, leaning back against the wall and shutting her eyes.

  Erick’s face was purple. He opened his mouth, but no sound came out.

  Juniper put a hand on his shoulder. “They’re nothing but rotten scofflaws. But, frankly, I’m too tired to worry about them right now. I’ll help out with the horses.” She thought Erick’s eyes would bug out of his head.

  “You’ll what?”

  “Do you think I’ve taken equestrian lessons twice a week for the last ten years without learning how to care for a horse?” She tugged the bag of oats from his hand.

  “But you’re—you’re—the crown princess!”

  “I know.” Juniper sighed. “I think everything’s going to be different now that we’re on our own. Cyril and that lot will figure it out soon enough. Hopefully. Back at the palace, I had someone to dress and undress me, to powder and perfume me and brush my hair out morning, night, and any other time I desired. They’d even clean my teeth if I let them. It’s not going to be like that here.” She looked slyly at him. “Unless you’ve got a hankering for the dental arts?”

  Erick laughed. “Well, the horses really could use your help. Only . . . and I’m not sure it’s my place to say anything, but should you be backing away from the sort of challenge Cyril threw at you?” He looked uncomfortable. “In the stories, a confrontation like that always has to be met head-on, or there are consequences later. Not that I’ve ever managed to do that myself, mind you.”

  Juniper’s stomach clenched. He was
right, of course. But the thought of taking on Cyril and the others, at the end of this day in particular, was too exhausting for words. She turned away and pulled open the bag of oats.

  Erick’s voice behind her was resigned. “When we’re done with the horses, I’ll lug some of the bundles out of your carriage. Free up the seat so you can sleep in there tonight. His Majesty would have me drawn and quartered if I let you sleep out on the stone floor.”

  THERE WAS NO SCHEDULED REVEILLE CALL TO wake Juniper the next morning. No maidservant bustling around the room, lighting a fire in the grate and placing fresh-cut flowers on her side table; no tempting scent of breakfast wafting from the far kitchens. Still, against all reason, within the span of a moment Juniper found herself sitting bolt upright on her carriage seat, wide-awake. After the briefest blink of disorientation, it all came back in a rush: The journey! The Hourglass! Her own country!

  In a trice, she’d thrown off her covers, shaken out her skirts—yesterday’s outfit, for it hadn’t felt right to don nightclothes there in the carriage—and sprung out into the cave. The recessed opening leading outside was clearly visible now, a diffused wash of sunlight bathing the near walls in a cheery off-yellow glow. A giddy rush rose inside Juniper, and she began darting from bedroll to bedroll, gently tugging at one person and whispering in another’s ear, before finally whirling in a circle.

  “Wake up, settlers! It’s high morning, and we are the proud inhabitants of a fine new land. Wake up, everyone! It’s time to go exploring!”

  Tippy was the first to react, materializing at Juniper’s side like a quivering whirl of energy. The others staggered up one after another, sleepy yawns melting into bright blinking eyes and eager looks.

  “Let’s go! Let’s go!” said Tippy, punctuating each statement with an energetic bounce.

  “Maybe some breakfast afore we set off?” murmured Alta in Juniper’s ear. “I think there are rolls left over from yesterday’s luncheon stop. It’s not so very much, but—”