Becca Fair and Foul

by Deirdre Baker

  “Merlin’s the expert on that,” said Auntie Meg. “Didn’t he act a lot of Shakespeare’s lovers? But I have to say — when Martin and I were going out we did a lot of chores together. We fell in love tearing down an old boathouse.”

  She headed off.

  Huh, Becca thought. Merlin’s complaints about Shakespeare’s drippy lovers were starting to make sense to her. Jane’s and Lucy’s lines were kind of sappy. O most dear mistress. O precious creature.

  Or maybe Shakespeare was saying that love wasn’t just about swooniness. It was about doing chores together. If so, Jane and Lucy were the best couple ever. Look at all the wood they’d moved in only a few minutes.

  They finally finished the scene, and with a thousand thousand farewells, blundered into the salal and evergreen huckleberries.

  Lucy bent to pick up the script she’d dropped and without warning, without even a rustle or the snap of a branch, the bushes exploded in her face.

  “A-ha-ha-ha! You sound ridiculous!” screeched Alicia, leaping up with her hair full of twigs.

  Bam! Her head hit Lucy smack in the middle of the face.

  “Ow!” Lucy screamed, and fell like a tree that had been axed, right into the shrubbery.

  She lay stock still in the bushes.

  “It was an accident!” said Alicia.

  “Oh,” Lucy said faintly. The glossy salal leaves closed over her face. “I swooned,” she murmured from deep in the undergrowth.

  “Why are you here?” Becca turned on Alicia. “You don’t want to be in the play, so quit tossing pine cones around! Go do whatever you want somewhere else!”

  Becca was so mad she stamped her foot. She hadn’t done that since she was a baby.

  “They aren’t pine cones!” Alicia retorted. “They’re fir cones. Byeeee!”

  “She sounds like she’s about two years old!” Becca fumed.

  “Or two weeks!” said Jane.

  “Two days,” Lucy muttered beneath the salal.

  No wonder Merlin said acting was dangerous, what with people sneaking in the bushes. What with sabotage!

  “We can’t go on until you’re okay,” Becca told Lucy.

  “She has to play the drunken jester in the next scene,” Jane said. “She can’t pass out now.”

  “Has your mum taught you any first aid, Lucy?” asked Becca.

  “Keep me warm, talk to me soothingly, don’t let me go to sleep,” she said. “Oh — here comes Frank.”

  Gran’s cat started licking Lucy’s face. The only part of him Becca could see was his tail, poking out of the salal and twitching.

  “It tickles!” Lucy said.

  “Frank’s reviving you,” said Becca.

  “I’ll be fine,” Lucy said. “Besides, I’m almost remembering my lines now.”

  “Your eyes aren’t crossed or anything,” Becca said. “And if you can remember your lines maybe you don’t have a concussion.”

  They began the scene again, while Frank shoved his head into Gran’s load of wood, his tail quivering like a burgee in a stiff breeze.

  “Come on!” Becca urged Lucy and Jane, so that they said their lines extra fast, double-tripping on the log-carrying like ferries on a busy day.

  “‘But you, O you, so perfect and so peerless,’” cried Jane.

  A shadow darted from the wood pile and vanished in the undergrowth.

  “‘I would not wish any companion in the world but you!’”

  Lucy’s voice was nothing compared to the ferocious growl that came pouring from Frank at that moment. He filled the air with a roar so savage that Becca’s hairs stood on end. She actually felt her skin change, as if she herself was becoming a creature of The Tempest.

  Frank raced into the salal, screaming with rage and blind, urgent purpose. Branches cracked and leaves whipped with the fury of his passing. Someone, something, ran before him, hissing and screeching and crying out desperately with a voice that, horribly, sounded almost human.

  The voices rose in a seething fit of scratch-and-tear argument that seemed as though it must be fatal.

  Then suddenly, there was quiet.

  “What was that!”

  Becca raced after Frank, and Jane and Lucy pounded after her.

  But Becca wasn’t sure she actually wanted to see whatever would be waiting for her when she caught up with Frank.

  He had come to a halt under Gran’s house. He was hissing and spitting as he glared up into the regions of wiring and pipes, insulation and subfloor, little lanes and alleyways that he could never fit into.

  Whatever it was had run up there, and was safe for now.

  “Frank, come away,” Becca said. Even to herself, she sounded feeble. She could hardly look at Frank in the same way, now that she’d heard his toothy roar.

  “I think I’ve got palpitations!” Lucy said.

  “Oh, man,” said Jane. “Something under the house. That’s not good news.”

  “Come away, Frank,” Becca repeated. She thought of tempting him with a sardine, but that hardly seemed like enough. He’d sounded ready to tear up a live shark.

  “Something’s living under there,” Jane said. “Let’s hope it hasn’t got into the plumbing or you’ll have Merlin around morning, noon and night.”

  “We usually do anyway,” Becca said. “And Merlin can’t be worse than whatever that was.”

  Whatever it was, it was quiet now, almost as if it had never been.

  They went back to the wood pile.

  “Should we do the log scene one last time?” Becca wondered.

  “I don’t have to look at the script at all now,” said Jane. “Listen: ‘I must remove some thousand of these logs, and pile them up …’”

  Lucy stepped in then, a Miranda who excelled at lugging wood around.

  And she was better at being swoony now. Alicia crashing into her face had helped. Even though her nose was slightly swollen.

  “‘I am a fool to weep at what I am glad of,’” Lucy said. “Sniff, sniff.”

  Well, a tiny bit better, Becca thought.

  Miranda and Ferdinand made their exits into the trees and there was a burst of clapping.

  “Hmm,” said Gran, stepping into the clearing. “Have Fifi and Merlin seen this?”

  “It’s The Tempest, isn’t it?” asked Mac. “I always like a play about weather.”

  But Gran wasn’t interested in talking about the play.

  “Now,” she said. “What about this woodpile?”

  And that’s when Becca noticed why Lucy had been slow, so seemingly distracted. She hadn’t tossed her logs on the ground any old way. She’d built a woodpile, quite a big one. It was a truly respectable structure, solid and stable. Becca kicked it and it didn’t move a millimeter.

  “That girl knows how to build a good woodpile,” said Gran. “But we can’t have it blocking the path. You’ll have to move it, and while you’re at it, you might as well build it where it should be. Come along and I’ll show you.”

  “I told you your gran would get us doing chores,” muttered Jane.

  10. Sound Effects

  “Lucy’s face got bashed and something made Frank go wild,” Becca told Merlin. “Then Gran made us move the wood pile. Plus, Alicia keeps bugging us and we get interrupted all the time and Lucy isn’t a great actor. Otherwise, everything’s fine.”

  Merlin hauled tools from his van, preparing for an early-evening onslaught on Jane’s family’s plumbing.

  “Oh, and Jane has gone and kissed a sea anemone,” Becca said. “Two of them, actually. An orange one and a green-and-purple one.”

  Why had Jane done that? Becca wondered. Sea anemones were squishy creatures, and on top of their squishiness they had beautiful frondy tentacles that everyone knew were sting-y and poisonous. When the tide was low and they were out of the wa
ter, they folded their fronds inside so they looked like soft, boring lumps.

  But the fronds were still in there, tucked away with their stinging, sticking, poisonous bits.

  “She kissed a sea anemone!” Merlin exclaimed.

  “What are you talking about?” Jane muttered, appearing suddenly.

  She sounded blurry and stiff-lipped.

  “Goodness,” said Merlin. “How did it feel?”

  “My lips are all buzzy,” Jane said. “And sore.”

  “She got stung,” sighed Becca. “She can hardly move her mouth.”

  “I have to say, that wouldn’t have occurred to me even at my most experimental,” Merlin marveled.

  “I wanted to know what it would be like,” said Jane. “They look like little mouths when they’re all closed up.” She paused as if her lips needed a rest. “It would be good if you had some ideas about our plumbing. I especially would like it if the place smelled better. Can’t you fix it?”

  “I hope so,” Merlin said. He shouldered his burden of equipment. “As for acting, Becca, here’s some advice. Try speaking the lines as if you’re making them up for the first time, right on the spot. And think about how everything a character says actually changes the way we see the person she’s talking to. Acting is a lot about listening.”

  He trudged off to Jane’s cabin.

  “Sea anemones,” Becca heard him mutter. “Couldn’t she have tried kissing a human, at least?”

  “Today let’s rehearse somewhere not here,” said Jane, a bit muffled-sounding. “Somewhere without a wood pile. Somewhere Alicia won’t find.”

  “The park?”

  Lucy trotted up then, still putting the finishing touches on her ponytail.

  “The park,” she said. At least, that’s what it sounded like. She had a bunch of hair doodads between her lips.

  “We’ll work on the scenes with Caliban and the clowns,” Becca said.

  “Stephano,” said Jane.

  “And Drinkulo,” said Lucy, flipping her ponytail.

  “Trinculo! Trinculo!” Becca corrected her.

  They had almost but not quite enough people for those scenes.

  But Alicia still refused to do the play.

  “I told you,” she’d said again only moments before. “I want a scooter, not a boat. And anyway, I’m a teenager. I’m into reading and sleeping.”

  * * *

  “‘All the infections that the sun sucks up from bogs, fens, flats, on Prosper fall!’” growled Jane as they tromped along.

  “I wish I could be Caliban,” Lucy said. “Miranda’s so gushy.”

  “We should hurry up,” said Becca, “or it’s going to get dark before we finish. Especially in the forest.”

  “It’s still light here on the trail,” Lucy said.

  “And you sound like Merlin,” Becca added. “Going on about Shakespeare’s lovers being drips. But you get to be Ariel, too, and that’s fun.”

  She tried to hurry them up by walking extra fast.

  “Do you think I could paint my body green? Or maybe fly?”

  “Green?” Becca asked. Now that Lucy was all keen on helping Annie the veg lady, was she trying to be a vegetable?

  “Come on,” said Jane. “Let’s run. The rehearsal place I’m thinking of is a long way.”

  She broke into a trot, and then, when Becca and Lucy started running along with her, upped it to a canter and then a gallop.

  “Yes, green,” Lucy said, as calm and steady as if she wasn’t pounding along like a champion sprinter. “Don’t you think Ariel’s kind of earthy?”

  “Caliban’s … earthy,” Becca panted. “Ariel’s … airy.”

  Something happened in the air then. Becca felt her hair blow up the back of her neck, lifted by a peculiar wind.

  “What was that?” asked Jane.

  “It was — ow!” Lucy shouted. “Ow! Get off me!”

  But whatever it was, was gone.

  “It hit me!” she cried. “Run!”

  “It was a giant bird!” Becca shouted.

  Lucy was going too fast now. Becca and Jane couldn’t keep up with her.

  That was why Becca saw everything.

  She felt another swoosh of air, and a dark, wide presence swooped over her and Jane. It wafted above them and went straight on towards Lucy.

  Its spread wings brought a quick twilight over them.

  Becca had time to see its gray-and-black markings, its powerful shoulders. She had time to hear the almost silent rush of air it displaced.

  “Lucy!” she cried.

  “Ow!” Lucy screamed, and the bird silently reached for her hair.

  “Let go!”

  It had her ponytail in its talons. It pulled and tore at it, as if it wanted to root it right out of Lucy’s head.

  “Ow! Buzz off!” Lucy shrieked, beating around her head with flailing arms.

  The bird let go and flew off, but before Becca and Jane could catch up to Lucy, it came around again.

  “Hide!” hollered Jane, but again huge barred wings spread over Lucy like a smothering canopy. The bird raked at her and grabbed at her hair with great clawing talons, pulling and tugging as if it was trying to seize Lucy right off the face of the earth.

  Becca and Jane sprinted towards her.

  “Go away!” Lucy screamed. “Begone!”

  An attack! Becca thought. The park had always been peaceful before. Why would something go after Lucy?

  Gran’s island had no scary attackers she knew of — not humans or bears or cougars, or even the apes or adders or tumbling hedgehogs in Shakespeare’s play.

  Or did it?

  “Get off!” Lucy yelled. Whack! Whack! “Get out of here!”

  Was Lucy crying?

  The great bird banged her in the head once more and then soared upward, disappearing into the forest as if it had never been.

  “Are you hurt?” Becca asked. “Oh, Lucy! What was it?”

  “I don’t know!” Lucy wiped her eyes and bent over, panting. Her ponytail flopped over her head as Becca and Jane hugged her.

  “It tried to eat your ponytail!”

  Lucy pulled the elastic out of her hair and put her fingers to her scalp. They came away dark with blood.

  “Look!” she said.

  “It’s just a bit,” said Jane, inspecting Lucy’s head.

  “A bit!” Lucy exclaimed. “It’s enough! I didn’t know this forest was so weird!” She sniffed. “It’s never been before.”

  “Why would a bird attack you?” wondered Jane. “What did you do?”

  “I didn’t do a thing! Ow!” Lucy touched her scalp again. “It’s really sore.”

  She sniffed and wiped her nose with her hand, leaving streaks of blood and nose stuff all over her face.

  “Maybe we should go home,” said Becca.

  “No, we don’t have to,” Lucy said. “I know we need to rehearse.”

  “We’ll stay together,” Becca said, even though that hadn’t protected Lucy before.

  “We’ll cover our heads,” said Jane.

  She pulled her shirt right up over her ears so her stomach showed, and her face poked out of the neck-hole.

  “No more running,” said Lucy, wiping her nose on her shirt.

  Beams of light from the lowering sun filtered through the trees and lit up the grasses and cobwebs between bars of shadow.

  “It’s spooky,” said Lucy. “What if it comes back?”

  “We’ll be okay here,” Jane said, leading them into a clearing. “I think.”

  The bird had vanished and the forest was quiet, but Lucy kept her shirt over her head.

  “‘Prospero’s spirits hear me,’” Jane began, speaking Caliban’s part in a buzzy-lipped growl. “‘Lo now, lo, here comes a spirit of his, an
d to torment me —’”

  For a second Becca felt her eyes change, as if by Jane’s words trees, shadows, leaves and pale patches of evening sunlight shifted and became the hedgehogs, apes and urchins she was talking about, and maybe attack birds as well.

  Was it because of the way Jane spoke that the forest changed? Or because a bird attacking Lucy had been way too real?

  Or because all around them moss glowed with a green light, cedar boughs rustled, and nearby two trees groaned aloud as they rubbed against each other in the wind?

  “‘This is no fish but an islander that hath lately suffered by a thunderbolt,’” Lucy said now. “That could be me! Struck by a bird bolt!”

  “‘The spirit torments me! O!’” Jane shrieked.

  Becca couldn’t help it. Every time the trees muttered in the wind, she jumped.

  In the mossy clearing, the three of them acted their parts, argued and sang, danced, hiccuped, fought and fell over.

  “What’s that noise?” asked Lucy suddenly.

  They stopped still and there was a crackle of leaves, a whisper of salal bushes.

  “Can I hide here with you?” Merlin asked quietly, as invisible beside Becca as the shadow of a tree.

  “Hide?”

  “Don’t tell Jane’s dad where I am,” Merlin whispered. “I just spent a lot of time on his system, but I’m not sure it’s fixed. And he already calls me morning, noon and night.”

  “If you sorted out what was wrong once and for all, he’d stop calling,” said a voice in the twilight. Aunt Fifi was lurking in the trees, too.

  “It’s okay for you to stay,” Becca said. “But —”

  “Can we please finish before it’s completely night?” Jane asked.

  “And before the attack bird finds us again?” asked Lucy.

  “Attack bird?” asked Merlin.

  Then, Who-who-who-who-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o! sang a voice quite different from Lucy’s or Jane’s or Becca’s — a singer who, Becca thought, might speak for the forest itself.

  “Probably Alicia,” Lucy muttered. “She’s moved on from fir cones.”

  Who-who-who-who-o-o-o-o-o!

  “We know you’re there, Alicia!”

  But it didn’t make a bit of difference.