With the help of the bars, Georgie pulled himself to his feet and moved toward Elspeth’s cell. “You are an awful person is what you are,” he said. “Why did you have to tell him about the loganberries? Because of you, I’ve lost my job.”
“Yeah?” said Elspeth. “Krool’s going to chop my head off for treason and whatever the penalty is for stealing a tart.”
“It generally results in having one’s hand chopped off,” said Jack.
“Jack! For crying out loud,” said Jill.
“What? She wanted to know.”
“If he’s in an especially good mood,” offered Georgie, “perhaps he’ll chop off your head first.”
“Oh yay, goodie for me,” said Elspeth.
“I’m just saying, it would certainly save you some discomfort.”
Elspeth growled and grabbed two handfuls of her curled hair and fought the urge to tear it out by the roots.
“I’ll put in a good word for you,” Georgie added.
“Quiet!” shouted Elspeth. “Enough! I can’t take this anymore. Everyone just stop talking to me for a minute. I need to think.”
She shuffled to the darkened back of her cell, leaned against the rock wall, and, with a sigh, slid to the ground. She drew her knees up and rested her muddled head upon them, the silky gown smooth against her cheek. Her prison mates honored her request for silence, and Georgie sat down himself while Jack and Jill just stood and looked upon Elspeth for a good ten minutes before Jill said, “Elspeth, dear.”
Elspeth did not answer, and when she failed to respond a second time, it was quite apparent that the girl had fallen fast asleep. And when Jill was absolutely certain of this, she whispered, “Sleep, sweet Jacqueline. Sleep.”
Georgie Porgie puddin’ and pie
Found loganberries in short supply.
When Krool ate the pie he said,
“Off with Georgie’s puddin’ head.”
Chapter 14
Morning arrived, and Elspeth woke, as she frequently did, with the feeling of having been watched. She took a few moments just lying in the fetal position while trying to piece together the events of the previous day.
Slowly she sat up, gave her stiff neck a good stretch, and jumped at the sight of Jill, peering at her through the bars of her cell with a wistful smile.
“What are you doing? Have you been . . . watching me sleep?” Elspeth said. She quickly wiped the grit from her eyes and ran the back of her sleeve across her mouth for any remaining drool.
“I’m sorry,” said Jill. “I couldn’t help myself.” She spoke in a whisper so as not to waken Jack and Georgie, who were still curled up, fast asleep on their own patches of dirt.
“It is kind of weird,” said Elspeth.
“I suppose it seems that way to you,” said Jill. “It’s just that . . . we had a daughter once. We . . . lost her.”
“Yes, I know,” said Elspeth, feeling it appropriate to stand up. Out of respect, perhaps? She wasn’t sure. Though she may have been entirely unmoved by Bo-Peep’s tale of having lost her precious sheep, there was something about a mother speaking of her child in the past tense that could touch even the least accessible of hearts. “Dumpty told me all about it. I can’t believe Krool threw her down a well. Of all the horrible things. It must have been awful for you.”
“He came in the night,” said Jill. By her faraway look, Elspeth could tell that the scene now played vividly in Jill’s mind. “Krool and his men. They snatched her away, and we could not stop them no matter how hard we fought, kicked, and clawed. In the end we failed. We failed to protect our own daughter. It was shameful.”
“But you did everything possible, right?” said Elspeth, suddenly hit with a very strange and new emotion, an overwhelming desire to relieve the woman of her horrible pain. “You fought them as best you could. There’s no shame in that. And you did try to get her back. You did go looking for her.”
“For any sign of her,” said Jill. “For years we searched every inch of the kingdom. When we heard that she had been cast down a well, we set our sights on exploring each and every one, hundreds of them, until finally, one night . . .”
Jill stopped short and looked away quickly. The shaking of her head launched several large tears onto the dirt floor at Elspeth’s feet. Elspeth moved closer to Jill, carefully stepping over the tears, as though they were delicate, living things. “What?” she whispered. “One night, what?”
Jill reached through the bars and took Elspeth’s hand while her eyes filled and overflowed. “One night . . . we found her.”
Without knowing why, Elspeth pulled her hand away, and, with mild reluctance, Jill released it. “You found her?” Elspeth gasped. “You found your daughter’s remains?”
“Not her remains,” said Jill, that tender smile returning once more. “We found her. Alive and well.”
This new detail nearly knocked Elspeth off her feet. “She’s still alive? But Dumpty never told me . . .”
“That’s because Dumpty doesn’t know,” said Jill. “Nor does anyone else. We mentioned only that we had found a passage out. The rest we kept secret. To protect you.”
Elspeth’s confusion could not have been more complete. “I don’t understand. What does any of this have to do with me?”
“The little girl who was thrown down the well,” said Jill, “was you.”
“What?” said Elspeth. She laughed at this, not because she found it funny but because she felt she ought to, considering the pure lunacy of it. “I think if someone had thrown me down a well I would’ve remembered.”
“You were not even a year old. Let’s just say we’re all quite fortunate that you’ve always been very good at holding your breath, or Krool might have succeeded in his plan. What he thought would be the end of you turned out to be a new beginning.”
Elspeth looked beyond Jill to the sleeping heap on the ground—the one with the thinning hair, the ballooning belly, and the small space between his front teeth. Without realizing it, she began probing the gap in her own teeth with the point of her tongue. As ridiculous as it sounded, there was something both familiar and familial about these people. Looking at Jill’s face, she noticed many of her own features gazing right back.
“But that would make me your daughter,” said Elspeth. “And you, my mother.”
“Yes,” said Jill. And, while she continued to smile warmly, Elspeth slowly backed away.
“No,” she said. “You’re confused, I’m afraid. Or crazy. Or both.”
“Page thirty-five,” said Jill.
“What?”
“Of the Book. If you need further proof, it’s a very good likeness of you. In fact, it’s how we were sure that we’d finally found you.”
“I don’t want to look at that stupid book,” sneered Elspeth. “It proves nothing. Besides, I have parents. Back home.”
“The Pules,” said Jill with a nod that looked like approval. “They’ve taken very good care of you, and for that we will always be grateful to them.”
Elspeth was flooded with a desire to do something she hadn’t in years. She wanted nothing more at that moment than to run to her mother and hug her tightly and without reservation. And then something that Jill had said moments earlier echoed in her mind. The bit about how she’d always been very good at holding her breath.
The last thing Elspeth had done before waking up in the middle of a strange forest was hold her breath until her living room had gone completely dark. It stood to reason then, that by repeating the act she might be transported back home or, at the very least, to some other place far less dreadful.
With nothing to lose as Elspeth saw it, she folded her arms across her chest, took in a very shallow breath (for the goal this time was not to prolong the process but to pass out as quickly as possible) and stopped breathing.
As before, sound was the first to go as her inner ear swelled and pounded. She didn’t hear a word that Jill was saying, even though the woman must have been speaking quite loudly bec
ause Jack woke abruptly. He sat up, staggered to his feet, and limped over to his wife. The two seemed to be pleading with her, talking over each other and motioning with their hands.
Their voices would eventually wake Georgie, though Elspeth took no notice of that. By then the already poorly lit room was becoming darker still, and in a moment everything—Jack and Jill, the dirt floor and the iron bars, the dank air and the desperate gloom—disappeared, and once more Elspeth found herself in the warmth and brightness of her own home.
Ding dong dell, baby’s in the well.
Who threw her down?
He who wears the crown.
Did she survive?
Please see page thirty-five.
Chapter 15
Never before had Elspeth’s mother looked upon her with such kindness. With a loving gaze, she brushed the curls from Elspeth’s forehead and kissed her softly on the cheek. Her father took his turn, hugging her tightly before walking briskly to the front door. Smiling widely, he opened the door and led in a real live alpaca, white with reddish-brown markings.
Mr. Pule had been selling hearing aids in Peru, he explained, and, wanting nothing more than to make his daughter happy, he had picked out the most beautiful alpaca he could find to bring home. Clenched between the animal’s blocky white teeth was a pink silk ribbon tied in a bow around a small gold box.
Taking the box from the alpaca, Mr. Pule described how his flight home had connected in Brussels, affording him the opportunity to pick up a sampling of the finest Belgian chocolate.
Elspeth took the box and gently pulled at the pink bow until it fell away and floated gently to the floor. Removing the lid, she brought the box to her nose and breathed in deeply. There were only four chocolates in the box, but each was a work of art, with clean lines and a subtle but uniform sheen. Carefully, she plucked out a square, flat one with the initials of the maker embossed upon its surface.
Wanting to savor each and every morsel, she snipped off but a small corner with her gapped front teeth and, instantly, her mouth was filled with the rich flavor of . . . blood. What? Wait a minute. Yes, it was the unmistakable metallic taste of blood. Confused, she looked to her father, who only smiled, apparently unaware that he had been duped by Belgians into buying something that tasted so incredibly unlike chocolate.
Before Elspeth could complain about the awfulness of it, the alpaca, for no apparent reason, reared up on its hind legs, then turned and sprinted for the open door. “No!” Elspeth shouted. And when neither her father nor her mother made a move to stop the animal, Elspeth raced after it. In her haste, she tripped over her father’s case of brochures and hearing-aid samples and fell face first to the floor.
Slowly, she moved her fingertips to her mouth and brought away a fair amount of blood—far more than could possibly be contained in that tiny bite of so-called chocolate. When her pupils came into focus again, she noticed a small pool of blood on the dirt floor, which caused her to consider the dirt floor itself. This was not her living room at all. It was a prison cell, and her parents were nowhere to be found. When she looked up and saw Jack and Jill peering through the bars of the adjacent cage, she knew it had all been nothing more than hallucination.
“Are you okay?” asked Jack. “You’ve been unconscious for quite some time. We’ve been worried to death.”
“It didn’t work,” was all Elspeth could say. “I’m still here.” She sat and stared at the wall and ran her tongue over the dried blood on her split lower lip. In addition, there was a golf-ball-size welt on her forehead that throbbed with every beat of her heart.
“I’m sorry,” said Jill. “I wish you would have asked me first. There’s only one way out as far as I know.”
“The well?”
“The well,” Jack confirmed. “Unfortunately, now that Krool knows about it he’s placed it under heavy guard.”
“Listen,” said Jill. “I know all of this is confusing and upsetting. But try to look at it as an opportunity, a chance to do something great.”
Elspeth shook her fists in frustration. “I just want to go home,” she said through teeth clenched tightly. “And don’t tell me I’m already home. I want to go to my real home. To my house and my things and all the people I know. I don’t want to do something great.”
Jill knelt down, hoping to draw Elspeth’s eyes to hers. “Don’t you see?” she said. “They’re the same thing. You can’t do one without the other.”
“Why not?” asked Elspeth.
“Because of the prophecy,” Jill responded. “As long as Krool is allowed to remain on the throne, the passageway home will be forever inaccessible to you. Someone needs to lead the people in rising up to take back what is rightfully theirs. And that person is you.”
“And just how am I supposed to lead the people when they’re all a bunch of cowards, always running away? The Dish ran away with the Spoon. Little Miss Muffet ran away from a spider. And when the boys came out to play, Georgie Porgie ran away.”
“That is a lie,” Georgie protested loudly while poking his finger through the bars in Elspeth’s direction. “And besides, I will not be a party to this in any way. In fact, I will not listen to another word of this treasonous plot.” He covered his ears and moved to the far end of his cell and began humming a random series of notes that failed to amount to music.
“Even if I had any interest in any of this, what’s the point?” asked Elspeth. “How am I supposed to overthrow a government from inside a jail cell or with my head chopped off?”
“Fate has brought you this far,” said Jack, as if that should somehow bolster Elspeth’s confidence.
“But why me?” she asked. “This prophecy stuff. I don’t get it. I’m an eleven-year-old kid. There’s nothing special about me.”
“Don’t be foolish,” Jill whispered. “There’s plenty that’s special about you. Things that you don’t even know about.”
“I have no friends,” said Elspeth. With those words came tears, but Elspeth, with years of practice, managed to gulp them back down. “How special could someone with no friends be?”
“That tells me only that you’re misunderstood,” said Jill. “Don’t you think it’s possible? That you could be so misunderstood because you’ve been living for so long in a world that’s not your own?”
“I don’t know. I suppose,” said Elspeth. She dug a morsel of dirt from the floor and rolled it between her thumb and forefinger.
“Whether you believe it or not, you were meant to do great things,” whispered Jill.
“I’m sorry, but I don’t believe it,” said Elspeth. “I’m sure you’re very nice people and everything, but it all sounds like a bunch of nonsense to me. Still, if it’s the only way for me to get home, then I guess I have no choice.”
“So are you saying you’ll do it?” asked Jack hopefully.
Elspeth sighed and looked first at the ground and then back to Jack’s and Jill’s expectant faces. “Okay,” she said in a resigned sort of way. “I’ll do it. That is if we can get out of here somehow before we lose our heads.”
The smiles that covered Jack’s and Jill’s faces were of both happiness and pride. “I knew she’d come through.” Jack beamed. “I knew she would save us. A born hero, didn’t I tell you?”
Jack’s boasting might have gone on indefinitely if not for the sudden sound of heavy footsteps approaching. The prison door pushed open, and in walked the four guards from the day before. Immediately Georgie descended upon them.
“Thank goodness you’re here,” he said, rushing to the door of his cell. “I’m sure once His Majesty hears my side of the story, he’ll see it was all just a simple . . .”
But when the guards unlocked Elspeth’s cell instead, Georgie quickly realized this was not about him. “Please.” He beckoned to the man with the large sideburns, who stood stoically nearby. “Perhaps I could testify against the girl in exchange for leniency. I’d be more than happy to do so. I’ve heard some things that might be quite useful.” Hi
s pleas went ignored, and the man with the Van Dyke led Elspeth from her cell.
“Elspeth Pule,” he announced loudly. “You are hereby summoned to appear in the royal court of His Highness, King Krool, Ruler of All the Land, Lord of the Seas and the Moon, Duke of Banbury Cross, Baron of Gotham, Royal Knight Companion of the Most Noble Order of Silver Bells and Cockle Shells, Earl of St. Ives, Great Steward of the Pumpkin Eaters, Knight Grand Cross of the Most Honorable Order of Knick-Knack Paddywhack, and Royal Grand Champion of the Order of Pickled Peppers.”
When he had finally finished his pronouncement, Elspeth looked at the man and said, “Okay, seriously. Are you as tired of saying all that as I am of hearing it?”
“Probably,” said the man.
By the time the guards led Elspeth out of the dungeon, across the breezy plaza, down a series of narrow hallways, and into the courtroom, it was abuzz with spectators, all anxious for a look at the young traitor. The same eyes that had looked upon her with what she thought had been envy only the night before, now seemed full of scorn.
She tried her best to avert the piercing stares and found plenty upon which to focus. An entire wall of the room was draped in several enormous, floor-to-ceiling tapestries featuring very flattering likenesses of the king. An oversize table and chair, placed upon an elevated platform, presumably for the judge, sat vacant for now, and Elspeth was led to a wooden bench that seemed to have been reserved for her alone.
Sitting on another bench to her right was a man dressed in a dark-blue suit, his thick hair combed back, straight and tight. A longer look caused Elspeth to consider the fact that the man bore a strong resemblance to Krool.
With a bang, a side door flew open, and in hurried a man looking very much like George Washington after having just been mugged. His white wig, complete with braided ponytail, sat slightly askew on his head, and he struggled to button up a black gown while loose paper fell from a leather satchel wedged beneath his left arm. He stumbled over an untied shoelace and practically fell onto the bench next to Elspeth.
Blue in the Face Page 9