o0o
“She’s here!”
CJ Sherwood almost tripped over red-haired Faline, who was sitting smack in the doorway of Murial Sherwood’s little kitchen. “Faline, do you have to be right there?” She groaned, looking past Faline to Ben as he blurred into human form. “Who’s here, Ben?”
“She—Sartora!” Ben exclaimed. His snub-nosed face was all grin from excitement.
“Here?” Sherry asked from her spot beside Faline, her big blue eyes wide.
“In the house?” Faline squawked.
“In Mearsies Heili?” Sherry put in, looking puzzled. Among the many faces crowded into Murial Sherwood’s cabin, there were no new ones.
“Yes!”
“And why shouldn’t she come here?” CJ put her hands on her hips.
Irene appeared behind CJ, and leaned on a chair, her long ponytail swinging forward. “Because she probably should go to all those big countries first. Or so all the big countries would think.”
“Maybe she has,” Sherry said reasonably.
Clair, sitting at a makeshift desk on the other side of the room, looked up at her aunt, who shook her head.
Gwen, the third member of the card game-inventing trio on the floor, asked, “What’re we waitin’ for?”
Ben turned to Clair. “Should I take ‘em to the Junkyard?”
“Them?”
“She’s with two others, one of ‘em Rel.”
“Rel!” CJ exclaimed, rolling her eyes.
“So that’s why she’s on her way,” Sherry said. “Of course Rel would bring her to us.”
“By all means,” Clair said briskly, before CJ could unlimber some choice insults. “We’d better get bucketing, gang. If she’s a kid, she’ll want a kid welcome.”
“Well, we would,” Dhana muttered, her changeable face registering obvious doubt. “A great magician—even a kid—might want other great magicians.”
“There aren’t any here,” Clair said, smiling up at her aunt, who nodded. Murial might be counted by some a great magician, but she did not care for the company of humans—especially strangers. “So she’s going to have to settle for us.”
“Then let’s get our carcassi mov—ow! Faline!” CJ backed up, again nearly tripping over Faline.
Murial’s cabin was small, and there was little space, so Faline and her group had perforce set up their game between the outer room and the kitchen, where CJ had been watching Seshemerria make a chocolate pie—as if watching it would speed it along.
Faline, Sherry, and Gwen scrambled up, Gwen snapping their cards together and plopping them onto a shelf. Clair had asked the girls to be neat, a rare enough request that all had been scrupulous to observe—all the Sherwoods, that is.
Kyale, the silver-haired princess from Vasande Leror, had carried on as she felt a princess ought. The others had quietly picked up behind her, some not without resentment—until, early in spring, Lina Mellay had taken pity on the group and lured Kyale to the Tornacio Islands for a visit.
CJ dashed for her cloak, feeling an intense sense of relief that now—at last—something was happening. A whole year stuck in Aunt Murial’s, with only quick sneak trips to check on the rest of the country, or to hide out in the Junky for brief times, had been confining to the spirit. They couldn’t actually do anything, even after the elevens had seemed to be gone; the people were still enchanted, and still compelled to report “strangers.” Strangers, they’d discovered the winter before, had included Clair, the girls, and the regional governors.
They still could not use magic, save the smallest and most inconsequential spells. That meant a long walk north through the forest, in the rain, which pleased only Dhana and Seshemerria.
o0o
Devon had gone quiet. Liere walked with care, extending her awareness from time to time. So far, no Norsundrians.
They had walked for a while through meadows of dying grasses when a bolt of lightning shot out of the sky, slanting down in a sudden, shocking strike. It blurred when it hit the ground, and with a flash of silver-white light turned into a white horse.
“Ah,” said Rel. “I was hoping Hreealdar would come.”
Liere stared at the horse, who looked like the dream version of the white horses she’d met in the north.
“This is Hreealdar,” Rel said, smiling. “It is from these beings—native to another of Erhal’s worlds, I’m told—that our own white horses are descended. Climb up. He’s safe.” He smiled slightly. “‘He’ being a term of convenience.”
Hreealdar turned his head toward Liere before deliberately lowering it. She hesitated, then gripped the silky mane and scrambled up onto his back. The horse felt like a horse—muscled, strong—but the hair was softer, and the smell was not horsy. If the creature had he or she parts, they weren’t visible.
Devon climbed up behind, and grabbed Liere around the waist.
“He’ll bring you to the forest hideout,” Rel said. “Where I strongly suspect we’ll find Clair and the others.”
Liere, nodded, but she knew what must come first.
She tentatively contacted Hreealdar. The horse’s mind was unlike any she’d yet found, but he understood her request: Take me to the cities.
Liere stiffened—and felt only wind and light. There was no jolt, no burn; suddenly Hreealdar pranced forward on a cobbled street lined with pretty, brightly painted shops.
Liere and Devon slid off, and made their way to the nearest house.
And so it went, back to the familiar pattern, only easier, because of Hreealdar, and because there were no Norsundrians.
Mearsies Heili is a small country, mostly uninhabited by humans. It did not take long to free the kingdom province by province; Hreealdar’s last stop was atop a mountain, but it was disconcerting because the city seemed to extend beyond the mountain top into cloud, for wisps of vapor rose at the ends of the straight streets—and beyond those she saw only the distant sparkles of the Pink Sea way, way below. A city in the sky?
The great moonstone palace reminded Liere of Roth Drael, only this one was beautifully complete, a series of towers reaching upward in a style at once complex and austere.
She sent her mind within, and discovered that it was empty. So she walked into the town, marveling at the solid ground, and cheered by the houses with their brightly painted shutters and doors.
She disenchanted the first people she came to, moving away quickly down the street before anyone could talk to her. As always, they turned to one another and started talking, laughing, exchanging breathless comments, leaning out of windows over flower boxes, or running along pretty pathways to greet one another.
By now she was able to assess the speed of the breaking enchantment propagating outward like rings widen after one drops a rock in a pool.
When the magic ‘ring’ had passed her, she thought a summons to Hreealdar, and clambered upon his back.
The lightning flash brought them to a grassy sward near a sheer cliff. A waterfall splashed down into a wide pool from which iridescent bubbles and vapor rose. Liere stared, thinking that—like the Pink Sea—she should be repulsed, but the sight was as beautiful as it was strange.
She listened on the mental plane, and discovered that there were beings in the water. Echoing like faint singing was yet another kind of life, something very alien indeed, hidden deep within the mountain. She discovered by mental images that Hreealdar lived there, and that this was a place of very old power.
She wondered if Clair and her friends were aware of that.
She tried thinking a question at the beings in the water. No words came back—they were too different from humans for that—but compelling images came that made her head feel like the natural boundary of her skull had dissolved.
She blinked, swayed, then sat down hard. The contact was gone.
“You got drunk without even falling in,” Devon exclaimed.
“Drunk?”
Devon pointed at the water. “That’s what CJ and the girls call it. You
get kind of dizzy and dreamy if you swim in that water. Dhana comes from those people. I mean, before she decided to be a human.”
They don’t know how powerful these beings are, Liere thought.
“I think I know the way to the Junky. It’s that way.” Devon pointed west.
Liere had closed her eyes. Still sensitive from the strange contact, she said, “I sense other minds. They are coming.”
“Oh, you’re going to love the gang. I can hardly wait!” Devon plopped down on the grass. Overhead, rain began to rustle through the brilliantly colored late-summer leaves. The two girls waited in silence, Liere absently fingering the dyr, until they heard the sound of laughter.
o0o
“Where?” Clair asked.
“Magic Lake,” Ben said, still breathless.
“She must be back, then,” Clair said, smiling; it meant her people were recovering from the enchantment. She’d make her rounds to check, but first she must express her thanks to Sartora. She turned to the girls. “Well? Want to go with me?”
They had arrived at their underground hideout shortly before, to find Rel waiting for them with the news that Sartora had taken Hreealdar. Then Ben dove out of the sky and down the hollow tree, and blurred back into human form to announce that she was finished.
CJ groaned. “I just got on a dry dress, just in time to get soggy again. I hate not being able to use magic!”
“Just like every other person in the world,” Irene said, waving her hands airily.
“Except magicians,” Diana said, looking up, her dark eyes amused.
CJ shrugged. “Everyday people aren’t as dedicated to laziness as I am!”
“She’s saving the whole world,” Sherry said, her light blue eyes rounder than ever. “And she came here. To us.”
“That was because of rock-faced Baglioni,” CJ muttered.
A couple of the girls looked around guiltily, in case Rel might possibly overhear, but he was down in the room the boys usually used, changing into dry clothes. CJ didn’t care; she never said anything about Rel, whom she considered entirely too perfect for his own good, that she wouldn’t be quite willing to say—in detail—to his face.
“She didn’t have to come here,” Seshemerria said, ever the peacemaker.
CJ said impatiently, “I know what we owe her, and I’m proud she’s here! I guess I want her to be proud to be here.”
The news that Devon was traveling with Liere had reminded CJ of that snobby princess from Imar. Karia very definitely had looked down on little, rural Mearsies Heili, with its girl queen who had no sense of fashion, and its total lack of an aristocratic court. Sartora was from this very same country.
“Rain’s slackened,” Dhana said, her head cocked.
No one else knew how she could tell, but they were used to Dhana’s ultra sensitivity to weather, especially water.
“Well, let’s fazoom,” CJ said, hands on hips. “Get it over with.”
Outside, she felt her restless mood ease. It had been good to be in the Junkyard again. No, it was more than that. There was a change in the atmosphere. Something . . .
She turned to Clair, whose grayish green eyes wore an expression that had not been there for a year. There was indeed a change for the better, and CJ wasn’t the only one to feel it.
CJ skipped, threw back her head, and stared up through the canopy of amber, gold, scarlet, flame-orange autumn leaves. She sucked in a lungful of the pure, rain-washed forest air, and felt her heart expand with joy.
She began to sing.
The walk to the Magic Lake took just long enough for the girls to join her in all seventeen verses of one of CJ’s special songs. It had begun as a vivid imaginary account of a meeting between a silly kid villain, a goat, and a moth-eaten wig, but Siamis’s name had been hastily substituted—as had other villains’ names in times gone by.
CJ was busy concocting an eighteenth verse, one suitably loaded with insults specific to Siamis, when they started down the gentle rise leading to the Magic Lake. “ . . .’ brainless grinch-faced sneeb’—What rhymes with sneeb?” CJ asked.
“There’s the Lake!” Gwen called. “And I see Devon!”
“Sneeb,” Faline repeated, chortling.
Faline’s happy laughter echoing brightly through the trees, and CJ’s light voice that reminded her of bird-song was the first sound of the girls that Liere ever heard.
“Sneeb! What a great word! Fleeb, greeb, splareeb . . .”
“And verily and merrily they carried on . . .”
“Hey, Devon! Over here!” Irene called.
Devon danced forward, her little face lifted upward, her mouth and eyes transformed with happiness.
Liere was startled to see long, curling morvende-white hair framing a square, calm face in the central girl. But this girl was no morvende, for she had ordinary fingernails, and her skin was light brown instead of fish pale. Meeting those light green eyes gave her another small shock: here again was someone close to making her unity, though as yet she did not know it.
CJ greeted Devon, then looked curiously at the mighty world-saver. She liked what she saw, which was unprepossessing enough: a thin, plain girl with raggedly cut hair in boy-style, wearing scruffy boy clothes. Her nose and ears were red from the cold. Liere’s eyes were as large and round as Sherry’s, only colored a light brown, like honey. When that gaze met CJ’s, CJ felt as if her ears rang, but the reaction was so brief she thought she imagined it.
What she didn’t imagine was the utter lack of humor in Sartora’s face.
“Welcome to Mearsies Heili,” Clair said. “I think you’ve already lifted the enchantment?”
“Yes. Are you Clair?” Liere addressed the white-haired girl.
“I am.” Clair sighed softly and happily. “Thank you for lifting the enchantment. I must go check on things. People will have questions. Girls, why don’t you take Sartora and Devon back to the Junky?”
Clair made a sign. A flash of light and there was Hreealdar, dancing forward, mane spilling silkily. Clair jumped on his back. Flash! They vanished.
“Sneeb,” a girl with bristling, bright-red braids declared to Liere, her eyes crescents of mirth. She was dressed in green and orange striped pantaloons, and a bright purple shirt. “Do you know a good rhyme? It’s for a song about Siamis. Plenty of insults,” she added.
“Faline, I’ll bet insults songs are too babyish,” the girl with the vivid blue eyes said, and Liere knew that she was being tested. Her expectations reeled.
“I don’t know any rhymes,” Liere said. “And I’m a terrible singer.”
The blue eyes were a lot more friendly as their owner said, “I’m CJ Sherwood.” She introduced the others.
Liere knew their names already, from Devon’s many stories; here was dark-skinned, dark-haired, dark-eyed Diana in her ratty old clothes, moving so quietly she scarcely disturbed a leaf. Devon had explained (several times) that Diana had been the first one Dhana met when she’d emerged from the Lake waters, and so the girls didn’t know if ‘Dhana’ was the name of her people, an attempt to repeat ‘Diana,’ or her name, but the name stuck.
And here was tall, blond-haired Seshe, the oldest, the one who saw ghosts; there was Irene (“You pronounce it “Ih-RENNEH”) who loved fancy clothes and dress-up and plays, and there was short, droopy-eyed Gwen who was good at mimicking voices, and curly-haired, blue-eyed Sherry, Clair’s oldest living friend.
Except for Diana, whose beauty reminded Liere of a deer, they seemed like ordinary girls, and not the astonishingly witty, clever, gorgeous paragons she’d been hearing about for weeks, in such a voice of longing that Liere did not hold any of Devon’s brag against them.
They began the walk back through the forest, some still trying to find rhymes for various insults, others listening and laughing, she matched names to faces and personalities.
“You two hungry?” CJ asked presently.
“Sure,” Devon said. “For your kinda food—always!”
“A wise philosophy,” Faline put in, waving a finger instructively. “Always ready for tacos is at least as important as having several good insults ready for when you unexpectedly meet a villain.”
Liere had heard Devon talk about off-world foods that the Mearsiean girls had adopted; her descriptions had been reverent enough to border on the lyrical.
“Important for what?” Devon asked now, with an expectant grin.
“Important for the life of the adventurer,” Faline responded, as if it weren’t immediately obvious.
Never had Liere heard kids talk like this. Silliness at South End had almost always been related to play-copies of adult life, or else teasing.
“Sing the song,” Gwen said to CJ. “And when we’re done snarkling at our own wit—”
“Snarkling means kind of laughing and snickering,” Devon whispered to Liere, with a self-important earnestness that made Liere smile inside. This word, too, had been defined several times on board the ship.
“—then maybe they can help us finish the new verse,” Gwen finished.
“Okay.”
CJ’s voice rose, echoing sweetly through the trees. Liere scarcely heard the words. What thrilled through her nerves was the glorious sound of a lovely singing voice—every bit as pure as the dawn-singers’.
A princess who didn’t act like a princess was supposed to—or dress like one either. Her plain black wool vest, white shirt, and green skirt, her bare feet, didn’t indicate any pride in mere self or status. So, too, her utter unconsciousness of the pleasing quality of her voice.
Then there was the fact that the Mearsiean girls had not treated Liere like a hero. In fact, at least a couple of them appeared to have expected her to act like one, a prospect that had made them wary, if not antagonistic.
Liere sensed the song drawing near its end—punctuated with the girls’ laughter—and listened, but she did not really expect to make up new words. When CJ finished, the others all chimed in with suggestions, some trying to outshout one other. Devon looked from face to face, grinning happily—looking, for the first time in so long, like a kid her age.
Dhana ran off, moving with such grace that Liere turned around to watch in amazement as Dhana turned a handspring over a log, caught a tree branch and swung out over a mossy boulder, landing as lightly as a gull skimming water, and then, with a flick of light brown hair, she vanished into a running stream. Not splashed, but actually disappeared.
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