Over the Sea

by Sherwood Smith

  “I do love it.” Seshe ran her hands down the swaths of filmy fabric in all those lovely colors, and the fine embroidery along the wide neck and down the outside of the sleeves.

  “You can have it — and any others you like — if you tell me the secret. It’s all right. Take as many as you think fair. I can always get more.”

  “There isn’t a secret,” Seshe said, thinking rapidly indeed. Especially when she saw the scowl pruning Moniheya’s face. “At least, not in the sense you mean.” She spoke with caution, not sure how this girl was going to react.

  “Well, what sense, then?”

  Seshe glanced out the window. Saw stars, to her surprise. The sun had already set.

  “Well,” Seshe said more slowly. “My old nurse told me that beauty comes of being happy inside.”

  “Happy. Happy? Are you hinting that I’m not happy?”

  “How should I know?” Seshe retorted. “I can’t read minds! I’m telling you what my old nurse said.”

  Moniheya jangled her bracelets. Looked up. “So you’re happy, then? With her?”

  “With Clair, you mean?” Seshe said, venturing a name.

  “Whatever her name is. Papa calls her The Traitor.”

  “That’s silly, when she’s not Yxubarec.”

  “No, but she shelters one who is. Papa wants to get her back and kill her. As an example. Quite right, too, for if everyone left the cloud, we’d die out!”

  Who are you trying to convince, me, or yourself? Seshe thought, but that question didn’t stay long. Instead, the accusation about Clair came back, and Seshe realized she knew what it meant. Oh my.

  Seshe said, “Well, if you have to fling me off your cloud for saying this, I’m still going to say it: I think people ought to be able to live where they want to.”

  A long silence. Seshe looked out and counted stars, thinking how clear they were, how sharp, from up so high. And the house was quite warm, too, she realized. More magic, obviously.

  Then Moniheya made another irritated face again. “It’s your jewelry.”

  “What?” Seshe’s shoulders tightened.

  Moniheya grinned in triumph. “It is! It is! You keep touching that stupid necklace — there’s a beauty spell on it! And you spouted all that gas about being happy!”

  “No, you’re quite wrong,” Seshe cried, but she could hear the fear in her own voice, and knew that it would be misinterpreted.

  “Give it to me. I’ll pay. A bag of gold. A trunk of gold!”

  “No. It’s a gift, from Clair, and means more to me than gold.”

  “Oh, what a lie! Nothing is worth more than gold, except gems! Unless you do have magic on it.”

  “If you come down with me, I’ll have Clair make you one,” Seshe offered. “I know she’ll do it. And your Papa need never know, since he dislikes Clair so much.”

  Moniheya pursed her lips, and Seshe suspected she was very curious to see this hated Clair, but of course it wouldn’t do to say so.

  “Let’s eat,” Moniheya pronounced. “And I’ll think about it.”

  And so she summoned servants (all of them very handsome) who brought in trays of food. Seshe tried to eat but couldn’t, as Moniheya crammed food into her mouth with excellent appetite, every so often pausing to threaten or wheedle.

  At the end of the meal she rang her bell again, the trays were taken out, Moniheya following. Seshe heard her whisper — and had just enough time to look around for an escape when Moniheya and the three female servants came back in, and pounced on Seshe.

  She put up a good fight, but not good enough; the servants pinned Seshe down and Moniheya undid the necklace clasp. Put it around her neck, looked into her mirror — and no change.

  “Nothing! It’s nothing!” she screamed, stamping around in a circle.

  She ripped the necklace off, ran out onto her terrace, and flung it as hard as she could.

  o0o

  Clair had gone to bed, but not to sleep. She lay for a time in bed, then finally got up and moved to her window, staring out at the dark covering of clouds.

  And so when the necklace flashed out of transfer and landed on her desk with a soft ching! Clair knew instantly whose it was.

  And what it meant.

  She didn’t even bother to get dressed. She fixed an image of Seshe in her mind and performed the transfer spell.

  And so Seshe was relieved and Moniheya amazed when there appeared in the royal bedroom a girl with white hair and white nightgown.

  Moniheya turned to Seshe, guessing at once what had happened. “You didn’t say she was morvende!”

  In answer Clair silently held up her hands. She had never seen morvende, but she had read that the mysterious cave-dwellers had white hair, pale eyes, and long claw-tipped fingers. Her plain, short nails were answer enough for that, and it also gave her time to master her anger.

  Because Clair was really, really angry, the sort of rage that being afraid all day boils up. Wow, do I know that one! Clair gets it less often, but when she does, you better watch out if you are a villain!

  “You already killed one friend,” she said in a voice husky with anger. “I want you gone from my land and the air above it.”

  “Why?” Moniheya asked, diverted. “You have so many people down there! Don’t you get tired of them?”

  Clair’s mouth pressed into a thin line, and she trembled with the effort it took not to do something terrible now that she was face to face with the girl who had to have murdered Jennet.

  “No,” Seshe said, sorrowful as she glanced at Clair — and sorrowful that Moniheya was so warped from human feeling. “No, the bond is called friendship, and that’s what makes life wonderful. Faces, mirrors, pretty gowns, all of that just isn’t the same as having friends.”

  Moniheya crossed her arms, troubled and angry. “I think you’re lying, that there really is a secret.”

  “Here is a secret,” Clair said. “One you’ll understand: I now have a lot more magic than your father does. Lots more. Watch.”

  She pointed a finger at Moniheya, and spoke a spell. It was a long one, memorized well, and so full of magic — an enchantment, really — that the room seemed to sparkle.

  And suddenly Moniheya felt her form change. For the very first time it was against her will. She turned to the mirror, and gasped in terror, for what she saw there was a short, squat form, no limb the same length as its mate, her skin mottled, her nose pendulous and warty, her hair sparse and colored an ugly iron gray.

  “Look like you are inside,” Clair said, low and furious. “You and your murdering kind. And tell your father that if you ever appear in my land again, this fate awaits you all. Permanently.”

  “You wouldn’t dare!” the new Moniheya squeaked.

  Clair’s eyes widened, and she grinned a terrible grin. “Oh, wouldn’t I,” she said in a low, intense voice, almost like a vow. “Oh, how much I would love to do it right now, and save innocent lives!”

  She waved a hand, and lightning flashed.

  Now there were four in the room. Moniheya stared in fear and amazement at the white horse with the floating blue-white hair. Seshe and Clair vaulted on its back, and once again it turned into light, and vanished.

  Moniheya ran screaming into the outer rooms.

  o0o

  When Clair’s spell wore off, the Yxubarec cloud was far out over the sea.

  I found out about the adventure from Seshe. Clair never talked about it, but I knew something had happened because I woke up to the sound of crying coming from her room.

  TWELVE — CJ Versus PJ

  Bringing me at last to the matter of my name.

  At the time I thought it was weird how a group of friends could form their own almost secret language, kind of. We certainly were forming ours. Most of the words were ones I made up, and the girls adapted those happily.

  But the one they made up was my nickname, CJ.

  Odd, how these things can turn all about. Calling me CJ started out as a joke. A tease,
really. Not a mean one, even though it made me sore inside. I tried hard to hide that reaction, so it’s not like the girls knew that I hated it and used it in spite.

  Faline kept saying it because she just loved the rhyme — plus the idea that each side had a leader with a rhyming nickname. Us against them. It was Faline’s glee that made it take as a nickname, annoying me until I realized it had become the girls’ secret name for me.

  Secret from outsiders. It hit me after I overheard a couple of them refer to me as Princess Cherene Jennet to other people. Quite proudly. Whazeem! Suddenly my perspective altered.

  It’s that pride in belonging that changes everything, that puts you cozily inside the group with the secret codes, and others outside. And likewise, nicknames that don’t sound like pride, that don’t include you in, can drive you batsier than the sound of the nickname would warrant.

  Well, take ol’ PJ and me. I soon discovered that I not only didn’t mind being CJ, but I actually began to think of myself as CJ, except when I was consciously representing Clair and the kingdom. Around the girls, in fact, I had slowly come to be myself. There was no longer any need to impress them, or to try to earn respect, whether for Clair — or for me. We just were.

  And so I really was CJ. And Princess Cherene Jennet, when I needed to be.

  As for PJ, he just hated being called PJ!

  We got our chance to use it, and find out his reaction, really soon, and believe me, it was all his fault.

  o0o

  The weather cleared up, and for a time it was like summer again, except the leaves had turned glorious colors. Crimson! Amber! Bright yellow, lime yellow, yellow-orange, red-orange. Even the rust-colored ones were pretty, because they formed such a contrast to the brighter ones.

  Once we were walking in a group, and Seshe stopped to admire a stream. (Dhana passed by, dove in, and ploop! Vanished with a rainbow splash, then, wink! there she was on the other side.) At the bottom of the clear-running water lay a generous scattering of leaves, the colors bright as a hoard of gemstones.

  But even I seldom wandered far to the west, for that end of the forest was close-grown, tangled, and so dark that it was impossible to make a path, much less a road. The west formed a kind of natural barrier, beyond whose hills and waterfalls, I knew, lay desert. Somehow the clouds always came up from the south, and occasionally from the north, before moving east. They almost never came from the west — and those that did were almost always fast-moving thunderboomers.

  So our patrols stayed at the northernmost portions of the woodland, and extended east from there. We usually started out at the point closest to the old road that bisected the forestland, going northward up toward into the Auknuges’ town. This road was very old, and overgrown. Mearsieans had stopped using it when the Auknuges took the farmland north of the wood, preferring either the eastern roads, or else the sea, for trade with Reyte or Ujban. This was because of the absurdly high tolls and taxes that Glotulae had established, making shipping an easier course. The danger was that the northeast of MH had the Chwahir lurking like spiders waiting to bite. So some did prefer to stick to the woodland road.

  Why am I blabbing about all this?

  Because at first I flat out didn’t believe that PJ and his fatheaded pals were actually looking for us. We did see the occasional traveler as we did our patrols, especially along the old road. Clair had said that people could come and go freely, so long as they didn’t come as warriors to attack anyone, and so we girls saw wagons or laden oxen going along every so often.

  Well, to get right to PJ and his idiocy, some of these travelers obviously reported seeing us girls, too. Why not? This is our home, after all, and we didn’t bother anyone, just watched.

  So ... the weather cleared, as I said, and even turned balmy for a time. We went back to the regular patrol rotation. One night Irene returned and reported PJ and a bunch of his knucklehead pals galumphing on horseback through the northern end of the woodland.

  Other than cracking jokes about it, we thought no more of it.

  But the next day, Sherry returned from her patrol, early afternoon, and she, too, reported having seen PJ and a gaggle of fatwits flapdoodling along, again on horseback.

  “Where d’you think those clods are going?” I asked.

  “I think they’re lookin’ for us,” Irene said, fluffing out her ponytail.

  “No way,” I said. “Why?”

  “I also think they’re looking for us,” Sherry said, eyes wide. “They rode round and round.”

  “Well, of course. No one can ride west,” Dhana said, shrugging. “So they could be scouting, like CJ says, or just riding around to get away from Mumsie.”

  “Yes, that makes plenty of sense,” Seshe said.

  “But looking for us? Nah! Last time they were here they didn’t even see us!”

  “They saw lots of seed-pods, though.” Faline chortled. “Wouldn’t it be fun to make ’em think trees were throwing pods at them?”

  We all laughed, and started speculating on what stupidity brought them. But the thought of PJ nosing around like he owned the woods made me boil.

  “Tomorrow, let’s all go out,” I said. “And if we see ’em, follow ’em. Find out what they’re up to.”

  “We don’t have horses, though.”

  And only I had the ring for calling Hreealdar. I said, “Let’s get some sort of signal, then, and as soon as I find you I’ll call Hreealdar. Okay?”

  The girls nodded, or shrugged. We talked on a little about setting up signals, and how to pass them back and forth, none of which I need to report in the records since it all turned out to be unnecessary — as we were to discover was typical of most of our plans. Well. Mine.

  We went out in pairs. I was walking with Irene, who was in one of her Moods.

  “Of course it means I’m just dying to get married,” Irene stated, flinging her hands wide. “Kisses! Googly talk!” Her hands fluttered like demented butterflies. “Just because a girl happens to have a taste for pretty clothes?”

  It wasn’t a real question, of course, but I said, “Humph!” anyway.

  Irene heaved a groaning sigh. “So I like to wrap my hair in rags once in a while, to get some curl. Oh no! Danger! It means next day we’ll all be grown up, and flirting with ... with PJ!”

  I snorted a laugh.

  “Well, that’s the way some people act.”

  ‘Some people’ had been, as usual, Dhana, who also had Moods. Dhana’s Moods turned sour when it was hot and dry outside — and other times for reasons none of us as yet could parse.

  “That’s what ‘some people’ say when they get snappy. But you’re never snappy, oh no,” I said. “Nosiree bob, you’re much too swee-eet and demure and oh so quiet and shy! Maidenly, that’s it!”

  Irene rolled her eyes.

  “And if you’re maidenly, stands to reason you’ll never get married, right?” I pointed out. “Now if you were acting madamly ...”

  Irene snickered. And having snickered, couldn’t hold onto the Mood.

  “Well ‘some people’ might think I’m a perfect example of just that!” She had to get in that one last try, of course.

  “‘Some people’ being such experts on how married people act,” I pointed out.

  Another snicker.

  “I tell you what I find barfacious,” I said, sensing that it was time to move on, “and that’s the thought of PJ courting anybody. Peee-yew!”

  “‘Pee-yew’,” Irene repeated, laughing hard. “What does that mean in your old language? It has so funny a sound!”

  “It didn’t mean anything except this.” I held my nose. “Stinko!” I said that in English too. And then I switched back to English in my head — something getting more difficult by the day — and dug up all the slang for smells that I could remember.

  Irene was still laughing when I became aware of other voices.

  At first I thought I was hearing more of the girls, except the voices sounded wrong.

  Irene
was very still, lips parted.

  “It’s them,” she said, eyes wide.

  “... cowards.” That voice, drawled in a distinctive surly whine, was stomach-curdlingly familiar.

  Irene and I ran a little ways round some rocks, scooted under the handing branches of a gnarled old cedar, and peered down at a bend in one of the half-grown old trails that led to the main road.

  “Of course they’re cowards,” a big, hulking boy in purple velvet sneered. “They’re just a bunch of stupid girls.”

  “That white haired brat can’t find anyone else to follow her,” another brayed in a har-dee-har-har tone.

  Yok! Yok! PJ and his band of banana-brains guffawed and whinnied like that was actually wit.

  “Well,” PJ said, “I’m tired of riding about while they hide in fear. We can tell Mumsie they’ll never dare come back.”

  “No thrashing?” That was from the single girl, a tall one with a her nose held in the air. “I still want to see a good thrashing. Teach them some manners around the Queen.”

  PJ waved a hand with four rings on it. “Oh, never fear. We’ll thrash them yet — ”

  I turned, stunned, to face Irene. “They’re talking about us.”

  “Yes.”

  “Us.”

  “Yes.”

  “Me! And Clair!” My amazement blitzed, faster than Dhana’s and Irene’s Moods, into sizzling, broiling, barbequing outrage.

  I forgot about the crow-call signal. Forgot the plan, and bellowed, “Who’s a coward, you pimple-faced porkeroo?”

  “CJ?”

  I didn’t even hear Irene. I was too mad.

  PJ and his group stopped so quickly their horses sidled and almost panicked. Vaguely I heard Irene’s yell behind me, and I thought, wow, she can’t do a crow at all, then I forgot her as I jammed my hands on my hips.

  “What,” I demanded, “are you doing stinking up our woods without permission?”

  “Permission!” the girl gasped.

  “This is Mearsies Heili,” I stated, pointing at the ground. “That means it’s outside of the territory you idiots usurped. And if you want to ride around and act stupid, you had better get permission.”