“That’s a shame. It’s delicious!” said Tumbledown.
This was my job. Recalling my maps, we had to head to the right past the burned-out tree. I toddled along the edge of the winding pools, keeping an eye out for the best corners to cut. Water led to water. Follow the pools in the right direction, and we would reach the river! “Yes, I’ve been told that once you start eating, it’s very hard to give up the habit. I don’t have a complete mouth, and oh my, do I wish we’d been able to stay for that tea Butterscotch Wisdom offered.” Mmm, tea.
Sandy digested this for a brief time, and then asked, “Are you comfortable back there…?”
“Girl Running! I’m the last painting of Kaleidoscope Eyes, who was made by Dangerous Daniella herself in an unusually whimsical mood, and I’ve been up and down the Dotted Line exploring, although I’m not sure it will help you much because until I fell onto a book I didn’t realize I could go anywhere farther than the wall itself.” supplied Girl Running, her head squeezing up into the visible space, along with one arm and shoulder as if she were trying to climb up over the edge of the book. Of course, she couldn’t, because there wasn’t room on the paper.
Even tilting my head, I could only see all that out of the corner of my eye, past the edge of my glasses, so she was even blurrier than usual, but the further evidence that I had peripheral vision again was nice.
Sandy laughed, clearly already fond of Girl Running. Her next words confirmed that. “Welcome to the quest. We do a lot of walking, so you’ll fit right in.” She let out a long, happy sigh. “I’m making new friends so fast. I was never any good at it before, but Here it’s so easy.”
Tumbles turned his pointed head up to look at her. “Why wouldn’t it be easy, Miss Sandy? I was friends with almost all the beavers at the Great Flubbo Dam. I had lots of fun roaring and chasing them around, and then later they would come tell me what a responsible, hard-working dargon I was.”
“But didn’t you need to have more in common?” Sandy asked.
Tumbles gave his head a shake. It tended to stay on the same level even as his body bounced up and down while he walked. “Nope. They were always talking about wood, and I didn’t understand any of that, but it was fun listening, especially when they got really excited about the best kinds of wood. Did you know wood comes in different kinds?”
“I did know that, but that’s all I know.”
Spinning the tip of his tail in a circle, Tumbledown said, “Anyway, I don’t understand you, and I like you.”
“Me neither, and also me too, both together at the same time but separately!” called out Girl Running.
I straightened my glasses, to help say this exactly right. “I’m trying to understand you, and I hope I will someday.”
“Thanks, everybody,” Sandy said, but she looked back and her smile was just for me.
Alas, the smile died almost immediately, replaced by a wince. Lifting her feet one at a time, she pulled off her shoes. “If we’re following the stream anyway, I’m going to walk in the water. Oh… yes, that’s nice. Can you hold these? And I’ll carry you so you don’t get wet.”
A few seconds of rearranging later, Sandy was walking in water up to her ankles, making a soothing sloshing noise. She held me in her arms, and I held Flapwaddle’s journal in my arms, and Sandy’s shoes had gone into my backpack. Not to be left out, Tumbledown rowed along on his back just ahead of us, with his mouth tightly shut so no water could get in and put out his candle.
I flipped through the book, looking for a good map of the area, and Girl Running climbed from page to page following along, chattering, “I have lots of friends all over Here, but they’re mostly friends I met once and had a nice conversation with and never met again, but they’re still friends and it would be great to see them again. I guess we won’t be together long, but it’s really great just meeting you for this long, isn’t it?”
“It is,” agreed Sandy.
Personally, I had a map to distract me. There was the Library Tree, and some kind of bridge landmark that Flapwaddle had scratched out. And Port Rait right at a spot where a dotted line stretched from off the map, but there was nothing to tell me what the distances were like.
The puddles had certainly coalesced into a stream as we walked, so perhaps we’d passed the ex-bridge? Finally, I looked up, and the sky was getting rather deep blue, shading toward sunset. That, in the distance, let me see lights.
“Oh, my. I believe that’s a town ahead. We’ll get to Port Rait just in time for supper!”
Chapter Ten
Even with her feet in the water, Sandy winced with the occasional step by the time we reached the wall.
At that point, she had to walk along the side of the river. She just might have been tall enough to cross with her head above water, but it would certainly have been inconvenient. There was no walking through it once we arrived, because the whole river flowed up the slope where the end of the wall reached the ground.
By then we had reached Port Rait anyway. Not only did the wall go up, it branched to encircle the town.
It was quite pretty. The wall itself had round dips in the top, evenly spaced, and crenellations like tidy flat teeth. The stone itself was pale, almost ivory, but the best thing about it were the drawings. Trees, little cottages with smoke spiraling from the chimneys, craggy mountains, it had all sorts of pictures running out as far as my eyes could see. Most were rather blurry, but the mountains were starkly, intricately painted in grey and white, a rather nice contrast to the adorable crayoned house next door.
“Eeeeeeeee!” squealed Girl Running, running around in a circle and jabbing her fingers furiously toward the wall.
I recognized the hint. “Miss Sandy, please…?”
She put me down on the grass, and I toddled up to hold my book against the wall.
Girl Running leaped off the page and onto the stone surface. “AAAAAthankyouthankyou the library was super neat and the books were full of words but everything was so cramped and finally I have space to move!” Move she did, climbing up the slope where the wall emerged, dashing along the wall’s upper edge upside down, vaulting a crayonny cloud with legs spread, climbing a tree back to the ground, and circling back around to us right-side up. She was much larger on the wall than in my book, more than half as tall as Sandy!
My heroine squinted at the wall, not looking nearly so happy. “Is every town Here going to have a wall around it?”
I flipped open—my book was already flipped open. I flipped through my book, although I wasn’t quite sure what I was looking for. “I shouldn’t think so.”
Girl Running reached the fuzzy grey cloud again, and began running over its surface in a circle. She shrank quite a bit in the process. It did keep her nearby long enough to chatter, “Oh no, this is just because the shriveners live here, and they like to know what’s In and what’s Out, so they had the whole wall extended around their little town, and anyway it was really easy to draw a ring around. You’ll see when you get inside, I promise!”
My eyebrows lumped up. “Oh, my.” This was the home of the shriveners? “Oh, my,” I repeated. Maybe we would get lucky and they would all be out shrivening?
I really had to find the proper word for what shriveners do. Shrive? Shrive, shrivening, shrove?
I had gotten too wound up in thinking again. Near us a huge arch almost allowed entrance to Port Rait, except for an iron portcullis blocking the back. Right out front hung a little roll of numbers, and Sandy tore off ‘1’ and walked inside.
A booth indented the tunnel. A bell dinged, a placard next to it flipped to ‘1’, and the stiff, beak-faced, white-shrouded figure of a shrivener marched evenly up to the counter.
“State your business,” it said. Not much of my old life was clear, but I remembered that slow, careful, even monotonous voice. They all talked like that. Even clothlings and bundlish who joined the shriveners tried to talk like that.
“I’d like to come inside and find a place to rest, and some food, please. Maybe
a boat to the capitol,” Sandy answered.
The shrivener got out its inevitable tape measure. Sandy stood in front of the counter with a bemused expression as its long arms reached out and measured her face from side to side, up and down, her arms, around her shoulders, and so on.
Myself, I looked at the portcullis on the inner end of the tunnel. It was quite heavy. I could squeeze through, but Sandy certainly couldn’t. I looked at this end of the tunnel. It also had a portcullis, not quite withdrawn into the ceiling. Oh, my.
The shrivener finished measuring. “You are identified as a human, and you are not Princess Charity, therefor you are the human Sandy.”
Waving my arms, I ran toward my heroine shouting, “Miss Sandy! Get out of there! Run!”
She trusted me, and bolted. The shrivener paid no attention. It picked up a note off of its table and read, “By order of Princess Charity, the true ruler of Here and There, the human Sandy is to be confined so that she can be sent Elsewhere.”
With that, it pulled a lever and the portcullis on this side of the arch slammed down to the ground.
Fortunately, by then Sandy and I were easily clear.
“What—was—that?” she puffed. She had run quite hard, the instant I gave her warning.
“The shriveners are responsible for…” I waved my hands around, one of them holding my book, as I tried to find the correct words. I couldn’t just tell her they shrive things. “Order. Checking that everything is normal and working. They help keep Here a friendly place by sending messengers to the tinkers, or the flops, or to anyone who can help when they find something wrong. They dropped by the Endless Picnic a lot to ask if we heard of places they should go. But they’re… they’re…”
“Obsessed!” shouted Girl Running from the wall, her face appearing first in one window of the little house, then the other. She climbed out of the chimney, up the spiraling smoke, and ran around upside down on the top edge some more. “Totally obsessed. Bonkers obsessed. They never take a break, and they’re always measuring stuff, and they have a fit if you smudge anything. You should see Port Rait. It’s super pretty, but you can sure tell that shriveners built it. A Forest of Bird Cages got smudged pretty bad, and the shriveners actually tried to wash him off the wall, and I don’t know what would have happened if Kaleidoscope Eyes hadn’t still been alive and repainted him instead.”
“And Charity decides what is and is not orderly now that she’s on the throne,” I concluded.
Sandy’s frown hardened, a thin line of determination. “No. This is ridiculous.”
She stomped up to the portcullis, while the shrivener waddled up to the other side in the stiff gait they always used. Always. I strongly suspected they were incapable of running. Could they even climb stairs? Perhaps they had an assigned stair climbing cycle. Running was naturally disorderly, but stairs were usually nice and even and predictable. Yes, I decided that if it came down to it, we could easily outrun shriveners, but could not rely on merely climbing out of reach.
“Remain still, and I will make other arrangements for your incarceration,” said this shrivener to Sandy.
She pointed a finger at it, and jabbed through the bars. Oh, my, humans really did have such fine and agile fingers! So pointy! “No. This is a mistake. You are not supposed to capture me, and I am not supposed to be exiled.”
It stood there, ticking faintly in the brief moments of silence between it and Sandy speaking. “Princess Charity’s orders are clear. Princess Charity’s orders are law.”
Sandy was really quite heated about this topic. She stabbed her finger into her upturned palm while arguing, “I’m Princess Charity’s best friend, and I know that can’t be true. Did she give you these orders herself?”
“No.”
More silence, except for the ticking. Finally, Sandy grunted in frustration. “You are completely literal, aren’t you? I can fix that. The shriveners will understand context and… and… I mean, I’ll think very hard about it, and change you if I’m sure it’s the right thing to do.” She rallied, squaring up her shoulders. “But that’s later and we’re not done. Who gave you those orders?”
“They were delivered by messenger, from Pincushion, assistant, sidekick, and enforcer for Princess Charity.”
Sandy was always expressive, but compared to the rock-still, toneless stick figure draped in white cloth, her body language really stood out. She straightened up another inch, and my knees almost buckled underneath me hearing her imperious tone. “So, you don’t know if the orders are from Charity or not. But I’m a human, and I’m right here, and I’m telling you those orders are wrong.”
“The orders were delivered through the proper channels. Therefore, they are Princess Charity’s orders.”
Sandy scowled. She was already frowning, but this was different, troubled instead of angry. The regal force was draining out of her fast. “There’s no way for you to know that. Did the note say Charity gave those orders? I think they came from Pincushion, not Charity. I’m sure of it.”
“Orders from Pincushion are orders from Charity. Hierarchy is necessary to the operation of a monarchy.”
Sandy took a couple of steps back, abandoning the shrivener to look down at me instead. “I don’t understand. I can’t change him. Is my power gone?”
The memory of my urge to kneel when Sandy had given orders loomed fresh in my fluff. Emphatically, I answered, “No, your magic is stronger than ever, so the explanation must be that you’re running up against Charity’s magic now. Presumably she has strong magic of her own, and it’s canceling yours.”
I tucked my elbow under a mitten and tapped the earpiece of my glasses as thinking happened. “We know that Charity is a princess, and I suppose she’s in the capitol and crowned properly now. The ability to enforce hierarchy certainly sounds like princess magic. Her orders will be traveling all over Here by messenger bird right now. Whether or not they’re actually hers, of course. The shrivener is right, that may not matter, if they’re given by a deputy that she trusts. While I don’t doubt her loyalty, I certainly wouldn’t put it past Little Miss Snippybritches to overinterpret. She could be quite, well, snippy.”
Sandy winced. “Does… does that mean everyone will be my enemy?”
Oh, my. Certainly a terrifying prospect, if true. It required thought. Levity might not be appropriate to the crisis, but I did so love thinking. “That seems obvious, but… no. We’ve been told that humans come into regular conflict, and those conflicts are spectacular. Clearly, no one human has overwhelming power over the other. You must be facing her magic at its strongest here. I think we should expect her to have the advantage whenever giving orders is involved.”
Sandy sat down suddenly in the grass next to me. Quite suddenly indeed, as if she were collapsing in half. She draped her arms over her knees, and all the strength from her confrontation with the shrivener was used up, replaced by squeaky sadness. “I wanted to get inside. I’m tired, Heartfelt, and my feet are killing me, and I’m hungry. I’m more than hungry, I’m starving. We can’t get in, and there’s nowhere to rest and no food to eat for miles.” She flapped a hand at the grass going on in all directions.
The shriveners had certainly been rigorous about keeping all of Port Rait inside the walls. I had also been trying not to think about it, but I needed tea so badly that I had to prod my belly to make sure I was still properly stuffed.
There was only one thing to do. I climbed up on my heroine’s leg, and put my arms around her neck. With my head resting against her shoulder, I gave her the softest, most encouraging hug I had.
She squeezed me back so hard that I couldn’t see the pink glow between us, and my voice came out in a wheeze. “I will find a way to get you inside. I promise. Just give me a minute to think.”
Girl Running called over to us, “I know how to get you inside! I live in Port Rait, or at least I kind of live in Port Rait when I’m not traveling, and I have an idea and I know it will work! BUT…”
She pau
sed, standing next to the closed gate with her arms clasped behind her, body rocking forward and back. “You have to sign the wall with my paint.”
My world went sideways as Sandy climbed to her feet, tucking me under her arm. She winced, and her voice cracked for a moment as she asked, “But wouldn’t that hurt you?”
Girl Running shrugged. “Maybe. A little. I don’t know. But it will be worth it because every human who has ever visited Here since the wall was built, and that was a long time ago, has autographed the wall somewhere, and it will be an honor I’ll remember for the rest of my life if you use my paint to do it.”
“Well… if it will make you happy…” Sandy limped over to a relatively bare space of the wall, under one of those peculiar dips in the upper surface that made the wall look like a series of dashes. Girl Running scrambled up to meet her, and stood quivering with excited energy as Sandy touched the painting’s chest with her fingertip, scooped up some red paint, and wrote on the pale stone next to her, “Sandy Golding.” I had to twist around quite a bit to see the letters properly, but they were nicely swoopy. A fine autograph.
Girl Running didn’t say anything about it, but I could not help but notice the process did indeed leave her with a gouged streak like a scar.
There was no time to bring up the topic delicately. The shrivener had returned to the gate, and I hadn’t even noticed him leave. “I have alerted the proper authorities. You will be collected in…” Its tick got louder, marking the seconds as its head rocked evenly from left to right, and right to left.
A countdown was hardly necessary. Above the gate, flowing water piled up in a shiny, wobbling hill. Arms thrust out of the mass, and it flopped forward, slapping at us from above!
Everyone screamed. Mine was the highest pitched, clothlingiest scream, I noticed with pride. Sandy, being heroic, let out more of a yelp of surprise as she jumped back out of the way. Tumbles rolled away like a ball, making a scraping, yowling noise, somewhere between animal and tortured metal. Girl Running babbled hysterically as she leapfrogged over the weirdly proportioned houses and streets painted next along the wall. The water monster’s gargling shrieks covered up her words.
A Rag Doll's Guide to Here and There Page 13