Mearsies Heili Bounces Back

Mearsies Heile Bounces Back:

CJ’s Second Notebook

Sherwood Smith

Copyright © 2011 by Sherwood Smith

ISBN: 978 1 61138 066 8

Book View Cafe

January 2011

When I lived on Earth, there was a funny magazine my
babysitter sometimes let me see. It was called MAD. Sometimes it had sequels of
things, and they called them “Bounces Back.” Because I’ve finished rewriting
this second notebook here, and because of some of the things that happened in,
as well as to, Mearsies Heili, that “bounces back” pretty much fits.

Okay. When I left off in the first notebook, Clair, our
queen, had finally gotten into contact with all the provinces of Mearsies
Heili—except for the chopped-down forest that Glotulae Auknuge, sister to the
king of Elchnudaeb, still claimed as her “kingdom.” What had once been a trade
town on the Great North Road was now a city that supported the enormous palace
we called the Squashed Wedding Cake, because that’s what it looked like to us. “Queen”
Glotulae (nicknamed Fobo by us, because of the way she trilled her words) was
always adding more decorations to it, as well as statues of herself and her son
Prince Jonnicake (yes, she really and truly named her son Jonnicake), who we
called PJ.

Fobo and PJ wanted to take over the rest of the country,
just so everybody would bow down to them. Sometimes they were aided by the
other villain we had to worry about, Kwenz of the Chwahir, who lived in the
Shadowland below the cloud city that was also our capital. The Chwahir, like
the Mearsieans, had come from another continent long ago, each making a colony
in uninhabited land. The Mearsieans had come to escape the Chwahir, but guess
who chased after them. The Chwahir like conquering. Most of their boys and men
have to be warriors. Kwenz was very old, a master of black magic, which is
mostly used for force.

“Black” magic is so named because it spends magic that takes
ages to renew, unlike “white” or “light” magic, which is mostly used to aid
life. If you think of magic like electricity, black magic zaps out the power
grid in gigandor spells, but white magic uses low watts so there’s always
plenty in the world. White magic takes longer to perform, and has a lot of
safeguards. But it’s a whole lot safer to use. I know, because I’ve been trying
to learn it so I can help Clair, when Kwenz tried magical villainy against us.

So who are we again?

There were now eight of us girls in Clair’s gang—nine with white-haired
Clair Sherwood, queen of Mearsies Heili. She’d been queen for a year or two
when we first met. Next was me, Cherene Jennet, serving as Clair’s left-hand
splat, or princess. As I said, I used to live on Earth, but someone else got
stuck in my place and I got to come here. I’m short and skinny with long
straight black hair and blue eyes.

Blond-haired Sherry had been living with Clair the
longest—they’d made friends when they were little kids. Freckle-faced,
red-haired Faline was our joker. You’d never know she was a shape-changer by
nature—at least, her people, the Yxubarecs, had been exiled for their habit of
taking the forms of beautiful people and getting rid of the originals. Faline
was short, wiry, her hair so bristly it stuck out like a flaming bush unless
she braided it.

Seshe was the oldest, tall and calm and smart, with very
long blondish-brown hair. She loved the forest land and animals. Seshe talked
even less than Diana about where she came from, but she sure knew a lot.

Diana was the quietest. She also loved the forest, and knew
the most about things like woodcraft and also how to get past locked doors. As
I said, Diana did not talk about her past; her dark eyes would go distant and
she’d fade into the shadows if anyone started nosing.

Irene couldn’t be more different. She loved to talk, she
loved acting, drama, playing parts, dressing up. She and Dhana were the moody
ones. But that’s all they shared—Dhana wasn’t even human, except she’d borrowed
our form for a time. She actually was a water being from the strange, rainbow
hot spring we called the Magic Lake, right below the cloud city where Clair has
her capital.

Gwen was the newest to our gang, a small, quiet girl
originally from Earth, with an amazing talent for mimicking voices.

We were all kids, including Clair, who had been studying white
magic since she was little. Clair had found a spell that would keep us as kids,
which meant birthdays were extra fun. We got to celebrate but not get older, so
nobody would start getting mushy and disgusting about boys.

We girls had recently finished remodeling the Junky, our
underground hideout. Everyone had her own room, and we’d even added some
extras, in case we had visitors, and also, Clair wanted her cousin Puddlenose
to have a room waiting for him if he ever came back. We thought this was a
great idea.

Clair and I had recently finished the connecting tunnels
(once we’d decided that the rope entrances were only fun to go down, not up)
and what happens? We all end up crammed in the main room most of the time. But
the big difference was, we no longer
had
to stay crammed up—we only did
when we chose to. Somehow that made everything work out better, especially for
the moody ones.

When the weather was rotten outside—as it was the day I’m
about to report—it was so cozy to gather in the main room with warm goodies to
eat and drink, to talk and laugh. Maybe I’d sing and Dhana would dance for us.
Sometimes two or three of the girls put together skits for the rest of us to
watch.

I wrote a lot of those up in my first records. All the jokes
were there, even the ones we repeated a million times because it was just as
funny, or almost as funny, to wait for the expected comeback as it had been the
first time we heard it. But when I let a couple of people read those, I
couldn’t help noticing that they skipped over those pages. I guess we’re not
always as wonderful to other people as we are to ourselves, or maybe in-jokes
and stuff just aren’t interesting to anyone outside the group.

But I decided to copy this one rainy day into the new
notebook anyway. Partly because it is in some ways so typical of those quiet
evenings, when it’s just us, and no big worries. (Because the big adventures
tend to start out as big worries.) You could say that this one stands for all
of them—lots and lots of lovely, fun evenings just like it. And partly because
Clair so seldom told stories. That’s the non-typical part. And what she had to
say, well, you’ll see.

o0o

On this particular day, a nasty, sleety rain fell in zinging
arrows outside. Not even Dhana liked it. Inside, it was warm—the Fire Stick in
our fireplace gave off a comforting glow. Sherry and Seshe had cooked up some
of their delicious hot chocolate with whipped cream on top, and an extra bowl
in the middle of the floor, for those of us who like hot chocolate-flavored
whipped cream. Weird. In hot weather, ew. But cold? There is nothing better.

Diana had begun singing a stupid song I’d made up,
Hoooome,
home on derange, where the madhouse minions do plaaaaay ...

They didn’t know the original song, and didn’t want to. They
liked my version, which had to be crooned in either a falsetto or a low, growly
voice, because of the drony nature of the melody.

Where sellll-dom is hearrrrrd, a garbaceous word ...

And where piiiiies splat the villains all day!

“Iyi-yi-yi-yiiiiiiiii!” Sherry trilled in a horrible
descant.

Irene clapped her hands over her ears. “CJ! Sing something
that won’t break our ears!”

I’d been collecting songs here and there. On the cloud top,
small as it was, two musicians’ groups existed, providing music for anyone who
hired them. And in a land where there isn’t any TV and a city where there
wasn’t a theater, they got plenty of business. You could walk behind the
glaziers’ places and hear them practicing when the weather was nice, all the
upper story windows would be open, and they considered that to be free
advertising.

Anyway, the songs I liked the best had these running
triplets and flourishes that kind of reminded me a little of trumpet chords,
and a little of the flourishes you heard in Irish and Scottish folk songs,
especially the minor key ones. I really liked those a whole lot. But, I’d
discovered to my dismay, the words were usually long, silly rambles about a
couple of fatwits who wanted to fall in love (splat in love is more like it) or
one had fallen in love and the other hadn’t, or they both were in love but somebody
else snouted in so they couldn’t get married... . Bor-ring! Why waste great
melodies on mushy songs?

So I swiped the melodies and made up new words. The girls
liked my versions much better—especially when I made up funny ones about the
various villains, all sung to beautiful songs. Somehow, Faline kept saying, it
was just that much funnier when the melody is pretty.

Their favorite was one I had recently made up about PJ and a
goat at a bridge. PJ insists that the goat has to bow, and let PJ go first. Goats
are not known for letting anyone go first anymore than for bowing, but you
could believe that PJ would expect it. It was such a silly song that Faline and
Sherry and Irene decided to turn it into a skit.

But. “I can’t sing right now, the whipped cream makes me
croak like a frog,” I said.

When half the others groaned, Clair said, “Why don’t we tell
stories? Before we know it the rain will be gone, and everyone can get some
fresh air on patrol.”

We hadn’t heard from PJ and his gang of clucks for a long time,
which made even Sherry suspicious. And Kwenz, we knew, was training his newly
appointed heir, who we hadn’t yet met. But we knew he was a kid. Didn’t take
master brains to figure that that boded no good for us.

“A patrol in the cold,” Faline groaned with fervor.

“
And
mud.” Irene pruned her face. “Some
like
nasty wet weather ...”

“So we’ll all go on patrol.” Diana grinned. “Wasn’t gonna
argue.”

Dhana and Irene eyed one another. Irene twitched her
shoulders a little (she had bunches of ribbons on each), but didn’t speak. Gwen
said in her quiet voice, “How about a story from before I came?”

“You already know all mine,” I said. Sometimes they liked
hearing yukky stuff about Earth, just to shudder. Parts of my Earth memories
had begun to fade except for the bits they liked hearing over and over. I’d
even made up some stories about Earth and put the girls in. They adored those
stories the most.

Gwen looked Clair’s way, and Sherry said helpfully, “You
haven’t heard all Clair’s.”

Clair made a face and looked down at her toes, which were
dug into the bright blue patch in the rug. She hated talking about her life
before we came, but we’d gotten some of it out of her in bits and pieces.

“C’mon, Clair, tell us some firsts.” Irene put her chin on
her hands.

“Firsts?”

“First time you met some of the villains. We already know
about all our firsts.”

Gwen nodded. Clair glanced her way, and hesitated. Gwen
looked interested, but still too shy about asking. Gwen fit in fine—we all
liked her, and she liked us—but there was so much left over from her
gratitude-is-a-weapon days at that rotten orphanage, you could see Clair
deciding to unclam just for her.

“Well, as it happens, some of the firsts are all jumbled
together,” she said.

She took up the chocolate pot in both hands, and poured more
into her cup.

Everyone waited; the room was, for the first time, so silent
I could hear the soft crackle of flames from the fireplace, and the muffled
thuddud of the rain on the ground overhead.

Clair wriggled her toes in the carpet, her fingers closed
round her cup.

While she ordered her thoughts, I turned my attention to the
others. Funny, how much respect Clair got when she didn’t ask for any. She
hated titles, wouldn’t dress differently than anyone, never demanded to speak
first, or last. Never went first at dinner, or took the best place in a
room—all stuff that PJ did, for example. He was always watching to make sure
everyone gave him his bows, and waited for him to go first, and have the best
chair. He demanded (loudly) all the signs of respect, but I don’t know how much
respect his followers actually felt if they always had to be reminded, or
bribed with promises of rank and riches as soon as they conquered Mearsies
Heili.