Over The Sea (33 page)

Irene repeated Clair's words as closely as she could remember.

When she came to the Clair's promise to back them if they chose to get rid of the interlopers, Obas and the other adults exchanged glances, and Irene suspected they could hardly wait until they could get away and talk among themselves.

Sure enough, after a meal of hot cabbage-rolls and rice, people spread purposefully through the camp; snaps and thuds sounded as ingenious rope-pulleys pulled platforms up and hid them in the thick foliage of the oak trees.

The lead girl explained that she was Obas's cousin Min, then said, “Oaks were planted by our ancestors. Only we know they aren't native here, but if you see an oak, it usually has either a message drop or a platform, or both.”

“Want to run decoy with us?” a boy asked, his grin challenging.

Irene thought of Diana's speed and woodcraft, but she didn't say anything, just nodded.

The boy, brown as a berry, with curly dark hair and a big grin, nudged one of the girls — his sister, from the resemblance — and then said, “We'll be chased.”

Irene grinned. “Lead the way. I'll follow.”

Which is what happened.

The crashing of the guard party was heard long before they appeared. “Catch us if you can!” Min howled, from just upslope of the road. Far up behind them the camp was already deserted; when the captain of the posse signaled for a chase, the kids started slipping and sliding downhill, leading the posse directly away from the camp.

The kids knew what they were doing, being long practiced: they'd let the pursuit glimpse them, then they'd veer uphill or down — mostly up, once they were safely away from the camp, and down only when it was to plunge into tumbling streams and other hazards. Irene was also practiced enough both with running through wild country and with kids to know that she was being challenged just as much as the posse was.

But she kept up with no problem.

The next few days were fun. There were spying trips down to the harbor, and one raid, while Obas got into contact with the other adults on the other islands. Irene was there only at the end, when they planned their take-over of the main building during one of the big parties the Elchnudaebians held when they gathered for planning sessions.

The kids' contributions were all things like “Let's swing in on the chandeliers!” and such-like. Impractical (there weren't any chandeliers, at least not near windows) but Irene really liked their spirit.

However, she wasn't part of the raiding party, which turned out to be pretty dull after all: the Elchnudaebians gave up as soon as they were surrounded, and as Obas's group outnumbered all the guards, there wasn't any kind of a fight.

They marched the Elchnudaebians straight down to the harbor, with all the folk watching, and saw them get aboard one of their ships and sail south.

That's when Obas turned to Irene. “If your queen is really going to help, now's the time. Because they will probably be back.”

Irene smacked her hands together. “I'll go tell her. Thanks for the good time!” And she transferred back.

Clair had just finished with Wesset North when Irene showed up — wearing a wreck of a dress. Clair was in her magic chambers, poring over old books, but she set those aside and summoned me, and we both listened while Irene told her story.

At the end, she smiled at us. “You did great, Irene. I'll take over from here.”

Irene sighed, then said, “Now I can go bury this dress!” Her tone was tragic. “My beautiful dress! But I'm going to get another one, and this time, I want the lace with embroidery — and, well, never mind.”

Clair thanked her again, and Irene and I retreated downstairs. Clair got herself ready, transferred to the islands, and spent the rest of the day with Obas and the grownups.

On her return, she said, “Let's go find the rest of the girls. I have some news.”

“Bad news?” I asked, scrunching up my face.

Clair grimaced. “I don't' know that it means any good, but, well, I guess we'll see.”

And since Irene had been the last to return, everyone was there in the Junky, which was warm and cozy as a brief rainstorm drummed the ground overhead.

We gathered on the rug, and Clair stood in the middle. “I had a visitor who accidentally encountered the Chwahir,” she said. “She got away, but listen here. I still don't understand why Kwenz would have to be away so much, but the result is, he revolted against Shnit in not wanting to be part of that weird plan for Puddlenose. You know, forcing him into an enchantment to rule here. Kwenz knows that that just means Shnit controlling everything through him. But he doesn't dare go against Brother Dear directly. So, the short version is, he has an heir.”

“A what?” Faline squeaked, rolling over backwards.

“A slob who's going to direct the villainy and scummery afterwards,” I said. “If Kwenz ever croaks.”

“But those two use black magic to extend their lives,” Clair said.

“Ugh! Ew! Blech! Disgusting!”

Clair waited until we were done, then said, “This heir is not an adult, he seems to be about Puddlenose's age. According to what I was told. He's being trained in magic by Kwenz. I don't know if that's better or worse for us than if he had an adult heir, but I do want you girls to be extra cautious on your patrols. It could be this heir will be nosing around here before long, judging from Chwahir habits of the past.”

Diana smacked a fist into her palm. “Let 'em try.”

Seshe crossed her arms, frowning with worry.

I looked around at the girls, from Seshe's concern to Irene's fierce grin, and I said, “One thing for sure. If this gabboon tried anything at all with us, it shall be war to the pie!”

“Not to the knife?” Diana asked, then she looked Clair's way, and shrugged. “Not that I want to be killing anyone, but what if they try to kill us?”

“We use our wits, and our magic, and drive them back out,” Clair said.

“And what could be nastier than to smother 'em in prune-and-pea pies?” I asked. “It worked on PJ, so we can try it on this slob. I will work on spells that make the glop last longer.”

The girls all started talking at once. Clair motioned to me, and we walked up the short, root-framed tunnel to her room, which she seldom used, but somehow it just felt like Clair in there — calm, quiet, the bed quilt and seat cushions light blue, the rain steady overhead.

“What is it?” I asked. “Oh. Irene's trip. What happened. Did you fix everything?”

Clair smiled. “I can't, alone. But our Mearsiean traders can. I had an interview with the head of the Mearsiean Trade Guild just yesterday. She has been talking to ship captains who bring in goods for trade. They all promised to help, for it will mean no more illegal tariffs at the islands, and no more risk of their ships trying to land goods along our coast, which has no good harbor. I'll have to be gone a day or so, I think, while the Trade Guild Mistress and I visit at the harbor. So things here are yours to watch.”

I nodded, feeling uneasy. Clair paused, then looked at me, a pucker between her straight brows. “A problem with that?”

“No,” I said. “Well, yes. But I'll do it! I just feel — I dunno, strange. Sitting on the throne. And you dealing with ship captains and traders and things. It's all, well, changed.”

“Everything changes,” Clair began, her voice soft, her greenish eyes not quite looking at me. Her face looked calm as always, but I was beginning to understand her.

I said, “I'm still happy here! I love it here! I just, I dunno, thought things would be like they were. Okay, so they won't. Well, nothing will stop us from having fun.”

And she smiled, the quick, grateful smile of one who's not just happy, but relieved.

So if you want to know all about Clair standing by while the Tornacio harbor people and the trade people argued and shouted, and made deals and finally came to more or less of an agreement, feel free to look in Clair's records. She said she mostly listened, nobody really listened to her, but they all turned to her when they were done, so it did mean something after all to be a queen, even if you're a kid.

She always wrote down the treaty and trade decisions exactly as spoken, because people always remembered things differently.

What it meant for us is that Clair was gone for several days, and I was in charge of the kingdom. I, the worthless brat from off world. I was there in the place of a queen.

I wandered from room to room in the white palace Before, my attention was mostly on Clair or the other girls. Now I smelled the cool, clean scent ruffling in the windows. The air carried the astringent aromas of spring herbs sprouting in the garden below the towers. I gazed into rooms I'd never seen before, trying to imagine who might have lived there, what they were like. Some of the furnishings were worn, though well kept — curving chair arms rubbed smooth from someone sitting there every day, but the wood itself dusted, even polished, the cushion on the seat either new, or else in the case of the chairs with tapestry upholstery, new stitchwork replacing the worn places.

Furnishings of many styles — I hadn't realized before just how many ways you can make a chair — but all of them pleasing to my eyes because none were plastic, or chrome, two things I had hated in my old life. One big bed chamber making an L in a corner of the square part of the palace had furnishings made from wood that was shaped like trees and vines, with the knots all left in. The hangings were green. Another room, two floors down, had white marble tables, carved like the legs of fantastic beasts. There weren't any chairs, just divans, silver-painted, the cushions all a pale, pale ice blue. One of the tower rooms had a high bed with a curtain around it, and bookshelves all round, though those were now empty.

Beds on platforms, or even on the floor, chairs in circles — curule, I think they are called — and high-backed and wing backed and claw-footed, or cushions on floors — rugs of every design and hue, tapestries, paintings, statues, murals, I looked at the fabulous array of colors and flowing curves in all those different furnishings and wondered how it was that I had felt like a stranger in the land where I'd been born, but I was home here. Every room had a story to tell.

At home, art and music had been hidden away, were not present in the things you used every day. Here, they were.

Is it that easy? I thought, as wind billowed through hanging curtains in a long bedchamber high in one of the towers, the weather kept out by magic. No. Belonging means a whole lot of things, and one of them is having people who smile when you come into a room, who want you there. I have that now, I thought, laughing inside.

In spring, the windows were all opened, and fresh air worked its way all down through the castle, and would flow freely until the first snow of next winter. Next winter. I was here, and I would see next winter. And the winter after that. And the one after that, and, and, and.

Trade laws, Fobo, Kwenz and this mysterious heir — none of it mattered.

I am
here
. I am home, thought I.

When I was eight years old, two things happened.

One, I realized just after my birthday that eight was only two years away from double digits — and after that, it was all over. Before you knew it you had to be a teenager, and then a grownup. There went the end of fun and adventure! Girls weren't allowed to do anything fun. So I started a diary in order to remember everything I could about being a kid.

The second thing was waking up one morning after the most vivid dream I had ever had. (I can still remember it, very nearly fifty years later.) Clair was in it, wearing purple pants of a type I'd never seen before, a crimson sash, and a billowy white shirt. I couldn't explain the outfit any more than I could her story about another world where she didn't have to grow up. I just knew that she was a queen instead of a princess, that her home was in the Sherwoods Forest that had nothing to do with Robin Hood, and that she was lonely, searching for girls to rescue who might become her friends.

So she swooped beside the car when we went on trips, talking to me about the strange people and places in her world. When Clair began to show up in the cartoon stories I began drawing, my own place devolved into the Watcher at the Window, the chronicler of events. To protect my precious secret identity, I adopted Clair's name, as did the other girls: Sherwood.

Having the job of writing down the girls' adventures helped me make peace with the harsh fact that magic was unlikely to come find me. At first the stories were in cartoon form, drawings being much faster than the laboriousness of cursive writing. I discovered the world along with CJ. Sherry was Clair's first friend, then Faline (which I should have spelled Flinna, but that spelling has persisted for fifty years), then Diana, and then Dhana — whose name was inspired by Diana's, because she'd never heard of names before. Irene came in there somewhere, too, flouncing into the stories like a prima donna flinging aside the curtain to take center stage — except that she was always the first to laugh at herself when she got too pompous.

I stopped destroying the stories and began to collect them when I went to junior high, because I could keep the notebook in my locker. After that, there were two notebooks … and now there are 24, though the last few are very, very thin indeed, because by then the M girls were involved in the kids-eye view of world events. CJ knew she was only seeing a portion of them, so she began collecting records rather than writing them. She was astonished to discover that people also wanted to collect hers, and when she came upon a former enemy reading one, she went back and rewrote them.

What you have here are the rewritten versions — CJ's and mine.

— Sherwood Smith
December, 2007

In the sixties, the style of big eyes was pretty pervasive. Despite that, the portraits I made of the girls resembled them enough that I never threw them away. I always meant to redo them, but never got back to it. Somehow it got harder and harder to throw them away as the years passed, so here they are. The writing is their names in Mearsiean. CJ's drawing is slightly off: she does not have a square head. My brother found the sketch on my bed when I was out of my room and scrawled horns on her. This upset me terribly after my hours of work, so I took a magic marker to her hair to obliterate them, which made the shape of her head come out slightly odd. I meant to amend that, too, but it's funny how years change one's perspective on events. Clair's portrait in the cave opening above the Magic Lake is the very first drawing in a psychedelic-covered blank paper book I was given Christmas of 1971 in Vienna, Austria. There are more scenes with the girls (one included here). Next volume will have the face-off before The Great Pie Fight. The silhouette of CJ writing at her desk I made this week, for this volume.