Over The Sea (4 page)

I loved Clair's world more each time I went. So of course what hurt the same amount — more each time — was returning. I don't mean it just hurt my heart, which it did, for the freedom and joy of Mearsies Heili withered into the old fear when I stepped into my house, listening for sounds of discovery, smelling the outside smog and the inside stench of cigarettes. Hurt my ears, for the sounds of traffic, and sirens, and planes overhead, and the ugliness of blatting TVs and radios were so discordant. Hurt my eyes, for my world looked so ugly to me.

The worst, though, was that pain inside.

I'd already read every magic story in the school library, and in them all the children were forced to return to their Earth lives after a magical adventure. Sometimes they even had the memory taken away, the “it was all just a dream” ending that I loathed so much I'd boil with rage afterward at the
cheat
.

That seemed to be the rules, I realized. You were forced to go back, even if you didn't want to, and give up joy, and magic, and beauty, to grow up and live out a dreary life amid ugliness, forcing yourself to be like everyone else, just because you happened to be born there. It seemed as inarguable as humans being born with two arms and two legs. Someone who didn't have the two arms or legs was regarded with pity, or horror, or scorn, just the way the person who felt an outsider was regarded.

What it really meant was that someday Clair would not come back.

That thought gnawed me inside, but I never expressed it. What if I did, and she said
Maybe I ought to stop coming now?

The thought of it scared me so much I scolded myself frequently: remember! Each visit was to be treasured in case it was the last — like I could make a single M&M candy last about half an hour by tiny, tiny nibbles. I wrote each visit in a tiny diary I made, using a code, so nosy parents going through my things wouldn't be able to read it. Just as well, because three of those diaries vanished when my room got cleaned while I was at school. The first time I waited around, sick with apprehension, wondering if I was going to get the belt for writing in a code. I knew what they'd say if I dared to bring it up:
Why are you keeping secrets? Only kids who have guilty consciences keep secrets. Everyone else is happy to have anyone look at their things
.

How could I express that
safety
had come, in a very few visits, to mean Mearsies Heili, and not home? I dreaded coming home. In fact I hated the word
home
because so often it meant fear, and sudden pain.

Three more visits. They were much too short. As soon as I got there Clair gave me the medallion to wear, and then I heard the language whose sound I already loved. When I had to go back I'd try to remember the words I'd spoken while under the spell of the medallion, but I couldn't. I could only remember sounds, the ‘r's that trill, the clear vowels, some of them double.

On the fourth visit, waiting with Sherry were two new girls, Irene and Seshe. In case for some weird reason my records are ever translated, that first one sounds like Ear-enneh. The last ‘eh' being really short. Some other people said it like Ay-reeneh, but she didn't. Seshe was short for Seshemerria. Her name was pronounced “
Seh
-she.”

Irene was maybe a year or so older than I was, tallish, with a long ponytail of brown hair. Seshe was also tall — in fact, she was both the tallest and the oldest of the girls. Her hair was also the longest, a straight blond-streaked light brown fall to the backs of her knees. She bound it in locks so it wouldn't tangle.

Clare and I appeared in the forest, just like the previous three visits. The sun was warm, the weather clear. And there were the three girls, giving me a feeling that my visit had been planned for by them all.

As soon as they were introduced, Irene turned to me, put her hands on her hips, and said, “I
love
acting out stories. I
hope
you do too. It's my
favorite
game!” She talked just like that, with all those emphasized words.

“Sure,” I said, struggling to keep my face bland and polite. Inside, I boiled with instant jealousy because Irene stood there in a pretty dress with lace at the neck and sleeves, and ribbons lacing the front together. It was blue and pale pink and cream, all in loops and swoops, and I agonized, wishing I could ever have something that pretty.

Irene flipped her ponytail back. “So what story shall we do?”

Seshe turned Clair's way. “Do you want to play?” Her voice was calm, as calm as her face.

Clair gave her head a shake. “I'd rather watch.”

Seshe nodded. “Then we need a story for four.”

Irene sighed, staring intently up at the trees, as though someone was going to strangle her if she didn't think up something at once. I watched, fighting against the instinct that worked so quick in me to turn envy to dislike. I did not want to dislike anything in Mearsies Heili, or anyone who Clair liked. But it was obvious that Irene didn't have to worry about being thought too wild, or too show-offy, or too anything.

“Shall we play — ” Sherry began.

She never finished her suggestion, for we all heard noises: a kind of thumping, and then, faintly, a braying laugh that echoed through the trees.

Clair went very still.

Irene whirled around, drawing in a breath. “It's
them
,” she whispered. “Has to be!”

“Let's see,” Seshe suggested in a low voice. “Seems to be coming from the north road.”

Clair looked my way, her expression not quite worry, more like question. “Do you mind? Or would you rather not?”

“I want to see, if it's okay,” I said, very tentative. I did not want to say the wrong thing.

She seemed relieved. Seshe led the way through the trees to what had once been a road, but had been let grow over. We stopped on a gentle rise just above it, in a place where we could see for a little distance northward — maybe half a city block, was the way I thought of it then. The road was wide in some places, and overgrown in others.

Six horses clopped at a slow pace into view. In astonishment we took in the tassels and ribbons decorating reins and saddles of the kids, four boys and two girls. One of the boys rode in the middle of the group. The gold crown on his head with its jeweled spikes glittering in the sun made me blink, but it was his clothes that were enough to stop a clock, if this world even had clocks.

All those kids were dressed fancy, like in some fairy tale drawing in an Earth book, but the other five might as well have been wearing barrels compared that clod in the middle. Hoo — eee! The basic type of clothes seemed to be a tunic-jacket with a shirt under, and loose breeches stuffed into boots that were shiny and dark, and kind of mottled in a pattern.

Why were the basic forms of his clothes hard to make out? Because of all the embroidery, jewels, lace, ribbons, medallions, tassels, and other decorations festooned all over 'em, that's why. All in shades of blue, a blue so intense that it made his sallow skin look almost greenish. Except for the purple zits, that is. Otherwise he was short, with brown hair that looked as if it'd been curled — you know, with ridges in it. He rode with his nose in the air.

“Wow,” I breathed. “There's enough junk on that guy's clothes to decorate a hundred dresses.”

Even the handle of his sword hilt (a thin rapier blade) was all encrusted with blue gems. How could he
hold
it, with those things poking his hand? The other boys had plainer swords. Though the girls dressed pretty much the same as the boys (their riding tunics were longer and a bit more skirt-like) they didn't have swords.

Clair's kitten-laugh next to my shoulder brought my attention round. Her eyes were squinched tight against letting out any more laughs. She whispered, “Permit me to introduce ... Prince Jonnicake Auknuge.”

Glotulae's son!

I swung back around. Just then he and his friends reached the portion of the road directly below us. We were hidden by a low fern, and none of us moved, but I don't think they would have noticed us if we'd yelled and bounded up and down. They were all talking in accented Mearsiean, so we were able to understand it.

“Oh, I'm so
tired
,” one of the girls whined to the other. She was just below me. I could smell the rose perfume on her hair. “This is so
boring
. It looks all the
same
.”

“Are we stopping soon, your highness?” one of the boys asked in a slurpy, toady sort of voice. And to his friends — in a more normal voice — ”I'm starved.”

The great Jonnicake spoke at last, in a high nasal drawl, “When I find the perrr-fect spot for my retreee-aaaaaaat.”

Another of the boys said, “You want a hill, then, your highness. So you get a view. And you can see anyone coming.”

“But you want it hidden, Prince Jonnicake, dear,” said the other of the girls in a sugary voice. She added a little less sweetly, “Otherwise it's not a retreat.”

The first girl leaned forward. “And you must have only pretty things. No lackeys, no loud, grasping merchants with their overdressed daughters trying to imitate
us
.”

“A lake,” said a third boy.

“Who cares about lakes? Water is so ... so dreary,” that first girl sighed.

“Because when it's hot we can have boat races, and — ”

“Quiiiii-yet,” Jonnicake whined.

And they all shut up.

“I want my own place ...” he began in his nasal moo, but then his words ran together, for they had passed on, and all we could see were their decorated backs, and the beribboned horses' tails.

And along came an even bigger cavalcade, men and women, some kids, looking wooden-faced, as they drove, or walked along-side, pony-pulled covered carts. They were dressed alike in ugly clothes of gray, yellow, and orange. Livery, I realized later. These were the servants.

Irene touched my shoulder, and beckoned for me to follow.

Seshe led the way down the slope and around a grove of trees. The moss and grass and old leaves were soft under my bare feet. The road curved, and we all crouched down, me shivering with excitement and laughter, as the group rode by again.

The two girls were complaining to each other about some merchant girl trying to act above her rank.

Prince Jonnicake interrupted them, nasaling at one of the boys, “No. You aren't
listening
, Nial. This is supposed to be mine.
All
of it, but I don't
like
wood. My royal will is to begin with my
own
place, and put the lackeys out of sight. Build a city. Clear it all out from the middle, see, and while Mumsie — ”

Honest, that's how it translated —
Mumsie
.

“ — thinks it a little retreat, I will have my own city, and my own army, and then I can — ”

“His own city?” Irene whispered, the last word an indignant hiss.

“In our wood?” Seshe added, looking stricken.

One of the horses twitched its ears, its head swinging round to look at us, but the boy riding it slapped his reins against the animal's face.

“What do we do?” Sherry said, her eyes round with worry.

”... but I very much fear I'm starving, your highness,” one of the boys said in a long-suffering voice.

“We'll stop and eat when I find the right location.”

My insides were boiling with laughter. I thought my ears would explode with my effort not to let it out.

Irene motioned violently for our attention. “Let's follow them, shall we?”

“I very much want to,” Clair stated, frowning. “This is our land they are proposing to build their city on.”

And for a time that's what we did. I realized as we ran along that Seshe knew the way really well. Oh, to spend days just wandering around this beautiful place, never being afraid of having to go home!

It wasn't a very long run. Jonnicake's pals were all complaining now — hunger, ugly trees going on forever — horses smelled — butts hurt.

Then he stopped, looked around with a lordly air, and announced, “Here's the place.”

He'd stopped on the side of a gentle rise that overlooked a meandering stream. We were farther uphill, again hiding behind green shrubs.

Jonnicake looked back down the road. The servants trudged into view beside the laden carts. He snapped his fingers They hurried forward at once, some uncovering the carts, two or three unhooking the ponies and drawing them off to be watered, I guess. Others led away the decorated horses.

All the rest spread out embroidered cloths, and placed pillows in a circle, with the largest one — tasseled with gold — in the center. Then PJ (I had already begun thinking of him as PJ instead of Prince Jonnicake) chose his spot. He gave his friends an expectant glare, and they all bowed or curtseyed. Then he waved at the brocade picnic cloth with a very lofty air. His friends all said, “Thank you, your highness,” in ingratiating voices, and arranged themselves on the pillows around him.

While the servants quietly moved around, serving out enough cakes, pastries, and other sweets to feed about five cities, the friends all vied with one another in telling PJ what a sweet spot it was, how clever he was to choose it, and how many guest suites was he planning?

“Will you hurry up?” PJ snapped at the last two servants still arranging the food. “And get out of sight when you're done.
Damn
you,” he added, sounding so self-important with his cussing that I nearly choked myself in my effort not to laugh out loud.

They settled in to eat. The picnic was made up entirely of desserts, most of them filled with jam, and studded with candies.

PJ's pals ate daintily, with very refined manners — right down to curled pinkies — but obviously nobody had ever yelled at PJ about
his
manners because he gabbled on, sometimes slobbering food down his front, as he described his idea of a “retreat”. When he waved a hand and splats of jelly hit several of them in the face and got on their clothes, they looked disgusted, but nobody dared complain.