Quite Contrary (32 page)

“Rat, I don’t want to float around on the sea until we starve. Maybe we should turn around,” I said. Slumped up against the back of the boat, I stared resentfully ahead of us at the fat lot of nothing there was to see.

Rat ran back to me along the rail and jumped onto my knee. “We’ll only get lost again, Miss Mary. We’ll end up somewhere far away from fairy tales, but we will end up somewhere.”

“But that won’t stop my Wolf, right? It may not even slow him down,” I asked, except I wasn’t really asking. It was hardly even a guess.

Rat looked away from me, over the side of the boat. Yeah, I’d nailed it. “No,” he admitted

“Then we’re sticking to fairy tale land. At least there, you’re useful. Set a course, or whatever it is you do.” I lifted one hand to wave it lazily and pretend I had perfect confidence in him. I really hoped he knew what he was doing, because we were out on the ocean in the middle of nowhere.

“We’re out on the ocean in—” He started to complain, echoing my thoughts exactly, but stopped himself. Giving his left ear two tugs, he turned his dark little eyes back to me and asked, “The easy ways involve lanterns, fishing poles, or other things we don’t have. May I have your permission to get us into trouble?”

“More trouble’s not going to make any difference now,” I replied.

Straightening up, his body lengthening into a tube, Rat announced, “Once upon a time—” and with a loud cracking noise the boat hit a rock. Rat tumbled into my skirt, Scarecrow fell backwards off her seat, and I lay right where I was and felt pretty good. That had been simple and catastrophic. Oh, yeah, I’d gotten the right rat for me.

“It’s bad if the boat leaks, right?” Scarecrow asked, her legs still sticking up in the air.

“It would be, but wherever we’re going, we’re here,” I answered. Pushing myself to my feet, I scooped my satchel up onto my shoulder, and as Rat clung to my dress, I picked my way forward past Scarecrow to the front of the boat. A clump of rough, angular rocks stuck up out of the water. The boat had wedged itself but good between two of them.

I extended a leg and braced a foot on the most convenient rock, and offered my hand back to Scarecrow. “Come on. Now’s not the time to find out if you float.”

Once again, my shoes proved to be everything an enchanted tree could offer a girl. I pulled Scarecrow up and easily kept my footing on wet rock as we climbed to the top of the little stone hill. The moon provided exactly enough light to see that, aside from these few rocks, water surrounded us on all sides.

Crouching down, I guessed, “Well, we must be near land. Maybe we’ll see what to do in the morning.”

“It won’t take that long. Look up,” Rat said.

I peered into the water around us. “You mean that light?”

As I squinted at the reflection bobbing on the waves, a girl’s voice above us asked, “Is someone there?”

I could barely hear her. There was hardly any breeze, but the air still seemed to carry away her voice.

Leaning my head back, I yelled up, “Nope. Nobody!” just to see what would happen.

Above us, the light fluttered like a moth. Yes, it fluttered. Those lights were glowing wings, weren’t they? She was really high up. “If this is the wind,” she called out, trailing off doubtfully in mid-sentence.

I suddenly felt like a heel. She either wasn’t that bright, or she had her own problems, and here I was giving her grief.

Fortunately, I still had a rat.

“Not the wind! Down here on the rocks, my lady. Three shipwrecked visitors, wondering where we are and how to get to shore,” he yelled up.

The light fluttered down, and I changed my mind. It moved more like a kite, bobbing in the wind. Those were wings, though. They belonged to a girl in a white dress, but they were much bigger than her, extending far out at angles like the wings of a dragonfly. They looked very much like dragonfly wings, if you gave dragonflies a pale blue glow that showed up vividly against the black sky. No, on second thought, those weren’t her wings. They were fastened onto her back, held on by straps crossing the front of her dress.

She bobbed and danced above us, but lower and lower, and finally a bare foot reached out and touched the top of the rock. The flying stopped, but her other foot matched the first and she landed gracefully, only to ruin the effect by jerking up onto her tiptoes and squeaking, “Eek! It’s wet!”

“I like your wings!” Scarecrow exclaimed.

“An Earth daughter!” the girl squealed, twisting around to look at Scarecrow. One of her wings swung right past my face. I had the sudden, terrible feeling that we’d found Scarecrow’s long lost twin.

“A construct, Your Highness,” Rat said.

Highness?

As the girl spun and nearly backhanded me with her wings again, I saw the thin wire tiara on her forehead. The white dress did have fancy lace embroidery around the edges. Princess it was.

“You have a talking rat! Are you a witch?” the princess asked. White showed all around her pale blue eyes. Very pale. Pale blue eyes, pale blonde hair, and pale white skin. She looked distinctly Valdisish, but the blue light of her wings sucked the color out of everything.

“Are you a witch?” Scarecrow echoed.

Someone shoot me.

“We are only three travelers, Your Highness,” Rat cut back in, trying to get the conversation moving somewhere sensible. “Our boat hit this rock, and we don’t know where we are.”

“A boat?” the girl asked.

Now she really sounded like Scarecrow, her voice full of wonder. Her wings swung up farther out of the way, and she slid down to a lower rock to peer at the little fishing boat. We’d never unfastened the sails. What would we have done with them? But she did, setting her toes on the edge of the boat and reaching out to unwind the ties. The sail opened up and filled with the slight breeze, for all the good that did.

“It’s such a simple idea, now that I see one. Wood floats, and you ask the winds to push you to where you’re going. You could travel so far, and never get tired,” she whispered, as if she’d forgotten we were here.

“Your Highness’s people don’t use boats?” Rat asked. He began to climb up my skirt, and I decided I ought to make myself useful. I scooped him up in my hand and held out my arm so he could sit on my palm while he talked to her. I had to let him handle this conversation. I knew I wouldn’t be able to resist sarcasm.

“We’re not allowed near the sea. I don’t know why,” she answered him. Sliding down to a lower rock, she crouched low, peering down at the dark, sloshing water.

A woman rose up out of the sea to meet her, pulling herself up to the waist onto the rock. “Guilt. You have what belongs to us,” she accused. The threat in her tone wasn’t subtle, either.

Clawed fingers reached up, and the princess pulled her skirts away and stood up on her tiptoes. “I’ve never stolen anything from anyone! Why would I? I’m a princess!” she squealed.

The woman from the sea hissed, actually hissed, like a snake. “A Princess of the Air. You stole the wind’s love from us, your mother and your mother’s mother and your mother’s mother’s mother, all of your brothers and sisters and tribe. He ran off with a human girl, and when you’re all dead he’ll come back to us.”

I slid down the rocks next to the princess, eying the mermaid. She wasn’t a mermaid, was she? Her body just stopped when it met the water. I was almost certain, with the light of those wings cast down on her. She might have been pretty, if it weren’t for the claws and the hair made of seaweed, but—

“You’re a fairy, aren’t you?” I asked.

“The Sea belongs to us. The Air belongs to us. The Fae are Earth’s first—” was as far as she got. My question answered, I planted a shoe in the middle of her face and shoved. Yep, fairy. She hadn’t been expecting it, and was too stupid to try and stop me. She’d had enough trouble holding onto the rock. My kick dislodged her, and she fell back into the water screaming in anger.

The splash of her disappearing under the waves didn’t stop the screaming. If anything she screamed louder, and it echoed all around the rock. The waves rose, thrashing around the stone. Geez, did I hate fairies. Sore winners, sore losers, just all around one hundred percent jerks.

I turned around and grabbed the princess’s shoulders, which was an extra good idea because she’d backed so far away from the sea fairy she was about to fall backwards off the rock. “You have wings, and I think it would be a great idea to use them to fly away, right now. Can you take us?”

“May—maybe, if we leave your construct behind,” she stammered.

“Then take her and the rat, and come back for me if you can,” I ordered. Reaching up, I pulled Scarecrow down and shoved her at the princess. Then I grabbed Rat, but he sunk his claws into my skirt good and didn’t come off. “Rat, let go. Someone has to take care of Scarecrow!”

The Princess let out a whine “My wings don’t have the power to lift that much wood!”

Rat spoke up. “I can fix that.” I stopped pulling. He went on very hesitantly. “You won’t like it.”

That was all he said. He’d figured out I hate to be led. Another round of angry screaming went up as a large wave splattered almost on top of our rock. “Do it,” I ordered, and let go of him.

He scrambled up my skirt, spiraling around my stomach and chest out onto my sleeve, then jumped onto Scarecrow’s shoulder. “Your heart is an engine,” he squeaked to her.

I clenched my teeth and squeezed my mouth shut, then winced as Scarecrow declared gleefully, “Hey, yeah!”

I balled up my fists too, making my body tense so that I wouldn’t stop them both. I’d agreed to this, and I had to trust Rat, but I had to fight to stay still as she pulled the clockwork ball out of her chest, reached around, and stuck it into the wings at their base. I couldn’t really see that part. Rat rushed out along her outstretched arm to help, and I knew they’d done it when the wings flared with a brighter light, and Scarecrow’s body slumped over. I caught her in my arms and tried not to glare as I looked at Rat sitting on the princess’s shoulder. He wouldn’t do anything that would kill Scarecrow. I was sure of it. I had to trust him.

“Mine!” the fairy screamed from the water. Another wave splashed against the rock. It didn’t come any closer than the last, but the princess squealed, wrapped her own arms around me and Scarecrow, and yanked us off our feet and into the air.

Wind rushed around us. I felt like a kite. Okay, I felt like I thought a kite would feel like. We hardly weighed anything, and holding onto Scarecrow’s limp body was easy. The wind blew us higher and higher into the air. The rocks disappeared from view in seconds. The furious yelling faded away in the rush of air.

As high up as we were, I saw a light in the distance that looked even with us. The wind pushed us that way, although it didn’t seem to matter which way we faced.

“Why don’t I take you home with me?” the girl asked. “And I ought to introduce myself. I’m Princess Breeze.”

“Mary,” I answered. I tried to sound friendly, but I’m not good at that.

The lights became a town, and a castle. They didn’t float, but nested on the edge of a cliff above the water, a cliff high enough to be a mountain. Half a dozen pale blue fireflies must have been other people floating around on glowing wings, but we didn’t get near enough to any of them to see. Breeze set us down on a balcony on the side of the castle. Balconies and rooftop patios peppered the building, which otherwise was tall, white, and suitable for fairy tales of all descriptions.

As soon as my feet were solidly placed, I pushed her wings up, spun her around, and sunk my hand into the gooey glowing soap bubble her wings attached to. It was full of wind, rushing around my hand. Scarecrow’s heart floated on that current, and I wrapped my fingers around its gears and yanked it out.

Scarecrow’s body got really heavy, and maybe I grunted as that side of me sagged, trying to hold her up. I shoved the heart through the open laces of her bodice into the gap in her chest. It didn’t work, but Rat was jumping down onto my wrist already. He pulled, and seeing what he did, I twisted the heart around until it locked into place where it had been exactly fitted.

Scarecrow straightened up on her own feet, asking, “Was I dead? I don’t want to be really dead, I want to be really alive.”

I very carefully did not glare at Rat, or say anything about it. He’d told me I wouldn’t like it, and I’d trusted him, and I didn’t like it and it had worked.

“You can use my third bedroom. Or would you like to eat first?” Breeze asked me, well, breezily. She strolled through the open double doors off the balcony and into a small, high-ceilinged room that seemed to have no purpose but storing coats. Well, one other purpose. Unbuckling the straps, Breeze hung her wings on a very high hook, so they barely touched the floor.

“I don’t eat, but I like how food smells!” Scarecrow chirped as she scurried after.

I wondered if Rat was trying as hard as I was not to share a sarcastic glance. Food did sound good. Something freshly cooked and with flavor would be nice, since fairy tale meals on the road were like chewing wood.

I followed Breeze and Scarecrow inside, but before I could say anything, a man’s stiffly disapproving voice ordered, “Breeze, you will meet me in the dining hall, now.”

“What is Dad doing awake at this hour?!” Breeze squeaked. She looked much too terrified to actually be in any trouble, and that stuffy formal voice promised nothing worse than a Good Talking To. Maybe a laughable excuse for a spanking, although since Breeze was several years older than me, probably not.

Finally in a room decently lit with pretty oil lamps, I found out that Breeze wasn’t as pale as Valdis after all. Instead, she was gray. Not completely gray, except for eyes that really were freakishly cloudy, but her blonde hair and pale skin, instead of being nearly white, were nearly gray. Her white dress, white crown, and room decorated in white and cream made the effect more stark. The room had a lot of ribbons. A
lot
of ribbons. Bows, or at least something with trailing streamers, were all over everything.

And she’d been well named. The ribbons all fluttered in a gentle wind that rolled Breeze’s skirts around her legs and mussed her hair. We were two rooms inside, and that wind had to come from Breeze herself.