Quite Contrary (37 page)

We turned. My feet thudded across the hard dirt of the forest floor. We turned again. My legs twinged.

The backs of my thighs were getting stiff already, and my lungs itched when I took deep breaths. I’d run too much today.

I couldn’t say anything. I was NOT going to give up.

Behind my head, Rat called out to Scarecrow, “We can’t just run. We need to find a path somewhere the Wolf can’t follow. Do you see anything? A rabbit hole? A fairy ring?”

I didn’t know if I should be angry or grateful that he’d guessed I couldn’t last much longer.

“There’s a break in the maze down there!” Scarecrow shouted back. She pointed, turned a corner, and pointed in a new direction.

“Lead us there!” Rat barked.

We took another turn. The backs of my legs stiffened and resisted each step a little more, but I gritted my teeth and ran faster. This invisible passage had already lasted longer than most. Up ahead, was that a light?

I slowed down. Bad idea. The moment I did, my thighs thickened into knots and I staggered forward, stopped, and propped my hands on my knees, taking deep breaths. I wasn’t done. No way. I looked up. The light came from a lantern hanging on a fishing line, tied to a fishing pole, held by a little old man whose beard stuck out crazily in both directions. He had the overalls and plaid flannel shirt that screamed fairy tale resident. As he stared at us, a fish flopped and twisted in his hands, still hooked to the line.

And that line of blackness cutting across the grass next to him must be a stream. My lungs were easing, and my eyes were getting used to the glare of the lantern enough to see past it. I didn’t know where a stream became a river, but this had to be pushing that boundary.

An old man fishing in the middle of the night. I was waist deep, again, in another fairy tale.

“Sir, you are just what we needed. I’d like to buy that fish from you, if you please!” declared Rat, scrambling out of my hood and onto my shoulder.

“Let me clean it first. How much are you offering?” the old guy asked. With one eyebrow raised, he studied us with obvious amusement and curiosity. A girl in a red dress, a girl made of wood, and a talking rat. He must be thinking he was waist deep in a fairy tale.

“We want it just the way it is. We haven’t any money on us, but I don’t think that will be a problem.” Rat sounded jovial again, and he slid down my sleeve with ease onto the satchel. Burrowing into it, he pulled out a bottle and lifted it up enough for the old man to see. “Bottle of fresh root beer is worth a fish, don’t you think?”

I would have turned tail and run from Rat’s used car salesman voice, and the old guy got a little of that, too. He hesitated suspiciously, but it must have been a good deal. Or maybe he took pity on an exhausted middle schooler and her weird sidekicks.

“Sure,” he said.

Rat pulled the bottle out the rest of the way, and I took it from him, stepping forward to pass it to the fisherman. He gave his line a swing, and a slimy, spastically struggling fish landed in both my hands. Fantastic. Thanks loads, Rat.

Was this a magic wish-granting fish or something? It flopped again, then paused to lay there gasping in my hands. No, it was just a mindless everyday fish choking to death with a hook stuck in its mouth. I shouldn’t care about that. I didn’t feel bad eating them. It had a brain the size of a pinhead, and probably couldn’t suffer. It just looked like it was suffering.

The fisherman popped the top off my bottle of root beer and took a pull at it. He grinned at Rat, and nodded. “Fair deal. Don’t know what you want from the fish, but I hope you get it.”

Rat was about to tell me what we wanted from the fish. Forget it, he might convince me. I had to not think about that, or about anything, so I could reach into this horrible slimy thing’s mouth, pinch my fingers around the fish hook, and twist it loose. The fish didn’t react. It really was too dumb to hurt. Whatever, I’d chosen my way. I let the fish hook go and the line swing back to the fisherman, and threw the fish as hard as I could back into the water.

Rat didn’t complain at all. He climbed back up my sleeve, and I asked him, “You didn’t want the fish. What are you up to?”

Right then the old guy finished off the bottle of root beer and threw it into the stream after my fish. “That’s what I’m up to! Go get the bottle!” Rat whispered to me.

“Wade into a stream in the middle of the night and try and find a drink bottle?” I hissed. “Are you kidding me?!” I knew he was trying to get me out of here. I had to trust him. At least enough to step down the bank and dip one of my feet into the water. “It’s ice cold!” I added. Added vehemently. My teeth wanted to chatter just touching it, and now I had a shoe full of ice.

I ignored him while he tried to figure out how to argue with me, and put my foot back in the stream. Criminy, it was cold. This was some kind of stupid fairy tale thing to make me too scared to get out the bottle, wasn’t it? Oh, forget all of it. I stomped out into the water. By the time I got to where the bottle had hit the surface, I really was waist deep in a fairy tale, with my body shaking and my teeth clicking rapid-fire and my legs numb below the knees.

Rat called back to the fisherman, “Sir, you’ve been fair with us. I want to be fair with you. Trouble is coming, and it’s trouble that kills. Grab your catch and get out of here, fast.”

I had to hand it to the old guy. He was smart, and he got the message. This was a fairy tale he didn’t want to be in. He did exactly what he was told, grabbing a big toolbox and taking off upriver, away from us and away from where we’d come. He dropped his fishing rod in the process, and Scarecrow lunged forward and caught the lantern as it fell. The old man disappeared into the dark, and I wasn’t going to argue with him leaving us the light.

Now the numbness was creeping up towards my hips. It was time for Rat to get a taste of his own medicine. He still clung to my sleeve, after all. I ducked down, bending forward and plunging myself into the water to begin feeling around the riverbed.

I could hardly feel anything but the shock of the cold. Dirt. Mud. Plant. Rock. Slimy plant. Another rock. A skinny rock? The bottle! I’d actually found it! I closed my fist around it and stood up, gasping for breath as water exploded off me and Rat.

Oh jeez, this was cold. My body shook all over again. Even my feet ached all over again.

My feet weren’t numb anymore. It wasn’t supposed to work that way, was it? A fish—the fish I’d saved before, some other fish, I didn’t know—broke the surface next to me, then shook itself, bulging into a grossly cute cross between a baby and a frog.

“On behalf of the water who is mother of us all, I thank you, my lady!” he said. His voice wasn’t as high pitched as Scarecrow’s, but it tried, and had a throaty lisp.

“I feel rude asking tit for tat, but we may be running out of time—” Rat started to say.

“You are completely out of time. I’m tired of delay after delay after delay,” the deep voice of my Wolf finished for him.

So big. He stepped out of the trees and into the lamplight, and he was taller than Scarecrow. Scarecrow, who stood on the shore right in front of him.

“If you want to repay her, get her out of here now!” Rat squeaked at the frog.

“I’m not leaving Scarecrow!” I barked, dragging my legs through the water and wading towards shore. Towards my Wolf.
Oh geez, Mary, how stupid are you? Too stupid to leave helpless Scarecrow behind like I had Breeze
.

“This? You’d die for this? By all means,” purred the Wolf. He swung his head around and fastened his teeth onto Scarecrow’s shoulder. Scarecrow swung the lamp around to hit him in the head. I beat her to it. I threw the empty root beer bottle as hard as I could, and smacked him in the top of his skull with it.

That did it. He threw Scarecrow down and leaped forward, snarling. Straight at me. I’d come too close. Those teeth were coming right for my head, until I got yanked backwards off my feet by a savage undertow.

I pulled with my arms and my head broke the surface again. The slight current had become a tidal wave, shoving me downstream. Scarecrow had gotten back to her feet. As I watched, she dropped the lantern and sprinted forward, then jumped into the water. She reached out her wooden hand and shouted, “Mary!”

I fought too, groped to catch her hand, but it was worse than useless. The water picked up speed with every second. By the time Scarecrow hit the water, I was more than a body length away, and getting faster. The current only affected me. The Wolf splashed furiously, clumsily trying to charge after me, and Scarecrow waded at a snail’s pace.

I left the lantern way behind. Scarecrow and the Wolf disappeared, becoming unidentifiable textures in the patch of light. I fought, twisting and kicking my feet against the current, but what could I do against water? It dragged me under into blackness.

ot the blackness of unconsciousness. This was the blackness of dark water on every side, rushing me along. Scarecrow. I’d left Scarecrow behind. What would she do? I twisted and flailed and tried to swim against the current, and accomplished nothing whatsoever. There wasn’t anything to fight against, just water. Frog-baby magic ensured I didn’t freeze to death. The water didn’t feel hot, or cold, or anything. It was just dark, rushing me along, and felt like standing in a strong wind. Rat? Did I still—I did, his little claws tugged at my clothes as he crawled from my arm to a more secure footing on my bodice. I closed my arms over him just in case and waited.

I didn’t think I slept, but that was the only explanation I had for the sun rising. I couldn’t see the horizon from underwater, but pitch-black water became murky, shadowy water, and the current spilled me out of the river and into a deep bowl. A lake. A lake on no map, inhabited by horrible little frog babies who’d saved my life.

Inhabited by somebody. Mud, seashells, logs, crystals, and scales were the ingredients for a crude, sparkly cathedral at the very bottom of the bowl. Uneven walls and arches rather than roofs made it hard to tell if the thing was one building or half a dozen. Or maybe it was a palace. Yeah, a glittery palace made of garbage at the bottom of a lake. Sounded about right. The whole thing was trying too hard.

The rest of the lake bottom was filled with rotting tree trunks, piled up stones, tangles of seaweed, and mud. Lots and lots of mud. Plenty of room for the fish girl to hide before she came zooming up out of a hollow log. Maybe more of a fish
woman
. She had the shape of an adult, or at least a teenager, but the scales and extra fins made it hard to put an age to her. She had a lot of fins. She didn’t have a fish tail, but with fins like wings stretching off her arms and legs, she didn’t need one.

“Are you the girl who picked up the bottle?” she asked as if I’d killed a dragon. Shiny eyes wide in awe, hands tucked up under her chin hopefully, and everything.

“And she took a fish away from a fisherman and returned it to the water with her own two hands!” exclaimed the frog baby, swimming out from behind me. In the growing light, he was blue gray with just plain gray spots. The fish girl was more into garish rainbow sparkles.

“Welcome to the center of the world!” a boy exclaimed, wriggling out from under a rock. Hairless, with dark brown skin and a lighter underbelly, he looked like a salamander but moved like an eel, as if bones were optional.