Sagaria (2 page)

Then there was Flip, who so far hadn’t mustered the nerve to tell her how he felt about her. Not even to hint that he worshiped the ground she walked on, that her gay laughter was the sweet music of the breeze in the topmost leaves of the trees, that …

“If I were you,” Dodgem was saying, “I’d go out and find a lizard to fight right now. If you had a few bleeding gashes at the party tonight, it might give you the edge on Tod when it comes to catching Jinnia’s attention. Or you could ask a fish to gobble you up.”

Oh, yes. The fish. The famous fish. One of Tod’s most popular and melodramatic stories was about when he’d fallen into the river and been swallowed by a gigantic fish. Luckily for the tale-teller and his rapt audiences, but unluckily for Flip, the fish eventually spat him out.

Flip, privately, didn’t blame the fish for doing that.

“I don’t think,” he said carefully, “Jinnia is so empty-headed as to believe the fish story.”

Dodgem laughed loudly. “It doesn’t matter if it’s true or not, my friend. It’s a great story and that’s all that’s important. All of Tod’s yarns are great. That’s why the guy is everybody’s hero. What I’m trying to tell you is you’ve got a few hours to find yourself a few adventures and learn how to tell them.”

Flip gave him a sidelong look. It wouldn’t feel right to try and impress Jinnia with stories that weren’t true, with escapades that hadn’t really happened. Yet … yet that was exactly what Tod did, wasn’t it?

He shook his head sharply, as if to jolt loose the thought. If he won the love of Jinnia through lies, it wouldn’t be a love worth having.

“I’ll be there,” he said grimly.

Dodgem looked toward the window, trying to see through the steamed-up glass. “The rain seems to have stopped,” he announced. “I’d better be on my way.”

After his friend had disappeared, whistling and picking his way cautiously down the muddy path, Flip rested his head against the door-jamb. He wasn’t 
sure why Dodgem had trekked all the way here through the rain to visit him. Surely not just to pass the time of day? Then he understood.

Dodgem would never come right out and say so, but despite his air of disinterest and unconcern, he was almost as eager as Flip for Flip to win Jinnia’s affections. Although he might call Tod a hero and beam with apparent approval and admiration when he spoke of Tod’s adventures, it didn’t mean he necessarily
liked
the fellow.

So Dodgem had called by in the kind hope that he might impart a few tips and pointers to his less socially sophisticated friend.

And I truly do need all the tips and pointers I can get,
Flip thought sadly as he closed the door.

A while later, when he was certain the rain had stopped for good, Flip went out to check on his extensive berry garden. Some people had difficulty growing berries, but Flip had never experienced any problems. Standing at the edge of his plantation and regarding the neat rows of bushes, he grinned contentedly. Tod might be the one who was good at talking up a storm, but he couldn’t match Flip for berry-growing. Then Flip’s expression soured. Somehow, he didn’t think Jinnia would be as fascinated by masterful berry-growing as she was by a fight with a lizard.

The pale blue sky overhead still seemed tearful after the heavy storm. It reflected his mood exactly. Even so, he cheered up a little as he moved among the bushes, and he began to whistle one of his favorite songs, “A Gooseberry the Size of the Moon”.

Yes. A gooseberry. That was what he had a fancy for right now.

As it chanced, he was standing beside his best gooseberry bush, so he reached out and plucked a nice, ripe one. He looked at it for a moment, seeing the elegant tracery of veins just under the furry skin, then bit into it. Mm. Delicious. Tart yet sweet. A perfect berry.

Juice running down his chin, he was struck by a new thought
. I’ll bet the berries on the other side of the mountains are twice as big and I’ll bet they taste twice as good too.

If he could go there and bring back one of those berries as proof that there really was such a place, surely it would make Jinnia sit up and take notice of him. He blinked and shook his head.

On the other hand, it might impress her even more if I could just cure myself of my constant daydreaming
…

Once he’d finished his gooseberry, Flip went inside and mopped the last of the sticky juice off his face at the kitchen sink, washing his whiskers until he was satisfied they were perfectly clean all the way to their tips. He burped demurely and sat down on his couch.

The next thing he knew, he was lying down on his couch.

And the next thing he knew after, he wasn’t just lying down, he was—

The whole ground shook as an earthquake raced across the land, leaving devastation and despair in its wake.

At least, that’s what Flip assumed at first. Somehow, he was back outside in his little yard and was reaching to pluck that plump and succulent gooseberry he could have sworn he’d eaten a few minutes ago. But no, there it was, still attached to its stalk – still whole. Why was he thinking of gooseberries when the whole world was being shaken to pieces?

He looked up with his heart in his throat and saw a gigantic creature, gleaming silver, barreling through the sky straight toward him at unimaginable speed, its great fanged mouth gaping wide. The monster was as long as a tree and the spread of its wings (or were they arms?) was wider than a river. An old abandoned barn, whose existence Flip had never noticed before, was shattered to matchwood by the creature’s trailing legs.

Pure instinct threw Flip into the nearest berry bush. Lying on his back, he could see the silver belly of the great beast through the knotty tracery of the bush’s branches as it vaulted over him then clear over his cottage … but not quite.

One of its metallic feet tore the chimney away from the cottage roof, and it went catapulting into the sky, where it exploded in a cloud of dust and soot. Then, just as suddenly as it had arrived, the thunderous din was gone.

As he sat up, pushing away twigs and thorns that seemed determined to gouge his flesh as painfully as they could, Flip thought he could hear a distant thumping that echoed through the forest, but soon even that vanished. There was a silence so deep you could almost reach out and touch it, then the birds began to sing again. Flip let out a long, low breath that he seemed to have been holding for hours.

I’m alive!
he thought. Whatever that … thing was, I’ve survived it. I’m surely the Adventurer Extraordinaire, am I not?

Then he fell off his couch and awoke to the sound of his chin hitting the floor.

Dusk came and with it, a stream of people passing by Flip’s cottage on their way to the party. A few were walking alone, but most as couples or families, the children running around the legs of the grown-ups and squealing in delight. Even the youngest child knew this was Mishmash’s biggest day of the year, and all thoughts of sleepiness were banished by the excitement.

Flip watched them from the window for a while, then went back to his mirror. He had combed his whiskers into an elegant downward curl, the very height of the latest fashion, and had put on his best costume: the black one with the little mahogany buttons. As he was quite tall (nearly seven inches, almost as tall as Tod, if not quite so sturdily built), the sober, dark outfit suited him well. He knew he could cut quite a dash when he wanted to. It was just that he so rarely remembered to make the effort; he simply rattled around in whatever set of clothes first came to hand when he climbed out of bed in the mornings.

He twitched his curled whiskers experimentally and struck a pose. “What a handsome fellow you are, to be sure,” he said to his reflection.

Tod was a handsome fellow too, unfortunately. Try as he would, Flip couldn’t rid his mind of that thought. Oh, well. He would just have to hope that Tod did something stupid – fall flat on his face in a bowl of custard, perhaps – so that Jinnia would see him for the fool he was.

Fat chance.

Shrugging his shoulders, Flip headed for the door, and soon he was following a family of five along the well-trodden path toward the festivities.

The center of Mishmash was a dozen or so houses and shops, some as many as five stories high, clustered around the village green. Tonight almost half of the green was occupied by a huge marquee, out of which light, noise and people spilled to fill the other half of the green. Everybody was here, from the youngest to the oldest and everyone seemed to be talking at the tops of their voices, whether they had anything to say or not. Lanterns of different sizes and colors hung in the surrounding trees. The air was filled with the smell of roasted chestnuts and candied apples.

Flip pushed his way through the throng to reach the big tent, pausing every once in a while to say hello to people he knew. Their eyes were gleaming with elation, reflecting colored glints from the lanterns. He wondered if his own eyes looked the same or if they were dull and lifeless, the way he was beginning to once more feel. There seemed to be far, far too many people, and he found his mind turning to the quiet and solitude of the places he loved best: the unexplored 
forest glades, the banks of streams sleeping in the sunlight that trickled through the canopy of the trees, the hillsides where the bracken grew …

Inside the marquee was worse: even more crowded, even brighter, even noisier.

He squinted in the light and saw a sea of animated faces, piled dishes of food and great punch bowls of drink. Suddenly, he wasn’t very hungry or thirsty. What he really wanted to do was turn and bolt for home. Not exactly the sort of emotion he should be feeling if he’d come here to astonish Jinnia with his courage. He straightened his back and forced himself to hold his head up high. Was he not Flip, Adventurer Extraordinare, like it said on the sign? Had he not faced a thousand perils far beyond the ken of any one of these mindless party-goers?

There, that was better.

Confident he now looked the part, he shouldered his way over to the nearest table and helped himself to a roasted chestnut. As he did so, a paw clamped down on his arm.

“Well, if it ain’t Flip,” said a voice.

Flip did his best to control his instinctive shudder. He knew that voice. He dreaded that voice. He
loathed
that voice, if he were honest with himself.

“Tod!” he cried, turning around with what he hoped was a dazzling grin. “How good to find you here, old friend!”

For a moment, the expression on the bigger fellow’s face faltered, but almost at once it resumed its customary arrogant sneer.

“What’s with the costume and furwax, Flip? Hoping to make Jinnia’s pretty little heart go pit-a-pat, eh?”

As this was precisely what Flip was hoping to do, he felt his bravado shrink. “The–these old togs?” he stammered in an unconvincing display of indifference. Tod was clad in a flamboyant motley, all shouting purples and flaring reds and beetle-wing greens, and Flip suddenly felt drab and tawdry beside him. “The–they’re,” – he looked down at himself dismissively and picked a nonexistent piece of fluff from his waistcoat – “the–they’re nothing special.”