Back To The Divide (4 page)

35

"You'd be best off as a japegrin. I can run you up a little purple number -- I'm a whiz with a needle and thread."

"What about my hair?"

Turpsik patted her bun. "I'm gray as a diggeluck, really," she said. "You can use some of my dye."

The dye worked astonishingly well, and Turpsik curled his hair in such a way that it fanned out in a tangle of red, hiding his ears completely. The purple japegrin clothes fit perfectly and clashed with his hair in the approved manner. There was even a little hood in one of the pockets that buttoned on to the collar. "Fernytickles," said Turpsik suddenly.

"Excuse me?"

"Fernytickles. Hold still." She painted some freckles across his nose with the hair dye.

Felix stared at his reflection in a puddle. Apart from his blue eyes, which should have been green and squinty, he looked totally authentic.

Turpsik spent the next hour making him sing the anthem over and over again, changing the tune a bit here and there until it was exactly the way she wanted it. Then she read him a few thoroughly depressing poems about gray skies and snowstorms and fish. After that they had cake and more milk shakes, and just as they were finishing them Pignut arrived.

To Felix's amazement he was riding a wise-hoof. Wise-hoofs were academics, not beasts of burden, and they ran the library. When confronted by such an imposing creature in the flesh, Felix found the term
wise-hoof
came more naturally

36

to him than
centaur.
The horse part was chestnut; the tail was a pale sandy color, as were the hair and beard. Pignut dismounted, and Turpsik gave him a sheet of paper with the words to the anthem written on it. Then they haggled about the price.

As the haggling became more heated, Felix turned to the wise-hoof. "Are you a librarian?" he asked.

"Yes," said the wise-hoof.

"So why are you carrying a japegrin around?"

"You're a japegrin," the wise-hoof pointed out.

Felix was torn between revealing his true identity so that he could ask the librarian about Betony or keeping quiet. He tried a middle course of action. "How many prisoners are they keeping in the library?"

"Twenty or so."

"And are they all OK?"

The wise-hoof looked at Felix contemptuously. "No," he said, "they're not all OK."

"What do you mean?"

"Why are you interested?"

"We're not all thugs, you know," said Felix desperately, remembering that there had been japegrins who'd sided against Snakeweed.

"There have been a few ...
accidents,
I think Fleabane called them."

"Has anyone been killed?"

"Two of my colleagues. They tried to neutralize the incendiary

37

spell hanging over the library and got caught doing it. On-the-spot wand execution. The screams went on for rather a long time."

"I'm sorry," said Felix.

"That doesn't really help," said the wise-hoof.

Pignut and Turpsik reached an agreement, with Felix's forthcoming performance of the anthem thrown in as a special offer. The contract was sealed with a ritual slapping of hands and the exchange of insults. Pignut and Felix climbed up onto the wise-hoof and rode out of the valley.

After a while Pignut said, "I don't even know your name, song merchant."

So Felix was a song merchant now, was he? But he couldn't call himself by his real name, it was far too memorable. "Sam," he said, which was the first alternative that came into his head.

"Sam?"

Bad choice, thought Felix.

"Short for Samphire, presumably?"

"That's right," said Felix, heaving a silent sigh of relief. This was short-lived, however, because it started to rain. Then he remembered the hood and put it on. The rain poncho in his backpack would have been more effective, but trying to explain fluorescent orange nylon would have been a nightmare.

"Met Fleabane before, have you?" Pignut asked him. "No. What's he like?"

38

"Well ..." The japegrin sounded unsure whether to continue. Then he seemed to cast caution to the winds and said, "Between ourselves, he's not frightfully popular."

"That's a bit of an understatement," muttered the wise-hoof

"In fact," said Pignut, "a lot of folk are beginning to think he's worse than Snakeweed. Snakeweed was a con artist, not a brute. Oh, I know he used sinistroms, but only when he had to."

Felix could hardly believe he was hearing this.

"Kicking boots, heavy-duty wands, squawking-mad triple-heads, incendiary spells," Pignut went on. "Not to mention the disappearance of the king and queen. Gone on vacation, apparently." He laughed grimly. "If you believe that, you'll believe anything. Where's it all going to end?"

"It won't end," said the wise-hoof. "Whatever Fleabane gets, he'll just want more. That's the way he is." He skirted a puddle and nearly slipped over in the mud. The rain was getting heavier. "People used to be satisfied with what they had before they started reading what everyone else had. Newspapers? Abuse-papers, if you ask me."

Pignut turned his head and grinned at Felix. There was a drip of rain on the end of his nose. "I bet you're glad you're a japegrin and not a lickit or a tangle-child," he said. "It can't be much fun scratching a living in the outlying farmsteads they've all been sent to. Fleabane takes most of the produce in rent, and full stomachs are a thing of the past.

39

Not putting you off, am I? You'll need to sing that anthem like a flame-bird if we're to impress his lordship. Do it well, and you'll get a gold coin. Do it badly, and you're not the only one in trouble.
I'll
get it in the neck for choosing the wrong poet to write the wretched thing."

"I can't keep this up for much longer," said the wise-hoof irritably. "Carrying two people instead of one is no joke. It's getting toward dusk; are we going to stop somewhere for the night?"

"We'll find an inn," said Pignut. "A hot tub and dinner sounds like the best idea I've heard for a long time."

They traveled for the next half hour in silence, with just the splash-squelch of hooves for accompaniment. Then they rounded a bend in the road and saw a wooden building on stilts. The area underneath was obviously stabling for cuddyaks, and as they drew closer Felix could hear them bellowing and smell the manure.

"Oh, great," said the wise-hoof bitterly. "I can't climb a ladder. I'm going to be in with the beasts of burden, aren't I?"

"It's just for one night," said Pignut. "And it'll be warm and dry. The only thing that's going to suffer is your pride. Actually, Andria isn't all that far away now. We could just keep going."

"No thanks," said the wise-hoof. "I'll settle for the stable. The company will be an improvement, anyway."

Later, as Felix sat drinking his fertle-juice and eating his mushroom omelette, he felt alternately wildly elated at

40

being back in the other world and then worried sick about nearly everyone he cared about. The few seconds left in between were taken up with checking out how he was feeling, just in case his cure was fading away. So far, he felt OK. Which was more than his parents could say. He felt a sudden flare of hatred for Snakeweed.

The inn was packed with traders selling everything from lickit sweets to handmade paper, for which there was now great demand. It was Felix who had brought printing to Betony's world, and he could see the evidence of his actions everywhere. Leaflets on the tables, advertising wailing courses in three-part discord. Tacky posters, promoting crystal ball parlors and giving their hygiene-rating. Advertisements on the backs of the menus, for toadstool suppliers. He'd wanted to come back so badly, but he hadn't expected what he'd found. Apparently there was a curfew and roadblocks on every street leading out of Andria. The tangle-folk had been forcibly rehoused, miles from anywhere, and the king and queen had quite simply vanished. Everyone at the inn seemed a bit edgy and quieter than might have been expected. The conversations kept to safe subjects like the weather and magic.

And although Felix felt reasonably confident of his disguise -- he wasn't anywhere near as weedy as he'd been the previous year -- there were always the blue eyes....

Ironclaw fluffed out his feathers, scratched out a couple of numbers on his brazzle dirt-board, and thought for a

41

moment. It was the best dirt-board on Tromm Fell, situated in a shallow depression close to the Divide and protected from the wind on three sides by a rocky outcrop. He wrote a few more numbers in the sandy soil with his talon, hopped back, and surveyed the result. Elegant, that's what it was. All the best solutions were. He'd been working on a pyramid idea for cataloging the books in the library by subject, which would make finding things less of a hit-or-miss affair. The first number would stand for the general area of interest -- animals, say. The next number would specify whether it swam, flew, wriggled, or walked. Then what? Whether it used magic or not? He ruffled his feathers again and glanced at the sky. There was a speck in the distance -- Granitelegs, maybe, dropping by with some lunch and a tricky little algebraic problem or two. He focused the magnification area of his eye on the speck. It wasn't a brazzle at all. It was a fire-breather, and it was carrying two passengers. As it got closer, it became apparent that the passengers were japegrins. Ironclaw waited until the fire-breather landed, using the footpath as a runway and skidding to a halt far too close to his dirt-board for comfort.

The japegrin with the most badges on his uniform jumped down and said, "Are you Ironclaw?"

"Who wants to know?" asked Ironclaw cautiously.

"Never you mind," said the japegrin. "I'm one of Fleabane's senior operatives."

"And who's Fleabane?"

42

"President of Andria," said the japegrin.

Ironclaw didn't like the sound of this at all.

The japegrin fiddled with his belt so that the wand hanging from it was more visible. "Granitelegs said we'd find you here."

Ironclaw eyed the wand. "What do you want?"

"The spell that crosses people over the Divide. You were the one who calculated it -- and you memorize everything. It's common knowledge. Thornbeak told us."

"Thornbeak
told you?"

"She's one of the prisoners in the library."

Ironclaw stiffened. "What exactly do you mean by prisoner?"

"All the librarians and historians are under house arrest while they look for this dimension spell. You may not be the only mathematician to have worked it out."

"Well, I've forgotten it," said Ironclaw. Although it was a lie, it still pained him to say it.

The japegrin drew his wand. "We've had orders to, er ... persuade you if you seemed reluctant."

"Really," said Ironclaw, eyeing the wand again. It was an ugly thing, thick and blunt and black.

The japegrin tapped a rock with it, and a shower of sparks arced to the ground. "I want you to send Toadflax here into the other world."

The second japegrin stepped forward.

43

"Then I want him to come back again," said the first japegrin, "so I know you haven't sent him somewhere else entirely."

"Go dunk your head in a cuddyak-pat," said Ironclaw.

The senior japegrin aimed his wand at Ironclaw's dirt-board and flicked his wrist. A sheet of flame rushed across it, melting the sand into something resembling black glass. "I can do the same to you," he said. "Or I can simply start by singeing your wing feathers so that you can't fly."

Ironclaw fought to suppress his fury. I can get rid of one of them, he thought. I could just recite the first part of my spell and freeze Toadflax where he stands. And then I need to deal with the other one. I ought to peck his eyes out for ruining my dirt-board, but I can never summon up enough enthusiasm for that sort of thing. "You win," he said, which wasn't something he could remember ever saying before. "I need freckle-face there standing with one foot on either side of the Divide."

"The Divide?" queried Toadflax, looking around.

"The watershed." Ironclaw sighed. "Don't you know anything? It's right there, on the ridge."

When everything was as it should be, Ironclaw recited the spell. Toadflax seemed to shift a little way to the right, and then he froze.

"What's the matter?" snapped the senior japegrin. "Why hasn't he disappeared?"

Ironclaw scratched his rump with his hind leg and looked

44

thoughtful. "There's some sort of barrier preventing the spell from completing," he said. "Is he wearing a talisman?"

"No."

"An amulet?"

"No."

"Well, there's something strongly magical on his person," Ironclaw announced, waiting for his adversary to come up with the reason himself.

Finally the light dawned and the japegrin said, "It must be his wand. It's a heavy-duty one."

"Oh, right," said Ironclaw innocently, making a move to relieve the frozen figure of the offending item.

"Oh no you don't," said the japegrin quickly.
"I'll
take charge of that, thank you," and he stepped across the Divide himself.

Ironclaw gabbled the spell again as rapidly as possible, and the japegrin suddenly realized what was happening. He reached for his own wand, but his arm lost its momentum, as though it had changed its mind, and his fingers fixed in an empty grasp. A grimace of awful realization froze, like a mask, on his face.

Nice one, thought Ironclaw, feeling pleased with himself. He turned to the fire-breather. "I don't think your employers need you anymore," he said. "I suggest you go back to Andria."

The fire-breather looked fed up, but it got to its feet and