Mearsies Heili Bounces Back (22 page)

“I didn’t tell it very well. It’s a free life! I love it for
that as well as for the fun. Real freedom is roaming the woods with bare feet,
and all day in front of you, and no adults yapping at you.”

Pralineh smiled politely. I gave up, plunked myself down
onto my chair and began eating again.

Pralineh resumed her meal. I couldn’t tell much from her
expression, but later on I found out she was thinking over what she’d heard. So
far, their guest—Raneseh had insisted I was a guest—was a surprise. There were
aspects of my words that were so unfamiliar she began to consider how it could
be two girls more or less the same age (actually she was a couple years older)
could have such a vast chasm of experience between them.

“Bare feet,” she said finally. “Not because you lack shoes,
but through choice. Like you have now?”

I stuck my feet out and wiggled my toes. “Like I have
now—and do every day until the first snowfall.”

Pralineh smiled, laying her fork neatly alongside her plate.
“If you are heartened at wide expanses, there is a pretty wilderness behind the
walls bounding the home farm, toward the main road. Would you like to see that?”

“Yes!” I exclaimed, thinking: Good chance for escape! “Can
you take me there tomorrow?”

“Oh, not I. That is, I am usually involved with work, and
with visiting. Maybe I can introduce you to some of my friends? Would you like
that? As for the wilderness, that can be arranged. I shall speak to Raneseh.”

“Who is this Raneseh?” I asked, my silver clattering to the
plate now that I was done.

“My father,” Pralineh said with faint surprise. “Surely you
would know by my not appending a title of politeness to his name.”

“You don’t call him Father?”

Pralineh smiled. “That sounds odd! Is that a custom in your
part of the world? Will you forgive me if I observe it sounds strange—as if I
were to call you Girl? To call a person by the most general word—” She stopped,
afraid she sounded rude. And lifted her shoulders. “It sounds odd to my ears,
as no doubt my custom must sound to you. Now that we are finished, should you
like to accompany me in sewing? If Raneseh and Rel join me, sometimes we read
to one another, or we just talk.”

I drew in a deep breath. Now that I’d eaten, and learned
where I was, it was time for duty.

I forced a smile. “Thank you—sounds spiff—but I’m real
tired.”

Pralineh nodded politely. “Rest well, your highness.”

I intended to be gone before the candles had burned down
much farther, but I still couldn’t resist saying, “Just CJ. The title junk is
more for telling you who I am than for any I-go-first gorbaggio.”

I left Pralineh whispering, “Gorbaggio?”

Pralineh seemed to assume I knew my way back. I did my best
to retrace my steps, discovering that the house seemed to be built like a
picture frame, four lines of adjacent rooms around a central garden. The four
corners jutted out, making right angles everywhere, with glass doors into the
extensive gardens. Everything led to an extra big central parlor or gathering
room, that looked into an inner garden of herbs and blossoms. Outside the
house, at least on my side, was that big garden, the one I’d first discovered
on waking.

My room was in one of the corner suites, with empty rooms
either side of me, straight down the hall from Pralineh. I figured I had to be in
the guest area—there didn’t seem to be anyone else around me.

I reached my room, whisked in, as the candles flickered and
streamed. I opened the glass doors and listened. Crickets, just like home.

Oh,
home.

Overwhelmed with longing, I sped out, and straight through
the garden, pushing aside bushes and branches as I headed straight away.

My feet encountered the flags of a pathway just as a man
called, “Pralineh? That you?”

I didn’t stop to think. I just turned away from the voice
and took off like a shot.

And made it about ten steps before some very fast footsteps
caught up and fingers gripped my arm, bringing me summarily to a stop.

I shrugged out of the grip, whirled to run again. A very
tall figure loomed beside me; an arm reached across just as I took the first
step, and I bumped straight into what seemed to be a bar. Fell back, arms
flailing.

Two big, capable hands caught my shoulders, righted me
easily, but one stayed firmly clamped on one shoulder.

A man spoke with Pralineh’s accent from a few steps away: “Where
are you going?”

I fumed. “Isn’t it obvious? I’m running to the moon the hard
way!” I lost hold of my temper and added, “Did that fat-wit father of
Pralineh’s send you to spy on me?”

“I am Raneseh Khavnan.”

“Who thinks Kwenz is a good guy?” I heard my voice wobble,
and shot out angrily, “I am sooo sorr-ee!”

Raneseh gave a faint sigh. “Rel, please conduct this person
into my house.”

Rel had to be the one with the iron mitt, then, I thought,
temper now boiling. I twitched, trying to get the hand off my shoulder, but the
grip stayed right where it was.

And so the three of us walked up the path I hadn’t seen,
through a door at another end of the house, and into one of the sitting
rooms—where Pralineh was just passing through, holding a vase of flowers. She
stopped in surprise.

“Raneseh? Rel? Cherene Jennet? Whatever happened?”

“I tried to dump this joint, of course,” I said angrily,
furious with myself as well as the universe. “Argh! Will someone tell this slob
to get his cooties offa me?”

“Oh dear.” Pralineh set the vase on a sideboard and just
stood there, hands to her cheeks.

“Come, Rel, to my study,” Raneseh said from somewhere
behind.

Pralineh whisked herself out; I stomped (my bare feet making
no noise on the beautiful woven carpets) between the other two through one of
the three doors off the sitting room.

This side of the house was different. The hallway I’d
glimpsed was plain, the paintings along the tops of the darkwood paneling holly
intertwined with a stylized sea-bird shape. We reached one of the corner
suites, and walked past an empty sitting room with a fine rug, a couple of
chairs, and the walls on either side of the three doors containing floor to
ceiling bookcases.

The room we entered was lit by golden lamps. Half-sized book
shelves filled two walls; above the book cases hung a couple of splendid
tapestries of historic scenes that ordinarily I would have magnetted to
straight away. A fine desk stood across a corner, facing the glass doors at an
angle that would avoid a direct blaze of morning sun in summer but still afford
a view of the garden.

Raneseh moved quietly behind the desk and sat down, the
light at either side falling on a middle-aged face. He was tall, well-made,
almost entirely bald, what little hair remaining neatly queued back. He had a
short, well-tended light brown mustache and beard, streaked with silver, that
suited his face. He wore the long robe of the scholar, open over a fine linen
shirt and trousers; the expensive fabric of his robe hissed and rustled as he
sat down.

The hand on my shoulder guided me firmly to a cushioned
chair before one of the book cases, and let go. I plopped onto the chair as my
unseen guide walked round and took up a stance behind Raneseh’s chair.

I glowered, momentarily puzzled: so far, everyone, even the
one servant, had been neatly dressed. Well dressed, at least so far as my total
lack of fashion awareness could descry.

So I was surprised at the sight of this boy maybe a year or
two older than Clair’s cousin Puddlenose, taller than many adults, with his
ragged shock of glossy black hair, a strong-boned face above a plain laced
tunic-shirt of the sort laborers wore, sashed at the waist, baggy riding
trousers, scuffed and worn mocs.

“I’m sorry we began so ill,” Raneseh began.

“I’m not.” I thumped my crossed arms across my chest. To
another girl, I wouldn’t let my temper show—but to a grownup, one keeping me
prisoner, one who was on the side of Kwenz? Hah! “I need to get home. I don’t
know what sort of lies Kwenz told you, but if you believed ’em, you must be
stu—ah, that is, I don’t know what kind of stinker trick that rotten geez is
trying to pull, but either I get outa here, or Clair has to come and get me.
And I hate making extra work for her.”

“No one is coming to get you.” Raneseh spoke with care. “I
was given to understand that the proper order has been restored to our fellow
Mearsieans over on the next continent That there have been, how can I say it,
some misguided children who have caused considerable damage while playing
magical games. Once order is restored, these children—you are one of them—will
be offered a chance at re-education, to make good what was once wantonly
destroyed. Like an entire city, condemned into darkness by malicious magic.”

“Lies, lies!” I exclaimed, so angry I couldn’t sit still. I
jolted up, then plopped down again. “That rotten stinking liar! I’d like to
kick him forever into darkness—” I heard myself getting shrill, and stopped
with a gulp.

“I was shown this city,” Raneseh said quietly. “It is
reprehensible, to be forced to live in darkness.”

“But
we
didn’t make it. That happened in history.
Kwenz is evil,” I said with a desperate attempt at controlling my voice.

Too late. I could see it, that they thought me a bratty liar
myself—that my running away, my yelling, all were proof I was some kind of
horrible juvenile delinquent, just like on Earth before I left—the ones who
broke windows for the fun of it, who threw Coke bombs through those windows,
who started fires with their cigarettes, who destroyed things just to see
people get upset.

Kwenz had turned everything backward.

And these people believed him.

And I didn’t have any magic to get away.

Raneseh said, “You are young, you have been misled by bad
influences. That you will be offered a chance to learn your mistakes and help
where you harmed argues for benign guidance.”

My chest heaved on an angry sob. “You make me sick!” I
bellowed, jumped up, and ran.

I blundered out; nobody stopped me. I made it back to the
room I’d been put in, saw the door still open, rammed through and out into the
dark garden, where I threw myself under the big drooping tree. There all my
worries and shocks and anger burst free in a storm of wild crying.

It lasted a long time.

I lay on the grass, limp and exhausted, breathing raggedly.
Gulped and started up in anger when I thought I heard a footfall, but when I
glared around me and saw no one, I flopped down again, this time on my back,
and lay facing the stars beyond the trees, until the lights blurred into the
sparkle of slow and silent tears.

I woke up in the bed.

Someone had dumped me in, dirty feet and rumpled dress and
all.

Throat aching, eyes stinging, head pounding, I got miserably
up and put myself through the cleaning frame. Then I stripped the bed and put
the sheets through, so nobody else would have to do it. I remade the bed,
something I did at home; I noticed the sheets were an extremely fine, small
cotton weave, like Clair had inherited. I had never paid the least attention to
sheets before Seshe had talked about what fine linens there were in the White
Palace, and—

Seshe! Clair! Where were they? Those lies Raneseh had told
made it sound like the
entire kingdom
was under Kwenz’s control.

I groaned. “I have to get home,” I whimpered, turning around
in an agonized circle. But how?

I opened the glass doors, breathing in the garden scents.
The cool breeze was pleasant on my hot face, and made the hammer inside my
skull thunk just a little softer.
Now
, I thought.
Forget breakfast,
forget trying to convince these people that Kwenz is a rotten villain. Leave
now, while you can see where you are going
.

And so I slipped outside, and this time paid attention to where
I was going. I discovered that the garden, which looked so wild and forest-like
from the windows of the house, was actually ordered and carefully tended—no
dead leaves or weeds in sight—everything laid out in pleasing patterns that
roughly paralleled a stream branching off from a nearby river that I could
hear, though not yet see. Flowering shrubs made a nice middle layer between
grass and trees. Brick-edged walkways curved around little hillocks, dropping
away toward a stone wall alongside a road. Beyond the road flowed that river, rushing
straight on to freedom.

I stepped from the garden onto a grassy sward and headed
straight for the wall. My head panged from hunger and all that wild weeping the
night before—but if I could just get away—

“Cherene Jennet?” That was Pralineh.

I whirled. Pralineh was just visible a ways down the path on
the other side of the house, a broad, shallow basket in one hand, half-full of
flower cuttings.

I hunched my shoulders up, whirled back around, and stalked
determinedly toward that wall. My head thumped too hard for me to run, but if I
could just—

“Cherene Jennet? Please stop,” Pralineh called, hurrying
toward me with some difficulty, the huge basket bumping against her legs.

“I have to. Go home,” I said, feeling weirder by the moment.
A rushing sound in my ears made me grip the wall. “Home.”

Pralineh took hold of my wrist, uncertain what to do; then
she gave an exclamation of relief as capable hands steadied me by the
shoulders, turned me around and guided me firmly away. The hands only let go
when we reached the glass doors to my room; I kicked the door shut behind me
without turning around, flopped down on the bed, eyes closed, aware only of my
own breathing, for a long time.

Gradually I became aware of a gentle tugging at my hair.

It felt soothing. I looked over as Pralineh drew a
soft-bristled brush through my long black hair, which had gotten impossibly
tangled. But Pralineh worked the tangles out with gentle fingers. It actually
made me feel a tiny bit better. That is, my physical self. The bad feelings
remained, and I struggled not to howl with anger and grief.