Quite Contrary (33 page)

If I didn’t touch her, she’d stand there dithering for an hour. Any second now, she’d ask me what she should do. I took her by the shoulders, turned her to face the door, and pushed her until she started walking. “Just get it over with.”

Lightening the pressure made her slow down, so I kept pushing until we got out in the hall. “Point.” She did, reluctantly, and I steered her that way.

“Come on, come on! It won’t be that bad. It never is, and I was just dead!” Scarecrow urged Breeze, skipping out in front of us. She grabbed Breeze’s hands in both of hers and walked backwards, pulling Breeze forwards.

That broke the princess’s reluctance, and I was able to let her go as she walked on her own. We got a half-hearted tour as Breeze pointed at doors and said things like “Those are my Dad’s rooms,” and “My organ is in there. I wish I had time to show it to you!” She didn’t think the escalators were worth mentioning, but as I stepped onto a long, downwards ramp and the wind picked me up and carried me gently to the first floor, well, that was pretty cool.

Breeze’s castle was pretty informal. I didn’t see anyone except a pair of young men carrying trays of food until we got to the great hall, and as her father had promised, it was more of a big dining room. The family liked white, but the place was short on fancy candelabras, and the great hall wasn’t half as big as what used to be my school’s gymnasium.

Her father sat at the head of the table, and he wasn’t as gray as Breeze, except in the hair, but he tried. Everything about him was stiff and straight, even his immaculately pressed clothes. At least Breeze’s dress was dirty around the hem from our encounter by the sea.

He had a lot of books and stared intently at a map, although the map was a joke. The castle and town were well marked, as well as the cliff, but around them stretched a lot of blank space and a few arrows with notes like ‘Murky Forest’ and ‘Dragons’ pointing off the edges.

He looked up at us, and his face remained stiff. “Who are your friends?”

This guy really did not want to act surprised.

“Travelers. From very far away, I think. They were shipwrecked, and I heard them yelling and carried them home.” Breeze did her best to mimic his composure, back straight and hands clasped behind her. She wasn’t nearly as good at it.

“You aren’t supposed to be flying over the sea in the first place,” her father said.

She gave up, and hung her head guiltily. “No.”

“Saving lives is more important than whether you snuck out at night, or where to.” He. looked straight at me. “I am Torr, King of the Air. May I ask your names?”

“Mary,” I answered reluctantly.

“I’m Scarecrow, and he’s a talking rat!” Scarecrow added.

“Rat-In-Boots, Your Majesty,” Rat corrected, doing a fair job of bowing while holding onto my sleeve with two feet and one hand. “Still looking for my boots.”

“At this hour, you must be exhausted,” the king huffed. “Are you more hungry, or tired?”

“Hungry,” I answered. Then I kicked myself mentally.
Mary, the guy’s being nice to you, even if he acts like he has himself starched every morning.
“Your Majesty.”

“You can stay with Breeze while you’re here. I’ll have food sent up to her chambers, and we can all talk again in the morning.” He gave Breeze a very deliberate look. I didn’t buy it, but she did.

“Yes, Dad,” she mumbled, shuffling backwards and curtseying twice.

I stumped after her.

Maybe she hadn’t bought it. The moment the four of us were out of sight of anyone else, Breeze sighed. “I think I got out of it. Thanks to you!”

The trip back to her rooms went much faster, since Breeze was in much more of a hurry. So much so that her feet didn’t always touch the ground. Where I swung my legs and hit the floor with my shoes hard, and Scarecrow bounced and skipped every other step, Breeze would lift both feet and glide forward a few paces.

The wind-powered escalator going back up was just as cool as the one going down.

When we got back to Breeze’s rooms, I knew just where to go. The food had gotten here first, and I left Breeze behind as I followed the smell down the hall and into another bedroom. This one had way too much pink in it. I was twelve, not six, for pity’s sake. But it had three trays of every possible combination of eggs, bacon, fruit, fried bread, and hot cheese. Plus, more root beer. Or something like root beer. Carbonation must not have been a big mystery for people who were friends with the wind.

I’d slept pretty well before, but the meal made me logy and the bed had a lot of cushions. I propped myself up on them and fell asleep watching Scarecrow poking at a mobile that hung from the ceiling.

woke up about forty times, each of them just long enough to register that Scarecrow had wandered into the bedroom or out of the bedroom or opened a drawer or made noise some other way. When I finally woke up properly, with sunlight filtering through the curtains, I was impressed I’d slept at all with Rat and Scarecrow in the room. Rat had curled up on my shoulder, and with me leaning back against a mountain of pillows, he’d fallen asleep with all four legs sticking in the air again. All I could smell was rat, which prompted a thought.

“How hard do you think it would be to get a bath in this place?” I asked.

“I think they have showers!” Scarecrow answered. She’d gotten hold of a little stuffed doll and a miniature version of Breeze’s wings, and had the doll flying in short circles on the end of a string.

“Two hot showers in twenty-four hours. This is a turn for the better.” I let out a sigh of momentary contentment.

Rat rolled over on my shoulder, and I shook him onto the mattress. I headed straight for the bathroom, working the laces on my Red Riding Hood dress. As Rat scurried to follow me, I pushed him back out with my foot and shut the door on him—although why either of us bothered, who knows?

I liked the bathroom. It looked pretty modern, although it had multiple faucets for everything. If the marble walls, floor, and everything were real marble, well, Breeze was a princess, right? She had at least two more bathrooms like this.

Scarecrow was right, too. It had a shower stall, but no bathtub. I leaned in and turned one of the knobs, and then yelled very loudly indeed.

“I’m fine! I’m fine!” I had to shout as I heard Rat squeaking through the door.

“Just wet,” I added under my breath. I turned the not-a-shower off, and dripped. It had sort of been a shower, but more like standing in a washing machine. The locals liked to be vigorously clean, and the stall door was definitely not meant to be open when the miniature hurricane turned on.

I wrung out as much water as I could from my clothes into the stall’s drain. Well, okay. I was soaking wet. The bathroom was past ‘soaking wet’ to ‘covered in puddles’. But even my costume felt clean.

I found a small towel and did my best to scrub my hair dry, then stepped out of the bathroom. At least my shoes were out here and dry, and Rat didn’t say anything about my condition. Wonder of wonders, neither did Scarecrow.

Breeze, on the other hand, peeked in the door, which I’d have to tell Scarecrow never to leave open. “I heard voices. Are you—oh, my. Why—no, of course. You don’t have your own winds to dry yourself, do you? Here!” Her breeze rolled into the room, flapping loose covers and blowing all around me. Feeling it touch me everywhere gave me the heebie-jeebies, especially if it might be alive, but the result was as good as standing in a blow dryer. I soon became merely damp.

“Thanks,” I told her reluctantly.

“Would you like a late breakfast? I’m sure my father would love to meet you properly!” Breeze asked. She was transparent as glass. She wanted a distraction in case her dad still wanted to chew her out.

Eesh. I guess I owed it to her.

“Okay, if you’ll feed Rat too,” I grumbled.

The hesitation showed that it hadn’t occurred to her. “Yes. Of course.”

“C’mon, Scarecrow.” I, tugged her upright as we trailed after Breeze.

The princess’s feet hardly touched the floor this morning, although without her wings, an inch off the ground seemed to be her limit. It explained why she didn’t wear shoes.

My shoes were squishy from damp feet, but I was sticking with them.

Breeze guided us to the hall where she’d said her father’s rooms were, and into what had to be a dining room for the royal family. Lots of wood, glass skylights, and a table that would only fit a dozen people, tops. Laid with enough food for forty, of course.

“Good morning! May our guests eat with us?” Breeze chirped at her father, as if she had absolutely no reason to be afraid she might be in trouble at all. She could not have been more obvious.

On the other hand, she clearly knew her audience.

King Torr set aside a tray cover. “Of course. In fact, we have another guest. I’m sure you felt the storm blow over us at dawn. My lady, are you ready to eat?”

“I believe I’m finally cleaned up. Thank you, Torr. You’re so generous.” A woman stepped into the room, wrapped in a dressing gown. It hugged her figure, but trailed down almost to the floor and wasn’t actually immodest. It just clung as she walked, and accented her model perfect face and the faintly pearlescent green of her long hair. My brain caught up. It had taken a few seconds. After all, she looked and sounded different when she wasn’t screaming in rage.

Eyes wide, Breeze said it for me. “Dad, that’s the sea witch who attacked me last night.”

“What?” The fairy was so much better at this than Breeze. Her puzzled frown suggested nothing more than she didn’t understand what Breeze had said.

“And we need to talk about you being out over the sea last night, Breeze,” the King answered.

The fairy laid her hand on the King’s wrist, distracting him for a moment and softening his stiff expression.

I took it as my chance. “This you have to face alone, Princess. Just show me the way back to your room,” I grabbed Scarecrow and Breeze’s wrists and pulling them back out of the dining room. Just for good measure, I shut the door behind us hard, so everyone would know how mad I was.

It hadn’t been a good performance. I just hoped this was something fairies were stupid about. “We are getting out of here, now,” I hissed under my breath.

“She must be staying in a nearby room. She’ll have a cloak, or a shawl. It’ll be lined with fish scales. We can prove what she is,” Rat whispered from my shoulder.

“Yes!” Breeze whispered, entirely too loud.

“No,” I contradicted both of them flatly. “Which way is out?”

“We could get you and the wooden girl wings—” Breeze started.

“And be visible for miles. A door. Out. We need to run, Princess, right now!” I whispered. In fact, since I knew which way Breeze’s rooms were, I dragged her and Scarecrow in the opposite direction. Plotting right outside a room the fairy was in would be idiotic.

“Miss Mary, all we have to do is expose her. To leave the water she had to carry some proof of what she was!” Rat insisted.

“He’s not going to listen,” I snapped. “Door! Which way? It’ll have to be on the ground floor, right?” I remembered how to get to the escalators. I dragged a stumbling Breeze that way. Fortunately, she didn’t have enough spine to fight me. Which was good. She was at least twenty pounds heavier.