Quite Contrary (34 page)

“My Dad will listen to me!” Breeze squeaked, still trying to whisper.

“Where’s your mother?” I glared at the princess, hard and vicious. I had to get this through her thick skull, and we didn’t have any time!

“She died. Two years ago.” Breeze’s expression turned bleak, her eyes glisteny. Not how I’d meant to do it, but I’d gotten her to be serious.

I jerked my head back behind us. “That’s your new stepmother. She just walked out of your Dad’s bathroom wearing next to nothing. She’s a fairy who wants to kill you. You put the rest of the pieces together yourself.”

She shivered, and the first tears slid out of the corners of her eyes.

“Cry later. We get out of the castle now,” I growled. We stepped into the stream of air that carried us gently down the escalators towards the ground floor. “Everybody would rather fly. There are doors on ground level nobody notices, right?”

Breeze nodded. She’d given up. Thank goodness. We were getting out of here.

Getting out stayed easy. Breeze stopped arguing, and the castle was riddled with unguarded ground floor doors. The town wasn’t much different. A few people walked the streets, but most of them buzzed over the rooftops on wings smaller and less gaudy than Breeze’s. We were still too visible, but it beat flying.

“Miss Mary,” Rat whispered into my ear, and pointed down the street.

Looks like freight was too heavy to fly. Plain old ordinary wagons, or at least wagons with an engine in front that was no doubt wind powered, lined up by the side of the street. I walked up to one that had been unloaded and was being reloaded, with Breeze shuffling despondently behind me and Scarecrow gawking at the town with her hands clasped behind her neck.

“Hey, Mister,” I told the guy loading bags onto the wagon bed, “Can we get a ride out of town to pick up her wings?”

He didn’t argue, so I pushed Breeze up onto the wagon, and gave Scarecrow a shove until she figured it out and climbed up herself. The next bag dropped onto the wooden boards must have been the last, because the wagoner leaned down and whispered to me, “She looks miserable. The King must be furious.”

“If we can get her wings back fast and quiet, I’m hoping it’ll blow over.” I lied with the appropriate solemn face. I couldn’t have hidden who Breeze was, so I’d bet on it instead.

After that, the wagon pulled out and we sat, swinging our legs over the edge, as it took us down the hill and out of the town. The wind engine pulled smoothly, slightly faster than we could have walked. It wasn’t a great solution, but it worked.

Eventually, Scarecrow leaned over and asked, “Is there a way to make her stop being so unhappy?”

She meant Breeze, of course. The princess sat slumped forward with her hands on her knees, staring over the edge of the wagon bed at the ground. I shook my head at Scarecrow, and so did Rat.

“There has to be something,” Scarecrow leaned in closer. If Breeze heard us, and she
had
to hear us, she didn’t show any sign. Rat and I shook our heads again.

“Geez,” Scarecrow complained, leaning back and propping her hands behind her on the boards. Being Scarecrow, she sounded perky about it and stared at the birds and people flying around in the sky with all signs of interest.

The wagons ambled down the hill. The town shrank behind us at the top. Finally, the wagon stopped and the guy up front called back, “You girls going farther? We stop here at the depot.”

“They’re stuck in a tree, right inside the woods,” I lied, pointing at the forest right ahead of us. The road turned around it. We’d get good and lost in five minutes in there.

“No wonder King Torr’s mad. Good luck. There should be a wagon heading back up around sundown,” he said.

I nodded and pulled Breeze down onto the road top, which turned to asphalt where it curved away from the trees. Scarecrow hopped down, her shoes plopping almost as loudly as mine. I slipped an arm around Breeze’s shoulders and walked her out towards the woods. It was a little too close for my tastes, not to mention awkward since she was most of a head taller than me, but it put on the right show. Maybe it would do something for her. She hadn’t recovered at all.

Rat must have been thinking about that, too. “It will work out, Your Highness. I know all the tricks of the fairies. Either a prince will come rescue you, or more likely, the witch will expose herself now that you’ve run away. When your father figures out what she is, the spell on him will be broken.”

“The only spell on him is a magically perfect body, and he doesn’t want it broken,” I snapped.

Rat didn’t let me break his flow. “His love for his daughter will win out as soon as the witch reveals herself. She’ll be getting desperate right now.”

Branches arched over our heads, cutting us off from being spotted from the sky. “We won’t rely on it, or on a prince. If it happens, great. Until then, you save yourself.”

If he hadn’t been clinging to my cape right by my ear, I wouldn’t have heard the little husky breath, the angry cut off sigh as Rat tried to hold his temper. Mine flamed up, burning up my spine. It was time for our big fight. It had to happen sooner or later. I waited for him to make whatever little jab would start it.

He didn’t. And he
still
didn’t. He wasn’t going to. That was almost as infuriating. Didn’t he have the guts to stand up to me? He obviously didn’t think I was right. He just didn’t want to fight with me.

Crap, and I didn’t want to fight, either. I reached up and rubbed the top of his head with my thumb. He didn’t press into it or anything, but we’d push this confrontation off a little longer.

Or maybe he was smarter than me, and he hadn’t wanted to argue because we were already freaking out Breeze. She stopped suddenly and yelped, “I want to go home!” Pressing the heels of her hands to her eyes, she started to bawl.

Geez. I didn’t want to blame her, but this was stupid and dangerous as—

Too late. Branches rustled and snapped, and leaves flew everywhere. Two men strapped into wings crashed down through the canopy to land in front of us, spears pointed in our direction. Another two came down behind, and I saw a guard on either side of us crouched up in the treetops. There might be more.

One final soldier landed more carefully, holding onto the sea fairy with her arms wrapped around his neck. I’d say he didn’t mind that job, but his eyes were too spaced out. Fairies loved their mind control magic.

“Thank the wind, we’ve caught them. I told you, that tiny witch cast a spell over the princess and kidnapped her. We’ll take them both back with us.” She pulled off the concerned and good-natured stepmother act perfectly.

I wanted to argue, but the guards didn’t look ensorcelled, they just looked completely convinced. They knew what they wanted to believe already.

Someone argued for me. A choked off scream and thump gave me all of a second and a half of warning, then my Wolf leaped down off a branch and landed barely five feet away from me. Great. My Wolf could climb, too.

Is that really the first thing you can think at a time like this, Mary?

“Red Riding Hood is mine,” he announced in that deep, always confident voice.

He’d misjudged his audience badly. No one wanted to talk. Everyone screamed. I was one of ‘everyone.’ The guards weren’t paying attention to me. I turned and ran.

Out of the corner of my eye, I saw a guard grab Breeze by the arm. I was leaving her and Scarecrow behind. The Wolf was right behind me. There was no way I could escape anyway. He yelped, boomingly loud. I didn’t look back to see what happened.

The fairy snapped, “They’re both mine.”

My Wolf’s deep, smooth voice went suddenly ragged. “I am out of patience.”

Everyone started to scream again, and I pushed my legs harder, my whole body hurting as I put every step between myself and the violence going on behind me as fast as possible.

But, “Breeze,” I panted.

“She’s safe. Your story just killed hers,” Rat said by my ear. He sounded afraid. That was the right way to sound right now.

Noise. Feet pounding on fallen leaves, coming up behind me. “You can run faster than that, right?” Scarecrow asked.

I tried. I had nothing to worry about but putting distance between me and the shrieking and snarling and snapping wood behind me. Behind me, and getting quieter.

Still too close. My Wolf had caught up with me so fast.

e was right behind me this time, and I couldn’t possibly outrun him. How long would it take to kill a few guards and a fairy? Is that what he was doing? I ran some more. My shoes pounded against the forest floor. A log lay in front of me, and I jumped over it. Stupid. I couldn’t outrun him!

I needed a clever plan right now. I tried to tell Rat, but pain stung my lungs. I wouldn’t be able to run much longer. “Need a door, or—something!” I wheezed. My legs sped along, but my lungs jolted me again.

“We could try the maze,” Scarecrow chirped. “Maybe he’ll get lost!”

She grabbed my wrist, and I yanked it away. She grabbed it again. “Come on, let me save you this time!” She sounded so cheerful. Did she not understand that my life was on the line? That I wouldn’t even hear the paws that were catching up behind me? What game was she playing now?

She’s not playing a game, Mary. She wants to help.

Her head was made of wood, and she was about that smart. She wanted to help me. I couldn’t step on that. I couldn’t.

“What maze?” I croaked.

“The one we’re already in. This way!” Scarecrow answered. She was still skipping. She yanked me to the side, and we ran in a different direction. She turned suddenly and pulled me in yet another direction.

“What—there’s no—” I tried to ask, but I couldn’t. My lungs ached.

“We can stop running. You can walk, right? Will walking be good?” Scarecrow asked. She drew up short, and I wished she’d needed to pull me to a stop. Instead, I bent over, hands on my knees, and fought to breathe.

“Don’t have time—” I whispered hoarsely. I was too tired to be as afraid as I needed to be.

“We might. We went in all kinds of circles when we ran through the maze’s walls. The Wolf will do the same thing, right?”

“What walls?” Rat asked for me.

Forest surrounded us. A lot of trees, but no walls. Not even many bushes.

“Like this one!” Scarecrow let go of my wrist and bounced over to a tree. Reaching up to a low branch, she plucked a web made of rough string tied between two twigs.

What? I wheezed some more. I would be doing that anyway. It gave me time to look around. The forest hadn’t changed. I’d seen a lot of trees in the last few days, and these didn’t cluster too tightly. They were mostly yellow, but a few clung stubbornly to green. There wasn’t anything to see except that tangle of strings with a button and a feather hanging from them.

Nothing to see with human eyes.

Rat got there right before me. “Magic. Miss Mary, we’re not wandering in the woods anymore. We’re on the outskirts of somewhere. This part of the forest belongs to someone.”

“Someone who put a lot of work into the spells you’ve been bashing away at so hard,” added an old woman’s voice, right on time. “You throw around magic like a battering ram, but I still don’t know how you got so deep.”