Quite Contrary (8 page)

That all became moot as the flailing Wolf happened to swat the Queen with a foot, and one of his claws scratched her forearm.

She screamed. It hit me, it filled the air, it blotted out all other noise. The ground pitched and shook. Trees fell down at the edges of the green. New trees and rocks thrust up out of the ground. The table bent and splintered in two places. Doors opened out of the air. Doors everywhere, with a different view behind each of them. Fairies charged out of some of them or fled into others.

Rat jumped up and grabbed the hem of my skirt. His teeth were smeared with a yellow goo that might be fairy blood. I closed my fist around him immediately, yanking him free of the fabric. “Get her out of here! This is her only chance!” I shrieked at him, hoping my voice could carry three inches over the Queen’s primal, incoherent bellow. Then, I threw him hard, and he hit Elizabeth right in the bodice of her fancy gown.

Alone as usual, I spun around and dove into the nearest door. Please, Rat-In-Boots, be as smart as I thought you were, and make Elizabeth do the same.

ideways became up as I passed through the door. I tried to roll as I hit the ground, but it turns out that’s not easy. My shoulder and side hurt. I did roll a few feet, so maybe it did help. It was hard to tell. I was so tired.

I’d hardly noticed being tired and hungry in Fairyland. Now exhaustion weighed me down and my belly gnawed at me. I’d hit the ground somewhere dark, but I could see light. Pushing myself up, I trudged out into the brighter shadows of a rocky nighttime field. I didn’t see any buildings. I did see a flat space and a log. I bunched up the hood and cape to cushion my wooden pillow and fell asleep. I knew I should be running from the Wolf, but I couldn’t run anyway.

I woke up eventually, to bright sun and a hollow, aching hunger. I had no idea where I was, but it wasn’t Fairyland. This place was weird, but it wasn’t surreal. Rocks, small hills, bushes, and a lot of moss and lichen summed up the landscape. Anything that wasn’t green was black. The dark place I’d come out of last night turned out to be a cave in the sharply vertical hill nearby.

Man, I was hungry. Hungry and alone.

I’d have to learn to take care of myself without a talking rat. I wasn’t too sore when I stood up and looked around. I admit, I didn’t see anything that looked like it could be eaten. Could I learn to hunt? AND make fire? I’d have to learn pretty fast.

Smoke wisped up over the edge of a ridge. I could see it, so I could walk there. Smoke might mean people, who would have food. Or it might mean something else entirely. I wasn’t getting anywhere standing here. I walked.

My new shoes ate up the ground, refusing to slip on anything and ignoring the sharpest looking rocks. Boy, what had the magic shoes been like? I was so hungry. A smell of eggs made it worse, and the smoke ahead looked more like steam. I climbed up to the top of the ridge and looked down into a wide cup filled with steaming pools. Ha! Hot springs! I knew it!

Hot springs weren’t food, but a bath would be nice. A bath would be very nice. I’d mostly gotten rid of the slime when I changed into this disastrously stupid Red Riding Hood costume, which merely left me sweaty, dingy, and smeared with Halloween makeup. I felt dirty and hungry, and feeling clean and hungry would be an improvement.

I wrestled my shoes off, and dipped a toe into a pool. Ow! Okay, too hot. What about the others? A few tests and a distinct feeling that my toes had been roasted later, I found a pool that was bearably hot. I untied the god-awful hood and flung it on a rock, then twisted out of the silly red and white dress and threw it on top. My underwear hadn’t done anything to offend me, but I flung it down just as hard. Teach it to stand in the way of my bath!

Gingerly, wincing at the heat, I slid into the pool. Lethargically, I dunked my hair and scrubbed my face, but the hot water felt too good. After that, I just crouched in the middle and baked.

Something moved. The Wolf? No. An older teenage boy, shockingly blonde, leaned over the edge of the bowl holding the hot springs. That wasn’t as bad as the Wolf, even if I was stark naked, but the crossbow he had pointed at me supplied plenty of menace.

“What’s your name, girl?” It was accent day. His wasn’t as thick as Elizabeth’s, and I couldn’t place it.

“F—” I started, and gritted my teeth. A promise was a promise even if Rat-In-Boots wasn’t here to hear me break it, and even if I’d never said the words ‘I promise.’ “Why? Will it make a difference in whether or not you shoot me?” I snarled back instead.

“I’ll try not to shoot you, girl,” he replied. He was so smug, talking slowly and savoring every word as he went on, “Why damage what is now mine? Unless you have some guardian to fight me for you, I claim you as spoils. Step out of the water and face me.”

“I’m naked, you idiot!” I yelled back at him.

“I know,” he answered, all gloating delight. “Out of the water.”

Another noise, and someone else’s head rose up over the ridge behind the boy. Another teenager, this time a girl with skin as pale as mine and peroxide blonde hair. She stared at me for a moment, and then she and the boy jerked. I didn’t see what she’d done behind the rock ledge, but he yelped in pain as she shouted, “Are you blind, stupid, or perverted, Eric? She can’t have passed eleven winters!”

“She’ll grow up eve—ow! Okay, I didn’t mean that! I didn’t!” ‘Eric’ barked back. He hadn’t. I knew how a boy looked at a girl when he was interested. Eric had just been bullying me.

“Then what did you mean, treating a stranger and a child like some prize in a raid?” the girl pushed.

“I wanted to draw out her guard for a duel! She can’t be out here alone!” he squeaked back. It was surreal how guilty and desperate he looked and sounded. He’d just been pointing a bow at me! Now the bow lay there as the platinum blonde laid into him.

“And that’s better? Eric, do you know who the girl’s family are? Her chief, and king, and nation? Do we have a war against them? Do you want to start one? Do you even know the difference between a hero and a bandit?” From the boy’s repeated grunts, I thought she kept on kicking him.

The kicks didn’t seem to do much, but he admitted grudgingly, “… you’re right, Valdis. I went too far. I’m sorry.”

“You’re such a jackass sometimes, Eric,” she sighed. Then, she stepped up onto the edge of the bowl. She wore a long blue shirt and white pants, and she called down to me, “You’re the one who deserves an apology, stranger. Please don’t judge us by how we met. If he’d spent more than half a thought and understood what he was doing, he wouldn’t have threatened you.”

“That’s not real reassuring,” I replied noncommitally. I was still butt naked in a hot spring I didn’t want to stand up in with two armed teenagers. Yes, armed. The girl had a sword at her waist.

She dropped to one knee, punched Eric in the top of his head, and lowered her own. “No, it is not. Please, I apologize for both of us. Let us make amends somehow. I swear, Eric is a rude stranger but a good friend. I’d like to prove it.”

“I don’t see how you can,” I groused. My stomach immediately made its own demand. “But if you’ve got any food, it would be a start.”

“Our hospitality is yours, in our homes and on the trail,” she answered, taking me seriously. “When you are clothed, we will share our meal with you, or if you wish you may leave and we will not follow. Either way, Eric and I will be facing the other way with our eyes closed.”

The last ended in a needling tone that got a glare from the boy. A glare that ended as his face turned solemn as well. He turned around, disappearing behind the rocks, and I heard him call, “Valdis is right. About everything. I apologize, stranger.” His voice rasped with the effort of forcing that apology. That made me, just maybe, inclined to believe it. The apologies that are easy to make are the ones people don’t mean.

Which left me free to choose whatever I wanted, I supposed. I wanted food, even if it meant hanging around with a bully a few more minutes. Yeah, forget righteousness. I was starving.

I could see the girl’s shoulders and the back of her head, and I couldn’t see the boy at all. They couldn’t see me. I still felt painfully bare and helpless as I sloshed out of the pool and pulled on my clothes. Panties, then shoes, and dress last, my nervousness ordered. I ignored it and left my shoes until the end, after I’d tied all of the dress’s laces.

“I’m as dressed as I’m going to get,” I announced.

“I’ll make a fire,” the boy declared, standing up.

The girl’s glower cracked to flash him a brief smile. “I’ll make introductions.”

A few minutes later, I sat on a rock and forced myself to at least try and see these two fresh. They were both teenagers, maybe high school seniors if we were back home. I couldn’t guess for sure, because the boy was so big. His height and massive shoulders would have done any football team proud and turned the knees of any cheerleader I’d ever met into quivering jelly. The girl was also tall and in good shape, and she had him beat on being pale and blonde. Her skin looked like milk and I kept staring at the roots of her hair because I couldn’t believe it could be that platinum blonde naturally. Apparently it was. They both wore loose blue shirts and pants that should have made them shapeless, but failed. And weapons. And bags tied in thick twine.

“My name is Valdis Helasdottir, and the fool with his mainlander bow is Eric Fells, Son Of Thor,” the girl explained as she wrestled a bag open.

“… really son of Thor?” I asked. It was hard to be skeptical. While I watched, Eric broke a small tree off at ground level with his hands and snapped it into bits over his knee.

“Really son of Thor,” Valdis assured me. She sounded amused, but I didn’t think she was making fun of me. “Three travelers visited our village nine months before he was born. Nall made a bet with one over an arm wrestling contest. He lost, and the stranger claimed a night with his wife as his prize. When the travelers left the next morning, the sign of the hammer had been stamped over Nall’s bed. Nine months later, Eric was born.”

“Despite that, my father loves me and has raised me as his own, and I keep his family name,” Erik chimed in as he dumped the broken up tree trunk in a pile. Slipping the hefty metal sledgehammer out of his belt, he stabbed the handle into the wood, and with a loud crack and a flash of blue, the logs caught fire. “But by blood, I am the son of Thor,” he finished proudly. He sounded proud of both fathers. It made him slightly less of a jerk. Slightly.

“I guess you can’t expect a god to sleep alone,” I hedged, not sure what to think of that story.

That made them both laugh, and Valdis said, “They thought so. It was my half-sister Nilda who kept Odin company that night. We were still at war with the Flint Spire village at that time, and my father was our war chief. The Allfather offered to trade a plan that would win us the war completely for Nilda during his stay. My father would have refused, but Nilda accepted the offer on her own, so that was that! No child came of that pairing, but one half Aesir in the village is enough.”

From their jovial smiles, Valdis and Eric loved these stories. Village gossip with added mythology, I supposed.

“So, no doubt the third traveler was Loki, and whatever girl was forced to keep him happy didn’t end up pregnant because of it,” I said.