Alyssa reached into the side pocket of her pack and pulled out the compass. She held it in her hand until the needle stopped moving and pointed in the direction of the path.
"Sorry, love, that's not going to do you much good here." The mouse snorted. "But then, that's why you have a ticket."
"Why not? That must be north." Alyssa pointed in the direction that the compass did.
"Turn around three times."
Alyssa blew out her breath and did as the mouse instructed. The compass needle now pointed down the road in the direction they had come. Well, this sucks.She put it back into her pack, wondering how many of the other items she had chosen to bring with would also prove useless. Max pranced down the trail and she followed him. After walking through the silent woods for what seemed like miles and drinking half the water in one of her bottles, she spotted a cottage nestled among the trees near the path. Smoke drifted from the brick chimney and black and purple flowers bloomed in planters hanging from the windows on either side of the purple wooden door.
Max turned off the path to follow flat stones that led to the cottage door.
Alyssa trailed after him and banged on the door.
A little girl opened it. "Yes?" She had blond pigtails, almost as long as she stood tall, and wore a purple and black checked pinafore over a starched taffeta dress with puffed sleeves and a full skirt. The dress fabric shifted between purple and black.
"We're looking for Giserella," Alyssa said.
"I'm Giserella. Why?"
"The ticket lady said I could get a magic potion from you to cure my grandma from pancreatic cancer." She didn't say you were just a brat.
Giserella put her little fists on her hips. "And why would I want to give you that?"
"We've got cool stuff to give you," Max said.
Alyssa glared at him.
"Oh." Giserella tilted her head to one side. "Like what?"
Max pushed his nose at the pack. The mouse stepped away from the strap and Alyssa lifted it off her shoulders. She reached into the outside pocket, pulled out the compass and offered it to Giserella.
"What do I want with this?" She handed it back to Alyssa. "It won't work here."
Alyssa rummaged around in her pack, trying to decide what she could part with. Max nudged her elbow when she touched the MP3 player. Reluctantly, she withdrew it. "What about this?"
"That's more like it." The girl's lips curled upward and Alyssa noticed that her teeth came to sharp points. "Of course, this might get you a cure for breast cancer or maybe lung cancer. But, pancreatic cancer, that's a little trickier." She held the MP3 player up to her ear and shook it.
Alyssa, while trying to find the cell phone that seemed to have gotten buried in the bottom of the pack, pulled out her t-shirt and set it on the porch.
Giserella picked it up. "Very nice." She held up the black t-shirt with a purple Pink Floyd emblem on it. "All right, then, I'll make you a potion. It'll take me a while. You may as well come inside and wait."
Alyssa bent down to whisper in Max's ear. "Stupid dog, I'm out an MP3 player 'cause a you." He ignored her and they followed Giserella into the cottage. The top of the doorway grazed Alyssa's hair and the ceiling inside wasn't much higher. When Giserella pointed to a wooden rocking chair in front of the fireplace, Alyssa sat in it.
Giserella bustled about, throwing things into an iron pot hanging from a metal hook that swung out from the fireplace.
Alyssa couldn't identify everything that went into the pot, but she saw a copper coin, several black feathers, a small block of wood, a handful of pebbles, an apple core, a dead rat, and a live snake. This is so stupid.
Giserella left the cottage and came back with a bucket that she emptied into the pot. She counted out seventeen drops from a blue glass bottle in the shape of a unicorn; the liquid emerged from its horn. She pushed the kettle over the fire.
Alyssa gripped the arms of the chair so she wouldn't bolt out the door, and stared at the pot. Finally, after what seemed like forever, she saw the liquid inside bubbling. Giserella dragged a tall stool over to the corner, climbed on it, and pulled a spiderweb from the ceiling. Holding two of the corners, she kept it intact until she draped it over the pot.
Geez, how disgusting is that?
Wiping her hands on her pinafore, Giserella sat in a smaller version of the rocker that held Alyssa. "How long has your grandmother had cancer?"
"Not quite a year." Alyssa swallowed her anger about the MP3 player and tried to be civil. "Mom says she might not make it 'til Christmas."
"Shoulda come sooner. She'll have to drink a lot. Make her take a glassful while standing on one foot and holding her breath every time she takes a piss 'til it's gone."
Alyssa stared. "Don't think Grandma can stand, never mind on one foot."
"Someone can support her, that's okay. But she's gotta hold her breath." Giserella rocked back and forth, kicking the floor with her heels.
Alyssa scrabbled about in her backpack until she found a scrap of paper and the dragon pen. She repeated the instructions as she wrote them down. "Glassful every time she pees while standing on one foot and holding her breath." She looked up. "She supposed to do all this while taking a leak?"
"No, she can do it after."
"Which foot?" Does any of this matter. No way is this stuff going to work and Grandma shouldn't have to drink something so nasty.
"Don't matter."
"How big a glass."
"Any size, just make sure it's completely full and she drinks it all."
Alyssa looked up. "So a shot glass and a water glass work the same?"
Giserella nodded. "Shot glass'll just take her longer to finish the jug, but if she's having trouble swallowing..."
Alyssa rolled back her eyes, but wrote that down too. Grandma was a stickler for precise instructions so she would bring her precise instructions. She tucked the paper into her pocket and returned the pen to her pack.
The snake in the pot screamed.
Giserella jumped up, pulled the snake out of the pot, and swung the kettle from the fire. Using a wooden ladle, she transferred the liquid in the pot to a purple clay jug bigger than Alyssa's backpack. Then she blew through the hole three times, and stuck a cork in it. "There ya go. Careful going back to the coach stop."
"Thanks a lot." If the stuff in the jug didn't work, no way would her dad buy her a new MP3 player. "I hope you like the music I have on the MP3 player."
"Music? No, I don't need any music, thanks."
Alyssa put on her backpack and struggled to hoist the jug up so she could carry it out of the cottage. "Stupid dog," she said as soon as the door closed behind them. "She doesn't even know what to do with my MP3 player."
"You're the one who decided to use your ticket to get a cure for your grandmother." Max trotted toward the path. "Not my fault you brought stuff you couldn't live without." He turned and looked over his shoulder. "Only two kinds of people visit Giserella: those who bring her presents that she likes and those she eats for supper."
Alyssa shuddered, and dismissed the idea as folderol, another one of Dad's favorite words. When she got to the path that led back to the road, she set the jug down. She couldn't carry it in her arms all the way back to the coach stop. After she stared at it for a few minutes, she pulled Max's leash from her pack, strung it through the two handles of the jug, and attached the clip to the loop. She lifted the leash onto her shoulder, resting it on the padded strap of her pack, and set off to follow the path back toward the road.
"Wrong way." Max headed in the other direction.
"But that's the way we came." Alyssa looked around, confused. She couldn't see Giserella's cottage.
"That's the way here; it's not the way back." Max kept walking.
"Now, hang on a minute. That just doesn't make sense. Why can't we retrace our steps?"
"Because this is Faerie, love," the mouse said. "The way in isn't the same as the way out."
Alyssa muttered under her breath. And,
I'm supposed to believe a stupid white mouse and a dog who gives away my stuff. But she trudged off in Max's trail. The dog slowed until she caught up with him, and then resumed a brisker pace.
"Max, I've got to carry this pack and the jug. Don't go so fast."
"At this rate, it's gonna take us a couple of days to get to the coach stop." But he slowed his pace a little.
"How come we can't make it back to the coach stop in a couple of hours? Only took us that long to reach Giserella's."
Max ignored her.
Stupid, stupid, stupid.Struggling to keep up with Max, Alyssa didn't have enough breath to rant out loud.
As they walked, the path became a road and the forest drifted into meadows. The meadows slowly became tilled fields of tall pink grass on one side and some kind of orange, bean-like crop on the other. Off in the distance, Alyssa occasionally saw an odd-shaped house or barn. One, although freshly painted, had such strange construction it looked like it would keel over at any minute. A little later, they passed a shed near the road with one wall and its roof missing. Odd shaped pieces of wood, rusted tools, and other debris littered the ground around it.
Alyssa had walked several yards past the mess when she stopped, turned around and walked back. She set down the jug and pulled a couple of round pieces from the pile of wood. Wheels.
Max sat down in the road.
Miss Lisle wiggled her whiskers. "What in the world are you up to?"
"If I have to traipse around Faerie for another day or two, I'm not lugging this jug." Alyssa dug through the pile and found two long poles, a shorter one, and a few square flat pieces with holes in them. "My shoulder's killing me already." She stripped off her pack and set the mouse on top of the jug.
She mucked around in the mess until she found a hunk of metal big enough to use as a hammer and a couple of dozen nails in various sizes and stages of rusting. Good thing Mom talked Dad into letting me take woodshop.One after another she held pieces together and pounded in nail after nail. She put the shorter pole through holes in the side pieces and attached that to the wheels. In the end, her contraption didn't look half bad. "Max, will you pull the jug for Grandma?"
He tilted his head to one side. "I suppose. Your grandma always gives me a big rawhide bone for Christmas." He licked his chops.
With him standing between the longer poles and the mouse making useless suggestions, Alyssa played with the leash until she came up with a way to attach it around the dog's chest, and leave enough slack to fasten it to the poles. She lifted the jug up into the makeshift cart. Well that will give my shoulder a break, at least.
She bent down and rubbed at the red marks in between her big and second toes. This sucks. Shoulda changed into my sneakers when I found out how much walking I'm expected to do.She yanked her socks and sneakers from her pack. After a moment's consideration, she took out her jeans as well. She just couldn't bring herself to wear Converse sneakers with a skirt. After she put the jeans on under her skirt and tied her sneakers, she stuffed the flip flops in the pack and hoisted it onto her back.
"You may as well put the pack in there, too. I don't think I'll notice the difference." Max stepped forward and the cart lurched after him.
Alyssa wedged her pack between the jug and the side of the cart. Without the heavy items slowing her down, she kept up a brisk pace. Even so, although the sun still blazed in a pristine blue sky, she needed to dig her hoodie out of the pack and pull it over her head. She noticed patches of ice in the fields on either side and, as the shadows grew longer, snow covered portions of the road and mud mucked up the rest of it. Why me? How do I end up somewhere that it snows in the middle of August?
She finally took pity on the shivering mouse and stuffed her into the fleece pocket across her belly. Only Max didn't seem concerned about the weather, although the mud and snow made it difficult for him to pull the cart.
"I thought Faerie would be more fun, romantic even." Alyssa pulled the hood over her head. "I mean where's Prince Charming? And, I haven't seen a single fairy."
Lilse stuck her head out of one side of Alyssa's pocket. "You didn't ask for a ticket to visit Prince Charming, love. You asked for a ticket to see Giserella."
"You mean, if I'd told the ticket lady I wanted to meet Prince Charming, I could be lolling around in some castle right now instead of trudging about through the snow?" Why the hell didn't I think of that earlier?
"Well, yes, love, although Prince Charming isn't one to allow visitors to loll about."
"And, you wouldn't have the magic to help your grandmother." Max wagged his tail.
Assuming the vile concoction Giserella poured into that jug actually works.
"Well, I suppose if I have to choose between meeting Prince Charming and helping Grandma..." C'mon, no way Prince Charming'd have any interest in me anyway.
Max yelped and Alyssa rushed to his side. He lifted his left front paw and she saw blood dripping from it. A large metal shard protruded from the pad.
This is so totally lame. What else will I have to put up with? Aloud, she said: "Poor baby, let me get that out of there." Blood gushed when she pulled the metal out. She grabbed his paw in one hand and squeezed, while reaching for her pack with the other. When she got the zipper open, she dug around until she found her cotton bikini briefs. She wrapped them around Max's paw, tying the pink fabric over the top.
Geez, now I'm using my underwear to bandage my dog. I should have stayed home. "Can you walk?"
"Not if I have to pull the cart."
Alyssa unfastened the cart poles from Max's harness and he limped off on three paws. She stood between the poles, lifted them, and followed. Despite the mud, pulling the cart beat lugging the heavy jug on her shoulder. Of course, she could just abandon it and concentrate on finding her way home. For all she knew that wicked little Giserella had filled the jug with icky stuff that wouldn't do anything to help Grandma. But, Alyssa had given up her MP3 player and the Pink Floyd t-shirt Dad had given her, plusan opportunity to meet Prince Charming and see real fairies. At least if she brought home something that helped Grandma, Dad might buy her a new MP3 player and let her get her belly button pierced.
"Max, do you know how much farther?"
"How much farther tonight, or until we get to the coach stop?"
Alyssa sighed. "Tonight, I guess." She didn't want to know how much longer she would be stuck here.
"Well, I don't think we'll find an inn on this road. We'll have to look for some kind of shelter."
Alyssa shivered. When the sun set, even if she huddled with Max all night, she didn't think she could survive in this cold. A tear crept down her cheek. I think I liked it better when Grandma's presents didn't work. She wondered how Max knew not only which road to take, but whether or not they would find a place to stay along the way.
The sun hovered at the horizon and Alyssa couldn't see well in the gathering gloom. But she glimpsed a dark spot in the hill above the road and hoped it was the entrance to a cave. She couldn't pull the cart up the rough incline, so she tugged it off the road and behind a shrub, hoping it would stay put overnight. She put on her pack, used the leash to shoulder the jug, and struggled up the hill. The indentation in the hillside hardly qualified as a cave, but it would give them protection from the wind and the overhang would keep off any snow or rain.
Max ran off. Alyssa tucked the pack and the jug into a corner and gathered as many sticks, bits of dried bark, and the largest pieces of wood she could drag back to the shelter. Remembering Dad's instructions when he took her camping earlier in the summer, she piled the smaller sticks close to the outer edge of the shelter and stuffed some dried leaves underneath and in between. With the dragon pen/lighter, she lit the leaves, and when the sticks caught fire, she pulled one of the larger pieces of wood up against the flames. At least they could stay warm if she didn't let the fire go out.
Lilse crawled out of Alyssa's pocket and curled up in front of the fire. "Just lovely."
Alyssa ate two of th
e energy bars, and let the mouse have the crumbs in the wrappings. She worried about what she could feed Max. She didn't need to hear him whining that he was starving.
When he finally returned, Max had blood on his muzzle. Alyssa didn't want to think about what he had eaten. She poured small amounts of the bottled water into her hand and let him and Lilse lap it up. "One of us needs to stay awake and keep watch." That's what they did in every adventure story she had ever read and, if this wasn't an adventure, Alyssa didn't know what was.
Max sat down next to the fire. "I'll watch out while you get some sleep. I can roust Lilse when I need a nap."
Alyssa pulled two more big logs into the flames, curled up in front of the fire and, despite the hard ground, fell asleep in an instant.
Lilse woke her by pulling on her ear in the dark of night. "I need to sleep a bit more, love. Can you stand watch 'til dawn?"
Alyssa stretched her arms and sat up with her legs crossed in front of her. The fire had died down to embers. She rolled another log over the hot coals and watched until it caught. When she felt her eyelids grow heavy, she stood up and stepped out of the shelter far enough so she could look up at the black night sky, sprinkled with stars like powdered sugar on the French toast Dad burned when Mom let him make breakfast. She sniveled.
Max lay curled up with his tail over his nose and Lilse had settled into the crevasse between his haunch and his side.
Yesterday Alyssa had set off with no expectation that magic could work. She had forgone whatever pleasant adventures Faerie offered to bring home a huge, heavy jug because someone who allegedly ate people claimed it contained enough magic to save Grandma's life. Although she'd traveled a few hours to request the magic, so far her return trip had taken the better part of an afternoon and evening. Animals talked to her and kept watch and some even wore clothing. But other than that and some bizarre colors, Faerie didn't feel that much different from the rest of the world. And, where are the damn fairies anyway? She crept over to her pack and found her cell phone. She turned it on, and shut it off again when it failed to find a signal. Figures.
A screech sounded in the distance. When the sound got closer, she crawled back into the shelter. Okay, I'm standing watch. What the bleep am I supposed do if someone or something actually tries to attack me?Something howled in answer to the screeching. Next she heard a distant noise that sounded like a herd of elephants tromping through the woods. She jumped up and kicked dirt onto the fire until the glowing embers disappeared. If someone or something was stalking her, the fire would make her easier to find.
Ticket to Faerie Page 2
