by E. G. Foley
“Who? Hurry, they’re all leaving!”
Isabelle turned, quickly scanned the crowd, and then pointed. “There. Those three. They are definitely up to something.”
Dani let out a startled huff when she saw the children Isabelle was pointing to—two boys, one girl. “The skunkies!”
“You know them?” Archie asked.
“They’re the shapeshifter children who kept pestering me during the Assessments! Remember? They were sitting right by us. Triplets. Henry had to growl at them for me.”
“Oh, right!” Archie said, nodding. “You know, shapeshifters are usually born in multiples like their animal counterparts are born in litters. That’s why Henry and Helena are twins.”
“Well, those three are definitely up to no good,” Isabelle said, staring at the suspects. “Actually…I think they might be Lord Badgerton’s niece and nephews.”
“Who’s that?” Dani asked.
“An Elder,” Archie said.
“Uh-oh,” said Dani.
“Well, I have to go,” Isabelle announced. “I did as you asked. I’m sure you two can handle it from here. I am not traipsing around the woods with you in my tea gown and risking getting dirty before the royal audience.”
“That’s all right, sis, you don’t have to. We can manage from here. Good luck with the Queen.”
“Thanks, Izzy!” Dani called, waving, as the older girl left them to their own devices.
Archie turned to her. “Come on, we mustn’t let those wily shapeshifters get away.”
“Aye, we’re not going to let them pin their misdeeds on Jake.”
They rushed across the entrance hall, blending in with the crowd of rowdy children.
“Too bad you didn’t make some extra Bully Buzzers. Take it from me, those three are pests,” Dani said as they hurried out into the brilliant spring sunshine.
“I wonder why they’d even want to take the Queen’s flag.”
“Same reason they bothered me—just to be annoying! Little stinkers.”
“Yes, but how do you suppose they got up there? Standing on each other’s shoulders, what?”
“I don’t know!” Dani said impatiently. “Let’s just find out if they have it with them or if they’ve hidden it somewhere.” She seized hold of his arm and pulled him into a run.
The skunkies were among the flood of children pouring into the woods on the treasure hunt. The kids spread out, searching for prizes in small teams of two or three.
Archie and Dani kept their eyes on their quarry and proceeded to follow them onto the forest path. They pretended to be participating in the game, but all the while, were keeping their targets under surveillance.
The skunkies made their way through the green underbrush, and soon had led Archie and Dani quite a ways from the majority of the treasure-hunters.
“I wonder where they’re taking us,” Archie murmured. “They do seem like shifty little things, don’t they?”
The triplets giggled and snickered amongst themselves and were constantly glancing over their shoulders with an air of furtive glee.
“They’re certainly acting pleased with themselves. Like they just got away with something big.”
“Do you really think they framed Jake on purpose?”
“Oh, I don’t know. They probably just liked the pretty colors on the flag,” Dani said wryly. Then she let out a gasp as one of the boy skunkies glanced over his shoulder and spotted her. “Oh, drat! They’ve seen us! Duck!” She pulled Archie behind a tree, but he brushed her off.
“No, if they’ve already seen us, they’re going to run. We can’t afford to lose them. Come on!”
He was right. The boy had already told his siblings they were being followed, and now all three of them began running away as fast as the forest’s uneven ground and layer of knee-high ferns would permit.
“I say!” Archie called as Dani and he hurried after them. “A word with you three, please!”
“They’re not going to listen to reason, Archie, not those three,” she muttered. But they might respond to more of a rookery approach. “’Oy! You lot! Get back ’ere before I crack ye!”
It didn’t work. The fleeing shapeshifters were no more impressed with her bellicose shouts than they were with Archie’s plea for civility. They just did whatever the devil they wanted, Dani thought in frustration as she tripped, unable to see her footing amid the ferns.
Archie righted her before she fell and they kept on, but a moment later, the skunkies disappeared into the sun-dappled thicket ahead.
“Blast, where’d they go?” the boy genius exclaimed, panting with exertion.
“I don’t know.” Dani turned, looking around in all directions. Some of the branches ahead were vibrating from their passing. “That way!”
They chased again.
“Quit runnin’ away, cowards!” Dani taunted.
“Why’d you steal the Queen’s flag?” Archie yelled when they caught sight of them again.
“Aye! We want it back!”
The other skunkie brother pulled a folded, colorful length of silk out from under his shirt and waved it rudely at them, grinning.
“Hey! That’s it! They’ve got the Queen’s flag!” Dani said in shock. “Look at them! Have you ever seen such little horrors?”
“Audacious,” Archie said in disapproval. “If they’re stealing royal property at this age, imagine what they’ll do by the time they’re twelve. Come on, Dani. We’ve got to be the adults here.”
“I just want to throttle ’em.”
Once more, the skunkies ducked them. It was no fun trying to catch a shapeshifter. Sir Peter’s wife hadn’t given any tips on how to do that in her class.
They shoved on through the woods, getting scratched by branches and bitten by insects for their pains, but although they could not see their quarry, the skunkies could not have got far yet. They knew the triplets could still hear them, so they kept trying to engage them—or, at least, provoke a reaction.
The sound of tittering gave away the shapeshifters’ position in a dense thicket about twenty yards to the right. Archie pointed at it, Dani nodded, and they immediately closed in.
“I say, we just want to talk you!” Archie yelled into the woods as they approached. But he peered through the branches, confused. “Did they give us the slip again? Why can’t we see them?”
“Maybe they changed form,” Dani said worriedly, then raised her voice once more to a shout, “You’d better not turn yourselves into skunks out here, or we’re stealing your clothes and then what will you do when it’s time to walk back to Merlin Hall and the three of you are starkers, eh? Not too clever, are you?”
But the moment they burst into the thicket where they expected to find the trio, they realized—too late—that they had walked into a trap.
Skunks sprayed them full-blast from three directions at close range. Even worse, they were so startled by this veritable chemical attack that they shrieked in revulsion, only to learn the hard way that the very worst thing you can do during a skunk attack is to open your mouth.
They dropped to the ground, gagging on the taste as well as the overpowering odor of skunk.
Roaring with laughter, the skunkies turned themselves back into the rotten human children that they were, waving the Queen’s flag in their faces again. At least, Dani was fairly sure it was the flag. All she could see were the bright royal colors as tears poured down her cheeks from the eye-watering smell.
“I’ll get you for this!” she vowed amid her retching coughs.
One of the skunkies nudged her rudely with a toe in response—not quite a kick, but almost. “Next time, mind your own business!” It was the girl shapeshifter, speaking with belligerence worthy of the rookery.
“Archie, are you all right?” Dani wheezed.
“Horrible!” he gasped out. “Humiliating!”
Indeed, they had been bested.
The thieves got away.
# # #
Meanwhile, Ja
ke continued falling through the sky.
Nixie had shrieked when she realized she had just pushed him off the edge of the world—at least, the world of the foxhunt painting.
But then, she, too, grasped that the only way to escape the pack of hounds and riders bearing down on them was to jump off the stile, and so she did.
Both of them went crashing through thin air, but the wispy top layer of clouds soon gave way to dark woolly thunderheads. They fell into a chaotic, highly charged stratum of storm winds that buffeted them and whirled them around like autumn leaves.
Falling and falling through the tempest, they were pummeled by rain and hail and very nearly zapped by lightning. Nevertheless, they were better off than the sailors below, as it turned out.
Jake first realized which painting they had entered when he heard a great, cracking groan of splitting wood below and a chorus of distant male screams. He wrenched his neck looking over to locate Nixie, and caught a glimpse of the sinking tall ship from the corner of his eye, its sails torn to ribbons by the gales.
The next thing he knew, he plunged into the storm-tossed sea, twenty-foot waves crashing over him. Oh, yes, this famous painting he remembered. He recalled admiring all its drama and danger.
’Twas a fine thing to look at, but he had never counted on visiting the Turner shipwreck scene from the inside. He kicked his legs and clawed wildly at the water with his arms, struggling upward through the swells.
Just when he thought his lungs would burst, his head popped up above the waves. Sucking in huge lungfuls of air, he immediately looked around for Nixie.
Since she was so light-framed a girl and had leaped a few seconds after he did, she was still falling. He heard her shrieking as she approached and looked up. Treading water for all he was worth, he winced when she hit the water. He hoped she had not hurt her ankle even worse.
He swam in the direction where she had landed. It took several terrifying minutes of screaming each other’s names, but at last, they managed to find one another.
“Are you all right?” Jake demanded, pushing his soaked hair out of his eyes while the bitter cold of the sea seeped into his hands and feet.
Nixie looked even worse off. “I’m alive.”
In the distance, the great sailing ship had all but broken in two, and now the burning halves were sinking slowly into the waves.
Note to self, Jake thought. Don’t join Royal Navy. True, they had steamships now.
Still.
“Jake, I saw an island while I was falling,” Nixie said, pointing. “It’s that way! We should swim for it.”
He nodded. “I saw it, too. Let’s go. If we get separated, we’ll meet up somewhere on the beach, yes?”
Nixie nodded, and then they both headed for the island, swimming side by side and taking care not to get separated.
The powder stores aboard the vessel must have exploded in the wreck, and as a result, much of the grand old frigate was on fire, its doomed masts burning like great candles in the night. By the orange glare of this giant bonfire, Jake could just make out the shape of the island in the distance, but it was difficult to tell how far away it was. He just prayed they could stay alive long enough to reach it.
It was their only hope.
Again and again the waves dunked him underwater, but he refused to be drowned and did his best to look after Nixie and keep the girl alive. Her face was a pale oval in the darkness.
Whether she had done worse injury to her ankle, he could only guess. If she had, she did not complain. Of course, this was no time for conversation. Every precious ounce of air had to be preserved for breathing as the waves arced under them and threw them forward and clawed them back again and again.
After what seemed like hours of swimming for their lives, they finally reached the gentle surf around the island and stumbled through the shallows, staggering up onto the beach amid the litter from the shipwreck.
Wooden planks, barrels, everyday items, and other bits of wreckage (including a few dead sailors that Jake hoped Nixie didn’t see) were already washing up onto the beach, drifting sadly back and forth as the waves rolled in.
Jake gained his feet in the shallows and spared Nixie the effort of walking, pulling her through the waist-high water like a tugboat. A length of wood that he thought was a broken yardarm from the ship floated in their way, but as he pushed it aside, he realized it was actually the paintbrush marking the boundary into the next picture.
He pointed it out to Nixie. “We’re entering a new painting,” he croaked, his voice raspy, his throat sore from having nearly drowned in saltwater.
She acknowledged his comment with the barest of nods.
Ahead, the island loomed, the black spiky leaves of tropical palm trees silhouetted against the predawn gray.
There was no sign of the sailors who had tried to escape the sinking ship in their rowboats. But as Jake recalled, the point of the Turner painting was to honor a tragedy in which there had been no survivors.
Or something like that.
At last, the two of them staggered up onto the empty beach and collapsed on the sand in sheer physical exhaustion. For a long time, they lay without moving, half-dead, bedraggled castaways.
Jake could barely move his body. But gradually, it occurred to him that, if all of the paintings had been booby-trapped with dangers and obstacles, then they could not afford to wallow on the beach like a pair of wounded seals.
The sun had climbed up over the horizon and had started to dry their clothes. It was really very pleasant, but for how long?
For all he knew, there could be headhunters living on this island.
He glanced over at his waifish, black-clad companion. The little witch had fallen fast asleep, and he hated to wake her.
Still, out here on this beach, they were exposed, easily seen by anyone else who might be on the island. It would be safer to at least move farther up the strand into the shadows of the trees.
“Nixie.”
She didn’t stir, and he found he didn’t have the heart to insist right away. Truth be told, he felt dashed sorry for her. If only he were as insightful as Archie, maybe he would’ve realized from the start that the poor little mite was in need of help instead of letting his offended pride get in the way.
He gave her a few minutes longer to rest while he sat up and took off his shoes. He squeezed as much of the dampness as he could out of his socks, then lay them on the sand to let them dry a bit more, and rolled up the bottoms of his trousers.
His stomach grumbled, which brought another ominous thought. What were they supposed to eat? If they got lost in these paintings for any significant length of time, might they starve to death?
Frowning, Jake visored his eyes with his hand and looked out to sea. There was no sign of the sinking ship anymore. Even the wreckage was gone, including the dead sailors.
The beach was pristine. All he could think was that Nixie and he must have crossed fully into the next painting.
Whatever that might entail…
Strange sounds were coming out of the jungle at their backs. Jake looked warily over his shoulder and stared, amazed, at a showy, jewel-colored bird that swooped along the treeline. Maybe a parrot?
Many bird calls and insect chirps emanated from the trees, but when a lizard flicked among some rocks nearby, Jake had had enough. He was a city boy, accustomed to the hubbub of London, and this tropical paradise was giving him the creeps.
He shook Nixie by her shoulder. “Wake up. We’ve got to get going.”
She groaned, refusing to open her eyes. “Leave me be.”
“I know you want to sleep, but it isn’t safe here. Come on, open your eyes and take a look round. What painting are we in?”
“I hardly memorized all the pictures in the Enchanted Gallery, Jake.” Lying on her stomach, she heaved herself up onto her elbows and looked around, squinting in the brilliant sunshine. “I suppose, if I had to guess…I’d say we’ve arrived on Prospero’s island.”
/> “Is that good or bad?”
“Prospero’s island? As in Shakespeare’s The Tempest?” She stared meaningfully at him. “Sound familiar?”
Jake pressed his lips shut.
She sighed. “You really are an ignoramus, aren’t you?”
“An ignoramus who just saved your life again,” he grumbled. “Can you walk or not?”
“What choice do I have?” she asked grimly, and climbing to her feet, to his relief, she found she could stand.
It was difficult for her to walk in the deep, soft sand, however, so once more, Jake gave her his arm to steady her. “Come on, we’ve got to find the next paintbrush. Is this Prospero fellow somebody we’re going to have to worry about?”
“No, not him. Prospero was the sorcerer in the story and the heroine’s father.” She paused, glancing around warily at the jungle. “It’s Caliban that worries me.”
“Caliban?”
“A monster Prospero created to be his servant.”
Jake immediately thought of Ogden Trumbull, and turned to her, wide-eyed. “What sort of monster?”
“Hard to say. In the theatre, they always show him with like…horns and a hump. He’s supposed to be very ugly and walk with a limp. I always imagined him like a minotaur, I guess.”
“Oh, perfect,” Jake muttered.
“Let’s just hope we don’t run into him before we find the paintbrush.”
Somehow, he doubted they would be so lucky.
# # #
Isabelle fidgeted in her chair, her hands folded in her lap, her palms sweating with anxiety.
Eleven debutantes dressed in their very smartest daytime finery sat in the marble anteroom, waiting in varying states of dread for the great honor of being summoned in as a group to see the Queen.
The chamberlain was expected at any moment to usher them in and present them to Her Majesty and her royal daughters, who had just joined their mother in the opulent stateroom a few minutes ago.
Isabelle decided that Queen Victoria had too many daughters to keep track of properly, but it would be nice to meet them, anyway.
Everyone was rather terrified. One could have cut the tension in the air with a cake-knife. Last-minute adjustments were discreetly made to gowns. Final flyaway hairs were smashed down by the girls’ hovering chaperones, governesses, and mothers.
