The Knot Impossible

by Barbara Else

  Doctor Goodabod’s treatment had made Madam Butterly’s face look like Lady Gall’s.

  “I was abrupt just now. Rufkin, I apologise,” she was saying. “Sammo, amuse the boys. They can see the pigeons. Then tell the chef to make oven fries and hamburger. I want them tucked in very safe indeed before we reach open sea. Off you go.”

  Madam Butterly took herself to the circular picture, hooked back the veil and gave an excited and satisfied smile. It wasn’t a picture at all. It was a mirror with words carved around the frame. At the top was her name: VIDA BUTTERLY. Below were the words: FOREVER VICTORIOUS.

  Sammo hustled Rufkin and Vosco out of the lounge. The cat padded with them. The yacht was even bigger than it looked from outside. Many cabins led off the internal passageway.

  They stopped at a small door and Rufkin smelled the sharp feathery odour of bird. Sammo unlatched the door and led them in. Pigeons rustled and cooed in a large cage. The cat sat in the corridor, ears and whiskers back, tail twitching at the tip as if it was hungry.

  Rufkin wasn’t hungry at all. Not even for hamburger.

  “Actually,” he said, “Vosco and I have to check personally on the rowboat.”

  Sammo scowled. “Madam Butterly will be watching to see the birds released. If she doesn’t, I’m for the chop.” The scowl turned to the grimmest of grins. “That’s not a lamb chop to go with the fries.”

  It was surprising how many thoughts could travel round Rufkin’s head at the same time. Thunderhead’s words—a deal or reward. The line of the front half of the pantomime horse in Dark Heart of Greed. “The face behind the mask of friendship is not offering free oats.” The horse’s back half blew a raspberry.

  In his mind Rufkin saw the words again—FOREVER VICTORIOUS. A twist on Lady Gall’s forever beautiful. He could guess whose assistant Vida Butterly had been when she was young. Lady Gall, selfish and cruel. And that blue folder. Madam Butterly didn’t just use beauteen to freeze her wrinkles. Doctor Goodabod, with elastic surgery, had also given her a round chin and pointed cheekbones exactly like the chin and cheekbones of Lady Gall.

  Rufkin had to get the Queen and Vosco out of here.

  Sammo rolled the letter into a tiny brass cartridge. From a bench he picked up a little knife with a safety sleeve, cut a piece of tape, then put the knife back. He chose a sleek pigeon. It uttered a coo when he began binding the cartridge to one of its legs.

  “It’s amaa-aazing that she’s still got pigeons.” Rufkin knew that being cute would annoy the man. “Everyone else gave up pigeons years ago. But the old ways are best again now phones don’t work and nor do message-birds.”

  “She always has back-ups,” Sammo muttered. “And back-ups to back-ups, then back-ups to them.”

  “How will the pigeon know where to go?” Rufkin asked. “I thought they only flew back to where they’d come from in the first place.”

  “Madam B has means and methods.” The man was expressionless. But there were times when lack of expression screamed the truth. Rufkin had tried it at school and still got detention.

  He kept his eyes wide in the Expression-cute. “It would be very clever if she guessed that phones would stop working all over the place. And to make sure she’d have the right pigeons to send to the right places.”

  Poker-faced, Sammo adjusted the cartridge.

  Rufkin managed the Blink artless-and-innocent. “It could even mean that Madam Butterly knows a lot about what’s really at the bottom of the end-of-days.”

  The man looked right at Rufkin, a welter of thoughts in his eye now, none of them comforting. “Shut up. Stand back. You’ll soon be in your cabin.”

  Pigeon in one hand, he fiddled with the latch of a porthole.

  Rufkin snuck the little knife into his pocket and whispered to the birds in the cage, “Get ready. It’s us or you.” Then he yanked open the cage, grabbed the cat and threw it in among the pigeons. He seized Vosco by the wrist and started running.

  A yowl and a screech from the cat, a yell from Sammo, a mad chirping and flapping of wings…

  By now Rufkin and Vosco were back in the lounge. In front of the round mirror, Madam Butterly turned. She dropped a new glass, tall and brimming with bubbles, and cried out in surprise.

  Then they were through the other door onto the deck.

  “Sammo! Thunderhead! Get the boys!” Madam Butterly’s cry had turned to rage.

  Rufkin hurried Vosco down the outside stairs to the stern platform. He half-dropped and half-threw Vosco into the rowboat, still bobbing on the end of its rope. Then he wrenched one of the yacht’s spare oars from the brass clamps and jammed it into the davits that held the dinghy.

  He grabbed the other oar, and slithered from the platform into the rowboat. It wobbled like crazy. He whisked out the knife and sawed at the rope. A shout came from up on the bridge deck. He heard sailors running. But the knife was slicing through the rope like—well, like a knife through butter.

  Rufkin snatched up the oars—the one he’d just stolen and the one the alligator hadn’t crunched—fitted them into the rowlocks and bent to work. Pigeons flew in spirals above the Sea Honey.

  “About ship!” he heard Thunderhead roar. “Lower a rowboat!”

  “Your Majesty,” said Rufkin. “Wake up. Vosco, make her wake up.”

  He glanced over his shoulder. Vosco had dragged the sack off Queen Sibilla and was patting her face.

  “Use the trumpet,” Rufkin cried, “that’ll do it.” He dipped and raised the oars as hard as he could—which bank was nearer? The eastern one.

  The trumpet blew, horribly rumptipaze. Rufkin glanced around again. The Queen continued to lie with her eyes closed, but he heard her murmur through the splash of the oars.

  “Breakfast,” she muttered. “Toast and peanut butter. Plum preserve cut into squares on my porridge.”

  She must be feeling better if she was hungry. Now he heard ouches and ows as she struggled up.

  “It’s evening?” she asked.

  Yes, the sky was lavender. The pigeons had started to flap off in a dozen directions. The crew on the Sea Honey were struggling to lower the dinghy.

  Rufkin scooped an oar, then rowed more steadily for the eastern bank. He tried to explain—that time had passed, he and Vosco had been on the yacht, what he’d seen and heard.

  “‘Forever victorious,’” said the Queen. “Kind and good Madam Butterly? The one who gives thousands of dolleros to charity every three months? The one with the smile that warms at two hundred paces?”

  Rufkin kept rowing. She would think him an idiot. He had done the wrong thing.

  “Good on you,” said the Queen. “I knew she was too sweet to be true.”

  There was no time to waste on being self-satisfied. The Sea Honey was ending its turn and would soon bear down on them. And its dinghy was lowered at last, with five men. The rowers in their striped jerseys looked far too brawny for a fight to be fair.

  Vosco made the trumpet blurt again. “Help,” he said.

  The Queen eyed the Sea Honey. “If Lady Gall is Vida Butterly’s idol, that madam will have no time for dragon-eagles or common decency. We’ll row for our lives. Give me an oar.”

  Together, she and Rufkin made far more quickly for the eastern bank. It was so rocky there, the Sea Honey wouldn’t be able to get close—though its dinghy would be deadly if it carried a deadly weapon. Rufkin glanced at the sky, darker purple now. Unless Madam Butterly’s dinghy had a searchlight, their own little boat might stay hidden in the night.

  What was beyond the red rocks of the riverbank? Sand, as far as Rufkin knew. That was all he’d seen from the super-yacht. He couldn’t remember a scrap of geography.

  The Queen must have been weak after her ordeal. But she still kept giving him tips and was darn good at rowing. With just a couple of oar-dips she had them between some sheltering boulders and out of sight from the main stream.

  “Wait a moment,” she said in a low voice.

  She nipped over the si
de of the rowboat. On her stomach she wriggled up the rocky bank for a few queen-lengths. The pouch he’d seen on her leather belt actually looked like a scabbard. With a dagger in. Impressive.

  He heard shouting in the distance. The Queen wriggled down again.

  “The yacht’s anchoring,” she said. “The dinghy’s taking in water, so they’re giving up. They’ll expect they can find us tomorrow. They won’t dare come ashore in the dark.”

  “But we came ashore,” said Rufkin. “I—I didn’t see any more alligators once we left the willows behind, but…”

  “Any noise we make should scare off—um—small things,” she whispered. For a moment she held her head as if she was dizzy again. “Now. What have we got with us? It’s always best to take stock. One Vosco and a trumpet.” Vosco chuckled. “One Rufkin. Two whole oars, phew—good thinking, Rufkin. And half a chewed oar. There’s me, still with a headache. And a sun hat. A sack. There’s a coil of rope under the seat, but not a large one.”

  “And you’ve got a dagger,” Rufkin said. “That’s some sort of protection.”

  There was a pause. “Maybe.” Then she smiled. “I’m sorry I can’t be more reassuring. Now, we must speak quietly or our voices might carry. So quick, just do what I say.”

  ~

  The rowboat was very light indeed. Rufkin was glad he hadn’t known how flimsy it was when the alligator’s jaws were open beside it. Now, at least, it wasn’t much effort to haul it out of the stream, then up through the boulders. It was hard to see good footing. But he managed. The Queen staggered only when they were up on flat stony ground at last. So did he.

  “Sit quiet,” she said to Vosco. “No trumpet. Or I’ll take it away. I mean it.” She gave him a grin and he grinned back.

  She took off the sun hat, lay flat, and scanned the stream again. “Can you see them at all from here?”

  Rufkin shook his head.

  “Good,” said the Queen. “As soon as it’s really dark, I want to set an oar upright against the seat of the rowboat, with that sack tied to it.”

  “Here? On the stones?” Rufkin asked. “That’ll be no use.”

  “Don’t look at me like that,” said Queen Sibilla. “The job’s not impossible.”

  ~

  Of course it wasn’t. Any stage-hand could fix an oar vertical in a few minutes. If someone gave Rufkin a bag of metal brackets and screws and a strong screwdriver, he’d do it too. Well, maybe in an hour with the right swearwords and a few blood blisters. It would be easy if there was a bright light too, and snacks like cheese pastries and apple. But here? In the dark? Only him and the Queen?

  “Can’t you just use magic?” he asked.

  “You know it doesn’t work as easily as that.” She sounded annoyed. In a moment she might ask if his Statements of Success were any good.

  So he kept his mouth shut and did his best. There was the coil of rope. His little knife would cope with that. But blast, it was pretty small for making a notch in the edge of the seat so the oar could be set.

  “I need the dagger,” he said.

  “No,” she replied.

  Double blast—

  Then it was like a light switched on in his head—the dagger. The royal dagger. Of course, she would wear it on a dangerous mission. It was the sign of the monarch. No ordinary person should even touch it.

  “Let’s get on with it,” she said softly.

  He blinked, felt really dumb and—got on with it.

  The little knife he’d stolen from Sammo did an okay job. There were small rocks to help wedge things in place. Rufkin wanted to use the beanie for extra packing, but Vosco refused to give it. The Queen let him use the sun hat though. She kept wanting to help. That made it tricky. He didn’t want to jab her fingers by accident. He didn’t want to give her a knock with the oar as they raised it.

  There was no moon, but fitful starlight came through the clouds. Out in the stream, lights glowed on the Sea Honey. The air moved gently as it had done since Rufkin began work. He had always known a boy having an adventure should be strong with muscles as well as his mind. It would have helped if he’d also been allowed a scrap of magic. But not the dagger. Never the dagger. He didn’t want to touch that at all, no way.

  Finally the oar was fixed like a mast. The sack was its sail.

  “Rudder,” she said. “The oar you stole will do for that.”

  He managed to fix that in place too.

  She stood back and looked. “Good job.”

  He blushed hot. For this moment of being praised by the Queen, he was grateful. But what next? An average boy like him in such an adventure? It couldn’t end well.

  Queen Sibilla tucked Vosco and trumpet in the bow. “Rufkin, sit here with me.” She arranged herself at one side at the stern, he sat at the other. She took a last look back at Jovial River and the glow from the yacht. Then she stared up at the sky in the west.

  For a long moment nothing happened except that the air stopped moving entirely.

  Then the Queen faced ahead to the east. She picked up an end of the rope attached to the sail and handed the other end to Rufkin.

  A breath seemed to begin.

  Rufkin felt it on his hair, his neck and shoulders. It became a soft huff that gathered strength but had no sound. The sacking sail filled then—impossibly—and the rowboat lifted a little above the sand as if it drifted on invisible water. Slowly, very slowly, the rowboat began floating eastwards over the stony land.

  So—there was magic around him after all. It wasn’t huge magic. But it wasn’t the stage magic of illusion and clever machinery. This was real. This was the Queen in communion with the power of nature. She was heading at last to the dragon-eagles.

  The moonless night made the journey into a waking dream. They had to ease around large rocks and skirt past crevices, tugging the rope attached to each side of the sail to angle it this way or that. The wind kept the rowboat moving at no more than the speed of a donkey-saunter. Speed—not the best word. But Rufkin had to admit the sacking sail would collapse in any strong gust.

  Steam rose from a crevice as they floated towards it. Far down another, Rufkin caught flashes that might be the luminous tails of lizards, small and large. In the next, coils of steam were gathering before some underground boiling might shoot them up in a geyser. In the strange simmering and purring from underground he also heard the oo-oo of a night bird, a far-off clopping that could be horses on stony ground, the distant churning of waves on the shore of Old Ocean.

  A faint snore from Vosco turned into a sob. The little boy sat up. Tears and nose-drip glistened in the night.

  “Manage the sail,” the Queen murmured to Rufkin. She climbed over to talk softly to Vosco.

  Rufkin thought he heard horses again. Nomads, maybe. To their right Old Ocean boomed on in the distance. On their left a dark line of hills lay like dozing dragons. Ahead would be dawn and the end of the stony flat. What was Nissy doing by now? Where might she be heading?

  Vosco slept again. The Queen clambered back to the stern. “He misses his parents.”

  Rufkin wanted to say That’s natural but his voice didn’t feel reliable. It took a few minutes to be sure it wouldn’t wobble.

  “Ma’am, I know you have to go east. But we can’t get to the Eastern Isle in one night.”

  She shook her head.

  “So what happens next?”

  “I don’t know,” said the Queen.

  Even while he was asking, he’d known the answer. It would be great if whatever amount of magic she’d been granted or earned could solve everything. But he supposed that would be too easy.

  Anyway, what was going on? He tried to think it through. He’d always wondered about stories and plays where villains wanted to rule the whole world. What would they do if they succeeded? There’d be nothing left for them to want. The stories were any good only if the villains lost. It was highly satisfying to see a thwarted villain. But those were just stories. He couldn’t see any particular villain at wor
k in this adventure. Madam Butterly was a crook, he was sure of it, and Nissy’s notebook, still down his shirt, might hold some useful clues when the Queen could look at it. But Madam Butterly wouldn’t have created the end-of-days deliberately. Not even the worst villain would do that.

  The Queen swayed where she sat.

  “Do you need to sleep again?” Rufkin asked.

  “I’ve been sleeping for days.” Her voice was so tired. “We have to go on as far as possible. I can’t stop yet.”

  Rufkin wasn’t clever like Oscar and Ahria, but he didn’t think being unconscious was the same as sleeping. “You haven’t had anything to eat since the explosion. You were probably poisoned by all that blue stuff over your face.”

  “Blue stuff?” She rubbed her cheeks. “It must be lazulite dust. I must get a message to my brother. And to Vosco’s parents and the Council of Wisdom.”

  She could have done that at Port Feather, if he hadn’t run off with Vosco. He had a stab of guilt. “You need a doctor. A good one, not like Goodabod—he might be a good elastic surgeon but he’s not…” He tailed off.

  As they glided by a crevice, a rumble began and out gushed a fountain of steam. Hot drops sprinkled down. Vosco awoke with a squeal. The sacking sail flapped like crazy. The Queen lost her grip on the rope. Rufkin managed to hang on to his bit and grab hers as well. The rowboat banged on the ground twice but wobbled back into the air.

  The shade of the sky began changing at last. He could make out the Queen’s face again. She looked as haggard as a sketch drawn with old scrappy pencils. The wind faltered for a moment, then blew just as steadily.

  Rufkin kept his eyes on the stony sand flat and tugged the rope to by-pass a deep cleft, then edge past a cluster of rocks. He tried to scan the path they had journeyed. It was still too dark to see anything much except darkness—if he wrote that in a school essay, the teacher would say, Keep your jokes out of school work, I’ve warned you before.

  He scanned ahead again. Now a rim of gold showed the horizon. A few pointy bits and shapes like cauliflower might be distant trees. As the sun lifted, a shaft of light beamed into his eyes. This was like the road he’d hoped for back on the launch. All it showed to the south was a rumple of grass-covered dunes. To the north, trees and hills. Ahead was a scatter of rocks like a natural barrier. Then tussock. The end of the stone flat.