by John Daulton
Chapter 23
Climbing the twisted palm trees in the forbidden cove was easy. Pernie scrambled up the winding slant of one such pair with the ease of a monkey and the silence of a child who’d spent her whole life playing and exploring in nature, one who had learned from hunters and woodsmen on Kurr, and now one with over a half year’s being trained by elves.
The cawfrat, a poisonous variety of parrot, flapped away as she climbed. Silent as she was, it did not need to hear her, for it saw her quite easily with its great round eyes. Just as well, Pernie thought as she neared the top of the winding trunks. It was better to be out of its range. She knew from previous experience that cawfrats spat foul acid along with the curses that they spoke. But their range was short, and the parrot only flew to the next tree, not particularly concerned with the little girl in the tree.
That was a fatal mistake. No sooner had it settled in the crook of the palm fronds it had flown to than Pernie’s spear ran it through, right beneath the wing and halfway out the other side, pushing that wing out at an acute angle as the spearhead knifed through. It barely had time to squawk before it fell in a flapping spasm into the sand, where it landed with a thump.
Pernie sent the image of it, in particular of its eyes, to Knot, who lay curled up in a ball on the beach where she had left him. He perked up upon receiving the thought, and she guided him to it once he’d unrolled himself and seized onto the idea of food. A moment later, an instant really, given the insect’s speed, Knot set upon the still-twitching cawfrat and drove his tongue spike into one of the bird’s huge, juicy eyes, happily sucking out the delicious meat.
Pernie watched Knot as she leaned into the tree, her toes jammed into the cleavage formed where the two trunks had come together as the trees had grown. Knot loved eyeballs, it was true, but there were none he loved as much as cawfrat eyes. Each was nearly as big as a papaya, and every time she killed one of the birds for him, he grew a little less obstinate.
She sighed and looked up into the cluster of coconuts that dangled just above her head. She should have gotten one down before she’d thrown her spear. She’d been wanting to try one anyway.
She climbed the remaining distance and drew her knife from her belt. She reached up and had just begun to cut when Djoveeve’s shout came up. “Don’t you dare, child!” There was such absolute command in it that Pernie’s little eyebrows dropped into a concerted line above eyes that focused all the more. She set to the task more earnestly and thrust her little knife into the cluster, sawing for all her worth.
Tremors vibrated through the trunk as she cut, and for a moment it gave her pause. Her sawing slowed as she feared that Djoveeve’s stories of the twisted tree spirits, the ghosts that lived in them, might be coming true. What if the tree was shaking because a ghost was coming out?
But then an enormous hand clamped an iron grip upon her leg as Djoveeve, now transformed into a silver-haired gorilla, yanked her free of her perch and dangled her by the ankle high above the sand.
Djoveeve began descending, still holding Pernie at arm’s length in one hand and using her remaining three limbs to climb. The motions were violent. The transmuted assassin jumped down with her bottom half, her thick body elongating as she dropped. Her lower legs would catch the trunk and stop the near free fall with a jolt, then she’d let go with her upper arm and let the tree slide through the gray pads of her powerful hand. The sliding made a rapid tick, tick, ticking as the corrugations rasped across her leathery grip, then she’d grab hold and drop another two spans with her bottom half again. She repeated the sequence several times, with Pernie swinging wildly in the air.
The whole descent took only a matter of seconds, and by the end of it, Pernie was shaken rather violently—perhaps on purpose. It was a condition that was not helped much by the fact that, when they were still five feet from the ground, Djoveeve simply dropped her, letting Pernie fall into the sand. She landed with a dull thump not unlike that of the fallen cawfrat, whose eyes Knot was still sucking on, and had to blink some of the beach out of her eyes.
“I told you not to come here again,” Djoveeve said, already returned to human form. “And I certainly told you the nature of these trees.”
“You tell me lots of things,” Pernie said through a pout. “You talk too much, and nobody believes in ghosts.” She got up and went to where Knot was, intent on riding him away.
Djoveeve caught her and gently turned her around, looking down into her eyes. Pernie defied her, glaring back as if she were the one with something to teach the old woman instead. Djoveeve stared down into that little gaze of solidity and smiled, first in admiration, and then with fondness and even love.
“What’s the matter, little Sava?” she asked at last. “Even you aren’t this angry right away.”
“I’m not angry. I want to be alone.”
“But why?”
Pernie yanked an arm free and tried to turn away. But Djoveeve still held her firmly by her other arm. When Pernie looked back, she saw that Djoveeve’s eyes were closed, and she was quietly muttering a spell. Pernie tried to yank her arm free again, which failed, so she tried to peel Djoveeve’s gnarled old fingers away. She might as well have been trying to straighten an iron boomerang.
She thought about stabbing the old woman through the hand, but she knew that would be bad. Too bad. Still, the more she tried to peel those fingers away, the madder she got. Pernie looked up in the old woman’s old face as the weathered assassin muttered her dumb old spell, and Pernie decided it didn’t matter how mad Djoveeve got. She reached for her knife and saw that she didn’t have it anymore. It was still lying in the sand where the gorilla had dropped her.
She bit the old assassin instead. Right across the top of her knuckles, just as hard as she could. The woman did not let go, not even when Pernie tasted blood.
Finally Djoveeve stopped chanting and regarded the child held captive in her strong grip. She smiled sadly, and apologized. “It’s your birthday, little Sava, and nobody has done a thing.”
Pernie wanted to deny it, to throw it back at Djoveeve as a lie, but it was true. It was her birthday. And nobody even cared. Kettle would have made her a giant cake and hung strips of dyed lace all around the kitchens everywhere. Kettle would have let her eat sugarplums and frostberries for breakfast, all soaked in cream. There would have been no work today either, and Kettle and Nipper and Gimmel would have all sung her the birthday song. Gimmel would have brought her a present too, something from town, a new sharp knife that would make Kettle grouse and worry and smile.
But no, not here. Not on stupid Hunters Isle. She couldn’t even get sweet coconut milk from a stupid “sacred” tree. Knot was the only one who got anything special on her birthday.
Djoveeve seemed to see her thoughts as they played out in her eyes, and she apologized again. “I am sorry, little one. I did not realize.”
“It doesn’t matter,” Pernie said. “I’m ten years old today. I’m a big girl now. I don’t need sweets and party songs.”
“Well, I don’t know about party songs, but I think I should like an excuse for sweets.”
Pernie thrust out her lips and tried to turn away, once more tugging at the manacle of the old woman’s grip.
Djoveeve released her, unexpectedly, and she staggered a step toward Knot, who had just begun slurping out the dead cawfrat’s other eye. She meant to go ride him away as soon as he was done.
“Have you ever heard of sugar shrimp?” the old assassin asked to Pernie’s retreating back. “They are one of the great joys of String, and the elves say they are the sweetest meat on all of Prosperion. Perhaps the sweetest anything.”
Pernie frowned, unseen by Djoveeve, and kept walking toward her bug. She had never heard of sugar shrimp, but she was not going to tell the old woman that.
“I once ate forty-three of them, all in a row,” the aged assassin said. “It was a year after I got here, and I discovered them by chance. Oh, you should have seen how old lady Belletelemew
fussed. She went on and on about fitness and health, calling them the confection of the sea. She told me that my people, our people, get fat here on String, and that the Assassin of the Vale has to be nimble and swift.” She laughed, thinking back on it. “I think I’m plenty nimble and swift,” she said. “Even at my ripe old age.”
Pernie tried not to care, but it was kind of interesting. Sort of.
“Well,” said the ancient assassin, “since it is your birthday, and now that I’ve got those sweet delicacies in my head, I think I’m off to have a few to celebrate. It would be more fun if you’d come along, but if you’d rather stay here and pout, so be it. Just do not climb the trees. In this I am in earnest. If you cut them, you could kill them, and with them someone’s life-bond will be lost.”
Pernie turned back around; she was going to protest that she didn’t believe all that sacred soul stuff. Trees holding ghosts and spirits. Kettle told her a long time ago that there were no such things as ghosts. She’d said it many times, and even Master Altin had agreed. He’d been right there in the kitchen that day that Pernie had the bad nightmare, the night after Gimmel told the scary stories around the fire as part of the Festival for the Dead. She’d had terrible dreams about ghosts coming through the walls, just like Gimmel’s story said, but even Master Altin had told her that ghost stories were meant for scaring little girls. Both Kettle and Master Altin said they weren’t true, and they would never lie. Although, Master Altin had once told her that the stories about the orcs were only meant to scare little girls too.
But Djoveeve was already transformed to her black jaguar form again, running off toward the rocks at the edge of the invisible dissolving barrier, though this time headed for the left side, which was a direction Pernie hadn’t explored the last time she was here.
Sugar shrimp did sound promising. And it was her birthday after all.
She turned back and saw that Knot was still at his meal, though the bulging eyeball was nearly half-collapsed. She could wait for him to finish. It wouldn’t be fair to deprive him of his birthday dinner just so she could have hers.
She retrieved her knife, then plopped down on the soft pink sand and waited patiently. Watching with her head tilted to the side a little and the sun glinting off the long, shimmering gold of her hair, she let herself enjoy the gross slurping of Knot at his meal. In time, she was in a good enough mood to giggle as Knot got to the bottom of the cawfrat’s eye socket. What remained of the eyeball meat mixed with air as he sucked up the last juicy bits, and the noise he made gurgled hilariously in her ears. She was still giggling when it was all done, even as she pulled her spear free of the eyeless corpse and climbed onto her insect’s back.
But she fell silent after, as she set her feet and settled in to ride. She took up the rope in one hand and wrapped it several times around her wrist. She gripped the spear tightly in her other hand. She closed her eyes and sent her thoughts into the insect’s mind. She listened to its senses, for its thoughts were mainly blank. But it sensed everything. She had discovered that she could hear what it heard, what it knew through its feet, the vibrations of things so tiny no human could hear, so tiny she doubted even elves could hear. But Knot could. Knot’s sensitive little feet felt everything, heard everything. And in the span of a few seconds, she could hear the soft pads of Djoveeve’s jaguar paws on sand.
With a tap of her spear, and just the barest reminder of pain in places behind the bug, it set off at a run. She caught the black cat in four minutes flat.
Chapter 24
As Altin had feared, the visit to the diviner Ocelot had been useless. Her cryptic answers were more cryptic than usual, and he was reminded, again, of why everyone said she was completely mad. For the most part, it was nothing but a string of the obvious or the insane, as she’d gone on and on about how he could see himself in mirrors—hardly a shocking revelation there—and about the dead rising up again. And of course, the silliest part, or the most mundane, was her emphatic warning of how great danger would come from an Earth wizard one day, which was either total nonsense, since there were no Earth magicians, or simply mundane reality, as it was more than obvious that some sorcerer, many sorcerers, would eventually get to Earth, and while there, who knew what Altin might do one day that could set one of them off. Where the wizard happened to be was, in a way, immaterial given that a magician that wanted to do him harm was going to do him harm, or try to, whether he was on Prosperion or Earth. Or, for that matter, whether he was on Blue Fire, Yellow Fire, Red Fire, Andalia, or anywhere else. So, while it was unfortunate to discover that he had enemies on the horizon, it was hardly a surprise. It seemed the universe never ran out of hateful beings to throw his way.
And it was on that topic, at least in a way, that Altin found himself being confronted upon his return to Calico Castle. He teleported himself back from Ocelot’s forest hovel into his old, familiar place behind an old suit of armor, his own sort of unofficial clean room—clean space really—that he’d been using for years. He appeared in the dark shadows behind the ancient plate mail, deep in the recesses of Calico Castle’s huge and seldom-used dining hall. There stood, far across from where he’d arrived, a long table, not so long or grand as had been the custom in centuries past, but long enough for a very large family, if one were to attend a meal set there.
Sitting at this table, in a dim little globe of candlelight, sat the keep’s kitchen matron, dear old Kettle, staring at the round shape of a bright blue birthday cake. It wasn’t a very big cake, and for a woman whose skills were as renowned as Kettle’s were, it seemed a rather sad little thing, her usual deft touch with the knife normally giving a playful texture to the frosting, and on other occasions she would have put some time into making little frosting animals or flowers or puffing clouds. But not this one. She’d frosted it with the deft strokes of a woman wanting to have it done, as if she’d planned for no one to see, and there were no puffing anythings fluffing up in folds of fancy frosting at all.
Kettle’s puffy red eyes, however, suggested that the birthday cake was not meant for happiness anyway, and it only took him a moment to guess by the ten candles burning there whose birthday it was. He grimaced, hating what he knew was about to come, but there was nothing to be done for it, and he was the master of Calico Castle after all. Not to mention the Queen’s Galactic Mage. He sighed. And he was, more than any of those others, Kettle’s friend. Part of her family in a way, for what other family had either of them known in these last thirteen years?
He padded across the floor, his bare feet silent as he went. As quietly as he could, he pulled out a chair opposite her.
The chair’s old oaken feet scraping across the stones broke her trance, and she looked up at him, wiping reflexively at her cheeks with the back of her hand.
“It’s certainly quiet around here without her,” Altin said, hoping that his smile would bring happy memories.
“And ya was always fast ta remind her of it too,” she said.
Altin exhaled a long, tired breath that fanned the ten little candles, bending the tiny flames toward her like glowing supplicants, bowing in submission to her grief. “She’s not dead, you know. She’s in very capable hands. She’s going to be a great person one day. Perhaps very soon, as I expect those elves have more than they bargained for with her.”
She tried to be mad again, to snap at him, but that last bit made her smile. “Oh, and that’s like ta be the truth of it too.” She almost laughed. “I can see ’em now, her givin’ em screamin’ fits, like as not bitin’ and scratchin’ the lot, wantin’ ta come home.”
Altin nodded. “I imagine she is.”
“Ya should be goin’ ta check on her regular, ya know. What with her bein’ yer ward and all.”
“I’ve already told you I can’t, Kettle. You know the laws and the treaty. And this is beyond even that. This is some ancient pact. We’ve gone over it a hundred times.”
“And we’ll go over it a hundred and another more. Ya don’t even try ta g
et a message ta her at all. Not even one a them lizards the city folks throw about. Could ya even be bothered to do that much?”
“Kettle, they don’t go to String. You were there when I tried. And she can’t hear me when I call. I’ve done that too. She’s with the elves. It’s done. Please stop throwing it in my face all the time. I’ve got enough to worry about as it is.”
“She worships ya, ya know.”
“Yes, I know. And she almost shot Orli too. So, if we’re being honest, I think that some training on how to handle weapons properly was way overdue. She is where she needs to be. It is her destiny.”
“Destiny.” Kettle did laugh this time, though there was no humor in it now. No fond recollections or undercurrents of joy. “Like ya ever gave one lick fer destiny afore.”
Altin peered through the bright candlelight to where Kettle glowered as she stared into the fire, her face shadowed some since she’d leaned back in her chair. He thought it was an odd reflection of Pernie sitting there, an older, wizened kind of petulance. He shook his head, and got up. “Well, I wish her a happy birthday,” he said. “Wherever she is just now, whatever she is doing. I hope she is happy and with friends.”
“As if elves know anythin’ ’bout friends.”
“Kettle, we have no idea what the elves know. For all we know, she’s having a big party right now with a hundred dancing elves playing music and eating cake until she’s so full she can barely move.”
“I should think that’s hardly likely. I may not read all them books as a great magician such as you, but I been round long enough ta know there weren’t no elf what ever baked no cake. There ain’t no need a libraries to know as much as that.”
