Brimstone and Lily (Legacy Stone Adventures)

by Terry Kroenung

  Something heavy and strong lifted me up about half a foot. Muck sprayed out of the gap. I started to recall that afternoon’s laundry session with longing. This called for a change in tactics. Morphageus became a giant armored gauntlet with eagle’s talons. It dug its fingers into the wood of the seat and sealed its mighty palm against the thing trying to escape. The threatening sounds were muffled but still plenty powerful and the outhouse shook like a feather in a gale. But Jasper held firm. Nothing came through. I let go of him to devote both hands, both feet, and both lungs to escaping the shack.

  Now I know I try to sound like the toughest kid in the world, but when I want to I can shriek as loud and as high as any other girl. Stuck in that privy, an angry magick-born poop monster trying to devour me, I really wanted to. Opening my mouth as wide as it would go, I let out a cry that would have done a steam locomotive proud…just as Romulus yanked open the outhouse door.

  “Oww! Lordy!” he hollered, hands on ears. “What you doin’?”

  “Bullies!” I cried, bowling him over and landing on top of his enormous form. I kept going, stepping on his face as I rushed away from the outhouse.

  “Where?” asked Ernie, dancing away from Romulus’ shirt pocket, mirror in hand.

  Roberta circled overhead, squawking, “Can’t spy ‘em. Must be over the horizon.”

  I looked at our kitchen door. No gaslight or candleglow could be seen in the windows. Ma should still be up, frettin’ over me. The outhouse still swayed and creaked. A Bully sure lurked someplace nearby. Maybe several of them. I put my finger to my lips and pointed toward my home.

  “I think they’re in the dry goods store over yonder,” I hollered for the benefit of anybody hiding in our place. Walking back down the alley, away from our building, I signaled to for Romulus to grab the mouse and for Ernie to take the mirror. He nodded and waved at Roberta. The parrot swooped down. She grabbed Ernie in her claws and he scrambled onto her back. While I crouched down to pretend I’d gone toward Clemens’, Romulus moved as fast as a bullet’s shadow toward the kitchen door. With a mighty foot he shattered the door, jamb and all. As he whipped aside Roberta dove through the jagged opening with a cry of “Give ‘em a broadside, me hearties!” Now I could see the dim blue witchlight that I’d missed before. Bullies in my house.Where’s Ma, then? I started sprinting toward the steps, forgetting that I was unarmed. Morphageus still held the privy monster at bay.

  Before I could take ten steps it had ended. My magicked ears picked up Ernie yelling, “Once more unto the breach, dear friends!” Must be Shakespeare night. The Bully death-sigh whooshed out behind the orange-violet flash I’d grown to love. Then silence. Roberta broke that by flapping back out into the alley, whooping in victory.

  “Sent ‘em both off to see Davy Jones, we did!”

  Romulus stood by the steps. “Two of ’em. Prob’ly left as lookouts in case we come back. Don’t think they’s any more about.”

  I tapped the black silk cord around my neck. “Nope. Stone’s warm again.” Brushing past him, I burst into the flat, all frantic. “Ma! Ma, you here?!” I cried, knowing that she couldn’t be.

  Nothing. Dead silence. No, no, no! Where is she? I crashed from the kitchen to the parlor to the bedroom, noting the signs of a hasty exit. A chair overturned, cupboards and drawers left open, papers trailing across the rug. Freezing still, I cocked my head to hear if maybe she was hiding someplace. No breathing sounds, no rustling, not even to my wonder-ears. Think…where would she go if somethin’ happened?

  My breathing grew shallow from the panic. Lightheaded, I sat down at the kitchen table. Our sugar bowl had tipped over, spilling its crystals in odd dunes. I blinked as Romulus lit a pair of candles. Shadows waved across the room like ghosts. Maybe they are. Maybe they’re Ma and Eddie, tryin’ to say goodbye. Roberta hopped onto the chair next to me, Ernie astride her neck. They looked like something out of a fairy tale. ‘Rodent and Parrot’s Magickal Adventure.’ My chubby mouse friend held one of Ma’s smallest, sharpest knitting needles in both paws.

  “Now I have a weapon, too,” he announced, waving it about like a spear, to Roberta’s dismay. She wrenched her head to and fro to avoid losing an eye.

  “Weapon?” I blurted, jumping up as if I’d just sat on a tack. “Jasper!”

  I blasted out of the kitchen door and streaked down the steps and across the alley to the privy. Once at the outhouse I hesitated and checked my Stone. No bad guys around. The tiny building stood as solid as ever, all shaking and groaning had stopped. Its only smell was the usual awful stench it gave off in summer. Ah, the heady aroma of Washington City in July. Mrs. Lincoln’s special perfume. Jerking the handle, I let the night air in and hollered, “Jasper!”

  “No need to pretend you care about me,” he whined. Morphageus still held the metal glove shape, impatient spiky metal fingers tapping on the scarred wooden seat. “Abandoning me in this foul jakes, awash in the muck of countless Sauveurs. I battle savage piles of animated dung, sacrificin’ my spotless surface to the night-soil terrors, so you can ride off to glory---”

  Rolling my tired eyes, I said, “Yeah, yeah, yeah. Get over to the pump, you.”

  “Yippee!” he sang, sounding even younger than usual. He scampered over to the steps like an awkward puppy, still in his gauntlet form. I worked the big green pump handle till clean water—cleaner than what covered him, anyway—glurgled out. He rolled around, giggling, letting the stream sluice off his smelly coat of crud. When he’d got as close to sparkling as he was likely to get, short of using a steam hose, he shook himself all over. I couldn’t help thinking that Romulus must’ve done that, in his old life.

  “Did you miss me?” Jasper asked, snaking up and around my body in his sword shape.

  I grabbed the hilt and sheathed Morphageus. “I was gone for maybe five minutes.”

  “Believe me, kiddo, it felt like five years from where I sat. Excuse me, from where you sat, actually.”

  “Ho, ho. You should be onstage, Mr. Comedian.” We headed back into the kitchen.

  “Yeah, I could star in an umbrella stand, or be a wall display…”

  Romulus, Ernie, and Roberta, were still in the house. Ernie gorged himself on sugar, his fat little squirmy legs sticking straight up out of the bowl. I heard disturbing gobbling sounds. Roberta shook her feathered head as if she watched some poor drunk lying in a gutter. Standing by the parlor window, Romulus kept a sleepless eye on 10th Street.

  I stifled a laugh. “Now there’s a sight to inspire confidence in the Marshals of the Equity.”

  Ernie struggled out of the sugar bowl, his twitching whiskers looking as if he’d fallen into a snow bank. “That’s me. A confidence man.”

  “You can say that again, bucko,” Roberta muttered.

  A man-sized burp came out of the mouse’s snout. “Trust old Ernie. I make all your problems disappear.”

  Giving the messy table a glum look, I said, “Somebody made Ma disappear. I can’t imagine where---”

  My eyes narrowed. Ernie was saying something, but my magicked-ears had closed. Every sense bent to the sugar patterns on the table. There was a word written there, scratched with a hasty finger.

  CROATAN.

  Croatan? Like Sir Walter Raleigh? Like the Lost Colony of Roanoke we learned about in school? That Croatan?

  “Did one of you do this?” I asked.

  Everyone gave me a blank look. “Do what?” asked Romulus.

  “Write in the sugar.”

  Roberta chomped an apple she’d grabbed from the fruit bowl on the sideboard. “Been too busy raidin’ the stores.”

  “I can’t write nothin’,” said Romulus, squinting at the writing and turning his head every which way to try to make sense of it.

  Ma. Ma left me a message! She’s gone to North Carolina. But why? And how?

  “We gotta go,” I announced.

  “Virginny or bust!” cried Roberta, spewing fruit everywhere and flapping her blue-tipped wings.

  I sh
ook my head. “We’re just passin’ through there. I aim to go to North Carolina. To the Outer Banks.”

  Ernie pawed the sugar coating from his muzzle. “Me bloomin’ ears must be clogged. Say again?”

  Pointing to the word written in the spilled sugar, I said in a firm tone, “This says she’s headed for Croatan Island. That’s hard by Cape Hatteras.”

  Romulus moved to block the door. I thumped up against him. “You don’t know that.”

  “I know she’s gone. I know she wrote this message as she was leavin’. I know that---”

  The parrot cocked her piratical head at me. Her spectacles made her eyes look big and funny. “You should know that the Merchantry might’ve written it to send you into a trap.”

  “Why would they do that? Venoma said they want me in London by the turn of the moon. What good would trappin’ me down south do ‘em?” A rushing started to fill my ears, like a flash flood arriving.

  Ernie crawled up my arm and plopped into my haversack. “Maybe Venoma laid the trap. Thing yer needs to know about the Honourable Merchantry, missy…chess players all. They stick plots inside of plans inside of schemes. I think it keeps ‘em from gettin’ bored.”

  “You cain’t run off without thinkin’, miss,” advised Romulus.

  The room echoed with my frustrated roar. “What in tarnation am I supposed to do?! My whole family’s gone, to who knows where? Our only clues point in opposite directions.” My pulse pounded and the room grew fuzzy.

  “But a word written in sugar’s a powerful flimsy excuse to crowd on all sail,” Roberta said, preening her feathers.

  “And whether or not Venoma’s tryin’ to snare us, we know she has Eddie,” Ernie pointed out with a definitive nod.

  I paced around the kitchen, confused as a duck hit on the head. “OK, here’s what we’ll do. I’m the Stone-Warden, and my final decision is to…” No matter how hard I breathed, no air seemed to come in. Swallowing hard, I tried again. “My decision…is…we…”

  My last memory of my home was of the spinning ceiling, and Ernie diving off me onto the table as I fell.

  * * * * *

  Foul-smelling canteen water shocked me awake. Sitting up with a scream, I felt Romulus’ hand across my mouth. Seemed like a barn door smacking into me.

  “Sshh!” he whispered. His low tone shook the air more than my shriek had, I thought. “They’ll hear us.”

  I sucked in air through my nose to clear my head. Marsh. Mud. Sea-bird pooh. Must be back at the river. My blurry eyes asked a question. Two of them, actually.

  Jasper answered. Oh, yeah. Someday I’ll figure out this whole mind-readin’ thing. “You fainted. More Stone and Merchantry than you could handle for one night, I expect. Romulus carried you here like a baby. We’re at river. And we’re not alone, as usual.”

  “Who is it this time?”

  A shrill male voice broke the night stillness. “Sergeant Reilly! Take a squad further to your left.”

  “Yes, sir!” another voice answered, accented with the brogue of Irlann. “Corporal, bring your men this way.”

  Ernie crept along my arm, holding his knitting needle like a fearsome pike. “Let ‘em come! I’ll perforate their gullets.”

  “Infantry,” said Romulus. “Look like a whole battalion from New York.”

  Sounds like another great reason to cross the river. To get away from our own troops.

  “Merchantry troops, you mean,” Jasper corrected. “Somebody high up sent them to bring us in. Told ‘em we’re spies or saboteurs.”

  I peeled Romulus’ hand from my mouth. “They’ve got us dead to rights if they follow that last order. We’ll be boxed in with the water to our backs. “What now? I don’t imagine that mirrors will work against muskets.”

  Romulus started easing back toward the water. “We gots to go. Now. Quiet as…mice.”

  It took a lot of willpower to stifle my snicker at that, with Ernie all but chanting a war-cry from atop my elbow. “Where’s Roberta?”

  “Scoutin’ fo’ a good crossin’ spot. Has to be easy to get to, dark, and have a good tree handy.”

  “Tree?”

  “To make us a boat.”

  The army had scoured the river for any type of boat that might be used to help spies. They tried to control river crossings and make it as hard as possible for Confederates to get help from our side. That’s why our search for a rowboat, a canoe, or any other craft came up empty, as we’d known it most likely would. I gathered that we were supposed to find a tree and make a raft, but I should’ve figured that the Stone-Warden needed to expand her imagination even more than she already had.

  Romulus led us along the shore, away from the soldiers. As their voices and stompings faded, I relaxed a bit. I still ached all over, and felt the kind of tired that tends to come when you’re dead and buried. Roberta had swooped in to tell us that she’d found a good tree by the river, south of the Monument. It lay in sight of the Long Bridge, but dark enough for our purpose. I fell behind, what with my shorter legs and being almost a corpse and all. When I caught up with the Marshal, he was talking to the tree. And it talked back.

  Figures. Should’ve known that ‘good tree’ meant somethin’ else to these guys.

  “Is this her?” asked the tree, a medium-sized peach. It almost seemed to peer down its nose at me, though it had no visible face. His voice sounded young and educated, like the jaded university students from Georgetown who came to Ford’s sometimes. All he needed was a book of Cicero’s orations and a glass of beer.

  “This be Verity,” said Romulus. “Verity, this is Pitts.”

  Pitts? A peach tree named Pitts? You gotta be kiddin’ me.

  “No joke,” Jasper chuckled in my head. “And don’t let on that you think it’s funny. Thin-barked, this one is.”

  “Pleased to meet you, sir,” I said with a little bow.

  “Oh, don’t patronize me!” snapped Pitts, shaking his foliage. He muttered under his breath in a snippy tone. “Ten years planted here, listening to messages on the root network from all over the world, just waiting for my golden opportunity, and they send me a snot-nosed brat.”

  “Well, this brat’s got good ears,” I shot back.

  “Oooh! How wonderful for you. Too bad you’re wet behind them.”

  Something snapped in me. I’d been pushed around enough by my enemies; I didn’t need it from my supposed allies. The Stone flared white-hot in my left hand and Jasper, shaped as a woodsman’s axe, leapt into my right fist. “You gonna help or not? I’d just as soon carve a canoe outta you as listen to this.”

  The tree gasped. “She does have the Stone!”

  “Stones, more like,” snickered Ernie. “A pair of ‘em.”

  “Told you,” Romulus said with a satisfied smile. “Can we get goin’ now?”

  “Sure, sure. Does she know what’s about to happen?”

  Roberta, perched on one of his branches, said, “Well, we ain’t exactly got to that yet.”

  Oh-oh, this can’t be good. “Got to what yet?” I asked, eyebrows up and hands on hips.

  “Send a girl to do a tree’s job,” sighed Pitts. He grunted and his roots pulled free of the shore mud with a long sucking sound. Like a clown with oversized funny shoes, he waddled toward the river. I was so amazed that I almost missed Jasper speaking to me.

  “We’re up the creek without a paddle,” he giggled. “Hold on tight now.”

  My innards twisted, caught in an orange-green tornado that stank like brimstone and lilies. Dull razors sliced into every inch of my skin. The bones of my face felt like they had split into a dozen new chunks and rolled under a wagon. Something heavy dragged my backside down to the muddy ground. While I lay there I retched. Dry heaves and dizziness fought for my soul.

  What’s happenin’? This is the most awful thing ever…

  Turned out that shape-shifting hurt. I mean it really hurt.

  I tried to stand up, but my body wouldn’t do it at first. It wanted to stay on a
ll fours. The weight still clung to my backside. What is that thing? Feels like a rubber mat. Bending my head to see what was going on with my tortured body, I found that my neck had shortened. The thing didn’t want to move as far as it had before. My eyes were still magicked, so seeing in the dark proved to be no problem. What I saw was a problem.

  Fur. Brown fur. And paws with claws.

  This better not be permanent or I’ll turn Jasper into a commode and make use of him.

  “Romulus, what…?” I tried to say. My voice squeaked out, like a giant mouse spoke for me. He didn’t answer. Instead, he handed me his mirror, which I trapped between my clumsy new paws. I gawked at what stared back at me. Beady eyes, buck teeth, whiskers, and a flat rubbery tail.

  I’d been turned into a giant red-haired…beaver.

  12/ “Safe” in Virginia

  With a cracking of limbs and rustling of leaves, the uprooted peach tree waded into the Potomac, then slid over as if a lumberjack had felled him.

  “Ooh, that’s nice!” Pitts said, wiggling his shoots. “Cools the roots, you know.”

  “Jumpin’ Jehosophat!” I shouted. The words sounded, I don’t know…beavery. I could understand what I said, of course, and so could my friends, but to somebody who wasn’t a Marshal of the Equity it must’ve just been animal chattering. All to the good, otherwise those searching soldiers would have come running. “Jasper! What did you do to me? Who’d you…Jasper? Jasper?”

  No answer. No giggly smart-aleck voice in my head. Nothing.

  I felt for the sword with my clumsy paws. Gone! What a catastrophe. I’m a giant rodent and the only one who can maybe change me back has skedaddled. My pudgy form spun in circles to see if I’d dropped Morphageus in the weeds near the riverbank. Nope. He’s gone, for sure. Now what do I do?

  “Sword’s gone!” I barked through my buck teeth. “Sword’s gone! I’ve lost Morphageus. We’re in trouble now.” I wiggled my whiskers at Ernie and Romulus. “Come on, help me look.”