Valory stood over me, huffing like an angry bull. “Pick em all up!” she barked.
As I placed the stones back in a neat pile, I asked slowly, “Did it hamper Almyra much having an eye patch?”
“Well, no, not much but sometimes she…wait a minute. I never told you she only had one eye! How did you know that?”
“I’ve seen her,” I said.
Valory jerked me up by the elbow. “Get in the house.”
“Only if you promise not to choke me again,” I said, rubbing my sore throat.
“Sure,” Valory said in a not so convincing tone.
In the tense hour that followed, I laid out everything I knew starting with my own story of how I came to be in Faylinn. I told Valory all about Bleeding Bastion and my first encounter with the demon, Robyn. Then I related my meeting with Marafae on the Isle of Avalon, carefully describing the memories that Marafae had shown me.
I finished. Valory sat for a long time, staring silently into the fire. Her usual hearty aura was muted by the swell of emotions that I knew she must be feeling. My heart broke for her. Valory had trusted Almyra implicitly.
I still bristled with anger whenever I thought of the old Gnome, but I began to understand why Almyra might have tricked Marafae. It must have been lonely for the old woman alone in the woods. Maybe she’d figured that a wayward teenage Slaugh would not make a good mother.
“So,” Valory said in a hollow voice, “You’re telling me that my daddy was the king of all the Slaugh and my mother was his crazy mistress?”
“Yes,” I said, trying not to sound nervous. I couldn’t gauge yet if Valory still wanted to hurt me or not.
“And my half brother—”
“Hugo.”
“Right. Hugo has taken over as king and is up to no good.”
“Precisely,” I said.
Valory puffed out her cheeks and pushed her hat off her forehead. “Geez. Why would Almyra lie like that? If she’d just let me be, maybe my mom wouldn’t have gone off her gourd and killed all those folks. Maybe she never would have brought back that demon thingy.”
Now that I was calmer I considered the other side. “Or maybe you would have died as a baby and she still would have gone crazy. We’ll never know exactly why Almyra lied to Marafae, but maybe she thought she was doing her a favor. That’s probably how I’d feel if a teenage girl came to me in Marafae’s condition. She had no home and no family.”
Valory raised an eyebrow. “Changed your tune now, have you?”
I squirmed. “That was really dumb of me to freak out like that. But it’s like you said: I was only thinking of all the deaths Marafae was responsible for…all the deaths that might not have been.” I thought longingly of my father and sighed.
Valory fell silent again. The fire popped and crackled. Outside the wind howled. Fine snow snuck in under the old wooden door. The little hut suddenly felt much too tiny for the two of us.
I wrestled with guilt over revealing everything to Valory. The girl was a simple mountain dweller. She could have lived her whole life happily not knowing about her true origin. Then again, I could have, too. For all the pain and sorrow, for all the broken bones and broken hearts, I still didn’t regret coming to Faylinn. I knew exactly who I was, where I came from and what I had to do. Even with the blizzard howling outside I suddenly felt the pang of inactivity. I’d put my journey on hold too long.
“I’m leaving tomorrow if the snow stops,” I said.
The firelight’s reflection glimmered in Valory’s eyes. Her wings twitched and she asked, “Where will you go?”
I shrugged. “Anywhere I want, I suppose. Everyone who was looking for me must think I’m dead by now—enemies and friends.” I thought regretfully of the Larues.
“The nearest town is called Feegman’s Boot,” Valory said. “It’s two days north of here. I’ve never been, but the fur traders I’ve dealt with from there say they’ve got excellent pubs.”
“Feegman’s Boot it is,” I said.
An icy gust howled in the chimney. I shivered, dreading the two-day trek ahead of me. “What will you do?” I asked.
“What I’ve always done,” Valory said. “Fish. Hunt. What difference does it make? It’s all I know how to do.”
I wasn’t sure how safe it was to press the point, but I had been thinking of something. “You do realize that you’re the rightful heir to the Slaugh throne, don’t you? You’re Hagan’s oldest child. Maybe if you came forward, Hugo would step down.”
“What would I do with a bloody throne?” Valory asked irately. “If that Hugo brat wants it, he can have it.”
“But you’d be a good ruler…the rightful ruler.”
Valory stood up abruptly and shoved her chair back. It made a loud scraping noise that caused my scalp to crinkle. For a second she seemed to fill up the entire hut with her stomping strides and her agitated wing flaps. She snatched up her coat, pulled it on and opened the door. Wind and snow roared inside, extinguishing the fire.
“Where are you going?” I asked.
Valory didn’t answer. She walked out and slammed the door so hard that the whole hut shook.
I tossed and turned in the short bed that had belonged to Almyra. The blizzard still raged, but Valory did not return. I alternated between angry and guilty. It was mean of Valory to make me worry by staying out all night, but I knew I should have kept my mouth shut about the whole royalty thing. Valory was already dealing with an identity crisis. I berated myself for making it worse.
Sometime in the wee hours I finally fell asleep. I woke stiff and cold in the morning to an empty hut. The wind no longer howled. Winter sunlight glimmered through the snow caked against the window.
I took my time packing. Throughout the days we’d been trapped indoors, Valory had shown me how to work with leather and furs so that now I had a nice collection of warm clothes. I rolled up as much as I could and placed it in a leather bag. I kept looking expectantly at the door. Every time a shadow passed by the window my heart jumped only to realize that it was just blackbirds pecking around for scraps.
After two mugs of tea and a breakfast of dried berries, there was little to do but be on my way. With a last look at Valory’s empty hammock, I sighed and left the hut. It took a lot of effort for me not to look back as I struggled through the fresh layer of snow.
The sun climbed high. It beat down on the snow, causing all the ice crystals to glitter like a million diamonds. I squinted in the glare. I felt confident enough of my directions to know I was heading north. The unknowns haunted me, though. I had no money, so shelter was going to be a tricky proposition even after I reached town. The weather could turn sour at any moment, forcing me off track. I could navigate by the sun and stars, but if I lost sight of those I might as well be blindfolded. I thought of using the flute to call Tuari, but I didn’t want to risk being spotted. Hopefully the duke thought I was dead. I wanted to keep it that way. Plus, I didn’t want to become too reliant on the flute. It was the reason for the curse, after all.
Still, the idea was very tempting after a few miles of struggling through knee-deep snow. Exhausted, I sat down on a tree stump and glared at the expanse of white wilderness that lay ahead. My fingers crept towards the shortsword in my new fur belt.
“No,” I resolved. “I’m not going to do this the easy way. I deserve to freeze my legs off in this godforsaken backcountry.”
“Bein’ a little hard on yourself, aren’t ya?”
My head snapped up. There stood Valory with strings of fresh game in both hands. She grinned from under her hat.
I scooped up and handful of snow and threw it at her face.
“Phleh!” Valory spit out a mouthful of the stuff. “What was that for?”
“For making me worry all night! What on earth were you doing?”
Valory lifted the fetches of game. “Getting supplies for the trip. We can trade the furs for food and lodging in Feegman’s Boot. And, you know, we might want to eat sometime. Just a thoug
ht.”
“We?” I said incredulously.
“Yeah, we. See, I did some thinkin’ last night after I got all riled up. Got to thinkin’ about how I never done nothing or gone nowhere, and how out of the blue one day falls this girl. Somehow she knows things about me I never knew myself, and it gets me to wondering: is it some kind of sign? Like maybe my whole life was leading up to now and I’ve got a choice: I can go on doing what I always done, not making no ripple in nobody’s pond, or I can go with this hard-headed girl who believes in her life’s purpose so strongly that she’d walk two days in the snow without asking for directions. Well, I thought long and hard about all of that, and I made up my mind. I’m going with you.”
Relieved, I smiled. “Really? That’s great! You know how terrible I am at catching food.”
“I do have one or two conditions,” Valory said.
“Let’s hear them.”
Valory put down her catch and lifted a finger. “Number one: you’ve got to call me Your Highness.”
I grinned. “Sure thing. What else?”
“Number two: be patient with me. I like to do things my way and as you saw last night, I sometimes have a temper. Don’t think too badly of me when it flares up.”
I just kept grinning.
“What is it?” Valory asked.
“That whole bit about your temper?”
“Yeah?”
“I think it runs in the family.”
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
Chloe pushed aside the ugly, floral-print curtains and gave a scowl to the littered sidewalk outside. A row of vehicles looked back at her. She didn’t like the things. They were noisy and smelly and they moved so frighteningly fast on the hard, black roadways that covered the city in every direction.
A human walked by chatting on one of those dinky little rectangular devices that they all carried. The woman jabbered into her little machine, oblivious to anything around her. Chloe stuck out her tongue but the woman never noticed.
“Stop that!” Othella scolded.
Chloe closed the curtain and groaned. “I don’t like the humans here. They’re all clueless dullards.”
Violet glared at her from the hotel bed. A mountain of papers and brochures surrounded her. “They’re not dullards, Chloe. They just pay attention to different things.”
Chloe peered out the window again. “Well they should pay more attention to their surroundings. That woman just walked out in front of one of those car thingies.”
“Okay, some of them really are dullards,” Violet admitted.
Chloe sighed. “I’m tired of being here. When can we go home?”
Othella didn’t answer. She sat in her wheelchair at the hotel room’s badly lit vanity. A collection of tools was spread out next to the Pyxis Charm on the vanity top. She’d been tinkering feverishly with the Pyxis Charm for over an hour. Her blonde hair hung limp her on back. She’d hocked all her jewels for human money. Nobody who saw her would have guessed she was royalty.
Chloe and Violet had been forced to hide their identity as well. Both wore denim blue jeans and hats to cover their pointy ears. Chloe hated the clothes. The pants made her feel like a boy and the hat squished down her gorgeous purple curls. Nothing about the human world suited her.
They’d been jumping around cities for what felt like ages. The Pyxis Charm showed wear and tear from all the abuse. It was not meant to leap between places so haphazardly. Despite Othella’s best efforts it was beginning to malfunction. She didn’t say it, and neither Chloe nor Violet dared to ask, but getting back home to Faylinn could cause a problem.
Why all the city-jumping? Chloe asked that question on a daily basis and only got half answers as a response. She suspected a big part of it was safety. Her mother was nothing if not over-cautious, even if there was no way for enemies to reach them in the human world. Othella’s official excuse was that she was searching for something. She checked into big, musty buildings with stained books lining all the walls—nothing like the castle library at Ivywild. She scanned newspapers and watched the flickering vision boxes that sat in every hotel room.
Violet absorbed herself in research of the human culture while Chloe tagged along and tried not to set anything on fire. For months they’d traveled among the stinky vehicles and hidden in the human cities. They watched the vision box and ate human food and felt terribly lonely in a world that was bursting at the seams with people.
Chloe wriggled her legs in the scratchy jeans. She longed for her old watered silks, sequined gowns and feathered slippers. She craved the familiar sight of faces with pointed ears. More than that, she worried. What had become of her kingdom? She felt like she was running away when all she really wanted to do was go back immediately and push the duke off the top of Ivywild’s highest spire.
“AAAAAAGHHHHH!” she yelled, clutching the sides of her head. “I can’t take it anymore!”
The brochure Violet was holding burst into flames. Violet dropped it onto the bed and snuffed it out with a pillow. “Chloe! You can’t do that here!”
“I just did!” Chloe said, giving her sister a challenging frown. “What are you going to do about it?”
“Girls!” Othella exclaimed. She looked up from the Pyxis Charm. There were dark circles under her eyes.
Chloe and Violet stared at the floor.
“Sorry, Mother,” Violet said.
Othella sighed and spun her wheelchair to face them. She pulled the satchel out of her pocket where she kept the human money. “I think you two have been inside too long,” she said wearily. She handed Chloe a roll of thin, green papers.
Chloe detested the grittiness of the human money. She much preferred the smooth, pretty gems that Fay used for currency. “What’s this for?”
“There’s a market down the street,” Othella said. “A mall, they call it. A whole collection of little stores all in one building. Go entertain yourselves there. Be back by sundown. And remember our rules.”
“No magic,” Violet recited. “No talking to strangers. No talking about home. No taking off our hats.”
“Good girl,” Othella said. “Oh, and don’t forget the room key.”
Chloe picked up the funny little card off the nightstand. It was one of the few things here that fascinated her. On their first night in a hotel, she’d spent hours swiping the card in the door just to hear the lock pop open.
“You know where this place is?” Chloe asked Violet as they took off down the sidewalk.
“I saw it on a map in the hotel room,” Violet said. “We go to that big road over there and then turn right. It’s not far at all.”
Chloe hunched her shoulders and picked up her pace. She was glad to be out of the hotel room, but with the road nearby the vehicle fumes stunk up the air. From every direction came the sounds of human life. Cars honked, people shouted, music blared and the air buzzed constantly with the conversations of people on their telly-phones. Chloe couldn’t make out the words but she felt the signals jamming up the air. She wondered how Emma had lived here so long. Everything was a distraction. Nothing was ever still.
Violet seemed to adjust well enough, but she walked around with a look of grim resignation. Chloe wondered if she felt lost, too. Here, her skills meant nothing.
“I can’t wait to go home,” Chloe said to test the waters. She watched Violet out of the corner of her eye.
Violet pursed her lips. “We aren’t supposed to talk about that.”
“Bah,” Chloe said, tossing her head. The bulk of her purple hair stayed stuck in place under her hat. It just wasn’t she same. “You can’t possibly like this place.”
“No, not really,” Violet admitted.
“And you must miss everybody. What about Garland?” Chloe never missed the chance to tease Violet about her old crush.
Violet shrugged. “I guess.” Then she looked over at Chloe. “I don’t feel like that about him, though. Geez, Chloe. That was years ago and I only liked him because he was nice to me. You don’t keep
up, do you?”
Chloe resented Violet’s growing impudence.
Violet giggled. “You should see yourself! You might frighten somebody with your lip stuck out and your forehead all knotted up like that!”
Chloe seriously considered setting fire to Violet’s hat, but held herself in check because they crossed paths with a human girl walking a poofy white dog. Chloe and Violet turned and stared at the dog as it trotted past them.
“Looks like a tiny fluffalo,” Chloe said. “If it was pink, that is.”
“Do you mean the dog or the girl?” Violet asked.
Chloe snorted in spite of herself. “Hey, you told me to stop making fun of humans. You shouldn’t get to, either.”
“Fair enough,” Violet said. “Hey, there’s the mall.”
The sprawling building lay across the highway. Chloe took one look at the stream of cars speeding by and gulped. “Can’t we fly over it?”
“Come on,” Violet said. She walked to the corner where a blinking sign beeped at them. “I saw some people doing this on the vision box last night,” she said as she pushed a button beneath the sign.
The picture on the sign changed from a hand to the figure of a person walking. The cars stopped in both directions. Certain that they would spurt forward again at any second, Chloe sprinted across the road. Her heart beat ten times its normal rate. She sucked in deep breaths to recover and then gagged on exhaust fumes.
Violet jogged the distance and arrived next to Chloe just as the hand reappeared on the sign. “You don’t have to run,” she said.
The traffic started up again. It roared by inches from where they were standing. Chloe trembled and backed further onto the sidewalk. Behind her sat the mall. Cars lined rows and rows in paved fields all around it. Chloe flashed them looks of distrust as she and Violet made their way to the mall doors.
Othella did most of the shopping when they needed supplies, so this was Chloe’s first foray into a big human marketplace. The lights, colors and smells of the mall overwhelmed her. It was huge compared to Ivywild’s open-air market. At first she just stood inside the doors with her mouth hanging open. Violet was awestruck as well.
The Flute Keeper's Promise (The Flute Keeper Saga) Page 22
