By the time they reached Jessamyn’s cave and had bundled her inside, the girl’s supercilious look was back, and she seemed quite herself again. An uncomfortable suspicion rose in Juniper’s mind. She sat next to where Jessamyn reclined on her cushioned bed with a hand flung across her brow.
Juniper kept her voice neutral. “Jessamyn, how are you feeling? Can you tell us what happened?”
“Oh, I cannot speak of it!” Jessamyn moaned. She started to hiccup, and Juniper grabbed her free hand and patted it soothingly. Erick and Alta hovered silently near the entryway.
“You’re safe now. And unharmed, I think?”
Hesitantly, Jessamyn nodded.
“Good. But we really do need to know what happened. And if there is any . . . you know, danger still out there. For the rest of us.” Jessamyn looked entirely unmoved, so Juniper tried again. “Or to you, of course. We want to make sure it doesn’t happen again. Whatever it was.”
Jessamyn sat up suddenly, eyes wild. Juniper immediately regretted her suspicions; no one could playact a terror this raw. “The truth is . . . I don’t know what happened.” The girl shuddered, and clasped her arms as though seeking warmth or comfort. “I was in here trying to sleep, not that it was possible with so much racket from your little party up there.”
Juniper made comforting noises, waiting until Jessamyn went on.
“Well, there was no way I could sleep, so finally I rose and decided to take a short walk around. Get some air.”
Juniper noticed that Jessamyn was wearing a fine ruffled gown, tight of bodice and high of collar, and delicate heeled slippers. Had Jessamyn been on her way back to the party, perhaps hoping to join the group and move away from her troublemaking friends?
“As I made my way down the trail, just to take the air, you understand, no other purpose”—her eyes dared Juniper to contradict her—“all of a sudden, I heard . . . I saw . . .” She shuddered violently.
“What?” Juniper pressed, keeping her voice gentle.
But Jessamyn shook her head. “I saw angry orange lights, flashing off and on. I could not see clearly in the darkness, but there were bodies—giant, fearsome figures skulking about, riding upon monstrous, bulky-looking beasts. They made no noise, but crept about with evil intent.” She stopped, and after a minute, Juniper saw she wasn’t going to say any more.
“Then what?” she asked.
“Then nothing. That was all. By this time I was near to the fences, where you found me, and the shapes were shadows, and they began to gather right upon me! I screamed, and I suppose I frightened them away, but I myself knew nothing else until I felt hands shaking me.” She tossed Erick and Alta a disdainful nod. “Those two gave me such a fright, I am scarcely recovered.”
Juniper frowned at her. “Well, you gave us something of a fright, too! That’s really all this is about? You saw bulky shadowed shapes near the animal pens? Have you considered that perhaps it was our own goats and horses you saw roaming about, casting warped shadows in the moonlight?”
“Casting shadows upon what, the light beaming forth from their demonic eye sockets?” Jessamyn was fully recovered now, hands balled into fists and leaning in toward Juniper. “I. Know. What I saw! There were evil lights, and forms that were man-shaped, only larger and more vile. You can believe me or not, as you please. But now I wish to be left alone. At least that infernal racket has ceased. You all may go.”
Juniper stood up, looking uncertainly at Jessamyn, who lay back down and turned her face to the wall. “Look,” she said. “I didn’t mean to doubt you. I’m sure you saw . . . something out there.”
“Pull the curtain fully over the door on your way out,” Jessamyn retorted coldly, and Juniper had no choice but to retreat. She didn’t bother drawing the curtain; shock or not, there was only so much attitude she could handle.
“So what do you think of that story?” Alta asked as they trudged back toward the Great Tree. “Do you believe her?”
“I’ve no idea what to believe,” Juniper said wearily.
• • •
The next morning, Juniper and Toby, along with a few other early risers, trekked over to inspect the animal enclosures. To one side was the goats’ pen, surrounded by a fence made of long, thin tree branches woven with thick knotted rope. Near the back of the enclosure, the goats huddled in a furry mass. Opposite them, the gaggle of chickens squawked around the overturned wagon bed that was now their home. The nearby horses’ enclosure had higher bars and a sturdier fence.
Or . . . it used to.
Yesterday, the brand-new fence had stood upright; today it bulged grotesquely inward, limp branches teetering in loose soil. The ground inside the horses’ enclosure was fully torn up and trampled. Inside, five horses nervously pawed the ground, eyes darting from side to side.
Five horses, where there should have been fourteen.
“What’s happened?” Juniper asked. “Where have they gone?”
Toby just shook his head. “I’ve had a quick scout all around—they’re nowhere nearby. The prints lead out from here and get lost on the hard rock trails.”
“It’s as though the fence was sat on by something really big,” said Tippy, “what stretched it out beyond repair. That’s just not nice at all.”
Toby vaulted the fence, a bag of feed in hand, heading for the remaining horses. Juniper was gratified to realize that Thunderstar was one of those still in the paddock.
“What’ll we do without horses?” came Sussi’s thin wail from among the group. She stood close to her older sister, with Oona’s arm wrapped protectively around her. Still, the younger girl’s voice trembled as she spoke. “We’re trapped here in the mountains, then, aren’t we? With no horses to ride back?”
“We’re no such thing,” Alta said firmly.
Juniper quickly turned to face the anxious onlookers, whose number had doubled in the last few minutes. “Alta’s right. We’re going to track these horses and do our best to get them back. But don’t forget the wagons up in the cave—we can easily pack everyone into those for our trip back, if needed. There’s no cause for alarm.”
Erick was squatting a few paces up, near the broken fence. “Look at this,” he said.
“Everyone else, stay back,” Juniper called. She didn’t want to lose the chance—however slim—of finding identifiable tracks. “Give us a few minutes to inspect things.”
Alta got busy yelling the watchers out of the way, while Tippy darted here and there with featherlight tread, making a great show of her own pint-sized investigation. All the hoofprints in and around the paddock crisscrossed over one another so that it was hard to pull anything else from the scene.
“This here,” said Erick, pointing to a slight rise just above the enclosure, away from the muddle of hoofprints, “is where we found Her Sniffyness.” He flushed and quickly corrected himself. “That is, Lady Jessamyn. See how the ground is all trampled by our feet? But down here . . . look.”
Juniper leaned in. Much of the ground in this part of the paddock was dry and graveled and showed no clear marks. But right at the enclosure’s edge, the ground was softer. Quite separate from the hoofprints, she could clearly see some very distinct, oddly large prints.
“Are those—they are hoofprints, aren’t they?”
Erick hesitated. “There was this—”
“Let me guess,” said Juniper. “A book you have on the reading of prints?”
“What? How did you know that?” Erick looked so startled that, despite the tension of the moment, Juniper burst out laughing.
“Is there anything you haven’t read a book on, Erick Dufrayne?”
Erick ducked his head. “I suppose not. This volume is very well regarded, though. Said to include every animal in the near continents.”
Juniper frowned. “And these prints?”
“Nothing in there even comes close.�
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The prints were large—nearly twice the size of the horses’ hooves. The precise shape was hard to make out in the dry, trampled earth. But Erick was right: These could have been made by no ordinary beast. “What do you think, then?”
“Truthfully?” Erick shook his head. “I’ve not the faintest idea. The shape’s like no animal I’ve ever seen. They seem almost . . . unreal somehow.”
“Monsters!” cried Tippy with glee. “Horse-thieving monsters! Riding whatever monsters ride. Fire-breathing dracos? Truly this is a glorious day!”
“Hush, you!” snapped Alta, having successfully corralled the onlookers and now pushing in to see for herself. “’Tis nothing of the sort.”
“Of course not,” Juniper said, getting ahold of herself. “There’s no such thing as monsters. We’ll find a reasonable explanation to this once we track them down, you’ll see.” Still, a small shudder ran down her back.
They set to work scouting far and wide. But as Toby had said, the tracks were quickly lost in the dry, packed-stone trails of the South Bank cliff side, and did not reemerge. Whoever—or whatever—had taken the horses had made a clean getaway.
So it was a quiet, skittish group that gathered around the sitting stones for the morning meal. The arrival of Cyril and Root did little to ease the tension, and Juniper looked up in dismay at seeing them. Had they come to join the team or to challenge her further? Well, their jaunty walks, their smug and unruffled expressions made the answer to that pretty clear.
Another thought sprang to her mind. Juniper narrowed her eyes. “Where were you two last night?” Even as she said the words, though, the unspoken accusation did not ring true. It was all too easy to believe these two were behind the disturbance—with Jessamyn as co-conspirator, even. But those odd prints told a different story. And what could Cyril want with nine horses? Where would he put them?
Juniper didn’t believe in monsters; there had to be a logical explanation. But one thing she knew for sure: Those hoofprints had not been made by any creature known in the land of Torr.
Cyril didn’t seem to notice her stormy expression. “That’s a jolly question,” he said, and she was surprised to see a spark of good humor on his face. “For after we were so rudely ejected from the festivities last evening, Root and I set off to do some adventuring of our own. Isn’t that right, Root?”
“Right it is,” Root agreed, and Juniper wondered idly if she’d ever heard him talk before. He was so good at being Cyril’s silent partner that she barely thought of him as his own person.
Cyril waved grandly toward the group. “So much progress has been made in construction and establishment. I propose—”
“Wait!” Juniper cut him off. “I meant what I said last night. Are you here to join in the work today? You’re not welcome to our meals otherwise.”
Cyril just smiled more broadly. “As I began to say—everyone has been working so hard. And Root and I have discovered the most delicious new spot.” He turned to face the group. “What would you all think of taking a day of rest and leisure?”
Juniper opened her mouth to disagree. For one thing, Cyril was totally sidestepping the issue of helping with the work. For another, they hadn’t even been here a week! Get work done, then have fun. That’s the way things should be. A little evening party was one thing, like they’d had last night, but a whole day off? And what about searching for the stolen horses? Still, she couldn’t miss how the worried faces around her lit up at Cyril’s words, how drooping shoulders straightened, a general tension easing out of the air. I should have noticed how tired everyone was, she thought. And based on their investigation so far, there didn’t seem to be much they could do about the horse thieves.
She stood and raised her voice. “A most excellent suggestion,” she said, “and one that I think . . .” She hesitated as all eyes turned toward her, as all paused midword, midbreath—and she took a single moment to marvel at this, the capturing of a group’s attention, holding them in the palm of her hand and turning them this way or that according to the need. She saw Cyril’s brows draw in, his face darken. He opened his mouth, and she flung her arms wide. “Let us do it! A day of rest and adventure. Have we not earned it? We shall follow Cyril and Root to explore their new spot—and then tomorrow we’ll work twice as hard as ever. What do you say?”
The chorus of cheers and applause and stomping feet was reward enough, as the group erupted in a gabble of delighted plans and projections.
“It is a swimming hole,” Cyril called over the ruckus, and it was clear they heard him, for they nodded and buzzed the louder. But he’d lost his hold. They were fully Juniper’s now, and as she turned on her heel, the cool smile she shot him said all that needed saying.
Juniper swept off to locate her bathing gear.
• • •
They hiked downriver and crossed at the rickety wooden bridge—passing over one at a time, just to be safe. Filbert looked especially hesitant, and Juniper held her breath as he took his turn. The old boards creaked under his bulk, but the base held firm, with barely a wobble as he stepped gingerly across. In a few minutes, they were all safely on the North Bank.
“So much grass everywhere! This would have made a grand pasture for the horses,” Toby said to Sussi as they walked along just ahead of Juniper.
“Can’t it still, for those that are left?” Sussi asked.
“Of course.” Toby sighed, then perked up. “The goats will love it, too—so thick and green, so much room to run!”
“Look there,” Sussi said, pointing. “Wild onions!” Juniper smiled at how alike the siblings looked, walking side by side in the dappled morning light. The rest of the group moved along in twos and threes, with Cyril and Root in the lead, and Oona hanging just behind the noble boys. Jessamyn stamped along somewhere to the rear, fully recovered from the night before but apparently trying to reach her destination without muddying her silk slippers. Good luck with that, Juniper thought, while avoiding a look at her own grime-caked sandals.
“Leaping lollapalooza! It’s all a-showering over here!” shrieked Tippy, gadding around on the edge of the stream. She was right. Juniper had wondered how the land north of the river could be so green and lush, in contrast with the South Bank’s dry, cracked soil. But now she could see the fine spray billowing up from the river’s edge to coat the pasture. The wind here must blow in one direction only.
“Natural wonders,” she said. “I can scarcely imagine how much more there is to discover in this wild, unknown land!”
“We should launch a proper scouting expedition,” said Alta. “Learn everything about this place and what it has to offer for our country’s needs.”
“That is an excellent idea!” Juniper exclaimed. “First thing tomorrow, will you head that up? We can make it a regular part of our daily tasks. Take one or two others along.”
“I’ll go! We shall be on the lookout for those dracos, I swear,” Tippy offered, cartwheeling her way across the grass.
Juniper’s hand brushed her waist-pouch, where parchment rustled. “Erick and I have been working on a map, but there’s ever so much detail still to be sketched in as we figure out the full scope of the Basin. We need to prioritize our tasks and set goals. Then we can run things as efficiently as possible.” All of this and swimming days, too, she thought, her heart sinking a little. Was this how a country worked? Truly?
Alta nodded. “First light tomorrow, then. My, but this day is glorious! Do you know what I would be doing if I were back home?”
Juniper shook her head.
“I should be up to my arms in pig’s grease, or flour, or coal from shoveling out the great ovens. I can’t say that I miss it.”
“And I should have been starting out on yet another ghastly groundsweep,” Paul said with a shudder, “all the while wishing from my heart that I might spend my entire day out in the green.”
“About this time?” Juniper wondered what time it even was, and realized with a start that she’d hardly glanced at the timepiece all day. “I should likely be engaged in a vigorous outdoor constitutional, before being packed back to the classroom for another tedious session of geometric equations, or political case studies, or analysis of the treatise of law as it applies to continental invasion across the last six centuries.”
She looked sidelong at Alta and Paul, saw the laughter hiding in their eyes, laughter they weren’t quite sure should come out. Juniper giggled, and the other two dissolved together, all of them laughing until they gasped, with the sun beating down on their heads, sending out a warmth that was far more than skin deep.
FROM THE BRIDGE, THE GROUP SKIRTED THE newly planted vegetable gardens and cut across the grassy field to the far side of the valley, heading straight for the crags on the other side. By the time they reached the base of the cliff, Juniper was walking alongside Cyril. Root and Oona followed close behind.
“So you stayed out here last night?” Juniper asked. She hadn’t missed how far-off this place was, nor the visibly single set of tracks they’d seen going and coming—normal-sized feet only, no strange, erratic hooves. The more she thought about it, the less possible it seemed for Cyril to have been involved in last night’s horse debacle.
“We set off as soon as we were dismissed,” he said with a sneer, “and only returned this morning.”
“That’s very generous of you to want to share your discovery so quickly with the group.”
“Why, everything is better shared, is it not?” he said slyly, and Tippy, popping up on his other side, clapped her hands in approval. But Juniper frowned. She’d never known Cyril not to have some backhanded motive at work, if she just waited long enough for it to appear.
Princess Juniper of the Hourglass Page 12
