The Salamander Spell

by E. D. Baker

  “Then bad thingss began happening to her. A sstorm made her roof leak and ruined her magic bookss. A rat wandered in and ate her mosst important herbss. Her potion sscorched when she took a nap. That’ss when she told me it wass all my fault; she ssaid that her bad luck began the day she brought me home. She called me a jinx, and I knew she was right. Bad luck followss me wherever I go.”

  “I’m sorry to hear that,” said Grassina as she took a step backward. Apparently, this wasn’t Chartreuse after all.

  “Yessterday a hairy monsster broke into the cottage and ssmashed everything. The witch wass out, you ssee, or she would have turned him into a mousse and fed him to me. When the monsster broke my cage, I thought I’d finally be free. I wass almosst out the door when he sstepped on my tail. I thought he wass going to kill me, but he changed hiss mind and I got away after all. I sstill have bad luck, though. I can’t go far with a tail like thiss. Ah, I ssee you undersstand. That’ss it, move away from me. Maybe my bad luck won’t hurt you if you leave now.”

  Grassina kept backing away until she bumped into the thicket behind her. Despite what the creature said, it wasn’t its bad luck that she found frightening. “You’re a real snake!” she said, her eyes widening as she realized something else. “Then why can I understand everything you’re saying?”

  “Why wouldn’t you be able to undersstand me, unlesss . . . Is there ssomething wrong with the way I talk?” the snake asked, becoming agitated. “Are my wordss getting sslurred? Iss my voice getting faint? I’m going to die now, aren’t I? The end iss near. I can feel it! It’ss my bad luck, I tell you. That monsster musst have hurt me more than I thought when it sstepped on my tail!”

  “I doubt it. You sound fine. It’s just that I’m really a human girl, not a rabbit, and I shouldn’t be able to understand you . . . unless . . . Is it because I am a rabbit now?”

  “You’re crazy,” said the snake. “That explainss a lot. Only a crazy rabbit would want to hear my sstory. Monkeyss are crazy, and if you’re like them . . .”

  “I’m not crazy. I’m a human girl who . . .”

  “You’re no human; you’re a rabbit. Jusst look at that little twitchy nosse and fluffy puff of a tail! I think that . . . Shh! What wass that?”

  A leaf rustled. Fur brushed a twig. A padded paw scraped an exposed root. Grassina raised her head to sniff the air. There was a new scent, like her own rabbity smell, yet completely different. This scent set her whiskers quivering and made the fur along her spine bristle. Whatever the creature was, she already didn’t like it.

  Turning her head ever so slowly, Grassina glimpsed a flash of russet fur and the tip of a pointed ear. It was a fox, and it was only a few feet away inside the tangled thicket.

  “Thiss iss the end,” whispered the snake. “Now ssomeone iss going to die becausse of my bad luck. I can’t sslither fasst with my tail like thiss, and you’re crazier than a butterfly that thinkss it can sswim. We don’t sstand a chance!”

  Caught between the instinct to run and her desire to help a creature in need, Grassina paused for only a second before saying, “I’m not crazy, and I’m not leaving you here to die. There must be something we can do.” Her eyes fell on a broken twig. When she tried to pick it up, she had to use both paws to hold it, being careful not to prick herself on the wicked-looking thorns.

  The twig wobbled as Grassina raised it between her paws and turned to face the fox. Smiling, the fox skirted a prickly branch while its eyes flicked from her to the snake. “What have we here?” it said, licking its lips.

  “You don’t want to fool with me,” Grassina said.

  The fox smirked. “And why is that?”

  “Because I have this!” she said. Raising the twig over her head, she hopped once and brought it down on the fox’s skull as hard as she could. The fox jerked its head away, but Grassina followed, raining blows on it with the thorny twig.

  “What are you doing?” the fox barked. “You’re a rabbit. You’re supposed to be afraid! Stop that! Ow! Ow!”

  The fox dodged, trying to evade her blows. Grassina was still walloping the animal when her skin began to tingle, her paws to prickle, and her ears to ache. She paused and took a deep breath, but her vision blurred, making it hard to see when the fox turned to face her, its lips curled back in a snarl. Shaking her head to clear it made her feel woozy, so she almost didn’t notice the fox tensing its muscles to pounce. When she did, she swung at the fox one last time even though she was feeling so light-headed that she was afraid she might faint. She was halfway through her swing when her paws lost their grip on the twig; the tingling had grown until she could feel nothing else.

  Grassina’s entire body shimmered, but she had her eyes closed, so she didn’t see it. Nor did she see the horrified look on the fox’s face when she began to change.

  The fox turned tail and ran when Grassina’s body began to push the thorns aside, breaking some and bending others as she grew. The thorns scratched and bit into her flesh as she returned to her normal size and shape, leaving trickles of blood on her face, hands, and clothes. When the tingling stopped, she felt the thorn-inflicted pain in a rush of sensation that made her cry out. Her eyes fluttered open and she flinched; the thorns were so thick around her that she was afraid to move. Biting her lip at the pain of each new prick and scrape, she pushed the twigs aside as she forced her way through the thicket.

  “Well, I’ll be . . . ,” whispered the little green snake at her feet.

  Grassina looked down. “I can still understand you!” she said. “Now do you believe me? I told you I was a human.” Something rustled in the thicket only a few yards away. After glancing in that direction, Grassina turned back to the snake. “I don’t want to leave you here to get eaten. Come with me and I’ll . . .”

  The snake drew back, rearranging its coils deeper under the protective thorns. “Pleasse don’t try to hurt me! Issn’t it bad enough that my tail iss ssquashed?”

  Grassina was aghast. “I don’t want to hurt you! I have to go home now and see my family, but I don’t want to leave you here. If you go with me, I can keep you safe while your tail heals. You won’t bite me or anything if I pick you up?”

  “Well, you did protect me from that fox,” said the snake. “I ssupposse I can trusst you. But I have to warn you that if you take me with you, my bad luck will come, too.”

  “You don’t need to worry about that,” said Grassina. “I don’t believe in bad luck.” Gritting her teeth, she touched the snake, expecting it to feel cold and slimy. Instead it felt nice, not cool, but not exactly warm either. Its scales were smooth, and it tickled when it slid across her palm and wrapped itself around her wrist.

  “Ssay,” said the snake. “You’re not a witch, are you? You’re not going to sstick me in a kettle with toe of bat and ear of rat or ssome other dissgussting combination?”

  Grassina laughed and shook her head. “You don’t need to worry about me. I don’t have a lick of magic. I told you, I just want to keep you safe.” Pushing aside the last branch, she stepped out of the thicket and stopped to tug her gown free of the thorns. She looked around, afraid of what she might see. The farmer’s field was empty except for a flock of scavenging crows; there was no sign of either her sister or her mother. She would have to go home to find out what had happened to her family.

  Over the years, she had learned enough about magic to realize that because her mother had cast the spell that changed her, Olivene had to be the one to change her back. She had reverted to her human form, so perhaps her mother’s own transformation had been only temporary and she was her normal self again. But if she wasn’t . . . Grassina began to hurry, taking long ground-eating strides as she thought about her father’s disappearance. And then there was Chartreuse. Who knew what their mother might have done to her?

  Grassina would have to tend to the snake first, of course. “Hold on tight. I don’t want to drop you.”

  “I wouldn’t blame you if you did. It would jusst be my bad luck a
gain. But I should be fine. I wass hatched in a tree, after all. You know, you’re the firsst human I’ve ever talked to. Mudine talked at me, but she never tried to talk to me.”

  “And you’re the first snake I’ve ever wanted to talk to,” Grassina said, still amazed that she could converse with an animal.

  Five

  What are you doing?” demanded Grassina, ducking out of her sister’s way.

  Chartreuse waved the broom handle, swatting at a web and ripping it down the center. A spider dangled from one of the broken threads. “Vandals! Thieves!” it shouted in a voice no louder than a whisper.

  “That should be obvious,” said Chartreuse. “Mother told us to collect spiders’ webs. Do you know of a better way?”

  Grassina put her hand on the broom so that her sister couldn’t swing it again. “You don’t have to be so rough. We could try asking for them.”

  “Ask who?” Chartreuse glanced at the stable boy mucking out a nearby stall. “I’m not asking him, if that’s what you mean.”

  Grassina shook her head. “Ask the spiders, of course. The webs belong to them.”

  “You want to talk to spiders?” Chartreuse sounded incredulous.

  “You could do it if you’d like. I think talking to animals is fun.”

  “You would,” said Chartreuse. “But I don’t. It’s beneath a royal princess to talk to animals. We have a responsibility to our subjects to maintain some decorum. If you’d paid attention to Lady Sophronia, you’d know that we are supposed to set examples for our less fortunate subjects.”

  “Something awful happened to you when Mother turned you into a chicken, didn’t it? You never did tell me what it was like.”

  Chartreuse gave her such a venomous look that it could have wilted plants. “I told you never to mention it again! It was a nightmare, and I don’t want to talk about it!”

  Soon after returning home, Grassina had discovered that she hadn’t been the only one to have a transformation spell cast on her. Holding up her hands in surrender, she said, “All right, I’m sorry! But if you won’t talk to spiders, at least let me try.”

  “Even you can’t think that—”

  “We shouldn’t use a stick anyway. Did you see how it tore the web? We have to be gentle with them. Mother wants us to keep the webs intact.”

  Chartreuse sighed. “Then go ahead and do it your way. I want to get this over with so I can go to bed. I have plans for the morning and need to get up early.”

  “I just bet you do,” muttered Grassina. Spotting another web near the ceiling, she waved her hand at it, calling, “Yoo hoo! Over here.”

  The spider crouching in the center of the web glared down at them. When it spoke, its voice was scarcely louder than the breathing of the horses in the closest stalls. Grassina wouldn’t have heard it if she hadn’t been trying her hardest. “Stay away from me, you monsters,” said the spider. “I saw what you did to Inez’s web.”

  “I’m sorry,” said Grassina. “That was a mistake. It won’t happen again.”

  “You bet it was a mistake,” the spider said, waving a leg in the air for emphasis. “That was a beautiful web! Inez is known throughout the stable for her craftsmanship.”

  “I’m sure she is. I’ve never seen such lovely webs as the ones I’ve found here. That’s why my mother sent us to get them. She said they were the best in all the land, and she needs them for a very special project.”

  “I thought we came to the stable because we didn’t know where else to look,” murmured Chartreuse.

  “Shh!” said Grassina, darting an angry glance at her sister. Turning back to the spider, she smiled and said as graciously as she could, “We’ve come to ask if we might have a selection of your finest webs.”

  “What sort of special project?” asked the spider, sounding interested in spite of itself.

  “Don’t you dare listen to her, Corinne,” whispered the spider named Inez. “You can’t trust a web beater.”

  “She didn’t beat your web,” said Corinne. “The other one did.”

  Inez turned from Grassina to Chartreuse. “They all look alike to me.”

  “Tell me about the project,” Corinne said again.

  “Oh, right, the project.” Grassina thought fast, trying to come up with something convincing. “My mother is the queen. She’s made a wager with another queen that our spiders are finer weavers than any human in her kingdom. Of course Mother wants the best webs she can find to show the other queen—”

  “Then it’s no wonder you came here,” said Corinne. “But you were going about it all wrong. Here, I’ll show you.” The spider darted to the edge of the web and worked one of the anchoring threads free. “You can have this one. It’s one of my best efforts, if I do say so myself.”

  “Don’t do it, Corinne!” shouted Inez. “They don’t deserve it.”

  “Stop being an old stick in the web,” said Corinne, loosening a second thread. “I’ve heard about contests like this. The spiders always win if their webs are half decent. I’m giving the queen the best webs we have.” Working on one thread after another, she freed the web until it began to sag.

  Olivene had made the girls boil vinegar to wash the webs, then gave them a gray powder to mix with the vinegar, saying, “That should do the trick!” The resulting concoction had smelled so strong that Chartreuse had made Grassina lug the pail to the stable, saying that the odor gave her a headache. Grassina crinkled her nose at the smell as she held up the pail to catch Corinne’s falling web.

  “Is this going to take much longer?” Chartreuse asked, stifling a yawn. “It’s getting late, and I would like to get to bed sometime tonight.”

  “How many more do you need?” the spider asked Grassina. “Morris! Francine! Your webs should do very well. The queen will need one of Astoria’s special weaves, too. Tori, if you undo that end, I’ll get started on this one.”

  By the time the spiders had finished donating their webs for the queens’ wager, Grassina had collected more than two dozen. Chartreuse waited impatiently at the stable door while Grassina thanked the spiders.

  “That was some story you made up,” Chartreuse said as her sister joined her.

  “I know, I know, I shouldn’t have lied, but what did you expect me to tell them—give us your webs so our mother can use them in a potion? I’m sure that would have gone over well.”

  Chartreuse patted her sister on the back. “Don’t be so prickly. I thought your story was good.”

  “Maybe,” said Grassina, “but I didn’t like deceiving them that way.”

  “Don’t let it worry you. They’re just bugs.”

  “So it’s all right for a princess to lie to certain people?”

  “Certainly not, but spiders aren’t people, are they? Now, let’s finish these horrid webs. I’m sick of them already.”

  “Where should we wash them?” asked Grassina.

  “Your chamber will do. The smell will keep me awake if we do it in mine. Your room already reeks of all those plants you have drying.”

  “I’d rather have it smell like herbs than the way that kitten makes your room stink,” Grassina muttered as she shifted the weight of the heavy bucket from one hand to the other.

  Whatever the powder was that their mother had given them, it kept the webs from clumping or dissolving and made them sparkle as they sloshed around in the pail. Grassina’s burden seemed to grow heavier as she climbed the stairs, and she had to stop now and then to rest. Chartreuse finally offered to take a turn, but she did it grudgingly and complained the entire time.

  The stars were shining outside Grassina’s window when the girls reached her room. Rather than find someone to light her candles for her, Grassina borrowed a flame from a torch in the hall and lit them one by one. A draft from the window made the drying plants hanging from her ceiling rustle and carried their pungent odor down to the girls. Chartreuse wrinkled her nose, but Grassina liked the smell and turned her face up with a sigh.

  “What are yo
u waiting for?” said Chartreuse. “I don’t have time for this. Don’t you realize how late it is?”

  “Oh, I realize . . . ,” Grassina grumbled, reaching for the bucket, “since you keep reminding me.” Although she washed the first web by herself, she was afraid it would tear when she took it out. “Help me with this,” she said, glancing at Chartreuse.

  “Say please,” her sister told her. “Princesses must never forget their manners.”

  “Please,” Grassina said through gritted teeth.

  “I don’t see why you can’t do it yourself,” Chartreuse said as she helped carry the dripping web to the windowsill. After they’d draped it over the ledge, she shook her hands to dry them, splattering her sister with droplets.

  “I’m sure you can handle it from here. It shouldn’t take you much longer, so I’ll be off to bed now.”

  “We’re supposed to do this together,” said Grassina.

  “We did. I have to go. I’m too tired to stay awake a minute longer.”

  “We’ve barely started . . . ,” Grassina began.

  “Good night, Grassina,” Chartreuse said pointedly as she closed the door behind her.

  Grassina reached into the pail for another web. The vinegar was cold and stung the little cuts she hadn’t known she had, but she handled the webs as carefully as she could. It was very late when she realized that only a few remained in the pail. Even so, the castle wasn’t completely silent. The sound of the guards making their rounds on the battlements carried through the still night air. The yowling of cats in the courtyard seemed extra loud and made Grassina feel edgy. She was relieved when a hound broke up the catfight.

  When she’d laid out the last web to dry, Grassina tumbled into bed and fell asleep instantly. It seemed only a few minutes had passed before she woke to a voice screeching in her ear, “Get out of bed, you lazy lump!” Startled out of a deep sleep, Grassina lurched bolt upright with her heart trying to thud its way out of her chest.