A Well-Timed Enchantment

by Vivian Vande Velde

  Deanna sighed and got to her feet. If she was lucky, she thought, they'd be out of hearing range by the time Leonard discovered he'd been abandoned.

  She wasn't lucky.

  They were walking across a field planted with some sort of grain—barley, possibly—when his voice caught up with them, hardly more than a whisper of wind in the leaves. "Baylen!" They had covered quite a distance and Leonard must have been shouting with all his might for the sound to reach them at all. She had never done anything so low, she thought. But, after all, what could she do? Baylen had the clothes. What was her alternative? To tackle him, grab Leonard's pants, bring them back to him, and cease to exist by noon?

  "Bay-len!"

  And Baylen only grinned.

  Oliver had glanced at her once, at the first call, as though to check whether her ears could pick out the sound, but his expression told her nothing.

  Deanna set her face—this was none of her business, she told herself—and put one foot ahead of the other. "Bayyyy-lennnn!" she heard again, fainter than before. Perhaps Leonard's voice was giving out, or he was realizing the fruitlessness of it all. And then she thought she heard it one more time, but that may have been a breeze rattling the leaves; and after that they continued to the crossroads in silence. Baylen's plan better be worth it, she thought. It'd better have convinced Algernon to leave the watch untended. Otherwise she'd have to face Leonard again, and how could she do that?

  She knew they were close when Baylen put his finger to his lips although nobody had said anything since the pond. Silently he pointed to a wooded area, then made a curlicue gesture that she assumed meant they'd circle into the woods and come up onto the crossroads from behind—longer but safer. She nodded.

  The woods were dark, with exposed roots to trip her up, and twigs that hung down and snagged in her hair. No telling how many insects were nesting in there by now. The night was hot and humid and her hair and her clothes stuck to her.

  There was no path that Deanna could see. Baylen stuffed Leonard's clothes underneath a bush and began to pick his way with a self-assurance that Deanna figured would in no time either get them exactly where he wanted or have them hopelessly lost. She kept turning around to make sure Oliver was still there, because he never made a sound.

  Finally—it must have been four o'clock where people had clocks—Baylen turned around to once more place finger to lips. Then he got down on his hands and knees and very, very stealthily crawled forward.

  Deanna and Oliver followed, and in a few moments were at the edge of the trees. They had come out in the angle where the two roads intersected, and were maybe a hundred yards away; it was hard for Deanna to judge: perhaps the distance from her front yard to that of her best friend Lynn, two houses away. Two houses, and about nine hundred years. There was no cover at all—nothing to hide behind—just wild grass and weeds between them, crouching at the edge of the woods, and the cauldron, sitting by itself in the middle of the road.

  But there was nobody else there. Apparently Algernon had believed the story Baylen had invented about the watch and the gold and the "let no human eye..." Apparently.

  Deanna squinted into the shadows up and down the lengths of the two roads, same as Baylen and Oliver were doing. Crickets chirped, mosquitoes whined, but nothing out of the ordinary seemed to be stirring tonight. Don't forget you're stirring, Deanna told herself. But even with a cynical outlook she could find nothing suspicious in the colorless landscape she surveyed.

  Baylen started to get up and Oliver tugged on his sleeve. He pointed to the left, where there were some bushes across the road.

  "What?" Baylen asked in a barely audible whisper.

  "Someone sitting there," Oliver whispered back.

  Deanna and Baylen tried to pick a shape out of the shadows. "I see nothing," Baylen said. Deanna's thought exactly.

  "Two men," Oliver described to them. "The one on the right has light curly hair and a sleeveless leather tunic. The other has longer, darker hair and a short-sleeved shirt. I can't make out the color in this light They have their backs to us and appear to be asleep, although it's hard to say for certain."

  It took Baylen a good second to remember to shut his mouth. He glanced from Oliver to the shadows across the road. He gave a low, appreciative whistle and said, "You must have the eyes of a cat."

  "Yes," Oliver said.

  "If there're two, there may be more," Deanna whispered.

  "With instructions not to look at the cauldron," Baylen reminded them. "Uncle Algernon believed every word I told him. He thinks he's making gold. He'll have told his people not to look at the cauldron. They'll be facing away from us. If they're awake—which they probably won't be. If there's more than the two sleepers to begin with."

  Deanna looked at Oliver, who appeared none too pleased by all this. "What is it?" she asked.

  He seemed to be listening to the night sounds. He shook his head. "Something's not right."

  Baylen sighed impatiently, as though to say, Amateurs always get cold feet. "We can't back out now. What would you say to Uncle Algernon?"

  What would she say to Leonard? "Surely there has to be another way," she said. "There's always more than one way to skin a cat."

  Oliver looked up sharply.

  "Sorry. I meant—"

  "This is safe," Baylen interrupted. "My lady, trust me ... Nothing is wrong. This is just last-moment jitters."

  Oliver didn't get last-moment jitters, Deanna was willing to bet. But Baylen was right about one thing: this wouldn't get any easier by postponing it. By tomorrow afternoon she wouldn't even be a memory unless the fair folk were wrong, and she had stopped believing that long ago. "All right. We'll do it," she said, figuring if the situation were that dangerous, Oliver would object.

  He didn't.

  "All right," Baylen said. "We'll wait a bit to make sure nobody's stirring."

  The "bit" stretched out agonizingly. At least an hour of nothing.

  The darkness.

  The croaking frogs.

  The smell of grass.

  The sweat drying on her back, prickling like a hundred creepy-crawlers.

  She shifted position and tried to ease a cramp out of her leg. Which way was east? Was that the first hint of dawn in the sky?

  Finally Baylen asked, "Are the guards still there?"

  Oliver nodded.

  "Do they still look asleep?"

  Again Oliver nodded.

  "Then we'll go now. We'll approach together, just in case there is trouble. Deanna, you seize the watch. Oliver, you stand to her left, keeping a special eye on those guards. I'll protect her right."

  Deanna's heart was beating harder than it had when she'd been fighting through the underbrush in the woods. Could the others see how scared she was? She hoped not: they both looked so calm.

  "Ready?" Baylen asked. "Keep low. Forced-march pace."

  What's forced-march pace? Deanna was about to ask, but didn't have the chance. Just short of a run, she saw, panting already to keep up. There was no breeze to cool the hot, sticky air. And Baylen moved them forward in a weaving pattern, which took them three times as long to cover the distance. Any more excitement and they're going to have to pick me up and carry me, she thought as they reached the cauldron.

  No sign that anyone was watching or aware of them.

  With Oliver several paces away to one side, and Baylen several paces away to the other, Deanna turned her attention to the cauldron. It was enormous, big enough that Deanna could easily have fit inside it. Must have been awful carrying it out here, she thought. And it was filled, as Baylen had said it should be, with metal of all sorts. Mostly armor, she noted. This is finally over, she thought. Look out, elves, here I come. The small wooden box was perched at the top. Her hands closed around it, lifted it, removed it from the pile. Mostly armor, but it started to settle, to tip, and oh no, the guards would be sure to hear, except it wasn't settling after all, it was moving upward, and a silvery gauntlet grabbed hold of her w
rist, and the gauntlet was attached to an armpiece which was attached to a cuirass, and it was an entire chain-mail-armored man who'd been crouched down in that enormous cauldron with a few stray pieces of scrap metal to camouflage him, but now he had hold of her, and the wooden box had dropped from her fingers, which were becoming numb from the pressure of his restraining her, and that was Algernon's face leering at her from underneath that helmet, and a dozen armed guards had jumped out from behind trees and bushes and clumps of dirt that had seemed too small to hide anybody, but now they had their swords and crossbows and pikes leveled at Oliver and Baylen and Deanna, and Algernon said, "Are you ready to talk now?"

  FIFTEEN

  "Who's the Leader of the Club...?"

  "Uncle Algernon," Baylen said with a nervous laugh, "it's me, Baylen."

  Still holding on to her, the wizard looked beyond Deanna to his nephew. "I see who it is, you meddling idiot. Put your hands up."

  "Uncle Algernon!" Baylen tried to sound indignant, but the drawn weapons were obviously making him edgy.

  "Put your hands up."

  Baylen put them up.

  Oliver, wearing what Deanna considered his I-told-you-so look, raised his hands also.

  "Somebody's going to get hurt, with all those weapons," Baylen grumbled as Algernon motioned two of his men forward.

  "Nobody's going to get hurt," Algernon said, never loosening his grip on Deanna.

  Ha!

  "Now you've done it," she said. "You can kiss your gold good-bye, you know."

  Algernon gave her that boy-are-you-a-halfwit look. "Gold?" he said. "Under the moon? Everybody knows gold is aligned with the sun, not the moon."

  Everybody?

  The men took Baylen's sword and Oliver's, then patted them up and down searching for hidden weapons. Oliver had a knife that Deanna hadn't known of. Resourceful—not that it made any difference now.

  Baylen gave a baleful glare at the young man who searched him. "Boy, Norman, you just wait until I tell my father," he snarled. "Are you going to be in trouble."

  Norman didn't appear overly daunted by the idea.

  With her companions disarmed, Algernon finally released Deanna. He stood looking at her as though she were a minor annoyance, but mostly weighing, evaluating. It was the sort of look Oliver—when he'd still been a cat—had given Aunt Emilienne's goldfish, as though wondering how good a dinner they'd make.

  She stared at her feet to avoid Algernon's penetrating eyes.

  "We'll bring them back to Belesse," he told his men. But then he glanced around as though he'd just realized something was wrong. He settled his gaze on Baylen. "Where's your brother?"

  "Brother?" Baylen said innocently.

  Algernon folded his arms across his chest.

  "Oh." Baylen gave the nervous grin again. "Leonard? You mean where's Leonard?"

  Algernon watched Baylen, and Baylen watched Algernon.

  "In serf Guillaume's pond," Deanna said. At least she didn't have to carry Leonard on her conscience anymore.

  The wizard didn't point out that it was late for swimming, even though it must be five o'clock in the morning, if not later. The night seemed determined to last forever. He sighed. "Norman," he said, "why don't you take Baylen to Guillaume's holding? See if Leonard needs rescuing."

  The young servant saluted sharply, all the while sucking in his cheeks to keep from laughing. Perhaps that should have made Deanna feel better about Baylen leaving her and Oliver alone with Algernon and all his armed guards. It didn't.

  The wizard took off his helmet and squirmed out of the armor he'd worn to hide in the cauldron. Like Oliver, he was dressed in black. But while the dark against Oliver's fair skin made him look dramatic and interesting, it made Algernon look positively cadaverous. Her watch still hung around his neck by the gold chain she'd seen that evening. "Torrance, you make sure our young friend doesn't try anything foolhardy," he told the burly man who was guarding Oliver. "The rest of you can bring all this back to the castle." He ignored the groans of complaint and indicated for Deanna to follow Oliver and the man Torrance.

  But things quickly turned nasty: Torrance took Oliver by the arm and Oliver twisted away from the touch. The guard roughly took hold of him again and Oliver looked ready to fight about it "Oliver," she said.

  Oliver narrowed his eyes.

  He's not going to listen to me, Deanna thought.

  However, when Torrance tugged on his arm once more, Oliver went with him quietly.

  Deanna was aware that Algernon had taken in all this.

  "Who are you?" he asked as they started toward the castle. "And what are you doing here?"

  "That's for me to know and for you to find out," she said, estimating, after she'd already said it, that it made her sound about five years old.

  "This ... thing, which Baylen called a watch: What is it?"

  "Never saw it before," Deanna said—so what if he knew it as a lie?

  "The numbers change."

  "Do they?"

  "They count something. But they count strangely. They go to fifty-nine, then start all over again."

  Sounded like seconds mode: the button must have gotten pressed while she tried to disentangle the watch from her sweater, sitting—all that while ago—on the side of the well in Chalon. She didn't say that; she said, "That is strange."

  He grabbed her arm and swung her around to face him.

  She scrunched her eyes closed to avoid his eyes.

  "What's a Taiwan?" he fairly screamed, shaking her. "Who's this creature with the big ears and the long nose and the white gloves?"

  "I don't know. Leave me alone."

  She heard a scuffle from up the road and looked. Oliver was struggling with Torrance. The bigger man had him on his knees, his arms twisted up behind his back, but Oliver was still fighting to get back to her, to protect her. "It's all right," she called, thinking, If Torrance hurts him, I'll ... She didn't know what she'd do, but she was determined that she'd make him pay somehow. "I'm all right, Oliver."

  Oliver stopped struggling and Torrance hauled him to his feet. Algernon released Deanna, and Oliver let himself get yanked around, back toward the castle.

  "What do the numbers count?" Algernon asked from between clenched teeth.

  "Beats of your heart," Deanna said, spitting out the words as fast as she could think of them. "Each time your heart beats, the watch subtracts a day from your life. Take it off soon or you may well drop dead before breakfast."

  She was angry enough to be careless. She let her eyes meet his. But he was angry also, angry and scared, in no mood to try mind control. He shoved her, hard enough that she had to take two quick steps, not hard enough to hurt, or to make her fall.

  They walked the rest of the way in silence. The sky was definitely getting lighter. Castle Belesse loomed darkly ahead of them, looking for all the world like a fortified prison. The drawbridge was open, as it had been all the while she'd been here. Torches burned at that entry and at the entry to the main building. The courtyard was faintly illuminated by the torches along the inside of the encircling wall, but there were no lights showing in any of the windows. Except for a lone guard pacing along the top of the wall, no one seemed to be stirring at this early hour. Seven o'clock? she guessed. Seven-thirty? Normally she got up at seven-thirty. She'd never before been the whole night without going to bed. The cooking staff would be awake and about, but busy in the kitchen. No one would know where Algernon was taking them. No one would know he had taken them. People disappear, Leonard had told her.

  She must have unintentionally balked, or Algernon expected her to try to escape, for he took firm hold of her arm. In the silent dawn their footsteps clattered noisily on the drawbridge. Noisily enough to wake castle sleepers? She doubted it. Should she scream? Should she assume Sir Henri would defend her against his own brother?

  "To the tower, sir?" Torrance asked.

  "Stable."

  So he had something planned for them. Something so terrible he
didn't dare do it here at the castle where normal (more or less) people could find out about it. She remembered Baylen summoning him to the stable to deal with a horse with a broken leg. She stiffened, refusing to walk. If she screamed and nobody came, still that wouldn't make their situation any worse. It could only help. Perhaps the wizard sensed the scream building in her throat, for he clapped his hand over her mouth. "Come on," he muttered between clenched teeth. She let herself drop so that he had to support her weight. His free hand circled her waist and he started dragging her across the courtyard, away from the entry hall, away from civilized behavior. "I'm not going to hurt you."

  Sure he wasn't.

  She tried to bite his hand, but it was large, and firmly centered over her mouth, and she couldn't get to it. Already they were away from the main entry, halfway to the stables. Her heels had left tracks in the packed earth of the courtyard. Would anyone notice and wonder? She could smell the animal pens: the goats, the pigs, the horses.

  "Move," Algernon snarled at a clutch of half-grown chickens too intent on pecking at something in the dirt to get out of his way.

  Oliver must have thought he was snapping at her, or he heard her muffled cries for help. In any case, he whirled around, and Algernon hissed into her ear, "Stop being stupid." And Torrance, who appeared to be the kind of man who didn't mind hurting people, drew his sword. It left its sheath with a sibilant whisper reminiscent of Aunt Emilienne sharpening her kitchen knives. The slitty-eyed expression Oliver wore reminded Deanna that he was used to claws and teeth: he was probably imagining himself going for Torrance's throat. Don't fight him, Deanna wanted to warn him, but Algernon's hand still covered her mouth.

  Her watch intervened.

  Or, rather, the musical alarm did.

  "Dah-da dah-da dah-da dah..." It gave its tinny rendition of the opening notes from the "Mickey Mouse March."

  Two bars into it and Algernon had let go of her and ripped the chain from his neck and was holding the watch away from himself at arm's length.