A Well-Timed Enchantment

by Vivian Vande Velde

  Drop it, Deanna wished at him.

  He looked at it in horror, his hand tight on the chain.

  Drop it, drop it.

  The music stopped, its message complete. (Seven-thirty, time to get up.) He looked from the watch to Deanna. He wasn't going to drop it. He wasn't going to stampede in helpless panic.

  But the pigs were.

  Behind him, the pig keeper's charges had roused themselves from dead-asleep to oinking, snorting pandemonium.

  "Down, Squeakers. Back off, Patch," the little pigman cried. He'd been asleep on a pallet in one corner of the pen, and he rubbed his eyes with one hand, tried to restrain the pigs with the other. They continued to squeal and hurl themselves against the gate and the sides of the pen. "Charlemagne, you stop that right now."

  Torrance, looking at the swirl of pigs open-mouthed, had let his sword arm drop. He and Oliver backed away from the gate, which rattled loosely in its rawhide bindings. Deanna and Algernon backed away from the side of the pen, which looked considerably less secure than it had five seconds ago.

  "Patch! I'll stew you for dinner for sure 'less you get away from there!" No sooner said than the old man looked up and saw Deanna. Saw Algernon, with one hand still gripping her arm, the other holding out her watch. She saw something go on behind those eyes—she didn't know what. "Yey!" he called, giving the nearest pig a smack on the rump with the flat of his palm. "Walk! Walk time." And with that he flipped the rawhide thong that held the gate closed. "Yey, pigs! Walk!" A diversion!

  The pigs headed for the courtyard.

  Or, to be more precise, the pigs headed for Deanna and Algernon, who were standing between them and the courtyard.

  The pigman put his hand next to his mouth and gave a cry that was half yodel, half yell. "Yah-yah-yah-yah! Snowy! Blacky!" One pen over, between them and the courtyard, a pair of young goats jumped their fence.

  "Hey!" their keeper yelled at the pigman. "Don't do that." Too late.

  The goats were headed for the pigman.

  Or, to be more precise, the goats were headed for Deanna and Algernon, who were standing between them and the pigman.

  Deanna scrambled up onto the railing of the pigpen. Algernon was half a step behind her.

  "Whoa, Charlemagne! Back, boy." The pigman stopped the biggest of the pigs from getting past them. He headed it off toward where Algernon was perched on the fence. Other pigs got confused and started milling about, bumping into each other and into the side of the pen.

  Deanna felt the boards rattle under her. Algernon had his knees pulled up to his chin.

  Meanwhile the boy who tended the goats had opened the gate to his pen in order to lead the two escaped goats back in. Instead the others got out.

  "Bah! Bah!" they bleated, heading straight for the confusion. "Oink! Oink!" the pigs snorted. The dust they raised swirled thickly. The goats were the worst. They butted, some gently, some not so gently, against the pigs and the pen and the other goats. One began to nibble at Algernon's left sleeve while he had his attention on holding the watch away from another on his right side. As soon as he got distracted by noticing what was happening to his shirt, Deanna thought, she was going to grab the watch and run.

  Servants poured out of the castle and the outbuildings. They shouted questions, yelled advice, and chased after the animals, riling more than they captured. Geese honked and beat their wings. Between them and the chickens, there was a snowstorm of feathers in the air. A rooster settled itself on the rail beside Algernon and began to crow.

  Torrance had been elbowed away from Oliver, back to the fringe of the group. Good. Deanna decided to add to the confusion. She covered her ears against the din and began to scream as loudly as she could.

  She could see the pigman jumping up and down, flapping his arms. Judging from the faces he made, he was also hooting, but she couldn't hear him over the other noises.

  Oliver waded through the animals and people to get to her side. She uncovered her ears and was about to warn him that Torrance was making his way through the crowd, his sword still drawn, but Oliver wasn't even looking at her. His attention was straight on Algernon.

  For his part, the wizard had finally noticed that half his left sleeve was eaten away. He was looking at that, so he didn't even glance up at Oliver's approach. But if Oliver had looked eager to get at Torrance's throat, Deanna thought he was going to kill Algernon.

  He gave a shove that sent the wizard flipping backward into the pig yard, then hurdled the fence and jumped on top of the older man as he lay stunned, flat on his back in the muck. The watch had gone flying through the air, hit the gatepost, and landed on the chaos side of the railing.

  "Fight! Fight!" various voices announced, a few sounding downright pleased about it.

  Deanna took her eyes off the watch long enough to make sure Oliver was in control of the struggle inside the pigpen, then lunged after it. She dived between several sets of legs, human and not, and saw it kicked out of her range just as she was about to grasp it.

  There. She crawled forward, almost got a finger stepped on, then cupped her hand over it Cot you, got you, got you. She sent a mental thank-you to the pigman.

  A foot came down on the trailing chain Algernon had attached. Deanna pried at the foot and pushed against the leg. Nothing. "Excuse me," she said to the kneecap. Still the leg didn't move. Once again Deanna tried to wiggle her fingers under the boot "Move, you medieval moron," she muttered. Still nothing. What kind of idiot was this? She took a second look at the boot. High-quality craftsmanship evident there. She moved her gaze slightly higher. The cloth of the pants was finely woven. Higher still, a brocade vest Higher still to the face looking down at her with incredulous puzzlement...

  She gulped.

  "Hello, Sir Henri," she said.

  SIXTEEN

  Explanations

  Sir Henri leaned over and scooped up the watch.

  "Lady Deanna," he asked, "what are you doing?"

  "Trying to rescue the world," Deanna mumbled. The situation hadn't merely taken another turn for the worse, it had just gotten hopeless. What now?

  Sir Henri tapped his ear, indicating that he hadn't heard.

  "Trying to rescue the world!" Deanna shouted. So what if he thought she was crazy? He'd never help her against his own brother People disap pear, Leonard had said. Despite all appearances, Sir Henri had to know, had to have been—if not a part of that—at the very least turning his back on the castle's darker goings-on. Did she really think he'd consider her a special case, deserving of his intervention?

  Sir Henri shook his head, and it took her a moment to realize that he wasn't answering her unspoken train of thought, but was simply showing that he still couldn't hear.

  "Quiet!" he bellowed over the racket of squealing, squawking livestock and shouting, shoving humans. "Hold still."

  Miraculously—she would never have guessed Sir Henri could command such authority—the humans in the crowd stilled. The animals, no longer pursued by whooping, arm-flailing servants, began to settle down. High-pitched squeals became grunts, the goats stopped butting, dust and feathers settled to the ground.

  "You—" He pointed at someone behind Deanna. "—and you: break up that fracas. You, you, and you: round up the animals. The rest of you: don't try to help. Just stand perfectly still and don't make any noise. Let the animal keepers work around you. Lady Deanna." He helped her to her feet.

  Even before she was standing straight, she looked for Oliver. He and the wizard Algernon were in the pigpen, held apart by two no-nonsense men. By their bulging muscles and sooty leather aprons, Deanna knew them to be the blacksmith and his assistant. The younger man, the assistant, had released the wizard but stood between him and Oliver, ready to keep them from getting at each other again. Algernon ignored him. He brushed off his clothes, his expression one of barely restrained fury. Oliver, on the other hand, seemed willing to take on the blacksmith despite the almost ludicrous difference in their sizes. But the huge man held him
effortlessly, waiting for Sir Henri to tell him what to do next. Neither Oliver nor Algernon appeared to be seriously injured.

  Then she took in the courtyard. It looked like the scene of a major pillow battle. The animals were being led back to their pens by the pigman, the goatboy, and the goosegirl, but feathers wafted through the air, stirred by their every move. The servants, who had been ordered not to move, were all facing her, watching her, waiting to see what she would do next.

  Deanna closed her eyes and tried to pretend they weren't there. It didn't work.

  "Now," said Sir Henri. "For shame."

  Deanna peeked, and saw that Sir Henri was addressing Oliver and Algernon.

  "Is this honorable? Is this sporting? I am deeply shocked by both of you. Surely this isn't the custom in Bretagne, sir."

  Oliver, still struggling in the blacksmith's grip, caught sight of Deanna. For a moment their eyes met. He stopped trying to get loose. His anger seemed to dissolve all in a moment and he met Sir Henri's gaze levelly and coolly.

  "And you, Algernon. At your age!" He gazed around the courtyard. "What is the meaning of all this? What's going on?"

  That was a mistake. Everyone started at once.

  "He's trying to kill us." Deanna pointed at Algernon.

  "They're a danger to us." Algernon pointed at her.

  "They're elves." Torrance pointed at her and Oliver.

  The others wouldn't be outdone. The goatboy stuck his finger in the pigman's face. "He set my goats loose."

  The pigman blamed it on the goosegirl. "She stepped on Patch's tail."

  She wasn't paying attention. "Has anybody seen my goslings?" she asked.

  Voices joined in from the crowd.

  "Somebody picked my pocket."

  "I didn't see anything."

  "He started it."

  "No, he did."

  "No, she did."

  Everybody seemed to have something to say, except Oliver, of course, who just stood watching her with those cold green eyes.

  And then, from the back of the crowd, a peevish voice complained: "She stole my clothes."

  That got everyone's attention.

  Oh, no, Deanna thought.

  Leonard made his way through the crowd. He was wearing what must have been clothing borrowed from serf Guillaume or one of the other holders between the pond and the castle: a burlap sack of a shirt and a pair of often-mended pants held up by a length of rope. He wore no shoes but had a narrow, moth-eaten blanket around his shoulders. "She—" He paused to give a great sneeze, and wiped his nose on the corner of the blanket. He pointed at Deanna. "She stole my clothes."

  Deanna had to try twice before she got her voice to work. "I did not."

  "Baylen told me all about it," Leonard told his father, and the whole courtyard of people. "She forced him to take my clothes."

  "I forced Baylen?" Deanna cried. She spotted the older brother at the fringe of the crowd, wearing a sheepish grin. The cowardly little weasel.

  Now Algernon hustled forward.

  "Don't let him look in your eyes," she screamed at Sir Henri. Yesterday, when the wizard had stopped controlling her to try his spell on Oliver, she had seen that he could only affect one person at a time. But Sir Henri would be the worst one to be subject to Algernon's will. She protected her eyes with her hands.

  "What?" Sir Henri asked, sounding no more befuddled than usual.

  "These people are not what they seem," Algernon told his brother in a highly agitated voice. "They're not of this world."

  "She stole my clothes."

  "Leonard," the wizard said, "this is more important than your stupid clothes. They—"

  "She stole ... She ... She ... A-choo!"

  "Has anyone seen the goslings?"

  "Do you think she's the one who picked my pocket?"

  "Henri, listen to me—"

  "Maybe she stole your goslings, too."

  Sir Henri's voice cut across all the others. "All right, that's enough!"

  Slowly Deanna uncovered her eyes.

  "That's enough," Sir Henri repeated, not quite a bellow this time. "We shall not have another public brawl. We shall discuss this in private, with decorum and reason. Algernon, Deanna, and Oliver, the four of us shall retire to my room and get to the bottom of this. Leonard, kindly change out of those ridiculous clothes and go blow your nose properly. Baylen, meet me in your room. Torrance, get these feathers cleaned up. And the rest of you can find something to do before I have to assign tasks."

  That threat got the same reaction that it did whenever Deanna's teachers used it in school.

  "Sir Henri—" Deanna said, fighting the stampede of people who scurried to exit the courtyard before they got noticed.

  "My room," he said.

  She sighed.

  She turned and found Oliver still standing in the pigpen, the blacksmith gone. Almost everyone was gone already. The pig keeper was there, of course. He gave a shrug as though to say, Well, J tried. But you keep messing up.

  She sighed again. "Come on, Oliver." She reached to give him a hand over the railing, although he probably didn't need it. He was watching her, she thought, with more hostility than usual. She was in no mood for his moods. "Let's go," she said testily, her patience gone, her nerves frazzled.

  "You had it," he said softly, so that Sir Henri and Algernon wouldn't hear.

  "Yes. For a moment. I let it get away." She didn't need his criticism. "I did my best." She wasn't used to people counting on her. She could grow to hate it very easily.

  "You had it," Oliver repeated. "I felt you touch it."

  "Oliver, would you get out of there?" She hadn't meant to yell, but she couldn't take much more of this. If he made her cry, here, where everybody could see, she'd never forgive him.

  Oliver climbed over the railing, then stood there, just looking at her.

  Algernon was watching their every move.

  Sir Henri was yawning and scratching his head.

  "You go first," Algernon told him, moving to place them between himself and his brother. "I'll guard the rear."

  "Oh, don't be ridiculous." Sir Henri grabbed his arm and marched him toward the castle.

  Deanna and Oliver followed. Up the stairs. Down the corridor. Around the corner. With Sir Henri's room in sight, she suddenly stopped and faced Oliver. Sir Henri and Algernon were still walking, Algernon looking over his shoulder to make sure they were still there, Sir Henri pulling him along. "What did you mean, you could feel it?" she whispered to Oliver.

  He'd been watching her, she realized, still quietly, intently watching her. Instead of answering, he asked, "Why did you scream?"

  "What?"

  "Why did you scream? I thought he'd hurt you."

  She remembered Oliver's face as he had gone after Algernon.

  Algernon and Sir Henri had reached the door and were waiting for them. Close enough to see, not to hear.

  "No. No, I wasn't hurt I was just trying to add to the confusion. I thought if things got hectic enough, I could maybe get to the watch."

  He gave his head the upward tilt which he did instead of nodding.

  It was her turn for a question. "What did you mean when you said you could feel me touch the watch?"

  Finally he broke eye contact, the first time she had seen him do that Instinctively, she lowered her gaze in response. Always before he either didn't even seem to notice her or he stared until she became disconcerted and turned away. He was learning the social amenities. Don't spit out the wine. Lie with a straight face. Glance away if you don't want people looking at you, especially if you have something to hide. He was learning—just in time to lose it all.

  She looked up. Oliver was staring at the floor, his hands clenched by his sides. "When you touched the watch," he said softly, "you must have momentarily broken the chain of events that led to a change of history. For those few seconds, things were as though you had never dropped your watch into the well. The world reverted to what it had been before. I started
to change back into a cat." He glanced up quickly to see her reaction.

  She had never been sure how much of the situation he understood. She felt cold and drained. Somehow she had hoped ... She had hoped ... She didn't know what she had hoped. She only knew what she felt. "I see," she said, hardly any sound at all coming from her. This time it was she who broke eye contact.

  Sir Henri cleared his throat loudly, and she welcomed the excuse to turn away from Oliver.

  Sir Henri's room was cluttered with jousting prizes and tournament memorabilia. "Sit down," he said, then looked around at the mess. "Ahm ... anywhere."

  He sat on the corner of his bed and patted the spot next to him.

  She waited for Algernon to sit on the window ledge to make sure he didn't hem her in, then took the place next to Sir Henri. Oliver sat on the edge of a chest strewn with brittle laurel wreaths and began to dust himself off.

  "Now," Sir Henri started.

  "They're not human," Algernon interrupted. "At least the boy's not."

  Oliver, still fastidiously trying to get the dust out of his clothes, glanced up sharply.

  Sir Henri gave the wizard a dirty look. "Now," he repeated to Deanna in a tone that said No more interruptions, "Torrance said you were elves. Surely—"

  "Torrance is an idiot," Algernon said.

  Sir Henri sighed.

  "What that is—" Algernon indicated Deanna's watch, which Sir Henri still held. "—1 have no way of telling. It's like nothing I've ever seen. The boy's sword is elfinwork. That much was immediately obvious: the craftsmanship, the metal itself—made of some substance I've never seen before, definitely not iron. But Torrance has an iron sword and it had no discernible effect on him. Everyone knows elves can't stand the feel of iron."

  Incredibly, Oliver wasn't even paying attention. He was running his fingers through his hair, trying to remove the dirt from the courtyard brawl.

  Sir Henri said, "And yet you say—"

  "And yet I say he isn't human. Henri, I tried the mind-control spell and it didn't work on him."

  That was it, Deanna thought. Her last hope had been that Sir Henri was somehow unfamiliar with what was going on, that he would be shocked to learn of Algernon's ways. Yet here was Algernon blithely saying I tried the mind-control spell just as easy as someone would say I tried the new video game at the mall.