"No, I don't want to talk about it" But then, very softly, he said, "I don't want to go back."
"To Chalon?" she asked.
"To being a cat."
She sighed. "I have no say in that, Oliver." Her heart was beating so hard it hurt. She didn't want to lose him, but she would in any case. She said: "If you stay here in this time, maybe you'll be all right. We'll explain to the fair folk—"
He turned away, angry.
Yeah, sure, the fair folk. Right. "Oliver—"
"Do you think I can go back after this? Be happy with what I was: rubbing against people's legs for attention, coughing up hairballs, eating mice in the barn? After this? Or won't I even remember? Will it be as though I never existed?"
That,
in another form, was what the fair folk had predicted for her. She shook her head. "I don't know."
"I wish we'd never found it. I wish we could have stayed like this forever."
"But the fair folk said the world changed for the worse. And I would never get back home."
Before Oliver had a chance to answer, Baylen's voice carried over as he crossed the courtyard: "Deanna! Oliver!" He came, grinning all the way as though he had never tricked them and abandoned them and lied about them to get himself out of trouble. He stopped, standing close enough that his shadow fell across them. "Why the serious faces, you two?"
"Deanna was just explaining to me," Oliver said, getting to his feet but keeping his face tipped so that his eyes wouldn't show, "how her life is more important than mine."
"No," Deanna protested, scrambling to her feet, "that's not what I meant. Oliver!"
But he had already gone into the stable.
Baylen shrugged. "Strange," he said. "Very strange, that one."
Deanna bit off her answer, which was rude and wouldn't have helped the situation anyway, and followed Oliver.
The horse stable was large and well kept, which meant the smells of fresh straw and hay kept the more objectionable odors to a tolerable level. Stable boys were bustling about tending a half dozen richly caparisoned horses that had just been brought in: the mounts of the bishop and his retinue, Deanna realized, as she watched the boys remove brocade saddlecloths and harnesses hung with tiny silver bells.
The master of the stables had seen them come in. "More horses to be readied?" he asked Baylen, shouting over the confusion of feeding, watering, and currying.
Baylen held up three fingers.
"Justin!" the master called to a young boy who was sweeping out the stalls. "Three horses."
"Yes, sir."
"Ahmmm..." Deanna said.
"You don't ride?" Baylen guessed.
"No, I don't."
"Justin!" he called. "Two horses."
"Yes, sir."
"Oliver doesn't ride either," she pointed out.
"Of course he does," Baylen said. "Father taught him yesterday. He learned in no time."
Oliver learned a lot of things in no time,
she thought.
"Still, it'd probably be best if you rode with me rather than with him," Baylen said, "since I do have a bit more experience." He grinned.
Oliver was busy ignoring them, so she nodded. It made sense.
The stableboy, looking hardly big enough to manage, got two of the horses harnessed and ready.
Baylen stuck his head out the door. "All clear," he announced. He swung onto his horse and held a hand down to her.
The animal looked a lot bigger than she'd imagined from seeing them on TV or grazing in far-off fields. It had large yellow teeth, and it snorted at her, watching her warily out of the corner of its eye, which did nothing for her confidence. The stableboy came up behind to help her on.
"Put your foot here," Baylen told her. "No, this way. Give me your hand. Don't lean that way. No. Deanna. Wait This way. Keep your foot straight."
The stableboy, who had managed to lug around those huge saddles without any trouble, tried to lift her by the waist and shove her up the side of the horse, while Baylen grabbed her under her arms and tried to haul her up.
Nobody
touched Deanna under her arms. Even the thought of it was enough to tickle, to make her squirm.
The Lone Ranger never got on Silver like this,
she thought, aware that her rear end was sticking up in the air while her face pressed against the horse's scratchy neck. "There." Baylen gave a great heave and got her up in front of him and facing in the right direction, but sitting sidesaddle.
"I'm going to fall."
"You're not going to fall."
"I'm going to fall." She clutched at his arm.
"You're not going to fall. Here, lean against me."
She did, which made her feel slightly more secure. Just slightly.
"Relax, I've never lost a lady yet."
How reassuring.
Oliver had mounted already and was waiting patiently. Occasionally Deanna would catch a glimpse of his face, his eyes, and there was still pain there. She hated to see him go through this.
Baylen moved their horse to the stable door. "All cl—Oh-oh."
A tall man had just come out of the castle's front entry.
"The bishop?" she whispered, noting his fine clothes and the gleam of a huge gold cross hanging halfway down his chest.
Baylen nodded.
Algernon and Sir Henri followed close on the cleric's heels. One of them said something which made him turn away from the stable.
"We'll take it nice and slow and easy," Baylen said, urging the horse out into the courtyard and toward the front gate. Oliver's horse followed. Just three boring people out for a morning ride, their demeanor was meant to proclaim.
Sir Henri was pointing out some feature of the castle's roof to the bishop so that his back remained to them.
Their horses' hooves clattered on the wooden drawbridge, then thumped on the grass on the other side of the moat. Deanna didn't look back lest she draw attention to them by appearing anxious. Baylen checked over his shoulder as though to make sure Oliver was keeping up. "The bishop doesn't seem interested in us," he announced.
Deanna let out the breath she had been holding and glanced at the watch. 10:43. Had the fair folk been speaking literally when they'd said midday?
Baylen dug his heels into their horse's sides, and the animal leapt forward.
"Don't do that," she yelled at him, scrambling for a better hold. She was going to bounce right off, she knew it. Whoever had invented horseback riding as a mode of transportation had to have been a maniac. She flung her arms around Baylen's neck, because he seemed like the only steady thing in the world. The ground underneath her feet sped by dizzyingly and the wind whipped her hair against her face. The beating of her heart and the horse's hooves seemed to be keeping time. "I'm going to fall off," she yelled to be heard over the sound of both.
"You're not going to fall off," Baylen assured her once again and urged the horse on even faster.
Deanna peered around him sure that Oliver would never be able to keep up. What was Baylen doing,
trying
to lose him? But Oliver was staying with them nicely. She closed her eyes to protect them from the stinging tendrils of hair, and to protect her stomach from the sight of the lurching countryside.
Eventually—only about as long as ten or twenty trips up, down, and around on Space Mountain at Disneyland—she realized that they had slowed, and that the sun wasn't beating down so fiercely on her head. She opened her eyes gingerly, ready to shut them at the slightest hint of tipping landscape. But as she did so, Baylen pulled the horse in even slower, into what was probably called a trot. There were trees all around. They had entered the forest.
She craned to look around Baylen. Oliver had managed to stay with them. Now, if she could just refrain from throwing up, she'd be all set.
The clearing where she'd first met Baylen and his family was just inside the forest; they'd be there any second now. She tried to do some mental calculating to see how long it would take after that. She and Oliver had walked ... what? about an hour between the fair folk's clearing and the one where the joust had taken place. Figure about a mile every fifteen or twenty minutes, that made approximately three or four miles. Okay, now how fast were the horses traveling?
She couldn't concentrate. First, there was the ever-present fear that she would yet bounce right off and land on her face in the underbrush. But also, now that she was thinking about that first day, she was remembering her first conversation with Baylen, and how unenthusiastically he had reacted to her request for help. What a coincidence that now he was helping her. Unexpectedly, Algernon's voice came back to her.
Algernon's voice said:
I don't believe in coincidence, do you?
She'd been holding on around Baylen's neck, but now she let go. Instead she clutched the saddle for support.
They broke through the trees into the first clearing. Two men were there, waiting on horseback. One was Baylen's squire, Vachel, the other someone whose face was vaguely familiar from the castle. That should have meant that they were friendly, that Deanna had nothing to worry about.
Should have.
It took all her courage to release the saddle and to let herself slide down under Baylen's arm and off the horse. The thing was still moving, and she had a perfectly vivid picture of catching her foot and getting dragged under and trampled, something along the lines of the chariot scene in
Ben Hur.
None of that happened, of course. Sitting sidesaddle, she was facing off to the left anyway, and she started walking as soon as her feet touched the ground. The horse kept going, and Baylen was too surprised to react for at least a couple seconds.
"Oliver," she called, having visions of him spurring his mount to a gallop, swooping down on her, lifting her up onto his saddle, and riding off into the sunset with her.
None of that happened, either. Oliver was a quick learner, but apparently swooping was not one of the things that had come up in his lessons with Sir Henri.
Baylen wheeled his horse around and placed himself between Oliver and Deanna. "Oh, Deanna," he said innocently, as though he could think she had fallen off, "I'm so sorry. Are you all right?"
She backed away from him. "What are they doing here?" she asked.
"Them?" Baylen glanced at the men who were slowly but steadily approaching. "I don't know. They must have decided to go out for a ride and happened to have chosen the same path we did."
Deanna remembered the stable master commenting on the number of horses Baylen was having readied that morning. "I see." She took another step back.
The two men had positioned themselves, one on either side of Oliver. Nothing openly hostile, but ready.
Oliver's strange slitted eyes flicked from them to her.
Baylen sighed. "Somebody get her back up on the horse, would you?" he snapped.
Vachel, the squire, dismounted and helped Deanna get back on Baylen's horse. It was a lot easier the second time, except that at the last moment Baylen swung her around so that she was straddling the horse. This was much more comfortable. But it was going to make getting off quickly just about impossible. He was scrunching her hat, which was still tied around her neck but had slipped down her back like a cowboy's hat.
"What are you doing, Baylen?" she demanded.
"Lady Deanna," he said, putting his hands on the reins, which meant around her also, "working with you on your quest these past several hours, I have come to a great appreciation of and admiration for your beauty and your spirit." He started the horse moving again, at a slow walk. Oliver rode behind, with the two men from Castle Belesse in the rear. "I have decided that I cannot survive bereft of your presence."
Could he possibly be serious? "You can't come with us," she said, incredulous that she'd had to say that twice this morning.
"That was never my intention."
"I can't stay."
He grinned.
A nasty suspicion settled in a cold, hard lump in her chest. She repeated: "I can't stay."
"Just for a little while."
The lump got colder and harder and, yes, lumpier. She hadn't believed for an instant—well, not for two instants—that she could sweep Baylen off his feet. But he could at least have tried for a convincing lie. "
Just for a little while
" she echoed. "Just long enough for Leonard to hear about it."
"Well..." he said.
She followed Baylen's nasty reasoning. "If Leonard's going to look foolish for pursuing me if I just leave, he'll look much worse if I run off with you, is that it?"
"Well..." he said.
She sighed. It was her own fault, she thought, reflecting once again on that first meeting. She'd always been warned against talking to strangers. And Baylen was about as strange as you could get. His petty feud with Leonard was going to ruin everything. What now?
Help!
she could shout.
This man is not my father! This is not someone I know!
That certainly wasn't going to be a tremendous help in this situation. She glanced backward. Oliver was watching her. He wouldn't do anything without instructions. The two men from Castle Belesse were behind him, single file because the path at this point was so narrow. Not much he could do with them there anyway. Who else was a possibility? Sir Henri and the wizard Algernon were back at the castle detaining the bishop on her behalf. The fair folk had yet to provide overwhelming aid. She was on her own. She was used to depending on others, or on crossing her fingers and hoping for the best. But she was on her own. This time it was her or nobody.
How could she get off the horse? Or—and she liked this even better—how could she get Baylen off the horse?
She shifted her hold on the horse's neck so that her left arm was between the reins, where she could grab hold if need be. Then she waited until they came to a rough area on the forest path. It dipped where a big tree root had come up to the surface and weather had hollowed out a sizable nook in the road. Sturdy weeds grew around the tree, overflowing onto the path, making it even narrower.
She didn't dare look back to check on Oliver, lest Baylen get suspicious. But she estimated that his horse was about ten seconds behind theirs. She squeezed her legs tight around the horse as it stepped over the root.
One, two, three ... Was
she counting too fast?...
four, five, six
... Was she counting too slow?...
seven, eight, nine...
Too fast and Oliver would still be behind the root when she went into action. Too slow and not only Oliver but Baylen's men would be past it.
Ten.