Larry said, "But it might be dangerous to assume anybody we run into is with the king."
"We're not likely to run into anyone," Tiffanie told him. "Dragons' Cove is not that far."
"But
what if?
" Larry insisted. "What if we
do
meet up with some elves with their songs and their silver bells and their bet-you-can't-guess-what-I'm-thinking faces, and their swords and their bows and arrows and their magical trinkets?"
Tiffanie had no more patience for reassuring him, but Eleni asked, "Why are you asking?"
"Because," Larry said, "there's a group of elves heading this way now."
Once he said it, I could hear them—a snatch of song, the tinkling of silver bells—though the curve of the path hid them for the moment from our sight: a large number from the sound of them, talking and laughing among themselves.
Eleni said, "We look so strange, we're bound to attract attention and questions."
My inclination was to run and hide, but nobody asked me.
"All right," Tiffanie said, "I'm going to cast a glamour over all of us, make the three of us look like elf shepherdesses. And Brave Heart, I'll make you look like a sheep. Whatever you do, don't bark."
I was about to point out that her look-like-a-cheerleader spell wasn't working in Kazaran Dahaani, but apparently she knew that and used a different
spell. The sensation was like being licked all over by a cat: somewhere between ticklish and irritating.
In less time than it takes to say, Eleni and I became very blond and willowy, which—hey!—had long been a goal in my life. Now we were both wearing dresses made of an incredibly soft, fluttery material: mine in a heathery green, Eleni's a slightly more bluish shade.
As gorgeous as Eleni looked and I felt, Tiffanie had made herself look considerably more gorgeous, with hair that went on and on, and her gown was sunset pink, with iridescent threads at the neckline.
Brave Heart looked like a sheep, except he was sitting on the path, scratching behind his ear in a very doglike manner.
The elves were just beyond the bend.
"Hey!" Larry said. "Hey! What about me?"
"What?" Tiffanie asked softly, so as not to let the elves hear.
"You said you were going to cast a glamour. You said, 'on all of you.' Where's my disguise?"
"You don't need one. Spreenies belong here. Or you can just..." She waved her hand treetop-ward.
"I want a disguise."
"Stop making a scene."
"I want—"
Tiffanie made an abrupt gesture, then ordered from between clenched teeth, "Get on a tree branch
now
"—because her magic had made Larry take on the shape of a tree toad.
"Thanks a lot," he grumbled, just as the party of twelve or fifteen elves came into sight.
I could see right away that the spell only disguised us because otherwise Larry would have plummeted to the ground like ... well, like a tree toad who'd been caught in midair. Instead, he must have flapped his little wings which had become invisible to us, and he hid himself, still grumbling, among the leaves of the trees.
Fortunately, the elves didn't notice him.
Unfortunately, the elves did notice us—which, I guess, was pretty much unavoidable with us right there in the middle of their path; but, anyway, we'd taken our magical precaution.
Fortunately, they seemed a social group rather than a military troop, male and female elves in clothes too fluttery and delicate to be anything besides party clothes, with flower wreaths in their hair, and bells sewn into their garments and tied at their wrists and ankles, and carrying baskets of flowers and fruit as though they were on their way to a picnic.
Unfortunately, they were so social that they decided to stop to chat with us.
Fortunately, they—or at least the males in the group—seemed most interested in the extremely gorgeous Tiffanie.
Unfortunately—
Oh, forget that. Things looked okay for the moment, but always with the possibility of turning bad.
"Well met, shepherd lasses!" they greeted us. "Come, join us in celebrating the day."
They crowded around us—well, mostly Tiffanie—and begged, "Please!" and "Come!" and "How could we be festive without you?"
"No, no," Tiffanie told them, "thank you for the kind invitation, but my sisters and I must be heading home."
"Oh, that is so disappointing!" one of the more persistent males said. "Still, if you don't have time to join us for a meal on the greensward, at least join us for a song."
"Or let us braid flowers into your hair," another enterprising elf said, taking some flowers from the basket he carried. He started to twine them in Tiffanie's extravagant hair, though I heard him murmur, "Your hair looks so lush, but feels ... so much finer and more delicate."
One of the females started a song that was composed almost entirely of notes that—if they went any higher—would have been beyond human hearing.
They must have been on the threshold of hurting Brave Heart's ears, for he started whining.
"Listen, listen," the elves cried, laughing, their voices as clear as the bells they wore. "The girls' sheep is trying to sing along with Sylvianna!"
Which, of course, the elf girl Sylvianna took as encouragement to put even more high-note flourishes into her song.
Tiffanie rested her hand on Brave Heart's head, to calm him.
Not working,
I could tell. Things were about to go seriously wrong. I could see the wool on Brave Heart's haunches bristle.
He was about to bark at the euphonious Sylvianna—if not take a bite out of her: either of which was decidedly an unsheeplike reaction.
I prepared to grab Eleni's hand and run for the gate. If we passed through back into our world with Tiffanie's spell on us, would we continue to look this way? Good news for me. But for my grandmother, maybe not. She had already been attractive, but now she was attractive in a totally different way. Would she and my grandfather still end up marrying if she looked this way? I took a step toward her and realized only by the tug on my hair that one of the elves was busy weaving daisies into my hair, too.
"Ow!" Sylvianna stopped singing and put her hand to the back of her neck.
"What?" people asked her.
"I think it was an acorn," she said. "That was the second one to land on my head."
"It's too early for acorns to be falling," her friends told her.
But sure enough, we could all see two green acorns on the path.
"One would almost suspect there were spreenies about," someone observed.
The elves peered into the trees, while Tiffanie continued to pat Brave Heart's head. "Down," she murmured, probably meaning "Calm down," but he sat. Tiffanie tugged on the wool on the back of his neck to get him to stand before anyone else noticed.
The elves were preoccupied looking for a spreenie.
"No," one of them finally announced, "no spreenies. All I see is that ugly tree toad."
Eleni said, "I hear it's been a bad year for tree toads. They've gotten extremely bold."
The elves had short attention spans. They turned back to Tiffanie and Brave Heart. I saw the tree toad pluck another acorn and lob it at the back of the head of the elf who'd called him ugly, but luckily the elf
couldn't tell where it had come from and looked directly up rather than behind him.
At least Sylvianna had been distracted from singing. "What's your sheep's name?" she asked, crouching in front of Brave Heart to peer into his face.
"Brave—" Tiffanie started, then apparently realizing Brave Heart wasn't an appropriate name for a sheep, finished, "Fluffy."
"Brave Fluffy," the elf girl cried, delighted. She switched to baby talk. "My, aren't you just the sweetest little thing!"
Brave Heart bared his teeth at her, but as they only looked like sheep teeth, the girl didn't take alarm.
"Join us," the elves continued to urge. "It will be so much fun." They tugged on our arms. Tiffanie, Eleni, and I dug our heels into the ground. The guys tugging on me and Eleni picked up the subtle nuance that we didn't want to go. The two trying to entice Tiffanie were more stubborn.
Brave Heart growled at them.
Sylvianna—who'd been nose to nose with him—scrambled to her feet in alarm, but the males just wouldn't give up.
Brave Heart decided it was time to stake out his territory. I saw him check out the leg of the nearest elf. Then he lifted his own leg, and peed.
It was a real conversation-stopper.
"Really," Eleni said, prying loose the fingers of one of the elves who'd been laughing and holding on to Tiffanie's wrists, "Fluffy gets very anxious when away from the other sheep for too long."
The elves finally took the hint. Even the one who'd been trying to put flowers into Tiffanie's hair. They kept falling out, anyway.
"Well, if you're sure...," one of the female elves said. In any case, she'd probably worked out that if we joined them, the girls would outnumber the guys. Actually, with Tiffanie among them, there wouldn't be any leftover guys no matter how few girls there were.
"Have a good picnic," I said. I'd been just about useless through the entire incident, and I began waving even though they weren't moving yet.
"Good-bye," they told us. "Farewell."
We watched, smiling and waving as they continued down the path, until they disappeared around another bend. One of them took up a song again, and we waited until their voices faded.
So that was one crisis out of the way. I could only hope I'd be more useful next time.
"We'd better stay disguised, don't you think?" Eleni asked Tiffanie. "In case we run into any other people?"
I wanted to add,
You might want to pick a look that's less attention grabbing,
but I didn't have a chance.
Eleni continued, "Unless keeping up the spell tires you or weakens you."
I would have thought of that first part, eventually, but never the last part, proving yet again how much smarter than me my grandmother was. And more considerate. Without even having to stop to think about it.
But, for all that, Tiffanie made a dismissive gesture. "Glamours don't take that much power."
"Yeah, speaking of glamours"—Larry hovered in front of her face, closer than he needed to be—"I don't want to be disguised as a toad."
You'd have thought a big tough dog like Brave Heart would have resented looking like a sheep. But Brave Heart seemed to have become attached to Tiffanie despite his woolly state, and he barked at Larry for giving Tiffanie a hard time.
A barking sheep. A barking sheep barking at a levitating toad. It's the kind of image that could well trigger serious mental problems later in my life.
Tiffanie asked Larry, "What do you want to look like? Vole? Shrew?
Rat?
"
"How about something that
flies,
you lackwit," he suggested, "seeing as how that's how I travel and the whole purpose of these so-called disguises is so that we can pass without attracting attention?"
"A bird," Eleni suggested brightly, as though it had never occurred to her that that was obvious and that Tiffanie was being intentionally obtuse.
"The Bluebird of Unhappiness," I suggested. "The Bluebird of Downright Dysfunction."
"Oh, I am
so
amused," Larry said. To Tiffanie he said, "How about an eagle?"
"You're too small to be an eagle," Tiffanie said. "The spell would have to extend way beyond your actual parameters." She moved her hands from
roughly five inches apart—approximately Larry-sized—to two or three feet apart, to demonstrate an eagle's wingspan.
"Not a powerful enough witch to do it?" Larry taunted.
"I am tempted to leave you this way forever," Tiffanie threatened, but she flicked her fingers at him, and the toad shifted to a little bird that looked sort of like a small gray cardinal.
"What am I?" Larry asked, twisting in midair, trying to catch a look at his backside.
"Tufted titmouse," Tiffanie said, "for the pure joy of the silliness of the name." Then she was all business: "Come on, let's go. We've wasted a lot of time, and Julian is in danger."
We started walking, two pretty elven shepherdesses, one drop-dead-gorgeous elven shepherdess, and a sheep with a tendency to sniff at the edge of the path and to chase after butterflies. Followed by a tufted titmouse that grumbled and criticized all the way.
"So," I said, trying to be sensible and logical, thinking ahead, planning ... like my grandmother. "Dragons' Cove..."
Eleni waited expectantly, while Tiffanie wore a pained expression that indicated she just knew I was about to say something worthless.
"Dragons' Cove," Larry repeated in a slow, dim tone, as though I'd just caught up to the conversation of fifteen minutes ago.
"So...," I said again. "Sand..."
Eleni nodded encouragingly.
"And dragon eggshells..." Hopefully, I finished, "But of course ... no dragons?"
"Nooo," Larry said, "baby dragons grow on baby dragon bushes and are plucked by storks, then delivered to happy dragon mommies and daddies. No dragons involved. Nuh-uh. Rated PG. Definitely."
"Laying and hatching season is in early spring," Tiffanie assured me.
Just to be sure, I pressed on. "And dragons don't go to Dragons' Cove except then?"
"Sometimes," Larry said.
"Almost never," Tiffanie corrected him.
Almost.
Great.
"Not to worry," Tiffanie assured us.
"Except—," Larry started.
Tiffanie had finally had enough of him. "Would you just stop instigating and shut up?"
Larry gave an aggrieved snort, flapping his little titmouse wing to his little titmouse breast.
"Zip it," Tiffanie ordered.
In the suddenly Larry-free silence, Eleni finally asked in her quiet voice, "Except...?"
Tiffanie sighed.
Eleni pretended she didn't notice. "Glass is made with sand and extreme heat."
Tiffanie sighed even louder. "Can't humans make glass without dragon-breath flame?"
"Well, sure," I started, "but—"
"That was a rhetorical question, honey," Tiffanie said. "There won't be any dragons, so let's just concentrate on getting there fast while Julian is still in one piece."