Over The Sea (18 page)

To help them get the idea, though, she held her nose and waved at them as though they stank. They got that one, all right. Faline almost fell off her branch, chortling at their outrage and affront, and I felt that shivery laughter in my middle that almost made me unable to concentrate.

PJ yelped orders at the servants. Seshe had been right. I only listened long enough to gauge how much time I had before things got hot.

It was going to get hot right away.

So I shut my eyes. Took a deep breath.

I'd stayed out in the main room in the Junky, so as not to disturb the others' sleep and practiced those spells, for hours. Now I began spell-weaving, fast and assured and focused.

And I
felt
them hold! One by one, the waiting girls got armloads of pies. Sherry gasped, Faline snickered.

Seshe murmured, “Good job. But phew! This one smells awful.”

I opened my eyes, fighting the vertigo that made me feel slightly lightheaded after so much magic-making. “Of course.” I held onto my tree branch. “Realized. This morning.” Closed my eyes. “Why waste good ones? That one is prune and boiled pea.”

I thought Faline was going to die. “P-r-r-une! P-p-p-pea!”

“What's mine?” Sherry blinked at the pink and orange mess in her hands. “It smells quite icky.”

“Oh, that one is a spam-and-pumpkin supremo.”

“Spam?”

“As close as I could get to this very,
very
disgusting food on Earth we used to be forced to eat.”

Sherry wriggled with delight.

One by one the pies appeared on the girls' laps, which was my destination-focus, and they carefully set them aside along the huge, flat branches where we sat.

Meanwhile, the girls and PJ were exchanging insults down below, the girls just out of reach. Nothing had happened yet.

As I finished, my brain feeling like a squeezed sponge, I heard the end of one of PJ's taunts. “… waiting for that black-haired brat who
claims
to be a
prin-cess
.”

Pause, and sure enough, right on cue — just like Fobo's court — PJ's pals guffawed extra loud.

It was time for my appearance.

We'd picked our ground, of course. Later I was to learn that that was the first requirement of a commander in battle. At the time, I sauntered slowly, knowing PJ was just waiting for me to get into range, while behind me Sherry, Faline, and Seshe were quickly shifting pies from the branches to a big, flat rock behind the outcropping around which I strolled.

“You're interrupting our picnic,” I said. “And you weren't invited.”

“Oh no,” drawled the biggest one, today wearing purple silk with diamonds and crimson spangles. “I'm so-o-o distraught!”

“We weren't invited to a peasant picnic, how terrible!” the girl proclaimed.

“But since you came — uninvited — why, we'll include you,” I said, grinning.

Sure enough. PJ urged his horse close, probably to intimidate me, but I didn't move. I was within arm's reach of the mossy rocks behind which the girls crouched, screened by leafy shrubs.

“I think it's going to be
our
picnic,” PJ snarled. “Harslo. “ He waved a hand to a tall, thin fellow in livery. “Thrash that brat.”

“Now, Seshe,” I muttered.

And as the servant started advancing with the yew wand, out came Seshe's hands, complete with the pie I'd especially designed for PJ. But the servant looked completely uncertain, and the way he held that wand gave me the sudden idea he'd never hit anything in his life, horse or person.

“Wait a sec.” I held up my palm to him.

“Don't you dare give my lackeys orders!” PJ squeaked.

“I just want to know why you're here. What do you expect to get?”

“This territory ought by rights to belong to my mother, Her Gracious Majesty, Queen Glotulae.” He finished in a grand voice, and waited.

For what? He glared at his friends, who hastily bowed from their horses' backs.

PJ humphed, then went on. “It will be part of my inheritance, and I, in turn, shall grant proprietary rights on my loyal followers.” A lofty gesture toward his pals.

Seshe whispered, “He's promising his friends they can be dukes and duchesses.”

Huh. Certainly was one way to make sure you kept friends, even if you were a pill. “But this land belongs to Clair.”

“It belongs to whoever has the strength to take it and hold it,” Purple stated. He might have been the oldest one there, but he was definitely the biggest. “Queen Glotulae can call on her brother's armsmen at need. And her allies — ”

“Not that,” the girl muttered. I think she meant to do it quietly, but I heard her.

Purple's eyes shifted. Then he leaned forward and said real fast, “Who's your stupid ‘queen' going to call on? The palace silver-polishers? Or just leave defense to a bunch of scrawny brats like you?”

“Yeah,” PJ said, grinning smugly.

And who's the real leader of your gang of fatheads
, I thought, staring at PJ, who really was small and scrawny under all that fancy clothing. But I just smiled. “Last chance to leave.”

PJ laughed. Purple howled. The girl. The rest of their gang laughed too- — but only for a moment. They looked around, and saw our whole gang, at the ready.

One by one the girls had slipped around them, forming in a circle. See, I could learn from my mistakes, and that had been my mistake the day before, to let them encircle me. Well, I'd told the girls to encircle them, each to her target, and I counted on the fact that they'd pay no attention to girls carrying pastries, whereas they might have if we'd had weapons.

I had my pie, and right when PJ threw his head back to bray a laugh, I threw it with both hands.

My aim wasn't that great, or the horse shifted. Instead of getting him square in the face, it clipped the side of his head, but broke apart most satisfyingly, spattering his crimson silk with raspberry-banana-avocado glop.

“Auwk!” he squawked.

“Arrrrrgh!” the girl screamed. Diana had gotten her smack in the phizz with a spam-and-cram (“cram” being spoiled dough) deluxe.

Purple yelled cuss words as Irene's cherry-filling-and-cottage cheese gorbanzo splorched across his front.

“No, it's boiled cherry,” Irene said in a lofty drawl. “And rotten cheese — ”

He ripped out his sword blade and took a lunge at her before she could get the rest of the ingredients out. He jumped down, obviously to give chase — way too mad to remember all that about the servants — but the pie had slopped right where he stepped. He slid and took a header — right into the pieces of a sauerkraut-cottage cheese nastarooni.

“Ha!” I bellowed, then got busy magicking up the second round, as the girls converged for more.

This time most of the pies went astray as people and horses dodged, but the horses began slipping on the mess in the road, and most of the servants sprang worriedly to horses' heads.

The girl (I'll just call her Pinch Nose for now) slapped her reins across a servant's face as she shrieked, “Thrash that #!^&@ with the black braids!”

“Is that the way fancy people talk?” Sherry yelled. “Yuk!”

“She's talking about what she's got between her ears,” Irene cried in a voice loud enough for a big stage.

Pinch Nose glared at Irene, then tried to force her mount to trample her. Irene hopped over a rock. The horse slipped, and I caught my breath, afraid for those long legs.

The animal's eyes went wide and it nickered, ears back. Then, despite Pinch Nose's screeching and her trying to slap the reins either side of its neck, it backed away from the pie mess.

But not before Pinch Nose got a double dose — a pineapple-pea-sourberry fazeemerette and a honey-rotten-banana supremo splorching in her face, and down the front of her clothes. She started shrieking, “EEEEEEE-EEEEEEE-EEEEEE” sounding like a tea kettle gone mad.

Seshe had gotten the practical idea of picking up pieces of pastry from the ground and flinging it — now mixed with dirt — at PJ and the rest. The girls quickly copied.

“Avoid the servants,” she cried, when I stooped.

I'd just thought the same thing. And so had the rest of the girls: wasn't the servants' fault, and not a single one was trying to do anything to us with those yew thingies they were carrying.

PJ almost lost control of his mount as he wailed in rage and disgust. When Faline stood on the outcropping, her finger pointed, laughing, PJ's wail rose into a shrill yelp of fury and he kneed his horse, turned around, and galloped back up the road — leaving behind his sword, all besmeared with pie.

Perforce the rest had to follow, the servants last. I noticed four or five yew wands lying in the multi-colored goo on the road.

I waited until they were out of sight, and then gave a great whoop of triumph. The girls joined in, laughing and dancing around crazily. All our nervous energy made us wild for a little time, until at last we all gathered on the grass under an almost leafless oak, breathless, exchanging gasping comments like
Did you see that one with the pie on his head?
and
Did you hear PJ?
and the like.

“I'm thirsty,” Faline said finally. “Let's go back.” She frowned. “Except what about that?”

Insects of various sorts had appeared from somewhere, and were busy buzzing about the goo on the road.

“I want to make sure I did the magic right,” I said. “I think so — it was very clear about magic and food — but still.”

“You mean it goes away?” Dhana asked, swinging her legs. She alone had climbed the tree shading us.

“It's sort of illusion and real combined. It does go away, which is why you don't use it all the time. I mean for good stuff. You would starve,” I said.

“That's weird. Why would anyone make up food spells, unless they used food for fighting, during the past?”

“Clair said from time to time in the past, they made mages stand around and magic up extra feasts, so they could eat and eat and the food would vanish and they wouldn't get fat. There was a spell book for that. I just made up my own recipes!”

“What a waste of magic,” Irene said, hands on hips. “I mean, I like to eat, but all day?”

“Well, it's considered, um — ”

“Decadent,” Seshe supplied, making a gag-face.

“That was the word.”

“They keep the servants up all day and night, too,” Diana muttered, scowling.

I opened my mouth, and then closed it. Diana never talked about her past, so asking
How do you know?
might be considered nosy.

“Eating all day was fun?” Sherry asked. “It sounds boring.”

“Well, anyway, I think it's a fine spell to have,” Faline declared. “I like those pies. They squish so nicely! And make a delightful mess all over those
fawncy
clothes! Oh, and PJ got so mad he forgot to cuss!”

“Too bad it isn't permanent for them,” Irene said. “Just think how they must feel, riding back in the hot sun with all that goo on them, and serves them right.”

“But they'll be back,” Sherry said, eyes round.

“If they do,” I said, “they're gonna come this way, since it's the main road. And so, now that I know magic really works — I mean, mine does — let's booby trap this place, so they decide they never want to be here again.”

“Won't be for a while in any case,” Dhana said, her eyes closed as she sniffed the air.

“Oh. Sure. Right,” Irene said, wiping her sweaty brow. Then she forgot the weather as she stared at the road. “Look at that!”

The goo had lessened in volume. As she watched the edges of it turned insubstantial, and then vanished altogether, like fog in the sun. The components were going back into the ground.

“Wow,” I muttered under my breath. Magic was so ... so amazing, so wonderful, and even more amazing was the idea that
I
could do it!

“C'mon, let's get back to the Junky. I'm thirsty, and hungry too, and I sure am not going to eat any of that!” Faline said, pointing at the last of the mess in the road.

“After I get this,” Diana said, stooping to pick up PJ's gaudy sword. “Trophy. For our triumph.” She swished it back and forth.

“Good idea,” I said.

So we trooped back to the Junky.

After a rest, I transferred up to the white palace, and I found Clair busy at her studies. She stopped, of course, and listened while I told her everything.

She grinned at my account of the pie fight, but other things made her frown. Especially that business about the ‘allies' that Purple had mentioned, and then corrected with such suspicious haste.

“What do you think that was? Fobo's stinker of a brother?” I asked.

Clair shook her head. “No. Has to be Kwenz,” she said, looking serious again. “I've had several reports of messengers riding into the Shadowland. Wherever he's been, he's now back.”

If Clair could have, she would have kept us forever safe from danger.

This was of course despite the fact that she was herself in danger, something she sometimes tried to hide, and other times shared, at least with me. I worked hard at my magic studies. Oh, not every day, because sometimes the weather was just too nice, and we girls would get involved with a long, complicated game.

I also skipped magic studies when I got busy writing down the first version of my records, from which I have taken this account you're reading now. At first I wrote down everything — everything the girls said, everything we did, guesses (mostly wrong) about various things. I even put down what desserts we had, because I still wasn't used to having dessert, especially whatever I wanted.

Then I'd see Clair, or think of some spell I wished I could do, and guilt would goad me right back to my desk and I'd hit the books, studying furiously for the better part of a day, and determined to keep to a tough schedule. The sort of schedule that had become second nature to Clair.