Over The Sea (5 page)

By the time he was done describing the rooms he needed just for himself, the count was up to at least twenty five. The idea made me boil. I hadn't even realized I was breathing hard until Clair crouched next to me and whispered, “Is something wrong? Do you wish to return?”

“No,” I muttered, forgetting all about my vow to be ladylike and polite. “I want to get that slob and kick him back to his wedding cake castle! He wants to cut down the forest. Isn't there anyone to stop him?”

“I'm trying to think how.”

I saw one of the boys surreptitiously throw a candy at one of the girls, and as she stuck her tongue out at him, an idea came to me. “
We
could,” I whispered back.

Clair's eyes were wide.

I remembered not to be pushy. “Um, is it all right?”

“Is what all right?”

“Well, if we, um, try to get rid of them?”

“How?”

I pointed all around us at the seed-pods that had been dropped by the trees. “If it seems like the forest doesn't want them, d'you think they'll leave?”

Irene gasped, and gripped her hands. “Oh!”

Clair gave a firm little nod. “Let's.”

And so we scrambled backward, each scooping as many seedpods into pockets or skirts as she could carry. Then Seshe pointed to a tree across the way, and vanished in a flash of skirts and swinging hair.

I climbed up a tree that overhung the picnic group, trying to make sure my nightie wouldn't snag. Far away was the fear and dread of home, and questions, and punishment.

I settled along a branch, lined up my seeds in a row on the rough bark, and tossed my first. It landed with a soft plop smack in the middle of one of their plates. And the kid didn't even notice! I flung another, hitting one of the girls just behind the ear.

“Ow!” she shrieked, looking up. “Ugh!”

“What are you yelling about?” a boy snarled.

“Something
hit
me.”

Oh,
sure
.”

They had to be brother and sister, I thought. And so I tossed a seed at him. It missed — but at the same moment Irene also flung one, and hers hit him right on the nose.

“Yagh!” he shrieked, as though he'd been stabbed.

Two landed on one's lap. “Hey!”

One poinked the next boy over. “Stop that!”

“Is that birds?” the first girl cried, as a seed splorched into her silver, bejeweled punch cup.

“I hate this place!” the second girl whined. “
Things
are coming at me! It is
so
disgusting!”

Nobody had gotten PJ yet.

“Quiet! Quiet!” PJ demanded. “They're just seeds. These stupid trees. But they'll all be cut down.”

I picked up three seeds, and this time I half sat up so my aim would be better. Whop! And all three hit him, smack, smack, smack.

He let out a shriek worse than an air-raid siren. Of course I threw more, but it was Seshe's careful throw that went straight into his wide-open mouth.

His eyes bulged, he spat — and kept spitting. Scrambled up, still spitting, yelling wordlessly. Then he howled, “I hate this place!”

The servants appeared, and began to pick up the picnic.

PJ slung a dish at the closest. “Leave it! Leave it, you stupid pig! Get the horses!
Now
!”

One of the girls sniveled, her fingers at her hair, and the boys all looked around fearfully, though I noticed that they all still had their swords on.

PJ's guests clumped together, and most of them bowed hastily when PJ glared at them before mounting his horse.

As soon as they got onto their horses they galloped away, leaving the servants to struggle along behind, some of them hastily rescuing the silver and gold dishes and utensils. They scraped off the food right onto the ground, folded up the picnic cloths, and hastened away.

The last I heard of PJ was his sharp, nasal complaint: “You forgot to bow to me, Murjun. I was watching.”

As soon as they were out of sight we climbed down from our trees.

“Wow, talk about litterbugs,” I muttered.

“Ah, one good rain and that will vanish,” Seshe said, smiling. “Meanwhile, they are gone. I hope and trust that that will keep them away for a time. Huh! So much running. I am thirsty.” She led the way down to the stream.

“I'm afraid that it won't keep them away,” Clair said, sighing as she knelt. “He seems to want to have his own little realm away from Glotulae.”

“If it were anybody else, I'd say, can you blame him?” Seshe commented, looking comical for a moment, then she dipped her hands, folded them to make a cup, and drank.

Clair shook her head. “I do not blame him at all for wanting to be away from Glotulae. But not here.”

“So if he does come, you get 'em again,” I said. “Make it so awful he never wants to come back. But that means being on the watch.” My tongue moved dryly in my mouth. “Um, is the water okay?”

Clair looked surprised, and then reflective. “Ah. Yes. It is good, here.”

I needed no more invitation. And she was right, it was good, tasting not like chlorine, like the tap water at home, but pure and sweet and clean. I slurped up so much my stomach sloshed when I stood.

And, to my surprise, I saw the girls all looking at me.

“Your patrol idea is good. That would mean patrolling around here regularly.” Seshe smiled. “I'd like that.”

“Not me,” Irene stated. “Oh, I like being here when the weather's nice, but I like being indoors, too.”

“So we build a little house,” Sherry suggested.

“And they'll find it first thing,” I said, sorting through all my favorite stories. “No ...” Then I stopped, remembering I was the guest, and was I sounding too bossy?

“Go on,” Clair invited.

“See, what I'd do — if I could — is make a kind of underground hideout that they wouldn't know about. Somewhere close enough to where they'd be coming from, see. Secret entrances and exits. Of course it's a horrid amount of work ...” I stopped, thinking of shovels and wet and mud and insects and fresh air and cave-ins.

Clair frowned. Not angrily, more like she was thinking. “And if that could be arranged?”

“Why, then you have a kind of headquarters, and you can even keep supplies in it. So if they come back, there are your seeds. Or rotten tomatoes might even be better.”

“An underground hideout!” Irene whirled around so her petticoats showed. “Oh! I
love
it!”

“Me too,” Sherry admitted.

Seshe nodded. “I do like that idea, and also patrolling. Oh, I don't want them coming here and cutting this wood down, as they did to part of the North Wood.”

“I was ready to explode,” I snarled. “That disgusting Prune Juice and his ‘I require at least twenty rooms for my personal needs'.” I parodied his princely drawl — or what he obviously thought a princely drawl. “Does he always talk like that? Like he has the world's worst case of — ”

I remembered myself then, and felt my face burn.

“Ah. Sorry,” I heh-hehed.

“Prune Juice?” Sherry asked, looking perplexed.

They all looked at me in question. I gulped. “Prince Jonnicake — PJ — Prune Juice.”

Irene let off a peal of laughter. “Prune Juice!
Prune
Juice! That's it, that is his new name! Now you must think of one even better for his horrid mother!”

And Clair grinned. “Prune Juice. PJ. It is a better pair of nicknames for him than he uses for me.”

“He knows Clair?” I asked Seshe as we walked toward the Magic Lake.

Seshe gave me a quick glance of muted surprise. “Yes,” she said, rather tentatively. As if she could say more, but hesitated.

I clamped my jaw against being nosy. Anyway, I had another problem, a much worse one. Good as that water had been, I soon wished I hadn't drunk any.

“Is something wrong?” she asked then, glancing at me in obvious worry.

I realized I was walking weird, my legs stiff. My face went hot again. Irene and Clair were a ways ahead talking, with Sherry listening. Didn't these girls
ever
have to go? I whispered, “Is there a bathroom anywhere?”

Seshe blinked in blank surprise. “You wish to bathe?”

“No. You-know.”

“I-know what?”

Hotter face. My guts writhed with embarrassment. Was I about to get myself into trouble here, too? “Restroom.”

“Oh! You need a rest? Clair said it is night, in your world.”

I sighed. “I have to
go
.” I waved a hand vaguely toward my privates.

Seshe gaped, and then said in a low murmur, “The Waste Spell does function here, I assure you.”

“The what?”

“Waste Spell,” she repeated, and then her eyes went big in amazement, and then crinkled in horror. “You mean — you do not know it? What do you — no.” She shook her head violently. “Forgive me.”

“What's wrong?” Clair turned around.

I groaned. “I can't help it — ”

Seshe darted ahead, and whispered in her ear.

Clair did not get angry. Her mouth rounded, and then she said, “Well, we're all girls, and the need is the need. Here's the Spell. You repeat it first, learn it, and then say it and, and, well, let go at the same time.”

And she taught me the Waste Spell. I didn't want to try it in front of them, so I went behind a tree, in case it didn't work, and they understood at once, and stayed where they were. When it did work — and weird that was! — I ran back. “Hey, that's great! So you don't have bathrooms here?”

“Well, rooms with baths, yes, though many places have cleaning frames instead,” Clair said. “It depends on water, and other things. But I think I know your question. I do not yet know if humans brought magic knowledge here, or discovered it when they found magic here, but what would you do if you had magic?”

“Make life better,” Irene stated.

Clair nodded. “And so our ancestors did. The Waste Spell is taught to our young as soon as they can learn it.”

Potty-training, I translated to myself. But with no potties.

“Where does it go?” I asked, and then clapped my hand over my mouth.

If they noticed, no one commented.

“Into the ground,” Clair said. “As does the dirt when you step through a cleaning frame, or pass your clothes through one. Separates into component parts.”

“Do animals know the Waste Spell?” I asked.

“No,” Clair said. The other girls were silent, their eyes downward. “But most places have the Wanders' Guild. A besorcelled wand passes over the waste, using a variation of the Waste Spell, and so the streets stay clean. The Wanders walk streets of cities all day.”

“So you don't get pollution problems, then?” I asked.

The word
pollution
came out as
poison
.

“Not from those,” Clair said. “Life is not perfect here — ”

“Or the Chwahir wouldn't be around,” Irene put in. “Or Glotulae trying to oust — ” She stopped, and waved her hands around. “The Mearsieans from their land.”

What was she going to say?

Irene whirled around, crossed her arms, then stated, “I know it is impolite, but I
must
know. Is your world covered with — ” She gestured.

Cusswords, I was to discover, were very different from Earth — except for this one. In a world where no one had to poop or pee externally, you might say, to do it deliberately — or even refer to it — was ten times worse than the sex cussing at home, which, by the way, they didn't have here. Spitting was also considered superdooper bad, I was to find out. In some countries, even making the motion of spitting could get you into real trouble.

Right then I was fighting not to laugh. “No,” I said. I noticed Sherry was crimson, shaking silently. “We have plumbing. In the past, though, it was.” I remembered what I'd read about people throwing the contents of chamber pots out windows into the streets — and all the diseases that came of it, though no one knew that at the time.

“Plumbing? So whatever that is puts it in the ground?” Sherry asked.

“Well, no, I think it goes to the ocean, where I live, and inland, into the rivers.”

The girls exchanged looks of horror, but no one said anything more. We emerged atop another clearing then, looking east. This one was not as close to the Lake as the one on my first visit. I looked up at the mountain with its eternal cloud — and then I realized what that cloud had to be. My perspective kind of jolted. Was that the cloud on which sat that white palace?

I stopped, tipped back my head — yes! I saw the gleam of something white, one of the tallest towers, just beyond the edge of the lower cloud. And beyond that the sky was white with puffs of little clouds.

“Rain coming,” Sherry said.

“Rain!” I said, and then hesitated.