Over The Sea (6 page)

“You don't like it?” Seshe asked, as Clair gave me a funny look.

“Opposite,” I said. “We almost never get rain where I live, and I love it.”

Clair smiled. “Well, then, we shall have to see if you can have some here, then.”

And I knew from that she'd been waiting only for the nicest days before bringing me.

But I still hadn't figured out what it meant.

The school year had changed again before the next visit. The weather got hotter, as it always does at the end of the year, and came January and it cooled off at last, alternating days of heat with brief rain. I started sleeping with clothes under my nightgown. Every single day was a long, hot dreariness to be gotten through, for I no longer even tried to fit in, or find happiness there. I moved through the countless hours, doing what I had to do, my whole being concentrated on nighttime and whether or not this time Clair would come.

And come she did. I heard the tapping at the windowpane, jumped out of bed, threw off my flannel nightie, and stepped out, wearing a t-shirt and pedal-pushers.

This time, once I'd recovered from the transfer ickies, I discovered that we were alone in a woodland clearing. Clair said, with a big grin — rare for her — ”We have a surprise for you.”

She looked around very carefully, and I did as well. Then she led the way to a lightning-blasted tree and climbed the lower branches. It turned out to be hollow inside, after she cleared off this big mat of leaves and moss and stuff — and there was a ladder going down!

“Oh!” Pleasure seared from my eyes to my toes. Golden light way down indicated that this wasn't just a hollow tree, but a secret entrance to a room. Not just a room, but
an underground hideout
.

I scrambled down, impatient to see everything. Clair followed me into a short tunnel that curved downward. It opened into a room round as an egg, with some roots in the otherwise smooth ceiling. Round lights sat on pedestals, shining on a colorful woven rug spread over the smooth, hard-packed ground. Pillows made a circle on the rug. Another tunnel led downward to what was obviously another room. And in the other direction, the same. Against one wall was a fireplace.

All the girls were there — including a new one, this girl about Irene's height, sturdy build, her skin a dusky brown, her hair dark and thick and worn in shining long braids. Her eyes reminded me of dog's eyes — brown and pretty and watchful.

“This is Diana,” Clair said. Her name was pronounced Dih-YAN-ah. That ‘yuh' in the middle, I was to find out, was common to Sartoran-influenced words.

Diana was dressed in an old, patched green tunic and worn brown knee pants. Her legs and feet were bare.

“She's great at woodcraft, it turns out,” Seshe said, coming forward. “And so she's taken over organizing our patrols.”

“We took your idea,” Irene added. “Making it so awful here for PJ whenever he tries to stick his wiggly nose south of their city — unlawful, I might add — that he seems to have given up his plans for his ‘thousand room retreat'.”

“At least until he can get his own guard to send against us.” Clair rubbed a hand up her other arm. “He sent a message to his uncle up in north Elchnudaeb since his mother won't give him his own.”

“We overheard him bragging about it.” Irene posed with her wrist to her forehead.

“Want to see our place?” Sherry asked, springing forward. “Isn't it wonderful? It took Clair ever so long, for it was lots and lots and lots of magic, but oh, isn't it grand?”

“It sure is,” I said longingly.

Sherry showed me the kitchen alcove. There was a barrel of water with a spell over it that cleaned dishes, and down below was another egg-shaped room, also lit by magic glow-globes, with hammocks strung up to big strong roots in the ceiling.

“This is so cozy,” I said, looking around. Envy crunched my heart into a tiny ball, but I fought hard against it. “I'm so glad you have this place,” I added with determined cheer.

“Clair says maybe we can have more rooms someday, if we like,” Sherry added. “But she was so tired, doing all this. You've no idea how many spells it took to make it all safe for us and for the plants above, and to have air, and keep it dry, and everything. Spells and days, and us camping in the rain twice, because — ”

A quick look went between them all, and she fell silent.

Seshe poked her head down through the hole above, her long hair swinging. “Want to go on patrol?”

“Sure!”

I hoped we'd encounter PJ again, but we didn't. I was careful not to express any disappointment, but to keep my face as calm as Clair's, and not ask questions about that
because
, to thank everybody for everything they showed me, and for my visit.

Each of the next two times I came, there was a new girl added to the group. None of the others had left. They all lived there together, I realized — though I had no idea how much time was passing in Mearsies Heili. I'd had another birthday, and I was taller, but none of them seemed changed at all. My aging made me the more anxious as time steadily wore and bore onward. Time, the worst enemy. Just when was I going to be too old for Clair — and would I find out before it was too late?

Faline was the first of the new ones. She was short and stocky, with bristly red hair that sprang into tight curls unless forced into braids so stiff they stuck out like sticks. Her face and arms and legs were covered with freckles, her eyes blue-green and always crinkled with merriment.

It was clear that sometime between my last visit and this that she and Sherry had become best friends. Did Clair mind? She didn't seem to. She just smiled at Faline's constant jokes. Constant and really, really dumb.

On the next visit the addition was a strange, moody girl with thin, flyaway brownish blond hair worn short at her shoulders, changeable eyes. She moved with grace. Not fussy or show-offy, but fluid, like everything she did was a dance.

We all went on patrol together, and from time to time she did dance, with utter unselfconsciousness. She didn't care if anyone watched or not. Her face lifted, her eyes half closed, as if she heard music that others could not hear, and there she went, whirling away, light as autumn leaves on the wind. She vanished out of sight.

“She's not human, you know,” Sherry said cheerily to me. “Well, half.”

I caught a quick look from Faline, a stricken, guilty look, but then she looked away again just as quickly.

“We were all at the Lake, splashing our feet in the water, and the bubbles give this heave and roil, and out she comes, just like that!”

I squinted at Sherry. “You're making that up.”

“Nuh uh.” She shook her head so hard her curls bounced.

“It's true,” Seshe said. “We were all there. She said, I choose to have human form for a time, and to be with you, if it is permitted.”

“Real careful, like,” Sherry put in. “Like she'd never talked before.”

“Well, she hadn't,” Seshe said, smiling. “Not like humans talk, anyway. And of course Clair said she was welcome, and did she have a name?”

“She didn't know what that was,” Sherry added, her blue eyes round with amazement. “Imagine!”

“But we told her our names, and after Diana told her her name, and so she said,
Oh
,
I am Dhah-neh
—

It was a breathy sort of sound, the initial D no more than a touch of the tongue to the front teeth, and a lot of ‘h'.

“ — which we think is how she was translating the name of her people. The ones in the Lake. And Diana's sounded most familiar. Anyway we turned that into Dhana, which is kind of pretty, don't you think?” Seshe put her head to one side.

“Very,” I said truthfully. “But will she get mixed up with Diana? They do sound kind of alike.”

“Well, it hasn't been a problem so far — ”

Sherry shook with silent laughter. “Except when she forgets that she has a name.”

“That's very seldom anymore,” Clair said, coming up on Seshe's other side.

“Is anybody else a magic person?” I asked, watching Faline from the side of my eyes.

Yep, her shoulders hunched up. But she didn't turn.

“No,” Seshe said. “At least, not that I know.” Her smile was sad. “I can't speak for the others, but my own circumstances were both ordinary and dreary. Until Clair found me on the road and invited me here for a visit. And then to stay.” She sent a grateful look at Clair, who was studying the ground, and didn't see it.

Not that that mattered to Seshe. She wasn't trying to toady — none of the girls did, though Clair was the one with the magic.

Irene's dramatic voice brought attention her way. “Do
not
ask about
me
,” she said, shaking her fist toward the south. “Unless you wish to hear a terrifying tale.”

Diana, just beyond her, sidled a frowny look, but she didn't speak. Dhana reappeared then, joining us matter-of-factly, as if she'd never been gone.

“My story was yukky too,” Sherry said wistfully. “Not my home. I come from Mearsies Heili, but Kwenz — ” She shook her head. “Never mind. I was left without a family, and Clair found me, and I'm happy to be here.”

After a silence, Clair said, “We agreed that no one has to talk about her past if she doesn't want to. Listen, how about if we find a name for the hideout?”

“I like calling it ‘the hideout,'” Irene announced. “Besides, it sounds kind of fussy for it to have some grand name.” She waved her hands in circles around her head on the words
fussy
and
grand
.

“Who says it has to be grand?” Dhana retorted, also waving her hands around her head. It was a mocking gesture, but her hands were so ballet-like, they reminded me of butterflies.

Diana smiled at the trail in front of her. Faline looked away, and none of us could see her face.

I said, “But what if PJ or any of his klank-brained friends overhears?”

Faline whispered
klank-brained! klunk-brained!
, and then dissolved into snickering. Sherry also started to chortle.

“Then, what, a kind of code?” Clair said, frowning a little. “But wouldn't that draw notice as well?”

“I do like the idea of a code, though,” Irene admitted, and this time there were no dramatic gestures. Dhana smiled faintly, then twirled around twice, and leaped lightly over a tree root.

They all looked at me.

“No,” I said. “The best place for a thief is under the sheriff's bed. Every single adventure story says that. And I think it works here. See, you have to give it some kind of obvious name, or one that won't make PJ want to be there.”

“Like?” Irene crossed her arms.

“Like Pigsty. Do you have pigs here?”

The girls nodded. “They eat the scraps of food you don't want. And their leavings are left in gardens.”

“So nobody eats them?”

The girls looked shocked. “Oh, no. They have
babies!
“ Sherry exclaimed earnestly, and that's how I found out they don't eat any mammals in that world.

“Okay, well, back to names. Or Snake Pit. Or Root Cellar — no, that one hints at underground — ” I stopped when I heard a choking, wheezing sound, and there was Faline, purple-faced.

“Let's eat in the Pigsty,” Faline crowed. “Let's catch a nap in the Pigsty! Let's have a m-m-m-asssss-quer-ade in th-the P-p-p-igsssty ...” She couldn't finish, she was laughing so hard.

The others grinned.

“I see what you mean,” Clair admitted. “But I do confess I mislike Pigsty.”

“Ugh.” Irene shuddered. “I will
not
say that I live in a Pigsty. They make sweet pets, but they eat — ” She shuddered, rolling her eyes toward the sky.

“Well, something bland, but not too bland, but not interesting. Like backyard, but not something you actually have here, lest it be confusing. But something PJ thinks is disgusting — like Junkheap, or maybe Junkyard — ”

The term didn't translate.

“Junk,” Irene repeated. “What a funny sound! What is junk?” She said it a little like Clair had once pronounced
Jennet
, with a soft ‘j' — no ‘d' sound at the front, the way I was used to.

And they all looked at me in question.

“It's from my language,” I said. “Where do you put stuff that doesn't work anymore? That is all broken, or that people don't want any more?”

“You take it apart and make a new thing,” Seshe explained.

“Junk,” Faline repeated. “Klunk — ”

“Bunk.” Sherry spluttered with snickers.

“Junkyard,” Clair repeated. “It would never, ever occur to anyone to figure that out.”

Irene gave an emphatic nod. “And it's short, and easy to remember.”

“Junkyard it is, then,” Seshe said. “Yes, I like it too — a place where exists things we don't even have.” She smiled at the absurdity.

The sun had vanished behind clouds without our noticing. A low rumble of thunder triggered the plopping of fat drops of rain on the leaves overhead. One splashed my face, running into my mouth. It tasted sweet, not like rust, as rain did at home.

“Can you take us to the hide — the Junkyard — by magic?” Irene asked Clair. “My gown will be ruined.”

Clair shook her head. “Too many. I'm not capable of transfers with so many, yet.”

“Then let's run,” Diana suggested, grinning. “Race you!” She poked Clair and then tore ahead, fast as a cheetah, and as graceful in her own way. Clair started running after her, a head-down, determined, straight-path sort of run. Dhana took off after her, but veering for reasons we couldn't see, sometimes turning handsprings over rocks, before she vanished in the greeny shadows.

“Last one there is Prune Juice's sister!” Faline yelled, starting to run, but she didn't go very fast. She was wheezing too hard with laughter.