The Children's Crusade (3 page)

Girls are funny
, Daniel thought.
Marya's lips are smiling, but her eyes are still sad.

“She's beautiful. I promise I like it,” Marya assured him. As if to prove it, she kissed the statue's head and looked up at Daniel.

Daniel wished she had kissed him instead. It made him want to smash the stupid statue. He shoved his hands into his overcoat pockets.

She still didn't seem ready to leave the Shimmers, so he lay back down beside her. At least now, though, she was looking at the statue he'd given her instead of at the shining dancers above the pool.

“Tell me what it was like,” Daniel asked her,
“in that Petersburg place of yours
.
”

“I've told you a dozen times,” Marya protested.

“But I like hearing the telling,” he said. What he truly liked was the excuse to stay close to Marya. He liked having her tell him stories about her life.

Marya gave a little smile and lay the statue across her lap. “Once, long, long ago, my mother belonged to the Empress.”

“Belonged?” Daniel repeated. Marya had never started the story quite like that before—never used the word “belonged.” “Like that statue I just gave you belongs to you?”

“Yes, exactly like that.”

“I wouldn't want to belong to nobody!” Daniel said.

“It didn't seem strange at the time,” Marya said. “It was just the way it was. And Mama got to wear pretty dresses, and I did, too, and eat well and live in the palace year-round.”

“That part would have been all right.” Daniel had spent most of his thirteen years sweating by the coal furnaces of the factory or freezing while scrounging for food or shelter.

“Yes,” Marya said in her soft voice. “But Mama had to do whatever the Empress wanted. They all did. So when the Empress went to France one day and saw people dance a way she liked,
she came back and told all her servants to bring her their girl children.”

“No boys?” Daniel always asked that question in the same spot in the story.

Marya smiled. “No boys. My mother had to make me go. I didn't want to. The Empress scared me.”

“She scares me, too.” Daniel shivered.

“The Empress looked at all the girls and she picked the prettiest ones.”

“So of course she picked you!” Daniel always said this, too.

Marya stood and pointed at Daniel. “You are going to dance for me!” she said in a highfalutin, bossy tone.

She jumped off the boat and sat cross-legged on the grass. Daniel flopped down and stretched out beside her. The Free Country grass came together under him to form a pillow.

“If the Empress picked you, you couldn't be with your family very much,” Marya continued. “You spent too much time practicing ways to stand and move. If you didn't catch on, they'd hit your legs with a stick. They gave you shoes that had wood on the toes. The dancing shoes made your feet bleed.”

“It weren't right!” Daniel was furious at Marya's mistreatment. He hated the shoes that
crushed her toes and made them bleed, the dancing master who beat the students. “I'd 'uv flung those biting shoes straight at that dancing fool's head!”

“But I wanted to dance!” Marya exclaimed. “It wasn't all bad. There was something in the dance that was good—like a promise.”

She pulled her knees up to her chest and wrapped her slim pale arms around them. Her eyes looked dreamy. “Sometimes you'd feel like you could soar away from everything—just glide, free, if only you knew how.” She tilted her head and looked at Daniel. It made him turn shy—her gaze was so direct for once. “I thought it might make a difference if I took off the shoes. And it did. A little bit. But not enough. It wasn't the shoes that held me down. It was that I had never learned how to fly. No one else knew either. No one could show me how.”

Daniel's eyes went to the Shimmers. He was finally understanding why Marya was always here. “The Shimmers fly, don't they?” he asked. “They know.”

“Yes, they do. But I don't think they can teach me. It's their own dance.” She faced the Shimmers again. “I think everyone must have to find her own dance.”

She had never said so much before. Daniel
reached over and gripped her hands. “What do you think your dance would be?”

He must have grabbed her small, cool hands too tightly, because she winced. He instantly released her soft fingers.

Daniel stared at the dirt, ashamed. “I'm sorry,” he mumbled.

“I know,” Marya replied.

They sat quietly for a few minutes. He couldn't help her, and it made him sad and a little bit angry.

“Did you say that Kerwyn will be choosing the next missionary?” Marya asked.

“Any time now,” Daniel said. Was she hoping that he would go, go away? She wanted to be rid of him, didn't she? He couldn't bear to look at her in case that was what she was thinking.

Marya stood, clutching the statue. “Thank you for the dance,” she said to the Shimmers. “And for my present,” she said to Daniel. And then she ran off, leaving him alone.

T
IM STARED, TRYING
to grasp the implications of what he was seeing.

Titania stood there, clear as day, on the sidewalk in a run-down section of London. She looked wildly out of place—her pale green skin was only one of the attributes that made her stand out.

For another thing, she was spectacularly beautiful. Even her weird green skin didn't detract from her beauty. Tim could not have said exactly what it was that made her more beautiful than anyone he'd ever seen. Maybe it had something to do with the fact that she was filled with magic.

Her long hair was dark green, and today it was woven through with tiny flowers. She wore a flowing silver gown that shimmered whenever she moved. Her long sleeves were pale, transparent blue—the color of twilight. She had large, almond-shaped eyes that changed color with her
mood. They were a deep purple now, and Tim felt their furious glare as if she were actually touching him. He took several steps backward.

“How dare you?” she shrieked. “You terrible, foolish child.”

Tim clenched his jaw. “How dare I what? Risk my life to save your world? I suppose a thank-you is too much to ask for.”

Titania took a step toward him and Tim forced himself to stay put. He felt a cold draft emanating from her and he shivered.

“You are insolent,” she growled. “No one speaks to me in that manner.”

Tim's brown eyes never wavered from hers. After all, what he had said was true: He
had
saved Faerie and it had cost him plenty. She ought to be thanking him, not shouting at him. But he had discovered that adults didn't always behave in any normal or rational way.

Titania made a slow circle around Tim, as if she were studying a specimen. Tim took the opportunity to glance around. No one on the street seemed to have noticed her.
Do they think I'm speaking to myself?
he wondered.
Or has she cloaked us both in some invisibility spell? She could probably do something like that easily enough.

Titania stopped in front of him again. “It was not only love he spurned for your sake but life as
well. You have been the death of your father.”

Tim's head snapped back as if she had struck him. The words stung. “Don't you think I know that?” he shouted. “I live with that every minute of the day.”

A nasty smile spread across Titania's face. “Well, at least you suffer,” she said.

“Did you ever think maybe he sacrificed himself so he wouldn't have to be trapped in a world with you any longer?” Tim retorted.

Now Titania looked wounded, as if Tim's words had the prick of truth in them. She quickly recovered. “You do your father no honor, changeling,” she spat at him. “Had you an ounce of skill, you would not have needed such a sacrifice from him. You walked blindly into that lair. You know nothing, and your ignorance is your curse. You are not just a fool, you are dangerous.”

Tim was not going to let this horrid woman get the best of him. “Are you quite finished yelling at me? I really have to be going now.”

“Go where you will, Timothy Hunter,” Titania said, her voice nearly a growl. “Prowl these gray and dingy streets or sink all the way to Hell. But go knowing what you are: a cursed fool.”

Fury and pain made Timothy brave—or at least bold. “Oh, I know what I am all right, your
royal bitchiness,” he declared. He jerked a thumb toward himself. “I'm the fool that saved
you
and your world—and lost a father for my troubles. You would be dead without me. You
owe
me. Live with that!”

Without a backward glance, Tim spun around and left the Queen of Faerie standing on the London sidewalk. He forced himself not to look back, to keep moving forward, to move as if he had some idea of where he might be going. He didn't even care if she followed him, or sent gremlins on his trail or whatever the Queen of Faerie might do when raving. He didn't care about anything at all. She was right about one thing: His father was dead—and it was all his fault.

He found himself in a familiar location—the cemetery.

Everything had gotten so confusing after his mother died; everything had changed. He missed his mum so much, but he never felt like he had anyplace to express it. He was always worried about his dad's—Mr. Hunter's—feelings. Mr. Hunter already blamed himself for Tim's mother's death, for not being the one to die. He was completely adrift without her. How could Tim add his own loss to that? So Tim had hidden his hurt and kept things to himself.

Tim took the familiar winding path until he
came to his mother's grave. He sank down beside the gravestone and leaned his head against it, feeling its hard coolness.

Tim noticed scrawny little weeds poking skinny shoots up out of the dirt covering his mum's grave. “What are these?” he muttered. He reached to pluck the pathetic-looking things. Then his hand froze as he remembered.

When Tim had been dying in Faerie, he had been whisked out of his body by a pretty young woman who just happened to be the incarnation of Death. They had a long talk, and when Tim woke up back inside his body, he had found a packet of seeds in his pocket. A packet he had seen Death find in her messy apartment. When Tim returned to his own world, he had visited his mum's grave and planted the seeds.

The infant plants didn't look like much, but Tim knew that appearances could be deceiving. Besides, he figured seeds given to him by Death herself must be pretty important. She'd gone through a lot of trouble to find them. It would probably be a bad idea to pull them up. Better to wait and see what they turned out to be.

Tim stood up stiffly. Sometimes he felt better after visiting his mum's grave. Not today, though. Today, he felt weighed down by Titania's words. He had tried to drown them out, but they hit too
close to home. He had caused Tamlin's death, and there was no way he could argue himself out of that one. And she was right about his ignorance—it made him dangerous. But then why didn't anyone teach him anything? It made no sense that the Trenchcoat Brigade would dump this ability into his lap without an instruction manual.

No, nothing made sense to Tim. Least of all the adults who seemed to be bent on ripping his reality to shreds.

M
ARYA CRADLED THE BALLERINA
statue in her arms as she hurried to her tent. The conversation with Daniel had unsettled her.

He needs so much
, she thought. She felt bad but she knew his need was a bottomless pit, and nothing she said or did could ever fill it.

There was something else, too. She felt she had finally hit upon a truth when she talked to him about the Shimmers. They couldn't teach her what she needed to know. Only
she
could discover how to dance in the way she wanted to.

She could pirouette, and pose in arabesque, and plié, but couldn't use the movement to express what she was feeling inside. She could do the steps, make the patterns, but she couldn't move with the transporting, compelling grace of a Shimmer. What she had realized while talking to Daniel was that dancing should be about what
was inside her, not what her muscles and limbs could do. That was the difference between her and the Shimmers. They were at peace; they lived in harmony with their surroundings. Their insides and their outsides were one.

That was what Marya had to learn to do.

She entered her tent, which Daniel had helped her set up a long time ago. It was really just sheets slung over the branches of several trees, clipped together so that they wouldn't slip. Marya had decorated the branches with chiffon scarves and flower garlands. A trunk held all of her belongings—of which she had few. She stored the various presents that Daniel had given her in the trunk, too. She slept on the soft grass and used a tree stump as a table. She liked being able to watch how the sun changed the colors inside the tent as it filtered through the different layers of fabric.

She placed the little ballerina statue on the tree stump and lay down on the grass, her arms under her head as she formulated a plan.

After a short time, she stood and stretched. She knew what she needed to do. First things first. She left her tent and located Kerwyn, making sure he didn't see her. She hid behind a thick tree and watched him for a few minutes. He was surrounded by a group of children, probably
the new ones Daniel had brought in. Kerwyn should be busy for a little longer.

Next, she went to Kerwyn's cave. She never understood why he would choose to live underground. Marya's tent was light and airy, while Kerwyn's shelter was dark and dank. But Free Country gave each child what they needed, so maybe the dark made Kerwyn feel protected and safe. Marya knew a bit of what Kerwyn had gone through on that Crusade. The cave must let him feel hidden. Had Marya undergone such an ordeal, she might want to hide, too.

Marya looked around the small cavern. Candles stood in niches carved into the rock walls. Books were strewn about everywhere. Bags of chalk sat in one corner. None of these was what she was looking for.

Her green eyes lit on a stack of board games. Kerwyn could spend hours playing these games. Several of the children from later times had brought them through, often losing interest in them once they discovered all the activities Free Country offered. They abandoned them for swimming and tumbling and rafting and playing dress up. Kerwyn then inherited the games, and he loved them. He didn't care if there were no other players. Sometimes he'd sit and play all sides. Both the white and the black checkers, the hat
and the car and the iron in Monopoly.

His favorite, though, far above the rest, was the word game. He would set up four sets of tiles, and make words appear all over the board. He kept a dictionary at hand, and once Marya had heard him arguing with himself over whether or not a word was admissible for points. It grew quite heated, with Kerwyn arguing both sides. Apparently something called “triple bonus points” were at stake.

Marya opened the box and took all the little tiles with the letters on them. She slipped them into the pocket of her dress. They clicked against each other as she hurried back to the hill where she'd last seen Kerwyn.

Kerwyn was alone now, sitting with his back against a tree, gazing out over Free Country. He was watching the new children exploring their freedom.

Marya climbed the hill and stood over Kerwyn. “Kerwyn? Listen. I'm ready,” she said.

“What?” Kerwyn glanced up at her.

“I'm ready. I want to go on the next mission.”

“That's silly. You're a girl.” Kerwyn went back to watching the little ones. A small girl was picking flowers that instantly replaced themselves the moment the first ones were plucked from the ground.

“What does that have to do with anything?” Marya demanded. She hated it when Kerwyn said stupid things like that.

“Our group has only one assignment left, and it's important.” Kerwyn sounded as if he were a very old man explaining things to a very young—and slow—girl. Daniel was right. What was the word that he had used? Kerwyn was a jerk.

“This is probably the most important mission anyone's got. And you are a girl.” He stood up. Marya knew that as far as he was concerned, the conversation was over.

Only it wasn't. Far from it.

“Kerwyn? You like to play that word game, don't you? Scribble?”

“Scrabble. Yes…” Now he looked confused.

“Well, someone's taken all the pieces. Those square letter things? And hidden them.” She laughed. “To tell the truth, I did it.” She pirouetted, then grinned at him. “I'll bet you'd do just about anything to get them back, wouldn't you?”

Kerwyn leaped to his feet. “Do you think I'd jeopardize the whole mission just to—”

“Of course you would,” Marya cut him off with another laugh. “Anyone sensible would.”

Kerwyn stared at her. “You evil brat!”

She wasn't upset by his calling her names. She knew he didn't really mean it. It was simply
the proof that she'd won.

“Maybe I am and maybe I'm not,” she said. “But I know how to get things done, don't I?” She'd been right. He loved the Scrabble enough that he'd do anything to get his pieces back. Even send a mere girl on a mission.

Kerwyn paced a few minutes. Finally he stopped and glared at her. “All right. Since you're so clever. How's this for fair? You get to go. You can go on this mission. But if you fail, you can't come back here. Ever.”

That didn't scare her one bit. “I'll go pack right now!”

She hurried back to her tent, trying to figure out what she should bring with her. She slung a cloth pouch over her shoulder and looked around her little space.

“Hmmm. Chalk!” She bent down and put the colored chalk into her pouch. That was a definite. “Her.” She picked up the ballerina statue, smiled at it, then slipped it into the pouch. “Apples.” She might get hungry. “Comb. Bracelet.” She glanced around her tent, pondering. “More apples?”

Daniel popped his head through the opening of the tent.

“You done it!” he exclaimed. “You got 'round Kerwyn! He hardly ever lets the girls do anything!”

“Uh-huh.” She waved him to come in, then
knelt by the trunk, wondering if she'd forgotten anything.

Daniel squatted down beside her. “How'd you ever do it? No one gets 'round Kerwyn.”

“Simple. I scared him.” She moved some scarves aside, rummaging deeper in the trunk.

“Did you? I wish I could have seen that.” Daniel sank back onto his heels and grinned.

“What you got in that bag there? Apples?”

“And my comb and my bracelet. And your present.” She lifted the ballerina from the bag to show him.

Daniel's blue eyes widened and he quickly glanced down at the ground, blushing. “I'm glad you're taking something to remember me by.”

She smiled. She was glad she had decided to take the statue. It pleased Daniel so much to know she liked it. Daniel tugged at the pouch. “What else you got in there?”

“Uhm, the chalk.”

“Well, that's good. Wouldn't get far if you forgot that. Anything else?”

Marya hesitated a moment and then reached down and pulled out a battered pair of dancing shoes. She had never shown them to anyone in Free Country before.

She dangled the ragged pink satin slippers from their fraying pink ribbon, letting them
twirl in front of her face. It had been some time since she'd taken them out of the trunk. But there they were in front of her face. Same wood blocks in the toes. Blood still staining the insides. “Yes,” she whispered. “I'm taking these.”

Daniel looked from her to the shoes, then back to her face again. She could tell he was unsure what to say, but she liked the fact that he clearly understood how important the ballet slippers were to her. He just nodded, then said, “So you're all set then.”

“All set. Oh! Except for these.” She dropped the Scrabble tiles onto the tree stump. “Tell Kerwyn where they are after I've gone.”

“All right.”

Daniel walked her to the special spot where the pattern would work. He had to leave her at the clearing—one could only go through the gate alone.

She knelt down and drew the hopscotch grid. Then she turned and waved good-bye. He looked so sad, but when he realized she was looking at him, a grin spread across his face. “See ya!” he called. “Come back soon!”

Marya patted her pouch. She took a deep breath and began to hop and chant.

With that last phrase, she hopped the last part of the pattern—right out of Free Country.