1: Rainy Day

When I lived on Earth, there was a funny magazine my babysitter sometimes let me see. It was called MAD. Sometimes it had sequels of things, and they called them “Bounces Back.” Because I’ve finished rewriting this second notebook here, and because of some of the things that happened in, as well as to, Mearsies Heili, that “bounces back” pretty much fits.

Okay. When I left off in the first notebook, Clair, our queen, had finally gotten into contact with all the provinces of Mearsies Heili—except for the chopped-down forest that Glotulae Auknuge, sister to Fudalklaeb of Elchnudaebb, still claimed as her “kingdom.” What had once been a trade town on the Great North Road was now a city that supported the enormous palace we called the Squashed Wedding Cake, because that’s what it looked like to us. Self-appointed “Queen” Glotulae (nicknamed Fobo by us) was always adding more decorations to it, as well as statues of herself and her son Prince Jonicake (yes, she really and truly named her son Jonicake), who we called PJ.

Fobo and PJ wanted to take over the rest of Mearsies Heili, their motivation as far as we could tell, in order to have more people bowing down to them. And of course more wealth. Sometimes they were aided by the other villain we had to worry about, Kwenz of the Chwahir, who lived in the Chwahir outpost called the Shadowland below the cloud city that was also our capital. The Chwahir, like the Mearsieans, had come from another continent long ago, each making a colony in uninhabited land. The Mearsieans had come to escape the Chwahir, but guess who chased after them. The Chwahir like conquering. Most of their boys and men have to be warriors. Kwenz was very old, a master of dark magic, which is mostly used for force.

“Dark” magic is so named because it spends magic that takes ages to renew, unlike “light” magic. I think of magic as being like electricity, in which dark magic is always super high voltage, even if you’re just using it for a tiny purpose. It can zaps out the power grid in gigandor spells, making everything go dark. And it can electrocute you, if you’re not careful. Light magic uses low voltage so there’s always plenty in the world, and if you make a mistake, the spell just falls apart. Light magic takes longer to perform, because it has a lot of safeguards. I’ve been trying to learn it so I can help Clair, when Kwenz tried magical villainy against us.

In case you’re asking, who are we again?

There were now eight of us girls in Clair’s gang—nine, counting white-haired Clair, queen of Mearsies Heili. She’d been queen for somewhat over a year when we first met. Next was me, Cherenneh Jennet, serving as Clair’s second in command, or, as I liked to think of myself, her left-hand splat .As I said, I used to live on Earth, but someone else got stuck in my place and I got to come here. I’m short and skinny with long straight black hair and blue eyes.

Blond-haired Sherry had been living with Clair the longest. They’d made friends when they were little kids. Freckle-faced, red-haired Falinneh was our joker. You’d never know she was a shape-changer by nature—at least, her people, the Xubarecs, had been exiled for their habit of taking the forms of people who caught their eye and bumping off the originals. Falinneh was short and wiry, her hair so bristly it stuck out like a flaming bush unless she braided it.

Seshe was the tallest and oldest, having done the Child Spell at around fifteen, calm and smart, with very long ash blond hair. She loved the forest land and animals. Seshe talked even less than Diana about where she came from, but she sure knew a lot.

Diana was the quietest. She also loved the forest, and knew the most about things like woodcraft and also how to get past locked doors. As I said, Diana did not talk about her past; her dark eyes would go distant and she’d fade into the shadows if anyone started nosing.

Irenne couldn’t be more different. She loved to talk. She loved attention. She loved acting, drama, playing parts, and dressing up. She and Dhana were the moody ones. But that’s all they shared—Dhana wasn’t even human, except she’d borrowed our form for a time. She actually was a water being from the strange, rainbow hot spring we called the Magic Lake, right below the cloud city where Clair has her capital.

Gwen was the newest to our gang, a small, scrappy girl originally from Earth, with an amazing talent for mimicking voices.

We were all kids, including Clair, who had been studying light magic since she was little. Clair had found what was called the Child Spell, a spell that halted body changes toward puberty. As far as we were concerned, that meant we’d stay kids forever, which meant birthdays were extra fun. We got to celebrate but not cross into adulthood, so nobody would start getting mushy and disgusting about romance.

We girls had recently finished remodeling the Junky, our underground hideout, which had been cozy when there were only four or five of us, but had become crowded with nine. Everyone had her own room, and we’d even added some extras, in case we had visitors, and also, Clair wanted her cousin Puddlenose to have a room waiting for him if he and when he returned to visit. He had itchfeet, and Clair had given up on his ever settling down here or anywhere.

Clair and I had recently finished the connecting tunnels (once we’d decided that the rope entrances were only fun to go down, not up) and what happens? We all end up crammed in the main room most of the time. But the big difference was, we no longer had to stay crammed up—we only did when we chose to. Somehow that made everything work out better, especially for the moody ones.

When the weather was rotten outside—as it was the day I’m about to report—it was so cozy to gather in the main room with warm goodies to eat and drink, to talk and laugh. Maybe I’d sing and Dhana would dance for us. Sometimes Irenne, Falinneh, and Gwen, often with Sherry, put together skits for the rest of us to watch.

I wrote a lot of those up in my first records. All the jokes were there, even the ones we repeated a million times because it was just as funny, or almost as funny, to wait for the expected comeback as it had been the first time we heard it. But when I let a couple of people read those, I couldn’t help noticing that they skipped over those pages. I guess we’re not always as wonderful to other people as we are to ourselves, or maybe in-jokes and stuff just aren’t interesting to anyone outside the group. Or maybe it’s the way I wrote them up. That was my greatest of my many secret fears, that I, as the official archivist of our days, was lousy at it.

Despite all that, I decided to copy this one rainy day into the new notebook anyway. Partly because it is in some ways so typical of those quiet evenings, when it’s just us, and no big worries. (Because the big adventures tend to start out as big worries.) You could say that this one stands for all of them—lots and lots of lovely, fun evenings just like it. And partly because Clair so seldom told stories. That’s the non-typical part. And what she had to say, well, you’ll see.

On this particular day, a nasty, sleety rain fell in zinging arrows outside. Not even Dhana liked it. Inside, it was warm—the firestick in our fireplace gave off a comforting glow. Sherry and Seshe had cooked up some of their delicious hot chocolate with whipped cream on top, and an extra bowl in the middle of the floor, for those of us who like hot chocolate-flavored whipped cream. In hot weather, ew. But cold? There is nothing better.

Diana had begun singing a stupid song I’d made up, Hoooome, home on derange, where the madhouse minions do plaaaaay …

They didn’t know the original song, and didn’t want to. They liked my version, which had to be crooned in either a falsetto or a low, growly voice, because of the drony nature of the melody.

Where sellll-dom is hearrrrrd, a garbaceous word …

And where piiiiies splat the villains all day!

“EYE-yi-yi-yiiiiiiiii!” Sherry trilled in a horrible descant.

Irenne clapped her hands over her ears. “CJ! Sing something that won’t break our ears!”

I’d been collecting songs here and there. On the cloud top, small as it was, two musicians’ groups existed, providing music for anyone who hired them. And in a land where there isn’t any TV and a city where there wasn’t a formal theater—though various guilds and groups put together plays all the time—they got plenty of business. You could walk behind the glaziers’ places and hear them practicing when the weather was nice, all the upper story windows would be open, and they considered that to be free advertising.

Anyway, the songs I liked the best had these running triplets and flourishes that kind of reminded me of trumpet chords, and a little like the dancy melodies of folk songs, especially the minor key ones. But, I’d discovered to my dismay, the words were usually long, silly rambles about a couple of nitwits who wanted to fall in love, or one had fallen in love and the other hadn’t, or they both were in love but somebody else snouted in so they couldn’t get married. Bor-ring! Why waste great melodies on mushy songs?

I swiped the melodies and made up new words. The girls liked my versions much better—especially when I made up funny ones about the various villains, sung to beautiful melodies. Somehow, Falinneh kept saying, it was just that much funnier when the melody is pretty.

Their favorite was one I had recently made up about PJ and a goat at a bridge. PJ insists that the goat has to bow, and let PJ go first. Goats are not known for letting anyone go first anymore than for bowing, but you could believe that PJ would expect it. It was such a silly song that Falinneh and Sherry and Irenne decided to turn it into a skit.

But. “I can’t sing right now, the whipped cream makes me croak like a frog,” I said.

Clair said, “Why don’t we tell stories? Before we know it the rain will be gone, and everyone can get some fresh air on patrol.”

We hadn’t heard from PJ and his gang of followers for a long time, which made even Sherry suspicious. And Kwenz, we knew, was training his newly appointed heir, who we hadn’t yet met. But we knew he was a kid. Didn’t take master brains to figure that that boded no good for us.

“A patrol in the cold,” Falinneh groaned with fervor.

“And mud.” Irenne pruned her face. “Some like nasty wet weather.”

“I’ll patrol.” Diana grinned. No surprise—she’s our hardiest.

“I like wet weather,” Dhana put in. Though she doesn’t look hardy, the way Diana does, she’s not really human.

She and Irenne eyed one another. Irenne twitched her shoulders a little (she had bunches of ribbons on each), but didn’t add any more complaints, since no one was insisting she go out in bad weather.

Gwen said tentatively, “How about a story from before I came?”

“You already know all mine,” I said. Sometimes they liked hearing yukky stuff about Earth, just to shudder. Parts of my Earth memories had begun to fade except for the bits they liked hearing over and over. I’d even made up some silly stories about Earth, or Earth story characters, and put the girls in. Like “Flatman and Flubbin Meet the Mearsieans.” Or my most ridiculous, “The Men from U.N.C.L.E meet the A.U.N.T.I.E.S.” The aforementioned being us, and the letters standing for Another Unwanted Network of . . . you get the idea. The girls adored those stories the most.

Gwen looked Clair’s way, and Sherry said helpfully, “You haven’t heard all Clair’s stories.”

Clair made a face and looked down at her toes, which were dug into the bright blue patch in the rug. She hated talking about her life before we came, but we’d gotten some of it out of her in bits and pieces.

“C’mon, Clair, tell us some firsts.” Irenne put her chin on her hands.

“Firsts?”

“First time you met some of the villains. We already know about all our firsts.”

Gwen nodded. Clair glanced her way, and hesitated. Gwen looked interested, but still too shy about asking. Gwen fit in fine—we all liked her, and she liked us—but there was so much left over from her gratitude-is-a-weapon days at that rotten orphanage before she ran away and tried to survive on the streets, you could see Clair deciding to unclam just for her.

“As it happens, some of the firsts are all jumbled together,” she said as she took up the chocolate pot and poured more into her cup.

Everyone waited; the room was, for the first time, so silent I could hear the soft crackle of flames from the fireplace, and the muffled drum of the rain on the ground overhead.

Clair wriggled her toes in the carpet, her fingers cradling her cup. While she ordered her thoughts, I turned my attention to the others, brooding about my struggle against a sense of competition, mostly with Seshe, for leadership. Even though there was no competition, except in my own head. Seshe did not want to be a leader. She shied away from it, in fact. But still, every single time she made a suggestion that the others hailed as good, I’d fume, thinking I ought to have made it.

Then there was respect, something we all want, though we can’t sell it, or touch it. Or buy it. Clair got it naturally, from all of us, and you could say, oh, sure, because she was top banana in our tree. But she hated titles, wouldn’t dress differently than anyone, never demanded to speak first, or last. Never went first at dinner, or took the best place in a room—all stuff that PJ demanded, for example. He was always watching to make sure everyone gave him his bows, used honorifics in every single sentence, and waited for him to go first. He demanded (loudly) all the signs of respect, but I don’t know how much respect his followers actually felt if they always had to be reminded. Especially as we’d caught some of them making faces or sniggering behind his back. And we were fairly sure that they were robbing him and Fobo steadily, while they waited for the dudly duo to conquer Mearsies Heili and hand out the promised titles and land and wealth. (As if Fobo actually would!)

Clair had never handed out land. She gave us a home. We could do what we wanted, because she shared what she had, so none of us would ever go hungry. If we wanted to, we could prentice out somewhere—a few of her friends had. She did ask us to go around to the provinces and neighboring lands, but if we’d said no, she would have found a way to go herself. We chose to patrol, watching out for PJ’s invasion. Clair didn’t make us.

Here we all were, and she was going to tell a story. If the rest of us were thinking over our words just before telling a story, there would be jokes and snickers and conversation. But we were quiet, waiting. It was respect, so natural no one thought about it.

Clair said, “I guess the best place for me to start is when my friend Jennet was alive, before the Xubarecs pushed her off their cloud. I was four or five, I forget now—my birthdays came and went with no one noticing, mostly. We’d been talking about the Children’s Army—the kids left over after Kwenz pulled his Debt Day wine-spell trick in order to get more servants into the Shadow. Jennet kept talking about the missing ones. Like her parents.”

Clair paused, and then went on in her low, soft voice, her green gaze straying toward the fire and staying there as she described how her mom was actually having morning interviews for once, rather than sleeping, so the girls sneaked into the magic library. Clair had learned the basics of magic as well as reading—mostly from her hermit Aunt Murial, the mage, who stopped by now and then, until chased away jealously by Clair’s mom. Clair learned magic by practicing on her own, once she’d had lessons from Aunt Murial in the basics.

No one knew how far along she really was, so no one had thought to hide any of the books. She located one that had transportation magic. She had never been permitted to leave the cloud-city, but she had sneaked away once, and saw the road around Mount Marcus that led down into the Shadowland beneath the cloud-city. Clair also knew enough about transfer magic, Aunt Murial having explained that she had to say the spell and picture a specific Destination, or when the transfer magic wrenched you out of time and space in this world, you would vanish forever.

She pictured a spot she knew at the edge of the Shadow, seen when poor Jennet had lost her family to Kwenz’s terrible spell. She sent Jennet, then herself. Without the spell book, of course. But, being five, they didn’t think about getting back up.

The road leading into the Shadow under the cloud city was well flattened, the time was early morning, so no one was out. They wandered along the barren rocky road to the castle. Kwenz did have guards on the walls, but they were seldom attentive—it wasn’t as if anyone was trying to invade! Also, they had so much magic on them that they didn’t do anything on their own initiative, especially when the morning light was strong. It hurt their eyes.

“If we were seen,” Clair said, “I expect no one bothered to report us. Jennet only had Chwahir clothes, and my clothes were grubby and worn, unless Janil saw to it that I got a bath and a change. Jennet remembered her way about the castle, and we went on our search for her parents, through room after empty room . . .”

Some servants were out and about, carrying things to and fro. They walked slowly, gazes down. The girls copied them, and no one paid them the least attention.

They were looking for that tall old man they knew was in charge. Clair had recently learned a lesson from Steward Janil: that reasonable children could discuss what they wanted, and maybe get it. Whining and yelling would never get anything except time in your room. Even if Clair’s mom wouldn’t listen sometimes, just went on sleeping, or drinking wine out of her silver cup, Janil always listened. And whatever Janil said always was true. Plus, when you listened and learned, she gave you hugs and cookies.

The girls were determined to discuss things reasonably with that old man. Maybe then he’d let Jennet’s parents go—and even give them cookies. The girls didn’t really want any hugs, except of course Jennet did from her parents.

They heard voices. One of them was familiar. It was the old man, and he was laughing. It wasn’t a nice laugh at all, but it was familiar, so on they toiled, into a vast, gloomy room that was full of people! Only the people were still!

Clair reached to touch the nearest outstretched hand, to discover a cold hardness, like marble. No warm skin. She snatched her fingers back as she stared up. The people had been frozen in the middle of movement, some fearful, some warding threat, some offering threat. A few were sad, looking down. And some held children in arms or by the hand—babies and children just as still and cold.

Jennet ran off to look for her parents. Clair walked more slowly. Her attention was caught by a boy who looked familiar. He had a squinched-up face, his fingers outstretched, slightly curled. Like he was reaching. He was a little taller than she, standing in the center of the room.

She looked at his eyes. They gleamed and glittered in the dim light reflected from outside the stone room, looking creepily real. As if these stone eyes watched her. She backed up a step, two steps—and then heard voices again.

One was the old man again, laughing. It was a wheezy laugh—a mean laugh. She hid behind the boy-statue.

“… and there you are! No, you needn’t hold him any longer.”

The new voice sounded garbled. Like someone trying to talk while underwater in the bathtub, only there wasn’t any water. The voice slowed, then stopped, while the wheezy laughter continued.

The old man said, “My brother slowed the stone spell, see, so they know what’s happening to them. Listen, you!”

A third voice was deep and husky. “Interesting. Quite interesting.”

The old man said, “I’ve been experimenting at my brother’s request—he wants the stone spell to freeze them at different lengths of time. I think I’ve got it. I’ve also added the antidote layered so that they can be released for further experiments.” He wheezed a laugh. “Easier than having to go out to corral more to experiment on.”

The deep, husky voice growled, “That’s a very complicated enchantment. You have to bind such enchantments onto a key—”

The old man said testily, “And, what, I do not know that? I am not doddering!”

“No, no, my error entirely. I was merely stating the obvious as a background to an observation.”

“Ah. Ah. Perhaps I was hasty. My brother does sometimes lecture me, as if I was not the one to teach him his first spells. Do go on.”

“It’s merely this. I’ve discovered that objects onto which enchantments are bound are so easy to misplace. Better to put the spell on a person. The jest is in selecting someone related in some way, as a reminder to you in case you are in the process of a difficult chain of enchantments. You tie the enchantment onto a person who would never release the spell. Unless of course you chose.”

“A person,” said the wheezer.

“For example, that drunken sot directly above you, in the white palace. Or her brat, even more unlikely.”

“I do like that,” the old wheezer said. But I’d need proximity.

“Oh, that’s easily taken care of with a tracer spell. Here! I happen to have prepared a token with one layered on it. I was going to use it for something else, but as a gift to my host, I’ll tender it to you. All you need to do is provide the brat’s name.”

The old one wheezed a lot of words that Clair and Jennet could not hear, then said in the direction of a statue, “Done! No one will ever come seeking you. Ever! Whereas, if you had stayed in my service, you would be free right now. Think about that as time passes while you are stone, ha ha ha!”

“Lethal.” The deep voice laughed. It was a growly, scary laugh. “Quite lethal. But are they able to think?”

“My brother insists they can. He was very careful with his experiments on—”

The voices faded away, as something dropped on the stone floor with a sweet tinkle sound. Gold glinted. Clair ran forward to pick it up—and the sense of magic fuzzed over her fingers, startling her. She dropped the coin and looked around, fearing to see dark magic—black smoke—lightning strikes. All things that had scared her when she was littler, because she was scared now. The lesson about the difference between dark magic and light magic made sense now.

That old wheezer wasn’t going to listen to reasonable children. And he certainly wasn’t going to smile and offer people cookies. Not if he could laugh while turning someone to stone.

Clair stomped in a circle, mired in unhappy thoughts until Jennet pattered up, her eyes huge.

“Did you hear that?” Clair asked, whispering now. “What he said about Mama?”

Jennet nodded. “He called you a brat. You’re not a brat.”

“He’s icky. I don’t care if he calls me a brat. What it means,” Clair realized as she turned around, “is that I can free them. I think.”

“Let’s try one!”

They looked around, avoiding the tall men who all looked so angry. Clair picked one of the women holding a child. She touched the top of that cold stone hand, saying, “Ala! You are now awake!”

But nothing happened.

She struck the stone hand harder—and then tried giving the statue a hug. Then tried the ‘clear-away-illusion’ spell, which is one of the simplest there is, illusions being temporary as well as unreal. But nothing happened.

Clair scowled, remembering those words about ‘easy’.

Jennet said, “They are staring at us, Clair. Try their eyes.”

Clair had noticed that the gleams of the dim light outside made the eyes look real, though that could be the smoothness of the stone over the eyeballs. In any case, she disliked the idea of touching someone’s open eye, even on a statue, but anything was worth trying once. She stood on tiptoe, just barely able to reach the woman’s face, and lightly tapped each eye.

And the statue made a weird crackling noise, then shuddered.

Quickly Clair touched the baby’s eyes so the woman wouldn’t be holding a stone baby, and they both wriggled and moved, the baby sinking with a sigh against its mother. The woman squinted down at Clair as if she had a terrible headache, but then tears welled up in her eyes. Her real eyes, that blinked and moved.

Clair hated to see tears. She felt even worse as the woman dropped to her knees, murmuring broken words of gratitude. That made Clair feel hot pricklies because she didn’t feel she’d earned such praise, so she said, “How’d you get froze?”

“I refused to remain in the Shadowland to serve in the kitchens of Kwenz of the Chwahir.”

“He’s the old man with the beard?”

“Yes,” she whispered. “Stay away from him, child.”

Clair and Jennet nodded, having already come to that conclusion.

The woman looked around fearfully, took a slow step, then moved faster and faster, fading into the shadows as she made her way out.

Jennet said, “Maybe we better go away.”

“Not until I set them all free.”

Jennet said, “But my parents aren’t here. I looked at them all.”

“I’m sorry,” Clair said. “I wish they were. But I can’t leave these others as statues.”

Jennet did not argue, just followed Clair from person to person. To help Clair reach the taller men, Jennet bent over and made a turtle back for her to climb on. Soon the creak and crackle of breaking magical stone and restored flesh and blood filled the gloomy, cavernous space. Some people took off without speaking, others found the girls to thank them.

All had refused to serve Kwenz, and some said he had gloated about saving them for a full generation’s time, till everyone they knew was dead, and they’d be a fresh crop of servants. By then his brother would find will-binding spells.

When Clair came to the boy—she’d saved him for last—he shook himself all over. Jennet laughed, saying, “He reminds me of a puppy!”

Clair laughed. The boy blinked, squinted, then said, “You have to be Clevarlineh.”

“Yes.”

“Hi, cousin!” He grinned.

“I do remember you,” Clair said happily. Then looked puzzled. “But you went away.”

He made a face. “That’s because Uncle Doumei came after me again. Traded me for something he probably didn’t get. But Wan-Edhe gave me to Kwenz to experiment on.”

“What?”

“Oh, never mind,” he said, eyeing the five-year-old. He was about eight, then, and felt that life in the Land of the Chwahir wasn’t anything his five-year-old cousin needed to hear about. “Let’s get out of here while we can,” was his next thought—as he explained to her later.

“… and so he showed us the way out, explaining that he’d been sent to Kwenz to be taught a lesson—that is, to be experimented on—but he suspected it was because someone had broken into Wan-Edhe’s magical wards over Narad, his capital. It was, and probably still is, the worst warded city in the entire world,” Clair said, sitting back, then sipping her now-cold chocolate. “Puddlenose says that nothing will grow in that city, there’s so much dark magic leaching away at life and light.”

“He got turned into stone? How grotty!” Gwen exclaimed.

“Oh, he kept making jokes about it. Insisting it was a good day’s rest, but heavy on the dreams. Stuff like that. Maybe it was better than life with King Shnit Sonscarna, who calls himself Wan-Edhe—‘King of Kings’.” Clair pinched her nose on the words ‘Wan-Edhe.’

“And that’s how you met Rosey?” I asked.

Clair grinned. “His was the deep voice. What’s more, Puddlenose and I thought ourselves so smart when we figured out a couple of years later that he’d known I was there all the time, and dropped the token where I could find it..”

Falinneh chortled. “Wish I coulda met him. Even if he is a villain.”

“If he is.” Clair made a face. “The more I think about those days, the more I think that whatever else he was, he was not a real villain.”

Gwen looked from one to another of us, and I sensed that our knowledge and her lack were dividing us, so I pointed upward. “That rain is louder than ever. We’re not patrolling any time soon, so why don’t you tell us more about Rosey, Clair? Like, why would he pretend to be a villain?”

Clair gave us one of her question-looks.

“I always like hearing about Rosey.” Seshe leaned forward. “He is such a mystery! Just when you think you know how villains will act, you get someone like Rosey.”

Irenne still had her chin in her hands. “Why don’t we see him now?”

“I hope nothing horrible has happened to him,” Clair said. “I sometimes wonder if he’s actually Wan-Edhe’s enemy, though he seems to be Kwenz’s friend. I don’t know how that could be—”

“Euw!”

“Pshooie!”

“Glug!”

“I didn’t even think you could be friends with a villain,” she said doubtfully.

“You can’t,” I pronounced, bulling in. “You can’t trust ’em, so why be friends?”

“Okay, now I’m really curious,” Gwen admitted.

“Well …” I could tell Clair was relieved that the rest of us weren’t bored.

Seshe got up to make some more hot chocolate, and Sherry gave the whipped cream a brisk stir, as the rain roared overhead.

“Our first encounter was right after we started out of the castle. See, it was then that I realized I had no way to get us safely back up to the white palace. My cousin said, ‘Which way out? Seems to me we should wander on up to Aunt Mearsieanne’s.’

“‘We can’t,’ I said, and I was trying hard not to cry. Jennet was already upset because we hadn’t found her parents among the statues.

“And just then, this massive, dark-bearded man loomed out of the darkness. ‘What have we here? Some hostages, hah hah hah!’ It was the deep, growly voice! ‘It seems my over-confident friend needs a lesson in caution.’ And next thing we knew we were transported a long distance …” Clair sat back, that far-away look making her smile a little as the firelight leaped and gleamed in her eyes.

She went on to describe how awful they all felt after the long transfer. They came out of it hearing the booming-voiced fellow saying things like You’re all my prisoners now, ha ha, ho ho! Now you must learn how terrible the Chwahir are, and a lot of similar threats.

“He said he was going to throw us in a cell, which turned out to be a loft in a cottage. Not much was there but a bed with an old quilt, and a tiny window that looked straight up a rocky cliff-side. He brought us all what he called prisoner-slop—saying we’d have to get used to it, and the like, but what he gave us was boiled grain with honey and milk, and biscuits with a hunk of cheese and some tasty greenstuff put into each. We gobbled the food down, drank the milk he left in a big bowl—we shared, a sip apiece until it was gone—and then we jumped up onto the bed, and in the middle of trying to figure out where we were and what was going to happen, we fell asleep.”

When the three kids woke up, they explored inside and outside of the cottage, which was built high on a cliff overlooking a quilt of farms and forests far below, embroidered by the twinkling blue of rivers, streams and a couple of small lakes.

Rosey was a big, stout man in a black robe, with a bristly black beard and unkempt hair. The cottage had one big room, with a kitchen alcove. The walls were solid with books.

Rosey claimed they were his prisoners, and he would ransom them because King Shnit of the Chwahir wanted to get his hands on them to make them statues, or make them scrub all the floors in his giant castle, and as soon as they were done to start again, never pausing to eat. All scary things to five-year-olds. Puddlenose knew the king was far worse.

Next time Blackbeard showed up, Clair asked his name. The deep, rumbling voice mumbled something that sounded like ‘Mount Rose’ or Mondros, which soon became Rosey to the kids. At first they didn’t use it to his face, but when he heard it, he laughed and said that that was close enough to his name, and he liked it right fine.

The thing was, after putting a good scare into them about the Chwahir, and about kids who didn’t learn their transport magic before using it, and such-like, he left one of his books open after a day or two—and right there on the page was the transport spell, with a picture of her home Destination. It took several subsequent kidnappings for Clair to realize that it was the light magic spell, not the faster, but far more dangerous dark spell—but Rosey explained his having a light magic book by saying that one ought to always know one’s enemy.

Clair took that as a lesson, as she did the one about magic. When they got home, she applied herself earnestly to her studies, and at first, the other two played happily enough. But Puddlenose soon got restless, especially when Clair’s mom crabbed at him about making noise, or bringing in dust. She plainly found him in the way, but didn’t come right out and say so.

Clair sighed. “Rosey’s villain talk was easier to bear. Puddlenose took to wandering farther and farther, just to explore. He’d be gone longer and longer. Clair and Jennet missed him, but as Clair’s mom didn’t seem to notice him whether he was right there at the dinner table or gone, there was no one to stop him—and then came the day that stretched into two, then three, then a week, and then a year. And longer.”

Clair set her cup down, and sat back. “Puddlenose joined kids on the Wander after that, and would turn up every now and then.”

“Still does,” Sherry said helpfully. As if we hadn’t already experienced that.

Everyone tried to guess whether Rosey was a villain or not, and why he might kidnap Mearsieans just to let them easily escape. We know a lot more now, of course.

But there’s more about Rosey way, way further along in the records, so I’ll stop the rewrite of this one just where it ended when I first put it down, not so long after I came.

“Hey, the rain is stopped,” Sherry yelled—breaking into her own story of her first clash with Kwenz, which wasn’t all that interesting (though it had been awful at the time).

Kwenz, the Shadow, Sherry’s fumbling attempts at being a housemaid (causing Kwenz to fire her from the job and send her out—she wasn’t even worth turning into something!), were forgotten at the prospect of running around in the fresh air.

We raced up into the brisk wind. The sun emerged from the clouds, birds trilled again, rain dripped from the trees—and we had to run around and have a mud fight, leaving storytelling for another day.