Chapter 19
Everyone watched as the three horses left. Caramel Brute ran after them a few yards, then looked over his shoulder questioningly. When nobody made a move, he sat where he was and stared at the departing horses until they disappeared over a ridge. His ears were cocked toward the humans though. As soon as they stirred, he rushed back to them. They laughed a little at his wild greeting, as if he’d been separated from them for days.
Janna was too sad to laugh, especially when the two remaining mares walked over to Alissa and Petten, but she didn’t react further, because Caramel Brute suddenly growled, and the hair along his back rose.
“Hello, down there,” came a distant call, and Caramel Brute growled again.
Everyone started in surprise—everyone but the two mares, Janna noted. The mares raised their heads as if they’d been expecting the three figures waving shepherd’s staffs on the crest of the nearest hill. Janna’s eyes narrowed. She’d wondered why Madow was letting the Mount Pasture group walk the rest of the way. He must have known these shepherds were coming and hadn’t wanted to meet them. Smart. Neither do—
“Hello yourself,” her father was shouting back. “It’s Roni, Bandy, and Muck,” he said with such joy that Janna made herself put a smile on her face.
Cook had grabbed Caramel Brute and was holding onto him, soothing him with murmured words of reassurance. The big dog wasn’t happy to have yet more humans arrive, but his growl became more of a grumble.
Petten nodded. “This is good. They can show you the best way to return home.”
By now, the men had run down the hill and were rapidly approaching. Luff hurried to meet them and there was a lot of backslapping and congratulating.
“Go on, Janna. You don’t have to wait with us,” Petten said.
“Yes, go and greet them,” seconded Alissa warmly.
Janna hesitated.
“We won’t leave without saying goodbye,” Petten promised.
What else could she do? She walked toward the jovial group, and when one of the shepherds saw her, he shouted a welcome and pulled her into a hug. Then she was passed around from shepherd to shepherd and hugged and generally triumphed over—as if I was a lost lamb, she thought, halfway expecting one of them to sling her over his shoulder and start for home.
“Where’d you go to, girl?” asked Bandy finally.
“I got captured by the Fern Queen,” Janna answered truthfully enough, although she omitted the part about falling into a tunnel. There was no need to embarrass herself.
“I didn’t know there was a real person called the Fern Queen until Luff told us you’d fallen into her old tunnel,” Roni said loudly, and Janna gave up the idea of keeping embarrassing things secret.
“She was real all right, and as evil as the old stories said she was.”
The shepherds shifted uneasily. Undaunted, Janna continued. “She was going to turn Dad and me into fernpeople with horrible green veins and eyes, but the fernwoman who cooked for her helped us escape. Do you want to meet her?”
“A fernwoman,” Muck said offhandedly, rubbing the beard on his chin.
“Yes, come on.” Janna led the way back to the waiting group.
“This is Cook,” she introduced her friend proudly.
Cook nodded and the three shepherds nodded back, but nobody said anything further until Luff rather pointedly continued the introductions, this time including Petten, Alissa, and each of the shepherds.
“Oh yes, sorry,” Janna said, accepting the correction politely, though she avoided looking at Petten when Muck was introduced.
Petten’s work spreading the dried stable muck in the Fern Queen’s gardens had given rise to a constant stream of complaints and jokes about the smelly stuff. Petten would keep his face under strict control. Janna knew that he would, but she also knew that if he made the smallest, most distantly courteous good-to-meet-you smile, she would dissolve into helpless laughter, and that wouldn’t be nice. She had promised her father to be nice. Besides, Luff had left out the horses.
“And these are two high-home horses,” she added grandly, tilting her head toward her father to indicate that he had forgotten to introduce them. “One of them is called Hayla, but I don’t know the other one’s name. Can you talk?” she asked the brown mares, though she was pretty sure they couldn’t.
The mares gazed at her, swishing their tails. It was typically relaxed behavior from these high-home animals, but Janna was uncomfortably aware that they were acting remarkably like ordinary horses.
“Only the cream-colored ones talk,” she explained to the shepherds, none of whom were looking at her. One was staring intently over the hills, while the other two had developed a fascination with their boots.
Janna stiffened. She opened her mouth in outrage, but Petten spoke before she could, and her attention was sidetracked.
“I think Alissa and I should leave now. We don’t want to miss meeting her people.”
Hugging each other only took a few minutes, but Janna didn’t try to prolong it. She was too sad to make the effort. When Petten and Alissa gracefully sprang onto their mounts’ backs, the shepherds murmured in appreciation. Of course, they did. They always appreciated everyone but her.
The mares moved off in a northerly direction.
“Come visit soon,” Janna called, waving goodbye.
Her friends called back promises of future meetings until they reached the top of a hill and started down the other side. As they passed out of sight, Alissa and Petten both waved. Then they were gone, and Janna heaved a shuddering sigh.
While she’d been waving goodbye, the men had started an animated discussion about such interesting topics as Bandy’s new treatment for foot fungus and the current drought that had lasted two weeks. Luff was maintaining that it would rain that day, and the shepherds seemed hopeful. Their king’s predictions had often come true, not always, but often enough to make them start scanning the sky.
Cook wandered over to the creek for a drink of water, and Janna followed. She sat on the bank while the older woman cupped her hands and brought gulps of water to her mouth.
When she’d satisfied her thirst, Cook sat down next to her.
“It’s to be expected,” she said.
“What’s to be expected?” Janna asked listlessly. “That I’m depressed over Alissa and Petten leaving?”
“That too,” Cook agreed. “But I meant about the shepherds.”
“You need to use more words, Cook. Shepherds’ brains are stuffed with wool, but if that’s what you’re trying to say, I already know it.”
Cook smiled. “It’s good to joke.”
Janna didn’t have the energy to assure her that she hadn’t been joking.
“No, I meant the shepherds not believing about the talking horses and the Fern Queen.”
Janna lost some of her listlessness. “I told them only the cream-colored horses could talk, but you’re right, they didn’t act as if they believed me. I wish Petten and Alissa could have talked to them before they left, but when Dad backs me—he will, won’t he?”
“He’ll be patient.”
That wasn’t very reassuring, but then Janna thought of something that was.
“Anyway, they can see you. You were a fernperson, and you’re right in front of their eyes.”
Cook shook her head. “I don’t look it now.”
Janna stared in dismay. It was true. Cook had brown eyes now and a broad face that was wrinkled but certainly not green in any way.
“I’m doomed,” the girl moaned.
****
Around noon, the rain King Luff had predicted started in a slow drizzle that lasted for hours.
At least it was a warm day instead of the cooler one the mountain world was quite capable of producing in early autumn. They’d get wet but they wouldn’t get chilled. Luff pointed this out cheerfully, and the three shepherds agreed, but shepherds were used to being outside in every kind of weather, and Janna knew for a fact that, as the king of Mount Pasture, her father was out in it too, more often than not.
Cook, who was plodding along, breathing heavily, didn’t say anything; however, she did manage a nod in response to Luff’s cheerful comment. Janna faced fixedly ahead and tried to imagine herself in a mountain clearing—a dry mountain clearing—but even her imagination had its limits. Walking in the rain for hours without anything to prevent a constant stream of raindrops from trickling down her face was not her idea of fun.
Every now and then, her hair got so heavy that she’d grab the long wet strands and wring what she could out of them, muttering to herself. Cook didn’t say anything then either, though she did wait for Janna to finish so she could continue to walk beside her. It was doubtlessly a demonstration of sympathy from the reserved woman, but toward the end of the day, communication of every sort died away.
They sloshed steadily onward, and Janna came to the firm conviction that the going-up side of a hill was longer than its going-down side. Such an insight should be more widely known, and she dared anyone to disagree with her about it. In fact, she whispered a brilliant rebuttal to any such disagreement. When Cook glanced worriedly in her direction, Janna ended the debate, though she did first declare herself the winner.
Finally, the rain petered out and Luff called a break. Janna and Cook sank onto the nearest flat-surfaced rocks. They didn’t care that the rocks were wet. What difference did it make? They couldn’t get any wetter. This was much worse than riding on Madow and the other horses through that cloud. Janna was sure that she had never been this wet, not even when bathing in the huge castle tub or swimming in one of Mount Pasture’s waterholes. It was having wet, soggy clothes on that made the difference, clothes that squelched against her body and—
The shepherds and Luff had stopped farther up the hill, but they weren’t so far away that she couldn’t hear when they started talking about her.
“How long’s Janna been this way?” one of the shepherds asked in a low voice.
She couldn’t tell which one had asked the question. It didn’t matter; all three were waiting expectantly for an answer.
“Eh, what do you mean?” asked her father, though he sounded as if he knew exactly what the man meant.
“You know, thinking things are, that ain’t,” said the man.
Janna identified him this time. It was Muck. She’d always felt sorry for the man because of his name, but no longer, she vowed, as she shot to her feet and headed up the hill. He deserves it!
“What I told you was true,” she said hotly, elbowing her way into the group. “We did meet high-home horses, but only the cream-colored ones can talk, which is mentioned specifically in the history books if you had ever bothered to read them. The mares you saw couldn’t talk because they were brown, but they were different from normal horses, and I can prove it. Alissa and Petten didn’t have saddles or bridles. It was the mares who decided where to go, not the riders. Didn’t you see that?”
Janna waited for their answer expectantly.
She had figured this argument out as she trudged through the rain. Surely, it would convince these country men. It was their type of reasoning. They shuffled in their boots and cleared their throats, sounding remarkably like her father when he didn’t know what to say. Then Bandy muttered something about good riders guiding horses by moving their knees in certain ways.
“That’s ridiculous,” Janna said, but her father gently corrected her.
“It’s true, Janna. Not every good rider would know how to do it, but a scout like Petten certainly would.”
“Dad, you know I’m right about the horses. Tell them.”
“She is right,” he immediately said to her great relief. “We met cream-colored horses who could and did talk. We wouldn’t have made it here without their help.”
Janna glared in triumph at the shepherds, but they weren’t making eye contact again. Muck started to say something, but Roni nudged him and whispered something about the whole ordeal being hardest on the family.
It was hopeless, and Janna completely humiliated herself for all eternity by starting to cry. She didn’t shed a few decorous tears either. Oh no, great, heaving sobs were what burst out, sobs that shook her whole body.
When she was finished with her cry, she was going to die. Never would she return to a kingdom where people didn’t believe what she said. She’d go back to the Fern Queen’s castle and live by herself until the poisonous fumes got to her. She’d find the horses’ valley and beg them to take her in for the rest of her life, which wouldn’t last long because she wouldn’t be able to find enough food and would die of starvation. She’d go to live with Alissa, and if she died because she didn’t know the way to Green Waters that would show them, that would show everyone, and serve them right too.
Janna felt her father putting his arms around her and heard him tell the shepherds, “Go on without us. I know the way to Roni’s from here. You’re sure about putting us up for the night, Roni?”
Roni must have nodded his reply because she could hear the shepherds leaving, but she refused to lift her head. They weren’t even worth a glare. She hated shepherds. She hated shepherds’ children. She hated Mount Pasture.
When she’d finished her cry, Janna was too exhausted to resist when her father urged her onward. He walked on one side of her and Cook on the other, and the fernwoman took her hand. Nothing really helped. They were still walking toward an unfriendly kingdom infested with shepherds.
Oddly enough, it was the first sight of Mount Pasture that made her feel better.
They had struggled up a hill that was hard to climb because of loose rocks that slid out from under their feet, making them stagger every few steps. Janna couldn’t keep track of the times she almost fell. When she finally reached the top, she had to bend over, hands on knees, to catch her breath.
Then the sun slipped away from the clouds that had hidden it all afternoon. Wearily, Janna straightened up, intending to close her eyes and let the light bathe her face. Her eyes widened instead. Her lips parted.
Stretching out in front of her, the familiar low hills of her kingdom had been transformed into shining emerald-green rivers that flowed up and down the swelling curves of land. Janna stared breathlessly for a full minute. Then the golden glow of sunset faded and the green rivers became grassy pastures again, but she smiled a real smile for the first time that day.
Here, the thought came. Even here.
****
Roni’s cottage was one of the homes in the southeastern corner of Mount Pasture that had lost lambs that year. King Luff was sure it was the Fern Queen’s people who had stolen them.
“It’s been a week since anybody missed any,” Roni figured.
“Did we stay that long in the valley?” Luff said, shaking his head. “A week! Well, you can’t put wool back on the sheep. We were tired and the days passed without us realizing it. In any case, the Fern Queen is dead now. You should have no more problems with stolen lambs.”
Roni’s wife had prepared a supper of hot stew, applesauce, and homemade bread. She was apologetic about what she considered simple food, but everything tasted delicious to the travelers after their steady diet of roots, fish, and berries. Even Cook got second helpings and asked about the seasonings.
Janna was too tired to eat much. The emotional ups and downs of the last few days had drained her, and now there was another worry on her mind. She had lost weight during their imprisonment in the Fern Queen’s castle. Lots of small meals had done it. Her mother didn’t cook small meals—ever.
When she didn’t take seconds, her father, who was on his thirds, asked if she felt sick.
“I want to watch my weight,” Janna said, which triggered the standard comment from people who had no intention of doing the same thing themselves.
“I’m watching my weight too,” boomed Roni, staring down at his stomach. He and his wife laughed as if those words had never before passed human lips.
Luff shifted uneasily, and Janna knew exactly what he was thinking. She had never been able to resist her mother’s cooking either. That was the problem.
Cook was the only one who supported her.
“You’ll do it. I’ll help,” she said.
Janna wondered what the former cook thought she could do. Queen Berta was firmly established as the castle cook and quite happy in her role, but it was really too exhausting to think about anything but bed.
Early the next morning, they set off on the winding roads that would lead them home. Mount Pasture was large. It would be a full day’s journey, even though the castle was in the southeastern part of the kingdom.
Caramel Brute had disappeared when they went into the cottage for the night, but Cook hadn’t been concerned. He wouldn’t want to be confined inside a strange place, she’d explained, and sure enough, he joined them as soon as they got out of sight of the cottage.
Most dogs prefer to lead the way, and the big dog was no exception. He swaggered a few yards in front of them as if in charge, glancing back casually to make sure they were still following. Whenever there was a fork in the road, Caramel Brute strutted down one of them hopefully. If his humans went the other way, he had to scramble to reach the right road; however, if they followed him, he swaggered on in the grand role of leader.
It was funny, and so were the dog’s frequent side trips to investigate anything that had an interesting smell. Inevitably, he got left behind and had to run to catch up, bursting between Janna and Cook like a hairy blast of wind, all for the sake of being in his favorite place, out front, pretending to lead the way.
Cook laughed at her dog’s antics and declared outright that she liked this kingdom. Low hills were easier to climb than mountains. In fact, the older woman was almost talkative, though the only thing she and Luff wanted to talk about was how wonderful Mount Pasture was. Cook would ask about something, and Luff would answer with more details than anyone could possibly want to know, in Janna’s opinion.
Still, she was in better spirits than the day before.
A good night’s sleep had helped. She was willing to admit that the low hills of her kingdom were easier to climb; however, the warmth of Mount Pasture’s air didn’t interest her as a conversational topic, and when the talk turned to the relative merits of a small herd versus a large one, she dropped behind so she wouldn’t have to hear anything about sheep.
Finally, the sun slipped behind a mountain. All three of them were walking much slower, but it didn’t matter because they had reached the slopes of the final hill. The castle was on the other side. They were almost home, and Luff huffed up the incline. Cook followed him with a will. Janna just followed.
She had her head up, listlessly watching the other two; consequently, she was the first to spot someone coming over the top of the hill, someone whose shape was round and whose face was wreathed in smiles.
“Mom,” she shouted, and her father’s head snapped up.
“Berta!” he bellowed and waved wildly as he ran to meet her.
Janna ran toward her mother too, laughing at her dad’s sudden energy. Her up-and-down spirits were soaring again and she was glad. Time enough later to think about…nope, wouldn’t go there. Not now.