Tryal's Curse 2.1

~2407 words

Chapter Two:
A Prince in Sheep’s Clothing

Night fell quickly on the Meargro Mountains. Far quicker, in Elborn’s opinion, than it ought to. Perhaps this was because he had been in Kelm’s house earlier—his sense of time was always wrecked after visiting there—but Elborn felt as if the sparse daylight was mocking him. Arlene— his Arlene—was missing. He needed to find her. He needed to make sure she was all right, that she wasn’t hurt….

If only everyone wouldn’t be so slow about it.

All of Meare was in a ruckus. The town had been upended twice, and when it became apparent that Arlene Randerfort was ‘not there, Meka Elborn sir, yes, she’s not there’— Kelm had demanded search parties be assembled, and ordered for them to set off at once. He was Ixister no longer, but most of the Meare did not know this as of yet, although they looked at Malkolm strangely and murmured under their breaths about ‘that strange lad, an envoy from the king perhaps, is he?’ Elborn had merely snorted at the lot of them.

Now though, he stood on a barrel, surveying the crowd of volunteers, some who had offered help themselves, others having been coerced by Kelm’s presence to help. The ex-Ixister was currently scolding a few men for piling their carts up with useless supplies, while Malkolm had mysteriously disappeared. Elborn’s shoulders slumped as people jostled around him, most of them casting sympathetic smiles his way, or stopping to press his hand and nod in what they obviously thought was a comforting manner. Elborn smiled at them weakly, then shook his head at himself.

What is the matter with you, Elborn? he thought. Where is your spark? Where is your genius? Still shaking his head, he whipped a silk handkerchief from his pocket and wiped his forehead, wishing for a distraction.

Said distraction arrived in the form of his wife. The moment Elborn saw Garnet pushing through the crowd and walking towards him, he hopped off the barrel and embraced her. She stiffened for a moment before returning the hug. She was taller than Elborn by an inch—no doubt she was wearing the heels that were forever glued to her feet—and her eyes were still streaming freely. When she pulled back, Elborn saw that her eyes were red, but faded somehow, and cold. He patted her on the back.

‘S’all right,’ Elborn said. ‘Kelm has cast a Tracing spell—it’s weak, because he is no longer an Official Ixister, but it should help us with the search.’ He patted his wife’s shoulder. ‘Chin up, Garnet. You have me, I will find Arlene—I’ve never failed yet, right?’ Garnet’s lower lip trembled on her plump face, but her eyes remained steely and she removed Elborn’s hand from her shoulder.

‘It’s late, Elborn. I’m grabbing a cart. You—if you’re wise, you’ll leave Kelm to sorting the villagers out and come with me. Arlene—she—’ Garnet paused for a second and wiped her face. ‘I will search all of Adreitus if I have to,’ she said firmly, glaring at Elborn. She walked away from him and towards the square, where a number of horse carts had been assembled. Her numerous shawls trailed after her and her bright golden curls bobbed on her head as she climbed into one of the carts and meddled with the lyte-fixtures. Elborn wrinkled his nose. Horse carts. It was so very primitive. He remembered his WAGON, currently dismantled and lying in a heap in the middle of his Mekanik Workshop. It would have been so useful right now, Elborn thought, twisting the material of his waistcoat between his fists in frustration. He stared at the horse carts, then at Kelm, then at the lyte-fixtures. A jigsaw formed in his head and he put the pieces together. He was sure he had a set of pre-written engarvments at home, tiles which had been prepared for his WAGON, but which were useless now. If he could get Kelm to bind those engarvments with another magical object, like the lyte-fixtures, he could…

Elborn’s eyes lit up. He scurried towards Kelm.

‘Kelm—I need you to do something for me!’

Half an hour later, Elborn was bouncing towards the Western Peaks of the range, lyte-fixture glowing brightly, a multitude of bright tiles with strange patterns embedded into its metallic base. Garnet gathered her shawls around her. Elborn held onto the lyte-fixture tightly, moving it in circles like a steering-wheel. He shivered as the cold night air passed straight through him, but his face was set and determined every time his niece’s smiling face appeared in his head.

Please don’t let this be a mistake. 

~*~

If Arlene Randerfort counted, she had made almost eighteen mistakes that day. Most of them were rather small mistakes (if knowing that kind of thing matters to you) like tripping and cursing and losing her way on the mountain trails. Some of the mistakes, however, were larger than bears. Yes, thought Arlene, attempting to claw her way up the slippery, slimy walls of the wabbit hole. Some mistakes were larger than bears. Her nails dug into the clammy soil, knees positioned awkwardly as she tried to push her heels into the dirt. Frustrated, she kicked at the wall of the hole, succeeding only in adding a bruise to her inventory of aches. Biting down on her lip, she threw a tantrum in her head. ‘Well, Arlene,’ she whispered, ‘you’ve just done the impossible—made things worse.’ She scowled, stepping back to glare at the wall. If there was a pair of plush earmuffs to top her Bear of Mistakes, it would be this one.

Falling into a hole had not been in Arlene’s inventory of aches that day.

She sighed, plopping down on the floor. She no longer cared how dirty her dress was, or how grimy her face; in fact, she thought, it didn’t really matter. She had  wanted to look respectable for her meeting with Ixister Quixa, whom Prince had promised he would take her to. Ixister Quixa could read minds, Prince had said, and he interpreted dreams. But as the hours ticked on, and Arlene’s feet grew weary, it slowly grew obvious that the meeting would not be taking place. Somewhere along the way she had managed to stray off the path, bypassing their designated meeting-place. As night had fallen on the mountains, everything began to look the same. There was no light save that of the moon’s stingy beams peeping from behind the clouds—and that was nowhere near enough to keep Arlene from falling down a hole. Her carefully braided hair had come loose; it hung in ginger wisps around her face. Her dress, although not torn, might as well be, because it was damp and covered with a million kinds of dirt. She patted it down, grimacing at the clayey sediments that caught beneath her fingernails.

‘You look quite the spectacle, Arlene,’ she whispered to herself again. It was the kind of thing her uncle, Elborn, would say to her. It gave her comfort to imagine him with her. She knew that he would probably have thought of a way out of the hole already. Elborn was a genius, after all, and it was part of his job to come up with solutions to unsolvable problems. Arlene would be a liar if she said she wasn’t proud of him.

She would also be a liar if she told herself that Elborn would not mind her little sojourn into the South End of the Meargro Mountains. She would be a liar if she said that he would encourage her talking to strangers and taking midnight strolls. Arlene had two theories for her actions in the past couple of days, one of which was that she was more of a liar than she had ever believed.

The other theory was that she was possessed.

There was no other reason for her stupidity—for her naivety, she thought, picking at the scabs on her knee. No one would have done the things she had, or made the mistakes she had made if they weren’t under some sort of influence. She buried her face in the folds of her skirt and sobbed, but to her great irritation, she found that she could not cry. She wiped her face with her dirty hand and sighed. ‘You are not a princess, Arlene,’ she told herself. ‘You are not a damsel in distress. You are a girl stuck in a hole and you will find a way out. So up you get.’ Saying this, Arlene jumped to her feet. This time, instead of attempting to scrabble out of the hole, she looked around for a foothold. At this point, even a bit of hard rock in the wall would suffice. She could dig at the softer dirt and make a makeshift foothold, even! But running her hands along the walls, Arlene soon realised that this was futile: the walls were packed together too well. There was a thin layer of slime covering them, so that Arlene’s fingers were green and sticky by the time she had finished inspecting her prison. ‘Yeuch,’ she said, wiping the slime on her shoes. She looked around the hole one more time and grimaced. It smelled. It smelled really bad.

One would think Arlene Randerfort would be sensible enough to at least pick out a proper hole to fall into. Preferably, a proper hole would be one that did not belong to a wabbit (Arlene had decided from the excessive amount of slime that this hole obviously belonged to one) or one that did not stink of rot. Arlene was unable to discern exactly how this kind of rot differed from the other kinds, but if she chalked it up in her head, she would guess that it was at least 2.67 times worse.

(Mathematical precision was not Arlene’s forte, let it be said.)

Sighing again, she sat down on the floor. It looked like all she could do was wait for the wabbit to come back. The wabbit, she reasoned to herself, would do things:

1) It would eat her, digging its claws into her body and nibbling on her appendages as dessert.

2) It would kill her and toss her body into a corner.

Neither of these options much appealed to Arlene, so she decided simply to not think about it. That was the way Arlene worked. If something bothered her, she would simply refuse to accept it as anything but a blurry realization at the back of her head. Two years ago, she had discovered this strange power as one that all humans possessed, but very few understood. She didn’t understand it entirely, either, except she knew that sometimes she could observe scenes very detachedly, like an observer who is unaffected by anything. It allowed her to think clearly. It allowed her to understand.

It was this power that made Arlene Randerfort so very clever. In some ways, of course, she was stupid. But in others, she was wise beyond her years. She sat quietly, in the middle of the hole, watching the moon flicker behind the clouds. Slowly, she got to her feet and slipped her shoes off; they were boots made of unaesium, a queer, metallic substance that was both waterproof and did not rust. They were expensive shoes, sleek and silver, with patterns dancing along their length; the inside was layered with rubber. They reached up higher than her knees and made it difficult for her to walk sometimes. Arlene had never cared much for them, really. Like most of the stuff Aunt Garnet gave her, the shoes had heels that stuck out as sharp as knives. Arlene had once cut her hand on them, and the only reason she wore the shoes was because they kept out the cold.

She had never expected them to save her life.

Arlene swung her arm back as far as it would go and drove the sharp heel into the wall, pushing at it until half of the boot had disappeared into the dirt. Arlene swung herself up with one hand, her feet swinging in the air—she then raised an arm and wedged the other boot above her head. This proved difficult, because she was balanced so precariously, but she managed to grab onto the dangling laces and place one foot firmly on the boot below her. Her socks were slippery with slime and she was afraid she would fall.

She didn’t.

Looking up, Arlene was very glad that although the hole she had fallen into stank, it had not been too deep. It sunk a bit more than two metres into the ground,  and was rather wide. She supposed it belonged to a young wabbit (which didn’t make it any less dangerous, still), and the thought comforted her a bit. The bottom of the hole had been soft, too, so Arlene had been mostly winded by the wall but not seriously hurt.

‘You’re lucky, Arlene,’ she said, gritting her teeth. ‘Lucky.’

Tugging at the laces of her boot, she was relieved when it remained stuck in the wall and did not fall out. Shifting carefully, she pulled herself upwards and cupped her hands firmly around the calf. With a grunt, Arlene pulled herself upwards again. It’s like climbing a tree, she thought. Thank goodness for upper body strength.

Slowly, steadily, Arlene gripped the edge of the hole and pulled herself out. The cold mountain air slapped her; it smelt lovely, of pines and berries. Arlene inhaled deeply and sighed, closing her eyes for a second. She lay down on the ground.

The sound of yelling was what caused her eyes to snap open again. Arlene sat up abruptly.

A boy was heading towards her, dressed in fleece from head to toe. It was Prince. Arlene jumped to her feet and started running towards him. But he wasn’t looking at her—in fact, Arlene doubted he'd even seen her. His gaze was directed at something behind his shoulder. A sword swung madly at his hip. He yelled again, something indistinguishable, although it sounded vaguely like he was saying, 'Yar yar yar yar—yar yar!' 

Arlene screamed as she saw what Prince was running from. She stopped stock-still when he neared her; he turned to look at her with wide eyes. His mouth dropped open. 

'Run!' he managed to say. 

A wabbit raced after him, slime trailing down its grossly elongated body, its fangs gleaming in the moonlight.