Miss Rabbit's pink eyes widened. That kind of hope couldn't be faked, Keon-hee thought to herself. Miss Rabbit very much wanted to know who she was. So did Keon-hee. Also, what was this Mental Achoo thing, and why did it make Asher sound so grim?
Unfortunately, a gruff voice cut across the clearing. "Your intuition is impressive, but now we'll take care of the girl."
Keon-hee looked curiously at the intruders. There were about ten all told, so badly in need of baths that she could hear flies buzzing in the sudden lack of talking. The owner of the gruff voice, standing ahead of the others, was huge and bald, shirtless and grinning, a tiny round skull strung across his forehead with string, an X-shaped scar carved across the bridge of his nose, long-muzzled skulls decorating one shoulder and a belt buckle, and, between his legs, an oddly prominent little cup-thing—
A rumbly snarl drew her attention farther down. Two sinuous animals pushed around the man's muscled legs, which were encased in huge, knee-high boots and loose black trousers. The animals' golden eyes lifted, their gazes glued to Miss Rabbit. One animal licked its chops and shook both a dirty brown mane and a scaly, rattle-tipped tail; the other snarled around finger-thick, yellowed fangs and rustled its reddish, bat-like wings. Keon-hee couldn't stop staring at them. She'd never seen anything like them. Their broad paws dug at the ground, claws like payara teeth sliding in and out of the toes. Their whiskers quivered and curled outward. The animal on the left yowled, sending shivers running up Keon-hee's spine.
"You have been quite difficult to track down," the huge man said pleasantly to Miss Rabbit, "but the road ends here."
Miss Rabbit hugged herself, her eyes wide and frightened. She attempted to hide behind a sunflower stalk. "No!" she cried.
He snorted. "Considering the trouble you've caused, you're lucky I don't kill you on the spot."
His friends seemed to agree. Nasty laughter rippled through their group, and more than one man smacked an ax or a club against his palm. At these sounds, the winged and furry animals began prowling around the huge man, snarling louder.
He smiled even wider than before and adopted a pleasant, genial tone. "Instead, I'll ask your coopera—"
A blast of fire ripped a trench through the dirt, barely missing the huge man. It struck five of the men behind him, sending them flying as though they'd been standing on a barrel keg and it had detonated.
"A – Asher?" Keon-hee gasped, scandalized that he hadn't even let the man finish his sentence.
"This journey was getting tedious," Asher said, speaking as pleasantly as the other man had. Zini's flames smoked along the edge of his saber's blade, ready for another attack. "I should thank you for the opportunity to kick your sorry ass."
Keon-hee palmed her face. Not again.
Meanwhile, the huge, stinky man's expression suggested that someone had just slapped him awake with a spiny sea urchin. His snarling pets crouched low to the ground, their fur standing on end, their tails rattling. "You're the Firelord?! I'd heard about you, but I thought you'd be taller. No matter. Surely, you must want to know why we need the rabbit."
"No," Asher said. "Not really. Zini, fire away!"
A storm of fire cooked the air and wilted the trees and flowers. Keon-hee had to stop this, although, she was sure, her partner was only interested in making these brigands dance, not to actually kill them.
"Asher, wait!" she called, springing toward him.
She didn't hear a click. She felt it, though, something giving way under her heel. "Huh?"
Asher must have noticed the way she froze. He turned to look at her, the blaze from his saber painting his face as red as his hair. She peered under her sandal.
Mashed into the grass, the trigger winked in the sun, and then the red button popped back out.
..::~*~::..
Screams echoed around the woods, sending every nondescript bird for miles flocking from the pillar of dirt, fire, grass, sunflowers, chimeras, people, and trees that spewed into the sky. A silver cat, large as a chimera but far more graceful, its eyes and its claws gleaming like mercury, lifted its nose and sniffed the wind. It rose up on all four metal legs. The wind played with its earrings and its long, soft fur.
A step sounded behind it. The voice of its master, a most powerful sorceress, caused it to duck its head, hoping for the touch of her youthful hand.
"What is it, Keloa?" she asked. She scratched the great head between the ears, and the metal-type Ephemeral Card spirit began to purr mightily. "Strangers in the woods?"
The Sorceress of Metal made the strange, amused little sound that passed for a purr in her kind. Her hand moved to scratching Keloa's jaw, sending shivers of pleasure racing down its spine.
"Do not worry," she murmured. "I will keep the egg safe."
..::~*~::..
As soon as the sound of falling debris tapered off, Asher pushed himself off the bunny-girl, dislodging rocks and clods of earth.
"Are you all right?" he asked her roughly, propped on his elbows.
Dazed, she nodded. She resembled a Red Moon House hostess, on her back all ravished and flush-cheeked, the tips of her front teeth visible behind lush, parted lips. The suspicion that she'd rather be sprawled under Keon-hee than him kept the hand he offered her strictly business.
Still looking dizzy, she took it, and he pulled her to her feet. She weighed almost nothing, he marveled, she was such a wispy thing. They spent a few minutes fixing themselves, brushing off the dirt and pebbles, righting their clothes, checking for new injuries. It took another minute to locate her clog, which she must have lost again when Asher tackled her to keep a giant tree from squashing her.
"YOU DARE TO FIGHT ME?!" bellowed the bald-headed Card Hunter, his face purple and his bulging eyes bloodshot. "I am Siegfried Ferdinand Suttroheim, the Third!"
Asher and Bunny exchanged a sidelong glance. Dude wasn't going anywhere. Hunters littered this newest clearing in the forest, half-buried by dirt and branches, their bodies contorted painfully but their minds too far gone to care. All except for the leader, Spoogie Furry Heinie in Third Place or whatever down there, lying full-length on the ground. A redwood lounged across his back.
"Who sent you after her?" Asher asked calmly, tilting his head at Bunny, knowing full well he wasn't going to get an answer this way. According to Keon-hee and her big, sappy eyes, he had to at least try.
"Apparently you are unaware of the power I wield!" the Hunter raved as expected, his cleft chin digging a small hole in the dirt. "I welcome your attack!"
Bunny-lady did have one quality Keon-hee lacked. She watched quietly and from a respectful distance, her hands clasped in front of her sash, as Asher fished around in the Hunters' bags now littering the ground. He came up with a magnifying glass. Score.
He held it up so that Spoogie could see it, then grinned like a teenaged dragon, all fangs and glee. He took his time positioning the glass just right, focusing the sun's rays into a dot the size of Bunny's littlest fingertip. While birds chirped and leaves rustled in the breeze, Asher waited with the patience of the ancients.
A tiny spot on the hairless skin of Spoogie's skull first turned a darker purple, then grayish white as it started to sizzle. His whole head flushed brick red, and his nose started to run.
"Okay!" he screamed, voice rising to a squeal, spittle and tears flying. "I'll talk! I'll talk!"
..::~*~::..
A blue sky.
Clear air.
Friends.
Do I smell tea?
What a lovely dream.
"Miss Rosemary!"
Freyasday, Rossbach Landing . . .
A riding crop crashed across her open book.
Rosemary sat up with a jolt, the sharp sound echoing in her ears. She did smell tea, but not fresh and hot, steaming from a silver tea service. It was the scent of bergamot lingering on the hands of her tutor, Mistress Abegail Taylor.
After a light, almost lighthearted, tap of the crop to the workbook – its pages now creased – the familiar lecture about Rosemary's lack of attention and focus began.
Rosemary sat straight in her chair to align the boning of her corset, her hands folded in her lap, her chin up, her eyes trained on the large, clear windows opposite her small desk, the picture of obedience. Defiance was unseemly, Mistress Taylor said. So Rosemary watched the smokestacks outside the mansion windows as they serenely puffed black smoke that smeared across what was, Rosemary assumed, a beautiful blue sky. She didn't know for sure. She'd never seen it. Only in books. Not boring Physics and Engineering, or Philosophy and what passed for Art History, no – she'd seen it in picture books, like Alice in Wonderland. Books that Mistress Taylor had deemed inappropriate for a young lady of Miss Rosemary's advanced age, even though she still dressed Rosemary in the ruffled pinafore of a child, affixing large, girlish bows in her hair, finishing her outfits with round-toed, patent-leather strap shoes instead of the ankle boots most young women of fourteen wore.
She wished she had been born Alice Liddell instead of Rosemary Rossbach. She'd have friends, then. Even strange ones were better than none.
"How many times do I have to tell you?" Mistress Taylor demanded. The crop tapped her palm. "No daydreaming in class!"
Rosemary said nothing. She sat, compliant and dutiful, waiting for her next instruction. She knew how fast the riding crop could strike. Her hands tightened in the folds of her skirt, but she would not let her inner trembling show. She wouldn't.
"Remember what happened last time you broke the rules?" Mistress Taylor crooned. "Poor Elspeth."
At these words, Rosemary flinched. Elspeth. A porcelain doll. Her one true friend.
"That fire must have been so hot. It just . . ." Mistress Taylor delicately bit her bottom lip, her shiny, perfect, shockingly rose-red lip, and sucked in a sympathetic breath that sent shivers through Rosemary's insides, ending uncomfortably in the pit of her belly. "It ate her up, didn't it? First her hair, one curl at a time. And then her dress, one thread at a time. It turned to dust, didn't it? And her face, her sweet little face." Mistress Taylor laughed. "All gone!"
Elspeth! Rosemary mourned. She could no longer see the smokestacks. All she could see was her friend, lying in a small, blackened heap on the grate.
Mistress Taylor leaned on the desk, tapping one long, polished, and pointed nail on the wood. Then, satisfied that Rosemary wasn't going to doze off again, she swept regally to the mantel, where daguerreotypes in gilt frames stood. "One day you will lead your family, Miss Rosemary, which is why you must complete your finishing school. Understood?"
"Yes, Mistress," Rosemary whispered. Mistress Taylor repeated those same words to her at least once a week. It was the whole reason that her father had hired her, the most successful tutor in the country.
"Good," Mistress Taylor whispered, her lipstick glittering. She swished closer, raising the riding crop. Her gaze lingered on the corner of Rosemary's mouth, the dip under her jaw, the front of her dress. "Good, Miss Rosemary. Now—"
A timid knock at the sitting room door preceded the butler. He leaned into the room. "Excuse me, Madam, but Miss Rosemary has a caller."
Mistress Taylor whirled, swiftly hiding the riding crop in the folds of her skirt. "Harrison! I thought I made it clear, no interruptions during lessons!"
Harrison shot a desperate look at Rosemary that she pretended not to see; he knew his job better than she did. "But, Madam . . ."
When Mistress Taylor put on a smile, like right then, she was actually quite pretty, even if her severe dark wool gown, narrow wire-rimmed spectacles, and too-tight hairstyle didn't flatter her youthful face. Her foreign cosmetics made her pale skin resemble a rose in bloom. Perhaps her good looks were responsible for all those praiseworthy recommendations from the rich fathers in the city.
"Is this another of her boyfriends?" she asked Harrison, who looked as though he had no idea what the right answer was supposed to be. She sighed, aggravated.
"Filthy men," she said. Or, Rosemary thought she said. It had been quiet, like a curse, and Harrison didn't react at all.
Without a word, Rosemary stood, ready to follow the waiting Harrison to the drawing room, where her caller must be expecting her.
Mistress Taylor swooped upon her and grabbed her arm in hard fingers. The smell of dry tea wafted into Rosemary's face.
"You must reject his advances cruelly and harshly, like I taught you," she whispered with unneeded urgency. "You're only fourteen. They want only one thing – the fortune of the Rossbachs. Your fortune, Rosemary." Now Mistress Taylor was the one trembling. Her nails pinched Rosemary through her sleeve. "Pigs. Dogs! Dispose of him, but hurry!"
Rosemary knew that she looked like a little girl, but that she moved like a woman. Detached. Aloof. She didn't know who these gentlemen callers were, how they had heard of her. It wasn't possible they had caught sight of her on the street or in a shop. She was not allowed out of the mansion. Still, they came, seeking her hand, and she sent them away, as Mistress Taylor instructed. She had learned months ago how not to feel sorry for them.
Harrison gave her a small bow, and she smiled faintly. The little old man was kind. It wasn't his fault that he didn't know how the riding crop had cut and bruised her fair skin many times before, where no one would ever see its ugly work.
He opened the door for her, but Mistress Taylor detained him as she always did, leaving Rosemary no choice but to make the doomed walk to the drawing room alone.
She stopped as the door clicked shut behind her. She should go to the drawing room. Her suitor was waiting for her. Obedience. Compliance.
However, Mistress Taylor had erred today. She had reminded Rosemary of losing Elspeth. Reckless and in pain, she turned back. Bent toward the keyhole.
"Tell me about our guest," Mistress Taylor said.
"An older gentleman, Mistress," Harrison answered. "Very handsome, but older. He gave his name as Knightley. Isaiah Knightley."
"Wonderful!" she cried, laughing aloud. "Even the old, perverted dogs are coming out to sniff. It doesn't help that she's such a strange girl. I fear she has no hope of attracting a normal man. I mean, a girl her age still talking to her doll! This is what happens when parents are too self-absorbed."
Rosemary straightened and clasped her hands. She contemplated the doorknob for several moments, the brass escutcheon, the painted wood behind it. So, this was Mistress Taylor's opinion of her. Not a surprise, really. Rosemary turned each word of her tutor's short speech over in her mind, and decided that . . .
She really didn't care.
She turned and walked down lush, carpeted hallways, across mezzanines bordered by marble columns, through galleries of precious, priceless art. The Rossbachs were indeed rich. The richest family, the most powerful family of Albion's gentry. And she, Rosemary, the only daughter of the aged and oft-absent Lord Rutherford, was heiress to it all.
A glint from a long line of windows caught her eye, prompting her to move closer and press her hand, still dimpled by a stubborn layer of baby fat, against the cold, hard glass. Albion spread out before her, a shining meadow of stone, metal, and glass. Smokestacks puffed, clockwork engines chugged, and drab citizens went wearily about their gray, ashy lives, unaware of the watcher from on high. Trees and flowers could not hope to flourish in this world of metal, coal, stone, cobbles, and soot.
This was her world.
Rosemary tried, but she felt nothing for this dead place, these corpselike people. How could she, trapped in this cage called a mansion?
Dreams.
Blue sky.
Clear air.
Tea with friends.
It was all meaningless.
A/N: Greetings and Salutations, Dear Readers! Thank you so much for visiting me!
So, I'm not sure that this update is clear, and I'm afraid that it may be a bit confusing. What do you think? Are you able to follow the narrative all right?
Reviewer Thanks! Darwin and St4r Hunter. Thank you so much! Your reviews made me smile! *HUGS*
Yours,
Anne