3

Companionship

I was up early the next morning, and managed to scrounge up a handful of unappetizing but supposedly eatable berries and a distinctly gross-looking tuber that actually turned out to be pretty good. After breakfast (and after Dyln was done fussing about our situation) we got on our way. The day was generally uneventful, and so were the next two. The forest we were traveling through grew gradually denser, and even I was a bit frustrated at some points.

On the fourth day, rain woke us at the unholy hour of three o'clock. We were both irritable and spent a good two hours fighting as we slogged through the mud. At about five, I cut off Dyln's forgettable comment about my less than striking feminine anatomy. "I heard something."

"Probably your brain rattling around in your skull!" she snapped.

"Oh shut up," I returned, cocking my head. "More like whimpering, I'd say. Probably human, and coming from this direction."

I headed off to the left, and Dyln followed, muttering incomprehensibly. We'd walked for a good ten minutes and I was beginning to think I was going crazy under the strain when I almost tripped over a makeshift tent (very makeshift: it was basically a cloak draped over the remains of a long-dead bush). A tallish boy sprang out with a dagger and lunged for my neck.

"Space lemons!" The phrase also means "yikes!" or whatever the hell else I want. I jumped to the side and grabbed the collar of his decrepit shirt, using his own momentum to drop him on his ass. "What was that for?" I asked indignantly.

He looked sheepish. "Sorry, miss. I thought you were one of his."

I didn't consider that an explanation. "Why would you suspect me, who's he, and why would you want whoever we're talking about dead?"

"Shut up, Dil," Dyln said from behind me. "Give him time to breathe. You'll have to excuse my friend. She's a nut job." Nut job yourself, Cat Woman.

The boy made an indistinct noise in the back of his throat. "Well, I did almost slit her throat. I'm Skye." He made a deep, elegant bow. "Whom do I have the honor of addressing?"

This courtly, melodramatic display of manners was amusing enough to make me forget how excusably irked I was, but I did remember that I was a fugitive. I was about to feed him something about "classified information" when Dyln, who, it suddenly occurred to me, was acting sort of strange, introduced herself as Dylnia Kumachre. I happened to know she didn't know what her last name was and that Dyln, simply Dyln, was precisely what she had named herself at age four (she was now twenty).

"Um, yeah, she's Dilanda." Thank you for the flattering introduction, Dyln.

I disappeared quite thoroughly after that as the two of them jabbered on. I wasn't much of a romantic, not that I had a chance anyhow, but even I knew that sparks were flying here. It was a classic scenario. Boy meets girl. Girl meets boy. Boy is impressed by girl's legs, and/or bustline. Girl appreciates handsome face and hopes for a good kisser. Yuck. My beloved mother might have had an, er, interest in the opposite sex at fifteen, thus my existence, but I had avoided that particular cruel twist of nature up to that point and far beyond.

The lovebirds managed to remember I was there before their faces became permanently stuck together, which I helped along by chucking a rock and Dyln's head. I got beat up, but at least I didn't have to watch the impending liplock. I still won't even watch kissing on TV.

Once we'd sorted everything out I lost Dyln another romantic opportunity by demanding that Skye explain what the hell he'd been talking about.

"Has either of you noticed that there haven't been any bards or storytellers around for years?" he began.

I always answer rhetorical questions, just to be annoying. "Not really. We never get any up in the mountains." I'd have elaborated, but Dyln gave me that icy glare of hers and I shut up for fear of earning myself another black eye. Space lemons.

Skye acted as if the interruption had never occurred. "Lord Donovan's been rounding us all up. The old legends of Gaea are dangerous to his cause. I was a prisoner for a long time, and some of his men don't have particularly guarded tongues, so I've picked up quite a bit."

This time I had a real question. "Who's Lord Donovan?"

"Where do you live?" he asked in disbelief. I was getting tired of that question and its variations.

"Nowhere Land," I snapped. "Just tell me who you're talking about."

"Alrighty, then," Skye said with a shrug. "He's Lord Van's main advisor. Little scrawny guy who looks between umpty and umpty with muddy hair. Nothing against the king. He's a nice guy and, I think, a distant cousin of mine. Be that as it may, the country and most of the rest of Gaea's gone to hell since he let the bastard move in and take over just after the war. Anyhow, the backstabbing son-of-a-bitch is trying to gain total control of Gaea, though how exactly he plans to do so is a mystery to me. I gather that it will involve some serious death and destruction. Fun."

               "We ran afoul of the same gentleman," Dyln said, and hurriedly explained our situation.

               "Rough luck," he said shortly. "Can't be easy to have that hanging over your head, Dil." The second the words were out of his mouth he turned, made the sad puppy eyes at Dyln, and started gushing sympathy. Romeo and Juliet started to make me a little nauseous, so I suggested we get a move on, just to give me something to do that didn't involve turbulence of the digestive system.

               "Where to?" Skye asked.

               Dyln and I exchanged worried glances. Somehow we'd been so wrapped up in getting away that even with three days to clear our heads we hadn't thought of what to do next.

               "Well," I said thoughtfully. "We should probably go see if my mother's alright. If she's still at the house we may be able to get some more info out of the woman, and I can kill her for not telling me all this before. After that we'll figure out exactly what's in our future."

               It wasn't much of a plan, which Dyln as anything but shy about pointing out, but it was the only thing we had to go on. Somehow it was obvious that Skye would come with us, though neither of us had said anything on the subject. Of course, if I'd said anything about him not coming, Dyln would probably have murdered me.               

And so went another day. Dyln and Skye spent most of the night making out. I learned to roll over and ignore them so I could get a little sleep, but it wasn't easy. When I finally did drop off I kept having distinctly unpleasant dreams about things I probably shouldn't put in print. Space lemons.

The next day began predictably. The two sweethearts were pretty wrapped up in each other (Skye was telling Dyln about his escape from Lord Donovan, something about jumping guards and bribing a housemaid, blah-de-blah-de-blah), so the navigating was left to me. That's generally a bad idea. I'd get lost in an empty room with one door, and I still don't know how I made it through all of my errands for Mother.

Dyln's intuition is generally good, and eventually she noticed that I didn't have a clue where I was going. She yelled at me for a few minutes, grabbed Skye's map (which looked like illegible chicken scratch to me), and directed us all to the nearest city so we could pick up some supplies. Luckily, she actually had some cash on her, or we'd have been forging for berries for quite a while longer.

We were all technically on the run, but as Skye was one escapee from a gaggle of prisoners and Dyln and I were memorable to the extreme, he was the one who actually went into the city to scrounge up supplies and any tidbits of information he could lay his ears on. It was lucky he did.

When Skye got back a few hours later, he was breathless and scared looking. "You two just hit the most wanted list!" he informed us when he got his breath back. "I'm down separately, but it looks like we've all three of us got his highness on our asses."

"Terrific," Dyln said, slumping against the nearest tree. "It's just a matter of time, in that case. Lord Van's got some damn good trackers at his beck and call."

An idea was forming deep in the recesses of my odd little brain. "What, precisely, was said?"

"Does it matter?" Dyln snapped. "We're sort of unmistakable."

Skye answered despite her admittedly irrefutable logic, but he didn't sound particularly hopeful. "There are posters up offering a reward for the 'Heir of Lord Dilandau' and her accomplice. You're aptly described as a 'tall, beguiling cat creature' and Dil as a 'childish-looking female replica of the Crazed Commander.' I'm on a smaller poster listed with a couple of other escaped bards as 'tallish and blue-haired.' Not the most distinctive description, but more specific than I like!"

"So I don't know what you were thinking, Dil, but they've got more than enough to go on," Dyln said with a shrug.

"Well, for one thing," I snapped. "My name is Dilanda, not Dil! I'm not a pickle! Space lemons!" This last had more to do with the fact that I'd just realized to late that I'd be named "Pickle" for the rest of my life than anything else, and Dyln had the satisfied cat smile on. Just terrific.

"I dunno, you have a sort of salty personality," Skye pointed out, interrupting my musing. I forced a laugh to make him feel better. Wow, this guy was lame! He was supposed to be a professional entertainer, too.

"Well, I mean that," I said after I figured my sham giggling had lasted long enough (about three seconds, if anyone cares). "Anyhow, what if said descriptions didn't apply to us anymore?"

"I don't follow," Dyln said with one of her shapely eyebrows raised.

"Never mind," I said with a sigh. When someone said that in a story her companions always caught on immediately. "How much does this thing bend?" I grabbed her tail, twisting a little as punishment for her stupidity.

"What the hell does that have to do with anything?" She asked, snatching it back.

"More than you know. And your ears, too."

Looking utterly mystified, she twisted it three times around her leg, leaving the end to twitch. "It's practically prehensile. I have to push my ears down, though." She obviously thought I'd lost my mind and, thinking back, that isn't surprising.

"Good. Be right back!" I dashed off towards the city before either of them could stop me.

***

"You've come through again, you little pickle," Dyln laughed when I finished. "And I thought you'd cracked." What'd I say.

I'd pulled an old skirt from a garbage heap in the city. A few loose stitches fastened her tail inside, and a long tunic I'd found in the same pile covered the slight bulge on her rear. An ancient bonnet salvaged from the rotting wreckage of an abandoned dogcart with room enough to hide her ears with minimal discomfort completed the look. If she kept her overlong canine teeth out of view and didn't draw attention to her retractable fingernails, no one would suspect that she wasn't a perfectly normal human.

"Now we do me," I said cheerfully.

"And we 'do you' how?" Skye pointed out. "You can put on dragonslayer's armor, a tutu, or a clown suit, but you'll still be a childish-looking female replica of Lord Dilandau."

"Guess what the operative word is," I challenged him as I pulled out my own new wardrobe, which I'd gotten off some kind of officer's son in exchange for the cosmetic mirror, which I hope he meant as a present for his sister or girlfriend. The pants were a little big, which wasn't much of a disadvantage. The shirt was even bigger, which was actually useful. I didn't have a lot to hide, but the drape of the cloth completely nullified what female features I did have.

Dyln looked concerned. "Do you think that'll work? You're skinny and sort of a tomboy, but that doesn't mean that you'll look especially masculine."

"I was gonna borrow Skye's cloak," I said. "That hood'll come in useful. Do you think I should cut my hair? I've had this mane for fifteen years now, and I'm sort of attached to it. That knight guy's hair was about this long."

"His name's Allen, or at least I think it is," Dyln said thoughtfully. (Oh, so he was that brother of Dilandau's, which made him my uncle. No wonder he didn't look pleased about bringing me in!) "He's noble, though. A peasant boy wouldn't have let it grow so much. It's impractical, and will probably call attention to you. That's the last thing we need."

"Oh, well," I sighed. "Let's get it over with."

Skye, who had been quiet a while, suddenly piped up. "What about me? I've been described too, and if I get caught someone might notice my traveling companions. Then what?"

I pointed to the tattered bag I'd brought everything in. "There's a hat in there. The only definite thing they said about you was hair color, so there's no picking you out if no one can see the top of your head." I turned back to Dyln. "Lots of space lemons. Let's get the hair surgery done with. Make it as long as I can pull off."

"I never thought I'd see you worry over your appearance," she said wonderingly.

"Well, it's sort of for Mother's sake," I explained. "She made sort of a fetish out of my 'lovely hair,' and it was catching. Looking back, I think it might be that it reminded me of my father more than any other feature. Why that would be, I don't know."

Dyln shrugged. "Weird. What'm I supposed to cut with?"

"I'll see what I've got." I turned to my discarded dress and dumped out the pockets.

"Wow!" exclaimed Dyln and Skye at the same time.

That was what I would have said had I not been familiar with my own habits. I'm still a packrat, but I look perfectly tidy compared to myself then. We sifted through bits of string, worthless trinkets, an empty coin purse, the mangled remains of several shopping or to-do lists I'd forgotten about, a few shiny rocks I thought were pretty, a feather from some unidentifiable bird, a petrified piece of chocolate that had bloomed beyond recognition, a small get-the-ball-on-the-string-into-the-cone game, a broken acorn, a tiny flask of Mother's "magic wakeup potion," some scraps of the same cloth the dress was made of, a needle, a spool of heavy brown thread, a thimble, and a shark's tooth before we found a tiny dagger in a leather sheath.

"I knew I had something like this," I said triumphantly.

"You're a bizarre little pickle sometimes," Dyln declared as she finished sawing my hair off (she's not a great barber; the on the right it was just below my chin and on the left hung to my shoulders). "With all this in there, that dress should stick out about two feet in every direction." She handed back the dagger. It seemed like a useful thing to have around, so I shoved the sheath into a little notch between the leather and lining of my left boot, for easy access.

"Mother sews these things with extra pockets because of this little quirk of mine," I explained, showing her the dress's inside, covered in little bags. "It took me a long time to collect this much. Help me shovel it back up."

"Why? And where do you plan to put this?" Dyln asked with a laugh.

"It can come in pretty useful," I said with a shrug. "As I just demonstrated. Skye, can I use your bag?"

"Okay, but if any of that crap hurts the harp I'll nail your hide to a tree," he said, trying to twist his good-natured face into a scowl. It didn't work, and we all chuckled at the result.

Dyln refused to help me recover all my treasures on the grounds that she didn't want to know what horrors lived in there, meaning my pockets. I flung the acorn at her.

While I scooped handfuls of miscellaneous thingies into Skye's bag, my beloved companions leaned over my shoulder and did dry commentary. We'd been going for a few minutes and I was about to kill them both just to stop the flow of stale wit when Dyln found the necklace.

"As for that scary thing, I don't even know what- Hey! What's this?" Her hand dared into a mass of steel rings and wooden beads and she came up with an unmistakably silver chain. An amulet made of some yellowish crystal dangled on the end of it. It was engraved, but the letters were worn and I didn't recognize the language.

"This looks valuable. Where'd it come from?" Skye asked.

"Don't ask me," I answered, examining the piece. "I don't remember the source of half this stuff. No, wait. I do know. When I was younger I bugged my Mother about who my father was twenty-four seven. Eventually I finally got her to agree to a compromise. She promised to tell me the truth about myself when I turned fifteen and gave me this necklace then and there. She said it belonged to him, but she didn't know anything about it."

I closed my hand over it and pressed it to my chest. Heaven knows what I expected. Perhaps that it would somehow comfort and/or strengthen me. What I got was a distinctly painful jolt and a foreboding feeling of intense evil. I made a sudden whimpering noise that would probably have sounded a lot like "space lemons" if intelligible.

"What was that?" Skye asked, concerned.

"Nothing, just a cough." The feeling had vanished completely, and this time it was me who wondered if I'd lost it. I shrugged it off.

For reasons I couldn't explain, I put the necklace on. "That's probably worth something," Dyln observed. "Or at least it's pretty. I suppose you wouldn't want to sell something that belonged to your father." I made some sensible reply and the two of us resumed collecting my junk.

Skye and Dyln resumed their less-than-wisecracks, and I forced the incident out of my mind to laugh along with them. Soon I had convinced myself that it hadn't been anything to worry about and became my usual goofy self. We resumed walking after that, Dyln handling the directions.

At one point, she turned to me. "About how lost do you think we'd be by now if I let you direct us?"

 I narrowed my eyes scornfully instead of replying because my mouth was full. Grey, gritty, and months old or not, chocolate is chocolate.