Now I had the overwhelming desire to sneeze. To my embarrassment, the sound that came out was nothing even remotely close to a ladylike achoo. It was more like howling hurricane-force gusts—including the spray.
“Nice one, Sneezy,” Rexi chortled.
She should know better than to mess with me in the middle of a shoe crisis, so I replied with the well-recognized dwarf hand sign telling her to heigh-ho herself off a cliff.
“Fine, Princess. Walk barefoot for all I care, but let’s get going before these trees snap out of their trance and shish kebab us. Besides, it’ll be dark soon.”
Finding a shelter, with four walls no less, made perfect sense. So why did I not want to budge? “I don’t think they’ll come any closer. Maybe we should stay. I have this feeling that we’re supposed to be here.”
Rexi threw her hands up in the air. “And I have this feeling you’re delusional, probably delirious from shopping withdrawal and hunger.”
A very loud grumble from Kato’s stomach put him firmly in agreement. Even my traitorous tummy cramped and reminded me of its emptiness.
Rexi started walking “First food, then sleep. Tomorrow we can keep looking for that rainbow and your moldy green witch.”
Without proof that the trees would stay petrified or a steak dinner would magically appear, I couldn’t convince them to stay. And just like I didn’t want to leave them behind, I didn’t want to get left behind either.
When I didn’t argue, Kato took that as a sign to get going. Or he got tired of listening and too hungry to care. He put his nose to the ground and padded off to the west faster than any of Dad’s hunting hounds.
I took one last look at the piles of books and the bespectacled bug. He puffed another little cloud of dust and went back to munching the quill pictured on a leather tome. The image had been engraved in sparkly red ink. Guess the bugger really liked red.
Rexi whistled. “Are you coming?”
“Yeah,” I said and hurriedly reclaimed my shoes while the bibliobug was busy with his snack.
Keeping her back to me, she started talking before I reached her. “So I’m sure that you just wanted someone to boss around, but that was kinda cool. You know, not ditching us and stuff. You might not be entirely worthless.” Without waiting for a response, she ran to catch up with Kato.
It was not even remotely close to an apology but better than a punch in the face or a dagger in the back.
The moment Kato smelled something, his whole posture changed. First he went rigid; then he pranced circles around Rexi and I, trying to get us to move faster. A sweet smell wafted on the wind just as the three of us stumbled to the cusp of the meadow that housed the big black spike. The aged, spiraling metal came out of a greenhouse full of plants, flowers, and flutterbeaks. There was also a modest house in the midst of periwinkle blue wildflowers. It gave off a much better vibe than Hydra’s little shack of horrors.
The perfection was marred by high-pitched trills. Someone was singing—badly. A short woman with a rather round middle sang while she hung laundry on a line. Black, feathery hair hung down her back. Everything else about her—scarf to ankle boots—was pink. Even her skin was rosy in its coloring.
“We are in the west. There’s a spire. Do you think this is Black Crow? The name sounds ominous, but I’d say the whole bubblegum theme makes her look nice and cheery,” I whispered to Rexi, since I knew it was pointless to ask Kato. His dripping saliva answered for him.
A pie wafted delicious-smelling steam from an open window. That clenched the decision for everyone. After over a day with no food, we had devolved into creatures ruled by our stomachs. Kato’s rumbled extremely loudly as way of introduction.
“Who’s there?” The woman turned around, startled enough that she dropped the hot-pink knickers she’d been hanging on the line.
Either we looked really scary, or we smelled really scary. Most likely we just looked like we’d been to spell and back. Kato, in particular, was starting to look less cuddly and more wild beast.
The woman gathered her hot-pink poodle skirt and ran toward us, getting within touching distance of Kato. She pulled her hand back at the last second. “May I?”
I thought she was addressing me, but her gaze was honed in on Kato. He, in turn, looked at me and shrugged his wings as if saying, Do you think she’ll feed me if I let her?
“Um, he doesn’t talk, but I think it’s okay if you touch him,” I said, trying to get the woman’s attention.
She looked at me for the first time, her eyes large and magnified through Fairy Fizz Bottle glasses.
Her attention to me was brief, and then it was all about Kato again. Instead of petting him, she clinically pulled back his lips and examined his fangs, turned his head this way and that, and even looked up his nose. I’m surprised he didn’t bite her. “Fascinating,” she murmured. “A fine adolescent chimera such as yourself should be able to speak.”
“A what?”