Hydra inspected them and nodded. “Da. Will do job, but better to be goink at once. A little late is too late in this cases.”
She unlatched the small suitcase and set it on the cloud. “Vait.” Like a miniature version of her house, the bag suddenly expanded and left a carriage-sized mortar with chicken feet.
“What’s that?” Rexi asked, staying well away from it.
“Have never seen RV? Running Vehicle. Is somethink I von from Baba Yaga playink roulette.” She climbed in the bowl and gestured to the little bit of space left behind her. “Comink?”
Even Kato eyed it with a leery expression. “We’ll walk, thanks. But where are we going?”
“Hopefully not there.” I pointed east, to the extremely large house made of stone and metal—with a bean stalk in the garden.
“Nyet, but if hungry, giant make very tasty golden egg omelet.” Hydra put on the colored goggles and rotated the pestle, heading out at a brisk pace across the clouds.
“I’ll pass,” I said and looked at the bean stalk again. Instead of going down, the bean stalk started in the clouds and grew upward, higher than the eye could track. Guess we weren’t getting down that way.
We followed after Hydra, but walking on clouds was nothing like walking on air; it was like walking in snow. Maybe those big chicken feet acted like snowshoes, but my heels kept getting stuck. The darker clouds were especially gooey.
After a few hundred yards, the chicken bowl stopped. Hydra pulled off her head, tied it to her walking stick, and thrust it down through the cloud cover. “What are you doing?” I asked, hoping she knew how to tie a good knot, because if not, we’d be going head hunting.
Hydra’s body hoisted the stick back up, her head still on it, and moved the bowl to a new spot. “What look like? Head periscope plus color-spectrum glasses find invisible rainbow. Is not rocketink science,” she said before plunging her head down under the clouds again.
The grayish clouds beneath our feet rumbled. Or maybe that was Kato. “You can’t be thinking about using the spring,” he yelled loud enough so Hydra could hear.
“Da. Unless you are havink better plan,” she hollered back, her head still out of sight.
Wanting answers and to see for myself, I crouched down and poked my head through the dense clouds. From so high, I could see the patchwork of kingdoms, each setting so different from the next. But no rainbow. Then again, I didn’t have the glasses on. “When Griz attacked the palace, the Emerald Sorceress said my only hope was over the rainbow at the spring. What’s the big deal?” Being so high—and upside down—was making me a little dizzy. As I started to sway, Kato’s arms circled my waist, keeping me steady as he pulled me up.
My hair cracked and hissed from more than the condensation in the cloud.
Once Hydra got her head back on straight, she launched into a long, extremely hard to follow history lesson on the springs. SpiffNotes version: Guy named Rainbow Sprite found a magic spring and had issues sharing, so he made it invisible, built a killer rainbow to guard it, and moved it regularly. Don’t ask me how.
“So in other words,” I said, trying very hard to control my temper even though I was really pixed at Verte. “Last week, when we started looking for the spring without the glasses, we wouldn’t have seen the rainbow—unless we walked into it, and then poof! Princess Crispies.”
Hydra popped her head off for another rainbow fishing expedition. Before she went under, she said very matter-of-factly, “If was easy, das Gray Vitch have given sister spring vater shower a goat’s age ago.”
“What?” Kato roared. If I had closed my eyes right then, I would have thought he was still a chimera.
At the sound, Hydra’s bird-legged RV took off like, well, a chicken with its head cut off.
“Hydra, please wait.” I had an unpleasant feeling that I knew what she was talking about. Grimm, I hoped I was wrong. “Are Griz and Blanc sisters?”
“How did I not know this?” Kato put his head in his hands, causing his ill-fitting shirt to flap open.
“Bah. Is obvious. You must have memory vorse than Anastazia. Vhite Vitch. Gray Vitch. Das entire line have the boring colors with silver eyes.” Hydra glared down her lumpy nose at me. “Just who are you thinkink have put curse on high and mighty House of Emerald in first place?”
I had already figured it out a while ago; I just hadn’t wanted to believe it. The story of the sisters and the Emerald curse, my dream—all the pieces came together, and I didn’t like them.