It looked like the feasting could go on for quite a while. I didn’t have much of a stomach for food—nearly being killed and then spending the evening with a decapitated cyclops head will do that to you. Besides, I didn’t fit in here with these people. Not like Tristan did. I went up to my room.
I knew I wouldn’t be able to sleep, and I didn’t even want to try. I pulled the blankets around myself and sat on the bed, leaning against the wall. I’d left the door open so I could listen to the sounds from downstairs. I wanted to hear people chatting and laughing. Happy noises. It kept at bay the dark images of the day that kept darting through my mind. The goat lunging at me. The robbers’ leering faces. The cyclops as he rushed toward me, and the feel of his claws holding me tight as he dragged me through the forest. My ribs still hurt.
“Savannah?” I saw a silhouette in the doorway and recognized Tristan.
“Yeah?”
“Why are you sitting in the dark?”
“Because I’m too twenty-first century and if I can’t flip on a switch then it’s too much trouble to light a room.”
He hesitated, one arm on the door frame. “I want to talk to you about tomorrow.”
I figured he didn’t want to do that in the dark so I got up and walked toward the door, but he disappeared and came back with a torch that had been in the hallway. We met just inside my door. He put the torch into a hanger, then leaned against the wall looking at me. “In the morning I’m going to the castle to take the proof of the cyclops’s death to King Roderick. Did you want to come with me?”
“No.”
He nodded as though expecting as much. “That’s fine, but you have to stay here. In this room.” His blue eyes turned intense as he emphasized the point. “I don’t want to come back and find you’re off trying to help me slay the dragon, okay? I know they’re fun magical creatures in all those fantasy novels back home, but here they’re more like huge flying crocodiles. That have bad tempers. And shoot flames out of their mouths. And eat people. In fact, they don’t like to eat raw meat so they cook their food inside their mouths, often while listening to it scream. Do you understand what I’m telling you?”
I turned away from him. “I understand perfectly. You think I’m incompetent.”
“That’s not what I said.”
But it was too late; the stress of the day finally crescendoed in my mind. I was trying so hard to do things right and nothing had gone the way I’d planned. Even coming here felt like a mistake. Tristan didn’t want my help. The tears didn’t have time to well up in my eyes. They just came, spilling out onto my cheeks.
He walked toward me, a sigh on his lips. “Don’t cry.”
I wiped the tears off my cheeks but they were just replaced by others. Then I started sobbing.
“Savannah.” He said my name softly, partially with exasperation, but with something else too. Forgiveness maybe. He put his arms around me and I lay my head against his chest. The scratchy wool of his tunic pressed roughly against my cheek. I didn’t care that it felt like sandpaper or smelled of the bonfire smoke. I wound my arms around his waist.
The tears kept coming but breathing was easier.
“It’s okay,” he said, and then said it over and over while stroking my hair. “You’re not incompetent. Hey, you’re the one who brought the Shampoo Bottle of Death with you.” His fingers lingered over a lock of my hair and he brought it up to his face. “Not only will it disable monsters but it makes your hair smell good too.”
I didn’t answer him. I couldn’t.
“Look, I’m sorry I yelled at you before,” he said, and he let out another sigh. “It’s just . . . you belong back in high school. Back with the cheerleaders, and the track team, and the mall. Safe things. Things that don’t eat girls. You don’t realize how dangerous all of this is. It’s some sort of game to you.”
“No, it’s not.”
He ran his fingers across the back of my hair. “Why did you come back to the Middle Ages to help me?”
I lifted my head up to look at him. “I had to. It was the right thing to do.”
His expression was unreadable, serious. He nodded slightly but I had no idea whether my explanation satisfied him.
“I didn’t mean to send you here,” I said. “I was just upset about the whole Hunter thing and not thinking clearly.”
“I know,” he said.
“And okay, a lot of times I don’t think clearly, but I’m trying.”
“I know,” he said again. His hand moved from my hair down my back. Which, by the way, suddenly made it hard to think clearly.
My voice came out just above a whisper. “I’m really not looking for a prince.”
“Good.”
He was so near, and it was so comforting to have his arms around me. I didn’t want him to move away from me. “What does Princess Margaret’s hair smell like?”
“Cough medicine.”
It bothered me that he actually knew the answer to that question. “Is that where you were all day? With her?”
He looked up at the ceiling as though trying to make an accounting of his time, but he didn’t let go of me. “I was talking to members of the king’s guards who’ve dealt with the dragon before, practicing archery with the other knights, and yes, part of the time I was trying to pump Princess Margaret for information on the Black Knight.”
That shouldn’t have bothered me, but it did. “Did she tell you anything useful?”
“Not really. She’s upset about something. I didn’t catch the whole conversation between her and Lady Theodora, but apparently whoever it was who stood her up yesterday still hasn’t come by to beg her forgiveness.”
“The Black Knight?”
He shrugged. “Who knows?” His hand was back on my hair, twisting strands of it between his fingers. Quite distracting.
I said, “Your future fiancée wouldn’t let me out of her room.”
He showed no alarm at this news. “She thought you were sick. You told her yourself that you were.”
“I don’t trust her and I don’t think you should either, even if she is demure . . . and has a nice dowry.”
“You don’t need to be jealous.” He tightened his arms, pressing me closer to him. “Some girls don’t need to bribe guys into liking them.”
He bent down to kiss me, and I tilted my face up to meet his lips. I wanted more than anything to kiss him, to feel like he cared about me that way. It felt like triumph, like acceptance. Then with a thud to my heart, I remembered what a kiss would do and pushed him away.
He stared at me, surprised, and I could only stare back at him, wide-eyed and breathless. I still had more than five days left until the switching enchantment wore off and I’d just come close to forgetting everything and making myself a permanent resident of the Middle Ages.
“I’m sorry,” I said. “It’s just that . . .” Did I tell him or not? I hadn’t wanted to tempt him with the knowledge of how easy it would be for him to get rid of his enchantment, but he wouldn’t take advantage of me, would he? I could trust him. He’d risked his life to save me from the cyclops . . . Of course he’d needed to kill the cyclops anyway . . .
I’d waited too long. Tristan supplied his own ending. “You’re still getting over Hunter?”
I hated lying to him, but it was the safest way. I nodded. “I need a little more time before I can get involved with anyone.” Five days to be precise.
I heard someone walking down the hallway and waited for them to pass before I finished talking to Tristan. But they didn’t. They walked right to our door. I heard the innkeeper say, “This here be your sister’s room.”
And then Jane and Hunter walked in.
From the Honorable Sagewick Goldengill
To Madame Bellwings, Fairy Advancement
Dear Madame Bellwings,
Due to the limitations of the Memoir Elves, there appears to be an essential gap in this narrative. Will you contact Leprechaun Relations and ask them for details regarding the tra
nsportation of Jane Delano and Hunter Delmont back in time to the land of Pampovilla?
Yours,
Professor Sagewick Goldengill
From Clover T. Bloomsbottle
To Professor Sagewick Goldengill
Dear Professor,
Some blokes up at the Roadside Tavern said you wanted to know my part in how those two mortals ended up in the Middle Ages. Well, after a series of unfortunate circumstances, I found myself in the land of the Yanks. I made a pact with a mortal girl and she said she’d mail me back to Ireland. Aye—but never trust a mortal—it was just a trick. She trapped me in the box so her sister could find me and demand me gold.
So there I was, trusting as you like, when I heard the tape ripping off the box. Then, sure enough, there were two gigantic heads peering down at me.
“What is that?” the lass asked.
And the lad said, “I think it’s alive.”
I at once told them what’s what. “You can’t have me gold, so don’t even ask.”
Well, the two of them took to staring at me some more and the lad said, “I think it’s supposed to be a leprechaun.”
The lass blinked at me. “A leprechaun? Magic is real?”
Ah, the arrogance of mortals! “Of course magic is real,” I told her. “You think just because you don’t see something that it isn’t real? When was the last time any of you saw gravity or electricity? You don’t appreciate magic when you see it, and that’s why you mortals see so little of it.”
The lad looked down in the box as though he hadn’t heard a single word and said, “Why is Savannah mailing a leprechaun to Ireland?”
So I told them, “I promised I’d help send Savannah to the Middle Ages if she’d send me to Ireland. I did my part of the bargain. She’s there, isn’t she?”
Well, you’ve never seen such hysterics. The lass started gasping and clenching the side of the box so hard I thought she’d tip me gold right over. “Savannah can’t go running around the Middle Ages! She’ll catch the plague or something. What is she doing there?”
To tell you the truth, I couldn’t remember myself. What are the affairs of mortals to the likes of us? Just one mess after another. So I scratched my beard and said, “It had something to do with a prince. She wanted to go to some fancy dress-wearing thing you mortals all do when you’re in love.”
The sister started a-gasping again. “A wedding? She wants to marry a prince?”
But I can’t be expected to keep track of foolish young girls’ wishes. I said, “I expect she’ll be there for no more than a few months. Unless she gets stuck there altogether or killed. Sometimes that happens to the more foolish mortals.”
The lass let out a shriek, and repeated, “She’s doomed! I’m never going to see Savannah again!”
I hated to see the poor thing so distressed and technically I owed them a favor, as they opened the box that I’d been shut in. So I told them I’d use me magic mirror to check in on Savannah and tell them how she fared. Right generous of me, and I don’t mind saying so.
A few minutes later I set their fears to rest. “Your worries have been for nothing,” I told them. “Helped kill a cyclops, she did. True, it almost ate her, but she made good bait. The cyclops was so distracted with her that the other fellow was able to kill it. And all’s well that ends well.”
The lass proved to be of a weak constitution, for she nearly swooned—had to sit down, right there on the floor.
The lad said, “How do we get Savannah back?”
“Get her back?” I asked. “Why would you want to do such a thing when she went to all that trouble to get there?”
The lad got angry then. Pointed a finger at me and said, “If you won’t help her, we’re not taking you anywhere. You can just wait here for her to come back. If she ever does.”
Well, I had to do something then, even if leprechauns have no power to send people to other places. I told them, “If you relinquish any claim on me gold—not that I’d give it to you anyway, so don’t even ask—I might be able to call in a favor. Several years back I taught a fairy chap how to spin straw into gold. He still owes me something for that one, he does. I could have him send you back for a bit. That way you could talk to your sister and convince her to come back.”
Perhaps it was dishonest for me not to tell them about the contract, and they may have been under the false assumption that all they would have to do to come home was to convince Savannah to ask her fairy godmother to send them all back. I may have even told them that fairy godmothers were akin to angels, just waiting to bless the lives of the deserving. But I ask you, since when have the mortal folk been honest with us? It’s never been their way. Deeds for deeds, I say.
I called me friend Rumpelstiltskin, and he sent them back right quickly, he did.
Yours,
Clover T. Bloomsbottle
Chapter 20
Jane and Hunter looked as they had on many school mornings: jeans, tennis shoes, and backpacks on their shoulders. But streaks of dirt smudged their clothes, and the knee of Jane’s jeans was torn. They looked tired and frazzled, and seeing them made it seem that the world had suddenly ripped open, mixing old with new, blending the centuries together.
Tristan turned to me, a look of accusation darkening his eyes. “You sent them here too?”
“I didn’t!” I said, then turned to Jane. “What are you doing here?”
Frustration flashed across her face. Her eyes had a panicked look, a loss of composure that wasn’t like her. She dropped her backpack onto the floor. “That’s how you greet me? I’ve just spent the last two hours wandering around a forest in the dark—which I’m sure was your leprechaun’s idea of a joke— and we never even would have found the village if it hadn’t been for the church bell and the bonfire. And I kept falling down, and my jeans are ripped, and now we’ve finally found you and you ask me what I’m doing here?” Her voice spiraled in volume. “This is the Middle Ages, Savannah. This is not a safe place for a teenage girl. It’s dangerous. It has the plague, and wars, and—”
“One less monster.” Hunter took a step toward Tristan. He held up his hand to give Tristan a high-five. “Way to go, dude. They’re making up songs in your honor downstairs.”
Jane didn’t take her eyes off me. “Mom and Dad are going to flip out about this. I don’t know what you think you’re doing here, but you’ve got to come home. Right. Now.” Jane folded her arms and finished her lecture with an aggravated breath.
“So you’re admitting that I’m not crazy,” I said.
“What?” she asked.
“You thought I was crazy when I told you about the leprechaun and the Middle Ages. But you opened the package and found out the truth, didn’t you?”
“Okay,” Jane said, cutting me off. “You’re not crazy. Now will you please come home?”
“Trust me, I want to come home but I’m here until Tristan can leave.”
As calmly as if he were discussing the weather, Tristan added, “I can’t leave until I become a prince.”
“You? You’re the prince?” Jane’s voice took on an agitated edge and she turned in my direction. “You’re not going to get married, are you?”
“Not to each other,” I said and couldn’t keep my lips from pursing. “Tristan wants to marry Princess Margaret.”
“I don’t want to marry her,” he said. “It’s all part of the deluxe prom package Savannah ordered.”
Then I had to explain to Jane and Hunter how my fairy godmother had misunderstood certain statements I’d made and had sent Tristan back in time to become a prince. He still had two tasks left before he could achieve that goal and return to our time.
“Kill a dragon?” Hunter said as though he both envied and feared for Tristan. “Can you do that?”
“I’ve got to.”
Jane shook her head, disbelief seeping into her tone. “But your leprechaun told us that all you had to do to come home was to ask your fairy godmother.”
“Oh, w
ell, that just means you were duped by a leprechaun,” I said.
Hunter cocked his head and looked at me narrowly. “Your fairy godmother won’t help you at all?”
“My fairy godmother won’t even take my calls. She’s sort of a teenage, airheaded shopping diva who didn’t pay attention very well in fairy school.”
Jane sat down on my bed and rubbed at her forehead wearily. “Well, that figures.”
I followed her with my gaze. “Meaning?”
“They must match fairy godmothers to people by type. You pretty much just described yourself.”
“I did not,” I said. “I’m not . . .” I ran through the list of qualities I’d just said, deciding which one to protest first. Shopping diva, okay that was sort of me. Didn’t pay attention in school . . . um, ditto for that one. I wasn’t an airhead though, was I?
I thought of all the ways I’d messed things up in the last two days and wasn’t sure. Still, I folded my arms. “I am not like her.” Which was true. I always return my phone messages. “And besides, I didn’t ask you to come. So if you don’t want to be here why don’t you just call your responsible, punctual fairy godmother and leave?”
“Because I didn’t get a fairy godmother,” Jane said. “I got a creepy little man who may in fact have been Rumpelstiltskin. The leprechaun said your fairy godmother would take all of us back when you asked.” Jane let her hands fall to her sides in exasperation. They were smeared with dirt and tiny scratches ran across them. “How could you mess up a wish from your fairy godmother?”
Tristan spoke, and his voice had a calmness to it that almost didn’t belong in the room. “What did you bring with you?”
“What?” Jane asked.
“You knew you were going to the Middle Ages. You must have brought along things you were going to need. Savannah brought supplies. Things to barter. What’s in your backpacks?”
It was more of a point than a question and Jane blushed at the reprimand.
Hunter said, “We only have our schoolbooks. We didn’t think we were going to stay here.” He thrust his hands into the pockets of his jeans. “I thought fairies were supposed to be good and do nice things for people.”