While Gwendolyn climbed onto the biggest bed, Annie set her candle on a small table and hopped onto the average-size bed, which poofed up around her like a lavender-scented cloud.
“I can’t sleep on this bed!” exclaimed Gwendolyn. “The mattress is as hard as a rock.”
“This mattress is much too soft,” Annie told her.
Gwendolyn slipped off the biggest bed and ran to the smallest. “If this bed is any good, I claim it!” she cried out. She sat on the edge of the mattress for just a moment before lying down. Closing her eyes, she curled up on her side, murmured, “This bed is just right,” and was fast asleep.
Her sister’s breathing was already loud and steady when Annie blew out the candle and lay back on the too-soft mattress. Something crunched when she rested her head on the pillow. Reaching under it, she pulled out a sprig of rosemary. “At least it doesn’t smell like wet dog,” she murmured, and then she too was asleep.
The sound of heavy footsteps on the stairs woke Annie. She lay quietly for a moment and let her gaze wander. The rain had stopped and the clouds had moved on, letting moonlight through the windowpanes. When she heard heavy breathing coming from both sides of her, she turned her head and saw that Liam was asleep on the big bed. Assuming that it was Beldegard coming to check on them, Annie turned over and closed her eyes again.
A board creaked by the foot of the smallest bed, claws scraped the wooden floor, and a child’s voice piped up, “There’s someone sleeping in my bed again!”
Annie sat up with a start as Liam rolled off the big bed, already drawing his sword. A dark figure was standing between the two largest beds. It wasn’t big enough to be Beldegard. Neither was another, smaller figure even after it rose onto its hind legs. The figure snuffling Gwendolyn’s feet was even smaller.
“Get behind me, ladies!” Liam shouted, brandishing his sword.
Annie glanced at her sister, who was lying on her back, staring at the menacing figures as if she were frozen in place. Scrambling off her bed, Annie grabbed her sister’s hand and dragged her up and across the middle-size bed. She was shoving Gwendolyn off to the other side when someone latched on to Annie’s ankle. When she tried to shake off whoever was holding her, the grip only grew tighter.
“I’ve got one!” cried the child’s voice.
Suddenly Beldegard appeared at the top of the stairs. “What’s going on up here?” he roared.
“They have a bear with them?” said the middle-size figure.
There was the scrape of a flint and a flame flared. Gwendolyn held up a lit candle. Annie would have thought she was dreaming if she hadn’t felt the grip on her ankle. There were four bears in the room now. Beldegard was the largest by far, but two of the others appeared to be adults, while the one holding on to Annie was just a cub.
“Get away from my friends!” snarled Beldegard.
The middle-size bear growled and took a step toward Beldegard. “Are you threatening us in our own house?”
“Your house?” said Liam. “How could this be your house?”
“Mama, something’s happening to me,” said the bear cub.
“Not now, Teddy. Mama’s busy,” the middle-size bear replied. She was looking at Liam when she said, “We own this house and we don’t take kindly to thieves!”
“We aren’t thieves!” said Liam. “We came inside to get out of the rain. No one was here, so we thought the house was abandoned.”
“It wasn’t abandoned. Just this morning we went for a walk while our porridge cooled. We came home to find a girl had eaten Teddy’s breakfast, broken his rocking chair, and was asleep in his bed. When we confronted her, she ran out of the house, taking my favorite gold necklace with her. We spent the whole day chasing her and when we finally gave up and came home, what do we find but more thieves sleeping in our beds!”
“Mama, look at me,” cried the baby bear. “I have hands!”
“Not now, Teddy. I… You have what?”
“I’m scared,” whimpered the cub. “Now my fur’s going away.”
“Eustace, go look at your son and see what he’s talking about.”
Annie squirmed around so that she was facing the cub. Even in the dim candlelight, she could see him changing. His ears were moving to the side of his head while his fur seemed to melt away. As each moment passed, he looked less like a bear cub and more like a seven-year-old boy.
“Liam, they aren’t really bears,” Annie said, scooting across the bed toward the little boy.
Knowing that they were really human made Annie less afraid of the bears. She stayed where she was when the father bear crouched beside his son and peered at his face.
“It’s true!” said the father bear. “He looks like a human again!”
“Well, not quite,” said Gwendolyn, “but he will if he keeps holding on to Annie.”
The father bear’s eyes flew to Annie’s face. “Are you doing this? Are you a witch?”
Annie shook her head. “I can’t do any magic, but magic doesn’t affect me or anyone touching me.”
“How can that be?” asked the mother bear as she padded toward her son.
“It was my only christening gift from a fairy,” Annie explained.
“Annie is helping me on my quest,” said Beldegard. “I’m human, too, but a dwarf turned me into a bear so he could steal my treasure. We’re on a quest to find him.”
The father bear’s jaw dropped. “Did he have a long straggly beard and a raspy voice?”
When Beldegard nodded, the three bears began to talk at once.
“He was mean!” said the baby bear.
“He came to our house and demanded that we give him food and lodging. We might have done it if he hadn’t been so rude!” the mother bear exclaimed.
“I told him to go away if he couldn’t be polite,” explained the father bear.
“He had another dwarf with him. That one was much nicer. He got mad and yelled at the bearded one. They left then, but the bearded one came back to steal our food. He frightened the servants so much that they ran off,” said the mother bear. “He turned us into bears after that.”
“How long ago was the dwarf here?” Liam asked.
“It’s hard to keep track of time when you’re a bear; the days sort of flow together,” the father bear replied. “But I think it was less than a week.”
Liam glanced from the mother bear to the father bear. “Is it possible that the dwarf is still in the Dark Forest?”
The father bear shook his head. “The Dark Forest isn’t very big. I’ve been all over it since then, but the dwarf has definitely gone.”
“Do you have any idea which way he might have headed?” asked Annie.
All three bears shook their heads.
“If I were you, I’d go see the fairy in the Moonflower Glade,” said the father bear. “She can probably help you. Just be careful. The way to the Moonflower Glade is long and fraught with danger.”
“I want to apologize for using your clothes without asking you first,” Annie told the mother bear. “Ours were wet from the rain.”
“That’s perfectly all right, my dear,” the mother bear told her. “It’s not like I can use them now. If you find that dwarf and make him undo his magic, we’ll be eternally grateful. Why don’t you go back to sleep and I’ll hang up your clothes to dry? Since we turned into bears, we’ve been sleeping downstairs. We just came up here to see what other damage that girl had done.”
Annie helped the mother bear gather up the wet clothes, then watched her carry them down the stairs in her mouth. When all three bears had gone she climbed back into bed and was almost asleep when Liam and Beldegard began to talk in hushed voices.
“There’s something I don’t understand,” said Liam. “If you were standing guard downstairs like you said you were going to, why didn’t you see the three bears before they came upstairs?”
Beldegard cleared his throat, and when he spoke Annie thought he sounded embarrassed. “I went outside to take care
of personal matters.”
“What kind of personal matters would you need to tend to in the middle of the night when you’re supposed to be standing guard?” Liam said, sounding cross.
“You know,” said Beldegard, his voice so low Annie had to strain to hear it. “The kind a bear always does in the woods. I’m going downstairs now. I’ll see you in the morning. And please don’t tell the ladies about this!”
Chapter 9
The mother bear had already made porridge by the time Annie and Gwendolyn went downstairs the next morning. “It’s the only food I can cook,” she told them as they joined Liam at the table. “Eustace’s fairy godmother gave us a magic cooking pot when we got married.”
“She’s only a minor fairy so all it will cook is porridge,” said the father bear. “But it warms you up and fills your belly.”
“Sounds tempting,” Gwendolyn whispered to Annie, making a wry face.
Even so, with a little honey dribbled on top, the porridge was delicious and all the bowls were soon scraped clean.
“Before you leave, we were wondering if you could do us a favor,” the father bear said to Annie as the travelers gathered outside the door. “Could we touch you all at once so we can see ourselves as we’re supposed to be?”
“Yes, of course,” Annie replied, and held out her hand. She was expecting them all to touch her hand or arm, but when the father bear nudged his cub toward her, the little bear stood on his hind legs and threw his arms around her waist. Annie staggered back into the mother bear’s embrace, and then the father bear stood up behind the cub and Annie was enveloped in a big bear hug.
Annie glanced down and saw that the bear cub’s fur was turning into silky brown hair. She heard the mother bear gasp behind her and felt the father bear’s grip tighten as they too began to revert to their human form. And then the mother and father bears began to cry. She thought at first that they might be in pain, but when she looked at the father’s face, she saw a middle-aged man smiling through his tears.
They’d been standing there for a few minutes when Annie began to wonder when they would let her go. Hot and uncomfortable, she fidgeted, hoping they would take a hint.
“I’m getting squished!” announced the little boy.
“Um,” Annie began, “I think we should…”
“I can’t thank you enough!” cried the mother bear. “I thought I might never see their real faces again!”
Annie looked over her shoulder at the curly-haired woman with the tear-streaked face. “You’re welcome,” Annie told her. “Now if you don’t mind, we really do have to go.”
“Yes, of course,” the mother bear said, and they all stepped back, freeing Annie.
The father picked up his son and put his other arm around his wife, pulling her to his side. “The Moonflower Glade is due north of here, but be careful.”
“We will be,” said Liam. “Can you be more specific about what dangers we might have to face?”
No longer in contact with Annie, the three people were already reverting back into bears. The half-man, half-bear father shook his head. “I’ve just heard that it’s dangerous, not what the dangers might be. Good luck finding the evil dwarf. I don’t know how you’ll make him undo his magic, but he deserves whatever you do to him.”
“Thank you again!” the mother bear called to Annie as the four friends started toward the path.
“That was really embarrassing,” Gwendolyn told Annie when the bears were out of sight. “I thought they were never going to let you go, and the crying… I don’t know how you stood it.”
“They were happy!” said Annie. “There was nothing to be embarrassed about.”
“Well, it made me uncomfortable, seeing them like that,” Gwendolyn snapped.
They walked in silence for a few minutes, during which Annie kept expecting her sister to leave her side to walk with Beldegard. She was about to ask if she wanted something, when Gwendolyn turned back to her and cleared her throat. “I don’t suppose that later, when we stop for a break or something, you could, uh—”
“Touch Beldegard’s shoulder so you can gaze into each other’s human eyes? Yes, I can do that,” Annie said, and sighed.
They had walked well into the afternoon when Annie finally turned to Liam and said, “Do you have any idea where we’re going?”
“Not really,” he said. “What about you, Beldegard? Do you think we’re getting close?”
“I haven’t a clue,” said the bear prince.
“Then why don’t we ask for directions instead of wandering around like fools?” Annie asked. “Surely we’re far enough north that someone here knows where the Moonflower Glade is located.”
Liam shrugged. “I suppose if you want to.”
“Fine! I’m asking the first person we see!”
Annie would have been happy to talk to someone, but the path had become a road, and though it looked well traveled, they walked for miles without seeing a single person. She was becoming increasingly frustrated when she finally heard the creak of a wagon coming up behind them and spotted an old farmer driving a team of tired horses home from market.
While Beldegard hid in the bushes, Annie and her friends stepped aside so the wagon and horses could pass. “Pardon me, good sir!” Annie called. “Might I have a moment of your time?”
“Huh? Whazzat?” the old man asked, cupping his hand behind his ear.
“I was just wondering if you could give us directions. We’re trying to find the Moonflower Glade,” Annie said, raising her voice.
“You sure you want to go there?” asked the old man. “The way is long and fraught with danger.”
“That’s what we’ve heard, but we’re not sure what it means,” said Liam. “Will we have to pass some tortuous test or fight dragons or what?”
The old man shrugged. “I don’t know what it means. It’s just what everyone says. Never been there myself. Fact is, you can’t get there from this direction. You’ll have to go to the Old Mill Road, about a mile or two back,” he said, pointing back the way they’d come. “Then turn left at the falling-down barn, which might have already fallen down, come to think of it, then go through Gruntly Village. Whatever you do, don’t eat at the tavern with the bird on the sign. Eat at the other one, the food is good and someone there can give you directions for the rest of the way.”
“Thank you, kind sir,” said Annie.
“You’re welcome, miss. By the way, did you know that a large animal is following you?”
Annie laughed and glanced toward the shrubs. “Yes, I know. He’s a friend of ours.”
The old man’s eyes widened, but he just nodded and clucked to his horses to get them moving again, although Annie did hear him mutter to himself, “Now that’s an odd one for you. Not as odd as those dwarves, though. Never heard such bickering in all my born days.”
“Did you say you saw some dwarves?” Annie called after him, but he didn’t seem to hear her and kept going.
“I guess you should have asked someone for directions sooner,” Liam told her.
“But I… I mean, you… Oh, never mind!” she said, but she let him take her hand anyway.
Annie fumed all the way back to the Old Mill Road. Once they were seeing new scenery, however, she forgot to be irritated and began to look for the falling-down barn. The old farmer hadn’t told them which side of the road to watch, but the others were looking as well and Beldegard was ranging across both sides of the road. It was the bear prince who finally came across the decaying timbers that had once been part of a barn. He emerged loping out of the underbrush, his tongue lolling like a big dog’s, and plopped down in front of Annie. “I found the old man’s barn. At least I think it was a barn. Come see for yourself.”
Annie glanced at the waist-high grass and shook her head. “I’ll take your word for it. The farmer said we should turn left now. Do you see a road anywhere?”
“I saw something that might once have been a road. It’s overgrown, but we could try
it,” said the bear prince. “What are we looking for next?”
“A village where we might get something to eat as well as more directions,” Annie replied.
“So far the way to the Moonflower Glade hasn’t been fraught with much of anything,” said Liam. “I wonder what the bear and the old man were talking about.”
“I’d rather we didn’t find out,” said Gwendolyn. “Walking this far is grueling enough without having to worry about dragons or monsters or some awful test.”
“Have any of you ever heard of Gruntly Village?” asked Beldegard. “Because that might be it up ahead.”
They peered through the trees in the direction the bear prince was facing. Although they couldn’t see them very well, there were buildings just past the curve in the road.
“I don’t know anything about it,” said Liam. “So it can’t be in Dorinocco. We must have crossed the border into Floradale.”
“I remember now!” Annie exclaimed. “The fairy Moonbeam is the fairy in the Moonflower Glade! Mother was born in Floradale, you know, and Moonbeam was her favorite fairy godmother. Moonbeam was also the fairy who gave me the gift of no-magic.”
“I don’t recall Mother mentioning that,” said Gwendolyn.
Annie sighed. “Then maybe she didn’t tell you about it. She did talk to me once in a while when you weren’t around.”
“This is where I leave you again,” said Beldegard. “I’ll see you when you’re finished in the village.”
“Good-bye, my sweet,” Gwendolyn said, hugging Beldegard around the neck. “Be safe.”
“I live but to see you again,” Beldegard told the princess, and licked her across her face.
“I feel ill,” Liam muttered to Annie as they began to walk.
“I know! All that bear drool!” said Annie. “Imagine!”
“I meant I feel sick because of what he said. Being a bear must be affecting his mind. No self-respecting man would talk like that.”
“Unless he’s being romantic,” Annie replied, giving Liam a wistful look.