Ursula Vernon Read online

  “Arrgh!” said the crested lizard, clutching her throat. “I didn’t mean to say that last—it just came out, and really fast!”

  “Is it just me,” said Wendell, “or is she speaking in rhyme?”

  Christiana pointed at Wendell and nodded furiously.

  “The Rhymer’s curse . . .” said Danny, fascinated. “Say something else!”

  “It’s got to be something psychosomatic,” said Christiana darkly. “Because it feels like these rhymes are automatic.”

  It quickly became obvious that Christiana had to rhyme the ends of her sentences. If she tried to resist, she got red in the face and then sputtered out nonsense until she managed to come to a rhyme.

  Danny thought this was hysterical. Christiana thought this was grounds for murder, something something something girder.

  Wendell snapped his fingers. “I’ve got it! Try to say something that you can’t rhyme.”

  Apparently trying to rhyme “orange” had given Christiana the mother of all coughing fits. She rolled around, tearing up handfuls of grass and hacking. Danny got out another bottle of water for her, and Wendell went digging through his book of fairy tales, looking for some kind of clue to her condition.

  Eventually she stopped coughing. Her eyes were red and streaming. She took Danny’s water grimly, muttered “Thanks, dude . . . I think I’m screwed . . .” and took a drink.

  Under normal circumstances, Danny would have demanded that the Junior Skeptic try to explain away something so obviously magical as a fairy curse, but she looked so miserable that he felt a little guilty . . . and anyway, this wasn’t getting them any closer to finding his mom.

  “This is weird,” said Wendell, flipping pages. “Thomas the Rhymer was a mortal bard—that’s like a singer who tells stories—trapped in Faerie. He finally got loose, but they cursed him to tell only the truth, which made his stories pretty boring.” He looked over at Christiana. “So she should be telling only the truth, not rhyming . . . Christiana, tell a lie.”

  She rolled her eyes. “I think Big Eddy’s really cute. I want to kiss him on the snoot.” Danny snickered.

  “So obviously that isn’t working,” said Wendell.

  “The fairy seemed pretty upset when you gave him his hat,” said Danny. “Maybe you interrupted the spell and it settled on the rhyming bit.”

  “Yeah, about that . . .” Wendell turned to another page. “Some fairies vanish if you give them clothes, like brownies.”

  “Brownies?”

  “Not the chocolate things. A type of fairy. They fix shoes. Maybe our fairy was one of those, and when I gave him his hat back . . .” The iguana shrugged.

  “Well, if we run into any other mean fairies, throw your shirt at them,” said Danny. He took a step down the path.

  A shadow passed over them.

  A big shadow.

  Danny looked up to see something enormous pass over the sun.

  “That’s a big bird,” said Danny. “Wonder what it is.” He looked over at Christiana—she always knew nerd stuff like that—and realized that during her coughing fit, she had rolled partway off the path. The line of white stones lay under her knees.

  The shadow swept by again . . . and halted.

  Stay on the path, Great-Grandfather Dragonbreath had said.

  Danny flung himself at Christiana and grabbed her shoulder. “Wendell, help!”

  Fortunately for Danny, Wendell’s help was not required, because Wendell was still saying “What? Me?” when the bird struck.

  It should have hit them. Six inches to the side, and it would have hit them. But the white stones seemed to act like force fields, and the bird missed. It scuffled savagely at the turf, then launched itself upward and was gone.

  “Did you see the size of that thing?” asked Danny. “It had claws like—like—” He tried to think of a proper description and failed miserably. “Like really, really big claws!”

  “The eloquence, it burns,” said Wendell, picking himself up off the ground.

  Danny straightened. “Well. I guess that’s why we don’t leave the path, huh? But we need to keep moving if we’re gonna find Mom. Christiana, are you okay? I mean . . . err . . . with the rhyming thing?”

  She stood up. “I’m sure that this will yield to willpower. I’ll have it beat within the hour.”

  “Uh-huh.”

  “It should wear off at sunset,” said Wendell. “Err . . . probably. Or else in a year and a day. Or seven years . . . I think those are the usual durations for curses.”

  “If all else fails, you could totally have a career in hip-hop,” said Danny as they started down the path. Christiana gave him a look that was pure poison and muttered something under her breath. Danny wasn’t quite sure what she’d said, but he was pretty sure it had rhymed.

  They reached the woods a few minutes later. The trees were tall, with silvery trunks and leaves that flashed golden when the breeze moved them. The air was full of rustling, and oddly colored birds sang from overhead.

  The path stopped being grass and turned into springy green moss, but the white lines of pebbles continued under the trees. The kids kept walking, gazing up through the leaves.

  “That bird has horns,” said Wendell, stopping suddenly.

  Danny watched another bird go by that appeared to be made entirely of white lace. “This is pretty weird,” he admitted.

  “I think I’ve got it figured out, what this stuff is all about,” said Christiana.

  “Oh?” They kept walking.

  Christiana folded her hands together. “We got too close to the mushrooms in your yard, and now we’re hallucinating hard.”

  Danny and Wendell exchanged looks. “Well, if we wake up in the hospital, we’ll know you’re right,” said Wendell philosophically. “And then we’ll need kidney transplants.”

  “Really?” said Danny.

  “There’s a reason people don’t eat toadstools. You know, the horrible death and all.”

  “That, or this is one of those dreams, and nothing’s really as it seems,” added Christiana.

  “Go with that,” said Danny. “Pretend this is a dream, and you have to help me find my mother before you wake up.” He didn’t really care what Christiana thought was going on, as long as she didn’t antagonize any more fairies.

  Her face fell. “If this is a dream, it makes me sad . . .”

  “Why?” asked Wendell.

  “Means there’s no flying monkeys to be had.”

  The iguana patted her shoulder. “You discovered a new species at summer camp. Finding another one on the weekend would be too much to ask.” Christiana heaved a sigh.

  The path led under a gnarled tree with low-hanging branches. A line of birds looked down at the travelers. They were all wearing small masks.

  “That’s not creepy or anything,” muttered Wendell.

  There was a rustling in the bushes a few feet from the path. Danny stopped. Wendell hid behind Christiana.

  “Who’s there?” asked Danny suspiciously.

  “I can help you! Come over here!” a voice called back.

  Danny took a step forward.

  “I know what you’re looking for!” said the voice in the bushes. “I can help you find it!”

  The dragon started to take another step, and Wendell grabbed his shoulder. “Don’t leave the path!” He pointed to the line of pebbles.

  “It’s just a few feet . . .” said the bushes coaxingly.

  Danny wavered. He wasn’t supposed to leave the path—Great-Grandfather Dragonbreath had been really clear about that—but it wasn’t far, and if the voice in the bushes really could help them find his mother, wouldn’t it be worth the risk? He lifted a foot.

/>   Christiana stepped up to the line of pebbles and put her hands on her hips. “First tell us what we’re looking for, or we’re not taking one step more!”

  Danny put his foot back down on the path.

  “Stupid!” hissed the first bush. “Hardly anybody keeps sheep anymore. It’s not like the old days!”

  “It always used to be a lost sheep,” said the second bush sullenly.

  “Or babies,” said a nearby rock. “Remember when we’d steal babies and leave changelings?”

  “Man, those were the days,” agreed the first bush.

  Wendell nudged Danny in the ribs. “Fairies can disguise themselves as all kinds of things. I bet those aren’t really bushes.”

  It occurred to Danny that his great-grandfather had been absolutely right—fairies were not nice.

  “Out of curiosity,” he said, “if I’d left the path, what would you have done to me?”

  “Eaten you,” said the rock.

  “Made you dance until you dropped dead,” said the second bush.

  “Made you give up your hoard,” said the first bush. “You’re a dragon, right? We don’t get that many dragons through here.”

  Danny snorted. His hoard was a fairly small collection, mostly bottle caps, coins from his allowance, and his birthday money, and he kept it stuffed in his mattress.

  “Right. Better luck next time, guys.” He turned his back and led the way down the path. The other two followed. Wendell kept a close eye on the rock.

  After the incident with the talking bushes, the kids went single file in the dead middle of the path. Probably things couldn’t get them as long as they didn’t break the line of white pebbles, but who wanted to risk it?

  The forest grew stranger and stranger around them. Glossy green ferns grew taller than their heads, sending up curling fiddleheads nearly six feet high. Strange birds perched atop them. The most common wore small white masks, but there were birds with antenna and antlers and even one with a third eye in the middle of its forehead.

  They passed through a section where the birds looked like ordinary blackbirds, but their calls were high, eerie giggles. It was incredibly creepy. Wendell put his hands over his ears and sang tunelessly just to try and drown it out.

  “I’m all for species conservation, but maybe not in the case of this one.”

  “I know,” said Danny, gritting his teeth as another chorus of giggling erupted from the trees. “I wish I had earplugs. Or headphones or something.”

  “Can you play an MP3 in Faerie? Seems like . . . err . . . something . . . dairy?”

  The birds thought this was hysterical. Christiana sighed.

  Eventually the giggling birds fell behind, and they were able to smack Wendell until he stopped singing.

  A few minutes later, Danny stopped in his tracks.

  There were miniature houses walking across the path in front of them. They were about four inches high and marching along on six small insect legs.

  “Whoa,” said Wendell.

  No two houses looked alike. They were different colors and different styles of architecture. Danny picked up a tiny ranch house by the roof and flipped it over. It kicked its legs frantically. They appeared to be growing right out of the lower floor of the house.

  “Now I know this is a dream, ’cause that’s the weirdest thing I’ve ever seen,” Christiana said.

  The house slammed its front door in apparent agitation. “Sorry,” said Danny, and set it back down on the moss. It scurried back into the line and continued marching across the path. After a succession of cabins, split-levels, and Tudors had passed, the final house—a trailer with a bent satellite dish—tromped past, and the path was empty.

  Wendell looked at the line of house-bugs vanishing into the ferns, then at his book of fairy tales, and said, “Yeah, I got nothin’.”

  Danny shook himself. “Wow! Think what you could do with your own pet house! You could, like, teach it tricks, and keep stuff in it and take it to school as a lunch box . . .”

  “I wonder if you can litterbox-train a house,” said Wendell.

  They kept walking.

  The forest began to thin out. Shafts of sunlight stabbed through the trees. Birds flew through them, sometimes changing color when the light hit them.

  “Look, there’s something up ahead. I hope it doesn’t make us dead,” said Christiana, pointing.

  Something lay half in, half out of the path. It looked like a pile of rags. It wasn’t until they got quite close that they saw it was a fox lying in the ferns.

  It didn’t look good. It was so thin that each rib was visible, and its fur stuck out in ragged orange tufts. It lay on its side and watched them with bright, pain-glazed eyes.

  “Careful . . .” said Wendell.

  “There’s something wrong with it,” said Danny. He halted a few feet away and wrinkled his nose. Wendell waved a hand in front of his face.

  Danny hadn’t ever been that close to a real live fox before, and he hadn’t realized that they stank. It smelled almost like a skunk—a sharp, burnt musk smell.

  “I don’t suppose you’d be willing to help a fellow out?” said the fox.

  Wendell went “Yeeeerrk! It talks!” and jumped back, nearly into Christiana, who elbowed him sharply in the ribs.

  “Help you how?” asked Danny. “And are you really a fox?”

  “Vulpine’s honor,” said the fox, lifting a narrow black paw, “I’m truly a fox. A fox in a fix, in this case.”

  “Ah,” said the fox. “Fairy curse, is it?” He squirmed along the ground an inch or two, but seemed unable to rise. “Happens around here. Should wear off once you’re back in the mortal world . . . assuming you get back there at all.”

  “We’re going back,” said Danny. “We just have to rescue my mother first.”

  “Mmm.” The fox gave another heave, and dragged himself a few more inches onto the path. “Might be able to help you, if you help me. Favor for a favor and all that.”

  “What sort of favor do you need?” asked Wendell warily. He felt bad for the fox, who was obviously having some kind of problem, but the memory of the murderous bushes was still fresh in the iguana’s mind.

  “There’s a spell tangled in my tail,” said the fox. “The thing that looks like a rope of thorns. It’s weighing me down and keeping me from running free, as a fox rightly should. If you were to break it, I’d be very grateful.”

  “How do we break the spell?” asked Danny. He took a few steps closer and craned his neck. The fox had a long bushy tail, but sure enough, there was something wrapped around the end of it. It was hard to see quite what it was—it kept shifting oddly, and looked like purple thorns one minute and rusty barbed wire the next—but it definitely looked spiky and unfriendly.

  “A few things will break a fairy spell without fail,” said the fox cheerfully. “Cold iron, salt, holy water . . . don’t suppose you brought any of those things?”

  The children shook their heads.

  “We were kinda in a hurry,” said Danny.

  The fox sighed. “The tears of a maiden fair and true?”

  There was a long pause.

  “C’mon,” said Danny, “it’s the only way. And maybe he can help us!”

  “No way, Jose!”

  Wendell scuffed a toe in the dirt and muttered, “He looks like he’s in pain.”

  “Indeed,” said the fox pleasantly, “’tis quite excruciating.”

  Christiana sagged.

  “Just a couple tears,” said Danny. “Think of something sad! Think if my mom never comes back . . .” His eyes started to burn just thinking about it himself.

  “I am not one of those people who cries on command!” snapped Christiana. S
he glared at Danny, Wendell, and the fox in turn, then stared up at the trees. “Not even if it’s in demand!”

  “But—”

  “With a spell in my tail, I can’t run,” said the fox sadly. “And me with ten kits at home, starving, growing up fatherless if they grow up at all—”

  “Oh, please.” Christiana folded her arms. “All you’ve got at home are fleas.”

  The fox grinned, showing a thicket of sharp teeth. “Can’t blame me for trying, fair maiden. Besides, I might have kits. Someday. Potentially.”

  Christiana grumbled something Danny couldn’t make out, then something else that presumably rhymed with it.

  “Look,” said the fox, “I’m not unreasonable. I’ll tell you what I know, and you can decide whether or not to help me. That’s fair, isn’t it?”

  “Sounds fair,” Wendell allowed. Danny nodded. After a minute Christiana did too.

  “You’re looking for someone,” said the fox. “You said your mom might never come back, so I’m guessing she’s been fairy-led, yes?”

  “If you mean that fairies snatched her from a mushroom ring, yeah,” said Danny.

  The fox lifted his head as well as he could. The curse shimmered as it moved, and sparks crawled over it with a faint crackling noise. It looked very uncomfortable.

  “How can we get my mom back?” asked Danny.

  “Mmm.” The fox flicked his ears. “That’s the question. The king likes flattery, so talk sweetly to him, but words alone won’t do the trick. You’ll have to trade him something he wants . . . one of your comrades, perhaps, or five years of your life, or the thing that stands behind the mill . . .”