Flora Segunda: Being the Magickal Mishaps of a Girl of Spirit, Her Glass-Gazing Sidekick, Two Ominous Butlers (One Blue), a House with Eleven Thousand Rooms, and a Red Dog (Magic Carpet Books) (26 page)

I closed my eyes. Udo, alone, risking for me; Udo’s plan, which actually sounded like a pretty good one. I guess not all my Will was gone, because when I dug down deep inside to the depths of my heart, I found that I did not really want to vanish, leave Flynnie, leave Udo, leave Mamma. Would Nini Mo give up? She was my role model. Poppy was not.

A ranger is made, not born,
Nini Mo said.
A ranger doesn’t give in, or give out.

I was born a Fyrdraaca, but I could make myself a ranger. I was tired and I wanted to sleep, but what fun is sleep if you do not dream—and do not wake?

I opened my eyes.

Udo, looking damp and wilted in the steam, said, “Well?”

“Hand me my robe and get out,” I answered, and he grinned in relief.

R
ANGERS ARE MASTERS
at sneaking; it is their very rationale, their nature, their Will. Nini Mo snuck into the Virreina of Huitzil’s seraglio and snuck the sixteen-year-old Infanta Eliade right out from under her mamma’s nose before the Infanta could be sacrificed to the Huitzil goddess of rain. Then Nini Mo escorted the Infanta to Califa, where she married the Warlord and lived happily ever after.

If Nini Mo could sneak into the Virreina’s seraglio and sneak the future Warlady out, then surely we could sneak into Bilskinir and steal a Semiote Verb. Of course we could, and then we would go home, restore Valefor, and live happily ever after, too.

Of course we could.

My heart remained optimistic, at least a little, but the rest of me was starting to feel pretty draggy. My head hurt, and my tummy growled with a hunger that even the maple-nut muffin couldn’t satisfy.

We were going to miss another day of school, but that hardly seemed worth worrying about now. Even when Udo spends the night at Crackpot, he still has to walk the kiddies to school. So when he ran off to do that, I went down to the kitchen to try to plug the hole in my tum with a pound of bacon and two bowls of oatmeal.

An hour or so later, Udo returned, with egg-and-cheese on a roll and the extremely good news that a huge fog bank was moving through Ocean’s Gate into the Bay and that Cow Hollow Harbor would be fogged in by noon. This meant that Mamma’s ferry was sure to be delayed, buying us a little more time.

When we went to saddle the horses, we discovered that Mouse had thrown a shoe. There was no time to call the farrier; we’d have to double up on Bonzo, and this we did. Once again we rode out of the City, into the Outside Lands, via Portal Pass, only this time, when we reached the fork where Sandy Road goes south toward the Zoo Battery, we turned north onto Point Lobos Road.

The day, which started so sunshiny, had, as Udo predicted, turned cold and chilly. Even swaddled in Poppy’s buffalo coat, I was cold, oh-so-cold, and glad that Udo rode behind me, for he radiated heat like a hot-water bottle. In front of me, Flynnie rode draped like a sock over my pommel. Twice we had tried to return him to Crackpot, and twice he had somehow caught up with us; finally, we had to let him come, but he hadn’t been able to keep up. Luckily, Bonzo is pretty strong, and Flynn doesn’t weigh much, and he was warm, too, although boney.

The easy rhythm of Bonzo’s walk lulled me into a haze. I felt drifty and half asleep, or maybe I
was
asleep and this was all a dream—

“Look!” Udo pointed.

We had crested the Point Lobos Hill, and there, ahead, Bilskinir stood, silhouetted against a hovering fog bank. The House sits on a tall promontory, at the northern edge of the Pacifica Playa, and the rocks upon which it perches looked black as the best dark chocolate. They rose straight up from the water, so sheer that I’d wager not even a lizard could find foothold upon the glassy stone, and where the cliffs ended and the foundations of Bilskinir began was hard to say. I had never been this close to it before, and it struck me now that the House looked dark and ominous, almost brooding.

“What style do you think that is?” Udo asked. Flynnie wiggled and kicked, so I pushed him down off Bonzo. He skidded down the sand dune and rushed to the waterline, flushing a flock of seagulls off the sand.

“I don’t know. Early Awful Baroque? It looks a bit like a wedding cake,” I answered, yawning.

“An evil wedding cake.”

“How can a wedding cake be evil?”

“It can be black, and ominous, and evil.”

A roadway, rotten and broken, started at the beach and undulated up the side of the cliff, becoming lost from view around the northern edge. The smooth sandy beach gave way to rocks, scooped with shallow tidal pools, clotted with seaweed. Seagulls swooped and curled, their yelping cries echoed by the distant barking of sea lions.

I urged Bonzo down onto the beach, toward the roadway. Flynn scrabbled ahead of us, nosing seaweed and splashing through the water, barking at any bird that had the gall to come too close.

Soon we stood at the very root of the House, and its height above us seemed enormous and pressing. When I tilted my head back, the perspective swayed and wavered, and for a sickening second, I thought the entire House—turrets, spires, domes, buttresses, gingerbread, and all—was about to slide down upon our heads.

The tide was coming in, a green scrim of water surging up over the beach. Each wave came a little higher, and fell back a little less. The bottom of the roadway had flooded out, but I hoped not very deeply.

“How long do you think it takes for the tide to come in?” I asked Udo, pulling Bonzo to a halt, just above the water’s edge.

“Not long,” he said. “It’s rising awful fast.”

I didn’t ask Udo how high he thought the tide would get. By the damp discoloration of the sand and the seaweed on the rocks, I could tell this part of the beach would be entirely flooded at high tide, and a good part of the roadway, as well.

“And then how long until the tide goes down?”

“Six hours, give or take.”

“I hope Mamma is very delayed,” I said dolefully.

“Or maybe Bilskinir has a back door,” Udo suggested. “The guidebook didn’t say anything about one, but there has to be a way out other than across the beach. Look: Snapperdog!”

Flynnie had abandoned his sniffing and was now splashing through the surf. He climbed onto a piece of the broken causeway and turned to look back at us, barking.

“Snapperdog says we are falling behind,” Udo said.

“Flynn! Get back here!” I shouted, but Snapperdog is notorious for ignoring commands, and he ignored this one, too. He bounced down off the broken bit of causeway, disappeared into a smack of surf, and when the wave pulled back, reappeared higher up on the road, shaking off water.

I could not let Flynn go where I would not follow, so I put heel to Bonzo and nudged her on. The water splashed around us, first just lapping the edge of the road, wetting Bonzo’s hooves. If that had been all, it would have been easy as pie, just as Udo had promised. But it seemed that as the road rose, curving up around the side of the cliff, so, too, did the waves rise higher and higher, keeping pace with the roadway’s ascent.

I gave Bonzo her head, trusting that she knew better than I how firm her footing was, and she moved toward the shelter of the cliff side, as far from the edge as she could get. Ahead, through the spray, Flynn could be occasionally seen bouncing from rock to rock. The ocean was surging ever upward, and falling back less and less, so that soon Bonzo’s fetlocks were wet. We drew our feet up as high as we could, to try to keep our boots dry.

“Good girl, good girl,” I cooed. Bonzo’s ears flickered and she continued onward, her head down, her muscles rolling under my thighs. Once she staggered, sliding, and for an awful second, I thought we were done for. I dropped the reins and grabbed at her mane, clamping on to her as hard as I could. Udo nearly cut off my breathing with his squeeze. Icy cold water surged, soaking us, but then Bonzo recovered her footing.

I twisted, craning my neck, and saw that the roadway behind us had vanished into the swirling gush of the incoming tide.
There’s no way out but through.

“This totally sucks!” Udo shouted, and I could not argue with him. I’m not afraid of the water, but these waves were strangely insistent, like grabby hands trying to snatch us, to drag us under. I twisted the reins tightly around my hands and was, finally, glad for Udo’s viselike grip around my middle.

Bonzo, solidly, ignored the grabby water. Her head hanging low, she continued onward as surefooted as a mule. Now the sea was up above the stirrups, and I could not pull my feet any higher. Water slapped into my eyes; I blinked the sting away and wiped at my face with a wet sleeve. The coldness felt like acid eating at my flesh. My frozen fingers could hardly grasp the reins. Now the water was up to Bonzo’s chest, swirling and sucking. The roar was thunderous.

Udo knocked me in the ribs, pointing, and I pushed my sodden hair out of my eyes. We had rounded a curve, and I could see ahead, at the top of a steep grade, the tall structure of a gate. A red figure posed in front: Flynn. If Snapperdog could make it, so could we.

Suddenly the waves fell back, and the water began to ebb. In a few seconds, the road was clear again, although still slick with seawater. The ocean had gone as flat as paper, the tide high, but not high enough to reach the road. And then a swell appeared on the water’s smoothness, a swell that grew into a bulge and elongated upward into a wave.

With no urging from me, Bonzo broke into a jog, her hooves skittering on the wet rocks.

“Flora!” Udo moaned in my ear.

“I know—hold on. We’ll be okay. Come on, Bonzo, come on, girl.”

Higher and higher the wave grew, stretching like molten glass until it hung over us like a liquid ceiling, translucent blue and green, and still it did not surge downward. Even if Bonzo had been in the clear to canter, she would not be able to outrun the wave’s break. But it did not break, only grew higher and higher. For a second, a minute, an hour, an eternity, the entire sea hung over our heads, heavy and smothering.

Then the wave collapsed. The noise was incredible, like the roar of a mob, or an avalanche, or a hundred cannons firing at once, or a thousand soldiers screaming together. My life did not flash before my eyes, like in books, but I thought of what Mamma would say when she found out that I had gotten Bonzo drowned, and that now she could not be mad about Valefor, and that I hoped I would see Udo on the other side, and I wished I’d been a bit nicer to Poppy, and—

Suddenly I realized the noise was receding and I was not drowned. I opened my eyes and saw that the water had been flung back by some invisible barrier. Bonzo had stopped and was looking about, bemused. Above us, around us, water thrashed and pounded, but not a drop touched us. Each time a wave rose, for a few seconds we were in a luminous tunnel of blue and green. Then the water would be repelled and the dreary daylight returned. The roadway was now smooth and dry.

“I think I just lost fifteen years off my life,” Udo said. “And I almost pissed my drawers. Maybe I did piss my drawers. I’m so wet, I cannot tell.”

A few more steps and we had reached the top of the road. Somehow I would have thought the gate to Bilskinir would be enormous and nasty, with spikes and bars and thorns and maybe gargoyles spitting boiling oil. But it wasn’t. It was a plain white wooden gate, set in a plain white wooden fence, not so high as Bonzo’s head. It was open.

Before this ordinary gate, Flynnie sat, licking his bottom while he waited for us. Beyond the threshold lay an immaculate sand driveway, as white and smooth as new snow. The sky ahead, framed through spreading trees, was as bright as blue paint, and the air was hushed and tranquil.

Looking over my shoulder, I saw that the waves had resumed their fury and were hitting the roadway hard. The crash of the surf shuttered us in, and I could no longer see the Playa below. In contrast to the bright day before us, behind us the sky was still gray.

Once again, Flynnie was point dog; while we hesitated, he bolted onward. No giant Butler swooped down to snatch him up as a tasty mouthful, and this emboldened us. But before I could touch her sides with my heels, Bonzo took matters into her own hooves and shot forward as though she had been spiked from behind.

She flew through the gate and down the path, hooves kicking up all the nice white sand. I yanked hard on the reins and not a whit did she slow down. We tore down the roadway, which curved through a copse of tall shady trees, and rushed through bright flower beds, blossoms kicking up around us.

“Whoa! Whoa!” I hollered.

Udo jounced behind me, his chin banging hard into the top of my head, knees knocking into my sides. Bonzo shifted from the jarring trot into an effortless canter. That made it easier to stay on, but I could still not stop her.

“Hold on!” I could feel Udo starting to slip behind me, but I couldn’t do anything other than saw back and forth uselessly on the reins. Ahead, the trees broke open to the blue sky and the bulk of a gray stone building.

“I am holding!” Udo shouted.

“Whoa, whoa, whoa!” Something loomed up in our path—a sundial, I think—and Bonzo bounded over it like a jackrabbit. Then suddenly she skimmed into a halt, but Udo and I kept going and tumbled over her neck, toward the hard ground.

W
E WERE MUSSED,
grass-stained, and breathless, but otherwise all right. My side burned from Udo’s pointy elbow, and my back hurt from landing hard on the grass. The pain felt surprisingly good: It proved I was still solid. Flynnie stood over me, licking and drooling. I hadn’t been dumped in years, and now twice in as many days; Nini Mo would not be proud.

“Get off!” I pushed at Flynnie, and heaved up to my feet. Bonzo had already recovered and was now tearing great gobs of grass out of the lawn, as though she had never done a snapperhorse thing in her entire life.

Udo clambered to his feet, grimacing at the grass stains on his jacket. “Now I’m wet
and
dirty.” He wrung out the hem of his kilt and straightened his hat. “But at least I am alive.”