Flora's Dare: How a Girl of Spirit Gambles All to Expand Her Vocabulary, Confront a Bouncing Boy Terror, and Try to Save Califa from a Shaky Doom (Despite Being Confined to Her Room) (26 page)

“I thought I was dead!” the Girl shrieked.

“I thought we were both dead!” I shrieked back.

“That was the ugliest pottlely pumpion I’ve ever seen in my life!”

“A weedy rude-growing clack dish!”

“A bootless rough-hewn whey-face!”

“Hope he likes his new
nose
!”

“He fiked with the wrong people!” she screamed, and in this case, I agreed with her language wholeheartedly. He had indeed fiked with the wrong people.

“Fike him!”

“And the Vortex he rode in on!” I shrieked back, and again we were speechless with laughter. There’s nothing like barely escaping disaster to make you scream with joy We laughed and rolled and howled and cried until our stomach muscles hurt, our eyes burned, our noses ran, and we were so out of breath that we could barely sputter.

The Girl staggered over to the rocker by the huge blue-tiled stove. She nudged the rocker with her foot. “Nursie! Make us some xocholattes.”

The shadow in the rocker coalesced into a plump old woman, with a ruffled hat like a cabbage and little raisin eyes. A nursery servitor—a fragment of a domicilic denizen, created to care for children. I’d heard of them but (thanks to Mamma) never actually seen one. A smile creased Nursie’s powdered cheeks, and she toddled over to the stove, where she began to potter around with a chocolate pot.

The room continued the childlike theme. It was small and snug and very cozy On the rug by the tiled stove (tiles painted with animals), tin soldiers beseiged a towering dollhouse; the window seat was heaped with dolls and stuffed animals; and the book shelves were stacked with games, building sets, and kiddie books. The walls were papered with monkeys jumping on beds, and carved monkeys cavorted on the heavy wooden mantel and climbed up the chimneypiece.

And all this was very odd because the Girl was not a child; she looked at least fifteen, or even (based on her cleavage) sixteen. Her face was mostly obscured under smeared maquillage and bruises, but what I could see indicated she was cute in a round baby-doll way Her hair had been tortured into three stiff braids and bundled together into a topknot, each braid a different color—red, black, gold. This hairstyle is worn only by the cadets at the Benica Barracks Military Academy I was relieved to know I was still in the Waking World, but what was a Benica cadet doing in a nursery?

“Who are you?” I asked.

“Shush! We can’t talk here—come on! Come
on
!” The Girl disappeared into the room beyond, which, when I followed her, was revealed to be a night nursery, dominated by an enormous bed. At each corner of the bed, a blue lacquered squid stood on its fluted tail, tentacles entwining upward to support a wooden canopy. The bed’s blue curtains were closed; in the dim light they shimmered like a sheet of water. I was instantly jealous. I’ve always longed for a huge canopy bed—so cozy yet with room for you and all the dogs, and a heap of books besides. My bed is snug, but sometimes it feels just like the broom closet it once was.

The Girl hoisted herself up one of the squid columns. Clearly she had done this often, for she shimmied up it easily; at the top, she swung over the edge of the canopy and disappeared.

A rope slithered down from above and almost whacked me in the head—but if she could climb up one of those ten-foot-tall squids, I could, too. I jumped up, grabbed at a bulbous squid eye and started hauling, mentally thanking Archangel Bob for his insistence that I keep at Sanctuary’s climbing wall until I could make it all the way to the top. Of course, then I hadn’t been sore, burning, throbbing, and exhausted, but as Nini Mo said,
It’s amazing what you can do when you have an audience.

I made it to the top, slightly puffing. As I belly flopped over the canopy edge, I felt a slight galvanic tingle: I had just crossed some sort of Enclosure Sigil. The space between the top of the canopy and the ceiling was just enough to sit upright. The Girl was sitting cross-legged on a heap of blankets and pillows, with the plushy Pig—whom I could have sworn we had left in the bathroom—in her lap. What a supercool space, and so clever, too. My jealousy increased.

The Girl had lit a foul-smelling cigarillo, and now she said, through a puff of smoke, “Want one?”

While I waved her offer away coughing, she continued: “We can talk here. I’ve got a Deafening Sigil set up.
He
can’t hear us—it’s safe. Look, you gotta help me—what’s your name?”

“Flora. And would you quit blowing on me? That cigarillo smoke is almost as foul as the kakodæmon.”

“That’s the whole point, Flora. It drowns out the stench,” the Girl said, but she quit blowing on me. “Look, Flora, I’m a prisoner here, and I need your help to escape.

“Where is here?” I interrupted. “Thanks to your Vortex I have no idea where I am.”

“Bilskinir House,” she said impatiently, and relief flooded through me. I was in the right place after all; the Vortex hadn’t sucked me halfway across the world or to another locale entirely. “Hardhands is holding me prisoner—you gotta help me escape.”

Hardhands! My heart, so recently buoyed with hope, sank like a fisherman’s float in a storm. “You mean General Haðraaða?”

“Ayah, him, the cullionly”—and here the girl described General Haðraaða in terms that made her mouth need a good washing. “I’m his prisoner. He’s locked me in this tower because I wouldn’t obey him, and if he catches you here, you’ll be his prisoner, too.”

I listened, my heart sinking deeper and deeper. As far as I was concerned, Hardhands had been dead since before I was born, murdered by his malicious wife, the Butcher Brakespeare. A horrible feeling was starting to tingle up the back of my spine.

“What year is it?” I interrupted the girl’s harangue.

“The fifth year of Florian’s tyranny—may he soon drop into the rotten mouth of death,” she answered.

I was born in the twenty-ninth year of the Warlord’s reign. Which meant I was thirty-seven—no thirty-eight—years in the past. Pigface Psychopomp on a Pogostick! I was in the right place at the wrong time. My heart was past sinking. Now it was sunk. The last time I had visited Bilskinir I had briefly ended up in the wrong time, but not nearly so far back. That time Paimon had blamed me—said my Anima Enervation was making Bilskinir House unstable—but clearly Bilskinir House was unstable all on its own. It didn’t need any help from me.

The Girl must have read the horror on my face, for she said avidly “You
are
from the future!” The smoke puffed from her nose as she laughed. “My sigil worked! I am the crowned and conquering child, the girl with the most cake! Tell me my future.”

“I don’t know who you are!”

“Sidonia Romney Haðraaða,” she answered impatiently “But everyone calls me Tiny Doom.”

“I’ve never heard of you!”

“But my sigil worked,” she said, disappointed. “You should know.”

“Worked! I was on a vital mission until I got sucked into the Vortex! You completely messed me up!”

“What kind of vital mission?” Tiny Doom demanded.

“I was trying to save the City from complete and utter annihilation.”

“What kind of destruction?”

“Earthquakes. Look, I have to talk to Paimon immediately.” He’d gotten me back to my proper place before; surely he could do it now.

Tiny Doom said fiercely “You can’t. If he finds out you are here, he’ll want to know where you came from, and then it will come out about the Vortex and I’ll be totally fiked. Hardhands has forbidden me to play in the Current. He’ll murder me or worse! And you, as well.”

“But how else am I going to get home and save the City?”

“Don’t be a snapperhead. Your earthquakes are in the future. You’ve got no hurry now, unless the future you are talking about is in five minutes.”

“Thirty-eight years,” I corrected.

“Well, then, you’ve got plenty of time to figure it all out,” Tiny Doom said calmly and for one brief moment I felt much much better. The threat of the Loliga was far in the future. The moment ended when something else occurred to me.

“I can’t wait thirty-eight years. I’ll be ancient by then—over fifty. I have to get home now! I have to talk to Paimon!”

“Not on your fiking life,” Tiny Doom said. “I have to get out of here, and if you alert yourself to Paimon, we’ll both be stuck. Look, ’You got in, you can get back out again,’ Nini says. In fact, that’s who you want—Nini Mo. She’ll know exactly what to do!”

Nini! Nini Mo! Tiny Doom’s words sank in, and my heart began to buoy upward. Nini Mo was alive! The greatest ranger who ever lived was still alive! And she’d know how to get me back to my own time. Nini Mo!

Tiny Doom was still talking: “...so lucky that in the future they let kids your age be rangers! I have to fiking wait until I graduate from the Barracks before I can take the Ranger’s Oath. Which is completely fiked since I’ve already spent two summers with the rangers—”

“You know Nini Mo?” I interrupted.

“Of course I do! I was detached to the Ranger Corps last summer, and when I graduate, I will be going into the Ranger Corps. Hardhands says he won’t let me, but he can—” Tiny Doom suggested that he do something quite unappealing. I didn’t care what Hardhands could do. My heart, previously so soggy, was about to explode with excitement. Nini Mo! Getting sucked through that stupid Vortex would be worth it if I got to meet Nini Mo.
Everything
would be worth it if I got to meet Nini Mo.

But first I needed Georgiana Segunda’s
Diario.
I might be in the wrong time, but the
Diario
was still in reach. I’d come all this way, and I wasn’t leaving without it. And suddenly I had a plan to get it.

“You are a Haðraaða?”

“Ayah,” Tiny Doom said, somewhat belligerently “So what?”

“Do you know about Georgiana Haðraaða’s
Diario
?”

“Ayah, why?”

“That’s what I came to Bilskinir for—I mean, when you sucked me into your Vortex, that’s what I was looking for. Will you help me get it?”

“I can’t let you have a Haðraaða heirloom. Particularly without knowing what you want it for.”

“Nini sent me to get it.” The lie rolled off my tongue. “She didn’t tell me why she wanted it—just sent me on a mission. I don’t ask questions of direct orders. I just follow them. Isn’t that what rangers do?”

Tiny Doom stared at me, and so did the Pig sitting on her lap. I had the uncomfortable feeling that perhaps the Pig knew I was lying, but I hoped he couldn’t tell her that I was. The lie was already twisting on my conscience, but
sometimes a small fib is the price you pay for a great victory,
Nini Mo said.

“Nini Mo from the future?”

“Ayah, so.” I smiled what I hoped was a very sincere smile.

“Why didn’t she just ask Hardhands for it?”

“Oh, she did,” I said swiftly. “But he refused to give it to her—he’s petty, you know—and so she sent me to sneak in and get it. Very deep cover, silent and secret, you know. She needs it to save the City”

“That sounds like Hardhands, the bootless whey face. Well, if I help you get the
Diario,
will you help me escape? Hardhands has me under a geas not to leave Bilskinir.”

“But I don’t know how to lift a geas.”

“Who said you had to?” she said. “Here’s the genius part. I can’t leave under my own Will, but if I were your prisoner, I’d be leaving under your Will, and that would obviate the geas. It’s not the Ultimate Ranger Dare, but it’s a pretty clever plan. Hardhands never thought I’d be able to get anyone to help me; he can suck on that! Deal?”

I needed the
Diario
and I hoped to get to Nini Mo. If Tiny Doom was willing to help me, I could help her in return. Didn’t Nini Mo say that the ranger who helps another ranger helps herself?

“Deal. Pinkie promise?”

“All right. Pinkie promise,” Tiny Doom said.
“The ranger who helps another ranger helps herself.”

T
INY DOOM
turned out to be by far the coolest person I had ever met. Not only had she spent two summers with the Ranger Corps, but she’d even participated in several ranger operations, some training (stealing the Redlegs Regiment’s Colors) and others actual (which she couldn’t give me any details on, citing mission secrecy). She’d been Nini Mo’s aide-de-camp
and
her adjutant, eating and working by her side, sometimes sleeping on a cot outside her door.

Tiny Doom knew tons of Gramatica, too—far more than I did. Not only could she open a Vortex (though she clearly hadn’t quite figured out how to close one) and get the Current to reflect, but she could command elementals and conjure retroactive enchantments. Tiny Doom had even enchanted Nursie so that she couldn’t report back to Paimon. And she had embodied a Protection Sigil into the form of the pink plushy pig—fantastically clever, if you ask me, because who would ever suspect a pink plushy pig to be so powerful and strong? Superdeep cover—the best. I resolved that as soon as I got home, I would try to do the same with my own pink plushy pig—funny that we should have the same pig, so many years apart.

Tiny Doom had a huge wardrobe of gorgeous clothes, all of which fit her perfectly. She was kind enough to lend me some, including a pair of fabulous purple stays that actually fit me (how glorious to be supported and still be able to breathe!) and the most fabulous midnight-blue and shocking-pink frock coat—“You are too old to wear pinafores, Flora, throw that rag out!”—with kilts to match. Unlike the Zu-Zu and Udo, she knew that when it came to maquillage, less is more. By the time she was done with my face, you could hardly even tell I was wearing any maquillage—I just looked like me, only superbetter. She was even able to turn my bushy eyebrows into the most perfect little wings—a painful, tweezy transformation, but worth it. “Nini says,” Tiny Doom said, “that if you look your best, people will think you are.”

Even her nickname was cool—Tiny Doom. That was almost as good as Nini Mo. And yards better than the Zu-Zu, or Hotspur, or the Rock of Califa, or even the Dainty Pirate. By comparison,
Flora
sounded downright babyish. The only nickname I’d ever had was Tinks, which was fine when I was two, but not really rangery cool. I resolved to correct this lack as soon as possible.