The Emperor's Ostrich Page 6

  “I know my name,” she said slowly. “I am trying to figure out if you know my name.”

  “Why, you’re Begonia, of course,” said Key, patting her on the head. “The funny girl with the pink scarf in her hair and the missing cow. The damsel I’ve chosen to rescue, romantically.”

  Begonia sighed with relief. She almost hugged him. If Key had been truly injured and lost his wits completely, what could she have done to help him, so far away from any town or city? But he was still himself. And just as determined as ever.

  “Will you please leave off with this rescue nonsense?” she said.

  “You won’t call it nonsense when I dramatically rescue you.”

  In the distance, a wild animal’s hunting cry ripped through the forest. Night was fully dark, now, and the biting wind was cold. Begonia’s skin prickled while her heart sank.

  The kitty meowed against her ankles. She scooped her into her arms and felt the soothing warmth of fur against her skin.

  “Come on, Key,” she said. “Grab your things. We’d better be moving on. Alfalfa’s not here, so there’s no reason why we should stay here and trouble this—person—anymore.” She’d hesitated. She wasn’t sure what sort of person she was dealing with. Man or woman, young or old, she didn’t know about the stranger. All she knew was that he—or she—was unpleasant, rude, and accompanied by a monster bird that might, in all likelihood, come back.

  “You can’t leave me here,” came the thin voice yet again. “I forbid it. Eek! Did you hear that?”

  Begonia listened. “That was nothing more than a warbler’s evening song. Haven’t you ever been outside at night?”

  “Don’t be impertinent, little girl. I’ve been to many lawn parties that extended past sunset.”

  “Oh, well, then.” Begonia was glad the darkness hid her face. “Sir,” she said, cautiously, for she decided the voice was most likely male, “have you come across a white cow in your travels today?”

  “Infernal thing wouldn’t leave us alone,” replied the apparently “sir” figure. “Plodded along beside us all afternoon, mooing at us, and playing games with my ostrich. Highly disrespectful and most inconvenient. I shall have it slaughtered and eaten for dinner.”

  “Oh, no!” Begonia cried. “You can’t! That’s my cow. You haven’t already, er, eaten her, have you?”

  “What am I, a butcher?” cried the voice. His tree was close by, but they could no more see him in the darkness than they could see Alfalfa.

  Key chimed in. “Perhaps,” he said. “Some of the nicest people I know are butchers. But you don’t seem like any of the nicest people I know. What are you?”

  The voice from the darkness sniffed. “What I am is not your concern.”

  “All right,” said Key. “Where do you come from?”

  “Shan’t tell you.”

  “What’s your name, then?”

  The voice hesitated. “Names are unimportant for someone such as myself.”

  “You don’t know your own name!” Begonia cried, disbelieving. “You actually don’t know it!”

  “I could have you imprisoned in the dungeons for such disrespect,” came the voice. “Without food or water. With rats snapping at your ankles.”

  Begonia turned away from the unpleasant figure. “Come on, Key, let’s get going. We’re wasting our time here. Alfalfa must be close by if she’s stayed so close to this ostrich all afternoon. Though why she’d do that, I can’t imagine.”

  “Shh! You shall not leave,” the odious person hissed from his perch. “I command you to stay. After you retrieve my ostrich and fetch me something to eat.”

  Begonia had endured a long and trying day, and this troublesome person was becoming one problem too many. “Look, No-name,” she said, “even if we had food to give you, we wouldn’t share it after how rude you’ve been. And we haven’t a crumb between us. Nor can we catch your bird. We’d have to be owls to see him in the dark. And horses to go fast enough to outrun him. It’s just not possible. So I think you should stop giving orders.”

  “Stay,” barked the man, “or face the consequences.”

  “Why? So you can insult us all night long? No, thank you. We’ll find another place to sleep. You can find some other people to pick on if you like.” Begonia began tugging Key toward the stream, but Key stayed still.

  “Just out of curiosity,” he ventured, “what consequences?”

  Begonia had no patience for this delay. She pressed through the brambles until the throat-clenching, hair-raising cry of a forest animal rent the air. And a second, joining the first.

  Begonia knew that cry.

  It had made their cows’ eyes roll white with terror when it came too near Two Windmills once before.

  It had taken all the village huntsmen to drive it back to the wilds from whence it came.

  But not before it got away with two of Grandmother Flummox’s sheep.

  “The panthers,” said the man, “with bloodred eyes, and razor claws, that infest the forest, and hunt for food by night.”

  He began climbing higher up his tree branch with a speed Begonia wouldn’t have expected of him. She herself could barely move for terror.

  “You’d better climb, too, if you want to stay alive,” he called down to them. “Not that tree! This one!”

  “You first,” said Key. “Hurry!”

  It wasn’t easy climbing in the dark. More than once, Begonia’s foot slipped off a branch and nearly left her dangling. Then the panther’s scream reached their ears again, closer this time. She gritted her teeth and climbed, with Key close behind. The gray kitty leaped past them up the trunk and into the high branches with incredible speed.

  “Are you all right?” Key asked Begonia. “Got a good grip on the trunk?”

  “Quiet!” whispered the stranger. “You’re letting the panthers know where we are.”

  “They already do,” Begonia whispered. “Look.”

  Only a glimmer of light from the low-rising moon penetrated the forest branches, but in its faint glow, as they held their breath, they saw shadows circling the tree. Shadows, with rippling muscles, long black tails, hungry red eyes, and wicked yellow teeth. And claws that raked the tree trunk, probing for the best way to begin their climb.

  11

  WHAT A PELICAN OUGHT TO HAVE REALIZED

  Farther along in the forest, near the winding stream, a tree shuddered under the burden of an entire colony of nesting pink-backed pelicans, large birds with impressive wingspans and vast, pouchy beaks for catching fish. The weight of a dozen heavy nests, laden with eggs and nesting mothers, made the tree creak and moan in the night winds.

  One such mother, roosting upon her nest, sighed in her sleep. A warm, soothing sensation had crept into her dreams. She would have smiled, but that’s hard to do with a beak. She didn’t know it, but the form of an old man had appeared in the branches of the heavy-laden tree. He hovered there, gently stroking the pelican’s pinkish-gray back feathers.

  “A mapmaker?”

  The voice at his ear made the hovering man jump. The pelican, paddling in the shallows of dream waters as a chick at her own mother’s side, stirred as if a cold wind had brought wafting in the scent of a hunting stink-badger.

  “Mr. I’m-So-Important-That-I-Deserve-to-Fiddle-with-Destiny takes on the appearance of a village mapmaker?”

  “Hush!” the old man whispered. “You’ll wake Mama Pelican.”

  “Leave her out of it,” said the newcomer, the hovering form of an older woman. “Leave off with your bad impersonation of that nice old man. And leave my Begonia to me.”

  “You’re one to talk.” He brushed his fingertips over the pelican’s crown feathers. Her funny-lidded eyes stirred. “A mustard-maker? It figures you’d do something ridiculous.”

  The old woman tossed a flap of her shawl over her shoulder.

  “I wouldn’t have had to become the mustard-maker if you hadn’t up and decided to be the mapmaker,” she said. “What did you mean by i
t? Giving my girl a magic map? She’ll never know what to think of the real mapmaker again. I gave her one specific job to do, but now her head’s so turned around she doesn’t know which way is up.”

  The old man glanced at the old woman. “Neither do you, apparently.”

  In all her scolding, the grandmother spirit hadn’t realized that she’d been rotating in midair until she practically floated sideways. She righted herself abruptly. “Explain yourself.”

  The grandfather spirit stroked the pelican mother and soothed her dreams until even the growing chicks inside the eggs felt happy waves of warm contentment.

  “I gave her the map,” he said, “to help her find her way, whatever befalls her. It’s been my observation that the people you meddle with need all the help they can get.”

  She folded her arms across her chest. “You do your own meddling,” she told him. “Don’t you meddle in my meddling with your meddling. It isn’t sporting.”

  “If I ever figure out what that means…”

  “You just tend to your emperor,” the grandmother spirit said briskly, “and leave my Begonia to me.” She vanished in a puff.

  The grandfather spirit stroked the mother pelican again before fading into the darkness. She slumbered on, lulled by memories of her mama bird and drowsy dreams of her own downy chicks to come, which she would gather safely under her far-reaching wings.

  12

  MOUNTING PERIL, AND UNLIKELY HELP

  How would it feel, to wait to die?

  Like this?

  What was strange was the quiet. They clung to their perches, the three of them: Begonia, the stranger, and Key, not daring to breathe. The moon mounted the dome of the sky, rising over the treetops to cast its cold beams down upon the glossy hides of their impending doom.

  One panther circled the tree trunk. The other stood on its hind legs and spread its forelegs wide around the tree. It looked for all the world like a hug. A hug from a cat that was huge and black, with murderous red eyes.

  And all the time in the world.

  The hugging panther chose each hold slowly, carefully. It flexed its muscles without a care.

  Then it jumped. It still clung to the tree trunk, but it had now cut the distance between the ground and Key in half.

  Key yelped in terror. “Shoo! Shoo!”

  “‘Shoo, shoo’? Is that the best you can do?” the stranger called from the top of the tree. “Throw something at the demon cat!”

  “Throw what?” cried Begonia. “You, perhaps? Key, here, take my hand!”

  “You can’t throw me,” the stranger said. “I’m too important.”

  The panther leaped again, only barely missing Key’s foot as Begonia pulled him up higher.

  “We’ll never make it,” cried Begonia. “We’re climbing for dear life, but the wicked beast isn’t even trying!”

  Overhead, from up in the thin branches, her terrified little gray kitty yowled.

  “Never surrender, Maid Begonia,” gasped Key. “We’re not defeated yet.”

  “Two panthers, two children,” said the stranger in the tree. “One for each. I’m higher than you, so I should be all right. But this is highly upsetting. I dislike messy things.”

  “Be quiet!”

  The panther coiled its muscles for a last and deadly leap. Then it paused, and turned.

  The panther on the ground heard it, too. A growl rumbled in its throat. In the distance, they heard something tearing rapidly through the forest.

  A milk cow’s moo reached Begonia’s ears.

  “Alfalfa?”

  As smoothly as it had scaled the tree, the climbing panther peeled itself off the tree trunk in a noiseless pounce back to the forest floor. Together, the two panthers padded off in the direction of the moo.

  Begonia shook with relief. But the danger wasn’t for away, and now it was chasing her cow. “Poor Alfalfa!” She whispered. “Have we come all this way only to hear her be killed by vicious panthers?”

  “We will remember her with gratitude,” Key said, panting, “and honor. But I can’t exactly be sorry that it’s her they’re chasing, and not us.”

  They heard more panther screams, and Begonia wished she could plug her ears, but she needed her hands to keep her grip.

  Noises in the distance came nearer, and again they heard a hunter cat’s cry.

  Then a panther’s dark shape sprinted underneath their perch, retreating in the opposite direction. Its mate came after, yowling as the huge monster bird chased it, dealing a massive kick with its long legs that sent the panther flying.

  The three creatures disappeared into the forest. The sound of their chase gradually faded away.

  “Did I see what I thought I saw?” Begonia wondered aloud. “Were two deadly panthers just chased away by a bird?”

  As she spoke, the gray kitty found Begonia’s shoulder and climbed on. The poor trembling kitty’s tail was thick as a small tree limb.

  “I knew my ostrich would protect me,” the smug stranger said. “Now, help me down. We can’t stay up here all night like monkeys.”

  “Help yourself down,” snapped Begonia. “You were awfully cheery about watching us die first.” She began the dangerous work of descending the tree in the dark.

  “I rescued you!” cried the repulsive man.

  Key laughed bitterly. “Not even close. Your bird did.”

  The stranger shook his tree branch. Begonia held on for dear life, and thought of Peony’s spoiled fits. “I’m allowed to take credit for what my servants do. Always. My pets, too.”

  “Maybe you do that in your little world,” Begonia said. “But here in the real world, we prefer the truth.”

  They reached the ground and sank to their trembling knees. Then they rolled onto their sides and dissolved into the soil on the forest floor.

  “Think those panthers will come back?” Key asked Begonia.

  The shock of what had just happened—and what had nearly happened—caught up to Begonia then. She’d nearly died! A horrible, terrifying, excruciating death! She clutched her arms tightly around her sides. She couldn’t answer Key. She turned away to hide the tears running down her cheeks and the shuddering in her breath.

  But Key had heard her. For once the boy didn’t know what to say. He placed a hand on her shoulder and kept it there.

  Begonia wiped her cheeks with a sleeve and drew a deep breath.

  “I don’t know if they’ll come back,” she said at last. “I hope not. I hope the ostrich scared them. Our best hope is to stay close tonight and get whatever sleep we can. Tomorrow morning, cow or no cow, I’m going home.”

  13

  MORE DARK DEEDS ON THAT FATEFUL NIGHT

  Midnight, in the palace.

  Servants and staff had long since gone to sleep, all except for those whose mission it was to pass the nighttime hours wide awake, keeping watch. With no emperor to protect, the night watchmen drooped at their posts, but of course the palace, which was the seat of government, must still be patrolled.

  The Imperial Butler was not one of those whose job it was to keep a lonely nighttime vigil. He ought to have been deep in slumber, but he lay, this cool spring night, tossing fitfully between his sheets as sleep was snatched from him by curious dreams. He heard noises and footsteps. He imagined he heard the emperor’s voice summoning him for a drink.

  He brooded. Could the emperor have returned? Might someone else want a beverage? Perhaps the chancellor was having trouble sleeping and needed some warm milk. Or perhaps those three companions of the emperor’s were up to some trouble. A dark thought, indeed. They’d been acting stealthy and secretive all day—all week, come to think of it—and the Imperial Butler didn’t like the piercing stare each of them gave him whenever he passed by. Did they suspect he had heard their plans that morning?

  He rose and dressed. Sleep was impossible now, so he might as well explore the nighttime corridors. It couldn’t do any harm.

  No one knew better than the Imperial Butler how to
creep like a cat through the carpeted halls. It was part of his buttling training. Carrying a small, shaded oil lamp, he made his rounds, nodding to the guards stationed even now outside the emperor’s lonely bedchamber. He paused to listen at servants’ and courtiers’ bedroom doors, waiting for any sound of someone in need or distress. But all slept, it seemed. Only he had been plagued by restless dreams.

  He turned a corner that led to the chancellor’s bedchamber. All was quiet. He listened but heard nothing. He turned to leave, then paused. The weak gleam of his lamp revealed something amiss.

  The door to the chancellor’s bedroom was slightly, so very slightly, open.

  Only enough that the bolt wouldn’t latch. Not enough to reveal anything going on inside. Which, from the sound of things, was nothing except snoring.

  Surely it was nothing, the Imperial Butler thought. A mistake anyone might make.

  But not anyone like the chancellor.

  He was an old man, the chancellor, stooped, with a large belly and skinny limbs, cloudy eyes that peered through thick glasses, and a nose that dripped. After the former emperor had died young, the chancellor had practically raised his young son from boyhood while guarding the empire and its scepter of rule. If the emperor hadn’t gone missing, he would’ve presented the scepter to him in just a few days’ time.

  If there was one thing the young butler knew about the chancellor, it was this: he was careful. Careful with the scepter, careful with papers, careful with secrets, careful with locks.

  He would never go to sleep with his door ajar. Yet he must have, for still he snored like a drowsy bear.

  The butler considered entering to check on him, but he hated to disturb or embarrass the old man over nothing. Surely everything was fine. Perhaps, as he aged, he was becoming forgetful. The butler reached for the doorknob to pull it gently shut.

  Just before the bolt clicked, he heard it: a snort. A catch in the snore, then a muffling, then silence, as if a pillow had been thrown over the chancellor’s head.

  His fingers froze over the doorknob.

  The bolt clicked. Too late to stop it.

  The door wrenched open. Arms grabbed the butler and yanked him in.