The Emperor's Ostrich Page 8

  “That’s how I’ll get Alfalfa home,” she said. “Alfalfa loves the ostrich. Goodness knows why. She follows him. Fine. I’ll lead the ostrich to my house, and Alfalfa will follow.”

  She headed off after the odd pair of animal friends. The gray cat appeared from wherever it had been prowling and leaped up onto Begonia’s shoulder.

  The man in the pajamas scrambled to catch up with her. “See here,” he said. “That’s my ostrich. Not yours. You can’t have him.”

  “I don’t want your ostrich,” Begonia said. “I just need to borrow him for a bit.”

  Key crashed through the underbrush after them. “Suppose the ostrich won’t be easily led,” he said. “Then you’re right back to the same problem you had before.”

  Begonia turned to the stranger. “Can you lead the ostrich?”

  The stranger shrugged. “He goes where I direct him,” he said, “but I don’t want to take him to your house. Why would I?”

  She fumed silently. There had to be a way to borrow this ostrich long enough to get a homesick milkmaid and her love-struck cow back to Two Windmills. Poor Mumsy must be frantic by now, and oh, what Begonia wouldn’t give for clean clothes and hot food and a washing-up!

  Key tied the brass bell around Alfalfa’s neck. Its chimes echoed mysteriously off tree trunks and reverberated through misty morning forest air. Up ahead, the ostrich moseyed forward with his funny, halting, waddling walk, pausing briefly to peck at a beetle here and nibble on fresh spring leaves there.

  At least each step took her closer to the road home. They were headed farther along the same stream they’d followed yesterday. Soon they’d meet that other road, and if she turned, let’s see, left, that would be east. No, northeast. Either way, it would take her back to the flowering bush where she first met Key, and from there she knew which road to take home.

  She turned toward the stranger. “Where are you headed, anyway?”

  He scowled. “My destination is none of your business.”

  “I only wondered,” she said slowly, “if it’s near where I’m bound. There’s safety in numbers. Let the panthers eat us instead of you, right? If you came to my home, if the panthers hadn’t eaten me, Mumsy—my mother—would feed you a hot meal and wash your clothes.”

  Key’s drooping spine turned to water at this idea. “She would?” he sighed. “Would she feed me a hot meal and wash my clothes, too?”

  Begonia groaned.

  “Look, sir,” Key said to the stranger. “We can’t very well not call you anything. It feels impolite, and a romantic is always polite, come what may. Courteous to the death! That’s what we are. So give us something we can call you.”

  The man’s lips twitched, as though he were at war with them. He grew so exasperated that he tugged at his hair with both hands. Then he lifted his head, as though he’d had a new idea.

  “Lumi,” he said slowly, as if testing the sound. “Lumi! Yes, Lumi. If you must call me something, you may call me Lumi.”

  The gray cat on Begonia’s shoulder yowled.

  “The kitty doesn’t like your name,” Begonia observed. “She needs a name, too. Mumsy would name her after some plant or other. So I’ll call her Stormcloud.” She grinned. “I’ve never gotten to name anything before.” The kitty chewed Begonia’s hair in reply. “I think she likes it.”

  “Stormcloud has a name, and now, Lumi,” said Key, “you have one, too. Excellent. Now tell us a little bit about yourself. Where you’re from, where you’re going. What your story is.”

  “Why should I?” demanded Lumi, if that were really his name, which Begonia doubted.

  “I gave you breakfast,” she reminded him.

  “Hah,” said the little man. “Do you know how many people usually bring me breakfast?”

  “Six,” said Key.

  Begonia giggled, but their companion looked surprised. “Yes,” he said. “You guessed it.”

  They waited. They heard no other sound but the chirping of morning birds and the crunching of claws, hooves, and feet through last autumn’s fallen leaves.

  “Tell us where home is, Lumi,” Begonia begged.

  “I was rudely driven from my … home,” he said at last. “I was violently robbed of my … home.” He took a deep breath. “I am trying to get back to my … home.”

  Begonia and Key exchanged puzzled glances. Key whispered, “He forgets words a lot.”

  “Well,” Begonia said slowly, “that’s sad. I’m very sorry to hear it. Did you ever ask any people you met along the way for help?”

  He scowled. “I tried, many times. In Mackerel City, I was forced to ask low persons for sustenance. Fishwives and bakers and such. But they were disgustingly rude. When I couldn’t … when they didn’t understand my answers to their questions, the stupid peasants, they threw things at me and drove me out of the city. They called me a thief for helping myself to food, when it’s mine by rights!”

  Key’s eyebrows rose. “You mean, you stole loaves of bread and so forth, and they got mad at you for it?”

  “Can you believe it?” demanded Lumi. “They threatened to have soldiers arrest me! I only just managed to get away. I avoid people now.”

  Key gestured to himself and Begonia. “We’re people.”

  “No, you’re not.”

  Up ahead, Alfalfa’s white tail swished from side to side, and her swaying rump did the same while her bell tinkled. Beyond her, the ostrich’s big brown body bobbed along atop his impossible legs. His head and neck hung low as he pecked for breakfast, so he looked like a headless body hovering on stilts, as though he’d lost his head completely.

  Begonia began to fear she’d lost hers.

  But at least they were moving. Now, if she could just move them toward home.

  She stuck her hands into her pockets and felt the parchment curl of the mapmaker’s gift.

  The mapmaker. Now there was an idea.

  “Lumi,” she said, “it sounds like what you need is a good map of the empire, if you’re going to find your home.”

  Lumi gestured to the mapless forest all around them. “Where do you suggest I find one?”

  “In my village of Two Windmills,” she said, “which we could reach by suppertime, there lives a master mapmaker. He has piles and piles of maps. Here’s one he gave me.” She offered him her own small map.

  “If you described your home to him, Master Mapmaker could show you the way and give you a map to get there.” She watched his face closely to see if she was getting anywhere. “Of course, before you visited the mapmaker, you’d probably want a bath, and warm towels, and clean clothes, and some home-cooked supper, which Mumsy will be only too happy to give you.”

  Once again, Key moaned with anticipation. “It sounds like heaven. I can’t wait. Are there meatballs? I long for meatballs!”

  Begonia ignored him. “Just a day’s walk, and we’re there.”

  Up ahead, the trees were thinning. More morning light filtered through. They were reaching the end of the woods, which meant soon they’d reach the road, and perhaps Lumi would take his ostrich another way, with Alfalfa following them in all likelihood. It was now or never.

  “You’ll love our village,” she said, doubting he could actually love anything.

  “Hmm,” said Lumi. “Two Windmills, you say? I’ve never heard of it.”

  “We’re a friendly village,” Begonia said. “Very peaceful.”

  Lumi’s stomach let out a loud rumble. He plucked at his grimy clothes, then fingered one limp mustache. He drew himself up tall.

  “I shall accompany you to this Two Windmills of yours,” said he. “No doubt it’s a backward place, or I would know of it. But I shall visit, inspect it, and demand of its occupants a bath, and clothes, and a map. I have made up my mind.”

  15

  AN ANXIOUS TRAVELER, AND HER HURRIED JOURNEY

  Long before the sun rose in the eastern sky and cast its rosy glow over Peony’s round cheeks as she slept like an angel beside her, Chrysa
nthemumsy had made her decision.

  She would go look for Begonia.

  She hadn’t slept all night for fretting about her daughter. Any pale comfort she’d taken from Madame Mustard-maker’s words the night before had faded long before the moon reached the peak of its sweep across the sky.

  She should’ve gone sooner. She shouldn’t have listened to Madame Mustard-maker. The whole thing was highly suspicious. She should’ve gone searching last night. Who could tell what terrors might befall a young girl alone in the world in the dark of night? But Chrysanthemumsy knew she couldn’t have found her at night. If only she had eyes to see in the dark like Catnip.

  If only she had never sent Begonia in the first place. True, Begonia had successfully brought Alfalfa home in the past, but any mother should have realized that finding a wandering cow could turn into a wild-goose chase.

  It was just that Begonia was so reliable, so capable. It was easy to entrust her with tasks and responsibilities. Usually, she accomplished them all without a hitch.

  Chrysanthemumsy moved softly from the bed, so as not to disturb little Peony, and went outside. She asked Grandmother Flummox to come sit with Peony and take care of the milking and eggs in her absence. The neighbor, though still mending from her cold, came immediately. All of Two Windmills knew by now that Begonia hadn’t come home, and they prayed that the ancestor spirits would watch over her and bring her safely back.

  Chrysanthemumsy packed some food and a bottle of water in a sack, threw it over her shoulder, and headed toward the village. Begonia had gone that way, she knew, and passed straight through town. Witnesses had been able to tell her that much yesterday.

  She walked all morning, until the sun had nearly reached its peak and her feet felt heavy with fatigue. Poor Begonia! To have faced so long a journey alone, and so young!

  I’m coming, daughter. Over and over, she willed the words to travel from her heart to Begonia’s, to give her comfort and strength. May the words find her safe. May her feet follow soon after.

  16

  MORE BICKERING, AND A BIRD-BACK BOOST

  Begonia, Lumi, Key, and the animals stumbled through the thinning trees and found themselves facing the road. The ostrich blinked at the bright midday sunlight, while Alfalfa got to work munching succulent grass and clover growing along the road’s margins.

  “Help me up,” ordered Lumi.

  “Up where?” asked Key.

  “Onto my ostrich, you dunce,” was Lumi’s reply. “Did you really think I would walk on foot all day long?”

  Begonia looked to her left down the long corridor of road that snaked through the trees. She consulted her map. Yes, left was the way to go. This path would lead eventually to the fork in the road and the purple bush, through small villages, and then to her home, her barn, her bedroom. Mumsy could sort out the twin nuisances of Lumi and Key, and life would go back to normal.

  Key, however, was engaged in conversation with Lumi.

  “Really?” he said. “You ride that ostrich? It actually lets you ride it?”

  Lumi’s nose poked the clouds. “Of course it does. It’s my ostrich.”

  Key was fascinated. “Have you always ridden ostriches? Since you were little?” His eyes lit up. “Say, is that what you do for a living? Ride ostriches in races? You’re just the build for the job.”

  “Enough of your prattle. Help me up, I say!” demanded Lumi. “What is the matter with you two? I never knew peasants could be so stupid and unhelpful.”

  Something inside Begonia made a quiet little explosion. She couldn’t say why. Perhaps it was walking all morning after nothing but milk for breakfast. Perhaps it was sleeping on the damp forest floor after nearly becoming a panther’s midnight meal. Begonia had had enough. Lumi had certainly said worse. But this was one remark too many. She was done with trying to placate this tyrant.

  “What’s the matter with you, that you treat people so rudely?” she said. “You act like you’re the emperor himself, bossing and complaining so much. But I’m sure the emperor at least knows better than to act like such a spoiled baby, or no one would ever follow a word he says.”

  Lumi’s lips quivered, which made his mustaches wiggle. The effect was not unlike the sniffing, twitchy snout of a whiskered rat. Stormcloud, who evidently disapproved of rising voices, leaped from Begonia’s shoulder to the ground.

  “Nobody talks that way to me,” he said. “I shan’t help you if you talk that way to me. You can figure out how to get your useless cow home without my ostrich.”

  “Then we won’t help you get up onto his back,” replied Begonia. “And you can just go back to wandering in circles and sleeping hungry under the stars, with panthers for company, while you try to find your home.”

  “Um, Begonia?”

  “Not now, Key!” she cried. “And furthermore, I’m beginning to have some sympathy for whoever it was that drove you out of your home. Who can blame them, if they had to live with you? You’re the most selfish person I ever met.”

  Key hopped from left foot to right. “Begonia—”

  “What do you know about anything, you silly little girl?” Lumi’s face bunched up like a prune, and he stuck his tongue out at Begonia. “Great men like me don’t listen to the prattle of brainless little maidens. Great men like me don’t even allow little girls into their presence because they’re completely useless.”

  Key tugged on her sleeve. “Begonia…”

  She whirled on him and unleashed all the anger that she would’ve liked to blast at Lumi. “What, Key? What’s so important that you have to tell me right now?”

  He pointed down the road. “The animals are gone.”

  They all turned. Sure enough, there was no sign of the ostrich or the cow.

  “Which way did they go?” cried Lumi. “Why weren’t you watching?”

  “I was watching,” said Key indignantly. “I tried to tell you. They went that way.”

  Lumi and Begonia bolted down the road toward the left, with Key following along after them. Lumi’s sprint didn’t last long. Begonia, however, ran well and kept going until she came around a bend and nearly collided with Alfalfa. The ostrich, who had one wing thrown over the cow, for all the world like a young man with his arm around a sweetheart, ballooned out his throat and made a low hooting sound at Begonia. Then he turned around, spread his wings wide, and ran straight for her. On powerful, panther-kicking legs.

  She backed away, then turned and ran. She was no match for his speed. The ostrich loped easily behind her, waving his menacing wings as a warning, until a lowing moo from Alfalfa halted him, and he turned and trotted back to his cow.

  Begonia wiped her forehead with her apron.

  She caught her breath and waited to make sure the ostrich wouldn’t change his mind. “I found them,” she shouted.

  Key jogged into view, followed eventually by a red-faced Lumi, and finally by Stormcloud.

  “It’s not that I don’t agree with you completely,” Key said as they watched the huffing man approach, “about Lumi being an absolute terror, but I think we should probably stop fighting with him—and by ‘we’ I mean ‘you,’ but a romantic doesn’t like to criticize a damsel, not directly. Let’s just get him up on his ostrich.”

  Begonia rolled her eyes and thought up a juicy retort for Key. Then she sighed. “What if we get him up on his ostrich, and they just run off and abandon us?”

  Key shrugged. “At least we’ll be rid of him.”

  Begonia grinned. “You make an excellent point.”

  “Maybe with the ostrich gone, Alfalfa will follow you home,” added Key. “But I doubt the ostrich will leave his lady friend. Personally, I wouldn’t.” He glanced sidelong at Begonia. “If I were an ostrich, that is.”

  Lumi reached them just then. Begonia swallowed the things she would have liked to say to him. “If you stand on that fallen log near the woods,” she told him, “we can help boost you onto the ostrich’s back.”

  To her surprise, he nodded
and went straight to the tree. He clambered clumsily atop the large fallen trunk and whistled to the ostrich. He came. Key and Begonia hurried to help, and together they boosted and hoisted Lumi’s legs up over the bird’s body and under his wings. The ostrich didn’t like the whole affair, and neither did Begonia, for Lumi badly needed a bath. But, finally, they got him mounted, and Lumi nudged him onward down the road. The ostrich complied but swiveled his head around to make sure Alfalfa was following.

  This was the scene: An eight-foot tall bird, picking his way along the dusty highway, with an alarmingly mustached rider in filthy red silk pajamas bobbing along atop his fluffy back. Behind them, a white cow with a black spot following close by, tinkling the bell on her neck and mooing the moos of cow romance. Behind her, a rather dirty milkmaid in a dress that had probably once been blue, and an apron that would never again be white, trailing a pink scarf from her long dark hair, which was batted at occasionally by the gray cat that seemed permanently affixed to her shoulder. Behind girl and cat, a tall, slouching boy, with a sack over his shoulder and his hair so full of twigs and leaves he looked more like a shambling sapling than a human being.

  This is what anyone watching them would have seen.

  As they came around the next bend in the road, this is what someone else did see.

  “Well, I never,” said a booming voice as an elegantly dressed rider came into view and pulled up the reins of his glossy black horse. “Never in all my days did I see a party like this traveling along the emperor’s highways. And I’ve seen some extraordinary sights. You can be sure of that. I’m Poka, proprietor of Poka’s Carnival of Curiosities, at your service. Pleased to meet you.”

  17

  ANOTHER STRANGE ROMANCE, AND ITS TRAGIC INTERRUPTION

  Chrysanthemumsy walked as quickly as she could, but even her urgency to find her daughter didn’t stop her from growing weary. Somewhere past the hamlet of Mossy Well, she came to a shady spot under a grove of trees and sat down on a boulder to drink some water and catch her breath before continuing. She was aware, dimly, that this was a lovely spot, with green grasses dancing in the breeze, birds singing through the trees, and the carved roof of an open-air temple peeking up just beyond a rise in the ground. But she had no stomach for sightseeing today.