Good Curses Evil (8 page)

“You will soon see. Look! Someone approaches!” the poppy lady said, pointing to a dark alley on the opposite side of the square.

“Come with us. Quickly!” said the white rose lady.

We followed the Zâne into the shadowy overhang of a tailor's shop and watched as a figure emerged from the alley. At first, I thought it might be Wolf, but I quickly ruled that out. The figure was too slender beneath the hooded cloak. A woman, then. She clutched tightly to something as she flitted like a wraith from shadow to shadow.

“What's she doing?” Jezebel whispered.

“Watch and see,” the daisy fairy said sadly.

The woman dashed into the open space of the town square and stopped at the well. She lifted her hood to reveal a very young, lovely face, although it was twisted with worry. Then she uncovered the bundle she'd been holding so tightly. From our position across the square, it was impossible to see what she had uncovered. And yet, somehow, I knew. The gentle way she pulled the blanket. The soft kiss as she dusted its face with her cheek. It was a baby.

Jez and I both exchanged excited looks.

Jackpot!
I mouthed to Jez, making sure the fairies weren't watching us.

The woman bent over the well and with mounting horror I thought she would drop the baby into the deep water. And I couldn't care less about the baby's
safety
. That's just cracked! I was only worried about losing a chance to steal the kid—I was pretty sure it needed to be a
live
one.

But I had nothing to fear. The woman laid the baby gently on the rain-soaked grass near the well. She tucked a note carefully into the folds of the blanket. Then, with one final glance behind her, she pulled the cloak hood over her head and melted into the shadows.

In a matter of moments, we had all crossed the square to where the sleeping baby lay. Even in the dark, I could see tufts of bright red curls peeking out from under the blanket's frayed edge.

Now I just had to figure out how to convince the Zâne to let me have the stinky little thing. My planning was interrupted by an outburst from Jez.

“Why did she do that?” she said. I was shocked at the accusation in her voice. “How could anybody do that!”

“Shh. Be still, child,” the white rose lady said. “It will be for the best. You'll see.”

Jezebel plucked the note from the blanket, being careful not to wake the sleeping infant.

“What's it say?” I asked as we stood in the rain, which was fading into a misty drizzle.

“It says she was a poor girl who could not afford to take care of her precious baby. It says ‘Please love her as I always will.' ”

Jez wiped quickly at her eyes and sniffled. I'd never thought of the countess as the kind of girl to get all choked up over an abandoned baby. She noticed me watching her.

“What? I'm probably just getting a dumb cold from all this rain,” she said.

However, Jez's reaction was not the biggest surprise. That award went to Cappy. One look at the little pink bundle and he was hooked.

“Oooooh,” he said, grabbing for the baby with his big, clumsy claws. I reached out to stop him, but the Zâne held me back.

“Just a moment,” the white rose lady said, smiling affectionately at Cappy and the baby. It seemed all the Zâne had changed their minds about him. You might even say they'd grown fond of him.

Cappy scooped the bundled baby into his massive ape-arms with a surprising gentleness I would not have thought possible from the big oaf—especially after he'd pulverized that moth. He cradled the baby close to his chest as if he'd done it a thousand times before.

“Hold her close, Cappy, while we bless her,” the white rose lady said.

Then the Zâne gathered around the baby's head, floating in a slow, revolving circle as they extended their hands over her—the white rose lady holding her magic wand. They whispered in a language I had never heard, and yet it sounded familiar. It was the sound of wind in the trees and clear, cool streams bubbling over rocks. It was the sound of the moon and the stars and
cat-a-bats!
Those girly fairy spells were making me all crazy and mushy. Thankfully, they stopped singing before I ended up in a cape fighting for justice and honor and junk like that.

Each of the Zâne touched the baby's soft forehead with their tiny hands. Then it was over.

“That's it?” I asked. “I mean … what now?”

“That is for you to decide, Rune,” the white rose lady said. “This baby's fate is tied up with yours now. In time, you will see her gifts. She is a very special baby.”

“Wait … you mean, we're supposed to take it, uh,
her
with us?” I asked. This baby stealing was a piece of cake!

“That is also for you to decide. However, even if you were to leave her here by this well, it is our belief that she would somehow find a way to reach you. As I said, your fates are intertwined now.”

“Pretty baby. Pretty baby sleepy,” Cappy whispered as he rocked the baby tenderly.

“And now, dawn is approaching. The moon sets. We must be away,” the poppy lady said. I couldn't see any hint of morning light, but I wasn't going to argue.

“Oh, uh, thanks for all your help,” I said. “We'll take, uh, good care of it … I mean
her
.”

Then the Zâne were gone in a flash of light, and we were alone in the middle of the town with a baby and no Wolf.

“Score!” I shouted. “That was
easy!
”

At that moment, the baby woke up and started to cry.

“What now?” Jezebel asked, wrinkling her nose. It seemed her previous concern did not extend to
crying
babies.

“Ummm …,” I said. “We need a goat.”

“Are you mental?” Jez started counting on her fingers. “Henchman, baby, princess, kingdom. I don't remember ‘goat' anywhere in the Plot, Rune.”

“Milk, Countess Know-It-All. The quickest way to shut a kid up is to feed it.”

After a hasty search, we found a goat at the other end of town, tethered to a fencepost. We untied it and led it a few feet down the road when I thought better of it and went back to leave one of my gold coins on the fencepost.

“What are you doing?” Jez asked.

“I can't have the whole town chasing us with pitchforks and torches looking for the village goat, now, can I?”

Jez just rolled her eyes.

We decided that we couldn't wait for Wolf. We had to keep moving. With dawn on the horizon, the town of Ieri would soon be awake and wondering what a dog-headed monster was doing with a redheaded baby and what a couple of villains were doing with a pilfered goat. So we crossed over the border into the kingdom of Kaloya.

 

CHAPTER EIGHT

On the Road Again

Are there always this many patrols?” Jez asked.

“I don't know,” I answered.

We'd slept most of the day in a grove of trees about thirty yards from the road, waking in a late, cloudy afternoon. From the shadows of our hiding spot, we watched as yet another patrol of soldiers went by. The roads were crawling with them. We were forced to keep to the trees and fields, so we wouldn't be questioned. Jez and I might have been able to explain why we were traveling with a baby and no guardians, but there was no way we could explain Cappy.

“I wish we had some means of knowing what was going on,” Jez said.

“Oh, duh!” I answered. “We do!” I reached into my pack and found my dad's crystal ball.

I rubbed my hands over the smooth, glassy surface until the ball started to glow. In it I saw a city. Kaloya was in turmoil over a recent uprising at the palace. Soldiers were being dispatched to patrol all major roads leading in and out of the capital.

“We are
so
going to overthrow this kingdom,” I said.

“I don't know, Rune. There are a lot of soldiers around. This might be harder than you think.”

“C'mon, Jez. Our luck is improving. The crystal ball is working for us. And we've got our henchman and our baby, don't we?”

We glanced at Cappy, who was happily tickling our stolen baby.

“What about the princess? Why don't you see if the crystal can show us where to find one?”

“Good idea.”

I ran my hand across the crystal's surface once more, but it remained dark. For ten minutes I shook it and squeezed it until finally giving up.

“What were you saying about our luck improving?” Jez asked.

“I don't need it to tell me anyway,” I said. “Princesses are always in castles.”

“Right,” Jez said. “And when they don't just let you in the front door, they always have mile-long blond hair, which they toss out the window for you to climb. Have you given any
serious
thought as to how you'll kidnap a princess?”

“Well,” I said, rubbing my chin thoughtfully, “first I'll feed her a poison apple, then I'll stab her with a spinning wheel spindle, and if those don't work I'll bop her over the head with a glass slipper.”

This earned me another eye roll from Jez.

As the afternoon faded, we traveled on, darting between groves of trees, always keeping in sight of the road but out of sight of would-be travelers. Several times we saw soldiers marching or riding horseback. I worried the baby's constant crying would give us away, but Cappy always seemed to know what the baby needed. Not only could he rock it and feed it, he also changed its diaper—swapping it out with a piece of cloth torn from one of our blankets. Then, whenever we came upon a stream or pond, he would wash out the old diaper and dry it, ready to swap it out again.

“Some evil henchman I found,” I said, frowning at Cappy as he washed another diaper in the pond where we had stopped to eat. Nearby, the goat munched contentedly at a patch of grass.

“He's not so bad,” Jez said. “Besides, you said yourself a good henchman should possess a quality that the villain lacked.”

“Oh, and what's that? Pure stupidity?” I asked.

“How about parental instincts, Rune? Look at him! He's a natural nursemaid.”

At that moment, Cappy had filled one of our spare waterskins with goat's milk and was feeding the baby while crooning a lullaby that sounded something like, “Rocky-bye baby in Cappy's arms. Cappy loves baby, la, la, la, la.” He wasn't too good with the rhyming.

Cappy stood up to refill the waterskin, when he tripped over a rock and went sprawling face-first toward the ground. Amazingly, he managed to both hold on to the baby as he fell and save it from being squished under his stony body. The waterskin, however, wasn't so lucky.

“Ouch,” Cappy said. Only it sounded like
oumnch
because his face was buried in the grass. He slowly raised his body to reveal the poor, tattered waterskin.

“Oh, no!” Cappy said, picking up the remains of the baby's makeshift bottle and holding it out for all to see. Then he started to cry. It was the
flutterby
all over again.

I tried to tell him not to worry. We had another waterskin and could use it if we had to—although the idea of sharing drool with Cappy and a baby was beyond gross to me. My tongue felt fuzzy just thinking about it.

Cappy continued to cry despite my reassurances. Then something remarkable happened. The waterskin rose up from Cappy's hands into the air, floating just above the baby's head. The baby stretched out its pudgy fingers toward the makeshift bottle, but it just continued to float.

“What's happening?” Jez asked.

Cappy even stopped crying, mesmerized by the floating bottle. Then the gaping tear in the waterskin began to mend. It was like watching a zipper zip itself up. In a matter of moments, the skin was repaired, good as new, and floated back into Cappy's hands.

“Okay, who did that?” I asked, looking accusingly at Jezebel.

“It wasn't me!” she said.

“Cappy?” I asked in wonder.

“Cappy no do magic,” he answered. He was already refilling the waterskin with milk from the goat.

“Goat?” I asked. Hey, I'd seen animals do stranger things. The goat only bleated and continued to munch its patch of grass.

Then the baby giggled, actually
giggled at me
. It blinked and wiggled its little hands, grabbing one of its feet and sucking on its toes with a big grin on its chubby pink face.

“No way,” I said.

“The baby?” Jez asked. “Maybe she's magical. She could be a witch halfsie or something.”

“The Zâne did say it was special,” I said, staring at the baby with keen interest. A magical baby could come in very handy … if only we could figure out how to control its magic.

“You, baby,” I said. “Make that goat fly.” I didn't have a particular interest in flying goats; really I just wanted to see another demonstration of the baby's power. Nothing happened.

“Maybe it comes and goes,” Jez said with a shrug.

We spent the early evening walking parallel to the road. Cappy continued to care for the baby, and I had to grudgingly admit it was a good thing he was there. Especially since neither Jez nor I knew anything about babies. It'd been a long time since evil nursery school.

There was no more magic from the baby while we traveled. It slept. It cried. It pooped. It didn't seem all that special to me. I was beginning to wonder if the magic had really come from the goat after all.

As the evening wore on, the last of the rain clouds floated away, and the stars and moon were shining overhead. I could see the lights of a city in the distance. I knew from studying the map that it would be the capital city of the kingdom of Kaloya. It was there we'd find our princess and plot to overthrow the kingdom. Cresting a hill, we caught sight of the city gates. I knew it wouldn't be long before they were closed. We picked up our pace.

“Okay,” I said. “The plan is to go in there, find the palace, kidnap the nearest princess, and get out again without being discovered.”

“Uh, Rune? How exactly are we going to do that?” Jez asked.

“No idea.”

“And what about Cappy and the baby and … uh … the goat? We can't take them into the city,” Jez said.

Cappy was crooning to the sleeping infant. He hadn't set it down since the night before when he'd first picked it up … except for diaper changes.

“Good point,” I said. “We need to stash them somewhere until we get back.”

Jezebel, Cappy, and I scouted around the outskirts of the city until we found an abandoned barn. It had been partially destroyed by a fire, but half of it was still standing. Plus there was hay and a stream nearby, so Cappy and the baby could sleep and drink … and wash out diaper poop.

“Cappy no want Runey to go,” Cappy said, pouting again.

“Look here, Cappy. We … uh … need you to watch out for the baby while we're gone, okay? You're in charge.”

“In charge?” Cappy asked. At first he looked confused, then a slow smile spread across his gargoyle face. “Cappy the boss!” he said.

“Sure, Cappy. Just stay out of sight and take care of the baby. If we don't come back in a few days, take the baby back to the forest and find the Zâne … the pretty flying girlies, remember? They'll help you.”

Cappy nodded frantically. His tongue lolled like Wolf Junior's and it reminded me of something. Cappy's barn had a clear view of the moonlit road and the city gates.

“One more thing, Cappy. Watch the gates,” I said, pointing to be sure he understood. “If you see a wolf, a
doggy
, bring him back here to the barn and tell him Rune and Jezebel are Plotting inside. He'll be dressed like a person, Cappy—dressed like us, okay?” I thought I should clarify. I didn't want to come back to a barn full of German shepherds and poodles. “Can you do that, Cappy?”

“Doggy!” he said. I had to assume that meant
yes
.

Jez and I left Cappy with some dried meat and made our way to the city gates just as they were about to close for the night. We did not see the other three figures who climbed stealthily over the city wall and followed close behind us.