Chapter 8

Frogs hate unicorns.

Mr. Squibbles flattened his ears and burrowed into her pocket. Naomi quickly looked over at Yula and saw that she looked alarmed. She waved and moved out of eyesight.

She hunched over her pocket and hissed, “Are you insane? Tavik will kill anyone who tries to sneak in.”

“That will be problematic, but a nighttime departure is still your best option. If you try to leave during the day, someone will notice you’re gone like your maid.” Naomi paced unhappily.

“There has to be another way.”

“We could try lots of different ways. We’d have to because none of them would work.”

She frowned. “Well, if this is the best plan, how are we supposed to accomplish it?”

“We?” he squeaked.

“You know the secret passage, and you know where the witch lives, of course you’re going to guide me. That’s what she sent you to do.” She held her breath waiting for Mr. Squibbles’ response. She needed him to go with her. She didn't know if she could escape if she had to face it alone. Mr. Squibbles appeared to be thinking about his answer. He took a long time. Naomi feared she would go blue waiting.

“Fine,” Mr. Squibbles finally sighed. “I don’t suppose you know how to pick locks do you?”

“No, unfortunately I have always been a fine upstanding citizen.”

“We’ll have to get a key then,” Mr. Squibbles said flicking his whiskers.

“We?”

“Sorry, you will have to get a key. I suspect only Tavik has the one to his chambers. You’ll have to use your feminine charms to distract him and slip it away from him.”

“Yes, I’ll just do that the next time we’re alone together. I’ll bat my eyelashes from behind my blindfold and slip my bound hands right into his pocket.”

“If you really want to get out of here, you’ll figure something out.”

She huffed and wondered if there were more helpful talking animals somewhere in the castle like maybe a hungry cat. The day was getting late. Yula and Naomi gathered their flowers and went back into the castle. Naomi asked what the plans were for dinner, and Yula said dinner had been arranged to be served in her room. Lord Tavik was to dine with one of his vassals that night and would probably sleep at their home. She was relieved by the news, which meant there was no way for her to act upon her and Mr. Squibbles' nonexistent plan; instead she could spend the night actually trying to formulate one. Yula sat with her late into the night. Naomi kept to her own thoughts while Yula did some embroidery.

“You are very quiet, milady,” Yula said from her seat by the fire.

She looked up from her daze and gave the old woman a wan smile. “I’ve got a lot on my mind.”

“Are you bored?”

She played off the question with a shrug. “It doesn’t seem like there’s much for me to do here.”

Yula nodded and stared at her embroidery. “Once Lord Tavik leaves, you'll find something to do.”

“He’s leaving? When?” Maybe she wouldn’t have to worry about creeping through his room while he slept.

“In a few days I suppose. He’ll be done with all the business that required his attention. His primary goal for coming back was to get you situated.”

“Oh, so he just wanted to dump me here and get back to his wars.”

“A soldier camp is no place for a lady.” Naomi snorted. They were no place for anyone. A sick thought popped into her mind.

“Are you leaving with him?”

Yula’s mouth thinned for a moment, and she didn't raise her eyes from her work. “Our lord has not said if he will want me to go and tend him. There are plenty of maids in the castle, all of them younger than me. One of them can tend to you.”

“But you’re who I know. You’re who I trust.” This was terrible. She’d barely gotten a glimpse of these younger maids. Mrs. Boon made sure of that. If Yula left, she’d be alone. Yula’s mouth thinned more.

“I have enjoyed tending you, milady, and I would not be averse to staying here to serve you, but it will be Lord Tavik’s decision.”

“I’ll tell him to let you stay. He can’t expect you to go back. If it’s no place for me, it can’t be a place for you. Let him take Mrs. Boon. She’ll probably fit right in with the soldiers or scare them.”

Yula’s mouth lifted into a tiny smile. She began gathering her things. “It’s late. I'll leave you to rest, and thank you.”

She went over to her and gave her a hug. “We’ll figure something out. I’m not going to let you go easily.”

Once Yula was gone, she turned to go to bed. She was a little sore from her riding lesson but felt a good night’s sleep would make her as good as new.

“Ready?”

She stopped at the edge of her bed and looked down. Mr. Squibbles crawled out from underneath. “Why are you dressed for bed?” he asked.

“Because I was going to bed.”

“No, you’re not. This is the perfect opportunity to get into Tavik’s room. I bet he doesn’t lock it when he’s not in there. He doesn’t keep any papers or other important things in there.”

“You want to leave tonight?”

“We might not get a better chance!”

She looked around her room in apprehension. She hadn't planned on trying anything so soon. She hadn't made any preparations. She wasn't even dressed.

“You said so yourself, it’s near suicide to try and sneak into his room while he’s there. Tonight is our chance,” he reminded her.

“Yula just said that he won't be staying much longer. He’s planning to return to his troops before too long. We could just wait 'til he’s gone for good.”

“Do you really want to wait, or do you want to not do this at all? For someone who wants to find a unicorn to take her away from here, you aren’t acting very eager to start.”

She stared at the small rodent and knew he was right. If she didn’t want to spend another night in this messed up world, she should leave now, not wait around. She had to consider her life back home. What was happening while she was away? What was her family suffering? With her priorities realigned, she went to her wardrobe and began pulling out clothes.

“What should I bring?”

“I don't know.”

“I'll need clothes.”

“Okay, bring clothes.”

“But what should I bring?”

“You just said. Clothes.”

“But what type?”

It was hard to tell, but it looked like he shrugged his shoulders. “Were you really once a wizard?”

“Yes, I was.”

“And what did you wear?”

“I wore a nice red robe.”

“And is that all you ever wore?”

“What else did I need?”

She shook her head and stuffed a wool gown and another set of underclothes into a bag. “Turn around.”

“What? Why?”

“You just said you were once a wizard. I'm not changing in front of you.”

His sigh was loud and clear as he shuffled around. She slipped out of her nightgown and into a simple dress. Once she was ready, she picked up the bag and moved to the door.

She peeked out of her room cautiously. She’d said that there were no guards, but she didn’t want to take any chances. When she saw that no one was in the hallway, she crept out.

“Come on, let’s go,” Mr. Squibbles said as he ran down the passage. She closed the door to her room and stepped quickly to catch up with the mouse. The fact that she was following a mouse no longer seemed surreal.

Her heart was pounding when she arrived at Tavik’s door. They hadn’t heard or seen anyone in their sneaking, but she still feared being discovered. She tried the handle, praying that Mr. Squibbles was right about him not locking it when he wasn’t there. It opened easily. She slipped into the dark chamber and closed the door quietly behind her. She raised her candle with a shaking hand. Her eyes went immediately to the bed. For a second, her eyes saw a form on there, and she had a small heart attack, but the candle flickered and revealed her imagination had made shadows into war lords.

“Where’s the passage?”

“This way,” Mr. Squibbles said and darted off into the darkness.

She squinted and crept further into the room. She finally picked out the mouse beside the fireplace on his hind legs. She moved closer, her eyes darting over the mantle. “What do I press to open it?”

“Do you see that discolored stone?”

She placed her hand upon it and pressed. It didn’t budge. “Now count four stones down and three to the right.”

She was glad it was dim so that Mr. Squibbles hadn’t seen her attempt or her light blush. She followed his directions to the stone and pressed. It didn't budge either. “Nothing’s happening.”

“It’s old. Push harder.”

She leaned into the stone and pushed with all of her weight. It shifted a little but still didn’t budge. “Am I doing something wrong?”

“Obviously, you’re not pushing hard enough.”

She tried harder to push the stone. It just stayed where it was.

“Maybe it needs to be oiled or greased or something,” she huffed as she took a step back.

“Let me see what I can do.” He disappeared through a chink in the wall.

She waited nervously. She'd known this was a bad idea. They were going to get caught and then she would be thrown into a dungeon. She hadn’t been shown any on her tour by Mrs. Boon, but Tavik was sure to have one somewhere in the castle. It probably had chains dangling everywhere, a rack, whips, large beady eyed rats who loved fingers and toes, an iron maiden, thumb screws, a rusty guillotine, and every restraint imaginable. Tavik had already shown a peccadillo for tying her up.

“Mr. Squibbles, hurry up,” she called. She thought she heard muffled swearing through the wall.

Finally, something began to happen. Stones began grinding together and the block she'd been pressing on slid inward. As she began to worry that someone would come to investigate the sounds, the wall began to swing open. As soon as the gap was wide enough, she slipped through. She found Mr. Squibbles waiting for her. He'd gotten dust and cobwebs all over himself while getting the door to work.

“We will not be able to close it. The rope snapped for the main pulley.”

“But they’ll know how we escaped.”

Mr. Squibbles twitched his whiskers. “If you stop worrying and start going, we'll be long gone by the time they discover the secret passage. Now move it!” He took off down the dark passage disappearing quickly. She lingered a moment. She was still indecisive over the whole thing. She spared a thought for Yula and worried that the old woman would come to harm due to her escape. Maybe she should bring the old woman with her?

“Mr. Squibbles, wait!” she called, but the mouse was gone. She thought frantically about what she should do. If she left Yula, she might be punished, but if she was found with Naomi, she would surely be punished. Tavik had not placed a guard on her nor had he seemed to have instructed Yula to watch her. He couldn't punish her for something she hadn't known to do, at least that was how Naomi hoped it would be. She would leave her. The decision made, she felt awful but that was the way it would have to be.

As if karma agreed wholeheartedly that she was doing a bad thing, her candle was snuffed out by a draft with her first step down the tunnel. She thought about attempting to relight it but feared she wouldn't catch up with the mouse as it were. She tossed the candle aside, stepped further into the tunnel, found the far wall and began to follow it. With each step she took, her pace increased until she was running full tilt. She knew she should stop. Her mad dash was foolhardy, but what about any of this was sane, she asked herself. She was following a talking mouse to go see a witch about finding a unicorn. She continued running down the passage to catch up with Mr. Squibbles, but she received no encouraging word that she was anywhere near him.

The passage was pitch black and littered with debris. Stones had crumbled from the wall, and spiders, mice, and other insects had left their trash there as well. Even with her hand on the wall to guide her, she slipped and scraped her hands and knees. She got back up but slowed her pace to a walk, though it didn’t matter because her heart still pounded like she was running.

The darkness was claustrophobic. She had no sense of distance. Cobwebs latched onto her face and made her skin crawl. She had to blow her nose and spit them out. And she could see nothing: Not end to the passage, not the walls or floor, not her hand in front of her face. She began to panic. It was like she was in one of those sensory deprivation tanks. She couldn’t see or hear anything. She hugged the wall. It was all she had.

She called out to Mr. Squibbles a few times but received no response. She began to wonder if the little rodent had abandoned her. Maybe it was all a trick. Maybe he had brought her here as a ploy to get her in trouble. Maybe he was now watching with his beady rodent eyes snickering as she stumbled around in circles. She started thinking of ways to kill mice. She could step on him and crush him under her shoe. The sound of his bones crunching would be very satisfying. She could kill him with a trap. She would bait it with cheese. She could poison him, maybe slip something into his wine. She could lock him in a room full of hungry cats. She could clench him in her fist and squeeze till his ribs collapsed, and his beady little eyes bulged. She could dice him up and make stew. She could drown him in a bucket of water. There were so many ways to kill a mouse. Naomi was sorry she would only be able to use one of them when she got a hold of the little traitor. Where was he? Where was she?

“Mr. Squibbles!”

It probably wasn’t even his real name. Mister, indeed. And what the heck was a squibble?

She stumbled on clutching her anger tight to keep her fear at bay. Thoughts of dead mice danced in her head. She didn’t abandon them until she realized the darkness up ahead was lightening from pitch black to moonlit. She quickened her pace and dashed out of the tunnel into a forested area.

“It took you long enough.”

She whirled around toward the mouse and felt her jaw drop. She had been ready to commit rodent-icide, but she had not figured on there being a witness, a large, snorting, long-legged witness.

“Where did you get the horse?”

“From the stable of course. Now do you want to get up here or gawp at the nice horse for the rest of the night?”

She went up to the horse cautiously. When she reached his head, and let him sniff her hand, she realized it was actually Stomper. She rubbed his forehead and wondered how she was going to manage this. One riding lesson did not a horsewoman make. To her surprise, she realized the horse was bridled and saddled.

“Mr. Squibbles, did you have help?”

He sat between Stomper's ears, clutching strands of the horse's forelock. “What, you don’t think a mouse could saddle and bring a horse out here on his very own?”

“Who helped you?”

“Maybe a poor stable boy, who is more superstitious than wise, thought a ghost of a dead general told him to saddle and ready the horse, and maybe the dead general got the horse to come out here with a little animal speak, and you should thank the dead general.”

“Thank you, General. What are your orders, sir?”

“Get on the horse, Naomi. We’re wasting moonlight.”

She climbed up onto the horse with little grace, but luckily, Stomper was a very patient horse. She sat on his back uncomfortably and fiddled with the reins. Master Geoff had not let her hold them during her lesson. She didn’t know what to do with them.

Mr. Squibbles sighed. She got the feeling he would be doing that a lot during their little adventure. “Nudge the horse gently with your left heel and pull the right rein some to turn him around.”

She did as instructed, and Stomper slowly wheeled around. “Now nudge him again with both heels.” The horse began to trot through the woods.

“Can’t you use more animal speak to tell him what to do? I really have no feel for this,” she suggested. The small animal hunched his shoulders.

“Very well. If I’d known you were this helpless, I would’ve planned this a whole lot differently.”

“What would you have planned?”

“Not to have done this at all.”

They rode in relative silence. The mouse would occasionally chitter something to the horse to guide him, and Naomi would yawn. Dew began to set, and she felt clammy. The night seemed very surreal to her. They traveled through the forest following a dirt trail. The insect noises sounded off key to her, and the animals they would hear would make noises that sounded like wildlife calls put through a synthesizer. Stomper moved sedately, but she knew she would not have covered as much ground on her own. The further they went the more apprehensive she became. The forest grew denser, and the eerie wildlife noises increased. She began to worry about Umbreks.

“How much further?” she asked after they’d traveled for what she judged to be an hour.

The mouse didn’t answer.

“Mr. Squibbles?” She peered at the mouse sitting between Stomper’s ears.

“Um,” the mouse nervously laughed.

“What?”

“Well, you see, the house is around here somewhere…”

“You don’t know WHERE it is?”

His ears flattened. “I knew where it was, but she must’ve moved it.”

“What did she do, make it grow legs and have it walk away?”

“No, that would be silly. She couldn’t have gone far. She likes these woods. We’ll find her. Don’t worry.”

“Don’t worry, he says. We’ll find the magically moving house. It can’t have walked off too far. I hate this place.” She muttered. Stomper snorted in consolation.

“There, that light! It’s her. It has to be. Nobody else would live out here.” Mr. Squibbles said something to Stomper, and the horse sped up to a trot heading toward the light.

She didn’t let herself believe it. She sat stonily and kept her eyes firmly on the house. It could be a woodcutter’s cabin or a hunter’s lodge. She was already formulating a ruse to tell the owners when the house turned out to be some poor family’s home. She would claim to be lost, which was the truth, who had been set upon by Umbreks, several days old truth, trying to find her way back home. She realized she wouldn’t have to lie much at all.

When they reached the house, Mr. Squibbles leaped down from the horse before she could stop him.

“Agatha, get your wrinkly ass out here! I’ve brought her!”

“Mr. Squibbles!” Naomi exclaimed.

If the witch were home, she didn’t want to be hexed before she even reached the doorstep. The door to the cottage swung open, and an old hunched woman stood in the light. She raised a lantern up, and Naomi’s eyes met the dancing eyes of Agatha. Everything that she’d gone through came rushing up in her throat in one word. “You!”

Agatha’s smile widened into a toothy grin. “Welcome to my home.”

“Do you know how much trouble you put me in? I was forced to marry Tavik!”

“That was the plan.”

“Plan? I didn’t agree to any plan!”

“It was better that you didn’t know.”

She slid off Stomper and marched up to the witch. “You better be ready to tell me stuff. Stuff like how I can get home.”

“Come inside, and we’ll discuss it.” She held the door wide. Naomi looked inside and felt like the fly being invited in by the spider but shook off her misgivings and went in. She turned to look at Stomper. She wasn’t sure if she should tie him up or not. Before she could decide whether to go back outside, the door swung shut on its own.

“Have a seat, Naomi.”

The cottage was warm and cozy except for the random animal bones that hung from the ceiling. They added a certain deranged something to the place. Agatha settled down into a chair and motioned for her to take the other.

“So, Mr. Squibbles brought me…” Naomi said unsure of anything else. The mouse in question had darted off into the shadows of the room. Agatha picked up a long pipe and lit it with twig from the fire. She nodded her head as she puffed it.

“Yes, I said I’d send for you.”

“Is he really a mage trapped in mouse form?”

Agatha grinned around the pipe stem. “No, he’s my familiar. He thinks humans will take him more seriously if he tells them that he was once human.”

From the darkness, Mr. Squibbles voice floated out. “It’s because humans are ignorant speciests: Can’t accept that another animal might be as smart as or smarter than you.”

“I think you’re much smarter than me, Mr. Squibbles. So are you two going to help me?” Naomi asked.

To her amazement, Agatha blew out a plume of smoke in a long spiral. “Yes, I’m going to help you. You need a unicorn to get home. I’ll help you get one.”

“How?”

“Let me know one thing first. How committed are you to getting home?”

“Very committed. To the point I should be fitted for a straight jacket.”

The witch obviously didn't understand the reference, but Naomi's tone was convincing enough. “And you're not a virgin?”

She shook her head.

She sat back in her chair. “It would help matters if we had one.”

“I don’t suppose you know any?”

She threw her head back and laughed. “No, not personally. Not many virgins come my way.”

“Wooh, wooh, aiv noe.”

Both women turned in their seats. Mr. Squibbles came out with a piece of bread in his paws and his cheeks puffed full with food.

“Iaa loow fleuar un fis.”

“You do, do you?” Agatha said.

“What did he say?”

“He knows where we can find a virgin.”

“Where?”

“Fwavik.”

“What?” Naomi asked.

“He said Tavik.”

She didn’t understand. “Tavik is holding a virgin?”

“Nwo! Wit is Twavuk.”

“There’s a virgin with Tavik?”

“No, Fwavuk!”

“Huh?”

“My dear, the virgin is Tavik,” Agatha said.

Continue to Chapter 9.