A Princess of Landover

“I won’t,” she promised. But of course, she already was.

She reached her bedroom sunk in a miasma of gloom and dark thoughts, opened the door, and nearly jumped with fright when a tall, gangly figure seated on the edge of her bed abruptly stood.

“Hello, Mistaya,” said Questor Thews, and held out his hands in greeting.

REVELATIONS

Mistaya gave a small cry of mingled relief and joy and rushed over to her old friend, wrapping her arms about him with such ferocity that she could hear his shocked gasp. She crushed his body against hers, the feel of his bony frame, all the angles and knobs so wonderfully familiar and welcome. Her reaction surprised her, but it didn’t lessen the intensity of her enthusiasm. She had never been so glad to see anyone in her life.

“Mistaya, goodness!” he managed, his voice a bit strangled, but obviously pleased. “Did you miss me so much?”

“I did miss you,” she whispered into his shoulder. “Oh, I’m so glad you’re here!”

The long, thin hands patted her hair comfortingly. “Well, I would have come sooner had I known you were in such distress. Of course, it would have helped if you had told me just where you were.”

“I know, I know. I’m sorry. But I just couldn’t …”

She gave a deep, long sigh, and then she backed away from him far enough that they were eye-to-eye. “How did you find me?”

“It was a guess,” he advised, rather sheepishly. “When we couldn’t find you any other way, Abernathy and I tried to think where the last place was that we would expect you to go. A kind of reverse psychology, I suppose. We put ourselves in your shoes—which isn’t all that easy to do, I might add—and we came up with Libiris. It didn’t make a whole lot of sense, but we were running out of options. So we decided to come here and see if we might possibly be right.”

“Abernathy is here, too?”

“Outside with the G’home Gnomes.” The blue eyes twinkled. “They gave you up, I am afraid. They couldn’t help themselves. They denied everything, but when G’home Gnomes deny everything, it is usually true. I left them in Abernathy’s care and came inside for a look.”

“But how did you manage that? This place is guarded like a fortress!”

“Oh, I know a few tricks about how to get in and out of places.” He took her hands in his own and squeezed them. “Come. Sit down on the bed while we talk. My bones do not allow for prolonged periods of standing in place anymore.”

They sat on the bed, the scarecrow wizard and the young girl to whom he had always been mentor and friend. She kept one arm around him, as if afraid she might lose him. It was uncharacteristic of her to be so clingy; she saw herself as independent and strong, not as a child in need of an adult’s protective presence. But just now, in this time and place, all that seemed unimportant.

“It wasn’t their fault, you know,” she told him. “Poggwydd went with me to grandfather because I made him. I threatened him. I told him that if he didn’t come with me, he’d be blamed for my disappearing because he was the last one to be seen with me.” She felt embarrassed by her admission, but didn’t back away from it. “The truth is, I was afraid to go alone. Shoopdiesel just happened along and stayed because he’s Poggwydd’s friend.”

Questor Thews nodded. “I thought it might be something like that. Their attempts at an explanation suggested as much. They kept insisting that they only did what was necessary to look after you. I guess that included bringing you here, too.”

“No, they didn’t have anything to do with that. That was all because of the cat.”

“Edgewood Dirk?”

She sighed, somehow unsurprised that the wizard knew. “He showed up at Elderew after Grandfather said I would have to go home. He was the one who suggested that nobody would think to look for me at Libiris. He said he’d come with me and hide me with his magic from any other magic that might uncover my presence.” She shrugged. “I don’t know what I was thinking, coming to the one place I said I wouldn’t go. But I came, anyway. It just seemed to be the only thing to do. He was pretty persuasive.”

“Edgewood Dirk can be like that. But you have to be careful of him.”

“I guess so. Once we got here, he disappeared, and I haven’t seen him since. I don’t know where he went.”