Free Ozark Trilogy 1: Twelve Fair Kingdoms by Suzette Haden Elgin Page B

mighty beat up before it became available. I was going to have a good night’s work ahead of me cleaning up all this mess, and maybe longer. I looked like something blown through a door with rusty nails in it, and most assuredly my appearance was not anything that would impress the Airys if they could see me now. Or before tomorrow morning, I rather expected.
    “Botheration,” I said, and hollered for Sterling one more time. She turned up at once, naturally, now that I didn’t need her to save my life, and looked at me with the most Mulish distaste.
    “Don’t like my smell, do you?” I muttered. I didn’t blame her; I didn’t like it either. “Let’s get back to the water,” I said, “and I’ll do something about it.”
    I didn’t know the coordinates, or even the general direction, and I was too tired and too weak to SNAP even if I had known them. So I just followed her tail. I could count on her to take me back to where we’d landed, since she wouldn’t be enjoying all these brambles and brush any more than I was. I wanted water; and the medicines in my emergency kit, and the denims I’d been about to put on when this adventure—
    I stopped short, right there. I stopped, battered as I was, and the elaborateness with which I blistered the air all around me impressed even Sterling; her ears went flat back against her head.
    “And plenty of adventures as you go along. That’s required! ” she’d said, had dear old Granny Golightly, and I’d ignored her and gone right on talking without so much as an acknowledgment that I’d heard her mention the matter. Nor had I thought of it since. If I hadn’t been so young I’d of thought I was getting old.
    This changed things.
    Sterling brayed at me, and I hushed her.
    “Wait a minute now,” I said. “Let me think.”
     
    There were but two possible readings. One, this had been an accident, no more, and my simplest course was to heal my wounds and settle and furbish myself to appear at Castle Airy as if I’d had no hair disturbed on my head since I flew out from Castle Clark. Two —this was Granny Golightly’s doing—and she had an amazing confidence in my abilities if it was, or an outright dislike for me—and I should somehow or other contrive to have myself rescued by somebody else ... or whatever. Clear things up just enough to stand it, maybe, throw myself over the Mule’s back at the proper time, and straggle into Castle Airy a victim just short of death.
    Foof. I didn’t know what to do. From Granny Golightly’s perspective I’d been getting off easy; two Castles stopped at already, and not one adventure to show for my trouble yet— hardly the way that things were supposed to be laid out. Under the terms of the Constraints set on a Quest, its success was directly proportional to the number and the severity of the adventures encountered along the way, and Golightly might well have felt she had a duty to support me more than I might of cared to be supported. And if Granny’s story explaining my by-passing Castle Smith was a cavecat mauling, and I showed up unmarked and spoiled it—there’d be trouble. But how was I to know?
    Un til Sterling and I made it out onto the bank of the creek again, me fretting all the way and her whuffling, and there, in the absolute middle of nowhere, naked and alone out on a bare gray boulder, sat a pale blue squawker egg. No nest, no squawker, no coop. No farmer. Just the egg. Granny Golightly was mean, but she wasn’t careless; the question was neatly settled, and a few more points to her. I wondered just how far that one’s range extended?
    Well, it was dramatic, I’ll say that for it. There I was at the gates of Airy before the eyes of their greeting party, clinging to Sterling’s mane with one poor little gloved hand, my gorgeous velvets sodden with blood and my hair hanging loose below my waist in a tangle of brambles and weeds and dirt. I chose a spot that looked reasonably soft, pulled up the Mule