The Dark and Forbidding Land Read online

  “Watch your mouth buddy!” Graham was at Senta’s side. “I’ll give you what for!”

  “Come on children.” Mr. Fonstan, stepping around the Freedonain, took the children by their shoulders and guided them past him. “Let’s not bother Mr. Streck anymore.”

  Streck went back to looking around, while Mr. Fonstan led the children down the road toward Town Square. Graham kept turning to look over his shoulder at Streck. When he started to slow a bit, Mr. Fonstan pulled him along.

  “Don’t go looking for trouble, lad,” he said. “I don’t like the look of that one and it ain’t just because he’s foreigner.”

  They had traveled more than halfway from Zurfina’s tower to the square before encountering the utahraptors, so it was only a short walk to complete the trip. Mr. Fonstan’s long legs made up for the fact that he had no snowshoes. While the snow continued to drop, now the wind whipped up to toss it into little spirals in the air. Mr. Fonstan left them at the corner of the almost completed bakery building.

  “Tell your Da, I’ll see him tomorrow night for a pint and darts as usual,” he said before he left.

  “Right-o,” replied Graham, and then turned to look at Senta. “What?”

  “I was just about to get that Freedonian to show me some of his stuff before you butted in. I wanted to see how strong of a wizard he was.”

  “But you didn’t even know that he was a wizard.”

  “So you were listening in on my conversation? Do you think I could live with Zurfina for almost two whole years and not know every magic symbol in the world?”

  The boy looked at his feet. “I was just trying to be… you know… a gentleman and all.”

  “My hero,” said Senta dryly. “Anyway. How much did you talk Mr. Darwin out of?”

  “Three marks. That’s one and fifty p for each of us.”

  Senta didn’t point out that it was she that was really responsible for the creature’s demise. After all, Graham had done his best. And she felt warm inside when she remembered the moment, as the great beasts prepared to charge, that he told her to stand behind him.

  “What do you want to do with the money?” she asked.

  “Let’s go get some soda water and pfennig candy,” he grinned, and then frowned. “Hey, what’s with your eyebrows?”

  Chapter Six: Yuah and Cissy

  Cissy was getting quite used to her new role. The work she did, while not physically demanding, was at least varied enough to keep her attention. She enjoyed watching the humans and learning about their strange activities. She enjoyed earning many copper bits and spending some of them to buy things. She liked the human houses, especially now with four feet of snow on the ground outside and more coming down all the time. Unused rooms in the big house could become as drafty as the huts in lizzie villages, but there were so many fireplaces constantly burning that it was easy to find a place to warm up. And her own place, in the room she now shared with four other females, in the back of the motorshed, was kept toasty warm in the evening.

  “Pay attention Cissy,” said Mrs. Dechantagne.

  Cissy was lacing up the back of the strange undergarment that squeezed the human woman’s waist. Cissy now knew Mrs. Dechantagne’s name, and indeed the names of the other members of the household, though the intricacies of their familial connections still baffled her. Nor could she pronounce most of the names, but fortunately speech on her part was seldom needed. She liked Mrs. Dechantagne almost as much as she liked Mrs. Colbshallow. Neither woman hit the lizzies and Mrs. Dechantagne didn’t yell at them overmuch. While Mrs. Colbshallow did on occasion raise her voice, she alone among the humans had learned the lizzie language, and offered affection toward the lizzies.

  Cissy found herself starting to think in Brech, rather than her native language. She had learned so many words for things that there were no words for among the lizzies. She had stopped thinking of her race as “the people” and now just thought of them as lizzies, and more often than not, when she thought of herself, the name Cissy came to mind rather than Ssissiatok.

  She pulled the corset strings tightly through they eyelets and pulled down on them, locking them into position, so that she could then tie them into a knot. Once that was done, Mrs. Dechantagne turned around to examine her work in the cheval glass.

  “Yes, that’s fine. Now help me into the dress.”

  Cissy was fascinated by the ornate dresses that the human females wore, and this dress was no exception. It was the color of an angry sunset and was made of enough material to have clothed a dozen men and women. Covered with coral roses and pink bows, it had to be carefully held so that Mrs. Dechantagne could step into it. Then it was fastened up the back with more than forty tiny buttons, which Cissy could barely manipulate even with a buttonhook in her clawed fingers. There was no way that the woman could have put it on by herself and there was no way that she would be able to get out of it either. Of course Cissy had her own skirt, but it was just a wide piece of material wrapped around her above the tail, a mere homage to the dresses worn by the human women of the house.

  Once Mrs. Dechantagne was in her dress, Cissy had to kneel down to put the woman’s shoes on her feet, using the same buttonhook to slip the twenty-four buttons on each shoe into their correct spot. Before she could stand up she heard a shrieking sound from the doorway to the right. She turned to see elderly Mrs. Godwin leaning against the doorframe with her hand on her breast.

  “Are you alright Mrs. Godwin?” asked Mrs. Dechantagne.

  “I thought for a moment you were being attacked… by an alligator.”

  “Did you forget your glasses again, Mrs. G?”

  “Of course I didn’t. I have them… oh…” Mrs. Godwin felt her face, and not finding any glasses there, turned and wandered off down the hallway.

  “You do rather look like an alligator,” said the young woman, looking down at Cissy.

  “Alligator?”

  “Yes. Well, I’ve never seen one in real life. Just in books. Um, they say you have crocodiles that are very similar. Do you know crocodiles?”

  Cissy shook her head.

  “Oh well. Get up off the floor. I’m done with you for now. Go down and see what Mrs. Colbshallow has for you.”

  Leaving the bedroom and walking down the staircase, Cissy looked into the kitchen to find Mrs. Colbshallow supervising the lunch preparations. Shoss and Clegg were washing and cutting vegetables while Sill was arranging a few snow flowers in a vase. Kheesie stepped into the room just behind Cissy.

  “Did you finish helping Mrs. Dechantagne get dressed?” asked Mrs. Colbshallow.

  “Yes sss…” Cissy hissed mirthfully. Though she had understood everything the woman had said, not many would have, since about every other word was in the lizzie language. She had in fact not said “Mrs. Dechantagne”, but had used the term the lizzies in the house had for her, which roughly translated to “the thin white and brown one”.

  “And you Kheesie? Is Iolana down for her nap?”

  “Yes,” said Kheesie, then turning to Cissy, hissed under her breath. “Finally. It simply refuses to sleep.”

  “She,” corrected Cissy.

  “Very good,” said Mrs. Colbshallow. “You two are free for now. Staff lunch is in two hours time. Come see me afterwards.”

  The lizzies were used to eating just once each day, but Mrs. Colbshallow insisted that they sit down to dine three times, each immediately after the three biggest meals of the humans. Cissy made her way out the back door and across the snow-covered yard to her room in the back of the motor shed. Kheesie followed. Once they were inside, they both stretched out on their sleeping mats, lying flat on their stomachs, their noses pointed toward one another.

  “I saw Tattasserott walking by on the road in front of the big house,” said Kheesie.

  “What was he doing?” wondered Cissy. “Has he got a job here now?”

  “You know he doesn’t have a job. He’s Ssterrost’s kinsman.”

  “He can’t be in
the town unless he has a job. The soft-skins don’t allow us here without an identification bracelet.”

  “He bought one or he took it from someone. I’ve seen a dozen lizzies around town with identification bracelets that belong to someone else. The soft-skins can’t tell us apart. He’s here to get the copper bits for Ssterrost.”

  “I don’t care why he’s here,” said Cissy, lifting her nose off the floor. “He won’t come here. He’ll be too afraid to come here.”

  “No, he won’t come here,” agreed Kheesie. “But we all leave sometime. We go in to town. We all have to do errands. He can find us away from the house sometime.”

  Just then Tisson stuck his snout inside the door. “Cissy. The thin white and brown one wants you again. You have to walk to the store with her.”

  Cissy got up; ignoring the knowing look that Kheesie gave her. She found Mrs. Dechantagne, her dress now covered with a large furry coat, her head topped by a wide-brimmed hat, and her hands held together in a furry muff, waiting in the foyer. Mrs. Godwin was speaking to her.

  “You’ll catch your death of cold before you reach the square. Dresses like that were not meant for tramping along on snow-covered roadways.”

  “If there was some other means of transportation available, I would gladly take it,” replied Mrs. Dechantagne. “There are no steam carriages. We don’t have a trolley.”

  “Maybe you should just stay home then.”

  “I can’t stay home. Mrs. Bratihn is finally in her shop and ready to take measurements.”

  “Didn’t you have her take your measurements just the other day?” wondered Mrs. Godwin.

  “That was at her house. I need to have my measurements taken in the shop.”

  “I suppose you’ll do what you want,” said Mrs. Godwin, throwing up her hands and walking away. “Might as well order a dress to replace this one, since it will be ruined. Of course you’ll probably catch your death…”

  “I want you to accompany me to the Town Square,” said Mrs. Dechantagne to Cissy.

  Cissy nodded.

  “I… I’m afraid to go by myself. The deinonychus… and the velociraptors…”

  “The feathered runners,” said Cissy, forgetting for a moment that the woman couldn’t understand her language. She nodded again to indicate her own understanding. Velociraptors were small, knee high to a lizardman. They presented no threat to one of her people. They seldom attacked even a lone human, unless he was injured. The deinonychus were larger and a flock would go after a human, or even three or four humans if they were feeling particularly aggressive. Even they were cautious around the lizzies though. The lizzies were not soft like the humans, and they didn’t have tiny, useless mouths either. Two clawed hands. A large mouth full of cone-shaped teeth. A tail. Of course even a single utahraptor would as happily attack a lizzie as a human and there wasn’t much to do about that but to run.

  “Do you want a coat?” asked Mrs. Dechantagne.

  Cissy shook her head no. They exited the front door and made their way across the yard to the road. The snow was still coming down, and though the road had finally been salted by a lizzie work crew, several inches of new accumulation had once again covered it.

  Mrs. Dechantagne removed one hand from her muff and pulled the furry collar of her coat up around her ears.

  * * * * *

  Yuah removed one hand from her muff and pulled the furry collar of her coat up around her ears. She walked as swiftly as was practical down the road, the hem of her dress leaving a wide brush pattern in the soft snow, with Cissy following about six feet behind her and slightly to her right. Watching the edge of the forests for any frightening Birmisian beasts, she occasionally glanced back at the lizzie maid, to find her looking back with her yellow eyes. Yuah wasn’t sure if she was staring at her the whole time, or just looked at her when she made to turn around. Finally she couldn’t take it anymore. She stopped and pointed to the ground next to her.

  “You walk here.”

  The lizzie stopped for a moment, rolled her eyes around, then stepped forward to the indicated spot.

  “You will walk next to me on this trip. That way we can look for dangers.”

  “Yes,” agreed Cissy.

  Town square wasn’t too awfully far from the Dechantagne home and it wasn’t long before they arrived. Though the skin of her cheeks smarted and she could feel the weight of her wet dress hem, Yuah was pleased to note that she had not been unduly discomforted by the trek. She made a beeline for the dress shop, the bell mounted above the door ringing as she entered.

  “Don’t just stand in the doorway!” shouted Mrs. Luebking. “In or out!”

  Yuah was startled at being spoken to in such a way until she realized that Mrs. Luebking was talking to Cissy, who had followed her in.

  “Yes,” said Yuah. “In or out.”

  Cissy turned to guide her long tail into the shop, and then allowed the door to close.

  “Well good day Yuah,” said Mrs. Leubking, stepping forward to offer a great hug. “Or must I call you Mrs. D now.”

  “Oh please don’t.”

  “Married life certainly suits you. I can see a glow around you already.” Mrs. Luebking peered over Yuah’s shoulder. “Is this your lizzie?”

  Turning around, Yuah looked at Cissy, who was bent over examining a green hat covered in flowers and with a large red feather. “Yes. I didn’t want to walk alone.”

  “Quite understandable.” Mrs. Luebking nodded sagely. “And we’ve already had some of them in and out of here, naturally—deliveries and what not. Still, I’d rather not have it hanging around when Mrs. Bratihn comes back. You understand.”

  “Mm.” Yuah did understand. Mr. Bratihn and Terrence had both been blinded while in captivity in the lizzie city-state of Suusthek. She called to her maid. “You may go to the pfennig store. I’ll be done here in just a little bit.”

  The lizzie stared back for a moment, and then opened the door causing the bell to ring once again, and went out. It took so long for the tip of her long tail to leave the shop that Yuah thought the door might close on it. But it didn’t.

  “Now what can Mrs. B and I do for you today?” The question brought Yuah’s attention back to the other woman.

  “I need to be measured.”

  “But you were just measured the other day.”

  Yuah lowered her voice. “That was before I was married. My body is… different now.”

  Mrs. Luebking laughed. “I’m sure you feel different, dear. But your measurements haven’t changed noticeably. Believe me, I have an eye for such things.”

  At that moment, Mrs. Bratihn emerged from the doorway that led to the shop’s back room. She had obviously just come in the back door, because she was dressed in her coat with snowflakes still clinging to it and to her hair.

  “There’s my favorite customer,” she said. “What can I do for you today?”

  * * * * *

  “What can I do for you today?” asked Mr. Parnorsham, the human who ruled the store that sold many wonderful items.

  The shop was empty of any other customers. Mr. Parnorsham stood behind the wooden counter sipping a drink from a glass bottle. Cissy stepped away from the door and walked down the aisle between the counter topped here and there with stacks of canned goods and several racks holding umbrellas, rubber overshoes, and slickers. She stopped in front of the counter opposite the shop proprietor who looked up at her questioningly.

  “Well, what is it that you need?”

  “Ood.”

  “I’m afraid I don’t understand you.”

  “Dlocks.”

  “I don’t follow. Can you describe it?”

  Cissy held up her hands to make a small square with her clawed fingers. Mr. Parnorsham stepped back as if she was about to lunge at him.

  “Scare dlocks.”

  “Why don’t you look around? If you don’t see it, then I’m afraid I just won’t be able to help you.”

  Cissy nodded and then wandered aro
und to the next aisle where the toy counter was located. She knew that what she was looking for had to be somewhere nearby. She had seen many human children with them. The twenty-four inch square display, divided into six inch square compartments, each held a different type of toy—rubber bouncing balls, toy guns, small human shapes made of metal, very tiny tea cups with saucers, and wooden replicas of strange four-legged creatures with yarn tails. Cissy picked one up and tried to imagine what the real animal would look like. Then she spied what she was looking for. Just beyond the toys were mesh bags filled with square wooden blocks. She reached down to pick up one of the bags and just as she did, heard the sound of the bell above the door ringing.

  A truly massive lizardman entered. He was well over seven feet tall, with mottled greyish green skin and a jagged dewlap that had once been mauled by a utahraptor. He immediately saw Cissy and started toward her. Cissy looked around. Mr. Parnorsham, after noting that the visitor was another lizzie, had turned to something occupying him behind his counter.

  “Ssissiatok,” said the newcomer when he had come within arm’s length of her.

  “You are not supposed to be in the softskin town, Tattasserott,” said Cissy.

  “Who are you to tell me where I can and cannot go, Ssissiatok?”

  “My name is Cissy. And I am the governor’s lizzie.”

  “You belong to Ssterrost and Ssterrost wants his share of your copper bits.”

  The bell above the door rang again and the two lizzies stopped talking to look as a human woman entered. Though all of the soft-skins looked strange to lizzie eyes, this woman was by far the strangest that Cissy had ever seen. Instead of the large, colorful dresses that the other females wore, this one was covered in tight-fitting leather, making her look far thinner. Most lizzies might have mistaken her for a male without the large bump on her behind, but Cissy now knew to look for breasts as an indicator of sex. Tattasserott might not have known as much about human anatomy as Cissy did, but he recognized the human anyway.