Up and Down the Scratchy Mountains Read online

  The squirrel ran off.

  So Lucy picked up her pail and walked to the blackberry patch alone, where she stuffed herself until her mouth was purple. She rolled in the sun-warmed grass and kicked through the burbling stream, but it was very quiet without Wynston. At the end of the day, she sat on a hill to watch the sun set behind the castle. Then she brushed off her skirts and walked down the hill with her pail, heavy and brimming with dark berries. She left it on the steps of the castle and went home for supper, where Sally and Papa were waiting patiently.

  But when she sat down at the table, Lucy just pushed a mound of beans around her plate noisily and grumped.

  “Lucy!” said her papa firmly. He covered her little hand with his own hand. It felt rough, lined with the hard work of milking. “That’s not how we eat our supper, is it? What a terrible noise! Don’t you have any manners at all?”

  “Hmph!” Lucy hmphed at her papa. “I don’t suppose I do. And I don’t suppose it really matters.”

  She continued to scrape at her beans. Then she stuck out her tongue at Sally and threw her spoon on the floor. She didn’t know what had come over her. She could feel the grumpiness taking control of her hands. She knew she was being dreadful but couldn’t stop.

  “Lucy!” Her father’s stern voice grew sterner. “You are now excused from the table. And I don’t want to hear a peep out of you until the end of dinner.”

  “I don’t care,” snarked Lucy, pushing back her chair so that it made a loud scrreeeeeech on the floor. “I don’t want to talk to you anyway. So there.”

  “And no singing either,” her father said coldly. “And no writing in your diary.”

  “Oh, that’s just perfect,” answered Lucy tartly. “You’re silent all day long, and now I have to be silent too.”

  “What?” Lucy’s father was confused.

  “You won’t talk about things, and now I can’t either.” She stomped from the room.

  “What was that all about?” Lucy heard her papa asking Sally in a bewildered tone. Lucy went to bed in her clothes. She sprawled angrily on the quilt and stared at the ceiling for hours. She knew she’d made a fuss for no reason, but she was too grumpy to feel bad about it.

  The next morning Sally and Lucy walked to the market as usual, but Lucy was still in a bad mood. She sucked intently on a ringlet of her hair as she stomped her feet to town.

  Sally looked at the wet, slimy strand of hair in her sister’s hand and frowned. “You know, Lucy, that really isn’t very becoming.” Sally never sucked her hair. Sally’s skirts were always crisp and clean, and her shining brown locks were always tucked neatly into a headband that perfectly matched her shoes.

  Lucy paused for a second as though listening to Sally, but then she asked a question, a big question. “Sally, what do you think happened to Mama?”

  There was a long silence before Sally spoke. When she did, it was in a calm, careful voice.

  “You know I don’t have an answer for that, Lucy. Papa doesn’t talk about it, so how could I know?”

  “But shouldn’t you…I mean, we…wonder? I mean, wouldn’t you like to know?”

  Sally sighed. “Some things are like that, Lucy. I don’t know how the morning glories know to close at night. I don’t know why cream rises in the milk pail. There are a lot of things I don’t know. That’s just how life is.”

  “But don’t you miss her?”

  Sally sighed even more deeply. “How can I miss what I barely remember?”

  “Well, I miss her, even though I don’t remember her at all. I miss all the things she would have done with me and all the things we would have talked about. I feel like a puzzle with missing pieces.”

  Sally squirmed uncomfortably and shook her head. “It’s better not to talk about it.”

  “Why?”

  “It just is. It’s easier not to think about it.”

  “Not for me.”

  “If Papa wanted us to know, he’d tell us. And if he doesn’t want to talk about it, why should we?”

  “But that’s just the problem…. Nobody wants to talk about it,” said Lucy. Sally picked up her stride and moved quickly down the path, away from her sister and the difficult question.

  Lucy felt frustrated. She knew Sally and she were different kinds of people, but without Wynston to talk to, Sally was all she had. Lucy had always spent so much time with the prince, she’d never bothered to make friends with any of the girls at school. She’d always thought they were silly, fussy, and too tidy, like Sally. But now, for the first time, she thought maybe this had been a mistake. Still, there was nothing she could do about it today. Oh, why didn’t Sally want to know about Mama? Why didn’t Sally feel the mystery, the longing she felt?

  Lucy wanted to mull the subject over for a little longer, but already Sally was far ahead. So Lucy had to give up thinking thoughts and run to catch up. A minute later, walking in stride with Sally again, she returned to sucking on her hair.

  Suddenly Sally whirled around and said in an unusually loud un-Sally-ish voice, “You really shouldn’t do that, you know. Sucking on your hair is germy and icky and ew. I swear, I don’t know how Wynston puts up with you all the time!”

  At that, Lucy stopped sucking on her hair long enough to set down her basket. “Geez. How come you’re so mad? And what made you say that about Wynston?” Lucy demanded.

  “No reason,” quickly replied Sally, who was never loud for long. “I was just feeling angry. Sorry. I didn’t mean to lose my temper.”

  “That’s okay, but seriously, what made you mention Wynston?”

  “I don’t know. What’s the big deal about Wynston?”

  “No big deal,” said Lucy, looking at Sally carefully.

  “You’re ridiculous,” said Sally as she tossed her perfect head perfectly. So Lucy explained, a bit.

  “I’m feeling a little…odd…about Wynston. He stood me up,” she said.

  But Sally was no help. “Oh, pooh. Likely he was off at a lesson, learning to groom his father’s ferns or some such silliness.”

  She continued on her way, and Lucy stared after her. “Come on!” called Sally over her shoulder. “We’ll be late for market.” Sally hated to be late for anything, even her chores.

  But Lucy didn’t care. She left her basket where it was and started the other way down the path. She’d had a thought! She finally knew whom she could talk to about Wynston…someone who might be able to help her understand.

  She hurtled down the path and turned left at the fork in the road that led to the royal estate. She pattered over the moat bridge and up the stone steps of the castle. Then she rang the huge attendance bell and went to wait in the Great Hall for the king to arrive.

  She sat on a stiff stone chair big enough for a gigantic giant. The hall was cold and empty, so Lucy whispered into the huge room, “Wynston?” But the room ate her voice, so she spent a few minutes craning her neck and peering at the enormous map that hung above her head, a map of the Bewilderness. Finally she turned herself around to face the wall behind her. She perched on her knees to get a better look.

  Just above her left shoulder she found Thistle, with the castle at its center. And just above Thistle she could make out the dark, treacherous peaks of the Scratchy Mountains, dotted with cliffs and crags. They stretched to the very top of the map, and seemed impassible. But the first mountain was a little different, backlit with sunbeams and encircled by a bright blue river. It looked…fascinating.

  …she spent a few minutes peering at the enormous map…

  But staring at the old map, however beguiling, was cold comfort in the Great Hall. So Lucy turned back around in her seat, away from the map, and tried her usual cheer-up trick. She sang a song, and she swung her legs as she sang:

  Oh, the larks and the rain and the little bitty bees,

  all sniffle and snuffle in the tall, tall trees.

  They much prefer to be down with the roses,

  on the low, low branches near the big trees’ to
eses.

  Lucy’s voice was small and clear, and it echoed in the room, scaring her a little. Just then King Desmond entered. He was wiping his shirt with a handkerchief and muttering, “My, my goodness, and gravy to boot—” He hurried over to Lucy.

  She was sitting so high that the king’s nose was just level with her bare swinging feet. “Hello, Lucy. I’m afraid I’m in something of a muddle today. Not much time to spare, and I seem to have gotten a dribble on my best shirt. Cloth of gold—oh my! Perhaps you could come back on Thursday? Thursday is a splendid day for visiting. Masha makes brownies….”

  Lucy shook her curls. “No, King Desmond. I need to talk to you now. It’s just—well, I always meet Wynston on Sunday mornings for our usual scamper. Then yesterday he didn’t come down, and Masha said he was too busy. But what I want to ask you is…is Wynston mad at me? I thought you might know.” She looked down at the king from her high perch and waited for an answer.

  “Maybe he forgot,” offered the king, picking at the gravy on his shirt.

  “But we always meet on Sunday. Every Sunday since we were five years old! I don’t see how he could possibly forget.” Lucy shook her head. “He must be mad at me.”

  “Oh, Lucy, my girl. He isn’t angry so far as I know, but—” The king sighed. “How shall I say this?” He leaned against the giant chair. “Lucy, we are all very fond of you, but the time has come for Wynston to turn his mind to matters of state and circumstance, to ruby-shining and princess-finding and the like.”

  “Princess-finding?” echoed Lucy and the Great Hall.

  “Yes, we rather need to find him a suitable princess. That takes a lot of time, since suitable princesses are scarce these days, and most of them are silly girls with too much hair who take endless dancing lessons and long naps.”

  “But I don’t understand why he needs a princess to begin with.”

  “Well, a king must have a queen. That’s the way it goes.” When he said the word queen, the king looked sadly across the throne room at a portrait on the wall. An oil painting of a thin woman with an extraordinary amount of hair hung in a heavy gilded frame. “It’s a sad thing, a king without a queen.” He sighed. “I miss Germantrude every single day…since I lost her.”

  “Yes, it’s very sad and all, and I’m sorry for your loss, of course, but you do all right,” said Lucy. “You seem to be just fine without a queen.”

  “Oh, but my child, I’m not. It isn’t the same, sitting on that high throne by myself. And while I’m extremely lucky to have my sister around to fill in at luncheons and other queenly occasions…it isn’t the same.” He walked to the painting and ran his finger along the frame.

  “No, I suppose not,” answered Lucy, who didn’t think much of Lavinia, the king’s sister. Lavinia was always trying to organize Lucy’s curls. And when she wasn’t, she was mostly napping or eating cream puffs.

  She gave the king a minute before she interrupted. “So what’s the big deal, then? Wynston needs a queen, and you’ll find him one. What’s so hard about that?”

  The king woke from his reverie and stepped away from his beloved Germantrude. “Ah—it’s not so easy. It takes a lot of time, as I said. So I’m guessing that while you were waiting for him yesterday, he was studying his lessons or going through the directory.”

  “The directory?”

  “The directory of suitable hands, of course! It’s a lot of reading, and you have to pay careful attention, because the writing is very small and the pictures aren’t always exactly accurate.”

  “Pictures?”

  “Yes, pictures of all the hands.”

  “Hands?”

  “Hands in marriage, of course.” The king sighed again. “I forget how little common people know about royal matters of state. You’ve heard of asking for a girl’s hand in marriage?”

  “Of course.”

  “You can tell a lot about a girl, you know, simply by looking at her hands.”

  “Oh,” said Lucy, trying not to glance at her own chewed fingernails and grubby palms. “I see.”

  “Good!” The king was pleased.

  “But if it’s such a lot of work, couldn’t I just be his suitable princess?”

  “How sweet,” chuckled the king. “You long to be the princess of Thistle? To wear a crown of gold? To marry my noble son?”

  Lucy wrinkled her nose in a funny way. “Not especially,” she replied. “I’m rather fond of being just who I am, but I’m not pleased at missing romps with my best friend because he has to curtsy with a bunch of snippy-nosed twit-nits with yellow hair and tight shoes!”

  The king crossed his arms. “Harumph! They don’t all have yellow hair. And just as Wynston has learned to be a king by watching me, so a suitable princess will have learned to be a queen by watching her royal mother. That’s how it works.”

  “But!” protested Lucy.

  “I’m sure your mother taught you many wonderful things, but she wasn’t a queen, now, was she?”

  Lucy looked at her feet and mumbled angrily, “I wouldn’t know what she was. Nobody tells me anything.” She looked up. “But I’m a quick learner. And if I were his princess, Wynston wouldn’t have to miss the blackberry patch on Sundays. It only makes sense.”

  At this the king laughed loudly, with a snort. “Oh, Lucy, you’re such a child. You have to understand that there are ancient rules regarding these royal concerns. You can’t be a princess simply because you and Wynston get along, or because you want to go berry picking, or because you’d enjoy each other’s company, have pleasant lives, and rule the kingdom wisely and happily. Suitable isn’t about pleasant or happy or fun. Suitable takes years of heavy learning and generations of careful breeding. And anyway, there’s a law.”

  “A law?” Lucy asked. “A law against me?”

  “Not exactly,” answered the king. “Not a law against you as a person. Just a law against you ever, ever, ever living in this castle.” Then he struck an odd pose, planted one hand on his velveted hip, pointed the index finger of his other hand in the air, and recited carefully: “By royal decree during the reign of Osbaldo the Humble, thirty-first king of Thistle, in the year of the great winds: Only true nobility may reside within the gracious walls of the House of Thistle. So are the walls preserved.”

  Then he lowered his hand and turned to look at Lucy. “And you, I’m afraid, are just not noble, and therefore not a suitable match for Wynston. Nope. There’s nothing we can do about it. You’re common, my dear, no matter how sweet you happen to be.”

  Lucy didn’t have a response for that.

  “So you see, it will be a long while before Wynston can go for a walk with you. And once he’s found his princess, he’ll be occupied with murmuring sweet nothings and helping his lady wind her wool. Maybe you’d do well to find a new best friend. Besides, you and Wynston argue a great deal, anyway, don’t you?” The king shook his head.

  Lucy slipped down from the big chair and faced the king with her hands on her hips. “Well, even if he is busy finding a stupid princess, that’s no excuse for missing an appointment in the berry patch. That’s terribly rude!”

  “Perhaps, but in any case, I’ve got to do something about this gravy.” The king licked his shirt and whispered to himself, “Most definitely prickly-prune gravy—whatever was I thinking?”

  Lucy left the hall and found her way out into the sunlight. She had a lump in her throat, but no idea why it was there. Why did it matter so much that Wynston had forgotten her this once? She forgot things all the time. She told herself there’d always be next weekend, or the weekend after that. But for the first time, she couldn’t be certain about Wynston. And if she couldn’t be certain of Wynston, what could she be sure of?

  Lucy felt confused. She didn’t know whether to be angry or sad, and she didn’t like either option. They seemed equally icky.

  She walked home, kicking a pebble and muttering, “Suitable…shmootable…flootable.” She thought, I wonder what my mother would have to say abou
t that!

  After a little ways, Lucy came to one of the pastures where her father led his cattle to graze. She stopped to scratch Verbena, the oldest and gentlest cow in the herd, on the nose with a stick. “Hey, Verbena…here, girl.”

  Verbena ambled over, followed by her daughter, Rosebud, a wily red animal. Rosebud herself had given birth to her first calf that spring, but the poor little thing had died only moments after. Ever since then, the young cow had been a bit funny in the head and more than a little wild, which endeared her to Lucy but no one else. As Verbena neared the fence, Rosebud split off and sprinted over to bury her nose in a gopher hole. Verbena mooooed loudly at her daughter, but Rosebud paid no mind. Verbena mooed again, and just then, Rosebud yelped as much as a cow can yelp—“Mooo-yelp!”—and pulled her nose fast out of the gopher hole. It was clear she’d gotten a nip.

  “See, you should listen to Verbena,” lectured Lucy. “You’re lucky to have a good mama cow to teach you things. And don’t you forget it!” She gave Verbena an affectionate scratch and a sympathetic gaze before she turned and continued on her way home.

  When Lucy got back to the dairy, Sally was making soup and grumbling. She seemed more than a little angry at Lucy for deserting her on the way to market, so Lucy apologized and helped her chop the carrots and the celery. She rolled out fat noodles and minced garlic, and then she stood over the pot, stirring the soup and thinking more quietly than usual.

  Then suddenly, for the second time in as many days, she felt two tears making their way down her cheeks. But this time she couldn’t stop them. She made absolutely certain-sure that nobody saw her crying, but nevertheless, her tears fell into the good thick stew, so that her father complained that night, “More care with the salt next time. This tastes like it was made from seawater.”

  Sally said nothing, but Lucy wriggled uncomfortably in her chair at dinner. What is wrong with me? she wondered as she mopped up the salty soup with a hunk of brown bread. I never used to cry like this. Never! Only ninnies cry.