Chapter 30

While Fynn trained the army, Winnie spied on him from an obscure corner of the courtyard. She called it observing. Since his last threat, she preferred to keep out of his way. On the plus side he had obeyed the queen’s decree to recruit vogan. Thirty scrawny teen toads, dressed in shiny armor, practiced beside the mel-yew. Winnie had requested one hundred recruits.

Under Fynn’s direction, the fighters tramped and clanked through their drills. They shot arrows at short mounds of straw. Winnie wanted him to work with taller, moving targets, but his rigid stance said be silent or die.

In the afternoon they had sword practice. The mel-yew soldiers paired up with their kind, as did the began soldiers. Fynn directed the pairs to parlay and whoosh. The swordsmen obediently jumped forward or retreated on his commands. Their swords clanged and, as much as Winnie hated to admit it, they also whooshed. But honestly, she’d taken fencing in gym class last year and knew parlay and whoosh were not the proper terms.

What if Fynn’s drills weren’t enough? She folded and unfolded her arms in frustration. This was supposed to be her battle too. If only she’d paid better attention during the war lectures in history class. At least then she’d have a few strategies to suggest.

She also wished she could talk to Kip. She hadn’t seen him in two days. Even his lab had been empty when she checked. He needed to man up and apologize to the queen so he could stop hiding and help. For now, at least, all Winnie had was her alleged clever human brain.

The first thing her brain considered was how the lurk in had behaved in her nightmares. They’d never sprayed venom or tried to bite her, so they probably weren’t poisonous. That would be a plus. They’d looked like tarantulas in her dreams but like daddy longlegs in Kip’s crystal ball. Maybe the actual kind didn’t matter. The important thing was they had long legs. How well would those oversized legs keep their balance on a springy ocean? For that matter, how well would the began army do, marching on a rubbery surface? Could hopping help them keep their balance? Maybe if the royal army bounced on the ocean, they could create waves high enough to tip over the spiders.

“Hey, Fynn,” she called out. “How high can your men jump?”

He shook his head and turned away.

She gasped. He did not just turn his back on a general. Just because she watched from the sidelines didn’t mean she wasn’t in charge. She stormed up to him. “You can’t ignore me. The queen said I’m your boss. Why haven’t you taken the bouncy ocean into account? Did you know the enemy is a bunch of spiders? And stop saying parlay and whoosh. It’s parry and thrust. Parry and thrust!”

He turned to his troops. “Gentlemen, let us show the good general how well we’ve been doing with target practice.” He clasped her arm and pulled her to the courtyard wall. “General, if you’ll stand here.” He pressed her back into the stone. “Don’t move.” To the troops, he said, “Men, the object of this exercise is to see how closely you can aim your arrows near the top of the general’s head without actually hitting her.”

“You can’t do that!” She struggled in his grip, but his hold was too strong to escape.

He smirked. “Have no worries, General. I’d say your chances of getting impaled are quite slim. Men, weapons at the ready.”

In a fluid motion the entire army snapped up their bows. Hundreds of arrows pointed at her head.

“Oh, and men,” he added, “if the general runs, it just means she’s testing you to see how well you can aim at a moving target.” He strode back to his position at the end of the front line.

She glanced left to right. Nearby stood a barrel, a trough, a few haystacks, and a palm cart. Perfect covers. But could she reach any of them in time? A palm polishing a nearby carriage gave her an idea. If she couldn’t run to shelter before the arrows started flying, maybe protection could come to her.

“Aim,” Fynn ordered.

“Hey, Pall!” She didn’t think Fynn would let the army fire with a palm in the area.

The ground rumbled from galloping hooves. Fifteen man horses rushed to her. She had no idea so many were in the area. Still, they created a protective barrier. All fifteen clamored at once to know what service they could offer.

“Company, halt,” Fynn shouted over the noise. “Lower your weapons.”

Winnie let out a relieved breath. “Sorry,” she told the throng. “Just need four of you.” Using the four as cover, she marched to the castle entrance. At the doorway she turned to the palum. “Thanks for walking with me. You’re free to go now.”

All four bobbed their heads but followed her inside.

“I’m good. You can go back to what you were doing.” She pointed to the door, then turned away. She’d barely taken a step when hooves clopped behind her. She sighed and looked back. “Guys, for real. You’re dismissed.”

“You called my name,” said the palm in front. “I wish to help.”

“You called my name,” the others joined in.

“You already helped. Thank you. Now I really have to go.” She sprinted away. Fortunately, they didn’t follow. That was when a new battle strategy began to form. She hurried after a passing page and asked for directions to find the queen.

He pointed her to an office where the queen sat, signing decrees. She looked up. “Ah, Windemere. We were just thinking of you.”

Winnie bowed. “I came to ask—”

“First, if we may.” Queen Bogen lowered her quill. She cleared her throat. “About the hunt.” She coughed again. “It might have been a bit rash of us, trying to lose you. We hope you’ll forgive us for that.”

Winnie’s mouth dropped open. She’d never expected an actual apology from the queen. Maybe she wasn’t such a pompous old toad after all. Her pink eyes actually looked remorseful.

Her own eyes widened. Had she just found one of those allies her dad had mentioned in her Ferris wheel dream? She stepped forward with her hand out. “Where I come from, to show no hard feelings, we shake hands. It also means friendship.”

“In the name of friendship and kinship.”

Her hand clasped Winnie’s with a gentle pressure. It felt soft and cool, not warty at all.

“As for our earlier mistake,” the queen said, “we wish to make it up to you.”

For the briefest moment Winnie considered asking the queen to fire Fynn for almost trying to kill her again. Her main reason for coming to the queen’s office, however, took priority. Winnie bowed again. “I do have a request.”

“We shall accommodate you.”

Winnie’s heart fluttered with hope. “Do you think your technicians could build more speakers? Really big ones?”

“They can build whatever we ask. Why would we need them?”

“We could set them up on your ocean, far out to sea, then hide a microphone near the beach. I thought we could…” Here it got tricky. The queen might not do it if she knew what Winnie had in mind. “Scare the lurk in away with loud noises.”

The queen gazed thoughtfully at the ceiling. “Do you mean we’d create sounds that would make our army appear much larger than it is?”

Winnie hadn’t thought of that, but it sounded better than her original lie. “Yes, Your Majesty.”

The queen lowered her gaze from the ceiling. “We are in favor of any tactic that will keep our people from harm. Thank you for your clever suggestion. We shall order it straight away. We’ll also command the builders to assemble a special platform in the brush so that we may oversee the battle. Perhaps we’ll even employ Polo to insult the enemy with his wit.”

“Excellent idea, Your Majesty.” Winnie bowed a third time. “With your permission, I’d like to stand by the microphone.”

“Shouldn’t you be at the front lines, overseeing the battle?”

“Fynn will be with the men. If I’m on the platform, I can tell him what I see.” Winnie crossed her fingers for luck.

After a long pause, the queen said, “Granted.”

“Perfect. Thanks.” Winnie started to leave but turned back. “One more thing. Could you please forgive Kip? We might need his magic if the speaker thing doesn’t work.”

Queen Bogen pressed her lips into a grim line.

“He didn’t mean to freeze your advisors. And they’re unfrozen now.”

“My son’s life depends upon you smiting this enemy. To remove all distractions, the oracle has suggested that the wizard safely remain elsewhere until the war ends.”

“But he knows magic.”

“Not the kind we need. Carry on, my dear. You’ve a war to win.” The queen waved her away.

Winnie hesitated, wondering if the time was right to snitch on Fynn. Would the queen change her mind about Kip if she knew her military advisor’s murderous tendencies were even more distracting? Winnie opened her mouth but closed it again. She was a warrior, not a little kid who tattled. Still, she left the room feeling less confident than she had going in. One of her allies hated her, and she didn’t have Kip’s magic as a backup. She took a deep breath and straightened her shoulders. Warriors never gave up.

Winnie marched to her meeting about the speakers. To her relief, the royal technicians, comprised of both began and mel-yew subjects, accepted her amplifier measurements without question. They even shared how they intended to generate power to the speakers. She didn’t understand any of their technical talk. She just smiled and nodded.

For the next two days, while Fynn continued to train the troops in the courtyard, Winnie oversaw preparations at the impending battle site. She sprinted back and forth between the shoreline, where the mel-yew builders constructed the giant speakers, and the vegetation boundary at the beach where began worked on the viewing platform. Half a dozen palm hauled equipment and supplies to both places and only occasionally got in the way. All the while, a single palm stood on the rubbery ocean, far beyond the flurry of activity.

Winnie wobbled out and stood beside the palm on guard duty. He stared outward through the binoculars. The two stood so far out to sea that sound from the activity behind them barely reached them.

“See anything?” she asked.

“I see the much-far, good General, but no specks.”

“Thank you,” she said. The smelly ocean kept her from breathing deeply in relief, but her muscles relaxed. No specks on the horizon meant they still had time to prepare.

On her way back to solid ground, a crowd of tiny mel-yew workers tried to carry the first speaker over the jelly ocean. She hurried to help them, but that only added to the unsteady ground. They stumbled and swayed so much they almost dropped it.

“Go back. Go back!” the mel-yew foreman shouted. “We need a better base.”

They unsteadily returned to the beach. The mel-yew engineers scratched their bald heads and pondered. A few minutes later they restructured the speaker bases to roll, instead of tipping over. This time, they employed four palm to heft the altered amplifiers onto a flatbed cart. A group of mel-yew rode along as the palm pulled the cart onto the jellied ocean.

“Keep going,” Winnie called from the beach. “I’ll tell you when to stop.”

Every few yards the palm paused and looked to her.

“Farther.” She motioned to them to keep going another two hundred yards. “Right there.” She waved for them to stop and set up the speakers.

Once they returned with the cart, a mel-yew handed her the wireless microphone.

“Testing. Test one, test two.” Her amplified voice blasted from the speakers with so much intensity birds nesting in the bushes shrieked and flapped away.

She turned to the nearest engineer. “Can you make it louder?”

He bowed. “Indeed we can, General.”

She grinned at him. “You guys are awesome.”

With the sound system in place, Winnie moved on to the platform hidden by the edge of the forest. The team leader pounded the last nail into place.

She clambered up the wooden staircase to check it out. Protective railings surrounded the platform reminiscent of the open deck at her old lake house. She shook her head. No time to think about that now.

According to specifications, a throne would come later. An opening between the tree branches gave her a view of the ocean and the beach. She nodded. “Looks good.”

From her vantage point, the speakers stood so far away they looked like dark blobs. She lowered her gaze to the gray beach and imagined the rows and rows of mel-yew and began soldiers. Winnie shuddered and gripped the railing. This wasn’t a game. This was a real war, and as much as she wanted to deny it, she was afraid.

She rode back to the castle in a carriage filled with a boisterous group of mel-yew. They laughed and sang about successfully completing their task. She forced a smile, pretending to celebrate with them.

The carriage rolled to a stop in the courtyard. Before Winnie could disembark, a palm galloped past, shouting, “A speck! A speck! There’s a speck out to sea!”