The dog stared up at him. Then its mouth lolled open again, and its tail beat the earth a few times.
"Stout fellow!" Geoffrey tousled its ears and jumped to his feet. "Bide in readiness, then, and thou shalt yet be a stable-dog… An thou wilt, Fess?" With trepidation, he looked up at the horse.
"I would be honored to share my stable with so faithful a companion, Geoffrey—but you understand that the decision must still remain with your parents."
"Oh, surely, Fess! Yet an thou wilt permit him the stable, I do not think Mama will object!"
"Come, then." Cordelia had been watching the whole affair with ill-concealed impatience. "The West awaits."
"Aye! I will come gladly!" Geoffrey turned and strode away, turning back to wave goodbye only twice as he and his brothers and sister moved away down the path with Fess behind them. He didn't even hear Cordelia muttering under her breath, something about a great, smelly, slobbering beast.
Chapter Eight
The forest thinned; the trees became fewer and more slender. The ground began to rise and, as the sun rose to mid-morning, the children found themselves in an upland moor. Wind tossed their hair, and the wide-open view lifted their hearts. "Oh!" Cordelia cried. "I could dance!"
"Please do not," Fess said quickly. Even here, strains of repetitive music rose from rocks all about them.
Magnus looked about, his brow furrowed. "I see no springs or ponds, Fess."
"You will find very few," the robot confirmed. "Open water is rare on a moor. When we do find some, we must fill waterskins."
"And if we do not?"
"Then we shall not turn back," Fess said, with decision, "until we do."
"Do we not chance fate, Fess?"
"With ordinary children, yes. But you can fly; when you begin to grow thirsty, we shall go aloft."
Cordelia swallowed. "I have thirst now."
"That is only because we have been discussing the issue, Cordelia."
"I might flit to the stream we camped by last night," Gregory suggested.
Fess lifted his head. "Of course! I continually fail to correlate the full range of your powers with current circumstances."
"Thou doth mean thou dost ever forget what we can do."
"Not 'forget,'" Fess demurred.
" Tis only that he doth not wish to acknowledge it," Geoffrey muttered to Magnus, but Big Brother shushed him.
Fess affected not to have heard. "Then there is little peril from thirst, since you can fetch water whenever you wish. However, there are bogs, children. Be careful to remain on the path; those patches of soft earth could swallow a child whole."
"Not with thee by us, Fess," Gregory piped.
"Yet Mama would be wroth at so much mud on thy clothes," Cordelia pointed out. "Mind thy steps, brother."
Gregory's lower lip jutted in a pout, but he followed as they set off up the path, two abreast, Geoffrey and Cordelia in the lead, Fess following behind.
They crested the top of a rise and found a huge boulder blocking the path. On top of it glowed a pair of girls' shoes, electric blue.
Cordelia let out a cry of delight and ran to the rocky pedestal. "Oh! They are so beauteous!" She caught up the slippers and held them up in the sunlight. "And so soft."
"Soft?" Gregory asked, wide-eyes. "Are they cloth, sister?"
"Nay, they are leather—but velvet to the touch."
"It is a leather-finish termed suede," Fess explained. "Cordelia! They are not yours!"
"Yet who else's could they be?" Cordelia kicked off her shoes and pushed her toes into the blue slippers. "Surely, if someone left them and went away, they must care not who takes them! And see, they are new from the last!"
"And also from the first." Magnus scowled. "Why do I mistrust them?"
A bass note thrummed especially loudly. Magnus jumped aside, and saw a new rock landing almost where he'd been. "A plague upon these noisy stones!"
"They are a plague." Then Gregory stared at his sister, wounded. "Cordelia! Not thee too!"
Cordelia's feet had begun to step lightly to the music of the rock, her body swaying. "Wherefore not? Ah, now I ken wherefore this music hath so strong a beat—'tis for dancing!"
"I have lost all stomach for the sport," Magnus declared, "since we have seen what others make of it. Give over, Delia! Let us be off!"
"There is no harm in dancing, Magnus," Fess told him. "Let her amuse herself for a few minutes; we assuredly have no pressing schedule."
Magnus looked up at him, startled, and gave the robot a glare that clearly accused him of treachery. Fess only watched Cordelia, though, immobile and patient as a block of iron.
" 'Tis more silly than aught I have seen," Geoffrey snorted, "to dance to strains that go DOO-DOO-DOO." He grunted along with the tune, hopping about in a crude parody of Cordelia's dance. She screeched in outrage. "Thou vile boy! Canst thou not see another's pleasure, without need to lessen it?"
" 'Ware, brother," Magnus cautioned. "Thou dost begin to step quite deftly."
"Oh, aye, and to trip the light fantastic," Geoffrey said, with withering sarcasm. But he forgot to grunt his musical burlesque, and went on dancing. Sure enough, his steps began to be rather neat and nimble, and a slow smile spread across his face.
"Thou dost take as much pleasure in it as I," Cordelia gloated.
Geoffrey jerked to a halt, paling at the insult. "Never! 'Tis a girls' game, that!"
"You will find it pleasant enough when you are grown, Geoffrey," Fess assured him, "even as you will find the company of young women to be one of your greatest delights."
"I could wish not to grow, then!"
"Do not, I prithee," Gregory said quickly, "for wishes have an uncommon way of coming true—in Gramarye."
Geoffrey glowered, but he didn't answer.
"We have passed enough time," Fess said. "Come, Cordelia. Finish your dance; we must resume our journey."
"Oh, thou dost spoil the joy of it," Cordelia complained. "Naetheless, the sun grows low, and I shall go with thee."
"Well, then, come," Magnus repeated. "Cease thy dancing."
"Why, so I do!"
"Oh, dost thou!" Geoffrey grinned. "I could swear thou yet dost hop!"
"Assuredly, thou dost not truly believe thou hast stopped, Cordelia," Gregory added.
"Nay, I do not," Cordelia said, alarmed. "Yet I assure thee, brothers, I do strive to! Nay, be still, my beating feet!"
Fess lifted his head. "The shoes themselves continue to dance! They will not let her stop!"
"How can that be?" Gregory protested. "They are not living things!"
"Perhaps a living being is nearby, to animate them; perhaps they are alive, as much as any witch-moss construct is!"
"Shoes of witch-moss!" Magnus said, unbelieving. "Surely they could not endure!"
"They need last only a bit longer than Cordelia's strength, to do their wretched work," Gregory answered. "Come, throw all thy weight upon her toe! Hold still her foot!" And he leaped at Cordelia, both heels slamming down at her feet.
But the slippers skipped aside, even as Cordelia screeched, "Do not step on my blue suede shoes! I could not bear to have them spoiled!"
"Then I shall catch thy body!" Gregory threw his arms around her waist, just as a crow of victory split the moorland and a very large woman leaped out from behind the boulder, whirling a net over her head. Her skirts were full, her face was gaudy with rouge and powder, and her neckline scooped low enough to violate the laws of aesthetics. "Two at one catch!" she cackled. "Eh, I'll have much gold for them!" The net spun high, weights on its border spreading it wide as it swooped down to snare Cordelia, and Gregory with her. "A catch, a catch!" the woman cried, and waddled toward the mound of netting that thrashed and heaved, for Cordelia's body whipped in wild movements, the shoes still beating at the ground in their dance.